The User Journey: Be Prepared for Search

Here's how it looks at my place right now.

We lost our electricity for three days. Since I work entirely online, I couldn't get any work done for that whole time. While the sun was out, I did some filing, but essentially I had three days off.

It would have been so much better to have had three days off without being huddled by the fire reading with a flashlight.

Oh, there were some nice candlelight Scrabble games and we had guitar music, along with the creepy sound of trees breaking and falling.

And it did give me the chance to read those stacks of magazines I've had piling up, and I saw an excellent reminder in the snazzy pages of Practical Web Design. There was a discussion of the ways that people search: broadly, for general information; then narrowly, for further information on points they've come up with during the first search; and finally, with a specific transaction in mind.

PWD was making the point that we may only see the traffic arriving at our websites through the transactional searches. Google Analytics doesn't show that they initially found us during informational searches and only then narrowed in.

In fact, if you've done a good job with your content, it's likely that your visitors will have seen you on the search enigne results page for a query or two before they click -- many people now get as much information as they can from Google before settling on a website to visit. So, if you sell accounting software, your visitors may have noticed your website as an offering for a search for "accounting software" and "integrated accounting software" and "good choices for accounting" before they finally settle in and search for you by name.

I can actually see a bit of this at my educational blog. The tracking I have there shows the last page visitors were on before reaching me. Often, they've been to a set of things like "global warming activities" and "global warming lesson plans" and "climate change lessons." When they actually click through repeatedly from the different pages, I can see it. When they've merely seen my article a number of times before deciding to read it, of course, I don't know that.

The message is that we need to be present at all the points of the search. Your website's content should consider not only the specific terms your clients use to find you, but the more general kinds of information they may be searching for before that. We can't measure the effects of that presence, but logically we can understand its importance.

The good news is that you can accomplish this by providing useful information at your website. In fact, so many search techniques boil down to having useful information at your website that this should continue to be your highest priority.

However, there is another takeaway here, it seems to me. Your meta description, your title, and the headings of your website copy are very likely to be the things those visitors see on the search engine results page. So I think you might want to pay particular attention to those items when you're polishing up the useful content for your page.

It's suprising how often those very pieces of content are left for the designer or developer to write, rather than being carefully written along with the main content.

I'm very thankful to have electricity once more. Our experience was made easier by our having candles and flashlights and warm clothing. Is it too much of a stretch to think of our websites in the same way? We need to be prepared for all the points of the user's journey at which we would like to be found.

What Do Tech Guys Look Like?

Last night I was commiserating with a fellow information worker. She had been dissed by a computer salesperson.

"It happens to me, too," I said. "The last time I bought a computer, the guy offered to come to my house and plug it in for me."

My friend remembered that occasion. "You forgave him later, when he mentioned that he lived in a dorm room."

True.

"It's because we don't look like tech guys," I suggested.

I look like someone's mom. She looks like a young Catherine Zeta-Jones.

We thought of some of the tech guys we work with who do look like tech guys.

"You have to be 23 years old and wear polo shirts," I suggested.

"No way! You have to look tired and schlumpy because you've been up most of the night working on a web site."

Actually, I can do that.

Linkbuilding Strategies: What Works for You

When I develop SEO strategies for people, I often suggest a linkbuilding component. Actually, I probably always suggest a linkbuilding component. One of my first clients when I left in-house SEO and became a freelance had a couple million links, and a new linkbuilding campaign was a good move for him, so why wouldn't it be for you?

That doesn't mean that everyone should conduct precisely the same linkbuilding campaign. I was reminded of that while getting a campaign started for BrassMusicOnline.com. The talented people over there will arrange your favorite song to suit your tuba quintet or your one hundred piece orchestra or -- in my case -- a sax, a singer, and a couple of flutes. As anyone who has ever burnt up a few hours seeking out an arrangement that will suit the particular instruments you have on hand knows, this is a useful service.

So I went straightaway to musicians' forums and trombone associations' link pages and so forth and started writing persuasive letters to the humans who take care of those pages. They wrote back to me in gratitude for putting them on to this great thing.

It would be wonderful if basic linkbuilding were always like that. Unfortunately, it's not. If you're a jeweler, for example, you're going to find that the typical response to your forays into early linkbuilding is an automatic notice telling you that you'll have to pay a fee for the directory to go to the trouble of looking at your website and deciding whether or not to link to you. Your industry, your product, your particular website, your competition and even your own social skills play a part in determining what kind of linkbuilding will work best for you.

How can you determine the best strategy for your website?

• Use your special knowledge. I knew where to start for BrassMusicOnline.com because I'm a musician who downloads sheet music, I'm in contact with plenty of others, and I know where we go for such things and how we search for them. I'm also an SEO professional, so I know what to do with that information. But you have special knowledge about your business, don't you? Or you know who you should ask to find out. Where do your customers hang out online? What do they type into the search box when they look for someone like you, and what do they find when they do so? It's worth taking some time to find out.


• Check your competitors' links. This is a slightly technical thing to do, but not that hard. You can find good software that will speed the process up for you, or you can do it for free at Yahoo Site Explorer. Marketleap.com and Searchbliss.com also have good free tools for this purpose. Once you've got a list of that competitor's backlinks to examine, you can get an idea of their overall strategy, and see whether you could benefit from it or not. Sometimes I see that a client's competitor is paying for most links (honestly, through advertising, I mean) or swapping links, so I just make a note of that so I know what we're up against. Sometimes, though, I find great sites I wasn't already aware of this way. You might even see a clever strategy that's new to you. When you find yourself thinking, "Wow! How did they get that link?" you know it's worth further exploration.


• Get help. Anyone can do linkbuilding. A good linkbuilder has an analytical turn of mind, good communication skills, a persuasive writing style, speed at the keyboard, and a sincere belief in the value of your website. That might describe the receptionist in your front office who has time on his or her hands in the afternoon, or your student intern, or you. But linkbuilding is time-consuming even if you do it well, and it's really time-consuming if you do it badly. What's more, if you make the wrong choices, it can do you harm. If you make the right choices, it can be the mainstay of your marketing. It's worth hiring an expert for a campaign now and then if you don't have the skills in-house.

BrassMusicOnline.com had me do a strategy for them and kick off the campaign. I was able to introduce them to a good offshore linkbuilder to continue the project. I'm feeling optimistic about them. Remember them when you need a euphonium arrangement for your next party, too.

In SEO, It's Really Not the Thought That Counts

Yesterday I was reading a list of frustrations among SEOs, and encountered one of my faves: clients who don't take action on recommendations, but still expect results.

This is one of those things that causes people to tell (anonymous) stories about you over beers.

But there are indeed clients who really seem to feel that my having provided the list of changes that need to be made onsite, or the list of linkbuilding steps that needs to be implemented, is tantamount to having optimized the site and done some marketing.

A colleague once expressed this really well in a committee meeting. "She," said my friend, "is the kind of person who decides she needs to get organized, so she buys shelves."

Expecting improvement to follow from being given advice is like thinking you'll become organized just because you bought the shelves.

Not following the advice is your prerogative. But you can't then say it didn't work.

You also can't count from when you got the advice. I had that conversation with a client recently. I had advised him to take an action, and he did take that action, but it was two months after our initial discussion. He's concerned about the results he's getting. He felt that he should have seen more progress by now. But he was counting from when we met, not when he actually took action.

I think part of this problem is that it's easy to feel, once you make up your mind to do something, as though it has essentially already been done. It's the thought that counts, right? Not in SEO, though. Maybe this would be a good day to look back at your SEO plan and see what you haven't yet implemented. You might be surprised.

SEO for Humans

My new client over at Fixr.com described this blog as "SEO for Humans." I had to laugh at that one. LOL, in fact, if not ROTFL.

He's an engineer.

Now I wouldn't say that engineers aren't human. I wouldn't even agree that they're superhuman. But I think he captured the point of what I'm doing here.

If you're a businessperson and you decide that you want to improve your results with the search engines, you don't have many places to learn about how to do it. Information directed toward businesspeople tends to take the position that you should give up and advertise because you're not going to be able to figure out the internet. And most of the SEO blogs are writing for ... well, the more technologically engaged.

I want this blog to be accessible to the more technologically disengaged, too.

It is possible that jokes in the form of flow charts are just by their nature funny only to the geekier among us. But I'm ROTFL.

Web Content that Keeps Visitors Coming

An email arrived recently in my inbox asking what kind of content I'd recommend for websites that want to increase traffic.

I can quickly answer that with a firm, "It depends." Or an even less useful but equally firm, "Good content."

Since web content is what I do, I am aware of numerous variables, and I know that I do something different for each client, so I don't like to give general guidelines. However, I am an agreeable person, so I'll see if I can't do something a little better than, "Give 'em the good stuff."

William Morris said, "Have nothing in your houses which you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful." They didn't have websites in those days, or he'd have said "in your houses or websites" and also added, "Oh, and fun stuff is good on websites."

• We go to websites to find useful information. We want to know where something is, or how to do something, or the answer to some other question that's on our minds. If your website has useful information, people will come to find it. (Assuming that the search engines send them there, but we talk about that all the time. You have that covered.) Tools that people want to use will bring them to your site as well, often many times. I figure this post might be thought-provoking and get you to look at your website with new eyes, so it will be useful to you. Also, you might not have known about William Morris, the guy who painted the picture up there. Now you know.
  


• We go to websites to experience beauty. When we go somewhere to listen to music, to look at photographs of gorgeous scenery, or I suppose to look at pictures of scantily clad stunners (I don't do that myself, just trying to cover all the bases), then we're using the internet to experience beauty. Beautifully designed websites with beautiful language bring visitors back, too. Morris's picture up there is quite beautiful, isn't it? Feel free to gaze upon it as long as you like.



• We go to websites to play. To play games, to talk to our friends, to find out the rest of some interesting bit of gossip. I have people throwing snowballs at me over on Facebook this very minute, and we're all grownups. If your website is fun, feels like a community, and has cool things to do, people will visit you. We've been having a nice conversation in the comments on yesterday's post, Alissa and Dana and I. I know that they live in Ohio and Pennsylvania respectively, so I probably won't be dropping by to see them any time soon. This website allows us to discuss our businesses.

I hope that you found some use and beauty here today, and perhaps also had some fun.

Giving It Away?

It is more and more common nowadays to give things away at websites. "Common" doesn't always mean it's a good idea. Should you be giving things away to your customers or potential customers?

First, the main reasons businesses give stuff away online:

• If your product is good, free samples will bring customers back for more. There's nothing new about this idea. When you try something and you like it, the chances are good that you'll want more of it. Research supports this claim, as well; in fact, it's been found that the more generous you are with your samples, the more likely you are to have return customers, and the more they eventually spend with you over the life of your relationship with them. What's more, since people tend to overvalue things that are given to them as gifts, your prices look better after they've accepted a sample, by comparison with their expectations.
• The internet particularly encourages or necessitates free samples. If I'm in a brick and mortar bookstore, I can leaf through a book before buying it. Online, I can go to Amazon, O'Reilly, Safari, or SitePoint and see -- even download -- samples of a book before buying it. If I couldn't, I probably wouldn't buy it, since I've heard someplace that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover. It's not just books; there are many things that can easily be sampled online, and there are plenty more things that can be mailed off to a potential customer when they request it with a few clicks of a mouse. That's the encouragement part -- it's easy. The necessity part is that it can be very hard to judge the quality of an item online, even more than in a print ad where the color and quality of the image is more consistent than it is on your visitor's monitor.
• Peer pressure. Now that giving samples is so widespread, online customers expect it. There they are, searching your website for the free version, the free trial, the free sample... All your competitors are doing it, so why aren't you?

That's why people make those free offers. But should you? Here are some questions to help you decide.

• How do you feel about it? I had a client once who often said, "I'm not going to give it away!" It was practically a slogan of hers. I see her point. Therapists tell us that those who don't pay personally for their treatment don't feel invested in it. I know from my own experience that people don't show up for free seminars they've registered for as often as the ones they've had to pay for, even if the fee is very small. And of course you can't keep the doors open without profits. But you can get a free website analysis from me anyway. I enjoy looking at people's websites and seeing all the things they could do to improve their rankings and traffic, and I find it very satisfying to help people. I sometimes check websites out just out of curiosity, and then I have to restrain myself from dashing off an email to tell them how they could improve. It would be like going up to a stranger and telling him how he could improve his looks with a new haircut, so I resist the temptation, but you know I love what I do, I believe in the value of it, and so of course I want to share it. If you don't feel that way, you might be in the wrong business.
• Will someone who has sampled still need to buy? Your optometrist probably wouldn't mind giving you a free pair of contacts to try. After all, you'll need more, and you'll love her for giving them to you and go back. But you probably aren't going to get a free pair of glasses. You might not go back for years. I find that people who receive a free website analysis and stop there can't usually make the best use of it themselves. If they can, more power to them. But most find it useful enough that they want the snazzy complete highly-researched paid version, not to mention assistance in implementing it. The first chapter of the book, the trial of something the customer will want to keep using, items that get used up and have to be replaced -- these are the things to offer as samples. In other words, if you're selling cars, free sampling of the product probably isn't for you. Maybe a free guide to car care would be a good choice, though.
• Does it work for you? You need to keep track. I know that I frequently buy software, books, and music that I've sampled. Not everyone does. There are internet users who feel that there is so much free stuff out there that they simply shouldn't have to pay for anything. These are the folks who'll scoop up your samples with no intention of becoming your customers. There are people who will spend so much time and electricity searching out a free alternative to a paid item, even if the quality is far inferior, that they end up paying more that if they'd bought the superior item. And here we may be back to "How do you feel about it?" I know that my free blogs lead people who want good blogging for their companies to hire me. If, while my blogs are doing their jobs, they are also useful to readers for free, well, I'm happy about that. But the history of the internet is littered with people who thought someone would choose to pay for things which in fact they would only take for free. Keep records that let you know whether your samples are offering a good return on your investment or not.

Where Should You Put Your Blog?

In yesterday's post, I talked about setting up a blog ahead of your new website's launch date. Doing this helps you boost awareness of the website, gets your customers and clients in the habit of visiting, and can give additional value to the link from your blog to your website.

Basically, though, you can only do this if your blog is separate from your main site.

If you use Blogger, you can upload your blog to the site once it's up. "Put Your Blogger Blog On Your Website" gives you step by step instructions for doing so. You can also have it on its own domain and link it up nicely. If you prefer Wordpress, you can install it into your website.

If you start your blog at some other place, then you can still copy and paste it into your website later, but I don't see any reason to do so. There are lots of nice places for personal blogs and webpages. Here are my entirely subjective views on the main choices of free blogging platforms for personal use:

• Hardest to use if you don't write html: bravenet and zerocatch
• Coolest: weebly and spruz
• Most elegant pre-made themes: edublogs and squarespaces
• Worst pre-made themes: zerocatch and wikispaces
• Best wizards: tripod and edublogs
• Easiest to get started: terapad and xanga
• Most irritating to use: blogspot and livejournal

This has nothing to do with making a blog for your business, though. We're not talking here about fun. Serious work-related blogging pretty much has to be Blogger or Wordpress.

Since I blog for lots of people all over the web, I've used many different blogging platforms. Some are more to my taste than others, but all of them work. What I always say is, "Wordpress, Notepad, Blogger, Word, Dreamweaver, pointy sticks on clay tablets.... it's all the same to me."

You might be more exacting than I am.

Therefore, I went around the web to see what the more discriminating bloggers had to say about the difference between Blogger and Wordpress.

The first thing you have to know is that people who are making serious, well-researched comparisons between the two are always comparing Blogger with the paid version of Wordpress.

Given that, the comparisons boil down to this:

• When you blog at Blogger, Google owns your content.
• Blogger is easier if you don't have much tech training.
• Wordpress is more flexible if you don't have much tech training.
• Wordpress has higher prestige if you do.

I therefore have two suggestions for you if you're trying to decide between the two:

• Set up a free account at each and see how you personally like it. I find that I have to spend a lot of time in the html editor at Blogger to get it to do just what I want, but many people find that surprising. I was surprised to find that Wordpress is considered hard to use. Much of this is personal preference.
• Visit the links in the third paragraph above and read the instructions for putting each into your website and see which sounds easier to you.

If you've already arranged for your blog to be integrated into your website, then you'll probably have to wait till it goes live before you can do much blogging.

Stumble It!

When Should I Start Marketing?

I received this interesting question in an email this morning. It's an interesting question because it's different from the usual question. The usual question is, "When should I stop marketing?"

The answer to that question, by the way, is "As soon as you have as much business as you would ever want."

But my email correspondant was wondering how far ahead of your website's launch date you should begin marketing.

A couple of websites I've written are on the launch pad, so to speak -- not actually live, but just about ready. Serendipitously enough, they are perfect examples of two possible approaches to the question of when to start marketing.

One, a nonprofit music organization, has done no marketing ahead of time at all. This website will have a .edu address, no competition for the name, and no staff to do any marketing for it. Since the website doesn't exist yet, there's no point in trying to place a lot of links for it.

Trust me, the kind of directory that will link to your "under construction" site isn't the kind of directory you want to be included in.

The other, also a nonprofit organization, has a .com address, quite a bit of competition for the name, and a staff. In other words, both their need and their resources are greater. They started doing some preliminary marketing as soon as they signed the contract for the website.

How? With a blog. Blog directories often won't list your blog until you've got three months of regular posting. People visiting your blog may not hang around or come back if you don't have a bit of a history of regular posting. So if you have someone (or the budget to hire me) to do the writing, it makes sense to get a head start on the blog that will be associated with your website.

For this type of marketing, the answer to "When should I begin?" is "As soon as possible." If you're not sure what place blogging has in your marketing plans, refresh your memory with "What Blogging Can Do For Your Website."

Other kinds of marketing for a website have to wait until the website is live. You don't want people visiting your "under construction" page too much. They'll get tired of it before you're ready to receive them, and then they won't come and visit when you're open for business.

Stumble It!

Make Your Website Pay its Way

One of the things I most frequently hear from small business owners is that their websites don't earn their keep.

Sometimes, frankly, that's because their websites aren't doing a good job, and need fixing. That's where I come in.

But sometimes the websites simply haven't been set up to do a job. They're lazy, layabout websites with no true purpose in life.

Or occasionally they're luxurious websites that lie around in marabou negligees eating bonbons. Same problem.

As one client put it, back before becoming a client of mine, "Business websites are just really expensive business cards.

If you have a site like that, then maybe one of your goals for 2009 is to make the lazy thing pay its way. Here are some ways to do that:

• Directly monetize your website. When you sell ads, premium content (by subscription or by download), or the very stuff your website is made from via whitelabel or affiliate marketing, you make money directly from your website. Or you don't. Most people don't. I think this is because there's a widespread belief that doing these things is a no-brainer, get rich quick kind of thing. Actually, these things require skill. Your website, in these cases, is your product, and people aren't going to buy it any more readily than they do any other product. Is your website your product? And if so, is it a good one? Then go for it. Actually, I have a website which I plan to monetize this year, and I'll let you share in my adventures as I go along. That way, you can see how it goes for me before you make any investments yourself.
• Do marketing at your website. When you sell services or have a brick and mortar place of business, that's what your website is probably for. I spoke over the holidays with an author who sells her books through ordinary outlets (bookstores, you know, and Amazon.com and places like that), and she has been able to replace her former schedule of touring and public speaking with blogging. Her website keeps her royalties coming in, even though it has no direct income-producing features. That's what this website does for me, too. People who are thinking about hiring me can come here, see that I know what I'm doing, and contact me with confidence. The problem for many small business owners is that they can't tell whether their website is doing this job or not -- until they slack off at the website and their sales go down.
• Sell things at your website. Ecommerce is the most obvious way to earn money from your website, and many of my clients do just that, either as a supplement to their physical shops or with their websites as their sole sales outlets. But you don't have to be a retailer or a manufacturer to use this means of increasing your income. If you have a cool website, you can merchandise it with T-shirts and mugs at CafePress with very little effort (and, let's face it, much less profit than if you do it yourself, but that can be a good tradeoff). I also have a couple of clients who could definitely put some of their current materials into ebook format successfully, and sell them from their websites. Both these options allow you to have direct sales without inventory or shipping, so they are nearly passive income.

Are you feeling inspired now?

Stumble It!

PageRank -- What Is It and Why Should You Care?

PageRank is Google's algorithm for determining how important, useful, and trustworthy a web page is. Google's main search page gets a 10, as does the WCR CSS validation service. This website has a 3, which is not bad since it's only been in existence for a few months. Many of the websites I work with have a PR0 when I meet them, even if they've been around for years.

You can check your PageRank with a Rank Checker Tool like this one from SEOMoz.org. You an also install a toolbar from Google or Firefox that will tell you the PageRanks of all the pages you look at.

Over the holidays, I read an interesting little essay by Jack Strawman claiming that Google's PageRank is a trap and a snare. Here's his thinking: Google shows searchers pages on the basis of PageRank, which is decided by Google. Since Google makes these decisions on the basis of links, and it is practically impossible to get links by any honest means, webmasters have to go to ads instead of search. Since Google has the best online advertising, that means that webmasters will simply have to advertise with Google. Ipso facto, Google has forced us all to pay for ads through them.

Now, Google does in fact decide which pages to show partially on the basis of PageRank. However, I'm #1 at Google for my main keywords, even though I have only PR3, and I am trailed by quite a few older PR4 websites.

And we know that PageRank is based in part upon links. The thinking is that your page, if it is useful, will naturally get links. After that, Strawman's argument breaks down, it seems to me. The claims that follow are questionable, and the argumentation has holes big enough to drive a truck through.

An essay can be interesting without being convincing.

But I thought of it while I was doing year-end reports. It's fun to do year-end reports. I was sending off word to clients that their formerly PageRank zero pages had climbed to PR3, and that their links had quadrupled, and that really makes you feel like it's time to open the champagne.

How did the PageRank increase? Increased links, yes, and in most cases a rewrite, and in several cases a redesign as well. Had their pages become more useful? Yes. Are they getting better search rankings? Yes. Did they buy ads? No.

In fact, only one of my clients bought ads from Google this year. Their redesign isn't complete yet, they've increased their links significantly, and they've gone -- as many of my clients have this season -- from a PR0 to a PR3. Still worth opening champagne for, but it doesn't support the claim that Google has a cunning plot going on.

If PageRank isn't a cheap trick to make you buy Adwords, what is it? According to Google, "PageRank reflects our view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that we believe are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results."

Or, according to an early academic paper by Lawrence Page which you can read at Stanford's website, "We assume page A has pages T1...Tn which point to it (i.e., are citations). The parameter d is a damping factor which can be set between 0 and 1. We usually set d to 0.85. There are more details about d in the next section. Also C(A) is defined as the number of links going out of page A. The PageRank of a page A is given as follows:

PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + ... + PR(Tn)/C(Tn))

Note that the PageRanks form a probability distribution over web pages, so the sum of all web pages' PageRanks will be one."

If they're using 500 million variables and 2 billion terms, not to mention equations which are probably much fancier than this by now, you probably can't guess them all and game them. Why try? Instead, how about making your page trustworthy, useful, and important to human beings?

Because your PageRank is a measure of how well you're doing with your SEO, that's for sure. It's also a measure, though not a perfect one, of how useful your website is. If you don't have the PageRank you think you deserve, then you should contact me and I'll help you fix that. Having a lower PageRank than you deserve means that your website is not being offered to people who are looking for someone like you as often as it should be, so you're not earning as much as you ought to. (I always feel like I deserve a certain market share, don't you?)

PageRank is not, however, a measure of your value as a human being, or even as a company. Nor, in my opinion, is it a cunning plot. It's just a measurement. Measurements can be very useful for telling us whether we're meeting our goals, and for helping us to adjust our strategies if what we're doing isn't working.

An increased PageRank could even be a good New Year's Resolution.

Stumble It!