SEOptimise » online marketing

The Challenge of Selling SEO & Forgetting the ‘Human Ranking Factor’

Shaad Hamid — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 12:31:23 +0000

As with selling any service, selling SEO services is an extremely challenging task. Here are my observations of two opposite ends of the spectrum of what SEO consultants often experience with selling SEO services.

Give me a two day optimisation strategy

We’ll often get contacted with the following, “We want a two day web optimisation strategy implemented.” Many neophyte consultants lick their lips and pounce on the ‘opportunity’ with alacrity. They start shooting off proposals, buffing up their hallowed methodology, and more.

A more sane, measured and customer-serving response to the request for a two day optimisation precess is, “Why?”

That always stops people in their tracks. “Why do you want a two day strategy implementation for your website and how do you know that’s the right thing for you?”

In the act of asking that question, you start actually consulting. And if you engage in a real dialogue on the basis of those questions you will gain bracing insight into the real issues, challenges and aspirations of the potential client. You may also get a bracing introduction to the assumptions they’re making — many of which are potentially untested.

It may well be that a two day implementation process is like a relatively empty vessel, into which (after suitable diagnostics and appropriate design) you can pour content that will actually serve their needs and best interests. But it may also be that a half day audit would suffice, and the real action needs to take place at their organisational levels, or with a different group of people, or may require preliminary contact with customers or other stakeholders. It could be that a six month process is needed.

My recommendation to companies who put out a request like the one above, and get a proposal back in response, is to disqualify the person or agency from further consideration, as the request has no meaning without further exploration.

And if you are an agency or a freelance consultant and receive a request like the above, differentiate yourself meaningfully by helping to get to the core of what’s driving the request, rather than getting infatuated by the format proposed.

Avoiding the panacea of empty process

Here’s another common challenge. An organisation decides they need to create a SEO strategy or a digital marketing strategy and manage its roll-out. They get an agency with a strategy implementation process, anchored in the balanced scorecard or some other framework. As they proceed, courtesy of this framework, they are deluged with meetings, with process charts, with communiques, and eventually they arrive at what they perceive to be ‘The Holy Grail’. Namely, they have a clear map. All inconsistencies are removed (at least on the charts anyway), and the path forward glitters like a mythical ‘Yellow Brick Road’.

The problem in the map is not the territory, and it never has been. The problem is that underlying the process clarity are dysfunctional relationships, misguided leadership behaviours, poorly aligned teams, social networks that don’t operate well, departmental practices that may be out of kilter with strategic aspirations, information hoarded rather than shared, a culture that is ossified with past practices rather than vitalised by future aspirations. And eventually the ‘knowing/doing gap’ will become that much more profound.

My humble advice is that once you have process clarity, you have to convert that into a more human map: of behaviours-in-action, team composition and alignment, presence of vibrant or nullifying relationships, communication and network effectiveness, leadership role-modeling and relevant efforts at culture-shifting in order to make the processes actually manifest. Until these adaptive elements are infused into the process steps, to humanise and actualise the processes, we run the risk of trying to run the world from an operating manual.

It doesn’t work. In fact, most of us don’t even run our computers from a manual. We get some hands-on experience while drawing on some guidance, then tinkering and adapting based on results. Alas, in an organisation there are many more moving parts, and my ‘tinkering’ can have expensive consequences if not synergised with the learnings and efforts of others.

Process clarity and human engagement must march together. You can see an organisation as a collection of processes and plans. Fair enough. But you can even more meaningfully see it pulsating with human performance. In other words, the subtotal of all the actions, interactions, behaviours, collaboration and communication between all the people who make a difference to the success or failure of the organisation. You can see the organisation as a patchwork quilt of teams, conversations and acted upon commitments. These are human dimensions, or as I’d like to call it, the ‘human ranking factor’ and if not addressed, all the gewgaws and trinkets of process clarity will be fallow and leave your strategic marketing vision unfulfilled.

Image credit: mootown

When SEO appears on The Archers…

Rachel McCombie — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 11:38:11 +0000

…There can be no further doubt that it’s mainstream. Yes, a discussion around search engine optimisation has featured on never-ending Radio 4 farming-community soap opera The Archers.

You’re probably wondering why I would know this. The answer is that, being prematurely middle aged enough to refer to the radio as “the wireless”, I am also middle aged (and countrified) enough to tune into The Archers from time to time (I don’t follow it religiously or anything, honest!).

For anyone who isn’t a regular listener, let me update you. Bridge Farm has been responsible for an outbreak of e-coli, spread through its ice cream. It effectively poisoned some kids at a gymkhana and landed two customers in hospital. Naturally, the national and local press has gone to town on the story and the Bridge Farm dairy has lost all of its customers.

But the farmers now plan to rebuild their reputation and their business. The only problem is that anytime anyone searches for ‘Bridge Farm’, the top stories are all about e-coli – not exactly a message that’s going to get people excited about your ice cream.

So, they want to use an SEO agency to work some online reputation management magic and allow them to restore their brand. Here’s what I would advise:

Address the issues
Tony and Pat Archer need to draw a line under the crisis. Unfortunately, they can’t talk to the press – every time they do, the journalist reignites the e-coli story and they feed the flames. But they do need to ensure they’ve addressed the issues behind the outbreak and show that they have done so.

One option would be to fire the source of the outbreak – one of their dairy staff – and tell their customers what they’ve done. But Tony and Pat seem like nice people and don’t want to make their employee a scapegoat.

Instead, they should issue a press release highlighting the changes they’ve made that ensure greater hygiene standards are observed.

Move the story on
After that press release, they need to stop talking about the outbreak. Not on their website and not to journalists.

Each time they do that, they ruin their chances of moving the story on. Even a sympathetic journalist wanting to document how their business is recovering will be telling the story of how they put two children in hospital.

Create new buzz
Instead of dwelling on the negative story, they need to do other newsworthy things, so there are more recent, positive news stories that will potentially appear in the search engine results.

Perhaps they could attempt some silly news story, like making a record-breaking sausage, or a serious but positive story such as launching an organic farming awareness day.

They should probably steer clear of stories relating to any of their dairy business, as this simply invites mentions of the e-coli crisis.

Push other products
Bridge Farm’s website should be overhauled so that it is primarily optimised for their non-dairy products.

Rebuilding their dairy business is going to take time and the farm needs to maintain its income in the meantime. One way to do that is to ensure that the meat products are being strongly marketed.

If you search for ‘Bridge Farm’ and a load of content on organic sausages and happy pedigree pigs ranks first then you have an initially positive experience of the brand.

Drive their reputation socially
The farmers should use their website, write a blog, tweet and encourage supporters to ‘like’ Bridge Farm on Facebook.

Using these platforms, they can build customer loyalty and increase the amount of positive mentions of their brand on the web.

These help drive new customers and maintain ties with their current ones.

If all else fails, ditch the brand
Potentially, Bridge Farm has simply become a toxic brand. Giving a bunch of gymkhana kids e-coli is one hell of a reputation crisis.

If none of the above methods work and the end seems near, it could well be time to rebrand, repackage and begin their promotional campaign from scratch.

Then they can instigate some positive reputation management tactics and build a loved brand.

Now, how to boost business at The Bull…

SEOs – time to brush up on your grammar?

Rachel McCombie — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 12:27:35 +0000

As a self-confessed grammar geek, I’m frequently dismayed by the sloppy standard of writing I am continually confronted with throughout the course of the seven days a week I spend exploring the weird and wonderful world wide web. Whether it’s a blog post, a tweet or even a company website, it seems that a lax approach to grammar has become the norm – even, most shockingly of all, among professional copywriters I’ve hired. The most frequent offender in the huge array of rudimentary English errors is the misplaced or missing apostrophe, a grammar violation which winds me up so much that Stuart Tofts and Kevin Gibbons make a point of including one in every email they send me, just so that they can see my reaction.

Before you ask, no – “Trampoline” is not the name of the shop!

Not long ago, in a moment of above average exasperation, I sent out a tweet which said:

So imagine my satisfaction when the following correction from Google was brought to my attention not long after:

We’re all used to Google correcting misspellings, but this was the first time I had seen it suggest correct punctuation. Interestingly, it has not automatically displayed results for “women’s clothing” with a different option for “search instead for womens clothing”, as it usually does with misspellings. Furthermore, doing the same search but for “mens” and “childrens” did not produce a “Did you mean” suggestion.

A quick glance down the search results for the search seen above showed sites with title tags using both correct and incorrect punctuation ranking for both terms (though title tags are obviously not the only consideration!). However, changing the search from “womens” to “women’s” did change which websites appeared on the first page – so it does seem to have some bearing on rankings. The top ranking websites were the same, but lower on the first page the results were different – meaning that some sites (Debenhams, for example) lost out on a first page ranking. The humble apostrophe makes a difference!

The Google Keyword Tool does recognise a small difference in search volumes for the two versions, but the number of searches for each is roughly equal. So why is Google making this correction in the search results?

This interesting video from Google shows the process used by Google engineers when they make algorithm changes – which they apparently do on a daily basis:

The video explains the rationale behind the “did you mean” suggestions: sites with misspellings are typically of a poorer quality. So as far as I can see, it’s a logical assumption that sites with a poor standard of grammar should be treated with the same approach.

In the light of the Panda update, we’re all getting used to the idea that Google is cracking down on low-quality sites, placing increasing emphasis on high-quality content that provides value for its users (the majority of whom are also Google’s users). Of course, many people are lazy when it comes to typing terms into Google, and will omit punctuation such as apostrophes because it takes marginally less time to type, and because they feel it makes little difference. But I would argue that the presence of poor grammar on a website could end up being a negative quality indicator because it diminishes a user’s trust in that website.

Google does use comments from real users in addressing problems of identifying what counts as a low-quality website. See this excerpt from a Wired.com interview with Google:

Wired.com: How do you recognize a shallow-content site? Do you have to wind up defining low quality content?

Singhal: That’s a very, very hard problem that we haven’t solved, and it’s an ongoing evolution how to solve that problem. We wanted to keep it strictly scientific, so we used our standard evaluation system that we’ve developed, where we basically sent out documents to outside testers. Then we asked the raters questions like: “Would you be comfortable giving this site your credit card? Would you be comfortable giving medicine prescribed by this site to your kids?”

Cutts: There was an engineer who came up with a rigorous set of questions, everything from. “Do you consider this site to be authoritative? Would it be okay if this was in a magazine? Does this site have excessive ads?” Questions along those lines.

Singhal: And based on that, we basically formed some definition of what could be considered low quality. In addition, we launched the Chrome Site Blocker [allowing users to specify sites they wanted blocked from their search results] earlier , and we didn’t use that data in this change. However, we compared and it was 84 percent overlap [between sites downloaded by the Chrome blocker and downgraded by the update]. So that said that we were in the right direction.

The incorporation of user feedback into algorithms was also confirmed on the official Google Webmaster Central Blog. Personally, if I visit a company website and the first thing I notice is that it’s riddled with poor grammar, it puts me right off that company. My most likely course of action would be to go back to the search results and find a competitor with a well-written website – and I know I’m not alone in this.

I lament falling standards of English and argue that proper use of grammar DOES matter. Poor grammar is unprofessional and makes a company look sloppy, as though they just don’t care. If they have that kind of attitude towards their professional image – if they can’t even be bothered to get their English right – what might their attitude be to customer service? How can I trust them with my business? Google wants the best results for its users, websites they can place trust and confidence in – and part of that means companies who know how to present themselves in a professional way. It’s only one step from correcting misspellings to correcting grammar abuse.

So it’s certainly not impossible that Google may pay more careful attention to grammar in the future. If that happens, using an apostrophe or not could mean the difference between ranking competitively for a term and not; it could also mean that a PPC ad, with apostrophes dropped to keep within the character limit, might not appear on the searches you want it to appear on. If there are any algorithm updates involving grammar in the offing, they are still only in their infancy; but if you ask me, this would be a good time for online marketers to sharpen up their grammar skills and recommend that their clients do the same.

Image credit
Zawtowers on Flickr

Why Automating PPC Accounts Using APIs May Be a Bad Idea

Shaad Hamid — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 13:40:45 +0000

Automating Google Adwords accounts using APIs is a great way to save time and improve efficiency on large and complex accounts. However in my opinion, the success of paid search campaigns lies in understanding the marketing goals of the organisation, having an understanding of the products offered by the organisation, and having an understanding of the target market. This information acts as a guide when researching highly relevant keywords, creating ‘quality score friendly’ keyword segmentations and generating compelling ad copy that communicates the product offerings clearly and concisely, enticing users to click on an ad. I believe that these tasks are done best through human input as opposed to automated feeds.

Automation is useful if there are over a thousand product offerings and the products offered change dynamically within a twenty four hour period. Large ecommerce websites focusing on a wide range of products (such as Amazon and eBay) have such a large variety of products that it is almost impossible to make changes to their accounts manually. Therefore, XML feeds make perfect business sense in making account level, ad group level and ad level adjustments on a live campaign.

However, businesses that offer less than a thousand products and have a pricing strategy that is fairly fixed throughout the year will benefit more from manual intervention, as there would be greater control over changes made to ad copy and it would also be more customer focused. This alone would be a competitive advantage over advertisers who resort to automated paid search campaigns, as there’d most likely be disparity between the adverts and the users’ search query; this would lead to low levels of click through rates, which then lead to higher costs per click due to low quality scores.

For small to medium sized accounts, bulk changes could quite easily be done using Google Adwords Editor. Taking the extra time and effort into making sure every ad and every ad group is customised for the target user will pay more dividends through greater number of quality leads. This is an area that large ecommerce websites miss out on due to large amounts of automation, where the user’s keyword does not correspond with the ad copy and the related landing page. This would prove to be counterproductive, as leads generated would be of low quality. Furthermore, you could apply rules in order to automate bid management and use conversion optimiser wherever it is applicable. These can easily be implemented without the need for XML feeds.

Although introducing XML feeds would make account management relatively easier, I strongly believe that managing small to medium sized accounts manually will lead to better quality ads, better quality leads and will result in low overall spend – which will hopefully convert into higher return on investment.

Tracking Online Marketing Campaigns in Google Analytics

Daniel Bianchini — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 13:06:16 +0000

In recent months I have found myself using the Google URL builder tool significantly more across a range of projects, including tracking emails and tagging PPC accounts.

One of the most frustrating things I found about the Google URL builder tool is how time consuming it was and the fact that I was constantly copying and pasting the URL into a spreadsheet to record what was being tracked.

After searching for a simple free tool that would help make this process more efficient, I decided to create a spreadsheet that would do just the job – http://goo.gl/jI1Wd.

Why Track Online Marketing Campaigns

Ensuring that you are tracking all of your marketing campaigns is essential to seeing which channels are working for you and which are not. These online marketing channels could include Email, PPC, Social Media or SEO, to name a few.

When launching a product, a retailer would market the product across multiple marketing channels including online. Online marketing allows you to track how well the campaign has done and can put a ROI on the activity that has taken place, where traditional offline marketing makes this a lot more difficult.

A typical online marketing campaign would include, but not be limited to, PPC, SEO, Email and social media to enable promotion across multiple platforms and ensure maximum visibility. Below shows an example of how tracking codes could be used across different marketing channels promoting the same campaign.

Email Campaign – ?utm_source=Link 1&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Product Launch
Social Media Campaign – ?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Social Media&utm_campaign=Product Launch
Social Media Campaign - ?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Social Media&utm_campaign=Product Launch
PPC Campaign – ?utm_source=Yahoo&utm_medium=PPC&utm_term=Product Name&utm_campaign=Product Launch

If your online marketing campaigns are not being tracked then you will not be able to get the data that could be available to you if you had tracked your campaigns.

So I have told you about my recent frustrations with Google URL Builder and why you should be tracking your online marketing campaigns, so let’s have a look at the spreadsheet.

How the Spreadsheet Works?

The spreadsheet works in exactly the same way that the Google URL builder tool works, with the user having to enter the URL into the destination URL cell, followed by filling in the following fields:

Campaign Source*
Campaign Medium*
Campaign Term
Campaign Content
Campaign Name*

*Should always be used

Once these fields have been filled in, the tagged URL will be generated within the “tagged URL field”; the URL can then be copied directly into your campaign.

Once your campaign is live you will start to see data filter through into Google Analytics via Traffic Sources > Incoming Traffic > Campaigns. Once your data has come through you can start to tweak your campaigns further to ensure maximum ROI.

The biggest advantage that the campaign tracking spreadsheet has is the ability to create/edit/delete a large number of tracked URLs easily, in a single document. The campaign tracking spreadsheet can then be used as a master document to ensure that all campaigns are recorded and archived.

Campaign Tracking Spreadsheet: http://goo.gl/jI1Wd

The spreadsheet is a very basic concept, but I feel that it does the job well, whilst leaving room for improvement and modification if you require something more sophisticated.

Have a look at the spreadsheet, copy or download it and let me know if it helps you save time and makes tagging URLs more efficient. I look forward to hearing your comments below or on twitter @danielbianchini.

I would like to give my thanks to Tony Sutcliffe who helped me make the formulas as efficient as possible.

How to Perfect Your Press Releases

Rachel McCombie — Fri, 13 May 2011 12:38:41 +0000

As the importance of SEO becomes increasingly widely recognised, millions more marketers have started churning out press releases. Unfortunately, many seem less concerned about the potential media coverage than about the optimisation benefits.

A good press release, when it’s picked up on and used by the media, can do wonders for your brand awareness and corporate authority. But it’s also great for optimisation, and if your agency is writing slapdash articles, calling them press releases and distributing them to a bunch of websites where nobody will ever read them, then you’re barely scraping the surface of your press release potential.

By creating press releases that writers and bloggers will actually use, your effort can pack a far more powerful punch both in online and offline marketing. Here are some of my top tips for dramatically better releases.

Run some analysis or research

Forget every other tip in this article; if your press release doesn’t have a good story then it won’t even get read, let alone used. Although a good story for an industry-specific publication may not be something the editor of The Times would publish, your releases have to have a decent hook, no matter how niche your field. Otherwise you are doing nothing more than churning out half-hearted copy that no human will ever read!

Pro top tip

Invest in your release! Analyse your company’s sales data and see if there’s an interesting trend you can highlight, run a survey among your customers or on your website, or even consider paying an agency to conduct research on your behalf.

That way, you have an actual story that goes beyond ‘new product launched’. You can of course put out a release when you want to sell a new service or product, but make sure there’s something juicier in there for the writer too.

Build relationships with writers

The best way to garner press attention for your release is to have an existing relationship with the journalists or bloggers you’re targeting.

For larger brands with bigger budgets, this can mean taking a few writers out for a meal to discuss working with them in the future. Companies with less cash and smaller teams may do better chatting to relevant writers via platforms like Twitter, commenting on their blogs and gaining introductions at conferences and other industry events.

You may also benefit from ringing around a few of the writers you know, just to bring their attention to your release. A quick, friendly chat on the phone can work wonders.

Pro top tip

If you’re friendly with a particularly well-known blogger or writer, then why not offer them exclusive access to your release in advance? You’ll do them a favour by offering them an exclusive and it makes it more likely that your story will get publicity.

Get your spelling and grammar right

All journalists and most bloggers care about spelling, punctuation and grammar. They can’t help it – it’s wired into their minds, and for good reason. Badly written news articles look unprofessional and untrustworthy, and the same goes for press releases.

So, if you want your pitch for their attention to look professional, have it proofread before you send it.

Pro top tip

Forget WRITING IN ATTENTION-GRABBING CAPITALS and ditch the over-excited exclamation marks!!!! They make your content look spammy and unprofessional.

If a writer has opened your release, the sight of an abused caps-lock button or an abundance of exclamation marks will just make them close it again. And what’s more, they’ll be less likely to open your emails in the future.

Be clear, precise and concise

Writers are busy, busy people. Don’t waste their time – get to the point as early as possible or you risk them never getting as far as your actual story.

Say what you have to say in as few words as possible and be strict with yourself when you come to edit your release.

Use a professional writer if you aren’t confident about writing well. There are even some copywriters who charge just a few pounds to proofread work, so you can get a professional’s opinion even if your budget is stretched.

Pro top tip

While puns can be fun, a good headline is a clear one that shows the writer exactly what they will get from the release.

The really good news is that this is also great for SEO, as it makes it more likely that your keywords will fit neatly into your headline.

Justify your claims

Once people start actually reading your press releases, you’ll quickly learn how essential it is that you can justify any claims you make.

Journos and bloggers can be a clever bunch, and are likely to pick up on any claims you can’t substantiate. That means that your release could result in a negative story, which is hardly the point.

Pro top tip

When making any kind of claim, asterix it and include as much information regarding it as possible beneath the article, such as links, survey size and so on.

If a writer is half-heartedly considering running your story but then decides they would need to contact you for additional details, it might just put them off using it.

Journalists are an overworked race, while bloggers often work in their spare time, meaning they don’t always have time to research. Make it easy for them.

How to get ready for Christmas NOW

Rachel McCombie — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 15:36:23 +0000

Image credit: Flickr

Despite a tough economic backdrop and widespread fears over delivery times, this was another season of growth for UK online retail. It may seem a little early to be thinking about Christmas again already, but given that careful planning is often hailed as the key to success, what can you start doing now to prepare for next Christmas?

In another bumper year for web businesses, more Britons spent more online than ever before. In fact, a study commissioned by Tealeaf showed that 44% of the country’s web-enabled adults did some of their Christmas shopping online. And if recession and a looming year of cuts weren’t enough to dampen online Christmas shopping growth, then next year is also likely to break a few records.

This means that all consumer-facing online retailers need to ensure that their websites are ready in time for the busy festive season.

The need for a streamline buying process was highlighted by the Tealeaf research, which showed that as many as 45% of respondents said they’d encountered difficulties with their shopping. Almost half said they wouldn’t return to a shop where they’d had problems, and one in 10 said they had criticised retailers on social networks.

With that in mind, how can you ensure next Christmas goes without a hitch?

Start planning your festive marketing straight away

If you’re starting to wonder about your Christmas marketing in November, you’ve left it too late to do a good job.

Fantastic festive viral campaigns, targeted advertising and meticulously executed email marketing drops aren’t thrown together in a few days or even a few weeks.

Start brainstorming your approach now and have a firm idea in place by summer. You then have months to plan it and stage it well. On top of that, you’ll save yourself a horrendous rush in the final few months, and you’ll cut down on hours of expensive overtime.

Protect your Christmas budget

Just as every family is urged to save a little each month to ensure they don’t run into debt in December, your business should be spending a little less each month to make sure it has extra marketing budget to spare at Christmas.

That way you can really work platforms like paid search advertising and drive more festive business to your online shop.

Delivering a reliable and efficient service at Christmas can win you long-term customers, so it’s well worth it.

Offer Christmas discounts throughout the year

Rewarding customers for their loyalty is always a good idea, and pledging to give them a Christmas discount for their shopping earlier in the year can be great.

Not only will you give your customer that warm feeling they get when they know they’re being rewarded, but it will also boost your festive sales.

You can even email the shopper closer to the time to remind them of the discount available, putting your online store at the forefront of their minds.

Start building a gift finder

If you consider yourself to be rubbish at Christmas shopping, the online gift finder is your friend. But an effective gift-finding tool takes time to build and test.

Start planning and budgeting for it now, so that you can have it up and running by October. That should allow you to set it live just as the earlybirds start Christmas shopping.

Examine your customer journey

This is good advice generally, but it will help your Christmas shopping figures.

Comb through your customer journey to check for barriers to sale and to ensure your clients enjoy an easy shopping experience.

Rid your site of unnecessary clicks; each one is a barrier to purchase, increasing your chances of shopping cart abandonment. Ensure your search functions are performing as expected.

One of the best ways to improve your customer journey is to ask your customers, perhaps offering a prize draw as an incentive to complete a survey. Very often a website’s designers can be simply too close to the project to view it objectively.

Customers will have no qualms about putting you right!

Keep sales in mind too

It used to be that the sales began on Boxing Day, but for the online retailer, the sales begin as soon as it’s too late to deliver in time for Christmas.

For most businesses that’s December 23rd or even earlier. With that in mind, when planning your Christmas campaign, don’t forget to give some thought to the sales frenzy that follows it.

You’ll need to work on your marketing campaign for that in advance too.

Have staff working Christmas Day

It’s a pain and no one wants to ask their staff to work over Christmas, but you need to have someone behind the scenes just in case.

According to eDigital Research, 86% of UK consumers went online over Christmas Day and Boxing Day in 2010, and many of them did so to take early advantage of the sales.

Put plans in place now to have your IT teams working over those days, to ensure your website runs smoothly no matter what traffic you face.

Larger stores may also want to have a skeleton customer services team on call, just in case there are any problems. Having a ready response to an issue can turn a negative customer experience into a positive one.

Start making plans now and your staff may be more willing to work the bank holidays. You could even offer them some extra holiday over the year to make up for losing a few hours on Christmas Day.

40 Social Media Tools & WordPress Plugins – a4uexpo Presentation

Kevin Gibbons — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 12:53:26 +0000

Today I presented at a4uexpo London on 40 Social Media Tools and WordPress Plugins. This was split equally between the two sections and I’ve shared the slides and individual links, plus provided a very quick summary for each below.

a4uexpo – 40 Social Media Tools & WordPress Plugins

Top 20 Social Media Tools

Hootsuite – manage your social media accounts online and link up with your traffic stats in Google Analytics.
Untweeps – tidy-up your Twitter account by finding the accounts you’re following which have gone stale.
Klout – find influencers based upon Klout score and find ways to improve the influence of your own account.
Topsy – find the top influencers to connect with and help retweet your messages, based on a keyword query.
Wikipedia Traffic Statistics – view how much traffic an individual Wikipedia webpage has generated.
Flowtown – customer insight tool to find which social media sites your customers and contacts are using.
Social Mention – online reputation management tool to show brand mentions and overview of topics.
Scout Labs – view recent stats on brand mentions, plus all information from blogs, news, YouTube, Flickr and Twitter.
KnowEm – protect your brand by claiming the social media profile handles to stop other people from registering them.
Pitchengine – promote your press releases to social media channels.
Journalisted – find top UK journalists based on a search query – recommend searching for industry name.
SWix – comprensive tracking and reporting to pull together a range of social media profile stats into a single dashboard.
Domain Superstar – find new domain name opportunties based on a keyword query.
StumbleUpon advertising – give social media campaigns a boost with some extra paid visits.
Skimlinks – quickly and easily convert external links to affiliate links, when there is a merchant available.
ad.ly – advertise via Twitter and MySpace to promote your content by paying per tweet/message.
oDesk – find freelancers online to hire for a wide-range of web-based tasks.
Fiverr – build Facebook fan pages and Twitter followings, amongst many other small tasks.
Omgili – search just for forums and find new discussions based on a keyword query.
TubeMogul – distribute your videos to all of the top video sharing websites via a single upload.

Top 20 WordPress Plugins

Sharebar – useful WordPress plugin to display all popular social media bookmarking buttons alongside blog posts.
Blackbird Pie – easily share your favourite tweets by embedding them directly into blogs posts.
su.pr – encourage StumbleUpon votes when using URL shorteners to send links out on Twitter.
Backtype – pull together the latest discussion around a blog post from social media websites.
Subscribe to comments – encourage the continuation of blog discussions, with email alert messages to commenters.
All in One SEO – automatically optimise title tags, description and noindex/follow meta tags.
Yet Another Related Posts – automatically build internal links to related content from each blog post.
Google XML Sitemaps Generator – great way of automatically generating an XML sitemap to keep your blog up-to-date.
Redirection – easily manage the redirection of a blog from one URL to a new version.
SEO Smart Links – automatically create internal/external links when keywords are mentioned within content.
Feedburner FeedSmith – automatically forwards any RSS URL’s to use a single Feedburner version.
RSS Footer – add copyright, external links and promotions for subscribers and scraper sites using RSS feeds.
WordPress Database Backup – make sure you have a backup of your site incase the worst happens.
WP Super Cache – make sure your blog is running as quickly as possible, looking to keep users and search engines happy!
A/B Theme Testing Plugin - split test two different WordPress designs or layouts alongside each other simultaneously.
Zemanta – get inspiration to brighten up posts, with images and external links recommended to bloggers.
WP Robot – automated plugin for important Amazon and eBay products into a blog automatically. Be careful with this one!
WP125 – ad management tool to rotate ads and manage the expiry date for direct advertisers.
Geolocation targeting – try targeting your ads specifically for your most popular audience locations.
WP-e-commerce – convert your WordPress site into an e-commerce store so that you manage the buying process.

Also if you have any questions from the session, please ask – happy to answer either in the comments or via Twitter.

How to achieve excellence in joined-up marketing – #JUMPchallenge

Kevin Gibbons — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 14:52:19 +0000

This post is part of the #JUMPchallenge, a blogging competition designed raise awareness on how to join up online and offline marketing, launched to support Econsultancy’s JUMP event.

Image credit: Flickr

It’s essential that the different elements of your marketing reinforce one another if your budget is going to generate the highest possible returns.

Search marketing, traditional marketing and PR cannot happen in isolation from each other, or you will inevitably end up spending more than you need to on a less-effective campaign.

Join your marketing up well and you’ll develop a powerful corporate persona, provide seamless service to new and existing customers, and free-up more budget by eliminating waste.

So, with all these benefits, how do you join up your marketing? I thought I’d examine some of the different strands and take a look at how each can work more effectively with the rest of the marketing mix.

How to join-up PR and everything

PR is a vital element of your marketing strategy, it feeds into everything. PR is about managing your name. After all, without a decent reputation, the rest of your marketing is going nowhere.

Don’t forget as well that your PR executive or team are paid to keep their fingers on the pulse of your industry. They can be a trove of knowledge about coming trends, current issues and consumer concerns.

Your link builders can brainstorm ideas with the PR team and your email marketers can plan their campaign calendar with their help.

Often, your PR exec is also the best person to take up the reins of your social media strategy.

Twitter, Facebook and other social platforms are excellent PR tools, and it’s a great idea to have your company spokespeople blogging (check out my free blogging whitepaper for an in-depth look at why blogs are such a powerful tool).

That means your SEO team can return the favour and guide your PR exec in blogging best practice, boosting your website’s organic optimisation and cementing your corporation reputation with thoughtful insights.

It’s a virtuous circle of joined-up marketing excellence.

How to join-up SEO and everything

Finally the rest of the marketing world is starting to realise what I have been banging on about for years – SEO is not some technical website extra, it should be considered at every stage of your online marketing.

For example, your SEO team understand the terms you need to rank more highly for – they need to be in a position to feed this back to your PR team. That way, your press releases, social media work and blog content can be tailored to include these important phrases.

The SEO team should be included in all copywriting work for your site so that they can guide the copywriter in what’s needed to make your pages sparkle for search engine crawlers as well as for human visitors.

Plus, there’s a load of useful information being gathered around the company that your SEO team could benefit from.

What subject lines did best in the email marketing tests? That can feed into their PPC copy. What industry blogs were most popular on Twitter this month? That can feed into their link building work.

Although all elements of marketing are important, I think that PR and SEO should underpin everything a company does.

How to join-up email marketing and everything

Don’t view your email marketing as solely selling your products or services. Change your perspective and see it as a vehicle for marketing your entire company.

There’s great potential for your email to provide a platform for your other work and still drive interested customers to your products.

For example, you could add ‘Find us on Facebook’ and ‘Follow us on Twitter’ buttons to your emails.

You could include links to recent blog posts on your own site, or maybe even guest blog posts elsewhere (if you’re finding it hard to negotiate a guest post on a high-authority blog, offering to include it in your newsletter can be a great bargaining chip).

Perhaps some of your more skilled SEO copywriters or PR execs could write a newsletter to enhance your marketing? This can make your communication more effective and also boost your brand’s reputation among the recipients.

How to join-up social media and everything

I went to a pub the other day and there was a ‘Find us on Facebook’ sticker on the door. That’s great, keeping social media in mind at every point is really useful in terms of customer engagement.

The more opportunities you have to engage socially with the customer, the better. It massively enhances customer loyalty, as well as keeping your brand at the front of their mind when they next make a purchase.

Some social media marketers may feel they face a bit of a battle showing the value of what they do to the rest of the team. For example, perhaps your email marketing copywriter won’t want to include a ‘Follow us on Twitter’ button because it won’t take clickers to a sales page.

Your business needs to be more long-sighted than this. By building followers and fans, your company is creating a hardcore of loyal customers – people it can communicate with in a fun and social way. A click to Twitter is not a wasted click.

By giving discounts and special offers to fans, you can drive sales without intruding on anyone. You’ll also find it easier to get people to tweet your blog posts, share your content and rave about your deals – all of which feeds back beautifully into PR and SEO.

How to join up your offline and online marketing

Many small and medium-sized enterprises simply don’t bother with offline marketing, because the web is a far more cost-effective place to promote themselves.

However, offline marketing such as posters, newspaper, TV and radio adverts still work for major brands. There’s also similar great scope for local offline marketing for smaller companies, in the local press, for example.

But how can this join-up with your online marketing? Just as with email marketing, your offline promotions should show that there are even more value-adding perks available online.

For great discounts and sneak previews, find us on Facebook.

Find more great recipes back on our website.

You have limited space in any offline promotion but unlimited space online. Direct people to the web when you can and you’ll have more space to play with and another chance to win their custom.

How to join-up your team

Okay, this is perhaps the most important piece of advice in this entire post. Your marketing won’t be joined-up until the various relevant teams are working together.

Some large businesses will have whole teams dedicated to the different marketing strands I have outlined here – and it is essential these teams get to know each other.

You want them to communicate more effectively, brainstorm ideas with each other and share their skills. You need to facilitate that as much as possible.

Start by bringing the teams together and sitting them around the same desks if possible. Explain your marketing ambitions and encourage them to see themselves as part of one large team rather than their own smaller functions.

If your SEO is done by an agency like mine then ask for your search executive to come and work from your office for a few days, to build a good working relationship with your in-house marketers.

If this is a major change for your marketers then invest in some team-building fun. Send them off for a meal together or a team-building day or drinks. It’s worth it.

Your marketing can’t be joined up until your whole team – email marketers, link builders, paid search executives, the lot – see themselves as part of a bigger team and wider strategy.

Use Google Analytics custom segments to audit and improve search marketing

Dave Chaffey — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 09:20:06 +0000

Use Google Analytics custom segments to audit and improve search marketing

Anyone who has ever reviewed the keywords attracting visitors to a site will have seen that brand search terms usually dominate, often accounting for more than 50% of search related visits for well-known brands.

Every site has associated brands, but to paraphrase Morrisey, some brands are biggger than others. For these, isolating brand search is essential if you’re serious about using search to create incremental business i.e. create awareness and sales from new customers.

It follows that it’s futile to try to review and improve search engine marketing without taking brand phrases into account, but that’s the default for the less than savvy. For marketers, reviewing their analytics it’s easy to understand since the analytics tool doesn’t readily isolate brand and non-brand phrases.

For the search agency, well maybe they’re being less than transparent with their clients since it’s even easy for the incompetent to attract branded site visitors to a site. Of course this won’t apply to most readers of this esteemed blog!

This short tutorial will show you how to use Google Analytics to quickly set up Advanced Segments to help you review your search performance.
Setting up custom segments for search keywords in Google Analytics
Custom Advanced Segments are what you need to set these up. If you haven’t come across these because they’re hidden in Google Analytics, then you’re missing out – see my Smart Insights post on “10 different types of advanced segments”: http://www.smartinsights.com/blog/web-analytics/google-analytics-web-analytics/segmenting-google-analytics/.

For search marketers, there are standard segments for paid and natural segments which I’m sure you’re all using already – if not that post gives and example.

To understand the interaction of paid and natural brand phrases, I recommend setting up 4 advanced segments. I advise setting them up and labelling them as follows:

1. Natural search visits including brand.

2. Natural search visits NOT including brand.

3. Paid search visits including brand name(s).

4. Paid search visits NOT including brand name(s).

It just takes a few seconds to set each one up. I’ll show you how for an advanced segment for natural search visits containing the brand name. I’ll use my “brand name” from my site since I can’t use client data to illustrate this…

Step 1. Select “Create a new advanced segment” from the Advanced segments box top right or click on the Advanced Segment menu option in the left sidebar and chose “Create a new custom segment”

Step 2. First, select Keyword as the dimension to segment on from the “Traffic sources” dimension group on the left of the screen. Drag across. Easy.

Next filter by entering the brand name by choosing “contains” . Also, easy.

Tip: In many cases, you will want to include some variants of the brand. You do this using the pipe symbol and selecting “regular expression” rather than “contains”. For example, Starbucks|Star Bucks, although contains “bucks” would be easier…

Step 3 Next segment by natural search choosing a segment dimension as “and” as shown in the screengrab above. This will match “organic”. Paid is “cpc”

Step 4 Choose a name for your segment and press the “test” option to make sure you have it right.

Step 5 Finally you can apply your advanced segments to the report by selecting the segments you want from the Advanced Segments box on the top right as shown in the first screengrab.

This example shows a high level view of the breakdown of search traffic.

You can also use these segments within keyword reports to easily separate out brand and non brand keywords. For high volume phrases it can be worth setting up a contains “high volume keyword” so that you can analyse that in depth.

I hope that works for you. How do you use advanced segments for search analysis – I’d be interested to hear about the segments you use.

In the meantime, I’d be interested to hear how you use segments in Google Analytics.

46 CRO/Conversion Rate Optimization Resources for Web Design, SEO & Social Media Experts

Tad Chef — Thu, 20 May 2010 15:58:14 +0000

This list is not meant for the average small business owner. These 46 CRO/Conversion Rate Optimization resources require web design, SEO and social media experts to implement, use or even understand them.

How do you find out whether your web designer, SEO or social media consultant or company has enough expertise to deal with them?

In case your web designer thinks web design is about fancy graphics, flashy animations and cool homepages s/he isn’t an expert.
In case your SEO consultant speaks about meta tags, PageRank and keyword density all the time s/he isn’t an expert.
In case your social media expert advises you to gain more Twitter followers using an autopilot tool, to submit your site to hundreds of social media sites or has no flagship blog s/he isn’t an expert either.

These people won’t be able to make proper use of these resources.

In contrast highly skilled specialists of all the three industries, web design, SEO and social media speak about conversions and ROI all the time.

Some talk too much, like I tend to sometimes and don’t practice what they preach but this time the list is directly related to my quest for improving conversions of this blog here.

So let me share what I have found out in the recent 10 months.

For starters: Read our two CRO resources we provided earlier:
12 Indispensable Readability Measures to Increase Conversions
30 Simple Ways of Improving Bounce Rate and Conversion Rate

I sorted the resources according to their main focus:

CRO/Conversion Rate Optimization

7 Steps to Improving Conversion Rates
How To Create High-Converting Landing Pages
Increasing Website Conversions: How Categorization, Personalization, and Choice Limitation Can Increase Sales
How to Increase Conversions on any Website in 45 Minutes
11 Ways to Influence People Online and Make Them Take Action
BruceClay – 21 Secrets of Top Converting Websites
A simple multivariate testing strategy that produced a 367% increase in number of free software downloads
Landing Page Types
10 must-read scientific research papers on conversion rate optimization

SEO

Social Media

Web Design

Ecommerce

Average Ecommerce Conversion Rates
Stopping Shopping Cart Abandonment
10 Steps To A More Usable Ecommerce Website

Tools

Analytics

Of course several of these conversion optimization resources fit in more than one category. Also take note that the term CRO is still quite new and some people drop the “rate” and say conversion [rate] optimization instead. They refer to the same discipline though.

Do you know other CRO resources you can’t find on this list? Add them in the comment section. They can be your won as well. As always the best ones may end up in the post or in my next post. A5XD3SV6KA6X

© SEOptimise - Download our free business guide to blogging whitepaper and sign-up for the SEOptimise monthly newsletter. 46 CRO/Conversion Rate Optimization Resources for Web Design, SEO & Social Media Experts

30 SEO, Social Media & Marketing Case Studies that Prove the ROI of it All

Tad Chef — Fri, 07 May 2010 12:34:39 +0000

We all love case studies. Who is we? We in the SEO industry, we in social media and online marketing, we business people. Case studies show on real life examples, real websites, projects and campaigns that something works.

Good case studies are more than proof though. They also show you how to market or optimize a site. They show an example of how it actually works.

Case studies combine both, the insight of a how to articles and the business proof of a finished campaign. They shows the results from experience.

These are some of the reasons why I’ve collected a comprehensive list of 30 SEO, social media & marketing case studies that prove the ROI of it All.

Yes, the ROI in SEO, social media and other kinds of online marketing is still too often fuzzy. We want success stories, numbers and explanations so that we can reenact the steps you need to succeed. So here they are, enjoy:

Link building/baiting

Other SEO

Social Media

Blogging

Other

It took me more than a year to collect those case studies so they are only those that I really think are worth your attention. Most of them are not overt advertising or blatant self promotion, they are quite neutral case studies you can rely on.

Take note that I included more than one (actually three) articles about two particularly successful marketing campaigns on Twitter and Facebook. The results were to good to not get covered in depth.

Of course we at SEOptimise have our own SEO case studies. You can download them here and here as PDF documents.

Goal Involvement Analogy: “Conversion Attribution is Like Selling Xabi Alonso & Hoping for the Same Result”

Kevin Gibbons — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 23:17:29 +0000

Google have announced this week at SES New York the introduction of AdWords Search Funnels. The conversion attribution problem has been heavily discussed during the last year and this led me to think of a quote which was on Twitter a while ago, (I think it was from Chris Lake – correct me if I’m wrong though): “Conversion Attribution is Like Selling Xabi Alonso & Hoping for the Same Result”.

Image credit: Flickr

Even if you don’t know anything about football, hopefully this will still make some sort of sense – but being a big Liverpool fan this quote really struck home with me as an excellent analogy. For those who don’t know, last season Xabi Alonso often provided the assist before an assist leading towards a goal. So if you’re looking at stats on goals scored and direct assists it may be difficult to understand the true value Alonso added to the team.

Take Alonso out of the equation and 12-months after Liverpool were comfortably beating the likes of Real Madrid and Man United, they’re now losing to Wigan and Lille. Clearly this doesn’t mean it’s all down to Alonso leaving (he didn’t even play in the Man United win), but if you look a bit deeper into his performances last season it becomes easier to see the contribution he had and how his departure contributed towards the teams winning momentum quickly turning into a miserable run in form.

So lets have a look at how this relates to search and online marketing…

Website Lead/Sale = Goal

You’ve done the hard work, you’ve found a potential customer who is interested enough in your site that they return via a branded keyword (or direct visit) and complete a sale. It’s the same as giving Fernando Torres a free shot with just the keeper to beat. You won’t always get a 100% conversion rate – but in both cases there’s a very good chance it will end up with a goal.

Penultimate Visit = Direct Assist

Some players don’t always score enough goals, David Beckham for example, but if you take him away from taking freekicks, corners and crossing the ball into the box then you’re likely to see a noticeable drop in chances created and goals scored. This could be exactly the same with your online strategy, which is why it’s so important to find those advertising channels and keywords which are contributing to the end goal.

Mid-Level Visit = Midfield Pass

If Liverpool scored a goal last season, there’s a good chance Xabi Alonso was involved at some point during that move. This may not have a huge importance to the overall outcome, but if involved more often than not, then he’s clearly having a positive impact to the team. This could relate to an email marketing campaign or a keyword which may rarely convert, but is often involved in an assist. Take it away and those conversion chances may start to dry up.

Initial Visit = Defensive Build Up

What got the ball rolling in the first place? In the case of a football game, it may start with a move from the back by a goalkeeper or defender. When online, perhaps it was a search at the early stage of the buying cycle, something like “where to go on holiday”. You’ve still got a huge amount of work to do in order to grab that conversion, but you need to start somewhere – and unless Howard Webb is the ref, you don’t get free goals given to you on a plate!

Goal involvement – which is most important stage?

For football, in theory it’s easy – you need to put the ball in the back of the net so the scorer gets the most credit. But in actual-fact there’s far more to it. Paul Tomkins has devised an excellent system to track the goal involvement of each player, valuing how they contribute to the team over a number of games. Even if you have no interest in football this is worth a read to get your head around the conversion attribution problem we face online.

“When turning football into numbers, there will always be problems. And when it comes to ‘assists’, this is especially true. How can you reward someone who rolls the ball eight inches from an indirect free-kick as highly as someone who beats seven men and puts the ball in the striker’s path in the six-yard box?”

The same could be said for website conversions. For a branded search term or direct visit – which clinches a sale – you can almost certainly say they’ve either heard of the brand or have visited the site before. This keyword can’t possibly be as valuable in terms of attracting new business as a non-branded, competitive term.

You could take this analogy even further, what happens if performance drops?

Is the manager to blame? Perhaps there are other circumstances which affect the way a job is being done, for example client/management demands, bad luck, a steep learning curve or budget restrictions.
Is expectation unrealistic? Liverpool’s squad value is far less than Man City and Tottenham, yet if they finish below them in the league it would be a disaster to many people. Perhaps your client is the same, thinking they have the right to be number one for every relevant term in Google – maybe that’s based on a successul past which is largely the case for Liverpool.
Is it a level-playing field? Are you competing on a lower budget? For the last three transfer windows Liverpool have had to break even, often being outbid for targeted new players. This may be the same with your online campaigns, perhaps your competitors can afford to make a loss in some areas while you left to focus on cheaper alternatives.
Is the whole greater than the sum of all parts? For every expensive big name signing, most teams need a Darren Flecther, Lucas or Obi Mikel. These players often aren’t the fans favourites, but it helps make the team more balanced and effective. How does your online marketing strategy work together? Do you have an integrated campaign for SEO, PPC, analytics, web design, affiliate, conversion optimisation, email marketing, social media etc?
What’s your plan B? If your main striker gets injured, how do you replace them without seeing a major drop in form? What if your keywords are seasonal? Is there anything else you could be doing to try and maintain performance levels?
Are you continually improving? It can be easy to stick with what works and be short-sighted, while competitors may be innovating towards using new tactics which may get them to the top. Just look at how Arsene Wenger’s continental approach to football paid off when he was the first to introduce this to the Premiership.
Do you convert your chances? Is your website as appealing, or your brand as well respected as your competitors? Does your sales team clinch the sale once the lead is provided? Do your competitors have greater conversion rates? Does your striker need 8 or 9 good chances to score a goal, or is he a clinical finisher who can win you a game in an instant?

Ok, that’s probably enough football analogies for now, but by tracking the performance at all stages you can really get a strong idea about how every aspect of an online marketing campaign (or football team) is working. Then you can make a sensible decision based on the actual facts and figures, instead of gut feelings and opinions – which has to be a far more successful and long-term approach.

© SEOptimise - Download our free business guide to blogging whitepaper and sign-up for the SEOptimise monthly newsletter. Goal Involvement Analogy: “Conversion Attribution is Like Selling Xabi Alonso & Hoping for the Same Result”

30 Web Trends to Watch in 2010

Tad Chef — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 13:17:55 +0000

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.

I started from scratch and asked my followers on Twitter to contribute. Most of the Web trends to watch in 2010 can be seen already on the Web so I’m really no prophet I just compiled a list. OK, also I chose those trends that I consider worth watching in 2010 and left out others. I think the following aspects of the Internet will have a major impact next year and beyond.

I divided the upcoming trends into several sections:

social media
business
mobile
marketing
search
SEO
web design & development
software

Social Media

Twitter integration and apps were king in 2009 and are here to stay. Either you integrate or you perish
Tumblr is successful and growing in the shadow of Twitter, when Twitter finally loses steam will Tumblr be the new darling?
Market consolidation in social media leaving only a few major players on the scene: Twitter, Facebook and who else?
Social news (Digg, Reddit) and bookmarking (Delicious) will become obsolete. Already the first wave of social media that is social news and bookmarking lose against Twitter.
Social browsing (StumbleUpon etc.) is already dead. There were more than a dozen of social browsing services in 2008. Most of them are dead or on hiatus already. More to follow.

Business

We’ll witness a demise or hiatus of most startups without critical mass of users as the money runs out
We can expect a proliferation of premium and freemium business models as venture capital stays scarce
Companies and brands will have to develop a social media strategy in 2010 to stay afloat
With business accounts and data access selling like hotcakes and additional revenue sources Twitter will become profitable in 2010 already

Mobile

We’ll see a smartphone systems death match as the market isn’t big enough for all the often incompatible systems we have right now.
Apple will be losing market share. The iPhone still looks like years ago. They don’t even have a netbook yet. They can’t rely on cult tactics forever.
Phones and calls for free thanks Google: Google prepares the real Google Phone combining Google Voice and Gizmo5 VoIP to offer free calls.

Marketing

We’ll see less bullshit and more substance in the online marketing field. As the Web matures more and more people become too savvy to get fooled.
Advertising replaced on the Web by “ad content” that is non promotional content about the brand, company or products: Less banners more reports.

Search

Real time search will go prime time for everyone, not just the search geeks and early adopters
Google and Bing will keep on copying each other in order to capitalize on the search advertising market
Advanced personalization will lead to your own personal search results for most people rendering ranking checks useless

SEO

SEO is becoming ubiquitous, everybody does it (BBC etc.) and in 2010 those who don’t will fail to compete
More SEO experts will return underground again inspite of ubiquitous SEO due to wide spread prejudice of the ignorant against the trade
Like it or not but we’ll see more jQuery pop ups due to their high conversion rate. Thanks to @rhyswynne for the suggestion

Web Design & Development

Mobile apps will continue to boom and optimized web pages for mobile use will become common place finally
HTML5 and CSS3 will allow web designers to offer extra features possible backed by graceful degradation in oder to support for older browsers
YouTube censorship spawns an open source and DIY video embedding counter movement. We already witness it but in 2010 you’ll look like a noob using YouTube on your site

Blogging

Blogs get even more authoritative and accepted, becoming the “old media” of the Web
Quick and clean miniblogging (Tumblr, Posterous etc.) establish a lively sphere between Twitter-like microblogging and blogging. @richardbaxter of SEOGadget agrees about Posterous continuous growth
Video content finally gets the importance we expected for years now with growing band width etc.

Software

There will be more cloud computing and web based software or rather webware around and people will use it more often
Most notably Google Docs will convince more users of the Microsoft Office desktop edition to switch
At the same time Google Chrome OS will be competing successfully with Windows at least on netbooks

Thanks to Twitter user @thunderror for several suggestions I included in the software section.

Are there other trends to watch in 2010 you considered crucial? Did I forget to mention something that has to be brought to our readers? attention? Tell us in the comment section. The best contributions will be added to the actual list.

7 Reasons Why You Need to Deal With Search Engine Marketing Change

Kevin Gibbons — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 14:29:35 +0000

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!

1) Don’t rest on your laurels

Paid links, keyword stuffing, meta keywords optimisation etc are normally all methods of tricking the search engines into thinking your webpage is more relevant/important to a set of keywords that it actually is!

Back in the late 90′s and early 2000′s (I’m not calling it noughties!) this worked very well, so why wouldn’t you do it? You wouldn’t just let your competitors outrank you without competing on a level playing field. But at the same time the search engines (Google especially) are quickly evolving and tweaking their algorithms – one day the tactics which are working may change and turn a very profitable online business by wiping everything out overnight.

Also, just because your successful tactics from 2-3 years ago worked back then, it doesn’t mean you can just continue applying the same tactics in the future and get the same levels of success.

2) Be aware of competitors

Being on the internet means that you may wake up one morning to find a new, very powerful competitor.

Recently in the UK the online department store Very.co.uk (backed by Littlewoods) has began heavily advertising on TV and using pay-per-click advertising to promote themselves. I’m sure if Debenhams had a new competitor on the high-street, for example, they would be aware of this well in advance and be able to react in time to this. However, online these things can change very quickly and catching them out just before the Christmas shopping period is more likely when you can move much quicker.

Also, as above don’t rest on your laurels. Just because your at #1 in Google for your most important keyword today, this doesn’t mean that your competitors aren’t working on an SEO strategy which may knock you off the top in the future. Plus no website is ever performing at its full potential in the search engines and there is always room for improvement in the form of more traffic (whether competitive or long-tail) and overall conversions. Even Wikipedia aren’t number one for every term and even then it’s normally only a single listing out of the top ten!

3) Make and learn from your mistakes

It’s estimated that it takes 6-10 years to become amazingly great at something, so you’re not going to get everything right first time! Having now been involved in SEO for 7 years, there’s still a lot I’m continually learning and I’d be the first to admit that I made lots of mistakes in the past when optimising websites (luckily these were usually my own). But in my opinion this is the best way of actually learning what works, or in many cases what doesn’t.

I mentioned in my SEO copywriting post that there is a lot of trial and error work involved in optimising a website. This is true, but based on experience you get a feel of what does or doesn’t work well – and each time your judgement improves and the likelihood of making a right decision under a given circumstances is greater.

Just make sure you’ve got the majority of your mistakes out of the way or have some test projects available - so that when working on an important project you can make the right choices when it matters.

4) Try to prevent knee-jerk reactions

One thing I’ve found to be true in SEO is that you often need to have a clear strategy and stick to it. Sometimes you optimise a website and surprise yourself with incredibly quick results, other times you may done everything right but it takes a little time to pay off. You may even have to take one step back before going two forward, but one thing I have learnt is that stability, more often than not, far outweighs knee-jerk reactions and chopping and changing.

If you give your ideas time and attention to pay-off, it’s more likely to be a better option than trying to start from scratch again on something new. There’s a great quote from Glen Allsopp on Search Engine People which says the first hurdle is often the hardest to achieve, this is very true – so stick to it!

5) Review performance over a sensible period of time

Continuing from the above point about needing stability, you do also need to review your search marketing activity at regular intervals. But this should be reviewed over a sensible period of time. From a business perspective, it can sometimes be very easy to over-analyse short terms successes or failures – looking at a longer period of time often gives you a clearer focus over performance and makes the bigger picture appear more obvious.

For example, for a highly seasonal campaign it can be unfair/misleading to review the traffic volumes or online revenue on a month-to-month basis. But a comprehsive review on a quarterly or even annual basis – comparing with performance from previous similar periods – may be extremely valuable.

This is something we’ve recently done with a client, around 12 months after originally optimising their site we now have enough traffic and performance stats to review the success of this and also look at the areas which haven’t worked so well, or where the market may have changed, revisiting these with new ideas. We’re not assuming that everything we did was perfect first time around and even if it was it still needs to be checked. But if we had done this after 3-6 months, it wouldn’t have told us too much and we may have changed something too quickly before it had a chance to fufil its potential.

6) Don’t put all your eggs in one basket

This is a very common mistake, if your PPC campaign is performing very well you obviously want to maximise this and it’s very easy to throw extra budget at this because you can quickly see if your return on investment is paying off.

But what happens when the latest PPC quality score update means your campaign isn’t as profitable as it once was and you have no additional revenue streams and advertising channels to fall back on?

Internet marketing isn’t about finding the best tactic and just focusing on that one thing. Most campaigns work best when they are integrated together – so yes advertise using paid search, but use that keyword and conversion data to implement into your SEO strategy. The main goal of most online marketing campaigns is to convert a sale or lead, but what about the potential customers who are at an early stage of the buying cycle and not quite ready to purchase. Think about other methods of getting these visitors back to your site, get them to signup for your newsletter (email marketing) and subscribe to your blog (social media marketing).

7) Look at what’s in store for the future

It can be easy to pay too much attention to what’s going on in the search world sometimes, there are frequently changes, news and ideas on a daily basis, but you really need to try and filter out the ones which affect you and how you do things.

These are the actionable ideas which you do need to be aware of in order to make sure you are doing your job as effectively as possible.

Here’s a quick list of a few things which you may have considered or need to be aware of in the future:

Bing UK – you may have focused solely on Google for SEO and PPC in the past – but there’s a good chance Bing may become a more serious competitor in the future. This means you may have to dedicate more of your SEO effort and PPC budget towards Bing and Microsoft adCenter.
What are the most popular social media sites and where is this heading? For example, are you still working on your MySpace marketing strategy? Or are you using Twitter effectively and ready for what Google Wave has to offer?
Google page speed – Google’s algorithm changes normally aim to improve the overall user experience for visitors. So improving your page speed and making sure your site is browser compatible is something you should be doing anyway, but now it’s even more important as an SEO activity.
Google algorithm updates – if your website dropped in Google UK six months ago only to be replaced by a US or Australian site, it’s probably because of the #ukserps issue which has been a common talking point. Being aware of updates such as Vince and Caffeine helps you to make more insightful decisions based on all of information you have available.

So those are my thoughts on why you shouldn’t let the search world pass you by. Most people who work in the search industry like it so much because it’s kept exciting by never being constant and always having new ideas and opinions available, so change has to be a good thing! :D

What do you want from your online efforts?

Stuart Tofts — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:25:10 +0000

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.

SEO is a key factor here; it’s the equivalent of renting a shop in the middle of a busy shopping centre – increasing footfall is key to success.

If this is your sole ambition then make sure you analyse the success of different marketing tactics, so that you can divert your budget into the most successful streams.

Recommended: Organic SEO, pay-per-click advertising, email marketing, social media marketing, competitions and giveaways, press engagement

More visitors

If you’re a commercial organisation then you want to increase visitor numbers in order to boost sales. However, some websites simply want to increase visitor numbers – they don’t then need to convert them into anything other than repeat visitors.

This is often the case for online news sources or blogs that rely on advertising revenue.

Recommended: Organic SEO, pay-per-click advertising, press engagement

More information

There are many organisations that exist in order to capture people’s information and consent to future marketing or surveying activities.

Whether the business makes money from carrying out surveys and market research, or collects addresses for other companies to use for marketing, there’s a difficult line to tread when it comes to promoting these sites.

Often, standard marketing like SEO falls down here. These businesses must turn to more subtle efforts, like viral promotions, competition marketing and giveaways.

Simply increasing traffic will not necessarily be a cost-effective way to promote these kinds of sites.

Recommended: viral marketing, competitions and giveaways

More publicity

Okay, if you’re a pressure group or a political party, what is it you want? To boost your online publicity and make sure people have heard about you and understand what you’re about.

This is my favourite kind of marketing. Really careful use of paid advertising around searches for current affairs and relevant contentious issues can help this kind of group achieve incredible visibility.

Press releases, an authoritative and charismatic blog, a forum – there are some really fun and effective ways to boost a pressure group’s audience, whether they are a major political party or the Village Green Preservation Society.

Recommended: Pay-per-click advertising, blogging, press engagement, social media marketing

More donations

If you’re a charitable organisation, then you want to raise publicity but also revenue. In many ways, you’re more like a commercial organisation than a pressure group. Increasing footfall will help boost revenue, so SEO is a key element here.

However, increasing revenue also relies heavily on the content of your site – since there’s no product for your visitors to take home. So, the tactics outlined under ‘more publicity’ come into play – blogging, aligning yourself with current affairs and social media marketing.

Charities want reliable income streams more than anything, so much of your marketing will be directed at people who’ve already donated, to keep them giving and to increase loyalty. That means email marketing can make a big difference to your success.

Recommended: Organic SEO, Pay-per-click advertising, blogging, social media marketing, email marketing, press engagement

80% Social Media Adoption: Are You the Last of the Mohicans?

Tad Chef — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 16:53:15 +0000

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.

While most of Internet users are using social media many businesses still fail to do so.

Business owners still frown upon the fuzzy ROI of social media or the lack of control over what people write, both on the inside, the employees, as well as the outside, the customers and the general public.

In business you either adapt or you get swept away. The business owners who embraced social media like Dell, Blender or Naked Pizza are success stories and they earn real revenue directly from social media sites.

For business owners who are not yet suicidal the question is not whether to embrace social media but how.

How not to act on social media

In the past many small business owners tended to just blatantly self promote themselves on social media sites that do not accept self promotion. Today we have tools that facilitate a social media engagement the easy and less obnoxious way. Twitter is the best example of not only allowing businesses to join in and take part in the conversation but actively seeking business users to participate.

Participation is the key to social media success. Participation is not promotion.

You don’t sell on social media unless you are Dell and everybody expects you to do so.

Then you can offer bargains or special offers. In case you are not Dell or a similar sizes company you should try to listen first, contribute next and promote yourself as a last step if at all. The best type of promotion online like in real life is being recommended by others not throwing slogans at people.

How to act on social media

So how do you approach the amorphous thing called social media? You don’t have to in most cases. Social media has already approached you or your industry at least. You just need to search for yourself, your brand or your products and to listen and participate right there where you find the conversation about them.

This is not enough though. You need of course a place where you can voice your opinions and reply to false claims by others:

a Twitter account
a blog or a community
or both

More than a third of US Internet users engage with social media as so called critics. While this category is not to be taken literally as social media critics not only criticize these people are crucial for most businesses: They write reviews about you. They talk about you. In case you don’t listen they might get angry. Then they will rather bash you.

Nowadays I’m quite used to the fact that whenever I complain on Twitter I get an instant reply by a representative of the respective company. So when corporate execs ask what the ROI of social media is one of the most obvious replies is: You lose less money. At first you won’t earn money but at least your participation will make you lose less of it.

In many cases the actual lack of response shows a brand in a worse light than the accusation itself.

When you tackle the issues the problem often dissolves. When you leave them rot they stink the more. So think twice before becoming the Last of the Mohicans. You might be brave, but “progress” or whatever you call that evolving business landscape on the Web does not care about those not willing to stay afloat.

30 Simple Ways of Improving Bounce Rate and Conversion Rate

Tad Chef — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 18:46:56 +0000

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.

You might argue that improving bounce rate and conversion rate is more about web analytics or overall online marketing but nowadays you can’t pretend that SEO is somehow not part of those disciplines or the other way around both of them not being part of SEO.

When it comes to PPC most people by now take care of bounce rates, landing page optimization and conversion rates. When it comes to SEO for search and beyond many people still don’t.

This post is divided into 5 sections each one of them covering a crucial aspect of improving bounce rate and conversion rate. I present you 30 simple ways of doing that as most of them are not rocket science once you take both rates into account:

traffic
visitor intent
usability
landing page optimization
a/b split testing

Traffic
Without traffic you won’t get any bounce rates or conversion rates to measure. You need to get people to your site, whether via search, social media, bookmarks and direct “type in” way or links from other sites. Nonetheless you don’t want random visitors you want to attract people who will be beneficial for your business.

Get “targeted” traffic that is people who are potentially interested in your offerings via search
Optimize for one main keyword or phrase per page but never more than 3 or 4 throughout your site
Use Twitter to gain a following of like-minded and/or interested individuals
Participate on niche social sites, forums and blogs to attract your audience, we do participate on Sphinn
Go where interested visitors already are, like on Q&A sites (Yahoo Answers e.g.) and interact
Focus on and establish authority in your area, niche or language, age or other demographic

Visitor Intent
In order not to scare away your visitors in an instant (and let them bounce off) and to convert them to clients, customers, subscribers or whatever you prefer you need to determine the so called user or visitor intent. This might be

informational – as in “I want to know more about x”
commercial – as in “I want to buy x”
social – as in “I want to contact x or socialize with x”

x being a keyword or phrase.

Identify category of visitor intent (informational, commercial, social) using web analytics
Split visitors up according to source where they come from, returning visitors get different treatment as search and social media users
Create a funnel for each user intent, checking the referrer. WordPress bloggers often do that for search visitors by offering several posts (using a plugin) that might match the user intent.
Offer a menu that contains the most sought after items on all of your pages (contact form and/or phone number, blog and/or forum, shopping cart/call to action).
Ask people what they want using live chat or simple surveys
Employ conversion attribution to know who the person and how it ended up on your site

Usability
Usability is still frowned upon by some in the SEO industry while others embraced it already several years ago. Without proper usability the best search optimized site does not earn money.

One of the main factors leading to undesirable effects like high bounce rates or low conversion rates is poor usability. While usability experts tend to assume that usability is about clean and simple interface design in SEO we also tend to bring the sheer attractiveness of a page to the table.

When a visitor bounces for a lack of a visual clue or eye catcher a page isn’t really usable is it?

Use an eye catching image to illustrate a page on top of it, not a random stock photography cliche though
Declare what the topic/purpose of a page is in the headline and page title
Add a clearly visible and button-like call to action above the fold/scroll of your page, like “call now toll free”, “subscribe now”, “download free version”
Make way for your desired outcome by as few clicks as possible while showing the user where s/he is (breadcrumb menus work great for that purpose)
Let the visitors eyes rest on your page by adding a significant amount of white space
Hide advanced features at the same time and display them on demand (“onmouseover”)

Landing Page Optimization
What are landing pages? Leading usability and SEO experts consider every page a landing page. On the hand landing pages refer to pages specifically created for a single purpose and/or audience.

In the dark past webmasters relied on the “home page” metaphor for visitors to arrive at the front door. The contrary is the case, your visitors arrive via a myriad of ways through all kinds of pages.

Nowadays deep links are often far more popular than the actual front page of a site. You should anticipate that and create or optimize your landing pages accordingly. Knowing the traffic source and the most likely visitor intent will better your chances to create fitting landing pages.

Create landing pages for organic traffic, long tail queries and important social media sites like Twitter, not only for PPC and banner ads
Simplify your landing pages as much as possible but not more than that, you still need to convince your visitors
Streamline your visitor experience by dividing your page up into steps (beware of huge forms, make them fill in step by step using AJAX)
Add signs of of trust to your site, like badges from professional organizations, user reviews with real recognizable names, awards
Do not distract, remove pitfalls, ads and other annoyances unless the purpose of your site is for visitors to click those ads
Test your landing pages frequently visiting from different sources. I surprisingly often encounter broken landing pages that ether lead to nowhere or stopped working

A/B Split Testing
While the last tip dealt with testing there is a different kind of testing as well necessary to optimize your landing pages , it’s the so called A/B split testing or multivariate testing.

Many people are already familiar with the concept from PPC and are using Google Website Optimizer. The Google Website Optimizer tool is not limited to ads though, you can test whatever pages you want no matter where the traffic comes from

Test several versions of a landing page using Google Website Optimizer or A/Bingo no matter whether your landing page is just a blog post and the call to action only a “follow me on Twitter” badge.
Compare different call to action wordings on buttons as well as page copy
Compare different images depending on the demographic you are seeking to convince (old vs young people, men vs women, casual visitors vs experts)
Test different colors, font types and text sizes, more or less white space etc.
Compare anything you’d like or can change. For instance sometimes adding too many badges will outdo your simplification and the other way around. The advantage can sometimes be huge.
Test during different times of day, week and year to determine temporal and seasonal changes. People before lunch decide differently than those after lunch ;-)

As you see some of these simple ways are quite obvious while others may sound intimidating. On the whole this list just scratches the surface.

You have to dive deep into the metrics and test for yourself.

Most small SEO projects won’t even allow that depth due to budget limitations but you can also attempt to convince the clients you already have to step up their efforts.

A high bounce rate and a low conversion rate is like kicking out your potential customers or scaring away your visitors that ring the door bell.

It’s like changing the visitor intent: Make the people who just wanted to get higher rankings and more traffic improve their bounce rate and conversion rate as well.

In case this list is not enough for you you might want to check these additional resources elsewhere:

Marketing to women on the World Wide Web

Libby Chivers — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 09:12:10 +0000

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.

However, I do believe that a great many blokes work in search engine optimisation (SEO) and so end up overseeing other marketing campaigns, like social media work.

They may be excellent at selling to men, particularly those in their own demographic, but what women want may not be that obvious to them.

So, here are a few things it is important to remember. As always, please feel free to add your own comments below.

Don’t miss women out

It is sometimes easy to assume that a woman will not be interested in your product – especially if you’re selling a service like SEO; many people you work with will be male IT consultants.

But, while the majority of the techies you interact with will be men, the people commissioning your work, assessing your work and paying for your work are as likely to be female as they are male.

So, make sure your marketing is inclusive. Don’t just use blokey language, bear women in mind whatever the product. Even if it’s men’s clothing, partners, mothers and daughters could be buying it.

Increase onsite socialising

As the Nielson stats and other research shows – women tend to enjoy socialising online more than men. They also (generally) interact differently – confrontational forum debates are out and supportive social networking is in.

So, facilitate that and personalise your platform. Allow personalised avatars, create a space for off-topic chat, encourage the sharing of ideas and support, and watch your online community thrive.

Create attractive pages

Men tend to appreciate functionality in websites. Clear lines, bold language, impeccable internal search, that sort of thing.

Of course, women need all that stuff too. A site that functions badly won’t appeal to anyone, no matter how aesthetically pleasing. However, female visitors appreciate attractive pages much much more.

Depending on your product, sites should be attractive, colourful, textured. Go beyond good basic design and create a pleasant space. Men won’t mind and women will enjoy it.

Grow your user-generated content

If you look at the success of websites that are hugely popular with various female demographics, they have a wealth of user-generated content.

Websites for mums, websites for women in IT, websites promoting stitch-n-bitches – whatever it is, if it is predominantly female and successful, the chances are it has reviews and articles submitted by the community.

Peer reviews of products and services is important for many women and should be catered for. A female reader will prefer to trust their fellow consumers rather than the company message, no matter how many statistics, blueprints and facts the firm has provided.

Don’t generalise

Okay, so this article itself is a generalisation but don’t assume you can apply these rules and instantly work magic with your female consumers.

You need to tailor any effort much further – a website selling to vets will need a considerably different approach to a website selling baking goods.

Also, most products and services are on offer to men and women, so keep everyone in mind when building the site. Marketing to males is not the opposite of marketing to females – you need to ensure your website caters and appeals to all.

Twitter Friday: Twitter Redesign – Did you Notice it?

Tad Chef — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 19:03:52 +0000

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.

Twitter seems to commit the same mistake as StumbleUpon. Why is redesigning the frontpage or site just for casual visitors a problem? For at least two reasons.

Confusion
Just imagine a person who got used to a certain look which encounters a different design on a friend’s computer. Then s/he logs in just to discover that the design disappears. “What’s wrong” is the first question you can think of. Is Twitter broken? The user experience is quite poor now. You get two different site designs depending on whether you are a member or not. A new user might feel cheated getting a different look and feel instead of the one s/he expected to get judging from the homepage.

Negligence
Don’t you feel neglected when the new kid on the block gets preferential treatment while you, the loyal disciple gets the business as usual kind of reaction? This is exactly how Twitter made its users feel. The feeling might not surface but inside the gut you feel it. It feels strange to be treated like that. Why do they care less for those they should value the most, their members?

Now I might be a little picky. Let’s just assume it’s OK to redesign just for casual visitors. Still it feels weird.

The new Twitter homepage or landing page as some describe it looks like a search engine. The speculation about the ominous Twitter vs Google competition got reignited with this step. Let’s assume the that you are a person who have never heard of Twitter before. Now the person enters the Twitter landing page and sees a search engine. Then she enters its favorite keyword or topic and hits the “search” button. Now I just did that.

I entered “seo” and hit the search button. The first two results were in Spanish.

I speak some Spanish but it could have been German, Japanese or whatever else most people don’t speak. It’s just random. For the average Google user it’s just random crap results. So don’t promise if you can’t deliver. Don’t try to look like a search engine if you aren’t one. Most people will bounce off that landing page especially as most of the popular topics are cryptic for people new to Twitter.

What is:

Follow Friday
#itsuckswhen
Cash for Clunkers
TGIF
#mlbtrades

These are currently the top 5 most popular topics on the Twitter homepage. At #6 there is Harry Potter, the only key phrase most people will know but I doubt that Harry Potter will make people join Twitter. Thus overall the new Twitter homepage alienates both existing users as well as potential ones.

Who the hell advises Twitter on SEO? They should be fired. I guess they don’t have a SEO advisor yet. The leaked documents showed just a “SEO?” ;-)

Tell me:

Am I just too picky?
Do you like the new Twitter design?
Did you join Twitter after the redesign?