The Baha’i World Center has launched a new website dedicated to the life of Baha’u'llah, the Prophet-Founder of the Baha’i Faith. I am grateful for having had the honor of playing a tiny role in this project — mainly by assisting the very capable web team of the Baha’i International Community with the website’s search engine optimization — and humbled by the beautiful work the whole team has put together.

Photo of Baha’u'llah

What is unique about this site is that it presents in a very artistic yet search engine friendly way a rich photographic journey through the life of the most current messenger of God, and offers to the viewers a wealth of images of artifacts and writings of Baha’u'llah.

Great job to Brian Kurzius and the whole team, and my deep gratitude for having been allowed to play a small part in this exciting project.

Last week I attended a wonderfully informative meeting of the Web Managers Roundtable organized by Julie Perlmutter and hosted by the World Bank. The two presenters were:

• Pierre Guillaume Wielezynski, Communications Officer at the External Affairs office of the World Bank
• John H. Bell, Managing Director and Executive Creative Director at the 360° Digital Influence division of Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide

Here are several of the ideas on developing a social media strategy, adopted from the Ogilvy presentation by John Bell (who also blogs about the World Bank’s take on social media):

Ideas for using online visibility and search

• Search Visibility - Increase the probability that people who research your company or related issues find what you want them to find, including helping your target audience to make the connection between risk factors/symptoms and your company’s public health campaign.
• Multimedia Visibility - Use existing visual or audio assets to promote word of mouth, mobilize allies and improve search engine results
• Content Syndication - Distribute your content via trusted web sites to improve search engine results

Ideas on information sharing

• Internal Blog - Share information between offices for to allow for a quick response when a crisis arises. Share information and materials among and between stakeholders.
• Wiki - Engage a coalition or a community to work toward a common goal.

Ideas for building an Engagement Toolbox

• How to monitor cgm
• How to create an influencer audit
• How to do an online visibility audit
• How to create an engagement plan
• How to create commenting guidelines
• How to create corporate blogging guidelines
• How to reach out to bloggers
• How to manage a crisis
• How to launch a blog
• How to use del.icio.us
• How to publish & publicize multimedia

eMarketer posted results from a survey conducted by MarketingSherpa among attendees of the ad:tech asking them what online marketing approaches worked for them the best and the worst. The top three among the most successful online marketing tools were:

• Pay-per-click marketing
• Email lists compiled by the web site
• Search engine optimization

This is consistent with the results of a client of mine, Studio Lotus, who saw their organic search engine traffic increase 68% from September 2006 to January 2007, based on a successful, well-planned web redesign. A small but very targeted Google AdWords campaign seems to be producing good results for them, and where I see a lot of untapped potential is fully utilizing the contact list accumulated through the web site’s contact form. It is heartening to see that best practices indeed produce good results.

A survey conducted by Enquiro Search Solutions and MarketingSherpa reveals the important role search plays in business-to-business buying decisions (PDF).

Among the findings of the research are:

• Search plays a dominant role in decision-making about business-to-business purchases.
• Google is overwhelmingly the search engine of choice in researching business-to-business purchases.
• Search is most likely to be used during the early or mid research phase of the buying cycle.
• Search engines will likely be used in conjunction with other sites primarily manufacturer’s sites. Budget for the purchase is a factor in the likelihood of this occurring.
• Research (and search engine usage) generally happens at least a month or two in advance of the actual purchase decision.
• Budget plays a part in this as well, with the gap between research and purchase decisions increasing with the amount of the budget.
• Effective balancing of organic and sponsored strategies is essential: organic search results, depending on the search engine, draw anywhere from 70 to 80% of the click-throughs.
• Position whether on the organic or sponsored side, is also essential: Over 60% of the click-throughs happen on the first 3 listings.
• The way the users eye moves across the search engine page is a strong determinant in which listing will be eventually chosen.
• Over 60% of all users make their decisions about which listing they will click on in a few seconds, after a quick scan of the page. This reinforces the importance and the significant advantage top sponsored locations provide.

Paying more for keywords on pay-per-click search engines does not necessarily get the most value for their dollars, according to a report published by DoubleClick, “Search Engine Marketing Considerations,” and based on data from DoubleClick search and affiliate marketing unit Performics.

According to the report, more than 60 percent of “active” keywords resulting in at least one click during the last month, cost 20 cents or less. In contrast, keywords that cost more than $1 account for only 6 percent of those clicked on at least once a month.

Higher position doesn’t necessarily mean greater click volume. The report concludes that high click-volume keywords perform equally well both above and below the top three. In fact, lower-positioned keywords drive 10 percent of total conversions. Moreover, conversion rates tend to fall as cost-per-click prices exceed 50 cents.

The report concludes that search engine marketing requires a combination of human expertise, robust technology, and constant attention–three qualities that are not always readily available to the average interactive shop or in-house marketing department.

Are you able to handle the technological requirements to manage an active ongoing search engine campaign? If not, contact WebSage for a free estimate on your search engine marketing needs.

A recent question posted on the SEM2 Google group had me provide brief answers which are nevertheless universal and are shared here:

1. What can be done to guarantee that Google index’s your site often.

Have new content. Google as well as other search engines love fresh content. Whether you do that through blog, press releases, articles, etc, it is up to you, but try to have something new published regularly and over time this will send a signal to the spiders to come and visit more often.

2. Second, what is the average time to be placed in DMOZ?

Six weeks seems to be the average but can vary. Keep in mind that the DMOZ editors are all volunteers, which implies they are busy with their full time job. You can courtiously inquire about a submission through the DMOZ forum. I have found that submitting on a geographical basis (i.e. B2B company based in XX state) first accelerates acceptance.

3. How this (DMOZ listing) works in regards to pagerank?

DMOZ listings tend to carry higher value in Google’s algorithm because they have been edited by a human and the Open Directory has consistently shown good quality of newly submitted content. Because of that, Google visits DMOZ often, thus the importance of having your site listed with DMOZ.

I would have you ask yourself the question about conversion very seriously. If you are in the AdSense business then you need a lot of content and eyeballs. If you are in any business dependant on conversion, you should make sure your content, action items, copy, information architecture, any aspect of your web presence should work towards improving your conversion rates. To do that you need to implement some web metrics and regularly track their success.

A white paper (PDF, 254 KB) published by OneUpWeb, a search engine marketing company, reveals that the big brand companies of the Fortune 100 list are still slow to tap the power of search engine marketing. Comparing with its findings from 2002, OneUpWeb concludes that while there has been some growth of search engine optimization among the web sites of Fortune 100 companies, it does not correspond to the growth of the search engine marketing industry. Such lack of apparent interest in implementing organic search engine optimization might risk the web brand marketshare of the companies, in addition to the loss of potential sales.

Among the findings of the survey are:

• 44% of all Fortune 100 companies in 2004 do not use any SEO best practices; 55% of the 2002 list of Fortune 100 companies were not using SEO
• 47%, 3% more than in 2002, have been utilizing some form of search engine optimization but often have deployed practices that might backfire and are not sustainable
• Just 9% of the Fortune 100 companies use best search engine optimization practices, effectivelly triple the number of such companies in 2002
• Finally the survey concludes that the global leaders are at risk of losing marketshare unless implementing rigorous search engine marketing campaigns.

Direct Marketing News published an article about a survey conducted by The Kelsey Group among 300 small businesses whose customers and suppliers are mostly within 50 miles to gauge their use of the Internet. Two years after a previous such survey when just 35 percent of the small businesses said that the Web was important, now the majority indicate the growing importance of web marketing for their business and 55 percent of them have web presence.

Some additional findings:

• Only 6 percent reported using pay-per-click advertising
• 14 percent said they optimized their Web site to appear higher in search results
• 19 percent said they used Internet Yellow Pages

I am asked often about the main risk of submitting web pages to the Overture Site Match program — being charged per click indefinitely. Indeed, Overture do not clarify this outright on their website. PositionTech, an Overture partner has been equally cryptic about this question on their site but luckily were more responsive to my emails.

Here I am sharing a paraphrased version of the answers I received…

• Shall I participate in the Overture Site Match
• Can I remove web links from the Overture Site Match program?
• How can I manage my CPC funds in Overture Site Match?

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Most people think of search engine optimization as an exercise to make more pages indexed by search engine spiders and then having them rank highly. That’s fair.

Now imagine yourself in a situation where your pages rank too high… Or rather, the wrong pages rank too high?

I found myself in such a situation when the representative of a large company approached me politely and requested I remove information which I was not authorized to publish. I tried to cooperate as much as possible but time was against us. Most people know that it takes weeks if not months to have Google reindex a site and update the pages already scanned.

I would like to share two ways of accelerating the solution to this problem — when the issue is urgent.
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