Mike Moran thinks that Six Sigma isn’t relevant to internet marketing.

“Six Sigma is an excellent way to deliver high quality with repeatable processes, such as manufacturing your product, but it is exactly the wrong goal in Internet marketing.”

Bryan Eisenberg, on the other hand, thinks that it is important enough to build into the web marketing process.

“It may sound like pure theory, but Six Sigma is practical and yields enormous return on investment (ROI). We apply its principles to Web marketing…”

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The creation of an online Internet marketing test where anyone can contribute is an interesting experiment.

We all know the jokes about how groups are incompetent and this is reinforced by our experience in meetings where a lot of time is wasted. The other side of the coin is eloquently supported by James Surowiecki who wrote a book called The “Wisdom of Crowds”.

Social Media Internet Marketing Test
Ths Internet Marketing Test is a different kind of wisdom that I don’t think was mentioned in James Surowiecki’s book as we are not just looking for answers. In this case we are asking people to contribute the questions as well as the answer.

It will be interesting to see if the Social Media Internet Marketing Test brings good results.

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I thought it was interesting that here in Israel, Google and Microsoft located their offices very close to each other as you can see below.

I had to wade into the water so you could see how close the Google and Microsoft offices are. You can see my sandals in the foreground. Click to enlarge.

Close up of Google’s offices

Close up of Microsoft’s offices

Israel is a very small country and it isn’t unusual for competitors to locate near each other.

There are also great reasons to locate here in Haifa (full disclosure–my office is in Haifa too):

• A beautiful view of the beach
• Close to the Technion–with a great supply of excellent engineering graduates (full disclosure again: I am a Technion graduate)
• Close proximity to freeway and train

Despite our marching towards a global village it seems like local customs still influence multinationals. It is nice that both Google and Microsoft employees can enjoy the view of the Mediterranean.

The Israeli beach–not a bad view for hard working search engine people.

Most of our website usability testing continues through the last step of the shopping cart but we usually don’t actually buy the item. However in our last test, I decided to get my wife a present and had the item shipped to my office so I could surprise her.

I was pleasantly surprised when the present arrived the next day as I only requested regular delivery. However, when I opened the box my marketing instincts told me something was wrong. There was no promotional materials in the box—no catalog, no up selling, or cross selling.

Another lesson learned—usability testing should include actually ordering and receiving the item. I passed on the information to the company owner and of course she said, “You’re right—we will start including appropriate materials right away”. My wife, by the way, was very happy to get a new outfit.

Do you think I can write the expense off my taxes under usability testing?

I found a web analytics book worth reading. Although I knew almost everything Avinash Kaushik wrote, I learned more from this book than any other one source.

Finding out what your web site users think by talking to them comes up many times in the book. This is very important, however smaller companies may not have the resources to do this offline research in a scientific manner. In those cases you could make contact with people who converted. Although this is a very special segment, it is better than not contacting anyone. As Avinash emphasizes, with web analytics most of the data won’t be perfect and we have to base our actions on what we have.

Comparing traffic trends to competitor’s on Alexa is another good idea, but the figures will not be accurate for small companies (and not completely accurate for big ones either as he notes).

MSN drives less traffic to most of my clients, so I spend less time on MSN. Avinash points out one tip I really liked — the MSN search funnel. It shows you what people search for before and after your keyword. This can give you many insights and it is a lot of fun. I tried it with keywords for one of my B2B clients and nothing came up, as I expected. However it is worth checking out for more mainstream keywords.

Although I didn’t count all the graphs shown in the book from different web analytics packages, I have the impression that graphs from ClickTracks outnumber all the others combined. This is probably due to its ease of use and ability to show important information if you know what kind of labels you need to segment visitors. Ease of configuration should not be overlooked when choosing a web analytics package. As you dig deeper into your statistics you will find more and more things to check and configure and if you have to rely on your IT people it will slow you down.

Today we posted our SEO Cartoon Quiz. I hope it will create a lot of smiles in the Internet marketing community (I don’t think regular people will get the jokes). As soon as we finished setting up the quiz a lot more ideas started to come to us. Maybe we will have to put out another edition one day.

Before we answer that, let’s see what is going on. Below you can see that when I searched for PDF files on Google’s search engine with the word technology you can see the file I was looking for as the 2^nd result. Where does the title (the first line in purple) come from?

By clicking on the link I get the PDF file shown below. You can see that the title shown in the search engine was taken from the heading on the first page.

Google didn’t bother to fill out the title field in the PDF. The title field is shown below.

Google can get away with doing this because they are careful about using good headings. Can you also get by without bothering to fill out the title field?

It depends. If you have a good heading then you can skip the title field. However, if the title is a graphic, or if it doesn’t accurately describe the content, or if you are missing keywords you can do one of two things to rectify the situation:

1. Change the heading to reflect the content, add your keywords and make sure the heading is not a graphic
2. Add a title tag to the PDF. This is easily done if you have the proper software (Adobe Acrobat for example)

Most people realize that different languages demand different keywords and strategies. However, English is a special case. It is now the de facto international language leaving Esperanto in the dust.

Not everyone pays enough attention to the fact that English is used differently by different users. There are more second language English speakers than native English speakers in the world Their use of English is different than native English speakers. There are also many different English dialects. North American English and British English are the most well known. Consider these examples where the first term is used by Americans and the second by the English:

• Diapers vs. Nappies
• Apartment vs Flat
• Elevator vs. Lift
• Uterine Fibroids vs. Myoma

Consider the following factors when working on an English Global Search Engine Marketing Strategy

• Use of different words to describe the same thing by different people
• People who know English as a second language have a tendency to make more typos and spelling mistakes when they search for keywords.
• People who know English as a second language use less sophisticated searches – fewer keywords in the string and simpler words

All these factors should be taken into account when starting a Search Engine Marketing Strategy. Also, don’t forget to make sure your landing pages use simpler language for your visitors who use English as a second language.

Before the advent of the Internet, one of advertising’s most famous sayings was:

“I know I waste half the money I spend on advertising,” department store pioneer John Wanamaker said. “The problem is, I don’t know which half.”

Many times I use this to demonstrate the advantages of internet marketing over the old methods. By analyzing log files it is relatively easy to find out which advertising campaigns are working. However I now have a new saying:

“I know that only half of what is written about search engine optimization is correct. The only problem is that most people don’t know which half”.

Can You Believe What You Read About the Keyword Metatag?

I recently ran across an interesting report on SEO ranking factors. Here you can see that many SEO leaders don’t agree on basic issues. However, one subject where there is high agreement is regarding the Keyword Metatag. – it is of slight importance.

However, when you read the comments it becomes obvious that there isn’t much agreement about anything except for the slight importance. Many people are not really sure how Google relates to the Keyword Metatag and say: I think…, Probably.., I don’t think…

Others are sure that Google does not look at them at all. However, I know for a fact that Google does look at them because I have seen them in the SERPs (search engine results page). This is a rare occurrence but it does show that this tag is not ignored.

What Can We Believe?

This just goes to show that the best approach is to test things for yourself. And realize that for different keyword spaces and competition levels, you need different strategies.

The rule to optimize for only 1-2 keywords per page has been repeated so often that it has become set in stone. Actually, some people say 2-3 and others say 3-4. I did a check in Google for: optimize page “1-2 keywords” -searching. I replaced the numbers each time and the one with the most sites turned out to be 2-3. If democracy is truth then 2-3 keywords is the way to go.

So is it best to optimize each page for 2-3 keywords?

The truth is that it depends on the competition, back links and the importance of the keyword.

For example, if there is very little competition, you can optimize for more keywords on a page. Even if you don’t get a top position for each keyword you can still get traffic if you have a visible position (a visible position is defined by how many positions your persistent clients are willing to consider before starting a new search).

If there is a lot of competition you may want to create a new page so you optimize less keywords on each page. However if you can’t justify the time, you can also create an ad very quickly on the search engines. It is usually faster to create an ad than an additional page which has to be optimized. The results are also more predictable. The disadvantage is that you must pay for every click and costs have a tendency to go up with time.

In many cases you may want to create a new page and an ad to show on the search engines. Make sure to test to see if your ads are cannibalizing your natural search positions.

A strategy for each keyword

Depending on the circumstances you may optimize existing pages, create new ones, run search engine ads or use a combination of the above. Don’t rely on conventional wisdom regarding the number of keywords to optimize for on each page. Every keyword needs its own strategy.