SEO Miva Style

[lfreeman]

I am desperately in need of referrals for my clients.

If you specialize in SEO support and are reasonably priced, please contact me.

If you know of anyone that you use that is considerably good and reasonably priced, please send me their information.

Basically I need someone that can analyze a site and make sure that it has been built in an optimal fashion, configure the Google goals and analytics, provide the meta tags and keywords, provide support sitemap content, aid the client in getting started with pay per click campaigns, etc.

I also need you to keep in mind that you may be working along side me in several of these projects. If you play nicely with others than I might be able to use your help. I have loads of work available and cannot handle it all myself.

[DesignExtend-MSI]

I sure wish I could refer some, but every single SEO person whose worked with us and proven themselves has wound up getting grabbed by a client full time, whereas they can't take on any more work. We're trying to bring more in as well.

[Biffy]

Everything you posted is in my oeuvre except generating the keywords. I don't have pro tools for that part. The rest of it is pretty standard stuff.

The Adwords management is where the magic comes in. The secret to this is to effectively meta-manage the huge flood of data. This requires customizing your Analytics reports to give you exactly what you need. This is usually an iterative process.

Essentially it's all about making money via an upside-down advertising medium. Instead of ad channels competing for your dollars, you are doing your best to see who can spend the most by bidding things up. Once you understand this problem then you're ready to actually do some good.

You can locate and identify a large number of micro-markets by using geo-targeting and temporal targeting techniques. For instance, I did a campaign for a company selling tactical gear. I located several geo-targeted hotspots from the Analytics data and showed them to the owner. I was then told that every one of the locations was a major military base. I also pointed out cycles in time that we guessed were paydays. I also learned that many searches were coming from Iraq and there were NO BIDS AT ALL on keywords in this market. While the sales volume was low, the cost were almost nothing and the ROI was fabulous. I was managing about 60,000 keywords in this campaign.

I analyzed a narrow family of searches from Saudi Arabia so we added some Saudi keywords that worked out extremely well.

I also studied the effects of emailing their newsletter at various times. We made the most money by emailing Monday and Tuesday nights, about double emaling on the worst night, Sunday.

We also studied seasonal trends. The data added only a few refinements to what the owners already knew by experience and instinct. However, the data did give us exact numbers for budgeting the ad campaigns and the resulting ROI analyses. We were able to squeeze only a few percent out of this one.

In addition the data spotlighted a major problem in cart bailouts they didn't even know they had. We further uncovered a disturbing bug in their fulfillment system and was able to track the long-term effects that backordering and drop-shipping had on repeat business.

The technical implementation with Miva-Analytics is fairly straightforward and well understood. Meta-management of the data is critical. The biggest problem I have is in overcoming deeply embedded misconceptions of the customers (unreasonable expectations) and in expressing myself about complex, multi-dimensional trendline concepts.

I'll be happy to share what I know.

[Biffy]

I'd also like to mention a great resource for understanding the problems associated with Analytics and SEO. It's commonly called Information Overload and is best explained in Toffler's book Future Shock.

This lies at the root of my main problems working in the SEO field. The psychological effects of information overload (stress, anxiety) are quite real and are very difficult to overcome from a contractor's standpoint. Getting a client to change into a meta-management role is often resisted, sometimes vigorously. Let me assure you of this - you cannot possibly hope to manage the monstrous flow of Analytics information without developing meta-management techniques.

Many clients are already overloaded and stresed to the breaking point. These customers may be unable to endure the transition period required to develop meta-management skills and take full advantage of Analytics.

I've been working for a few years trying to develop ways to successfully work with clients on these psychological issues. While I have made some good progress, I certainly have not solved the problem in any general sense. The best solution I know is to talk it out in advance, be prepared for what's in store, and don't take it out on your family or employees. A significant number of my SEO projects have partly failed or only been partly successful because the client was unable to develop the necessary mind-tools and I was unable to help them in an appropriate way.

In addition, my meta-management techniques are themselves imperfect but they certainly can reduce the psychological impact of dealing with masive data influxes such as this. Without meta-management it's unlikely that full success can be achieved in SEO SEM. Information Overload is too serious of a problem to ignore and for some people is sometimes extremely difficult, even impossible, to conquer.

If you don't have time to read the book, you might prefer this video explanation by Orson Wells.

Future Shock (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ghzomm15yE)

[eMediaSales]

Hi Lynda,

We'll set up the basic SEO system in MM5, configure analytics, set up goal funnels, set up short linking, meta tag sections, an articles content section for the store, etc., for $299.95. I know this doesn't get you all of the way to a full SEO - you still need keywork research to put in the right keywords and add the right content, but I believe it's reasonably priced for the setup.

See our Miva Merchant 5 SEO Kit (http://www.emediasales.com/hosting/seo-marketing/miva-merchant-seo-kit.html) service.

We also play nicely with other developers - a LOT of our work is subcontract based. Leslie, Ben and I split it up based on whose expertise is needed.

best,
James

[lfreeman]

This is what I am looking for, I will get back to you off list, thanks.

Hi Lynda,

We'll set up the basic SEO system in MM5, configure analytics, set up goal funnels, set up short linking, meta tag sections, an articles content section for the store, etc., for $299.95. I know this doesn't get you all of the way to a full SEO - you still need keywork research to put in the right keywords and add the right content, but I believe it's reasonably priced for the setup.

See our Miva Merchant 5 SEO Kit (http://www.emediasales.com/hosting/seo-marketing/miva-merchant-seo-kit.html) service.

We also play nicely with other developers - a LOT of our work is subcontract based. Leslie, Ben and I split it up based on whose expertise is needed.

best,
James

[silvalex]

Biffy, you gather some very interesting points that I'm afraid may fall upon deaf ears as it's a complexity that I believe too many people ignore.

[lfreeman]

But just because I didn't respond doesn't mean I didn't appreciate the insight that he offered. I just didn't have a response to give. I just really need to focus on getting the support that I require, that's all.

Biffy, you gather some very interesting points that I'm afraid may fall upon deaf ears as it's a complexity that I believe too many people ignore.

[Biffy]

The whole point is that almost anyone can hook you up and send you a massive flood of data from Analytics and AdWords. The question is how will you process that data? Are you prepared to handle the large increase in demands on your decision making capacity?

Almost no one can handle it efficiently because it's too much data, too fast with too many decisions to make. While Analytics is a truly marvelous tool, it cannot be used efficiently in its raw form.

In order to achieve efficiency and optimal usage, the reports must be custom designed and amalgamated for the individual user. This can be a very difficult goal to achieve because you are mostly dealing with information overload and stress to the decision making system.

The data you need to be successful is there, it really is, but how do you find it and present it so that decisions can be made efficiently and comfortably? Surprisingly this answer varies with the individual and herein lies the challenge.

You might say that we know how to develop the system and then boil it down to a question of who will spend the necessary time or money to actually do it? Will it take 30 hours or 300 hours? Can this even be predicted? So far I have found no satisfactory answer.

We can supply the client with a full integration for $200 to $500, but the system isn't very useful in its default form. It takes far too long to examine all the reports because there are thousands and thousands of them. In a real-world application it becomes impossible to micro-manage the system and extract the gold nuggets of data. The client does what they can and decides to ignore all the rest. In almost all cases they are not aware that they are filtering out valuable data.

In a meta-management system the administrator would define the gold nuggets and the system would do all the grunt work automatically. The data is presented as a very small set of compound graphs. The decision making becomes a small set of yes-no decisions that only takes a few minutes of time.

Imagine yourself trying to manage 100,000 keywords in 3,000 separate geo-targeted markets compounded by temporal targeting and seasonal trendlines. What questions would you ask the system and how would you present the answers?

You don't design the system for the data, you define it for the user because that's where the real-world limitations lie. Us humans can only process so much data so fast and can only make so many critical decisions in a day. When these limits are exceeded stress results and defense mechanisms start kicking in.

Us consultants never discuss this. We just don't like to admit we all have limits. Clients don't like it either. However, the more successfully we can deal with this the more profitable and stress-free our clients will be in the area of Analytics. I firmly believe meta-management techniques can increase our data processing and decison making capacites by 100 or even 1000 for Analytics.