Hot on the heels of my last article, “The Basics of Search Engine Optimization“, many commenters and emailers have let me know their opinions and stories about branding conflicts with search marketing. In-house SEO’s feel the pain more than the rest as they struggle to keep the keywords in front of the searchers, only to have corporate directives control the page title, relegating the website to the 3rd or 4th page of search results.
I am friends with many in-house SEO’s. From Fortune 500’s, multi-national companies, even local big businesses, the problems of these in-house search marketers are primarily the same: calling things what they are, and optimizing for those keywords rather than the brand.
There are some that feel passionately about branding their companies and that search engine optimization should take a back seat to that branding. To them I have to say, “tough luck.” Sorry, but it just doesn’t work the way. Not if you want to be found and get the most exposure for your site.
Here’s why:
Customer Vocabulary
You have to be pretty arrogant to think that branding is the primary goal of a website, and that searchers will respond to that. Unless you are a major household name, people rarely search for you unless they already know you or have information about you. Even then, no business has cornered the search market on actual concepts. Just because people know your business name does not mean that they are searching for you.
Here are a few examples of how some well-known brands stack up against the search term popularity:
Despite being household names, these brands hold very little sway when people are searching for the actual product. Very few are searching for the brand in comparison to the primary keyword concepts. Not everyone knows who you are.
Searcher Control
The internet is a medium that businesses cannot control. There are numerous conversations taking place, and unfortunately, most companies are not even aware of what is being said about them. Customers are talking; many are talking about their experiences with companies and products. Businesses cannot control this conversation, and when they attempt to do that, it backfires. Spectacularly, in some cases. Engaging in the conversation with customers is a good idea, dominating the conversation and controlling it isn’t.
This is not the age of the corporate message to the mass market. This is the age of the searcher, as they are they ones using the tools and conversations of the internet to drive the demand. The internet is the only medium that allows customers to tell companies when they are interested in their message, and not the other way around. TV commercials, billboards, magazines, even banner ads on websites are a “shotgun” approach to mass marketing. Get the brand out in front of the market, try to affect the decision. However, the message first has to be relevant. If the message isn’t relevant, then that ad, the billboard, they really have no hold on me. However, when I am looking for a product, then I control who I listen to and what I see.
Brand + Keyword
Very few people are searching for you; they are searching for your product. The only change in that is when people know specifically what they want, and then they add the brand to the product name. In that case, your site had better be found.
Considering the buying cycle, many consumers have researched products on line, using many search methods to get reviews and pricing. After making the decision, they know the brand that they want and they search specifically for that. Now, it is up to your site to be found for that search, as the potential of that searcher becoming a buyer is very high.
There have been many studies that show that the conversion rate is very high for searches referrals that contain both the brand name and the product name. I have observed this trend as well from analysing hundreds of websites. The more detailed a searcher is in the keyword along with abranded term, the more potential of converting them to a customer.
In most cases, searches for a specific brand or a company name will find the website. It is (in most cases) very easy to optimize for a company name. Those who know you will find you, those who don’t won’t.
The Long Tail
Yes, the long tail again. You simply cannot focus entirely on your brand name and a single product keyword. Your customers don’t do that, and aren’t you trying to reach them? Find out the many names that customers call your products; they are varied and sometimes very specific, depending on many factors. To focus on a brand name or a single keyword will cause you to miss the greater part of the market, and also the most profitable part of the market.
Rule #1
Call the stuff what your customers call it! If you don’t, no one will find it.
Rule #2
Corporate Branding has its place. And its place is not in the sole ownership of the page title. As I have said, the title tag is the “beachfront property” of a website. For those that choose to have nothing but the branding in the title, that beachfront property quickly becomes a lonely island.
Matt Bailey is the owner and founder of SiteLogic and has over a decade in the web marketing industry. He focuses on consulting and training to help companies take control of their websites and marketing strategies.
This morning, I presented at the Direct Marketing Association’s ACCM conference (for catalog retailers.) I always enjoy these specialized conferences because we can talk specifically about selling products online and how SEO can increase business, simply from changes in how one approaches the website.
This presentation was inspired from a question asked from a prior conference. The question asked what is the top 3 things that businesses do wrong? It took me a while to distill it to three things, but I think I can summarize that most problems come from these problems in large companies.
Top Three Mistakes:
1. Branding comes before marketing tactics. Many times, a company’s branding policies will conflict with the necessary elements of an optimization campaign. I see this many times when a company name is the only information that can be placed in the page title. Of course, the page title is one of the most critical elements of on-page optimization, so the conflict is obvious. Unfortunately, some companies think this is a debatable issue, but it is not.
2. Call things what they are. Related to this, many companies try to define their markets by creating fancy branded product names, rather than simply calling stuff what it is. This is one of the primary problems I see, and the simplest of keyword research will show that customers do not search for these branded terms, they search for what they know and they use their words to define products, not the company’s terms.
3. The basis of optimization is the customer experience. (Yes, I know that isn’t a mistake, but to think otherwise might get you in trouble.) The search engines are trying to evaluate web pages on the basis of what a human would think is the most relevant, so optimizing your content and your presentation for users, using basic SEO principles, will help you rank well in the search engines. This is one of those phenomena that have been part of search since the early days. Do what is best for your users, and the search engine success will follow.
Matt Bailey is the owner and founder of SiteLogic and has over a decade in the web marketing industry. He focuses on consulting and training to help companies take control of their websites and marketing strategies.
My Web Analytics Course is featured on the SlideShare homepage today! Hooray!
Certainly not a newcomer to the social space scene, SlideShare has become one of my favorite social sharing sites in a very short time. Granted, seeing a slideshow without hearing the presentation is a little odd, but I always have requests for my slides after a presentation.
There are a few reasons that I hesitate to share my PowerPoints, the first of which is the time that goes in to create one of these, the second the clip art that I purchase for use in the presentation, and thirdly, because sometimes I look at these things and wonder what people will get out of these. Those that have attended my presentations know that I attempt to make my slides as visual as possible, so I often wonder what people will get from screen captures and pictures of Captain Kirk.
I like the SlideShare concept, as I can simply upload a presentation immediately after a presentation and mention the link to the SiteLogic SlideShare page. This also eliminates the hassle of sending 4-6 Meg files by email, and your slides stay intact.
SlideShare also provides the code for you to add a slideshow to your website or blog. This is great for sharing the PowerPoint in your blog without large images and PDF files. The interactive viewer allows users to click through the show. The only downside I have experienced is that a font will get “blown out” once in a while and replaced with something that is not even close – but, i can deal with that (sometimes).
For fun, and by demand, I uploaded the Red Shirt Analysis slides to SlideShare. You can view them here:
Matt Bailey is the owner and founder of SiteLogic and has over a decade in the web marketing industry. He focuses on consulting and training to help companies take control of their websites and marketing strategies.
From the earlier article that I wrote, Social Media Under the Microscope, a lot of conversation was spawned as a result of the data findings. Many questions seemed to have been answered, as many people responded by confirming the same data on their sites. However, there were some new questions created from the data.
The most fascinating questions revolved around defining the difference between different social media technologies, such as blogs, forums, online news sites, and social networking and bookmarking sites. Using the same data, but looking at it in different ways provided some very amazing trends. So, with new & improved charts (complete with fresh new colors) and additional tools to dig into the data, (thanks to ClickTracks) I began the process of analyzing different forms of engagement based on visitor referral sources.
Defining Social Media
Because of the strong differences in engagement and context, I have had to divide the general term of social media in order to properly label and view the visitors from these sources. Because these groups view content in very diametrically opposed methods, they must be separated and defined. I added Web 2.0 customer review sites, since they are social media-based websites.
Social Media: Blogs, Forums
Social News: Digg, Reddit, Delicious, Netscape
Web 2.0: (Yahoo Local, Amazon reviews)
Using one of the more recent events that rippled through the blogosphere, Jennifer Laycock’s run-in with the National Pork Board, a lot of data was built. Jennifer’s original blog post made the front page of the major social news sites, attracted public relations and online news coverage, and made headlines in the mommy bloggers and parenting forums. A data junkie’s dream, this provided compelling data to analyze as there were a variety of visitor referral sources and long term data.
Define: Engagement
One of the best ways of analyzing visitors is not to get distracted by the big numbers. When building comparisons from referrers, one has to look at the goals of the site. Especially for content producers, making the site “sticky” has to be defined. What makes a successful visit, even if there is no conversion? Any site manager should have to answer that question, as a good customer experience is what makes people come back, even if they do not purchase or become a lead on the first visit. Chances are they won’t. So how do you know if you are taking care of your visitors? This is where engagement metrics are so important.
First, define engagement. Define a successful visit to your website. A combination of time on site and pages viewed were the logical choices for this project, as Jennifer writes a content-based blog. She does sell shirts (which got her in trouble in the first place), so that as a conversion as well, even though it is not her primary activity.
Define: Audience
Second, define your audience. This may sound impossible at first, but consider where your audience comes from: search engine queries, website links, direct access or bookmarks. Now, what are those people looking for? Search queries are not that hard to aggregate. I suggest creating “buckets” of keyword concepts. Rather than isolating a specific term and counting visitors, widen the scope and create a catch-all phrase that will capture as many of the related terms to a particular concept as possible.
For example, a site that sells lighting may want to filter the search queries for the phrase ‘ceiling fans’. Rather than waste time trying to capture every single variation of the term, use the single word ‘fans’. This will help you to view the search trends in that vertical rather than getting sidetracked on tracking the specific phrase. Depending on the size of the site, there can be hundreds of related terms within the segment. The more segments you create, the more data you have to compare. Comparison also takes on a new aspect when comparing similar terms within the vertical, rather than comparing all of the terms in one list.
The idea is that by segmenting out each of these key concepts, rather than specific words, you can better identify what each group of searchers is looking for, and then better identify what your site is delivering to them.
In looking at Jennifer’s traffic sources, we saw a significant distinction in the audience:
Salon.com
Parenting Forums (two popular sources)
Mommy Bloggers (primary blog referrers)
Web Marketing Blogs
Social News Sites (Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon)
Search Traffic (four primary keyword verticals in the strategy)
This created a wide range of audience characteristics. On one hand, Jennifer is a recognizable member of the search marketing community; on the other she is a mommy blogger and a breastfeeding activist. This event brought many different groups together, simply by nature of the situation; the corporate giant with an overzealous attorney going after a work at home mom with a blog.
click for larger image
High Audience Engagement
Based on engagement factors, the group that was the most engaged, and with a very respectable conversion rate, were the visitors from Salon.com. These visitors tended to stay the longest, read more pages, and consistently browsed the shirt selection. It was a surprise that this group was the most engaged, but something resonated with them as the article was published right in the middle of the controversy.
Good Audience Engagement Blogs & Forums
The second most engaged group was a mix of blogs and forums. Typically, the blog referrals stayed longer and read more, but the forums were not far off. This was not surprising, as the highest referring blogs in terms of numbers were other mommy bloggers. The forums were well known parenting forums which brought the article to the attention of other moms and dads. There was also a distinct difference between the mommy blogger referrals and the search marketing community referrals. Obviously, this situation resonated more with the mommy bloggers than the search community. The marketers were more interested in the David v. Goliath match-up and link bombing the Pork Board. The news really spread in the mommy blogger world, as many were personally offended at the attorney’s remarks. These groups, while the engagement was lower than Salon.com, tended to convert and buy shirts at a higher rate – not a big surprise.
Search Traffic
Closely related but less engaged were the searchers. Of course, the search traffic around the event lagged based on the search engines. However, there were changes in the Google index within hours of the first post. Two days after the original blog post, Jennifer’s site, TheLactivist.com, ranked #6 for the search term, “National Pork Board.” The engagement rates varied based on the terms they were searching for, which provided a very insightful view into the engagement by search term “group”. The conversion rates were lower than the blog referrers, but there was also differentiation among the conversion rates based on search terms as well. Based on what people are searching for, they view a site very differently, which leads to understanding the context of the search and the searcher’s expectations.
Low Audience Engagement
The lowest engaged group is the social media group, whose primary demographic is twenty-something tech-oriented males. However, the behavior shown here (lowest time on site, rarely more than one page view, no conversions) is not specific to this site. It is an occurrence on almost every site that is subject to attention from the techie world. From Slashdot to Digg, the attention from techies who share stories from around the world is nothing new. Consistently, the referrals from those types of social news sites all follow a trend of low engagement and rare conversions.
The “Long Tail” of Referrers
Most web marketers have heard of the Keyword Long Tail effect. See Keyword Long Tail for more info:
However, one of the more exciting things noted in the analysis was from the blog and forum referrers who sent traffic from the initial visit link. As time went on, those referrers tended to link to Jennifer’s site again and again, especially as she broke new stories specific to the parenting and breastfeeding communities.
This is the critical long-term data observation.
TheLactivist.com attracted attention from a wide variety of sources, yet the primary message is breastfeeding rights, parenting, and activism. Those blogs and forums, specific to that audience, that initially found her site from the Pork Board suit, continued to link to her site because it was relevant to their message and audience.
While the Digg, Reddit and other socal media did the “Flash Mob” thing . . .
Her other referrers, many of whom found her site from the Pork Board story, continued to send visitors and link to her blog. This is the long tail effect for links.
When new bloggers and opinion leaders find your website and it resonates with them, they tend to link to it more often, thereby sending more people over the long term than in one specific instance. Interestingly, there were other stories that drove more people from these blogs to her website than what was drawn by the original article!
Context and Competition
Here are the keys to developing this effect for your website. Context and Competition for Attention.
The principle of context is simple, we each practice it every day. When mommy bloggers and parenting forums linked to Jennifer’s story, the context was clear, they were mothers outraged at the comments of the Pork Board lawyer. Jennifer’s blog was sympathetic for them, as she was a work at home mother being harassed and bullied by a corporate giant. Therefore, the context of the link in those blogs and forums was very high. Conversely, the competition for the reader’s attention was very low. When a blogger links to another site it is usually supported by surrounding information that is relevant, powerful and the next best thing to a word-of-mouth referral. There are very few other links competing for attention, and when a link is provided in a clear context, there is no competition.
The next level in context and competition is search referrals. Searchers have queried a topic and they are evaluating the result page to find the most relevant choice to click. The context is usually fairly good, depending upon the searcher’s terms, and in an ideal world, all of the choices are relevant; however, they are all competing for the searcher’s attention. The more results on the page, the more scrolling, and the more results pages viewed, the more the competition for the searcher’s attention increases and the less chance that your site will be clicked.
Finally, social media. The competition for the reader’s attention is huge, as the homepage of Digg alone has about 30 news and topical links to choose from. Contextually, those links have little to nothing in common. This is the place for distraction, something different, and discovery of news not otherwise found. Most users are not looking for anything in particular, politics excluded, so it is all about what catches their eye. The competition for their attention is very high, and the context is very low for specific subjects, so it logically stands that their engagement rates for any site will be very low.
Conclusions
The biggest take-away for me was the impact of a good link from an online news source. The visitors and the weight of the authority provide a significant benefit. Truly, a show of quality over quantity. Online Public Relations and reaching out to online news outlets is still one of the most viable methods of creating awareness and traffic for a website.
The second take-away is the recognition that a long term strategy that focuses on your target audience will be the most viable and profitable. Chasing after short-term repetition from social news sites as a means of marketing a website will lead to detached visitors who see no consistent context to your site or your goals as a business.
The tried and true focus of building a business by a long-term focus on your target market is borne out in the data. Building a relevant site that connects with visitor needs is the most beneficial and valuable. A strategy that engages visitors by the contextual relevance will build sales and leads and long-term reputation at the same time.
Matt Bailey is the owner and founder of SiteLogic and has over a decade in the web marketing industry. He focuses on consulting and training to help companies take control of their websites and marketing strategies.
I was reviewing some old articles on analytics when I caught last summer’s DM News Report on Analytics (PDF). I was impressed at the amount of information contained about the business case for analytics, all coming from some very intelligent people. The great thing was the consistent thread of thought throughout the entire report: Analytics is growing – and it’s more than web stats – it is marketing intelligence. Unfortunately, the gold mine is sitting untouched, as many businesses are unaware of the untold riches sitting just a few inches away.
However, this grabbed my attention more than anything else in the report:
“Web analytics works best when measurement expectations are clearly defined in advance, not after the fact or on an ad-hoc basis.”
-Eric Peterson
This is not only the essence of analytics, it is the essence of business. Even greater than that, of life. Your life has to have goals, otherwise, what are the expectations that you will measure yourself against? How can you expect a business to succeed when there are no measurements along the way to provide correction and guidance?
Goal setting and published expectations are natural for those who expect to succeed, and it is not a strange trend that those who practice that also succeed in business. The same is true of websites. They must have a goal, both for the owner and the visitor. Unless that goal is declared, there is no way to determine success or failure.
The only way to sift through the mountains of data, the hundreds of charts and graphs, the pages of “Top 10” lists, is to have a specific set of goals to measure. By measuring against specific goals, the data will suddenly fall away as you remove what is not necessary to the overall goals. Good analytics programs allow you to strip away the stuff you don’t want or need to see. They allow you to focus in on the key indicators that are relevant to your site’s performance.
Bottom Line: If you don’t have clearly defined goals for your online marketing strategy, then no amount of analytics will assist you in making the right decisions.
Matt Bailey is the owner and founder of SiteLogic and has over a decade in the web marketing industry. He focuses on consulting and training to help companies take control of their websites and marketing strategies.
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Matt Bailey is the owner and founder of SiteLogic and has over a decade in the web marketing industry. He focuses on consulting and training to help companies take control of their websites and marketing strategies.
