1. There is a problem with our keyword selection and we need to adjust our strategy
2. There is a problem with the website which is causing confusion to prospects as soon as they arrive
3. There is a problem with the analytics setup

As an SEO, we have some control over #1. Depending on the arrangement we are often reliant on another company for #2. And we can certainly do some easy checking for #3. So the biggest problem here comes with the complexity of working with another company. Some don’t share your overall philosophy, some are just tough to work with while others can be downright objectionable when it comes to SEO. These are real situations and while we like to think we can resolve any issue when working with others, it just can’t always happen. While we’d love to figure out why the client is getting so much traffic but few conversions, it’s not in the budget and it’s essentially not our responsibility as much as we want it to be.

In reality, SEO can exist in a vacuum but we’re just suggesting that it shouldn’t.

Just to add some complexity to the situation is the actual definition of SEO. Traditionally, we think of SEO as activities that result in increasing visibility on Search Engines. That’s it. It includes some website manipulation. It involves a lot of off-site activity as well. It includes content development and distribution. All of these activities are done with the explicit goal of increasing visibility on Search Engines. Some however, have started to roll other disciplines under the umbrella. CRO (conversion rate optimization) is something that is awesome and helps resolve our bouncerate/conversion problem but it’s not SEO.

Social media is most certainly a gray area. It does have an influence over Search Engine visibility so many will simply roll that into their SEO services. We’re ok with that. It makes sense. Lead nurturing, email marketing, branding, traditional PR, usability…well, now you’re really starting to push it. Some consider Inbound Marketing as the sweet spot. I’d be OK with that but it is also limited in scope to activities intended to drive traffic to a website. It doesn’t really include CRO or web development or user testing or even analytics and goal tracking all of which are huge priorities for us. That’s why we are an Internet Marketing company.

Much of the SEO confusion seems largely to be a result of fuzzy terminology…what is SEO, what is not SEO. Even the pros have trouble agreeing. So we are keeping it as a pretty significant channel in our toolkit but our ‘SEO-only’ campaigns are slowly working their way out.

Photo Credit: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1126222

Paul Fleming is co-founder and VP of Interactive Services for Dinkum Interactive. A trained teacher, Paul has worked in a variety of forms of Internet Marketing but with a focus on SEO. Originally from Australia, he now resides in Philadelphia with his wife and 2 ankle-biters.

We can apply this to Search Engine Optimization, too, as was nicely done in an article on Search Engine Watch called “SEO is Both Science and Art” by Mark Jackson. He provides a clear definition of science that I am reducing to “a systematized knowledge of a subject”. There are many on-line sources for this kind of knowledge for SEO, although Mark does point out that there is a lot of bad information out there in addition to some good stuff.

The science of SEO would of course include using the right platform for your website. Fast loading and easy to navigate are but two of the requirements for the platform. Good content is essential and that includes grammar, spelling and relevance to visitors to the site.  Properly setting up the onsite meta data and analytics for tracking is also part of the science.

Art, according to the SEW article, involves the use of skill and creative imagination. One of the most important requirements for SEO is figuring out which keywords to target.  Online tools abound that give variations of key word phrases and search volume. Of the hundreds of phrases that may be relevant to the content on the site, choosing which to target at any given stage of  the SEO campaign is an art. Finding the prhases that web surfers use to find the product or service, and staying away from the industry jargon the web site owner thinks they use is part of this. Deciding on which long tail phrases and which competitive phrases to target is more involved that applying a mathematical formula to the data and skimming the ‘right’ numbers.

Once those phrases are chosen and agreed upon, each page of the site needs a keyword strategy based on content. This strategy needs to be revisited during the campaign as analytics information is collected and analyzed for what is working well, and what could use a few tweaks. This is a process, based on an understanding of the analytics, looking at trends over time, and not just a snapshot of numbers at any point in time. It involves creative thinking to tie all of this together with a general marketing program for the brand, while keeping the performance of the site and the satisfaction of the visitors to the site in mind.

In order to raise your web site to be a productive member of your brand family and of the internet society, go ahead and read the (good) information on Search Engine Optimization, but find that SEO artist who can take those principles and put them to work for the benefit of your site and brand.

Photo Credits: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1367221, http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1157754

Regina Sillitti is Project Coordinator for Dinkum Interactive. She has worked in programming, design, business analysis and quality assurance. Her background in design and data processing give her a unique perspective on client - tech translation. You can reach her at regina@dinkuminteractive.com, or find her on Twitter, @ReginaSillitti.

If you’re the type who likes to go into their analytics account or you may notice on some of our reports that one of your keyword search referrals says (not provided). Some may have more for this category than others. In fact I recently saw 1 client get 3 sales from (not provided). Hooray to the sales but unfortunately we don’t know the actual converting phrases, just that they came via Google organic search.

So what are we doing about it? Unfortunately there is not a whole lot that we can do about it. It doesn’t change the way we approach a campaign, we’re still going to be increasing your online visibility, driving traffic to your website and focusing on getting those conversions, we’re just not going to have the exact data to work with and report on. In some cases it may actually be worth including Adwords with your campaign, even a small one. It is still a solid marketing channel, it just feels a little dirtier in light of this seemingly deceptive rollout (yeah paid search referral data is still available even if you are logged into your Google account). Does seem a bit strange.

Paul Fleming is co-founder and VP of Interactive Services for Dinkum Interactive. A trained teacher, Paul has worked in a variety of forms of Internet Marketing but with a focus on SEO. Originally from Australia, he now resides in Philadelphia with his wife and 2 ankle-biters.

If you check that chart, you’ll notice some of the latest updates have some reference to a Panda. Initially arriving Feb 23rd, 2011 Panda was a big ‘un. Someone suggested 12% of all websites would be impacted. Hardest hit were the content-heavy websites, in particular those they deemed to contain low quality content. Plus, the real key here was that it seemed to target whole website content instead of individual pages. So now a bunch of low quality pages that didn’t matter, were suddenly pulling down overall website rankings. I observed at a distance, a team that helped to bring a website hit by the initial Panda back to life, but at that time we didn’t see any significant damage to client websites. It wasn’t until Panda 2.5 that we saw one of ours impacted. Overall traffic remained strong, in fact it had never been higher, unfortunately some of their top level keyword phrases took a hit which affected overall conversions. There were a few tell-tale signs that we immediately launched into fixing but it was an unusual update that also meant far more questions than answers. Also hit were some very popular and what many may consider to be good quality websites with solid content which made it even more puzzling.

So I  suggest that the task has become more than “create good content” and in fact I think there are quite a few other factors that have slipped under the radar from this update and as a result of this update. As always, we like to push the importance of looking at all elements of your web presence but there appears to be some quicker fixes that we’ve noticed have had an impact.

Analyze your Site Architecture – this has been overlooked for a long time as designers and developers have been given the responsibility of also creating and implementing the structure. It’s not always a bad thing but sometimes it’s flawed from the start, other times sees the website expanding over time and the structure not able to keep up. So now with Google looking at the website as a whole, it’s more important than ever to be aware of your website flow. These guys help explain better than I can.

Clean up Content – I already mentioned this but it does seem to be a big part of the Panda update so it’s important to reiterate the need to do some cleaning. If you have content that is 6 clicks away from the home page, noindex it, get rid of it or move it to the new structure you have already started working on.

Webmaster Tools – I’m assuming you’ve already been poring through your webmaster info. While much of the data is pretty iffy, it does offer some useful insight in some areas. Certainly the crawl errors and the broken links data is important and make sure to go and fix as many as possible.

Stay Fresh – a good chunk of websites that were hit seemed to be older and more dormant. Google has always rewarded freshness and this seems even more important. Regular updates of content, video, audio etc all create value to both users and search engines so stop neglecting it.

There are still plenty of questions and speculation. Bouncerate has been identified as a possible metric but I’ve not seen it as a factor (though trying to improve this is always a good idea). Nor have I ever seen any improvements from a fully validated website (though it’s also a good goal). For a lot of folks, it’s simply back to basics. Reacquaint yourselves with Google’s guidelines and start creating good, solid content.

Paul Fleming is co-founder and VP of Interactive Services for Dinkum Interactive. A trained teacher, Paul has worked in a variety of forms of Internet Marketing but with a focus on SEO. Originally from Australia, he now resides in Philadelphia with his wife and 2 ankle-biters.

Moving to Disqus
After helping MJ with some basic SEO configurations and reducing the load time her site by making her WordPress theme more efficient (it had about 300 server calls per pageload, which we reduced a LOT to help make her hosting environment for responsive), we moved on to comments.  Our recommendation was to move to Disqus – a comments platform that you’ve probably used/seen on major blogs and news sites.  The benefits were twofold: reduced server load during peak commenting periods and more analytics/tools to monitor and enhance her community.

One Day in the Life of MJ's Big Blog

While the road was a bit bumpy (importing 1.1 million comments is unfortunately not an automated or simplistic process!) we finally launched Disqus on her site this past week.  So far, the community has responded to it with appropriately high levels of opinion and involved – a few hundred comments to the question of  ”do you like threaded comments” was interesting to read!

What Have You Done for me Lately?
What MJ and her blog have reinforced to me is the importance of community, and how that sometimes means paying attention to each of a million comments that by themselves don’t mean too much.   MJ told me that she read each and every comment on her site – that she felt responsible to the people who visited her site and made it a vibrant hub for involvement in reality TV and the personalities of each show.

This was reinforced each time we discussed a new feature or change to MJ’s site.  The ultimate question she asked was: did the change or feature in question advance her community and help them become more involved, or did it hinder that goal?  If only we could all keep such a laser-straight focus on our communities and networks, nurturing them into powerful assets, we’d be in good shape.

Jacob Smith is a Senior Project Manager and Web Strategist with Dinkum Interactive and has led over 150 high-level consulting and website development projects over the last 10 years. He is active in both the internet and cultural communities, and served on the board of Philly Car Share, a nonprofit and one of the largest car sharing organization in the United States until helping engineer its sale to Enterprise Holdings in the summer of 2011. Originally from Southern California, Jacob and his wife, Meghan, now live in Center City Philadelphia with their young sons Rory and Duncan.

This concept makes perfect sense for application development, but it’s also a great similitude for how we approach SEO.  While I’m not an SEO expert (that title belongs to our resident Paul Fleming), I spend a good chunk of my time helping our clients understand it and keep current with the trends and developments.

A common question, which I received from three different clients this week, is to ask how we research keywords to determine if they are relevant and worth targeting.  In essence: what makes a good keyword or phrase?

There are two parts to it, and the first is neatly answered by the concept of desire paths.

1. Usage – Just like with a desire path, a good keyword is one that is actually used by a real live person (in our case, a prospect).  A few years ago we had a client that wanted to correct us each time we proposed “non profit” as a keyword in phrases for their campaign.  They insisted that the correct spelling was “nonprofit”!  However, correct or not, qualified prospects were already using the spelling “non profit” so we had to position ourselves in front of them using the terminology (or path) that they were intentionally using.  So, first step: look at the tracks and trails on the ground and see what people are searching for, and if those phrases are relevant to the campaign.
2. Competition – There are lots of wonderful keywords out there that are simply too competitive to target, especially at the beginning of a campaign.  High rankings for valuable terms like “rare books” or “christian university” take time, money, energy, and a bit of magic to attain.  So, with each keyword research revision, we present both the number of searches for a particular term and the number of competitors in the marketplace that might also be targeting the same term.

The desire paths metaphor applies to other elements of internet marketing as well, including social media investments, email marketing scheduling, paid search advertising, platform usage, etc.  You shouldn’t solely follow your customers around, waiting to see what they are interested in (I’m reminded of a Rupert Murdoch quote that “We don’t deal in market share. We create the market.”).  However, it’s always good to know what they think is the shortest path from point to point – you may just find yourself meeting them halfway.

Jacob Smith is a Senior Project Manager and Web Strategist with Dinkum Interactive and has led over 150 high-level consulting and website development projects over the last 10 years. He is active in both the internet and cultural communities, and served on the board of Philly Car Share, a nonprofit and one of the largest car sharing organization in the United States until helping engineer its sale to Enterprise Holdings in the summer of 2011. Originally from Southern California, Jacob and his wife, Meghan, now live in Center City Philadelphia with their young sons Rory and Duncan.

So for us, it’s really just a matter of here we go again, how do we adapt what we do without diluting impact for our clients? Right now we’re not 100% certain, we continue to do what we do and start to address any anomalies in our reports as they come through but you should expect to see a reduction in the number of keywords driving visitors to your website (so far it’s a pretty small number). Rankings (for what they are worth) will remain trackable but the detailed keyword referrals will no longer apply.

So that’s a shame, not the end of the world as some SEO companies fear but a real shame. Forget about SEO and Internet Marketing companies who report on these statistics. Think about the website owners, especially those who use this data to help focus their business strategies and goals. Again, not the end of the world for them but a loss of some very valuable information.

Photo credit: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1056131

Paul Fleming is co-founder and VP of Interactive Services for Dinkum Interactive. A trained teacher, Paul has worked in a variety of forms of Internet Marketing but with a focus on SEO. Originally from Australia, he now resides in Philadelphia with his wife and 2 ankle-biters.

I prefer clients who want to understand the Search Engine Marketing journey and who take the time to ask questions as they come up. These clients are often, although not always, more engaged and better partners in their campaign. Many times this is the difference between a campaign that has a hard time getting off the ground, and one that is more successful.

As in any human communication, there are frequently unasked questions lurking behind the ones that are given voice, and the person doing the asking may not be aware of them.  In a lengthy conversation with a relatively new client, I explained about general keywords and long tail phrases, why it is important to focus on a smaller number of phrases that will result in highly targeted traffic to the new site, and other basic SEO type information.  The client then wanted to understand how search engines knew to look for his site, and I started in on an explanation of XML site maps and spiders and internet competition.

Then he asked a very telling question. Will someone who is running a small business and creating and managing their own site know about how to communicate with the search engines to let them know how to find the site? This is a much deeper question, and of course there is not a pat answer here.  None of the things that Dinkum does is very secret, and information on SEO and all related topics are available on the internet for anyone who cares to read up on them. I know this, and the client knows it now, too.

What he was really asking is, “What is Dinkum going to do for me that will set me apart from the other sites on the web with similar offerings? How will you make me unique, and get me found?” Even more basic is the underlying question of, “Why should I pay you to do what I can learn from the internet?”

That is the important question to answer here! I needed to explain everything clearly and in an understandable style so the client was comfortable with the idea that he can take care of his business, and Dinkum is there to help him by doing the hard work of making his site visible on the web and help him to understand that the years of experience that we have enables us to take advantage of opportunities to promote his site when changes in the online world occur, as they inevitably do.  Answering the detailed technical questions is a means to enhance the trust necessary in this relationship to give this campaign the best shot at being successful.

The next time a client is peppering you with questions, take it as the opening to creating a trusting, mutually beneficial relationship. Earn their trust by knowing and being able to explain how you are going to help them be the best they can be. And always listen for the questions not asked when chatting with your clients.

Photo Credit: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1238327

Regina Sillitti is Project Coordinator for Dinkum Interactive. She has worked in programming, design, business analysis and quality assurance. Her background in design and data processing give her a unique perspective on client - tech translation. You can reach her at regina@dinkuminteractive.com, or find her on Twitter, @ReginaSillitti.

By the time we have explained the importance of choosing relevant keywords, they are on board with wanting to rank the raw data to put their best SEO foot forward with good meta data. Sometimes we struggle with content, but even when we struggle, the client understands the need for well written, user friendly, valuable, keyword rich content throughout their site.

Now comes the hard part. All of this work is just the beginning of the campaign.  ”What do you mean just the beginning?” they ask. “We wrote compelling content, you optimized the site, now we just wait for the visitors to click through!” Maybe it is a symptom of the instant gratification we have come to expect in most other aspects of modern life. Or maybe, just maybe, I have not been successful at educating some clients about the ongoing aspect of SEO.  Recently I read an article on Search Engine Watch that used an expression that I feel really spoke to the issue at hand. On page optimization “buys you a ticket to the competition” but your online strategy helps you win it.

In other words, you can’t hope to become visible and win the hearts and minds of human visitors, until you have made the site friendly to spiders, and valuable to humans.  But that is just opening the door.  Online marketing, link building, paying attention to local search, all  get you over the threshold and into the arena.

Keyword strategy is not a ranking factor, according to the author, Eric Enge, but it makes sure you are in the right game.  Without a well optimized site, search engines have trouble finding you, and if search engines can’t find you for relevant searches, the all important human visitors can’t find you either!

I am going to work on my client education strategy, to make sure it clearly includes the long term nature of SEO, the importance of keywords and good content, not as a ranking factor, but as a relevance factor, and the importance of fresh content, via blogs, articles, press releases, video, social media mentions, bookmarks, and everything else relevant to a given campaign, to keep the site on the radar of the search engine spiders and human visitors.

Content is king, but maybe we haven’t done a good enough job explaining WHY!

If you have client education tips, I would love to hear from you.

Photo Credits:  http://www.sxc.hu/photo/762140 , http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1254879 

Regina Sillitti is Project Coordinator for Dinkum Interactive. She has worked in programming, design, business analysis and quality assurance. Her background in design and data processing give her a unique perspective on client - tech translation. You can reach her at regina@dinkuminteractive.com, or find her on Twitter, @ReginaSillitti.

One of the more important conversations that we engage in with new clients involves keyword phrases. We understand the importance of drilling down to the most relevant, yet reasonable search terms. Some terms are relevant, but just so competitive that there is no point in targeting them in the first part of the campaign. Some are relevant but no one is looking for them, so we may be easily able to have the site rank for the term, but since no one is searching for it, the return is  questionable!

There are a host of options between those extremes.  These are typically some longer tail phrases with good search and competition numbers. Now we just need to know how relevant they are to the business. The client knows the business better than we can hope to at this point, so we need their input.

I spoke with a client who was taking time from his vacation to get the keyword phase of the project to the next level.  I explained that we use a three point rating scale with one being very relevant, two being somewhat relevant, and three being not relevant at all.  Easy? Most of the time.  This client wanted a deeper scale so he could tell me which phrases are very relevant today, which may be relevant in a few months, and which will always be secondarily relevant.  By talking through it, we were able to come to an agreement on a new scale that suited his needs and got us the important information we needed to take the next step for his website.

Another client made all of the phrases ones, thinking he was complimenting us on our research! Again, by talking through the process we were able to help him categorize the phrases that then allowed us to target those most relevant to the business.

One more example involves a proposal that went out to a potential client. When answering this persons questions, he made it clear that he was trying to compare us to another provider, and wanted more detailed information in certain areas so that he could easily make the comparison. Once we understood what he was looking for, we were able to give him the appropriate level of detail to make the comparison.

In each of these examples, we obviously believed that we had done a thorough job of outlining and explaining what we needed, and outlining what we were going to do for the client.  In each instance, when we listened to the questions, we were able to make things more clear.

It is important to take these steps with each client or contact for sure. But keeping the bigger picture in mind, we can also plan ahead to make our communications clearer from the beginning, allowing others to understand more quickly and ask deeper questions from the start.

How do you encourage your clients  to ask questions about your processes, and what do you learn from the questions?

Photo Credit: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/976655

Regina Sillitti is Project Coordinator for Dinkum Interactive. She has worked in programming, design, business analysis and quality assurance. Her background in design and data processing give her a unique perspective on client - tech translation. You can reach her at regina@dinkuminteractive.com, or find her on Twitter, @ReginaSillitti.