The suggestions I presented are:

The Kickstarter

The Kickstarter package comprises:

• Keyword research on the company
  • Keyword history analysis (if applicable)
  • Brand keyword assessment
  • Search engine research
  • Competitor keyword analysis
  • Term selection and difficulty control
  • Long tail keyword assessment
• SEO inspection of existing website (if applicable)
• Keyword suggestions for SEO and PPC use

A basic keyword assessment package that supplies the client with the necessary keywords to begin an SEO campaign and means to commence own alterations of an existing site.

The Accelerator

The accelerator package comprises:

• The Kickstarter package
• Unique page titles
• Meta description
• Content (text) design
• HTML attribute proposals
• Sitemap
• General website rundown

A standard SEO package the supplies the client with the necessary components for a website build in regards to SEO

The Cruiser

The Cruiser package comprises:

• The Kickstarter and Accelerator packages
• Link building assessment
• Performance testing including basic, advanced and/or professional tests where appropriate
• Follow-up and continueous reassessment of keyword selection and term use

A complete SEO package that supplies the entire creation, implementation and monitoring of the SEO campaign.

— o0o —

The naming convention was very well recieved. Actual feedback on the contents of the packages is not yet available.

Finished the review of the offer Switch Marketing Communications had gotten from the Web Developer. The offer was in Dutch, so the task was extra spicy (challenging). Seeing as it’s an area I know a bit about, I only had to look up a few key words to translate the offer. As stated in the initial post, the offer didn’t include any considerations on optimization for search engines at all – neither in text nor visual designs. So it was pretty much just taking my newly created SEO check list and start from the beginning listing what was missing.

It wasn’t all bad though. The Web Developer suggested using CSS in all elements of the design. This supports optimization a great deal, since for instance navigation will have “proper” anchor links that the web robot can crawl.

Besides a very large visual navigation (approximately 30% from the top) the Web Developer or the Switch Management had suggested a right-scrolling bar of logos for the companies/clients that Switch has worked for in the middle of the screen under the navigation.

A moving bar of logos in the middle of the screen will capture a lot of attention and will evoke clicking on the logos. With nothing behind the logos, the visitor is going to be disappointed, so I suggested linking to a portfolio where each client was presented along with a description of the task performed and testimonials from the happy client. The portfolio would facilitate extensive use of task specific keywords in relevant texts (examples: house style, catalogue design, ad campaign, brochures, flyers and such). Presenting the tasks that Switch is capable of undertaking in a descriptive text is very valuable for online visibility.

The front page is going to be the About Us page. On this Switch intends to present the strengths of the company. Specifying the tasks with contextual linking to the portfolio is a great way of ensuring internal linking between important pages.

I also suggested informative pages on the different “buzzwords” of marketing. Articles on strengths and weaknesses of direct marketing tools, importance of a consistent house style, tips and tricks on creating folders/flyers/invitations and such will strengthen the whole Switch site and will make for several landing pages that all could aid in the achievement of the most wanted responses. The articles could be presented in a blog, but a blog would require updating and additions from the managers/directors to stay interesting, hence static pages might be preferable for the Switch team.

The Web Developer had suggested a contact form on the front page. Since establishing contact is the most wanted response of Switch, I suggested putting a contact form on every page. There shouldn’t be any doubt in discerning the MWR of the Switch pages and there should be no obstacles in establishing contact with the company.

After these initial content considerations I commenced with the more technical requirements:

• A title tag on every page, syntax: [Keyword for the page – Category | Switch Marketing Communications bv – Kapitaal aan ervaring]

I didn’t do any keyword research, since that wasn’t really part of the task and the actual content is not yet decided. The “Kapitaal aan ervaring” is a catch phrase/key message that Switch wants to base their identity on. Means something like “Experience Capital/Strength in Experience” and refers to the great expertise that Switch has accumulated through decades in the marketing business.

• A description meta-tag containing several keywords – long and short tail.

• Use of keywords in headings and subheadings.

• Extensive use and internal linking through keywords in the body text.

• Ensuring keyword anchor texts in links along with keyword use in the title attribute

• Ensuring keyword picture titles along with keyword use in the alt attribute

• Ensuring a rel=“nofollow” attribute in forms to avoid duplicate content

• Adding an XML sitemap to enable easy crawling

After presenting my review to the account manager we had a discussion about the value of blogging. He could see the potential in blogging, but was reluctant to use it, since it would demand constant updating/article writing from the managers and directors. He wasn’t convinced that they would have anything interesting to write about once the initial obvious topics had been covered and he didn’t really see any value in commenting on current events, trends or developments in marketing in a blog.

We also discussed the 3-click rule. The rule is mainly a usability tool, but I argued that considering usability in the making of the site, will improve the sites general popularity and will encourage backlinking, hence eventually improving ranking.

The manager was very satisfied with the result of my review and would forward my comments to the Web Developer for him to add in his offer.

The check list is based on the use of free tools, which I thought conveniently fitting for a student. As a professional marketer, you might want to take advantage of the more elaborate purchasable tools like Wordtracker and Google Adwords (full version).

The check list is written to marketers with only basic knowledge of website programming, which the technical specifications clearly show. For general technical specifications regarding SEO in website developing see Danny Dover’s Web Developer’s SEO Cheat Sheet.

Here goes.

Search Engine Optimization Check List

Preparations

1. Most Wanted Response

The Most Wanted Response (MWR) is the action/reaction that you wish to achieve from users when visiting the site. It can be anything from signing up for a news letter and using a search engine to find more information to purchasing a product and viewing a video. The MWR is important in determining what content to put on the site and the content is important in defining the SEO strategy (key word selection, key word density, link structure…)

1.1. What is the purpose of the site/page?

What is the client offering the users?

1.2. What possible responses are available on the site/page?

What opportunities does the user have to interact: Sign up, purchase, search and such?

1.3. What are the conversion goals

The conversion goals are the actions/reactions that ensure a “sale”. Is the goal a purchase of a specific product or is the goal to have the user submit an email-address or phone number to be contacted regarding the purchase of said product?

1.4. Make a prioritized list of most wanted responses on the site/page.

2. Key Word Research

2.1. Brainstorming

2.1.1. What keywords does the client think fits the product/service?

2.1.2. What are customers/users likely to type in to search engines to find the information/services offered?

2.1.3. What keywords fit the business area generally? These are typically the “prime” general sector key words that comprise several sub-sectors. Example. “Home Construction” when the company is in carpentry or masonry. Ranking through these terms usually requires Pay-Per-Click marketing.

2.2. Surveying

2.2.1. What have customers/users previously typed in to search engines to find the information/services offered? (If possible)

2.2.2. Use the initial set of keywords to conduct research on Google. Type in the key words in Google and examine the result. Are the key words suitable?

2.2.3. Scan the sites returned for more keywords and content ideas.

2.2.4. Find major competitors on Google and examine what key words they are found through.

This involves checking their title and description tags in the HTML. Can also use SEMRush.com’s keyword parsing tool to determine which keywords the competitors are targeting (if any).

2.3. Research Tool Data

2.3.1. Check keywords to a Keyword Research Tool .

2.3.2. Get suggestions to more keywords using the Keyword Tool.

2.4. Term Selection

2.4.1. Create a keyword matrix using the result from the Keyword Tool.

2.4.2. Control terms for difficulty using the Keyword Tool.

The Google Adwords External Keyword Tool returns each keyword with difficulty High, Medium, Low or Very Low. Difficulty means how difficult it will be to get a high rank with that specific keyword, since it is very common and fits countless pages. High Difficulty means that PPC needs to be used in order to achieve rank on this specific keyword.

2.4.3. Consider if/what keywords are more suited for Pay-Per-Click.

2.4.4. Make sure Long Tail keywords are included.

Only 30% of all hits are the result of the most popular keywords and phrases, and these hits are often made by “window shoppers”. Long Tail keywords are multi-phrase search queries which users use on search engines to find the right website.

Example:

“Shoes” returns 307.000.000 pages that the user will have to browse through to find the right page.

“Men’s shoes leather size 9” returns only 479.000 pages all of which have a significantly higher relevance.

Benefits from Long Tail keywords:

· Lead to higher conversions. If you attract users on Long Tail keywords they are probably looking for exactly what you supply.

· Easier to rank. There is significantly lower competition on Long Tail keywords compared to the popular “prime” keywords.

· More visitors. Targeting Long Tail keywords will gradually increase search engine traffic to the site, because more pages are ranked/indexed. Increased visibility.

2.5. Performance Testing and Analytics

2.5.1. After implementation keep track of web traffic, activity and conversions using Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools and/or similar to further refine keyword selection.

2.5.1.1. Basic Tests

2.5.1.1.1. Total Organic Traffic. Is the number of visits increasing?

2.5.1.1.2. Indexed Pages. Do a “site:yourdomain.com” command in Google and see how many of the domain’s pages are indexed. More pages indexed = Increased visibility.

2.5.1.2. Advanced Tests

2.5.1.2.1. Number of visits per keyword phrase. Are the chosen keywords generating the expected traffic?

2.5.1.2.2. Brand search terms vs. non-brand search terms. A higher percentage of brand traffic usually means we’re not capturing the Long Tail traffic.

2.5.1.3. Professional Tests

2.5.1.3.1. Yielding pages. Is traffic generated from the front page alone or are subpages contributing to the traffic?

2.5.1.3.2. Total Number of Queries Ratio. Looking at the total number of possible queries for a specific key phrase will reveal a percentage. Higher percentage is an improvement.

Implementation

3. Content

3.1. Use of keywords/key phrases in:

3.1.1. The Title tag (no more than 70 characters)

3.1.2. The Description tag (no more than 155 characters)

3.1.3. Headings and subheadings

3.1.4. Body copy – use Bold or Strong to emphasize keywords.

3.1.5. Links on the page – use the Title attributes and put keywords in the anchor text.

3.1.6. Alt text attributes on pictures

3.2. Avoid putting content in Flash or JavaScript

3.3. Adhere to the 3-click rule for important content

No important content should be further away than three clicks from the front page. Usability contributes to the PageRank of the site if users find it important, relevant and easy to navigate.

3.4. Avoid frames

3.5. Make sure the MWR is easily discernable

The page should encourage the MWR

3.6. Add a Sitemap

3.6.1. Free sitemap generator at XML-Sitemaps.com

3.7. Ensure internal linking outside the navigation

Make sure there are text links to and from important sub-pages outside of the navigation. Either use contextual linking (links within a body of text) or footer navigation.

3.8. Avoid duplicate content

3.7.2. Check the site for duplicate content internally using Webconfs.com’s Similar Page Checker

3.7.3. Check the site for duplicate content externally using Copyscape

3.7.4. Make use of the robot.txt to prevent duplicate content

3.7.5. Make use of the “nofollow” argument when linking to duplicate content

3.7.6. Make use of the “noindex” argument when page contains duplicate content

4. Link Building

4.1. Check possible backlinking from:

4.1.1. Listing on subsidiary and partner sites

4.1.2. Directory listings

4.1.3. Press releases/printed material

4.1.4. By-lines in articles

4.1.5. Reciprocal links

4.1.6. Paid-for links

4.2. Blogging

Blogging contributes to increasing visibility

4.2.1. Internal blog

Create and maintain own blog to supply relevant articles, materials and/or insights on topics important to the product/service, use of the product/service or other topics somehow related to the product/service

4.2.2. External blogs

Contribute to external blogs on the product/service, use of the product/service or topics otherwise related to the product/service.

Switch Marketing Communications has today recieved an offer on the building (coding) of the new Switch Marketing Communications website. The offer contains the usual designs (presentation, navigation) and some content suggestions. Switch has made the basic visual design themselves and the offer from the Media Company contains suggestions on practical solutions for the build. Furthermore the offer contains a list of technical specifications and hosting possibilities. Nowhere is optimization for search engines mentioned.

Based on my work on the SEO check list, the managers have asked me to review the offer (which is in Dutch) in an SEO perspective and present my advice/suggestions for optimal optimization for search engines. This is a very big vote of confidence in me and I am very excited to get the opportunity to use my newly aquired skills on such an important task.

I plan to arrange my presentation in accordance with the check list. I’ll have to discuss with the managers exactly how specific my suggestions needs to be (if I should suggest specific keywords and phrases, do specific research, suggest keyword use in tags, suggest means of link building and such), but considering there’s absolutely nothing in the offer, there is plenty of suggestions to start with.

And on that note, I commence the review.

A good example on a clear MWR is Google.com. There are a lot of different functions to choose from: View picture or videos, read news, use the Gmail, use forums or calendars and much more. All of these functions/tools are available from the Google.com site, but the one thing the entirely dominates the site is the Search Bar. It is obvious that Google’s MWR is for the user to make a search of the internet. In comparison the MWR of Yahoo.com and Jubii.dk can seem much more unclear, considering the clutter of functions/tools and choices on these sites. The three sites have the exact same main function, but Google is the most used by web searchers. The clear MWR of Google may be a significant factor in this.

No matter if you’re creating a new website or re-considering an existing site, the approach to determining the MWR is the same. A brainstorming and prioritizing of all possible responses/actions will reveal the obvious MWR. It might have been something not even considered yet and it might depend on what stage of of the lifecycle the company is in. A newly established company might have Attention Creation as MWR where an already established company might have Buy A Product as MWR. The MWR dictates the content of the page.

Achieving the MWR is the goal of Landing Pages. The landing page is any page within a site where traffic is sent to achieve a certain action or result. Different landing pages can be included in a site to achieve different MWRs.

At first glance one could say that SEO is what you use attract people to your site and the MWR is how you want them to react once they’ve reached the site. In that regard one could state that the one is not necessarily dependent on the other?

Strong SEO includes content that is relevant and important to the user. For the content to be relevant and important, it needs to fulfill some need or solve some problem that the user has. If this need is fulfilled or this problem is solved the user is more inclined to participate in/become part of the SEO by supplying links and/or referrals. The purpose of SEO is to improve your ranking in search engines/make your site more popular, so the MWR for the optimized site be to make the user participate in/become part of the SEO. In that sense the MWR is important to the SEO strategy. You’ll need to determine a MWR in your SEO strategy.

On the other hand you can have other MWRs that has absolutely nothing to do with the SEO, but by simply fulfilling the need/solving the problem/offering a service by the user purchasing your product/responding as wanted, you’re indirectly improving your ranking/popularity.

As stated there can be several MWRs on different pages on the same site. Once the MWR of a particular page has been determined, you can use SEO to increase the success rate of the MWRs. There’s no point in making excellent SEO and get thousands of visitors to your site, if the visitors are the wrong kind and don’t act as you want them to. You won’t get the successful conversions and you might even build badwill for attracting the wrong crowd (not fulfilling their needs).

Conclusion

Determining the Most Wanted Response is important in the planning of Search Engine Optimization… and Search Engine Optimization is a tool to achieve the Most Wanted Response. The MWR is very significant to SEO in the sense that the MWR can have significant influence on the focus of the SEO.

Bibliography:

Soho Man – Small Business Blog – Clickincome – Using the MWR (Most Wanted Response) to Get Action

Floating World Web Development – Make Sure You Know What Your “Most Wanted Response” Is.

Nonstop English – Sales Or Subscribers, What Is the Focus of Your Website?

Nonstop English – Learn to Survive Google’s Latest Update Insanity, With the Tao of Search Enging Promotion

Copyblogger – Landing Page Tutorials and Case Studies

Will have to find confirmations or denials on this…

— o0o —

According to Google the PageRank reflects the importance of a page. In the calculation of a page’s PageRank is included the importance (PageRank) of other pages linking to the page (backlinks). Hence stating that backlinks are more important that high PageRank is sort of futile, since a high number of important backlinks -will- result in a higher PageRank.

Also according to Google pages that are considered important and recieve a higher PageRank are also more likely to appear at the top of the search results.

The thing that may make a difference is the Hypertext-Matching Analysis that Google also uses to determine relevance in regards to the search queries. In theory you could have a query where the site is considered important because of important backlinks, but it isn’t really very relevant in regards to the actual query. A backlink from CNN.com or some similar important page should result in a high rank if the site ranked is news related, but if it’s a eCommerce site it shouldn’t. The Hypertext-Matching Analysis is supposed to make the determination of page type, but if this fails, the page may be ranked wrong and end up a irrelevant result on a SERP. Probably this “flaw” is what people have been referring to when making the above mentioned claim.

The conclusion is: High PageRank is important for a high placement on SERPs, but not the only criteria. PageRank can definitely not be ignored entirely, but relying totally on a high amount of backlinks is dangerous, since the backlink sources needs to be of significant importance to be of any value.

Yes it is… but one of the “rules” of SEO is to avoid duplicate content and this is where the use of the robot.txt can be very useful.

Duplicate content can occur in four different ways:

• Websites With Identical Pages.
  • Affiliate sites with the same design and same content.
  • Websites with doorway pages intended to spam the search engines in order to manipulate search results.
• Scraped Content
  • Content copied from other sites and repacked to look different, but basically is exactly the same.
• E-Commerce Production Descriptions
  • E-Commerce sites using the same manufacturers’ descriptions of the products as many others do
• Distribution of Articles
  • The copying of articles from different sites to blogs and/or other article sites.

All of the above is considered spam by the search engines’ duplicate content filters and will result in penality for both the original author and the copier. So if one knows that some content is copied from or published somewhere else, the robot.txt file can be used to disallow crawling of that particular part of the site.

To avoid making duplicate content on own websites you can use online similarity tools like Webconfs.com’s Similar Page Checker. This tool compares two pages and returns a percentage of similarity. High similarity indicates that you probably should change the content of a page to avoid being penalized by the search engine duplicate content filters.

To avoid duplicate content from copies on the internet you can use other online tools like Copyscape to scan the internet for replicas of pages that others have “borrowed”.

Branding – the collection of images and ideas representing the producer, the producer’s policies, ideals, goals and attitudes. More specifically branding are the set of verbal attributes and concrete symbols such as name, logo, slogan and design scheme that convey the essence of a company, product or service (according to Wikipidia). Still we also have David A. Akers Brand Identity as a uniquie set of brand associations that the brand strategist aspires to create or maintain. These associations represent what the brand stands for and imply a promise to customers from the organization members. The assets linked to a brand’s name and symbol that adds to the value of the product or service is considered Brand Equity. The increased value may be physical (monetary) or psychological (perception).

Advertising is the communication that attempts to persuade potential customers to purchase or consume more of a given product or execute a specific action. The media used for advertising are numerous and comprised of both offline and online media. The most important factor in advertising is location. The wrong location for the perfect advertisement will yield no purchases, inquiries or approaches where a mediocre advertisement in the perfect location can yield innumerous postive results. Advertisement might not initially result in a purchase, inquiry or approach, but if the potential customer has noticed the advertisement (consciously or unconsciously), he is more likely to choose you when doing searches on the product/service. The strategy of advertising can be two-fold: Short-term (click now) or long-term (don’t forget me when you’re ready to buy).

Lead Generation is the creation of potential customer interest into a product or service. Lead generation is a tool to create attention around the product or service through give-aways or incentives and includes direct mail, trade show marketing, email marketing and telemarketing.

SEM/PPC is the targeted and bought rank spots in seach engines and contextual advertising. The goal is to reach potential customers through keyword targeted advertising.

Now… the article that inspired these considerations state that each tool has its right time and right place and that one shouldn’t supplement one in place  of the other. I don’t fully agree with this statement, as I find it requires a specific set of circumstances to be valid. Of course you shouldn’t blindly use all tools indiscriminately, but I don’t see any significant problem in combining some of them in an overall marketing strategy. I also find that many of the considerations needed to implement one tool is the same for other tools. The question is whether or not you can actually percieve the tools as Alternatives. You don’t need to choose one or the other.

Of course there are many factors in determining which tools to use and when, but stating that some exclude others is dangerous. I would rather state that the Most Wanted Response is a significant factor in determining which tools to use. The purpose/main goal of the marketing campaign along with the budget for the campaign should dictate which tools to use, not the tools themselves.

Researching the market and the target groups, defining company mission/vision, defining brand identity and defining the key messages will eventually reveal which tools are best suited for the communication. I don’t see why the result of this research and these definitions cannot be a combination of tools.

Getting back to the headline of this post and the actual topic I wanted to discuss: Why should one choose SEO over SEM/PPC or vice versa?

I must admit that currently I see very few advantages of using SEM/PPC and others seem to share my sentiment, since studies have shown that 85% of most people ignore PPC links and sponsored listings entirely. Many find them invasive and annoying and trust the organic results more, since these are generated through critierias of popularity. PPC -will- get your site to the top of the charts, but the costs of it (material costs and immaterial costs) needs to be weighed against the actual return on investment (ROI). At this point I would claim that thorough and planned SEO can reach just as high organically as SEM/PPC at a significantly lower cost.

There seems to be a general concensus on the following categorizations:

The basic KPIs are:

• Total Organic Traffic
  • Basically if the traffic on the site is measurable increasing, you must be doing something right.
• Total Numbers of Pages Indexed
  • Doing a “site:yourdomain.com” command on Google will reveal how many pages have been indexed by Google. The more pages indexed the better.

The more advances KPIs are:

• Number of visitors per keyword phrase
  • Observing the ratio of visitors to the most valuable keyword phrases can reveal if it’s improving. Improvement means that the chosen keywords were the right ones and that they are generating more traffic.
• Brand search terms vs non-brand search terms
  • A higher percentage of brand traffic (traffic generated from brand search terms like “Nike”) usually covers a lack in the ability to “capturing the tail” from non-brand traffic (traffic generate from non-brand search terms like “mens running shoes with extra absorption”. There is a big potential in capturing the tail and getting converts (clicks that result in the most wanted response) from non-branded traffic. Theories state that for every 100.000 brand hits there’s an estimated 4.000.000 searches that could have given a hit and a convert with the right SEO (keywords).

The Professional KPIs are:

• Yielding Pages
  • The ratio of pages yielding traffic/total pages. Higher ratio means that we are getting generated traffic from several pages and probably several different topics. Correct SEO makes this possible since every page has its own unique content and keywords that attract different users, but results in the same most wanted response.
• SEO Reach
  • Looking at the total number of possible queries for a specific search term will reveal a percentage. A higher percentage is an improvement.

Most important online literature on this topic were the SEO Design Solutions’ The Importance of Key Performance Indicators, VKI Studio’s SEO KPI’s – Use the Right Search Engine Optimization Key Performance Indicators and Netconcept’s 7 New SEO KPIs – Search Engine Optimiazation Key Performance Indicators.