The 2010 Winter Olympics are underway and my own home television glows each night with these fantastic displays of human strength and achievement. Tonight, I find my mind unable to avoid a cross over of thoughts between the day to day (specifically, my job as a relationship manager for an internet marketing company) and the Olympian marvels that I am viewing. This particular evening I find myself comparing the sport of curling to SEO. I mean, think about it. It shouldn’t be that far of a stretch to equate SEO to a sport.

Let’s look at this in the most simplistic way. Let’s say you are the head of marketing (maybe a CMO or a director). That makes you the thrower in the game of curling. As the head of marketing, you have the obvious goal of achieving more conversions. In the sport of curling, this would be like getting the most points. In general, with SEO, the idea is that you can increase your conversions by being higher on the search results; being on the first page and being higher in the list. With curling, you receive more points by first getting stones in the ‘house’ (the target) and then these points can be higher if you are closer to the ‘button’ (the center of the target) than your opponent. Now what really struck me as being much like an SEO effort is the well thought out strategy and active play of the stone on route to the target. The thrower is a part of a team and the team consists of two other people who are actively engaged with the stone, listening to the thrower and responding accordingly. They adjust the ice as needed and thus the path of the stone as it works it’s way toward its resting spot. This struck me as being much like our SEO engagements. Each day, we are actively maneuvering a client’s site toward the desired position within the search results. We listen to our client for feedback as we roll out a strategy. We determine the best approaches to navigate obstacles or knock the components out of the way. Basically, we are continuously engaged with our customers and their sites and we are continuously correcting as necessary to achieve optimal results; to get more conversions – to win! So if SEO is like Olympic Curling, I can’t wait for our gold medals!

We love the Google Analytics e-commerce system, in no small part because it is so “simple”: what you see is what you get, and it can basically be used to reflect your shopping cart system’s understanding of any given transaction.

The most essential double-check comes from the fact that any given sale is made up of two independent measures: The Transaction report and the Product report.

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I found writing my first blog entry an angst-filled experience. Blogging for me is like eating green vegetables. It’s not that I don’t understand the benefits of green vegetables to my health or haven’t heard the positive impacts of blogging. But simply being informed of the benefits does not make the activity any easier or motivate me to do it more.

As a child, I often had to sit at the dinner table until long after dinner was over. My wise mother made it her mission to get me to eat green vegetables, like peas. I had to sit at the table until my plate was clean. Being blessed (or cursed) with a sensitive palate and a strong will, I sat in defiance at the table, night after night, keeping the peas at bay.

I learned two things from my childhood green vegetable encounters that helped me to overcome the challenge of writing my first blog entry.

• Focus on something you enjoy. Faced with a plate full of peas, I found if I took a drink of lemonade, something I enjoy tasting, along with a spoonful of the dreaded peas, I could chase the peas down faster and easier than just eating peas alone. So to make that first blog writing experience easier, I chose my vacation to Paris as the subject. I’ve always enjoyed traveling and as someone who used to work in the travel industry, find travel easy to talk about.
• Don’t wait, just do it. Spending more time thinking about how awful the peas will taste, won’t make them taste any better when you finally get around to eating them. In fact, waiting will likely make your anxiety worse! Have you ever eaten cold peas?

So, get writing that first blog entry. If you need some inspiration, take a vacation!

When Google Buzz showed up in my inbox, I was intrigued yet unsure. After all of the hoopla about Google Wave, I have to admit I never became a convert. Maybe because the invitations were scarce and so no one I wanted to Wave with was available to Wave with me, maybe because among my friends and family I’m an early adopter, so even if invitations weren’t scarce, no one in my inner circle would have Waved with me anyway. Beyond that, the lack of integration with my Gmail inbox was a killer. Another inbox for me to check….it never made it into my routine. I checked it this week, after weeks of inactivity, to find a message from a friend from…weeks ago.#Fail

Google Buzz, on the other hand, is integrated with my Gmail inbox, and in the last two days I’ve already used it more than I’ve ever used Google Wave. So far, I’ve enjoyed photos of a friend’s kid in Chicago, caught some local news – President Barack Obama to deliver the University Michigan commencement address, laughed at some goofy blogs and goofy statements from friends, and I encountered a book that I’ve added to my list of reserved items at the local library (Atul Gawande’s The Checklist Manifesto).

Looking at my Buzz stream on my Google profile, you will notice that it looks an awful lot like Facebook. Same mixture of photos and comments on photos and status updates and comments on status updates. And, since (as yet) there are no Mafia Wars, no Farmville, and no applications to help me figure out what kind of cheese am or what kind of cheese you think I am, it’s actually much more pleasant to dip into.

Yet, until close friends and family are complete Gmail-geeks like I am, I’ll still need Facebook to connect with close friends and family. And, while I am very excited about these tools for connecting with people I already know, I remain convinced that the most open social networking tools, like Twitter, remain the best for businesses to find new customers. Facebook is a walled garden, though becoming less so with its recent changes to its privacy settings making more content public. Google Buzz seems at least semi-walled. Right now I’ve got my Buzz kind of locked down until I decide how it all works.

I’m still exploring Buzz, but so far it seems exceptionally personal and less business-y. Hubspot has provided these recommendations on getting started with Google Buzz for your business. Take a look, let me know what you see, and together we’ll see how it develops.

I was recently working on an SEO engagement that began with an extensive phase of keyword research and analysis.  As we worked to categorize, organize, and generally make sense of the terms that populated the language of our client’s industry, we began to notice clusters of search terms for which no corresponding content could be found on their website.

Did our keyword research efforts somehow run amok, inadvertently pulling in keyphrases unrelated to our client’s business?  That was certainly a possibility, and can happen quite easy if you’re not careful.  Another, more exciting possibility is that we uncovered niches within our client’s market (perhaps even potential products or services) that they weren’t even aware were worth considering.

The beauty of well-executed keyword research (using some of our favorite tools like Google’s Keyword Tool), is that the keywords you come across often paint an interesting picture of the subject you’re investigating.  Looking at the language used by searchers can give you insight into their needs or motivations (consider, for instance, the different needs associated with the search terms ‘buy dog leash’ vs. ‘dog leash training’).   And better still, Google’s Keyword Tool doesn’t just give you keyphrases related to your subject, but the traffic volumes associated with them, as well.  With this information, you begin to understand the degree of interest associated with the terms your keyword research uncovers.

Of course, this is a very simplified demonstration of the potential for using keyword research to aid in market research, but it’s a beginning.  With the right tools and know-how, there’s a strong case to be made for using keyword research to kick-off your quest for new market niches and opportunities for new products or services.

Interested in learning the ins and outs of Google Analytics? Then our Google Analytics course is the place for you. This class translates Analytics to help you achieve your business goals.

Course Overview

Google Analytics is free to all advertisers and site owners, and has been re-designed for increased effectiveness. Installing Analytics code on your site is only the first step in the process of making this powerful tool work for your organization.

Regardless of familiarity with their website goals, users are faced with the same questions:

• How do I know what Analytics reports and features to use?
• How can I measure success for my site?
• What metrics are most important, and what do they really mean?
• Do I know the latest techniques for leveraging these metrics to increase my site’s traffic and sales?
• How do I get the most out of my limited management time while still getting the most out of my account?

Our course, on Friday February 19th, is an all-day workshop that provides a foundation of proven principles that will help you succeed in using Google Analytics to improve your site’s performance. Regardless of whether you’re a beginner just setting up your account, or a web analyst with years of experience this class will help you optimize your site.

Course Highlights

You will learn how to:

• Translate Analytics metrics and reports for real success on your site
• Find out who your best customers are
• Narrow in on which of your marketing channels are not working
• Maximize leads or sales through focus on landing pages
• Track your goals the RIGHT way
• Efficiently manage an account
• Learn how to apply your skills to all web analytic tools
• Hands-on experience using proven methods to analyze your own Analytics account

Who: Anyone who is currently using Google Analytics or interested in learning more about it.

When: Friday, February 19th 9:00 – 4:00 (lunch break from Noon – 1:30)

Where: Pure Visibility offices, 201 S. Main St., 5th Floor, Ann Arbor, MI 48104

Prerequisites: Attendees must have a Google Analytics account and a laptop computer

Cost: $695 per person if you book today.

Click here to register

Do you have a page on your website that you know could be better? Do you need help showing how subtle changes can have a big effect in conversion rates?

I came across a great site recently: ABtests.com (via The Interaction Designer’s Coffee Break). It consists of the results of A/B tests. It shows two different designs, side by side, points out which one had a higher conversion rate, and presents a theory about why one design did better than the other.

Testing designs is an important part of getting your online sales engine running. It takes advantage of the unique strengths that online marketing offers – the ability to collect lots of data and test ideas. There are free tools out there for doing it, such as Google Website Optimizer, but trying out a new idea can be as simple as rolling out a new page, using it for a while, and comparing the results to the previous design.

As fellow entrepreneurs, Linda and I are often meeting with friends and colleagues looking for the best way to get started with a new website. And the great news is, today’s tools for building websites are remarkable equalizers. Here are a few of our favorite tips and tools, written with entrepreneurs in mind. If you’re a large corporation in a competitive space, your “to-do” list will be more complex. However, many general principles apply across sites of all sizes.

Be Findable
The easiest way to be findable as an entrepreneur on a limited budget is to use tools designed from the ground up to be easily read by search engines such as Google. WordPress is a great choice here. You can start with a freebie version and customize things along the way as you have budget and time. Yes, there are other similar tools – although comparing them is a job for another article. Trust us when we say that few platforms have a vibrant community of coders and designers that support them like WordPress, so among other advantages, it’s simply going to be easier to find people to help you when you adopt a mainstream platform.

Keep Your Design Simple
Because we’re a little biased toward making sure you’re findable, we’re going to encourage you to focus on content and moving forward with the simplest design possible. Save your energy for the content. Custom design is awesome and great, and we love our design friends and we want you to keep them busy! We also want you to get started as efficiently as possible, to which end you may consider starting with a ready-made WordPress theme. More than a simple template, themes allow you to customize many aspects of a site formerly left to true coders.

Did We Mention Content?
Being findable is all about having content on your site that your target audience will be searching for. This requires understanding the language of your target audience, as well as having some volume of content that fits that audience. Building your site in a framework such as WordPress encourages blogging/content generation, and blogging naturally adds a diversity of keywords and keyphrases to your site. Even blogging once a week is enough to make a difference, and as you add new content, you’ll find that your site is found for a wider variety of searches – without having to pay to show up in search. There’s a lot of nuances we’re skipping here, but none of them matter if you’re not generating content in the first place. Writing is your secret weapon. If it’s not your bag, hire a copywriter to interview you and write articles. It’ll be the best investment you’ve ever made.

Include A Call to Action
What’s a call to action, you might ask? Just conjure up an old Billy Mays ad: “Call Now!” “Order in the next 15 minutes, and get a second one a free!” etc. If you’re bothering to attract someone to your site, you need to know what you want them to do when they get there. That’s your call to action. Make it clear. Make it big. Make it bold. Just like Billy.

Measure!
When you’re starting out, it’s tempting to say that you’ll know when this is all working because the phone will ring. While true, that’s a lagging indicator that doesn’t provide sufficient feedback to guide systematic improvements to your site. To gather that data, there are two free tools every site needs: Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools. There are others, but if you’re only going to do two, start with these.

In addition to installing those tools (start collecting data now, even if you don’t plan on using it right away) we recommend measuring a couple more things:

• Track phone calls. Eliminate guessing. Know exactly which phone calls came from the web. One of our favorites tools for phone tracking is Mongoose Metrics, which scales nicely from a single phone number designed to track all web leads, to enterprise class solutions with staggering numbers of unique phone numbers and sophisticated tracking that integrates with other systems like Google Analytics and Google AdWords.
• Use contact forms. Avoid using simple email/mailto links like the plague. Use a contact form to collect information – just enough information and no more. In the early days, chances are you would prefer to follow up and ask a few more questions than risk losing the lead because the form scared a prospect away. And if at all possible, make sure the contact form flows automatically into some sort of customer database / CRM tool. With tools like salesforce.com this is cheap and easy even for small organizations. And it’s a lot easier to implement when you’re still small. Do it now.

While this list may not sound very “SEOy”, that’s the ironic thing about how Search Engine Optimization has evolved. It used to be about title tags and such, but these days those tactics are often just the cost of entry. It you want to turn your website into Your Online Sales Engine, you’ll need more than the “traditional” SEO tactics – you’ll eventually need to build a system like the one we’ve outlined here.

Keep us posted on your progress – we can’t wait to hear your results!!