My short answer?

Forget about the search engines and start thinking about your customer.

To understand why, there’s a quick story for you, a list of fundamental questions you need to consider and then an outline of how you can tie it all together.

Quick story:

Once upon a time, Bluewire Media’s website was nowhere to be found on Google when you typed in “web design brisbane” – a pretty competitive keyword. This was not acceptable for a web strategy consultancy, so we set out to improve our ranking.

We used 2 sources: We posed a few questions to Reload Media and read Glenn Murray’s SEO Secrets e-book.

Armed with a better understanding of how the search engines worked, we were able to get to the first page of results. It was a good step but we still wanted #1.

We then focussed on “thinking like a publisher” courtesy of David Meerman Scott’s “The New Rules of Marketing and PR”. We co-created the Web Strategy Planning Template with him and started to share much more content with our audience. The number of our back links increased dramatically and from high quality web sites like News.com.au courtesy of journalists and other visitors finding our blog and content useful.

In the process, we saw major fluctuations of our rankings and our competitors’. Some websites that had been on the first page for years vanished to the anonymity of page 4 or 5. Our own ranking bounced around as Google changed their search algorithm with countless small tweaks and a couple of major overhauls.

Ultimately our ranking improved over a few months until we were #1 for “web design Brisbane” (where we stayed for 3 years) and quite a few others. We’ve recently dropped to #2 but that’s ok, we’ll be back (my logic is next).

It’s time to consider some fundamental questions:

Why does a person use a search engine?

To find information.

What then is the purpose of a search engine?

The sole purpose of a search engine is to help a searcher find the information they are looking for.

Why will a searcher return to use a search engine again?

A searcher will return if the results of their search are useful.

How will a searcher choose one search engine over another?

Primarily by the usefulness of the results. A secondary consideration is the speed of the delivery of those results.

How does a search engine make money?

By having searchers click on sponsored links or pay per click advertising. The more people search, the more likely they are to click on the paid links. The more often people search, the more often they will click on the paid links. The more often they click, the more money the search engine makes.

Who is the searcher?

The searcher is YOUR customer, YOUR prospect, YOUR future No.1 referrer, a journalist looking for a good story in YOUR industry. The list goes on.

So if the searcher wants useful results and the search engines make money by delivering useful results, what do you think will drive your business’s long term search engine rankings?

USEFULNESS, to your customer or buyer persona, in everything you do on the web will drive your long term search engine rankings.

How can you do this?

• By genuinely knowing your customer or buyer persona.
• By understanding your customers’ problems and providing great content to help them solve it.
• By structuring your web strategy around your searcher or buyer persona not around your products (try using our web strategy planning template if you need help).
• By knowing what they a looking for and knowing what they are typing into the search engines and using their language, not some mumbo jumbo, jargon filled rubbish.
• By providing such interesting/useful/entertaining/valuable content that people will link to it and share it – thereby building QUALITY back links that create long term sustainable rankings, not junk links from an unrelated forum.
• By building content so it will be picked up not just by your customers but by journalists who will share it with a larger audience.
• By having landing pages that your customers find useful and that are relevant to what they are looking for.
• By refreshing your content regularly to demonstrate that you care about the issues your customers are facing.

Yes there is a place for Search Engine Optimisation to achieve short term results using technical changes, backlinking and other techniques. But do you seriously think trying to keep up with every change made to the ultra secret search engine algorithm by Google’s 31,000 employees (qualified by this type of entry exam) is a sustainable strategy?

Their algorithms are going to continue to refine, to reduce the impact of technical details like metadata, to build in the social proof as demonstrated by the number of tweets and likes and comments and check-ins and reviews and ratings and quality of authorship….. Then the next big thing will come along and swamp everything we know about today and demand more change from our businesses.

But the one thing you can count on is that search engines servicing their customers will be at the heart of it.

Don’t waste your time trying to keep up with every tweak made by collective brain power of the world’s best and brightest – get the basics right and then focus on your customer. If what you do is in their best interests, if you’re genuinely adding value with everything you do, then you can be sure the search engines will catch up and reward you handsomely for it.

So… what do you think? Is SEO dead?

Haven’t times changed since 2007?

Yes, we’ve seen social media sites like Facebook and Twitter explode and some like MySpace, implode.  I agree certainly that internet years are like dog years!

I like how David explains the old rules. There used to be three ways to get attention.

1. Buy it (adverts)
2. Beg for it (press releases)
3. Bug people for it (salespeople)

Luckily, now there is a 4th: Earn attention by publishing remarkable content!

David’s third edition of his bestselling book is full of case studies of organisations large and small that have achieved phenomenal success by embracing the ‘new rules’.  Having read both the second and third editions, I am stilled most blown away by the powerful introduction where the ‘old rules’ are debunked.

Page 7 entitled One-Way Marketing is Yesterday’s Message had me hooked.

Old Rules
A primary technique of what Seth Godin calls the TV-industrial complex is interruption.  Under this system, the advertising agency creative people sit in hip offices dreaming up ways to interrupt people so that they pay attention to a one-way message.

New Rules
The web is different. Instead of one-way interruption, web marketing is about delivering useful content at the precise moment a buyer needs it.

On page 8, David elaborates:

The Old Rules of Marketing
- Marketing simply meant advertising (and branding)
- Advertising needed to appeal to the masses
- Advertising relied on interrupting people to get them to pay attention to a message
- Advertising was one-way: company to consumer
-  Advertising was exclusively about selling products
- Advertising was based on campaigns that had a limited life
- Creativity was deemed the most important component of advertising
- It was more important for the ad agency to win advertising awards than for the client to win new customers

The New Rules of Marketing
None of this is true anymore. The web has transformed the rules, and you must transform your marketing to make the most of the web-enabled marketplace of ideas.

My favourite quote

Put simply (and this is my favourite quote and message from the book).

“On the web, you ARE what you publish”

My take

In a nutshell, my interpretation of the ‘new rules’ is to publish remarkable content that helps solve your buyers problems.  Publish frequently and share it liberally.

You’ll be rewarded with loads of interested buyers, backlinks which will propel you up the Google search rankings and enquiries from journalists looking for experts to write about.  Most importantly this will lead to genuine customers who appreciate your useful content and love the fact you’re not interrupting them!

Thank You

Thanks David.  On a personal we were excited when you agreed to collaborate with Bluewire on the Strategy Planning Template and thrilled that you included the template in the book. Cheers for the mention on page 153!

You can follow @dmscott, buy his book and follow his blog Web Ink Now.

Adam and I went along to another great Verne Harnish Rockefeller Habits event put on by The Growth Faculty on Tuesday and sat next to Derek Hodge, a TEC (The Executive Connection) Group Chair.

With a full day of Verne under our belts and sharing ideas, Derek invited me to join him the next day for a TEC presentation by Marcus Child (@digitalmarcus) titled “Leading an Engaged Culture”.

What a cracking few hours! Marcus was incredibly energetic as a presenter with great practical ideas around leadership and staff engagement, not to mention some incredible results to report. If you get the chance, I highly recommend you go to see him.

I videoed Marcus afterwards and asked him the question: “How can we use the web to build an engaged culture?” . The video is below.

The quick take home for me: The web can be used to really bring leadership messages to life through visual and audio, and enable them to be shared so much more easily!

Thanks again Marcus!

The video

It’s 2.03mins (transcript below):

Interview Transcript:

Hello my name is Marcus Child.

I’ve been speaking to the leaders of TEC today and that’s my work! Speaking to people all over the place, describing to people how they can get an engaged culture. And think about how we might use the web for that.

My own story, a year ago, somebody said to me: “Marcus, you do these talks, people really enjoy them” (really nice things) “but afterwards a few months after, they say: how do you keep it alive? How do you keep the messages because I’ve forgotten what you said?”

So I made a series of Digital Marcus. Made a website, and made a series of downloads, all audio downloads – mp3s – which people can listen to on their mobile phones, listen to on mp3 players, download onto their laptops, listen on the tube, when they’re driving.

And do you know it’s made a massive difference. For my business it’s been marvellous, but also for people to keep the message alive. I sold 25,000 of these things in the first 6 months! Ever so strong! And that’s been really good for me. I’ve decided to blog, and give people videos and footage of me working – just to keep the thing alive.

With some of my clients we do the same thing. Literally MDs and other people in their organisations, are finding ways of not only blogging, but sharing what they’re saying, what the latest newscast is in a podcast, in a really quick mp3, which gets shared around the business for everyone to get the latest message.It’s a much more modern, powerful way to get to see, feel and hear your leader in action.

And I think there’s a lot there. I think there’s something about replay it, build it into an accessible device, and it can be ever so colourful. And way better than the black and white of a page.

When David was in Australia earlier this year, we asked him to explain how to use the template and why it is so useful.

Download it for free

Download the Web Strategy Planning Template (with Bluewire’s design)
Download the Marketing Strategy Planning Template (with David’s design)

They are free to download. No registration is required. And feel free to share with your friends!

PS. Congrats David

The 3rd edition of David’s book “The New Rules of Marketing & PR” has just been released. Congratulations David, we look forward to reading it!

And thanks for collaborating with us on the Web Strategy Planning Template.

You can follow @dmscott on twitter or visit www.DavidMeermanScott.com

In the last 2 months, we’ve had 2 web strategy workshops with 2 different clients – one has gone really smoothly, the other not so smoothly.

I won’t name names, but sincere thanks to both clients (they’ll recognise themselves) for their genuine feedback – you can’t improve without it.

I want to pick one aspect of the feedback that really stood out as a difference.

Client Feedback

As chair for both of these meetings, I have to take responsibility for the introductions of the team members:

• In the workshop for client 1, I introduced our team and their technical skills.
• A few weeks later with client 2, I introduced our team then described their Native Genius.

The latter worked so much better.

Client 1 said: “I just wasn’t sure about X and Ys skill set and what they brought to the workshop.”

Client 2 said: “It was absolutely clear for us what everyone in the room was responsible for, and why they were there. Everyone commented how well you knew each other’s strengths and how clear your team’s roles were.”

It’s not rocket science to pick which project went smoothly.

What is a Native Genius?

It’s a concept from Liz Wiseman’s book Multipliers (thanks again for your influence Liz) and definitely not to be confused with a technical skill:

A native genius is something that people do, not only exceptionally well, but absolutely naturally. They do it easily (without extra effort) and freely (without condition)…They get results that are head-and-shoulders above others but they do it without breaking a sweat.

[I wrote a blog post on How to Discover Native Genius if you’re looking for more info.]

We list each of our team’s native genius on our website:

1. Adam – connecting with people
2. Toby – helping get the best for other people
3. Angela – supportive organiser
4. Lesley – making ideas actionable through planning
5. Sam – solving problems to make life easier
6. Sarah – telling stories
7. Angus – improving something
8. Shanon – helping others solve problems

Why was Native Genius important?

Sure it’s not the only reason the projects went smoothly or not, but in the contrasting workshops, the subtle difference of introduction had a huge impact on the perception by the client.

Communication is one of Bluewire Media’s core values and brand promise, and I now realise that communicating the strengths of our team involved in a workshop (or any meeting) is critical to its success.

It means that you’re able to work to each other’s strengths. It means everyone, especially the client’s team, understands us and our roles much more clearly and can direct questions and comments accordingly.

Workshop quality = Communication quality.

The outcome? An action item for me: Update all of our agendas to include Native Genius introductions.

PS: I’d be really interested to hear your comments on what differentiated a great workshop/project in your experience.

Marketing in The Age of Google (by Vanessa Fox) is an insightful book about search, how it’s impacted the web and our lives, and how to make the most of it for business.

Vanessa goes into detail about the specifics of search engine optimisation and how search engines can be used for business planning, research and testing. i definitely agree with the tag line: “Your online strategy IS your business strategy”. The information is good, tying together the various concepts and tools available with examples and diagrams.

The parts that stood out for me were these quotes (bolding mine):

According to leaked 2008 Google quality guidelines, utility (how helpful the page is for the searcher based on intent), “is the most important aspect of search engine quality.”

A much better strategy is to focus on what the search engines are trying to achieve with all of those algorithm tweaks – showing the most relevant results for a given query.

Remember, the customers remain the same – they are simply adapting new behaviours to take advantage of the world of search.

What does this mean for you?

Don’t wait for the search engines, get ahead of them.

How? 3 steps:

1. Be useful.
2. Be relevant.
3. Be easy to use.

Because the customers haven’t changed, only the way they are finding information!

The reality is, if you are all of these things, the search engines will eventually catch up to you. With 26,316 seriously smart people at Google, (not to mention all the staff at Yahoo!, Bing and the others), they are bound to tweak their algorithms to catch up and deliver the most relevant and useful results.

[Side note: It was great to see that Vanessa's concepts closely aligned with our Web Strategy Planning Template, particularly the idea of "search personas" mirroring "buyer personas".]

Why? She uses it. (The first time I met her she confessed she was a twitter addict! You can follow her on twitter @mysocialpolicy or read her blog: My Social Media Lawyer.)

Particularly when trying to convince CEOs, we are frequently asked about the legalities of social media policies so I asked her to write a guest post to address just that.

Enter Vivienne…

+++++++

Blake Burningham, Vivienne Storey, Me, Hanh Keary, Jim Stewart at David Meerman Scott's Real Time Marketing and PR masterclass

Have you thought about the real purpose of taking the time and effort to write and implement a social media policy in your organisation?

There are many answers to “why have a social media policy at all?” and the main ones usually revolve around risk management issues such as:

• How do I protect my brand?
• How do I protect confidential or sensitive information?
• How do I hand over “control” of my message?
• How do I manage productivity?
• How do I address privacy concerns?

These are all highly valid questions that can and should be addressed in a social media policy (along with a whole host of other risk management issues) but there is one main function a social media policy should address and that is:

“How do I enable my organisation to communicate in “real time” without having to wait for approval from the marketing/comms or legal team?”

Policy making

A social media policy should in effect be a pre-approval document for employees in your organisation to have a real time dialogue on the internet, whether it’s via twitter, blogging, Facebook or responding to comments. Imagine the power of unleashing all of your interested employees as marketers on your behalf, safe in the knowledge that they are following well thought out guidelines and processes? Imagine.

Throughout the process of writing a social media policy, this should be your single goal; “Am I enabling the organisation to engage on-line without having to ask “Am I doing the right thing?”, “Am I breaking any rules?””.

Examples

If you look at companies that are “doing” social media well, this is exactly the approach they have taken. Companies such as Coca-Cola and Deloitte have developed and implemented clear, well thought out, policies that encourage real time online engagement. And how successful they have been!

Content

Content is so time sensitive that you simply cannot afford to be waiting around arguing over whether certain pieces should be published by certain people. If you have to wait days to get agreement over publishing, the content is probably passé; relevancy and opportunity long gone.

Have these arguments while you’re developing your policy; dispute, wrangle and wrestle your way through the content of the policy always keeping that key question in mind; “Does this enable my organisation to engage in real time, on-line?” It’s worth having that intense debate during the development of your social media policy so that once it’s complete you can hand over to the organisation and say “go for it”

As Nike say “just do it”.

Note from Vivienne: Thank you to David Meerman Scott for the “real time” reference via his book, Real-Time Marketing & PR, and the inspiration for this blog.

Why?

To borrow Verne Harnish‘s words, we decided to apply a “laser-like focus” on what we do best - web strategy. This meant that it was time to hand web hosting over to a specialist.

It may seem like reliable hosting is part of a good web strategy (& it is) but our job as trusted advisor is to ensure our clients get the best outcomes.  And whilst this may seem counter intuitive, we decided clients would be better serviced by going direct to our suppliers.

(In 90% of cases, we’ve recommended our clients continue to deal directly with our supplier NetRegistry.)

Seth Godin also has a great quote which I felt really rang true for this decision:

“Strategy is worth thinking about if it causes you to make difficult or non-intuitive decisions. And so you have to test your commitment. “Are you saying that we have to cancel this product line?” is the sort of reaction your strategy statements ought to generate.”

What’s the benefit to our web hosting clients?

1. They can benefit from the specialist skills, expertise and product offerings of a focussed web hosting company
2. These companies are set up for incredible levels of support (eg NetRegistry has 24/7/365 phone support)
3. Often they allow the flexibility of self service.
4. Reduced cost

How will it roll out?

After a great deal of preparation, the first round of hosting transitions will take place this Sunday, with the aim to have it all wrapped up by the end of March.

Will this affect other services?

It’s business as usual for the rest of our services: web strategy, web design, email marketing, updates and support, social media strategy etc!

Thank you!

To Larry, Giles, Anil, Tony, Sara and all the NetRegistry team who have supported our dedicated hosting efforts over the past 6 years and have helped so much with the transition for our clients.

Finally and most importantly, a HUGE thank you to all of our clients for your patience and understanding through this transition and for your web hosting business over the last 6 years.

Why? Because the web has a huge demand for content and great PR is about developing interesting, relevant and timely content. I still believe this is the case, that’s why I was really pleased when Catriona Pollard, Director of CP Communications in Sydney and blog author of Public Relations Sydney, happily accepted my challenge of a guest post!

Social Media continues to be a hot topic so… enter Catriona…

+++++++++++++

The collision of social media and PR: why they work so well together

By Catriona Pollard, Director CP Communications

While businesses have been using public relations for years to raise their profile and communicate with their target audiences, social media is still finding its place. Is it a part of IT, a part of marketing or customer service?

After 18 years working in PR, the introduction of social media to our strategies actually came quite naturally, mostly because PR and social media are incredibly similar.

Both offer two way communication between organisations and their target markets. They both provide a way to influence people and communicate with them. Simply, both are about relationships.

When you’re working with traditional PR, the media’s representation of a story can significantly impact on how the public see you, however if it is a positive story, the fact that it is written by a journalist makes the message even more credible.

There is always the risk that you can’t control what the journalist writes so then you consider going straight to the source – via social media.

Using platforms like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, you’re cutting out the third party and offering your messages directly. It is a much quicker, more direct route of communication to a very targeted audience who have chosen to engage with your brand on social media.

You can actually become the direct source of news about your company or brand by writing a blog and posting articles or media releases on your website, this can help raise your profile, increase your credibility as an expert in your field and all that fresh, relevant content being posted online certainly doesn’t hurt your SEO efforts!

Just as there is crisis management within a traditional public relations role, social media can also lead to some negative ‘press’ which is understandable when you have a platform that can become anyone’s soap box. A fear of what people might say about you in the public space is not a reason to avoid using social media.

In reality, people are going to say whatever they want about your company, the difference is whether you are already a part of the conversation with them giving you the chance to intercept and implement damage control before the conversations get out of hand.

Remember it’s all about two way communication.

[Note from Toby: This is a really important point from both a relationship growing point of view and a resourcing point of view. Don't forget that, like in real life, if you start a conversation, you can't just walk away from it...]

By using a combination of both traditional PR and social media as marketing tools you’re giving your business the greatest opportunity to be seen and heard by the audience that matters most to you.

About the Author

Catriona Pollard is director of CP Communications, a PR and social media agency which provides specialist media, traditional and online PR strategies that achieve positive media coverage, increased brand awareness and improved sales results. Catriona also writes the PR blog Public Relations Sydney.

Recently, Bluewire Media has claimed the #1 spot from John Hacking, who has dropped from #1 to page 2 (any ideas why?). If you looked at the home page of the Bluewire Media website however, you might be confused as to how we’ve made it to the number one spot. There’s no heading saying “Web Design Brisbane”, the words “Web Design” and “Brisbane” appear only once each in the browser title tag, and they’re not together or near the start. In fact, the phrase “Web Design Brisbane” or “Brisbane Web Design” doesn’t even appear anywhere on the page.

Compare this with the companies who share spots 2-10, most of whom start their titles with “Web Design Brisbane”, and you’ll be left to wonder why Bluewire Media is even on the first page.

Well, if you know anything about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), you’ll know that inbound links (links from someone else’s site back to your site) play a huge factor in getting your site to rank higher in search results. A quick scan of the number of links pointing to each of the top 10 websites reveals that Bluewire Media has roughly 24,000 inbound links, while the rest of the top 10 have between 1,000 and 10,000 inbound links (with a couple of exceptions).

Search results for "Web Design Brisbane" using SEOBook's SEO Toolbar to display link data

Fair enough, you might say, until you hear that Bluewire Media does not actually offer SEO services directly (apart from ensuring the websites we build are search engine friendly, we refer our clients to our SEO partners, Reload Media, for all their other SEO needs). How then, have we managed to get twice or three times the number of links that our competitors have, most of whom offer SEO and linkbuilding services?

Well, at Bluewire Media, we’re big believers that the best way to market your business online is to give something of value away for free. Our free Web Strategy Planning Template, co-created with international keynote speaker and best-selling author David Meerman Scott has been downloaded and used by thousands of businesses worldwide to help them define their web strategy.

By giving this template away for free, we’ve managed to not only get our logo and contact details into the offices of hundreds of companies Australia wide, but also to get hundreds (and eventually thousands) of links from webmasters and bloggers who have found it useful and wanted to share it with their audiences, and in doing so have helped us achieve our number one ranking.

We try to recommend to most of our clients that they write an e-book or similar and give it away for free, but many of them, being business-people, just can’t get their head around the concept; and it’s often hard to think of all the right arguments to convince them on the spot. Here, I’ve outlined here what happens when you give away for free something other people thing is pretty valuable.

The process:

1. You publish something (let’s call it a widget) that people would pay for (because it’s that good), but instead you give it away for free. It could be a free e-book, an online tool or app, a printable template or checklist (like ours), or even just a great blog post!
2. People read or use your widget and find it valuable. It’s so good that they can’t resist telling their friends and followers about it using social media (especially if you make it easily shareable). This spreads your brand name and increases your reputation.
3. If your free widget is good enough, eventually it will create enough of a social media storm that people will start blogging about it (hello backlinks!).
4. People who read those blog posts will then know about you and your free widget, and if they find it valuable enough, they’ll tell their own friends and followers.
5. This cycle goes on and on while your brand name is being spread further and further and your reputation is skyrocketing.
6. You now have a first-class reputation, and your customers come to you ready to buy your products/services because they’ve read about you, seen your work and trust your expertise.

But why does it have to be free?

Making your widget free means that when someone comes across it, they don’t have to deliberate over whether they can afford it or whether it will be worth the money, they don’t have to get up and walk across the room to get their credit card details (don’t under-estimate the laziness of the general population), and they have no reason to trust that your widget will do what you claim it will. If it’s free, however, there is absolutely no reason why someone wouldn’t use/read/download it right then and there and be blown away by how valuable it is. Basically, by making it free, you’re allowing it to spread faster and further.

Want to learn more?

[Edit: Lesley has linked to an excellent video in the comments. If you're interested to know more, please have a look]

David Meerman Scott is a thought leader in this field, and has some great books that really help clarify exactly why you should give something away for free. I recommend buying and reading his book ‘World Wide Rave’ (we’ve got some copies in the office if you’d like to borrow one) and downloading some of his free e-books (yes that’s right, he practices what he preaches).

Are you convinced?

A lot of people will remain un-convinced, especially if they think they’re in an industry that this doesn’t apply to. Really though, if you have a product or service and you have a website, there’s a way that it can work for you: you just need to be creative.

If you’re having a hard time thinking of a way to do this in your industry, leave a comment explaining your situation and I’ll think of one for you!