SEO, Internet Marketing, and other things I don't know much about…
Internet Marketing
Tips for Young Internet Marketer’s
Apr 7th
As a young man in internet marketing, I have had to grow from doing SEO for my own sites (back when arbitrage was all the rage), then doing general internet marketing for clients and customers sites (some which I designed, and others which had already been built) and then managing an in-house SEO team. Each role has had it’s pro’s and con’s, and a focus on different skill-sets. For example, working for yourself can be a great experience and provide boundless flexibility, however you tend to be working autonomously and while many people work best this way, you won’t be interacting with others which can result in your skills being blunted and for laziness to set in.
However I am not here to tell you what is the best working environment for you. I have compiled a list of quick and basic tips for those just starting out in the SEO world.
Read & Stay Up to Date
There is nothing being behind in the SEO world. Did you know that 301 redirects don’t pass full PageRank? Did you know there was a toolbar PageRank update two days ago? If you weren’t aware of these things you need to read more, keep up to date in the dynamic world of SEO! I am by no means saying that I am a guru when it comes to the latest SEO theories and updates, but I do my best to keep ahead of the trend.
As a youngster in SEO, you must keep ahead of the pack, as the pack has more experience than you. Most of the guru’s out there have been plying their trade for 5 or more years (many SEO’s have upwards of 10-12 years experience!), so it’s crucial you partially make up for this inexperience by being on the ball when it comes to changes in Google’s algorithm, linkbait theories etc.
Here are a few RSS feeds I suggest following:
If you see any others that provide really valuable content, be sure to subscribe to their RSS feed, just in case you miss them in your daily browsing.
Get Your Name Out There
This is a point that I myself am still working on, so I can’t give you definitive answers. However I can try and point you in the right direction, and let you know a few things I am trying.
Start a Blog
This allows you to publish your thoughts in full, without too much outside interference. It gives others a point of reference, and allows them to get an insight into what kind of internet marketer you are.
Get on Twitter
I know many of you will already be on Twitter, but if you aren’t, do it. Worst case scenario, you get a handful of followers, but at least it gives you a point of reference for your favourite links! Be sure not to post too reguarly, or too infrequently, and only post about things you are genuinely interested in. For more information check out my post on Using Twitter for SEO.
I was having a chat to a social media specialist today, and she said that Twitter was predominantly a “follow/unfollow” game. So spend some time once a week following people in your industry who you think will post valuable content, then also spend some time unfollowing people that aren’t following you. So by following others, your number of followers should increase in turn.
Twitter drives great traffic for any links you post, so if you couple this with starting a blog, the results can come in quickly.
Audit Your Facebook Profile
This point goes not only for your Facebook profile, but any websites that may have publicly accessible information about yourself.
Now I can’t stress this enough. Make sure the information is clean! Don’t join groups which may be offensive, try to keep wall post’s above-board, and don’t post photos of you after a huge Saturday night out. Also it’s worth making sure all your Facebook profile is set to private.
Now I know this shouldn’t have to be a worry, and it annoys me that this is an issue, but believe me in the internet marketing industry people will Google your name. So it’s worth cleaning up anything out there that could be perceived as in bad taste. You have been warned!
Expand Your Knowledge
Unfortunately we can’t all specialise in everything. But what I can recommend is working out where your knowledge is lacking or could be improved and start trying to increase your knowledge on that subject. For me it was PHP and CSS, so I sat down with a couple of designers, and had a look over some websites just to get up to a basic level of understanding.
For you it might be CRO, or HTML, or design, but whatever it is, be sure to spend some time on improving those skills. It can be so easy trying to fine tune the skill-set you specialise in, that it is easy to move away from the big picture. Even though you might not be hands-on in these areas of internet marketing, having an understanding of them will help ensure your success as an internet marketer.
Video SEO Tips
Mar 11th
As we delve deeper and deeper into Web 2.0, we are finding that unique, dynamic and interesting content is becoming more and more important. YouTube is now the second largest search engine after Google, and we are finding that people are having substantially less interest in reading content which is full of text. From an SEO persepctive people are almost 10 times more likely to link to a blog post which has a few different types of content (video, images, lists etc.).
I’m a huge fan of videos, because at worst at least you are increasing brand awareness, credibility, and hopefully some direct traffic. On this note, it’s worth having a watermark over the video for those few people which type web address’ directly into their browsers.
Video for Linkbait
Can you think of a good article that you think people would be enticed to link to? Why not try making an interesting video instead? The video first caught on as a good SEO, linkbait, marketing tactic when a few people began releasing very interesting/funny/infromative videos and noticed they spread across the web incredibly quickly. We now know this phenamonom as a video going “viral”. If you happen to host an interesting/funny/informative video on your website, or a page within your site, you will find it draws an incredible amount of links!
Video for Direct Links
Created a video that’s hosted on your website? You can pump it out to a few different video sharing websites and get some DIRECT links in return. Here is a handy list of 12 do-follow video sharing websites. Don’t simply limit your submissions to video sharing websites with “dofollow” links. Make sure you submit to YouTube and other major video submission website to ensure your link profile is kept relatively natural, and as Google’ postition on nofollow links seems to change day-to-day it can’t hurt to have a few nofollow links!
SEO for Video
Want to get your video at appear at the top of the YouTube SERP’s or even Google results? Then you will have to embark on some SEO for your video. Essentially SEO for video follows the same conventions as SEO for standard websites. Try and get some links to your video on YouTube (be sure to link to it from your website). Google and YouTube also seem to take into account the number of views a video has, so try to optimise your video for highly searched terms. Here is a little tip if you are struggling. Find a video in your niche that has a large number of views, then copy that video’s ‘tags’ exactly and you should appear very highly in “Related Videos”. Don’t be afraid to respond to somebody else’s video as well, as this is also a good way to piggyback of somebody else’s success.
As always, leave a comment.
SEO or CRO?
Oct 29th
First things first, what is CRO? CRO is (among other things) conversion rate optimisation. Put simply, this is taking an existing product or service for sale on the web, and improving the sale rate of the product, without a heavy focus on increasing traffic numbers. Although traffic may play a small part in CRO, the main focus is optimising the site itself to increase the amount of sales per visitor to the site. For example, XYZ.com may be receiving 1,000 hits per month and getting 10 sales (a sale rate of 1%). The job of a CRO would be to increase that percentage, not the number of hits.
Why post this on an SEO blog you ask? I may be shooting myself in the foot here, but sometimes traffic isn’t the issue, it’s saleability. Many SEO professionals can increase your traffic 10,000%, but will it increase sales?
Take a look at your current sale rate. Is it at what you think is a reasonable level? Anywhere between 0.5%-8% are good benchmark figures, with 1%-2% being good levels for a financial website for example, whereas retail websites can go as high as an 8% conversion rate. If you are somewhere in this conversion rate (5%-8% for retail, and slightly lower for most other services), then SEO is what you should be focusing on.
However, if have a conversion rate of 2% or lower, then maybe your first port of call should be optimising for conversion, not for traffic levels.
I am no conversion expert, but I have done some work with it in the past, and here are a few tips to help increase your conversion rate (yes, most of them are just common sense but remember a conversion is a different thing for each site, sometimes a conversion is simply a phone call, these are just simple points that should work on every website).
Direct the User
Don’t let the user aimlessly stumble about your website. Try to direct them to sales pages in the least clicks possible. Ideally you should be able to make a sale on the first page they land on. Have “Buy Now” buttons spread out so that one is always visible on the browser (but try and do it in a neat, attractive way).
Attractive Yet Simple
Having an attractive site is important. Think about when you buy something from a retail store, the look and feel of the store determines how much you are willing to pay, what you expect to find, how long you spend there etc. A website is no different. Make your website an inviting space for users where they can linger.
As with everything I seem to write there is a ‘but’. In this case it involves ensuring your website is attractive, while still maintaining it’s ease-of-use. Don’t overuse Flash or annoying animations, and make sure your images aren’t so large that they increase loading times substantially. Avoid clutter and superfluous information/images/text as this simply distracts the user from what they should be doing, buying!
Alter Your Pricing, Payment Options
By offering a range of payment and pricing options, you are making your product readily accessible to more markets. Not everybody has a credit card, not everybody trusts direct debit. Make sure you use PayPal as one of the options, as this tends to be one of the safest options for both you the seller and the buyer. Buyers tend to trust PayPal more than standard payment options.
Offer a Guarantee
By offering a guarantee of some sort, money-back is the most common, you can prove to the customer that you are so confident in your product you can guarantee they will be satisfied with it. How can they lose then? If they love your product (which they should) they simply completed the transaction that was expected, and if not they haven’t lost anything.
Be Open, Honest and Trustworthy
Don’t try and hide anything, or put extra charges behind a wall of tiny text and Terms and Conditions. Make the charges transparent, so the buyer isn’t hit with extra charges at the last minute (as there is no surer way of blowing a sale). If you have extra credit card charges, shipping costs etc, make sure the buyer knows about it early on.
Post some testimonials of happy buyers in the past, show that you are posting by courier and give them the reference number, give realistic time frames for delivery, anything to reassure the buyer.
I know these are all relatively obvious points, but I have used them all in the past to up the conversion rate of a number of sites. If you have any suggestions, ideas, or disagreements please comment!
