Blekko – New Search Engine – Quick Review
July 29th, 2010 by Peter CullenQuick review of the new Blekko search engine.
Have you had a chance to check it out yet?
Are Search Engines More Trustworthy than Social Media?
July 22nd, 2010 by Peter CullenThe rise in conversations about Search and how Search is evolving are growing. The debate focuses on whether Google will be superseded by Facebook and will Social Search take over from traditional search?
The core argument for me is, are searchers more likely to trust a faceless search engine or is your average searcher more likely to trust their social graph, i.e. family, friends and colleagues?
Some empirical insight into this question comes from the recently published Digital Influence Index June 2010. The report found that…
Internet users tend to look at many sources when seeking information, not relying on one source, apparently believing the truth is something average to the information found on those outlets
The report goes onto say…
While most Internet users look to individuals and their experiences in online conversations and Internet postings, they do not trust everything they read. In fact, they tend to reply more on information from government or company sources than on what is posted by other users
What can be taken from this insight? I guess the first question to ask is where do people find our about new things today? Do they search for new products/services by asking their social graph or do they do the digging themselves?
As the quote above indicates people use several different sources. This question of ’sources’ and the impact a source has on an individuals decision was further investigated in the Digital Influence Index report. The graph below shows how sources of information have an influence on consumers making decision.
Information Sources - Social Search vc Search Engines
In 7 out of 9 categories, a search engine was the most trusted source of information.
Look at the numbers for Social Networking Sites in the chart.
So we know that Facebook has just topped the half a billion mark in users, but as the meteoric rise of social media continues unabated, the question that should be asked is,
…As Social Media companies grow and become more of an influence in our everyday lives, is there a similar rise in trust people have in the users on these systems, or are more and more people piling in to be part of the phenomenon without really understand what they are becoming part of?…
Let’s take a step back.
What always surprised me about Google and it’s rise to search dominance, was the fact the most people (i.e. those outside the online marketing industry) always put a lot of trust and confident in the faceless search engine results page.
Ordinary people trusted the results that were delivered to them as an independent measure of value.
When Google talks about it’s algorithm it uses words like trust, authority, reputation, page rank, high quality. Matt Cutts and his team are constantly looking to evolve the Google algorithm in terms of putting more and more emphasis on quality, the independent quality of their organic search results is what makes Google Google. Check out the short 3 minute video below showing Matt talking about this topic.
Now, back to Social Search. There can be no question as to the rise in popularity and reach of social media, what is in question is what information sources do people trust?
Do users on Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn trust their social graph? This question for me is more about the fundamental nature of people and less about the functionality of any particular social media site.
Ask yourself the question, and be honest, do you trust people you are connected to online? If you’re like me, you probably don’t really know most of the people you are connected with, sure you may know them in a casual business sense, but would you trust them? Would you trust them to give you a truly independent view of a new product or service you are checking out? Maybe?
According to the data returned by Digital Influence Index, if you’re from the US, there is a 15% chance that you trust information that is provided by other internet users. Compare that to a 27% chance that you trust information that is provided by companies and a 26% chance that you trust information that is provided by the government.
Trusting Web Information Sources
Think about a recent business event you were at, a face to face event. Think about the people you met, had a conversation with, exchanged business cards. You later connected with that person on LinkedIn and are now following them on Twitter. You’ve exchanged a few tweets and posted a couple of comments ( that were replied to) on their blog. Happy days, you have a new member of your social graph.
Question: Do you trust that person?
Do you trust them to give you an independent analysis of something you’re working on? Assuming you’re not paying them of course, would you trust them?
This, in essence, is the key question that needs to be answered when people debate how social search is going to take over from traditional search. Do you want your social graph to dictate what you see, or are you looking for a truly independent view of the world, a view that is not influenced by the unavoidable bias (positive or negative) of human nature?
What are your feelings about this? Do you trust your social graph? Do you trust search engines?
Like what you read?
Website Conversion Rates – One Tip to Double Your Conversion Rate
June 30th, 2010 by Peter CullenWhat one ongoing change could you make to your website that might double your website conversion rate? What one single change might transform your business?
Amanda Simmons posted a decent blog over at Search Engine Land today outlining 5 Tip to Improve Conversion on B2B landing pages.
One of these tips really stands out for me and from what I’ve seen it’s of the most underused conversion rated task that businesses engage in online.
Think about your local high street for a moment, or stores at the local mall or shopping center. Have you ever stopped and taken a long hard look at the shop windows you pass every day? Have you noticed, (maybe you have sub-consciously) how the shop windows change from season to season, Summer, Winter, Autumn, Spring? Even mid season changes seem to be becoming more and more fashionable. What are the the shore owners doing? Why are they changing their shop windows every few weeks? It amazes me the time and effort even small store owners put into changing their window display.
Why do they do it and what’s it got to do with my website?
Obviously the reason they change the store windows is that they are trying to attract you into their store. They are trying to stand out from the competition and show you something that is more compelling. I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve seen people stop at a store front and be lured in by what’s in the front windows, special offers, sales, new season range…etc.
These store are always trying something different in the hope that more passing trade will be lured into their business. They are always testing new ideas, new concepts. The more creative they are, the more they stand out, the more people are attracted to their store.
Now, let’s turn this around and ask you a very simple question – ‘How often do you change your website store front?
How often do you take a critical look at your website and think about what it is saying. What is your website trying to sell?
How often do you ask new/existing clients, ‘What was is about our company in particular, that made you do business with us?’ How often do you take this feedback and communicate it on your website’s homepage (store front). What you are trying to understand and condense here to a few simple words is your value proposition. You’re trying to answer the question that is on every new prospects mind, ‘Why should I do business with you, What’s in it for me?’
Amanda gives a great example of the value proposition from rhapsody.com, shown below.
Another great example of a company experimenting with their homepage is Google, take a look at two of their early homepages.
or what about this one…
and eventually of course to the super streamlined, very user friendly current homepage…
The one thing that can and will double or triple your website conversion rate is testing.
Testing different calls to action, testing different value propositions, testing different images.
Get one thing straight about your homepage, your traffic doesn’t care about you, about your company, about how many awards you won. They only want to know one thing – How Can You Make My Life Better?
Start testing today and start measuring the results. A/B testing is the way to really make an impact on your online sales. Getting tons of traffic is great, getting tons of traffic that is converting in ever increasing numbers is the key to stellar success.
So, what’s the problem, why is every company online not engaged in rigorous testing of their homepage and their value proposition?
Honestly, I don’t know. At Interleado we change our homepage about once every quarter, probably should even be more frequent than that. Maybe those responsible for your company’s website lack the time or motivation when it comes to improving your sites conversion rates.
What would happen to the store on the high street if they didn’t change their store window? Would they be losing customers by failing to keep up with the changing seasons?
What’s your thoughts? Why are website conversion rates so poor and why do many business not change their web store front?
Have you been involved with a company that continually evolve their value proposition on their homepage? What results did you see?
Search Engine Marketing Ireland – Who’s Responsible?
June 29th, 2010 by Peter CullenAs part of a recent marketing campaign, Interleado have been talking to a lot of companies in Ireland about their website.
Three very clear pictures emerged from our campaign about the attitude Irish companies have to their website…
- In larger SME’s it often very unclear who is actually responsible for the website. The IT function invariably get landed with the responsibility of talking to anyone about the company’s website requirements.
- When there is a non-IT person tasked with looking after a company’s website, very often this person has other responsibilities and find little time to actually develop a clear plan for marketing their company’s wares successfully online.
- There is still a lot of confusion when it comes to understanding the differences between organic search activities, paid search activities, Local Search..etc
Naturally the first question is, ‘Is it only Ireland that has a problem with defining internal responsibilities when it comes to Search Engine Marketing?’
I’d like to get your feedback on this one. From my our own experience, similar issues exist with UK companies, but not with US companies.
Let’s take a look our three findings and tease them out.
The IT Guy Approach to Internet Marketing
When a company gets a new website, the IT guy is sometimes landed with the ongoing responsibility of managing site. This can be anyone from the IT Director to the tech support guy. Probably because it’s seen as a more technical role, what with the ftp details, uploading changes, domain registration, email related issues, spam fighting – it’s all technical right?
The obvious problem with approach is that the IT will only ever look after the IT related stuff and will never get involved in thinking about promoting your latest products or services. I think this approach is maybe a legacy of the days before content management systems (CMS) . Before the days when anyone who would write a sentence in Microsoft Word could edit a webpage or even god forbid develop a new page from scratch.
Some of the CMS solutions on the market today are very easy to use, the likes of Wordpress or Joolma spring to mind, but some still leave a lot to be desired in terms of usability for the complete technophobe.
The marketing executive approach to Internet Marketing
Picture the scene! You have a very competent, very experienced person that is key to your business. You have faith in them, proven years of loyalty to the company. Everyone is talking about the web, everyone’s getting business from the web these days, we need to ‘up our game’ on the web. The only thing we need to decide is who will look after our new web strategy.
Who’s going to be the internal champion for our new strategic online marketing plan? Who can we trust. Who wants the responsibility? You have a management meeting and you decide to give it to a member of your team that is doing a great job on the marketing side of things. They have proven themselves in supporting the sales guys over the last few years. They know the company inside out and know the customers. You give the responsibility to Jane.
Now, notice I said you give the ‘responsibility’, not the job. This is inevitability where the problems starts, because now Jane not only has to continue to deliver on her existing responsibilities, she now is responsible for marketing the company online. Can you guess where Jane is after 3 months? Frustrated?Annouyed? Left the company?
What happens is that nothing happens. Jane’s primary responsibilities will always win out over the new online marketing responsibilities. What also sometimes happens in this situation is that nobody is quiet sure what responsibilities one person has over another. The IT Guy looks after part of the website, Marketing another, Sales another, Support another. You end up with nobody really taking the responsibility or managing the development of the business online.
I know this is changing and more and more businesses are appointing staff whose sole responsibility is to manage the online marketing of the company, but I still get the feeling that there are many many companies who are still trapped in the traditional sales and marketing roles that have dominated the last 30 years.
The advertising approach to Internet Marketing
If you are running an advertising campaign with Google Adwords, or Yahoo or Bing, does this mean your business is running an Internet Marketing campaign? Let me put it another way, if your business is targeting 25% of the online market, are you running an Internet Marketing campaign, or are you just dipping your toe in the water?
Internet Marketing, like everything else these days is becoming more and more fragmented. Putting all your eggs in one basket is selling your business way short. Internet marketing these days is so much more…
As the channels to market fragment, so does expertise. It very hard to get one person who knows everything about marketing your business online. Point three is really a fallout from point one and two where nobody rally takes the role of online marketing seriously and you get an ad-hoc approach and possibly the easiest approach to getting visibility is taken. Running a small Google Adwords campaign takes very little time to setup and manage. Running a successful Internet Marketing campaign takes, time, money and serious management backing.
Can you identify with any of the cases above?
Have you been in that situation before?
Are there cultural differences to how business run their business online?
Is Traditional Publishing on its way out?
June 25th, 2010 by John Trenaman- What direction is Traditional News Media going?
- Recent Developments of Leading Publishing Companies
- The Future of Online News Media
- New York Times & Financial Times Online Strategies
Now that the web offers nearly infinite ad space, display advertising has become a commodity and newspapers find it difficult to compete with ad networks that specialize in more efficient, targeted advertising packages across multiple platforms.
With the increase of different online search applications, we see more people turning to online resources to find instant real time information. Consumers now use several different media sources when searching for information on the web. Where does this leave traditional publishing companies?
According to Mashable, last year ad spending on newspapers was down 9.7% (magazines were down as well), while Internet ad spending had increased 7.5%, as did TV (up 10.5%) and radio ads (up 6%). The future doesn’t look any better for print, with Internet revenue set to overtake newspapers by 2014 or possibly sooner.
With new improved devices such as the iPad, smartphones, laptops and netbooks , there is no doubt that younger generations are more tech savvy and increasingly mobile.
The convenience of digital distribution means that many consumers no longer need or want newspapers or other forms of print media.
With mounting print and distribution costs and the loss of classified advertising revenue to websites like eBay, Craigslist and Google, traditional media is losing ground.
According to Mashable, in the States alone, Newspaper revenue fell by 28% in the first three quarters of 2009, after declines of 17.7% in 2008 and 9.4% in 2007.
As the number of subscribers dwindled, so did the value of print ads on a per-ad basis. Weekly news magazines suffered to a lesser extent; between 2002 and 2009, Newsweek lost 25% and Time lost 18% of its subscribers, while U.S. News & World Report closed its print edition and moved its operations fully to the web.
Recent Developments of Leading Publishing Companies.
As print media revenues continue to dwindle traditional media companies are beginning to look at partnering with Internet marketing companies in order to move into the online marketplace.
McClatchy
The McClatchy Company is the third largest newspaper company in the United States, with 30 daily newspapers, 43 non-dailies, and direct marketing and direct mail operations. McClatchy also operates leading local websites in each of its markets which extends its audience reach. These websites offer users comprehensive news and information, advertising, e-commerce and other services.
The McClatchy Company has recently been offering WebVisible’s online marketing solution to local businesses in several markets, including Kansas City, Mo., Tacoma, Wash., and Fresno, Calif.
The program has been so successful (advertising sales in March were roughly five times higher than the previous month) that McClatchy and WebVisible are planning to add new markets every month through the end of the year.
The move gives McClatchy’s local advertisers the most efficient way to get found by customers no matter how they’re looking — in newspaper listings, newspaper web sites or search engines, or via mobile phones or navigation devices.
Together with its newspapers and direct marketing products, these interactive operations make McClatchy the leading local media company in each of its premium high-growth markets. By using Web Visible the McClatchy Company is embracing the shift in advertising from traditional publishing to online media platforms.
Gannett Local
Gannett has recently become the latest to hop on this seismic shift in advertising trends. The USA’s number one publisher recently opened GannettLocal, a small business marketing division based in Phoenix.
They will be selling online marketing services to small/local businesses and those services include SEO and local search marketing
GannettLocal chief Brad Robertson: “GannettLocal is a new business model focused on working with small and medium sized business to provide them a high-touch marketing consultation and a suite of multiplatform solutions (search engine marketing, e-mail, digital display, website, and geo-targeted print/flyers) delivered by a team of dedicated experts over the phone.”
The Future of Online News Media.
It seems the only way for news publishers to survive is by investing resources into innovation online. However, many newspapers while moving to the online marketplace cannot ignore the fact that their audience expects to read their news for free.
Experiments and testing has started in terms of looking at the behaviors of news consumption with digital and interactive forms of storytelling. More importantly, business models are needed that will help generate revenue while still keeping regular traffic flowing to these news sites.
The advice of Financial Times editor, Lionel Barber is; ”figuring out what is special, distinctive and original about a news organisation’s content and focusing on that in terms of charging.”
Many people believe that these companies may need to come up with new methods of advertising on their sites as the online marketplace is also being squeezed. If they don’t act soon, the future could look bleak for many of these news publishers.
What to do?
Some news media websites have tried using Paywalls in the past to charge people for reading their content, but these rarely worked and in many cases have lead to a huge decrease in online traffic to various news media sites. The simple fact is, if people need to find out information on the web they will go somewhere else and find it for free.
In January 2011, The New York Times will go behind a paywall. However it’s not a complete paywall, it more like a regulator for allowing only a certain amount of articles to be read for free during a given time period.
This regulated paywall is currently being used by the Financial Times and is described as a “metered system”, whereby visitors are limited to five articles per day before being prompted to pay for further access.
Whilst other publications fiddle with adapting their business models to mirror that of the Financial Times, it must be remembered that FT occupies a unique position in the market, enjoying the majority of its circulation amongst businesses as opposed to individuals.
It’s unlikely that The New York Times will remain one of the most-linked-to news sources on blogs or other social media platforms in 2011 if a paywall is in place.
The big question remains to be answered – Would you pay to see news articles from your favorite news sites?
What online news sites would you pay for? What ones would you not?
Like what you read?
Mobile Phone SEO-How is it Evolving?
June 21st, 2010 by John Trenaman- What is the future of the Mobile Web
- New browsing habits & Information Sources
- Your Mobile SEO Strategy
Mobile Web Evolution
The mobile web is growing at a rapid pace, and the way in which people browse it is becoming very different from traditional desktop browsing.
People trying to build up a web presence on the mobile web must realize that the majority of your mobile audience are usually not looking for the same information that your desktop audience is looking for.For this reason it is becoming increasingly hard to create a mobile SEO strategy for your business.
Before the introduction of Smartphones, mobile advertisers were confined to the small screens of traditional mobile units. Web access was unappealing and expensive/ slow web pages on those phones often consisted of nothing more than a few hyperlinks and some text.
The introduction of the iPhone has changed the way we surf the web on our mobile handsets. Mobile web browsing has been brought to a new level of functionality thanks to the introduction of a full touch screen HTML browser. Now, the use of the web on mobile handsets devices has started to make more sense for both smart phone users and advertisers.
Click here for a broader explanation of the Mobile web
The Future of the Mobile Web:
Lately we have seen a huge increase in Location based and real time searching on mobile handsets. More and more applications are being used to browse the web in different ways as opposed to just using Google as the only means of search.
How/Where does this leave advertisers to access their web audience? Do they stick with Adwords and organic search techniques or do they find new & different ways to boost traffic to their websites via mobile handsets.
Following Google’s recent acquisition of AdMob, they have introduced “Click to Call” ads. Your business ad now shows up in the SEPRS on the mobile web but there is a clickable telephone number link that connects directly to the business via your Smartphone.
This proves that a lot of people who browse the web are looking for instant information or “on the go” information and may not even want to enter a website.
Most search applications on smartphones are now using your GPS location to give you more personalized and real time search results. Also, with new “check-in Apps” like Foursquare and Gowalla you can now advertise directly to an individual’s mobile when you know they are in a nearby location of your business. This is making Mobile SEO increasingly hard to track and analyze.
These applications are bringing mobile SEO to a new level, where businesses can track down potential customers based on location, instead of having to wait to be indexed in Google’s SERPS (search engine results pages), where they might not ever be found. These “check in” Apps, could be the way of the future for many advertisers. It brings about a whole new meaning to localized searching.
Foursquare and Gowalla are the two most popular “check-in apps” out there at the moment, with Google Buzz attempting (but failing) to capture some of this market too.
The thing about Foursquare and Gowalla, and these check-in apps, is that they create a connection between yourself and the merchant (business owner). It tells your friends where you are, and then in the aggregate, it tells the services like Foursquare and Gowalla what places have the most activity about them at any given time.
With potential customers sharing their locations means businesses can provide a real-time call-to-action to get them inside their establishment while they’re nearby. Search marketers can utilize location with APIs.
Foursquare is beginning to take off in some major cities and has over 1million users worldwide with ten “check- in’s” per second. Business owners are getting great visibility by interacting with potential customers who are in their locality and reeling them in by offering them discounts on certain products.
For more information and examples of these “check-in” apps click here
Does this pave the way for more methods of “on the go” or location based advertising techniques? Do people have similar browsing habits while on mobile phones when compared to desktop searching?
New Browsing Habits & Information Sources
Downloadable search applications for Smartphones have different input mechanisms that can make them more fun, more interactive or more useful, and in many cases, the results tend to be more specialized and provide more information than a regular mobile web search.
Mobile Search Applications are altering mobile SEO. Mobile searchers are actually turning to mobile search applications instead of web search. These include search applications like WikiTude,UrbanSpoon,RedLaser,Trip Advisor,Yelp and Shazam and many more.
For more info on these search apps click here
As the web quickly becomes more mobile and social than ever, we see these kind of Apps filling voids that were mostly left empty throughout the history of search and social media. We see more and more people not using web browsers on mobile phones, they just use different Apps associated with different websites due to their ease of use and quicker download time.
With Apple dominating the Smartphone market, other well known mobile phone brands are constantly playing catch-up. This is due to the popularity and functionality associated with the Apple brand and its hugely popular iPhone. The new 4G iPhone is due to be release next month, with Mashable announcing yesterday that the first batch of devices available for pre-order were already sold out.
Your Mobile SEO Strategy:
Mobile SEO greatly differs to traditional desktop SEO methods. A lot of questions are still being raised about how mobile sites are indexed. Mobile search engines do not index your website for search in the same way as your traditional desktop search engines would.
Whether you create a separate mobile site on a sub domain of your existing domain or you create different css style sheets for different mobile devices, it’s important that website owners understand that your mobile audience usually wants to see very different information than you desktop audience.
Most popular social media websites or any websites that have a significant user interaction on desktop devices still saw it fit to “trim” down their existing sites and introduce handy Apps. This allows mobile users to use the main functionalities of these sites while chopping out all the extra information that is not seen as hugely relevant to the mobile market or that could contribute to slower downloading time or rendering issues.
By making your website more appealing to mobile search and attacking rendering issues on different mobile devices you can greatly increase your chances of being found for different key word searches.
For more detailed information on how to tackle Mobile SEO you can check out our webpage devoted to exploring how to create a mobile SEO strategy for your business.
This webpage goes into more detail about rendering issues across multiple handsets, best practices for mobile SEO, as well as all the risks involved with mobile SEO including content duplication and different ways of getting around it.
Read more about your mobile SEO strategy here
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Social Media Audit – Is your Website Utilizing Social Media?
May 25th, 2010 by John TrenamanIn this Posting we will examine:
- How to Integrate Social media with your website
- How to get better Rankings using Social Media
- How make your website more interactive
Your Blog
In one of our previous posts we talked about the importance of content syndication. By producing well planned, informational blog articles you can achieving good rankings for both medium & long tail keyword phrases in Google’s SERPS.
This not only helps create brand awareness through organic search. If used correctly, your blog can be used to syndicate your website content to many different sources all over the web.
First of all, to maximize your websites visibility,your blog should be attached to your domain name. Frequently, I see companies that use external blog URLS’s on Blogger.com or Wordpress.
For example, they might have www.myblog.wordpress.com. Implementing a blog this way is only building the authority of the Wordpress site. When you eventually migrate to your own hosting solution, e.g. www.mydomain.com/blog, any backlinks you’vre built up will be lost when you migrate!
Search engines and people like fresh content. If you are starting a company or personal blog, try and get into the habit of posting an article once or twice a week. This is obvious right? Of course it is, but starting and maintaining a blog is not something you should get into lightly. You need to set aside 3-4 hours per week to research, write, edit and publish one or two really good articles. If your company is starting a new blog make sure that the person responsible has enough time within their diary to actually write the content.
If you produce good content, the page rank of your blog URL will increase over time from people linking back to your articles. When your page rank increases, any additional internal cross linking and other link strategies become much more effective, leading to greater visibility for your website.
Open Source CMS:
Joomla and Wordpress are two of the most popular open source content management systems (CMS). Many websites and blogs run on either Wordpress or Joomla because they are flexible platforms with large user support communities, and they’re free. They allow you to get access to some great plug-ins which can really create a different methods of customer interaction on your blog page.
In terms of choosing a publishing platform, I would highly recommend Wordpress as my preferred blogging tool. It’s really easy to integrate with your website. The learning curve is very gentle and as it’s open source there are tons of plugins to enhance the functionality of the tool.
You can even design your own webpage or blog themes for different content management systems using a program called Artisteer. It’s really easy to use and when you’re done you can simply extract the theme as a plug-in and upload it to your server.
Some of the social media plug- in’s you can implement in WordPress also really help with content syndication, allowing you to build up a huge network of followers and help promote your brand off your website.
By installing Twitter and Facebook plug ins your can help spread good “word of mouse” campaigns across different social networks, making your website content visible to people all over the web.
It might be a good idea to set up both email and RSS applications on you blog page too. Feedburner is the most common RSS application.This brings your news and articles to your audience, instead of them coming looking for it.
The SERP’s are competitive enough as it is, so if someone reads an article that they like on your blog, they should be given the option to receive regular updates from that blog.
Twitter
We all know how powerful Twitter is. Anyone that reads one of your blog postings or views an interesting webpage should have the option to tweet (syndicate) that URL to all their followers.
When you check your web analytics you’ll be able to check how many visits you received from Twitter , right down to the actual individual piece of content.
Twitter can give a specific webpage even more visibility on its network with some of its recent developments, including Twitter Search and Google’s Real Time Search.
Twitter search is great for people searching for “real time” content.Its quite a handy PR tool in that sense too. You can now see any fresh content that is tweeted in a matter of seconds without having to wait for Google to index it! Try searching for recent tweets related to your business using Twitter Search.
Real time search is now becoming a big feature on Google’s organic listings page. When you search on certain topics you will now see a live feed of tweets that are related to that topic. See below for an example.
You can also track each tweet using Hootsuite. This application also has a handy PR tool which will allow you to see who is mentioning your brand across the Twitter Network.
Twitter is now integrated with Social Networking Giants’ Facebook and Linkedin. So when you “tweet” it can automatically go straight to both your profiles on these social sites.
If you produce a good article there’s no telling how many times it can get tweeted. The more places the article appears, the more chances it has of being re tweeted.
Images
Image optimization is another strategy that is often overlooked. Flickr is one of the best online photo management and sharing applications on the web. Anything you upload onto its network should really be traceable back to your website.
Flickr acts as an “image search engine” and can be very effective in driving traffic to your website. If you tag your images appropriately when you upload them to Flickr or any other photo sharing website, you will increase your chances of being found for different keyword searches on these websites..
You can also attach your Facebook or Linkedin profile information to images on the Flickr Search network, making even more sources available for people to see you brand when they search for an image related to your business.
Video
YouTube is now the second largest search engine on the web. In recent posts we discussed how important it was to optimize your Youtube tags. Any videos that you make for your business, should be uploaded to Youtube and easily traceable back to your website.
More and more people are beginning to explore brands on YouTube . People are now using it as a learning center. Whether it’s companies promoting their brands, or individuals just reviewing different products, Youtube is becoming a huge information source for web users.
With Google’s new interface, vertical search engines (images, video, blog, news) are going to used even more. SEO professionals tasked with doing a website audit are going to have broaden their scope to include all areas of online marketing, not just on-page and off-page SEO.
Bookmarketing
Social bookmarking allows web users to search, share, organize, and store the bookmarks of different web pages. This can be done publicly or privately (in private groups), or a combination of the two.
People who are allowed to view the bookmarks can view them using a variety of different functions to sort and tag them. If used effectively, social bookmarking can have a very positive effect on the visibility and authority of your website.
The tagging and descriptions used in bookmarking is referred to as external meta data and can have huge benefits in SEO, because the information used in the tagging is not controlled by the site owners, but by the public.
In essence, the information in external meta tags can be much more valuable than external inbound link anchor text.
Remember, if a social bookmarking sites uses nofollow links, then your website will not gain the link juice benefits from back links.
However, don’t overlook the power of social bookmarking, especially for the major sites which use No Follow, because their tags and external Meta data can still be used to qualify and classify major sites.
Del.icio.us and StumbleUpon are two of major social bookmarking sites to join because even if you don’t get the long-term link benefits of a No Follow, you’ll have the long term benefits of external Meta data, votes and traffic.
Facebook enables you to create a buzz around your product or business in a familiar environment for the customer. Having your Facebook integrated with your website is very beneficial for increasing its visibility. This has been done up to now very successfully via Facebook Connect.
Any webpage on your website that has a frequent flow of traffic should have the Facebook Connect icon on it. It’s a simple way of branding your website at absolutely no cost or effort.
The “F share” button is also a useful icon to have beside any blog posting on your website to allow readers to syndicate your content to all of their friends on Facebook with just the click of a mouse.
Due to the recent implementation of Facebook’s new “Open Source Protocol“, we saw it fit to implement the Facebook “like” button to all our blog postings. Facebook seems to be heading on the direction of creating a Social Search Network, so why not jump on the bandwagon early!
Your Faebook page will also usually rank very high in SERPS. Sometimes even higher then your website for certain keyword searches! So waste no time in setting up a presence on this Social Networking giant.
Some Social Networking sites like LinkedIn have the “follow” attribute enabled so you can put your company website on your public profile and your website will gain some benefit due to LinkedIn’s high authority.
You can also engage with your industry specific audience by starting discussions or posting news articles in the appropriate groups. This can generate a huge amount to traffic to your website.
I’d recommend you download Hootsuite. This free piece of software provides you with a very efficient way of posting links to LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook at the same time. This saves you time and effort by not having to log into your accounts in all of these sites and post your links separately.
Slideshare
Slideshare is another great way to increase you brand awareness. This allows you to upload different presentations which can then be traced back to your website. Its integrated with Facebook and Linkedin now also, giving you more channels to show off your presentations to different audiences.
What about your experience of Social Media? Have you or your business used it successfully? Was it to drive sales or customer engagement?
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SEO Audit – 5 Key Areas Every SEO Website Audit Should Look At…
May 20th, 2010 by Peter CullenLast week I blogged about the evolution of Google and how this evolution is forcing web marketers to broaden their definition of a website audit. This new Web Business Audit included all elements of an online businesses marketing activities, including:
- Visibility
- SEO
- Usability
- Product/Service Promotion
- Email Marketing
- Online Advertising
- Social Media
- Analytics
Web Business Audit
In this blog post we’re going to ask the question, ‘What should a SEO Website Audit look like? Let’s expand the SEO node above to explore the key areas, including:
- Keyword research
- Content Analysis
- Website Authority Analysis
- Webmaster Tools
- Code Quality
Keyword Research
Keyword Research and Analysis are the foundation of any SEO Audit or ongoing SEO campaign. A business needs to know what keywords they are targeting otherwise any search engine traffic sent their way is more a result of accidental marketing rather than focused SEO effort.
A lot of businesses can judge success in the search engines just by seeing their website returned when using the company name or a brand related keyword. If your brand is big enough this maybe is enough, however even big brands are missing out on search engine traffic opportunities. Consider the difference in traffic between a number 1 position and a number 3 (five times less traffic) or a number 4 position (7 times less traffic).
Choosing the right tool(s) to do keyword research is one of the first steps you need to take. We wrote a blog about these last week, comparing some of the more popular keyword tools.
Content Analysis
How do you audit content? There are two ways of auditing your content and how you approach this task will probably depend on the size of website or organisation you are doing the audit for.
For very small sites and companies, where the content is updated infrequently and mostly by the same person, the major focus will be looking at how optimised the content is.
For larger businesses and websites, where you have several departments and multiple content developers, as well as looking at the content in terms of how well optimised it is, you should also ask to review the existing content development guidelines that the company issues to their employees (if they have one!).
You may also want to review the content management system these larger organisation are using and review whether it is SEO friendly.
What content related factors should you be looking to report against as part of the audit?
- Font – What’s the best font to use on your website? Some may say it’s probably quite a subjective thing, but an independent authority on the subject have listed Arial, Helvetica and especially Veranda as one of the most effective fonts designed for reading text on website.
There is an excellent article explaining the differences in web fonts here.
- Content Length – How much content should be on each page? Should your articles be long, short? Firstly, let’s get one thing out of the way – keyword density - forget about it! The important thing about your content is that it is easy to read, from a human perspective.Remember that your typical searcher has the attention span of a goldfish! Writing long sales type pages of content is not going to engage your reader and won’t endear you to potential clients.
- Visual Layout – If your message is clear, concise and easy to take action against, users will be more likely to trust your brand. Sounds easy right? Think again. Good design is hard to implement as competing stakeholders can insist on adding their ‘bit’! For guidelines on how to approach designing your website, check out, ‘The Golden Ratio in Web Design‘ article from Net Tuts
- CSS – Although Google no longer has strong recommendations about the size of your page, having smaller pages results in faster load times and lower abandonment sates. Do faster load times for web pages influence search rankings?
- Content Uniqueness - Do you or your company develop content that is unique? If your content in the eyes of the search engines is not ’unique’ enough, then your web pages will probably not manage to get listed in their indexes! But what is unique content?
- 30-50 unique words that form unique parsable sentences that other sites/pages do not have.
- Unique html text content – not unique with just different key verbs or nouns. Replacing key geographical terms on pages hoping to target different locations is not going to do you any favors!
- Unique title and description tags.
- Unique image/video/audio content. With Google’s recent change to their GUI, vertical search engines are going to become more and more important in terms of sending traffic in your direction.
- Optimised Content – Now this may sound like the most obvious thing in the world, but make sure your target keyword(s) are actually on your web pages, and check for the following SEO text factors
- Keywords in title and description tag
- Keyword in breadcrumbs (if possible)
- Keyword in heading tag
- Alt Text set on images
- Different types of tagged content, e.g. audio, video
- Appropriate ’on topic’ external links
- Internal links to targeted pages with link text using keyword
- Keyword(s) used in opening paragraph of body text
- Keywords in bold or strong tags
- Keyword used in page name, e.g. www.mydomain.com/keyword1.html
- Existence of sitemaps, both on site and uploaded to Google Webmaster Tools
- Duplicate Content – There are two main types of duplicate content. The first is content that has been scraped illegally from websites and re-trashed into a new page. The second type of duplicate content is when a website has two or more versions of a web page – same content , different URL’s. As part of an SEO audit you can check for duplication as follows:
- Check to see if your non www version of your website 301 redirects to the www version. Type into the command line of the browser, http://mydomain.com and it should return www.mydomain.com
- Check to see if there are pages on your website that have duplicated content. As part of an SEO Website Audit how would you check for duplicate content issues on this website?Check out the short video below to see how you might do this. We’ve picked a random search phrase , ‘new laptop battery‘ and picked a random website, http://www.laptopbatteriesshop.co.uk/
- Geo Location – Less of an issues these days. but if your target market is in the UK, then ideally your website should be hosted in the UK. As I said less of an issue these days as having a .co.uk domain can do well even if hosted outside the UK. If you have a choice though, I’d go with hosting in your main target market country.
What about code to text ratio? The less code you have on a web page, the easier it is for a search engine to crawl and index the page, right? The CSS Zen Garden recommends separating your content layer from your presentation layer.
Website Authority Analysis
What should you be looking for here? Well, you want to find out:
- How many backlinks a website has coming into it
- What is the quality of those backlinks?
- What countries are the backlinks coming from
- What rate the backlinks are coming in at
- Where are your competitors getting their backlinks from?
Numerous tools available to check this sort of stuff, from free tools in Yahoo Explorer to our very own SEO Workbench.
Webmaster Tools
Both Google and Bing have tools that allows you to identify crawling issues with your website and manage your indexed pages.
Some of the things you can do with the Webmaster Tools:
- Upload a site map, gives you the opportunity to list your website pages for the search engines
- Manage any change of address – domain name changes, not office location
- Set preferred target countries
- Find out where and what pages are getting listed in the search results pages
- What keywords do the search engines associate with your website?
- Diagnose crawl errors
And many more cool things. As part of your website audit, getting access to the webmaster tools can really help diagnosing SEO issues.
Code Quality
Alway no harm to check the quality of a website code, both the html and CSS quality. WC3 allows you do both from here:
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
So what about your experience? What else would you include in your website audit?
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Keyword Tool Options-Which one to Use?
May 14th, 2010 by John Trenaman- Keyword Tool Comparisons -Which one to use?
- Inconsistencies of different Keyword tools.
- Where do Keyword Tools get their keyword data from?
How to chose the right keyword tool
There are so many keyword tools out there I’m beginning to lose count! They all have strengths and weaknesses, none are perfect by any means! The challenge is trying to find out which one suits you best and which one will help you succeed with your Internet Marketing Strategy!
Each keyword tool uses different datasets which provide you with the keyword data that you are looking for. Some use only a fraction of the data when compared to others which can lead to inconsistent keyword data being returned from different tools.
Keyword research is the foundation of any successful SEO campaign. Using the wrong keyword tool can limit the opportunities for your business and may result in choosing inappropriate keywords. If you have never used a keyword tool, you should ask yourself the following questions:
- Which is more accurate?
- Which one has the functionality that suits you best?
- Is there one Keyword tool that is more intuitive than another?
The most productive thing to do, could be to use a mix of 2-3 different keyword tools and develop your keyword strategy decisions based on pooling the data and functionalities of all three together.
Try using the strengths of each product while also being aware of their inconsistencies. Explore the different functionalities of each tool and try to find out as much as you can about the dataset they use, i.e. where do they get their data from?
As we’ve said a Keyword research task is the foundation of any internet marketing strategy. All website strategies are built around different keywords as they define your target market . It’s essential to keep up with changes in keyword trends and find those keyword niches that are going to drive targeted traffic to your website that results in sales.
Just quick note on that, what type of keyword phrase are searches using? The graph (stats from Hitwise) below gives a very good insight into how searches search and the impact for online sales:
Keyword Phrase Length
You can see that as searchers evolves, they are using longer and longer words in their search phrases. This is an important note to keep in mind as you develop your keyword strategy.
The purposs of keyword research is not just about finding out which keyword phrases people are using in their everyday searches and choosing a selection of those to target for your website.
It’s also about new keyword generation, discovering niche keyword strategies and drilling further down and finding as many different variations and descriptions of different keywords that will help drive more traffic to your website.
Let’s have a look at a few different Keyword tools including; Wordtracker, Wordstream, Google’s Keyword tool and KeyWord Discovery.
So where do they get their data from?
Let’s start with Google’s free keyword tool. This tool allows you to generate keywords by either pointing to a website directly or by typing in keywords, either way will result in a list of keywords with monthly stats.
Google Trends allows you to view up to five years of trend data on searcher behavior. The Traffic Estimator provides insights into potential traffic and predicted CPC for a given keyword.
All of Google’s tools only pull data from Google’s database which is the biggest by far! Let’s face it, there’s not many search engines or news portals that are not on the Google Network at this stage.
Some keyword tools like Google’s tend to return results that are more focused on what is most popular instead of maybe giving you some good ideas for potential long tail keywords. It’s these long tail keywords that are most likely to open up new niches for your business and help you grow sales.
Just because a keyword has a high search volume doesn’t mean it will be worthwhile to try and rank highly for. I thought the Wordtracker KEI was useful in that respect, because I was able to just concentrate on keywords that had a higher probability of ranking highly for rather then just seeing lists of very popular and competitive keywords.
In some cases some inferior keyword tools pull data from small meta search engines with very limited data sources.
Wordstream boasts that it aggregates over 1 billion unique keywords, representing over a trillion search queries and hundreds of millions of related terms from diverse keyword sources including search engines, Internet service providers and browser tool bars.
This huge database enables them to supply thousands of long-tail keyword suggestions – far more than most subscription-based tools like Key Word Discovery or Wordtracker.
That’s great if you’re looking for keyword suggestions, but what if you want the exact number of searches that people carry out on a keyword? Google’s keyword tool is probably the most comprehensive in this field.
You need to make sure your keyword tool gets it data from both major and minor search engines, and will give you data from a variety of heavily trafficked sources.
Word Tracker boasts that it has a keyword database of over 350 million queries and an advanced keyword suggestion tools.
It also has some useful search features like; datasets from book listings on Amazon, web page count information from Google, listings information from eBay, web site usage information from Alexa. But again, how accurate are these? Take a look at the following examples:
When I did a broad match search on the populatity of the key word: iPhone using the Keyword Discovery eBay listings search Tool it showed the following results:
How could there only be 923 searches for the term “iPhone” on eBay in a whole year. Yes, it does show that this particular keyword is significantly more popular then others underneath it but I would imagine its no where near the real number of times people did a search for “iPhone” on eBay in the last year. So why have this functionality? Is this not misleading for a Search campaign?
In terms of keyword suggestions and keyword idea generation, Google doesn’t compare with some other keyword tools. The “drill down lists” that Wordstream will provide for you are astonishing. If you’re looking for keyword suggestions it will bring back thousands of key word variations in both broad and specific categories, you can then email these lists to yourself for free.
Using Wordstream I can use the related keywords to build out a better keyword list than I can get from WordTracker, alone, and perhaps, from Google’s Keyword Tool – which is more focused on sales.
Lets see how key word data can be inconsistent on different keyword tools. If I search for the term “Swimming Pools” in Keyword discovery, Wordtracker and Google’s Keyword tool what will happen?
I used Keyword Discovery &WordTracker for searches on “swimming pools” for the past year in their so called “Google Databases“:
I got these results:
- Wordtracker: 2,240,000 per year
- Keyword Discovery: 806 per year (how could there only be 806 searches for “Swimming Pools in Google for one year)
I then did the same search in Google’s Keyword Tool for one month and 2,200,000 searches were done.
This just shows you how much less data some keyword tools use when compared to others.Thats not to say they are useless, they may have a lot of other useful functionalities for keyword research such as competitor analysis and suggestion tools. In terms of Search Volume results though, I think Google’s Keyword Tool is the most comprehensive!
KeyWord Tool Comparisons
I prefer Google’s Keyword tool or Wordtracker to a lesser extent because it has a significantly larger number of search queries in its database. As seen above when you are using Keyword Discovery, you are only getting the numbers (KEI, Count) for a tiny percent of the total number of search queries on all search engines. This is due to inability to access the same information that Google has access to regarding keyword searches.
There really isnt much between Keyword Discovery and Wordtracker. Keyword Discovery does provide more search features and returns a larger keyword list. It’s also better suited to people building AdSense sites, but Wordtracker has been around a long time and has many admirers.
Wordstream has gone for a totally different approach. It offers the same keyword suggestion capabilities as Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery, and similar tools, but layers on keyword analytics, keyword grouping and organization, and integrated content authoring tools.
From what I can see its almost like a content management system for keyword campaigns!You also don’t have to pay for keyword lists unlike both Keyword Discover and Wordtracker.
Being able to link your AdWords account allows you to automatically push the changes you make in Wordstream directly to your AdWords account, saving both time and money. You can also set up Ad campaigns and set bidding prices for PPC campaigns in Wordstreams interface.
Its integration with Google Analytics means that the keywords you research in AdWords will be based on actual keywords that people are searching to find your site. That in itself makes the keywords entered into AdWords more relevant, reduces guesswork, and eliminates the need to input your keywords into AdWords manually.
With its Keyword Niche Finder Tool, marketers can type in terms related to their business and receive a list of the most popular and relevant keywords for their websites, along with the most interesting keyword niches or clusters.
Marketers and website owners can leverage the results from The Keyword Niche Finder to build and structure intelligent website information architectures or create new subsections of their existing sites to drive traffic and collect new business opportunities.
After doing this research I’d probably use Wordstream for keyword generation and for setting up and managing niche keyword strategies. Id use Google’s Keyword tool for providing me with the comprehensive search volume results of keywords which not many other keyword tools can accurately provide.
Have you used these Keyword Tools? What other tools do you suggest? How many keyword tools would you use for the same campaign?
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Website Auditing – 5 Key Areas Your Website Auditor Should Analyze
May 12th, 2010 by Peter CullenWhere should a website audit begin? Should it be more accurately called a ‘web business audit’?
With Google new interface being rolled out this week, vertical search engines (images, video, blog, news) are going to used even more. SEO professionals tasked with doing a website audit are going to have broaden their scope to include all areas of online marketing, not just on-page and off-page SEO.
No matter what the size of your business online, a website audit should now begin to look at all aspects of your online marketing efforts, including
- SEO
- Visibility
- Usability
- Social Media
- Analytics
Website Audit Components
When starting the Website Audit where should you begin?
Benchmarking where you are now is always a good starting point. Before you start getting into the nitty gritty of what might be wrong with your online marketing strategy, take the time to look at your online landscape.
I would recommend that the first area to look at is the visibility of the business online. Online visibility, in the traditional sense, meant looking at the keyword rankings for a website. I think this approach needs to be evolved, you should be digging a little deeper and might want to start looking at the following areas:
- Search Engines
- Rankings
- Bing
- Yahoo
- Target Keywords
- branded Keywords
- Indexed Pages
- Rankings
- Social Media
- YouTube
- Flicker
Website Audit Visibility
Finding out what your website’s visibility is in the search engines is easy enough, you can manually check the rankings or use software like the SEO Workbench.
But what about your visibility in terms of indexed pages? How do you find out if a search engine has indexed all your pages? Some may argue that this component of the website audit should reside in the SEO section, but I think it’s important before you even look at the website, to find out what the search engine think about it in terms of indexed pages.
To find out how many of your websites pages are actually indexed in the search engine you simply go to any of the search engines and type in the command, site:www.yourdomain.com
It’s interesting to see the difference between the search engines. I tried this command for the domain www.getslipcovers.com and these were the results:
- Google 91 pages
- Yahoo 39 pages
- Bing 146 pages
How many pages are actually on this site? It’s actually quite easy to find out using a web crawler, one that you’ve configured yourself! Seriouly though, there is a really quick to intsall and relatively easy to understand web crawler at WebSPHINX
According to WebSphinx there are 39 pages on Getcovers.com. As part of a website audit, the natural question to ask here is where are all the other pages coming from in Google and Bing?
If you actually try to go through Google’s and Bing’s SERPS to find what the last pages indexed are, you’ll find that both only allows you go as far as page 4 and Google reports 36 pages, while Bing is at 25 pages – interesting!
Why is that? Why would the search engine report a larger number of pages on an initial search and then only give you access to a few?
The larger number of pages are all the pages that a search engine has indexed from a website. When you dive a little deeper, it will only return those pages that the search engine deems to have enough quality.
In this case the search engines are reporting more or less the actual number of pages on the website. The thing to look out for when doing this yourself or getting someone else to do it for you, is are the search engines only indexing a small portion of your website? If they are, you can start looking at ways to address this. Maybe it’s an issues with your internal linking, or navigation?
After you have your benchmark in terms of visibility for pages and pages indexed, next you want to audit your Social Media visibility.
How do you find out (for free!) what people are saying about your brand online?
- Twitter
There are numerous Twitter clients available to track what people are saying about your brand, here are some:-
- Hootsuite (My favorite)
- Pluggio (New to me, but looks very interesting)
- TwirlOr, you can just query Twitter itself at http://search.twitter.com
If we use the example from above, www.getslipcovers.com lets see what Twitter returns. In this case nothing is returned , so not a lot of activity on Twitter for getslipcovers.com. Interesting though, if you do a search for ’slip covers’ on Twitter , quite a lot of activity, and consequently quite lot of opportunities for getslipcovers.com to engage with people who are talking about ’slip covers’.
- Google Alerts
This service from Google allows you to get notified when your brand or website, or any keyword for that matter, is mentioned on Google’s vast network. You can get notifications from the following sources:-- News
- Blogs
- Web
- Video
- Groups
Google Alerts
This is an incredibly powerful (free) service that lets you keep track of your major keywords and brand names.
- YouTube
This may not seem like an obvious one, but YouTube is the second most searched on ’search engine’ on the web!Search for your company name or brand name to see if people have tagged videos with your keywords. For our example above, ’slip covers’ on YouTube returns 870 results (videos) for this keyword term.
- Flickr
Another website where you may not think of looking, but again, doing a keyword search on ’slip covers’ returns 6,186 results. Again, could be a good place to find people who are using images tagged with your brand/products and maybe you don’t like it? - LinkedIn
This is more competitor analysis than social media monitoring, but you can find out who your competitors are for chosen keywords and see what they are up to on LinkedIn. - Facebook
Again more competitor analysis, but very useful to keep close to your community, acting essentially as customer service online.
Lots of free opportunities to find out where people are mentioning your brand and what they are saying about you. Visibility uncovery should be a major part of any audit of your business online.
In the next post we’ll look at the next step in auditing your online business and find out what are the important components of a the SEO audit!
What areas do you think are important when auditing a business online?
Do you think Google’s new interface is going to change the way you audit a business?
