Use Site Maps to Help Your Rankings

One of the easiest things you can do to improve your search rankings is to create a site map. Google and other search engines prefer an XML file but since it's actually a computer-to-computer file type it's not really intended for end-user viewing. If you prefer, you can make an HTML file complete with links for site navigation. Depending upon the layout, your site map might be the easiest way for a visitor to see what you have to offer and how your different products are related.

If you're not up for the task of generating an XML file on your own, check out RAGE's Google Sitemap Automator. It's an extremely easy-to-use application and very inexpensive (under $30). If you are managing multiple sites, as I am, you can create site maps for all of them in just minutes.

Once your site map has been created, Google Sitemap Automator will even publish the generated XML files to search engines such as Google (you must have a webmaster tools log in), Yahoo, MSN, and Ask.com. You can also predefine the importance of each page and assign meta data automatically. Most SEO specialists suggest that you submit your site map to search engines at least once a week, but of course, this will depend upon how often you actually make changes to your site.

While you're setting up your Google Webmaster Tools account, spend some time roving the Google options. There are lots of other applications that they offer such as analytics, product base, and site search tools. All of these can be key components to a robust search-engine optimization plan.

Job one of any new feature implementation, is to map out a system for measuring results. In the case of a site map, it's pretty easy to choose a few key words for which you wish to rank well and do a search, recording the page and position rank of each. Create and post your site map and check the same key words for a few days. You should notice an improvement, but if you don't it just means you have more work to do. 

I have to admit that a number of the tools I use are made by Google, but that's because they are easy, most are free, and Google provides a better-than-average support network. I encourage most of my clients to at least start with Google and then, if they need more features, graduate to something really expensive later. 

The great thing about SEO and SMO is you really can be quite effective and spend very little money. Oh sure, you'll need a budget for placing banner ads and paying designers, that sort of thing, but many, many of the SEO/SMO tricks that I will talk about will be completely free -- except, of course, for your time investment...

Is a web site enough?

These days it's quite rare to find a company without a web site, and that may be even more true of our industry. Most of us have made a hefty investment in our web site: the design, the content, the graphics, and maybe even in video presentations to keep our customers engaged. In fact, look around and there are probably few customer-facing projects in which you've made such an investment and that nearly every one of your customers has seen. Surely that's enough...

While it's true that web sites can provide your customers with a huge variety of information about your products, web logs -- blogs for short -- are a great complement to those efforts. Blogs provide a level of communication and interactivity that is impossible to achieve with a web site alone.

If your web site is well-rounded, you have service descriptions, product descriptions, trouble shooting FAQs, press release postings, company information, and perhaps a form for requesting contact, but where can your customer actually interact with you, ask a question, or even disagree with you? All of these are basic functions of a blog.

Though you may not have ever considered a blog, there are lots of companies today who have foregone the traditional web site and only provide a blog. This may not be the best path for you, but one thing is sure: you would not be worse off with a blog, you could only benefit.

If you'd like to tour a few blogs to understand the possibilities, try Technorati, one of the better blog search engines. It's easy to search and find topics in which you are interested. Once you've bookmarked a four or five, visit them regularly and jump right in with comments on those stories that have commenting enabled. It won't take you long to decide that you're ready to strike out on your own.

This blog is powered by Google and if you're new to the concept of blogging, it's a good place to get your feet wet. Navigate to Blogger and register. You'll find lots of help files and FAQs in case you need assistance in getting up and running.

Once you have your blog rolling, be sure that you include links from your web site to the blog and in the blog back to your web site. You'll also want to send an email out to your customers and let them know that you now have a place where the can contribute, comment, complain, or search for more help; a place where you can post video and audio help files, instructional how-tos, or demonstrations. As your customers begin to contribute, you can mine the content for great customer quotes or become immediately alerted to a customer problem -- before they begin to complain to other customers.

The commenting feature can even be monitored. If you are concerned that some comments could be detrimental, turn on the monitoring and review comments before allowing them to be visible to followers. Don't be overly concerned about customers posting a complaint. This is usually a fairly harmless method to blowing off steam and your timely responses show all followers that you care when your customers have a problem and that you're showing the issue the utmost consideration.

As customers post comments, you can even go back and edit your original posting, modifying it to accommodate the comments. For instance, if you receive multiple comments that request more information, you can edit the posting to include additional resources, links, or product descriptions that are posted on your web site.

With your web site and blog firmly entrenched in bidirectional promotion, you'll get the added benefit of improved validity and relevancy rankings for both forums.

When I consult with companies on this topic, there's never any question that this is a good idea -- everyone agrees that it is -- the problem only comes when we discuss the commitment needed to keep blog content up to date, relevant, and changing. Unlike a web page where you can make the investment up front and tend to it only as your product line or service offerings undergo a change, a blog will only be successful if you contribute -- regularly.

I don't really expect that you as the CEO, CIO, or even GM have time to post to a blog every day, but it would benefit you greatly to post to it regularly -- or even every now and then. Assign someone on your staff to tend to the daily postings, but the higher up the corporate ladder you stand, the more customers appreciate hearing from you. Your customers have built a dependency on your company's products or services and this blog can be an easy-to-use forum where you can post relevant and timely information. Hearing from c-level leaders will create good will and build relationships.

So, let's review: easy to set up, easy to contribute, builds search-engine recognition, provides easy forum for bidrectional communication with customers, and fosters good will. How can you possibly go wrong?

Are extensions still a million-dollar industry?

In 1995, I started ThePowerXChange. This was after four years as a corporate trainer where I often also functioned as a reseller of QuarkXPress XTensions to my training customers. In the last 17 or so years, I've made millions of dollars selling extensions (collectively XTensions, Plug-ins, Add-ons, Add-ins, and so on), but it begs the question: Are there still millions to be made? Of course there are, but the way you sell, promote, and even deliver them is different. That is the catalyst for this blog.

We have different challenges today than the early days and many of those challenges come in the form of messaging vehicles. At ThePowerXChange, I feel as though we've tried everything, and believe me, we've had lots of failures, but we obviously had lots of successes, too. I would like to think that despite the number of failures, I at least came away a bit smarter.

In the pages of this blog I will share with you some of our tried-and-true messaging vehicles, but more importantly I will share with you the results of our new forays into the world of social-media optimization (SMO) and search-engine optimization (SEO), and how -- or whether -- you can use it to sell your software technology. These are methods that are common to many industries, but I will tell you about them as they apply to us; those of us in the business of software for publishing.

Before 9/11, at ThePowerXChange, we were just motoring along and enjoying reasonable success and growth. Our big campaigns before this pivotal period were what we called PUNs (product-upgrade notices). It was a form of variable-data printing -- when very few companies even knew what that was. We used Xdata and QuarkXPress to customize postcards to our customers telling them when a product they had purchased had been revisioned. They were hugely successful. Depending upon the product, we would see 80% of the customers purchase the upgrade. Our customers loved that the postcard contained all of their purchase history, the product name, the version -- all the things that are taken for granted today with any variable-data job.

After 9/11, it was a whole, new world. Had anyone told me that my company would be affected by a bombing on the eastern seaboard, I would have calmly explained to them how little they know about my business. As it turns out, I would have been wrong -- completely wrong.

For the eight months after 9/11, our phone simply did not ring. We had a shopping cart site, and the cart remained empty. Out of sheer boredom, we started contacting our customers and asked them how we could help and we ended up developing a nice little niche business that while it generated no income, created more good will than I could have bought with a truckload of money.

We had a fair number of customers in the region of the twin towers in NYC and many of them had been booted from their offices due to the quarantine. These companies were also without their software and computers so we researched, wrote letters, and re-delivered their entire library; including their major apps from Quark, Adobe, Meta, and Macromedia. The great thing is, once everyone got back to work, they remembered us and many are still our customers today.

At the same time we started researching shopping-cart software and how to drive traffic. My support manager took over the shopping cart research and together we settled on Searchfit. The benefit to this proprietary solution was that they created static web pages for each product. This increased the number of relevant pages at our site and moved us up the search-engine rankings quickly. I took on the electronic marketing and started email campaigns, click-thru advertising, co-op eMarketing, link exchanges, and more. I read everything in could get my hands on about how to take advantage of the very inexpensive or free marketing available through the web.

Nearly eight years later we still spend nearly all of our marketing budget on search-engine placement and figuring out how to best employ these new and some not-so-new tools to promote the extensible-technology market. We have launched all new SMO campaigns that include LinkedIn, Plaxo, Yahoo, Google, Revver, YouTube, Delicious, Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, GoogleBase, Google Analytics, Google Search, Google AdSense, Amazon, Flickr, BlipTV, MeFeedia, RSS, link exchange, click-thru ads, banner ads, affiliates program, co-op eMarketing and announcements with our partners, and news and press releases.

So here, on the pages of my blog, I will tell you about what we've done, what we're doing, and where we're headed. I'll try to give you ideas about projects you can implement and maybe we'll find ways to work together to benefit you and your market. At the very least, you'll come away with a sense that we share your pain. If you're like me, it will make you feel better to know that you are not alone.