Anatomy Of A Web-Advertising Campaign

Anatomy Of A Web-Advertising Campaign
By Jerry Bader (c) 2006

In The Beginning There Was Marketing

Anyone in business who has any interest in using the Web to
further his or her business is well aware of "search engine
optimization." Not a day goes by that my email in-box isn't
loaded with information on how to get the best search engine
results, and not a week goes by that a client or potential
client doesn't request that their website be not just search
friendly but search engine fanatical.

For some time we have been preaching the importance of
delivering the marketing message and that your message should
not be corrupted or distorted by techniques aimed at attracting
search engine robots while driving away real people who may
actually be potential customers.

Now I realize that in many circles this attitude is considered
outright heresy, but hopefully there are a few marketing types
around that understand websites have to deliver more than
miscellaneous random eyeballs; websites have to deliver a
message that is memorable, understandable, useable, and if
you're really good at your job, information that can be
incorporated into your audiences' belief system.

With that in mind we were pleasantly surprised when Google the
primary target of this SEO obsessive compulsive frenzy of
technical slight-of-hand announced that they were instituting
Google Video Ads and to add a little icing on the cake, they
purchased YouTube adding to their already considerable
investment in Google Video. Somebody at the big "G" thinks
video is a viable Web-medium even if the purveyors of search
engine fool's gold would have you believe otherwise.

The list of companies, including Forbes, Amazon, Wyeth, and
Ford, delivering Web-audio and Web-video grows daily and we are
not just talking about major corporations. Small companies are
using multimedia to get the edge on their larger competitors
who still have their heads buried in the search engine
optimization sand.

Acknowledging All The Issues

In developing our campaign to promote the use of Web-audio and
Web-video as an effective method of delivering marketing
messages over the Web, we identified four key issues that would
have to be addressed:

(a) We had to demonstrate that website design was about
delivering the marketing message and not just search engine
optimization.

(b) We had to demonstrate that even small and medium-sized
companies could afford professional Web-audio and Web-video and
that it wasn't cost prohibitive.

(c) We had to demonstrate that professional Web-audio and
Web-video required more than just the ability to use a video
camera and that professional multimedia story-telling required
a unique set of creative skills and technical ability not often
found in-house in most businesses.

(d) We had to demonstrate that the development and production
of creative multimedia marketing and professional webmedia
content had to do with talent and experience, not size.

These were the challenges that informed all our subsequent
decisions.

The Concept

In order to make people pay attention to what we had to say we
needed a concept that was both familiar and edgy. Sure we were
sticking a finger in the eye of all the search engine
optimizers but you can't be afraid to make a strong statement
if you want people to sit-up and take notice, especially if you
are fighting a tidal wave of misconception.

The fact that we were telling people that delivering your
marketing message on the Web using multimedia was more
important than search engine optimization was enough to make
what we were doing controversial, but we also needed a vehicle
that allowed us to present the opposing point of view. What we
needed was a recognizable style that demonstrated our ability
to deliver a memorable, comprehensible, useable,
belief-altering message in the medium we were promoting.

Since we primarily use Macintosh computers for all our work and
only use PCs to check for compatibility, we thought we would pay
homage to the brilliant Mac commercials running on television.
The format worked for us because it allowed us to create two
characters of our own that would present opposing points of
view over a series of videos that would comprise the campaign.
We knew that some people would react unfavorably to our using
such a familiar format but we figured it would demonstrate how
even small but talented production companies can deliver high
quality multimedia Web-based marketing on tight budgets.

A Market Primed and Ready

Our efforts in advocating the power of using the human voice
and image to deliver marketing stories over the Web was finally
getting through to companies who were fed-up with the cost and
ineffectiveness of continually chasing the holy grail of search
engine optimization. Company presidents and marketing managers
were starting to listen, starting to realize there was another
way. This campaign was aimed at pushing these business
executives to act on what they already knew: good marketing is
about delivering the message, not keyword density.

Preproduction, Production, and Post Production

We wanted to make sure we had a distinctive sound by composing
our own signature theme music and creating our own cast of
characters with a distinctive message promoting the concept of
multimedia. In fact these planned web-commercials really don't
sell anything, all they do is make people aware that search
engine optimization is not the only thing they should be
thinking about when they are developing a website or webmedia
campaign. In short, the medium was the message.

The use of Web-audio and Web-video is the best way to implement
this kind of marketing presentation. We sat down and started to
write and before we knew it we had eighteen scripts each
featuring a different issue in the search engine optimization
versus multimedia controversy.

The next step was finding the right actors to play the part.
Whereas Web-audio allows us to draw upon a vast number of voice
talents across North American, video is much more limiting,
especially if we wanted to keep the cost down to a reasonable
amount. Even if we were prepared to blow the budget on actors,
we knew our clients wouldn't, so it was important to
demonstrate that we could get the job cast at a sensible cost.
The casting proved to be an interesting exercise of frustration
and humor. We had all types of applicants ranging from the
sublime to the ridiculous to the outright bizarre, but
ultimately we were able to find two fine young actors who
understood exactly what we were doing and who took to the parts
as if they were written specifically for them.

One of our greatest assets as a firm is that we do everything
from concept to implementation, including writing, videoing,
editing, graphic, motion, and website design; but if you want
to produce a campaign at a sensible price you still have to be
careful you don't write overly elaborate scripts that require
multiple sets, locations or hard to acquire props. That said we
still had to find a cute dog we could trust on set, links of
various kinds of sausages, a hard to put together toy, and best
of all a real straightjacket from an interesting website that
specialized in rather strange items of clothing.

The shoot itself went extremely smoothly and we ended up
shooting all eighteen videos in less than two days. We assumed
some of the videos that looked good on paper just wouldn't
translate to the screen, but to our surprise every one of the
scripts worked. We knew what we wanted to say and weren't
afraid to say it, even though we were flying in the face of
conventional wisdom.

While Josh Bader our Director of Photography was digitizing,
color correcting and editing the raw footage, Simon Bader our
Director of Audio composed a number of theme music compositions
to choose from for our signature sound. Once all the pieces were
put together into a series of finished videos, we were ready to
implement the campaign.

Implementation

The first set of six videos were uploaded to Google Video and
YouTube as well as onto a webpage
(http://www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads/) that was created to house the
full campaign of eventually eighteen videos, each presenting a
different issue in the search engine optimization versus
multimedia controversy. Versions of the videos were also used
to create a Google Video Ad campaign.

Credits

Produced by MRPwebmedia
Executive Producer: Jerry Bader
Written By: Jerry and Josh Bader
Director of Photography and Visual Design: Josh Bader
Director of Audio and Music Composer: Simon Bader
SEO Guy: Sean Kaufmann
Multimedia Guy: Erez Bowers

Web Development with SEO in Mind

Web Development with SEO in Mind
By Adam McFarland of iPrioritize
(http://www.iprioritize.com/) (c) 2006

When a business owner decides to bring their business to the
web, generally the last thing that they think about is search
engine optimization. They assume that whomever they hire to do
their web design will put up a site and then submit it to the
search engines and the traffic will magically pour in.
Unfortunately it takes more than that to drive search engine
traffic to your site, and even more unfortunately most
developers don't program with SEO in mind, nor do they educate
the client about the process involved in gaining traffic from
search engines.

Whether it's carelessness or a lack of knowledge, or a
combination of the two, this often leads to a client that
several months down the road doesn't understand why their site
doesn't get any traffic and isn't helping their business. A
good designer will not only program with SEO in mind, but will
also educate the client about the basic principles of SEO,
whether they are the one who executes it or not.

Many times the clients I inherit have gone through this scenario
and then face drastic on-site changes to get their site search
engine friendly before we are even able to begin the arduous
process of link building. Whether you are designing a site for
yourself or for a client, following the simple steps below when
programming will ultimately save the business time and money and
result in a search engine friendly site that truly maximizes the
online potential of the business.

Use proper tags for headings, bold text, italic text, and lists
– HTML has heading tags, bold tags, italic tags, and ordered and
unordered lists for a reason and you should use them. Using CSS
you can practically style them however you like, but actually
using a heading tag for your headings, and bold tags for
important text, will help allow search engines understand what
text on a page is a heading or what is more important than the
surrounding text. Simply applying a CSS style that makes text
larger or bold doesn't do that.

Optimize your images – search engine spiders can't read text
within an image. Adding ALT text to your image tag helps, but
ideally you should remove all wording from the image and style
it using CSS, adding the remaining portion of the image as a
background image to the text. Here is a side-by-side comparison
(http://www.seo-playbook.com/image_example.php) of two images
that look the same in your browser, but much different to a
search engine spider.

Avoid canonical problems – believe it or not, search engines can
see http://fda-approved-rx.com, http://www.fda-approved-rx.com, and
http://www.fda-approved-rx.com/index.htm as three different pages. A
simple solution is to use a 301 redirect
(http://www.webconfs.com/how-to-redirect-a-webpage.php) to point
all of your pages to their "www" counterpart. You can also select
the preferred domain that Google shows in the new Google
Webmaster Tools (http://www.google.com/webmasters/) console.

Get rid of Session IDs if you have a PHP site – have you ever
seen a PHPSESSID variable added to the end of a URL on a PHP
page (it looks something like PHPSESSID=34908908)? This happens
because PHP will add a unique PHPSESSID to URLs within your site
if cookies aren't available. This can be extremely problematic
for your site's search engine ranking. Google and Yahoo will see
a unique PHPSESSID in the URL every time they visit a page on
your site, and in turn think that said page is a different page
each time. At worst, this could be viewed as duplicate content
and get your site banned, and at best it will reduce the
perceived value of each page. One solution that I've used
successfully is to utilize url_rewriter.tags
(http://www.php.net/session).

Put CSS and JavaScript in external files – nearly every site
nowadays uses CSS and JavaScript for something. While both are
great for enhancing user experience, neither will help your
search engine ranking if left on your page. One of the factors
that search engines consider when ranking your site is the
percentage of code relevant to the search term. CSS and
JavaScript can take up hundreds of lines of code, minimizing the
importance of your text and in turn hurting your ranking. By
putting them in separate files and simply including them in your
page by reference, you can reduce hundreds of lines down to one
and increase the amount of code in the file that is relevant
content.

Minimize the use of tables in layouts – the debate about whether
or not tables should be used in site design has been going on
for years and there's no end in site. I fall somewhere in the
middle – there are certain circumstances (like organizing
tabular data) where I think tables still make the most sense,
but I also appreciate the SEO benefits of using CSS layouts.
CSS layouts drastically reduce the amount of code in your site
that isn't content that the user sees. Just like moving CSS and
JavaScript to an external file, the less on-page code that isn't
content, the better. Check out search engine friendly layouts
(http://www.searchenginefriendlylayouts.com/) for some free
example layouts.

Validate your site – a site doesn't have to be perfectly coded
to rank high in the search engines (there are many, many other
factors), but valid HTML will help ensure that search engines
and browsers alike will accurately see your page. Try using the
official W3C Validator (http://validator.w3.org/) or install
this handy Firefox extension (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/249/). Validating generally identifies areas of code
that are redundant, unnecessary, or not accepted across all
browsers. All of which will help make your site more search
engine friendly.
================================================================
Adam McFarland owns iPrioritize - simple to-do lists
(http://www.iprioritize.com/) that can be edited at any time
from any place in the world. He also provides SEO consulting
(http://www.seo-playbook.com/) for small businesses looking for
a cost-effective way to drive more traffic to their site and
convert more visitors into customers.