Balancing SEO and Usability

There is a thin line between optimizing a website for search engines and optimizing it for users. In order to get the content and keywords onto a page that are necessary to boost search engine rankings, it is often the case that usability is compromised. If your page is totally optimized for search engines, but compromises usability, you may be able to drive a lot of traffic to the page, but only convert a small amount of it. On the other hand, if you optimize the page only for usability, leaving off loads of content, you may be able to better convert the traffic that comes, but there will be far less traffic.

A good way to find the best balance is analyzing your analytics. In Google Analytics, for example, you can set up goals used to track conversion on the website. Test your goals on different pages. Optimize a page for search engines and track conversions on that page. Optimize another page for the users and track the same conversions on that page, but as a separate goal. This will let you see if you generate more conversions from the search engine optimized page, which should generate a high amount of traffic with a low conversion rate, or from the user optimized page that should generate a smaller amount of traffic but a higher conversion rate.

Have you ever considered a Press Release?

Years ago, when I worked in the advertising and promotion business, I learned something valuable. That is, newspapers and magazines (of all sorts) are always looking for a story. Let's face it, they've got to have something for the next issue. And if you make their job easy, by writing the story for them, you can get an awful lot of exposure for whatever it is that you want to share with the world.

Say, for example, that you want to promote your Global Domains Inernational (GDI) affiliate program. Your Press Release can be a story with a title such as "The Phenomenon of Internet Marketing" or " .ws, the other .com". In other words, you are creating a new story that speaks to a subject and gives you an author credit at the end that contains your referral link.

Now this is commonly done online with article marketing via article directories, submission services and so on. But those aren't Press Releases for print media publications. You 'story' printed in a small local paper, trade magazine etc. can give you tremendous exposure. And one of the secrets for promoting GDI is to do it -OFF-line.

There are lots of free resources out there those interested in this type of promotion. Learning how to write and submit a Press Release is not difficult. Many publications even have their own kit that they'd prefer you use. But anyway, here are three basic tips:

1) It should sound like a news story and not an ad.

2) The headline and first few sentences are VERY important as they must capture the reader's attention.

3) Proof-read it multiple times and get others to proof-read it also.


If you don't have any idea what to write about, here are a few suggestions:

~ New products or services that you're rolling out on your website

~ The results of an online poll that you've conducted

~ A virtual trade show or seminar that you're hosting

~ A free chat-room class that you're teaching

~ Your opening of a new website

~ A famous person that has used or endorses your business

~ An ebook review or the story behind one that you authored

~ A fund-raising event that you are running


The list goes on and on. It's really not that much work once you sit down and commit to doing it and the results just might surprise you!

Prove it! Social Media ROI for Business - Please vote for our SXSW Panel

Keith Burtis, the Community Manager at Best Buy has put together a team of Social Media Superstars to create a presentation for SXSW - The South By SouthWest Interactive Conference titled "Prove it! Social Media ROI for Business"



The Panel includes Jay Berkowitz; Allan Isfan; Justin Levy; Amber Naslund and Jason Falls. Each of the panel members has offered to preview their presentation on their blog to give you a sample of the presentation. Here is my sample of Social Media ROI, and below are links to the other members of our esteemed panel.



Oh, and one small favor, please :) Panels at SXSW are voted on by you. If you like our topic, please take a moment to register for SXSW and vote for our panel!



The Most Important Way to Measure Social Media ROI

The most important way to measure ROI (Return on Investment) for all internet activities including Social Media is to quantify the specific actions people take on your website. If you sell something on your site it is very straightforward to measure how many people made a purchase on your site after coming to your site from a Social Media website. If you don’t sell anything on your site you can measure a ‘conversion action’ such as a completed ‘Contact Us’ form or an eNewsletter subscription.

Google Analytics is free and it is a very reliable way to measure what happens on your website,. This program can tell you which websites people came from, and it can measure what they do on your website. It is very easy to add a conversion code on the sales confirmation page or ‘goal’ such as a completed Contact Us form. Every site that doesn’t have a high end analytics program should have Google Analytics in place.

Ten Golden Rules doesn’t sell products we are a B2B (Business to Business) site, we don’t measure direct sales, we measure leads on our site. In this example below, we looked at traffic to our Ten Golden Rules website from Social Media website Twitter. This site sent 492 visits from my www.Twitter.com/JayBerkowitz account. 2.44 percent of those site visitors signed up for our free eNewsletter, .41 percent requested a website consultation and .20 percent completed a Contact Us form, overall 3.05 percent of site visitors became a lead for our company or they opted-in to our database. We track the sources of our clients and we are able to determine the ROI from our Social Media activities.

Social Media Sponsorships = ROI





















































Another form of measurable ROI from Social Media can come in the form of sponsorships.

Our Ten Golden Rules Internet Marketing Podcast, a recent SOFIE Award Winner for best Use of New Media, has had two sponsors, SilverPOP and GoToMeeting.

In addition, the Podcast has generated invitations for high profile speaking engagements, media coverage and clients for Ten Golden Rules internet agency.





Here are the posts from my fellow panelists on how to generate ROI from Social Media:



Prove it, Social Media ROI for Business - Keith Burtis



Two ways to generate and measure Social Media ROI - Allan Isfan





Social Media ROI? Traditional Is Still More Accepted - Jason Falls



Return on Eyeballs: The new ROI - Sue Murphy

Celebrity Searches Can Be Hazardous... To Your Computer

According to McAfee, Inc., celebrity searches can be hazardous to your computer, containing viruses, spyware, adware, spam and phishing. Actress Jessica Biel has been the top search that has a one in five chance of getting one of these threats to your computer.

"Cybercriminals are star watchers too - they latch onto popular celebrities to encourage the download of malicious software in disguise," McAfee's Jeff Green said in a statement.

"Consumers' obsession with celebrity news and culture is harmless in theory, but one bad download can cause a lot of damage to a computer."

Other celebrities that may cause a threat to your computer were Beyonce, Jennifer Aniston, Kim Kardashian and Miley Cyrus.

Who would have thought that cybercriminals use celebrities to spread viruses? Just a heads up to everyone to be careful when you search for the latest celebrity news. I stick to People.com. :)

Are You Analyzing Sentiment?

With the rise of social media, blogging, forums, reviews, and bookmarking in the internet marketing realm, sentiment analysis is gaining importance. The issue, however, is that while still in its infancy, sentiment analysis is still challenged by the task of translating human emotion into hard data.

Nevertheless, the importance of monitoring online social outlets is essential to the success of a business and can allow businesses to act fast when issues arise. By analyzing the sentiment of online discussions about your business, you can know if a decision you recently made was good or if customers are unhappy.

Monitoring and analyzing sentiment is only half the battle. It is important to join the conversation and offer solutions to problems, explanations of misinformation, etc. With your brand having a strong online presence in social media, you can quickly reach many customers and keep them happy.

Great Presentation how to get blogs to Rank on Google

Matt Cutts from Google did a great presentation at WordCamp in San Francisco. WordCamps BarCamps and Podcamps are free (or cheap) conferences about the interactive space. Wordcamps are focused on WordPress a free blogging platform.

You can find the Matt Cutts Video here.

"WordPress takes care of 90% of the mechanics of Search Engine Optimization"

Use Google Reader To Share Posts

Google has announced several new features to Google Reader which makes it easy to share posts through a variety of social media, blogging, and bookmarking websites. Specifically, the “Send To” feature will let you simultaneously send all of your shared items to the servicess you select.

To select what services you want to share posts on, visit the settings page in Google Reader and click on the “Send To” link at the top right. Select all of the services you want to share on, such as Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, or Digg, and your shared information will automatically be sent to those services.