Category Archives: Search Engines

Top Ten Tips for Web Marketing Success in 2014

Posted on by Posted in Email Marketing, How Tos, Search Engines

1. Hidden Dollars in Email

Given that it is far cheaper to sell to an existing customer than find a new one, and marketers suggest 12 “touches” per annum for each customer, doesn’t email present itself and a cheap and fast means of keeping in touch?

Go low tech, just start with Outlook. Set up groups and email different offers or information to them.

If your list(s) get large, move to a third party newsletter manager like www.gen3media.com.au

Think about segmenting your lists from the outset. Not all customers are interested in the same things or have the same budget.

Tip: Before you consider emailing any one new, review the Spam Act (see FAQs). Did you know one email can be considered spam and you must be able to prove an existing relationship or that the receiver consented?

Tip Two: Some ISPs like Bigpond, use their outbound mail server to restrict how many recipients you can send to or the amount of data you can send. You may have to keep your lists to a few hundred names each.

2. What is all the fuss about links?

Why do we hear so much about links? A link into your web site is considered by search engines to be a vote of confidence in your web site.The more votes you have, the higher the likelihood your site has of moving up the SERPs (search engine results pages).

Tip: Aim for 50 or 60 website links, not 5 or 6.

But you can’t get links from just anywhere: they have to be “theme” or related to your site by topic. For example, a BnB will link to a local restaurant and local attractions, but not to some extraneous site. And your site should link out to as many resources as you can find that you consider will add value to your users experience of your web site.

Can I be penalised for linking to the wrong site? Oddly, yes. If a resource you link to has a Google page ranking of 0 or 1, this link may drag you backwards in the SERPs.

Your linking strategy must put you at the centre of your chosen topic. Search engines have to see a “web” of links entering your site and that your site is “authoritative” on your subject.

How can I tell who is linking to me? Go to www.yahoo.com and enter link:www.yourdomain.com.au and click the search button. I similar search can be done at Google, but the results are not as comprehensive.

3. Don’t Forget the Real World

Add your web address or “URL” to all your off line marketing activities. Here is a list (be no means exhaustive): business cards and letterheads, shirts and caps, company car, shop windows, swing tags, signs, press releases, classified adverts…. and your email signature file.

4. Who’s Looking Anyway?

Know thy visitor! Who is looking at your web site? Where are they in the world? When is your web site busiest? What is the most looked at page? What is the page that most people leave your site from? Did that classified advertising you did last month culminate in more visitors to your site?

It is likely that the company that hosts your site is keeping statistics on your site’s performance. These “web stats” are general hidden behind a log in to stop your competitors looking at them (but hell you are doing better than them anyway so let ’em look!).

Web stats are vital to track trends. For example, are your visitor numbers tracking up over time and are they staying longer. If not, you have to reverse that. Web stats will also show you what keywords people are using and on what search engine.

The main stats packages available are: Analog, Webalyizer, Awstats and Google Analytics.

Tip: remember close to 60% of visitors to your web site may be the “bots” of search engines. Accommodate them with lots of keyword rich text.

5. Convert Lookers to Buyers

There are web based tools that allow you to engage you site’s visitors:

  • WeCallYouNow.com – allow people to initiate a call from you. Only good for people by a phone all day.
  • Whoson.com – invite visitors to chat with you. Select chat candidates on the basis of the pages they are looking at and how long they have been looking. Only good for PC based workers.
  • “Tell a friend” email links – a simple friend get friend device.

6. Don’t Forget a Call to Action

What do you want people to do? Call this number, click this email link, complete this form, etc. It may be obvious to you or your feel it is implicit, but make it explicit.

What are they going to get if they respond e.g. “talk to the business owner right now”, “and download a free report on xyz”.

7. Pay Per Click Advertising

Tip: Only do this as a last resort. Exhaust all avenues to come up in the “natural results” first.

Pay per click advertising is essentially bidding in an auction for position on the SERPs screen. You set a monthly budget, say $50, set the maximum you are prepared to pay for a click say $1 and the search engine will serve your ads (top and right) beside the natural results UNTIL your budget is exhausted. At that time your ad falls out of rotation.

At the time of writing, according to Melbourne IT, about $1 per click is required to get top position on most chosen keywords.

Tip: PPC experts suggest you aim for second position. You will pay less and stay on the screen longer and the click through rate is similar.

Tip Two: even though you only have a tiny amount of text for your ad, what you say in that ad can have a massive impact on the click through rate. Amazingly, people are employed just to write adwords ads. Test several versions.

Warning 1: even if you get number 1 position it may not equate to sales. Traffic is no indicator or willingness to purchase.

Warning 2: your competitors can click you adverts and exhaust your budget. Amazing but true.

8. Keywords

Tip: ignore the <meta> tag keyword. It is abused and no longer works. Simple as that.

In terms of keywords focus on adding your critical keywords to:

  • the <title> tag
  • the link label of the first link on the page
  • the first para… keep all these close to the A1 coordinate on the page

Tip Two: using the above 3 areas, optimise each page for different keywords.

Remember, humans tire fast from reading on screen (so headings and bulleted lists are good for humans) but machines do not tire. So in terms of search engines, more text is good.

Testing Tools:

8. Start a Blog

“Blog” is short for “web log”. Blogs usually offer commentary on a topic, like this one on web marketing. Blogs are the equivalent of an opinion piece in the analogue world of newspapers. If you have specialist knowledge or a unique perspective on a topic, you may be a perfect blogger. Use your blog to build a community around your site. e.g computer shop blog on gaming news and patches.

Your blog will allow you to build authority around your web site. It will present more text to search engines while adding value for your users.

9. Search Engine Submission

Search engine submission is the process of saying to search engines “hey, there is a new (or changed) site over here. Come and look at it“. There is much discussion about the value of search engine submission versus a concept called “natural find”. But it is detailed and outside the scope of this post, suffice to say, in my experience, there is good reason to let search engines know you are live. Submission URLs follow:

10. Read this blog…

…and this tutorial on search engines written specifically for web site owners.

This article was written by Peter Mitchell of Dynamic Web Solutions Pty Ltd
Copyright 2014

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Pay Per Click or PPC Advertising

Posted on by Posted in Search Engines

Pay per click advertising is essentially bidding in an auction for position on the search engine results pages. You set a monthly budget, say $50, set the maximum you are prepared to pay for a click say $1 and the search engine will serve your ads (top and right) amongst the natural results UNTIL your budget is exhausted. At that time your ad falls out of rotation.

Tip: Only do this as a last resort. Exhaust all avenues to come up in the “natural results” first.

PPC commentators suggest you bid sufficiently high to get the 2nd or 3rd position amongst your competitors, but not the 1st position. You want your advert to appear “above the fold” (i.e. as the screen loaded, but with no need to scroll vertically) but you do not want to out bid everyone and pay a premium.

Additionally, the copy you use in your ad has been shown to make a huge difference to the click through rate. You should expect to have 2 or 3 ads and test them over a couple of months. You only have room for a tiny amount of text for each ad, so having variations shouldn’t take too long to set up.

Similarly, the keywords you choose in the Google AdWords or Yahoo! Search Marketing campaign managers will impact strongly on the effectiveness of your ad. You will need to research your keywords at a site like www.keyworddiscovery.com before making any decisions about what keywords are worth optimising your site around.

Obviously PPC is a big revenue earner for the search engines – according to Forbesmagazine it will earn the search companies $8 billion per annum by 2008. It means however that the best web site do not necessarily get optimal screen real estate, that this now goes to the web site owner with the highest ability to pay.

Warning 1: even if you get number 1 position it may not equate to sales. Traffic is no indicator of willingness to purchase.

Warning 2: your competitors can click you adverts and exhaust your budget. Amazing but true. Google claims to have “click fraud” mitigation practises in place, but they will not confirm what they are and therefore can not be tested and confirmed as effective.

 Conclusion: PPC advertising is growing massively, and is here to stay. PPC can deliver traffic to your site – if you have the ability to pay.

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Google Local Business Results

Posted on by Posted in Search Engines

You may have noticed that sometimes when you use Google it returns a map with the search results. The map has pins on it that correlate to the top 3 most relevant sites right of the map (see example).

The map is clickable and it can move you to a bigger Google map page. Each of the pins is clickable and it displays a business’s details. Google calls this service “Local Business Results“. If the search query contains a business type and a location, you will most probably see local business results. The narrower the geographic area the more likely Google will show results in the one box format. Coffs Harbour has one post code. A search for “north coast accommodation” encompassing several post codes doesn’t display local business results.

It is possible for you to move your pin, add a logo and complete business’s details. Locate your pin, click it, then click “Edit” and “Move Marker” or “Claim Your Business”. Google will initiate a validation process with you to ensure you are the business owner.

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Traffic versus Sales

Posted on by Posted in Search Engines

Not all traffic to your web site is equal. Although Google has the greatest number of searchers (49%), its users are not necessarily “ready to buy”. Research shows that the most productive search engine in terms of b2c purchasing is MSN (with only 10% market share of searchers). This means that while Google may deliver more customers to your site, those people do not necessarily have their credit card at the ready.

Image you have number 1 position on a search engine under the 1st, 2nd or 3rd keyword phrases of your choice. That sounds good doesn’t it? Sounds like what most web site owners would want. Still it is possible to get to number one, get a load of traffic, but not sales! Why is this the case? Because the people coming are not buyers: they are window shoppers. You want buyers. And that search engine isn’t delivering them. So how should you change you strategy to meet your goal – less traffic, more sales (you can work on higher dollar average later).

Here are some suggestions.

  1. Target your inbound links at site where you know people are buying. You want people who are familiar with purchasing on the Net. Not just looking and thinking about it. You should be selective and strategic in selecting sites to trade links with (your “link partners”) based on what people go to the link partner’s site for and what they do there. If the partner site has a high Google page rank and frequent buyers, then this could be a good link to obtain. Remember five or six inbound links is not enough. Fifty or sixty is more like it. You should constantly be requesting links and assessing who is linking to you.
  2. Or email specifically to people who are like your existing customers in some way.

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Domain Names with Keywords

Posted on by Posted in Search Engines, What NOT to do

Some web site owners believe that registering a domain name with their main keywords will shoot them to the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs). While having keywords in your domain name will advantage you, this advantage should not be overstated.

It may give your site a little lift in the SERPs, but this will be just one lift out of many you could give your site by thinking carefully about your content, your keywords and page structures (SEO stuff in other words).

The point has to be made too that there are many domains that come up prominently amongst the SERPs that do NOT have keywords in their domain names. Does youtube.com have the keyword “video” or “broadcast” in it? Nope.

These sites have probably achieved their good position by compelling content – content that is updated, enlarged, linked well to other resources considered valuable by search engines.

Historial Analysis of Domain Names

Search engines are more likely to favor older domain names than new domain names. New domains have no track record. They could be just spam resources set up the trick search engines. Older sites can be analysed for frequency of change and how many outlying sites link to them.

Resources
More discussion on keywords in domain names

Keywords Meta Tag – Trashed!

Posted on by Posted in Optimisation, Search Engines

Many web site owner’s have been told that there is a magic “meta” something that you use for keywords and your site comes up number one, Bob’s your uncle.

 While there may have been some truth in this 5 or 6 years ago, some naughty web site developers packed so many useless and misleading keywords into the keyword meta tag that search engine companies had no choice but to walk away from it as a means of sorting out the relevancy of sites to various searches.

The “four majors”; Google, Yahoo, MSN and All the Web are ignoring the keyword meta tag. Other smaller engines may still look at it, but only assign minimal credibility to it.

Summary:
The game is over for the keyword meta tag. Keyword stuffing made it useless.
You will have to look to over areas and structure fo your html documents to present your chosen keywords.

Top Ten Tips for Web Marketing Success in 2009

Posted on by Posted in Email Marketing, How Tos, Search Engines

1. Hidden Dollars in Email

Given that it is far cheaper to sell to an existing customer than find a new one, and marketers suggest 12 “touches” per annum for each customer, doesn’t email present itself and a cheap and fast means of keeping in touch?

Go low tech, just start with Outlook. Set up groups and email different offers or information to them.

If your list(s) get large, move to a third party newsletter manager like www.gen3media.com.au

Think about segmenting your lists from the outset. Not all customers are interested in the same things or have the same budget.

Tip: Before you consider emailing any one new, review the Spam Act on the ACMA website. Did you know one email can be considered spam and you must be able to prove an existing relationship or that the receiver consented?

Tip Two: Some ISPs like Bigpond, use their outbound mail server to restrict how many recipients you can send to or the amount of data you can send. You may have to keep your lists to a few hundred names each.

2. What is all the fuss about links?

Why do we hear so much about links? A link into your web site is considered by search engines to be a vote of confidence in your web site.The more votes you have, the higher the likelihood your site has of moving up the SERPs (search engine results pages).

Tip: Aim for 50 or 60 website links, not 5 or 6.

But you can’t get links from just anywhere: they have to be “theme” or related to your site by topic. For example, a BnB will link to a local restaurant and local attractions, but not to some extraneous site. And your site should link out to as many resources as you can find that you consider will add value to your users experience of your web site.

Can I be penalised for linking to the wrong site? Oddly, yes. If a resource you link to has a Google page ranking of 0 or 1, this link may drag you backwards in the SERPs.

Your linking strategy must put you at the centre of your chosen topic. Search engines have to see a “web” of links entering your site and that your site is “authoritative” on your subject.

How can I tell who is linking to me? Go to www.yahoo.com and enter link:www.yourdomain.com.au and click the search button. I similar search can be done at Google, but the results are not as comprehensive.

3. Don’t Forget the Real World

Add your web address or “URL” to all your off line marketing activities. Here is a list (be no means exhaustive): business cards and letterheads, shirts and caps, company car, shop windows, swing tags, signs, press releases, classified adverts…. and your email signature file. More ideas…

4. Who’s Looking Anyway?

Know thy visitor! Who is looking at your web site? Where are they in the world? When is your web site busiest? What is the most looked at page? What is the page that most people leave your site from? Did that classified advertising you did last month culminate in more visitors to your site?

It is likely that the company that hosts your site is keeping statistics on your site’s performance. These “web stats” are general hidden behind a log in to stop your competitors looking at them (but hell you are doing better than them anyway so let ’em look!).

Web stats are vital to track trends. For example, are your visitor numbers tracking up over time and are they staying longer. If not, you have to reverse that. Web stats will also show you what keywords people are using and on what search engine.

The main stats packages available are : Analog, Webalyizer and Awstats.

Tip: remember close to 60% of visitors to your web site may be the “bots” of search engines. Accommodated them with lots of keyword rich text.

5. Convert Lookers to Buyers

There are web based tools that allow you to engage you site’s visitors:

  • WeCallYouNow.com – allow people to initiate a call from you. Only good for people by a phone all day.
  • Whoson.com – invite visitors to chat with you. Select chat candidates on the basis of the pages they are looking at and how long they have been looking. Only good for PC based workers.
  • “Tell a friend” email links – a simple friend get friend device.

6. Don’t Forget a Call to Action

What do you want people to do? Call this number, click this email link, complete this form, etc. It may be obvious to you or your feel it is implicit, but make it explicit.

What are they going to get if they respond e.g. “talk to the business owner right now”, “and download a free report on xyz”.

7. Pay Per Click Advertising

Tip: Only do this as a last resort. Exhaust all avenues to come up in the “natural results” first.

Pay per click advertising is essentially bidding in an auction for position on the SERPs screen. You set a monthly budget, say $50, set the maximum you are prepared to pay for a click say $1 and the search engine will serve your ads (top and right) beside the natural results UNTIL your budget is exhausted. At that time your ad falls out of rotation.

At the time of writing, according to Melbourne IT, about $1 per click is required to get top position on most chosen keywords.

Tip: PPC experts suggest you aim for second position. You will pay less and stay on the screen longer and the click through rate is similar.

Tip Two: even though you only have a tiny amount of text for your ad, what you say in that ad can have a massive impact on the click through rate. Amazingly, people are employed just to write adwords ads. Test several versions.

Warning 1: even if you get number 1 position it may not equate to sales. Traffic is no indicator or willingness to purchase.

Warning 2: your competitors can click you adverts and exhaust your budget. Amazing but true.

8. Keywords

Tip: ignore the <meta> tag keyword. It is abused and no longer works. Simple as that.

In terms of keywords focus on adding your critical keywords to:

  • the <title> tag
  • the link label of the first link on the page
  • the first para… keep all these close to the A1 coordinate on the page

Tip Two: using the above 3 areas, optimise each page for different keywords.

Remember, humans tire fast from reading on screen (so headings and bulleted lists are good for humans) but machines do not tire. So in terms of search engines, more text is good.

Testing Tools:

8. Start a Blog

“Blog” is short for “web log”. Blogs usually offer commentary on a topic, like this one on web marketing. Blogs are the equivalent of an opinion piece in the analogue world of newspapers. If you have specialist knowledge or a unique perspective on a topic, you may be a perfect blogger. Use your blog to build a community around your site. e.g computer shop blog on gaming news and patches.

Your blog will allow you to build authority around your web site. It will present more text to search engines while adding value for your users.

9. Search Engine Submission

Search engine submission is the process of saying to search engines “hey, there is a new (or changed) site over here. Come and look at it“. There is much discussion about the value of search engine submission versus a concept called “natural find”. But it is detailed and outside the scope of this post, suffice to say, in my experience, there is good reason to let search engines know you are live. Submission URLs follow:

10. Read this blog…

…and this tutorial on search engines written specifically for web site owners.

This article was written by Peter Mitchell of Dynamic Web Solutions Pty Ltd
Copyright 2008