If you're thinking of starting SEO business, one of the key decisions you'll need to make is where to setup. One of the advantages of the internet is that distance doesn't become the obstacle it once was. An office can exist virtually, with the workforce spread out across the country, or around the globe, with employees working from home.
Let's take a look at the many advantages and disadvantages of the virtual business. It would be great if those who have already established their own SEO businesses could share their experiences in the comments :)
1. Financial Concerns
One of the biggest problems for any start-up is lack of finance. Keeping overheads low in order to maximize cashflow is therefore a good idea, and one of the biggest overheads a business faces in the early stages, besides wages, is setting up an office. The rent must be paid and equipment must be hired or purchased.
A virtual company uses existing premises i.e. the home and, in many cases, existing equipment.
2. Opportunity Cost
Small companies can out-maneuver bigger companies by being more efficient and more productive.
Say employees in a traditional company must commute an hour round trip each day. Then add the time they take to get ready for work. Perhaps that all adds up to an hour and half each day. In a year, this dead time adds up to months! Whilst employees can get work done on the commute if using public transport, it's not an ideal space for concentrating.
The lost time for the virtual office is essentially zero. No commute. No getting ready. Well, maybe putting some pants on might be a good idea :)
3. Less Meetings/Water Cooler Activity
How much meeting time is actually useful? How many hours of the day do we spend chatting with work mates?
Having worked both in traditional environments and virtual environments, I've found I get a lot more done in virtual environments. The social element of traditional workplaces, whilst beneficial in terms of morale, can result in less productivity. The virtual office, on the other hand, tends to be a lot more task focused. "Meetings" (Skype) are a lot shorter, organising them is a lot easier (no room bookings), and because you're not face-to-face with people all the time, there are fewer minute-by-minute distractions.
4. Virtual Office Employees Can Work Longer Hours
I don't know why this is, but I suspect it's because virtual office employees make less of distinction between working time and personal time. It was actually one of the "downsides" I found when I first worked from home - it was near impossible to leave work! Each time I passed the office, I was tempted to do a little more.
When you commute to an office, it's easier to walk out the door and leave it all behind.
5. Employees Really Like It
Some people will work for less wages for the privilege of working from home. They gain in other ways i.e. more flexible arrangements, time spent near family, reduced costs of lunch, enjoying their own surroundings, not having to communte, etc. A happy employee typically produces more work, and stays at the company longer, thus increasing productivity and reducing expenses.
Downsides?
Of course, the virtual office has downsides. One of the big downsides is the reduced social interaction. Some people thrive on the social interaction of the work place, and are not suited to the virtual office. The key is to screen employees carefully. Some virtual offices also setup in coffee shops to help counter the social isolation.
Home can also be a distracting place. Employees need an area away from other people.
Clients may perceive your company as less serious if it operates out of a home address. The way to get around this is to rent a mail forwarding address and the occasional meeting room in the center of town. There are companies that offer these facilities, and you can use meeting rooms and secretarial services on an hourly basis. I've also found that big clients don't go to small suppliers anyway. They demand you to come to them!
Some people need to be micro-managed. Again, careful selection is the key. Also try to make delivery task-based as opposed to based on hours worked.
What have been you experiences - positives and negatives - of your office setup?
IIf you could tell the web 2.0/read-write/blogging/crowd-sourcing crowd one thing about search marketing, what would it be?
In a recent talk, given to bloggers, by Google Engineer Matt Cutts, Matt posed the question:
"What Do SEOs know that bloggers might not know?"
Matt goes on to talk about the merits of keyword research in terms of topic selection, and how understanding this concept can bring you a great deal of traffic. In summary, if you find out what keywords people search on, then add these to your page, you stand a good change of having those searchers land on your page. As SEOs know, there's more to it than that, but that's the quick version :)
Let's look a bit deeper into keywords.
Search Is A Reverse Broadcast System
I think Danny Sullivan first described search as a "reverse broadcast system". It's a great way to describe the value of search, and how to approach search in terms of marketing.
I liken search engines to being a 'reverse broadcast network.' People pay tons to be on television because you can get your message out in front of millions of people: broadcasting. With search engines, millions of people are telling you *their* messages: what they want to buy, purchase or get information about. You don't broadcast to them; instead, it's the reverse, they broadcast to you. There's very little if anything as a marketing or information medium that I can think of that compares to this. It's golden and still today amazingly unrecognized
In search marketing, you prosper when you let your visitors determine your content. They broadcast their intent to you, by phrasing a search query, so you should listen to that intent, and respond by providing appropriate content. Google does the match-making.
For example, if you learn that 5,400 people a month search for "antivirus software comparison", you could research and create this information, thus matching that demand with your supply of information.
How do we determine visitor intent?
The Search Phrase As A Means To Measure User Intent
If you're not an SEO and encountering this blog for the first time, you now now the most important thing about search marketing, and that is you need to match the content of your site to the intent of the search visitor. In a blog post recently, Seth Godin talked about the problem with advertising:
"(The internet) has created a surplus of attention. Ads go unsold. People are spending hours on YouTube or Twitter or Facebook or other sites and not spending their attention on ads, because the ads are either absent or not worth watching"
Seth was talking about the differences between old media advertising and new media advertising, but this is a problem related primarily to to a mismatch of user intent. The intent of users on Facebook is primarily social. Search, however, provides a more specific - and ultimately more lucrative - eco-system for the online marketer.
The intent of the visitor may be determined by analyzing the search phrase itself.
An informational search is when people want to find out about something. i.e. What is the capital of Finland?. A navigational query is when users want to find a certain site i.e. Dell Computers A transactional query is when users want to aquire, although not necessary buy, something. For example, "where can I get guitar schematics"
There is a fair degree of guesswork involved in determining user intent. The keyword itself may provide clues. For example, "buy LCD monitor overnight delivery" tells you a great deal about user intent. "LCD monitor", less so.
When evaluating keyword terms, and deciding what content to provide, it pays to examine the keyword query in terms of query type. For example, the query "Buy LCD monitor overnight delivery" is clearly transactional. A visitor would expect to see an e-commerce page that facilitates a purchase, as opposed to a Wikipedia entry explaining the history of LCD monitors.
Generally speaking, transactional queries are good to target if you monetraize by providing something, either a good or service based upon a transaction or call-to-action. Navigational queries are good to target if you provide "where to" information - like a directory or a list of links - or you provide information closely aligned to a web destination. Informational queries are self-explanatory.
Of course, there are exceptions to these rules, and numerous points of cross-over i.e. a query might be informational, navigational and transactional.
The takeaway point is it is to seek to understand the main visitor intent. It will effect what information you present and how you present it. A page based around achieving a transaction will look very different to a page that provides information. If you're ranking well for a transactional query, but you only provide information, you'll lose an opportunity to engage visitors.
On-Page Keyword Integration
Once you've figured out user intent, and chosen your keyword phrases, you then need to integrate these terms into your content. A page should reflect and confirm the intent of the searcher. If the searcher is expecting to undertake a transaction, then the page should be organised in a way to facilitate the transaction.
Amazon provides a good example:
The "Buy Now" function is never far away from the users mouse click. The title is clear and prominent. Informational aspects are relegated to the bottom of the page.
You should provide confirmation the visitor has arrived in the right place. A good way to do this is to feature the search phrase high up on the page, preferably as a headline. This serves two purposes - it tells the search engine what the page is about, and confirms to your visitor that what they searched for and what they got are the same thing. If the visitor has to wade through too much information in order before getting a signal of confirmation, they're more likely to click back.
PPC marketing strategy also supports this theory. Common PPC practice is to include the keyword in the ad title, which can lead to higher click-thru rates than if you leave the keyword out. It stands to reason that a searcher expects to see the same keyword term they searched on echoed back at them.
The Long Tail
Did you know that 20-25% of search phases at Google are unique? 1/4 of all keyword searches have never been searched before! This is why it is important to include related phrases and synonyms on your page. The addition of related phrases and concepts allows you to pick up additional search visitor traffic from obscure combinations of keyword phrases.
The term "The Long Tail" was coined by Chris Andersen, and applied to online retailers, such as Amazon:
"A frequency distribution with a long tail has been studied by statisticians since at least 1946.[2] The distribution and inventory costs of these businesses allow them to realize significant profit out of selling small volumes of hard-to-find items to many customers, instead of only selling large volumes of a reduced number of popular items. The group comprised of a large number of "non-hit" items is called the Long Tail."
The Long Tail also applies to search. Whilst millions of people search for "used cars", a few hundred search for "used cars east texas". If you sell used cars in east Texas, then it makes sense to target these specific, long tail terms. What these terms may lack in sheer traffic numbers, they make up for in broadcasting specific intent.
Match that intent with your service provision, and you're laughing.
How To Put It All Together
Visitor search streams determine your content. Use the SEOBook Keyword Research Tool to find keyword terms relating to your business/topic. You can approximate the highest value terms using SEM Rush
Having assembled a keyword list, find related keywords and synonyms of those terms. You can use the SEOBook Keyword Research Tool. Or Google's Keyword Tool
Split the obvious terms into transactional, navigational, and informational. This will dictate how you prioritize the content on the page. i.e. a transactional query needs a clear call to action featured prominently
Create pages. Place the keyword term in a proment place on the page, preferably in a heading. This will help confirm to the visitor they have arrived at the right palce
Watch visitor traffic and interaction. If you're seeing high frequency - or strong conversions - for obscure terms, consider writing a page dedicated to this term.
Rinse and repat
So long as your site is being crawled by Google, and you've got a few inbound links, traffic will soon flow to your door. What you do with all that new found traffic is up to you :)
While some members of the SEO industry encourage outing, it should be highlighted that they are not above duping their customers with launching a "new" tool that is actually a dumbed-down rehash of a tool we have offered for years here.
If you want the full version with additional features please do check out Hub Finder, as it is way better than the hyped knock-off is.
No Hype Required!
Our co-citation tool has way more options than the competition. It is better in every practical way, other than hype...and that is why we decided to make it free for you to test it for the next 24 hours.
Why Hub Finder is Better than the Hyped Knock Off Tool
It allows you to automatically pull in search results from Google, Yahoo!, or both
It allows you to enter up to 10 competing sites
It allows you to mix and match the above
It allows you to select pages that are linking to any page on a site OR pages that are linking to only the specific pages that were ranking
It shows you the exact pages the links came from AND tracks multiple links from a single site even if different pages within that site were linking to multiple resources in your industry.
Shows IP addresses
Offers lightning quick CSV export
Knock Off Marketing
How can a person roll with those sorts of business ethics (clone someone else's work and then pawn it off as their own) and then encourage SEOs outing each other (even after they have read about the caustic effects of outing multipletimes)?
How About Honesty For a Change?
If you are dirty be dirty.
If you are clean be clean.
But no point being one and acting like you are the next.
The web has too long of a memory to play those kinds of games.
IMHO.
Update
Rand edited his post to add attribution, for which I thank him. Had the whole "standing on the shoulders" bit or any sort of attribution existed originally I never would have published this post. But it was the re-packaging something that has been around forever as being brand new (without any attribution) that is inconsistent with the openness some claim to strive for.
Recently a well known SEO blogger mentioned that they didn't understand why real professional SEOs advocate variation between page titles and on-page headings. This blog post is a free SEO consult for that person :)
Hopefully it clears the public SEO space of some misinformation.
Are You Missing Keywords?
People search for literally billions of unique search queries each month. You either target those searchers, or you miss them. Think about how many people query Google every day, and then look at this graphic:
Keyword tools are driven off of a sample of keyword data, and are thus top heavy. In some cases a keyword tool will only show you 5 or 10 related keywords for a core keyword that has driven traffic to a page via hundreds of unique search keywords.
What is Duplication?
Each piece of duplication in your on-page SEO strategy is ***at best*** wasted opportunity. Worse yet, if you are aggressive with aligning your on page heading, your page title, and your internal + external link anchor text the page becomes more likely to get filtered out of the search results (which is quite common in some aggressive spaces).
Even if you build a site (and a particular page) that are authoritative enough to capture a #1 keyword ranking, if your on-page SEO is strong you still get far more traffic from longtail keywords.
How to Include Variation in Your SEO Strategy
So how can you balance your on-page SEO strategy to capture more of the highly valuable search traffic? You can...
use singular vs plural
use synonyms
use various keyword modifiers
change word order
The bottom line is using more relevant keyword variations = more traffic.
Apples to Apples
Thinking about this site...we have competitors who have similar site age, way more inbound links, ~10x the number of employees, 5 times as many pages of content indexed by Google, more comments on each page, and yet we still get more search traffic.
Meanwhile I have made over 15,000 forum posts + build out a bunch of other websites (ie: doing a lot of work other than SEO for this site)...so our relative out-performance on much more limited resources comes from using a smarter and more comprehensive SEO strategy.
We don't get as much Twitter traffic, but then we don't target the hype and misinformation game as well as others do. ;) (Everyone has their own niche target market!)
Bonus Tip
Some people understand SEO on a mechanical level. Others understand it on a holistic level. This is one of those tips that separates the men from the boys. ;)
Some content management systems force the page title and the heading to be the same by default. But both Drupal (Page title) and Wordpress (SEO title tag) have plugins that allow you to make the on-page heading different from the page title. This allows you to optimize for different things. You can...
create a headline for RSS readers that is designed around piquing curiosity and/or targeting emotional reactions to pull in clicks
create a keyword laden page title that is designed to pull in latent search traffic
Not only does variation allow you to target those 2 different audiences (and pull in more search traffic), but readers often link to content using the official title in the anchor text. So if you make the page title and on-page heading different that can help you get more keyword variation in your inbound link anchor text as well.
Anyone who writes a regular blog knows about writers block. But no matter how much time you spend staring at that blank page, the article just never writes itself.
Pity.
So how do you overcome writers block?
Here are a few tips.
Topic Selection
It's not that there aren't plenty of topics to write about, the problem is we often feel we need to say something new. The reality is that not much is genuinely new. We all stand on the shoulders of giants.
Instead, try and find new angles on old ideas.
One good way of doing this is to combine two topics. For example, if you know a lot about SEO, apply this knowledge to a more conventional topic, like, say "How To Innovate" The article then becomes "How To Innovate In The SEO Business". Not rocket science - or a particularly new angle for that matter - but combining two tried-n-true topics can create something new.
2. Just Write
Often called free-writing, there's a lot to be said for just making a start.
Think of a question - any question at all - and start writing about it. Don't worry if your produce gibberish, the aim is to get rid of that blank page.
Introduce an SEO twist by going through your keyword logs. Find any keywords phrased as a question, and free- write about that keyword. Put the keyword phrases into Google's Keyword Research Tool, and see what word associations, and other questions, come up.
I'm getting self-reflexive and post-modern here, but that's how this article started. I'm rewriting this article from a page of utter gibberish. Hopefully I'm making slightly more sense now.
3. Go For A Walk
One daily habit I've got into recently - and I can't recommend it enough - is to go for a walk. There's something about exercise, and being away from a computer, that clears your thinking processes. Try it for a few days and see if you notice the difference.
I'd be really interested to hear if your experience has been the same as mine.
4. Steal!
Well, not really.
Creatively borrow :)
There isn't much that is genuinely new in this world, and there is even less new in the field of marketing theory. I loved the book "The Purple Cow", but really, it's a new spin on an old topic - having a unique selling point.
A lot of the books I've been reading recently have a "sameness" about them. That's because a lot of marketing books rehash old theory using new terminology.
But hey - why not join them! What's old to you might be new to someone else. And if you can put your ideas in a contemporary setting, then that will bring something new to the table. Grab some old books or magazines and rewrite articles. Bring them up to date. Put them in a new context. Redefine terms. Add a new spin. Do some keyword research on the key themes and integrate.
The good thing about writing from existing pieces is that you get over the blank page effect. You're already starting from a finished piece. Your job is to rewrite, expand, take it into new territories, respin and create something new.
5. Chunk It
Chunking is a method of writing where you split concepts into small pieces.
Create bullet-point lists of things you want to say - write the conclusion first
Create headings
Write a paragraph of one sentence under each heading
Can you scan the document and understand it?
Although sparse, the article is complete in terms of structure. You then dress up the bare bones by expanding the sentences under the headings, thus turning them into fully formed paragraphs.
6. Write Something Unrelated
Ever get the feeling that everything that can be said about SEO has been said already?
It's not true, of course, but it feels that way sometimes.
Try researching and writing about a completely different topic area. You might not publish the piece, but by immersing yourself in new areas and concepts, you might gain new insights on your chosen field.
Unfortunately, the SEO niche has become an echo chamber, so try to read outside the area of SEO as much as you can. How about looking at areas such as future gazing, trends, history, economics, business, politics or personal development? Can you relate any of these fields back to SEO and marketing?
7. Don't Write At All
A lot of people feel the need to publish, even when they have nothing to say.
You often see this on blogs. Some arbitrary decision has been made that the writer must make one post a day, or must Twitter five times a day, or else, or else....
....or else what?
People will leave and never come back?
No one is that important.
I think it's more likely that readers will appreciate something that is worth their time reading. Time is a scarce thing, so I don't think writers do readers any favours by churning out, well, typing. Sure, the golden rule of blogging is to keep a blog regularly updated. A good thing, if you can manage it. But this can create a pressure to churn something - anything - out. The reality is that few people can write killer pieces each and everyday.
So rather than write something substandard because you're not really feeling like it, why not just do something else instead.
I'd be interested to hear your strategies for beating writers block.
If a person is a public SEO and their only gig is writing a blog about SEO (and selling client services to newbies) then it can be quite easy to share and not care. If they destroy a technique or someone else's business to earn a bit of attention who cares? They got the attention, and that can be converted into currency as herds of newbies flock to where the crowd and controversy are.
Which is why some of the sleaziest SEOs publicly promote SEO outing.
They understand that justifying their own business actions helps to legitimize them, even if they are hypocritical scumbags who use their blog to threaten and bully around people with a smaller platform. If you are doing effective SEO but are not paying them on retainer look for them to go out of their way to try to out you and harm your business.
Real SEO Professionals
But if a significant portion of your revenues comes from affiliate and/or ad driven sites which just happen to be ran by SEOs (which Google generally hate, in spite of some claims to the contrary) the care with which you give out information increases. And competition is not always above board.
Business Can Be Dirty
About a month ago a person contacting me about how they were an honest Joe wanted more tips from me, and about a week earlier I noticed that the same person stole something from one of my sites and was trying to compete directly against me using my own content!!!
About a year ago a "friend" claimed he wanted to invest in some of our businesses. He came up with an offer, got most of our information about some of our business ideas, grabbed a hold of some of our business relationships, and is now creating a similar business model competing head on. He claims that his capital was illiquid as for why he did not complete the deal, but he does not realize I know how much he spent on some other assets at the time. And a case of inadequate resources is never an adequate excuse when the person who approaches you names their offer price. They burned 100% of the trust I had in them to the ground. How could I ever trust them again?
A couple years ago one of my sites got dinged with a penalty. While that penalty was in play, another "friend" working on building other businesses told a friend of mine "clone Aaron's site," not expecting that sleazy advice would come back to me.
I think about a week ago someone asked me a blog comment along the lines of "what affiliate offers should I promote right now."
At that level the person...
is not a paying customer
is valuing my time at nothing
is trying to take away time I could spend servicing our paying customers (or attention I could spend promoting our other money making sites)
AND they want me to give them advice which would increase the competition we faced in our other publishing projects, sacrificing our future revenues
When I wanted to be well known there was value to popularity, but the people who are paying you $0 for your time AND who are asking specific specialized questions about what you are doing are only going to harm your business interests. And so you must say no thanks to answering those types of questions.
Real SEOs Become Guarded - or go Bankrupt!
After a few years of being constantly screwed over by a bunch of snakes and liars you simply decide to share less. Either you do that, or you are simply commoditizing the value of your own time (past/present/future) with each advanced tip you share publicly. Who wants to work harder to lower their current (and future) wages?
The internet marketing field is branded in part as being sleazy largely because a huge segment of the marketplace is. Even if 90% of PPC affiliate marketers were honest, the sleaziest 10% of the market will get 90%+ of the ad impressions because they are willing to go the extra mile to promote scams, bundle reverse billing fraud, use fake celebrity endorsements, create fake brands, etc. Given that search engines are willing to compete against their top advertisers and ad networks are how many internet marketers make their money, it is quite hard to build a sustainable business model unless you create and sell your own products.
And in the SEO market, if you are open and honest you set yourself up for Google penalties, competitors outing you, getting hate from envious competitors, and former "friends" trying to marginalize your business. Let alone contemplating how other third parties might use your public information against you. Not only is Google going out of their way to promote brands, but many of the big brands are further compounding that effect by heavily investing into SEO...and Google typically won't penalize the brand for doing the same thing that a smaller publisher would get penalized for doing.
Free Specific SEO Advice Worth Thousands of Dollars
Here is a ranking chart...let me tell you how to boost rankings for a site from nowhere to in the game on a bunch of keywords for only a few hundred bucks.
Well if I actually did that, it would just get burned to the ground.
Real SEO Goes Underground
Lots of other smart people have came to the same conclusions, which is why SEO has gone back underground. Yes some of the public information is decent, but more and more misinformation and hype are polluting the industry.
It is just like people writing about social media, but giving you a half-truth about how it organically spreads rather than mentioning what they really do to seed it...and where one rats out the next while selling himself to the highest bidder. As the market matures and SEO returns go from x hundred/thousand percent to y percent you can only expect competitors to act sleazier to gain any competitive advantage they can. After all, who wants to go back to having a regular old job?
Does brand matter? That seems to be a question Google wants to challenge. Eric Schmidt offers quotes like "brands are how you sort out the cesspool". Google's search algorithms this year have put more weight on domain authority (which is often associated with brands).
But while Google is telling everyone else to build a brand, Google might be looking to compete head on with brands in many large verticals. According to the NYT:
“LendingTree recently learned that Google imminently plans to launch a loan aggregation service in late August or early September of this year that would compete with LendingTree,” the complaint says. “Lending Tree has also learned that Mortech intends to make its pricing engine services available for use with Google’s new service and will send information related to mortgage loan offers to be displayed to consumer on Google’s Web site.”
The complaint further says that LendingTree has obtained screen shots of a trial version of Google’s service that further indicate that it plans to “provide customers with conditional loan offers in addition to lenders’ contact information.”
Google made a similar test in the UK last year. This is just more reason to develop longtail content and try to build distribution channels outside of search. It seems if you are too successful with search Google may do some self-serving to compete directly against you.
When I launched the membership site about a year ago I decided to set a membership limit at 1,000. Recently we have been getting a lot of word of mouth marketing and our growth rate has surged beyond my wildest expectations. We recently raised our price to try to curb growth, but promotion associated with that caused another rush of sign ups and even after we raised our price we did not see any slowing down on new subscribers. We reached our capacity and are closing off new premium memberships for a while.
Ironic that success creates a host of other issues, but I care too much and work too long. And I don't want to lower the quality of our customer interaction and customer service to scale it to the moon. Recently I watched some TED videos about career crisis and motivation. One of the most ressonating quotes was Alain de Botton's "You can be successful at everything. We hear a lot of talk about work/life balance - nonsense. You can't have it all. So any vision of success has to admit what it is losing out on." It's so obvious to read that...but I certainly needed to hear it. ;)
In the worst recession in 80 years (perhaps a depression) I am not asking anyone to cry me a river for getting too much business. It is a problem most people would love to have. But we are drowning in opportunity with our other sites doing great and this site growing a bit quicker than I was planning on. Since opening I have made over 15,000 posts in the forums, and the rate of posting has only increased as our membership has risen. Just a couple months ago I was at ~ 12,000 posts.
As I have poured myself into this site we built a community I am proud of, but am falling behind on some other fronts - this week I was late writing a guest column for another site, I have 1,000+ emails in my inbox, and I have grown far too chubby (as seen in recentvideos).
Our current customers will keep getting the same great customer service they have been, but I just turned off new paid submissions so I can lighten the load for a while. It is hard to justify letting my health slide to earn a bit more when so much of the earnings just get handed over to corrupt bankers. If I earn a lot but die young I can't really count that as getting ahead. Well I guess I could, but I don't want to. ;)
If you would like to be notified of when we have some capacity again please sign up for a free basic account (you get a bunch of cool bonuses) and I will let you know when we are open to new customers again!
Thanks for reading and thanks for your help in building this site into a strong well known brand with so many loyal customers! :)
What is the purpose of that new page you're adding to your site?
Is it to rank highly for a keyword term? That's half the battle won, of course :)
After the visitor has arrived on your page, what do you want the visitor to do next?
According to Seth Godin, you probably want a visitor to do one of five things:
Click to go to another page on your site
Buy something
Register for something
Click on/view advertising
Pass your message on to a friend
So, if you build a landing page, and you're going to invest time and money to get people to visit it, it makes sense to optimize that page to accomplish just one of the things above. Perhaps two, but no more.
Keep that desired action firmly in mind when you design and optimize your pages. The first rule of optimization is to optimize for humans. Ranking a page, only to have visitors click away, is a waste of time and effort.
Optimize For Focus
In the SEOBook Forums, we offer site reviews as a service to members.
We often see sites where it isn't clear what they visitor needs to do. This is usually caused by too many options presented on one page. By trying to please all audiences, we often end up pleasing nobody.
Decide the key action you want people to take, and relegate all other options. Either move some options to a different page, or reduce the visual weight of other options relative to the main action you want a visitor to take.
Here's a great example of a site where the one key action is in clear focus: DailyBurn.com
An exception to this rule is when the user is very familiar with the site. A lack of options often means too many clicks to get things done. However, if your page is focused on the first time searcher, then simplicity and clarity is the way to go.
Visual Focus
Do you know where people's eyes focus when they land on your site?
Check out this tool at FenGui. The tool tries to work out how people will visually scan your site. Some web statistics packages, such as Google Analytics and ClickTracks, provide visual click tracking based on user activity.
Before deciding on a template for your site, it is a good idea to test out your ideas using PPC. Knock up a few different designs, run a short campaign and use split/run testing to determine which page layout result in the user taking the desired action most often. Armed with this information, you're less likely to waste time in your SEO campaign.
Design Considerations
There are few hard and fast rules when it comes to web design, because each element you add will affect what is already there. Or not there.
However, a few factors remain constant:
The eye will be attracted to color blocks
The eye will be attracted to human faces or forms
Whitespace promotes readability - keep paragraphs short, use headings and bulletpoints
Make sure all visual elements underscore the desired action.
Where Web Design/ SEO Often Goes Wrong
The success of a page should be measured by one criteria:
Does the visitor do what you want them to do?
Often, other criteria will blur this vision. For example, a designer who is more interested in winning awards than ensuring your pages do what they should, may make a page pretty, but sometimes pretty doesn't result in a desired action. An SEO can sometimes be overzealous in terms of keyword usage, which can result in dense text and odd-phrasing, which has the potential to put visitors off.
There is little point putting a lot of effort into attracting visitors if they don't do what you want them to do.
A Word About Adsense
Positioning of adsense can be the difference between making pocketmoney and making a living. Look at Adsense as a visual element, as opposed to a block of text. Typography and text layout are design elements, every bit as much as graphics.
Are your eyes drawn to Adsense as you scan the page? If not, you may need to tone down other visual display elements, including color, to make Adsense Ads stand out. If Adsense is the way you monetize, the desired user action is the click. Are other elements on your page, be they links or graphics, competing for that click?
Paul Sloan has been a good friend of mine who has worked in journalism far longer than I have been an SEO. In this interview we discussed journalism, marketing, and public relations.
You have been a journalist for a wide array of publications. How would you describe the differences between the various journalistic roles you have played at the various companies you have worked for?
Let’s start with the obvious: Journalism is in major upheaval and how it all shakes out is anyone’s guess. Here’s what I am certain of: The broader economy will rebound and the business of journalism will not. Traditional media -- by that I mean print newspapers and magazines -- were struggling before the general economy fell into this deep recession and no miracle will return them to their pre-Web glory. To which I say, thank goodness.
People working at newspapers are bemoaning the death of journalism. That’s just not the case. The business models are dying, or at least they’re very sick. But journalism is alive and evolving at an incredible pace. Look at the places I have worked -- CNN, Bloomberg, Fortune Magazine, Business 2.0, The Chicago Tribune, U.S. News & World Report . One is dead (Business 2.0), two probably should be dead (Fortune and U.S. News) and one, The Tribune, is bankrupt.
Sure it’s rough, but it’s exciting and opportunities are emerging at a fast pace. I’m still amazed that The New York Times, which held out forever before introducing color photographs to its pages, now has its reporters live blogging senate confirmation hearings and MacWorld keynotes. Makes the whole debate over color seems sort of silly.
The Web and blogosphere do a great job keeping biggies such as The New York Times on its toes--both watching over it for accuracy and keeping its reporters chasing stories. But for now, the Times, the Wall Street Journal and a few others are still super influential. So, naturally, plenty of businesses and startups want the coverage in the established media.
As a journalist, what do you look for most when considering a topic to write about and an angle to write from?
The number one thing I’ve always looked for is surprise. A predictable story is a dull story. And I love story, narrative. So I look for people. Too many reporters, especially tech reporters, just write about the technologies. That’s fine for blog posts, but often behind technologies exist stories of persistence or controversy that humanize a story and make it memorable.
You wrote about a wide range of business and start up ideas in your Playing the Angles. How do you come up with story topic ideas?
Funny you bring that up. I thought doing that column was sort of silly idea when my boss at the time Josh Quittner asked me to do it, but I really got into it and it became quite popular. The way I found topics was old-fashioned reporting: Calling around and talking to all sorts of people doing things that seemed interesting and instructive. Make enough calls and eventually you land on something surprising and compelling. I enjoyed it because it was about real people -- individuals figuring out creative ways to make money, usually on the Web.
That column died with Business 2.0, but to this day I get email from people asking about things I wrote about in those columns. So I recently decided to create a Website about entrepreneurs large and small. I was surprised, but PlayingTheAngles.com was available, so I registered the name and we just launched it!
How often did/does your story and angle change drastically while researching it?
That can happen a lot. Good reporters -- and, more importantly, good editors -- know that stories change as you gather facts. Everyone goes into a story with an angle in mind; it’s impossible not to. And bad reporters doggedly cling to that angle even when all evidence points them in another direction.
Does a person need to "know people" to get media coverage? What sets apart the coverage-worthy from those who are not?
If you want coverage about your business or idea or just you, sure, it helps to know people in the business. But if you’re doing something interesting, reporters are always looking for things to write about. Shooting off a well-crafted email is by no means a waste of time.
What should they put in the email? What is the right amount of information? When is it too much information?
The main mistake people make is to oversell an idea, or a client. It's always better to be honest. You might be better off saying to a reporter something like, This idea might make a good little item, or maybe it could be part of a round up about others doing similar things. Too often people call to persuade you that their story is a really big story. In my experience, that's never the case. Tell me how big it is and my eyes are rolling.
Write a brief email brief and keep it in check with reality. Know something about the reporter so you can appeal to his or her interests or areas of coverage. (Yes, I’ve received many emails addressed to other people or to me but the wrong news organization). And ask to setup a quick call or meeting as a way of getting-to-know each other. If someone calls and says, I'd like you to meet so and so because you write a lot about digital music and my client has been involved in three music ventures, then I'm sold. Those meetings don't always lead to stories, but they're time well spent for both sides because the next time I'm writing about digital music, the chances are good that I will call that person. And then when you want to pitch a specific idea for a story, you will have a relationship with that reporter.
When you are looking into the background or credibility of a source what are key signs that make you comfortable trusting someone? What makes you feel a person is underqualified and/or not trustworthy?
That all depends on the type of story. I’ve had the experience of believing someone completely and finding out years later that that person was looking me in the eyes and lying. Unfortunately, lying is part of drill, especially among business and in business journalism. All you can do is trust your gut, double and triple check everything, talk to as many people as possible, and, when it makes sense, verify claims with numbers and data. In the get-it-out-now pace of today, I constantly see numbers tossed out by companies and taken as fact.
Did you ever end up writing a story that you later regretted writing? If so, did it create new filters for your future writing?
Anyone who’s written a story about a companies has regrets. These are not he said, she said, stories. I’m talking about the stories that go out on a limb and say something like, Why So and So is the Smartest CEO on the Planet. And then, low and behold, that CEO looses his job a month later. Fortunately, that’s never happened to me. But there are plenty of examples of this from the past year.
Marc Andreesseen, who’s had his share of press coverage, beginning with the 1996 cover of Time Magazine where he posed barefoot, told me that early on he learned to keep the press coverage in perspective. I’m paraphrasing, but he said something like: “You’re never as smart as they say you are, and you’re never as dumb as they say you are.” Marc is certainly right about that. Magazines like Fortune want to run bold covers that say, The Smartest CEO blah blah blah... Those sell, or at least they used to. But everyone knows they’re complete hyperbole.
Some of your stories have spread all over the web while others were less received. What do you feel separates the stories that spread from those that do not spread as far?
For starters, certain stories are naturals for setting the Web ablaze. At CNN Money.com, for example, they go out of their way to write about Apple because Apple has legions of fans who read anything and everything. People click, and CNN Money.Com makes money. It’s that simple. I wrote a couple of big stories about the domain world, and both of those were huge on the Web. It helped that they were surprising stories -- what? people are making money on domain names? Didn’t that end with the dot-com bust?. The second big piece, about Kevin Ham, spent a lot of time on AOL’s home page. These were discovery pieces in a way, and they had that lure to the reader that, hey, if these people can get so rich, you can too.
I started out at a newspaper in Anniston, Alabama, called The Anniston Star. I was always thrilled when readers wrote in about something I had written. Now, that feedback starts in minutes and can go on and on. I love that.
Did you ever like being pitched? If so, what was the best way to pitch you (and other journalists)?
This is a good question. I can count the number of stories I have written that began with a pitch on one hand, and they all have been little pieces that I did for the Web. The rule of thumb is that the good stories just don’t come from PR people. That said, there are no so many outlets for coverage and a limitless amount of space (the Internet vs. a newspaper or magazine), so PR people can be more successful.
Do you recommend hiring PR firms? What is the difference between good PR firms and bad ones, from a journalist's perspective?
I’ve been helping some startups deal with this lately. The mistakes that PR firms make are just unbelievable to me. I’ve taken meetings from PR people who know very little about their clients. If it’s a startup, they don’t know if it’s profitable, if it has venture backing or, if it doesn’t, who the main investors are. So my first piece of advice is make sure your PR firm knows the basics about you.
But here’s the other crime that PR people commit, and there’s just no excuse for it: They no nothing about the reporter they are pitching or what the reporter tends to write about. This often happens because PR agencies buy lists and start making cold calls. If you’re hiring people to do this, you’re wasting your money.
Even if the PR person isn’t working this way, it’s just inexcusable not to know something about the reporter you are calling. There’s this thing called Google. Surely you can use it before you pitch a story about digital music to someone who writes about banking.
These are just a few of the blunders that PR people routinely make.
What are some easy and affordable ways to appeal to media members? What are some of the most creative and best thought out things people did to get your attention (or the attention of your colleagues)?
Are you suggesting bribes? No one’s ever tried that on me, although people often try to buy dinner (I generally don’t let them) or fly me places (I would never allow).
When speaking to a media member should the person being interviewed research the background of the journalist? If so, what all should they look at?
Yes, yes, yes. As much a they can. They should read what that person has done, and get a sense of what interests that reporter.
As a popular blogger in a hot field I get many media enqueries and sometimes I get misquoted. What strategies should entreprenuers use when talking to the media to minimize the risk of misquotes?
Talk slowly and, if you’re really concerned, use a digital recorder. But you will get misquoted, the concern, I assume, is that you’re words and thoughts are getting misrepresented. Well, you’ve got a blog. So you can have your say. My friend Damon Darlin at the New York Times recently wrote a piece that was critical of the way some reporting takes place online. It was a fair column, it seemed to me, but one of the bloggers that Damon quoted, Techcrunch founder Mike Arrington wasn’t happy. TechCrunch has huge reach -- 7 million page views a month. And Mike, whom I also consider a friend, isn’t one to let matters die down. So he spoke up. The days of submitting a correction to the paper and hoping they run it are long over.
Who is the greatest guitarist of all time? Why?
Unanswerable question. The most underrated is Eddie Hazel, who was best known for his lead guitar work with Parliment Funkadelic. Soulful, biting and melodic at the same time. His playing on Red Hot Mama on Funkadelic’s Standing on the Verge of Getting it on is some of the tastiest and vicious guitar playing ever. This is a longer, live version:
How does writing a story compare with writing a guitar riff?
Bad writers often use too many words. Bad guitarists play too much, excluding genres such as metal that are all about notes and more notes.
A great guitar line, like a great piece of writing, has just the right blend of notes/words and rhythm.
