Jon's In Waikiki (AKA The Waikiki Marketer)

People often ask what their Bounce rate should be. There’s not one answer as it will vary across different industries. And even subsets of industries.

What you should look at instead is improving your bounce rate constantly.

One thing that is making the SEO circles is the bounce rate’s effect on rankings. Some SEOs are making a good case for it being a factor in Google’s ranking of a site.

How much they can tell about your bounce rate is difficult to say. Some won’t use Google Analytics now for precisely this reason. After all, if Google is doing your Analytics, then know exactly what your bounce rate is.

Keep in mind that while there is good evidence that indicates bounce rate in the search ranking formula for Google, it’s not confirmed.

In the end, your goal should be to improve your bounce rate consistently. Your internet and search marketing depends on that. What do you do to improve your bounce rate?

You simply make sure that you’re targeting your content directly at your real prospects. That means telling them that they’ve arrived in the right place immediately.

From an initial glance they should have the sense that what they’re looking for is here, on your site.

This involves web usability issues. That doesn’t sound like internet/search marketing, but it is. EVERYTHING you do is marketing. Be clear about what your page is about, what it sells, who it serves.

Give the visitor an easy to understand navigation option(s). They have to know where they can go for more information, more products or just to find the info they’re looking for.

Again, like all marketing, it’s about targeting and delivering. SEO, Search Marketing, Internet Marketing, whatever. It all works on the time tested rules marketing has always followed.

The format and the method of delivery may be a little different, but you still must give the prospect what they want to win.

Search & Internet Marketing don’t end when the prospect comes through your virtual door. You still have work to do.

Many businesses concentrate so much on the work outside the site, they forget completely about the crucial importance of the on site experience.

Hawaii business has a long history of being built on relationships and trust. In Honolulu, and especially on our Neighbor Islands, people do not ‘do business’ as quickly as on the Mainland.

Here, some measure of rapport must be built. If you can establish that you have mutual friends or relatives, even better. It’s a slower, yet in some ways, richer way of business.

This need for trust and credibility has direct applications for all businesses on the internet, whether they’re in Hawaii or not.

There is a desire by your visitors to feel comfortable buying from you – or just ‘buying you’.

Without a brick-and-mortar shop to visit, at least initially, your prospect wants to get to know you or at least be reassured that taking the next step won’t be risky.

How can you do this? Give people a look at You, your business, your life even. An About Us page, done right, can establish the human face that sometimes makes the difference between a sale and a click off of your site.

Give people a reason to trust you and your product or service. In other words, expand your marketing to include yourself and your business. Or your way of doing business.

Tell them what professional groups you belong to. Show your office or store, if you have one. Give some background to the readers.

What was true about offline Marketing is doubly true of Search and Internet Marketing – and that is the fact that ‘Everything You Do Is Marketing’.

Remember, they’re not just buying what you sell, they have to buy ‘You’. Integrate that into your search/internet marketing efforts and it will pay off.

Google is getting more and more personal. As discussed before on this blog, the results one searchers gets will often be different from another searcher’s, even if they uses the same search phrase.

Google is tracking your search behavior and take that into consideration when they assemble and deliver results to you.

Another development recently is Google delivering results based on your geographic location. They will give a boost to businesses and search listings that are located – or are more relevant – to your area.

So far that doesn’t necessarily mean that local businesses automatically make the Top 10 for everybody using Google in your town. It does, though, give you an edge that most businesses would be wise to exploit.

Many SEO and search marketing experts are now saying that strict rankings will become meaningless as they don’t apply across the board. One searcher’s Top 10 will not be the same as another’s.

Your search marketing will need to get more personal. If relevant, you need to tell the search engines who you are and where you are in uncertain terms.

Your SEO and site optimization must target your audience as precisely as possible. That will be the key to success.

Find out WHO your audience is – not in general terms, but specific ones. Then create content directed at them.

Some Hawaii businesses will find this to be a little difficult as activities targeted at travelers mean reaching them before they come to the Islands as well as after.

There are those who book ahead and others who book tours and activities once they’re here. You have to figure out how your SEO/Search Marketing efforts will take shape to solve that dilemma.

If you look at the source code of sites today you still see extensive use of the Meta Tags. Specifically, I mean the Meta Keywords tag in this case.

You’ll find that someone, acting on SEO conventional wisdom, has stuffed that tag full. They’ve included every keyword and keyphrase related to their industry. And then some.

It’s SEO, circa 1998. Yet, somehow the belief persists that this is still key to SEO. It isn’t.

It’s just one of those SEO ghosts that won’t go away. Here’s the reason why it doesn’t work in today’s Google dominated search world:

REASON 1 – Google and the other major search engines pay no attention to this tag today. They roll right over it without even a glance. Like it’s not even there. All that work for nothing.

REASON 2 – Those search engines that do even look at it have a rule. And that rule is this. Any keyword or keyphrase you have in that meta keyword tag must also appear in the page. Again, people are doing extra work for no payoff. They add all kinds of extra keyphrases they want to appear in the search engines for, despite the fact that those keywords aren’t actually on the page.

Even those keywords that are on the page – if you haven’t optimized the page well enough for them, it doesn’t matter that they are in the tag.

Their appearance in the meta keywords tag gives no boost to you for them. It just tells the search engines to ‘consider’ the page for cataloging under those keyphrases.

Again, effort for no payoff. So what SHOULD you do?

It’s the same story as always. Do quality SEO on your pages and off. Choose targeted keywords and then use them wisely on the site. But don’t waste your time on the meta keywords tag.

And if an SEO you’re considering suggests doing it, you’ll know to put their number in the round file.

Bad SEO is often worse than no SEO. Sometimes A LOT worse.

Hawaii businesses, like all businesses, fall prey to SEO companies promising ‘Top Rankings!’ ‘#1 On Google!’ or all kinds of other promise that do sound great to the uninitiated.

Unfortunately, they miss the real target your business is shooting for.

First, before we go further, rankings are indeed important. However, rankings are not all equal. If you just want bragging rights for being at the top of Google, you have a lot of options.

In fact, it’s very easy to get to the #1 Google spot. There are unlimited numbers of keyphrases. You’re only limited by your imagination.

What really counts is finding the keyphrases that bring your conversions – your sales, your clients, your leads. That will be a harder path to follow, but it’s the one that makes SEO truly successful. It’s like hunting.

Which trail leads to the prize? Which one looks good, yet ultimately goes nowhere? That is what you’re shooting at and for with SEO. And most SEO companies forget that.

I know a lot of Hawaii companies who are not getting what they think they are because of this.

Rankings are on the way to SEO success, but they aren’t the pot of gold at the end. Your most important factor in your SEO campaign should be the Conversions.

That’s what will pay your bills. And we in Hawaii know how expensive our bills are.

If you’ve checked your Google rankings at different times in the same day, you may have noticed that your rankings fluctuate.

In fact, your Google rankings might be see-sawing by more than a few positions. What does that mean?

It means you’re learning about the Google Data Centers factor – a big one in SEO. Contrary to what some believe, there isn’t 1 Google Ranking Algorithm. Let me explain.

Google has a number of what are called Data Centers. Basically, the Data Centers are what take in your search query after you hit that ‘Search’ button on Google.

Then, according to the Google algorithm, they find the listings they think match your query and then feed you the 1st 10 or so.

You don’t necessarily get the same Google Data Center each time you search, even if you do a search one after another. The ranking algorithm is varied to some extent in each Data Center.

Some more than others. It is believed that at least 1 Data Center at any time is using a more ‘experimental’ algorithm as Google tries to continually improve their ranking formula.

What does this mean for  your search engine optimization (SEO)? It means you should continue to do the same crucial On and Off Site work.

That means links, targeted keywords, and quality, targeted content. You can’t game every algorithm variation, especially not as they continually change.

The solid foundations of SEO will serve you well, no matter what Data Center you’re being ranked in.

The news in the search advertising world got some bad news, at least for some outlets. Both AOL and Ask reported that they are seeing a slowdown in revenue from their search advertising programs. AOL even stated that they expected the decline to continue.

On the other hand Google & Yahoo both reported growth during recent months. AdWords & Yahoo Ads both boosted their profits. So which is the real story? I believe that search marketing/advertising is still growing. Yahoo and especially Google have excellent search ad programs, so they’re just getting more business that the weaker ones (AOL & Ask) don’t.

In fact, there is a trend toward more search engine use by consumers during this economic downturn. They’re taking more time and putting more effort into shopping around. If they have less money to play with, they want to be sure it’s going to be spent wisely. That means research on Google, Yahoo, etc.

That means that search marketing and advertising is worth your money if you’re a business. It’s where the consumers and clients are going so you need to be there in front of them. It’s time to stop missing the party. Search marketing is the both the present and the forseeable future.

Did you know that one of the top searches on Google is ‘Yahoo.com’. Searchers using one search engine will input the address of another search engine to find it.

Why don’t they just type ‘yahoo.com’ into the address bar of their browser? Who knows.

There are a few lessons to be learned here about your search marketing, but the one we’re dealing with here is the need to make it obvious what you do or offer to searchers.

The yahoo url is not the only address searchers use – it is very common to see Google used to ‘search’ for web addresses the person already knows. People want the basics and they want it given to them simply and clearly.

Being obvious means using your SEO keywords and your page description to communicate precisely – and quickly – how you fulfill their wishes.

If you’re selling something specific, you need to tell the searcher that immediately. Don’t get sidetracked talking about side issues or things that only matter to you.

Put yourself in the searchers place. When they do a search on Google and the listings come up, they need to know who has what they want.

You might have it, but if you don’t tell them in the limited space provided, you’re losing potential business.

There are ways to do this, but we won’t get into them here. Instead, remember that valuable guideline we gave above.

See things from the searcher’s perspective, then put what you’ve realized into your page titles and descriptions.

It’s a part of SEO/Search Marketing that’s forgotten too often.

A conversation with a friend about Hawaii businesses proved very interesting.

I had been telling him that I believed many, though not all, of the Hawaii businesses we lost might have been saved if they had done more online marketing.

Specifically SEO, targeted both at Hawaii prospects as well as at those outside the Islands.

My friend made the good point that Hawaii business is conducted on a word-of-mouth basis. Success locally often comes down to recommendations and referrals, one person to another.

That’s true in most places, but it takes on a whole new dimension in Hawaii.

Therefore, many Hawaii businesses see little use in the Internet, and that includes SEO.

Hawaii runs differently so Internet/Search Marketing are seen by many as something mainland companies do, but it serves little purpose here.

I don’t share that view wholly. In fact, SEO and Internet Marketing can reinforce that word of mouth, which is so important here. Hawaii consumers/clients are turning to search engines more and more.

The younger generations here are building the same Google habits their mainland counterparts have had for some years.

A Hawaii business, with a strong SEO driven presence, can capitalize on the local ways by using testimonials, the ‘social’ web (such as Facebook, YouTube, etc.) and other internet tools in the traditional local business ways.

Another use would be to reinforce their local presence. A Hawaii searcher might look for a business or service and THEN ask around for opinions. If you can get in front of them, you have a much better chance as they’ll be asking around about you, not your competitor.

Just make sure to keep your business clean so that any feedback they get is good.

Hawaii SEO has arrived as a viable local business tool. It just needs the right people to realize it before we lose more of our valued Hawaii businesses.

We’ve lost enough of them already.

A new survey that just came out predicted that the number of small businesses using social media will double in the next year.

It’s one more sign of businesses looking for more affordable and more targeted ways to market themselves.

One thing many businesses forget is that social networks and online social avenues are good ways to benefit your SEO presence as well. Many, understandably, believe that:

1. Social marketing doesn’t do much for their website directly, at least for search engine purposes. That’s precisely the point, though.

SEO is about search presence and positioning and these social outlets, whether they are a Facebook page, a YouTube video or Flickr photos, are cataloged by Google.

Google, in this age of Universal Search, often delivers these results with the formerly dominant web site listings. At the top of the search results, in some cases. Why wouldn’t you take advantage of that?

2. Another mistake businesses make is thinking that it isn’t appropriate for them. One prospective client, a law firm, didn’t see the use of YouTube since their concentration was representing businesses.

They couldn’t get past thinking that the only use for YouTube would be putting up copies of TV commercials. Since they didn’t do that kind of advertising, they threw out the idea.

A well-informed SEO strategy would have had them doing informational videos or some kind of introduction to their firm for prospective clients to view. But they wouldn’t hear it.

It could have not only been good search marketing, it would have been good SEO. It might have been another listing in the results for them, reinforcing their search presence. It was not to be.

The survey that kicked off this post was centered more on small businesses advertising on online social outlets. But that ties in to the point of this post.

They’re missing the other side of the coin completely – being in and on the social outlets themselves. Not just as advertisers, but as participants.

Their SEO would benefit, but what they don’t do can only make more room for you in Google. So maybe their slowness isn’t such a bad thing.