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One of the most challenging things about optimizing a web site for a small business owner is controlling their expectations and tempering their ambitions. For many, a web site is more than just a way to reach their core audience – it’s a blurring of their understanding of who their core audience really is.
Because it’s called the World Wide Web, many business owners decide that they really will be reaching the world. Unfortunately, if this is their expectation, they get very upset when this isn’t necessarily true. A web site doesn’t automagically translate into state-wide, national, international or intergalactic reach. There are a lot of questions that need to be answered before expanding the expected coverage area of a site:
- If you’re a service provider, can you legitimately provide services in those new territories? If not and you’re thinking you can refer the business for a cut, do you have the contacts or credibility to do so?
- As a product provider, can you ship/deliver to those areas? At what cost? What value proposition makes you more appealling than a more local provider who will have lower rates for delivery?
- What are you willing to do to be able to compete in this age of Local Search with people who may be truly local and thus have an algorithmic advantage?
I know of some businesses that really do manage some national reach. For instance, homebrewing suppliers have traditionally had some ways of reaching national audiences – online homebrewing forums populated by local fans of various shops. And every shop has some unique ‘house’ recipes that can pull in a client. In some areas, there aren’t ANY homebrew suppliers, making going outside the local region essential (even though shipment of glass is always heinous). And there’s now a hops shortage – this is bad news, believe you me – which means that some people to get the specific varietals they want (what, you thought hops was hops? Hops are like lettuce: there are a billion types and they all taste different) need to find shops that have a supplier.
But for most local businesses who decide that they’re intergalactic? Not so much.
I somewhat recently (when measured in archaeological time) commented that Council Bluffs is a pit
– a pit where Google happens to be building a data center, in point of fact. Based on an ad in this weekend’s newspaper, I have found a web site that challenges that assertion: the CB Convention & Visitors Bureau site!
Gaming, sporting events, museums, historical sites, nature, annual festivals, performing arts facilities, world-class dining, and comfortable lodging await your reservation.
WOW. And here my college friends mostly talked about the smell of the old Sara Lee plant, and the summer that one of them spent in a plastics manufacuring job making implements for medical examinations of women. Maybe Google looked more at the city’s black squirrel mascot (‘Chipper’), and had stopped-up sinuses when they made their choice, and my friends are just crankys.
Building a web site is not a ‘marketing strategy.’
A web site is a marketing tactic or a marketing tool.
It’s strange the things one discovers online while doing potentially productive work on behalf of clients.
For instance, today the Associated Press tells us the horrifying tale of a giant python eating a dog in Australia.
They even provide pictures!
I doubt this is going to be useful for my client, but this is important news to be aware of, as pythons are apparently an imminent threat in much of the United States. After all, the San Francisco Chronicle tells us pythons may invade California
. Per their article, coming from Florida:
At 20 miles a month, a determined Burmese python from Florida could arrive in San Francisco as early as August 2020.
In the meantime, think of all the dogs at risk between Florida and California! And beavers. The article specifically discusses how much determined giant pythons might like to eat beavers. You might want to keep an eye on Rover between now and 2020.
It reminds me of the nature discussion I went to with my mom once, where the habits of suburban coyotes were tracked. They found coyotes (which are relatives of dogs, right?) mostly lived near restaurant dumpsters and along drainage lakes and creeks. Mom let them set up a tracking station under our back porch, which was near a creek. They found that suburban coyotes ate a lot of squirrel, bunny… and common housecats whose owners were convinced kitty needed to run free.download Blackball
I have maintained for several years, and can probably find industry study to support me, that the rise of online job sites has driven both an increase in applications to positions, and a decrease in cover letters written to support said applications.
Some might say: “Oooh, increased pool to choose from!” They’re generally wrong, simply in the sense that the ability to clicky-click and send a resume often leads to a larger pool of unqualified applicants to slog through in search of the future company rock-star you wish to hire.
Cover letters are a part of this. In a deluge of applications, a decent cover letter can be the difference between an interview and rejection – especially if you’re stretching a bit to apply for something (ex: traditional marketer trying to crack online marketing). Intern candidates really need to include cover letters, as most online application systems just barely ask your college major – leaving a hiring manager knowing that (a) you’re a college student, and (b) you work at the grocery store part-time. While internships don’t generally require a lot of specialized skill, the effort of telling a manager your major and that you have any related coursework goes quite far. It’s an applicant’s best chance to market himself – and if you’re applying in any form of marketing field, I happen to think failure to take advantage of the opportunity says poor things about an applicant’s potential!
Across the board, I have some advice:
- Cover letters matter.
- Be careful about copying and pasting a ’standard’ letter. Cover letters don’t count for ‘full credit’ if they’re full of vague platitudes and no reference to the characteristics sought in the job ad.
- GET THE COMPANY NAME RIGHT. Nothing warms the heart of a hiring manager to et a cover letter referring to another local company as a swell place one might want to work.
- Check your spelling. And your grammar. Egad. Now, not everyone is going to be a rhetorical genius, but for professional positions, reasonable communication skill is a must.
- Be a realist. If forced to give a salary number, be aware of the general range such positions or such experience tend to compel – it’s not heinously difficult to research, and if your salary figure is daft, all the other work on the resume and cover letter will be wasted.
I’ve become grumpy in my old age, but back when I was a wee sprout (cane shake!), WE WROTE COVER LETTERS. And people LIKED them! We also had to send them in ENVELOPES on PAPER with POSTAGE. Don’t get me wrong – I like online application. But it’s made people lazy.
I give you a post from SEO Roundtable that highlights still another reason why MSN Search is stinkariffic. Anyone who deals with these people is very clear on why they might want to buy Yahoo, because they clearly can’t code an algorithm of any value. I am getting very tired of explaining to clients that they aren’t listed in MSN because MSN is stinktastic.
Microsoft Live Search Says Admits They Were Too Tough on Sites: Making Algorithm Less “Strict”
Yeah, I noticed. They’d index a site, then the site would disappear. They even have an FAQ on the topic:
Occasionally, a website may disappear from search results as we continue to improve our website-ranking algorithms. In some cases, search results may change considerably as we test new algorithms.
…
Because our web crawler (A program that scans websites and indexes their information for searching.) manages millions of pages, it’s normal for some pages to move in and out of the index.
Look, if you have to have an FAQ on site disappearances and have to claim that due to volume some sites go boom!, your algo is broken and stinky. On the plus side, they seem to be fessing up to it, but that it took them this long isn’t the most promising sign.
Rumor is now in the universe that MSN Search is recognizing 301 Redirects.
I will believe it when I see it occur. I am watching about 10 sites to see if it picks up. Even when it does, it will not remove my general belief that MSN Search is stinky.
The current big trendy thing in the Twin Cities is for high schools to find Facebook-posted pictures of their students drinking.
This gets right down to the heart of something I told some college students for a career day a while back: Do not assume your Facebook profile is secret. Not from your parents, not from potential employers, not from other figures of possible authority. I stressed that one should never post things to Facebook you don’t want a potential employer to discover. Just as you Google the hot member of the appropriate affectional gender after a introduction or blind date, don’t assume employers don’t do the same for you – especially if you’re applying in online marketing! Your online presence becomes a part of your personal ‘brand.’
Every time this happens though, the high school students get upset about invasions of privacy and how ‘maybe the images were photoshopped!’ uh-huh. The parents also frequently get peevish about the schools ‘usurping’ parental authority by doing such things as suspending athletes from sports (most HS athletes sign a ‘no substances’ policy).
Common sense applies to all: The Internet is basically public. Don’t count on it for privacy when posting images or various forms of personally identifiable information. For the stuff that SHOULD be private, like banking, deal with respected providers. And don’t be dumb.
(And now, all of us old farts over 30 can breathe a sigh of relief that if we did have pictures online in the early flush of Mosaic 1.0 and the magnificent speed of the 38.8k modem, they’re long, long gone, or were under such obscure nom-de-guerres no one could find ‘em anyway.)
We need to all quit pretending that MSN/Live Search is a ‘real’ search engine, or that it is a legitimate third competitor to the Big Two.
I know that it’s Microsoft, etc., but just because they’re huge we needn’t pander to their ego.
Real search engines can follow basic web standards.
Autobytel, one of the big auto sites, did a study that suggests consumers have a sense of search engine fatigue
. Obviously, since this was released by an auto portal, some of the info and findings in the press release were self-serving.
I’ve worked in automotive. Auto search is really a challenge for a lot of reasons. First, you have the parent ‘brand’ sites. Then you have dealer sites. Depending on the badge/maker, a lot of dealer sites are basically templated sites, often based on bad code structures. (I seem to recall Dodge being an especial offender against good code standards.)
Then you have the issue of new vs. used. When someone wants a new car and has narrowed things down to the ballpark of make-model, it starts to limit their dealership choices, and in many cases, their negotiation room. (Hint: You want a hybrid? You’re paying what the dealer SAYS you’re paying. Supply and demand’s a brute.)
But used cars are a battlefield. So what if you’re a Toyota dealer? You have used cars from many makers on the lot. So you have to compete on the basis of your inventory and/or ability to get a piece of inventory. But most of the aggregation web sites, like Autobytel, don’t have a good way to have inventory crawled. They’re up-to-date, so long as a dealer keeps their feeds hot, but the site has to drive the traffic to see the inventory, and then the site has to have non-stinky options to search local inventories.
Because of the competition in the aggregator space, most dealerships have to play ball on multiple sites. Depending on the dealer and the inventory size, this gets pricey quickly.
Thus, aggregators have to be able to compete in local spaces, and have to be able to compete on a wide variety of terms that go from hyper-generic (‘used car’) to specific (‘2003 toyota camry’). Organically, the space is a dogfight. While many do ok organically, these sites end up using a ton of PPC.
All this is before you even consider the notion of ‘research.’ I remember a study from a few years ago that said that used car dealers are the least trusted professionals in the US (followed by advertising execs). People tend to spend a lot on, and rely on, their autos. So they want research on reliability, gas mileage, recalls, you name it. But the ‘brand names’ of research that are well-known or trusted are limited. Sites either all carry info from the same 3-4 providers, or have information that may be less trusted. Duplicate content is a likely end result — as it is for lots of product spec information as well.
One of the things I will say is great in the automotive space is that the dealers themselves do a terrific job of lead tracking, on the whole. This is naturally better for the larger dealerships, not the corner used car lot, but even those smaller outfits often do a good job of identifying lead sources. There are a lot of programs in the automotive space to do lead tracking and follow-up, assign trackable phone numbers to different campaigns (badge site, dealer site, aggregtor sites), and measure lead conversion. A lot of other locally-converting industries could learn a lot from the average automotive lead-gen program.
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