More SEO Tools

From time to time, I let you know about some of the more useful (out of the abundant crop available on the Internet!) online tools for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) that I have come across. So here's the latest batch of valuable, and free, widgets that I've found:

The first is a site that checks on all of your back links, with a twist: it actually details not only the back link itself, but the anchor text associated with the link. For those of you sophisticated about SEO for your website, you'll know that this is very important information. There are a couple of reasons why this is important. First of all, the search engines use anchor text to associate your site with keywords that might be searched on in that engine, and uses this information in it's search rankings. So it's very important to have your most important keywords show up as anchor text on as many back links as you can manage. Secondly, if the search engines find that the anchor text on your back links is too repetitive, the engines will penalize you from a ranking perspective. The reason is that if the anchor text on all of your back links reads the same, Google and the other engines assume that the links are "manufactured" by the owner of the site--rather than generated naturally as a result of your site being interesting to others. So I highly recommend that you check out and use this tool:

Backlink Anchor Text Checker

A similar tool is the "C Class Back Link Analyzer". Once again, this is a tool for those sophisticated about SEO. The "C" Class Back Link Analyzer investigates the links pointing to a website, and then groups them according to the IP addresses they result from. If one back link comes from 54.37.14.5 and another comes from 54.37.14.6, the tool would group together. Links which come from the same C-Class IP are likely to be hosted by the same company, often lowering the site's search engine ranking.

"C" Class Back Link Analyzer

One last esoteric tool for the true SEO fanatics out there. It's called Deep Link Ratio Calculator. This tool measure the number of links to pages on your site other than the Index/Home Page, divided by the total number linked to your site. This is important because the Search Engines consider these "Deep Links" to be more "natural", more likely the result of someone creating a link to some great content in your site (as opposed to you listing your own site in a directory, for example). So this neat tool can give you another view of how "natural" the Search Engines are viewing the links to your site.

Deep Link Ratio Calculator

Finally, I present "yet another" Keyword Suggestion tool. I know, there are lots of them out there, but I find that when you're looking to generate keywords for SEO on a site, or when starting a PPC campaign, there are never enough good tools. This Suggestion tool claims to accumulate and report Keyword variations from the six most major search engines. Give it a shot and report back how it goes.

Keyword Suggestion Tool


I hope that you find these online SEO tools useful--post a comment and let me know!

Phil Morettini
PJM Consulting
www.pjmconsult.com

System Integration vs. Product Development

I've recently engaged on assignments with two new clients. Both of them have businesses selling to large, blue chip customers. Customers of the size that are used to "having it their way"; as a result, getting a deal with them often includes the need for a lot of customization.

The interesting thing about these two clients is how they perceive and approach that need to customize.

A Tale of Two Companies

Company A views customization somewhat as a pain and distraction, something to be controlled--I am assisting them with creating a standard solution offering menu outlining the "Base" offering, with a list of options available at an added cost. They really want to discourage certain customizations, absolutely won't do some things that will be asked, and want to make sure that they charge dearly for items that they find painful. They have the classic mentality of a product company; they want to do the amount of customization necessary to make a large sale to this important customer--but NO more than they have to.

Company B, which also considers itself a product company, has a very different mentality about customization. They welcome it, pride themselves on it, and position themselves to these potential large clients as someone that can quickly bring solutions to the client, customized to their desires. They want their big account reps to be scouring the big accounts for unique pain points or opportunities, which might fall within the company's core capabilities, enabling them to propose a customized solution. In fact, up till now, their product development approach has really been to find out what individual accounts want--and build it for them.

So which of these two business models is the best way for technology companies to go?

System Integration Business Models

Advantages:
*More flexible and able to change with shifts in the marketplace
*Not as capital-intensive due to less "betting" on upfront product development
*Easier to grow business organically with internally-generated capital than in a product business

Disadvantages:
*Less risk due to lower upfront investments
*More competition; System Integration is an "easier-entry" business
*Generally lower operating margins
*Growth is less scalable than a product-oriented company

Product-Focused Business Models

Advantages:
*Provides greater opportunity for strategic advantage and resulting fast growth
*Less competition if a product/brand/technology differential advantage is created
*Can scale much quicker if a hit product is developed
*Higher operating margins if product is successful
*Usually more marketing-driven and less labor-intensive
*If creating a very large company is the goal, much easier to raise outside capital

Disadvantages:
*Much more risk of "crib death", resulting in complete capital loss if first product has problems in development or marketing
*Harder to "get over the hump"; success is harder to come by, and success often happens as a step function after a difficult startup period

First of all, I want to emphasize that there isn't necessarily a "wrong" approach with either of these business models. You can make a lot of money pursuing either model. Both of the companies I have used as models have managed to attract blue chip customer which would be the envy of any company. What we are really talking about here is the difference between a classic product-driven company and a system integrator.

Company A is that classic product-driven company. They customize when they have to, but also have a point where they will say "no".

Company B also self-identifies itself as a product company, and in fact they have built their business around a small number of standard offerings. But as their core strategic advantage they really are utilizing relationships, the ability to customize beyond what standard product companies (especially larger ones) are willing to do, as well as to react very quickly to customer requests. They've built a very nice business doing this, but have some frustrations as well. They are highly dependent upon a small number of major accounts for virtually all of their revenue, and have the major revenue/profit swings that are associated with this type of business--up one year, back down the next. They also are in constant fear that a larger company will come along and "take away" their marketplace, because they've continuously failed to create new products which build upon a core offering which is very dated technologically. The core offering appears long-in-tooth and vulnerable. This company is very account-focused, and the lack of a market focus has kept them from being able to create additional, broadly marketable products which provide them with a strong proprietary advantage (and causes a lack of sleep at night!)

Company A understands who they are and what they want. That doesn't guarantee success, but it makes it much easier to build a plan that everyone agrees on. At that point success or failure usually depends upon execution, unless the plan is awful. If failure ensues in this scenario, more times than not, the problem is in execution. Company B's biggest problem is that they are floating right in the middle between the two business models. They are trying to leverage both of these business models, and struggling with execution, in some ways with both.

SUMMARY
It isn't impossible to combine these two business models successfully. I'm sure that many of you can't point to several examples of such a very successful compromise. In fact, many technology companies combine both of these models to some extent, with good success. But I find that usually, a company identifies itself primarily as a product company first, or a systems integrator. That identification is their strategic focus, and takes precedence when prioritizing the use of always scarce assets.

The secondary business model is usually utilized on an opportunistic basis. Product companies integrate and customize as needed to get a big deal. Integrators create "products" to fill the needs of a big account, and sometimes happily find they are saleable to other accounts. Occasionally, these "products" prove so widely saleable that they are spun off into a separate product company, or the integrator changes its focus into becoming a full-blown product company.

The most important thing, in my opinion, is to understand who you are, and what you are trying to accomplish strategically. It's the company's that are trying to leverage both business models at once, without one model taking the lead, that gets itself in a heap of trouble. That's my opinion--what's yours?

Phil Morettini
PJM Consulting
www.pjmconsult.com

The Future of Wireless Communications

Land Lines are going away, right? Everyone says so. We hire young women, generally in their twenties, to help take care of my son. I can't remember the last time one of their phones had an Area Code associated with the place they are currently living.

That's because they don't use landlines--many people in their twenties and thirties move around a lot, and rely strictly on a cell phone as their sole or primary telephone. If they have a couple of roommates, occasionally they will also have a landline. But the number usually isn't given out, and doesn't appear to be used much.

So does this mean that we are rapidly heading toward the wireless society that pundits have been predicting for a number of years? Or is wireless growth slowing and about to settle into mature market mode, with modest incremental growth in the future? There are a number of factors on both sides of this discussion--let's explore a few.

Factors Pointing Towards Acceleration Of Wireless

Mobility
Society is becoming more and more mobile as time goes on, and everyone is getting used to being able to do things on the go, that used to be done only at home or the office. This trend appears to be one that will only continue--and is a positive thing to most people's thinking. I do think there may be a bit of a backlash in this area--"too much of a good thing"--I'll address this later on.

New Services
The addition of many new services should drive users to utilize wireless as an increasingly greater percentage of their total computing/communications device usage. Trends such as the merging of consumer cameras and music into smartphones create the types of new services that are driving increased wireless usage in the near term. Location-based services could provide another nice pop in growth, if they ever do reach their potential (and they've been "coming" for quite a while). I would note that I don't consider these trends the type of major innovations that will cause a fundamental, "step-function" like shift and a major positive effect on wireless usage. I view these new applications as incremental, something to continue the modest growth we are currently seeing in the wireless market--in the western world, at least. Outside of the developed world, of course, there is some phenomenal growth occurring. In terms of market development, I view rapid wireless growth in developing countries as a "catch up" phenomena.

Cost
This is a bit of a two edged sword. Like any other technology-driven market, the cost of electronics and services are being continually driven down, especially as wireless has scaled into a mass market, with corresponding economies of scale. Up to this point, at least, there has been sufficient competition to drive down the price of services from the wireless carriers. There seems to be some flattening of this price deflation in the US recently, however. On the other hand, as new services have been introduced, the "total bill" that consumers end up paying for ALL of their technology services (wireless, TV, Internet Access, etc.) has been going up. There will be a point where consumers say "enough is enough"; the total tech entertainment and communications bill simply can't rise forever.

Technology Innovation and Competition
I do believe that technological innovations, market scale, and competition will all play a factor in continuing to bring down overall costs in the long run. New technologies such as WIMAX, networked WiFi and in-home pico cell towers will provide technological alternatives for consumers, and therefore increased indirect competition. And there are certainly many exciting developments in research labs which we haven't even heard of yet, that will lead to increased innovation and continuing industry growth. I really believe that the technological aspect of wireless is still in its infancy, and will be the major factor that leads to long growth in wireless markets.


Factors Pointing Towards Slowing Of Wireless


QOS
The biggest issue, in my opinion, that will limit the future growth of wireless, is the lack of sufficient Quality-of-Service. Current cell phone service in the US sucks. There's no other way of putting it. Depending upon your carrier in a given metro area, service can still be spotty, with persistent dropped calls--even after all of these years, and the fact that cell phones are a ubiquitous mass market item. I still have 3 landlines in my house, two for business usage. I sure don't want to talk to a new client on a cell phone connection--if I can help it. I know many business people that don't feel this way, and use their cell phone exclusively--my opinion is hardly universal. But I don't really understand it. Especially inside, in homes and offices, you just can't trust that the call quality to be anywhere near what is demanded by an important business call. Some of this is based upon real issues--mountains in the way of radio waves, etc. But much of the problem is simply the wireless carriers jamming too many calls into too little spectrum, for cost reasons. I'm quite surprised that no one has yet come up with a "business quality" wireless service, which guarantees a higher level of call quality--much like a business or first class airline seat.

Complexity
As new features and services get added, even if they are welcomed, user interfaces and experiences almost always get more complex--at least initially. Complexity is the enemy of mass acceptance. So vendors need to be careful about adding new bells, whistles and new revenue-generating services faster than the market can become comfortable with them

Size
The size of devices, dictated by the need for mobility, works directly against a premium user experience for many functions. The new iPhone is a major step forward, for example, and sets a new standard for browsing the Internet on a truly portable device. Yet anyone that would rather surf the net on an iPhone, rather than any real computer, would have to be classified as insane. As more compelling online services are developed specifically for mobile devices, this may become less of an issue. But the size constraints required to make a good mobile device work against wireless devices for many current applications. Here is where I believe that truly breakthrough technologies--things like speech recognition, holographic displays and virtual keyboards--are needed to make a real dent in this issue.

User experience controlled by Telcos
The wireless carriers have held a stranglehold on the user experience thus far in the life of cell service. Because of this, you have large, conservative telephone companies basically deciding on what users want and should have, in an otherwise technology-driven space. Most of their decisions are driven by their own short term revenue concerns, with little vision on what can grow the market exponentially in the long run. At the most basic level, you can't even take your cell phone and use it on a new carrier network. A few major technology vendors are pushing to open things up, such as Apple and the open browsing experience with the iPhone, and Google's recent attempts to make new wireless spectrum open. But the wireless telcos still have a stranglehold on the market and will keep things as proprietary as possible for as long as possible. They're terrified a being left as just commodity bandwidth providers, like their wired counterparts were in the dialup Internet market. No one on the carrier side wants to see THAT happen again. Because of this, innovation in user experience will continue to be stunted.

It's Just "Too Much"
As I mentioned earlier in this article, we're all becoming instantly accessible no matter where we are. I am an early adopter of many types of gadgets--a real tech guy. I am also an email junkie. I always expected that I'd be one of the first users of a smartphone that provided the proper balance between a cell phone and a computer/data communications device. Certainly these devices have been refined, and exist today. But by the time it happened, I decided that I really didn't need to be quite that accessible. I'm not an emergency room doctor, nor a high level commodities trader that needs instant access to everything. It's rare that I'm not in front of a computer to get email access within a couple of hours. And I can always be reached with a regular call on my cell phone, office phone, or home phone. Do I really need a device that provides instant email, instant messaging and cell phone access? With the convenience of that device comes the penalty of never having a moment's peace that is totally within your control. It's my opinion that as modern life has accelerated to warp speed on a normal basis, more and more folks are going to be rejecting the notion that 24/7, instant access is a necessity--let alone a convenience.

Summary
It is always difficult to forecast how such a huge, important market will develop over time. In many ways wireless communications has already commoditized, and in other ways one can hypothesize that these technologies are in their infancy. If they are truly n their infancy--then forecasting the future is a dangerous game. My own feeling is that we are at a very early stage--a plateau of sorts, which appears much like the steady-state commoditization of mature markets. But I expect that there will be a number of disruptive technological changes coming, separated by a period of years where the negative factors slow growth, over the next couple of decades. Wireless communications will hit plateaus where it appears the market has matured and growth has slowed. Then a breakthrough new technology will appear, changing the game and re-igniting robust growth. What will those technological innovations be--holograms, speech recognition, or large increases in data throughput capacity in the wireless spectrum? That's where the guessing game begins. How do you see this market? What breakthroughs do you see in the coming years? Post a comment and enrich our discussion on this interesting topic.

Phil Morettini
PJM Consulting
www.pjmconsult.com