Archive for the ‘SEO’ Category

Tuesday, September 7th, 2010

Snap The Long Tail of SEO by Filling a Void

Filling a Void and The Long Tail of SEOIf you’ve read previous posts of mine, then you already how powerful I think the long tail of SEO is. It’s an incredibly important concept in Search Marketing and it’s a topic I cover often with my SEO clients. I was planning on writing about another topic this month for my column on Search Engine Journal, but something happened over the past few weeks that I just had to write about. Hey, things move fast on the web, and in online marketing. :)

Meet The Long Tail of Frustrated Samsung Captivate Users
My last blog post detailed the problems I encountered while trying to sync my Samsung Captivate to my computer. As I said in the post, it’s a slick and feature-rich phone, but I just couldn’t sync it… I spent hours researching the problem, spoke with AT&T and Samsung, but still had no solution. I almost ended up taking the phone back… Then I found a video on Daily Motion (in French) that helped me solve the problem (via a comment posted on the video page). Since I had a feeling that many other users were experiencing the same issue, I decided to write a step-by-step tutorial about how to solve the problem. I simply wanted to save other people from the hours of frustration that I experienced, by providing a detailed and valuable post. Since there wasn’t a single, clear solution yet, I knew there was a void that needed to be filled.

A Wave of Traffic and Keywords
I posted the tutorial and moved on, since I had a crazy week. Little did I know that a wave of frustrated Captivate users was hitting my blog (and not long after I published the post). As I started analyzing the traffic to my blog, I couldn’t help but notice the sheer number of keywords that were leading to the tutorial. Now I’m a big believer in the long tail, but this was truly amazing. As each day passed, hundreds and hundreds of keywords were leading to the post. It was a great example of how filling a void with a valuable post could lead to a spike of traffic (and how it could capture the long tail of SEO).

Based on what I just explained, I hope you are eager to find out just how many keywords ended up leading to the post and what this means for online marketers.

But as usual, you’ll need to head over to Search Engine Journal to read more about my case study. :)
How To Capture The Long Tail of SEO By Filling a Void

GG

Posted by Glenn Gabe @ 9:57 am in SEO, blogging, google
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Friday, August 6th, 2010

Web Server Monitoring – Give Your Online Marketing Campaigns a Fighting Chance With a Digital Scout

Web Server MonitoringYou’ve mapped out an incredible online marketing strategy. Your developers have been frantically working to meet your deadlines, the creative is approved, dates set, and your campaigns are almost ready to launch. Everyone is excited. But, are you missing one critical element that can literally save your campaigns? You just might be… One important thing I learned early in my career is that your online marketing campaigns are only as good as the servers they are run on. For example, imagine driving thousands of people per day to a site that is down 25% of the time. Imagine an e-commerce site that bombs during checkout 10% of the time. Or worse, imagine you receive so much attention and traffic that your site is down for days at a time (wasting significant amounts of budget and an opportunity to land new customers). This is the reality of online marketing, and unfortunately, many marketers learn the hard way how important hosting is to their success.

Enter Server Monitoring, Your Online Marketing Scout
I remember launching a large-scale campaign for a client after starting my own business. There was a critical decision I needed to make as we set up their hosting. I could go with dedicated hosting or go with a webfarm (where multiple servers work together to balance the load). The webfarm was more expensive and we didn’t know the exact amount of traffic the campaign would generate, so it was a hard decision. I decided to go with webfarm hosting, and I was lucky I did. The campaign drove over 950K visits to the site in just a few days (based on the viral nature of the video content). The webfarm didn’t even hiccup. We experienced no downtime, even though the site was getting hammered from all directions. How did I know that we didn’t experience downtime? I set up server monitoring so I would know immediately if one of the servers went down. It was relatively easy for my hosting provider to set up, cost me very little, and enabled me to know exactly how the webfarm was performing.

Ping It Baby
When server monitoring is set up, the web server in question is pinged at a certain frequency (like every second or minute) to ensure the server responds. If it doesn’t, an email gets immediately triggered to you and a ticket will be set up with technical support. Yes, this is brilliant and can save your campaign from technical failure. In addition to pinging your web server, you can also set up monitoring for your mail server. If you heavily rely on email for your business (which most business owners do), then this can also be an invaluable service. Similar to web server monitoring, the mail server can be pinged every x seconds or minutes to ensure uptime. If it’s down, an email will be triggered and a support ticket opened. Again, this is a smart thing to do for online marketers.

Understand Your Hosting Package and Provider
So, you’re sold on the idea of server monitoring, but don’t know where to start. No problem. First, you need to understand the hosting package you have set up and the various services that your hosting provider offers. For example, do you have a shared hosting package, dedicated package, virtual private server, etc? Is monitoring offered for certain packages and not others? Then you need to find out how much monitoring costs and what you need to do in order to have your provider set it up. I recommend giving technical support a call and speaking with them about the possibilities. Also keep in mind that monitoring will require that your hosting provider is fine with complete transparency. This could separate the great hosting providers from the good ones. You will know every time the server goes down and for how long. This could be somewhat uncomfortable for certain hosting providers, especially if they aren’t confident in their service.

The Cost of Server Monitoring
You might find that some hosting providers will set up monitoring for free and others that will charge a small monthly fee. For example, it might cost you $5-$10 per month per server (and per monitor). If you had a monitor set up for your web server and one for your email server, then it might cost you $10-$20 per month for monitoring. Needless to say, that’s a small price to pay for being confident in your hosting setup (especially if you or your clients are launching several online marketing campaigns). Imagine you were spending tens of thousands of dollars (or more) on the campaign. What’s $5 or $10 per month??

Points to Consider and Key Takeaways:

  • I recommend having monitoring set up for both your web server and mail server. Then you can be confident that your site is up and running and that you can receive email.
  • When setting up the email address for the monitor (the address that will be emailed if your server goes down), don’t use an email address at your domain. Use a gmail address or another web-based email account. If your mail server is run on the same machine that runs your web server, then you won’t get the email notification when your servers goes down… :) Find out from your hosting provider if your mail server and web server are on separate machines.
  • Make sure the monitor emails you when the sever goes down and when it’s back up. Then you can identify the true downtime that the site experienced.
  • Have your hosting provider test the monitor once it’s set up. Then you can make sure you are in fact emailed and that a support ticket is opened. Like everything else in technology, testing can save you from an embarrassing situation.

Monitoring Is Smart, Set It Up
As you can see, I believe server monitoring is extremely important for online marketers. Don’t let web server downtime ruin your online marketing campaigns. There’s nothing worse than doing your job well as an online marketer and then having a server fail. If that happens, your campaign fails along with the server. If visitors cannot get to the site in question, then you’re dead in the water. Think of your monitor as an online marketing scout that will watch over your servers. A scout that never sleeps, checks your servers continually, takes no sides, and can save your campaigns. Set monitoring up now.

GG

Posted by Glenn Gabe @ 6:52 am in SEM, SEO, ecommerce, social-media, viral-marketing, web-hosting
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Monday, May 24th, 2010

The Strategy to Execution Gap™ (SEG) and Its Effect on SEO

The Strategy to Execution Gap (SEG)Over the past 15 years, I’ve had the opportunity to work on some incredible projects with some extremely talented people.  Whenever I was about to launch a new initiative, I found it was helpful to look at the various challenges and obstacles to success (in order to minimize them as much as possible).  When dealing with online marketing projects, there are several variables that can inhibit your progress, including technology, process, and people.  All three categories of obstacles can throw a wrench into effectively completing tasks, which can then lead to missed deadlines and a slower path to success.  That said, there are also times that a path has been cleared and you can execute very quickly.  And in online marketing, efficient execution is critical.  I’m a firm believer that you can build the best strategy in the world, but unless you can execute at a rapid pace (while maintaining high quality), you’re dead in the water.  The outstanding strategy you created won’t be worth the paper it’s written on.

The Strategy to Execution Gap™ (SEG) and SEO
About 4 years ago, I created a metric to demonstrate how delays and obstacles can impact online marketing initiatives.  The metric is called the Strategy to Execution Gap™, or SEG.  The SEG is a metric that can help you identify how effective your team is for a given initiative or set of initiatives.  If you’ve read some of my previous posts, you already know I am analytics nut.  I love using data to back what I recommend (and I’m a big believer that opinion gets you nowhere while data is hard to ignore).  This is part of the reason that the SEG can be so valuable.

The SEG provides a percentage, which can show you how effectively your team is executing projects.  The lower the number, the more efficient your team is.  The higher the number, and your team is not executing at an effective level. It can be used for any online marketing initiative, but I’ll focus on SEO for this post.  The Strategy to Execution Gap™ fits SEO very well, since there are typically a number of projects that need to be completed during an engagement (and each usually has a weighted priority).  I’ve written extensively about SEO technical audits and remediation plans in the past, and they help build an SEO roadmap, or the series of projects that need to be completed during the year.  For example, in SEO it’s extremely important that technical barriers are removed before you move into projects like content optimization.  A tangible example would be if you have a massive canonicalization problem or a serious domain strategy issue.  If you do, then you better tackle those projects first before you simply optimize content on the site.  If the search engines cannot effectively crawl and index your content, you can forget about content optimization…  Also, SEO takes time before you see success.  Typically, you need to build up SEO power over time before you see a big change in rankings and organic search traffic.  Even if you fix all of the technical problems on your site, you still need to tackle several additional projects like content optimization, linkbuilding, etc.  That’s why efficient execution is critically important.  A delay in completing projects can impact months of SEO performance.

Based on what I’ve explained above, the Strategy to Execution Gap™ is a perfect fit for SEO initiatives.  Presenting the metric before you get started and then giving periodic updates on a team’s SEG percentage can get key stakeholders involved and on-board with what you are trying to accomplish.  And, they might even help you out by removing obstacles from your SEO path.  More about that soon.

The Strategy to Execution Gap (SEG) Formula
When you map out a series of projects as part of your SEO roadmap, they become the foundation for your Strategy to Execution Gap™.  Based on those projects, and the priority you give each project, you can explain to your team how the SEG will be calculated (and what the score means to their success).  Below, I’ll first present the formula and then present an example so you can see how it works.

The Strategy to Execution Gap = (Sum of Weighted Projects – Sum of Weighted Projects Completed  / Sum of Weighted Projects) * 100

Some notes about the SEG formula:

  1. Each project should be weighted from 0-10 and will be based on your analysis of the current situation.
  2. You can use all of the projects that are part of your roadmap, or just a subset for a given time period.  i.e. You can do this quarterly, semi-annually, or for the entire year.
  3. The SEG will end up being a percentage.  The lower your percentage, the better the score (meaning the gap to execution is low).  A higher percentage means your team is not executing at a high level (or there is a larger gap between strategy and execution).

An example:
Let’s say you had the following projects to complete (the weighted priority score is next to each project).  I’ll keep the example simple, but keep in mind that might have several more projects to tackle as part of an actual SEO roadmap.

Domain Strategy 8
Fix Canonicalization Problems 8
Refine Internal Linking Structure 6
XML Sitemaps 5
Keyword Research 4
Content Optimization 4
Video SEO 3
Linkbuilding 7

Total Weighted Sum: 45

Let’s say you are a few months into the initiative and three items have been completed (domain strategy, internal linking structure, and keyword research).  At your next meeting, you want to give the team an update on how things are progressing.  The SEG for this project so far is 60%, meaning there is a relatively high strategy to execution gap (which is not great).  The formula looks like this: (45-18/45) * 100 = 60%

At this point, you could discuss the various obstacles to execution to see why your SEG isn’t better.  Depending on the size of your team and the number of departments involved, you might be surprised to hear some of the obstacles popping up.

To show you how the SEG can be impacted (especially by the weighting involved), let’s say your team completed two additional projects during this time period.  For example, maybe canonicalization and xml sitemaps were taken care of (both with relatively high weighted scores).  If that was the case, your SEG drops to 31% (almost in half) showing a lower strategy to execution gap (which is good).  I find the SEG is a great metric for quickly showing an efficiency percentage, while also sparking conversation about potential obstacles involved.

How to Close the Gap (Decreasing the SEG)
Let’s face it, execution in online marketing is  everything.  Decreasing your SEG can have a massive impact on the success of your initiative (which can have an impact on targeted traffic, conversion, and revenue).   So, how do you close the gap?  As explained earlier, there are a number of obstacles that can inhibit your SEO projects, including technology, developers, egos, other initiatives, designers, branding, executives, legal, PR, etc.  My recommendation is to meet with key stakeholders before your initiative begins.  Explain what you are trying to accomplish and its potential impact on the bottom line.  Take everyone through the SEG and tie percentages to success (and revenue).  If everyone understands the big picture, you might be able to clear more paths, which can lower your SEG, and increase your chance of success.  Whether this approach will be successful for you depends on a number of factors, including the details of the specific initiative, the people involved, and culture of the organization.  One thing I’ve learned over the past 15 years is that data and metrics always help make a case.  Opinions and finger pointing rarely work.  The SEG can be one more metric that can help your cause.

Your Next Steps with the Strategy to Execution Gap™ (SEG)
The good news is that you can get moving with the SEG right now.  Whether you’re just starting an initiative or if you’re in the middle of one now, start to think about the specific tasks involved.  Then weight each project and explain the SEG to your team.  After everyone on your team understands how the SEG works, then expand your communication to key stakeholders.  As projects are completed, you can start to include the Strategy to Execution Gap™ in your presentations and progress reports.  Make the SEG a quick visual that represents how effective your team is.  Remember, using data and not opinion might end up winning over more people.

And who knows, maybe after the SEG has been used a few times to track efficiency, others in your organization might adopt the metric for their own initiatives.  Wouldn’t it be great if you were the person that introduced and sparked the SEG metric throughout your organization?  Just make sure you reference this post after you’re famous.  :)

GG

Posted by Glenn Gabe @ 8:53 am in SEM, SEO, web-analytics
3 Comments »
Tuesday, May 11th, 2010

Using Simple and Effective Keyword Charts for New SEO Clients

Paid Versus Organic KeywordsWhen I begin helping new SEO clients, I find it’s extremely important to first help them understand their current state before moving to more complex projects.  As part of the initial projects I tackle, a top-level keyword analysis can help clients understand which keywords are driving traffic to their site and how valuable those keywords are.  New SEO clients typically know that they already rank for some keywords, but they often don’t know the exact breakdown.  Understanding this breakdown is important, since you typically need to map out a series of projects that will be part of an SEO roadmap.  The projects could impact the next six months to a year of work, so you want to make sure everyone is on the same page and clearly understands the current situation.

Simple Charts, Effective Messaging
After completing a top-level keyword analysis, I find that some simple yet effective charts can help clients clearly understand their current status.  In addition, these keyword charts can help gain buy-in from key stakeholders in the organization and set the stage for future SEO efforts.  For example, the charts can demonstrate the ratio of paid to organic keywords, branded to non-branded keywords, converting to non-converting keywords, etc. Once you quickly build these charts, then you can dive into what the data actually means and how you can improve SEO results.

So, are you interested in learning more about the simple keyword charts I mentioned above?  I’ve got you covered, but you’re going to have to hop over to Search Engine Journal to read my latest post titled Simple Yet Effective Charts for Helping New SEO Clients Understand Their Current Keywords.  My post covers various scenarios you might come across when analyzing keywords for new SEO clients, examples of some of the charts, and what this can mean for clients.

As usual, if you have any questions, feel free to post them here or on Search Engine Journal.

Read my latest post on Search Engine Journal:
Simple Yet Effective Charts For Helping New SEO Clients Understand Their Current Keywords

GG

Posted by Glenn Gabe @ 10:19 am in SEM, SEO, keyword-research, web-analytics
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Sunday, April 25th, 2010

A Baker’s Dozen: A Quick Update on Kati’s Kupcakes, The Winner of The Search a Small Business Holiday Giveaway [PODCAST]

Kati's Kupcakes New CMS and Website DesignIf you’re a frequent reader of my blog, then you probably remember the Search a Small Business Holiday Giveaway I launched this past December.  The purpose of the contest was to give an ultra-small business in New Jersey a free online marketing audit, which would produce plan for enhancing the company’s digital strategies.

I launched the contest because it didn’t seem fair that many small businesses lack the resources or budgets to tackle online marketing the right way.  Many SMB’s move at light speed to keep their businesses running and simply don’t have time to keep up on the latest strategies and tactics.  I opened the contest to any small business in NJ with less than ten employees (what I categorized as an ultra-small business).

The winner of the contest was Kati Angelini and she owns Kati’s Kupcakes, a gourmet cupcake business in Moorestown, NJ.  Kati’s Kupcakes creates specialty cupcakes, cupcake towers, wedding cupcakes, etc.  When I first spoke to Kati after announcing the winner, I could tell right away that she was passionate about her business, and was eager to learn more about SEO, Local Search, SEM, Web Analytics, etc.  It also became apparent to me that Kati represented the classic case of someone that had serious skills and was extremely talented, but lacked the exposure she needed to rapidly grow her business.  So, after my initial conference call with her, I got started on analyzing her business, her site, her current marketing efforts, etc.

What I Found and How I Helped (And We’re Not Done Yet…)
During my audit, I began to analyze Kati’s website, her presence in Local Search, her rankings in Natural Search, her tracking capabilities, etc.  It didn’t take long to understand the path we needed to go down.  In a nutshell, the content management system (CMS) Kati was using to run her website was wreaking havoc on her efforts.  The website had a rudimentary design, it was riddled with technical problems, her content wasn’t optimized (at all), she had no presence in local search, and lacked the ability to quickly add new content or blog posts.  For a local small business, the combination I listed above was causing serious problems for gaining exposure, rankings, quality visitors, and customers.  When you boil it down, Kati needed to show up when people were searching for her services.  At the time, she simply wasn’t.

The Marketing Spot with Jay Ehret
When I launched the holiday giveaway, Jay Ehret from The Marketing Spot reached out to me to learn more about the contest.  In case you don’t know Jay, he focuses heavily on small business marketing and branding and he also runs a podcast called Power to the Small Business.  Jay learned about the contest via Twitter (since we have been following each other for some time now).  Jay recently invited me to be on his podcast to speak about the contest, the changes we implemented for Kati, and the results from our initial efforts.  Both Kati and I were on the call and we had a great conversation with Jay about the project.  The podcast launched today and you can listen to it now by visiting the blog post (listed below) or by downloading the podcast via iTunes.

Listen to the Podcast About Kati’s Kupcakes:
Local SEO Clinic: Improving Traffic, Improving Business

Kati’s Kupcakes: Highlights From Our Initial Efforts
Although we are only a few months in, there have been some great improvements marketing-wise.  Kati still has a long way to go, but our initial efforts are definitely paying off. Again, you can listen to the podcast to learn more (it’s 30 minutes long).  Here are some highlights from the project and I’m eager to keep helping Kati grow her business.  By the way, you can hear Kati’s view of the projects on the podcast (including how they have impacted her business.)

  • I performed a thorough SEO technical audit, which revealed a number of technical issues impacting her performance in Natural Search.  There were also a number of content optimization problems on the site (to say the least).  The deck was 30 slides long…
  • We moved Kati’s website from a problematic content management system (CMS) to Wordpress, which helped fix a number of technical problems inhibiting her efforts (usability, SEO, blogging, domain strategy, etc.)
  • Kati’s indexation (the number of pages indexed by the search engines) has increased from 12 unoptimized pages to 136 pages.
  • I developed a local search strategy for Kati’s Kupcakes in order for the business to show up for local searches.  This included making a number of changes and additions across several websites and databases.
  • I started training Kati on best practices for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  Kati is the person that would be creating new pages, new blog posts, etc. and needed to understand how to properly optimize those pages on her site.  This took the form of multiple one hour training sessions (and the training is on-going).
  • I explained the power of the long tail of SEO, as well as how to target it.  The long tail is incredibly powerful and businesses should avoid the long tail at their own peril. A bit dramatic?  Sure, but definitely true.  :)
  • Kati’s original website ranked for almost no target keywords.  Since March 1st, 622 keywords have led visitors to Kati’s website, 561 of those keywords were unbranded terms (not someone simply searching for Kati’s Kupcakes), and 128 of those keywords included a local qualifier.  For example, using a town, zipcode, or state along with target keywords.  Down the line, I believe that Kati’s website can rank for thousands of keywords, but 622 is a great start (and a huge improvement.)
  • We added Google Analytics for tracking site performance, which enables Kati to view granular reporting across traffic sources, campaigns, keywords, etc.  I am going to help Kati develop an analytics strategy, including identifying conversions and events to track, so she can quickly and efficiently identify which efforts are paying off for her business.


A Good Start, But There’s Still A Lot To Do:
Although we have made a lot of changes and Kati’s business is seeing a nice impact, we still have some things to do marketing-wise.  For example, there are several content optimization projects we need to perform on the site.  I also want to help Kati learn more about paid search and understand how it can supplement organic search.  I think Kati can have a stronger integration with Facebook and Twitter, and possibly start to use location-based services like FourSquare or Gowalla.  And I want to keep training Kati on SEO best practices so she feels comfortable with making changes that will help her organic search efforts.  In addition, I mentioned that I’ll be helping Kati develop an analytics strategy.  That’s probably our next major step.

So, if you are interested in hearing more about the contest and the projects we tackled, head over to the Marketing Spot and listen to the podcast.  Again, it’s about 30 minutes long, but contains some good nuggets of information for small businesses. Heck, put in on your iPod and listen to it during your next workout.  :)

GG

Posted by Glenn Gabe @ 12:02 pm in SEO, google-analytics, local-search, small-business, web-analytics, wordpress
1 Comment »