New blog: Talking Trails

The new blog is up and running. It is all about our preparations and adventures during our upcoming three months backpacking, trekking trip to South America, with most of our time spent in the Andes.
http://talkingtrails.blogspot.com

SEO goes beyond search engines

This is a snip from my Facebook page: A colleague posted my new website to their feed. The text used to describe my site comes from my site's description meta tag. It's a concise positioning statement. These words do not appear anywhere on my web site other than in code. However, being written for people my home page  does present my consulting business in 4 paragraphs that expand and explain this positioning further.

SEO: write for people, code for search engines

One way to get search engine optimization right is to think of SEO from the earliest stage of conception of a web site, or a web page. That means you'll write the site for people and you’ll construct the code for search engines.

Writing for people includes

• Starting with your keyword list
• Using your most important keywords, rather than many variants, in title tags, urls, page’s description tag, headings, and body text
• Be authentic and trustworthy

Construct code for search engines

• Heed the power of the url
• Create the most important Meta tags; title tag, description tag, keyword tag
• Create image tags for each image on your site (this is also a good accessibility guideline)

You can optimize every page on your web site. If you have 40 pages that’s easier than if you have 40,000 pages. Simply triage the needs for improvement and invest where you’ll see the biggest return on your investment: for instance, home page, secondary landing pages, or key sections. 

New content should simply be conceived with these simple SEO concepts in mind, rather than be retrofitted later.

Telemarketing - a field guide

As I got the fourth phone call in a week from a telecommunications company wanting me to switch or upgrade, I sighed with frustration. As someone who has managed telemarketing campaigns, and who has benefited from excellent service calls, I know that telemarketing can be positive and profitable - in terms of sales and in terms of enhancing the relationship between company and customers.

So why are telemarketing calls so annoying?

1 - the caller doesn't know who I am or the relationship I have with the organization. Seriously - how does Rogers, who owns Fido, not know that I have cell phone service with Fido? How is it that my fairly simple name get mispronounced almost every time?

Companies track purchase behaviour and a multitude of other details about their clients. Phonetic pronunciation of names and tracking the comments of the customer are absolute requirements for any company undertaking telemarketing. Please acknowledge that I do business with you and that it's valued.

2 - the caller isn't offering something relevant to me. Why switch phone service when the costs and services are identical? Want me to change to your service? Offer something significantly better than what I currently have. Why did you think I'd want tickets to the circus? Is my name from a list of people who have supported a particular charity or are you cold calling from the phone book?

3 - the caller doesn't know the details of what they are offering. So I am interested in getting a subscription to the dance series. Is that ballet in tutus or contemporary dress? The caller had no idea.

Callers need to know as many details of the business as possible and know how to quickly find answers to customer questions. Small details really do make or break the deal.

4 - the caller doesn't ask me anything about my experience with the company. I don't want to listen about you - I want to talk about me and how I experience your company. Callers representing the company are contacting current and potential clients - it's an amazing opportunity to advocate for the company and collect quick feedback on brand awareness and customer satisfaction.

Telemarketing is as much a Public Relations activity as a Sales activity. Use it wisely to carefully promote your message and collect important information from your customer base.

Intrinsic connections: SEO and Brand

In my recent SEO seminar I put search engine optimization firmly in the context of branding and building customer relationships. My premise:

• Web users want: what they want, when they are ready, wherever they are, and in just the way they want it 
• People don’t want to ‘search’, they want to ‘find’, so SEO must foster user-centred and brand-oriented keyword thinking and writing

Online Channels are about: Dialogue and Conversation

• They work because of: Relevance and Timeliness
• They demand: Authenticity

In that sense then, brand matters. Because trust can be won and lost in an instant. And search engines are often the first encounter a web user has with your brand; they might also be the last encounter when web users choose another listing over yours.

I used a simple three step process to explain the importance of SEO from a brand point of view.

1. Search for company name, or important keyword relating to your company in a search engine (do this with the top 3 search engines and note the differences): What does the listing say? Is the headline and short description search engines use understandable and a meaningful communication about your brand? Does it leave the right impression?
2. Look at your company's homepage: Identify where each engine is getting the information it shows from? Typically search engines use title tags - that's the text that shows up in the browser's tab - and either words appearing on the site or the description meta tag, if you have one set up.
3.  Title tags and meta tags: Anyone can, you included, look at the source code of your web site. Most likely its in a menu drop down like "View - Source". Or look for developer in the page icon drop down. Title and meta tags should be easily found at the top of the page for each of your web pages.

This may well be the first step to making improvements to your web presence that are championed beyond the confines of the web team, or maybe the web and marketing teams.

Because, SEO is a way to ensure your brand is effectively communicated. It is also a way to be found by the right people in the online environment.

The Qualitative-Quantitative Divide

MRIA Ottawa held a fascinating panel discussion on qualitative-quantitative research approaches. The discussion explored combined focus group and survey methodology but touched only lightly on other methods of marketing research.

In my view the following merit consideration:

• Marketing research is not merely doing focus groups and surveys. It includes the full gamut of research activities that contribute to better decision-making: from literature reviews to know what is already known, to web reviews to find out what others are doing and how, to communications audits and semiotic analysis, to customer data mining/behaviour modelling, to competitive branding assessments.
• Opinion bias comes from ones own experience. A Survey house invariably discusses the marketing research business based on what they are so very good at. Other practitioners who offer another range of services will have a point of view that is informed by that. As a consultant I am not tied to a call centre or focus group facilities and I do not need to achieve any particular scale to amortize my hardware or infrastructure investments. I am free to build research methodologies to any budget and I can make sure that better information is used to make decisions.
• Computers count, people measure. I heard this at a recent Third Tuesday meeting and was struck by how much it resonated with the audience. Technology is simply a tool, decisions are made by people supported by tools. As a researcher part of my job is to interpret data points relative to a business decision. That requires me to know enough about my clients' business - without that I am liable to misinterpret data points and my recommendations may or may not be all that relevant. 
• Budget is important but it's not everything. I can use research methods that fit nearly any budget and improve the situation. A marketing/communications materials audit may take as little as 1 or 2 days and can result in major transformative decisions that improve effective communications. An intelligent review of web traffic statistics can reveal important insights to improve a web site.
• There is no qualitative-quantitative divide. What we call research (primary or secondary, qualitative or quantitative, statistically valid and reliable or directional), is not all that important. What is important is to choose the most effective methods possible within time and budget constraints that allow for a better decision. 

Search Engine Optimization

I presented my new SEO webinar yesterday to a fine crowd of 40 connections, with several having multiple participants on the webinar. It went well and the feedback on the content was very good. My approach,not surprising, is strategic in nature: where does SEO fit in the marketing mix, where does it fit in the online mix and what does good SEO entail. I showed some neat examples of the power of code, some simple tricks and a few keyword tools.

Now, I will seek places to make this presentation again and again; it'll last at least a few weeks maybe even months.

This time it was presented by MRIA, which I am really pleased with.