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Feb 4

Conversation Starter

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Something changed. And it suddenly got a lot more colourful in the office.

our kind of people

Copy, Content and Distribution

Loads of copywriters have told us that they struggle to sell their own services , ironically, and I have seen customers actually screw up their noses at the mere mention of the word. I guess it’s one of those words that can mean different things to different people.

As a result, there is a lot of confusion around the purpose, the benefits, and the value.

But, what we know is that when we write pages on our customer websites

2. The number of visits to websites goes up

1. The number of leads goes up

As a company we need to be able to add that value. The more words you have on the website, the more relevant traffic you get. It’s simple really:

Words make web marketing work better, and they get to repeat themselves again and again, over a very long period.

If you work hard at knowing what to say, it gets even better.

And, so, we’ve been busy. In fact, we have been doing so many things for other people, that we had no energy to write our own!

That’s not right.

So, we are so very pleased to welcome Jessica McGinn to help us onto the next step, and I’m very sure our customers will be just as happy.

About Jess

Now, Jessica can write.

She gets ‘context’, and thinks about how words make people feel. Having said that, our Jess isn’t that worried about saying what she thinks about pretty much anything.

Which is why I’m not showing her this before I hit the publish button.

But whilst writing will be a very important skill for our little community going forward, managing that content in WordPress is just as important. Even if customers send us their own stuff, it still needs structuring for the web, editing and laying out.

We’ve seen already that being web dexterous will be a massive help in ‘getting things done’. And things are getting done faster around here. You’ll see.

A Learning Process

After 6 very solid, brain exploding weeks of learning at speed, we’re just about ‘ready to go’.

And I think we’ve spent useful time learning about learning, teaching, conversations, and all related to web marketing and sales. They say you never really know a subject until you’ve taught it, so I’m glad to have started on the content badge now.

So, I guess I ought to finish the intro and say, ‘Hi Jess’.

Here are some subjects you might choose for a first blog post. Or, choose something else, we’re only just getting going after all..

  1. Websites are conversations
  2. Learning is at the heart of all good conversation
  3. The best conversations come from really good questions
  4. The best time to write about something is when you’re learning it

What is it about learning lately….

Filed under: Running a Business | Comments Off

Oct 27

Big Brouhaha in Google Land

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Another ‘bombshell’ was landed on the Search Engine Optimisers by Google last week, when they announced, for user privacy’s sake, they;

“will no longer report the query terms that the user searched on to reach your site”

Oh fickle finger of fate. As soon as you get over your Panda eyes (the name of Google’s last bombshell), you suddenly can’t see anything anymore. Curse the luck of the SEO.

SEO is the house, Google is the sand

If you build a business based purely on SEO, the model is likely to come under pressure at some point. Google change their minds, they catch up with all the ‘tricks’ eventually, and this can have a big effect, instantly and dramatically.

How do you fancy building a business on something that might disappear in the snap of fingers?

And another thing. Where’s my soapbox….I’m not sure I understand why the world expects to continue to receive ‘free advertising’, or why they are so upset when it is affected by Google’s move to protect user privacy.

SEO people are very much up in arms, a link for their trouble. But as for telling Google you’ll have to go black hat to get around it. That’s not smart.

How will this affect our web marketing lives?

Only for those Logged in to google, right?

Ok, this does only apply to ‘Signed In’ visitors (Google Plus anyone?) but we are already seeing visits with search terms as ‘not provided’ – the numbers of people logged in will grow rapidly in our view. Google Plus will be a big part of search, you won’t want to miss it.

Sorry, it is really ‘going to be going away’

Bye Bye, it was nice knowing you

We will miss those search terms, they were insightful.

If you could discover the terms that were converting, then you could focus efforts. And, as only a small proportion of terms ever convert into enquiries, it was like finding nuggets of gold in the sifting pan, or striking oil even.

CPC is still information rich

But in the SEO’s mind, the biggest of ‘rat smells’ is that this doesn’t apply to Google’s advertising clicks. Google rightly argue that it will stop people spending money if you can’t tell what is working or not.

I can only say they haven’t met half the people using Adwords that I have.

Nevertheless, it looks like, for the moment we will still get search queries for visitors from paid, however hypocritical and however much SEO’s cry ‘foul!’.

Justifying the difference in stance, I keep thinking that being logged into Google must allow people to identify you personally somehow. It would explain the instant decision and not very well thought out response to the not very well thought out… outcry.

No change there then

We’ve always argued, (as most people who know us will verify).

Oh, we should have carried on with that sentence… we’ve always argued that we don’t start SEO until we understand the phrases that will convert. And the quickest, most reliable way to discover what works or not is to run very tightly focussed Adwords campaigns.

Depending on the volumes, this can be slow. But, actually, it is better than going fast and wasting loads of (clients) money on generating loads of traffic that does…nothing. We’ve asked them, they agree. Well, some do, occasionally.

So, we can still find the phrases that work in the same way we have always done. And we do understand from our Adwords data how many people are looking for things. Which is pretty much the only reliable way to focus the SEO activity.

You do know that we love SEO?

If we know what’s working, we want to make sure we optimise the site to focus on attracting attention from Google and visitors on that subject. This won’t change, data or no SEO data.

We will still be able to focus the content, we can still see that people are coming to the landing page, and we can tell the percentage that convert – just not the rate of conversion in precise terms from free visits any more. But the overall figure will be there to justify our existence.

And, we should also still be able to see ‘where we are in google’ for search phrases as a reference to how we’re doing.

If all Search Query Data went away?

We don’t want Search Data to go away, lets get that straight. But what would happen if it ALL disappeared.

My view is that people would have to put their faith more into good content, and they would still do the things they do today. It would just be like TV advertising all over again. You know half of it works, just not which half.

It would be more important to invite website visitors to identify themselves, at which point we may have permission to follow up and track their interest. That would encourage more content marketing which essentially trades valuable content for permission to stay in touch during the buying period. It’s called Marketing Automation.

Marketing Automation – the hidden grey line

This is where things have been getting tricky in the last few years. Systems have been starting to track people anonymously when they arrive on websites.

Systems like Marketo, Pardot and dozens of others have been starting to keep records of anaonymous visitors to be assigned to real people when they eventually identify themselves.

If you’re in marketing and you get excited by that sort of data, then you probably shouldn’t have it.

Along with re-marketing, which is essentially tagging people when they come to your website and then following them around with Ads (so….that’s why SEOMOZ advertise on some very strange sites), all of this behaviour freaks visitors out, or it would do, should they know about it.

And that’s where this ruling is coming from.

The impending doom

This just can’t happen, or I’m moving across the Atlantic. Don’t worry, I’ll visit, you’ll keep in touch, it’ll be great for holidays.

The information commissioner’s office to be found at – ico dot gov dot uk

I’m not linking to them, I don’t want them to know I exist. They’re pushing ahead with their public protection charter and threatening to implement policies that will make you seek permission to use any sort of anonymous analytics. Seemingly this has to be done before people get to the site – (well, that’s just as silly as what they’re suggesting).

It only applies to Europe, not the rest of the world. Europe can afford the loss of business, right?

Bottom Lines

You have to respect people’s privacy, it is a fundamental human right. There’s no doubt it is a good thing if the prospect of collusion and sharing data is about to undermine our travelling aorund the web unmolested.

And if Ryan air manage to increase their fares automatically the second time I visit their website, then so can other people.

But I don’t personally think there is anything wrong with tracking people anonymously. We don’t need signatures for people who happen to be caught on cctv.

Oh wait, We do.

The man who knows everything about CCTV rules says it’s covered by the Data Protection act, and you can actually demand to see what you were wearing in the tax office last week.

So we’ll have to wait and see. Apparently, the Euro Debt talks continue, and we may be out of Europe by the morning.

Well, you never know your luck.

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Filed under: SEO | Comments Off

Mar 10

SEO Advice for 2011

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The Internet changes so rapidly, it is sometimes difficult to choose what to focus on first.

Google Advice

Thankfully, there are a few places around the net that offer advice, and one of the best is the chaps from google themselves. The latest (March 2011) is a question around larger company SEO…

In summary then

  • Speed of site is important from a user point of view, and so Google is also now taking this into account
  • Get CEO (they must mean MD) ‘buy in’ for projects and train the team.
  • Produce great content and use Social Media to promote it

Plus – there is a terrible joke about being on the same page.

Of course, now that Social Media counts towards search engine results, I should imagine that more people will have to get involved. Like us, for example, yet more learning to do!

What do we mean by Social Media

  • Blog, as a hub for all activity, RSS built in and Email
  • Media: Videos, demos, screenshots, infographics, web casts,
  • Platforms: Twitter, LinkedIN, Facebook if necessary, Slideshare, Flickr,
  • And then spread the news: Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, industry blogs

Creativity for SEO Success

Another gem of advice comes from the creative productivity blog, Lifedev. I truly believe that creativity will drive success on the web, as every business moves towards becoming its own micro media channel. It’s not just design, it’s what and how you say things.

That phrase from Google they keep repeating, ‘Great Content’ means that it should be interesting – and that means; educational, entertaining or inspirational. And, if you want all three, some shiny infographics are probably a good bet. More on those another time.

Here’s their shortest guide to SEO ever

We linked to this

Simplicity at it’s best.

Filed under: Creativity, SEO | No Comments

Jan 19

Marketers get this

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Please find below some links to marketing genius which lightens the heart

It is fantastically creative, insightful and educational on many levels.

What people really like looking at, reading about is themselves. And laughing at themselves is just the best of all.

This is like Dilbert, but segmented.

cartoons for business

the website is here

Filed under: Fun, Marketing Resources | No Comments

Aug 9

Should you have more than one website?

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Questions about multiple websites, or mini sites, are common from our customers, so we ought to write about it!

First of all, there is no rule that says that an organisation shouldn’t have more than one website.

Inevitably, this question is about whether multiple sites are good for search engines, and good for the visitor. But in many ways, ‘what is good’ for search engines and people is one and the same thing.

Search Engines do work really hard to discover what is good for searchers, because if they get it wrong consistently, there is nothing to stop us all using a different search box in the future. And let’s face it, they tend to do a really good job of it…it is amazing technology.mini websites

What’s good for the visitor?

If we’re considering a different group of visitors, with different tasks, then the answer is easy. Think seriously about doing different business on different websites. The example would be if we had two separate divisions, that happen to share the same building.

As you are still reading, then we should think about that single organisation website.

But as an service provider focussed on our own client’s success, we like to think more (only?) about those visitors who might buy at some point in the future. It makes it easier to decide what might best help visitors make ‘the right decision’.

What do they need to know

This really does focus the mind – because if you had 100 people stood in front of you every day (because we’re doing your marketing)  then how many different questions might you get.

Each visitor has a different set of questions

Lets help all those people by covering everything they might want to know, and put that information under their nose. In our experience, it just works best. Remember that most untamed websites convert at less than 1% – or in other words, just one out of those 100 visitors decide to do something. There’s room for improvement.

So, following this through. Being successful in converting website visitors into sales conversations does usually mean having more information on the website than originally anticipated. Visitors just have such a wide remit, especially early on in their investigations.

How come our website ended up so large

It is easy to sell left handed widgets if that’s what people are looking for, but sooner or later, we’re going to have to explain to other people what exactly they are and why they might want one.

As long winded as this is – it goes to explain why people’s websites will always end up much larger than originally planned.

There are literally thousands of ways to describe the same thing, especially when even slightly complex. When people want their teeth straightened, for example, you couldn’t guess they might use 1 out of 2-3000 different search phrases, at least.

Whichever way that you present the information, whether on long pages (which does work well), or splitting it up into easily navigable sub areas on a website, this will appear messier the more subjects you have.

Can we do anything other than have multiple sites

Strategies will be to ‘turn the website upside down’ so that every sub landing page acts as a visitors personal home page, with everything pertinent to their decision being put under their nose. This is a fine principle, and works great for paid search, and to an extent it is a great principle for unpaid search too. But it eventually presents challenges to Search Marketers when nearly every inbound link you might get from the outside world comes into the home page, and needs distributing.

It’s not impossible, but it gets harder to prioritise content when different parts of the business are all screaming at you to get their stuff to the top.

But inevitably, at some point, it is going to occur to someone to have a different website.

The benefits of mini sites

  • Domain words are quite heavily weighted if they are keywords, which works if enough people look for them
  • Sites are more specific, and visitors feel you’re focussed which helps conversion (big point)
  • Visitors don’t get distracted from your mission. It is obvious what you want them to do
  • Links can weigh more heavily when aimed at less competitive ‘sub’ market material

The downsides of mini sites

  • You literally have to double your marketing efforts
  • Splitting marketing efforts could be like splitting a political party in two, when neither would get into power
  • Not as much cross fertilisation of customer types
  • If owners don’t take them seriously, mini sites can feel unloved and put people off
  • Age is a factor, and new sites take a while to get going with the search engines
  • Depending on where visitors come from, it can be hard to track visitors between sites

This last point is important.

If all your deals come show up on Analytic Software as referrals from SITE A, then how are you going to hone your search marketing efforts. The returns available from search marketing often only come after the results have been fed back into the machine a few times, and if you can’t attribute the success, you also won’t be able to turn off the most expensive half of the marketing. Which, by the way, could quadruple the profitability.

How to decide on a mini site

The bottom line is that the more important a particular sub section of the website becomes, then the more likely it should be spun out into a separate website. It will often follow that your organisation will reflect this move and if a complex subject area is important enough to split off your marketing, it will probably be important to focus the sales and operations too.

Alternatively, if there is a very tight focus on one particular goal, and it is a non-complex goal, then it may be good to have people land on a page that takes people directly to the action button.

Filed under: Digital Marketing | 1 Comment

May 19

Telemarketing Company Review

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It would surprise some that I (matt) am a big fan of telemarketing. Given our belief in the internet and it’s capacity for lead generation.

Love that phrase "We make it happen"

But way back in the day, when a previous company was selling Telephone Systems, the only way to generate a constant source of business was to carry out consistent telemarketing.

Having developed a very healthy respect for what it can do, and for the people who can do it well, we know there is a definite and still growing need for quality services. We’ve been looking around.

Why would a search company be interested?

We meet people who are in businesses that can’t use our services. If that’s the case, we tell them.

  1. If you have a niche, and you know where the prospects are, then someone should be picking up the phone.
  2. If there are lots of people looking for what you do, but you don’t know who they are (capital equipment is once every 7 years on average), then we may be able to help.
  3. Even so, a number of our clients benefit from follow up calls to their warm lists, generated from Search Marketing campaigns.
  4. We offer a ‘holistic’ marketing service. If our clients grow, so do their budgets, it’s in all our interests to do the right thing first.

A lot of us ‘ less superhuman people‘ find scheduling telemarketing regularly hard work, and if that includes the dear reader – I would give this advice:

If you don’t like doing something, it is worth paying an expert to do it for you. Otherwise it is likely to stay at the back of the queue, you will feel terrible about yourselves because you know it should be done, in an ‘important not urgent’ kind of way. But you will forget, in favour of something you enjoy more. Human nature gets to us all.

Even if, when the business is small, it is tempting to try and do everything yourself, stop, look in the mirror, and then start asking around for someone to recommend a person they know. It is a false economy, and practically you will find out the limiting factor in progressing the business is YOU. I learnt the hard way when trying to learn how to do book-keeping many years ago. Not a good idea!

Face to face with telemarketers

So trying not to make the same mistakes in other areas, I found myself in the office of a true professional this morning. It was the buzzy smiley office of Xen Consultants in Wolverton Mill, Milton Keynes, and I met with Michaela Graham, the boss.

There’s a reason for blogging about this, and it’s the time Michaela afforded to go through the telesales proposition. I’m always impressed at meeting fantastic sales people, because they achieve things seemingly effortlessly, but you shoud know it takes a massive amount of preparation and thought. I’ve always aspired to being better in face to face sales than I am – it is one of the most valuable things you can do for any company. One of…no wait, it is the most valuable thing.

We choose to generate leads, helping ‘the great’ to generate more business. It is ‘our calling’ – I’ll just wait for that joke to sink in. No Marketing, No Sales, No Business.

Back to the meeting. Michaela was kind enough to show what worked (which was impressive), and to give some crucial advice

  • Never promise more than you can deliver
  • Always share and be as transparent as you possibly can with clients regards results, even on a bad day (who has those?)
  • Have prospective clients speak with existing clients as often as possible (That means having happy customers)
  • Employ people
  • Create good relationships between staff and clients by taking the time to understand each other
  • Making sure it happens – that was a key message for me.

As Conversationware enters a new phase, the advice felt extremely useful.

We’re inspired by the level of Xen Consultants success and growth, the advice is backed up with some evidence (credibility is persuasive). We’ll try to go about things in the same way, and we look forward to our own first campaigns.

If you’re thinking of telemarketing – this might be useful.

Try telemarketing

Try telemarketing

Talk to Michaela and you might find out something, like how many similar businesses to yours have tried telemarketing already.

Filed under: Sales and Marketing | No Comments

May 16

What is a Unique Selling Point

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And do you need one?

Many marketers talk about the Unique Selling Proposition, the USP.

If you’re wondering if they’re useful, you are not alone, or unique, even. Most clients bring it up, so we thought we’d examine whether there is a ‘point’ to them.

Is a usp a silver bullet

Is a usp a silver bullet

Depending on your world view, you may or may not agree with this article.

USP description

The USP was conceived as a way to help people, consumers, to make up their minds by having advertising that articulates a specific benefit of the product.

USP based advertising is definitely more to do with sales than with any previous form of advertising. And because our world view is that (web) marketing is just sales, but to a wider audience, we applaud the sentiment!

What if we don’t feel unique

Most clients have trouble with the USP concept, they feel ‘dishonest’ by claiming they are unique (hold onto that thought). For those who struggle, a USP doesn’t have to be unique to your product, just unique to your marketing, with no other local competitor claiming it.

This construct pre-supposes that people will be persuaded by the USP’s specific benefit, and it will make up their minds for them. Will it work?

What’s the proposition?

Here’s what we discovered about the humble, old fashioned USP and it’s influence on prospect decision making.

The concept of the USP was originally from the world of advertising in the 1950′s, and its key protagonist was Rosser Reeves who is the basis of one current hero of ours – Don Draper of the tv show MadMen uses his accomplishments, it says here in Wikipedia.

The thinking behind USP’s is that people will weigh every aspect of a product or solution, and will make a perfectly balanced judgement based on ‘the truth’. Of course, your version of the truth will include that thing that ‘only you do’, the thing, the slogan, that makes it overwhelmingly likely that people will make the right choice.

Effectively, this is where the idea of the slogan came from.

The USP and the time constraint

If you read the article in Wikipedia, and I recommend you do, there is a key statement

His (Rosser Reeves) greatest contributions were to express more clearly than anyone else the philosophy of a claim and to show how the philosophy could be applied to commercials that involve severe time constraints.

The USP is key when you have time contraints, and for us, that means it is specific to the advertising format.

It doesn’t apply to marketing, or to face to face selling and to a degree it doesn’t apply to the web – you wouldn’t use a USP in isolation.

A website is not advertising. People only turn up if they are looking for something, most often via a search engine, and these people are willing to give you more time, they’re not there to ignore you.

So USPs don’t work as well when time isn’t limited, but we’d suggest the home page is the one place where a slogan fits, and unique is good.

Do USP’s help people make buying decisions?

We don’t think so.

There is a new science that examines decision making, its called ‘behavioural economics’, and is more interesting than it sounds. We picked this up from discussions on SEOMoz, (hat tip) about nudges and a comment therein about Dan Ariely.

Behaviour is something we will come back to again and again in the future.

1. It is now accepted, by some people, that ‘facts’ are completely ignored if they don’t match what you already believe in, and if you don’t know what you believe in, then facts won’t necessarily help. This is supported by Congitive Behavioural Therapy, if you’re interested.

2. People will not believe you when you tell them your USP anyway. If you disagree, then you’ll understand the point.

3. But for a real ‘insight’ on decision making, look at the first video on this linked page from Dan Ariely, on making decisions. It is 17 minutes of joyous confusion.

Incredibly, this calls into question the ability for us to make balanced, lucid decisions. Of course, this doesn’t apply to the likes of you and me. It’s everyone else that has the trouble.

We firmly believe that the more complex the solution, the more money is involved, the more likely that USP’s won’t work. Simply, it is less likely that a single factor will convince a large proportion of the audience.

The final nail in the USP coffin

Would seem to be in the same article

In the 1960s Reeves’ techniques began to fail. Consumers became more savvy and learnt to tune out uninteresting commercials

This sort of advertising started to fail once consumers realised marketers were manipulating them. It went on to be replaced by emotional branding.

The key is that time on the web is not limited, and this is why long copy works, once again. Emotional branding won’t work on the web (on it’s own) for much the same reason. A combination would cover all the bases.

The product is the marketing

My friend Seth Godin promotes that the product is the marketing – he’s right. This is a long quote, but exceptional.

To work, advertising has to be honest. He insists the product being sold actually be superior, and argues that no amount of advertising could move inferior goods. He also disagrees that advertising was able to create demand where it did not exist. (edit: Sell what people are looking for)

Successful advertising for a flawed product will only increase the number of people who try the product and become dissatisfied with it.

If advertising is effective enough and a product flawed enough, the advertising will accelerate the destruction of the brand.

Similarly, it is a waste of money to claim uniqueness that doesn’t exist (you can let go of that thought now), because consumers will soon find out, and they won’t come back to the brand. This is important because historically fortunes are made from repeat business (edit: emphasis mine). Money would be better spent building some kind of meaningful advantage into a product before launching a costly advertising campaign to promote it.

The thing is, Seth Godin didn’t say the above originally, Rosser Reeves did in the 1960′s. Most people forgot, or didn’t learn it in the first place, that is until the marketing world shattered into little pieces and required that the product to be good again. Products get found out quicker with social media (Word Of Mouth on Speed).

I queued a long time to get this photo

I queued a long time to get this photo

(See, I do know him)

Filed under: Sales and Marketing, Website Conversion | No Comments

Dec 19

What happened to our Sales Process?

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When given the choice, would you pick up the phone and talk to a sales person, or would you rather browse google.

The ‘Sales Process’ is changing into something called the ‘Buying Process’

transform

You don’t get to steer any more.

The sheer volume of choice, and over capacity in every industry means a bewildering array of suitors. And there aren’t many of us that have more time than we used to, in order to talk to them all.

It’s easier, quicker and less stressful to use search engines for product and solution detail, than it is to call, wait for the right person to call back, and then get pushed into a sales pipeline. Especially if you don’t get the right answer first time.

So, these days, buyers won’t pick up the phone to find out if you’re an expert. Prove you’re an expert though, and then they might be more inclined.

At this point, there will be people who think their complex solution can’t be sold online, like some book or a camera from Amazon. But when we’re talking about process, it is clear that the point at which we get to speak to prospects is now later than earlier. It won’t get better.

Highly available and findable detail from the competition makes sure that these days we can’t just put a list of products on the website and hope it will be enough.

The competition is working hard too.

No sales person is hurt in the process.

If we don’t impress people with our knowledge, with our insights and customer stories, they’ll just click the back button. (that’s not a hint).

Within that context, the ability to educate themselves on the buying decision has put the buyer firmly into the driving seat. If we don’t provide quality information, people will find it elsewhere, in a heartbeat.

It is self service decision making, and sales are won and lost without anyone even being aware there was an opportunity.

Anecdotally from some customers recently, I hear that close rates are increasing.

It would seem that Customers are kissing less frogs and have ‘half made up their mind’ before they walk through the door. I firmly believe that once you’ve helped people understand what’s important, it’ll be your business to lose.

Marketing got longer and sales got shorter.

Turning Browser Caterpillars into Butterfly Leads

To compete effectively for prospect attention then, we need to share our hard won knowledge up front, on a website. It is counter intuitive, and all our instincts tell us to keep secrets, to worry about competitors, to worry that prospects ‘won’t understand’.  Just make sure they do.

It’s going to be an uncomfortable ride for many.

The good news

Once it’s done, the lead generation process gets very efficient indeed. Frog kissing was always a let down, and very expensive.

Information is as cheap as cabbage leaves.

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Filed under: Sales and Marketing | 1 Comment

Oct 7

What should you blog about?

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After we’ve explained the reasons for using blog technlogy, far too numerous to mention again here, customers tend to call us with a blank sheet of paper after the first few coffees are long gone.

The best advice we can give is to go read something. Preferably something related to what you do of course, but for ideas there is nothing like ‘news’ to set people’s opinions going.

internet-marketing-blog

For the technical, they would use ‘Google Reader’ which is a fantastic tool for subscribing to relevant news from a google newsfeed.

You see, to generate your own personal news stream, head over to google news, search for something fundamental to your business, hunt for the RSS button and click. You’re done. Read once a week for instant idea juice.

So, why is this a good idea?

Blogs are publishing platforms, and one of the main reasons to publish is that you have some news. News is fresh, and Search Engines give this some credence by seemingly placing ‘news’ articles almost instantly into their index. Some higher than others of course.

To give a great example, one of the best case studies I’ve ever seen for Search Engine Optimisation has to be the Brent Payne interview recently over at the Wordtracker website. Kudos and links go to them, congratulations.

You couldn’t get a better example of how keywords and news mix to give exposure to those who work them hard. It sets an example to us all, you included!

Another example: when Google chose a new ‘doodle’ today to honour the invention of the barcode, I ‘searched’ for bar code, and between the first time I looked and 20 minutes later, the Daily Telegraph leapt to the top of the rankings for a new article on bar code….above Wikipedia.

The reason Google did that, it’s ‘news’. See the google news feed…. and look for the orange button at the bottom.

The reason the Telegraph did that – it knows what people are looking for (from Stats or a keyword tool), and then writes about it. Just as the case study of the Tribune above, writing about things that ‘we know people are interested in’ is easier than trying to make it on your own.

Just I write this, I’m absolutely gratified to see one of my clients, who know a think about data capture and barcodes, have written an article on this very subject…spotting opportunities is a ‘key’ phrase for today.

My work there is done :-) , oh wait, I don’t mean that.

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Oct 6

Website redesign: Don't forget about search engines

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“Right, we’ve finished our web re-design, now we need one of those search engine people”

design tools

Cue disappointed look from ‘search engine types’.

Getting Search Engine attention is at least as much about what is done on the website as it is about external factors. These are far better thought about during the re-building of a website rather than afterwards. Not only that, it’s always difficult to propose changes to people who have waited a long time for their new site, hence the downcast feeling.

What to think about when re-designing a website

First things first: get some analytic software running on the site, so that you know which pages are getting traffic. This will help planning.

Do think about the existing ‘URL’s – the page addresses.

These are often changed, without a thought, to match the new schema. Of course, by ‘changed’ what we really mean is deleted and completely new pages put in their stead. They didn’t move them, they knocked the house down and built it elsewhere.

Redirects are important. Whenever you change an address, tell the people who send you things because if not, it will be ‘return to sender’.

How much that matters – probably depends on the page, but if visitors matter, then lets send them to a page that looks like something they were expecting, instead of a home page, or black holes.

The next thing is to check for Page Titles and Descriptions. Relevance is important, and if you were receiving visitors it was because Search Engines thought your page was relevant for ‘something in particular’.  The ‘in particular’ is usually from the page title, content, and incoming links, but descriptions can help improve the number of visitors.

For the avoidance of doubt, here’s how Google uses page Titles, Descriptions and URL’s

title description url

All these things are inserted during the page construction, during the (re) building phase.

Yes, the external factors are important for SEO, but if the website isn’t properly organised, then it will never work as well as it could.

Filed under: SEO, Website design | 1 Comment