SEM-SMO-TODAY

Of Wedding Photographers, Negatives and Adword PPC Campaigns

2011-02-06T19:34:00.000Z

One thing that has always puzzled me is the way people employ wedding photographers. The set up is that you arrange for them to be there for your special day and pay them to take the photos, the deal normally being that you get so many prints for your money. If you want any more then you have to put your hand back into your pocket. Now if they just charged the cost of the print with just a small mark up I' d not be raising the issue, but they don't, instead they add on a fair wack extra as you are paying ('again' in my mind) for their time. In effect they 'keep' your negatives and make you pay for using them.

They Keep Your Negatives

Now I know why they do what they do, but it still seems strange to me.

But What About Adwords Campaigns

I have been running Pay Per Click campaigns for a decade now and in that entire time I have never built a campaign for a customer and then said it was mine and that they could not take it with them, whether they were taking the running 'in house' or (heaven forbid) taking it to another supplier (well you can't please all the people all time).

My view is that how it should be done, the customer pays for the campaign to be built and so it is theirs, it is as simple as that in my view.

As with the wedding photographer's I understand why they [the other online marketing companies] do this (to keep the customer) but I do not agree with the practise and we at Serendipity will never go down that route, even if it means we loose the odd customer every now and then.

At Serendipity We Hand The Negatives Back

So if you are ever interested in having a PPC campaign built and want to keep the build as your own, then contact Serendipity (or another online marketing company) that hands your negatives back, after all you will have paid for them.....

Facebook & Twitter - Essential for All Businesses?

2011-01-30T19:03:00.000Z

It's true that there is going to be a big change in Online Marketing in 2011. For a start, both Google and Bing have come clean and told all that they will be taking Tweets and Posts/Likes into account when deciding what site to rank first in the SERPs. Then there is the case the power of the blog is set to increase, especially if you can harness this to get more links to a site.

However, some of the things I have been reading are saying things that I have difficulty in agreeing with. The basis of these comments are that ALL businesses MUST have a Facebook and Twitter account. Now while I can agree that having a Twitter account for all is a good idea, Twitter being very easy to use. It also does not take huge amounts of time to use and there is a lot of software out there to help. Twitter also is easily spidered (and is by Google all the time).

So Twitter is a good thing to have in my view, the amount of effort being well worth the effort.

Facebook is however a different kettle of fish in my view. Yes I'm sure it can be useful and could bring in traffic, however, for the small to medium size business will it bring in the level of traffic and SERP's bonus points necessary to balance the amount of effort?

In my view, whereas for the BIG businesses, Facebook is a MUST, for the smaller one, the only reason that I would recommend investing the time / money is in support of a Signal Creation programme, this being associated with a Blog on the customers site. We believe in this so much that we are launching a brand new product in Feb 2011, but more on that later.

To get back to the point, I do think that Facebook has a role for Big business, as for them it is essential to track their brand reputation and see what people are saying about them, moving to defuse any negative comments before they gain to much momentum and following (Twitter should be used this way too by the way).

So, yes for Big business, Facebook is a must, but for the smaller ones, without a big brand to protect, is Facebook necessary?

My view (and one that may well cause some comment) is that for the SME, that Facebook is not really worth investing the time and money that it would take to make it count. Sure, if they are going to be using a blog to push their site, then Facebook is a key part of the Signal creation process, but other than that, I'd keep away from Facebook (unless you are interested in it and would like to invest your spare time as it can't do any harm).

More on Social Media and Signal in the next few days

Are you in the right race with your website?

2011-01-25T19:43:00.000Z

It is said that the Internet offers a level playing field, one where anyone can have a presence, a presence that gives them access to huge potential market. The trouble is that this level playing field is a myth, yes anyone can have a site, but getting traffic to it is a very different matter.

Getting traffic means marketing, whether this is by getting rankings for the right keywords on Google, or by building up a huge following on Twitter or Facebook. The simple truth is that doing any of the former is just not easy and each route will take a lot of time and or money.

The best advice I can give to anyone thinking of starting this journey is to choose the right race to join. After all, if you were into car racing you would think twice before entering F1 when you only had enough money to buy a Ford Fiesta. The same thing applies to Internet Marketing, in the end it will be the availability of time / money that will define what market place you are really able to join.

So, talk to your SEO / SEM / SMO adviser and get them to show you the level of competition in your market place and more importantly what are the niches you could attack.

That way you won't be trying to win a race that you can't possibly succeed in.

Best of luck choosing your race!

Is 2011 The Year of the Blog?

2011-01-08T17:52:00.000Z

In the distant past (in Web Terms that means just a few years) it was Google Page Rank that ruled the roost. It was that algorithm that controlled which page was ranked first for any key phrase. But nothing is constant but change, and it was not long before things like the Meta Keywords tag were in turn handled the chalice of power.

Later still it was the words on the page that had the main effect on SERP's rankings. Each of these changes were tracked by the Search Engine Optimisation experts of the day, who in turn then made changes to the pages they controlled to get the best results.

On the other side of this 'battle' were the Search Engines who were busily changing the 'rules' so that it was they and not others who would 'decide' what pages would get what rankings. It was thus the change in the rules that concentrated the 'power' in the number of links came about.

Sure getting rankings is more than just about links, but in 2010 at least, they represented the most powerful part of the ranking equation.

However as I mentioned above, 2011 is going to see yet another change and this one it seems is going to centre on Blogs, the links to these Blogs and the interaction with the Social Media networks. These links, the Blogs and the Social Media posts that point to them are often called 'Signal' and getting rankings is going it seems to be all about that this year.

So for 2011, you will need two things:-

1) A Blog (hosted in a folder on your site, or in a sub domain).

2) Some Social Media presence in the form of a Twitter account and perhaps a Facebook page.

3) The time to write the blogs and then alert the Engines to the changes on the Blog using Tweets and Social Media posts.

More on these changes (as they become clearer) over the next months

You Can’t Teach an Old Blog New Tricks – Or Can You?

2010-12-23T12:35:00.001Z

Sorry for the terrible pun (and I do hope our canine friends will forgive me), but I just could not resist the idea. I expect it has been used before (although it was not coming up in Google) but whatever, I thought it was worth another airing.

But Can You Teach A Blog New Tricks?

I don’t know how many blogs you have looked at, but I’m afraid to say that the death rate is quite high, many blogs simply not being updated. The main reason for this I’m sure is lack of time, but I also imagine that a fair number are not kept up to date as people think that they are not being looked at.

Of course the problem may be that the content is poor, but it could also be the fact that not enough people are aware of the blog in the first place. Here the issue will be lack of marketing, some blog owners not even ensuring that their blog ‘pings’ the networks to tell of a new post. Also, not all make use of Twitter or Facebook to spread the word about new content.

So, if an ‘old blog’ is not using either pings or Social Media, then you can certainly teach it a new trick or two.

But there is MORE, much MORE that can be done…

Watch this space for more tips and tricks and make 2011 the Year of Your Blog!

The Link Between SEO and Signal Gets Stronger

2010-12-21T19:47:00.000Z

There has been much chatter about what the link is between SERP's and Social Media 'Signal' but the rumours seem to be turning into concrete fact.

See Matt Cutts talking about Google Rankings and Twitter & Facebook Signal and you'll see what I mean.

More later

Case Study for Shire and Co - Powerful SEO in Practise

2010-12-18T22:23:00.001Z

As any Blogger will tell you, one of the ways that you can use a blog effectively is to tell your readers that you know what you are talking about, that you know your onions and that therefore you should be listened too.

One of the best ways to show your expertise in any subject area (mine being Search Engine Marketing / and Social Media Optimisation) is a case study, showing how you were presented with a 'problem' what you did to fix it and what the results were.

In this case, Serendipity Online Marketing was contacted by Shire and Co after a referral by a current client. We went along and laid down what we could do for them, saying that it we would expect to be able to get them onto page one of Google for a number of top phrases in about 3 months, this being an especially difficult task as the site was very new.

We laid out a plan, our tried and tested plan, first doing the keyword research, then altering the site to include these words, then constructing a solid set of links to the site.

We were thus faced with the fact that we had a very new site, that was not built that well (the use of Joomla being a bit odd in places), that wanted rankings in a fairly competitive area. To cap it all, they wanted results fast!

When we started the site had no rankings for anything much (other than its own name) few links, and was totally unoptimised. It did not even cover all the areas that the customer wanted and which had been picked from the keyword research. Whilst it is not unusual to find that all the keyword phrases were not covered, it was unusual to find that some areas were not covered. But this was not a problem for Serendipity.

What we did.

As we knew what keywords were wanted, we started optimising the site, adding pages to cover the areas required and changing all the others so that they had the best chance of getting those all important rankings. We also added the iJoomla SEO extension to the site to make the process more efficient.

To cover the all important area of Social Media and Signal, we started a Twitter account and built the number of followers up to just under 400 in just a few weeks. Besides Tweeting from this account, we also Tweeted from our own accounts (which have nearly 8,000 followers in all) about Shire.

We also started the linking programme. As the graph below shows there were very few links to start with:-

The number of links took off under our influence leaping up to nearly 800 in just 2 months (with a lot more in process at the time of writing).

To show that this is not a one off, we also did some some work for a sister company of Shire and Co, Shire Leasing. As the graph below shows, when Serendipity started creating links in August, the numbers just took off...

But back to Shire and Co. So what was the result of our labours, what was acheived?

The Results

Being an SEO company, we were going to be judged on the number of rankings we gained for coverted words like 'Business Lawyers', 'Company Lawyers' and 'Employment Lawyers'.

As already stated, the rankings on Google for these words was a big fat ZERO before we started, the site had NO rankings at all. But after just two months, the rankings had started to appear and after three we had acheived:-

Business Lawyers - Position 3 out of over 6 Million pages

Company Lawyers - Position 1 out of over 36 Million pages
Employment Lawyers - Position 10 out of 1.5 Million pages

However, what is important is not rankings, but the number of visits and enquiries. After just two months, we were getting reports from the customer of increased visitor levels and also, more to the point more enquiries.

Of course it was early days, there being a lot more work to do for the site to get it even better rankings, traffic and enquiries. However, that was not to be, an internal re-organisation of the Shire Group causing them to take all SEO works back in house. Whilst this was a shame, at least we at Serendipity had given them a sound base to work from.

So there you have it, faced with the problem of a site with no links, rankings and little traffic, we did the research, made the on page changes and created the links, in the end producing some very good rankings for some top keywords.

More on SEO next week

Google Analytics & Searchandising

2010-12-15T08:53:00.002Z

I am often asked questions about Google Analytics, often because there is just so much data available that it just 'blows their minds'.

The trick here is to use Filters to place one set of data for say PPC visitors and another set for Organic visitors into different 'pots'. You still keep the 'big pot' with all the data in it too, but having these subsets of data sure makes it easier to understand.

However, this blog is not about reducing the amount of data in Analytics, its about INCREASING it, but for good reason.

We all know that the First Problem for all site owners is getting people to their site. As many have found, setting up a website and waiting for the people to flock in normally has only one outcome, a long wait (and a website covered in electronic dust). No, for all but the luckiest of businesses, a lot of hard work is required to get those potential customers into their site.

But there is a second problem

Getting visitors in is all well and good, but unless you get them to do something (buy or enquire or sign up for a newsletter) all the effort of getting them there is wasted. This “something” will vary from one site to another, but in all cases you want to make it easy for people to find what they want on the site as that is bound to increase the likelihood of them making a purchase or whatever else you want them to do.

The answer is of course the “Search” box. You’ll find these on many sites, and when they are done in the right way, they are really useful. With just a few clicks you can input the term “what do feed rubber ducks on” and be provided with a list of all the pages on the site that are relevant, all without all that tiresome tracking through the navigation and having to scan every page.

Searchandising

The term “Searchandising” is in fact all about the science of implementing these search boxes and the analysis of the data it provides and guess what Mr Google can help with both. For a small fee you can have a Google Search Facility on your site, this being backed by the same powerful search algorithims that Google use all the time. That beats the hell out of most so called search facilities I have come across on more sites than I care to mention - talk about awful!

Google have spent years perfecting their search function, so when you use it you have one that allows for the fact that humans are well, human. They just don’t do things the way a “sensible computer” would. For a start they can’t spell in many cases, and they tend to write as they speak, in other words they may well type in “yelow rubber duks”. Now a system that expects you to type in just “rubber ducks” is going to get really confused here and will probably decide that there is nothing on the site that matches these requirements and come up with an empty search list. Result, the user goes elsewhere and that potential sale is lost, not so with Googles offering.

Listing the Results

With Google you get the results in a way you understand and know, these being rated by relevance and from experience I can say that the small fee you have to pay each year is more than worth it.

The best bit is yet to come though

Search boxes are found on many sites, but that trick that is often missed is to check to see what people have actually typed in / are looking for. If you have this data you can use it to improve the way the site is laid out, e.g. what products are on the first page etc, but beyond that you can also glean a lot of information about visitor behaviour as it tells you what they want, and that can't be bad.

The data is also very useful for SEO purposes too, as there is a fair chance that any term typed into your internal search engine will be typed into Google and the like. Thus optimising your site for these terms is a great way of getting ahead of the competition.

That best bit

Perhaps the very best bit is that Google Analytics incorporates any on site searches in its database, allowing you to see what people have been looking for, all from that one interface, no extra programming, just DATA.

So what should I do?

Unless you have lots of money to burn, I'd hop off to Google, buy the Search Facility for your site and install the code pronto, its all very easy and if you can't do it, your web designer can in just a few minutes. Then all you have to do is to tell Analytics to incorporate the data (just a tick in the box being needed) and heh presto, you'll have lots of lovely new data to play with.

OK you might not want the extra data, but it will help..

More on Google Analytics (and Blogging, and SEO and .... tomorrow)

Win Some Lose Some

2010-12-13T22:49:00.001Z

Being in the Search Engine Marketing business can at times be quite discouraging. After all you are up against it from the start. You don't know all the SEO rules (no one does) and then you'll be sure to have a few customers who think that you are selling snake oil and just taking their good money (and not doing anything for them). Then there are those that think that it's easy and that getting their site to page 1 on Google should be a piece of cake..

Still we crack on and get those rankings, or Twitter followers, or reduce a clients click costs by 50% and then guess what, the client decides to stop using your services. Sure there are sometimes good reasons for this but when you have delivered consistently it can be hard to take. Still that is business I suppose and you just have to take it and move on.

The good news is that the job is so varied and changing all the time. But heh, stop there, because contrary to public belief, the rules of SEO and the way the engines 'act' has not changed that much. Sure there have been changes and the Engines do use different 'signals' to decide what to list first, but in the end you have the words on the pages and the links to those pages. Those two are the foundations of SEO and always will be. The links may be on Twitter, Facebook in reviews on Google Places or Upmystreet, but they are still links.

The trick in SEM is to choose your 'battlefield' (the right one) and then capture the area by clever use of words on the page and links to that site, all the while using as much 'leverage' as you can. What is 'leverage', simply the process of using your website, the sites you know and your Social Media presence in the best possible way. At SOM we understand the value of leverage and how to make the very best use of our clients marketing budgets.

More on leverage (and blogging - not forgotten that one) later.

Google Giveth - But It Does Not Always Take Away

2010-12-12T17:40:00.000Z

To be sure Goolge can give any business a huge leg up in the market place by placing their site at the top of the rankings for a really useful keyphrase. These Search Engine placements are themselves gained by the site being given 'points' by the Engines for the content on the pages, as well as of course most importantly, the links pointing to the pages of the site.

From this point of view you could say that these rankings are therefore 'given' by Google etc. But why does Google bestow these bounties and what causes it to 'take them away' a worrying thought that causes many a sleepness night for website owners.

This blog is not the place to go over what causes Google to 'like' a page, but it is the place to cover some issues about what causes Google to 'dislike' a page. One of the biggest scares that hit the market place was that if you paid for links that you would get banned from the listings. My recent research has led me to believe that buying links won't cause you to get banned at all, but on the other hand it won't get you any bonuses either !

Watch Out if You Host Paid For Links Though

What might get you into trouble is hosting paid links or hosting a part of a 'link sharing' network, as Google does not endorse the idea of 'paid links' (for SEO purposes) in any way shape or form. I experienced this to a degree myself, a site we were running SEO for having a 'paid link' on the home page. Even though we followed the procedure of telling all that the link was paid for, as we did not use the No Follow tag, we it seemed were penalised. The rankings were still on Page 1, but not as high as they had been. So we took the link off and within days the site had leapt up the listings, this seemingly proving the point.

Other data I have come across supports the above, one story telling how a business buying thousands worth of dollars of links every month lost not a single ranking when it stopped paying for them. The reason simply being that Google was not going to give any site a bunk up the rankings for having paid links, but it was also not penalising them for having the links in the first place.

In other words Google is not going to worry if you want to waste your money, but it won't go out of the way to tell you about it either.

Google therefore truly does give but does not always take away..

Is The Duplicate Filter A Myth Then?

2010-12-10T21:56:00.001Z

I'm taking a day off talking about Blogging to raise an issue about SEO that is to say the least contentious, this being all about Duplicate Content.

The Dangers of Duplicate Content ?

For my part, I like many others have always considered that there on inherant dangers in hosting duplicate content on a website, some pundits stating that using content on your site that has been used on others will cause those pages to be disregarded by the Engines, some pundits going so far as to say that your site would be blacklisted!

No Blacklists but Maybe Just Ignored?

The rules that I saw (and to a degree believed) stated that the Engines, being so clever an all, would work out where the content first appeared and then disregard it when ever it saw it again. I was always a bit doubtful of this fact simply because sites get spidered at widely different rates (from minutes to weeks). As this means that the time a spider comes across a page has no relation to when it was first posted (on that site), it also means that the Engines cannot really 'tell' where the text appeared first anywhere. Thus it cannot penalise sites when it comes across the text again. It does however not follow that it will give any site it finds the text on any benefits. In other words you won't get penalised, but you probaby won't get anything out of it either (just like the issue of paid for links - see a later blog)

This sounds quite plausible to me and as I have seen duplicate sites listed in Google with my own eyes, most often when a page is listed under two different Domain Names. So if this is indeed the case what is all the fuss on the web about, all those sites which allow you to check for duplicate content plus of course all those sites full of words of doom?

From the research I have been doing in the past weeks, it looks like the issue of duplicate content is indeed a bit of a red fish (I mean herring), the words of Matt Cutt (yes Mr Google himself) perhaps putting the matter to bed for once and for all. The best resource on this matter is perhaps the one on Buzzle, the whole area of duplicate content being covered in some detail.

Duplicate Content - Nothing to Worry About Really.

The issue of duplicate content is therefore not as important as many would have you believe, but that does not go to say that you should use duplicate content 'willy nilly' as Google do boost the page it reckons is the best. This is especially being important on Ecommerce sites where the use of xml feeds from product sites can really turn Google off (the product pages looking exactly the same as hundreds of others - Google after all has limits like all of us).

So do try to use original content, but don't get too hung up about the issue and remember perhaps this one point. If you can, over time, convince Google that your site is an authority on something, then it will be inclined to think that your pages are the best, even if perhaps the content is not totally unique...

So Why Blog In The First Place?

2010-12-08T20:50:00.000Z

It's a good question, after all Blogging takes a fair amount of time and not a little effort. Some people will be blogging for the what could be called the right reasons, that is to put their point of view across to a (potentially) mass audience, but others (the majority?) are blogging not so much to state their opinions, but to get links back to their site for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) purposes.

The reason for this is simple enough to understand (if you know anything about SEO) as the Search Engines LOVE links, giving sites with a lot of links a real boost in the rankings. This perhaps then is the answer to the question, people blog to get links and they want links as that gets them higher rankings.

Of course you can have more than one reason to blog, for my part I blog for lots of reasons.

One of them is that I, like many others have an inbuilt desire to write, I suppose that it is the 'frustrated author' in me. I don't pretend to be good at it, but I do enjoy dribbling on (and on) in my blogs...

Then there is the desire to help others, to provide them with ideas and data on the subjects of Search Engine Marketing and Social Media Marketing. I do this as I learnt my trade with the help of others, so if I can repay their generosity a bit by helping others then that is good.

I am however, not a complete saint (several bits are missing), and do I admit blog for two other important reasons. The first is to try to convince any reader that I know my stuff and that I could therefore help them with their website, gaining it both rankings and traffic. In other words I am after business.

The second reason, well that is pretty obvious. Yes, I too am after links to this blog, as these links will help these posts appear in Google etc, and that could lead to more viewers and hopefully business. These links will also boost the standing of this blog and thus the 'power' of the links pointing to our main SEO website, which in turn will boost its' rankings (and thus more traffic and business).

I expect that this is the case for most bloggers and as a good blog adds value to the web, I suppose it does not matter why the blog is written, at least that is my contention, which is after all one reason for having a blog in the first place.

Tomorrow - How to Blog!

Blogging For Business Seminar

2010-12-07T17:25:00.000Z

I’ve just got back from a seminar run by Business Link and delivered by Hallam.biz. It was all very interesting, going over why you should have a blog and how you can easily set one up. The two types Hosted and On Your Own Web Server were also discussed and the merits of both debated.

As readers of my blogs and articles know, I don’t purport to know it all and today was no exception, as I picked up lots of valuable tips and tricks. I didn’t agree with all the speaker had to say on SEO (you go and get two SEO experts who agree with each other on 100% of things and I’ll go and get a gun and shoot down that flying pig) but as I said there were nuggets of gold in the seminar.

The biggest thing that struck me was the overall complexity of the whole thing. After all, you had to consider setting a blog up (potentially having to get your website designer to help) then decide what you were going to consistently write about (and the consistent bit is VERY important) and then make sure you promoted it well enough to make it pay for itself one way or another.

I have been blogging on and off for years now and know how difficult it is. For my part, and I dare say I am not alone here, it is not the problem of finding something to talk about, but finding the time to talk about it, if you see what I mean. For a busy business person, this could be just too much for them to cope with, which is no doubt why 80% of blogs die a lonely death when the writer just runs out of steam or time.
There is of course an answer, get someone to blog for you. This is OK (and indeed is a service we offer) but it is not the same as someone writing about the industry / marketplace they know and love. Still sometimes it comes down to good old Hobsons choice and if that is the case, bearing in mind the potential power a good blog has to raise a businesses profile, then that is the one to take.

More on Blogging Why Do it? later

Slow Communications Can Have BIG Effects

2010-12-07T07:55:00.003Z

As every history buff will tell you, nearly 70 years ago the Japanese attacked the USA fleet at Pearl Harbour, in what was described as ‘A day of Infamy’ as there had been no official declaration of war. According to some historians, the Japanese had actually intended to declare war and then attack almost straight away, but slow communications between Japan and their USA embassy delayed things..

Slow communications as you can see can have dire consequences, an idea perhaps, celebrated by Google’s recent announcements that ‘It did not like slow websites and intended to penalise them in the rankings, in an attempt to get them to clean up their acts’. Such penalties could really hurt some sites, so it is not surprising that note is being taken of Mr Google’s threats.

The BIG question of course is, “Is my site slow and likely to get a penalty?”

Well there is one sure way of finding out and that is to add the FireBug add on to your Firefox browser. You can then use the ‘Page Speed’ section to analyse your site, all the issues (if there are any) being displayed along with potential fixes.

Some of these fixes are very complicated, others not so. But whatever, at least you will know what the issues are. Then you can have a chat with your web designer to get them sorted out. Perhaps all web designers should check their builds before they pass them on to the customer, but then again, they should really do the same for basic SEO (heh I’m talking myself out of a job here – careful !) shouldn’t they??

For more information on SEO and SEM please see our website http://www.serendipity-online-marketing.co.uk/

When is a Tweet not a Tweet?

2010-12-05T18:29:00.002Z

Getting a celebrity to endorse a product is nothing new. We've all seen adverts featuring David Beckham etc, the idea being that this is supposed to make us want whatever it is too. Not sure it works for me, but the big brands spend mega bucks on such things so it must work (mustn't it).

Of course, most endorsements are easily seen as adverts so those nice people in the Advertisement Standards Agency are not concerned, as no one is misled in thinking that young David really likes the 'Smell for Men' he is fronting for (although of course he might?).

However, what if a celebrity started Tweeting about how wonderful say the new 4*4 from Range Rover is. Sure they may have one and may think it is great, but what if they have been given one as a 'payment' for the Tweets? Would you rate the Tweets in the same way, in other words would you believe what the Tweet said if you knew the content was not coming from the heart, but instead perhaps the wallet?

This is the quandary that the ASA finds itself in. One one hand it wants to protect everyone, on the other hand it does not want to stifle advertisers. In Rovers case, it has said that it would act if there were complaints, which if upheld would result in the advertiser having to withdraw the Tweet and ones like it. It is, however, perhaps the negative publicity and loss of consumer confidence that brands are worried about most though.

The USA have taken a different view though, their Federal Trade Commission has issued guidelines, these requiring that brands take steps to ensure that any Tweeter that has received payment in some form has to reveal this fact. The accepted method is to add 'ad' or 'spon' in the Tweet.

If you want to keep within the rules, then bear in mind the following advice. According to the Office of Fair Trading, if you don't disclose such payment connections, then, 'if it is likely to cause the average consumer to take a transactional decision they would not have taken otherwise' you could fall foul of the Consumer Protection Regulations.

This issue is also shedding more light on the practice of some advertisers who place positive comments about their products on review sites using false persona's as well as the other tricks that advertisers (and SEO companies?) are using these days?

For more articles and information on internet marketing and search engine optimisation see our website.

The Link Between SEO and SMO Become Clearer (Just)

2010-12-03T09:58:00.000Z

It’s long been thought that there was a link between Twitter and Facebook and Rankings on the Search Engines.No one has been sure (and no one is really sure now to be truthful) what the link is, they've just known there was one.

The muddy water clears

The muddy water has now cleared a little now though with statements by both Google and Bing on the subject.

Google it seems is interested whenever anything is tweeted, especially if it is retweeted by someone that is deemed to be an authority figure, this being based to a degree on the number of followers they have. Articles and URL's that are tweeted about can therefore get extra SEO Omph by being seen in the Twittersphere.

As far as Facebook is concerned, links that are 'shared' are also taken into account, although Google has no access to private data at all (unlike Bing). There is also deemed to be a sort of 'Page Rank' effect here too, the number of people sharing a link increasing its power.

Bing is different

Bing has a similar view on Twitter, although it is mooted that they actually decide who is 'important'. They do however also take into account the number of Followers and Followed.
For Facebook, things get a little bit more complicated as Bing also checks to see if the URL / Article has also been mentioned in Twitter as well.The reason for this check is simply that if it is mentioned in both places that it must be important!

So, it looks like its now official, if you want to give your SEO efforts a boost, make sure you have a good Twitter presence (with lots of Followers etc) and that you are creating lots of great content for these 'authoritive' Twitterers to retweet.

Twitter’s tweets have more influence

One thing is clear though and that is that Twitter has more power when it comes to SEO, simply because it is by definition public and not a bit of a closed book like Facebook (due to much of the latters traffic being private in nature).

Should SEO Companies Sometimes Sack a Customer?

2010-12-02T08:11:00.001Z

Let’s face it, there are lots of Search Engine Optimising companies out there that have been ‘sacked’ by their customers. There can be many reasons for this, from simple poor performance thought to great performance but still not at the level that the customer wants (see my earlier blog on setting customer expectations).

But this blog is not about the customer sacking the SEO expert, it’s about the SEO expert sacking the customer. From a business point of view, the idea of actually telling a customer that you don’t want to work with them any more is far from appealing, after all money is money is it not?

Well that might be the view of many, but not for me. I take a pride in what I do. And, bearing in mind that I am being judged on very strict criteria, i.e the rankings and traffic, if I feel that the customer is not taking my advice, well, what is the point of the relationship. He is after all only going to blame me in the end when it does not work..

However, I doubt whether my views on this matter are agreed with by many, so I imagine that the sacking the customer act is not likely to occur frequently. But, I still stand by this rule and have recently had to put it into practice.

I’m not going to mention names here, but needless to say, the customer wanted what all customers want, a front page (No. 1 please) place on Google for a term that was shall we say competitive (nearly 18 million other pages wanted it). I was not concerned at the level of competition, any battle can be won if you have the right equipment and knowledge (a little bit of luck helps too – Napoleon himself said ‘I don’t want Good Generals, I want Lucky Generals’) and the budget the customer was allocating was fair too.

No, the problem was that the site that wanted this ranking was not up to scratch. I did the research on the competition and worked out just what was needed. The winning strategy it seems being content quality and depth. Sure I can optimise a site for certain words (do it all the time) but when you are trying to get to the top in certain areas, Google seems to take a much wider view than just for the one page. They start looking at the whole site, what it brings to the Internet community, in much more detail than they normally do. This means that content, relevant, non duplicate content is needed.

In this particular market place, it was clear that the competition knew this to be the case and where making quite sure that they covered the ground in full. I knew we had to fight on even terms. I was not asking for the job of writing the content (although I said we could get it done), I just wanted it on the site so that I could interlink it all together and impress Mr Google. But no, he was not going to ‘go to that trouble’.

So what do you do, stick with it and know that you are going to fail, or say, no, I can’t work that way and politely part company.

As you can guess, it was the latter direction that I choose to take and perhaps if more SEO companies did this it would help the web, after all content is what we all want, so let us inspire all to include it on their sites. That way we all win.

Cookies and Stream

2010-12-01T08:42:00.002Z

Social Media marketing is a strange beast and the things that work can really surprise. In previous articles I've talked about how using Twitter and Facebook 'properly' is totally different from the way it is being used by most. The issue is that using it the way it should be is both time consuming and difficult, the later for the simple reason that getting it right is not that simple.

Stream Marketing

This new term concerns the 'rivers' of comment that come from the 500 million people on Facebook and 200 Million on Twitter. Tapping into these rivers has been dubbed "stream marketing," by a certain Mr. Lazerow. Mind you, we do have to bear in mind that his company helps brands use Social Media to best effect, but even with this in mind what he says does ring some bells.

He reckons that what goes into those ceaseless rivers including updates and content from fans and friends, is some of the most powerful and important creative that we're going to see. What's more this content is 'talking the way that your customers talk', for the simple reason that it is your customers talking!

This however gives writers a bit of a problem as it requires a different set of skills to what most of them are used to produce. Gone is the 'promote or die strategy', this perhaps being changed to 'promote and die' as it seems people don't want to talk brands, instead they just want to chat and not be sold to while they are doing it.

"May the 4th Be With You."

An excellent example of something that worked (and surprised all when it did) was the message that BlackBerry used to celebrate Star Wars day. The Tweet turned out to be one of the most effective they have ever sent. The Tweet actually reached 150,000 people,and 98% of responses were positive. They were also mostly seen as a positive association with the brand, and what's more increased followers by 15%. Not bad for Tweeting something that had nothing to do at all with the brand in the first place.

As Mr Wallace of Blackberry said, "You need to be skilled at understanding how a seemingly random-type message can -- in the end -- contribute to the company brand."

Redefining relevance

It seems marketing executives all over the world are having experiences like Blackberry and Mr Wallace. In the past marketing was all about 'Relevance', but the rise of Facebook and Twitter looks to be forcing a change and redefinition of what is Relevant in the first place.

It seems that people using social networks don't actually want to read and talk about your products, they it seems just want to talk. The experts will tell you that promoting a brand using Social Media has always required that conversational touch, but many are surprised by just how conversational.

In fact there is increasing evidence that the most effective kinds of Social Media marketing are simple, random, even banal posts and Tweets.

Examples of ones that have worked are 'What are you doing this weekend?' or 'What is your ideal holiday?' Simple posts like this commonly receive in the region of 8,000 likes and 500 comments.
Reaction to these posts far outpace other conventional ones which concern product tips.

Perhaps the time when you spend a lot of money and time on creating and approving messages is over, it being replaced with very simple questions, like 'What's your favorite film.'

So your content should lean towards the conversational

The experts are now saying that 66% of a company's Facebook content should be conversational, but saying that the exact ratios will vary depending on the market place. Also with the whole area being so new there is little data around to tell anyone just how conversational posts compare to promotional ones in terms of marketing success, but much evidence is clear.

Some data from Facebook shows that 'conversational posts' produce eight to 12 times the response of brand oriented ones. It's not always about your brand, it is all about the fact that people are there to connect with other people and not you. Getting them to connect with you means getting them to like you.

And at last the Cookies I mentioned in the title

Oreo Cookies in the USA are masters in handling the balance between brand promotion and conversation. Examples from some of their recent posts and the responses are:

"Ever try dunking an Oreo cookie with a fork or anything else?" 8,200 likes and 2,300 comments
"Pick a flavor, any flavor! If you could create a new Oreo cream flavor, what would it be?" 7,100 likes, 12,500 comments

So it seems that using Social Media is more complicated and unusual than many thought, it is certainly going to lead to 'Interesting Times'.

The Implications of Cyber Monday on SEO

2010-11-30T07:11:00.000Z

Yesterday was 'Cyber Monday', the day that everyone gets into buying online for Christmas in a Serious Way. According to Visa, the reason is that it's near Christmas, everyone has been paid (it being the end of the month) and perhaps more importantly, people have had the weekend to do their final research on the high street.

The latter is a key point, the whole ‘buying process’ said to be carried out in 3 phrases. First people do some research online to narrow down the potentials, then in 2 they go to the high street to view the items they are interested in, in the flesh. The third and most important part (for the seller) is the actual purchase, which is carried out online.

Take for example buying a digital camera. There are many models to choose from all very similar but with subtle differences, these of course making all the difference to people. For some it will be weight, for others the size or brightness of the viewing screen. Whatever, these things cannot be checked online, so a visit to a shop is a must.

If the above scenario is truly the case (and I have done this myself) then the high street shop does indeed have a place in the buying cycle, but not the one that the shop owners would have wanted I'm sure.

The real importance of the above is of course that once the model (or models) have been selected by the would be purchaser is what their next step is. The Cyber Monday predictors say this is to search online to find the best deals, which as you can imagine has major implications to what a site needs to be optimised for and thus found for on the Engines.

Things are a lot different at different parts of the buying cycle. At the start when people are looking for a camera, you’ll want to get found for generic terms like 'digital cameras' or 'canon digital cameras', but at the end, you will want to be found for 'Powershot 610' or 'Panasonic 57F' or whatever other model numbers are out there.

On one hand, it may look easier to get listed for such a definite term, but here you have to remember that many sites do not optimise their actual product pages very well at all, relying on the more generic terms to get traffic. This may well be a mistake, as even though they may succeed at getting traffic the start of the buying cycle, there is no guarantee that the visitor who finds them then will have any loyalty and come back to buy later.

Thus to be sure to get those sales, you have to optimise a site to get traffic for general terms and for specifics too. This brings its own problems as many sites rely on XML feeds from manufacturers sites to provide the descriptions of the products they sell. As this means that the words on their pages are the same as on other sites (because they all use the same feeds), they can easily get ignored by Google (who don't like duplicate content) and thus lose that all important listing for a specific model name.

Other sites don't have a problem with duplicate content, their problem being that the pages simply don't SHOUT the product number / name. The terms / words not being placed in the page Title or in any header tags, as is required.

So, if you want to be found on the Engines at the end of the buying cycle, do make sure that your site is optimised for those all important model names / numbers. Fail to do this and you could easily miss out on lots of business.

Content Management Systems and SEO

2010-11-29T09:25:00.003Z

I know this is a bit of a hobby horse of mine, but I do get very frustrated by many CMS systems, at least when it comes to the carrying out Search Engine Optimisation for a site. There are many reasons for this, sometimes just a few things are 'wrong' in other cases the list is pretty endless.

The reason for these shortcomings is of course easy to explain, in that the CMS has been built so that it is easy to use and often also to a budget. Some open source CMS systems like Joomla have the advantage of lots of 'plug ins' / extensions that allow an optimiser to add the facilities that they need, but others do not and this leads to serious reductions in the number of SEO methodologies that can be used.

What is needed here is for the person commissioning the website to fully aware of his needs, i.e. is SEO an issue or is it just a brochure site. Here the website developer needs to ask some questions and to point out what they are going to do SEO wise and what the CMS that they are providing can and can't do. If they have any doubt, the should, at least in my view either not sell to that customer or to use a CMS that will 'fit the bill' so to speak.

It must be said that many CMS systems do have work arounds for most SEO issues, but none are as flexible as bespoke systems. Just a few issues that many CMS systems have:-

The Web page 'on page title' or the Meta Title are associated with the Menu so you can change these important items without ruining the Menu
The Menu does not allow the full use of the No Follow tag (used for Page Rank Sculpting)
Only parts of a page are accessible via the CMS
You cannot add extra javascript commands
You cannot alter the CSS

These are as I say just 5, there are many more.

So if you are about to purchase a new site using a CMS, please ask an expert on SEO to check that it will 'do the business' BEFORE you sign up for the deal.

More Tomorrow

Google to Show Twitter Ads in the UK

2010-11-26T09:48:00.002Z

As everyone following the fortunes of Twitter knows, Google have been showing relevant Tweets in its results lists for sometime now. They are not always there, but even so, their inclusion started a bit of flurry with the big Brands. Why, simply because they were worried that some 'bad tweets' (at least bad for them) might, just might show up and thus put people off clicking through to their site, or as bad, damage the brand.

It was good for Twitter though and this and the belief that Google 'takes Tweets into consideration' in its ranking algoritim has been enough to keep the interest of people who are just Tweeting with marketing / business in mind.

However, one question that must have crossed many minds is 'Just how Twitter making any money?' The answer, is that they do allow advertising, sponsored Tweets now being seen in the Twittersphere. This form of advertising was given a boost in the USA when Google started putting these 'Promoted Tweet' adverts in its search results. It is the first time that Google have ever done anything like this, so is quite a breakthrough (and Google are open to ideas about others too it seems).

The benefits for both are clear, more revenue (they are splitting the cake on this one) and with it's introdction into the UK market place planned for 2011, it will provide another means for advertisers to get into Google, perhaps in a way that will be better even than PPC ads (which are starting to become a victim of 'banner blindness' it seems) as they will be in the body of the Organic results.

So watch out for Twitter Promoted Tweets on a Google Search Screen in 2011

Facebook Search & Social Media Marketing

2010-11-25T07:55:00.003Z

The area of Social Media Marketing is one that is not fully understood by anyone, at least that is my view, everyone is still learning and wondering just how to make use of the medium. Sure some have got quite a good handle on it, but to be sure none know it all.

Twitter and Facebook

The two big names are of course Twitter and Facebook. My take is that these are two are very difficult animals, Twitter being more B2B focused than Facebook and easier to use too. Both take a hell of a lot of time IF you want to use them to full effect, something that few businesses are doing these days.

To Broadcast or To Have a Conversation?

Most business use Twitter as a ‘soap box’ from which they can broadcast messages about their products, whilst also keeping a ear to the ground, all the time checking if their brand is being mentioned. Where such comments are negative they quickly move to stop any rot, and where they are positive they’ll be sure to thank the Tweeter, all in the name of brand protection.

Of course the correct way of using Twitter is to engage with Twitterers and have a conversation. However, this is not as easy as it sounds and is very labour intensive – believe me on that one...

Facebook a Complex Beast

As for Facebook, this is a much more complex beast (and not one that I have a total handle on yet) and one that will in my view take even more time to use correctly than Twitter. Both have search facilities, and it is the latter that is causing ripples, at least for Facebook.

Facebook Search - A Lot Different From Google

The issue that is causing the big brands to scratch their heads is the way that the Facebook Search Engine works. Businesses using Facebook will of course want to be found for words associated with their brand, but unlike traditional Search Engines, getting listed in the top 8 (you have to be there or you can forget it) is not simply about the keyword density or the way a Facebook entity is created. With Facebook, it is all about ‘Friends’.

Brands therefore have to make sure that they have Friends who use the keyword they want to be found for in their name or on their walls. The places that their friends go is also taken into account, as is the number of fans and likes. All very complicated in my view and it will take some more digging before all is fully understood. One thing for certain is that because of the way that the Search Engine works is that if you are not in the first 8 then you can’t be clicked on and that means you can’t get a Like or a Friend to vote for you. Worse still while you are failing to get those all important votes your competitors (in the top 8) will be strengthening their position. If this is truly the case, it means that once you fall out of the top 8 you may never get back in.

Google - Video Ads & The Mobile Phone

2010-11-24T07:10:00.000Z

The Search Market place never stops moving, Google releasing news on videos and Pay Per Click, as well as telling all of the coming importance of the Mobile Phone.We’ll cover the video bit first.

New PPC Tools

PPC has been around for sometime of course, but it never stops changing. One reason for this is that PPC is not working as well as it used to, the phenomenon of Banner Blindness (where browsers simply do not see banner adverts) is it seems starting to affect users behaviour on Google, the click through rate dropping quite substantially over recent time. By the way, this has been hidden to most as even though the CTR has dropped, the number of searchers continues to be so high that no one has really noticed the effect. Although saying that, it must be said that many of the big names are realizing the power of the organic listings and are putting more effort into getting / retaining listings. As you can see nothing is straightforward when it comes to the Web...

Video Adverts

So to the adverts , Google it seems is about to start allowing UK Brands to include videos in their Adword Ads. These ‘video extensions’ are being promoted by Google as a way of combining the benefits of brand advertising with search. The videos will play underneath the normal PPC advert allowing users to click through to a site. Every 10 seconds of video will cost the same as the click.

Then Mobile Phone - More Important Than Desktop PC's by 2014?

As for the mobile phone, well we all knew it was important, but did you know that by 2014 the pundits reckon that more people will connect to the Internet (and presumably spend more time on line) via mobile phones than desktop PC’s. It is therefore not a surprise to know that Google is spending a lot of time and money on sorting out its mobile advertising platform. See www.google.co.uk/watchthisspace for info.

The Third Area of SEO

2010-11-23T06:59:00.001Z

Search Engine Optimisation has traditionally been about two things, On Page optimisation and Off Page optimisation. The first dealt with the words on the pages and how they ‘talked’ to the Search Engines, whilst the second was all about the links to a site.According to some there is now a third area, at least as far as Google is concerned.

Activity - The Third SEO Area

This latest area concerns the issue of ‘activity’. This activity itself covers two areas, that of activity in the matter of visits to a site and the activity on a site, that is the level of changes happening on that site.

Don't Let Your Site Go Stagnant

To be fair, the latter point has been one of the rules Google have been using for some time as they have never like stagnant sites that never seem to change. However, it is said that all of this area of activity now has a greater impact on the rankings for a site, so it is a matter that cannot be ignored.

At SOM we have been taking the whole matter very seriously for some months now, using both on page (e.g. the addition of news pages to sites) and off page techniques (e.g using Twitter to generate visits, all the time ensuring that Google are aware of the visits by using the Google URL shortening tool).

Links Are Still Important

It must be said that these methodologies look to be working very well, so if you are serious about getting (and keeping) your Google rankings I would give serious consideration to the matter of generating measurable activity for / on your site.That is not to say that you can afford to take your eye off the other two areas, this particularly being the case with links. Here you must ensure that your site has links from a wide variety of site types, IP address and that these links are pointed at pages other than the home page, these being called ‘deep links’ (aim for a deep link ratio of 50% – 80%).

Make Your Anchor Text Count

There is another issue with links too, this being all to do with the so called anchor text (the bit you click on). Make sure that the words here say what your site is all about and uses the keywords you want to be listed for, this really makes a difference.

So go and check your on page and off page optimisation, but please too, also consider this new area of activity.

SEO and Customer Expectations

2010-11-22T10:21:00.002Z

I’ve been in the Search Engine Marketing business for over 10 years now and of the many issues I have come across perhaps the most important is that of managing customer’s expectations. Why is this so important? Well in my view it is because many people don’t really understand what SEO is all about, often thinking that all you have to do to get a good listing is to build a website, sit back and wait. Others though are more aware of all the issues, but whichever group they fit into, both want the traffic that getting a good ranking for the right keywords will bring and want it asap.

Guaranted Rankings?

Some want to know if you will guarantee getting them rankings. This is really a double edged question, as some customers will walk away if you do offer some them, whilst others will walk away if you don’t. Answering the question is however very easy for us, as we simply won’t offer guarantees, this for the simple reason (in our view) that you can’t. We say this as we cannot know how the competition are going to react, what changes the Engines are going to make and to some degree what ‘hidden’ factors are in play for that particular customer.

Examing the site

Our first job is therefore to explain why a customer’s site does not have the rankings that a competitor enjoys. In 99% of cases the reason is pretty easy to spot, it being down to a lack of links and / or poor On Page optimisation. In a few cases the issues are more difficult to deduce, but thankfully these are few and far between. We then go on to show how we will remedy the situation, detailing a project plan covering the next 3 to 6 months. This plan will cover getting links from a whole range of sources, changing the pages to make sure they are ‘talking’ in the way that the Engines understand, and, with Google, ensuring that there is enough activity being registered (i.e. visits to the site).

Our well trodden path

For one of our recent customers we followed our normal path of not guaranteeing results, just the normal promise of hard work and the application of our extensive knowledge in the area of SEO. This customer, Shire and Co, was it happens among the group that would be suspicious of anyone promising results, but they still wanted results, and wanted them quickly...We therefore started our normal SEO programme with a set of Directory listings (not submitting to the Engines though, we always like them to find the site via the links we build), this being a great way to kick start the linking programme. We also started building links via blogs, articles and social media, all again a part of our proven plan.

Making the on page changes

Time then came to start on the pages of the site, to make sure that they were SHOUTING the keywords Shire wanted rankings for (these of course being selected from the extensive number located during the keyword research phase). This is where the fun really began as the site had been built using Joomla. Joomla is a Content Management System (CMS) and is widely used in websites around the globe. However, it’s flexibility can lead to ‘unusual’ set ups and this was the case here (at least as far as our Joomla experts were concerned). Nevertheless, after we had taken stock of the build, we installed the iJoomla SEO component and set about allocating and weaving in, the target keywords to the most appropriate pages on the site, adding a number of new ones to cover areas that the site initially did not.

Amazing results

What happened next was amazing. As normal, we had advised the client that it could take between three and six months before real gains were made. But here, in just the second month, the site had got page 1 rankings on Google for a main (highly competitive) keyword and then a week later, the number 1 slot for ‘company lawyers’. Both I and the customer were to use the vernacular ‘gobsmacked’, and I was quick to warn that the rankings might slip (this often happens to new sites which have yet to build a firm enough base) but to date this has not happened, quite the reverse in fact, the rankings continuing to rise across the board.

Not the first time - but unusual

This is not to be fair the first time this has happened to one of our customers (and I’m sure to other SEO companies could same the thing too), the same thing taking place to others as different as a boat trailer supplier and a business intelligence consultancy. However, it is not usual and cannot be counted upon so we will continue to advise our clients that SEO is a long haul commitment for most at least.

I f you would like to keep track of the progress for Shire and Co, please see our website as we will be featuring this site as a continuing case study.

Content is King, But is CMS a King Killer?

2010-11-19T08:44:00.002Z

Everyone understands that ‘Content is King’ on the web today. All the talk is about how the Engines only want to rate web sites which contain interesting information and this of course means in part at least the ‘words on the pages’. This information should also be seen to be changing on a regular basis.

A Vote for the CMS Then?

This would seem to be a vote for making it easy for website owners to add and amend their own content. This has of course been made easier by the huge growth in content management systems, these being available even on the cheapest of website hosting packages. Some of course are better than others and some are easier to use, however, there are real issues when it comes to the area of Search Engine Optimisation.

SEO Issues - Speed of Loading

There may be many more than the two I am going to cover below, but these are the two most important in my view. The first concerns the structure of the site itself, the way in which the pages are put together in HTML terms. Not all Content Management Systems (CMS) are bad of course, but if the pages load slowly because they have to make lots of ‘calls’ to the Web Server to ‘collect’ parts of the page itself, like css scripts, or files containing javascript code then the page will load slowly. This could well cause the site to be ‘downgraded’ by Google (this engine penalises web sites which loads slowly as it believes that they lessen the experience of web users) and that in turn can affect its chances of getting a good ranking.

Keyword Density

However, the biggest issue is that the web site owners can make any change they want to their sites text. Whilst this sounds like a good idea, making such changes can play havoc with a carefully optimised site. Areas like keyword density can be thrown out of the desired range (2% to 4%), whilst the all important heading text can be changed so much that the pages of the site no longer SHOUT the words they need to. If this happens, a page that had been enjoying a good ranking before it was changed by the owner could well drop down the rankings and even off them. If rankings are important (not all site owners are bothered) then you can see that allowing users the ability to change their own content might not be as good an idea as it first seems.

Headers SHOUT Keywords - Do you really want to Confuse the Listening Engines?

Problems are made even worse when the CMS has been set up to allow users to add headings whenever they want. Often these headings have been set up to use one of the old fashioned ‘header tags’ H1, H2 etc, which means that often the unknowing user ends up with a page full of header tags (which just ends up confusing things). Things can get even crazier when these headings end up in the wrong order, H1’s after H2’s and H3’s instead of before them, as this really makes thing messy!

The CMS & SEO Solution

Of course there is a way around the problem, first the CMS needs to be built in the right way, that is to minimise complexity and thus page load times. Secondly and more importantly the website owner needs to be made fully aware of how to use the CMS in the first place. This will allow them to make the changes they need whilst maintaining the ‘Optimisation’ of the pages.

So all you Web Designer chaps and lasses out there, please have a think about how you can help your customers, they'll love you for it in the end...

Back on the SEM SMO Road Again

2010-11-19T08:37:00.002Z

Well it's been a long time since the last post on this blog. It happened for lots or reasons, the holiday season, we got busier, plus of course our business went Limited (we are in the UK). The sad fact is that a huge percentage of Blogs do go quiet, up to 80% some say, but whatever, for a while at least we were just one more statistic...

Now however we are back, with a new writer being assigned to the job of keeping this blog active. We have many reasons for doing this, not the least that it will soon become a part of our new link building programme - watch this exciting space!!

The plan is to post at least one blog a day on SEM, SMO topics as well as many more via our new 'Engine' as mentioned above.

We are going to start the ball rolling with a Blog on Content Management Systems and how they can be dangerous SEO wise..

Read on MacDuff (apologies to all Shakespeare fans for that)....

Graham

Of Volcanos and PPC Campaigns

2010-04-20T07:35:00.002+01:00

Yesterday I finished a massive set of research in which I had to delve into the past of a PPC campaign to work out why something that was working had turned into something that was not. It took a lot of time and thought even to get started, the big question being, 'Just how do I handle this amount of data?'

Given some thought the plan emerged and with careful consideration of all the facts, the data was 'made sense of'. As it did the story it told unfolded in front of me and when finally I looked at the figures, showed just how far off track the campaign had gone, in just a few short months.

Google of course are the beneficiaries here, their 'Optimisation' and 'Missed Opportunity' practices causing keywords to be added that quite simply did not work (A lesson here for all, don't just add the ones that Google suggests willy nilly). On the upside a few gold nuggets were found, but overall, my customer had spent many thousands of pounds to no avail...

All of this comes down in the end to organisation. Organisation to only add the right words in the first place is of course hard, as you don't know that until you try it, but Organisation to check and remove the bad ones is easy, all it takes is time and an understanding of what 'good' and 'bad' are. However, such are the time pressures on many businesses, that they simply don't do this job too well 'in house', the result being that Google's coffers swell even the more.

Organisation, or should I say, lack of organisation, is one of the reasons people are having so much trouble getting home at the moment, with the airways around Europe being closed because of that volcano in Iceland. Organisation could not of course have stopped the eruption, but it could have saved a lot of people a lot of trouble. The swift mobilisation of Europe's Navy's and Air forces (the latter with their low flying transport planes) could have got 1,ooo's home and the commandeering of cruise ships in the Mediterranean could have brought 1,ooo's more home.

Of course, the governments of all shapes and colours did little and the situation has just got worse, until that is yesterday when they started to do things like getting the Royal Navy moving. So, in the end 'Organisation' was called in and the situation will I'm sure start to improve.

The question is, just like the Google campaign above, why were things left to get into such a state? Surely action on Google would have saved thousands of pounds, but that is in reality nothing to the pain and misery that is the very real problem for many travellers around the World at the moment.

The moral of the story is that one should always keep a close eye on situations and as soon as they start to slide, take action sooner rather than later, this being true whether or not you are dealing with PPC campaigns or volcanos.

More tomorrow

Does Your Company Monitor the Twittersphere?

2010-04-13T07:20:00.003+01:00

I've commented before on the fact that the jury is out when it comes to whether businesses in general feel that Twitter is of any use for marketing. Some are undoubtedly throwing a lot of time and cash at the issue, while others dally and others do nothing at all.

This both surprises and does not surprise me at the same time. It surprises me as I know for a fact that every 'Twitter' course that is held around here is immediately booked up by businesses (mostly small) that want to know more. On the other hand, looking at what Twitter is, it does not surprise me that many have yet to leap onto the bandwagon, as they are in reality unsure of how high to jump and not sure whether it will be worth the effort if they do.

To be sure, Twitter is easy to use, but if the whole idea is to 'Engage' with your customers, I can tell you from experience that that is not easy. Whilst being a Twitter convert myself, I can still see that a lot of what goes on is just people shouting their messages about, I'm just not sure how much listening is going on. This of course means that for the purposes of 'selling' that Twitter may in the end not bring in results for some.

Whether or not you see Twitter as a route to market or not, you should however be aware of the 'darker' side of Twitter (at least it could be 'dark' as far as your business is concerned). The 'dark side' I am talking about here is that of the complaints (nothing to do with StarWars - stand down Luke) that you see sprinkled about on Twitter.

These 'complaining Tweets' may not worry some businesses at all (e.g crazycameras), while others are, rightly or wrongly, of the opinion that anyone complaining about them on Twitter is something that they should be concerned about. These companies are thus actively scanning all the Tweets made and if they see their business name or one of their products mentioned, are quickly in action, asking if they can help (or thanking the Twitterer for the praise) .

As I've said before, you could Tweet anything you like about some businesses and they will not turn a hair, but for others your Tweets will quickly bring in offers of help and assistance. I have seen this twice, once with BT and once with www.mobiles.co.uk. In both cases my Tweets were picked up and some help given. In my view this is excellent and shows that the medium can help people resolve issues, at least some of the time.

I don't know about you, but the fact that someone responds to my messages, be they of annoyance or a cry for help, makes me feel that bit 'warmer' to the business in question, something that may keep me as a customer or at least stop me telling all my mates to avoid 'x' as they are a right shower. Either way, the 'care' shown will be of advantage to the business in question.

The moral of this story is that if you are unsure of whether to use Twitter to market your business, at least take the time to monitor the Tweets to make sure that your name is not being taken in vain, as it may well save your business some grief and some customers.

More tomorrow

Addiction to Google's Page Rank

2010-04-01T07:30:00.002+01:00

I was talking to a potential customer last week and they raised the question of Page Rank, while another was ringing me up with a worried tone in their voice as their Page Rank had dropped from 4 to 2 overnight. These sorts of conversations are not new, but do show how people worry about how Goolge 'view' their pages, perhaps more so than any actor that of the critics of the press. It goes to show just how powerful Google has become these days.

But What is Page Rank?

I'm not going to go very deeply into this (it gets very very mathematical) but I can give you an idea of how it works. Basically Page Rank is a ranking system, the rank based on the supposed 'importance' of any page on any website in the World.

This importance is calculated from the 'importance factor' passed on when page A links to page B (B being the one whose Page Rank is being assessed). If it was just a matter of counting the number of links to a page and using that to find it's Page Rank the job would be easy, but not very accurate (at least in Google's eyes) so they go one (well OK several) steps further.

Not Just the Number of Linking Pages

So, if it's not just the number of linking pages, how is Page Rank calculated, what is the additional 'magic formula'? This is where it gets complicated, as before a page can pass on 'importance' to another page, its own 'importance' (Page Rank) must be assessed. This of course means looking at the pages that link to it, and thus the ones that link to them and so on. You can see why this is a job of a (very big) computer and in essence goes on for ever and ever. All I can really tell you is that somehow, Google produce a Page Rank for a page and then, when it links out, pass on a fraction of that importance, as Page Rank, to all the pages that that page links too, the 'importance' of that page being divided amongst all those outgoing links.

It is obvious then, that a page with lots of links out of it, passes on less 'importance' to each of the pages it links too, than a page with just a couple of links on it. This is just one of the reasons that those links pages that you see on sites, in reality add little in the battle for Page Rank, there being so many links out of that one page, a page that will have scarce little importance to pass on in the first place.

It is also obvious that a link from a page with a high Page Rank is going to pass on more importance, hence the reason you pay more for links from a High Page Rank page (if you buy them that is - please be careful here)

Just How Accurate is Page Rank?

This is a moot point, I have heard some pundits say that the score you see in the Google tool bar can be widely inaccurate, while others still worship it like a God and will not dispute it. For my part I have seen a Page rank of 5/10 on a page in a site with just 5 pages, and not one single link in from any other site?, so I am not totally convinced of its accuracy, but it is a useful guide and I always like to see it go up.

The Importance Behind Page Rank

What really matters though, is not the actual Page Rank figure, but what is behind it. You see what it is the number of links to a page in a site, how those links have been created and yes, how influential is the page which holds the outgoing link, that really counts.

My view is a simple one, get in as many links as you can from a wide range of page types, with a wide range of 'importance' (and IP address) all the time using that most valuable resource the 'anchor text' (the bit you would click on) wisely - more on that another time. Sure, if you can land a link from a Education or Government site, or one like the BBC, then great, but if not, look at it as a numbers game, sure has worked that way for our customers over the years.

There is more to this subject (Page Rank Sculpting for example), but that will do for today

More soon

To Tweet Or Not To Tweet That Is The Question?

2010-03-25T07:05:00.002Z

Can't say for certain (without looking it up) what day Twitter started, but I do know that for 18 months I ignored it on purpose. I really could not see the point in being able to send 140chr messages, this I suppose more than likely as I'm not a great fan of texting in the first place (rather talk than text).

The younger generation are however addicted to texting (and Social Networks) and it seems, if my partner is anything to go by, so are many of the older generation too. So with both old and young alike using Social Media, it is not surprising that business is interested in it for advertising etc.

This interest is most plainly evident in the way that "Understanding Twitter Courses" are sold out in my local area at least, in a matter of days. However when it comes to doing the deed, or paying someone else to Tweet for them, the number of businesses really interested seems to be quite low.

Sure many are playing with Twitter, but some (and this includes some businesses that are selling Twitter services) are hardly tweeting at all, and most, according to the pundits are not Tweeting in the right way either.

For many businesses then the question really is 'To Tweet or Not To Tweet' and from my experience todate, most are totally unsure of what to do.

We plunged into Twitter a few months ago, not for the reason of trying to make an impact on people, but to make sure that our customer's domain and company names were seen to have been mentioned in the 'TwitterStream' just in case, as rumour had it, that Google were taking this into account when deciding rankings (still not sure on that one). This is still one of the main reasons that we Tweet, as it is a basic concept of our SEO practices that we try to cover all the bases, this so that whatever factors Google decides to use to rate sites, our client's sites are covered.

As for actually gaining business directly from Tweeting, that I think is not happening as much as people might hope (this being born out by polls), but like any form of advertising, it does raise the profile of a business, and, if targeted at the right people, MUST to some degree at least be beneficial.

With this in mind, my advice to businesses is that Social Media and Twitter are an opportunity that should not be missed especially considering that an impact can be made for a very small investment in time / money.

Time will tell as to just how powerful this medium becomes, but from what I have seen so far, all interested in B to C marketing, will have to get 'involved' with Social Media in the very near future.

More soon

When to Step Into the Buying Cycle?

2010-03-19T07:57:00.002Z

When you are selling something, anything, it pays to know a little about the 'Buying Cycle' for that particular product. The buying cycle is best defined as the what happens between when someone decides that they want something to the time that they go and buy it.

As you can imagine, this cycle can be very short; 'I'm thirsty, I think I'll buy a Coke' to long ones like 'I need a new TV, but I just don't know what type to get'. These cycles can thus last for seconds or months, some requiring detailed research, others none at all.

The producers of drinks or TV's could (and do) of course get involved with the customer even before they are actually looking, and that of course is the reason for many adverts on the TV. They want to put their brand in front of you for the time you are thirsty or looking for that TV. Branding is another reason why people write blogs or Tweet, it is all to do with raising one's profile.

When to get Involved?

However on the web, when it comes to a particular site selling a TV, the question is 'When should they get involved in that buying cycle?' Let us take TV's as the example. We can assume that the manufacturers will have been blasting out the reasons why people should pick a Sony or a Panasonic, all this being aimed at those who are either not in or have just started the process of getting a new TV, so that area is covered by the 'big boys'.

But what about you, the TV retailer, when do you start trying to catch the attention of that TV buyer? You also have to decide the means you are going to use, will you provide reviews and comparisons, will you set up a forum where people can get advice, or will you set up a Blog so that people can ask your advice directly and where you post this and that all about TV's. Or will you just wait until that last minute, when the buyer has decided on the model they want and then bounce and try to win the deal with the best price?

Some sites use both, and some don't sell on price at all, instead relying on the goodwill they have generated by providing the reviews and advice to the consumer.

As you can imagine, the process of capturing the eye of the customer early on is a time consuming and costly one. All those reviews and articles and the time taken to give advice are not going to be cheap to provide. When it comes to Adwords, the difference is vast too, as in one instance you are buying the word 'hd televisions' and in the other 'Sony XV4000'. As you can imagine the cost per click for one is a hell of a lot higher than the other...

As mentioned above, those sites wanting to wait until the end of the cycle, will, more than likely be using Adwords as the capturing mechanism. The reason for this is simple as it is very easy to 'buy' the keywords covering all the model numbers needed (rather than have your site tuned so finely that they appear in the Organic listings), and of course you are virtually guaranteed to be spotted (if you bid enough) by anyone looking.

Thus, if you have a good advert (and in many case a good price) you can more than likely get a sale from someone you have had no dealings with in the past at all. In a way you are 'stealing' that sale from those who (may) have helped that buyer come to the decision to by 'x' but that is, many would say 'business'.

Cheap is Not Always Cheerful

All you, as a site owner can do to counter this threat is to be as helpful as possible during the buying cycle and hope that this and the solid reputation you will have built up in the process will steer the buyer to purchase from you, even if you are that little bit more expensive. After all, cheap is not always cheerful at the end of that proverbial day.

More next week

Using Twitter to Interact with your Customers

2010-03-18T08:06:00.003Z

It is not often in the UK that one has heard the words 'hats off to' and 'BT' in the same phrase, but that is what I must say today, at least for one thing.

Why do I acclaim BT in this way? Well quite simply for the way they are monitoring Twitter. It was yesterday morning when I tweeted about my broadband being slow and that I was waiting for BT to fix it. Then not an hour later came a @reply from BT customer care saying that they were sorry that I was having problems and sending me a link with some ways that might helpfix the issue.

This is a good use of Twitters Search facility (or perhaps Topsy - see www.topsy.com) as it allows anyone to 'engage' (the secret they say of using Twitter properly and getting the most out of it) with other Tweeters.

Obviously, this engagement could lead to other things, in the end perhaps a sale? If not then at least the person trying to engage will have been seen in the others 'timeline' (if they respond, which all should do - 'manners you know') and that can only raise their awareness level, which after all is what it is all about.

So hats off to BT for the monitoring Twitter so carefully (they have yet to fix my line though!).

If you want to monitor Twitter, then just keep using the Search facility, or better still use Topsy, pay the little bit extra and get 15 min alerts. This means that within just 15 mins of someone using a keyword (or your name) you can know about it and @reply to them with help, news, views or a request for more info so that you can help. You never know where it might lead...

This of course can also help with Brand protection (see yesterdays Blog post) as a quick response would show that you care and could also turn that customer's bad feelings around. They could end up a great supporter and start telling everyone about how great you are....

Of course there are some companies that cannot do much to rescue their brand and thus any efforts would certainly be much like flogging that dead horse (yes you guessed it I'm referrring to my old friends at Crazycameras) but for many others, monitoring Twitter carefully could well be a very very good idea.

More tomorrow

Brand Protection and the Internet

2010-03-17T08:09:00.002Z

When Twitter started making a real impact, and especially when Tweets were first integrated into Google's search results, there was a 'flurry of worry' in the marketing world (or so it seemed to me). There were numerous posts, articles and comments all about how these Tweets could damage a brand and reduce sales.

Starbucks

The one I remember the best was from the marketing dept of Starbucks. They were worried that if someone used the net to find their local outlet (when visiting a new town) that they would see, just below the results a Tweet from a disgruntled customer and therefore decide to go elsewhere. Their 'brand protection' protocols were put on full alert it seems.

The idea of protecting your brand on the internet is of course nothing new, and just like in the old days (with press cuttings) some companies have a small army checking the 'web waves' for comments mentioning their brand in any way. Google alerts and the new Topsy (Twitter alert system) both help here of course.

Once detected, any 'bad' comment can be answered and combated in some way, be it to solve the issue or to simply draw people's attention away from it. Either way, this brand protection does at least limit any damage and, in the case of solving a problem, can actually boost a brand's image as it shows that they care.

To make matters even harder for the brand protectors, there are numerous 'Review' sites where anyone can tell of their experiences with a product or company. Just type in 'reviews + company name / product' into Google and you will more than likely be shown a whole list of sites.

Of course the answer to the problem is to have good products backed up with good supply and support, as that way you just won't get that many complaints and if you do they will be swamped by the good ones. Remember everyone knows that 'you can't please all the people all the time', so if you can please most of them you will be doing as well as can be expected...

As to why brand protection (both on and off line) is so important, well for the big companies of the world, like BT, Coca Cola, Ford etc the answer is obvious, but for the smaller businesses it must in the end come down to sales. After all if the world and his wife are continually slating you on the web, you are not likely to get much business via the web are you?

Crazycameras - and exception to the rule?

Well, it seems that however logical the above statement is, that our friends crazycameras, who have it seems been slated on the web for months, if not years, are still there selling online today.
True, they do not, I am told use any of price comparison sites (the many bad reviews), but they are still operating.

The complaints have also been for more than just poor service, or undelivered products, as they have included electrical safety issues, the equipment they supplied to one UK customer being unsuitable (and downright dangerous according to an electrical engineer) for use in the UK.

From this one can deduce that brand protection, whilst being a sacred subject for some, does it seem not matter to others (I have seen no efforts by Crazycameras to answer any of these criticisms).

I suppose the fact is that, if you, like a spider, spread your sticky web wide enough, that you will always catch enough unfortunates, even though if they had looked, they would have seen many many signs saying 'I'd turn back now if I was you'.

More tomorrow

The Power of Social Media & The Web Part 3

2010-03-15T15:14:00.002Z

For anyone that has been following some of my recent posts will have noticed that I've not been too pleased with a company called crazycameras. This was for the simple reason that they did not tell the truth about their products, could not manage that famous p***up in that famous brewery and all in all are 'bad sorts', the sort of company that does the internet no favours at all.

Now let me make it clear, I, like many others did, in the end get my camera. Sure it was the wrong model (as USA one and not a UK one), does not have a valid UK warranty (thanks to Panasonic's own rules), but I did get my camera (even though I had cancelled it a number of times).

I am saying this to point out that my 'Twitter crusade' has not been a personal one, but rather one that was intended to rid the Internet of a particularly useless company, rather as a doctor would want to rid the world of a nasty virus.

Now it may be that Crazycameras have at last had enough of all the bad publicity and reviews (mine were just a drop in the ocean, there were plenty of others outside of Twitter) and / or that Google have seen the light and have stopped their ads, but they do seem to have gone (at least from my viewpoint) and that is all to the good. For without their pay per click ads, they are not likely to snare as many unfortunates into buying from them. Still this could be a short term thing and is one that I am keeping my eye on.

During my little crusade I am pleased to report that my Tweets must have raised Crazycameras ignoble profile to many hundreds if not thousands of Twitterers, as well as to Google, Panasonic and Canon. I must admit to not being sure if any of these big hitters were / are bothered about it all, their view seeming to be 'nothing to do with us'. This by the way is something which I simply do not agree with at all. They are the ones supplying the cameras and they are the ones allowing this company to mislead people by the use of a .co.uk domain name in their adverts, still they are also the ones who are having their names associated with the whole sad affair and that can't help them either in the long run...

Still if they (crazycameras) do decide to start placing their ads on Google again, I will be ready to act and having seen the power of the net for myself here, even if only in a small way, will be ready to bring into play another weapon, that of the dedicated website.

One of the best examples of this was the 'rebellion' against Simon Cowell's Xfactor by a certain Jon Morter. Jon decided to stop Simon's apparent command of the Christmas No. 1 and thus chose the appropriately named group 'Rage Against the Machine' as his weapon of choice. He then succeeded, by using the power of the net's Facebook (and of course Twitter), in beating perhaps, the most powerful force in music in the world today.

When the Guardian broke the news to Morter that he had won, he was initially lost for words. "Oh bloody hell," he said, as the consequences of what he had done became clear. Composing himself, he said: "I think it just shows that in this day and age, if you want to say something, then you can – with the help of the internet and social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. If enough people are with you, you can beat the status quo."

Enough said, the proof was in the pudding and if Crazycameras try to make a come back on Google, we will see what a proper Twitter campaign, coupled with a dedicated 'Say No to Crazycameras' can achieve. It would after all be a very interesting experiment indeed.

More on the power of Social Media tomorrow...

So How Powerful is Social Media - Part 2

2010-03-10T07:13:00.002Z

The second day of my 'Social Media' experiment was very interesting and is showing that Twitter can indeed be used to 'reach out' to people. It is however a slow process, and should be likened to an Ant pushing an Elephant, i.e. don't expect instant results, but when the beast is moving well, watch out..

The above analogy is perhaps truer than it first appears, as in some cases at least, the Elephant will not be moved by strength of numbers, but by the fact that it is annoyed enough by the constant harassment to move on.

It will be interesting to see if my campaign to get Crazycameras to stop using a .co.uk domain name in their adverts works through either getting Google to stop them, them deciding to stop, or another party like the Advertising Standards Authority or Trading Standards to stop them. Or then again, could it be Twitter power that will cause them to think again?

I am not sure of the success of this campaign by any means, but Twitter and the Net in general do allow the humble peasant the ability to draw attention to things, and if enough people agree, then I am sure that things will happen, be it to stop companies misleading customers, or to get customers to buy things...

To give more details on the second day, well the first action was to create a Twitter Poll, an interesting service that allows people to get Twitterers opinions by a vote or survey. Attention was drawn to this (or should I say attempted to) via many Tweets both in the form of normal Tweets and by Replies. I can't say the response was overwhelming, (just 5 so far), but all were against allowing Crazycameras to use the .co.uk domain (which proves that they at least have not voted).

There will be more attempts at getting votes today, along with other Tweets about how the matter has been drawn to the attention of Google and the Advertising Standards Authority.

Look out for more posts on this Social Media Experiment !

To vote on the matter by the way, please visit - http://twtpoll.com/xp2496

2010-03-09T05:48:00.003Z

Just How Powerful Is Social Media? Part 1

2010-03-09T05:48:00.002Z

I've not been doing my Blog for a few days now, partly this was down to lack of time (we got a whole new bunch of clients coming aboard) and partly because I have been 'bogged down' in dealing with an Internet retailer, one that simply, in my view should not be allowed to trade.

You may have seen comments on this blog (and others) about this company, www.crazycameras.co.uk, as they do have a fair few (bad) comments about them spread across the web, be it on Twitter or any of the many review sites that exist (more fool me for not checking up before I ordered!)

You would think that with all this 'bad press' that they would not get any visitors (let alone sales) but they do. It is really surprising to me, I really would have thought that 'public opinion' would have put an end to them, but I suppose that as long as Google allow them to use a .co.uk domain name, even when they are in the USA that they will get along just fine.

I have taken the matter up with Google but they say that crazycameras are not breaking any of their rules, which in my view is being irresponsible, but hey that is only my opinion.

It is my view that as they are in the USA, and supply USA version cameras that they should not be allowed to use a .co.uk domain name UNLESS they make it very very clear on their site that the cameras they are selling are non UK versions and that the warranty is only valid if you send the camera all the way back to the USA....

I'm sure if all the facts were known that the number of orders from the UK would plummet, but making that happen will take some doing.

It is however a fact that if the Twitter community (and others online) really got their act together that they could force Google (and Crazycameras) to change their ways.

The question is 'Will enough people be bothered?" for if not then the power of Social Media will not be all that it could be?

I will keep you posted...

The Virus Will Always Get Through

2010-03-03T07:31:00.002Z

It was Stanley Baldwin who is first said to have quoted the phrase 'the bomber will always get through', this being used in 1932, in the speech "A Fear For The Future" to the British Parliament.

His words were proven to be fact in the later years and are today, just as true it seems, whether the bomb be delivered by plane or another means.

The sad fact of it all is that the same is true for computer viruses, no matter what defences you erect against them, they will eventually get through and make a right mess of your computer world.

Be sure on one thing here, I am talking from experience and from 'rubbing shoulders' with some of the top Computer Security guys over my years at the CCTA (Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency). Here their most telling comment about computer security was that "the only 100% defence was 6 inches of air" (i.e the system was not connected to anything - ever).

The other factor to remember is that the Virus protection software on your machine is always in 'catch up mode', it cannot ever protect you from a really brand new virus as it has not seen it before and hence cannot recognise it as a 'bad guy'. This is much the same in the world of medicine and we all have seen what a mess we make of fighting virus's there (even when they have been around for years).

So, what can you do about it?? The simplest and most complete solution is to make an 'Image' of your PC, BEFORE it gets any nasty's and make sure that you also make regular back ups of your data too.

That way, if your PC gets infected you can 'roll back' to an earlier version of your PC, pre the nasty virus, it being simply WIPED away when the PC's disc(s) has that old trusted version of you PC placed back on it. Sure you will lose some cookies etc that you had on the old machine, but overall much will be as it was, and all in a far faster time frame that getting rid of a determined virus (and less costly too, an IT man may well charge a few hundred pounds to remove a virus).

My advice, from one who has been infected (nasty it was) and has seen the pain of removal and the ease of the 'roll back' is to have a chat to your IT man and get an image of your PC straight away, the level of infections on the Net are rising all the time now, so don't waste time here.

By the way, in case you are wondering why I have taken the time from my normal Blogging about Marketing to speak on this, well, this is for three reasons.

Firstly, I have just been infected (for the first time in 9 years - and through a PDF at that !) and Secondly, having seen the ease of the roll back, as versus another machine in the business that took a day (and £400) to fix when it got zapped, I wanted all to hear what they could do.

The third reason is that by implementing the strategy outlined above, you are in effect, 'Giving Two Fingers' to the Virus producers (by taking all their 'fun' away) and that can't be a bad use of two fingers in my book.

More on Marketing soon...

So How Useable Is Your Site?

2010-02-26T12:06:00.002Z

Let's face it, any business that is serious about getting sales or leads from their website will spend a lot of time and money in raising it's profile. They'll be making sure that the website is Search Engine Friendly and that they are making the best use of the browser 'real estate'. They will be getting links to the site by the bucket load and making sure that there 'voice' is heard in the Social Media arena too.

All this adds up to one hell of a lot of effort (and money) and done properly will result in traffic to a site. But what happens then, do users like what they see, can they find what you want them to find? These are very important questions and they need to be answered not by you (or your web site's designers) but by your audience, your potential customers...

Of course there is a lot of research and questions that you can answer for yourself too, three of the greatest books on this subject being:-

'The Big Red Fez' by Seth Godin - ISBN 0-7432-2086-2
'Prioritizing Web Usability' by Jakob Neilson & Hoa Loranger - ISBN 0-321-35031-6
and
'Don't Make Me Think' by Steve Krugg - ISBN 0-321-34475-8

Reading any of these will really help you understand the area of web site usability in greater depth, but you will still be missing one vital component, that of what real visitors think of your site, not friends or business colleagues, but people who have never heard of you and have never seen your site before...

This is where independant user testing comes in and it can be a real eye opener, telling you that even though you thought that it was perfectly simply to find can openers on your site, that in reality for your potential customers it was dam hard.

Such insights come up far more often than you would have thought...

There are many companies that offer website usability testing, but one of the best I have come across is 'WhatUsersDo.com'. Their costs are good too, starting at just £25!! If you are interested you can also follow them on Twitter , it could be some time and money VERY well spent.

So if you have spend a lot of time and money getting traffic to your site, be sure to check that it is usable and that people can do 'what you want them to do' - More on that bit another day...

Online Reviews - Just how important are they?

2010-02-25T15:13:00.002Z

As per my other posts I really thought that the online review (as long as it could be found easily) would be a tremendously powerful tool, a tool that could make or break any business, whether this was a online shop, like my 'friends' at Crazycameras or a restaurant or other offline trader.

Why did I think this, well, a part of the 'hype' around Social Media is the argument that people will seek advice and views from their friends and associates before making a buying decision. This lead me to think that that meant that people were already searching for information on where not to buy etc.

My thoughts on this were (I thought) confirmed by the apparent 'panic' of some brand managers at the thought that peoples tweets might appear by their natural listings in Google, the fear being that if they were not complimentary that customers might take their business elsewhere.

My conclusion was that people are getting wise to the 'bad businesses' on the web and that the review was something that every business needed. But then I had an experience that proves that even the most savy online buyer can get it wrong, even when there are reviews and data out there warning him. That buyer was of course me, I did not do what I always (I thought) did and did not check out the web before ordering from crazycameras. Why did I do this insane act? well looking back on it there are many reasons, and I am sure that many have (and will) make the same mistake.

But why is this, why did I do what I did? I turned to the learned community at Linkedin and asked the question "How important are Consumer Reviews on the Internet if you are running (or marketing) an online store?" to try to find out more.

The results were to some degree as I predicted, most saying that Reviews were indeed a great and perhaps vital weapon at getting people to decide on buying from your brand rather than another. But there was one great post by a chap called Lyndsy Simon of FedEx Frieght that really was an eye opener to me (even though it is in reality just common sense).

Lyndsy's words were 'Speaking from personal experience, I only look for customer reviews if the site I'm looking at feels "shady" - in other words, they have failed to gain my trust, but I want their product. Practically speaking, if a site seems well put together and the prices are not the lowest in the arena, I'm not going to bother looking up reviews.'

This said it all to me, and now I look back on it was the reason I made the mistake. The crazycameras site looked good, their T&C's were fine and the price (perhaps the most important part) was great, they even offered free Post and Packing (not surprising in hindsight as they don't seem to send anything out..).

So I was 'sucked in' and am now paying (along with many others) the price.

What does all this go to show, well three things really:-

1. Reviews may well not have any effect at all IF the site / price / product mix is spot on

2. Good Reviews are being used by some and can only do good (but remember that not everybody will believe that you / the site owner did not write them)

3. Bad Reviews WILL in the most cases stop people buying if there are enough of them, and people take the time to look (which I seriously believe will be the case in most instances soon, as users become more 'internet savy')

So for the time being at least those 'bad eggs' on the Net will be able to survive, simply because not every one takes the time they should before buying, but saying that their days must be numbered...

More tomorrow

The Internet has turned the World into a Village

2010-02-24T09:10:00.002Z

If you go back just a hundred years you could find people in villages in the UK who had never been more than a few miles outside the place where they lived and worked. To be sure life was much simpler then, but people still had to buy goods and services and to make sure they choose the right supplier they asked their friends neighbours for advice.

In the villages it was easy to find out information on the best baker of plumber, as everyone knew everybody's business and were only to keen to share the gossip. This network (for a network it was) made sure that businesses kept their noses clean as if they did not, they would soon pay the price as the news of poor service or products spread and their customers went elsewhere.

As populations grew and people became more mobile and bought more and more things, it was 'easier' to get away with poor service or goods as there was always someone that had not heard about a bad company.

Then along came the Internet and made it even easier for companies, good and bad to sell their wares, and to sell them to people many hundreds if not thousands of miles away. This early internet must have been the 'happy hunting grounds' for many an unscrupulous business and at the moment there are still some that are making good money out of providing a poor service.

But are their days numbered? As the title of the blog states, the Internet is / has turned the world back into a village as now, everybody can find out just about anything they want to know about a business and how it treats its customers, allowing them to steer clear of any that look dubious.

The thing is that at the moment, not everyone is looking around for advice before they buy. I have seen reports that state that some 90% of online shoppers do look for reviews, but I think that is a bit optimistic and that the figure for the time being at least is lower. Why do I say that, simply because of the number of people who have been caught out by companies, like crazycameras that just don't live up to their promises. I have had personal experience of them, and the reviews of others are reporting just the same issues.

This must mean, that there are many who, at the moment at least, don't look at the reviews available on line, but that figure MUST drop over time as people become more 'Internet Savy'.

Here the message for all businesses, large and small, is that you must be aware of what is being said about you and your brand and be prepared to argue your case and as importantly to improve your services so that you only get positive reviews in the first place.

In the USA, the reviews attached to local businesses are already being looked at by people using Google Maps to find local suppliers (this area being targeted by SEO companies there) and it will soon be the same in the UK and Europe.

So a note of warning to all business owners, be sure that your goods and services are the best and that your customers are happy, as if you don't the 'Information Mill on the Web Will Surely Find You Out'

More tomorrow

Are Goliath's days numbered now?

2010-02-23T11:50:00.002Z

We've all heard the story about David and Goliath, but in most cases it is the 'David' in the match that gets squished.

We see this every day with big business getting away with things, the poor old consumer battling in vein to get justice. After all they are just one person all alone against a business that has many resources and often a very 'deaf' ear....

But is all this about to change with the advent of Social Media, as this gives all the chance to make their case on a much wider platform, and one that can under certain circumstances reach millions in a very short space of time.

You see, that 'wronged' consumer can now place comments on the various review sites AND then point people to them (via Twitter, Facebook etc) so that all can see what is going on and can thus make their own decisions as to whether to buy from that business in the future.

Surely, if enough people place such complaints / poor reviews AND people get to see (easily) what people are saying about a company that that company's purchases will be reduced and in extreme cases dry up entirely...

It is a known fact that poor reviews can put people off visiting restaurants etc, SEO companies around the world making it clear to their customers that having positive reviews associated with their Google Maps entry is a must.

As a starting place, have a look at the following reviews about a company called crazycameras. Their record looks like it is pretty bad overall as the two links below will prove.

http://www.reviewcentre.com/review584267.html
and
http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/crazy-cameras-c274982.html

and on the Social Media front, try searching for 'crazycameras' on Twitter.

Armed with these weapons, surely the consumer, the little person (the David) will soon be able to take on the biggest of businesses and in the end win.....

More tomorrow

Creating a GlobalBuzz

2010-02-17T07:35:00.004Z

I attended a webinar last night that really spelt out the power of Social Media and how the world of marketing had changed. In the old days it said, people had three methods of getting the attention of their potential customers.

i) The 'bought' some advertising or a space at an exhibition etc
ii) They 'begged' the Media for attention
iii) They employed sales people to go out and 'pester'

It went on to state that while these methods still worked and had their place, in the 'new' world, there were other, more effective (and potentially cheaper) ways of getting your message across and making those all important sales.

The basic premise of this 'new world' was that you did not buy, beg or pester your way to exposure (and thus sales) but instead you had to 'EARN' that exposure.

The presenter went on to explain that this 'earning process' was based upon another statement, one that he holds to be very true indeed:-

'On the Web You Are What You Publish'

This basic truth is supported by the fact that these days information, news and gossip all travel via 'Word of Mouse' (and thumb if you include the mobile phone) . This is where the Web really has changed things, as now it is so very easy to share things with others, which in turn means that news etc can spread very very quickly, the number of people being 'aware' of something potentially mutliplying at an incredible rate.

BUT, and it is a big but, that information / news has to be worth sharing, it has to be worth person A telling person B about. That is the trick and the fence that so many fail at.

One of the biggest changes that business has to get it's head around was that it was no longer any good to talk about products and service, but instead about the issues that were facing it's customers and how they could be solved. You did not now just go in and sell, you had to talk to people in their language not yours.

The biggest issue for many marketing executives will however be the issue of 'losing control' of the marketing methods, of taking your hands off the reins and letting the horse go where it wants to. The best example of this was that of the Grateful Dead pop group. They made the decision to allow their fans to record their live performances, even it was said going to the length of giving these 'recording fans' the best seats in the house. Their music was thus shared on the Net and viewed by thousands who otherwise may never have heard it. The end result, the group became the one of the most popular touring bands of all time. Plus remember they did not have to buy, beg or pester, they just 'shared'.

Views were also expressed about measuring ROI on Social Media and how this was basically a bad idea, it just being not compatible with the medium.

To see the Tweets on the webinar search for #GlobalBuzz on Twitter.

The 'Creating a Global Buzz Webinar' is available on line now too.

It was really good and I would recommend that all online marketers have a look, it certainly gave me some inspiration.

Newsletter Due Any Day Now!

2010-02-16T06:17:00.002Z

Our parent websites first newsletter is due to be sent out in the next few days, so please be sure to sign up.

In this first edition there will be some very special offers, these only being available via the Newsletter.

We expect that the Newsletter will be sent out monthly, but we will also be sending out other important 'news flashes' and other offers from time to time as well.

So don't miss out, sign up now.

By the way, you can un-subscribe at anytime of course.

How Important is Advert Positioning in PPC?

2010-02-15T09:50:00.002Z

One question that I am often asked is how important is the place an advert is shown when using Pay Per Click Adverts? This is a good question and is related to some degree at least to the question about what Organic ranking it is best to have.

We will however concentrate on PPC here, only referring to Organic rankings as appropriate. So, what is the best position to have for your advert? Is it position 1, or 4, 10 or what?

The short answer, that will infuriate many, is that 'it depends' on what the advert is for. Before I go into my thoughts, it is important to grasp one most important fact, this fact being that no matter how good your advert is (or where it is on the screen) that your potential customers will look around the others and click them (and the organic listings too) as well as looking at yours.

This fact means that even though a certain position may get you the first click, that it does not guarantee that you will get the last one, the 'buy it' click. This will depend on where you land your customers and how good a 'deal' you are offering them. The best positioning in the world and the best advert text in the world will not make up for a poor landing page, or in some sectors at least a higher price tag on the goods.

Let me tell you a little story (a true one too)

I thought perhaps that going through the process of buying a camera (as I did last week) might help to illustrate the process, helping with not only this question, but also covering some other aspects of online marketing too.

So last week I decided that I wanted to buy a camera, one primarily that would also take reasonable videos for use on websites (mainly our own and YouTube). I had looked a few months before too, but had decided at that time not to buy. This in effect means that I had started the 'buying cycle' some weeks before. Don't know what the length the cycle for a camera is on average, (varies from product to product, the cheaper the product the faster the cycle, at least on average) but in my instance it must be about 8 weeks.

I had in my mind a Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ7, this in part being down to the TV ad (the dancing Statue of Liberty one) [ a point here about the power of TV ads ], but was not sure if this was the best bet. So I started looking around for Reviews. There were many of course and all were very helpful, but here the point is, are there any online reviews for your products? This is not always appropriate or possible, but if others have them and you do not, you could be in BIG trouble, as your product will be the one that people cannot find out what they want to know, i.e. what do others really think about it.

The reviews led, in this case to YouTube videos, showing the camera, how good it was at videos etc as well as showing the competition. Here is another good point. Do you have videos about your products or services. When you think of it, most businesses could have videos about what they do. Having an informative video could well make the difference of someone buying or contacting you so do think about getting some online.

So, I had looked around and had decided that the camera would do. I also decided that I was going to buy it online, the question was from whom. That I decided (like many others I expect) was going to be on price, at least on price from what looked like a genuine site. I had seen some links from the reviews to sites that were selling the camera and they were my first port of call. However, I was not going to leave it there and turned once again to Google (where I had started out with the query 'Panasonic Lumix reviews'.

Up came all the adverts of course, together with some Organic listings that were in the main all too general. No it was the adverts that caught my eye. Why?, well because many were telling me then and there how much the camera was going to cost, including such info as 'Free p&p'. The latter is important as some sites do, in my opinion charge far too much for this, often 'hiding' it until the last moment. Note, this is NOT a good idea, be as upfront as you can here, otherwise you risk loosing sales. Tip here, keep a good check on your shopping cart abandonment rates and make changes to see if you can improve things.

I clicked on the cheapest one first and had a look around for any catches. None were there, but there were other ads showing the camera at other (higher) prices and some with no prices. I clicked on about 5 in the end, but none could compete for the same product, the prices being sometimes as much as £80 dearer (for exactly the same product). So I went back to the first one, not because it was the first (this being a combination of being high on the front screen of Google AND more importantly the text and message - the price) but because it was the best DEAL.

By the way, it was also important that I was taken just where I wanted to be with one click (from the advert). I did not have to look around for the camera on the page, it was there right in front of me, all I had to do was to choose the colour. It even confirmed the price and free p&p.

So in the end, the other adverts had had their chance of getting me to click and some had succeeded, but only one company had sealed the order as they were selling at the best price (this time).

What all this boils down to in the end is that it is not positioning or even (to a degree at least) the text of the advert, but what that click leads too. So don't fret too much about not being No.1 on Google Adwords (or in the Organic Listings) as just being there on the front page for ads and in the first 2 to 3 pages of Organic listings will get you visits, all because people like to 'Pogo Stick' through the possibilities to see if they can find the best deal or source of information.

So, instead of concentrating on rankings, take a good look at how you are presenting your products for 'sale' and if it is a price sensitive market place consider putting the prices in the adverts. Plus ALWAYS and I mean ALWAYS make it easy for people find what they are looking for and easy to buy it / contact you.

More soon

What sort of Person / Business Person are You?

2010-02-14T09:37:00.004Z

I was out having my morning walk through the country when a farmer started feeding his sheep. Watching them was very interesting indeed and it got me thinking 'Are people very much like Sheep, or are Sheep very much like people?'

You see the way each sheep fed, or tried to feed seemed very much just like how people act in life. Watching them I saw four distinct types, each one with it's good and bad points (this depending on your views on life).

The first type were there waiting for the farmer to put the food in the troughs. They were the thinkers, the ones with forethought and knowledge of what was to come. They were there and were sure to get food.

The second type were the hard nuts. They had not seen the food coming, but were sure going to get some. They pushed their way to the troughs, not caring about who was in their way. They were going to get fed, that was it, the only thought on their minds.

The third group ran around the mass of woolly bodies looking for a weak spot in the crush, and finding one dived in. These were the opportunists and they too got fed. They had not seen the food coming, but were quick enough to react when it did. They slid into the pack more than barging their way in.

Then there was the fourth type, the ones that ran around the pack vainly trying to get to the food. Back and fourth they would go, hoping just hoping that they would find their way in.

Watching those sheep really bought home to me the different types of people and business people that are around. I'm not saying any of the above are good or bad, but they are all different and all have their good and bad points.

The question is, what type are you?, and perhaps more interestingly what type would you like to be?, for even the fourth type of sheep is good. True they may be hungry sometimes, but they are, for the most part 'nice sheep', they don't want to hurt anybody, they just want to 'be.'

It is when it comes to business that the types really come into their own. For me, being there first (seeing the next 'Internet' wave before it hits you)is the best bet as I don't want to shoulder people out of the way (mind you saying that I will pinch their top rankings on Google if they don't watch out).

Failing that, I take on the role of the opportunist, making sure that I take advantage of anything I can for my clients (weak spots in the keywords that people are chasing for example).

But sometimes, just sometimes, in my private and business life I find myself milling around on the edge too. I don't see this as a problem, it is good to see things from a different perspective sometimes and anyway, I quite like being a 'nice sheep' some of the time.

More (on a more business like topic) tomorrow.

BBC's Virtual Revolution & Recommendation Engines

2010-02-13T23:36:00.003Z

Recommendation Engines Are They a Good Thing?

The BBC programme Virtual Revolution will have brought to the attention of many the fact that today businesses are in effect taking and storing our Electronic DNA. Armed with these facts businesses can and do use the information to decide which adverts and products to show us when we go online, Amazon being one of the major users of this process.

The question is, is this a bad thing? Some say that it is Ok, as it means that their online experience is better and that the information is used to ‘help’ them get the very best out of their online time. On the other hand, some argue that the information is being used to ‘control’ us, to show us things that in essence we ‘should’ like. Those that are worried go on to state that this influences behaviour in a way that has never been possible before and that this influence may not be in the end in our best interest.

How does it work and how far does it go?

Basically, when anyone searches the web and visits a website, the chances are that to some degree or another, the pages you have looked and the products you have viewed and bought will be recorded. This data becomes more accurate when you log into a site (like Amazon), often automatically via cookies. This logging on identifies you and allows the website to really see what you like. When you are not logged on in such a ‘definite’ way, the data recorded is not so easily connected with you as a person, but it is nevertheless useful to business as even thought they don’t know who is searching and looking for things, they know what lots of people do and thus what anyone person is likely to want to see in the future.

This ‘surveillance and recording’ goes on in the free Emails services too (like Gmail) as every email is scanned and keywords extracted from it, this in Google’s example being used to determine what adverts they should show you on the Gmail screen.

So whatever you do your behaviour on the web will be recorded in one way or another and this data will be used in some way by businesses to decide what to show you.

Social Networks

Search behaviour and the sites you visit are not the only way by which business decides what to show you, as they also take into account the info that people share on the web on the Social Network sites. The amount that this is taken into account is I’m sure not fully known yet, but there are rumours in the Search Market place that Google will be using the information ‘contained’ in anyone’s Social Network to decide what to show them when they are searching using Google.

Personalisation or Control?

All of the above basically means that your behaviour (or that of others) will influence what pages, information and products you are ‘served’ on the Internet. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Does this process destroy or damage the ‘serendipity’ that the Web offers, or ‘help’ people get the most out of their online time.

The thing that worries some is that this process influences people in a way that they might not fully realise. This does worry some people quite a lot and one day there may well be a backlash by internet users in that they will demand that their behaviour is not tracked and that they are not given results based on behaviour, whether theirs or someone else’s.

I am not sure what the future holds here, but I do know that today businesses can and do use these methodologies and that the process is becoming more and more refined and also that it’s use is set to increase.

At Serendipity Online Marketing we do assist our customers to make the best use of the data available, for example Keyword Research allows us to see what people are looking for and therefore what terms they should target in SEO and PPC. We also assist businesses make the best out of their websites by the use of Google Analytics. However, we do not, in line with privacy rules that exist today, track people down to an individual level. Instead we simply help our customers present to their customers the best possible browsing experience in the hope that all parties will be best satisfied.

Hopefully this is in order and correct, but we will be keeping a careful check on the ‘morals’ of the web and will never do anything that could be damaging to the end consumer.

Google Buzz - Is it set to change the World?

2010-02-11T07:56:00.003Z

Have you heard about Google Buzz yet? Perhaps not, but I'm sure you will soon. It is very very new and not released to all users yet, but it will be soon, that is for sure.

What exactly is it though? Well in a nutshell is a 'Social Sharing Service' based on Gmail and is meant to make it easier to share photos, videos etc as well as to start conversations about the things you find interesting.

Many will ask the question "Can't we already do that with Facebook or one of the many other Social Networking sites?" and of course they would be right.

However, Google say "Our belief is that organizing the social information on the Web — finding relevance in the noise — has become a large-scale challenge, one that Google's experience in organizing information can help solve."

Buzz will work with other social media services such as Twitter, Flickr and Google's Picasa and Google Reader. Google Buzz users also can use their mobile phones to tag posts by location.

The big question is can Google Buzz steal users from other social networking sites? According to a leading pundit, Augie Ray (of Forrester Research) "While bringing relevance filtering to the noisy social media world could prove a significant advantage, this doesn't (yet) seem to be enough to pull people away from the networks they've already created elsewhere." But he did also say that "Buzz could end up supplementing rather than replacing users' other social networks for now." Here the critical bit is 'for now' who is to say what Google might be able to do here.

From a Search Engine Marketing perspective, this whole thing may be more important than it looks, especially when it is added to rumours that Google will use a searchers 'personal network' when deciding what sites to list in its results..

More research required here I think..

More tomorrow

PS - My quote of the day:-

“You have to learn the rules of the game. And then, you have to play better than anyone else” – Albert Einstein, Scientist Genius

Conversations and Twitter

2010-02-10T07:37:00.003Z

In a previous post I mentioned that I was trying to find out how people start conversations in Twitter. People will do this for various reasons, to find friends to find information and of course to try to sell their goods. All of these are valid but for many businesses, it is the latter reason that they are really on Twitter.

Of course the first thing that should be said is that the 'sell, sell, sell' approach is not likely to get you far on Twitter. No, you have to be more thoughtful and 'Engage' (that word again) with your potential customers.

The real reason that you want to start conversations is thus that you want to start the 'Engagement Process'. Again this is just fine and dandy, nothing wrong with it (as long as your motives are good of course). So how can you start a conversation?

I asked the Linkedin community this very question and got some very useful answers, including one that said that Twitter was not being used (much) for holding conversations.

The replies:-

***

From Susan Applegate of Applegate Media Group.

My recent observation is that there aren't a lot of "conversations" going on. It's feeling less and less social and more and more like a one way street!

From Beatriz Alemar of Inktel Direct

I start conversations on Twitter one of 3 ways:-

1. I make an observation or ask a general question. People will usually respond.
2. Directly ask a person or group a question or comment.
3.. Answer a question or jump into a conversation.

Twitter is like a large cocktail party - sometimes you have to jump into a conversation. People don't mind. In fact, they might appreciate another person to bounce things off of.

and from

Cyrus Afzail of Astoria Communications

First off, start by asking what you want Twitter to accomplish for you or your business and what types of conversations can best make this happen. The specific types of conversations will differ, depending on the type of company you are and/or who you're trying to reach.

I think one of the best ways to use Twitter is to increase the awareness others have about content you're already producing. For example, when I write a new blog posting or do something similar in the course of marketing either my business or a client, I "push" the information out to followers on Twitter. Since most of the content I produce is informational in nature, even though it has a marketing context behind it, there's not that much resistance to receiving it.

Finally, if you're using Twitter in a business context, I would restrict your content to a business nature because, unlike Facebook and other platforms, you can establish multiple accounts for different purposes. If you want to use Twitter to maintain personal connection, that's fine, but I'd do it under a separate account.

***

I do hope that these were informative, they have certainly got me thinking.

More on this topic (and others) over the next few days

Economics - Fancy a Laugh???

2010-02-09T12:44:00.002Z

21 Economic Models explained with Cows

SOCIALISM
You have 2 cows.
You give one to your neighbour.

COMMUNISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and gives you some milk.

FASCISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and sells you some milk.

NAZISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and shoots you.

BUREAUCRATISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both, shoots one, milks the other, and then throws the
Milk away...

TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM
You have two cows.
You sell one and buy a bull.
Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows.
You sell them and retire on the income.

SURREALISM
You have two giraffes.
The government requires you to take harmonica lessons

AN AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows.
Later, you hire a consultant to analyse why the cow has dropped dead.

ENRON VENTURE CAPITALISM
You have two cows.
You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters
of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a
debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all
four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows. The milk rights of
the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island
Company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the
rights to all seven cows back to your listed company. The annual
report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more.
You sell one cow to buy a new president of the United States , leaving
you with nine cows. No balance sheet provided with the release. The
public then buys your bull.

A FRENCH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You go on strike, organise a riot, and block the roads, because you
want three cows.

A JAPANESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow
and produce twenty times the milk.
You then create a clever cow cartoon image called 'Cowkimon' and
market it worldwide.

A GERMAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You re-engineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and
milk themselves.

AN ITALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows, but you don't know where they are.
You decide to have lunch.

A RUSSIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You count them and learn you have five cows.
You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.
You count them again and learn you have 2 cows.
You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka.

A SWISS CORPORATION
You have 5000 cows. None of them belong to you.
You charge the owners for storing them.

A CHINESE CORPORATION
You have two cows..
You have 300 people milking them.
You claim that you have full employment, and high bovine productivity.
You arrest the newsman who reported the real situation.

AN INDIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You worship them.

A BRITISH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
Both are mad.

AN IRAQI CORPORATION
Everyone thinks you have lots of cows.
You tell them that you have none.
No-one believes you, so they bomb the **** out of you and invade your
country..
You still have no cows, but at least now you are part of Democracy....

AN AUSTRALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
Business seems pretty good.
You close the office and go for a few beers to celebrate.

A NEW ZEALAND CORPORATION
You have two cows.
The one on the left looks very attractive

Hope it made you smile, sure did me!

Back to serious stuff tomorrow..

Just Twittering on..

2010-02-09T07:12:00.004Z

While I was musing about this blog, the term 'just twittering on' popped into what I loosely call my mind and immediately rung a bell. The note lingered long enough to tell me that that is what many people seem to do, just 'twitter on', like someone at a party trying to impress, while not really saying anything and certainly not making any real friends.

This I thought cannot be the right way to use Twitter, it must be used to engage a response and not "I'm not following you" or "I'll just block you then" either. So how do you do this, how do you start a conversation. Well in a networking meeting you would ask an open question wouldn't you.

This sounded like a good idea, but I thought I'd test it somewhere other than Twitter (where to date my open questions and those I've seen have not been too hot) and so posted a 'discussion' on to Linkedin (best not to have all your social networking eggs in one basket). The question was an open one, asking people to share their successes on Twitter.

Perhaps the question was not the best, sort of like 'So what success have you had in using a piece of string?' to which of course came the inevitable reply 'depends on how long the string is'.

In my instance the question did get a better answer than that, but only one and it was not the type I was expecting, but it did help me (Linkedin is by the way one of the best place to get high quality answers to questions).

The reply was:- 'Depends what your promoting. A lot about Twitter is not just sending out tweets but interacting with your followers. Let them know you're a real person on the other side and not just a "sales machine". Make sure you're tweets are short enough so that followers can retweet for you. There's a lot more to maintaining relationships on twitter!!'

As you can see it was a good answer, it says a lot. It tells you to

1. Ensure you interact with your followers
2. Make sure that they know it is you and not an autotweeting machine
3. Don't try to sell, sell, sell
4. Do short Tweets so that they can be retweeted without loosing some words
and finally
5. That there is a lot more to maintaining relationships on Twitter than you might think

All of the above is good stuff and all very very true.

It did not answer my question though. Is this a bad thing, did I get more than I bargained for? Well yes in a way, but that is what an 'open question' can lead to isn't it?

So open questions are the way forwards then? Perhaps, but here I am not sure as Twitter is very different from Linkedin. The two communities are therefore likely to act in different ways, so the 'open question' might work on one but not another. Certainly to date my open questions on Twitter have not been as successful as I'd have hoped.

So, my next step is to ask the same question on both, and I will report back with the results, plus of course any answers to my question "SO how do you start a conversation on Twitter?"

By the way, on the success front. I can report that we've had several good contacts from Twitter and so far one piece of work. Also 15% of traffic to our website comes from Twitter now.

All good stuff indeed and thus I will keep 'Twittering On' (but I will try to make it interesting).

More tomorrow

The Importance of Being on Twitter

2010-02-08T10:06:00.002Z

One of the biggest reasons to be on Twitter and to tweet, tweet, tweet is that there is a chance (however small) that you might be noticed by a journalist and that they are, just when you send that tweet, looking for a story about what you do or have done.

It is only a slim chance, but it is worth taking as the free publicity you could get would be worth many thousands of pounds.

In the days before Twitter, journalists used to check just the online press releases, using keyword sniffing tools to find things that contained a key word of their choice. That saved them many hours of sifting and as I know from experience (I got a company on local radio this way) works.

Now of course they can use Twitter's in built search tool (and you should too by the way, just to see what is going on in your field) and you can be sure they are doing just that.

If you want an insight into how journalism are using Twitter to day, have a look at this article about 'how to track conversations in Twitter', sure is a good read.

Good luck in getting noticed...

More tomorrow

Twittering - Some Basic Rules

2010-02-05T07:19:00.002Z

Many of my blogs have been about Twitter and the fact that to get the most out of it you have to converse with people. Now getting a conversation going is not easy, but I have some basic rules that will help start them, help you keep them going and also, perhaps, spark some interest in other readers.

1. When someone raises a question or a point with you, make sure you answer it as best as you ca. If you don't know the answer, either say so with a note to say that you will find out and get back to them, or pass them on to someone that does know (and thus get points that way too).

2. Use the Real Time search facility that Twitter offers to see if people are talking about you or your brand / company. If they are having problems find out what, if they are enjoying things even better. Either way it is good to talk.

3. If you have something that you can give away, then don't worry about offending people. What is more the fact that you have done so may really impress them.

4. If you find someone has said something nice about you, then make sure you thank them. If this is done publically reply that way, if in a private message use that method first and then ask if you can use the testimonial.

5. Be nice to everyone!

Hope this helps, more details on using Twitter and SEO next week week.

5.

Google Maps - The New Yellow Pages?

2010-02-04T08:29:00.003Z

I interrupt my series of blogs on Twitter for a most important news flash about Google and the effects that 'smart phones' are going to have on the Search Market Place over the course of 2010.

In the USA, the effects are already being felt, and as ever, we in the UK are going to start feeling the same wind of change sooner or later. But what is this change and what does the business owner need to do right now if they are to benefit / not lose out?

The change is being caused by the way that people (especially the younger elements of society) use their mobile phones. Now I use the term 'phone' loosely here as these 'smart phones' are hardly phones at all, no they are powerful computers and are being used as such (did you know that more than 80% of Tweets come from phones!).

This use of the phone to 'to do it all' means that many (most) people will / are using their phones to SEARCH for things, especially for those things that are local to them at that time e.g Italian restaurant or pet shop. This so that they can quickly satisfy their needs then and there (we do after all now live in a society that almost demands 'instant satisfaction'). Google helps them here as it 'knows' where they are, so they don't even have to tell it that, just what they want.

Google then serves up a list based on it's Local Listings and hey presto they have all the info they need (even down to reviews on the businesses listed).

What does this mean for the business owner? Simple, that they MUST:-

1. Get listed in all of the relevant directories
2. Claim & verify their listings,
3. Get some customer reviews,
4. And thus secure your position on Google Maps.

If they cannot do this themselves, they should contact a Search Engine Marketing company that they trust and get it set up asap, before the rules change and the 'claim jumpers' get to work.

The clock is ticking here and time is running out fast..

More on Twitter and Search Engine Marketing soon...

The Three Twitter Camps

2010-02-03T08:07:00.003Z

Twitter and Conversations

Twitter it seems is viewed by different people in different ways. Some see it as an electronic soapbox that allows them to vent their feelings on political or social matters, others just as a way of saying what they are doing. Another group is using it to make friend, whilst still another, the business people are trying to use it to get customers and ultimately make money.

There is nothing wrong with any of the above, Twitter itself providing all users with the ability to see what they want to see and block that they don't. It is also totally true that friends can be made online, many married couples being the proof on that one, if proof is needed.

The Three Twitter Camps

What interests me is that in the end all of Tweets these 'groups' make fall into one of three camps, those that just speak (and don't necessarily listen), those that are desperate for a conversation, something that they can build a 'relationship' on; whether this is friendship, marriage or a business transaction, and those that are just 'listening' to see what is going on, only making contact when something that really interests them happens.

I reckon that everyone will do some of each type of 'Tweet action' in their time, however, to be sure, many Twitterers will spend more time sending one 'type' of Tweet than another, this being quite simply because they have a different agenda for using Twitter.

To Converse, Just Speak or Listen

Now I must admit that I am still very much in the learning phase of my TwitterLife and thus, in true student style have been doing a fair amount of listening, trying to find out what the secret of Twitter is, primarily I will admit for the third type of user, that of the business trying to gain customers.

In the courses I have attended, there have been some fantastic examples of how Twitter has changed the fortunes of some businesses. The trick is of course to be able to replicate this success. So how has Twitter helped these people?

The majority of "winners" it seems have gained success by being noticed on Twitter when otherwise they would have remained in the shade. These lucky businesses have therefore gained the light that the conventional press and TV/radio services can provide. Why were they chosen, well here as ever lady luck has a part to play, in that someone was looking for a story about something just when these Tweets were new and fresh. The result, massive publicity, which in turn led to orders..

For others, success has too been caused by simply 'being there', people seeing the tweet and making contact. Sometimes this is caused by the fact that people have lost touch with old business contacts and in others they are brand new. Whatever, both result in sales and that is what counts for the business person in the end.

Both of the above are just about Speaking, about Tweeting, there is no conversation to speak of, the Tweet going straight to the point of 'success', this being basically caused by someone in the 'Speaking' camp being noticed by someone in the 'Listening' camp. This is great and in itself a great reason for using Twitter, but what about the other area of 'use' that of the 'Conversation' camp?

Stangers are just customers you haven't met yet

This area seems to be the most difficult to grasp, as it means that you have to elicit a response from a total stranger before the conversation can commence, for, if we are to turn these strangers in to customers we must 'talk' to them first. The key here is I understand not to Sell,Sell,Sell, but to 'chat, chat, chat' just as you would in a networking meeting. This will not be easy, especially with the time delays between Tweets. However, the rewards could be immense. Dell for example, used the Speaking camps methods to tell others of offers, used the Listening camps methods to monitor what was being said about them and then used the Conversation camps tools to engage, the result a huge boost in sales.

So we know that just 'being there' can be enough to get you noticed by journalists and by people who knew you or are excited about what you have to offer, this leaves the 'starting and continuing conversations' part to master.

I'll cover this is my next Blog

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Internet Marketing Ologist

2010-02-02T14:31:00.002Z

Want to know the definition of an InternetMarketingOlogist?

Please see:- http://knol.google.com/k/graham/internetmarketingologist/2dhi9q9r1dmdu/17#

The Future of Search Marketing

2010-02-02T10:40:00.010Z

As I write Google are set to introduce yet another twist to the way they interpret the Search Market place, this one seeming to be about increasing how much 'note' they take about an individuals social circle. At the moment Google already change the listings based upon where you have been before (beware of this if you stay logged into your Google account all the time as it WILL skew the results you see when searching). In fact, my tests have shown that your results can be skewed to some degree even when you are not logged in, Google it seems taking note of your IP address...

The latter points (about Google 'using your search history') has been around for sometime. This and the fact that Google alters what you see in the Search Results depending on where you are in the world (here providing more results from your apparent country as per your IP address) means that to some degree no one sees exactly the same first page results in any case, however, the latest changes may take it one step further than this.

But here I want to deal with one of the comments that I have heard from a few sources recently. The quote being that 'Search Engine Marketing is Dead', this being said as, as far as the proponents of this statement are concerned: "People will have details of the products and services they are interested in being sent to them directly, WITHOUT the need for them to search for them in the first place." If indeed this turns out to be true, then no one will use Google and the like to find things, but, there is one big flaw in their argument.

Let us examine the meaning of the phrase "People will have details of the products and services they are interested in being sent to them directly, WITHOUT the need for them to search for them in the first place." What does this mean? Well I think it means that today (yes even today) people make sure that information comes to them without the need to search. To do this people subscribe to Newsletters, RSS feeds, offers by email and Google Alerts to name but a few. In all these cases information is delivered directly to the recipient, so in that respect they are right, people do get info and news without the need for search.

Taking this one step further to include the Social Media arena, here too people get news and views on all sorts of things (perhaps too much at times) as those that they congregate with post this and that on the web. Again it is quite possible that they may well get to know about a fantastic new tumble dryer that irons the clothes as well and could then well go straight out and buy it, all without Searching for it at all.

But here lies the interesting point, as if people are to start talking about something, they have to know about it first. The 'news' has to start somewhere before it can be propagated. Now let us assume it is Twitter that is used to start the ball rolling. Now Twitter as we know has a very small message 'window' and so people use it to point to blogs or websites so that the message can be delivered in full. This of course means that there still has to be content on the web, content that will no doubt continue to be optimised until the last person stops using Google (please turn off the light) as no business will want to miss an opportunity.

We also have to consider exactly how the news 'leaks out' in the first place, how does the manufacturer tell all about his marvellous new machine? Of course for something as great as this the TV and radio will no doubt to be pleased to pass the message on, but for lesser products/services other means will be needed.

Twitter and the other Social Media sites will I'm sure be used here, but will they not also be using Online Press Releases and their website to promote it as well, so that people SEARCHING for things like this find them? If this is true then both the press releases and the websites must be optimised if they are to be easily found and that means in turn that SEO will be used (and that must include all the SEO tactics like building links will be put into place).

Lastly, if we are to assume that people let the news about this tumble dryer come to them (not searching for it in the first place), then you can be sure that when the time comes to buy it that they will seek reviews on the device and also for the best place they can buy it from. BOTH of these will mean, you guessed it, SEARCHING for these reviews and shops on the web.

Thus those wanting to make sure that their reviews or offers are seen by those searching WILL optimise their site in order that it gets the very best ranking possible.

We also need to come back to the point about users 'subscribing' to information sources. This too at least to a point will rely on good optimisation of the news source. For, to be found in the first place, people will more than likely have come across the site whilst they are using a search engine. OK some will be pointed to the blog etc via Social Media, but many will find sites using search, at least for some time to come.

So Search Engine Marketing is not dead (and is never likely to be either) in my opinion, but as with all things in life I am willing to discuss the matter and be proved wrong, I just wouldn't bet on it that's all.

More tomorrow!

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Twittering For Business

2010-01-28T12:15:00.002Z

We've been using Twitter now for about two months, having left it for that period on purpose to see how it went. In fact we 'ignored' Twitter for about 18 months in all, and during that time have listened with great interest to both sides of the 'Is Twitter worth the time?' debate.

Over the months, there have been some ardent proponents and also a fair amount of doubters, some the latter having many many years of experience in the field of marketing.

But, as you are no doubt aware, the business community is as 'Twitter Mad' as the general public, all the courses being offered quickly filling up, sometimes in a matter of hours...

It was with the latter in mind that we got ourselves 'down and dirty' in Twitter and have been successful todate in creating a large number of followers (some 4,300 in 9 weeks). However, as any Twitter Expert will tell you, it is not the number of followers that counts, but who they are and what you are 'talking about' with them.

With this in mind I attended a course myself yesterday and was pleased to learn a few things (I was also pleased that I knew a lot already - plus some things that were not mentioned and are a part of an intended 'advanced course' - AND I was also pleased that the presenter learnt a few things from me on SEO - Which proves the adage 'You Never Stop Learning till You Stop Breathing').

But what in essence did I learn? Too much for one Post I can tell you, so there will be more over the next days, but for the first batch, well here goes:-

1. Choose Your Twitter Name with Care
2. Decide what you want to achieve
3. Find those people in your target market and start a conversation with them
4. Be sure to listen and don't sell sell sell
5. Don't expect instant success

The other thing that is worth mentioning is that, from my experience so far and from what I learned yesterday, if you want to run a Twitter account 'properly' you will have to give it quite a lot of time, perhaps as much as 1 - 2 hrs a day..

More tomorrow - with help and tips on making Twitter work for your business

Opposites Attract in SEO As Well.

2010-01-27T08:17:00.003Z

It's an old saying that 'opposites attract' in human relationships, but in a way you can use this in Search Engine Optimisation as well. This is of course all about 'keywords; and 'keyword phrases' and getting rankings for these on the Engines (for your site). Your list of target keywords will have (hopefully) been drawn up after many hours of diligent research (with some inspiration thrown in for good measure), but what if you are missing a trick....?

The plain fact is that when considering the list of keywords to focus your SEO efforts on you will have discarded many because they don't fit in with your site. This being done even though they might have a high frequency of use or a low number of competitor pages, either of which would make them a good choice. If only they fitted in with your products or service...

But wait on, maybe these words are the total opposite of what you sell or do, but does this preclude their use? Maybe not, for, with a bit of thought your could target these juicy looking words. Let's look at some' examples:-

Let's assume that your site sells 'quality bedroom furniture', this would of course normally mean that you would disregard phrases like 'cheap bedroom furniture' as the people using this term are probably not going to be interested in your products. Now while this is more than likely true, there will be some that you may tempt and besides the visit might cause them to mention you to a friend etc, so it would not be wasted.

But how do you 'legally' and 'legitimately' get Google to rank you and also make it worth the while of the visitor, all these being important as you must not mislead either the Engines or the visitor.

The answer is in the use of 'buyer beware' or 'have you though of this angle' pages. The former is best used when trying to get someone to pay a higher price because the cheaper product might really not be good enough, e.g for car insurance, maybe that cheap company never paying out when it counts, whilst the 'angle' pages could be used in the bedroom furniture site. Here you would be able to argue that cheap furniture won't last as long, is bad for your back (for beds) etc.

Now, because you can weave in these words into a page on the site (and legitimately too) you will be able to target these words, and you never know could convert the visitor to your way of thinking and get an order.

So, even in the area of Internet Marketing 'opposites do, or at least may, attract'.

More tomorrow

Search Engine Optimisation is Just Like Predicting the Weather

2010-01-26T16:11:00.001Z

Working out how to optimise a web page is quite a lot like predicting the weather when you get down to it. Both the weatherman and the SEO professional have a huge number of variables to deal with, and both don’t know for certain what is going to happen in the next days and hours.

Just like the weather forecaster, the SEO professional can tell, with some degree of accuracy what a particular page of words will achieve, but they have to take into account a whole lot more information besides the words on the page (e.g. about the links to the page) and then make their guess based on their knowledge of the ‘rules’ that are used by the Engines to rank pages.

The weather forecaster does a similar thing when you think about it, their data being things like air pressure and temperature. They too make their predictions based on rules, but in their case they are perhaps the luckier, as the rules they deal with are the rules of physics and they don’t change, unlike those in the SEO world, where changes to the rules can be made at whim by the masters in Google.

This means that any predictions about rankings you get must in essence, like a 5 day weather forecast be very much a guess, and that in turn means anyone who is guaranteeing a first page position cannot in truth be giving you the full facts.

Worst still for the Search Engine Optimiser, is the fact that the rules may and do change all the time and that for some keywords different rules apply than for others. Sites too can have different ‘handicaps’ applied for different ‘keyword zones’ (keywords about a particular subject area), Google preferring to display certain types of sites in some cases.

These SEO rule changes can also be switched on and off, which makes testing to see what is the best way of getting a ranking difficult to say the least, as you don’t know for certain, if it is the changes you have made to a site that causes any alterations to the rankings, or whether in fact it is a change in the underlying rules that are the culprit.

So, the Search Engine optimisation expert and the weather forecaster are both ‘up against it’ in one form or another, but in the case of the weatherman, they do at least have the benefit for knowing the rules and knowing that they won’t be being changing overnight.

Building a site with Search Engine Optimisation in Mind.

2010-01-25T10:55:00.002Z

SEO is made up of two parts, ‘On Page’ optimisation, which is all about the words on the site’s pages, and ‘Off Page’ optimisation, which is all about the links from other sites, these days this including links and ‘mentions’ in the Social Media arena.

On Page SEO

Maximising ‘On page search engine optimisation’ means using the Right Words in the Right Place in the Right Way.

The Right Words, are obtained through deep keyword research and by applying a fair amount of thought to the problem. Overall this is probably about 80% research and 20% educated guess work.
The Right Place on a websites pages refers to placing the words in the areas that the Search Engines look.

The most important place is the Meta Title (this is the area in the Header area of a webpage which is seen in the browser, in that top blue bar). This area ‘tells’ the Engines what the page is supposed to be about. In general you can assume that they will look at about the first 9 words, ignoring the rest. These words need to be chosen with care and the same ones should NOT be used throughout the site.

It should also be born in mind that these words will be used in the Search Engine Listings, so even thought they don’t have to be ‘English’ in the sense of making sense, make sure that it does not look like ‘nonsense’ as this may put people off visiting the site.

The other area that counts is of course the words on the page. Here it is the way the words are used that counts (see below). However, remember that you can use the space ‘below the fold’ to place words as well. This practise will allow you to have a short / concise looking page for the causal visitor, while having more detailed information for those needing more info, as well of course of providing the Search Engine Spiders with those all needed words.

Remember too that the file names used are important too and can assist in your rankings. So use keyword rich page URL’s, extending this to the file names used for images (‘horse riding in France.jpg’ being so much more powerful than ‘img001.jpg’ in the battle for rankings in Google’s Image Search, which in turn will help with gaining rankings in the Search Engine’s listings).
The Right Way to use these words on the page centres two issues. The first being that they words you are trying to target will normally be 2 to 4 words long. It is therefore important to try to use these phrases in the copy (the words on the page) in the same order. Don’t worry if you cannot use them the same way more than a couple of times on a page (be sure to check out the article on ‘writing for the search engines’). Where it is difficult, use parts of the phrase, as well as words that mean the same thing (e.g. equine for horse) as the Engines are very good at understanding that they are about the same thing.

The second refers to the use of the ‘old fashioned’ HTML tags like H1, H2, Li and Strong. These days most designers use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), these being used by the Browser to work out how to render (display) the words on the page, e.g. a certain ‘style’ will tell the Browser to make the words look 12 pixels high in Red.

There is no standard in CSS however, you can construct any style you like and call it what you want, thus the Engines cannot tell what is important and what it not, this being critical when the site owner is trying to convince the Engines that his page really is about ‘horse riding holidays’ or whatever.

So, if you want to add weight to ‘argument’ that your page is about horse riding holidays, you need to place these keywords in a Header tag (H1) and then support this with other lesser Header tags (they range from H2 to H6) as well as using the List item tag (Li) and the Bold and Strong tags (b) and (strong). Placing words in these tags will inform the Engines that these are the important words on the page and will therefore assist you in gaining rankings for these targeted keywords.

Also remember that these keywords should be used in the ALT tags of images and more importantly in the Anchor text in links on the page. This anchor text refers to the words (normally) underlined in blue (the bit you click on). This is used in two critical ways, it first tells the Engines what the page it is going to is all about (this being true whether it is an internal or external link) and secondly and as importantly, it implies that the page the link is ON is also relevant to that anchor text, a very useful way of gaining extra points in the ranking game indeed.The fact that the Engines ignore most punctuation should also be considered (see the SEO article and other associated articles) as this can help when trying to bring together a series of words to make a target keyphrase.eyword Density is also a factor that needs to be considered, try to aim for between 2% and 4% (for Google). You can get away with more than this, but much more can de dangerous and can actually cause you to loose rankings.

Here it is important to think globally about the pages on your site, don’t overdo anything, i.e don’t use dozens of words in the ALT tags and keep your file names sensible too.

Try too hard and the Engines will smell a furry rodent (rat) and penalise you, so just be sensible and use 'Off Page' Optimisation as well and you will get better rankings.

More tomorrow

Page Layouts That Increase Search Engine Rankings

2010-01-22T12:09:00.003Z

If you have a website and are struggling to get rankings on the Engines, you will no doubt have heard the cry 'get more keywords and text on your pages then!' Whilst this sounds easy, for some sites, getting those 'extra' words on the pages can be hard, or is it?

Sure, you have a lovely site, it has some great images on it and enough text to entertain and inform the visitor about your products and services. However, when it comes to getting rankings (and therefore getting those much needed visitors in the first place) there is just not enough text.

Of course many website owners will then say "But I don't want to destroy my nice looking pages / site for the sake of getting rankings! After all, if I do that, the page may look so terrible that people leave it straight away. Thus it won't make any difference that I'm getting in more traffic!"

All this is true, you can have a very good site SEO wise, that is simply awful in getting people to stay on the site and to 'convert' in the manner that is needed. The trick is of course to lay the page out in a way that will achieve both...

This is simpler than it sounds. All you have to do is to:-

Use the Meta TITLE of the page to 'say' what the page is about (9 words or so)
Repeat the use of these words in some Header (H1 - H3) tags on the page, as near to the top as you can.
Make sure you use relevant words in the text around these Header tags

Then and this is the trick:-
Use the words 'More Information' as a link on the bottom of the page to jump the user to a section at the bottom of the page (this can be 'legally' hidden using javascript if you want) which contains much more information. This information containing those all important keywords (and those like them - remember the Engines are very good at knowing what words are associated).

If you do this you'll be able to have a great looking page for the casual visitor (they not seeing all these extra words) and yet, for the really interested browser (e.g. those who just want to know more before they decide what to do) AND of course our friends the Search Engine spiders the words and information is there to see.

The spiders don't care too much where the words are, so as long as they see them somewhere, they will be happy (and so will you, as your pages then stand a far better chance of getting a ranking). And as for your visitor, well that extra information could well make all the difference and it could just make them convert.

All this achieved and you still have a site that looks great!

More next week

The 10 Rules of Internet Marketing

2010-01-20T11:58:00.003Z

Rule 1 - Decide what your goals are and maintain focus on reaching them.
Rule 2 - When writing a newsletter and adding pages to your site, find out what people want to see in it!
Rule 3 - Test Change and Test Again. The only way to find the perfect recipe for a cake is to bake lots of cakes...
Rule 4 - Try to make your Marketing Interactive.
Rule 5 - Create and Nuture relationships with customers, suppliers, business partners and other relevant associated ventures.
Rule 6 - Never forget that SEO is not just about the words on the page, it is also about LINKS.
Rule 7 - Integrate your Online Marketing with your Offline Marketing and make sure that they give the same message.
Rule 8 - Keep It Simple ! Don't use Flash etc just because you can.
Rule 9 - Content is King. Make it useful relevant and easy to find.
Rule 10 - Do not expect Instant Success. It will take many months to perfect your internet marketing, be it SEO, PPC or the important matter of ensuring a high enough conversion rate.

The 7 Keys to a Successful PPC Program

2010-01-19T09:02:00.004Z

I'm leaving my series on writing copy for the Search Engines today (well you can have too much of a good thing) and instead today will provide some useful information on Pay Per Click (PPC), this being an area that, whilst it can result in sales, can also result in a lot of wasted money.

The Framework of Success

Define The Goals for the Campaign

With every part of a marketing campaign, the goals, the 'what you want to achieve' must be laid down first, you must as they say 'start with the end in mind'. These goals can be easy to set, e.g 'cost of clicks must be 10% lower than the profit from sales' or that 'a lead is required for every £20 spent on clicks'. Others could include newsletter signups, increased number of followers on a Twitter account. The list is long and will depend on what you are trying to achieve and what sort of site you have.
Conduct Keyword Research

Good keyword research is essential before starting any online campaign, whether it be PPC or SEO. There are various tools on the marketplace which will allow you to see what terms are being used in any vertical market place (subject area) and also which ones your competitors are using in their PPC campaigns. You can also see what terms sites are being linked to with, as this too gives an indication of what they want visitors to find them under.

Beware of just using the Google Suggestion Engine, as some say that this gives you keywords that Google want you to use and not perhaps those that are best.
Prepare The Campaign

The way in which a PPC campaign and the associated landing pages are put together has a profound impact on it's future performance. A badly constructed campaign costs more to run, is less effective and is also harder to manage.

The way a campaign is built will depend on many things, are there different geographical and times of days that need to be targeted? If so, it will be necessary to set up each one of these as a stand alone group of words.

When the campaigns are set you then need to divide the words into sub groups, listing all those that are 'common to each other' together. This needs to be done until the groups truly seem to be just on one subject. This makes it easier to write adverts that will match the words and also makes the whole campaign easier to manage, all 'dog keywords' are together and and 'cat keywords' are together, rather than having them all under 'Pet'.

You will also have to decide if you are going to use Broad, Exact or Phrase matching, as this will have a great impact on whether you advert is triggered and what is triggered by.

Beware using the Broad Match term without carefully constructing a list of 'negative keywords' (those words, that if used, will cause you advert NOT to be triggered) as otherwise you may find that you wasting clicks on the wrong market place entirely.

The other important thing is that the words used in the adverts will match their associated keywords and that increases 'Quality Score' and thus reduces click costs.

Take note here that the Landing pages (where the visitor goes when they click an ad) is also taken into account of scoring purposes and more importantly, this page should be built in a way that will increase conversions.
Set Your Bidding Strategy

With PPC you have to set up daily budgets and also what you are willing to pay for a click. The former sets how many times your adverts will be seen, whilst the latter sets where in the lists of adverts it will appear. The best place for an advert can only be found through long and hard trial and error (you need a lot of data here), but overall I can recommend going for positions 3 -4, this being a good balance between the top zone that can cost a lot more per click, and the bottom of the page that might just not get your ad noticed enough.
Manage Your Bids

Whatever position you decide upon, you will have to manage your bids, increasing the amount you are willing to pay per click when they drop to low and decreasing it when they climb too high. Beware here of the average position data, as it may be that your advert, while having an average of 3 is actually being seen in position 8 during the peak hours of the day (for your keyword/product), this being because the canny advertisers increase the amount they are willing to pay in these hours, thus forcing others down the list.
Analyse the Results

Today those running PPC campaigns have access to a wealth of information, not only through the ever extending list of reports available from the PPC interface, but also from the likes of Google Analytics.

These tools should be used to monitor the efficiency of all the keywords and their associated landing pages and will provide information as to the actual keywords used to activate the advert, how many pages were viewed and how many conversions were made.
Change and Test Again

Once you have all the information that Analytics can give you, you can change the keyword lists (removing some and promoting others to hero status), change the advert text and also alter the landing pages that are not working as well as they should.

The effect of these changes then needs to be examined and the whole process starts again.

As you can see, it is not as easy as it looks when setting up a PPC campaign, but if you follow this list you will have a far better likelihood of success.

More Tomorrow

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Writing Copy to Convince Google to Rank Your Site

2010-01-18T13:28:00.004Z

This blog is one of a series, each one giving you some ideas as to how to write copy if you want Google to rank your pages.

Each one covers a different topic, but in essence they are all about the same thing, making sure that your page includes the 'key phrases' you want your site to be found for. It really is as simple as that, include the words in the right way (and make sure you have enough links) and your site will be ranked (although of course in cases of incredible competition, it might not be ranked as high as you would like - more on another time).

The subject of today's blog is how you can add copy to a site that is mostly images, or at least where images are as important as the words. This scenario is very common on E-commerce sites, these having pictures of the goods, and sometimes just pictures.

As the Search Engine's spiders cannot read images they only have the ALT tag (Alternate Text Tag - used in the old days when the internet was so slow that people switched off images, the ALT tag then telling them the image was 'A picture of a dog') and the file name of the image,which is often something like image05.jpg, which of course tells them nothing - see our forthcoming blog on getting listed for Google's Image search.

So with many image laden sites, the Engines have little to go on and thus don't know what to list the site for. The trick is to add text of course, but how, when images are the real message?

There are three main tricks here:-

Make sure you add some words to the top of the visible page and if possible use the H1 / H2 tags to 'tell' the engines what the page contains.
Try to add some text to describe each image, and make sure that the link to it's page (presuming it has a page of it's own) is keyword rich. Use Header tags (H3 perhaps) here if you can (but don't overload the page, instead use Bold/Strong in the description somewhere.
Add text below the fold (this refers to the fact that in most cases, only the top half of a page will be shown on a user's browser until they scroll down) as this will not be seen at first by the user, but will always be picked up by the engines. This area can be as long as you want and thus all those keywords that you want to be found for can be included here. Just remember that you should never 'shout' too many words at the engines as this ends up sounding like 'rhubarb' !

More on writing to impress the Search Engines tomorrow.

What is Going to Happen to Search Engine Marketing in 2010?

2010-01-13T09:41:00.005Z

I'm going to leave my series of posts on 'How to convince Google to list your site' for today to comment on the issue of how SEO and SEM is going to change in 2010. There is a lot of talk about it now on the web and it has been mentioned to me quite a few times by associates as well.

Time to put my views on the matter down for all to see.

First, let us define what we are talking about.

All the chat seems to be concentrating on Search Engine Optimisation (words on the page & links) and not about Search Engine Marketing. This in turn means that people don't think that things are going to change in the area of Pay Per Click, which is a huge weapon in the arsenal of any Internet Marketing company.

Why do I mention this, because PPC also needs the words on the pages to be carefully considered, that is if you want to get the highest quality score (and thus pay less per click). This means that whatever happens to SEO, site owners will still have to build their pages with SEO in mind, if they are using PPC.

Getting back to the point, the issue is 'will the words on the pages and the links to these pages need to be optimised in the future' and secondly why is the question being raised at all?

Let's deal with the second point first. As you guessed Google is at the bottom of this, as it is said that they soon won't bother to look at the words on a site, instead they will see what people are talking about on the Social Networks and then 'decide' what site best fits a search term from that information alone, this no doubt based on the words used in the Tweets etc and the association with a site, or the mentioning of a site/domain name.

There is even talk of Google 'knowing where you are' when searching on a mobile phone, and then using this info to provide what 'they think' is the best site in their search results. This is not that new really it just being an extension of the way that Google uses a searcher's IP address to locate where they are, then skewing the results to fit with that location to some degree, but to me it is all I must admit getting a bit scary.

Leaving the 'big brother' aspect aside (the worrying bit about Google 'deciding' what you want to see) let us look at the mechanics of this potential search algorithm.

What is being proposed is that the Engines will ignore the words on the page and instead use the Social Networks to deicide what is best. I think this is rubbish, sure Google can decide whether Coke or Pepsi are most popular and that Niki must be at the top of every search for 'trainers' because they are mentioned all the time, but what for the normal small business that is using Google to obtain traffic?

It will be along time before most of these get enough traffic on the Social Networks to 'count' and that means that Google will have to fall back upon something else to decide what to list when searching for something like 'boat trailers' and that something is BOUND to include the words on the page and the number and type of links to a site from others.

So, my view is that SEO and SEM are far from dead, BUT that anyone who wants to get (or to keep) a top ranking on Google will have to include the use of the Social Networks in their marketing plan, as these WILL be used to one degree or another when Google decides what sites to list.

Any comments gratefully received

Bulleted Lists - Writing With The Search Engines In Mind

2010-01-12T08:47:00.005Z

This is another in the series of items about 'writing with the search engines in mind', but what exactly are we talking about here, getting rankings of course? Rankings for your chosen keyphrase.

Now all this is very fine and dandy, but you also have to remember that you are writing with the human in mind too. Some of these tricks may look a bit clumsy from some standpoints, and in a way that is true, you would not write this way under 'normal' circumstances, but if there is no other way of moving your pages up the list (so you can get some visitors) then following the rules laid down here will help.

One word of warning however, if you see your rankings rise and get the visitors in AND then find that the pages are not liked (visitors 'bounce' off them and don't stay long) then you will need to de-tune the pages a bit, reducing the amount of 'keyword writing' in the copy, as this may well make the pages more palatable for your visitors (again down to checking on the results).

Anyway to business:-

This section is all about using 'Bulleted Lists'. These are common enough on the web today and are excellent in getting messages across, the text being easy to read and scan. However, many a trick is lost when it comes to increasing keyword density in the copy.

The problem is that most lists are written in a way that only uses the main keyphrases once or twice, failing to use them (or something like them - remember the engines are clever at associating different terms) in the actual list items themselves.

Example for keyword 'number plates':-

We can supply number plates to fit all cars in a huge variety of styles

no documentation required
fixing kits available
old fashioned black and white plates
online plate builder
Fast Delivery

Here just one mention of the term was used, whereas with a bit of work we can re-write it to look something like this:-

Number plates available to fit all cars in a huge variety of styles shapes and sizes

your number plates can be supplied without documentation
fixing kits available for all types of car and bike number plates
old fashioned black and white number / licence plates available
use our online number plate builder to include all sorts of images
your number plates delivered safely and fast too

Using this method the number of mentions of the term 'number plate' is increased whilst also using the term 'licence plate' and bringing in the word 'bike' too so that the engines know that we also deal with motorcycle plates.

More on writing for the engines tomorrow

More on Writing For The Search Engines

2010-01-07T11:14:00.002Z

Sometimes people use what are called 'Personal' keyphrases when they are searching on the Internet, say for something like 'help me save money'. Getting these into your copy can be really difficult as it not natural to use such words in most pages, site owners normally using the phrase 'helping you save money' as we are writing for customers.

So how can we get words like this into our pages?

Here's an example:-

******************

Looking for ways to save money

These days many people are looking to cut costs, so it is not surprising if you are typing in 'help me save money' into the Engines, after all all the tips you can get the better.

In fact, such is the demand for help in this area, that I bet there is more than one book being written under the title 'Help Me Save Money' and more than one Blog called something very much like that too.

******************

Hopefully you get the drift here and will be able to weave these 'personal' keyphrases into your pages using this simple technique.

More on convincing the Engines to List your site using Search Engine Optimisation tomorrow.

Writing Copy that Convinces Google to Rank Your Site

2009-12-18T10:30:00.003Z

This is the second in a series of blogs on how to write copy that will get Google to rank your site for your chosen set of keywords. Those last few words are however VERY important as you need to KNOW what keyword phrases you want to get found for, and that means either extensive Keyword Research, or Pay Per Click 'Reconnaissance Missions' (here you 'buy' the keywords you think may be good in phrase match mode and see how many times your ads are viewed. Done properly this is a very accurate way of determining the frequency that any term in used) or both.

Once you have the phrases though, you will have hit another problem, as fitting some of them into a sentence that reads well can be difficult if not impossible, whilst with others, yes you can fit them in once, but twice looks just too awful to the human reader.

The answer, use the 'blindness' of the Search Engine Spiders. They don't see punctuation, so you can use commas, and full stops etc, to make a sentence flow for humans whilst still getting your chosen phrase included, just as you want and need.

Some Examples:-

Phrase: - "Internet Marketing Articles"

Words on the page:-

Internet Marketing Articles

Today the interest in the online market place is hotter than ever, most businesses looking for a way to use Internet Marketing. Articles are a useful source of information here.

- In 2010, the advertising area that saw the greatest growth was you guessed it Internet Marketing. Articles on this can be found at www.forrester-research.com.

- If you are looking to increase your knowledge in the area of Internet Marketing, articles, blogs and Social Media sites provide a host of information.

- Some say, "If you want your business to thrive in 2010, you will have to embrace the area of Internet Marketing."

Articles can be found at www.serendipity-online-marketing.co.uk as well as many other trusted resources.

***************

As you can see by the bold text we have managed to string in 4 mentions of the EXACT phrase without looking too repetitive, the Search Engines simply not seeing the quotation marks, commas, full stops or even the line breaks.

More Next week

Want Good Rankings? Then Convince Google - Part 1

2009-12-17T09:02:00.004Z

Our previous posts have covered the issue about what SEO is all about. Is it trickery, all done with smoke and mirrors? Well the answer is that it should not be, and if it is, beware as Google have an army of engineers just looking for sites on the 'fiddle' and another army developing software to spot sites automatically. This should be enough to put the 'black hat' (those that practise SEO on the 'dark side') brigade off for life, but there are those who still stick to the creed, and good luck to them. But I for one am sticking to the white side of the line and am quite proud of my white hat (OK so it goes slightly grey at times).

So, having decided to stick to using only proper SEO techniques what do you have to do? For a starter, can I suggest that you look at our previous article on SEO, as this gives details of using the parts of the site in the right way. This however just tells you how to use the areas of a page, it does not give you knowledge of how to write the text in the right way, the right way of course being one that both engages the visitor and also speaks in a way that the Search Engine Spiders can understand.

When I say 'understand' I am not talking about not using javascript the wrong way or of not having all the text of a site in images (yes I have seen this done !) , but about how the words on a page are set out and used.

So How Do Search Engine Spiders Read Differently to Humans Then?

What a good question (glad I asked it) as it forms the basis of many of the 'tricks' that will be revealed over the next few days. When humans read a page, they will naturally take into account the punctuation and the layout, so when they see a line of text with a comma in it, or when a line of text is split by a line break, they will read this in the correct way, it making sense to the human brain. However, our friends the Spiders, just read the text as one long time, ignoring most if not all punctuation and line breaks.

This means you can write copy in a way that includes the keywords in the way that you want and still make it look good to human visitors (here by the way we take it that you know what keywords you are after, if not see our info on keyword research). Here is an example:-

Internet Marketing Services Hereford
SEO firms in the Midlands are much cheaper than London ones

This phrase tells the user that the page is about SEO in Hereford and that they can save money too, good for humans, but what about the spiders? They see the text as:-

Internet Marketing Services Hereford SEO firms in the Midlands are much cheaper than London ones

Which gives us the phrases:-

Internet Marketing Services Hereford
Hereford SEO firms
SEO firms in the Midlands

As you can see we get an extra phrase here 'Hereford SEO firms' being split onto to two lines as far as the human reader is concerned.

There are more ways that you can use this idea, so watch out for tomorrows tip.

SEO - Trickery? No - Convincing? Yes

2009-12-16T12:47:00.009Z

There is a lot of discussion about the relationship between SEO practitioners and the Search Engines, particularly Google. Some see it as a war between the two parties, whilst the others (the wise ones in my view) see it as a matter of co-operation. True the two don't see eye to eye all the time, the Engines wanting to get the very best sites listed for any given term, while the SEO professional just wants the site they are working on, on the front page, as that is after all how they make their money.

There is however a way of pleasing both of these groups, and in reality it is quite simple. All you have to do is have something interesting to say or sell and then say it in a way that the Engines understand.

These simple goals are however not always that easy to reach, many sites in reality having little to say or to offer that is different from the masses, which of course makes it difficult to get to that first base, the most important base which is to have GOOD CONTENT.

It is however possible (with a bit of work) to achieve this goal, but it will take extra time at the copy stage, and if you are selling products, you will have to look at creating your own product related descriptions and not use an xml feed (which will make your site look exactly the same as thousands of others), at least if you want these product pages to get listed.

So, with this bit of extra work on the copy, you now have to use it and lay it out in a way that the Engines can read and understand.

Trickery? No - Convincing? Yes

This leds me back to the title of this article, you see, Search Engine Optimisation is NOT about 'Tricking' the Engines. Instead it is all about 'Convincing' them that the page is worth listing.

It is much the same process as any salesperson will do with a customer, they don't (should not) trick the person into buying their products, but instead lay out the benefits of ownership, explaining that it will meet their needs, both in a way that convinces the person to buy.

It is just this process that is required with SEO. In the case of the engines, they after all just want to list a page that meets their needs, that is a page that matches the selected search term either in 'word match' terms or in terms of 'what that page is all about' (the latter by the way is increasingly being used by the Engines these days, they are getting very clever about realising that a page all about cannines is also all about dogs - even when the word 'dog' is not even on the page - another story here).

So how to Convince the Engines

The big question is thus, "So how do I convince the Engines then?" In basic terms this means:-

1 - Use the TITLE (the one shown at the top of the Browser, the META Title) to describe what the page is all about.

2 - Back this up by using the META Description and Keywords areas. True these
are not of great use in SEO terms, but the description could well be used in any
listing and a good one can make all the difference to getting a click through or not.

3 - Ensure that the 'on Page' Titles use the old fashioned Header Tags (

H1 - very important

through to

H6 - of minor importance

) as the Engines are under the impression that these are used to highlight the important words on a page (it all goes back to the early days of Printing and 'mark up languages' - yet another story).

4 - use the words you are want to get listed for (and words that are like those that you want to get listed for) in the body copy, the density of these being something around 2 - 4%.

5 - Interlink your pages in the site using these terms (again the engines take note of the use of links on a page and all those links too that page - whether from the same site or another one).

6 - Try to use at least 350 words on a page.

All of the above will help you convince the Engines to list your page.

Is there more to it than that? Well of course there is, the biggest area being that of Links from other sites, known as 'Off Page' optimisation. More on that later. But if you stick to these simple rules, you will get better listings, of that there is no doubt.

B2B Marketers Increasing Social Media Spend

2009-12-11T18:35:00.009Z

There is always a lot of talk about how important Social Media is these days, but todate, most commentators thought that only the B to C (those selling to the Consumer market place) would really be interested in using Social Media to any great degree.

The figures from the USA (data & images courtesy of www.emarkete r.com) tell a different story it seems, more than half of all B2B marketers expecting to increase their spend on
Social Media in 2010.

The percentage of those using SM at the moment is also up on last year, the rise being quite consistent throught late 2008 and 2009.

What is perhaps more interesting is that in 2009, only 14% were in fact using Twitter and just 18% relied on Blogs. Podcasts were the most popular (at 20%), whilst many had already started a user community in some way (33%).

As to why they are thinking of using SM, well it is not it seems to get sales (well at least in the short term) but instead it is all about being thought of as experts in their field, so that their name springs to mind first (rather than the competition).

To me this is very useful data and shows that there could be a huge amount of growth in the use of Twitter etc in 2010 as these B2B market types start to realise the potential for establishing their brand as the top dog (or should it be the top bird now?) in their market place. This being now especially important with the implementation of Googles 'Social Media Marquee' in the main results.

What is for sure is that there is going to be a lot of change in the Social Media Arena in 2010.

Don't do the Unexpected !

2009-12-10T10:44:00.003Z

Anyone who has read the 'Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe' will be aware of the term 'Expect the Unexpected' which as the books points out is a contradiction in terms. Another famous expression in the book is 'Don't Panic'. Both these phrases are of use when considering how to lay out a web page as they both have lessons to tell...

The problem is that even though web users may well expect the unexpected (you come across some strange things whilst surfing) they will in most cases not like it very much. So if you go and place your navigation on the right hand side of the screen, or in extreme cases have the user chase it around the screen with their mouse, they are likely to leave. In short people on the web expect things in certain places and that is as they say that.

As to the second term, Don't Panic, I'm afraid that faced with something unexpected or 'too hard' most users will indeed panic and leave your site. You are after all always just a 'click away from disaster' (disaster being in this case the user leaving before looking / buying) so my advice is don't push your luck.

The Moral of the tale is therefore to do things in the way people expect, that way you don't shake their confidence in the site and better still, you make it easier for them to find what they want on your site and that can only be good news for sales.

More Tomorrow

Google Adds Real Time Searches

2009-12-09T13:41:00.003Z

yesterday Google rolled out a major update to the way it produces listings, these now including 'real-time search results' to all and perhaps pushing Google further ahead of the other contenders in the SERPs market place.

Content is now indexed from content provided by
services such as Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook, presenting the results on the main search in a constantly updating marquee, see
the image on the right:-

Google say that they will apply their ranking algorithm to real-time results in the same way as it's ordinary results, with factors like the number of followers and retweets helping to determine whether results will appear on the homepage, all of which must be taking some computing power!

See for yourself by searching for your favourite TV show or sporting event . Whether it's an 'eyewitness tweet', a breaking news story or a fresh blog post, you should be able to find it on Google right after it's been published on the web

The arms race for real-time search really picked up pace in October, when Microsoft and Google both announced that they would be working to integrate Twitter's content into their search engines on the same day.

"I would say that real-time search is the natural evolution of universal search," said Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience at Google. However, Mayer added that instant search results had caught Google off guard. "I wish we'd had the foresight to see this," she admitted.

What does this mean for marketeers and those wanting to be in the spotlight (so they can sell their products or services) ?, well for sure it makes Twitter and its like more important than ever.

So keep Tweeting

More Tomorrow

Google and 2010?

2009-12-07T11:35:00.003Z

As the year nears it's end, the normal army of predictions appear on the horizon, be it the end of the world, the price of cheese is set to soar (a terrible prospect as I love cheese - another story) or some other 'crazy?' thoughts.

Sometimes however the person doing the predicting is someone that people really listen too and in the world of Search & Online Marketing, one of them is Matt Cutts of Google. On a recent interview (see it on Utube) he shared some thoughts.

In the interview, Matt, related that the processes that Google use at the moment are very complex (and not simply a 'word pattern' search - SEO 'trainees' take note) and that this is something that Google will be taking even further in 2010. They already have something called 'Google Squared'. Google Squared, in Google's words, takes a category and creates a starter 'square' of information, automatically fetching and organizing facts from across the web.

Basically it seems that 2010 is going to be about finding new sources of data to search in and to make the ways that the data is searched more efficient. Matt talked of this as determining 'what is really going on with the words in documents and in queries' rather than the words themselves. Perhaps this will be first in a line of changes that start looking at the 'quality' of the information in a source, rather than simply how many words it has in it and links it has to it (this has started already, but is far from perfected).

So 2010 is going to be all change, but that in itself is nothing new.

To sum it up just 'Hang on and enjoy the ride!'

More Tomorrow

Google Adds New Features to Analytics

2009-12-04T06:25:00.004Z

Google Analytics offers every website owner the chance to see what is really going on, on their site. Not only does it tell them where the traffic is coming from (which search terms or part of the marketing campaign) it also provides an insight into what the visitors 'do', what they like and dislike etc. Cleverly used, it can provide information on:-

1. What link they used to leave the site,
2. What documents they downloaded,
3. And at what stage they abandoned a critical form

However, nothing (especially on the Web) stays still for very long and thus Google have just announced some major upgrades. The major points are listed below, but for a full brief and some in depth information, visit the section of Utube dedicated to Google Analytics .

Major Upgrades

1. Analytics Intelligence & Custom Alerts

Using a rule based Intelligence engine, this part of Analytics monitors data patterns over daily, weekly and monthly periods. This brings significant changes in data trends and insights to your attention (when otherwise you may have missed them). Custom Alerts (for monitoring selections of data dimensions) can also now be set up

2. Expanded Goals

The old limit of 4 goals has been a problem for complex sites for some time now, however, the limit is now 20, much better.

3. Mobile Sites Support

Sites designed for mobile users (for the iPhone etc and when using Android mobile applications tracking) now have better support.

There is more of course and if you want the full picture you can visit:-

- Google's Analytics Help Centre
- The Conversion Room Blog
- The Analytics Help Forum

More Tomorrow

Facebook and Twitter + How We Got Them

2009-12-03T07:46:00.004Z

The whole area of 'Social Networking' is still quite new and is developing all the time, some call it a fad, others say it is the shape of things to come. Whatever, it certainly has the interest of businesses, especially those who want to make a bigger impact on the web.

First a bit of history on marketing.

In the 'old days' businesses 'pushed' their way into people's lives, using Radio, TV and newspaper adverts. Then, in newer times came the Telesales boom and more recently Email Marketing.

Then when the Internet got established and the Search Engines got their act together, people started Looking [Searching] for what they wanted. Businesses had to react by first getting themselves on the web (easy) and then making sure they were found (not so easy). Thus was the Search Engine Optimisation profession born.

Now however, things are changing again. That is not to say the old forms of advertising are dead (although they are not very well) but they have been superseded, first by the Internet and it's Search Engines and now by the latest form of buyer behaviour, that of subscribing and sharing.

Subscribing and Sharing.

This new Internet is called Web 2.0 and at it's heart is the notion to share news, views and thoughts to all that are interested. Hence the birth of Utube where you can see videos, posted by all and sundry on just about anything. Facebook and its like came next, places where you could go and chat and ask each other questions. Along with this change came the ability for people to subscribe to the 'news and views' that interested them.

Buyers today can therefore Search, Subscribe and Share (info going both ways in the latter case) to find the information they need before making a purchase. This is one of the reasons that 'Review Sites' are becoming more important (yet another story).

Where we are Today.

Whether the web drove the user or the user drove the web is immaterial, but today businesses wanting to make that 'impact' on the web have little choice but to embrace Social Media and that means Twitter or Facebook (at least today).

Twitter & Facebook - The Basic Difference

The basic difference beteen Twitter and Facebook is that the former is really a platform for saying 'This is what I'm doing today, or See this interesting thing' whilst Facebook is more like that cocktail party, where you mingle with whom you choose and have 'conversations'. In other words you have to engage more with others on Facebook, rather than just 'talk at them' like you do with Twitter.

This basic difference has a huge impact though. You see, whilst you can run a Twitter account with just a few minutes a day, running a Facebook account and 'talking' to all those potential buyers could and does take hours and hours. Yes of course you can always use it in a half hearted manner, but will that do any good if people are expecting more?

Whatever, using any type of Social Media is more time consuming than the other types of Online Marketing (yes, even more time consuming than SEO and that is saying something I can tell you), so if you are one of those looking to join the party, be aware of the time you will have to put in, at least if you want to be truly successful.

More Tomorrow

Articles and How They Can HELP SEO

2009-12-02T14:01:00.003Z

Writing articles and then getting them placed all around the web has been an SEO tactic for many years now. There has however been some talk that it's days are numbered, the word on the street being that Google has decided to treat the links in articles (when found in a an article directory) in much the same way as it treats those from FFA (Free For All) sites, ie it does not give them much credit.

I am not sure if this is true, but it is worth bearing in mind and means that you should think of trying a different tactic when posting articles.

Here are the things to bear in mind

1. Make the best of your articles and use a service like www.submityourarticle.com.

2. Post different variations of the article around the web (the site above offers an 'article leverage' service here.)

3. Find sites, other than the directories, that host articles and see if you can gt them to post your articles (they'll have to be good though.)

4. Don't forget the two greatest 'article' sites Wikipedia and Google Knol. It is well worth posting on these too.

So Article Writing & Posting is still worthwhile and taking the above into account will give your articles a fighting chance of helping your SEO efforts.

More tomorrow

Why Do Some Pages Get Ranked on Google and Some Not?

2009-12-01T08:09:00.002Z

I'm sure many people reading this will be thinking about this self same question in reference to their own site. It is as after all a very important question and the answer, if you can turn it to your advantage, one that could prove to be very valuable.

It is however, quite an easy question to answer, at least at a general level, the answer demystifying the oft said "black art" of Search Engine Optimisation. (I do however have to state again that this is a basic guide and does therefore not cover some of the more complicated issues of "keyword density", "deep linking ratio", "code to text ratio" and others, all of which have a bearing on the effectiveness of any web page).

To better illustrate the answer to this question, let me use an analogy to describe why some pages get ranked and some don't.

The Market Place Analogy

This analogy is based on an old fashioned market place, the sort when men with barrows come in and then shout out what they have on offer, you know "A pound of plums for 90p" or "Genuine leather jackets for £40", you get the picture. However, in my analogy these "market places" are set up by Google, one market for each vertical market. So you have one for boats and another for gardeners and another for houses for sale, and so on.

Now every one who wants to get into any of these market places can try regardless of what they sell, however, Google will be quite ruthless in stopping anyone it feels is not in the right market from getting in (however, just like any process this is not fool proof). This leaves countless thousands of "web pages" (not sites, but pages) that want to get in to sell their wares. Why, because to get in gives them a chance to be picked by those "Google Agents" who come into the market place looking for the best pages to list when someone searches for something to do with that market.

But getting into the Market place is only the first step, how do they get picked by the Google Agent for one of those coveted top ten positions??

The Rules of the "Google Marketplace"

To understand that, you must first know the "rules" of these Google Marketplaces.

The first and most important rule is that all web pages start at the back of the marketplace, which of course makes it very difficult for the Google Agents to "hear" them crying out their wares. As the sites to which the web pages get older, so does the web page move up the marketplace, getting nearer and nearer to the front (and thus more easily heard and picked for that top ten list).

However, there is some bad news here, as it is said by many and proved by some that Google, for reasons best known to themselves, erect a sound proof barrier in front of any very new websites page, effectively making it impossible to hear. These poor sites often have to sit behind this barrier and play in the "sandboxes" made available for up to 6 months (depending on the market place). True, there are ways of getting them noticed, but for the rest it is just a matter of time (and thus they go and pay another of Google's Agents who slip their names into the top ten list in the "sponsored listing" section, known as Google Adwords.).

For those who have served their time in the sandbox area, they at last have the chance to make themselves heard. But are they prepared, have they understood the rules of the game??

Two Types of Web Pages in the Marketplace

But what are the rules?? Well basically they are quite simple. For a start in that marketplace you will find two types of web page, one that is trying to catch the Google Agents eye for a listing place and the other, well they are saying, "go and have a look at this page, its all about x". The latter are of course "links" to pages from other sites, and because the agents listen to them they are, as you may have been told, very important. They can even get an agent to look into the sandbox area, especially if there are enough of them and or they are deemed important in their own right. The rules for these links pages are simple enough, they say "I represent XXX website and we are all about YYY. I'd like you to consider ZZZ website, they are very good at what you are looking for".

So much for these "link pages", but what of the normal webpage. What are the rules for them. This in fact is the most important part of this story, as it is these rules that make or break a webpage's chance of getting "heard" by the Google Agents.

So to the rules.

First, each webpage must only utter the words on its page, it cannot say anything else.

It first shouts out its Title (the bit in the blue bar at the top of your browser), here it can really boom out the words, which make them easier to hear. Then it continues down the page, saying the words on the pages, pausing when it comes to paragraphs etc. Whenever it comes to a Heading in a page or something in bold or italics it can say the words a bit louder, and when it comes to lists, it can pause between each phrase, all the better to make the words more effective.

It can also make it quite clear to the Agents that there are other pages in its own site that are very relevant (these being the internal links), all with the aim of trying to impress upon the agent that the webpage's website is very useful indeed and should therefore be listed.

The Unprepared Web Page / Site

So, what does the above mean to the unprepared website??

Well for many, although they have managed to get into the marketplace, they find to their horror that when it comes to shouting out their Title, they have to say "WM Cooper" and not "Plumbing Suppliers, Showers and Taps by WM Cooper", which if the agent is looking for plumbers to list is far more interesting.

Then when they come to the words on the page, they have to drivel on about "Welcome to WM Cooper website. We have been in business for 30 years and have 1000's of happy customers, come to us…", by which time the Agent has "switched off" and started looking elsewhere.

Now, if the words in the page had had a Heading of "Plumbing Supplies" and then read something like "We can supply you with taps, bathrooms, tiles, wash basins" and so on the agent would have been far more likely to listen.

Other sites have different problems, sure the webpage's exist, but they have nothing pointing to them inside their own site. Such pages are barred by Google from even getting into the marketplace, their argument being "there is no record of your existence on the website you are claiming to have come from, therefore you don't exist, please go away". Now of course such pages do exist, it is just that the "stupid" agents that Google employs cannot fill in the search boxes or use the tick boxes and press the "Search" button that it is presented with. Thus such pages fall at the very first fence…

Then again there are those unfortunate pages, that even though they are quite clearly, to the human reader anyway, all about "hotels in Portsmouth" do not actually say this on the page in any convincing way, in some cases the word "Portsmouth" may never even be on the page. Why, because the web designer knows that the only way that the page is going to be seen is when someone clicks on a link for Portsmouth hotels, so it just has to be all about "Portsmouth hotels" doesn't it? Well true, the Google agents will have noticed the link, but when it comes to that marketplace, if another thousand pages (and there could be a lot lot more) are all shouting out, in no uncertain terms, that they are about "Portsmouth hotels" who are they going to pick, do I really have to say more…

Thus it is only those web pages that have done their homework and who come into the marketplace prepared that win those coveted first page positions. Well that is true to a point, but we have forgotten those "linking" pages we spoke of earlier, just what part do they have to play in this saga? quite a lot actually, in fact it is now calculated that our friends the Google agents listen to the shouting of these "links" to such a degree that as much as 50 % of the reason they choose A over B is down to them. So that means it pays to get lots of links pointing to your site into that marketplace.

Google the Perverse

But be warned, Google, in a perverse sort of way, and knowing that people know it listens to the shouts of these links, will only listen if the website that the link is on is relevant to the site it is talking about (pointing to). In other words a site all about Florida Fish Farms will be of little use "link pressure" wise to a site selling Combine Harvesters, and vice versa. Also, just to spice the pot a bit more (as if it needs it) Google also keep an eye on the number of sites in a marketplace "shouting" about other sites, and if one site seems to get too many new sites "shouting" about over a short period of time are likely to get a wee bit suspicious. Is, heaven forbid, someone trying to make a site appear more popular than it really is….

So the market place is full of dangers, but basically it is "trick" free. If the pages of a website do their homework and make sure that they are really "saying" what they are all about, making it quite clear in the Title of the page as well as the headings on the page, have plenty of links and references to other pages in their site (and even ones outside it) and, just as importantly, get some links pointing to them and the other pages in their webpage, they WILL get listed. Do anything else though and be prepared to go on asking that question "why do some pages get listed by Google while mine do not….?"

is your Site SHOUTING the Right words?

2009-11-30T10:15:00.003Z

I penned an article way back in Nov 2007 on this subject, which is really all about 'putting the keywords into pages in the RIGHT way'. What I said then still holds true today (a fact that goes to show that the rate of change in how site's are ranked does not change as much as some would have you think.

So the question is Does your site:

1. Use the right words?
2. In the right way?
3. In the right place?

To answer the first question you need to have carried out some Keyword Research in order that you can identify the phrases that people are using, and can therefore, (bearing in mind the competition) chose which ones to target.

Once you have that list, you need to use them in the copy on the page, aiming for a density of between a 2% and 4% (percentage of time the words are used on the page), whilst, and this is important, still making the page readable.

Using them in the right way is a bit more difficult as for best effect you need to include the phrases in the order that they are used, in other words don't split up a phrase if you can avoid it. More importantly, you need to put these words on the page in the right way. To explain, imagine that you are reading a newspaper that instead of using HEADLINES to show what is important on the page, used the same size text (with no bold etc) on its pages. You can imagine how difficult it would be to see at a quick glance what the main topics were. This is exactly the problem the Search Engines will have with your site UNLESS you use the (old fashioned) HTML Header tags, H1 to H6.

HTML is a form of 'mark up language' and has it roots (interestingly enough) in the world of print, the 'mark up language' being the way of telling the print setters how to layout the page and what fonts etc to use. Thus the Header 1 tag (H1) is the MAIN header, whilst the H2 is the next most important, all the way down to H6.

So, think of the Search Engines as someone looking at your pages in the same way as those print setters, they NEED to be told what is important and THE ONLY WAY of doing this (in the page copy at least - see later) is to use the HEADER tags (and to a lesser degree the Bold, Italic and List tags). Oh and by the way, if you are worried about using the Header tags because it will compromise the look and feel of your site, don't worry, you can over ride their appearance using style sheets, ask your web designer about that one.

So, you have dealt with the copy on the page, but you have still missed the Biggest Trick and that is the TITLE of the page, not the one on the page, but the one in the Browser Header Bar (the bit in blue). This is the most important bit of real estate on a page as far as Search Engine Optimisation is concerned, as it 'tells' the Engines what the page is all about, so choose it carefully, bearing in mind:-

1. It MUST match the copy on the page
2. The first words are the most important
3. Only the first nine will be used by the Engines

That about wraps it up at the initial level. There is more of course, such as the rule on prominence, but more on all that later.

Is Your Site a Black Hole?

2009-11-27T08:59:00.002Z

Is your site a black hole where visitors arrive and then are never seen again? Do you know what they did there? What they liked and disliked? If they started the shopping cart (or enquiry system) and then left half way through?

Today, thanks to Google's free analytics (always worries me that, Google giving something away - but that is another story) many sites now can tell a lot about what their visitors get up to. Whether this data is used correctly is (yet) another story and we won't go down that route today, no let us concentrate on whether ALL the data that could be collected IS being collected.

The difference between a Black Hole a Grey Hole and a White Hole

As above, many sites are now using analytics and will therefore not have a black hole for a site, but they probably still have a grey one as they are not using Filters, Tagging and Event Tracking, all three of which will add a whole new dimension to the data collected and will allow you to better understand what is going on. Used correctly you can see Everything and your site becomes not black or grey, but bright white (at least data wise).

For instance, did you know that with 'Tagging' you can split your visitors into the right groups, those coming in via a Newsletter being separated from those coming in via Banner ads etc.

With 'Event Tracking' you can see if people click a 'mailto' link to send you an email, or to go to another site. Better still you can use it to see at what part of filling out a form users stop, something that could save you a lot of lost business (cause you would know what they did not like and could therefore change it).

Filters on the other hand allow you to see the data in clearer fashion by only collecting data on a particular section of visitors, plus, they can also be used to 'filter out' visitors from your own business etc.

As you can see, there is a whole lot more to Google analytics than meets the eye.

The question is, is your site a Black Hole a Grey one or one where you see it all..?

More tomorrow

Bounce Rates and Your Home Page

2009-11-26T08:45:00.004Z

If you are amongst the group of website owners (or webmasters) who use Google Analytics (or another analytic tool) one of the first things you will be looking at is the 'Bounce Rate' (the number of visitors that come to the site and leave straight away, think about it in the same way as a shopper going through the door of a store and then turning right around and leaving without looking at what was on the shelves - not something that would fill the owner with confidence if it happened a lot !).

This Bounce rate is probably the most important statistic there is as a high bounce rate means that people are just not getting the chance to see what you can do for them, which means you have lost a potential sale 'EVERY TIME someone Bounces'.

Now don't get me wrong NO site has a zero bounce rate, and the rate will vary tremendously depending on how the visitor got to the site (e.g emails sent to a list of qualified customers will (should) always result in lower bounce rates than visitors from the Search Engine results), but if you have a high bounce rate then you are in trouble, that's a fact.

So how can you improve matters?

The first thing I would do is to check the download time of your site and see if it is this that is causing you issues (these days people will often leave sites that take too long to download). Tip, if you want to be really clever you can also make changes to your home page to see if it is downloaded in full every time, quite useful to know if you are having doubts on the matter. You could also see if users with particular browser are leaving more than others (here a sign of incompatibility with the browser).

However, once you have checked all these 'technical' issues, the next step is to ask yourself three questions:-

Does your Home Page

1. Tell Visitors WHO YOU ARE?
2. Tell Visitors WHAT YOU OFFER / DO?
3. Tell Visitors WHY THEY SHOULD BUY FROM YOU?

If your site does not do these three things correctly it could well be the reason your visitors are leaving, without looking around the store, in high numbers.

So go check it out, just off to have another look at mine now too....

More tomorrow

PS If you have not got analytics of some sort on your site, get it sorted now! You are really missing a trick as you simply won't be able to tell what the important people - your potential customers - think about your site and how they are reacting to it.

Don't Forget Bing When Building Your Links..

2009-11-25T09:09:00.002Z

There is not a lot of 'chatter' on the SEO street about the rules that Bing uses when assessing a site for ranking, but Rick DeJarnette of Bing Webmaster Center has come up with some advice in the form of some dos and don'ts of link-building (for Bing.)

As you would expect, this advice is not a lot different to Google's, but it is always good to get news from the 'horses mouth' in areas like this (getting it wrong could be fatal).

Bing views links in a similar way to Google, placing emphasis on the 'quality' of links when determining rankings. Rick is however at pains to point out "Just don't make the mistake of believing it will result in instant gratification. Successful link building efforts require a long-term commitment, not an overnight or turnkey solution," adding, "You need to continually invest in link building efforts with creativity and time."

So What Should You NOT Do

Do any of these and there is a good chance that your site will be closely reviewed by one of Bing's 'quality engineers'. The penalties were also spelled out by Rick "When probable manipulation is detected, a spam rank factor is applied to a site, depending upon the type and severity of the infraction and if the spam rating is high, a site can be penalized with a lowered rank. If the violations are egregious, a site can be temporarily or even permanently purged from the index."

1. So don't increase your links too fast as this smacks of 'artificial' engineering. Yes, I know you can go and 'buy' a 1,000 (non paid) links in the form of blogs and forum posts, just don't do it overnight!

2. Beware of having too many inbound links from irrelevant blog comments and forums.

3. Never use hidden links in your pages

4. Avoid the paid link farms, link exchanges programes and any other "bad neighbourhoods" on the Web

5. Be careful who you link out too. Remember as this is far more easily controlled by the website owner, so a lot of mistakes here can really get you into trouble. Thus linking out to 'known' web spam sites is a no no (I always check sites to see if they are in Google's index, if they are not then they are probably 'trouble' and not worth linking too anyway.)

What You SHOULD Do

1. Develop your Brand and ensure that relevant industry experts, product reviewers, bloggers are aware of your site and it's content and encourage them to link to you.

3. Use Online Press releases

4. Publish 'expert articles' on the many online article directory sites available

5. Try to participate in as many conversations on blogs and forums that are relevant to your site, using links / your ID script to refer / link back to your site (when applicable).

6. Use the social networks in order to increase the 'footprint' of your site / brand, but here ensure you have links to your site in all your profiles.

7. Use E-newsletters and to notify all of the new content on your site and keep both the site and the E-newsletter fresh and informative.

8. Have a blog or forum on your site, or at least linked to the site.

All of this is not really news to any search marketer who has been around the block a few times, but if you are new to the game, following this advice will help your rankings on Bing and Google and that can't be bad now can it?

More Tomorrow

Google's Caffeine Update & Site Speed

2009-11-24T11:44:00.003Z

There is a lot of talk about the new ranking algorithm update due from Google any time now. According to Matt Cutts this update will not be rolled out in full (only one data centre will be operation) until after Christmas and even when it does it will not make that much difference.

The other thing that is on the cards, one that could really make a difference is all about the topic of site download times. Here Google's idea is that the web should be fast and that it will therefore give faster sites better rankings than slow ones. In other words slow site will be handicapped in the race (just like the favourites are in horse racing). The moral here is of course, make sure your site is fast (and not all Flash - some designers please take note) and just to help, Google have provided a set of tools for you.

Check out the video on http://videos.webpronews.com/2009/11/13/matt-cutts-interview/

For details of the speed test and other add on's for Firefox see:- http://code.google.com/speed/

More tomorrow

Less can be More when Conversions are Wanted

2009-11-23T09:22:00.002Z

You may have heard the phrase 'less can be more' before and it is true on the web too.

One of the best examples of this is having too much 'going on' on the home page of a site. This I'm afraid can just confuse people so much that they either forget why they came (distraction being the issue here) or cause them to get so fed up trying to make out what you do or what they do next, that they simply go away.

This 'simplicity' is said to be one of the reasons that Google is so popular, as unlike Yahoo it does not clutter up the screen with anything other than the important bit, the space where you type in what you are looking for. Bear this in mind when you are designing your home page. Ask yourself, 'why has someone come to my site and how do I best serve them?', crack this and you will see an increase in conversions.

The second issue on conversions is also about clutter, but this time it's about the number of products you display on each of your product pages. Tests have shown that decreasing the number of items from 9 to 6 can increase the conversion rate by as much as 6%. Why, well it is reckoned that people can (a) see the product more clearly (it has more room on the screen and thus is bigger) and (b) they are not as confused about which one to pick. Either way, sites that have employed these tactics have seen an increase in sales.

More tomorrow

The Two Type of Visitor

2009-11-20T08:16:00.003Z

When it comes right down to it, there are basically two types of visitor to any Ecommerce website, those that will look and look for what they want and those that will 'go and ask'.

This mirrors people's behaviour in the shops when you come to think of it. Many shoppers prefer to drift around a store, glancing at the directory signs to see if they can spot where they need to be (just like you do on the navigation bar of a site), looking in the different isles (on the web = pages) until either they get fed up and walk out (click to another site) or find what they want and potentially buy it. These shoppers are of the 'We'll do it ourselves' variety and can well be put off if approached by an assistant (or by an 'annoying Can I help you?' chat box appearing on the screen).

The other type of shopper will make a bee line straight for customer information or the nearest assistant and ask where what they want can be found. In the shops it is highly likely that the assistants will be able to point the shopper in the right direction, often taking them to the item themselves, all very helpful. On the web however it can be very very different. On the web the helpful shop assistant is replaced by the SEARCH box.

The first thing that the 'I will just ask' web shopper has to do is to locate the Search Box. More often than not this is on the top of the screen and is easily found and often has the word 'SEARCH' in a button by it. This is great and makes it easy to find and better still you know what to do next, click the button. Some such boxes are not however that easily found and may have a magnifying glass icon instead of a nice big button. Now I'm not saying that people don't 'get' the connection between the icon and the action, but remember not everyone is a Sherlock Holmes fan and may not therefore associate the icon with the action 'to search' so beware and keep it Simple.

The next potential pit fall on the web is the quality of the Search Results. This is totally dependent on the quality of the programming behind the search facility and in many cases the results are far from helpful, being incomplete, inaccurate, poorly laid out and in extreme cases leave the user thinking 'so what do I do now?' which in web terms is always, always a very bad idea.

So, if you have a Search Facility on your site, you MUST ensure that the results are true and accurate and that using it all is like falling off the proverbial log. If you can manage that you will have gone a long way to increasing conversions on your site, after all, we have all turned into 'I will just ask' shoppers at sometimes in our lives.

There is however one more trick that the wise website owner should know about when it comes to the Search Box, more on that in the next post.

Increasing PPC Conversions

2009-11-19T08:18:00.002Z

I attended an interesting Webinar yesterday run by our friends Google. It was all about how making small changes to a website can really increase conversions.

One of the most important points was that of 'Disconnection' (my term not theirs) . This refers to the fact that many adverts say one thing and then deliver the visitor to a page that says another. The example they gave was 'buy an electric drill for £88.99' and then be taken to a page that only mentions drills from £100. The 'Disconnection' here is obvious and visitors will often just leave at that point (the figures prove it).

What you HAVE to do is to ensure that things mentioned in the advert are on the 'landing page' AND THAT they are clearly visible (best to smack the user in the face with it in my opinion so they can't miss it) and not buried somewhere on a page full of other products etc.

Improving the 'Connection' between your adverts and landing page will reduce the 'Bounce' rate by as much as 20%...

If you would like some assistance with a troublesome PPC campaign, please see www.serendipity-online-marketing.com

More tomorrow...

Link Building using Articles

2009-11-18T11:40:00.002Z

There is talk on the SEO 'street' that using Articles for links is now a process best forgotten, the buzz being that the Engines have now decided that the article engines (where most articles end up) are just another form of Free For All (FFA) links site. As you know, such sites (indeed to some degree also pages on sites that are just a list of links) have been to all intents and purposes disregarded by the Engines for some time now, so if this is true, is it worth all the effort and expense of placing articles on the web?

The fact is we don't know for sure what is in the mind of Google etc on this matter, but we can take steps to make sure that our articles work where the competitions does not, the result here being that we still get traffic and rankings and they don't.

How is this done, well it is a three stage process.

Make sure that the articles you right are original and worth the time it takes to read them
Make sure that you don't submit exact copies to a whole list of sites, cause if you do Google's 'Duplicate Filter' monster (a nasty beast) will 'get you.'
Do some research and find sites that want articles and then contact them directly.

Follow these three simple rules and you'll find that Article's are far from dead in the SEO world.

Link Building for SEO

2009-11-17T11:32:00.002Z

There is a lot of talk at the moment about the way that link building strategies are going to have to change again now that Twitter and Facebook and other Social Media websites are in the market place and, and this is perhaps the major factor, that Google and Bing are climbing into bed with them so very readily.

Talk is that Tweets will be a part of the algorithm used by Google when deciding who to rate for what, other talk is that it will soon be all about Branding. Both of these may well be true and further examination of this critical area is needed.

If you are interested, then please see our online search engine optimistation articles.

Twitter and the Stock Market

2009-11-16T12:21:00.004Z

It may be a funny thing to say but there are ( or could be ) similarities between Twitter and the Stock Market. Why so I say this, well, it is a fact that computer systems are used to track the fortunes of shares (are they going up and down?) and that in many cases, decisions to buy or sell these shares will either be made by a computer (or at least suggested by one). The price of shares will therefore be to some degree or another decided by computers. Now if these computers make their decisions based on the market place and this to a degree is effected by other computers you could imagine that shares could go up and down like mad things, all with little intervention from humans, a few of whom may have unwittingly 'started the rollercoaster' by the purchase or sale of a critical amount of stock.

Now I'm sure that there are safeguards about this in the Financial Sector (well OK I hope that there are) but what about Twitter...

With the automated software you can get today, you can easily 'tell it' to go and follow hundreds of accounts and they, if they are using similar software will no doubt follow you back (even if only for a short while). The outcome of all this automation will no doubt be more followers (I can prove that) but are they 'real' people or is just a computer reading the tweets?

As you can see, computers are used in both areas in big ways, let's just hope that Twitter does not suffer in the same way as the Financial sector just has..

Social Media Workshops

2009-11-13T07:35:00.001Z

Seems that the number of Social Media Workshops on offer today is rising by the minute, some are free, others can cost you £600 for a two day course. The question is are they worth the money, or are they (especially the free ones) just designed to show the attendees that the job is just far too hard for them to do and they'd best leave it to the 'professionals'

Having been in the SEM world for nine years now, I know just how difficult it is for anyone trying to understand what it is all about, after their skill sets are different, so courses can be useful, but what do people really get out of them, do they follow up the time spent at the course with great Tweets and Facebook pages, or is the time wasted.

Also, how many just decide to leave it with the 'professionals' like Serendipity Online Marketing?

Love to know...

Silver Bullet or Not?

2009-11-12T08:54:00.000Z

In the world of SEO, the search has been long for the famed 'silver bullet' the thing or method, that would enable anyone to take a site to the top of the rankings and get all the traffic (and hence sales) that they wanted.

Of course, you'll hear many people say that they have just that, but most (all?) are just after your money, their book, program or training course really being about making them money not you.

And now there is Twitter and everyone is falling over themselves to use it saying this it IT, The Way to make it happen.

So is Twitter that famed bullet?, I think that the jury is still out and it's true value won't be known until all the 'hype' dies down. Some (albeit few experts) are already talking about the 'emperors new clothes' but we will have to wait and see.

New Source of Info on SEM & SMO

2009-11-11T18:10:00.000Z

There is a lot of hype at the moment about Social Media Optimisation and as expected a whole host of information about it all, too much for most people to read, let alone assimilate.

To this end, we'll be doing our best to provide some snippets from it all, thus giving you, our reader a chance of understanding what is going on....

We'll be doing our best here, but it is not going to be easy.

The best advice we can give at the moment, is don't be sucked in by the hype until you have had a chance to consider all the factors.

Until later...