Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Youtube should work together with your website to promote your online brand.
Are you leveraging the power of social media on your site? If you’re like most businesses, you’re probably missing out on potential interactions, impressions and ultimately sales. Courtesy of our friends at the Social Media Examiner, below is a quick how-to guide to ensure your business website and social media platforms are working together to maximize your online exposure.
It's a no-brainer but double-check how many of your competitors aren't doing it. Best practice is for social media buttons to at the top, bottom or along the side of your home page. Links or buttons should remain in your navigation as users move from page to page. To ensure that users don’t exit your web page altogether, you can create buttons or links that open your social media pages in a new window.
Don't get trapped into linking to all social media channels you’ve dabbled in. If you’re fonder of Twitter and have completely abandoned your Facebook page, there’s no reason to link to any outlet that is not being actively managed. In fact, linking out to inactive channels can ultimately cause more harm than good.
If you use social media to keep your customers up to date with your current products and offerings and are actively managing your outlets on a daily or bi-weekly basis, it might be worth showcasing your Twitter feed or Facebook posts directly on your website.
Social media changes fast. So if you added your buttons a year ago, they are probably "walking with the dinosaurs" today. Facebook fans morphed into Likes, group pages died, +1 is spanking new and LinkedIn improved significantly. Do research to find the most current social media terminology so you don’t get caught mumbling about “The Facebook” and “The Twitter.”
If you sell a product or run an eCommerce site and haven’t added share buttons to your product pages, you're missing out on a whole host of potential impressions. Share buttons should enable visitors to your website to seamlessly share or recommend a product. Similar to eCommerce sites, if you have resources, articles, a blog or other valuable content on your site, you should attempt to make it as simple as possible for readers to share it with others.
Check out AddThis or ShareThis for a solution here. Both provide efficient and easy-to-use solutions for social media sharing across eCommerce sites with the added benefit of analytics to see how the content is getting shared.
Pay attention to the number of clicks on your outbound social media links by tapping into Google Analytics. An easy way to explore this is by setting up Event Tracking. Google provides a step-by-step guide on how to incorporate the correct codes into your site. If you find that few individuals explore your social media outlets once landing on your page, perhaps your social media buttons aren’t in a convenient location.
Many types of software allow you to see your social media insights alongside your web analytics in order to pick up on trends and to better understand the successes or failures of campaigns. SproutSocial allows users to compare web analytics and social media reporting information from specific timeframes side by side. Being able to see the way in which your social media and website analytics relate proves useful in establishing goals, measuring successes and identifying areas in which you can improve.
Even some major brands continue using social media in ways that violate the platforms’ terms and conditions. You can't use Google+ for contest entries, a personal Facebook page shouldn’t be used to operate a brand and there are certain rules to adhere to when running a promotion on Facebook. The way you use social media reflects on your website, as well as your brand as a whole. If you’ve accidentally violated some terms and conditions in the past, delete those pages and do not link out to them even in the interim.
With the changing social media landscape these days, it is easy to confuse social media features. Keep in mind:
You won’t be directing individuals to your Facebook page by installing a Facebook “Like” button on a specific website page. Instead, you are allowing individuals to “Like”/share the information, content or product that is found on that specific page. There is no correlation between Liking a specific website page and directing users to “Like” your branded Facebook page.
You want to make sure that compelling information is easily shareable, but littering social media share buttons all over your webpage isn’t the way to go. Before adding share buttons to a page, ask yourself, “Is there information here that people would find worth sharing?”
There are a number of things to keep in mind when registering a domain name for your new site. We’ve scoured the web and our summary of the best advice from a range of experts on choosing a domain name for a new website is as follows. By choosing a domain name carefully and following the tips below, you will be able to select a successful website domain.
The best types of domains to buy in order of our preference are:
Whilst we would recommend .com.au you can realistically rank just as easily with any of them. The .com always wins out simply because that’s what people add by default. Also, since it is one of the oldest extensions .com shows that your business has been around for a while and that you have a well-established presence on the Web. However, if you’re getting found in the search engine ranking pages does anyone really pay attention to the domain name anyway?
How to find available domains
There are a number of services available to help you find available domains. We use www.melbourneit.com.au. To find available domains, simply click on the DOMAIN tab and type in the keyword that you want to include.
Make it easy to remember and target “type-by” traffic
Remember that whilst most people usually type the website domain into a search engine to get to a website, other people will type directly into the address bar.
When choosing a domain name you should avoid long and complicated names, as people may get it wrong when typing it and simply lose interest. Choosing a domain name with plurals should also be avoided, along with names that feature double letters. Therefore, try to keep the domain name short and preferably singular.
Double letters in a domain name can make it incredibly difficult and confusing for people to navigate to, for example marcsshirts.com.au. But if you really do want a page with double letters, then it's a good idea to register both versions - marcsshirts.com.au and marcshirts.com.au. This will prevent you from losing traffic when someone enters the name wrongly.
Used commonly spelt version of words. It is important that people are able to understand and spell your domain correctly, otherwise you will lose traffic. It is preferable to spell out numbers rather than using digits. The easier the domain name, the easier it will be for people to remember you and visit your website.
Keywords in the domain
Most business’s don’t have the massive marketing resources of a Zappos or Amazon. When selecting a name to fit with your website, you want to ensure it’s relevant to the topic or theme of your site. There is no point registering a URL completely unrelated to what you’ll be promoting. The exception to this rule is of course, a really catchy domain name. Whilst sites like Google, Yahoo and Twitter have proved to work exceptionally well in creating an online brand presence there are obviously the exception rather than the rule.
If your website is going to be business related or involved in some form of commerce it makes sense to have a well-searched-for-keyword incorporated within the domain name. The majority of online businesses are still found through search engine queries. By and large though, a good rule of thumb is to incorporate the most searched for term (for your market) in your domain name.
A lot of discussion happens around the importance of having your keyword in the URL. The argument against it is that good on-page search engine optimisation negates a need for your keywords in there at all. But time and time again we see keyword rich domain names ranked amongst the best. If at all possible we recommend including keywords in your domain name.
Brand names in the domain
The argument against this is that if the site gets too big and starts to outrank the actual company site for whatever product you are selling, they will simply take you down.
To hyphenate or not to hyphenate?
The shorter your domain name the more memorable it’s going to be. However you’ll discover that most one-word/two-word domain names have been snatched up already. The question about whether to use hyphens frequently raises debate in many forums we frequent. The consensus is that although they don’t look nearly as pretty use of a hyphen in a domain name has no negative impact on search engine optimisation in the long run. For this reason adding the hyphen is an option when looking for available URLs. This additional keystroke can bring an otherwise unavailable keywords back into play.
Most SEO experts concur that hyphenating a string of words makes a long domain name more search engine friendly. The downside is that when it comes to word-of-mouth dissemination most folks won’t bother including those pesky hyphens, with the resulting consequence that intended referrals to your domain could end up on your competitor’s doorstep. Sometimes choosing a domain name is a bit of a balancing act.
The addition of other words such as those below might also work really well:
Whether you add the word to the beginning or the end again has no real impact on the overall rank of your site. Words like Cheap and Bargain should be avoided, as well as any other word that implies something negative about the product.
Direct match domain names improve adwords click through rates
In a recent review done by Memorabledomains.co.uk, direct match domains enjoyed superior click through results. Three Google AdWords campaigns were set up with identical ad copy, the difference being the targeted domain name for each ad. The primary domain name used was ElectricBicycles.co.uk, being an exact match for the keyword electric bicycles. The other two domain names were YourBikes.co.uk and InAHurry.co.uk. The results showed a 42% improvement in CTR for the exact match domain; however there were other benefits, as well. Memorable Domains also reported that the ad was displayed more often and had a higher quality score, the end result being a 105% click advantage over InAHurry.co.uk and a 45% advantage over YourBikes.co.uk.
(Cited on http://marketaire.com/2011/07/07/drastically-improve-ppc-performance-with-an-exact-match-domain/)
Those are some serious click differences!
Register more than one domain
If you come up with a really good domain name, other people may try to piggyback on your awesome domain name by registering something similar. If possible protect your business or website by registering similar sounding domain names and parking them. For example, if you register marcsweb.com also think about registering marcsweb.net. Some businesses also register common misspellings of their site’s name. Remember that several domains can point to the same website.
Where do you register your new domain
There are any number of providers that can be used to register your domain. We use intaserve.com.au to register all our domains (not an affiliate link). They cost as little as $13.98 per year. They are honest and reliable, and I strongly recommend them to anyone.
When registering your domain name it’s a good idea to register it for more than one year. There are usually discounts for multi-year registrations from most domain name registers and Google considers multi-year registered domains as less likely to be spam sites. Consequently, right off the bat your site will have a search engine advantage and a shorter evaluation period in the Google Sandbox.
….and finally register your domain as soon as possible
Domain names are being snatched faster than a one legged cat tryin' to bury a turd on a ferris wheel. Register soon unless you want to get stuck with the-domain-name-that-no-one-else-wants.org.
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Businesses optimizing for local search as a separate subset of their internet marketing strategy are able gain an advantage over their larger competitors who tend to dedicate large budgets to paid search marketing and banner advertising.
A local search is performed when someone uses a search engine to find products or services in their own local area or community. Maps began popping up in Google search results during 2008 with links to local businesses. Early in 2009 Google started to automatically include local site listings in their search results, based on your physical location (based on your IP address).
Here’s our ultimate easy to follow 7 step Local Search Optimisation Action Plan:
Step 1 - Optimize your website for local search
If your local search optimization action plan achieves nothing else, make sure you place your local street address and phone number on every page of your website. This achieves two things:
Create a contact us page with all of your local information. A good contact us page includes the following elements:
If you have more than one location, create a page on your website for each location.
A more advanced technique is to have your webmaster create a KML location file to display geographic data for Google Earth, Google Maps, and Google Maps for mobile. Read more about how to create these files in Google’s KML Tutorial.
Step 2 – Claim your listing on Google Maps
Google’s local search service is Google Maps. The business side of things is called Google Places. Use Google Places to create your free listing. When potential customers search maps for local information, they'll find your business including your address, hours of operation and even photos of your storefront &/or products. Make sure your business is listed and build out your listing with as much information and additional content as possible including videos and maps.
Whilst the discussion below is focussed more in your Google Places listing, your strategy should also embraces other popular search engines such as Bing and Yahoo.
Bing
For Bing create a business listing through the Bing Business Portal. Your Bing listing should include as many details as possible. Including media will help boost the likelihood that it will rank higher than competitors.
Yahoo
To claim an existing Yahoo Local listing, sign into your Yahoo account or create an account if you don’t already have one. Search for your listing on Yahoo Local. Click on the Enhance your listing link to add more details.
If your business does not have a Yahoo local listing, create one in the Local Listings Account Centre. Enhanced listings are $9.95 per month and allow you to include up to 10 photos, promotion links, and a 3,000 character description of your business.
Step 2 – Claim your place or register with local search directories
A great way to get more visibility on a search engine ranking page is to submit your business details to any number of local business directories. First and foremost this will give your business online credibility. By having your company appear more than just once on a search for your company name, this makes searchers a lot more comfortable about clicking your link. The other thing this will do for you is pull your website and blogs further up the search engine ranking page.
Below is a list of local search directories that you should consider registering with. When you do so it is crucial that you always use the same business name, address and phone number as this is how search engines will recognise your listing as the same business.
Get maximum leverage of your free listing with these directories by including relevant descriptions of your services, images, videos and visitor reviews. Be thorough, accurate, and complete on your local listings. Include your full address (including post code), phone number, relevant business categories, and relevant service / product keywords in your page description
Step 3 - Encourage satisfied customers to post a review
Encourage your satisfied customers to leave a review on your Google places listing. A high volume of reviews (and especially reviews native to Google Places) help a lot more than a lower volume of top-notch reviews. Whenever you can influence review content, try to have those reviews include category and location keywords as this will influence your position within local search results.
Step 4 - Respond to your critics - be authentic!
Embrace criticism and bad reviews as opportunities to be responsive and to defend your brand. As the old adage goes, a happy customer will tell three of their friends but an unhappy one will tell ten. But online, you have the opportunity to respond and right a perceived wrong. Everyone knows that businesses have good days and bad days. Folks are not likely to believe that a business could only get glowing sugary sweet customer reviews. The odd bit of criticism adds authenticity. It’s the way you respond to your criticism that will count for your future fans, and may even help bring back that wayward customer that had an unfortunate experience back to you.
Step 5 – Check out what your competitors are doing
Take hints for your local search strategy by analysing what your competition are doing. Take a look at the Places page of your competitors by searching their business name. The next step of your local search strategy is to take advantage of any websites your competitors are using that don’t already form part of your campaign. Once you have researched and established references on these new sites, you can always look for unknown competitors simply by searching for core local keywords, viewing the listings that are positioned at the top of the results.
Step 6 – Take a look at the big end of town
If you’ve searched all of your local resources and aren’t entirely sure where to look next, you can target larger metro markets to find new opportunities. Remember, it doesn’t matter if they aren’t in your local market, you could still find new opportunities within those listings. In fact, if you’re searching within your industry, you can often find niche specific references that will strengthen your listing and content. Search larger areas, often times you can find industry related accounts that are highly successful within those markets, but locally the competition probably won’t be targeting the majority of what major players are.
Step 7 – Strive for continued local growth
As your business builds its local presence, it’s important to seek opportunities to list your business contact information whenever possible. Extra citations strengthen your Places account. As references build, keep your address information consistent. It may be a good idea to refer to and copy information directly from your Google Places listing whenever you’re creating a new reference or citation. Remember, local search is only going to become more relevant and personalized as it continues to evolve.
Some Final Comments
Local search is critical to all businesses. Google estimates that 73% of all online activity is related in someway or another to local content. In addition research by comScore Networks indicates that 43% of search engine users are seeking a local merchant to buy something offline and that 54% of search users have substituted internet search for the phone book. Developments in how search engines display their results have made a consideration of local search even more important.
A local search optimisation strategy is different from natural search engine optimisation. This is because Google utilises a completely different algorithm for ranking local map results. However, search engine and local search optimisation are becoming very tied together. Blended search results are overtaking many standard search engine ranking page listings. Highly optimized company sites having an obvious impact on local ranking. There is a real opportunity for businesses that operate in either a single or many geographic locations to optimise their websites so that they are found by searchers conducting local searches.
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Goldcoasttouristparks.com.au records 43% Increase in web traffic in first twelve months with online reservations of $359,000. Gold Coast Tourist Parks is the corporate brand for seven holiday parks that operate in the ultra competitive accommodation/tourism sector on the Gold Coast. The recently completed project was required to deliver on the following brief:
Development of a significantly refreshed brand identify that reflected the modern holiday park business but that also was sympathetic to and reflected the history of caravanning and camping on the Gold Coast and the many generations of repeat customers that patronise the parks
This year has seen a dramatic increase in the number of Australian shoppers that are willing to buy online. Harvey Norman has recently decided to launch a branded online site in the latest example that Australian retailers are getting serious about getting online. The new site will mean other retailers need to innovate online to compete.
As recent media reports attest, Australian consumers are on the verge of a major shift in their shopping habits with a recent survey of more than 1000 shoppers confirming a dramatic increase in their willingness to buy online.
Morgan Stanley report that by 2015 online sales overall in
Purchase of books, videos and travel services are already popular online. The highest growth potential is in categories where sales penetration has so far been relatively low such as hardware, DIY, clothing and furniture. The survey also shows that people who already brought online are now buying a wider range of products, from fitness equipment to stationery and even groceries that had traditionally been an unpopular category. Among those surveyed nearly 7% plan to significantly increase their spending on general merchandise online while 26% will modestly increase their online purchases.
This rise in volume has big implications for retailers. Shoppers who try online purchasing and are satisfied with their initial experience tend to return to the same sites. In a market that is moving quickly from a small base, first movers will have an enormous competitive advantage.
Email marketing can work wonders for your bottom line if its done properly. Even top email marketers can muck it up. Here are our tips for getting the most out of email marketing:
Check, check and double check – rush and you’ll come unstuck. Get a second and third set of eyes to read your email.
Content is king – make your message engaging. Try telling a story that might come from an expert.
Avoid the spam trap – your email should include an unsubscribe button. Email campaigns work if you offer killer content and send it to contacts not strangers. Always get permission rather than spam every email list you get your hands on.
Give a little to gain a lot ‑ avoid in your face pitches. Solve your clients’ or customers’ problem. Include a special offer.
Short articles beat long ones – cater for readers who are time poor, have a short online attention spans and are quick to move on. Hit your high points and offer a read more button to give folks the option to dive in. Post longer articles to your website.
Make sure the subject line is attention grabbing
Add eye catching graphics
Think about formatting for mobile devices such as blackberries and iPhones – ensure your email can be easily read on mobile phones, PDA’s and tablets.
Include a forward to friend button – try incentivising your readers to forward your email to their contact lists.
Last month the web changed as Google's most recent large algorithm update saw many websites' rankings (and therefore traffic) fall away. What is becoming increasingly clear, however, is that for most websites, their rankings have only just begun to be effected.
In early May, many SEOs saw large fluctuations in their monitored rankings and niches. This most recent update, called either Panda 2.1 or 3.0, seems to be effecting many smaller websites. Google is eager to downplay the size of the most recent update but it’s clear that for many companies the impact may be worse than the initial release.
What does this mean for you? Well, if you have duplicate content issues or rely on content re-publishing then you really need to sort that out! Furthermore, Google's algorithm is increasingly becoming smarter at judging the quality of a website - no longer on just a content level, but also on a design level.
Recent updates to Google Analytics' tracking code include a new metric to measure page load speeds. This perhaps hints at another new metric Google will use to evaluate your website's quality. If a page takes too long to load then that's bad for visitors and if Google continues to send visitors to websites that have poor quality content and take an age to load then people will start to look for another search engine (hypothetically Google's reasoning - I'm pretty sure Google will never be toppled).
Whilst standard Search Engine Optimisation techniques are still important, it is more important than ever to ensure your website has high quality, unique content that is genuinely engaging and insightful for users and visitors.
Inbound Marketing describes the practice of bringing warm, qualified leads into a business’ sales funnel rather than reaching outward to cold, questionable targets through traditional marketing means. Inbound Marketing is becoming more popular as businesses look for efficient and affordable ways to acquire new business leads. Even without the marketing budgets of their larger corporate competitors, small to medium sized businesses can successfully compete by embracing the techniques of Inbound Marketing.
Outbound Marketing includes old school methods such as cold calls, mass mail outs, print ads, attending tradeshows, TV advertising and the like. Outbound marketing is largely a numbers game and to get a product or service in front of as many cold leads as possible and entice them up to the point where they decide to buy. Ok if you’ve got the budget to get a TV ad produced and buy expensive air time. These methods have there place but with consumers becoming more cynical towards traditional forms of advertising, Outbound Marketing is becoming less efficient with businesses wasting time appealing to tons of people who have no interest in their offering. People are more in control of what information they receive and how. Channel surfing, SPAM filters, use of caller id, no junk mail lists are all ways that increasingly time poor consumers are more and more screening out the unwanted distractions of Outbound Marketing.
Rather than interrupting people to get their attention, Inbound Marketing relies on the principle that the customers with the highest sales conversion potential are those that find and come to you. The most important part of a successful Inbound Marketing strategy is creating quality website content that will bring people into your sales process. By creating great content, you'll rise in internet search results, create linkable content, and educate your audience. All of these outcomes will help you bring in warm leads that have been pre-qualified as interested in your product or service by searching terms relevant terms or by reading similar content that links to you. Successful Inbound Marketing requires that a business has a website optimized to close leads into deals and engages visitors once they "land" on your website.
The creation of a blog is another essential technique in exploiting the benefits of Inbound Marketing. In addition to blogging, there are many other forms of great content to create that will bring interested visitors. Use of social media, hosting webinars, offering free or low cost e-books for download, and developing microsites are other methods to attract leads that are interested in a company’s particular offerings and more eager to engage in a conversation.
So the philosophy of Inbound Marketing is to focus marketing effort on filling your sales funnel with pre-qualified leads that discover your company. In that way the message about a product or service is greeted by welcoming ears rather than random outbound contacts.
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