Brilliant Thinking

Towards the end of May, the AVG Security Suite started spewing fake hits to websites across the web which appear as web stats in your web analytics reports. Given there are approximately 20 million users of the new AVG suite, this amounts to a very large amount of fake traffic.

In February, AVG acquired Exploit Prevention Labs and its LinkScanner tool, then bundled the tool in the latest AVG release. What the LinkScanner does - in an effort to protect the user from being hacked, spammed or spoofed - is to pretend that it is a human and “clicks” on every link found in search engine results. So when you visit Google and search for something, every single result found is visited by LinkScanner to determine if the website linked is legitimate or a link to malware. The end result is what appears to be real traffic on the website.

For small sites, this is not going to make much difference, although it may appear you have more visitors than usual. For larger sites with high traffic volumes, this will mean a large spike in traffic. But, it will also potentially mean larger bills because website owners have to pay for bandwidth (small sites are below the minimum threshold so this doesn’t become an issue).

Adam Beale, who runs a UK-based internet consultancy, says that across his small stable of clients, traffic has spiked as much as 80 per cent on some sites. And this is more than just an inconvenience. After all, sites live and die by their traffic numbers. And net resources aren’t free.

“Although [the AVG LinkScanner] might be good for the security of users, it’s a real pain for website owners and webmasters. It’s causing people to think their traffic is increasing, costing those who pay for bandwidth, and wasting disk space with large amounts of unnecessary lines in log files.”

One of his clients, Beale says, normally pulls in 140GB of bandwidth a month, and for June, he predicts a 5 per cent jump.

At the moment, there is a way of filtering AVG traffic from log files. But it’s unclear whether this method would filter out legitimate traffic as well. After all, the traffic appears to come from numerous legitimate IP addresses of general web users. And AVG suggests that - in the name of high security - they may make changes that prevent such filtering. After all, if you can filter it, so can the malware producers they are trying to block.

“A situation like this generates false traffic, bogus data, and this leads to wrong budget decisions and marketing activities,” says Barry Parshall, director of product management at WebTrends, a popular web analytics firm. “I completely get the value proposition [of LinkScanner], but it would be responsible of them to identify themselves, with agent code or whatever it might be, so legitimate businesses can serve their customers properly.”

AVG have promised a fix to alleviate this condition, but until then pay close attention to the number of very short duration visits you receive on your website (assuming you have good analytics software that shows you this kind of statistic). If you are using basic log file analysis software that does not show the duration of visits or allow you to drill down into the details, it may be time to upgrade or consider more thorough tools such as Google Analytics, Yahoo!, comScore, or Nielsen NetRatings.

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Marketing - it (usually) starts once the site is launched (notwithstanding any pre-launch campaigns of course).

However, the marketing plan is a key tool in understanding the needs of the website before design and development begin - the plan helps identify the demographics of your target audience as well as possibly indicating traffic volumes or targets. This information feeds into the user interface, graphic design, site engine, hosting and infrastructure components so that the right systems are designed and built to meet your needs and your audience’s needs.

I am not going to get into a discussion of which marketing channels you should use because there is no hard and fast rule - except to say that you should look at all the channels and decide which will be best for your site, from online communities, through video blogs, podcasts, search engine optimisation, traditional advertising or even targeted mailshots and postcards.

You have probably read somewhere that links are a good thing, or your colleague mentioned in passing that you really should consider getting links to and from your website to improve search engine traffic.

The truth of the matter is that links are good - they are the virtual world’s answer to “it’s not what you know (your content) but who you know (how you are linked).” In reality - for search engines at least - it’s both that matter; ie you need good content and links.

However, links are not without their downsides.

Firstly, it takes time to establish good links - you need to forage the web and often apply to be linked from certain sites that are relevant to you. You may also need to pay for some links.

Secondly, links can be transient - places you are linked from today may not be there tomorrow and so your nett inbound links can decrease unless you monitor them. The same is true of out-bound links from your site. The nature of sites where your links are can also change, in turn changing the way search engines view the relevance and importance of the link; positive links can turn into negative ones if the nature of the linking site changes significantly (fortunately this is very rare, but it can happen).

We have a client who had linked to a small, independent search engine from their website. The link had been there for a couple of years. Without any warning, the owner of search engine website sold the domain to a spam portal promoting everything from gambling to porn. Overnight, a respectable referral from our client turned into a case of bad PR. Needless to say the link was removed, but it is important to check your links - in and out - regularly.

Thirdly, the actual copy that you use to link to your site has an effect on the value of the link itself - get it right and search engines will love you; get it wrong and it could be seen as an attempt to spam the search engines resulting in your site dropping in the search engine results.

So, how many links should you look for? And should you do it yourself?

The first question has a relative answer. It’s relative to how much you want to increase your targeted traffic and also relative to what other competitors are doing in your market. Remember that links include traffic from members-only directories - these links can provide much better targeted traffic for your product or service, while public links can increase your overall search engine position.

There are tools such as Market Leap’s link popularity check which provide a comparative review of your site alongside your competitors and such tools are an excellent start-point for your link building campaign.

The second question is simply one of time and learning. When you embark on your own campaign there will be a learning curve - lots of reading and some trial and error. You need to assess each potential link partner and, once linked, ensure they keep your link alive. You also need to link out from your site appropriately so search engines see you as a good referrer - a “links” page is treated with less relevance than links embedded within key content on your site for example.

If you haven’t got the time and don’t want to climb the learning curve, find a good agency to do the work for you. They should always present any candidate link partners to you - after all it’s your site. They should also present a report of their initial investigation or rationale behind the number and types of links they recommend.

My partner runs her own business - it’s an exclusive personal shopping business with a small but very important client base. They are the kind of people whose buying patterns aren’t the same as the rest of the general population, they buy based on different paradigms. It is true that they do use the Internet, but not in the same way as the “majority”.

Today, I took a call for my partner from a search engine optimisation company. They call my partner’s company periodically touting for business, and it’s usually quite polite. Here’s a typical conversation:

SEO: “Hello, I’m Mr Smith from SEO Company. We have been looking at your website and noticed you aren’t being found in the search engines. We’d like to send you a free report that highlights our findings so that you can see how to improve your search engine results and get more traffic.”

It’s at this point that the call is usually transferred to me since we look after the web side of things.

Me: “Many thanks, but we’re not looking to increase the number of visitors to the site. The service is aimed at a small number of clients and we only take on clients through word of mouth and personal recommendation.”

SEO: “We see that you’re not appearing in the top results for phrases such as ‘personal shopper’, and our free report can help you improve this and achieve a high ranking for a number of phrases, including ‘blah blah blah’ and ‘an other phrase’.”

Me: “Thank you. However, the personal shopping service is bespoke and clients are effectively ‘hand picked’ and so additional search engine traffic is not necessary. We’re not looking to generate volume sales through the website so do not need SEO.”

SEO: “….”

After 2 or 3 rounds, the SEO company I am referring to get the point that we don’t even want the free report (which will try to sell their services of course) and usually politely end the conversation and we both go about our businesses.

However, today, the SEO representative - and I don’t know if they were sitting in a call centre somewhere doing cold calling, or were actually in the company offices - was of a different breed and left a very sour taste in the mouth.

It all started quite politely …

SEO: “Hello, I’m Mr Smith from SEO Company. We have been looking at your website and noticed you aren’t being found in the search engines. We’d like to send you a free report that highlights our findings so that you can see how to improve your search engine results and get more traffic.”

Me: “Many thanks, but we’re not looking to increase the number of visitors to the site. The service is aimed at a small number of clients and we only take on clients through word of mouth and personal recommendation.”

SEO: “We see that you’re not appearing in the top results for phrases such as ‘personal shopper’, and our free report can help you improve this and achieve a high ranking for a number of phrases, including ‘blah blah blah’ and ‘an other phrase’.”

Me: “Thank you. However, the personal shopping service is bespoke and clients are effectively ‘hand picked’ and …”

But I didn’t get to finish the sentence today …

SEO: “So, why have you got a website then?” He cut me off and questioned the business model. I suspect this was on the basis that he couldn’t figure out how to get a sale based on my polite refusal and thought that by wrong footing me he’d maybe spin a sale.

Me: “Because prospects still like to see that Street Chic is a credible organisation even if they are recommended to us personally.”

SEO: “So, you need to increase your rankings for ‘personal shopper’ so that you can generate more leads.”

Me: (still polite, but now frustrated that the usual 2 or 3 exchanges didn’t conclude the conversation): “No, we don’t. Our clients purchase a service such as ours using completely different criteria to online shopping and our marketing strategy does not require any SEO components in order to reach them effectively. I’d like to …”

I didn’t get to finish:

SEO: (muttering) “right then” (click)

It sounded as if he was saying something else under his breath as the receiver went down - I couldn’t quite hear - but he was not happy and definately the candiate for “worst telephone manner during a cold call.” He was aggressive, rude and disrespectful - all in the space of 3 minutes - to a company he was trying to win as a customer.

And this is where the question of branding comes in. This experience with this individual reflects directly on the brand that the SEO company is trying to build. In the past when they had called I had a mental note that, maybe, I might use them in the future for a client project if that client fitted the profile of their company’s SEO offering. However, this representative has completely undone any goodwill and completely undermined the brand experience to the point that I will actively avoid them.

A brand is much more than a logo, a picture or a design. It’s a whole company philosophy that appears at every touch point for that company. I wonder what his briefing was like? Maybe something like:

“Get as many free reports out as you can. Don’t take no for an answer. Use any method in the book, as well as some that aren’t, but get the free reports out. We’ll worry about converting them later.”

If that’s how they plan their own sales process, what does this say about how they plan their SEO campaigns? Could it be inferred that it is by the same scatter-gun approach and they’re only interested in the numbers rather than the results? That may be a leap of faith to some, but in my mind this is how the company’s brand is now perceived (remember too that his sales pitch was more concerned about visitor numbers instead of targeted visitor numbers?)

A brand is a sensitive object and all representatives - even call centre operators - must be aware of the core principles in order to communicate the brand effectively, even if they don’t make a sale.

As an aside, there is a good tool from Market Leap (not the people who called) to check your website’s visibility for different search terms. You can find the “keyword verification tool” here. They also have a good incoming link checker.

I have recently noticed a slow down in the performance of some important sites that I visit. This is characterised simply by the pages not loading. The reason is that the site is pulling content from a third-party server located somewhere else in the world, and there seems to be a problem retrieving that data. The picture above shows the “loading …” message I had for a few minutes when I visited accuweather.com recently to check the forecast.

I have had similar experiences with Wired news which carries adverts using the doubleclick network (Transferring data from ad.uk.doubleclick.net …), and even had problems with Amazon when the page on amazon.co.uk I was visiting was trying to pull content from amazon.com but was failing to retrieve the data.

On news and information sites, I may simply go back later, or, since there are so many alternative sites providing similar content I may switch to another content source. If the problem persists and I regularly have the “loading …” problem with a site, I will switch to another brand to provide that content. When it comes to ecommerce (in the case of Amazon), this can hit your bottom line quite seriously.

In an article “Warnings of Internet Overload” a possible cause may have been highlighted. The article talks in very broad terms about the whole Internet grinding to a halt initially, but goes on to suggest that the real bottleneck is in the “last mile” or the actual connection to homes and businesses because these connections are old and often of copper wire, and so can handle less volume of data efficiently. Consequently, as more people come on-line on these “last mile” connections, more issues are going to appear. ISPs are already limiting bandwidth use of people on such lines in an effort to prevent us noticing the bottleneck issue.

The question you have to ask when deciding to carry advertising or pull third-party content from alternative sources is simply “what is the benefit, and how does the risk of not being able to retrieve this content affect my site?” Even if the retrieval is not a product of your infrastructure, but due to the “last mile” problem mentioned above. As your site traffic scales upwards, unhappy visitors equals lost visitors. And those visitors equate to eyeballs who you want to see the third-party content. The nett result is that carrying the third-party content reflects directly on your brand because most visitors don’t know that it is either the third-party site that has a problem, or it’s the “last mile” effect. They simply blame you and tell their friends.

Is there a solution?

Aside from investing in the infrastructure of the third-party servers and their networks, and the “last mile”, there are coding methodologies which allow third-party content to be pulled after the page loads. This means that you ensure you deliver your content to the customer and any third-party content is delivered if it can be. After all, it should be less important to deliver third-party content than your own.

Web 2.0 technologies (it’s essentially JavaScript we’re talking about here) enable the site developer to introduce components into the page which are populated after the page loads by executing JavaScript on the client to activate the third-party controls and pull in the relevant data, or substitute with alternative content where necessary. Such components have been used for some time to serve advertising based on page keywords (for example on experts-exchange.com using vibrantmedia.com) which parses the page content post-load and tags keywords with relevant advertising.

This is a more sophisticated application of the technology as it uses additional pattern matching to intelligently serve ads, but a simple “search and replace” algorithm could easily prevent the “loading from third party …” damaging your brand because you’re not serving anything to your visitors.