SEO - Panda and the Penguins

I am now at this point 2 weeks into my position based in San Francisco and am finding myself in need of expressing my deepest concerns with how the SEO industry has been representing itself. During my first week on the job I found several questionable SEO strategies implemented on the main site that I was hired to work on. In addition, I have found very aggressive techniques for link building provided by the agency hired roughly a year ago. I'm not going to name the name's of the people or agency involved to spare them, but I will get into some detail of what was done so that we can all learn from the experience.

Panda and Penguin

To precursor what I am about to discuss, there have been some fairly recent massive updates to the Google algorithms that have caused cries heard around the world by SEO's. Those updates would be what is now known as Panda and Penguin. To help you get a better idea of what Panda and Penguin mean for SEO (no they aren't the cute bear or birds we know from the Discover Channel), check out the High-quality sites algorithm goes global, incorporates user feedback post on April 11, 2011 by Amit Singhal to the Google Webmaster Blog, and Another step to reward high-quality sites posted by Matt Cutts on April 24, 2012 (nearly one year later).  In general, what the updates themselves are about is to target websites that are "optimizing" content for the sole purpose of getting rankings, and apply techniques in link building that focus just on links, rather than quality content referring to their website.

Findings

The company I work for has hired the esteemed Laura Lippay (in addition to the agency) to bring another level of expertise to the very important SEO that drives a very large percentage of revenue to the site. In Laura's evaluation she found many odd links pointing to the website, and more specifically a large amount to lower level pages within the site. There is also a numerous amount of links from one page to the next, and content that seems to be fairly cookie cutter that doesn't quite make sense to the user. The links in particular Laura had asked about several times, with little to no response from the agency. Given that there was a lot more to be done with the site, Laura decided to focus on more important efforts.

Enter SEOGoddess...

Laura showed me what she had found in her early days working with the company and I began to dig a bit further. As she was showing me, I noticed that the content linking from random sites that had absolutely nothing to do with the site they were linking to (for example: a hair advice website linking to a data processing website - note: example has nothing to do with the site I am working on, but is a similar scenario) all seemed to be very much in the same. Each and every one of the pages of content also had a standard last paragraph with a couple of sentences containing 2 links with the most aggressive key terms in them. hmmmm (I thought).. Laura copied the first couple of sentences and searched for them in Google. One of the hundreds of results looked like an article submission domain. We clicked to it, and looked around. Lo and behold, it was an article submission site, and the article that was submitted (among several others) was represented by our company's website brand. The articles were submitted around the time the agency was hired to work on SEO.  Laura grabbed the screenshots for me to email to the agency. While Laura was talking with another staff with the company I went to the agency's website to see if I could get a better idea of how they approach SEO. From the home page I clicked "What We DO" in their navigation and proceeded to the "Link Building" section of their website. From there they listed an article "Five Surefire Ways to Build Links and Increase Traffic to Your Website or Blog" - in the article the #1 surefire way: "Article Marketing" which then lists out websites they submit articles to, including the one Laura and I had found. I went to my desk and emailed the agency. Not asking if they knew anything about the article submission, but I simply showed them what I found, how I found it, and then cited the article on their website leaving them no room to neither deny, or to not respond.

Friends Come in Handy

While drafting up the email to the agency, I wanted to make sure I was approaching the issue the best way possible. I know that Bruce Clay had talked about Link Cleanup that he has done for his clients while he was at my Search and Social Hawaii last September 2011. Bruce had advised one of our attendees in an open forum discussion that his staff would ask the websites to remove the links. In some cases he was having to pay them to remove the links, and some were just outright difficult to deal with. While I am in the process of restructuring the website I thought "Why not 404 the URLs that the sites are linking to, while I change the URL structure?" But before I go down the road (well not so easy considering some of them have good quality links, and determining which ones could stay and which would go would be a chore all its own.) I asked Bruce what he thought our best strategy would be. He of course replied with recommending that we evaluate the links pointing to the site, and which pages.

His words exactly:

How important is the target landing page?
If home page you may be stuck.
If a sub-page, then an article in our newsletter on link pruning... http://www.bruceclay.com/newsletter/volume102/link-pruning-procedure.htmIt is hard, tedious work, especially since many junk sites are easily offended by de-link requests.

After my response, he mentioned that we could add the pages that we no longer cared about to the robots.txt and Google would then make the appropriate adjustments (in short).

Industry Folks talk Quality SEO

Bruce Clay had posted this article "SEO Community Watch: Why We’re All Responsible for a Quality Industry" On May 24, 2012. After he shared it to the SEO Group on Facebook it sparked quite a lot of comments around how our industry should be policing themselves to use better strategies.

Bruce mentions in his blog post:

I believe that SEOs who openly engage in a practice that was always doomed are intentionally harming their clients, and this is grossly unethical. What’s even more unfortunate for site owners is that the repair on their sites with paid links usually costs more than the original damage. If a site owner spent $200 per month to buy links, they’ll likely spend 10 times that to correct damage bad links have caused, plus the loss of business until it’s fixed. The easy way out has led to a long, hard road to repair. The demand for an SEO penalty audit service is very high now, and the cost is significant – perhaps hundreds of hours (we happen to know; we offer a cleanup service ourselves). For example, if you are a well-known brand and your site has sufficient value, the repair can begin with just link pruning. However, if your site was based solely on paid links, it’s also very likely you won’t have enough quality content to rank even after fixing the link damage.

The Facebook post by Bruce sparked many 'Like's and over 75 comments. The discussion even started questioning and debating SEMPO's involvement in ensuring that agencies stay on the up-and-up.

In conclusion

What the agency did for our website wasn't entirely a bad thing at the time. Of course it is now with the Panda and Penguin updates knocking all these linking strategy SEO's off their perch, but if you look at any Agency I guarantee you will find that each and every one of them have "Link Building" (or the like) listed as one of their services. In fact - if I do a search on Google right now (not logged in) I see a list of paid search results in which the first links to an agency that lists "link Building" right there on the landing page. The second is another agency that lists out "Directory Listings", "Link Acquisitions", "Press Releases", and "Link Bait" as part of the strategy they provide for SEO.  

In fact moz.org (a trusted resource for all SEO's) even recommends directory submissions as a way to obtain links in their "Professional Guide to Link Building" Copyrighted in 2010 (just 2 years ago) Stating:

Directories
Directories can be a great way to obtain links. There are a large number of directories out there, and they may or may not require money in order to obtain a listing. Examples of high quality directories that are free include:
   Librarian's Internet Index
   Open Directory Project (aka DMOZ)
Examples of high quality directories which require a fee are:
   Yahoo! Directory
   Business.com
   Best of the Web
A more comprehensive list of directories is available from Strongest Links.

As I explained to my boss and our General Manager the agency was doing what they felt was a good SEO strategy. They were acting on what every SEO agency, respected leaders, and common practice that our industry has been allowing for many years. They hadn't done anything wrong really. 

I had even told the agency that I don't care who did it or why it was done, what I care about is that we get it cleaned up and move forward from here.

A Shift in Thinking

What we need to do now is shift our thinking back to what SEO was originally about before SEO's started finding ways to get quick results. Create a website that is user friendly and present your product or service to your audience in a way that makes sense to them. Don't only give them what they are searching for, but simply follow the rules that ensure the site will get crawled, that your key terms are available in an easily digestible manner, and your website is organized and structured so that every page is easily crawled. (of course there is so much more than that - but you get the general idea).

When people ask me "Can I do X to my site to generate rankings?" My answer is more often than not; "If you are thinking of doing something with the sole purpose to generate rankings... Then don't do it."

The Future of SEO

As a result of the Panda and Penguin updates I am sure we will start to see agencies list "Linking Cleanup" as a service they provide. Heck, Bruce Clay himself offers an "SEO Penalty Assessment Service" in which he evaluates and offers linking cleanup for clients (which is why I asked him for the advice in the first place). 

My hope is that we start to see less spamming of comments to our blogs, less random directories showing up in search results, and more quality content when we search for that special item we want to buy, or continue to do research online.

Why the Google Changes? Ooh Ooh - I get it!

 Stripping out "+" in searches and not providing keyword referrals in analytics
Last week I posted about Google's announcement to stop reporting on referring key terms in Analytics, and I have been keeping up to date as much as I can with all the news around it since then.

2 Days ago Barry Schwartz posted an article to SEL about the changes in how we search on Google. Google has removed the ability to use the "+" in our advanced search.

Google themselves said:
"We're streamlining the ways you can tell Google to search for the exact keywords you type, whether it's an exact phrase or a single word, by focusing on the functionality of the quotation marks operator. So, if in the past you would have searched for [magazine +latina], you should now search for [magazine "latina"] to get the same results."

So it hit me this morning...

Since the launch of Google+ several months ago, as an SEO, I have at times found it difficult to search for "Google+" or even the "+1 button". I am sure that since the launch, Google themselves are having trouble seeing referring key terms. In the past the referring URL would have "+" in between the terms. So if someone searched "Google+" then the referring URL would strip out the "+" and those monitoring the referring terms for Google+ would just see "Google" as the referring term. So their question would be: Did people search "Google" or "Google+"?

With Google+ itself being under a microscope after the dying "Google Wave" and "Google Buzz" I can see someone saying to the powers that be that this needed to get fixed. Otherwise they couldn't accurately decide if Google+ is going to succeed.

The next step in this process is to strip the referring URLs of their "+" in between key terms. This unfortunately directly affects analytics as companies won't be able to accurately see referring search terms anymore.

So now Google just needs to fix the tracking of referring terms somehow. Google doesn't want to miss out on that data any more than we do. So be patient, it will come back again...

SEO/SEM Salary Survey

In July of 2008 I posted to this very blog a survey to gather a list of SEO's and their salary range with the promise of sharing out the results to everyone. I received well over 1000 submissions I posted the results and sent everyone an email with the data so they could form their own reports. While my results were posted in 2009 it was the height of the SEO and PPC employment boom, and Social Media was still a glimmer in our eyes.
So in the nature of updating data and keeping up with this every changing industry I decided that it is time to do the survey again, and see where we have gone over the past few years.

If you are an SEO or SEM take a moment and fill out the survey below. Also - feel free to add it to your own blog, send it to your friends to fill it out, etc. I promise to once again share the data with you all (minus emails to refrain from exposing you all to spam) in an excel doc, and post the results I have found from the folks that fill out the form.

Once we hit 1,000 or more submissions check your email for your attachment...


Add the survey to your blog or website:
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Google Secure Search and what it means for SEO's

I was editing videos from Search and Social Hawaii diligently and getting ready for my talk on SEO this Thursday when I saw a post update from the Google Analytics Blog addressing the announcement that Google is going to make search more secure. So I came out of my hole for a moment to draft up a quick blog post to clear up any questions.

Google says:

"As search becomes an increasingly customized experience, we recognize the growing importance of protecting the personalized search results we deliver. As a result, we’re enhancing our default search experience for signed-in users. Over the next few weeks, many of you will find yourselves redirected to https://www.google.com (note the extra “s”) when you’re signed in to your Google Account. This change encrypts your search queries and Google’s results page. This is especially important when you’re using an unsecured Internet connection, such as a WiFi hotspot in an Internet cafe. You can also navigate tohttps://www.google.com directly if you’re signed out or if you don’t have a Google Account."


What does this mean for SEO's?

Rankings:
It doesn't directly effect rankings as a whole, but it does effect the individual user's results as they will see a more personalized list of websites in their search results. In all honesty, that doesn't change anymore than what us SEO's have been working towards for several years now since Google setup Gmail and a login feature for their products and searches. It just means that instead of a few users seeing personalized results, more users will start to see personalized results. So dont' focus on whether or not your target audience is going to be logged in and what they might see in their personalized results, assume that all of them are.

Analytics:
Now here's where it gets tricky. The Google Analytics team is working very closely with the rest of the company to ensure that data is being passed showing the referring URL and Terms from paid and natural search results.

"How will this change impact Google Analytics users?
When a signed in user visits your site from an organic Google search, all web analytics services, including Google Analytics, will continue to recognize the visit as Google “organic” search, but will no longer report the query terms that the user searched on to reach your site. Keep in mind that the change will affect only a minority of your traffic. You will continue to see aggregate query data with no change, including visits from users who aren’t signed in and visits from Google "cpc"."

What is Google Analytics doing about it?
We are still measuring all SEO traffic. You will still be able to see your conversion rates, segmentations, and more.

Which is great for those of you that have Google Analytics installed on their websites, but what about Omniture or Webtrends?
In 2005 when I was working with Omniture to start showing referring key terms for SEO and streamlining our PPC within the system they were able to crack the code and get us the robust tracking we see today. While I don't see a blog post on either Omniture, or Webtrands blogs (I'll add the links in a comment as soon as I see something) I can assure you that Google doesn't want to hide anything from us SEO's and Marketers. They want us to be able to see the referring traffic and asses what is working, and what isn't. If we don't see it, we can't create a better user experience, and that would go against all of Google's ideals.

For those of you that rely solely on Omniture (or have clients that do) take a moment and reconsider adding the Google Analytic tracking onto the website (or talk to your clients about it) for the time being.

So never fear, rankings will still go on as usual, and the ability to track in Google Analytics won't be effected in any way...

Carry on...

3 Simple Facebook Tricks for Marketers

A lot of people ask me often "How did you do that?" in regards to some of the cool things I do with Facebook status updates, managing my pages, and so on. So here's a few of my little tricks you can use while marketing to your peeps.

1) Tagging in a Status Update or Comment
Tagging people or pages in Facebook is a common occurrence, but unfortunately a lot of people don't quite know how to do it, or how to use it to their marketing benefit. Adding a tag to an update can have many benefits. Thankfully, Facebook has recognized this downside to the secrets of tagging and has now made it easier to do by simply listing out people or pages you have "like"d to make it easier, but in some cases you may not see the suggestions pop up. In this case, you cans till use the "@" for tagging. One of the glitches is that at times it takes a bit for the system to populate the suggestions, so if you don't see them right away just delete everything back tot he "@" and redo it until it shows up. Also, if you aren't friends with the person, or "like" the page of the place or business you are tagging you won't see it in your suggestions. So be sure to "friend" or "like" them before tagging.
Here's how you do it:
Begin posting your status and simply add the "@" then immediately type in the name or page (no space after the "@" is typed) and you can see the suggestions pop up.

Using Tagging for Marketing
In some cases the status or post you made will show up on the person, business, or place's wall you tagged. If the person, place or business set their preferences to not allow people to tag them, or the page settings only show their posts to the wall, then your tag will not show up. It is still a good practice to tag when mentioning them though as it provides a link to their profile or page. Wappow uses tagging as we mention businesses that sponsor our events. The users can just click to their page and "like" them or just learn more about our sponsors. We also use this method for our speakers so our attendees can see who is speaking and learn a bit more about them by checking out their profile on Facebook. Some other uses are if you are offering a promotion with a partner company, you can tag the other company to gain more exposure. Blog posts that mention companies can be posted to your profile with a tag to the company you are blogging about. You can even call out your most active fans to show them appreciation for spreading the word about your company and encourage more brand advocates as others see you giving credit for active marketing on your behalf. Got more ideas? Comment below and tell me how you have used tagging to benefit your marketing.

2) Sharing Facebook URLs (Pages, Videos, and Photos)
The sharing of other Facebook photos, videos, or pages unfortunately isn't just a click away form the Facebook interface. At times you are given the option to "share" a post, or "like" a post or comment, but the post to your profile or page isn't as visible as it would be if you were to post them yourself.
For example: if you simply "like" something this is what it looks like in the stream:

The sample above is a comment on a video posted by a friend. As you can see it's pretty hidden amongst the other posts made. If it's a video or picture you really want your users to see and give credit to the person who originally posted it and you see the "share" option is available, got that route. Click the share link and a popup will appear with the option to make a comment and "share".

This is what it will look like if you "share":

Notice the video is much more prominent on the page than the comment. 

If the "share" option isn't available, or you want to take full credit for sharing the photo or video, simply right click the link of the photo or video and select "copy link location". Then select the "link" on your page or profile and paste the link in the field and click "attach" - then comment away.

When sharing photos and videos from other sources (such as youtube.com, slideshare presentations, etc) simply grab the URL (link) of the item and paste it in the link field as shown above. In most cases Facebook recognizes the URL as a video or flash player and will render it on the wall as such so the user can just play from your stream. We use this for photo sets on Flickr, posting the link to the set directly to our wall so the user doesn't have to leave Facebook. Posting videos and photo set links to events before, during, and after is very beneficial to marketing efforts. People can see examples from the event and say they are "attending" or "maybe attending" which allows for us to continue to encourage them to register for the event and show up. In return your users will often share the videos or pictures which gives you more exposure and sparks the viral marketing effect. 

Here's an example of what it looks like as your friends and fans comment, share, like, etc the item you posted:

Akvile had attended one of our events and commented on one of the pictures in photo album I had posted to the Wappow page. People that didn't make it to this particular event get to see who was there, who spoke (in this case Rand Fishkin CEO of SEOmoz) and will be thinking to themselves "Darn, I wish I had gone. I'll have to go next time." which for our monthly Wappow Social Day! is exactly what we want them to do.

3) Getting People to "Like" You

You've probably seen those ads or Facebook posts to groups or pages that say "Make money now on Facebook, get 'likes' for your page" or something similar. The truth is, there are no quick fixes to getting a ton of "like"s for your fan page. Sure you can pay some money to a company that will magically get you thousands of "like"s but what are they really going to get you? Nothing...

The best way I have found to getting "like"s is to be patient and know where your fan base is. You don't want thousands of random people that aren't going to benefit you by "like"ing your page, you want true brand evangelists that will buy your product, use your software, attend your event, will share out your content, and spark the viral effect (They "like" or comment, three friends see it and "like" or comment, and those people have three friends that see it, and so on.) 

One of the most effective ways we have gotten "like"s with regards to business related pages is to add the like box to the website. After adding the SEOGoddess fan page to the SEOGoddess website I noticed a huge lift in "like"s to the page. Now the page has over 1,000 likes in just a few months, and the good news is: they are all people that took it upon themselves to "like" the page. 

Add a "Like" Box to a Website

Adding a Like Box to your website is pretty simple - just grab the URL of the page you want to add, and go to the Facebook Developer's section and enter the URL of the page in the WYSIWYG they provide:

Click the "Get Code" button and copy the html code provided. You can then add the code to your website (or give it to your developer to add for you). If you have a Wordpress or other content management system, simply go into the source code or "edit html" option and paste the code where you want the widget to appear. 

Don't Have a Website?

If you don't have a page that is associated with a website you can still get "like"s the natural way, it just might go a bit slower than you are wanting. Just remember, being patient is the key to quality "like"s. I created the Seattle, WA page on May 19, 2011 which now has 10 "like"s on it (1 week after it's creation) which are all very active in posting to the page and sharing posts.  My initial strategy was to post to the Seattle, WA Group the page is associated with, shared it to my personal wall, and every couple of days share it to the SEOGoddess fans, Wappow fans, etc. I also scheduled posts to hit the page from Hootsuite with links to places to visit around Seattle, and events happening. As people catch on with posting events, businesses, etc the "like"s will grow and all will benefit from the page. How does this page benefit our marketing? Wappow hosts a lot of events in Seattle, WA so having a group just for Seattle, and a page that goes with it that both have a large following will eventually benefit the company gaining exposure to the event we hold. It also shows a sense of community on a personal level as Seattle is my home, my family history, and therefore very close to my heart. In a year or so as the company grows, the fan base will grow, and our branding in the local area will become strong resulting in people trusting in, and frequently attending our events.

So there you have it - 3 simple tricks you can do to get your Facebook marketing going. Don't forget to remember to engage with your friends and fans on Facebook and you'll be successful in driving leads and establishing a solid brand presence.

Social Media for a Cause

Yesterday Gillian Muessig (President of SEOmoz and my SEOmom) asked me to do her a favor, and when SEOmom asks me to help her out, help her out I shall do.

She sent me a link to Chase Community Giving and described the charity she has been working with for a while now and is needing help in getting enough votes to get the much needed $25,000. The charity is called the "The Akshaya Patra Foundation" which is the world's largest NGO-run midday meal program, feeding 1.3 million children each day in over 8,000 schools through 18 kitchens in 8 states in India.  Being a woman passionate about children and aiding people in other countries, I naturally took this one on. Not to mention that on 5/19 they where at 210 votes with 6 days to get to 200,000 votes we had a long ways to go. Gillian was at first discouraged, but I know if social media goes viral in the right ways anything is possible. So I immediately did the math - in order to get to 200k in 6 days if we could get at least 200 people (which is about where they where at to begin with) to each share to one person and ask that person to vote then we could double the amount of votes in 1 day. From there it's just a matter of getting each person that votes to encourage 5 friends to vote (or vote 5 times themselves and get one friend to share and vote 5 times) then day one should end with 2x what they started with. From there - if each person votes and shares to 5 people the viral effect should take hold and the numbers should grow to 250,000 by the 5th day.

Here's how it works:
Day 1 get to share to at least one friend - 200x2=400
Day 2 get those 400 to share to 5 friends - 400x5= 2,000
Day 3 get those 2000 people to share to 5 friends - 2,000x5= 10,000
Day 4 get those 10,000 people to share to 5 friends - 10,000x5=50,000
Day 5 get those 50,000 people to share to 5 friends - 50,000x5=250,000

So naturally by day 6 we should be well over the 200,000 votes...

How are we doing it you ask?
The beauty of marketing in social media for charities is that they are a charity. Asking people to vote for a person or a product is one thing, but asking them to give to help feed starving children, well it just tugs at the heart strings. Which is the driving success of any social media effort. It's not just about messaging, imagery, user experience, numbers, and any other traditional marketing strategy. It starts with emotion and social engagement first and then messaging, imagery, user experience, and numbers to drive the success.

So I started naturally started with a post to my Facebook status asking people to vote and share it out as well. The awesome thing too is that the page for the charity offers up ways to share it out and get people to vote (smart). A simple click to the Facebook like icon and I added a comment "This one is VERY important - we need 200,000 votes by May 25th. Help me spread the word by copying and pasting this and posting to your status..." But oops - I forgot the call to action to "vote", so while I shared it out, I didn't quite get the messaging right. What I should have said was "This one is VERY important - we need 200,000 votes by May 25th - go vote and then help me spread the word by copying and pasting this and posting to your status..." but then I didn't tug at the emotions of the people I am sharing to, so some of my friends thought it was spam (doh). So once again, I revised the post "Help us fight childhood hunger and promote education to the children in India. We need 200k votes by 5/25 to raise $25k - go vote and spread the word by copying and pasting this and posting to your status...".

From there I utilized some of the pages and groups I manage. The only thing is that the message and the nature of the charity didn't match up with the demographic of some of the pages. The "I had 'Learning Disabilities' as a kid and now I'm a genius" and the "Breakfast Sandwich" pages were both a prime example of where NOT to post a request to help a charity. The fans of those pages are looking for certain things, and starving children in India was not one of them. But I have others - and those pages (while not 100% the demographic we where looking for) could be worked into helping out. I refrained from using any of the Wappow business pages (the Wappow page, and the Social Day page are focused on marketing and social media marketing and to stray for even one post would discourage our fans), but the SEOGoddess fan page has a level of personality, and enough fans to make a difference, that twisting the message to work with the audience could actually grab some attention. So here's what I posted "President of SEOmoz, Gillian Muessig asked me to help her get votes for her favorite charity. I'm a sucker for helping to feed children in other countries so I voted... If you get a chance, go vote and get your friends to vote - we need 200k votes by 5/25 to raise $25k from Chase Community Giving." It ties in the SEO community by mentioning Gillian and the company she runs (in which SEOGoddess fans are also familiar with), and validates the post by mentioning what the charity does, and where the money is coming from. I also pulled in the sense of urgency and challenge (which sparks the competitive emotion in people) by mentioning the goal of getting 200k votes by 5/25. If you also notice, I validated why SEOGoddess is helping the charity herself (or myself as you look at it).  By tagging Gillian, SEOmoz, and Chase it also puts the post on the walls of each of them (if they allow it in their settings) which validates each mention with a link to them, plus gets more exposure. Oh, and I didn't forget the 2 call to actions - 1) Go vote, and 2) Share with your friends.

But I didn't stop there...
I have a few strategies and tricks up my sleeve as a marketer. Asking friends to help share things out on a personal level goes a long way. I have found most times if I write out the message myself and send an email with an explanation as to why I am asking them, and why they should do it most times they are more than happy to help out. The trick is to email the people who's followers (and friends) are going to be the right demographic for the message. I wouldn't ask my Mother or Father to share this out (my Mom had a hard time even taking a cruise to Greece as it was just too foreign for her) so supporting children in another country isn't her thing. Not to mention her friends would think something is wrong with her. My Father is in Real Estate... (do I really need to explain why that demographic won't work?).  So I selected a handful of friends in the SEO industry that know Gillian and SEOmoz well. I also hit a couple of friends that have been known to support charities similar to this one that aren't in the industry. So between Googletalk and Emails I managed to  ask over 50 of my friends to help out. Each one came back with a "I'd be happy to"... It was because of the choice of demographic in friends, and their followers, and the personal messaging from me that encouraged them to say "yes". Now whether they message it right is up to them. I do at times have something to copy and paste, but a lot of times how I say something isn't necessarily the way they would say it so it doesn't quite come across right.
Of course there is still lot's more we can do - but at least we are off to a great start.
As of last night (after a full day of sharing) they where up to 260 votes (6:15 pm pst) and 690 this morning (6:30 am pst). As of now they are at 925 (1:35 pm pst) and growing each time I refresh the page. So according to the plan we should end with 2,000 today and continue to grow as each person votes each day (up to 5 times) and shares to 5 people who vote, and those 5 people share to 5 people who each vote and share and so on.

So when you get a chance today - go vote and share to at least 5 friends: http://wppw.me/4ZwVP 
Don't forget to ask your friends to vote and share (and dont' forget to get your messaging in)...

Social Media, SEO, Starbucks, and the Breakfast Sandwich

In January of 2008, I was gainfully employed with one of the many technology corporations based in Redmond, WA (No it wasn't Microsoft). It was Concur Technologies, an expense management software company (you've probably used them while booking your business trip and/or filed your expenses). As you know, while working at companies such as this, meetings are scheduled throughout the day (if not back-to-back) and in order for me to get a decent breakfast (well, almost decent) I would stop by my favorite Starbucks drive through and grab my Venti quad Vanilla Latte with 10 pumps of vanilla and a sausage breakfast sandwich. When I would get into work I would bring my coffee and breakfast sandwich into my first meeting of the day and eat happily as the meeting leads would hash out whatever it was they needed to hash out for the moment. My boss and my team got very used to seeing me every morning with my routine breakfast and they had all heard the story about how I had been grabbing my Starbucks coffee every morning since I could drive to school. As soon as the breakfast sandwiches were introduced I added them to my morning routine.

Starbucks announced it was discontinuing the breakfast sandwiches in the January 30, 2008 earnings call. Shortly after my Boss said casually as I opened up my white sack with "Jen" handwritten on it, "You know they're going to discontinue the breakfast sandwich, right?" My mouth dropped open and my heart skipped a couple of beats as a moment of panic struck me. The scream of "nooooo" was heard throughout the land and everyone in the room looked on in horror. I proceeded from meeting room to meeting room telling everyone how horrible it was that the breakfast sandwich was going to be discontinued. My Boss finally said, "With all the websites you have created, why not create one to save the breakfast sandwich?"
I headed home that evening and checked Network Solutions (the registrar and hosting company I have been using since my first website in 1999) to see if "savethebreakfastsandwich.com" or something similar was available for registration. Since it was available, I grabbed it, and set-up hosting for the website I was going to create. The marketing person in me began questioning "Why am I doing this?", "What is the sole purpose of the website?", "What is the ultimate goal?", and "What is the target market for the website?". Once I determined my marketing persona and strategy and my $0.00 budget, little effort marketing began.

Blog Comment

I posted a comment to the Starbucks Gossip Blog post titled "Starbucks to get rid of warm breakfast sandwiches" when the site was completed which resulted in a blog post dedicated to the 7 members we had in February 21, 2008. As a result of the comment and then blog post the site began generating a plethora of buzz around it.

Press and Buzz

February 29, 2008 - Seattle Time NWSource Blogger Amy Martinez wrote in Tidbits
"As of Thursday morning, 60 people had joined a Web site dedicated to saving Starbucks' warmed breakfast sandwiches, which the company plans to phase out this year.
One member of the newly launched http://www.savethebreakfastsandwich.com wrote "My homage to the Breakfast Sadwich (sic): Don't push me cuz I'm close to the edge, I'm tryin' not to lose my head, but it (sic) you take my sandwich away uh huh uh huh... " — MA"
May 15, 2008 - National Post "Starbucks Does Breakfast"
July 31, 2008 - Fresno Beehive Blog post "Starbucks introduces less stinky sandwiches"
"Starbucks recently announced it will begin making less smelly breakfast sandwiches.
First, some back story: In an effort to get back to its roots, the Starbucks CEO announced in January that the chain would stop carrying its hot breakfast sandwiches. Apparently the smell of baking (reheating?) bread, cheese and eggs overpowered the smell of coffee.
It was part of an effort to stay strong in a tough economy, with changes like closing local stores and laying off employees.
The folks at www.savethebreakfastsandwich.com mounted a mini rebellion, complete with posts like, "You can pry my peppered bacon, aged cheddar and egg from my cold, dead hands."
For whatever reason -- perhaps to fend off competitors like Dunkin' Donuts offering coffee and breakfast -- Starbucks reversed course. The breakfast sandwiches would stay. Only now, they'll be made with a new type of cheese (oh, I'm dying to know how they tested the smelliness of cheese) and less butter in the eggs to help control the smell."
September 5, 2008 - New York Times Executive Blogs post by Joe Nocera "The Starbucks Egg Sandwich Double-Cross"
"A few days later, I received an e-mail message from one of Mr. Varma’s (friend of writer and new employee of Starbucks) new colleagues, informing me that it wasn’t ineptitude that was keeping the sandwiches on the shelf — Mr. Schultz had decided to reverse his decision and keep them! "As you recall, Howard made a point that we would address the issues of quality and store experience as it related to breakfast sandwiches," she wrote. "We took a look at the sandwiches here in our Starbucks kitchens and were able to make improvements to the recipe to address the aroma and quality concerns. Bottom line — warm breakfast is an important complement to the daily coffee ritual of a significant portion of our customers and we think we have a win-win solution here."
The Starbucks woman also pointed me to a Web site called “Save The Breakfast Sandwich,” claiming that it showed there was a groundswell of customer support for them. But when I checked the Web site, I couldn’t help notice that it had all of 195 members."

We Got Traffic

Within the first month of the website launching the site received over 4,000 visits. I knew I couldn't rely on social media and the buzz of blogs to keep the traffic going at this rate, so I began optimizing for search engines creating a page for every city and state in the United States and optimizing for the key phrase "Starbucks in ...". 3 years to the date the site receives roughly 1200 visits in one month's time with 91% of the traffic coming from search engines.

Social Media

Now when this site was developed 3 years ago, Twitter was only a couple of years old, Facebook had opened it's doors to everyone just 2 years prior (September 26, 2006). What marketers used for "Social Media Marketing" back then was primarily MySpace, Linkedin, blogs, chat rooms, bookmarking sites, commenting on products, forums, list-serves, and the like. Not to mention that SEO was a "do some work and wait" type of job as Google's updates were happening every few months rather than every day as they are today. My social media marketing efforts were solely reliant upon bookmarking sites (adding the quick bookmarking links to each page of the website), blogs, press, and the general groundswell that online buzz marketing produced.

The Site Gets me a Job?

In November of 2009, I was working as VP of Interactive Marketing at Obvio.us.com and was looking to get back in-house with an established corporation again, when a Starbucks HR person posted to the Seattle Digital Eve list that they were looking for a Manager in Social Media. She specifically requested that all applicants put "digitaleve - manager - social media" in the subject line and send to her email address directly. I proceeded to update my resume to reflect the latest work I had done with clients, Concur, Classmates.com, Smartsheet, and mentioned the savethebreakfastsandwich.com website, the Facebook fan page, and talked about my checkins on Foursquare. Hoping to show how I not only support Starbucks, but also know the latest social media trends. Unfortunately I did not hear word back from her regarding the position. I have been told by numerous HR professionals that the market is (and was) flooded with individuals looking for work and resume's were being submitted by the hundreds of thousands making it extremely difficult for them to see every resume that crossed the system, email, or desk. Go figure...

It just goes to show you that creating a website that gets the attention of press, blogs, and all sorts of online sources will get you traffic, but unfortunately won't get you a job.

STBS Gets a Mention

On March 28, 2011 CEO of Starbucks Howard Schultz spoke at a kick-off event for his new book "Onward" that shares the story of the company's turnaround revealing how Starbucks achieved profitability without "sacrificing humanity."

It was brought to my attention by one of Wappow's Search and Social Hawaii 2010 attendees Linda Sherman as she shared a link to the book on her Facebook wall. With the link she commented "I got so excited when Howard Schultz declared the importance of social media for any enterprise that I pulled out the only recording device I had with me at the moment - my iPhone 4." Naturally I had to respond with a plug for the savethebreakfastsandwich.com who's sole source of traffic is through social media and SEO. After she pointed out that the website is mentioned in his book, I quickly headed to Amazon.com and purchased both the Kindle and Hard Copy versions. Sure enough, on Page 231 it says "After I’d announced the end of the breakfast sandwich on the earnings call back in January 2008, we had immediately pulled the sandwiches out of stores’ display cases, although customers could still order them by request. And, as predicted, we saw an immediate decline in stores that had carried the product, but we also saw impassioned customer comments posted at MyStarbucksIdea.com and got them at our customer call center. A website even sprang up: Savethebreakfastsandwich.com.” Now here's where I point out that oddly the MyStarbucksIdea.com website was launched in March of 2008 and the only real comment that was made asking that Starbucks keeps the Breakfast Sandwich is my post by STBS (Save The Breakfast Sandwich) in June of 2008. Is this enough to warrant calling it an "impassioned customer comment"? or a plug to help boost a bad idea?

So?

So in the end, the website had caught the attention of some bloggers, press, breakfast sandwich fans, and even the CEO himself Howard Schultz all from social media marketing and SEO. Did the website truly save the breakfast sandwich at Starbucks? A question I will never truly be able to answer as no one from Starbucks has ever spoken with me (not about the site or for a position I directly applied for) - so it will forever remain a mystery.

Even after the website mention in the book and the traffic that the website is still getting from the individual city and state pages, I still pay every month to Network Solutions to host the website. I have now since revamped the site to reflect the saving of the sandwich and providing social interactivity that Facebook and Twitter allow us website developers to provide. I also set the Google maps to show all the Starbucks within each city and state on the according page so that the analytics stop showing a 99.8% bounce rate and a time of less than 1 minute spent on each page. Since the book mention and the changes that have been made, the site has seen a boost from 5% Direct Traffic referrals to 15% and from 3% referring websites to 8% with Facebook bringing in 3.5% of that traffic - though Google Organic is still bringing in a large amount of traffic all going to the individual location pages (roughly 60 keywords per day referring traffic from SEO to the individual pages).

I'm sure at some point Google will probably shut me down (or algorithm me out) as they punished JCPenney for buying links - according to the NY Times article "The Dirty Little Secrets of Search". Though I am hoping my "doorway pages" are user friendly enough that they will let them stay (especially since Starbucks doesn't offer maps with store locations for searchers).

The site is and has been used as a lesson in the effectiveness in social media and search engine optimization to the Wappow workshop attendees. I also do occasionally have an interviewer pull it up on their computer to show them what I am capable of when it comes to fooling around with silly little websites.

Facebook Like and Facebook Share

As you may have noticed Facebook is popping up on sites all over the web. You can like, share, login, or even comment on blog posts, news articles, or any other page of a website.  In typical Facebook fashion, developers used to be able to add either a "share" button or a "like" button to their website pages. The difference was that the like button was a simple click and notification that you "like" the page. There was no other effort on your part to write a comment, or anything else. The "share" allowed you to not only write a comment, but to edit the information (title, description, image) that was to be shared – giving the user a bit more control.Both would show up in the news stream, and on their wall, but the like was a simple line saying "Bob likes the blah page". The "share" showed up with a graphic, the comment, and the title and description of the page.
This allowed for more noticeability in the very busy news feed of the user’s friends. In most cases I would personally choose (and recommend) the "share" button.
And so did Facebook...
In recent developments Facebook has changed how the "like" button behaves making it more like the "share" button – allowing the user to "like" something, giving them the option to make a statement about it, and showing up more prominently in the news feed. So now when you setup your "like" button there are a couple of different options you can choose. 1) choose the word "recommend" or "like" in the button itself. 2) choose the layout style of Standard, Button Count, or Box Count.

So now when you "recommend" or "like" a page it gives you the option to say "what's on your mind?" adding a comment to the item in the news feed.

And instead of showing up in the news feed as "Bob like the Blah page" it now shows up more prominently with a graphic, title, and description.