The last session of SES Chicago Day 3 proved to be one helluva entertaining discussion on black hat, white hat SEO.  However while listening to the panel, I couldn’t help thinking about the 5:30 PM Chicago traffic and the 4-5 inches of snow that was expected (and had started!).

My recaps will include some useful tidbits that I picked up during day 2 of SES Chicago.  Tweets were made from @marketwire as well as my personal handle @shinng using the hashtag #seschi and #rt2eat.  So what is the meaning of the latter hashtag?  Well, the creative marketing team @marketwire wanted to give back for the holiday season so we decided to take advantage of the Marketwire presence.  For every ReTweet of our tweets that include the hashtags #seschi #rt2eat, Marketwire will be donating $1.00 per RT for a max contribution of $500 to benefit the Greater Chicago Food Depository.

SES Chicago Session – Black Hat, White Hat: Does it Really Matter Anymore?

Moderator:  Frank Watson (Kangamurra Media)
Speakers:  Rand Fishkin (SEOmoz.org), David Naylor (Bronco), Matthew Bailey (SES Advisory Board, Site Logic Marketing), Todd Friesen (Position Technologies), Bruce Clay (Bruce Clay, Inc)

This session was truly a roundtable.  It wasn’t as organized as the other sessions where one person presented with a powerpoint followed by another.   This session was more like the every-man-for-himself mentality, but considering it was the last session, that was a good thing.

The most memorable quotes are outlined below.

What is black hat SEO?

• Black hat is what’s prohibited by guidelines.
• When it comes to black hat, the only tactic left is buying links.
• Amateur SEO is keyword stuffing.
• Black hat SEO is the risk and fear of risk model.
• Black hat is aggressive link building.

Regarding spam…

• Spam and black hat aren’t one and the same.  When you’re playing cards, there are professional card players and there are card cheats.
• The definition of spam is, “What would Matt Cutts think?”  If you’re on your laptop and Matt Cutts walks behind you and you immediately close your laptop, you’re a spammer.
• Google should be thanking the black hats for finding all their holes and closing it up.
• The fundamental problem is that people don’t know when stuff is wrong.  Google hasn’t defined all the things that are wrong.
• Example: search for “flights to Chicago” on Google.  The first couple map listings are black hat SEO tactics.  (Notice the web address and redirection)

Is Google assessing intent?

• They can’t!

Do you think the Google public DNS is going to have an affect on the web?

• It gives Google a lot more access to data traffic, but I’m not sure what it does for them.  Not sure if it will impact SEO.

Is it black hat to do stuff that will push Ripoff Report to the 2nd page?

• Although both Yahoo! and Bing banned Ripoff Report, the consensus was that it is not a black hat tactic.

Does Google AdWords spend affect your ranking?

• AdWords and rankings barely know each other even exists.  They don’t collaborate well between projects.
• It’s intentional that they don’t collaborate well.  It’s their culture.

Day 2 of SES Chicago proved to be a much slower day, but I think many of the attendees needed the “break”.  The biggest session by far was Tim Ash’s “Landing Page Optimization”.

This SES Chicago recap will cover my favorite session of Day 2, Tim Ash’s presentation on “Landing Page Optimization: The 7 Deadly Sins”.  My primary reason for attending this session was to listen to Tim Ash speak.  I was told that Ash was an engaging speaker and he did not disappoint.

My recaps will include some useful tidbits that I picked up during day 2 of SES Chicago.  Tweets were made from @marketwire as well as my personal handle @shinng using the hashtag #seschi and #rt2eat.  So what is the meaning of the latter hashtag?  Well, the creative marketing team @marketwire wanted to give back for the holiday season so we decided to take advantage of the Marketwire presence.  For every ReTweet of our tweets that include the hashtags #seschi #rt2eat, Marketwire will be donating $1.00 per RT for a max contribution of $500 to benefit the Greater Chicago Food Depository.

SES Chicago Session – Landing Page Optimization: The 7 Deadly Sins

Moderator:  Sage Lewis (SageRock)
Speakers:  Tim Ash (SiteTuners)

The effect of the miserable morning commute to downtown Chicago was quickly forgotten thanks to Tim Ash.  He immediately set the tone by asking which of the audience members had children.  A few dozen raised their hand.  Of those that had children, who thought their baby was ugly.  Of course, everyone immediately put their hands down.   Ash pointed out that everyone has seen an ugly baby.  So get to the point right?  Ash’s point: your baby is ugly.  Don’t be “ignorant and blind”.  As it relates to landing page optimization, if you ignore your landing page, you will make less money.

• For every $83 spent on drive to a website and acquisition, $1 is spent on landing page.
• CPA (cost per acquisition)=CPC (cost per click) / CR (conversion rate)
• “The camel” analogy
  • Often times, there is a struggle about which department should design the website.  The analogy used by Ash was “the camel” as in, “a horse designed by committee”.  When multiple departments end up having input into the design, the end result is not a good one.
  • So the question was posed, who should design your website?  Answer choices:  agency, boss, webmaster, marketing, IT
  • Correct answer:  Your visitors should design your website which means you need to look at your landing page analytics.
• Optimizing a landing page is improving conversion.
• Landing page testing is not optional.  Fix your money pages.
• Never let the BPU (business prevention unit=IT) make the decisions
• Eliminate the HIPPO (highest paid person’s opinion)

Top 7 mistakes to avoid in optimizing your landing page

1. Unclear call to action
   • The visitor should not be asking, “what am I supposed to do?”
   • The landing page should answer the question, “what do you expect me to do”
   • The obvious standard: if the call to action on a landing page is not obvious, then it is costing you a lot of money.  In other words, if it’s not obvious, it’s not happening.
   • Get rid of splash and flash landing pages to avoid distraction
2. Too many choices
3. Asking for too much information
   • Example: if I’m downloading a white paper, why do I need to input my name?  All that’s required should be an email address.  /Nick Shin – I have to disagree.  All landing pages should include a name and email address field at a minimum.  In the white paper example, you are capturing the user’s information because they become a lead, which means you will want to contact them in the future. Right?
4. Too much text
   • The “Charlie Brown-wahwahwah” analogy – too much text is like Charlie Brown saying, “wahwahwah”
   • Strike out all adjectives and all unsubstantiated claims
5. Not keeping your promises
   • One of the worst things you can do is deceive and/or confuse your visitors.  Make it straightforward.
   • Example: The Consumer Reports “bait-and-switch” – In one of Consumer Reports’ PPC ads for reviews, the ad’s call to action is to click the button to read reviews.  When you click on the ad, the user is directed to a landing page that you must “join now”.  The user is expecting to read the review, but instead the user is asked to join in order to read the review.  Not good.
6. Visual distractions
   • Keep the content clean and don’t do entry popups.
   • Leave the creativity at home when creating landing pages.
   • If you emphasize everything, nothing will be important.
   • Example: take a look at newyorkbarbells.com.
7. Lack of trust
   • Move trust symbols up.
   • Example (unfortunately I don’t remember the company): On one company’s website, instead of having the widely accepted method of putting a company logo in the top left hand corner, this one company placed their “trust” logo and centered their company logo.  The “trust” logo was one of those SSL/secure logos that is widely recognizable.

At the end, Tim provided a list of websites that will help you optimize your landing page for improved conversions.

• AttentionWizard.com by Tim Ash’s SiteTuners – attention heatmap
• Crazy Egg – build heatmaps and track clicks
• ClickTale - web analytics
• Google Website Optimizer
• UserTesting.com – usability testing
• userfly – usability testing
• Litmus – compatibility testing
• FeedbackArmy – usability testing
• Cross Browser – compatibility testing

This SES Chicago recap will cover Bryan Eisenberg’s “21 Secrets of Top Converting Websites”.  Also included are 5 steps to great conversion rates next week.

My recaps will include some useful tidbits that I picked up during day 1 of SES Chicago.  Tweets were made from @marketwire as well as my personal handle @shinng using the hashtag #seschi and #rt2eat.  So what is the meaning of the latter hashtag?  Well, the creative marketing team @marketwire wanted to give back for the holiday season so we decided to take advantage of the Marketwire presence.  For every ReTweet of our tweets that include the hashtags #seschi #rt2eat, Marketwire will be donating $1.00 per RT for a max contribution of $500 to benefit the Greater Chicago Food Depository. 

SES Chicago Session – 21 Secrets of Top Converting Websites

Moderator: Anne Kennedy (SES Advisory Board, Joblr.com, Beyond Ink)
Speakers:  Bryan Eisenberg (SES Advisory Board, NYT best selling author)

This was my favorite session from Day 1 of SES Chicago 2009 because it was jam packed with information.  This was probably the reason why I was so exhausted afterwards.

Bryan Eisenberg was an engaging speaker and an even better presenter of providing information with real life examples.  Before listing the tips provided during session “information overload”, below are some other notable quotes.

• Optimization is more than a single page, it’s the whole journey.
• IT = BPU (Business Prevention Unit) /Nick Shin – having heard this the first time, this one will stick.  Best quote of SES Chicago 2009.
  

The 21 secrets to top converting sites:

1. They communicate UVPs (unique value proposition) and UCPs (unique campaign proposition).
   • Examples of websites that do this well: Vitacost, Mailchimp, Gotomeeting
2. Makes persuasive and relevant offers
   • But make sure the offer doesn’t disappear at checkout.  The offer should appear throughout the entire buying process.
3. Reinforces offers
4. Maintains scent
   • Example: Victoria’s Secret – In their banner ads and subsequent landing pages, they maintain the same branding and idential images and colors
     
5. Makes strong first impressions
6. Appeals to multiple personas/segments
   • Example: Mint.com
   • Personas build predictive models – simple and robust
7. They don’t do slice and dice optimization.
   • 4 types of web visitors – spontaneous, humanistics, methodical, competitive
   • Test for impact not variations
     
8. They leverage social commerce – user generated content drives natural search
9. They use it for navigation.
   • Example – Golfsmith’s “sort by” function
   • By adding the “sort by” option, Golfsmith’s conversion went up by 160%
10. They use it for promotions – user generated content drives promotion
    
11. They use it for credibility.
12. They use it for feedback and research.
13. They use persuasion principles by using the following:
    • Scarcity
    • Authenticity
    • Consistency
    • Consensus
    • Liking
14. They even make forms interesting by putting images.
    • Average cart abandonment=72%
    • When a visitor is ready to check out after putting items in a cart and the website requires to create an account, be sure the coupon code is inserted appropriately to prevent visitor from leaving the page and eventually the website.
15. They provide a point of action assurance, i.e., response time matters.
    
    • Average lead loses 6 times the effectiveness every hour the lead is made to wait
16. They keep you in the process.
    • An example was shown of a popup where 2 buttons were present.   Make sure that the clickable buttons are not of equal weight.  You want to make an emphasis on the button that you want the visitor to click.
17. They consider email preview.
18. They budget for experience.
    • They focus on continuous improvement.
    • They align customers and business objectives.
    • Interesting fact:  At any given point, Amazon is conducting 200 tests.
19. They utilize a system for prioritizing.
20. They make data driven decisions.
    • To do web analytics and optimization correctly, you have to make a to-do list regularly.
    • Ask yourself: what marketing efforts or parts of your website have challenges?
21. They know how to execute rapidly.
    • Move past top 10 “to-do’s”
    • Focus on trends – what’s spiking up/down
    • Stop out-of-control keywords and save your budget
    • Capitalize on hot campaigns quickly to boost profits

5 steps to great conversation rates next week

1. Identify the problems, review analytics, check for high exit pages, check for high bounce rates for key landing pages
2. Create a to-do list of what you would like to improve
3. Document hypothesis for thinking on how to fix it
4. Prioritize your to-do list by resources and impact
5. Start testing

Day 1 of SES Chicago 2009 was all about search, analytics, and conversion.  I posted a recap of the Jeff Jarvis keynote.

This SES Chicago recap will cover 2 of the 5 sessions from Day 1.  The 1st two sessions include “Search Analytics” and “Search: Where to Next?”.

My recaps will include some useful tidbits that I picked up during day 1 of SES Chicago.  Tweets were made from @marketwire as well as my personal handle @shinng using the hashtag #seschi and #rt2eat.  So what is the meaning of the latter hashtag?  Well, the creative marketing team @marketwire wanted to give back for the holiday season so we decided to take advantage of the Marketwire presence.  For every ReTweet of our tweets that include the hashtags #seschi #rt2eat, Marketwire will be donating $1.00 per RT for a max contribution of $500 to benefit the Greater Chicago Food Depository.

SES Chicago Session – Search Analytics

Moderator: Richard Zwicky (Enquisite)
Speakers: Jim Sterne (Web Analytics Association), Matthew Bailey (SES Advisory Board, Site Logic Marketing), Dennis Mortensen (Yahoo!)

The panel started off the session with a simple question, but it set the tone for the rest of the session.

Question: When it comes to analytics, what should you use?
Answer: Behavior

• The goal is to optimize process.  Focus on single process and optimize it.
• 4 Big Optimization Metrics – presentation, content, and images provided by Jim Sterne (Chairman, Web Analytics Association)
  • Behavior – what do they do
    
  • Attitude – how do they feel
    
  • Competition – how do you compare
    
  • Outcomes – what are the results
  • 
    
• How to prioritize analytics
  • Revenue is at risk
  • Boss asks for it
  • Does not overwhelm
  • Requires an analyst rather than being self serving
• Not all visitors are the same.  The key is segmentation – what did the user want and expect.
• 7 segments for search success – Presentation, images, and content provided by Matt Bailey (SES Advisory Board, SiteLogic)
  
  • Keyword buckets – “segments”; Sub-buckets – brand name, other terms
  • Segment acquisition
  • 
    
  • Segment bounce rates
  • Segment behavior
  • 
    
  • Segment content into persuasive pages, entry pages, time on page, and search
  • 
    
  • Segment entry points
  • Action – do something
• Keep analysis in context.  User behavior is different depending on the page they came from.

SES Chicago Session – Search: Where to Next?

Moderator: Simon Heseltine (AOL)
Speakers:  Eli Goodman (comScore), Justin Merickel (Efficient Frontier), Ronald Burr (WebVisible), Douglas McMillen (Microsoft Advertising)

• The session started off talking about the changing SERPs (search engine results page).  The point?  Advertisers need to think about the new multimedia SERP that displays products because information is adding more depth into the search page.
• The “bottled water” example
  • Image results dominate the search results
  • Concern raised regarding the user experience put out by Google, but it also shows how important it is to leverage the multimedia search results page
• Look at local business, product extensions, and comparisons.  The benefits:
  • Creating long tail automation
  • Enabling creatives to be more specific
  • Automates significant manual efforts
  • End result: greater coverage in search results
• The Zappos “Asics running shoes” example specifically regarding above-the-fold in Google
  
  • #2 in paid search results and 6 individual images from Zappos above the fold in Google
    
  • The Google user experience is questioned because who wants to see image results from the same company repeatedly?  On the flip side, it goes to show that leveraging this changing SERP is important.

• Creative management is:
  • Developing feeds
  • Mapping feeds to creative template
  • Generating ad variations from creative template
  • Assigning/matching to ad groups based on feed data
  • Pushing to search engines via API
• Is display now search like?  There are 2 big trends driving display towards search like performance
  1. Rapid expansion of auction based access to inventory
  2. Access to targeting data decoupled from media
• When exposed to both PPC and display ads, consumers were found to be 2 times more likely to complete a transaction.
• To get search like content, you have to retarget and use 3rd party data to do it effectively.
  

The speaker I was most looking forward to hear speak, Eli Goodman from comScore, ended the session.  His 3 talking points: Branding, In-Text Search, and Social Search

• Branding - you always want to be on the short list for the consumer
  
  • Stat: $118 billion for branding vs $68 billion for direct response
  • As organic searches become richer, sponsored results must keep up.  Expect innovations.
  • Don’t just think about the obvious terms, but related concepts and terms, i.e. “assistive terms”
    
  • Think of search as the traffic driver to the brand mechanism.
  • The GE “ecoimagination” and “clean energy” example – none of their pages rank highly for the latter term in the SERPs.  Very few people actually search for the term “ecoimagination”.
    
  • The point: Focus on what people are searching and related terms.  GE can focus on “clean energy”, “energy saving”, “energy saving tips”
• In-Text Search – search results that show up when you mouse-over content.  When hovering over a link, a pop over appears with a relevant link.
  
  • This mixes content consumption with search possibilities.
  • Value of in-text offers a way to be informative, useful,  and entertaining.
  • The most useful content increases user engagement.
  • As functionality increases, so does CTR (click through rate).
  • The Hellman’s Recipes example – when hovering over related key terms, a pop over appears with recipe ideas and ingredient lists.
• Social Search
  • Alternative search properties such as Facebook show strong year-over-year search growth from September 2008.  The exception is MySpace.
  • Social search is the next frontier, thus social search results need to be more relevant.
  • Food for thought: think about how you trust your friends for one thing, while you trust other friends for different things.
  • Optimize content for social networks.  This presents a tremendous opportunity for marketers.
• The guy from Microsoft Advertising specifically Bing, was too sales-y so I went in-and-out mentally.  The few tidbits that I did jot down include:
  
  • Bing’s upcoming mobile search will be similar to the online search user experience.
  • Stat: Mobile broadband users will reach 30% penetration in 2010
  • Now is the time to start testing and learning because mobile inventory is much cheaper for broad terms and mobile search is seeing 2-3 times higher click-through-rates.
    
  • Stat: In 2008, 5.2 million mobile search users, by 2013, the number will jump to 56.2 million
    

Every Friday, I plan on posting the most useful online marketing stories of the week.  The majority of you have probably seen the top marketing news via Twitter, but it’s also a way for me to archive for my own benefit and learnings.  Selfish and helpful at the same time right?

Most popular post on Marketing Shindig – How to Optimize Your Twitter Page

My Personal Favorites for the Top Online Marketing Posts of the Week

1. 50 Blogging Lessons To Know If You’re Starting Today by Adam Singer of The Future Buzz
   • Okay so we all know the benefits in blogging.  Still not sure?  Then be sure to read Technorati’s 2009 State of the Blogosphere.  There are numerous benefits to blogging, blah blah blah, yada yada yada.
   • Why I liked Adam’s post so much – Everyone likes lists, but everyone loves lists that are beneficial in helping one succeed.  I agree that the lessons will help those starting a blog, but it will certainly benefit those who have been blogging for years.  Don’t let the title fool you, it is NOT just for those starting a blog.
   • Out of the 50, below are just some of my favorites:
     • If you wouldn’t do it for free, don’t do it at all.  In other words:  do it for passion and for yourself and you can’t lose.
     • It’s not going to be easy – nothing rewarding is.  /Nick – this applies to life in general, but when it comes to blogging, it takes commitment; no joke.  Many of my sites have fell by the wayside because I just didn’t have the time.
     • …and get involved in conversations with smart, interesting people.
     • The best blogs are products of success from pull, not push.
     • Realize that promotion is secondary to content.
2. HubSpot Interview with Gary Vaynerchuk by HubSpot
   • Why I liked the interview with Gary V so much – Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) is one of the more influential social media users and success stories today.   The “Social Media Sommelier” has used social media to successfully grow his family’s wine business.  HubSpot does a great job interviewing internet celebrities and asking insightful questions.
   • My favorite quotes from the interview:
     • “I don’t feel like a rockstar, I feel ridiculously lucky…” /Nick – love the humble attitude.
     • “Passion gives you the drive it takes to make a product awesome and convince people that it’s awesome…” /Nick – awesome.
     • “…realize that I wasn’t going to own the New York Jets if I didn’t make a change…It took 6 months before anybody really took notice of what I was doing.” /Nick – so incredibly inspirational. This portion of the interview was by far my favorite.  Getting the background of success stories.
     • “You can’t be a fake brand.”
3. 3 Realities of Social Media by guest author Michael Brito on PR 2.0
   • Why I liked Michael’s post so much – The 3 realities that Michael points out in his post hit the nail on the head.   It’s concise and straight to the point, but also very true.
   • What are the 3 realities?  Consumers already get it, brands still trying to figure it out, Brands should focus on people first, No such thing as a social media expert yet.
4. 5 Must-Read Social Media Marketing Studies compiled by Social Media Examiner
   • Why I liked this compilation of studies so much – I personally love stats, but only from relevant and respected sources.  Yes, there are about 5,365 social media “studies” out there, but only a handful of those studies are from reputable sources.  Just a good, take-it-with-a-grain-of-salt-but-still-interesting read.
   • The numbers discussed: 26 million (1 in 7) adults will use Twitter monthly, Americans spend 17% of online time on social media sites, over half of marketers will be using social media, blogs are considered most useful tool by over half of businesses, 3/4 of marketers plan to increase social media use in 2010.
5. Future of Deliverability: The Role of User Interaction by Mark Brownlow of Email Marketing Reports
   • With all the talk about social media and how those 5,365 (made up number FYI) studies are saying the usage of social media is increasing in popularity, email marketing is still an essential part of one’s business.  The ROI is tremendous so I was pleasantly surprised to read such insightful posts by Mark on email marketing especially this post.
   • Why I liked Mark’s post so much – Mark talks about the engagement aspect of email marketing by discussing user interaction and reputation.  I liked the fact that he was able to get feedback from several deliverability experts.
6. Google Analytics Now More Powerful, Flexible and Intelligent by Google Analytics Blog
   • Why I liked this post so much – More power to google analytics is always a good thing.
   • The major takeaways on the enhancements: define up to 20 goals per profile, ability to track mobile websites/apps, advanced table filtering, multiple custom variables, “Analytics Intelligence” which will provide automatic alerts of significant changes to your data, among others.  Videos are available.
7. Want More Clicks?  Tweet Less by Dan Zarrella
   • Why I liked Dan’s post so much – I personally like Dan’s analytical approach.  Perhaps it was the pretty graphs and all the neat colors used in the graphs, but let me tell you that you will get at least one takeaway reading Dan’s post.
   • What does he go over: CTR (click through rate) by links per hour, Average CTR by links per hour, CTR by links per day, Average CTR by links per day.
   • What is the main takeaways besides reading the title of the post?
     • “The more frequently you tweet links, the fewer clicks you’ll get”
     • “If you want your tweet to get noticed and RT’ed, slow down your posting rate”

The Marketing Videos I Enjoyed Most This Week

• I never get tired of the always interesting, extremely fascinated, where-did-they-get-the-numbers-from-please-show-me-the-sources video titled “Social Media Revolution” that answers the question, “Is Social Media a Fad?”.  The answer is obvious -NO-, but the stats in this video are quite amazing.

• Notice how quickly the buzz around Google Wave died down.  I was pumped when I received a Google Wave invite, but after approximately 1 min 52 sec, I logged off.  However, this user has made Google Wave very entertaining by utilizing one of the most memorable scenes of Pulp Fiction.

See you next Friday for more top online marketing posts of the week.

[Transcript of the video is included]

From the mouth of the lion himself, Matt Cutts explains in this video that Google no longer takes the meta keyword tag into much consideration.  Although it might be hard to take for some of us that painstakingly coded meta keywords by hand for extensive online catalogs, fear not, other search engines may still rely on that information for help in ranking their indices.  I have included a transcript of the video below.  I can now recite the explanation by Matt Cutts because I had to “rewind” so many times…good stuff.

From Matt Cutts at Google talking about the keyword meta tags and the importance of meta description.

“So let’s talk about that in a little more detail because sometimes people file lawsuits. Alice has alice.com and Bob has bob.com and maybe Bob takes Alice’s name and puts it into the keyword meta tags and Alice sees that and she gets really angry and she talks to Bob and maybe sues Bob.  Well, how much should Alice be worried about Bob using that one term, Alice, in the keywords meta tag?  The answer is, we (Google) don’t use the keywords meta tag in our (Google’s) search ranking; other search engines might, but Google doesn’t.  But for our main core web search, whenever we look at the keywords meta tag, we say, you know what, too many people have spammed that too much; we really just don’t use this information at all. Now that’s not too say we don’t use any meta tags.  For example, there’s one called meta description and often times if you have a good meta description tag, we will use that info or part of that info in our snippet. So, if we’re going to return alice.com and your meta description is something really useful, we might show that as a snippet in the search results.  But if you’re looking at the keyword meta tags, we really don’t use that at all so don’t bother to get frustrated if somebody else is using your name in the keyword meta tags. It’s really not worth suing someone over because, at least for Google, we don’t use that information in our ranking even in the least little bit.”

This is a “hello world”, going out to the online marketing and social media communities.  In the coming weeks, I’m going to be expanding on my thoughts past my usual 140 character limit and focusing on reflecting on observations, tips and tricks, and best practices as they pertain to marketing.

In the meantime, please favorite my site in Technorati, subscribe via RSS, and follow me on Twitter.

-Nick