Posts tagged search
Reputation, reputation, reputation is key to online success
Dec 1st
When it comes to doing business online, you can mess with your location as much as you like – but don’t risk your reputation.
If you build a good reputation on the web, people will link to you. If people link to you, other people will follow those links, and you will build up your traffic and your business. And the more good quality and relevant links you have, the higher you will rise up the search engine listings. More and better links means better rankings on Google, too.
Whether buying a house or opening a shop, there’s an old saying that the most important factors are location, location and location. But how does this work out on the internet?
Your web server can be physically located in a data centre almost anywhere in the world. Potentially, you can run an online business as effectively from a beach in Majorca as you could on Oxford Street.
One of our customers a few years ago even succeeded in managing his store while halfway up Mount Everest!
So when it comes to doing business online, you can mess with the location as much as you like. But the one thing you don’t want to mess with is your reputation.
If by action or inaction you manage to damage your reputation, the world can hear about it very quickly; via Facebook, MySpace, Digg, del.icio.us, Twitter. There is an endless list of media by which disgruntled customers can spread their complaints about your business. Do you monitor them? Would you know?
On the internet it’s not location, location, location; it’s reputation, reputation, reputation that counts.
That means selling a quality product at a fair price, and looking after your customers. It also means watching what’s being said about you in social and interactive media, and taking every opportunity to intervene positively and turn disappointed customers around.
Why you need to create ‘made for mobile’ websites
Nov 26th
Having a website isn’t enough for brands. You need to go mobile!
Mobile web browser Opera Mini has said that usage around the world has jumped 11% in just a month, highlighting the importance of brands having a presence of the web.
Data transfers have gained 16% as around 40 million people used Opera Mini in October. That’s an 11.3% increase from September 2009 and more than 155% compared to October 2008.
As mobile web use is clearly growing rapidly, it is important that your site has not only a good, usable mobile presence, but it is also essential that it be visible in mobile search.
These days, as a marketer, you can’t ignore mobile users. The rate at which consumers are accessing the web via mobile devices is growing rapidly, largely thanks to the increasing popularity and production of smartphones. This opens up a whole new platform from which to reach people with ads and it is certainly not enough to just get by with banners, search and display as they’d appear on the ‘normal’ web.
Many companies and brands have spent the last couple of years or so redesigning their web pages to fit the mobile screen. The introduction of apps has meant these brands and companies can have a completely new product available for the web and it’s made to size.
Just having a mobile site isn’t even enough anymore. Users have to be able to find it and just because you have a good ranking in Google does not mean that your mobile site has a good ranking in Google’s mobile search engine, or is even indexed at all.
Google recently shared a few important tips for making sure your mobile site is being indexed in Google’s Mobile Search:
1. Create a mobile sitemap and submit it to Google so Google knows it exists. This can be done using Google Webmaster Tools, just like with a regular sitemap.
2. To make sure Googlebot-Mobile can access your site, allow any User-agent to access it (you should also be aware that Google may change its User-agent information at any time without notice, so it is not recommended that you check if the User-agent exactly matches ‘Googlebot-Mobile’).
3. Check that your mobile-friendly URLs’ DTD (Doc Type Definition) declaration is in an appropriate mobile format such as XHTML Mobile or Compact HTML.
Also, keep in mind that if you run both a regular site and a mobile version of it, there is a possibility that the wrong version will show up in the wrong search results.
Another way you can make sure a user is pointed to the right version of your site is simply to provide a link. That’s what Google does (if you access the mobile version of Google, you will find a link to the desktop version).
Business networking strikes back
Nov 19th
Bruce Townsend, online marketing expert at ecommerce & EPOS supplier, Actinic (www.actinic.co.uk)
Only a few years ago, networking was the thing that greased the wheels of business. It wasn’t what you knew, but who you knew, that built the reputation of your company. Whether at exhibitions and events, or in the local Chambers of Commerce, pressing the flesh and chewing the fat with like-minded people was the way to put the word about. Handing out bits of free advice opened doors for the occasional sales pitch, and brought the business rolling in.
The worldwide web changed all that. The online channel became the new growth opportunity, and on the internet it wasn’t who you knew, but what you knew that counted. Early conversations were about HTML and Perl script and how to physically create an online presence. As technology became easier to use, and more companies went online, competition increased and the debate switched to PPC and SEO, and how to get your web site visible in search results.
Today, we may be on the cusp of another switch. In the UK, 90% of searches go through Google. For any given search, Google only offers twenty places in the first page of results, and ten of those are adverts. It’s getting crowded at the top, and harder and harder for new entries to gain visibility.
But fear not, because rescue may be at hand. And guess what, it’s good old-fashioned networking in another guise. More and more businesses are gaining a foothold and building a profile online using social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace, and business-oriented services like LinkedIn and Plaxo. Even Twitter, the bastard child of blogging and social networking, is being put to effective commercial use.
Initially dismissed by business skeptics, these sites are finding their place in the armoury of business marketing tools. Is your business represented there?
Who does Microsoft want to be and to whom?
Oct 23rd
The battle between tech giants Microsoft and Apple has now gone far behind those rather annoying ‘I’m a Mac, I’m a PC’ ads and is in full swing.
Both companies this week launched new products. Apple came out with some interesting new innovations including a 27 inch screen (the iMac) and Microsoft launched a number of new applications – which I think is actually a very interesting move for the company.
However, Microsoft has lacked much innovation in terms of new ideas. It seems the tech giant that once ruled the world is simply playing catch-up (does anybody remember Zune…who actually has one?).
Apple on the other hand, doesn’t even have to try. Its brand advocates are so loyal and besotted with this ‘hip and trendy’ brand that it doesn’t have to launch hundred of products a year – just a few new gadgets will do.
Anything Apple does is ‘revolutionary’ and instantly cool. Microsoft is still, well, Microsoft. A little outdated and is coming across as simply being, well, a little desperate.
Its launch of Bing earlier this year signaled a new fight as it took on search engine giant Google – trying to cash in on search marketing revenues. But is it too late? What will compel internet users to switch from Google, a brand they have great affinity with and have trusted for years (probably since they first began using the internet!)? It’ll have to be huge.
As a society we have to challenge the big players. We can’t let them have a monopoly on any given market and we need other companies to offer us alternatives – not everyone is the same. But is Microsoft trying too hard to be too many things to too many people and in the process losing site of itself?
Who knows what Microsoft stands for anymore, and furthermore, why would advertisers get on board if they can’t be exactly sure about what they brand does anymore and for whom?
The next ‘holy grail’ of search advertising?
Oct 9th
Micro-blogging site Twitter is in advanced talks with Google and Microsoft about licensing its data feed to the companies’ search engines!
This is very exciting news for all those brands and advertisers that currently use Twitter to release information about upcoming products and company news.
I personally think this is a brilliant idea, and if you’ve ever used Twitter Search you’ll know why – it’s a great way to follow trends, get the news straight from the horse’s mouth and find out what people are saying about you.
The ability to cull through the flood of tweets as they are posted is gaining popularity as an important new way to search the internet for up-to-the-minute information on the latest news events and happenings on.
Twitter’s discussions with Microsoft and Google are being conducted separately and would allow each company to incorporate the 140-character messages, or ‘tweets’, that Twitter is known for into their internet search results.
The AllThingsDigital blog (part of the Wall Street Journal) quoted unidentified sources as saying the companies are discussing several types of deals.
Details could include Twitter receiving a payment of several million dollars and various types of revenue-sharing agreements to allow Twitter to benefit from the ad revenue that Microsoft and Google generate from search results.
Twitter has emerged as one of the fastest-growing internet social media services due to the amount of businesses that use it to promote themselves and stay in touch in ‘real time’, however the company has yet to generate any significant revenue from its free service. Could this be the micro-blogging site’s ‘holy grail’ of revenues?
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