Another Analytics Tool To Understand Your Engagements

http://chartbeat.com/demo/

Here is another analytic tool to consider. It is part of the Microsoft BizSpark portfolio, this SAaS tool provides analytics in a manner different then Google Analytics. This tool is more geared towards looking at all your online channels: Twitter, Facebook, Website, mobile. Designed as a dashboard to scan for action steps next, it has a new look and feel graphic that allows for quick absorption of information. The focus here is on how long visitors are engaged. ChartBeat Analytics is that tool. It can in real time show what your traffic is doing. It will show where it is from (in bound links), what the keywords that are driving traffic to the site, what links are getting visitors to your site and more. This lets you focus on what is working to turn it up, and what is not working, to keep on experimenting. You are experimenting your SEO and site conversion,  are you not?

This tool is another example that it is not just about getting someone to your site, but are they paying attention and engaging on the site. This is the same as someone running in the brick and mortar store because of the shiny display, only to find it does not correlate to the products inside. That user will just turn right back around,, and head back into the next store in the mall. Or the person in the mall that’s just looking for a restroom, and in 10 seconds head to the restroom, does their business and turns around and heads back out. The person didn’t buy anything, and best case your store maybe made a slight impact on him. So the next time they are looking for something like what you have in the store will consider you, probably not. You fooled them once shame on them, but they don’t want to be fooled twice. but it wasn’t a true engagement.  What they are really looking for is not real engagements, and their lifetime value to the store or your website is absolutely minimal because you failed them the first time to match your SEO to your real site.

Analytics are tools that help you understand who your visitors are, and allow you to get a sense of how they perceive your website and what the value is to them.  While it does not ask the question directly, you can infer that if they are staying on the site for longer periods of time, they are often more engaged and more interested in what you have to offer. This indicates a good correlation to your SEO and SEM efforts. Unless of course they just got distracted by a phone call.

 

Are You Looking at Your Website from a Cusomers Perspective?

What you’re looking for someone who’s looking for what your store is generically offering comes in to see if you have what they are specifically looking for work. You can convert them to being a true engagement while they’re there.

That’s why retailers count how many people are coming in and how many people are coming out there also counting how many of them are actually purchasing. I have worked with over 100 different retail chains from single retailers to Office Big box stores. They are counting by the month, day of the week, hour of the day (I know, I installed the counters that go back to the corporate databases). They are counting how many of customers are actually signing up for the e-mail list. They’re counting how many of purchasers are return customers from previous orders. There also counting what is the average amount of each visitor’s spending. Retail stores count the numbers in so many ways you would be amazed. Just like you need to on your website. Your website is not a black box. You need to be paying attention to what’s happening.

If these types of customer engagement don’t make absolute clear sense to you, then I would suggest you go and spend some time and with brick and mortar retailers. Consider even working as a retailer. Learn how retailers convert the looky loo’s into true engagements. Yes we have all been shopping, but look at how retailers work with other customers not just yourself. Learn how retailers try to customize to the needs of each person, not a one size fits all. It is important that you learn how to look through a store or website through the eyes of a customer. It is important that you understand that the customer is always right in their perspective, and how they are looking at the world. And if you don’t understand their perspective, it will be very hard to understand why they’re not buying from you. If that same attitude of understanding is what a potential customer or visitor is looking at when they see a store and their perspective also becomes very useful.

This attitude of looking at your website and how you design your SEO and SEM. Did you need to present the right kind of signage from the street to get the customer to pull into the parking lot? Once they get inside the store, they need to see what the sign promised is fulfilled. SEO and SEM is about creating it signage from the street. You can fake a man once or twice but once you do, they will ignore your sign for the rest of their life, because you made them cut across left-hand lane and pull into your parking lot. And they will tell their friends to ignore you or worse. You need to create a good ‘sign’ in your SEO/SEM to attract your visitors into your store. But you also need the sign to be a good indicator of what is in the store.

Just as stores don’t (at least those that survive long term) have the same layout year after year, websites also must evolve and continue to improve based on what works and what does not. This should be done as measured experiments. You can follow the models used in Lean Start-up (Eric Ries) and E-Myth (Micheal Gerber).  Those experiments need tools like Google Analytics and other tools like ChartBeat. Topics of other blog posts.

Oh, not selling products on your site?  I would place heavy odds on your sellling ideas – be they the idea that your service is better then someone elses, or your idea is more important then the next bloggers. Remember to look at the website through your visitors eyes in the path they took to get to your items.

 

Are You Looking at Your Visitors All the Same, or in Small Groups?

Poll –

Have you  heard about the long tail by Chris Anderson? Briefly his book is the ‘discovery’ that there is more ‘action’ in the rest of a market (in terms of total dollars or total number sold or total people involved or…) then the ‘top 10′ best sellers.  He spends a lot of time doing lots of analysis that proves that there is more ‘area’ under the curve in the long tail or the ‘rest of the market’ or the top 1,000,000 less the top 10, then there is in the top 10 of most categories.  Of course, top 40 radio stations do not want you to know this. Nor do Budweiser, Miller, Coke and Pepsi – they only feel the top 5 is all that counts.

What does this have to do with your website? Mostly that you do not have to be ‘the top 10′ of a ‘short tail term’ to be someone.  You can be very successful by focusing on your niche.  The key for success is to define multiple niches and excel at a niche rather then trying to be everything to everyone. You still have to rank high for your term, but it does not have to be a short tail term, it can be a long tail term (shoes vs. New Balance 531 AA Blue shoes).

This is born out by reviewing how searches are done on the Internet. The trend continues to be more and longer keyword phrases month after month as people continue to not find what they are looking for on short tail searches. Every go into a car dealer with the answer of ‘A Car’ to the ‘how can I help you?’. You frustrate most salespeople, they don’t want short tail answers, they want long tail answers – ‘I want a blue 2009 H2 with all the accessories’. Search engines are not (usually) smarter then even a car salesperson. They want you to identify what your interests are, what your desires are and how you will use the car – your

Psychographic modeling

Look at your psychographic in smaller chunks of the long tail and put the ‘chunks’ together. Look at the casual buyer, the passionate collector, the person who only uses it once, the family that only buys from a recommendation.

The point is concentrate on behavioral targeting. Of course, this can get creepy if you go too far, but being perceptive is a benefit. So understanding that collectors what good shipping and wrappers is good. Knowing your customer’s bra size (especially if they have never ordered from you) is usually creepy. The key is to look at it through the eyes of your potential customer.

Just like you should not prejudge all blue people as cold and distant, you should not prejudge all your visitors as meeting just one standard way of behaving.

• Define different groups of visitors
• look at how they would prefer to interact with your business
• what should you do to most accommodate their preferences
• how will they be looking to find you
• what terms do each group use (surfboard vs. board vs. ) – need 4 examples of different terms that could be culturally or generationally different …Rad idea dude! Cool man! (when did cool get to mean hot?)
• create extra pages that are focused on each psychograpic to cater to the needs of each group
• look at what the overlaps are of the different groups this is what you should consider emphasizing in your main pages.
• look at and map (MS VISIO is good for this or mind map software) your potential target group. Look at where they overlap and where they don’t.

When you start designing your marketing campaigns, it is important to look at the long tail of your market. What do the different niches want? What are the solutions they are looking for? The different answers to these questions will help you identify the correct strategies for marketing effectively to the long tail. That will allow you to create effective keyword lists that are far easier to rank well in then the ‘short tail’ terms that ‘everyone else’ is battling for.

Rather then fighting for top 10 place for the term  ‘Beer’ on Google, go after ‘Western Wisconsin’s best wheat ale’, your audience will be more dedicated, less price sensitive and  easier to reach. In other words more profitable.

How do I get ranked Higher?

I’m trying to get higher on the search engines when “grief” and “widow” is entered but that is not as easy as it sounds. All advice is appreciated.
Mary Francis
www.thesisterhoodofwidows.com

Sorry if this sounds harsh, but it is intended to be helpful, not mean.

I would suggest a variety of steps to improve your SERP (Search Engine Results Page):

• Register your domain name for at least 2 years. If you don’t have confidence in your site for at least another $11 (2nd year cost at GoDaddy.com) , then Google will not think you are serious about your site, and therefore not treat you seriously.
• Get links from other sites to your site. Google knows of no other links to your page (I know because at google.com Advanced Search I entered: link:thesisterhoodofwidows.com at the bottom). To Google, that means, no one else has recommended you, so Google feels that since no one else thinks you are worth recommending, that you are not a very worthwhile site. Of course there is nothing wrong with promoting yourself with a blog (wordpress.com), social networking like Facebook and LinkedIn and others.
• Add ALT tags that focus on what the different images are about including Grief and Widow. “Mary Cover” is not real helpful to the site impaired, mobile user, or Google search engine. However, “Book Cover for Sisterhood of Widows, A how to book for new widows” is a lot more helpful to Google and readers in understanding what the image is about.
• Change “Widows understand Widows like no one else can” to a Heading rather then a ‘STRONG’.
• Consider your wording. You have Widow 23 times on the page. Some search engines will see that as ‘keyword stuffing’ for the amount of text on the page.
• Remember that these are very broad words that will have quite a bit of competition. I would recommend on a strategy that is more focused initially. This will build more traffic and buzz. Then you can attempt a broader focus. “widow’s grief” will be a lot easier. You will need to have the words next to each other to optimize for this and focus your work accordingly.
• Since you have already created a PDF of the 1st chapter,
  

  PDF Available

  share the PDF wide and far. But consider updating your PDF to include the domain name in the properties, on a separate front page to link to your website (And a last page to order the book online), and the footer having the domain name on every page. Some of the search engines can now ‘read’ pdf’s and that will improve the links into your site. Be descriptive on the properties to make it easy for someone to understand what a great treasure it is when it gets forwarded without your website.

• Consider using some of the free or low cost tools for measuring your site and telling you what you need to do to improve it. See my post on Google Analytics for a free solution.
• Consider using the services of an search engine optimizer who will work with you personally short term and longer term to optimize your efforts either as a coach or a implementer.
• Put links to the stores where your book is being sold.
• Continue to update and expand the site. In the world of change (imagine 6 months ago not being able to go to most of the Florida 1350 miles of coastline this summer because of an oil spill). If you are not updating your site, SE will consider you irrelevant our our changing world. Add new testimonials, press releases, announcements of book signings, links to reviews, and your own on-going thoughts and learning on the subject. Sorry, the project is just beginning once the book is completed.
• Consider other domain names that link to your websites that are simple – perhaps just short summaries of each chapter. Do not host all the different websites at the same company. Google will interpret them as spam and penalize you rather then reward you.
• Consider working with a proofreader.
• Commit to adding a least one new page per month to your website, and improving your existing pages.
• Look to other sources to interview you as an author for podcasts and radio shows. These of course should all be linked to your website, as well as posted on your website.

Google continuing to grow

I just heard that Google has reclaimed its marketshare that Bing lost while Microsoft was spending tons to launch its new revamping of its search engine.

It seems that many people checked out Bing and decided to stick with Google. Keep this in mind as you dedicate your resources on optimizing your sites for the search engines.

How Do I Get Bad Stories About Me Off Google? Part 3

Continuing on with our list of ways to improve your search results from Part 2 of How Do I Get Bad Stories About Me Off Google:

• Consider posting on Answers.yahoo.com. When you write a post and sign your name to it, you increase the number of positive results associated with you. You can also add a link to your website or blog, which also increases the number of positive returns and gives you a better ranking.
• Consider posting on askville.amazon.com
• Consider posting on Directories
  • Justia.com
  • Yellow pages – There are many of them
  • Superpages.com
  • Local.google.com – you can post your Regis or HQ addresses as additional locations for your business if you have temporary office space.
• Consider posting on:
  • Encyclopedia.com
  • Answers.com
  • Dictionary.com
• Try to get your alumni or other .EDU to link to your site and to post your biography.
• Post videos of yourself
  • YouTube.com
  • Google.com
  • Yahoo.com
• Create books and self-publish on Amazon.com
• Post reviews with your name on Amazon.com
• Post your information on ZoomInfo.com and set to public
• Post your information on Classmates.com and set to public
• Post your information on MySpace.com and set to public
• Put different content on each location – do NOT just copy and paste- customize to some extent. Google will penalize you and your sites for cloning information.
• Don’t just repost content
• Link to different spots, not all the same.  Links can be to different pages on your blog(s), good articles or other positive content.
• Link to what is linking to other good content.  In other words, if Sue’s blog has links to the positive articles about you, then link to Sue’s blog, especially her article that has links to the articles about you.
• Ask others for links to you and your good sites.
  • Create a template email. Ideally you would give a phone call before hand to explain the situation.
  • Ask others to visit the good links, especially from Google searches
  • Ask that they add content (comments) and links to your site.
• Set up a Twitter account to allow for more posting
• Set your home page to Google with the search of keyword phrase set. Then open tabs of the ‘good’ links on a regular basis.
• Create SlideDecks of information with links and reference to yourself.
• Create PodCasts with information about yourself
• Create a resources page on your website – link to other articles
  • Safe ‘free’ resources
  • How to choose a firm in your industry
  • When to use your profession
• Post Articles on others sites with your name and links back to your site - http://help.helium.com/earn-money-helium
• Consider outsourcing parts of this to virtual assistant or e-lance. You may also want to consider a virtual business manager to most effectively manage a project like this.
• There are tools for monitoring your reputation.  These range from free to high-cost.  The more they can do automatically, the less they will be able to foresee the place that you did not expect to have an issue.
• Google alerts is a great place to start – set up alerts to let you know when ever your search keyword phrases show up in Google’s search engine.  You can also set up customized news pages that provide all the occurrences of your keyword phrases as well. These are easy to do, but look to find someone who knows how to look at the situation with fairly objective views, to get all the different variations of the keyword phrases that may be in use.

You can also use Google news as a feed for your website to keep your content fresh. But of course be aware, this may post good and bad.

• http://www.theappgap.com/top-web-reputation-tracking-providers-from-mashable.html
• http://mashable.com/2008/12/29/brand-reputation-monitoring-tools/
• http://www.internet-reputation-management.com/?gclid=CIakxp69-5sCFSIhDQod4VeH-A

So there you have it, lots of different ways to get bad Google stories about you off the top of the list in search returns.  No one stop shop for free, but a list of specific steps to get results.

Have you ever had a search engine reputation issue? What did you do about it?

How Do I Get Bad Stories About Me Off Google? Part 2

Continuing on with our discussion from Part 1 of How Do I Get Bad Stories About Me Off Google…

Google will also change it results based on what it learns about the web. That is changing second by second as its ‘bots (computer programs running day and night reading and analyzing website pages) return each second with new information. Those ‘bots are busy looking at:

• What sites are out there,
• what sites do they link to,
• what sites are most popular
• how the pages are optimized?

Search Engine Reputation Management

So what to do?  Here is a starter list of steps for improving your search engine reputation:

• Get your story out there – create a website and promote it on the search engines. Like any website, you need to follow the basics –
  • Buy the domain name for at least 2 years – get your full name as the domain name or whatever keyword phrase is causing you the most grief. The reason for buying your name as a domain name is that if someone is writing a negative story about Ebenezer Pumpkin, (which is your name), then when someone else puts in a Google search for Ebenezer Pumpkin, they are directed first to your website, not the negative press story. The reasoning for buying a domain name for keyword phrases is the same. Consider getting a few domains based on your top keyword phrases. Ideally, you want to have the websites active, and not just by the domain name and lock it up. The more active a website is, the better it is for search returns. When you buy and lock up the names for the websites, you do actually have to do something with them, not just let them sit there unused.
  • Fill out your meta tags especially the ‘description’ – make sure your name and top keyword phrase is in the description. If you can not edit the code directly (such as if you are using a site template that generates your site, look for a place to create a description.
  • Put effort into the 1^st 70 characters of the ‘Title’ tag – again include your name and primary keyword phrase.
  • Use header tags in your content (H1, H2, H3) to alert Google what is really important about your content.

• Put your photos and images on the site with ALT tags.  The reason this is important is that Google searches for things in different ways. Google searches by video and picture in a different program, so its important to cover that base as well. The more you can get your name out there referenced in a positive way, the better off you are. These ALT tags need to have your name in them.  Google has a separate search engine just for images. This is your opportunity to directly ‘feed’ it what it is looking for.  These should also have your name in them as part of the file name.  In other words not picture1.jpg but barackobamastanding.jpg or johnmccainmad.jpg If your site creation or your abilities allow, create captions that match the images and the ALT tags.

This lets you more easily dominate one whole search engine aspect (images) which is often one of the key links on ‘normal’ text links.  But it also lets you ‘prove’ your content on another part of Google’s search.

• Visit your content from the search terms in Google.  Google looks at what you (and everyone else) visits when you put searches into the search. If you visit your results, then it feels that those results were relevant to the search terms you entered. If your friends do the same, all the better. Do an intentional search on your website to see what it pulls up. Google does keep track of the number of times you do this, so you can’t use it forever to drive up your search engine results.
• Create a WordPress blog about something you are passionate about.  Plan on creating at least 10 entries – they don’t have to be long treatises; plan on 400-800 words each.  Make sure you put your name, and post some more photos. Make sure it is good content. Don’t just put up garbage, or things you’re not interested in, just to have content up on a blog.
• Make a list of all the search keyword phrases that you are trying to shift your image. This list may be as short as 5-10, but probably should be as long as 50-100.  Do a search on the terms You can use Google keyword phrase generator and many other tools as discussed in other posts. This is where you can keep an eye out for the hidden spots that you are gaining a reputation that you do not desire.
• You can also considering having free cartoon versions of your image made for free at befunky.com – the key is to create different images of you that are well indexed by Google.  Rather than just having one photo of yourself on your site copied across all the pages, have different photos of yourself, with ALT tags on them, so that Google will pick up your name more often, and in a good sense. You can repurpose a photo and have it made into a cartoon version of you, rather than just having different regular photos of yourself. Google will think its a different photo of you, even if  you see it as the same photo of you, just in cartoon form.  Also post these on your other sites -
• Create accounts on the social networking sites – you may want to be conservative in how much others are allowed to post content related to you, but you can use this to put your version of the story.  If you limit the responses that others can make, you can control to some degree your image.  Most of these are not create and forget types of efforts. You will need to keep adding content to the accounts to show they are active.  Again you can use your images here as well links to positive stories.
  • Facebook
  • Linkedin
  • Myspace
  • Zoominfo
  • Plaxo
• Post content on a regular basis on sites with links to your site.
• Post content on Craigslist with your keyword terms. Even though Craigslist is primarily a classified  ad market, you can also post a message about yourself, your services and jobs. This is shorter term, and will probably need to be reposted every couple of weeks as Craigslist takes down the ads after a couple of weeks.
  • You can use tools to make reposting easier such as Craigslist Bot Pro – I have not personally used this yet, but have read many good things about it.
• Ask your network to social bookmark your preferred sites and stories. This includes sites like digg.com, Mixx, delicious, reddit, metafilter. This lets others see your ‘good’ content over the ‘bad’ content, as well as letting Google know your ‘good’ content is better then the ‘bad’ content.
• Write press releases and submit to PRNEWSWIRE and other newswire services. These are great sites as far as reputation with Google and other search engines.  Of course these need to be properly written to include your keyword phrases and related phrases frequently throughout the release. Include links back to yourself at least 2 times.
• Review your content for your keyword phrases and related terms.  If you are not being explicit in your descriptions, don’t expect Google to know what you are thinking and where you want to be ranked as well.
• Consider tools for managing your efforts – WebPosition is one that I have used over 12 years. Many of its best strengths are no longer relevant but, it can still be helpful for a variety of tasks.
• Optimize your website including creating a page specific for the keyword phrase.
• Link to good articles ranked rather than bad articles. You want to make sure that when you do a Google search, the number of good articles and references about you comes up higher in the results list than the number of bad items.
• Create a personal link for your Facebook page
• Create a Wikipedia page – Be careful with this. Be ready to manage this page. It is open to anyone to edit, and there are people who put many hours towards making sure all discussions are complete, as well as balanced.  You may need manage the updates on an ongoing basis.  Ignoring this option of course does not prevent someone else creating a negative page about you.  So at least start thinking what you would want on your Wikipedia page. In the meantime look to see if you are listed anywhere on the site as well.  Also look how other biography pages are formatted and what is listed.
• Create a (at least one) blog. You can create multiple blogs on each site about different topics.
  • Create on
    • WordPress
    • Typepad
    • blogspot
  • Use tags on your different postings
  • Use categories in your postings
  • Link to individual pages from posts or comments on other sites. These links improve the reputation of your content, by linking to your site.
  • Link to other pages that you like from posts on other sites.
  • Link to ‘good’ articles that are ranking well on Google about your reputation.
  • Link to other social networking sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace especially your personalized URL.
  • Keep updating your content. Google assumes newer content is ‘better’ and more relevant then older content. Sites that are updated regularly are more relevant to ‘stale’ sites. This becomes key when going against news sites that continue to update on other pages, even though your ‘bad’ pages may never change.
  • Consider using RSS feeds to auto update your blog or website.

To be continued in Part 3 of How Do I Get Bad Stories About Me Off Google…

How Do I Get Bad Stories About Me Off Of Google, Part 1 of 3

Search Engine Reputation Management or SERM

A client who had some smear stories written about him, recently asked – how do I get bad stories about me off of Google? Or more accurately, when someone else has written a story about you online which presents you in a negative light, how do you get that story pushed further down in the return results of a Google search? You want to preserve your good online reputation. You want your reputation online to be as positive as possible. When someone does a Google search on you, you want favorable stories and results which put you in a good light. And when someone writes and posts a story about you, right or wrong, accurate information or made up, inaccurate fabrications, those stories come up in a Google search. You can’t control what others write about you. So when they write about you and it is negative, what do you do, and how do you get your good reputation back?

Rather than fight the story at the source, and demand a retraction, it is easier and better just to optimize your site for searches. By going to the original source which wrote the negative story and asking them to remove or retract their story – you risk waking the ‘ sleeping giant’. That could backfire on you and create even worse press for you. The other possibility is there is more than one negative story about you, so you would end up chasing way too many people to get them to take their stories off, which they may not. It would be far more effective for you to ignore  the source, and manage the search return results a different way.

As it turned out, my client was a lightning rod of feelings – Good and Bad.  And while the saying all press is good press, in his case, it was not working to his benefit. It was costing him jobs and he seemed to have this other issue – the truth and wanting others to see the truth over the lies.

With that in mind, I figured I would outline how to improve your online reputation.

• This area of Internet presence management is labeled Search Engine Reputation Management or SERM. It is a subset of SEO, and contains many skills – including an understanding of crisis management.  Many of the solutions will not be quick, like much of SEO – but results will vary, like your mileage and situation.
• Understand that Google results change – 1^st of all not everyone gets the same results at the same minute.  Two different people can do a Google search at the same time, using the same search words, and one person will have the same entry ranked higher than the other search return will give the other person. One person can have ‘peas’ returned as the third listing, while another person can have ‘peas’ returned as item number 5, using the very same search words. Google is trying to improve the results for everyone.  So it will create different results based on what you have searched before and what is in your other Google account including:
  • Gmail – Google will try to customize your search results based on what is in your GMail emails,
  • Customized news on Google News – If you follow Cricket over Candian Football, your search results will lean that way as well. Follow McCain over Clinton – your results are different.
  • Google Docs – What you store helps Google understand what you are focused on.
  • Google alerts
  • YouTube – Also owned by Google, so watch Oberman clips more then Beck or Cute Kitties – your results also reflect the shift.
  • Previous Google searches

This assumes of course, that you have a Google account, which not everyone does. Using  a Google account can be to your benefit, because Google keeps track of what you have searched for, what you have looked at in the returned results, how long you were there, and what you did from there. It keeps track of this, so that when you do another search, it in effect thinks, well, they were interested in x before, so based on that, I will return things more likely to be like x, since that is what they seem to be interested in.

You can choose to have it optimize its results for you on your Google account.

Follow the discussion on Part 2 of How Do I Get Bad Stories About Me Off Google…

Will PPC increase in 2009?

Here are some thoughts from Kevin Lee’s Poll on Linkedin,

Do you think your PPC (Pay Per Click) search spending will grow this year compared to last?

I believe SEM (search engine marketing) will increase, but the real question is will more dollars go to SEO (search engine optimization) or to SEM?

SEM will increase, because it is measurable and you can plan on it a lot more the SEO. More importantly, the results are often quicker with SEM than SEO. These days management wants quick results – harvest the sales this month, not planting for when we might be in business next quarter. SEM has fewer variables as far as knowing at least how many ‘clicks’ you are going to get.  Certainly you still have a lot of back end ratios that can be ‘tweaked’ to get your true CPA (Cost Per Action) including copy, call to action and creativity. But at least you can report a ‘we had a million people come to the site’ that matches up well with the retail side of ‘Orbit’ people counters or what ever the ‘bricks’ side is using to count bodies. ‘Orbit’ people counters are devices that counts number of people entering a store each hour-most stores are counting how many are entering the store, as well as how many are buying and average spent per visit.

I think the answer is -  it will be a draw – more dollars will go into SEO as SEM gets saturated. But SEM will get the easy money as response from traditional marketing continues to drop in response to TiVo, DVR, Hulu, YouTube, programming fragmentation (what time was that show on? – now its what day, time and station is that show on?), programming standardization (how many ‘dancing shows’ are there?) and simplification (reality TV), diluting brand equity and a host of other core mistakes on the traditional marketing side as it tries to adapt to the changing world of ‘500 channels of TV and nothing’s on’.

It will be interesting to see if the additional money in SEM produces good results or will too many hacks waste too much money and destroy the reputation of the industry for years to come, pushing marketing dollars back into traditional marketing as soon as the economy recovers, and traditional marketing can get their own act together for measurable results (especially with live viewings vs. 24 hour viewings vs. 7 day viewings).

So what do you think? Are you investing more in PPC in 2009 than in 2008?

Don’t Be Stingy With Your Pages – We Are Not in the Print World Anymore

One of the challenges for many people trying to create a website is the sense of scarcity of space on the Internet.  This goes back to the days of printing when each impression on each sheet of paper was a significant effort.

The world of the web is different.  Space is just about free.  Sure there are some hosting plans that charge a slight increase to have more pages, but if that is preventing you from effectively communicating your messages, then you need to reevaluate your hosting (another post). The amount of server space you are taking up with most well designed pages is minimal (if the pages are big enough to measure, they will be too slow to load. Make them smaller in graphics, or optimize your code).

So unlike a book or article printed on paper where ‘white space’ feels like a waste, on a website ‘white space’ is a sign of focus and professionalism.  This also makes it easier for the reader to get a single idea at a time.  Use the page as a way to segment ideas. You will notice that complex manuals use this concept because it improves effectiveness and comprehension.  Complex manuals break the ideas into separate pages because it allows for cohesiveness within a concept being communicated.

And guess what – Google and other search engines do well with this.  They understand and appreciate a page that is trying to communicate one idea better than a page that is about 15 ideas and all over the place. When you review search engine analysis programs like WebPosition and other tools, they talk about the precise number of words, how often to repeat the keyword phrases, the percentage of keyword phrases to total text and further formulas.  But when you get down to it, if you write at a reasonable grade level of understanding, and cover a single idea rather than a bunch, these numbers magically fall into place.  Search engine analysis tools are great tools for tweaking, but following 1 idea per page solves a ton of tweaking work later.

So, don’t be stingy with your use of individual pages. Don’t create one long page that covers it all – it is confusing for your visitors and for Google. Create lots of pages, there’s plenty of room in web-space!