Posted by randfish

If you’ve been around the SEO world a while, you’ve undoubtedly heard the old adage:

Do what’s right for users and engines will reward you with higher rankings

Along with its peer:

SEO tactics that focus on engines, rather than users, are manipulative (black/gray hat) and will eventually be discounted or penalized

In my opinion, both of these statements are utterly false and tragically misleading. In my view, SEO starts with the user (of course), but cannot ignore the incredible importance of search-engine targeted (and specific) tactics. When I first considered the issue, I thought that perhaps, years ago, these opinions were more accurate than they are today. However, after visualizing the issue, I discovered even that isn’t true:

(please note: graphs like this are, as always, just my personal opinion)

The value of tactics from each set has risen/fallen over time, leading me to the conclusion that this was never good advice. And yet, thinking back, I’m almost sure that at some point, at a conference and during interactions with clients, I personally repeated this misnomer. I want to issue an apology for that now and set the record straight – SEO is a task that requires paying close attention to the needs of both users and engines. You can’t be an effective SEO without it.

Just think of all the specific tasks we perform that we’d never do if it weren’t for search engines:

• Title tags: We might still make them, but agonize over keyword usage and positioning, uniqueness and flow? I doubt it.
• Meta tags: Nope. No reason to even bother.
• XML Sitemaps: I’m pretty sure no human has ever visited this file in an attempt to sort out the pages on your site.
• Webmaster Tools Registration: Without engines, there wouldn’t be any.
• Keyword Research: I think this practice would be more like advertising copy – think Mad Men.
• Keyword Targeting: Why worry about keyword placement for anything other than conversion rate optimization?
• URL Canonicalization: No need – visitors are getting the content either way.
• Accessible Link Structures: So long as you’re not worried about the >2% of visitors who can’t see Flash, go ahead and build rich applications to your heart’s content.
• Robots.txt & Meta Robots: No engines, no reason to direct engines.
• Link Building: Unless it’s specifically to draw in relevant traffic, why bother?
• Creating Vertical Search Feeds: That’s going to be time wasted.
• Information Architecture: While there’s good reasons to do some of this for users, a significant portion of the accessibility and link hierarchy arguments are made moot.
• Redirection: Without engines, we can use whatever method is convenient – javascript, meta refresh, 302 - it makes little difference to the user.
• Rel="Nofollow": Internally or externally, it becomes a pointless attribute.

I think the problem with the classic "build for users" advice is that it sounds so compelling and, on a surface level, makes a lot of sense. Maybe this is a good warning not to adhere to any advice just because it seems logical on its face – knowledge and expertise may not make for simple messaging, but, outside of politics, accuracy is far more valuable than fitting into a sound byte.

UPDATE: A lot of folks in the comments are under the impression that I’m recommending against building for users – nothing could be further from the truth. Websites are made for people, and users should absolutely be the focus of your efforts. My argument in this post centers specifically around the practice of search engine optimization and the idea that tactics which are engine-focused (like XML sitemaps, anchor text, link architecture, webmaster tools usage, etc.) can be ignored because they’re not "for the user." The charts and points above are intended to illustrate that if you only focus on "user-targeted SEO" you’re missing a huge chunk of the potential SEO opportunity pie.

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Posted by randfish

It’s been a long time since I last blogged on design topics, but I think it’s time to break that streak. This post focuses on a design style that’s both retro (it’s been around a long time) and emerging (the popularity, at least to me, feels like it’s on the rise) - the single-purpose homepage.

First, a brief example:

In the above design, Spokeo has just one, singular, all-consuming goal – get your email address so they can show you how their product works. There may be a few secondary links for registered users to login, access to the blog and about pages, and some logos to help improve credibility, but basically, we’re looking at remarkably driven intent behind the design.

Five Reasons I Like the Single-Purpose Homepage:

1. It Gets the Message Across Quickly
   With only a single headline and call to action, visitors quickly parse the critical message you’re attempting to push. In longer, more complex pages, designers and marketers constantly have to worry about the percentage of people who are actually exposed (in any meaningful way) to the intended triggers.
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2. It Forces Simplicity in Communication
   This singularity of messaging also means that the language, words and images chosen have to communicate simply or risk failure. Simplicity in web design has proven itself over and over again as a driver of success, and simple messages are the easiest to understand and to transmit virally – a marketer’s dream.
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3. It Reveals What Matters (and Obscures What Doesn’t)
   When external forces compel us, we tend to find our greatest strength is all that remains. That principle is in clear effect with these designs, as the unecessary is completely stripped away, leaving only  those items (graphics, font, layout, links and messaging) that serve the singular purpose of the page. If you’ve ever fought over which ten things to put on the homepage, get ready to trade that in for which ten words can express the entirity of your business (not necessarily an enviable trade, but it can be a net positive).
   _
4. It Sorts the Visitor Wheat from the Chaff
   Visitors who reach this page will instantly know whether the product is for them or not. The uninterested are immediately disengaged, leaving only true potential candidates for marketing and targeting. This means every piece of data you can collect and refine about your remaining audience is precious — but it does remove the "noise" that’s often mixed in with an unfocused audience.
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5. It Makes it Easy to Optimize the Funnel
   If you’re doing lots of A/B and multivariate testing (and if this doesn’t convince you that you should, abandon all hope), the simplicity of having only a few input boxes, links and headlines is a miracle. Tests run faster, produce more compelling results and give you the focus you need to improve click-through and conversion rates efficiently. Tiny changes in these percents are frequently responsible for millions of dollars of revenue (which is generally a good thing).

Is It Good for SEO?

It depends… If you have the type of site that’s very product focused and single-purpose in nature, this can be an ideal page type. Even if you run a blog, promote articles, or have other types of secondary content, you can always embed links to them in smaller, more background-style fonts and retain crawlability and good information architecture.

The only real trouble may come from the homepage’s loss in ability to send traffic to more viral, less product-specific parts of the site (which will then cost links, which will in turn cost SEO opportunity). If this is a danger, it may be a viable reason not to implement this style of design. You also definitely shouldn’t be using this style if it doesn’t fit with your strategic goals – publishers, blogs, newspapers and most retailers probably don’t want to go this direction (though taking cues from it in deeper, more focused pages is probably very wise).

Eight Examples of Single-Purpose Homepages in Action:

The URL shortening service j.mp (run by Bit.ly) is remarkably focused on helping provide their product with little surrounding clutter. I particularly like the approach of stretching the URL bar so it’s always the dominant focus – and once you use j.mp, you’ll never go to any other service (part of the reason they can focus so heavily on getting the product used in the first 5 seconds of the first visit).

Tumblr’s message "the easiest way to blog" is made credible by the fantastically simple signup process. They’ve also smartly broken the "single purpose" literal interpretation by having a callout in the green box of "21 Reasons Why You’ll Love Tumblr." Just for the record – even though I’m an advocate of this style for the right type of site, I do strongly encourage testing often and early. The beautiful part is how easy pages like this are to test (in comparison to their portal-entry-like peers)

 

Shopify employs simplicity and text-based callouts to highlight its messaging. I like the layout visually, but I wonder if they’ve done extensive testing about the impact of the three text boxes.

If you’ve seen the dozens of popular weather sites around the web, you know how horrifyingly cluttered they can be. UmbrellaToday breaks with tradition and provides possibly the dead-simplest method for getting solid weather reports. I’m a fan of the clever name and branding, too – I love personality in startups

Although Silverback’s homepage is a bit long-form vertically, the message is singular – convey what the app does and why you need it, then get a click on that download link. I’m not sure if they have tested it, but I’d love to see a version that puts the "What does Silverback do?" graphic in the text bubble spoken by the Gorilla. 

Popular travel site Kayak technically has multiple foci, but the strength of the homepage’s conviction that you want to find airline pricing and their ability to stick with it for so many years (and probably through hundreds of rounds of testing) illustrates the single-purpose homepage brilliantly. It’s also in sharp contrast to their competitors in the travel market, who insist on promoting specials, deals, partnerships, news, reviews and a thousand other disparate items that distract from the intended goal of both website and visitor.

When I first visited Resumator, I wasn’t sure it belonged on this list. However, after spending ~9 seconds actually reading the copy on the page, I was impressed. I instantly knew what they did and actually considered sending it over to some folks inside SEOmoz for consideration (since we’re going to be on the hunt for new hires soon). Single message – check. Delivered quickly – check. Focused direction to one action – check. All that, and it looks pretty useful

Gist plugs your email in with the web’s social features to help give context and content around your inbox and contacts. It’s a pretty spiffy piece of software, particularly for those in sales, and the homepage does a good job of conveying the value proposition quickly and simply.

You’ve probably never heard of this tiny, Mountain View, CA company, but apparently, they do pretty well

Your thoughts?

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Social media has had a tremendous impact on traditional business standards. We are now even seeing retailers embrace social media trends. But as Vib Prasad of 1-800-Flowers tells WPN, there are several factors retailers must consider as they embark on social media efforts.

He says, “The key really is to integrate social media into your overall marketing campaigns.”

Retailers need to connect with their customers, listen to what they are talking about, and strive to meet their needs. Prasad explains how 1-800-Flowers integrated social media into their Mother’s Day campaigns and created all sorts of buzz through Facebook, Twitter, and mommy bloggers.

As retailers connect with their audience, they must remember to speak with a “conversational voice” and not a “corporate voice.” Consumers control the purchase process now and expect the merchants to come down to their level.

Permuto launched during the Shop.org Annual Summit last week. WebProNews talked with Permuto CEO and Co-Founder Shaukat Shamim to find out about their flagship product ShopperConnect and how it helps retailers get the most ROI out of their ad spend.

Online display advertising has, traditionally, not been very measurable. Shamim however explains how ShopperConnect combines the effectiveness and measurability of search engine marketing to online display advertising. The advertising platform helps merchants put their ads in front of past, current and, most importantly, new customers.

Since the company is focused on reaching the needs of retailers, Shamim says their solution provides them with a different reach than the major search players provide.

To learn more about Permuto and their advertising platform, visit their site.

Last week I shared a set of slides from a presentation I recently gave which outlines a variety of lessons that I’ve learned as a blogger over the last 7 years. Over the coming months I intend to expand upon many of the points in that presentation – starting today with ‘Listening’.

When I began blogging in 2002 I made a lot of mistakes and had a lot of false assumptions about blogging. One of the things I quickly found out didn’t work when trying to grow a blog was to use it purely as a broadcast tool.

In the first few weeks of blogging it was almost as though I was using the blog as a platform or a stage where I stood with a megaphone in hand blasting out my message for anyone who might happen to be passing by to hear. It’s no wonder that only my wife read my blog that first week (and even she never really came back).

Nobody likes a loud mouth. Nobody wants to be on the receiving end of someone talking AT them.

The people we tend to be drawn to in real life are people who pause in conversation to let you have a say, people who ask questions about you, people who have a genuine interest in what you’ve got to say.

The same is true (in most cases) when it comes to blogging.

Of course there are cases where blogs are successfully used as broadcast tools with little interaction between blogger and reader – however in most cases there is at least some element of ‘listening’ going on by the blogger. Let me explore a few ways that a blogger should consider ‘listening’:

Listen to the culture of the blogosphere

This is one for those yet to start blogging (and it should also be applied to those getting into new social media tools like Twitter, Facebook etc).

I was chatting with a new blogger recently who described her first week of blogging as being similar to travelling to a new country and having to adjust to a new language, climate, etiquette and customs as an outsider.

When travelling overseas for an extended stay (perhaps for a new job) most travellers know that one of their first tasks as a new resident is to make some cultural adjustments.

• learning some basic words in the local language
• finding a local who can talk them through the etiquette
• getting a map so that they can find their way around
• learning to use systems like public transport…. etc

In a similar way – when you’re new to the blogosphere (or any new part of the social media-sphere) it’s important to pause, take stock, learn about the culture, learn to use the tools, discover what is acceptable (and not acceptable), learn the rhythms etc

The danger in not learning the culture of the blogosphere is doing something that not only doesn’t work but that offends ‘the locals’ and hurts your reputation.

Listen for where your potential readers are gathering

One of the key tasks that any new blogger who wants to grow their readership should do is identify where their potential readers are already gathering online.

As I mentioned a couple of weeks back – it’s not enough just to build a good blog with great content in order to find readers for your blog. If you want people to know about your blog you need to ‘get out there’ and interact with them and develop a presence in the places that your potential readers are already gathering.

Of course before you can find these places you need to have an understanding of who you’re trying to attract – so do a little work on defining who you want to read your blog and then begin to look for where that type of person is already gathering (I talk more about how I did this in this recent video on how I use promote my blog).

Listen to what others in your niche are saying

One of the most powerful things that I did which helped take my early blogs to the next level was to begin to monitor what others in my niche/industry were talking about.

I discovered the power of this accidentally one day when I just happened to be surfing on another small blog that broke news of a big story. I picked up the story on my own blog (linking to the first) and then my post got picked up by a massive blog which drew in a lot of new readers. Knowing what was happening in the niche helped to break stories but also build relationships with other bloggers in the niche.

Back then the tools for monitoring other blogs and topics were primitive and meant some manual hunting around (I remember in the very early days having to manually bookmark the blogs I wanted to track and visit them each every day to see if they’d posted anything new) but these days it is a lot easier to set up and automate.

My own monitoring of my niches generally happens in two ways:

1. Subscribing to Feeds of Key Sources of Information – these days most sites have some way of subscribing to them, usually via an RSS feed. I have a folder in my feed reader for each of my main topics which contains a number of key blogs and news sites in that niche. I used to follow close to a thousand blogs to do this – but these days have refined the list to much less for each topic.
2. 2. Keyword Alerts – using Google’s news and blog alerts I have a number of alerts set up so that if any news site or blog uses a keyword that I’m interested in I know about it. Choosing keywords that are specific enough can take a little time (some words just generate too many alerts) but on almost a daily basis these alerts identify important posts in my niches.
3. Recommendation Sites – the other listening tool that I use to help me know what’s going on in my niches is to subscribe to sites that are in the business of looking for popular content in my niches. These sites can be a little hard to find depending upon your niche but because I’m largely working in the Tech space there are a few including TechMeme and Delicious. TechMeme looks at what content key blogs are linking to in the tech space and Delicious is a bookmarking site that produces a list of popular content being bookmarked at any point in time (it’s not purely tech related but does consistently produce good results for me). Both of these sites have RSS feeds you can subscribe to to monitor what’s hot.
4. Twitter – I also find that being active on Twitter and developing a Twitter account that has a niche focus can also help you listen to what people are saying about your niche. This partly happens naturally (those you follow in your niche will share links) but there are also great tools including Tweetmeme (which shows you what is being retweeted in different categories) and other monitoring/search tools such as Twitter search (you can set up an RSS feed for different search terms) and tools built into Twitter clients (like TweetDeck which allows you to set up a column specifically for alerts). More and more useful tools are being set up for Twitter to help monitor what people are saying about your industry.

Listen to what is being said about you

The other use for some of the tools mentioned above (keyword alerts and the Twitter keyword monitoring) is that you can use them to alert you when someone is talking about you, your business, your blog or your brand specifically.

I’ve talked previously about setting up a vanity folder in your feed reader to help you do this so won’t go into great detail about it here – however it’s something that I’ve found particularly useful for a couple of reasons:

1. Building Relationships – when another blogger links to you it is useful to know about it so you can go and build a relationship with that blogger and their readers.
2. Reputation Management – from time to time you might also be mentioned on another site/blog/press in a more negative way. Knowing quickly about this is also important as it enables you to respond (if necessarily) or at least monitor developments.

Create Listening Spaces on Your Blog

Have you ever had a ‘conversation’ with someone where you simply could not get a word in edgeways? The person talked so fast and without taking a breath – to the point where there simply wasn’t space for you to be listened to.

Sometimes I get that same feeling while on blogs. It’s not that the blogger isn’t interested in their reader – it’s just that they get so excited about what they’re blogging about that they just don’t stop long enough to let others have a say.

One of the simplest ways to create these ‘listening spaces’ on a blog is to ask questions. Ask them at the end of your posts, ask them half way through the and even write posts that are nothing but questions.

Listen to the Questions Your Readers are Asking

One of the most important things to be on the listen out for is questions.

I remember one of my first teachers drumming into the class I was in that there was no such thing as a dumb question and that if one person asked a question it usually meant that others also had the same question going around in their minds.

As a result – when a reader asks you a question, you can bet that they’re not the only one thinking it.

Questions reveal potential topics to write about, problems with your site and opportunities to expand what you’re doing on your blog. Pay careful attention to them in the following areas:

1. comments section – this is the most obvious place for your readers to ask questions
2. your inbox – what questions are you getting from readers via your blog’s contact form?
3. search engine referral terms – often people arrive on your site having plugged a specific question into Google. Most stats packages will reveal these terms and phrases – keep on the look out specifically for questions – also check out 103bees – a tool that specifically monitors and collates questions being asked in your search stats.
4. questions typed into onsite search boxes – this is a goldmine of information, monitoring what people are searching for when they’re actually on your site will show you all kinds of needs, problems and challenges that your readers want to learn more about. Lijit is one tool that helps you track these questions.
5. ask readers for questions – from time to time it can be worth writing a post on your blog that specifically invites readers to ask a question.

Listen to what is working (and what isn’t)

The last thing I’ll add on the topic of listening before I open this topic up to others to share their thoughts is to listen by tracking what is and isn’t working on your blog.

This means setting up your blog with a good metrics tool (I use Google Analytics but there are other great ones out there) and regularly using it to work out what is readers are responding to on your blog.

Some places to start include:

• What posts are being read most?
• What posts are generating good conversation/comments?
• What posts are being linked to by others most?
• How are readers using your design? (use a tool like CrazyEgg to create a heatmap)
• What days of the week are people reading your site most on? What times of the day?
• What pages are people ‘bouncing’ from your site on (bounce rate shows how many people arrive on your blog and immediately leave)
• What posts are people spending most (and least) time on?
• What posts are you getting most negative feedback on?

It is easy to obsess on some of these stats – but it’s also easy to ignore the useful stuff in them that could help you improve your blog.

How else do you Listen in your blogging?

I’ve talked for way too long on a post about listening – so now it’s over to you.

What would you add? Do you use some of the above techniques? What has worked well for you? I’m all ears!

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Listening – Principles of Successful Blogging #1

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See the full sized version of this video at YouTube – Expand Your Blog By Adding a Book.

A couple of weeks back I introduced a brainstorming exercise that gets bloggers to think about how to expand their blog. I followed that post up with an exploration of adding a forum to a blog as one good way to expand your blog.

Today In this video I continue this exploration of how to expand a blog by looking at adding a book to a blog. In it we look at the example of PostSecret and their new book PostSecret: Confessions on Life, Death and God.

By ‘book’ I’m talking about ‘real’ or ‘hard cover’ books rather than ‘e-books’ (which I’ll cover later in the series).

As I mention in the video publishing a book is not going to be something most bloggers starting out can realistically achieve (although I’ve chatted to one quite new blogger recently who tells me that he’s just landed a publishing deal just a few months in) – however I do think it is something to keep in the back of your mind as you develop your blog.

Also mentioned in the video were the books by Photojojo and Lifehacker.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Books – How to Expand your Blog #2

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I have not been able to continue on the “How to Promote CPA Offers” series. Nevertheless will now be able to spend some time completing the series. I will get into the details on both white hat & black hat techniques. Remember, I will share the black hat techniques only for educational purposes. I do [...]

Posted by willcritchlow

I am in the middle of a crazy couple of months of seminars, conferences and other assorted presentations. If you’re interested in seeing any of them, my speaking schedule is online.

Last week I spent Wednesday at ad:tech in London where I spoke about advanced analytics and online reputation management. In my analytics presentation, I was refining ideas for what I’m going to talk about at our own advanced SEO seminar so I’m not putting that one online just yet, but I thought the online reputation stuff would make a good Monday morning post. The audience was mainly brand and advertising people so I didn’t assume too much knowledge of SEO or ORM, but instead ran through why you would want to monitor for your brand, how to determine if something is going to be a problem and some tips and tricks we’ve picked up along the way.

For those of you who haven’t seen me speak, my slides are not always the most self-explanatory things so although I have included them here, I am also going to run through the key themes and tips:

Ad:Tech 2009 Online Reputation – Will Critchlow, Distilled

Who’s talking about your brand?

1. London Fashion Week: I wanted to start with something topical so I used some examples from London Fashion Week (including brands and models) to demonstrate the impact of news events (interestingly, I found no significant correlation between spikes in search volume for the brands or models during fashion week). Out of this came two kinds of worked example, however:
   • The power of news stories and official websites such as londonfashionweek.co.uk – both of which were ranking for big brand names throughout the week
   • A look at an example set of negative search results – for a model who has no official website ranking, has wikipedia at #1 for her name and has a story about a sex tape on the first page
2. How to tell if something’s a problem: although most of this will be obvious to anyone with an SEO background, I presented some ways to tell whether a new story you find while monitoring for your name or brand is likely to end up ranking for your name. The factors I encouraged people to look out for were:
   • Is the keyword in the title / URL
   • Is the keyword in the headline and copy
   • How powerful is the domain (noting that most new stories won’t have gathered many links of their own yet so we have to make assumptions based on the power of the domain)
   • Of course I recommended people install the mozbar to get easy access to all these factors
3. The pyramid of pain: the stories you are looking out for especially hard are the negative ones which include the keyword prominently and which reside on a powerful domain. Not only are people very likely to be reading and sharing the story, but it’s highly likely to end up ranking
4. Tips and tricks: through our work for a variety of clients, we have been lucky(?) enough to have encountered at least our fair share of gotchas. I thought the least I could do was share a few tips:
   • Have a plan in advance of bad stuff happening – mid-crisis is not the time to be wondering whose job it is to check the wheelnuts
   • We have found the most valuable part of our daily / weekly reports to be the forecast – trying to "write tomorrow’s executive summary today"
   • When emailing busy executives with critical reputation information make sure your subject line gives them the first thing they need to know, and by the time they’ve read the first sentence on the preview pane of their iphone they are fully up to speed
   • Know who to speak to out of hours. What happens if you discover something critical during monitoring and you can’t reach your normal contact? Make sure you have a plan. I illustrated this with a true story about some monitoring we were doing for a client (not Tesco) and discovered a credible threat against Tesco employees and property. I had to cold-call them and try to get through to the right person without sounding like a bomb-threat nutter. To their credit, I got a quick call back from the head of security, but whenever it’s your client, you shouldn’t have to take that risk

I hope there’s some tips in there for everyone. If it raises any questions, feel free to drop me a line or leave them in the comments.

My next presentations

There are a few tickets left for the PRO SEO seminar but we are expecting it to sell out this week.

On Wednesday, at 4.30pm UK time (8.30am PST / 11.30am EST) I am hosting a free conference call entitled How to be an Excel Ninja (and how it helps your SEO) where I will be slicing and dicing Linkscape data among other things. If you’d like to join the call or get the recording afterwards, you can sign up here.

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online reputation, orm, adtech, presentation

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Over the last three months on ProBlogger it’s been a pretty busy time – here are the most popular posts – judged by mixture of factors including traffic and comments.

1. 9 Things to Do To Make Sure Your Next Blog Post is Read by More than Your Mom
2. 8 First Step SEO Tips for Bloggers
3. Forums – How to Expand Your Blog #1
4. 6 Reasons Your Blog Traffic Might Be Declining [And What to Do About It]
5. How to Use Google’s Wonder Wheel to Find Topics to Write about
6. How to Build a Successful Blog
7. 11 Lessons I Learned Earning $119,725.45 from Amazon Associates Program
8. 9 First Step Goals for New Bloggers
9. How to Make Money (Passively) With Your Blog
10. Want a Crash-Proof Site? A Paint-by-Numbers Guide to Using (and Surviving) Amazon S3

I hope that catches you up on some of what you may have missed this last quarter.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Top 10 Posts on ProBlogger Q3 2009

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A couple of days back I tweeted this question:

“Question: what’s your #1 blog tip in 140 characters or less? GO!’”

Over the next hour or two a lot of great responses came in – so I thought I’d post a link to them today because I think in the midst of them is a lot of wisdom. Below is a screen shot of the first 11 responses – but for the full thread of all replies to that original tweet check out the thread on twitoaster.

What would you add? What’s your #1 blog tip (keep it short).

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Blogging Tips in 140 Characters or Less

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