Last week we launched a new feature on the Frogblogg; search marketing word of the week. If you want to find out more as to why we are doing this, have a look at last weeks post.
So Frogg, please give me this weeks letter...
'C'
OK, 'C' is for 'conversion'
A 'conversion' is when a measurable goal for a website is achieved. Such a goal might be to fill in an enquiry form, sign up to a newsletter or complete a sale online. Conversions can be tracked and measured by a decent analytics package.
Mistakenly, some see the objective of their search engine optimisation campaign to achieve a top ranking on a search engine. Remember, a ranking is really only a means to an end. Just because you are ranking number one on Google, it means nothing if your website fails to convert traffic to meet the objective (s).
Welcome to our new weekly brain busting "search tip of the week". Every Monday (unless there is a bank holiday) we will be imparting to you, our valued readers, a little titbit that will help you in your quest to increase your visibility online. This weeks tip is as follows:
We have been reading a lot lately about how Google likes sites that don't hog their bandwidth by allowing Google to spider content on their site that would not necessarily be of use to visitors, and therefore of use for Google to index and rank.
Therefore our tip is to make sure you utilise robots.txt to ask the Googlebot to ignore these type of pages on your site.
E.g.
pages with duplicate content
printer friendly versions of of pages
stubbs (empty pages produced by your content management system)
pop up pages with no navigation
Using robots.txt means Google is happier as you only feed it worthy pages, and you don't end up with people entering the site through pages not intended as entry pages.
For those of us getting Fed up with the aggressive nature of the Diggs and long in the teeth delicious of this On line world -
Why not dive into the ocean of New Niche Social Media Sites: I've browsed through a whole heap of them and listed a few below. Check out the full list at: Tropical SEO's great updated top 29 list
PlugIM is a user driven internet marketing community where users submit content, articles and comment on projects etc. The kind of stories featured are: WP-PlugIMWordpressplugin is availableand Yahoo Pipes the Ultimate Splog Tool
What is sk*rt? – It’s kind of like a Girly mag in the form of a portal. The kind of stories you can find here aren't exactly ground breaking but it does what it says on the tin. The kind of stories are:First Look at Roberto Cavalli for H&M and Can't afford high-end designer duds: Why buy when you can rent?
Care2 - I really liked this community, it’s basically built by altruists for altruists. Dealing with matters from human rights to animal welfare and the environment it gives people the tools to not just talk about wanting to do something by actually do it. The featured articles on Care2 are: Lawmakers To Consider New Animal Torture Penalties and Child Sex Slavery Hidden 5000 Children in Britain
Videosift- This is just plain fun, its got a nice simple layout and its for people who love all kinds of video and wasting time enjoying watching them – I listed a few of my random favourites:
We'd like to welcome you to a new feature on the Froggblog; search 'word of the week'.
Every Friday, we will publish a new 'search' related word or phrase on the Froggblog and provide our explanation as to what this word means. Why are we doing this when there are already so many good glossaries across the Internet? Well, firstly, we don't just want to copy or refer to somebody else's good work; we want to create our own. If you have visited our website in recent months you may have noticed that the glossary page sits empty; it has done for far too long! So this gives us an opportunity to start filling that page. Also, our clients often ask for a straightforward definition of a word or phrase that they might have heard either from us or from elsewhere. We often find that the definition they have picked up from somebody else is rather different to how we would put it; either plain wrong or complete gobbledygook!
We will therefore endeavour to put things in plain English!
There is no real pattern to the words that will be selected. I will simply ask the Frogg for a letter and pick the first word or phrase that comes to mind. So without further ado, Frogg, give me the first letter...
'I'...ok, a slightly obvious place to start but let's go with...
'Index'
Think of an index as a database; a database of stored web pages and the content which sits upon these pages. The index is created by the process of 'spidering' (doh, that's two words of the week!). A spider (robot, bot, crawler) is a program used by search engines to follow links from web page to web page. As it goes on its merry travels it takes a copy of each page to store in its index.
Sometimes it would appear it is difficult to define one word without introducing another!!
Check back next week for the latest word(s) of the week!
For those of us who live, breathe and dare I say sleep search engine marketing, how many times has a prospective client asked the question, can you get my site to the top of the natural search listings?
On the face of it, this is a perfectly valid question, however, to answer this properly, a potential client or company who is serious about rankings as a stated aim, must realise certain pre-requisites need to be in place, before employing an ethical SEO company to help gain natural search listings.
To use the following analogy, you wouldn’t expect Lewis Hamilton with a Formula 3 racing car to compete in a Formula 1 race.
In terms of what is required to help achieve natural search engine listings, websites must first of all be designed with both the user and SEO in mind. Secondly, you only to have to read the Google webmaster guidelines to realise, that just like an editor of a magazine or newspaper, the rules are that content must be fresh, engaging and of good quality to be considered for its intended audience. Therefore, dedicate an appropriate amount of time to writing useful copy for your web pages and construct a plan as to how you are going to keep the content fresh and engaging. Last but by no means least important, search engine optimisation requires continuous ongoing investment both in terms of time and money, from the both the client and the SEO company to attack the off the page strategies and build link popularity which is a real feature of today’s search engines algorithiums.
Even when success is achieved, all of the pre-requisites mentioned above must be continually worked upon to maintain and hopefully improve results. Companies who rest on their laurels are likely to be yesterday’s results as competitors looking for the same success are never likely to far away.
A checkout process on an e-commerce site is key to the site’s success in converting visitors into online sales. Your site may be attracting targeted visitors that want to buy online but your complicated or frustrating checkout means that they give up (and in many cases, are unlikely to return.) This indicates how important it is to get your checkout right
I tend to come across many more sites that have frustrating and long winded checkout processes than I do checkout’s that are usable, simple and safe. And this is exactly how people want to buy online, with simplicity and security.
So I thought I would brainstorm what I think should be included in your checkout and where it should be included in order to make the process as stress free for everyone.
Firstly, make it obvious that your checkout procedure is secure and that any extra costs (e.g. delivery costs) are made obvious early on in the process. Potential customers will want to want to feel secure and informed, and any extra processes or ‘noise’ within this process is likely to affect your conversion rate of visitor into sale. It may also be an idea to have a clear link on every page of the site that allows customers to “view basket” and “view delivery info”.
Product · Price - make the cost of items and products clearly visible · Options - make sure that users can choose colours/ sizes of products here so that the desired final product is added to the basket · Availability - If the product is not available, it should say so at this stage. It would be irritating for a customer to go through the checkout process only to find that the product they want is not available · Call to action - place a call to action to prompt people to “Buy online now!”
Basket · Add to basket – Take the customer to the basket when a customer clicks “add to basket”. This means that customers can clearly seethe contents of the basket. Remember to place an obvious link back to the product page that the customer came from. · Editing the basket – Make editing the shopping basket simple and easy. For example, make it possible for customers to delete individual items from their basket. (I have recently come across a site that only allowed me to empty the whole basket.) It should be here that customers have the option to either “continue shopping” or “proceed to checkout”
Checkout · Security– once customers proceed through the checkout, be sure your isolate again that your checkout is secure. · Review - allow customers to review what they are paying for. All delivery or shipping costs should have been mentioned by this step. · Login or register? – I personally find it annoying having to register with a site in order to complete an online sale. However should you require that customers register, you should do so here. · Payment– customers should then add their payment and shipping details. · Thank you – a thank you page should summarise the order, summarise the payment, provide reference numbers and include information about how to print the confirmation page etc.
A friend of mine recently split with his girlfriend. This is obviously a common occurrence across the world, but now in this digital age new dilemmas are making breaking up even harder to do. After the split he was faced with 3 dilemmas with his Facebook profile:
1. He would have to change his relationship status and partner details on Facebook. This would have to be timed to perfection. Remove her too soon and it would probably make her even more upset than she already was, however leave it too long and he may be giving the wrong message.
2. He wants to stay friends, however by keeping her a s a friend on facebook she will be able to keep tabs on what he's been up to and who he has been making friends with. She can even see if he's met someone new. Which leads us to dilemma number three.
3. Being a bit of a cad he has already met a new girlfriend and she is on facebook too. He doesn't want his ex to see how quickly he has moved on but his new girlfriend is asking him why he is still listed as in a relationship with his ex and why she isnt listed in there. In fact this was the cause of their first argument!
So how has he managed to solve these dilemma's?
Simple, he has decided to remove his relationship status all together. He has remained friends with his ex as this would have just been too cruel. He explained to his new girfriend he didn't want to hurt his ex by removing her too soon or completely and she is fine with this. However i feel that at some stage in the future she will be demanding she is rightfully listed as his partner on his profile.
So in hindsight there is a warning for us all. When asked to give personal information on the web you should be cautious. I would definitely recommend keeping information about your relationship status private. As your network grows you will be announcing to everyone each time you split up or even get back together and some things need to be treated with sensitivity!
We have recently updated our article "a sticky situation" that gives a set of tips and guidelines to encourage people to return to your site on a regular basis.
"The average web surfer is a fickle creature, flitting from one website to the next in search of information. Research has shown that a visitor to a website will make a decision on whether they are going to stay within the first few seconds. OK, so you have employed all of the design tricks that are going to capture your visitors’ attention; but are they enough? How do you keep their attention? More importantly how do you persuade them to come back for a repeat visit?"
Here are our main tips;
Keep your website content up to date. No one will remember your website above others if it has information that is out of date.
Provide your visitors with useful tools. Are there any tools that the type of person who visits your website might find useful?
Get tagged! Make it as easy as possible for people to tag your site or add it to their accounts by having social bookmarking buttons on your site such as “Add to del.icio.us” or “Digg This.”
Newsletters; offering regular, free information and advice is a great way of forming an ongoing relationship with potential customers.
Utilise email marketing. Marketing to your previous site visitors by email will increase the chances of them returning to your site.
Turn your website into an information portal. The more useful information you can give them, the more they will view you as an authority and return back to your site to utilise those links on a regular basis.
These are our tips in brief. For a more detailed explanation please download our online report.
OK so we might be blowing our own trumpet a bit here but us froggers are delighted to have been chosen to feature in the esteemed eConsultancy Search Marketing Buyers Guide.
We were approached by eConsultancy to feature as one of their selection of the highest quality search marketing companies in the UK and have hidden our excitement until publishing which was today. Hurray!!
'I'm interested in using Leapfrogg, you talk a good talk but I don’t see you ranking number one on Google for 'search engine optimisation. Why is that?'.
If Leapfrogg earned a penny for every time we'd been asked this….
Now I'm not saying it is not a valid question but lets lets tidy this up once and for all because it does raise some interesting points which are applicable to all those involved in search marketing.
We know we don’t rank number one for 'search engine optimisation'. In fact we dont even rank in the top 30 for 'search engine optimisation' and it may surprise you to hear that we don’t really want to. 'I don’t believe you' I hear at the back! Well, its true and I'll explain why.
We have grown a very successful business mainly off the back of our good reputation and the leads which inevitably come our way as a result through referrals. We have also grown our business through the fantastic relationships we have with other companies who offer services complementary to our own. Therefore, and this will come as a real shock to some, we do not even try to rank on the first page of Google (or any other search engine for that matter) for the term 'search engine optimisation'.
The time, effort and resource it would take to rank for this term is simply not worth it. As it happens we do rank on page one for a number of slightly less popular but certainly highly relevent terms. The result of this is a better quality of lead. If your own search marketing agency ranks on page one for 'search engine optimisation' I bet your bottom dollar that you are absolutely inundated with leads; 'Great' I hear again from the back. Wrong, because I bet a huge number of them will be of a very poor quality (the 'I've heard that I need to do some SEO, I have £50 a montht to spend and I want to be ranking number one on Google for 'insurance' by the end of next week!' type) therefore wasting your time and resource. In our experience targeting a longer tail term attracts the type of person we want to work with i.e. somebody who is slightly further down the buying cycle or someone who is looking for a specific service.
And this is the point; it is not always viable to try and rank for THE most relevant and therefore competitive term in your industry. Not only can it take a huge amount of time and certainly money but even once you are there the results are not always agreeable in terms of the quality of leads generated. I know it's a cliche but it really is about quality over quantity!
Remember also that search marketing has evolved. It is not only about rankings on search engines, it is about developing a presence across many other channels which in some cases can provide you with more traffic than the search engines themselves. I'm talking blogs, forums, networks, noticeboards, review sites; coined as 'social media'. Developing a strategy and presence across such media is as valuable as that number one position on Google, if not more so because you are not at the mercy of a force outside of your control; the dreaded algorithm!
So, what's the moral of the story, or perhaps morals…
1) It does not always make business sense to try and rank on the first page for the first search term which comes to mind (which will usually be the most competitive)
2) Search engine optimisation is not about rankings, it is about garnering traffic from many new and developing online sources, such as those mentioned above
3) You should never rely on search engines as the sole means of driving traffic to your site and therefore in growing your business. Pure SEO should make up just one part of your online strategy and an even smaller part of your overall marketing strategy (which incorporates offline)
4) And no, Leapfrogg does not rank on page one for 'search engine optimisation' and we probably never will!
Make sure you don’t leave the kids at home on August 18th, or you could, like the Bell family, land yourself with a £20,000 home repair bill to cover the damage of a skins style “Let's trash the average family-sized house disco party" party thanks to the latest promotional stunt from team Calvin Harris.
Rachel Bill hit the headlines this April after she posted party invitations on social networking site Myspace.com which quickly got out of hand, following excessive syndication from community members. Spreading like wildfire, the party resulted in revellers trashing the Bells family home, urinating on Rachel's mother's wedding dress, stealing cash and jewellery and even chasing the neighbours with golf clubs to prevent intervention. Such a party that echoes that of the opening trailer for Skins (below).
To celebrate (or should we stay promote) Calvin’s album and his latest single Merrymaking At My Place, team Harris are calling on fans to stage house parties all over the UK simultaneously on Saturday 18th August.
You must register your party with their website first (data capture is a must!) before being granted access to their “Party microsite”, which at the time of writing wasn’t live - which is a bit of a shame - , however it promises to offer an online platform for fans, offering prizes, ideas and enabling communication between members.
There is no doubt that this stunt will appear all over the social networks as individual users upload their Calvin Harris style party videos and photographs on content networks including FlickrYoutubeGoogle Video and the abovementioned ‘Party Microsite’ – and thus creating buzz and one way links to the Calvin Harris website.
This notion is only accentuated by the carrot and stick tactics that will see one Calvin perform a private acoustic set to one lucky host, in addition to personally delivering a £1500 cash prize (for the repairs no doubt).
However whilst many might be concerned of the wider ramifications of encouraging (albeit unintentionally) reckless behaviour, sexual promiscuity and excessive alcohol consumption, this campaign must be praised for tapping into the multiple social networks, stimulating cross platform content sharing and encouraging offline buzz…. There are not campaigns that we can say that about, particularly when considering the budget.
Whilst the social accountability of this campaign is bypassed with token small print, this is certainly somewhat out of the ordinary – but if team Harris wanted to provoke recreation, get blogged about, hit the headlines and ensure a legacy of video content uploads with the ultimate aim of increasing artist visibility and increased album sales, then I am sure, with this campaign, they will succeed.
Yes, it’s a sign; however this sign serves a purpose not simply to provide a company name and contact details, but to provoke a reaction. Call it art that generates a buzz and encourages people to talk, but it is this buzz that found me photographing, uploading and appropriately tagging it on a content sharing network and blogging about it.
Suddenly Sussex Scaffolding has a heightened level of exposure, (it’s just a shame they didn’t include their url), but the crux of the matter is this – Generating a spark to ignite ones imagination and spread your message virally can be so simple that you might even bypass it altogether.
However, regardless of your on or offline marketing budget, this example proves that a good idea, in the right place, can get people talking and doesn’t have to cost the earth…
We love Social Bookmarking - Votes are noticed and appreciated:
Whilst checking client stats on Monday I noticed a huge discrepancy between the June and July figures a jump of around 80% in some cases. Thanks to: Yohay from the things.co blog for his post questioning this issue. As it happens, Bounce rates are now excluded form the Avg. time on site figures and the update was ran on July 20th which accounts for the escalating figures now.
The analytics support team were quoted to have said:
Previously, the Average Time on Site had been calculated as the total time on site for all visits divided by the total number of visits. Both the total time on site and total number of visits included bounces. As of July 20, 2007, we began reporting the Average Time on Site as the total ti me on site for all visits (excluding bounces) divided by the total number of visits (excluding bounces). This change also affected data from earlier dates, not just newer data. Because bounces have been removed from this calculation, you may notice a significant increase in the average amount of time spent on your site. Please be assured that we have in no way changed your data, only the way that the Average Time on Site is being calculated.
This is quite a significant change and I know a few people are wondering why this wasn’t flagged up by Google prior to the update, their is also a question of whether the removal of bounce rates from average time is industry standard. If I hear anymore I’ll update you.
We recently had a rather irate client on the phone to one of our account managers questioning why they were not seeing their ad in the search listings. They had been “searching and searching” but were not seeing their ad. Within about 10 seconds the account manager entered the search query, had seen the ad is question (at the desired position) and had deduced that the client had not been able to view the ad because they had simply searched for it too many times. Essentially, the client’s actions were causing a negative effect on the campaign. This made me think of a number of ways that clients can help SEO Agencies manage their PPC search marketing campaign more effectively.
In order to run a successful PPC search campaign it is imperative that there is a clear line of communication between the SEO agency (i.e an account manager) and the client. This is crucial to the success of the campaign for a number of reasons.
It is inevitable that products or services will become discontinued or unavailable at some point in a campaign's life cycle. In the event of this occurring, it is necessary for the client to immediately get in contact with their SEO agency. This will enable the search terms related to the discontinued or unavailable products or services to either be deleted or paused. This will mean that no clicks or costs will be accrued for the product or service that has no chance of leading to a conversion. Similarly, it is also important for the client to notify the agency of any new products or services newly offered.
If the client is running any additional marketing initiatives, either in the future or at present, alongside search engine marketing it is important to let your agency know. The marketing initiative undertaken will inevitably cause some amount of "buzz" and a large amount of people will perform searches to either find out more about the company in question or the product or service being advertised. If your online spend is only small, it is important to maximise your spend during, and after these key periods in order to capture the full impact of this increased traffic.
If the client wants to make sure that their ads are at a certain position and is performing countless searches a day, it is CRUCIAL that they use the Ad Preview tool (mentioned in a previous post) https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/AdTargetingPreviewTool The key reasons for this are as follows:
Google recently made a change to the way ads are shown, allowing each individual search query to be responded to uniquely or differently. For example, if a client was to search for their ad multiple times, the system may "adapt" the search results in order to (supposedly) relate to your needs. The thinking behind this is that if you do not click on the ads that are shown a number of times, they are deemed less relevant to the search query. This may cause ads to drop to lower positions than before.
Each time an ad is shown an impression is accrued. An ad's relevance is determined largely by its CTR. Click through Rate is calculated as Clicks/Impressions x 100. So, if a large majority of impressions are recorded for a search term, but only a small number of clicks are generated, the individual ad’s CTR will be very low, which will then effect the quality score of the search term. A low quality score means that you may have to pay a considerably higher CPC to attain your desired average position, than your competitors.
This process is usually a relatively straight forward and dare-I-even-say “fair” way to attribute a cost to a keyword when left to the relevancy principal. However, when a faux search is made (i.e checking the average position of an ad), this will significantly increase the volume of impressions generated for a certain keyword. As these searches are made with the intention of checking, rather than actually searching, no clicks will be accrued thereby lowering the CTR of an ad, which will directly lead the CPC paid for the individual keyword to be raised, and may even lower the ad to lower positions (based on the paragraphs above).
So, to conclude, the success of a brilliantly optimised, high converting paid search campaign can never be wholly be attributed to either Agency or Client. Instead both must understand each others goals, and the steps that they can both take to achieve them.
We just had to share this Facebook / Face Off trailer mashup - it's genius and considering the increasing influence of social networks, it will hopefully go some way to splash some cold water in the faces of Facebook addicts.
In terms of viral content, this is an excellent example, and only time (and social bookmarking sites) will tell just how successful it will be.
Last week we launched a new feature on the Frogblogg; search marketing word of the week. If you want to find out more as to why we are doing this, have a look at last weeks post.
