12 reasons why you need an SEO strategy

admin — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 12:43:28 +0000

Search can help you achieve your business goals Want more customers? More leads? More sales? The internet is a huge marketplace and consumers appear to have lost their fear of buying things via the web. Search engines are often the starting place for a product search, and they’re getting more popular. More than half of all internet users search at least once a day.
Brand visibility / findability Don’t allow your direct or indirect competitors rank higher than you. Using tried and tested techniques you can gain high positions in search results using the power of SEO.
Competitor activity Your competitors are likely to be investing in SEO, even if you aren’t. Competitor websites are already ahead of you with their SEO. And if they are, you need to quickly start to compete with them in this area, or they could take something of an entrenched position.
It pays off in the long-term In the long-term, organic listings will deliver a potentially higher volume of visitors at a lower cost. Organic clicks are essentially free.
Paid search is becoming more expensive There is greater competition in paid search these days, which means click costs have increased to a point where there is limited scope for profit. Your ability to generate ROI depends on how well you convert traffic to customers, and paid search traffic can cost a lot of money.
People prefer the natural results Users tend to choose the natural search results in preference to the paid-search listings. Natural search attracts approximately 88% to 90% of search engine users. This figure increases for experienced users or who fall into a category of informational search behaviour. This suggests that companies who concentrate on paid listings only are limiting their visibility.
You don’t need to come first to win It isn’t a case of ‘all or nothing’ (aka ‘first position or nothing’) with SEO, so don’t let the challenge of making it onto the first three deter you from investing in this area.
Concerns about PPC click fraud Although the search engines have played down the significance of click fraud the perception remains that investment into paid search carries the risk of fraudulent clicks, and therefore damage to return on investment.
People trust Google, Bing and Yahoo Specifically, people trust Google to deliver relevant results. It is the reason why Google became synonymous with search. If Google says your company is number one for a search term then in the mind of the searcher it probably is.
Better ROI Many marketers turn to SEO investment because the ROI case for PPC is not as strong as it was due to keyword inflation.
SEO seen as more strategic Company executives are more likely to understand the power and potential of search engines even if they are traditional marketers rather than online specialists. An estimated 80% of an average optimised website’s traffic comes from a website’s organic search engine listings.
SEO helps you build a better website Therefore it helps you build a better user experience, if only because of the focus on what you should be doing for the maximum impact in the organic search listings. Better usability. Better fulfilment paths. Happy customers mean higher satisfaction rates and more trust. And this makes for a happier boss…

Customers Deserve Better User Experience

admin — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 12:37:39 +0000

The Elements Of Great Customer Experience; There are 3 elements to great customer experience:

Functional: How well did the experiences meet the customer needs?
Accessible: How easy was it for the customer to do what they wanted to do?
Emotional: How did the customer feel about the experiences?

Companies that want to be great, or even good, need to interact with customers in a way that meets their customers’ needs, is easily accessible, and reinforces the emotional components of the company’s brand. While that may sound straightforward, it’s not easy to do and requires a lot of focus from the entire company. Companies can’t transform into CX leaders overnight. But if they focus on the total experience—functional, accessible, and emotional—and build CX competencies, then they we will be heading in the right direction.

Engaging Users

admin — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 12:34:14 +0000

Website users today expect an interactive and engaging experience across all websites they visit and transact with – and so well they might, as more websites blur the boundaries between web pages and native applications, and supply the user with ever more powerful tools.

Not every website needs to “be the best, be leading edge” and make interactivity a primary concern. Instead, website development teams (and we’re not just talking designers here) need to have the authority to conceive and deliver creative, consistent, and engaging websites – this requires input from all skill sets across the full team; designers, information architects, SEM, developers, project managers. Interactivity consideration is increasingly important, and giving it due consideration is the first step in creating an experience that can charm users.

Succeeding in this could just be the difference that gets users to make themselves at home in a site instead of heading back to Google.

How to do ecommerce right

admin — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 10:00:42 +0000

It’s incredible how many retailers still offer websites that are mere online catalogues and don’t allow you to shop. In fact, even some high street chains are only now taking their first steps in ecommerce. Even if customers don’t intend to buy online and are just browsing, firms risk damaging the perception of the brand by failing to provide an online shopping experience. Here are some ideas for getting it right:

Make it safe
know your customers’ rights
Keep it simple
Offer a good returns policy
Integrate your online and offline marketplaces
Ask yourself if it looks professional
Give out a phone number
Promote your website properly
Let customers track their orders progress

Of course all of these activities are not always possible – mostly dictated by budget – but consideration should be given to as many as possible to make a good user experience.

Keyword Phrases In The Site Design Process

admin — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 09:58:13 +0000

You need to determine the important keywords for your site and the numbers of potential visitors searching on them, a few pointers:

Do you know how many searches are being carried out on your target keyword phrases? Use keyword data to help you estimate if there are enough searches being carried out within your anticipated keywords/phrases to indicate whether search marketing might become an integral part of your site design. This will help you decide how much effort to put into search marketing during and after a site design.
Do you need to add content to the site? You should consider adding content to the site to better focus on important keyword phrases if needed. In addition, do you see people searching for related topics?
It may make sense to include that content on the web site to make the website more useful and to help get those web pages found by people searching for that information. During the site design process and after the site is launched, work on ways to get theses visitors interested in your products and services.
Optimise pages for target keywords. It may make sense to optimise most site pages during the site development process, for the best chance at appearing in search results for your important keywords when the site is launch. In many cases, optimisation of specific pages can be enhanced after the site is launched, and often has to be because of time constraints or in the case of bringing in an SEO after the fact.
Develop relevant tags. Develop a short list of keywords to focus on. Use them to develop the important tags, such as HTML Page Title tags and Meta Description tags for most (if not all) the web pages, ideally before the site is launched. Again, as long as you have developed a search engine friendly site, you can do more specific optimization after the site is launched.

Digital Marketing

admin — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 12:38:53 +0000

Search engine optimisation is the key to website success as more and more people find products and services through natural search on search engines. I can help you identify and rectify any problem areas to improve your website visibility and ranking and work with you to develop a long term search engine marketing strategy to help you achieve results.

Web Statistics Analysis and Data Mining; The first step in developing your marketing strategy is getting a real understand of where you are now. Understanding your visitors behaviour on site what pages they visit and why they leave. Accessing and interpreting this information is key to understanding how your visitors interact with your site, and where and how site improvements can be made.

Online Customer Acquisition and Retention; Acquiring and retaining good customers is central to the success of any site. I can advise on and develop strategies for success and continued growth, including reawakening “sleeping” customers, growing your customer base, and ensuring effective customer communication.

Online Marketing Strategies; with extensive Internet experience both as an internal and external consultant, I can provide effective online marketing, boosting both new customer acquisition and existing customer retention. In a recent survey it was found that:

72% of searchers click on the first link of interest to them
85% click on natural results – not adverts
42% click on position 1, page 1 of search results
Only 6% of users venture onto page 2 of search results

Getting your site on page 1 of the major search engines and as near to position 1 as possible is key to improving conversion. Working with you to identify your target audience and your main competitors we can vastly improve the results for your existing site and also look at further ways of improving what you already have. Looking at the various ways you market yourself and making sure that all messages are joined up both online and offline.

Charles Church Case Study

admin — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 15:26:01 +0000

Challenge

Charles Church wanted to come out of the recession at the front of the market – able to react quickly to customer demands.

Solution

A user centric web site putting user needs at the forefront. Taking a thorough look through the current competitor offerings and determining the way users want to search for new homes. Used a process that is tried and tested; looking at user needs; user acquisition strategy to establish the best way to develop the site.

User needs:

analysing the online presence against key criteria:

Positions in search engines

Content quality

Keyword themes/silos

Analysis of relevant competitors

User acquisition:

SEO research gives the ‘goals’ of the site

The user can then be targeted through the correct marketing medium

The objectives of the site are confirmed as achievable

Information architecture:

Full site structure incorporating the SEO research

Prototype mock up with full usability testing

Creative:

Mood boards following brand

Design candidates

Final design – close to candidate

Results

A site that is easy to use and focuses on the user. The results from the site have shown a marked increase in conversion traffic.

3 simple ways to increase online sales

admin — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 12:40:40 +0000

Ask your customers – have any ‘friendly’ customers that you can ask to see how they feel about your website and service. They might have been with you for some time so they are loyal but they will still tell you how they feel about something. Don’t be scared or dismissive about what they have to say take it on board and if appropriate react.
Send surveys to email recipients – Every so often send a survey to your email recipients, possibly with an incentive for completing. You can then ask them anything you want regarding your company or your website and how they feel about using it.
Analyse your analytics data – website analytics data is going to tell you more than you think. If you have service pages or abandoned shopping carts, your analytics data could give you the insight that you need in order to strengthen those areas of your website.

Improving conversions on your website and through your business often requires lots of digging as well as trial and error until you find that right combination that works ideally for you and your web based business.

Builders Merchants Online Strategy

admin — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 15:49:56 +0000

Challenge

A national builder’s merchant with over 1800 trade counters has been struggling with online marketing and transactions, dropping a long way behind competitors, due to a legacy business model. The challenge was to build a strategy that could be followed without impacting the business model too dramatically thereby forcing an internal systems review which they did not want to consider at this stage in the economy.

Solution

A series of tasks were conducted to establish the market position, what competitors were doing online, the key words that are being searched for, the market in general. A full set of recommendations were put forward for consideration including usage of key words and phrases, what the target audiences are actually looking for and how the site should function to achieve the user needs of the site and microsites.

Results

The recommendations are in the process of being implemented so full results are not yet known, however it has allowed the client to look at their marketplace in a way that they have not done before.