President George Washington was well known for his ethics.

Interestingly, there is one important facet of internet marketing (and more specifically SEO) that encourages professionals to do the right thing.  That is online reputation management (ORM).  ORM is a key component of SEO that pertains to what other people have to say about you on the Internet; i.e. positive and negative feedback.

A few weeks ago I came across a very interesting example, which illustrated the importance of ORM within SEO and the consequences of doing the wrong thing. Mike Halvorsen, a Search Engine Optimizer in Columbus, Ohio, found himself in a email battle with Joe Rozsa, another SEO in the same city over the keyword, SEO Columbus (which was his exact business name).  Rozsa’s case was that Halvorsen’s SEO efforts for his own business were having a negative impact on Rozsa’s.  Consequently he asked that Halvorsen stopped whatever it was that he was doing. Halvorsen felt that he was well within his rights, so he turned to the SEO community as a whole for support. Most people sided with Halvorsen, which generated a lot of negative content directed at Rozsa.

Whether Joe Rozsa was right or wrong in contacting Mike Halvorsen is really a matter of personal judgment. His actions did eventually cost him a good reputation under the name, SEO Columbus as well as a high ranking on Google SERPs. He will likely have to rebrand his business under a different name. Joe missed the significance of ORM. The important concept to note is that ORM is a critical part of SEO.

Similarly, another example of the importance of doing the right thing in Internet marketing dealt with a lawsuit Cleveland Golf filed against Christopher Prince and Bright Builders. Prince owned a site for which Bright Builders provided SEO services. The site sold counterfeit Cleveland Golf clubs. The judge determined that Bright Builders had contributed to the copyright infringement with its SEO services and ordered them to pay almost $800,000 in damages.

The case showed that SEO firms can be held accountable for how the work they do for a client is used. Therefore SEO firms need to be aware of the ethical impact of their services as well as its legality. If SEO work is being leveraged to deceive customers like those in this case, it probably will get a firm into trouble at some point.

Ultimately, the best strategy for SEOs to conduct business in an ethical manner is to care about their online reputation and to focus on doing the right thing. Clearly, keyword rankings aren’t the only thing at stake when it comes to decision making in Internet marketing.  Be aware of the impact of your actions, do the right thing, and happy optimizing. And remember, don’t trade your snack pack for a banana.

• Part 1: Introduction to our hiring process series
• Part 2: The job announcement and writing portion
• Part 3: The phone interview
• Part 4: The meet-and-greet and in-person interview

And today is Part 5: The Wrap-up! We know that every company’s hiring process is different and, therefore, every company has tips and tricks they’ve learned over the years about what has worked best for them, for their company, and their industry. At Hanapin, we’ve spent quite some time brainstorming about our process and refining it. We wanted to share our personal tips and tricks with you in hopes of helping you also uncover amazing search marketers.

On Monday, Jessica posted the introduction to our hiring process series, explaining why we do what we do and what you could expect from each post. On Tuesday, Jessica C. did an excellent job of explaining the job announcement and writing portion of our hiring process. Read through her post for all the great information she gathered. Below is a recap of some of her most important take-away points:

To Post Or Not To Post?

At Hanapin, we feel it’s best to cover all our bases, plain and simple. Here’s a sample of where we typically post our job listing:

• Career Builder
• Monster/Hot Jobs
• Talent Zoo
• eMarketing Silo
• Marketing Pilgrim
• SEOmoz
• Our local newspaper, The Herald-Times
• Linked In
• SEO Boy & PPC Hero
• Twitter
• College Job Boards

Filter, Filter, Filter

We treat every step of our hiring process as a filtering system, right from the get-go. Even our job listing serves a two-fold purpose:

1. Acquire applicants.
2. See if those applicants can follow directions.

Check out Jessica C.’s post to see a sample of our job listing. In it, we give applicants very specific instructions. If they don’t follow them, they are not chosen to advance to the next round: the writing portion. Below is a list of the questions we typically ask an applicant in the round 2 writing portion:

1. Why do you love the Internet?
2. What’s the most challenging work problem you’ve ever encountered? What could you have done differently?
3. Describe a situation where the workload was beginning to be too much.  How did you meet deadlines and maintain the quality of your work?
4. What’s the single most important lesson you learned from your parents?
5. What would make you not a good fit for (position)?

These questions not only give us insight into why the person is applying, they also give us a glimpse into their personality. We couple this Q & A list with the applicant’s resume and cover letter to help us ask the right questions in the next round…

Mm What ’cha Say?

Steve did a great job covering our telephone interview process. Here are some take-away points from his post:

• Phone interviews are special because they give us our first real look at the communication abilities of an individual and an opportunity to hear the stories that support the resume.
• Determining the right questions to ask is the one of the hardest things to do in preparation for the interview. You want to ask questions that encourage the candidate to reveal something important about his or herself and are not impossible to answer. Remember, the purpose of a phone interview is to find out whether or not this person is worth inviting to the next stage of the hiring process…Use it as a tool to collect information and make an informed decision about someone.
• If you are having trouble coming up with ideas for questions, I recommend sitting down and determining what traits you value in the position you are trying to hire and then formulating topics around them. As a word of caution, it’s also important to remember that certain questions are illegal for companies to ask. If you’d like to know more about those kinds of questions and their legal alternatives, see jobinterviewquestions.org.
• We conduct phone interviews in pairs so that a candidate gets more thorough feedback that’s from more than one perspective/opinion.

Mix & A-Mingle

The meet and greet portion of our hiring process is an office favorite. Amy did an excellent job explaining the purpose of the meet and greet. Here are some take-away portions to part 4 of our series:

• It gives each candidate the chance to connect with everyone.
• If we’re on the fence about people, we bring them in to the meet and greet because it’s a lot easier to gauge a person’s personality in person.  It’s a good buffer before the final interview, for one, because we are able to further narrow down the pool and, for two, sometimes we get some odd ones.
• Conversely, the meet and greet also offers us the opportunity to show a glimpse of our personality; if the fit isn’t right, a candidate can bow out gracefully after the meet and greet, no harm no foul.
• The final interviews take place at our office. Multiple team members are involved in the interview process for each candidate, which allows us to develop a balanced perception of how well the candidate will work with our team and within our industry.

Why We Do What We Do

Over the years we’ve worked hard to refine our hiring process, and we will continue to do so down the road. However, for now, we think our detailed process ads quite a bit of value to our company. The following are some Hanapin team members’ opinions about the value and importance of our hiring strategy:

“It allows us to truly know the people we’re hiring in a way that I don’t think people at other companies get to. I think it’s important especially for a small company that we can gauge the personalities of the people we’re hiring, so the meet and greet and in-person interview are especially valuable to us.”

-Bethany Bey, Account Executive

“You get to see, especially through the meet and greet, putting a face with a resume and seeing how people interact with various team members and that’s important. Seeing a person’s ability to follow directions…with all the specifics of each round you get to see a person’s attention to detail and that’s a big part of the industry.”

-Bryan Watson, Assistant Account Executive

“I think the main value of our long and in-depth hiring process is that it allows us to discover little pieces of information about people that don’t come out normally with the “one interview” method. And sometimes those little pieces of information that people don’t think are important to mention but that end up coming out during the various different types of interview are the most important things in determining if someone will fit with our team or be able to think in the way we need them to.”

-Jessica Niver, Account Supervisor

And That’s A Wrap!

At Hanapin, we’ve worked hard over the years to refine our hiring process. Overall, we feel it’s quite effective right now, but we’ll certainly continue to refine it down the road. We have learned some valuable lessons along the way, and we are thrilled to have been able to share our hiring process with you, as it now stands, through this series. We hope we’ve helped. Happy Hiring!

At this point in the hiring process, we’ve already narrowed down the pool pretty significantly.  We generally have well over a hundred applicants and will invite anywhere from 15-20 to the meet and greet.  This size group is nice because it gives each candidate the chance to connect with everyone. We are all active in the hiring process, and everyone’s opinion is taken into account.  Since we don’t have time to allow every employee to interview every candidate (and really, what candidate wants to be interviewed by 15 different people?), we are all able to at least meet everyone, and help decide who will advance to the final interview. Likewise, it gives each of us the chance to get to know them.  It’s also the perfect size to reserve a room at a restaurant or other venue without feeling overcrowded.

The meet and greet is the candidates’ time to shine.  It’s a relaxed setting and we genuinely look forward to meeting everyone. A meet and greet offers candidates a chance to make an impression, discuss interests, and in general, just to be candid.  If we’re on the fence about people, we bring them in to the meet and greet because it’s a lot easier to gauge a person’s personality in person.  It’s a good buffer before the final interview, for one, because we are able to further narrow down the pool and, for two, sometimes we get some odd ones.  We’re a laidback, down-to-earth group but there are some deal-breakers that, simply put, should not be done at a meet and greet, nor any other professional setting, casual as it may be.  Conversely, the meet and greet also offers us the opportunity to show a glimpse of our personality; if the fit isn’t right, a candidate can bow out gracefully after the meet and greet, no harm no foul.

After a short presentation and a few hours of mingling with prospectives, the candidates leave and we all rank our top five, as well as the characteristics that led us to believe that they would be most valuable.  We also have what I’ll call ‘Honorable Mentions’, in case someone had more than five candidates that they really liked.  Our CEO and account supervisors will then sort through everyone’s selections and determine who has made it on to the final round.  Generally, everyone’s top five is different although there are usually at least a few names that top the majority of rankings.

The final interviews take place at our office. Multiple team members are involved in the interview process for each candidate, which allows us to develop a balanced perception of how well the candidate will work with our team and within our industry.  We ask around five pages of questions that range from general background, critical thinking, strategy, Internet knowledge and more.  Our questions are followed up with a small internet quiz, which gauges the candidate’s internet know-how.  Because of our unique, extensive training program, we’re able to hire people with little or no experience, train them, and allow them to manage clients once they are ready.  Thus, we use our interviews to gauge interest in the field, ability and desire to learn, customer service, and many other aspects of the job that are not always possible to teach.  Once the interviews are done, we send all of our feedback to the CEO who ultimately decides who to extend offers to.  Offers are extended and the rest is history!

Don’t miss out! Tomorrow, part 5, the conclusion of our Behind the Curtain series will recap the entire hiring process. In case you missed the prior posts from this 5 part series, I’d encourage you to check them out. See part 1, part 2, and part 3.

URL Structure

If your site has not already been created, I would suggest reading over the URL best practices.  URLs are given special consideration because search engines assume that keywords in the URL are the main topic of the page.  It makes sense right?  Webmasters can stuff several random keywords into the content but keywords in the URL are most likely the fundamental topic of the page, or they should be.  That’s what your readers expect to read about.   What about dynamic URLs that serve to include any number of search queries, you ask?  Search engines do not appreciate dynamic URLs, so try to avoid that if at all possible.  See my previous blog for more information about URL optimization best practices.

Keyword Research

Keyword research should be one of your first optimization steps, whether your site has already been created or not.  Keyword research is important because oftentimes we have an idea as to which keywords we want to rank for, but without gathering data you may wind up optimizing your site for keywords that are nearly impossible to rank for, or even worse, keywords that have no search volume.  We suggest doing keyword research by making a huge list of keywords that describe your page (do this for each page of your site).  Use keyword tools such as Google’s keyword tool.  This tool is especially handy because it shows you the search volume for each keyword.  You can then search for the term and see how many competitors there are, which will help you determine how hard it will be to rank for.  Remember, just because there are a lot of competitors doesn’t mean it will be impossible to rank.  Are the competitors quality sites?  Take a look at their SEO, have they optimized well for the terms you’re interested in ranking for?  Are they even competitors?  For instance, if you’re hoping to rank for the word ‘apple’, because you own an orchard, you may want to check if other orchards are ranking, or if instead you will be competing against sites like the Food Network which are likely much larger with a lot of time invested in marketing.  Check out Bethany’s post for more details on keyword research.

Optimizing Content and Meta Data

It likely goes without saying that search engines crawl your site and your meta data for keywords in order to determine what your site is about.  From there, they are able to rank it for each search query, however they see fit.  Now that you’ve done a spectacular job with keyword research, you can be confident that your site will rank well for keywords with a high search volume, thus increasing your (targeted) traffic.  To do so, you will want to incorporate these keywords into the pages.  Just as you created a separate keyword research list for each page of the site, you will optimize each page of the site with different keywords.  Pick the top 1-4 keywords for each page, and work to incorporate these words into the copy, the meta title, meta description, and alt tags (the copy that shows if you hover over an image, or in place of the image if it does not load properly).  You should use these keywords enough to emphasize their importance but not so much that the copy reads funny.  The search engines will recognize if you  are keyword stuffing (using the keywords too often, in order to attempt to improve rank) and you will be penalized.  Plus, you want it to ultimately read well for your target audience, so keep that in mind when you are writing the content.  Also keep in mind that search engines generally crawl 60 characters for the title and 160 characters for the meta description, including spaces, so try to keep them short, sweet, and to the point – with keyword sprinkled throughout.  Check out Rob’s post on SEO copywriting for content optimization best practices.

Create Sitemap and Robots.txt Files

A sitemap basically acts as a roadmap for the search engines.  It tells the spiders which pages are a priority for indexing and which aren’t.  You can set a priority and frequency for each page on your site.  Make sure that you don’t include any pages that you wouldn’t want crawled.  To be safe, you should also create a Robots.txt file to ensure that pages that shouldn’t be indexed are not crawled.   These pages must, I repeat must be placed exactly as so: www.domain.com/sitemap.xml and www.domain.com/robots.txt, respectively.  Check out these links for step by step instructions on creating a sitemap and creating a robots.txt file.

Set Up Webmaster Tools

Webmaster tools are hugely helpful with finding crawl errors, HTML suggestions, and malware, as well as other site issues.  You will want to create an account for both Google’s webmaster tools and Bing’s  webmaster tools, just to make sure that your site is behaving properly for both engines.  Once you have done all of the above steps, you will want to make sure that your sitemap is submitted to both webmaster tools, as this can potentially trigger a crawl, which will update your rank to account for all of your recent optimizations.  You can resubmit your sitemap as much as you’d like but it wont necessarily always help.  For more information on Webmaster Tools, check out Jenny’s guide to setting up webmaster tools.

Linkbuilding

Once you have a well-optimized site, you should begin looking to other creative ways to boost your rank.  Linkbuilding is a great way to improve rank, because the search engine’s see each inward link as a vote of approval toward your site.  In other words, when others link to your site, the search engine’s view this as a recommendation: you must be an authority on the subject if other sites are singing your praises.   Blogs and top ten lists tend to make great linkbait; that is, people tend to link to short informational posts or instructions.   For a full guide, check out Jessica’s post on how to better your linkbuilding.

I could go on forever and ever about search engine optimization tactics but this is a good place to start.  Remember, search engine optimization is an ongoing process.  Although you may have already done all of these things, you will need to continuously redo this list in order to achieve optimal results.

Here is just a quick list of different ways that one can be swayed due to a lack of education concerning SEO or the Internet.

1. “We’ll make the site for you and pass all the leads onto you.” – How are people going to find the site? Who has control of the analytics? Who is making it? Where is it hosted? What about changes to the site’s layout, structure and keywords? How fast are those changes?

2. “Your website needs to be redesigned. We can do it for $XXXX.” – Based on what data? Which metrics are you basing your conclusions? What are the “before and afters” of your other clients? What is the breakdown of cost? Why do you use X hosting over Y hosting? What is your opinion on WordPress and Joomla?

3. “We can make sure you get listed in all search engines.” – Why all? Why spend the effort beyond more and more obscure search engines beyond five?

4. “We will review your website copy and make sure its optimized.” – At what point is it optimized? Does that mean its all done after its optimized? Which page is optimized over the other?

5. “You don’t need as many web pages on a website as before.” – For which purpose? Converting? Ranking? Educating? Am I expecting my phone staff to educate the client?

6. “Let us handle your Adwords” – How many leads should I expect? Who is monitoring the ads? Who is writing the ads? How are they doing it? What can I assume if I don’t reach these numbers?

7. “Your company listing on our website will be a great value to you” – How many unique visitors do you get in my category in a month? What is your long-term strategy to compete with Google Places?

8. “Our informational videos can be easily placed on your site and will turn your site into an information resource while harvesting leads.” – How do you account for devices that do not play Flash or Silverlight that are owned by my target audience?

As you can imagine, salespeople don’t like me very much. I reside in an area where there is not a lot of education concerning the web. Creating and hosting a website is either viewed as a large expense as building a new office complex or as trivial as posting a bulletin on a public bulletin board.

That’s why we are here to guide you and answer questions. If the gas station clerk mentions that he can do a website for you, chances are it’s not as difficult as it once was to set one up. There is value in doing things right and finding out how to do those things right.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. You are not unintelligent. The talent you surround yourself with want you to succeed because they want to see you succeed from their talents. Anyone can make a pitch, anyone can write a check, but it’s the drive to continue outmaneuver and outwit competition that moves your business from outside of a storage closet.

Some of the structures we’ve seen companies employ include:

• Handle all online marketing channels in-house, with the option of either having one person handle all online strategies or splitting strategies between a team of two or more.

• Keep more familiar marketing channels or channels with which the company has seen more success, in-house while outsourcing the less familiar or successful, or sometimes just more time-consuming, to outside agencies or freelancers.

• Outsource all internet marketing strategies to an outside agency, or to several different agencies or freelancers.

While these are all perfectly viable options and they all work for different businesses, when it comes down to it, the most efficient and beneficial long-term way to manage all of the online marketing activities an organization engages in is to find a way to ensure that the activities engaged in for each strategy can feed into one another and provide benefits outside the strict scope of PPC, or SEO, or social media etc. In other words, the strategies have to be consistent with each other, and helpful to one another, or you’re wasting time, money, and possibly creating a poor long-term foundation for your brand online. Consider some of the complications that can arise from having too many hands in the internet marketing pot:

• Inconsistent branding- such that when potential customers interact with you via various online channels the messages they receive about your company and its culture, values, and goals are different.

• Development of projects that have the potential to damage other online marketing strategies- for example, if one part of your website is modified by your SEO company, what impact will it have on your PPC campaigns? Will your web developers be prepared to handle the extra traffic generated by a successful social media campaign?

• Duplication of projects- because your online presence, though channeled through distinct strategies, is actually a whole, and that whole is based on improving user experience with your company, it may be that the most beneficial projects for PPC are also the most beneficial for SEO. In that case, the time and money wasted by having two agencies or two individuals working on those pieces separately could be substantially reduced.

• Violations of company policy or deviations from company direction- specifically if communication between the company and outside agents is not well-defined, for all agents, there is a risk in giving creative control to someone else. They may create a marketing plan that is outside the scope of your company’s ultimate plan for the future, or they may create creative elements that are in violation of your industry’s marketing policies. There is no way for someone outside of your company to know what you want unless you tell them, so it’s important to do so regularly.

Some of the most common ways to address the issue of confusion amongst internal employees, or between agencies/freelancers and organizations and their internal employees and reduce the likelihood of the above complications, are as follows:

• One person takes high-level, directional control of internet marketing strategies and ensures that the activities performed in one strategy are consistent and beneficial to the others, including relaying communications and project details between parties. This is the role that an internal marketing manager might take in directing either several in-house employees or one or more agencies, and it can work very well as long as the marketing manager has the time and capability to oversee and communicate with multiple teams, can effectively distribute information about overall marketing direction, and can facilitate collaborative work between different teams.

• Multiple outside agencies or freelancers are responsible for communicating with one another about ongoing and upcoming projects and coordinating to ensure that they’re consistent and will benefit, or at least not harm, one another. This can also work, but it relies on several factors, including excellent communication between interagency teams (which can often be very challenging, as agencies or freelancers have different communication styles and are also frequently reluctant to share detailed information about their projects with others). The other consideration is that if an internal agent of the company is not overseeing all project coordination by outside parties, the company’s goals, restrictions, and overall direction must be communicated very clearly, preferably in an official document or documents, to all involved parties before they begin work. Essentially, an internal party still needs to be substantially involved in the overall process, but may not need to take so much day-to-day responsibility if a company has identified outside agents they trust to work together to execute their internet marketing strategies.

• One outside agency or freelancer is responsible for all elements of internet marketing, with varying levels of communication and direction from the company. This structure sounds ideal, from the perspective of maintaining consistency, simplifying communication, and offering the ability to create projects that are multifunctional for more than one area of online marketing. The complication comes in when you consider that “the best” agent or agency for any one particular strategy may not be “the best” at another…and you want the best, don’t you? As such, unless you find an individual or company that has demonstrated strong capability across internet marketing channels, it can be difficult to put all of your projects with one agency or individual. However, if you can identify an agency you are comfortable with handling multiple strategies, the efficiency, cost, and communication-difficulty savings can be great. One caveat of this method is that sometimes if all internet marketing responsibilities are outsourced, internal communication with the outsourcers can become a smaller priority, which is fine to the extent that you are comfortable giving the agency freer reign over your branding and revenue generation efforts. Regardless, to maintain a good long-term fit between the company’s direction and the agency’s marketing plans, discussions of any relevant internal audience data, company direction changes, etc. should be scheduled and held regularly.

• One internal person holds responsibility for the planning and execution of all internet marketing strategies. This is how many companies begin in internet marketing. Their marketing officer, sales person, or even CEO, depending on company structure and size, begins dealing with marketing online. This obviously offers substantial benefit in terms of ensuring that projects remain consistent and in line with company goals. The primary disadvantage that most companies with one-person internal internet marketing departments find is that the scope of activities available is too wide for one person to fully take advantage of, especially in combination with other job responsibilities. This can lead to a lot of missed opportunity, as well as a lack of proper oversight to best optimize the channels that are being operated. Unless an internal agent is well-educated in terms of internet marketing, it is hard to replicate the expertise of an outside agency or expert freelancer with an internal employee, regardless of how much easier it makes communication and seems to make day-to-day operations. Some companies, after outsourcing their online marketing strategies for a time, do decide that the expense of hiring an expert internal person or team to handle solely internet marketing is their ideal combination to address communication and direction issues without sacrificing expertise, and that method is more promising than assigning the responsibility to an internal employee with other internal responsibilities.

Essentially, any method can work, but any method can also go very wrong. The important thing is to consider your company’s structure, internal expertise, and capability, research outside options, and from there create a plan with strong direction that integrates all strategies as one, rather than considering each channel as an element separate from the others.

It’s true, true. I’ve never been on the “shopping around” end of searching for SEO services- but I have been on the “selling” side of that equation, as well as on the “say HUH your former SEO firm did WHAT” side of the client-relationship equation. And being in those places has given me a pretty solid understanding of what it is essential that a company searching for an SEO manager learns about, and from, any company they’re considering, as well as what they need to make sure their potential manager knows about their own business.

And like most of us: I’ve purchased several cars. And no matter how many times I do it, it’s kind of scary. It’s a big deal! That’s a lot of investment! I…don’t know anything except I want it to be fast, and purple and never break. And I’d like to pay as little as possible. But when it comes down to it, finding an SEO firm is a lot like finding the best car for you for the best price. Let me explain why:

If you don’t know exactly what you need, you’re screwed.

You should always start with a list of “things that make a good X”: a list of standard services or features that you can expect from a reputable car or SEO dealer.  Research online, ask business acquaintances, and gather as much information as you can about what is available and how it relates to your needs.

That’s not to say that you shouldn’t always keep your ears and eyes open for new options you’re not yet aware of. But it does mean that if you don’t understand exactly what the feature being offered is and how it works, you don’t get to use it as a decision-making factor until you’ve gotten all of the info on it and taken a minute to think about it. An SEO firm offers you anchor text optimization for $200/month, the car dealer offers you paint sealant for $150. Do either of those things matter? Do you need them? Do you know?! If not, it’s okay! Don’t feel pressured to make decisions about things you don’t understand. Take time, get opinions or second offers, and then go back to the one you want to do business with, knowing exactly what you want.

If you don’t know your own standards, you’re screwed.

Not every car salesman in the world is going to try to take advantage of you. And neither is every SEO firm. But the problem is: when you’re dealing with an industry you’re pretty unfamiliar with, it becomes about 9000% easier to get the very short end of the stick. Fortunately, the truth is that no matter how unfamiliar you may be with an industry, product, or service, you still know what your personal quality standards are! I feel like we’d all refuse to touch a car with leaking gas can and dog pee stains on the backseat, so just…apply that same standard of quality to your website! Do you want an SEO firm who will carefully proofread and edit all of the copy and linking they do for your site, and ensure it meets with your approval? Or a three-country-relay outsource that’s posted on your site after an editor with 674 other pages to approve and post today glances at it? You need to understand the quality you’re going to get for the price you pay, and make sure that your standards don’t get sacrificed for economy.

It’s your ride…I mean, it’s your website. It’s your business. No matter how trustworthy and exceptional your SEO firm is, ultimately, the website is the portrayal of yourself and your business you’re showing the world. Whatever level of control you need to have over it, make sure the firm is aware from the outset, to avoid both quality issues and creative control issues later on in your relationship.

You have to respect what you don’t know.

Truth be told, when most of us go to buy a car or go to hire an SEO firm, we know what we want. We have “goals” (I want a new Jeep Grand Cherokee and it’s gotta be PURPLE and it’s gotta have a black leather interior and please also if it could have heated seats and a self-starter, I live in Indiana and it’s getting cold out for heavenssakes). But often, we aren’t 100% sure how we’ll reach those goals. We might have to modify our goals a little bit based on the reality of what’s possible (Huh? My specially modified non-production color Grand Cherokee is going to be $14,000 more than the one on the lot here?). And that’s fine! It’s a natural part of the learning and negotiating process. You’re going to have to remember that search engine optimizers are not magicians, they’re just people who understand the rules of making stuff popular online. Again: ask around to make sure that you’re not being lied to by an undermotivated SEO agent, but be aware that sometimes you’re going to have expectations that aren’t based on the reality of what SEO can do, and be willing to change your expectations (within a comfortable range for yourself and your business) when you gain that understanding.

Realize that sometimes pretty is worth it…sometimes it’s not.

This is self-explanatory in terms of cars. Paying $14,000 more for a purple Jeep when I like charcoal grey just fine would be a terrible decision for me. Tempting, but terrible. In SEO, this can be a bit trickier. Sometimes agencies which offer very polished, very standardized packages can offer those options because they are large companies with very large client recruitment and advertising budgets, and the presentation isn’t at all reflective of their actual search engine optimization capabilities. An agency which offers you useful information in a straightforward, organized manner from the outset and takes your personal preferences into consideration during your negotiations is likely to continue doing so. A freelancer who has excellent references but a terrible sales pitch and faxes you a contract with the name of their previous client whited out? Maybe will do an excellent job of the work, but you can expect communication might be complicated. You have to use your own judgment to determine whether the level of professionalism portrayed by each properly reflects their capabilities, as well as determine whether the firm or individual’s communicative style will work with your internal business strategies.

Always remember just because you’re confused in your meeting with the car salesman or the SEO agency pitchman, don’t panic! That’s why we have the internet. Take a time out, make sure you’re being thorough and being true to your needs, and it will work out just fine.

The other day, one of my more hands-on clients forwarded me this article about monitoring rankings using advanced filters. After reading it I knew that I would be able to use this for all of my clients, and I started telling my colleagues about how helpful it would be for everyone to use. However, I forgot one important detail. Not all of us know about filters, let alone advanced filters. I also realized that we haven’t really implemented very many “User Defined” segments, so all in all, we’d have to start with those steps first before we truly appreciated the “golden nugget” that had been uncovered.

What are Google Analytics filters & how are they used?

There are two types of filters, predefined and advanced. Google describes them as:

• Predefined Filters: Predefined filters are a quick and easy way to accomplish some of the most common filtering tasks.
• Custom Filters: Custom filters allow more advanced manipulation of data.

So what does this mean for you, and how are they set up?

Note: When working within an account it is a good idea to always have one profile without filters. It’s important to keep a “clean” profile, and create additional profiles that contain segmented data. This will help ensure the integrity of your data in case a profile is deleted or a filter is set up incorrectly. Just imagine if you only tested on your main profile – you’d have no way of knowing what data was accurate, and if you deleted the profile, you’d have no way of getting historical data back.

Creating Predefined Filters

There are a few choices when creating a predefined filter, so you first have to decide what you want to exclude or include in your profile data. After you know what you want to track, log into your account, and choose the profile you will be working with (or create a new one). Once you are in the profile you can add/edit filters from there.

1. Exclude all traffic from a domain. Use this filter to block all traffic from a certain domain. Google help explains that Google Analytics uses reverse IP lookup to find the domain of your users, so this can come in handy for larger companies that have their IP addresses mapped to the domain instead of their ISPs.
2. Exclude all traffic from an IP address. We use this one all the time to block traffic from our IP address. This helps ensure that the testing I do for clients, and the visits I make to their site doesn’t skew the data. I know the level of traffic I generate isn’t all that much, but by excluding our IP the data is just that much cleaner, and who doesn’t like that?
3. Include only traffic to a subdirectory. This helps you track only the traffic that goes to a subdirectory of your site. This is particularly handy when you have a blog that you want to monitor traffic on. You would simply enter ^/blog/ if you want to track www.mysite.com/blog.

Creating Custom Filters

There are a variety of custom filters that you can create, each one giving you a deeper dive into the data that is captured in your Analytics account. When creating a custom filter, you first have to choose one of the following:

• Exclude
• Include
• Lowercase
• Uppercase
• Search and Replace
• Advanced

From there you will make a selection in the filter field that will help further segment your filter. There are a variety of choices ranging from Request URI, data from your campaigns (like keywords), eCommerce data, and visitor information. When paired with the choices above, you can see how quickly you will be able to create an immense number of filters to help you really hone in on certain parts of data.

User Defined Segments

If you checked out the article I referenced above, you’ll know that the other feature mentioned and used in the advanced filters they created were user defined segments. You may have seen these when viewing reports in Analytics, either on the top under advanced segments, or on the left hand side under Visitors. Either way, it’s important to understand that they are just one more powerful tool that we can use to get a better idea about who is visiting a website, and how one segment’s behavior may be different than another’s.

Still wondering why you should care? User-defined segments allow you to label your visitors based on the actions they take while on your site, such as sign up for your newsletter, fill out a contact form, or make a purchase. And considering the fact that all of these actions would lead us to believe they are probably more engaged than the average Joe, it would be really great if only we could see how they interact differently when it comes to other important metrics like time on site or pageviews, or even bounce rate.

Setting up User Defined Labels

Now don’t leave when I say this, but user-defined labels require a bit of extra code. But it’s not that bad, I promise! Firs you have to decide the name for your segment, such as “customer”, and you add a little snippet of code that helps identify that label when they reach the confirmation page. Check out this help section for specific details on adding the user-defined code. (Be sure to scroll down to the “technical notes” to make sure you understand all aspects before diving in.)

So now that you understand filters and user-defined labels, you can start to do some of the experimenting that Patrick discusses in the article above, and start gathering some pretty amazing data that will help you better optimize your accounts.

A friendly tip:When dealing with keyword reports or filters, you are bound to notice that there are visitors coming in through (not set), and it might be a fairly large number. This is because not all visitors come in from a keyword; some come in directly either by typing in your URL, or through a bookmark. You can verify that your filter is correct by calculating the percent of visitors that came in through (not set), and compare that to the percent of Direct visitors in the Traffic Sources report. They won’t be identical, but they should be fairly close.

Different industries experience this, for programmers it’s call “feature creep.” Something new comes in and it starts to get bloated and the original goal that was supposedly easy to achieve becomes sacrificed for the whole of the entire new project to be completed – whatever version it is this quarter.

The same thing happens with your SEO and internet marketing.

Here are 3 things to help keep you on task.

1. Keep an eye on competition’s rankings

Remember, SEO is about ranking top for the terms that people would use to find your site. That’s it. Sometimes it’s easy, sometimes it’s hard. Sometimes it’s really hard. Just because you haven’t implemented SEO technique #175, doesn’t mean you need to if traffic is coming your way.

2. Be Task-Oriented. Not Vision-Oriented.

The vision is rank high everywhere someone would go to find something you provide. Now that the vision is established, focus on tasks to complete something.

3. Stave off Rogue SEO Engineers by demanding proof.

Increases of SEO offers to enhance your website might be piling up your inbox or junk mail folder. They are in mine! Now and then, one slips through. Remember that you have a project to complete. Your team is smart. You know your business more than someone who sent some spam. Don’t get disillusioned by some marketing speak on what your website is not doing. If someone wants to earn your business they should provide a breakdown on your competitive landscape, their analysis of missed opportunities (quantified if possible), and bench-marked analytics on previous clients.

Stay strong. Stay the course. Implement your SEO plan and be known as a great Project Manager.

We’ve all been there. We’ve been given a task that we’re not sure how to handle and with limited resources to make it succeed. Increasing leads through a website is not a fad. It will continue to be big important factor in your overall marketing campaign. A problem you may not think about is proving the value of your efforts to maybe garner some budget money to expand your online efforts.

While this post won’t be about SEO on-the-fly, it will talk about maximizing the visibility of your efforts to the company’s brass.

1. Contact Forms

This is #1 for a reason. If I had only one item on this list, this would be it. If your website only has one contact form or just a clickable email hyperlink – you have some work to do. As you identify your web customers in different categories, you should have a different contact form for each “purpose.” For example, if you’re a local law firm, you should separate your site according to different clients that would come to your site. Each page that refers to hat client segment should have its own contact form. When the form is submitted, you know exactly which part of the website that lead came from and know the next step. You should also include a generic “Catch all” type of submission form on a contact us page. I use this on several sites to give people a chance to “vent” their problem. They don’t want to categorize themselves, they want to talk and let me categorize them later. I still also include an email hyperlink because I’ve found that some people like the feeling of “circumventing the system” altogether and type whatever they want. It’s another net that captures a different segment of people. Those that typed the most in the last two methods are actually investing their time with you already and conversion of a lead into a sale is more likely.

The major part of contact forms is having the ability of the form to be copied  automatically to other people in your company. Before launching an overhaul, I made sure that the CEO, COO, and Sales Manager were copied on all submission forms. I alerted them I would do this as a “…if you want” type of activity” so as to not make a big deal out of it and they agreed.

The payoff was when different marketing initiatives started bringing in very strong web leads.

2. Showing Conversion Ratios

Sales teams love talking about conversion rates. Conversion rates are usually the percentage of sales that come out of leads. For marketing, it’s the step before leads. It’s the amount of exposures of the message that convert to leads. A bare-bones way to use Google Analytics is to compare the number of web submission forms (don’t delete them! Ever!) and compare that to the number of unique visitors on that page for a specific period. Everyone always says that a good conversion rate is 1% for everything from traditional junk mail fliers to websites. I think a 10% or higher rate is achievable on pages targeted specifically for a certain clientele. It works! Once you set the stage of typical conversion rates, your rate will shine.

3. Coming under standard costs-per-lead

For every lead you bring in through your website, quantify your time spent on the site every month and multiply that by your pay rate. Divide that by the amount of leads generated and your have a “cost per lead.” Most businesses have a “cost per lead” number in mind in order to make decisions concerning advertising. One business figured a $240 cost per lead of a new customer. Yours will vary. Imagine if you were able to bring a cost per lead drastically below that number? You suddenly show value toward your efforts like you haven’t before!

As you build your website’s online campaign, remember to keep management in the loop with the value it is adding to the bottom line. You will bring a confidence to your efforts from their support like you never have seen. As one Operations Officer told me three weeks ago in a meeting. “I don’t use the internet, I don’t care for it, but it’s obviously important to our clients and so we must pay attention to it.”