Your Corporate Homepage is Really Google.com

Google Results Is Your Real Corporate Homepage
Corporations spend a great deal of money and resources to make sure that their corporate homepage looks great. What’s a corporate homepage? It’s the pro-company, pro-brand homepage that highlights what the company does, and it’s latest product campaign or initiative. It’s the starting point in what I call the Irrelevant Corporate Website (and the community has translated this post into 10 languages).

Fortunately, this is NOT the corporate homepage, as many overlook that the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) for your brand is the actual corporate homepage. The same amount of effort should be spent to ensure that the company is shown in the right light after someone does a Google search for a brand or product.

While most companies spend money on Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to make sure that their irrelevant corporate website comes to the top of the Google results (and most succeed). Some are unaware of how social media sites (blogs and twitter) can start to bubble up.

For example, take this research from Cornell University that indicates that approximately the top three results of any SERP are clicked on 75% of the time.

A Blog Rant ranked above official Corporate Page
Have you heard of “What the F*ck is wrong with Dell Technical Support” Of course, he didn’t use the asterisk. While it’s an older example, and a case study of success, let’s quickly talk about Dell. Imagine you’re a customer and you’re having issues with your company. A quick Google query for “Dell Support” at one time yielded above the fold a post by former Yahoo top blogger and former developer Jeremy Zawodny (now at Craigslist) way back in 2005.

At one time, I remember that the top three listings were 1) The official Dell Support site, 2) Jeremy’s post and 3) another Dell Support page. According to the Cornell eye tracking research, Jeremy’s post infiltrated clicks by 13% and were sure to be seen by many on the SERP. Fortunately for Dell, Jeremy’s post has moved down from the top results but is still on the first page, and ugly scar for us to all remember.

While most would rarely Google negative information about a brand when trying to seek them out, try entering your brand name plus the word “Sucks” you’ll be surprised what you’ll find. When I was at Hitachi (but at a different division) I remember how shocking it was to see this blog post “Hitachi Hell”. Now if this prominant gaming blogger had chosen to single out a specific product, it could easily have risen to the top of the search heap. Therefore do searches for all of the following for each of your product names too.

For some, Wikipedia is a starting ground
Other common search results? Wikipedia, and as you know, it also scores high in search results. When I was at Hitachi, I was surprised when I interviewed an executive to learn that he used Wikipedia as a way to make business decisions –well at least to see all the players in a particular space, he found it objective. Wikipedia isn’t a place you can put your irrelevant corporate content, although it’s far from perfect, it strives –but doesn’t always succeed — to contain objective viewpoints from the crowd. If you’re not sure how to engage Wikipedia, Charlene Li has published this report.

Impacts to recruiting
What we do online echoes for years, Google has a memory like none other, in fact this Tech CEO prowls through Google search results before hiring some candidates: “CEO Curt Finch will most likely spend some time on the Internet finding out what he can about you, including where you went to school, what your political leanings are, who your friends are, if you’ve run any marathons, and anything else he can lay his eyes on”

Summary: Don’t neglect your Google Search results for your brand, product, and name In summary, be cognizant that your homepage isn’t the website you own and manage, but actually Google Results. While you can shape that first few entries with search marketing techniques, but note that a influential blog can cause havoc or be a positive endorsement.

What to look for in a Search Engine Optimization Company

John Meloche and Jim Turner on a live Talk Radio Show deidicated to Marketing and Making Money on the Internet it’s called The Best Promo Sohw

They’ve giving a series of questions to ask an SEO you plan to hire, be a savvy and armed consumer and know what to look for.

Question to ask SEOs during interview process:

How long have you been in business?If someone tells you they’ve been doing it for 10 years, likely it didn’t exist then. So they may be a fraud

What is your background? Do you have a background in marketing or sales?

Do you have long terms clients? Are they satisfied? Ask them to prove it with case studies and references, and even tried keyword searches

What made your competition get the first seaerch results, what made them get the top search results?

What’s a realistic traffic uptake I can expect? Ask them to provide a breakdown of previous keywords and projected ones in the future.

Finding a good SEO
A good test is to find an SEO that comes up top when you type SEO. Duh!

Getting banned, not good
Tip: Getting banned is horrible for your domain, and you may want to consider shutting it down. Getting into the sandbox is not so bad.

Pricing SEO, what are market prices?
It varies on keywords that you’re aiming for

What really matters?
Organic is what matters, content is king

Small Business Web Marketing

Small business’s realize that what happens on the web may impact customers. For example, restaurants that don’t create their own website will often have a review site (like yelp, chowhound, or yahoo reviews) be the top listed site for their business.

Here’s a few resources:

Make sure your website shows exactly what you site does, address information, contact info. Download Squad has 10 tips for small businesses. I’ve also suggested to friends with restaurants to consider using pictures of their restaurant and food. But again, contact info should go right up on first page, as users are often seeking how to get to your establishment.

SF Gate has some suggestions on search strategies, well narrow ones at that. By staying focused, your small business may have an opportunity in beating out larger companies in your region.

I’ve also started to notice that there are more cafe’s and restaurants live streaming their establishment. Often, these bustling small companies may benefit from showing the world they are hub’s of energy and activity.

Small businesses may also benefit from finding other online communities and connecting with peers, partners, or customers. I’ve heard some several folks that Intuit’s Quickbooks has a thriving online community for small businesses.

Lastly, check out Duct Tape Marketing blog, which has a constant stream of high quality content.

Costs and Benefits of Search Engine Optimization

I know one of the top SEO consultants in the United States, he confided that he makes up to $500 an hour for his service, and clients are paying for it. The return? A website that is easier to find in Google and other search engine results. Previously, there has been challenges to this emerging industry, and the SEO industry stood back up and declared legitmacy.

I realize the benefits of being found quickly and easily through keywords that you’re tied to, I watch my logs and am able to see which keywords are yielding new visitors.

Oh, and if your corporation is launching a new product, I highly recommend you buy the keywords associated with the product, or optimize your product and get it crawled quickly. Why? Because at my previous company, when our competitor launched a new product, we blogged about it, and was in the top search results –above the competitor.

Where should you put your dollars? Paid or organic? At this session, I learned the most effective campaigns use a combination of both.

Not sure what to pay? read this report on SEO Pricing & Costs – What Should You Charge / How Much Should You Pay?

Neil Patel or Pronet Advertising has been helping me optimize my site, he’s shown me how to look at incoming keyword traffic and how to match and optimize my site to achieve maximum results. If you’ve questions, his blog is a good place to start.

The problem with Google Search Results: Why being “popular” and “web native” sucks

Google results are crap, but we use them anyways.

Many people are trying to game Google. In fact there’s a whole industry called Search Engine Optimization that focuses on doing this, many of them I know personally.

Here’s two reasons why Google Search results suck:

Google Results return most Popular
The problem with Google search results is that it returns the most “Popular” content, which doesn’t mean it’s always the “Right” content.

For example, Scoble often tells folks he’s “The number one Robert on Google”, yet there are Roberts that are more well known than him, such as Robert Redford or Robert Dinero.

Google yields content only on Web
This leads to problem two: Google delivers the most popular webpages or sites that exist on the internet, and it you’re not on the internet, do you matter? The problem is, Robert Redford and Robert Dinero have a stronger precence on the silver screen and TV than they do on the internet.

So what will happen? How will we evolve? Boss John Furrier suggests that we look at social networks, communities, and those we trust to find information. I’ll bet part of the answer is there.

If the Blog is the new resume then the “Google Me” is the business card?

Josh observes that Blogs are the new resume. Of course only a fraction of internet users blog, let’s not forget however that the next generation of workers are using Social Networks (From MySpace, Facebook, as well as uploading their own videos) so this is a trend that is not likely to go away.

I know several people that have gotten jobs primarily because of their blog, it had a lot to do with me getting my job too (read the comments from my CEO). Employers can see what someone is like, how they think, how the write, but more importantly what others think about them by checking out trackbacks and how people deal with disagreements, comments, etc.

So if the blog is the resume, then Jim Turner’s analogy that folks are not handing out business cards as much because they tell folks to “Google my name“.