Search is a tactile art.

At heart, I am a data guy. I run numbers, look at trends, see patterns and set direction based on what this all indicates. This is a great habit when dealing with several hundred campaigns' and oodles of money built up from $1 bids. Taking it all in, running it through database queries and custom routines makes fairly quick work of the tasks (hours vs days). However, this weekend I was reminded (again) that large number crunching projects are not the single answer to search's challenges. You have to get into it. Our campaign managers would probably rather I didn't. But I do. And the truth is,  I really enjoy it. It is very 'tactile'. You can almost feel the information as you pour through the campaigns. You get a sense of the relationship between the different campaigns, keywords, kw types, bids, positioning, QS, ad copy and so on. Some of our programs are made up of a dozen campaigns spending hundreds of thousands a month each while others are hundreds of campaigns spending thousands a month each. Both present unique challenges. But to do either kind well, you have to do more than look at reports, change bids and set up bid rules. You have to get dirty. Most SEM folks have done deep dives into their campaigns. But, do yourself a favor, and without any pretext, just start exploring your campaigns. Look for the little things that won't show up in an exception report, or be uncovered in a problem. Search is about nuances; and nuances, by definition are small and frequently unnoticed. But these are the little things that add up to big things. When we talk about the hard work of SEM, this is the kind of thing we really mean. 

And I think this is what makes good SEM folks unique. To put together a really good SEM program, you need to have a broad perspective, understand the objectives and the stategies. Not just of search, but for the whole marketing and advertising 'thing'. I frequently find myself in conversations about this with my teammates; we all have ideas about the direction we should go with the products and service we promote. But, then we are just as eager to jump into the gritty part of the SEM job. It is because we have an understanding of the larger effort that we know, almost instinctively, what nuances to leverage.

So, do yourself and your clients a favor. Get dirty.

The right perspective makes all the difference

This is an easy putt:

I have always promoted the idea that search marketers have to step beyond search to see what is really going in with their company or clients. To really add value, you have to know where you fit in, what obstacles you might face and what you might offer beyond the obvious. Sometimes, even often, the obstacles have nothing to do with the game of search. Take another look at that easy put... from a broader perspective. 

  

Kind of makes you rethink it, doesn't it? If you are only focusing on your narrow area, are there dangers, threats, or perhaps opportunities that you are missing?

Google Organic Ranking Changes...people keep crying

Why do so many continue to act surprised when Google alters the page rankings? Mark Simon has a perspective that I strongly share... Why does anyone allow their business to depend on the charity of Google's fickle page ranking? He chides both SEO experts and the clients that follow them unquestioningly.

I am not anti-SEO. I just think too much focus is placed on the engines and not enough on good communication. If you know SEO, the rest of this is going to bore you, unless you just feel like slamming my perspective ( I won't mind). For the rest, this is a primer with opinion.

Search engines want the consumers / users to have good experience post click. That is what will keep users coming back to the engine to search other topics. The point is, they want your site to serve the needs of the users. So, you need to focus on the user's needs. This sounds basic, but is too often forgotten.

So to that end, content, well structured and well organized, is paramount. Each page should be focused on a particular area of your business. If you sell bicycles and parts, putting the bikes and parts listed and described on one page dilutes the content. It makes it hard for users to zero in on the information they want. If someone is looking for bike tires, and it is buried somewhere among bikes, brakes, cranks and helmets, how will they find it. As it turns out, search engines aren't any better at figuring it out. In fact they are worse. They figure out what a page is about through the concentration of like clues and their occurrence relative to all other information. This is known as density... usually discussed as keyword density.  

The best way to help search engines match your pages with searches is to concentrate on narrow topics that are easily associated with likely keyword searches. Dedicating a page to tires (or even road tires and off-road tires), with appropriate content makes it easier for an engines to match it up to a search for, say... mountain bike tires. A dedicated page might appear 60% about these tires, where a 'junk' page with everything might appear to be less than 10% about it (just as an example). If you had to decide which page was more focused on tires, which one would you pick?  

The structure of the content is important too. Well thought out menu and page hierarchy allows the users to navigate to the content easily. It also happens to be a way for the engines to see the connection between the pages of our site and understand the nature of the content. Again, what is good for the user is also good for the engines. 

We hear a lot about the tags or coding. These are important, though the importance of some tags seems to ebb and flow. As good form, engines aside, proper code for alt tags, title tags, names, meta, etc should be followed. Some of the tags aid in usability, others make it easier to manage development. There are SEO folks who will tell you it matters a great deal and others will say, not so much. My view is simple. Don't be lazy, follow good form and you'll be ready should Google or Yahoo! switch things up again. Some of these tags are important now, others may become important(again).  

Links. Links. Links... The latest change from Google (it is rumored) is intended to defeat some of the paid linking schemes that are used. I don't know that this is so. However, I am not a fan of paid links. If we spend as much time focusing on the needs of the users, developing good content, working on the site / experience and developing good reciprocal linking partnerships that add value to the user experience, we may convert more of the users we get while attracting more links naturally. Oh, and not lose sleep worrying that Google might find us out.

Press releases are important. But, if they serve no other purpose than to try to create links to your site, fire your PR person and find a better use of your money. As with the rest of the SEO tactics, do they serve a broader need and add value to the business? If so, go full steam ahead and, by the way, add a link to your site (preferably to a section related to the release). 

You know there is more... there are whole books dedicated to SEO. But, the bottom line in any good SEO program is to focus first and foremost on the user. Only then should you put efforts toward improving your Google page ranking. And, for goodness sake, don't build a business model around SEO.