Search Engine Marketing Blog

You think you are selling serviced office space to the branch manager but in fact it is the secretary doing the bargain hunting online. You are sure that it is the man of the house viewing the ad for the four door hatch back you’re trying to offload but in reality it’s the real influencer of the household – the 12 year old who has become adept at convincing his mother of why they desperately need or shouldn’t be seen within 20 miles of well, whatever his friends do or don’t currently think is cool. You assume you’re promoting the latest mens’ fashion fragrance to you guessed it, men – think again. It’s the girlfriends. And not their own girlfriends but their girlfriends’ girlfriends.

So how do you deal with the fact that you are in reality not marketing to the decision maker you thought you were targeting but instead a host of unseen and oft-times unconventional gatekeepers.

What does a 12 year old know about buying the family car? He knows how to search online. He knows what’s cool, how to do online bargain hunting, how to find reviews, what the footballers drive and what the wanna be footballers wanna drive. In short, he is the techno wizard of the home and therefore he is the designated “researcher”. His parents will obviously do their own research but it will be influenced by the information he has already obtained effortlessly and possibly in un-exhaustible measures via the treasure trove (for a 12 year old wanting to be seen driven to school in a fantastically sweet ride) that is the world wide web.

So how do you deal with this? Do you redevelop your TV ad? Spend millions on a new campaign aimed at spotty pre-teens. No, your gatekeeper problem is online. Online is easy. It’s all about keywords – content is king. Speak to your audience, however many audiences that may be. Talk their language, write content just for them, use terminology they understand, find appealing and most importantly of all are SEARCHING FOR.

Because if they don’t find you in a search you don’t exist. Simple as that. There is no magic wand, no special marketing formula, no mumbo jumbo. There’s just keywords and copy aimed at the right audience, several right audiences. And it all comes down to being found. By the right people, at the right time.

The 12 year old kid doesn’t buy the car, he just tells his parents what he’s found out online about such and such a car. The secretary doesn’t sign the lease, she just reports on the available options. But you have to be there, in their face, at the top of the results, for whatever search the gatekeeper, not the end buyer, does.

So your task – think like your audience. Not your purchasing audience - your research audience. And remember, there might be a few. Don’t be stingy with the content.

For more on this subject see Kevin Lee’s post - Designated Searchers May Thwart Personalization. It’s a thought provoking read.

Fine, I used to be one. That was before I realised how much money the G god makes out of having something to index. And giving them something to index is my job. So in reality I’m helping them make money and yet according to the puritanical white hats I’m supposed to be totally blinkered and never, ever, ever, ever try to game the system? Are you serious?

Google and every other commercial search engine is just that - commercial. They sell ads, they make money, good for them. I have no problem with that whatsoever. It’s what capitalism is all about.

But to then turn around and act as the keepers of all things true and good - it just gets me sometimes.

G says Don’t Buy Links - well, why not? They sell links don’t they? What is a PPC ad if not a link? It’s a link, people click it, G gets money, the advertiser hopefully gets a new customer, everyone’s happy. So why should they tell us not to do ad sales on our own sites in any way, shape or form that we see fit? It’s my site! I can do what I bl**dy well like.

G says Don’t Create Content for Search Engines, Write for People - Ok, now, I happen to agree with this one but only because I happen to know it’s one and the same thing - at the least the way I do it. You could argue (just cause I’m in a mood) that creating content for search engines is good for people and therefore you should only create content for search engines! So there!

The Self-Labelled White Hats say Don’t Do Anything at all ever just for the sake of search engines. Again, against my better judgement this is a rule I generally follow not because search engines are something hollowed and sacred but because designing sites in a user friendly manner with well structured navigation and keyword rich content is both second nature and good business.

BUT - and that’s a very, very big BUT - if search engines weren’t part of the equation do you honestly for a minute think that people would have been so ready to forsake Flash or other difficult to index technologies in favour of boring, old fashioned, easily spiderable code? Do you think so much time, effort and attention would be spent on ensuring that sites are W3 compliant and that meta tagging was all correct and accounted for? Give me a break.

The irony is that most tanned-to-black hat search engine marketers who know me would consider me a straight up white hat SEO puritan (I don’t do anything on Google’s no no list). The difference is that I no longer worship at the G god’s feet or think it’s a all knowing, all seeing, all loving deity. It’s a commercial organisation for Pete’s sake! They’re not hippies or even yuppies. They’re not trying to make the world a better place or save starving children or start a new religion. They make money, they horn in on anything that’s gaining prominence, they are out to rule the world (well, that might be taking it a bit far but this is a rant in case you haven’t noticed). And as long as they continue to give my sites prominent placement I’m happy to go along with it. But don’t tell me to be puritanical and not have impure thoughts or it’ll displease Google. It’s not my god and I really don’t care!

1. Pay someone to do it for you - just make sure they can spell and speak the language please.

2. Piggy back off someone else’s work - find an article or blog post you like and add to it. Just make sure you fully attribute the original piece of content to its rightful owner.

3. Be a copycat - find an article, piece of research or press release you like and say the same thing but in a different way or targeted at a different audience. Again, attribute it to the original piece of work and its author.

4. Find out what your employees love and let them write about it - on company time.

5. Ask your partners, suppliers, heck - the general public - for content and publish it fully attributed. If you have a submit an article page you probably will get article submissions.

6. Run a poetry or product naming or tagline competition. Ask for submissions, post all the entries, reward the winner(s) and name the runners up.

7. Set up an online suggestion box and let people submit to it. Not only is it content, it’s also fantastic - and free - market research.

8. Allow reviews of your products, branches, website, anything. Let people write their own testimonials as well as telling you what you can improve on.

9. Double, tripe, quadruple check that all your product specs, technical information, FAQ’s and so on have been published on your site in a format that search engines can index (not behind a login or password protected barrier).

10. Have a section that contains snippets of what other sites say about your company with a link back to the original article. You’ll need to set up an alert in order to keep track of what is being said and where.

The above suggestions may require a bit of programming and revamping of your site but will not require a lot of ongoing content authoring. Yet they will give your site a fresh injection of new, unique content. Let others do your work for you - after all, they actually want to.