See, here is the proof!

In my last post, some time ago now, I said that I would significantly improve my traffic rank…

In fact this is what I said on April 23rd: Here is my starting point: tomallinder.com has a Google Page Rank of 3 which is not great but not bad either. My traffic rank is 6.79M according to Alexa which is not good at all mostly because I have been too busy with my primary business to keep my site updated.

Today, my traffic rank is 1,528,364 according to Alexa. So, with minimum effort, I have dramatically increased my traffic rank…

So, does it not make sense that the more traffic your business gets, the more customers, clients and if you are publicly traded, SHAREHOLDERS. It works, near and far…

Excerpt from my book, New Thinking for Publicly Traded Companies:

Like it or not, even if your company makes tin cans or something else that is not “sexy”, in order to be successful in today’s world YOU MUST BECOME AN INTERNET MARKETER… Do not mix up Internet Marketer with Network Marketer. Once, someone wrote in a Twitter “tweet” “Misery, thy name is Internet Marketer”. I can understand why someone would say that because generally, Internet marketing and Network marketing gets mixed up. Network marketers sell a “program” that is supposed to make you rich. They are most often pyramid schemes that few make any real money with. I will explain two types of Internet Marketing later.

HubSpot pointed out in a recent webinar something I already knew but nevertheless, it made a big impression on me: With each passing day, more and more people are using search engines to find supplies, goods, services, information and just about everything else. Would it not stand to reason that people are now using search engines (which means they are probably using Google) to find companies to invest in?

Given the sorry state that most “stock message boards” and “stock chat rooms” are in, it is an undeniable fact that investors are seeking their information elsewhere.

I received a comment to a blog I did recently from a gentleman that was a retired high-ranking military officer of about 60 years old. He said that never in his life did he see such a mess of disinformation, hype and disruptive communication as he saw on the message boards of a company he was invested in. I wrote back to him and told him that that was just the way things were now and he would find better information on social media platforms. I also showed him how to search and filter the information so that it might be of use. On social media platforms, for the most part, people that are disruptive and spam have no audience or are suspended by the platform. The quality control is better whereas message boards and chat rooms are pretty much “anything goes” and are of little or no use to investors anymore. Not to say that all threads on all message boards are bad, but many are, especially those of micro and small cap companies.

Let’s say an investor is looking on the Internet for companies to invest in. Notice that I did not say the investor was looking for “stocks”. Investors invest in companies, traders trade stocks. Can our theoretical investor find any information about your company by doing an Internet search? He or she probably can if they type in the exact name of your company. What if the investor does not know of your company? Can your company be found? If your company cannot be found in the first couple of pages of Google’s Search Engine Results Page (SERP) for a search term, they will never know you exist.

If the name of your company is XYZ Widgets, Inc. and is publicly traded it can be found if they put in “XYZ Widgets”, probably the top result. But investors will be looking for something like “investing, “widgets” or “investing in widgets”. Would your company be on the first page? In most cases, probably not. Your company may not even in the top 2 or 3 pages of the SERPs (depending on the number of Widget companies).

Just for the record, the search term “investor relations social media” yields tomallinder.com at number TWO on Google and my article on Investor Relations 2.0 at Wikinvest.com the number ONE result. My philosophy: I would rather dominate a niche than compete with everyone else for the most competitive search terms…

Another interesting study that HubSpot did was to share where searchers clicked on SERPs on Google. The presentation had a great name and you can download/view at HubSpot; the name was Marketing Detox: How to Get Off Google AdWords PPC Crack (PPC is pay per click). I loved the title by the way…

HeatMap Showing where majority of clicks occur on Google SERPs

They clearly stated how people are smarter now with regard to searches. Paid search, while very useful and money making and lead generation for some, by in large is not beneficial for most. I know companies, IR firms and promoters that have promoted their business via Google and had no good results. There are certain techniques and combinations one has to know to be successful. It is like Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in that manner; as long as you are willing to pay for the secret it will work; if you don’t pay for the help, you get nowhere.

On slide 17 of the webinar presentation, they showed where the clicks occurred on the typical SERP. They were all concentrated in the organic areas and mostly in the top 5 results. There were only a few clicks in the paid ads in the top and right side of the page. It reminds me of stock promotion via email, fax, phones or the other tired old stuff; people keep paying for it even though it doesn’t work. The next slide revealed the actual stats – clicks in the organic results outnumbered the clicks in the paid areas by a 3-1 margin.

One thing that turns people off of the paid clicks is when you are looking for an item or information, the results often yield totally useless results. One time, I did a search on Crumpler, NC, the town that I lived in just to see what would come up. More than one of the paid results indicated that they were selling “Crumpler” at a really good price.

Let’s get back to why Google is important to your company… As more and more investors use search engines, and about 70% are using Google, you need to be found in the first couple of pages on the SERPs. The first page would be better and that can be attained over time. There are two ways to get on the first page of Google:

An organic SEO plan… which you can do yourself if you spend a lot of time learning about it and get all the right tools.

Or… pay to get on the first page of Google.

For some reason though, I can’t figure out quite how a publicly traded company would do PPC advertising or any sort of advertising for investors on Google or any other advertising platform. I have written about paid advertising for one reason: There are a lot of SEO hackers out there running businesses that target companies under the guise of doing SEO. They promise “Page 1 Results”. They will get you on the first page via the paid ads but… once you stop paying for the ads you disappear completely. There are a lot of other “SEO” programs out there that will do a little for you and pay for some ads with the budget and improve your results somewhat; again though, it is temporary results.

With an organic SEO plan, progress made does not disappear overnight. A lot more people will click on your link because they know you “earned” the spot on that particular search engine. SEO is complex with all of the variables but really pretty simple in concept. There is a lot of SEO documentation out there both free and paid. But I will assure you that the knowledge required to move your company to the first page or two of Google is not free at all.

Have you ever heard of a “Perception Report”? OK, I will get into that in a minute or two…

A company’s performance in the marketplace with respect to stock volume and price is by in large, a function of investor’s perception of the company. I have spoken with countless CEOs and other management team members over the last few years and nearly all felt strongly that their stock was undervalued given the underlying fundamentals of the company.

Often times especially with micro and small cap companies, there is a “disconnect” between the company and the stock. This disconnect can be in either direction. I have seen companies that continue to perform on the business front while their stock goes completely unnoticed. Other companies have a business that is speculative at best with virtually no underlying fundamentals that trades heavily and gets a lot of attention. Why is this?

Fundamentals drive business but perception drives stocks. To some this is obvious, but without a lot of experience in the marketplace, it is not so obvious. I will say it again: I have spoken with countless management team members of public companies that do not understand that without some level of good to great perception, their stock will not trade. Oh sure, any company or “third party” can hire a “group” to provide liquidity in a stock for a day or two, or if they have the money to spend, for a longer period of time…

It is the objective of every publicly traded company’s management team to have their stock trade consistently and organically. For those that are reading this and do not know what organic trading is, it simply means that the stock trades without “market support”. In other words, you don’t need a team of manipulators working the stock to make it trade.

Let’s look at what drives perception:

• Emotion- Probably the biggest factor. Emotion is something that the stock trader wants to avoid but the investor must be emotionally involved with the company they invest in. You want investors to “marry” your company and stock.
• Visibility of the business. Is the company highly visible through marketing campaigns? (don’t confuse a marketing campaign on behalf of a company with stock promotion – apples and oranges)?
• Product or Service- Very important factor. In order to achieve some sort of emotional response, the company must have a product or service that the investor can understand and see a great need for.
• BUZZ- This is closely related to the 3 items above. Bottom line is: You company’s stock will not trade organically without some sort of buzz.

So this brings us to the “Perception Report”. Unlike the Research Report, which is paid for by the company or the “third party” the Perception Report is free. Finding out where you stand is an important first step. A map is navigate with is great but without knowing where you are, you cannot get to where you want to go.

What is in a “Perception Report”?

1. Website Analysis and “Grade”. This is important because a company’s website is the single most underutilized asset that I see most of the time. The average publicly traded company’s website cannot be found in the first few pages of search engines. The only way to “find” the company is to search by the company’s name. Most publicly traded company web pages have had some Search Engine Optimization (SEO) done on them but nevertheless, are still loaded with problems.
2. Conversation Monitoring: Most publicly traded companies look at stock message boards to find out what the sentiment is regarding their company. There is nearly a billion people worldwide using social media. I am finding now that most of these “conversations” regarding publicly traded companies are going taking place on Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed and many other social media platforms. Knowing what the real sentiment is on your company is another valuable starting place. Not only will you know what is being said about your company but who is saying it. There are many other uses for conversation monitoring as well.
3. Reach and Influence: Your company no matter how big or small has a certain influence and reach across the Internet. Again, this is another important item to gauge.

By knowing and understanding where your company stands gives you a great place to start building a strategy. There is a lot more to measuring your company than stock performance.

When I measure a client’s performance under my program, Not only do I look at stock price and volume but how many new subscribers to their content they have, web page traffic, how many new business leads, how much new business have they generated as a result of my efforts? These are just a few things that I look at and as you can see, most of them have nothing to do with the stock price at all…