My Errant Mind

Welcome to Part II of a three-part series on search marketing dependency. You can read Part I here: Unhealthy Search Marketing Dependency: Part I - Business Safety

In this second part, I discuss how and why you can and should protect your business from dependencies. I also share some thoughts on steps you can take to make sure your Web presence is not a source of stress, but rather, a pleasant operating environment—at least from a marketing standpoint.

What Does A Search Dependency Mean To Your Business?

Many business models require high conversion rates by site visitors to succeed. However, relying primarily or exclusively on traffic from search engines so much that one begins to worry over dropping in search rankings for a brief period suggests two problematic issues with the overall marketing strategy.

Firstly, It Suggests Neglect

It suggests that other methods of marketing the site and your business are not being engaged in sufficiently to ensure that the website is an effective presence or tool.

• This means other online advertising campaigns are not being implemented effectively or with enough frequency.
• It means link-building has either been ignored or not engaged in effectively.
• It also means that greater emphasis has been placed on acquisition of new customers than gaining and sustaining repeat business from existing ones.
• It is a good indicator that someone in your organization suffers from marketing myopia.
• It means you have a website, but no real presence.

Granted, there are reasons that some of the above may individually be parts of a legitimate marketing campaign. You might, for example:

• Be selling a subscription. Repeat customers may not renew for another year, so acquiring new customers is an important business consideration.
• You might be focusing on a particular part of the marketing life-cycle—such as initial market penetration—which might require a specific set of tactics.

There are other examples, but that is enough to make the point. Situation dictates. Just be sure you have assessed your situation correctly.

I say this because if you are so worried about page rank that implementing redirects on your webserver (or your hosting company’s) is cause for worry, your reliance on search is well in the realm of unhealthy. It also means your brand recognition is probably next to non-existent (which may be fine if your brand is relatively new).

The Pay Per Click ‘Grail-Quest’

A lot of businesses ignore the importance of offline marketing and word of mouth, thinking to make do exclusively with Internet advertising. Worse, they ignore other forms of emarketing and focus almost exclusively on the false grail of search engine traffic, mistakenly thinking a PPC campaign is all that is needed to succeed as a business online.

It is easy to slip into that mindset. Why? Well, PPC is relatively uncomplicated and easy to engage in.

I can hear the chorus of howls welling up already, but the truth is that it is not complicated at all. Sure, you need to put some effort into analyzing keywords and keyword phrases, but it is not anything that can not be taught to most people. In any case, there are all sorts of software solutions that will help you do it.

It is basically a function of writing good copy and managing your budget smartly—pretty much just like any other advertising campaign. Those are the major issues for determining whether or not your PPC ad campaign will work. And no, I am not suggesting relevance is unimportant. I am assuming you will get that part right, otherwise, you certainly should not be putting all your eggs in the search marketing basket.

If you have good copy and enough of a budget, your ads will be seen. They might even be clicked on.

Secondly, It Suggests You Are Forgetting The Nature Of Business

Who goes to Google to look for books? Most of us go to Barnes & Noble, AbeBooks, Hastings or some other bookseller’s site (I purposely leave out two notable mentions because I do not like their business practices) when shopping for books online.

If my business needs a critical software solution, do you honestly think I intend to buy whatever solution pops up in the top ten results from searching for the related term? Not no, but Hell no! I’m going to buy what the IT staff suggests, or what I have heard about from others in the industry, or I will ask someone knowledgeable for a suggestion. If I read favorable reviews of your product, I may be inclined to buy.

But from search results? Sure, you may get more people looking at your product, which may translate into more sales. Or, it may not. People are finicky. One thing is not in doubt, however.

Word of mouth trumps every other form of advertising.

Why is that the case? Business is about relationships. I will say it again…

Business Is About Relationships

Did you wonder who those two booksellers I failed to mention are for even a moment? I do not patronize either, any longer. Why? They have failed in the relationship department. They are forgetting business is about relationships.

Just like a recent flippant comment by one company (Snapper) in a recent email reply to me cost them a formerly lifelong and die-hard customer, the two booksellers in question have lost my business because of their corporate policies and attitudes. However, many companies have my loyalty and continue to work at keeping it. I like that.

I like that they feel as if they have a relationship with me.

And relationships involve trust. Sure, you can build the first inkling of trust with enough ad exposures. But will that kind of fledgling trust automatically transfer when you re-brand and move to a new site?

Not really. And if it is search traffic you are worried about, then you need not worry about carrying trust over.

Then why would anyone worry about maintaining page rank?

If You Are Search Dependent And Need To Change Domains, What Steps Can You Take To Make It Go More Smoothly?

What if my business model is driven by new sales for small, disposable products or time sensitive information products and I need to fuel new sales from high traffic? Well, first of all, those are both potential situations where you may in fact find maintaining high search traffic critical.

If I want to change the name and look of my site, but keep the same content, or some processes, etc., then it might be a concern to keep my search traffic flowing. After all, I already put so much effort into getting great page rank, right? I have ‘the formula’ down. My pages are tweaked, perfectly coded and optimized, keyword density is optimal, etc., and I do not want that effort wasted.

I want to stay at the top of the search results for ‘widgets’ and not see my rankings drop, for example. What can I do to ensure my business does not take a huge hit?

Plan Ahead And Be Smart

The most obvious answer, but the hardest to define. Here are some suggestions as to what you can do, however.

• Create your new site, complete with rebranding, and launch it well ahead of the intended switchover date.
• Build and deploy the new site while the old one remains as is. Simply shift marketing efforts to the new site, but leave the old one up and running, allowing old marketing campaigns to play out.
• Insert links and pointer content (Press releases, blog entries, news, etc.,) on the old site directing people, business partners, and search spiders to the new site. Do this weeks in advance. Do not duplicate content: rather, import it into your new site on a schedule, so that you are slowly shrinking the old site and growing the new one while avoiding search engine penalties for duplicate content.
• Take a page from traditional marketing. The ‘Grand Opening’ campaign that announces ‘under new management’ and puts you in contact with present and past customers is a standard technique for a reason. It works. If you have built relationships—and they are good ones—this will lessen the impact of any potential lost business. You can not afford to ignore previously satisfied customers. It is not smart, and it wastes a valuable opportunity if you do.
• Set aside marketing funds above and beyond your normal level. This allowance for pumping up your presence temporarily will offset some of the pain of the move. Simply do a much greater volume of the advertising you were before, or add an additional campaign—so long as it is with purpose and quality is not sacrificed.
• Check out the article Move to a New Domain Without Losing Rankings (or Hair) by Mike Grehan. It offers some great practical techniques using server side redirects that will pay big dividends. It is the article that inspired this series.

You Can Forget Page Rank If You Are Not Dependent On It

Of course, you could take the opportunity to be like Nike. ‘Just do it,’™ and move. Start from zero. Simply take your old content and port it into the new site and go live while shutting down the old one—aside from redirects.

You will learn a lot about your IT staff and their capabilities, as well as your marketing department’s if you do this. You will learn much and sharpen skills, and gain invaluable experience as an organization. If you’re worried, bring in an outside consultant to help keep things on track. But, again, I stress that this kind of experience is invaluable to an organization.

If you go too long without such experiences in an organization, you create dependencies on the status quo. Those become dangers down the road. You may find areas you can trim the fat from. You may discover roadblocks that search-spiders (bots) have been meeting up with.

And really, it should not be a stressful situation at all. Where is your confidence? If you do not have any, ask yourself why that is?

Are You Identifying Your Goals Correctly?

Of course, not worrying about page rank goes against the goal of the cited example above. Which—consequently—is not to maintain page rank, but to maintain visibility and keep traffic high.

Do not confuse ‘preserving page rank’ with what you are actually trying to accomplish.

It is important that you make the distinction. Otherwise, you risk trying to solve the wrong problem and implementing less than optimal or incorrect solutions.

In fact, identifying processes and measuring the right results are vitally critical. It helps you ensure that you pursue the correct strategic issues. According to author Nirmalya Kumar (as quoted in an article on MarketingProfs.com), this is one of the reasons that a lot of companies “view their marketing department as an expense, rather than an investment.“

Identification matters—whether you are picking wild mushrooms to eat, or deciding what strategies to pursue for your business!

How could you, then, just start from scratch and not worry about the consequences so much that your staff and everyone is stressed about an upcoming ‘move’ to a new domain? What would create an atmosphere in your company that would insulate not only your business, but your employees from undue stresses brought about by voluntary change?

What helps insulate a business from financial dangers?

It is The Pervasive Presence. And, it is Part III of this series.