From the monthly archives:

October 2007

Friday Tea Time - 10/12/07

by TheMadHat on October 12, 2007

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Friday Tea Time Columbus Day Fed Up With SEO Version. This post might be off topic in places. Eat it. These will be the strangest posts I could find for the week Christopher Columbus discovered South America in 1498 (if you comment and say 1492 I’m not responding).

* What Would Jesus Link To? Google of course. Only Google has enough money to buy a link from Jesus. Satan Bill Gates doesn’t need one. My question: If you link to Jesus is that considered a paid link?

* Please Join the Alien Resistance Movement because you need to be ready when they land. Also because you can get cool free anti-alien stickers.

* Blog Action Day is Monday so go plant a tree and blog about it. Or at least drive your Honda instead of your V12 Aston Martin.

* Good Graywolf interview on linking. Doug Heil is back making the same asinine comments as usual.

* 7.5 rules to sneak by Mr. Nofollow and sell links without getting the hammer of justice brought down upon your lowly site. Also 7.5 rules on what to look for when buying links. That’s right, BUYING LINKS. Don’t ask me though, I nofollow all paid links. Like the one I just sent to Matt. He chatted with me over a beer one time at pubcon and I’m pretty sure I allowed him to speak to me for free in exchange for linking to his blog on every post.

* Rand-Gate and a bunch of girly tittle tattle. In case you missed it for some reason. Don’t really know much about the details because I don’t really care. If Rand outs some of my sites I’ll send out the bots to smack some of his. Case closed.

* Your blog sucks. Mine probably does too, but whatever.

* The ASSociated Press Can Blow Me. Here is why.

* Get Free Shit. Or give away some shit and get a link. Time to start spamming that thing. ;)

* The RIAA and Google in a super secret partnership

* Back on the serious note. John has a great post about being humbled at the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference and how we’re still in the interim with money to be made. Don’t make the mistake of thinking it’s easy. You need a plan and you have to stick to it. Think of it as playing poker. Stick to your methods and don’t randomly do things. He also notes things are looking up so get a plan and get going. To quote my favorite black hat…”Do It Fucking Now“.

* This might be the greatest thing ever. (PS Jeremy…broken link on this page)

* Google using Wikipedia? Nice write-up by Bill; but Wikipedia? That would be a stupid move by Google I’d think. Let’s see how fast I swamp the editors with fake “Danny Sullivan” pages.

* Please bow down and thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster that someone finally called out Shari Thurow and her regurgitated “I’m a white hat usability expert who doesn’t really know shit about real SEO but wrote a book anyway and since I was first you suck

You Talkin' To Me?

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Mastering Your Conversions By Mastering Perspectives

by TheMadHat on October 10, 2007

Target Your Customers!I had the unique opportunity recently to have one of my properties analyzed by the master of conversion marketing Bryan Eisenberg from FutureNow and analytics genius John Marshall previously of ClickTracks. This was made available to members of Market Motive and I was lucky enough to be included. If you haven’t heard of Market Motive yet you should certainly check it out. They bring together top experts from several fields for consulting and training.

I’m going to run through what I learned during this session from Bryan and some of my own thoughts on the different types of customers and how best to construct your site to appeal to each customer type. Bryan presented four different types of customer perspectives. You will need to determine which of these types is your normal user and market appropriately to push the envelope on your conversions. Keep in mind you will likely have to market to more than one and possibly all types equally.

The Competitor

The “What” customer. This customer will be in the later stage of the buying process. He wants to know what he is getting and why it is better. You should tailor you ads to appeal to his vanity. He wants to be better than the next guy and will want to know what your product or solution can do for him. The competitive type will be power oriented and carry a business-like attitude. He wants people to envy him. The favorite customer of high-end goods and services.

The Methodical

The “How” customer. This customer will be in the earlier stage of the buying process and will be trying to find out every piece of information on what he is looking for. If you don’t have the answers to every question he has, you’ll be written off as a non-authority, not credible, and he will quickly begin researching elsewhere. This customer will also browse through your other products to make sure there isn’t a better option and will soon want to know how your product will solve his problem. In my case this is the most difficult customer to target. They ask too many questions.

The Spontaneous

The “Why” customer. This customer will be in the earlier stage of the buying process but will move through to the purchase very quickly. He will want to know why you’re the best source for the product and will want to feel safe and secure with the purchase. This customer will want an easy shopping experience but they will also want to know why it’s easy. Give them a feeling of security and lots of assurances that you will deliver what you promise. Address their concerns as quickly as possible to convert the spontaneous type.

The Humanistic

The “Who” customer. This customer will normally be in the middle stage of the buying process and in my opinion will probably be waffling back and forth a lot. He wants to know who is behind the company and will want to know that your company is trustworthy and your product is solid. Testimonials and incentives will work well with this type of customer. Your “about us” page will be important because you can count on him going to it. He will be looking for a relationship with your company so be as transparent as possible.

So now you know the four general customer types but what are you going to do about it? Most likely you’re going to need to cater to more than one of these types. Let’s run through some tips.

1. Rank The Personalities - This should be your first step. Weigh each based on your individual experiences with your customers. Do most of your customers want the best no matter the cost? Do a smaller but still significant number of your customers like the personal touch of your live help? Now you know what you should be focusing on; the competitor and the humanistic customer.

2. Focus Your Creative - Make sure the creative and copy addressing your particular customer type is front and center. Don’t give Mr. Spontaneous your most popular products and toss it into your navigation. If you’re targeting the humanistic customer, don’t make them click on a link to see some testimonials. Give them what they want where they will see it immediately. This post is already too long for a detailed explanation of eye tracking, so just make sure you know what your users are drawn to and address the needs of that customer!

3. Be Consistent - Whether it’s your home page, landing page, or checkout page, make sure you stick to the same voice. If you give the impression of an easy shopping experience for the spontaneous customer, don’t make him fill out a 7 page checkout. If you explain to Mr. Methodical how you build and manufacture your widget, don’t forget to tell him how he is going to receive it. Highlight specific points throughout the entire process and don’t deviate!

4. Focus On Emotions - There has always been different views on the basic human emotions…greed, vanity, fear, and so forth. Each customer type will cater to specific emotions. For example the competitive type will respond to vanity and exclusivity. Let them know they will be treated like a VIP and they will be one of very few.

5. Don’t Be Relative - One of the most interesting things I learned during this session was the different though processes of marketers and consumers. Marketers tend to be right brain thinkers and make their advertising and language more intuitive while the majority of customers want concrete details. Go farther than saying it’s easy or it’s the best product. Be specific on why it’s easy and why it’s the best product. Don’t make them figure it on their own.

I hope this post was as helpful to you as the conversation with Bryan was for me. I’ve already begun analyzing several of my properties looking at different customer types and determining if I am properly addressing their needs. Once again, be sure to strongly consider joining Market Motive. The 25 minute conversation I had already is worth the cost of the membership. I would like to thank Bryan and John for taking the time to look over my site and give me their insights. It was certainly a great learning experience.

The Market Motive Team

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Friday Tea Time - 10/5/07

by TheMadHat on October 5, 2007

Hola! Time for another Friday Tea Time. We missed last week due to work overload so I’ll be bringing a few things in from last week. So I still haven’t done any of those improvements I said I was going to do the other day. I’m sacrificing that time to give you another addition to the Tea Time, so smile and say thank you. So let’s look at the interesting things from the SEO world in the last week…errr two weeks:

    * From The Conceptualist, from DirectNavigation, from Craigslist…Hot girl on the lookout for successful SEO’s and domainers.

    * My favorite post of the week comes from Wiep on how to explain SEO and link building to construction workers. Entertaining and makes perfect sense.

    * Brian has a list of friends you need to make. Maybe you can befriend them by getting their moronic VC asses to move blogs from domains with TypePad, Wordpress, etc, etc.

    * Conquer the world in 10 easy steps and why this headline is crap.

    * I’ve started some heavy investing into domaining and I’ve learned two things. Domainers don’t know shit about SEO, and I don’t know shit about domaining. All I need to do is find a partner in the domain space and we could make tons of money. I also figured out domaining is really fun and gives me a bigger rush than SEO ever will (except for the paychecks…but hopefully I’ll get those from domaining too). Here is an excellent post from Dominik Mueller on becoming a domainer at this stage of the game.

    * A couple things from TechCrunch that kick ass. Non SEO related but it’s Friday and I can do what I want. VUDU - This is on my Christmas list for sure. Great domain name too. mint - I’ve been using it and it saves a lot of time when you just want an update on all your accounts. It’s still in beta so it has a couple of bugs but I’m becoming a dedicated user.

    * Feel like exploiting Jesus for some easily earned cash? Pat Robertson wannabe’s. Here is your chance.

    * Great post on engagement as a metric (or not a metric) from Occam’s Razor. On a side not I just bought his book recently (Web Analytics: An Hour A Day) and I’m not through it yet but I fully recommend it. You can get it here at Amazon through my non affiliate link. (I don’t need to make money blogging about SEO…only Chows do that)

    * Found via G-Man (get well soon!). If you don’t like regular expressions you’re going to love this htaccess generator from Jeremy at nusuni.com. It take the headache out of it and keeps the hair on your head, if you have any left. It also keeps my dog from getting things thrown at her.

    * Via fantomaster here is 300 social bookmarking sites. If anybody comes up with a script to hit them all I’m buying the beer, and giving you lots of cash.

    * Alister Cameron stole your credit card numbers!. Then he goes through some pointers on how to keep yourself secure in the online world of interweb tubes and pipes and stuff. Disclaimer: he didn’t actually steal any credit card numbers, just found some by accident…or so he claims ;)

    * Help others with your unflinching generosity, then head to the bank with loads of cash. Enough said.

    * Geek alert! Here’s some code to help you track clicks for you n00b affiliates. It’s easily customizable to any program that supports subid’s. This way you know what is converting and when.

    * Matt…nice try responding to this paid links is FUD double talk FUD double talk FUD post, but you maybe should just not say anything.

    * To answer the question posed by Oilman….EVERYTHING.

    * Last but not least, Rand explains why big is better. For basic SEO techniques sure, he’s dead on. Once you get to the last “10%” hard stuff, it’s a different story and I’ll be posting why next week. So in conclusion I agree with about half of that post. I don’t really like arguing with Rand, it makes me feel guilty inside. How’s that for branding?

    * Intraweb Gold: Things to Say at a Funeral. (I know. I didn’t have anything prepared for this week. Deal with it.

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….oops, forgot to remove my blog template ;)

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