Ozdachs

Is It Marketing or 1984 Speak?

This morning I helped a CPA tell his clients about the State of California’s effort to collect use tax payments. The concept is straight-forward, but the language used by the government is either straight out of Marketing 101 or George Orwell’s 1984.

Here’s the problem for cash-strapped California. When you buy goods “tax free” from out-of-state stores like the Internet’s Amazon.com, you are required to pay the sales tax (called a “use tax”) to California. The State thinks that most people and companies ignore this rule and fail to pay what they should.

According to legislation effective 2010, businesses are supposed to file a report annually online declaring what they owe and pay it. Individuals are supposed to declare and pay their use tax amount when they file their state income tax form.

Since the state is desperate for money, the Franchise Tax Board is sounding pretty shrill over the filing requirements. All of this is understandable and meets my expectation of what government are supposed to do.

But , two parts of the program twist the English language too much:

The state requires businesses that gross over $100,000 annually to file a report online unless they already have a sale tax certificate. The business who the state is now forcing to file extra reports are called by the state, “Qualified Purchasers”.Really? “Qualified Purchaser” means I have to file more tax forms?
How do I get disqualified?
The legislation that established this extra reporting burden on small/medium-size businesses was called, wait for it…, “The Internet Tax Freedom Act”.(See the letter to tax professionals from the state.)

If words are to have meaning, the legislator and the Franchise Tax Board need to be sent back to remedial summer school. Oops! I forgot. There’s no money anymore to teach language skills.

By Ozdachs|2011-03-31T12:13:51-07:00March 31st, 2011|Writing|0 Comments

Sleazy Foxy Marketing Tricks to Watch For

Last week I had sleazy sales experience with a representative from a big-name media powerhouse who was trying to get my client to advertise with them.

It’s been a long time since I’ve encountered a classic, fast-talking salesman who runs though the shock and awe sales pitch with such speed and vigor that all you’re supposed to be able to do is say, “Yes, sign me up.”

But, KNEW’s male salesrep provided me with that retro, Madmen-on-steroids call last week. The spiel went something like:

With your permission, during our post Easter station breaks your company will be mentioned as sponsoring our anti drunk-driving campaign. Let me read you the copy…

It was a brief, good-doing, innocuous statement that I could live with. But, I had a few questions. Like, how much for how many mentions over what period of time? And, more importantly, who was KNEW and why hadn’t I heard of them?

My attempted interruptions for those questions didn’t yield too much information. The cost was cheap, a couple hundred dollars a day. But for how many mentions? When during the day? These details that never surfaced before the big issue was tackled, who is KNEW?

I was told the KNEW was a news talk station in San Francisco.

Really? I listen to the radio a lot, and wind up listening to news (KCBS) and the #1 talk station (KGO) most of the time, with a few hours a week from my local school district’s public station. I know that KGO has a conservative talk sister station, KSFO, but KNEW? It didn’t ring a bell.

So, I asked what KNEW programmed and got unresponsive mumbo-jumbo from Mr. Motormouth. I persisted, and got more sales speech and no better information.

But, as Mr. Sales was going on about the goodness of anti-DUI messages, or something, I went to the keyboard and Googled KNEW.

Oh. They’re the Fox affiliate in San Francisco, and their home page showed Glen Beck smiling out on his public.

Fox! That’s what my fast-talking monologist was trying to keep me from knowing. He wanted to sign me up to advertise on Fox radio without ever telling me it was Fox radio. Wow!

Now, I imagine that San Francisco is not the easiest sales market for far-right Fox radio. But, to have the station’s programming masked from a potential, questioning advertiser just is wrong. Stand up for your product, Mr. Salesrep. Maybe I share Fox’s views, or maybe I just want exposure to its listeners. Find out. Maybe take your lumps, maybe make your sale. But, don’t play coy. Besides, do many businesses really sign up without knowing that they are supporting with their advertising dollars the super-right line up of Fox?

But, back to my conversation. After I dug up the apparently awful truth about KNEW, I said, “Oh you’re Fox. Oh, no, no, no!” in a surprised or horrified, not angry, tone. In response, the ace sales rep hung up. No goodbye, no nothing.

Apparently the Stand Up for America Fox network tries to slink in the back door of potential advertisers and runs when exposed to the light of day. Kind of ironic. Kind of disappointing.

By Ozdachs|2011-03-22T08:05:16-07:00March 22nd, 2011|Marketing|0 Comments

Catering to a Caterer: Search Engine Optimization at Work

In my opinion, web design should include optimizing the pages for search engines. There should be no need to employ a second professional to make a site show up in search results.

But, apparently most web designers consider search engine optimization something separate from site creation. Just last week I worked with a local caterer whose professionally developed site was invisible on Google and other search engines. I am beginning to understand how business that specialize in Search Engine Optimization can make money.

Marin Caterer for the San Francisco Bay Area: Michael Goldstein

Michael Goldstein Events Updated Home Page

The original designer had put up a fine looking site, but there were no words on the site to tell Google what the pages were about. I take that back: every page had the same title with “catering” the third word of the page title. But, that was it.

The site mentioned the type of events the business catered, like weddings. But the word “catering” was not emphasized in the visible text on the pages. None of the images had ALT tags — HTML code that describes pictures for the visually impaired and for search engines — with the word “catering”.

So, as far as Google was concerned, the site could have been about “wedding chapels” or “wedding planners” or “wedding dresses”. Maybe the site could have been in results “wedding food” or “wedding chef”, if anyone searched for those terms. But, for “wedding catering”, the site was not going to show up.

We decided to try to attract searchers for:

We also decided to try to show up when people searched for “Marin” and the catering terms listed above.

Our changes went online Monday, and the search engines have started to respond. Google already lists 3 terms in its top 10 results, 5 in the top 20, 7 in the top 30, and 10 in the top 100.

This morning I tweaked some pages to help more terms, and we’ll be monitoring this first round of optimization for the next couple months.

Real people are starting to notice the site, too.

Before the site was updated, we tracked visitors for a few days and saw that no one came from searches for “catering” on the Internet. When anyone used Google to find the site, they searched for the business by name. So, they weren’t looking for catering services, they were looking for Michael Goldstein Events catering.

When I looked at the statistics this morning, some people had come to the site after checking Google for “catering” or “Novato catering”. It’s just a trickle of visitors at this point, but it’s a start.

I remain surprised that so many web designers can publish sites for business clients that don’t appeal to search engines. When I create a new site for a client, I don’t charge extra for optimizing the site for visibility on Google. I incorporate good search engine techniques as part of making the overall design. I think all web designers should do the same.

But, until they do, I’m happy to help businesses with under-performing web sites get into search engine results!

By Ozdachs|2011-03-19T12:50:57-07:00March 19th, 2011|Client Sites and Actions, Search Engine Optimization|3 Comments

Has Google Manipulated Search Results to Calm Fears?

If you hear about killer fallout from the Japanese nuclear plants coming to the US, it isn’t. The story, complete with maps, is a hoax.

Fallout Map from Japanese Nuclear plant radiation leaks

Bogus Fallout Map

One of the best discussions on a phony map was published two days ago on Blogotariat.com.

One of the more interesting bits mentioned in passing in Blogotariat was their observation that Google is manipulating results to help quash the rumors spawned by the map. Despite an hysterical number of posts and Tweets, Blogotariat claimed that Google put on the top of the search results sites that calmed rather than inflamed.

Indeed, I just did a Google search for “nuclear fallout map”. The #1 web page result was one posted yesterday from the rumor control site, Snopes. The picture of the map on the right with the clear label of “FALSE” is from Snopes.

Google regularly claims that it does NOT manipulate search results. It says that automatic algorithms determine the order information appears in its results. Google uses the “software defense” against all claims of bias and commercial manipulation.

Up to now I have believed Google’s claims that no humans are involved. But, now I wonder.

For a page put up yesterday — as Snopes’ was — to be number 1 for a popular topic is unusual.
When I checked the Page Rank (a measure of how popular Google thinks a page is) for the Snopes page, the page shows as “unranked”. For a page without ranking to show up high in search results is unusual… although the home page at Snopes.com is a very highly rated 8.
There were also no backlinks to the page, according to the Google toolbar. Backlinks indicate to Google that a page is used as an authority by other sites and therefore should show up higher in results.

So, although I haven’t done a thorough search engine optimization review for the Snopes.com debunking page, it seems to be possible that human intervention helped the Snopes rumor control page snag #1 position. Especially since:

Google’s company policy is to do no evil. Helping spread panic would be doing evil. Taking steps to keep popular — but false and inflammatory pages — lower in search results would prevent Google from doing evil.

The possible changing of search results means that in the future I am going to be a bit more skeptical of Google’s claim that all search results are automatic. While Google’s motives in this case are benign — or at least in concert with my instincts and morals — manipulating results is worrisome. Could Google modify results to eliminate political views/commerical products/competitor information they don’t like? Do they already? Will they?

Yep, something to worry about. But, Google’s possible manipulation is a much smaller lump of worry to have than the worry lump I’d have if I had believed the faked fallout map.

So thank you, Google. But, I’ll be watching you.

And, of course, everyone can calm their friends about this — and other Internet rumors — by referring people to responsible places like Snopes.com!

By Ozdachs|2011-03-15T17:38:35-07:00March 15th, 2011|Google|0 Comments

Creating a Competitor’s Site

Marin Trust and Estate Attorney Marlene Getchell recently asked me to help her publish her new web site which was being designed by branding specialist and graphic designer Kristi Frelkin.

Web Design for Marin Estate Attorney Marelene Getchell

Site for Marin Estate Attorney Marelene Getchell

Kristi propagated the look of Marlene’s other marketing materials into a web design, and I received PFD’s of each page which I published as Search-Engine-readable HTML pages.

I enjoyed the challenge of being shown a picture and being told, “Make me one of these!”

Working for Marlene also posed another challenge: I was already working for Marin Estate Planning Attorney Julia Wald. I have helped Julia become #1 in Google searches for 5 terms, including “Marin Estate Planning Attorneys”.

In fact, when we first met, Marlene told me that she and Julia were competitors for some type of business. She asked if I would have a problem helping her with her web site.

Yes, normally I would decline an engagement from a competitor to an existing client. There is only one #1 position in Google for any given set of keywords, and I don’t want to choose among clients about who I best promote.

I agreed to work on Marlene’s site only for one reason: Julia recommended me to Marlene and told me that she thought I should help Marlene.

With the client’s approval I felt comfortable helping another estate attorney get online.

Fortunately, Marlene and Julia have different focuses, although there are many clients who could benefit from either attorney. Julia’s ideal client wants to create an estate plan while Marlene enjoys litigating disputes. Julia’s most important keywords are “Marin estate planning attorney” while Marlene is looking for traction on “Trust and Estate attorney”.

I am careful not to suggest a marketing strategy to Marlene that I developed with Julia, and vice versa. They may be friendly competitors, but I want to separate the accounts as much as possible!

The good news, of course, is if you are looking for an attorney to help you with your estate issues, I know two great ones.

By Ozdachs|2011-03-15T10:58:10-07:00March 15th, 2011|Client Sites and Actions|0 Comments

About Ozdachs

Is It Marketing or 1984 Speak?

Sleazy Foxy Marketing Tricks to Watch For

Catering to a Caterer: Search Engine Optimization at Work

Has Google Manipulated Search Results to Calm Fears?

Creating a Competitor’s Site