Ideas for Business

Kalena Jordan of Ask Kalena was recently asked this question:

Why do older unoptimized sites sometimes rank better than younger optimized ones?

It’s a good question and I like the way she answered it. I’m going to give my own answer now even though she and I are in agreement.

The search engines have well over 100 criteria that they judge when deciding which sites rank for specific keyword phrases. The algorithms are such that no criteria is weighted so heavily that it dominates all other criteria. On-page optimization is just one ranking factor. Other ranking factors that influence where websites fall in the line up include:

• Age of the domain
• Relevance of inbound links to the domain
• Quality of inbound links to the domain
• Server neighborhood of the domain
• Registration history and future of the domain
• Web page load time
• Code to text ratio
• Link attributes and graphic alt tags
• Many, many more

There is more to website optimization than merely choosing the right keywords and placing them a number of times within your content. Internal links are important, site navigation is important, and there are a ton of off site optimization techniques that are looked at. If an older non-optimized site in your niche is outranking you, it is likely because it is doing enough things right that the one ranking factor (on-page optimization) simply isn’t enough to push it down and push you up.

The good news: Over time, if you keep doing enough of the right things, you should be able to bridge the gap.

Find out the 3 essential elements to ranking a web site well in any search engine.

One restaurant owner in Arizona drove to pick up a customer who had been involved in an automobile accident and was in danger of missing his reservation. Now that’s customer service! And it got such word of mouth buzz that the restaurant attracted press stories - and not just in its home town.

The story is the perfect illustration of how exceptional service can lead to word of mouth buzz. It’s uncommon and this type of service doesn’t happen every day, which is what makes it worth talking about. And if you perform that kind of service for your customers then you’ll be talked about too.

Never deny the power of word of mouth advertising. It’s cheap advertising, but by cheap I don’t mean non-valuable. The value is immeasurable. It’s inexpensive because you don’t have to shell out dollars and hope it works. It is costly, however, because exceptional service requires some level of risk that must be managed. Still, it’s worth every ounce of it. There is no substitute for word of mouth buzz, even for a small business.

In the last couple of years that has been a growing trend called microblogging. Essentially, microblogging is throwing up a sentence or two in short bursts and many microbloggers do this several times a day. A lot of them claim it is good for business and have hundreds or thousands of people following them on the popular microblogging sites. Is it worth it?

Well, let me just list the top microblogging sites:

• Twitter (the most popular of all)
• FriendFeed
• Plurk
• Jaiku
• Pownce
• Identi.ca
• Kwippy

The last two on this list - Identi.ca and Kwippy - are the two newest microblogging sites to the list. The point behind these sites is to allow social media marketers and others who own websites the opportunity to market themselves in short bursts throughout the day.

While I don’t do any microblogging myself, I do see where it can be helpful. But microblogging is best done as an adjunct to regular blogging, not as a replacement. Most of these sites have word limits (Twitter’s like 140 words, or something) and you can’t write messages longer than those. That isn’t much space to include a blog post like this one that is full of information. Instead, what it does is allow you to shoot out quick promotions and if you have a lot of products and services to promote, or a lot of clients to promote then microblogging can be a great way to get your quick messages out there for the world to see.

Get the scoop on blogging today.

If you like to fish then you understand the importance of bait. You take something that fish like, put it on the end of a hook, and throw your line in the water. When they bite, you snag them and reel them in. Link bait works much the same way.

What you do is create some kind of content that others will find attractive to link to. You are “baiting” their links. But not just any link bait will do. The No. 1 rule for link bait is to make it relevant.

You want the people who link to your site to be people within your niche. They will be people who own websites or blogs about your topic. Your link bait will attract their links and that translates into a higher PageRank and eventually higher rankings for you. Sounds simple, right?

Well, it is simple enough to understand. The hard part is creating the content. You have to predict what people will like, which requires having some understanding of human nature and what people within your industry want. If you can nail that down, you can create some awesome link bait.

Erica DeWolf conducted an informal survey about e-mail marketing preferences among companies to see if they preferred to hire someone to do their e-mail marketing in-house or hire an outside agency to handle their e-mail marketing. With only 18 responses, it’s difficult to get an accurate reading of the results, but there may be enough information here to get a good look at what other businesses want to do with their e-mail marketing.

Erica’s survey doesn’t say what size companies responded to the survey. I suspect that larger businesses would have responded differently to the survey than smaller businesses, but the results are interesting:

60% of the respondents said they currently outsource their e-mail marketing but 50% of the respondents said they’d prefer to keep it in-house. Erica’s survey results don’t say what the crossover is among that 60% and 50% of survey participants (Are they the same people? Is there only a 10% overlap? A 25% overlap? That would be interesting to know).

I would have to slightly disagree with some of Erica’s conclusions, specifically about saving money and branding. It might seem like it will be less expensive to hire someone to manage your e-mail marketing, but that really depends on how much e-mail marketing you do. If you don’t do a lot then it might actually be less expensive to outsource it depending on your agency’s fees. If you hire a full-time campaign manager then you’ll have to pay salary and possibly benefits. You do need to factor perks and benefits into the cost equation of your marketing expense (Do you provide vacation and sick days? Insurance and medical benefits? Other perks? All of those are a part of your expenses so include them in your figuring). You won’t have to pay outside agencies any benefits or provide insurance, which could reduce your expenses.

On branding, an outside agency that specializes in e-mail marketing can be just as adept at taking your branding and including it in your e-mail marketing efforts. A marketing agency that does this full time knows how to work with companies in that manner and can be just as effective as an in-house marketing manager.

When it comes to e-mail marketing, an in-house manager might work for you, but outsourcing can be the best option for some as well. You have to do the research and make that determination for your business.