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Triumph of the WhoDat Nation, The Saints & New Orleans

Who dat?

Who dat?

Who dat say dey gonna beat dem saints?

#whodat – from Maitri

The above is my best approximation of the phonetic for the entire “Who Dat” chant. Who Dat, used to be a very personal, private New Orleans thing. I was in New York a few weeks ago visiting my mother and she asked “What’s this ‘Who Dat?’ thing all about”?.

And yes, I use my mother as my barometer for ubiquity. For instance, when my mother’s on Facebook everyone is on Facebook.

The New Orleans Saints have been a source of pride and frustration for the city of New Orleans since their founding 40-some years ago. I did not grow up in New Orleans but have lived here better than half my life and New Orleans is my home and the Saints are my team.

“Who Dat?” was a direct opposition to the “Ain’ts” contingent who would go to the games with bags on their heads for shame.

The Saints are making our city proud, and the nation is screaming Who Dat?

Sorry Indianapolis, this wasn’t your year.

But what is this symbolic of really? It’s symbolic of a New New Orleans – the kind of New Orleans which is nurturing of Entrepreneurship. The kind of New Orleans where we have a Mayor’s race with nearly a dozen candidates with many great options.

And then, this. The best belated Christmas present imaginable. Better than 100 golden King Cake babies. The New Orleans Saints have brought it home for the WhoDat Nation and won the Super Bowl.

This surely bodes well.

Isn't that just awesome?

Now That's a New Orleans Saints Fan

Shame on you NFL.

Shame on you NFL

February 8, 2010
Facebook Advertising Delivers Low Cost Per Lead
In the middle of August we started testing Facebook Advertising for one of our plastic surgeon clients. The surgeon wanted to reach potential tummy tuck and breast augmentation patients. We selected a number of stock images and loaded the ads. However, Facebook rejected all of our ads (The Downsides) because they did not follow the Facebook advertising guidelines.

Facebook Advertising Early Lessons

This was a shock to me, the surgeon and the 5 other people who saw the Facebook advertising mockups, because we thought we used:
- relevant and appropriate images and language
- correct grammar
- spelling and punctuation
- proper sentence structure
- and targeted the ads appropriately
After trying many Facebook ad combinations, I realized Facebook was rejecting the images, so we decided to try the practices’ logo instead.

Facebook Advertising Effectiveness

Is facebook advertising effective? I had run an unsuccessful Facebook advertising campaign in early 2008 that turned out to be a waste of money!

So, I wasn’t very optimistic going into the campaign. We decided to start out by testing $150 in August. After several days of looking at the impressions, click through rate and cost, I was still discouraged. However, when I logged into Google Analytics, I noticed that Facebook was referring a decent percentage of the sites visitors and these visitors were completing contact forms at a very high rate. At the end of August, I calculated that of the almost $150 spent in August on Facebook Ads, there were 11 completed forms, which is about a $13.63 cost per lead.

Facebook Advertising ROI

WOW! A $14 cost per lead for plastic surgery is amazing! So, for September we decided to increase the budget to $200. Again, I noticed a lot of activity in September and, as of Sept 30th, Facebook advertising had referred 17 completed forms for a total cost per lead of $11.76.

Overall, $350 was spent on Facebook ads and 28 contact forms were completed during August and September, averaging a total of $12.50 cost per lead.

I am pleasantly surprised at how well it all worked, and I am very excited to explore more Facebook advertising opportunities in the future!

—

Related Posts:
- Facebook Marketing – Sneaky, Subversive, Effective!
January 28, 2010
Duplicate Content: Bad News for Rankings

Recently, I received the phone call that no one in SEO ever wants to receive. In a nutshell, our clients’ site had completely fallen off the rankings. I, of course, began scrambling for what could have possibly happened within a week- the final result…..duplicate content! (Disclaimer: We did not place duplicate content up. It was a franchise site.)

Acceptable Reasons for Duplicate Content

Duplicate content is not looked upon highly by Google, and can either hurt your rankings or make them disappear completely. According to Google Webmaster Tools, there are a few places duplicate content is acceptable.

– Discussion forums that can generate both regular and stripped-down pages targeted at mobile devices

– Store items shown or linked via multiple distinct URLs

– Printer-only versions of web pages

Ways to Correct Duplicate Content

If you come across an instance that could be duplicate content, here are some actions that can be taken to prevent it.

– 301 Redirects: redirect all of your duplicate pages to one page. The duplicate content and redirected URLs will work themselves out in Google.

– Robots.txt: Place this in your code on the pages you don’t want Google to index. In the case of the printable text, place it on those pages.

– Rewrite Content: If you have two sites that work together for one business, then edit one site so that the content reads the same, but will be indexed differently. You can also put a small blurb on one site and link to the site with all of the information.

Various methods exist to correct duplicate content based on different scenarios. A great article I found when researching was in the Google Webmaster Tools. The easiest way to manage duplicate content is to avoid overusing.

January 26, 2010
Is it really important to get on the Google map? and … How does a SMB get on the Google Map?

One of the first road blocks we often have to get around is the belief that the Google Local 7-Pack map listing is the “whole enchilada.”

Yeah, the Google 7-Pack is definitely a positive listing for a local business, gets your listing featured at the top of the page with your primary competition. It’s good stuff, sure. This is not an exact quote, but it comes from Steve Espinosa: “With a #1 map ranking and #1 organic ranking, organic get’s 1.8 times the traffic.” Of a potential 100% combined traffic, 30% would come from the map listing.

A presence on the Google map is NOT going to guarantee a flood of new business to your door. It’s NOT going to guarantee total search domination.

Bottom line: it is absolutely valuable to get listed on the Google map for your primary local keyword … but it should not be the total focus of your website promotion efforts.

(Some good reading: “Google Making More Pronounced Effort to Reach SMBs”)

Sooo … how do you get your listing on the Google 7-Pack?

#1 – go Google yourself: Find your listing as it exists in Google Maps; then claim it as your own, and edit the listing with as much data as you can provide to Google. This is the good stuff. Add as much as you can about your business. Browsers searching for your widget want to know when you’re open, what payments you accept, and what your building looks like or what YOU look like. Add pictures. Add videos. Add everything – even the kitchen sink!

And choose your category carefully. David Mihm: “Properly categorizing your business at Google Maps is one of the most important Local Search Ranking Factors.”

When you get to the verification page, (yeah! the verifications page! you’re coming up to the finish line!) you can get a postcard mailed to your business or have a phone call. I highly recommend the phone call. It’s immediate so it might take a little coordinating with the client’s front line person answering the phone, but it’s well worth it because you’re done in 5 minutes. A post card takes WEEKS to get to the office if it arrives at all: Here is an on-going Google forum for some folks not receiving verification post cards. They are still waiting…

January 21, 2010
Your Designer Does Not Do SEO

Have you ever asked your mechanic to reupholster your seats? Have you asked your aesthetician to give you a face lift? Probably not and with good reason. It isn’t their job. There may be mechanics out there who know a lot about upholstery and some who can actually do it. I’m sure somewhere out there there is an aesthetician who knows all about plastic surgery but that doesn’t mean they are qualified to perform it.  I thought it was funny the first time I saw a clause in a designer’s contract stating that they are not IT and will not teach HTML to the recipient of site design.  The longer I’ve been in the industry the more I understand why.

Too Many Hats Lead to a Sore Neck

We see this reoccurring problem of people assuming that search engine optimization and marketing are the same as good design or coding.  Admittedly, there is a gray area.  A nice cross over exists somewhere between W3C compliance, proper use of H1 tags and whether to use bold or strong. For the most part, web design and search engine optimization and marketing are two different jobs and functions.

I see three major problems with this. The first problem is what I like to call the “Cliff notes pro syndrome.” A company buys a book something like “SEO for (fill in adjective of inexperienced individual)” and they now have in-house SEO.  Everyone should study complementary trades on their own. A book or class however does not provide new trade credentials. Daily steady practice does. So, unless your designer is Jarod from The Pretender and can execute on anything they read as if they’ve been practicing since birth then one book does not provide in-house SEO.  There is a difference between understanding it and practicing it.

The second issue, focusing on freelance designers can be seen in this comment “our designer did a good job we don’t need that.” I love this one. It’s like saying “my car’s well made… no oil changes for me.”  Optimization isn’t a one shot deal. It’s an ongoing development like any good marketing effort .

The third flaw in this logic is the first step in proper optimization – strategy. Planning and strategy are fundamental in the success of search optimization as it is in any business plan or marketing campaign. If you don’t identify your goal and plan the road to get there your success is probably going to be about as nonexistent as that strategy. Chances are your designer did not spend time doing a competitive analysis and determining the best way to reach your target demographic.  This would be essential for any SEO to help steer you down the path.   It’s always best to have a designer and an SEO work in tandem from the beginning.

January 19, 2010
Practical Ways to Combat Potential Negative Publicity

I am super excited! After weeks and weeks of searching, I finally found the red, snakeskin platform pumps I have been looking for! Of course, before I make the purchase (and part with that amount of money for a pair of shoes), the first thing I do is Google them and look at customer reviews to see what other users have to say…”Worst shoes ever bought”…”Heel broke after one wear”…”Leather stretched”…”Strap punctured”. Shockingly, they are all negative!

WOW! This company truly needs some online reputation management. Online reputation management is simply the process of monitoring a brand online, dealing with anything negative and understanding how to be pro-active to prevent negative content. The tactics are mostly used by companies to pro-actively protect their reputation from damaging content found online, unfortunately some companies use online reputation management to reactively “fix” the damage that is already done.

Reputation management is more important than ever in how your company is positively or negatively perceived. Think about the popularity of search engines, emerging social media and blogging. These things make it easier than ever for the public to voice their opinions – good or bad – to a very large group of people.

So, how can you maintain control of your online presence? Here are 4 ways:

1. Create new pages to rank higher

In other words, create positive content to replace negative content. This will help push any negative content further down.

2. Create pages on other sites

Set up a lens on Squidoo and send some links back to it. Start a blog on wordpress.com or blogger.com. Keep up with posts, add some links and watch it climb. Set up social networking profiles on Facebook, Twitter, Linked In or My Space.

3. Respond to the issue if a blog or forum post

One day, someone is going to find the page so why not respond. If the person is genuinely upset, don’t get defensive, just apologize and try to resolve the issue. If the post is false, contact the site, even though there is no guarantee it will be removed.

4. Encourage happy customers to post positive reviews.

It is not as motivating to make a happy customer leave a review, as it is an irate customer. Make it easy for them to share their experience. Offer a link to a review site in e-mails to your customers, and perhaps even some sort of incentive.

The above four ways are a great start to managing your online presence. There is always something that can be done to work on this. Take the time to find where your company is mentioned or listed, and be sure to check back every so often. Reputation management isn’t a one-time thing, it’s an ongoing process!

January 14, 2010
Online Reviews Rule With Google’s Sidewiki

The reason testimonials and reviews are so powerful is because they provide a third-party (and hopefully, unbiased) opinion of what actual users think about products and services. Google knows this and considers reviews and citations an important factor in local search rankings.

Studies have shown that not only do long customer stories (2.5 times longer than reviews) lead to increased, more relevant search results, but increasing website interactivity with fresh, real-world content like customer questions and answers can increase sales conversions and lower customer service costs. For some business owners online reviews have become far more useful than the traditional print yellow pages and savvy business owners have figured out proactive ways to use online review sites.

But there are concerns that Google is now trying to dominate the local search landscape with new developments, some of which place user reviews at the heart of their new features. Google’s new browser add-on called “Sidewiki” allows anyone to contribute comments about any web page. According to Google, Sidewiki entries use an algorithm that promotes the most useful, high-quality entries. It takes into account feedback from users, previous entries made by the same author and many other signals developed.

How Google uses these entries to rank web pages remains to be seen, but most marketers agree that the impacts of this are far reaching, because it includes every web page on the internet in Google’s own social network, with consumer opinion – both positive and negative – displayed every time a user opens a web page. With this new feature, Google has shifted power firmly away from corporate web teams and placed it in the hands of the consumer.

The good thing is that Sidewiki entries are tied to a Google profile. There’s no guarantee that the profile isn’t bogus, but the advantage is that no anonymous entries are allowed. Also, Google will analyze language so that “stupid comments” are automatically discounted or removed.

Some marketers surmise that user profiles will be moderated by a quality algorithm, so more influential, active or powerful users, with more powerful Google Profiles or Personal PageRank, will have more influence in the comments. This is very likely the case, as measurements of Twitter influence have demonstrated in the past. It’s usually a small minority of influencers who create the most comments and influence the majority of users.

So how do businesses make use of this feature? The same way they bring newly-created linkbait to the notice of influential bloggers – by cultivating customer evangelists and monitoring social networks for influential voices and alerting them to content that is interesting and valuable. Sidewiki is just another way for Google to introduce a new feature of quality control into its already formidable algorithm and ensure that SEO and website promotion experts don’t get too complacent with their efforts.

January 12, 2010
Benchmarks for Plastic Surgery Marketing Online December 2009

Plastic Surgery Internet References Benchmark for December Shows Overall Decline of Less Than 17% from Spring – The Busiest Season of The Year

We work with a number of plastic surgeons and have the opportunity to really get a sense for their zeitgeist. Right now many of them are feeling a pinch – our review had, to this point, been anecdotal rather than analytical. Suffice it to say we knew there was a problem but didn’t know if it was a lack of traffic, or a lack of conversion (window shopping but no buying).

One of our clients has been prompting me for some time to start providing benchmarks within his category (where we have some depth) as a yardstick against which we could measure his success. And then, in conversation with another client this evening, the topic came up again as we were discussing a former client who is really suffering.

For our benchmark we decided to look only at Google organic ranking and to compare a very specific date range, specifically a comparison of December 2009 versus May 2009. This date range seemed appropriate given the seeming decline in traffic and business, and given December is an historically low month compared to May.

Throwing out the high and the low in our sample, we found that the average decline in the studied group was 16.4% May to December. This is not a surprising number given the seasonality of the profession but it at least gave us a benchmark.

And in all, it doesn’t explain the massive decline in the client who left and in some of our continuing clients.

Below are screenshots from Google Analytics of the comparison:

Clearly we’re only looking at one metric, but there are clear correlations between the right kind of traffic and revenue.

View the whole set of screenshots at flickr.

My thanks to Dr. Paul Parker a Plastic Surgeon specializing in breast augmentation. New Jersey patients should visit his site http://www.parkercenter.net/.

Thanks also to Dr. Roy Kim a Plastic Surgeon specializing in surgeries of the face and body including breast augmentation and tummy tuck. San Francisco patients should visit his site http://www.drkim.com/.

And the moral of the story is: If you’re a plastic surgeon and your traffic is up December over May, good on ya. Give those monkeys a banana.

If you’re down, don’t sweat it. +/- a few percentage points beyond the mean is no big deal.

If you’re down 40% or more, look out. It may be time to reevaluate the model. If you’re down 40% or more and your web people aren’t scrambling then definitely change course.

January 8, 2010
Will the Real Google Places Page, Please Stand Up, Please Stand Up?

Your Google listing and its Google Place page is a great central depository for all information about your business. It is the compilation of business owner provided data as well as user-generated reviews. The Place page is an incredibly valuable tool for a small or medium size business owner. The Places page URL is friendly to users, easy to share, and easy to find …

You will want to search for your company + geo modifier.

For example, “Search Influence, New Orleans, LA” will get me here:

When I click on “More information,” I land on the business’ Google map listing with all manner of data that consumers love:

Click on “Link” in the upper right corner – it’s small, but it’s there – and the popup box indicates the Place page link:

Did all of that and still don’t find your Places link?

If you followed the steps above, and your Places link is not a friendly URL, your listing likely is not yet the authoritative one. It should look like the model – http://maps.google.com/places/us/city/name-st/#/-full-business-name –

The first thing you need to do, is look for other listings in your business name. These can be …

1) another business squatting on your company name (dirty dogs!)

2) forgotten listings that are simply duplications:

Either way the least authoritative listing needs to be suspended in the Google Local Business Center to make the real listing stand up. To paraphrase the immortal word of Eminem, “Will the real Google listing, please stand up, please stand up, please stand up?”

If you don’t have duplicate listings on any variation of the name or duplicates on address, you should try to manually create the Places page using the standardized format per Mike Blumenthall:

http://maps.google.com/places/us/city/name-st/#/-full-business-name

Watch for derivatives of Street, St, Lane, Ln, etc.

It may take a little of your time to get it straight in Google Local Business Center, but to be the authority on your Google map listing and to own your friendly Places page URL is invaluable to a small business, and well worth a little effort.

January 7, 2010
The Pros and Cons of Google Place Pages

Google’s idea of giving small businesses their own page through their project, Place Pages for Google Maps, has got local search buzzing with the SEO implications of this move for small business websites. Could Place Pages provide competition in the SERPS for the small business website? It’s possible. Will they be bad for business? That’s not so clear.

For one, a business without a high ranking or optimized website would benefit from the obvious boost of having Google display “all the information for that place in one place” on its very own Place Page. On the other hand, the fact that Place Pages also provide user-generated content, in the form of reviews, has just made the task of online reputation management that much harder.

Local businesses put a lot of stock in review sites like Yelp to boost their local search rankings in Google, and Place Pages are likely to provide significant competition to Yelp, especially since it seems to be pulling information – on everything from hours of operation to a restaurant’s price range – from sources such as Citysearch and Zagat, but not from Yelp.

Some bloggers have noted that Place Pages could become a powerhouse for local business owners and users, as well as the go-to pages for numerous facts about all kinds of places. Will they encourage more local businesses to claim their listings? Google believes they will.

Since Place Pages are likely to have a unique URL, it’s possible they will be indexed in the organic results. As one blogger observed, Google’s obsession with testing landing pages has ensured that Place Pages double up as well-optimized landing pages.

Contrary to the fears that Place Pages will eliminate the need for small business websites, we believe they will only complement our optimization efforts. As far as business benefits and search listings go, Google has just offered local business owners another avenue to reach their customer, and that can’t be all bad.

Since it seems inevitable that Place Pages will have a significant presence in the search listings, it would seem wise to use them to “leverage advanced image and video tagging, push Barnacle SEO to a new level and leverage the heck out of them” to claim a bigger slice of the local search pie.

If you’re a local business owner, providing Google with information for your Place Page can only facilitate your overall business goals of reaching out to your customer. Whether you require the help of an SEO firm to achieve this, or not, Place Pages will involve more, not less, work for local SEO firms.

January 5, 2010