SEO alert: captions coming to YouTube

YouTube has announced automatic captioning for videos. Read a nice summary here. Adding captions could potentially have huge SEO value but only if you start applying SEO tactics to video transcripts like you do for text on a website. And you're already doing that, right?

Is Crate and Barrel cherry picking product reviews?

Crate and Barrel's website prominently displays the following product reviews link on their home page: "Write a review. Read a review. Join the conversation" A friend of mine tried to do just that - and his review was rejected by C&B via an automated email response with little explanation:

We're sorry your recent Crate and Barrel review of Rachel Sofa
did not successfully post online because it did not meet one or more
of our established Guidelines and/or Terms of Use.
Please revisit the following before submitting a new product review:

* Guidelines
* Terms of Use
* Tips for Writing Reviews

Reviews usually post within three days of submission.

Thank you for sharing your ideas in Crate and Barrel product reviews.
And we hope to successfully post your next review soon.

Here is the review that he wanted to post for their Rachel sofa giving it two Stars:

We purchased two Rachel chairs and a sofa month ago, and while we love the comfortable chairs, the sofa is a disappointment. It always looks messy, and the back pillows are much shorter than shown in the photo on the C&B website. One of my kids has already hit his head on the hard back of the sofa.

I read C&B's product review guidelines and don't see any obvious reason for this review being rejected:


Review Guidelines

* First, take a look at Tips for Writing a Review.
* Focus on the product and your own experience.
* Be specific about your likes/dislikes, pros/cons of the product.
* All submitted reviews are subject to Crate and Barrel Terms of Use.
* Reviews are typically posted online within 72 hours of submission.

Crate and Barrel reserves the right to withhold posting reviews that violate our Terms of Use or other guidelines, or that contain the following types of content:

* Obscenities, discriminatory language or other language not suitable for a public forum.
* Advertisements, SPAM content, or references to other products, offers or websites.
* Email addresses, URLs, phone numbers, physical addresses or other forms of contact information.
* Spiteful or derogatory comments directed at other reviews and/or their authors posted on the page.

For Customer Service feedback and issues including product selection, pricing, ordering and delivery, please contact us directly, rather than submitting your issues in the form of a review, so that we may immediately address your concerns.

Thanks for taking the time to write your Crate and Barrel review.

I did a quick survey of their sofa section and noticed two trends among the sofa reviews on their website. There were very few one, two, and even three star reviews, probably less than 15%. The second trend was more troubling - for all sofas that had only one or two reviews, the reviews were never less than four stars.

Is C&B rejecting poor reviews when they would be the first / only review for a given product?

Maybe C&B hasn't gotten the message that even bad product reviews are good for business.

Applying Steven Covey's habit #5 to social media

I'm a sometimes adherent to Steven Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective people. Habit #5 is particularly applicable to Social Media:

"Seek first to understand, then to be understood"

Translating this to social media, you should be always begin by listening; that is, seek first to understand. Which directly flows into the next two wonderful declarations which have many authors according to Google search results:

• Customer service is the new PR
• Customer service is the new marketing
  

When you listen to what consumers and customers are saying online about your organization, products, and services, you'll come to understand them better and gain insights into how to solve their needs, problems, etc.

When you're meeting (exceeding?) your customer's expectations, they'll let their friends and contacts know.

Are you listening?

"Seek first to understand, then to be understood"

Questions about Bob Evan's BE-mail

I checked out Bob Evan's BE-mail today. Here is the "subscription" screen:


Some questions for Bob Evans:

Why do I have create an account just to get email offers?

Why is the Google Analytics tracking tag missing from the registration page? (this suggests no one is looking at the data for this site)

Why hasn't the copyright notice been updated since 2004? Have you forgotten about BE-mail?

BE-mail is overly complicated and way behind modern email subscription practices. Bob Evans could take a lesson from the simplicity of the Cameron Mitchell email subscription form.

Reviewing Donatos Pizza email registration

Today, I decided to register for the Donatos Pizza email despite the less than compelling call-to-action: SIGNUP FOR EMAIL. After getting assaulted by the loud video of Donatos founder Jim Grote, I began the registration process:

Step 1: I provided my zipcode.



Step 2: I provided a bunch of other information.



Step 2: Read some really drab "thank you" text.



Step 4: I received a confirmation double-opt email title test from "unknown sender" and no text in the email saying it was from Donatos. I almost deleted it as spam. When I clicked on the subscription confirmation link in the email, I was taken directly to Donatos home page with no message telling me my confirmation was successful.

Some recommendations:

• Provide a compelling call-to-action for email registration on the home page, as Pizza hut does
  
• Provide details on how often emails are sent out
• Combine step page 1 and page 2 into a single page
• Eliminate any unnecessary fields in the registration - or explain why all fields are required
• FIX the confirmation / opt-in email
  

Columbus SEO: Huntington Bank needs to put more focus on the short tail

Monthly searches for "banks columbus" and related terms: 90,500

Current highest rank for any page on www.huntington.com: 3, meaning the website probably gets about 10% of clicks for these searches.

The banking business is tough right now and hometown bank Huntington National certainly hasn't been immune to financial difficulties. In times like these, high search engine rankings are critical to attracting new business.

Huntington.com appears to be well optimized for narrower (i.e., long tail) terms such as "free checking Columbus" but that term, for example, gets only about 170 searches per month. Huntington is missing a large opportunity by not being optimized for the top term.

While the long tail is certainly valuable for getting qualified visitors from search engines, it shouldn't be done to the exclusion or detriment of the short tail - the most popular, high volume search keywords.

High volume keywords can drive significant traffic to your website, and provide a brand boost as well since past studies have shown that nearly 40% of search engine users believe that the top ranked sites for a search are the leaders in their industry.

On a related topic, tt appears that Huntington has no local search strategy, but that's a whole another post.

Rankings cloudy for Columbus media websites on Columbus weather searches

123,600. That's Google estimated monthly searches for the following phrases related to Columbus weather:

• columbus weather: 74,000
• columbus ohio weather: 33,100
• columbus oh weather: 9,900
• weather in columbus: 6,600
  

None of the leading local media websites for Columbus - Dispatch.com, 10TV.com, NBC4i.com - are ranked #1 for any of the terms. Since the top three ranked pages usually get 70% or more of all clicks, rank is critical. Their Google page one rankings for each term:

Columbus weather:

• Dispatch.com - not ranked
  
• 10TV.com -#4
• NBC4i.com - #7
  

Columbus ohio weather:

• Dispatch.com - not ranked
  
• 10TV.com - #3 and #4
  
• NBC4i.com - #5
  

Columbus oh weather:

• Dispatch.com - not ranked
  
• 10TV.com - #6
  
• NBC4i.com - #8
  

weather in Columbus:

• Dispatch.com - not ranked
  
• 10TV.com - not ranked
  
• NBC4i.com - #8
  

Each month, Dispatch.com, 10TV.com, and NBC4i.com are collectively losing more than 100,000 visits to non-local websites such as Weather Underground and Weather.com.

SEO = the most bang for your Internet marketing buck

I'm a big believer in data. As the following data reveal, SEO is your best bet for a strong return on investment (ROI).

In the most recent SEMPO State of Search Marketing Survey, SEO was ranked the #2 internet marketing tactic for generating ROI:



The results of Forbes 2009 Ad Effectiveness Survey on eMarketer show SEO as the Most effective online marketing tactic for generating conversions:



Despite such data, just about every Internet marketing seminar in Columbus during 2009 has been about how to grow your business by using social media; it's the shiny new thing that everyone in Columbus is excited about.While I don't doubt that social media will continue to grow in importance, the smart marketers are setting aside time and money for SEO too. Are you a smart marketer?