May 5th, 2010 by Richard Zwicky
Unfortunately for some, it can seem to be when you put your trust in the wrong hands. On Monday, (May 2, 2010), a well-known SEO - Rae Hoffman, also known as sugarrae, wrote an excellent piece demolishing a poorly informed “insights into SEO” type article about why Big Brands don’t Rank. I’m not going to dive into the details of that article; if you haven’t already done so, you can read it for yourself (and make sure to read Rae’s as well to understand how off base it was).
The point is bad SEO analysis and advice continues to plague online marketing, and unfortunately some of the bad advice sometimes comes from individuals or firms that could be considered authorities. Bad advice of the kind published in the Big Brands article on Monday immediately undermines credibility of quality SEO, and makes all businesses more skeptical and cautious about investing in this area of online marketing.
The reality is, proper SEO is not bullshit. It’s not witchcraft, and great SEO’s don’t really practice their dark art doing things to web pages and web sites that are beyond the scope of anyone without years of insights and training. I know tons of great SEO’s who don’t have years of experience, and some great SEO’s who have operated under the radar, unrecognized for years. There’s also some well known individuals associated with the industry who are not great SEO’s, but they are great marketers. The reality is:
- Great SEO’s don’t care about just driving traffic; they work to drive up conversions, or increase branding.
- Great SEO is not just about the html on the page, it’s also about off-page (links), and the on-page content which drives conversions or awareness.
- Great SEO is not an IT project; it’s customer acquisition, branding and sales. Why does marketing let it be shoved into the status of an IT project? That’s a warning sign of a company that doesn’t understand the value of marketing online.
- Great SEO is a component of Online Marketing. Just like PPC, social, links, display, email, and even your own web site.
- Most great SEO’s won’t provide a 5-minute analysis that will solve all your site’s issues. Your site is likely far too messed up for a 5-minute solution!
- Great SEO is not a one-off job. Anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is not credible.
- Many great SEO’s won’t be found on “Top Ten” lists. Not because they’re not qualified, but because they don’t market themselves that way, and generally, they are too busy. (Plus most top ten lists are just linkbait)
- A lot of great marketers write “Top Ten” lists: They want attention because it drives customer acquisition. Aaron Wall recently published a “Top Ten SEO’s” list, and lots of people blogged and tweeted about it, arguing about who was, and wasn’t on the list. The point was it drove lots of attention and traffic to Aaron’s site, which is what he set out to achieve. Great online marketing, and SEO for “Top Ten SEO’s”!
I could write out / share a lot of information and details around each of these points about great SEO, but there’s not much point. There are lots of great articles filled with very useful information published about SEO each day. Even better, there are great SEO’s out there who can provide you credible insights to act upon, and who can help your entire marketing strategy become much more effective.
Bad SEO, and poor quality advice is trouble. It’s trouble for everyone associated to online marketing, because bad advice and experiences makes companies gun-shy about investing again. When companies pull out of SEO they do so not because the channel doesn’t work, but because their implementation was badly done. When you pull out of SEO, you’re undermining yourself and marketing your business without a strong foundation. SEO is about more than just html, it’s about conversion optimization, site architecture, and optimizing the user experience: it’s sales and it’s marketing. Get rid of all that, and you’ve just thrown most of your business potential out the window.
You might wonder: what do I know? Well, After having spent over 10 years in this industry, I’ve had the chance to see, hear, and observe a heck of a lot. I’m lucky enough to be invited to speak at a lot of conferences worldwide, not because I’m always the most exciting speaker, but because I have relevant information and a lot of experience. I earned that experience doing online marketing for B2B sites with less than 100 search referrals / month (to start), and B2C ones with over 750,000 search referrals / day, and more importantly: thousands of conversions per day, (when I was done).
So what do I know? Maybe not much. But I do know this: SEO is NOT Bullshit.
Tags: business, conversion, conversions, customer acquisition, insight, links, marketer, marketers, Marketing, potential, ppc, Referral, search, search referrals, SEM, SEO, social links, traffic
Posted in Enquisite Search Metrics | 12 Comments »
March 23rd, 2010 by Richard Zwicky
Enquisite is thrilled to release our latest offering, Enquisite Linker into pre-commercial release today. We’ve been preparing the application for a while, and are amazed at how many people have already signed up! In fact, we had a mini pre-launch by invite only. The response was great, and on launch we flicked the switch, and contextually relevant introductions started being sent out. Now, anyone can join.
I’ve spent a lot of time today speaking with people here at SES New York. Lots of great comments and feedback. People absolutely love the fact that this system is not a link exchange, nor a link network, nor a system by which we buy, sell, or broker links. None of that. It’s very simply a transparent introduction service which matches your defined business objectives with the goals of others, and provides introductions based on symmetrical interests.
I wanted to get this post out earlier today, but got so busy, I failed to post this earlier. I’d like to walk you through the steps of Linker, so that you can read more than just buzz.
When you join Enquisite Linker, you register for access to the system, and receive a username and password. Some Linker users are Enquisite Search & Social Analytics clients, but many are not. We don’t treat you differently in either case. However, as a Linker only user, you don’t get access to all the advanced reporting features in the rest of the Enquisite suite. But you don’t need it to leverage the full power of Linker either.
I often describe Linker as a dating service for webmasters and marketers to connect with each other based on contextual relevance. Like a dating service, success is measured by successful introductions.
When you first log in to Linker, you’ll get directed to the Site Profile screen. On subsequent visits, you’ll be directed to the Summary page.
The Site Profile screen is where you define your web site.
On this page, you define what site you are representing, what business categories it belongs to, and where it is geographically located. For a lot of businesses, geography matters. Beyond that, we ask for some keywords which describe your business, and additional classifying information. Once you’ve completed the information, we look up other, objective information such as your PageRank and mozRank. This completes your site profile. Some businesses will have multiple site profiles, because they operate multiple locations which service different geographies. Remember, the system is about driving contextual relevance.
Next, you need to complete the linking criteria page. Dating services feature match criteria about whom you would like to be introduced to. Enquisite Linker does the same, but the criteria defines which sites would be ideal matches for your business objectives. Again, it’s all about contextual relevance.
So here, it’s much like the site profile you completed earlier, except that you’re defining whom you are willing to accept introductions to. If a webmaster represents a site which doesn’t match your needs, you never get introduced.
In addition to the qualifiers you set up on your own site profile, here, you define what the ideal site possesses for PageRank, mozRank, etc. Again, objective, third-party values.
When you complete your profile, the system takes over. Whenever a new site joins the network, we check to see if it’s a match to your defined needs, and if so, whether or not your site matches theirs. If there is a bilateral match, we email you to advise you thereof, and you log-in to Enquisite Linker to review, approve, or reject the introduction. That part of the process happens on the Linker Summary page, which is now your default login page. Across the top, you can review your history-to-date: How many introductions are new, how many have you accepted, and how many have resulted in an introductory email to yourself and a match.
Here, you see a list of all available matches, ranked by overall score. Click a listing, and review the details. Prior to any listing appearing as a potential match, one of our quality control agents will review both sites to ensure suitability and relevance. This will also keep down spam, and help ensure greater relevance:
Once you’ve reviewed the details, you can decide to accept, reject, or think about the introduction. The details page disclose your business categories, geography, and scores. It doesn’t disclose any identifying information to anyone.
If you accept the potential introduction, our system waits for the other party to do the same. Once both accept, the system will email both of you a contact email, so that you can connect, and set a time to meet. At this point, Enquisite Linker has done it’s job, and it’s up to you to discuss the suitability of the link.
It’s pretty simple really. A very complicated piece of software and algorithms, which you really can set up once, and then have it deliver value for years.
I should note that as a business evolves, you can edit, add or remove linking criteria and site profile information on as needed basis. The market evolves, and so do your needs.
Ready to get going: Sign up for Linker today!
Tags: business, business categories, business objectives, dating service, enquisite, introduction service, launch, link building, linking strategies, links, marketer, SES
Posted in Enquisite Search Metrics | No Comments »
February 9th, 2010 by Richard Zwicky
This evening, we’re adding a new set of reports to Enquisite’s Optimizer product.
Optimizer has been Enquisite’s core search analytics service since launch. Late last year we added a links tracking module to the reports, as search marketers needed to be able to monitor which links when live when, and more importantly which links pointing in to a web site stopped sending traffic, or had huge spikes in referrals. These additions were designed to help the search marketer monitor more of their traffic sources that affected their search campaigns. We’re taking that logic further with tonight’s release.
Tonight, Enquisite is adding a layer of Social Marketing tracking functionality to our reporting. The search marketing industry has grown considerably over the last year and a half, and so have we. Social networks were still nascent, and their impact was hard to understand. But a combined perspective on Search and Social (not just the firm Search and Social) has become very important to any online marketer. We recognize that marketers are having a hard time measuring the impact of both channels, independently and together, so we’re bring perspective to the marketplace.
Enquisite Campaign was designed from the ground up to report on, and provide predictive analysis of opportunities across channels, and let online marketers, VP’s, CMO’s and CFO’s understand how the various channels interact, and combine together to contribute to revenue. Businesses need that perspective to invest.
Today’s addition to Enquisite Optimizer adds a “Social” tab to the reporting suite. Now, you can understand all your social campaign referrals from within one interface, and also view that traffic geographically via our mapping interface. Plus, you can compare that against your paid and organic search campaigns.
Do you really know how your social campaigns are affecting your search campaigns? Now, you can see where social referrals are coming from, and map that against your search referrals. Do the geographies overlap? What’s the lag time? How does it affect referral quality and conversion rates? These are all questions that for the first time you can now answer.
Log in, take a look, and provide us feedback of what else you would like to see added in Optimizer’s Social reports.
In March we’ll be making a significant addition to Enquisite’s suite of products in the area of linking. Linking continues to present a myriad of challenges for search marketers, and the amount of spam generated in this area is massive. We’re going to help you cut through the noise and implement more effective linking campaigns. We’ll be contacting all Enquisite account holders with an early participation offer shortly, keep your eyes peeled, you won’t want to miss it.
Tags: CFO, CMO, conversion, functionality, marketer, online marketers, predictive analysis, social campaigns, social marketing, social networks, traffic sources, vp
Posted in Analytics | 1 Comment »
Should You Consider “Author Authority”?
August 6th, 2010 by Richard Zwicky
Search marketers are familiar with signals. One of the truisms is the logic: if no one links to your site, it can’t be considered important, therefore why should it appear in the search results? The more quality links referencing your website or web pages, the better.
A lot of signals or factors behind links can affect the quality, relevance, and value of these citations. Perhaps there’s another signal to consider: Author.
If you’re interested in learning more, earlier today Search Engine Watch published an article I submitted on the topic of Author Authority. The idea came to me while reading a recent patent which was issued and assigned to Google. I’d love to get your thoughts and feedback!
Thanks!
Richard / @rzwicky
Tags: authority, authority score, GOOG, Google, linking strategies, links, marketer, Marketing, patent, Search Engines, SEO Link Building, social marketing
Posted in Commentary, Google, Inbound Marketing, Link Strategies, SEO, SMM, Search Engines, link building, search marketing, social marketing | No Comments »