Are you serious? The speed of your page may be as important as the relevant content on your site for how Google will rank you? According to Mr. Cutts of Google, the most important new factor for SEO rank maybe the speed at which your site loads.

What exactly will this mean for the millions of web managers, SEO professionals, companies and the agencies which serve them? It means that not only does your content need to be relevant; not only do you need to have appropriate keywords and back links, but the IT gurus will need to work closer with the marketing and SEO professionals on the overall web channel of the business. This has not always been a match made in heaven. It also means more investment in technology and IT infrastructure which hasn’t always seen the level of support it truly needs. In many companies it resembles the relationship between General McChrystal and President Obama. The General asks for troops and the President takes forever to send them while at the same time stating how he supports the troops. I have seen this played out in many companies. IT needs valuable resources to do their job successfully and the leadership of the company keeps shortchanging them for legitimate and sometimes illegitimate reasons.

Nonetheless, look for this struggle to expand if Google implements site load speed as one of the factors in page rankings. The lingering question in my mind is what about the multitude of outside factors that effect page load, such as the enduser’s computer and connection for example? Is Google taking any of that into account?

Here is the interview with Matt Cutts of Google

I have heard that if you’re a major recognizable brand name such as Nike, Levi Straus, Honda, etc. that you don’t need to be concerned with SEO or SEM. This is a huge assumption. Sure any consumer who is already in the camp for a particular brand can find that site regardless of SEO.

What SEO and SEM does for you is assure you rank well for those who are using generic terms such as t-shirt or running shoes etc. It also assures that when consumers are searching for a product and are open to any brand; that your bran will show up in their search. If my wife wants a purse for her birthday and I am searching on the generic term “purse”, I guarantee that Coach would like to show up first in my search. If they aren’t performing SEO or SEM, then they missed an opportunity.

It is also valuable if your brand has many products that consumers search for once on your site. If the visitor can’t find what they want, they will go where they can, and you don’t want to miss that opportunity for a sale. For example, the company ACCO has a retail site where you can purchase office supplies direct from them as well as going to Staples.com etc. Their online catalog is quite extensive. If I am looking for the “Rio Red” Swingline Stapler on the ACCO site, I should be able to find it with that term, assuming proper SEO was performed on the page for the internal site search engine to find it. However, If I don’t know the exact product term and just type in red stapler in Google, and SEO was not performed on the product page, then my chances are pretty low of finding that exact product. Other examples are Nike and Under Armour. They have many products for sale direct from their site. They also use an internal search engine. Many times I am looking for a product and don’t know the exact product name, so these companies had better perform SEO on their product pages to help me find that product I am ready to purchase otherwise, I will go to a different brand.

Now what do you do when the actual product isn’t sold direct from the manufacturer?

Many brands don’t sell direct from their site, they use other online retail channels. Target.com competes with Overstock.com and Amazon.com competes with Barnes&Noble.com and the list goes on. These sites need to optimize their product pages so consumers can find the exact product they are looking for, regardless of brand name recognition. Again, if I can’t find it on your site, I’m leaving. If what I’m looking for isn’t on the first 3 pages of a search engine, I’m moving on.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a very involved process including proper content creation which is relevant to search terms and proper use of key terms and key phrases within the content titles and body, page links, meta tags, etc. The sister of SEO is Search Engine Marketing (SEM). A lot of work goes into these processes in order to gain top rankings on search engine result pages (SERPs) and ultimately gain more visits and conversions. It is an ever changing and re-evaluation process to maintain the top position on (SERPs) as consumers use different terms in search, as competitors change their sites, as consumer search trends change, and as search engines change their algorithms. An important piece to any SEO strategy involves attaining links back to your site. If these back links are from sites related in content to your site, this of course increases the popularity  and credibility of your site as judged by the search engines, thus increasing your quality score and rankings on SERPs.

So here are some things to think about in attracting backlinks:

1. Link bait. Create “linkable” content that others will be happy to link to. Like Seth Godin’s book, the Purple Cow, create something that is remarkable, that people want to share and talk about. A boring online brochure most likely won’t attract many links without outside assistance. However, helpful how-to articles, original research, resources such as useful lists, and cool online tools such as spypig.com which is a site that tracks email marketing is something that adds value.

2. Interactive PR. Content is King! Writing compelling press releases with terms linked back to appropriate pages on your site is a good way to attract readers. Create a social media release through PitchEngine. Distribute your releases through online press release services to increase your exposure. Consider both free press release services and fee-based PR distribution sites.

3. Articles. Create your own external links to your site by writing helpful industry-related articles and linking these back to your site. Submit your articles to high-quality article directories.

The next four tactics involve generating links through blogs, in order from the easiest but lowest value to the most challenging but rewarding techniques.

4. Blog comments. Post comments on industry-related blogs. Make sure you comments are relevant to the post, add value (i.e. they aren’t just about your company), and include no more than two links back to your site. One is better. This works well with company or industry blogs as well. This can be very time consuming as well.

5. Blogger outreach. Take the direct route—send notes to carefully selected bloggers pointing them to original research, compelling content, a useful tool or (truly) interesting news. Use proper blogger relations techniques, and avoid these worst practices in blogger outreach.

6. Blogger relationships. Since bloggers who know you are more likely to link to you, try to establish relationships with some key bloggers in your industry space. Subscribe to their RSS feeds, follow them on Twitter, tweet their posts on occasion, write comments (see above), ask for advice, and, if possible, try to connect live at conferences where they are presenting or attending. This goes with networking practices. Make some face to face connections when possible to strengthen and grow the professional relationship.

7. Guest posts. Most powerful of all, once you’ve established a relationship with an influential blogger, offer to write a guest post. Make sure it offers valuable information; is not self-promotional; and appeals to the blog’s readers. It’s generally acceptable to include 2-3 links back to your own site between the post and the “about the author,” but don’t overdo it, and ideally the post should link to other information sources as well. An even better way to this is to ask them to be a guest blogger on your site.

These are by no means quick or easy. It takes a great deal of patience and persistence, just like the rest of the SEO campaign. It’s never ending and constantly evolving.

Given that innovation is the only sustainable advantage these days, advertisers need to allocate at least 10% of their marketing budget to foster it, even in these economically challenged times, said former eBay and Best Buy CMO Mike Linton.

Innovation, by Mr. Linton’s definition, is any action taken by the brand that changes consumer behavior in favor of the company, and that can range from a new product to a new way to service customers. While it’s no surprise that Starbucks has managed to build a massive social-media audience, considering that it gives away latte coupons on Twitter and Facebook, innovation is also when a toilet-paper brand can get consumers to tweet about how soft its product is and show brand in a new light.

Any marketer standing still at a time when the consumer is ahead of the brand is bound to lose, said Mr. Linton, now a Forbes columnist. And amid the wide array of choices that consumers have today, fickleness represents a greater challenge than ever and loyalty dissipates that much more quickly. “Without innovation, you end up in a defensive position,” he said.

Yet at a time when marketers are challenged to produce immediate returns, how can they balance the need to innovate against the pressure to produce bottom-line quarterly results?

Mr. Linton offered a few tips for driving innovation that don’t require rich resources:

1. Just go for it.

If it’s true innovation, you won’t know everything about it, including how to measure it. Don’t spend precious resources planning and testing your new approach or product until everything’s in perfect alignment, he said. Though it can be a bit scary to navigate in uncharted territory, the price to pay for holding back is that your competitors may be on the verge of launching the next big thing that could render your brand passé.

“You have to keep pace with the market, and [that means] the marketers have to get comfortable with the ambiguity,” Mr. Linton said.

2. Give your team incentives to innovate.

One tactic Mr. Linton has leaned on is to compensate his teams not only by how they measure specific functions, but by the totality of the customer experience, such as store sales, customer complaints and other metrics.

“I paid my team on total ROI first,” Mr. Linton said.

If you pay your search-engine optimization guru solely by click-throughs or the media buyer strictly on media efficiency, you’re encouraging them to think in silos and not outside the box. For example, if you set the success metric for customer-service reps to handle incoming calls within five minutes, you could be compromising their level of care in handling more time-consuming, complex customer-service issues.

3. Make sure you have at least one new thing every year.

As you prepare your annual business plan, ask yourself if you have anything new in the roadmap that wasn’t there last year. You have to constantly ask: “Are we on the offensive? Who’s our real competition?” Mr. Linton said.

“What are you doing that’s new this year? If you don’t have something new, someone else will,” he said.

4. Use the 70% rule.

If your team feels there’s a 70% chance that an out-of-the-box initiative based on rough math and intuition will deliver significant learning and success, you should go for it. “You have to have a belief that it’s going to work for you,” Mr. Linton said.

5. Don’t be blindsided by the competition and get lost in what innovation is.

Record labels still believed they were each other’s competition even as they engaged in legal battles with music download, peer-to-peer sites and the consumers who used those sites. They didn’t see that consumers were bypassing the $19.99 CD en masse while Apple created a colossal digital-music franchise.

By the way, innovation isn’t printing $1 coupons when the 50-cent coupons don’t work. “If you temporarily buy your way to greatness, that’s a problem and it’s not going to solve the long-term problem,” Mr. Linton said. “Pricing only solves long-term problems if you only compete on price.”

People who know me, and those who have read previous posts, know that I am a positive person focused on success. I believe that while in mechanical systems it is normal to ask “negative” questions to diagnose why something broke or failed and find a solution. For example:

Q- Why did the product get returned?

A- Because the connector came loose.

Q- Why did the connector come loose?

And the process goes on until the root cause is found and fixed. In human systems if you come across a problem or failure and if the focus goes down the similar track as in mechanical systems, I have seen evidence that a solution is not found. To the contrary, I have seen the negative spiral just exacerbate the problem. To solve challenges in human systems I have found success with Appreciative Inquiry. So why did I title this post “Failure is a Better Teacher”?

The world is focused on success, especially America. Success in academics. Success in sports. Success in Business. We benchmark success and try to copycat others’ successful strategies whether personal or company successes. Many books have been written on success. Many people have gotten rich from writing books on how to attain success. Look at one book for example. “In Search of Excellence” was a very successful book on successful companies and what they did to be successful. The problem is that these companies haven’t stayed at the top of their game. Sometimes focusing on success alone can be a mistake. What happens if you never look at your failures? Thomas Edison, Abraham Lincoln to name two “successes” also had many failures before their success. Walt Disney is another famous person who encountered many failures before realizing his dream.

So it is important to learn from failure. Don’t let it stop you. Keep moving forward.

The problem with studying failure is that it typically precedes the assignment of blame rather than an opportunity for improvement. Then the defenses go up and communication shuts down. Take football as an example. Coaches and players watch hours of game film studying what was done wrong so they can see where they need to improve or where the weaknesses of an opposing team are. We should not fear failure. We should embrace it, acknowledge it and learn from it. Many times in life it takes major setbacks to shake us to change. When we are successful, we are fat, dumb and happy.

So, the trick is to study failures in an objective manner without assigning blame and learn from it and work to remove it.

Ok, I’ve been gone for a while due to a very busy schedule of independent marketing projects, but I am now back.

OMG, How appropriate that Microsoft uses Vampire Diaries to launch the next Windows OS that will suck. I would have loved to be in the brainstorming session that turned out this latest ad to promote Windows 7. Microsoft is in need of a massive dose of credibility and this doesn’t do it for me. I would expect something like this from a High School Marketing class, not a marketing department or professional and experienced ad agency. Using a cute little girl, bunnies and cats will not change the fact that the issues with MS are solely due to the product that Microsoft puts out and its long reputation of instability. Crashes, bugs, viruses and constant patches and updates (some of which make things worse) are the challenges that Microsoft faces. Before addressing these issues, the marketing folks are wasting their budgets and are forced to acts of desperation, because the product can’t compete on features and benefits. The campaign of paying consumers to buy a PC was bad and desperate.  The ads from Apple work because they are based on experiences that many of us have had with our PC’s, which also serve as the reasons many of us have switched to Apple, including me. Take a lesson from Seth Godin and The Purple Cow – Make a remarkable product first.

Good Luck.

Sex Sells, but for markers?

First, let me say that I am a big fan of Qaurtet, which is a subsidiary of ACCO Brands. You may be familiar with Quartet. They own the dry erase board (whiteboard) market. This post is not to criticize but to help. Several years ago when EXPO was a brand new company, they went to Quartet and asked that the EXPO dry erase markers be added with every purchase of a Quartet whiteboard. The rest is history. Flash forward to about three years ago now. Quartet realizes that owning the whiteboard market makes them the natural choice for dry erase markers as well. Quartet introduces a far superior dry erase marker that actually does last twice as long as the EXPO dry erase markers.

Anyway,  here is the point. The name of these superior Quartet dry erase markers is “EnduraGlide”! Maybe I am the only one with the oversexed mind, but the name EnduraGlide, does not make me think of dry erase markers. The next issue I noticed with these Quartet dry erase markers is the design. The cap is designed to prevent rolling, which is great, however it looks like, well, a phallic symbol to put it nicely. I am not sure if the product design team at Quartet was feeling especially randy at the time or if it’s just my fertile mind that comes up with this, but I can’t help but to come to this conclusion when Quartet has a dry erase marker named EnduraGlide and it’s shaped like a phallic symbol. Is it me or is it part of a subliminal product marketing campaign? I don’t care either way. I just find it funny. When I brought this up with colleagues, they discounted my comments. I’m just being perverted, trying to be funny, they said.

but I noticed in a blind test to determine who likes the design and the name, without offering any bias into the discussion, I found that women liked the name EnduraGlide and the shape of the dry erase marker  by a margin of 7 to 3. The test was unscientific and included 30 female office workers. I’m waiting on the commercial for the Quartet EndraGlide dry erase marker with Barry White singing in the background and a sultry voice explaining the enhanced performance of the EnduraGlide dry erase marker.

I thought it ended there. Maybe it was a coincidence that Quartet is offering a superior dry erase marker that lasts twice as long as the EXPO dry erase marker and its name happens to be EnduraGlide and shaped like a phallic symbol.

I was wrong. A recent trip to a local grocery store revealed the latest Quartet dry erase marker – The Screamers!

Here is part of the description taken from their website “The soft grip enhances comfort while keeping you in control during long writing sessions. The reverse taper design reduces pressure that can build up while holding the marker.”

The link to the product page is HERE.

So, apparently sex now sells dry erase markers. If you’re in the market for some enhanced performance from your dry erase marker and want superior product that lasts twice as long, feels good in your hand, and reduces the pressure that can build up before you are ready to quite, then the Quartet EnduraGlide or Quartet Screamers are the dry erase markers for you.

Keep writing!

This is a great article by Brian Tomkins

Social media has become the buzz at business conferences across the country in 2009. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Blogs are the best known forms of social media today.

Although some of these tools have been around for several years, business owners now realize that they may be the best way to promote their business on a tight budget. Most business owners see social media as an inexpensive way to advertise but, it’s also an inexpensive way to build lasting relationships with your customers.

A strong client for life program is one of the most important pieces of any marketing strategy. Most companies spend most of their marketing budget on advertising to new customers, but finding new customers can be difficult and expensive. It’s always easier to farm than it is to hunt.

Traditional client for life programs include regular mailings, holiday cards and sometimes a calendar with your picture. These mailings are basically stay-in-touch tactics. The goal is to be the first person or company that customers or referral partners think of when they need your product or service.

In the last 10 years, companies have added e-mails to their client for life programs, which can be less expensive than mailings. All of these traditional techniques have been effective in the past, but social media has opened the door to new possibilities and higher customer expectations.

People don’t like being talked to and they dislike being marketed to even more. A good friend is a friend who listens. A good business is a business that listens.

Web sites such as Facebook and Twitter open the lines of communication between a business and its customers. The companies that have found early success in social media have learned to actively engage their customers and most importantly, listen.

The first step to a successful, social media-driven, client for life program is to listen. The more you know about your customers, the better you can serve them.  Companies used to spend thousands of dollars for the market research social media can provide for free. If you want to learn more about your customers, look and listen as they give you access to their lives. They will share their likes and dislikes.

Most importantly, they will share their successes and challenges. Twitter offers tools for you to listen to when people are talking about your specific product or service.

The next step is to stay in touch. Facebook allows you to see pictures posted by your customers. These pictures could be of a newborn child, an anniversary celebration or a graduation. All of these are excellent opportunities for you to offer congratulations. Referral partners may also share their successes and challenges.

This is another great opportunity for you to offer your congratulations or support. The posting of helpful articles and links is easy to do with social media and can provide additional value. Every time you post something, your picture or logo accompanies your post.

Finally, the most important step in a successful, social media-driven, client for life program is to build relationships through communication. We prefer to visit a restaurant where the owner comes out to greet us personally and asks if everything was OK.

Two-way communication will be appreciated by your customers more than any other gesture. If they have questions or concerns, your response and interaction will help build strong personal relationships. We have often heard that customers will buy from people they “know, like, and trust.” While that is true to the sales process, it is even more important to the client for life process.

Customers remain loyal to companies that listen and address their personal concerns. They will always feel connected to a business owner that they feel they can talk to. If the success of your business is based on the relationship you have with your customers, then it is important to make building and maintaining these relationships a priority.

How do you know if you are using tools like Facebook and Twitter effectively?  Look at your Facebook wall. Do you see comments on your posts? On Twitter, how often do people re-tweet your tweets? Are your updates one-way communications or are you actively engaging your followers? Learn how to convince your current clients to use social media

Brian Tomkins is chief of operations for Nextvoice247, a multimedia company that combines traditional Marketing and PR techniques with innovative Social Media strategies. He helps his clients brand themselves and build strong relationships by supplementing traditional marketing techniques with online social media.  He utilizes Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, Blogs and other online tools to build communities and connect his clients to their target audience. Contact him at btomkins@iiecho.com.

Everyone is an SEO Guru.

Seems like everyone these days claims to be a social media or SEO or SEM GURU. You can’t surf the internet or look for business resources without being bombarded by individuals who have jumped on the bandwagon of SEO and social media, trying to fill their webinars and seminars – so they can sell you very important information on Internet Marketing for a very healthy price.

While there are several companies out there that can help with SEO, one that I highly recommend is KEO Marketing, for the small companies working on a shoestring budget or the indivual marketer or even web developer who needs to optimize their site, I am sharing this list of SEO resource links so you don’t have to lose valuable time hunting for the FREE information you need. Here is the list:

http://www.clickz.com/
http://searchengineland.com/
http://searchenginewatch.com/
http://www.seochat.com/
http://www.sempoinstitute.com/
http://www.sempoaz.com/

If you need hosting, I also recommend that you look at www.harvardhositing.com or our very own Phoenix Arizona based web hosting company – www.GoDaddy.com

I hope this is useful for you. With regular visits to these sites you too can be an SEO Guru!

Ever notice how job hunting is a lot like dating? I sure have, and I have put together a list of the similarities. Here they are:

1. Dress for success. You put on your best clothes, shave, comb and put gel in your hair for the special date (interview) so you can make the all important good first impression. This can be tricky depending on the industry, the company and region of the country, so do your homework. A good rule of thumb is don’t dress better than the other person on the date (interview)
2. Always be On. When in public, always assume you are being watched from the time you drive up to the time you drive away from the event. Have your car clean, dress for success, use professional language and manners. Always speak well of others because you don’t know who knows who, nor their opinion of the person. That is also why it is important to be on because you don’t know who could make that important introduction or that the next great relationship is standing right in front of you. This can happen at a networking event, a sports event, while going to the store or at your kid’s football practice.
3. Market yourself. You are on the market for a new relationship, even if you have been dumped and don’t feel ready to get back out there, you must. Figure out your brand. What is it? What is your tagline? What is your elevator speech? What is your advertising campaign like? What is your message that is being conveyed through your reputation, your network, your clothes, etc. This is vital to attract the next great relationship with someone (company) which shares your values.
4. Do your research. You cyberstalk the person (company), to find out all you can about them, so you can speak with them intelligently. You want to know what they like and dislike. You want to be able to answer questions and speak to topics that are important to them and ask leading questions that help you decide if this will be a good relationship.
5. Utilize your network. You speak to people in your network, your friends or their friends ,past employees (boyfriends/girlfriends) and learn about the true nature of the person that might not be revealed in the first meeting. Get set ups with good people (companies).
6. Create positive questions. Make statements that will cause the person to ask you more positive questions so you can keep the conversation going and they see you as a person they want to have a relationship with.
7. Value yourself. Don’t be easy. No one respects a person that is easy or undervalues their contribution to the relationship. Hold out for what you are truly worth regardless of how long it’s been or that the offer seems to be attractive at that moment. Anything worth having is worth waiting for, so if an offer is made, think about it before jumping into a bad relationship.
8. Be yourself. In order to have a good relationship, it needs to be built on trust and who you really are. It does no good to pretend to be something your not because we are looking for a long term relationship. This works on both sides. How many companies have we worked at turned out very different from the image portrayed in the interview?  Save yourself time and money by being yourself.
9. Stay positive. You may have just been dumped; the person tells you it’s not you but them; your going in different directions, etc. Remember it is not a reflection on you personally. You need to stay positive. The right one is out there for you. You won’t attract the right one by being negative. Face it, who wants to be around a sourpuss.
10. Follow Up. Ok, you had the date (interview) and you thought it went very well. But there is no call the next day. A week, a month goes by and no call. By this time you are angry that the jerk led you on. You put in all of that effort for nothing. This works two ways as well. You can follow up with a call and a thank you card. keep following up about once a week or so to show your still interested. If you don’t get a response after a month, then you probably don’t want to be with them. They have poor communication skills and are unable to be candid with you up front.

So there is my list. Do you have any to add? let me know…