The Evolving Internet Marketer

Before There Were Computers

Memory was something you lost with age
An application was for employment
A program was a TV show
A cursor used profanity

A keyboard was a piano
A web was a spider’s home
A virus was the flu
A CD was a bank account

A hard drive was a long trip on the road
A mouse pad was where a mouse lived
And if you had a 3 inch floppy . . .

. . . you just hoped nobody ever found out!

Author anonymous but submitted to me (for some odd reason)
by both my sister and niece!

If it Sounds Too Good to be True … (or) What Happens When Your SEO Company Runs Afoul of Google?

Here’s a nightmare scenario for you … You head into the office and log-on to check your web site stats to see how your traffic is holding up. You’re excited because the big bucks you’ve invested in Search Engine Optimization are finally paying off. Your traffic and web-based sales are going through the roof…

But wait a minute. Your traffic has dropped to a crawl. It’s like Highway 77 through Wahoo, NE at 2 a.m. No traffic and, what’s worse, your sale’s gusher has dropped to a drip. What is up!!!

Unfortunately you’re a victim of your SEO company’s bad and/or deceptive search practices. Practices that have gotten them thrown out of Google or other major search properties. Practices like…

• Creating ‘doorway‘ pages loaded with deceptive keywords such as ’sex’ that then redirect traffic to the legitimate site.
• Setting up or participating in ‘link farms‘ that falsely inflate the importance of the site by cross linking clients sites to each other even though there’s no connection.
• Setting up search engine ‘spamming pages‘ that are crammed full of key words

Don’t think this can happen to you? Neither did the customers of traffic-power.com. Traffic Power employees teams of high pressure telemarkters to constantly harass you into signing up with their service. For an initial payment of $3,000 they promise top placement on google and other search properties but what they don’t tell you is that the techniques they use are specifically banned by google and will get you banned too should they be used on your behalf.

If you’re unsure on what techniques to avoid in optimizing your own pages or you are concerned about the methods being touted by an seo firm; consider these from the Google Information for Webmasters‘ page:

Quality Guidelines – Basic principles:

• Make pages for users, not for search engines. Don’t deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as “cloaking.”
• Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you’d feel comfortable explaining what you’ve done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”
• Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.
• Don’t use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our Terms of Service…

Quality Guidelines – Specific recommendations:

• Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
• Don’t employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.
• Don’t send automated queries to Google.
• Don’t load pages with irrelevant words.
• Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
• Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines, or other “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.

In short, develop meaningful pages full of strong content populated with relevant key words that is of interest to your customers and prospects. Build site maps, use appropriate meta tags (title, description, etc.) and do the hard work of letting others know about what you offer. Invite legitimate website’s with a complementary interest in what you offer to link to your site and afford reciprocal links where it makes sense. Start a blog or an ezine. Publish your URL on every piece of correspondence or collateral you send out. Offer not only solid products and services but solid value that goes above and beyond the expected. Your site will get noticed, ranked and visited. Guaranteed.

• Richard Drawhorn’s article in the February 2006 MarketPosition Newsletter from Web Trends.
• Trafficpowersucks.com – the owner of this site believes he was defrauded by traffic-power and threw up this site as a means to draw attention to their methods and, hopefully, receive restitution for the several thousand dollars he spent with them to get his site banned, er, ranked by these folks. Instead he’s being sued.
• Matt Cutts personal blog – Matt is head of the webspam group at Google but normally doesn’t use his blog for official announcements such as confirming that, yes, Google has indeed tossed traffic-power.com and their clients from the Google index.
• ‘Optimize’ Rankings At Your Own Risk, the Wall Street Journal article by David Kesomdel that brought Traffic Power and their questionable practices into wide-spread public view back in September of last year.
• Traffic problems – an article published by City Life in Las Vegas that details specific consequences to Traffic Power customers including the stress management supplier who lost 80% of his business as a result of his affiliation with TP (at least he could dip into his product for a little relief). While most SEO efforts take 60-90 days to have an effect on your rankings. Our hapless supplier was banned from Google only 30 days after signing on with TP.

A Final Note…
Traffic Power is certainly not the only SEO firm using frowned-upon practices to get their clients high rankings but they were/are one of the most egregious examples of search engine optimization gone bad. I find it telling that not only are they still promoting their services via their web site and, no doubt, telemarketing efforts, but they make no mention anywhere of the fact that their techniques have resulted in their clients’ loss of ranking and revenues as a result of their efforts. Keep in mind that their are lots of legitimate, above board firms out there how do SEO right. If you need one I suggest that you familiarize yourself with Google’s guidelines and ask prospective optimizers if they adhere to these and other engines’ approved approaches.

Here’s Looking at You, Kid. Eye-tracking Research and Your Website’s Layout

No, this is not the path I took to my car after this month’s Super Bowl party! What it actually represents is a fairly simplistic model of the most common eye-movement pattern of a group of browsers viewing a web page. This research was compiled by the Eyetrack III team and released by The Poynter Institute, the Estlow Center for Journalism & New Media, and Eyetools. As the above diagram indicates, the Eyetrack III team found a common pattern: “…The eyes most often fixated first in the upper left of the page, then hovered in that area before going left to right. Only after perusing the top portion of the page for some time did their eyes explore further down the page…” How can you use this information to develop or redevelop your web site?

Here’s a diagram that the Eyetrack folks derived from their preliminary analysis of the data… The research team suggests that you match the location of the content on your site’s pages to this map and rearrange it as necessary to place the most critical content in the higher priority zones. For more details … much more … on this fascinating study. Click through to the source listing below.

Source: The Best of Eyetrack III: What We Saw When We Looked Through Their Eyes

Thanks for reading… tom.gray@gemsolv.com GeMSolv.com

WordPress – I’m in Love

UPDATE:

Took the plunge! Installed WordPress on my server so now my blog is served through my web site. WordPress made it easy. Even though I was a little nervous about setting up databases and the like, it was a piece of cake and a piece of cake to import my blogger blogs as well. Now I have to get everything ship shape.

Wow! Just discovered WordPress’ hosted blogging solution and have made the decision to jump ship from Blogger to this even though Blogger allows me to integrate my blog into my web site and WordPress doesn’t (yet) provide this capability. The capabilities it does provide are astonishing, however, in a free platform. Blogrolls, categories, additional pages – all stuff that’s either unavailable or unobvious or requiring additional coding to enable in Blogger – are easy to access & implement features of WordPress. I’m so happy My next step is to migrate my several dozen posts from my existing blog to WordPress. I’m confident that I’ll be able to accomplish this with little problem. I’ll let you know.

A final note: Don’t get me wrong. I think Blogger is great and the fact that you can easily integrate it into your site is great as well but it’s more for what I would consider beginning bloggers – like I still am in many respects – or amateur bloggers. I know that there is a free, downloadable version of WP that I can host on my ISP’s server and I’ll get to that soon. When I do that then WordPress won’t just be integrated into my site, it will, most likely, be my site. It’s that robust.

I Thought You Said You were the (Time) Sensitive Sort!

Couple of lessons to be learned from a recent Frontier Airlines promotional email.

1. Urgency is good for motivating action. Use it.
2. The internet is not a perfect delivery medium.

I was all set to jump all over the special promo fare that Frontier was offering to the city my daughter is attending college in when I noticed that I’d have to pull a Marty McFly to take advantage of it. In other words, the offer expired before it was even delivered to me.

Look closely at the following screen capture of the email I received from Frontier Airlines promoting a special one day sale in honor of Valentines day.

Notice the 3 circled items…

• They sent this message at 7:02 a.m. on Tuesday, February 14th.
• The offer was highly time sensitive in that it had to be used that same day (2/14), unfortunately…
• I didn’t receive the offer in my Inbox until 1:57 a.m. the following day, Wednesday, 2/15!

My computer was on continuously that day. My email program was up and running and I was checking it regularly. So basically, Frontier’s urgent promo went bouncing around the ether for 19 hours before stumbliing into my inbox. I’ll be honest, I don’t know how many emails suffer this kind of delay or what causes it. What I do know is that it’s not the only one I get like this.

So while urgency + great deal brought me to the brink of purchase; late delivery wiped out this pretty sure sale (and I’ve got 2 friends with daughters at the same school, who knows, I might have organized a dad’s weekend).

We all labor under the assumption that the internet is an instantaneous medium. It’s not. Neither is it perfect. Messages disappear. The ether eats them. They get delayed, as in this case.

Food for thought, as a marketer, you might want to rethink your timing, particularly with highly time-sensitive offers. It might behoove you to launch your urgent offer just a wee bit earlier. At midnight or even the day before to give your messages just a bit more time to percolate through to your prospects desktops.

Building Traffic on the Web

I started blogging in November 2003. I wrote 3 posts through the end of the year. I wrote 10 posts in 2004 with nothing after July of that year and didn’t post anything else for over a year, until November, 2005. Since then I’ve STARTED blogging, logging over 40 posts in that time. Other than registering with Technorati and getting listed in the Blogspot directory – my original blog was (still is) built using Blogger and fed to my web site – I haven’t done a whole lot of promotion for my blog. And, while I’ve seen an uptick in traffic because of my blog, I’m not seeing huge numbers coming through it; and that’s okay by me.

You might ask me, “Why?, you’re the ‘internet marketer’, right? How come you aren’t building any traffic?” The reason is simple, I don’t think I have enough to offer yet. I’m getting there. Some of what I’ve written, even I think, is pretty good. But there’s not enough and there’s not enough focus as of yet. If I’m to attract AND keep an audience, I need to have a message that appeals to and applies to them. I have to provide value consistently and I don’t think I’m there yet.

The question is not so much, “how do I build traffic?”, as it is, “what value do I provide the traffic I build?“. Believe me, if I, or you provide value via your web site, published works, products or however else you deliver what you do to your customers, you will build traffic. It’s called word-of-mouth or, on the web, viral. Borrowing from Field of Dreams; that movie’s catch-phrase was, “If you build it, they will come.” Turn it around. If they come, and you haven’t built it, not only will they leave but they’ll likely not return and tell everyone else not to bother going either.

Seth Godin, interestingly enough, posted this comment today on his blog:

…People never say, “how can I earn more traffic?” or “How can I rethink the core of what I’m offering so that it organically attracts people who want to see it?”…

I agree with Mr. Godin because that’s where I’m at … trying to figure out how to earn traffic. Because whatever you earn, you get to keep.

Phishing with the FTC

Worried your mom, girlfriend, hubby or grand dad is going to run afoul of those nefarious phishers? The friendly folks at the FTC have your back, dude. Check this out. Finally, government that works! Click the friendly phish below…

Thanks for reading…

tom.gray@gemsolv.com
GeMSolv.com

Color Me Cool – Good Color is the Fabric of Good Design

Alright, look down. What color are your socks? Brown? Okay. What color are your pants? Blue? Errrr … okay, no worries–here’s the tool for you, an easy-to-use and free on-line color matching application from the makers of Color Schemer Studio. You simply pick a core color from its palette and it provides you a complete range of complementary colors along with their RGB and HEX numbers.

So while you may be uncoordinated, color-wise, there’s no reason your website or email need to be jarringly or even drably clad. Good color can make a poor design interesting and a great design, extraordinary.

Thanks for reading…

tom.gray@gemsolv.com
GeMSolv.com

Good Design Just Makes Sense

Somebody commented to me the other day on how cool the Apple iPod’s navigations system is. His comment caught me by surprise because I hadn’t really thought about whether it was cool or not. It just made sense.

Like all good design there is a heavy dose of intuitiveness built in. I don’t need to read the manual, go to a class or call tech support to figure out how it works. Rather it’s, “Just a sec …”, and I get it.

Your web site and email communications should strive for this, “Don’t Make Me Think“, approach to design embodied by the iPod and its ilk. The best design eliminates the guesswork from the process.

Good design on a website means that you know almost immediately…

• what it’s about, it’s purpose, and whether you belong there – good design doesn’t waste your time
• where you can go to get your needs met.
• what decisions to make and why you should make them
• how to do business with the site and
• who and how to contact a real person if your questions aren’t answered or you need the kind of information only a real, live person can provide (SIDEBAR: Amazing, isn’t it, how may sites don’t have any sort of contact information. I mean, I know you’re a big company and all but can’t you at least put us in touch with your central company switchboard?).

So consider, or reconsider, your site’s design. Does it just make sense? And don’t take your word for it. After all, you know how it works. You already know where to go and what decisions you’d like your viewers to make. Your opinion doesn’t count. If you can afford formal testing, do it. If you can’t, organize everyone you know to review and provide feedback on your website or other digital communication. Give them tasks: find something, buy something, subscribe to something, etc.

Remember, your visitors are always only one-click away from good-bye.

Thanks for reading…

tom.gray@gemsolv.com
GeMSolv.com

Here’s Looking at You, Kid. Eye-tracking Research and Your Website’s Layout

No, this is not the path I took to my car after yesterday’s Super Bowl party!

What it actually represents is a fairly simplistic model of the most common eye-movement pattern of a group of browsers viewing a web page. This research was compiled by the Eyetrack III team and released by The Poynter Institute, the Estlow Center for Journalism & New Media, and Eyetools.

As the above diagram indicates, the Eyetrack III team found a common pattern: “…The eyes most often fixated first in the upper left of the page, then hovered in that area before going left to right. Only after perusing the top portion of the page for some time did their eyes explore further down the page…”

How can you use this information to develop or redevelop your web site? Here’s a diagram that the Eyetrack folks derived from their preliminary analysis of the data…

The research team suggests that you match the location of the content on your site’s pages to this map and rearrange it as necessary to place the most critical content in the higher priority zones. For more details … much more … on this fascinating study. Click through to the source listing below.

Thanks for reading…

tom.gray@gemsolv.com
GeMSolv.com