Competitive Intelligence – There’s No Such Thing As Privacy On The Web
One of the downsides of the Internet is the lack of privacy. It can be amusing to see individuals jump up and down because Facebook has breached their privacy when the exact same information is freely available on their website. I guess it’s the principle at stake. However, it does lead to my point that, online, there is very little privacy. When it comes to competitive intelligence, the information is out there and often easy to find.
The biggest source of information are the search engines. Search engines spend their whole being scouring the web looking for information that hasn’t been indexed, and updating information it already has. Don’t let anyone fool you into believing the search engines only index web pages – they certainly don’t. Images, videos, tweets, and forum posts along with a million and one other social media conversations are all being indexed and, once indexed, they could appear in search results.
When seeking information related to your competitors, the hardest part is not finding the information; it is sifting through to get to the real data. A review, for example, could be written by an affiliate, a disgruntled customer, a pay-for-post blogger, or perhaps even an employee. Of course, don’t be surprised if you come across data that appears to be wrong. Smart business owners are trying to foil competitors by placing misinformation in certain areas – misleading keywords in meta tags is an obvious one.
Is it wrong to collect competitive intelligence? Businesses have been doing it for thousands of years – the Internet has just made it easier. Besides, if you’re a strong competitor, you can bet they are looking over your shoulder right now! Privacy – you’re online – what privacy?
The Six Most Important Internet Marketing Must Do’s
If you are running a business with an online presence, then social media marketing has to be a part of your strategy. I cannot think of any niche where social media couldn’t be of some benefit, and if ‘Likes’ become the new ‘Links’, then it will become a whole lot more important. However, a social media presence means more than just creating a profile. Here are the six most important internet marketing must do’s.
Profiles:
Your profile is a reflection of your business. It could be one of the first things that visitors look at. Make sure it accurately reflects your business. Don’t spam by linking to sales pages; link them to the most important social pages on your website – don’t have one, get one!
Engage:
Create as many opportunities for two-way conversation as possible. If you publish a blog, open it up to comments. Don’t forget to edit out the spam and to respond to comments. Likewise, wherever possible, make commenting on social media easy and respond when appropriate. Get that two-way communication going.
Transparency:
Don’t hide, and don’t bury negatives. If there is a negative comment left, respond to it accordingly. Unless legal issues prevail, admit errors and act to remedy them. Be sure that others can see that the issue has been resolved.
Personnel:
If there is more than one person in the business, particularly more than one involved with social media marketing, introduce them, let your visitors and followers know who they are and what their role is. Just as importantly, make sure they identify themselves in any conversations.
Follow:
Social media marketing is all about communication. Be sure to follow people are important to you. At the same time, if someone you follow starts to spam, unfollow them – don’t help them to spread their trash.
Content:
Create content that is suitable for social media. It doesn’t have to be a video or podcast. Creating content on your blog that invokes two conversations is important. Creating a welcome page dedicated to each social media channel can really personalize a new relationship.
Social media marketing is about to become more mainstream so the last thing you need is to be left behind. Start with those six steps and you will be on the right road to success.
Can Online Videos Can Make A Real Difference
Online videos – for some business owners, they have proven to be a godsend. For others, they are an area that’s too scary to venture into. For the latter, relax and check out what your competitors are doing in the area of video production and publishing. Videos are now a proven valuable marketing tool, even inexpensive home made videos.
Are professional videos better? It actually depends on what sort of image you are trying to create. If your business is targeting younger adults and you are using a fun, happy-go-lucky approach, then wacky home made videos could be all that is needed – in fact, the wackier the better. If your business is a little more on the serious side, then having a professionally produced video could well produce dividends. What is interesting are the number of seemingly wacky home made videos that are actually professionally produced and the number of professional looking videos that are home made – in some cases, I dare you to pick them!
But can videos make a real difference? One of the heaviest trafficked sites is YouTube and websites that do incorporate videos report strong viewing statistics. If you are looking for viral content, then videos are just as likely to go viral as a photo or story – in some cases more so.
Video for video sake is not likely to make much of a difference. However, if you have something to say, a point to make, or can make life easier for your customers (for example, step-by-step how-to videos), then videos can make a significant difference to your business’s overall reputation. Good videos are also valuable for building brand awareness. If you’re not sure if video is right for your business, ask a professional in the online video marketing business.
Social Media Optimization – Is It Time To Map Our Conversations?
We create site maps so that search engines and visitors can find all the pages in our websites, so is it time to create a similar map of all our social conversations? Site maps list every page a website owner wants indexed – a social conversation map would similarly map every social conversation we wanted indexed or followed – or made available to our visitors.
I am not sure what you could call it. A social site map, a social conversation map, or my favorite, a social cite map – but then, what’s in a name? it’s the concept that’s interesting. I can certainly see a range of benefits to such a map. Obviously, if published, search engines would be able to follow the links to your conversations, and perhaps even index them. Your visitors can follow links to conversations which could lead to more followers, more links, and perhaps more likes. And for you as a website owner, it may help you keep track of past conversations and make it easy to reference them when required.
How you would develop a social cite map is another question. There is software available that helps you track current conversations – if you need to manually extract that data to build a social cite map it could become time consuming. Of course, waiting would make the creation even harder if you wanted to include old data.
A social cite map – it’s an interesting concept, and one worth considering. If the logistics could be worked out, I can see a lot of benefits to website owners, their visitors, and perhaps even search engines. What do you think? Any ideas on how we could create a ‘social cite map’ as part of our social media optimization strategies?
The Dangers Of Using Likes In Place Of Links
Bruce Clay suggests that social media ‘likes’ will become the new ‘links’ when it comes to delivering traffic. There’s a strong possibility he’s right too. Search engines are paying more attention to social media activity and Facebook is now becoming a dominant player when it comes to receiving and delivering traffic.
I can see real dangers in using social media as a voting platform. Social media likes will be no different to the current link-based voting system (and that is all links are – votes). Clay rightfully points out that ‘likes’ will eventually be sold as links are now; the problem is, at present, it can take thousands of links to affect a position in search results. We have also seen businesses uses various forms of bribery to gain likes from followers. One wonders how many likes it will take to make a difference – at present, likes in the high hundreds seem to be sufficient.
As with links, likes will not represent quality. Likes will go to people who have effective social media marketing campaigns, can make offers available that attract likes (or direct bribery), and can produce effective viral campaigns. That last will become the real key. Social is far more powerful than any link-building strategy. Social already has a strong web-like structure so viral campaigns have the capacity to reach a much higher audience at faster speeds than traditional methods.
There are two dangers for many businesses, particularly small businesses. Like it or not, you will have to engage in social media. Furthermore, like it or not, you will need to engage in social media marketing targeted towards ‘likes’ as much as traffic, sales, or product awareness.
Most small business owners are not smart marketers. Where social has provided small business owners with a somewhat level playing field, the future may not be as accommodating. Will ‘likes’ improve the quality of content? In the short term it should, but long term, you have to wonder!
Do You Still Doubt The Influence Of Facebook?
Facebook – to many people it’s a fad, or a place for kids and their friends to hang out. And, on both scores, they are. And that’s what makes Facebook all the more important. Yes, it’s a fad, but it’s not going away any time soon. And, yes, it is a place where kids and their friends hang out; along with their moms and dads and any other member of the extended family wanting to keep in contact.
From a business perspective, it’s a unique meeting place that has never been achieved in such numbers in the history of mankind. Think about it – where else in history have you had millions of people, all linked in one form or another, in the one place where marketers can display their wares? Nowhere, I can think off.
But does Facebook deliver? That’s the most important question on any business owners mind? According to one report, Facebook is delivering more content than YouTube. Considering YouTube is extremely popular (some say the second biggest search engine on the internet), then that is a lot of content. If you want raw numbers, Facebook delivered 24% of pageviews to YouTube’s 6.93% and Google’s somewhat paltry 4.13% – perhaps that puts the whole Facebook discussion into some perspective.
There is a simple moral to this data. Google is still king of search, but search is losing its position as king of the online world. Users are now heading to social media first, often making it the start page in their browser. While optimizing pages for search is still important, having a strong online position on Facebook is now becoming important as well. The real danger for many businesses is similar to what we saw ten years ago in search. A lot of businesses shunned search as unimportant – look at it now. Don’t make the same mistake with social – catching up will be even harder.
Running A Successful Business On Pay Per Click Alone
There are many businesses that have foregone organic search and social media marketing so they can concentrate on pay per click advertising on its own. And they are doing it successfully. There are pluses and minuses to this approach, and one of the biggest minuses is cost. However, well managed, it is possible. Let’s look at some of the advantages.
Content – you don’t have to continuously generate content to stay on top of organic search results. You can create a website that is very tight and that is designed purely to produce results.
Targeted Traffic – the traffic that is arriving on your site is there because they are looking for what you have to offer. Targeted traffic is everyone’s goal; pay per click is one of the best sources.
Costs - while pay per click can be expensive, those costs are tightly controllable. You can set tight budgets, put limits on your costs per click and even control how much traffic is arriving on your website each day.
Control – you have more control over your business. You will have a reasonable idea how much traffic is coming in each day, what the conversion rate is, and in some cases, how much stock you need in reserve. Organic search can be all over the place when it comes to traffic numbers and conversion rates.
While some businesses are highly successful using pay per click advertising alone, it’s not for everyone. To be successful you need a well designed website, good landing pages that convert well, and a good selection of converting keywords. Most importantly, you need good products or services that have profit margins that make pay per click a profitable option. What many of these businesses do have in common is a team of pay per click experts helping them achieve their goals.
Finding Conversations To Promote Your Business
Internet marketing covers a wide range of activities, all designed to promote your business, your brand, your website and/or yourself. One area of Internet marketing that is often either overlooked, or misused, is that of blog commenting. In most cases, people are looking at blogs as possible link opportunities and while this should not be dismissed, blog comments can deliver much more than just a link.
The key to successful blog commenting is to find blogs that have a high profile in your niche. It doesn’t matter if the comments are ‘no follow’ or ‘do follow’ since links should not be your primary aim. Your primary aim is to determine what factors are affecting people in your niche, and to promote yourself as an authority in that niche.
You need to identify conversations early, and to participate in them using your knowledge and experience. Don’t even consider participating in conversations that don’t relate to your area of expertise. Instead, cultivate relationships with those that are regular participants themselves. You may find it useful to follow their links to their blogs where you can continue that relationship. Overtime, you will develop a reputation for being an expert in your niche.
Being recognized in this manner will naturally lead to traffic from those blogs, and over time, perhaps even links. Your reputation will also travel to social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, furthering your circle of influence. The end result of this activity is a good reputation, traffic, and perhaps even a boost to search engine optimization outcomes. The hardest part is simply finding conversations early so you can make significant contributions rather than arriving late when the action’s all over.
Here’s a tip – find high profile blogs then subscribe to their feeds, that way you should get early notice when they publish new content.
Is Google Giving Reputation Management A Helping Hand?
Google have changed the way search results are displayed and the new changes could make online reputation management just that little bit easier. The last modification to search results was to publish two related links on a domain for certain search queries. These queries include a search for domain by name, a search for a business by name, and a search for a brand by name. Google have now increased that from two related pages to a maximum of four pages.
You may wonder how that will help with reputation management. If your website is able to claim the top four listings, and you have a blog that is also able to take the next four listings, you will now have the top eight listings in search results covered. According to the Google blog:
As before, we still provide links to results from a variety of domains to ensure people find a diverse set of sources relevant to their searches. However, when our algorithms predict pages from a particular site are likely to be most relevant, it makes sense to provide additional direct links in our search results.
That variety of domains could well be your blog, especially if it is hosted on its own domain with the appropriate domain name. Don’t be surprised to see businesses now registering domain names using their business name with the term ‘blog’ or similar added to the end. We recently reported on an admission from Matt Cutts that exact domain matches rank higher than they normally should. Put the two together and you have two sites that rank highly for any searches on those domain names.
It’s only a small step since your reputation can be badly tainted in many other ways. Reports may not float to the top of search results based on your business name, but they could based on product names, perhaps a brand name, and through non-search entities such as social media. Still, every little bit helps, and this change will certainly go a long way to protecting a business’ reputation in the search results. All you need now is a blog that is ranking well – you do have one, don’t you???
Change Brings Decisions – Don’t Be Rash
We seem to be going through a period of rapid fire announcements from search and social media outlets. At times, there is a flurry of activity as website owners try to absorb changes all the while looking for holes they can use to gain an advantage over competitors. Sometimes, it’s worth stopping, taking a deep breath, and really analyzing what steps should be taken. Occasionally, doing nothing may be the best option.
AllFacebook recently reported that Facebook wall allowing brands to claim community pages that had been created using their brand name. They further claim that businesses could claim up to five community pages as their own, effectively wresting control from the creators and placing editorial control in the hands of the brand owners. For some brands, having community pages that reflect poorly on their business has been, at the very least, an irritation. However, there are many community pages that don’t reflect poorly so before jumping in and claiming them, you may want to consider a few points.
- does the page hurt your business/brand?
- is the page a good independent view of your business/brand?
- will claiming this page alienate followers?
One area where I see businesses wanting to claim community pages is when they have a large group of followers. By claiming community pages, you are able to access that group and send them marketing material. This could become another privacy issue for Facebook since users had followed that community page, not the business. It will be interesting to see if privacy raises its head.
So why do I suggest doing nothing? It makes sense to claim community pages if they are having a negative effect on your business. However, if there are ten community pages currently live, which five are you going to claim? And what happens next week or next month if one of the remaining five begins to publish harmful material? Community pages are generally created by those interested in your product. There are some that try to profit off your brand, and claiming them could be seen as worthwhile. For the others, they epitomize what social is all about and probably best left in peace. If they do cause problems in the future then you’ll be in a position to act. The next generation of online marketing may well be through third parties such as Facebook community pages, mom bloggers or Tweeters.
You should only act if the action itself helps to improve your standing in social communities and helps to build your business. Sometimes, acting can do more harm than good so don’t be rash in your decision making.
Where SEM And SMO Intersect
Search engine marketing and social media marketing have long had an interesting relationship. It’s easy to compartmentalize and say that such and such belongs here while this and that belong over there. But it’s not necessarily helping your business to do that.
Search engine marketing and social media marketing are both forms of Internet marketing. As such, they have something in common. But they also have some overlap, which means that they likely have more in common than simply categorization.
For instance, you’ve likely seen social media profiles, or even posts, updates, and tweets, in search results. That means that social media can be a form of search engine marketing. And certain social media – like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube – even have their own search features, some of which are quite popular. YouTube has even been called the second largest search engine in terms of volume.
I think someday Facebook may surpass YouTube in terms of volume of searches. But will they include off-site search in that deal?
Long story short, don’t expect to compartmentalize your Internet marketing strategies forever. You should really develop one Internet marketing strategy that pulls all of your online marketing together and crafts it such that the strategies work together – not against each other.
Are Moms The Hidden Influencers?
Technorati released its annual State of the Blogosphere report earlier this month and one of the standout statistics is that mom bloggers are steadily becoming strong influencers. Not only are they becoming strong influencers, they are turning their power into online businesses – successful ones at that.
Marketing experts have known for decades that moms are the key to many successful marketing campaigns. The belief in many marketing departments is that males have little in the way of brains when it comes to shopping, even for their own needs. If you want to sell a male a product, target the women in their lives – that was the mantra.
With mothers now taking to blogging, they are starting to wield some incredible power. In the days before the Internet, women, in particular mothers, would have get-togethers while the kids were at school and have, what many males considered to be, regular gossip sessions. They would discuss everything from little Johnny’s antics at school to what products they like and dislike. Now they are doing the same online except, instead of half a dozen mothers getting together, we have hundreds, if not thousands, reading these blogs – and I use the plural judiciously since most mothers regularly read more than one mommy blog.
Is there a message for business owners in this new environment? I think there could be. Mothers have been strong influencers for a long time. They are steadily growing in numbers when it comes to blogs and social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. The future for many businesses will depend on how well they can connect with these moms, particularly through social media. Do it well, create a positive relationship, and they will most likely support your business. Do it poorly and there is a good chance your business will be mocked by this growing group.
Remember, moms have always had the ability to influence those around them. Now that they are starting to realize the power of the Internet, they are starting to flex their muscles and let their voices be heard – are you listening at all?
Is Yahoo! About To Start A New Search War?
Now I know most will argue that Yahoo! is now out of search, and in the traditional sense, they are. However, the time is ripe now to step out of your safe ‘traditional search’ shoes and to start thinking laterally. Yahoo! has made several major announcements, all related to local search, and much of it designed with the mobile user in mind.
Yahoo! have announced several apps that will make it easier for people to access information on the web. For example, they can find restaurants close to where they are then book a table by way of OpenTable, the restaurant booking service. What should interest business owners is the launch of Local Offers. As the name suggests, users can click through to see what offers are currently available in their area. Some of the Yahoo! partnerships for this service inlcude:
- Groupon,
- LivingSocial,
- Gilt City,
- BloomSpot,
- BuyWithMe,
- DealOn,
- Zozi,
- CrowdSavings,
- Lifebooker,
- FreshGuide,
- Scoop St,
- Goldstar,
- HomeRun,
- Tippr,
- Coupons.com, and
- Valpak.
Users now can access their Yahoo! page where they can read the latest news, read what’s available at local business restaurants along with free offers from local businesses, all without having to enter a search term. Google have been working away at making local search (now Google Places) as user friendly and relevant as possible. In fact, they have made one or two interesting changes to local search themselves this week.
Will this change local search in any way? It’s a hard call, and it will depend on how well Yahoo! can sell the feature, and how well it draws he crowds.
Stale Content – Are You Destroying Your Own Reputation
There are two things that visitors are going to notice when they first land on one of your pages – how it looks and what it says. Let’s assume you have hired a professional website designer to create attractive easy-to-negotiate pages, so your website looks great. What about the content?
One of the problems with search engines is that they generally rank old pages above new pages. Google, for example, may talk a lot about ‘fresh content’, but for most searches the pages listed are fairly old. If your site has been around for awhile then those old pages are going to rank fairly well, even if the information on them is a little outdated.
This is where your reputation could take a real hammering. If visitors feel the information is too old, too out of date, or no longer relevant, there is a good chance they’ll hit the back button rather than seeking fresher content on your site. Flagging the fact that the information is outdated and linking to fresher content may not attract them either.
You have several options. You could redirect to fresher content as long as the new page is about the same subject. You could also rewrite the content to bring it up to date. It seems to be pointless having a redirect to new content when you could simply update the content on that page.
Reputation management starts at home – that is, it starts with what you say and do on your own website. While search engine marketing and social media marketing are all the rage at present, taking time to review those old pages on your website is equally important. Is the content still relevant, accurate, and able to answer the needs of your visitors? If not, give it a lick of polish and bring it up to date.
SEO – Are You Results Oriented, Or Chasing The Impossible Dream?
If you are a new business just setting up then you are going to find it tough. There’s no point mincing words – search is quickly becoming saturated, especially when it comes to short one- or two-word keywords, and ranking highly quickly is just not going to happen. It’s not all doom and gloom, however. If you work your way methodically you can succeed and, over time, you can start to make a serious impact in search results – it all depends on your approach.
Chasing highly competitive keywords is the quickest way to bankruptcy. Your competitors have had a big head start on you and their search engine optimization programs will make it much harder for you to compete. If you are results oriented, then you can start to make an impact. It’s really a very simple process on paper (not so simple in application). What is the process?
Keywords – Finding keywords that are still competitive. They may not receive zillions of searches each day, but that factor alone makes them attractive.
Optimizing – Optimizing your web site for those keywords is the next step. This includes all the usual onsite and offsite factors.
Analyzing – Now comes the results orientated process – are those keywords starting to rank; are they delivering traffic; and are they converting into sales? If they are, you are on the right track; if not, why not? – this is the real analysis process.
More Keywords – Once you are starting to see results, it’s time to go back and take another look at those keywords. Your first list contained keywords with low competition – it’s now time to start attacking keywords with a little more competition – then optimize, then analyze. It’s a process that never stops and, over time, you may well be in a position to attack those top-of-the-chain keywords.
The key to succeeding in a highly competitive market is to start by attacking the lesser quality keywords – running a strong search engine optimization campaign – then steadily building on that base. In two, three or perhaps four years time, you will look back and be amazed at far you have traveled. Build your business on results rather than trying to be number one overnight – it’s not going to happen.
How Far Do You Need To Go To Protect Your Brand?
When it comes to reputation management, there are always two aspects that you must look at. What you do and say and what others can do or say to hurt you or your business. There are a number of measures you can put in place to protect your business and your brand, but how far do you need to go?
This question sprung to mind when I read that Facebook was likely to introduce an email system of their own. One of the questions I keep reading is whether you would prefer a Facebook email address or a Gmail email address. My initial reaction is one of – why either/or? If you are running an online business then surely your email address is something like yourname@yourdomain.com?
However, returning to reputation management, in particular your brand, do you need to protect your brand by claiming it as an email address on Facebook? I mentioned there were two aspects to reputation management – what you do, and what others do. The big question here is – if you have a branded Facebook Fan Page and someone else claims your brand as an email address, can they hurt your business? While unlikely, it does have the potential to create some harm so with that in mind you probably should do everything possible to claim it.
Have you secured your brand on Facebook? If you haven’t then everything in this post could be moot. We come back to that question – can someone else harm your brand or business by using either on Facebook or Twitter or any of the other major social media sites? If they can then perhaps you should look to securing them yourself before someone else does!
Optimizing Your Business For Vertical Search
One of the big changes that we are likely to see into the future is that of vertical search. Vertical search is nothing more than a dedicated search portal for specific industries. The most popular examples are Trulia for real estate and Bing Shopping (formerly MSN Shopping) for product searches.
The down side to some vertical searches options is that, in reality, they are nothing more than paid directories. Rather than crawling the net and building their own database of pages, they rely on businesses like your own to provide the data. This doesn’t make them any less important, however, since consumers often access them in preference to organic search.
Can you optimize your business for vertical search? Optimize is probably the wrong term in this instance. Where vertical search options exist, business need to follow whatever processes are required to have their products or services listed. For example, Bing Shopping or Google Product search require an up-to-date product feed.
When thinking vertical search, don’t be limited to your niche. Vertical search covers a wide range of search options including blogs (blog search, Technorati), Social (Twitter, Facebook and Friendfeed) and video and images to name a few. With this in mind, you may find that through the use of blogs, videos, social media and a product feed, your web site could appear in several different and unrelated vertical search channels.
Vertical search is important in some industries, however, it hasn’t quite taken off when it comes to mainstream internet use – yet. Like local search (another vertical), niche related vertical search engines may well become one of the big changes into the future. Mainstream search engines have added verticals (blog, news, image, video, local) over the years and, as their databases become bloated, increasing the number of verticals will become a necessity if they want to maintain quality in search results.
If there are vertical search options available to your business, make use of them. They may not have a major influence on your business today, but they may well do so in the future.
Questions To Ask Before Hiring A Professional Internet Marketing Firm
Internet marketing is a very broad field taking in every online aspect from web design through search engine marketing and on to social media marketing. Whether you need all of these services, or just some components, before shelling out what resources you may have, consider asking these questions first.
- Do they offer agency support for all search engines – many firms can offer support for Google, but they are not the only player.
- What sort of training and experience have their consultants had
- Do their consultants have technical knowledge and expertise of the search engines; again, not just Google
- Do they have PPC management experience including keyword selection and split testing
- Do they have access to PPC Beta programs
- Can they identify and monitor click fraud
- Can you agree to a month-to-month contract rather than committing to longer periods
- Can they offer complementary services such as video production and the creation of Facebook Fan Pages
- Do they have social media marketing experience
- Can they provide professional reviews or examples of the work
- Can they guarantee results
The last is almost a trick question. If they do guarantee results, ask them on what basis. In most cases, Internet marketing professionals may offer guarantees on their work, but not necessarily on the results since there are so many uncontrollable variables. If they offer guaranteed results – be wary.
When asking questions of prospective Internet marketing firms, you are looking for two things. Number one, you are looking for a team that is professional and proficient at what they do; and, number two, you are looking for a team that you can comfortably communicate with. The latter is almost as important as the first since poor communication often leads to disappointment and unsatisfactory results. It’s your money and your business – you need the best that you can afford.
Why Keeping Abreast Of Search Engine News Is Important
If you concentrate a lot on SEO and organic traffic then you should also be concentrating on the news that steadily flows out of the various search engines. There are those around at present who have little idea that Yahoo! search is now really Bing search or that Ask.com has now folded its search arms and will concentrate now on it’s traditional Q&A sector.
Search engines are constantly changing their approach to search rankings so keeping on top of where their thinking is can be very important. News can also affect your past, present and future actions. For example, with Yahoo! and Ask not determining search results, do you still need the factors that many sites relied on. The keywords meta tag is a primary example – it now appears to be redundant although I know some who use the tag to confuse competitors (how? – load the tag with keywords you’re not targeting).
There are plenty of reports around the web today about Matt Cutts’ talk about Google and the directions of search. If a video of the talk raises its head then it will pay to actually watch it. You will find there are a lot of gems buried away in his talk including an admission that exact domain matches rank higher than they probably should.
Keeping up with the latest news is important when deciding the areas you need to target. This post probably appears to contradict yesterday’s post about avoiding too much information. However, it’s all relative to what you are attempting. If social media marketing is your game then concentrating on that material is important, not SEO. You also need to be able to filter the drivel away from what is important news. Of course, the bottom line is what you actually do with that information – but that’s your call.
Are You Lost In The Internet Marketing Maze? You’re Not The Only One!
Big businesses have one distinct advantage over small businesses – they can afford to employ dedicated teams to run their online presences. For small businesses, it’s often a case of running a business, growing a business, and if there’s any time left over, drowning in all the online advice and new tools that flood our inboxes every day. If that’s you, don’t stress, you’re not the only one. In fact, New York Times tech columnist David Pogue, in an interview with WebProNews claimed that, “In the last three or four years…it’s becoming overwhelming for me.”
If the pros are becoming overwhelmed, what chance is there for the hard working business owners trying to survive in an online world? While we are being swamped with new technology and new approaches, there are a number of things that small business owners can do to help themselves. Here are a few suggestions:
- Limit your intake of news to two or three reliable sources and subscribe to them only. Don’t allow yourself to become swamped with too much information.
- Find a small set of tools that you are comfortable with and stick to them. Rather than investigating new tools all the time, learn to get the most out of the tools you are using. Internet marketing tools are constantly being updated so there are very few ‘old’ tools around these days.
- Concentrate on the areas that are producing results. If you have free time, then explore new areas, but only one at time.
- Consult an Internet marketing expert. You will either get a tick for doing the right things, or helpful advice that should increase your profitability.
For smaller online businesses, the real key is time management. Working on and in your business is important if you want to continue to grow. However, you also need to set aside dedicated time for working at the online component. Whatever you do, don’t become overwhelmed by all the new information – if you are, you’re simply trying to absorb too much.
Should You Have More Than 100 Keywords?
How many keywords is enough for your SEO or PPC campaign? The truth is, you can never have enough keywords. How you use your keywords is far more important than how many keywords you have.
When it comes to SEO, the more keywords you have the more opportunities you have to capture rankings for those keywords. You figure you have two chances to rank for the same keyword on the same website at Google and once or twice at Bing. If you have a 1,000 keyword list then that gives you about 4,000 chances to rank for those keywords with a 1,000-page website.
With PPC it’s a little different. Pay per click campaigns operate best with tight keyword groups. If you group your keywords effectively and write good ads that lead clickers to well-optimized and conversion-ready landing pages then you should have a profitable marketing plan. The more keywords you have in your arsenal the better your chances of reaching that goal.
But pay per click advertising and search engine marketing effectiveness depend on your use of the keywords you have. Your SEO efforts will be greatly improved if you have a good army of keywords.
Don’t get wrapped around the axle on numbers, just find good keywords.
Will Instant Preview Make Custom Web Design Crucial To Your Success?
Google have announced the introduction of ‘Instant Previews’ in search results and this could, over time, influence traffic numbers to many web sites. The feature allows users to preview the site listed in results without the need to actually visit the site. We all know how quickly web design can affect a user’s opinion of a web site. Put simply, if the user doesn’t like what they see, they will check out the next site listed in the search results. Are they going to like your web site?
All web site owners should, as a priority, check out their own web sites using the instant preview. Just enter a search for a term you know you rank highly on and click on the magnifying glass on the right of your search listing. While you’re at it, check out your competition as well. Put yourself in the shoes of an average Internet surfer – which site would you visit first?
Custom web design will become a key area in the future as web site owners try to outdo each other with striking logo designs and web pages that are easy to navigate and easy to find information on. One of the features of Instant Previews is that the section of the page where the search term exists is highlighted, placing it in context within the page itself.
What makes Instant Previews even more dangerous for those with weak designs is that a user only has to click on a magnifying glass once. From there the user only has to place the cursor over each magnifying glass to see a preview. They can quickly flip between a couple of sites before deciding on the one that suits their needs.
Logos will be important as will color and layout. The quality of your content cannot be underestimated given the focus it will receive for search terms. If you are running a business web site, have a good hard look at your web design – is it time to call in an expert to create a complete custom web design?
Of course, Instant Preview may not catch people’s attention and the effect on traffic and click-through rates could be negligible. While I wouldn’t panic just yet – I suggest you carefully watch your stats over the coming months.
10 Video Optimization Tips To Increase YouTube Views
What is the second largest search tool on the Internet? YouTube. In fact, there are more daily searches on YouTube than there are on Yahoo!, Bing, Facebook or Twitter – combined. If you target Google for search traffic then you should also consider YouTube and all it takes is a few well optimized videos. Here are 10 essential components to a well optimized video.
- Valuable Content – don’t confuse value with quality. When it comes to quality, most people refer to sound, lighting and other production techniques. Value in a video is what will make it popular, be it humor, music, or an easy-to-follow how-to video.
- Keyword Rich Titles – be sure your titles are accurate and keyword rich, they may also appear in traditional search results.
- Video Tags - use tags that properly identify the videos content
- Video Description – like the title and tags, be sure to use a keyword rich description that accurately describes the video’s contents. Remember also that the description is your sales line to attract viewers.
- Categories – accuracy is important with today’s videos so be sure to select the right category for your video.
- Video Transcriptions – it doesn’t take long now to create a video transcription – Be sure it is well optimized for your keywords and upload it with the video.
- Captions - the use of captions is becoming popular so use them where they may be appropriate.
- Geographic Locations - if geographic location is important, be sure to included it in areas such as description and keywords.
- Annotate And Link - Use annotations and be sure to link to any other videos you may have.
- Promote – promote your videos at every opportunity. Refer friends to your new creations and ask them to share with their friends. If you have a Facebook or Twitter profile, share the video link with them as well.
By following those 10 steps, you should have a video that provides some sort of value to viewers, and that is well optimized to appear in YouTube (and organic) search results. Of course, you can always engage a professional video creation team to do it all for you.
Are You Missing The Human Element?
If you have a web site – why? Is it to help market your business and build a brand? Is it to attract customers, make sales, and over time, deliver a healthy return on your investment? If your web site is connected to a business, or in reality, the whole business, then I am sure your answer to those questions is a resounding yes. If that’s the case, how do you intend to attain those objectives. For most businesses, they use one or more of the following:
Search engine optimization – who can argue with free organic traffic? Of course, that’s not an overnight program so you may use:
Pay Per Click Marketing – if you can’t secure free traffic overnight, why not buy it? That is essentially what PPC marketing is all about – buying traffic. That will kick start your business so you decide on:
Social Media Marketing - you get social perhaps building a Fan Page on Facebook and building up a list of followers on Twitter.
There are many other methods that you could use to try and attract traffic. The one thing that is missing in this process is the human element. Aside from business-to-business commerce, you are trying to sell a service or product to a human. Whether it’s SEO, PPC or Social Media Marketing, you should never lose sight of who your customer really is.
SEO is a prime example of becoming wrapped up in finding a way to the top of the search results while forgetting that your customer is actually a person. Finding a keyword that is well used but is easy to target may get you to the top of the search results. You may even gain bandwidth-busting traffic – however, if the search term has little to do with actually purchasing the product then it’s likely your sales will be low. The reason – you have missed the human element. You have gone for a perceived easy target without considering it’s worth to your business.
The same is true with PPC and social media marketing. The latter is littered with small online businesses that have looked for quantity when it comes to followers, and not quality. Your customers are humans, not numbers or keywords – forget that, and no amount of internet marketing can hope to achieve your initial goals.
5 Reasons SEO Is A Good Investment
Search engine optimization is one of the most effective online marketing strategies available to businesses trying to do business online. There are plenty of reasons for believing that SEO is a worthwhile activity. Here are five reasons you should employ SEO in your online marketing strategy:
- Any improvements you make to your website for SEO will help the search engines better index and rank your website for the rest of its life;
- A good SEO firm will recommend “best practices” so that you have the best SEO tools and advice at your disposal;
- Any new content you create is yours forever and that content has the potential to bring you new customers from your website every day;
- New links you gain from your efforts will remain and continue to drive traffic and increase your search engine rankings for the life of your website;
- If you get lucky and rank for keywords that you aren’t targeting then that’s a ‘give me’. You don’t pay for those keywords so you can potentially have lots of freebies.
SEO is one of the most cost effective and efficient ways to market your business online. The results are long term and once you find a strategy that works, you can use it on all of your websites.
Google Offers To Help Improve Page Load Speed
There are always strange things going on inside Google. One can often imagine it looking like a mad professor’s laboratory except, instead of test tubes, it’s computer geeks glued to monitors. The latest offering from Google – mod_pagespeed. As the name suggests, it’s a module designed to improve the load speed of web pages.
The need to consider page speed as a ranking algorithm is a bit of a mystery in a way. Sure, we all want the Internet to burn along at the speed of light – but page speed itself is not a measure of quality. In fact, better quality pages often take a moment longer to load than those spammy made for Adsense content rip-off sites that abound. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be constantly assessing your pages for speed issues.
Pages that have modules that rely on external sources – for example, Amazon product feeds – can be a little slower, especially if Amazon is having a slow day. You will need to assess the value of having these modules against the effect they have on page load times. There is a way around this, however, and that is to look at a page the way a user does.
Your page’s design and the code behind it should be written in such a way that the content appears as soon as possible when loading. Blogs are notorious for having a left side bar that loads before the content. That is fine as long as the content in the side bar is loaded quickly – have one of those Amazon widgets and the main content can be delayed for several seconds. The key in that situation is to move all the slow loading content to the right side bar, or to have your theme written so that the main content is loaded first.
Should you use Google’s mod_pagespeed module? You will need to check compatibility issues; for example, it will only run on Apache 2.2. You will also need to assess whether or not it really delivers any improvements in page load speeds. If it doesn’t then ask whether you really need another layer of software around your site.
Can Rich Snippets Give You A Competitive Edge?
2010 will probably go down in Internet history as the year that search results came of age. There have been many changes made this year and the latest could give small online businesses a real competitive edge, especially if they can beat their rivals when it comes to price and service. Rich snippets have been around for a while and offer a web site owner the option to add data to their search results. The latest from Google takes this one step further.
Using rich snippets, you can now include price, availability and reviews to your search results. If your online business is a shopping site, this one change to your listing could remove the need to be number one in search results. Your search engine optimization strategy should still be focused on a gaining a high ranking, but at a listing in the top three to five results could now be competitive.
Consumers performing a search will be able to see at glance which online shopping site has the product in stock, how much they are charging, and whether or not there are any reviews available. If your prices are competitive then you will have an edge of those not displaying prices. You will certainly have an edge of those displaying prices that are higher than yours.
The only doubt that could be raised over this feature is whether or not will trigger price discount wars between highly ranked web sites. Consumers won’t complain, but it won’t be good for your bottom line. It your competitors aren’t displaying prices, then use rich snippets to give your business an edge. If your competitors are displaying prices, then you will need to decide whether or not displaying your prices you will advantage, or disadvantage your business. Consumers will certainly win!
Adding Extra Links To Your Pay Per Click Marketing
Pay per click marketing, particularly through Google Adwords, has been the backbone search marketing for a good decade now. One of the limitations has been that each ad unit could only have one link. Earlier this year Google made changes to Adwords that allowed advertisers to include an additional four site links in their ad units.
For many businesses, these additional site links have been a real boost. Rather than advertise one product, you could effectively advertise five products. If you sold hard drives for example, and your ad unit promoted and pointed to Western Digital hard drives on your site, your additional site links might point to sales pages on Seagate, Maxell, Maxtor or Samsung hard drives.
The concept is sound and as you can see from the above example, is more likely to increase click through rates than decrease them. If you can convert those clicks to sales and similar rates then your sales and profits will most likely improve as well. For many businesses in that situation, undertaking a split test of ad units with and without site links could be a worthwhile experience.
As with everything in life, there is also a downside to site links. They are not for every business and need to be used wisely. If you are heavily promoting one product or service, the last thing you should be doing is diluting that traffic away from your featured product. More importantly, using site links because you can could be highly counterproductive and result in falling click through rates and falling sales.
Split testing is the key to success when making any changes to a marketing campaign, more so if it is proving to be successful. Site links do exist in Google Adwords, and if you sell a range of products then, used wisely, they could be beneficial to your business.
Five (Free) Tools To Track Brand Mentions
One of the hardest tasks for many businesses is monitoring their brand, company or product in social media circles. In highly competitive niches, being able to keep your finger on the pulse could mean the difference between cashing in on the latest trend, and missing the boat completely. Here’s a simple question. How many times was your brand, business or product mentioned in social media circles today, or this week? Don’t know? Perhaps you need to consider using one of these tools.
These tools all help you to monitor social media for any term. I suggest you have a look at each and if you find one that you’re comfortable with, use that. As a side note, they are all free.
Spy – searches for mentions across a variety of social media sites including Twitter, Friendfeed and Blog Comments. It’s fairly comprehensive but rather slow. Instead of a full screen of results, it scrolls them one at time so it can be a little disconcerting.
BoardReader – more like a traditional search engine. BoardReader delivers results from a variety of social media. It also has a neat little graph that shows the frequency of mentions over the last month.
SocialMention – one of the most comprehensive social tracking tools. SocialMention doesn’t just include mentions from a wide range of sources, it also includes lists of associated keywords, hashtags, top users associated with the search terms, and the major sites where the search term was found.
Collecta – real time search engine that looks for your search term in a variety of sites including Twitter, Facebook and Google Buzz. You can filter out certain search types such as videos and images.
48ers – another real-time search engine. Type in a search term and it will deliver up-to-the-minute results from sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz, Digg and Delicious.
These tracking tools are ideal for keeping up to date on what your competitors are saying, and who is saying what about them. They can also be ideal for keeping up with what is happening in the industry. As competitive intelligence tools, they pass the grade although there are far better options available if you’re prepared to shell out a few dollars.
Six Ways To Improve Your Social Media Reputation
One of the most important components of social media marketing is your reputation on social sites that you develop a presence on. There are several activities you can undertake that work to increase your reputation amongst followers, and often work to encourage newcomers to also follow you. Here are six activities that you should consider.
1 – Promoting Others - spend a little time researching what others have to say about your brand, product or service. If someone has written a good blog post detailing how to use your product to advantage – promote it with a link to the post. Followers will appreciate the information and of course the blog writer will appreciate that A) you have bothered to read their content, and B) you are promoting it for them.
2 – Respond – responding to people who reach out is vitally important. If someone follows or ‘Likes’ you, a quick and simple welcome personalizes the relationship. If someone asks a question, respond to it in a timely fashion.
3 – Give Credit – if a question is asked and you decide to write a blog post on the topic, give credit to the person that asked the question. They feel that their question was important, others see that you take questions seriously, and you are also sending a message that you do actually read comments and responses, even on Facebook, or Twitter.
4 – Provide Value – people follow you for a reason and, generally speaking, it’s because they have some expectations. If you have promised early notice of specials then deliver. Failing to deliver will see people leaving you quite quickly, telling the world along the way that you fail to deliver.
5 – Stay On Topic – stay loyal to the niche around which you have created your profile. If you have several niches, then develop separate profiles and build followers for each. While the occasional cross-promotion is generally acceptable, don’t over do it.
6 – Be Social – it’s not just about you or your business. Don’t forget the social component. While readers don’t want to know about what you had for breakfast, you would be surprised at how many people do want to see the human side. An engagement, wedding or new baby by a staff member will often see a stream of congratulations. If you, or that staff member can respond, so much the better.
Social media marketing is not always about promoting a brand, product or service. However, in delivering on those six points, you can be doing just that, but in a way that highlights the ‘social’ nature or your marketing. Just for a change – put yourself in your followers shoes!