The Illusion of Communication

I’ve presented this topic to many groups before and I usually start out by telling everyone that a search engine optimization (SEO) campaign is a microcosm of your business environment. So, all you really have to do is whip out the business and marketing plans that you’ve been working on and it’s essentially done: SEO in a bottle.

What typically happens at this point is I get a lot of blank stares and a large, quite room. Apparently, there aren’t a whole lot of completed, well-thought out business and marketing plans in the room. If you happen to be just like me (and all the other small business owners in the world) who lack an articulated business plan, but still want to move forward with an SEO program that works, then what follows will be a great place to start.

How to Create a Successful SEO Campaign

There are five key steps to launching a successful SEO campaign, each one being as critical as the other, so make sure you give each step its due attention!

Gather Data

There are many ways that you can gather data for your SEO campaign. Here are 4 of the best methods:

1. Brainstorm with your colleagues, employees, your boss. Get ideas, any ideas. You can eliminate the bad ones later in the process.
2. Talk to your customers. Find out how they found you and if they found what they were looking for.
3. Check your site’s search referrals/web log (e.g., Google Analytics)
4. Check the competition. Go to their Web sites and view their meta data and see what keywords they think are important. (For most browsers on Windows systems, you can view the meta data by right-clicking and choosing “view source” from the right-click menu).

Create Your Plan

With your data gathering complete, it’s time to assess your own organization. Out of all the things you uncovered in the first step, what sort ideas are relevant to what your company does? Look at your data for patterns and see how thing match up to your actual capabilities.

As an extension of this process, you will also need to set quantifiable goals; if you are selling something, define what and how much and in what time frame. If you are generating leads, define what information you need for it to be a good lead.

While going through this exercise, it is also important to understand what you can deliver. For example, you may discover that visitors to your site would convert to leads in high numbers if you offered a white paper. However, your company doesn’t currently have a good white paper available, and it would cost too much to hire someone to write it. So, if you can’t deliver a white paper, don’t use it as part of your plan! On the other hand, you might consider what you already available, such as a users’ guide or an existing manual of some sort. These can usually be repurposed for your needs (at least in the short-term) and for much less effort and cost than creating a deliverable from scratch.

Research Keyword candidates

At this point you should have a very robust list of keywords and ideas on how to use them. But not all of these keywords are going to be good keywords for your business. There are many different keyword research tools out there (email me, and I’ll be happy to send you a list of several). The goal here is to go through your list and weed out the keywords that will cost too much (especially important for pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns) or will bring in too little traffic.

Additionally, think about what other campaigns do you have going on. For example, if you are using billboards, and you have a big picture of a bulldog on all your signs, you may want to include “bulldog,” and all it’s variations in your final set of keywords, despite the fact that the keyword “bulldog” didn’t do well with your research tools. Someone seeing your billboard might not remember the Web site address or the company name on the sign, but they may remember the bulldog.

Organize Your Data

Once you have completed your keyword research, it’s time to separate the wheat from the chafe. Put together a matrix or a chart that identifies the keywords you need to use, what goals they will be supporting, and how you plan on using them.

Confirm the Plan & Execute!

Review your goals, the keywords, and the overall plan. Make sure that your assets (whatever it is that you will be giving to your visitors) work in a cohesive and holistic manner with your overall business goals. Ask yourself, can you accomplish your goal with the assets on hand and the chosen keywords? If the answer is no, then assess what’s not working and start the process over. If the answer is yes, then execute the plan!

Posted by Matthew under SEM & Internet Marketing | No Comments »

So I just finished installing QuickBooks Pro 2009, which took a lot longer than I planned. And the new Intuit activation/registration is, well, a little too much. Still, it was a good upgrade for me, because I got it essentially for FREE!

I was able to get it for free because I’ve been using Twitter. That’s right. I can directly attribute my receiving a $200 piece of software for free because of my use of Twitter.

But that made me think about what others may have experienced. What has Twitter done for you? Can you quantify your TwitteROI? I’d love to know … so please post your comments below, so we can have a rolling account of the actual value of Twitter.

Posted by Matthew under Internet Marketing & Communication & Marketing Strategy | 1 Comment »

If you want to keep and maintain relationships with your prospects and customers (and who doesn’t), the best place to start is with proper introductions. Here’s an example of what NOT to do. According to a recent story in CIO Magazine:

Emailappenders, an organization that sells e-mail lists and has offices in the U.S. and the U.K, sold Javelin Marketing, a company based in Concord, California, a list of more than 100,000 e-mail addresses for people who had opted in to receive marketing material. The deal went sour when Javelin used the list for a marketing campaign. Javelin’s marketing director, Bob Richards, said that nearly 85 percent of the e-mail bounced, which he maintains indicates that most of the list was rubbish. He’s seeking a refund for the US$14,000 Javelin spent.

In the above story, email addresses were obtained through third-party systems. The ultimate recipient of the email didn’t know the sender and the likelihood that the recipient will be interested in what’s offered is slim (and in this case, the chances the the email addresses working were equally bad!). This is just one of the many reasons why list buying ultimately is a bad idea.

The moral of the story is this: Your organization can save a few bucks by growing email lists through healthier channels (i.e., not buying lists from third-party vendors) and, moreover, you have a much better chance at forming substantial business relationships with leads obtained through your own systems.

There are many ways to grow your list through the proper channels, one example being a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign. By using a PPC campaign, you can forge a relationship BEFORE the visitor signs up for your email list. An interesting bit that may have been overlooked in the previous sentence: the visitor is signing up for your list, not being forced into it (like in the example story).

An example PPC process works like this: The visitor starts out by looking for something specific, something that ultimately you offer and decided to advertise on a search engine. When the visitor clicks on the link, it brings the visitor to your web site, which (if done well) should have a very targeted message that speaks to what this visitor was searching for. By the time the visitor gets to the point where he’s asked to sign up for your newsletter, the visitor will have a good idea that the content you’ll send will be useful, non-offensive information. And thus the beginnings of a healthy relationship are formed.

Posted by Matthew under Internet Marketing & Communication & Marketing Strategy | No Comments »