Search Marketing Insomniac…The Blog of Adam Henige

We just made it past the one year mark.  The day in the office was pretty uneventful to be honest, but I couldn’t help but reflect on all of the things that happened in our first year of business, and the lessons I’ve learned.  To steal a cliche I used in my final weeks at Xerox, I’ll break things down Clint Eastwood style, “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.”

The Good

• My business partner is a brilliant guy, and a lot of fun to work with.  I couldn’t imagine taking this plunge with anyone else, and Joe has been critical in our success thus far, his networking and presentation skills have been on display all over Michigan.  There’s a reason I call him the mayor, after all.
• Our interns.  It started out with a lone intern last summer, and we’ve had a stream of them come through since then and they’ve been eager learners and a real asset to our output.
• Our partners.  Another huge reason for our success thus far has been our partners.  They’ve fueled our growth by partnering on projects (and in the case of GreenLite, they even built our new site!)  This past Thursday we invited everyone out to Claddagh’s for food and drink, and we had a good showing, and more importantly, a good time!
• Getting involved.  We’ve been very fortunate to be able to join so many great associations and organizations locally, which has allowed us to share our input and get some positive exposure.  We’ve taken part in presentations everywhere from Mason High School to Lansing Rotary, and enjoyed working with organizations like the South Lansing Business Association, Meridian Area Business Association, Capitol Area IT Council, Mid Michigan Red Cross, and the Creative Alliance (I’m sure I’m forgetting some, sorry in advance!)
• Our clients.  We wouldn’t have made it very far without them, and some of our earliest clients have continued referring even more business to us.  It took a bit of a leap of faith to climb on board with a new company, and our clients have been wonderful partners working with us to make our services succeed for them.
• Our new digs.  We moved from a tiny office in Okemos to 1,800 square feet next door to Capitol Research Services in East Lansing, which will allow us plenty of room to grow.
• The media.  Just today Spotlight Michigan stopped by to do a feature on us, and we’ve also received great press from the Great Lakes IT Report, Capital Gains, the Lansing State Journal and more.  The coverage has helped create awareness for our business, and the back links have been a big help to our SEO efforts (so if you want to feature us more often, just ask!)

The Bad

• The economy.  While the economy wasn’t on an upswing last May when we started Netvantage, we just didn’t foresee what started in late 2008.  Many a sleepless night happened late into 2008 as we wondered if we’d get undercut by the floundering economy.
• Learning as you go.  Truth be told, we have been pretty lucky in that we haven’t made any catastrophically stupid mistakes.  Thanks to some advice from our accounting consultant Andy Azelton, as well as some sage advice from friends and colleagues, we’ve steered clear of tragedy when it could have been all too easy to sink our ship.  That said, we definitely would change some things if we started over - client acquisition strategy and streamlining our early advertising amongst others.

The Ugly

• Perhaps the best part of this post is that there really hasn’t been an ugly stage to this past year.  Leaving a great job to start my own company in the teeth of a recession still sounds insane, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.  You only live once (depending on your religion, I suppose) and this was something that I just had to do.  2009 has been exceptional to Netvantage so far, and I can’t wait to see what’s next.

For anyone who’s been involved in our successes thus far, my most sincere thanks.  If it weren’t for all of you, we really wouldn’t be where we are today.

There are a million ways to ask for a link, but using some common sense when you do so by email can certainly help your cause.  What do I mean by common sense?  Well, a couple of things.  The first is common advice for anyone who’s done link building in the past, and that’s to personalize your message to a degree that matches the value of the link you’re aiming to obtain.  Some links are more valuable than others, but just because it’s not an authoritative link you’re after doesn’t mean you should send out a message with zero personalization.  Even some moderate personalization like mentioning the site, the page you want a link from, and addressing your contact by name will improve your chances for consideration.

The other point I wanted to make here was about etiquette.  I’ve seen a lot of bloggers giving advice about the best way to ask for a link.  Some say that you should “always include the html for your link” or similar instructions when asking for a link.  But every case is different, and I’ve seen many of other webmasters get offended by this approach.  Typically, I find that authority sites usually know what they’re doing from an SEO standpoint, and you have to assume they get requests from time to time.  If you’re approaching a site that seems to have its SEO ducks in a row, don’t insult their intelligence when you make a request.  On the opposite end of the spectrum, you may find yourself seeking a link from a blogger who doesn’t seem to be too technically savvy, in which case offering up the html might be beneficial for them.

Ultimately, there’s no one right way to ask for a link via email.  Just use your head.

Is there anything better than finding free SEO tools that are REALLY valuable?  Well, winning the lotto might top it, but not by much.  Okay, I might need a life, but I have found a couple cool tools lately that I thought I’d share.

Majestic SEO is the first one.  An awesome database of links over time that can show you how your links have grown, or how your competitors’ have grown.  This can be some excellent intelligence to gauge the aggressiveness of your competitors and diagnose the tactics they’re using.  I’m still digging into all of the ways to leverage this tool, but thus far, it’s one of the most impressive free tools I have found.

Buzzstream is the other tool.  To me, one of the most inefficient tasks in SEO is trying to track your communications, particularly with all of the different methods of communication these days.  While it may not solve every issue in tracking your communications, it goes a long way towards documenting and categorizing your link building opportunities.  I’m just beginning to wade into using this, but the prospects are pretty exciting thus far.

Okay, keeping it short tonight…err…this morning.  Happy SEOing…

I’m still sort of shocked when I mention Google Reader or Google Alerts to people and they don’t have any idea what I’m talking about.  If you’re doing SEO, utilizing these tools can go a long way to making sure that you’re getting every link possible.

A lot of SEOs will tell you that it makes sense to go out and hunt down sites that mention your company and either ask for a link if they didn’t already include one, or ask that the webmaster optimize the anchor text for your SEO purposes.  Of course, these are good ideas, but a lot of times it can be difficult to get someone to care enough to make these changes, particularly if the page has been up for a while.  Experience tells me that the fresher content is, the easier it is to have someone adjust or add a link.

So while many people think of Google Alerts as a tool to simply monitor mentions of your brand(s) and may tie it into Google Reader to organize their daily intake of information, you can also use these mentions to make sure that every mention is followed up on for SEO purposes.  As we come up on our one year anniversary, I’m hoping some of the press we get turns into solid linking opportunities, and I start every morning with a quick glance at Google Reader to see what opportunities opportunities have presented themselves that day, and I recommend you do, too.

As one of the holdover companies from the IndexTools days, I’ve been waiting to hear more on the re-launch as Yahoo Web Analytics, and it’s been a long time since I’ve made a peep about it. You may recall a good long time ago when I decided to give people an introduction to what YWA (well, still IndexTools really) had to offer.  I definitely lauded it at the time, but while I’m sure Mr. Mortensen and his team have been doing their darndest to roll out a fabulous product, I’ve found myself moving almost exclusively to Google Analytics, as they have been beefing up their offerings at an incredible rate.

That said, some potentially exciting tidbits came recently in the form of an email from YWA that I thought I’d share with those who have been anxiously waiting, or those who may just be slightly curious.  It went like this:

These bullets definitely got my head spinning a bit.  Let’s take a look one by one…

1. Demographics.  REALLY???  While this is a marketer’s dream, I approach this with the utmost in skepticism.  What exactly does this mean?  Where does the demographic data come from?  What level of detail?  I will temper my expectations, as MSN tried to offer something similar in their beta launch, and I got such highly actionable data as this:
   
2. Oodles of custom variables?  AWESOME.  IndexTools had a lot of flexibility advantages over Google Analytics a while back, and this should put them back in the game.  I’m excited to tear into this, particularly for our ecommerce clients.
3. 50 actions?  Wow, this is a major expansion over what IndexTools offered in its days as a paid service.  That’s impressive.  For those keeping score at home, Google only offers four goals to track in a single profile.  If you have a complicated site with lots of potential goals/goal pages, this will be a godsend.
4. I’ll wait and see on the charts, but adding notes, if done properly, could make reporting a helluva lot easier for some clients.
5. I haven’t needed more flexibility than what they offered as IndexTools, but I’m sure greater control will be a nice addition for many agencies.

Wow (I keep saying that), it’s been a while since I had a post focused almost totally on analytics.  It feels good…my blood’s flowing again.  I’m just realizing the content of my blogging largely relates to whatever my day to day focus has shifted to.  As you may have noticed, I’ve been doing a heavy load of SEO lately, so that’s been reflected here.  I have a big analytics consulting project tying up in the next few weeks, and depending on when this drops, hopefully I’ll have more to report soon…an updated review of new features perhaps?  Stay tuned.