The Final Chapters...

Job…
Yesterday was not the best day for me. I was forced to accept a lay-off from my job. I was bumped out of my business office position by a displaced transcriptionist. My only other option was to bump someone else out of a 4:00 to midnight shift in housekeeping - but we all know that would not work for a person taking night classes. (Besides, I can’t even keep my own apartment clean!) For now, I am an unemployed full-time graduate student. I now have a completely new opinion about the benefits of being in a Union.

Internet Marketing…
When I first started this class, I wondered if I would be able to keep up. Now, here we are at the end of course, and I'm almost done with everything. It was fun to “meet” new people and reconnect with others. The material that I learned about will be valuable as I try to market myself into a new job.

Seth Godin…
Even though I unsubscribed to Seth’s blog, I still check it out now and then. His post from June 24, 2010 is called You’re Already Self Employed. I couldn’t have asked for a more timely and appropriate reminder. He tells us that the decisions and actions we take each day determine what we'll be doing next. It’s time to reconfigure my goals and set some new timelines for my future. I can do that.

My Blog…
As a total beginner in the blog department, I really enjoyed this assignment. It was a great opportunity to connect the course material with a real website and learn more about the application of recommendations.

Module 8 – Social Media…
President Barack Obama has been called the first social media president. When Obama was a candidate, his Twitter account was one of the most popular accounts. Obama also campaigned with the assistance of YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn and other popular social media tools (Zarella, p. 5). I think this shows that social media marketing can be extremely successful when used appropriately, and that its popularity and usefulness will continue to grow.

Companies need to engage their customers in social media opportunities (Zarella, p.1). When a company does not participate in social media marketing, they are missing out. Tide.com invites website guests to become a member of their Tide Community. You can ask questions, share ideas, suggest tips, and generally communicate with other members. Tide also uses Twitter and has a Facebook account. The website also provides a number of videos, including customer testimonials. This is a great way to allow customers to participate and share their stories. I am always amazed at the new things I discover when searching on the websites. I am satisfied that Tide is staying current with social media opportunities.

See you later…
I just wanted to say thanks to everyone for making this class so much fun. Thanks, Jim, for helping me discover new interests and teaching me so much about internet marketing. I am confident that parts of this class will stay with me and give me some guidance as I move forward in life.

Harley's Social Media Marketing

Web 2.0 refers to web applications that allow information sharing and collaboration on the World Wide Web. Users are allowed to interact as contributors to website content. The Social Media Marketing Strategy PowerPoint by Mary Lou Roberts, Slide #6, lists the following as some examples for “Web 2.0” social media:

• Blogs
• RSS
• Social Networks
• Personalized Search
• Wikis
• Podcasts
• Virtual Worlds

I was not at all surprised to see that the Harley Davidson website was taking advantage of interactive social media opportunities with the invitation to follow Harley-Davidson on Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, and Twitter. I also found a blog located under the Museum tab. There are blog entries about museum activities and events and comments related to the Harley-Davidson museum.

While checking things out further, I discovered another social opportunity for users to contribute to the website. In the Ride Planner section, visitors can plan their next adventure. Similar to driving directions on Mapquest, a Harley user can enter a trip starting point and destination point and receive a route map. Harley visitors can also share route plans with other riders. A recent contribution was called “Mike’s Twisty Ride from Oakville to Caledon.” (Wherever that is!)

Harley Davidson is keeping up with respect to social media marketing, and I’m guessing that many of their customers are pleased with the efforts. When Mike stops at a wayside rest because of motion sickness from the twisty roads, he can check for any Hog Twitter Updates and then tweet right back! According to Zarrella, p. 59, the most important aspect of a social network is two people connecting. Mission accomplished.

Internet Marketing and Our Websites - HarleyDavidson:Tide:Jeep:MinnesotaTwins:Target

Over the past seven weeks, I have been investigating and writing about various aspects of the five “chosen” websites for this course, and I have really learned a lot. This week’s section about off-page optimization was very interesting. Having a number of quality links to your website can help improve your Google ranking (Fleishner, page 56). Listed below is the reported number of websites linking in to our designated sites, according to the results search on Google:

• Target: 2040
• Harley Davidson: 962
• Jeep: 631
• Minnesota Twins: 410
• Tide: 161

Target tops the list and Tide is at the bottom. Since all of the websites are well known, their number of incoming links is probably somewhat irrelevant. Their customer base is already established, so being on top of the Google search page is likely not their priority. Search engine optimization efforts can definitely help websites that are not as well known as these popular companies.

Jennifer Van Iderstyne posted a ClickZ article on June 8, 2010 called Build Links Without a Computer. She offered some very simple ideas to establish some quality links without using the internet. Van Iderstyne recommends getting back to some of the basics. You can create some great links by direct communication with a telephone call, snail mail, or in person. On page 72, Fleischner gives an example of an email request to propose a link exchange with another website. Van Iderstyne suggests putting a real voice to the request. Personal communication can lead to possible links. Whenever the opportunity arises, talk about the content and value of your website, and remember to talk about linking potential.

Our five websites seem to be up to speed with the various tips we have learned about off-page optimization or increasing the popularity of their site (Fleischner, page 52). After looking at each one, I found evidence supporting their use of various link building techniques. I uncovered press releases and blogs which can both aid in link development. Each of the websites definitely offered something of value to the visitor, including information and promotions. Judging from the obvious familiarity and the individual company successes, I would say that the websites for Tide, Target, Jeep, Harley Davidson and the Minnesota Twins are doing the right thing with their marketing.

Twins Turn!

I feel like it’s time to give the Twins a turn. As I’ve mentioned before, I look at the Twins website on a fairly regular basis. If a person searches for “Minnesota Twins," the website is number one on the Google search page. If you type in “Twins” on Google, the first three organic results are related to Minnesota Twins baseball. The results are www.twinsbaseball.com, twins.mlb.com and minnesota.twins.mlb.com. Any of the top three results will take a person directly to the Minnesota Twins main website, even though the names of the top three results appear as if they are different. Nice job of optimization going on here. I also found it interesting that the five featured link ads on the search page were completely unrelated to baseball. The paid ads all referred to some aspect of twin pregnancy!

So – what helps the Twins reach the top? For one thing, they have 711,000 linked in websites. Since the Twins are at the top, it is likely that there are a large number of quality external links that include the Twins keywords. It is very important that external links to a website contain specific keywords rather than something like “click here” (Fleischner, page 58).

What else? Located directly on the Twins homepage, I found a message inviting me to start my own Twins Major League Blog and join communities like these: Fantasy 411, Voice from Twins Territory, Michael Cuddyer's Blog, Twins Ballpark Update, and Kelly's Corner. There are five blogs, easily accessible to any visitor. Blogs are a great tool to boost search engine optimization efforts (Fleischner, page 77).

And one more…Google values one-way links above all else (Fleischner, page 57). The best way to attract one-way links is to promote free content (Fleischner, page 89). The Twins website is full of free content. There are plenty of headlines and news articles, a pretty intriguing sweepstakes offer, a chance to vote for All-Star players, and an invitation to have game updates forwarded directly to your cell phone. The options available at the Twins website are diverse and could attract a broad range of visitors. It seems like they are trying to offer something for everyone. Whatever it is that they are doing, it seems to be working! Go Twins!

Oh, and speaking of the Twins, I'll be at Target Field cheering them on this Wednesday and Thursday :)

Keyword: Tide?

When I hear the word Tide, I think of laundry soap - a product that you buy at a store and use to wash clothes. My initial attempt at a laundry list of keywords for Tide would probably include words that reflect washing clothes: soap, detergent, clean, wash, laundry, and of course, Tide. There are varying opinions on the importance of keywords. They are probably not very significant standing alone, but when used in combination with the webpage theme, keywords will help Google recognize legitimate webpage content (Fleischner, p.24).

The source information at Tide.com on June 9, 2010 revealed the following list of keywords and phrases: official Tide site; get info; detergent; stains; stain solutions; variants; scents; value; coupons; products; articles; loads of hope; questions; search; contact Tide; message board. Detergent and stains make a lot of sense to use as keywords for Tide, but I wonder why they chose variants, get info, questions and search as keywords. It is not a good idea to use a specific keyword if no one uses it when searching online (Fleischner, p.25). I find it hard to believe that a person would search for “products” or “value” in an effort to find the Tide website.

Sage Lewis posted an article on ClickZ dated June 1, 2010 called The Beginning – A Very Good Place to Start. Lewis agrees with Fleischner on this keyword subject. Lewis stressed the importance of completing appropriate research on keyword phrases in order to connect with customers. Vocabulary used within a specific company can often be completely different than a customer’s vocabulary. In order to increase search engine rankings, you should use the words your potential visitors use when looking for your website.

When it comes to keywords at the Tide website, I would certainly think that “Tide” should be among the chosen words. I guess it is possible that Tide is such a strong, familiar product that the keyword meta tags don’t have to be a priority. I went to Google and searched for “stain solutions” and Tide.com was listed on the second page. When I searched for detergent, I found Tide.com in the 4th spot on the first page. I typed in “questions” and Tide.com was nowhere to be found. So, why does Tide.com use “questions” as a keyword? Good question.

Searching Target

I wonder if the Website Designers at Target have read SEO Made Simple. According to this book, one of the first lessons on search engine optimization is that meta tags play a very large role in the Google ranking competition. There are four basic meta tags: Title, Description, Keywords and Robots (Fleischner, p. 21). I decided to take a closer look at some of Target.com’s meta tags.

On Monday, June 7, the source information at Target.com showed the following listed as keywords: patio furniture, furniture, gardening tools, swimwear, baby, electronics, toys, bedding, shoes, sporting goods, shop online.

I went to Google, searched for patio furniture and found Target.com on page 2. Next, I typed in gardening tools and found Target.com on page 8. After that, I did a search for toys and found Target.com towards the bottom of the first page in the 9th spot. Target.com ended up on page 3 when I searched for swimwear. For some reason, I expected Target to be on the first page of every search.

Moving on, I found that the source information for the Title meta tag at Target.com showed the following: Target.com & dash; Furniture, Patio Furniture, Baby, Swimwear, Toys and more. The content of this title is nine words and 63 characters including spaces. Basic guidelines indicate that a title tag should be no more than seven words and less than 60 characters including spaces (Fleischner, p. 22). Each word in the title tag is weighted by Google, so too many words in the title will result in diminished importance of each word. When the title is longer than 60 characters it will run off and be finished with trailing dots. Target.com is over the limit on both of these recommendations; however, I found the title was presented in full on my Google search.

Meta tags are just one part of search engine optimization, but Target should take a closer look at their keywords and title. Maybe some adjustments would help them improve their Google ranking. On the other hand, maybe Target is so well established in both the online and offline community that they don’t need to worry about search engine optimization. Either way, reading the book couldn’t hurt.

Websites and Roberts and Blogs, Oh My!

I submitted maurices.com to Hubspot’s website grader. They received a grade of 90. After reviewing the results, my recommendations for the maurices.com website included the following:

1. Clarify or simplify the content to reflect a more appropriate readability level. Their current rating indicates a readability level of advanced/doctoral degree. They would better serve their customers by bringing the reading level down to at least a high school level.

2. Establish necessary relationships with other reputable websites in order to increase the number of inbound links to it. Maurices.com had 9,339 inbound links compared to almost 32,000 inbound links for the competitor I chose. Jeanne Hopkins posted a blog entry on Friday, April 30, 2010, at HubSpot's Inbound Internet Marketing Blog called “Oh No! My Website Grader Score Went Down!” It states in the post that a link from CNN.com or NYTimes.com will increase a website's authority. The more authority your site has, the greater the likelihood that Google and Bing will place it higher in their organic results.

3. Metadata tags tell the search engines what a web page is about. Maurices.com should shorten the page title for better results. The maximum recommended length for page titles is 70 characters and the current page title is over double that at 143 characters.

Just for fun, I submitted Target.com to the website grader. Their website received a grade of 99. Target’s readability level was reported as secondary/high school. Target has more than 320,000 inbound links and their page title was within the recommended number of characters.

Target seems to do most things very well, so it is not surprising that Target’s online privacy policy is very detailed. Consumer privacy concerns are self-regulated by individual businesses (Roberts, p. 311), and Target clearly provides a lot of information. The website tells their consumers what information they collect, how they share it, and how to limit the sharing of information. According to a study that dealt with direct marketing practices, 33.3% of people rarely read website privacy policies and 4.5% of people always read them (Roberts, p. 308). Personally, I fall into the “rarely read” category.

We are all aware of the privacy issues that can occur when we go online, but for most of us it must be worth the risk. It’s hard (impossible, really) to imagine life today without the internet.

"Back" to Target

When I get lost at the Target website, I just hit the “Back” button until I arrive at the place where I am no longer confused. More often than not, I have landed back on the home page of the website. To me, there is something comforting about the Target home page. It could be that my personal familiarity and satisfaction with the website inspires positive emotion. Emotion/attitude is one of the four dimensions of customer interface that contribute to the customer experience (Roberts, p.265). In my case, Target has succeeded in this aspect of the customer experience.

When it comes to the navigational structure on a website, one important rule is that the visitor should always be able to navigate the site without instructions by following familiar web conventions or simple logic (Roberts, p. 259). One example suggests use of the corporate logo as a link to the home page.

The upper left corner of all pages that I reviewed on the Target website displays a target sign, which is their logo. All a visitor has to do is click on the target and they are immediately taken to the home page. I honestly had never clicked on the target before because as noted, I just use the “back” button. Apparently, there is no need for any specific directions telling the customers to click on the target logo for the home page because it is assumed that this action would be logical and common to internet users.

The Target website appears to be designed so that customers can easily select a department that will provide them with the products they are interested in researching or purchasing. Every page that I looked at provided the department categories in the same location across the top of the page. The consistency eliminates confusion. The main ad on the home page today shows a picture of two girls on a bike who seem like they are happy and having fun. Websites should be developed and designed to be responsive to the need for information and the attitude with which the visitor enters the site (Roberts, p. 254). Target seems to be right on target with maintaining an effective website.