Save Money, Help a Good Cause and Learn SEO

For those of you who are “making the dive” into SEO, or just want to stay current with online marketing trends, the Search Marketing Standard magazine can be an excellent resource.

With stories on such topics as PPC, SEO, web analytics, click fraud, local and contextual search and interviews with industry experts, there’s almost always something interesting to be gained.

From now until December 10, new subscribers will receive a 67% discount on a 1 year subscription. That’s $4.95 for a US subscription and $6.60 in Canada for a year of SMS magazine.

In addition, the magazine will donate $1 to Toys for Tots for each new subscription which uses the discount code.

The discount code is HOLIDAY67 and you can subscribe here:
https://www.searchmarketingstandard.com/subscribe.html

Web 2.0 is a real, if difficult to define, phenomenon. And predictions such as ““60% of organizations will have some form of social media in place by 2008” suggest that Intranet 2.0 is arriving inside the firewall. But, in our experience, most organizations have yet to make Intranet 1.0 deliver real value.

The Intranet Research Report by the Irish Computer Society underscores this nicely. Key findings of a survey of 2000+ companies:

• Half of all intranet users find intranet search ineffective
• 80% believe navigation and search need improvement
• Almost half say they don’t use the intranet to support their daily work.

Eek! None of this is about the Intranet 2.0 promise of spontaneous creation content, or emergent knowledge management. It’s about a failure to do deliver on the basics.

Want to succeed at Intranet 1.0? Follow these three steps:

Step One: Document the Tasks Your Intranet Needs to Support

Define and gain a detailed understanding of employees’ most common/most important tasks. You probably have much of this information available to you or can get it quickly. Key sources include:

• Your server logs (which shows what people use when they can find it)
• Your search logs (which shows what people are looking for even when they can’t find it).
• Quick and dirty surveys (probably supported by your CMS but if not, very simple to code)

Break down each task into the steps required for success and diagram these.

Step Two: Design your Intranet to Support Key Tasks

Create an information architecture designed to make these tasks fast and simple. This might mean organizing content for one click access or implementing a single sign on system but the goal is the same – drive employee efficiency. Organize content to support activity, not in a perfect logical structure or according to your org chart.

Step Three: Fix Your Intranet Search Engine.

Do this now. If your intranet is using old search technology or the search that came “free” with the content management solution, rip it out. Grab the Google Search Appliance or the free IBM/Yahoo Ominifind software. Explore Microsoft’s free Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express released last week.One note: You can turn intranet search into a gigantic, time-consuming project. And to deliver the full value of search, you are going to need to look at the hard stuff, like cross application integration. But you can plug in any of these search software solutions today and immediately deliver superior results. Spend even two hours tuning the search solution and you can make most of your users happy.

The Bottom Line

Intranet 1.0 and 2.0 do different things and deliver different value to the organization. I’ll be blogging shortly on the key differences, but the one line summary is that Intranet 1.0 is about providing efficient access to approved resources while Intranet 2.0 is about capturing corporate knowledge in a meaningful way. One last thought – these aren’t competing concepts – you will need both.

Here’s a quick an interesting development for Canadian marketers: YouTube.ca just launched today.

According to the official press release, the site will feature content targeted towards Canadian visitors. The new Canadian YouTube Blog notes that some of the top YouTube visitors are Canadian, and asks from feedback from Canadian visitors.

The new Canadian specific YouTube site promises to be a very interesting playground, if early interest is any indication. Although the press release announcing YouTube Canada went out at 10am EST today, ING Direct released details about at $10,000 contest specifically for YouTube Canada visitors at 11:05 EST - a scant hour later.

The YouTube Canada site is so new, even it’s parent company Google hasn’t even visited yet:

YouTube already has partnerships or agreements with Canadian content publishers including CBC, the CFL and Sony BMG Canada.

You may have heard that Google Analytics is rolling out a number of new features over the coming weeks.  One of the features that has the analysts here at NLC very excited is internal “Site Search” tracking.  The buzz for Site Search has been building for over a week; so we’re pleased to announce that this feature was finally publicly released this evening!

Accessible via the Content menu, Google Analytics Site Search now empowers website managers to easily monitor the keyword phrases used in onsite searches.

As the resident information architect at non~linear creations, I see immediate value in this feature:

• Navigation can be evaluated and fine tuned
  
  Much of our research has demonstrated that a small subset of keyword phrases represents the vast majority of searches.  A highly sought-after keyword may suggest that navigational elements need to be re-worded or re-structured.

• The drivers of onsite search can be more easily identified
  
  Website managers can now see search activity in context – identifying when and where website visitors “give up” on navigation and in-page links and resort to the search feature.  Keyword phrases can also be viewed by segment such as the visitors’ city, network location or the source of the initial referral to your site.   If you’ve made use of the Google Analytics user-defined segmentation features, then you may have already identified a few key audiences on your site (such as blog readers, job seekers and customers etc.)  An understanding how each of these target market segments search brings businesses one step closer to better serving their clientele.
• Problem areas can spotted and fixed
  
  When a visitor searches and is unsatisfied with the results, they may exit the search results page entirely or bounce from one result to the next seeking, but not really finding, the desired content.  Two new metrics have been introduced to help gauge this behavior, % Search Exits (which is somewhat akin to a bounce rate) and Results/Pageviews per Search.

If you are interested in monitoring your site searches or getting started with Google Analytics check out our configuration, training and support service offerings or contact us.