A Follow Up To My Fulfilling Life In Michigan
Kate Tykocki is one of dozens dedicated and talented people that are really striving and pushing for a different way of life in Michigan. Her essay - “My Fulfilling Life in Michigan” gained a lot of positive attention in the social media space, http://ow.ly/HfVG. It is truly a great piece on her thoughts on staying in MIchigan, and all of the positive and fulfilling benefits she enjoys, coupled with her fears of what lies ahead for the great lakes state.
Upon reading, I felt compelled to jot down some more the same in support of her notion, and to add to the benefits she brought up. Now, keep in mind, that Kate and I have only some of the same traits, and interests. I don’t play kickball. I don’t like theater. I don’t work in the public sector. I live a great and fulfilling life here in Michigan for different reasons. My perspective is a bit different because unlike Kate, I am NOT from Michigan. I am from Upstate New York. I moved in in 1995 to attend Michigan State University, and I have not left Michigan, now in my early thirties. I too live a fulfilling life in Michigan for many, many reasons. Here are a few.
1. Ability to work in a technologically advanced company that myself and partner started in 2008 in which we were able to keep our overhead/rent/labor/startup costs low. Our cost advantage has been passed down to our consulting fees which has helped us win projects.
2. Promixity to world class education institutions which lend us research knowledge, a talent pipeline, and many amenities which are taken for granted such as the the Wharton Center, the Breslin Center, and the Kresge Art Museum.
3. Cost of property. While this has been a bit of a hindrance as I tried to re-sell one of my homes, myself and my family truly lived “the American Dream”, and moved up with a two acre ranch house in the country with no neighbors for the less the cost of a 1 bedroom condo in any major city, plus we were able to buy quaint cabin on a trout stream on 4 acres in the UP.
4. I love the outdoors. In minutes, I can be deer hunting. In a matter of two hours, I can be on world class trout stream. Or on a sandy beach with safe water. And in only a few more hours, I can be in the most beautiful places in the world, the Upper Peninsula, with a pristine beauty that is unmatched. And to get there, I will fight minimal traffic. I used to go to NYC, my brother lives in Jersey, trust me on this. On our way to a wedding in Marquette, my wife was driving and I was working on my laptop with a wireless card for one of our California clients. For a break, my family stopped at a road side beach park in the UP on the top of Lake Michigan. We got out and played in the clear, pristine water, awesome sand in our feet. The sky was crystal blue and smog free. Got back in the car, dried off, and I jumped back online. That is mixing work and play in a global setting folks.
5. Or, I can go the other way catch a Tiger game in downtown Detroit, and go to a high end restaurant in Royal Oak, catch a Robin Williams show at the Wharton Center, or go visit the Meijer Gardens.
This is not intended to a be Utopian blog post about Michigan. It is ugly out there. Cuts to education scare me. Our unemployment scares me. However, the work that Kate and others in the creative class circles do needs to be spread. We are going to get there. There is going to be a breakthrough. Not because of us waiting for it, but because we will create it. As we know, the world, and Michigan, is comprised of 90% of people that things happen to, and 10% of people that makes things happen. I am going to be part of the 10%, and so is Kate, and hundreds of other leaders.
This is the greatest state. There is diversity, there is people, there is will. And I do think its changing, and changing in the right direction. And i am thrilled to be a part of it.
Two Methods to Help Decide Between Organic SEO and Paid Search
As we have covered in the past, there are many differences between organic search engine optimization and paid search marketing. Many small and medium sized businesses that are new to the platform of search marketing have the dilemma of using both mediums, or choosing between. The question came up during my most recent speaking engagement. I am going to offer two quick criteria points based on my experiences that you may be able to use in your decisions.
1. What is your target audience? If you are serving a local market, you may want to target your keywords and then leverage the geo-targeting advantages that pay per click marketing offers. You can use this to serve ads on search engine result pages defined across very specific geographic areas. For organic SEO, this can be tricky, especially in the area of on page optimization. If you have to focus on queries like “book store in Lansing”, it takes some very good attention to detail in your meta titling, and body content. By contrast, in paid search we can focus on broader keyword variations but define what geographic locations you want your ads to be served in, and not be concerned with being burdened by geographic keyword orientation in the content and code on your site.
2. Conduct a quick benchmarking study using the free Rank Checker from SEO Book, and you can see what keywords your site is ranking out for. If you have some that are ranking out within the top two pages, perhaps this is a good window of opportunity to focus on SEO and gain first page, and consequent top three rankings. If keywords that are important to you are ranked out very low, like 86th, or not ranked at all, it may be time for paid search. The reason being is that even if you aggressively focus on SEO, you are probably 3-6 months away from seeing rankings, and an even greater amount of time away from seeing quality traffic from those rankings. To get quality traffic - may be time to deploy a paid search campaign.
And finally, it is can be a good idea to test both mediums. If you are committing resources to both tactics, often times there can be intelligence gathered from each to help the other. (Note: sometimes this is not the case as paid traffic can behave much more differently than organic traffic depending on your sector) For example, you may deploy a paid search test over a month’s period, and from this use Google Analytics to evaluate which keywords deliver higher performing traffic.
Remember, aside from your overall conversion goals, pay attention to metrics per keyword such as bounce rate, average time on site, and pages per visit. (To view this, go to Traffic Sources>Keywords) If you are using Google AdWords, you can link up your campaign directly to Google Analytics by going to the Reporting tab>Google Analytics drop down option to initiate the link. Using this data in a short term test, you can evaluate what keywords tend to deliver higher levels of quality traffic. Developing those clusters of keywords, you are now armed with keyword research in which to embark on your longer term SEO strategy of optimizing on site for those keywords. Again, I will caution that in some sectors, paid traffic will behave much more differently than organic search traffic, but it is worth the test.
Hope this helps as you try to decide where to commit your search marketing time, resources, and budgets.
