Google Trends for Tumblr, Digg and StumbleUpon
Last year I made about 30 predictions on Web trends for 2009. Many of them came true, others, of course, did not. Still even in those cases the ideas from the Web trends list were useful. Even those trends that disappeared from the radar or haven’t got main stream yet should be watched closely as they might pop up again sooner or later.
So I decided to make a new Web trends list, this time for 2010.
Around 5 years ago I read the book Who Moved my Cheese. It’s a very simple, short story about the different methods of dealing with change. I’ve recently re-read this, (it only takes about an hour so I’d definitely recommend reading if you haven’t already) – but I realised that there’s a lot which can be applied to day-to-day life in search marketing.
Image Credit: Flickr
They say an internet year is the equalivent to 7 normal years, I’m sure a search engine marketing year may be more! So basically if you don’t like change – you’re probably in the wrong job! Continue Reading »
If you’re about to embark on an online marketing campaign, have you actually thought about what you want to achieve?
Last week, I was reading Patricio Robles’ excellent article 10 reasons people criticise SEO. Among the many comments left on the post was one suggesting that many clients don’t really know what it is they want to achieve from search engine optimisation before they start.
I think this is surprisingly true. At SEOptimise, we always encourage our clients to outline what they would consider to be success, to make sure we’re targeting our efforts. Not everyone’s goal is a straightforward commercial one.
Surprisingly often, they don’t really know and SEO is now just one more aspect of online marketing. Many organisations dutifully sign up and spend a great deal of cash of an array of web-based promotional efforts without a clear picture of what they want to achieve.
Considering how easy it is to analyse and measure online marketing success, this is an inexplicable waste of money.
More sales
This is the most obvious reason for any online marketing effort – to increase traffic to a commercial website in order to increase sales; to boost a brand’s reputation and mindshare in order to increase sales; and to encourage customers to return and make further purchases.
To be or not to be
A recent statistic has opened my eyes. While I still somehow assumed to be an early adopter of social media in its still early days a Forrester Research study has shown that 80% of US Internet users use social media in one or more ways. While most of them are lurkers which is no surprise a large amount of the people actually contribute in an active manner. Social media in Europe is not as popular yet but the trend is clear.
While pondering the results it dawned on me that most of the businesses I encounter are far behind.
Continue Reading »
Nowadays lowering bounce rates and increasing conversion rates are two or rather one (as both are closely tied together) of the main tasks that modern SEO is about.
Image credit: Sean Dreilinger
It’s obvious: Rankings and traffic do not mean much when the website visitors bounce off and you fail to convert them to buyers, subscribers or whatever you desire your visitors to do for you. Some industry insiders even suspect bounce rate to be a ranking factor itself already.
Continue Reading »
Females aged between 35 and 49 are the fastest-growing group within social networks and blogging sites, according to recent research by Neilson. So how can marketers ensure they are effectively selling to women?
Image Credit: Freyja, Flickr
Before I begin this post, let’s get a few things straight. I do not believe that women are completely different and need entirely separate promotional tactics. I recognise that many aspects of marketing relate to both genders and I think I could easily write a piece on tactics for selling specifically to men. Continue Reading »
Twitter just redesigned its homepage? You probably read about it but did you notice any changes? Probably not unless you don’t use Twitter at all.
The “revamped homepage” as some pundits put it can only be seen when you’re not logged in.
I already wondered what strange marketing tactic this is when StumbleUpon has done that, relaunching the site for outsiders but not the members. For weeks signed in Stumblers couldn’t see the new shiny homepage.
Continue Reading »
SEOptimise will be at the Online Marketing Show this week at Olympia in London, so make sure you come and visit our stand.
The exhibition is hosted on Tuesday 30th June to Wednesday 1st July and promises to be one of the UK’s top online marketing events. Plus you can still get entrance passes at the show and follow the event on the official @OMS09 Twitter account and #OMS09 hashtag.
SEOptimise will be on stand A138, we’ll hopefully see you there! :)
Yesterday I wrote a post on Econsultancy about why not selling online can damage your brand. This does sound very obvious, but it’s surprising how many well-known UK brands and even high-street retailers do not manage to get this right online.
One of the examples given in the comments (thanks Andon) was the Primark website, who not only fail to sell their products online, but they also have no product catalogue available either. Plus the website has clearly not been optimised for the search engines, without going into too much details just check out:
But back to my main point of selling online and below is a screenshot of the womenswear product page. This very briefly outlines the type of products and brands available but without going into any further detail: Continue Reading »
Download our free business guide to blogging white paper...
Posting tweet...
