Google Chrome OS - what does it mean?

Announced in July of 2009 was Google Chrome OS - Official Google Blog: Introducing the Google Chrome OS - when I first read it I was shocked. Does this really mean that Google is going to try to develop an operating system?

The nitty gritty of the announcement is pretty abundant when you read who is involved and the work they are putting into the product is impressive. The whole goal is to launch a user friendly, ant-virus prone, system that people can install and start using without having to relearn and "to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web." In otherwords "It should just work."

In conjunction with my theory years ago about how TV, Phones, and the Internet will all work on one basic system as the technologies merge into one another the theory behind the Google Chrome OS and could computing is indicative that we are heading into a direction that our phones, computers, and television will all work as one streamlined process.

I can already see where Google is going to go as I recently was forced to purchase a Google Phone (G1) from T-Mobile as I went swimming with my iPhone that I had for over 2 years now. (pictured here) In order to get a new phone I had to sign a new 2 year contract with at&t which I was not ready to do. The best alternative was to use the extra line to my kids' T-Mobile account (which I have had since 2002). In addition to the lower cost to maintain the phone, the purchasing and setup of the phone was even easier then when I had originally gotten my iPhone. The downside was the fact that I had to setup a gmail account finally, but once setup and imported all my calendar items and my contacts from outlook they downloaded right to the phone. No using iTunes to synch my phone. It was all from the internet...

So you can probably see where Google is going with this. Right now with Google Docs, the Google G1 Phone, Gmail and signing in to the personalized Google search all of my information is stored in one place and synched without having to install software, plug in my phone, or learn how to do it. It just worked!

My prediction - the Google Chrome OS will get someone up on the internet and running with cloud computing in just a few simple steps:
1)Download the Google Chrome OS FREE!
2)Install
3)Enter your username and password for your Google Gmail, or personal account
4)and your all synched up including calendar, contacts, documents, email, etc.

Not to mention that they will be launching the open source by the end of 2009 so that other companies and developers can benefit through developing apps and the like as they have for the Google G1 phone.

...and the look: (unofficial photos courtesy of Mashable)

The Coolest Search Peeps Ever!

In my many years in search marketing I have come to know a lot of people in the industry. Some are well known and some not so much but are rock stars in their own right. This post has been a long time brewing in my head. I have wanted to do a shout out to all the people that have been around for many years and have influenced not only myself, but others as well. To keep the list from getting too long I stuck with those I had photos of on-hand. As some of you know I am always the one behind the camera taking pics of multiple events in the search industry so naturally I had photos of each and every one of these cool search peeps. I also kept the list alphabetical so as not to make anyone feel bad for being at the bottom of the list (sorry Rand and Todd, it just ended up that way).

  Aaron Goldman 

I have known Aaron for a few years now through from his writings for Media Post, including the table topics he had gathered for the past couple of years for the Search Insider Summits. Aaron was the VP of Marketing & Strategic Partnerships at Resolution Media for nearly 5 years before breaking off with Connectual as a Managing Partner bringing together buyers and sellers of digital marketing solutions. Aaron also serves on the Executive Board of Directors for the Chicago Interactive Marketing Association and is a frequent speaker at SES, OMMA, and Search Insider Summits. Aaron's propensity to wear shirts with funny phrases such as "Google Me" and "Who Tweeted?" leads to great conversations about the power of natural search and social media. You're shirts inspire me Aaron!

Dan Perry 

One of the best In-House SEO's I have had the pleasure of working with in planning the In-House Day for the Search Insider Summits. Dan's collaboration and ideas have driven the agenda to a finely tuned and informational day catered to the issues that only In-House SEO's face. Dan has been the SEO Manager for Cars.com for over 3 years in which he has managed the organic direction. Big kudos go out to Dan for his recent weight loss. I have got to say I didn't even recognize him at the last Search Insider Summit. Yay Dan!

David Berkowitz 

With over 7,500 followers on Twitter, David has been an influential participant in the search marketing industry. Having been a speaker at over 80 events, appearing on CNBC, and quoted in the NY Times, Ad Age, and many other publications David continues to educate and influence the search (now social) industry. I have known David for a few years and have always enjoyed the conversations about search and most recently share a passion for social media marketing. David recommended the book Groundswell over a year ago and since then I have been focusing on social media strategies in order to drive search rankings. David always has time to give great advice and has been a huge advocate as I work with Media Post on the Search Insider Summits and a great source to bounce ideas off of. David has a smile that seems to get larger the more he drinks and is always willing to watch my purse while I take photos. Thank You David!

Gord Hotchkiss 

Having served as the Programming Chair for the Search Insider Summit for several years now Gord has been a great support in every crazy idea I come up with in planning or promoting the summits. I first met Gord at SES NY in 2006 and had a chance to talk to him in more depth with the idea for the In-House Day at the Search Insider Summit while walking the beach on a remote island with the rest of the "dolphin" tour group ("dolphin" is in quotes because I have yet to see a dolphin on the tour). Gord and I talked about the struggles In-House SEO's face and after introducing me to Dan Perry we began putting the agenda into affect. While Gord gets out from time to time with the rest of us, he somehow manages to get up bright and early each morning to kick off each day's discussions. Keep those panels going Gord!

Janel Landis 

What can you say about Janel? When I first met Janel she was on a panel of mine a while back and I was told before meeting her that she tends to be a bit quiet. I don't know where this person got the impression that she is quiet because Janel is anything but. She has always been there through the late nights as we talk SEO by the harbor with the rest of the cool SEO Peeps. Janel has a lot of great ideas and has brought insight into every panel she has spoken on. I never leave the room after she has spoken without a little bit more in my database of SEO knowledge. Janel has been the VP of Search Marketing for SendTec for over 4 years. She has spoken at numerous conferences and writes for Media Post regularly. I always enjoy Janel's panels but have to say the discussion on RFP's Fundementaly Broken Moderated by Aaron Goldman was by far my favorite as it was great to see the trials and tribulations our vendors go through to write proposals (that video can be viewed here). Thank You Janel!

Olivier Lemaignen 

Almost 10 years at Intuit brings Olivier a wealth of experience and knowledge. Olivier has gone from Senior Marketing Manager to Group Manager of Online Acquisition in the Small Business division and is now the Group Manager for Global Search Marketing. I met Olivier while working on the agenda for the In-House day at the search Insider Summit. He has not only spoken at the Summit but has spoken at SES and is on the Board of Advisors for SEMPO. Olivier always has a lot to offer when it comes to the In-House agenda and is always a delight to talk to while at the Summit's various activities. Olivier is always willing (with some arm twisting) to continue the networking with his appletini in hand. Keep 'em coming!

Rand Fishkin 

5 years ago Rand Fishkin started SEOmoz.com which has since grown to over 150,000 members. Rand has become a Rock Star in the SEO community with close to 9,000 followers on Twitter (even though he doesn't get the fascination people have with Twitter) and so many friends on Facebook he can't keep track. When Rand isn't posting for the T_Max Twitter handle (and you thought it was Todd) with myself and his wife he is speaking at one of the many search conferences around the world (despite his pitch for SMX East getting turned down). Rand has a great insightful point of view when it comes to search marketing on the SEOmoz Blog which has over 40,000 readers. Rand has always been very dapper and manages to maintain his composure even when his wife is cutting a search marketer down (and you know she will).

Todd Friesen 

AKA Oilman (a nickname for searchengineforums.com he used while he was an accountant for Chevron Canada), Todd has been a key player in the SEO industry since 1998. Before his current position as VP of Search at Position Technologies he was the Director of Search at Range Media. If you haven't heard Todd on WebmasterRadio.fm you can find him speaking at conferences such as Search Engine Strategies, SMX and Media Post's Search Insider Summit. I first heard Todd's name after I left Visible Technologies as he had briefly taken over the Search team there. Since then Todd and I have been through discussions from how he thinks H1 tags actually effect your rankings to arguing with Rand about how Twitter is cool. Todd is very passionate (to say the least) about SEO. Get him on the right topic and he will convince you to see it his way before letting you go anywhere. Take a Valium Oilman!

  Topher Kohan 

One of my favorite SEO's Topher is the Search Engine Optimization Coordinator for CNN.com. Topher came highly recommended by Dan Perry for the In-House day this last May 2009 and added great value to our panel representing the large corporation as an In-House SEO. At one point he even stumped Jeremiah Andrick to the point where he was focusing on what Topher had said. Topher is always a delight to hang out with and his tweets never fail to educate and amuse. Keep it up little buddy!

Twitter Search Help

On July 14, 2008 the folks at Twitter announced that they acquired Summize to help power the searching of all those random tweets by users. The downside to having such a powerful user generated website is that there isn't much control over what people say or how they say it. We even ran into this when marketing for the Search Insider Summit last spring when trying to get attendees used to using the #MPSIS branding hashtag in referencing the summit while they had been used to using the #SIS in the past. The move was not only a branding decision, but one that help steer away from any confusion when someone talked about their "sis" (short for "sister").

So how does one search for what they are looking for specifically on Twitter?

The folks at Twitter and Summize have streamlined the process by allowing for some basic operators you can use quickly without having to fill out the advanced search on Twitter. Thanks to Twitter not only can we find tweets about specific topics close to us (such as Drinks in Seattle) but we can now track them in our various applications (I personally like the feeds in Tweetdeck to stay up-to-date)

How does one use these for Marketing?

Track Your Brand - When keeping up to date on what people are saying about your brand you can use the simple hashtag or just phrase search in the handle and keep the feed on your Tweetdeck, or even your Google personal or reader page. Customer Service - One of my favorite examples of how Twitter search is used is from both Comcast and Qwest who are prime examples of how companies are now using Twitter to track what their customers are saying. Most people at one time or another have tweeted that "Comcast Sucks" or "Comast is slow" or even that they are "waiting for Comcast" - Comcast has a handle @comcastcares and the people monitoring it track all of these phrases or key words through Twitter's search. When a new tweet is posted they simply respond to that person and try to work them through their frustrations through Twitter. For Example: @micahn posted "Comcast crawling again... 3:43 PM Jan 17th" to which Comcast had replied immediately ultimately resulting in @micahn happy again about his internet connection I myself have had great help from Qwest when tweeting "Still no modem from qwest. C'mon guys" they quickly responded with "@SEOGoddess Hi if you DM me your Qwest number/contact number I'll check the modem status for you. Thanks Corey" and sent me a message of when my modem was scheduled to arrive. From customer service to monitoring your brand - even using key terms in your tweets to help people find you and gain quality followers Twitter search can be a powerful tool all around. Below is a quick reference for those of you not sure exactly how these search operators on Twitter work - Enjoy! dog bone Contains both "dog" and "bone" somewhere in the tweet. "tweetup Seattle" Contains the exact phrase "tweetup Seattle" somewhere in the Tweet. vegan OR vegetarian Contains either "vegan", "vegetarian" or both somewhere in the tweet. toilet-paper Contains the word "toilet" but not "paper" in the tweet. #twitlingo Contains the hashtag "twitlingo" which most people will use when tweeting a specific word, phrase, or topic as a group collective. from:SEOGoddess A tweet that has been sent from the "SEOGoddess" handle. to:jandrick Any tweet sent to the "jandrick" handle in twitter. @RealitySEO Any tweets referencing the "RealitySEO" handle (usually replies, #followfriday, or any other types of mentions. "happy hour" near:"san francisco" Any tweet containing the exact phrase "happy hour" and sent near "san francisco". near:Seattle within:5mi Any tweets by people Billy Mayssince:2009-06-28 Any tweets containing "Billy Mays" that were tweeted since the date "2009-06-28" (year-month-day). followfriday until:2009-06-26 Any tweets containing "followfriday" tweeted until the date "2009-06-29". movie bruno:) Any tweet containing the word "movie", and "Bruno", and with a positive attitude. Star Trek :( Any tweet containing "Star Trek" with a negative attitude. twitlingo? Any tweet containing "twitlingo" and asking a question. funny filter:links Any tweets containing "funny" and linking to URLs. news source:tweetdeck Any tweet containing "news" and entered via TweetDeck (more twitter apps)

Rand Fishkin gets "Honest about Social Media Marketing"

I am not one to engage in heated discussions especially topics thrown out in order to spark a "lively debate" on the internet. In fact my general rule is that if something strikes a cord with me I will sit on it a few days and will usually completely forget it ever was said but at times fins myself am still thinking on it. In which case I will then respond later when the initial reaction has wavered a bit.

Today I was hit by a posting that happened to spark a blogpost of my own after laying dormant for so many months. But why? Could it be that I am calmly in Florida for the Search Insider Summit wrapping up Winshuttle's Community Site (launching next Tuesday) and helping to put the final touches on Media Post's Search Insider Summit agenda, and speakers that I now have time to post? Possibly - since I still stick by my theory that people that have time to rant are people that don't have enough work to do. This evening I seem to fall into that category.

So my rant for the evening is in response to a good friend of mine Rand Fishkin. I am going to start off by stating that while I have known Rand for a short period of time he has been a great supporter and I still hold him in high regards. Unfortunately Rand Fishkin's post to his blog at 1:49 am Monday May 4th in which he states,

"The majority of marketers who engage in social media do so NOT because it produces greater ROI (professionally), but because the metrics are more immediately tangible and emotionally rewarding."

A very a bold statement in which Rand Fishkin continues to state his case by simplifying the act of what it takes to optimize a website,

"Let's say I put in some effort attracting more relevant visitors to my site. I see that a certain phrase is sending good quality traffic via my analytics and decide to pursue a higher ranking for that keyword. I do a bit of external link research, find some good places for a listing, maybe acquire a small handful of external links. I tweak the title tag, the H1 and a bit of the page content and make the call to action more prominent and compelling. I find a few important pages on my site (the top pages tool is badass for this) and place some good internal links. My rankings rise a few positions and I see more traffic the next week.

My conversions go up, and my company makes a few hundred more dollars in signups every week thereafter."

Now before I continue to quote his blog posting I am going to break a part the entire posting as I would an email to some of my favorite and very intelligent developers from my past (you know who you are) as we would discuss why work needed to be done on the website in order to obtain rankings (discussions that oddly don't happen anymore as more and more developers and others are seeing that SEO isn't a bunch of "smoke and mirrors"). In the past my emails would come with links to Google's webmaster guidelines and other websites that included SEO best practices, but in this case I am just going to state my opinion in response to Rand Fishkin's opinion (and remember, this is just my opinion).

So picking apart the above statement:

1) First item on the agenda "some effort". Really? SEO takes some effort? simply add meta tags, keywords, h1 tags and some internal linking and bam you have rankings...

If that were really the case a lot of us SEO's would be out of a job. Ok that statement was a bit broad - so more detail: Understanding the basics of SEO is great. Focus on a few key terms that you know your audience is searching for and get your Title tags to reflect them (so that the snippet draws your user to click when you do get rankings) place them in the correct densities within the content of your site (across the site for broad aggressive 1-2 word terms and whole pages around specific 3-5 word phrases for a more targeted audience) internal linking including those terms in the anchor text seeded throughout the site (yes the navigation on each page gets skipped as they are overlooked as shingles) with related content linking to other related content not just for users but bots as well.

Of course that's just scratching the surface - once you get rankings how you present your value proposition and your call to action after the user has clicked through the snippet to the page that is ranking is crucial in driving that conversion.

2) "I do a bit of external link research, find some good places for a listing, maybe acquire a small handful of external links." Where are these external links coming from? Rand doesn't get into detail here, but my assumption would be that the person obtaining the links would be hitting up forums that have postings on the topic in which they would be optimizing for, or comment on a blog post here and there with the phrase located in the comment surrounded by a hyperlink. But isn't that social media marketing? I would hope the SEO isn't purchasing links on a website somewhere, 'cause that would be bad...

Rand Fishkin continues to talk about the metrics of SEO and how effective the "some effort" is:

"To see 59 conversions this week vs. 53 from last week means an improvement of more than 10% for an investment of only a day's work. Repeat that process and you've got something amazing on your hands."

An average SEO makes anywhere between $30-$80,000 per years salary. let's assume that the SEO putting in "some effort" is a beginning SEO since the work is pretty basic. A days work would cost the company $115 for an SEO making $30,000 a year (not counting the cost in benefits, computer, software, etc). That "one days work" just brought in 6 more conversions than the week before bringing them to a $19 cost per conversion. I don't know about you but that's kinda high. In fact I just brought Winshuttle from a $18 cost per conversion in Adwords to now $6 cost per conversion and increased conversions from 100 per week to 100 per day with 1 weeks work. (not gonna bring my salary into it, I'll let you figure out the math on your own)

Rand Fishkin goes on to talk about the social media side of his statement. Now here's where I am going to slightly agree with him that the psychology of having friends is what drives social media marketing. In fact studies have shown over the past few years that the driving factor behind social networking and why it is becoming so popular is the psychology of human interaction. When it comes to the buying decision process us humans will usually talk to friends or go into a store and talk to a salesperson about their take on products comparing each item's pros and cons before making that purchase. why do we want to do this? We are social creatures at heart and will "trust" anything a "friend" has to say about something before we make that decision ourselves. How many times have you not only gone to a friend before making a buying decision, but talked to a friend before making life decisions in general? Choosing what college to go to, who you want to date, if you should marry them or not, should you buy a house or rent an apartment, and so on. Ultimately the decision is yours but you generally won't make it without talking to someone first.

That is where the power of social media comes into play. Especially in my case at Winshuttle working with business to business as the purchasing decision making process takes months and requires a bit of nurturing throughout. That process can be sped up or solidified in the company's direction if handled appropriately as the lead comes through the gate. Social media plays a huge part in that initial messaging. If the user sees the brand not only mentioned but talked about in a positive way before ever coming to the site they are swayed that much more before we capture that lead. If this is done right it not only shortens the buying cycle, but also frees up our sales people by bringing them more qualified leads faster. The less time they take, the more they can close, the less the company has to pay per qualified lead and so on and so on.

Here's where I start to pick apart Rand's post piece by piece:

After showing a screenshot of SEOmoz's own analytics rand fishkin goes on by pointing out that Twitter has only .35% of the conversions while Google holds .72%,

"There's Twitter at the bottom of the list, bringing 10K+ visits to our site! That's huge, right?

Here's the problem... It's also the lowest converting traffic of any referral source - less than half that of aggregate Google referrals."

Here Rand is counting just Twitter, but what about Facebook, or possibly other social sites in which SEOmoz is mentioned? When I search for SEOmoz I see not only the offical website but look - there's twitter, a blog (copyblogger.com), youtube, stumbleupon, digg and of course Facebook (on page 2). All which obtain rankings and help in solidifying the SEOmoz brand as users conduct research for the best ways to learn how to optimize their website or look for cool tools to help in optimizing the site. Oh and wait - wasn't this blog posting by Rand himself social media marketing? In looking at the amount that Rand Fishkin blogs seems that he manages to get in at least 1 post a day if not every few days.

Rand continues on by stating,

"I grant that direct referrals are never the whole story, and that there is real branding, marketing and user acquisition value to the traffic, participation and effort spent in social media. What I worry about is whether these intangibles are worth the expenditure.

In every one of the social media cases, the feedback and the metrics are coming from real people that I can reply to, hear back from and strike up a conversation with. The lonely days of lines & numbers as the only recompense for my marketing efforts are at an end. When I engage in social media marketing, I don't feel like an SEO geek, toiling against an algorithm and an anonymous search audience. I feel like a social butterfly, blossoming in the world of Twitter & Facebook, the same outlets the media is raving on about all day long (when not obsessed with swine flu, that is)."

I admit I myself tend to get distracted from time to time when a topic I am interested becomes a buzz on Twitter or Facebook. I of course will justify it by saying that it's for work since most of the discussions I take an interest in are online marketing related. There are days in which I know I need to sit with my head down and get work done and those are the days that the tweetdeck gets shut off and I don't touch Facebook until I get home at night and the kids are fast asleep.

Just as any addiction, social networking should be used in moderation.

Why am I picking on Rand you ask? Because this is a point of discussion each time I go out with Rand and give him a hard time about not tweeting a lot (or that Todd Friesen tweets too much) or that Rand doesn't follow a lot of people on Twitter (but neither do I so I can't pick on him there) or that he almost never logs into Facebook and ads all those people that want to be his friend. He just "doesn't understand why people are so addicted to Twitter or Facebook". A discussion we continue to have and have always walked away with Rand Fishkin continuing to have his opinion and the rest of us social media brats with ours.

I know that in the case of my position at Winshuttle the social media work has become extremely effective in not only generating brand awareness in resolving issues people might have for SAP that Winshuttle's products can solve, but also in engaging SAP consultants that might use transactionSHUTTLE with one client and recommend it for another (I actually have quite a few consultants as Facebook friends and have engaged in discussions with them at times).

The moral of my story is simply this. Rand Fishkin's post brought up a statement I have been often telling people especially as I am here attending the Media Post Email and Search Insider Summits that Social Media Marketing is today what SEO was several years ago. Back in the day when I worked for an agency and then at Classmates the struggle was to get buy in from others in order to get changes made for search optimization. Optimizing was more about proving that SEO was valid and worked when there was no way of really tracking that the efforts made were bringing in the dough (ROI). Now Search optimization has become not only proven over and over to the extent that executives and other people are asking me what are we going to do next (rather than me asking for the work and getting some of it done) but is now easily tracked and measured.

I say give social media a few years (especially in today's economy) as company's start to see the value in the benefits a tweet a day and a Facebook page can make.

SEO/SEM Salaries - Actual Survey Results

As the search marketing industry grows by importance and the qualified individuals that choose to make a career from search marketing (either SEO or PPC) gain experience and insight as search becomes more and more complex we start to ask ourselves are we really making what we are worth? As Richard Zwicky pointed out during his lunch and learn at the Search Insider Summit in Park City Utah this last December of 2008 a lot of us SEO's left contemplating our salaries.
Rand Fishkin posted a general guideline with job titles and descriptions back in 2006, and Payscale even reported their findings on January 20, 2009 based on individual's years of experience as well as broken down by city and state. Unfortunately Rand's salary ranges while pretty acurate are quite broad leaving most of us thinking "Yeah I fit somewhere in between, but where exactly?" and Payscale leaving some of us wondering how the heck does someone actually have over 10 years of experience as an SEO? Not to mention the salary difference of someone that has between 1-4 years and 5-9 years experience really not jumping that considerably.
Being the research junkie that I am I decided to run my own SEO salary survey. I posted the form on my blog back in July of 2008 and waited to recieve over 1,000 participants grabbing not only their SEO salaries, but the company size, agency or in-house, and so on. The results were pretty interesting, and I have to admit renewed my faith in the industry once again that us SEO people are valued more than we were 7 years ago (when I was making $35k a year as an SEO Lead).



As you can see most SEO people search anywhere between $30,000 to $89,000 per year salary with a larger number in the $50,000 to $89,000 per year salary range. Though it still looks like quite a lot of the agency SEO's are making under $29,000 per year salary. Rarely will you see an SEO making over $90,000 while working at an agency.
In-house SEO's however have a different (ut not by much) salary range than the agency SEO's with the majority making anywhere between $30,000 to $49,000 and $50,000 to $89,000 per year salary again with the majority bringing in $50,000 to $89,000 per year salary. But as you can see a much larger percentage earn over $90,000 per years salary as in-house SEO's than the agency SEO's.
As I pointed out in my last post comparing the roles of an in-house SEO vs someone that would work for an agency I suggested in the end that someone wanting to make SEO a career would benefit from starting out in an agency and moving to in-house full time as they gain more experience and knowledge. With more and more companies hiring in-house SEO's these companies are recognizing that the role these people play should be in the upper management positions requiring a higher salary range, and more and more are even beginning to develop entire teams rather than using agencies (or to supplement the agency).

SEO Career - Agency vs. In-House SEO

As the search industry grows agencies are popping up all over and more and more companies are hiring in-house SEO's. How does one decide to get into search engine optimization and which direction does one take in their career path? In-House SEO or SEO Agency?
In 2006 I finally jumped ship from SEO Agency to full time in-house SEO at Classmates.com as their SEO Manager. It was a position created with no real thought put into it as to what work was needed, how to scale the effectiveness of the position, or who the position would be reporting to but there definitely was a need for someone in-house as the agency they were working with at the time had great suggestions for SEO but weren't able to get the work completed.
I was originally hired to work under one of the VPs in Marketing who was very good at analysis, but not so much on the technical side of the website, and most certainly didn't understand SEO. He set me loose after I explained the keyword analysis and analyzing what terms were driving conversions from paid search in order to determine a starting point for optimizing the site. Unfortunately that VP quit just a few weeks after my hiring along with not having someone to directly guide me I continued to work on the site as if I were a consultant optimizing for a client. During the first couple of months I befriended a few of the VPs throughout the company who had setup a meeting with Ted Cahall (CEO) along with a group of developers, Directors and other VPs in order to hammer out what changes needed to be made and set a priority. Close to the end of the meeting Ted Cahall had asked me how much revenue I predicted out of these changes. A concept I had never even thought of. As consultants our goal is to optimize the site and increase traffic or rankings as much as possible to show that our work was effective. It was always up to the clients and the website to drive the conversions. Now I was faced with an end-to-end process that I had worried about as a UI designer, but never as an SEO.
My role as an in-house SEO was definitely a learning experience for both Classmates.com and myself. Being in-house and optimizing a website is a completely different beast altogether. This posting looks at the different aspects of each role pointing out the pros and cons in hopes that SEO's can not only understand the difference, but can make a decision as to what direction they would like to go in as a career.

Agency SEO

Depending on the position you are in with an agency the responsibilities change but the end result will always remain the same. Most often than not when a client signs a contract they expect certain things from their agency. A client usually chooses SEO because they aren't showing up in the search engines for terms that they feel they should be showing up for. The reasoning behind this is if they show up for the right terms they will see more conversions or leads from the website they invested so much money in with design and development. For them it all boils down to revenue, for the SEO agency it translates into ranking and ultimately traffic (eventually digging into qualified traffic and leads).
Typically most SEO agencies will have anywhere from 10 to possibly hundreds of clients assigned to one search engine optimizer (or SEO Strategist). Each SEO Strategist begins working with each client by asking a few questions in order to understand the business model and what the client considers an aquisition. The SEO Strategist will then draw up a keyword analysis looking through words and terms based on what the client thinks their users will be suing to find their website. From there the SEO Strategist will choose a select few terms that are most relevant and develop meta tags (Title and Description), suggest copy revisions or additions to the website, suggest a linking strategy and so on. The agency will then send regular ranking reports along with tracking analysis of the traffic coming to the site through natural SEO.
Some SEO agencies have grown beyond the cookie cutter fashion of optimizing a website for their clients in offering landing page design, testing, optimization etc. or even offering social media campaigns that generate links as well as traffic from social networking websites or blogs, etc.

In-House SEO

In the past couple of years more and more companies are bringing SEO in-house not to replace the agency they are using necessarily, but to help manage the relationship between the agency and the people internally that need to complete the work in order to champion the work through effectively. To explain the role of an in-house SEO is to list out most of the responsibilities and goals of what is expected of them.
Core responsibilities of an in-house SEO:
Develop the company and or website SEO strategy and implementation. (complete with time line, work needed from other teams, agency help, etc along with spend)
Hands-on optimization; improving site structure, page construction, content, keyword lists, and SEO copy writing where needed (some companies have copywriters on staff and developers allocated for the work needed)
Keyword Analysis, and set KPI benchmarking and reporting for sites' organic search optimization efforts and continual monitoring of search trends related to the company or website.
Define SEO requirements in a product management capacity by recommending site enhancements that maximize ROI and increase rank of natural search result listings.
Serve as internal search expert, driving all communication between company's domestic and/or international companies to ensure best practices are shared and leveraged throughout.
Work on landing page redesign projects to ensure that paid and natural search pages are not only maximizing traffic but driving conversions.
Analyze and translate quantitative and qualitative data from web analytics tool into an actionable SEO plan.
Create and validate business cases for projects.
Maintain dashboard with work completed including spend along with conversions for each item in order to track cost per acquisition for natural SEO. (in some cases you will be expected to report this to upper level executives or help your superior report your work and effectiveness)
For some larger organizations an in-house SEO can be expected to:
Document business requirements for other teams, working with stakeholders throughout the organization to factor in their needs.
Is the business voice for SEO projects throughout the product development process, working closely with the technology organization.
Experience in defining and writing product/​functional specifications

In some cases an in-house SEO is expected to:
Work closely with the paid search marketing team (if not part of the responsibilities as an in-house SEO - depending on the company size) in creating SEO strategy to increase organic traffic and rankings.
Leverage social networking, user generated content and PR releases to drive qualified traffic. (as social media becomes recognized as a high impact strategy I believe companies will start to hire social media people as a role all its own)
Manage SEO initiatives for Google beta programs such as, mash ups for Google maps, Google co-op, plug-ins for Google desktop, widgets and other incremental SEO opportunities where applicable.
Set up a process to continuously educate internal teams on SEO best practices and emerging optimization techniques.

As you can see the roles and resposinbilities of the in-house SEO and SEO Agency employee are completely different, but yet both require a solid understanding of SEO. So how does one get started in SEO as a career? If you are passionate about SEO and you find that you have a unique satisfaction of seeing a website or page rank for a term you targeted then you have been bitten by the SEO bug and are definitely cut out to work both for an agency or in-house. It is highly recommended that you start with a smaller agency or on your own optimizing as many websites for clients as you can. Gather data and document as much as you can so that when you go to the agency or company hiring an in-house SEO you have examples of your work to show you understand the basics and can at least optimize a website. Agencies give you the opportunity to work with multiple websites and clients so that you not only get different scenarios of website optimization, but become exceptionally good at working with people along with the common questions such as, "I searched 'X' and we don't show up, why?" The questions you get from clients as an SEO Strategist in an agency prepare you for the same questions you will get occasionally see as an in-house SEO.
When you are ready to make the transition from agency to in-house SEO be prepared to have a robust understanding of marketing and how they track conversions, budget, etc as well as having the patience in working with other teams such as copywriters, designers, developers, legal, PR and so on. You will not only have to know SEO well, but to be able to explain different aspects of it to people that think differently from you. For example, when talking to a designer you will want to stress the importance of copy on a page that would most likely have a design focus in order to get key terms in there, or explain to someone in legal that you don't have complete control over what ranks in the search engines.
All in all both positions are very rewarding and a job in search engine optimization is not only challenging, but a lot of fun with a constant evolution in strategy and know how.

For more help on getting started in a career in SEO visit:
Market Motive SEO Training
SEOMoz Beginner's Guide to SEO

Online Marketing Strategy and Your Target Persona

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Whether you are planning a natural search targeting campaign, a paid search marketing strategy or a social media strategy it’s always best to know who you are targeting before implementing any of your campaign or strategy. But how do you know who you are targeting and how to target them?

The www.savethebreakfastsandwich.com (STBS) website was originally developed as a fun site after speaking with a colleague in February 2008 in finding out that Howard Schultz was planning on discontinuing them in October of 2008. The goal was to develop a website where breakfast sandwich lovers could join in support of keeping them with a discussion board with stories and discussions supporting the sandwiches.

In this website’s case my main goal was to encourage people to sign up and possibly join in on the discussions. The site isn’t a money maker, but rather a site that was to generate buzz and enough members to hopefully convince Starbucks that the Breakfast Sandwich is worth keeping. In order to determine who I would be targeting in my strategies I had to go back to the type of person that enjoys walking into Starbucks and ordering a breakfast sandwich, and then narrow it down to the type of person that would be upset enough to rally in support. From there this person had to be technically savvy and one who is involved in the internet (i.e. active in sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Digg, etc.).

As I dug deeper into the personality of the STBS Persona I narrowed it down to a male between the age of 20-30 who is very active in the online community having Facebook profiles so that he would talk about the site and the story of the Breakfast Sandwich being discontinued creating awareness. He also has his own websites and/or Blog in which he would post a blurb about the story and link back to the website (generating awareness and linking credit for SEO). He is a very sarcastic individual and loves to mock the large corporations (what I like to call the conforming non-conformist). He also enjoys a good controversy (but only the obscure ones). Let’s call him Brian…

Now that I know I am targeting Brian, where he enjoys hanging out on the web, and what he does, as well as what will spark his interest it was time to determine a strategy. Every online marketing plan should have a basic strategy of 4 channels.

1) Search Engine Optimization – natural rankings on Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask, and more

2) Paid Search Marketing – paid placements starting with bidding on key words and showing up in search results on the top sponsored or right side placements up to placements on other sites (per keyword bidding and/or placement targeting) to even banner ad placements(per keyword bidding and/or placement targeting)

3) Social Media Marketing – generating brand awareness and/or buzz about a website, company or product through social sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, and more

4) Traditional Banners – with sites such as Adready in which your ads can appear across a network of sites generating awareness.

Depending on your budget and man power you should have a clear plan established before ever beginning any work or hiring of agencies to help you.

In the case of the STBS site I had no budget whatsoever, with limited amount of manpower since I was already marketing full time for Concur Technologies.

With a budget of nothing and limited manpower I set a plan that solely relied on the controversy of the Breakfast Sandwich being discontinued to trigger Brian to start talking immediately. I developed the site in 3 days keeping all search engine optimization in play with each page and across the entire site, and focused on promoting it as much as I could through social media sites.

Natural SEO

My main target was to rank for “Starbucks” of course, but second would be to show up naturally for “Breakfast Sandwich”, “Starbucks Breakfast”, “Starbucks breakfast sandwiches”, etc.

When targeting a persona and optimizing a website for that persona it’s always important to pay attention to the following 4 optimization techniques:

1) Landing Pages – focus on obscure terms (long tailed key phrases) that are 3-5 words in length that your persona might specifically be searching for and provide them with a landing page or 2-4 page microsite that gives them exactly what they are looking for.

2) Meta Tags – each landing page and page of your website should keep your persona in mind as you write the title and description. If a persona is looking for the “Starbucks breakfast sandwich” the result should explain what the site is about. Especially in the case of the STBS site. We don’t want a user searching for the actual sandwich to click the result and close out the website because they didn’t see the sandwiches. If they saw a result that talks about the demise and saving the sandwich and they choose to click the result then they are already aware of what the site is about and less likely to close out.

3) Internal Linking – when it comes to the persona the links pointing to other pages is very important. If you have a page seeded with links within the content the person might be compelled to click through to irrelevant pages and get lost within the site. Focus on the links that would be most important to them as they land on the pages that rank with clear calls to action (graphical buttons, banners, etc) and keep the linking to other pages in the sitemap or on pages that are more relevant.

4) External Linking – external linking is a great source for SEO credit. Encourage users to link to stories, landing pages, posts, etc. by adding “bookmark us” with the more popular bookmarking sites (Google, Digg, del.icio.us, etc) and encourage them to add links to their blogs or websites to specific pages with quick html they can copy and paste and talk about on their blog.

Of course this is all in addition to the standard SEO such as xml sitemaps, robots.txt, etc.

Social Media

Keeping my persona Brian in mind as I looked to other sites to talk about the STBS site and spark controversy I started with other blogs that discussed Starbucks either by fans or had Starbucks coffee drinkers talking to one another. I particularly started with a comment to a blog post that was a few days old on the Starbucks Gossip Blog - http://starbucksgossip.typepad.com/_/2008/01/starbucks-to-ge.html

The comment was quickly picked up and blogged about http://starbucksgossip.typepad.com/_/2008/02/seven-people-ha.html. The site immediately took off from there with blog postings from local obscure publications such as Seattle’s own Stranger http://slog.thestranger.com/2008/02/save_the_starbucks_breakfast_sandwich , to the New York Times http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/25/blogtalk-burgled-in-the-burg/

From there the site took off for the first few weeks it was launched. People were buzzing about it faster than I could keep track. Knowing that this groundswell wouldn’t last long (as most controversies die off within weeks or even days) I had to keep the momentum going as well as implement an SEO strategy that would keep the awareness of the site prominent in the internet culture.

With regards to the social media I kept commenting on blogs and sending out emails to members that would be interesting enough for them to forward on. I also setup a Facebook page and occasionally promoted it through my profile, twitter tweet, etc.

The SEO strategy was focused on local targeting. I developed a database of every city in every state across the US and created a page for each state and then the city targeting individuals that would be searching for a Starbucks in their area. The beauty of SEO is that you don’t have to be as specific to the user since you aren’t paying for the ad. The goal with these pages was to mention the demise of the breakfast sandwich in the snippet itself. The user would be searching for Starbucks close to their home, work, hotel, etc (for example starbucks felton, CA) then see the result and read “Find the Starbucks in FELTON - CA for your favorite breakfast sandwich before they are discontinued.” The user would click the result out of curiosity (not a highly qualified referral – but SEO has next to $0 cost per click so it has room for less qualified click throughs) the user then sees a landing page that educates them more about the decision to discontinue the breakfast sandwich and encourages them to sign up to help support it. Signup is free and easy which makes that decision fairly easy (with a 40% conversion rate from those pages from natural traffic).

Of course if I had an ad placed the messaging, and landing page would be much different, but again, this is SEO so we have a bid of legroom to convince rather than just presenting as we would with paid advertising so that our return on investment would be higher.

Always remember your user with any marketing strategy - a banner ad should spark curiosity and educate before the user clicks so that it is not only noticed but the user knows what to expect before clicking through, whereas a PPC ad should be specific to the term you are bidding on with the ad and landing page giving the user exactly what they are looking for. Pay attention to who your user is, what they are looking for and where you are grabbing them from and you will be successful in your marketing.

Optimize Your Landing Pages Without Disturbing Your Tests

When I was first approached by Mark (CEO of Smartsheet) with the opportunity to work for them in marketing I was excited about the product and all that it has to offer. I was even more impressed while in the first week in my new position to find out that they had already implemented landing pages with a complete user flow. From paid search advertising that pointed to a landing page that then sent the user through a very simple registration process, then showing the user a template that helped them get started based on the landing page or ad they came from. The user experience was unique depending on what each user was interested in. How brilliant!

The VP of Marketing (Maria) had done an excellent job working with Widemile in optimizing the original landing pages. With over 40-50 landing pages they were able to take the results from a select few pages and apply them across the rest of the 40 to 50 pages that weren’t tested, resulting in an increase from a 4-5% conversion rate up to over 6-12% by redesigning a select few and testing the designs against the original. (read the article on btobonline.com here)
With the website going through a complete redesign and a new product rolling out I wasn’t sure if we were going to see the same results, or if I could try some of the strategies I had used in the past with Classmates or Concur to increase the conversions. Luckily I had 40+ landing pages to work with that all had templates associated with them. I started with the most popular based on the natural search traffic. A lot of the landing pages were indexed and had a pagerank of 4-6 (depending on the page). So I took the pages that were driving the most conversions naturally and applied three different designs across them. We launched the new site and our BETA product in July 2008 and thus the landing pages were setup for A/B testing (A being a design based off of winning combinations against 3 new design layouts) in 3 groups. I captured the paid search marketing campaigns that were setup before and split them up by content targeting, and search only instead of one lump in one campaign (difficult to track effectiveness of ads on content, vs. search). The first week of launch our paid search marketing campaigns were converting at 6%. Over the course of the few weeks I noticed that the content network was converting higher, and the landing pages were doing much better with the new designs. Over the course of the few weeks I optimized the campaigns and created banners to see if I could drive more traffic to the landing pages for testing. By the end of July 2008 I was able to get the overall conversion rate up to over 9%.

In August I created adgroups for each landing page (20 of the top converting pages) complete with text ads, banners, and a template that the user would see once signed up. I implemented the winning test design on the pages, and added some new elements for multivariate testing in 2 groups. One group had an emphasis on “Free Account” and the other had an “easy as 1-2-3 to sign up” block to the right. Our conversion rate jumped up to over 11% (getting close to what we were at in the past). With the “Free Account” traffic we noticed that the users were less likely to stick around so we pulled the “Free Account” wording off of the pages. Since I was testing other elements on those pages and not the “Free Account” I grabbed a footprint of where the conversions were so I could see if removing the words would affect the conversion rate. At the same time I added a block with a list of our value props to some of the pages. Once again, since I didn’t have enough data to stop the test, and adding the block wasn’t a part of the tested elements I took a footprint of where the pages were at.
I did notice a drop in the conversions from the “Free Account” removal, with an increase on the pages I added the value props to.

I charted a few of our results below for you to see:






I am happy to say that as a result of the small changes I made (while keeping the tests going) I was able to increase our overall conversion rate to nearly 15% by the end of August 2008.
The lesson learned is that you don’t have to keep stopping and starting new tests just to make small changes, and the small changes you make can still be tracked if you just grab the data before you make the change. You do still want your tests to run long enough to collect enough data for the small changes you make, but the idea is to leave the multivariate testing for 1-2 elements (that way you get faster results with less combinations). Do remember that these are tests, and the data your are collecting through multivariate, and especiall A to B, shouldn't be manipulated too often otherwise your results could be skewed be all the changes you made along the way.

Just as I was able to get templates to show up when our users sign in, I took the time to setup the sheet that I keep track of my landing pages as a template - complete with tips on how to keep track of it all. Just click the link here, sign up and you should see the template once you have verified your email.
Happy Testing!

SEO Survey

After signing up for one of Google's beta testing applications through their form that posts directly to the google doc spreadsheet I thought I would give it a try and create an SEO survey through Google docs myself. The results are published directly to the doc as the survey is submitted.
Take a moment and fill out the survey yourself. The results will update automatically as people fill it out and submit it, and I will post the data in all its glory to the public with pie chart sand everything for all to see. It will be interesting to see what comes of the answers.

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