OK…so you’re running a responsible, reputable business and you catch your bookkeeper with her hands in the till. You fire her…as you should, and threaten prosecution.

Next thing you know negative reviews about you and/or your company start showing up on Yelp, or whatever review sites are out there for you particular industry (and there are more out there than you realize). Counterfeit Facebook pages using your name and making you look like a jerk start showing up in the search results. If you are looking for a real life example check out this reputation nightmare.

Whether you’ve been victimized as an innocent business owner... or you really are a jerk is irrelevant. Your reputation, and now your business is at stake.

Reputation Management is something that must be monitored and managed, and besides…it just sounds cool. In any event it is one of the most unambiguous terms regarding the Internet that I can think of. There is nothing pretentious about it.

Where do you start?

Well let’s start by getting past the denial phase:

    •   First; you might actually be a jerk. Come to terms with that and seek help.
    •   Second; you are now officially in a world of hurt. Come to terms with that and seek help.

The Internet is forever. Nothing goes away…it can only be buried by other information that is deemed more relevant or more current by the search engines or it may be “diluted” by more favorable postings on review sites. The trick is to push negative results off the first page of search results, or dilute negative comments with a slew of positive recommendations.

The antidote is fairly time consuming, but the alternative is most certainly devastating. We monitor countless amounts or data for our clients, and you would be shocked by how many searches are conducted specifically on the name of an individual or the name of the company instead of just the service they offer.

Stay tuned. Because over the next week or so I’m going to go over a few things you can do for yourself, and some things that are best left for a professional reputation management company.

I received call from a noted cosmetic surgeon in Denver a few months back. His issue was that he was stopped and cited for a DWI (Driving While Intoxicated).  This made the local newspaper (the online version) and despite the fact that he was acquitted, his business dropped off substantially.

I don’t know about you, but before someone takes a knife to my face I prefer they not be intoxicated. Apparently this is unavoidable in some pubs and taverns I’ve been to…but that is another story. In this case his potential patients easily found this out simply by Googling him by name.

He wanted to know how to make that article disappear. The problem is that content on the Internet is forever. You can’t make it disappear; you can only bury it onto deeper pages on the search results.

What makes this such a tough assignment is that the content came from a Newspaper website. That makes it extra challenging because by its very nature news sites are constantly updating their content and search engines give extra weight to pages that contain “fresh” page content. “Fresh” content refers to page content that updates regularly as opposed to being static.

A good example of this would be the home page of news sites like CNN.com. Essentially, the home page automatically updates whenever a new content page (a new article) is added. So do the links to other related articles.

It is important to consider fresh content when planning out your site architecture. The home page and all category-level pages should include a content element that will automatically update when new content pages are added. That is why Blogs and News modules have become so important.

And the Cosmetic Surgeon? In a fleeting sober moment he did the math and realized that the cost of a Reputation Management Program paled in comparison to the devastating effects of bad PR. It took a few weeks, but we were able to push the nasty article off the first page. Cosmetically enhanced faces in Denver are once again on the rise.

There is a lot more to consider when choosing a domain name than once might think at first glance. Once you build your website, publish your domain name on collateral material and optimize it for search engines, you are somewhat committed… so better make a good choice up-front.

In general, here are my rules of thumb:

Shorter is better than longer:


Obviously shorter domains are easier to type, and in most cases are easier to remember. The problem is that almost all the good short domains have already been taken. You may have to get creative, or go to a new extension (Dot Net or Dot Biz, etc.). Shorter is definitely desirable, but not at the expense of some other considerations (read on…)

Easy to spell:


Face it, some words are just commonly misspelled… consistently. I would never recommend taking on a purposely misspelled domain name as your primary, but you do need to weigh the ease of spelling vs. the targeted nature of the words in your domain. The worst case scenario is if the common misspelled name is that of your competition.

Avoid special Characters:


Dashes, underscores and dots are all easily missed. More than likely you are resorting to special characters because the versions without all those dots and dashes have already been taken.

No Acronyms:


Unless you’re already a brand name…or trying to establish one, don’t expect people to remember that www.scvma.org is the domain for the “Southern California Veterinary Medical Association”. OK… that is a tough one, but if possible go with something longer that is memorable an easy to spell before you try to make someone remember SCVMA…

“Dot Com” trumps “Dot everything else”… most times


Dot Com is the granddaddy of all domains. If you have a good “Dot Com” most people will give you credit for being around a while… or at least being the original. There is no shame in going to a different domain extension, but see what you can do with a “dot Com” first. The exceptions are a “Dot Org” if you are indeed an organization. Or “Dot Info” if you want to be perceived as a source for information and not commerce. Don’t knock yourself our trying to force-feed yourself into a leftover “Dot Com” if it doesn’t make sense… Just take a look first.

Easy to remember:


Sometimes even short domains are not easy to remember. Acronyms can be very hard; meaningless words or easily confused names can be a challenge as well. This becomes a factor when trying to leverage word of mouth advertising (one friend telling another) or collateral advertising that requires the target audience to visit the site after the fact (such as radio advertising, of billboard advertising).

It’s not particularly relevant if someone is clicking on a link, but if they have to remember your domain name or spell it… they better be able to remember it.

Use Keywords:


Search Engines assume that if there is a keyword in your domain name, that your website must be relevant for that word. If possible, use a word or words that are appropriate for you to show up for on the search engines as part of your domain.

One more tip:

When publishing your domain use a technique called “stemming”. That is; instead of www.mydomainname.com, publish it as www.MyDomainName.com so that human beings can actually make sense of it whenever they see it. That will make it easier for them to read it and memorize it.

None of these rules are absolute. The best alternatives available might require you to break a rule or two. Just consider that you are probably going to have to live with your domain name for a long time… so make a good decision. 

In September of 2007 Marketing Sherpa conducted two surveys in an effort to learn what challenges in-house marketers have designing a landing page program, and what challenges Agencies have managing a landing page campaign for their clients. Notice the common frustrations in each case:

Frustrations of In-House Marketers round analysis of Landing Pages

The biggest obstacle to in-house landing page optimization is by far is the lack of resources. In mid-sized companies the marketing department is typically overloaded. In smaller companies without a marketing department, the owner of the staff, even if they had the right credentials is (or should be) too busy minding the core business.

Frustrations of Agencies in Providing Better Analytics to Clients

Resources: It is tempting to try and do it yourself or assign it to existing staff. Take into consideration the true cost of doing it in-house. Are you diverting staff members from other necessary duties? Are you paying them to learn on the job when an agency or consultant may have already cultivated that know-how? You may indeed have the talent under your own roof; just consider carefully the true costs.

Aptitude: Most individuals are either left brained or right brained. That is to say technically or creatively inclined. Since a landing page campaign is a combination of creative and analytical, a technical oriented team or individual is not likely to come up with the compelling creative, and the creative team may not be able to interpret the data. That applies to agencies as well as you and your staff.

Experience: Agencies may have strengths in either creative or analytics; however they may not have the full array of skill sets necessary to do it any better than you can do in-house. If your current levels of web traffic are insufficient, make sure you work with a consultant that can deliver everything that you need, either in full or in part with your in-house team.

Summary

The limited scope of this white paper covers only some industry best practices. Virtually every element on a web page has some effect…positive or negative on the actions that a visitor takes. Ultimately only testing will determine what works and what doesn’t.

Whether you are working with an Agency, a Consultancy, in-house staff, or doing it yourself, this paper was designed to help you avoid costly mistakes and wasted effort.   Use the information in this paper to help you implement, or manage others to implement best practices. There are however other considerations:

Traffic: If you are not driving enough traffic to your website, no amount of landing page best practices will help. There is still a common misconception that if you build a website your customers will automatically find it. Before you can gauge how your visitors react to your landing page, you need to have visitors.

Testing: It’s easy to say that you will test the results, but do you have the mechanisms in place to capture the data? Do you know how to interpret the data?

Implementation: Who will implement these best practices?  Should you hire professional help or task you in-house staff? If that is a budgetary decision, what is the true cost of re-taking your staff?

I think we can all agree that the Internet is not as shiny and new as it seemed a decade ago. Arriving on a website is no longer such a unique experience that you have to sacrifice the most valuable piece of real-estate (your top Headline) with “Welcome to Our Website!” Frankly, nobody cares….

If you want to make your visitors welcome, give them what they are looking for; A headline that lets them know they are in the right place.

Depending on personality type, you have 2-8 seconds before they decide to leave your site. There are very few things that you can almost guarantee they will look at during that time; one of them is… the Headline.

Statistically, women will read more than men, older people will read more than younger people, and few people will read your body copy unless they are intrigued by the headline. Heck, even search engines give your headlines (H1 tags) more weight when indexing your site.

Therefore your headline is arguably the most important element of your landing page. Don’t waste it!

Instead of “Welcome to our Website”, how about something interesting that will really welcome them like:

“Who Else Wants a Great Blog Template Design?”

Or…

“Here is a Method that is Helping Bloggers Write Better Post Titles”

Or…

“Get Rid of That Lame Mullet Hairdo Once and For All”

OK, maybe not the best examples off the top of my head, but you get the point. Any one of those headlines trumps the universally lame “Welcome to my Website”.  If you are clever enough to weave a keyword or two into an interesting headline, search engines will be as interested in you as those lucky visitors who found your website.

I recently had the pleasure of listening to a good friend of mine and Co-Founder of ReachLocal; Nathan Hanks talk about the relationship between searching the web, surfing the web, and socializing on the web, and how they are all related to how consumers make decisions about buying. To illustrate the relationship he made up a little story (or did he make it up?)

Search:

Vicky has a friend that in Dallas Texas who is getting married. Vicky is the bridesmaid wanting to take her friend and three of the other bridesmaids to a special day at a local spa. She is taking all five ladies and is looking for a place that has great pre-wedding spa packages.

 

Vicky is at work and its 2:00 in the afternoon and she is taking a break and starts searching on Google for “wedding party spa packages dallas”. She hits “enter” and boom!...there on the page are 5 or 6 different search results. One of those search results is “Suzie-Q’s Day Spa”, and another one is the Crescent spa; which is a very well known spa in Dallas at the Crescent hotel.

 

Vicky clicks on a couple of sites and says “what about the Crescent? I’ve heard of them”. “What about this Suzie-Q spa?” She clicks on a few pages and minutes later she realizes that she has to run over to a meeting and takes off.

Surf:

At the end of the day Vicky comes back to her desk and as is her afternoon ritual she goes to check her email and the news online. She opens up her CNN news and wow! There is a display ad… (banner ad) for Suzie-Q’s spa!

Vicky doesn’t know or care or even think too much about why Suzie-Q’s banner ad showed up just when she was thinking about a local spa. But we know it wasn’t an accident. That is something called “remarketing”. When Vicky originally visited Suzie-Q’s website, a tag or a “cookie” was dropped on Vicky’s computer. Later when Vicky went to look at the news, there was the banner ad for Suzie-Q’s business just waiting for her.

Vicky remembers that she has to book that spa package for the girls.  “This must be a pretty cool spa; they must have a pretty large advertising budget”. So Vicky clicks on the banner and finds herself back on Suzie-Q’s site. Vicky browses through the site and thinks it looks pretty good. She sees some pages and some programs and thinks it looks pretty reasonable.

Maybe she doesn’t know what to make of the pricing, or maybe she just hasn’t seen enough pictures, maybe she is leaning on going to the Crescent because she suspects the Crescent is a sure bet based on its reputation.

Social:

Vicky turns around and goes to Yelp or CitySearch. Now instead of searching on “wedding party spa packages dallas” she types in “Suzie-Q day spa”. Vicky is no longer searching, she is researching Suzie-Q, and she is doing it on a review site. Maybe there weren’t any listings, so Vicky goes back to Google and searches on “Suzie-Q spa” to see what comes up. Well Suzie-Q’s map listing shows up on Google maps section with 3 and a half star rating.  In fact there are 3 reviews on Suzie-Q’s spa.

Vicky thinks “only three reviews, that’s not a whole lot of reviews for a spa in downtown Dallas”, but she clicks on the first one. It just so happens that review is by another woman who brought her friends there for a pre-wedding spa getaway who wrote that “it was the best value for her money and really a great experience athletically and in terms of and relaxation”.

Conversion:

Vicky likes what she sees and is now ready to pick up the phone and book a package for her group.

This is just an example of how Search, Surf & Social work together to drive a conversion. Now this of course is just a made up scenario, but I can tell you that is a typical scenario that happens more than you might think.