Problem: Client says that site traffic and sales have decreased since starting SEO campaign. You know that since taking over SEO you have eliminated hundreds of pages of duplicate content and increased search spidering of important pages. Site usability has improved significantly and rankings for key terms are also improving. Many site architectural issues have been uncovered but remain unresolved and can only be fixed by the client. What do you do?

I was posed this problem recently and my first thought was, let’s look at the analytics. Unfortunately, the client refuses to give us access to their analytical data, which means everything I’m about to say here falls under the category What-Could-Have-Been-Though-We-Won’t-Know-For-Sure.

Solution: The only real way to find a solution, or rather to find the real problem that will allow us to develop a solution, is to dive into the site analytics. From the limited information we gathered from the client it appeared that the decline in traffic and sales are part of a much bigger issue that started several months before SEO began. It is unfortunate that the SEO efforts were not able to offset the decline in a noticeable way, but it may have done so in a measurable way.

Here is what I was hoping to find out:

First I wanted to look at the traffic numbers to see if the optimized product and pages are showing the same level of traffic decline as pages we had not yet optimized. This could be quite telling. If we found that while other pages show a decrease in traffic by X amount but the pages we have optimized for specific keywords are showing less of a decrease, or even an increase, then this can show that the optimization is effective in bringing in traffic.

We would also want to look at traffic that came to the site via search engines to see if that has increased or decreased. We could compare pre-SEO search traffic with post-SEO traffic while also looking at the keywords that are driving the traffic to see if there have been any changes that correlate to the optimization efforts.

Next we would want to look at conversion data. Has the conversion rate increased or decreased on the site overall? How about just the areas that have been optimized?

Without access to the data I’m not even able to guess as to what’s causing this client’s decline. And beyond that we can only make assumptions as to the benefit that the SEO campaign has provided them, though the measures I stated in the problem above help us make some of those assumptions.

The bottom line, without analytics there really is no way to measure success. You won’t know if you are successful and you won’t be able to determine what’s causing the perceived failure. And if you can’t know that, you’re better off not doing a marketing campaign to begin with.

Did I miss anything? What else would you want to analyze in this situation?

Last week Yahoo posted a blog about how using the negative keywords helps increase relevance. Where they did provide a list of steps, I thought I’d take that a bit further and outline the steps for each of the three major PPC providers.

Google AdWords
Quite often you will want to create a negative keyword list that applies to your entire campaign, rather than creating individual lists for each ad group. Google makes this easy by following these steps:

1. Sign in to your AdWords account.
2. Click the campaign you wish to edit.
3. The number of existing campaign negative keywords will appear beneath the campaign name and daily budget.
4. If no campaign negative keywords exist for your campaign, click Add. Otherwise, click edit.
5. You may select and enter negative keywords for your campaign in one of two ways:

You will find at other times you do want more control over the negatives, and Google again makes it easy to apply negative keywords at the ad group level by following these steps:

1. Sign in to your AdWords account.
2. Select the campaign and the ad group that you’d like to edit.
3. Select the Keywords tab.
4. Click Edit keywords, above the keyword table.
5. Add your negative keywords, one per line. Make sure to put a negative sign (–) before each keyword (e.g., –free).
6. Click Save Changes.

If you’re editing your accounts using AdWords Editor, then things are even a little easier.

1. In the Account column, select the campaign or ad group.
2. Select the Negatives tab.
3. For a single negative keyword, click the Add Negative and select the type of negative you wish to add
4. For a group, or list of multiple negative terms, click on Make Multiple Changes and select the type of change you’d like to make

Yahoo! Search Marketing

1. Sign in to your account
2. Go to your Ad Group Settings page.
3. Click on “Tactic Settings.”
4. On the “Tactic Settings” page the “Excluded Words” feature is displayed.
5. Click on “Excluded Words” to open the entry field.
6. Add your excluded words but do not to use any commas or semicolons after each word.
7. Click “Save Changes,” to process the Excluded Words list.

MSN adCenter

1. On the Keywords page, in the keyword entry box, type each keyword on a new line.
2. Click Add to Keywords List.
3. In the Negative keywords column, type negative keywords for each keyword.
4. To save your negative keywords, click Continue.

The QVC task is one that they’ve done before on The Apprentice, so this episode didn’t really offer up anything new. And since there were no real fireworks to speak of, this was a pretty bland episode. I’d love if The Apprentice would get back to tasks that require some unique business savvy, but there I go again longing for the days of Season One.

Let’s get right to the lessons…

Business Lesson One: Take the high road.

Taking the high road isn’t easy. Going low can feel good for a minute or two, but it never adds anything to your stature among your coworkers or bosses. It’s great to get a good zing in from time to time, but it takes a person of true character to walk away from the perfect opportunity to cut someone low.

In the opening few minutes, we caught a glimpse of both Omarosa and Piers talking to the camera. Omarosa continued to show us what kind of person she really is - digging in on Piers in an effort to make herself look better (at least to herself). On the other hand, you could see that Piers didn’t want to play that game anymore. Yes, he got into the gutter in the last episode, but I think this episode showed his truer colors. While he made a factual statement that he has no desire to ever speak to Omarosa again, he passed when Trump gave him the opportunity to get a dig in on Omarosa. “That was yesterday.” My respect level for Piers went up dramatically.

Business Lesson Two: Just because something works, don’t be afraid to try something new.

We’ve heard it said, “don’t fix what isn’t broken.” While there is truth in that, in business, to become and maintain a leadership position, you should always be looking to fix and improve upon previous successes. You can’t always rely on what worked before. Each new task brings opportunities for new strategies and new tactics. If you want to win, you have to look for those new opportunities rather than relying on the old.

Piers, again, wanted to rely on the star power of Lennox Lewis. That trick has been done before, and it’s wearing a bit thin. Even though they lost, I think the team made the right decision to keep Lennox behind the scenes.

Business Lesson Three: Learn the system!

Anytime you’re doing something new, you need to learn as much about it as possible. Just like if you have a critical appointment, it helps to map out your directions and timing beforehand to make sure you arrive on time. In business, understanding the system you’ll be working with is critical to success. The quick review usually isn’t enough.

Marilu’s team lost because they didn’t know about Easy Pay. Why? Both her and Carol had been on QVC before. Marilu can be forgiven a bit because she sold her books, which wouldn’t have used that feature. But Carol, having several years of experience, most certainly should have known. That bit of knowledge could have won them the task.

But that doesn’t relinquish responsibility from the other team members either. This is something they should have thought about enough to ask or research. I’m sure there are a million things to know to make a successful QVC commercial. But it only takes one thing to make it unsuccessful. Any new system you’re jumping into needs to be thoroughly researched and understood in order to leverage each and every available opportunity. Failure to do so is just another failure.

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FREE LOVE: the ongoing rise in free, valuable stuff that's available to consumers online and offline. From AirAsia tickets to Wikipedia, and from diapers to music. Blame an all out war for consumers' ever-scarcer attention, the post-scarcity dynamics of the online world, the avalanche of free user generated content, and an emerging swapping and recycling culture.

Read FREE LOVE »

It is often said that it is important to write for your audience. But what does that really mean? How do you determine who your audience is?

If you write for whom you think your audience is, you might be missing out on a completely different crowd.

Consider Your Audience - Three Major Members

1. Write for the researchers. The people in the beginning phases of purchasing are researching to learn more about the products or services that they’re looking for. They may not even really know what they’re looking for at all, so it’s crucial to be very general and to refrain from using jargon or other industry-specific terminology.

   Someone well-versed in internet marketing is very familiar with search engine optimization (SEO), but for a small business owner who just started a website, they need more broad references that make sense to them. Explain everything in layman’s terms, and you’re likely to get a repeat visitor when they move to the next phase of audience participation.

2. Write for the shoppers. The next member of your reading audience is the shopper. This is the person who has done the research on the topics and has a pretty good understanding of what it is they’re looking for. Now that they know enough about the product or service, they’re ready to do some comparison shopping.

   Target your shopping readers by including more industry-specific terms and arm them with information that will make them want to pick your product or services over your competitors. You can include side-by-side comparison charts that show the benefits so that they want to come to you when they’re ultimately ready to buy.

3. Write for the buyers. After they have done the research and have made comparisons between competitors, the buyers are ready to convert. They know enough about what they’re looking for, so your writing can be very specific and can include a lot of terminology and facts that will make them want to buy your product or service.

   Your buyers want quick information that makes them want to convert, so give them the info they want quickly. When writing for your buyers, consider giving them links to any customer service, warranty, shipping, or refund information as applicable.

Let your audience know that they’re making the right decision in selecting your services over your competitor, and you’ll be sure to have repeat customers or generate referral business as a result.

We’ve finally been able to work out (most of) the bugs from CodeMonitor. For our users out there I apologize profusely. I know the darn thing has been broken for a long time and we’ve been working hard at getting it all put back together after several server changes. But it looks like that has finally happened.

As always, please submit any bug reports or upgrade requests to help us continue to make this tool better.

What Does CodeMonitor do?

For those of you who don’t know what the CodeMonitor tool is or does… well it’s pretty cool, if you ask me.

Simply put, it notifies you when any web page that you are monitoring changes. Now this isn’t a substitute for an RSS feed, this is something entirely different. CodeMonitor allows you to monitor select pages of a website and will email you whenever that page changes. Once you get that email you can login to see the new changes highlighted against to the previously “saved” version of the page.

Here, let me show you…

Let’s say that I wanted to keep tabs on what a competitor is doing whenever they make changes to their pages for SEO purposes (or any other reason). After creating my CodeMonitor account (yes, an account is needed so we can store your monitored pages for a daily comparison) I then set up all my monitored pages. Each time I login now I get a screen that looks like this:

Now let’s say that several of my monitored pages change. The next morning I find an email that tells me what pages changed and prompts me to login:

I quickly see which pages have changed and I can click on the little compare icon which will let me see the old version side by side with the new version of the page:

This view shows me the on-page text (with Title and Metas) of the last “saved” version on the right and the most recent version on the left. The green highlights show me exactly what has changed between the two versions. I’m able to scroll each side independently so I can see the differences all the way down the document. Once I’ve done my analysis of the changes I can then hit the save icon and the new version becomes the master version from which all daily comparisons are made.

I also have the option of switching to two other views, one allows me to compare the HTML code of the page and the other is to compare the page as it looks in a browser. Here is a shot of the same page above in code compare view:

The browser view still has bugs and isn’t comparing properly so I won’t show you a screenshot, but you get the gist.

How else can I use it?

Not only does CodeMonitor let me keep up on what my competitors are doing but I can also use it to monitor pages that are not set up for RSS. I currently use it for wikipedia pages, Google webmaster pages, etc.

But I also have one more use for it for which it is extremely helpful, and that is to monitor client pages that we have optimized. Yeah, that’s right, we monitor our client’s too.

Why? Well you know how it is, you spend a lot of time editing page content, title tags, etc. and then a week later the client goes and makes changes from an old version of the page. Poof, all your SEO is gone. But most times we wouldn’t know it until we got back in to analyze the site, but with CodeMonitor we know the very next day. This then allows us to go in and see what changes the client made. Sometimes they are not significant but sometimes they are. Either way, we know.

And here is where we get to a couple of other cool features of CodeMonitor. If you have editing access to a page you are monitoring (such as a client page) you can control which pieces of code get monitored and which don’t. This is especially handy when changes are made to global headers or footers or when there are revolving elements on a page. You can simply insert some snippets of code to tell CodeMonitor to ignore those portions of the code. When changes are made to the code marked for ignore you won’t bother with it or have to go in and save a dozen site pages because of it.

Other Features

Another couple of handy features is that you can tell CodeMonitor to ignore comment tag changes or to notify you only when changes are to the text are made. The latter ignores all coding changes and only focuses on textual elements and the title and metas.

So there you have it. Check out CodeMonitor and start monitoring and spying today!