Between Stations » marketing

Hazards of Web 2.0

Julie — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 03:04:02 +0000

The greatest hazard of Web 2.0 is a failure to be genuine.

Today’s failure to be surprised moment is that WalMart’s back-to-school foray onto Facebook didn’t ’start a conversation’ on dorm decor. It got them slammed for labor practices. Mind you, they’re claiming future roomies are using the site to coordinate, but it just doesn’t look that way on the surface.

WalMart’s past ’social’ experiments have been a bit lackluster in actual result.

The real takeaways on this are first, it’s risky to be Web 2.0 when you have a lot of bad PR to start with. Second, you can’t change the conversation just by trying to participate. Web 2.0 actions need to be compatible with who you are, and recognize who others think you are. Sure, you can use Web 2.0 to ‘move’ who you are to who you want to be, but depending on where you start… it will take a while.

Submissions: Snake Oil

Julie — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 15:47:52 +0000

One of the top questions I get from well-intentioned new site owners concerns search engine submissions.

“I got an e-mail from a company that says they will submit me to 181 search engines for $(small amount of money). Should I do it?”

Truly, these people mean well. They see a low price tag and think/hope there might be value in it.

I always end up having to crush them. Assuming a $35 submission fee, that’s between 8 and 10 delicious gourmet schmancy coffee drinks. Mmm, caffeine.

Submission to the top 3 search engines — Google, Yahoo, and MSN — is technically unnecessary, as they’re all crawler-based, but if it makes you feel good, it can be done while drinking one of the abovementioned caffeinated treats. Yum. I actually tend to recommend submitting to MSN, because they’ve been totally irregular about indexing some of the sites I’m associated with even when we submit. Ask only recently started allowing submission, rounding out the top 4 properties.

Then, let’s look at Nielsen’s list of the top 10 search referring properties in the US, June edition. Pretty much everything in the 6 remaining entrants in the top 10 have some relationship or data feed from the top 4. So, with the top 4, you’re really probably reaching into about 96.5% of households.

So, what to do with those other 7-9 coffee drinks? I typically recommend making a coffee date with your web traffic reports, once a week, for 7-9 weeks with the rest of the money you saved by not using a submissions service. Check your referring sites and URLs. See if you see any chances for inbound link building. Get all happy inside if your search referrals start going up. Be a coffee achiever.

Mythology of Sponsored WordPress Templates

Julie — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 16:16:03 +0000

The WordPress Themes site did a massive housecleaning of sponsored themes the other day. Some of the users of WordPress are happy, some unhappy. Some theme designers are happy, some unhappy.

The basics of the situation is that many of the themes with sponsored links on the WordPress site got nuked. Most theme owners claim there was little notice to get themes updated and into compliance with new policies. Others claim that even themes that complied with new policies got nuked.

Reading some of the justifications from some of those happy about affairs shows quite a bit about myths surrounding the idea of inbound links.

I’ve seen a number of people claim that when you use a sponsored template, with links to the sponsor in the footer, you are ‘giving away your PageRank to this sponsor!’

I really see several issues with that assertion:

Most blogs don’t have much in the way of PageRank to ‘give away.’
Those that DO tend to create custom designs, or know enough about branding to want to avoid heavily spammy sponsored links.
Most of the themes I’ve seen that have 3-4 sponsored links look really bad. Ugly = not likely to be downloaded.
Providing a few outbound links on ANY site isn’t going to trash your own ability to rank. It’s all a matter of proportion.

I honestly doubt all that many sponsors of the spammy-class of sponsored themes (ie, themes with 4-5 outlinks on it) see a lot of rank help from the activity. It doesn’t fall into the same class in my mind as the people who comment-spam blogs on Bob Dole drugs, but it’s not altogether dissimilar.

The people who know least about sponsors and themes and etc. most likely use hosted solutions and don’t know how to download themes anyway. Those people also likely have the lowest PageRank, anyway.

Those who know at some level that all the footer links at least look bad, might be spammy, and might be intended as SEO (but kind of fall into Dunce Hat SEO in my book) are the people less likely to have downloaded these themes.

Those who are pretty sure, if nothing else, that the spammy footer links are ugly, and who have high-traffic blogs, are likely also the ones who get some customization done and don’t need sponsored links anyway. And those are the blog owners who could actually help a sponsor.

(And that’s before even calling into question if the links count for much anyway. Footer links are the dead real estate and code zone of a page, and are typically easy enough to discount in an algorithim the way most page code lays out. But I won’t even go there right now.)

Every Snowflake is Unique. Are You?

Julie — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 21:35:19 +0000

Perhaps your mother loves you. (I hope so; I hope I’m not opening any wounds, here.)

But here’s the thing: Search engines aren’t biologically programmed to do the same. In fact, they aren’t biological at all. They’re logical. Tech-no-logical. Robots don’t love you, no matter what watching Steven Spielberg movies, Star Wars, and Terminator films may have had you believing. I know this may be hard, but you need to separate yourself from your fantasies of Googlebot as R2D2.

There are many snowflakes on this cold, icy and loveless glacier we call the Internet. What makes you unique amongst the snowflakes? Do you have prettier edges? Are you more crystalline? Are you whiter? Are you the proverbial yellow snow that should not be eaten?

Make your web site reflect that, even if you’re yellow snow. Some people like that kind of thing — the Internet was built on that kind of content. Search engine logic loves that kind of thing: communities grow around the eating of yellow snow, links spring up, and you become unique. Uniqueness is algorithmically recognizable, and will earn you the closest thing a search engine has to love: attention and traffic referral.

Unique Value Propositions have been the basis of marketing for years. The internet has not changed this equation. If anything, it encourages businesses to engage in true self-reflection on what they can offer that someone up the street cannot. If that means pouring blue liquid on yourself and calling yourself a snowcone instead of a snowflake, that’s what it may take to drive traffic to your business, whether online or offline.

Minneapolis Locals: SEO Event 7/11

Julie — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 14:30:22 +0000

The Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association is sponsoring a good session on the Future of Search on July 11 at the always-posh Calhoun Beach Club.

The events are always well-run, the crunchy snacks are always crunchy and snack-like, and the cash bars tend to be pretty reasonable. The socializing is as good as you’re willing to make it.

For anyone in the area, it’s a good event to attend. I plan on making it, unless the summer sunshine beckons me too strongly to ride my bike.

Flash: It’s Not Just Search

Julie — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 03:22:54 +0000

The Google Webmaster Blog has a post about uses of Flash in Web pages. Naturally, as one might expect from Google, they focus on the ability of Googlebot or other spiders to ’see’ Flash.

Nothing’s wrong with this, mind you. Flash navigation is bad and needs to not exist.

But there are plenty of good reasons to use Flash. For instance, while it may not be spiderable, I know two sites where Flash ‘product builders’ are key drivers for conversion. Timbuk2, who make really great bicycle bags (and who’ve branched off into other bags too), have a great bag configurator tool that allows you to build your custom bag, see it, share it, and buy it. (I totally recommend their laptop bag, by the way.)

Similarly, Orbea’s USA site has a lot of Flash. But, they’re a brand play first and foremost. They are bikes yearned for by fanboys (and fangirls, hi), and aren’t going to be a primary (or tertiary, or billionary) choice for a casual shopper looking for help with bike selection on the Internet. Their bike builder tool is teh swanky. And that’s not a site that’s going to need lots of ‘how to choose components,’ since, again: the audience. We know what we like, and it’s shiny, light, and high-tech. Er, did I just say we? Anyway, a few runs through a configurator, then the next stop is a local shop who can help you fit and order a nice bit of carbon fiber with Italian componentry…

er, I digress. Again.

Flash can be a good part of a user experience. Not every site needs to live and die by spiderability. Should Flash be surrounded by spiderable goodness? Sure. Should a site owner decry Flash because it’s not 100% full of SEO goodness? Not if by adding Flash they can get people to drop some change.

(PS: Santa, all I really want for Christmas is Diva with a full Campy Chorus gruppo. I promise to be good.)

Political Search

Julie — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 19:40:26 +0000

Rolling into the three-decade long primary race, we have studies evaluating the search effectiveness of various US presidential candidates already.

One limiter of the study is that it seems to focus purely on PPC spend. I find some of what various candidates are doing from an organic perspective to be far more interesting. They’re all on all the social networks, YouTube, and Flickr, for instance, and then each candidate seems to have their own spins:

Mitt Romney has a blog, ostensibly by his brothers, on a subdomain. He’s also been using his domain since 2002, and hasn’t done anything limiting like add office or year to the domain — smart.
John Edwards has a freaking SPLASH PAGE. Ugh! But he uses wacky code to avoid having it indexed. Again, he’s using his ‘name’ domain, no wacky offices or years. Again, a blog. And nice rollover menu code.
Barack Obama is more of the same, only he’s added a UGC section over at my.barackobama.com. Nice.
Hillary Clinton, like John Edwards, has a dumb splash page with wacky code. Once in, it looks like she has a UGC section… but wait! DEAD LINK!!!! I’m also underwhelmed by her meta-description on a SERP.
Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani is on a dumb domain (JoinRudy2008.com, registered 2006, and not reusable if he doesn’t get it this round, or if he DOES and needs to be re-elected later). He’s got some nice ‘add these widgets to your blog!’ for quick link-building.
Sam Brownback officially makes me ask: WHAT IS WITH SPLASH PAGES THIS SEASON. Especially for a guy without a metric ton of name recognition. Interestingly, once you make it in, he’s got one of the cleaner designs and a text-driven home page — which most of the others just don’t.

Looking at bad political sites makes my head ache. I may go research nice places to go during the Republican Convention in 2008, happening right here in my home town of Minneapolis-St. Paul. I am SO going to be out of town, after having lived through the 1996 Democratic Convention in Chicago. I’ve had a full lifetime worth of Secret Service Agents preventing me from getting a coffee, thankyouverymuch.

Missed Opportunities in Real Estate Development

Julie — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 15:34:29 +0000

How many ‘Maple Streets’ does any one county, state or country need? I saw no fewer than two in a 28-mile bicycle ride last night.

What makes a real estate developer say, “Let’s name all these streets for trees?”

And why do they always choose the same trees? Why not a round of ‘Black Locust Lane’ or ‘Poison Sumac Street?’

If I were to build a subdivision, I think I would name streets after exotic and tasty greens. ‘Take a left turn at Arugula Avenue and go up Endive Lane to the cul-se-sac, which is Escarole Court. I’m the green house, in the middle.’ If I wanted to really make a niche, all the houses would be ecologically friendly ‘green’ houses.

As it is, I think I may re-name my server namespace so that each machine and node is named for a leafy green. Yum.

Directories & The Sniff Test

Julie — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 18:04:33 +0000

I think any reasonably competent SEO has the good sense on how to tell if a directory is ‘good’ or ‘eh.’

Unfortunately, many of our clients, let alone non-clients who think they can’t afford SEO advice, don’t have the well-honed sense of smell. Nor should they be expected to — one of the advantages for a business owner in working with a full-time search engine marketer is that the SEO spends their professional life being a search geek. Most ‘normal’ business owners need to spend their time knowing the ins and outs of their business.

Here are a few warning signs about if that ‘directory’ is crap:

Are they indexed? I had someone ask me about submitting to a ‘directory’ that I was quickly able to determine wasn’t even indexed in Yahoo or Google. This is not the sign of hot traffic referral waiting to happen! The site: command is a good one for people wanting to get involved with their web site to learn.
Age of domain. Now, I know that a lot of normal people don’t know how to use whois, but it’s really quite simple. If the domain is fairly new and the directory isn’t associated with someone you’ve heard of, caveat emptor.
Request for reciprocal link. I recommend all suspicion of any reciprocal link request, but if this directory is prominent enough to drive traffic to you, why do they need you to link to them? In general, they’re going to have hundreds of outbound links, you probably have fewer. This means your link to them is likely more valuable than their link to you. So why bother?
Have you heard of them? If you haven’t heard of them, will your clients have heard of them? It won’t be a good source of traffic if no one uses them.

Reliability of Online Reviews

Julie — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 22:44:05 +0000

This one’s for the Funk King of Minneapolis, Paul Jahn.

There’s a Salon blog post today on the reliability of online reviews. Here’s a choice bit:

Online ratings are beset by one main flaw, something pollsters call “response bias.” Because people are more likely to rate products that have moved them in some way — either positively or negatively — ratings for most items brim with extreme opinions. On Yelp everyone is above average; company CEO Jeremy Stoppelman told me that 85 percent of local businesses on the site get a three-star or better average rating.

The article is pretty good, so I won’t rehash it here. One thing that notably isn’t mentioned is ‘business owners posting wretchedly fake reviews in some mad faux-SEO urge.’ I’ve seen some awful, awful fake reviews — no real human writes like these reviews, or would say these things about a business such as that reviewed.

The visual range depictions discussed in this article won’t do much about those written reviews, although they’ll show the bias in the starred reviews a little more strongly. On the other hand, Paul and I have discussed that if a reasonable person found these fake reviews, they’d make a sane reader less likely to go to a business. Even though there’s massive response bias in even real reviews, at least they’re real.