Tag: seo research

11 Humorous Answers to Dumb Google Searches

Google Search: How to Spell Duh
Google Search: How to Spell Duh

You may wonder how I will make this turn out to be both useful and humorous, but have a little faith, my Google searching friend. This is a list of my answers to some the dumbest Google searches I recently found in my server logs. Before I cut straight to my list of absurdities, allow me just a moment to set the stage.

I love SEO. There, I said it! I really do love my work, although it is usually much more fun to do it than to explain it to people. I am the first to suspect that, as I have often said, “When I Go to Hell, They Will Have Me Selling SEO“. Yes, fun to do it, but tortuous to explain it.

One of the reasons I love SEO so much is the great humor and insights to the human mind that it offers. This is also one of the reasons you may sometimes find me to be condescending and uppity, because there are truly some dumb people out there. Yes, saying that makes me a jerk, but actually more of a “PECKER” (Reference: “New SEO Acronym to Replace SEO by 2012“).

It takes all types to make a species, but wow … just “Wow!” I am a fan of people, but sometimes I have to feel just a little tinge of embarrassment for the floaters in our genetic pool.

The term “SEO”, for the uninitiated, is an acronym for “search engine optimization”, and as a practitioner in the field, it means that I can generally rank at the top of the list for damn near anything I choose. That is why companies pay me to provide this service for them. Yeah, can you believe it? Being ranked at the top of search results is actually worth paying for. That is totally crazy, I know!

Don’t hate me for it, because it comes with a touch of insanity, and a good dose of time. Like well over a decade of practice and studying SEO to know what works.

A good amount of this particular achievement comes down to having a squillion website links pointing to my blog from other websites, and having just a touch of Murnahan wit and charm. OK, you can call it “BS”, or whatever you like, but let’s face it, some websites will rank well in search engines, and some will never be indexed for popular searches. This one ranks particularly well, which comes with a great potential for humor.

I previously wrote about the downside of being obsessed with statistics and over-monitoring of user data, but it is also very important to know how people are finding a website. It tells us what we need to know, and how to make things even better. When you dig really deep, it can sometimes make hot coffee shoot uncontrollably from your nose as you laugh. This is especially the case when you try to picture what in the world those people were actually hoping to find in their online search.

NOTE: Although I am a huge proponent of targeting a market based on specific propensity of readers to become a customer or to refer business. Targeting is why I write things to attract specific searches from specific people. For example, I wrote about NASCAR start and park teams to reach the racing community, while offering good marketing thoughts.

With the good comes the bad, and sometimes it all goes wonky. If you rank well for the useful search terms, always it comes with unexpected absurdities. Although some of these may not seem so humorous on the surface, if you squint and look closely, there is something just a bit funny going on here.

Each of these searches have come in many variations of the search, and each is an actual verbatim quote taken from the top 5,000 searches in my website analytics within the past 30 days (typographical errors and all).

  • Dumb Google Search One: “icecream for sore bum“

    OK, I hate to drop this little peach so early, but this one does set a certain tone. This is an actual search that has been repeated in many various forms, including some that were probably typed urgently like “what;s good for hemorrhoids” (Twitter, of course!). It leads users to an article that asks “Is Twitter Good for SEO?“. The article may actually be useful, but I didn’t write this one for bums. If your butt hurts, I really don’t have a lot for you, but dozens of people seem to think that ice cream may help.

  • Dumb Google Search Two: “can your testicals reconnect them selves“

    I can forgive this fella for misspelling testicles, and for not realizing that “themselves” is actually just one word. This came from a Korean speaking individual in Burke, Virginia, USA. What I picture is a really frustrated little Korean guy sitting cross-legged at his computer screaming at his lover and murmuring “You betteh be right woman, oh I keow you!”

    I actually took a screen capture of this one when it happened. My guess is that he did not want to call 9-1-1, just in case he actually ended up killing somebody. I hope that poor guy is alright! I also hope he does not come for my testicles for wasting his precious moment with my article titled “SEO, Social Media, and Marketing Balls“. In my defense, I did not use the word “testicles” in the article, even once, and there was no medical advice.

  • Dumb Google Search Three: “best hookers“

    I suppose I kind of asked for this one when I titled an article “Hookers Write the Best Blogs“. What I didn’t realize at the time was just how many people would be performing Google image searches for pictures of hookers. I searched it one time, just to see what they were seeing. A few transsexual hookers and other creepy images later, I washed my eyes out with Listerine and vowed to never do that again!

  • Dumb Google Search Four: “buy termites online“

    Who knew that termites were so in-demand? I see a lot of variations for the query of where to buy termites. Although I am sure a number of these are people seeking to study termites in their laboratory, it makes me wonder how many angry ex-husbands are dumping these voracious little monsters around the foundations of their former homes. For those looking for termites, I offer this article titled “Things You Cannot Sell Online“. Termites are not one of those things, and it is highly unlikely that what you sell is on the list, too!

  • Dumb Google Search Five: “blog trolls“

    I wonder what they want with a blog troll. Yeah, I am sure that some people are just looking for a picture of a blog troll, but nobody I know has actually ever seen one. They sneak around in the shadows of the Internet. Here is what I had to say about them: A Few Words About Blog Trolls and Lurkers.

  • Dumb Google Search Six: “cheap sutures“

    This one is really dumb for a couple reasons. Sutures are those things they use to stitch people up after surgery. They generally come at an extremely high cost to we consumers. I guess maybe there is not enough markup in the medical field, so they have to find their sutures cheap so they can earn an extra four dollars on a $40,000 surgery.

    The other reason this one cracks me up is that I was once contracted to place a client at the top of searches for cheap sutures. They still owe me many tens of thousands of dollars, but then, that is why I now hold five of the top ten search results for their company name, “Suture Express“, along with their coveted “cheap sutures” and the names of each of their executives. Oops! 😉

  • Dumb Google Search Seven: “what happens if i set up a facebook page and dont use it?“

    This one should be simple. What else could a person logically expect would happen? Your computer will be infected with a virus that causes it to explode into a squillion pieces. I would not suggest this, especially with a laptop, but if it happens to you, just Google me when you need those testicles reconnected.

    In case you need to know more about Facebook or their computer-exploding virus, here is more information on the topic.

  • Dumb Google Search Eight: “SEO meta tags“

    This one is actually a very popular search, and it blows my mind. I mean, seriously, just look at the source code on any one of my blog’s pages if you need a mental re-adjustment on the topic of SEO tips. I would like to give you a quote from the article these search patrons find:

    “As long as there are people who ask “do meta tags help with SEO” there will be plenty of people to con them out of their money.”

    I hope you are not searching for information about meta tags. If so, you really should stick around and read some more.

  • Dumb Google Search Nine: “what to do when your too good at your job“

    My answer would perhaps be to quit the job and seek something better. Please just don’t make it a writing career until you at least learn the difference between your and you’re. Sure, maybe this is no big deal, but if “your too good at your job”, you’re probably going to need a better resume writer.

    This search landed the user on an article titled “Are You Too Good at Your Job?“, but what I think they really needed was to learn about Cousin Prolly in the article titled “Grammatical Reasons They’re Taking Their Business Over There”

    Another idea for being too good at your job is to give it all up and become an SEO and social media expert. That seems to be mighty damn popular (in searches, too)!

  • Dumb Google Search Ten: “things people find“

    My first thought here is “huh?” I am not so sure why, but a lot of searches just don’t make any sense to me at all. Apparently a limited few people are trying to find things people find. What they actually find is an article titled “Crazy Things People Search For” which addresses the ways people use search engines. It kind of goes well with this piece, so you may enjoy it.

  • Dumb Google Search Eleven: “how much does seo cost“

    This one actually comes with a whole lot of related searches that are equally as ridiculous. Some of those are social media rates, seo hourly rate, how much does it cost for SEO, social media marketing cost, how much will a social media strategy cost, and literally thousands more.

    What these searchers are obviously completely terrified and confused about is that there is a vast difference from one SEO to another. Asking the cost without knowing what to expect or understanding that it is not about cost, but rather increased profit, is about as wasteful and dumb as any question ever asked.

    Have you seen the Grand Canyon? I would like to submit that the difference in good SEO and bad SEO makes that thing look like a crack in a sidewalk.

My Dumb Summary of Dumb Google Searches

I guess eleven is enough for now. I gave you a whole lot of truly useful links dispersed throughout this article. In fact, probably enough that if you sit there and read them all at once, it will make your bum hurt. So, please bookmark this page, get yourself some ice cream to sit in, come back, and take some time checking them out.

Also, please add your comments and tell me how you arrived here. If you are that poor Korean fella represented in this image, I’d love to know how things turned out.

If you are not that Korean guy, be sure you subscribe, because I’ve got a whole lot more where this came from!

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Here is That Extra Time You Asked For

Your Extra Time, Ladies and Gentlemen
Your Extra Time, Ladies and Gentlemen


I am excited to hear from you if you can relate to this. Have you ever had somebody ask you to do something and use the phrase “when you have some extra time”? It may be just fine if a friend says that, while asking you to go and do something fun. When it attacks your profession, there is a line to be drawn.

I get this “extra time” concept thrown my way almost every day. I am not joking or exaggerating about this. I know that a lot of other professional service people get this, too. It is hard for a lot of people to understand that when your product is knowledge or time, it still has a cost.

Yes, even those intangible things like rubbing brain cells together to create a spark, blowing on it, and turning it into a flame actually have a real and measurable cost. So, how can we deal with this, and make it understandable to people who think there is some magical “extra time” laying around to hand out for free?

It seems apparent that old sayings like “time is money”, “you get what you pay for”, and “time is our most valuable resource” have outlived their usefulness. They have become as cliché as a passing stranger asking “how are you doing?” They don’t really want to know how you are doing when they utter that. Try it out the next time you hear it, and give them a big earful and you will see what I mean. People often overlook respect for other peoples’ time with a similar disregard.

I suppose that free time can be a touchy subject for a lot of people, but not for me. I am going to share my responses when people slip me this sort of “give me free stuff” proposition. If you are a professional who deals with this, I hope it will help you to manage your time. If you are a time-beggar, I hope this will help you to be more understanding and respectful the next time this absurdity begins to spew forth from the vile and disrespectful hole between your lips.

Defending Your Extra Time

If you are ever faced with similar matters of requests for your free time, think about what else you could be doing with it. These are just a handful of thoughts which stomp loudly through my head when people ask me to provide professional services in my extra time:

You Want My WHAT?
You Want My WHAT?

Extra Time? My Kids Would Love That! – When I am asked for my extra time, the first thing that comes to my mind is how much my wife and kids would really love it if I had some extra time to share with them.

Have You Tried This at a Restaurant? – I imagine it like this: “Hey waitress, when you have some extra food back there in the kitchen, can you do me a favor, please? In return, I will send my hair stylist in to see you, and I am sure he will make up for all of the free food I gobble while I keep you from earning your tips. He is a great guy, and I am on my way to see him for a free haircut as soon as I leave here.”

Doctor, My Toe Hurts! – “I know that you usually charge people for this, and you have huge liability and licensing in the balance, but since we are not in the office, could you do this one as a freebie?”

I Want a Free Car, Too! – This is funny for me, because I have had car dealers offer to trade me very nice cars for my work. This always reminds me to say: “You want my extra time, but you would like it for free? Let me think about that and get back to you when I have something really large with which to hit you over the head.”

Motorcycle! – See the 47 second video … Enough said.

Misconceptions About “Extra Time” Are Worse in Some Industries

I realize that in some industries, the lines are a bit more blurred than others. In my job role, I find that a lot of people want me to simply “look it over” and to give them a “quick estimate”. Although it may not seem to be a big deal, performing marketing asset reviews and building marketing strategies puts food on my table. It is not just the act of implementing what I know that I am paid for, but also the research and strategy.

Researching, planning, and “looking it over” are things which most people expect to pay for in the accounting, legal, medical, and many other fields. Those of us in the marketing industry are also paid for that time we spend doing the things you may imagine to be “quick and easy” for us. Otherwise, it would be common for us to waste enormous amounts of our time writing boilerplate marketing plans for people who are not serious enough about their business to do what they really should be doing. Worse yet, if we provide a plan and you decide to try and implement it yourself or have an inferior marketing person do it for you, we look stupid for a plan that failed but could have succeeded with abundance.

Drunken Sailor Coming Through!

Semi-Pro Marketing
Semi-Pro Marketing
I could really go crazy with some drunken sailor language on this topic, because in my world it is easy to see it as theft of my goods. It is hard to describe my struggle to be diplomatic about this. Any shred of diplomacy I display comes to me because I understand how people may view this from the outside. After all, the vast number of semi-professionals on the fringe of the marketing industry make it appear so “salesy” and like marketing people are all begging people for their money. It creates an absurd illusion that marketing people earn more money for themselves than they earn for their clients.

The reality is that for true marketing professionals, our time is worth just as much as that iPhone you are holding, that car you are driving, or that house you live in. You see, this is because our time and knowledge is what we earn our living with. We don’t sell items … we help other people to sell items. Our job is to earn more money for our clients.

If I had some extra time, wouldn’t it make sense that I would use that “extra time” to work harder and to sell it at its fair market value? Yes, that’s right … that is exactly what I would do. So, here you go:

Dear Friend:

I appreciate your show of confidence by asking me to look at your business and give you recommendations to make it more marketable. I would be delighted to write you a researched marketing plan and proposal free of charge … if it was free for me, too. You see, my time and knowledge is what I earn money with, just like a shoe store uses shoes to make money.

This is my extra time, right now. I am using it to write this blog so that more people will know who I am, respect the value of my time, and pay me money for that extra time I had laying around.

Respectfully,

Mark Aaron Murnahan

All of my extra time is gone. If I find any more, I will use it to further my business reach. Fortunately, you also receive a benefit from it, because I am providing you with a constantly growing blog archive to teach you things that you can put to use in your extra time.

If you want some of my time to help you decide if it is worth paying for, I have already used that time, too. I used it to build a fantastic reputation, and an exemplary work history.

Whether this reaches you as a person who earns a living with your time and knowledge, or a person on the other side, I hope I have helped you see things a bit differently. I have tried my best to express consideration for both parties, and I hope you will do the same.

Thank you for your time.

Big Ben photo credit to peterpearson via Flickr

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“How Much Does SEO Cost?” is The Wrong Question

The Cost of SEO
The Cost of SEO

If you are in a customer-facing job role, you have surely heard the common question of “how much does it cost?” Many of us hear it long before questions of value even come into consideration, and it seems especially common in SEO (search engine optimization).

I consider the “how much does it cost” shopping approach a very worthwhile reason to scream at somebody and demean them. I usually try to hold back that urge, but it is definitely scream-worthy. I have very often answered it by hanging up the phone. That is because I take it as an indication that the person asking will only see a dollar amount and not what it represents.

When it comes to SEO (search engine optimization), “how much does it cost” is absolutely the wrong question to open discussions. I will explain why the cost of SEO is far down the list of things which will matter, and whether you are on the buying side or selling side of SEO, this should be useful to you. I will also explain why the question of how much the SEO will cost is not only a moving target, but also ways to determine an appropriate cost.

First, consider this: The topic struck me when I see how often my wife, Chef and Owner of Mad Eliza’s Cakes and Confections, answers burning questions about the cost of wedding cake. It happens very often that a bride-to-be will ask how much her wedding cake will cost, before even having a good idea of the design or even how many guests it needs to feed. I find a lot of people shop for SEO the same way. From now on, you will know better!

The SEO Cost Should Be Based on the Need

There is no practical way of answering questions of the cost of SEO until the variable of need is addressed. Assessing the need for SEO should be based on client goals and accurate marketing projections. To get to the right number, you must have a good fix on the overall market potential, and how much market share can be reasonably expected at a given level of action.

This is not rocket surgery, but it does require more than just guesswork. A good projection will be based on multiple variables, but a good start is to know how many people are looking for what you offer.

If you are not clear on how many people are looking for you, and what they are looking for, close estimates can be made using tools such as SpyFu, WordTracker, and Google’s keyword tool. These tools can help you find out how many people are searching for what you offer, and provide a glimpse of the overall market potential.

More useful information on this topic is available in the article titled “Improve SEO Return on Investment (ROI) With Simple Math“.

The Point of Diminishing SEO Returns

It is possible to overestimate your efforts and do more SEO than you need. I have never seen it happen in real life, but the theory makes sense. If you are spending more money on SEO than the potential for your entire market, there is a point where it would be wasteful. However, the ugly monkey which stares many people in the face is that in the beginning, most SEO efforts will cost more than they return. So, this brings up the point of how far you can see into your future.

Short-Term SEO Cost vs. Increased SEO ROI Later

Let’s look at this with a bit of logic. There is no return on investment (ROI) at the point when you write the first check for SEO. Having short term (30, 60, and 90 day) goals is important for most companies. When more effort is focused on short term SEO goals than long term goals, the expected overall ROI is lowered. There is a balancing point which is important to reach.

If you need to meet short term objectives in order to produce cashflow to achieve longer term goals, the end cost will generally be higher. This is because you are overemphasizing the short term objectives just to pay for the higher return long term goals.

Where SEO Cost Goes Off The Rails

While I was writing this article, I was distracted by the ding of a message coming from the live chat on my contact page. It was from a really nice guy named Eric, and here is how the chat went:

[11:04] Eric: Hi Mark I’m interested in asking you about some of your services if you have a few minutes
[11:04] murnahan: Sure.
[11:05] murnahan: You are welcome to ring me if you prefer. My direct line is *REDACTED DUE TO AGING WEBSITE* or my Skype username is “murnahan”.
[11:05] Eric: I came across your site researching SEO tips and first off, great information. I’m trying to gain an understanding of SEO, and it’s obviously very in-depth. I’m a vey tech savvy person but not really on the “up and up” for SEO. Anyway, I manage a national moving company, and we’re looking to increase our search traffic. What type of services do you offer that you think could help us out?
[11:07] murnahan: There are a lot of answers to that question, but perhaps the best one is this: I can make your company more attractive, somewhere along the lines of sex and bacon.
[11:08] Eric: Hm. I do like both of those things
[11:08] murnahan: When you make your company more attractive, the word spreads, and you get bigger pay checks.
[11:08] murnahan: See what I mean … most people do! LOL
[11:08] Eric: I would actually like to speak with you. can I call now?
[11:09] murnahan: sure … my ears are on.

Well, Eric called me and we spoke for a while. It was a good talk, and I listened to what his company does, and where they hope to go with it. As we talked, I was thinking … I do that a lot. One of my first thoughts was how important it is for a moving company to gain people’s confidence. I have heard a lot of nightmares about how moving companies break stuff, steal stuff, and scam people out of extra money once they have your stuff in their trucks. In fact, I have a friend who is in a lawsuit against his mover right now.

Eric asked me if I had any ideas on how I could help his company. Although this is the exact stuff I am paid to do, I thought I’d at least let him know I was listening and thinking. I discussed a few ideas with Eric about how we could make his moving company a little more sex and bacon-like.

Since his company has complete access to people’s stuff, I suggested that overcoming the potential customers’ fears about movers would be an important step to increasing their business. Of course, this is only one piece of a larger strategy, but a critical one.

I told Eric I thought it would be really neat for them to walk into each job and hang a half dozen IP cameras on the walls and provide customers a website login in case they want to look in on the progress. Then I pointed out that the cost of an 8 gigabyte SD card is under 30 bucks, and it may be cool to hand people a complete video record of their move when he hands them their bill. Not only could this set them apart as a more trustworthy company, it could also be a nice benefit for people to document all of their belongings for insurance purposes. It would provide customers with greater confidence, and give them something valuable, all at once.

OK, so it may cost a few bucks. It could easily have a one-time cost a thousand bucks or more per truck for wireless cameras and a laptop with a built-in Internet connection. That is not bad, considering it is a tiny fraction of the cost of a tractor trailer and other moving equipment. It would take them an extra 10-20 minutes (of a 4-6 hour job) to hang some stick-on hooks to place the cameras, and $30 for an SD card. The technology part would be a breeze, for me. Heck, I did a 6,000 mile live mobile webcast from a race car. This one would be a no-brainer, and the moving guys would only have to know how to turn on a laptop and click a “start” button.

Can you imagine how much that relatively small extra effort could pay them with customer confidence? Can you imagine what would happen if major tech blogs picked up the story of their success in using technology to overcome real-world trust barriers? It could make a nice press release for tech bloggers, television, and more. Can you imagine how that could affect their SEO?

How Much Does SEO Cost Now?

I never worked with a moving company, and this idea sprouted up fresh from a short conversation during a free consultation. It gets even better if Eric pays me for my ideas. Eric didn’t call to ask me about the cost of SEO. He asked the right questions, centered around value and calculated return on investment.

When he asked me about how much SEO would cost, it was more about how much he needs to beg, borrow, and steal to get the results that he wants for his company. He understands that good marketing is what makes companies bigger, and that bad SEO can cost a lot more than good SEO. That is a whole lot different than simply fearing the cost of SEO.

Get the SEO Questions Right

If you know the right questions to ask about SEO, you will have a lot better results. It will help you to avoid being taken advantage of by SEO lies, and to realize why SEO is a lot more than just technical geeky work.

I have always said that coffee and cigarettes are the best SEO and social media marketing tools. If that sounds crazy, please be sure to see this video explaining why I know it is true.

My Answers About “How Much Does SEO Cost”

Every search engine optimizer will have a different answer about the cost of SEO services. Some of them will be right, and some of them will be woefully wrong. We each work differently, and each have different skill sets and levels of marketing talent. In my case, I require a sizable investment, and I am not a good match for most companies. I prefer to only work with two to four clients at a time, and my projects come with a three to twelve month commitment. That should pretty well explain why I don’t do SEO for dog walkers.

Something important to consider is that until the other important questions are answered, the matter of cost will always be incorrect. This is simply not a commodity business, and everybody will have different needs and expectations. Throwing around dollar amounts is a waste of time if the purchaser and the provider do not fully understand each other, and the job at hand.

I want to leave you with these thoughts regarding the cost of SEO from my perspective:

  • Yes, I have a family of five, and each of them like to eat every day.
  • Yes, I do own a motorcycle that cost more than my first two houses, combined.
  • Yes, that is a real Picasso hanging in my living room (pictured above).
  • Yes, it will cost you a lot more than the money in my hand to get my attention.
  • Yes, my clients always earn more profit from my work than I do!
  • Yes, I will probably scream at you and hang up the phone if you call me to ask “how much does SEO cost?”
Some search engine optimizers will promise 1,000 links to your website and first page ranking in Google for $300. Isn’t that search engine optimizer a great deal?

Now, please answer me … do you really think that it is the same thing wherever you go?

Here are some related articles I have written regarding the cost of SEO and placing cost above value. I hope you will enjoy them.

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SEO, Social Media, and Marketing Balls

SEO and Social Media Balls
SEO and Social Media Balls

I often try to relate concepts of SEO and social media to things that people in other industries can use. After all, who really cares about all of this, unless it can help them do whatever it is they do for a living.

If you don’t have anything to sell, you probably aren’t very concerned about your marketing. But you do have something to sell, so let me give you a hand.

My challenge is to help you translate this into earning profit for your company. In the big picture, two important questions I must address are as follows:

  • What do you do to earn the food you eat?
  • How can I relate this Internet stuff to something that will help you eat better?

One way I hope to relate this into your line of work is to use analogies. This time, I will use tennis balls, but it could really be about anything.

Now let’s look at what others competing in your industry are doing.

How Others Sell Balls With SEO and Social Media

A common approach to social media that you may see with your competitors is to create a website and then start tweeting and facebooking things like “I have balls”, “Check out my balls!” After a while, they will figure out that people get really tired of the same old balls, and nobody wants to see them anymore.

Nobody Wants Old Balls
Nobody Wants Old Balls

This is a common outcome when companies neglect the people they are trying to reach, and overlook creativity in their value proposition. So, it will take a different approach, and they may turn their focus to SEO. They will often fill up their blog with a whole bunch of articles about their balls and hope that will work.

The trouble here is that it will take a lot of time and effort to produce all of that blog content. They may decide to outsource it to India or The Philippines but all of the sudden find themselves sending really mixes messages. Balls are different in other countries, and a lot can be lost in translation.

This is not the path you want to take, so put this out of your mind and let’s think about a better way to move your balls.

A Better Way to Move Your Balls

My experience in SEO and social media has led me to this: I have never found an industry that, with enough dedication, cannot be made more interesting when looked at from the right perspective.

It takes some research and creativity, but every industry has something that makes it interesting. Even paper clips can be more exciting … yes, paper clips!

Who Wants Your Balls?
Who Wants Your Balls?

One of the first things to do is to carefully research who wants your balls. You want to understand them, and what they are likely to look for online. You want to reach them where they are … on their turf. Then you need to get a picture of what drives them to take a desired action. In this case, you want tennis players. More precisely, you want tennis players without balls. In order to find them, you need to think more like them, and develop a sense of what will attract them.

Sometimes you have to look outside of the tennis-related industry to find your potential customers’ other interests. I wrote about this not so long ago in an article about customer modeling titled “Facebook Marketing: Pages, Customer Modeling, Promoting, and Awesomeness“. It addressed how to gather information to produce a better model of your ideal customer, and it is worth a read.

Get Others to Talk About Your Balls!

Once you know more about your model customer, you need to produce information that interests them. If you consistently produce quality information about their interests, it will be much easier to keep their attention. If it is compelling enough, they will subscribe to your blog, your Twitter, your Facebook, and etcetera. Now you have an audience that wants to hear about your balls.

Make a Spash With Your Balls!
Make a Spash With Your Balls!

With an attentive audience that likes what you do, it will be a lot easier for your balls to be ranked well in search engines. This is because your attentive audience will share your information with other interested people, in the form of website links. They will tweet it, facebook it, and even blog about it. Now, unlike your competitor who talks about his balls all the time, you will have other people talking about your balls.

This is a huge reward to you, because all of those links to your interesting website are crucial to making it rank higher in search engines than the competition. You will want to be good to these people, and keep them fed with more interesting and useful information. So you add more to your blog, and it grows bigger and bigger and eventually gets even more popular.

The cycle has begun, and you are on your way to greater things. You may even decide to grow your business with bigger balls, like softballs, volleyballs, and basketballs.

Selling Balls Takes Dedication

When I claim that this all requires dedication, it means spending time researching, and doing more than just the same old thing the competition is doing.

Never Let Your Balls Get Boring!
Never Let Your Balls Get Boring!

Before you put this all to use, it is best to develop some degree of marketing talent. Since you are not in the SEO and social media marketing business by profession, I want to recommend subscribing to my blog and reviewing my blog archive to learn about other things that can help you.

I do a bang up job of ranking in search engines for things in the SEO and social media marketing industries. I am supposed to, right? That way, new people can find me.

This was not always the case. I had to work really hard to discover what people want, connect with them using social media, and produce a lot of compelling information, just like I suggested for you. It does not happen overnight, but with dedication, it does happen in time. It will be worth it.

Now, back to those two questions I mentioned earlier:

  • What do you do to earn the food you eat?
  • How can I relate this Internet stuff to something that will help you eat better?

Since you can’t just eat your balls, you are going to need to sell them to buy food!

They Will Beg For Your Balls
They Will Beg For Your Balls

If you do everything just right, before you know it, people will be begging to play with your balls.

If you need more help promoting your balls, there are a lot of people in my industry who can make this happen for you.

I am always looking for people with balls. In my line of work, I encounter a lot of people every day who have no balls, and I will be happy to help you connect with them.

Balls image credit to shawnzrossi via Flickr
Old ball image credit to basykes via Flickr
Ball in mouth image credit to TCL8TO7 via Flickr
Splashing Balls image credit to ingridtaylar via Flickr
Bored ball image credit to greenkozi via Flickr
Begging image credit to sunsets_for_you via Flickr

SEO and Conversion: Increasing Website Traffic is Only Part of SEO

Conversion is When the Register Dings
Conversion is When the Register Dings

I write a lot about SEO (search engine optimization) and social media marketing. You expect that, and I am here to deliver. What I think a lot of people interested in SEO do not want to face is that SEO is a lot less about tricky technology issues, and a lot more about producing brilliant marketing.

The industry of SEO is ever-changing, but at the same time, many things are constant. For the largest part, the same things that mattered ten years ago still matter today. There have been many technical changes, but the technical aspects of SEO are not as individually important as some people may lead you to believe. The technology is really just a lot of little pieces which we fit together to assist the larger cause.

Early in the industry of SEO it became popular to chase information on the latest tricks to stay a step ahead of the search engines. Although there were cases when this became valuable, it seems pretty convenient that it is also used for confusing customers in order to seem more valuable. Many absurd yet popular myths about SEO such as meta tags still persist, even today.

There is value in understanding the technologies involved, but the truth is often less popular than myths. The truth is that search engine optimization and the value it represents is influenced a lot more by human response than by a computer. Giving people something which holds value to them has always been the most important part of SEO. This is the truth, and it is backed up with numbers.
Providing value to customers is not just a principle of good SEO, but marketing as a whole. When you give people something of value, they are more likely to share it with others. On the Internet, they often share it with links. In SEO, those links are like votes telling the search engines who should sit at the top as the “President”.

The Best SEO Trick Ever: Provide Value to Others

If you adhere to this one solid principle of providing value to others, your marketing will take a positive turn. A trick I have learned through two decades in the marketing business is that sometimes you must give until it hurts. Getting everything you want may not always work on the time frame you have set for yourself. I have often discovered that this challenge simply means that you are either not giving enough value, or you should have started sooner, and with better research.

Transforming a business from good to great is not simple. If it was simple, every business would have great results and everybody would win.

It is popular these days to award medals and ribbons to every kid in the race, but let’s face it … that will not translate well in the business world. We do not all get ribbons and medals.

Making the best of any market means knowing which people to reach and knowing what they want. It means knowing the customers’ needs and desires, and knowing the best way to solve them. When you take a close look, SEO starts to sound a lot like marketing, which is exactly what it is, but SEO is often viewed at as a technical trade. What many people are hesitant to understand is that SEO is more about producing great marketing in a very competitive atmosphere and less about geeky magic tricks. It requires an understanding of what people want, the unique ways they interact online versus offline, creating an appropriately compelling message, and being able to properly apply technology and mathematics.

SEO is a lot less about programming code and geek stuff than it is about people and psychology.

SEO Meets the Human Factor

The technologies surrounding SEO can help a lot, and increased website traffic is a great thing. I certainly love watching big numbers. I know that big numbers of website visitors will always impress my clients. They really want to see those new visitor statistics, because that is something they understand. What they have a harder time focusing on is that if those numbers do not inspire the conversion of lookers into buyers, or convert their brief message into a lasting one, most of the value is lost.

With any marketing message, there is a right group and a wrong group to deliver it to. It is easy to assume that if somebody performs a given search, they are the right audience for you. This is not always as simple as it seems, and often leads to spending a lot of time and money learning hard lessons. Taking a stronger approach to researching your market reminds me of something my father often advised, which is to “measure twice and cut once.”

Focusing on delivering the right message and presenting that message to the right people leads to higher conversion rates. The research to affect this result is in the top two most important roles of a search engine optimizer, second to getting out of bed.

Getting the research right is what tells us how to reach the right audience and what they will respond to favorably. It gives us the information we need to convert website visitors from lookers into buyers. Secondarily, it tells us how to bring more website traffic based on what people are searching for. Yes, bringing the people is secondary to knowing what they will want once they get there. Why should this concept be so difficult for smart people to grasp? Perhaps it is because they are blindsided by a lot of technical talk and SEO lies.

Educating a client on the importance of increasing conversion by producing a better message based on proper research may sound like an excuse to overlook the traffic numbers, right? This is not the case. More traffic is relatively simple to achieve, when you are actually providing high value based on good research.

The fascination with big numbers has created a culture of promoting valueless junk on the Internet aimed only at bloated traffic numbers. As the importance of traffic volume over traffic value grew roots early, many businesses overlooked doing the things that actually produce revenue. This misjudgment has lead many companies to underestimate the value of the Internet for their business growth. They may have hired SEO services which produced a huge volume of traffic, but then when it did not convert to revenue for the company, they lost faith. More often, they find that the SEO either did not really understand their role, or did not make a stand against the client’s preconceptions of the SEO being just a tech job. It is easy to see how these things could make a company stop trying.

Improving SEO Conversion Means Great Marketing

What can you do to convert more website traffic from lookers into buyers? This is an old question that every good marketer faces. The best answer is usually in finding the right audience. It is always easier to sell a product or service if you are selling to the right audience.

It is commonly accepted that good search engine optimizers who have done their research will know how to get more links by providing useful and compelling content. This will create a lot of website traffic, but that does not always mean the money train is coming down the track. If they are trying to sell tractor tires to race car drivers, they may gain a lot of website traffic, but they will probably have a hard time selling tires.

Good SEO also know, which I suspect a lot of people do not realize about the business function of SEO, is that they must produce reasons for those website visitors to take action and convert into something valuable to the website owner. This may mean a sale, a sales lead, a subscriber, or whatever it is that provides value and purpose to the effort. The first step is knowing who those visitors are and what will compel them to take action. The common tragedy is to get the traffic and then try to figure out why people are not responding.

Traffic quality is an area where it seems that many SEO (the good ones) would like to concentrate on more, but they get their hands tied by the client. The client often looks to the SEO primarily for the purpose of driving more traffic, but then neglect the value an experienced SEO has as a marketer and not just as a part of a tech field. This can create a case where conversion is viewed as secondary to a primary goal of traffic, which is totally backward and often a fast track to failure.

What do you think?

Photo credit to landofnodstudios via Flickr

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