The Morsel of the Story-Lessons in SEO from a Foodie » Search Engine Marketing

First Installment of The Morsel of the Story

Lisa — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 18:57:58 +0000

I love food and most things related to food (growing it, cooking it, enjoying it).

I’ve had the good fortune of being an online marketer for 13 years. What do online marketing and food have to do with each other? Apparently a lot because for the past couple of years when I’m doing one of these disciplines I learn something that I can apply to the other. Today I’m embarking on a new blog adventure called, “The Morsel of the Story” and will hopefully draw illuminating analogies between search marketing and cooking. My love for food often crosses over into love of SEO (I’ve even helped with SEO for the purpose of experiencing amazing food. Check out our friends at this new West Linn restaurant, Allium Bistro)

I’ve never made Coq au Vin. It’s always looked intimidating and it takes a lot of time and planning. But a few months ago I set out to create my first Coq au Vin. I scoured my cookbooks and my favorite online recipe sites and came up with one from Bon Appetit Cookbook with illustrations and good step by step instructions that seemed daunting, yet doable. Coq au Vin takes twenty-one ingredients, nine steps and two days to prepare. Where to start? Accepting that there are risks and it may not be great allowed me to forget my concern and be excited about the potential reward.

My education and early career were in Journalism. I enjoy writing, but don’t have the confidence that all of my content development efforts will be rewarded with great exposure.

Writing well takes time and in online marketing 1 article out of 20 may provide great impact for you or your client. Writing is risky mostly because it takes effort that may or may not be rewarded. But when it is rewarded, that risk becomes encouragement and fuels creativity and excitement about a very important online marketing strategy.

Not every press release or blog post or article you write will be a masterpiece. Not every meal you create will be delectable. But encouraging yourself to pursue the masterpiece ups your game on a day-to-day basis. Now that I know I can make Coq au Vin (it was amazing, the family loved everything about it except the amount of dirty dished created in the process) I’m less fearful of preparing a duck ragu dish I love that used to intimidate.

Once a post or article gets picked up by the Wall Street Journal or American Express you have more confidence that efforts will be rewarded. (Read this marketing blog to learn more about facing risk and quieting what Seth Godin calls “the lizard brain”).

For every great effort it’s thoughtful to take a step back and acknowledge the “why?” Why make Coq au Vin rather than eating Chicken McNuggets, because ultimately it’s so damn tasty.

But there are other reasons, like the way the kitchen smells when it’s filled with the aroma of fresh sauteed garlic, smoky bacon and lightly simmering French Burgundy.

Why make a long term plan for online marketing rather than jumping on the “because everyone else is doing it” bandwagon? It’s risky sure, but there are great rewards.

Every day is filled with choices, like picking up Chicken McNuggets or creating Coq au Vin or responding to that “get on page one at Google for just $19.99″ email rather than creating a long-term relationship with a proven online marketing agency or creating long-term goals in-house.

Satisfying and long-lasting results come from dedicating the time, effort and acceptance of risk.

The Morsel of the Story? With great risk, comes great reward.

How Search Marketing is Like Herding Cats

Lisa — Thu, 14 May 2009 18:41:10 +0000

Cats are fiendishly complicated to manage, they eat when they want, sleep when they want, come and go as they please. A cat is going to do what it wants, when it wants and there’s precious little you can do to change that. Feed them, shelter them, love them, buy those ridiculous mouse on a string toys to entertain them, get them a scratching post (which they may or may not use) and be enormously available to them for their every need. And they may or may not give you the time of day.

Search Marketing isn’t entirely like that, but it’s close. Learn best practices, implement the right site architecture, spend time developing great content, participate in online communities through social marketing, provide exceptional site performance all so Google will pay attention, and they will if it’s done right…sometimes. And what worked last quarter, may not be what works this quarter.

It’s the equivalent of setting out a can of tuna when the cat is gone, “I value you you so much, I’m willing to set out a $1.75 can of white albacore to entice you to quit being a bitch and come home where you can do me the favor of keeping you from getting eaten by the coyote waiting for you by the barn.” That usually works, then one day, “F#%& you, don’t care about tuna, what else you got?” A little different from Google, but note the parallels.

In the middle of a fairly difficult move, the cats decided to run off for the day. We contemplate what to do, leave the door open, set out food, drive to the old house, set a familiar article next to the front door, walk around in the rain for hours hoping to catch a glimpse of the cats which we imagine are wet and frightened, feeling out of sorts from the new change. In a bit of resignation we decide to go out to dinner and resume the search when we return. At which point, they emerge. Frightened, wet, tired? No, DeeDee is taking a long leisurely nap deep in the bathroom linen closet, Hermann comes strolling up after a 12 hour disappearance just in time to use the litter box, “Man that was a big adventure, I’d have stayed out longer but I really needed to take a crap”. What an ass. Yet here we are relieved and filled with gratitude that these demanding, careless little furballs are home safely. No rhyme or reason as to why they’ve gone or where they’ve been.

So it’s going great, you’re executing on the well-researched search marketing strategy, all internal pages and products are humming along, ranking and performing just as planned and all the sudden, 2 weeks into the busy season the top trafficked phrase with ranking to the home page drops off the face of the planet, for no apparent reason. Site performance is up, no big pricing changes in the industry, no new competition, nothing unexpected, it’s just gone. So you go about setting out the tuna, not the Bumble Bee, but the really good stuff they get only by smacking baby dolphins in the head, sure it’s bad, but you’ll try almost anything at this point. Stand out in the rain, forgo other activities in the hope of gaining the placement that helps make quarterly goals. Then in exasperation, you go to something else. Your heart sinks, a sense of dejected defeat washes over you. Then you check dashboards the next day, and there it is. The ranking you need, hate and love all at the same time. The bitch is back.

Grow with Google Analytics, Search Suggest, Local & Webmaster Tools

Lisa — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 20:06:53 +0000

GOOGLE ANALYTICS

Where else but Google can you get such great business building tools for free? If you have an online business and you’re not using Google Analytics, well you’re just plain silly not to (unless you have no interest in knowing what your visitors are doing on your site). You can create a report that breaks down your visits by their source, which search engine, which referrals, which links are driving traffic. More importantly, you can see which source is generating the best conversion and focus marketing efforts on traffic sources that grow your business. Break your sales down by keyword within each engine and make educated choices about which keywords you should be focusing on for your search optimization efforts. No matter how close you are to this data, I promise you there will be surprises and some great opportunity to improve conversion and overall sales.

If you want to learn more about Google Analytics, attend the SEMpdx Google Analytics & Hot Seat Review Tues, Nov 11th (I’ll be serving on the panel;) Just $35, great education from Google Analytics experts, great appetizers and no host bar at the Hotel DeLuxe.

GOOGLE SEARCH SUGGEST

Now Google is helping you fill in the blanks when you start a search query, type in “search engine” and you’ll see other suggestions such as “search engine optimization”, “search engine marketing” and “search engine submission”. Helpful if you’re a searcher and helpful if you’re a search marketer. Use this tool to see emerging trends in search queries as well as give you suggestions for keyword sets you may not be pursuing.

GOOGLE LOCAL

I’ll say it again, if you’re not using Google Local and there is any benefit in local business to you, you’re just plain silly. Go to local.google.com and claim your business listing. Build citations from other local businesses or organizations (chamber, yellow pages, relevant industry groups) and keep an eye on where your placing in local results.

GOOGLE WEBMASTER TOOLS

If you have a Google Account, go to “My Account” under “My Products” you should see “Webmaster Tools”, if not click More under “Try Something New” and choose Webmaster Tools. Verify your site by placing a snippet of code and you have access to diagnostics, statistics, links and other great tools.

There really are no excuses, these products are all free. They take little or no technical expertise to implement. The hard work is making analyzing metrics and continued improvement an integral part of your marketing program.

Top 10 list for choosing a Search Marketing Agency

Lisa — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 23:18:24 +0000

If you’re choosing a Search Marketing agency, prepare yourself with some important questions.

1* How long have you been in business? -This can be an important issue, especially considering there are consultants with little experience who just decide to put up a shingle and call themselves search marketers. Newer agencies can be a good choice, depending upon their experience, education and the results they have provided for their customers.

2* What kind of results do you provide for your clients? Show me the money;) If an SEO can’t show you quantifiable results and share references, that could be a red flag that they’re enormously inexperienced.

3* Will you share case studies with me? Same as last question but requires a little more detail. Ask for improvements to lead generation, revenue and other site goals.

4* How do you measure your success? If your SEO only measures success with rankings, run. Success needs to be measured with attachment to revenue and/or site goals. Personalized search also makes it hard to call an exact position (what may show as #2 for me might show as #5 for someone else. Make sure your goals are quantifiable and relevant to your bottom line.

5* Do you have clients in my industry? This can be hard, having an SEO who verticalizes in a particular industry can be powerful. Just make sure there’s no conflict and you won’t be competing against a current client.

6* How do you report site changes and other strategy implementation? There’s not one single silver bullet. Good SEO requires a lot of work on a lot of fronts. However, it’s important that your SEO share changes they make whether it’s content, linking or other search strategies.

7* Do you know how to implement local search? Don’t use an sledge hammer when a pin hammer will work. Local search can be enormously effective if that’s your business focus. It may be more cost effective and just as powerful to focus on a local search strategy.

8* What SEO strategies do you implement? There’s more than one way to skin a cat and there are many techniques employed for SEO. However, information architecture, content and linking are fundamental. A great linking strategy won’t do you as much good if you haven’t done keyword research.

9* How can I communicate with you? You should have an account manager or point of contact you can reach at any (reasonable) time. We use a project management tool that allows our customers to view status of all projects relevant to their site so they can monitor progress.

10* How do I know when we’re done? Again, create quantifiable goals. Nothing is more frustrating for an SEO or a client than hearing, are we there yet? and not having an answer. Learn more about choosing a Search Marketing agency.

Top 12 List of What Attendees Learn at Hot Seat Site Reviews

Lisa — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 19:02:40 +0000

Last week I served on two hot seat panels, one at SEMPDX and one at Software Association of Oregon Tech Pub in Corvallis. Site reviews can be hard in a group setting because often times the search marketing education level varies dramatically for participants so making the content relevant can be difficult. Both of these panels went really well and, upon assessment, I found some universal truths that may be helpful to search marketers as well as the business person hoping to glean helpful information from site reviews:

#1 Search marketing is a hot topic! Not that this is an enormous surprise, but with all the unhappy economic forecasts, business owners are looking to search to help them get an edge.

#2 Web site campaigns (SEO, SEM, other advertising campaigns) are ultimately managed by individuals with little knowledge or understanding of search. This makes it all the more important that as search professionals we do what we can to educate and help business owners make informed decisions about their search investment.

#3 40% of search queries have local intent-WOW! Don’t forget local efforts. Ranking in local search algorithms can be less expensive than ranking in the overall algorithms in many cases. If your business is driven by local, learn about these tactics. Check out David’s notes from the SEMPDX Hot Seat, David has created some amazing research around the topic and is a highly-respected expert in the area. Download David’s PowerPoint here.

#4 There’s a shortage of women in the search profession;) As a speaker on the search circuit and as the Marketing/Membership Chair of the SEMPDX Board of Directors, I am surprised at the percentage of women in search marketing, especially on the technical side. About 18% of speakers at the shows are women, if you’re a web developer or web marketer and you’re a woman, get some education, experience and get involved on the search side.

#5 Websites need fresh content. You can’t just build it and they will come. Keep your content fresh through site updates, blog content, site reviews and images. Google loves it, your visitors love it.

#6 Everyone learns at Hot Seat Site Reviews. My background is as a reporter and my specialty was initially content development (which morphed into website usability, analytics and search). Though I engage very talented technical folks to help me do my job, I’m not an enormously technical person, my strength is on the marketing side. At one of the hot seats, I learned how important load time (for a hood river real estate website) is to search, not something that I was taking into consideration as a piece of my search strategies. Even if you’re a seasoned search professional, become a member of SEMPDX and learn how to be even better at your job.

#7 Sites with partial or limited SEO can still be profitable and fully optimized sites can miss business goals. In a perfect world, everyone would have a perfectly optimized site, but don’t lose site that the goal is business growth and that is, ultimately, the goal.

#8 It’s still important to talk about the basics. At the SAO Hot Seat, I asked how many people knew what a title tag was, in a room of about 50 only a handful did. Link building and SMM are nearly irrelevant exercises unless keyword research and some foundational optimization efforts are made.

#9 Business owners are frustrated with search. I heard from several participants who were frustrated about how to start with a search marketer and, just as importantly, weren’t sure what to expect from engaging with a search marketer. This is why SEMPDX is so important, the board of directors and advisory board of this group are happy to help educate so business owners can avoid the pitfalls of bad search marketers (sadly there are still many out there, but they’re getting easier to spot).

#10 Business owners are not sure how to choose a search marketer. I’ll be doing a post next week about this topic, but here’s a good approach-the proof is in the pudding;) Any good search marketer should have case studies and references that show they have provided search marketing success for other clients. If they don’t, go find one who does.

#11 Search marketers love their job. I have been involved with web marketing since 1996. It is such an exciting field and it changes so rapidly that we are required to attend search conferences regularly to stay on top of trends and changes in the algorithm. Engaging in a search campaign is often invigorating for business owners, it ignites their passion for search as well as for the overall growth of the business. It can really be a lot of fun.

#12 There is no substitute for a professional. Search marketing is a discipline that requires a lot of time and education to learn. As a business owner, if you have a great deal of time to invest, you should. However, if you’re busy with the day to day running of your business, hire a professional to help you grow your business with search marketing.

PS Shout out to all the great panelists at both events, Scott Hendison, David Mihm, Todd Mintz, Scott Fish and Andre Jensen.

Whose job is it anyway?

Lisa — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 02:35:26 +0000

Delivering 100,000 targeted prospects to your website in 24 hours for just $19.95

High performance websites for just $100.

Ajax and PHP developers only $5 per hour.

You’ve seen the ads on Google, Yahoo and MSN ad networks, you’ve received the emails. Please tell me you don’t buy this.

As in every profession, there are charlatans. Making promises they’ll never fulfill, it’s to be expected. But what’s not expected is that bright people running successful companies use these outrageous claims to create expectations with reputable agencies everyday.

This isn’t the first time I’ve weighed in on the “it’s our jobs as search marketers to educate our potential customers” platform. So I’m throwing it out there, what can we do as search professionals to create a standard for pay scale and, more importantly, creation of expectations?

Here’s the question. You have a potential new customer. Your job is to take a site with zero search visibility (seriously, zero, they can’t even be found for their own name), create awareness through placement of their top 50 keywords (average KEI of 1.0). These 50 keywords will drive 20K visits per month at a 2% conversion rate which yields them the magic number they need to run the online part of their business. What steps do you take to engage them, help them understand the process and provide a bid and proposal that meet their needs? Okay, search marketers, put your money where your mouth is. The point of this exercise is to get our potential customers to realize the value and benefit of engaging our services. When any of our brethren consider answering the “Page 1 placement on Google for just $24.95″ we’ve not only lost but we’ve de-valued our services.

My position is this. My services for this project cost this. Period. I’m not selling a car. I don’t have to go in back and talk it over with the general manager, you don’t have to choose whether or not you get the clear coat with that. This is the price for these services. Can I get an AMEN?

The most recent statistic I’ve heard for the value of search placement is that 90% of visits for a particular keyword/phrase take place from page one results (do the math-page 1 is 10 results out of maybe 1 million results). This, in and of itself, should command reflection for business owners when they are selecting search engine marketing and optimization services, yet we’re still losing our misguided brethren to “Page 1 of Google results for just $49.95″.

Maybe the bigger question is this, do we even entertain meetings with potential clients who are swayed by the seductive voice of unreasonable expectations? Should we only engage clients who truly understand (and are willing to pay for) the value of exceptional search marketing services? Or is it our duty to educate our misguided friends with a great deal of potential?

As an older, (10 year), but smaller agency it’s my goal here to gain some wisdom. It’s my inclination (as a farm girl and as an SEO who sees the value in our services) to want to help our wayward brethren in their pursuit of search ranking and business growth-but at what price?

I would love to hear strategies from my fellow search marketers as we band together to answer the “whose job is it anyway?” question.
All my best.

Happy Anniversary! Top 5 Things I Love about Search Marketing

Lisa — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 21:32:02 +0000

This month marks the anniversary for my 10th year in business and the 1st year of my blog. Both of these events have been monumental in our success. In honor of this celebration, I’d like to share my all time

Top 5 Things I Love about Search Marketing:

5) Quantifiable nature of the business. If you are gaining awareness, increasing visits, improving conversion and growing sales, you’re succeeding. Search can be the most quantifiable of all marketing efforts if done properly.

4) You don’t step in the same river twice. Search marketing is a swiftly moving, ever changing discipline. I don’t know how you could ever get bored as a search marketer.

3) Interesting history. I watched 28 up the other day, a documentary about the interviews of a handful of people on their 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th birthdays. I would love to see some research body do this for search marketing. How can you predict where it will go? It’s driven by part legacy, part innovation, part perspective and part sheer will.

2) Relative newness of the discipline. Traditional marketing and advertising have tried and true practices and standards. Search marketing is finally becoming standardized, but as new strategies emerge we are challenged to work them into the search marketing mix.

1) The people. Search marketers are by nature, exciting, innovative, interesting creatures. They are the first to share their new findings and the last to disparage. They are some of my favorite people on the planet.

Thank you to the following:

My children, Marcus & Taylor for putting up with my travel, my crazy schedule, having to share my home office with your music room before we had a real office and for accompanying me to California many times to go to Disneyland;)
Dallas & Roxanne for helping make the family schedule work
My parents and family for helping me through the good times and the bad times, I love you
My friends for their support (and martinis)
The nay sayers for teaching me the value of perseverance
Dave Edwards for great business advice
My co-workers for their faith that we were working towards something special
Avery Dennison for the opportunity to work with such a fantastic company
Print and Mail Center for exploring the unknown together
Cathedral Ridge Winery for coming back;)
EZkem Lab Services for being a great collaborator
Vineyardview for teaching me that I love search marketing and I hate running a B & B;)
Copper West Properties for your patience and faith
Swaddlekeeper for the cutest product ever
Hitchsource for your innovation
Monster.com for making me your PR person and hooking me up
Kiplinger Magazine, Glamour Magazine and The Oregonian for the great articles
SEMPO for creating a standard for the industry
SEMPDX for creating a local membership of search marketers, for making me an Advisory Board member, for the trip to Chicago, for the speaking gig at SearchFest, to your board members (Todd, Ben, Scott, all) for their great mentoring and mostly for being such a great group of professionals

I am grateful. Here’s to another 10 years!

Speaking at SMX West

Lisa — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 22:00:55 +0000

Big thank you to Chris Elwell, Claire Shoen, Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman for allowing me to present at SMX West.

It was a great experience and I was happy to meet Damien and Fionn. Hope to see everybody at SMX Advanced in Seattle.