Beware... You don't want this guy to be your next web marketing expert.

I was reading posts in one of my favourite online forums when I noticed the signature line for one of the users: The Internet – Where anyone with a keyboard is an expert. Truer words have never been spoken and thinking of a recent conversation with one of my clients, I could feel my blood pressure start to rise.

But let’s start with my first reaction. It’s absolutely true (and in many ways wonderful) how the Internet has opened up the world and provided a soapbox for a variety of backyard experts. For example:

Wikipedia – the user-managed encyclopedia of everything.

Podcasts – allowing you to learn about everything from how to lose weight to overcoming your fear of public speaking.

YouTube – Now the world’s 2nd most popular search engine where you can watch and learn how to stop your dog from jumping, install a video card, or what not to do with a van, a ramp and a mountain bike.

The nice thing about these resources is that they are truly “caveat emptor” or “buyer beware”. But it’s easy to watch, read, or listen and make a judgment call as to how much validity you want to put in the “expert’s” skill, ability and experience. If you agree with their advice, take it. If it seems faulty, you may want to pass. Did you watch the bike video? The point is, it’s easy to make a judgement call on the “expert.”

The other reality of that signature line, however, is the part that makes my blood boil. Owning a pen does not make a someone a great author. Owning a camera a does not make someone a great photographer. Owning or watching a TV does not make someone a great producer (although I tend to be able to pick the fall line-up winners better than most TV execs). And owning a computer and some web design software certainly doesn’t make someone a great online marketer.

It’s frustrating having the same conversation time after time with clients or potential clients. “Why do you charge so much? My brother/ son-in-law/cousin/grand-niece/buddy’s kid can do it for free!”  My response? “Okay.” Creating a website isn’t that difficult and in truth,  almost anyone can do it. But more and more, your website is the “first impression” of your business that most of your customers will receive. Do you want just anyone to create that…and for free?

Today if you are in business, you have to be on the web. I used to tell people that if they couldn’t afford a professionally designed website that something, perhaps designed by their nephew, was better than nothing. Well, I’ve seen too many of those “somethings” and they bring about expressions: “that sure is something…,” “something in there has to make sense,” “I bet they had something else in mind.” A bad website can destroy your credibility. If you can’t afford a website, claim your business address in Google Places and other directories and add a short informative description. That is better than nothing and won’t leave potential customers wondering if the typos on your site are indicative of your lack of competence.

Now sometimes “the nephew” does get it right and the website looks great. But, there’s often another side to the story. It’s the inevitable follow up a year or two down the line. The business owner explains that online marketing “doesn’t work” for their business model. They didn’t get any leads through their website, the site is too difficult to update, or some other thing. The logic here is faulty. It’s no different than the 65 year old web Luddite who claims the “Internet is broken” because they can’t figure out how to buy a book from Amazon.

Successfully marketing a product or service online isn’t easy. While a “free” website may look great, it may not:

• Capture your unique selling proposition
• Include calls-to-action, telling visitors what to do next
• Organize information about your business in a logical, easy-to-digest manner
• Do one of a hundred other little things that make a website “sell” your business

And it’s definitely not going to be part of an overall strategy for marketing your business online. It’s the years of experience, testing, understanding of best practices for website design, online marketing, email marketing and now social media marketing that my team and I bring to the table. That’s why we cost more than your nephew, or cousin, or brother-in-law.

The Internet – Where anyone with a keyboard is an expert. However not all experts are created equal.

Twenty years ago, a simple document proposed a unified way for computers in a network to display information in a human readable way. It allowed you to easily move from one piece of information to another by simply moving your mouse over a piece of text and clicking it. This simple document, was the precursor to what we know today – hyper links and the World Wide Web. That document, published November 12^th 1990, can be found here.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee – The Inventor of the Web

As a physicist working at CERN, he found that information was hard to access. In the mid 80s, the Internet existed solely as a large network of computers with CERN being one of the largest nodes in Europe. Even though computers using Internet Protocol were able to talk to each other, displaying the information to users was a problem. Reading one piece of information and then moving onto another was difficult.

HyperText and the World Wide Web

Information was structured in a hierarchy. If you wanted to see a paper written by Dr. Joe, you need to figure out which database that paper was stored in. You then needed type in commands and credentials to view it, typically in raw text. Let’s say that Joe referenced a report that his colleague John wrote and it was stored in another database. In order to access this report, you’d then need to connect to that database, type in some commands to find the paper and then it might show it to you using another program. The Internet facilitated the sharing of information but you can see from this example that there was no unified way to show it to you.

Berner-Lee’s document proposed a unified way to show information to the user and a way for users to reference other information easily. Information did not need to rely on a hierarchy anymore. All information could “link” to other information and to each other and there was finally a unified way for computers to show this information. This invention, combined with domain name registration and TCP/IP (both being emergent technologies in the 80s) gave birth to the World Wide Web as we know it.

It’s free

In my opinion, the most important line of this proposal is this: “to provide the software for the above free of charge to anyone.” Lee was working at CERN and therefore, all intellectual property developed there belonged to CERN. This included the Hypertext Transfer Protocol, HTML and the browser developed by Lee. If CERN and Lee followed conventional software development wisdom, they would have charged royalties for any institution or individuals using it.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee could have been rich beyond his wildest dreams but insisted that his work by released into the public domain. This is huge. By doing this, new industries were created.

If it weren’t for this document (and its eventual implementation), companies like Google, YouTube and Facebook would never have been created. Blogs like mashable.com, gawker.com, smashingmagazine.com and your favourite site featuring pictures of cats would never have been possible.

A few notes

Technically speaking, Lee drafted his first memo on Hypertext in March of 1989. His boss wrote “vague but exciting…” on this draft but didn’t let him follow through with his idea. It wasn’t until Robert Cailliau, rewrote and submitted the draft in November 12^th 1990 that they were able to receive approval and funds to actually start the project.

This September, Amalgam Design earned the honour of redesigning the homepage for World Vision Canada’s website. World Vision Canada is one of Canada’s largest charities with annual revenues in excess of $300M. More than half a million children are sponsored by Canadians through this amazing organization.

The challenge of the redesign was to maintain the focus the website’s primary goal, driving child sponsorship, while providing visitors easy access to World Vision Canada’s other marketing and advocacy programs.

“Our team worked with World Vision to define the goals of the site and strategize what content should be included and what shouldn’t and how their audience would be best served,” explains our Digital Demigod, Adam Hadley.

Design Ninja Sandra Smith adds, “We wanted to strongly brand them and the blue is one of their secondary corporate colours that doesn’t get alot of airtime. We wanted to use the easily recognized World Vision orange but we didn’t want the whole site to be saturated with it. The emphasis had to be on the children that are being helped through the organization.”

We wanted to add more dimension to the site and made the content boxes rounded and added a drop shadow to them. The menu hovers include more shading to refine the shape. We added web fonts, a reasonably new technology that really makes websites pop by not being restricted to standard system fonts.  We put the design on a standard grid to streamline the look. Lastly, we added a Twitter feed to support World Vision Canada’s social media efforts.

Earlier this year, World Vision Canada began working with Amalgam Design to produce the digital version of Childview, a quarterly magazine which is the flagship communication to child sponsors and donors. Amalgam Design also developed a social media strategy for them that has helped to increase World Vision Canada’s Facebook fans by 48% and their Twitter followers by an astounding 369% in just 6 months. Subsequent editions of Childview have followed and later this week we’ll be launching another major online project. Click here to view the new World Vision Canada homepage.

More and more, Canadian charities are trusting Amalgam Design to drive their brand and achieve their online goals. We have extensive experience with fundraising microsites, SEO, social media, email campaigns and virtual catalogs. With over 40 years of combined digital marketing experience, Amalgam Design is your online superhero! Read more about our digital services for charities. If you’re ready to find out how Amalgam Design can help you achieve our online fundraising and advocacy goals click here to contact us.

Do you write your website content to rank on page 1 of Google or do you write it to drive sales from your visitors? Don’t worry. I’m here to tell you that you can have your cake, and get your fork, because you can eat it too.

It is absolutely possible to write website content that ranks well in search engines and sells like a dream. The key is planning and achieving a perfect balance between the two objectives.

Let’s start with how to write for search engines.

If you’ve done any research into SEO, you’ve learned that in order to rank high in Google, you need good content. But what does that mean? It means volume, quality and lots of juicy keywords.

Start at the Beginning: Listing Your Keywords

Before you do anything else, create your list of keywords. A “keyword” is a word or term that customers are likely to use in a search when looking for your business. Don’t go crazy. Choose your “Big 5”, the top five terms you’d love to rank for.

For example, I want Amalgam Design’s Search Engine Optimization landing page to rank when business owners are looking to optimize their company websites. The keywords I want to rank for might be: Search Engine Optimization Toronto, SEO company, SEO firm, Search Engine Optimization agency Canada, and Google ranking.

Don’t forget to include location keywords (Toronto, Ontario, Canada, etc.) because customers search on location. If I’m looking for a plumber, if I don’t put “Toronto” in my search terms, the #1 result could be from Texas. Google has recently updated its search to always provide location based results (it knows where you live), but users still put cities and countries in their search terms so you should include them in your content.

When I’m writing content for a website, I put my keywords in a list and keep them at the top of my draft as I’m writing. This reminds me of what terms to lace into the copy. I write as naturally as possible, writing what I want to say about the product or service and I periodically reread my keyword terms. Where possible, I’ll use a full keyword phrase in the copy, and if I can’t do that, I’ll add an extra word into the content to achieve better ranking.

For example, if I’ve written the sentence, “Amalgam Design offers SEO as part of our web design services,” I might edit it to say, “Amalgam Design offers search engine optimization for Google as part of our SEO web design services.” In this case, it didn’t break the flow of the sentence too much and I was able to insert 2 more keywords into my copy.

Try to keep keyword terms together whenever possible but consider splitting them into single words where you can because Google looks at your entire page of content. That is, if I can’t fit “Toronto SEO company” naturally into my copy, it’s okay to just say “Toronto” as long as “SEO” and “company” are also somewhere else on the page.

Don’t forget that questions can be keywords. Many users treat Google like an oracle and may enter “How do I make my website rank in Google?” as their search terms. Consider making questions part of your content but remember that questions don’t communicate the solution which is what you are trying to sell, so use them sparingly.

Where to Use Your Keywords

Google puts more emphasis on headings and links than on body text. Consider working your keywords into your headings and menu links where you can as well as your meta titles. I don’t just say “Services” when I can say “SEO Services”.

Don’t bother filling your keywords meta tags with your favourites because all major search engines ignore this meta tag as a result of abuse. Similarly, search engines don’t care what you put in your meta description but users sure do (this is the blurb that shows up in your Google listing) so make it as sales driven as possible! The only meta tag that Google cares about is the meta title (the title that shows up at the top of your browser window).

Don’t Stuff It, Sell It

Yes, you are writing your content with search engines in mind, but you must always write your content for users, not for bots. Why? Because you could drive an army of users to your site through SEO but you’ve accomplished nothing if they don’t buy anything.

This is why you should never use keyword stuffing to rank. Keyword stuffing is a popular SEO tactic where you use as many of your keywords as many times as possible in a paragraph. This copy is clearly not written for users and can be confusing to potential customers.

Using our Toronto SEO company example, here’s what bad keyword stuffed content reads like: Toronto SEO company, Amalgam Design is an affordable Toronto SEO (search engine optimization) company that will get your website ranking in Google and other major search engines. A Toronto SEO company since 1999, Amalgam Design makes your website search engine optimized.

This kind of keyword spamming (or stuffing) works sometimes to achieve rank but certainly doesn’t sell anything to anybody and leaves your visitors wondering why you’re talking to them like they are an idiot.

Writing To Sell

Identifying your unique selling point is Marketing 101. So when you are writing sales copy for a website, you must keep that in the forefront.

With our Amalgam Design SEO company example, our unique selling point is that we are marketers, and can write killer sales copy and create beautiful designs that achieve awesome ranking in Google. So that has to drive my message.

Here is a rewrite of the previous example, this time using sales driven good keyword content: Amalgam Design is a Toronto based company that loves ethical SEO. We create stunning search engine optimized designs and use proven sales driven content to get you ranking in Google and other major search engines.

While, technically, the first example uses the keywords more often, Google finds keyword stuffing fishy and my primary goal is to convince potential customers that they should hire us.

Know Where To Draw the Line

Customers always win. If it becomes clear that I have to choose between writing for a customer and writing for Google, I’ll always err on the side of sales. I’ll choose a pithy heading over a keyword laden one any day. Why? Because clients like it. There are many marketing channels driving users to our website. While search may be the biggest, it hurts our overall revenue if in the end we’re nothing more than Google groupies.

Search engines update themselves all the time, changing what they look for in a good site. If you create your site for users, you’ll never be left holding a bag of useless, outdated tricks.

I got no love for Yellow Pages. Anyone who knows me knows not to get me started. The Yellow Pages print book serves its purpose, on some level or another, or at least my dad likes it. I must admit, even I crack it open once every year or two but that’s only because so many of my local businesses haven’t clued into how awesome Google Maps is and have yet to list themselves on it.

The noise in the other room

The noise in the other room is the sound of print dying. Don’t mind him. He’s been dying for years. We all saw it coming but he wouldn’t listen. He kept insisting he was still relevant while we warned him to devise a back up plan. And now he’s in his final death rattle and when he comes a-callin’ asking for my advertising money, I always ask him the same question, “What have you got for me online?”

Too many print organizations are trying to transfer their print business models to the web and are dismayed when they don’t succeed. Yellowpages.ca is guilty of this in 3 major ways.

1. One year contract? Exsqueeze me? It’s not permanently “out there” the way the print book is. If your online service is any good, prove it by letting me try it for 3-6 months before I commit.
2. Showing my print ad as my online listing. Online is not print. A print ad scanned and put on a web page is illegible and uncrawlable to search engines.
3. Charging me by location. They over complicate their model and their rates are anything but competitive when I need to pay separately for each neighbourhood I want to be listed in.

My bone to pick

Most of our clients find the Internet a little bit overwhelming and all its opportunities more than a little confusing. As a result, I feel that the people who work in the industry have an obligation to be as clear and up front about their offering as possible. My contention with YellowPages.ca is that they obfuscate the facts, taking advantage of the lay person. I realize that’s a bold thing to say, but as I mentioned, I got no love.

Of all the things on the Internet, nothing seems to confuse people more than SEO (search engine optimization). It’s a magic word. If you use it, you can convince people of anything because they know they want it but aren’t entirely sure how to get it. So when Yellowpages.ca claims to be partners with Google and says that paying for a listing with their online directory increases your SEO, it seems like a win-win.

Organizations claiming to be “partners” with Google make my head blow up

When the sales package I was faxed (yes, FAXED) from Yellowpages.ca had a Google logo in it and claimed they were partners, I asked the sales representative to clarify.

He stuttered a little and when I followed up by asking if I would see the Yellow Pages logo on a Google.ca page he flat out didn’t know what to say. That’s because web stuff can be confusing. And he didn’t know his own product because the people in charge had made it more confusing than it needed to be.

The vague wording in the sales package implied that Yellow Pages had a special relationship with Google which enabled your Yellow Pages ad to be advertised in Google’s sponsored listings for a small additional fee. On top of that, your Yellow Pages ad would rank organically better in Google.

Sigh.

How Yellow Pages uses Google’s sponsored listings

Here’s a quote from Google’s Philosophy page on the Google website: Advertising on Google is always clearly identified as a “Sponsored Link,” so it does not compromise the integrity of our search results. We never manipulate rankings to put our partners higher in our search results and no one can buy better PageRank.

The truth is, if you pay them extra, Yellow Pages will run a sponsored listings campaign in Google on your behalf driving traffic to your Yellow Pages ad.

The Pros: If you don’t have the first clue how to run a sponsored listings campaign and can’t afford someone who can, this is a great way to get presence in Google’s Adwords for a reasonable amount of money.

The Cons: Yellow Pages is using your money to advertise themselves. Notice how they aren’t driving traffic to your website, but to their ad? What’s more, if you haven’t paid for a live link to your website, your advertising money is flapping in the wind. And the part that really cheeses me, if Google users are interested in your ad and click on the sponsored listing, you still pay for the click but it’s Yellow Pages’ page ranking which increases.

How your Yellow Pages listing impacts your page ranking

Does listing in Yellowpages.ca improve your SEO? Yes. But so does listing in Canpages.ca and Toronto.com and any other high ranking business directory. Google collects information about your website from everywhere. The more times it sees your business listed the more credibility you have. Especially if your listing is surrounded by lots of juicy keywords. In other words, directories where you get to submit a description of your business and your website link are ideal.

The Pros: Yellowpages.ca has a good page rank so being listed with them is one more notch in your SEO belt.

The Cons: The link to your website is indirect so it doesn’t count as one of your high ranking backlinks (which is kind of the point). Yellowpages.ca shows the image of your ad online (if you bought one) which is useless to search engines. All those relevant keywords are no where to be found and the only thing Google learns from Yellowpages.ca about your business is your address. This would explain why the SEO for yellowpages.ca itself sucks. Type any business category into Google (example “accountant Toronto”) and see if yellowpages.ca shows up on the first page. It doesn’t because the Yellow Pages site contains no relevant content.

My advice on choosing a directory

Most industries have online directories specific to them that rank well in organic searches. Try anything once. Track your results. Review your analytics (your web traffic sources) and make sure to always ask how customers heard about you. Pay close attention to your traffic on the day a print ad runs and assume any increase is from that.

For every marketing channel, take the number of click throughs and divide it by the money you spent on the channel. If a product is good, it delivers good results: solid traffic for a reasonable cost. What’s a reasonable cost? We like anything around $2 per click but it differs from business to business. If the click is highly targeted and likely to convert (result in a sale), you can pay significantly more. If you are in the double digits (or, God help you, triple digits) for a channel, you can certainly do better.