SEO Slappy

Gmail to Get More Protection From Snoops - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

2009-06-24T08:01:00.002+10:00

Noting that many power users have already turned on HTTPS protection, Google now says that is considering going further. “Ideally we’d like this to be on by default for all connections, and we’re investigating the trade-offs, since there are some downsides to HTTPS — in some cases it makes certain actions slower,” Ms. Whitten wrote. “We’re planning a trial in which we’ll move small samples of different types of Gmail users to HTTPS to see what their experience is, and whether it affects the performance of their email. Does it load fast enough? Is it responsive enough? Are there particular regions, or networks, or computer setups that do particularly poorly on HTTPS?”

Online Marketing projected to increase

2009-04-14T06:22:00.002+10:00

eMarketer projects that the online share of ad dollars will continue to grow, rising from nearly 10% this year to slightly more than 15% in 2013.
“The spending shifts predate the recession,” says David Hallerman, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report, US Advertising Spending: The New Reality. “But the current economy is reinforcing the new advertising models—and making them more permanent.”

These projections by eMarketer mirror many other studies and statements around the world. Facing the oncoming recession, an increasing number of print newspapers are turning to online to survice, in fact.

SEO/SEM in Australia is a special issue for so many reasons. Join me was we explore. It will be a fascinating and informative journey.

And people wonder why I suggest Paypal?

2009-04-05T17:12:00.004+10:00

Credit card processing online can be a scary business. For most of my web development and SEO/SEM clients, I suggest a simple solution: Use Paypal. The initial reaction is Why? Hasn't Paypal been getting some bad press lately?

"Well, yeah," I usually say. "eBay was criticized for switching to Paypal as its only credit card and payment platform. That was criticism about eBay, rather than Paypal; and eBay made this move because there were too many who found ways to avoid the eBay commissions. - They loved the eBay service, and didn't want to have to pay for it."
" --All that shows about Paypal is it is a valuable business resource."

And further, "One of the most significant reasons is good for your online business too. "
"If you use Paypal, you don't have to keep credit card information. It's kept on Paypal. If someone hacks your leased hosting, they won't be able to steal from your customers."

Don't keep the information
One long term client argues that he has to get the credit card information from his clients because they don't know how, or simply don't want to learn how, to use Paypal or any other payment gateway.
He just tells them to give him the credit card data, and he'll fix them right up. "Leave it with me," he'll say. -- Every time I hear it, I want to cringe.

"If someone hacks your server (where he has only so much control over the security on leased server space), gets a hold of your address book (where he it all down); or even finds one of your scrawled-on-the-back-of-an-envelope notes," I tend to look at his eyes about here." --you could be criminally liable for the results."
He just looks at me and repeats how he usually does it.
His clients and customers aren't computer literate. They don't want to be. And he likes the idea that they trust him.

It's not just a small business problem
Small business has a simple, effective solution to an issue that has yet to be resolved around the globe. A lot of large companies are learning this lesson the hard way.

In light of recent data breaches that have compromised consumer information, such as the potentially massive 2008 Heartland Payment Systems breach, some congressmen are questioning whether the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards, created and regulated by credit card companies, are sufficiently protecting information.
...
"I have no doubt that compliance to PCI standards are the best line of defense," said Robert Russo, director of the PCI Data Security Standards Council. "We have never found a breached entity to be in full compliance at the time of breach."(CNET)

This has become a very active debate across the Net in the United States.

"I'm concerned that as long as the payment card industry is writing the standards, we'll never see a more secure system," Thompson said. "We in Congress must consider whether we can continue to rely on industry-created standards, particularly if they're inadequate to address the ongoing threat." (comment on Forbes)

NRF Calls PCI Standards ‘Elaborate Patch,’ Tells Congress Retailers Should Not Be Required to Keep Credit Card Numbers (AOL Money)

“All of us – merchants, banks, credit card companies and our customers – want to eliminate credit card fraud,” NRF (National Retail Federation in the US) Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer David Hogan said. “But if the goal is to make credit card data less vulnerable, the ultimate solution is to stop requiring merchants to store card data in the first place. The bottom line is that it makes more sense for credit card companies to protect their data from thieves by keeping it in a relatively few secure locations than to expect millions of merchants scattered across the nation to lock up their data for them.”(ibid)

There is no National Retail Federation in Australia, unfortunately. Retailers instead rely on the government to provide information, and that is commonly inadequate.

More bad news in the world of data security: Companies aren't just losing more of their customers' private information than ever before. Customers are also losing patience with those increasingly common breaches. (Forbes)

In Pictures: The Year's Biggest Data Breaches(Forbes)

In Pictures: 23 Tech Security Terms You Should Know(Forbes)

You've got to do your part, too

As an online retailer, you can protect your customers on your own site.
First make sure your payment gateway doesn't require any information to be passed in plain text. If your payment gateway doesn't allow your customers to log into their site to make payments, -- as Paypal does--, then don't use that gateway. It's really that simple. There's no reason to expose your customers information to the store-and-forward series of servers across the Net.

Second, use a secure page for your ordering. You never know what a customer will put in the Notes section of an order.
If you don't have the $2500-$5500 to purchase a certificate from a company like Thawte, use the free SSL certificate provided on any reputable hosting.
A free, unregistered security certificate can be obtained on from most servers. It's nearly as secure as a registered certificate since you'll still be using the same encryption routines.
In some cases, hosting companies will lease you access to a shared certificate. It's a small price to pay for offering your customers a lot of security.

My clients can't be bothered
That's the final word on using secure ordering on a website and a secure payment gateway in Australia: "My clients can't be bothered."
I've got to admit it's a hard one to argue. Australians came late to the Internet and computing. The Howard administration sought persistently to dissuade Australians from using the Internet for personal and business. There's a lot to overcome in this country.

One thing I did note though, the guy never sends his credit card information via email.

SEO/SEM in Australia is a special issue for so many reasons. Join me was we explore. It will be a fascinating and informative journey.

Internet advertising wanes in 08

2009-03-31T21:27:00.003+11:00

“The economy has had a significant impact on the short-term growth of the Internet advertising market,” David Silverman, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, which contributed to the report, said in a conference call.
Internet advertising in the United States grew to $23.4 billion in 2008, an increase of 10.6 percent from 2007, according to the Internet Advertising Revenue Report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau, a trade group representing online advertisers, as well as PricewaterhouseCoopers.
That was the only category of advertising spending that grew in 2008 other than cable television, which rose 7.8 percent, according to Nielsen figures supplied for the report.

Australia has yet to have an eCommerce boom. For most of the last decade, the infrastructure and installed base just wasn't there. Internet advertising in Australia has largely been limited to imitating conventional marketing.

The former administration was Internet-phobic, releasing constant articles to the press that were intended to scare Australians away from using the Internet and implementing policies that retarded the growth of Internet use for both individuals and small business.
Large business, institutes of higher education, and government were encouraged onto the Net, producing a digital divide that inhibited the development of small business in a more subversive way.

In the last two years as more businesses come to understand the power of the Internet can be applied to their business goals, the influence of the Howard administration has waned.

SEO/SEM in Australia is a special issue for so many reasons. Join me was we explor
e. It will be a fascinating and informative journey.

HP gets into vanity publishing

2009-03-31T20:54:00.003+11:00

With a new Web service called MagCloud, Hewlett-Packard hopes to make it easier and cheaper to crank out a magazine than running photocopies at the local copy shop.
Charging 20 cents a page, paid only when a customer orders a copy, H.P. dreams of turning MagCloud into vanity publishing’s equivalent of YouTube. The company, a leading maker of computers and printers, envisions people using their PCs to develop quick magazines commemorating their daughter’s volleyball season or chronicling the intricacies of the Arizona cactus business.
“There are so many of the nichey, maybe weird-at-first communities, that can use this,” said Andrew Bolwell, head of the MagCloud effort at Hewlett-Packard. ..

Yes, sometimes it pays to read foreign newspapers like the NY Times, even in Australia.

For companies looking to establish credibility in niche markets, offering a subscription or free copy of the company magazine is an incredible sales tool. Potential customers will admire the quality, and keep the magazine for its uniqueness and appearance.
Vanity publishing has been an effective, but little-known element in search engine marketing since the advent of lulu.com in Jan 2000.

Many other sites offer variations. Lulu still offers the widest range of services, although the services have become increasingly expensive. A fact that limits some of the feasibility for small businesses somewhat.
Having customers roaming the world with your company name and logo on a tshirt is still very effective. Just look at how many department stores and tech shops require their employees to wear a tshirt -usually with some witty saying- when working and on breaks.

HP's MagCloud will be less expensive than publishing through any of the vanity publishers now in service.

SEO/SEM in Australia is a special issue for so many reasons. Join me was we explore. It will be a fascinating and informative journey.

Virtual Worlds and Famine

2008-04-27T16:48:00.001+10:00

Image via Wikipedia

(reproduced here with permission from the 101 Computer Consultants' blog)

In the years before WWII, Hitler repeatedly told the world he intended to have a war in the East for Lebensraum. There were quiet rumblings that didn't always make the headlines: the renouncement of the Treaty of Versailles, the build up of German forces, and the bold new attitude of Germany at the Olympics. (Did anyone notice that is where the torch relay began?)

Far more interesting were the many new technologies that emerged: the Zeppellin, radio broadcasts around the world. The world was exhausted from the Great Depression. Everyone looked to new ideas for hope.
And the "funny little man from Germany" sounded a lot like a few other fascist dicators, Mussolini and Franco. Who would take him seriously? He was just beating his chest to give his countrymen courage.

I've always looked at the news was more like a conversation between writers than separate factoids.

Famines and Civil War
From the back pages of the Herald Sun today:

UN food agency chief Jacques Diouf (of Haiti) yesterday warned of civil war in some countries because of global food shortages and called for a revamp of the international food system. ...
"Unfortunately, we always wait until there is a catastrophe in this world before we react," he said.

The price of rice, a staple for every country, has more than doubled in the last year. Some rice producing countries have banned exports to preserve the food supply for their own people.

Turn the Page
Turning a page, virtual worlds are seen as invaluable elearning tools. IBM has set up a website to manage its stake in the virtual world, and to protect its virtual property rights. A high level executive manager has been hired to oversee virtual operations.

Australian telecommunications incumbent Telstra last year launched what was said to be the country’s first major corporate presence in the online virtual world. Dubbed “the Pond”, Telstra’s Second Life islands aim to encourage customer interaction while creating new sales and marketing opportunities.

Clever Zebra has developed ready-made corporate complexes that it has made available under the Open Source GPL license. Telstra spent $20,000 to customize a corporate complex on Second Life.
In Melbourne, train conductors use tweetscan to announce late arrivals and canceled schedules. Dell uses the same service to keep its ear to the ground about product approval and marketing opportunities.
Even more startling, Calvin Klein has produced the world's first virtual perfume. -- And you thought scented business cards were a bit much? (Yes, there is a company in Sydney that makes scented business cards!)
Teachers in virtual classrooms use twitter and twitterscan to listen to their students' comments, and react to questions.

Technology
In my online resume, I state flatly that I believe technology can save the world. I believe deeply in the power of communication across national boundaries to prevent catastrophes and bring people together.
There must have been a few like me in 1936 or so, too. Radio was the big thing then. Communication with anywhere in the world at the speed of light. In the light of history though, the record doesn't look so good.

The Flat World is facing its first crises.
None of this stuff was unpredictable.
Overpopulation and food shortages have been discussed for decades. I remember long conversations in the 1970s about it. Food shortages and social changes were the subject of movies. The paintings were gut wrenching. Those paintings and movies are now called "vintage", and rarely available anywhere.
Food shortages cause civil wars and wars between nations. Governments are overturned violently by desperate crowds. How many times has this happened in a lifetime?
Global warming has been predicted by scientists since the middle of the last century. Researchers in the early 1970s found lead levels in the Greenland ice packs were toxic. The levels had been deposited in the ice since the turn of the century, when automobiles started using ethyl gasoline to power cars.

Have we turned to virtual worlds to avoid dealing with the realities of the problems facing us all?
That would be a cruel choice.
One researcher put it plainly: "We have the capacity to feed the world. We have the tools to deliver that food to everyone who needs it." No kidding. The central valley in California is fertile enough to feed the north American continent, with billions of tons of food left over to export. There are other fertile areas around the world which only need to be put into production. The nations of the world have more than enough transport available. The US can deliver rice from the Sacramento delta to anywhere in the world.
The facts are there. International leaders like Jaques Diouf are pointing out the need. What's stopping us?

I live and work in the virtual world. The Internet has been a passion for me since before its inception. Groups of programmers gathered to dream about it, and speak quietly about our experience with its military predecessors, for years before anyone heard of the "Internet."
We knew it could be done.
The virtual world has eclipsed television as an entertainment source in Australia.
The virtual world has proven its value as a business resource, an information resource, and in entertainment. The power of the Internet has opened up the world to all who access it.
It's time the Internet showed how it can help those who desperately need help. Those millions who are not looking for entertainment or money, but for the daily needs of living.
I know this is just one post in a massive blogosphere. I hope a few people see it. More than that, I hope many people act on the ideas I've put forth here. I will place a similar post on all my blogs.
It's time to show the real power of a dream.SEO/SEM in Australia is a special issue for so many reasons. Join me was we explore. It will be a fascinating and informative journey.

Contact details

2008-04-21T11:45:00.003+10:00

Image by BR0WSER via FlickrIs this an issue for SEO, or web design?

Recent surveys of online buyers indicate they will spend less than 3 minutes searching for a way to communicate with the company.

Even business owners new to the Net know. I don't know how many times I've heard an SEO client tell me to make the logo bigger (because it has the contact phone number) or to put the phone and email both at the top and bottom of the page. The look is intrusive, yes. It is also good business.

MaCorr Research, working with web hosting firms offering web design, reports that "77% of respondents will switch to a competitor if the business does not provide a phone number, e-mail address or live chat."
Consumer expectations drive the need for businesses to provide a means of communication.

85% of the 1,025 respondents cite the ability to contact a business as the most important aspect of using a company’s web site.
78% are irritated when unable to find a way to communicate on a business’s web site;
48% have felt angry to the degree they tell someone about the failure. 91% are most irritated when unable to find a contact phone number,
and 82% when unable to find a contact e-mail address.

After successfully contacting a business:

97% of survey respondents say they would visit the web site again and use the business in the future;
93% say they would use the business more frequently,
92% would recommend the business to others
and 85% would bookmark the site, the survey finds.

I have to say that I distrust those numbers, frankly. They're just too high. Or there is no commitment indicated. I'd have to question the participants of the survey, and how it was worded.

SEO/SEM in Australia is a special issue for so many reasons. Join me was we explore. It will be a fascinating and informative journey.

Chat with your Customers

2008-04-19T18:54:00.003+10:00

Image via WikipediaI've got to admit to a bias towards small business. I want to see small business be as effective at using the Net as "the Big Boys."
A few days ago, one of my clients said, "Can you put online chat on my site? I've heard it's the best way to make a sale."
I'd talked to this guy about a number of options for his site: animated FAQs, online chat, and messaging. Like most small business owners, when he found out it would cost him a monthly fee, he suddenly was looking for the door and his watch. So I asked, "How many sales do you think you'll make if I do?"
It wasn't really fair. He had no idea how many sales he'd make from online chat. Recognizing I had to get him out of a corner, I said, "How much do you make on a sale?"
That same expression. Now this one he should have known: I'd given him a spreadsheet with a complete breakdown of pricing and profits. Obviously, he hadn't looked it over or just didn't think of it in terms of average profit.
Fortunately, I had. But I was interested to see what his number would be. After all, I don't know the sales he's made. I just get a fee for my work.

Like anything else, the online chat facility has to be considered in terms of ROI - How much is it gonna pay to play?
When you're just starting out, you gotta try stuff to see if it works for you. You need to think realistically though. It's not just a monthly fee, or a per-minute use fee, there's also your own time involved.

Online chat costs
If someone is asking about something, it's time to go find out about it. Soo...
I had always looked at online chat as a means of making a site more 'sticky' - meaning it would keep potential Customers around longer. Turns out that was a pretty naive perspective,
Let's look at the upside first.
From the Internet Retailer:

Orvis, a multi-channel outdoor gear and apparel retailer, invites customers to chat only when they are on certain pages, such as customer service. “We have a lot of stuff on the customer service page,” says Brad Wolansky, vice president of e-commerce. “If 15 seconds go by and you’re still on that page, you’re probably looking for something and haven’t found it.”
Orvis also offers chat to customers lingering on the checkout page. But the retailer does not offer chat on product pages, where visitors may linger reading reviews, examining photos, watching videos and comparing products. “Sitting there for a long time is not an indication you have a problem,” Wolansky says. “I don’t want to bother you.” Wolansky says customers who chat convert 15% to 20% of the time, roughly triple the rate of e-mail.

Mr Wolansky is getting sales from 20% of his Customers he chats with. Considering that 68% of visitors will abandon the shopping cart before checking out, he's saving a lot of sales, too. He's effectively reduced the number of abandoned shopping carts by 15% or so - based on the averages.
It's interesting when and why Orvis will offer to chat. Picking up on lingering customers on the checkout page is a great idea. And Orvis will offer to help a (potential) Customer understand his customer service page too, which adds a lot to Orvis' credibility and reputation for integrity.
That's long tail advertising. It just goes on and on.
Kevin Kohn at LivePerson Inc. claimed that 15% of site visitors accept invitations to chat.
One thing about averages and ranges: They are just averages and ranges. Your business may do much better. (It could do worse, of course, but why expect the negative?)

20% of web chats result in a completed purchase
Web chatters spend approximately 35% more per order
30%-40% of Web site traffic includes self-service shoppers (consumers who make purchase decisions without vendor assistance)

Online chat services range in price from $39.99 to $159.99 per month for single seat or 1-5 seats.
If we can estimate the average sale online is about $25.00 with a conservative markup of 50%, or about $8.00 and change, it would take at least 5 new sales each month to break even - on just the cost of the software.
There may also be setup fees, costs for employees to attend, training costs and other niggling costs.

SEO/SEM in Australia is a special issue for so many reasons. Join me was we explore. It will be a fascinating and informative journey.

Back to the basics

2008-04-19T13:06:00.006+10:00

SEO is about maximising your search engine positioning. You can Do It Yourself (DIY) or engage a search engine consultant to do the work for you. To save time, another option is to do it yourself with a little assistance from a consultant.

One of the truisms on the Web is that over half of all webpages are not indexed. There are no links to the pages, or the website. If you have a online business, the website is useless if it does not attract visitors.
The key feature and importance of SEO is to make it easy for search engines to understand your site, page by page. That's SEO in a nutshell.
You SEO the site, page by page, to support the next step: SEM.
SEM is the process of making the website and pages visible to search engines and potential customers.
SEO and SEM are part of website optimization, a part of the overall development of a website for business or community information purposes.

Some companies don't need SEM
Some people think so, anyway.
Companies with very well known brand names don't need to market their site to get visitors. Everyone in Australia will type in 'telstra.com' to find the Telstra website. For almost all of the rest of us, we get to squabble with the search engines to be seen.
Some companies will short the queue, expensively, by buying a place on a list called 'Sponsored Links' using PPC advertising. PPC advertising is popular. These links will be in direct competition with the largest companies in their industries for spots on those lists.
And when the PPC campaign stops, the link -and the visitors- stop.
You see, the largest companies know they do need SEM.

There are three important steps for search engine success.
First, the search engine must know of your site.
Second, because most people using the search engines only look at the first or second SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Using the default settings for Google, that means the first 20 listings. Ever notice how many results you get from a search? It's often in the millions.
Third, if you get a page in the top 20 listing, the person has to see what they're looking for.
Actually, you can break down the numbers a little more.

40% of searchers will not look past the top 4 listings; another 20% will look to the rest of the first page. That means over half - 60% - won't even look to the second page;
another 20% or so will look at the second page. It's about the same breakdown there too. Of this 20% of searchers, only 1 in 5 will look past the middle of the page, or 6 listings, on the second page.
By the end of that second page, only about 1 searcher in 10 is going to see you.

If the searcher doesn't see what they're looking for, they'll launch another search.

What if they do find it?
Finding accurate statistics on the behavior of Australians is tough (or expensive.) However, we can get some idea from US statistics (from Coremetrics March 2007)

Samples of Coremetrics’ U.S. benchmark data for March include:
22.41% of visitors left retail sites after viewing one page, while 51.65% got as far as a product page.
Average page views per session was 13.76 and product page views per session 3.78.
The average order included 6.12 items totaling $140.10. The shopping cart abandonment rate was 68.42%.
14.84% of consumers used site search during their visits, resulting in a 5.60% conversion rate and an average order of $151.92.
47.89% of traffic and 67.35% of sales came from visitors who typed in the retailer’s URL or clicked on a bookmark. The typical conversion rate on such “direct load” visits was 3.29%.
Natural search results accounted for 13.35% of visits and 7.83% of sales, producing a conversion rate of 1.66%. Referrals from sites such as affiliate networks and comparison shopping engines accounted for 5.71% of traffic and 1.97% of sales, producing a conversion rate of 1.36%.

What is this stuff telling us?

If a visitor (not a searcher any more, hopefully) finds a retail site, one in five will leave. More than half will look at at least one product page.
On average, the visitor will look at about 4 times as many product and company information pages than product pages.
Once the visitor has figured out what they want, they'll buy 6 items. However, almost 70% of visitors will abandon the shopping cart before completing the purchase.
Visitors that are looking for something in particular (using the site search) will buy more often than those just browsing the website, and spend more money.
Half of those who came to the site, and 2/3rds (67%) of sales, came from people who typed in the site name.
Over twice as many visitors came from natural search results (not PPC) as from affiliate or comparison shopping sites. Nearly 6 times as many visitors who found the site from natural search results bought something compared to affiliate links or comparison shopping sites.

Yeah, I know. I love to play with the numbers. The numbers are the reality of this stuff. They make it manageable.
Take another look.
What those numbers means is people do want to know about the company and the products. They'll go to great lengths to find out, even running the shopping cart and abandoning it to see everything they can.
Those numbers seem to tell us that twice as many people will buy if they find a site in the natural search results as if they type in the name of the site. But that's not the whole story. Three times as many sales and visits came from visitors who typed in the name of the site. That means they've been there before. They know the name of the site.
These are either repeat customers or people who've checked out the company and products.
The time worn adage on the Web is a visitor converts to a customer after 3-5 visits to a website. Guess what? The adage holds pretty well based on those numbers.

The numbers also tell us that about half the visitors won't look past the first page. That starts the old sales numbers game running. To get sales, you have to get visitors.
That note about using site search reminds us to make it easy for the customer to do their job: to buy from you.
And we are back to web design, SEO, and SEM again.

SEO/SEM in Australia is a special issue for so many reasons. Join me was we explore. It will be a fascinating and informative journey.

Crawling through HTML forms and Flash

2008-04-18T15:34:00.004+10:00

Google is constantly trying new ideas to improve our coverage of the web.
In the US and UK markets, Google now scans JavaScript and Flash to discover links. That's an improvement that hasn't been implemented in Australia yet, but is expected soon.
Just to emphasize, that doesn't mean Google can retrieve content from Javascript and Flash, only the links.

Google's latest foray is with forms. The Googlebot will try a small number of queries using the form. The whole story is available on the title link. I was pleasantly surprised to see this news, and wanted to make a note to myself...

Black and White

2008-04-17T07:58:00.003+10:00

Image via WikipediaChannel 7's Sunrise program presented a segment on "Why Dads should be banned from the delivery room." Sometimes you can't help thinking you can make an argument for anything. And someone will, sooner or later.

Black and White
I can make the argument that black is the same as white, for example.

"Black and white" is used to describe an attitude, perspective, or understanding of a topic. In this commonly used context, it doesn't matter which is "black" or "white".
"Black" by itself has a negative connotation emotionally and racially. Other than to describe the color, the word is rarely used. The same can be said for "white." The racial connotation is socially unacceptable, even implying racism. The word is used more commonly than "black" to describe color only because of the broad use of the term "white goods."
The only other common use of the terms "black" and "white" is to "put it down in black and white" which means to clearly state something or write it down. In the modern world, it really doesn't matter what color the text is however. It could just as often be white text, or blue, or green, or any other color.
Therefore realistically, the terms "black" and "white" other than the often misused abstract colors, the terms "black" and "white" are equivalent in use, which is the only meaningful definition after all.

What do you think? Is it semantics - the use of words - the only thing that's important? or is it a dictionary definition which only marginally describes the meaning of the words in the real world?

The arguments presented above are intentionally provocative. Often, I think the same is true for many of the ideas presented in the media, too. Anything that sounds different or contradicts accepted perceptions is attractive to the media -like the topic of the report to ban dads from the delivery room.
The whole point is to grab attention. At some point, you have to think for yourself and be practical.

SEO/SEM in Australia is a special issue for so many reasons. Join me was we explore. It will be a fascinating and informative journey.

Selling SEO

2008-04-16T12:59:00.010+10:00

Image via WikipediaWhen I want to sell SEO to someone, I tend to do it very simply.

I ask them what keywords they think describe their business. Most people intuitively know what a keyword is, and they know what categories in the Yellow Pages apply to their business.
Let's say the answer is: "Tools. I sell mechanics' tools. Garden tools."
I launch a browser, and type "tools" into the Google search box. 1,070,000,000 results. Let's cut that down a bit just for the sake of sanity and reality.
Select 'pages from Australia', and launch the search again.

Much better: 345,000.
Now 'mechanics tools': 317,000.
And 'garden tools': 216,000.

Big numbers, yes. But not as incomprehensible as a billion and change.
Those sites did good SEO. They're listed number 1 through 4 out of 300,000 or so.

Look again at the sites on the screen. There are maybe 5 or so above the fold.
Now, see these guys over here under 'Sponsored Links'? They're paying $4-$6 a click to be on the same page. (A little preparation goes a long ways here..)
Do you remember how much you paid for those test ads we ran about keywords? (A few days can easily cost $100-$200.) That means the Sponsored Links are paying a couple of thousand dollars a month to be on the same page as the sites that did SEO.

You might spend a couple of thousand to get your pages into the top of the natural search results. But they'll stay there for a while. It depends on what you do with the pages. But if they're at the top for a few months, it's gonna take a lot to get them out of position.

And remember, 40% of Australians won't buy from Sponsored Links on principle? That means your SEO dollars are that much more valuable. 60/40 is 1.5. So if you spend $2000, it's worth $3000 - 1.5 times $2000. -thanks to the peculiarities of the Aussie market.
Those guys over there probably know that (pointing to the Sponsored Links), but they're bidding against each other over what's left.
Now if we're really successful, we'll get your site into those positions for particular brands or even popular tools.

It isn't hard numbers, no. But the point usually gets across. The approach is demonstrable and understandable. The customer doesn't have to be a math wiz to figure it out. It also sets some achievable targets for the future.

Spin, Duck, and Dodge
Some of the strategies and tactics out there are pure manipulation.

DON’T DO THIS: Get lost in the details.
Do you think the CEO (or small business owner) wants to hear about meta tags, site architecture, content and link popularity?
Probably not. He or she just wants to hear one thing: How will SEO benefit me? Which brings us to…

DON’T DO THIS: Dodge direct questions.
While “talking points” are a powerful way to stay on
message, make sure you know when to answer a direct question.

I realize this is 'good sales technique', but I'd prefer to give a direct answer to a direct question. If someone has taken the time to learn enough to ask questions, they deserve an answer. I may warn them the answer may have a lot of detail, but if they're willing to hear the full answer, they'll get it.
As much as possible, I'll focus on the benefits. I don't want to wade through the vagaries of site structure and different search engines either. But try explaining the benefits of a heading tag without mentioning the rest of the page structure.
If you want to end up in a situation analogous to spaghetti code, wait til someone has told your prospective customer: "I don't even bother with the keyword or description tags. The search engines ignore it anyway." And then have to explain.

DON’T DO THIS: Focus on to many benefits .
Remember the power of threes: When information comes in three bits, it usually sticks.
Too little and it sounds half-baked, too much and it sounds too good to be true—or your audience will forget your additional points.
Stick with three, high-level and pertinent benefits.

I have to agree with this one. Somehow, I want to know what the person really wants from an SEO campaign. Not only do I want to know, but I want to put those goals down in writing (or email) . Setting goals in writing makes me accountable. Having the goals in writing also avoids my having to hit moving targets, and the horror of all technical projects: scope creep.

Is the goal of the site to sell products? - or a service? -or is it to generate leads?

If the goal is to sell a service, the site structure is different than if to sell products. For example, the most accessible pages will focus on the service. There will be more pages supporting the sale of the service.
If the goal is to sell products, then the products should be front and center on the homepage. Services will only be another option amongst the products.
Generating leads is analogous to branding. If the company name is associated with a service or product (i.e., branded) then the search terms will lead directly to the site. Otherwise, the site should focus on the benefits, and let the benefits to the consumer get the lead.

It's possible to have a site do all three things, of course. One focus will support the others. There may be a lot of pages though.
If the stated goal is to sell a service, and somewhere in the process it changes to selling products, then back to selling the service - the site will just be an unsuccessful mess because it's much harder to hit a moving target.
That's a form of scope creep. If you don't write things down, scope creep can slosh back and forth, increasing then decreasing, to create nothing but dissatisfaction and confusion.

DO THIS: Talk the talk.
Now you have your three key SEO benefits.
The next step is to transform them into “talking points.” Political junkies out there will be very familiar with talking points, and to see them in action is a thing of beauty. No matter what question is thrown at them, they somehow manage to weave back to one of the talking points.

I'm not very big on buzzwords. You know you're getting there when the customer starts picking up the jargon of SEO.
Not just as buzzwords though. - like throwing out "ex dividend" pretending to know all about stocks - but when customers use SEO terms in context to describe what's happening, and why.
It's also a good sign that you're failing to get the point across if your customer hasn't picked up the basic terms, too. You're missing something in the communication. It's time to regroup and rethink how you're presenting your efforts.
When both you and your customer manage to weave any discussion back to the goals, you've got yourself a team effort.

Learning to communicate with customers is a way of showing them respect. You're not there to impress them with your brilliance or superiority. Your job is to help them achieve their goals. You're there to make your customers part of your SEO team. Part of that job is to help them understand their goals, and how you can help achieve those goals.
After all, they are the experts in their business - not matter how large or small the business.

SEO/SEM in Australia is a special issue for so many reasons. Join me was we explore. It will be a fascinating and informative journey.

Flaming Underpants: the 1956 Olympic Hoax

2008-04-15T08:48:00.004+10:00

I know it's not directly pertinent to SEO in Australia, but this is hilarious!

The Museum of Hoaxes story will save me a little typing.

Then someone whispered in the mayor’s ear, “That’s not the torch.” Suddenly the mayor realized what he was holding. Held proudly in his hand was not the majestic Olympic flame. Instead he was gripping a wooden chair leg topped by a plum pudding can inside of which a pair of kerosene-soaked underwear was burning with a greasy flame. The mayor looked around for the runner, but the man had already disappeared, melting away into the surrounding crowd.

There's already a web buzz rippling across the Net. You gotta wonder what kind of internet tsunami this stunt would cause today?

SEO/SEM in Australia is a special issue for so many reasons. Join me was we explore. It will be a fascinating and informative journey.

The Buzz is all Broadband

2008-04-15T08:05:00.003+10:00

Image by Brett L. via FlickrFrom Reuters:

Australia has slower and more expensive Internet access than many other developed countries, and though penetration rates are on a par, officials and experts have warned Australia may fall behind in competitiveness without faster, nationwide coverage.

They're not telling anyone in Australia anything new. Expensive broadband with poor service has come to be expected. Leading the race to the bottom is the company that can most affect service: Telstra.
There is even a term: fraudband, to describe ADSL service sold for too much but slower than dialup.
Some people in the technical field consider all Australian ADSL service fraudband because of the coverage maps. Coverage maps are published online (supposedly) showing where ADSL in different versions is available. There are two problems with the maps:

Commonly where coverage is shown, the telephone exchanges are too far away. Although full service is indicated within 4km of an exchange, past 1.3km or so, the quality (read: speed and reliablity) drops off dramatically.
The out of date, or just poorly wired, exchanges are full. ADSL may be offered in an area, but you take out a lottery ticket to get service. Some homes almost next door to an exchange have waited over a year.

IHT picked up on the story:

Australia could be a step closer to building a high-speed broadband network after the government canceled a deal for a rural system that would have overlapped with the one planned nationwide. The scrapping of the rural network plan, which was to cost 958 million Australian dollars, or $888 million, came as the government planned to invite bids for a national network as early as next week.

Hate to tellya, folks, but that's been going on for more than 5 years.
The government has commissioned Telstra to provide outdated service to regional (rural) areas, then realized the service would conflict with other plans - wasting years and hundreds of millions of dollars. Regional users are forced from one flaky plan to the next (CDMA to NextG is the latest.) and still have dropouts and poor service.
The government has looked to private enterprise to pick up some of the slack by offering grants and special loans. Satellite service and free service expands too quickly for these small firms to keep up. One abandoned network is cobbled onto the next, creating a nightmare for customers and those companies that took the bait.

Like the old AT&T in the US, Telstra is great at the big projects:

Australian telecommunications company Telstra has begun the arduous task of laying a 9,000 km undersea internet cable from Australia to Hawaii.

Again, that's not the whole story. Telstra is laying that cable, not out of social consciousness or entrepreneurial zeal, but out of monopolistic necessity. Telstra has been buying bandwidth from old rival Optus for years.

If you can't even get email, why bother to open up a business online? An inspiring example is as passion for beauty.
There is no question some companies have braved the madness and succeeded though. Relatively, for a country that needs reliable communications from coast to coast like no other, Australia has made the road to success unnecessarily hard.
There are many words to describe the slosh of media in one direction then the next, with only miniscule real progress: most of them 4-letter words.

SEO/SEM in Australia is a special issue for so many reasons. Join me was we explore. It will be a fascinating and informative journey.

ROI: The 800 lbs Gorilla in the Corner pt 2

2008-04-09T16:45:00.004+10:00

Image via WikipediaA surprising question appeared on a business forum recently: Do I need to get business cards?
The poster said that his business was entirely online. He had no face to face contact with his customers. The only communication was by order and email, with an occassional phone call to clear up immediate problems. He didn't see why he needed business cards - and his arguments were pretty sound.
The question must have astonished most of the forum. No one replied for nearly 3 weeks.
Finally, someone posted that business cards had helped build his business. He included business cards in all packaging along with the invoice, and passed them out whenever he met someone. The business cards helped his customers remember his business, or to find his online store.
The discussion ended there.

The question is valid though: Does a small wholly online company need business cards?
Marketers will say emphatically Yes. Invoices with contact information are good. Most people put them away after they're paid. The only time an invoice gets any attention is at tax time.
People handle business cards differently. They're usually put into a card file on the desktop. Whenever the person thumbs through the cards looking for something, they momentarily see each business card. Even though it's just a fraction of a second, that's enough to remind customers of the business.
For that small moment, the Customer will remember the purchase. They may even return to the website - and buy something else. That's enough. The business card has paid for itself and more.
5oo business cards cost about $100, or about 20 cents a card. If the merchant makes $5.00 on the purchase, that's an ROI of $5.00 (- not counting the original purchase -) for 20 cents.

Let's have a little fun with the numbers.
If that were the only purchase anyone made because of a business card then the guy spent $100 to get $5. That's assuming he got rid of all 500 of the cards. If he did put all 500 cards into potential future Customers' hands, the chances of him getting the one sale is .. 500 to 1.
That's pretty good odds. - Sorta.

How many Customers have to buy something for him to break even on the business cards? $5 per sale. He needs to make $100. That means he has to make 20 sales to cover the cost of the business cards. - What are his chances of that? 20 out of 500, or .. 25 to 1.
The odds are getting closer. But most people would make a bet if they knew there the odds were 25 to 1 in their favor.
What if he only passed out 100 cards? That's 5 to 1.
Or 200 cards? 10 to 1.
The odds are still in his favor. But where does he decide he's willing to make the bet. He's betting his business and income, remember?
The potential ROI on his business cards depends on how many cards he puts into potential customers' hands.

There's a joker in this deck of cards. What he makes depends on how quickly he gets the cards out. Let's say he finds for every 10 cards he passes out, he makes a sale.
If he passed out 100 cards, - That's 10 sales. - or $50. He hasn't paid for the cards.
If he passed out 300 cards, - That's 30 sales. - or or $150. He's paid for the cards, but hasn't really made much.
How long will it take him to pass out 300 cards? A week? A month? A year?

If he made $50 ($100 for the cards. He made $150 from 30 sales.) from 300 cards in a year, that hardly makes the cost reasonable. He could make more money from doing something else to promote his business.
Thinking about ROI means thinking about thinking about how long it will take to recoup the investment.
If his online store made 1000 sales in a year, and only 30 of them resulted from the cards, is that a worthwhile investment?

The answer is .. Yes. -- Why?
After the cost of the cards, he only made $50. Then again, he sent out 700 invoices that didn't have business cards, didn't he?
There are maybe 700 of his Customers that never got a card. And he could have handed out cards in other places.

But none of these numbers are the real reason he should have a business card. The reason he should have a business card is Customers' expectations. A business card with the invoice supports the perception of the business.
If he meets someone, handing out a business card is expected. People question of he's really in business if he doesn't have one.
A business card supports his reputation. There is nothing more valuable to a business -especially a small online business- than their reputation. It reflects upon the perceived integrity of the business.
But how do you put a value on reputation? It's part of his investment in business cards.

There are significant factors in ROI that can't be expressed in hard numbers.
How valuable these factors are to a business depends on the nature of the business.
If the owner assumes that Customers will come to the site one time to either make a purchase or not, then there is much less value to distributing business cards to help establish reputation. There is still some value since one-time Customers may refer others.
If the company expects to sell repeatedly to Customers, then the value of business cards to establish reputation -and to bring Customers back- is much greater.
More depends on the long-term plans of the business:

Does the business plan to add more products?
Will the new products be more profitable?

We now have a significant factor that affects many more significant factors. In order to understand the value, how do we quantify these factors?
Incorporating a little fuzzy logic may help. There is an old marketing adage that it costs 6 times as much to keep a Customer as it does to find a new one. That means the $150 he made from the business cards is worth .. $900. He only made $5000 for the year. Suddenly, the value of the business cards is worth nearly 20% of the revenue.
It is using fuzzy logic, but the difference of $650 can be seen as the long term value of the investment in business cards.
On a card by card basis, the $100 spent on each card represents an ROI of $900. The cards that cost 20 cents each have returned $1.80 per card (- really $3.00 because only 300 of 500 cards were distributed.)

There are many other factors. Some can be quantified, and some can't. Determining the quality of these factors depends on the priorities of the business.
Assuming again that the company made $5000 for the year:

How many visitors came to the site? We know that 1000 people bought products.
How many times did repeat Customers return to the site?
How many times did visitors come to the site before buying?
Why did people return to the site?

For web design, software training, community building, and web programming a similar sort of analysis can be made. Hard numbers can be put to some things. Some things are difficult to express in numbers. Overall, the value of these unquantifiable aspects is qualified by the goals and vision of the business.
We'll explore a few of the specifics in another article.

SEO/SEM in Australia is a special issue for so many reasons. Join me was we explore. It will be a fascinating and informative journey.

ROI: The 800 lbs Gorilla in the Corner pt 1

2008-04-08T11:52:00.004+10:00

Image from WikipediaA lot of the stuff I do is difficult to present in terms of ROI: web development and programming, software training, SEO/SEM, and Community Building can be very esoteric in terms of raw dollars.

Old Days
It's been like this since my first days in the computer field.
My second job in IT was as a commission sales person for NEC. To the world back then, IBM meant Computers. NEC was unknown outside Japan. They entered the US market through Europe with a superb microcomputer system based on the new 286 processor. (I did warn you I'd been at this a long time, right?)
Not only was the system faster, but it had the best color monitor on the market. It could be networked - with a little careful programming- with the new Netware software, so it didn't need a license for token ring technology from IBM.

I didn't know much about programming or computers in those days. All I knew was I wanted to work with this cutting edge stuff. Fortunately, microcomputers leveled the playing field for folks like me. Colleges were training people on mainframes. Even people with Masters' degrees in Computer Science had rarely seen a micro.
My only real advantage was to be organized. I might not have had much more to say than what was in the brochure, but I made sure I got to every appointment on time to say it.
I was really excited to be working for one of the obvious industry leaders as it expanded into a vast new market.

This one manager was impressed with my naive enthusiasm. On the second visit to his distribution company, he smiled and told me: "If you can find me one piece of software that will run on that system, I'll replace every computer in the room." I looked across the room at 25 computers, and my pupils must have dilated.
Then he said, "I'll replace them all,...if you can find me one piece of software that will run on 286 systems." Then he handed me a copy of DataSources. DataSources was once the Bible of the computing industry. These two huge books were 4 inches thick and the size of a coffee table book. One was for software. One for hardware.
"Go ahead. You can take them with you. You find one piece of software, even if I can't use it, and I'll sign the requisition today," he said. "Then come talk to me next week."

I took those books home and poured over them. I even looked through the hardware book hoping to find something to trace down in the public library. There was nothing.
I had to go back in there the next week and admit defeat. He just laughed as he handed me some coffee.

The new DataSources came out in about 6 months. It was filled with software that ran on 286 systems, and software that was compatible for both 286 and 8080 systems. Both had options to use CP/M, PCDOS or MSDOS as the operating system.
Turns out, he did replace all his computers, networked them, and signed on to an annual service contract to contain his costs - all through me. I ended up doing a lot of the work myself. I followed the NEC tech around and helped him to learn about all the new technologies.
The owner and I had a lot of coffees together.

This was the days before the Internet and Windows. Windows was out, but version 2.x didn't work reliably. It was a year or so later when version 3.1 came out that Windows began to make a place for itself.
The Internet was a secret subject for tech people. We wished upon the stars for it. It was more an impossible dream than reality. And many people thought it would never happen. The Internet would mean too much information and freedom, the hacks canted. No government would allow that.

Faith?
Thing is, this guy didn't replace his computers because he could show a real return from the dollars spent. He didn't buy them because he needed the fabulous 10Mbyte harddrives, or the advanced CGA graphics.
There wasn't any way to calculate an ROI on so many unproven technologies. The technologies were so new no one knew how much it would cost to keep them running. Netware was promising to make micros work like mainframes. It sounded almost impossible.
It wasn't hard for IBM to show that converting paper records to searchable databases saved money and increased productivity. But that was for big business with hundreds of thousands of records. IBM had whole systems: printers, terminals, harddrives, and mainframes.
No one even knew how to connect printers to these new microcomputer networks. In most cases, a programmer had to write a driver for a Netware network. How do you figure that cost into the ROI?

IBM threatened, then released their own Personal Computers. But they didn't even connect to the mainframes. PC's worked like dumb terminals which cost much less. IBM only got into the microcomputer market to quash the upstarts.
We know now it didn't work. But when this guy bought that room full of micros and networked them, he could not have justified it to anyone.

So ... Why did he buy 25 computers, a network, and a long term service contract on unproven technology and put his whole career and business on the line?

Part of it was the excitement of the microcomputer revolution.
Part of it was a need to keep technologically ahead of his competitors.
Part of it was to keep up his company's reputation.
Part of it was NEC's international reputation.
Part of it was all the times I came to him over coffee so many times to tell him exciting and good news about the developing industry.

He made the right decision. But he only saw the ROI in passing. I doubt he ever sat down to figure it all up. If I had had to justify the purchase in terms of his return on investment, he would never have made the purchase.
Many times, I've sat down with prospective customers and told this story.
I emphasize the brilliance of his foresight by quoting Napoleon "L'audace. L'audace. Toujours, l'audace." Then I mention the practicality of the long term service contract which guaranteed him support any time, and specified hourly programming fees - and how that limited his exposure to the uncertainties.

Options
Could he have made safer, more productive choices? Maybe. No one knew it at the time, but his network absorbed technology and upgrades for almost a decade. Netware upgraded to accommodate 386 systems and software, then 486 systems.
If he had networked 8080 or Z80 systems with Netware, it would have been much more risky.
Software is defined for workers in terms of the interface. The costs of retraining staff would have been much more dramatic to move from green text on black screens to 16 and then 256 color monitors.

Color screens turned out to cause less eyestrain, headaches and were proven to be more productive. People were more willing to put in long hours and could concentrate easier on choices distinguished by different colors.

NEC did not offer a long term contract for support on such an ad hoc (technologically) network. Programming and technical support would've had to be billed at the market rate. Netware was made to run on the 286 (or at least the 8086/80186).
Replacing 286-based systems turned out to be much less expensive because IBM opened up its architecture (in a last ditch attempt to bury micros, many thought).
But no one could have known all of that.

What does this story prove?
As the story unfolds, many advantages showed themselves:

color screens for productivity (and employee moral);
harddrives saved server time;
projects and departments were separated for security and practicality;
improving technology melded software and hardware to reduce upgrade costs;
Microsoft broke free from IBM and Windows came into its own;
and much more.

Today we have the advantage of those years of anticipation and determination. But still, many purchases come down to prioritizing the goals of the business. That's really how this forward-thinking manager made his decision.
Look back at the list of reasons I gave. Then glance over the whole article. Not many of those elements could be expressed in hard numbers going in. They had to be managed to prove themselves.
And there is an element of just plain luck.

He chose to make the purchase because of his own priorities. His priorities were not easily quantifiable. There is no question they are qualifiable though. And in time some of his qualifiable reasons proved themselves.

The story illustrates a reality of any technology purchase: hardware, software, training, websites, SEO/SEM, and community building, the decision is made on priorities, not necessarily hard numbers. Technology in business is too closely integrated with ergonomics to quantify everything. Employees and customers are a part of the equation.
If the technology is not a priority, it will not be purchased no matter what is quantified.

Does that mean not to put into numbers anything that can be quantified? No. At every opportunity, quantify. Managers need numbers to manage. It's an old adage of management.
But management at every level has to respect the elements of technology that are qualifiable, but resist being quantified.
We'll explore these topics further in the next few posts in terms of each of the services and products.

SEO/SEM in Australia is a special issue for so many reasons. Join me was we explore. It will be a fascinating and informative journey.

eMarketer speaks to me

2008-04-08T09:59:00.004+10:00

One of the best email lists I ever signed up for was eMarketer.
Take a look at this graphic.
Admittedly, these figures are from the US, and the Australian market would have slightly different numbers. The saying here is: "Australia is about 10 years behind the US." - It serves as a self-fulfilling prophecy especially for smaller companies.
These numbers are probably pretty accurate for larger businesses in Australia; and close for small- to medium-sized companies. Smaller companies have put less of this information to use in Australia. From what I have seen here, that may change soon and quickly.

An effective adjustment to the numbers could be made by adjusting the numbers using statistics about Australia from the ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics). Australia has slightly fewer college graduates and a larger number of people between 35 and 64. The most active economic group in Australia is defined as the 15-34 age group, for both online and conventional sales, for example.
From intuition, for example, I would say the Australian public would trust a Non-Profit organization or Healthcare specialist more than an Academic source. I have to wonder if as many as 12% of Australians would find Bloggers a trustworthy source of information. The long term effects of a continuing Internet-phobic media campaign by the government, combined with the fact that Australia has opened up the Net in the last 4-5 years, leaves the perception that Bloggers are a questionable source.
Overall, the graphic above will spark useful discussions about the online marketing targets for businesses of any size in Australia.

Further:
Advertisers will spend £3.4 billion in 2008, up 27% from 2007 levels, and will continue double-digit growth through 2010, passing £4.3 billion in 2010 and exceeding £5 billion in 2012, according to online ad spending data released by eMarketer, MarketingCharts writes.

SEO/SEM in Australia is a special issue for so many reasons. Join me was we explore. It will be a fascinating and informative journey.

Why make it hard?

2008-04-07T06:23:00.003+10:00

Image from Wikipedia

When I buy something online, I'm a lot like everyone else. I'm either looking for a bargain or want something in a hurry.

Why would online business owners spend countless hours following every possible search engine optimization and marketing technique to get me to visit their website, and yet make it so difficult for me to actually make a purchase?

Haven’t they realized that if they don’t make it easy to order right now, I'll go find it somewhere else?

Even street merchants accept credit cards now.

It shocks me how often website owners will have page after page convincing me to purchase their product, but then make me look for the link to buy right now.
eBay figured this out long ago and provided the famous Buy NOW! button. That Buy NOW! button has saved millions of people the hassle of bidding and waiting to get their purchases. Some folks love the auction. Others just want what they see. If it looks like a good price: Let's do it!

Yes, online shoppers have many different buying habits.
Some will be ready to buy. Others will want to know everything before proceeding. If the price looks too good, some will just want to see if the site is there next week.
More savvy buyers will run a search through the forums to see if anyone has had a problem with the company. eBay knows this, and incorporated formal Feedback into the site. The history of a seller is available without leaving the site.

Smart move. Nobody trusts reviews.
On one site, I suggested setting up a link to a web search of the forums on the company name.

An old ecommerce adage is a visitor will come back 3 times before purchasing.

You can meet the needs of all types of buyers by first making sure they can easily see the link, and providing more the opportunity to make the purchase from any page on the site.

Similarly, if you make people register before they can make a purchase, you are going to lose some business, it is as simple as that.There have been many times when I clicked on an item because I more information, only to discover the prices weren't visible until I registered. What an annoyance!

If the site uses what I call forced registration (you must register before you can continue) I am very likely to leave the website without making a purchase. I assume they are more interested in my contact information than selling me something. I know they can sell my information.
Again, I don't want to read a lawyered Privacy Statement to find out.

Shipping prices, handling fees, and any other information had better be quickly and easily available whenever I want to buy. I really don't want to have to read half the Terms and Conditions to find out there is a $25 handling fee for purchases under $500.
If I get to the last page of the checkout to find out about a handling or shipping fee, I'm likely to just cancel the sale.

Why on earth would they even consider making me go through all of that just to find out if they will accept my Discover Card?

If you step back and look at these scenarios for a moment, you might also see where the site owner could have put me at ease long before it ever reached this point.

Is the product available now?
Clearly indicate what credit cards can be used, and how.
A simple statement that my information is not going to be sold.
Handling and shipping charges clearly indicated.

I don't trust a company that makes me click a buy button to find out which credit cards the company accepts, or to find out shipping charges and policies. This type of information should be available up front!

I want to say to site owners: "When I'm ready to buy, your credibility is on the line." Once I pull out credit cards, even minor details missing from the site will spook me away.

Before clicking that button, I'll look down one last time to make sure the site displays full contact information. I might even Google it, just to see if it makes sense.
Did I have to search for this information? Or, is it right at the bottom of every page?

I won’t spend much time looking for additional information. If I don't see what I need quickly and easily, I will move on to another site that they feel comfortable. I'll even if that means spend a little more for that peace of mind.

Give me information you know I'm going to need to make an informed purchase. Help me do my job: To buy from you. Or I'll go find somewhere else to get it.

(This is a reworked article from one of my old blogs. I was roaming through my old research blogs and found it.)
SEO/SEM in Australia is a special issue for so many reasons. Join me was we explore. It will be a fascinating and informative journey.

One Keyword per Page

2008-04-06T09:05:00.006+10:00

Image from WikipediaSearch Engine Herald ran an article by Noel titled "SEO Basic - One Keyword per Page" which stuck in my mind for a bit, so I posted the following comment:

What do you mean by ‘optimizing’ when you say one keyword per page?
The LSI process tracks the use of associated terms to interpret the subject of a page. If you define ‘optimization’ as terms within the 2%-15% keyword density (some people target 5%-12%), then the goal of optimization would be to get as many of the commonly associated terms into that range - not just one keyword.
Whichever range is used, getting just one keyword (or phrase) into that range dictates some very short pages. Google once looked at only the first 250-500 words of content in order to build up their index quickly, that’s true. That was a few years ago.

The result was many SEO people writing a lot of short pages that resembled intrusive advertising as opposed to truly relevant information.

But Google has changed its perspective recently to favor pages with around 1000-1200 words, which arguably allows for more pertinent information.
Many business websites find it difficult to find 500 words about a category or product, much less 1000, which reflects Google’s long-standing policy to return SERPs which favor information as opposed to sales pitches.

The article is on SEO basics. My comments took the subject matter a little further. I just didn't think this short article was being very clear, that's all.
I'd just finished a keyword density analysis on a homepage. There was one word on the page that was within the indicated range. I'd rewritten the page to have 17 words and phrases within the 2-15% range. All but one of the terms clearly pertinent to the topic and the goals of the homepage.

Homepages can be difficult for SEO.
A company may provide a number of services and products that need to be presented along with a brief introduction to convey the attitude and quality of the business.
The Value Proposition of the business is often expressed in a slogan that is not commonly associated with the type of business.
The wider the distribution of services and products, the more the keyword density will be diluted. This is the challenge of SEO and web design.

It's much easier to get the right mix of keyword density for a page on a category of services and/or products; or for a particular service or product. Although finding 250+ words to say about some products can be difficult too.

LSI can actually make writing relevant pages easier, too.
A little research can reveal a number of associated terms on most topics, which means the text can flow more easily and include greater detail without losing relevancy. In fact, using the right combination of terms can make the page more human-readable and more relevant.
Complexity isn't always a negative. Humans are complex. I suppose it could be said the complexity of content has to match as closely as possible the complexity of the target audience.

The complexity offered by LSI and longer pages poses the challenge of writing content that is still scannable. Web users still scan the page. Very few read more than about 55 words or so.
Visitors can be induced to read more of the content by good presentation and interactive content, but that has its limits. A great deal depends on assumptions about the type of traffic the site will draw, and the marketing goals.

Australia
Is it fair to tell a DYI web designer to try to target only one keyword or key phrase per page?
Part of the answer depends on the locale. The article referenced above was written for the US market, where competition is fierce. Content designers in the US market have to contend with a more balanced apportioning of the search engine market.
In Australia, Google with LSI still controls 80% of the search traffic. That's really the basics in this market.
Australian web designers must write for the cutting edge technology, or seek traffic elsewhere. Most Australian sites are designed to be marketed within Australia and New Zealand.; if not regionally within Australia.

SEO/SEM in Australia is a special issue for so many reasons. Join me was we explore. It will be a fascinating and informative journey.

Online Community Building

2008-04-05T18:18:00.004+11:00

Image from WikipediaI had a friend in Monterey California whose passion was growing grass.
Ever watched grass grow? It's not the most exciting thing to do. Watching time lapse photography of growing grass is much more fun.
My friend used to sit and watch grass grow. She loved it. She would sit and watch for hours.
She could make grass grow anywhere. And it always came up lush and green, thick enough to just lay around in.
She wouldn't just pile on fertilizer and chemicals. She worked with the native soil. That meant sandy mushy soil around Monterey. Not many people around Monterey have lawns. The soil just doesn't work.
She worked with the soil as it is. Her reasoning was simple: "The native soil is going to come back anyway. Why fight it?"
They hired her to work on the Pebble Beach golf course. She was a consultant.
If you watch a golf tournament at Pebble Beach, the first thing you'll notice is the long, gorgeous green fairways. Those aren't just fertilizer and sod. That grass grows because my friend knows how to make the grass grow.

Growing Communities
Growing an online community is a lot like watching grass grow. If you know what you're doing, it's just a matter of wanting to see how well it grows.

My first attempt at growing an online community was largely a failure. There were a lot of reasons. The guy I was working with had never heard of blogs. Almost no one in Australia had a blog in those days. No one had heard of Digg or Technorati. At least neither my client nor his customers.
It was a few years ago. Google hadn't even opened up an office in Australia. The Copyright Law amendments hadn't nearly closed down local entrepreneurial search engines. That stuff almost caused Google to refuse to index Australian sites altogether.
And, probably more than anything else, the Howard government was still working to frighten Australia away from the Web; and using Telstra's lust for profits to keep access slow and expensive.

Just an aside, I was talking to a guy who lives in Berwick a couple of days ago. He tells me he can't get ADSL. There are no ports on the phone exchange.
Berwick is a fast growing suburb of Melbourne with a university, a large TAFE, a hospital and a major regional clinic. Yet the residents can't even get reliable access to fraudband, much less ADSL.

Now, only a few years later, Australians are probably overrepresented on Facebook. There are even a couple of Australian social networking sites!

The goals of my first attempt at building an online community weren't lofty.
It was just to keep the customers of my client coming back to his site. We set up a local business directory, and offered members the option of putting a web page on his site as advertising.
Not much of an effort, I know now. But, it did build the traffic to his site.
Members could comment on any of the articles on the site. In over a year, we got one comment. Maybe two, not counting the spamming on the blog.

Communispace, a company in Boston, sets up online communities. I found their press release from 2006 "10 Best Practices for Online Customer Communities" cited in a book by Larry Weber on Marketing the Social Web. Reading through the list as a sort of post mortem on my own efforts, it's not hard to see what worked and what didn't.

1. Invite the right people, keep it private and small. That wasn't hard. The company only had about 40 customers. Because my client wasn't familiar with the concepts though, he never invited them.
2. View members as advisors to the company. Membership was resisted because my client didn't want to be a source of spam. It was impossible to get past the idea of spam to the idea of community.
3. Find the social glue, make it member-centric. This was my mistake. I chose a social glue that could be perceived as negative. My intention was to empower the customers by informing them.
And then the social glue was never properly implemented. The blog was informative, but the website never adopted a goal of being informative or useful - in the customers' eyes.
4. Work at building the community. Building the community was done backwards. We would include a customer's website in the Local Business Directory, then try to get them to become involved.
The SEO boom hadn't begun. Internet access was much worse than today. Small business owners couldn't see the advantage of giving them a link to their sites. For that matter, many didn't know why the had websites - other than public expectations.
Almost all of my client's customers were home or small business. In my enthusiasm for the Web, I had closed my eyes to a reality of the target market.
5. Be genuine, encourage candor. We didn't have much response for other reasons. Too often the articles on the website and the blog were simply commercials for the company.
And there was the sense that some of the information in both places was giving away trade secrets.
Candor was not a goal. (insert wry chuckle here)
6. Just plain ask. When I could, I did. In an environment where the customer just wanted to know when it was done, asking for opinions and viewpoints was considered offensive. Customers didn't like being asked for their opinions about something they "knew nothing about but their kids (or grandkids) did".
This may seem like a strange reaction considering the statistical make up of Australians on the Web.
7. Pay even more attention to what members initiate. Instead of getting the customers' reactions on the site or blog, we did pay attention to the changing nature of customer requirements. On the ground, so to speak.
At that point in Australia's web history, maybe on the ground was the only means of discovering what the customers wanted (or initiated.)
8. Don’t squelch the negative. Despite some effort, this customer relationship was still one-way. In one-way customer interactions, negatives are always squelched one way or the other.
My client, and his customers, had expectations based on the principles of interruptive, not interactive, marketing.
9. Don’t ask too much, too often. Refer to comments on No.s 1-8 above.
10. Use the right mix of technologies and methodologies, and keep experimenting. Bingo.
The whole effort was the wrong mix of technologies and methodologies. My responsibility, of course. The community was largely a failure.
We certainly kept experimenting though.
The experiments bore fruit. The goals of the project were to:

Maintain the customer base;
Generate leads for new business;
Promote referrals;
and to Explore new sources of income.

No.s 1 and 4 were successful. The small local customer base stayed loyal.
Only a few new customers were added because of the site. But those customers opened up new avenues for business. The site gained prominence in the SERPs and page rank.
As an attempt to produce a community, the effort was largely a failure. But the project did double the business gross income and profits within a year.

I can't help but wonder if I made a good lawn?

We worked at it for over a year with poor results. There were so many things missing, not the least was an understanding of how to build an online community. Or even Why to build an online community given the online environment created by government, physical connections, and the naivete of most of the customers.
The results were better than the quality of the effort deserved perhaps. Then again, it was an innovative project for a small local company to initiate.
I had gone into the project with ambitious goals based on my experience in the US. This was Australia. It became a struggle with infinitesimals. The delta between 1 and 2 may be 100%, but the result is still insignificant for most purposes.

When I got the idea to work through this exercise, I had hoped it would offer some insights into building a community online. Looking over it, I can't say that it did. The concept of an online community could be better described as a point of conflict than a business goal. The story looks like a project management "failure to get high level advocacy" lesson.
I mean, with only 3 people involved, how much closer to the "reins of power" do you have to get? The answer is something like: "You just don't understand my customers." unfortunately. And in the end, that may be right.

SEO/SEM in Australia is a special issue for so many reasons. Join me was we explore. It will be a fascinating and informative journey.

Why some businesses stay small

2008-04-02T08:37:00.006+11:00

Image from WikipediaHogan's Heroes is still popular in Australia. Frequently in off-prime time advertising, you'll see commercials for DVD sets of past episodes. It's been the same ad for more than 5 years. Must be doing pretty well still.
Hogan looks around the room. "Look. I came up with the idea to steal it, right? -- Well, the rest is just detail." - He could be talking about parking a Tiger tank behind the barracks...
Bob Crane's (Hogan) wife was Col. Klink's secretary in the series. You can almost hear her say, "He's just like my brother. He has all sorts of great ideas."

Dr. Greg Chapman PhD, business coach and university lecture -also a Telstra Business Awards judge- , has authored a new book about Australian small business "The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.
AUSTRALIAN small business, in many respects, is recognised as the backbone of the economy. According to government statistics, there are more than 1.88 million small businesses, employing 3.6 million people. Their combined capitalised worth is $4.3 trillion -- more than four times that of the Australian Securities Exchange. (The Australian)
Dr Chapman's book and Col. Klink's secretary are talking about the same things.

SEO and SEM is a part of the expansion of a business. Even successfully applying a few techniques can put pressure on a business that it may not be prepared for.

Why do small businesses stay small?
My first reaction is deterministic: They choose to stay small. One way or the other, it's a choice made by the owner(s) of the company.

Some businesses choose to stay small consciously in order to be more involved in projects and to offer better service and response to their customers. There's a sort of critical mass here. The profits must be enough for the business to survive and prosper. That means the business has an established reputation within a region or profession. If either of these factors is missing, then the choice to stay small is only going to lead to the business closing.

In some cases, there may be no choice. The business must stay small because of limited resources. The qualifications of the owner are the reason the business works. Or the business may be based on some legally or physically limited natural resource, such as water. The business is defined by the resource, not the market, and that sustains profits.
Expansion means stretching those resources or lowering standards. If the business is based on the owner's qualifications, even adding a second truck could mean those standards will not be maintained. To expand means making compromises the owner is not willing to make.

Planning
As Dr Chapman points out, most businesses fail because of planning - or more correctly, the lack of it.
If you ask most small business owners though, they will cite financial reasons. At a given point in the growth of a business, this may be a valid reason.
Most often though, that point has been reached because of a lack of planning and good financial management. Few small business owners are skilled at maximizing the value of their assets, receivables and cash flow.
On the ground, too often the business is financed using credit cards. Small business owners will say over and over, "You have to spend money to make money." - not to explain why they've invested in marketing or financial planning, but as an excuse for why the company has not grown. The saying is followed by: "And I don't have the money!"

Two ways of saying the same thing: "90% of businesses don't have a plan. 90% of businesses that have a plan succeed." and "Only 2% of small businesses have a plan for their business."
Which brings us to..

Goals
Planning for a small business is critical. But not grandiose. It's incremental:

Set goals,
Take a step,
Evaluate it,
Then based on the results look to the next step.

Too often small business invests in a new project because someone told them it was a good idea, or they feel pressured by recent circumstances. The volume of business grows, so they add a new truck. When the momentary volume falls off, the business is stuck with a new -now non-producing- expense. There was no Goal, and the business is forced into the Evaluation phase. The only evaluation is less money.
The business is forced into the cycle of Planning without any Plan to work with. The business capacity has expanded, but there is nowhere to use it - until another rush of business.

Establishing an online presence by applying SEO/SEM can be one of those steps. Within a Plan, SEO can help a business accomplish its goals. Without a Plan, the business may see SEO as just another expense, and abandon the effort before it bears fruit.
One of the keys is to have some means to evaluate the success or failure of SEO. Most of the time, that means placement in the SERPs.
When a reputable SEO Specialist tells the owner that they can't guarantee placement in a week or a month - that's all they hear. Sometimes, a little work is all it takes to get into the top 1-3 or 4-6 listings. To maintain that placement though, and usually to establish it, takes a few months if not a year or more.
What's frustrating for SEO Specialists is to find that the company has not incorporated the successful placement into the Goals of the company. Which brings us to the next topic...

Utilizing Resources
Resources are not just money or equipment. The most valuable resource a business has is its employees.
Small business owners find it difficult to transition out of the "founder mind-set" in which they micromanage others and do everything themselves. At all levels of business, one person may lack all of the talent and skill-set to grow a company. It's rare to find one individual with all those skills. This mindset limits the growth of the company to one person's capacity for work.
Learning to respect others for their skills and abilities is a critical element in growing a business.

The old saying goes, "Get good people. And let them know how much you appreciate them."
Another common problem for small business owners is the failure to communicate with employees. The small business owner is defensive and fails to share with employees how they fit into the big picture. The business fails to enroll employees in the company's success.
Too often, a small business owner is offended to find that someone working for them has skills they lack instead of being delighted to find this person has added much more than expected to the company.
Small business owners that do not grow do not look at their company as a portfolio of skills. There is no team concept. Many are unaware of the skills and experiences are required to run the company, much less grow the company.

On the ground, employers in Australia too often see hiring someone as giving them some sort of gift. The employer is not hiring a valuable person to contribute to the value of the company.
The question was asked on an Australian employment networking site recently: "If the guy didn't hire you to add something to the company, why did he hire you?" - It's a valid question for both employer and employee.
Small business owners cannot grow their company without knowing what skills are needed. If the owner is unaware of the skills (and assumes s/he has to have all of them) how can they appreciate the person being hired?

Unlimited Resources
Even a small business can offer a wide range of service and product, even if they don't provide the service or manufacture the product. How?
For the products, the answer if simple: find a supplier. Even if the business is service-oriented, offering quality products makes the service much more valuable. The answer is the same for a service: find a supplier of the service. Whether the small business is product- or service-oriented, having ready answers for customers is always appreciated.
For small business owners in Australia, this means calling their mates.
Mateship is a wonderful part of Australian society. But in business it fosters mediocrity. Mates will refer business to someone they want something from; which means the referral from a mate may never be forthcoming.
If a mate takes a quality and professional attitude towards the service, there is no reason not to call them in. Otherwise, network to find someone who adds to the quality of your own business. Australian small business has been slower to learn that fact than large business.

Market Driven
Small business owners see their products or services as first-rate. They work hard to maintain the quality, and are rightfully proud of what they do.
A roadblock to growth is to fail to look at the business from the Customers' view. Customers don't want a custom-made doll because they are impressed with the quality of the fabric. Customers want a custom-made doll as a special gift for their children, or because they want a blond doll to fill out a collection.
The wants and needs of the Customer are what sells the product. It's reassuring to the Customer that only the best fabrics and sewing techniques are used, yes. And those facts may make the Customer choose one manufacturer over another. But at the end of the day, if the child weren't having a birthday, or they already had a blond doll, the Customer wouldn't even be looking for a doll.
For the company to remain product-focused business and ignore the definitions of market demand leaves alternative distribution channels or market segments for someone else. The company's focus is directed inward, not by the needs or wants of their Customers.

Keywords define the Market
SEM uses keywords to define these market segments. The keyword analysis may suggest new distribution channels for the company's services and products.
One of the keys to successful internet marketing is permanent links to a site and deep links to specific pages. Linking strategies abound today, but the basics still apply. And SEO Specialist will find complementary services and products in the course of their research. The linking strategy can be seen as a first step, incrementally, in a broader strategy of channeling and partnerships.
Any good marketing effort includes polling the company's past and current customers. Too many opportunities are missed by small business because their focus is inward. An inward focused business ignores one of the most valuable resources of marketing information: their own customers.
Customers may suggest product enhancements that hadn't occurred to the owner. Customers may reveal trends in the market that the inward focus missed. Other companies will find those trends and enhancements, and business market share will ultimately shrink.
Successful businesses, large and small, constantly change and expand by actively listening to their Customers. SEO/SEM can keep a company aware.

Which brings us to the most important factor:
Implementation
Entrepreneurs often cannot execute their vision. They find it difficult to stay focused, jumping from one great idea or opportunity to the next. As often, a good run of business is just as distracting.

Integrity is the foundation of small business. It can be seen as a multiplier of the value of the product or service. That multiplier can double or halve the value of the business. The integrity of the owner or representatives is what makes a business valuable or useless in the eyes of the consumer; and other businesses.
Big business can absorb and defend itself against a bad reputation. A small business cannot.
Once a small business gets a reputation for reneging on agreements or poor service, it may as well close its doors.

A good idea is put forth. It's "new" and exciting. "I wish we had that." or "We'd have it made if we were..."
Instantly, other ideas or opportunities discussed within the company are forgotten.
A professional is called in to provide the service or product. A plan is put forth. Benchmarks are set to implement the plan - probably more planning than the owner has ever done for their business.
Agreements are made. Initial payments billed and paid. And the plan is put into action.
Then the circumstances change. The small business owner decides that this is not a plan they can afford, or cannot make the compromises from their inward focus.

Small business owners in Australia take the attitude that they can change an agreement on a whim, -- especially if mateship is involved.
Verbal and written agreements are equally vulnerable. Documenting progress is only useful if taking the dispute to court. Since the owner did not have a long term plan to keep the agreement in perspective, the goals of the agreement are lost.
There may be valid reasons, but small business owners don't seek agreement. Instead of communication and negotiation, the attitude is taken that they are "the Boss", and that's enough.
Although unprofessional and rude, the practice is common. The practice is so common as to be acceptable to many small businesses when dealing with other small businesses.

One good idea after another is begun, then cancelled. Money is spent. Time and money wasted for all involved.
Implentation depends on the integrity of the business owner The business owner -as the primary representative of the small business- must depend upon a plan to keep any effort in perspective. Planning provides the confidence to enroll employees in the success of a business, and to build a team to make the business successful.

SEO/SEM in Australia is a special issue for so many reasons. Join me was we explore. It will be a fascinating and informative journey.

Questions and Answers

2008-03-27T10:20:00.002+11:00

One of my regular readers sent me a critique.

Your posts are very informative. You ask a lot of good questions, but don't seem to have the answers. - preferred to remain anonymous

Looking over my last few posts, there's something to the critique.
In my own defense, I've got to say I think asking the right questions is the best way to find the answers. That may sound like running to the high ground to some. That is how I think though. Despite training and experience as an analyst in technical work, I've learned my mind is geared right-brain. I'm an intuitive thinker. My Kiersey surveys confirm it.

Some of the questions I've asked were more to point out issues to be aware of, to see how they work out. For example, how Universal Search will affect SERPs and useability issues is open to conjecture at this point. We're just going to have to wait and see.
Many times, answers to questions would only be anecdotal. A case study might help clarify some issues, but realistically every website and business has different goals and requirements. The answers depend upon many issues like:

The integration of the website in the business process;
Is the company or website established itself on the Web?;
The technical skills of the owner?;
Is the website ready to be marketed?;
What sort of marketing will be efficient within the advertising budget?;
and many others both more general and more specific.

Case studies can be impressive. I'll probably include a couple at some point. But unless the case study involves very similar circumstances, they're only there for bragging rights.

Her critique is valid. It calls into question my problem-solving abilities; and my presentation of the company on this blog.
She wants to see definitive answers. That's a valid concern for prospective customers, and has come to be expected by consumers from those who purport to be gurus or experts.

Problem solving
Because I'm usually involved in technical problems where the customer doesn't know the terminology much less understand the concepts involved, I've use established methods to document my problem solving efforts.
For clarification of an issue, I'll use Is-Is Not lists. To illustrate the process, I'll use the 5 Why's system. Both methods are easy to understand and intuitive.

In Project Management, the 5 Why's method organizes and documents brainstorming sessions. In marketing, it allows my Customers to think like their Customers - Consumers.
Asked why Consumers should use their products or services, a Customer will go into some depth about the quality of their products and their qualifications to provide their services - but that is rarely why Consumers buy. Consumers buy because their products and services meet a Consumer need or want. Asking 5 Why's usually elicits much more marketable terms and scenarios.

The best part of using these methods is they present topics which can be questioned.
At best, the results build Customer confidence. The give and take of questions becomes a team building exercise. The Customer becomes actively involved in the planning and process. Synergy builds. After all, my Customer is the expert in their field. I'm listening to the best expertise available: my Customer.
Synergy doesn't always happen. But it is always worth a shot.

Conflicting Styles
Because of the wide range of technical expertise in my Customers, I've developed two conflicting styles to present my SEO/SEM efforts.
One, is to just present my conclusions and state the steps necessary to solve the problem. Essentially: Just do it.
Personally, I'm uncomfortable with this style, but it is the only thing that can be done when the Customer's attitude or circumstances demand it. This approach is always problematical.

Marketing a website is not an exact science. It's a process. And involves a little luck.
Luck in this case is defined as where Opportunity meets Preparation. All I can really do is make the site as ready for the Web as possible; which includes offsite marketing as well as page design and content.
For Customers who demand to know exactly when it will all happen, the process is frustrating. The best I can do is present the efforts of me and my team in steps, and emphasize the achievements as they happen.

My preferred approach is to involve the site owner, either directly or through the assigned liason person(s), in the process. I prefer a dialogue between myself and my Customers. This empowers my customers as they learn. It's not possible to discuss everything in depth. I tend to emphasize the steps that the customer can see, just as for those who want a 'Just do it' style.
I've gotten two critiques of this style:
1) All you're doing is teaching your Customers what they need to stop employing you. - A very Australian perspective.;
and 2) You talk (or explain) too much. I tend to write long emails explaining issues and tying many concepts together. If someone wants to know what I'm doing and why, I'll take the time to tell them. I prefer educated Customers.
My preferred style comes from California. It has proven problematical in Australia, especially with small business owners.
This blog is my way of getting my thoughts out. It probably spares my Customers a lot of eye strain.

Do I have all the answers? No. Anyone who pretends to have all the answers is like SEO companies that offer guarantees - best to be avoided.
I'm not going to pretend to be omniscient or clairvoyant. The Web changes constantly. The best anyone can do is try to keep up. That's what keeps the work fascinating and challenging.
Can I support my conclusions? Yes, usually in some depth. In most cases, I can even document my thinking. Some issues are easy: Every site needs SEO. Other issues are open to experiment and conjecture: Is it better to have wide registration or PPC? The answer depends on the company's market position, long-term and short-term goals.
I wonder if I've answered my critical friend.

SEO/SEM in Australia is a special issue for so many reasons. Join me was we explore. It will be a fascinating and informative journey.

SEO Illustrations

2008-03-26T20:57:00.003+11:00

After piecing together the post on Universal Search, I decided to take my own advice to see how others had illustrated the SEO/SEM process. It's harder than you think to illustrate a 3-dimensional, really 4-dimensional, process for those who are not at least somewhat familiar with how the dynamic mechanisms of the Web works. I hope these guys don't mind a little link love.
Here is the one that caught my eye first.

The illustration is from RedalKemi.com
That's really not a bad. You can take a look at it if you like. I'm just studying how the process is illustrated.
The diagram clearly illustrates the benchmarks. (Benchmarks is a project management term for issues that must be resolved before continuing with the project.) Time is implied from top to bottom.
There are a few unclear elements. CORE is a neologism from the marketing department. The initials LB and AS stand for Link Building and Automated Submissions, respectively. The website explains the terms and process in some depth, although for clarity the image could be made into a link map. There could be some confusion over whether AS stood for AdSense or Automated Submissions, for example.

This illustration is from the Center for Citizen Media blog.
Obviously, not everyone approves of SEO. I'm not sure which step the author disagrees with most: overaggressive marketers gaming the system or Google closing the loopholes and dinging the sites that break Google's rules.
It can be argued successfully (I can show a couple of examples offhand.) that marketers are creating better content and more timely content. The support for Google comes down almost to prejudice and politics. Will consumers revolt because content is more relevant (more informative and timely)? Is any of this destroying the Web? If you think of the Web as a young mind, then Google's Relevancy efforts are the way a child matures by learning and testing rules.
The philosophical and political arguments can go on and on.

As a marketing tool, this illustration from the Before Your Interview blog is great. Although it appears to be 2-dimensional, it's really linear; more correctly, circular.

It's intuitive and easy, and allows the presenter to discuss many issues in the process. It's attractive. The bright colored arrows catch the eye. The use of whitespace is good.
Despite the large numbered steps, it's a little unclear where to start. And where to finish. In a way, it deceives the intuition a little. There is less of an attempt to illustrate the details of the process than to allow the presenter and client to discuss the steps.

This illustration is from the Quality Nonsense blog.

Great stuff, huh?
Check out the blog, too. This is not True Confessions - more like a Letterman monologue.

You can quickly see the purpose of this illustration from PRomoting Webs site.

The colors are vibrant. The terms used are familiar. But for my purposes -to illustrate the SEO/SEM process, it's only marginally useful.
This could be an introduction of a Powerpoint presentation. Topics are essentially listed in a creative presentation of an outline.
There's no meaningful timeline. 'Strategy' is a slide title; not a step.

This illustration from Bristol Bath Exeter Plymouth Online web E-marketing gets into more depth. But it's so unclear about the presentation an arrow is required to indicate the flow of time.

That's too plain to really catch the eye. In fact, it's a little hard to follow for the uninitiated. There's no question the presenter means business though.

Now, this is a marketing plan! - from ProBlogger right here in Australia.
That's not an illustration. It's an ambitious plan that states goals. It doesn't say much about how those goals will be achieved. Nor does it illustrate recursive steps. This guy wants it all, and NOW!
Combined with a couple of the other illustrations, it could be very effective. To accomplish those goals though, this guy needs to assemble a team. Wonder if he needs an SEO Consultant?

In the light of the introduction of Universal Search, and presuming the quality of illustration will improve, - none of these illustrations is very impressive. In different circumstances -different clients, where the illustration appears, and style of presentation or presenter, all of them could be effective to explain the process.

This illustration from Inventa Technologies is a little too complicated.
'Development' is really a title. My first thought was to animate it like a roulette wheel. Those small arrows in the center are unnecessary. Some of them are even off-center, too. It's a good list of the initial steps for SEM. It's businesslike (which means the colors could be brighter), but where is the starting point?
The arrows between items seem to indicate each item is a benchmark. They're not. Keyword Selection doesn't have to be done before Site Architecture is done. The list is organized more for the developer than SEO.
I can't escape the feeling this illustration needs animation, and maybe some mouseover effects.

I'm going to finish this little exercise with an illustration I like from the Huntas search engine.
Vibrant earth colors dynamically arranged with energetic lettering, the illustration demands attention.
Overlaying circles suggests topics affects others; and a sequence. To emphasize the sequence, small arrows link around the circles. Although details are missing, the sequencing is accurate. You do have to Optimize a web site before you Submit web pages, for example.
It's a distinctive design, yet businesslike. A student of design will tell you those are Southwestern colors, which have become acceptable throughout the world for business. So the designer kept within the expectations of their audience.
The 2-dimensional design illustrates time effectively. The illustration is intuitively clear and could stand on its own. It requires no presenter or additional text to get its point across.

I hope you've enjoyed my review of some of the design efforts to illustrate the SEO/SEM process. Let me know what you think.

PS If representatives of any of the authors or sites wants their illustration removed, feel free to contact me. I'll remove it instantly along with my comments.

SEO/SEM in Australia is a special issue for so many reasons. Join me was we explore. It will be a fascinating and informative journey.

Google's Universal Search

2008-03-25T14:52:00.008+11:00

This is one I saw coming.
I've been telling clients to get out their webcams and post the video to YouTube to help increase the visibility of their business online. Only a couple of clients took me up on the suggestion. It was hard to overcome the poor Internet connectivity in Australia.

Universal Search
Google's default search will be a Universal Search. The SERPs will include videos, images, news, blogs and web pages. - Everything. It's going to change the SEO/SEM services dramatically.
Universal Search is presently only available in the US. As it spreads across the world, Optimization will include more types of media. The competition for top SERP listings is too competitive to avoid.

You see, really Google is more than a single search engine. In fact, it's many search engines. It's surprising how few people actually use the other search listings. Here's a list:

Each link on the list represents a search engine within Google. Until now, you had to find and use the other search engines. Universal Search, already implemented in the US, will mean all of these search engines will provide SERPs.
If you want just websites and webpages, you'll have to specify that option.

For example, one of the most useful is the Images search. Sometimes, trying to illustrate a website in meaningful ways -something other than pretty girls and other fluff- can be difficult. A quick run through the Images search can give you an idea how others have tackled the problem.
Google News is not comprehensive, but it does provide very recent, relevant information.
For example, I try to stay on top of web developments. I have a weekly email alert on the News search about SEO in Australia.

How will Universal Search affect SEO?
Most websites in Australia are static. The wildfire of SEO services indicates the majority of those sites are not optimized, or even structured. (You gotta wonder what those folks were studying in Web Design classes?)
A few gurus have put out the opinion that for a site to appear high in a Universal Search, the site is going to have to incorporate more universal elements: blogs, images, documents, videos, etc. Naming conventions for these elements will become significant. "img100016.jpg" will be replaced with "black-shoes-look-great.jpg". Because images have their own search engine at Google, it isn't inconceivable that the name of an image could become as significant as a URL.
That presents a problem for a market where business is only beginning to realize the potential of the Web. (Most of my clients are already in the 21st century, I'm happy to say.)

Connectivity still an issue
Some people simply responded: "I can't watch YouTube. Why should I think my customers will?" - And they were right.
Finally, Internet connectivity is improving in Australia. Consumers have become aware of the "Fraudband" -ADSL 256 mbps and below- offerings and ignoring them. Improving does not mean fully implemented. Telstra's rollout of ADSL2 and ADSL2+ is still "aspirational" over the next 9 months. Fraudband is still being sold.
("Aspirational" was Howard's latest way of saying "non-core promises". It's a little like selling opportunity in a multilevel marketing scheme...Howard lost the last election, btw.)

Google may delay the Universal Search rollout for Australia
It may be a good business decision for Google to hold off on providing the Australian market with Universal Search. Large areas of the country, even metropolitan areas, may not have the bandwidth to explore the links.
Google commands nearly 80% of all search traffic in Australia. If a large portion of the Web community cannot click on the SERPs from Universal Search ("USERP"s?), Google could lose its primacy.
The Australian market only represents 1% of the world's Internet population, but it is a rich, competitive and -most importantly- growing market for PPC advertising. Google has only had its regional facilities running for about a year. Yahoo Australia (Yahoo7) offers a much more reliable regional PPC service, and doesn't carry the negative baggage of Google.
The decision for Google will come down to ROI, I imagine. Is the growing Australian market valuable enough not to risk the losses from Universal Search?

Aspirational ADSL
Telstra and other large providers are lowering prices and increasing speeds. Sometimes so quietly you can hardly hear the moss move. Telstra will let customers upgrade to faster speeds free, but the person has to ask for the upgrade. Sometimes the new plan cost less than the fraudband! On the ground, most consumers aren't aware of the situation -yet.
The majority of Australian consumers can now see YouTube videos, use VoIP, and even watch some TV on the Web.
Telstra and Optus are filling TV screens with ads offering a wireless router with ADSL. The "networked home". Great idea. It's been working fine in New Zealand for more than 4 years. Relatively few Australian households enjoy the benefits of a networked home.
(Please forgive the obvious cynicism. It's unavoidable. Australians have been retarded for so long by their government and the large telcos.

A practical run through
Take images as an example. Run a quick search on any topic in Google Images. You'll quickly see that many images were named by software. The name may be from a digital camera, or from the website where the image was purchased.
In the world of Universal Search, that's a missed opportunity. The name of the image may become as powerful an optimization tool as the URL is today. In the Image Search, the name of the image is comparable to the URL of the page; possibly even the page title. It remains to be seen how important to Optimization ALT and TITLE tags will be. Will they be a part of the web page? - or will they be incorporated into the Relevancy calculations for an image?
It's easy to see that ALT tags could become much more important. Those web designers who used the ALT tag to stuff keywords into a document are going have to rethink their (key)words.
Image quality and file size will become more important.
Evenless relevant images will be important for building links. Initially at least, it's not hard to see many sites will fill with images. The practice might come to be called "image bombing", where a site crowds as many images as possible onto its pages to increase its visibility. At least initially, it will improve rankings and conversion rates. How this practice will work out in the long run is yet to be seen.
Hopefully, web designers will press relevant illustrations of business processes; and better product pictures. If not the Web Designers, the SEO people will, I assure you.

Illustrators' Renaissance
Universal Search could drive a renaissance of vector graphics in place of bitmaps. The size of the image file will not just an issue for page download times.
A blotchy image will drive away visitors. Images with good contrast and composition look better in thumbnails appearing next to the link in the search results.

How many web designers have howled into the dark night about having to explain complicated business functions in text, knowing full well that most of the viewers will scan over the page (and never read the well-crafted words)? Good illustrations, animations, and videos that illustrate business processes and services will have a renaissance of sorts. These creative concoctions will have full ranking with web pages and blog articles.

Blogs and Blog articles
Blogs have been the lost hinterland in Australia. Sometimes I think the Outback has a better reputation than blogs.
As it was with Internet access only a few years ago, blog numbers are dominated by large business, national media, universities and TAFEs. Young people are blogging on the social networking sites, of course. Many sites offer free blogging. There are a few blogs set up as ecommerce sites. But few Australians are in the blogosphere.
Citizen journalism here is hindered by restrictive and capricious laws. The concept of slander in Australia is restrictive. It doesn't matter if someone is telling the truth, if the content damages the reputation of the subject, the author is liable for slander.
This is not the United States.

Blogs and blog articles will have to be SEO'd to the same level as web pages under Universal Search. This opens up opportunities for businesses to drive traffic to their websites.
It depends on the editorial policy of the blog, and its goals.
Small and medium sized businesses can demonstrate expertise, build professional reputation, and even have a little fun with blogging. If a blog is too commercial, some blogging sites (e.g., Blogger) will remove access to the blog.
Business blogs can contain anecdotes from Customer service, for example; or outlandish uses for their products; even personal stories about holidays and parties. There is no law that says a business blog has to be all business.
With Universal Search, all these articles will have much more significance.

It's not all that new, really
When you think about it, Universal Search is not a new concept. Google and other search engines have always counted links from YouTube videos, blogs, and their other search engines in the Relevancy calculation. Universal Search is only making that fact obvious.
In doing so, Google is giving those who use the Web community an advantage - and encouraging others to become more community minded. Google is taking a leadership position in defining the relevancy of a website (or blog).
Google's commitment to Relevancy is laudable. My gut reaction is to applaud, in fact. But my head makes me look again at what it may mean to business.

The comments in this article are based on a well-established assumption: That search users will choose from the first 1- 3 or 4-6 of the SERPs. With many new media represented in the SERPs, will that assumption hold true? There will be images, blog articles, and videos mixed in with web pages. Will that cause natural search results to become increasingly irrelevant to business?
If so, will the PPC (Sponsored Links) become far more important and expensive?

Google is taking a leadership role in defining the Web community and Relevance, as it always has. But is Universal Search is a gamble in many ways.

SEO/SEM in Australia is a special issue for so many reasons. Join me was we explore. It will be a fascinating and informative journey.

The 5 Whys

2008-03-25T11:58:00.002+11:00

Go to Ask (formerly Ask Jeeves) and type in "Why call a cable installer?"
The first thing you see is the sponsored links. The sponsored links give the following reasons:

Install Broadband: Same day or its free
Telephone systems installation and maintenance for all businesses
TV Installations (7 days): Plasma, LCD, Home theater installs; Flat rate Sydney (and a phone number)

Yet if you ask a cable installer why someone will call them, they'll tell you about their qualifications; the quality of their work; the quality of their tools and materials.
Why does someone call a cable installer?

Because they want their broadband working for more rooms of their house.
they want a new phone installed;
they want their present phones to work better;
they want a new television or home theater installed.
Or there is a service broker who wants you to put your job up for cable installers to bid.

They don't call a cable installer because he has great qualifications or uses good tools and materials. If you look down the page at the search results, you'll see a lot of DYI kits, places to buy cabling supplies, and cable installer horror stories.
Only one cable installer for every two pages or so. Other than the Sponsored Links, there isn't one cable installer on the first page of results.

It's a good thing Jeeves is retired. Ask doesn't seem to have the answer to "Why call a cable installer?" really. Or do they?

The 5 Why?'s

Ever had a little kid see you doing something and ask, "Whatcha doin'?"
You explain, trying to keep your mind on your work, and the kid says, "Why?"
You put aside something, and patiently explain why you're doing what you're doing; and the kid says, "Why?"
About here you're thinking, "I've got to explain this.", and set aside your work completely to give a long winded answer you hope (emphasis needed) will satisfy the kid's curiosity. - And the kid looks at you and says, "Why?"
This time, you're gonna have to reach. Your answer may take in social issues, politics, and maybe even religion. But those soft young eyes meet yours again with "Why?"
This has become a test of wills and character. Most people just tell the kid to go away. Some enlightened types might realize the kid just wants attention. A hug and a tickle satisfy the real reason for all the questions.

Like the kid, Customers don't want to hear all the answers to Why. They just want their needs fulfilled. Those Sponsored Links are speaking directly to those needs. In fact, they are saying what marketing research tells them is the most likely reason someone calls a cable installer.

One customer may want broadband installed, and today.
Another might want a telephone system installed.
Another wants their new plasma TV running, or a home media center connected.

The Sponsored Links are speaking directly to the Customers' needs. (Let the rest go find what they can in the search results.) Neither the business or the Customer has the time for 5 Why?'s.

Speak to the Why?'s
(All puns intended.)
The authors of these ads are speaking directly to why the Customers they want will call a cable installer.
But take a closer look at the wording, and consider the targeting.
The top and bottom ad are more likely targeted towards home owners or home business. The mention ADSL, same day service, and a list of home entertainment devices.
The one in the center is targeted for business. It says so clearly. And its terminology is more formal, "installation and maintenance." Home owners install; they don't get an installation. And very few home owners worry about maintenance (unless its their garden or divorce.)
Although there is no reason a business wouldn't want a plasma screen installed or same day service, that's usually not the first consideration. The Customer doesn't have to ask why. They see what they want, click on the ad, and it's instant gratification.

What has happened is the authors of the ad asked themselves Why? a few times. There is an old marketing homily that goes: Ask yourself Why 5 times (to understand your Customer)
The authors asked themselves Why? five times to understand the reasons their Customers wanted the service. If you look at the ads, it works pretty well. They don't talk about experience or qualifications. The text talks about the needs and wants of the Customer.

Web pages
More than likely, 1/2 of those ads are linked to a landing page. Google frowns on landing pages. The landing page speaks directly to the content of the ad. Landing pages are optimized to respond to the ad. The page probably has contact information and a form to book a cable installer. At most, contact information is one click away on another page.
There are small differences in a landing page though. A landing page is not permanent information. It's built just to absorb the production from the ad. One of the main reasons for this is to track the efficiency of the ad. Usually, landing page content is duplicated on the main site.
The landing page may be part of the market research. The company may want to know the effectiveness of different wording for the ad; or whether an image ad is more effective.

If one of the company's main services is cable installation however, there's no need for a landing page. The ad link takes them into the website where a page is optimized for the same Customer needs.
The difference is subtle, but important. If the company does cable installation, the page may not speak as clearly to the Customer's needs from the ad. There may be more information about other Customer needs and wants. Or the page may describe the company more than the need expressed in the ad.
This page will answer the question more fully "Why call a cable installer?", but may not be so clear about answering the Customer's needs. (Unfortunately, neither did whoever took over for Jeeves.)
A very valid question is: Why doesn't this page appear in the search results (SERPs)?
The answer to that is gonna have to be for another time, but try the same search "Why call a cable installer?" on Google or Answers.com. Hint: The reason has a lot to do with Relevancy and tagging.
At the end of the day, "Why call a cable installer?" depends on why you are asking, and who (or what search engine) you ask.

SEO/SEM in Australia is a special issue for so many reasons. Join me was we explore. It will be a fascinating and informative journey.

NY law may take away free web services

2008-03-22T07:02:00.006+11:00

From the NY Times:

“Should these companies be able to sell or use what’s essentially private data without permission? The easy answer is absolutely not,” said the assemblyman who sponsored the bill, Richard L. Brodsky, a Democrat who has represented part of Westchester County since 1982.

As an online marketer in Australia, my concerns turn quickly to the tools of my trade, and how this legislation may affect the growth of Australia's Internet marketplace.

Site Membership
Nearly every ecommerce site offers some sort of membership option. That's really not what's at issue here.
eCommerce sites offer membership to keep in contact with their customers: to offer specials, personalize and socialize, and to build traffic to their websites. More than anything else, membership allows the company and consumer to build a business relationship.
For the vast majority of businesses on the Web, -and especially businesses that are only online-, it's only realistic. Except for established brands such as Proctor and Gamble, Johnson and Johnson, Google, and Yahoo, membership is an acknowledgment of an oft-forgotten fact of doing business on the Web: the Web is a direct marketing medium. There is an old business homily that it costs 6 times as much to find a new customer as it does to retain an old one. Staying in contact with your customers helps you build your own brand.
Most businesses on the Web don't sell or share their customers' information, but it's worth checking their Terms and Conditions to be sure.
It's an important distinction.
For the website owner, membership is a means to document their customer base. It adds to the value of the online business. The owners respect their customers' privacy because it is part of the business relationship.

Sharing or Selling Information
The legislation is aimed at those sites that sell, use or share consumer information without informing the consumer. It will require websites to offer consumers obvious ways to opt out of advertising based on their browsing history and Web actions. Users would also have to give explicit permission to companies like Google, Yahoo, and AOL to link the anonymous searching and surfing data from around the Web to information like their name, address or phone number. First blush, that sounds like a good idea. The question is how is the consumer better served?

There is a loss of privacy in responding to any advertising. Consumers are already aware of that fact. It's not news.
Google, Yahoo, and AOL offer services which allow advertisers to better target the interests of consumers. That's arguably a win-win situation for all concerned.

Consumers get more relevant information when they search on a service or product.
Advertisers spend fewer advertising dollars to find interested consumers. Less money spent on advertising can mean lower prices to the consumer.
And the service provider (Google, Yahoo, AOL, etc.) makes money selling the targeting service.
Compared to the costs of targeted conventional advertising, these services are inexpensive and efficient. The lower costs mean smaller companies can compete for the consumer dollar, which keeps larger companies' pricing lower.

Opt-out vs Opt-in

David Hallerman, a senior analyst at eMarketer points out:
"While transparency about marketer intent will lead some portion of consumers to opt-out, those who say 'yes' will be more valuable, since their willingness to trade Web site tracking in exchange for more relevant ads will clearly signal their preference."

The genie may already be out of the bottle. Data collection by online ad companies is already widespread. Consumers and advertisers have come to expect Web companies to produce ads based on copious consumer data, and all have come to expect the level of service and responsiveness tracking allows.
Most web companies oppose any legislation which appears regressive in this sense. Interestingly, Microsoft favors legislation about online privacy and advertising practices. Microsoft has lobbied federal lawmakers to establish regulations include all sorts of companies that serve ads around the Web, not just those that show ads based on users’ behavior.
It's sad to say, but this is Microsoft again taking a side against entrepreneurism and new business, and in support of monopoly practices. Microsoft has been under fire many times for intrusive marketing that abuses customer information.

Opt-in Lists
There are numerous Opt-in newsletters and email lists across the Web. In exchange for valuable information, games or contests, consumers are requested to provide contact information and requested to indicate their areas of interest. Some of these surveys are internal marketing research. More commonly the information is sold to email list vendors, who in turn offer the interest-based lists to businesses to market their products and services.
For businesses, these lists are invaluable but not cheap. At one time, email lists were the most efficient means of marketing on the Web - providing approximately a 14% click-thru rate (CTR). Arguably, SEO has supplanted email lists as the most efficient use of advertising dollars.
Since the purpose of the lists are transparent in the Terms of Use, this legislation doesn't seem to affect Opt-in lists.

Compromise
There is no question that business will intrude beyond the boundaries of the expectation of privacy, if allowed. Consumers have a right to privacy. The question that will remain moot is to what degree each of these principles will apply. Ideas and perceptions change quickly.
Billboards and neon signs were once seen as intrusions on privacy. The signs are intrusive, but they don't report back. CCTV cameras are all over the UK. Cameras do report back. But they add to the perception of safety and security. Most UK residents have become accustomed to CCTV in a relatively short time.
On a personal level, do I have the right to tell my neighbor not to install a CCTV security system if s/he can see into my yard? - or did my neighbor just increase my own security?
In a complex society, there are always compromises to be made.

Advertising proponents argue that no harm has been shown by behavioral targeting or third-party advertising. That idea is worth investigating further. The idea is hardly proven at this point. Advertisers speak to their own self interest when they say the rush to regulate the Internet is really unnecessary.
The Web has changed. It has become a medium for business in order to fund itself. Online advertising is the fuel that drives Internet business. If the fuel dries up, the engine stops.

Privacy and the Law
Legislators and the legal system are given the power to curtail human and civil rights as part of the social contract of government. That social contract presupposes that these laws will conform to the 'common weal' of the people. Laws which blatantly disregard the common weal, such as the Howard government's AWA laws, can result in a change of government and the law.
If services such as Google, Yahoo, and AOL are transparent about their use of search tracking in their Terms of Use, does the responsibility rest with the consumer? -or at what point do these actions call into play the role of government to protect its citizens?
Google alone represents about 80% of the searches from Australia. That speaks either to the quality of their service, or indicates a huge threat to Australian society. If that threat is real, then how real is the threat from social networking sites? -and, for that matter, government tracking through filtering?

Internationalism and Australia
Although this legislation is proposed in New York state, it will affect the way business is done on the Web throughout the world.
Australia has struggled to come to terms with its own Privacy Act and Copyright laws revisions. The recent revisions to Copyright Law forced Google to threaten publicly to remove all Australian sites from its indexes. Australia was compared to Communist China over filtering and the reporting requirements for ISPs. Over 150 exemptions to the revision quickly followed.
How these issues will shake out remains to be seen. Legal scholars have not come to terms with changing business models on the Web.
Under the Howard government, an Internet-phobic attitude affected the perceptions and use of the Web.
Australia represents a good study in how a developing legal system deals with the forces of an information economy. If the laws are based on archaic reasoning, or influenced too heavily by cashed-up special interests (as in the case of the Australian copyright revisions), the effects spread much wider than the national jurisdiction.

Social Networking sites
Perhaps the most influential marketing force in Australia today are the social networking sites. Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and YouTube are in the news daily. These sites present prescient privacy issues since so much individual information is put there by users.
How can a law prevent advertisers from collecting data based on the use of their services if so much information is available on social networking sites? Will social networking be curtailed by this legislation? It could be. That would raise an immense furor that will not help the reasonable debate on privacy.
Kim Weatherall at LawFont:

Meanwhile, over at MySpace, it has emerged that over 29,000 registered sex offenders have profiles on the website, which is four times as many cited by the company only two months ago. (The total number of MySpace users numbers around 180 million.)
The idea of registered sex offenders interacting on MySpace is of course worrying, given that your online persona may be very different from your real one.
But also giving pause is the fact that MySpace was pressured to release this information in response to the demands of a group of attorneys general, as well as the fact that MySpace has already, without the involvement of government, used its own database on users to remove about 7,000 profiles of sex offenders. I do not mean to treat the issue of sex offenders lightly — but it does call into question the roles of industry, the government, and regulation in the world of social networking.(emphasis added)

The driving force of the legislation in New York is a straw man argument. The straw figure is constructed, as usual, of shallow reasoning and fear. There are legitimate concerns, but real legislative leadership and understanding is necessary before legislation is tabled. Good law is not driven by anecdotal evidence. It is based on reality.
These are not simple issues, and they will not be resolved quickly. But it is important to distinguish the legal and socially acceptable marketing practices from those in question - without presuming that because something is questioned it is wrong, or should be made illegal.

Addendum: Recent events speak to these issues. Soon to come.

SEO/SEM in Australia is a special issue for so many reasons. Join me was we explore. It will be a fascinating and informative journey.

Web Design 101 - Second Period

2008-03-21T07:36:00.009+11:00

It didn't take long to get a response to this:

I am, by my own admission, a lousy web designer.

"Well, what kind of web designer are you then? The stuff in that article about Wired didn't sound very professional. It sounded like a bunch of techie BS to me."
-- Fair enough.

I'm a technical web designer. I pay attention to things like above the fold, easy navigation, hot spots, and how the visitor's eyes will move down the page to get information. Which, of course, means I often use templates - which I hate. I hate templates for the same reason I hate modern cars. They all look the same to me.

Above the Fold
The Above the Fold concept grew out of studies of visitor behavior. About 60% of visitors to a website never click down the page. They scan what appears in their browser window, if that's not what they want, they move on quickly.
Let me take a random example from the Web. This is the Oklahoma Bar Association website.

That's what appears in the browser. It's what is 'above the fold.' If the visitor clicks on the scrollbar on the right, they'll see:
Unless the person needs something specific from the Oklahoma Bar Association, and knows it should be there, less than 30% of visitors will ever see that second fold.
That means less than 15% of visitors to this site will ever what is on the two folds below, too.
Above the fold, you have to identify yourself, say or show something of interest, and offer visitors somewhere to go - or you've lost them.

Hot Spots
Take another look at the first page of this site. It's an attractive page: businesslike, and appealing. There is some energy to the presentation. That's important.

(Note: My apologies to regular readers. I'd intended to put this graphic in place initially, but had misplaced the software.-PD)

Where do your eyes go first? and then? And how does your attention move down the page?
If you're like me, they went momentarily to the logo in the upper left, then quickly to the colored navigation on the right. A quick scan of that list -maybe the first 3 or 4 items- then across to the navigation on the left. A slightly longer scan there, then a look at the article headlines. - And back to the colored navigation on the right!
The Hot Spot on that page is the flashy navigation on the right. It draws attention from everything else. The eyes keep going back there no matter what you're looking for.
If what the visitor is looking for isn't on the navigation, they might find the Quick Links drop down or the Search bar.
The movement of the eye is probably more easily seen in the reduced image.

Navigation
The Navigation is in the colored areas. The eyes are drawn to those colored areas, even though the site uses text links. And there's a little stickiness. See the last link on the right? Every other link is capitalized except 'my okbar'. Personalization.

That's actually the 'Tips' page. Take a look at the homepage for a second.
Where do your eyes go? Again, right to that navigation on the right. But they quickly shot over to the Mock Trials article, didn't they?
There is no second fold here. All you see if you scroll down is the footer with a the copyright and contact info. This page is designed completely above the fold. Did you notice there is a new link on the right to quickly look up a case? Probably not until I mentioned it. You'd have to be a member of the site to use it because it requires an ID and Pin number. Again, stickiness through personalization.
This whole page is navigation really. It moves you quickly to where (is assumed) you want to go.

All of these concepts are technical aspects of web design. This is hardly an award-winning creative site, but it is a very good design for useability.

Color
One key aspect that is often overlooked is color.
Imagine picking a color combination for a plumber. You might ask the customer what their favorite colors are; but will probably prove fruitless. Most people will say either blue or green, which doesn't tell you much.
You might try to consider the meanings of color. What can you say about the company using color? Or, more professionally: What does the visitor want to see?

One technical method is to turn a color wheel. Choosing appealing color combinations from a color wheel is easy. Just look for combinations at muliples of 30 degrees.
Adjacent colors harmonize. Colors separated by another color are contrasting colors. You may also see these referred to as complementary. Red and Green are contrasting colors. The more transitional colors separating two colors, the greater the contrast. Colors that are directly opposite from one another clash.
The there is the limitation of 216 web-safe colors.
In the end, the web designer usually has to prototype a few pages with different color schemes, although none of the examples will probably satisfy the eye of the discriminating plumber.

If a designer wants to be a little New Age about it, they might apply the principles of Feng Shui to the colors and patterns. (Maybe another time...)

What meaning do the colors on the Oklahoma Bar Association pages convey? There aren't many: grey, crimson, black and white.
This should have been an easy one for the designer. In this case, a combination of color confers the meaning. Grey and crimson are colors associated with learned academics, graduation, and scholarship around the world. These colors could even be taken from the traditional formal robes of the legal profession.
The swish of crimson on the right mimics the drape of crimson underrobes.
Keeping the text black on a white background maintains the business like appearance. Can you imagine the text in blue? It would be inappropriate, maybe even garish.
If a little more energy were needed, the colors of the text might be alternated between black and dark grey. But that sort of distinction is unnecessary here.

Individual colors convey meaning, too.
Grey is a neutral, balanced color. It is a conservative color. It is the color of formality, even mourning.
Red is power. Business people wear red ties. Celebrities and VIPs (very important people) walk the red carpet.
The combination confers a subtle message beyond the traditions.
And these colors are not overused. There is a lot of white space, indicating openness - something the legal profession always strives for, but fails because of the arcane nature of their training.

Gestalt
The Gestalt of the web pages indicated here is consistent. It is reinforced by the symbol of the legal profession: the scales of justice in the logo position. There are four Gestalt designs. Which of these applies to the web pages illustrated above?

These concepts:

Similarity
Proximity
Continuity
Closure
and All Together Now

..are psychologically hard wired into our brains. The interpretation of these patterns bridges cultures and racial divides. When the information on a web page (or any other document) doesn't respect these principles, it is seen as awkward or distasteful.
The same sort of gut level reaction is invoked when a website adheres too closely to one of the Gestalts. Consider the dark interfaces of many gaming sites. In an attempt to convey Continuity, the sites often evoke Closure and too much 'togetherness' (All Together Now). These interfaces seem to drain energy from the viewer. (For example, take the 'All Together Now' pattern and fill the remaining squares with black.)

Images
Images are a part of every website. The old saying about a picture being worth a thousand words is only true on the web for the visitor, not the search engine, -- but still holds true.

Logos just don't cut it. There are few really memorable logos anymore. Logos are often stylized to keep them simple because most people will remember vivid abstractions. Other than traditional icons though, most logos have lost their meaning.
Images of people in some sort of activity are best. Visitors identify with the people and the activity in an image far better than telling the story in text.
Animated images can be easily overdone. Unless the animation is necessary to illustrate steps in a process or provides interactivity, they're usually best to avoid. Animated images just to provide movement make the web page look like an intrusive ad. The animation can quickly draw attention from the important information.
As a trainer, I've trained people to make animations in Photoshop and Flash. I always caution everyone not to rely on them. For one thing, to date no search engine can read either format.
How do you place images on a page? - Refer to the Gestalt section above.

Expectations and Surprise
Websites, more than individual pages, have to conform to visitors expectations. A business site has to have a logo and a title bar - even if the title of the page isn't in the title bar. The logo should be a link back to the homepage. Navigation from every page should be clear from every page on the site.
That doesn't mean every page has to be the same. In fact for many reasons including SEO, every page shouldn't be too similar. But too many changes may make for unwelcome surprises that confuse visitors.
Small surprises are acceptable. Take another look at the illustrations of the Oklahoma Bar Association website. The homepage has the logo and title bar, with a quick login to reference material. The internal pages change slightly. These pages have additional navigation hints on the left and breadcrumbs at the top.
If there were a general rule for changing the look and feel of a website, it might be to limit such changes to navigation.
Changes in color -for text, title bar, or background- to distinguish different parts of a website have to be done with caution. Colors convey different meanings. And no one can predict how different browsers or monitors will display some colors.

You are what you publish
What kind of web designer am I? A technical web designer. One who applies these principles and ideas above somewhat resentfully to my work. I pay attention to the goals of SEO and SEM when I design a site.
I told an SEO client recently: "I can tell you the reason for every word on (your) website." I had to hold my tongue from saying it would bore him to death if I did.
There is a great deal more that can be done with web design.
Web design has only begun to explore the dimensions of Web 2.0, for example. It's exciting for me to contemplate producing websites that are more interactive; more like desktop applications or games. For now, we are stuck with the business letterhead model.
But the expectations of users and customers will have to grow and change. It's already happening in places like the US and UK. Australia may follow suit soon, as real broadband speeds become more commonplace.

SEO/SEM in Australia is a special issue for so many reasons. Join me was we explore. It will be a fascinating and informative journey.

Economic Times for SEO

2008-03-20T10:34:00.005+11:00

Why does the state of the economy have to do with SEO and SEM? - Everything.
SEO is only the first step towards SEM. Marketers are often compared to guerrilla fighters. "Guerrilla marketing" was a buzzword for marketing online marketing a few years ago.
Mao spoke eloquently and in depth about the role of a guerrilla in society: "The guerrilla in the population is like a fish in a river. If the water is foul, the fish dies. If the water is good for the fish, the fish flourishes."
It's very much the same for marketers. Marketers flourish when the economy is healthy.

Not enough people realize the financial engineering that has created the boom economy in Australia is based on the building industry and real estate market. Most Australians point proudly to the resources boom, but it is just a spike that contributes big numbers. Mining doesn't affect the whole economy anywhere near as much as housing. Mining and resources sales are powerful forces in the regions near the mines.
The resources sector contributes to a healthy balance of payments. One of the indicators of Australia's inflated economy is that the balance of payments is not healthy. The boom has produced an import-driven market where local producers are being priced out of the market. Where is this inflation-driving money coming from?
The long term drought hasn't helped, but market forces could, arguably, have absorbed the drought factor if the import market weren't controlling prices.

Is it a bubble?
The housing boom -government-subsidized building and real estate sales- has created the boom economy. The country has become drunk and addicted to credit. Home ownership is the basis of credit. A home owner can always get a credit card. It's an assumption that homes will always increase in price, and many factors can be quoted to support it.
The family income of the average Australian household is leveraged by credit to 160% (1.6 times the annual income.) That's an average.
On the ground, I know two households who have leveraged their annual income by more than 200% by manipulating credit. Despite all the howling about long hours and job stress, both these couples only worked half a year.
By separating their individual incomes and each working only half a year, they pick up another form of income: government subsidies. One partner applies for broad liberal payments based on their income, easily ignoring the contributions of the other partner. They get even greater leverage by letting the government pay off the credit cards and mortgage.
It's a bubble that has to burst someday. Or does it?
Laberal commentator Ian Martin spelled out the government's attitude before the last federal election. It's an attitude reflected persistently in the press and popular opinion.
There is an Aussie saying: "It's past a joke."
All parties involved seem locked into this scheme, if by nothing else then by the perceptions and attitudes across the country.
There are payments for every stage in life. Most are not means tested. For example, every new mother gets $4000 for giving birth, no matter what the household income.

How does this affect SEO/SEM?
I'll be discussing this issue at length in the next few articles. One factor is that Australia has not experienced a dot-com boom. Most of the country simply didn't have adequate Internet access when the dot-com boom roared through the US, UK, and Europe.
Google wisely only opened offices in Australia two years ago. New amendments to copyright law inordinately influenced by record company activism nearly drove them out in Jan 2007. Google threatened publicly to refuse to index Australian websites. Over 150 exclusions to the law allow a still-tenuous Google presence. Yet Google represents 80% of searches from Australia.
How the changing economic times will affect web design and marketing companies remains to be seen. SEO and SEM may be the means to open the door for Australian small and medium sized business to experience the power of marketing on the Web - to fulfill the lost promise of the web to allow small companies compete in an open market.
The proliferation of SEO companies certainly indicates a need vacuum being filled. It's more a vacuum caused by bad web design and poor access to the Net than an entrepreneurial push though. As online business owners become more savvy, that will change.
I imagine that will be when the SEO companies shake out the chaff, too.

SEO/SEM in Australia is a special issue for so many reasons. Join me was we explore. It will be a fascinating and informative journey.

Hackers and the 30%

2008-03-19T18:28:00.004+11:00

In the dim dark days long past, web design was not a profession.
In the beginning, before the advent of public search engines, the Web population was made up of the top 30% or so of the best educated and best paid in the US. People joined the 'Internet Revolution' to see what these future great minds were thinking and saying.
In those days, a hacker was more of a Robin Hood than a Darth Vader. 'Hacking' was a sport, sorta. It meant breaking into someplace just because you could. Hackers didn't take things. They usually left something to say they'd been there. A dark rose on a chemistry professor's desk, for example.
The Net was more humorous than commercial.
One of the most popular downloads was a tutorial on picking locks - not on a site called Burglary.com -but on the MIT site.

As books emerged predicting the introduction of HTML 3.2 (the current version is 4.x), Web Designer became a profession. A dot-com was just another domain. (Not for long though.)
The debate raged for years about whether the Web should allow business sites.
A lot of people didn't think it should. But the push into the new medium was inexorable. After all, the Web was populated with the most cashed up consumers in the country!

Web pages were often long. Hyperlinks moved the reader from one part to the other instantly. Philosophers rambled on for hours -in text- about how hyperlinks were creating a new mindset. A 3-dimensional concept of information: a Revolution in expression. Text and images aligned themselves analogically to the thinking processes of the human mind.
Some web designers became architects of the Revolution. They designed information to be understood in quick reference and depth.

The key to this Revolution was how to structure the information.
Page titles reflected the context. Headings set the information into outline form. Each heading was also an anchor that could be addressed via hyperlink, so the reader could move seamlessly through.
Keywords and meta data emerged. They presented the home grown search engines with quick references to the content. No one was willing to commit precious mass storage to comparing the whole content of web pages.
The nascient science of information retrieval traded amongst the gnomes and dwarves of the Net.

New Web Designers were trained to this structure to organize their pages. They have to be educated to it.

Twenty years or more later, new Web Designers have forgotten. Like the stories of ancient religions and societies, the lessons have to be learned again. The story could read like a fantasy novel written during a war. Dark forces sweeping across the World, changing, destroying, and building new places and things - until they burnt themselves out in their glory.
"Google has changed the way the Web does business" is the buzzing headline. It may be more like brushing off old shoes though. The structure is again relevant. In fact, it establishes Relevancy for a web page.
The Web has changed, but gone full circle. It's more egalitarian, and commercial. Instead of the top 30%; there are less than 25% who choose not to have Internet access.
New leaders earn their fortunes by digging up the treasures of the Past. SEO is really just applying the principles established in the beginning to a new Web.

SEO/SEM in Australia is a special issue for so many reasons. Join me was we explore. It will be a fascinating and informative journey.

Green Pee for St Patrick's Day

2008-03-19T17:46:00.005+11:00

This is completely off topic, but it's been a long day of research and frustration.
I've always thought of the news as a kind of conversation. As if one writer were talking to another. Looking at one comment then the next, you can find some interesting viewpoints, perspectives, and even a little intuition about what may happen.

St Patrick's Day was this week. So a couple of articles from the Treehugger blog caught my eye.
First was "Global Warming Could Turn Emerald Isle Brown".
Seems the Irish American Climate Project is predicting bog bursts (- The Earth has to release gas in Ireland like everyone else. -) will become more frequent; some of the Emerald Isle will become more like the Mediterreanean (- Bronzed Irish sounds like baked carrot to me. -); and the fabled Irish potato may fail as a commercial crop.
Another potato famine could mean a lot more Irish in New York. - That's good or bad, depending on your ethnic view, I suppose.

The other article from the Treehugger blog was "Drinkpee: Waste = Food DIY Kit and Exhibition on Now in NYC".
This one made me sit up a little. In fact, I made a quick dash to the toilet to relieve my morning coffee.
Pee may soon be too valuable to flush.
Swiss scientists say:

"85-90% of the nitrogen and 50-80% of the phosphorus are concentrated in the urine. These nutrients are desirable in agriculture, but not in waterbodies."

In other words, save your pee. It may feed the world.

The conversation between these two articles made me think someday we may all be urged to come to the Emerald Isle to pee on the potatoes - and the fields and bushes too. The Emerald Isle may shine under a new light (- fluorescent blue?).
All under the slogan: Take a Green Pee for St Patrick's day!

SEO/SEM in Australia is a special issue for so many reasons. Join me was we explore. It will be a fascinating and informative journey.

Web Design 101 - First Period

2008-03-16T15:46:00.005+11:00

I am, by my own admission, a lousy web designer.

Why? - Because I hate templates.

The first website I saw was made by Microsoft's FrontPage 97. All you had to do was tell it: Make me a corporate web! - and FrontPage would dutifully generate homepage, about us, products, and services, and contact pages. Poof! A small company was IBM.
The title of the page was in a box at the top, and all the structural tags - H1, H2, etc. - were colored, sized, and decorated for you. In most templates, it even gave you little graphics for unordered lists.
All you had to do was fill in the blanks, and you were a working company on the Web.
It was a raving bore in 94; and it's only more today. (Not a great poet, either, you'll notice.)

One of the first rules of web design is to make your pages look pretty much the same. The idea is that you won't confuse your visitors, and maybe even establish your corporate or personal style.
That was find in those days if your sense of style is either blue jeans or polyester slacks.
Problem was, that layout implied a company had to have Products and Services. Some companies didn't. That alone created a sense of insecurity or desperation.

Design the information to express

I've never been much of one to put things in little boxes. Design should express and enhance, not restrict.

I tend to want to design a website page by page to reflect the present attitude of the company. If it's a small company that just got a new logo done, then let's let it fill half of space above the fold. Why not? This is company just coming into its own.
They're proud of their new logo. It's all over their vans, new business cards and new company literature. Put it out there for the world to see!
They've only got a few services, but those services are needed in their area. Their customers like them. One of them said so right in the middle of the home page.
Just put a list on the side full of links to get more info.

A design like that gets poo-poo'd a lot. Even customers don't like it because they don't think it looks "business-like". (Not that anyone has ever defined "business-like" too well.) It becomes a matter of latent expectations, not perceiving.

Why does a web page have to follow the pattern of a business letter? Why not let it be a presentation right from the homepage? You got a new company, tell the world about it.
You can always add or adjust stuff later.
It has to look like a business letter because customers won't know what to do. Or, It has to look like a business letter because that's what this site looks like. (The one I'd like to be...)

Wired wonders
Wired proposed over a decade ago that we use the web space better. (I lost track of the article or I'd provide a link.)
Web pages only had to show a window into the content. It's what they do anyway. There could be content spread wide and far across thousands of pixels of space. One click, and the viewport shifted to another part of the grandscape.
They were far ahead of their time.

Web pages in those days were constrained by download speeds on 33k and 56k modems. If a webpage had more than 30K of content - images, programming, and HTML - visitors just went somewhere else.
The download time has changed a little with the spread of broadband, but the size limitation for templates still holds them below 60K. And all of it has to fit on a business letter, within two clicks down the sidebar.

The article proposed broad, bold colors. Wide colored channels guided the visitor across the webscape to explore information or make a purchase. The user actually interacted with the page instead of just clicking away.
Changing colors in the viewscape indicated where the visitor was in the process. All the information was contained on the page, so there was no need for flickering screens. The body tag encompassed many pages, really viewports, of the viewscape. If the visitor wanted, they could ramble around without following the colored guide lanes - and take the path less followed.
Using a mouse or the arrow keys, they could go anywhere just like exploring a landscape on Google Earth. Zoom in or out to get their bearings, then off to explore again.
I don't imagine such a site would have a problem with stickiness...

Where does all of this fit into SEO and SEM? That's going to be a topic or two for another time.

The plan in those days long ago was to use Javascript and Java to implement responsiveness and new content on demand. That can still be done, of course, but there are much more exciting options now. (continued later)

SEO/SEM in Australia is a special issue for so many reasons. Join me was we explore. It will be a fascinating and informative journey.

Blogger's (Google's really) Link Widget

2008-02-24T14:54:00.003+11:00

I have been remiss. This blog hasn't had the attention it deserves for too long.
In an effort to try to make up for this sad state, I decided to pull up the Blogger Layout and add some of the blogs and websites I read and use for insight, information and perspective. Not just in Australia, but around the world, there are at least 50 or so.
Happily tracking back through the Bookmarks on three browsers, Bloglines feeds, and the saved links on Google docs, .. It was getting a little tiring even for Sunday afternoon busy work.

Then I noticed something.
I'd set the number of links to show to 8. The whole list was approaching 50 or so, and more to come, so I decided it was time to save my work and see what the blog looked like. Sure enough, only 8 were listed.
Considering the importance of inbound links in the Google eye, how does that work?
Do all the links count? They are listed, after all. Or does Gooogle only count those listed links? Are invisible links still a measure of relevance?
This deserves a little more research. I'll have to send an email to my friends at Blogger and see what they have to say.
Stay tuned.

SEO/SEM in Australia is a special issue for so many reasons. Join me was we explore. It will be a fascinating and informative journey.

Computers are NOT refrigerators!

2008-02-20T14:20:00.003+11:00

One of my part time vocations is fixing computers and networks. Either as a contractor or someone calls me. It's funny, but I've come to notice that people treat computers pretty much like a refrigerator.

No one pays any attention to it if it runs right.
They stuff things in, and only take things out when they have to.
They almost always take out the same things.
Things are only fixed when they start looking really grotty, and are obviously not working right.
Repairs are done when things are too far gone to help.
The puns about how both can propogate infections could go on and on...

Most of the time, it's really computer servicing. The desktop or laptop is loaded with spyware or low-level viruses. Too many people rely on Windows firewall, or blame it for their computer slowing down and shut it off completely.
They either don't have any virus protection, or it's hopelessly out of date. One lady's system popped up a message saying her AVG software trial was 176 days past due! -- She wanted me to install a new free spyware and virus suite her cousin pirated for her. (I didn't.)
It's rare that there is a hardware problem.

The statistics tell the story. But there are real day to day concerns.
Australians came to the Internet and computers late. They've only had a few years to learn. Present government programs are offering $3000 worth of free training - 7-1/2 days - to get users more aware of what their new computers can do. To many though, a decade of computer- and Internet-phobic messages from government and the media have taken their toll. A lot of the positives have gotten lost in the message muck.
It's far more fashionable to resent or even hate computers around here.
The cost of Internet access, and the poor quality, hasn't helped. $69.95 a month for 100mb over a 128mbps line is joke. (Keep watching, there are more and better coming!) What has been a cheap utility item for the rest of the western world has proven an expensive, terrifying luxury around Australia. -- As if every fridge came with a cholera coating...

To their credit, some are learning fast the hard way about the problems of being always connected via ADSL. Usually these are small business owners who've grudgingly come to rely on their computers.
A few are getting very skilled at managing their computers, too. The over-35 and over-50 Internet users are taking things very seriously -- almost too seriously. Some of those folks are gonna push cheap computer tech businesses out of business.

You can't help but imagine Australians' attitude of treating computers like refrigerators is very much like the rest of the world.

A couple of tech companies are offering remote servicing: scheduled maintenance over the Net to keep systems running well.
A good idea, really. Once a month a tech logs in, checks the hardware and software, runs a few updates, then logs out after starting a virus scan. If there are any problems, there's a local phone number to call.
If you're not going to learn how to use a tool, at least hire someone to make sure it's running right.

People keep toys in their fridges and computers too.

SEO/SEM in Australia is a special issue for so many reasons. Join me was we explore. It will be a fascinating and informative journey.

Numbers tell the story - sorta

2008-01-21T10:45:00.001+11:00

From the Global Thoughtz Australia blog, we learn:

Australian Internet Users Profile

(by Alban Guillemot)
Best practice online marketing requires a good knowledge of your target audience so that you can develop a tailored online strategy. If you are planning an online marketing campaign in Australia, the following information will help you to find out who is the typical Australian internet user.

According to the latest census from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 58% of the Australian population has access to internet. 20% of the Australian population still rely on dial up connection, while 37% has broadband access.

More Girls

Based on Hitwise Data for the last 12 weeks, it appears that the typical Australian internet user is more likely to be a girl, as 52.02% are female, whereas 47.98% are male.

Over 35

Looking at the demographics, a large proportion of the Australian internet population is over 35 years old (66.3%), with a high proportion of users over 55 (26.28%). The 18-24 years old slice represents only 13.77%.

From the East Coast

More than 81% of the Australian Internet population lives on the East Coast (NSW, VIC, ACT, TAS, QLD) with around 34% for New South Wales. South Australia and Northern Territory only account for 8%, while Western Australia represents 11%.

What's significant there?
First, it's surprising to see the large proportion of over 35s (66%) on the Net - and most of them using broadband.
Over a quarter of those over 55 use the Internet. That's a greater proportion than the UK (18%) and the US (17%).
Why are these numbers interesting? Most marketing online and offline is targeted at the 15-34 age group. Based on these numbers, they represent just under 1/3 of those with Internet access.
The reason the marketing is targeted at this group is an Australian marketing adage that this age group spends nearly half the money for consumer goods.
Banks and retail outlets offer easy credit for these new consumers. It comes as a surprise to many aussies how much harder it is to get a credit card after they turn 36.

emarketer shows some interesting statistics about Australians using broadband. (look down the page a little..) 13.6 million Australians, or 66%, have access to the Net. 4.3 million or 53.9% of all households, have broadband access.
The broadband numbers are a little misleading. You'd have to live here to know it, but over half of those don't have adequate service and/or are not using broadband as the OECD defines it - at least 256mbits.

SEO/SEM in Australia is a special issue for so many reasons. Join me was we explore. It will be a fascinating and informative journey.

Best (or worst?) example

2008-01-15T14:47:00.000+11:00

Sometimes you wonder why a company builds a website.
A home conveyancing company (which I will not name) provides one of the best examples of the need for SEO. Or is it worst?

The site is done entirely in Flash. No keywords. No description of the content. Not even an ALT tag on the Flash. Only the TITLE reflects the company name. There are no HEADER tags.
It's attractive and easy to navigate in Flash, and presents the company well. But no search engine will see any of that. Because the content cannot be seen by the search engines, the TITLE has no relevancy (as recorded in Whois...)
There are no links to the site. It has not been registered with any search engines or directories. In fact, even if you search on the company name on Google, it will not appear.
The content has not changed since the site was set up over three years ago.

The site is essentially invisible. The popular estimate is that about half the webpages on the Net have not been indexed. This site is one of this silent majority.

SEO/SEM in Australia is a special issue for so many reasons. Join me was we explore. It will be a fascinating and informative journey.

Polls: How longdoes it typically take you to make a webpage from scratch?

2007-10-01T10:43:00.000+10:00

From About.com:

I love Jennifer Kyrnin. She knows how to keep her readers interested by motivating feedback.

It seems like a pretty straight-forward question at first glance: How long?
Interestingly, it's easy to see that the more experienced web designers said it took them longer to make a web page.

Inexperienced page designers will simply layout a page, insert a few graphics and set the text layout to suit. Concerns such as SEO - many inexperienced page designers avoid the head tag altogether - keywords, and competition can be forgotten.
(The worst is subcontracting to someone who has sold a web page/site design to a client from all Flash, but that's another post..)

Experienced page designers are aware that every page is in competition with other pages all over the Net with the same topics and similar content. A good designer will keep this fact in mind and research competing pages from keywords and search listings.
To ignore the basics of SEO when designing a web page is hardly fraud but it comes close. At best, it's unprofessional. Without SEF considerations, a web page is just a prototype or mock-up. If that's what the client is paying for, good. But an ethical designer will tell them they don't have a functional web page no matter what widgets or devices are included.

27% of the poll respondents indicated they could make a web page in 'an hour or so' or less.

46% indicated it took 'half a day' or 'a day or two' to design a web page from scratch. If the page is in XHTML using good software, that sounds about right.
Now, if there are other considerations, such as scope creep (Client or designer keeps adding new things and ideas.), or the page is intended to work with a CMS or embedded devices that are integral to the presentation, a page can take longer.
It's a good rule of thumb that you can add the number of scope creep plus the number of devices as a percentage to the increased cost of a web page. Any total over 10 means the cost doubles - which often means adding a new page or two.

Pricing alone quickly becomes a sticking point, especially when there is a wide disparity between the skill level of the designer and the client. Price and useability (as the client understands it) can quickly push the time required into the 'a week' and 'more than a week' categories from the poll.
A better professional position for the designer is to avoid adding to the scope creep, even if it's hard to manage the creative juices burning inside. Somewhere between the unhappy knot of understating "Give the client what they want.", and those creative juices is a happy compromise for all.

It's a paradox of human nature that the web pages that take the longest are probably those where the designer is given free reign, - no matter what the price!
Designing for oneself is probably the worst example. The designer cannot keep the scope creep under control.
Designing for someone who has already paid - even if it's a small price - with freedom of design is a close second. The showmanship of the designer comes into play. S/he cannot avoid the tendency to want to show what they can do. Time constraints be damned.
It becomes a no-sum game between the goal(s) of the page and the skills of the designer.
Next comes the situation where it is the first work done for a large, prospective long-term client. The designer has to remember that the work follows the bureaucratic model: Whatever you do becomes expected, and you have to build from there (- which may be impossible...)
These situations take the longest.

Then there is the undiscovered technology page, where the designer wants to use a new technology and the client has no idea what is happening. Oh well.

SEO/SEM in Australia is a special issue for so many reasons. Join me was we explore. It will be a fascinating and informative journey.

Polls: Should you extend credit to clients?

2007-10-01T10:02:00.000+10:00

From About.com:

The question isn't as simple as it sounds. There is no web designer/services programmer who has not been burnt by a client. Sometimes it seems like the clients we are most willing to do more for are the ones most likely not to pay. That's some sort of psychological twist built into the creative-technical syndrome (-Did I just invent a new topic for the DSM VI?).

But getting a contract from clients who are woefully unaware of the goals of their own site can be impossible.
In Australia, the level of client awareness is woefully behind the rest of the free world for many reasons. Australians have only had broadband access for a couple of years for anyone outside the central business districts (CBD). Even the best of promised access speeds coming in the next few years are only barely considered 'broadband' by the rest of the world.
Through no fault of their own, the vast majority of Australian businesses have no concept of the power of the Internet.

94.6% of registered businesses in Australia are small businesses. Following the ancient maxim/rule of internet marketing, 70% (or more in a developing market) of sales from a website will be within 20 miles of the physical address of the business. That's approximately 35 kilometers.
The rule applies to about 85-90% of the 3.8 million Australian business owners.
In plain English, these folks just don't see the reason for a website.
At best, the business owner sees that their clients expect some sort of website. Their vision for the website is more along the lines of a business card or brochure. Monetizing the site, or even making it SERP-friendly, is far beyond the mindset.

Extending credit to such clients is risky - with or without a contract.
The poll on About.com is not a good representative sample because of the small number of respondents; and possibly the make up of the respondents, but the message comes through loud and clear: Credit is very risky.

A useful compromise to put everyone's mind at ease is a staged payment system.
Once the goals of the site are outlined and sketched out as webpages, a baseline cost can be determined. This price has to leave some room for a little scope creep, but not too much.
Suggested features should be fixed price alternatives - defined as clearly as possible - and not more than 3-5 listed.
A base rate of some sort has to be agreed upon, either as per-hour, per-page, or some combination.

When the price is agreed upon, at 1/3 to 1/2 is paid up front. An alpha point is determined by the satisfaction of the contracted goals of the site. If there are a large number of pages/features in the site, another payment point should be based on the estimated number of days to complete pages or features.
Like most of us, web designers/programmers like to see pay packets fortnightly or monthly. That's a good rule of thumb for how to break up payment schedules.

Finally, the last payment should be substantial - 1/4 to 1/3 of the completion.

If a client can't agree to partial payments as the goals of the site are satisfied, it's time to find another client. The web designer has already put in hours of research and consultation at this point that s/he will never be paid for; and the 'client' has gained from the free education.

It's nearly impossible to get full payment up front from a contracted project, but we can all hope for somedays..

SEO/SEM in Australia is a special issue for so many reasons. Join me was we explore. It will be a fascinating and informative journey.

Oh, those competition-crazed aussies

2007-09-29T13:21:00.000+10:00

SEO/SEM in Australia is a special issue for so many reasons. Join me was we explore. It will be a fascinating and informative journey.

Competition-crazy Aussies hain't got no chance (already)

IF THE race has started to develop really fast broadband in the Asia-Pacific area, Australia has already all but lost, a leading telecommunications analyst says.
And if that situation is to change, the Government has to encourage investment in taking optical fibre cables not just to street corner nodes, but all the way to homes, he says. (The Age)

No kidding. Most of us in the technology and media trades have been saying that for .. 5-7 years?
Leith Campbell makes a legitimate point though: "..The political will to invest in broadband isn't there..." Political will? Australia has politicized a fear of the Internet. Internet-phobic as become a syndrome of every election.

Helen Coonan has illustrated repeatedly that she is lost when it comes to understanding the Internet. The numbers seem meaningless to her. Even easy ideas such as the rest of Asia, US and Europe already enjoying broadband speeds of 100 times or more what is available here, seem to just make her eyes glaze.

Telstra has called on the Minister for Communications, Senator Helen Coonan, to cease and desist distributing misleading and incorrect information, and is demanding she put the record straight.

In letters being sent out to 500,000 households throughout the country spruiking the Government's OPEL sweetheart deal, the Minister is incorrectly claiming there is no wireless broadband service in areas where Telstra's Next G™ wireless broadband service is clearly available. (07 Sept)

Telstra went out to the addresses the Minister complains about, and found broadband available. One city she mentioned had been funded for broadband through her own Communications Ministry!

And, the raving debate, - like hyenas to a corpse - rages on: the ACCC has been accused of retarding investment in infrastructure by imposing upon Telstra to share its infrastructure network cheaply.

The ACCC's justification for giving competitors cheap access to Telstra's copper lines was the "stepping stone" theory - allowing new entrants to gain sufficient marketshare to invest in their own infrastructure as they step up the "ladder of investment". That theory has been completely shot down - if the evidence of the low levels of telecommunications investment in the chart below wasn't enough.

The fact that government leadership failed for years to cause the problem doesn't seem to be a popular topic. Or is just that soppy-eyed leadership is taken for granted? Maybe a little more coffee will help...
Sheesh, how am I supposed to make a peddling websites in Australia? Folks gotta be able to see them first.

Spinning WiMax in Oz

2007-09-25T11:02:00.000+10:00

The SNAKE TALES shows a red biplane burning out as it swirls one way then the next. The snake and the doggy look up. "Spin doctor!", says the doggy.
Obviously a political commentary, it could as well describe the problems of the Howard campaign as the debate about WiMax technology in Australia. 'Course, it's alll sorta tied in anyway.

Howard caught flat-footed
The Internet caught the Howard government. In the last year, Labor candidates Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard used FaceBook to kick off their team candidacy for PM. Rudd and Gillard are far more attractive onlne than Mr Howard, who seems to have a very hard time giving a straight answer.
In 2000, John Howard resolved all of Australia's questions about the Internet with: "The Internet in Australia is just fine." --and that, was that.
In those days, only 30% or so of Australians had access to the Net; and nearly all of those were on dialup. Dialup over phone lines that needed to be replaced, either because they were old or because they were poor quality when installed.

NBT
The NBT (next big thing) in Australian politics is always either the 'Bush' - referring to regional Australia -or the Aboriginies. References to anything positive in those directions are good for a short polling bump, at least.
Internet access to the Bush is an active debate right now because big name competitors are looking to supplant Telstra's highly politicized and outdated efforts.

Behind the scenes, a lot is going on.
Telstra wanted in 2002 to dismantle its CDMA and HSPA systems without offering the 3G alternative. That would leave millions in the outback without reliable access to the Net. For once, the regulators stepped in for the consumers and forced Telstra to keep the old system running until NextG was available.
Telstra owns about half the exchanges in regional Australia; the rest belong to AusStar.
OPEL (Optus-Elders consortium) has won the $959 million tender to provide WiMax to the Bush, and urban areas. Telstra was pointedly forbidden to be part of the bidding, and has launched a public campaign against WiMax.

What is WiMax?
Confused yet? You should be. Seems everyone else is.
Intel will introduce chipsets for WiMax in 2008. When something has been committed to mass produced hardware, you gotta think it really is "coming." ('Scuze the sarcasm, pls...)

An information sheet issued by the government says: "WiMax chip sets will be incorporated in a range of electronic devices, including PCs, cams, personal music devices and PDAs.

Chinese techs call WiMax "4G". They're installing it all across the country.

Is it WiMax?
Technically, WiMax is not 802.11n. It is 802.16e. Another source of confusion is 802.11n - incorporating advances for wireless networking devices - covers a similar radio spectrum (bands 2.3GHz, 2.4GHz and 3.5GHz, and 5.8GHz.) Experts are all over the Net saying 11n will make all cabling, even fibre optics, obsolete - and many writers are calling 11n 'WiMax.'
Further complicating the issue is that all of the radio spectrum is regulated in Australia. In the US and Europe, many countries leave these frequency bands open for public use.

Then the fine print tells us the proposed Australian WiMax rose will only encompass the 2.3GHz, 2.4GHz and 3.5GHz bands.

On Friday, (Communications Minister Helen) .. Coonan tried to downplay debate over standards, saying people did not care about the technology, only the service they received.

Too true.
That dog bites both ways, Ms Coonan. Ignoring the technology for spin is not a decision-making process. Someone in the government has to understand the technology and make the right decsions.
Last year, the raging debate over who would provide FTTN (fibre to the node) only served to disgust the public with the whole process. In the end, no one could decide. Telstra and OPEL-lite were further undermined in their submissions by a German company that had already done FTTN for a decade.

Best answer
No matter what technology is employed, it will still mean shared bandwidth. Shared bandwidth means congestion at times. It doesn't seem too hard to see that whatever system is chosen it has to provide for expansion and for high peak traffic.
The fact is no matter what wireless protocol is pursued, it will have to be supported by a reliable connection, and that connection is obviously a fibre optics cable system. This simple fact seems to have escaped the debate somehow.

If dear reader, you want to delve deeper into this morass, I'll give you the link to my search on AustralianIT. Enjoy the great white cloud.

Before Australia can be competitive in the Asian or US-UK markets, the country needs reliable access to the Internet at speeds that make the Internet more than an aggravation.

SEO/SEM in Australia is a special issue for so many reasons. Join me was we explore. It will be a fascinating and informative journey. There is too much room for spin in this debate. It really is like a swirling old biplane about to crash.

IT daws fewer students

2007-09-25T09:51:00.000+10:00

The news is always a conversation.
This morning, the Herald Sun reports half as many VCE students have chosen IT compared to last year. As an Internet/IT proselyte, that is disappointing. I can't help feel these decisions are shaped by the government's Internet-phobic attitude in national advertising.

IT less attractive
There is no question IT has become a less-certain path professionally.
Since the dot-com bubble burst, job listings have become miniscule. HR departments are listing jobs requiring a laundry list of skills for much lower pay scales. (Some of the listings are comical: requirements for years of experience in technologies which have only existed for months, or a year or two.)
The media has given a lot of coverage to out-sourcing to India and Pakistan by large institutions and banks. It's a discouraging job market. No one seems to be reminding these banks and financial institutions that there are no privacy laws in those countries. Reports have reached Australia of CDs full of credit card and bank details being sold in open air markets!

TAFE enrolment drops
The same article reports "TAFE colleges are failing to meet the nneeds of the private sector and should be overhauled," according to Federal Vocational and Further Education Minister Andrew Robb. -- It's bloody well about time, Mr Robb.
TAFE enrollments dropped 13% between 2001 and 2006.

Australia's institutionalized vocational training has been centered in the TAFE (Technical and Further Education) system. The system was a good idea initially. A fast-track public-private partnering to produce the skills Australia desperately needed. But the TAFE system has become bureaucratic, unweildy, and political -- incorporating the worst of Australia's mateship and corruption.

TAFEs take on the affects of colleges and universities. The names chosen for these for-profit businesses are at best deceptive. There may have been the intention to encourage entrepreneurship originally, but by putting 70-85% (depending on source) of government funding into the TAFE system as opposed to spreading the funds around for small, better-focused organizations, the TAFEs have become as much a hinderance to flexible learning as examples.
Because large TAFEs are publicly well-funded yet remain private businesses, these institutions become competitors in the open market with an inordinate advantage.
Projects which would be funded on their merits privately are subsidized by using (not employing, using) students. Instead of paying for skills on the open market, the TAFE lets the government and the students pay for the right to develop entrepreneurial projects.
The result quashes new ideas and entrepreneurship, especially for Internet entrepreneurs.

TAFE means business
Public funding 'initiatives' are formed based on the submissions from TAFEs to suit the TAFEs. TAFE executives and employees sit on the decision-making boards, and direct the funds from private initiative to the TAFEs. (e.g., WiMax technology is planned to provide broadband speeds for regional Australia in 2008.)
Business entitites are formed specifically to take advantage of this public trough feed.

SEO/SEM in Australia is a special issue for so many reasons. Join me was we explore. It will be a fascinating and informative journey.

Australian IT: Bad Form

2007-09-09T11:29:00.000+10:00

Sometimes playing with research tools is a little sobering.
I love a good cynical laugh, especially at the expense of some ignoramus in the law around Australia more than most, but this article from AustralianIT is just headline grabbing nonsense. Most of the article has nothing to do with the headline, "Judge says Keep IT simple, stupid". The rest of the article is just loose change about a new MySpace for dogs, Florida electoral machinery, and other fluff.

The excerpt about the judge is taken (supposedly) taken from Annova. Yet there is no link. Annova functions in Australia as a distributor and an eBay store. They are an electronics retailer from the UK.
The story did the rounds in the UK and then got picked up by The Australian and even an aussie student's forum post.
The student's forum post and the AustralianIT story have an important point in common: Neither indicates that this is a UK judge. What is sad to find is this man is also a very learned QC who even writes regularly for medical journals. For a man who doesn't know what a website is, his career is all over the Internet.

This sort of loose journalistic effort only feeds the fires of those who see the Internet as the enemy. And I resent this sort of thing even more coming from AustralianIT, which has been an important resource for me to learn about IT and the Internet in Australia.

Now this is from Annova, picked up by TimmyB on Oreilly, and it is wryly funny.

Just a raw plug for my first SEO clients:
Short Cut Computers belongs to Steve Trim, a friend who actually paid me to learn this stuff and put it to work for him.
And Steve Trim's other business, Barcode Solutions., which will be my second project.

Telstra takes to the mattresses (or blogs)

2007-09-09T09:32:00.000+10:00

Telstra has drecided to join the rest of the blogging world. In the usual Telstra style, the new blogs are professional looking and full of user-unfriendly bugs. A massive array of corporate blogs, all carefully edited to put the company's best foot forward.
Too bad the company's policies prevent most of the country from joining the free world.

Buggy
Most of my customers are small businesses. SME's (Small- to Medium-sized Enterprises to the rest of the world); "small business" to the ATO. Considering that these businesses employ 85% of the workforce and are 96.4% of the registered businesses in Australia, I was particularly dismayed to find the new 'Small Business' blogger was the former soppy 'Lifestyles' blogger.
She goes on and on about her fascination of the insects she calls 'nerds', but the nerds at Telstra have their revenge: neither the RSS feed nor the Comments on her blog work. (She may not want the Comments to work.)
You can almost hear the gnomes chuckling.

You have to read the news like a conversation.
When the person blogging about small business in Australia keeps citing studies done by large retailers in the US; and calling Internet entrepreneurs "nerds", it's not hard to conclude she wishes she lived somewhere else. (Hint: She certainly needs to work somewhere else...)
One thing is certain: She has little or no idea what it means to develop the Internet as a resource for a small business in Australia.

Her first article was for 'Breast Cancer Day' at the Telstra Dome. Laudable, but hardly 'News you can use'. (A leftover from her former project?) She is far out of touch with the needs of small business in Australia.

A few of the other blogs have undefined RSS feeds, too. And Telstra wonders why it's losing money? I did find a useable feed on the homepage.

Comments
There are 4 separate blogs complaining about the regulatory requirement to keep CDMA in place until the NextG network is running properly. The blogs are full of people complaining about holes in service. The chief technical blogger advises getting a magnetic antenna; and one comment says it will make a nice paperweight.
No one dares complain about the fees. (I guess they leave that to the Dodo ad.)
Telstra whinges on to make its case. All Telstra has to do is explain that they want to cripple their competitors and are willing to leave 1/2 the population without reliable broadband.
Strangely, most of the Comments on these blogs seem to be Telstra shareholders. The shareholders want to know why Telstra shouldn't be allowed to make the same obscene profits as steel companies.

CDMA divine
Optus, iiNet, and other carriers in the G9 consortium built their business by sharing Telstra's CDMA network. This was mandated by regulations in order to introduce competition into the market. Only 10 years ago, Telstra was a monopoly. The only game in town.
When Telstra dragged its feet (for 7 years overcharging consumers for piss-poor broadband) on the issue of fibre cabling and then wireless internet access, 9 of these companies formed a consortium, excluding Telstra, and filed a competing proposal to do the work.
Here would be a chance for Telstra to let them know why they shouldn't mess with the Mother Country (..or Mother Nature, or God, etc.)
CDMA will go sooner or later. Telstra probably intended to handle the changeover as they did ADSL: charge heavily for the NextG service as it was grudgingly enabled. This is one case where the politicians should be applauded.

When you read these blogs as a conversation along with the other blogs on these topics, the Telstra gang seems to want to dominate the discussion to put the party line forward. The internet marketing of these blogs seem to be towards Telstra shareholders and employees, too, which skews the tone of the response.
I suppose all's fair in love and war, or business, but as an interested observer, you do get tired of seeing people ground up in the conflict.
Until broadband improves to the point small business can see the efficacy of the Internet, SEO and SEM will only be valuable tools for the privileged few.

Notes:
CDMA -- (Code Division Multiple Access): A technology for digital transmission of radio signals between, for example, a mobile telephone and a radio base station. In CDMA, a frequency is divided into a number of codes. A spread spectrum approach to digital transmission. With CDMA, each conversation is digitized and then tagged with a code. Also known as IS-95A or cdmaOne

Just a raw plug for my first SEO clients:
Short Cut Computers belongs to Steve Trim, a friend who actually paid me to learn this stuff and put it to work for him.
And Steve Trim's other business, Barcode Solutions., which will be my second project.

Success,.. sorta

2007-09-05T12:38:00.000+10:00

Just a raw plug for my first SEO clients:
Short Cut Computers belongs to Steve Trim, a friend who actually paid me to learn this stuff and put it to work for him.
And Steve Trim's other business, Barcode Solutions., which will be my second project.

I use the excerpt above as part of my signature on this experimental blog to help generate temporal links to Steve's company sites. It's an experiment to see how the rankings are affected.

Steve's main site, Shortcut Computers, had been designed to be easily modified by him and his staff using FrontPage(tm). It had been up for nearly a year when he became interested in what was happening there. -- Nothing.
The site registered about 35 visitors in a year; most of which were probably Steve himself. It was there for him to say he had a website.

After reading a few books on SEO/SEM, we redid the site.
First, it needed to be more dynamic and easier to use. Still experimenting with options, we mistakenly chose PostNuke for the CMS. PostNuke made some things easier, but overall is a programmers' CMS.
Then the overall appearance was reconfigured. The present homepage reflects this step.
It is at least dynamic, but too many of the pages are lost behind long URLs.
Small problems.

During this process, I began researching SEO/SEM.
First step: Wade through a few books.
Second step: Find the resources needed in Australia.
Third step: Apply those resources to accomplish the goals of the business.

I began "internet marketing" back when AltaVista and Lycos were the search engine paradigms. Google and Yahoo in those days didn't exist. The key to internet marketing was, and still is, LINKS!
Step two was an eye-opener. There simply weren't that many directories and search engines. Two industries, tourism and mining, were well represented. Business listings were made on government or telecom sites. The Yellow Pages in Australia had spawned three different access sites; all of whom charged for listings.

Step three was the real challenge though.
The small company's service area was a number of suburbs on the southeast side of Melbourne. Although this area comprised over 1 million residents, it sat on the bleeding edge of broadband availability. Most of his customers were condemned to dial up Internet access.
(Click the 'Melbourne' tab on the iBurst availability map. There are other similar maps - and more timely - but this one tracks very closely and illustrate the point. Then enter 'Dandenong' to see the availability in the company's service area.)

This company, like 90% of small business in Australia, didn't want to market nationally or even citywide.
Links from search engines were good for natural rankings -- "roamers" in SEM-speak -- but to increase business, we needed visitors -- "convertibles" SEM-speak -- who could take use the services. For that, we needed to target a region not commonly defined: PPC advertising.
For Melbournians, the "southeast suburbs" is easily understood. For Google-Aus and Yahoo7, it means nothing.

We established a blog for the company to demonstrate expertise in depth, and to keep up with changes in the business climate of the service area. Fortunately, the changes came fast and furious in the media. Rupert Murdoch announced on a visit that "Internet service in Australia is abysmal." Optus went public with plans to form G-9, excluding Telstra. Then the bubble-heads in Parliament passed archaic copyright law amendments.
Nothing drives Internet traffic like other media.

Avoiding any more of the details, we managed to get 70-90 visitors per day to the site within 3 months. Page ranks from Google (2), and Alexa(about 260,000) gained over 6 months or so. The site rose quickly to SERP positions 1-4 in most of the service area. The blog is cited regularly on other blogs. We even saw visits on the blog from Canberra.

While I was away in Hawaii, things were neglected. The number of visitors held pretty solid because of the natural search. PPC campaigns were abandoned though, and 'convertibles' waned.

Overall, a success. With the caveat that it can only improve with more attention
What was found and learned about SEO/SEM in Australia was to be applied to another of Steve's enterprises: Barcode Solutions. This has to be easier. Its market is national and international. (Hope springs eternal. It wasn't...)

Latest figures just like the first...

2007-09-05T12:07:00.000+10:00

Hitwise reiterates the search figures for Australia. These numbers seem to hardly change.
Yes, Google-Aus and Google dominate the search engine traffic with more than 84%. (Google-Aus: 68.45%, Google: 14.81%). If anything, Google has increased its dominance in the last year.

Yahoo7 (Yahoo-Aus and TV channel 7) are really pulling out all the stops to try to gain more interest in their offerings, but for the highly profitable SERP numbers (Yahoo-Aus: 3.03%); they've only managed to fall behind their pricey competitors at NineMSN (8.20%).
For anyone looking to market a website to Australia, Google is pretty much the whole ball game - Or is it?
The sophistication of Google's search algorithm is lost in the shallow Australian market (more on this later), but the power of being the icon of Internet search is overwhelming to the raw Australian user. Ever heard anyone say: "I Yahoo'd it."?

MSN has taken the perspective of becoming the high priced spread to maximize profits from its marginal position. Makes sense. This is really Microsoft, after all.
I don't hate Microsoft. They've made too many smart moves not to respect them. I just wish more people would learn about Linux, and make the whole software marketplace more reasonable.
But pricing an ad on MSN at $20,000 a month is ridiculous in Australia. It limits MSN to only big business in a country where 96.4% of registered businesses are small (under $2M gross with less than 5 employees, as defined by the Finance Minister.)

Lead by an Internet-phobic government, you have to wonder when the Australian public will suss this stuff out. The entrepreneurial search engine industry is already beginning to diminish. No one knows how to interpret the regressive copyright laws, and that has scared many out of the market.
Even some university projects have changed their focus from setting up a search engine to producing the software.

Just a raw plug for some SEO/SEM clients:
Short Cut Computers belongs to Steve Trim, a friend who actually paid me to learn this stuff and put it to work for him.
And Steve Trim's other business, Barcode Solutions., which will be my second project.

2007-08-10T11:56:00.000+10:00

Here is a handy tool from a US competitor:

If the stuff in this blog makes sense to you, visit my website at AEmeritus Relevant Training because that's where it's all gonna be put in motion.
Just a raw plug for my first SEO clients:
Short Cut Computers belongs to Steve Trim, a friend who actually paid me to learn this stuff and put it to work for him.
And Steve Trim's other business, Barcode Solutions., which will be my second project.

Fresh SEM in OZ

2006-11-30T12:21:00.000+11:00

Fresh SEM in Oz
by Paul Donley

When I started looking into SEO and SEM, I roamed the Net a little to see what the buzz was all about, then - after realizing that I was lost in acronyms and neologisms again - checked out a couple of books from my online reference library and settled down in front of the computer with a strong cup of coffee for some reading.
It didn't take a long time before I realized that I was looking at some grreeeat stuff -- but it didn't pertain to the Land of OZ.

Fresh in Oz
Australia took to the Internet faster, person by person (per capita), than any other country in the world. In 2000-2001, fewer than 10% of Australian households had access to the Net. Last year, 2005, 35% of all Australian households had access; and slightly more, 41%, of Australian businesses - mostly small businesses.
Of those, 65% were using broadband access of one form or the other.
It's been predicted in 2010 that 70% of small businesses in Australia will be on the Net. The Internet will be the most important advertising resource for small business. And Australia has a lot of small, regional and local businesses.

Googled
At this point, however, Australia is new to the Net - and computers.
There have already been a few marketing surges as Australians moved first to replace their older P1 and P2 systems with P4's in order to run XP, then Celeron made a splash, and the next surge is already underway with the dual-core hardware. Households no longer have just one computer. There is usually a desktop and a couple of laptops in most households these days.

All those new computers need access to the Internet, so .. wireless networking is popular. For most households, the first network they'll see will be wireless - at the home or office.

But all this hardware doesn't mean everyone has instantly acquired computer skills. Far from it.
Driven by their children, who see the latest hardware and software in the schools - because both Victoria and NSW are constantly upgrading the school to fulfill campaign promises - households have spent thousands over the past 5 years to acquire computers that no one seems to really know what to do with.
Even the teachers who are running around with those hot new laptops are a little confused. But they sure look impressive!

Let me use the major search engines to illustrate what I mean.
Internationally, Google and Yahoo are neck and neck when it comes to searches. The last figures I saw put Google at 40% and Yahoo! at 43% of all searches. Google, because its name has become synonymous with "search on the Net"; and Yahoo! because they are the best established portal to the Net.
The International figures look something like this. (I made this chart using an online service for school children called Create a Graph from the National Institute for Educational Statistics. It's a free online service.)

Australia is a little different. Since the aussies are new to the Net, they're more susceptible to the buzzwords. They "google" for things.
While Yahoo! and Google pretty much split the International pie; in Australia, Google-Australia has 65% of the searches.
Since the aussies are new kids on the block, many don't realize there is a Google-Australia. About 13% use the original Google site. -- In Australia, Google commands nearly 80% of all online searches.
That is a commanding position.

If, for example, I want to build Internet presence and recognition for a website - based on keywords - by putting their services before 70% of the web, all I need is Google. They command nearly 80%. I can accomplish my goal easily with a Google PPC (point per click) campaign.

Aussies suss it out
As the aussies suss out the Internet, that will change.

Australians follow the trends from America, especially on the Net. It's reasonable to assume that they'll be moving more towards the International market split for searches soon.

Local Directories
Australian governments have spent to provide every large town and region with its own Community Guide - a local directory of business and events. Even local townships and suburbs have their own Community Guides.
Telstra (with vast government subsidies) has developed the Yellow and White pages, then linked both to a national advertising campaign for Sensis.

There are also a number of entrepreneurial search engines and directories that have sprung up.
Although all this activity will not supplant the dominance of Google Australia and Yahoo! Australia, it will serve to nudge the aussies along to suss out the way to search the Net.
Aussies are pretty clewy.
eBay is going to help, too, over the Christmas shopping season. Australians go to eBay for things almost as much as they do to the search engines. A shopper can have a bit of fun with eBay. If they find something on eBay, but want to see the (approximate) price in Australian dollars, all they have to do is add ".au" to the URL - and the price in Australian dollars appears!

How long is it??
This long!
Aussies are moving fast on the Net. But the question for any Internet Marketing campaign is: How long will it be before they are searching like the rest of the world?
A number of factors come into play here quickly. Aussies are notoriously brand loyal. It takes a tsunami or a good hit of dynamite to make them move from something. Then again, there is that pressure to be like the US and UK, which sorta balances it all out.

We can have a bit of a play with another figure, the loyalty numbers, and fuzzy logic to make a good guess.
Google commands a 74% loyalty. Yahoo! gets only about 47%. Neither bad numbers really.
And remember, MSN already has 13% of the searches within Australia through its affiliation with NineMSN.

Let's see what happens to Google.
We start with 65% - the portion of searches Google had in 2005 - and estimate their portion in 2006 to be 74% of 65%, or -- 48%. That leaves a bigger slice of the pie for Yahoo! Australia and NineMSN, along with all those local and regional directories.
If people know what kind of business or service they want, they will learn to turn to local directories because it's quicker. Aussies are very community minded.
Now, if you assume that the searches done on Google US are gonna stay about the same because those folks are looking for something outside Australia, then Google will enjoy about a (48 + 13) 61% share of the searches in 2006. (I gotta wonder how close I'm gonna be. The figures will be out soon.)

Do the same thing for 2007, and the number doesn't track. 74% of 48 plus 13 is .. 35 percent. In order to track with the 2005 International figures, Google will have to pick up a few from somewhere - probably Yahoo!, which can only keep the loyalty of less than half (47%) of its searches.
But the guesstimate still works. It'll take the aussies about two years to suss out the search options on the Net, which sounds about right.
By the end of 2007, aussies will be searching along like the rest of the world.
Where the community directories and entrepreneurs will come into the mix, we'll have to look into in another article.

If the stuff in this blog makes sense to you, visit my website at AEmeritus Relevant Training
because that's where it's all gonna be put in motion.
Just a raw plug for my first SEO clients:
Short Cut Computers belongs to Steve Trim, a friend who actually paid me to learn this stuff and put it to work for him.
And Steve Trim's other business, Barcode Solutions., which will be my second project.

The debate continues about relevant links

2006-11-27T18:36:00.000+11:00

A short lament.
It used to be so easy, even if it didn't seem like it at the time. If your business couldn't afford the big budget banner ads on huge portals, to generate links you signed up for an link exchange (which was usually a portal of sorts), webring, and got your site registered on as many directories and search engines as the freebie registration sites could muster. Then started exchanging links.
You did a little research to find complementary services, and sent those sites a letter asking for a link on their site if you'd put one on yours. This was often the fun part.
Because one of the common rules was that 70% of the purchases were from companies and sites that were physically within 70 miles of your company, it became a sort of social program. You had a reason to meet all sorts of people near you!
You exchanged links with them, and made new friends.

While that rule still applies, more and more buyers are willing to purchase from anywhere off the Net. Some significant percentage of buyers only purchase locally still.
You worked this guerrilla style until you made enough money to buy a big banner ad. And usually by then it wasn't traffic and links you were after, it was "transactional visitors", or .. buyers.
Anyway, that's enough of the lament.
Things still work that way. Sorta.

Developments
In the great hunt for links, an changed link with complementary business sites are invaluable but webrings and link exchanges have fallen into disfavor. There is a great debate going on that could cause a lot of change to the Web economy. Not just for webrings and link exchanges, but all affiliate programs.
Affiliate programs traditionally work one of two ways:

The affiliate network places your ad on either targeted or non-specific sites that are also members of the network that go through their server then are redirected to your site;
or you set up your own affiliate program, called a "network specific linking network".

Click- throughs are counted, and commissions paid. With an affiliate network running the show, you don't get any link count advantage for your page rank. Their server gets linked from thousands or even tens of thousands of sites.
If you run your own affiliate network though, you end up with many links to your site - and have to pay your own commissions. It's just harder because you have to administer your own program.

Newer Affiliate Networks
Newer affiliate networks have software, called an "affiliate management" application, that you install on your server to direct the click-through to your site. The program is often sold as much on this capability as on the number of links the network can provide. But if the company doesn't emphasize how their network works, ask. And ask your SEO people to watch for these networks. They can usually tell just by checking the links to the affiliate servers and a couple of their clients.

Google in its infinite wisdom has become aware of repititious wording in links. Google watches how quickly links to a site accumulate in order to avoid search engine spam. Since you submit an ad to a link exchange, often for a fee, the same ad ends up repeated all over the Net. If too many links appear in a short time, Google may penalize or even ban your site.
Google has even gone so far as to make a patent filing.

Google now watches to see if too many links appear with identical anchor text, then checks to see if the links disappear quickly. Affiliate networks are automated inserted text and code which expose your link with others in a round table fashion. If you were to join an affiliate network, the number of links to your site would increase dramatically. But the links will appear, then disappear, from a site within a few minutes.
Since Google is doing this sort of thing, you can expect other search engines to adopt the same practice soon.

Complementary business sites
Sending out requests for links is one of the fundamental functions of marketing on the Net. Will this sort of activity trigger Google's anti-spamming defenses? Search engine marketers will have to be careful of the anchor text.

Another consideration is how stringently Google will enforce its rules against linking to banned sites. If another site in the affiliate network has been identified as using spamming tactics, you don't want a link to or from that site. But how will you - as the owner of a site - or your marketing agenty know?
There is a list of banned sites, of course. It's huge. But that is part of the reason you would hire an agent: to make the right decisions for you.

Interesting bit
This was an interesting thing to find. Recently, when one of my clients was setting up her new site and blog, she accidentally entered her site name into the search window. She entered "www.potsandpans.com". (not her site)
What came back was a surprise. There were 14 links to her site! - But her site wasn't finished and had not been submitted to any directories or search engines. In fact, the link to her domain only showed a non-functional page.
Checking later, there were only 4, then 5 links to her site in the same search.
All of the sites appeared to be different, but they contained the same segment of text from her blog, which included anchor text: "..only quality pots and pans are what we want .." (This is only an example. If it actually is a live link, it's an accident.)
It turned out that someone had set up a number of domains about kitchenware, kitchens, and pots, and pointed them to blogs. The made up pages which only contained a Google Adsense ad, and a little nonsense text.

Every link that showed had been modified as if it were generated by PHP. For example, instead of "http://www.kittykitchens.com", the linked page was "http://www.kittykitchens.com/?goop=nonsense". That last bit might be used to track a session.
If you've ever wondered what happens when a page is generated by a content management program, that's it. The server makes an identical page on the server. The page is called "http://www.kittykitchens.com/?goop=nonsense", but it's only there for a short while.
That's how she found 14 links, and later there were only 4, then 5.
There were literally hundreds of these blogs, with about 70 pages on each. The software just looped through the sites - There were at least 85 of them at my count. - and tried to generate a fake page for every page. (at least 85 X 70 = 5950!)
This was automated blog spamming in a big way!
No wonder Google has become concerned.

Link Quality, not Quantity
Not many people think about it, but many ads on a webpage dilute the relevancy of the content. In the example above, because the webpages contained only random snippets other than the Google ads, there was no relevant content other than the snippet injected into the page to generate the link!
The old days system couldn't help but produce relevant links since there weren't so many ways to produce irrelevant links.

Webrings are usually targeted within an industry or interest. But you don't hear much about webrings any more.
Affiliate networks are still a good source of links, there's no reason to bail out of them just yet. Like all things in business, you just have to know what you're dealing with and steer clear of the dangerous stuff.

Industry effects
Google will find some resistance in being too stringent about these new rules since Ad Words and AdSense are simply a new way of working affiliate networks in the final analysis. The same can be argued for all PPC (pay per click) services.

Google may find itself having to explain why it is trying to run the only affiliate network on the Net.

If the stuff in this blog makes sense to you, visit my website at AEmeritus Relevant Training because that's where it's all gonna be put in motion.
Just a raw plug for my first SEO clients:
Short Cut Computers belongs to Steve Trim, a friend who actually paid me to learn this stuff and put it to work for him.
And Steve Trim's other business, Barcode Solutions., which will be my second project.

Starting Out

2006-11-25T18:28:00.000+11:00

For the time being, this is gonna be a pretty mundane blog. Really, it's a place for me to store the research I'm doing on SEO and SEM in Australia. In time, it may even become an authoritative enterprise for SEO and SEM in Australia, who knows?

Australia is a special problem for search engine optimization, but then Australia is a special problem for everything.

If the stuff in this blog makes sense to you, visit my website at AEmeritus Relevant Training because that's where it's all gonna be put in motion.
Just a raw plug for my first SEO clients:
Short Cut Computers belongs to Steve Trim, a friend who actually paid me to learn this stuff and put it to work for him.
And Steve Trim's other business, Barcode Solutions., which will be my second project.