We will be posting more about paid search marketing, so I will keep this fairly brief and high-level (again, just giving an overview of the website optimization space). 

Paid search, strictly speaking, is simply paying to have text advertisements appear on search results pages.  Now, not surprisingly, there is a lot more to it than that.  For example, the major search engines have extensive “content networks,” which means your ad can show up on websites.  And, you can create image ads and video ads in addition to the classic text ads.  The key, regardless of how sophisticated you want to get with your paid campaigns, is to keep your message consistent and relevant.

Website optimization has to extend to the ads your marketing and design team puts out because if they are saying one thing and the website is saying another you could have a serious image problem.  Additionally, the search engines reward consistent themes from keywords, through ads, and on to your website.  A well structured paid search campaign will have lower cost-per-click and higher conversion rates.  Typically, with any website optimization effort you will need to extend beyond the website and look at the message in your ads and on referring sites.

You will be able to track the success of message alignment via your web analytics solution.  A measurement of single-page accesses will start to give you a feel (although it is not a perfect measurement) of the effects.  Also, the data you collect from your paid search efforts will give you a little glimpse at the “why” people visit your site, as opposed to just knowing that they do. 

Here is what I mean:  The keywords your visitors search for represent questions, or needs, they have.  You can test key terms with paid search that will give you insight to their questions, which you will not get via organic search.  Also, you will get a better feel for search volumes by looking at paid search impressions.  See, now you are starting to understand your web visitors a little better.

My philosophy is that paid search marketing, even if you are not interested in the pure advertising part of it, is a relatively inexpensive way to conduct some market research.  In terms of website optimization, the critical role of paid search marketing can totally ignore the advertising function, if it makes sense to do so.

Today I setup the Question and Answers page instead of writing a post. Visit it, ask a question, and get an answer.

There is a difference between search engine optimization and web site optimization. Sometimes they even conflict. For example, a page with optimal keyword density for search findability may be very clunky and annoying for your website visitors.  In many cases, getting more traffic with lower conversion rates may not be a good strategy (sometimes it is).

Now, those of you who know something about SEO are probably cringing at “keyword density,” considering it is a minor factor, but it is a factor and every little bit helps.

The technical structure of your site is the minimum bar for search optimization. In other words, if it doesn’t meet certain standards then it will automatically decrease your rankings. For example, if you have a Flash Introduction page for your web site and you have not done anything to “help” the search engines through that page it could be the only page that gets indexed. And, worse than that, there is no crawlable content on the page! The ill effects go beyond just search though, the page may not be compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act, and you may not be creating the “user experience” you thought you were. This is not to say you shouldn’t have the fancy flash intro page; just be careful how you do it.

One other example where SEO and web optimization will intersect (or diverge) is the messaging of your campaigns. It is very important that you treat your targeted web searches as questions. If you want to rank high on Swiss Bank Accounts because it gets searched more frequently than Idaho Bank Accounts you can create keyword targeted content and for the sake of argument, lets say you do rank well. That is a fantastic SEO achievement, but will do little for website optimization.  Website optimization is for people not for search engines.

A good website optimization effort will keep things in balance. You need high search rankings, you need fancy web programming, you need a functional web site, you need a pretty web page, and web site optimization is focused on getting all of those elements in the right amounts.

Marketing, as it relates to web optimization, is Valitics’ area of expertise. That being said, Marc and I could write a book on the subject, however, I will keep this blog post short. There will certainly be plenty more to come in future posts.

The primary point I want to address in this broad overview we are walking through is that your message has to be consistent from the initial “touch” to the customer satisfaction follow-up. This principle embodies many of the elements discussed in the other disciplines related to website optimization. Here is an example:

Let’s say you meet a potential client at a leads group. They immediately get an impression of you from your conversation, they have expectations. One of two things will happen when they visit the website on your perfectly designed business card — it will either validate their expectations or it will not. A general measure of that will be your entrance page bounce rate (not super scientific, just a question of did the visitor find what they were looking for). I am not claiming that it is a perfect measure, but coupled with additional measures can give you some insight to your “wow factor” as Marc likes to call it.

The same process will occur if visitors come from your paid search campaigns, organic search results, or referring websites. Make sure your message is consistent whenever possible, and you will see increased results from your web marketing efforts. One point to consider is that you need to know your value proposition prior to creating ads and web pages.

I suppose the connection between website optimization and usability is fairly straightforward, so I won’t bore you. However, there are a few points that need touched.

If we think of usability as the ease with which visitors to a website can accomplish the purpose they came for then it becomes a very critical piece of website optimization. Really, usability and site optimization are both focused on reducing friction for potential customers.

Not surprisingly, web analytics can play a significant role in identifying friction points on your website. If you want to optimize your own web site, are a usability consultant/expert, or just want some great analytics information I highly recommend that you get familiar with the Future Now’s practice of “persuasion architecture.” Persuasion architecture is a fantastic approach to website optimization and it encompasses the basics of usability. And, to my absolute enjoyment, it embraces web analytics as well!

Last point about usability, don’t mistakenly think you are an expert just because you surf the web. The principles of usability go beyond just designing simple navigation structures. During your web site optimization efforts you will want to watch the clickstream data closely, ask your visitors about their website experiences, and test like crazy to identify usability breakdowns in your system. If you think your site may have a problem, or you are in doubt about your ability to identify usability problems, get with a usability expert.

BTW, PinPoint Performance a web and software usability firm based in the Boise,ID area will give you a free consultation. That’s right, its free, so I am not trying to sell you anything, just making connections.

Okay, so this is a no-brainer; of course web design will be a critical part of your website optimization efforts. However, there are a couple of items to think about here. The first is that in most cases the person doing the web design should not be the same person doing the web development. That may not be the case in smaller organizations where people where several hats, etc. The quality of the design, though, tends to be better when it is done by someone who specializes in design.

Website optimization design takes a special type of designer though. They have to balance some demands that at times may be in conflict with one another. For example, the marketing department might think a slanted menu would be cool, while the web developer thinks that a horizontal css-driven menu will be better. The designer ends up trying to serve both requests.

Ultimately, in your website optimization efforts what the marketing department and the web development team think is of less import than what your customers think. This is where an offshoot of web analytics, called A/B testing, comes into play. Designers play a very key role in A/B testing. Most of the designers we work with actually enjoy doing it too.

The designer gets to create a variety of designs and rather than picking the one Marketing, IT, or the CEO likes best, each of the designs are used with particular goals in mind. Obviously, there are some constraints according to resources available and the extent of the optimization efforts, but as a general rule the design that most positively impacts the bottom line is the “best” one.

The other primary function of a designer will be to know and understand good usability principles (more on that tomorrow), but there are fantastic usability experts out there — use them.

Designers are typically very creative, which is why they are good at what they do, but they have to be realistic as well. For example if the only goal of a particular website is to sell widgets then a flash intro page and animated graphics are probably not the best use of resources (IMHO), but if the site is focused on validation of a premiere offline image flashiness may be critical. It is important for the person managing your website optimization efforts to know the purpose of the website and to communicate that to design personnel.

Web development usually falls under the IT department in large organizations, and is typically outsourced in smaller companies.  Whichever situation you are in, you will face some of the same challenges when you start optimizing your website.  With no discredit to IT departments, as a general rule, their primary focus is not to create an optimized website.  What I mean is, they have security issues, CRM, ERP, administration rights, and a myriad of other priorities that typically trump the marketing department’s requests for web optimization.  However, in most cases, it will be absolutely critical to involve your web team in the process (one exception may be if you have a fairly robust content management system and a person with some basic web skills).

Web site optimization is primarily a customer-focused activity, which means it is primarily a business activity, not a technical activity.  However, you cannot avoid the technical aspects, such as adding content, changing layout, creating additional web pages, changing page names, altering site navigation, and the list could go on forever….  The point is, if you have aspirations to create the optimal web experience for your visitors you have to get buy-in from your development team. 

The other key here is to realize the most web developers are really good at what they do (very general statement), and they may lend you insight to the optimization process that will save you time and money.  Your web developer(s) should be involved in the process because they will help you realistically determine your immediate capabilities and costs associated with expanding capabilities.

The web metrics that developers care about will be completely different than the metrics that marketers care about.  The key for website optimization is to report to your technical team the metrics that will help them make better decisions about the things that they have specific responsibility for.  That means conversion rates are probably not the most valuable metric, but the number of and which pages are crawled by the search engines may be a relevant metric. 

The primary job of the person managing your web optimization efforts will be to give each responsible party the minimum amount of web data that still enables them to complete their job.  That isn’t to keep people in the dark, but to help them keep from getting paralyzed by too much irrelevant information.  There is no hard and fast rule about who needs what; the amount of data you pass on will be as much related to the recipient’s personality as it is to their job function.

Since we are still in the introductory phase, let me just position this whole website optimization thing as it fits in the marketing world.

Site optimization is multidisciplinary, and as such requires a polymath to enact it. That creates a real problem when things change as quickly as they do on the Net because it is virtually impossible to stay up on every aspect of Internet Marketing. Each of the silos in the graphic to the right are extremely deep and sufficiently broad. It is nearly impossible for a single person, or entity, to be simultaneously good at all of these disciplines. The solution is specialization.

Specialization creates a challenge with consistency across the various disciplines within the organization. Website Optimization is really the process of communicating the necessary information to the appropriate parties in a timely and useful manner. It is a process not a one-time event.

Web analytics (an inappropriate label, but a great marketing ploy) at its core is just data collected from your website. There are various ways to collect the data, and each has their merits and demerits; we’ll leave that discussion for another day. For now, web analytics, or web usage data, is the best medium for understanding and communicating the various aspects of website optimization.

The next series of my blog posts will be dissecting each of the disciplines in terms of their role in website optimization and how to use web analytics as a communication tool. Stay Tuned . . . .

So, this is the first “official” Valitics blog post.  According to all of my Web 2.0 Guru friends (Tac Anderson, Justin Beller, Brian Packer, and Justin Foster) around the valley the first post is always the hardest.

 I think the hardest part for me is trying to explain why a web-centric company like ours has taken our sweet time getting this together.  Well, we have been so busy refining our products/services for our customers and reading other web genius blogs that we haven’t written in our own.

We always tell our clients that, “writing relevant content in your blog will help your findability and can validate you as a expert in your field, but beware, you have to write well and write often.”  Up until now Valitics could not commit to writing often.

Okay, our first post is official.  I have attempted to explain why this is the first, and now on to more important matters :-).

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