Dear Manufacturer,
You’ve got some cool stuff. So cool, in fact, that many people around the country have businesses that sell your items through their store. You’ve got stuff that’s in demand. It’s hip. It’s high quality. You’re proud of what you build.
You’ve got something that people want; good for you. Yet there’s a problem. You’re so far behind the times that sales are zipping right on past you. Why?
I’m glad you asked.
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I’m the proud father of four children, ages 11-17. As an Internet Marketer, it goes without saying that there are plenty of computers around the house, and almost always a child parked in front of one at any time.
Children of this age make terrific guinea pigs. They are awesome resources that can find things online that even a seasoned SEO expert may have a hard time finding. Why? Because they don’t use Yahoo!, Google or MSN very much.
Want one of my kids to find something online? Most often, their first stop is YouTube. That’s right. Need info on a person? Forget Yahoo!’s people search, there’s Facebook.
And these kids aren’t really any different than most other teens. Comscore’s May numbers show that YouTube searches are up 4 percent, while Google’s searches dropped 2 percent. Yahoo is down 4 percent, and Microsoft’s sites are down as well.
What’s up? Well, YouTube as I said, as well as Facebook and Craigslist.
SEO (that is, Search Engine Optimization) is still a pretty new industry. There’s not a week that goes by that I have to explain what it is I do and (very generically) how I do it. People (usually clueless business owners) are fascinated that there exists an entire world based around increasing website traffic and climbing the rankings of Google and such. They had no idea the system could be gamed. (Yeah, I know, gamed isn’t really the right word to use here, but hopefully it gets the right idea across).
But now that there’s an increasingly younger audience to our SEO efforts, we’re starting to see more and more blog posts on things like Optimizing your Twitter profile, or How to turn your Facebook fans into sales leads.
Wait a minute: I thought my job was to optimize your website for certain terms, build links and make the user experience so that it increases conversions (ie ROI).
Now there are Social Media consultants (or “experts”). They help you build up your Facebook profile, tweet for you, and help you create community around your brand. It’s a terrific idea, and one that ultimately supports a business owner’s SEO efforts, but my gosh it’s time consuming. No wonder these people are creating their own industry.
And this isn’t really the first time SEO has divided. We’ve seem people go the way of Linkbait expert in the past, along with many other spin-offs.
Which brings me to the point of this rant: Choose your battles. Gee, you haven’t heard that one before. But really, how much money can the average small business owner throw at an SEO project? And then on top of that, social media, PPC, viral campaigns, linkbait and video? Forget it.
I’ll be honest with you. There is no one person that can do all of that effectively. No way, no how. It takes a team. Sure, that team may be all quarantined inside a single office, each doing their own little piece of the work, but there’s no way one person can promise a small business owner all of these things his/herself.
If your “marketing guy” tells you that he can do your email blasts, create videos, handle your SEO and run your PPC campaign, you’d better find out if he’s got a team behind him.
In St. Louis, every March and October the Yellow Pages (YP) are delivered to the homes and businesses across the area. These new phone books replace the ones delivered the year prior. Delivery dates may be the same across the country, I’m not sure.
Many of you know that I do some web work on an Army contract several days a week in the Federal Center in downtown St. Louis. Well, I make it a point to watch for the new phone books, which showed up around March 8th this year. Because of the large amount of worker bees here (about 250), they wheel the phone books in on pallets and put them in the hallway. Then the worker bees can just come by and grab a new book (and put their old one in a recycle bin).
This year, I kept tabs on the amount of phone books. Over the period of 38 days, about 16 phone books were taken from the pallet of 200.
Sixteen books.
Just for giggles, I visited a few of the other floors in the building to see how many phone books were still sitting around. Every floor (except for the IRS area) had about the same amount of books remaining on their pallets.
They finally wheeled them out yesterday. I hope they went to a recycling center somewhere.
Mr. Small Business owner, what does this tell you about the future of Yellow Page advertising? Are you still spending thousands or tens of thousands of dollars on YP ads? Your audience is shrinking, and your money is being wasted.
I have a few clients who are ahead of the curve when it comes to Internet Marketing. They recognized the poor use of their marketing budgets with YP and have since scaled back their spending on these sources, and have put that money into building their online presence through blogging and link building. They are reaping huge harvests on their well-placed seeds.
I’m not saying to drop your YP ad. In fact, I think it’s still a viable source of traffic, particularly if your target audience is over the age of 50. But I am saying don’t put so much money into it any more. A simple ad with your company name, phone number and URL is all you need.
Shameless Plug: Quit wasting money on dying forms of marketing/advertising. Put that money into hiring someone (like me) that will help your business continue to grow and thrive. Create a presence and a following online, provide outstanding customer service, and the customers will come.
Ok I’ll get straight to the point – I eat in the bathroom. Sometimes in my car, too.
You see, I’m part of a growing group of folks who carry the Internet everywhere they go. Between the iPhone, PDAs and other Internet-enabled devices, getting online is no longer something you need to visit the library to do.
For instance: Every night my wife asks me to take her up to the tanning salon, and I do. While she goes in, gets naked and scorches her skin, I sit in the truck and read interesting RSS feeds with my Treo via Google Reader. It’s a nice 20 or so minutes alone where I can catch up on some of my favorite SEO bloggers.
My cellphone’s interface isn’t the best, and those buttons are mighty tiny to push, so I prefer not to push more than I have to. So I’d prefer to click and get straight to the full text, not read a small portion and then have to click 1 for the original post. Three clicks just to read what you’re blabbering about?
What’s even worse is feeds like Sphinn’s Top Ten. At first I thought – wow, cool – all the good stuff on one page. Then I started to read them on the Treo, and what a headache. First I get the summary feed, which upon clicking takes me to the sphinn Top-Ten page (full of summaries) where I have to click it again. Then it takes me to the Sphinn page where (once again) there’s the description, some comments, and oh – a link to the actual post.
Your feed should not be this difficult to get to. People subscribed to read your content, get it to them immediately.
Since you already know how important a blog is to your business, you must also understand that providing a convenient way for people to read your blog is just as important. What’s the point of posting if no one can read it?
I suggest to my clients that they offer multiple feeds on their website – a summary feed, and a full text feed.
A summary feed is a RSS feed that contains the first 30 or so words of your blog post. It’s quick to download, and people can decide quickly whether or not they want to read the rest of your post. The biggest con is that it requires the person to click and download the full post. When you’ve got limited time, a slow connection, or a small phone, this may not be the best choice.
A full text feed contains the entire text of every post. This is a great option for those (like me) who prefer to download once and not have to click (and wait) to read the rest.
There are no real SEO impacts by offering more than one feed. The entire point is to make it convenient to all of your readers.
There are numerous ways to do this, I’m not going into all of them. Personally, I use FeedBurner’s services. I set up multiple accounts for each blog, one with full feeds and one with summaries. Then I link to both of those feeds in my blog, therefore offering my first time readers the option of how they’d like to consume my content.
As I said before, the point is to make it easy for people to read the content of your website/blog. Sites or links that require several clicks will send your visitors away to other, more convenient sites (your competitors). Don’t let that happen.
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Will Hanke is part husband, father, geek and all kickass SEO. Follow on Twitter or stalk elsewhere.