The Search Engine wars continue. Google’s market capitalization has exceeded $50 bn and – underlining the importance of the search process - Microsoft have announced their own search engine initiative.
With our help (hopefully) our own clients focus increasingly on lifting their site ranking, via link building, site optimization, and promotion.
However, many web companies, and new site owners still focus more on web site styling than the critical search engine dimension needed to get a strong level of traffic to their sites. We hope NetNews can give you some useful pointers on this.
1. NET ISSUES
Important issues that could impact on your website approach
It pays to advertise - we are seeing increasingly proactive promotion of web sites. UK Online advertising will reach £500m by end 2004, and is likely to overtake radio advertising by 2007. Since 2003, online ad spend in UK has exceeded cinema advertising (iabuk.net) and is now running at c150% of cinema advertising spend.
The latest figures (iabuk.net/PriceWaterhouseCooper) show a huge (76%) year on year increase in online advertising within the UK.
The key message, within the mix of possible options is to consider first using more paid search advertising – UK web site owners spent £115m on paid search advertising in the first half of 2004 – virtually double the 2003 level.
2. NET HAPPENINGS
News, themes and trends from the Internet – home and abroad
Technology enablers still developing strongly…………….…………..……………
WAP – 1.08 bn of WAP pages were viewed during September – an increase of 20% on September 2003 levels – total WAP page impressions are predicted to exceed 13 billion for 2004 (Mobile Data Assocn (MDA).
Text messaging – UK text messages now exceed 2 billion per month, ie 2.13 billion for September: 2004 volumes are up by c23% on 2004 (MDA).
Broadband – over 5m UK households now have broadband internet access –broadband usage in the UK has grown by 50% during past 6 months (nopworld.com)
Internet – over 50% of UK’s 25m households are now online.
Online Shopping Update - UK figures showing strong growth…………….
- the 18m online shoppers in the UK will spend £15bn online in 2004: currently volume is growing by 37% year on year
- e-retail may represent 10% of all UK shopping by 2005
- the 12m regular online shoppers in the UK spent over £1bn online in September, with clothing being the fastest growing sector (FT/Imrg)
Forrester Research has predicted that within US, online retail sales will more than double by 2010 to US$316 billion, with most retail segments growing by between 10% and 20% over that period.
Hitwise feel that in the UK - with increasing adoption of broadband Internet connections and growing consumer confidence in shopping online - the online market will grow at a similar pace. They highlight the Tesco model, where profits from its online groceries business grew by 27% for the half year ending 14 August, ie:
- since January 2004, Tesco Superstore experienced a 26% increase in online traffic.
- site visitors are spending an average of nearly 22 minutes on the site.
3. NET TIPS
Some hints you could consider
Search Engine Marketing
Links are critical - to rank highly in search engine results it is essential to have inbound links from good quality sites. The links will be more effective if they come from a site that is a) in a field closely related to your own b) has a good Google page ranking and c) includes your keywords in the link text.
NCS can help with every aspect of this, from building your understanding and approach, to finding, contacting, and finalising inbound links to your site.
Don’t just use single keywords – there is an increasing tendency for users to insert phrases, not single words into Google etc. Recent Hitwise research shows that, in many sectors, up to 60% of successful searches feature three or four keywords.
This learning applies also within PayPerClick – the bid level (cost) of a single, very generic term can be very high. However, if you add a qualifying phrase or adjective, to produce more targetted keywords, the cost can drop sharply – and may help improve your conversion rate also.
Think Google – it is still, massively, the most strongly used search engine, with nearly 80% of UK searchers using it regularly (New Media Age).
Web Site Design and Content
Get some testimony – to help improve enquiry, and conversion rates, start putting comments from satisfied clients on to your site – when they say something positive about your product/service, ask them if you can put the quote on the site.
Where you have bult a strong client base, consider putting a list of your client names on the site – it can act as implicit testimony to your expertise.
Don’t be static – some, even very restrained, visual “movement” can strongly increase the visual appeal of web page. Attractive effects can be incorporated at low cost – whilst avoiding excessive use of Flash which can increase download times, and consume bandwidth.
Don’t Flash and Splash - excessive Flash slows the site down. Using this on a “Splash page”, ie a landing, or gateway page, can lose visitors quickly. Generally, it is best to take your visitors straight to your Home Page.
4. NCS FOCUS
News and services from NCS that might help
Auto – links capability – achieving a high volume of links manually can be very time consuming. NCS now provides clients with an enhanced auto link capability to make it easier for visitors to your site to set up links to you, but with you retaining control of quality in each instance.
Presenting images on the site – a large volume of images, eg photos, on a web site can use excessive amounts of space, and produce a heavy visual impact. NCS increasingly uses thumbnails of images, which expand on mouserollover, to give better use of space, and a more pleasing visual impact.
Please approach us if you feel NCS help with the foregoing, would be useful.
5. NET NOTHINGS
You probably already know that:
The EU is coming – after co.uk and .com, comes .eu – ie registration for the new top level domain will begin in Q1 2005
The reading habit is going online – European consumers now spend twice as much time on the web as they spend reading newspapers (eiaa.net)
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.
