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Archive of CEO's Blog: 2008

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>The Problem With SEO

>The "Googling Business"

Of the two, Organic and PPC, PPC is, in our estimate, far more valuable than Organic listing. Why? Because with PPC you can buy the exposure you want, where you want, when you want it, and at a price you can afford. With Organic, getting consistent exposure is spotty at best, and if you work too hard at it, your efforts may violate Google’s ranking criteria. That is to say, if you hire an SEO company to help you maximize your Organic listing, and in the process they game the system to get you where you want to be, you could find yourself with your website being banned by Google. What’s a banned website, you ask? It’s one that no longer shows up on any of Google’s search engine listing pages. 

On the other hand, if you focus on PPC optimization, then you can not only get the higher level listing you want, but also make it work for you (i.e. bring you customers and sales), as well as leverage the overall effort such that your Organic listing actually increases too. 

In the end, since it’s all about selling something to someone, then why not focus on the method that works best to help expose new customers to your web site? 

So what have we learned so far? Answer: a) you can get search page listing exposure for your site via either Organic SEO or PPC SEO, b) PPC SEO is easier to manage and more productive, and if done well, will actually increase your Organic listing too, and c) the purpose of increasing your SEO ranking is to gain more exposure for your site. Right?

Nope. Wrong. That last item, item “c)” is the problem here. That’s not what you are supposed to learn. Being pedantic, getting listed on a search page is not about exposure, it’s about accomplishing step one in a multi step process designed to sell something to someone. If all you are doing is trying to get exposure, then you are wasting the money you are spending. Come on now, what is the purpose of business? Everyone, repeat after me: to sell something to someone! 

SEO helps you do that, if you do it right. Getting someone to click on your PPC ad is called a conversion, and while you pay when someone clicks on your ad, that is not the objective. That is, the objective is not to gain as high a conversion rate as possible, it’s to have those that click on your ad do something after they get to your site. And what is it that we want them to do when they get to your site? Everyone, repeat after me: buy something! 

When writing the ad copy that you place in your PPC ads, remember, the overall goal is not to get people to click on the ad… clicking on your ad is merely the first step in an overall process. The objective is to get them to follow that process until they have bought something. Or, more properly, the ultimate goal is to get visitors to your site to take action, once they have reached your site.  

So let’s ask that question again, and this time answer it correctly—so what have we learned so far? Answer: a) you can get search page listing exposure for your site via either Organic SEO or PPC SEO, b) PPC SEO is easier to manage and more productive, and if done well, will actually increase your Organic listing too, and c) the purpose of increasing your SEO ranking is to accomplish the first step in a multistep process aimed at getting visitors to your site to take action once they have reached your site. Right? Right! 

1. Locate the suspect/prospect

2. Get the suspect/prospect’s interest

3. Qualify the suspect/prospect

   1. Make sure you are dealing with the decision maker

   2. Make certain they are able to afford your product and/or service

   3. Make sure they have a need for your product, or else help create a need for them

4. Establish trust

5. Explain the value of your product and/or services

6. Listen for and overcome their objections

7. Force a buying decision (a.k.a. implement a call to action and ask for the sale)

8. Identify the customer’s quality assessment criteria

9. Deliver the goods

10. Deliver the quality factors previously assessed

11. Assess you customer’s satisfaction

    1. Redeliver the quality factors

    2. Reinforce or reestablish trust

12. Ask the customer to review the company’s performance, product satisfaction, level of quality

13. Seek referrals from the customer

By the way, at this point I hope you are taking a moment to send an eMail to your Webmaster, and your E.V.P. of Sales, asking them both what they are doing to make sure that Sales are being optimized for your website, not just search engine ranking? And if they write back saying that they are following the suggestions of your SEO company, then tell them that they should either learn how online sales are handled in the 21st Century, or find another job. Understanding how to sell on the web is one of the minimally required skill sets today's sales people require. If your sales people don’t have it, they need to get it. They should not be taking advice from your SEO company. They should be giving it. After all, your sales people are the only ones who know how your company goes about dealing with items 2, 3, 4, 5, and 10 above. No SEO company, and no third party website developer can possibly build a site for you that will accomplish these items unless your head of sales is intimately involved in explaining how your company deals with these issues, and in translating the internal processes you use to bring about positive results for each of them, to external web based processes.

Hopefully by now you have a better understanding of the role SEO should play for your company’s web presence. Contrary to what web developers will tell you, the purpose of SEO is not to get you a high ranking on a search page, it’s to

a) Help you locate new suspects/prospects that can be fed into the selling process,

The "Googling Business" 

It seems like all of our customers are asking for help with Google. Believe it or not, I got a call this week from a client in Serbia, asking me for “help with this Googling business.” So while I just wrote about Google last month, I guess if Google is what everyone is interested in, I should speak more about it this month.

Without embarrassing my client here, he seems to have gotten himself into a little bit of a pickle, with the net result that right about now the web is full of rather nasty and copious web pages listing law suits that were filed against him, reports regarding the temporary suspension of his professional license, copies of t.v. ambush video interviews that were conducted at one of his offices back here in the States, and worse. Since he’s in a line of business that absolutely relies on his maintaining an impeccable reputation, all of the negative stuff floating around the internet about him isn’t helping any. Not at all. If you believed what you saw online about him, you would think he’s either a convicted felon or a defrocked priest let loose from the church after being convicted of child molestation. 

Ah, excuse me for a minute, now that I think of it, the church doesn’t let its priests go if they find them engaging in child molestation. They simply forgive them and then get on about telling us what sinners we are and how much we need their help.

Anyway, back to the story…

My client is not a convicted felon and certainly not someone I would have thought of as evil… he’s just a simple human being that lost a couple of law suits and is now paying the price.

But that’s what happens with “this Googling business,” get your name on the internet, and it’s there forever. In his case, the negative information about him, while amounting to no more than 10 or so articles, is so devastating in its power of suggestion that it’s likely to overwhelm the nearly 500 positive entries that exist about him on the web. For this client, someone who personally helped Presidents Carter and Clinton establish negotiations that helped curtail and limit the war in Kosovo (and therein saving thousands of lives), and who has donated tens-of-thousands of hours and dollars to charities, its patently unfair what is happening to him.

Unfortunately, it’s happening. And his career is crumbling in the process.

What would you do if this happened to you? What would you do about it?

Well, short of keeping your customers from filing law suits against you, there isn’t much you can do to stop nasty stuff from ending up on the Internet. And once it’s there, believe me, Google will find it, index it, and list it when someone does a search on your name. There are, however, a few “after the horse is out of the barn” type of things you can do to try and minimize the effect.

Before looking at them though, let’s be clear: it’s not Google’s fault. All they are is the messenger, and as we all learned in High School, it does little good to shoot the messenger (although in Google’s case I have to admit it does seem like a tempting idea at times). No, it’s not Google’s fault. The fault lies with the people who put up the website(s) that contain the critical information that, in the case of my client, he would like to keep out of the public’s eye. In his case it was the State court system and the professional licensing agency that posted the information about him on the web. And lest you think this is unfair, all they did was post the facts of his case. So, while in this instance he is being hurt by the rawness of the facts, the other side of the coin is that the system is working… that is, we the public are able to gain access to public information about him… as well as others that we do business with, so that we can make informed judgments as to whether we in fact want to do business with people like this or not.

Still, it seems unfair that he is being penalized so much by so little in the way of negative information.

As to what can be done, well, here are a few things to keep in mind as you run around the web leaving information about yourself behind:

As for keeping negative things about you off the web:

Getting control over “the Googling business” isn’t that difficult to do. In fact, in this day and age it’s actually easier than staying out of trouble. Make your own choice: either learn to stay out of trouble, or get busy searching the web for everything that is out there about you, clean up your web presence, and then do everything you can to stay off of other people’s web pages. 

Or, as I've said before, you can always hire someone like us to do it for you.

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Site Visitors Beware  

Too many irons in the fire… I stumbled my way through the whole month of February and never did get a chance to write February’s Blog. My apologies folks, too much on my plate these days. We took on four new accounts in February, and getting their projects off the ground just took too much of my time. Mea culpa. I promise to do better. 

Talking about new accounts, last week one of them asked me if it mattered that they didn’t use a Google prescribed “Site Map” Meta Tag on their site. They were concerned that without it their “Google ranking” would be lower. 

It’s interesting how Google has put the fear of failure into the hearts of company managers, and even supposed SEO experts, isn’t it? This damn company… Google… that provides nothing more than a third rate advertising platform as far as I am concerned, has been so effective in promoting their brand that, like cigarettes, there is hardly a person on earth who hasn’t heard of them. Yet like cigarettes, my view is that there’s more bad to Google than good these days.

Once, eons ago, Google's search engine worked well and provided value. Today it stinks. At times fully two-thirds of the results returned prove to be nothing more than lists of other sites that, when you go to them, are doing little more in turn than presenting their own list of even more sites, based on info they gathered from their own Google search. In the end, it’s clear that their only purpose is to stick their nose into the food chain, so that they too can earn CPC (Cost Per Click) ad revenue.

Commercially, there’s nothing wrong with this… the problem is that Google enables and appears to encourage and support this search engine ranking game. With the net result that you and I, the very people who go to Google to find worthwhile search results, end up receiving search results that are little more than junk.

Why does it work this way? For two reasons: 1) these “CPC consolidators,” as I call them, have the time and money to hack Google’s 200-criteria search algorithm and force their sites to the top of the ranking list, leaving Joe Normal’s business site lost in the dust, lucky if it shows up somewhere on page 70 of Google’s search results, and 2) because Google enables them to do this. If you ask me, it appears that it is no longer Google’s goal to deliver worthwhile search results, but instead to work hand in hand with its “Partners” to punch up overall CPC ad revenue… even at the sake of quality.

But that’s not the worst of it. The fact is, Google is not a search engine. It’s an advertising platform. Which means that nearly everything Google does is with an eye towards how it will help increase their advertising revenue. Take Google’s Meta Tags; ostensibly their purpose is to help the average business make its site more visible to Google, and therein increase its search engine ranking. But do they really? 

In some ways they do, but at the same time they also vacuum up what otherwise might be considered private user information, feed it back to Google’s data warehouse, where it is regurgitated and sold to advertisers. Effectively then, by using Google’s Meta tags and subscribing to their Google Analytics service what you are doing is helping Google mine your own customer user data, so that Google can then resell it to advertisers for a nice fat profit. Nice, huh? And this from a supposedly “Blue Chip” company? 

Without a doubt Google Analytics has value. First, Google makes it available at no cost (gosh, I wonder why they do that...). Second, it provides a class-leading reporting tool that is tres useful when it comes to finding out what visitors to your site are doing while they are there. But what is not being said is that while all of this is happening, your customers’ user data is being compromised by you, in that you are willingly letting Google have access to it. 

How does this happen? Read the fine print: as part of the deal you make when you use Google Analytics’ service at no cost, you give Google the right to use the information collected from your site. In other words, they help you collect your customers’ data so that you can use it, and in return you let them use it too. Other than being thoroughly offended that if I go to someone’s website, what I do there might end up in Google’s data warehouse, what I can’t understand is why the world hasn’t put a stop to this behind the scenes data gathering? Here in the US everyone is all over George Bush for trying to tap into citizen data (which I agree is wholly unacceptable, not to mention un-Constitutional)… but when Google does it, no one complains.

Obviously, if, on your own, you collected, stored and used data about what visitors do when they come to your website, there wouldn’t be any issues about information rights. But what about when you resell that information? Or let a third party, like Google, have access to it? Don’t you, at a minimum, have an obligation to tell your customers that you are sharing their data with other people? And what about violating online data privacy laws? The European Union, for one, has a directive that states that if you use cookies you have to tell people you use them… and you must do so in a “clear and precise” manner. It would indeed be strange if a court of law didn’t interpret this to mean that if you allow a third party to collect user data from your site, you have an equal responsibility to inform your site visitors. The US has similar laws, and so does nearly every country on earth. Yet in most cases they are not being followed, and without a doubt, no one is even looking at what Big Brother… oops, excuse me… Google, is doing. 

Lest someone think that I am suggesting that Google is doing something untoward with the private user data they collect, that’s not the case. Google is very explicit in its privacy policy as to how it will and won’t use the personal data it collects. My problem with them is not that they don’t publish their privacy policy (because in fact they do), it’s that they don’t prominently publish the facts surrounding where, when and how they collect the private user data they are warehousing. Surely a company this size, with its obligation to set world class standards when it comes to Corporate Governance, has a moral responsibility to tell the public what it’s doing when it comes to gathering our personal data. Until they get around to doing this, users beware: more and more each day, the sites you visit are using Google Analytics to collect data about you. And that data is being industriously collected and stored by Google in warehouses where it will sit… for tens of years… waiting until it is either a) resold to an advertiser somewhere, or b) subpoenaed by some court so that it can be used to track your activities, interests, likes, dislikes and peccadilloes. 

What would make me happy? Do away with Google Analytics? No, that’s not necessary. As I said, it’s a class-leading reporting tool. Purge Google’s data warehouse once every year? Yeah, that would be nice… but it’s highly unlikely to happen. What then? My answer: force everyone who uses Google Analytics to place a small banner on their Home Page, where it is clearly visible “above the fold,” that states, in “clear and precise” words, “When you visit this site, your user data and activities are collected, stored and shared with third parties.” 

That would make me happy.

If Your Site Is Good Enough, You Can Actually Change Society  

January 2008… a New Year… a new reason to live.

Ah, that is, if we all make it through this year. What with global warming and all of the environmental damage we are doing, it’ll be a miracle if we don’t choke ourselves to death on our own exhaust fumes. 

I’ve got some friends down under in Australia doing oceanographic research on what is now clearly a rapidly disappearing Great Barrier Reef. They are flabbergasted with what they are finding. At the current rate of decay they are predicting the destruction, in less than 15 years, of up to 48% of the Great Barrier Reef (a reef that took 12+ million years to form…), a loss of some 5.3 million jobs in Northern Queensland, a downturn in the Northeastern Queensland economy of US$4.22 billion (out of the US$5.3 billion annual income earned from tourism), and the likely bankruptcy of Cairns (it may not actually go bankrupt… it will just turn into a ghost town as 73% of 2+ million global tourists stop going there because the reef is dead).

Raise a glass of Shiraz to humanity’s progress. Shed a tear that we destroyed the earth in the process.

What has this to do with Web 2.0 you ask? Plenty.

It seems that people simply don’t know what to do about the environment. Is it o.k. for the Japanese to be hunting whales in the Southern Ocean, or isn’t it? Is global warming real, or is it a figment of Al Gore’s imagination? Are pollution levels increasing in the US, or are they decreasing as oil companies would have us believe? Do we need the oil in Iraq that we fought to get our hands on, or do we have enough to make it on our own? Should we drill in Alaska, or leave the place to the moose and polar bears? How to know what to do? Oh dear me (sob… sob…), how to know what to do? 

Guess what folks? The answers are right in front of our eyes. They’re on the Internet.

As a responsible, earth dwelling human being, surely you are going to do all in your power to find the truth out about the state of the environment, aren’t you? Sure you are. The question is, how are you going to do it?

Answer: try using the Internet. By far the best value the Internet has brought to humanity is its capacity to help us research things of interest… and, in the case of the environment, necessity. Without a doubt, the Internet provides a plethora of information that can help us determine what actions to take, which government’s to oppose, and where to put our hard earned cash when it comes time to act.

Take the issue of CO² emissions. How will we ever figure out if that whole Carbon Emission Offset scheme is real or not? Is it just another scam cloaked in the sheep’s clothing of the green movement, or does buying offset credits really help the environment?

The Internet has the answer. 

For your assignment tonight class, I’m going to give you three sites to look at. Each tries to present the idea of buying carbon offset credits as salvation for humanity. Your task is to a) assess whether they sold you on their scheme or not, and b) determine, based on how they portray themselves, whether they earned your trust or not.

Visit the sites, and after you have viewed them rate them. In particular, after viewing each site rate whether:

1: You “bought the site’s scheme”. That is, if you understood the program being offered and think that under certain circumstances you would actually buy carbon offset credits from them, award them 5 points. If on the other hand you find that it’s difficult to figure out whether buying offset credits from the site would actually result in any improvement to the environment, don’t award them any points.

2. If the way the site explained who they are, what they know, and how passionate they are about the challenge before them made you instinctively trust them, award them another 5 points. If on the other hand their site was all over the map, confusing to navigate, and portrayed a company managed by a frazzled, confused disorganized group of zealots who seemed to be having problems getting their point across, award them nothing.

Here are your sites, now go do your homework:

	Site 1: https://climatefriendly.com/ ClimateFriendly.com Bought the scheme:     0 or 5 points Trust them:                    0 or 5 points Total points:
	Site 2: www.zerofootprint.net ZeroFootprint.com Bought the scheme:     0 or 5 points Trust them:                    0 or 5 points Total points:
	Site 3: http://www.co2balance.com/   co2balance.com Bought the scheme:     0 or 5 points Trust them:                    0 or 5 points Total points:

Interesting, huh?

See how important site design is in getting your message across?

Site 1: This site clearly had the most polished design. Further, it went a long way towards earning my trust by letting me calculate the carbon emissions I emit driving to work each day. At first I liked that… but then I began to wonder: does being able to accurately calculate something really equate to trust? Sure, the site was polished and smooth. But would my money actually do anything to offset carbon emissions? For me, the telling point was that digging into the site showed that all the money I might send them would be applied towards wind farms in New Zealand and Turkey. Turkey? Do they really need wind farms in Turkey? And how are they going to get that excess electricity from their wind farms in New Zealand back to Camden, New Jersey, where's it's needed? How sure can I be that the money I send them will actually accomplish anything? Wouldn’t I be better off just putting my money aside and saving it until I could buy a Prius? In the end I gave them a score of Bought the Scheme: 0; Trust: 0. Well, actually, I felt guilty and gave them 2.5 points for the Trust thing. It just seemed like they deserved it, but really though, I wasn’t pleased about awarding them any points at all.

Site 2: My initial impression of this site was that it was filled with too much hype and not enough substance. No calculators, no testimonials, etc. I found myself disappointed and a bit confused. It made me wonder if the people running the company had any idea what they were doing. Worse, the pastel text on a white background was nearly impossible to read. Certainly, if they are unable to concisely present their ideas to me… that is, if they can’t organize their mind so that they can manage to explain what in fact it is that they are doing… then how can they manage the money I send them? Still, the site was packed with information that helped raise my awareness of the problem at hand, so at least they earned my trust on that point. Also, while their explanation of where they spend their money made me a bit uneasy, at least they seemed to be spending it with other carbon emission sellers… instead of just putting it into their own pocket. Strangely, after wandering around the site a bit, it began to grow on me. In the end, I found that I was comfortable that what I was seeing was marketing weakness on their part, and not stupidity or fraud. When I finally realized that the money I send them might end up at, say, a third party tree growers cooperative, instead of in their pocket, they had sold me. Overall I scored them: Bought The Scheme: 5, Trust: 5.

Site 3. Oh my goodness. This site must have been designed by the kid down the street from the guy collecting the money you send them. I found it all over the place… dreadfully difficult to navigate. Even so, it was by far the most informative in terms of letting me calculate just about anything I might want to. With 6 calculators, there’s little left of the environment that I’m not now able to figure out for myself. Strangely though, while carbon emissions is a global problem, the site proudly touts that the money you send them helps offset British landscape and wildlife habitat. Duh? What am I missing? Do I (and the rest of the world for that matter) give a damn what the British landscape looks like? And can’t they simply stop hunting foxes if they want to help the wildlife? Or simply put a muzzle on Camilla if they want to prevent the spread of rabies? In the end, while I appreciated the information they provided, it didn’t help me trust them enough to send them my money. Sorry. I scored them: Bought the Scheme: 0, Trust: 0.

What’s the bottom line?

One More Time: See how important the design of your website is? Not only does it determine how effective you are in getting your message across, but it also determines whether the viewers end up trusting you or not. If you fail on these points, then guess what? They won’t send you their money. The next time you get to the office, give your marketing people a checklist of questions like those in this example. Ask them to look over the site and answer the questions. Count the score, and see where you stand. If it suggests that your site is difficult to navigate, confusing, lacks focus or fails to earn the viewer’s trust, then call us. We’ll fix it for you.

In the meantime, save the planet folks. It needs our help.

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The following are sample questions you may want to ask about your own site. Add to them as you wish, and then ask your employees to rate your site between 0 and 5 points for each question. Consider anything over 66% acceptable but in need of work; anything over 80% suggests you are doing fine.

1. Does our website strategy effectively differentiates us in the eyes of the client/customer? [Don't guess at this, ask your customers!]

2. Does our website’s sales and marketing strategy help us tap the most growing markets? [Are your sales increasing in growing markets, or stagnant? If they are increasing, then maybe your website is responsible. Give yourself 5 points if it is. If sales in new markets are not growing, get busy fixing your website.]

3. Does our website contain literature and promotional materials that are designed to effectively promote our products and services? Can these documents be downloaded?

4. Does our website effectively utilize mailings, advertising, technology and other forms of marketing to attract new clients/customers?

5. When an inquiry comes to us via our website, are our clients/customers extremely pleased by the quality and speed of service which they receive from us?

6. Do we systematically monitor the impact of ads and promotions on website sales to evaluate their effectiveness?

7. Do we use our website to assure that the information that we give our clients/customers is timely, accurate and appropriate to satisfy their level of needs?

8. Does a first look at our website suggest that we know exactly who the target market for our products and services is, or do we look confused to a typical web visitor?

9. Does our website help us continuously and closely monitor the activity level of our clients/customers, distinguishing between those that are active and inactive, and those that have short term and long term business potential for us?

10. Is our website designed so that we are able to listen to our clients/customers, win their confidence, and make them feel happy about the products and services we offer?

11. Do our Sales Managers frequently monitor and review the website’s performance, tracking whether it helps or hinders their staff's selling effort? If they do, what do their reports look like?

12. Does our website incorporate the latest innovations and methods for reaching the client/customer over the Internet? Do we even know what the latest innovations and methods are?

13. Do the site design people allow plenty of scope for individual initiatives, enterprises and creativity when it comes to using our website to promote the company? Or is the website controlled by a bunch of technies that feel they know everything?

14. Do we have regular staff meetings to discuss whether our site is working for us or not? Do we solicit employee and site visitor feedback?

15. Does our website operate at positive cash flow? If not, why not?

16. The company has a clear perception of its mission and central purpose, is this explained on the website?

17. The company strives to achieve high company values, which are endorsed by others, and are implemented in daily activities. Are these discussed, explained and demonstrated on our website?

18. We have clear standards for customer service which are known and followed by all personnel. Do we tell the public about this on our website?

19. Do we use our website to strive to make the "Sales" experience entertaining, enjoyable and delightful for every client/customer?

20. Does our website showcase the talent of our people, so that our customers can place a face with the voice they hear on the phone? Feeling connected to people builds trust. Do we try to use our website to connect with people and build trust?

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