This is the conclusion to the three part series on SEO and PPC’s quest to have an amazing night out on the town.  If you missed part one or part two – check them out before reading on. 

While both SEO and PPC are now having an amazing time, they both feel like it can still be taken to the next level. Just then Web Analytics reappears, but he is not alone this time. On one side, he’s got the one person that PPC has had their eye on the entire night while on the other side, SEO sees the one that they’ve been after.

With PPC, you can tell there are instant sparks and they immediately head out to the dance floor. SEO, however, is the type to take it real slow and so they go take a seat on the couches. It doesn’t take long for the chemistry to build and soon they are having an amazing time as well.

With a smile on his face, Web Analytics knows that SEO and PPC have learned an important lesson tonight. While they both can get into the party on their own and have a decent time, the night will not reach its full potential unless they work together.  They need to bring along their friend, Web Analytics to show them how best to play off each other and eliminate the obstacles that present themselves along the way.

This experience that SEO and PPC had can be translated into the real world of SEO and PPC. SEO is a slow process that requires a lot of patience while building up rankings for the targeted keywords. The pages that visitors will be going to are often more content rich. So, it can often be a slower process before a visitor actually makes a purchase.

PPC on the other hand, provides instant gratification. It’s quick to get going and quite easy to move into the top positions if you’re willing to pay the price. It’s generally flashier since you have full control over the marketing message and the landing page that a visitor goes to. It is generally more offer-oriented and is designed to generate an immediate purchase.

All too often…SEO and PPC aren’t done in conjunction with each other. Each forges out on their own and can experience success. But, unless they are working together they are likely not reaching their full potential. That is where Web analytics comes into play.

The Web analyst needs to understand how SEO and PPC work together and find the optimal balance. It means nothing to rank #1 in the SERPs for a “key” search phrase if all you’re doing is sending crappy traffic that never converts. You need to know the types of keywords that do convert into sales or other site goals and refocus your efforts around those.

Too often, I see the excitement on people’s faces when they’ve finally achieved a goal of ranking on the first page of the SERPs and the site suddenly begins to see an increase in traffic. A high volume of traffic, however, does not necessarily translate into an increase in conversions of the site goals.

The Web analyst should know the keywords that are working well for PPC and those that work well for SEO. If it works well for PPC, then it’s probably worth trying for SEO purposes. The same holds true for keywords that are working well for SEO. If you have a set of keywords that you rank highly both organically and in PPC, then there is another task that the Web analyst needs to work on.

That task is finding the right position for the PPC ad based on where the site ranks organically. It may be that the #2 spot in PPC generates the highest return, but it could also be taking away sales that otherwise would be coming through organically. Understanding what position for PPC generates the highest overall (both organically and paid) return will allow your company to realize the greatest return.

That is just the beginning, but this would go on forever if I began getting into the importance of multivariate testing and the full analysis of user behavior for organic and paid visitors that should continually be taking place.

Instead, I’ll hopefully be leaving you with an understanding that a truly integrated SEO and PPC effort requires more than just the SEO and PPC teams working together. It requires the Web analytics team to also provide insights and advice to help take it to the next level.

So, while SEO and PPC can get into the party that is the first page of the SERPs, they really should enlist the help of Web Analytics to take the party up to the next level and really begin to drive the highest level of sales while delivering the best overall return.

So…Friday night, in my own socially hip way (as in not so), I spent the evening watching a sci-fi show, then stayed up late (after my wife and son were in bed) to pay some bills.  Just before midnight, I decided to take the two block trip to the mailbox to make sure those bills got off on time and my credit report stayed nice and shiny (For you Firefly fans: yes, that kind of shiny). 

So, I walked out the front door of our building and around the side to cut across the back lawn on my way to the mailbox.  Pretty much as I entered the back yard, a deer crossed my path.  Now I don’t live in a rural area, I live in the nation’s capital. Not near it, in it.  Washington DC. The Seat of Power. The Capital. District of “We-apparently-have-Deer” Columbia.

I tried to document this occasion with a picture of said deer using my stellar 1 megapixel (excuse me, 1.3 megapixel) camera phone.  Lets just say the results were the kind of thing they use to prove aliens exist.  So I photoshopped a deer into a city street so you could see an over-exaggerated version of what I saw.

After I watched the deer trounce through some lawns and wonder further down the road into the urban jungle – I continued on my walk to the mail box.  All the while, I waited for a stag to run out of the shadows and maul me for looking at his doe (or for poring concrete and asphalt all over his natural habitat, whichever seemed appropriate to him at the time).  Finally, I reached the safety of the mailbox and deposited my letters. 

Once there, I happened to see a passing police officer, apparently on a similar nighttime errand to the mailbox and flagged down her car.  I clearly and eloquently explained the situation, “Uhhh, Deer!  Over there!”  She then calmly and politely extracted further information from me:  The deer was alive and as far as I could tell unhurt.  Unfortunately, she explained that there was nothing she could do, due to the lateness of the hour and the fact that animal control would only come out if the animal was dead or hurt.  I thanked her for her time, and she continued on her way to the mailbox.

This story got me thinking about design and how to grab people’s attention.  If you can bring a streak of the wild to the domestic you’ll grab the attention of anyone watching.

What does that mean?  Well, it’s different for every design and in many cases it’s more of a feeling than a hard and fast rule, but every good design should take some risk.  It should have something wild and untamed, something that grabs your attention and cannot be categorized.

It is a tenuous balance, however, for if the design is too wild then it could easily go astray and miss the target audience.  The converse is also just as bad.  If the design is too “corporate” or safe then it will not interest or, worst of all, will bore the audience and turn them off to the product or message.  It’s important to keep your design balanced so that it interests and engages the audience.

So, take your lessons from the deer and push toward something a bit more wild in your designs and campaigns because, if you succeed in striking that perfect balance, there won’t be a thing the style police can do.

Many marketers are responsible for providing management an executive summary of the Web stats each month. The summary probably consists of:

Visitors
Unique Visitors
Top Pages
Top Referrers
Possibly Top Paths

Chances are it takes a little time to pull the data together and format the report nicely. Chances also are that if you stopped sending the report, everyone may not even notice.

Sure, looking at the number of visitors can be interesting, especially if there are big changes. But, this type of data is pretty useless to upper management, especially since there is so much more meaningful information available.

So what is a successful marketer to do?

You need to take a step back and figure out what is important, figure out what to measure, and figure out how to measure it. Today, I’ll talk about what to measure. Next week, I’ll cover the how to.

Each month the executive summary report should answer the following questions:
How is the Website helping or hurting our business?
Why?
What is going to be done to either help more or fix the problem?

To do this you must align the goals of the Website with the overall company goals. For example, an e-commerce site’s goals should be:

New sales
Repeat sales
Increased dollar value of order
Increased dollar lifetime value of a customer
Referrals
Leads

So, the report should include this topline information, in addition to year-over-year (or month-over-month) changes with an explanation of why the situation is improving or not. If the situation is improving, campaigns with an extremely high ROI should be highlighted. And, if it is not improving – briefly describe what is going to be done to change this (e.g. stop spending money on non-converting PPC campaigns).

A report filled with meaningful business information in business terms that management can relate to will be much more appreciated than a less meaningful lists of stats.

Last week, I gave a brief introduction to Twitter.  So this week, I thought I’d do a write up on creating a Twitter profile, and what you do once you have one.

First things first, head over to the Twiter sign-up page and type in the user name that you’d like to have. As you’re typing, you’ll find out if it’s available or not. Once you have something you like, type in the password for the account, and you’re good to go.

Now that you have an account, it’s time to make it look like you’re a real person. The first step is to enter a profile picture (Settings -> Picture). While any picture will do, if it’s a personal account, it’s probably a good idea to have a picture of you. If it’s a company account with multiple authors, or if your brand is more important than you personally, then a brand logo is fine. Just remember that it’ll get shrunk down to fit the standard Twitter avatar size (see below), so make sure it’ll scale.

Now that you look like a real person, it’s time to enter some information about you. Go to Settings -> Account and enter your Website, bio, location, etc. If you’d like you can also go to Settings -> Design to redesign the background of your twitter page.

Now that you feel like a real person (to someone viewing your account), it’s time to build out the account. Take a look around for people that you want to listen to, and add them to your following list (you can start with the EndlessPlain twitter account). Look at who they follow and see if they’re people that you want to follow.

Soon you’ll have a nice list of 100+ people that you’re following. Some will follow you back, just because you’re following them. Some will follow you back if they know you, others won’t… or at least won’t until you engage them.

Follow conversations that they have and reply to tweets when you have something to say. They’ll get notified that they have a reply, and they’ll see it even if they’re not following you. This can lead to them following you, or replying to you, which then pushes your name out to all their followers, which has the potential for some of them to check you out and add you.

Just replying isn’t a great strategy though, you do need to add your own unique content, show that there’s a real person out there. Note: Unique content does not equal spamming your followers with continual blog posting notifications, or with every minute detail on your daily life.

Decide on your boundaries, your audience limitations, if you’re going to be sharing some personal details, what do you want clients that subscribe to your feed / your boss / the internet to be able to see? Do you need to go to private mode (which means that you get to approve anyone that follows you)? How active are you going to be? Just remember that as you add more followers, they’re going to expect you to maintain whatever level of activity and quality they’ve come to expect.

I ran across an old post from Groundswell author Charlene Li from April 2007 discussing her Forrester’s Report on Social Technographics. Since I am a very visual person, I immediately focused on the ladder graphic depicting social media participation levels.

One of Li’s key points in the post is that businesses should understand where their audience falls on the ladder prior to developing a social media strategy. This reinforces a core belief here at Serengeti — that the first step in developing a social media strategy is to perform a social media audit. Our audits look at existing social media projects (if any) and evaluate what similar and non-similar businesses are doing. We also gather benchmark data on current activity and conversation levels. Lastly, we provide a social media strategy and execution plan.

Do you know how your key audience engages in social media? Are they joiners or spectators? And what are they saying? If you can’t answer these questions, you should consider a Serengeti Social Media audit. You may be surprised with what you find out.

…You’re supposed to say “Wednesday”… you know… so I can say “Webinar!” and then… Oh forget it.

Throughout the month of August, Serengeti Communications will present a weekly, one-hour Webinar every Wednesday (say that five times fast). We’ll be covering various Web 2.0 and marketing strategies each week and helping your business get just a little bit better at using that new-fangled thing called the “Internet.” (All the cool kids say it’s going to be the next “sliced bread.”)

So, what are these Webinars going to cover? I’m glad you asked.

And, all this for only twenty-seven easy payments of nothing. But wait, there’s more…call right now and you can get your whole team to attend for nothing. That’s right just twenty-seven easy payments of nothing. That’s nothing for you, nothing for your co-worker, and the extra special low price of nothing for your great-uncle Ted.

So, invite your co-workers, your bosses, and obscure relatives to The Wednesday Webinar Series. Operators (i.e. Stacy) are standing by so Register Today.

This is Part Two of a three part series on SEO and PPCs quest to have an amazing night out on the town.  If you have not already read Part One, check it out before reading on. 

Once SEO and PPC finally meet up a new set of issues arise. Neither of them can manage to get past the crowds and up to the bar to get drinks. To make matters worse, the cocktail waitresses seem to be ignoring them. Frustrated, they decide they will instead mingle and see who they meet. They each go their separate ways, but after a while they both begin to get frustrated. While everyone seems to be out for attention tonight, neither SEO nor PPC is having much luck. Both of them seem to be getting ignored or shot down more often than not which is quickly making the night a disappointment.

Just then, an old friend who neither SEO nor PPC has seen in ages shows up. The old friends name is Web Analytics. SEO and PPC explain the frustration each is having with how the night is going and seem a bit upset as a smile comes across the face of Web Analytics.

Web Analytics explains that he can help turn the night into the type of party that SEO and PPC thought they were going to at the outset. He explains that PPC and SEO need to work together to have the night they envisioned and once they find out how best to play off each other then everything else will fall into place.

Armed with their new advice - they again try their luck. After a bit of experimenting with different tactics, their luck starts to change. Suddenly, they seem to be the center of attention with each generating their fair share of interest from almost everyone they come in contact with.

There is still one area, however, that SEO and PPC have yet to master and that is the ability to get a drink. Seeing that, Web Analytics sends over a cocktail waitress to SEO and PPC who are laughing and having a great time with a couple of new friends. After taking their order, the cocktail waitress tells them that she will keep an eye on them and makes sure they are taken care of for the rest of the night.

While both SEO and PPC are now having an amazing time, they both feel like it can still be taken to the next level. Just then, Web Analytics reappears – but he is not alone this time.

Find out who Web Analytics has brought with him in the conclusion next week.

For those that aren’t aware, Twitter is a social network that allows ‘friends’ to communicate with each other in brief 140 character bursts of text (known as tweets). You can send these tweets directly through the twitter website, or through one of many twitter applications (such as the desktop based twhirl, or the Blackberry based Twitterberry).

It doesn’t sound too tempting does it? Personally I put off joining it for quite a while, not wanting to have to decipher the “WOT RU Doing?” and “I Dunt no u?”s of the world.

But then I actually tried it, and I found that it was actually a good communication tool. People talk in full English, and hold conversations that are interesting and, because of the tool, interactive. Obviously there are some people out there that try to take advantage of the tool to try and spam or over push their services / sites / products, but you’ll get that with most media, so it’s not unexpected.

But how can twitter help your business?

• It can group people interested in your company, products, or cause together, helping them communicate, and enabling them to work together to spread the message about you.
• It can help you to broadcast news and events about your company to subscribers, showing that there’s a ‘beyond P.O.S.’ side to your firm.
• It can help you to know what’s going on with your users, giving them the ability to give you feedback as to what they like / don’t like, and what they feel your company can do better. Although if you’d prefer to lurk rather than engage, twitter has a search function (formerly known as Summize)that you can use to search all twitter conversations for a mention of your company / product / etc.

So should Twitter be a part of your social media strategy? Well, as is the usual theme with these social media sites, you need to have time set aside to build up and maintain an account, so just signing up, and adding a bunch of friends, then not doing much won’t work. You have to tweet, and interact with other people, answering their tweets. Eventually you’ll build up an account that can serve you and your organization well.

Oh, and if you’re interested in following the tweets of the Serengeti Team, you can do so at https://twitter.com/endlessplain.

Being a former AOL employee and still having many friends that work in the Northern Virginia offices, I take notice when company news is released.  When I heard last night that the rumors about Microsoft or Yahoo buying AOL were heating up again, I was a little surprised.  What was even more surprising was that when I pinged my friends at AOL this morning looking for scoop, I got nothing, nada, zip.  They hadn’t heard anything, no buzz, no rumblings.  So, this begs the question…if employees at AOL don’t care about what happens to AOL, why should anyone else? 

Many would argue (me being one of them) that AOL is a dinosaur, slowly dying off piece-by-piece.  Although AOL launches new sites as part of their growth strategy, they don’t brand these new sites heavily with AOL.  I’m assuming this is due to the negative brand association.  Most consumers probably don’t realize that TMZ (celebrity gossip powerhouse) is part of AOL and if they did, would they still visit?  Another example launched just a few weeks ago — tourtracker.com.

In our Facebook, Twitter world - are big portals (Yahoo!, MSN, AOL) even relevant?  Since I am a creature of habit, I still use AOL.com to check my weather and news, but I am slowly transitioning to other sites and visiting AOL less.  Many people still visiting AOL – over 200 million unique visitors per month.  So, just based on sheer numbers, I’ll concede that AOL is still a player.  Unfortunately, size is also what has kept AOL from staying ahead of the curve. 

So, back to the dinosaur analogy, whose time also came and went, AOL is approaching extinction and it appears not many people care. 

This is part one of a three part series that was first published as part of Marketing Pilgrim’s Scholarship Contest. The finalists were determined by the number of visitors that read the post as well as factoring in bonus points for a low bounce rate and high average time on site. While this post was not a finalist, it did have the second lowest bounce rate of any entry and the eleventh highest average time on site. I guess what that means is that I should have made an effort to drive visitors to the post.  Oh well, there is always next year.

But, without further adu here is part one of the post.

How does search engine optimization and pay-per-click advertising relate to your quest to have an amazing night out at the hottest bar or club in town? And, what friend should you make sure to bring along so that you will definitely have a night to remember? Well, I won’t require you to have the patience of SEO. But instead, I’ll give you the instant gratification of PPC.

Two friends, SEO and PPC are getting ready to head out on their quest to have an incredible time at the new local hotspot. They decide they will meet at the club since they live on opposite sides of town. As usual, PPC quickly gets ready and heads out the door. There is no style lost, however, in the quick process of getting ready. In fact, PPC is looking quite flashy and really stands out from the crowd. PPC quickly finds a parking spot right next to the club and heads past the long line waiting to get in. As usual, PPC is on the guest list and is ushered right inside.

SEO on the other hand takes a long time to get ready, but once ready looks every bit as impressive. After SEO finally makes it out the door, through the traffic heading downtown, SEO eventually finds a parking spot far away from the club a new obstacle arises. SEO does not seem to be on the guest list and instead has to wait patiently in line. SEO could be upset and frustrated, but instead excitedly anticipates the fun night that hopefully is about to begin. An hour goes by, but eventually SEO is let through the doors and to the party inside.

Does this sound familiar to all you SEO and PPC experts? PPC is always the one that can be up and running in no time with a flashy ad and ranking in top positions for all the important keywords. PPC can slip right into the party and start generating sales in no time. SEO on the other hand has to be patient since you’re likely not going to be able to join the party on the first page of the SERPs right away. Instead, it will take hard work and a lot of patience before you finally make your way in. That hard work and patience, however, can really pay off and potentially can be more cost effective than PPC in the long term. But anyways, back to the story…

Next week part 2…