I recently vacationed by driving around West Texas and Big Bend (click the pix to see a bigger version). We had a glorious time (consider a Star Party at McDonald Observatory a MUST on your next trip out there) and enjoyed sluicing for gems at Sonora Caverns, cruising up and down mountains and seeing the glory of ALL the geographic regions that make up the great state of Texas.

Before we left, I surfed the web to learn about our hotel’s amenities. No mention of Internet connectivity. None. Gasp! Whatever would we do to entertain the online-video-game playing kiddo? I, personally, looked forward to not being connected, but my son had a different opinion. We surfed around and found a McDonald’s in the area with WiFi. Whew! At least we have an emergency plan!

As an Internet Professional, I spend my days in front of a computer playing with Internet marketing tools, enhancing link development skills, reading blogs and forums, etc. I figured a few days of family time would be wonderful. I’m sad to say I’m the one that felt a little lonely out there. Not only were we unable to surf the web, but we often had no signal on our various cell phone plans. Talk about quiet time!

There has been a recent change in the Google algorithm, meaning many sites have seen changes in the rankings for cherished search terms. After muttering about it for a couple of weeks, I’ve decided not to take it personally. We’ve been #1 for one particular term for years, so suddenly becoming #2 is not THAT big a deal–especially since the competing site doesn’t have anything like the depth of information, the links, the content or the design licks that our site does. After all, it’s the human who decides which site looks interesting.

And, it’s relatively easy for a site to concentrate on a single term to compete, but our methodology for site optimization looks at 25-30 terms. For our own site, there are 50 terms we monitor, and we have dozens of terms on the first page of Google…we do a good job of filling the niche we defined as our target. Over the years, we’ve been through several major algorithm changes, and the good news is that things settle out, and the cream still rises to the top. None of our clients has ever seen substantial change to their rankings, after the storm passes.

None of us likes change, but change forces us to adapt. High gas prices help us act on our conservationist values, and we suddenly understand the cost of running errands one at a time. Something we all need to do from time to time is to consider how Google looks at our site. What pages are being served up, and which are not being served? There are two major factors to consider: quality content, and quality links.

Take your list of targeted terms and take a fresh look at your rankings. Page one rankings are definitely keepers. Terms that are not in the top 20? It may be time to remove them from your strategy. For those terms that fall onto the second page, now is a good time to think about building them up–move the content higher up in your site, or replace some of those dud terms with these up-and-comers. Also, think about longer keyword phrases that you might have unique content for–unique is a high value at the Googleplex.

Are all your links pointing to the home page? Then you’re missing a huge opportunity. Keyword-based links that point to relevant content pages can be just the thing to pop a #15 ranking onto the first page–and since the vast majority of people only look at Page One results, it’s well worth the extra effort to sharpen your SEO strategy with quality content and quality links.

I’m taking care of a friend’s cats while he’s out of town. While I was leaving his apartment, a stink bug flew at me and attacked with extreme prejudice and unmitigated ferocity. OK, I’ll admit that it was probably just trying to find someplace to land peacefully, but my head is not as bug-friendly as it may look.

I began flailing my arms about in desperate defense, ultimately relying on the plastic bag in my hand as a weapon against this cruel stink bug berserker. You may remember that I am taking care of cats. The plastic bag, which I was taking to the dumpster, was not empty.

(more…)

Back to work after Mother’s Day, it hit me. Does Google = Mom?

You decide for yourself. Choose the most appropriate response for each question below:

1. Establishes and subtly enforces — to keep things in order — a system of reward and discipline for a set of known rules:

a) Google
b) Mom

2. Establishes and subtly enforces a second system of reward and discipline, this one for which the rules are not disclosed:

a) Google
b) Mom

3. Encourages — through a complex strategy of intermittent delayed reward for compliant behavior — the habit of always trying to do everything right to be sure she’s happy:

a) Google
b) Mom

4. Occasionally must take away everyone’s privileges when actually only a few have been bad:

a) Google
b) Mom

5.Works tirelessly to survey, decode, categorize, store, and retrieve stuff — on demand and usually in under two seconds — so most of the time we can get what we need or something pretty darn close:

a) Google
b) Mom

6. Has earned the cultural endorsement of having a noun that names them be also used as a verb:

a) Google
b) Mother

7. Fill in the blank: “If ___________ ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.”

a) Google
b) Momma

Am I on to something here?

Part of the work we do as a b2b internet marketing agency is helping clients choose words to describe their products and services. When we start a project, we ask for a list of the keywords they already use to talk about their goods, as well as for words they might be considering using, have heard their competitors using, or have discovered some other way.It makes for a delicate inquiry, and sometimes an awkward first dialogue. A marketing executive who has spent a great deal of time and money in the creative, analytical, and political work to get agreement on a differentiating way to describe what they sell can be at least disappointed when her SEO agency doesn’t want to work on making their site visible for their new slogan.

After many, many meetings to come up with “Lightspring Cloud Walkers,” hearing us say you’ve got to make your site visible for “diabetic foot shoes” might not be all that thrilling. Or say you’ve spent a year getting agreement on “Mini Mobile Executive Identification Device (MMEID) ” and your SEO agency suggests optimizing your site for “employee badge” and “nametag.” You need the bigger name, you say, because next year the MMEID also will have fingerprint and retina scans built in…and we give back…”security badge.”

Like we say, nobody’s searching on your tag line. At least not yet, anyway.

The Google toolbar (and others!) is a favorite internet marketing tool of mine. It may not seem like a marketing “tool” to everybody, but when I spend time researching on behalf of a client, Google toolbar is front and center. So, I thought I’d let you in on a most-used trick: searching a site, even if there isn’t a search window on the site.

To begin with, download the Google toolbar (not just the little search window that’s installed in various toolbars) from toolbar.google.com.

Let’s say you Google a word, get a bunch of results and then don’t find the term you were searching for on a particular site that was returned as a result. There’s a little icon available on the Google toolbar that looks like Mr. Magoo (for those of us old enough to remember him!)–or maybe it’s a magnifying glass with spectacles. I have no idea what it’s supposed to be, but it sure is a handy little guy.

(Yahoo toolbar has a similar function available via the “Search Web” drop-down menu.) This function allows you to search for a term “only on the current website.” If it’s not showing on your Google toolbar, right click a blank area of the toolbar and select “customize.” You’ll be able to click/drag the icon onto your toolbar.

So, for example, when I’m researching a particular search phrase for a client’s organic SEO project, I use Mr. Magoo on the various (mostly competitor) sites and get a feel for how they’re using the term. You can check your own web pages to see if your copy is reflecting the search terms that are important to you.

Enjoy this Mr. Magoo search-in-a-search trick. Actually, you can use it from any site without doing a search first…as long as you have the toolbar open.

Recent economic news – slowing Google PPC revenues, a likely recession, slowing consumer spending, has interesting implications for SEO. And some economists are saying it is going to get much worse.

Of course, no one knows for sure. I like the old moniker for economics - “the dismal science”.

If people cut back on PPC ad spending, what might be the effect on an SEO agency, for example?   If businesses can borrow less, and cut spending, how would that affect the agency? We are a B2B internet marketing agency and are looking at the possible effects of an economic slowdown.

I believe that when times get tough, good marketing is even more important. So I would put more emphasis on a smart, high-ROI web marketing strategy during a downturn.  

This industry might be too young to know how customers will react if the economy gets worse, but I’d put my bets on smart online marketing.

I get two or three new business calls a week. It’s typically a business owner who needs to improve her web marketing, but has no idea what it will cost to get to the top of the search results. Or, it’s a sales guy in a company who is looking for a quick fix, to make his numbers for the quarter. Both get a quick, free assessment, and it usually doesn’t include my recommendation that they sign up for search engine optimization.

Having a small business myself, I know how much I needed sales in the early days, and how much I have had to learn about marketing to understand where sales come from. Have you ever noticed how few advertising agencies advertise? That should tell you something about marketing professional services.

When it comes to web marketing, the small local business owner is clueless about what tools are available. One of the most powerful is absolutely free: signing up for a business listing on Google Maps. Local results are often at the very top of the search engine results, right where you want to be found.

The other recommendation I make is to try pay per click advertising. For a modest budget, maybe $300-600 a month, you can advertise on the most popular search terms for your business, and target only local prospects. Over a few months, you will gather data on what search terms are resulting in traffic, which terms actually turn into business, and how much it costs to be present when people are shopping. Since a full SEO program costs at least a couple thousand dollars a month, PPC advertising can help you test the waters and see if search marketing is profitable for your business. This is a test we recommend, before you make the financial commitment to use SEO to show up on top of the rankings, based on your site’s merits and not ad dollars. If PPC works for you, and you know that only 18% of B2B prospects click on those ads, then SEO starts to look like a better investment.

Following up on the mention yesterday on the failed interview session Sarah Lacy had with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, here is a play-by-play from CNet. Just so you get an idea of how Tweets work (Twitter posts), here is a screen capture on Tweets about Tom Parish’s panel at SXSW:

Every nerd’s dream is to win the epic battle using his brains and maybe some secret ninja skills, thereby winning the admiration of Pamela Anderson.

Unfortunately, most muscleheads would crush the typical nerd in any battle, particularly an epic one, because of one factor: muscle. The nerd’s problem is he’s dreaming of victory without putting the daily sweat into his game plan. He’s trying to short circuit the system. No sweat, no victory.

We see this attitude with black hat SEO. While slugging through competitor sites for a client, Susan the Meticulous discovered a site that put a pile of hidden text on the home page, and then duplicated it throughout the site. They even included links to a completely unrelated website, most likely another SEO client of theirs.

Ethical search engine optimization means that you have to do the work. You cannot short circuit the system. This is one of my biggest soapbox issues. Technology only creates obstacles. It does not provide solutions for SEO.

Black hatters think they can avoid hard work by creating hidden text. It’s hidden because it’s stuffed with keywords and is bad for marketing. Technology is only giving that site an invitation to the blacklist.

If the nerd sweated it out at the gym 2 or 3 times a week, he would have the strength and agility to defeat the musclehead. Similarly, if you add good content to your site 2 or 3 times a week, you will be in a much stronger position as time progresses.

The irony of this is that Sara Rasco, our Blog Overlord, has been cracking the whip because I have been lax in my blog postings. My job is not about writing blog posts, and I’m guessing that yours isn’t either. This is why it’s so tempting to look for the easy way out. The site with the hidden text should have spent the time to write great marketing copy.

Note: if you’re a nerd and a woman, please substitute the words “his brains” with “her brains” and “Pamela Anderson” with “David Hasselhoff”.