DISC, Inc - “Making Web Sites Make Money”

DISC, Inc - “Making Web Sites Make Money”www.2disc.com - [email protected] - 413.584.6500 - 73 James St., Greenfield, MA 01301

Search & SocialPresented to Prof. Bahl’s Social Media Strategyan MBA class at theIsenberg School Of Management, UMass

By Rob Laporte, PresidentDISC, Inc. - “Making Web Sites Make Money”[email protected] www.2disc.com

10/30/13

mailto:[email protected]


http://www.2disc.com/

http://www.2disc.com/


What You’ll Get Today

• You get the big picture and trends more than particular tactics which change quickly.

• More about search than social marketing, simply because most of you already know a lot about, if not use, social media.

• The format is about 1/2 lecture on search marketing, and 1/2 discussion. Please write down questions during the first half, so we can address them in the second half.

• A few good online resources.



Overview• My Background• Overview of Social Marketing• Overview of Search Marketing• Why Search Marketing?• The Hard Freakonomics of Web Marketing• The Parts of Search Marketing• Intersections of Search & Social• Beware Hype• Linking and PageRank in Search & Social• The Rise of Google+• Major Trends• Resources • Q&A, Discussion



My Background

• Worked in advertising and market research in the ‘80s.

• Ph.D. work in Shakespeare and teaching literature and writing at UMass Amherst in the ‘90s.

• Founded DISC in 1995, specialized in SEM in 1997.

• Hundreds of clients of all types and sizes over 16 years.

• Most published author in the the print/web magazine, VisibilityMagazine.com.

• I prefer enduring research and articles over chatty social media, but that’s just me, and social sharing is important.


http://www.VisibilityMagazine.com/


Overview of Social Marketing

• Most if not all of you use social media like Facebook--and are in this class--so you know enough about what social media is.



Overview of Search Marketing• SEM: Search Engine Marketing or, more eloquently,

Search Marketing, consists of marketing a website in search engines, typically via:– SEO (Search Engine Optimization), which addresses search

engine friendly code, keyword research, and keyworded writing in websites.

– Managing pay per click (PPC) advertising.

– Other paid placement, like Google Shopping and other shopping comparison sites, and display ads (image or video) on non-search engine websites where ads are triggered by the keywords and topics on the web page.

– Increasingly “SEM” includes conversion rate optimization (CRO), Landing Page Optimization (LPO), and ROI projection and tracking.



Why SEM?

• It works. Often really, really well, especially in the past before everyone caught on, but there’s still plenty of low-hanging fruit to pick.

• Google vs. General Electric.


8

An S&P 100, Pre-Web Business

9

GE

10

GE

11

GE

12

GE

13

14

GE


GE

GE’s market capitalization, or value, is about $248 billion

GE is about 126 years old.



Google, Inc.

Google’s market capitalization is about $290 billion - about 15% more than GE.

Google is about 12 years old, or 1/10th of GE’s age.



If SEM Didn’t Work,Google Wouldn’t Be So Huge

• 68% of Google’s annual revenue, about $26 billion, comes from those PPC ads on top and right of search result pages, and that roughly 26 billion clicks per year is only about 15% of all Google.com clicks. The rest are clicks from the non-paid, free or “organic” listings. Bing and Yahoo add about 30% to these numbers.

• Thousands of businesses would not be paying these click charges month after month if it did not work. Tracking profit is quite accurate these days, and most businesses could spend much more profitably.

• In short, SEM really works, and you want to be in search engines, certainly the free parts and probably the paid parts.



The Hard Freakonomics of SEO• Too many hucksters and incompetents are consulting -- no

equivalent of the AMA or the ABA exists to qualify “professionals.”

• Complexity is too much to master unless it’s your full time job -- and even then it’s really hard to master. It’s more complicated than the legal profession, though not as complicated as the medical profession.

• It takes a lot of time to learn enough to chose a consultant or SEM firm.

• SEM changes weekly. Google alters its ranking algorithm about 500 times per year--more than once per day--and some changes, like the recent Panda and Penguin updates, have ruined millions of dollars of past (shady) SEM work and many businesses.

• The “Hard Freakonomics of Search Marketing for Small Businesses,” by Rob Laporte (moi), www.visibilitymagazine.com/disc-inc/rob-laporte/the-hard-freakonomics-of-search-marketing-for-small-business


http://www.visibilitymagazine.com/disc-inc/rob-laporte/the-hard-freakonomics-of-search-marketing-for-small-business

http://www.visibilitymagazine.com/disc-inc/rob-laporte/the-hard-freakonomics-of-search-marketing-for-small-business


The 7 Parts of SEO

1. Technical SEO pertains to blockages on the level of the server and deep code of websites.

2. CMS & Database SEO, or CMS-SEO, pertains to proactive SEO tactics build into content management systems.

3. Keyword Research and SEO Copywriting.

4. Link Marketing

5. Local & Map SEO

6. ROI Reporting - “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth measuring.” Most overlooked by SMEs.

7. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) or Landing Page Optimization (LPO), increasing standard part of search marketing work. Read Tim Ash’s Landing Page Optimization and Jakob Neilsen’s books.



Technical SEO

• Technical SEO pertains to blockages on the level of the server and deep code of websites.– Best free audit tool is WooRank.com.– It’s best to hire an SEO pro who knows which

SEO technical problems are most urgent and how to fix them. Otherwise, Google it, being sure to restrict results to the last year.



CMS & Database SEO or CMS-SEO• CMS-SEO pertains to proactive SEO tactics build into content

management systems. Overlaps some with technical SEO.This one really does require an SEO pro. See my two Visibility Magazine articles on CMS-SEO at www.2disc.com/about-us/press-and-media/visibility-magazine, which are a few years old but still accurate except for recommended word counts in some areas of web pages.

• Small business get a good search engine friendly CMS in WordPress, especially with the Yoast or similar plug-ins.

• For websites selling lots of products, programming your CMS to pull keywords into your pages may require a week of skilled labor, but you end up with an intelligent SEO machine that works for you in perpetuity. True, the resulting SEO is not as good as careful manual work--which should be done on key pages as well--but the ROI escalates over months and years because your SEO costs in this area drop to zero.


http://www.2disc.com/visibility_magazine.php


Keyword Researchand SEO Writing

• This concerns researching and writing key phrases into your website.

– This is old fashion SEO, essentially the same since 1997.

• Affordable keyword research tools, like WordTracker and Google’s keyword tool, don’t work very well now.

– Bing’s free tool is the best of the cheap ones.

– DISC now recommends PPC advertising to determine the best keywords for SEO.

• Learning the rules of SEO writing is relatively easy. Some pros argue that 50% of this is just doing good writing, which naturally uses words and phrases relevant to your market’s searches.



Link Marketing

• Entails getting relevant, legitimate incoming links from other web properties to your website.

• Debatable whether link marketing is part of “SEO” per se.

• If you take a cheap and easy route, you risk sudden steep demotions in the search engines any time in the future.

– Google’s Panda and Penguin updates destroyed many businesses that used inexpensive link marketing tactics.

• Like social media marketing, link marketing done right takes time and care. Budget a little bit each month.

• If y



Local & Map SEO• Boosts your website or social media property in search

engines and in the maps in smart phones, tablets, PCs and Macs.

• If you don’t have a website, use a Google+ (for Business) page.

• Make a spreadsheet or other document with all info commonly asked for in the top local search websites.

• Register with the roughly 10 databases (like Axicom) and local websites, like Yelp, which feed the top search engines’ results. Make that information as consistent as possible, especially the business name, description, address, phone, and category within the local directory/website.

• The more reviews, the better.

• There and many ranking factors.


http://www.google.com/placesforbusiness













Paid Placement, Like PPC• You can’t do this half-way, except for AdWords Express.

– The profitable ads and keyword searches that trigger the ads to appear in search engines take time to find and optimize via monthly testing.

– Putting a “toe in the water” means you’ll do what everyone else has bidded up to the most expensive clicks.

– Use “Re-Targetting” and other advanced tools.

– Paid placement requires talented, long-experienced professional help. Even the full-time pros are finding it difficult to keep up with the most profitable tactics.

• Remember that PPC is largely a bidding platform. Your competition shares your reluctance to spend, creating opportunity for you. “Fortune Favors the Bold.”



“Now this end is called the

Thagomizer . . . after the Late

Thag Simmons”



Intersections of Search & Social

• All marketing is search in one form or another.

• In social, you search for friends, activities, reviews of restaurants or products. It’s still search.

• Increasingly search engines rank websites according to the amount of social signals pointing to the website.

• This trend will increase to a point, but remember that nearly half of Americans think the Earth is under 10,000 years old, so search engines won’t let group “likes” determine all ranking in search engines.

• “SoLoMo” (social, local, mobile): all three parts growing rapidly and synergizing and amplifying one another.

• More Social => Better Search Rank. Social activities related to a website will impact search ranking either directly or indirectly.



Beware Hype

• All web marketing channels, especially social media marketing, are subject to huge hype.

– Journalists and tons of bloggers, who want their content to rank in search engines, produce scads of big bold headlines and “really important” content.

– Social media firms hire PR agencies to pump up their importance, their stock prices, or their IPO.

– Web marketing firms hype social media services they sell.

• This kind of hype is echoed and amplified by countless bloggers. Misinformation can be echoed.

• Social marketing takes lots of time, and that cost must be compared to costs and returns of other marketing channels.



Search vs. Social ROI

• 2012-holiday-ecommerce-traffic-sources


http://cms.searchenginewatch.com/IMG/902/253902/2012-holiday-ecommerce-traffic-sources.png?1368190491


PageRank Visualized



More Social => Better Search Rank • Social activities will impact search ranking either directly or

indirectly.

• Directly via passing PageRank, but most links in social media sites don’t pass PageRank.

• Indirect boosts SE ranking, despite no PageRank flow.

• The authority and trustworthiness of linking websites and social media properties is important and will become increasingly so. Search engines measure authority and trustworthiness in many ways.

– The author tag and its future

– Other instances of the semantic web or “micro-formats”

• Again, quantity and quality of social signals demands lots of expert time, and other marketing channels may have better ROI (including, increasingly, traditional marketing).



Google+ May Become #1

• Google+ (for personal and business) is very high on Google’s priority list, and is getting tons of Google investment.

• Some top social media mavens believe Google+ will surpass Facebook within 5 years.

– Google owns search, so can promote Google+ effectively.

• Google+ already greatly increases click-through rates. Soon will increase ranking.

• 1/3 of evolution of search engines entails fighting spam and the surplus of duplicate or very similar content, and Google+ is a major weapon in this fight.



Major Trends • SoLoMo continues rapid escalation.

– Google glasses and The Minority Report.

• Increasing sophistication in assessing the variety of online and offline parts of the conversion funnel, including social ROI.

• Increasing disparity between the haves and have nots in web marketing because of the Freakonomics of search.

• Increasing automation of web marketing. Imagine a website that automatically changes design, text, even products and services, in real time automatically as all relevant data is processed.

• Search marketing will continue to become a standard part of business schools’ curriculum.

• Specialization will continue to increase.

• An emergent culture of loathing “too big to fail” may accelerate the trend of people seeking--both within and outside of search engines--smaller, socially connected businesses to fulfill their needs.



Case History: The-HomeStore.com • A small business that builds modular homes in the Northeast.

• Client of DISC’s for about 9 years, and spent over $300,000 in labor costs with DISC.

• Before the housing crisis, the smart, Ph.D President diverted all marketing funds to web marketing, mostly search.

• Dominated the search engines, becoming the envy of his peers.

• Housing market crash hurt him, but less than others. He continued to invest heavily in web marketing, knowing that competitors would not and that many would go out of business, leaving him on top for the rebound in the market.

• About two years ago, got DISC’s social media advice on his blog, which within a year was voted best in his industry.

• Big Google changes hurt his rank: a lesson about putting too many eggs in one marketing basket.



A Few Good Resources• The search engines and social media websites themselves.

• SearchEngineLand.com

• SocialMediaExaminer.com and SoLoMoShow.com, and the podcasts there.

• My articles at VisibilityMagazine.com. Search for “Rob Laporte”.

• http://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors

• www.location3.com/social-media-implications-of-2013-seo-ranking-factors-report/ - good study on social impact on SEO rank.

• Book: The Art of SEO (2nd Edition)

• 2disc.com/blog - for executive perspective and prioritizing

• Google searches restricted by date.

• About tools to help in social media: tons of them--see SocialMediaExaminer.com and SoLoMoShow.com.


http://www.SearchEngineLand.com/

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/

http://www.solomoshow.com/

http://www.VisibilityMagazine.com/

http://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors

http://www.location3.com/social-media-implications-of-2013-seo-ranking-factors-report/

http://www.location3.com/social-media-implications-of-2013-seo-ranking-factors-report/

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/

http://www.solomoshow.com/


Contacting Me at DISC and Downloading This Talk

• Rob Laporte– [email protected]– 413-584-6500– Yeah, no social media contacts

• This presentation is at 2disc.com/about-us/speaking-seminars/



http://www.2disc.com/ces/

http://www.2disc.com/ces/


• I invite questions, comments, discussion.

Q & A, Discussion



Search & Social

By Rob Laporte, PresidentDISC, Inc. - “Making Web Sites Make Money”[email protected] www.2disc.com

10/30/13





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DISC, Inc - “Making Web Sites Make Money”