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The Insidious Nofollow Tag: An SEO Rant

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I’m normally a positive, upbeat kind of guy, and as someone who’s been writing professionally since the days of disco, rarely at a loss for words. Yet mention the “nofollow” tag, and that all changes. I, like many other many other web marketing professionals, am left sputtering with a mix of disgust and rage, fumbling for an adjective that conveys sufficient contempt: despicable, vile, loathsome, abhorrent, abominable, wretched, odious, detestable, downright evil.
The nofollow tag was misguidedly inflicted upon the online world by Google in 2005. According to Wikipedia (among the worst nofollow offenders), “The nofollow HTML attribute was originally designed to stop comment spam on blogs. Blog readers and bloggers were well aware of the immense problem. Just like any other type of spam affects its community, comment spam affected the entire blogging community, so in early 2005 (Google and Blogger engineers) designed the attribute to address the problem and the nofollow attribute was born.”

Though the originators of WordPress have developed a far more elegant and inoffensive solution to the comment spam problem with Akismet, the execrable nofollow tag remains with us, like a cancer impervious to drugs or radiation.

The justification for the continued use of this repugnant scrap of code is to prevent passing link juice from listings on directory and social bookmarking sites to spammy or other objectionable content. But, to be charitable, the nofollow tag is to the world of web links what “let’s just be friends” is to romantic relationships. It’s a way for site owners to say: “I’m happy to use your content to build my traffic, but not to reciprocate. I don’t want anyone to think we’re together.”

An alarming number of once-respectable social bookmarking sites—Digg, delicious, Mister Wong, Reddit, Mixx, Bibsonomy, Jumptags, Faves, Yahoo! Buzz, Simpy—have now instituted dastardly nofollow tags. It’s easy to determine if your favorite site should now become an ex-favorite, just “view source” in your browser and search for rel=”nofollow.” If it’s there for any reason other than Pagerank sculpting (e.g. nofollowing pages like “Contact Us”), move along. If you’re trying to promote your own content, it won’t work. If you are trying to promote some else’s, you won’t help them much.

Hey, here’s a novel idea: if someone is using your blog, social media site or directory to link to spam, porn, hate speech, discount online pharmaceuticals, miracle weight loss nonsense, or work-at-home scams—DELETE THE LINK. Why is okay to have such crap listed on your site, regardless of whether or not you’re passing link juice?

In fairness, this pernicious string of characters once served a purpose, as a less-than-ideal solution to a serious problem. But today, Akismet solves the link spam problem on blogs. The community can be used to solve the problem on social bookmarking sites. A little bit of old-fashioned work can deal with issue on directory sites.

I’m not alone on this. It’s time to demand better, to rid the world of the reprehensible, insidious nofollow tag once and for all. Ideally, Google should announce it’s no longer recognizing the tag. Absent that, site owners should boycott it. And if they don’t, users should walk.

Note: This post was originally published on the WebMarketCentral blog in October 2009. But it all remains true.

Will Content Marketing Kill Trade Magazines?

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This post was originally published on the WebMarketCentral blog in November 2009.

Content marketing is all the rage. Check out Joe Pulizzi’s Junta42 blog, pick up a copy of Ardath Albee’s wonderful new book eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale (which builds upon the foundation laid by David Meerman Scott and others), follow @Mike_Stelzner on Twitter—it’s everywhere. Marketers are becoming publishers, writing valuable thought leadership and how-to content in order to build name recognition, credibility, and even sales pipelines.

Back in the pre-Internet days, trade publications were pretty much the only way to efficiently reach narrowly targeted niche audiences, like architects, chemical engineers or IT help desk managers. Even in the early days of online, trade publication websites and their newsletters were essential media.

But there’s no question that journalism is taking a beating during this downturn. Across all media, more than 35,000 jobs have been lost in the past year. While a large share of those positions have been shed in broadcast and newspapers, trade publications haven’t been immune.

The challenges faced by trade publications go far beyond the current economic slowdown. Trade pubs traditionally flourished due to five conditions which simply no longer exist.

Audience. As noted above, trade publications were once the only way to reach niche audiences. Today, there are far more options: specific segments can be reached through SEO, SEM, industry-specific blogs, LinkedIn groups, Twitter and other venues. Certainly, trade publications still have value in delivering targeted audiences, but they no longer have a monopoly.

Authority and independence. Content produced by marketers and PR professionals is always, of course, self-serving: that’s their job. Content produced by trade publications, in contrast, has been seen as less biased and more independent. But the fact is that no type of media has ever been truly objective, and it may not even be possible. With the dramatic increase in content enabled by online publishing, this has become ever more apparent, and cynicism has grown. People now understand that CNN doesn’t provide the “news,” it serves up the liberal take on it—as Fox serves the other end of the political spectrum. And the reporting in trade publications, despite assertions of a “Chinese wall” between editorial and ad sales, has always been influenced by advertiser spending. In the late 1990s, when big companies were taking huge write-offs and even declaring bankruptcy due to failed implementations of large ERP systems, ComputerWorld stood out with its honest reporting; most other publications continued to push bubbles-and-sunshine pieces about these systems and vendors.

Expertise. The editors and reporters at trade publications were once looked to as experts in their specific fields, and in many cases they were (and still are). But many of the writers were just that—writers. They may reported for Golf Digest one day and a niche publication focused on mechanical engineering the next. How did they get their material? By interviewing experts on both vendor and user sides. Today, those vendors and users can publish their own content in blogs, article publication sites and elsewhere, without the need for a middleman.

Advertising. Designing clever ads and placing them with targeted publications used to be a primary method for brand building and direct response. But as books like those from Ardath Albee and David Meerman Scott noted above contend, with individuals now exposed to 4,000-5,000 advertising impressions of some sort on a daily basis, advertising in general has become less effective. People use technologies like iPods, TiVo and even online ad blockers to avoid additional advertising exposure. Marketers today are relying more on producing thought-leadership content to attract prospects than on traditional in-your-face advertising, according to a recent study reported by HubSpot. As the report also notes, advertising still has its place, it just doesn’t have the same priority, or share of budget, that it once did.

Aggregation. Trade publications used to serve the role of content aggregator, bring together the best content from experts on both the vendor and user sides as well as leading industry analysts. While they still provide that service to some extent, trade pubs are no longer the only game in town. Content producers now have many more options, including their own company websites, product or service microsites, blogs, article sites like Ezine Articles, Hub Pages and Google Knol, and other venues. For example, this article on H1N1 and pandemic planning was self-published on a company site, drawing traffic through SEO and social media. And other sites, such as the B2B Marketing Zone, aggregate blog posts on specific topics (b2b marketing in this case).

Perhaps “kill” is too strong a word, but the changing content landscape and plethora of publishing options certainly present significant challenges for trade publications and are forcing changes to their business model. What do you think?

7 Reasons Every Business Needs to be on Twitter

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Revised July 8, 2020. The original version of this post was published on the WebMarketCentral blog in January 2010.

Twitter’s user base has grown 10X in the past decade, as the platform has evolved from social media curiosity to vital communication channel. Yet it still holds vast untapped potential for business use.

Why every business needs to be on TwitterFrom 2010: “Despite the fact that Twitter has more than 32 million users, has received massive publicity from both celebrities and government, and produced remarkable results for companies like Dell and Zappos, many business executives still don’t ‘get’ Twitter.”

Twitter now has more than 330 million users, and most businesses at least have a presence on the platform—though it is still often misunderstood and under-utilized. As reported here, the good news for Twitter is that more than 90% of B2B software companies have Twitter accounts.

The bad news is that only slightly more than half of those brand accounts are actually active. Further:

[Read more…]

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Best Practices

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Search engine marketing (SEM) can be a powerful lead generation source, or a complete waste of money. B2B marketers often get less from their SEM programs than possible by overlooking basic but critical steps. Here are some best practices to optimize your results from SEM campaigns:

1. Determine your budget: while there is no hard-and-fast rule for this, there are a number of factors that will affect the size of the budget required to optimize your return from search marketing:

  • Search Engine Marketing NetworksNumber of keywords—more keywords means a higher budget.
  • Time-of-day and days-of-week display—running a campaign 24/7 will require a higher budget than a business-hours-only campaign.
  • Geographic display—a global campaign needs a higher budget than one limited to one or a few countries.
  • Search-only or search plus content sites—running a campaign across both search engines and partner content sites requires a higher budget than a campaign focused on search alone.
  • The type of product or service you offer—as a general rule, products or services that are inexpensive, have only one decision-maker, and are either tactical (B2B) or impulse (B2C) purchases will benefit most from an aggressive search marketing campaign. Those that are big ticket, involve multiple decision makers, and are strategic (B2B) or infrequently purchased (B2C) generally see somewhat lower conversion rates from SEM campaigns, but can still be valuable for lead generation, using an incentive for response such as a thought leadership white paper or research report.
  • Your goals—how many leads or sales are you planning to drive from search marketing? Higher goals require a larger budget.

2. Keyword / Key Phrase Development: look at multiple sources—your existing site content, competitors’ websites, industry trade publications, relevant blogs, and the keyword suggestion tool in Google AdWords—to develop your long list of key word and phrases to use in your SEM campaign. You can afford to go a little overboard here, as you only pay for actual clicks. Key words and phrases that get few impressions or a low conversion rate can be culled later.

3. Divide your keywords / phrases into logical groups: keep the number of groups manageable, but ideally you’ll end up with 30 or fewer keyword search terms per group—60 terms as an absolute maximum.

4. Write your ads. Both Google and Yahoo frown on the use of shorthand (such as “GR8” for “great”), excessive punctuation (FREE!!!) and superlatives (“best,” “leader,” etc.). So, keep your verbiage humble—but compelling. For example, “the affordable option” or the most specific functional benefit you can factually tout.

For headlines, you’ll increase your click-through rate by using variable headlines, where the term the searcher actually used appears as the title of your ad. The syntax for this, on both Google and Yahoo, is {KeyWord: your service} where “keyword” is the term your prospect actually searched on, and “your service” is the default term to use in the ad if the search phrase is too long to serve as an ad headline.

5. Set your campaign parameters—geography, time/day and search/content. Both Google and Yahoo provide campaign settings pages where you specify these various parameters for your campaign.

First, determine your geographic coverage: do you want your ads displayed to a global audience, or just one or a few countries?

Second, set the time and day criteria for your ad display. For global campaigns, time needs to be set for 24-hour display. For localized campaigns, you may want to limit display hours, but set your ranges broadly—few people work 8-5 anymore, and both B2B and B2C prospects may well be searching in the early morning or late evening hours.

Third, decide if you want your ads to display only on the search engines or across their content partner networks as well (this blog is an example of a Google content partner—notice the relevant ads displayed at the top and bottom of this page). Content partner sites tend to deliver lower click-through rates than search, but can still be a valuable part of your campaign. For aggressive campaigns, content sites should definitely be included; for more limited or test campaigns, search alone may be the better setting. If you’re uncertain, start your campaign with search, then expand to the content network once your keywords and messages are optimized. You’ll need to develop different ads for the content network with compelling static headlines to catch the attention of readers who aren’t necessarily seeking your content on network sites as they are on search.

6. Develop your landing pages. Logically, you may want a different landing page for each key term group. It’s amazing how many Google and Yahoo ads (still!) simply send clickers to a site’s home page. Unless your home page is spectacularly well-designed, visitors will wonder, “What am I supposed to do now?” Best practice is to send them to landing page that explains why you are absolutely the best vendor on earth relative to the key term group they came from, and then give them a clear call to action (“contact us for more information;” “download our white paper;” etc.).

7. Consider your “incentive for response.” A commonly used item is a white paper; visitors are far more likely to sign up to download or receive something than to simply fill out a form to get “more information”—from experience, about 10 times more likely. Research reports, webinar registrations, contests, surveys and newsletter signups can also be used as incentives.

8. Implement conversion tracking. Both Google and Yahoo provide conversion tracking code for your landing pages and instructions on how to implement this. Ultimately, the goal of SEM is to produce either leads or sales, not just clicks, so conversion tracking is a critical component of your search marketing campaigns. Without it, you’re just paying for traffic, with no way to measure the ROI of your SEM campaigns.

9. Launch your campaign and analyze the results. Neither Google nor Yahoo provide real-time statistics; there is a lag of several hours in their reporting, so it will take a few days to get a usable picture of what’s happening with your campaign. Analyze results weekly for at least the first six to eight weeks of your program. When analyzing results, look for both which keywords are generating the highest number of clicks as well as the highest conversion rate. Remember the 80/20 rule: 20% of your keywords are likely to generate 80% of your clicks. Start by focusing on improving your results for these high-value keywords, and optimize on less-frequently searched terms later.

10. Optimize your keyword bids. The top three ads displayed get the highest click-through rates (CTR), but are also the most expensive positions. The bottom two ads (positions 7 and 8) get the second-highest CTR. To optimize your budget, bid for the top three position on terms where you get the highest conversion rate (regardless of CTR). For terms with a high CTR but low conversion, bid for the bottom three first page spots (positions 6-8). It’s unlikely that you’ll have terms that generate a lot of clicks with no conversions, but if you do—drop these ASAP, as they are just a waste of your money.

11. Test alternative ad copy. Write at least two different ads that point to the same landing page, then in Google AdWords and Yahoo Sponsored Search, turn on ad optimization so that your more effective ads are being shown more frequently. After 2-3 weeks, check performance; if one ad is clearly generating higher CTR than the other, delete the lower-performing ad and replace it with a new one to test.

12. Test alternative landing pages. Once your ads are optimized (i.e., you have two ads performing about equally well), point each to a different landing page. Test differing types of copy, amounts of copy, contact form / no contact form, and different offers. Test until you have one that clearly outperforms alternatives at converting visitors to leads.

13. Unless your goal is an immediate online sale, implement appropriate lead follow-up programs. “Warm” leads (someone who completes a “contact us for more information” form) can—and are likely expecting to—be followed up with a (relative prompt) phone call from sales. “Cool” leads (e.g., visitors who download a white paper) should be followed up with by email, with phone calls to those who haven’t opted out of your messages after two mailings.

14. Finally, optimize your site for natural search based on your ad search terms that generate the highest number of impressions and best conversion rate. Organic search listings typically generate 3-4 times as many clicks as paid ads, so it’s critical whenever possible to have your website rank highly in natural search results for popular ad terms.

Book Review: The Perfection of Marketing

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Despite it’s ambitious title, The Perfection of Marketing is a surprisingly accessible and fast-paced read. The book is written in case study fashion, taking the reader through a realistic scenario of a midsized company struggling to build on its past success and take sales to the next level. The style is engaging, drawing the reader into the story. Author James Connor keeps the story moving forward at a brisk, but not hurried pace. In addition, each chapter ends with a quick summary of the key points presented, a nice touch that helps reinforce and retain the most important information.

The Perfection of Marketing book cover

The book walks through three major steps in the author’s perfection of marketing process: positioning the brand through the sales moment; rolling out the brand consistently; and return on investment marketing. In the author’s parlance, the “sales moment” is that key value proposition that makes a prospect say “yes.” They’ve done their homework. They’ve identified several alternative products or services that will solve their problem. What is the key point that makes them choose to buy from your company above all others? That’s Connors’ key sales moment, and the value proposition around which to build the brand.

The first section walks through the four main elements of branding: a company’s name, logo, tagline, and campaignable image. Nike is used an example. The name Nike comes from the Greek goddess of victory (not a bad association for a company that produces sports apparel for competitive athletes at all levels). The swoosh logo invokes motion and speed. The tagline (which former spokesperson Tiger Woods clearly took a bit too literally), “Just do it,” is both immediately relevant and highly memorable. And the image—an athlete running—reflects the aspirations of the company’s target market. Few companies tie all the elements of branding together that ideally, but its a goal every company can pursue.

The second section, rolling out the brand, properly focuses on building the brand internally first, before taking it to the market. Before a brand image will be believable and accepted by prospects, it must be internalized by employees and partners. Messages must be consistent imbued into the company’s culture. Branding is next extended to the organization’s website and communicated to the media and other key influencers through PR and social media marketing, then to prospects through advertising and promotional activities.

The final section, one sure to be dear to CEOs and CFOs (and the marketers who need to communicate with them in the language of business), explains return on investment marketing. The first key is understanding the lifetime value of a customer; from this, ROI calculations can be performed on any marketing activity to help set budget levels appropriately. Two different strategies are presented: a slow growth strategy focused on conservative and modest marketing investments, and a more aggressive fast growth strategy, “spending ahead of sales” to gain a competitive foothold in the market or launch a disruptive new product.

The book is aimed at a wide audience; C-level executives will gain a greater understanding of the role of marketing and the business justification for various levels of investment. Corporate marketers will come away with clear guidelines for an over-arching strategy, and how and when an outside agency can be most helpful. And marketing agency people will get key insights into how to speak with clients at all levels of management, and position their services within a coherent and unified strategy for marketing success. (Incidentally, The Perfection of Marketing is actually highly aligned with the business practices of the agency I’m part of, KC Associates, though with some helpful enhancements.)

So does the book live up to it’s title? For the most part, yes. My only criticism of the book, albeit a minor one, is that in its brevity, the book does a much better job with the “what” of marketing than with the “how.” This relatively slim volume would have benefited from a bit more detail on specific steps or actions to accomplish some of the objectives presented. Readers will have look elsewhere, or fill in some of the blanks using their own creativity, in order to incorporate the overall strategy presented here.

Still, The Perfection of Marketing is a highly approachable and valuable book for corporate and marketing agency executives alike.

Other reviews of this book:

The Perfection of Marketing, by James Connor – A Book Review
Brad Shorr

My Marketing Book of the Year
Douglas Karr

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