Flickr, the photo sharing website has been around for some time now but with the introduction of Flickr Badges and the advanced API; search engine specialists and web enthusiasts like ourselves are just coming to terms with its true potential. Why would we be content with just putting our photos on a website and sharing them with friends when we can reach world wide audiences and have our photos indexed in Google?

Account Structure

So after playing around with Flickr for well over a year now, we have come up with some great ways to help you optimise your Flickr accounts. The first thing you need to consider is the structure and theme of your account. Think of the keywords you would like to appear for and how you can break down your account into subsets. The subsets being individual or sets of related photo albums. So for example one of our clients, Undiscovered Alps, offers Multi Activity Holidays in the French Alps and has a subset called Snow Shoeing In the Alps. This subset then contains two albums which are based in different regions. This not only makes it easier for users to navigate but also makes the account highly targeted.

Collection Or Subset Descriptions

For each collection or subset you can also insert a description. This is very important as it is a perfect opportunity to include some keyword rich text. So for example in the Snow Shoeing In the Alps example you would want to include the words alps and snow shoeing. You may also want to include some links in the description that point through to your website. This is an ideal opportunity to drive traffic to your website which is of course one of the main objectives.

Writing Photograph Titles

Once you have worked your way through setting up your account structure and inserting descriptions, you will want to look at how you upload your individual photographs. Uploading photos is relatively straight forward but there are numerous ways to improve your chances of getting noticed. So typically we would start by looking at the titles. You may notice that most photos on Flickr are location based. So when writing your titles be sure to include specific locations or a particular brand, event or product name. Naming your photo’s me00012 or DSC000232 is going to make it incredibly difficult for people to find and gives no insight into what your photo is about. When writing titles keep them short, to the point and make sure you include your chosen keywords.

Writing Photograph Descriptions

After writing a great eye catching title, you will want to produce a photo description. Again this is another opportunity to include those all important keywords and links. It should be noted that you use highly specific anchor text for the links, however links on Flickr are ‘no followed’. This means search engines will not use them to gauge link popularity. We would recommend that you have around 3 or 4 lines for each description.

Adding Tags To Your Photos

The last thing you should look at when uploading photos is the tags. You may have noticed that most social media sites are using tags and this is because it allows people to find things by a specific keyword. With this in mind you should add tags that relate to your individual photos. So again location tags are useful and also the activity or event they are carrying out. Toronto and Mike maybe too vague so you might want to use something like Toronto and Mountain Biking. Think about what words your users would use.

Geo Tagging And Account Level Changes

There are also a couple of things you can do at account level. So you will definitely want to ensure that you have checked the ‘make photos publicly viewable’ option. This ensures that everyone can view your photos. Another really nifty feature which I picked up on recently is geo targeting. As mentioned before much of Flickr is based on location so being able to add your pictures to a map can be really useful. Setting it up is really easy and can make a real difference in your campaign targeting.

Engaging With The Community

Finally we recommend that you engage with the Flickr community. Find groups that have similar interests and post comments on their message boards. Be careful not to put blatant advertising messages on there. Have a look at what people are saying and join in with their conversations. The information gained from this engagement can really help in developing your own site further. You can find out what’s hot in the area and what people really want.

Conclusion

Flickr is undoubtedly a great tool and will work better in some areas rather than others. If you do decide you are going to use Flickr to help promote your business you should set out a clear plan about what you want to achieve. So you will need to ask questions of what you want to achieve and what do you offer to users?

There’s no ‘right way’ to do keyword research, it can involve creating then gathering scattered thoughts, using a whole host of keyword research and analysis tools, then figuring which phrases have enough traffic, and which ones you have a chance of ranking for.

A linear process may constrain you, you may miss things that more fluid methods would uncover… but in an effort to tie things down a bit, we’ve put together a process that may help streamline this keyword research and mapping phase.  Which, lets be honest, is a core aspect of SEO and proper website development.

Keyword Research and Mapping Process

• Select the pages you want to focus on
• Add the name and url in the correct field of the keyword mapping spreadsheet
• Create your seedlist with the following :
  • Products/services
  • Synonyms / other ways of describing your product
  • Relevant adjectives (e.g. stylish, modern, classic)
  • Regional qualifiers
  • For further ideas use the Google keyword research tool
• Evaluate the content of your first page and select the relevant keywords from your seed list
• Add these keywords into the Keyword combining tool to generate phrases
• Sift through the results and remove anything that doesn’t make sense
• Add the list into the Google keyword research tool
• Evaluate which terms are relevant to that page and have good traffic levels (be wary of highly competitive or very generic phrases)
• Select your phrases, (2 or 3) making sure they are closely related to each other and relevant to the page
• Based on these keywords and the content on the site, write a short title
• Add them into the keyword mapping spreadsheet for that page, along with some very similar variations (plural or longer phrases). Keywords should total around 8-10
• Add a unique description – this must be useful for the user, compelling and make use of the keywords you are targeting
• Look at the url, you may want to re-write this to include your keyphrase. You can add in sub directories – e.g.
  • www.website.com/car-accessories/audio/mp3-players or
  • www.website.com/car-accessories/audio/mp3-players/sony-h281-mp3-player.html

  Remember it must be well structured & obviously unique – you don’t want it to look spammy.

• Once you have updated the website with your new metadata, run the Firefox SenSEO tool to see if there’s anything else you need to do to improve the page rank for that target keyphrase

Review and Testing

Once you’ve completed the mapping process, you need to give your site time to achieve the rankings.  You can review your results over a period of 6 months.

If you’re traffic has not increased, and if you’re not achieving decent rankings for your chosen keyphrases, then you may wish to review.  Select some longer tail phrases if your competition is too strong, or get some serious link building done.

On the other hand, if you’ve achieved rankings easily, but your traffic hasn’t gone up significantly, you may want to up your game, get some bigger hitting keyphrases with higher traffic levels.

Resources

To help you with this, we’ve set up a very basic but useful spreadsheet and created a PDF version of this keyword research and mapping process:

Tools Used For This Process

• Google keyword research tool
• Keyword combining tool
• Firefox SenSEO tool (You need to use the Firefox browser to use this)

A blog is web-based publication that is updated regularly with blog posts. It can be part of a website as a news section, or it can be independent. Blog posts can be in any number of wildly different formats – e.g. informative articles, commentary, diary notes, video posts or photos, and some blogs make use of a combination of these styles. It is a very flexible, and more informative way of publishing than the ‘traditional’ website which has a set structure, is planned and updated periodically when content is deemed out of date.

Blog content can also be consumed in a number of ways, making this flexible publishing tool not only easy for the owner to use, but also the reader. True blogs are set up with ‘RSS’ installed (we will come to this later). Which allows the content to be ‘pulled in’ to whatever reading device or software the user wishes.

This document aims to outline some benefits of blogging, some advice on how to tell if it is suitable for you or not, tips on publishing a blog post, and ideas for topics and content.

Examples of well maintained blogs

Notes in Spanish

Notes in Spanish is a blog used in combination with a podcast. The podcast show notes, links to the audio files, commentary, news videos and tips are published as blog posts. The purpose of the blog is to encourage signups to the newsletter and a more importantly signups to a premium membership.

SimpleBits

SimpleBits is developer’s blog written by Dan Cederholm, which covers news about the industry, the company’s twitter posts, quotes related to design and development, announcements of product launches, links to interesting design and other things he finds on the Internet. The purpose is to generate leads from people interested in the services he offers. Posts are short, varied and very frequent.

PushON

Our blog is used to help promote our main site, increase email subscriptions and encourage people to request further information about our services. We publish news about our company and our clients, articles about the online marketing industry, any events we’re going to or presenting at, tips about online marketing, and some general banter about the Internet.

Why Blog?

Blogs are a great way of communicating in a very personal way with your audience, building your online presence, and quite frankly showing off. If you have specialist knowledge in your field, publishing tips and articles on your industry will not only give your users useful interesting content, but will also demonstrate that you know your stuff.

Blogs, when properly deployed, work very well with search and can be a very useful platform to support marketing campaigns. They can be so flexible – and you can embed different types of media to get your message across – images, video, text, links, presentations and audio.

Blogs use RSS, which makes the content available in ways that are easily consumed and used by your visitors, other websites and journalists.

What is RSS?

RSS is a technology used to publish frequently updated content in a standard format feed. The feed is used for distributing blog entries, news, podcasts (audio feeds), and video podcasts for example.

RSS helps get your content to the reader after they have left your site by letting them ‘syndicate’ content automatically. Meaning that when new content is available, subscribers to the feed will almost immediately have the content available in their chosen feed reader.

RSS allows users to subscribe to the latest updates from websites they are particularly interested in, or to view updates from many websites in one place.

Because people subscribe to your content, it enables you to deliver messages to an ‘opted in’ audience, and to continue the relationship with your visitor after they leave your site.

This is a tool that some writers, researchers and journalists use, because not only can you subscribe to RSS feeds from a number of sources, you can also receive news feeds of articles with a certain topic or keyword – for example ‘motor cross’ or ‘animals’.

So if you write a story, and publish it on your blog, there is a chance that a journalist specialising in a related subject will pick it up and republish elements of your content – leading to further publicity and traffic to your site.

How do you subscribe to RSS?

If a site has RSS enabled, it will usually have a button like this on the page or visible in the address bar of your browser:

Or text link saying something along the lines of “Subscribe via RSS” or “News Feed”.

To subscribe to an RSS feed, you click on the link to the feed and choose the feed reader you want to use to view your regular content. Alternatively, if your feed reader isn’t listed, you can copy the feed url and add it to your feed reader manually.

There are loads of feedreaders you can use, but I’ve listed some examples for you here:

Bloglines

Bloglines is an online service for searching, subscribing, creating and sharing news feeds, blogs and rich web content :

iGoogle

iGoogle which is a web based, and very easy to use. As it is web based, you can log in on any PC connected to the Internet to keep up with your feeds :

Microsoft Outlook 2007

Microsoft Outlook 2007, which is desktop based, and pulls in your RSS feeds and displays them like emails :

FeedDemon

FeedDemon is one of the most popular feed readers, it is a desktop tool that allows you to customise the way feeds are organized and displayed, set up custom ‘news watches’ based on keywords or use search to find articles :

Should you set up a blog?

Good question… this is something you have to figure out yourself, but consider the following:

• Do you have time or resources to make regular blog posts on an ongoing basis?
• Do you have something to talk about?
• Can you offer something useful to your readers?
• Will it benefit your business?
• Is it something your target audience is likely to read?

The main reason why you should not bother is if you haven’t the time or resources to keep up the blog posts. If you have the will, you can always learn how to do it better.

Test your subject matter or format by sending it to a small selection of your contacts and request feedback or suggestions for future content.

How do you set up a blog?

There are a number of blogging platforms available that require very little design or customisation. There are blog tools that you can sign up for online, where you don’t need to download, host or install. You sign up for an account, choose the name for your blog, and log in to update your details, choose your design and start blogging – all of this can be done within an hour or two.

This is a great option for people with limited budget, or people who are just dipping their toes into the blogging scene.

Examples of blog providers that work this way:

• Wordpress.com
• Blogger
• Live Journal
  

The limitation is that you generally aren’t able to use your own domain name and don’t have full freedom to customise the design.

If you’re more serious about blogging, a more professional method is to have your blogging software installed on your servers along with your website. You can then choose to have www.yourdomain.com/blog or blog.yourdomain.com

You can also design your blog to match or compliment your existing website; you have much more flexibility with design than the online account.

We recommend Wordpress.org for blogging software, but there are a number of other good tools you can use. You may be restricted by your web host as to which blogging software you can use. This is something you will need a designer/developer to help with, along with the actual installation and design.

We have a list of our favourite, and most useful plugins for Wordpress that add functionality, or make it easier to rank well in the search engine results for your chosen phrases. This list is available on our blog.

Once you’ve set up your blog, what do you write?

This greatly depends on what the purpose of the blog is, who your target audience is and who is writing the content.

You may have a number of different goals –

• Increase traffic
• Generate revenue from advertising
• Encourage signups to your newsletter
• Increase sales from your e-commerce store
• Generate leads
• Establish yourself as a thought leader in your field
• Promote events

A couple of examples:

To increase traffic and generate revenue from advertising

You could write very short, very frequent blog posts about the latest products and industry news. Lots of images and examples of these products in use. Your articles are short but very frequent, and about lots of different products because you don’t want to engage – you want people to click on the link and buy something elsewhere. The high frequency increases the chances you will get listed for a larger number of searches.

To generate signups to your newsletter or membership plan

Offer useful tips and how-to guides. Longer, more in depth articles. With each blog post, remember to mention that you get so much more ‘members only’ content if you subscribe.

To generate leads

You could write about the ongoing work you do, develop case studies and write articles about the success, the process, before and after pictures, graphs showing the improvement, quotes, testimonials and talk about any industry awards you’re going for. If you’re open about how you do it, you may get people who are in the same industry, but trying to improve following you, bookmarking the site, and linking to you. This all boosts your search engine rankings.

Blogging rules

This is up to you. You write the rules for the way your blog is run.

If there will be a number of bloggers, agree on a blogging policy between yourselves. Get everyone involved in this policy from the start, because it will then be self policed.

Think about what is sensitive and what is not, is swearing acceptable, how rude can you be, are there topics you don’t go near, can you mention things about your fellow employees, do you keep it on-topic all the time, can you talk about random non related items, etc.

Every company will be different, so get together for a brain storm, but don’t be so strict that people are worried about what they can write, it can stifle creativity.

Some general tips for better blogging

1. Let people know who’s talking – if you have a number of bloggers contributing, add a photo for each of them.  This helps when you’re building up a following for each writer, and you get more conversation if people know they’re talking to Paul from Kwikfit rather than adding a comment on the faceless company blog.
2. Let people subscribe by email – a lot of people still haven’t ‘got’ the whole RSS movement, so give people an option about how they consume your information.
3. When mentioning a product/service you offer, link to it.
4. When cross referencing from your blog to your website, deep link to the specific page related to your conversation (not necessarily the home page of your website). This helps the user, as you are taking them to the item you mentioned rather than making them search around for it. But it also helps your deeper pages get indexed well.
5. Use your blogroll for links to useful, interesting, related blogs.  This helps your users, but it also increases the chances these bloggers will link back to you.
6. Read your industry magazines and comment on the print articles as well as online articles.
7. Don’t go for the full on ‘sell, sell, sell’ message, make sure your content is useful/interesting/funny/informative.
8. Choose your title wisely – make it compelling & give some thought to the words that people will search for naturally.
9. Try to keep a regular schedule, if you don’t post for a month, you may lose your readers.
10. Add an image or video to keep it interesting.
11. Keep your sentences & paragraphs to reasonable length, not too long.
12. Leave breathing space – i.e. add paragraph breaks, and sub titles to break up your text and make it easy for the user to scan.
13. Use keywords or phrases in your content. Keep in mind what people might search for, related to the article you’re writing and the services you offer. You must ensure you write predominantly for people, but with search engines in mind.
14. Encourage comments. This can be a great way to find out what your audience thinks, how you can improve, and what you excel at. Very helpful for your next marketing campaign. You may want to moderate this to avoid spam, gossip or expletives. But be open enough to allow negative comments.
15. Reply politely and promptly to your comments. Encourage further discussion.
16. Be as open and honest as you can. Waxing lyrical about this amazing product you found, when you actually market that product, is not a good idea. It’s called astroturfing, and if you get found out, it can be very embarrassing. It’s much better to admit you’re involved, but you love the features of this new product anyway. Conversely, if you’ve had a disaster, be prepared to answer critical comments.
17. Check your spelling and grammar.
18. Talk about new news, keep your articles up to date.
19. Make sure your blog is good looking and easy to use. You have to convince someone to stay within the first second they visit the site. Keep in mind your brand.
20. Avoid making defamatory comments; the author may be sued personally.
21. Remember that once published, it may be on the Internet forever. Would you be happy for your parents/children to read it?
22. Research your facts carefully.
23. Give the pro’s and cons for your arguments, not just one side of the story.

Get involved in the blogging conversation

Make sure you read other blogs in the same topic area. They can give you ideas on format, frequency and content, and you can quote, compare and contract their opinions. Often if you talk about someone, they will start to follow you and sometimes even link to you.

Whatever you do, make sure you don’t plagiarise. It’s very easy to find out who’s copied your work on the Internet. So by all means, quote your competitor, but give them the credit, and if you’re feeling generous give them a link.

Keep an eye on what people are saying about you, and your company. Other bloggers may have loved your article and mentioned it on their blog. Make sure you acknowledge this – either on your blog, their blog or both. And if someone doesn’t like what you do, you can tackle that too.

Tracking this is easier than it sounds – if you’re using Wordpress, it will track any links pointing to your blog so you can see what people have said about you. And you can set up an alert using Google Alerts for any online mentions of your name, brand, clients, or any competitors you want to stalk.

There has been a lot of industry buzz about Twitter. Sometimes we become so immersed in our online marketing sector where we’re always looking to adopt early, that we forget that the absolute vast majority of people, in effect our clients or target audience, haven’t got a clue what Twitter is; how to use it or what value it has. Hopefully I’ll answer a few of those questions right here

So, really, what is Twitter?

Twitter is what’s is rather sweetly known as a ”micro blogging platform”. Sounds rather twee doesn’t it?  Effectively it takes SMS sensibilities and applies it to blogging. So with Twitter, you have a restricted number of characters, 140, for each post that you make, similar to the concise nature of SMS. The idea being that you compose your thought into a very neat package of commentary or wisdom. And Twitter is blog-a-like in that your posts are displayed sequentially with the most recent first. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of Twitter is the ability to choose who you follow, whose Tweets (an individual Twitter post) you consume. And conversely, other people can choose to follow your Tweets. In effect you can go some way to customising your conversation. By choosing those whose opinion you respect, you can get a short cut to the foremost thinking in your sector. Assuming they use Twitter of course. And as we are in the digital media sector, most of the people whose thinking we value tend to use Twitter. For example, we would certainly recommend that you follow:

Aaron Wall

Robert Scoble

Jeremiah Owyang

Lee Odden

Simon Wharton

Jonathan Yarmis

You might think of these as the “Twitterati”

How do you use Twitter?

At its most rudimentary, Twitter has a web interface that you can use via a Browser. Realistically though, this is an awkward way of using Twitter. The browser takes up a lot of desktop real estate and really doesn’t have the tools built into it that starts to make Twitter useful. You’ll find a lot of people use Twhirl or very similar applications such as Twitterific for the MAC. These deploy more a chat/instant messenger interface which can fade into the background on the desktop. The client becomes unobtrusive when you’re not using it, yet remains available, picking up the Tweets of those you follow by regularly polling Twitter. Twitter can also be narrowcast as opposed to broadcast. You can choose to send a message directly to one person. You can also reply to direct message or broadcast messages and so engaging conversations may follow. Twitter is also usable via mobile devices. You can choose to receive and SMS on your mobile when certain people Tweet. Obviously you want to be careful about who you choose to follow via this method as you don’t want to be receiving and SMS that have little relevance to you while you are out and about. You can also access the Twitter website via a mobile browser friendly version at http://m.twitter.com.

The Downside of Twitter

Noise, noise, noise and more noise. Too often you can find that that Tweets are focused on the ego of the author. Am I really interested in what you had for breakfast? Many people Tweet these fascinating snippets. I have no interest in this but to some people, the “Water cooler” conversation that is enabled with your peer group, but world-wide, is a great way of relaxing. You could say it empowers the down time of the digital community. I’d say be careful who you follow unless you want your attention diverted with drivel.

Getting Started with Twitter

What do you want to be known for? Give it some thought. If you want a good audience for your thoughts, then think why people might want to follow you. Are you sharing wisdom or are you sharing your breakfast menu?
Find the people you respect on Twitter and then follow them. Twitterquette suggest that you follow those who follow you. It doesn’t always happen but at the time of writing numbers of followers seem to be important for bragging rights in the Twitterverse. My following is bigger than your following is the measure of the online personality.
If you are doing something interesting, or are somewhere interesting, then Twitter the event. Breaking key news snippets is a great way of getting the attention of those who can’t be there and it’s certainly where the mobile interactivity comes into play.
The question arises as to how much penetration Twitter has. According to Techcrunch, it’s not huge on the grand scale of things, but it is growing rapidly

Third Party Twitter Applications

It’s the third party applications that are starting to make Twitter compelling.

Twhirl
Thwirl certainly ticks a lot of the boxes with what I like with a desktop client.

Twitterific
A Mac based desktop client.

Twitterlocal
Twitterlocal is a nice tool which allows you to add a regional context to Twitter. You can see who is Twittering within a radius of a given location.

Facebook
You can also consider Facebook as a Twitter app in a way as you can pull your Tweets into your Facebook profile, a nice way of using technology to economically spread your wisdom.

Jaiku
With so many online tools and applications to keep abreast of, it’s essential for the savvy webbie to be able to use their time economically. This of course leads into a conversation about managing your personal brand. Another example of how you can use Twitter to feed your online presence with data is via Jaiku. In many ways, this is a Twitter competitor but you can use Twitter to drive it. Which is handy as it follows the micro blogging principle but with bells on.

Terraminds
I also like Terraminds as a tool for searching Twitter which is a good way of finding who you want to follow.

Twitter Scan
A Twitter search engine with bells and whistles

How can I use Twitter?

Twitter can be used in many ways. It depends what you want to get out of it. It’s excellent for:
•    Following the thoughts of experts
•    Getting real time breaking news
•    Delivering real time breaking news
•    Building your personal brand
•    Gossip
•    Seeding marketing campaigns

One of the most interesting Twitter experiments, as I write, is by Zappos.  By aggregating Tweets about Zappos into one stream, they make a compelling connection very directly with their customers who are consequently very publicly their advocates. Their CEO also uses Twitter very intimately to give an engaging view of how Zappos works at his level. There’s a bravery and openness that many businesses would shy away from that could prove to be a winning strategy.
.

So, What use is Twitter?

There isn’t really a definitive use for Twitter, it’s a multipurpose tool. As a browser based tool, I found it a bit tiresome but Twhirl is the application that made it useful to me. It sits just out of site and lets me know what people I respect are thinking. I can also let them know what I’m thinking and on the odd occasion, these key influencers find my thoughts interesting and propagate them to their audience. It massively increases my reach. It’s not for everyone though, the only way to find out is to play.

Building a website for Search Engine Success

There really are no great secrets to how you should go about building a website that search engines will like. Quite simply, if you want search engines to like your website then there is no better place to start than building your site to W3C standards.

About Web Standards

In the beginning the Internet was very much like an unruly child and to some degree it still is. The problem was we were given all this great technology to help us communicate with each other but with a lack of formally set out rules to guide us we were allowed to run wild.

“The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international consortium where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards.”

By adhering to specifications and guidelines set out by the W3C when building websites we are using what is accepted within the industry as best practice.

Search Engines like Websites Built to Web Standards

It’s true, we’ve seen time and time again that when we build sites to W3C standards they achieve a level of search engine success our no-standards compliant competitors can only dream of.

Why?

Well, the most obvious difference between a standards compliant site and a non-standard compliant site is the use of CSS for laying out the design rather than nested tables.

Tables should be used for tabular data, so says the W3C and not for laying out the design of a site. The intended use for tables was always to layout tables of information but they quickly became the norm for laying out web designs. Using tables for layout causes significant code bloat as well as causing accessibility issues for screen readers. Search engines aren’t really interested in code, they like content. Using CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) for layout means much leaner code and therefore makes it easier for search engine bots to find the content.

Conclusion

If you’re planning a new website make sure the company you choose to build your site build it to W3C standard. If you already have a site and you’re not sure if it’s built to web standards use the W3C validation service to check.

http://validator.w3.org/

If you’re site is not built to web standards talk to us and we will advise on how best to go about addressing the problems. In some instances a full rebuild is advisable but in most cases a site can be retro fitted to achieve W3C standards. You can also request a Free website analysis from us which will include W3C validation.

Roy Wilding
Creative Director – PushON Ltd
The Online Marketing People

Haveyou ever tried finding a website for a shop down the road from you? Youknow where it is, but you can’t quite remember the name of it. It sellsgadgets and some odd technologies that you think your dad would reallylike for his birthday. You try a quick search for “Gadgets” and foundsome national mail order site, based miles away. Frustrated, so you tryto refine the search by including your location but are now faced withsearch results for some weird gadgets that your local football teamhave branded and are selling as merchandise!  

Perhapsyou’re looking online for some corporate training course and no matterhow hard you look you can only find courses that are being run so faraway you’d spend a day travelling and lose valuable time.

Manyof us have had similar frustrating experiences like this. Therefore, itis importatnt that we prevent our customers and clients from having thesame off-putting search experiences when trying to find our brandsonline. In short, we need to find ways of being found more effectivelyin locally focused search.

In this article we’ll be detailingsome quick and easy solutions that will help your websites visibilityin local search results.

Google Map/Local Business Centre

Googleoffers a free service that allows business to add a brief descriptionof their products and services, along with more detailed informationsuch as opening hours and preferred payment methods. Google iscontinuing to master its ‘Universal Search’ results and we arecontinuing to see information from Google Maps being returned in itsmain results page.

Google validate your business locations bysending you out an activation pin. You can expect to receive the pinwithin 3 weeks of requesting it and once active, Google say that, yourad will be live within just 10 days.

Most of the othermajor search engines offer some form of local map functionality too.Check out Yahoo Local and Live Search to get listed in their maps too. 

Microformats

Microformats haveincluded a geo-location tag in their hCard, business card. This searchengine friendly business card allows users to hard code their lat &long coordinates directly onto their website. Here’s a quick example ofthe PushON offices location via hCard and geo tag:

<div id=”" class=”vcard”>
<span class=”fn”></span>
<div class=”org”>PushON Ltd</div>
<div class=”adr”>
<div class=”street-address”>217 The Boxworks, 4 Worsley Street</div>
<span class=”locality”>Manchester</span>
<span class=”postal-code”>M15 4NU</span>

<span class=”country-name”>UK</span>

<span class=”geo”>

 <span class=”latitude”>53.4733</span>,

 <span class=”longitude”>-2.26093</span>

</span>
</div>

As the usage of microformats become more widely used in mainstreamwebsite design and as Search Engines are increasingly indexing thismarked up content and include it in their results we will start to seethis become really valuable in optimising for local search.

Optimising for Local Keywords/Anchor Texts

Thisshould be your first port of call when looking to optimise for yourlocal search terms. When customers search any of the search enginesthey are typing in text and the search engine attempts to match thattext to websites on the internet that has that text in their content.

Tosuccessfully optimise your keywords and content for local search terms,you should consider using them in your page headers, titles anddescriptions.

PushON has recently undertaken some researchinto place names in the Manchester (UK) Area. In terms of search theseare referred to as geographical qualifiers. This research will bepublished shortly via our website and will be available for downloadfor free.

NOTE: be careful of overusing keywords inyour websites content. Remember that your audience is the human readerand not just the search engine; anything over 10% keyword density isdeemed as spam and may have a negative effect on your websites rankingsin the search results. There are a number of browser plug-ins andwebsites that can check your websites content for keyword density.

Directory Listings

Adirectory is a web search tool that is compiled manually by humaneditors. Once websites have been submitted with information (such as atitles, urls and descriptions) they are assessed by the editor and, ifdeemed suitable for addition, are listed under one or more subjectcategories AND geographical regions.

Unlike search engineresults, directories rely on human editing to categorise the websitelistings, not a long and complex algorithm. Some people feel that thisgives human edited directories more credibility then a search engineand as a result the major search engines use these directories toinfluence how they display their own results.
 
DMOZ – The Open Directory Project (ODP)

What sets the Open Directory Project apartfrom other directories is its database of indexed documents that isavailable to other directories and search engines. A listing hereresults in your website automatically being listed in many otherdirectories and search engines. The model of using volunteer editors isfairly ambitious – and surprisingly successful. It’s a massiveachievement and one of the most authoritative sites on the internet.

Local Directories

Many directories on the internet are internationally focused withregional sections available deep into the sites navigation. However, togain real value in local search you should be aiming to get listed insome locally focused directories that are specific to the town, countyor region your business operates in.

Manchester UK Local Directory

One of the most successful Manchester related directories is Manchester UK.Established by John Moss in 1994 as the Manchester Project; thedirectory has undergone continual growth in recent years. John Moss,Author of Manchester UK, said “human edited directories are invariablymore relevant then even the best constructed algorithms are a crudedevice and results are often completely irrelevant, silly, erroneous orblatantly misleading results.”

He put the directories successdown to it being “relevant to the local area and more relevant andaccurate in terms of the information it contains. Content is our mainconcern – quality content, plenty of it and free.”

Summary

Local Search is an ever-growing area that if taken advantage of willhelp drive quality leads to your website. The hints and tips above willhelp you get a feel for what is required to optimise your website butto get the best out of your website requires a bespoke online marketingsolution.

Many businesses realise that they have to generate traffic to their site if they want to, at the very least, recoup the outlay invested in their Internet site.  But all too often they accept the received wisdom that pay per click and paid advertising will give the return that is so eagerly sought without really fully considering online organic search marketing properly. 

Pay per click and advertising on well-visited websites certainly has its benefits, I cannot and will not deny that assertion.  Pay per click (PPC) is easy to understand and, unlike many marketing activities, the return can be calculated very accurately indeed – and those are the great attributes.  It also gives the marketing manager or owner an immediate hit.  The pressure to get results quickly is baring down and pay per click can certainly ease the pressure with immediate effect – a simple solution handed on a plate.

Yet, this singular approach is not fully justified.  Yes, pay per click and paid advertising can be highly effective; we all hear the anecdotal examples of business acquaintances and their limitless praise for this approach.  But the approach is limited.

I am not discounting pay per click or paid advertising: there is a place for both in combination with organic search marketing.  Indeed, the best campaigns combine both approaches to stunning effect because both present different strengths which work well together.  But if you have to choose there is a clear winner: organic search.

Before I explain further I really need to clarify what I mean by organic search marketing.  I am referring to a collection of methods that includes using discussion forums, social networking sites, reciprocal links, identifying and utilising sites that Google and other prominent search engines use to rank websites and good old fashioned search engine optimisation: search engine ranking.  And it is the last of these that I will concentrate my article on to demonstrate that there is another way of attaining the results you want from your online marketing.

So why do I have such believe in organic search marketing?  What is my proof?  Why, according to online experts E-consultancy, does 84% of online spend come in the form of paid placement and PPC and the small remaining 16% on organic search marketing if the latter has so much to offer?

Well, my first point is that organic search marketing has much to offer but is generally overlooked or underrated.  Online marketing, as with so many disciplines, is not fully understood and if it is not understood by the buyer then they will often chose the option they can quickly get a grip of or feel comfortable with: PPC and paid placement. 

We must remember as marketers that not everyone has the appreciation or understanding of online marketing.  And we must remember that many marketers are experts in a particular field but do not have a full comprehension of the full marketing mix, at least not to the same depth as their specialisation. 

But my proof goes further: various studies show that a prospective buyer will use organic searches 60% – 80% of the time.  Moreover, organic search results gather up to 6 times more clicks than paid for advertising.

The reasons for this can possibly be attributed to a number of factors.  Firstly, buyers tend to trust search engines.  A brand such as Google fosters confidence; advertising cannot provide the same assurance as it is bought rather than earned. 

Secondly, according to a study conducted by US marketing firm Enquiro and eye tracking technology company Eyetools, surfers follow an F shaped pattern of scanning.  This means that the search results, on the left, are viewed more closely than on the right where the PPCs are located.

I would like to re-iterate that PPC and paid placement certainly have a role in a comprehensive online marketing plan.  The F viewing pattern extends over to the PPC – but only the top ones.

Pay per click search company Overture’s research has confirmed this viewpoint.  A marketing campaign that secures a combination of a top three placement with a top placed PPC will generate a 93% chance of gaining a click. 

The Advertising Association has found that Internet advertising is up 73% for the first half of the year.  It certainly works for some companies.  But its success is also its drawback.  The more we use PPC and paid advertising the more its currency diminishes.  I only have to think of texting and e-mails to back this point up: the more we use PPC the more we will all ignore it and the more the cost will go up for the most popular search words.

Online search marketing undeniably does not have the immediate hit of PPC and paid advertising.  But whereas PPC and paid advertising’s effects ware off quickly, organic search marketing has a real impact in the medium to long term and even after the campaign has finished it will still yield a return.  Many companies will find its longevity and substance of organic search a real benefit.

Organic search marketing benefits from low costs, established reader behaviour and the trust of many commercial and consumer surfers in their search engines to provide the most meaningful search returns.

Consequently, online search cannot be discounted from any online campaign that really wants to give a substantial return.  With organic search marketing technique rapidly evolving and being popularised and PPC becoming over subscribed it can only be a matter of time before clever marketers take heed and chose another way to do their online marketing.

About the author

Simon Wharton runs well regarded web build agency Virtuaffinity and its sister company PushON – a specialist online search marketing agency.  PushOn works with business from all sectors and sizes to ensure the greatest visibility possible online for its clients.  Simon and his team are especially interested in making social media optimisation, SEO and blogging work effectively for their clients.

Simon can be contacted for further comment on simon@pushon.co.uk or on 0870 757 4888

Most of the readers of Talking Business have heard of blogs.  Indeed, when I talk to businesses many have heard of the ubiquitous term, but have never really even considered it as an integral part of their marketing strategy.

Why is that?

Well, the media has portrayed the world of blogging as the domain of techies and bedroom closeted teenagers.  It is hardly surprising that many businesses never give blogging a second thought.  Moreover, many in the business world fail to grasp the real impact and benefits of technology.  How many readers of Talking Business, I wonder, value the Internet? Everyone?  But, how many have invested not only money but also real thought into their online strategy: the online face of their company for the whole world? Not as many I suspect. 

So what is a blog? 

Simply put it is an online diary: a series of regular entries or posts on a theme or subject of real interest to the writer.  The blog may reside online by itself or better still as a feature within a website.

Blogs are not the preserve of the technical genius.  They are very simple to use.  They are also very cheap to set-up; in some cases the simpler versions are free.

The question still remains – what is the value to business?

Blogs give businesses value in a number of ways.  Firstly, a company that blogs with intelligent and insightful comments about their industry has the potential to become the voice of their industry.  Other professionals within the field of the blogger will consult the blog to compare views or learn about a ground breaking aspect of their industry.

The result of using a blog to achieve this aim is building relationships with notable industry professionals.  So, if you are a specialist accountancy practice you might wish to work in partnership with more general accountancy companies that do not offer your particular knowledge base.  The general accountancy practice might want a reliable partner with say, the specialist tax expertise you possess.  This will allow it to service its clients’ needs without the customer looking elsewhere.  How can they find out who knows about this specialism and your expertise?  By following your blog the level of your expertise will be displayed. 

If you blog with the tips I have outlined then you will be found by those you wish to interact with – you are being proactive with little effort.

There are many other benefits: the possibility of attracting a greater number of higher calibre candidates wishing to work for the blogger’s company – a real cost saving for some enterprises.

And of course attracting clients directly.

Blogging in the real world

But does that work in the real world?  One of my clients Artisan Marketing Communications is one example of where the results are starting to filter through. 

When we were approached, Artisan wanted PushON to build a simple static website – we said “no!”  We advised them that a blog was better suited to their aims.  After initial reluctance they agreed with our approach despite a slight case of technophobia, which was soon overcome.

Why did we insist on a blog?  Well, a static website would have given this new PR agency no competitive advantage whatsoever.  Once a potential client had come to the site there would have been nothing to attract them back.  To use an analogy: if a newspaper had the same stories every day, who would read it a second time?  So many websites have this effect and it can actually be detrimental to a business. 

Artisan, at first, posted an entry every two to three days now they post at least five times a week.  The subject matter covers media relations, the PR industry and the influence of new technology on business communications.  They can be found at www.artisanmc.co.uk

The results after only six months are encouraging.  Very few PR agencies in Manchester blog, this has immediately marked Artisan in their industry.  It has also brought some interesting results.  One such example is when NW Business Insider magazine contacted Artisan to discuss blogging for a business feature.  The magazine was one that Artisan had had little contact with but by supplying interesting comments it broke the ice.  This was a key contact for Artisan and will enable them to provide an even better service to clients.     

Where now?

Blogs are not confined to techies or chief executives of big business, many businesses of all sizes and sectors have something to say of interest.  I have included a collection of brief tips, if you think you can follow them you should consider a blog.

10 quick tips to being a successful business blogger:

1. Post entries regularly
2. Post entries that have purpose and focus, do not write for the sake of it
3. Give comment of interest and value to your readers
4. Be transparent and honest – readers will be able to determine when a blog is phoney
5. Use simple easy to read English; if your audience do not understand industry jargon do not use it
6. Be concise – get to your point and make it well.  Even fans of your blog will have limited time
7. Use links in your body copy to give you more visibility on search engines
8. Use reciprocal links to partner websites and blogs, which also aid search engine rankings
9. Ensure a RSS feed is available on your blog: RSS feeds allow you to distribute alerts and information direct to a subscriber’s PC without the need for them to come back to your blog.  This eases communication and builds a relationship between the blogger and the reader.
10. Leave comments on other industry blogs to build relationships within your industry and get your name out

Simon Wharton, managing director of online search marketing specialists PushON welcomes comments and questions and can be contacted on 0870 757 4888 or simon@pushon.co.uk

Talking Business North Manchester
Blogging article
9th November 2006