3 Tips to Make Video Marketing Simple

Posted on May 26, 2010 by Lucy

Video marketing often appears on the list of the ‘next big things’ in internet marketing. It is a very useful medium, but some companies remain stuck on how to use it in their SEO or internet marketing strategy. These three quick tips will help!

1. Make how-to videos … don’t try to be funny

If you have to try to think of something funny, it just won’t work! The most valuable thing that many companies can offer consumers is their know-how. How-to videos are easy to make and have plenty of specialisation potential, while often still fitting with corporate aims and personality.

2. Follow formatting best practices
That is:

  • Keep your video to 5 or 6 minutes
  • Tag it with plenty of related keywords
  • Structure your video with subsections to facilitate viewer learning
  • Enable comments to generate discussion and get you some feedback

3. Call them to action

In a how-to video used for internet marketing, your call to action would probably be something like “If you would like to learn more about XYZ, here at XYZ Corp we’re always available to help. Call us on 123 XYZ”.

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Animated Avatars on Websites – Good or Evil?

Posted on May 19, 2010 by Lucy

Personally, I hate websites with sound. If I don’t absolutely need something from that particular site, I’ll always go somewhere else. But, you know what … I’m not everybody! A lot of sites are now using animated avatars to personalise their content. Today we ask – are they good, or are they evil?!

SEO

Avatars are good because…

Some customers are auditory learners – Highly visual information just doesn’t suit some brains.

They can help you do complicated things – People learn best from other people, not necessarily from reading something, and avatars provide some of that interaction.

Avatars are evil because…

They’re creepy! – If you must have an avatar, I recommend having an ordinary video shot of yourself, rather than an animated avatar. Especially one with an electronic voice.

People don’t always have or like sites with sound­ – I’ll vouch for the truth of this – I’m one of them. I can skim read much faster than the time it takes for someone to have a casual conversation with me.

Bottom line? If you have a site where people might need to be walked through complex tasks, or if the avatar is opt-in rather than opt-out (by exiting the site!), then go for it.

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Why Your Site Desperately Needs a Search Bar!

Posted on May 12, 2010 by Lucy

Don’t have an internal site search bar? Why, if Jakob Nielsen saw you in the street he’d rap you across the knuckles, young whippersnapper! Seriously though, an internal search bar is vitally important to the success of most sites. Your web marketing effort and SEO will bring visitors, but if they can’t find what they want, it will all be for naught.  Here’s why a search bar should be your next website investment.

Because it’s actually pretty easy!

Ask your SEO firm for help if you aren’t sure how to get a ‘Powered by Google’ search bar, at the minimum. It’s easy!

Because if they can’t find what they want, they’ll leave

There are thousands of sites on the net, and quite a few selling the same thing as you. If you make life hard for your customers, they’ll go to a site that doesn’t.

Because it gets you lots of sweet, sweet data!

Want to know what language your customers use? What they really want when they come to your site? The data from a search bar tells you much more explicitly than any other analytics tool.

Because your customers are ‘the searching type’

If your customers found you through SEO and search, they’ll certainly appreciate the same convenience within your site.

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Google and ‘Those’ Report Links

Posted on May 5, 2010 by Lucy

You might have noticed that Google is a big company. If you’re thinking about your SEO, you almost definitely have! And, just like when any person or company grows past a certain critical mass, Google has the power to do a lot more in our lives that ordinary everyday companies … like Coke and Cadburys. And with power comes responsibility … so why doesn’t Google act on their Inappropriate Image and Spam reports?

The problem with reporting

This issue has been brought to a head several times by images showing up at the top of Google Image results that are offensive in some way. There is a link to Report Offensive Images … but it just doesn’t work. Pictures remain after many days.

And although it downgrades the quality of their product, the same issue exists with reporting spam sites. They simply remain where they are, until something automated happens to remove them.

What can we expect from Google?

Like all companies, Google has limited resources. They have built an empire on automation – but unfortunately not everything can be automated. This problem is likely to continue. All we can do is recommend that you send a quick email to Google when your SEO spam or offensive image reports are ignored, but don’t waste too much brain-space on it … it’s likely to continue well into the future.

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7 Hilarious Google Suggest Questions!

Posted on April 29, 2010 by Lucy

You’ll need to open a new Google page to read this blog post! We were talking about using Google Suggest in your internet marketing keyword research last week. However, we couldn’t resist a little side-street trip into one of the internet’s funnier corners … Google Suggest questions. With thanks to www.questionsuggestions.com for the items on this list. Don’t include the triple dots at the end of each term when you type them in.

SEO

Put your Google Suggest suggestions in here!

  1. Are all p …
    Seems that maths, biology, polar bears and pregnancy are some of the web’s top topics!
  2. Why do I have …
    Sometimes, you might not want to know. Squeamish-ness warning on this one.
  3. Can ju …
    After looking at these search results, I had to go to Wiki. I didn’t even know who the guy was!
  4. Is there a he …
    Highly philosophical. I find it amazing that people actually expect Google to answer such questions.
  5. Why do emo …
    Nothing about emotions, surprisingly! Seems that pop culture reigns over neuroscience … yet again …
  6. Is it cool t …
    Check out the last result here (which is hopefully the same for you as it is for me!). You notice that many of the weirder results in Google Suggest are actually song lyrics
  7. Will go …
    Another wonderfully poetic mix of the esoteric and the economical!

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Using Google Suggest for Keyword Research

Posted on April 22, 2010 by Lucy

We’ve done a fair bit of writing on how to go about your keyword research. There is a pretty well established set of best practices for determining your keywords in a way that will benefit (not sabotage) your web marketing campaigns. Today we check out a little used tool for keyword research. It’s quick, it’s easy, it’s got the technical chops … it’s Google Suggest!

What’s Google Suggest?

Unless you have managed to switch the feature off without even knowing what it is, you’ll see Google suggest almost any time you type in a search term in the Google box. For example, when you type in ‘Am I on…’ to Google, a drop down list comes up showing you options like ‘Am I on the no fly list’, ‘Am I on the terrorist watchlist’, Ám I on Santa’s good list’, etc. These are high volume search terms.

How to use Google Suggest for keyword research

There are three main ways:

  • Use the terms there as inspiration when you are creating more targeted content pages or thinking of blogging topics
  • Include the terms in your heading tags and page titles
  • Include the terms in your page copy

Choose results from near the top of the list – these have a higher search volume. Of course, you will be kicking your own web marketing in the shins if you choose terms that aren’t relevant to your business … remember your golden rules!

There are other tools (and indeed, other Google tools) that do exactly the same thing. However, Google Suggest is quick, easy, and simple. A great starting point – but not necessarily the web marketing guru’s top tool :-) .

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Company Blogging – To Outsource, or Not to Outsource?

Posted on April 15, 2010 by Lucy

Blogging is an excellent SEO strategy. It provides continually updated content for Google, plenty of opportunity to create an internal linking structure and use anchor text, and also engages your readers. However, a blog can take up a lot of time. Should you outsource  your company blogging, or not?

SEO

The case for outsourcing:

Sometimes outsourcing is the only acceptable option – you run a small partnership and just don’t have time for example. Here are some other advantages:

  • It might be cheaper to pay someone else for it than spend your own time blogging
  • It can create a more professional blog
  • Pro bloggers are often more in tune with the net community

However, there are disadvantages …

The case for in-house blogging

  • If you’re trying to build yourself up as an expert and have a relatively obscure industry, you’ll almost never get the quality posts from an outsourced writer that you could write
  • In-house blogging creates a real face for your company … not an outsourced face
  • You have access to inside information that you might not think to pass on
  • You’ll have access to multimedia relevant to your company that freelance blog writers couldn’t get.

The solution?

As with many things – a mix of both strategies works best. Start with a 50/50 mix … and adjust as you go!

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3 Scientific Principles of Search – Zipf, Pareto and the Lizard!

Posted on April 9, 2010 by Lucy

Okay, okay … Zipf and Pareto were sitting at a bar, and this lizard walks up to the bartender, and the bartender says ‘Why the long tail?’.

HA ha haa haaaaa!

Okay, now that’s out of our systems … Zipf, Pareto and the lizard actually have some very important and scientific things to teach us about internet marketing and SEO! Here’s why you should be familiar with all of them (enough to recognise any if they walked into the bar where you were sitting), for your own SEO benefit :-) .

1. Zipf’s Law

This law states that the specificity of any word is inversely proportional to the number of times it will be used in any context. Words which are broader and more generally applicable will be used more times than narrower words, and vice versa. The narrowness of usage is obviously compounded when you make the ‘word’ into several words, or a phrase.

Obviously, this tells us that the broader your keywords are, the more people will be searching on them. There is an enormous caveat, though … this also means there is many more websites to compete with for the rankings and traffic.

2. Pareto’s Principle

You have probably encountered this in some other form – Pareto is the ‘father’ of the 80/20 concept, or the idea that 80% of results come from 20% of the activity.

You know that you wear 20% of the clothes in your wardrobe 80% of the time … but in SEO terms, Pareto’s principle means that 80% of your profits will come from 20% of your visitors, that 80% of your visitors will come from 20% of your keyphrases … etc. In practical terms, how should you account for that? By paying attention to that 20% that generates results, and aiming to expand those areas … aiming to break the ‘law’, in other words!

3. The Lizard

You might have heard of long-tail search queries before, but not many people realise that the ‘long tail’ actually belongs to a lizard. If you graphed out the search queries on a given topic (credit checks, for example), with the most frequently used and clicked-on keywords at the left hand side of the graph near the axis, and the least frequently searched keyphrases tailing off towards the end, you’d find that in the entire conceptual environment, the head is very short and broad … and the ‘tail’ of less frequently used (but more specific, according to Zipf’s Law) keyphrases actually make up a sizeable portion of the searches.

SEO

Focus on the long tail!

What’s more, these long tail search queries usually lead to much better sales:visitor ratios, because a specific keyword is more ‘targeted’ to your website, meaning that your business is more likely to be what the customer is looking for!

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(Almost) Everything in the Google Algorithm

Posted on April 2, 2010 by Lucy

Of course, the Google algorithm is a tightly guarded secret, much like the 11 secret herbs and spices in KFC chicken. And besides, I don’t think that if you knew the recipe and made the chicken at home yourself that it would taste the same, anyway! So, even though some things are meant to remain unknown, today we attempt to map out the Google algorithm for web marketing success … just a little!

SEO

Shhh! Don't tell Google!

I’ve broken down each of the elements that would go into scoring a website with the Google algorithm, and then listed the factors that come under each element.

1. Keyphrase usage

The factors that would go towards the overall ‘keyphrase usage’ score in the Google algorithm for your site would include some combination of positioning (is the keyword in the title tags, the header tags and the URL?), is the keyword used in the content of the page, and is it used in anchor text for inbound links?

2. Domain trust/authority

This element is related to the age of the domain and its inferred authority that comes from its extension – .edu and .gov domains rank better, as we know. It also includes factors like its registration history (has it changed hands), the conceptual neighbourhood of the domain (is it about buying prespcription pharma online, or about getting a university degree?), and the links pointing to the domain.

3. Link popularity

It isn’t just about sheer numbers when it comes to link popularity! We’re fairly sure that Google considers factors like the age of the links, the quality of the domains and the pages that the links reside on, the anchor text used, Pagerank, and whether the subject matter is related to yours somehow.

4. Visitor Data

If our page shows up a lot in search results but few people click on it, that may erode your ranking. Factors like search requests for your particular URL or domain, the time that users spend on your pages and the number of pages they visit would probably all factor in the algo.

5. Quality of content

There are machine algorithms for rating text readability – the Flesch-Kincaid readability test may be one of them – and they probably influence your Google rank. If you wanted another reason why its better to hire out your website copywriting, there it is!

6. Penalties

And of course, any penalties must be factored into the equation.

There’s a lot of holes in this run down of what the Google algorithm potentially entails … but also a lot of illumination!

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5 Best Tips for SEO Copywriting

Posted on March 26, 2010 by Lucy

Most businesses aren’t in copywriting … just like most businesses aren’t in possum control! However, since that crazy old thing called the interwebs came along, a lot of businesses have tried their hand at copywriting. Today we’re not here to tell you how to do you own SEO copywriting for your website – because the best advice we can give you in that area is to have a professional do it! However, there are some strategies and techniques that you can ensure are applied to your website that will definitely help create the copy that will be best for your customers, your search engine rankings, and also your personal satisfaction. Here’s 6 of the best.

SEO

Tips for an unusual, but effective, style of writing

1. Keep it balanced

Some SEO firms will tell you that getting good Google results is all about having as many keyphrases in the copy as possible. Others will tell you that any time you consciously think of a keyword while writing, customers can tell you’re trying to manipulate them and will instantly leave. Neither is true, obviously … make sure that when it comes to keywords, there is a good balance between search-friendliness and human-friendliness.

2. Have some input into the keywords

It is a very rare SEO firm that will tell their customers that they are not allowed to choose their own keywords. So, don’t just accept the ideas that your internet marketing company puts forward without thinking. Make sure the phrases apply to your business, and make sense from your customer’s points of view. Your SEO professionals WANT you to!

3. Make sure the keyword applies to the PAGE, not just the site

If you own a weddings management service and have a particular page about wedding decorations design, make that the main keyword. If you don’t sell wedding dresses, resist the temptation to talk about them in the text just because they get a lot of searches … Google knows all, and is a harsh master!

4. Keep common misspellings to their own page

I know that using misspelled keywords as part of the strategy can be useful … SOMETIMES! If you must use it, keep the misspelled keywords to obscure spots, and don’t just mix them up with the properly spelled words. Even the searchers who typed the phrase in wrong will pick that up, and think you are unprofessional.

5. Allow your keyphrases to be used dynamically

For example, you will get much the same SEO effect from using the phrase ‘If you want to buy a used car in Brisbane’ as you will by saying ‘If you want to buy a Brisbane used car’. However, the effect on the customer is far different!

SEO copywriting doesn’t have to sound like spam … or leave that same horrible taste in your customers’ mouths ;-) . There are plenty of ways for expert SEO firms to keep Google, and your visitors, happy!

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