SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION SEO COMPANY

A blog is a very powerful SEO tool that I encourage all my clients to invest time in developing. Not only does it encourage you to stay abreast of what is going on in your industry, it serves multiple purposes beneficial to any search engine marketing initiative.

Ultimately, a blog contributes to your page count, keeps your site fresh and relevant, and provides content that people can link to. In addition, a blog acts as a resource for your business that your customers can reference. In this client facing capacity, your blog reinforces why people should do business with you.

The following tips are here to provide you with some direction on how to specifically write posts that will appeal to people who might link to you. Asking for links is good if you have the contacts. If you don’t have any friends with cool websites then check out below how to attract links through a relevant and intelligent blog.

1. Scope out the competition and identify your link market

See how people already utilising this strategy are making it work for them by check out who is linking to your competitors. Pay particular attention to the deeper pages and what type of information they are linking to. Brainstorm similar topics you could write about or expand upon.

2. Identify your angle

After you find the pages that are attracting links in your industry, try asking fellow bloggers about what topics they would like to see researched and written about. It might be hit and miss but the information you get will be worth every minute spent ensuring you are not wasting your time.

3. Write it up

You heard me!

4. Promote your content

Approach the bloggers you did your research with, find other bloggers to recommend the content to, chat to people on forums about the article, and ask people their opinions. If you’re really good then you can spread the word via social media.

I hope you got some good ideas and info out of this article. Please share it with your friends and link to it from your blog if you rate it. I’d like to thank Melissa from Distilled for inspiring this post. You can find the original here.

After the excitement and energy of the World Cup Soccer Tournament had died down, E-Web Marketing decided to revive the spirit during lunchtime by holding a FIFA World Cup tournament of its own. Entries were taken and over the course of two weeks, a knock out competition was held to find out who the best FIFA Soccer player was. Players from every department faced off at lunch times and the atmosphere in the recreation room was electric. We had everything we needed to recreate the World Cup in our office, minus the vuvuzelas (but that didn’t stop us making a racket without them!).

Early days

Round 1 played out without too many upsets. The seasoned players were known and they strategically picked off the weaker, inexperienced players one by one. The quarter finals were where things started to heat up and rivalries were formed. The favourites, Aris and Buckley, began sledging each other early on and this continued up to the very end. The games were tight and many ended in penalty shoot-outs, creating much tension and spilt lunches on the rec room floor. Woofie, our office mascot, enjoyed the festivities as much as we did as he graciously picked up the remnants of the excited spectators’ lunches.

Finals approach

After a very cordial playoff for third place between Thakorlal and Forz (Thakorlal getting through with a nail biting win), the office gathered for the anticipated final between Aris “The Hitman” Abramian and Daniel “Girlyman” Buckley. The Hitman came out swinging however it was the steady and patient press by Girlyman that triumphed. Aris certainly wins a mention for his skillful sledging of his opponents however all credit must go to Daniel “Girlyman” Buckley - who prevailed to win the title of E-Web’s FIFA Soccer Champion!

1. If I have multiple contact forms on different pages, do I need a separate thank you page for each one?

It is dependent on the goal. In most cases it is not necessary if there is the same contact form on every page. You do not need a separate thank you page for different contact forms.

If you have a form on the /contact.php page and the /about-us.php page that both redirect to the same thank you page (/thank-you.php) once the form is submitted, the programmer can setup a goal funnel to track which page (/contact.php or /about-us.php) the visitor is filling in the form. You can also check which pages the user visited that led up to a goal completion (Goals > Reverse Goal Path).

 2. Why can’t goals be set up on my shopping cart?

There could be several reasons why goals cannot be set up on your website. A common reason why we cannot set up goals on a shopping cart is that there is no receipt (thank you) page. The reason why we need a thank you page for goals is because it is the best way to track whether a visitor has completed a goal or conversion.

In the case where your website redirects to an external website for payment, please refer to the “Can I set up goals if my payment page goes off-page (e.g. PayPal)?” answer.

 3. Can I set up goals if my payment page goes off-site (e.g. PayPal)?

We cannot track a conversion completely if the website redirects to an off-site payment website (e.g. PayPal). This is because we do not have access to the PayPal website. We cannot place your Google Analytics code on an off-site payment page and therefore lose the visitor tracking. The best solution is for clients to implement an onsite payment strategy.

 4. What is Ecommerce goal tracking?

E-Commerce goal tracking is a block of code that is inserted on a receipt (thank you) page which automatically detects and records transactions (by assigning a dollar value) and product information. The data recorded by the code can then be reviewed in Google Analytics. E-commerce goal tracking is most beneficial to shopping cart websites.

 5. Is it possible to track the pages that the visitor visited before reaching my thank you page?

Yes, we can track the previous pages a user visited before reaching the thank you page (if a goal for the thank you page has been set up on your Google Analytics account). However, this will only work if your website does not redirect to an off-site payment page. Goals > Reverse Goal Path will show which pages the user has visited before completing a goal.

 6. What happens if my goals change?

If your goals change, you should immediately update them in Google Analytics. You may also need to update the conversion process as well.

 7. What happens to my goals if I redesign my website?

If the URLs have changed on the website, the goals setup may need to be changed.

 8. What is a conversion rate?

The goal conversion rate is the percentage of sessions on a site that results in a completed goal. The formula to determine the conversion rate is:

Conversion rate = outcomes (aka completed goals)/ visitors x 100

Social media has its place in every online marketing campaign. However, how you use it to its best effect for generating returns for your business, or for giving value to your customers, will be very different from business to business. I work with many different types of businesses and entrepreneurs, and there is no one single strategy that will suit them all.

The type of social media interactions you want and the motivation behind a social media campaign will differ for every situation. Some businesses wish to simply interact with current customers to increase satisfaction and enjoyment of their products or services. Another reason would be to improve exposure and branding. The more common reason is to drive traffic to a site in order to generate leads and increase sales.

If you are not sure what you want to achieve through social media or even what you could achieve with it then follow these simple steps to test the waters and have a splash around in the Web 2.0 ocean.

1. Focus your attention on one or two choice platforms. Don’t spread yourself too thin or you won’t be able to determine which platform is working for you as you’ll be too busy working hard for all of them! Trial a couple at a time to learn and grow, then evaluate the effectiveness of your strategy and reevaluate it if necessary.

2. Set your performance targets and measure them. Simple yet not often done. Once you have chosen your platform, come up with a rough idea as to what it is you want to try and achieve and set some targets. This will help you gauge their effectiveness, but also help you determine how much time to invest in social media moving forward. Think re-tweets, blog posts, referral traffic, fans, connections, enquiries, etc.

3. Don’t clog the line! As a rule, don’t post information that you wouldn’t want to receive in a frequency that you wouldn’t want to receive it. Avoid over posting information promoting your business as this will spam your followers and turn them off.

4. Are there niche social media sites that serve your industry? Considering the amount of social media sites out there, this is quite likely. Find them and interact. These people are interested in what you’ve got and will be happy to interact and hear about what you have to say.

5. Follow people who are doing it right, take notes and do it how they do it.

6.  Make it easy for people to follow you by adding widgets to your site.

So what are you waiting for? Jump in and start swimming!

Click here to read more on social media tips for beginners.

A number of my clients recently have had some really good questions based around what keywords to target as part of their SEO campaigns. The predominant belief is that one should go hard and fast for the shorter and most competitive keywords to bring traffic to a site.

However, this is usually not the best option, as industry data and our own experience shows that we can much better serve the purpose of a website by having a good blend of long and short tail keywords.

But first thing’s first: what exactly do I mean when I talk about short tail, long tail and the competitiveness of keywords?

Short tail keywords

• keywords 3 words or less, e.g. ‘branding consultants’
• higher traffic volumes
• more competitive

Long tail keywords

• keywords 3 words or more, e.g. ‘where can i find branding consultants in sydney’
• lower traffic volumes
• less competitive
• generally more qualified

These are the keywords that have lots (millions in most cases) of other pages to compete against in the search engines and many competitors trying to rank for that one keyword, i.e. ‘office furniture’ or ‘buy car’.

There are some Search Engine Marketers who focus their attentions mostly on the short tail - the shorter, more generalised keywords which have the biggest search volumes and highest rates of competition. There are other SEMs who work on the longer keywords, which being less competitive are easier to rank for, but also generate less search queries.

The SEM writing this post believes, as with most things in life, the balance between the two must be found. Targeting a smart and thoughtful array of short and long tail keywords will give you a well-rounded SEO campaign, capable of bringing in large amounts of qualified traffic.

To focus on only highly competitive, short tail keywords is putting all your eggs in one basket. These keywords require a lot of resources and, depending on the size and authority of your website, will take much more time to get decent rankings. The long tail keyword strategy enables your site to rank quicker, but requires more keywords to be able to generate a similar amount of traffic that you would see from a smaller amount of more competitive keywords.

Benefits of targeting both short and long tail keywords

• Long tail keywords rank faster therefore bringing traffic in the early days of a campaign
• Quality of traffic will vary between keywords and only targeting short tail keywords reduces your ability to get the usually more qualified traffic from the long tail keywords
• Depending on how large and competitive your site it, it might be a relativity that it will take a very long time to rank for short tail keywords related to your business
• Focusing efforts on the two strategies give you a good spread across the search demand curve (see image below)

Search Demand Curve

Buzz at the moment is on how Amazon has thrown its hat into the social networking arena with the online shopping giant’s recent acquisition of patent for a ‘social networking system’. 

How Amazon plans to use the patent is The Question. Its social network patent was approved by the United States Patent and Trademark Office last Tuesday, meaning that Amazon may be planning to offer similar services to social media users as those provided by Facebook, MySpace, Google Buzz and Friendster.

The patent “provides a mechanism for a user to selectively establish contact relationships or connections with other users” and “automatically notify users of personal information updates made by their respective contacts.” Ring any bells?

Back to The Question: what Amazon will do with this patent? The history is that Amazon planned to develop a network service (PlanetAll) which it acquired in 1998. However this was shut down after two years in 2000.

What Amazon may plan to do now is a little mistimed considering the level of competition in the current market. Pre-MySpace and Facebook, Amazon had the technology and the concepts but it culled PlanetAll and absorbed its features into Amazon’s Friends and Favorites technology.

Does Amazon hope to compete on a large scale with the likes of Facebook and Friendster? Would it seek legal avenues to enforce its rights to the patent, trying to make other networks change their current models?

This is unlikely in my opinion. It’s more likely that Amazon would use it to build its own social network based around its products and services, in order to benefit the sharing of information and increase sales.

With so many different types of social networks around at the moment and the many more we will surely see in the future, each changing how web users interact and find information, I am keen to see what eventuates and to find out what Amazon can bring to the social networking table.

Looking for easy ways to keep your company blog loaded with interesting and relevant content? Check out the following list of simple strategies that will keep those posts flowing.

1. Answer Common Customer Questions

Filter the emails and enquiries you receive from customers and turn these into a FAQ or a simple list of common questions and answer them via your blog. Depending on how involved the questions are you can dedicate entire posts to particular questions or group similar questions.

2. Gather and Report on Industry Information

Compile industry statistics, images, videos etc and put them into interesting articles that will be useful to your clientele.

3. Explore other Media

Publish video or audio interviews of industry figures/experts. Post images from events.

4. Enlist Help

Approach others to write for you. Work smarter not harder and incentivise people in your industry to write for you. Does an employee in your company have a specialty? Get them to write a post!

5. Create Lists

How-to, best-of, etc. Make them useful, specific and relevant.

6. Chart It Up

You can’t go wrong with useful data displayed in a graph. They make it quick and easy to get your idea across.

7. Think Like an OpEd Writer

OpEd writers argue a particular side of an issue and no doubt there will be points of contention in your industry. Pick a hot topic and write an opinion piece on it.

8. Analyse your Analytics

Web analytics can tell you useful information about your users such as where they are from, what info they seek, what computer/browser they use and even what phone. That info can help you come up with ideas to peek your customers interests.

9. Review Stuff

Read books (or even watch films or documentaries) related to your industry. Review them for your clientele via your blog.

10. Break News

Scan the news and media to find out the latest in your industry and write a post on the event/development.

Check out more detailed information on the above pointers in the original post by Kipp Bodnar here.

The whisper going around the Tech Giant playground at the moment is that Bing might potentially take over from Google as the default search provider in the Safari browser in the new iPhone operating system. This rumour has been floating around for while but as the release of the new iPhone OS draws nearer then it might be a good time to look at the implications for SEO and its benefactors.

Currently, Google is estimated to spend around $100 million per year for the privilege. It’s anyone’s guess as to the price Microsoft would pay for the opportunity. Here we see two competing search entities go head to head for a very lucrative deal that would certainly pay massive dividends to the victor. But what does it mean for the little guy? If every iPhone user in the world was converted to using Bing then how much impact would that have on the importance of ranking in Bing’s mobile search? A massive one I’d say. If Bing pulls this deal off then we will be facing a large change in the market share Bing have currently in mobile search.

At this stage I don’t believe there is a need to reassess your online marketing strategy. The rumours are just that, rumours; however it does pay to be aware. Microsoft is denying everything. Google might not be interested in staying in bed with Apple considering they are bigger competitors in the mobile arena now with Google Android. Either way, keep your ears out as any battle between giants can get interesting. Even more interesting is the fact that such an alliance between Microsoft and Apple could prove to be a decisive strike against Google.

Twitter has recently become a platform for cross boundary politicking as the Dalai Lama reached out to Chinese followers to take questions and provide some solace on issues from Tibet to his succession.  The Dalai Lama held a one-hour question-and-answer session via Twitter. It was not done through his official Twitter account but facilitated by Chinese writer Wang Lixiong who ran the feed from a New York hotel room. The Dalai Lama’s responses were translated into Chinese by an interpreter and then tweeted on Lixiong’s Twitter account.

According to the AFP’s report, “Nearly 12,000 people selected the 250 questions by online voting done on a Google Moderator site, which was blocked in China on Thursday.” It’s not known how many Chinese people were able to follow the tweets as Twitter is a restricted site in China. There are an estimated 150,000 people in China who use Twitter, and access to the Dalai Lama’s responses were accessible via third-party Twitter applications so it’s very hard to gauge.

This blogger does not want to get too much into the political issues surrounding this case but more so wants to point out the amazing boundary that social media has succeeded in crossing. As much as the Chinese government attempts to blindfold its citizens, another way to see has been found. Kudos is given to Lixong and the Dalai Lama for their innovative efforts to use new technologies to reach out a hand directly to the Chinese people.

The importance of link building in SEO cannot be ignored. As with many things in life, what you have to work the hardest for will more often than not have the biggest value and return. Having said this, I am going to talk about the need to think outside the box when working your link building strategy. Why do we need to think and strategise for link building? The main reason being the importance to search engine rankings; we know how important they are considered by Google and to ignore this means that a website’s ranking potential will never be realised.

The prominence of link value in the Google algorithm is not only getting stronger but more complex, as they take into consideration elements use as user data, domain age and other relatively hard to fake factors. A link is a popularity vote. The more popular kids always get chosen to play, right? If you are counted as popular by the bigger and trendier kids then that would be more powerful than being adored by all the primary school kids. Now I’m not going to carry on about website popularity like an episode of 90210 however it’s important to consider, what makes a site popular and what can you do to encourage people to link to you?

Some ideas to get your creative linking mind working:

• Create content and dress your site for success - make your site attractive for others to link
  • E.g. Create 10 easy tips to help you <insert topic here> articles as these are easy to link to
• PPC - boost your traffic through a targeted PPC campaign that will attract people to your important information in the hope they will then link to it
• News and Syndication - get involved on other sites that encourage users to post information and news such as EzineArticles, GoArticles, iSnare, etc.
• Directories, Meme Trackers and Social Bookmarking - submit your site to directories, paid and non-paid. Tag related sites on social book marking sites like Del.icio.us. Memetracker - if you write about popular and spreading ideas with lots of unique content (and then link to some of the original resources), your site may get listed as a source on a meme tracker site.
• Network - capitalise on your social and business networks by developing strategies to reach out to those who will want to link to your site

There are many ways in which you can build links and the more creative you get then maybe the more effective that strategy will be. As getting links gets harder the more important it becomes to think outside the box and plan for linking success.

Check this article here for an expanded list of ideas on how to build links.