Business Today

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

Google Analytics and Conversion Funnels

Google analytics being free and all, is probably the most used set of web analytical tools on the planet just now. Some are a bit wary of this and many big businesses will not touch it for fear of Google "knowing too much" about their web business channel. Google of course say that this is all nonsense and promise not to do anything "naughty" with the data. Some are however unconvinced and continue to boycott its use.

Whatever the true story here, many smaller businesses are quite content on using the system and gain a lot from it, however, one thing that has come to our attention recently is that the use of the goals needs to be carefully set up, as otherwise you can get some bad conversion data.

This has happened to one of the companies managed by one of our associate companies, their site being all about exclusive garden buildings, (in fact if you want a garden office, home office, garden room, garden studio, or just a place to get away from it all, you should not miss their site at www.thegardenescape.co.uk) as we found that Google we reporting some very funny data indeed.

The problem is however quite simple to sort out in that you can set up what are called "funnels", these being the route that visitors has to go in order to place an order (or whatever passes for a conversion on a site). With these in place the level of accuracy is increased many fold and thus the data is more useful and worthwhile.

For more tips on using the web to improve your business, check out our main site at www.intelligent-online-marketing.com.

Is Your Site Saying the Right Things to the Search Engines?

We think that the Search Engines are Clever

We all think that computers are clever, this being especially so with the Search Engines, but the fact is, that in reality, computers are quite stupid and have to be spoon fed information in the way that they have been programmed to look for it.

It's the words on the page that count

Thus when it comes to getting listed on the Search Engines you have to seriously bear in mind the way that your web pages are being "read" by those Engines. When you boil it down to the basics, this means the words on the page, (including those image tags etc) but as importantly, it is the way those words are used and where they are that can make all the difference.

A newspaper without headlines?

Imagine reading a newspaper that used the same sized text for everything on the page, no big headlines, just the same text all over. Wouldn't it be difficult to make out at a glance, what that page was really about? Now the newspapers have long known that you use Headlines to attract and the body copy to inform, something that (in most cases) is still understood and used by web designers today.

CSS is causing problems

The problem is that with the introduction of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) it is now easy to produce pages that don't use the "tags" that the Engines have been programmed to look for. Thus when Mr Google visits your site and reads the text, they will ignore the CSS (even if they can read it, they don't know that the 'Big-Red' style is your Headline) and just read the code. If they don't see the tags they are expecting (the old fashioned H1 etc) they will just assume that all the words have the same level of importance, and that means your pages have no Headlines, and in turn that means the Engines won't really understand the main thrust of that pages' content.

The Search Engines Expect (Nelson's signal at the battle of Googlefalgar)

The result of this is that when other pages do it the way the Engines 'expect' that they will beat you in the listings game, and that is probably not what you want.

More on making your pages say things in the right way tomorrow.

For more articles on online marketing, visit our site, the home of the online marketing experts.

The Dangers of Duplicate Content

The dangers of Using duplicate content on the Web

It is true to say that many many websites today are using exactly the same content as hundreds of other sites. Many of these are selling electrical goods, cameras etc and are using the maufacturers description, while others are selling holidays or overseas property. Often the content of the site is an XML feed, that is taken in by the site and used to fill its databases and pages. Result, a site that uses the same words as its competitors...

What are the dangers?

From a human point of view, the dangers look zero, after all the manfacturer of the product knows how to describe their goods better than the website owner, so what is the problem? Well actually it is not the human visitor we are worried about at all, but the Search Engines themselves. Why?, because when they see that the page contains a lot of words (in exactly the same order etc) as an other page, they simply decide not to bother with it, and thus it will never be listed in the results, which in turn means that one method of bringing people into the site has gone, and for some, the Engines are the main way that the site gets its visitors.

I have seen this problem re-enacted on countless sites and the result it always the same, loss of Search Engine traffic, sometimes completely, the entire site being labled as just a copy. One of my customers a site well known for providing excellent advice and offers on overseas property has suffered from this situation just recently, my searches for text on their site coming up with other sites but not theirs

In their case they had used the same text as dozens of other sites for property that they could sell, whilst in other cases, they had used what was unique text from their site on a number of high profile property portals and because the Engines noticed the text on the portals first, thought that the copy on the ourhomeabroad site was the copy and hence ingnored it.

The Morale of the story

If you can avoid it, don't use feeds from other sites as copy on your site and perhaps even more important, don't use exact copies of the words on your site on any high profile sites, as it could well be that these will be crawled by the Engines first and that your site will be labled a copy and accordingly ignored.

For more information about using the Web to promote your business see the expert online marketing articles on www.intelligent-online-marketing.com

Checking if your Google ads are showing

Google Pay Per Click and Checking to see your own listings - The Right Way to do it

If you have a Google PPC campaign, you probably want to check to see if they are appearing every now and then (especially if you are paying someone else to run the campaign for you!). This leads to some of the giving in to temptation of typing in their keywords to see if their advert appears...

Now while this may look like a good idea, doing it that way is a bad idea for two very important reasons:-

It's the Wrong Way To Check Because

Firstly, by getting your ad to appear and then not clicking on it, you will reduce the apparent effectiveness of the advert (Google measures something called Click Through Rate CTR%), which basically calculates the number of times an ad is seen against the number of times it is clicked. The higher the CTR%, the lower Google charge for the click (this is just a part of Google's Quality Score Algorithim by the way).

Thus, if you dilute the CTR by constant checking, you will be driving your own click costs up. Admitedly, you'll be doing the same for your competitors, but there will be only one winner and that is Google, and they really do have enough money already.

The second reason is down to the way that Google "take note" of what someone is searching for, at least in the recent past, so if a particular user keeps keying in the same phrases, they will keep changing the ads they are seeing in an attempt to show them something different, in effect trying to capture a click for something. This process means that they start providing totally different results on the screen to a "normal" searcher. Thus in practice this means that a user may well not see the very ad they were looking for, when another searcher would, which in turn means that checking that way is pretty much useless.

By the way, the system which Google use is based on the Google tool bar, as this will "personalise" the results you see, as well as the fact that Google will remember your searches in any given "session" of searches.

So, the Right Way is..

It's all very simple, just go to The Google Ad Preview Tool and then fill in the boxes there, it'll soon show you who is being listed for those phrases at that time, and thus is very useful for "spying" on the competition as well as for checking up on your own ads.

Better still, if you have targeted a country or geographic area which you are not in you can use this tool to see if your ad is appearing, something that you couldn't normally do.

In all cases it does not count as an impression for the ad and therefore does not harm the CTR.

For more tips and information on online marketing check out the experts at intelligent online marketing