Since coming into the market last year, Bing has helped Microsoft improve its market share in the search engine market by offering users something different. Microsoft wanted to see what users thought of their new venture, and so enlisted the help of a qualitative research firm to study if Google users were willing to switch to Bing. The firm recruited 15 Google users and simply asked them to use Bing exclusively for one week. They did not tell them the study was sponsored by Microsoft.
The study revealed that of the 15 Google users who participated, 10 confirmed they plan to switch from Google to Bing. Their experiences are shown below:
There are a myriad of factors to take into consideration when optimising a website for search engine visibility which leaves things wide open for mistakes. It’s important to consider that all the actions you are taking might not all be beneficial to your cause. Each and every day we deal with excited and proactive clients with whom we love to work with but can rush into some SEO activities without consulting us which can be detrimental to their campaign. ‘Think then act’ is best policy. If you don’t know if the changes you are making to your website are going to be in its best SEO interests then seek out the expertise of your friendly E-Web Campaign Manager to help you out. If you don’t have access to a wealth of SEO knowledge such as that then check out the following list of common mistakes to avoid when managing your SEO campaign.
1. Failing to plan to continually work on SEO endeavours and just making a ‘once-off’ effort. SEO takes time to regularly analyse and make appropriate changes to keep the site evolving and fresh
2. Changing mind mid-project on what keywords to target
3. Impatience - not giving enough thought that an SEO campaign is a long term strategy and results won’t be evident in the first weeks or even months (in competitive markets)
4. Failure to do proper goal setting and not establishing required target to get ROI
5. Not using the valuable data available from a concurrent PPC campaign to monitor converting keywords
6. Failing to have any form of conversion tracking software on the site to see what keywords are the ones that you have to go after
7. Allowing keyword choices on the basis of “the MD checks this every day”
8. Chasing unrealistic keywords for your budget
9. Choosing keywords from internal industry-speak rather than consumer-led terms with actual traffic
10. Not reviewing keyword choices to understand where your site is failing to convert visitors and why
11. Stuffing content with unnatural frequencies of keywords
12. Creating content that has no value to human readers and fails to back up your market messages
13. Placing a large block of keyword-stuffed “seo content” a mouse scroll below the footer on the home page
14. Not using the correct 301 response for old content that has moved to a new URL
15. Failing to label images with relevant alt attributes containing keywords as appropriate
16. Not using other properties you own (parent company websites, partners etc) to direct keyword equity to your target site
17. Going for link volume rather than looking at quality
18. Using ‘click here’ and ‘read more’ as default choices for internal links, rather than more descriptive phrases containing keywords where appropriate
19. Deploying lots of inline Javascript and CSS and increasing the site’s download time
20. Denying access to spiders through Robots.txt
21. Not keeping the SEO company in the loop with changes to the company’s wider strategy
22. Allowing web developers to build/change things on the site willy-nilly without informing and consulting with SEO
23. Not responding to requests for information and content
24. Not ensuring that SEO recommendations are implemented as fully as possible
25. Blaming SEO partners for falling traffic without first seeing if there are wider market reasons such as seasonality that could be playing a part
For a more extensive list of common SEO Mistakes check out David Naylor ‘SEO 101 Common Mistakes‘ article.
It’s a simple question to ask, but one very few organisations have a clear answer when I ask. The reason I ask this is because of the way web pages are designed. They are designed as pages - not as an entire website.
Most of us when asked to plan the website would first think of what pages need to be included (a homepage, about us, services/products, and contact us is the default). And so you sit down with a designer and a programmer and work out how to build each individual page, and when we mention “page” you probably mean customising templates for each section.
And I am not saying that is not the right way to build a website - in fact, I think it’s a very important aspect that needs to be thought about. However, where you are missing out in that methodology is the fact that you haven’t really given much thought to the user experience.
User’s come to websites to complete an action, not to look at pages.
So when you go to do next revision of your website, or if you are starting one from scratch, rather than design pages, plan on how people should use your website.
Ask questions such as:
How will we announce to people the special offer our business has each month?
Where will new visitors/potential clients go to find out about us and what we are about?
Then - where do they go after that?
How can someone make an enquiry?
How can they find us on social networks? Do we even want that?
What is the steps I would like them to follow to make a purchase? Where should they go to make it easy to use as well as informative?
What should I blog about to encourage people to regularly visit the website?
How will I monitor and track the performance and determine what needs to be changed next?
By stepping into that frame of mind and then have a discussion with your team, you will end up with a much better result.
What Inspired This Post?
Earlier today I was looking to have a discussion and make an appointment with a bank manager about a particular situation. I will not name any particular banks, but there were a couple where it was extremely difficult to find the local number of the branch, whether or not that branch offered the particular service, and whether I could actually make an appointment rather than spend time speaking to a call centre or wait in a line.
Many of the websites were pretty, informative, but severely lacked the ability to give me any direction. I think I’m pretty good at navigating around websites, and yet the simple process of locating the phone number for the local branch proved extremely difficult.
So please consider the experience of your website’s users. Test it on family and your friends (especially your Mum or Grandma) and then make sure they are having an enjoyable and useful experience.
Foursquare is being the dubbed ‘the biggest thing to hit social media in 2010′ and is set to rock our world just like Twitter did in 2009 (safe enough to say it’s the biggest thing to hit social media in 2010 because we are yet to see out our first month but things still look very promising). It grew in popularity in San Francisco, spread across the US and has just been launched worldwide.
Foursquare is a location-based social networking medium. It is a mobile application which allows you to “check in” every time you visit a destination via your phones GPS capabilities. Locations can be anywhere from shops, bars, cafes and restaurants being the most popular, through to workplaces, banks and parks. Once you’ve checked into a location, Foursquare will then broadcast your whereabouts to your friends and recommend places to go and things to do nearby. The Foursquare website promotes that this is a great way to meet up with nearby friends and learn about their favourite spots and the new places they discover.
Foursquare.com describes itself as an “urban mix tape”, making lists of your favourite things to do and share them with your friends. Foursquare keeps a record of your actions, creates To-Do lists and suggests new things to check out. It shares other user’s experiences in particular locations. For example, if you checked into a restaurant it would unlock a tip suggesting an item from the menu. The game of it is that as you cruise along checking into locations and adding tips for others, you earn points and unlock badges. If you become the frequent Foursquare visitor to a location then you become ‘the Mayor’ until someone else overtakes you and steals your title. Mayors are eligible for freebies such as coffee, ice-cream etc depending on what that particular location may offer through Foursquare.
Example of Foursquare badges
The business applications of this new service are immediately clear:
1. Customer Intel - invaluable information on how often customers frequent your business, knowing what they are saving about your products and services
2. Word of mouth Advertising - your own customers recommending your products and services to others!? Wow! Doesn’t get any better than that!
3. Direct Marketing - want to reward your loyal customers? How about offering a discount to a new customer to inspire them to try a menu item or buy a product?
4. Potential to Rank in Search Engines - as Foursquare builds up authority with the search engines then their recommendations and listings are likely to rank. So if your business has some rave reviews and comments then you will potentially list in local search results
Why this will work? People love to let other people know what they are doing and how cool it is. People love to earn badges and would all love to be the ‘Mayor’ of something. My recommendations? Get ready for Foursquare to become a big thing. If you’re prepared to jump on this wave then you are sure to have a kanuna of a ride and save yourself being dumped in the shallows.
Google has released a new type of Ad extension in the form of a contact form. This feature is still fairly new and is only available to certain advertisers in the US to try.
Basically, with this extension activated your PPC ad will have a plus sign next to a call to action. After the user clicks on the plus sign, a drop down of your contact form to be submitted will appear within the search results. This is only available if your ad appears in the top position and the leads are priced at the maximum cost per click bid.
So how are the leads collected? Google will be collecting the phone number and name from the contact form. You will then receive an email from Google with the lead ID and information requested by the user. The catch is, you can’t contact the user directly, you have to call a special Google phone number and provide them with the lead ID.
This has the potential to really benefit some advertisers as one whole step in the conversion process is skipped. The searcher doesn’t need to click and go through the landing page to leave their contact details, which in effect, shortens the conversion process and could lead to an increase in conversion rates.
On the other hand, there will also be those that will be reluctant to leave their contact details without knowing more about the company, service or product. If this is the case, the contact form may not make a difference for the advertiser at all.
We all know and understand the importance of setting goals in our personal and business lives if we want to achieve success. A colleague of mine’s favourite saying is, “If you shoot for the moon then even if you don’t make it then you’ll land amongst the stars”. Corny and clichéd I know but not without its wisdom. For all its motivational glory, let’s have a look at installing a guidance system to that rocket that will keep you on the right path for your Online Marketing Campaign so that even if you don’t hit your target, you’ll at least be in the right solar system.
In life and business we need to have clear cut goals to steer us and it’s no different for Online Marketing Campaign goals. It’s crucial to have clear, appropriate and achievable goals in order to ensure that the energy you spend on your campaign is spent efficiently and effectively. The problem lies in the development of these goals, how do come up with goals that are realistic and help ensure that your campaign brings you the return that you desire?
Businesses Online Marketing Goals will generally revolve around the following:
Rankings
Traffic
These alone are not specific enough, it’s all well and good to have 1 million unique site visits in a month but what if none of them are buying your product or requesting additional information. These broad goals will then need to be broken up into other more specific goals which must align with the overall goals and strategy of the business:
Branding
Lead Generation
Sales Conversion
Rankings will no doubt be the first thing on any decision maker’s mind when it comes to deciding on goals for their Online Marketing Campaign. Ask most business decision makers about their goals and the response will most likely be, “I want to rank first place for all my keywords.” The problem with this train of thought is whether or not it is feasible to rank No.1. There are many factors such as competitiveness of the industry, current online search capabilities and preparedness to invest in the campaign that need to be considered to reality check this goal. The reality generally is that most new businesses are not capable of getting top rankings in the short-term and should factor it in as a long-term investment.
Increasing overall traffic is another common goal but once again, not specific enough. As with the example I used earlier, how beneficial would 1 million unique site visits in a month be but none of them were qualified visitors? The goals you decide on must help steer and guide your campaign to success and ultimately bring about a return to your company.
When developing your goals, keep them as S.M.A.R.T as possible.
Specific
Measureable
Attainable
Realistic
Timely
The SMART method of goal setting is an excellent way of developing a set of goals. Developing goals in this manner gives them a greater chance of being achieved.
When developing your online marketing goals bring it back to the ultimate objective and ask yourself the following question, what do I need to achieve in order to bring about a return to my business from my investment in online marketing?
Back in late November I blogged about the direction of online search and where would it go from here, and as a testament to how rapidly things change in the online world we already have an answer from Google about where they want to take things.
Google Goggles is a new search service offered on mobile phones running Google’s phone operating system, Android. Google Goggles allows the user to take a photo of an object and retrieve information from the web on it. Current requirements to be able to utilise Google Goggles:
* An Android device running Android 1.6 or above
* A QVGA screen
* A camera with autofocus
There are many uses for the service that will change how you search for information:
* Get information instantly by taking photos of:
Landmarks
Books
Artwork
Products
Logos
Wines
* Using the phones internal compass, the camera display can show information about locations such as restaurants relevant to your location and the direction that you point your camera. You’re then able to bring up information on the location (i.e. ratings and comments on restaurants)
* The service can recognise text and using this feature, users are able to scan in information off business cards and save them as contacts directly to the phone
This service is still in development and is not yet able to deliver results as relevant as you would expect via a normal keyword search, however its capabilities will advance through user feedback on the relevancy of their searches and as Google grows their database. Future plans for Google Goggles are to connect it with live updates from social networking sites such as Facebook status posts and Twitter feeds, as well as adding Google’s facial recognition technology (left out of initial release due to its currently limited functionality).
This new technology springs to mind some interesting questions; What will this new technology mean for online marketing? How does Google determine the relevancy of results and analyse images specific to certain topics? How will businesses optimise to generate exposure via this new medium?
From a social perspective, with the potential introduction of facial recognition, what will this mean for privacy? By simply entering a photo you took of someone into the search, will you be able to pull up of online data related to that person from their social networking pages to images to contact details to employment information? Will we have the choice whether or not to be ‘searchable’ online or what information comes up for searches?
This certainly is a space we will be keeping a close eye on.
Last week saw our office block receive its delivery of the Yellow Pages. In the past, the massive mounds of yellow information were quickly snapped up from the foyer, however we have noticed over the past few years that the mountains don’t get moved (where are you when we need you Usher?). A week later and the stack sits as strong as it did on delivery day. It’s blatantly obvious that people are no longer making their fingers do the walking, so we figured we’d list the top 5 ways of getting some use out of the Yellow Pages (as using them for information is pretty much redundant now).
A Monitor Stand
This old standby for how to use the phonebooks has become much more inefficient, as the phone books are now half the size they used to be. Back in the day, you could get away with using a single half of the yellow pages to prop up your monitor/laptop, but now you’ll need everything from A-Z to save the neck cramps. Still, this remains the most practical use for anyone that is dismayed by the senseless culling of trees that is apparent when only 10% of the delivered books seem to get snapped up by building tenants (we’re assuming it’s those with new PCs).
Increase Grip Strength
As much as we all love working on our Captains of Crush and wrist rollers, if you want to demonstrate your grip strength in the office, you’ll need something thick and useless to tear: enter the Yellow Pages. By standing on your desk, tearing phone books and screaming at passers by, you can cement your position as the office grip expert (and also nut job… nobody will touch your lunch in the company fridge again!)
Pulling pranks on room mates that leave their door unlocked
Words can’t begin to describe how awesome this stunt is. Just watch the video.
Of course you must rally the troops afterwards and ensure it all ends up in the recycling and not the rubbish bin.
Kindling
It’s coming into summer, and the team at E-Web Marketing enjoy a BBQ as much as anyone else. Rather than getting the old gas burner out, how about getting the genuine smoky flavour from a wood grill? Getting these started isn’t always the easiest task, however by tearing up the Yellow Pages, you’ll be able to get any fire started. Tip: Once you’re cooking, try chucking a whole copy on and it’ll burn like a log through the night.
It’s a better read than Twilight
Although The Oatmeal is a little more passionate in their dislike for Twilight, some members of the E-Web team have read Twilight, and wholeheartedly agree that reading the Yellow Pages is more interesting.
Some uses that are no longer so viable:
Door stop – the books no longer have the weight in them to hold a door open, though torn in half they can still be used as a viable wedge. At least we can at least take solace in the fact that less tress are being killed now.
Flattening out creased pages – the large, smooth, surface of these books used to serve as an excellent way to flatten out creased pages by placing between A-K and L-Z. But again the weight just isn’t there anymore.
Finding business services – HA!
I am sure there are many more practical uses for the books - this was just the first list that came to mind. If you are as frustrated as we are to see these stacks of books sitting there on door steps and in foyers - only to inevitably be taken away again and sent who knows where - then please feel free to leave a comment with what you do with the Yellow Pages. Best comment receives an enormous supply of kudos from mother nature.
Google has launched a new URL shortening service, which they claim will make the Internet a safer place. With the increase in use of Twitter, and other social networking services, there has been an increase in the use of URL shortening services. Rather than having a long URL string in posts (often which have a maximum character limit), you can punch the URL into a site, and they will give you a shortened version.
According to Google, here are the major advantages:
• Stability: Google’s scalable, multi-datacenter infrastructure provides great uptime and a reliable service to our users.
• Security: As we do with web search, shortened URLs are automatically checked to detect sites that may be malicious and warn users when the short URL resolves to such sites.
• Speed: At Google we like fast products and we’ve worked hard to ensure this service is quick. We’ll continue to iterate and improve the speed of Google Url Shortener.
You may be asking yourself why Google would be doing this, however with the rise of social networks like Twitter, people are clicking a large number of these links. They could be heading to dodgy sites without knowing it. Or, when spreading links, they could be spreading incorrect links, which would not only hurt branding, but also make it tougher for Google to crawl the web. If a link shortening service goes under, the links will no longer be valid. This hurts both users and Google.
At the moment, this service can only be used within a Google toolbar and Feedburner. Google mentions that if it proves to be successful, then they may expand it to a wider audience.
E-Web Marketing has been rewarded a ranking of 192 on the Deloitte Technology Fast500 Asia Pacific 2009, an award that recognises technology companies that have achieved the fastest rates of annual revenue growth in Asia Pacific during the past three years. The awards luncheon was held on the 10th of December 2009 at the Intercontinental Hotel, Hong Kong.
This highly placed ranking has been a result of the E-Web team’s consistent hard work and the loyal clients that assist in the company’s growing success. E-Web Marketing CEO, Gary Ng, has thanked his team for their contribution in helping E-Web place 192 in the rankings.
Mr Ng said: “To achieve a ranking of 192 in such a prestigious and wide-scaled program is a clear testament of E-Web’s high quality team and the value of service that we deliver to clients. We have had great success nationally, however this award demonstrates the international potential for success of the company as well.”
Nominations for the Deloitte Technology fast 500 Asia Pacific 2009 award are gathered from public company database research and direct nomination submissions. Key data is obtained from companies in Australia, China (Hong Kong), India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand. Companies must have first year operating revenues of at least $US 50,000. The award recognises both public and private technology companies, ranking them according to their revenue performances over the period of the past three years.
We congratulate all of our clients who have assisted in E-Web’s achievements, as well as the dedicated team that consistently strives to further improve the company. Congratulations must also be given to all other businesses listed in this award; to make it onto the Technology Fast500 Asia Pacific Program is a great achievement.
