Social Web Tips

Societe Generale analyst Richard Nguyen hit SAP with a sell rating on Wednesday citing increased odds of a fourth quarter profit warning and signs that customers are pushing back on the software company’s attempt to upsell them following a maintenance price increase.
Nguyen’s report–he downgraded SAP shares from a hold to a sell–come amid some worrisome […]

Application failures, operating system faults, Stop errors: If you see any of these while running Windows Vista, you could have defective or failing RAM. In this IT Dojo video, Bill Detwiler shows you how to investigate possible RAM problems with the Windows Memory Diagnostic Tool, included in Vista.

For those of you who prefer text to […]

Here are today’s notable headlines. You can get News To Know via email alert and RSS daily:
Sam Diaz: A rare occurrence: Macs on sale

Jason D. O’Grady: Apple retail stores to match prices
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes: Apple prepares for Black Friday blow-out!

Larry Dignan: YouTube goes wide screen; Sets up for more professional content

Garett Rogers: YouTube getting ready for […]

by Jennifer Laycock

I scan hundreds of feeds and read dozens of articles each day so you don’t have to. From the new “Twitter-bite” to small businesses turning to the web for cheap marketing, find out which articles I dubbed as must-read for the small business crowd today.

• I remember talking to my friend Matt Bailey earlier this year after a conference and hearing him talk about how he seems our industry shifting from the “sound bite” to the “Twitter bite.” His point was that people would soon begin making their points in 140 characters or less, so they could easily be quoted on Twitter. Sure enough, Jim Connolly over at Jim’s Marketing Blog has compiled 37 Marketing Tips in 140 Characters or less. (Via via Steve Woodruff.)
• If you’ve been playing around with Google’s free Website Optimizer but wonder if you are missing the boat in terms of potential, you might want to check out a new book by Bryan Eisenberg and John Quarto-vonTivadar. Chris Sherman has a review of Always be Testing: The Complete Guide to Google Website Optimizer” over at Search Engine Land.
• There was a good post in the Bradenton Herald yesterday looking at small businesses and they way they use social networking sites and the web to market their small businesses. These are the local coffee shops, restaurants and other companies that compete with national chains while trying to hold tight to a budget. It’s a good read to get a feel for how small businesses are beginning to embrace the web and includes a few bits of simple (and effective) advice.
• Mack Collier delivers another killer post over at Marketing Profs Daily Fix. This one outlines ten things every corporate blog should have. Ten, that’s it, ten simple things. If you are blogging, or thinking of blogging, you need to read this list. From comment policies to recruiting your bloggers to RSS buttons, Mack gives you the run down of what you MUST know to get rolling.

Check out our small business news site.

In this video, Sumi Das and I talk about the broken down talks between Facebook and Twitter and where a relationship between the two might be in the future. Both need to develop solid revenue models as they grow, which means this round may have simply been a victim of bad timing. Could the two […]

If there’s one thing about Apple products that you can pretty much always bank on, it’s that they rarely go on sale.
Best Buy launched some pre-Black Friday specials that discounts a whole lineup of Macbooks, iMacs and even the Mac Mini. (Nope, iPods and the iPhone are not on the list.)  Of course, these aren’t […]

by Stoney deGeyter

There is something about taking everyday life lessons and applying them to specific business situations. We often hear proverbs and anecdotes that we can apply throughout our daily routines, but until we hear them placed into a specific context we are often left with bumper-sticker philosophies that have little practical application.

Last week I presented a two part series of questions that SEOs and clients must ask themselves in order to work together to create a successful optimization campaign. Each of those questions could have been posed of anybody for any situation. But by looking at each specifically in the context of SEO we were able to create a thought process that allows for specific application of those questions in the SEO / client relationship.

Today I want to take a set of guidelines about making good decisions and apply them to the SEO and business success environment. Every day SEOs and business owners looking for ways to improve their online exposure are faced with dozens of decisions. Any one of these decisions can breath life into a dying SEO campaign, push a successful campaign to greater success, or cause a site to crash and burn in the search results.

Here are the first five of ten decision-making guidelines that’ll help you rock your SEO and SEM campaigns to success.

Never make permanent decisions based on temporary circumstances.

Rankings are volatile and frequently change as engines adjust their algorithms, new competition emerges and site changes are implemented. Sites that have held top positions for years can often find themselves displaced with the next algorithm update. Sometimes this can be a legitimate drop in relevance, while other times it can be a temporary snafu. Before making any sudden or permanent decisions, you must know the difference.

Every now and then we have a client that watches their rankings on a daily, if not hourly basis. If that ranking drops, for whatever reason, they are on the phone calling us to find out what’s going on. Each time we stress the need for patience. Often times the adjustments are temporary and making any changes will be more likely to prevent the ranking from bouncing back.

At the same time, investigation is in order. When such changes happen, one must investigate the issue to determine if the change is a temporary glitch, or if it’s the result of something else going on. Only once that determination has been made should any action be taken.

Don’t let your emotions blind you to reason.

The business owner or the SEO (if they are different) can often find themselves heavily invested in achieving “top rankings”. We’ve convinced ourselves that the only way to be successful is to have our keyword rank in the number one position. Logically, however, we know this isn’t true. There are many different things that factor into success, and search engines are (or at least should be) just a small part of that. Nobody should place the whole of their business success in Google’s hands. Especially considering the volatile nature of the search results.

While reason can tell us that the higher the ranking the more traffic you’ll receive, but traffic alone is not what you’re after. The most crucial thing to being successful is getting more sales while maintaining lower expenses. While you need to have traffic to get sales, increasing traffic isn’t always the best way to achieve it.

This is especially true in SEO where targeting certain keywords may bring an abundance of traffic but low conversions and other keywords will bring lower traffic but greater conversion rates. Similarly, changing a title tag may cause a drop in rankings but may also be more compelling and entice more clicks to the site than the better ranking title tag generated.

SEO is about the big picture and we can’t get wrapped up in the smaller issues. That’s not to say that we should do nothing, but we must be reasonable about what is the right course of action and what action is truly producing the best results for the business.

Surround yourself with sharp people and draw on their gifts, without being intimidated by their expertise.

People are often intimidated by those who know more than themselves. In SEO this mentality can keep us away from seeking out people who may be able to help us in ways that we cannot achieve for ourselves.

In running an SEO firm, I strive to employ the “Robin Hood” model, at least as it was relayed to me by a friend who actually read the book! From what I understand, Robin Hood would not allow someone to be a part of his gang that couldn’t beat him in a fight. In order to be successful, Robin Hood brought in only people who were better than him.

This principle applies throughout business and SEO. One person simply cannot have the monopoly on all SEO and web marketing knowledge. Therefore it is important to rely on others who know more and can do better than we ever could. With this model, I find that I learn many new things about SEO from those whom I employ or communicate with because they are in different trenches than I am. At the same time, they learn from my differing skills and expertise as well.

In some cases it’s easy to find people to perform certain jobs, especially when we know we have little or no knowledge of that particular area. But in areas where we know we are strong, it’s often difficult to bring in others who are just as strong, if not stronger. Especially when they have their own style and way of doing things. SEOs and business owners can benefit a great deal by finding people who’s skills overlap and ideas can be bounced off each other, creating far more success than any one could do individually.

Take time to consider all options.

With all the options there are at any given moment of an SEO campaign, it is important that you take adequate time to consider each option carefully. While we can often get far on gut instinct, the first option isn’t always the best option.

In SEO, there are times where one set of options will conflict with another leaving you to have to chose which is the best route forward. Other times you simply only want to implement one change or new campaign at a time in order to know what’s effective and what’s not. In these cases, proper decisions can be made only once all the options are presented and thought through.

Do you change a title tag? Increase or decrease keyword usage? Go out and get more links? Employ a social media campaign? Do you have the budget for one and not another? What is most likely to improve the results? Which is riskier?

These and many other questions must be asked and analyzed before moving forward with any one-single option. And once you decide to move forward, monitor carefully. If the results are negative, go back, undo, and try something different.

Choose your battles.

You can only do so much at a time. One of the things we come up against in performing SEO is budget vs. time. In SEO there are simply an unlimited number of options before you at any given time but you must pick and choose what you can and want to do.

In many cases the fight isn’t so much about budget or time, but it’s about approval. We often find we can do little more than make certain recommendations and then it’s up to the client to do the rest. We can push hard and potentially sour a good relationship, or we can move on to other things that can and will be implemented.

Each decision must be weighted with the potential benefit, both in terms of immediate and long-term success for the optimization campaign and the client. Deciding what to do and when is as important as just about any other decision you can make.

Later this week I’ll continue with Part II, providing five more decision making strategies that can be applied to creating a successful SEO campaign.

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Your faithful scribe just received this voice message when he picked up his home phone:
“Sorry to disturb you. This message was intended to be received by an answering machine.”
Then, the connection was cut.
Calling back the number (1-866-849-3243) gets you a “voice messaging center” for a marketer which does not identify itself.
It’s bad enough when the […]