This page will eventually contain an updated series of links on this
topic. Meanwhile preliminary work on the topic can be found at http://www.a-b.co.uk/e-msc/stickythree.html
Sticky Sites by Julie Grant, Ken Hewitt and Colin Pearson
I have now posted draft material about talks I attended by
Hacker Cracker Det Ch Superintendent Len Hynds
Search Engine - Optimisation Secrets
E-envoy (and
others) at NW CBI Conference on e-customers
A few convenient (and important links)
main Techo Innov forum
I have submitted
Background Paper on Stickiness
SEE ALSO
Other references found relating to Stickiness or Communities
Just discovered the books:
| Emerick Donald & Round Kimberley | Exploring Web Marketing & Project management | 0130163961 | |
| Brinson D et al | Exploring Electronic Commerce, site marketing and Law | 0130858986 www.phptr.com |
Also received the following email with much relevant information - may I suggest you subscribe directly to them:
Marketing in the eConomy <http://www.WebProNews.com/> <http://clicks.ientrymail.com/servlet/Clickthru?q=0e--eHTIiQJhpcJGB12rmPnxRJF>
Editor's Note - 01.17.02
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<mailto:Comments@WebProNews.com>Peter Thiruselvam
The WebProNews Team <http://clicks.ientrymail.com/servlet/Clickthru?q=50-M_XBIR0QsuVr3lftSqZw8thx>
Marketing in the <#FYI1>eConomy by Rob Thrasher
Meticulous selection of key-phrases and peripheral strategies will almost always
guarantee a successful campaign.
Note: The strategy defined in this article is a direct result of nearly seven
years of research and development conducted by the author, me, Rob Thrasher, a
'Five Star' ranked YAHOO! Internet marketing expert.
At the onset of a search engine marketing & optimization campaign it is
imperative to conduct initial research to indicate what key-phrases will produce
maximum bang for the clients buck. All too often, the very first thing a
prospective client does is throw five or six key-phrases off the top of their
head that they are convinced will increase their rankings and produce more hits.
I dubbed these 'intuitive key-phrases', and in my experience, they turn out to
be the actual recommended, or what I call 'researched key-phrases', less than
30% of the time. This phenomenon presents the Web marketing expert with a
multifaceted problem that requires answers or more in-depth queries into the
following:
1) Do searchers even query on these particular key-phrases?
2) If searchers do type these key-phrases as queries, how many others are
competing for the key-phrases.
3) What is the estimated revenue the key-phrase will generate. To answer this we
need many pieces of data including:
a) Conversion ratios for the existing site(s).
b) Predicted likely increase in conversion rate from a redesign using market
information.
c) Applying formulas to estimate the total number of additional hits that the
key-phrase will generate, if the campaign is successful, applying the odds of
success in each engine to the result of an approximate revenue generation when
the additional hits guess is applied to the conversion ratio.
4) If the key-phrase is not a 'money phrase' is it necessary as a branding
phrase? i.e. the companies name or top selling brand.
5) IF research shows that the key-phrase is not used on a large-scale, but used
very frequently in the clients' industry, as a niche key-phrase, then it is
necessary to use a secondary strategy that will strongly highlight possible
niche phrases that will generate more Web traffic than traditional power
phraseology. I call these strategies peripheral strategies. See more about
peripheral strategies below.
6) Continued monitoring to track ROI
7) Finally, how likely is the client willing to abandon the key-phrases that
prove to be erroneous? IF you have a possible client that insists you generate
more hits and revenue, yet is unwilling, for whatever reason to abandon at least
the most obviously flawed phrases, then politely decline the client. Especially
after you have explained that the number of hours necessary to achieve the
key-phrase when weighed against the cost would produce less ROI than most banner
ad campaigns. This client is too stubborn to listen to expert advice and needs
to go elsewhere. You will not have a very good chance that you will produce a
long-term profitable relationship due to the fact that this client WILL blame
you, if not out loud, then in their minds, when the campaign inevitably produces
no ROI.
Peripheral Strategies (PS) & Peripheral Branding (PB)
A PS is one with which you attempt to attract people to your Web site with
secondary strategies based upon more of a niche ideology. You will find on the
Web that people tend to turn towards it for items that are harder to get, or
fulfill a niche of some fashion. Thus, there tends to be very little competition
for these keywords. Less people type them, but the lack of competition and the
degree to which the browser is pre-qualified as a likely buyer means that these
key-phrases are worth more per possible click than their more popular
counterparts. Peripheral strategies can be conducted within the main site by
attaching different meta tags and content and submitted to the
<#FYI2>search engines or directories separately from the main sections,
or, more effectively, they can exist as a whole new site. A key component to
this strategy is a resource center within your site that is also categorized and
set up in adherence to the primary and secondary key-phrase strategies. They
will follow one of two main types of marketing logic:
1) They'll be sub-strategies off from the main one within the site whereby they
bring a different level to the main strategy. An example of this is building
key-phrase strategies focused on smaller picture concepts within the site, or on
the less profitable, at least in the 'real world', products or services that
might be more popular due to the fact that they are harder to find and have less
competition for key-phrases.
2) They'll be independent from the main, or sales & marketing, site. A
search engine, more of a directory really, with the main categories based
entirely around your primary and secondary key-phrases.
SE (Search Engine Squared)
This term refers to a particular strategy that, if utilized correctly, can
multiply the effect of your search engine marketing & optimization strategy
greatly. It is called "Search Engine Squared" due to the fact that you
are building your own engine to achieve better rankings in the engines, thus
squaring your results. NOTE: It might or might not actually square the results,
but it will provide better results. PLEASE NOTE ALSO: This is not a technique to
<#FYI3>spam any engine or directory to trick people to come to your site.
This strategy provides a useful and valuable tool to your marketplace and is a
perfectly valid entity for the search engines to catalog. I have not and will
not, here or anyplace, recommend trying to attract people to Web pages that are
not directly beneficial and pertinent to the desire and intent of the browser.
In fact, as referred to in "Web Surfing's New Wave", an article
authored by me, Rob Thrasher, and published in the "Home Business
Journal", I predicted the inevitability and necessity for smaller engines
serving the needs of browsers in a more niche fashion. So, these smaller engines
and directories will play a vital role in redefining how we search on the Web,
thus the 'SE (Search Engine Squared)'. technique provides a beneficial result to
the client as an individual entity AND to the populous of the 'virtual world' as
a whole. The sum of the parts, in this case, will be greater than the whole.
Here are the basic components of the SE technique:
1) The basic premise is based upon effectiveness of doorway pages. But doorway
pages tend to be generated using more of an educated, frequently automated,
guess framework and don't provide peripheral content, thus are very close to, if
not the definition of, Spam.
2) By securing an industry based and generic domain name, i.e.
HardwareStores.com, and placing key-phrases strategically in this new industry
specific search engine, YOU now own a valuable source for information and
resources within your industry, thus:
a) YOU control which of YOUR banners will show up and when.
b) YOU determine who gets links and what the priority of those links is, so YOU
decide that YOUR links to YOUR resource center in YOUR Web site are higher
priority.
c) YOU will become all knowing in the industry since you see postings placed by
competitors. Thus, YOU know about new projects about competitors, etc.
d) You determine what the categories in the search engine are and how they are
placed, thus giving sections where you are stronger than your competitor more
exposure and the ones in which competitors might be stronger less exposure.
3) With very little time and money invested you own a potentially valuable new
brand that, again, establishes YOU as a source for information.
4) Since YOU control submittals YOU can determine that there is a particularly
high priority project that needs search engine exposure and a good
<#FYI4>link-base then you simply add 50 or so links to the pages each with
its own description, thus launching the project in the engines with the
key-phrases already in place. OR, since YOU own the engine, you might decide
that YOU want to open up a whole new category in the engine with sub-categories
that reflect a brand new search engine key phrase strategy for the project as a
standalone.
5) Now YOU have a resource through which you can offer your clients or partner
firms free banner ads. If the brand becomes powerful enough you can generate
revenue from very targeted mailing and or banner campaigns.
6) After the initial population of the sites database it will require very
little time and effort to manage the engine with the proper tools built into the
BackEnd of the engine. A set of virtual rewards can be established to provide an
incentive for employees to interact with the site and keep it moving forward.
7) An expert interface can be set in the engine similar to YAHOO! Experts to
provide incentive for people outside your organization, or those within the firm
exclusively if you wish, it is YOUR engine after all.
Summary
If the Web is used efficiently and by experts the possibilities are literally
endless and almost always profitable. The cost of a fell blown search engine
campaign like this, including the cost of in-house resources, should be under
$250,000. If you get quotes for too much more than this you need to get a few
more quotes!
If you would like to ask me, Rob Thrasher, more about Web Marketing, or other
technical topics, you can receive free consults, courtesy of YAHOO!, at
Experts.Yahoo.com in the "Internet Marketing & Advertising"
section. My alias in Yahoo is NDRobRob. ND is short for one of my companies,
NETDesign Inc. at <http://www.NetdesignInc.com>www.NetdesignInc.com. The
double use of my first name is because another person already registered NDRob.
Could be me, but I'm not sure.
FYI
1) eConomy - The way I spell economy in the 'New Economy'. The spelling reflects
the duplicity of nature of the 'New Economy' and everything we think of as being
redefined in the 'New Economy'. It is not pronounced with the emphasis on the
'con' as in economy. It is pronounced with the emphasis on the first 'e'.
2) Is it a search engine or a directory? - For the purposes of this article I
will use the term 'search engine' to include directories, FFAs (Free For Alls)
and other listing sites. A search engine is typically a Web site that employs
automated Web spidering software technology to catalog sites and compile
pertinent information about the sites. Engines would typically also utilize
algorithms to determine a relevancy factor. Many of the features that
distinguish a directory were that of the degree to which they were automated.
The directories, i.e. YAHOO, have actual people review sites for validity and
content, and always admitted freely that many of the submittals were never seen,
and that many of the ones that were reviewed would not get into their listing.
This seems to have been a better concept, at least for now, since a click
through from YAHOO! Creates more sales as compared to all the major listing
sites.
3) Spam - An 'eWord' used to denote <#FYI5>junk. Unsolicited, bulk emails
or misleading submittals to listing sites.
4) Link-base - The total number of sites that have links to your site or
project. This number is one factor that determines how popular your site is with
respect to other sites on the Web. The more links, the more popular or valid
your site appears.
5) Is Spam bad? - I don't know why they used the word Spam to denote junk; I
like it and I'm not embarrassed to say it.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Rob Thrasher
Rob is a seven year veteran Business Intelligence Consultant. Rob
served in signals intelligence as a Cryptologic Technician with a
Top Secret-Codeword clearance in the Naval Security Group under
direction of the NSA. He is also recognized as a pioneer in the
search engine marketing industry as highlighted in the New York
Times in 1996.
<http://www.robthrasher.com/>http://www.robthrasher.com/
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