The 'Leapfroggers' move into their new home!

A few weeks ago we received the keys to our new office. Back then it didn't look much - dated, bland and slightly scruffy around the edges. As this is a massively exciting time for us (moving from serviced offices to our very own) we wanted to document the work involved and the finished space. And what better place to do so than the 'Froggblog!'

So, here we are in action putting the finishing touches to modernising the new space:



And the finished result:





A special thanks to our office manager, Jody, who has project managed the various contractors involved and ultimately ensured the smooth transition from our old home to the new one.

If you are in Brighton and fancy dropping by we would love to see you at the new home of the 'Froggers'.

Hilary Duff Topless Pic

That was the subject of an email I received over the weekend and what a disappointment it was not to be greeted with a picture of the Cheaper by the Dozen star upon opening it. But this is not to say I was scouting for such unsavoury material, on the contrary, I was going through my email account, deleting emails I no longer needed, re-sorting my folders and occasionally pausing to investigate interesting emails with catchy subject lines.

And whilst there was the obviously emails offering all sorts of remedies for particular “dysfunctions”, I had to praise how such scammers and spammers constructed these subject lines, and whether they tested their results.

On a daily basis I’m pitching to site owners, bloggers and journalists to take a few moments out of their day to speak to me, have a look at one of my client’s sites or better still, write about one of my clients and the email subject line is of fundamental importance. If you are simply including “Link request” in your email subject then chances are your email is going to be ignored, after all, it doesn’t really call people to action like the Hilary Duff subject now does it?

But what about including something personal? Something with their name or brand name in? or a subject which sums up what you want, without mentioning links?

Of course, how you ‘pitch’ your emails will depend upon the client you’re working on behalf of, but however and whatever you are doing, be sure to test, tweak, test some more and then tweak again and then continue to tweak based on the feedback and responses you are getting.

If your link request emails aren’t working, then change them. Try to add value to the subject line, to maximise readership and ensure they respond. No one likes to have their emails deleted, especially when you taken so much time to tailor an email specifically for them, so make sure it get through!

Have you had any funny or interesting email subject lines? Can you offer any more advice? or how about an insight into the type of subject lines which grab you?
Being sure to keep it clean of course…

Yahoo "Import" Feature Problems on Excel 07

As much as I have frustrations with Panama, the relatively new Search Marketing platform from Yahoo, I have found the "import" feature of great benefit. True, it did take a couple of days to get the hang of it, saving the file as Unicode Text with a .csv extension(?!?!) - but after that it was all plain sailing.

That was until I upgraded my computer to Office 2007! After that it all went blurry and fuzzy again, and nothing seemed to work. Even Yahoo's official instructions on how to use the import tool seem to contradict itself!

Try and try and try as I could to use the tool, it was just not happening. I did some searches and found a thread on SearchEngineWatch.com. Apparently what you need to do is:
1. Save the file as Unicode (.txt)
2. Close down your Excel spreadsheet
3. Go back to its saved location and rename it with the .csv extension
4. Upload the file using the Import function

HOWEVER...this still did not work for me?

I understand that Office 07 is a relatively new package, but it seems crazy that the import function is incompatible with it.

So, if anyone from Yahoo reads this, please, please, please make the import process easier and compatible with all versions of excel.

I would be interested whether this has worked for anyone else?

Yahoo's New Partners

We were running our standard end of month PPC reports today and came across something quite interesting for one client. On Yahoo! they experienced a huge increase in impressions, although we changed nothing major within the campaign. We have content network switched off and these results are very much out of the blue as you can see:

Feb	Impressions	Clicks
X Y	2618	20
X Y Z	1500	6

March	Impressions	Clicks
X Y	24,351	16
X Y Z	44,446	26

(X Y Z stand for different words, with X Y Z being an extension of X Y)

Having looked a little further into when these clicks occurred they always arrived in short bursts. The first came between Monday the 10^th of March and finished Friday the 14^th of March. The next burst came between Monday 24^th of March and lasted until Friday the 4^th of April. To me this looks like a testing period; from Monday to Friday and then a longer period of two weeks, including a weekend.

Having thought about this and considered going mad, we called Yahoo! After some denial on the second call they did mention that they might be “trialling new partners” but that they didn’t have any available information at the moment.

Looking to a number of our other clients who are also on Yahoo! we have notice similar trends over similar time periods, with nothing but tweaks made to the campaign.

Interesting, something is going on behind the scenes with Yahoo! the question is just what?

Search marketing report from 3i

One of our clients, 3i, has been busy researching and compiling an interesting search marketing report examining a number of key topics in the world of search, including the central position of Google, the role of the marketing agency and the rise of mobile and social search.

A number of leading business leaders have contributed to the report, including Sir Martin Sorrell and John Battelle plus leading figures from Google and Yahoo!

The report offers some interesting insights and commentary concerning the search landscape so if you have a spare moment it's well worth a look.

3i's media sector search marketing report

Why multimedia content is good for you

In the increasingly competitive online environment, of high quality websites, intuitive shopping carts, interactive image or product galleries and valuable content delivery tools it is becoming ever more of a struggle for the small to medium size business to compete, but, that’s certainly not to say it’s impossible.

Whilst competition is, in many instances, a good thing, in terms of pushing up the quality, reducing the cost to the end user, creating greater choice in the marketplace and harbouring innovation it presents the problem of engagement, particularly in the online sphere.

The rich media and applications of sites like the BBC, YouTube, Trip Advisor, the quality editorial of shopping portals including Amazon and the major social networking sites of Facebook and Bebo fight for attention against conventional platforms, and whilst this statement doesn’t consider the innumerable users and their diverse online needs it goes in some way to illustrate the state of the playing field, and how the bar really has been raised.

But what is your strategy? How can you engage customers? How do you compete for their attention? And once you’ve got customers, how do you retain them? In addition, how can you make cost savings in your marketing by turning visitors into loyal repeat customers who might in turn spread the word about your products and services?

One such engagement tool is multimedia content, which encompasses audio and video content. These multimedia mediums, allow business and website owners to engage with users and communicate differently to the traditional static pages of text and images users might expect from much of the web.

An excellent example of this is UK stag and hen organisers Adventure Connections who have devoted their homepage to a range of branded videos which describe their services, ‘sell’ their products and encourage readership in a way that pages of content just couldn’t.
Justin Sayers from Adventure Connections has reported:

“We’ve seen an instant increase in enquiries and customers seem to have more confidence in our brand, which, for a web based company, is excellent!”

In light of the competitive nature of the stag and hen industry, Adventure Connections sought to differentiate themselves from the websites of their competitors by adding value to how they communicated and the choice and format of video played a crucial role in how the company sought to drive forward this strategy.

Opting for professionally recorded video content which employed the services of two trained actors and a blue screen with which to superimpose further video content of the activities, Adventure Connections were rewarded with a range of high quality branded videos, which undoubtedly contribute to the professionalism of the website, the perception of the Adventure Connections brand, and, as Justin Sayers has reported, an increase in conversions.

This user centric approach serves the needs of the ever savvy user, who craves information and will just as quickly move off your website if they cannot find the information they need, and multimedia content is another tool to effectively communicate.

But multimedia content needn’t stop at video, as the use of podcasting technology represents a further opportunity to demonstrate authority in your sector by communicate news, interviews and other discussions in the form of a downloadable podcast, over, or in additional to, traditional static pages.

Therefore the opportunity to increase your conversions is presented when harnessing multimedia content, which can

- Heighten the perception of your brand
- Cement your position as an authority within your field
- Enhance the user experience
- Naturally attracts links to your website
- Differentiate from your competitions and
- Encourage customers to visit the other pages of your website or ‘find out more’

In this age of competitively, engagement is a key consideration, and this is just one reason why multimedia content is good for you.

(Lights, Camera, Action - from Flickr)

What's the point of optimising images?

With Google Universal Search now in full swing there is even more opportunity to see your website content rank on the search engines. And I am here to divulge to all you lucky readers just how to optimise the image content on your site to do just that.

By optimising all the images on your site you can increase your chances of higher rankings within search results for relevant keywords and therefore drive increased amounts of traffic to your site.

Optimise your image alt attributes
So what is an alt attribute and how can it help you achieve world domination? (Well, perhaps not quite.) Alt attributes are tags given to an image that use relevant search terms to describe what the image is. If a browser is unable to display an image it is the descriptive information within the alt tag that is shown instead. Placing search terms within the alt attributes for certain images will aid rankings.

Google is like a blind robot when it comes to viewing images, so no matter how pretty / humorous / absolutely fantastic your image may be the only aspect Google can appreciate of it is how you describe it in the alt tag. So, bearing this in mind here are some tips on how to make sure your images aid rankings and visibility:

• Ensure all images have an alt tag containing relevant search terms but also describing if the image is an illustration, photo, graphic etc. For example, if you have a photo of a dog wearing sunglasses and a sombrero the alt tag would look like this:

< src="dog-wearing-sunglasses-and-sombrero.gif"> alt="Dog wearing sunglasses and sombrero" >

Try not to be ambiguous with the alt tag description, it should be descriptive but not keyword filled. The alt tag text will be displayed in the search engine results so relevant search terms are essential in encouraging users to click on your image.

• Build relevant words into the file name and organise images into relevant folders. You should place photos into a photo folder on your site so the image url contains the word "photos" and the same for graphics and illustrations. Make sure once you have decided on a logical folder structure for images that you don't change it otherwise this will affect your rankings. An example of an optimised file name looks like this:
  www.abc.co.uk/photos/dog-wearing-sunglasses-and-sombrero.gif

Notice the use of a dash (-) between the words in the title of the image. This is the most search engine friendly way of labelling images as Google commonly interprets this as a space in the file name.

• Have relevant textual content surrounding your images, perhaps explaining what they are.

To summarise: Remember to make the tags highly relevant to the content of the image as this could lead to your images gaining their own individual rankings within universal search and Google Image search. Use tags and descriptions on images to drive search.

Once visitors are on your site thanks to the above optimisation techniques you need to optimise your images to convert for you. And as luck would haveit, I also have some tips on how you can use images to reap the rewards from your increase in search engine traffic.
Images for conversion
Ultimately, any images you place on your site which can be located via search on Google Image search or appearing in Google Universal Search are a possible means of driving traffic to your site which may result in conversions. Follow the tips below to increase the likelihood of your images converting visitors for you:

• Let your images tell a story. If your image is of a product available to purchase on your site then take photos of someone using the product or the product in use. Or if your site sells a service then include photos of customers participating in that service. See the example below for the product "apple peeler":

  

• Include labels pointing to different parts of an image to detail what each part is / what it does. An example of this can be seen below for the Sony Playstation 3:

• Join Google Webmaster Tools and opt in for Google Images. Within Google Webmaster Tools it is possible to view top search queries for images that drove traffic to the site. This information can be helpful when writing relevant alt tags for images on the site and for finding out what types of images drive traffic to your site. To view this information you must log in to your Google Webmaster account,click on "Statistics" on the left hand navigation then select "top search queries" from the drop down menu. Once in this section click on the arrow next to "All searches - All Locations" and under the "Search type" drop down menu select "images".

• If the images on your site are available to view as thumbnail images then there must be the option to view these images full-size to encourage conversions.

So there you have it folks...some easy-to-implement tips to see your images ranking in search engine results. I'll leave you with a quick tip overview to get you on your way:

1) Write relevant alt tags
2) Write relevant image file names
3) Decide on a logical file structure for images
4) Surround images with relevant textual content
5) Consider photos of product / service in use
6) Consider including labels on images
7) Use Google Webmaster Tools
8) Provide large scale image sizes


Image sources:
www.zesco.com
www.theregister.co.uk

Leapfrogg are on the move!

On Tuesday of this week we received the keys to our new offices! Having come on leaps and bounds (sorry!!) over the last year we have made the commitment to a huge, leased office space that we can very much make our own! Woo hoo! There is still much work to be done before we are ready to move in so we thought a few 'before and after' shots would be of interest.

Main office space


Main office space (its so big not even the panoramic view on the camera will fit it all in!)


More of the main office space - what will be the meeting area


The cable guy and office manager Jody deep in discussion!


What will be the kitchen and chill out area

So as you can see lots to be done before we move in on the 28th April! Check back then for the 'after' shots.

Until then...