Issue: In optimizing a client’s website, I came across some images that might seem unsuitable for children. Not vulgar or crude, and were there in a health care sense, but were still not suitable for children.

I wanted to find a tag that I could place in the image or on the page that would let the search engines, especially the adult filters of the images side, that the images were not suitable from the get go. The client had noted it on their site as well, but on the entry page, not on every page that the images appeared.

Short version: There were no tags that I could find, and no one knew the answer. So I emailed a friend of mine … Matt Cutts (no, I am NOT giving anyone his email address). See Matt, for those of you that don’t know, is one of the minds behind SafeSearch and is now the Head of the Web Spam team at Google. Who better to ask right?

Turns out there are meta tags that can be affixed to the page with ratings that are much like movie ratings. These ratings work with browser filters to ensure that kids do not see specific content on the web. Reading between the lines, I am thinking that this might also be a way to signal to the SEs that there are things on that page that should be behind the SafeSearch wall.

How to Tag Adult Content

The best resource for adult rating that Matt pointed me to had examples of how to use all the rating systems. Major downside: this means 4 additional meta tags on my page. This area of the world has not been condensed, so there are many way to rate pages. For my client, I added them all. Better safe than sorry in my opinion.

I won’t go over every one, but basically for most of them you place specific codes within the meta tag that let bots and browsers know exactly what type of content is on that page that might not be suitable. In my client’s instance, it was partial nudity on a woman that was health care based.

It might have taken some time and a little more work, but I know that parents and search engines will like that my client is trying to help protect children on the web. I just hope that the various organizations can come together on ONE rating system someday, but that might be as possible as all of the browsers rendering the same way (stupid IE …).

UPDATE: I had a question (PRO Membership Required) the other day in the SEOmoz Q&A that gave me another thought about how to use the adult content tagging. If your images have ever been placed behind the SafeSearch filter, and you think it isn’t warranted, you might TRY (read: hasn’t been tested) placing these meta tags on the page where the image is hosted, and use the tags for safe for children. Don’t use this to get around the filters, I don’t think that will work. If hand checked, and the images are in fact NOT kosher, you might get removed/banned. No bueno here people. Karma, remember karma. If you don’t want your kids, your nieces/nephews, or godchildren looking at those images, then other kids shouldn’t either.

Tagging Adult-ish Pictures is a post from: Kate Morris

Background

I am not a tools type of search engine marketer. Well, in terms of PPC bid management tools. I love Raven Tools and SEOmoz and some of the newer PPC tools like WordStream. (Yes, some of those are affiliate links)

There are some tools developers in the PPC space that I keep hearing about but have never seen. For the most part I don’t have the clients that are large enough for them. But seeing as there are some new awesome tools, I’ve been more open to requests from tool developers in the PPC space.

The LiveBall Approach

I got an email from Kristina Allen at Ion Interactive on February 15th asking me to review a press release about their most recent developments. Normally these requests are dry when coming from PR people, but Kristina got it right. The title of the email was Leprechauns, Lattes and LiveBall. She got immediate bonus points for originality and attention grabbing.

Her email not only got my attention, but Kristina, whom I had never met, had taken the time to read my site and understand me. She talked about my SEM Cereals post and asked nicely if I’d look at the release. She kept things light and informal.

Girl should get a raise just for that.

LiveBall

I had heard of Ion Interactive, but had no idea what they did. I wanted to help, but I can’t talk about something I know nothing about. Within 24 hours they had a demo setup and were sending me everything I needed to review their tool. The CEO was even present for the demo to answer my questions. So thanks to Justin Talerico and Megan Leap for answering all of my questions.

And just to make it clear, they are not paying me to write a good review. I am highly critical of unnecessary tools and will tell you the way it is. But I do need to tell my readers that they did send me a copy of their book, Honest Seduction. (Warning: affiliate link) I haven’t read it yet, but it’s on my list now.

LiveBall Review

LiveBall is a landing page optimization tool that is hosted on the Ion servers. Basically they setup an environment on their servers in which marketing people can create landing pages to test in an easy interface. LiveBall is hosting on a dedicated IP address for each customer. The pages created by their system are cross browser friendly (I asked) and while are hosted on their domain, they are pointed at a subdomain on your root domain.

The team there aids in building themes based around your current site layout. So they start the account for you by coding everything to look like your site. Testing these pages allows you to keep the same look and feel as the rest of your site. Your marketing managers can add and subtract elements to test through their easy WYSIWYG editor.

One feature I loved is that the LiveBall system gives you image galleries to choose stock images to test. Right now they are organized into six categories including Active Life, Business People, Healthcare, Higher Education, Leisure People, and Meanings. I’ve done testing, and it can get expensive to buy all the images you need for pages that you might not even keep!

The greatest thing? All of the pages created are SEO compliant. (That’s what their release was about) You can use the canonical tag to point the search engines at the “real” version, or add a “noindex” if you don’t want these pages in the index. You can add in your own tracking code, but they have built in tracking as well to help aide in decision making about the best landing page possible. And the system passes query strings so that you can track what you need to for your system as well as collecting important keyword information.

Overall Thoughts

This is something I would recommend to a company that has a marketing department and needs a way to test landing pages on the fly without interrupting the IT and web development side. Ion makes it clear that this system is built with marketers in mind, not necessarily code-minded people. It’s simple and easy to use, but also builds nice code on the back end.

What a company can learn in this system can be pushed to web development once conclusions are drawn. LiveBall and Ion have no issue with their clients taking the information and code developed in the system and putting into use on the whole site, I made sure to ask. Most companies will want to take what is learned and use it on the whole site back on the home server.

In talking with their team they understand that landing page optimization is not just for PPC. That is why they released the SEO compliant features. They know that testing is not a one time thing, and over time even the best campaigns can use some optimization. You never know when one change to a page can result in a 10% increase in conversion rates.

LiveBall Review is a post from: Kate Morris

Success! Body scan is clear. Will have to run a staged test in September, but it won’t be like this one. Just have to stay on top of it. Happy Dance!

March 2 Update:

Ok, just “udderly” got tired of the weight gain from having no thyroid and now in isolation for radioactive iodine treatment. I needed exercise. Plus my speech was slurred!

So I started an exercise plan last night. Not sure if the pill has anything to do with it! May need new clothes. Don‘t think there will be any discipline problems at school next week.

Go ahead—send them to the office!

Too Much? I know—green never was my color!

March 1 Update:

“Home and glistening!  Not quite up to a full glow but building!  My tongue is tingling.  I read that some lose taste bud sensations for one to two weeks.  At 3:30pm I start sucking on lemon drops to make the salivary glands really work to keep them protected from exposure I guess since they are right up there where most of the radiation is going.  My brain too?????  HMMMMM.  Love ya!”

As my mom starts her single treatment for thyroid cancer (radioactive iodine), I thought I’d share her update she sent via email last week. Yes, that is her own art work. I love her. *smiles* This is my mom and her attitude towards life, and where I get my mild insanity.

Background: In January, she was diagnosed in surgery to remove part of her thyroid gland. They removed the entire thyroid, but testing is necessary to ensure all thyroid, lymph node, and cancer cells are gone. Thyroid cancer is one of the most localized cancers, and easily treatable. The thyroid feeds on iodine, so to target treatment, the body is denied iodine (think a diet with no salt at all, most has iodine in it). They then give a pill of radioactive iodine, a small dose at first to identify any remaining cells. This was sent after taking that small dose.

Went for my pill this morning. No big deal – feel normal – had my picture taken. Right as rain.

Can’t eat, drink or lay down for 2 hours. Don’t have to be isolated in my room but have to keep my distance. No kids under 8 and no pregnant women. I’m in the wrong job for that!

Have a wonderful day – it’s beautiful out there! Stay tuned for glowing reports!

Love, Bunny

Tomorrow, March 1, she goes in for the full dose of radioactive iodine. The body scan Friday did reveal some remaining cells, so they have to be obliterated (I love that word). She’ll be in isolation for 2 full days, we can only pass food through the door. After the two days, we can go near her, but still best to not have “contact” for a few days. By next weekend she will be radioactive no more. Well, she will, but won’t be putting off any radioactivity.

This has been a relatively easy cancer experience if there can be such a thing. I am blessed to have great friends all around me. If you think about anyone today, focus on those fighting the harder battles with cancer. My best friend in high school is about to lose his 45 year old uncle, Dale, to a rare form of cancer either tonight or tomorrow. All my thoughts go out to his family and their continuing fight.

As my good friend Kristy says “Fuck Cancer.”

My Radioactive Mother is a post from: Kate Morris

Feb 23 – I have moved the client to HostGator.

Every once in a while an SEM consultant will come across a gem of a client. One that understands enough about our business to trust and respect the recommendations we make. It is these clients that we get the most involved with and spend extra time ensuring their success. And it hurts me when someone else decreases those businesses’ chances for that success. All because a service provider is cutting costs in tech support.

I got one such client recently from a referral. They did the unthinkable and brought me in as the SEO consultant while the site was being redesigned. We had some issues with the developers, so I have been fixing some things since the site was completed this weekend.

The fixing includes adding tracking codes, unique title tags, meta descriptions, and header tags. This also means removing archaic table based code and inline styling. This is while I await the flash files so that I can change some links on their homepage and in navigation. Why navigation? They used relative URLs. Yay.

What more you ask? How else can a project that started so well go wrong? It’s not the developers I have issues with, it is their host, XO Communications. You see, the client’s site is on a Linux-based server running Apache. Yes, I was thrilled to see that making small changes like 301 redirects should in fact remain small.

No. Apparently, XO Communications does not allow their clients to use mod_rewrite. XO does not make it clear how to use an htaccess file and what issues might arise when it is uploaded incorrectly. You can place an .htaccess file, but it won’t work but if it isn’t coded and loaded as a UNIX file, there are line break issues that cause issues. There is no way to point their /index.html to their www and non-www (which XO nicely redirects for everyone without asking which is preferred). On top of that, any old links are wasted at this moment until they can be changed. Why? I cannot redirect them using anything more than a meta refresh, which is what I might have to resort to in the end.  They might as well be on a Windows server, they might have more control that way.

Update: Please see the comments from XO below for more instruction on how to use htaccess in their server environment.

Contacting tech support was as helpful as their help section of the website. Their first response:

Unfortunately, we cannot change any settings on our Apache server to allow for whatever directives you are using in your .htaccess file. You can find a lot of information on what .htaccess file directives you can use on our server by using our knowledge base.

To find all of the .htaccess information we have, simple click on “Help” in the upper right hand corner of your Gateway. Once you get to the knowledge base, simply search for keyword “htaccess” and you will find all the information you need. I sincerely hope this assists you as our support is very limited on actually helping you with the actual directives.

The second response from XO after asking what I can do to redirect files on the site was worse.

I am sorry to report that we do not provide any assistance with setting up redirects.  You can, however, find these instructions in the Help Center.

[I took them out, sorry, but worthless, I had seen them hours before.]

Our Professional Services team can set up your redirects for a fee.  They can also optimize your web site so it is ranked higher on search engines.

Professional Services is currently offering 20% off their fees for the work they do.  Would you like a free quote from them?  Please let me know and I will forward your request.

Did you catch that? They can set up redirects for a FEE and on top of that, they can optimize my web site so it ranks higher! Really?!?!?!

XO Communications is resorting to holding the server functions hostage from their paying customers so that they will pay more. They are taking something that we work hard to convince people is not snake oil, and hide it from their clients under lock and key.

You’d think they would be a cheaper host then right? If my client prepays for a year, they are paying $162 to XO Communications for the year. I pay $120 for the year to HostGator and get more control to my server than my client could ever dream of! And I am not talking high level server control here people. I am a marketer by trade, I only know enough server side to make myself dangerous.

I have scoured the internet for this entire day to figure out how to deal with this short of telling the client to cut and run. That call is tomorrow.

XO Communications you should be ashamed.

Oh and I was on twitter all day alerting you to this issue using your @XOCares account. If you guys want any help with social media and customer relations, let me know. I know some awesome people who could help you out. Until then, please know that I will take as many people away from you as I can and push them over to any number of hosts that are open to assisting small business owners succeed in business.

Please Share This Story!

Yes, I hate XO Communications is a post from: Kate Morris

Taylor Pratt asked if cereal was allowed as a mid-afternoon snack today. A resounding yes was heard from what I saw, and that sparked my interest. What do search marketers (and any of my other followers) eat? Specifically, what is an SEO’s favorite cereal?

Winner: Lucky Charms

Voted on By:
Christa Watson, Joshua Sciarrino, Lyndsay Walker, Dan Perry

Seems like everyone loves the marshmallows. Forget the sugar covered oats, we want the marshmallows!

Runner Ups

Voted on By: Matt Siltala, Dan Perry	Voted on By: Casey Yandle, Andrew Woods	Voted on By: Taylor Pratt, Casey Yandle
Voted on By: Alan Bleweiss, Chiropractic	Voted on By: William Attwood	Voted on By: Ruth Burr
Voted on By: Matt Pellerin	Voted on By: Robert Brady	Voted on By: Jason Harrison
Voted on By: Clint Zink

Snack Time Cereal – SEM Edition is a post from: Kate Morris

This year has been full of ups and downs personally and professionally. 2009 will go down as a year of many adventures, love, and friendship. There have been many that have influenced my world, and I would never change a moment. Towards the end of the year, I found a freedom that I have been waiting for. With school almost complete (thesis needs to be finished, see more below), I find myself back with free evenings, and the time to watch movies and read books. Netflix is going to love me. I have tagged over 175 movies to watch, and intend to see them all.

More so, I have met some inspiring people, one recently pushed these thoughts over the edge. I have rekindled my romance with my truly creative side. Poetry, reading, drawing and writing has always held a special place in my heart. I don’t know where this year will lead, but I do know a few things, and the foundation is in creativity.

Thesis
I have a thesis to finish. That is a LOT of writing, and analyzing. To do my thesis any justice though, it needs some creativity. I want to be able to infuse some of that writing with pizazz.

Geography
I will live somewhere else. The place has changed innumerable times in the past 2 years. And while I am still not settled where, I do feel a need to move away from Austin for a short time. Read that last part again: short time. I am and will remain a Texas girl. I won’t put a number on the length of time I’ll be gone. I’ve learned enough about my life, it does not like to go as planned. But in my mind now, it will only be a few years. But who knows. This military brat needs a new adventure.

Travels
I am planning trips to Las Vegas, Colorado, Florida, Pennsylvania, Seattle, Canada, and more. This year will be a year of travels. I rather enjoyed that part of 2009, but worked a little too much in my travels. I want to be free to create when I travel. I am always open to ideas. I will do as much as my budget and time allow. I’ve been given this life, so I am living it to the max.

Jobs/Career
I am opening up to new jobs, anywhere. New adventures, new challenges. I’ve started talking with a few companies, but want to see where I really need to be. Have an idea? Send it on my way. No holding back in 2010. I might just stay on my own, join some friends in a rather rainy city. I love working on my own time, sometimes more than I should, sometimes less. So anything can happen.

Welcome 2010

In all of this, my 2010 will be filled with creativity of all kinds. No goals, no to do list. Just a promise to myself to let life happen as it will.

Thank you to everyone who has changed my life this past year. I look forward to more great times with all of you, online or IRL.

New Year Focus: Creativity is a post from: Kate Morris

The question centered around dayparting in Google but based on the specific industry their client was in, so after I guessed (educated guess, really …), I told them to look at the company’s analytics and see where their clients were visiting and buying. The retort was “Google Analytics doesn’t tell me that.”

Poppycock.

But I understood the confusion. Information by hour isn’t readily available but it is there. And I am going to show you how to pull the data. But to start, let’s review why dayparting might be important to you.

Dayparting

We get this term from traditional marketing. I first learned it in Introduction to Media Buying at The University of Texas. It had to do with radio and TV time purchasing. Imagine my delight when PPC started using it too. And it’s about the same. Dayparting is molding your spend to specific days and hours of the day to match when your best customers are looking.

Dayparting is not for every company. If you are a consumer based company, people are probably searching for your products at any hour of the day. Business-to-business firms are going to be more open to specifying a time of day. Consider business software – you might have some hard core people searching at night, or small business owners, but if your product is not focused to them, you probably don’t want to be running at 2am. Right? Good. Moving on.

When are your Customers Online?

Your analytics package should be able to tell you when customers are on your site. Above that, you should be tracking what time of the day people are purchasing if you are ecommerce. Google Analytics does provide this information to you, you just have to know where to look. Custom Reports FTW.

1. Get into your Google Analytics Account and find the “Custom Reporting” button on the left side navigation.

2. Click and get the bigger menu. At the bottom click on “Manage Custom Reports.”

3. In the upper right side, click on “Create new custom report.”

4. Title it (you’ll forget later) – hit edit next to the “Custom Report blah blah blah” up at the top.

5. First pick the metrics you want to see (in blue, see below). I am a fan of the metrics below, it’s a good place to start when you aren’t sure what to look at.

• Unique Visitors
• Unique Pageviews
• Total Goal Completions (you have to have goals set up to get data here)
• Avg. Time on Site
• Unique Purchases (must be e-commerce to use this)
• Bounce Rate

Sample Google Analytics Dayparting Report Setup

6. Once you get those, move to the green aka dimensions. This is where you pick what you are looking at. You can do one of three things here, or I recommend one of three.

1. Use one dimension - Time of Day – this is the minimal report and will help you see overall trends for time of day.
2. Use two dimensions – (1) Day (2) Time of Day – this gets down to each day and how things worked out each hour. More detailed but maybe too detailed for some.
3. Make both. Two separate reports. You can play with more dimensions of course, but I am just talking dayparting remember?

Once you’ve done that, preview the report and test away until you get it like you want it. If it’s that good and you have more than one client that can use it, you can save it to all of them. Nice huh? Yay for time saving! The rest … you should know what to do with. Pick the best hours, see if there are some major drop offs in traffic and purchasing, and review the data with the client (or executives).

For more information on dayparting check out these resources:

• Google Dayparting
• Yahoo Dayparting
• AdCenter Dayparting (aka Bing/MSN) (note that Brad covers Google here too, I <3 Brad)

So that was the quick and dirty – please comment with any questions and I’ll do my best to answer or point you to a resource with the answer.

PPC Tip: Dayparting using Google Analytics is a post from: Kate Morris

Kristy Bolsinger

Congratulations! Check out her post and all the other comments reviewing the best things about Raven Tools. You all did great, thanks so much for entering. Keep up with Raven and you might just hear about the next shirt they do. No doubt it’ll be great!

Raven Tools PubCon T-Shirt Winner is a post from: Kate Morris

In a global and Internet-based economy, they [brands] build trust and reinforce value.

- Strategy: A View from the Top

Are brands dead? Have we killed traditional marketing? Are newspapers dead? Will television ads die?

In a simple answer: No. I wish I could say that this topic has been beaten to death (it has, really) but people keep bringing it up. With the influx of buzz around new media (read: social media and online marketing) there is always talk of how it’s ending everything. It’s not.

Instead, new media is bringing us back to our roots, marketing roots that is. We are leaving a world where we pushed out messages to consumers trying to catch the ones that were interested in our products, and maybe converting a few more. Consumers had little say in what messages they received. New media is giving that power back to the consumer.

The new marketing world is one in which consumers have a say, and marketers get to talk to those that want to hear from them. Word of mouth is more powerful than ever before. As marketers, we get to participate and help our brand advocates in their mission. This new world is one in which the best products win. You have to stand out to win. To get people talking about you, the “box” cannot exist.

So brands are not dead, in fact in this “new world,” they are more powerful than ever. Build your brand, talk to your customers, foster relationships – it’s these things that build trust. Your brand is what carries trust from one customer to another potential customer. Take the right amount of time to build that up.

Brands=Trust is a post from: Kate Morris

Raven Team

A few weeks before PubCon, Jon Henshaw sent me the coolest shirt ever. I had the honor of getting a limited edition PubCon shirt before everyone else. I was stoked. Raven shirts are awesome. This one was much more so. They are always really comfortable and well designed.

Raven PubCon Design

Note the name of the designer. None other than Jon’s wife, Kathryn (awesome name spelling btw).

The issue with these shirts is that Raven didn’t make many. They ran out fast once they started giving them away, but I have a surprise. I have an extra one.

How to Win a Limited Edition Raven Tools PubCon Shirt

So it’s the guys shirt (read: Green) in XL. Sorry you don’t get to choose the size. This was a bonus shirt that was magically left over.

So to win the shirt, you need to comment on this post or write a blog post about what about Raven Tools is your favorite. Anything. My favorite comment or blog post will win. Don’t have a favorite because you aren’t using Raven? Umm, free 30 day trial much?

I’ll mail you the shirt and if you send me a pic, I’ll post it here. You have until Thanksgiving, November 26, 2009.

Raven PubCon Shirt Giveaway is a post from: Kate Morris