August, 2009

One of the cool things about the internet is how it gets us closer to a frictionless economy where there are fewer channel constraints or information uncertainties. Or at least that’s what I remember from Econ 101. As a businessperson, it’s kind of scary. But it’s what is. What’s brought me to thinking about this is the most recent communication I received from Google, the Ubiquitous (GtU), about their AdSense advertising program.

Google told me that on my websites where I show (and get paid for displaying) their ads, they were now adding an additional network of “Google-certified” advertisers. This network of third-party advertisers would compete with the Google advertisers for space on my website page. And Google would award this space based on this: “the ad generating the highest revenue for publishers will be displayed.”

Say what?
If you don’t use the Google Adsense or Google Adwords programs, I might as well be talking to you in Martian. If you own Google stock and don’t know what I’m talking about, you ought to research the revenue model of your asset. However, if we’re still connected here, chances are you are a Google AdSense or AdWords customer.  I live on both sides of this coin. I have websites that show ads and I also bid on keywords for advertising space on other websites. Here’s what I’m thinking:

Google AdSense
If you put ads on your website and get checks from Google, you might be able to smile. Google has just increased the client base competing for a presence on your potentially valuable website page. Although website page inventory increases everyday offering increasing options for your prospective advertisers, now there is a larger pool of advertisers looking for – and bidding on – that space.  Congratulations, looks like a win for you.

Google AdWords
If I’m bidding to have my ads placed on websites, it seems to me that I’ve got more competition. It was bad enough that I had to bid for keywords against those ignoramus who bring their egos to the table and bid outside of any meaningful ROI. But now, I’ve got both the ignoramus and the slick automated RoboAgency to compete against. Sort of like simultaneously playing chess against a computer and a 5 year old. I suspect my Pay per Click bid rates will increase.  Bummer.

Today, in a separate article, noted search marketer Kevin Lee wrote, Ten Reasons you’ll soon spend 25% more on search.” He makes some great points having a similar theme but barely touches on this matter of inventory expansion and bid competition.  It will be interesting to see how the factors he identifies together with the upcoming moves by Google to increase the set of advertisers ultimately influences revenue flowing to publishers (AdSense) and cost to advertisers (AdWords).

I’m a big fan of bookmarklet bit.ly, a simple url shortener.

About the same time I became more active with Twitter I was also becoming aware of frequent references to website domains with prefixes such as TinyUrl, Is.gd, Tiny.pl, Rurl.org, bit.ly. and more. Turns out these little sprites of letters and dots are just more internet magic that can turn an ungratefully long website domain into something short and, if not memorable, well, at least, uh, short.

Of course, if you Tweet, a short website reference is beautiful because it leaves the balance of Twitter’s 140 characters to pontificate. But recently I inserted a short bit.ly link into a Facebook post where I had all kinds of space to post a big ugly web domain. I did this because bit.ly offers me two very cool advantages that go beyond merely being short.

Custom domain
When you post your ugly long domain into a domain-shortening tool, usually you get back something like http://bit.ly/161Efn. Although short, it is still kind of ugly. But bit.ly lets you customize your domain. So when I moved my Facebook group over to the new page I gave them the simple domain, http://bit.ly/IllinoisAudubon to get them to a location that would have looked like this: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Illinois-Audubon-Society/81846041882

Tracking
If you establish a free account with bit.ly, you can sign in and view the domains you create and the click activity on the link. So if you want to measure activity on a link you place in an environment you might not otherwise be able to measure, bit.ly can cough up that metric.

bit.ly Preview
Although not specifically part of the short domain tool, bit.ly also offers a plug in for your Mozilla Firefox browser that permits you to hover over a bit.ly url and confirm the true location to which your click will take you. This plug-in also work with many of the other popular domain shorteners.

I’m not shilling for bit.ly. And, even as I write this I’m aware of similar as well as different features from other domain-shortening tools.  So if there is any single take-away from these comments, simply be aware that bit.ly and some others provide you additional management and usability features that go beyond permitting you to squeeze your brilliant thoughts into a 140 character-limiting tool. Look beyond the obvious.

There is a lot of voodoo associated with search engine optimization. Much of it is urban legend and legacy mis-information still circulating from the 20th century Internet. And some of it is promulgated by ersatz search engine optimization (SEO) specialists seeking only to obfuscate the fact that their craft is often simple and uncomplicated. In truth,  SEO is really a lot of fundamental blocking and tackling; just doing the grunt work that can pay dividends.

This came to mind recently when I received an email from our business partner, email service provider ExactTarget. They had a simple objective, to improve their search engine positioning in a competitive industry.  And they were pursuing this objective in a professional and forthright manner.  It is something every website manager can do so I thought I’d share their process.

In their email to me, they noted that the Duo website currently has a link to their website. This is an existing link we created to illustrate our connection to business partners with whom we are pleased to be affiliated. It just wasn’t working as hard for them as it might.  They asked us to make two simple changes:

Create a Link to the Right Page
ExactTarget noted that we were linking to http://www.exacttarget.com and requested that we change that link to http://email.exacttarget.com. Apparently they’ve created this domain because it is more keyword rich. Both links go to the same page.  “exacttarget.com” doesn’t describe anything except their trade name.  But “email.exacttarget.” includes the keyword “email” which at least provides a descriptive keyword about some of what this firm does.

For ExactTarget, they determined that the correct page that I would want to refer my site visitors would be their home page. The only thing I would add to this is the importance of obtaining links to the most appropriate page on your website – and more often than not, that is NOT the home page but an important and more relevant interior page of the site. When you request links to your site, think about the page on which you REALLY want people to enter your site. Then provide that URL.  Whenever possible, drive them to the interior of your site, not your home page, unless the home page really is the most relevant page for your anticipated site visitor.  (Note – if you don’t have a good interior page for your targeted site visitor, consider creating one. But I digress).

Link Descriptive Words – “Anchor Text”
The second thing ExactTarget requested was that we include important keywords as either part of the link or in very close proximity to the link. To make this brainless for us as well as to insure consistency of their message they suggested we use the elevator-pitch copy, “ExactTarget delivers on-demand email software solutions for permission-based email marketing.” And then they suggested we actually hyperlink the keyword phrase “email marketing” to their requested domain.   SEO folks call these linked keywords “anchor text”

Linking the descriptive keyword to the domain sends a signal to the search engines that if you are searching for “email marketing” chances are you will find what you are looking for at the place to which other websites are already linking.  Think of it as pointing, or better yet, voting. If ExactTarget can get a lot of its partners’ websites to “vote” that the right place to go for “email marketing” is “email.exacttarget.com”, the search engines will respond by giving this website prominence for this particular keyword search.

So, for example, if you help people with developmental disabilities, but what you really do is provide pediatric therapy to children with developmental disabilities, seek out your trusted partners who will put the phrase “pediatric therapy” on their site and link that phrase back to the pediatric therapy services of your website. If you’re a lawyer who does tax planning in Grand Rapids, Michigan, request the phrase “Grand Rapids tax planning” be on your partners’ sites and link to a page specifically about your tax planning services.

As I said, the concept is simple. Execution is the challenge. It all comes down to getting the blocking and tackling right.  Is anyone from the Chicago Bears organization listening?

Good economy or bad, marketing budgets are always subject to scrutiny by business managers. Dollars are allocated to various resources and out comes…. what? A brochure? A well-placed article in a trade publication? A speaking engagement? Often it is a lot of feel-good stuff. And I’m not saying it doesn’t work – sometimes. But connecting the investment to the bottom line, what business managers like to call return on investment (ROI), is frequently a stretch. Or, at worst, it is a complete non-starter.  So here comes this Internet thingy which generates gobs of data on all aspects of its performance and what happens? For many marketers, this information is the elephant in the room.  We know it’s there.  We just choose not to recognize it. I’ve dubbed this Faith Based Internet Marketing.

Faith-based Internet Marketing is simply this: PRAY people visit your website. HOPE they find value when they are there. BELIEVE it will help business.

Faith, of course, is a cornerstone of many of our lives, where we have the wisdom to accept much which cannot be otherwise proved. But, really, it has no place in Internet marketing.  Clearly, you do not have to pray that people will visit your website. There are multiple strategies for influencing that outcome and countless tools for measuring your achievement. “Hope” is not an action step as much as it is a state of anticipation. If you are really concerned about site visitors finding value, and you better darn well be, examine your site’s content and method of content delivery to document that it truly provides value. And, again, measure your content types to know if they are being “consumed” as you expect.  And challenge the belief that all your investment of resources actually helps your business.

Most of Duo’s clients don’t sell stuff on their website. So connecting the Internet marketing dot to the meeting-the-business-objective dot is often the most challenging. I don’t have the magic answer to this dilemma. If I did, I’d write a book and not a blog post. One recommendation I often make is to imagine that you didn’t have a web presence at all. Then start identifying exactly what would be lost. Scarily, maybe nothing! But if you do identify that which you would miss, put a dollar value on it – and measure that, too.

If you take these steps, when the Grim Budget Reaper comes to visit, you’ll have the tools to defend your Internet assets – and possibly expand them. Keep the faith. But don’t practice Faith Based Internet Marketing.