Disclaimer: This blog posting is intended to make new and existing SEO users aware of known Black Hat techniques and does not advocate the usage of such search engine optimization strategies.
In an earlier post, I touched briefly upon White Hat SEO basics and alluded to how ethics really doesn't play a part in whatever technique is employed when using search engine optimization. To brand ethics with SEO concepts is just silly. That's like saying everyone else is breaking a moral or legal requirement for the mass acquisition of inbound traffic and prospective customers. When in fact, no US laws are being broken here unless you're using the domain for cybersquatting and you have to prove that you own the website for legitimate purposes; which still might be construed as illegal with regard to the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act.
Black Hat techniques attempt to improve rankings in ways that are disapproved of by the search engines, or involve deception. These include link buying, spamdexing, cloaking, keyword stuffing, creating doorway pages, link farming, link baiting, misrepresenting content, using hidden text to manipulate page rankings, etc.
And, there are significant penalties from using Black Hat techniques:
* Your sites get delisted from major search engines
* Your IP address gets blacklisted
* Your page rankings are significantly reduced
* Your urls become eligible for manual review prior to a search engine crawl
I'm not sure why any company with a legitimate product or services offering would consider employing BH methods to gain higher page rankings. Ignorance? Greed? It does happen, albeit infrequently, to large brand-driven companies.
Related Links:
Black Hat vs. White Hat Search Spam Debate
Google Webmaster Guide for SEO
Black Hole SEO: The Real Desert Scraping
Glossary:
Black Hat
Keyword stuffing
Budget, time, and effort
Marketing needs come in all sorts of flavors:
Budget has always been a factor for the type(s) of marketing programs used to acquire or retain customers. The deeper the pockets, the better the program? Not necessarily so. You can always use a "no-frills", open source application to handle some of the marketing. You could use Microsoft Word to design a sales brochure in-house and either print it yourself or at a local printshop. A marketer can help you craft the right message and what to say that sells your services to a new customer.
People have to make the time to seek out marketing best practices for their industry and to utilize that knowledge that separates them from the competitors who attended the same seminar on how to market their business.
No one knows a business like the owner of a company. This is why effort is a key factor for marketing success. If you're not working with an outside marketing consultant or have one in-house, you'll be doing all the marketing yourself in addition to everything else your company does. It takes an active understanding of what marketing tools are best for your line of business. The days of flat advertising in the "yellow book" are no longer relevant.
Here's a tip on competitive intelligence:
Find a company that's similar to your own and search for them with all the methods you know. Telephone book ad, online listing, local flyer/message board ad, or where they appear in a search query on your favorite search engine. What is it about their marketing message that caught your attention? If you were their customer, would you respond?
- I'm a chiropractor working 12 hour days. When do I have time for marketing?
- I'm a CPA and I can only take on clients within an X-radius driving distance.
- I'm a licensed psychologist looking to get new customers in the [region] area.
- I'm a writer for the entertainment industry and I have a script to pitch.
- I'm a wellness health professional with a small retail storefront, what's the best way to attract new and retain old customers?
Budget has always been a factor for the type(s) of marketing programs used to acquire or retain customers. The deeper the pockets, the better the program? Not necessarily so. You can always use a "no-frills", open source application to handle some of the marketing. You could use Microsoft Word to design a sales brochure in-house and either print it yourself or at a local printshop. A marketer can help you craft the right message and what to say that sells your services to a new customer.
People have to make the time to seek out marketing best practices for their industry and to utilize that knowledge that separates them from the competitors who attended the same seminar on how to market their business.
No one knows a business like the owner of a company. This is why effort is a key factor for marketing success. If you're not working with an outside marketing consultant or have one in-house, you'll be doing all the marketing yourself in addition to everything else your company does. It takes an active understanding of what marketing tools are best for your line of business. The days of flat advertising in the "yellow book" are no longer relevant.
Here's a tip on competitive intelligence:
Find a company that's similar to your own and search for them with all the methods you know. Telephone book ad, online listing, local flyer/message board ad, or where they appear in a search query on your favorite search engine. What is it about their marketing message that caught your attention? If you were their customer, would you respond?
Customer Segmentation Revisited
The Pareto principle (a.k.a the 80-20 rule, Haddad's Theorem) states that 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. In the business world, this has come to mean that 80% of your revenues typically comes from 20% of your customers. Businesses have long sought after more customers who are akin to the 20% that generates the most revenues. How is it done? One method is to use customer segmentation.
Is this scenario familiar to you?
You're putting together list acquisition specs for business unit of your company (or your client's). The BU manager wants to launch a customer acquisition campaign that targets all small and medium sized businesses which have 100-500 employees, have $XX+ millions in revenues, and are geographically located in southern California. Their best repeat business customers comes from professional offices such as engineering, architectural, CPA, and law firms.
Do the specs and requirements match?
Traditional segmentation used to mean that you'd take a database (or list) of customers and carve them out into customer groups based on demographics or socio-psychographic data (e.g., Claritas). Value-based segmentation looks at groups of customers in terms of the revenue they generate and the costs of establishing and maintaining relationships with them. ROI is not just a financial statement hot item, it is a typical key performance indicator (KPI) to gauge how useful customer acquisition strategy is by comparing what measures it took to get that customer's business, how many units of X they purchased, and how many more units of X they intend to purchase.
Just who are your customers anyways?
The basics of customer segmentation answers the following parameters of any industry its applied to: Who, What, Where, Why, and How.
Who
Consumers? Businesses?
What
Your products or services.
Where
Not just for postal recipients. Did they respond to web or email advertisements? Attend a webinar? Buy directly from you or from an affiliate merchant?
Why
The reasons(s) why your products or services won the sale. Is your product or service better than that of the next best substitution product/service? Cheaper? Easier to use? A simple followup with a customer survey usually answers this and keeps the feedback door open.
How
How was it purchased? online? at a physical storefront? at the company store? at a tradeshow/seminar event?
Is this scenario familiar to you?
You're putting together list acquisition specs for business unit of your company (or your client's). The BU manager wants to launch a customer acquisition campaign that targets all small and medium sized businesses which have 100-500 employees, have $XX+ millions in revenues, and are geographically located in southern California. Their best repeat business customers comes from professional offices such as engineering, architectural, CPA, and law firms.
Do the specs and requirements match?
Traditional segmentation used to mean that you'd take a database (or list) of customers and carve them out into customer groups based on demographics or socio-psychographic data (e.g., Claritas). Value-based segmentation looks at groups of customers in terms of the revenue they generate and the costs of establishing and maintaining relationships with them. ROI is not just a financial statement hot item, it is a typical key performance indicator (KPI) to gauge how useful customer acquisition strategy is by comparing what measures it took to get that customer's business, how many units of X they purchased, and how many more units of X they intend to purchase.
Just who are your customers anyways?
The basics of customer segmentation answers the following parameters of any industry its applied to: Who, What, Where, Why, and How.
Who
Consumers? Businesses?
What
Your products or services.
Where
Not just for postal recipients. Did they respond to web or email advertisements? Attend a webinar? Buy directly from you or from an affiliate merchant?
Why
The reasons(s) why your products or services won the sale. Is your product or service better than that of the next best substitution product/service? Cheaper? Easier to use? A simple followup with a customer survey usually answers this and keeps the feedback door open.
How
How was it purchased? online? at a physical storefront? at the company store? at a tradeshow/seminar event?
Organic Traffic
For the first time, my other blog has received organic traffic from AOL. This is both interesting and significant because I don't advertise at all through any of AOL's networks. I don't get a whole lot of traffic, but it's steady and worthy of consideration to monetize the blog. I haven't done so in the past because it doesn't cost me anything to keep the site up.
I really don't see why people are so obsessed about keyword ad buys and bidding on short- and long-tails for that 15% or so paid search traffic that will get them placed higher up on the food chain. SEO is a concept, a lot like modern day IT practices, where the concept has to adapt so rapidly to changing technologies that you have to have employ specialists to cope with such trends to stay ahead of competitors. I don't feel that it adds any value to a company's business model and it detracts from the resources necessary to generate positive net income. I can have this opinion because of the 89 visits (83 absolute unique visitors) to the food blog in the last 30 days (May 10 - June 9), 72 visits (80% of total traffic) were Google organic.
For all the sites that I manage (2 blogs, 1 personal site, 1 game info site), I use Google Analytics, but I also have Stat Counter and ClusterMap on the ones where I know I will have international traffic. ClusterMap provides a wonderful display of frequency by location, representing website hit population by a visitor's IP address but at a bird's eye view.
This is where my international visitors came from (June '07 - May '08):
My two largest visitor populations are located in Florida and California. I have two recipes that generate consistent monthly traffic. Can you guess which ones? I'll give you a hint. One is a Cuban dessert recipe (majority of hits) that I was inspired to make from scratch after tasting it from Portos Bakery; the other is a Chinese appetizer (2nd most frequently visited posting) that is probably one of the priciest items you could order at a restaurant that has it. Both of these are made from basic (to that food culture) ingredients.
So, why do you suppose I have so much traffic from these two US states for that one Cuban recipe?
Web Tools for Marketers
I had originally thought about writing about nifty web tools that would be useful to small business owners, but in my research I had discovered that there were a lot of tools that people could use to make their day more efficient and a lot more that is a waste of time. I looked at these tools from two perspectives, one from my own, a marketing perspective -- how effectively the vendor generated buzz about the product and the second, from a clients' perspective in how they might perceive use of the tools and integrate it into their daily business practices.
1. LinkedIn - for business networking, pick one and stick with it. Having multiple profiles across different business networking sites just means that you have to update them all whenever a change occurs. It's better than Plaxo in maintaining current information on networked contacts. Plus, your personalize LinkedIn url is search engine indexed, so that's like free bio advertising without having to do anything other than create a basic profile. Users can easily import/export, add or remove contacts. It has a clean, easy-to-use interface that turns click-throughs into converts very quickly. It's good for creating rapport and building a reputation online through recommendations.
2. LuLu.com - a self-publishing site for hardcover or paperback books, calendars, etc. Haven't used this site yet, but they essentially remove all the barriers to entry for the publishing industry. Anyone can self-publish now, with their service offering.
3. Walk Score - originally developed for the real estate industry, this tool helps users find local-to-an-address businesses, schools, parks, libraries, etc. It's not just for people in town or the recently relocated, any traveling businessperson can find a local restaurant wherever their company sends them. The site programmatically ranks sites based on how far it is for a person to walk, point to point. All the locations feed directly from the Google Maps API, and adding a location fairly easy too. (Update: 2018-04-02, WalkScore acquired by Redfin)
4. Any blogging site like Blogger, TypePad, or WordPress - use for personal or business or both, promote products, introduce new services, keep an open window with your customers. Blogger.com allows you to manage multiple blogs under one master account. This is the "new" corporate newsletter. Many blogging sites have their own built-in RSS feeds, so your viewers can subscribe and be updated whenever you publish a new post.
5. Podcasting - MP3s for on-the-go listeners. Podcast Alley has both a genre directory and how-to resources for setting up podcasts. This is one media area where format standards have not been an issue. Podcasts can often be downloaded to one's iPod, Zune, desktop, or other MP3 player. Businesses are catching on and publishing seminars, tech conferences, and interviews using this web enhancement for distribution and delivery.
Professionals don't have a lot of excess time on their hands. This next short list are tools that didn't make the cut because they add more micromanagement steps, they're hard to use, are not the right advertising medium, or they simply don't make sense in blended media business marketing strategy.
Twitter - A dispatch service for micronets, if you really wanted people to know what you were up to 24/7. It's not just for people. The service can be hooked up to plants (water me), tamagochis (pet me), and vending machines (feed me).
Facebook - This site is slow to change to capture the benefit of having business tools available; also their site policies regarding privacy and user-generated content aren't all that great. It's very limited, and speedwise rather slow. There are plenty of competitors of similar flavor, e.g., Bebo, Hi5, Friendster, etc.
MySpace - purely for personal use unless you work in the entertainment industry; the on-site tools just aren't up to spec for professionals. Sure it's free, but in this case, having a blog or your own web domain would be better than a MySpace account.
SecondLife - a virtual "3D" world environment that allows users to create their own virtual content (clothing, furniture, cars) of various themes, buy virtual real estate (with real US dollars), offers a currency in Linden (game) money. B2C ads from real-world businesses are flat, two-dimensional billboards that are gaudy and distasteful to look at. Slow pixelated movement may give some users vertigo when traveling throughout the SecondLife world.
1. LinkedIn - for business networking, pick one and stick with it. Having multiple profiles across different business networking sites just means that you have to update them all whenever a change occurs. It's better than Plaxo in maintaining current information on networked contacts. Plus, your personalize LinkedIn url is search engine indexed, so that's like free bio advertising without having to do anything other than create a basic profile. Users can easily import/export, add or remove contacts. It has a clean, easy-to-use interface that turns click-throughs into converts very quickly. It's good for creating rapport and building a reputation online through recommendations.
2. LuLu.com - a self-publishing site for hardcover or paperback books, calendars, etc. Haven't used this site yet, but they essentially remove all the barriers to entry for the publishing industry. Anyone can self-publish now, with their service offering.
3. Walk Score - originally developed for the real estate industry, this tool helps users find local-to-an-address businesses, schools, parks, libraries, etc. It's not just for people in town or the recently relocated, any traveling businessperson can find a local restaurant wherever their company sends them. The site programmatically ranks sites based on how far it is for a person to walk, point to point. All the locations feed directly from the Google Maps API, and adding a location fairly easy too. (Update: 2018-04-02, WalkScore acquired by Redfin)
4. Any blogging site like Blogger, TypePad, or WordPress - use for personal or business or both, promote products, introduce new services, keep an open window with your customers. Blogger.com allows you to manage multiple blogs under one master account. This is the "new" corporate newsletter. Many blogging sites have their own built-in RSS feeds, so your viewers can subscribe and be updated whenever you publish a new post.
5. Podcasting - MP3s for on-the-go listeners. Podcast Alley has both a genre directory and how-to resources for setting up podcasts. This is one media area where format standards have not been an issue. Podcasts can often be downloaded to one's iPod, Zune, desktop, or other MP3 player. Businesses are catching on and publishing seminars, tech conferences, and interviews using this web enhancement for distribution and delivery.
Professionals don't have a lot of excess time on their hands. This next short list are tools that didn't make the cut because they add more micromanagement steps, they're hard to use, are not the right advertising medium, or they simply don't make sense in blended media business marketing strategy.
Twitter - A dispatch service for micronets, if you really wanted people to know what you were up to 24/7. It's not just for people. The service can be hooked up to plants (water me), tamagochis (pet me), and vending machines (feed me).
Facebook - This site is slow to change to capture the benefit of having business tools available; also their site policies regarding privacy and user-generated content aren't all that great. It's very limited, and speedwise rather slow. There are plenty of competitors of similar flavor, e.g., Bebo, Hi5, Friendster, etc.
MySpace - purely for personal use unless you work in the entertainment industry; the on-site tools just aren't up to spec for professionals. Sure it's free, but in this case, having a blog or your own web domain would be better than a MySpace account.
SecondLife - a virtual "3D" world environment that allows users to create their own virtual content (clothing, furniture, cars) of various themes, buy virtual real estate (with real US dollars), offers a currency in Linden (game) money. B2C ads from real-world businesses are flat, two-dimensional billboards that are gaudy and distasteful to look at. Slow pixelated movement may give some users vertigo when traveling throughout the SecondLife world.
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