Entries Tagged 'Search Engine Optimization' ↓

Todd Friesen and myself are sitting here with Justin Hopkins and Kiyomi Taguchi from KOMO-4 news being interviewed for a segment they are doing on what consumers can do to build and manage their online reputations.  We both spoke about how people are their own brands and that individuals need to inspect and manage their reputations.  Some basic tips we discussed are: own your domain name, create a blog, think before you post, actively participate in the space.  We had a chance to highlight some noteable examples of things gone wrong and right and what consumers can do to take control of their reputations in search engines.  It should be interesting to see what of an hour of our commentary gets edited down to for their report.

Stay tuned.

Blake  Cahill

Visible Technologies 

The traditional search optimization approach to enhancing brand value leaves a great deal to be desired. Although it’s critical that your brand Web site dominate its name space, there are other venues where you need to look at how your brand’s visibility is impacted through search.

If we talk about search scope, we’re looking at all the search engines and tools that create visibility for a brand. Each brand has its own search scope, depending on which search engines, tools, and directories may show results creating visibility for the brand. A few years ago, when human-edited directories like Yahoo!, Looksmart, and the Open Directory Project (DMOZ) drove significant traffic from their listings, search scope was an important part of the online marketing strategy.

In today’s Google-dominated world many companies choose to focus only on Google and Yahoo!, or just Google, thus limiting their effective search scope. But the fact remains that millions of consumers and potential business partners continue to use other search tools, and I mean many other tools — not just the well-known AOL, Ask, and Microsoft search services.

Simply implementing the fundamental principles of search engine optimization usually achieves acceptable search visibilityfor a brand’s primary Web site, but search scope goes beyond the organic listings in the search results. Pay-per-click advertising extends search scope into the arena of cross-brand advertising and brand-tailcoating, where alternate sites (affiliates and competitors) chase brand-related keywords.

The unfortunate lesson business has learned is that it is sometimes necessary to cover the PPC market just to ensure that no one usurps a brand’s specific visibility through doppelganger URL branding, similar product/service identification, and other marginally acceptable but widely practiced tactics for skimming traffic away from high-value brands.

So measuring your success for brand visibility in search depends upon a number of factors. First and foremost, you have to know what people are searching for. With a high-value brand there will be thousands of queries every month for which it is virtually impossible to optimize completely (Google reports that 20-25% of each month’s queries are new). It is therefore necessary to cherry-pick the queries that have the most relevance to your brand value.

How do you measure brand value on the Web and through search? I suggest that brand value is impacted only by Web sites that consumers and potential business partners are likely to consider to be authoritative or representative of the brand owner’s own interests.

Affiliate sites do not represent brand owner interests (but my definition is not concerned with enforcement and protection of trademarks). A company’s official Web site is an obvious choice for being representative of its brand interests, but some companies maintain separate corporate and ecommerce domains, and both types of sites would directly affect brand interests.

Some companies also outsource certain activities, such as corporate blogging, to separate URLs (VisInsights is an example of such an outsourced activity — Visible Technologies operates VisInsights for precisely that purpose). It follows that an outsourced corporate activity represents the brand owner’s interest.

Where a company has established multiple active domains it becomes necessary to achieve significant search visibility for all the domains, even though they all represent a similar brand interest (which may encompass multiple brands). A clearly articulated strategy must determine which URLs will be used for brand visibility. In a collective effort you want a flagship domain that serves as a brand hub.

There are several large companies that do a good job of orchestrating their search visibility. For example, if you visit the Orbitz or Hotels.com sites you’ll find front-page links to co-branded sites, thus enhancing visibility for partner sites and (presumably) enhancing search visibility. Some other large corporate entities take a different approach. IAC, for example, does not co-brand its Ask Search across its 60-70 Internet properties (including Ask’s sister search, AskCity).

Co-branding partner sites is important to enhancing brand visibility through search because it helps the search engines find related sites, and in turn those sites may help each other in search results (although this is not a guaranteed effect by any means). The extension of a brand’s reach through multiple domains builds brand credibility with the Web audience because they see the brand associated with trusted domains. Trust builds trust.

An emerging sector in search scope optimization is site search. As Web site inventories grow, as brand networks build out to new domains, providing users with a focused search experience has become increasingly important. Usability expert Jakob Nielsen notes in this April 2007 AlertBox that “site visitors mainly use the primary menus and the search box”.

Site search is problematic for several reasons, however. First, most organizations don’t have the resources to implement comprehensive site search technology for large content sites. They can turn to external resources, such as Google’s Search Appliance, but each third-party tool comes with limitations. Web-based and open-source tools usually have page limits (often around 10,000) that may make it impossible to cover all the current data in a large resource site.

Many sites offer search-service based site search, but the search engines don’t necessarily index and report all results for pages. Ask’s ExpertRank technology intentionally prevents a lot of content from reaching the public view index. Google’s (now hidden) Supplemental Results Index is devalued in comparison with its Main Web Index — often leading to the wrong pages being promoted above accurate information because of Google’s overreliance upon linkage. Yahoo! may crawl non-existing pages on sites that don’t configure their 404 Error handling according to Yahoo!’s expectations.

As of today, the only viable site search option from a major search engine is Microsoft’s Live Search Box because Microsoft recently expanded its search index and is not devaluing pages (in site search) that obtain fewer links than less relevant pages.

But even Microsoft’s site search functionality has practical limits. Sites that are crawled less frequently may not see new content appear in their site search for weeks or months. Although the major search engines all support XML sitemap discovery (including Microsoft), you have to update your XML site maps whenever you add content and the autodiscovery process does not guarantee inclusion.

Hence, it becomes necessary to ensure that new Web content is made available to site visitors through multiple channels (and in as many visible locations as possible).

But another limitation of site search with all search engines is that large networks may not be able to include all their content in third-party site search tools. The typical search engine site search plug-in allows up to about 5 domains. Google’s Custom Search Engine provides greater control over the number of domains that can be indexed but unfortunately the CSE tends to favor one domain over others and doesn’t handle Supplemental Results pages any better than Google’s Web Search.

As there are no perfect solutions for site search, a solid site search strategy has to be flexible and evolving. You should review your site search activity on at least a quarterly basis, look for new options and solutions twice a year, and upgrade your site search resources on an annual basis. If you seek out user feedback, ask them how they feel about your site search and what they would like to see in it.

Site search helps make your sites sticky and it reinforces the value of your brand because it eliminates the competition for visitor attention from other sites. If your business network offers extensive resources through product pages, consumer feedback and discussion, articles, and/or special features your brand value increases as you build search visibility for your inventory. Expanding your search scope improves brand performance overall, although you need to strike a balance between the various options available to you and the resources you have to allocate for search visibility.

There is a metric you won’t find anyone measuring but it may very well be the most important metric your brand needs to monitor. That’s the types of impressions you make. I don’t mean “number of impressions” as in advertisements served or pages viewed. I mean “how many different ways do you make a first impression?”

Photographer Peter D’Aprix shared a fascinating and compelling overview of how pictures help Web sites in many tangible and intangible ways on the esteemed LED Digest today. In a previous post I had written: “The impression you make on the Web can be just as polarizing as the impression you make in person. Everything that goes into your Web site presentation determines who will stay and who will leave your site immediately. That includes the pictures you provide of yourself.”

We were talking about whether pictures on Web sites improve conversion rates (the short answer is that they can). I introduced the concept of establishing credibility, but I wanted to stress the importance of understanding who was visiting your Web site. A brand may be relevant to several audiences but it has to market itself differently to those audiences. Advertisers have understood as much for years but in Web marketing the facts and opinions are clouded by limited points of view.

Search engine optimizers often advise clients not to create multiple Web sites for their products and services, and they cite studies, anecdotes, and opinions about the detrimental effects of “splitting your PageRank”, “confusing the search engines,” “sending mixed messages,” etc. Traditional marketers and business people often respond by saying, “It makes sense for the business to use multiple Web sites.”

Indeed it does. If your markets are divided between kids and adults, white-collar professionals and blue-collar skilled laborers, between genders, nationalities, and language groups - in short, if your markets are distinguished from each other by clear barriers you cannot ignore, then you need to send different messages to those markets.

The confusion in Web marketing arises from how to shape the messages. An entirely different theme may be required, but some companies make the mistake of replicating a theme across multiple Web sites. They want to bind the network together with a super corporate style, and in doing so they say to their markets that “your priorities and interests are not reflected in our priorities and interests.”

You can market the same book to over-50 customers and under-20 customers effectively by speaking to them in their own words and earning their trust and credulity by presenting your message in terms they are comfortable with and understand. On the Web that often means designing more than one site where each site has its own look and feel. You can make the corporate connection through linkage and referral pages.

The challenge, of course, is to maintain the corporate brand - you don’t want to sacrifice the identity you have created for your company because there is significant value in that identity. But you want to build rapport with your audience and target the right market with the right content and presentation.

In his LED post, Peter D’Aprix wrote: “the eye sees the collection of ALL the constituent parts of a page as a whole collection of the parts first, then drills down to those parts that attract the viewer. The way the parts are organized and thus interact can make a huge impact on the viewer either positively or negatively. One can enhance the other. Depending on what parts attracts the viewer based on their preferences, that is where they will go in order of their personal preference.”

Emphasis is mine, but I agree whole-heartedly with his point.

You have to build the message in the same visual language your audience understands, and not just in the idiomatic structures they use. Idiom changes over time but first impressions last forever. People who become closely associated with a brand remember that first experience vividly. Their brand loyalty may be altered by poor quality or service but they’ll always remember that first moment they felt interest in the brand itself.

How do you measure the quality of a first impression? It’s not easy to do on the Internet because people can come and go so quickly, or browse anonymously. They may clear their cookies, use dynamic IP addresses, or surf from friends’ computers. The same loyal customer may revisit your site many times and you’ll never know it, so when you evaluate the design of the site how will you know if the first impression factor has been reasonably assessed?

The impression we make when we enter a room is mirrored by the impression people make on us when we enter. With Web sites, visitors have more reliable metrics (their gut feelings) than Web site operators do. We don’t capture that moment when our visitors first appear. We don’t track success as easily as we capture transactions.

Brand loyalty is neither a transaction nor even a sequence of transaction. It’s an intangible quality that comes into life in an instant, gathers strength over time, and ultimately fades or dies. We build entire relationships through brand quality and value. But we begin those relationships in the briefest of moments, the first moments when we present ourselves to our new partners and customers.

If you’re managing a multi-audience marketing campaign, one Web site may not provide optimal results for you.

“Reputation management” and “brand management” are becoming confused in the media and in the various search engine optimization blogs and forums. As more companies express an interest in managing their online images (which is also an entirely different thing), they seek out SEOs for advice. Most SEOs don’t really understand reputation and brand management and they are, in general ill-equipped for the task.

You measure your reputation by what people say about you.

You measure your brand by what you say about yourself, by how much other people know about you and by how much information is available about you.

A typical search engine optimizer doesn’t work in a world where reputation and brand are distinct. To the average SEO, search results are a road map to traffic, not a source of information. A highly skilled, very experienced search optimizer understands the value of the first impression that query page makes on the user, but even at such a high level most SEOs are thinking in terms of positioning one Web site, not in terms of measuring the impact of 10, 20, or 30 Web sites.

Several popular SEO blogs have been advising people on “cute” methods for managing their search reputations. These are link worthy blogs that spend a lot of time in social media sites, and the bloggers often speak at SEO conferences. In terms of professional community standing and recognition their credentials are impeccable. These are not the wannabe second-stringers who are still parroting what they read in SEO blogs and forums.

Nonetheless, the typical SEO advice on reputation management is for you to rush out and create profiles on all the social media sites. Now, maybe if you operate a world-renowned delicatessen that has been featured on Food Network and some mean-spirited, disgruntled former customer is bashing you on blogs — maybe setting up a profile at ZoomInfo and LinkedIn will help you. Maybe not.

But if you’re, say a Fortune 1000 company, ZoomInfo and LinkedIn won’t cut the mustard. Not to belittle the great delicatessen owners who appear on Food Network and the Travel Network, but their brands are much smaller, very different entities from large corporations. And the online reputation of a specialty restaurant owner is much more personal and emotionally tied to the personality of the owner than the online reputation of a publicly traded company.

Furthermore, the more visible your brand is the more content there is on the Web. High profile individuals may generate a great deal of content, some of it quite unfavorable. The odds are pretty good that as search references of your name increase some of those unfavorable references will appear on sites that outrank ZoomInfo and LinkedIn. What many SEOs who preach the value of Zoominfo and LinkedIn don’t appreciate, however, is that profile pages by themselves don’t necessarily rank well.

In Google’s search results, for example, your social media profiles may never appear for your name. I have several that don’t even begin to approach the top 10 results for my own name. I am a published author, I have contributed to several high profile and popular blogs and Web sites, and I create my own Web content under my own name. Social media profiles just don’t score as highly relevant for my name the way other, more traditional content does.

Many profile pages on social media sites don’t accumulate links from other pages (either on the same sites or externally). Without those links the social media profiles don’t build enough internal PageRank to be admitted to Google’s Main Web Index. Hence, those pages won’t be allowed to rank well. That is why when you look at some of the new reputation managing SEOs they are occasionally posting links to their social media profile pages from their blog posts to build up the value in those pages.

With all due respect, that is pretty blatant and obvious search engine results manipulation. Now, it’s second nature to many SEOs to drop links in blogs and forums. A lot of them do it to the extent that SEO forum moderators very strictly monitor link placements and Google launched the “rel=’nofollow’” initiative to persuade (and in some cases bully) Web site operators to help devalue links that were clearly being placed for manipulation.

You can shape your search results management any way you prefer, but ZoomInfo doesn’t really tell people much about you. It certainly doesn’t address your brands very well. In fact, your brand and your reputation may differ radically. You may have a reputation for being curmudgeonly, abrupt, and abrasive but you may have a brand that people respect and appreciate.

So how can a social media profile page help you manage both your reputation and brand?

There is no one secret special formula for success. In fact, there is no one correct way to manage a brand campaign and a reputation. Each type of campaign needs to be strategically shaped and carefully implemented. You have to know the audience you’re dealing with, and how many audiences you have to address. You have to know where the search engines are placing their trust. You have to know where people are looking for information.

Social media sites are productive resources in some brand and reputation management campaigns. If your intent is to engage people in direct communication, some social media sites may work very well for you. But engaging people in direct communication doesn’t necessarily manage your reputation or brand.

All it really takes is one dedicated hostile voice that repeatedly points fingers at you on every possible Web site, and your reputation (possibly your brand) will suffer. How you respond to the hostile entity is a topic for another day, but if you’re hoping that ZoomInfo will manage your brand in a storm of criticism, protest, or false allegations, you need to be more realistic.

When people search on your name, be that your own name or your company’s name, do you want them to see ZoomInfo or do you want them to see your Web site? That’s really where reputation management and brand management begins. Where it all goes and where it ends is up to you, not to the social media marketers.

Michael Martinez
Visible Technologies

My colleague, Blake Cahill, asked that I offer some thoughts and follow-up on the John Bell at Ogilvy PR’s ideas about Search Reputation Management.

Many people have been blogging about the value and methods for implementing search reputation management over the past few months. Even the major media have begun running stories about it.

Your visibility in the search engines, as John points out, begins with you: what you do, what you say, and in some ways where you say it. Whether you need several domains to work with is really open to discussion. One person can be very visible across multiple domains without having to control them. That is also true of corporations.

Before you run out and buy 10 domains for your reputation management campaign, assess where you have already achieved online visibility. Maybe you can leverage that existing visibility into helping with your reputation management.

John also suggests you create a profile in “all the major social networks”. This is a standard tip being offered in many places. It’s a very good idea for people who have developed little to no visibility on the Web. But for people who have already blown the gates off the visibility race track — especially those people who are now experiencing some hostile negativity — social media profiles rarely do the trick. These pages by themselves don’t have much value to the search engines. Major blogs, news stories, and even specialty stop-the-guys-i-dislike Web sites often prove to be much more visible than profile pages.

If you already participate in online discussion groups, help people find your profile pages by linking to them in obtrusively from time to time. Use your name when you do. This helps people find pages where you can tell them a little about yourself without raising sensitive issues. It also helps the search engines decide the profile pages may be worth promoting. But don’t expect to knock the New York Times out of the search results with a social media profile page.

John also suggests you “get social publish”. I agree. If you are establishing a reputation, you need to share your passions and/or your expertise in a way that will encourage people to interact with you. You should treat people with respect and dignity, even though some of them won’t return the favor. Always be courteous and professional because that one angry response may not only come back to haunt you, it may launch a long, emotionally draining battle you’re not really interested in.

Be honest. Show integrity. Share the best side of yourself. People will support the good things you do, often by linking to your Web sites and what you write.

Finally, John suggests “stop doing bad things”. Of course, not everyone feels they are doing “bad things”. Different points of view may present both sides of an argument as “the right thing to do” or “vital for the needs of humanity”. If you cannot avoid provoking people you need to accept that you’ll be in a constant state of defense until the prevailing winds change in your favor. That may be a long time.

Reputation management begins before there is a problem.

Michael

Visible Technologies