SEO and Social Media

You know the Old Spice social media campaign that exploded in the end of July?  Lots of online views, and low ROI (well, according to the preliminary reports from outside of the Old Spice camp).  I’ve read enough articles calling this a failure for the low impact to revenue.  Whether true or not***, all I know is that Old Spice, which I always considered (for whatever reason) a low quality, old fashioned product, is now on my radar.  This is momentum, and this is a rare gem today.  A lot of marketing fails to gain any attention at all.  When you succeed, and cut through some noise, consider that a success.  Now, in 2010, you need to ‘level up’ on that success, or you might as well have not even tried.  Some success isn’t enough success.

SEO is marketing and branding, too.  Getting routine rankings for similar queries helps the searcher buy into your brand.  Your customers spend a lot of time in Google.  Typically more unique visitors come to your site from a Google search than any other medium.  Maybe you’re not getting the sales you’re hoping for from natural search, but you may be building your mindshare just by appearing frequently in the search engine result pages.  A lot of searchers trust Google.  If Google constantly shows your webpage to the same searcher, the perception may be that Google knows something you don’t know.  A lot of people actually think that Google ranks based on traffic and popularity.  Whatever the reason, that semi-conscious thought goes a long way in online marketing.  It could even influence offline foot traffic or sales through your other online marketing channels.  With good rankings comes good brand visibility.

My goal isn’t to convince you to ignore ROI in SEO (or any online marketing), but I do want to help you think about it differently if you’re one of the people who say, “my campaign failed because it didn’t turn a profit.”  I want you to remember that marketing is more than just immediate sales.  Sales is an important piece dependent on the components of your strategy.  Brands that concentrate on branding do so because they know the value.  Just because we’re online with amazing abilities to cookie and track, doesn’t mean we should forget the original definition of marketing and branding.

As a postscript, and as far as Old Spice goes, I was walking through the grocery store last week.  I did stop and pause at the deodorant.  I didn’t need any.  But I was semi-consciously influenced, and I this time I caught it.  If Old Spice keeps up their momentum, I might stop next and buy when I am in the market for deodorant.  If they don’t keep it up, that stop may have been it for me.

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***Update – Per the beginning of this article, it looks like the reports I was reading of low ROI for the Old Spice campaign have been, well, wrong.  Hard stats are in.  According to BrandWeek, Old Spice’s sales increased 107% over last month and 55% over the course of the past 3 months.  Nice.

Popularity: 34% [?]

How do you SEO a vending machine?  Turn it into a shopping mall.  Don’t just think of your ecommerce site as a shopping cart and content management tool – think of it as an experience for your customers.  Think of it as an establishment for your customers to find product information, lifestyle information, and learn a few things.  Think of it as a vessel for connecting customers with human beings – I don’t mean just through technology like IM, but via the content your writers produce.  When I think of sites that do it right, I think of sites that aren’t offer me choice.  They cross-sell without hesitation, but in a way that is useful and relevant.  They aren’t afraid to let me know what products don’t sell well, or get negatively reviewed.  They actually tell me what alternatives I might like instead.  They encourage me to come back with the size of their site, but with a comfortable navigation that gives me confidence in my next shopping experience.  They’re not afraid to link out to other sources if they don’t have the answer – even if it’s a competitor.  Search engines look at all this as customer value.  These are the sites they want to serve.

Which retailers am I talking about?  Well, three years ago I would have said Amazon.  Now, since I’ve become an almost complete online shopper (yes – I do my grocery shopping online), I’m noticing a lot more great retailers kicking up their experience.  Zappos, Barnes & Nobles, and Overstock are a few I hit lately.  There’s plenty more.

So this is a simple post with a simple message.  I like analogies.  I think they go a long way.  Ask yourself – is your site a vending machine?  If so, how are you going to change that?  If you don’t have the real estate on your machine now, build it.  Don’t worry so much about putting ROI to it – a lot of times that discourages a chance to really grow, despite how ’sensible’ and safe you think your paranoia is.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Google loves to test new features on small segments of users without announcement. In the past we’ve seen favicons show up in natural results, we’ve seen AJAX serving results to make listings a little more dynamic, and we’ve seen a social search component that lets users customize their search engine results page. Sometimes these experiments make it into production (for example, the latter became Search Wiki), and sometimes they fall off the Google grid.

A few months ago some lucky searchers found longer snippets being returned. On 3/24, Google announced that the longer snippets was now a reality. This is great news for businesses owners.

What’s a snippet?

The snippet is the little chunk of text that shows up under a listing in the search engine result pages. It’s not much bigger than a Twitter post, but is very valuable to searchers who are looking intently for answers, entertainment, or products. If the title of the webpage catches the searchers’ attention, they will often scan the snippet to validate whether the listing is worth clicking or not. When the keywords the user searched for are present in the snippet, they get bolded – this is an added bonus and a great attention grabber. Something about the bold text just lures searchers in – often semi-consciously!

Google documentation wants this snippet to be a summary of the content on the page. They say, “We frequently prefer to display meta descriptions of pages (when available) because it gives users a clear idea of the URL’s content. This directs them to good results faster and reduces the click-and-backtrack behavior that frustrates visitors and inflates web traffic metrics.” For all of these reasons, SEOs choose to write the meta descriptions carefully, embedding the keywords and messaging searchers are looking for in 155 characters or less.

So what happens if the meta description is deemed irrelevant or unworthy by Google’s algorithm? Or, if there’s simply no meta description found? Then Google will try to post content from the web page that it deems the best summary for the search query. Once in a while they’ll even reach out to the Open Directory Project for a description. Sometimes Google succeeds, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they overlook a great existing meta description for a terrible, algorithm determined alternative. Unfortunately in those cases, there’s nothing anyone can do put wait and pray that Google changes its mind down the line (though rewriting the meta description tag can sometimes influence Google). In the end, this is entirely at Google’s discretion.

Benefits of a Longer Snippet

The mighty powers that be at Google have decided for longer keyword searches, the user will benefit from additional lines of text in the snippet. This makes perfect sense. If the query is “Best Athletic Shoe Store For Women”, a longer snippet flushed with more detail could really help a searcher find what their looking for – not to mention improve the click-through rate and conversions. When the searcher is ultimately looking to buy a pair of shoes, our job as SEOs is to make sure our pages are recognized as the most relevant match – not just by Google, but by the user as well – and ultimately satisfy the searchers needs the first time. That’s where the magic happens. That’s where the sales are made. And that’s why a longer snippet is another great tool in our arsenal.

Read more about the longer snippet on Google’s Blog.

Google Showing Longer Snippets

Popularity: 40% [?]