How to ruin your business by not knowing when to shut up.
You know who Ken Evoy is, right? Of course you don’t. I didn’t either.
Basically, Ken is the online equivalent of one of those “make money from home” guys you see on TV — the infomercial guys with offers that sound too good to be true. He offers a service called Site Build It, which promises a simple solution to help folks with great ideas build and monetize websites in a snap. Sounds great, right?
Well, Ken’s been on a rampage for a couple years now, complaining about Google and the existence of “the Googlebomb” — a threat so heinous that it threatens us all. In a nutshell, a Googlebomb is the use of nefarious tactics to get a page ranked high in Google search results for a particular term. Ken claims he was a victim of a Googlebomb (in fact, he likely was). The short story is that a blogger named Lis Sowerbutts wrote a scathing review of SBI!, calling it a scam. Then a few folks helped jack her post up in Google rankings by using backlinks. To this day, Sowerbutts’ post ranks no. 1 in Google for “site build it scam.”
Evoy has made it a personal quest to eliminate Googlebombs. Or maybe just his. Or maybe just to get Google to admit they still exist. Frankly, I’m not sure. What I am sure about is that he is all over the Internet, posting long-winded comments on every blog without a word limit in the comments section.
I first heard of SBI! when a client of mine read about it and asked my opinion. Like any decent consultant, I cased the service for him. My impression? Meh. To Ken’s credit, the site doesn’t promise overnight success. In some respects, it follows the mantra I’ve repeated for years: Work hard. In order to make money on a website through SBI!, you still have to pay for hosting, still have to create content, still need to advertise. It’s not a magic bullet, by any means. My recommendation to my client was the service may be worth a try, but I didn’t see it offering anything more than he could get cheaper and better by using a WordPress install.
What troubled me, however, were Ken’s rants, which I started seeing all over the Internet. And the more I saw, the less I trusted him. The more I read, the less I believed he was doing right by his clients. In fact, Ken’s own success isn’t based on his own system — it’s based on selling his system. And sure, Ken has lots of testimonials from clients on his website and around the Internet, but many of those are affiliates — folks who make money selling his system to others.
Recently a friend of mine wrote his own blog post about the Googlebomb, citing Ken’s problems. Ken, of course, couldn’t resist commenting. Frankly, I couldn’t either. And I let my own opinion fly:
You know what would be awesome? If Mr. Evoy spent more time running his business and less time running around the web, commenting (at length) about this issue. Do Googlebombs exist? Sure. Fine. You’ve proved it. The best thing you can do now is to concentrate on getting positive reviews of your business online. Make your customers happy. If there are 100 positive reviews for every bad one, well, you’re doing just fine.
Interestingly, what Ken has managed to do is draw more and more attention to Ms. Sowerbutts’s post. The more attention he draws there, the more Google believes it’s a legit post.
To be honest, it sounds like Ken doesn’t like the content of the post, and doesn’t want people to read it. Whatever the case, he’s made himself look maniacal with the number and length of comments he’s made regarding the topic — not someone I’d want to give my money to.
Admittedly, my comment was not good-natured. What followed was a mind-boggling exchange with Mr. Evoy in which he attacked my work, ridiculed the Alexa ranking of sites I’ve built, and insinuated my clients would be better off with his service than mine.
Well, I’ve seen Ken’s top performers, and of this I’m sure: Ken’s clients don’t make near as much as mine do. And they do it without gaudy web traffic. And you know who gets richest off Ken’s service? Ken. That’s what he’s selling.
How do my clients perform so well? They aren’t Internet marketers. They’re brick-and-mortar businesses. They aren’t making money off AdWords. They’re making money selling real goods and real services to real humans — humans they’ve met. My clients include a national cable installer, one of the nation’s top gift-basket companies, a company that sells network security solutions, the nation’s premier rifle barrel manufacturer. I’m building sites for municipalities, nonprofit organizations and small, local community shops. And I’m worried about Alexa rankings? Why?
I’ll tell you why I’m not. I’m not because a small-town health club owner doesn’t need fake traffic from Russia. She needs REAL traffic from the town she’s in. And that’s what I provide. A cable installer wouldn’t benefit in the least from thousands of visits per day — he needs one visit from a $25 million client. And that visit comes from a phone call — not a Google search. When that client hits the site, he’d better be grabbed by what he sees. It must be visually appealing, easy to read, and not be obviously created to pander to search engines. It had better be written FOR that visitor.
Ken and his ilk are so tied up worried about pagerank that they’ve forgotten business fundamentals: Find your niche. Treat your customers right. Provide exemplary service. That’s what I do for my clients. I work tirelessly to give them great service, websites they can be proud to show off, advice that’s based on real-world experience. Because of that, my clients’ websites have been very successful.
I have no doubt, however, that Ken is more successful than I am. Not only does SBI! seem to be bringing in clients, but Ken has made a big show of informing me that he needn’t run his business anymore; he has a “senior management team” that does it for him.
I put a call in to SBI! and I found out some interesting information. According to the gentleman I talked to, the company has 40,000 clients. Some 20,000 of them, he told me, are affiliates. He also told me the software used to create websites has been updated four times in the last eight years (for the sake of comparison, WordPress has been updated that many times this year alone). The man I talked to, who identified himself as working in the sales department, wouldn’t tell me how many employees the company has. But let’s do some math.
If 40,000 people are using SBI! for at least $300 apiece, that’s $12 million. How much are those site owners making? The salesman wouldn’t say.
Here’s the bottom line: I don’t care about Ken Evoy or SBI! But there’s a bigger point: When you’re in business, run your business. If you want to be the public face of your business, as Ken is, act like someone people want to do business with. And you’d better damned well know what you’re talking about before you open your mouth. In Ken’s case, opening his mouth only showed his ignorance and the weakness of his own product.
Drive-by traffic (the blog post SEO guys don’t want you to read)
In real estate, location is everything, right? Put your business on the right street and you could make a killing. Put it in a dumpy neighborhood and you could be closed in six months.
The Internet’s not all that much different.
I’ve been in the Internet business a long time. Longer than Facebook. Longer even than Google or YouTube. I make a decent living helping clients use the Internet to promote themselves, better serve their customers and keep their own doors open. It’s a vocation I enjoy. One thing I’ve learned? The whole Internet is a dumpy neighborhood.
That’s right. I said it. The whole Internet is that dumpy neighborhood. It’s filled with perverts, lurkers, sleaze balls, snake-oil salesmen and worse. And more than that? There are way more people there who don’t want your product than there are who do — hundreds and hundreds of millions of people who want absolutely nothing to do with whatever you’re selling.
People love the idea of doing business on the Internet, because opening a storefront there seems like opening a storefront on the busiest street in the city. But it isn’t. It’s more like opening a storefront on the Autobahn, where the vast majority of the traffic is flying by, and nobody stops unless their car breaks down or they need to take an emergency bathroom break.
If we continue to torture this metaphor, I’m sure our search engine optimization friends will say that’s exactly what SEO is for…it’s like a road map, telling drivers exactly where to go to find what they’re looking for. And perhaps they’re right.
But as I tell my clients, think about your own shopping habits. When you go shopping, do you bring a map, drive around town and hope you find what you’re looking for? Or do you head to the mall and know exactly what stores you like? Do you pop into every store on Main Street, or do you read through the Sunday circulars and know where the sales are?
I’ve been harsh on SEO in the past, primarily because in my experience the vast majority of SEO “experts” know just enough to be dangerous. And with that nugget of knowledge, they’re willing to charge a fortune — all based on promises they can’t deliver on. And while I believe websites should be search-engine friendly, I can’t stand idly by and allow good people to be taken in by the idea that generating sales online is as simple as spending money on SEO. I can promise, without hesitation, that it does not work that way.
Very few people shop blindly. They aren’t typing in some random phrase and then buying the product from the first website they see. In fact, the vast majority of traffic — and therefore the vast majority of sales — on any website should be “direct request” — meaning someone actually typed in your name and visited on purpose.
I’ve had plenty of lively discussions on this site about the importance of drive-by traffic — the folks who google some term and stumble across a particular website. My argument is now and will forever be that this “drive-by” traffic is just that — it’s folks who were just driving by on that busy freeway. Perhaps they craned their necks as they passed, but they aren’t going to buy from you. They may even be on the wrong street.
Some of my SEO friends will tell you to take advantage of this traffic — to optimize your site so drive-by traffic becomes a profitable. But doing so is pandering to the lowest common denominator, and it isn’t serving your actual customers.
As I’ve said a thousand times: Advertise. It’s the only way to become a destination. No matter what you’re selling, make sure you’re an expert on that product. Make sure nobody knows it better than you do. Provide value and an amazing customer experience. Get people excited about supporting you. Create an ad campaign that targets your market and actively reach out to help people who could use products you’re selling.
SEO can get your address on the map, but advertising is the big billboard above the building, shouting “_____ on sale today!”
Before you spend money on anything, think about your own habits. If you aren’t excited about the way you’re marketing your business, chances are nobody else will be either. Be dynamic, incredible, and worthy of your customers. Don’t just rely on putting your business on the busiest street.
The real zombie uprising is online (or, How you can get more out of Twitter)
By the time you read this, I’m hoping to have fewer Twitter followers.
A couple of weeks ago I pointed you over to Atomic Tango, and Freddy’s wonderful tongue-in-cheek post about scoring more Twitter followers. If you haven’t read it yet, do so. It’s one of the truest, funniest and most interesting things I’ve ever read about Twitter.
It was funny at the time, and it made sense, but I wanted to put Freddy to the test. See, his contention is that you score more Twitter followers by doing slimy little things…and really, you do them to accomplish one slimy big thing — amass scores of fake Twitter followers so you can, well, brag about how many Twitter followers you have. And then get more Twitter followers.
Step one, according to Freddy: Keywords. Use enough of the right ones, and you draw the attention of Twitter zombies and spammers. The right keywords? Things like “MLM,” “network marketing,” “downline,” and “wealth.” And you can throw in SEO, SMM, SEM and any other buzzword used by the slimiest spammers on the net.
So I tried it out. I posted one simple tweet, packing it with keywords. I was in my office at the time, it was the end of the day, and I was headed home. Between posting that tweet and getting into my car, I gained seven new followers. On the drive home, I gained three more. Over the next couple of days, I posted five more tweets, packing each with keywords. I’ll add here that none of the tweets could have been construed as serious. In fact, I was brazen about calling out “my zombie friends” to make sure the follow process was automated. In short order I picked up about 60 new followers. I say “about” because I screwed up at first, and didn’t follow the zombies back. Those I didn’t follow dumped me within 24 hours. Lesson learned.
Those I did follow sent me automated direct messages almost immediately, offering to sell something. Awesome.
Then I realized what I had done. I ruined Twitter.
Now my stream is polluted with SEO experts, get-rich-quick schemes, automated tweets about blog posts from months ago and lots of ways I can use the Law of Attraction to make my life better. I don’t need Twitter for that; I already have an e-mail account.
Before this little experiment, Twitter was a pretty good news feed. I follow news outlets, tech journalists, local people and folks I consider experts (not people who call themselves experts) in fields that interest me. Sure, I’ve built a couple of lists to pull them from the haystack I created, but that just didn’t work for me.
So now I’m going to tell you the real secret of Twitter: Follower counts don’t mean anything. Nothing.?The only folks who have a lot of followers are celebrities and liars. That’s it. Why? Because everyone on Twitter believes they’re a leader; nobody wants to be a follower. We’re obsessed with our own follower counts because, well, what’s the sense in posting anything at all if there are only three people listening?
The sense is here: If you use the methods above and score 97 more followers than the three you used to have, there are still only three people listening. Zombies can’t hear you and won’t respond.
Want to get the most out of Twitter? Stop thinking about who’s following you and start concentrating on who you follow. There are brilliant people (like Freddy) posting brilliant things. And don’t worry about whether they’re following you back; follow them because you’re interested.
You get the most out of Twitter not by talking, but by listening. And if you’ve got engaging content to put up, do it. Talk to your followers. Respond to those you follow. Have a conversation. But don’t do any of it for the numbers. That’s the secret.
So…
I’m headed over to my Twitter account. And I’m unfollowing all the spammers, zombies and slimeballs.
I’m better company than that.
Just why is "conversion optimization" the "new SEO?"
According to this post at Search Engine Land, there’s a new game in town. It’s called conversion optimization, and it’s the next big money maker for the SEO crowd. Apparently the columnist has just discovered that the promise of SEOs — getting lots of people to your site — just isn’t enough anymore. Now visitors actually have to do something, or they just don’t count.
I agree with that, and I’ve said it before. I believe now, and have believed for years, that SEOs can only provide raw numbers, and way too often those numbers are accidental. The question is this: Why are SEOs turning to conversion marketing now?
Up until now, SEOs have been able to prey on frustrated website owners who just know in their hearts they could make a killing online if only they had more traffic. And since the early days of search, SEOs have always had a degree of success in providing raw numbers. But all too often the client is still not happy. Why? Because their 300 percent increase in visitors has equated to a 0 percent increase in sales. The SEO always begs off: “It’s not my fault,” he says. “I brought you traffic. That’s what you paid me for.”
Usually, this is followed up by an offer to tweak the search terms or some other tactic that will cost the client more money.
Clients aren’t having it anymore. And for good reason.
I love and hate the change from SEO to conversion marketing. Here’s why:
I hate it because it allows the same smarmy tricksters to keep stealing your money. Look, if they weren’t honest or capable before, can you believe they’re honest or capable now? I’ve been talking to clients about conversions ever since I got into this game. When a client asks me about their traffic and whether they get enough visitors, I always tell them the same thing: It’s not the number of visitors that’s important; it’s the number of customers.
I’ve always told my clients to save their SEO money and put it toward advertising. Generate desire for your product before the potential customer gets to your website. When they get there, make sure they know how to order and make the order process easy. The only time you need to convince someone to buy after they’ve gotten to your site is if they didn’t mean to be there in the first place. That’s the traffic SEOs have been generating from the beginning.
I love it because it means the tide is finally turning. People are starting to see that there are no accidental customers, and fooling people to come to your site is never the right way to start a healthy buyer-seller relationship. I love it because it will help continue to expose the big lie behind SEO — the idea that all you really need are stats and a high Google rank.
I can’t say enough what a hoax SEO is. (The only SEO you ever need should come from your designer. If your designer doesn’t know best web practices, you’ve got the wrong guy.) It says a lot that in the past couple of years, the SEO crowd first attached itself to social media, promising thousands of Twitter followers and Facebook friends, and is only now talking about conversions — way too late in the game. And I’m not just talking one or two. The Search Engine Land column has been tweeted 390 times as of this writing.
Be careful out there. These are the same people, using a different tactic.
Returns on your Facebook investment
Throughout 2009, the mantra was that all companies and organizations needed to live in the social media space. Don’t have a Facebook page? A twitter account? You aren’t on LinkedIn or uploading videos to YouTube? In 2009, you were a dinosaur.
At the dawning of this new year, we’re starting to hear something much different. This time it’s noise coming from the other side — a single, damning, awesome question: “What’s my ROI?”
I like this question because it does exactly what needed to be done throughout 2009: It rocks the so-called “social media evangelists” back onto their heels just long enough to expose the enormous heap of BS they’ve been shoveling for the last couple of years. And the best part is when the answer is, well, you’re asking a stupid question.
“Evangelists” don’t like the question because it threatens their business model — which involves taking lots of your money so they can help you, ahem, leverage social media platforms and SEO to maximize your company’s growth capacity. Or something like that. Truth is, social media doesn’t have to cost anything. The only reason it does is that the “experts” are taking advantage of the fear, uncertainty and doubt in corporate culture, where the thought of free anything is highly suspect.
Businesses are terrified of jumping into a space they don’t understand. They don’t want to look stupid on Twitter. They’re afraid of what will be posted to their Facebook page. They’re willing to pay for someone to execute a plan with precision. And for that, they’re gonna pay.
But the dirty secret is that these experts aren’t any smarter than the rest of us. They sure as hell don’t have it “figured out.” And after they’ve sucked up many thousands of your company’s dollars, they don’t want you figuring out what rats they are.
Let’s look for a minute at Twitter. It’s a cesspool of social media experts and SEOs. They amass a few thousand followers and claim to be “thought leaders.” They’ll tell you the more followers you have, the more influence you’ll have. And being part of the conversation is the important part, right? Well…read this and this. Anil Dash has done some of the most interesting reporting on follower counts on Twitter. One of his most interesting observations? He’s not replied to or retweeted more now (he has 300,000 followers) than he was when he had 15,000. And that’s because the vast majority of those following him are, as he puts it:
Some of them are inactive users, some are spammers, some just ignore the noise of the accounts that don’t interest them, like spam in an email inbox. But they can’t count as “followers” in any meaningful sense.
Here’s the thing: I’m not against social media for companies. In fact, I think social media can be a very good thing. I think it’s important for most businesses to play in the same spaces their customers play in. And it makes sense to give people a place where they can connect with you, talk to you, complain to you.
The problems, however, start when when you pay someone to make your company sound authentic on Twitter. Don’t sound authentic. Be authentic. Are you a nerd? A dork? Are you shy? Are you worried people will pick on you? Are you worried that you, as CEO of your company, are going to ruin your brand by speaking on behalf of your company?
What did your mother always tell you? Just be yourself. The people who are going to like you will like you no matter what. Don’t worry about the people who don’t. If the CEO doesn’t want to use Twitter, pick a person or two in the office you’re comfortable with. Allow them to be the eyes and ears and voices of the organization online. Set a few rules, but let people get to know them. Let them grow into the role.
In that way, social media costs next to nothing. A few minutes of time each day to send out a few lines, reply to the chatter, and monitor the conversation. Keep your investment and your expectations low. If you do that, you won’t be asking about ROI anymore. And you won’t want to kick yourself when you get a bill from an “expert.”