Jon's In Waikiki (AKA The Waikiki Marketer)

The past few days have brought some very interesting news for anyone in the search engine world – and it applies to everyone; search engine optimizers/marketers, businesses who are advertising online, site owners. That’s everybody.

The first developments were the findings of 2 studies that had just been completed. One, done by the American Advertising Federation, queried online advertisers to find out what marketing method (Internet only) brought the best return on their investment.

Paid Search came out on top, being the most profitable path for 42% of respondents. The next slot went to email, which was chosen by 24%. The last two vote getters, Rich Media and Display Ads, were the most profitable for 16% and 9%, respectively, of respondents.

The study was confirmation that I’m still in the right business.

The second study was an eye-tracking report. These have been done before, of course. The most notable one found the ‘Golden Triangle’ in the upper left-hand corner of the browser.

Still, that should not be automatically taken as the one, and only, place to be in order to profit. It’s like the Recall factor that tv ad studies always tout. The problem is that recall doesn’t equal sales.

Remember, or should I say Recall the old Joe Isuzu ads? The ‘Wazzup?!?!’ campaign? Of course you do. What most people don’t know is that sales for Isuzu and Budweiser dropped while those were being run. So much for recall.

But, getting back to the point. This latest eye-tracking study carries a $149 price tag before you get to see what it found. But – they did let one piece of data out to whet appetites. That data said something very interesting.

What it said was this: when people are in the research phase of a purchase, organic – ie regular – listings get just about all the clicks.

However, when the searcher has reached the actual purchase phase, paid  search ads got 44% of clicks. Not a bad netting.

The final item was the standardization of search engine sitemaps. Google Site Maps, which are XML files, have been around for about a year now.

Though faulty at first, they are now a solid tool for any website. Yahoo has now joined Google in adopting this standard. Bing was originally on board, but later press releases no longer include them.

Whether they’ve dropped out, were never really part of the effort or…? Hopefully Microsoft isn’t thinking they’ll come up with their own standard and somehow force the others to follow their lead instead.

That worked for the OS, but the search engine game isn’t played on their home field.

This actually isn’t a brand new development. If it is actually happening, it’s been going on now for at least 2 months.

What surprises me is that, from reading different SE forums,  there seems to be confirmation that Google is not indexing new sites; however, it’s not a hot topic.

Considering the importance of Google to a site’s success, this leaves me completely bewildered.

My experience comes through a client who bought a domain in July, then put up a site shortly thereafter.

Until I came on board I don’t think he had any incoming links outside of ones from a Google Ads campaign he had. I put a link to him on my site. The link was duly indexed by Google. And yet, the site was still not in their database.

Currently Google seems to be cataloging links to new sites, but not following them. There is talk that Google is trying to do some mass cleanup in their database to get rid of some of the spamming and ‘bad’ sites.

The idea being that they don’t want to take on more data until they can handle the current index. Makes sense.

But this is probably affecting the quality of results. But, most searchers probably won’t notice. So, if this is happening, it’s no big deal for them.

Still, this new development is disturbing for anyone trying to get up and running on the Net. It underlines the need for other SEs to get competitive and somehow challenge Google’s dominance.

When so many rely on one source for most of their income, it can only take one algorithm change to not only affect the bottom line, but erase it.

As an aside, I’ve been using Yahoo as my main SE for personal use. The results just seem to be better, more on target. This condition might be a side-effect of Goole’s success.

Their dominance attracts the attentions of spammers everywhere. It’s where most people go, so that’s where they want to be, too. This in turn brings less relevant results as spammer sites are ranking for keywords that have nothing to do with the site’s content.

In fact, you can easily find sites that have no real content at all, just AdSense ads, in the top 10 of most of Google’s results today. My keywords, which target marketing and SEM, have car rental and law office sites in the top 20.

I don’t think the keywords even appear on those sites. But there they are.

There’s not much you can do, except hope Google does do something to stop this or that they start losing eyeballs to Yahoo, Bing or DuckDuckGo.

If you’d like to do your part, start using one of those last three listed. You might be surprised how little you miss Google.

One of the things about Hawaii that I like is that trends and fads from the mainland often never make it here. This is surprising especially today in our age of global technology and communication.

The geographical isolation was felt even more when I was small. We got tv episodes here a week or two behind the rest of America. This would frequently confuse tourists.

They couldn’t understand why they were seeing the same episode again so soon.

Hawaii has traditionally been behind the mainland on a lot of other types of developments. The pace here is a little slower, so people don’t feel the compulsion to adapt the latest and greatest.

Outside of Waikiki, it is wise to carry some cash. There are many businesses here who will only take cash or check. Credit cards are worth nothing more than the plastic they’re made of.

So what does this have to do with the internet? I’ve found that many in the business community are applying this same attitude toward marketing on the web.

As we lose more and more local businesses, this may be a fatal mistake. Many, though not all, Hawaii businesses could survive, and even grow, if they built another revenue stream from the web.

Today, many here are still in the mindset that having a web site is all you need. For them, that is internet marketing. And it goes no further. SEO/SEM isn’t on their radar at all.

The fact that large mainland companies are taking over more and more of the Islands’ economy should be a wake-up call to all of us. Local businesses will have to start fighting back or they will soon be extinct.

The list of familiar names that have gone out of business – in just the past 5 or 10 years – is a long one. These are places that had been around 20, 30, 40, even 50 years. But no longer.

The state doesn’t make it any easier. Hawaii is one of the least friendly places to do business in the US. We’re always in the bottom 5 of those lists.

It’s especially unfriendly for small and mid-size companies, which is everyone in the local business community.

We can’t expand very far within the Islands, so the logical place to grow is online. I’d hate to see more familiar names close their doors.

I’m still in mourning for KC Drive Inn. If anybody knows where to get shakes as good as theirs, please drop me a line. I’m tired of crying myself to sleep every night.

My blog was hacked over the weekend, bringing the server down – which includes my web site, of course.

Apparently somewhere, on some file, the permissions were set to 777, making it possible for somebody to get in and do their worst.

You might want to look over your own site and/or blog for this same issue. It could save you a lot of grief.

I ended up moving to a new host – something I’d been considering for some time, but my paranoia of a move affecting my rankings, etc – coupled with laziness – put it off until now.

The past couple days were spent redoing things. I had to even rebuild this blog. But I find that these setbacks are a blessing in disguise. They force me to clear the decks and make improvements.

I took a break today from the deck cleaning to walk Nigel (my dog) down to the beach. I often forget to take advantage of where I live. Being glued to a computer monitor has a way of doing that.

We came upon the Hawaiian music/hula show they put on every night down there. The performers face the water with the audience sitting on the grass and, beyond that, the beach.

Nigel and I stood behind the musicians, which gave us a view of the waning sunset. It’s often strange to think that there are people who wait for that sunset every evening just to witness it.

Yet I miss most of them and I live 2 blocks away.

I’m going to start injecting some more of Hawaii business and life into this blog, along with the SEO/SEM/Marketing. I hope you’ll enjoy it.

As I often observe – perhaps too often – the dot bomb era taught us lessons that were soon forgotten.

I was reminded of this recently when I got an email from a potential client saying that my fee was too high – especially because I didn’t guarantee them sales; the implication being that other, better SEOs would make that guarantee.

Let me say this – if there are SEOs out there who can truly guarantee sales from their work, please give me their names. I’d like to hire them myself.

I specifically mean a full money-back guarantee with no conditions and no strings if there isn’t a big jump in sales arising from their work.

I say that because finding a firm that does this would be like trying to hire the ‘A Team’ in real life. One of my friends paid that ‘Howling Mad’ Murdoch guy to clean up the Mob in New Jersey.

Unfortunately, some guys broke his legs the first day and that was the end of that. Turns out, the guy was just an actor; the ‘A-Team’ was just a TV show, all pretend, a fantasy.

In this case, that is what these guarantees are, too. Imagine walking into a top ad agency and saying ‘I’ll hire you. But I want a guarantee that your ad campaign will double my sales.

If you don’t I don’t have to pay you for your work. Agreed?’. Does Madison Ave work that way? Of course not. They’d go broke.

Or what if you walked into the office of your local Shopper paper and plopped down across from their ad rep, whose Real Job is playing keyboards with his band.

Would you say to them ‘Run my ads. If my sales double, then I’ll pay for them. If they don’t then I won’t pay. Is it a deal?’

This I can guarantee: You’d walk out without an ad in the Shopper, though you might leave with a flyer for the band’s gig next Tuesday at the Taste of Schenectady festival.

SEO is marketing – it is getting people to your site. It is raising interest in your business. But just as a sidewalk sign does not make the sale, neither does SEO.

The sign can work wonders in pulling people off the street. After that, though, you have expectations that must be filled before you get their money.

Search engine optimization/marketing is still a very valuable service and tool. This truth doesn’t diminish its worth, just as good advertising is priceless.

You will still need a good product/service. You will still need to provide a good, even great experience. The early internet success stories were all about the traffic they were getting to their site.

The problem was that no sales were being made. No income came in. That’s the mistake people make with SEO. It’s vital, even essential to the success of most sites.

The mistake the dot-bomb people made was they thought the sales process ended there. It didn’t.

Anyone who seems to be promising a real money-back guarantee, no strings attached probably has a Get Out of Jail Free card concealed somewhere in the fine print. Remember to look for that.

Yesterday I cited the fact that paid search beat out organic (ie regular) search listings in the conversion rate category. I tracked down the actual figures so you can see for yourself.

Plus maybe it’ll get certain people to stop calling me a liar (I’m talking to you, Mom). Anyway, here is the conversion rates based on a Web Side Story study.

The percentages are a median of the results for each:

Paid Search / PPC: 3.40% Conversion

Organic Search: 3.13% Conversion

The study was done from January to August of this year, during which they tracked 57 million SE visits. Their ridiculous name aside, Web Side Story has a sterling reputation so these results can be considered reliable.

Both of these search avenues beat what they term as ‘overall site conversion’, which, I believe, includes visitors who typed in the URL or were referred through some non-Search Engine link.

One notation they did make to the study is that the study participants had professional SEO/SEMs working for them and/or they were experienced in this area themselves, so their results may be higher than most.

But they still stand by the findings as the ‘overall site conversion’ benefitted from this factor as well, so the comparison remains a valid one.

Here’s the kicker. An earlier study by Web Side Story, done in the last quarter of 2005, measured the conversion rates of SE acquisitions and non-SE acquisitions.

This is different from the above study because ‘overall site conversion’ would factor in ALL conversions, both SE and non-SE. Here are the percentages that came out of the 2005 experiment:

SE Acquisitions Conversion: 2.30%

Non-SE Acquisitions Conversion: .96%

Now that’s a gap you’d want to consult a dental surgeon about. Non-SE avenues would include banner ads, shopping search engines & affiliate links.

The SE conversion rate lags the 2006 results, for some reason. Possibly because people tend to look at more sites while buying at Christmas time.

Most do shop around more because of their desire to find that perfect Christmas gift. As opposed to my fail-safe system of buying what’s on the front shelf at 7-Eleven.

This has been said before, but many remain skeptical about search marketing and its results. You might even be. This just released study by Piper Jaffray just might convince you.

The study confirmed, using a ‘cost per customer aquisition’ measurement to give their conclusions a quantitative, understandable conclusion. Here’s the rundown of the marketing tools they used in the study and how they fared:

Search: $8.50
YP: $20
Online display ads: $50
Email: $60
Direct mail: $70

Interesting that the Yellow Pages remains strong, taking the #2 position. One wonders if it will still be there in 10, or even 5 years, as the Web takes a greater share of eyeballs looking for a business or a phone number.

At least, that’s what the experts are saying will happen. Then again, the ‘experts’ thought that Pets.com was a great investment.

Another thing that should be noted is that email, the favorite tool of the spammer lags far behind. I shudder to think that this will turn more of them to try their luck on the search engines.

There’s enough of those screwing up the results as it is. There is no shortage of spammers on Google.

The most amazing realization that I personally take from this – assuming the accuracy of this study – is how yet another recent study takes the advantages of search advertising to new levels.

This 2nd study found that the conversion rate for Search Engine Ads (ie PPC) was better than the conversion rate for organic, or regular, Search Engine listings. This flies fully in the face of the assumption that regular listings are head and shoulders above the ads.

If you ask most people, they’ll tell you that they NEVER click the ads and are never persuaded by them. This disconnect is just the online version of what advertisers have seen offline for years.

Everybody, when asked directly, will tell you that most advertising is stupid (that’s actually true) and that they aren’t affected by it (that’s often not true).

So – in light of this, maybe you should take another look at an AdWords campaign? Hopefully these new studies will prove helpful when I pitch a search ad campaign next time.

I have often had clients immediately dismiss the idea because you paid for the ads. My reply of ‘Who cares if you make more money than you spend?’ fell on deaf ears. Maybe I wasn’t persuasive enough.

I’m working with a client at the moment who is using session ids. These have been used for some time to track customers on your website.

Gathering that information is a great way to peer into the mind of your website visitors. The problem is that it can affect your standing in the search engines. And in a big way.

Today, search engines are able, for the most part, to catalog dynamic URLs. Those are the ones that look like this: http://www.YourSite.com/page.html?…. – you’ve seen them all over the Net by now.

With the majority of dynamic URLs, the letters and/or numbers are the same each time for any individual page. The server may grab different content or data, but the dynamic URL remains the same.

But not for session IDs.

Session IDs are used to identify an individual visitor to track them as they move around on the site. That means that the site has a different set of numbers each time attached to the URL.

So, when the search engine spider comes around, it gets the same treatment – a new, individual number assigned to it. But just for that visit.

Time passes and the search engine spider returns. Once again, it calls up a page and, also once again, it is assigned a unique number. A new, unique number different from the last time it came by.

Since the number is attached to the URL, the search engine sees this as a new page. After all, the URL is different than before. Plus, if it tries to call up the old URL (which is the same URL, but the old ID number attached), it gets a 404 File Not Found message.

So, as far as as Google, or Yahoo, or Bing is concerned, there is not static site there. Just a series of brand new URLs being put up constantly.

And if the pages are new, they have no chance to build up in the rankings. That’s a problem.

There is one more thing to consider – search engines, sometimes, still can’t catalog dynamic URLs. Or not 100% of the time at least.

Even Those search engines that can handle them will have problems if there are more than a few characters after the ‘?’. Keep that in mind.

So what can you do to fix this problem? Try using cookies instead of session IDs. Some visitors will refuse the cookie, but that’s worth risking in order to be in the search engines.

Another solution is to fix your site so that session ids are only assigned when a visitor logs in formally – say when making a purchase.

Someone with more programming knowledge than I do might have more solutions to offer so a little searching might be in order.

I have to hand it to Google – they’ve come out with something that can truly help your business. The Google Website Optimizer is basically your testing ground for any and all factors that are used on a webpage.

Want to test different text colors or fonts and see which ones produce the best response? You can do that.

You want to see which headline is bringing sales from your Google AdWords campaign(s)? This will give you all the stats at a glance.

Now, it wasn’t that doing split testing was so hard to do. But having all the data spelled out for you at a glance is extremely helpful. But there’s more to the Google’s Website Optimizer than that.

It’s actually set up to do much more complicated testing jobs. The tool truly shines in its ability to test more than one factor, ie multiple variables or changes, cutting your testing time down greatly.

For example you can test headlines AND font choices at the same time. If you’re familiar with the Taguchi Method, you’ve probably dealt with this already. And you can probably see how this new development has a lot to offer.

Unfortunately, there are a few things keeping most people from jumping right in. The first is that testing multiple factors at one time is a complex process and you have to maintain a good hold on what you’re seeing in the data.

It’s not as easy with split testing, where you can see at a glance which is the winner.

The 2nd barrier is the fact that this is still in the beta phase, so using it is by invitation. You can apply, though, and see what happens. It certainly can’t hurt. Here’s a link where you can see a demo of the package:

Google Website Optimizer

I often get this question, or some variation on it, from prospective clients. One of the more popular ones is “When will I be on the first page on Google?”. They want a hard, as exact as possible, number of days plus a set cost that will take them to this promised land of search engine dominance.

It’s understandable that they would want something they can count on. Unfortunately, it’s not possible to give an honest answer.

I wish I could tell them when the site is “ready”. There’s no point where an optimizer can truthfully say that their site has been optimized enough and will now rise to the top.

There is no formula for search engine rankings. You must keep working, because once you do make gains, you still need to maintain them.

Do not be fooled by any SEO who tells you that once they get x number of links, your site is ready. There’s no number, outside of ‘more than you have now’, that can be recommended.

At least with any integrity. Your goal for getting your site set up should be to get as much done as possible. No one, not even the best of us, can say what/how much exactly produces top rank positions.

An SEO can only say that they will get you so many links and do so many hours on the site. Or something to that effect.

If you’re getting promises of a package that guarantees being #1 on Google, turn it down and look elsewhere.