Google’s end October changes (see Section 3) feel a bit unseasonal.They have shifted the ground away from paid directories to a significant degree, and have reduced the Page Rank of large numbers of web sites worldwide. Possible actions needed are highlighted in Section 3,and apply only to Google, ie Yahoo and MSN are unaffected.
Nevertheless, web trading has continued to deliver strong sales growthin 2007. I hope this has worked for your own business during 2007, and send our best wishes for Christmas, and for every success in 2008.
1. NET ISSUES
Important issues that could impact on your website approach
With web design, looking good isn’t enough
Over 50% of our new clients already have a web site. Many are quite happy with
thelook of their site, but are not happy with the site traffic volume, or the
sales they get from the web. On checking, we often find that the design
execution is actually hampering the site performance in the search engines.
All site development aspects,ie Design, Development (coding) and Optimisation,
need professional execution, to avoid disappointment. Typical weaknesses we see
regularly, include the following:
IT Department Development
• Often, in larger businesses, the site coding is done by internal IT staff.
Although their IT skills may be strong, they are not always familiar with
the HTML conventions used by search engines, eg header hierarchy, metatag
formats
• Also optimisation is often weak, resulting in poor site visibility, and a
low ranking for the site
“Design before Optimisation” ……… or …“a university friend of my son….”
• When starting up, small businesses often do the initial site development
themselves or use a relative, or family friend
• However, although a neat looking site may be achieved, the greatest skill
shortfall tends to be in the optimisation of the site, ie creating a site
which is not “search engine spider-friendly”, or correctly optimised
• Since around 80% of traffic comes from search engines, the cost of this
weakness can be expensive.
“Balance the treatment of text and graphics”
• Often the developer doing the initial site may have a good design
background, but can often lack strong HTML coding or optimisation skills
• In these cases, often the visual impact is achieved at the expense of good
text presentation and user friendliness, eg
• Time - and visitors – are lost by use of slow loading Flash animation
landing pages
• Poor text presentation - easy to read text, eg short punchy sentences,
bullet points, should be used, not large chunks of unbroken text
• Lack of keyword focus – the text is often written with little regard
to keyword focus – likely to reduce the visibility of the site to
potential site users
• Weak product claims – identify what is unique, distinctive or special
about your offer, and then highlight this clearly for site visitors.
Help your visitors – give them a map
A site map both helps your visitors, and has good optimisation benefits – often
in the situations outlined above, it is overlooked
• the map will help your site visitors, and also helps search engine spiders
to navigate and index your site
• an example of a simple, effective site map can be seen here
Stay Fresh
Often the initial site is left untouched for quite a period. However it is
important to avoid out of date content – do all you can to keep your site
content alive and fresh
• eg consider a News/Update section – or develop a Newsletter – if you put
each issue on the site, this is an easy source of fresh material
Importantly, Google rates sites which have regular content changes, more highly
than those that don’t change, so the updates will help your site ranking also.
2. NET HAPPENINGS
News, themes and trends from the Internet – home and abroad
Technology enablers still developing strongly…………….…………..……………
Text messaging - volumes are still growing strongly. In Oct 2007 volumes
reached a record monthly total of 5.3 billion for Oct – up 25% on Oct 2006.
Thus volumes now exceed 1bn messages per week (text-it)
Internet usage – 61% of UK households (ie 15m households) can now access the
web. The volume has increased by 1m since 2006, and is growing at c7% pa.
Within Europe, Netherlands has the highest internet household penetration (80%)
(statistics.gov)
Broadband adoption – 84% of UK households which have internet access, do so
via Broadband, ie 12.6m households (statistics.gov)
Mobile web use – 16.3m people accessed the web in this way during Oct 2007, ie
over 20% of mobile phone users use their mobile phone to access the web. (text.it)
Online Shopping Update - UK figures showing strong growth……………….….
• UK is expected to spend more online this Christmas than any other
European country, with c£14bn being spent. Germany, forecast to be the
second highest spending country, is expected to spend around £12bn. (nma.co.uk)
Internet Promotion – continued shift away from traditional media…………...
• UK online advertising spend grew at 41% last year – by contrast,
traditional advertising showed a small reduction (iabuk.net)
• Email volumes increased by 52% year on year in 2007 (DMA.org) and now
exceed print-based direct marketing volumes
• Search Engine spend in Europe is forecast to reach nearly £6bn in 2012
– up from £2.5bn in 2007
• UK Search Engine spend is predicted to grow at 28% pa over this period –
the UK leads Europe on search-related spend (Forrester/nma.org)
• We have extensive experience in Pay Per Click – the most prominent web
promotion option - click here to learn more about how it works.
3. NET TIPS
Some hints you could consider
Google change – paid directories
On 27th October, many websites across the world discovered that their Google
Page Rank had reduced – by 2/3 in many instances. This followed changes by Google to reduce the recognition of links in paid directories – the changes applied
to Google only and do not impact other engines eg Yahoo, MSN.
The general interpretation has been that Google would prefer to see sites paying
them to achieve rankings via Pay Per Click rather than paying directory sites.
Key issues to be considered include:
• high quality referral directories should still be used selectively
• paid directory links for Yahoo, MSN are not affected
• continue to find inbound links, which emanate from web pages which carry
fewer than say 50 links - ideally 5/10
• pay increased attention to relevance of the site from which the inbound
link originates, ie are they in the same sector/trade as your site?
• consider scope for using article-based links, although this can be more
time consuming
• ensure the inbound link comes from a page indexed by Google.
NB: Net Commerce has tools which enable us to readily check each of these issues
– please contact us if you would like help on any aspect of link building.
4. NCS FOCUS
News and services from NCS that might help
e-mail not d-mail – the Direct Marketing Association highlight that in 2007,
email marketing overtook print direct marketing for the first time. NCS helps
many clients implement email marketing programmes – just contact us if you wish
to develop your own email programme, or click here to read more about this topic.
Video hosting - over the past couple of years there has been a strong shift to
putting video material on web sites, not just static visual images. We can provide
both the initial site structure, and guidance on video standards
We also provide a Content Management System which enables site owners to add new videos as they wish – just let us know if you wish to enhance your site content
in this way.
Developments in web marketing, site design, and web services
Social Networking and Mobile web use remain the two liveliest
issues in Web marketing currently - good use of both is a platform for getting better value from your site. In the next issue, we give an action check list on Social Networking, so this month we lead on Mobile web use – I hope the article and the rest of the content help you win more users for your site.
1 NET ISSUES
Significant issues that could impact on your website approach
Using Mobile access to bring more visitors to your site
Use this approach to increase your site traffic through Mobile web access:
a) Scale of web usage - using mobiles to access the web has stepped up sharply over the past year - according to Scoot UK, web traffic from mobile devices increased by over 4000% in the last 18 months. Apple hold by far the greatest share of this - their devices now handle more than 70% of mobile traffic on the web.
Even a year ago nearly 70% of i–phone users visited web sites via their phone on a daily basis.
b) Most popular uses - the most popular use of mobiles on the web is for email (59% of users); news headlines (46%) and social networking (41%)
c) Web brands – the most popular web brands were Google (55%); Facebook (42%); BBCNews (40%); E-bay (30%) and YouTube (77%)
d) Trends - Gartner reported in May that, worldwide, smart-phone sales increased by 85% year-on-year, so web usage trend seems likely to continue growing.
Clearly website owners should consider carefully the extent of the need to tailor their sites to suit mobile phone visitors, and how best to do this.
e) Our Approach - NCS assesses the degree of mobile relevance for all sites we develop, especially potentially high usage sites, e.g. information only sites, forums, social networking, sites addressing young user market.
Lower priority sites e.g. within certain industrial/commercial sectors will be identified also with, typically, a different technical solution being offered. Optimal domain usage, i.e. whether .mobi is best option, or whether non mobile domains will be adequate, are considered also.
f) Technical solutions - the optimal technical solution will be considered, e.g. for simple sites– the existing web site will often suffice for majority of mobile phones, with minimal content change needed, and .mobi use not needed.
For complex sites, e.g. for mobile-relevant sites with high content levels, (e.g. offering a wide range of products) a .mobi domain may be appropriate; the text content may need simplification; use of the flash/javascript content of existing site may need removing and image formats may need changing.
We will consider with clients the optimal level of search spend, once the site is up, to achieve the necessary level of visibility for the site.
g) Cost - the cost of specifying and developing fully mobile-friendly sites depends on the profile of individual sites. In some instances an effective solution can be delivered for minimal additional cost, as all requirements can be incorporated within the basic site specification.
In other cases it may be necessary to radically tailor the site content for mobile visitors - effectively a separate, mobile - orientated site is needed, although it can detect the mobile device and serve up a different set of pages suitable to them.
Under all options we closely tailor the price to reflect the work needed, with maximum re-use of existing content.
2. NET HAPPENINGS
News, themes and trends from the Internet – home and abroad
Mobile web usage - UK web traffic from mobile devices has increased by over 4000% in the last 18 months. Apple hold by far the greatest share of this - their devices now handling more than 70% of all mobile traffic (scoot.co.uk).
Social Networking - Facebook remains dominant – in the US 50% of the population is now on Facebook (Dreamgrow.com) – followed by YouTube and Twitter.
Online Shopping Update - UK online shopping is growing at 18% pa – the UK is Europe’s leading e-retail economy, with online sales likely to reach c£75bn in 2011 (imrg.org). By contrast, overall retail sales have actually shown falls in recent months.
Internet Promotion – double digit growth in online advertising spend is expected in 2011 – being driven by higher social media use, video, and display advertising. Paid search and mobile show strong growth also (nma.co.uk).
3. NET TIPS
Some hints you could consider
Use correct anchor text - when you put links to pages on your site, use terms for the clickable link which are the terms people will use when searching in a Search Engine for that activity. e.g. if you are a golf equipment e-tailer, and want to link to your new products page, don’t use “our new products” for the link, but describe the page more specifically, for example, “latest golf hybrids and drivers” – Search Engines attach far greater weight to specific terms like these.
Having said this, it is also important to vary the anchor text in your links – so don’t put the same text in all your links.
Get a long tail – long tail keywords are those which have several words, not a single word as the search term. Recent research (axandra.com) has highlighted that long tail keywords are much more likely to result in a sale than more general ones and often have less competition from other sites.
Thus, you will get both better conversion rates and more visitors if you focus on long tail keywords, rather than a single word, for your keyword.
Get on top - research (optify.net/axandra.com) has confirmed that if you get to the top positions on page 1 of Google, you not only get more clicks (the top 3 get 60% of the clicks), but you get a higher click through rate. Optify conclude that if you you double your site promotion spend to get to from 2nd position to 1st, you might triple your visits for that keyword.
NCS has 10 years experience in Search Engine marketing, so please contact us if you need help with this.
Think Firefox – the lastest Statcounter browsers statistics show that by May, Firefox held a share of 42% of browser usage - Internet Explorer was below 25% with Google Chrome increasing to nearly 26%. Clearly, Web owners need to check that their sites operate effectively with each of these browsers.
4. NCS FOCUS
News and services from NCS that might help
New Sites – we have launched a number of sites since the last newsletter – just visit our News Release page for a sample or click on our Portfolio page to see a much wider selection of our work.
Content Development - Google are reducing the rankings of shallow content sites, ie sites with minimal content. So be wary of relying on a minimal, passive, brochure site, to gain the search engine ranking you need. We have massive experience developing content for sites across a wide range of sectors – just approach us if you think your content needs enhancing.
