I recently took part at the Econsultancy Digital Cream event where client-side marketers discuss approaches to improve their digital marketing.
I was moderating the SEO roundtable where we discussed the main challenges and opportunities marketers were seeing with their SEO.
These were the main topics which were of interest to the 30 or so marketers at the roundtables:
1. The impact of social signals on rankings
The announcement that social signals now influence SEO rankings is well known, so this has to be a big issue to consider, particularly since many companies don’t have a blog and/or it’s not so well integrated into their site products and services pages.
At each of the roundtables we discussed how to integrate the type of content that will be shareable and linkable into commercial, non-publisher sites. Methods to gain backlinks are unsurprisingly still a major concern.
Even before this announcement I noticed many companies making efforts to integrate their SEO with online PR and social media. There seem to be more joint responsibilities for SEO and social in the larger companies that get it, a good move I think.
Many of the challenges for larger organisations involve getting SEO specialists to work more closely with other parts of a company or agencies working on online PR and social media initiatives.
2. Mobile search
Google revealed recently that over the past two years, its mobile searches have grown by more than five times.
As I showed in my last ClickThrough post, you can see how much this matters for your sector using Googles own tools.
3. Local search
Closely related, following an algorithm and interface update towards the end of last year, Google Places has become a lot more important for local searches involving the name of a location plus a service.
If you see the tell-tale red balloons dominating the search results for searches related to your services in an area, that’s a sure sign you need to take action.
4. Video search
Did you see the stats showing that YouTube has become the second-most important search engine in many countries? That suggests the opportunities for video SEO should be explored alongside other forms of blended search, if they’re not already.
5. Opportunities to engage on other sites
There’s a tendency within SEO to think inwardly about driving traffic to your sites and gaining links on other sites. But as the social web has evolved there may be new options for reaching an audience on other sites which perform well in the SERPs.
I see these types of sites as increasing in importance – often within the SERPS:
Few of the companies attending had been directly affected suggesting that if a site is a recognised brand producing unique, quality content, this update will have a limited impact.
6. Site migration
I chaired 3 roundtables and was surprised to see, in each one that, at least one person mentioned their concern of how a site redesign or relaunch affecting their URLs might impact in SEO. This was based on their experience of previous refreshes. All of this just goes to show that as well as reviewing new approaches, it’s important to know how to get the basics right too.
You may not have heard of astro-turfing (yet) in an online context, but you need to be aware of it if you are operating a business online.
Astroturfing is being used to further unlevel the playing field, particularly by large corporations, governments and campaigners, and you should be on the lookout for it. Although, it is notoriously difficult to spot or prove, especially now that there is software available which has been coded for the specific purpose of being undetectable.
Essential reading in understanding precisely what damage astroturfing is doing can be found in George Monbiot’s Blog on The Guardian. Much of the evidence about astroturfing recently has come from the HBGary affair, during which a PR firm decided to try to expose the crackers group Anonymous. (Bad move, as they discovered when thousands of their internal emails were leaked, their website cracked, etc).
In essence, evidence is being brought to light of corporations and governments using astroturfing to create ‘virtual personas’ to give credence to campaigns or to create a buzz about a product, service or brand in a multitude of online media – including blogs, Twitter, forums etc.
Astroturfing, or green marketing, is so-called because the grassroots have no roots. Those people shouting loudly pro-corporation or pro-policy are not who they seem. In fact, they are not really even “who” – they are most likely 1s and 0s.
As a marketing ploy, it may seem like a great idea to populate the world of social media with ‘astroturfers’ lauding your brand. However, this is seriously black hat internet marketing and should be avoided at all costs. In fact, some would say it is more than just black hat, it is downright dishonest and possibly even criminal.
Whilst creating virtual flashmobs, or crowdsourcing 1s and 0s, or trolling in forums to bad mouth your competitors may seem a great way to attract attention to your business etc, it does not take too long in a forum, or even on Twitter, for real human beings to smell a rat.
Even humans who have not been on the Internet for long leave a trail, and as more and more RL (Real Life) data is added to the Net, even a planning application years earlier can add credibility to someone’s existence. Trails into a user’s history should not just meet a dead end, and for those who have spent considerable hours, weeks, months and even years in IRC, chat rooms, fora, and now on social media, it is surprising how often these days people turn out to not have a history at all. This should ring alarm bells if it happens to you, or if an internet marketing agency suggests you use the technique. No ethical and honourable search marketing agency would even offer the service.
Unless you are willing to risk being found out, and face the potential damage that could do to your company, one has to ask what type of companies would resort to this level of tactics when a simple video that goes viral or a conversation with your customers can bring so much more positive PR?
However, what many businesses need to be aware of is that your competitors may be resorting to this approach. If you think you may be a victim of this technique, consult your internet marketing agency about taking positive action to prevent any damage to your brand, reputation and online presence.
We have previously blogged about brands getting it really wrong on Twitter and with social media. Today, another story is breaking about @Kenneth Cole, the fashion label named after its founder.
The backlash has already started and a fake Kenneth Cole Twitter account (@kennethcolePR) has already been created with acerbic, satirical tweets in equally bad taste.
E-consultancy offer a sage piece of advice on this:
‘Always pause for a moment in private before you reply in public’
Responses are currently running at around 1,500 negative retweets an hour – none of which will help any brand, particularly in the current climate. And with 131,000 Facebook ‘friends’ and an ‘open wall’ that permits disgruntled users the chance to post, this is likely to be one tweet that could seriously impact sales.
Kenneth Cole scrambled to respond on his Facebook account:
“I apologise to everyone who was offended by my insensitive tweet about the situation in Egypt. I’ve dedicated my life to raising awareness about serious social issues, and in hindsight my attempt at humour regarding a nation liberating themselves against oppression was poorly timed and absolutely inappropriate.”
Although some consumers have posted an acceptance of the apology on his Facebook wall, most comments continue to be negative.
Social Media – how to do it
Emotions are running high both within and without Egypt, with many problems being experienced using the internet and mobile phones in Egypt, restricting the stories of what is happening on the streets from being heard by the international community.
Access to the Net has become a precious resource for Egyptians, and this weekend saw Google engineers hacking together a solution (launched on Monday) using the very newly acquired SayNow to launch speaktotweet – a service which allows Egyptians to phone a number so their message can be tweeted with the hashtag #egypt and the original voice message listened to. e.g Voice of Egypt
The cynics amongst us could be thinking that this is an excellent way to garner publicity for a new service on the back of a crisis attracting mass global news coverage. However, it should be remembered that Google employees are allowed to devote some of their time on their own projects, and considering that the Google Head of Marketing for Middle East and North Africa is currently missing in Egypt, one should whole heartedly applaud Google for this initiative.
Recently, we mentioned Pitchengine as a press release submission service which permits the inclusion of multimedia, which in this day and age is sort of essential if you want to stand out from the crowd in an editor or journalists’s inbox. Now Pitchengine have teamed with Zog to show how mashing traditional marketing and new technology together can give you an edge far beyond just a little SEO or a photo in your press release.
It has long been a bug bear of mine that far too many internet marketing companies or agencies were only focussing on one or two options for clients e.g. SEO and PPC, whereas the reality is that, just as in the offline world, you need to get into ALL the places your audience hang out for the best chances to be heard.
However, some have managed to misinterpret that need to be heard within social media by posting exactly the same thing to every single channel – Twitter, blogs, social bookmarks, FB, Linkedin etc, failing to realise that a switched on potential customer may be on all of these channels and doesn’t want to see the same thing replicated over and over again. This frequently occurs on LinkedIn groups and Twitter and once you have seen the same post in four, ten or sometimes 20 groups or hashtags, you begin to wish they’d realise how this appears.
Pitchengine seem to have grasped this ‘nettle’ about the compromise between being heard and not drowning people with your noise, and applied it to the online press release scenario. It will be interesting to see what results agencies in particular begin to see for their clients from this ‘smart release’ service.
Youtube have started trialling live streaming in the last week This is a limited trial, as they say in the post, and there are some interesting views on what this could mean for others in the space eg Vimeo, ustream, Qik, Livestream, Apple TV etc and for online video services in general. However, the stats show just how far ahead Google is on market share.
However, for some on poor broadband connections (or the very many still on dial up globally), this streaming is going to be an issue because even downloading a video can result in buffering, lengthy pauses and that irritating spinning wheel. However, this has been an ongoing problem ever since Youtube started and it hasn’t stopped it becoming a household word or for ‘video’ to be a more highly searched term than ‘sex’. In fact, quality seems to be third in the “ease of use – availability – quality” success equation that for many companies producing products would appear to be anathema. (If you have buffering and smooth streaming problems, try Videoaccelerator).
One question has to be asked: is Youtube going to roll this out just to partners, or will *anyone* will be able to live stream through YouTube? You can see how if YouTube positioned itself to offer this service to everyone, there would be little chance of any other providers getting a look in, and as Google’s revenue comes (on the whole) from search, you can see where that could go in terms of massively increased revenue. However, Google paid $1.6bn for YouTube so there may still be some ground to make up on that initial investment still, and your average Joe isn’t going to be willing to pay to be a partner having been weaned on the free content, free access, free everything approach that YouTube offers.
There is already dissension in the ranks from ordinary users (who are not viewed as ‘partners’ in a corporate sense although they undoubtedly bring many of the users to the site.) Should the ‘rollout’ have been to a selected few corporates (Hollywood) or should YouTube perhaps have picked some of the hugely watched YouTube oddities to test the service? After all, many people go to YouTube not to find Hollywood content, but to seek out the nuggets that mainstream TV won’t show until it becomes popular on YouTube.
There also seem to be some teething problems with functionality, which inevitably raise comments about why other lesser known services can roll out streaming and yet YouTube is having these initial issues. This being a Google product, it may stay in beta for a long time, but along with resolving these issues, it may well add live search and other functionality to enhance the offering. It may also combine this with its Citizen news channel (Citizen Tube) – time will tell.
A press release may not seem like a press release any more to some who have been brought up in a traditional marketing environment. It could be 140 characters and look remarkably like a very simple statement in a tweet with a link to further info, images, video etc. This is very different from a double spaced, A4 release with notes to editors!
Your press releases should cater to two very different audiences, which may mean writing two press releases. One is information for media sites and editors and therefore factual with contact details. The second is customer-centric. It should be aimed at providing easy to understand information aimed at your target audience, your potential customer.You can and should track reaction and engagement to your press releases by sending readers to a specific landing page on your site. Alter the landing page according to audience simply by changing the URL to a different landing page tailored for that segment.
Optimise all press releases so that search engines are attracted to them. Apply basic SEO (search engine optimisation) to every release by including keywords and use relevant anchor text on all your links. Embed video into your release, add images, and always create a short link (for instance bit.ly) so that others can pass it on easily.
The search engines are reacting far more positively to multimedia and social media and you can often claim a front page ranking for real-time results by using both basic and advanced search engine optimisation techniques in your releases, especially when you propagate the news out through the social networks as well as more traditional press release avenues.
Despite your best efforts, it may appear that you have failed to attract media coverage. However, any press release should have been archived on your website, and just by doing that, you have added additional keywords and SEO factors to your own site.
What is most important is to remember that in this day and age, a press release only takes as long to write as it takes to type 140 characters. You can announce anything on Twitter and that can count as seeking publicity. By co-ordinating your marketing efforts, and understanding your audience, you can put out umpteen press releases in a single day, all leading to different places where you have valuable and unique content to share.
Does a press release need to be time sensitive? No-one wants to read about a product you launched months ago, but by archiving quality content on your site, it should stand the test of time and can bring long-standing internet marketing benefits.
All publicity is good publicity! Even a single RT (retweet – someone passing your announcement on Twitter to their audience) can bring in unexpected results.
The TopSEOs awards for August 2010 are out, and ClickThrough has been given two of them!
We’re delighted to see that we have been ranked fifth in the global Conversion Enhancement category, the only UK headquartered internet marketing company to make the list. TopSEOs state that they judge companies on their ability to conduct client site analysis, develop conversion strategies, as well as implementation and ongoing testing. It’s a testament to the work we have done to put conversion optimisation at the centre of our Digital Strategy Wheel, which defines the approach we take to client’s businesses.
ClickThrough also got a nod in the list of UK Online Reputation Management companies, coming in seventh place in the August 2010 rankings. Our ability to combine social media marketing, online PR and SEO techniques to provide a robust reputation management service to clients is gaining momentum.
A big pat on the back to all our search conversion experts as they continue to deliver a great service to our clients.
However you are placed regarding our current government, it is difficult to ignore the opinions and effects being expressed or felt within every community across the land as the proposed cuts are touted, and begin to bite.
As a business, it is unlikely that you have no local involvement. You probably employ people from your neighbourhood, you may have long-standing relationships with your community, your customer base may live all around your premises.
Whilst none of us may relish the austerity measures proposed, this is an ideal time for a socially aware and conscious business to rebuild links within your local community, and hence enhance your sales and marketing activities. Not that any of this should be done purely to increase the sales on your books, but it will rarely hurt!
Corporate and social responsibility is a term which often gets thrown at the ‘big boys’ and yet the best proponents of such activities are often constantly contributing into the local economy and adding to social dynamics, without hitting the red tops, because their contribution is not seen or heard of beyond that particular locale.
Now may be your chance for 5 minutes of fame. Companies who can contribute in an innovative and novel way stand to capture the attention of the local and national media if they enhance the society and community in which they live. Bearing in mind all the cuts which are likely to take place during this term, it cannot be too difficult for every company to see an opening for community /corporate action that will attract great PR.
This is a meagre attempt at suggesting you take a look at some of the things you could do, and wherever you are, it has to be worth looking at the Big Society in the North website and associated sites, blogs and feeds for further ideas. And if you can’t actually find a way to contribute directly into your community, perhaps you could support some of the ideas elsewhere so they become commercial concerns? Which could, looking at a few of the ideas, become hardcore businesses…….
This nation is full of great ideas; many are idling on back burners as those who wish to share them struggle to be heard. If your business is locally based and is struggling to survive, how about opening your doors for a day to all those who live around your premises and ASK THEM what they would do to improve employment prospects, extend your product range, make best use of your assets and resources, and so on…..?
A simple blog, a YouTube channel, a few schoolkids with video cameras and a Twitter hashtag….you could be on Breakfast TV within a week scoring high profile publicity for a simple social media marketing campaign and a few buns and cups of tea. Just an idea!
Google focuses on relevancy, and as such delivering relevant results to a search is key to Google’s operations. However, it has become increasingly obvious recently that quality control is slipping in the search results in that search for relevancy. For instance, if you enter the search term “search engine optimisation articles” into the news section of Google, some of the top results that come back are auto-generated articles.
So, where does that leave you as a business when developing content? Should you go for quality or write your copy specifically so it does well for relevance on top terms? Is it more important to be top of the search engines or to create unique, high quality content that satisfies your users? Or can you find a balance?
If what you are seeking is to be number 1 on the search engines, then you can achieve this by focussing on long tail terms that consistently bring in targeted traffic, but where the competition is significantly lower than on the most obvious terms.
For instance, you may produce help guides or how to manuals, books or white papers, and invariably far less people will be optimising and bidding on the major keywords + those terms than just on the major keywords. Therefore, you can rank more highly in such searches and you are more carefully targetting people responsive to your call to action e.g. buy our book, download our white paper, read our how to guide etc.
Inevitably, you will need to prepare that high quality content to deliver to your website visitors, but the benefits should be commensurate with that cost. If you then encourage people to share your content on their social networks, bookmark it with Delicious, tweet it, create a backlink on their own website, as well as email the link to friends and colleagues, your content will spread to a far wider circle than if you just pursue top search engine rankings for highly competitive terms.
We have previously posted about the importance of RSS feeds in your internet marketing mix, and once you have your feeds set up, you need to promote them widely. There are a huge number of RSS directories on the internet, which you can find by searching Google, Yahoo and Bing, as well as the social bookmarking sites.
As with URL shorteners, these sites often come and go, because they tend to be dependent on an advertising based business plan. Therefore, you should keep a list of all those you submit your feed to and regularly check which new ones have sprung up.
Many of the RSS directories allow you to add tags and categorise your feed so think about popular tags as well as which categories you wish to appear in. You should record these tags etc along with the URL you have submitted to, so that you can develop a good cross-section of different listings across all the directories, which should help to get you maximum exposure.
Find out more about good internet marketing practice in our SEO Book.
