Extra! Extra!

The Gemological Institute of America (GIA), the world’s foremost authority on diamonds, colored stones, and pearls recently worked with Extractable to launch their new website www.GIA.edu. The new website was designed with a coherent navigational structure that promotes critical user paths.

The site design and information architecture should increase student applications and stone submissions while driving repeat visitors as they have a more positive online experience with the GIA brand.

If you need a stone evaluated, are interested in a jewelry career, need to buy a ring or learn more about a stone make sure to visit GIA online or visit them in Carlsbad.

One of the most important factors search engines use to rank your website for keyword phrases is analyzing the number of websites and how popular (or important) the websites that are linking to you are (note: I’ll refer to these type of links as “backward links” although other SEO professionals might call them inward links, insite links, etc).  Google even patented a link analysis algorithm called Page Rank (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank) which helps Google determine the ranking of your website on keyword phrases.

Hence, link building should be an integral (and ongoing effort) in any search engine optimization (SEO) program.  Where should you look to increase the number and quality of backward links to your website?

• Find industry related blogs; and blog!
• Find and participate in industry related websites and forums.
• Submit your website to free search engine directories like DMOZ.org.
• Build relationships with similar website owners and prove value in having them add a link to your website.

To elaborate on the last point a little more; in Google’s search engine find related websites by using the following search syntax “related:www.yourwebsitehere.com” and identify any websites that might benefit from adding a link to your website.   Don’t email or call the website owner blindly.  You will need to build a relationship and prove value to the other website owner that creating a link to your website is in their best interests. 

Show value!  For example, if your websites focuses on listing all the Happy Hour events in the city of San Francisco consider contacting websites like MustSeeSanFranisco.com or SFTravel.com.  Who on vacation in San Francisco doesn’t want to have a drink at a local Happy Hour event?

Lastly, don’t forget to “optimize” the hyperlink by including the primary keyword phrase in the actual link.  Example:  Instead of adding the following text to another website you are getting a link from, “Visit http://www.yourwebsitehere.com/ to see some social events including happy hours in the city” write “Visit our partner to find great happy hours events in San Francisco”

The direct benefits of getting backward links is A) your website will receive more site traffic from visitors clicking through on that backward link and B) search engines will give your website more “weight” when determining where your website should appear on related keyword searches.

One of the most frustrating situations for any online marketer is not getting credit for sales that take place in the companies’ brick-and-mortar stores when the initial lead was generated online.  This often occurs when running a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaign which attracts customers to the companies’ website (where they can purchase the product online) but who still choose to purchase the product at the companies brick-and-mortar store.

Here’s a trick on how to setup one of your Pay-Per-Click campaigns so you can get credit for the sale and receive the allocades of your coworkers you know you deserve!

Setup one of your Pay-Per-Campaigns so the ads only display in a major city where your company has most of their brick-and-mortar stores.

Example: If your company focuses on selling competitive priced jewelry, setup a PPC campaign to only display ads in New York (assuming that’s where a majority of your stores are located) and bid on keywords like “discount jewelry, jewelry distributor, diamond wholesaler”.

Next, write all your ads to lead with the city abbreviation “NY” (an obvious abbreviation for anyone living in New York) and then include some of the keyword phrases that you are bidding on (eg. NY Diamond Wholesaler).  Use the second line of the ad to explain what your company sells (eg. necklaces, bracelets, rings etc) and use the last line of the ad to “hook” your customer (eg. advertise free shipping and a coupon for 10-20% off any purchase).

Keeping best practices in mind, create a specific landing page for this campaign.  Include (and better yet bold) the keywords you are bidding on, pictures of your products, etc.  Most importantly include a 10-20% coupon that can be used online upon checkout or printed out for in-store purchases.

If you’re a PPC rockstar you’ll probably already realize that setting up a geographic targeted PPC campaign with targeted ads that include the city name and take customers to a custom landing pages will result in:

1.    Higher clickthrough rates (don’t be surprised if you get close to 10%)!
2.    Higher online conversions (who doesn’t like a good 10-20% discount on a product they are already interested in?)
3.    Higher total sales (since you’ll get credit for offline sales generated online).

Have you figured out how number 3 happens?

The coupon code!  By setting up your campaign this way, you’ll have customers print off and use the coupon in-store (in order to get the 10-20% discount)!  Since, this coupon is only on your PPC landing page you’ll get credit for the sale!

When developing a new website, most companies (or web development agencies if the project is not being done in-house) go through an exhaustive “Test Plan” or “QA Checklist” before the site is launched. This document tends to focus on checking for broken links, spell checking site copy, testing site features like search or online forms, verifying the presence of 301 redirects (on the old website), making sure the site is free of (CSS, JS, etc) errors, ensuring the navigation is consistent, checking cross browser compatibility and so on goes the list.

When of the areas that I believe that is most often overlooked when “QAing” a website before it is launched is verifying that the sites analytic and search engine strategies are in place.

So just because your QA team believes the website is free of errors and ready to be launched don’t forget to verify your analytic strategy has been addressed and you’ve taken the necessary steps to make it easy for search engines to find and understand your new website.

So I used this weekend to make inroads into a growing backlog of online marketing articles, deleting many from notable figures that have surprisingly little to offer but also noting a number that are worth describing and debating in this forum.

One piece in particular caught my attention because in large part it describes the state on online marketing perhaps more effectively than most pieces I’ve seen. It comes to us courtesy of Marketing Profs. Periodically they run surveys where they gauge best practices in the online marketing world, but in this case they surveyed marketing professionals and asked them about their familiarity with and adoption of SEO practices to drive Web traffic. The results were compelling and telling and reveal the rather poor understanding of SEO even within the very industry that ought to be driving it. A few results from the MarketingProfs survey that polled a group of self-described corporate marketers (66%) and consultants (32%):

How long have they been using SEO?
27% don’t bother with SEO
22% have been at it less than a year
24% somewhere between 1-2 years

When asked what would it replace today,
42% of respondents said SEO funding would likely replace online advertising in the way of banners, newsletters and ads.

As for the major challenges they encounter,
48% say they have difficulty demonstrating any results, and
43% are not properly staffed

And although most (83%) cite improvements to their website as their largest Web marketing efforts,
47% of the respondents do not think they use SEO effectively to drive traffic to those very websites.

Lastly, perhaps not surprising given the state of the practice,
44% don’t know whether SEO is having any impact on marketing ROI

It seems puzzling that there is still a fog hanging over SEO, that it’s value is still a mystery to many who ought to understand it well when an increasing percentage of marketing funds are making their way online.

Today Google announced an updated version of their Analytics service. The service was already terrific, and free. It now features a much more robust dashboard, the ability to better track campaigns and the ability to email reports to collegues.

Check out the flash demo for an overview of the service and this blog for details on what has changed in the reporting interface.

Being an avid foodie living in San Francisco, Citysearch has long been part of my restaurant search arsenal, which also includes Yelp, sfgate, sfstation, and Chowhound. I’m not alone in using the site this way: 6 of the top 10 searches in Citysearch San Francisco are related to food. So it’s good news that Citysearch updated its website last week, creating a richer user experience while implementing Web 2.0 standards.

Aside from the fresh look and feel, some of the updates include:

1. Text messaging – This is probably the most convenient new feature. You can now send your search results to your phone via text messaging and receive the phone number, address and user ratings.

2. Behind-the-scenes videos – Citysearch offers short 1-minute videos of local restaurants, bars, hotels, and so on. Just like Chow. Now you can see the venue before you go.

3. Improved search - You can refine your search with more categories, such as group dining, carry out, lunch spot, and late night dining. You can also map your results much easier.

4. Better interaction design – Pop-up menus, for example, have replaced classic pull-downs, so you can see all the neighborhoods at once when you begin your search. This gives you a global view of your options, something pull-down menus can’t do.

5. Better organization of content – On the restaurants hub page, you can check out featured restaurants and popular new hotspots or select a checkbox for ‘searching restaurants only.’ No need to drilldown to another page anymore. And when you find the venue you want, you can also identify ‘what’s nearby.’ With the click of a button, you can see a map of hotels, bars, theaters, banks, etc. in the surrounding area.

I still have a few complaints. Search needs some work; it’s inconsistent. When you select the button to ‘map your results,’ it doesn’t always work. But overall, Citysearch has done a great job with this update. The site has definitely improved the user experience for people on-the-go. Now if they could only find a way of making parking easier.

Congrats to the Extractable team on the launch of the redesigned Merit Medical website.

The site is live at: http://www.merit.com

Congratulations to the Extractable team on the launch of the redesigned LBS Financial Credit Union website and another successful credit union project.

The site is live at http://www.lbsfcu.org

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has come out strongly against the idea of wikipedia contributors being paid by corporations to edit wikipedia articles about them.

OK, so “payola” isn’t the correct term. Payola involved payments for airplay on radio, which is controlled by a relatively small number of people. Wikipedia has a much broader field of contributors, so it’s not exactly a parallel situation.

I guess I see both sides of the argument. On one hand, any paid contributor is likely to have a strong bias that would probably be reflected in the article. On the other hand, wikipedia entries for many corporations are pretty sparse (Extractable doesn’t have one yet) because they lack a fan base.

I suspect this will be somewhat resolved over time, yielding two things: a generally accepted set of norms around this issue, and a number of people perfectly willing to violate those norms for the right price.

Of course the best solution would be to offer a method for companies to make sure their entries are robust and up to date, but with some method for curtailing useless and inaccurate information.