As we embark onto redesigning our semvalet.com‘s web site, we are naturally asking ourselves whether we have the right User experience and SEO strategy

1. Are we using the right information architecture?
2. What title tags should we be using?
3. What is the right content to display?
4. How do we make sure we optimize our customers stories for the greatest impact?
5. How can we make it easier for interested parties to link to our site?

Our own views coupled with customer research should inform most decisions. But when in doubt, we like to challenge our thinking by using search tools. After all search engines collect valuable data on how customers search for information.

The Google AdWords tool for instance highlights the popularity of queries for a particular keyword and suggest other related terms.

The choice of our domain name ‘semvalet.com’ was primary guided by our brand positioning, i.e. we are a no frills, no non-sense digital agency that specialize in helping businesses and other agencies succeed in Search Engine Marketing.

But we did leverage the Google Insights tools as well. When we compared queries for PPC  and SEM,  we have found SEM to be more popular:

When it comes to page titles and content optimization, we used a similar approach. We had  a bit more room to maneuver. SEO best practices indicated we had 80 characters for title tags, 160 for meta tags and a dozen meta keywords.

For instance we hesitated for some time before adding pay-per-click into most of our tags, h1 and h2. But it turned out this is still one of the best understood term to describe what we do, at least based on the popularity of the queries in Google AdWords.

As to our customers, we simply realized that as a start-up, being able to display big company names would definitely help getting us additional traffic. We worked closely with College Hunks Hauling Junk to create a high impact case study. You may not know them, but there are very prominent in Small Businesses magazines.

And we did not stop when the web site was launched. Like any start-up, our product offering saw a few adjustments. We expanded our services to agencies. As we created more customer segments, each of them had to use a different set of content to provide the most relevant user experience.

For agencies in particular, our guts are telling us they will expect a bit more sophistication in terms of semantics that we use on the web site. For instance, they understand the concept of Paid search while end customers typically think ‘google advertising’.

What we have yet to crack for the next release is whether we should be using the term ‘outsource’ or ‘subcontract’ or maybe both. In this case since agencies are a smallwer world, we can’t simply rely on Google AdWords tool. Other techniques such as Google analytics, polls, performance of our LinkedIn ads or analysis of Google search terms will help us refine our content strategy.

We are certainly not saying Search tools are the only way to optimize content, but we think they are a good start.

The next release of semvalet.com is planned next week. We will work hard on content over the next few weeks. Stay tuned!

Two weeks ago, we spoke about the merits of bidding on your own company brand name. One of them was to prevent competitors to steal away your potential customers.

From Google’s perspectives, it is fine to bid on your competitors brand name and products. In May 2009, they made it possible for your competitors to bid on your company name and use your brand terms in their text ads. In September 2010, Google expanded this practice to Canada, U.K. and Ireland. The same day, they also made it possible for most advertisers worldwide to bid on your company name (but not include their brand terms in the text ads). This is currently being challenged  by the European parliament and US companies like Rosetta Stone.

There are some limitations, which Google highlighted below:

”Ads using the term in a competitive, critical, or negative way will not be allowed to run with the term at issue in their ad. Additionally, we will not allow the following:

- ads that do not lead to a landing page that clearly facilitates the sale of either the goods and services corresponding to the trademark or parts or components related to the goods and services corresponding to the trademark

- competitive or critical information about the goods and services corresponding to a trademark

- ads that do not lead to a landing page which provides substantive information about the goods and services corresponding to a trademark”

The above rules are of course controversial for market leaders like Rosetta Stone that have established generic brand names that are associated with a category wide product. Google would argue that customers looking for Rosetta Stone products are looking for a language training program, not necessarily Rosetta Stone’s.

Google trademark policy is also not drawing clear boundaries. Right now, it seems any company can bid on any competitors’ name.

Stealing our customers away

In my experience, Google’s argument that their trademark policy is an attempt to increase customer experience is biased. There is clearly some financial benefits in having competitors and resellers bid on the same terms. Due to the nature of the AdWords auction, more bidders will automatically drive Cost Per Click (CPC) up.

Don’t get me wrong, I have seen instances where bidding on your competitors brand name or products work. This is especially true when your competitors is not using any paid search advertising. But unless your competitors are not running any analytics, they will notice the drop in traffic and sales. And very quickly will start creating ads that not only aim to recoup loss traffic but also take your own customers away.

Only Google is the long term winner of those short sighted strategies for advertisers.