Giving web marketing advice is not always an easy endeavor. Let’s be honest, sometimes it is hard to be good in this game. But if you find yourself in a pickle with a client and have no idea what to tell them, fear not: Just use the button below to generate a random statement of web marketing advice that is sure to wow them. And if you don’t get what you want the first time, feel free to keep clicking until you get exactly what you need. 60% of the time, this works EVERY TIME!

I am going to preface this post with something that I really should not have to say:  You need to be tracking your web-based inbound phone calls.  If you are not aware of how many calls/leads your website is generating for you, then you have no idea of the true ROI of your website.  Phone tracking is best done by creating a unique number that is available only on the website – this way you know that any calls to that specific number were generated by users who viewed the website.  You do not need a call center or a huge phone plan to do this.  You can get these unique numbers (along with increased tracking features like volume, caller length, and even caller ID) from great companies like IfByPhone that offer these services for very affordable rates.

For most of my clients, it is also critical to track not just volume, but volume by source.  That is, how many calls came from organic, PPC, specific referrals, etc?  The best way to do this is by using dynamic phone tracking.  With dynamic phone tracking, different numbers are displayed to different web visitors depending on the source of each user.  Some companies, like IfByPhone, offer this code as part of their services (others do not), but most have limitations as to how many numbers you can dynamically track on a page at one time.  This does not work for me, as I often need to track local & 1-800 numbers for every page.

No worries, I have written a bit of JavaScript that solves this problem.

First, a few caveats:

1) You must have at least one trackable phone number available to you.

2) This script only works with tagged links.  That means you have to put your parameter on the inbound link to your site.

3) This script is session based.  This means that user will only see this number the first time they come the source (i.e. PPC) you want to track.  If they come from a different source the next time (i.e. direct or organic), they will not see the same dynamically generated number that they did the first time.

4) This script will not work if the user goes to a page through a redirect.

Please note that items #2 thru #4 are not impossible to alter, just a little more complicated than the script I am giving you here.  Feel free to contact Beacon or myself with any questions if you would like to delve deeper.  If you doNow, without further ado…

Begin by placing the following JavaScript in either as a script in your HTML head or as a referenced external .js file.

var current_page = document.URL;
var sourceConfirm = current_page.indexOf(“?source-track”);

var phone_num=”XXX-XXX-XXXX”;
if (paidConfirm != -1)
{
document.cookie = “Track this Source”;
}
else
{
}

var cookieCheck=document.cookie.indexOf(“Track this Source”);

if (cookieCheck != -1)
{
phone_num=”YYY-YYY-YYYY”;
}
else
{
}

Replace “?source-track” with whatever parameter you are using to tag the inbound link with.  Replace XXX-XXX-XXXX with your default number.   Replace YYY-YYY-YYYY with the variable number that you would like tracked.

Next, where you want the number to display, place:

<script>phone_num</script>

And that is it.  Your default number will display for all users except for those who come to the site via the tagged link.

Merry Christmas!

- EW, follow me on twitter @ejwestksu

Ever had an issue where you want to track unique events (or virtual pageviews) within Google Analytics from a template file?  For example, on an e-commerce site, you may have a series of product pages that use the same ‘add to cart’ button from either an include file or some kind of reusable wrapper.  You may want to track each ‘add to cart’ click as a unique event for that specific product, not just the product section as a whole.  Since the actual JavaScript snippet for event tracking can only be placed into these file once, this would seem to post a problem.

Here’s the Solution.  In this case, we are going to use the URL of each page to serve as a unique identifier for the event tracking.  If the URLs are not unique among the pages where you want the event tracked, there is a slightly more complicated solution that you can contact me on Twitter for.

In the <head> of the pages that you want tracked, place the following code snippet (or save this snippet as a JavaScript file and reference it):

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">

<!--
	function passID()
	{
		var fullURL = parent.document.URL;
                var uniqueID = fullURL.substring(fullURL.indexOf('XX'),
		fullURL.indexOf('XX')+3);
		return uniqueID;
	}

//-->

</SCRIPT>

This snippet will grab a 3 character unique ID out of the page URL on which it appears.  Simply replace the XX in the code above with the 2 characters that precede the unique ID in the URL.  If the ID is only one character long, then you have it.  If it is 2 characters, replace the “+3″ above with “+4″.  If it is 3 characters, replace the “+3″ with “+5″, and so forth.

Note: If XX appears multiple times in URL, you will want to make it longer than two characters to ensure that you get the identifier that you want.  Just make sure to adjust the ending portion of the substring accordingly.

Now that we have our unique ID, the rest of the event tracking is easy.  For your onClick or onSubmit event, the tracking code for GA usually appears as:

_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'Category', 'Action', 'Label']);

With ‘Category’, ‘Action’, and ‘Label’ each being strings that the coder enters to display in Analytics.

In this case, we’re just going to make one adjustment:

_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'Category', 'Action', passID()]);

‘Label’ has been replaced by passID(), the function we created in the <head> of the page for the uniqueID.  You could also replace ‘Category’ or ‘Action’ with the passID() function as well, but I think ‘Label’ makes the most sense as these pages are going to be similar in nature coming from the same template file.

That’s it, the unique ID will now show in the label section of GA.  Feel free to contact me with any questions and I’d love to hear about any case studies where you use this.

- EJW, follow me on twitter: @ejwestksu

Last week, the world of social media was temporarily rocked by an accidental leak from a Google employee (the world of social media moved on quickly because that is what social media does).  Steve Yegge wanted to vent some opinions on Google+ in an internal memo, but accidentally made the post public.  To their credit, Google has not tried to suppress the post after the fact – you can read it here.  It is a bit lengthy, but I highly recommend taking the time to read it to get some pretty candid opinions from a Google developer towards one Google’s latest foray into social media.

In this post, Yegge expounds on some of the mistakes made with Google+ and makes some comparisons with an area where he finds Amazon.com & Facebook to be superior.  What really stood out to me was Yegge’s take on products and platforms:

“That one last thing that Google doesn’t do well is Platforms. We don’t understand platforms. We don’t “get” platforms. Some of you do, but you are the minority. This has become painfully clear to me over the past six years. I was kind of hoping that competitive pressure from Microsoft and Amazon and more recently Facebook would make us wake up collectively and start doing universal services. Not in some sort of ad-hoc, half-assed way, but in more or less the same way Amazon did it: all at once, for real, no cheating, and treating it as our top priority from now on.”

“A product is useless without a platform, or more precisely and accurately, a platform-less product will always be replaced by an equivalent platform-ized product.”

It occurred to me that since this was meant to be an internal post from a developer for other developers, those without a background in development may not understand the differences between platforms and products within the context of this post.  While the words can mean different things to different people across various industries (or even within this one), what purpose do they serve in this post to explain the [perceived] flaws in Google+ in relation to its competitors?

In this context, Yegge is criticizing Google+ for working on a closed system.  This makes it a “product.”  It is a versatile system with a variety of the features that people like in other social media systems – i.e. pictures, music, games, etc.  But, at the end of the day, the user is beholden to the features that Google has created for them.  Google+ is a pre-packaged product where the user’s ability to customize the experience is limited within the framework that Google allows.  Think of it as buying a car.  After purchase, you can add features like a CD player, power locks, keyless entry, et al.  You can even change car’s color.  But, you can’t drastically alter what the car is.  If you purchased an SUV, you cannot remake it as a sports coupe.

Yegge argues that Google+ (and maybe even Google itself to a certain degree) should be looking at itself more as a platform.  In this context, think of a platform more as a building foundation.  The foundation is a necessity and provides some direction for what it to be built upwards.  However, architects and foremen still have plenty of leeway on how to proceed.  For example, look at the openness of Facebook.  This was a system that originally served simply as a networking site.  However, over the past decade, it has evolved into a site where people listen to music (Spotify), play games (Farmville, Mafia Wars), determine their genealogy, take quizzes, etc.  These activities are done primarily through applications developed by third party developers.   These are people with no affiliation to Facebook, but can still use Facebook as a platform to develop apps designed to work specifically within it.  This means that every user experience is different depending on what apps they have installed on their page.  This also means that Mark Zuckerburg and Co. have given themselves significant flexibility for the future.  They do not have to dream of the next big thing, they will still benefit from it if occurs on their platform.

But, by being a product over a platform, Google+ has determined that it already knows what its users wants and will be able to provide that experience for them.  With over 40 million users at the time of this post, they are obviously doing something right.  But for sustainability purposes, without being in a platform setup, Google will have to constantly be on the edge of taste in order to prevent from going the way of MySpace…

- EJW, follow me on twitter: @ejwestksu

As I prepare for my first league’s draft tonight [that’s right, I’m not only geek enough to be in 3 leagues, I’m also geek enough to prep for each draft], I am struck by some of the similarities between building a quality fantasy football roster and being successful at my day job in web marketing.  It is actually uncanny as to level of analysis and prediction that lead to success in both arenas.  Truth be told, the following aspects can lead to victory in many walks of life, but I will maintain focus on these two areas that I know a bit about for the purposes of this post.

Build around your cornerstones:  Spend your big money on the areas where you truly excel.  For fantasy football, this ‘money’ comes in the form of early draft picks.  Owners use these picks on players they expect to be stars.  In marketing, this refers to using your budget in areas that you own a competitive advantage.  Emphasize your strengths!  What you do better than the competition is the franchise player of your business – whether that be your product, human capital, customer service, whatever.  If there is not anything that you do better than the competition, then you don’t have a franchise player – so do not plan on winning much.

Determine relevant stats:  Not all metrics affect the bottom line as much as others.  In fantasy football – pass attempts, pass receptions, and rushing attempts typically do not result in any points.  A wide receiver who racks up a lot of receptions, but not many yards or touchdowns, is not really that valuable.  Likewise, eyes on a website, advertisement, or video do not always result in any conversions.  When you are looking through your analytics data, figure out which ones represent your core audience.  Traffic that does not lead to conversions (i.e. sales, contacts, destination pages, etc.) is unlikely to be deemed particularly valuable.  Determine what the most relevant stats are to your campaign (i.e. click-thru rate, conversions, etc.) and focus on those.

Trend Analysis:  Trends are a key part of my industry.  Numbers that move in the same direction over time are not only more likely to continue doing so for some future projection, but also may tell us something about certain market segments altogether.  For example, increasing traffic from a certain region of the country may identify a significant marketing opportunity in that area.  Likewise, in fantasy football, a player who has shown growth in his stats over multiple years may be indicative of a player who is ready to break out for big numbers in the coming season.

Find undervalued areas:  Late rounds of fantasy football drafts can turn into a crapshoot of a sort.  Once the obvious names are off the board, determining the less obvious players who will be successful can prove very difficult.  Anybody can draft production in the early rounds, but it is the players who establish quality depth in the later rounds who often end up winning the league.  In order to have success in the later rounds of the draft, one must find players who their opponents undervalue.  Marketing is the same way.  Finding relevant marketing channels that the competition has neglected or is unaware of can produce huge results.

Finding success requires skill AND art:  Do not fear the occasional ‘gut’ feeling.  They may not always pay off, but a marketer who is never wrong is a marketer who never takes any chances.   Both fantasy football and web marketing involves art in addition to skill.  A little speculation and guesswork may not a bad thing so long as it is one aspect of a greater marketing plan and not THE marketing plan.

Was this a reach for a blog topic at a time when writer’s block seemed to be setting in?  Quite possibly.  But that does not mean that I’m not right!  As you are going about your web marketing processes and/or getting ready for your fantasy football league draft, take note of who does the preceding items the best.  Odds are that they have been the winners in the past and will be again.

We talk a lot about individual aspects of SEO and PPC, i.e. tactics.  We focus on best practices and offer some tips that we have learned through our own experiences/expertise.  However, to the best of my knowledge, this blog has never discussed the differences in overall strategy that should be taken in using PPC vs. SEO.  That they would be different may make inherent sense, but you will find that many marketers apply the same strategy to these two formats viewing them simply as different channels under the internet umbrella.

While there are exceptions, I typically recommend campaigns for both PPC and SEO to all of my clients.  There are benefits to be found exclusively in each to help the client reach almost any web-based goals.  However, that does not mean that I take the same strategy with both methodologies.  There are some fundamental differences that need to be observed with how each works and who is being targeted that affect how I go about tackling those systems.

For search engine optimization, the over-simplified strategy is to optimize the on-site content so that Google & Bing (and other engines to a lesser degree) will rank the site for terms that customers may be searching.  This includes specific product, service, and category pages – as well as peripheral terms that may be related to that content.  I am often willing to take a “shotgun” approach to SEO by tackling as many phrases that will rank as possible.  Even if this brings in some irrelevant traffic with a lower conversion rate, the raw number of conversions should increase as some users are searching along these lines.  There is no added cost per user beyond the time spent to create the ranking content.  For example, if I want to bring in users who are searching for steel containment tanks, I would like to rank high for the phrase “steel tanks.”  Now, this might also bring many users who are searching for army tanks, but so long as some of the users are searching for holding tanks, I would likely see a positive return on investment.  The tactics taken to achieve good organic results are discussed extensively in a number of SEO related articles on this blog.

For PPC, the strategy needs to be much more targeted.  Each visitor who arrives via PPC costs the provider just a little bit extra.  If PPC ads bring in large quantities of irrelevant/low converting users, this will likely result in a poor return on investment.  Using the previous example, I do not want to target the broad phrase “steel tanks” for PPC ads as they are expensive and a bit of a crapshoot as to how relevant the incoming traffic will be.  Compared to the shotgun for SEO, I want to use more of a sniper rival for PPC.  ROI on PPC can be terrific, but it will always be highest for the most relevant users.  I will want to use phrase (e.g. “steel storage tanks”), exact (e.g. [steel containment tanks]), and negative match (e.g. steel tanks –army) terms to best filter where my ads are shown.  That is not to say that you need to limit volume, only focus on that which is most likely to convert and work from there.  The Beacon blog contains a number of posts to discuss best practices in creating ads and the types of phrases that are most worthy of focus.

While I hate the word “synergy” (it is often used in situations where it is completely unachievable – i.e. business mergers), there is something to be said for PPC and SEO feeding off of each other.  They help create exposure and enhance the user experience to the point where they produce better results together than the sums of what either could achieve alone.  Just take heed to ensure that you are using a strategy specifically tailored for that aspect of web marketing as opposed to just sectioning out the same strategy across different channels.

“Solving for Pattern” is the title to a fascinating essay written by lifelong academic Wendell Berry.  If you have never read it, I highly recommend that you do.  Over-simplified, this essay addresses that our solutions to problems often create new problems in the short or long term.  Its conclusions may seem self-intuitive, but they are obviously not.  As a society, we continually make the same kinds of mistakes it addresses.

Berry asserts that good solutions to problems are much rarer than most people think.  He uses agriculture examples to show where addressing a single problem can lead to bigger peripheral issues.  An example would be cattle penned in a small area helping to build economies of scale, but also creating a situation where disease becomes more common and spreads more quickly.  Narrow vision and/or ignorance can lead to solutions that cause more problems than they solve:

“A bad solution is bad, then, because it acts destructively upon the larger patterns in which it is contained. It acts destructively upon those patterns, most likely, because it is formed in ignorance or disregard of them. A bad solution solves for a single purpose or goal, such as increased production.”

A truly good solution creates positive outcomes throughout the entire system where it is being used.  The often stated, but rarely obtained, business buzz word “synergy” would be applicable here.

While Berry’s essay used the agriculture industry as support for its claims, it also is quite applicable to the world of website creation and web marketing.  It is not uncommon in my line of work to run across ideas or plans to address a single concern that might cannibalize other aspects of a company’s web profile upon implementation.  It is important to maintain big picture thoughts even when making smaller adjustments.  For example, over-targeting for certain high volume key phrases and/or building low quality content to specifically to rank for these phrases can address search engine rankings, but could negatively affect the site’s user experience and performance overall.  This is why a lot of SEO firms who offer high rankings through high volume spam and completely generic landing pages for a select few key phrases should be taken with a grain of salt – their solutions (if they even work for what they are promising) could open up a can of worms elsewhere.

To solve you website for pattern, when making large scale adjustments, keep in mind the following items:

* How will this strategy affect my user’s experience?

* Will this change even address the issue I am concerned about?  Why am I doing this in the first place?

* What are some possible peripheral issues that could arise from this change?

* Test, Test, Test.  Never launch a dramatic change or new site blind.  While you will never know exactly how the web as a whole will react, there are numerous ways (focus testing, A/B tests, etc.) that will give you some idea of what to expect with your results.

The best way to ensure that you are solving for pattern and not creating more problems is to always be focusing on the overall strategy and goals of the website.  Be aware of your site’s & your company’s strengths, opportunities, and limitations.  Solutions and changes to your website should fit easily within your company’s strategy and operations.  If they don’t, then that is a weakness of the organization as a whole and an issue that is likely to be solved by a website tweak.

-EW, follow me on twitter @ejwestksu

I am a sucker for behind the scenes stories. I cannot get enough of them. Whether it be business, movies, sports, whatever – I want to know what is happening when the cameras are not rolling. This week, Bill Simmons (more commonly known as ‘The Sports Guy’ as a writer for ESPN) launched his own website, Grantland. This is a website where the main focus is to cater to people like me, who enjoy sports and pop culture…AT THE SAME TIME. Anyhow, before this begins to come across as an advertisement for his product, I want to discuss an article that stood out to me: a behind the scenes look at the short-lived National Sports Daily, commonly referred to as simply The National.

Born out of the mind of the richest man south of the Rio Grande, The National was an attempt at a national sports daily paper – to include scores, featured writing, editorials, the whole nine yards. In a way it was greatly ahead of its time. While it would fail in under two years, its format would eventually find tremendous success in the form of websites like ESPN.com, CNNSI, et al. In fact, many of the big name writers currently at these websites are alumni from The National. It was a virtual who’s who of sports writing talent for the past twenty years. With a revolutionary format and amazing talent, The National should have succeeded, but it didn’t. In fact, it lost $150 million in just over eighteen months.

But what does it have to do with web marketing? I am getting there – patience is a virtue.

The point here is that a great idea put into action by great people can lead to a great product (which The National was), but it is not always enough. In the case of this paper, it did not matter that they had a great product, nobody ever received it. It was taken down by a terrible distribution system that led to inconsistent deliveries – not just to individual patrons, but also to newstands that were considered necessary for the livelihood of a country-wide paper that was light on advertising revenue immediately upon launch. One executive put it best:

“Even in the box right outside [the New York City headquarters], we couldn’t receive our own paper!”

For many companies & firms in today’s digital age, their website is their distribution system – not necessarily to get their product to their customers (although that does occur), but primarily to deliver their message as to why customers and prospects should spend money with them. If this message is delivered poorly, to the wrong audience, or unable to be heard/seen, then the actualy product or service being offered need not even exist – regardless of its quality. The National spent millions on writers & executives, but cut corners when it came to IT professionals and distribution systems. Said one writer:

“”We do [have the best writing talent]. But…the tech side doesn’t know what they’re doing. We can write and edit all we want, but if we can’t publish the damn stuff, we’re dead.”

Many CEO’s may not view their website as a core aspect of their business operations, choosing instead to categorize it as just one other marketing channel. But the website will often serve as the customer’s first impression. Its appearance and functionality may lead to how the user views the entire company. A professional site that operates professionally will give the appearance of a professional company. A cookie-cutter site with a propensity to crash will likely give off the vibe that this is how the company’s entire business operations perform.

It is important to learn a twenty year old lesson from The National. Having a strong final product and good people to manufacture/run it is necessary, no doubt. However, that cannot be done at the expense of the infrastructure and presentation of the overall company. It is the equivalent of using cheap screws on the billion dollar space shuttle. A business is only as strong as its weakest link throughout the delivery process. When a firm has a great product, it should go to great lengths to let the public know about it and provide them with easy access to it. This can pay off exponentially through (free) word of mouth advertising. Whatever the expense of a quality website development and efficient web marketing can total to, I doubt there are many instances where it is more expensive than customers lost through a poorly presented online delivery.

A popular CMS system for e-commerce sites, Zen Cart offers advantages in an easy-to-use admin interface (especially for novices) and extensive customization capabilities for developers, either through the out-of-the-box modules or through custom added code added directly to the server.

However, one issue I have found with extensive customization is that some changes may have the unintended consequence of causing the cache folder – typically located on the server at /site/cache/ – to slowly (but without warning) build to an extremely large size that could crash the website.  This occurs because certain changes may trigger a debugging file to kick in and write error reports to the cache folder every minute.  This could lead to over a gig of information, or twice that if you are also running a test site, being generated by the site in a matter of weeks.

These files are generated by a debugging file that should be located at /site/includes/extra_configures/enable_error_logging.php.

Most of the recommendations I encountered for dealing with this issue involved just removing the enable_error_logging file altogether.  However, while this did stop writing files to the cache folder and preventing the folder from overflowing, it actually led to a queer circumstance where the errors were still written…only directly to the site itself, leading to some very strange display situations on select browsers.

As such, I recommend not deleting this file.  The best fix I was able to manage was to leave the file in existence, but alter its functionality.  This was accomplished by the following steps:

1) Open /site/includes/extra_configures/enable_error_logging.php.  Save a copy locally or with a different file extension within the same folder.  You will still want the code contained to be in existence should you ever want to debug select customizations or module installations using this file.

2) Look at the section that includes the snippets stated $pages_to_debug[] .  Delete all but one of these items (leaving one snippet that states $pages_to_debug[] = ‘ ‘;).  This should be in the vicinity of lines 18-20.

3)From here, delete all lines between the aforementioned line of code and the comment that states ///// DO NOT EDIT BELOW THIS LINE /////.  This should be located between lines 35 & 40.

That’s it!  Enough of the file is still in existence to prevent any errors from crashing your site, but the writing functionality to the cache folder has been removed, preventing any worries of unwanted gigs of data being accumulated.  Should you need to debug the site at a future date, simply go to the copied folder and replace the removed lines.  When you are done, delete the lines again as indicated.

- EW

Follow me on twitter: @ejwestksu

When restructuring a site’s URLs, the proper use of 301 redirects can make or break the continuous flow of traffic without a significant drop-off. Not only will this ensure that any traffic intended for the previous page will reach the most appropriate new destination, but it will also pass Google PageRank of the previous page to the new one. This makes it much easier to build or maintain search engine rankings than trying to build a new page up from scratch.

301 redirecting through an .htaccess server file is a pretty straightforward process. The line of code for a redirect can be as simple as:

Redirect 301 /site/original-destination.html /page/new-destination.html

For pages that end with a file extension, it is just about as simple as that. However, many systems nowadays will actually drop the file extension from the name. For example, /site/original-destination.html will actually appear as site/original-destination. This is a subtle, but important difference when it comes to redirects. It may not be wise to use:

Redirect 301 /site/orginal-destination /site/new-destination

This is because the standard 301 redirect is actually path prefix redirect, meaning that not only will /site/original-destination get moved to the new page, but so will /site/original-destination-A, /site/original-destination-2, /site/original-destination-iii, etc. Any page that begins with the redirected term will get moved. If you are moving an entire directory, this is a good thing. However, if just a single page or smaller group of pages needs to be moved, this is too broad a brush and can lead to problems.

The solution lies in using regular expressions with the RedirectMatch phrase. Use the carrot (^) to match the beginning of a string and a dollar sign ($) to indicate the end of the string. This will ensure that only the page designated is redirected:

RedirectMatch 301 ^/site/original-destination$ /site/new-destination

Note: As different systems have their own variations on how to handle redirecting, make sure to have an understanding of the syntax and redirect/rewrite rules in play before implementing this.

Follow me on twitter: @ejwestksu