Here are some of the most common situations where SEO gets in the way of a site’s usability:

Long Pages of Text – Admit it– you’ve stretched your content out a little longer than it needed to be so you could hit that “magic” 400-500 word count for SEO. If I’ve seen it once, I’ve seen it a thousand times. What could have easily been said in less than 200 words is drawn out into a 400 or 500 word repetitive, keyword stuffed page. Too much text hampers the usability of your site. Even if it’s easy-to-scan, it can still be intimidating to land on a page filled with nothing but text.

Lack of Pictures – This is another prime example of SEO out of control. Some people get so caught up in the idea of optimizing their site, they leave out anything that isn’t contributing higher search engine rankings. Websites without pictures are boring, period. Well placed pictures make your site more welcoming and more usable (especially if the picture is of a product.) Never sacrifice an attractive website for the sake of SEO. There’s no point in ranking well if no one stays on your site.

Keyword Stuffed Title Tags – Anyone with even a passing knowledge of SEO knows the importance of the title tag. It’s one of the most important places for including your site’s relevant keywords. Of course, this too has been taken to the extreme. Some sites include nothing but a long list of keywords in their title tags. This is terrible for usability. Ideally, your company name should be first (for better bookmarking) followed by a brief description of the page. In this brief description, you can certainly include a key phrase. Just don’t stuff the title so full of them that it makes your site look spammy.

Too Many Internal Links – Keyword-rich internal links are another technique used by SEOs to improve a page’s relevance for certain phrases. When done properly, they can actually enhance the usability of your site by guiding the visitors in a logical path from page to page. But these too can easily get out of hand. If I land on a page and all I see are tons of links, I immediately leave that page. It reeks of spam, and more importantly, it’s just annoying. Use internal linking sparingly and only when it makes sense. As a general rule of thumb, two or three links per page is an acceptable number.

No Contact Information – This goes back to the notion that everything on a page should be contributing to getting higher search engine placement. If your contact information is difficult to find, you’ll lose potential customers. People don’t want to spend time trying to figure out how to get in touch with you. They want answers now. Have your contact information and contact forms in easy to find places on each page. Not only will this improve conversion, but it also helps your site look more trustworthy.

If your site is suffering from any of these usability mistakes, develop a plan for correcting them immediately. The more usable your site is, the likelier it is to achieve the results you desire.

This research report was compiled using survey data from over 450 affiliate marketing publishers. I normally would not post about something that could be viewed as “self-promotional” (since AffiliateBenchmarks is a division of NETexponent) but I thought ReveNews readers could benefit from this research. I also thought the FREE price tag was compelling and wanted folks to get access to the data before we start charging.

It was great to put my research experience to use and I look forward to feedback from the community on how we can improve this service.

Branding in B-to-C means often to spend money on feel-good images and aspirations, rather than on highlighting actual benefits and useful properties of a product at least since the 1920s when Edward Bernays invented Public Relations.  

This type of “branding” is usually not done in the B-to-B segment, because feel-good images tend not to solve actual business problems and fulfill business needs.

Customer service, sales support, technical support, supply chain compliance, distribution are the things that are focused on, the things that B-to-B customers actually care about. Nothing of that is called branding, but the matter of fact is that it is. If people say about your company that it has great technical support instead of they made good experiences with your tech support when they had issue X, then it is branding. Your name is associated with a good property that is important to your customers. This increases the likelihood to finalize a deal. If an important aspect for a B-to-B transaction is not brought up by a potential customer, it is a good sign that your brand or reputation answered this question for the customer already. 

As a consumer brand can suffer because of association with something bad, a business brand can suffer as badly or worse, if it loses the association with a good characteristic or gets associated with a bad one. That’s why should it be also important to a B-to-B Brand to protect itself. If you have a brand in the business sector and consumer sector as well, damage to the brand in one of the sectors can damage your brand in the other sector as well. Here is a good example. 

I bought in 2006 a tablet PC from the Gateway business unit via their web site Gateway.com. With that computer I purchased a 4 years warranty, which includes second business day on-site support, parts and labor cost covered. I just got a case now, which was the reason for me to get the expensive warranty in the first place. I bought the computer and warranty directly from the brand and manufacturer Gateway, because I felt sure that I will be covered in the case that I need it. I was obviously mistaken.

On the Gateway.com website is a news article published about the sale of their business unit to MPC and a FAQ for Gateway clients about what that means for them. There it states:

The automated system sent me to a pre-recorded message telling me what I already knew, with the difference that I knew already more than that system, for example the fact that I won’t get support by dialing the proposed phone number.

I played stupid and did not provide any IDs to be able to get through to a person. That person was not much of help of course, because the first level of customer support is not authorized to do any decisions of their own. The supervisor was not much of help either, but that’s not the supervisor’s fault, since he does not understand the dynamics of branding, customer satisfaction and their impact on sales and the company’s overall business success. I was diverted to the Gateway support site, where I am currently attempting to break through the initial line of defense to get to somebody with a better understanding of the underlying issue of this case.

I also wrote a snail mail letter to corporate headquarters and management here in California where I tried to illustrate the problem that they, company/brand Gateway now have on their hand since they seem to have sold it to the wrong company who is not only having problems itself, but causing active damage to the Gateway brand  as well.

If Gateway cares about its own brand image at all, they should step in and actively protect it by delivering what they promised themselves to former customers of them. I don’t care about MPC and consider it a Gateway problem that Gateway can only solve in two different ways.

Option one would be to provide the support that they promised and restore their brand image that they are providing excellent support and service for their hardware.

Option two would be to go out of business themselves or stop making computers and make something else instead, like dish washers or toasters or something like that.

Any other option would be killing their brand, at least for me and maybe the people who encountered the same issues like I did, plus probably a number of people who just heard about those cases and now also don’t trust the Gateway brand anymore.  Gateway still sells PCs to consumers, but there is no technical difference between my tablet-PC purchased via Gateway business than to the one that was sold via Gateway for consumers.

Does Gateway expect me to trust the consumer brand Gateway after this or making any recommendations to get a computer from them to friends, family members or any other person I know and talk about where to buy a computer and which make?

Unfortunately is it not that easy for notebook computers to simply go and buy a spare part yourself elsewhere and replace the faulty one yourself or with help of a friend or independent technician. The part is not much more expensive though and should not matter to you, if you have it flying around anyway, as they do in the case of Gateway. If it would be a desktop PC, I’d go to Best Buy, which is 2 blocks from here and buy a new card for $100 bucks and the problem would be solved.

Then I could spend all the time needed in the world to discuss the reimbursement of my cost, which should have been covered by the warranty. I don’t have this option and the cause in damage because of impact on my business is getting much higher than the cost for the part and labor to install it.

That was the reason for me to get the warranty and to choose a trusted brand like Gateway. They are now proving that this trust was ill founded.

In a time where product and service properties and especially qualities and flaws of them become more relevant even in the consumer market, companies should be twice as careful to avoid any damage to their name, or brand values. Values that were created via hard work of their staff in the real world and not by selling feel-good images. Those values are becoming invaluable in times of recession, because only if those values still exist, does your business have a cutting edge over the completion, when nothing else separates you from them, including the price.

Cheers!

Carsten Cumbrowski
Internet Marketer, Entrepreneur and Blogger
Cumbrowski.com Internet Marketing Resources

Microsoft is reporting that according to Comscore its Live Search Cashback program accounted for 12% of all commercial transactions on the web. The transactions came from the approximately 4.5 million unique users in the program. Two big questions still remain: Will this tactic have any effect on Google’s Search business AND how will major affiliate networks (including Google) be impacted Live Search?

Layoffs Speed Up as Firms Struggle

Online companies continued to announce layoffs including:

Sun Microsystems - Had the biggest announcement this week cutting 5,000 jobs about 15% of its staff
Orbits - Eliminated 160 jobs about 10% of its staff
Shopzilla - Cut 30 jobs about 10% of its staff
Six Apart -Let go of 16 jobs about 8% of its staff
Jobster - Trimmed 15 jobs about 38% of its staff

Circuit City Files for Bankruptcy Protection

Aggressive job cuts and store closures were not enough to keep Circuit City from filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Monday. In its filing, Circuit City listed assets of $3.4 billion against debt of $2.3 billion. The company hopes that the bankruptcy will enable it to reorganize and remain operational through the holiday season.

Kowabunga Hires New President

Kowabunga announced Richard K. Howe as its new CEO and president . Howe previously was chief marketing/business strategy and M&A officer at Acxiom Corp., an interactive marketing services company.

What Exactly Are Fan Pages?

Fan pages allow businesses to directly interact with their customers on Facebook. “Fans” can upload photos and actively engage with other users on a fan page. Organizations have the opportunity to upload interactive videos and other types of multimedia on the fan page. Businesses can also send messages to their fans whenever the mood strikes them – thus, this format is an excellent way to keep customers informed about special events and offers that are related to the company.

Why is this format beneficial?

This form of advertising is free. Hey … who said that there was no such thing as a free lunch? Further, this fan page is public – and not private like much of Facebook. As a result search engines can index this fan page. In turn, your company may just get increased traffic to your website.

Also, this form of advertising is viral. When users become a fan of your site, it is advertised on all of their friends’ news feeds. Even if people have this news feed feature turned off, the fan page does show up on profiles and therefore your brand will be visible. Great extra exposure for brands!

Facebook Fan Page Advertising Advice

• Do not put up any “old thing” on a fan page. You must remember to cater to and actively work to engage your customer base. After all, if you do not engage your audience they will quickly lose interest in your product/business. Not quite the result you want!
• Users are more likely to interact with a brand that they feel passionate about. However, if your brand is not one that customers are likely to feel a great affinity for, all is not lost. You can offer certain rewards or incentives so that users will be more likely to engage with your brand.
• Remember to keep your fan page advertising consistent with your other online advertising efforts.

Overall then, if you are looking for an excellent – and free way – to market on Facebook, a fan page is definitely the way to go.

1. Seek Targeted Traffic - The first step to keeping visitors around longer is to ensure they should be there in the first place. If you seek targeted traffic, you’ll improve your chances of getting sticky traffic significantly. What’s the best way to attract targeted traffic? Through SEO. Optimizing your site for the right keywords will make certain the visitors landing on your website actually want to be there. Quality traffic=lower bounce rate.
2. Update Content Regularly - One way to keep visitors coming back and to make them stay longer is to update your content regularly. Fresh content not only shows your website is relevant, but it also helps you rank better in the search engines. Try to set a schedule for updating your content regularly; otherwise, you’ll keep overlooking it for “more important” tasks.
3. Keep Navigation Simple - Once you get visitors to land on your website, the last thing you want to do is scare them away with confusing navigation, so make your site as easy-to-use as possible. Great website usability makes visitors feel welcome, and it helps them move through your site easier. Avoid confusing, “creative” navigation at all costs.
4. Stay Focused - This is another usability issue. Don’t try to bite off more than you can chew on a particular page. Instead, stay focused. Limit the number of distractions on each page to give your website a clean, welcoming feel. Analyze each page to determine if there is anything that distracts the user from the main message. If there is, get rid of it. Focused websites keep visitors engaged.
5. Encourage Participation - The Internet is an inherently social platform. It’s the interactivity of the web that makes marketing so effective. If you want to give your website visitors a reason to stick around, allow them to participate. Comments, polls, forums, and ratings are just a few of the ways to coax your visitors into participating on your website.
6. Test Regularly - Einstein once said “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” If your website constantly has high bounce rates, you need to start changing things. That’s why you need to constantly test your website. Tweaking the content and layout of your site will help you create the most effective pages with the lowest bounce rates. Test! Test! Test!
7. Use Interlinking - How do you keep your traffic moving forward through your site? Interlinking throughout your content gives your readers a reason to keep clicking. Of course, you have to make sure that your links have a purpose. For example, if you’re blogging about a particular topic, you might want to link to a background story on your site that gives more clarity to your post. Never interlink simply for the sake of dropping more links. Every link should add value to the user experience.
8. Improve Load Time - The faster your pages load, the likelier it is that your visitors won’t click “back” immediately. Try to avoid things that slow down your website’s loading time. Heavy graphics, flash intros, and auto-play videos are just a few of the things that kill your load times. Keep your pages simple and fast-loading to give your visitors the best chance of sticking around more than a few seconds.
9. Focus on the Headline- When it comes down to it, the headline is perhaps the most important part of your pages. It’s what lets visitors know if the page has something of value to offer them. If your headline is a dud, your traffic won’t stick around to read the rest of your content. On the other hand, if your headline is compelling, your visitors are likelier to read through your content and to move onto other pages on your site. Focus on the headline to help everything else fall into place.

Try to implement these tips into your website over the next few months. I think you’ll find your traffic is of higher quality, and you’ll begin to see them sticking around for longer periods of time. Stay focused. Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Brand advocates allow you to release news about your company and products and then they advertise it for you. This is an inexpensive (frequently free) way to market yourself at ground level, where you are almost out of the picture. How many times have you gone to a new restaurant based on a friend’s recommendation instead of a commercial?

We’re talking about using street teams. Street teams are merely teams or groups of brand advocates. These are people who know, use, and trust your products and organization. The music industry has been effectively using street teams to promote new artists and new albums for decades now. Many urban periodicals that focus on art, nightlife, the social scene, and the club scene have also begun using street teams.

The Pitch (a Kansas City area urban life periodical) uses street teams to aid in gathering news and stories for publication. They simply have members (who elected to sign up) tell them about their nights out; where they went, what was fun or not fun, where the hot spots are. These are people who are already going out, already talking about it. The Pitch has just found a way to let their readers feel important about what they are already doing, while they gather free news.

This idea holds true for innumerable types of businesses. Aren’t your customers and clients already engaging in some sort of behavior like this? Do they talk about your business and your competitors with their colleagues and friends? Of course, the key is to determine how they are talking about it and who is talking in the best circles.

4 Steps to Starting a Street Team

Identify People To Be Organizers And Street Team Supervisors – These are frequently your PR manager and others that they delegate from the PR team.

Recruit Street Team Members From Your Customer Base - Advertise on your website or via email if you have a mailing list already in place.

With Your Street Team In Place - Plan promotional activities with certain events in mind. Promote a new product, informational seminar on an industry related topic, or whatever creative your PR team can come up with.

During The Event - Have your street team hand out promotional materials advertising your website, give away inexpensive items, have contests to win free products, collect names for your mailing list and help sell your other merchandise. Personal interaction with your customers/clients can help push along the sale of merchandise and possibly even recruitment of new street team members. You might be surprised how well this works.

Branding doesn’t have to come just in the form of media. The more you can spread your brand the better. And with the rise in social media and social marketing online…it seems to make sense to be applying the same ideas to the physical world. See for yourself what brand advocacy can do for you and you too could benefit from others bringing word of mouth back to the street

Now that the song is stuck in both our heads, I will commence with the skinny on how-to use Twitter directories to help build your professional network. Nowadays, Twitter is the “it” site for microsharing. Businesses are utilizing the popular social networking platform to improve internal communications, to bolster corporate relationships, for professional development, to mentor their community, to increase intelligence, and to create opportunities for collaborations, real-time think tanks and increase their productivity.

Social based flow communities such as Twitter are pioneering the new wave of business collaboration, networking and community building. It would behoove anyone to catch the wave now and ride on into this exciting new evolution of microsharing. Whether you are a major corporation or a self-employed freelancer, something to consider is ‘intelligent befriending.” A great resource for finding like-minded people to link up with is via Twitter directories. These directories allow you to either find friends in your niche area of interest or to list your own twitter profile so you can be found.

Twitter directories work as wonderful starting place to gather up your online tribe and to advertise your wares online. A prevalent problem with sharing all of your awesome content online is the inability to get your voice heard among al of the senseless clamoring. But there are tools and platforms available for free which enable you to find and be found! A few directories worth checking out are Just Tweet It, Twello, and TwitDir:

Just Tweet It: A user directory for Twitter, organized by genres to allow users to find other Twitter users to connect with. JustTweetIt allows users to add their name, an avatar and a small bio in multiple categories.

Twello: A Twitter search engine, a search directory of people by area of expertise, professional or other attributes listed in personal profiles on Twitter. There is a ton of information on Twello and well worthy of spending a few hours seeking out Twitter peeps and listing up.

TwitDir: A Twitter directory that allows users to type in keywords or phrases and search within Twitter usernames, descriptions, locations and everywhere. While you are on TwitDir, check out their lists: Top 100 followed, Top 100 Updates, Top 100 Favorites, and Top 100 Followers. They are quite amusing.

Lastly, if you’re looking to friend up a creative writer self-professed social media junkie, add me as a friend. I promise I won’t bite.

1.3 million was the number of wireless subscribers that left Sprint Nextel for competitors during the third quarter of 2008. The nation’s third-largest wireless provider reported it lost $326 million, or 11 cents per share, for the three months ending Sept. 30. It had earned $64 million, or 2 cents per share, in the same period a year ago. Overall revenue fell 13 percent to $7.5 billion

Dan Hesse, CEO, told analysts Sprint Nextel plans to work harder to attract new customers during the upcoming holiday season but acknowledged “we have yet to turn the corner.” Yet two weeks ago Hesse stated that Google’s Android wasn’t good enough, wonder what he thinks about Android now.

Layoffs Continue and Zappos Provides Good Example

Online companies continued to announce layoffs including:

Zappos - There is not good way to have to layoff an employee. It is never pleasant for either side. Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos  handled the layoffs at Zappos in about the classiest most straightforward way possible. Layoffs at Zappos impacted 128 employees approximately 8% of its staff.
Veoh - Cut 20 jobs about 18% of its staff
Linkedin - Trimmed 36 jobs about 10% of its staff

Join in the Ballmer “Move On” Drinking Game and Watch Yang Speak Candidly About the Failed Yahoo and Microsoft Romance

Steve Ballmer speaking at a Committee for Economic Development of Australia sounded more like a scorned suitor than the CEO of Mircosoft. Read the linked article and for a fun drinking game take a shot everytime he says the phrase “move on”.

Jerry Yang did a very interesting interview with John Battelle of Federated Media at the Web 2.0 Summit. Video below:

Election Results

Finally there was the small matter of the election last week. Congratulations to our new President Elect Barack Obama. The moment was historic on so many levels and here at Revenews it made us reflect what it means to be part of the United States of America. How lucky we are. We will soon know how Obama’s policies will impact the online as well as the offline market. Whether or not we agree with those policies, the awe inspiring moments of this election will long resonate.

As promised in Part 1 of this 2 part series I’m back with 3 more strategies and easy-to-implement tactics.  One strategy I mentioned that generated some email was providing feedback loops to affiliates.  Too radical for some apparently but let’s clarify a bit.  You do take hands off the wheel a bit but in a balanced manner.

According to Paul Moss, formerly of Insurance.com and now of lead generation group Trouve Media…

“Before doing anything you have to give everyone feedback loops… letting them know what traffic is doing well, what traffic is performing poorly. Give them as much feedback as you can, either through pixel tracking or marketing source code tracking.”

He continues, “Allowing all of those opportunities… to tie it back into their Google spend or their Yahoo spend… and then once you give them all of the transparency to the data, you have to price them according to their own performance.”

Moss says you still need to hold all affiliates accountable to their own performance but, “you continually tell them what traffic is performing well and driving up their marketing allowable… tell them what traffic is performing poorly and driving down their marketing allowable… and hopefully… they adjust the mix. They’re always going to adjust the mix according to volume.”

In the end he says, “The key point is the sharing data as far down the funnel as you feel comfortable with. ”

Let’s jump back in with one of the most controversial topics of all time — how to work collaboratively (not competitively or with “co-opitition” in mind) with affiliates in search marketing.

Develop and communicate a clear, well-reasoned search marketing policy to affiliates.

1. Audit your affiliate program for confluence with paid (PPC) search advertising efforts.

2. Understand value driven by affiliates across various categories based on audit results that demonstrate “triggers” of sales transactions.

3. Create business rules that negate and approve affiliate commissions based on logical rules that are shared openly and pro-actively with affiliates.

4. Understand where your search engine optimization “sweet spot” is by identifying where you want to spend time, energy (money).  Assign “long tail” search terms/keywords (those able to generate less referral volume) to affiliates for their monetization efforts.

Says Moss, “Search engines have algorithm on what they feel is going to provide value to the search engine user and they rank those sites accordingly. From my perspective of having a product. I know that I can sell it best but I’ve got only X amount of core competencies. I want my affiliates to capitalize on areas that aren’t my core competencies or create more depth.”

Indeed, wider affiliate distribution — something I’ll be talking about more with a panel of experts at eComxpo in January 2009 and at SES Chicago coming up in December with the likes of experienced experts, Jeff Ferguson of Napster and Kris Jones of Pepperjam Network (more like empire lately!).  I hope to see you there.

Experiment with social media & content-focused affiliates.

1. Scale your most precious resource, Time: Use new tools, such as Syntryx, to rapidly prospect for qualified affiliates.

2. Provide affiliates with access to helpful, innovative Web 2.0 linking technologies like Linkshare’s FlexLinks or Amazon’s various tools ranging from “SiteStripe” to Widgets.

3. Give affiliates access to product data, coupons and other content via flexible, RSS (real simple syndication)-enabled technologies.

“We’re offering merchants the ability to maintain ‘on sale’ and ‘deal of the day’ RSS campaigns for affiliates to publish on their sites,” says AvantLink’s Gary Marcoccia. “And to take it one step further the affiliates can promote ‘subscriptions’ to the same RSS feeds.”

“The key in generating feed subscribers from their site (in addition to, of course, sales), is affiliate IDs being embedded in links from the deal feeds… for as long as they are in use,” adds Marcoccia.

Consider creative, new approaches to paying and bonusing affiliates based on performance.

1. Throttle up payouts among performers who drive volume at a reasonable cost considering channel confluence issues, etc.

2. Throttle down payouts among under-performers who’ve been given a fair chance but are not performing on a quarterly basis.

“Proactively give fee increases where it’s merited, and decreases where it’s not merited,” says a very level-headded Moss.

“But, make sure that before you give a fee increase that you have enough data to ensure that you have the best chance to be a sustainable price point… if not giving it a little bit of room to grow. Otherwise, people don’t respond well to fee decreases and that’s when they’re going to start shopping their traffic.”

“The loyalty response that you’re going to get from proactively raising somebody’s fee will create a loyalty that you won’t get anywhere else. Combine that with creating a genuine friendship and genuinely getting to know the people, genuinely caring about them, understanding their business.”

Stay tuned for more actionable tips and interviews with experts in a variety of performance-focused Web marketing strategies.  As always I welcome your feedback!

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Jeff Molander is a leading Web marketing expert, author and speaker.  He is CEO of Molander & Associates Inc., and can be reached at jeff_at_jeffmolander.com.