A lesson in good business

Posted on May 9, 2011 by Richard Green

According to a new study published by the global brands agency Millward Brown, Apple have overtaken Google as the world’s most valuable brand.

Our designers have long worked on Macs and after some long consideration I personally converted to a Mac Book some 6 months ago, with some trepidation, as I have long been weaned on Windows technology. That 6 months has quickly shown me that I was ever wrong to doubt, and can’t ever see myself returning to Windows, certainly for as long as Apple continue to get it right.

As a brand they certainly seem to have nailed their marketing:

  • High perceived, and I now believe, actual product quality,
  • Unbelievable customer service (Have you been into an Apple store lately?).
  • Both of the above then provide Apple with a platform to charge premium prices. Nice job if you can crack it!

The brand is estimated at being worth $153 billion.

Leading on from this it’s also interesting to note that 6 of the tip 10 valued businesses are technology based, including Google, IBM, Microsoft, AT&T, and China Mobile. This is clearly reflective of the growing level of importance that IT and technology plays in our lives.

For those who want to delve deeper the full report can be found at www.millwardbrown.com/brandz.

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Mobile Internet………..the behemoth continues to grow

Posted on April 28, 2011 by Richard Green

You’d better believe it!. Here are some headlines:

  • There are 20,980,000 mobile internet users per month in the UK.
  • The UK is the fifth largest mobile internet market globally.
  • 23% of time spent accessing the internet is now on a mobile device.
  • 52% of Ipad users read a magazine or newspaper on their device every day.
  • 95% of smartphone owners have sought local information online.

Put simply if your marketing strategy doesn’t actively embrace the tidal wave that is the mobile intrnet you are likely to become significantly disadvantaged in the future. The mobile device is becoming an ever present in the lives of the great majority within the civilised world.

This will fuel the growth in local searches, and location based activity driven by the sheer flexibility and convenience of being able to access data on the go and stay in touch with both professional and social networks.

The internet of tomorrow is the mobile internet. Look to India now and we can already see that mobile internet users outnumber PC internet users by a ratio of 3 to 1; indeed this country accounts for 9% of all mobile internet users worldwide.

The improvement in smartphone technology and the rapid growth of the portable tablet sector will continue to accelerate this phenomenom. Quite simply, why be tied to a desk if you don’t need to be?

Though small keyboards and typing surfaces remain a limitation, developers are working hard on voice-based solutions that will circumvent this, and other interface developments will undoubtedly arrive to further fuel growth.

The world of mobile internet is definitely here to stay.

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8 More Tips for an Effective Website SEO Audit

Posted on April 21, 2011 by Richard Green

1. Redirect checks

Use a tool such as the one found here (http://livehttpheaders.mozdev.org) to check all redirects in use o your site return an effective status code.

2. Internal linking checks.

Look for pages that have excessive links (Beware of anything over 100). Ensure that effective anchor text is being used on all links.

3. Avoid use of unnecessary subdomains.

You may be best using subfolders as the search engines to not automatically apply the trust and link juice weight of a particular site to its sub-domains, which they see as more appropriate belonging to a completely separate site, and hence worthy of completely separate treatment in the eyes of the search engines.

4.Geographic Targeting.

If you are targeting a specific country you need to ensure that you follow the accepted guidelines for targeting your website at that country. You should also ensure that you have the required elements in place should you be targeting at a more local audience.

5. External linking.

Check the number and type of links you have coming into your site. It will be important to check this against the link setup of your key competition. There are various tools available to help you do this, such as that found at: http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com
Ensure that your primary keywords are showing on a regular basis as anchor text on links. However, ensure that you don’t overdo this and over rely on one particular keyword/phrase for this purpose as this may be picked up as a signal of purchased links.
Look for ‘deep links’, in other words links to pages other than to your home page as this will reflect a healthy situation.
Ensure that you are comfortable with the quality of the links, ensuring that they are as much as possible from good quality reputable and authoritative sites, and compare this to your key competitors.

6. Page load times.

Excessive load times will at worst interfere with crawling and indexing activity and at best it will disaffect human browsers who are likely to lose patience and turn their attention to your competitors’ sites.

7. Image alt tags.

Images are important to the enhancement of the user experience on your website. However, the search engines are blind as far as images are concerned. It is therefore important for search purposes that appropriate alt attributes and file names are given to images on your site.

8. Code quality.

Poor quality code can have negative impacts on your search performance, for example in inhibiting search engine crawl activity, so getting someone who can read code to check your site is a wise move. Alternatively you can use a tool such as http://www.seo-browser.com to get an understanding of how the search engines view a page.

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10 Tips for an Effective Website SEO Audit

Posted on April 21, 2011 by Richard Green

The following quick reference guide is meant as a ready reference to aid in reviewing how well your site is set up to perform well from a search perspective.

Usability

Though not immediately obvious as an element that should be considered from an SEO perspective. We should always remember that achieving a high search engine ranking isn’t an end goal in and of itself. The real objective lies in achieving conversion on your site or a positive response to a call to action. It’s therefore vital to ensure that you review your site from a user’s perspective; does it serve up and deliver what it needs to in an effective, user friendly way.

Accessibility/Spiderability

Absolutely essential is that the search engines are able to effectively crawl throughout the site and discover all of its content without hitting any blockages. Sounds simple, but you must ensure that the site architecture allows for this.

Search engine health check

Use the“site:yourdomain” tool in the Google search box to see how many and which of you pages have been indexed by Google. This gives you a current view of which of your pages have actually been found by the search engines.

Try searching, at very least for your brand name in the search engines, as you should as a very minimum be returnno9ng well against this search. If you aren’t it may indicate a problem that you need to investigate further.

Use the “info:yourdomain” tool to identify when your site was last ‘cached’/visited by Google and what it saw at the time.

Keyword health check

Is your site clearly targeting the keywords and phrases that you’re going for? Are the pages and sections laid out in a logical sequence that facilitates seamless browsing between topics, and is there an easy to follow linking structure in place with the use of appropriate ‘anchor’ text?

Duplicate content checks

Make sure that you are not duplicating the http:// and www. versions of the site. One should be clearly designated as the “canonical” domain and the other pointed at it with a 301 redirect. Use the inurl: and intitle: commands to check for duplicate content within your site. If you feel parts of your content may be duplicated elsewhere on the internet paste a passage from your suspected offending page into the Google search box and see what’s returned.

URL check

Make sure your page urls are designed in simple descriptive format, basically providing some description of what the page is all about. Avoid long streams and numbers in the url text, and ensure that what is there will be easily read and understood by the search engine spiders.

Title tag review

Ensure that you title tags on every page include the keywords that you are looking to target on that page. Ensure tag contains no more than 70 characters, as Google will not read beyond this limit. Don’t feel that you need to include your company name on every page title. Limit the keywords included in your title to no more than two.

Content review

Does each page have good quality content targeting the keywords you are going after on each page? Does it include the keyword/phrase itself and relevant associated words and phrases? Do you have meaningful, easy to read passages that make sense I.e. not just meaningless repeats of a key phrase, which would be treated as spam by the search engines?

Metatag review

Ensure that each page has a unique meta description tag. Check to ensure that there is no robot.txt present such as noindex or nofollow that will provide instructions to search robots that would basically interfere with or even stop the spidering of your site.

Sitemap file and robots.txt file verification

Use the verification tool within Google Webmaster Tools to check your robot.txt, and to verify that your sitemap (ensure you have one) is identifying all of the canonical pages on your site.

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Top 10 Tips for Returning High on Organic Searches

Posted on April 20, 2011 by Richard Green

Achieving high rankings on internet searches is a process based on applying many steps. However, there are a number of elements often considered to be more critical. Here’s a quick summary.

Title tags

Considered by most experts to be the single most important facto in achieving good rankings. The words in the title tag tell the search engines a lot about the content of the page, so it’s vital that your critical keywords and phrases are used in the title tag.

Content is king!

You need to ensure that your website contains good quality content that is highly relevant to the search phrases that you are targeting on you site. If you want Google and the other search engines to classify you as an authority on pink elephants, make sure that your site talks about pink elephants.

Global Link authority

Establishing good quality (emphasis on good quality) inbound links from other relevant sites that are themselves deemed as relevant, authority sites by the search engines is a vital part of a good SEO strategy. This particularly applies in situations where there is a lot of competition on a particular keyword or phrase.

Anchor text of links

The text related to either a link into a site or internal links within a site is an important mechanism for sending a signal to the search engines. If a link is meant to send someone to content about a fridge freezer then that wording should ideally be used to link to the content page. Avoid ‘click here’ as an easy cop out as this will diminish your SEO effort.

Age of site/h2>

The search engines take a signal from the length of time a site has been up and live. Given the number of poor quality, spammy sites that regularly emerge in an effort to make a quick buck, the logic of this is easy to follow. The lesson here is that if you think you need a website to help promote your business or enterprise (you undoubtedly do!), then the sooner you get a presence online the better!

Internal linking structure

How you link pages within your site gives the search engines a strong signal as to the importance of different areas and sections of the site. A well planned site architecture with a logical and easy to follow internal linking structure can help immensely with your online search efforts.

Topical relevance of inbound links

Within reason any inbound link should provide support to your SEO efforts. However links form sites that are highly relevant to the content in your own site will undoubtedly count for more. The emphasis is on topicality and relevance.

Global link popularity of sites that link to you.

If a site you link to is itself deemed as being important by virtue of the sites it ‘hangs out with’ i.e. Those sites that link to it, then the more positive the effect of their link to you.

You site neighbourhood

If you have a well established link network established with organisations and businesses in your field of operation, this helps to provide a strong vote of confidence for your site.

Site refreshment

Keeping your site alive and fresh by adding good quality, relevant content on a regular basis sends a strong message that will make search engines want to come back to visit your latest works. Make your site a labour of love.

Good SEO is definitely not rocket science, but does take logical thinking and hard work. A diligent focus on applying key best practice can generate incredible results and improvements in the performance of your online activities.

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5 Big big things to avoid to head off Negative Search Impact

Posted on April 20, 2011 by Richard Green

It’s easy to go wrong in your search efforts if you don’t apply a methodical and painstaking approach that is well recorded and tracked, but here are five of the major ‘school boy errors’ to watch out for:

  1. Poor or duplicate content. The search engines feed primarily on the words that they can read on your website. Failure to provide them with the right level of quality, re3lavnt words related to your targeted search phrases will leave them with nothing to find and feed on. By the same token just lifting content from somewhere else on the web and ‘plonking’ it on your site could see you receiving a hefty ranking penalty. Don’t run the risk of trying to fool the search engines; if they’ve seen some content before elsewhere they’re smart enough to know you’re copying it!!
  2. Your server is inaccessible to crawlers. The search engine crawlers need to be able to easily access your pages and content for them to determine the quality of your offering. If your chosen hosting server regularly makes this difficult the engines will automatically assume that you are a poor quality site and rank you accordingly. Therefore, ensure that your hosting server arrangements are robust from this perspective.
  3. External links to low quality/spam sites. It’s that old adage again, you are who you hang out with by association. If you link to a number of poor quality sites this can definitely send a very negative signal to the search engines, so beware!
  4. Participation in link schemes or purchasing/selling links. Search engines work on the premise that sites should link to each other for good reason…..providing relevant additional content, improving user experience etc. Therefore, either selling links in an effort to impact positively on ranking, or purchasing links through link farms are both regarded as negative actions and misuse can see your search rankings plummet. Next time you answer your phone to hear someone trying to sell you a ‘link strategy’ take care and exercise due caution.
  5. Duplicated meta information. The search engines take a strong view from certain elements of meta information, particularly the title tag. It stand to reason then that you should take time to ensure that each page on your site has a unique title tag that is relevant to the key search phrases you’re looking to target on that page.

One simple mistake can scupper your search efforts indefinitely. Some simple care in avoiding some of the most obvious ones can help you immensely.

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The Importance Of Keyword Research: 4 Key Steps

Posted on April 20, 2011 by Richard Green

You must have clear marketing, and more specifically online marketing goals, in mind before you embark on the process of identifying the keywords and phrases you want to target through your online presence. Effective and diligent work here is one of the most important, and profitable marketing activities you can undertake relating to your online strategy.

Four key steps are advisable:

1. Keyword Research.

A first stage is to clearly understand the dynamics of search within your targeted area of interest. This involves not only looking at the most obvious terms, but also analysing more niche terms that lie in the ‘long tail’ of search:

Though obviously great to capture the number 1 ranking for a marquee, highly searched keyword it’s worth understanding that such search terms actually only account for less than 30% of the searches undertaken on the Web. Understanding this dynamic is critical in developing your keyword strategy.

Identification of relevant keywords can come from a number of sources, including:

  • Free tools such as the Google keyword selector tool.
  • Brainstorming within your business.
  • Analysis of the sites of your key competitors to see what they’re targeting.

2. Site Architecture.

Having identified and checked that you have identified the keywords and phrases that you believe are most likely to lead to the “money shots”, you then need to decide how they will be best incorporated into your site. They need to be into relevant groups and hierarchies so that you can begin to form a logical navigation system for the site that visitors can you to quickly navigate to where they want to go in a way that optimises your profit potential and user experience.

3. Keyword Mapping.

Having established a sense of your architecture you then need to specifically map your targeted keywords into your site, by examining your intended pages (urls) and working out how best to map the keywords on to them. This process will allow you to rapidly identify any pages that aren’t targeting a keyword, in which case you may question the benefit of having them, and also see any keywords that don’t have a page, in which case you’ll probably want to create one. Again an emphasis should be placed on a mapping structure that’s easy to use.

4. Site Detail.

Having done all of the overview work the next step requires you to go granular in that you can develop (or assess existing) title and header tags to ensure that they support the keyword strategy and mapping.

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A Quick 10 Tip Guerrilla Guide to Making Your Website Engaging

Posted on April 20, 2011 by Richard Green

Though there are many factors involved in making your website engaging, and increasing the chances of gaining a favourable reaction from visitors, there are some key ones to bear in mind.

1. What’s the purpose of the site?

I’ve often heard the term “brochure site” used. Basically this is used by businesses who literally take their traditional hard copy brochure and transfer it on to the internet, and sit back thinking “job done”. However, to do just that is to waste an opportunity. Before embarking on creating a website you should have a clear objective for it in mind. IT should actively work for you rather than just sitting there as pretty brochure. It needs to be an active salesman for you’re your business, with an objective such as:

  • Selling a product or services.
  • Getting someone to contact you.
  • Gaining information from prospects, such as contact details.

Don’t be satisfied with just having a site…………make sure it’s working hard for you to improve your business.

2. The 10 second test.

When it comes to viewing websites the average person literally has the attention span of a gnat, and you literally, as shown through studies, have 10 seconds to grab someone’s interest. The key question is, does your site pass that test? Take a look yourself, but more importantly get other people both within and non-connected to your organisation to give you their opinion. Don’t be afraid to hear some negative feedback. The important thing is to understand how effective your site is in grabbing attention.

3. Does your home page cut the mustard?

  • Do you have a compelling headline that will draw people in and get across what you’re all about….or something that will inspire them to go further into the site?
  • Do you have an opt in offer that can help to build relationships for you?
  • Do you have clear and bold 2calls to action”? Do your visitors clearly know what’s expected of them?

4. Is the good stuff “above the fold”?

Using an old newspaper term and translating it to the web, the area “above the fold”, is what hits you between the eyes on the screen when you load a site. Put your best, most important messages and headline here so that visitors don’t have to scroll to see it. Make your major messages clear and easy to view.

5. Is you navigation simple and logical?

  • Are all your pages reachable within a maximum of three clicks?…Don’t bury content in the bowels of you site!
  • Is navigation easy to see and understand?
  • Are contact details and calls to action prominent and easy to find?

6. Is your content friendly and engaging?

Do you use appropriate language on your site? Don’t get sucked in to using plain corporate speak. Inject personality and friendliness. Use terms like we and us…..effectively engage with your visitors and use your site to help build your relationship with them.

7. Make it personal!

Unless you’re a major corporate entity, don’t try to be one. You’re best served in trying to establish relationships with your visitors by personalising your site. Use names of yourself and your team. Use pictures of yourselves, your office, your products etc. There is nothing more obvious that a stock image that you’re likely to come across on a number of sites. Bring your site to life and make it more appealing by going that extra mile with the personal touch. It will help you to stand out! Even if it means paying a photographer to take some shots, it’ll be worth the investment.

8. Images.

Though the search engines can’t see what’s in an image, they are vital to providing a good user experience. Again don’t go the safe rout of using bog standard imagery….be different and adventurous. Be unique. Stand out from the crowd!

9. “What our customers say”.

Your existing clients should be your strongest sales resource. Make it a habit to collect the nice things they have to say about you and post them on your site. Don’t just post them in to a sterile testimonials section. Actually use the term “What our customers have to say”, or something similar. Drop comments on every page of your site, and where possible make the relevant to the content of the pages they’re posted on.

10. Lights, camera, action.

Video is becoming more and more important as a medium for imparting information. You Tube is now the second largest search engine by visitor numbers, and Google has it’s own engine specialising in finding videos on line. Be bold and don’t be shy. We’re not talking Cecille B Demille here; these don’t have to be production perfect films; again make them personal and not over scripted; talk to people about your business. Alternatively if you have a product that lends itself to being demonstrated on film go for it; emphasise its usps ‘live’. Anything that’s related to you business that might grab attention or help bring the site to life….use it, and don’t be afraid of imperfection. Natural is best!

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10 More Must Do’s for a Positive Web Experience

Posted on April 20, 2011 by Richard Green

1. Colours and Font.

Do ensure that you use limited colour palettes and web friendly fonts. Avoid going to wild and wacky with a myriad of colours as this will detract from your core messages. Pick a font and stick to it. Sans serif fonts are best, such as arial and verdana. These are web friendly and will render well on screen

2. Professional design.

Ensure you have a professional looking design that doesn’t look amateurish. It sends the right impression if people think you’ve spent good quality time putting your site together.

3. The Rule Of 7.

Work hard on limiting your top level navigation menu to seven options. This will aid the user experience and enhance the ability to navigate easily around your site.

4. The Rule Of 3.

Most web pages are broken down into three vertical sections. This works best for browsers and visitors so don’t be tempted to walk past this standard.

5. Out Of Date Content.

Avoid out of date content at all costs. Nothing sends a signal that says “I don’t care” any stronger than web content that is blatantly out of date. The flip of this is to ensure, as best you can, that you keep your site refreshed with new, topical content. Regular updates are great, both for the user experience and search engines.

6. Use “trust logos” above the fold.

Do you have accreditations and/or relevant qualifications? If the answer’s yes then please make sure you flaunt them. They help to give your visitors confidence that you are a person/business to do business with, and help to reinforce any other positive messages that people may have received about you.

7. Slow loading content.

The average web user is in a hurry. They don’t have time to wait for slow loading content, so ensure that the build and hosting arrangements for your site are optimised to ensure your pages load as quickly as possible. With images, ensure they are optimised effectively for rendering on line; they have to resolve at no more than 72dpi. Try loading an image with a few mb on board and you’ll son n realise the error of your ways.

8. Links throughout text.

Ensure that you have a healthy spread of logical keyword rich text links throughout your site. This helps the search engines to find all of your content and makes the navigation experience for you human visitors simpler.

9. Different browser views.

We’re now up to version 9 of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, and on top of that we have Safari, Chrome, Firefox etc… and the chances are that your site will render differently in all of them. Hence you need to ensure that your site is coded and built with each of theses search engines and different screen sizes in mind or you may be subjecting visitors to an experience that you’re not counting on. Ensure that you test across the range of browser platforms prior to launch.

10. Standout from the crowd.

By all means be inspired by other sites, but don’t be tempted just to copy. Focus on differentiating your site form all of the others out there and particularly make sure you stand out from your direct competitors.

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10 Tips for a Smart SEO Strategy

Posted on April 20, 2011 by Richard Green

1. SEO integration is key

SEO must be integrated into your daily routines as part of your online marketing strategy. Simply treating it as a one off project will almost certainly not get you the results that you crave. This particularly applies if you site has a high rate of content updates, product renewal, or if you have a business effected by seasonal events or changes. A truly effective SERO approach requires ongoing attention and action to stay ahead of the game and the competition, which typically won’t stand still.

2. Be brave and stick with it

Avoid the temptation to change tack every five minutes. Once a strategy is researched and agreed it needs time to be effectively implemented and flourish. If instant results aren’t achieved there can be a strong temptation to call a halt and start again. Don’t be afraid to question and test, but if you’ve done your work right up front you need to display an element of patience in the search for positive results.

3. Use existing data to plan

Ensure that you effectively interrogate available analytics data about your site to provide a steer for the actions and approaches you’ll need to take.

4. Segment your markets

Be smart in the way you target different markets. Unless you are a truly mass market player with huge resources use the traditional marketing approach of segmentation to identify profitable niches that may be easier for you to reach, requiring less investments for greater relative return.

5. Consider all search engines

Though in the UK Google accounts for around 90% of all search engine traffic, don’t ignore some of the other (there are lots of them) search engines such as Bing, Yahoo and AOL, as they may offer potential results that are easier for you to get to.

6. Position your SEO efforts effectively

Ensure that you (if it’s your own site) or your clients understand that an SEO campaign should be treated as a long term initiative that may not deliver results in the initial weeks or even months if a market you are targeting is particularly competitive. As a general rule a 3 month establishment period is not uncommon.

7. Don’t ignore the vertical search engines

Ensure you consider not just the traditional search engine approach, but also the emerging vertical search engines focusing on such things as video, images, blogs, news etc.

8. Apply traditional business metrics

Ensure that from the very outset of planning your SEO strategy that you run the numbers and ensure that there is sufficient return on investment to be achieved from the market sector/segment you’re targeting.

9. Don’t just dabble in SEO

Ensure that SEO sits as a core element within your overall marketing and online marketing efforts. If it sits outside as something you’re dabbling with it will be doomed to failure.

10. Place SEO at the core of your online marketing efforts

Search engine optimisation should be right at the core of the planning stage of your online marketing efforts, down as far as the planning and building of your website. You should not actually build a site until you have taken into consideration the SEO elements and how these need to impact on the development of your site.

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