Here is Seth Godin’s response to this post and to your comments:

Hi Chris

Thanks for the note. And thanks to everyone who has taken the time to post such thoughtful comments.

I’m actually not asking ANYONE to trust me. That’s not the point of the work. The point is to give people something to think about. So I think Pete’s headline is misleading. There are plenty of institutions and individuals I trust, by the way, who don’t enable comments…

The bigger issue is about “should.” I have a problem when people say what a medium should or must have. A novel must not have pictures, or a blog must have comments. If you think that Boingboing, Cuban, Winer and I have misnamed our blogs, you’re welcome to, but I’m not sure it’s worth all the letters spilled over it.

So, I guess my takeaway is that a few people would really like all blogs (including mine) to have comments. My post about why I don’t have them stands… I just don’t have the constitution. I read my email, I read my trackbacks, I listen to my readers more than almost any successful author since Gutenberg got into publishing. If that’s not enough, I guess I have to shrug and acknowledge I can’t please everyone.

Thoughts?

Yes, I’ve been “tagged” by Michael Eager and Chris Sandberg to write the post 5 Things You Don’t Know About Me. To be honest with you, I don’t really like these pass along games. In fact, I can’t stand it when I get emails that try to make you feel guilty if you don’t pass them along. They’ll say something like “you better pass this email along or you will _______” or “if you pass this email along, you’ll earn $1M from Bill Gates” — I’m sure that you know what I’m talking about.

Anyway, for the sake of not being a poor sport, I will participate in the blog tag. That being said, I will not feel bad if the bloggers that I tag do not participate.

Here are the 5 things that you probably didn’t know about me:

1. I ripped my front tooth out when I was eight years old: I was playing “dunk ball” on a lowered basketball hoop in my back yard and as I went up for a Michael-Jordan-like-dunk, my front tooth hooked the net and ripped out! (I can picture what you are doing right now… holding your mouth and saying aaaawwwwwoooooo!)
2. I played Semi-Pro Soccer: The BYU Men’s Soccer team purchased a semi-pro franchise and is now competing in the Premier Development League. I started out my career as a forward and finished it off as a center-midfielder.
3. I’m married with 1 boy and a little girl on the way: One of the most exciting news in 2006 — my wife and I are expecting #2!
4. Lived 2 years in Uruguay: Served as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was 2 of the most amazing years of my life. I love the people and miss them dearly.
5. Never Seen The Wizard of Oz: To me, that’s not really that big of deal; but to everyone else, it has been shocking. I never saw the movie and never really had the desire. I suppose that I will see it one day with my children, but if don’t, oh well.

Tag: Jeff, Trent, Alex.

This is the third in a series of introductory articles related to Internet marketing, following What is Web / Internet Marketing? and What is Search Engine Optimization / SEO? If you’ve read both of those then this article on Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising should be fairly easy to understand.

First, go do a search on Google. Sure, I could post a graphic, but it’s better if you go do it for yourself. Unless you search for something really obscure, you’ll notice that right below the Google logo and the word “Web” that there is a blue area with 2-3 links in it. This doesn’t show up 100% of the time so if you don’t see it then look to the right side of the screen and you should see a number of links with text underneath them going down the right side. These are PPC advertisements, and you can buy them on Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and just about any other search engine.

The reason they’re called “pay per click” is because the advertisers don’t have to pay anything to put the ad up there, they only pay when the ad is clicked on.

What makes PPC advertising so great is its relative simplicity, tracking capabilities, high ROI, and availability.

Simplicity. It is quite easy to set up a PPC campaign. You don’t have to know how to build a website, program in HTML, or anything of that nature. If you have ever bought anything online then I’m sure you can figure it out. That said, there are a lot of finer points to managing a PPC campaign, but anyone can jump into it and start learning without needing to read a book.

Tracking capabilities. What if you could not only estimate the amount of auto traffic going past your billboard, but know exactly how many people looked at it? What if you could know with absolute certainty how many people who purchased your product did it because of a certain ad you ran in a certain magazine last month? What if you knew to the exact penny the average return on investment you got from a radio or TV ad you ran for the past three months? That’s just the beginning of what you can track with PPC. You can test out a PPC campaign and know with absolute mathematical certainty within days, hours even, whether it’s working or not, and then continue it or pull it.

High ROI. Direct mail costs around $10 per lead. Online banner ads are about $2. Leads from a phone book will cost you $1.18, and email marketing will run around $0.55. Although it depends on your industry, PPC leads average about $0.45 per lead.

Availability. I’ve travelled out of state a bit lately, and I’ve been surprised at the lack of billboards relative to I-15 in Utah between Provo and Salt Lake City. And because I-15 is such a major corridor if you purchase a billboard here you can capture a huge chunk of the available market. It really is a great advertising opportunity. The only problem is that it’s so great that there isn’t much availability. You might wait several months to secure the spot you want because it’s sold out for the rest of the year. With PPC you can create an account and have a campaign up and running within minutes. And if you’re willing to pay you can get into a top position that fast as well.

How Does it Work?

The way these ads are sold is on what is more or less an auction system. I say more or less because in some cases, Google for example, it’s only partially an auction system, but to simplify things let’s leave it at that. In essence, if you pay more per click then your ad is shown closer and closer to the #1 spot, although if you find the #3 spot actually works better for you then you can specify that you only want your ad to show up there and nowhere else.

When you create a new ad you specify what you want the headline to be, the two short lines of text below it, where you want the link to go to, how much you’re willing to pay per click, and then you’re off and running. It really is that easy.

PPC vs. SEO

With PPC you’re competing with the “natural” or “organic” search results we discussed in the post on SEO. So which one is better? There’s no hard and fast answer to that question, but here are some pros and cons.

The first pro of PPC is that it’s faster to set up and start getting traffic to your site. SEO takes weeks at a minimum if not months. PPC is easier to set up and manage–you can do it yourself in a few minutes. SEO requires more professional expertise as well as a working knowledge of HTML.

On the con side PPC doesn’t get as many clicks as the organic search results, only about 30%. When you turn off your PPC campaign it disappears immediately, whereas with SEO you get residual benefits, possibly for years. And with PPC you pay for every click you get, whereas with SEO your costs don’t depend on clicks, so whether you get 1,000 clicks per month or 100,000 you still pay the same amount (although some people could be misled by this statement into thinking that you don’t have to pay as much to get 100,000 clicks per month as you do to get 1,000).

My opinion is why not do both? Even in cases where my firm ranks in the #1 organic spot for a keyword, I’ve noticed that if I buy the #1 PPC spot I still get clicks from both links, so I continue to use PPC.

Click Fraud

“What if I put up a PPC ad and my competitor clicks on it 100 times every day?” That’s a perfectly logical question, but think about it. If Google and the other search engines couldn’t solve that problem, not many people would pay them for PPC ads, right? While click fraud is very real, it shouldn’t keep you away from using PPC. Chances are that once in a while a competitor might click on your ad, but if they click on it ten times in one minute Google is only going to charge you for the first click. They spend millions trying to combat click fraud because the cost of fighting it is much less than the revenue they stand to lose if they get a bad name by not doing enough to prevent it. The latest research seems to point to click fraud on Google being less than 2%.

How Do I Get Started?

Each of the three major search engines have their own system for managing PPC. I’ve included links below that go directly to where you can learn more and create accounts for each one:

Google PPC

Yahoo! PPC

MSN PPC

In addition, I’d recommend the following resources if you want to learn more about creating and managing a PPC campaign:

9 Cost-Effective PPC Branding Strategies

New Eye Tracking Report

My personal blog on search engine marketing and PPC

Should I Do This Myself or Hire a Professional?

For anyone who hasn’t tried it before I would recommend they try it themselves first. Even if you decide after two days of doing it yourself that you want to hire someone, you’ll be better off for having tried. But why should you hire someone at all? The one and only reason you should hire someone is if the cost of paying them to manage it delivers better results for the same or lower cost than if you did it yourself, taking into consideration that your time is also worth something. But ideally hiring a professional or a firm to manage your PPC campaign will result in lower costs and better results at the same time. For example, my firm was contacted in 2005 by a company whose PPC campaign had climbed to $20,000 per month in click through costs. They liked the results they were getting, they just didn’t like what they were paying for them. They hired us, and we cut their costs down to around $7,000 per month while at the same time improving the results they were getting. I’m embarassed to tell you how little they are paying us to save them $13,000 per month while giving them more leads and higher quality leads.

You might not be spending anywhere close to $20,000 on PPC, but if you’re spending at least $1,000 per month then hiring a firm or a professional might be worth it. If you’re spending $2,000 or more per month then I would definitely talk to some experts and see what they can do for you. However, if you do decided to hire a firm or a professional, beware. There are a lot of people out there who don’t know what they are doing but who are glad to take your money. There are also plenty who will set up fishy agreements with you, such as wherein they get paid a percentage of how much you spend on the third-party click through costs. I would recommend hiring a firm that presents you with a flat monthly rate that doesn’t fluctuate. “But what if I want to tie their pay to their performance?” you ask. Great, then do it by firing them if they don’t perform. I’m not saying more creative arrangements can’t work out, but if you want to keep it simple then go with the flat monthly management fee.

I came across a recent post by Pete Abilla where he calls out Seth Godin for not allowing comments on his blog. Its a good read but the post get’s even better in the comments where the conversation continues.

I’m not sure if disallowing comments makes me not trust Seth but I think Seth is missing the point of blogging by not allowing comments. Blogs are supposed to be conversational. You really can’t accomplish this without comments. When you don’t have comments its like telling your audience that their opinion on what you’ve said doesn’t count. It comes off as arrogant.

Some of my best posts were made great by the comments not by my commentary. Last August I called out CleanFlicks. There was a great debate about the merits and morality of this business in the comments. I’m still getting comments on the post. Just the other day I blogged about risk and Josh and Russ piped in on the comments with some great value add commentary that I felt really completed the post and complimented my points.

If Seth is debating whether or not to add comments he should just read Pete’s post. He should instantly see the value of comments in the comments of that post.

You may notice that I often end my posts by asking you your opinion.

So…thought?

Did you see that game last night? Boise St. played Oklahoma in the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl and it was incredible! Boise St., a huge underdog & BCS buster, beat Oklahoma 43-42 in OT to win the game. BSU’s coach had a lot of guts to call some of the plays that he called. Check out the highlights here (not great quality… but it does the job). UPDATE:  After all of the buzz throughout the day today, I felt like I need to add a few more comments to this post.  One of my partners today mentioned that if last night’s game was put into a movie (kind of like Remember the Titans or Invincible), it would be one of those dumb unrealistic movies.  I mean…think about what happened:

• Underdogs go up by a lot
• “Bad guys” come back to tie after three tries to convert a 2-point conversion (only 1:30 to go in the game)
• Next play, the underdog throws an interception and the “bad guys” run it back for a TD — it looks like there is no hope for the underdogs to win
• Underdogs drive the length of field in :45 seconds by using the old-fashioned “hook-and-ladder” play (not to mention that it was run to perfection)
• Game goes into OT
• The stage is set again… “bad guys” score on the first play in OT when their star running back takes it in the end zone
• Underdogs use every trick play in the book to convert on 4th down and score a TD
• Coach decides to go for 2 to win the game
• Last play of the game ends on a trick “Statue-of-liberty” play where the underdogs win the game
• And finally… after the game, the star player for the underdogs proposes to the head cheerleader!

Too good to be true!

Different people will give you different definitions for what qualifies as search engine optimization or SEO. If you’ve been confused by what you’ve heard about SEO, just forget everything you’ve ever learned and accept what I have to say. It might not be exactly what anyone else will tell you, but you’ll sleep easier at night.

SEO is any activity that increases the ranking of a certain website for a certain keyword or keyword phrase in a search engine. For those who are new to SEO, let’s explain what that sentence means.

1. Search engines. There are three major search engines, namely Google, Yahoo!, and MSN, in that order. What makes a search engine “major?” Having more people performing searches on it.

2. Keywords. When you go to Google and type in a word you want Google to search for, the word you’re typing in is called a “keyword.” It can be one word (i.e. “design”) or multiple words (i.e. “utah web design”). And there are different ways you can search for those keywords. One of the most common is to use quotes or not use quotes. If you search for “utah web design” (without the quotes) Google will pull up a list of websites that include the words “utah,” “web,” and “design” whereas if you search for “utah web design” (with quotes) it will only pull up those websites that have the three keywords “utah web design” toghether, in that exact order.

3. Rankings. When you search on Google or another search engine the result of that search is a list of links to websites. By default most search engines list 10 links or 10 results per page. The challenge Google’s thousands of employees face is making their search engine give you the results you want, and not just the results you want, but the results the other 1,000 people want who searched for the same keyword as you did today. This can be tricky, because what you are looking for when you type in a certain keyword might be different than what someone else is searching for when they type in the same keyword. So in pleasing you by giving you the result you want when you search for a certain keyword, Google might be making someone else unhappy. But I digress.

The point is that Google is trying to guess what you want to find, and so it ranks the results according to what it thinks you want. The method by which Google decides which website will come up #1 for a certain keyword, #2, #3, and so forth, is determined by their “algorithm.” Google’s algorithm is their secret recipe, and while they give clues about it, they don’t explicitly share it, the same way Coca Cola doesn’t post their exact recipe online for anyone to make at home. Of course you know it has sugar and water in it, something that makes it brown, and if you know more than I do about cola drinks you might be able to guess as some other ingredients, but the exact ingredients and their quantities are a well-guarded secret worth billions. Google’s algorithm is similarly guarded. Why? Because if their algorithm helps them rank sites in such a way that 70% of those searching for a certain keyword are satisfied with the results vs. 60% satisfaction for those using Yahoo!, then that difference can and does mean billions of dollars in revenue and market share for Google.

However, just as someone could reverse engineer Coca Cola’s recipe and get pretty close, there are ways to figure out a lot of the details about how Google’s algorithm works. And someone who understands how that algorithm works then has the ability to know what actions can be taken to make a certain website show up higher in the rankings on Google for a certain keyword search.

Let’s consider a simplified example. A well-known part of Google’s algorithm says that if a lot of websites link to your website, then your website will rank higher than another website without as many websites linking to it, all other things being equal. The logic here is that if your website has more links coming to it than another website then that is because it is more interesting or important, and should be put higher in the rankings since it will probably satisfy more users performing searches than alternative sites. If you are aware of this facet of Google’s algorithm, then you will work on getting more and more sites to link to your website, which will boost your rankings, drive more traffic to your website, and hopefully result in more leads or sales and more revenue.

Of course it’s more complicated than just getting links. There are bad links that can actually hurt your rankings, good links that help, and better links that help even more. Knowing which links are which and how to recruit more of the good and better kinds is part of the expertise an SEO professional should have that allows them to charge money for their services.

4. Activities. Of course the big question is what are all those activities that increase rankings? There are literally hundreds of things that can be done, and the exact mix depends on the exact situation. No two websites are alike, and the competitive landscapes for any two keywords are equally dissimilar. If there is any one over-arching tip about SEO it is that if you make your website interesting enough to human beings that they want to visit it and stick around, then chances are you’ll do well in search engines too. However, while that might be the best SEO tip ever, it’s not enough if you ignore all the other possible SEO activities, because your competitors won’t.

Common Questions and Misunderstanding About SEO

If you feel like you don’t know much about SEO then you’re in the majority. A lot of people I talk to have never heard of search engine optimization or SEO. Those that have generally don’t know much about it, and often what they do know is incorrect. In fact, many of those who tout themselves as SEO professionals are woefully uneducated and continue using techniques that are not only outdated but potentially damaging to a website’s rankings. Here are some of the more common questions and misunderstandings I run into.

How long does it take to get a top ranking in Google?

The answer is that it depends. I’ve written an entire post on an SEO blog regarding the answer to the question of getting a top ranking on Google, so go check that out if you want more information.

Isn’t SEO all about tricking search engines?

People ask me this as though SEO is something dishonest and sneaky, and perhaps there is some rationale behind that opinion. After all, there are a lot of SEO types who use unethical or “black hat” techniques to improve website rankings such as stuffing meta tags, using hidden text, or spamming search engines by way of buying links on link farms. But ethical or “white hat” SEO is encouraged by the search engines because it equates to building websites the way they should be built in the first place and doing things that make a website better, whether or not it improves rankings.

Think of SEO as another type of marketing, like a billboard. A billboard can have an ad placed on it that is misleading and gets customers to buy something they really don’t want through trickery, or a billboard can be used to tell potential customers in a straightforward way about a product. SEO can be used the right way or the wrong way, but used the right way can be a valuable and legitimate marketing tool just like TV, radio, print, or outdoor advertising.

Meta tags.

In 1999 SEO basically meant putting keywords in meta tags. Today, to say that SEO is all about meta tags is like saying that transportation is all about horses and buggies. While there is some limited use for meta tags, they are not what they once were and there is ample speculation that use of meta tags is dead.

SEO means having an ugly website.

Not true. You don’t have to make your homepage a solid two pages of text in order to rank high in search engines. My firm’s previous website, which by all acounts was quite pleasing to the eye, ranked very well for a number of competitive keywords despite having lots of graphics and Flash on the homepage and not a lot of text. We recently rebuilt our website to get even better results, but we were doing pretty good before the redesign, and it’s not as if the new website is ugly by any stretch.

What exactly do you do to optimize a website?

Hundreds of things, most of which would require a separate blog post in and of themselves. If you really want to know, consider the blog TheOrganicSEO.com or my personal blog on search engine optimization as starting points.

Flash is bad for search engines.

Myth. A lack of HTML text/content is bad for search engines. Flash doesn’t hurt rankings any more than graphics do, but if your entire site is Flash based, or graphic based for that matter, then you’re in a bad spot. Adding text will help immensely.

SEO won’t work for us because we don’t sell anything online.

Neither does my firm, but we get 75% or more of our business because of SEO, and we’re not alone. Law firms, universities, retail stores, magazines, software developers, recruiters, talent agencies, and architects are all examples of companies that can and do use SEO to get more business.

SEO is something you do once, or you do a lot of work at first but then it becomes easy to maintain.

To borrow an analogy from SEO expert Lee Odden, SEO is like putting a complicated puzzle together when the picture keeps on changing. A website is never “optimized,” it either has good rankings or it doesn’t. And once it has good rankings you don’t just sit back and relax, a lot of work is still required to maintain a good ranking.

Conclusion

Hopefully this gives you a start on understanding what SEO is and is not. If you have any questions feel free to leave your comments.

Everybody has to face fear of the unknown at some point in their life. I remember watching a program about the U.S. Navy SEAL’s on the Discovery Channel.  They were interviewing a young SEAL who said something to the effect that every time he entered a combat situation he was scared. I was really taken back by that. He said if you’re not scared then there is something wrong with you. He remarked that ”It’s ok to be scared, everybody is scared. It’s not ok to say you’re not going to complete the mission.” I never thought of a SEAL being scared but it makes perfect sense and that has always resonated with me.

If you’re not afraid then something is wrong with you. The best way to deal with fear is to take it head on. You must confront it by doing. Simply put, fear of the unknown is the biggest fear you will face. As you work and overcome small problems and challenges you will gain confidence thus greatly reducing fear and risk simultaneously. This means your chances of success will greatly increase by simply acting.

World famous mountain climber, Ed Viesturs, said “I manage the risk. I don’t seek danger. I’m not an adrenaline junkie. I figure out the safe way to go in and have fun so I can live with the risk.” That’s great advice on managing risk.

Do you remember the super bowl commercial for Monster.com with the kids saying stuff like “when I grow up I want to file paperwork all day”? It was an instant classic. Why? It reminded most people that they weren’t doing what they dreamed of doing when they were young. Do you want to be 50 asking yourself why you decided to make your life about debts, credits, paperwork and meetings and not what you really wanted?

At two points in my life I considered the same career path. I thought this would bring stability (whatever that is), constant employment and a decent paycheck. I also knew that I would have hated myself for doing it and not doing what I really love. If I am 50, broke and unemployed I know that I will not regret the decision I made to not take that career path.  

The hardest part about risk is that return is not guaranteed. That one simple thing constitutes the biggest single factor of risk itself. But what in life is guaranteed? Are stability and a constant paycheck guaranteed? In my opinion, only for those who make their own guarantees by putting it out there and making their own success instead of depending on others to do it for them.

Entrepreneurship is about calculated risk not gambling. The thing that is funny is that in business we take calculated risks all the time. Corporate managers, lawyers, CPA’s, consultants, stock brokers, insurance agents, employees, etc. risk others people’s money - that’s easy.

Entrepreneurs usually risk it all. 

I once read a book called Failing Forward, which discusses the way to properly fail. Yes, that’s right, properly fail. That means that when you fall down you pick yourself back up figure out why you failed, admit your mistakes and take the lessons learned to the next thing. It’s a simple but brilliant idea. Since reading that book, I have made a long mental list of my failures. At first it was incredibly painful but it has been an invaluable exercise. Don’t let arrogance get in the way of future success. It may be all that is really holding you back.

Wayne Gretzky said “You’ll always miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

Take the shot.  

Wow. PayPerPost.com (PPP) is the dumbest company I have seen in a long time. I first ran across PPP on a podcast they did with Mike Arrington. Arrington takes them to the cleaners over a 52 minute podcast. Calacanis can’t stand these guys either.

If you don’t know what PayPerPost.com is its basically what the name implies. Every time you post a blog post about a product or service they are pimping on PPP you, the blogger, get paid. At first their plan was no disclosure of the fact that the posts were ads. Then they got a lot of heat from the blogging community, Google began to devalue PPP’s blogger’s pageranks and the FTC got involved. This forced PPP to force their “bloggers” (I use the term loosely) to disclose the fact that their post are actually advertisements. Bottom line is that the industry hates these guys.

I read today that the PPP clowns have decided to let you in on the circus by doing a reality show style documentary called rockstartup. I got a headache watching the first three segments from shaking my head in disgust. This really is the dumbest thing I have ever seen and I think its going to end much the same way Startup.com ended. I’m willing to bet the farm on that.

Here’s what you get in episode three:

• PPP’s fearless CEO, Edward “Ted” Murphy, who claims to have started six companies since 1994 (I’m guessing hot dog stand, pay day loan company and management consultant are all found on his resume) still hasn’t learned that you need to call the phone company weeks in advance of an office move to get your phone and Internet hooked up. Apparently he’s never run into this before with all that vast past experience.
• A look around their current office space reveals that all the employees are working on G5 Macs with at least 23 inch monitors. Ted’s office is complete with bobble head dolls and other toys he hopes makes him look cool to the employees.
• Next our fearless leader heads over to the new office space complaining all the way over about the contractors not getting it done on time. Classic. Ted’s also very concerned about where the company’s sign is going to go on the lobby directory. That’s a huge concern for an Internet company.
• Now in the new office space we find a complete remodel job, brand new desks and (you guessed it) $700 Aeron chairs for all. Ted get’s a little upset when a painter uses one of his $700 chairs as a stool. Ted’s office is painted a nice “insane asylum yellow”. Anyone who knows anything about remodeling an office and the cost of chairs and desks knows that this new office space must have cost hundreds of thousands of good VC money. What a waste!
• Here’s a classic. Ted heads off for a trade show and leaves the move in to his development staff that is already up against a deadline. His CTO is obviously disgusted (and should be) but Ted fixes it with a laugh and a “I love you, buddy!” Now those are great management skills!
• Our hero, Ted, returns from what I’m sure was a productive trip to meet with Clear Channel to discuss radio ads. Radio ads? You’re an Internet company, Ted. People aren’t blogging when they’re driving down the freeway. Ted knows this is a bad move but says “you can’t be afraid to test the waters.” So true.
• Ted finally makes it to the new office space, which now has a finger print door access reader ($$$) installed at the front entrance. He’s bringing good cheer - a moving box full of boozes and plastic cups. Very classy!

Fast forward to episode 5 where you see the PPP Christmas party and get a glimpse at the PPP International CXT company truck complete with a dumping bed and Ted’s face painted on the side of it. I’m sure this thing must have cost their VC’s about $120,000 including the self indulgent paint job. What a ridiculous waste of good money.

If I were PPP’s VC, I would pull their funding and count myself lucky if I even recouped a buck.  These guys are making all the classic dotcom mistakes. Did Ted sleep through 2000? Do you know what a real marketing campaign paid for in expensive office furniture and company truck could have bought these guys? Ted needs to pick up this book and this book and start using his documentary to try to explain and market his controversial service rather than as a blatant self promotional tool.

I’m going to try to hunt PayPerPost down at Mac World for a podcast. I’ll keep you posted.

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