Queen Bee Marketing’s Blog About Marketing, SEO, and Design.

While on Digg today, I came across a blog post that made me think about all of the SEO misconceptions out there today. The post was titled “10 things you should know before submitting your website to Google.” Some of the advice was actually decent, but I’m not sure how some one can learn about SEO with out learning that submitting your site to Google is pointless. It makes it hard for other people who are trying to learn to know what is good advice and what isn’t. So here are a few of the myths I constantly hear:

1. Submitting (and resubmitting) your site to the major search engines is the only way to become indexed.
This is just a waste of time. All you need is one link from a site that is already indexed to your site and the search engines will find you.

2. SEO = SPAM.
Sure there are spammy SEO’s out there who are ruining the name for the rest of us. But SEO is about making your site easy to find and easy to use, not spamming people’s e-mail inbox or stuffing keywords on a page.

3. META Tags are what the search engines look at to rank my site.
Maybe this used to be the case, but not anymore. It won’t help your site to stuff 20 million keywords into the keywords META tag. The only use for META tags that I’ve seen is when a search engine displays the content in the tags in their SERPs.

4. “We guarantee rankings because we have a ’special relationship’ with Google”
There’s no such thing as a company that has a special relationship with Google. We actually got a call last week from a company claiming they had a relationship with Google, but could not tell us exactly how they intended to get the results they promised.

5. “Guaranteed” top placement in search engines.
There are no guarantees when it comes to SEO. Algorithms can change, competitors could increase their SEO efforts, etc. There are too many variables to guarantee a placement in the search engines.

6. SEO is a one-time thing.
If you look at SEO as a continual process you’ll be much more successful. Adding content regularly, promoting your site, and becoming established in your niche’s online community will have far more long-term benefits than thinking about SEO as a one time project.

7. Gaining PageRank is the most important goal.
Instead of focusing on PageRank, focus on what you actually want to achieve with your site. Visitors? Leads? Customers? Set goals that will help you or your company instead of getting wrapped up in what your PageRank is.

What other myths do you hear?

Cassi

I can see it now, way after the fact.

Who would have thought: simply design a search engine that returns results based on how everyone else views or “votes” on your site? Democratic voting on which sites mean the most relevant information. Blue is blue today, but blue may mean “light-blue, dark-blue, or any combination” tomorrow (based on what we, the population interested in blue, decide!)

Just like a report, newspaper article, or any other informative article. It’s what we decide it is. Kinda scary, especially when you look at all the “history revisionists” out there, i.e., the recent debate about whether the Holocaust took place, or not. wow.

Point being, the search engines (I’m referring primarily to Google) wish to return your search based on what you’re looking for. If you’re looking for the “joke of the day,” I bet you find a ton of joke websites. If you’re looking for “soy candles,” chances are you’ll find sites containing info about soy candles as well as sites that offer soy candles for sale. The algorithms keep getting more and more advanced. But it REALLY does make sense, and it’s based on the way we’ve looked for and found information and resources for hundreds of years. Everything from finding a business in the Yellow Pages to finding the proper spelling of a word (I use Google as my spell-checker now.- My spelling skills decrease as I grow older! Wow.)

So if we try to “guess” what Google is up to, or any other search engine for that matter, I think I have a clue: look at the habits of humans over the past thousand years and you’ll probably have a good guess as to how Google is trying to improve it’s engine: Great results, ethical results, fast and easy.

What else could they be doing?

Till next time,

Chris

Everyone thinks that when they graduate from college they know everything they’ll need to know to go out into the “real world.” Since graduating last May I’ve found that just isn’t the case. I graduated from Purdue with a degree in Visual Communications Design. Basically, Print (and some Web) design (logos, brochures, letterheads, etc.). Below are a few of the things I’ve learned since then.

1. Just because you build it, that doesn’t mean they will come.
Despite having 2 semesters of “web design” I was never taught about traffic/conversion. In the last several months I have been learning everything I can about SEO/SEM and on-line marketing in general. Even though I was taught how to design a visually appealing Web site in school, there was no mention of how to get people to come to the site.

2. Good design doesn’t always sell.
In school the final goal of a project was to have a well designed item. But in the real world of Marketing, the final goal is to get the audience to do something. Buy something, contact you, etc. I’ve had to learn how to make something look nice but also fulfill it’s purpose successfully.

3. Don’t let technology leave you behind.
While I was in school I only wanted to focus on traditional print design. I always said that print design was never going away so I would never be out of a job. That may be true, but I quickly realized that if I really wanted to succeed I’d have to keep up with newer technologies and continue expanding my skill set.

Cassi

The human mind is complex.  I’ve heard we only use 10% of our brain.  What goes on with the other 90%?  Maybe that’s where the urges come from to eat Nachos, start businesses, and watch The Man Show.  oh well…

Anyway, anyone who owns a site that’s supposed to attract leads or convert sales quickly learns the challenges of conversion.  For example, we made several changes to our site www.zionsvillecandlecompany.com in January.  We were converting 5% in November and December, and then dropped to a .5% after the changes.  Some of my associates pointed out the “seasonality” of candles, and that we should expect it to be slow in January.  I wasn’t satisfied with this, so after researching further, we decided to move the three variables in our control back to the way they were in December.  Guess what?  Our conversion quickly jumped to 2.5%.  Sure, not quite 5%, but at least I’ve isolated part of the drop to the actual seasonality. 

This caused me to start researching multi-variable software.  We only changed three things on our site in January, but combined with the seasonality variable, this still created (2^4) or 16 combinations of variables (if I remember my college finite course.) 

So if you’re short on patience (as I am,) start looking for multi-variable software OR, only change one variable at a time!

 See ya on the Dark Side…

Chris

We’re starting to get our pay per click data back this week from our first Indy-based seo/web design campaigns. Some VERY interesting data. First, the cost per click was over $2.25 for an above-fold placement. Second, there was only a combined total of less than 100 searches over the past week for some fairly (normally) competitive keywords.

So I guess I’m quickly formulating a few theories. 1) the seo/web design companies that are savvy about ppc’s are willing to spend decent dollars on ppc leads, and 2) there’s virtually NO traffic from companies wishing to use the net to help with their web/trafffic issues.

Now I’ll dive further. I’m willing to bet that a) there’s a huge education issue with companies not even knowing what they’re losing by not becoming internet savvy, and b) these companies are going to lose a ton of revenue trying to “catch-up” over the next five years.

Many of our clients and associates are feeling the pinch of losing business to companies with strong web presence. It’s weird, but these clients look like deer in the headlights when it comes to jumping in and making the web a revenue source.

So now we’re trying to design a marketing campaign to 1) reach our “ideal customers,” and 2) educate these potential customers as to why it is in their best interest to invest in a web presence.

I’m going to keep working the ppc and organic side for now, and I’ll report back if I uncover any decent impression terms!

Greetings from Zionsville, Indiana and Queen Bee Marketing.   Come on in and have a seat, we’ll pour you a cup of java and put another log on the fire (it’s cold here this time of year…)

We can talk about anything and everything, but we’ll probably end-up talking about s.e.o., the latest Google Dance, whether or not reciprocal links will get us banned, and the future of the web in general.

OK, we also need to find out why Yahoo can be so slow in giving us any organic love.  And maybe even if Page Rank is dead.

But let’s keep it clean and safe, and I’m sure we’ll all have a great time.

So again, welcome to Queen Bee, to our Buzz Blog, and remember, you get more customers with honey than vinegar (booooo).

Yours,

Chris Anderson