commbasics

Yes, yes, I know. Your customers are far too busy and intelligent to use social media and, even if they do, they do not use it for business-related activity. That’s an inaccurate belief. More than two-thirds of the population of North America and Europe are actively involved in social media on a daily basis, which means it is highly likely that your customer base does use at least one medium every day. Two bits of information came out in some conversations today regarding how to optimize search for your website. Most of the conversations were around a report on Search Engine Land where Andrey Lipattsev, a Search Quality Senior Strategist at Google, confirmed what the Google algorithms look for in search engine rankings. Here are the two most important activities you can do, based on my understanding: Engaging content is the most important thing for SEO Links back to your site The first activity is all under your control. You identify and create the content on your site and if it is se...

Google took the issued of keywords and shoved its priority to the very bottom of SEO and pushed paid search to a specific box on their search page. Suddenly a new group of sits were climbing rapidly to the top of the search engine… traditional media sites. Newspapers, broadcast organizations and bloggers. How could that be? Because Google had changed the algorithm priorities.   Google has always kept the lid on the secrets of their search algorithm, but since the beginnings of online search, the secrets have leaked out and been discovered by very smart people. These people make up the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) industry. There are multiple points of SEO, but from the start, key words were the most important. At first, putting the words in the header of websites was the major starting point so the SEO experts, mostly web designers, made that the primary focus of their counsel to clients. Finding what the most important words were became the definer of the successful site des...

Almost every company describes themselves to the customer base almost exactly the same way. Customers are left to make up their own minds and without any differentiation they make the same choices: the one they know that costs the least. Every company is unique.  Every company has something that sets them apart from all the others.  Products and services have been developed with care and dedication.  But almost every company describes themselves to the customer base almost exactly the same way.  The same phrases, same buzzwords, same claims, same features, same keywords.  Customers are left to make up their own minds and without any differentiation they make the same choices: the one they know that costs the least. The companies believe their products and services are their differentiators, and they would be right… from their perspective.  The customers, however, have no idea what it is that sets those products apart because they are described the s...

Lots of journalists have a hard time distinguishing what is good content (in other words, stuff that people will read and watch) and what they actually produce. Facebook recently announced it would be "punishing" users with bad content b y driving it out of friends and followers news feeds. Reports are coming in that most marketers have no idea if their content is actually effective.   More experts are saying there is an extreme disconnect between "best practice" SEO and good content. And it goes beyond marketing.  Lots of journalists have a hard time distinguishing what is good content (in other words, stuff that people will read and watch) and what they actually produce.  A couple of weeks ago the president of a large media company told me in frustation that his advertisers what to tell one story and his journalists want to tell another.  But the readers are asking for something altogether different and he can't get his team or sponsor...

The content that matters is not about you. It's about the problems your customers are trying to solve. Over the past few weeks I'm mentioned the changes in search technology from Google (Hummingbird) and how it will affect both B2B media and marketing.  I've also touched on google's concept of the Zero Moment of Decision (ZMOD), the moment when a customer actually decides to Google a company or product to make a purchase decision (which is actually long after the decision has been made). Today, however, I sat down with a good friend by the name of Douglas Alexander, who told me a very interesting story about his product search and selection process.  You may recognize Douglas's name from reading EBN, Electronic Purchasing Strategies or any number of component engineering and design publications.  He's currently writing what may become the definitive educational book on component engineering. I published the audio from the discussion on my Spreak...

Have you noticed that your web traffic seems to have fallen in the past month?  If not, you're lucky.  If so, don't blame Google's major overhaul of it's search algorithm , "Hummingbird." Blame your content instead.  And if you're and SEO expert, this might help .  As I've said about previous upgrades, Panda and Penguin, Hummingbird is less concerned with keywords as it is with context.  But the first two are focused on the engagement searchers have with content.  Hummingbird is all about context. (I find this remarkably coincidental that The Age of Context , by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel came out this month in time for this announcement from Google.  Well Played guys.)  So what does "all this context stuff" have to do with you?  Here's a brief explanation from Danny Sullivan at SearchEngineLand.com. "Hummingbird should better focus on the meaning behind the words. It may bett...

Many companies tell us wondrous numbers about how many hits they get on their site, all produced by their amazing SEO program.  But when I ask how many of those hits are real people and how many are spiderbots and how many are RSS reads, they have no idea what I'm talking about.  All they know is their site gets a lot of traffic.  That is not necessarily a good thing There is a minor skirmish in the media metric world over search engine optimization (SEO) , mostly between SEO and content marketing experts (I generally fall in the latter area). Yesterday I found a story in the obviously slanted Content Marketing Institute that actually explained where the lack is . When you need to sell a bunch of products to a bunch of people.  SEO is your number one web tool.  You need to reach a lot of people and making it easier for them to find you on the web is a great idea.  But if your business is selling a few products and services to a small number of c...

I was listening to an NPR program last weekend about the success of sharing sites, like Buzzfeed .  It opened up with the statement that "it used to be the key to success online was success in search..."  Going forward the program succinctly laid out how important of search in modern internet communications strategies. Not very. The program went on to talk about how sharing, or even "borrowing" content is the new key to success... even if it wasn't quite honest.  Point taken.  However, the discussion brought to mind something I've said over and over (and that seems to be making progress in the minds of some) that real, honest, sharable content is what will bring people to your website and do business with you. Page rankings are important to companies that are selling iPhone aftermarket accessories and boner pills.  They are also important to large corporations who want to make sure that no one sees links to the lower tier competi...

What's missing from most company websites, or at least what is craftfully hidden, is that very reason for being. Companies hire SEO consultants who have absolutely no understanding of the market for the companies' products and just jam the web traffic with random hits from spiders, which makes everyone feel good until you look at the sales figures for the year. This week I've been getting bombarded with SEO consultants wanting to link their sites to New Tech Press .  I've dutifully gone to their sites to see what they are all about and have been thoroughly disappointed in what I see.  They are filled with poorly written, unconnected, bland content that provides absolutely no value to their audiences.  They are designed only to drive search traffic. What makes it all the worse is some of these sites are for well-known corporations.  And, no, I won't tell you who. I understand the value of good SEO.  It's important to give people making rando...

Thanls Scott Adams!

 We come now to a discussion of earned media, which we will attack in two parts.  Today were going to look at search results as earned media.  We've touched on this in earlier discussions.  Not all search results are earned media, especially if you've paid for placement, but they can be considered earned if you've put the effort into making your content accessible through proper SEO practices.    One of the main ingredients in proper earned media is effort.  Earned media takes more effort to get than paid or owned media, but is an order of magnitude more valuable than the others because people tend to trust it.  As I've said earlier, the aspects of search that can be paid for (keywords, SEO gaming and outright pay for placement) have lessened the value, but if done right, it can be very beneficial to your communications program.  For now.  A few months ago, Google announced that it was changing the way in approa...

Been having some interesting discussions with web managers for b2b companies.  All of them start talking about their web traffic and SEO results.  I always step into the discussion with a series of questions that ends up stumping all of them. "So.  Who are all of those people visiting your site?" They stare at me blankly for a few seconds and then respond, "Why they're our customers, of course." "Like who?" "Well, we don't know who they are specifically..." "Then how do you know they are your customers?  Maybe they're your competitors." "They might be..." Then the stumper:  "So if you really don't know who it is visiting your site, why does it matter how many there are?" It is possible to determine if the right people are visiting your site, but the problem is that most marketing managers never ask that question and so most web site managers never take the time to dig deep...

OK, I’m a little behind it wrapping up this discussion.  Things are really getting crazy around here.  A couple of weeks ago I started talking about how SEO is not your biggest concern with your website and then followed up with how social networks followed that up with creating target audiences.  My premise is that both of the automated egalitarian technologies are being gamed by companies and building a basic distrust within their audiences.  I wrapped up my last post with: “So we are entering into another cycle; one that will be difficult for the current players to understand.  It is a cycle that will be based on ethics and trust and it is something that cannot be generated by an algorithm.” We’re going to build on that today. Trust is at the core of all genuine communication.  Once that goes out the window so does the communication.  That’s why search worked for a while because it wasn’t in the hands of the marketing department... until th...

Last Friday I dropped a flash-bang into the room saying search engine optimization (SEO) isn’t what you should be concerned about.  I got one comment from a SEO person pointing out, very nicely, that I didn’t know what I was talking about because SEO is still very important.  I don’t disagree with that statement because SEO is important... especially if you’re selling ink cartridges and boner pills.  That still doesn’t take away from my original statement.  SEO is not what you should be concerned about, especially if your business is about anything other than commodities. When Google got going in the mid double-oughts, search was THE thing.  People were still getting used to this interwebs thing and it was kinda fascinating being able to find all kinds of stuff that normally took a dozen phone books and a lot of shoe leather.  It also turned the garden hose of information in our lives into a viaduct.  People started applying subjective filters ...

I've been considering and reading about all the changes in the data-eating industry that Google, Facebook, et al are enacting and one big theme is starting to arise in my head: Search and search engine optimization are virtually worthless now.  (That's gonna piss some people off.) It used to be that people kept their browser start-up page on Google because they went on the interweb tubes to look for stuff; sometimes with a purpose but most of the time just to do it.  That's not the case anymore.  I know very few people that fire up their laptops, tablets and smart phones and immediately go to the browser.  now they got to Facebook, Twitter, Linked-in, Flipboard or any other application that allows them to get input from their social circle.  I know I'm one of them.  My browers (I use several) are set to open on publication sites like The Economist, SFGate and Electronic Products .  That, too, is not unsual as I see many people re...