5 Top SEO Tips For Business

In this post I wanted to cover five of many essential tips that anyone undergoing an SEO campaign should keep in mind. So without further ado, here we go:

1. Become accustom to using your analytics software to identify your websites strengths and weaknesses.

   The data provided by your analytics software will allow you to track how visitors arrived at your website, how they interacted with it and what you can do to convert those visitors into customers.  Aim to become a ‘power user’ – know the ins and outs of your analytics software. This is the most important data for your website and knowing how to access and interpret it will help you make intelligent business decisions.

2. Set-up E-commerce Tracking

   Whether you use the popular Google Analytics solution or an enterprise level solution such as Omniture , you’ll have the ability to track the details of each transaction that takes place through your website.

   E-commerce tracking is a must for online stores with multiple products, but if you provide any product or service that can be purchased online it’s highly recommended. Knowing exactly how much each keyword contributed to your monthly revenue is invaluable when it comes to making SEO decisions.

3. Chase the profitable keywords, not the popular ones

   It’s so tempting to try and rank well for keywords that have high search volumes – it seems to makes sense that the more traffic you can drive to the site the more sales you’re able to make, but if that keyword (KW1) has multiple meanings, is too generic or just not a good description of your product/service then you may struggle to see the sales you expected.

   With a little more research and investigation you may find two keywords (KW2, KW3) that are far less competitive (usually therefore less search volume) individually than KW1 but convert twice as much.

4. Help the search engines help you

   All of the 3 major players in the search engine market (Google, Yahoo, Bing) provide advice and guidance on helping them find, index and rank your website. By following this advice you can ensure your pages are found and indexed correctly for your target keywords. Sign up to services like Google Webmaster Tools and you’ll be provided with in-depth data on what the search engines see (or don’t see) when they crawl your website.

5. If in doubt ask an expert

   Search engines are constantly changing the way they find and rank websites and as a result the tips and techniques that worked in 2009 can become outdated very quickly. For example it was (perhaps still is) widely believed that putting your keyword in a prominent H1 header tag went a long way to helping you rank for that keyword and companies would go to great lengths to implement this across their websites, however it’s become evident that this is no longer true and the time and expense put towards implementing it would now be a waste.

Do You need to hire an SEO Expert?

SEO is a complicated and extensive field and many businesses do not have the time or resources to plan and implement an effective strategy that results in the required uplift in sales.  This may not hold true if your business offers a niche or very localised service (for example within a 30 mile radius of their offices) but for a business that can cater for a national or international customer base the challenges can be numerous.

Assess your goals, budget and capabilities before making a decision – if SEO is something you can handle internally while achieving your goals then it’s a great route to go, but if not you’ll need to begin the search for an SEO Agency.

Finding a suitable SEO Agency

A reliable SEO agency should not only have a good reputation and industry presence but be able to demonstrate the results they’ve achieved with past and current clients.

It’s also important to feel comfortable with the way an agency works and have faith in the service they offer. While there are many legitimate and effective agencies, there are those who employ spamming techniques that will at best be ineffective and at worst get you blacklisted from the search engines entirely (a considerable problem if your website is a main revenue stream!).

When done correctly Search Engine Optimisation can be an extremely cost effective solution to growing your business online and by partnering with an agency that has the knowledge and experience to see your goals achieved is always recommended when your business goals exceed your internal capabilities.

Pulse of the Nation: US Mood Tracked Through Twitter

Using the Google Maps API and 300 million tweets over three years, a group of researchers from Harvard and Northeasten universities have been able to identify the areas of the US that seem to be happiest by time of day and day of the week.

The resulting data has been visualised in the video below, with regions expanding or contracting in relation to the volume of tweets.

For the full story, check out the original Mashable post

BBC News Website Redesign

For those of us who use the BBC News website on a daily basis we woke up on 14th July to a brand new design & layout.

The eagle eyed among you may have seen the BBC’s intentions were announced around a week in advance to give people warning and a slideshow explaining some of the new features to be included – an excellent way to ‘soften the blow’ for the average user who’s become use to the existing layout.

Reaction to the redesign has been mixed as you may expect; change is always frustrating at first and while the BBC have made every effort to cater for everyone there were always going to be issues people would like resolved.

Rather than discuss the pros and cons of the redesign I wanted to provide a number of resources to the BBC team behind it, their thoughts and explanations of what’s gone on and why they believe the decisions they made were right. As a collection, the following links give a great insight into the thought processes behind the redesign of such a large website; not just for the latest stage but the development of the BBC’s new Visual Language.

Steven Herrman – BBC News Website Editor

• BBC News website redesign (1)
• BBC News website redesign (2)
• BBC News website redesign (3)
• BBC News website redesign (4)

BBC Internet Blog

• BBC News website redesign: telling the story (Paul Sissons)
• A new global visual language for the BBC’s digital services (Bronwyn van der Merwe)

Facebook vs Google | Social vs Search

Following on from my blog post on 11^th July 2010 Bing vs. Google I touched on the forces of Facebook to take on the mighty Google. Therefore I wanted to revisit this and look into whether this was a reality and what factors we need to be aware of as industry leaders.

Firstly we need to address what the competitive factors are between Google and Facebook. Yes Facebook now has more overall web traffic than Google in the UK but people use the 2 platforms for different activities.

People use Google to search for information, products, news, services, addresses, images, videos and more. Where as Facebook is a social networking platform used to communicate and engage with friends, family and communities who share your interests.

Therefore how can we start to compare Google to Facebook and suggest that Facebook have stolen Google’s top spot?

We need to understand what this means? A more pertinent question on this for me is that Facebook are becoming, if they are not already, a bigger brand than Google? With this comes power within the market and they are able to influence advertisers and users to engage with them over and above other platforms.

Facebook currently has 59% of the social network market in the UK (StatCounter)

In regards to search Google has 92% share (according to StatCounter) and completely dominates the UK market.

These figures clearly show the domination of the Facebook and Google within Search and Social media and both have different offerings however as advertisers we are looking for the online platforms which will allow us to generate the best results. Google offers tools and reporting which are far superior currently to the Facebook reporting, but Facebook in comparison is in its infancy. There are more and more examples of how Facebook can generate ROI and cost effective results for business so maybe this is where Google needs to be cautious. Can Facebook start to win bigger budgets and steal some of Google’s ad revenue?

Once the likes of Twitter and Facebook have a more established advertising platform for agencies and advertisers to manage and report on they could defiantly become a threat. Something I am sure Google has a close eye on.

Ongoing Shift of Marketing Dollars from Traditional to Online

A new 34 page report that has been published eMarketer estimates that US online advertising spending will reach $25.1 billion in 2010, a 5.5% increase on previous estimates.

Much of the growth is being attributed to the growing shift of marketing dollars from traditional to digital media, much of which as a result of the rapidly evolving ecosystem built on top of the social Internet—blogs, Twitter, Facebook, word-of-mouth and viral campaigns.

The new report, however, is not necessarily all good news; especially for the economy at large. “Still, economic blue skies are not seen everywhere in the ad world,” said David Hallerman, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report “US Ad Spending: How Big Is the Bounceback?” “Ironically, spending growth online is partially attributable to economic instability.

“The anxiety attached to the still-healing economy encourages marketers to bet more on ‘sure things’—and the ability to measure Internet ads, especially search, makes them more sure than most traditional ad spending,” he said.

Is the Social Web now front-of-mind for Madison Avenue?

This is a question that I have been asking myself for a while, and it is becoming increasingly evident that the great minds that are creating multi-million dollar commercials for the world’s most recognizable brands are very much thinking about the social web, particularly YouTube.

Like the Super Bowl every year, where the ad business is as talked about as much as the event itself, major sporting occasions tend to draw the largest budgets from major advertisers out the best work from those responsible for putting the ads together.

Now, with the 2010 World Cup now upon us, there are a number of great commercials which have become incredibly popular on YouTube. Let’s look at a couple.

Nike Football: Write the Future

Uploaded: May 17th, 2010
Views to date: 15,576,055

adidas Originals – Star Wars™ Cantina 2010

Uploaded: June 4th, 2010
Views to date: 3,297,285

To be honest, I don’t know too much about how the success or failure of traditional TV commercials are judged, however my feeling is that the extent of how they are shared and distributed across the web is certainly becoming a factor.

Internet Week New York – A Brief Review

Last week I had the good fortune of being able to attend a number of events at the third annual Internet Week in New York City.

With so much going on in different venues all over the City, the toughest task was figuring out which ones to go to. Well, along with dealing with the hangover’s which come with the late night partying!

In short, the week was an awe-inspiring whirlwind of innovation and entrepreneurialism with the social web, mobile and the open web being common themes.

Of all of the events (and parties) that I attended, one which really stood out was a panel discussion at the Journalism Institute at New York University in downtown Manhattan, entitled ‘The Future of Media’ The panel focused on how the Internet and other digital media are transforming the traditional media landscape.

What attracted me to RSVP for this event was two-fold. Firstly, Arianna Huffington, Co-Founder and Editor in Chief of the Huffington Post, of which I am a big fan, was one of the panel members. The other reason was simply because of the title of the event ‘The Future of Media’. I mean, how could I resist?

The panel also consisted of Dan Abrams of Mediaite, Josh Cohen of Google News, David Eun of AOL Media, James Pitaro of Yahoo! Media and Cindi Leive, Editor in Chief of Glamour.

Overall, a really great panel discussion only hampered perhaps by the strict 60 minutes that were available. One of the highlights being Arianna’s dig at Rupert Murdoch’s ‘Paywall’ approach to content.
My only gripe was perhaps that the subject matter deserved a much longer session.

Watch here.

Other highlights included socialite and occasional TV presenter, Julia Allison discussing ‘over-sharing’ and privacy with Jeff Jarvis, creator of BuzzMachine.com and author of ‘What Would Google Do?’ and NBC4 New York discussing TV in the Age of Social Media. Both of these videos, as well as many others can be viewed at http://www.livestream.com/internetweekny

Bing Vs Google

The fight is getting interesting. Just when we started to right off Bing due to many reasons, things start to change.

Has anyone noticed how Bing is pushing hard on TV advertising? How could you miss it! Back to back decision engine adverts filling a whole 3 minute commercial slot. It seems that Microsoft have finally put some money towards trying to push Bing to become a viable competitor to Google.

After Bing had a disappointing launch a year ago, advertisers have been made to struggle with small traffic volumes and a frustrating interface to try to manage our client’s accounts. Not only this but there seemed to be no support or drive from Microsoft to make Bing a compelling platform to use and therefore trying to manage this platform on behalf of clients has been a challenge. The most compelling step was them joining forces with Yahoo to make the 2nd and 3rd search engines in UK a possible threat to Google. However this is going to take time and we won’t expect to see any impact or changes until at least 2011. This will be a long process and I am sure there will be some teething problems as the two platforms merge and ultimately they have less than 10% market share.

However, Bing is becoming more aggressive with their advertising, updates and with their market share. Of course they are no Google at the moment but perhaps part of the reason for that is no one outside of the advertising industry knows what Bing is? I speak to my family and friends and there is a complete lack of awareness of the platform. If Bing can tackle this at least they will be giving themselves a chance and this seems to be something they are working on.

But am I getting my hopes up? Google market share in UK currently sits at over 90% according to statcounter.com, making them by far the dominant leader in the search market. Can Bing actually get to where they need to be? Or will Social platforms become the force to take on Google. (this is another story and debate)

On the other hand there was a clear buzz around Google’s background images yesterday and opinions on how they had flattered Bing by copying their look and feel. Does this mean Google see them a threat? They certainly got a lot of press, even though this was the voiced frustrations of those trying to remove the enraging backgrounds! But compare for yourself? They are not that similar are they?

The time has come where we need to see results from Bing. As advertisers we need efficient ways of managing these accounts, yes there are numerous 3rd party tools out their with API feeds at a cost but if the volumes of traffic and spends are not there both Bing and Yahoo become an ineffective use of account managers time.

I am personally hoping to see Bing driving forward and offering advertisers a compelling platform and over a year I have been waiting in anticipation. However, for now Google is still the clear leader here; maybe Facebook can give them a run for their money!

Top 5 Tips To Increase Click Through Rate

Firstly we need to address what is Click Through Rate. CTR determines the percentage of Click Through’s from the number of impressions you have received. The calculation for this being  No. of clicks / No. of impressions = Click through rate

1. Check your Keywords
The back bone of a PPC campaign is reliant on the keywords and how they’re grouped.

If you are trying to increase your Click Through Rate (CTR) one of the first place to look is your keywords. Many people forget this and tend to jump straight into match type changes and other more complex changes to find out that they are just restricting traffic.

Also ask yourself what CTR you expect to see? It could be that a lower CTR on a generic keyword is actually saving money by preventing irrelevant clicks.

However making sure that the keywords within your account reflect your product and services is important, as well as ensuring your keywords are relevant to your ad copy.

2. Test your ad copy

25 characters for a title and 70 for two lines of text is not a lot of space to express a clear marketing message. It is therefore important that you use these characters as effectively as possible. If you know people are searching on keywords that are relevant to your business how do you engage with them? Well again it depends on your end goal of your campaign, what are you trying to achieve? ‘Sales’ I hear you say, well high CTR does not always result in sales. So how can you influence someone who is looking to buy to click your ad? Call to actions, prices, discounts, something for nothing, best deals or unique offerings. All these elements can help catch the eye of the potential customer, distinguish you in the market and more importantly encourage someone to click. If your CTR is low and you are happy with your keywords, always check your ads.

3. Change Match Types

There are 3 variations of match types on Google and they have different jargon across Yahoo and Bing; Broad, Phase and Exact. The more refined the match type the more restrictive the exposure of your ads. So essentially less impressions and clicks may be achieved but they should be more targeted. In most cases you would expect by changing the match type from broad to phrase or exact the CTR would improve. This is down to the fact that you are eliminating some of the less relevant searches that are triggering your ad; now only the specific terms you have specified will show your ads and the relevancy is increased. However, this will prevent your from generating traffic on keywords which are relevant but not included in your account. An example of this would be as follows:

Keyword ‘hotel in Spain’ – on broad match. You may appear on ‘bad hotel in Spain’ and ‘best hotel in Spain’ or even ‘hotel with pool in Spain’

By refining the match type to exact you will prevent appearing on anything other than ‘hotel in Spain’ so traffic levels will drop but CTR will increase.

Make sure you have the most appropriate match type per keyword to achieve your end goals not just your desired CTR

4. Negative – By Match type

Negative terms will help broad and phase match keywords to be refined without eliminating the relevant searches you are matching too. Negative keywords are very important to improve CTR and prevent irrelevant traffic. In the example above we looked at a hotel scenario, as an advertiser you may not want to appear for people searching for ’bad hotel’ related keywords so by adding ‘bad’ as a broad negative term it mean that you will not appear when any search query includes ‘bad’.

However what about phrase negative and exact negatives? A great example of this is would be ‘Hotel magazine’, it is likely that you don’t want to appear on the term ‘Hotel magazine’ if you are trying to sell holidays, however by putting this as a broad match you may end up preventing yourself appearing on ‘Hotel’ related terms. So choosing Phrase or exact refines the negative in the same way as match types work. Again this is about creating a balance of CTR and relevant volume to your website.

5. Cost Per Click Bids

Finally the bid you are paying for a keyword can influence your CTR. If you appear in position 1 or 2 it is likely that you’re CTR will be much higher than position 8 or page 2. By changing your bid pricing this can help influence the position on the listings (as long as you have a good quality score). Therefore the more you pay per click the higher your CTR could potentially be.

However on the other side of the coin, if your quality score is weak then you may be paying more for higher positions without improving your CTR.

CPC changes are often the last step to take when trying to improve your CTR but can have a positive effect if managed in the right way.

91% of all Internet Traffic will be Video by 2014

An interesting report was released by Cisco earlier this week that was incorporated in the companies Visual Network Index (VNI) stating that Video Will make Up 91% of all Internet Traffic by 2014. The 91% includes streaming, file sharing, uploading, downloading and progressive download.

With the continuing growth in video and the convergence of other media platforms such as TV and Internet the likelihood of this happening is far more realistic especially as telecom exchange hubs unbundle local loops for faster broadband.

Another surprising element in the report is that Cisco believe that end of 2010 video will exceed P2P as the top traffic contributor which is a major shift in traffic allocation.
An important question for companies is how they start the engagement process with video now so they can take advatge of not just this growth not just as internet traffic but also the growth in new hardware platform such as Streak & iPad that their customers will be accessing information.