SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION SEO COMPANY

According to a study from Compete, active online consumers tend to have and spend more than other shopper groups. According to the study, this group intends on spending twice as much ($912 on average) over the holidays.

“Many retailers are bracing for lower online sales, but our research shows that not all shoppers are created equal,” said Debra Miller, associate, Retail and Consumers Products at Compete. “While most consumers say they’ll spend less this year, online shoppers seem to have deeper pockets and they’ll be looking for deals starting on Black Friday. Smart retailers should take a much closer look at online shopping segments relevant to them to capture a larger share of wallet among online consumers.”

Here is a summary of other findings from the Compete report:

• 42 percent of consumers reported that they are likely or extremely likely to select an “in store pick up” option if available for holiday purchases.
• 86 percent of shoppers have completed less than half of their total holiday shopping; 41 percent have not yet begun.
• 90 percent of consumers will spend at least some portion of their holiday budget online this year, up from 84 percent in 2008.
• 44 percent of consumers plan to spend less this holiday season compared to last year, while only 12 percent of shoppers anticipate spending more.

Our recommendations:

• Consumers will be looking to spend big over Christmas (for some industries), so by increasing your Adwords campaign you will be able to capitalise on this opportunity.
• Use the Google Insights tool to determine if there are any seasonal trends in certain keywords that you are targeting and use the best performing keywords in your Adwords campaign.

Are you worried about how Google Caffeine will affect your website rankings?

Do you want to improve your quality score for your Adwords campaign?

An emerging theme of the new Google algorithm seems to be speed and the time in which it loads up pages for users. The rationale is that Google wants their web pages to load up as quick as it takes to flick a page of a magazine.

According to Matt Cutts, a software engineer at Google:

“Historically, we haven’t had to use it in our search rankings, but a lot of people within Google think that the web should be fast. It should be a good experience, and so it’s sort of fair to say that if you’re a fast site, maybe you should get a little bit of a bonus. If you really have an awfully slow site, then maybe users don’t want that as much…I think a lot of people in 2010 are going to be thinking more about ‘how do I have my site be fast,’ how do I have it be rich without writing a bunch of custom Javascript?”

Based on what Matt Cutts has said, it may seem to be on the cards in the upcoming years. The only thing is that it is such a big task to implement that it will allow webmasters out there to adjust and make appropriate changes to their site before the new Caffeine rolls out.

Although web page speed factor has not been made official as part of the algorithm, we always encourage and help our clients to reduce the amount of coding on their website as best practice. Therefore, this change to Google’s algorithms won’t really be an issue since we have already taken pre-emptive steps to make sure all bases are covered.
Google has started to provide webmasters with tools that can help them optimise their sites and more specifically, speeding up load times for web pages.

Some tips to increase website speed is to:

• Reduce the different or bulky Javascript code on the page
• Include Gzip pages
• Reduce the size of image files on the page
• Use externally loaded video files such as Youtube

For more details of that interview with Matt Cutts you can access it here.

The accuracy of a search engine is dependent on the accuracy of its data set; that is the rationale. Google has announced that it now utilises public data directly from the World Bank to display results and graphs for questions like: “people per capita in U.S.A” or the number of “internet users in Australia or U.S.A”. Google has access to the official 17 World Development indicators and is easily comparable between different countries and other variables. This is in addition to Google’s earlier integration of data pulled from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau’s Population Division to its search results. The goal of this is to make data more accessible to the public and is not as sophisticated compared to the advanced capabilities of Wolfram Alpha which allows the user to manipulate the data.

Amidst Google’s announcement, Bing now relies on Wolfram Alpha to answer some of its search queries. According to Readwriteweb.com:

“…the company [Microsoft] told us that the integration with Wolfram Alpha would only consist on exchanging data about nutrition and that was reflected in the first version of this post. In today’s blog post, however, Microsoft also announced that it will display math results from Alpha.”

These constant improvements of search engine capabilities are definitely not hurting Bing’s popularity as it shows signs of some sort of growth in the US. According to the latest Hitwise data, Bing’s market share in the US grew 7% last month and is now at 9.57%. And although it may take a long time until it catches up with Google in terms of market share, it will be interesting to see what the search engines have installed for the upcoming years.

eBay has announced that it will be publishing editorial content, news on trends and a tag cloud of most popular searches currently. This is based on their sizable data set from its 88 million active users who search, buy and sell on eBay. Although this isn’t raw statistics, it still provides some useful insights. The data can be as broad as a correlation between events and increased searches for a term and as narrow as a comparison of a search for a Hall of Fame concert series.

Here is an example search made by The Inside Source:

For kicks, we decided to do a comparison of all the Hall of Famers participating in the concert series (there’s a second show at MSG tonight that includes U2, Metallica, Aretha Franklin, Lenny Kravitz, Ozzy Osbourne, Lou Reed, and more) to see which names popped up most frequently on eBay over the past week.

The results were pretty fascinating: in terms of keyword searches, Metallica was far and away the most sought after band among the bunch (more than 86,000 searches!)… Second to Metallica in frequency of keyword searches was U2 (75,190), followed by Bruce Springsteen (32,690). The number of search per artist dropped off significantly from there, with but Ozzy Osbourne coming in fourth (5,290) and Sting rounded out the top five at 4,570… The supply of concert tees correlates pretty well with the demand, with the top five live listings for the concert performers and the term “shirt” as follows as of this afternoon: Metallica (1,759), Ozzy Osbourne (327), Bruce Springsteen (376), U2 (680), BB King (61).

This new release trend-spotting data is definitely geared toward encouraging positive user activity, and increasing sales.

This maybe useful for internet marketers out there to target products that are not currently in their product portfolio. This includes specific brands and models that sell well all year round. Currently eBay offers a research-focused API which reveals some interesting pricing information for a given search term.

So as you can see, this is something that can be added to an internet marketer’s research tool arsenal.

Microsoft has announced the signed deal with Twitter and Facebook to effectively integrate status updates into the Bing search results. This will definitely move it closer to providing real-time search capabilities. Although search engine giants, Google are already showing Twitter and Facebook results, Bing will be stepping up and offering the entire public Twitter stream.

So how will the Twitter search results work on Bing? Here is an overview of what to expect:

•Tweets updated in real-time: View all tweets “roll in” in real-time by watching the “tweet SERP” update. To view more tweets than what’s displayed on the first page of search results, click “See more tweets about…”
•Results ranked by tweeter’s influence and uniqueness of the tweet: According to Microsoft, “If someone has a lot of followers, his/her tweet may get ranked higher. If a tweet is exactly the same as other tweets, it will get ranked lower.”
•Private tweets remain private: Tweets by users who have private or protected Twitter pages will not be indexed.
•Real-time only lasts so long: Tweets will only be indexed in Bing for 7 days, further indication that Bing intends to use the Twitter integration as a way to capitalize on real-time events and searcher interests. There’s no indication that Bing intends to index and provide a historical record of tweets.

The implications for marketers is that it will provide real-time social data within search result and encourage brands to embrace and try and keep up to the changing consumer search habits as they change. For example, a searcher seeking information on where the latest brand name sale is on, or the waiting time for an up and coming concert. Although the search engines cannot generate results as events are happening, user generated content from Facebook and Twitter may be able to address this.

The key takeouts from this news:
•Big opportunities for companies to
•Marketers who currently use Twitter and Facebook will experience greater importance and potentially traffic. However it will act as a double edged word in that brands will need to closely monitor any negative conversations that come up.
•From an SEO perspective, certain brands and industries may lose potential traffic and opportunity if they have not already taken up social media.
•Social media will continue to grow with search engines as it continues to move towards social commentary to determine data relevance.

Could Google ever takeover Apple’s popular iTunes space in the market? Well at the rate that Apple is growing, the latest figures beat analysts’ forecasts and propelling the US Company’s share price to an all-time high.

According to TechCrunch reports, Google could possibly be following the same model as Apple by potentially selling digital music online. But other reports claim that Google will be creating search results linking music sites such as Lala and iLike who sell music. Already, Google has given some signs of interest in the area. In March, the company launched a music service in China that provides free, ad-supported music downloads.

If this eventuates, and Google gets what it wants, then it can become a major player in the online music space because Google already knows what people are searching for and can leverage off this knowledge.

According to InternetNews.com reports:

“In general, Google is in a strong position to do something around music and compete,” Forrester Research analyst Mark Mulligan told InternetNews.com. “…they’re already a major player via YouTube, where we’ve seen online music video in many cases become more popular than online music audio. Apple can’t do anything about a BitTorrent download, but Google knows right from the start what people are looking for.”

Google can offer so much value in this area. General search terms can generate music product offerings and bundle product offerings which allow for total market capitalization.

So it will be interesting to watch this space over the next few months.

Big news recently as a US click fraud monitoring firm, Anchor Intelligence uncovered one of the largest ever click fraud rings originating from China.

According to Business Wire reports:

Anchor Intelligence has identified and eliminated over 200 click fraud rings involving at least five million distinct IP addresses with the help of its partners and clients. By identifying suspicious overlaps in audience segments and behaviors across its network, Anchor Intelligence uncovers new click fraud rings and applies its insights to its entire customer base. Fraudulent publishers are removed from a network’s system before ad fraud can impact advertisers.

The fraudsters known as “DormRing1” received its name as many of the perpetrators involved were students operating out of dormitories at Shanghai Technology Institute and other Chinese technical universities. Working in conjunction with one of its ad network customers, Anchor Intelligence tracked the operations of DormRing1 masterminds by gaining access to exclusive bulletin boards on various Chinese social networking sites. Anchor learned about the various tactics used by this fraud ring and was able to link many of the publisher sites to students living in dormitories on campus.

“Click fraud rings are active across the Internet and constantly evolving their tactics while trolling for vulnerable networks and advertisers,” concluded Ken Miller, CEO of Anchor Intelligence.

Every buyer or seller of online advertising that uses the Anchor ClearMark system becomes an instant winner in the battle against bad actors. Rather than fighting the arms race against the fraudsters alone, Anchor customers have chosen to leverage the collective intelligence of our network to develop a super strong line of defense against these rings.

Anchor Intelligence also indicates that while DormRing1 was shut down, similarly architected rings have emerged out of India and parts of Southeast Asia.

This definitely poses a challenge to all internet marketers who use paid advertising on ad and content networks on social networking sites as search engines do not seem to have a better way of preventing such fraud on a mass scale. That is why it is important to:

• Set up a structured Adwords campaign which allows you to geo-target your campaign to a specific region only or country and

• Track the location of your clicks and irregular clicking behavior via Google Analytics.

Interesting data came out of out a of a leading research company, Comscore recently, and the results showed that over 25.3 billion videos were viewed by US internet users. Given that about 161 million U.S. Internet users watched online videos during the month of August 2009, not only is this that largest ever recorded audience, but also the highest average number of videos viewed per user during that one month time period (on average 157 videos per user in the US).

Even more interesting, is that:

• The average online video viewer watched 582 minutes of video, which is equivalent to 9.7 hours in front of the screen.

• Google sites attracted 121.4 million unique visitors.

• YouTube.com accounted for 99 percent of all videos viewed on the Google network.

These statistics need to be taken with a grain of salt from a internet marketer point of view since the majority of videos viewed are not business related. For a complete list of results and breakdown of video usage visit the Comscore website.

What does it feel like to pass your credit card details over to an automated online shop?

Or better still, how does it feel  to pass over your financial details to a total stranger whom you haven’t even spoken to?

In an ever changing and often times unpredictable internet environment, shoppers are now looking for more secure sites to take their business to.

According to McAfee’s results from a study released on their website, it shows that sales conversions were 11% higher for online window shoppers who were shown security icons or cues, like the McAfee SECURE trustmark. Customers who took longer to complete a sale were found to be more responsive to security cues.

Other findings included:

• 65% of all shoppers wait a day more to complete a purchase, with an average delay of 33 hours and 54 minutes and;
• According to a recent Harris interactive study, 63% of consumers said that in spite of looking for a good deal, they would not purchase from a website or online store that didn’t display a trustmark or security policy.

• According to Javelin Strategy Research, every year online retailers lose billions of dollars from consumers who do not purchase due to security fears as opposed to price. In 2008, it was estimated that online retailers lost $21 billion in online sales due to online shopping fears and identity theft.

McAfee offer 4 tips for tweaking shopping carts for retailers to succeed in this hyper-competitive market; McAfee recommends the following strategies:

1) Consumers need to feel safe on every page.
Transparent privacy policies and security seals throughout the entire shopping experience to reassure consumers that their personal information will be safe when shopping on the site. Further to this, customers need to be given an option to contact customer support because according to writer Doug Caverly, “One cause of abandonment is ‘couldn’t find preferred pay option.’ Another one is ‘item unavailable at checkout.’ Then ‘couldn’t find customer support’ and ’security concerns’ kick in.”

2) Be Patient. Don’t Panic.
When re-marketing to shopping cart “abandoners”, there is a great risk in approaching them too soon. Likewise, when evaluating the effectiveness of a paid campaign, merchants should factor in realistic timetables for shoppers to complete their transaction. Otherwise, the retailer could annoy the customer who is window shopping or under-represent the campaign ROI. On the flip side, if the checkout process takes too long due to many unnecessary steps to get to a “Thank you” page, customers may also abandon.

3) Optimize the Entire Site.
Focusing purely on shopping cart abandonment can blind retailers to the larger issue of site abandonment. Optimizing check-out is a vital exercise, but retailers should not neglect the rest of the site. Many consumers fail to buy because the entire site experience does not feel secure. For well optimised pages both for the user and search engines, E-web recommends checking out some tips from Tim Ash’s ‘Landing Page Optimization‘.

4) Choose the Right Security Cues.
Online retailers should know not all trustmarks are created equal. A recent Yankee Group white-paper, Trust Marks: What’s Behind the Label Counts, found trustmarks that indicate daily vulnerability scanning, like McAfee SECURE, deliver the highest level of protection, compared to reputation, privacy and SSL trustmarks.

Handing over a credit card an unsecured site can be scary to many consumers. That’s why by taking some simple steps outlined above, you will begin to see conversion improvements.

Reports on the official Facebook blog claim that it now serves more more than 300 million people around the world.

What does this mean?

To put this into context, the entire US population is just over 304 million and more than 12 times the population of Australia.

Not only that, it is also collecting more revenue than it is currently spending on maintaining the site. Mark Zuckerberg said in a post on the official company Facebook blog:

“We’re also succeeding at building Facebook in a sustainable way. Earlier this year, we said we expected to be cash flow positive sometime in 2010, and I’m pleased to share that we achieved this milestone last quarter. This is important to us because it sets Facebook up to be a strong independent service for the long term.”

This means that Facebook will be able to develop and test out more features and products. Just like Google labs, it is allowing users to test out these prototypes by activating or downloading any of the prototypes listed.

From a marketing point of view, this may allow people or organisations’ more ways to connect to their followers. The future of Facebook looks quite rosy and will definitely be something keep an eye on.