The Big Wave Blog

Reporting from San Francisco, I have an update for our readers on Evision’s first speaking engagement of 2008. Our partners at CHLA invited me to speak to a group of California Bed and Breakfast owners this afternoon.

First of all, arriving in California from 10-degree Chicago weather feels great. Add to that a packed session that was very well received and raised some interesting points. I will summarize the important ones for you:

• Let there be light! From corporate boardrooms to independent business owners, there is still a lot of education that needs to be delivered. Having worked in the industry for several years, I sometimes feel that everyone must know the basics by now. But it’s never true! It may be 2008, but there are many people who have not been educated about the web in the right way. Educational sessions are always needed on search engines and website marketing.
• Count your chickens every day. There needs to be a major emphasis on analytics. Nothing great ever comes out of making an assumption. It is shocking to hear people discuss how they made decisions about their website based on some story they heard. You will never know what is really happening until you get analytics on your website. Good analytics are the key to making the right marketing decisions… and some of the best analytic software is FREE.
• Web reputation management is key. Keep an eye on what people are saying about you on the web. Message control is gone. It is now your job to keep tabs on what is being said about you and your business. It pays to be reasonable with people you do business with. Good actions will be duly noted, but bad ones will circulate much faster than you think!
• Weigh price vs. value. In 2008, an election year, it is time for your business to make a critical decision. Are you going to be the cheapest option with more sales, or the prestigious one with few? It’s up to you to become either Wal-Mart or Nordstrom. The most successful businesses online have a clear idea of who they want to do business with.

At the end of the session, there were a lot of questions from the audience. (Quite an accomplishment for an after-lunch session!)  It was a pleasure to be there, and I would like to thank Lynn, Jennifer, Sherri, Guy, Heidi, Jim & Bernice for their wonderful compliments.

Many of you have ignored your website for the past 2 years. Now is the time to start putting some serious effort into SEO, and this whole crazy social media/web 2.0 stuff. So, stop the black-hat link-building campaigns and stop the keyword stuffing techniques, because 2008 is about getting back to the basics.

I recommend that you follow these 6 easy steps to improve your search engine optimization efforts in 2008.

1. Check your site map and website navigation. Make sure that your interior pages are linking properly, and that your shopping cart/lead generation form is not buried deep within the site.

2. Make sure you are targeting the correct keywords on each page. Each year, searchers are getting smarter, typing in phrases that are more targeted. There are excellent keyword research tools available. Make sure that each page on your website is targeting 1-3 keyword phrases.

3. Reread and rewrite your content. Make sure your website copy conveys your company message, theme and mission. Be sure to write for your target audience, whether it’s teens, males, females or senior citizens. To enhance SEO, stop stuffing 10 different keyword phrases into the first paragraph of every page. Optimize each page of your site for 1-3 targeted keywords. Rewrite your header tags to include the keyword phrase that is being targeted for each page.

4. Name the images on your site. Recent search engine stats have indicated that 10% to 16% of all searches are for image results.

5. Spend some time with your online shopping cart, booking engine, or lead generation form. If it was made before 2005, then you might need an update. There have been some excellent improvements to online lead generation forms in the last 3 years. An updated, easy-to-use lead generation form can add a huge boost to your website conversions or leads. There is plenty of data available to help you pick the best form for your particular industry.

6. Once these website improvements are completed, add social booking buttons on key pages to help increase traffic and add to your link-building campaign. Popular social media/bookmarking sites include: Digg, Delicious, Reddit, StumbleUpon, and Furl; and the list grows longer each day. You can opt for an all-in-one social bookmarking button from addthis.com, which is quick and easy to integrate into your site. You can even edit which sites you want to include.

Try these easy website improvements, and you should see improvements in usability and online conversions without spending a huge amount of money.

Be sure to check back later this week for Part 2: Optimizing Your Paid Search Campaign for 2008.

Analytics Vendors and Package Implementation
December 5, 2007

This session covered something that is as ever-evolving as search itself.

Analytics have come a long way since being just log files. This panel had a few bright spots, and Google Analytics Senior Product Manager, Brett Crosby (formerly of Urchin), was the star of the panel. He gave an outline of the new update to the analytics program.

Internal site search tracking was introduced in June 2007 this year, and it is an excellent source of qualitative data. The “Ga.Js” update was outlined as well. The new capabilities of Google Analytics now take you beyond the world of Pageviews and into the world of event tracking and outbound link tracking.

Sadly, the representative from Yahoo was missing from the panel. Of course, the other panelists had a field day, amusing the crowd with jokes about the absence of the speaker.

Brett Crosby closed his presentation by saying, “Up next is Bill Schmarzo from Yahoo.” Ouch!

Link Buying
December 4, 2007

If anyone was sleepy today @ 4 PM Vegas time…. this was surely the wake-up session. With panelists like Rand Fishkin (SEOMoz), Jim Boykin (We Build Pages), John Lessnau (Link Adage), Aaron Wall (SEO Book), and Matt Cutts (Google), there was plenty of excitement to go around.

Aaron Wall and Matt Cutts have been going around most of November throwing burning arrows at each other, and the tension was felt when Aaron took the stage. His website was penalized during the recent Page Rank update, and he is obviously not thrilled about it.

Aaron is a man on a mission. Flanked by his new wife and taking big strides, he was hard to catch up with to have a conversation. At the next event, I hope to catch up with him and get introduced formally.

Here are some funny quotes from this power-packed session:

• “There are other good niche directories I am not naming as Matt might KILL them!”
  -Aaron Wall
• “Stay under the radar…Don’t piss off Google!”
  -Aaron Wall
• “His style is Mountain Man.”
  – Rand Fishkin about Aaron Wall

Rand’s comedy was a bit risky considering Aaron had the “don’t mess with me today” look.

Hopelessness is a key factor when you decide to go and buy all the links you can because nothing else is working.

In the end it is all about risk and reward. There are risks involved with buying links and nobody can guarantee anything. That’s the way search engines like Google operate. They want to maintain a high quality of search results, and every now and then some of us will have to bear the brunt of their spam teams.

Overall this was a very entertaining session, with lots of cheers and jeers!