DiscoverSEO - Website Optimisation

How building your website correctly from the outset will continue to benefit you now

noreply@blogger.com (DiscoverSEO) — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 12:40:00 +0000

With all the changes that have been happening lately in the world of SEO - Google buying YouTube, the Google Caffeine algorithm upgrade and the Bing and Yahoo merger - it is becoming increasingly more difficult to keep up and stay ahead when it comes to optimizing your website.

In this day and age having a website no longer means just having a site designed, built and uploaded and leaving it at that. Internet Marketing has grown exponentially in recent times and in order to take full advantage of this trend and reap the associated benefits, you need to have a fully functional well-built website before you can even think of embarking of any form of optimizing in order to gain rankings and attract the right kind of traffic.

The basics of building websites still counts for something

That said if you have a well-indexed website and it was built correctly from the word go or has been kept up to date in terms of the latest building recommendations, you are in good stead for moving forward with your intended optimization and capturing your market share.

Sites build in frames or framesets, flash and/or tables etc are considered by the web authorities (W3Schools and others) to be outdated and in some instances deprecated indicating that it is no longer supported in XHTML 1.0. These sites are then also not crawled by the Search Engine bots and will be left behind in the race for rankings.

Domain Age is a factor in Search Engine Optimization

Although it may not be a defining factor, domain age is still a factor and for two reasons:

The age of a domain gives the appearance of longevity which Google gives higher relevancy to. Search engines generally tens to put more trust into those sites that have been around longer.

Also the older the site, the more time it has had to build links from other sites etc.

Where to from here

There are many things that could be suggested for example you could consider rebuilding your site if its not been built correctly. It might also be a good idea to consider taking over old domains in order to benefit from aging if your current domain is not too well like or if you are just starting out. This is especially true if the domain is relevant and the site is built with high quality content.

What else needs to be considered

Before Google Caffeine kicks into effect take the time to test search keywords and phrases from your site (that you wish to be found under) and see where you are listed on both www.google.co.za and www2.sandbox.google.com. Then look at the results and and make a decision from there.

Web 2.0 sites and those with user generated content is now also considered the way to go and something to keep in mind if you plan on taking full advantage of the upcoming changes and want your website to perform at it optimal best.

Visit the following sites for more information:

Domain Age http://www.a1articles.com/article_1036559_81.html

Google Caffeine http://www.seobook.com/google-caffeine

SEO Basics

http://www.deondesigns.ca/blog/learn-the-basics-of-seo-before-you-try-anything-fancy/

http://www.scribd.com/doc/18752155/Basics-of-SEO

So a search engine likes my site - Now what?

noreply@blogger.com (DiscoverSEO) — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 10:17:00 +0000

This pattern is fast becoming a trend in the realm of Search Engine Optimisation. Website owners are finding that they have plenty of visitors coming to their sites all being pushed their by SEO techniques, Google AdWords and other Pay Per Click traffic generation methods.

The sad part is that all these extra visitors are not necessarily translating into extra enquiries and sales at the same exponential rate that the traffic to the site has increased.

The answer to this particularly perplexing conundrum is actually fairly simple : Search Engines Are Not People.

Search Engines may love your site and it may rank incredibly well in Google and other prominent search engines and get excellent keyword reach and relevancy from all the articles and content that you are posting to your site, but at the end of the day a search engine is not going to enquire about your latest and greatest product. So how do we get around the problem?

There are some very simple guidelines to design your landing pages to which will increase the chances of real people liking what they see and actually engaging further with you :

Keep the page simple. People have come through to that page for a specific reason and are looking for a specific thing, don’t complicate the page with tons of other “stuff”, just keep the info and required actions on the page relevant to what they were searching for.
Ensure that the visitor to the page is 100% sure about what it is that you need them to do on that page. If they need to send you a mail – tell them! And tell them a few times for the sake of clarity and ease of use. The worst thing you can have a user do is get to your landing page and say to himself, “now what do I do?”!
Test multiple landing page designs. Don’t assume that the first design you do is the correct one. Try a few designs and see which one gets you the best conversion results and then stick to this one. Be careful of trying to make too many changes at the same time because then you will not be able to judge which changes are the ones which worked.
Tell your visitor where they are. They have just come through to you through a search engine which told them that you were the right people to speak to; now reinforce that with some compelling copy that highlights what it is that they were searching for.
Once your visitor has completed the required action for that page, your site should direct them to a thank you page which will let them know that their enquiry has been successfully submitted. Now the cardinal sin of most websites is that they leave the page at that and they don’t try and cross sell or up sell a visitor who very clearly is interested in your product offering. Use this page to give them more info or to offer them something else that they would be interested in.

Using these guidelines will ensure that your landing pages do not suffer from having a multitude visitors but rather a throng of active participants who are willing to engage with you and take the next step in the buying cycle.

Bing has arrived in South Africa with local search

noreply@blogger.com (DiscoverSEO) — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:56:00 +0000

It has taken Microsoft many long years to finally realise that the reason no-one liked MSN Search and Live Search was because there was no immediate way to filter out results from other countries. It used to be the case of "Good luck finding a SA Company". Well Microsoft have finally stepped up to the plate with Bing which is a search engine that does indeed compete with Google in the fact that it has the "only for South Africa" option. The majority of website users in South Africa are looking for local products and local sites which is what has put Google ahead of the game for many years as it has been the only major search engine to offer this option.

Microsoft has invested over $100-million in advertising for their “Decision Engine “ search engine. As they try to get more than 8% of the US search market, my guess is that they will now see more of their market share coming from their international users because of this local search feature.

So what is so different about Bing?

From a first-off impression I was not very impressed. When I first logged onto Bing I was sure that I was staring at a Google clone.

The layout was the same except for Bing having a pretty interactive picture in the background.
The links all seamed to mark the same options as Google
The search results (SERPS) were identical to Google with the standard blue links and green URL reference
The preferences and options are identical
The cached page option is identical
Windows Live is the same as iGoogle and Bing Maps is very similar to Google Maps
Microsoft Advertising which is Microsofts PPC looks exactly like Google Adwords and are in the same place on the page

At first I thought that this was a mistake by Microsoft, but the more I thought about it the more I thought that they really did not have a choice. There was no way to take on a legend like Google so the old saying goes “If you can't beat them – Join them”. Microsoft took the Google shell that users are used to and tweaked it by adding slightly more functionality. Some very neat additional features you will notice are as follows:

The very cool extra content pop-out which is located by hovering to the right of the individual results. The great thing about this is that it also gives you a few of the target pages' internal links.
The related search bar to the left of the results is quick and easy to access
Their image search is much better presented to the user
They have integrated Bing into MSN Search so that it searches Bing by default.
They have the very cool "Popular Now" link which shows the top searches (only on the Bing.com and not the Bing.co.za)

How will Bing effect SEO companies

Bottom line is that SEO companies will now have to cater for Bing just as much as they did for Google. These companies need to start to use the tools that Bing offers like Bing's Webmaster Tools and Bing Maps. Microsoft is starting to cater for South Africa so will need to make sure we stay ahead of the game by trying out their product. The search results in the pages are different, if your site was #1 on Google it may be #8 on Bing. The two search engines may look very similar but behind the scenes they use different algorithms for their search so the SEO company needs to adjust to that.

Will Bing gain search market share in South Africa?

My answer is "Yes". Many South Africans use MSN Messanger and other Microsoft programs that may make Bing their default. There is a chance that if South Africans can get the same sort of local results that they would usually get from Google then they may indeed embrace the concept.

Organic Search versus Sponsored Search Results

noreply@blogger.com (DiscoverSEO) — Fri, 22 May 2009 08:02:00 +0000

Search engines such as Yahoo, Google, MSN and AltaVista generally deliver two types of search results namely; sponsored results and organic results. A sponsored or paid listing usually refers to one which is achieved through pay-per-click (PPC) search engine advertising such as Adwords. An organic listing on the other hand is achieved through search engine optimisation (SEO). These are the two most popular Internet marketing techniques. They are both “white hat” means of attracting a higher quantity and quality of traffic to a particular website which is often the primary Internet marketing objective.

As a result of years of practice, experts in the field of Internet marketing have developed a number of techniques which they employ to improve a websites search engine ranking. These techniques are collectively known as search engine optimisation. Although each expert practices his own brand of SEO based on his specific experience, some of the most effective SEO interventions include:

Keyword research
Keyword density analysis
Web page optimisation – title tags, meta tags, page URL and page content
Image optimisation
Submission to search engines and directories
Link building
Affiliate programs
Tracking and reporting

Pay-per-click is based on the concept of purchasing advertising space however it does differ from a traditional print advertisement in that the advertiser bids for a specific search phrase and is charged each time a visitor clicks through to their website. Adverts look almost exactly like organic search results, except that they are served as “sponsored links” and are ranked or listed according to how much the advertiser is willing to pay for the phrase.

Why “Organic”?

Organic search or natural search is the term used for describing an algorithmic search engine raking. In other words a ranking which is achieved by satisfying a search engines algorithmic criteria. Without getting into too much detail about the ins and outs of search engine technology it bears mentioning that search engines deliver results based on a set of criteria which extensive research tells them will satisfy their users input query.

People often ask how the word organic relates to search engine results. On the one hand the dictionary definition of the word organic is: having properties associated with living organisms. On the other hand, the word organic brings to mind something which is nourishing, wholesome or healthy. Although many traditional marketers would disagree, one of a website’s primary functions is that of being a resource. Internet marketers know that resourceful websites which “feed” their users interests and imaginations attract traffic and garner brand loyalty.

While SEO takes time (usually a few months) to take effect and involves structural improvements it is also more cost effective and more durable than other Internet marketing techniques. It is thus perceived as the “healthier” Internet marketing alternative. Another reason why websites may be associated with living organisms is because of their tendency to change, grow and mature.

Organic Search vs. Pay-Per-Click

As mentioned above both sponsored and organic search results are very effective ways of attracting traffic and optimising Internet marketing efforts. Both techniques are recommended and neither method can be said to outperform the other. A generalisation in this regard would fail to take into account internal and external environmental factors such as industry performance, competitors, budget and marketing objectives to name a few.

The major differences between the two methods come down to time and cost. PPC allows you to get to the top quickly whilst attaining the same results organically could take considerably longer. The cost of a PPC campaign will depend on the demand for your search phrase or keywords. The more popular the phrase the more costly the PPC campaign is likely to be. This in turn will impact on the campaigns sustainability. Although SEO may take longer to implement effectively results will be sustained over a longer period of time.

Recession: Why Some Industries like Internet Marketing continue to thrive

noreply@blogger.com (DiscoverSEO) — Wed, 13 May 2009 09:30:00 +0000

A recession is defined as a decline in GDP for two or more consecutive quarters. It is a period of general economic decline characterised by rising unemployment, lower reported company profit and a drop in household spending. The current global recession is said to have begun with a crisis in the US housing industry at the end of 2007. The recession spread quickly, plunging an integrated global economy into possibly the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression in the 1930’s.

Many sectors have been hit hard by this recession including the construction, financial and automotive industries. In-fact industries across the globe in various sectors have experienced significant declines in demand as a result of the recession. Worldwide, bankruptcy, poverty, joblessness and crime are on the rise however for some the global economic downturn tells another story.

Certain industries, it seems, are recession resistant. Despite the general decline being experienced by enterprises in all sectors some companies are thriving in these trying economic times. Two such industries include open source software and Internet marketing.

The use and development of open source software seems to be coming into its own in recent times. The recession has caused many corporations to re-consider their software options giving preference to more cost effective solutions. Companies such as RedHat, SugarCRM and Vyatta continue to grow whilst the technology sector in general is declining.

With Linux based software gaining popularity even Microsoft is including open source components in their software packages. Microsoft spokesman Sam Ramji says "The bulk of the opportunity is open source applications on Windows, but these things are all coming together. We are really bullish on being a platform for some of this innovation as customers want more functionality out of their hardware and software. We are becoming a conduit for other technologies."

Internet marketing is another industry in-which growth figures seem to climb steadily. Many organisations faced with budget cuts say they will continue and even increase spend on Internet marketing. This is not surprising, in light of the results of a 2007 survey in-which 81% of marketers surveyed say that their social media spending will meet or exceed their traditional advertising spending within the next 5 years.

Faced with tight budgets marketers are pressed to look for the best value and employ innovative marketing techniques such as those offered with Internet marketing packages. Search engine optimisation, e-mail marketing, affiliate marketing, pay-per-click and social media optimisation are measurable, efficient and cost-effective.

It stands to reason that industries which serve basic needs such as food, education, healthcare and energy will withstand recessionary pressure due to the low income elasticity of demand. Those businesses which offer great value on vital products and services will appeal to price sensitive buyers. Likewise, in the B2B arena enterprises which cater their client’s basic operational needs in a cost effective manner will thrive in the cash-strapped recessionary climate.

Google Enhancements Place More Emphasis on Content

noreply@blogger.com (DiscoverSEO) — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 09:37:00 +0000

The latest improvements to Google’s algorithm place greater emphasis on quality content. Ori Allon, who was responsible for developing the breakthrough Orion algorithm blogs about the integration of new technology which results in a great enhancement of users search experience.

Relevant content has always attracted excellent search engine ranking. Content which is interesting, relevant and frequently updated ensures that web-pages are indexed and served in search engine results pages. Content is therefore every websites foremost SEO concern. Last week, the search engine leader Google announced two improvements to their search engine results pages, both of which place even more emphasis on relevant content.

The two improvements which have caused so much excitement in the Internet marketing industry include an expanded list of useful related searches and the addition of longer search result descriptions. Now, this may not sound like much to the average marketer or business owner but to Internet marketer's across the globe these seemingly minute details have great implications.

The announcement came from the desks of Google's Ori Allon, Technical Lead: Search Quality team and Ken Wilder: Snippets Team Engineer. Ori Allon, as a research student in Australia developed the Orion Search Engine which was considered "revolutionary" for its ability to deliver search results not only for a specific keyword but also for phrases related to the key search term. Google purchased the rights to the Algorithm from Ori Allon in 2006 before hiring him to work at their California headquarters.

In a 2005 Interview Allon was quoted as saying "By displaying results to other associated key words directly related to your search topic, you gain additional pertinent information that you might not have originally conceived, thus offering an expert search without having an expert's knowledge." At the time even Bill Gates agreed that Orion would have far reaching implications for search saying "We need to take the search way beyond how people think of it today. We believe that OrionTM will do that."

Related search results appear at the bottom of the search engine results page. According to Allon and Wilder, the technology deployed last week allows the search engine to "better understand concepts and associations related to your search". This is the height of intuitive web technology. It means that search results are now even more relevant to input queries serving up not only what you need to know but what you did not even know to ask for. The second search engine enhancement applies to longer search queries. The results returned for longer queries are now more detailed and include a longer description. Together, the two improvements are an indication of Google's strong focus on quality results.

With this move Google have once again placed themselves way ahead of the competition. I predict it will be a long time before other search engines catch up. In the mean time Google will continue to gain market share. Once again looking at this from an Internet marketer's point of view, my advice to companies whose businesses depend on the sales generated through Internet marketing is to invest in content and reap the long-term SEO benefits that it delivers.

Blogs and Blog Topics

noreply@blogger.com (DiscoverSEO) — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 13:59:00 +0000

Bloggers often wonder what topics they should or should not include in their blog. Many bloggers have interests and views they would like to discuss on their blogs but are not sure how it will affect their search engine ranking and readership. The fact is that a large amount of unique content will attract a higher ranking. The variety of topics covered will strengthen the domain making it easier to rank well for new keywords. However, this move may cost the blogger his/her readers.

What makes a great blog?

Five qualities make for a great blog and content counts as the first three. Content, content, content, interactivity and syndication will ensure successful blogging. Readers will visit your blog, return to it, reference you and subscribe to your feeds as long as you provide content which is interesting, informative and relevant. Having established that, it stands to reason that bloggers trepidation with regards to the selection and presentation of blog topics is completely justified.

Topic selection

Topic selection and the leeway you allow yourself with regards to relevance will depend on the blogs purpose. These days, blogs are commonly found on commercial and corporate websites in-which the author discusses topics related to their products, services, industry and organisation.

In this case delving into related topics is interesting and adds spice to the content however straying too far from the main topic will cause readers to lose interest. Chances are you will probably attract a great deal of irrelevant traffic thus skewing your analytics and conversion ratio. The point is that content should always be written with the target audience in mind.

In the case of personal or social blogs, the author is often looking to attract the interest of a wide circle of like-minded individuals. Although this model allows more room to express views on a wider variety of topics, it is important to keep the discussion general and not get too specific. This type of blog will benefit from the diverse cross section of incoming links driving their search engine ranking upwards whilst at the same time keeping readers enthralled by the shifting content.

The niche blog on the other hand focuses on a very specific topic and usually contains a number of advertisements. Straying from the main topic of a niche blog would be counterproductive however I have come across a number of content portals containing several niche blogs in one website. These sites obviously require a great deal of resources to maintain and may be better served by having several blogs with a unique topic.

In answer to the question, is one blog with many topics better than many blogs with a single topic each, I would like to reiterate that the number of topics a blog includes should depend on the nature of the blog and its purpose.

Also, including more topics in a blatant effort to improve search engine optimisation may be transparent to regular readers. It is a good idea to consider topic selection carefully and test the waters by gauging reader’s reactions to changes in the topic.

Time to look at gearing websites for mobile access

noreply@blogger.com (DiscoverSEO) — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 10:21:00 +0000

originally published by BusinessDay on 24/03/2009

Smaller businesses need to start gearing up their websites for mobile access to accommodate the growing number of people that have internet capable mobile phones and want to access information while on the move.

In February, the GSM Association announced the four billionth mobile phone connection and predicts this will increase to six billion connections by 2013, and an increasing number of these cellular devices being sold have internet capabilities.

Emerging markets like SA and the rest of Africa have vast potential for mobile internet. As far back as August 2006, the BBC carried a story on its website in which it said that of the international users that accessed its website with an internet capable mobile phone, 61% were based in Nigeria and 19% in SA. It will become increasingly attractive to access web content from a mobile phone as the internet capabilities of these devices become more advanced.

Juniper Research says by 2013, 23% of all new cell phones will be smart phones, which allow internet browsing.

Global research company In-Stat forecasts more than 300 million Wi-Fi-enabled mobile phones will be sold in 2012 and the number of mobile phones that are capable of receiving video content will exceed half a billion by then.

"Some smart phones already allow high resolution pictures to be taken and uploaded directly to the web," says Ceri James, sales and marketing director at JD Internet Consulting .

He says companies like Amazon.com and the BBC have mobile friendly websites and Radio 702 and Makro are among the local companies that do. Some mobile-friendly websites will automatically detect that the user is using a mobile device, but with websites like FaceBook users are required to access a specific address - in this case m.facebook.com, says James.

A mobile browser can be downloaded free from www.opera.com/mini/download/ allowing content to be accessed from any website in a compressed format and users can zoom into any specific area.

Companies need to understand how important it is for their customers and potential customers to access their website from a mobile device and what kind of content they are most likely to be browsing for.

Most websites cannot be accessed effectively by mobile users, in many cases because they have been created in different sections containing different content. When viewing these web pages with a mobile device, all the frames of content are squashed into one cramped page.

The more recently designed websites use techniques that overcome this problem. Websites containing a lot of high resolution graphics present another major problem for mobile users because they slow down response times when trying to access information chew up bandwidth.

"Mobile users want to be able to search for and retrieve information quickly and view it clearly on the screen."

To allow for better mobile access all the rich unnecessary content needs to be stripped out and graphic images reduced to one to two kilobytes.

"If you browse on Amazon.com with a mobile phone, all the images are small, but are of a high enough resolution to view them properly." Companies can set up specific web pages that contain a light version of the same content and a process that recognises when a mobile user is browsing and diverts them to these pages from the same website address.

However, this will require keeping the mobile-friendly web pages in sync with the main website, which could become a major issue if more than one person is posting content. It will also result in having duplicate content on the website, which the search engines do not like and might affect the website rating.

A better alternative is to build intelligence into the website that will recognise when users are browsing with a mobile phone and optimise the content and the way it is presented to them, which is becoming the trend. "This will involve a few hours of additional development to an existing website."

Information on the recently introduced international development standard for mobile website content, XHTML, can be viewed at www.w3.org .

"It is possible to have a mix of XTML and HTML generated content on a website."

Companies can check how mobile-friendly their own or any other website is against the standard by visiting: validator.w3.org/mobile/ website, says James.

Google has developed an internet tool that allows users to select a mobile view of websites when searching for information, more information about which can be found at www.google.com/pda .

Tools like Google analytics will provide a detailed breakdown of browser types and screen resolution. James says when gearing a website for mobile access it is important to work with a web development company that understands the specific
needs of these users.

What You Should Pay for Search Engine Optimisation

noreply@blogger.com (DiscoverSEO) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 08:40:00 +0000

Search engine optimisation (SEO), is becoming an important marketing discipline in South Africa. Many organisations are beginning to recognise the value of Internet marketing and allocating their marketing budgets to online media. A mushrooming of new entrants to the Internet marketing industry has meant that there are many companies offering search engine optimisation services, some at very competitive rates.

As a result, when website custodians or owners attempt to ascertain whether their websites require SEO and what the possible costs will be, they are faced with an overwhelming variety of service offerings and widely diverse cost structures. One reason that costs differ so vastly is due to the nature of the Internet marketing industry. SEO is very much a natural progression for website development firms wishing to grow their business and expand their service offerings.

SEO services, on the one hand are often provided by companies who established themselves as website hosting and development agencies in the last decade. The larger more reputable organisations feel comfortable contracting with an established SEO service provider. They feel a greater sense of security in knowing that the company has been around the block a few times. They are also willing to pay a premium when contracting with a service provider who has a proven track record and offers continuity of service.

On the other hand there are a number of newcomers to the field who operate with little infrastructure and low overheads. Many of these companies are run by highly skilled SEO practitioners who are quite capable of delivering great results at a fraction of the cost.

Whilst both the larger, established agencies and the smaller up-coming practices present great solutions many marketers struggle with the choice, and wish to know what they should be paying for SEO. To compound the problem, the industry does not have a standard costing structure. Whilst many charge per hour, others charge on project to project basis and still others opt for a share of profits. It cannot be said that “x” amount per hour is the going rate as that would be a gross oversimplification. Rather, and as with almost every marketing decision the costs should be considered in relation to the benefits.

Search Engine Optimisation – A Cost/Benefit Analysis

A few guidelines could be used to determine the value an SEO campaign would have to your business. The following list is not comprehensive as each business’ needs will differ however these principles could assist with the decision making process.

Get your house in order:
Should there be problems elsewhere in your business it would be better to have those resolved before investing in an SEO campaign. If your website design and development are good, you have your operations in order and your products and services have been developed to an acceptable standard you are ready for SEO.

Goals and Objectives:
What you should pay for search engine optimisation will depend on your Internet marketing objectives. If your goals are very ambitious, you will probably require an aggressive strategy and you should be willing spend more to meet your objectives. It is important to set attainable goals and to know what they relate to in monetary terms. Then ask yourself what percentage of the expected return you are willing to spend to realise your goals.

Maintain a healthy development to IM ratio:
You should be prepared to spend three times what you spent on initial website design and development on Internet marketing initiatives which are designed to attract traffic, raise search engine rankings, increase conversion and ensure return visits. A great website alone will not lead to growth in market share. In any given period your Internet marketing budget should be allocated in a ratio of approximately one to four.

Choosing an SEO partner:
Other considerations which impact on the cost of search engine optimisation include the size of the firm you are dealing with, their years of experience and the demand for their services. A more reputable and experienced company’s rates may be higher than those of a smaller new entrant. It is important to bear in mind that Internet marketing is a process. It does take time and you should feel comfortable in the knowledge that you will be engaged in a long term relationship with your SEO service provider.

Industry specific factors:
Factors pertaining specifically to your business and website will also have an impact on the cost. The size and complexity of the website, the demand for your brand and competitiveness of your industry will all impact on the cost, time and nature of the project.

Having taken all the above into consideration, you should have a fairly good idea what you can afford to pay for search engine optimisation and with the number of service providers in this industry you should find one who meets the needs of your business. Finally your SEO service provider should offer transparent reporting on your websites current performance, SEO measures taken and the impact thereof. This will allow you to monitor your campaign and make the necessary adjustments.

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Crowdsourcing - How the Consumer is Producing the Product They Want.

noreply@blogger.com (DiscoverSEO) — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 05:50:00 +0000

What is crowdsourcing?

Crowdsourcing is a novel concept in problem solving. It is based on the idea that (paraphrasing Wikipedia) tasks can be outsourced to an undefined and generally large group of people or community in the form of an open call. It takes cognizance of the fact that many minds can accomplish more than a few and uses integrated media to tap into the intellects, creativity and preferences of the public.

The term is relatively new and was coined by Wired’s Jeff Howe in 2006. Jeff puts forth a second definition of crowdsourcing describing it as-

“The application of Open-Source principles outside the field of software”.

Crowdsourcing in action

Although the term may be new, the principle has been in use for some time. In-fact we have all seen crowdsourcing in action and may or may not have been aware of it. To cite a few examples, consider the process followed in 1994 in the implementation of the new South African flag in-which a call for designs invited the general public to participate in the design process thereby ensuring their buy in. That was an older form of crowdsourcing.

Popular reality television programs such as The Apprentice and Idols where viewers are invited to vote for their favorite candidate are some highly publicized recent examples of crowdsourcing. Although Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales objects to the term, the collaborative free-content encyclopaedia is another example of a successfully crowdsourced initiative.

A particularly noteworthy recent application of crowdsourcing was the use of Internet driven participatory politics in American President Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. The Obama campaign made brilliant use of new media to not only communicate regularly with voters but also to gain insight into what people were thinking, what their concerns were and ultimately what it would take to win their votes.

It seems as though Obama’s term in office will maintain the high level of interaction the American public has come to expect with other politicians following suit. N.Y. Public Advocate Mark Green recently called on New Yorker’s to aid him in setting his agenda saying: “Contact me at MarkGreen.com with 20 ways to fix our City so I can learn as I campaign”.

These are just a few of the larger instances in-which crowdsourcing lends itself to massive self-promotion giving the organisation, candidate or initiative widespread exposure.

Crowdsourcing as a business model

Crowdsourcing as a business model is used across various industries and sectors. It is also applied as a public problem solving model and has been used effectively in the design and development of products as diverse as software, pharmaceuticals, clothing and online stock-photo and map repositories.

Some of the perceived benefits of crowdsourcing include low costs, short lead times and increased customer input as well as buy in.

Ultimately the success of the crowdsourcing model can be attributed to the combined application of a few basic business and marketing principles:

It places great emphasis on research and development – a key facet of the competitive marketing strategy
is an innovative research and development solution using new media to improve reach and shorten lengthy research times
is highly responsive to customer needs
is interactive and invites participation from the target market
uses an integrated media approach blending online and offline media
promotes brand building through increased exposure and the use of publicity.

The model is quite controversial and has many vocal critics however the customer centric nature of crowdsourcing affords consumer’s a new level of involvement in the product development process.

Google's Gmail Slams IE6 – Have They Gone Too Far?

noreply@blogger.com (DiscoverSEO) — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 12:38:00 +0000

Google recently discouraged users of their popular Gmail service from using Micosoft’s Internet Explorer 6 (IE6). They seem to favor and encourage the use of alternative browsers such as Mozilla’s Firefox and Google’s very own recently launched Chrome .

It stands to reason that Google will promote the use of their newly developed Chrome but have they really gone too far in slamming IE6? Most people to whom this question is posed will shout an emphatic “absolutely not”. I’ll leave it to you to decide for yourself.

Gmail users accessing their account via an IE6 browser are greeted with a message saying “Get Faster Gmail”. This link leads to a page which provides numerous browser alternatives for different operating systems including Chrome and Firefox 3 amongst others. At the same time claims that Chrome and Firefox are “twice as fast” offer many users a compelling reason to switch. Apparently IE6 also fails to run certain Gmail features earning them the label “Unsupported Browser”.

Google’s obvious endorsement of browsers other than IE6 led to quite a flurry of online comment most of it in support of the move. For years developers have complained about the fact that IE6 fails to support numerous web applications. Problems with the browser include the inability to handle style sheets and security vulnerabilities.

It has become standard practice for developers to create web pages for Firefox and other advanced browsers then spend hours backtracking to tweak each page for IE6 compliance. Developers complain endlessly about the sheer absurdity of this practice not to mention the inefficiency. It makes sense for developers to favor browsers which comply with web standards and support fast JavaScript engines.

The launch of Firefox was welcomed by the development community with exposure to the browser gaining momentum in 2007. Word spread and Firefox quickly became the web communities preferred search engine. Although IE is losing market share to Firefox, Microsoft still retain a large portion of the browser market. In my opinion there are two key factors contributing to the IE’s stickiness. They are: corporate aversion to change and the fact that IE comes standard with Windows software packages.

Small business and home users of IE6 stay with the browser for lack of information. They are not aware of its shortcomings or the fact that there are alternatives. Corporations on the other hand, even those who are aware of the alternatives and the comparative benefits stay with the browser they have been using instead of incurring switching costs and risking backward compatibility. As long as IE6 holds its market share, developers will be faced with cross browser compatibility issues.

Ultimately Google, the website development community and W3C slams IE6 and Microsoft for their lackadaisical attitude towards progress. While other industry role-players are hungry for innovation, pushing the envelope and continuously testing the webs capabilities, the software giant seems to have contracted the destructive virus prevalent amongst organizations whose products dominate the technological landscape, namely indifference. In such cases there’s nothing like some healthy competition to awaken the beast from its slumber. Perhaps coming head to head with a worthy opponent may jar them into action.

Download Firefox Now
Download Google Chrome
Dowload Safari for apple users
Flock for social media
IE7+ if you must

Dealing with Duplicate Content: A Practical Guide

noreply@blogger.com (DiscoverSEO) — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 13:32:00 +0000

The Internet thankfully is still all about great content. Despite all the new marketing disciplines (SEO, SEM, SMO, SMM, ORM and IM) punting guaranteed search results, search engines serve appropriate results rich in content, thus keeping the system honest and ensuring their own survival.

The issue of duplicate content is something which mystifies, even plagues many Internet marketers. Every Internet marketer fears a drop in their websites search engine ranking. Duplicate content could result in a drop in search engine ranking or worse. Being black listed and having penalties instituted against you could deal a devastating blow to your search engine marketing efforts and prove very hard to recover from.

Before getting into ways of preventing search engines from perceiving your content as being duplicated it is necessary to understand that there are different types of duplicate content. Some occurrences of duplicate content are un-intentional whilst others are due to malicious and unimaginative “black-hat” marketing tactics.

Google defines duplicate content as: “substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar.” They also acknowledge that “mostly, this is not deceptive in origin”.

Duplicate content can occur in the following ways:

Having two domains carry the same content. When an organisation decides for geographical and/or other search reasons including canonical domains, to use the same website content on two domains, it confuses search engine robots causing them not to list the site at all.

Using Dynamic URL’s. Database driven websites, in which content is stored in a database and accessed on demand, may serve the same content under different URL’s, depending on the search parameters being used. Search engines can view this as duplicate content.

Circular navigation, in which there are multiple paths to the same website can also cause content to appear to be duplicated.

Providing printer-friendly pages. Users often require hard copies of the information on your website. It is therefore sometimes necessary to provide them with the option to print content. This can be done in one of two ways. You could either host a printer friendly copy (i.e. duplicating the content) or if you are using a CMS, the same content can be supplied in both web and printer formats by the system. Unfortunately, both ways cause your content to appear to be duplicated.

Providing a mobile-friendly version of your website. With the number of Internet friendly mobile devices hitting the market in recent days, it is becoming essential to offer a very basic version/format of your website specifically for user’s browsing your site from a mobile phone. As in the above case however you may run the risk of duplicating content.

Syndication: In cases in which your content is syndicated to other websites or when your articles and blog posts are submitted to content repositories search engines are likely to pick up your content as a duplicate and possibly link to the more “popular” version of your content.

E-commerce product descriptions: Common e-commerce products often have manufacturer descriptions which are used when they are retailed online, particularly in the case of affiliates. This too could be viewed as duplicate content and affect a websites ranking. The same applies in cases where products have multiple categorisations.

Plagiarism is presenting the written intellectual product of another person as your own without their permission. Copying online content is very easy to do and can be a quick fix for websites requiring content in a hurry. Although in most cases search engine crawlers can be relied on to select and serve a link to the originator of the content this unethical duplication of content could result in a loss of traffic.

Content Scraping refers to the use of a crawler to copy website content and rephrase it in an attempt to present it as unique content.

Preventing penalties

Whilst more advanced search engine crawlers do a good job of distinguishing between genuine cases of duplicate content and inadvertent instances, you can avoid being wrongfully penalised for duplicate content by doing the following:

Redirects: In order to ensure that search engines don’t view multiple domains and dynamic URL’s as duplicated content, select a canonical domain and use 301 redirects for permanent pages and 302 redirects for pages with content which is changed or updated often.

Robots.txt: In the case of printer friendly or mobile versions of your website, you need to indicate to the search engine that the information contained therein is not for crawling, use robots.txt to do so. You can also request that syndicated copies of your content be blocked using this method.

Style sheets: As an alternative to creating a duplicate of your webpage for print purposes you could program a style sheet for print. Provided that your website is programmed well, this may be a viable alternative to using robots.txt.

Link back to your site: If blocking syndicated content using robots.txt is not an option for you ensure that your articles contain links to your website.

Categorise and enhance product descriptions: It is really important to categorise products carefully, taking a user’s browser behaviour into consideration rather than duplicating a single page under various categories. Manufacturer’s product descriptions or reviews should be enhanced by providing additional unique content.

Use a content checker: You can detect duplicate content using online duplicate content software, a pro-active approach is required.

Claim ownership of your content: In cases in which your content is continuously ripped off and you are convinced that it negatively impacts your search engine ranking, you can file a DCMA infringement request with search engines such as Google, MSN and Yahoo.

Knowledge of duplicate content issues and how to prevent them could be beneficial when optimising your website for better search engine performance. It is important to keep in mind that your website could contain duplicated content and to take steps to ensure that preventative measures are implemented.

Check your site for duplicate content

www.copyscape.com

Relevant Content is the Key

noreply@blogger.com (DiscoverSEO) — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 12:04:00 +0000

The internet is a valuable marketing and PR tool, but getting the best out of it can be a daunting challenge, especially for smaller businesses with limited budgets.

Understandably, the agenda of the companies setting up websites is to sell their products and services. But it is no good setting up a website with no strategy and objectives behind it and hope customers and potential customers will flock to it.

Too many websites are designed to be ascetically pleasing and flashy with lots of graphics and little focus on content, says Ceri James, sales and marketing director at JD Internet Consulting.

"But search engines rank websites according to the relevance of their content." As much content as possible should therefore be presented in a text format that can be cut and pasted into a document as opposed to being embedded in images. "Search engines do not pick up and index fixed images," he says. So it is best not to just have fancy graphics on the home page without any informative text-based content.

"The first 300 characters of content on the home page are the most important for relevance ranking," says James. Option tabs used to navigate the website and the page titles they click through to should contain the same key words and phrases that should also relate to the content on the page. Search engines are more likely to pick these up than cute or clever titles that need to be interpreted.

"Google's main goal is to index the internet and rank websites in order of relevance," he says.

A company’s aim should be to achieve a higher relevance ranking for its target audience than its competitors as opposed to trying to be everything to everybody. Another consideration is that a 50-page website full of useful content has 10 times more chance of being picked up by the search engines than one with only five pages. Creating links to other relevant websites and getting listed on relevant portals and directories are just some of the ways to get a higher search engine ranking.

"A good internet consultant will set up these links as part of a package," says James. Having attracted the right audience, it is important to keep them on the website as long as possible.

The "stickiness" of the website will depend on factors like the overall look of the website, how easy it is to find what they are looking for and how relevant and useful the content is once they have found it.

Further attractions might include interesting relevant articles, product reviews and benchmarks, offering giveaways or special discounts and displaying prices of products and services.

Some companies are reluctant to display prices on their website, but competitors will get their hands on pricing information some other way if they really want to, says James. Informative articles will attract target audiences to a website and help to increase its search engine ranking, especially if the content contains key words and phrases.

Having found what they want potential customers will also need to easily access contact details, obtain further information or find out where to buy products or services.

“You want the customer to explore the content and then convert their interest into a sale,” he says.

When Robynn Burls set up her online company Encyclomedia, which provides a media contact database service, she realised that setting up a website that nobody can find is a waste of money.

So she started attending conferences and searching for information on the internet to learn how to optimise the website to get a good search engine ranking.

"Search engines look for keywords and phrases in website content that match the words users' type in when searching for information," she says.

Before setting up the company's website Burls first brainstormed with other people about which keywords and phrases to use.

She then used various internet software tools obtained from websites like www.keyworddiscovery.com and www.wordtracker.com/ to test out the effectiveness of the selected keywords. Both these websites offer a free trial of their software and the Wordtracker website contains expert articles and case studies and offers a free newsletter subscription.

Wordtracker will test keywords and report on how regularly these are used in searches and will come up with other related keywords. It will establish how likely users are to type in these words and phrases when they are searching for the type of information posted on the website. But it is worth remembering that a website that uses the most popular keywords will be competing with a lot of others that are using the same ones.

It may therefore pay to use more targeted keywords that are specific to the products and services on offer and are more likely to bring the website up first on the search listing when people type them in. For example, instead of just using the keyword "insurance," use "car insurance" or "budget car insurance."

Having established the optimum keywords, these need to be embedded in the text content on the web pages.

"Bear in mind that Google uses clever algorithms to test the relevance of website content," says Burls. So including words and phrases that relate to selected keywords is likely to increase the relevance ranking of the website. For example, if a person types in the words "public relations", Google will also pick up content containing related words like PR and perhaps publicity.

Having decided on a selection of keywords, the next step is to optimise the content on the website, make sure the text is easy to read and easy for the search engines to pick up and position the keywords strategically.

"I selected three to four keywords and phrases on each page and repeated them three times, once in bold type," says Burls.

Adding a blog to a website is a great way to continually create fresh content that includes keywords and invite comment from those reading the articles posted on it.

Burls says she also writes authoritative articles on the topic of PR for well known information websites like Bizcommunity and embeds some of her keywords in the text with links back to her website. This type of activity gets picked up by the search engines, adds credibility and increases traffic to the website.

Encyclomedia is staging a conference in Cape Town on 20 November (date expired since article was published) aimed at small companies that want to expand their knowledge of PR and what it can do for their business. Conference topics will include search engine optimisation, as an important element of web PR.

Leon Lategan, MD of Purple Cow Communications says in some cases it will pay a company to list its website on an aggregator portal because the chances are that it will achieve better results.

"An aggregator that has say 2000 bed and breakfast establishments on its website is likely to get more hits than an individual website for one B&B," he says.

Today, everyone seems to be offering search engine optimisation and it is important to choose the right one. The selection process should include asking for client references, testimonials, speaking to a few of them and asking them what the consultant achieved for them and how long it took.

Lategan says businesses often make the mistake of trying to pay as little as possible for website optimisation and end up being disappointed with the results. He says if a company wants to pay half the price it could take twice as long to get results.

Article Source

Business Day article published on Tuesday, November 18th

The Rise of Social Media Optimisation - Internet Marketing Trends

noreply@blogger.com (DiscoverSEO) — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 15:08:00 +0000

Some of the most visited websites include social media sites such as Facebook , Digg , Technorati , Muti , Twitter and YouTube . Each of these sites attract incredible volumes of international traffic because they allow users to interact socially on many levels. Social media optimisation is based on the theory that when websites provide users with the ability to publish content and interact with one another they attract more traffic. The idea of social media optimisation is to attract traffic from sources other than search engines and that is the essential difference between Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Social Media Optimisation (SMO).

Whilst both strategies have the same objective i.e. improving website traffic, search engine optimisation includes various techniques for improving your search rankings whilst social media optimisation utilises viral marketing or micro-sharing techniques.

SMO, however is more than an Internet marketing strategy. It has two dimensions one being Internet marketing and the other being Online Reputation Management. SMO can be used in two ways: to manage online public perception of your organisation and the products and services offered and to use social media tools to attract traffic to your website increasing sales conversion.

SMO and Online Reputation Management:

Organisations realise that they do not exist in a vacuum. The premise of modern strategic management is based on the knowledge that organisations exist in relation to their internal and external environments. Within these environments there are various stakeholders. Customers, owners, shareholders, suppliers, employees, the public, the media and competitors need to be communicated with and their perceptions of the organisation managed. Perceptions or reputations were traditionally managed under the functions of public relations and/or corporate communications. The rise of online social media has necessitated the creation of the field of online reputation management in which an organisation’s online reputation is tracked and managed.

SMO and Internet Marketing:

Cyberspace is a highly viral environment. Marketers have always used publicity to promote organisations, people, products and services. We know that a great product won’t remain a secret for long as people tend to talk about it. This is word of mouth advertising. In a digital world, the Internet serves as an incubator for publicity and word of mouth advertising. Hence we speak of viral marketing in which information travels like a virus from person to person, or group to group infecting individuals with awareness, information, and sometimes passing on value judgements. Social media optimisation mobilises the Internet’s viral potential to attract visitors by offering great content, tools and widgets, exclusive information and social platforms such as forums and blogs.

Mobilising Social Media

There are many practical ways in-which marketers use social media optimisation to attract traffic and manage online reputations. Some basic techniques include the provision of interactive features such as blogs, forums and wiki’s. RSS feeds are also useful whilst the incorporation of third party sites such as Digg, YouTube, Flikr (and locally) Muti and Laaikit are critical.

There are many different approaches to and techniques for the use of social media optimisation. Rohit Bhargava’s rules of Conducting Social Media Optimisation http://rohitbhargava.typepad.com/weblog/2006/08/5_rules_of_soci.html provides a comprehensive description of the various techniques.

Although Rohit’s original top 5 rules can be applied widely each websites social media strategy will differ based on the communication needs of the organisation and the target audience.

Personalised Search takes on new meaning with the launch of Google SearchWiki

noreply@blogger.com (DiscoverSEO) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 14:03:00 +0000

Cyberspace has, in the past few days, been abuzz of news about the launch of Google’s SearchWiki feature (official announcement) . There is much speculation at this stage about what this move will mean for Internet Marketing in general and Search Engine Optimisation in particular.

In the last year or so, changes in search engine results have reflected a greater propensity for multimedia content. Whilst a focus on content has been the order of the day there has been talk about moving towards a more personalised search experience. Personalised search whereby the search engine uses your web history to “understand” your preferences and deliver personalised results, has been a signed–in feature on Google since early in 2007.

Google’s SearchWiki is also a signed-in feature (meaning that only users with a Google account have access to it). SearchWiki allows users to personalise their search results by moving a result to the top of the page. Users can also delete pages from the results and comment on pages within the results. Their comments can be viewed by all signed-in users and they can view comments made by other users. Take note: this feature is currently only available on Google English (US) version.

The Upside of SearchWiki

The biggest advantage of SearchWiki is greater personalisation. The ability to ensure that the page you favour appears first in your results allows you to access the information you require with greater ease and reliability. Likewise, the ability to delete those pages which add no value to your search results is also wonderful whilst the ability to comment on pages and view the comments of other users gives the search action a social dimension. Allowing users to share their value judgements with one another makes search a much more interactive experience.

The Downside of SearchWiki

Some users may find that these added features make the search results appear more cluttered although my personal opinion is that they blend in quite well.

In most cases organic search results ensure that the most desirable results appear first. It is possible that if SearchWiki is overused it will limit the user’s inclination to learn new things. If a user prefers a single source and only visits that page repeatedly in their online search for a particular term they will hamper their chances of receiving new and important data.

The no.1 complaint from users of SearchWiki is that it cannot be turned off. The only way to turn it off is to sign-out from Google and for many that is not an option.

The comment section of SearchWiki is open to advertising as well as spam, but I'm sure Matt Cutts and his team have thought about this and will find a way to combat negative comments and inappropriate meterial.

The Googleside of SearchWiki

SearchWiki will provide Google with valuable information about their user’s likes and dislikes. If they chose to utilise this information it could aid them in delivering even better search results. The question is, will data gleaned from SearchWiki affect Google Bot’s algorithm? It stands to reason that if the data could improve search results they may come to factor it in at some stage.

Regardless of Google’s next move the launch of SearchWiki, means that the editorial role of ordinary Internet users has and is growing. This shift intensifies the focus on content, and makes it that much more important for Internet Marketers to provide users with a feature rich and satisfying online experience.

The real cost of deferring search engine optimisation

noreply@blogger.com (DiscoverSEO) — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 14:47:00 +0000

Get it Right the First Time

Time and budget constraints often see clients deferring SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) to a later date. Marketers faced with launch deadlines and cost issues tend to push the delivery of their website in order to meet a deadline or complete a project within budget thinking that SEO can be addressed later. This leads to a serious, detrimental and costly process error.

There are essentially two ways to design or re-design a website. One way includes SEO whilst the other does not. The difference between the two approaches is that one includes competitive analysis and positioning whilst the other neglects this essential marketing component.

When designing a website focus is often placed on the clients communication requirements. The planning phase of a website development initiative includes addressing issues of what to communicate and how to do so most effectively. Functionality is often considered during this phase with a view towards providing maximum user satisfaction. All of the above is entirely necessary with any marketing campaign, be it in an online or offline environment. However, in most cases for a marketing strategy to be effective it also needs to be competitive. You need to look to your competitors and position yourself in relation to their market position.

Consider the process you may follow if you were to launch a new product, or expand your service offering. You would typically approach your advertising agency. They would do a thorough market analysis, which would include identification of any competing products and/or services. They would also explore the product features and benefits and define your unique marketing proposition in order to play up the key selling points. They would furthermore identify appropriate media and devise an effective media plan. Similarly, competitive website design involves:

Competitive analysis: Who are the existing players in the market? How do they rank? What features do their websites contain and what works well for them?

Keyword research and recommendations: The provision of keyword statistics which allow you to make intelligent and informed decisions with regards to effective keyword usage.

Search engine friendly design: Linking, metadata, code and keywords are addressed to ensure search engine friendly design.

Internet marketing strategy: The use of pay per click, affiliate marketing, newsletters, e-mail and SMS marketing to attract more traffic to your website.

A competitive approach should therefore be adopted consciously and consistently throughout the website development process in order to avoid facing design flaws which may require costly alteration efforts.

The inclusion of search engine optimisation may drive initial website development costs up by as much as 25%. This is due, mainly to the inclusion of competitive marketing expertise, additional consulting hours, reporting, specialist programming and the creation of attractive content. However it will save you time and money in the long run.

Benefits of including SEO in the initial development stage:

Your website will perform at optimum capacity from day one,
You will capitalise your investment sooner. You can expect admirable traffic statistics and a good conversion rate within three to six months.
You will not incur additional development costs for at least the first year to 18 months.

Should you choose to defer search engine optimisation to a later date, it is quite likely that you will incur three to four times the cost of an upfront SEO investment.

The real costs of deferring SEO:

Code and design will need to be redressed for SEO,
All website content will need to be updated for keyword optimisation,
You will incur opportunity costs as a result of a website which does not compete effectively for traffic in your online marketplace,
You may lose valuable market share to competitors who perform better online.
You may loose valuable site age.

What we can do for you?:

If you are launching a new website or re-designing an existing one do not neglect the primary website concern which is search engine optimisation. Enquire about DiscoverSEO services to achieve optimum Internet marketing results.

Inside Adwords Pay Per Click

noreply@blogger.com (DiscoverSEO) — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 13:55:00 +0000

A Double Edged Sword

There are many different ways to get your website into the top ten results on SERP’s (search engine results pages). Some of the most popular techniques include SEO (search engine optimisation) and PPC (pay per click). Whilst the objective of these two techniques remains the same, their methods differ.

When using an SEO strategy the objective will be to make material changes to a website in an effort to improve its visibility on search engines and thus its ranking in organic search. Resources are directed towards lasting and long term improvements to a websites design, code and content.

PPC on the other hand is a paid form of search engine advertising, in which guaranteed placement is purchased for a given fee. The fee is determined by the market demand for your chosen keywords as well as relevance between the keyword and the content of your site. All major search engines offer some form of PPC service. Some of the most effective pay per click services available include Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing and MSN AdCenter, however since Google is the most popular search engine today, it stands to reason that their AdWords offers a greater pay per click reach than any other advertising medium available.

Although there are numerous benefits to using pay per click it is a double edged sword in that it produces both favourable and unfavourable results.

Some of the advantages include:

Immediate results
The pay per click campaign process is as simple as one, two, three. One, create an advert consisting of one title line and two content text lines. Two, set a budget, select your keywords and decide where you would like your advert to be displayed. And three, have your advert appear on the first page of Google results for your keywords.

Pay only for results
You set a budget which will only be debited each time someone clicks your advert and is connected to your website. No other advertising medium guarantees that your advert will be seen.

Targeted reach
Pay per click offers accurate targeting. Provided you select your keywords intelligently, your advert will only be visible to those users who are specifically in the market for your products and/or services. You are also able to direct your advert at specific regional target markets using AdWords functionality.

Local business ads
Link your advert to Google Maps to display your geographic location, contact information as well as an image depicting the nature of your business.

Some of the disadvantages include:

Cost
Certain keywords, depending on how much online competition exists, may be quite costly to secure.

Continuous investment
Pay per click requires that you continuously direct resources towards this method. If you consistently direct resources towards pay per click and fail to make long term improvements to your website using other Internet marketing methods you will create for your business an unhealthy reliance on this method of advertising.

Uncertain market share
It is possible to gain market share through the long term use of pay per click advertising. However because this market share is based on paid placement, it is volatile and could be purchased by a higher bidder.

Every marketer’s objective is to obtain maximum marketing value at minimum cost. Depending on the market in which your business exists and the level of Internet marketing competition, a PPC campaign could provide quick results for a reasonable fee. On the other hand, it could prove costly in the long run and fails to deliver lasting results.
What we can do for you?:

DiscoverSEO will assess your site to determine if Adwords will benefit your company. If you have an existing Adwords Account, we can assist in maximising the potential of your Google Adwords Campaign and bring you the best possible results for your market. Get an Adwords quote »

How to set up a blog in 5 easy steps

noreply@blogger.com (DiscoverSEO) — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 16:06:00 +0000

Step One: Select a blog service

Some of the most popular blog services available include Blogger, WordPress and Movable Type. Each of these reliable and useful blog services vary in terms of features and cost. Whilst Blogger and WordPress are free Movable Type is a paid service. Some of the advantages of using Blogger include free hosting and easily incorporated Adsense services. Although WordPress and MovableType require that your blog be hosted on your own server they also offer better statistics and more customisation. All three are great blog service options, your decision with regards to which service to use will ultimately depend on your budget, customisation and hosting requirements.

Step Two: Create a blog address

Your blog will need to be named. You should select a domain name or URL which will be memorable and which will appeal to your target audience. Some general advice about domain names:

the domain name should be kept short but at the same time it should be descriptive enough to inform readers what the blog is about,
they should preferably not include any words or names with complicated spellings,
numerals should also be avoided.

Step Three: Choose a Template

Most blog services offer a variety of templates. The template includes look and feel elements such as design, colour, and font of your website. Templates can often be changed if you are not satisfied with you initial selection.

Step Four: Include appropriate features

Features, such as those mentioned above, affect how the reader interacts with your blog. They have the ability to ensure that a user has a pleasant and memorable experience.

Step Five: Create great content

You now have a catchy domain name, you have selected a suitable blog service, are satisfied with the look and layout of you blog and feel that your blog features will appeal to your target audience. The stage has been set and the final performance is up to you.

The number one attraction of any blog is content and it is the quality of your content which will determine your blogs impact. Remember to pay attention to two things, purpose and frequency. When creating content for your blog you must remain true to your purpose in establishing the blog. Be it to educate, inform, interact, entertain, or all of the above purposeful writing ensures that you make good choices with regards to topics, tone and frequency of posting.

Blogs and Blogging Simplified

noreply@blogger.com (DiscoverSEO) — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 16:00:00 +0000

Blog is the short term for weblog. Weblogs originated in the late 1990’s and were used as a log or list of links to web pages the author visited and considered to be interesting or relevant. Each link included the author’s comments and thoughts on the linked articles. The trend soon caught on, as website administrators realised that this could be a quick and painless way of regularly updating their websites with information.

It was not long before software to support effortless weblog posting was developed. In so doing, today’s commonly used blog application was born. These day’s blogs are used in all sectors from corporations, to academia, and even in online social settings. Blogs have become more verbose and although they often contain links to other web pages, they are no longer merely a list of links. They are more like online journals, presented in reverse chronological order with the latest posting appearing first. There are no restrictions on what the author writes and he needs never be edited.
A good blog includes

Every good blog includes a few features: archives, syndication, blog-rolls, comments, pingbacks and trackbacks are probably the most important.

Archives are often found on the front page of a blog and are a collection of older posts. What’s cool about archives is that they allow the blog author to keep older posts on the website and to arrange them in an accessible manner. Articles in an archive can be arranged according to period of publication, (for example day, month or year), topic, author (in the case of many authors) or any other classification deemed relevant by the administrator.

The syndication process, allows readers of your blog to subscribe through RSS or similar technology, to automatically and regularly receive notification of any updates made to your weblog. They contain “feedreaders” which are designed to look for new information on specified pages and inform the user of the change in content that a particular webpage has undergone.

Blogrolls have replaced the initial intended function of weblogs. A blogroll consists of a list of links to other websites, blogs and news sites that are relevant to the subject of a particular blog. It also uses aggregation technology (like feedreaders) to “roll” the list of sites for new content.

Comments make weblogs really interesting. They allow readers to provide their various points of view, agree or disagree with the author and generally participate in the conversation. They are a great way of attaining feedback from stakeholders and many corporate bloggers use it as a sounding board for their thoughts and new ideas.

Trackbacks and pingbacks are quite similar to one another although they use completely different technology. Trackbacks were used first and allow users to reference another blog post, comment on it and inform the referenced blog that they have been tracked. Pingbacks allow for automatic reciprocal referencing but do not include comments. Both trackbacks and pingbacks are a bloggers way of referencing another blogger online. Online interlinking facilitated by trackbacks and pingbacks increases a websites search engine visibility.

How much business does your web site really generate?

noreply@blogger.com (DiscoverSEO) — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 10:33:00 +0000

Isn’t the purpose of your web site to generate revenue, by driving the right people to it, so that they can make an informed decision about your products & services, & then ultimately spend money with you?

This will only happen if your web site is listed in the top 20 search results of Google. – This is exactly how Discover SEO can assist your business.

Through its in depth understanding of how to optimise web sites, we will get YOUR web site strategically listed in all the related directories and search engines, crucial to getting you found under the correct searches & drive huge amounts of traffic to your web site each and every month. This in turn will mean increased sales & revenue for your business.

To find out more about this amazing service, go directly to Discover SEO & contact us right away.

The longer you wait, the more business you are losing to your competitors.