Every morningwhen I wake up one of the first things I do is pick up my smartphone (currently a T-Mobile G1, previously a Blackberry Curve, before that a Palm Treo) and take a quick look at my e-mail.  My wife used to think this very odd.  Until several months ago I got her a Blackberry Curve – now she does the same thing.  E-mail on this phone, at least the e-mail I’m looking at is personal e-mail plus some of my many part-time business effort e-mails – none stunningly successful (or they wouldn’t be part-time) so not a ton of e-mail.  So in other words, not work e-mail.  Not e-mail from my real job (the one that pays the bills).  I’m not sure why I make this distinction it’s really not important.

Most mornings I have about 17-21 e-mails.  No big deal, about 1/2 are to be deleted, about 1/4 to be read later (maybe) and a few that I actually needed to look at first thing in the morning.  But this morning I had 48 e-mails waiting in my inbox.  This isn’t entirely unusual, it’s happened before – in fact in happened last year on this same day.  I just didn’t blog about it.  Usually when this happens I hope I had an explosion of sales on one of my websites thus a ton of payment confirmation e-mails, or something went viral and I have a bunch of new newsletter signups.   Neither has been the case yet.  I have had a few mornings with 12-18 new twitter followers for FantasyDraftEdge.com so that’s not a bad thing but most commonly the reason for an unusually high number of e-mails is a Woot Off since I get new Woot notifications via e-mail. 

But this morning I was bombarded with happy birthday e-mails from a variety of companies and forums.  
 An interesting concept in personalized marketing.  A pretty simple one too.  They know my birthday because I signed up and entered my DOB.  I ahd about 5 from forums (many of which I haven’t visited in a long while) that were plain text – one line, happy birthday from my forum, yada yada.  I did have a few with some decent value – at least perceived value.

Disney Movie Rewards gave me 25 points to my account just for having a birthday.  Not bad.  A feature length movie costs $15 – $18 on Amazon.com and gets you 100 points so this was about a $4 value.

EA Store offerred me 25% Off any purchase.  Pretty good on video games that go for around $50 and I do enjoy playing sports video games (I had just pre-ordered Tiger Woods 2010 for XBox 360) and my son loves Wii games (okay, so do I) so there is potetntial I will use this even if their shipping prices are kind of high and they ship slow.  Plus with 2 kids now I don’t play video games nearly as often.

AMCEntertainment gave me a free large soda.  Now the list value of this is huge – what are drinks at movies these days, $8?  Okay, not that much but still a nice gesture.  But, see above – 2 kids – I don’t go to the movies much anymore.  They aren’t quite old enough to enjoy (or be bearable) for movies so this one may not get used.

My Points gave me 5 free points plus 500 points just for spending $5 at a select merchant.  Pretty good deal.  Even though the merchant selection for this offer was not great I did buy a $5 gift card from Old Navy.  It won’t go to waste (my wife will see to it) and I get the points.  I should say that I did take a screen shot of the notice that said explicity “Gift Cards purchases eligible for Points” since I am suspicious and wonder if it was supposed to say not eligible.  Hopefully I get my bonus points and never need to bring this up since I’ll probably lose the argument if they don’t give me points.

Plus I had gotten 2 e-mails previously from birthday clubs.  One was Houlihan’s restaurant, a free entree.  So that’s an $8 – $15 value for lunch, maybe twice that for dinner.  Of course they know I’ll spend at least that much with my guests plus I’ll pay $1.69 for 30 cents worth of lemonade. 

Also earlier in the week The Melting Pot sent me a free chocolate desert with the purchase on entree.  The Metling Pot is AMAZING, but expensive so I won’t probably use this one as we go about once a year for our anniversary or Christmas gift to ourselves.

Lastly, Dave and Busters sent me an email coupon for $10 in free tokens – just for showing up.  Not bad at all since I actually won’t drink if I go (which I’m sure they expect me to to make some money on the offer) or buy dinner (the food is over priced and under good).

Plus I got 2 e-cards and a few other direct personalized e-mails from friends with birthday wishes a few have wished me happy birthday via Facebook.

Ironically, one of my extra full inbox e-mails this morning was an offer for free travel when I join AARP.  It’s funnier when you know I haven’t hit 40….YET.   It was just spam, not bad marketing.

During the day I’ve gotten a few other similar marketing e-mails wishing me a happy day.

So my point is this – did these e-mails work?  Was this good marketing?  In some instances it was very cheap and easy.  No offer, clearly automated and no work on any graphics or anything (plain text e-mail).  Others have some value, some more than others, but none are exceptionally pricey.  No better than a deal I’d get anyway for some other reason perhaps – or a coupon in the paper.  But still, it was a gesture and even cynical old (now a year older, but not an AARP member yet) me thought it was nice – even if I did delete most of them pretty quickly.  I did just write a blog post and gave them all a link (well, the best ones)!

The bottom line is this – why not do this for your clients if you have the ability through your CMS or database.  Although as I said some were better than others and some intruigued me more than others not once did I get mad and think – I’m never going to that website or business again!  Curse them for wishing me a happy birthday!  It was a cheap and easy way to reach out to a customer in an effort build loyalty.  Good plan in my opinion.

So today I take a quick detour.  There is a 1983 movie, Malice, that has a great – although lengthy – quote in it that I’ve liked.  Here is my SEO version of that quote:

“I am a Google expert, I am Yahoo certified in pay-per-click and search marketing, I have been awarded citations from seven different search marketing organizations, and I am never, ever sick at sea. So I ask you; when someone goes into that chapel and they fall on their knees and they pray to God that their website will be ranked # 1 on Google or that their keywords are the best or that they maximize conversions with a high ROI, who do you think they’re praying to? Now, go ahead and read your SEO 101 books, client, and you go to your church, and, with any luck, you might win the annual raffle, but if you’re looking for God, he was doing keyword analysis at his desk on November 17, and he doesn’t like to be second guessed. You ask me if I have a God complex. Let me tell you something: I am God.”

SEO is an ongoing process with several pieces coming together to work over time.  And it can certainly take time to really start working – but when it does you can see some very quick growth.  The  more exposure your site gets, the more new exposure your site will likely get.  So when SEO starts snowballing new traffic and new conversions to your site – are you ready?

Can your servers handle the traffic?  All that work can lose its value if your site performance goes down quickly or the site crashes.

Can you handle the orders? Can you fill the orders?  When orders start increasing – can you keep up?  Do you have the stock on hand or at least the ability to ramp up quickly?  Do you have a plan?

And can you do all this while maintaining the high quality service that is easier for a new business that is still small with more time to focus on individual clients.  This high level of service likely helped you grow – don’t lose it when you get big.

With SEO it takes a long time to go up in rankings…but you can go down much quicker!  
So have you answered the very simply question:  Are you ready for your SEO to work?

First, what happens at least a few days a week in front of where my office…it probably happens more but I see it a few times:
There’s a long stretch of a state highway that feeds into downtown from an area of town that has really grown the past several years so what was once kind of a nifty shortcut into downtown away from the Interstates is now a major artery into the city and traffic can back up quickly as it ends at a stop light at the edge of the city.
Since this road crosses the river there are little opportunities to get off and bail out when traffic gets particularly bad.  The only exception (2 actually) is access to a frontage road (access road, service road) that is a public road and allows you to zoom along side the highway for a few miles and then remerge into the same traffic.  So basically you can be a weasel and cut ahead of a mile or so of traffic.  I hate people like that.   So as I come from the opposite direction daily seeing this stream of weasels I think to myself – I hope there is in fact such a thing as Karma and I hope they get what they deserve someday – whatever that may be…

So how do I related this to SEO?  Those people are taking shortcuts.  Technically they aren’t doing anything illegal.  It’s a public road they are using, and they aren’t speeding (well, I’m sure some are but that goes to my point – taking chances), they aren’t driving over the median or jumping a curb, slamming into other cars to get back into the traffic, etc…
But they are certainly treading a fine line of moral behavior?  One could say (like me) that it’s a rude or cheezy thing to do.  Why are these people better than the rest of us?  Sit in traffic like the rest of us and we’ll all get there soon enough.  Instead they ‘cheat’ and move up in traffic – ironically causing the overall traffic to slow down since now there is a line of cars merging back into traffic.
So as your website sits and patiently waits for your hard work on fundamental, white hat SEO to pay off otherwise are taking shortcuts and then trying to get back in line with the rest of us.  They’re possibly taking chances but not technically breaking any rules.  So do you believe in Karma?  Do you believe that by playing by the rules and doing the right thing you’ll be rewarded in the long run and those taking shortcuts and tiptoeing a lot closer to the “line” perhaps crossing it now and then will eventually get caught and punished (Karma)?

You decide.

And just because I like saying it – PurpleWidget.com is still the # 1 result on Google for the search term “purple widget”

Once again I thought about SEO.  Everyday I drive about 10 mph over the speed limit.  I know there are state troopers out there, or local police.  I see them sometimes sitting and shooting radar of course.  Yet, I still exceed the speed limit.  Maybe because I know of all the cars out there the odds are in my favor of not getting caught.  And even if I do zoom by a cop at 80 mph, maybe he isn’t really paying attention or doesn’t really care.  Maybe he’s a liberal and happy I’m driving a Prius so he lets me fly by….who knows.  And just as an aside, I drive a Prius because I don’t want to spend money on gas.  It’s nice that I’m saving the environment and all, but (despite a few social liberal tendencies) I’m no bleeding heart, the government must and will save us liberal I can assure you.  But today, seeing the state trooper car driving next to me I slowed down and stayed right at the speed limit.  So if the highway were search engine optimization, like it was yesterday, then the trooper is Matt Cutts.  If you don’t know who Matt Cutts is you have really stumbled onto the wrong blog.  Or you just really enjoy my ever so clever blurbs.

So do we speed (buy a link, stuff a keyword, etc…) even though we know the police (Google, Matt Cutts) are out there but since we don’t see them watching us we flirt with the white hat/gray hat/black hat line?  But as soon as we know we’re being watched (have a state trooper driving next to you) do you make darn sure you’re following every Google best practice?  

I may discuss in closed door meetings internally some “risky” techniques but I’m sure not going to stand up at an SEO conference session that Matt Cutts is sitting in and say “I’ve found a way to get one over on Google by doing this….”

So what did I do?  I finished moving to the right to exit, switched to the GPS Nav system in my car and asked for an alternate route to work.  Since my in car GPS doesn’t have traffic I pulled out my G1 cell phone and quickly (and safely of course) pulled up Google Maps with the traffic overlay turned on.  In just a few minutes I knew that the traffic only lasted a few miles and so my detour needed to only take me a few miles down the road and I could get back on the highway that was the best route to my office.  I was a bit frustrated by my in car nav system that kept giving strange detour directions as I traveled on what I knew to be the best route since I am familiar enough with this part of town to take this short detour.  Now I know, from experience that my GPS Nav would have gotten me there and perhaps even quicker but it just kept shouting (okay, it doesn’t literally shout) turn here, turn here as it reset everytime I passed it’s recommend turn and took my own strategy.  A few minutes later I was back on the interstate and at work only a few minutes later than normal.  It’s entirely possible that I would have arrived at work at exactly the same time had I just sat in the traffic waiting for it to clear – remember my Google Maps on my cell phone showed it only lasted a few miles – but maybe not.  Of my many pet peeves, sitting in traffic is one of the bigger ones.  Even though my detour may have taken a few minutes longer I was moving the entire time and not just sitting there.

I promise I’m headed to a point here related to search engine optimization but I want to make a few observations first.  Actually just one and I’m not sure why really but here it goes.  I recognize that what I call traffic here in Kansas City would be a dream for most people in most big cities in the US.  We have a few spots that get bad, but even that is nothing compared to major cities and with where my office is located and my house I drive a 24 mile route that is very low in traffic.  A 22 minute drive on a Sunday morning (with no Chiefs game) is only about 30 minutes at 8:00 AM during the week.  So, no traffic.  That’s why when I see any I try to avoid it – I’m spoiled.  I’ve lived in Las Vegas where traffic is constant and a nightmare at it’s peak.  I’ve driven in LA in traffic a few times (and never will again if I can avoid it) so I know that any complaint of a 10 minute delay because of traffic here will get very little sympathy from many. 

As promised…..my point…..

So, traffic is just fine – moving very smoothly and quickly.  A few lane changes here and there to keep moving since idiots continue to just use the left lane for their own personal day spa of driving – THE LEFT LANE IS FOR PASSING ONLY!  Sorry.  Refocused now.  I need to slow down sometimes to adjust to things around me, then speed up when the opportunity is there and all the while paying attention to everything and being safe.  Had a detour, used two different tools, adjusted and despite several detour options – all of which probably would have helped me – stayed on my planned path with patience, found my way back to the main road and continued onward.
So now for a moment pretend I hadn’t told my little driving to work story and read the above again.  Does this sound like an SEO plan?  As I was driving, and detouring I started to relate it to SEO (yes, I think about SEO too much) and it prompted this post.  I’ll drive home again tonight and back to work again tomorrow.

SEO is like driving in traffic.  Be safe, slow down when needed, speed up when available, be ready for detours and aware of options, use tools available, stay focused, get back on course.  And then do it again the next day, the day after, then again the next day….etc, etc, etc…

And just to make one final point, I record all my gas mileage and maintenance.  Reporting is important in SEO too  ;)

If you came just for clever analogy and story you can stop reading.   But because I haven’t in a while I’m going to a quick recap of rankings here for Purple Widget.  I’ll do a more in-depth look rather soon (or not so soon if I’m being honest) but here’s where we stand today.

Term “purple widget”

Google #1 and #2
MSN Live #1 and #2
Yahoo #1
ASK #1 and #2

So like I said when this blog started.  I can rank you #1 for purple widget, but if nobody is searching for purple widget it won’t do you any good.
Total Visits last 30 Days: 33
Visits from Search Engines: 14

As always, thanks for visiting PurpleWidget.com!  You may now start holding your breath until my next post.

So why do I bring this up?  I’m glad you asked.

As you’ve already noticed I gave a link to the tool I find so valuable.  Not only did I link to them I used keyword rich text.  I would imagine that WordPress Automatic Upgrade is a pretty targeted term for them and since that is what my link says that URL will get some help being known as an WordPress Automatic Upgrade authority because they have another link pointing to them with that title.  Yes, a regular link without the keyword text would have helped as well but not as much.  So again, why did I bring this up?  Luckily for you, I have arrived at my point.

The bottom line is simple, the website http://techie-buzz.com/wordpress-plugins/wordpress-automatic-upgrade-plugin.html (hey another link to them!) created a great tool (aka – great content) and I (someone with a website) linked to them!  They didn’t ask me to, they didn’t pay me to (although I am not above this, but that will be the subject of a future post – should I be above it?), I simply linked to them because I wrote about them and I wrote about them because they had something of awesome value!

Now I’m off to upgrade WordPress again, automatically!

By the way, the fact that this entire post was about upgrading WordPress automatically those little links have even more value because the content surrounding the links is highly relevant as well.  Pretty cool, huh?!?!

But no matter what you’re using your blog for, don’t neglect it!  Don’t do what I’ve done, stop posting for nearly 3 weeks.  The reason search engines like blogs is because they provide fresh content, and they provide it often.  So when you don’t make it a priority having a blog doesn’t come close to the potential value it offers.  So when you’re going to start a blog make sure you’re committed to it so it can work for you the way it’s capable of.

Don’t worry, I’ll be back to purple widget business soon.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/headsmacking-tip-8-give-your-seo-campaigns-time-to-take-effect