Business Today

A Challenge to Google?

It has been predicted many times, the engine that will be the downfall of Google, but this time the pundits are saying that there is just a chance that the day has come. What is this "pretenders" name? Cuil.com (pronounced "cool"), but why could it be so dangerous to Google's top dawg position??

Apparently, the database that Cuil uses is three times the size of Googles and ten times the size of MSN's, which should of course mean that the results could be more comprehensive

Then there is the issue about user privacy, Google as we know collects data (via the Google Tool bar etc) on what you look for and some people don't like that.

Another thing is that the people who built Cuil also know Google inside out, which means that they know a lot more than the other pretenders to the throne did.

Cuil could too be seen as a better engine for some, as it has several useful features that researchers and the really serious searcher might like, so that could draw users away too.

Perhaps Google will have a fight on its hands after all.

For more news items and articles on online marketing and search engine optimisation, please see our website.

The Importance of Internal Links

Every website has internal links, but all too often these are mainly just those in the navigation, and worse still, in many cases these can either be images or poorly chosen words with no "Title" tag. Both of the latter will assist in "telling" the Search Engines what the pages are about, but those that use just use these two methods for internal linking are missing a trick.

You see, you are not limited to placing links in the navigation, after all you can have them anywhere you want on your pages, but what would be the point?  Well the point is that the Engines, whilst looking at the navigation with interest, will look for "supporting evidence" on the pages of the site about what each page is about, thus some links in the text will do both the sending and receiving pages some good.

There is even better to come though, as the links on the pages can be longer and perhaps more descriptive than it is possible to use in any navigation. They do however have other advantages, in that the Engines take a deal of interest about the words that are around these links. Thus, if the linking text is surrounded by words that relevant to the page that is being linked too, then that link will gain even more points and help move your pages up the rankings for their targeted keywords.

They'll be more on the subject of internal linkings soon, this time covering the topic of Page Rank Sculpting.

For more information on online marketing and search engine optimisation, please see our website.

The Google Knol

Last week Google launched its new "Knol" service, which is designed, they say, to encourage people to create authoritative content which can then be indexed by its search engine and have Goolge ads added of course if you want. They reckon, that "Knols", will be different from blogs, which many see as casual and opinionated,  Knols instead being fact based, informative, and well researched / well written  articles on a very specific subject. For more information on Knol's see http://knol.google.com/k

All very interesting, but will the Knol have more power than a traditional blog?, some in the SEO world think that they may, and this of course could lead to lots of Knols being published for, in some cases the wrong reasons (nothing new there then).

However, for my part, anything new on the Web is welcome and the Knol, not being subject to being altered by any passing Tom, Dick or Harry, as with Wikipedia, means that it is a better marketing tool to publish the sort of expert information that can be provided by / for our clients.

Todate, the performance of the Knol, SEO wise,  is up for debate, but for sure, it will get a hell of a lot of traffic, and thus deserves careful consideration in any marketing strategy.

By the way KNOL a trademarked term = A unit of KNOwLedge.

More information on online marketing available on our site www.intelligent-online-marketing.com

The 40/40/20 Direct Marketing Rule

I've been around in business quite a long time now, been in the small and the big (AT&T) and have seen enough buzwords and "rules" to sink a battleship, or at least a small cruiser. Of them all the good old 80/20 rule seemed one of the best, it saying simply enough that you get 80% of your business from 20% of your customers (or 80% of the hassle out of 20%, these not necessarily being the same people!).

Simply, put it says that if you concentrate your efforts on that 20% you can't go far wrong. All sounds cool to me, and we use it every day at IOM.

But what is the 40/40/20 rule? Now I may suffer criticism for not knowing this before, but hell, I have broad enough shoulders (and never did pretend to know it all) so will freely admit, that the rules name at least meant nothing to me. So what is it all about and where did I see it?

It came from a fact sheet sent out by Ominture, a pretty vast organisation, to say the least. Now I'm not saying that they invented it, but credit where credit is due and all that.

What they are saying is essentially that if you want to maximise the conversions from your site you have to bear the 40 40 20 rule in mind, it saying that " Response orientated marketing success depends 40% on audience targeting (getting to the right people), 40% on the offer or proposition (how good is it really, a new BMW for £500!) and 20% on creative execution (how good it is put across).

Reading the document it all makes good sense, so if you want a copy yourself, go to http://www.omniture.com/offer/101.

For more information and some of our own home grown advice and articles, please visit our website at www.intelligent-online-marketing.com

RSS Feeds and Duplicate Content

Today RSS feeds are abundant on the web and can be very useful to add content to a site without any work being required by the owner. But as this content is by its very nature a copy of some words on (many) other sites, is it good for your rankings??

I have always been sceptical of the use of RSS feeds, suggesting that original content must be better and that if our customers want their site to be truly "interesting" they should start thinking about putting some budget aside for this area. IOM in fact offers a "news" service that places (old) news on a site, but re-works the news item so that it is different. This adds to the sites stickiness and has brought in conversions (the news items themselves being found in the Search Engine rankings and briniging in customers, something that a duplicate content RSS would not do).

But for those "sold" on the idea of wanting RSS feeds to their site, will it harm their rankings. It seems there are two camps here, one saying that placing "full" feeds (the entire news item) on a site can damage the rankings (and thus support "partial" ie just the headlines feeds), whilst the "full feeds" brigade say that the user gets a better experience if the whole item is there.

There is however no answer, so IOM is still taking the view of not using RSS feeds, as as I say the content is not unique and if it stands a chance of damaging the rankings then we don't see the point.

For more information and articles about online marketing, please see our website www.i-o-m.com

The Importance of Titles and Headings in SEO

At IOM we deal with lots of different sites, and the ones in the biggest trouble are the ones that either have too much duplicate content or have ignored the fact that the Title and H1 series of tags are important and need to be properly used.

Why is the title important, quite simply as the Engines use this as a indicator as to what the page is all about (and therefore what to rank it for). Similarly, the H1 tag is used by the engines as an indicator of the main thrust of the page, which in the days of LSI had better be something relevant to the Title tag.

You must also bear this in mind when you are writing the copy for the page, and also the other header tags on the page, the same going for the links in the text on the page, as these are not only used to tell what the linked page is about, but also what the page they are on is about to, the higher the relevance the better.

At the moment IOM is working on a careers advice site for school leavers and also with a site for careers advice for graduates, both these sites needing help with all of the above. More on the success of these sites later.

Please see out website for more advice and articles on online marketing.

The UK Loves Google 'OFFICIAL'

The Search Engine Optimisation / Marketing commumity in the UK have been saying for months now (or is it years?) that Google is the top dog as far as the number of searches being made in the UK go, statistics showing that some 70 - 85% of visits originate from that engines (if that is they are well optimised, but that is another story).

However, even with this in mind, I was somewhat amazed to hear that Google has become the top brand, the 'superbrand' in the UK , toppling Microsoft and beating the good old BBC (again).  There were in fact 500 runners in this race, and there is too good news for Microsoft, as it still beats Apple roundly (they were in 11th place).

The poll was carried out by YouGov, each brand being subjected to checks on the 7 BrandIndex attributes ("Buzz", General Impression, Quality, Recommend, Satisfaction, Corporate Reputation & Value). In all 1000 brands were scrutinised for their quality, reliability and their distinctiveness.

"Lifestyle brands, particularly those in the technology sector, have considerably more sway with the public than everyday staples such as the supermarkets, which now seem further than ever from the affections of the British people," said Stephen Cheliotis, chairman of the Superbrands Council which commissioned the research.

"The results are also a further sign that Google is continuing its dominance in the UK. It is clear that Google is the brand that people value at work and in their personal lives."

By way, it is also interesting to note that 'Google' as a word entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 2006. This has however caused them to be a bit wary, the media being told not to use 'Google' as a verb, however, it is a fact that people do, I have been 'Googled' on many occasions and it didn't hurt a bit.

For more articles and news on online marketing please visit www.intelligent-online-marketing.com

Is Your Site Usable?

There are today literally billions of websites around the world, many are really great, others lets face it are plain bad. History has no doubt got something to do with it, the early websites being so bland cried out for something a bit flashy and yes, they got flashed, to death in many cases. Today Flash is being used less and less and now tends to be used for the bits it should be used for and not everything which as I say was the case not so long ago.

But Flash aside, is your site usable, is the text big enough, is it clear enough, can people work out how to get around, does the search button bring the results it should? The questions go on and on, but they are important. Make it too hard for someone to use your site and there are hundreds just waiting for that click.

Perhaps the great Alber Einstein sums it up the best with his comment "make it as simple as it needs to be. But no simpler".

Mind you, such words are not as useful as some good old fashioned tips, and the best is to make sure that your site works the way people expect it to, after all if you had a newspaper you'd not put the main headlines on page 3 (unless you were the Sun), why, because people expect to see the Headlines on the front page at the top. When it comes to the web, here's what people expect to see, break these rules at your peril..

• Company Logo at top left and make sure it links to the home page
• Use the about us page for company info
• Keep the navigation in the same place and make its use consistent
• Use the space at the top of the page carefully, anything flashing or just too bright may be considered to be an advertisment (banner ad), and if thats your navigation or an important message, well....
• Use the term Shopping Cart for your basket
• Make sure the page downloads quickly
• Remember people don't read web pages, they scan them, reading the headlines and any bold text, and then if they like what they see and it matches their needs, then and only then will they read the small print

There are many others, but bearing these in mind will help you keep and convert more visitors and that after all is the name of the game.

Please see our other articles on online marketing on our website www.i-o-m.com

Keyword Research - The Bedrock of SEM

Much is written about Search Engine Marketing, and all the good advice will start with something about doing your keyword research BEFORE you start to build a Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign or to Optimise (SEO) your site so that the Engines like what they find. By the way, from my point of view, no one should even build a site without doing thorough keyword research, but that is another issue (I'll put the soap box away).

So if Keyword Research is so important, how does one go about it. As with all aspects of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) there are as many answers as there are people to ask in the first place, but one method is mentioned by many, and that is to use Wordtracker.

Wordtracker will not, as some might tell you, provide all the search queries used by everyone for anything, in fact, Wordtracker sees a tiny percentage of the searches made every day, but it, and it is a big but, does keep a database of somewhere near 380million searches, and that makes the data both valuable and statistically viable. Better still due to the sources used, these searches are not polluted by search engine optimisation companies who are typing in keywords to see where the sites they are optimising are in the listings (these are not "true" searches as they just distort what is really being searched for and are thus best avoided).

Carefully (and painstakingly used, it can take 16 hours to do keyword research properly), Wordtracker will provide you with a host of information about what sort of terms people are using, how often, plus it will give you an idea of the competition, and thus using the two, an idea of which ones are worth more effort than others.

Once you have the report however, you are not nearly finished, you still have to apply a fair amount of grey matter to the data to work out how to use it and which variations of the keywords you have found to use, but it does provide you with a firm foundation on which to build your online marketing campaign.

There are other resources too, the Google PPC interface also providing some data on what keywords are being used, plus of course, there are other keyword research engines like, Keyword Discovery and Best Keywords, so as with many things in life, you have to make your choice...

For more information on online marketing, please see our main site at www.intelligent-online-marketing.com

Searchandising and the missed opportunity

Many reading this blog will know what Searchandising (you guessed it, it's a USA term) is all about, but many won't, so lets start with a quick preci.

The first part of the word "Search" gives the game away a bit, as the focus of this particular bit of Web Marketing Science is about how people search, but not on the Search Engines, no, instead this is all about how people search "inside sites" using the internal search engine (or Google), the "andising" coming from the term "merchandising" meaning this context selling.

We all know how much importance is given to which keywords people use on the Search Engines, but many organisations (even big ones) seem to forget that the information trail that people are "giving them for free" when they use the search box on the site is worth more than its weight in gold.

The first part of the process is to make sure you are saving the search data (you can even do this when using Google as the internal search engine with a bit of trickery), and the second is make sure you look at it and analyse it and deduce what it is telling you. The third part is to make sure that the searches made end up giving the user the information they should, again many internal engines are bad at this.

The benefits of this can be many and Intelligent Online Marketing will be adding a whole section to its website in the near future to advise people on this "missing link" to Internet Success.

For more expert articles on online marketing visit our website www.intelligent-online-marketing.com