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Archive for April, 2008
April 28th, 2008 by Manoj Jasra
Having frequently been involved with the web analytics process I have noticed some consistent issues with web analytics both from an agency and in house perspective. I am not talking about data quality or even vendor selection, I am talking about how web analytics strategically fits in within an organization.
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Analytics is not a priority: In many cases web analytics is often an afterthought and is not implemented during a site launch or during a sponsored/email campaign. Web Analytics needs to be given more priority and should be thought of before any marketing campaigns are implemented so that you can actually quantify the amount of dollars you budgeted and spent for the marketing.
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The right stakeholders are not getting the right data: If the same dashboard is given to every person involved with your online strategy then you’re not allowing them to make informed business decisions which affect their part of the overall plan. Customized reporting is an absolute must - show the Marketing Manager leads (SEO vs. PPC), show the online marketing team keyword referrals/ROI by source, show the CEO/CFO sales and revenue numbers, show the IT Team Site Errors/Traffic Spikes and show the usability team barriers within conversion funnels.
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Too much data and not enough resources: In both the In-House and Agency worlds there becomes a time where analysts are simply bombarded with so many requests that they simply can’t keep up. Web Analytics is an extremely important tool used to show the performance of a business and how to best tweak your business’s performance, so WHY NOT add some more resources to it.
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Tough to find good analysts: It is difficult to find analysts who have the technical ability to implement a training solution but also have the marketing savvy to know what recommendations to offer once the data has been collected. However, there are a few good ways to train a new analytics analyst: Get them involved with the SEO/PPC teams so they better understand the business, Give them a mix between reading and scenario based training, give them some work to do which is out of their comfort zone, work with them through an analysis or deliverable, send them to SEMPhonic for some analytics training, and finally see if they’re still passionate after all of this.
Originally Published at: Web Analytics World
April 24th, 2008 by Gord Hotchkiss
The difference between tactics and strategy can be monumental in the success of any marketing, and search is no exception. So, what are the telltale signs of a strategy? How can you tell when you’re dealing with a basketful of tactics rather than a well thought out strategic plan? Here are some things to look for:
Strategies are immutable.
They remain constant, and so are expansive enough to accommodate the inevitable tactical shifts that will be required. Strategies provide bearings for the team involved, providing a navigation point that everyone can refer too. Napoleon was one of the best military strategists that ever lived, but he said that he never once had a battle go according to plan. Life never rolls out exactly the way we plan it. But, if you know what your strategy is, you can make the necessary adjustments on the fly and not lose sight of your objectives.
Strategies are not objectives
Strategies are not the same as objectives, but the two are integral to each other. Strategy needs an objective. And realizing objectives is a lot easier with an aligned strategy. But the two can’t replace each other. A great primer in objectives, strategies and tactics is provided by this supposed quote from Colin Powell in Desert Storm.
In a press conference, asked what the objective was, he replied, “Liberate Kuwait.”
“What’s the strategy?”
“First we’re going to cut it off, then we’re going to kill it (referring to Iraqi forces)
“What tactics are you going to use?”
“Tactics are Schwarzkopf’s job”
Strategies are simple yet profound
The best strategies boil down to one absolutely crystal clear concept that everyone can understand. The more people you have working on a strategy, and the more spread out they are, the clearer your strategic foundation has to be. Airlines provide a good example. Southwest’s strategy? To be THE low cost airline. JetBlue’s? To make coach suck less. Those are clear strategies that everyone, from CEO’s to pilots to baggage handlers, can understand. It also gives every team member the latitude to decide on the best tactical execution to achieve the strategic objective.
Strategies are Customer-Centric
Strategies have to be defined both from the outside, looking in, and the inside, looking out. Because of this, strategies have to begin with a clear understanding of your customer and their relationship not just with your company, but also your competition. You must be able to see how they differentiate you from your competitors, not how you believe you might be different. Then, you can use this external perspective to define your internal objectives, improving what must be improved and accentuating what is already good. It’s this view from the outside that allows you to determine the things you should do, and more importantly, the things you shouldn’t do. It helps you decide what the really important things are.
Strategically speaking, where do you begin?
So, if after this Strategy spotting primer, you decide you don’t have a strategy, how do you start building one? It’s no quick task. Strategies come from a lot of soul searching, hundreds (or thousands) of really tough questions and the courage to say no to things that seem really important. And strategies have to begin at the top. They come from developing a deep and honest understanding of your customers and, more importantly, your own company.
Strategy is hard. Really hard. But no company who has ever made the significant investment required has ever regretted it.
April 17th, 2008 by Gord Hotchkiss
It’s one of the banes of this industry that we often use the words “strategies” and “tactics” interchangeably. Conferences that fly the strategy banner offer a deep dive into multiple tactical tracks. Sessions that promise cutting edge strategies in fact deliver tactics. Now, I have nothing against tactics. The right tactic can be a beautiful thing, when it’s used to execute on a strategy. But they’re not the same thing.
The Dingoes ate my Strategy
I went off on this topic at the recent SMX in Sydney. I was asked to present at a session that offered out-of-the-box PPC tactics. I hijacked the session and said that it’s hard to know what out of the box is until you’ve defined the box. Strategy defines the box. If you’re building a house, strategy is the blueprint; tactics are the tools you use to put the house together. Apparently I scared a few Aussies by my impassioned plea not to confuse the two. The reason for my rant? Because all too often in search we get enamored with a brand new tool and forget to look at the blueprint. This is not a new message for me. Check the byline blurb at the bottom of this column. It’s been the same message since I started writing this column, almost 4 years ago now.
I don’t think anyone disagrees with me that strategy is a good thing. But why does our focus so often slip from the strategic to the tactical? Why do we keep loosing sight of the forest for the trees? Rick Tobin, our director of research, came up with one possible reason. Tactics are easy to own and even easier to delegate. They’re a “tick off” item on our to-do list. Strategy requires more thought. It’s a lot slipperier to get hold off.
The First Step is Admitting You Might be Making a Mistake
I tend to take a strategic slant when I present at conferences and shows. And because of that, I think I ask more from my audience. I’m asking them to question what it is they might be doing right now, because it might be the wrong thing. Strategy demands that you ask tough questions of yourself. It challenges your beliefs. And that’s a hard thing to ask of humans. We’re wired to ignore anything that might cause us to change our mind.
I know first hand how tough it can be to keep focused on your strategy and to execute effectively against it. It’s a constant challenge in my company, and the same is true for every company I know that values strategy. You have to think your way through this stuff. You can’t do it on autopilot.
Tactical Mastery or Strategic Stumbling
It’s a lot easier to focus on a tactic. We like to master things, and you can do this at a tactical level. You can be a great link builder, or PPC manager. You can become the wizard of analytics, or the master multivariate tester. And these are the things you’ll find on the typical search conference agenda. I think it would scare the hell out of most attendees to go to a session titled “Strategic Soul Searching: Are All Your Marketing Efforts in Vain?” To be fair to the show organizers, most attendees come looking for tactics. Almost no one comes looking for strategy. They may think they’re looking for strategy, but they’ve mixed up the terms.
Books like Good to Great and Built to Last, as well as almost anything by Peter Drucker or Tom Peters, ask you to look at things from a strategic vantage point. Even Covey’s The Seven Habits provides you with the strategic building blocks for a more effective personal life. In his books, Jim Collins warns that this is not a quick process. Companies can take a decade of dedicated persistent effort to really discover their soul and define their strategic direction. You can pick up a tactic in a 15 minute presentation, but a strategy takes a lot more time.
The Strategic Common Denominator
Personally, I’ve felt that by providing glimpses into user behavior, I can help provide a lens to help see things from the outside in, an essential perspective for strategic evaluation. Part of any strategy in marketing always depends on gaining a deeper understanding of the common denominator, humans. The more years I add to my CV, the more I realize we need to spend some time understanding the weird quirks and traits that make us all too imperfectly and irrationally human. And it’s from that understanding that your strategy will eventually spring forth.
To wrap up for this week, I leave you with a quote from Sun Tzu, the military strategist:
Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.
April 15th, 2008 by Manoj Jasra
Recently I have been involved in creating a search marketing training program which some very clear objectives: help new search marketing strategists get up to speed quicker, allow them to work on billable client work sooner/more efficiently and get them prepared to participate in high-level brainstorming strategies. As much as I can teach the new strategists, I have learned it’s as important to learn from them to continually tweak and improve the program. Below I have outlined 3 steps to creating a stronger search marketing training program.
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Constantly Reading, Sucks: Providing course material to your trainees is important but don’t overload them with constant reading. There will come a time where their ability to absorb content through line and lines of text will simply run out. I suggest mixing up the textual content with audio and video, additionally I recommend you introduce scenario based training. Scenario based training is way for trainees to get their hands dirty with tasks that they will face on a day to day basis. If you’re providing training for an agency or even in-house training, create tasks that are related to current issues that the company is facing, you never know what kind of innovative ideas some fresh minds could come up with.
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Create a Relationship: When you’re training someone it’s important that you create an open door policy right from the start so that your student(s) can approach you with any questions related to the training program or search marketing in general. Throughout the training program, schedule some regular time with your students to ask them how they’re doing with course material. This will keep the students stay engaged with the training program and help you design a course which is custom rather than "cookie cutter."
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Get Feedback: Your search marketing training program is not going to be perfect right off the bat and it may not be perfect for a while, but the idea is to continually tweak your program with feedback from the people who are undertaking the training. Whether it’s your clients or your co-workers, it’s important to get their comments/suggestions in-relation to the course content, their ability to understand the concepts, the level of difficulty of the material and the relevancy of the course material to real-life business situations.
Original Post: Web Analytics World
April 11th, 2008 by Gord Hotchkiss
The frequent flier blitzkrieg continues. This week’s stop, Sydney, Australia for SMX. In the opening keynote, Danny Sullivan asked Google’s Marissa Mayer what keeps her at Google. Her answer was that there are just too many really interesting, really hard questions still to be answered. She likened it to the world of scientific discovery and pegged the current state of search and online as analogous to the 15th or 16th century. Sir Isaac Newton has just discovered gravity.
From a timeline perspective, I think Marissa’s analogy works. There’s no doubt we’re at the early stages of something, but what that something is remains to be seen. The difference between us and Isaac Newton is that Newton was exploring the guiding principles of the real, physical world. We’re building a new world up as we go. More correctly, a new world is emerging organically from the efforts and thoughts of millions of people. It’s a world defined in an ethereal middle space, a world of mind spawned musings and accomplishments, shared and propelled one packet at a time. We’re not discovering anything, we’re building something entirely new. At any given moment, hundreds of millions of us are making it up as we go along. It’s a Darwinian experiment on a grand, grand scale.
The other difference is that the physical world afforded us a certain leisurely pace of exploration. Apples have been falling from trees for millions of years before Newton finally got around to wondering why. Even Darwin had the luxury of time to define his theory of natural selection. Not much happens in the way of evolution in any time scale that we can perceive.
But this online witches cauldron we call the Internet moves much quicker. It is a world driven by innovation, and it is the fastest innovators that will not only survive, but prosper. Mindful musing is a luxury we can’t afford. Things move too fast.
Despite the seemingly blank canvas that stretches before us, there are limits to the world we create, and these limits are those imposed on us by our human nature. The virtual world we create must fit within the sphere that defines us as a species. It must not take advantage of our foibles and failings. It must empower the best of us. The human mind is a convoluted, complex mechanism that is only 5% rational. The other 95%, the really fun part that makes us human, brews under the service, messy, murky and sometimes manipulative. And the truly scary part is that we know almost nothing about this dark underbelly of our minds. We’ve discovered much of the world that lives outside our skulls, thanks to Newton, Darwin, Galileo and their scientific brethren. But we’re only beginning to discover the world that sits locked in our 3 pounds of grey matter.
Humans haven’t really changed much in 250,000 years. Yet man’s greatest creation, our society, has changed by leaps and bounds and the pace of that change is still accelerating. The creation of the internet is perhaps the most significant leap forward yet. We are literally redefining the structure we use to build society upon. This, I suspect, changes everything. Our challenge, then, is to use our technology, our passion and our intellect to create a society that breaks the restrictions imposed on us not just by our physical world, but also by our baser human instincts.
I can understand why Marissa Mayer still wants to get up and go to work in the morning. She’s driven by the same thing that drives many of us who have chosen to dedicate our passion to this new online world that is the biggest group project in history.
Maybe, just maybe, this time we’ll get it right.
April 10th, 2008 by Jody Nimetz
The SEO Dangers of Website Re-Design: Enquiro Retro Post
We have been getting a lot of questions about website redesigns lately. Specifically as a site re-design relates to SEO and improving website usability with a website re-design. Many people are unaware of the "dangers" that you can place on your website when performing a site re-design that is not planned out. You must be aware of potential SEO issues when you plan a website re-design. As a result of the numerous questions that we have received recently, we have decided to visit our vaults for past articles that we have written that address issues with website re-designs and the impact that they have on SEO. For instance, take this piece written by former Enquiro team member Brenda Wright.
We owe our very existence to the caveman’s (and cavewoman’s) ability to know when to run away. Without this vital skill, we would have died out as a species long ago. In the time of the caveman it tended to be a lot easier to identify and respond to danger than is it today. Not a lot of time was lost standing around trying to identify the intentions of the saber-tooth tiger that was chasing the tribe.
Just like their ancient ancestors, modern day website managers/owners need to be aware of and avoid danger. One of the most dangerous times for websites is during a website re-design. Today the survival of many websites depend on the ability of the website owners/managers to recognize (and run away from) danger during a re-design.
Over the years, I have seen many companies sacrifice their website Search Engine visibility on the altar of re-design. Perhaps the most extreme example occurred a few years ago with a rental and service company for whom we had achieved phenomenal Search Engine visibility. The company thanked us very vocally for the literally hundreds of thousands of dollars of new business they were generating from their website now that it was being found on all the major Search Engines. As sometimes happens, our main contact within the company moved on and a new person was hired to manage their website. Unfortunately, without consulting with us, or bothering to find out why the website was doing so well on all the major Search Engines, the new website manager took down the carefully crafted and optimized website pages and replaced them all with images. Each website page was now one image. Search Engines cannot ‘see’ the content that is displayed via images. Predictably, the website Search Engine visibility began to plummet. We tried speaking with the website manager and even ended up speaking directly to the company owner – explaining what was happening and the need for swift action. His reply was, ‘well its ok – we are pretty booked up right now.’ As a result, the website lost all of its Search Engine visibility and they no longer had to worry about all the new customers coming to him via the Search Engines.
An inexperienced and unknowing employee sinks a website. It happens. But what happens even more often is the sinking of websites during re-design by ‘professional’ designers. Unfortunately, there are a lot of web design companies that have absolutely no clue about Search Engine Marketing or Optimization. There are still web designers who are convincing site owners to use a Splash entry page, think sites that are all in Flash are a great idea, and still kinda like Frames! These designers are not interested in promoting your business – they are interested it getting their designs up on the internet. To them it does not matter that your site cannot be found on Search Engines, or that those few visitors who do stumble across your site find it unusable – what matters is that the website conforms to their idea of good design.
To assist individuals thinking about a site redesign I have developed a “Run Away If” list that will save you grief, time, and money. This list presents very real danger signals that cautious website owners and managers should be aware of.
RUN AWAY if your web designer:
- Does not ask you about your business
- Does not ask you any questions about your Search Engine Marketing and Optimization programs
- Begins the new design without discussing with you the goal of your website
- Begins the new design without discussing with you who your target audience is
- Puts visual impact ahead of the usability of the web site
- Recommends a Splash entry page (Search Engines cannot normally ‘see’ Splash pages. This is a dated feature that tends to put off site visitors – who will often simply leave the page (and the website) before it has had a chance to load)
- Recommends your entire site be in Flash (Search Engines cannot ‘see’ Flash pages)
- Recommends putting your site in Frames (Search Engines have great difficulty ‘seeing’ Frames pages – there are workarounds for using Frames but they are a costly retro-fit. A good designer will recommend using tables rather than Frames if you have your heart set on a Frames look)
- Does not realize that the <title>, <meta name="description">, and <meta name="keywords"> tags should be different on every page
If you are using the services of a professional Search Engine Marketing company, please ensure that your web designer follows their recommendations. If you are not using a Search Engine Marketing company, speak with your designers and make sure they understand:
- How to optimize a website for Search Engines,
- How to design a website that will be user friendly for your target customers, and
- What you want to achieve with your website.
Be careful out there – there are very real dangers facing your website.
Interestning piece from a few years back in the Enquiro Archive. There are a number of key points that this article illustrates:
1. Ensure that you take care of the basics.
2. Be mindful of existing rankings and things such as your existing page optimization.
3. Understand your website’s audience.
4. Have a clear purpose for your website. Define some goals that you want to achieve.
There can be a danger in losing your existing SEO rankings if you do not carefully plan out your website redesign. For traffic and rankings that you have worked so hard for over the years, you run the risk of losing them in an instant by creating a flashy new site that does not serve the needs of your target audience.
For more information about SEO strategies as part of a website re-designs or to find out more about how to effectively create a transition strategy, contact Enquiro’s Sales Team.
April 3rd, 2008 by Gord Hotchkiss
Having just dragged my butt off a beach in Hawaii, my mind has not fully settled itself back in the search groove. But I did come to a realization in between snorkeling (highly recommended) and hiking the Na Pali coast in Kauai (even more highly recommended). Mobile is going to change our lives in amazing ways.
I’ve visited this topic before, but this time, in addition to my beautiful wife and two charming daughters, I traveled with a new companion, a brand new HTC TyTN II with an unlimited data plan. While this may sound “ho-hum” to you Americans, unlimited data is an impossible dream here in Canada. Our mobile providers are still holding us hostage for daring to check emails while on the road. It’s a sad state of affairs for an otherwise civilized country.
All Wired Up and No Place to Go
The combination of 3G speeds, a relatively powerful device and the elimination of worry about a roaming data bill spinning upwards faster than gas prices proved to be a heady and intoxicating combination for me. Unfortunately, I found that although (metaphorically) I was all dressed up, there were still precious few places to go. A couple of times I found my self saying, “surely there must be a WAP site for that” only to find myself trying to negotiate non-mobile friendly interfaces in a horribly glitchy browser. While the potential was so intoxicating, the reality fell far short.
This was a topic I touched on briefly in my opening remarks at the last Search Insider Summit. Mobile is the place where discontinuous innovation is most likely. There must have been a dozen times over the last 2 weeks where I said, “it would be so great if someone could…” and completed the sentence with something that seemed so obvious to me yet apparently was unavailable at this time.
So Much Potential, So Little Functionality
Now, much as I’d like to say that it’s my incredible vision that brought all these great possibilities to light, I suspect these are not undiscovered ideas. I’m sure that many companies are sitting on them, just waiting for the right convergence of device horsepower, input and output performance enhancements, bandwidth and standardization to roll these mobile killer apps out. Once some of current bottlenecks are solved, or at least relaxed, I believe there will be a rush of mobile innovation that’s been sitting on a shelf, biding it’s time.
Here’s just one example. While on Kauai, I started dreaming of actually owning property there. I indulge in this little fantasy (the huge gap between my income and Kauai property prices unquestionably defines this as a fantasy) every year. So I did a little searching on Zillow.com just to see how out of reach my dreams were. Now, on the laptop, Zillow is a rich information resource for real estate shoppers. But when you go mobile, its functionality is limited to texting an address to Zillow, and it sending back the current market price of the property as a return text message. While intriguing, this falls far short of Zillow’s total online experience. How amazing would it be to drive through neighborhoods, GPS enabled PDA or smartphone in hand, and have maps instantly updated with available properties and details. You can almost here the words coming out of my mouth: “It would be so great if…” Well, you get the idea.
Google: a Map in the Right Direction
I used Google Maps on the mobile a lot while I was away, and I have to admit, I’m pretty impressed with the functionality that has been squeezed into this little app. But we’re barely scratching the surface of what’s possible. Using it to look for a good Mexican restaurant while hiding out from a down pour in Waikiki was an experience that would have driven a lesser man to tears. It’s not really Google’s fault, it’s the lack of online, mobile friendly presence on the part of almost every business on the planet. Yes, I’ve heard all the market rationalizations about early adoption, critical mass of markets, bandwidth required to mobilize local advertisers…yadda, yadda, yadda. But Dammit, the potential is just so tantalizing!
So, my expectations of mobile nirvana fell a little flat, but you’ll be happy to hear I made a full recovery after intensive and repeated beach and Mai Tai therapy.
Mahalo!
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