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Jonathan: Hi everyone. This is Jonathan Goodman. Welcome to another episode of The World of
Internet Marketing. Today we have Jenny Halasz from JLH Marketing. Jenny has over a decade
of experience in all aspects of online marketing. She develops technical and content strategies
for clients, leads workshops and training, speaks and blogs about all things search.
She's worked with dozens of top companies, including Motorola, Lowe's, Home Improvement,
SAP, Four Seasons, Humana, Black & Decker and Citibank.
She works in both organic and paid search marketing, as well as social, usability, conversion
optimization, affiliate, and analytic research. She discovered that her clients almost always
had Marketing in one department and User Experience (UX) in another and the two would constantly
argue about which issue was more important: A) Getting eyeballs to the site, or B) keeping
them there. And we'll go into detail on that during the show.
She graduated *** laude from North Carolina State University with a self-styled degree
in search by blending Marketing and Mass Communication with a minor in Psychology for improved understanding
of user experience. I believe the first time we met, Jenny, was at SFIMA, the South Florida
Interactive Marketing Association. Is that right?
Jenny: That's right. Jonathan, you pumped me up so much in your intro that I don't think
I can live up the expectation.
Jonathan: Well, we're going to drill down into certain aspects of the technical SEO
(Search Engine Optimization), but my understanding is that you have a rather big announcement
that you wanted to tell everyone about today.
Jenny: I do. I'm very excited to let everyone know that I have decided to move into my own
consulting firm. I'm now going to be working independently, and I'm accepting clients who
are interested in not taking any shortcuts and really doing things the right way. I can
help you with everything from Google penalty recovery to scale-able customer acquisition
through PPC or SEO to email marketing and social. I'm very excited about the breadth
of services I'll be able to offer.
Jonathan: You have an incredible profile on LinkedIn. You've been at this for a very long
time. Not too long -- we don't want to state your age or anything. But you've gone through
the ranks, you've learned a tremendous amount, and you've applied it to many clients. Let's
get into the idea of where usability and SEO diverge so that there's a conflict. I've never
thought of it that way.
Can SEO and UX Co-Exist?
Jenny: Honestly, that bias is a little old. I think in general, people are starting to
understand that SEO and UX are one in the same and that you need to think about them
in the same way. But even as recently as a couple of years, I would constantly find myself
talking to the IT department usability team and the marketing people, and none of them
were saying the same thing. They were all feeling like each other's goals were in collision.
Jonathan: Right. Because IT comes from a very technical mindset, hence the word "IT." Usability
seems to be more of a design of elements. I originally started my career as a graphic
designer, and that seems to be where the graphic designers are moving to: a design of elements.
We used to do information architecture and building out the mapping of the entire sites.
So now it's kind of blended itself into a usability person. That person typically has
an understanding of architecture and also an understanding of design. Is that right?
Jenny: Yeah, I think so. I don't want to take anything away from truly trained user experience
architects. Those people have very specialized training. What I'm looking at is more along
the lines of identifying exactly what tasks people are trying to accomplish on your website
and then figuring out what you have existing and what resources you have available to build
new. So that we can help people accomplish those tasks, remove any roadblocks that are
in their way and get to the meat of the point, which is to make a sale or to gather a lead.
Jonathan: So that's where conversion comes in, right? And that's where the focus of marketing
is. Because branding and conversion are what lead to the sale and the repeat sale.
Jenny: Right. But I think what happens is that people in design have a tendency to like
things that are really beautiful. Beautiful is wonderful, and form is wonderful. But function
is critical. When you create something that is beautiful, but not fully functional, particularly
if it's functional desktop but maybe not mobile, you run into these sorts of conflicts between
departments and groups.
Jonathan: It's amazing. I was actually just talking to a client, and this client's entire
reason for having a website was to get people to fill out a form with their contact information
so that the client could then put them into the sales channel. But the contact was all
the way down at the bottom on the footer. That just amazed me. That seemed to be the
last thought. People have to sign up, so let's put that all the way at the bottom. That's
remarkable. If they don't have someone guiding them, those things happen. When you ask them
what the website is for, their answer is to get people to fill out a form. Then you look
at how they've designed their website, and unless there's a usability person there or
someone with an understanding of how to move the user to get through a transaction, they're
going with just whatever they happen to like or whatever color hit their fancy that day.
Jenny: Right. I think what you bring up is such a great segue into testing and the importance
of testing. I would agree with you that if what you want are leads, then it make sense
to put that lead form somewhere near the top of the page. But I think that sometimes giving
it to people too quickly can make them uncomfortable and can make it feel like you're asking for
more than you're giving. But hiding it at the bottom of the page can make it so that
they actually don't complete the task that you want them to do.
Jonathan: Right.
Jenny: So I think that's why things need to be tested. I personally don't like those long
form pages where you read and read and read. It's like 'we can do this and we can do that.
We can increase your sales by x percentage.' And you get all the way to the bottom and
it says 'click here to download a white paper.' Having the contact or task at the bottom actually
does work in some circumstances, however, so that's why the testing is so important.
Jonathan: Right. I've had the same experience at conventions where we're all sitting around
and we're talking about these long forms. I haven't had success with that. They tend
to come off reading like advertorials, similar to Guthy-Renker TV commercials selling vacuum
hair trimmers and crazy products like that. They come off as very spam-y and scam-y.
Jenny: The infomercials, right?
Jonathan: Exactly. The infomercials. But for some industries and some points of sale, they
work incredibly well.
Jenny: Yes. It's crazy. I would personally never buy from one of those, but then again,
I'm not their target market.
Jonathan: Right. So how can a small to medium-sized business successfully test without breaking
the bank?
Jenny: I think it becomes very difficult. Testing can get very, very expensive. But
typically the clients I work with already have testing solutions in place. Things like
Omniture test and Target, which are very expensive and something I'd never recommend for the
common webmaster. I understand that there are a few less expensive testing tools. I
haven't personally used them, but I've heard a lot of people recommend Unbounce. I would
absolutely look into some of the things like that. I'm sorry that I don't have a lot of
knowledge about the less expensive tools.
Jonathan: I'm curious about the Google testing tool. Have you ever used the Google A/B testing
tool?
Jenny: I have. I liked it when it was Google experiments and you could do it for as long
as you wanted. But now it's only I think 30 days. Is that right? Is it only 30 days you
can do a test and that's it?
Jonathan:Yes.
Jenny: I don't understand why Google did that. In most cases, if you have somebody who needs
to use a free tool like that, they probably don't have the volume that they need to make
a good decision in 30 days. So if anybody out there is developing a less expensive testing
tool, there's your market right there.
Jonathan: Exactly. We work specifically in WordPress, so I think there are plug-ins,
but I'm just don't aware of them. I personally don't do A/B testing because I'm not working
with Lowe's and Home Improvement. I'm working with the smaller to medium-sized businesses
so they don't have the high volumes of the larger companies. If we can get them 2,000
to 3,000 visitors per month, that skyrockets their sales. Whereas if Home Depot and Lowe's
wound up getting that many visitors, they would shut their site down. They probably
get that in half a day, maybe even an hour.
Jenny: Right. They get a lot of traffic, so you can make pretty good inferences with very
small length tests. I was thinking while you were talking. I did have a client I worked
for basically pro bono -- they just paid me as much as they could -- that was an attorney's
office and they didn't have the money for testing. So we did a really old-fashioned
style test. We put one form up for about 90 days; then we put a slightly different form
up for 90 days to see if it made any real difference. In their case, it actually made
a pretty significant difference. We got a lot more leads in the second test, if you
can call it a test. By leaving the form up longer, they did see an increase in conversions.
Jonathan: Do you happen to remember what the difference between test A and test B was?
Jenny: There were several differences, so it wasn't an A/B. It was multi-variant, if
you can even call it a test. Again, there's a real science to testing and I don't want
to take anything away from the people who do it professionally. We were doing a poor
man's test. We tried a couple of different changes, such as not having as many fields
required and simplifying the drop down menu and some things like that. In general, the
first form was very detailed and asked the client for a lot of information, which we
thought might instill trust in our client. And the second option was much faster to fill
out, but didn't give us much information. So we were trying to balance speed with trust
and it turned out that speed was the winner.
Jonathan: Wow.
Jenny: I'm sure if better testing was done, we'd be able to say 'ok, this worked and that
didn't,' but this was just a poor man's test.
Jonathan: Even though you say small man's testing, there are many, many more small to
medium-sized businesses out there than Fortune 500 companies. And because I know the range,
depth and breadth of the audience listening to this podcast, I know that is incredibly
valuable information for our audience. Many of them have websites that they spent a lot
of money designing, but they're not getting the expected results. I know you said your
bio on LinkedIn is older, which is the bio I used, but still this is a valid conversation
because getting people to the site is one thing, but actually getting them to do a transaction
or conversion or fill out a form is a different thing. As you know and I know working in SEO,
we can push thousands of people to a site. You can have video, social media and different
things and get thousands of people to a site -- or in your case tens of thousands of people
-- but regardless of how many people are going to the site, if they're not interacting or
making a transaction on that site, it's of no value.
Jenny: I agree.
Getting Eyeballs to the Site
Jonathan: Let's talk about getting eyeballs to the sight. What are some of the technical
SEO things you have in your little magic bag that the average person running a mom and
pop shop may not understand or know how to use?
Jenny: I need to start by saying there is no magic bag. It's just not there. [laughter]
Jonathan: You know what, Jenny? That will be our next presentation at the next conference
we go to -- There Is No Magic Bag. [laughter]
Jenny: That's great. I love that.
Jonathan: We should definitely put that presentation into PubCon next year. Now you and I have
both been in this industry for a very long time. What we were doing when we started would
now get us penalized and possibly removed from Google, right? Or if you don't want to
admit that, that's fine. [laughter]
Jenny: I admit to nothing. [laughter]
Jonathan: Exactly. But as the industry itself has become sophisticated, the ways and the
practices of what we do on a daily basis for our clients have significantly changed.
Jenny: I agree with that. If I did have a magic bag, one of the biggest things I would
probably put into it would be crawl patterns. Understanding how Google is consuming information
on your website. We have a tendency to personalize Goggle and make it into a person, but it's
a machine. So understanding what pages that machine is accessing, in what order and to
what depth of the structure can be very significant in understanding where you have opportunities
for improvement.
Jonathan: Right. We often think that Google comes in via the homepage and spreads out
via the navigation that we're set up for it. But instead, sometimes Google is doing other
things. It might have gotten to the site a different way. It might have specific terminology
that it's searching for or utilizing. And then it's grabbing different data than what
we'd necessarily think. In that way, you're getting other visitors that you might not
have expected to your site.
Jenny: Right. To be completely technically accurate, what Google does is that the machine
or spider collects lists of URLs. They may all be from the same site. They may not be.
So Google collects all these lists of URLs and processes basic data about them. They
put them into a database to collect the information out of later. Then they use the data that
is on those pages to make associations between the pages with the words that they have in
their index. So it's kind of backwards from how people typically think about it being
done. But if you understand that, you can understand why that crawl behavior is so significant.
Jonathan: Do you actually go into Webmaster Tools and look at what has been crawled and
how often it's been crawled?
Jenny: All the time. There's a lot of data in Webmaster Tools, but there's a heck of
a lot more in your server log files. By looking in your server log files, you can see what
order that spider is crawling those pages.
Jonathan: Well, that's a new one for me. We have access to the server log files. That's
a lot of data you have to consume. You've got to be pushing that data into something
else that's allowing you to read it. You're not sitting there reading it from the server
log file.
Jenny: Right. I have several processes. But when you're talking about small to mid-sized
businesses, you do have access to the server file logs. They're available from your hosting
company. And they're usually not so bad. It's usually pretty much just something you can
export into Excel and look at. You can sort it by just the Google bot and then look at
the order that it listed your pages in, how long it stayed and how often it comes back.
Jonathan: And you've made significant changes to websites using that technique?
Jenny: Yes. If Goggle is accessing certain parts of the site more than others, we can
take what is obviously working on those pages and apply it other sections of the site.
Jonathan: Fantastic. That's the magic bag right there. It's something honestly that
we're employing. It's something we could definitely look at. I feel that for the small to medium-sized
businesses that we work with, we're getting a lot of data from the Google Webmaster Tools.
But you're going the extra step.
Jenny: Yes. And another one that is a total unsung hero is Bing Webmaster Tools. There
is so much data in there.
Jonathan: Bing is the unsung hero of the Internet. [laughter]
Jenny: I don't know about the Internet, but certainly of SEO and data.
Jonathan: I used to teach at a university. I'd sit in a room during a meeting with a
couple of other professors and I'd say, 'Oh, you're using Bing. That's so interesting.
There are not that many people actually using Bing." And their answer was: "This is a university
laptop. The university provided this to us. Bing is pre-installed free. Could you help
me get it off?"
Jenny: Oh no. [laughter]
Jonathan: So yeah, if you force people to use Bing, they'll use it. They use it if you
give people a laptop and force them to use Bing. I think they're doing this for students
in institutional education too. They're giving kids laptops, but they're strictly exclusive
of Bing. So Bing's numbers and data of who is using Bing are generally those who are
forced to use it.
Jenny: Well, I don't want this to turn into a Bing bashing session. I actually think that
the results that they provide are often better. Certainly, Google has more volume. But one
interesting thing about Bing is that if you are in a business where your demographic is
older or educated or regulated industry, Bing is a great place to be because, just like
you said, they're locked in to using Microsoft and Bing.
Jonathan: Interesting. That's incredible.
Jenny: We see it with PPC campaigns a lot. My experience is with education, but I understand
that it's the same with Pharma and other industries where there's a lot of regulation happening
internally. We find that you can run the same campaign on Google and Bing in PPC and you
will generally spend less in Bing because there's less volume but your conversion rate
will be significantly better.
Jonathan: So you've actually taken the idea that these universities are locked into Bing
and you've turned that into a positive by target marketing to them?
Jenny: Yes. Exactly.
Jonathan: That's fantastic. That's incredible.
Keeping Them There
Jonathan: So let's talk about keeping users on the site. Would you say that's on the marketing
side or on the usability side? That's probably marketing, right?
Jenny: I would say it's both. I really would because marketing is going to succeed if you
give them all the information they're looking for. Usability is going to succeed if you
don't put any roadblocks in the way of them getting to it. That's things like site speed,
page load time, whether links are functioning or not, whether there's broken images showing
up, and whether there's a weird structure like you have to click 5 or 6 times to get
to what it is you need. All those things can significantly impact keeping them there, even
if the message at the end of trail is really good.
Jonathan: Going back to Google Webmaster Tools, that's really where Google has the ability
to show the path of how the visitors are coming in, what pages they're going to, and how much
time they spend there. That's something else that you're analyzing that allows you to make
decisions?
Jenny: I love that tool. That's one of the best things Google has ever done; is that
conversion path tool.
Jonathan: Yeah, I've always kind of wanted it to be on a big screen so that I can just
continue to search and move through wider and wider like a Jumbotron.
Jenny: Yes. That would be nice, wouldn't it? I absolutely love the -- it's not called real
time analytics. You could waste your entire time starting at real time analytics. It's
called In-Page analytics. Of course, it unfortunately never ever works when I'm trying to show it
to somebody. But it is so cool. It shows you the path in such a visual way. I wish it showed
whether somebody picked up a contact link from the top or the bottom of the page instead
of just showing that they clicked on it. That would be helpful.
Jonathan: Obviously people with small to medium businesses who have webmasters, as well as
Internet marketers, like Jenny and I, know about this. But for those who are unaware,
what we're doing is we're looking at the Webmaster Tool called In Page. Starting with the homepage,
it actually brings up and shows you the percentages of click-throughs on various navigation, contact
buttons and different elements. So you can move through that and watch as the percentages
change -- where people drop off, where people complete form, etc. You can definitely spend
hours and hours of time on it, but the analytics behind it and the understanding of how your
website is functioning for your visitors is critical.
Jenny: I completely agree. And while you can spend hours and hours in that section, just
like you can in real time analytics, at least your hours will be well spent and you'll probably
have some insights at the end of the day.
Jonathan: Exactly.
Marketing to a Mass Audience
Jonathan: Let's talk about marketing to a mass audience. Obviously, you're dealing with
very big companies who have social media, usability departments, marketing departments,
content developers, PPC campaigns and the whole big deal. So what elements to you bring
to that conversation?
Jenny: It really depends on the project. Because I work as a consultant, typically we're working
with one or maybe two of all the stakeholders that you named. One rather sad thing about
large enterprises is that they're still very silo in most cases. So it can be very difficult
to get all the stakeholders in a room together and agree on a plan of action. But that being
said, we do typically work more with the digital marketing group in terms of more tactical
things like tags and content and architecture and implementation of recommendations that
are designed to improve search specifically. However, I really like to work with companies
where there's a good connection between those and the other areas of marketing and usability.
I did some work with a top insurance company where I had the good fortune to work with
their SEO team and their usability team, which were very much a silo, but we found such great
opportunities between the two regarding little things that were being overlooked or were
being taken out of the process or not included in the process just because they didn't even
know they were supposed to include them. So to me, that's a really big win. When we come
in and make connections like that and help people really improve the quality of what
they're doing.
Jonathan: Are you sometimes involved with the marketing campaigns from a non-digital
campaign standpoint -- postcards, advertisements, radio ads, etc. -- and converting that over
and watching as visitors and potential purchasers of the product are moving over from campaigns
like that?
Jenny: Generally, we see those on the back end after they've happened. Again, because
of the silos and the lack of communication between groups, generally the digital team
won't even know that the print or the TV or the radio team is doing something until the
traffic comes. Then they say, "That's interesting. We got a huge spike around the Super Bowl.
Oh you guys did a Super Bowl ad? It would have been nice to know that." It's generally
not that extreme, but you get the idea. Our goal is to educate those groups to at least
get URLs tagged and at least get refers tagged with particular campaign variables so we can
feed that back into our analysis.
Jonathan: Let's back up and explain that. When you have an URL, especially with dynamic
elements -- whether it be e-commerce or something like that -- you have the ability, specifically
with Google Analytics, to create a tag that then gets appended to the URL. Can you explain
that?
Jenny: It's super easy to do. Google Analytics makes it super easy to do because they have
specific things, like the campaign, the source, the medium and the channel, that are already
identified in analytics. So all you have to do is go and build the URL with those specific
parameters and Google Analytics will automatically pull it into your reports. The best way to
do that is to just Google "URL Builder." And the first or second result in your search
will tell you exactly how to do that timing.
Jonathan: Yeah, it's brilliant because that is ROI. That is the conversion. You're able
to see that your visitor clicked through and actually converted. You see it right there.
Jenny: Right.
Jonathan: Because you're dealing with such large corporations, you're dealing with the
marketing and usability departments, but what happens when IT comes in and there are legacy
issues? You're working in the marketing department on a research project and you're trying to
figure stuff out, and then the slowdown comes when IT says that in order to do that, whether
it be dot. ISP or whatever the system may be, there's a legacy that then slows everything
down.
Jenny: Definitely. We deal with that on a daily basis. The only answer is that we just
do the best that we can. My advice on that is to try to get knowledge of when the sprints
are going to be, meaning when IT is going to be prepared to make change and push things
live onto the website and try to time things around those sprints. That will help get things
in faster. There have been plenty of times where we're really rushed on a set of recommendations
just so we could make it into a sprint. And then other times, it could be 6 months or
so before you'll be able to implement any of the changes that you want to make. So you
just do the best you can.
Jonathan: Yeah, that is probably the number one reason why there is a limit to the size
of business that I'm willing to work with. As soon as you've grown that company to where
IT is actually setting sail and casting their own ship and they're heading out to sea, you
have to tell them that this is the direction we need to take now. That's something that
I try to back away from. I was involved with corporate for 20 years and I commend you for
continuing with it. I find it just gut-wrenching and heartache.
Jenny: Well, what I love about it is that if we can build it into their processes, then
that's a win for everybody and we end up with such great, amazing, scalable results. If
you can fix something fundamental, it just makes such a huge difference. And that's true
whether it's a large business or a small business. Small businesses have an advantage because
they're more agile, but the lessons that they can learn from enterprise-level businesses
are scalability. So when I do work with small to mid-sized businesses, I really focus with
them on scalability. The idea is that we're going to get you a ton of traffic, a ton of
visitors, and make you one of the large enterprises. So let's plan now.
Jonathan: Absolutely. That's why they bring us in -- because they want to grow.
Four for Friday -- Questions Everyone is Asked
Jonathan: We've come to the part of the podcast where we do our Four for Friday questions.
I ask you four questions. You'd think it would be Five for Friday, but I haven't figured
out that fifth question yet. So let's start off with Question #1. What is your idea of
perfect Internet happiness?
Jenny: Utopian Internet? Gosh, I don't know.
Jonathan: You're the second person to call it Utopian Internet. So I'm going to change
the question to what is your Internet Utopia?
Jenny: I think I would like to see quality. I'd like to see everything on the Internet
have some value. I've done so much penalty work lately that sometimes I get to the end
of the day after looking at those sites and all that spam that's out there, and I just
feel like I need a shower. I would love to see lots of quality information on the Internet.
Jonathan: I think that's where Google is heading with all of the implementations and improvements
that Matt Cutts is making. And as we get to semantic language and everything like that,
it will start to push those spammers out there.
Jenny: Can I get up on my soapbox for a minute?
Jonathan: Sure.
Jenny: Particularly since this audience is small to mid-size business, I get so frustrated
with Google. I've worked with a lot of companies, big and small, over the last few months to
help them get Google penalties removed. And I'm so frustrated with the way that Google
is going after the website owners, the publishers, as opposed to the source of the problem, which
is the bad SEOs, if can you call them that. The snake oil salesmen that are out there.
While I know that has a lot of implications for quality SEO people like you and me -- we
don't really want to open ourselves up to lawsuits and things -- I just think the way
Google is going after it by penalizing rather than rewarding is completely the wrong way
to go. I'm getting very, very frustrated with them between that and no-follow and schema
and I think they're expecting far, far too much from the common webmaster.
Jonathan: Interesting. We will have to have another hour-long discussion about that sometime.
We're coming at this from two different sides. Being from a technological background and
being a semantic schema enthusiast, I kind of understand where Google wants to go. I
think that penalizing has unfortunately become the only alternative because rewarding is
difficult to do because there are so many websites. That's a great topic that we can
handle on another day.
Jenny: I'd love to.
Jonathan: We could definitely put together an SMX or a PubCon thing. Between the magic
bag and the schema debate, we could easily fill 45 minutes. Let's move on to the Question
#2. What is your greatest Internet regret?
Jenny: There are actually several regrets.
Jonathan: We've all had stops and starts in our careers. I ran an e-commerce straight
into the ground, so that's at least one of mine. Give us one of yours.
Jenny: Without knowing I was doing it, I really helped a spammer implement black cat techniques.
The person just pumped me for information on how Goggle algorithm worked and what kind
of things they look at. This was many years ago when it was much easier to spam, but also
when it was less common. That person just pumped me for information and they were able
to mount a very significant black hat campaign that actually ended up hurting one of my other
clients.
Jonathan: Oh my goodness.
Jenny: Yea. Big regret there that I didn't see what that person was really made of before
I gave them all that information.
Jonathan: That's interesting. Do you go to PubCon?
Jenny: I have actually never been to PubCon. I'm hoping to go to New Orleans. I applied
for a press pass.
Jonathan: But you've been to SFIMA. You've been to several other conferences. I know
that you were speaking recently. It is very interesting, particularly with Affiliate Summit,
SMX (Search Marketing Expo) and what used to be Blog World (which is now NMX) and PubCon,
that when you're up on the stage giving a presentation, you have to assume that there
are several types of people in the audience. This is what I've learned from experience.
There are small businesses and large size businesses sitting there, which is what you
are talking about. There are your competitors. And then there are people who are really on
the fringes of our industry. The black hat SEOs and the email spammers, the people that
do affiliate marketing in a very dark way. And when you're relaying good, trustworthy
information, as you did for this person, you just don't know how people are going to take
it and what they're going to do with it.
Jenny: Right.
Jonathan: I was part of the panel for the black hat SEOs. This was something that actually
happened to me. Instead of me being a black hat SEO, this was something that actually
happened and I really went through the process of how this happened knowing full well that
the Pandora's Box was then open and everybody knew how to do this technique. If they wanted
to, the people in the audience who do this stuff anyway now had a little bit of a leg
up on how to do this. That's why, particularly the black hat presentations that are given
at some of these conferences, are so scrutinized. A lot of people don't want to give these presentations
because then they get hit by Goggle.
Jenny: I have one more audience that's generally in the crowd at a conference.
Jonathan: Your mom?
Jenny: Right. (laughter). The search engine representatives themselves. They're standing
right there listening to everything you're saying.
Jonathan: Absolutely. And the hope is not to then point the finger at the people giving
the presentations, but taking what is on the groundswell, what is coming up in these techniques,
and seeing how Google can then prepare the audience that will be hit with this and themselves
within the search engine. I don't want to get into too much detail of what it was, but
this had to do with the idea of asking for backlinks to be removed. Are you familiar
with this?
Jenny: Yeah.
Jonathan: You work in the penalty field, so what is your stand on these campaigns that
go out and say 'we've been hit with a penalty and we'd like you remove all this backlinks.'
Jenny: You have to do it. If you have a really bad penalty and you need to get it lifted,
you have to do it. You have to email these sites and say 'pretty please will you remove
my backlink?' That is a waste of time and a waste of money and it doesn't ultimately
help the Internet at all. But it's a hoop that Google expects you to jump through.
Jonathan: And unfortunately when you have a panicked person who owns a website, a small
to mid-size or an enterprise size company, that is hit with a penalty, they're in such
a panic mode that they wind up going to the extreme. I've received emails requesting backlink
removal for websites that have thousands of visitors, isn't blacklisted and does very
well. So it's that misunderstanding by either the webmaster or the Internet marketing company
that's handling this penalty of 'let's get rid of all of our backlinks.'
Jenny: Right. It's interesting because I actually thought you were going somewhere else with
this because we started out talking black hat. There is a black hat technique that I've
recently become aware of where competitors get your link list and email the companies
and ask them to remove your link.
Jonathan: Yes. This is exactly the presentation that I gave. It was about posing as this other
company.
Jenny: Oh okay. I misunderstood.
Jonathan: Yes, this is the presentation that I gave at PubCon. There was a company out
there that was posing as our clients and asking for those backlinks that our clients had to be removed.
Jenny: Okay. I definitely misunderstood. Just to clarify what I was saying is if you legitimately
have been hit with a penalty, you do have to write these letters and ask to have your
links removed. You also just want to remove the crap.
Jonathan: Right. There are two different versions of backlink removal. There's the black hat
side where people are trying to reduce the number of backlinks that you, as the client,
have. And then there's the other side, which is you've gotten penalized and now you need
to remove backlinks, but you're in such a panic that you end up removing all of your
backlinks including the good ones. And this goes back to Google, which is 'why are backlinks
even important anymore?'
Jenny: Do not get me started on that or we will be here until next week.
Jonathan: I know. So let's move on to Question #3. What do you consider your greatest Internet
achievement?
Jenny: It actually is related to a penalty. It's a penalty that we just got notification
that it was revoked on Tuesday.
Jonathan: Nice.
Jenny: We've been working on it for over a year. That tops my list of greatest Internet
achievements.
Jonathan: Were they completely out of Goggle?
Jenny: Completely. It's a site that gets a lot of traffic. We're talking millions of
visits of month. And they had an affiliate that had gone off the rails and was doing
things like hacking sites and buying up expired domains from the World Health Organization
and hijacking in-URL redirects. We're talking out of control. When we started, the list
of backlinks were in the tens of thousands. It was one of the biggest projects I've ever
worked on, so to get that revoked email on Tuesday was so gratifying.
Jonathan: That's incredible. So this was obviously a popular website that you're saying has millions
of visitors a month. For them to be delisted must have been financially impactful.
Jenny: It definitely was. The client had a lot of traffic from other sources. Organic
traffic really was only about 30% of their traffic. But when I talk about millions of
visitors a month, that's the portion that was organic. It was 70% more of the volume
we were dealing with.
Jonathan: This is an affiliate company that they'd actually signed a contract with?
Jenny: No. They sell a product and they have a network of affiliates.
Jonathan: And one them went crazy?
Jenny: More like about 500 of them were really out of control.
Jonathan: Let's move on to Question #4. What is your favorite Internet book? Was there
a book that you read coming into the industry that got your excited about the industry?
Or was there a book that you read that changed your perspective on the industry?
Jenny: There are two books and they are completely differently. One is practical and that's "Marketing
in the Age of Google" by Vanessa Fox. I think it explains things so well. I would recommend
that anyone who wants to learn more about search read it.
Jonathan: I absolutely agree. That's a fantastic book.
Jenny: The other one I absolutely loved was "I'm Feeling Lucky: Confessions of Google
Employee Number 59." It's a book by Doug Edwards, who was the founder of AdWords, about his
time at Goggle. He was there in the very, very early days. And he was basically the
marketing department in a company completely filled with engineers. It's very interesting
to read the book of his perspective. It was like 'you don't know what you're talking about.'
The engineers didn't want to give him the time of day, even once they'd hire him to
market Google. So it's really a neat read.
Jonathan: I understand that battle still rages on even today between the engineers and marketing.
Jenny: That's what I hear.
Jonathan: Well, Jenny, this has been fantastic. Are you scheduled for any upcoming conferences?
Jenny: Yes. I just found out I'll be speaking at the American Marketing Association's High
Five Conference here in Raleigh at the end of February. Then I'll be remaining local
for a little bit because I have a couple of other things, including the Visual Marketing
for Business Conference here in February as well. The next big appearance I'm hoping to
make, assuming that I get selected, is SMX Advanced in June.
Jonathan: Yes. That's out in Seattle.
Jenny: Yep. I'm really hoping to make it. I spoke at it for the first time actually
last year and it was a wonderful experience that I'm hoping to repeat.
Jonathan: Fantastic. I went a couple of years ago. I'm not a West Coast guy and I found
that I was getting a lot of West Coast business cards for people that I was really never going
to follow up with. I tend to just stay Northeast Coast. So it's not really worth the money
for me to take the trip out there.
Jenny: I only have a couple clients from this area. And I've got several international clients.
Jonathan: Congratulations for dealing with those time zones.
Jenny: Yep. I'm not in Singapore anymore thankfully. That was the toughest one because that was
12 hours.
Jonathan: Well, I found Hawaii to be impossible.
Jenny: I think the worst time zone I had was Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Jonathan: You've got to get up early for that one.
Jenny: Not really. Six hours. So generally I can call in at the end of my day, which
is the beginning of his day.
Jonathan: Fantastic. I really appreciate this, Jenny. I look forward to seeing you at the
next conference we're both attending. Thank you so much.
Jenny: Thank you.
Outro
Again, this is Jonathan Goodman and this is the World of Internet Marketing. You can follow
me @HalyardConsult on Twitter. New episodes of the World of Internet Marketing can be
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name Jonathan Goodman. The podcast is also available with transcription at halyardconsulting.com
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