The Importance of Search Engine Optimisation to your website

It’s easy to think that search engine optimisation is an optional extra that is not necessary to getting your business online.

When you get your website live online the publishing process is not enough to get your site generating visitors and sales for your business. To enable your business to be noticed online, Search Engine Optimisation is needed to make sure that your site appears well in the rankings of Google and the other search engines for terms that your potential visitors are searching for. Remember, your website is part of your marketing department and getting visitors to find your site and its message is core to getting you more sales, just like getting your offline marketing noticed.

As Search Engine Optimisation is not a commodity for your business, choosing the right SEO company is essential to getting good results.

A good SEO company will offer a fully transparent service, discussing their work with you and getting you to agree changes to the site. As part of their transparent service your SEO company will explain the work they are doing for you, in a language you understand and answer any of your questions, helping you to understand the process of SEO.

When choosing an SEO company make sure that you avoid people who promise to submit your site to thousands of Search Engines, and who guarantee you number one rankings. Number one rankings can easily be achieved on your site but these might not be for keywords that will generate traffic for your site. A good SEO company will optimise your site around keywords that will drive traffic to your site, and some of these might be competitive, so they will never guarantee you a number one position. Google, MSN and Yahoo are the three search engines that drive the most search traffic and so, although the smaller search engines are important and should not be overlooked, focussing solely on getting rankings in every possible engine won’t help your website.

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Google Trends Allows Internet Marketers to Play "Keywords Stock Market"

ig-ticket marketing firms are using Internet Marketing hired-guns to leverage Google's sophisticated web-data tools and gain insight into consumer habits, Internet marketing potentials, search engine positioning opportunities, and super-converting high-volume web-traffic.

New York, NY (PRWEB) September 23, 2008 -- Marketing firms are hiring super-techies to leverage the well-funded, but very technical, Google information database and its data tools to gather information on consumer trends and potential free marketing windfalls via free Google traffic.

Marketing organizations are always trying to find the next edge in their industry. This is true of any major brand and this practice is definitely an art to expert marketing professionals that are guns-for-hire.

What's a typical example? Let's use the website Scentsy. Scentsy® candles is a company that was recently 'targeted' for 'SEO dominance' by one of the people we interviewed. Scentsy® is a US-based, emerging manufacturer of scented candle products but it might as well be a widget factory and another-day-at-the-home-office for the Internet marketers.

"Scentsy has tremendous upside potential while extremely low competition, both from a market-share perspective as well as organic SEO," said Garry Egan, an Internet Marketer who works from his satellite uplink and laptop computer. Egan is currently backpacking Europe and phoned in this interview. "I can work from anywhere," he said. "We were impressed."

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Top 10 ways to beat the credit crunch using internet marketing

As the media continue to drive the self-fulfilling prophecy of a recession, it’s time to start considering how best to use your marketing budgets in 2009 and beyond. Here are Programmes Manager, Jack Wallington's Top 10 methods of beating the credit crunch by maximising your online marketing strategies.

Monday, 22 September 2008

1. Search your way to the top

We’re all searching for the right answer and search marketing is definitely top of the answer barrel. Any marketer worth their salt knows that search is a safe bet for return on investment. You pay for clicks so you know exactly what you get, at least from the search engine, and combined with your own website’s analytics it is 100% measurable. This means that if you have a strong web presence with a great customer journey you will know how many sales or enquiries you can actually get. Visit our Search Help Centre for more.

2. Display power!

Search is all well and good, but it’s a passive tool that often relies on the consumer having an idea, thought or a need that makes them search. You need a tool that gets your brand, product or service noticed above the competition in the first place. Display is that tool and is to online marketing what TV, billboards and press is to offline. People may visit a search engine, but it’s the gateway to the billions of web pages that they spend the majority of their time on. Display lets you reach people on those pages with new video and interactive formats, powerful targeting and mass reach through networks. This makes it one of the most engaging, effective and powerful tools on the planet. With pricing for the number of impressions based on the quality of content, there are some real bargains to be had alongside the higher cost of premium content. Read our Display Advertising guide for more.

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Google Page Rank Explained

If you've been on the web long you've probably heard the words "page rank" or "PR" at least in passing. Perhaps you had better things to do than worry about mathematical equations, and I certainly don't blame you for that. For that same reason, I'll leave the Google page rank explained statistically process up to people like Ian Rogers on WebWorkshop.

Instead, I'd like to look at the outright benefits of having a good page rank.

*** Relevance ****

Let's say someone read one of your articles, liked it enough to visit your website, liked your website enough to sign up for your newsletter and then discovered that you had a PR0. They know enough about Google PR to know that PR10 is next to divine while PR0 is certainly not. No matter what they thought of your website, they have discovered a good reason not to believe what they thought was true which in turn knocks the relevancy of your website down a notch or two or maybe more.

Now let's say that same scenario took place but they found your website was perhaps a PR5 or higher. Perhaps even a PR8. Do you think this will affect their desire to be a part of your website? Of course it will, especially if your website is focused on any particular niche of Internet Marketing.

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Don't bet it all on Google Chrome

Think that Google's much-ballyhooed new Web browser, Chrome, is aimed at helping people surf the Web? Think again.

The browser instead takes dead aim at Microsoft Office and Microsoft Exchange. If Google has its way, your enterprise will use Chrome as a platform for Web-based applications from Google. You'll abandon Office, Outlook, and others, and you'll bid Microsoft good-bye.

Any surfing you do with it, from Google's point of view, is pure gravy.

Even though the world has greeted Chrome as a consumer-level browser, Google didn't conceive of it that way. In a blog post on the company's Web site, Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management, and Linus Upson, engineering director, made no bones about what Google wanted to do when it designed Chrome:

"We realized that the Web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for Web pages and applications, and that's what we set out to build."

To that end, Chrome is the first browser built from the ground up for a world in which the browser is an enterprise front end for Web-based applications and services such as Google Docs and Gmail.

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SEO Reporting: Going Beyond Rankings

Enterprise-level SEO provides consistently outstanding ROI over the life of the project. One of the best ways to substantiate this is through ongoing reporting.

In the past, many SEOs relied simply on providing visibility reports that detailed the rankings for particular keyword phrases within the top search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN/Live Search. Although this type of data can still be an excellent illustrative example of the success of a project, there are many possible ways that reporting of this nature can be misleading or irrelevant from a conversion/revenue perspective.

This week, I'll discuss the elements of the standard SEO reports that we provide to clients. This isn't the only way to do it, but our reports are valuable in providing actionable insight into SEO campaigns. Please note that based on the client, we also provide modified/customized reporting formats and dashboards as directed by the project manager and, as possible, based on available resources allocated by the project's ongoing budget.

Executive Summary

This provides an overview of the campaign performance and the activities performed during the last time period (typically one month). Additionally, this section can provide a number of other metrics, based on the particular client and their analytics tool(s) (such as Omniture, CoreMetrics, etc.). Executive summaries are typically crafted by the account's senior strategist, and then edited by the project manager for style and consistency with other client communications.

Visibility Reporting

At the onset of an SEO campaign, iterative keyword research dictates the keyword phrases that are targeted for rankings. Ideally, once the keywords are chosen, a baseline or benchmark ranking report for positioning within Google, Yahoo, and MSN is established. This sample of keywords typically ranges from 200 to 2,000 (and more) phrases, and is measured against on an ongoing basis.

Our visibility report provides the baseline ranking, the prior month's ranking, and the current month's ranking. It's important to note that these rankings should be considered as a snapshot in time, as they may not actually match the ranking of the keyword when the report is actually completed and delivered.

A word for the wary: the visibility report can be made intentionally misleading by an unethical SEO providing it. One can "stack the deck" with easy-to-rank-for keywords, if the proper questions aren't asked when keyword choices are finalized. This can also happen unintentionally, if the SEO is not knowledgeable enough to know which words are important to track.

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Tactical Link Building: Finding Link Targets

Last time, we discussed how good, old-fashioned directories could, and should, remain a key feature of your link-building repertoire. Today, we'll discuss how to find other link targets to help you construct a sustainable long-term link-building strategy.

If you're just starting to create your site's link-building strategy, now is a great time to plan on spending some quality time culling your keyword research, analyzing your site's Web metrics, and growing your understanding of rival sites' search results. In your quest to discover link-building targets, it's important to remember two things: start small and aim big, and don't break what's working.

To get started finding link targets, hit your site's Web metrics. Look at search engine referrals and which keywords or keyword phrases drive the most traffic to your site. Usually, a pretty small list of high-volume keywords and phrases drive between 50 and 70 percent of your search referral traffic.

If you rank well for your branded terms, so-called head terms, as you should, toss those phrases out of the list and focus on unbranded, or "torso," terms for which your site content ranks well. Just make sure you aren't reviewing internal site search data, because visitors use different search tactics and phrases once they find and engage with your site.

Know which keywords and phrases your site converts well for today, but expand that list to account for seasonality if your online business ebbs and flows through distinct sales shifts. Refresh your keyword list and data for these terms. Then try to focus only on two or three keyword themes at a time when seeking link targets. Trying to get a variety of text links in place for 50 different terms and phrases may quickly become unmanageable.

Remember, this process is first about link building for targeted terms that you already rank for. You can then expand that list based on content opportunities.

Spend some time analyzing your site log files; you'll start to see traffic patterns develop and evolve over time. If log files make you see double, spend time analyzing your site through any or all of your site's Webmaster tools. Either way, seek out opportunities to grow more referrals from those sites that already send traffic your way and add new link targets to the mix.

It takes a link to send a referral from one site to another, and each link contributes to your site's visibility for specific keywords and phrases. Visit those sites that link to your site, then hit the SERPs (define) to review the links of top-ranking competitive sites for your targeted terms. Once you have a list of targeted terms your site ranks well for, add those terms and phrases that you want to rank well for to the list. Initially target your content that already ranks on page two or three of the SERPs. A handful of well-targeted inbound links could help move this content to page one.

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Wading through the Web

So many search results, so little time. This is a common frustration for many who search for information on the World Wide Web, and especially for those whose searches are specific to an industry or a topic.

Take, for example, a search for the word ‘title’ on popular search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, or MSN. The majority of the search results include sites for boxing equipment and associations, HTML document structure, vehicle registration and title information, online book titles, a few businesses with ‘Title’ in their names, and the Wikipedia definition for ‘title’ as the prefix or suffix of a person’s name.

What’s missing is a context for the search, such as real estate property title. Adding these three words resulted in—after some additional scrolling — a link to home infomax.com, an online repository of real property records in the United States.

Vertical search engines — also known as specialty search engines — narrow the scope of a search to information specific to a particular business, industry, or topic. A growing trend that helps Web users make the most of their time online, vertical search engines have already narrowed the search to a specific industry or topic — the context — where as traditional ‘horizontal’ search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, MSN, or even Ask.com produce results from a multitude of Web pages that may or may not be related to the context of the search.

Vertical search engines limit the results to a specific set of content directly related to the topic or industry of query, and most include results aggregated from multiple sites on the Internet.

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Google Reigns as Most Powerful 10-Year-Old

When Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google Inc. on Sept. 7, 1998, they had little more than their ingenuity, four computers and an investor's $100,000 bet on their belief that an Internet search engine could change the world.

It sounded preposterous 10 years ago, but look now: Google draws upon a gargantuan computer network, nearly 20,000 employees and a $150 billion market value to redefine media, marketing and technology.

Perhaps Google's biggest test in the next decade will be finding a way to pursue its seemingly boundless ambitions without triggering a backlash that derails the company.

"You can't do some of the things that they are trying to do without eventually facing some challenges from the government and your rivals," said Danny Sullivan, who has followed Google since its inception and is now editor-in-chief of SearchEngineLand.

Google's expanding control over the flow of Internet traffic and advertising already is raising monopoly concerns.

The intensifying regulatory and political scrutiny on Google's expansion could present more roadblocks in the future. Even now, there's a chance U.S. antitrust regulators will challenge Google's plans to sell ads for Yahoo Inc., a fading Internet star whose recent struggles have been magnified by Google's success.

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Why Chrome Won't Crash Windows

Some are calling Google's (GOOG) new browser Chrome an "Internet Explorer killer." Others venture further and call it a "Windows killer." Whether Google's newly launched browser has Microsoft (MSFT) quaking is unclear, but there's no doubt that Google is serious about "organizing the world's information"—and is prepared to shake up the status quo in the process.

It should come as little surprise that Google is entering the Web browser market. The search heavyweight already has a substantial stake in our online activities. Search, check! E-mail, check! Office documents, check! The list of Web applications offered by Google is both long and varied. With its goal of providing all of our online needs, it makes perfect sense that Google would step up and provide a Web browser built to accommodate its applications. With Chrome, Google is betting that more of us will move more of our computing from desktops to online, relying on the vast data centers known as "the cloud." But can Google's Web browser singlehandedly entice us to dump a favorite Web browser and our computer's operating system?

Let's start with the operating system. What's your favorite flavor? Windows, OS X, Linux? Whichever your allegiance, for at least the next several years, you'll need an operating system to boot your computer and store the applications that are still too large and unwieldy to run from inside the cloud. Take iTunes, Photoshop, or PowerPoint. While online equivalents exist, they just can't match the processing power and functionality that come from the applications you run from your computer's operating system.

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10 common marketing mistakes to avoid

Avoiding marketing mistakes isn’t easy in today’s business marketplace; which is at times a terrifying jungle where your competitors are hungry predators and your customers are the food source that’s a challenge to catch. To survive you can’t afford to make many marketing mistakes. So here are some common marketing mistakes you should look out for.

1. Poor positioning
Firstly your food source or your customer—how well do you really know them? Most businesses today believe that their target market is anyone and everyone, which is fine if you have the marketing budget of Coca-Cola. Most soft drink companies define their core demographic (a little jargon meaning your ‘most probable customers’) as 14-to-18 year olds, which is why their advertising campaigns target teenagers with a theme of fun and first love. So mistake number one is not defining your core customer. Research your customers and see who is more likely to buy from you, then define them by sex, age and even status, eg. working mother, business owner etc.

2. A bland brand
Your brand is the backbone of your business and your logo is the pivot point that all your marketing will hang from. Mistake number two is having a poor, unmemorable brand.
You’ve heard the saying ‘a picture says a thousand words’ so what is your logo saying to your customers about your business? A logo should be colourful yet simple so it is easily recognised and able to be replicated across different mediums. It should say what you do and it should create the right first impression for your business. For example, if your business is a young, funky hair salon then the logo should be bright, modern and incorporate creative shapes with sharp angles instead of subtle pastel colours with an illustration of a head or pair of scissors.

3. A website instead of an online business
The latest statistics show a total of 1,407,724,920 people across the globe using the internet with just over 19 million (or 57 percent of the population) of those in Australia/Oceania (www.internetworldstats.com). Now realistically not all of these people are going to be searching for your business or looking at your website, but it does demonstrate the depth and potential of the internet. Mistake number three is not having an effective online presence to promote your business and attract customers. Instead of a website that is little more than an online brochure, you should build an online business portal – just like opening another shop or office but with the street address replaced by a website address (URL). Companies like DesignShop can help you create a self-managed online business with all the functionality you need, like e-newsletters, product information, e-catalogue or e-commerce, forums and so on.

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How Video Fits Into a PR Strategy

By definition, the practice of public relations involves maintaining communication with an entity's publics. This typically includes primary audiences like investors, consumers, and employees. As companies explore additional communication forums, public relation teams have added the likes of bloggers, video aggregator visitors, and social networking users to the list of people to talk to. Video content, in particular, affords PR professionals the ability to make a lasting impression on their publics. Online video is also easily syndicated and repackaged so messages will have a broad reach and present a united front.

Segmenting and Viral Content

Incorporating public relations into an online video strategy will help clients formulate how to target messages to their various audiences. Taking into account that investors care about different information than consumers, and employees require an entirely separate communications strategy, PR efforts can help guide overall marketing plans to ensure the right messages reach the right audiences.

Video -- more than most formats -- has the potential to evolve into a viral campaign. Knowing that users can pass along your video should hold marketers to a higher standard. Campaigns need to be well thought out and ultimately reflect favorably back on your brand. Extra steps can include linking out to appropriate pages to drive traffic and increase brand awareness. It can also translate into taking care during the production phase to ensure that messaging is appropriate so it resonates with different audience segments.

Monitoring

Tracking is important in any campaign. In public relations, it can be the difference between a setback and a crisis. By monitoring how users react to a video while it's being circulated, public relations professionals can try to head off negative reactions. Nothing seems to travel faster than people spreading bad publicity. Look beyond the analytics dashboard to keep an on the success or failure of a video campaign, and that includes visiting the sites where videos are posted to get a better sense of how they are being received. PR teams will then be in a better place to deal with any backlash.

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