Google’s social rival, the massively popular micro blogging site Twitter, are on the forefront of the accusing camp. After the new search algorithm was launched by Google, Twitter accused Google of trying to drive traffic to their social network by manipulating search results. A Twitter representative made the following statement: “For years, people have relied on Google to deliver the most relevant results any time they wanted to find something on the internet. As we’ve seen time and time again, news breaks first on Twitter, as a result, Twitter accounts and tweets are often the most relevant results. We’re concerned that as a result of Google’s changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone. We think that’s bad for people, publishers, news organisations and Twitter users”.

Personally, I think Twitter has a point. Twitter has had a massive social impact over the last few years (the “Twitter Revolutions” for example) and breaking news can often be found first on Twitter. If results from Twitter (or any other site for that matter) is the most relevant, the information should be available first in Google search results. This also ties in with the aforementioned Search Engine Optimisation. If you have to compete with only slightly relevant data from Google itself, you’re in for a losing battle. One option is to embrace the change from a social marketing perspective. But is this really best for the user?

In conclusion, it seems that many are worried that relevant results get pushed down in favour of Google + content. Fundamentally, relevancy is what it all boils down to. Google might not be in the wrong here, they are certainly entitled to promote their social network, but they should not compromise the quality of their search results in the process.

Twitter/Facebook - image credit - www.cbsnews.com

Having all the Personalised content from Google Plus mentioned above weaved into search result pages might not be welcomed by everyone. And at first glance it might seem to completely change the way we approach SEO. A lot of us in the field of Search Engine Optimization have been preparing for the day that search gets social. The option to switch between Global and Personalized results however, came as a surprise. Users can choose whether or not they want to use personalised search. This essentially means that current SEO practices still play the same role as always.

One cannot, however, predict the changes Google will make in the future, and tapping into the SEO potential of Personalised Search will play an increasingly important role in a Search Marketing campaign. Google might require us to be logged in at all times to use any of its features, including search. Even if this happens, I believe traditional SEO will remain alive and well. In its core, SEO is about optimization for the user, to optimize websites in order to facilitate and improve the search experience. This will always remain relevant.

With Search engine optimisation (SEO) you not only build brand awareness, but more importantly, you gain trust within your industry. The higher the ranking of your site in the search results, and the more frequently your page appears on the results pages, the more visitors and sales you’ll have, because you are targeting people who are looking for your product. Being listed on top of search engine results also almost automatically cements your company as a market leader.

Trust + brand awareness + more visitors = more sales.

So what is SEO? SEO (or Search Engine Optimisation) is the process of structuring a web page so that it is found, read, and indexed by search engines as effectively as possible. It improves the visibility of your website in search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing.

These search engines use crawlers to follow links from one page to another and retrieve the contents. This is indexed and added to their databases. Search engines’ web crawlers rank sites according to their relevance to search terms, which is calculated using criteria such as the extent of keyword matches and the number of sites linked to a website. Done properly, SEO ensures that, when users search for terms relevant to your business, they will find your website every time.

Unique content counts. Having professionally written, relevant copy on your site (different from the content on other sites in wording, structure and topics) can provide a big boost for your site’s rankings. Frequency of content change is also a must – not small changes to existing content, but new content which shows that your website is active and dynamic.

One advantage of PPC is that it is a lot more flexible than SEO, you can cover a lot more keywords than with a SEO campaign, so while you optimize your SEO campaign to rank high for your beter performing keywords you can also target a whole range of other keywords to drive people to your site.

I want to show a comparative report on how these can work together and especially how you can  even double your visits if you do SEO together with your PPC campaign.

For one of our clients we started doing SEO more than 2 years ago, you can really see a difference in the traffic they get. The graph below shows visits from the first of January 2009 to the 30^th of September 2010. The orange line  represents Paid traffic and one thing you can clearly see from it is that they haven’t increased their Adwords budget, it stayed the  same. If you look at the green line which represents organic traffic you will see that it gradually got more, up to a point 7 months ago where it started outperforming the PPC traffic.

The quality of the visits don’t differ a lot however, the bounce rate, average time spent and page views are a bit beter on SEO traffic than the PPC. The blue line indicates the total visits to the website, so you can imagine what the difference would have been if the client only focused on PPC or SEO. By doing both PPC and SEO you can maximize your reach to clients looking for your services.

By looking at these statistics you can clearly see how SEO traffic grows over time and how it can work together with PPC to give you a great Search Marketing campaign. So if you are just doing just PPC or SEO at the moment, you have now seen what your traffic can look like when you combine it.

Search engine optimization in essence is the practice of altering and tweaking a website and factors outside of your website to gain higher rankings in organic listings for targeted search terms. Organic listings are also referred to as natural listings these are the results that are not “paid for” (Payments to search engines that is).

Now a big misconception which people quite often make is that SEO is firstly an once off thing and secondly is something cheap. Now back when search engine’s started to become popular it might have been cheaper to rank well but since the benefit of ranking well in search engine result pages has been noticed it has become quite competitive. Thus it takes experts to analyze competitors to make sure you do more than your competitors to out rank them.

It also definitely isn’t a once off thing. Once you reach your rankings you will need to ensure you keep one step ahead of your competitors. Thus there are definitely costs associated with SEO which is determined by the vertical your company is classed in, the state of your website and what your current rankings are. SEO is also definitely a bespoke service and as such this adds to the cost and time needed to work out an effective strategy.

We have achieved some amazing results for our clients by using SEO. I’m going to look at 3 of our clients who have reached great results since signing up for SEO.

In our first example above (Company One) you can see we have done an comparison of their organic traffic compared from July 2007 to July 2010. We started this campaign off 3 years ago and have been constantly working with this company advising them on every step they take. They compete in quite a competitive vertical so it is important to be involved every step of the way. They did initially have some organic traffic before we started as indicated by the green line on the graph above but from the graph above you can see that this was nothing compared to what we have helped them achieve by utilizing SEO. We trebled their organic traffic in the last three years, which was a phenomenal feat. This has lead to our client becoming leaders in their relative industry.

Our second example is Company Two, who competes on a less competitive vertical. They started out with very limited organic traffic and no SEO strategy as well as website that was not search engine friendly at all. We helped them transform their website and define a SEO strategy both of which has helped them achieve the amazing results you see on the graph above. Their organic results have grown by a 613%.

Our last example is of side project we started in our company with the goal of turning it into a business. We thus had the opportunity to work with it from start to end. We created a website which would target our audience and use a very clearly defined SEO strategy. This meant me could develop the website with this strategy in mind. This resulted in us completely overshooting all our targets and building an extremely profitable on-line business driven by only organic traffic. The traffic in this comparison shows a growth of 890%.

So now that you have a few examples of what SEO can do for a company, do you really think you can compete without it? Feel free to drop us a line to find out how SEO could be helping your company. Have a great week and check in again for our case studies on social media and it’s benefits.

Now how has branding changed? Traditional media such as TV, banner and radio ads has always been important for branding as it reaches such a wide audience. It has also traditionally created trust in the brand with the audience because they believe that a company is successful when it can afford to advertise on these expensive mediums. Thus the company must be “good” if they have enough funds to advertise on these mediums.

Today the situation has changed – people have become lazy. Now that’s quite a bold statement but I say this in relation to branding and traditional media because a new step has been added to buying process. Traditional media creates a need with customers but the online world has become the medium that fulfills that need. So now people turn to search to find what they are looking for instead of memorizing what they hear or saw on advertising. Thus branding has lost some of its power when not closing the cycle by making sure your brand is also found when people look for your company.

So SEO has become part of the branding process and there are two ways SEO has a branding effect.

1. Branding by ranking on generic keywords

The first is branding you receive when users find your company in the results on some of the more generic keywords for your products or services. This is for instance if your company specializes in laptop sales and you rank high for the keywords [buying a laptop] or something similar.

2. Branding by reach of exposure

This is when your reach is wider, which you achieve by ranking for lots of long tail keyword searches such as [sony viao 13 laptop battery]. Your company can then establish itself as an expert on the subject, which also creates trust and branding for your company.

These two methods are quite different and require you to build in an approach to target each in your SEO strategy. They can both have phenomenal effects on your branding but also on your sales as you might shorten the buying process. Once you have a customer on your site and you have created trust for your company it improves your company’s chances dramatically of making the sale.

I hope this brief overview has been informative feel free to leave a comment or subscribe to our RSS.

Now in today’s world and with the emergence of web 2.0 it has become vitally important for us to control our personal brand. Why you may ask? Well you quite often attend conferences and networking session to promote yourself and build up contacts. This is a way of advertising your personal brand. Now in today’s age the online world has become so entwined in our lives that it is almost impossible to separate the two. Now what does that mean for your personal brand? Well in whichever stage of your life you may find yourself, you need to make sure you control what people find when the search for you online. Thus if you search for your name you should find your own web properties. For instance if you search for “Chris Calitz” you will find my personal blog with contact information for me and links to my social presence online ie. Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin.

Thus I have made sure people find info about me, which I control. This means I can then further advertise myself by simply making changes to the web properties I own. Now Emil gave you a quite detailed explanation of how to setup a Wordpress site but you need to take this a step further. You need to do some SEO on your website to ensure you are the first result in search engines for your branded terms.

Now luckily most of our branded terms are not qualified as very competitive keywords for instance “Chris Calitz” is not a very competitive term so the SEO I needed to do was not that extensive. If you do however have a name such as Richard Branson you might have a problem.

1. Choosing a domain name

Now the first step I would recommend is that you buy a domain name that contains your branded terms. So if your brand online and offline is based on your name try to buy a domain containing your name. For instance John Doe or Joe Bloggs would buy johndoe.com or joebloggs.com. Choosing a domain extension isn’t as important if your brand doesn’t compete with a competitive keyword phrases but if you are competing with Richard Branson you might need to make smart decisions. For instance if you are based in South Africa you could buy the local extension richardbranson.co.za, which is available I checked. This could give you a bit of a head start as you will be able to rank higher in South Africa but this isn’t a guarantee.

2. Finding inexpensive links

Now in SEO links are probably the most important ranking factor at the moment. Thus you need to build some links for your site. Now as this is not a difficult vertical to rank for you will only need a few inexpensive ones. You could search online for a few free directories to submit your site to which should ensure you have enough links. Some examples are www.sabest.co.za, www.dmoz.org, www.ananzi.co.za etc.

3. Deciding on anchor text and description

Now before you submit your sites you need to ensure you have decided on anchor text you want to use. These should be branded terms and should vary. For instance “Chris Calitz” and “chriscalitz”. These will be used for the text of the links you receive and they will be important in determining for which keywords you rank.

4. Lastly have content related to your branded terms

You need to ensure that you at least have a page with content or that your homepage has content where the branded phrases you want to rank for is mentioned.

This should put you well on your way to controlling your online brand. Feel free to leave some questions below and check in tomorrow as we will discuss how PPC could help you market your brand.

This week we will have a look at why you need to get professional help for your website, from the management of the website to all types of online marketing that can be utilised. The online marketing industry is an ever changing environment and if you are running your own company and still need to keep track of all the best practices needed to stay ahead something will get left behind.

Online marketing professionals work with websites and the marketing thereof everyday and trusting a company to handle your website might be worth a lot more than just the extra money that you will spend for their services.

People that I’ve met that ran their own PPC campaigns for example, realized that it was getting too involved for them to manage it properly. After handing it over to us they could focus more on their business and performance of the PPC campaigns also improved. Trying to do SEO yourself might be a bit more tricky because SEO is a lot more technical. You need someone that understands the technical side of how websites and search engines work to do that properly. Managing your social media marketing by yourself might work for a while but you will soon realize that as it grows that it will become time consuming, and you will never get to everything that you have to and do proper management of your Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Do check back here the rest of the week for more reasons why you should use an online marketing expert.

People don’t only go online for social reasons though but a lot of time online is also spend either doing research on their next holiday or the next camera they want to purchase. This trend will only increase as users end up spending more and more time online as they discover what all they can do online.

This is why it is vitally important for you to have an website these days even if you are a little guest house located in the middle of nowhere. In all likelihood people still need your service there and your clients will love you if you make it easier for them to find you by having a website.

Now that I have hopefully convinced you to go get your business a website you can’t stop there. You need to make sure you create an online presence for your website. Now there are a few ways to do this, which work the best when done together, but I will only discuss SEO.

Most users make use of search engines to find what they are looking for be it by typing in what they are looking for in the address bar and their default search engine answering them or them visiting a search engine like Google and searching for it there. SEO is the process of ensuring when visitor search for something that relates to your website that they will find you as an option to fulfil their need.

Thus SEO creates a presence online by offering your company, as an option to fulfil your visitors needs. Now you can’t be everywhere at the same time in real life neither can your website thus it’s important that you ensure you create your online presence with this in mind. You need to target users that are actually looking for your services and not everything related to your company or products. For this reason it is vitally important to ensure you create the right online presence with SEO.

Now to evaluate if you have created the right online presence is not that easy it will take constant monitoring and understanding of what users are actually doing on your website.  Examples would be that if you see that you have a high bounce rate your visitors aren’t finding your content relevant to what they where searching for or your online presence is targeting the wrong users. My best advice for this would be to constantly monitor it and make deductions based on your evaluations of what is happening on your website.

I want to end by rehashing the fact that SEO only forms part of a strategy to create an online presence. You will need to make sure you cover all aspects as the way people are finding what they need is changing as the internet changes so make sure your business stays up to date.

That is why effective online marketing is vitally important. It is essential to have a strong online presence and not be just another needle in the proverbial haystack.

The two main ways to create an online presence is through Pay Per Click advertising and through Search Engine Optimisation. Both of these methods work very well but each one has it’s advantages and disadvantages.

SEO

SEO is where the website is optimized to perform beter for certain keywords on the Search Engine Result Pages. It involves fixing the code of the website and optimising the content for the desired keywords. With SEO your goals are more long term, as it takes time for your pages and changes to your pages to be indexed by the search engines as well as getting a good rank for your keywords.

PPC

Pay Per Click is a type of advertising that is used on websites and search engines. You set up an ad that will display when certain criteria is met and you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. It works on a bidding system, you compete against other advertisers for the top spot. The placement of your ad all depends on what you are willing to spend per click as well as the relevance of your ad and content to the specific keyword you are bidding on. PPC is a lot more flexible than SEO because you can start and modify campaigns in a couple of minutes. You can see results instantly, so it is good to get a PPC campaign going while you are busy optimizing your site to perform beter organically.

The rest of the week these services will be discussed in more detail, so do come back to find out more.