It seems Google are able to track and find out everything about people these days. But not anymore!
This excellent parody video from satire site The Onion rips into Google by suggesting that they are launching an Opt Out Village where people can go and live if they don’t want to be tracked by Google. The village is devoid of hospitals, banks, computers and of course Google, and there is only one way to Opt back In but i’ll let you view the video to find out how!
The 3 main areas of Online Marketing
by admin at 11:45 am on July 9, 2009
Online Marketing or Internet Marketing can be a complicated business and there are lots of aspects to consider when taking on a complete Online Marketing project.
However to sum up the whole process we can segregate Online Marketing into 3 main areas, these are Traffic Generation, Conversion Analysis and Repeat Business. The following will go into more detail about each area.
Traffic Generation
One of the first things that need to be considered is how am I going to get visitors to my website?
This can be achieved in various ways but the method that will generate the most traffic is Search Engine Optimisation. This is the process of ranking highly in what is called the natural search results of a search engine. The first step in this process involves Keyword Research. This refers to figuring out what words and phrases most relate to your business and which of these words people actually search for and then incorporate them into your websites content and metadata. This then allows the search engines to know which words are important to your website. There are many other aspects to SEO such as Competitor Analysis, External & Internal Linking and Social Media to name a few all of which need to be considered when taking on an SEO project.
Another method of traffic generation is Pay Per Click advertising. This uses the same principles as SEO in the respect that it uses keywords. However with PPC advertising you bid on the position your advert will show depending on the keyword. The beauty of this type of advertising is you only pay when someone clicks on your advert.
Conversion Analysis
The next part of Online Marketing refers to Conversions. Conversions are sales or enquiries depending on the nature of your business. As part of your project you will want to monitor and analyse how many sales/enquiries you have achieved. A good way of doing this is to attach some analytical package (such as Google Analytics) to your website allowing you to see visitor activity and where any sales/enquiries came from.
However on the flip side if you are not achieving any sales/conversions you will want to know why. Maybe your website simply isn’t appealing enough to provoke a sale/enquiry, maybe you’re not giving the customer enough information or maybe your contact form is hard to find. These things can all be monitored and acted upon that is why it is so important to analyse your websites statistics regularly.
Repeat Business
Once you have achieved sales/enquiries unless you are only interested in one off sales then it is important to encourage people to repeat buy. This can be achieved through online marketing using techniques such as Email Marketing Campaign and well maintained blogs or forums.
Email Marketing gives you the opportunity to send a message to people who have already shown an interest in your product or service by signing up for newsletters or regular updates. This is what’s known as a Permission List as the people on the list have given their consent for you to contact them.
Another method of encouraging repeat business is to keep a well maintained blog or forum. This method allows people to interact with your business and gives them assurances that they can air any grievances or concerns quickly and easily. A blog is a great way to keep your customers informed on latest products, offers or company news and allows them to feel part of the community.
To sum up you will need to plan and consider each of these areas to succeed in your Online Marketing project. However the rewards for successful implementation are well worth the time and effort.
The Importance of Internal Linking
by admin at 5:22 pm on June 29, 2009
It is often believed that in SEO the most important links are external links leading to your site. Whilst these are indeed extremely important it is also very important to get the Internal Linking structure of your own site right.
Main Site Navigation
This process begins when you are deciding what keywords to use in the main navigation of your site. It is a good idea to use your most important and most relevant keywords within the main navigation as this is one of the first things the search engines will look at when crawling your site.
However don’t be tempted to try and stuff loads of keywords into your navigation as 1) It looks messy and 2) You can potentially get punished by the search engines.
Website Footer
Another form of Internal Linking that will also help the Search Engines is having a footer that mirrors the main navigation but can also contain a few extra pages that aren’t linked from the main navigation (these are usually pages like Privacy Policy or Terms & Conditions). It is very important however not to be tempted to keyword stuff in this area. I have seen sites where the footer links cover more area than the main content of the page! This again looks messy but will also reduce the value of each individual link.
Internal Text Links
Internal Text Links are links that are placed within the content of a page. When a relevant keyword is used in the content of your site you can turn that word into a link to the relevant part of your site. An example of this would be ‘We are a Web Design company based on the Wirral’ where web design links to the relevant page on our site (yes I know a cheap inbound link to our site on that one!).
And you guessed it, it’s important not to add too many text links as it will look messy and reduce the value of the links.
These steps alone will not boost your site to the top of the rankings, however they are an important part of the overall SEO process and for the time it takes it is definitely worth doing.
It is important for any company selling online to understand their customers D.U.F.’s. Now this has nothing to do with Homer Simpson’s favourite beer (mmm Duff!) but stands for Doubts, Uncertainties and Fears when buying online.
How can I find out what my customers D.U.F.’s are
This is a quick checklist of good ways to find out your customers DUF’s
• Start by Reviewing your Site
Is all the information regarding a product there and visible to a client? Is everything there that should be, like shipping costs, delivery date, secure shopping etc. Compare your site to industry leaders to see what you may be missing.
• Have a chat with the people on the front line
Talk to the people who speak to your customers. Are the customers asking the same questions every day? If so think about adding and FAQ to your site to allay some of their fears and answer their questions.
• Ask your customers for Feedback
Adding a customer feedback form can be a great way to find out what is worrying your customers about your products or services. It is also a great way to make customers feel comfortable buying from you if you have positive customer feedback.
• Usability Testing
Ask people who are unfamiliar to your site to go over it and assess the usability. This is a great way to see if your site is user friendly to new visitors and a great way to uncover new DUF’s.
These are My Top 5 tips for On Page SEO. Now these are by no means the definitive 5 things you should do in SEO, but they are a useful place to start. I welcome any comments or feedback you may have.
• Keyword Research
Choosing the correct keywords for your site is like building the foundations of a house. These keywords are the building blocks that support many aspects of SEO. It is important to select keywords that describe your business from the customer’s point of view, as they are the ones that are going to be using those words to find your site. To select these words there are many tools out there including Google Adwords Keyword Tool and Wordtracker to name but two, but it is also good to do some competitor analysis by typing the terms you think describe your business into the search engine and seeing who shows up. If they are your competitors or businesses much like yours you are on the right track.
• Content
Probably the most important part of the SEO process is the actual content on the website. It is important to remember that you are writing the content for your visitors and not the search engines. This means it is best to remember to make the content readable, coherent and to look at it from a customer’s point of view. Get someone who is not involved with the company and doesn’t know SEO to have a look at your site, if they wonder why there is repetition then you have overdone the keywords. Don’t stuff your content with keywords to try and get the site picked up by the search engine. This can actually lead to your site being punished and not showing at all in the search engines.
• Meta Data – Particularly important when producing meta data is the Title tag <title>. This is the text that shows at the top of the web browser and effectively gives a title to each page of your site. It is important to incorporate relevant keywords within the title tag. Once again however it is important to consider customers as the title tag is the first thing that people will see in the SERPs. Again it is important not to keyword stuff your Title tag as this may once again lead to sites or pages not showing.
Arguably of less importance are the keyword <keywords> and description tags <description>. The keyword tag is simply a list of keywords relating to the web page and is just a case of listing your most popular, relevant keywords.
The description tag is basically a description of the page. It is a few lines of text that give the customer a brief overview of the page. This means it is again important to write a description tag that is relevant and coherent to the customer as the description tag is also visible in the SERPs.
• Friendly URL’s
It is important to have URLs that relate to the page not only for your visitors but also for the search engines.
Using a keyword that relates to the page within your URL will help your site rank higher for that particular keyword. It also helps visitors to navigate your site as they know exactly where they are within it for example www.webtise.co.uk/webdesign tells you, you are on the web design page.
From an aesthetic point of view it also looks a lot tidier to have friendly URLs throughout the site.
• Internal Linking
An important aspect of On Page SEO is to make sure all your links are linking to the correct pages. It is also useful to link text within your content to pages of your site. The best practice is to use keywords within the text to link to other relevant (that is the important bit) areas on the site. As with everything else it is important not to over do your linking as not only does it look messy but it can also lead to punishment from the search engines. A footer sitemap is also a useful way of incorporating keywords and internal linking on your site.
