Setting Up Your Google Maps Listing, Make Sure Your Business Shows Up In Google Local Search

I don’t know about you, but I often find myself helping people with web marketing when I least expect it. This past Sunday was a good example. We went to buy my daughter a new mattress at a store located a few miles from our house. During the process of collecting my contact information, the salesperson (an older gentlemen), explained that they really want to advertise more in local neighborhoods, especially in a down economy. At this point, my wife knew a mini consulting session was going to take place. :-) So I told him what I do for a living and quickly explained some ideas for local marketing. One of the items that really piqued his curiosity was a Google Maps listing (using Google Local Business Center). Based on how excited he was to set that up and how many small business owners are confused with what a local listing actually is, I thought it would be a valuable blog post to tackle. And, here it is!

What is a Google Local Business Listing (or Google Maps Listing)?
When you search for a local business, Google may return a one box result listing up 10 local businesses along with a map. The title of that one box will read, “Local business results for {your search term} near {the location you entered}.” Please see the screenshot below based on a search for movers in Princeton, NJ. The 10 businesses you see listed were either entered by the business owners themselves or provided from external sources like various yellow page listings. You can click through to their websites or click the link for “more” or for “reviews” to access additional information about each business. When you click through to more information, you are actually taken to the Google Maps listing. Here, you can read reviews (if there are any), view an overview of the business, print a coupon (if the business set up any), view photos and video (more on this later), and view webpages associated with the business. And of course since you are in Google Maps, you can view a detailed map of the business location and get directions (just like you normally would in Google Maps.)



So you probably have one big question now…how do I get one of those listings? You’ll be happy to know that it’s both easy and free. Can you beat that?

Setting Up Your Google Local Business Center Account:
First, go to the Google Local Business Center and log in with a Google account. You will obviously want to add your first listing at this point by entering all of the required information. There are 5 tabs of information that Google will collect at this point. I highly recommend being as thorough as possible…this can only help you. A preview of your listing can be seen on the right side of the page. Note, if you have multiple locations and don’t want to add each by hand, then you can use a bulk upload to add all of your locations via a spreadsheet. This is a great way to go and can save you a lot of time. Now back to adding your first listing.

The 5 tabs are:

1. Required Information
This is your basic company information, including address, phone numbers, email addresses, website URL, and company description. Make sure you provide a detailed description.

2. Category
You can enter various categories that your business falls under. It’s important to target these categories as much as possible. Try and find categories that directly fit what you do. I know that sounds obvious, but I think people can rush through this step and not accurately tell Google what they do, which can affect their relevance to targeted searches.

3. Hours and Payment
Depending on your specific business, this may or may not be important. If you run a local business that has a storefront, then you can enter your hours Mon-Sun. Then you can enter the payment types you accept at your business.

4. Photos and Video
Let’s start with photos. Google Maps enables you to upload up to 10 photos for your business. As a small business owner, this is a great way to show off your storefront, yourself, and your employees. Think about it…many people searching for local businesses might ultimately have you come out to see them (plumbers, carpenters, landscapers, etc.) This is a great way to put them at ease… You can also provide up to 5 YouTube videos for your business. This is phenomenal way to speak directly to your prospective customers, show them what you do, provide customer testimonials, etc. Again, removing doubt from the minds of your potential customers. I highly recommend using both photos and video.

5. Custom Attributes
Google enables you to add custom attributes for information that doesn’t fall into one of the other tabs. For example, you can add “Areas Served”, “In Business Since”, “Specialties”, etc. You can also create your own attributes to fit your specific business.



Provide a Coupon
You can provide coupons in your Google Maps listing that customers can print out and bring to your business. Depending on your line of business, coupons are another great way to attract more customers. Google provides a form that you can fill out with the details of your offer and the coupon will show up within your local listing under the tab for “Coupons”. Easy enough!



Reviews and Ratings
Google aggregates content from a number of sources and you will find reviews from several websites. My recommendation is to reach out to your customer base and ask them to review your business. Google also enables customers to review a business right from your local listing. If you click the tab for “Reviews”, you will see a link for “Write a Review”. You can provide a title, a rating, and then your review. But like I said earlier, Google will also provide reviews from a number of third party websites. For example, I’m looking at a review from CitySearch now for a local pizza restaurant in my area.

Once You Submit Your Google Maps Listing…
You will need to verify that you are the owner of the business. You can do this in 2 ways (in the US). Google can either mail out a postcard to your business address or you can verify via phone. When I signed up a few years ago, I don’t believe that phone verification was available, but I would obviously choose that due to speed… The postcard will have a PIN that you will need to enter in your account to complete the verification process. There is also an SMS verification system, but at this point, it’s for non-US businesses. Once you are verified, your listing will be submitted and it will take a few weeks to show up in Google Local results. Note, Google says it can take up to 48 hours to show up after verification, but I don’t believe that I’ve seen it happen that fast. After your listing is live, any updates to your information can take 4-6 weeks (for example, if you needed to update any of the tabs in your listing).

How are the results ranked in Google Local?
First, Google isn’t going to give you the exact formula, but the listings are ranked by a combination of relevance to the search terms entered and proximity to the location searched for. Google’s algorithm determines which businesses rank highly for local searches (in their one box results and in Google Maps), so it’s not as simple as distance from the location searched for. For example, Google may rank a business higher that’s further away from the geo searched for if it finds that it’s more relevant to the search terms. Test it out…I’m sure you’ll find some interesting results. :-)

In closing,
I highly recommend you take control of your local listing in Google Maps. It’s free, can show up for targeted local searches, and enables you to provide a wealth of information about your business to prospective customers. With the ability to add photos and video, you’ve got a virtual salesperson working 24/7. Does anyone have a Google Local success story? I’d love to hear how a Google Maps listing has worked for your business.

GG

Performing Keyword Research and SEO, Don’t Assume You Know the Right Words to Target!

When it comes to Natural Search and SEO, performing extensive keyword research for your given business is critical. In my experience, most people are too close to their businesses to understand what people are really searching for. You may have seen this too, like using terminology and acronyms that only industry folks use. Or, if you have been in an industry for 20 years, then you surely must know how people search the web for your products or services, right? Don’t make this mistake! You might get a few by chance, but I’ll guarantee you are missing huge opportunities if you ignore keyword research. So don’t do it. :-)

Skepticism is Good
Right now, some of you are probably skeptical. That’s good, and I’ll give you some examples to curb your skepticism. Let’s say you are in the summer rental business at the Jersey shore. If you performed keyword research for your business, you would find that beach rentals is searched 4X more than summer rentals, which in turn is searched for 10X more than nj shore rental and beach house for rent. Without keyword research, it’s all based on opinion… I’ll take real data over opinion 99% of the time. That’s one thing about keyword research that I love… it takes guesswork out of the equation. Armed with data, you can make the right decisions from the beginning of your seo project before wasting time, money, and effort.

Here are some more quick examples:
Do you sell jewelry? Did you know that the keyword jewelry showed up 12X more than the keyword jeweler in Keyword Discovery? Let’s shift our focus to a buggy business? Pest control is searched 10X more than exterminator. Sell infant bedding? Did you know that the keyword baby bedding showed up 16X more than the keyword infant bedding? That's 16X more! I think you get my point… Do your keyword research and move opinions to the side…focus on real data, real searches, and don’t waste your time and effort trying to rank for keywords that won’t pay off.

Keyword Research Tools:
The two most popular options for keyword research are WordTracker (WT) and Keyword Discovery (KD). I have used WordTracker much longer than Keyword Discovery, but I can tell you that I’m really digging KD. Both are great tools and will give you excellent data. WordTracker’s database holds approximately 330 million metacrawler searches where Keyword Discovery holds over 36 Billion from over 200 search engines. I often find myself using both tools to find the right keywords, and if you focus on SEO, I would probably keep accounts with both services. Their prices won’t break the bank… WordTracker is $59/month and you can get a fairly large discount for an annual purchase ($329 for the year). Keyword Discovery is $70/month and I believe both are a small price to pay for finding the right keywords via the multitude of tools they provide. Your return on investment should be huge, to say the least.

A Closer Look at Keyword Discovery:
Let’s say you sell women’s jewelry and wanted to do some keyword research. You would log into KD and enter jewelry in research mode (see screenshot below). You will see the top searched terms with the keyword jewelry in them. The one column provided at this stage is “Searches”, or the number of times that the keyword was searched for over the past 12 months.

Screenshot from Keyword Discovery (Research Screen):
Click the image below to view a larger version.


Now, if you click the icon for “Analyze”, then you will see those keywords with some additional columns like “Occurrences”, “KEI”, and “Predicted Daily”. Occurrences shows the estimated number of webpages the keyword shows up on. KEI is a formula for showing you how competitive the keyword is. I can dedicate an entire post to KEI and you can read more about it on the web, but not all keywords are equal from a competitive standpoint. KEI helps you determine which keywords are worth going after and which ones might be too tough to rank for. Predicted Daily is just that, the predicted amount of times that the keyword is searched for each day.

Screenshot from Keyword Discovery (Analyze Screen):
Click the image below to view a larger version.


Drill in further to find targeted, long tail keywords…
At this point, you can click on any keyword to see a list of longer tail keywords containing the original word you clicked on. For example, click diamond jewelry to see all the keywords in the database that have the words diamond and jewelry as part of the keyword. This will include diamond jewelry watches, black diamond jewelry, diamond jewelry stores, etc. Then click “Analyze” again to view the additional columns I mentioned above.

I have my keywords, now what?
Let’s say you performed keyword research, found your target keywords, and have the spreadsheet sitting in front of you. Now what? Well, you would want to include these keywords on your website within the right HTML elements. For example, you would want to use these keywords in the title tag, the meta description tag, in the page copy, within your page headings (H1, H2, etc.), in your navigation and anchor links, and in image alt text. You would want to take a hard look at the pages on your site and optimize each one for the specific content they hold. Yes, it’s a lot of work, but well worth it. If you have a large site, definitely work with your developers on how to optimize the site dynamically. I can also write an entire post on optimizing the elements I just listed, but you’ll unfortunately have to wait for that one! I want to keep this post from being 25 pages long. ;-)

In SEO, your work is never done.
Once you optimize your website, you can’t just sit back. Like everything in web marketing, you need to track your results and refine your strategy as needed. Maybe some of your optimization isn’t paying off like you want it to, so you may need to go back and research more terms and optimize more pages. Or, you might want to tweak some of your pages, based on changes in your industry, your products, or seasonality. If you are using a robust web analytics package (Omniture, Coremetrics, Google Analytics, etc.), then you should have some great data to analyze. Then learn from the data and make changes to improve your rankings. I have written several posts about web analytics and you should definitely check them out.

OK, I’m sure you are chomping at the bit to get started (at least I hope you are!) Definitely stop back and let me know how keyword research works for you and your business. Go ahead, real data awaits!

BTW, did you know that SEO is searched for 3X as much as Search Engine Optimization? We are lazy typists, aren’t we? Quick tangent...do acronyms affect your business? ;-)

GG

E-Commerce Customer Reviews, Common Pitfalls That Can Impact Sales

If you run an e-commerce website, then chances are you’re fully aware of how ratings and reviews can impact sales. I think everyone agrees that enabling customers to review products is a powerful way to leverage user-generated content to improve the overall buying experience for visitors. That said, what constitutes a quality review, what are prospective customers looking for in a review, and how can the various types of reviews impact conversion? Not all reviews are created equal, so if you are thinking about implementing reviews on your website, I've listed four pitfalls below to watch out for. You might be able to plan your implementation with these in mind!

When Are Reviews Necessary?
Before I list the pitfalls, I also wanted to quickly explain when reviews are beneficial to prospective customers and when they aren’t necessary. I don’t really need to read a review for GAP jeans or a Banana Republic belt or a Canon calculator. We all know they are high quality and they are fairly simple items. In my opinion, it comes down to price, safety, and how a product impacts your life. Lesser known brands from smaller companies might require reviews from consumers versus bigger, well known brands. In addition, how the product will impact your life is an important factor for reviews. For example, you would probably want to read reviews for infant car seats, a high end camcorder, or an expensive piece of furniture. Price, safety, and how that product impacts your life will dictate if reviews are necessary. Again, just my opinion.

Without further ado, some pitfalls of e-commerce reviews include:

1. When there are no reviews!
If visitors are expecting to find reviews and they can’t find any for the product they are looking for, then there’s a chance they will lose confidence during the purchase process and move on. That's especially true if you boast about your website reviews! Even the slightest second thought can be a conversion killer. If you are having trouble gaining reviews from customers, then I highly recommend launching a campaign to drive more reviews. Leverage your in-house email list and get people back to your site to review the products they purchased. Heck, give them an incentive…maybe 15-20% off their next purchase in exchange for a review. Having no reviews can impact more than sales for the product at hand, it could be interpreted by visitors that you don’t have enough volume or customers to generate reviews. Again, not a good thing when someone is ready to buy from you…

2. Who is actually writing the review?
Let’s face it, customers aren’t stupid. They want to read reviews from similar people who are in similar situations. For example, anonymous reviews are close to worthless in my opinion. Depending on what I’m buying, I want to hear from someone in a similar situation (who has a name). I don’t need to know them obviously, but I want to know that it’s from a somewhat quality source. For example, whenever I buy a tech book (like a programming book), I want to hear from other developers. I have an entire bookcase full of programming books and not all were written perfectly, to say the least… So, something like, “I’ve been programming for 13 years and this book was outstanding. The chapters started with a solid foundation, then moved to basic coding examples, and then real-world coding projects. The samples always worked (don’t laugh, many programming books come with code examples that don’t work) and the book is a great reference for when I get stuck.” A review like that would get my attention. Last year, I wanted to read reviews when I was looking for a new golf driver. I definitely wanted to hear from golfers in my skill range. Hearing from a scratch golfer wouldn’t be helpful, nor would hearing from a beginner. Solid reviews helped build confidence and got me closer to the sale… Now, I still needed to blast a few golf balls at the range before buying the club! You get my point.

3. Mixed Reviews (Great reviews mixed with poor reviews).
Products that have mixed reviews will tend to give customers less confidence in moving forward with a purchase. It makes sense, right? How can there be 5 fantastic reviews and 5 horrible reviews? That’s a definite red flag for me (and others too). I wouldn’t take a risk on buying something online that half the reviewers thought was a waste of money. Would you? I’m not referring to reviews that rate a product as mediocre. I’m referring to those weird set of reviews where some people loved the item and others hated the item. Seems fishy, doesn’t it? I always move on… It also leads me to think that there’s a fake review or two in the mix… Read on. ;-)

4. Fake Reviews
I think we’ve all come across these, right? (probably written as anonymous)? It’s funny, most people can’t write a positive review if they are forced to. Don’t believe me? Go ahead…try and write a positive review for something that you don’t really like or that’s your own product. I will guarantee you that it sounds obvious. ;-) If I come across a fake review, there had better be a real one for that product…or there’s a good chance I’m moving on. My hope is that you can pick out the fake reviews, and if you can’t, then hopefully there are plenty of other reviews for the item at hand.

So there you have it, four pitfalls when offering customer reviews on your website. I definitely believe reviews are a great feature to add on your e-commerce site, but I think you should implement them with a good understanding of the types of reviews out there and how they can impact conversion, user experience, and return buyers. My hope is that you will keep these pitfalls in mind and try to form strategies to overcome them. For example, launching campaigns to increase reviews, dealing with anonymous reviews, tracking the impact of reviews, etc. When you break it down, reviews can help your customers make informed decisions, and also help you determine the right products to sell on your website. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go review the Tonka Truck I just bought my son. ;-)

GG

LiveHttpHeaders and SEO, How to Check Your HTTP Response Headers for Red Flags

Does your website throw a 302 when it should throw a 301? Does it throw a 200 when it should be a 404? Are there 500’s thrown on your site that look like 404’s? Do you think I’m insane yet? Hear me out…

Whether you understand the introduction above or don’t know what I’m talking about, there’s still something extremely important for you in this post. Every time you load a webpage, your browser REQUESTS a file and then the server provides a RESPONE to that request (also called a Response Header). Response headers can help you identify critical issues on your site (especially from an SEO standpoint). Now, you probably have a few key questions.

1) How do I check my response headers?
2) What should I be looking for?

Although I can’t cover everything about response headers in this post, I will answer the two questions listed above and provide some examples along the way.

Let me start by answering the first question since it’s the easiest… I highly recommend using LiveHttpHeaders, an add-on for Firefox that displays http headers in real time (as you browse webpages). This tool can save you a lot of time and possibly help you diagnose some serious SEO-related issues. I will answer the second question later in the post.

Install LiveHttpHeaders Now:
First, visit the LiveHttpHeaders project website and install the add-on. You will need to restart Firefox after installing LiveHttpHeaders. Once restarted, you can trigger LiveHttpHeaders in two ways. You can click Tools, LiveHttpHeaders, which will trigger a new window where you can view header responses in real time as your browse the web. You can also click View, Sidebar, LiveHttpHeaders to view response headers in a sidebar within Firefox. I prefer the new window, since I have dual monitors and it doesn’t take up any browser space. :-) Either way works fine.

To quickly test it out before we go any further, go and visit Google with LiveHttpHeaders running. When you hit the homepage of Google, you will see a bunch of information scroll by in LiveHttpHeaders. For our purposes, let’s look at the top of the window (the first piece of information sent back to you). I have stripped out some of the information you don’t need to focus on for this example.

http://www.google.com/

GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: www.google.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.11) Gecko/20071127 Firefox/2.0.0.11
Keep-Alive: 300
Connection: keep-alive

HTTP/1.x 200 OK
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Content-Length: 2547


I have bolded the response code, which shows 200 (or ok). 200 is a good thing... and now I can explain more about response headers and codes. By the way, where you see 200 in the window is where you would also see other response codes like 301, 302, 404, etc.

Back to our two questions for a minute. The second question was “What should I be looking for?” In a nutshell, you should be looking for the file requested and the response code sent by the server. Let’s start with a definition of a response header and identify some core http response codes.

As I mentioned earlier, when you load a webpage, two things happen. There is an http request (by your browser) and then an http response is sent (by the server). There is a response code returned as part of the http response. Some of the following codes might be familiar to you, and others aren’t. If you focus on SEO, then get to know them…they can really help you diagnose problems on your website.

Some of the most common http response codes are:

200 – ok (the webpage was returned ok)
301 – Permanent redirect (seo friendly) J
302 – Temporary redirect (don’t use this unless you absolutely have to!)
400 – Bad request (uh, not good)
401 – Unauthorized (you need to be authenticated)
403 – Forbidden (doesn’t matter who you are, it’s forbidden)
404 – Not found (not necessarily a bad thing…I’ll explain more later.)
500 – Internal server error (something went very wrong processing the webpage…)
502 – Bad gateway (also not a good thing)

Why are http response codes important? One of your goals as an SEO is to enable the bots to easily index your site. You don’t want them to get caught up in any way, shape or form. For example, 302 redirects are not the SEO-friendly way to tell Google where a page you removed now resides (you should use a 301 redirect instead). So constantly providing 302’s would be a very bad thing to do. Or how about throwing a 200 (ok) when you really should be throwing a 404. For example, the page isn’t there, but you just told Google that it is. Again, not a good thing to do. Therefore, finding 302’s, 404’s, 403’s, 500’s, etc. is critical to creating a clean path for the bots, which means you can have more of your content indexed and at a solid frequency. Let’s take a look at how LiveHttpHeaders can help you out.

Checking Your Response Headers:
Let’s take a look at a hypothetical situation. One morning you wake up and decide that you want to increase your natural search rankings. You launch an SEO initiative and get moving quickly. The first thing you want to do is to audit your current site structure (since you know that without a sound and clean structure, you’re dead in the water). So as part of your audit, you want to ensure your response headers and response codes look ok.

You fire up LiveHttpHeaders and visit your website:

* You hit the Homepage, 200 returned,
* You visit a Top Level Product Category, 200 returned,
* Then you try and visit a product detail page and you hit a 302 redirect. Hold on… You find that all links to your product detail page go through a 302 redirect. This was implemented as part of a recent code change. This is something you would want to change ASAP. The content on your product detail page is obviously important so you wouldn’t want to be throwing 302’s prior to the bots hitting those pages…
* But it doesn’t stop there. You know that you changed dozens of older product pages recently and created new URL’s. You check out the old URL’s and find 302 redirects to the new product pages. You would want to change that too… and provide a 301 redirect from the old page to the new page, safely passing link power from the old page to the new one.
* Then you check out some product categories on your site that have been removed completely (you won’t be selling those products anymore), but you find 200’s instead of 404’s. A 404 (page not found) is the proper response code to throw in this situation, as it will tell the engines that the page has been removed and that it should be de-indexed. You don’t want the page to be indexed if it’s not actually there, right?
* Last you check some newly added pages and find they are not displaying correctly. It looks like they aren’t on the site, which means you should see a 404. But…the server returns a 500 (or internal server error). Again, not a good thing as the bots traverse your website content and this is something invisible to the naked eye as you test your website. You would need to be checking response codes to find this issue…

OK, I think you get the picture! Keep in mind that a full SEO assessment covers much more than just checking response codes, but it’s an important part to revealing SEO-related issues. And you know what? Sometimes it’s darn easy to find a serious issue that can be resolved fairly quickly. For example, providing a 302 redirect right on your homepage! Or throwing 200’s for any page that’s been removed from your site.

Think Like a Bot:
I’ll end this post with an analogy. Imagine you needed to check every room in a 10 story hotel to document the type of TV that’s in each room. But the elevators don’t work properly, some of the staircase entrances are locked, and every now and then the room numbers change on you. Would you have an easy time completing your task? Would you keep trying to come back to “index” each room? Or would you stop a few rooms in and say, “Hey look, Lost is on.” And then sit back and watch the show….and forget about the TV’s (or your content). ;-)

GG

The DVR and Its Effect on TV Advertising Recall, Do Your Commercials Stand Out?

Or does that really matter? More on that later. First, I’m a big DVR user and have been one for a number of years. I bought my first TIVO about 5 years ago, quickly added a second, and then moved to the Comcast HD DVR last year. So, I read an article in late February about a study conducted by General Electric’s NBC Universal to document the recall power of TV commercials when DVR users were whipping through them at 6x speed. In other words, do you recall an advertisement as you are fast forwarding through commercials on your DVR? By the way, that’s exactly how I watch the shows I record. In addition, if I choose to watch a live show, I just start watching the show 15 minutes in (for a 1 hour show) and then I can still fly through the commercials. Now back to the testing. The following quote is directly from the Wall Street Journal article:

Tracking biometric measurements such as eye movements, heart rate and sweat, the study found that the ads people concentrated on the most and recalled the most shared several traits. The most successful ads concentrated the action and the brand's logo in the middle of the screen, didn't rely on multiple scene changes, audio or text to tell the story, and often used familiar characters. People were also more likely to remember an ad in fast-forward mode if they had seen it once before live.

Glenn’s translation: A big static logo in the center of the screen. ;-)

Uh, tracking biometric measurement?? OK... The most successful ads didn’t rely on audio to tell the story?? The more I think about this topic, the more I think that this entire study wasn’t necessary. I guess it was for networks trying to hold on to TV advertisers at all costs, right?

Paging Dr. Gabe… Dr. Gabe Please Come to the Living Room:
So, I decided to conduct my own study. That’s right…and without biometric measurements, my heart rate wasn’t monitored, my eye movements weren’t scanned, and my sweat glands weren’t checked! I flipped on my TV, drilled into my recordings, armed with a high tech toolkit for a high tech doctor of technology (a pad and pen) and started my first show. My goal was to fast forward through each set of commercials at the highest speed and see which ads I could recall. That is, if I didn’t go into convulsions first! :) Since every study needs a name, I am calling it “The Strobe Logo Study” conducted by Glenn Gabe, Technology Scientist at Large. ;-)

Without further ado, here are the results! I will also give my quick analysis of the results following the data.

LOST on ABC (Probably my favorite show right now...)
1 Hour in Length
I started zipping through the commercials at the highest fast forward speed. Believe me, the highest speed is darn fast…each segment of commercials was over in a few seconds. I remember seeing a flash of the Wendy’s logo (centered on screen), an Applebee’s logo and a Dunkin Donuts logo (both also centered on screen). More on ad positioning later. Each was up for a flash…probably a quarter (1/4) of a second. Also keep in mind that the three logos I remembered are big brands that have been advertising for years. This obviously helped with my recall of their ads.

The Sports Reporters on ESPN
30 minutes in length
The only advertisement I remember seeing was CDW. I saw this logo twice during the show and for a little longer than the logos in LOST. This intrigued me, so I rewound the show a little to watch the CDW ad. It ends up they sponsor the show (see, I didn’t know this because I never watched it in real time!) So, as a lead into the show, they have a voiceover say, “The Sports Reporters is sponsored by…CDW”. This takes a few seconds, which leaves their logo on-screen longer. I saw this twice during the show when whipping through it on my DVR. This is an interesting note for TV advertisers. Also, the logo was centered on the screen, an important factor during my scientific study. :)

American Idol on FOX (like I had to tell you…)
60 Minutes in length
I remember seeing a Citizens Bank logo (I think) and an Infiniti logo. And, maybe…just possibly… a Lowes guy. Then again, it could have been a 7 Eleven guy or Wawa guy. I told you…it’s darn fast! Any quick movement or elaborate camera angles looks like a blur in fast forward. It makes sense, though. The common thread for TV commercial recall was becoming apparent. Any commercial that ended with a large logo centered on screen had a chance of recall (unless I blinked during the 1/4 of a second!)

Dancing With The Stars on ABC
60 Minutes in Length
I’ll cut to the chase…I recalled 3 ads, Advil, Petsmart, and a Nivea product shot. Again, each logo was centered on screen and fairly large (and the Nivea product was also large and centered). Are you seeing a trend here?

Here’s an interesting side note:
When you watch a recorded show, it will abruptly stop at a random frame at the end of the show…which is rarely when it fades to black. Dancing with the Stars ended on a BBC Worldwide America logo. So, since my DVR stopped on that frame, I saw this logo for about 10 full seconds before it returned to my DVR menu. If you are still looking for ways to appear in a DVR world, this could be one of them. BBC Worldwide America was not an advertiser, but that spot could be opened up for advertising...

Conan O’Brien on NBC (Just a brilliant comedian!)
30 Minutes
I literally didn’t recall any specific advertisement… Not one. So, I went through it a second time to make sure my eyes weren’t just fried out of my head from the previous shows… Nope, not one ad, logo, brand, etc. I guess none of the commercials used a logo centered on-screen. Read on for my scientific analysis of my DVR study.

Is this what it’s come down to for TV advertisers?
Triggering convulsions in people to see if they remember a flash of a logo? Really? I know not everyone has a DVR (yet), but if this is the type of study we are conducting, then there’s something very, very wrong. I can hear the scientists who conducted the NBC Universal study now. {In my best European scientist voice} “Yes, it seems that even 1/8 of a second can impact your brand’s recognition in the mind of lowly consumers. TV advertising is still hugely powerful and we may turn to 60 strobe flashes of logos in the future versus 30 second spots. Sure, some people may be hospitalized from the flashes of light, but it’s all worth it if the Advil logo shows up, is recalled, and then helps the hospitalized person's family overcome its collective headaches by using Advil.” OK, I’m a bit sarcastic, but it’s hard not to be!

How To Really Enhance Your TV Advertising, ONLINE
When I think of the cost to produce high end TV commercials, then the cost for airing those commercials, and then combine that with the growing number of DVR users, it doesn’t take a mathematical genius to understand why traditional TV advertising is not in good shape. I’m not saying that TV commercials should go away…but I believe that you need to supplement your TV campaigns with other campaign elements to maximize exposure and engagement. For example, I always recommend adding an online viral component to your TV commercials. Have a micro-site or landing page to engage your brand and advertisement, to help with lead generation, to work in a contest, to spark user generated content, to add a blog, etc. and then utilize online marketing channels to drive visitors there. So, combining your high end TV commercials with a robust micro-site, and then utilize paid search, organic search, email marketing, social media, blogging, display advertising, etc. to drive people there is a smart way to go. Then you’ve got yourself a serious campaign, covering all avenues, and using innovative methods. Versus…trying to justify your TV commercials with “flashes of a logo” or what I’m calling “The Strobe Logo”. There is so much you can do online to enhance your TV advertisements, and at a reasonable cost. To me, it’s a necessary addition that can unleash the true power of viral marketing.

Now let me go put an ice bag on my eyes and give my poor DVR and TV a break! Until my next scientific experiment, this is Dr. Gabe signing off. Does anyone know a good eye doctor? Maybe I should get in touch with the people who went through the original study to see who they recommend!

GG

Disclaimer: I am not a medical doctor, scientist, or PHD. Please don’t ask me for medical assistance or to conduct clinical studies. If you need assistance from a medical doctor, please consult your healthcare company for a referral. I am not authorized to prescribe medication, recommend time off from work, or advocate medical procedures. :)

Google Analytics Benchmarking Data, Comparing Your Website Data to Industry Verticals

Earlier this month, Google Analytics added a new feature, the ability to view benchmarking data across verticals. The idea is to enable you as a website owner to compare your reporting to that of your industry as a whole or to other industries. You would obviously want to do this in order to glean insights about how your website compares in context (and not in a vacuum). Context is very important to have or your web metrics are just numbers. For example, your visitor level might be low or high compared to your niche, but you won’t know that unless you have context (or in this case other comparable data from your vertical.) Overall, I think Google providing benchmarking data is a good start and I’ll explain more below, but it really is just a start… Anyone that does competitive research for a living probably cracked a grin when they saw this very high level information.

How to View Benchmarking Data:
In order to view benchmarking data, you need to enable it in your analytics settings from within Google Analytics. The first page you see after logging in (which shows your various profiles) has a link that says “Edit Account and Data Sharing Services”. After clicking that link, check the box that says, “Share My Google Analytics Data… Anonymously with Google products and benchmarking service”. Then click “Save Changes”. Note that it could take several weeks for this data to show up. You will know if it shows up by clicking the Visitors Tab from within Google Analytics and then the “Benchmarking (BETA)” tab. Then you can dig in.


What Does Benchmarking Reporting Include?
The first thing you will see is a dashboard of reports, including Visits, Pageviews, Pages Per Visit (PPV), Bounce Rate (my favorite metric), Average Time on Site, and Percent of New Visits. Each graph will show you how your site compares with the industry you have selected. So how do you change the industry vertical to compare against? At the top of the report, you can click “Open Category List” to reveal all of the verticals you can select to compare your site’s data to. OK, I’ve revealed problem #1. If you want to compare apples to apples, you might not be thrilled with GA’s initial list of verticals. Again, this is a great start, but if you focus on a vertical that’s not directly reflected in one of the listings, is the process of analyzing the data worth it? Every vertical and type of site will have their nuances, so it’ll be hard to accurately compare data unless your vertical is listed.

Comparing Visits:
Everyone wants to know how their visitor counts stack up against their industry. This is actually one of the graphs that can help you. For example, if you see a dip in traffic during March, did your industry see the same dip? Did they see an increase instead? What does the trending look like for Q1 for your site versus your industry? Do you want to find partnerships based on seasonal traffic levels? Take a look at various verticals to note similar trending or inverse trending. Maybe you can help each other. You get the point…

Comparing Bounce Rate:
When I first found out that the benchmarking service would include bounce rate, my favorite web metric of all, I was psyched. I’ve written a series of blog posts about bounce rate, since I don’t think there’s a better metric for telling you more as fast as Bounce Rate. That said, I preach that bounce rate at the aggregate level (or site level) doesn’t really tell you much… you need to segment your data to truly understand where the problems lie. For example, social media traffic from Digg might have an 85% bounce rate, where your email marketing campaigns might be at 25%. Paid Search might be at 30% and organic search at 15%. Those numbers analyzed separately can tremendously help you. Combine them and you have a 39% aggregate bounce rate. Is that good or bad? I’m sure you get my point. Back to the benchmarking data. So, looking at the aggregate bounce rate on your site compared to an industry vertical probably won’t give you actionable data. That is, unless your BR is 90%. Then you don’t need benchmarking data anyway, you need some serious help. :)

Comparing Percent of New Visitors:
You want your visitors and customers to come back, right? So this metric can at least give you a feel for how your visitor retention compares to your industry vertical or other industry verticals. Every industry is different, but let’s say you are 30 points higher than your industry vertical for percent of new visitors and you aren’t running any crazy new campaigns (which would skew your data), then you might be on to a customer retention issue… Again, it really depends on your vertical and which marketing efforts you launched during that time period. If you see high numbers for return visitors against your industry totals, then how can you keep that trend going? These are just hypothetical situations, but it could be a valuable process to go through.

Comparing Pageviews:
I’m not going to spend a lot of time on pageviews. This metric bothers me slightly. I’m focused on conversion, so I don’t care if that takes 3 pageviews or 18 pageviews. That said, you can possibly find some interesting data here, like if pageviews in your industry are significantly lower than yours…maybe there is an industry trend for implementing new functionality that radically cuts down the amount of pageviews needed to find the right product. Hypothetical of course, but you might be able to glean insights from the reporting. The other problem is based on rich media functionality or AJAX, which won’t show up as additional pageviews. So, how do 10 pageviews compare to 2 if the 2 is really closer to 10, but completed via AJAX?? Again, I wouldn’t focus on this metric…

Comparing Pages Per Visit:
This could be a valuable metric to analyze compared to your industry vertical if your goal is to keep visitors on your site (advertising model). This essentially answers the question “how sticky is your site compared to your industry vertical?” Are there elements that your competition is using that increases their pages per visit? Is your site much stickier on average? Why is that? Did you just implement new content areas or various types of media content like video? For an e-commerce site, this isn’t as big of a deal. Again, if it takes my visitors 5 pages to convert or 10 pages, I don’t necessarily care. I want to provide the right information to the right people at the right time in order to build trust and convert them to a customer. It’s not always about speed…

Average Time on Site:
This is similar to pages per visit to me. Again, it really depends on your type of site. Are you trying to keep visitors on your site longer based on your business model? How are you achieving this? Did you implement social media functionality? Did you just implement video content? Is there messaging functionality? How does your site’s average time on site compare to your vertical? Or to similar verticals? A low average time on site compared to your industry vertical could indicate a problem with your campaigns, content, or navigation.

To summarize, I think Google Analytics has taken a step in the right direction with providing benchmarking information. It’s not elaborate and deep, but it does give you a decent comparison against your industry vertical and to other verticals. You’ll have to take some of the data with a grain of salt and really drill into your own analytics to glean insights. Maybe some of the GA benchmarking data pushes you to do additional competitive research using more elaborate tools like Hitwise. Just remember that context is everything and competitive research tools and services give you that context. So go ahead and compare away! :)

GG

Job Titles, Overtitling and Undertitling | How Ash from Army of Darkness Was Spot On

Ahh, the classic quote from Ash in Army of Darkness (watch the video clip above if you don’t know what I’m referring to!) I’m a big horror movie fan and this quote always cracks me up… And Bruce Campbell delivering the line makes it even better. So why the video clip? Well, I had a great conversation recently with several internet marketing professionals about job titles and I thought this clip was a good example of overtitling (more on that later). The question I posed was this, “Does a big and fancy job title hurt you or help you down the line?” And, does it even effectively communicate what you actually do on a regular basis? Recruiters and HR professionals deal with undertitling and overtitling all of the time and I figured I would give my 2 cents on the issue.

Let's start off with some basic definitions:
The definition of overtitling is holding a job title that is too senior for what you do and the level of experience you have. I believe smaller companies and agencies do this all the time… They want to attract and retain top talent, so they hand out big job titles.

As you might expect, the definition of undertitling is having a job title that is too junior for what you do and your level of experience. Larger companies that have a steep hierarchy developed by HR professionals tend to undertitle. “I’m sorry Joe, but our professional blueprint for job titles says that you have 3 months to go before I can give you the title of “Director”. I know you just generated $20MM in revenue for us across multiple channels, but our HR folks say it’s no go. Don’t laugh, I’ve seen this happen to people.

So, as Ash clearly demonstrated with the “Duke” in the video clip above, his overtitling wasn’t going to help them out in their given situation, right? “OK, you are so powerful that you need multiple fancy titles, but you’re still in a heap of trouble!” :-) BTW, if you enjoy horror films and haven’t seen the Evil Dead trilogy, I highly recommend it! Sam Raimi is a genius… And more importantly for you entrepreneurs out there…watch the making of the Evil Dead and learn how he dropped out of college knowing he could create killer films (no pun intended). He did, and with big risk comes big reward. He’s got serious moxy. Now back to job titles...

A Quick Lesson In Humility…
Early in my career, I ended up golfing with an executive at my company and we had paired up with 2 other gentlemen. If you golf, you know that usually by the second or third hole, the inevitable question pops up… “So, what do you do for a living??” I went through an elaborate explanation of what I did, being excited about the web booming and being part of it on multiple dimensions. Then, the executive I was playing with (who was also on the Executive Team no less), said quite simply, “I work in {enter the department name here} and I help our employees {enter the description here}”. What?? Dude, you’re a big deal! ;-) His response left a big impression on me. He didn’t need to throw around his title and that he was on the Executive Team of a multi-billion dollar company. He just told people what he did. I think that’s a good policy to have…

Internet Marketers Define Your Job Titles
So, with web marketing booming and new channels always emerging, what job title do you want? Do you want a traditional job title like “Director of Internet Marketing”, which is fairly broad and can mean focusing on multiple channels or do you want a highly focused title like "SEM Strategist”? There are some people who have broad and deep skill-sets in online marketing, but I think most people breaking in now have a strong focus. I actually consider myself fortunate to have started when I did (1994), which enabled me to gain a broad skill-set in online marketing (based on starting when the web hit). However, what if someone mainly focuses on 1 or 2 channels or focuses on analyzing those channels, or selling products and services for a distinct channel. Which type of title makes sense? Should they include a highly focused title that clearly explains what they do? I’m not here to answer that question, but I think it’s extremely relevant in today’s dynamic marketplace.

Here's a Recommendation for Developing a Job Title That Makes Sense
OK, here’s my 2 cents on job titles for internet marketers. Sit down and map out exactly what you do on a regular basis. Include all the details, whether you focus on web analytics or manage paid search or develop viral campaigns or focus on natural search. Seeing your job responsibilities on paper will help you get a firm grip on what you actually do. Then start some divergent thinking and jot down all the possible job titles. Then choose the top 5 for your given position. You can mix and match, expand on some titles, create new titles, etc. I highly recommend being as specific as possible and seeing how that sounds… I’m not saying that the position titled “Director of” or “VP of” should go away, but if you are a professional focused on a certain area of an industry, it will probably benefit you to have a focused job title. For example, I think Director of Social Media Marketing is focused enough… Once you have a few killer job titles, go to the leader of your respective organization and present them. What’s the worst that can happen? They say no? They might see your point and make a change. It could help you and others in your company down the line.

If all else fails...
...and you find yourself without a strong job title, you can always try to combine everything you do into one title! Check out my "About Glenn Gabe Page"...where I created a new title called Chief WebDeVideoSearchMarketBuzzAnalytics Officer.

Now try and put that on a business card. ;-)

GG