Arnie Kuenn, Conversion Conference Speaker

Click here for a $100 discount on Conversion Conference. You’ll see the discount code listed in the upper right after the click.

Arnie Kuenn is President of Vertical Measures, who offer services in link building, content creation and notably their content marketing guide. We met at Pubcon, and he’ll be speaking at Conversion Conference on video. He was kind enough to give us this sweeeeet interview . (I previously interviewed another Conversion Con speaker, Keith Hagen

Can you give me a little background about you?

You bet. Well first I am the founder and president of Vertical Measures, a search, social & content marketing company. Our focus is helping our clients get more traffic, more leads, and more business from their websites. I am an entrepreneur who had had two previous businesses in the world of new technologies and marketing. I am also a frequent speaker and author of Accelerate! Moving Your Business Forward Through the Convergence of Search, Social & Content Marketing (available on Amazon).

What knowledge level are you addressing in your preso at ConvConf?

This particular session is on video marketing and using video to increase conversions. Therefore I would say the people attending this session will be a little more marketing oriented as opposed to technically oriented.

You’re talking about video for conversion. What video content can your average ecommerce merchant create to lift sales?

It is a bit difficult to define the “average merchant” due to all the product possibilities, however, in general, videos that help demonstrate the product or video reviews of the product tend to be most successful in providing an increased conversion rate.

We’ve seen this at some of the major ecommerce sites like Amazon and Zappos, but even the little guy is finding success with video. [Emphasis added.]

For example there is a guy selling a home fitness product who saw a 46% increase in conversions when he used video. In addition to product demos and reviews, how-to videos can be pretty powerful too. In fact, I will be discussing a case study where one business grew exponentially over the past several years all based on how-to videos.

Can you share some links with companies going DIY with their video, please?
Sure. One would actually be Vertical Measures. We have actually turned one of our offices into a small studio and are doing more and more video in there: http://www.verticalmeasures.com/content/how-do-you-use-yahoo-answers-for-internet-marketing-video/

Here is a Golf School creating their own videos:
http://www.youtube.com/user/CollegeofGolf/videos?sort=p&view=0

And here is a link to one of the examples I will use in my presentation:
http://www.youtube.com/user/FixYourDLPcom/videos?sort=p&view=0

What attracted you to Conversion Conference vs another show?

I have known Tim Ash for quite a while now. Tim and I have spoken at many of the same events.

About two years ago I wrote a book about content marketing and Vertical Measures added content marketing services to our mix. Tim and I were talking one day and he asked if the kinds of things we were doing were helping clients with conversions. Of course the answer was “yes” so he invited me to speak at his San Francisco event.

I guess I didn’t mess that up too bad, so he invited me back to talk about video.

I will say, Tim runs one of the best conferences I have spoken at. He has a real eye for detail and takes the attendee and speaker feedback to heart.

Can you specify what feedback you’ve seen Tim take to heart and implement to improve the show?

I can think of two examples but I can’t say that I have seen it implemented yet, as I have only done the one event so far. But in San Francisco, Tim joined our lunch table for a few minutes, one of the attendees at the table made a suggestion and Tim quickly pulled out a piece of paper and started jotting down notes. He then asked the entire table for feedback. It’s not very often you see the person in charge of the event doing something like that.

The second example, was someone complaining about the sightline in one of the presentation rooms being obstructed by a pillar. You could tell Tim was already aware of the issue as he just bristled. I am pretty darn sure, there won’t be any pillars in the way in the future.

You’ve been to the show before. Who makes up the audience, in terms of job position?

Yes, as I mention above I was at the San Francisco event. I can only speak for the group that attended my particular session, but I saw quite a cross-section of people there.

There were developers, marketers and business owners there.

But all of them were focused on how to get more out of their website. I spoke on how to generate content ideas, so I think my group was a little more slanted towards the marketers, as opposed to designers.

Who are you looking to network with most, and why? (Can mean some specific person/people or types – eg other speakers to learn, inhouse ux people for lead gen etc).

Since I am not a UX guy or a developer, I tend to gravitate to the business owners and marketers.

I love to hear what others are experiencing, the challenges they are facing, and some of the solutions they have come up with to grow their businesses.

Everything in our world is moving at such a fast pace that it’s great to have a chance to get out and talk to people who can totally relate to each other.

What tips would you offer for people to get the most out of their networking, besides the standard ‘don’t start with self-promotion’?

Pretty short answer: ask questions. Like you said, don’t talk about yourself, ask question about others and their business. It’s the best way to learn and engage.

What’s a growing trend that you see in video for conversion (besides increased usage)? What are people getting right that they used to get wrong?

I think the biggest trend is the DIY aspect.

Rather than hiring a production firm, some businesses are talking the bull by the horns and creating their own videos. This might mean they hire a videographer on staff or it might mean they just use webcams and simple equipment to produce decent video all on their own. To me, just trying is doing it right.

My only real caveat is that most viewers are pretty tolerant of less than professional grade videos, but you must get the sound and lighting right. People will just click away if they cannot hear or see the video due to low quality production.

Now with respect to conversions, little things do matter. Something as simple as pointing (in the video) to the form you want them to complete can see a drastic improvement in conversion rates.

Your company specializes in link building. How can link building consultants satisfy customers in the short term, when relationship building is a long-term effort?

Vertical Measures is definitely known for our link building, but more and more of our link building efforts are centered around creating link attraction through great content.

And Penguin/Panda have only accelerated that area of our business. Most clients are now convinced that patience is a virtue when it comes to obtaining the proper back link profile.

The Google updates in March & April went a long way in helping us explain this to our clients, but we also have many case studies demonstrating where creating solid content, then promoting it, drove backlinks to their website.

In many cases the cost per link was substantially lower than the standard “ordering 10 links for $2500” approach. The only difference being it took a couple months longer with the content approach.

This would have been a different answer just a few months ago, but anyone paying attention to SEO these days seems to totally get it.

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

I recently saw a video on FBEvolution.com about using a squeeze page (aka email lead generation landing page) on your Facebook fan page, which I’ll be adapting for the Advanced SEO book fanpage.

In it, Ryan Deiss shares a case study on his landing page getting the name and email of 50% of the people who clicked like.

He incentivized the like with part 1 of his free report, and incentivized the email optin by upselling folks to get part 1 AND part 2.

I’m planning to test that, as well, with the following adaptation of Ryan’s landing page: 

Key elements in the lander and my adaptation on Ryan’s take:

- I’ve made the optin area 1.5 times as wide as the opposite area.
- Moved the word Or to the height of the end of the left-hand section’s heading.
- Widened the optin fields.
- Used my brand colours.
- Adapted the call to action to reflect a successful button I use in my standard book optin squeeze page.
- Ryan cleverly made the “part 1 only” section of the lander black and white only to be less enticing. That could backfire, as whitespace is known to draw the eye. For now I’m rolling with his hypothesis.

What do you predict the results will be? Ryan told me that the case study was a bit old and the numbers aren’t what they used to be. I’m still optimistic and think this can both increase my conversion rate as well as cut my cost per click, so it should be two simultaneous wins! Plus there’s the potential to get likes, which are like their own list, and which can be used for friends-of-connection ad targeting as well as sponsored stories. I’m salivating .

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

Keith Hagen of ConversionIQ is set to speak at the next Conversion Conference in Chicago. He graciously agreed to an interview ahead of the show.

1) What’s the topic of your presentation? How did you come up with that?

The topic is “Testing What Matters” and it arose from a conversion I had with another CRO and were talking about how all these massive corporations (like the ones we had both come out of) have the best testing tools and are testing, but not getting results, and how it was due that fact they just don’t know what to test.

2) What attracted you to Conversion Conference vs another show?

I was scheduled to speak last year on the behalf of the company I worked for (Webroot) where my team had increased the conversion rate greatly, but left to start ConversionIQ just before the conference. I went to the 1st Conversion Conference a couple of years ago and was happy to finally “find my community” as I felt “alone” as a CRO before then. This is the only show I will be speaking at this year, as it is the one I feel I can best contribute to.

3) Have you been before? Who are you looking to network with most, and why? (Can mean some specific person/people or types – eg other speakers to learn, inhouse ux people for lead gen etc).

Yes, I went to the 1st one in San Jose. I am looking to network with our vendors the most. We work really closely with them and want to build a more personal relationship for the long-term. I also want to meet Amy Africa who I met in 2004 and was the 1st person I’d ever met that was doing the same thing I was (I also want to thank her for the advice she gave me years later that lead to my co-founding ConversionIQ).

[Gab:] What did she tell you?
Keith: “Amy told me that consulting was a lot of work! She said it was rewarding, but it was not for faint of heart” .

4) What tips would you offer for people to get the most out of their networking, besides the standard ‘don’t start with self-promotion’?

You are asking the wrong guy. I’m just like people and enjoy learning from others across all fields. I’m lucky if I remember business cards and really hit the events for good conversation, not strategic biz stuff. Sorry.

5) What’s a growing trend that you see in best practice web design [for conversion]? What are people getting right that they used to get wrong?

The trend I see is towards CRO, and away from the routine and costly redesign that adds more risk than the benefit is worth.

6) You published a newsletter with CRO secrets – how often do you mail people? Do you segment your list?

We email weekly tips, but no newsletter. We don’t segment it yet, as we try to keep it broad enough to be of value to everyone, although we do dig into B2B and eCommerce a bit.

7) How effective is your lead-gen to sales conversion funnel? What do CRO consultants say that’s persuasive to close leads?

We are awesome at conversion. We find it helps to be honest, and let the potential benefits (the #’s) speak for themselves.

You mention “CRO consultants”, which is interesting since we don’t have our CRO experts selling, we have sales people doing that. If any CRO consultants would like to focus on CRO, they should let us know as our business system is geared to letting people focus on their core skills.

I can’t say exactly what gets the vast majority of prospects that talk to sales to convert other than the prospects understand the numbers and believe us due to our case studies. I think part of it is we are not “salesy” and probably come off as real. It could be they are mostly referrals or people we have met face to face.

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

Steve recently got a warning from Google that a number of pages were returning soft 404s, and the next week, his traffic dropped 10%.

The following week, another 30% was gone. What are these dramatically harsh “soft” 404 errors? How do you fix them?

What is a soft 404? It’s when your content is no longer what was there but you return an http status code other than 404 or 410 (i.e. you don’t return an error code). For instance, you might return a 200 code. As Google says in describing such errors, you can label a giraffe a dog, but it’s still a giraffe.

If Google detects such errors, you can expect them to index less of your pages and to eliminate the rankings those pages might once have had. In Steve’s case, this was probably partly to blame, but an additional server crash certainly did not help. So don’t worry about as drastic drops as Steve experienced, but be aware that you can see traffic drops due to soft 404s.

The difficulty this client experienced is that contrary to the more common soft 404 situation where 200 status codes are being served, we had established 301 redirects.

Here’s my analysis of the problem affecting this client’s site, all of which essentially stemmed from a recent redesign.

With the redesign, the client also implemented search-engine-friendly URLs. Great!
The trick of course is how do you maintain the rankings? Standard SEO best practice is to 301 redirect the old URLs to new URLs. Great!

What about when some of the pages on the old site won’t exist on the new site? This client has a dynamic classifieds site, so products are constantly being sold and delisted by the merchant who advertised it.

During the transition from old to new site, a number of product detail pages became useless because that merchant sold out his/her inventory.

We couldn’t leave the pages in place and just label them as sold, with links to other merchants’ identical-product listings. While good for users and Googlebot, it would burden the server heavily given the size and volume of this site.

Instead, we had to redirect these expiring classified listings. The priority list for 301 permanent redirects was as follows:

1. Exact-Product overview page that links to listings from several merchants. So an expired Nike Air Jordan 1991 Red Men’s Shoe product listing would send visitors to the Nike Air Jordan 1991 Red Men’s product overview page.

2. If such a page didn’t exist, a redirect to the deepest subcategory (i.e. from breadcrumb navigation) would be shown.

3. In the absence of a subcategory, a category page would be the redirect’s target.

4. In the absence of a relevant category, the general “Pick A Category” page would be shown.

Google showed us three URLs that it said were soft 404s, and indeed they were right with regards to two.

Those two redirected to the Pick A Category page. While that used to be acceptable and even widely advised SEO practice for the sake of maintaining traffic, Google’s realized it’s not an ideal user experience.

So Google tells you that such redirects (in their example, to one’s home page) are no good.

Fair enough, we’ll change that to 410 errors and hopefully make up the lost traffic on any specific rankings with increased indexing and longtail traffic to other product detail pages.

But the third page was perplexing – it redirected from a product detail page to a page that listed classified ads for exactly the same product. It wasn’t clear why Google thought this was a soft 404? A false positive from Google, clearly.

This lead me to write the following analysis for the client:

Hi Steve,

I looked around, checked out SEOmoz Pro and Google help and used my noggin. Here’s my analysis:

1) Generally, soft 404 is when there’s a 200 response even though the content isn’t there.
2) Google’s help pages also talk about redirecting to the home page as being a soft 404 – so we know that it’s not just 200 responses but also 301 that can cause soft 404s.
3) How does Google detect that there’s a soft 404? It checks if the content of the page says that the file is not found or otherwise says that an error took place.

ALSO – It seems it can look for content that is too different – as in 2). So probably it’s looking at title tags, headers, images, and content similarity.

If you look at the first soft 404 page (— edited to protect the innocent—), it’s more surprising because that category/search result shows exactly the products someone is searching for.

However, if you look at the html code, neither the title nor the headers (h1 h2 etc) reflect the product searched for. So for a robot, it’s not clear that the page it gets redirected to is about the same topic as the page it tried to fetch.

Therefore, the solution I propose to fix the soft 404 errors is:

—–Part 1—–

For products that are gone and redirect to perfectly accurate subcategories or model pages, to edit pages of that type (is it search results? something else? product-overview page?) and include the keywords in the important areas for SEO: title, h1 and let the on page content take care of the rest.

On a related note to the above, I suggest changing the css/coding around so that on category pages, not just product pages, the product name is in a large-font size h1. Currently they’re not in h1s at all. And other things that are not really important (e.g. non-category-specific sidebar headings) should not be h2.

Ex.: “Brand” “Color” etc should not be in h2, because that tells Google the wrong message about the page’s topic. They can still be in a larger font via css, but preferably not
h2.

Another benefit of making the category keyword a prominent h1 heading visible on the page is that this should hopefully help reduce bounce
rate.

—-Part 2—–

For product pages that are currently redirecting to the pick a category page, or a regular category page, let’s eliminate the 301 and just do a 410 gone .

In any case, Google is not treating them like 301s, so we may as well try and do what Google’s asking and show 410. On the 410 page, we can still show links to the relevant category page as well as the pick a category page.

For product pages that are currently redirecting to product-overview pages, let’s make sure the model pages have h1s set up right.

For product pages that are redirecting to subcategories, can we prioritize the same exact same product to show up first?

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

If you’re using both an autoresponder series of emails as well as “broadcast” messages that go out with no regard to sequence, you run the risk of annoying people with too-frequent emails.

For example, if you have an autoresponder series that sends emails every 3 days, then broadcast on top of that, someone could literally have just gotten an autoresponder when they get your broadcast. I just found that out the hard way with someone who got my free chapter telling me that they unsubscribed because the email prior to my broadcast today was sent 90 minutes earlier!

The solution is to segment your email list. In Aweber, you go to Subscribers > Search Subscribers. Then look for subscribers with whom the last followup date was 2+ days ago.

Aweber allows you powerful segmentation including by the date you last sent a follow-up email.

The problem with this kind of segmenting is that it always needs updating, because Aweber makes you pick a specific date. You can’t set the “Last Followup” field to “2+ days ago,” you need to set it to “On or Before” “April 20, 2012,” for example (I’m writing this April 23, 2012).

The result is that in the future, subscribers who have been recently added will be excluded by this segment – EVEN IF they have gotten the whole series of autoresponders over a month ago! Imagine we’re in June, and someone got all the autoresponder emails by May 15th. I can email them again without being annoying, but my above-saved segment would exclude them.

So the conclusion is that you need to save the segment with a name that tells you exactly how it’s set: “Last followup on or before {insert precise date}.” That way, next time you need to broadcast, you’ll be reminded to update the segment before sending to it.

Kudos to Joel Chudleigh from DeepFootprints.co.uk for forcing me to improve , and to Aweber for generally making great software despite my occasional quibbles.

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

How do you make a form convert higher? What are the universal best practices?

Yesterday I spoke to a lead who told me that people visiting his site never filled out the form. On a recent project through illuminea.com, an agency where I work part-time, we also recently had a customer who told us that the form was a useless method of contact because he never got any leads from it.

The problem with both of these marketers is that they misidentified the cause of the problem. Their forms were aweful. In the one case, there were over a dozen fields, the button read submit, and the form was submerged below content. In the other case, things were even worse with a captcha and a ‘clear form’ button.

Here are 7 best practices to maximize your forms’ conversion rate:

1) Minimize the number of form fields.

That doesn’t mean only ask for email, it means ask for the minimum necessary for your business. In some cases that’s just email, but more commonly you also want name, position in company, size of company, phone, whether they also want to subscribe to your newsletter (in case f a lead gen form offering something like a whitepaper) etc.

Why it works: People want to expend the least amount of effort. Indulge them.

2) Message match.

The source of traffic to the form should use the same call to action as the title of the page, the title of the form (if there’s a separate one) and the text of the button. Don’t use a button that reads “submit.”

Ex.: If your ad says “download a free whitepaper,” then your landing page title, form title and form submission button should also say “download a free whitepaper.” You can test alternatives like get instead of download or add “now” or “today” but you shouldn’t have it read “give me guidance” even if that’s one of the topics of the whitepaper. Why not? Because it’s not what they came for.

Why it works: You’re fulfilling your promise, which alternative language commonly fails to do.

Note: Check out also Oli Gardner’s useful best practices on calls-to-action.

3) Eliminate distractions like navigation, blog sidebars, long copy etc.

Anything that can take people’s attention away from the form will… and if they leave the page with a link or if they lose focus, your form will convert fewer people.

This also goes for extra copy – get the fold to start above the fold by cutting down copy to the minimum necessary for clarity.

Why it works: This increases focus and again makes it easier to convert.

4) Use appropriate reassurances.

If you’ve got a lead gen form, telling people that your content has been seen elsewhere (popular trade publications or mainstream media) helps.

Why it works: It takes away uncertainty about the quality of the content they’re about to download, or your trustworthiness.

If you’re in ecommerce, reassuring people about the safety of your site with security logos and SSL encryption (visible in modern browsers’ URL bars) helps.

Why it works: This best practice removes hesitation about the security of people’s credit card info online.

5) Improve the offer with a bonus.

This should really be number one since the quality of your offer is the key driver of conversions (think how many hoops people would jump through for a free Lamborghini). The other issues are just more common, unfortunately.

Why it works: You’re increasing people’s main motivation for filling out your form.

6) Clearly state what format and content you expect in the form field.

If you need a phone number without dashes – say so. Or better yet, provide three fields for the phone number and autotab once one has been completed.
If there’s a password required, state whether you need numbers or disallow certain characters above, beside or below the field. Don’t only show it afterwards as an error.

Why it works: It prevents frustration and encourages correct filling in from the start. After a person made an error, they’re less likely to complete the form if it’s your fault.

7) Avoid obstacles like captchas and traps like “clear form” buttons.

Captchas frustrate your prospects and clear form buttons get accidental clicks by people trying to submit the form. Forcing someone to restart is the opposite of what you want to do!

Why it works: You’re again keeping work to a minimum and making it easy on your prospects.

In sum: Keep it simple, provide the best possible offer from the get-go and eliminate excess.

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

Brian Wallace runs NowSourcing, an infographics-specialist consulting shop . They recently redesigned and Brian was kind enough to tell me why and what the process was!

Q – Tell us what your goals were.
BW – To create a classy custom feel to showcase our infographic design and social media services. The old site showed the typical internet marketing services you’d expect, but we wanted a more visual feel as well.

Q – What were the problem(s) with the old site?
BW – We wanted to make a great showpiece site highlighting our infographic work as well as our other services. Additionally we wanted to show the depth of our team. Earlier iterations of our site were mainly the strength of the blog but did not highlight our services enough.

Q – Why not just tweak old site, why do a full redesign?
BW – that’s a measure we tried before. Sometimes it makes more sense to really jump to the next level and make a big splash rather than incremental updates that site visitors might not even notice.

Q – Did you guys do usability testing as part of the redesign? what did you discover?
BW – Yes we did and for good reason. It’s important to check out new sites on all sorts of platform/browser and screen resolutions.

Q – Who did you work with and how did you select them?
BW – We worked with longtime partner NoFavorite out of NYC. Greg Passuntino and the gang are the best

Q – Any tips on redesign workflow to be efficient?
BW – Have swift, brutal and honest feedback. You’re not hurting anyone’s feelings. Just make sure to back it up with suggestions.

Q – What advice would you have for others redesigning?
BW – know your target audience and don’t just make something that only you like. Marketers are often in their own echo chamber. Show people outside of your industry. It will pay off in the end.

If you liked this, check out more interviews in seoroi.com/interviews or get my latest posts by email or RSS.

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

This is a guest post by Pavel Webb, the affiliate manager at TextMagic, a UK based SMS gateway that develops software which enables businesses and individuals to text from computer.

By 2013, more people are expected to use a mobile device than a PC to go online.*

Combine this with Google’s own internal data that mobile searches have increased by 4 times since 2010 (available on their mobile initiative website www.howtogomo.com) and you have a pretty strong case for why you need to be optimising your campaigns for mobile. Like, today.  Some facts to guide your optimisation:

1. Mobile-optimisation now counts toward Google Quality Score for mobile PPC ads

Perhaps the most important factor to understand about search optimisation today is that mobile optimisation is now a critical factor in Google’s Quality Score factor in its AdWords ranking algorithm.

The AdWords system now visits your website and determines the quality of the mobile (smartphone) experience. Google admits that an optimised website tends “to perform better in AdWords – they generally drive more mobile traffic at a lower cost.” (emphasis mine)

Why is this important to marketers? Well, improving your Quality Score lets you improve your ad rank without increasing your bid costs (thus saving you money).

2. Mobile PPC ads have a higher conversion rate

At first, this might seem counter-intuitive. People using mobiles are ‘busy’ and task oriented. Yet, when you properly target behaviour with a good PPC ad that is served to them at the right time, mobile users are more likely than their desktop counterparts to click the ad. More importantly, they convert more.

According to Google’s HowToGoMo.com, 95% of smartphone users surveyed have searched for local information. 61% of them call a business after searching and an amazing 59% actually visit the physical location.2

Google has a stake in the mobile advertising game, so you might be compelled to take their stats with a grain of salt. But consider these facts from Search Engine Watch: mobile cost-per-click is around 30% lower than desktop, and mobile click-through rates are around 5 times higher.

3. Adding an SMS component increases conversion

In my experience, SMS marketing campaigns have a tremendously successful track record. When used as a component of a marketing campaign in much the same way people used to run email campaigns, SMS offers the marketer the ability to speak directly to his or her target customers.

Understanding what your target audience likes and what they DO is an important factor in creating a solid SMS campaign. Coupons and voucher codes are the obvious use-case for generating an active SMS marketing list, and by advertising the SMS programme in a PPC ad, marketers are seeing a large increase in click-through and conversion from their PPC ads.

For instance, in a case outlined by Mobile Marketing Institute, when the business added a ‘text’ option to PPC ads (effectively telling the ad viewer about the SMS text message version of their product) they saw a striking increase in the number of responses compared to the desktop version of the PPC ads.

More searchers are using mobile devices, and the effect this has on SEO and PPC is rising with each passing month. Ignore mobile in your optimisation strategy and pay-per-click campaigns at your peril.

*Gartner 2010;
** Google “The Mobile Movement: Understanding Smartphone Users,” 2011 ; howtogomo.com

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

UserTesting has a panel of mobile device users who have high-resolution webcams on stands. So you can watch them use their mobile device–iPhone, Android, or iPad–as they visit your mobile website or use your mobile app.

The good folks at UT, amongst them Dave Garr love SEO ROI (who doesn’t? , and are donating 100 free mobile tests to SEO ROI’s readers. To get your free test:

1. Go to http://www.usertesting.com/mobile
2. Click “Pricing & Sign Up”
3. Select “1 user” from the dropdown menu.
4. When you get to the second page, click the “gift code” link and enter: seoroi

Voila, magic!

Hope you enjoy trying out their service !

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

Clients or leads with bad websites often acknowledge the problem but say that they’re redesigning anyways, so why implement conversion rate optimization work now when it will only last until the redesign?

If you liked this post, get my latest posts by email or by RSS.

Here’s a secret. That redesign? It’s coming, sure… it’ll be here around the time we achieve world peace. Or maybe a few days later, because the designer – unlike world peace – needs coffee breaks.

The reality is that web redesign projects are virtually never delivered on time. They suffer from many causes of delay, some of which include:

• while-we’re-at-it-itis: the propensity to toss in everything but the kitchen sink in the redesign, since all those extra features will each just take a few minutes to do and certainly won’t need to be tested for bugs
• budget shortfall: big briefs and little budgets make websites sad
• we-didn’t-really-know-what-we-got-ourselves-into-itis: the desire to close the deal commonly leads programmers, web shops and others to promise the world without understanding the true scope of the work. Sure we can duplicate Amazon.com for ya!
• HIPPOs: HIPPO stands for Highest Paid Person’s Opinion and it’s one of the biggest time wasters and argument generators. These people often “know best” – after all, they started the business in 1999 so they’re still the expert in 2012.
• Design by committee: Having to please everyone not only creates aweful sites, but it also takes longer
• Knowledge-enough-to-be-dangerous-participants: They read some articles and sold their services to consult on the project, and now they’re trying to justify their fees. Problem is… those fees can’t be justified. But you’ll have to handhold them and teach them stuff from scratch and want to blow your brains out 10 times along the way.

So that redesign that’s 2 months away from launch? Double that.

What about the cost of lost revenue?

Calculate the revenue you’re losing per month. A 15% conversion rate lift is easily achieved, so if you’re doing say 100 conversions a month, you’re losing 15 conversions in your first month delay!

Q: If your new site goes live in 4 months, does that mean you’re losing 60 (4 months x 15 conversions) conversions in that time?
A: No, you’re actually losing more!

- You’re losing the repeat sales from those people, regardless of whether those sales would come in the next 4 months or not.
- You’re losing the added conversions of further rounds of testing. It goes without saying that in 4 months, you can run multiple tests. And that means compounding interest.

Without even counting repeat sales, from conversion rate optimization alone you would get an extra 99 conversions! That’s like you just made your year 1 month longer! Who said there were only 24 hours in a day?

If you liked this post, get my latest posts by email or by RSS.

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

Want to learn usability testing? I promise that any complete beginner who applies the lessons in this guide thoroughly will see a higher conversion rate in 30 days, guaranteed!

Q: What is usability testing? What is remote usability testing?

A: Usability testing is the process of having people interact with a website and provide feedback on it. The purpose of this testing is to find out why users are using the site as they are.

The value in understanding why users behave a certain way is that you get actionable insight, which raw data on what users are doing doesn’t tell you. You can see what’s tripping up users and fix it!

Note: Usability testing is also used offline for testing products, but for our purposes we’ll stick to website usability testing.

Remote usability testing is a method of usability testing where the users testing the website are in a different location than the person giving the test. The test giver, known as the moderator, sets up the test and provides instructions on what to do.

For now, let’s see how usability testing works. Later we’ll address specific issues like remote vs in-person usability testing, moderated vs unmoderated testing, and what tools to use for specific tasks.

How Usability Testing Works

Photo credit sxc

There are 5 steps to running a usability test.

1. First, you decides on tasks you want people to do on your website, such as search for a product and add to cart.

2. You recruit users, ideally ones representative of the site’s audience for the test. Typically, 3-5 testers are used in each round of testing, after which changes are made and another round of testing begins.

(If you can’t recruit users, there are companies who do that and usability testing tools with panels of users you can recruit.)

3. Users attempt to do the tasks set by the site owner.

In the most popular and effective form of usability testing, test-takers record their screen and voice, while sharing their thoughts out loud as they use the site. In other types of usability testing, feedback may only be written afterwards.

A short questionnaire typically follows screen-and-audio-recording type tests. Questions focus on problems encountered using the site, possible solutions, and how the tester would have behaved had it not been a test.

4. You review the user feedback to understand what the users were trying to do and why. Make note of the most common difficulties.

5. The site owner makes changes to the website to solve the problems discovered from the recordings.

Note: For ease of reference, I’m going to use “the moderator,” “site owner” and “you” interchangeably, but the roles can be shared between team members as you see fit.

Let’s see each step of the testing process in more depth.

Step 1: Deciding On And Writing Tasks For Users

The first step is figuring out and writing what you want your users to try to do. You need to describe outcomes for users to achieve, and avoid (to the extent possible) being too explicit in how to do a task, avoid mentioning the names of particular links to click (e.g. the task reads “learn pricing,” when the site has a “Pricing” link).

A good task description is, “Get in touch with us,” not “Click ‘contact’ and fill out the form.”

Photo credit sxc

Start by asking, what is the purpose of the site? Then work backwards and ask yourself what steps are needed to get a visitor to accomplish those steps.

The following example illustrates how this works at a coarse level, but you can go more granular and test sub-elements within each step.

Ecommerce example: Let’s imagine we’re usability testing a running shoe retailer.

6 – Purpose of the site: The site’s purpose is to sell running shoes.

5- Previous step: To sell merchandise, users need to checkout.

4 – Previous step: To checkout, they need to have added something to cart.

3 – Previous step: To have added something to cart, they need to have found a product that adequately meets their needs.

2 – Previous step: To find that product, the users must sort through the site’s products easily.

1 – First step: Before sorting, visitors need to be convinced not to bounce with a credible appearance that’s relevant to their intent in visiting.

For step 1, since users are coming to your site to do the test, they won’t bounce on their own. To find out if your site is credible and relevant, use a five second test task description:

Ask people to look at the page for five seconds, look away, then share what they remember. Does “what people remember” match the landing page’s traffic sources, such as search keywords and ad copy? Is the design credible or does it make people flee?

For steps 2-6, a regular usability test with screen and voice recording would work fine.

Task description

Good: “Find a pair of Reebok running shoes and buy them. Find answers to any questions that come to mind.” This leaves discretion to users to browse for Reebok running shoes the way they naturally would. This allows them the choice to browse with search or clicks, refine their options as usual… in sum, to be themselves, which is what we want to see.

Bad: “Click the Reebok running shoes button in the lower left sidebar, click on a pair of shoes, add them to cart, and fill out the checkout forms.”

Step 2: Recruiting Users

(image credit Vintage Military Ads)

This is where most web pros aspiring to run usability tests give up. Frankly, recruiting testers is hard.

First, it’s not always obvious who your audience is. Who are these “representative users” anyways?

To answer that, build personas (easier), and seek keyword-level demographics (harder). If you’ve never worked in the field, you can always email the owners of existing sites and ask them; if they’re competitors, look at
people offering the service in a different city or language.

Second, how do you go about soliciting people to test the site? Why would they care or bother? Where do you find them? How do you approach them?

Commonly, usability testing will pay testers for their time. With remote usability testing, paypal payments or online gift certificates (ex.: Amazon.com) are common. Others are interested in helping just to be helpful or because they’re friends.

Once you know who your representative users are, you need to find them. To do that, first try the free way and solicit amongst family, friends and contacts by email and phone.

After exhausting this pool or if your contacts just are too different from representative users (you’re starting a hispanic dating site without knowing anyone hispanic), you can run demographically or professionally targeted ads. Places to advertise include Facebook, PlentyOfFish, LinkedIn, MyAds (demographics powered by MySpace) and supposedly the Google Display Network (formerly the Content Network).

Another option that recruits directly from your users is Bolt|Peters‘ Ethnio recruiting service.

Originally, Ethnio was offered at a rate of a few hundred dollars per person because it was an offline, labour-intensive recruiting process. Today Ethnio is a software tool with a free trial that just requires you to copy-paste some code to get started. It intercepts visitors as they come to the site, asking them to participate in your test. The downside is that the test needs to consist of a survey or Usabilla click test, which helps but isn’t as useful as getting them to record their screen and voice.

Another easy way out of recruiting is buy a remote usability testing service with a panel of users.

Tools in this category that will have users record their screen and spoken thoughts include TryMyUI , UserFeel -whose panel includes testers in the UK and Greece- and UserTesting.com. (UI means User Interface, such as the part of the website customers interact with by clicking and typing.)

On a lower-tech level there is Feedback Army, which surveys visitors after they try using your site. While it doesn’t record audio or video, it’s also only $15 for 10 users to provide their feedback.

Note that these panels are only appropriate for sites geared towards a general audience. Sites requiring knowledge of particular jargon (e.g. SEO) won’t find representative users here, since user selection criteria are limited to demographics and tech-savvy (“technographics”), and don’t break down by vertical.

A word on “representative users”

Finally, while it’s ideal to get representative users, it’s also fine to get users who are less representative and grade on a curve, proportionately to how closely they match your audience. (Hattip Steve Krug)

Step 3: Running the Test

Once recruited, it’s up to users to follow instructions and do the test. This either happens at agreed-upon times (moderated testing), or at the user’s discretion (unmoderated usability testing).

Test Preparation

With moderated testing, the moderator either sets up a computer with screen and audio recording software before the test, or instructs users to use browser-based software to record their screens and voices.

With unmoderated testing, the user is responsible for ensuring the audio and video recording software is on and recording, at the right level.

Note: Both of these comments assume a regular usability test, as opposed to a limited or partial test aimed at discovering how users interact with particular aspects of the site. This includes mouse-movement tracking and click measurement tests, for example, as well as visual analysis tools like FiveSecondTest or predictive gazeplot-and-eye-tracking tool Feng-Gui.

A gazeplot generated on Amazon’s mobile homepage by Feng-Gui.

Tip: It’s important to make sure that both video and audio are recording at the start, and that the sound levels are high enough, to avoid wasting time and money.

What Your Instructions  Need To Cover

Once the audio and video are on and at the right level, there are three things your instructions must cover:

a. Asking the user to say what hes doing and why out loud, constantly. To quote TryMyUI:

“Clearly say exactly what you are thinking as you are thinking it. We are interested in your impressions, expectations, and the motivations for your actions. Don’t edit your thoughts as you navigate the website! Simply say exactly what you are thinking at each step.”

Steve Krug’s excellent book on usability testing, Rocket Surgery Made Easy, emphasizes that you should make clear it’s the website being tested, not the user. They can’t make mistakes here!

This serves the highly important purpose of preventing self-censorship, as alluded to in TryMyUI’s instructions.

b. Providing a starting URL for the user. With in-person testing, you’ll have this pre-loaded.

c. Provide a written list of tasks. Don’t just provide it orally, because you want to ensure the same phrasing each time.

If users get distracted and go off to do their own thing, the moderator gently encourages them back to the task at hand.

Step 4: Reviewing The Feedback

Once the tests have been run, what’s left is data – not actionable insight. To turn that information into actionable recommendations, the moderator needs to review the collected feedback.

His purpose is to look for patterns in what gave users difficulty.

By focusing on problems common to more than one user, you ensure that you get the most bang for your buck in making changes and fixing the site. This is also why running a test with one user is insufficient.

Conversely, to save time and money, you shouldn’t test with more than 5 users per round of testing. By the fourth or fifth user you’ll already know the main issues the site has and having the same problems highlighted another half dozen times isn’t productive.

The problems the moderator will discover can usually be categorized by WiderFunnel’s classic LIFT model of conversion optimization:

• Value Proposition: What’s in it for the user. This is the core which the other factors act upon.
• Anxiety: How design -security reassurances, layout- and content -answering questions, social proof- affect trustworthiness. Reduce anxiety to lift the conversion plane.

• Distraction: The page features too many eye-catching elements. Focus is drawn away from the page’s main purpose. Reduce distraction for more lift.

• Relevance: The degree to which the page matches users’ expectations before arriving. Increase relevance for more lift.

• Clarity: Do the design and content work in synergy to explain the value proposition?

• Urgency: Do users have a reason to act now?

To return to our earlier example of the online running shoe retailer, here are some things you would look for in your analysis.

First, as mentioned earlier, is the landing page’s credibility and relevance to traffic sources. Is the site secure? Is the graphic design professional? For relevance, you can show the traffic source (ad, link or search listing) briefly before taking users to the landing page. Within the five second test, you can ask if the landing page matches the expectations the traffic source created.  – Relevance, Anxiety, Clarity -

Visitors need to drill down and find a product that suits their needs. Can they browse and search their way through your categories to find an adequate fit? How effective are your refinement options? When clicking through to a subcategory or product detail page, does the content there match expectations? – Relevance, Clarity -

Third, visitors need to get sufficient information from the product detail page. Does the information answer visitors’ questions? Does it convey benefits? How scannable is the information – bullet points or paragraphs? Where’s the refunds policy? Are the shoes in stock? How much is shipping? – Value Proposition, Urgency, Anxiety-

Users also need to be able to add to cart easily, and then modify the contents of the cart. Is the add to cart button noticeable and clearly a button? Are the cart buttons clearly labelled and laid out in a hierarchy reflecting their importance? Does the site need all this information the checkout requests? – Clarity, Distraction, Urgency, Anxiety -

Step 5: Implement The Changes

Again, follow Steve Krug’s excellent advice: Change the least possible to solve the problems.

For example, instead of redesigning a page’s graphics to reduce distraction, comment out some of the graphics. Test again and see if that solves things. To save time on such visual makeovers, you can just use a visual testing tool like Feng-Gui or Five Second Test, mentioned earlier.

And don’t wait for the “upcoming redesign”… 99% of the time it’ll go live months after promised. In the meantime, you’ve wasted loads of traffic.

Miscellaneous Testing Tips and FAQ

How do I test…

… information architecture (aka the organization of content on a site into logical groups)? Use card sorting. Do users look for content where you expected? Do they click the right links to drill down to the content you want them to find? (Image credit Revium.)

… where people would click next? Look at click based tools like CrazyEgg or Usabilla.

… how people make their way through a model of the site? Try wireframe creation software that (i) lets you interact with the wireframe by clicking the navigation and going to the wireframes for the relevant pages and (ii) allows you to share your wireframes online, so testers can access them. Some wireframe tools are designed to only be used in a desktop environment, so read carefully to avoid that.

See

Remote Testing vs In-Person Testing Pros and Cons

Remote testing is

- Cheaper: Don’t need to pay for travel, premises, computer equipment, food
- Less work to organize
- Easier to recruit for because there’s no geographic restriction
- Commonly paid for via Paypal or gift certificates

In-Person testing is

- More personal, you can get body language
- A more compelling opportunity for the whole team to witness the testing simultaneously and debrief, which can get things moving faster
- Commonly paid for in cash
- Instantaneous feedback; you view the data as it comes in, instead of waiting until later

“Moderated Testing” vs “Unmoderated Testing” Pros and Cons

Moderated testing:

- Is significantly less likely to encounter errors requiring retakes, such as setup issues with hardware or software, or testers veering off topic
- Yields richer, more useful data
- Tends to have representative users

Unmoderated testing:

- Sometimes yields obnoxious or useless responses, like FiveSecondTest and Feedback Army testers more interested in accumulating credits or micropayments than being helpful.
- Costs less on an individual test basis, because there is no moderator, or because it typically involves testing narrow interaction aspects such as click tests or visual feedback
- Is commonly associated with narrow aspects of interaction
- Tests of particular aspects may or may not have representative users
- Can save time when run through a service with a panel of testers, such that recruitment effort is negligible. This advantage makes it an easy entry-point/stepping stone for beginners to enter the world of usability testing.

Additional testing tools references:

There are many tools available for usability testing specific aspects of a website, or the whole shebang.

Kyle Soucy of Usable Interface put together a helpful, comprehensive overview of these varied tools.

Concluding Tip: Start as early in the web design process as possible

- Talk about the idea with friends and family and see what are the most common questions/objections raised, so you can answer them.

- Create user interface mockups in Photoshop and do the 5 second test (with or without the site): namely, ask people to look for a few seconds, then look away and ask what they recall.

- Put early design mockups through Feng-GUI as a sanity check – are there too many visually ‘loud’ areas?

- Imperfect testing is better than none. As the French say, “the best is the enemy of the good [enough].”

Further reading:

Review of testing service UserTesting.com
Sensible – Steve Krug’s site
Usability Post
RemoteUsability.com/tools

http://okcancel.com/archives/article/2006/07/guide-to-remote-usability-testing.html

http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/remote_online_usability_testing_why_how_and_when_to_use_it

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

Mobile websites’ homepages beat the pants off regular websites’ homepage designs at achieving a homepage’s goal: driving the visitor deeper into the site.

Q: Why are the homepage designs of mobile sites so much more effective than the design of ordinary homepages?

A: The reduced space on mobile screens forces choices in what to display, and this is especially true on the homepage.

Look at Amazon’s regular design:

The design of Amazon's full size homepage suffers from clutter. The extra screen space available has lead to a unfocused homepage design - and this despite generous whitespace.

The gaze plot for Amazon's home page shows that visitors' eyes will likely bounce all over the page, not focusing on a single spot.

As with the gaze plot, the heatmap indicates several very strong points of focus on the page, increasing the bounce rate and decreasing conversions.

Look at how the gaze plot and heatmap from Feng-Gui (that’s predictive eye-tracking; check out my friends at MiraMetrix.com for actual eye-tracking equipment) shows the human eye having too many focus spots on the regular home page … and this is Amazon we’re talking about, the retailer everyone looks to for leadership in usability and conversion rate optimization.

Compare that to their much easier-on-the-eyes mobile homepage:

The page's simple design limits the number of eye-catching elements, making it much more effective.

The gazeplot for Amazon's mobile homepage tells us that the Kindle promo draws most of the attention.

This heatmap shows again that the page's primary focus is on the Kindle, and only secondary to that are the other, photo-less, calls to action.

The difference isn’t always as dramatic, as when the layout has already been well designed with a main focal point and the remainder of the page in secondary focus. Observe the change from eBay’s regular homepage to their mobile site:

The full-size eBay homepage design is built simply with the goal of drawing visitors to browse popular products or else to learn about eBay's buyer protection measures.

eBay's mobile homepage: designed to make visitors click through on a category.

Q: Based on the above example, couldn’t you argue against designing a homepage by starting with the mobile site? Where would you place the product spotlight?

A: It’s far more likely you’ll succumb to the temptation to clutter your homepage if you first create a full-size design, rather than designing the mobile homepage first.

Besides, look at the focused, effective job Amazon did with their mobile homepage, which spotlights the Kindle. If you must have a spotlighted item, you can do that on mobile and translate that later to your regular home. Note also that the valuable upper-left hand screen real estate on eBay’s full size homepage is dedicated to the main navigation, just as the mobile site design emphasizes it.

So if you’re designing a new site for a client, here’s a best practice tip:

Build the mobile homepage design first. Then port that to the non-mobile version of the homepage. You’ll find a lighter, more usable design.

Even better, by starting with the mobile design, you have less to do quality assurance testing on before going live. That means you can get a design out faster.

Liked this? Check out my collection of links and guidelines on mobile landing pages and this mobile usability case study.

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

Two reasons:

1) Some of the most popular contact form plugins, including Contact Form 7, don’t provide a thankyou page. That means that you can’t easily set up a simple ab-test in Google Website Optimizer (GWO) to increase conversions, because GWO requires a thankyou page. Doh! (I realize I’m running that plugin, but I’m not actively seeking new consulting clients, so it’s not a priority to fix that.)

2) Typically, the contact button says submit by default. It’s well known that you want to match the button to your headline, and people didn’t come to your contact page with servitude in mind and/or kinky S&M messaging. They came to contact you. So the default button should read “Contact Us” or “Send Contact Message” … Submit isn’t clear and cuts conversions.

Like this post on conversion rate optimization (CRO) and usability? Get a free chapter from my advanced SEO book, which offers tactics covering the overlap between CRO and SEO.

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

I’ve been digging into online marketing tools and to my chagrin, most want an annual fee (or one time payment usually roughly equivalent). It’s the rise of SAAS…

Email:

MailerLite: Was on Discount from MightyDeals (found via Yoast) for $49/year!! Up to 10K subs… Love this pricing!
Or MailChimp: Free for up to 2K subs, plus very impressive segment-upon-signup options so you can better tailor content and increase open rates. Starting $49/mo thereafter.

I currently have Aweber which so far has been good, and their support’s generally been good – which is very important. I’m mostly interested in switching due to price (mailerlite) and functionality (chimp). Paying $29/mo for service at my # of subs (over 500, under 2k), for the advanced SEO book.

Contact Management / Social Media Analytics

The first two here are relationship-measuring social analytics tools. The latter is a traffic measuring social analytics tool.

I currently have BuzzStream which is pretty sweet. It automatically finds contact info, can track all email contact and Twitter contact too (going forward, non-historical), plus has various link building metrics and social media functions built in too, though personally my orientation is more the link building side. Starting $19/mo.

ConnectedHQ: Contact Management with full historical data and integrations with various social services. Measure and strengthen your relationships so you get more exposure and traffic. $10/mo

The reason ConnectedHQ also appeals to me is because of more integrations (mostly FB, I’m not big on LinkedIn) and historical data for them. Plus it’s affordable, which is great! Strong contrast to so many tools out there where average monthly price for a non-feature-neutered package is $49…

Awe.sm: Traffic analytics focused on social sharing where links are shared via means besides the browser (outlook, tweetdeck etc) and accurately reporting on where Twitter/FB/LinkedIn traffic really originated from, down to the particular tweet! Valuable for optimizing social media campaigns focused on traffic / conversions. Starting $15/mo

VaultPress: Multiple cloud-based backups + security monitoring for WP, by the creators of WP at Automattic. $40/mo and + for service including security. $15 for cloud backups which is basically not worth paying for since existing WP plugins do that.

Or: CodeGuard: Roughly the same idea but not WP specific. Unclear if they provide human support for cleaning bugs and reinstalling. $15/mo — Update: Got CodeGuard!

VisualWebsiteOptimizer: Tempted by their easy WYSIWYG interface… for better CRO testing. GWO’s horrible, sprawling documentation and disorganized forums are also a massive pain to navigate. $49/mo + for a decent package.

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

Want to a/b test your WordPress (WP) website without the cranky, unreliable Google Website Optimizer (GWO) plugins?

The problem with using Google Website Optimizer with WordPress:

1. Google Website Optimizer was designed with static html pages in mind, as opposed to pages created by a content management system like WordPress.

Each post on a WordPress-powered website relies on multiple different files, such as header.php, sidebar.php, post.php etc. Google Website Optimizer requires you to place code on the page you’re going to test, which is made more difficult because of the dynamic inclusion of the header, sidebar, body of the post etc.

2. Various WP plugins supposedly resolve the difficulty. In fact, they don’t solve it for two reasons:

• These plugins limit what you can test to the content of the post, and not the title, layout, navigation and other very important aspects of the page.
• They don’t work with custom themes – which is likely your case if you’re putting money into A/B testing or multivariate (MVT) testing. I’ve failed to make GWO work on this WordPress site despite numerous efforts and following instructions to the letter.

In short, what you need is for your WordPress pages to be static html …

So here’s how to a/b test any page/post on your WordPress site, and any aspect of it!
All for free using Google Website Optimizer…

1) Navigate to the WordPress page you want to test, in your browser.

2) Click File -> Save File As and download the page. With Firefox, this downloads two things: i) a folder including all the graphics, CSS and backend voodoo that makes the page pretty and ii) the final html that is sent to the browser to display on your screen.

3) Upload the folder and html file from step 2 to your server. This is your control version of the page.

4) Create one or more copies of the folder and html file, and edit as needed for your test. This is your experimental version of the page.

5) Upload the copy/ies to your server. Important: Don’t upload to a folder in which WordPress is installed, because doing so will cause the newly uploaded page will take forever to load (in my case, 30 seconds+). This means that if WordPress powers your whole site (e.g. it’s installed in the root folder), you’ll need to test on a subdomain or another domain. I suspect this may also be true of trying to upload the file to a page where other CMSes are installed

6) Edit both the control and experimental pages to include the Google Website Optimizer code.

7) Optional: Use a 302 Temporary Redirect on the existing page to send the traffic to your control page and let GWO split the traffic between the “A” (control) version and “B” (experimental) version of the test page. You want to use a temporary redirect because you’re only doing this until you find a better version of the page.

Alternately, you can use a 301 permanent redirect if you don’t want to be bothered keeping the WP version of the page later.

Optional: If you tested layout or something graphical besides content, have a dev create a special “page template” that you can select when creating a new WP page. That way you’ll be able to keep the new version within the control of WordPress, while getting the higher conversion rate of your new version.

A summary of this approach’s benefits:

- It’s easier than breaking your head trying to install GWO on a custom theme and never succeeding at having it validate.
- It provides more flexibility in what you can test than the existing plugins out there.
- You’re still using GWO, so it’s free.

Liked this workaround to a/b testing using GWO and WordPress? Add my rss feed to your reader for more tips on conversion and usability and advanced SEO.

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Have you been paying $29 and now $39 a head for usertesting.com?

Mashable has a list of free and commercial screencasting tools, including web-based/online ones.

(New to remote usability testing? – Read my user testing guide .)

The Screencasting Handbook has another list with certain other ones listed and describing relevant feature differences.

Finally, some generous soul gave Wikipedia a really comprehensive list of such tools, but without much detail on features.

You can use this plus the methodology in Rocket Science Made Easy (Steve Krug’s guide to usability testing) for really cheap tests, or even free ones.

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

Paul May co-founded BuzzStream, a CRM for link building and PR/social media that allows online marketers to manage relationships and be more effective in getting results, be they links or press. He gave me the following two-part interview about the software creation and startup process.

I’d already interviewed Ann Smarty before about her creation of MyBlogGuest and her insights on iteration, usability and the startup process.

Have you used usability testing along the way? If so, what role has it played (share examples)?

I talk to at least two customers every day, so I’m always getting feedback…we conduct formal usability testing any time we launch a major feature. Our testing approach is based on Steve Krug’s usability testing methodology – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QckIzHC99Xc.

Here’s how we did it when we launched the new prospecting tool:

• We had ten people test the product. Four of these were people at agencies dedicated to link building, two were at large SEO agencies, and four were in-house link builders.
• We break testing up into two phases.

  In our first phase we have the testers walk through a series of linked balsamiq mockups. The thing I love about using balsamiq mockups is that it’s great for identifying features you can cut before you get into code…when you see all the things that people stumble over and when they tell you which things they really care about, it makes it much easier to figure out the minimum viable feature-set.

  The downside to balsamiq mockups is that they force the user through a specific workflow, so your visibility into the true user experience is limited. Given this, we use mockups with three or four testers and then move to working code.

• When we’re testing, we give the tester control over our screen and ask them to complete specific tasks to see how easily they can accomplish them. For the prospecting tool, our scenarios were:
  1) Find prospects,
  2) Evaluate prospects,
  3) Add prospects to your account.

  As they go through each step, we have them say everything that they’re thinking. This helps us identify spots where our language is confusing, our workflow is cumbersome, etc.

Two of the big takeaways from the usability testing for the prospecting tool:

1. Using language like “keywords” confused people and led to poor selection of prospecting phrases (people thought they should just enter the same keywords they’re trying to rank on).

Just changing the language to “prospecting searches” significantly changed the way people used the product.

2. For the first release, people didn’t want or need a tool that automatically creates the prospecting phrases for them…
They just wanted to enter prospecting queries on their own and then let BuzzStream de-duplicate results and collect the data. This cut out a ton of development that we thought we needed in order to deliver a v1 product.

What lead you guys to integrate Twitter so tightly?

Initially because it scratched an itch that we had…we were engaging with people on twitter and people were talking about us there, but we had no way to leverage this. All these great things were happening there and if we had a history of it at our fingertips, we could build better outreach lists and engage more effectively…but it was as though the second after you tweeted someone or they tweeted about your company, the information would just scatter to the wind.

Do you have plans to integrate other social websites in the future? Digg? StumbleUpon? Facebook?

We’ve built a prototype for automatic discovery of blog comments, but we haven’t integrated it into the product yet….the truism with software is that you have to support anything you deliver and it’s much easier to add a feature than kill it, so we’re being careful here.

The next few months will be heavily weighted towards usability and UI features, and we’ll use that time to conduct some market research on social discovery features like this. I would love to hear thoughts from you and your readers about this. [Ed: I think this is valuable for the same reason as the Twitter integration, but also because it allows you to know who to work with when you need to promote something on those sites.]

Do you have grandfathered pricing?

Yes. We haven’t raised our prices, but we did change our pricing model.

In the past, each plan included a large number of users and a relatively small number of contacts and links. The overwhelming feedback we’ve gotten is that people needed more contacts and links. To meet the need we raised the number of contacts and links in each plan, but we also reduced the number of users in each plan.

For the vast majority of our current customers, this meant they got more links for the same price, but there were some customers that would have had to move to a more expensive plan to keep the same number of users. For them, we’ve grandfathered them into their current plan, but if they want to move to the new model, they’re able to do this at a significant discount.

Liked it? Check out Buzzstream today!

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

Do CSS galleries actually show the right way forward for web design?

Via a fascinating post on whitespace and visual hierarchy at Usability Post, I also discovered the UX part of Stack Exchange, one of the web’s biggest Q&A sites. It’s got loads of intermediate-advanced questions and is well worth a visit for people responsible for designing user interfaces. Warning: You might get hooked!

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

Why not put a news feed of your company’s latest press releases on the homepage?

Because 99 times out of 100, you won’t have news to share on a sufficiently regular basis to make the use of space effective and worthwhile. The net result is that you look silly, when, halfway through 2011, your news section still carries items from 2010.

I admit that I did this for about 3-4 years on my homepage until changing to a new homepage.

Since then, I changed my homepage to be more focused on getting the click through to other pages. However, I recently noticed that Commission Junction still has the News section on their site:

Commission Junction News on homepage

This error is even worse when you think of how valueable homepage real estate is, and how intensely it’s fought over in turf battles.

If you liked this bit of critical thinking, check out a free chapter of my book for easy lessons on doing this yourself.

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

This is a guest post by Stephen Croome of buyaniPad.com; his bio is below.

A baseline for mobile growth

Real numbers and our plan going forward:

There is a lot spoken on the growth of mobile but not much actual data shared. SEOmoz recently posted trends for mobile in 2011 and I thought I would contribute to the discussion with a baseline for expected mobile growth based on real sales data.

I have included data from two very different but high traffic sites. One is a pure play commercial sales site, and the other is a site that is purely informational. Neither have a mobile version of the site although both websites display fine on smartphones.

Hopefully this information helps people make better projections for their own clients. I encourage you to share real data so we can build a better picture of where the next few years’ growth is going come from.

UK sales site’s revenue from mobile devices

Conversion rate for mobile devices:

Click to enlarge

You can see I found an error in how Blackberries interact with our site, 0.08% conversion rate is far too low. Analytics ftw!

On digging into the problem I found it was merely that Blackberrys seem to be terrible for buying date and price intensive things online. I sat with a colleague and I bought a ticket on my iPhone 4 in about 2 minutes and he just gave up after 5. So, not all smart phones are equal!

The iPad conversion rate looks way ahead of handheld mobiles. Is this going to be an emerging theme – larger devices converting better than smaller? It makes sense to me but we will know when more players like the Galaxy Tab filter into the market.

Growth in mobile sales with projection:

This growth looks amazing and I think that when we look back at the end of the year, the growth that I’ve plotted is likely to be conservative.

However, let’s not get carried away just yet:

As a % of overall revenue, mobile sales are still small.

UK information site

This site has no sales, just public information. Warning: These projections are rough and ready due to the volatility of their traffic.

Visit data for mobile devices:

When you look at the visits by device data, you see more pages per visits and lowest bounce rate on the iPad. Other devices have a high average time on site but a low pages per visit and a high bounce rate.

I would suggest this is because people have more difficulty using the site on mobile devices and less on the iPad. Mobile is growing, but it still has form factor challenges to overcome.

Growth in mobile visits with projections:

However, let’s not get carried away just yet…

As a % of overall visits, mobile traffic is still small.

Mobile health tips

Whatever the level of buy-in to mobile in your organisation, there are a few universal tips that will serve you well
• Share your knowledge with your clients
• Have an opinion on mobile and a plan (even if it’s not likely to be actioned immediately)
• Push for mobile best practice, at least a simple mobile version of your sites
• Stay on top of the data, make sure you can clearly measure mobile sales and interactions on your sites

About Stephen: I’m a SEO interested in getting companies to re-engineer their products and processes to market themselves. I have some test sites that need some love www.buyanipad.com where I look at spam and www.purehairstyle.com where I look at the peculiarities of image search and generating impressions per visit. In my spare time I dream up marketing ideas like www.startupbeanbags.com.

You can follow me at your own peril at seomoz or @firstconversion

If you liked this post, you should also check out this post on mobile landing pages and my conversion rate optimization service.

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.