SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION SEO COMPANY

In the ever evolving and increasingly technical and complex world of SEO a new factor is coming out to play a bigger role in the race for search engine traffic. “Blended” search results are increasingly prominent and are taking up valuable search result real estate and moving traditional search results further down the page. Here in lies the opportunity for poorly ranking sites to be able to grab some traffic pie by giving their video footage the best chance of ranking.

Video results currently appear randomly on the results page in Google but are generally always on the 1^st page. They appear as thumbnails, making them very tempting to the user to click and see if they can get an answer to their search query without having to do anything that requires effort such as more clicking or reading. Here is an example of search results for the keyword ‘golf cart’.

Maximising your ability to drive traffic through video search results requires you to take one or both of the following paths:

1.       YouTube - Upload your video footage

Pro: This is the easiest way to be sure that your video will be indexed by Google.

Con: Users will have to view the video in YouTube therefore increasing the required steps for them to get to your site (should you have provided a link in your video description?)

2.       Video SEO

Enabling your videos to be indexed by Google requires some addition effort compared to the previous step.

i.            Get some videos

ii.            Submit the video to Google via Video Sitemap

iii.            Ensure your robots.txt is configured to point out videos to crawlers

iv.            Optimise titles and title tags

v.            Remember that Video SEO is normally long tail based, meaning that you’ll normally get video search results for longer keywords

Of the many and hard to predict directions that online search can take, videos appear to be something that will hang around for a while. This is definitely something worth putting some time and effort into as part of any complete online marketing campaign so what are you waiting for? Whip out your camera and make some home videos on your business or product and get more search result pie!

For some more detailed information on Video SEO check out Benjamin Wayne’s blog post on TechCrunch here.

Often I see clients who are caught up in the rankings and traffic trap where they can’t see the forest for the trees, the trees being rankings/traffic and the forest being the website objectives. We can get caught up looking at traffic statistics and fussing over individual keyword rankings that we can forget about putting effort into want we want website users to do. A big piece of the puzzle but an often neglected part of a solid online marketing campaign is conversion ability

A ‘conversion’ can be a sale, newsletter signup, completed contact us form or request for more information, or one of the main different possible actions you might want your site users to take. In the words of one of my favourite self-development writers Stephen Covey, “Begin with the end in mind”. Knowing is half the battle and the rest is reporting and clever design.

Why put all this effort into the conversion friendliness of your site? Simple maths.
Let’s say your site receives 3000 hits per month and has a conversion rate of 2%. This equates to 60 leads. With those 60 leads you might be successful at making 20% of them satisfied customers, leaving you with 12 of these a month. Therefore, if you could double your website’s conversion rate to 4% then you could in theory increase your leads to 120 and double your monthly sales to 24!

How do I do this you say? How can I double my monthly sales from online marketing? Check out these pointers and put them into action:

1. Make your content easily understood and user friendly. Put your content in subsections which concentrate on the benefits of your products/services, not the features.
2. Simplify your contact/lead form. Only ask of your customers what you need from them in order to consider them a lead.
3. Make smart decisions with smart data. Your website’s analytics data will offer a lot of useful data that you can leverage to improve the performance of your landing pages.
4. Make good use of images when creating landing pages. The use of images on landing pages can be powerful as they attract the eye and can help keep a user on the page.
5. Leverage landing pages for extended user engagement. Do you have a Facebook fan page, a blog, press releases, a newsletter or an RSS feed? Invite your users to connect with you through these mediums as they seek solutions to suit their needs.

For more information check out Christopher Wallace’s blog here.

Last week’s expected decision on the controversial Google Books Library Project by a US federal judge has been postponed. The judge told a crowded courtroom last week that he will listen with an “open mind” to the arguments for and again Google’s settlement with authors and publishers about the right to scan and publish book titles. U. S. District Court Judge Denny Chin walked into the courtroom at the U. S. Court of the Southern District New York with a tall stack of comments from each of the parties, and stated: “To end the suspense, I’m not going to rule today. There’s too much to digest”.

The Google Books Library Project aims to make it easy for people to find relevant books online. Google’s objective with this project was to enable people to find books that they couldn’t normally find as might be the case with out of print books. The homepage for the project states that the ultimate goal is to “work with publishers and libraries to create a comprehensive, searchable, virtual card catalogue of all books in all languages that helps users discover new books and publishers discover new readers”. Google, which has yet to present their case to the judge, have emphasised that the number of books included in the settlement is a small portion (3%) of all the titles in the world. They plan to make 20% of the catalogue free and if they choose, users can purchase the rest from Google.

The project has been under much criticism since its inception from competitors such as Microsoft and Amazon who argue that allowing the project go ahead will basically mean giving Google a license to profit from orphan works and get an unfair advantage. Other critics include some library groups, authors and other competitors. Another concern is that nothing in the settlement would protect users’ personal habits and information from being tracked for behavioural advertising. “The proposed Google book settlement is not a philanthropic effort to bring literature into the 21st century and bridge a literary divide,” opponents Microsoft, Amazon and library groups wrote in a recent filing through the Open Book Alliance. “This de facto exclusive license will provide Google with an enormous advantage over its search competitors.”

There are advocates for this plan such as the University of Michigan who praised the deal because they believe that most of the books in the settlement are scholarly works that are collecting dust on university bookshelves and wouldn’t otherwise be read. Other advocates include blind support groups who say that making publications available online means that people will have easier and cheaper access to works that are hard to come by today.

The settlement is part of Google’s ambitious effort to put the entire world’s books online, aiming to eventually be the main source for searching and buying titles.

There is some talk around about how Twitter has the potential to claim some of Google’s pie in the realm of real-time search. The ability to search for information via Twitter has the distinct and differentiated advantage over Google where the information is being presented real-time and comes direct from the user. For this reason some believe that Twitter is better than Google for researching companies, products and services for real customer feedback, breaking news and live events/conference updates.

The speed at which users can post information via Twitter and for this information to be made searchable instantaneously is an advantage over the slower process Google takes to crawl and list website information. The most common tweet is a link and a small insight.  The value of this link and the insight is quickly voted on as people respond and retweet. Relevance would then be determined by the amounts of these votes, making it a human powered search with the potential to provide very fresh and valid information.

Google Search results example for term ‘google translation’

Twitter search results example for term ‘google translation’

What does this mean for SEO?

Any switched on SEO practitioner will tell you all about the importance of links and its ability to impact your websites rankings. An easy way to generate a good amount of links can be achieved via blog posts. The theory goes that the tweet is the new blog post. In the past, the insight and the associated links were most favourably passed by on through blogs but as Twitter’s already impressive popularity increases, the amount of people posting on blogs will, in theory, decline. With a decline in these ‘votes’ will Google alter their algorithm to balance things out?

What does this mean for Google?

Twitter is differentiaed from Google by the potential to provide relavant and popular information through it’s millions of users. A search tool which provides information direct from a person who has purchased a particular product, viewed a film or used a service you are interested would be of interest to me, how about you?

It could simply be a matter of time before Twitter figures out a way to capatilise on this and claim search market share from Google. Ultimately, I believe it will be the users who decide the vailidity of this assumption. Either way it will be interesting to see how this play out. How will Twitter evolve in the coming year and what will happen with the potential rarefying of the inbound link and what impact will this have on the Google algorithm?

For more information on this endangered link theory, check out James Duthie’s post here.

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.

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.

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.

Official Google Video on Goggles

Visual Demo of Google Goggles Functionality

A recent survey has suggested that internet marketers need to focus more on the mobile marketing sector. Although hardly revolutionary thoughts, the actual numbers to come out of this report are very interesting.
According to the survey, here are the numbers:
-    41% of Internet marketing companies do not have plans in place for mobile marketing for the upcoming year
-    Social networking use has climbed from 23 to 44 per cent
-    Twitter presence has increased from 7 to 35 per cent

These numbers are nothing outside what has been shown in other surveys, however the most interesting number is that only 11 percent of those businesses surveyed actually planned to invest in the mobile sector.

The ramifications of ignoring a large percentage of your user base can be seen in many ways. From not having a site that can be used on a mobile browser, to not having a presence to defend (or market) yourself on Twitter, the pitfalls are many. This will be keenly felt by companies that are trying to target a younger, or more tech savvy market share. Young people are often impatient with sites that don’t display well,  so if they don’t see a friendly version of the site for their mobile browser, they’re not going to hang around.

You can actually track the browsers people use to access your site via Google Analytics. A quick tip would be to look at the bounce rates of your users when looking at the browsers they use. If you see that the mobile users are bouncing at a much higher rate, then you know you’ll need to make sure you better deliver your content for that device.

An important skill to foster when doing business online is the ability to look at your product/service through the eyes of your customers, but this is more difficult than it sounds. Without being able to observe and experience the usual physical interactions as you might in a normal store, how do you respond to your customers’ behaviours and plan for future trends in these behaviours?

It’s a complicated affair which could benefit with mastery in psychology and sociology and a little ESP wouldn’t hurt either. One method which is a little more accessible to us all is to use ‘personas’. The use of personas in design goes back to early 1980’s where a pioneering software inventor, Alan Cooper, started to observe and interview potential users of his software and to build products that served them and not the other way around. He watched them work, defined their typical day, and observed how they interacted with computers and how computers integrated with the rest of their lives in order to create valuable and functional programs.

Nowadays it’s been coined as ‘goal-directed design’ and Cooper has written many books on the topic. Kim Goodwin, Director of Design at Cooper, speaks about why they use this method in their design process:

“We use personas because they are powerful design, measurement, and communication tools. We use them in design to help us avoid the elastic user problem–where “the user” is a total novice one minute and a technophile the next–as well as self-referential design, because designers are seldom representative of a product’s target audience. Personas also help cut through assumptions that certain tasks are necessary; if a task doesn’t directly help accomplish a goal, we can try to eliminate it. We use personas in scenarios to help us refine and test the design at the whiteboard, which lets us involve a “user” long before you’d be able to do a usability test. Personas help us communicate with each other and with our clients. It’s easy to explain and justify design decisions when they’re based on persona goals as well as solid design principles.”

Click here for a great little cartoon on how you can benefit from this method specific to web design. This technique is also very applicable when writing content for a website. Important questions to ask yourself in order to make your site more applicable and therefore more valuable to your potential customers are:

• Who are the users of the website?
• What are the users’ tasks and goals?
• What are the users’ experience levels with the website, and websites like it?
• What functions do the users need from the website?
• What information might the users need, and in what form do they need it?
• How do users think the website should work?

Whether you are designing a brand new site or simply creating a small blog post like this one; by putting yourself the mind of your typical customer and designing to their personality type could completely change the way you view your business.