Local-ness becomes an important marketing factor in the search results

Thursday, May 17, 2012

Imagine you're Google, Bing or Yahoo. Every single day countless thousands, if not millions, of new websites are created, each one different. Exploring and indexing them is probably the easy bit. But how on earth do they keep the search results 'fair' with so much new stuff coming on board? 

After all, when punters make a search we get a page of ten or so results on our screens, and most searches return millions of sites displayed 10 per page. How on earth can search engines organise, rank and rate all that data to deliver an ideal experience to searchers? 

The latest set of Google algorithm updates included a handful of significant local indicators. Which means that, in board terms, making your site more local will benefit your local visibility in the search results. 

Not much use, of course, if you're a national or international business. But if your prospects and customers tend to be in your area, it's really good news and dilutes the local online competitive landscape considerably. 

So how can you bring valuable local-ness into play? 

1. by adding your site to Google Places for business, which is free. According to Google 97% of us search for local businesses online. Google Places for business is a local platform from Google designed to help your business stand out. You can add images, special offers and video, post live updates and respond to reviews. You'll find out all sorts of useful insights about your business too, as well as learning about the people who buy from you: stuff like the keywords they’re using and where they've come from 
2. Add local content to your website, including it in your meta description and page title, headers, sub-heads and within your content to show search engines that you operate locally
3. Use Google's free keyword research tool to identify the most popular local search terns and use them within your site content, taking care not to resort to keyword stuffing (using words and phrases too often in an attempt to manipulate the search results) or using them when there's no benefit to searchers, for example bunging a list at the foot of a page for no other reason than for search engines to pick up
4. advertise locally, online and offline
5. encourage local back-links to your website by creating content that local people like to share   
6. build up a community of local people on Twitter or your favourite social network, so Google can pick up local 'social signals'

What is link bait, why is it useful and how do you create it?

Thursday, May 10, 2012

The more people your website attracts, the better. The more visitors you get, the more excited search engines become about your site and the better your eventual natural search positions. If your visitors enjoy your content enough they'll link back to it so your back-link profile - which search engines use a an indicator of your site's relevance and quality - will improve. And if they're targeted visitors who already have a keen interest in the stuff you sell, even better: a proportion of them will buy from you. 

Link bait is all about attracting people to your website. The phrase means a piece of content that a higher number of people than average enjoy linking back to and sharing with their contacts. If you're very fortunate - and it happens rarely - you hit on something that folk can't get enough of and it goes ballistic. As a result you get a huge surge in visitors or, even better, a steady stream over a long period of time as your content is shared around the online world.

Link bait is anything and everything that catches people's attention. Here's a list of the kind of things you can do on-site to create a potential stir: 

1. react to breaking news and trending topics
2. interview someone fantastic 
3. be outrageous / controversial
4. amuse people
5. upload amazing images or video
6. take a strong stance and stick your head above the parapet
7. expose something scandalous or hilarious
8. set up a survey...
9. ...or provoke a reaction with the results of a survey
10. carry out / analyse unique research 
11. set up competitions and awards
12. create a cool infographic ( pre-internet we just called them diagrams!)
13. make an appeal for feedback / solicit opinions
14. give something cool away for free
15. create an exciting ongoing story that unfolds steadily over time
16. write previews / reviews
17. provide insider information / insights
18. give away precious information
19. be disarmingly honest and straightforward
20. take the mickey 

Top seven common sense tips for website excellence

Thursday, January 26, 2012

When was the last time you lingered longer than you needed to on a website simply because you enjoyed being there so much? 

If you have a favourite site, why do you like it more than similar sites that do or sell the same stuff? Is it because it looks better, sounds better, is full of useful stuff or a dream to navigate compared to competing sites?

It's worthwhile analysing your favourite and least favourite websites to see what you can learn, then applying your conclusions back to your own site. 

Here's seven top tips to help you achieve website excellence:

1. how fast does your site load compared to your competitors, favourite sites and least favourite sites? If it takes longer than average, the usual culprit is football pitch-sized images. Take a look at your images and cut the file size right down so they load like s*it off a blanket. Or so the saying goes! 
2. is your layout a nightmare of complexity compared to other sites? If your site has got out of control and you can't see the wood for the trees, it's probably time to pare it back and simplify your online offering. There's an added benefit: simple sites load and perform better on mobile, smartphone and tablet screens than complicated sites
3. check your site code using a free tool like Html Tidy, which cleans up extraneous bits of code, corrects mistakes and formats your pages so they're optimised for search engines 
4. how many words do you have on each page? Does your sales message go on and on or is it so short it doesn't give the full story? A good average to aim for is 350 words per page, which seems to suit human readers and search engines perfectly, but at the end of the day you need to make your sales argument in as many words as you need to do a great job of it... no more and no less. What does 'a great job' entail? It means expressing what you need to say clearly and succinctly, in as much detail as people need to make a buying decision
5. what does your site sound like? Are you using Plain English, with a capital P, as dictated by the Plain Language Society? Or has a load of jargon and business speak crept in? It doesn't matter whether you're operating in a business-to-business or business-to-consumer landscape. People are people, whether or not they work in business, and plain language always sells better than gobbledegook
6. how fresh is your site content? Very few of us work in a sector that stays static as the years go by. Most businesses go through changes and your site should reflect the changing landscape, promoting the fact that you're on the ball and keeping up with the likes, dislikes and demands of your target market
7. ditch Flash content. Adobe has stopped supporting Flash and it's time to stop using it altogether. Which is no bad thing since flashy, whizzy bits of animation aren't anywhere near as important to buyers as good, basic, solid, commercially powerful content

Use benefits to strengthen your sales message

Thursday, January 19, 2012

The most powerful sales messages focus on features and benefits. 

What's the difference? 

Say you sell website design services. A feature of your service might be that you design sites on the planet's best content management system. The benefit? Your customer can manage their new website easily and quickly without expert help, saving a great deal of time and money and putting them in full control of their online presence. 

Another feature might be that you've got twenty years' graphic design experience behind you. The customer benefit? The end result is so beautiful that it reduces site visitors to tears of admiration and joy... so much so that they simply can't resist buying.

Features and benefits belong together and support one another. But have a rummage around t'internet and you'll see an awful lot of sites focusing on features with not so much of a sniff of a benefit. This is good news for the people who get it right because it gives them a significant commercial advantage in a competitive landscape. 

Using benefits and features in tandem makes it easy to get a compelling, logical rhythm going and build an unbeatable sales proposition: 

• Because our product does X, you get Y
• Unlike other products, which only do A, we do B as well. Which means you enjoy A and B all in one go, saving time and hassle
• If you're a discerning customer you'll love our D, which delivers the best E experience this side of Mars
• Our P service means you get the best Qs in the market... every time     

You get the picture! 

The top 5 marketing New Year resolutions for 2012

Thursday, January 12, 2012

2011 was a bumper year for marketers, potentially one of the most exciting and fast-changing years since t'internet went mainstream. Bearing in mind everything that happened last year, what are the top five marketing resolutions for 2012?

1. Resolve to get your site in shape for the ongoing mobile revolution in 2012: mobile web hit the big time in 2011 and 2012 will see more of the same. You don't necessarily need a special mobile site. It depends how your existing site displays on a small screen. In an ideal world your site will be so simple and 'flat' in structure that it already displays perfectly well on smartphones and tablets.  
2. Get your conversion analysis act together: 2012 saw online marketing continuing to mature as, like generations of direct marketers before them, online marketers discovered the value of analysing visitor and conversion data. Familiarising yourself with your webstats puts you in a position of power. Including tracking in every campaign, in one form or another, is vital if you want to plan your marketing properly and allocate your budget sensibly. You need to know which marketing initiatives work best.
3. Keep your eye on Social Media Marketing: you might want to dive right in during 2012. Or just keep your eye on how things unfold. SMM is still very new and the jury's out as to whether it's the best way to spend your marketing energy. There's nothing wrong with holding back until the social media picture clears
4. Treat keywords with respect: search engine algorithms are much more sophisticated than they used to be. They can spot keyword stuffing a mile off. Which is good news all round. Keyword-stuffed copy sounds like shit, pardon my French, and while it used to give sites high prominence and win more visitors, it didn't exactly have a beneficial impact on sales. So feel free to write really well in 2012, pleasing search engines and human visitors!
5. Aim for the best possible quality online content: Google carried out thousands of algorithm updates over 2011. The most noticeable, named Panda and Caffeine by the SEO industry, were concerned with 'quality' and 'freshness'. And you can bet your last quid that updates in 2012 will also have quality-related aims like freshness, usefulness and relevance at their heart. Resolve to put the visitor first in 2012 and you won't go far wrong.

Effective marketing in one hour a day

Thursday, January 05, 2012

Unless you're a marketer by trade, marketing your business is probably one of your biggest day-to-day challenges. 

Thank goodness for elephant sandwiches. Allocating an hour a day to marketing is a sensible way to achieve a reasonable amount within a reasonable timescale with minimal stress and strain.

Here's just a few of the things you can do to improve your business's online and offline profile in just one hour. It's amazing what you can achieve in just five working days! 

1. create and schedule in two blog posts for the coming week
2. write a press release and distribute it by email to your local free/paid press and national trade publications
3. add your business to twenty or more online directories using a simple semi-automated directory submission tool like easysubmits.com
4. create and populate a Facebook page for your business
5. maintain your Facebook page

Here's five more. After a fortnight you'll already have a considerable amount of positive, useful, solid marketing activity under your belt. 

1. set up a Twitter account and follow your first 100+ prospects
2. edit two of your website pages so your sales message is absolutely spot on
3. research and identify your top five key words or phrases for SEO 
4. write and distribute two online articles 
5. set up your first Google AdWords or Bing Pay Per click test 

The OneZeroSquared experiment - Talking the talk AND walking the walk!

Thursday, November 24, 2011

As a general rule it's wise to put your money where your mouth is. That way you can rely on the courage of your convictions for real. How many more cliches can I come up with in one paragraph? Just watch me...!

Chris waxes lyrical about Adobe Business catalyst. He spent months and months researching every detail of a wide variety of CMS before deciding on ABC as the best platform for business websites. And now he's set up a genuine ecommerce venture so he can experience the ABC ecommerce platform from an end user, business owner perspective too. 

Instead of spending weeks on end working up the perfect e-commerce site from scratch, writing the code as you go, Chris has used ABC's unbeatable intuitive design tools to build a site that looks great - funky and contemporary - as well as working absolutely beautifully. 

Most content creation and management systems are built with a technical focus. Adobe goes several steps further by building the potential for great design into their model too. Having brought Photoshop and InDesign to a grateful creative sector, they're perfectly qualified to create a system that delivers considerable eye candy as well as full functionality. 

Anyway, I digress. The point is that Chris's new site is built on the ABS platform so it's rock solid and works like a dream as well as being great to look at. His design skills shine through, as does his sense of humour, in a collection of unique and occasionally contentious T-shirts, designed to deliver belly laughs and wry grins all round (he'll be blushing now - gotcha Chris!) and he hints at adding hand-made screen prints and more artistic delights soon.  

As a suck-it-and-see type of gal, I've just made a diary note to purchase a T-shirt or two with the festive season in mind. A man can't have too many t-shirts and mine is a case in point. Great fun!

 Here's a link: www.onezerosquared.com
 

Ecommerce: Is passion a friend or enemy?

Thursday, May 26, 2011

There's a lot to be said for enthusiasm. But, according to some experts, passion isn't necessarily the best guest to bring to your small business party.  

John Bradberry, an American business expert and writer, believes passion is dangerously addictive. Feeling impassioned delivers a small but potent emotional 'high'. Unless you're uncannily self-aware it's all to easy to lose your grip on commercial reality as a result. Taken too far, passion makes people delusional, convinced the market supports their plans even when the evidence clearly points in the opposite direction. 

Bradberry recommends a cool, clear, analytic and objective small business head. His advice? Never make assumptions. Check the facts every time. And base your small business's structure, direction and growth strategies on empirical rock. Not emotional sand. 

But sometimes passion is essential. A case in point? Communications and marketing. You can sell the most exciting product in the known universe. But if you make it sound boring, you're dead in the water. On the other hand, if you find yourself coming across like an evangelist it's probably time to curb your enthusiasm a little! 

Hm. A bit of a balancing act. It's dangerous to give your passionate inclinations full rein when creating your website content, marketing materials and whatnot. But there's a surprising amount of sales value in genuine enthusiasm, in a world where so many ecommerce outfits manage to make their products and services seem as dry as dust. 

If you're a slave to it, make a point of checking everything you do to make sure your passion shines through... without drowning your message and eventually wrecking your business on the pointy rocks of eccentricity and obsession!

Plain English sells - Make sure your site's free of gobbledegook!

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Who is your target market? Even if you're selling B2B, there's seldom - if ever - a good reason to use jargon, over-complicated or overly formal language.

How come? Because no matter who your target market is, business or consumer, they're human beings. And most of us are either too short of time, busy or impatient to faff about decoding gobbledegook. 
 
The key to successful marketing communications - which covers absoolutely everything from your website to email campaigns, brochures, push pages, direct mail letters, adverts, advertorial and more - is clear expression. And clear expression means plain English. 

Plain English is all about expressing yourself without waffle and jargon. It steers clear of long words when there's a short alternative. And, vitally, it's about 'owning' your communications.

What does that mean? Instead of saying 'Contact will be made once you've completed the application form', which is distant, aloof and sounds like an extract from a police crime report, say 'We will contact you when you've filled in your application form'. See what I mean? It's friendly, clear, open and personal. And it sounds more honest, transparent and approachable. 
  
How do you write plainly? The Plain Language Commission provides loads of free guidance. Plus writing skills courses, general editing services, readability reports, books and a newsletter. Which is great stuff. But there's an easier way. Write in exactly the same way as you'd speak and you can't go wrong... as long as you obey the rules for grammar and punctuation.

Get up close and intimate with your ecommerce site

Thursday, April 07, 2011

How much do you know about the inner workings of your ecommerce website?

If you usually hand everything - even the smallest change - over to a designer or webmaster, that's fine. But do you feel completely at ease not having any control over your web presence? Without the faintest clue how on earth the dratted thing works behind the scenes?

Many of us feel pretty vulnerable and would prefer some measure of control, knowledge or expertise. But getting to grips with the fine detail at the dirty end of ecommerce - the raw code - is far too time consuming. It's an area of expertise in itself.
 
One of the best things about the system Chris uses to design and administrate websites, Adobe Business Catalyst, is the level of control it gives people like you. You don't need to know a thing about code. The way the platform is set up gives you a sound intuitive grip on the way your ecommerce site is structured, what affects what and what connects to what.

Control freaks love it. You can run your site entirely by yourself if you want. If you're happy letting someone else deal with the guts of your ebusiness, you can do that too. Or go half and half, learning the basics but passing the actual hands-on administration to someone else. The level of involvement you choose is up to you... and it feels really good to have a choice. 

If your website doesn't sit on an all-singing, all-dancing, proven and highly respected content management system, jump ship as soon as you can and grab back control! Just call or email Chris for details.