It’s finally official: usability can be used for evil.

I’ve always suspected this to be true. After all, even the most innocuous of items””children’s toys””recently were transformed into agents for evil, so how could so powerful a concept as usability not be turned to the dark side? But now Jakob Nielsen has made the full evil potential of usability public knowledge in his recent Banner Blindness research report.

OK, I admit I’m a little puzzled at Jakob’s dramatic tone. Is this really news? Is the manipulative capacity of usability really surprising to anyone? And even if so, isn’t there a larger, more important message here than the awesome power of banner ads?

I mean, one doesn’t have to look far for examples of truly scary technologies out there, and people doing their best to forestall abuse by publicizing and educating on them.

Scarier things, by far, than banner ads

For instance, here’s a technology with clear potential for both good and evil: facial morphing.

Back in 2005, Jeremy N. Bailenson, Shanto Iyengar, & Nick Yee of the Stanford Virtual Reality lab conducted a study titled “Facial Identity Capture and Presidential Candidate Preference.”

The question posed was whether morphing a Presidential candidate’s face so it looks slightly like, say, my face, would increase my preference for that candidate. So, in other words, would a slightly Sandra-looking George Bush be more appealing to me, assuming my mind wasn’t already made up one way or the other?

The answer was YES. Evidently, we humans strongly prefer people who resemble us.

The scary part of this study, though, is that NO-ONE detected the morph. Each study participant thought they were seeing a plain photo of the candidates.

Imagine, if you will, the hellish combination of an evil-optimized banner ad (one that follows the anti-recommendations in Jakob’s post) coupled with an animated sales avatar, say from a company like SitePal, morphed to look like you. And how does it know what you look like? It did some realtime research, grabbed a photo off your IM account, or your blog, or Flickr. Or you have a webcam hooked up and turned on, and it captured your face that way.

However it managed to get your photo, the result would be devastatingly effective.

Not only would your eyes be reeled helplessly to the banner ad, you’d be unable to resist the sales pitch of the virtual being who looks so… familiar, somehow.

My, that’s an outstanding argument for buying a Lear jet, and I don’t believe I’ve ever met such a well-spoken, attractive salesperson. Where do I wire money?

Whoa. Now there’s something to worry about. Top that for scary, Jakob.

(Here’s an avatar that looks ever-so-vaguely like me. Similar enough that I’m already feeling the pull… She has a much bigger office than I do, though.)

When my brother, sisters and I were growing up, my father used to throw out all kinds of random euphemisms in everyday conversations. Some are expressions that you’ve probably heard yourself from time to time. One or two of them I actually wonder if he cleverly made up himself because I’ve never, ever heard them elsewhere. “Amy, you’re digging where there are no potatoes!” Huh? These expressions became such common staples in our household that my siblings and I affectionately refer to them now as
‘Mike-isms’.

Though I didn’t entirely grasp the meaning of these expressions when I was younger, I eventually decoded these cryptic metaphors and they have stuck with me into adulthood. In fact, oddly enough I came to the realization the other day that many of these ‘Mike-isms’ happen to have a great deal of relevance in the SEO world.

“Stop Digging Where There Are No Potatoes”

What it Means As a Mike-ism: Wasting effort, energy and/or emotion worrying about something that might never even happen or that is based on mere speculation.

What it Means As a SEO-ism: In the SEO world, digging where there are no potatoes translates to the non-art of arbitrarily picking keywords to optimize your site pages for and spending months waiting for high rankings… just to find out that either a) these are not terms targeted to your audience and therefore they are not driving traffic or conversions; or b) you’ve chosen terms that have little to no search volume because you didn’t bother to use keyword research tools. Essentially, you’ve wasted the past 2-3 months digging where there are no SEO potatoes (or ‘organic’ potatoes if you will).

How to Avoid Digging Where There Are No SEO Potatoes: Quite simply, use keyword tools such as Keyword Discovery, WordTracker or the plethora of other free and paid options to decide which terms to target – not your gut. Focus your efforts on choosing terms that have a balance of sufficient search volume to fuel traffic and conversions, reasonable competition, a direct tie-in to information rich pages on your site and that are well-focused (ie. don’t be foolish and try to optimize for the term ‘car’ simply because you are a car dealer in Boise, Idaho because it will NEVER happen).

Additionally, if you have the means to run a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign for a good 1-3 months before starting SEO efforts, definitely do so! Take advantage of what my colleague Sandra Niehaus refers to as the ‘Ferrari of Search’. PPC represents a unique opportunity to test hundreds to thousands of keywords in the real market and determine which ones truly convert and produce the best ROI. During this PPC test period, be sure to use Exact Match in Google and Standard Match in Yahoo to ensure that the terms that receive reported conversions are actually the terms that were searched.

Also, run a variety of A/B tests on ad copy so that you can learn which elements resonate best with your key audiences. Apply this knowledge to your meta descriptions to increase organic click-through.

View it as a case study. Take this newfound, real-world, valuable knowledge and apply it to your SEO efforts… and this time get your SEO efforts right the first time around.

***And oh yeah… by the way, “Digging Where There Are No SEO Potatoes” is also known as “Barking up the Wrong Tree”***

“Burning Your Candle at Both Ends”
What it Means As a Mike-ism: Doing too much and overexerting yourself.

What it Means As a SEO-ism: In SEO world, this is the practice of over-optimizing. You burnt your SEO candle at both ends when you suddenly and not-so-inconspicuously enlisted 2000 inbound links to your site - seemingly from nowhere and practically overnight. Your target keywords are used repeatedly, excessively and un-naturally throughout your copy. You’ve left no title tag, meta description, alt tag, heading tag or keyword tag unturned. And, being the overachiever that you are, you did it ALL in the course of a day… for all 142 pages of your site. Phew!

Not only have you angered the search engine gods, but you’ve also managed to achieve a hideous user experience as your copy now reads something like:

“We sell red shoes of all types. We have Nike red shoes, Reebok red shoes, Adidas red shoes and many other name-brand red shoes. If you like red shoes, be sure to come check out our red shoes.”

How to Avoid Burning Your SEO Candle at Both Ends: Know that if you are sacrificing user experience for SEO rankings, then you are overdoing it. If you’re lucky you may achieve some fleeting and fickle high rankings, but don’t think for a second that this will be a long term trend. In time, you will inevitably burn your SEO candle at both ends.

Instead, apply logical optimization techniques focusing initial efforts on well-written title tags, meta descriptions (not necessarily for ranking importance, but to entice click-through), alt tags and headings. Make copy tweaks to tie in variations of your targeted terms, but be absolutely sure that any changes you make do not diminish the quality of the copy from a human perspective.

In the midst of all of this onsite optimization, begin the ongoing process of seeking out relevant inbound links that are a natural complement to your offerings.

“Making a Mountain Out of a Molehill”
What it Means As a Mike-ism: Making a bigger deal out of something than it really is.

What it Means As a SEO-ism: Achieving Top 10 rankings (woo-hoo!), but yet those high rankings don’t drive traffic and/or conversions to your site (ohhh…).

A great example of making a mountain out of a SEO molehill, years ago a company looking for SEO services issued a ‘challenge’. They were shopping out several agencies and a so-called ‘competitor’ told them they could guarantee to get them in the #1 position in Google for ‘Ann Arbor intellectual property attorney”. They wanted to know who else could promise the same.

OK… first of all, most of us would have to agree that guaranteeing #1 rankings often equates to false, empty promises. #1 rankings should not be guaranteed, long tail term or not, as we do not control the search engines, we simply influence them.

But aside from that point of contention, I suppose ‘Ann Arbor intellectual property attorney’ sounds really great and all, but upon digging deeper it turns out to have negligible search volume:

(Source: Google AdWords Keyword Tool; Keyword Discovery confirms zero search volume as well)

By all means, anyone with SEO experience could very well get this company to rank highly, even #1, for ‘Ann Arbor intellectual property attorney’ if they chose to focus their efforts here! But they certainly would be trying to make a mountain out of a molehill. Any bottom-line focused SEO professional would rather help this company rank highly for terms that are actually going to send potential clients to their website… otherwise what’s the point?

How to Avoid Making Mountains Out of SEO Molehills: Know that Top 10 or #1 rankings are only a means to an end. Don’t assume that just because you are #1 for any given term that your job is done. It’s not.

Gauge SEO success instead by traffic, leads and sales - and make sure you are tracking online activity religiously to prove it. SEO is an ongoing cycle of executing, measuring and testing, analyzing and revising as needed to get it right. If you find that the ‘rock star’ term that you thought was going to bring you search engine fame isn’t proving to be as fabulous as you anticipated, don’t be afraid to change gears and go back to the beginning with new terms to target, if need be.

Lastly, I couldn’t help it… I felt some odd compulsion to bring in a modern day expression translated to a SEO-ism - I suppose for the sake of staying young, fresh and hip…

“Oh no you di’int!” (must be accompanied by a furiously wagging finger).
What it Means as a Mike-ism: Okay… my dad most definitely would not say “Oh no you di’int”. But it can often be heard on Jerry Springer episodes or MTV reality shows.

What it Means as a SEO-ism: What the Google Search Quality Team says right before they put you in the penalty box for black hat techniques. In use…

Matt Cutts: “White on white text? Oh no you di’int!”

How to Avoid Google’s ‘Oh No You Di’int!’: Best put by Jill Whalen in a recent Search Engine Land article: “Good, professional SEO that puts users first while keeping search engines in mind would never be considered spam by any stretch of a search engineer’s imagination.”

Setting Client Expectations for SEO

Show of hands: how many SEO professionals reading this have been asked whether they can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google?

We have. It’s a common misperception that getting a #1 ranking is a reasonable, achievable, and sustainable goal for pretty much anyone who puts their mind to it. And why wouldn’t clients assume this? There are plenty of ads promising guaranteed top rankings, usually phrased like a used-car-salesman pitch and with about as much credibility.

I mean, think about it. If these companies could always deliver what they promised, Google would need a horizontal display to accommodate the multitude of #1 rankings!

Seriously, though. When we’re asked for a guaranteed top ranking we have to respond with, “Of course that’d be great, and it’s certainly something we strive for, but we can’t absolutely promise that. And here’s why….”

Which is so much less compelling than an unqualified YES.

So if we don’t guarantee a top ranking on Google, what can we guarantee? If it’s up to us to define what clients should expect from a successful SEO campaign, what do we tell them?

A Question of Control

At times I envy my colleague Amy Konefal on the Paid Search side of our business. Compared to Search Engine Optimization, PPC is so concrete, so specific, so… controllable. It’s fast. Agile. Responsive - the Ferrari of Search. Want a top ranking? No problem, let me log in and ramp up that bid, or add some negative keywords to the Adgroup. There, try searching again. See? There we are at the top! High fives all around!

It’s really irritating.

It almost makes me happy to see Google’s Quality Score throwing a wrench into all that carefree PPC celebration.

SEO, by comparison, can seem mysterious and arbitrary to clients, a perception not diminished by unpredictable algorithm changes and Google’s often vague, delphic statements about what tactics work, what tactics could trigger an index ban, and what constitutes a quality, high-ranking web page.

So we do our best to set clear, realistic expectations up front, clarifying what’s possible and what the client will have to do to achieve it.

Great Expectations

While setting expectations is usually a custom exercise tailored to each client, here are a few of the common themes we make sure to communicate:

Expectation #1: SEO is not an exact science.

Communicating the inexact nature of SEO is an important first step. Rankings are affected by many factors, not all of which are within our or the client’s direct control. For instance:

• The SEO efforts of competitors
• changes to search engine algorithms
• a client company’s SEO-unfriendly CMS platform, directory structure, file-naming protocol, or META tagging standard that’s not going away anytime soon
• an upper-executive’s selection of keywords to target

All of these and many other uncontrollable factors influence the success of an SEO campaign.

Expectation #2: Rankings are important, but not the whole story

A narrow focus on rankings alone ignores other important considerations, ones that can make the business case for SEO much more effectively and concretely than rankings alone. For instance:

• Traffic from organic search. One of the major reasons for achieving high rankings in the first place is to increase the amount of traffic to a site. If traffic numbers increase noticeably after SEO improvements go live and maintain over time, SEO efforts can receive the credit.
• Conversions from organic search traffic. The quality of organic search traffic can be another measure of SEO’s success and value to an organization. One way to measure this is to track conversions (of whatever type your client’s site offers) from organic search traffic, and compare the quantity pre- and post-SEO efforts.
• Branding, credibility and competitive advantage. While less easy to measure directly, improved rankings (even if not the #1 spot) translate into more visibility for your client’s site and less for their competitors. Every results spot filled by a client’s page is one more chance for them to appear in front of their potential clients and customers.

Expectation #3: SEO is judged by improvement, not arbitrary targets

Moving clients away from a hard numeric goal (”We have to be #1 for ‘music’”) to one of improvement over time is key to managing an SEO project. While we may not guarantee a specific ranking, in our experience we can guarantee overall improvement in rankings, traffic, and visibility.

Expectation #4: Trends are important. Minor fluctuations are not.

Everyone’s experienced it. An optimized and link-built page finally hits the top five, only to drop three positions the next day. Panic time, right? No. Time to note the interesting little change and reassure the client.

Like a strategic stock market investor, we’re more interested in data trends than individual data points. We need a broader view than a single day’s worth of data to give quality advice. Yes, perhaps we dropped three positions today. But when we look at performance over the past month or quarter, what’s the trend? Of course, we slice and dice trends in various ways to gain as much clarity as possible. For instance, we might look at an individual page’s performance for its targeted keywords, or look at organic traffic trends for a group of strategic keywords. And of course we pay special attention to trends pre- and post-optimization efforts.

Expectation #5: Improvements depend on implementation

A caveat to Expectation #3 is this - our recommendations have to actually be implemented in order for them to work. For some clients this is no problem, but many have technical or other restrictions that limit the amount or type of tactic we are able to employ for them. So, to help set expectations in this area we set priorities, indicate which approaches would be most effective for the client, and clearly communicate the possibility of reduced results if the most effective tactics are not implemented.

Expectation #6: A ranking is more valuable if it’s for the right page

Here is an area where we differ with some SEOs, because it goes directly to visitor experience. We think a top ranking for a page that provides a poor experience isn’t much of a win because it’s not sustainable.

Visitors who click through a result listing only to find a confusing, difficult or irrelevant page aren’t likely to return. Or remember your company’s brand with affection, if at all. So what do you have to show for your top ranking but a bunch of useless, bouncing traffic? (unless, I concede, your business model is based solely on traffic numbers).

Success Through Education

We’re firm believers in SEO evangelism and education, which is why one of our service offerings is SEO training. The more a client understands about how SEO works and what factors influence success, the more they’ll spread the word and build consensus among their wider team. Which means when it comes time to change filenames, update the site directory structure, create new keyword-rich content, or get a budget approved, those involved will already be on board.

This, then, is our true long-term strategy for setting client expectations; to create educated clients who already understand what to expect.

I gave a talk at Web Design World in Seattle last month on Balancing Design, Usability & SEO. While doing some research on that presentation, I was trying to find some examples of sites that were strong in only one of these areas. As I’ve done some work in the printer ink space and knew there were plenty of well-optimized but really ugly and unusable sites there, I did a search on ‘ink cartridge’ and hit the jackpot on the first result.

This site was perfect for my needs: A #1 ranking for an insanely competitive keyword, ugly as hell, and horrifically unusable. Score!

Then I did a link: lookup command on Google to get a sense for the link pop this page has, certain that they must have engaged in some serious link-building to get this result. Little did I know…

As I scanned the results of the link query, I was struck by how many unrelated sites seemed to be linking to InkandStuff.

I figured they could be paid links, but many of the sites listed didn’t seem like the kind you would normally associate with posting paid links. So when I saw a listing for the World Islamic Forum Foundation, I clicked through to figure out why in the world this site was linking to InkandStuff. This is where things get interesting… because I couldn’t find a link on this page.

Now I was REALLY intrigued. Google was seeing the link, so it had to be there, right…? So I did a View Source to check out the code and figure out where the link was, and saw this:

What the…? Google is attributing link popularity to sites who have embedded invisible sponsored links in free stat counters? Apparently so… How else is this awful UK site ranking #1 on Google.com for “ink cartridge”?

So next I figured I’d check out MyWebStats to see what they were all about. Sure enough, on their FAQ page they state:

“If this service is so good, how can it be free?
We are lucky to have sponsors who cover the complete cost of running this service. To show our appreciation we accompany your counter with a small link to one of these sponsors.”

“To show our appreciation” - I love that.

SO - That apparently is the secret to gaming Google. All of Google’s tough talk about paid links and how they’re so proactive about making sure people can’t spam their way to the top is apparently just that - talk. This should be SO easy for Google to detect and act upon, but they haven’t… If they had, InkandStuff and/or MyWebStats would’ve been penalized, right?

I was one of those people who looked down on buying links for a long time. It just seemed wrong - and surely the brain trust at Google would clamp down at some point. I just couldn’t believe that buying your way to the top of the organic results could A) be SO easy, or B) yield sustainable results. That was three years ago.

This scheme of embedding links in free stat counters in order to juice link pop has been around for at least that long - and should be among the easiest for Google to detect. It should be a big yellow flag when a site gets lots of inbound links from totally unrelated sites over a short time period. And it should be really easy to detect the code pattern like the one shown above for those inbound links (it even says “invisible” for God’s sake!). Finally, it is pretty irregular to have a UK page show up at the top of the results for a competitive term like this on Google.com. It seems like that might have thrown a flag somewhere along the line as well. The patterns are easy to spot. But Google is either oblivious to all of these issues or they’ve decided not to do anything about it. I’m not sure which is worse.

People will point out that Google may already be aware of this and not be flowing PageRank from these links, per Matt Cutt’s post here. And maybe InkandStuff has enough link pop from other sources that are driving them to the #1 spot for “ink cartridge.” But I really doubt it. And that argument misses the point. InkandStuff is clearly trying to game Google with this and other activities - and they are doing so quite successfully - to the detriment of searchers and their less-savvy competitors. Bottom line: Google is letting these guys blatantly spam their engine and get away with it.

Rand Fishkin at SEOMoz (on whom one of my team members has what she calls an “SEO crush”) wrote an excellent post on this topic a while back: Paid Links - Can’t Be a White Hat With ‘em, Can’t Rank Without ‘em. (Rand - If you want to know the identity of your secret admirer, slip me a $20 while we’re on stage at SES. Just my way of trying to spice up the otherwise sedate SEM Pricing Models discussion)

But I digress…

It makes it really hard to be white hat SEO practitioners when we see things like this happening. Sadly, this is the second time I’ve run across this exact same scenario (an invisible sponsored link embedded within a different free stat counter) in the past few months while trying to figure out why a really crappy site was ranking so well for a competitive term. So count me among the growing legions of grey hats now, I guess… Given the competitive environment and the fact that “everyone is doing it” now - and it’s working - it no longer serves my clients’ best interests to advise against buying links. I hate saying that, but don’t feel like I have a choice any more. It’s the price of entry if you want top rankings on any competitive terms these days.

I happen to be a big fan and promoter of Google’s. But they risk killing (or at least injuring) the goose that laid their big golden egg if they don’t get more serious about cleaning up their results. Granted much of this may be beyond their control. I don’t expect them to be able to singlehandedly solve this problem for good. But it seems like they could be putting up more of a fight and at least making someone have to work to game their engine. As is, it’s just too easy.

I’m going to report this as a paid link. But their bluster aside, I’m not going to hold my breath hoping it will do any good. I first saw this result two months ago, and as of today both the InkandStuff and MyWebStats sites show a PR6.

There’s nothing I like better than when Google AdWords decides to make our lives as search marketers just a bit easier. If you’re interested in working smarter and improving campaign results, be sure to check out two of the more recent reporting roll-outs - Google’s new Placement Performance Reports and Search Query Reports.

Google Placement Performance Reports – Finally… We now have visibility and CONTROL over where our ads display in the Content Network given Google AdWords’ relatively new Placement Performance Reports.

For the sake of providing some historical context, there definitely has been an evolution in terms of Google’s Content Network offerings. We were granted some control years back when Google decided to let us set separate bids for Content v. Search (and by the way, if you aren’t bidding separately for the Content and Search Networks, you really need to make this change – these really should be viewed and managed separately, as they are entirely different beasts).

The ability to bid separately for Content and Search was definitely a big step towards more control.

Then, another not-so-small victory came about when Google decided to let us exclude sites – nice feature, and another step towards more control. But given that most account managers don’t take the time to dive into their log files, this didn’t help much for those who were clueless as to the source of their traffic in the first place.

But now with Google’s new Placement Performance report, we’ve got quick and easy visibility coupled with control. These reports allow you to see exactly which Content sites are sending you traffic and conversions, and therefore make the right decisions to improve your campaign’s ROI from the Content Network (as opposed to throwing your hands up in the air in frustration and pausing the Content Network all together as many of us did in the past).

For those sites that are driving costly traffic yet few or no conversions, go to your Tools link and choose the Site Exclusion option to eliminate future clicks from these lower performing websites.

For those sites that show up in your Placement Performance Reports as top performers, consider maximizing your exposure by setting up a Site Targeting campaign. With a Site Targeting campaign, you can explicitly choose which sites you want to appear on and therefore maximize exposure on your most effective placements. However, note that I say ‘consider’ Site Targeting because there is one major caveat – you end up paying on a CPM basis if you do this and in my experience thus far, this is a big downgrade in ROI. I’m personally willing to give up the increased control in order to keep my coveted CPC pricing model.

The Placement Performance Reports combined with Site Exclusion is definitely a great combination for increasing ROI on the Content Network… though I have to mention one big flaw. Domain ads. You’ll notice in your Placement Performance Reports that there are line items that say ‘Domain ads’, which refer to Google ads that show up on parked domains. In our experience, these parked domains drive lots of clicks and few conversions… yet currently, Google will not allow advertisers to opt out of domain ads, as you can with individual sites.

Overall though, a thumbs up to Google for granting us this increased level of visibility.

Google Search Query Reports – If you are using Broad or Phrase Match, then Google’s new Search Query Reports will definitely be your friend. Downloading a Search Query report will allow you to pull statistics including conversion information for the specific search queries that were used by the searcher who clicked through on your ad – as opposed to seeing metrics only for the term you were explicitly bidding on in AdWords.

I definitely recommend pulling this report ASAP if you have not already. You will be quite shocked at the terms that you are phrase and broad matching to currently. Many are so completely and totally off the mark it is not even funny - which in turn is creating a whole lot of buzz and well-warranted discontent regarding Google’s Expanded Broad Match (check out Expanded Broad Match Hurting AdWords Advertisers and Up The Creek With Google AdWords Broad Match).

Here are some suggestions for taking the Search Query report data and converting it into a positive in terms of ROI.

For those terms that are driving traffic yet not converting, set up negative keywords in your campaigns and/or ad groups; thus eliminating this ineffective traffic.

For those terms that are driving effective traffic and conversions within your ROI benchmarks, yet you aren’t explicitly bidding on them (the broad or phrase matched terms), go ahead and add these terms to your campaign. Even though you’re already showing up for these terms, you can maximize exposure and control by bidding on them individually.

Learn more about Google Placement Reports:
How to Use Google’s Placement Report and Site Exclusion to Cut Your Customer Acquisition Costs by 20%
Google Content Placement Performance Report Rollout

Learn more about Google Search Query Reports:
My Newfound Love: Google AdWords Search Query Reports
Searching Beyond the Paid: Google AdWords’ Search Query Report …

Bravo to Google for giving us the tools to increase ROI from our online campaigns!