In this blog, we’re going to be looking a little bit more at keyword research and why you should consider your Search Engine Marketing activities as a series of building blocks that you will need to continue to cement over the coming months.  It’s a big area after all and there’s a lot to take in.

I’m a national business and want EVERYONE to find me

While we all want to get as much business as possible online, so does everyone else and you have to be realistic about what can be achieved.

Even with websites, businesses constantly ruin them by trying to put too much on a landing page, thinking that by putting out a thousand messages that somehow that’s going to make people buy.  This is not the case.  You have to really think about the end user who has a much more specific plan on what they’re looking for than you could ever hope to second guess.

Search Engine Marketing is no different so while a business may want to go national, there’s a benefit in keeping things smaller and building upon each success, in a kind of ‘ground work’ approach to results.

Getting ranked on easier keywords will have some impact on the more demanding and difficult keywords, so it’s all valid.

If you want quicker results, then localised keywords will be easier to achieve in terms of rankings.  However, never assume that’s the end of your work.  In fact, we’ve written blogs that are all about companies who charge you a fortune for what is actually a much easier exercise.

If you’re looking at national coverage and want the big keywords, then you will need a budget for it and simply won’t achieve this with little work.  It can be done, we’ve done it many times, but you have to be absolutely dedicated to getting it and have the insight to understand that it will take months of SEO work to get there.

However, getting ranked locally will at least give you some presence to start off with and will help moving forward, so consider advice from your Search Engine Marketing provider on how best to approach it.

Of course you don’t need to be too tiny.  There’s probably not much point getting ranked for ‘gifts for her Barnet’, but it may be worth looking at ‘gifts for her London’ because it has a much bigger catchment area and will make a difference to your traffic and sales.

More keywords will surely help

Obviously the more keywords you are ranked for will help you attract more visitors to your website, but if you’re doing this from day one, then it’s just not realistic.

To reiterate the business that feels putting everything on the front page is the right thing to do, Search Engine Marketing success is about being specific and focusing on defined keywords.

If you start an SEO campaign with two or three keywords and then suddenly forget about them, opting for something else all together, you’ve got yourself on to a treadmill with no end point.

Therefore, instead of chopping and changing define your keywords and stick to them!  That way as you gain better rankings you’ll be able to see the progress you’ve made.

In our earlier blog we likened Search Engine Marketing to spinning plates.  Imagine the early keywords are your first four plates and they’re now spinning nicely with no risk of falling for now.  You can then begin adding more plates.  Whereas if you try and get fifty plates started at the same time you’ll end up with a lot of broken crockery.

Great Expectations

Try not to dream about page one rankings as you’ll inevitably get very disappointed.  Instead think of it like the hare and the snail race.  The snail is slow but consistent while the hare goes off at 100 miles per hour.  We all know the moral of the story so try to think of that with your own SEO.

Treat your Search Engine Marketing as a long-term strategy and begin spinning those plates one at a time and you will get the benefits of a healthy, high ranking site that gets lots of visitors.

Paul

Recently while searching Google, I happened upon a rather bizarre and offensive site.  People who read my blog will know that I do try and share information on what I find – some of it SEO based – some of it as a way to offer up new insights in to the online sector.  But for this blog, I am digressing slightly, but most certainly with good reason.

While there has been a lot said recently about the lack of policing on the Internet and how it seems anyone can create a website with content that can offend or is indeed even illegal, it begs belief that in this society a website that looks like the official Her Majesty’s Court Service website, evidently feels that a Swastika is perfectly acceptable as a way to imply that the UK legal system is run by ‘Fascists’

I am not going to go in to whether the legal system in the UK is indeed run by Fascists or controlled by a totalitarian government – but that’s not the point. What I find more offensive is that the Swastika in its Nazi roots can be used in this way, like it has any bearing on something that is so far removed from what happened in Europe and beyond during the Second World War.

It is not remotely funny or clever to utilise a symbol that was part of a regime that imposed genocide on millions of people.  It is completely offensive to use a symbol that stood for a regime that tortured and abused millions of people.  And above all, it is not acceptable to use a symbol that stood for a world where hatred and condemnation of millions of people was allowed to happen, just because of their religion, sexual orientation and race.  It is not clever or justified to use it as a way to degrade the legal system, because the connotations of a Nazi Swastika are fundamentally more serious.

Millions of people died during the Holocaust and in my mind, you do not need to be Jewish to appreciate why it is offensive and how inappropriate it is to use it in a way that completely degrades those that suffered even further. It is not too dissimilar to seeing a certain Royal Family member or Conservative MP parading around a fancy dress party dressed as a member of the Nazi party. If used right, it can be effective satire a la Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator, if used wrong it can become grossly offensive.

It’s important to remember that the Swastika and all that can be tied to a time in Europe where the Nazis allowed horrific things to happen to innocent people was actually not really that long ago.  In fact, it was only seventy three years ago that the war started. That’s still within a lifetime for some people who lived through and survived it.

What really annoys me is the fact that upon calling HM Court Centre in Watford to complain about it and to ask if it could be removed completely I was promptly told; “We can’t promise anything. We’ll see what we can do. Someone will call you back right away”.  And guess what? Two weeks later I’m still waiting for that call and the offensive site is still ‘live’.

If someone was to stand on a street corner today, holding up a Swastika citing hatred to certain people in society they would be arrested and certainly wouldn’t be ignored.  There are in fact countries where this behaviour is a criminal offence.  So the fact that it has been used so thoughtlessly on the Internet seems to mean it’s okay and therefore because there appears to be no way to control it, it does not matter.

It’s frankly worrying that a site that also looks like an official HM Courts Service website is even allowed to operate on this basis, particularly when you consider that even pretending to be a Police officer in the UK is a criminal offence.

What is the idiot (Gerry Coulter of Hitchin, Hertfordshire) who is running this site trying to achieve exactly?  Does he have no consideration or respect for a history that saw some of the most awful atrocities ever seen in a lifetime?

So, if it’s so hard to get sites taken down, it’s interesting to consider that anyone who has uploaded content to You Tube of the recent Grammys has had it promptly taken down because of copyright infringement.  Therefore, if You Tube can remove a video of Adele singing so easily, then why is it so hard to do something about a Swastika on a site that is obviously playing on its similarity to HM Court Service, with no thought as to the real impact the Swastika may have to users.

If people want to express their hatred and dislike for our legal system – that’s up to them – but when they show no respect for people who have genuinely had generations of issues because of a regime that had no regard for people it is fundamentally wrong. Let’s not forget, the Nazis under their Swastika flags murdered women, children, men, elderly people, jews, gay people and gypsies during their reign of terror – something that should never be forgotten or abused for the wrong reasons.

The truth is that a Swastika is a symbol for hatred. That hatred became political and was used as the driving force for the murder of millions, and it’s not that long ago that world witnessed this level and degree of intolerance and genocide. Now the legal system in the UK may be riddled with many flaws and even potential ‘illegalities’ in how it operates, and while the justification for a website that highlights these things is not without merit, it’s all in the presentation of that information. They should drop the Swastika and the sensationalist approach if they ever want their message to be taken seriously at all.

Paul

I have a huge passion for all things related to search engine marketing and social media, so here’s my breakdown of the key elements of Facebook: The Next Generation.

More media, more apps, more customisation

One of the most exciting aspects of Facebook’s timeline unveiling was the customisation that Facebook would now cater for in a big way. Facebook’s developer modules have been popular because they allow the users – especially brands looking to market themselves via social media – to customise their pages in ways that other social platforms cannot.

Every day, there are more brands wising up to using these elements in order to create a richer, more dynamic social experience for the users. Apps add further interaction between the brand and the user within social media, which can help to strengthen engagement with the brand and encourage them onto your website. Utilising these new Facebook elements effectively with a search engine marketing and content strategy could potentially be very effective in driving good traffic to your site.

Data

The apps updates segue into the new data features that Facebook will be implementing. Using new analytical software, developers can now learn more about the successes and failings of their integrated apps. They can look at more in-depth usage data to better inform their application development. Open Graph analytics are going to help to show the more engaging content to the users and improve on future applications to maximise user-engagement within social media.

Privacy

As with every update to Facebook, privacy remains the chief concern for users. The new timeline immediately set alarm bells ringing for users, who demanded to know exactly what information would now be available for everybody to see.

To prepare for the implementation, it’s advisable to go and review your privacy settings via Facebook. You are able now to limit the audience for all of your past posts. Although this option is tucked away at the bottom of your privacy settings page, selecting it will mean that people can’t trawl through your past posts if there’s content on there that you may not want them to see. This isn’t an airtight method; anyone tagged can still see the older content and their friends may be able to, too.

If you don’t review your privacy settings and amend them accordingly in time for the timeline introduction, then private information might suddenly become available to anyone searching for it. This might be a particular problem if you have used Facebook as a medium to rant about someone or as a channel to hop onto your soapbox about something that was aggravating you at work.

Facebook’s new timeline should revitalise an already powerful and popular social media channel and take it into a new, exciting era, but it isn’t without its potential problems. Innovation like the timeline is exactly what Facebook needs to differentiate itself from Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+.

Paul

Social shopping 

Facebook development is seeing a growth boom at the moment and improvements are being made all the time.  Integrating these innovative features into a business page allows you to create richer content within the social sphere and open up their offers or deals to active users within the Facebook page. Adding content like this – unique content is preferable – gives the active users a more comprehensive experience in using the Facebook page. Facebook pages are social communities where fans or customers can interact and discuss your brand. They are also a community where you can interact and engage with your customers on a regular basis. Businesses who integrate their offers and products into their pages are on a strong footing for encouraging more traffic to the website and encouraging purchases through an immediate and time-restricted offer.

Using these social elements is becoming quite popular within the fashion and cosmetics industries, as brands are trying new ways to engage with their customer base and target them with offers.

The Uniqlo clothing brand has several apps within its Uniqlo UK page on Facebook and each one is targeted in a different way. The first app is a digital marketing (e-newsletter) sign-up app – not as grabby as you might think, though. Although it’s encouraging people to add themselves to the database for direct digital marketing, it also incentivises the sign-up by offering a £5 discount voucher for opting to receive the e-shots. This £5 discount voucher could mean that your delivery is free of charge; whichever way you look at it, you’re getting money off for giving them your email. That’s a pretty good deal.

Uniqlo UK has also created a competition app that asks you to create a Uniqlo Christmas wish-list. Each week, the brand chooses a winner and sends them their entire wish-list. This seasonal offering has great sharing potential, encourages participation and encourages them to look through the products on the website to choose their wish-list. Great interaction and it is a great ‘surprise and delight’ for customers at Christmas.

Facebook apps are a great leap forward for ecommerce and targeted offerings. Having them directly integrated into the Facebook page gets a higher level of interaction as users participate in a comfortable environment. It’s going to be interesting to see what happens as a result of the forthcoming timeline feature. There could be bright blue days ahead for social media shopping and I’ll be keeping an excited eye out for the future.

Paul

In the early days of Google – even up until recently – the quality of the content didn’t matter to them. These days, the plates have shifted and Google now wants quality content over excesses of content. With a proper strategy behind it and an intelligent implementation of a plan, you can drive good traffic to your website with strong search referrals. Without that, your site is going to have a real struggle on its hands.

Even today, websites are churning out content for the sake of having it on their site. They write, they upload and they wait for the traffic to come streaming in without a single thought to writing quality articles relevant to their desired keywords. It’s no longer enough to saturate the site with content; the content has to serve a purpose and speak to both an audience of readers and the Google bots. A hundred pages of mediocrity pales against a handful of quality content pages that were written for a purpose.

Unique 

The Google search engine algorithm actively ‘punishes’ sites that have plagiarised or duplicate content. It does this by dropping the duplicated pages down in the search rankings far below the original content. Duplicated content creates a hostile environment for your site because it creates a negative picture for the search bots. As a result, you will find that all of your search engine marketing efforts will be undone very quickly. Search engines will see you as a spam site or worse. Developing unique content will lead to increased search referrals and drive traffic to your site if you sustain the content strategy intelligently.

Search engine marketing is a case of building up trust on two fronts. You have to build ‘trust’ with the search engines by providing strong content that adheres to the laws of GoogleBot, but you also have to prove your worth to your audience. Quality content will bring an audience back to your site for more information on relevant or associated subjects.

The online community is very sharp. If you’ve plagiarised content, particularly if you’ve done so from another competitor’s site, you will get found out. The online community has a sharp eye for things like this and they can spot it instantly if they’ve been reading about the specified topics in more than one place. Write targeted content that’s focused on matters of interest relevant to your site and keywords. Establish yourself as an authority on your keywords and subject matter and your audience will trust you for information above others.

Paul

Black hats start to lose their shirts

As Google adapts its algorithm and implements changes to it, it’s getting harder for black hats to use their shady techniques to boost themselves up the rankings. The latest updates favour newer content to give fresher results. Doing this shows that good quality, organic content. The black hats who swear by out of date algorithms are going to see their traffic disappear like a Las Vegas magician.

Like the Panda update, these changes to the algorithm are actually quite significant. Panda sent a lot of businesses into a fright because it changed the game in a big way. Panda would downgrade the beastly content farm websites that have copied content or saturated their pages with useless, black-hat content. Some legitimate sites have also suffered losses in their ranking positions since the algorithm change

What the new algorithm looks for in websites:

• Fresher results that will affect 35 per cent of results: that’s huge compared to other updates to the algorithm. The new content added to sites will be higher in the rankings. This isn’t new necessarily, but it has been radically improved from the 17.5 per cent freshness of previous updates. Does this mean that they are improved by 35 per cent; that’s an important distinction to make in order to look at the  algorithm update objectively. It simply means that 35% of results are going to be affected by the most recent algorithm update.
• Official pages will now rank highly in the search engine rankings: all official brand or company pages, official blogs and sites will all be boosted in the Google rankings. This increases the effectiveness of all ‘official’ pages and should – in theory – cut down on some of the more underhanded search engine marketing techniques employed by various competitors within certain industries. This modification should render fake or dodgy pages irrelevant or certainly impact on their effectiveness in the search engine rankings.

People always feel like they are having the proverbial rug pulled from under them whenever Google does something to change the way it ranks pages. The reality is that search is like that; it’s a fluid process and it is always evolving in order to compensate for changes in the industry or changes in technologies. It’s an organic medium and one that should always be evolving in order to give a balanced approach to marketing via search engines and the rankings. As Google grows to decide what’s ‘important’ and what is deemed to be unimportant.

Paul

Here are some key things to check off to ensure that your e-commerce site is operating at its peak in January.

Social support and customer service

January can be a hectic time for ecommerce websites, particularly around the beginning of the month. The January sales cause an influx of traffic with consumers eager to find the latest hot deals after Christmas. This is a time when your social media campaign can support your ecommerce and digital marketing efforts in the best possible way. Use this time to engage with your customers and talk to them on social media. You’ll find that more customers use Facebook pages and Twitter around this time as they try to communicate any issues or difficulties they are having with their online shopping experience. If they don’t get a reply straight away, a simple post can escalate into a much bigger issue.

The key to social media is awareness. People are always watching you on social media and it’s important that you NEVER remove a post that criticises your website or your brand. Removing posts like this is bad customer service and bad PR; it can turn a relatively simple issue into one with much bigger stakes. If someone is unhappy and venting on your Facebook page or Twitter feed, speak to them directly to ascertain what the problem is and deal with it as quickly as possible. If customers can see you dealing with your customers and interacting with them proactively, they will have greater confidence in your brand’s ability to deal with customers in a positive way. This will be particularly encouraging for any new customers debating whether or not to order with you for the first time.

Social media is a great support to your e-commerce campaign in January and its customer service value is not to be underestimated.

Stock levels

The January sale is a guarantee that your stock levels will run low on certain items, both sale items and regular stock. It’s important that the messages are clear and immediate if stock runs out on a certain item. Set a graphic that displays when stock runs down and out. This is a clear indication to your customers that the item is unavailable and stops them from getting frustrated when their order won’t go through. Keeping the item live and disabled is much better for search engine marketing because it keeps the content and URL live for the search engines to find.

Sales newsletters

Although a heavily saturated market around this time of year, the newsletter is still a good way to target your customers. More consumers are opening their emails on mobile devices and a targeted, segmented email notification of an appropriate offer might sway them to purchase immediately via their mobile.

E-commerce sites stand to start the year on a strong note if they check off these key points on the e-commerce checklist. Be smart about your targeting and you’ll be off to a good start for 2012.

Happy 2012 from Little Big Voice.

Paul

• 42 per cent viewed these on Bing
• 25 per cent viewed on Google
• 90 per cent of those monitored preferred to view the paid links over organic search results in both engines

The test was redone again in 2011 to give a fairer comparison of the two. Back when the original study was done, Bing was relatively new in the market and people participating in the study were not used to its features or interface. The most surprising aspect of the new study is how close the new results’ margins are. The battle it seems has come to a near-deadlock.

Paid versus organic search: who comes out on top? 

• 90% the study’s participants viewed the organic results at the top. All of the participants viewed the organic results. 

When it came to paid ads or sponsored links on the right, the results are very surprising:

• 28% viewed them on Google;
• 21% viewed them on Bing.

Participants/searchers now overlook the paid links

The question of paid versus organic is a long and oft-debated question in search engine marketing. The research conclusions of this study seem to answer the question in a definitive way. Organic is the winner. Most people would advise a combination of concerted paid and organic search engine marketing in order to achieve broadly successful results for your business, but it seems as though this thinking isn’t necessarily correct; nor is it something we should live and die by when using search engines to market a business or brand.

The differences between the two search giants

Well, really, there aren’t many differences. Certainly no huge differences. There’s a differential of roughly 0.2 seconds between those looking at the organic results on Google (0.9 seconds) and those looking at the organic results on Bing (0.7s). That doesn’t necessarily equal a conclusive win for Google. Far from it.

Matt Cutts of Google has made his feelings on Bing quite clear. He’s gone at them for lots of different things, namely the fact that it appears as though Bing copies its search results from Google entirely. Harry Shum of Bing would deny these vehemently, of course, as he has in this forty minute video on the Bing search engine. And there’s no denying the remarkable similarities in Bing versus Google search results. Typing gobbledygook into one gives you the exact same results in another. But in the end, it seems that those squabbles and politics don’t matter to the users. Users are using both relatively equally and the arguments are rendered moot. The battle between Google and Bing is at a standstill and organic search is rising up in its significance.

Paul

Back in the early days of the internet, when Babelfish was the translator du jour and people built .gif heavy websites with obscene backgrounds on Angelfire, this cloaking method was used to disguise porn and other assorted dodgy content from the search engine spiders. To paraphrase Matt Cutts, ‘Google-Bot would see Disney characters and the user would see porn.’ All very underhanded really and Google sees this as a violation of its quality guidelines. No matter what.

Google’s Matt Cutts’ video on cloaking and Google.

This is a great video straight from the proverbial horse’s mouth. Cutts gives a clear explanation of the devious nature of cloaking. His videos are becoming enormously popular for web developers and search engine marketers. He’s helping to dispel a lot of the myths and hearsay of search engine marketing and the great thing is that he heads the Google web spam team. Really, there aren’t many sources with that level of credibility or access to information on exactly what Google looks for.

What to look out for:

In Google’s Webmaster Tools the ‘Fetch as Google Bot’ function is a good way of looking at your web pages as Googlebot would. Doing this gives you a clear picture of what the Bot would see and gives you the chance to measure whether your pages are safe within Google’s quality guidelines. If they aren’t, the pages need to be re-addressed or Google will treat these as problem pages. The web spam teams will then intervene to tackle the pages as a priority. This could potentially be harmful for your website and its SEO.

Multi-language 

There are options if you need to display different content for different languages or countries. One way to do this is to use geo-location. Geo-location allows you to identify users from other countries and alter the content to match the language spoken in the country based on their needs.

Search engine marketing can be a difficult game to play at times because there are so many dodgy measures out there. The industry is dominated by people employing underhanded measures in order to achieve search goals and cloaking is a real issue. If your web developer – or you – are using cloaking to mask content from the search engine spiders, it could seriously jeopardise your current standing in the search engine rankings. Google is getting better at identifying these and they are working hard to put a resolute and final end to these practices.

Don’t be like the Klingons. Cloaking is cowardly.

Paul

Managers of an ecommerce website struggle with the issue of whether to un-publish a product from the website. All it takes is a balancing of both sides and it’s relatively easy to decide which avenue is best for your business in the long run.

Going-going-gone

When stock items are gone and you’re awaiting new stock for the site, it can often be the easiest thing to just remove it from the website altogether; doing this has pros and cons. Taking your product off the site could affect your search rankings for that product for some time because the older version of that page will still show in the search results as the search engines can take a little bit of time to clean out these 404 pages or ‘not found’ pages. Customers might well be driven through to error pages for a little while, which could result in an increase in customer care or customer service enquiries asking where the items have gone.

The problem with un-publishing products in this way is that there is no clear message being pushed out to the customer; this could irritate consumers coming to the site, if they can’t find what they want to purchase. Without being informed directly, consumer confidence can be affected and the consumer will likely be driven elsewhere to purchase the desired item.

Out of stock, still in sight

Another way to approach the problem is to create a graphic that is added to product pages when an item is out of stock. This is a simple way to alert customers to stock control issues without removing the page altogether. Most ecommerce platforms have an option within the product data to set the product to out of stock when stock runs down, which can either be hard-coded or done with the stock measurement function within the platform.

Although customers will likely be disappointed that they can’t purchase the item, it lets them know clearly that there is an issue with stock and that this should be resolved quickly. A clear message like this is much more likely to encourage them to check back regularly to get what they want. This out of stock message could also be tailored with an intelligent cross-sell and information – if you have it – on when the item will be back in stock.

An out-of-stock message on a product page is a much better option because it keeps the page ‘live’. Although customers might be unhappy in the short-term that they can’t purchase the item in question, they are much more forgiving when they are receiving a clearly communicated message over a page that’s missing completely from the site…and of course it’s great for SEO to keep the page ‘live’ because if you do take the page offline it could take some time for the search engines to re-list that page in their search results.

Paul

An SEO expert’s job isn’t a cut and dry case of doing the work and leaving; it’s a matter of regularly working with your client to adapt to their organically changing needs. Search engine marketing – and this is true in London and all around the world – is a toe-to-toe game of wits between the black hats and the white hats, that clichéd trope of Hollywood westerns.

When I describe someone as a white hat, I mean that they are legitimate search engine marketers. When they offer an SEO service, they deliver. They are people with years of experience that want to help companies to market themselves more successfully on the Internet. White hats are the good guys and they are offering a real service with real results. But wherever there are real SEO experts, there are the scammers and the spammers and those are the black hats.

The black hats have no real understanding of search engine marketing and how to market a company successfully. They peddle false hopes and lies, opting to fool companies into thinking that they are getting a comprehensive service. In reality, they’re getting a lot of hot air and carbon dioxide. They have companies spending hours on end needlessly cramming the meta-keywords on the promise that it will boost the company’s ranking; they encourage the business to create hidden text boxes on the website that are crammed with repetitive keywords. All of these sly and underhanded methods are what has created this bad reputation for real search engine optimisers.

So many businesses and brands out there are being duped by these people that the real experts are being treated as shady underworld kings sat on mountains of ill-gotten cash. The reality is much different. There are certainly a fair number of snake oil salesmen out there. But these people are not SEO experts; they’re selling spam. These people sell false hopes to businesses and they manipulate them into thinking that they’re getting an expert solution to their search engine ranking requirements.

Search engine marketers help search engines to find pages naturally. They do this using organic keywords, semantics and their experience in SEM. Finding a true SEO expert can be a challenge, but the end results can pay huge dividends. I have years of experience in helping businesses to strengthen their rankings in the search engines, both inside London and beyond.  To get an honest consultation on how I can help your business, you can contact me here.

Paul

Bad news travels fast online and a poor customer experience can result in your company being lambasted in a very public forum. Think how well your company can do with a strong SEO strategy and where it can land in the Google, Yahoo and Bing search results; now imagine that a bad customer review lands up on the rankings above or below your result. Online shoppers make up their minds very quickly and they are just looking for a reason not to buy your products.

David versus Goliath

In my previous blog, I wrote about the problems I’d had dealing with a small business and the abysmal customer service I’d received. It’s not just small businesses committing these infractions against their customers; big businesses are doing it too. Some small companies seem to think that they don’t have to provide a good customer service because of their size. Some big companies think that they’re above responsibility to their customers because they have survived this long.

In the end, both have a responsibility to do their best to offer customers excellent customer service. Strong customer service is a huge asset for businesses because it – like search engine marketing or SEO initiatives – can help to spread positive word about the business. Positive word will bring customers back time after time and as they tell their friends about it, the positive word of mouth will bring more people to the site.

Sweet Apples and Sour Lemons

I’m a bit of a computer game nerd. I had wanted updates for a game on my Mac – I won’t tell you what it is for fear of undermining my credibility. (Just kidding, but I’m still not saying.) I had two options: to buy directly from the Apple App Store or buy direct from the game’s company in question. I opted to go for the non-Apple company and I was appropriately punished for my choice.

I purchased the updates and breezed through the checkout process with ease. After purchasing, I found that the updates weren’t actually compatible at all (although this was never displayed on the website). When I emailed them (annoyingly there was no telephone number) to see about a refund, they told me that that wouldn’t be possible. They then referred me to an obscure section of their terms and conditions. They then reiterated the resolute and unwavering NO and told me that they would not offer me a refund. The service I received was so brutally blunt that I can honestly say that I will never buy from them again. Instead of offering a good service and a sympathetic ear, they were rude and trying everything they could to usher me away.

After I’d come to terms with my own anger, I went to the online Apple App Store with my tail tucked between my legs. As usual with all my Apple computer, music and movie purchases Apple gave me excellent customer service. The whole process was a breeze and they gave me advice from a place of knowledge and a foundation of strong, attentive customer service. In the end, I’ll sing Apple’s praises until I’m blue in the face and I will never go to the other company again. Ever. And my friends and family will never use them again. Ever.

Paul

UGC represents a regular flow of fresh content for your site. Depending on the site traffic, users could be uploading fresh, product-relevant content every day for you. Not only would they be supplying content, but they would also be representing the customer perspective for your brand. Having customers write reviews and product content, as well as asking/answering questions, can do a lot to bolster your site for search engine marketing.

Can customer reviews boost my site’s SEO credentials? 

Done intelligently, of course they can! User-generated content is something I’m asked about most often through Little Big Voice because people are unsure of this variable. And of course…Google loves regularly updated and unique content…and lots of it.

Customer reviews can have huge benefits for search and click-through-rates. Think about it; when someone wants to buy something and they’re unsure about it, they’ll ask their friends. Online shopping works slightly differently but on the same principle.

When a customer is looking for reasons to buy, they will search for product X plus review

• Macbook Pro review
• Samsung Galaxy S2 review
• iPhone 4S review

Having terms your product name plus review incorporated into your product pages and keywords will give you a huge boost for SEO. Look at the following Amazon customer review format for the Macbook Pro:

5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome!, 5 Mar 2011

By Midnight – See all my reviews

(TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: New Apple Macbook Pro 13 inch Notebook (Intel Core i5 Dual Core 2.3GHz, 4GB RAM, 320GB HDD, Up to 7 hrs battery life) – Launched February 2011 (Personal Computers) 

The format of this review puts the product name into every review on its page. Customers can access a vast resource of customer reviews on Amazon to give them better information to make their purchase.

Trust me, I’m a salesman…

Building trust online can be a difficult thing to do. Users on an ecommerce site are usually in a rush to buy and don’t want to mess around. It’s important to establish trust straight away to build relationships with your customers; building trust and furthering it will lead your customers to click through and ultimately convert.

User reviews are the equivalent of positive word of mouth. If a customer can see reviews from other people who purchased your site’s products, they can accurately gauge their experiences to weigh them positively or negatively. Using these reviews as a reference, they can then make a more informed and trust-based purchase.

Reevoo data suggests that having 50 or more customer reviews can increase conversion rates by 4.6 per cent; this shows the power of user-generated content for any ecommerce site looking to increase both its SERP, CTR and conversion rates.

Little Big Voice can give you advice on the best ways to mine the customer content resource and best practices for indexing your information correctly for maximum effectiveness.

Paul

If you are a company that has video content – be it demonstrations of your products, or some kind of promotional video that outlines what you do, then this blog is just for you.

The Basics

If you have a busy You Tube channel and you’re hoping to drive traffic to your website with it, then you should always consider how you SEO your videos.  This may be something you already do but for many it’s not even thought about.

The principles are exactly the same and if you imagine You Tube on one level – it’s a massive search engine that sits between being the second or third biggest in the world beneath Google!

This should help you identify its importance within your online efforts.

The other side to You Tube is of course that it is owned by Google and there is a dedicated Video option on Google Search that means you can look for videos – of which the rankings are extremely important!

So if you are looking to expand your online presence or have already got a presence but are looking to improve it then these tips may be of use!

What do I need to do?

As we are all aware, successful Search Engine Marketing is based on relevant keywords, which make it easier for people to find us.

So, just as you would in Google, your Search Engine Marketing efforts should be replicated in You Tube videos.

Any videos should be tagged with relevant keywords that will allow the end user to find you and that will also allow the user on You Tube to find your content.

Now, this isn’t the whole story of course, because people abuse this on You Tube and end up trying to post a video that is keyworded for something that a lot of people are searching for.  Thus the end user gets very annoyed when they suddenly find a video that has nothing to do with their search term.  The downside here is that your video can be reported, marked as spam and then promptly removed from You Tube altogether.  So, just as in traditional Search Engine Marketing for your website, you should not abuse You Tube to get fast results.

Essentials

First of all, you should title your video in a way that reflects a search term.  So rather than put:

Joe Blogs Video on Internet Marketing

you may benefit more from calling it:

Internet Marketing Tips for your Business

This means that a user will be able to find you more easily and if they don’t know your name it won’t matter.

Always include links back to your website.  You can put these straight in to You Tube videos for end users and can even benefit from offers based links in the video if what you’re offering is good enough.

You should also make sure that extra information is supplied about the video, which should ideally be keyworded too, as this will help You Tube and Google find your video more easily for displaying in search results.

Some more don’ts!

As well as the obvious ones mentioned, you should make sure that your video isn’t simply an ‘advertisement’.  It needs to have some merit in its own right, either as a resource or as entertainment.

Many companies around the world have created virals and videos that offer both entertainment and PR opportunities but that also allow a company to drive a considerable amount of traffic to their website.  This is really what you should be looking at doing.

Don’t simply put your video promo on their either.  Business video promotions tend to have bad music, bad editing and really won’t be of interest to many people.

Therefore, don’t be ridiculous – be realistic instead.  Consider truthfully whether your video will actually be of use to someone.

Some more general points

Don’t worry about telling people things.  Some companies get hung up on this over and over again, but the Internet has changed so much these days.  What many have to realise is that somewhere on the Internet there is always an answer.

Whether you’re a developer looking for code, or you want to find out how to plumb in a sink, the answer is there!  With the latter in mind, now try and imagine if you wanted to plumb in a sink and saw a video whether you’d actually want to do it yourself?

Or indeed, would a qualified plumber watch your video and learn something new?

Of course, some things should be kept well under wraps, but try not to assume that you’re ‘the original’ as chances are you’re not!

Finally…

So, remember, that all content online will benefit from some kind of help in the form of Search Engine Marketing, and as video content grows daily, you need to be aware of all the opportunities open to you.

Paul

Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing inherently wrong or bad about marketing companies in the United Kingdom offering search engine marketing services to companies in London. I’m not saying – not for a second – that only London-based search engine marketers are knowledgeable enough to offer wise and comprehensive advice on SEO. Far from it; anyone with experience in SEO is more than qualified to advise businesses on their search engine marketing needs. But the difference is that London-based SEMs (search engine marketers) have experience working with businesses in the city of London.

It’s a funny situation when a London-based business is looking for SEO advice for someone outside of the city. I’ve learned everything I know about SEO from on-the-ground experience in London. I’ve learned a lot from working with businesses, getting to know a client and their needs and then applying it to marketing their specific keywords and information.

Working with companies is important, especially in a city like London where businesses are trying desperately to get a straight, honest consultation in SEO. Learning about their business needs is vital to providing a competent and informed SEO service; one that is suited to their business. I’ve always found it key to talk with the company first to establish the sorts of keywords that they would like to be ranked highly on, as well as bringing my own ideas to the table on what their keywords should be. So many companies don’t do this these days, particularly when they are not based in the same city as their clients. It’s also important to understand the brand well before advising them on search engine marketing.

It’s a worrying trend in the industry that people sell high-minded and pricey search strategy and search engine marketing packages to companies from up and down the country without anything to back it up. No experience, no real knowledge of the way search works. Nothing.

Being in the same city as your clients gives you a unique insight into their SEO needs and helps you to provide a better service to the client. Most importantly, it gives the client the best possible basis with which to improve their business’ digital offering. I strongly believe that it’s important for both the business and the SEO provider to be in the same city to build an informed and tailored approach to their search needs and deliver the best possible service.  That’s how I’ve built up my knowledge and skills within the industry and it’s how I provide the best possible service to London-based businesses.

Paul

Good customer service is a prerequisite for any ecommerce website that wants to be successful. It strengthens customer loyalty and retention in the future; it basically keeps them from wandering off to your competitors and purchasing from them. It’s a digital spin on positive word of mouth! If a customer has a bad experience shopping with a site, they have the enormous forum of the digital world in which to voice their annoyance and discontent. Bad news travels fast online and a poor customer experience can result in your company being lambasted in a very public forum. Think how well your company can do with a strong SEO strategy and where it can land in the search results; now imagine that a bad customer review lands up on the rankings above or below your result. Online shoppers make up their minds very quickly and they are just looking for a reason not to buy your products.

I’ve had a couple of very bad experiences online recently. Both of these experiences were down to appalling customer service, yet these companies were very different: one big, one small. The common thing tying both experiences together – other than the horrendous customer service – was the fact that both companies hid behind the comfort and detachment of their websites. In doing so, they remained separate from the issue and could ignore it for a very long time.

It started off simply enough, as most stories do. I’d placed an online order with a small company. The journey was smooth enough and the checkout process was relatively painless; I got through the whole process in about 10 minutes – I’d been reading some customer reviews and lost track of the time. I should have been suspicious when I didn’t get an automated email confirming my purchase right away, but hindsight is a blessing and a curse. The lines were silent and I didn’t receive the items I ordered, so I called the company to chase it up. After a week still no order. I called them again.

This time was a different story. They told me that they had ordered the wrong products and couldn’t fulfil the order. I reordered and still nothing. By this point, the vein in my head was probably the size of a football; I’d started to look like Stressed Eric on a particularly bad day. When I finally got through again, they told me that they had forgotten and that they took full responsibility.

‘Okay,’ I thought.

My last nerve was understandably raw. After another wrangle, they finally admitted that it was still kicking  around their offices. Never again.

I won’t name the company here because it wouldn’t serve any purpose other than to start flinging mud around. The point is this, some companies have grown so comfortable in the detachment of the online community that they have completely lost sight of the basics of a good shopping experience: customer service. So many businesses these days hide behind their websites and telephones to avoid having to face up to the fact that they have failed their customers. It’s not good enough.

If a customer has a bad experience on your site, they are almost certain to blog about it, tweet about it or circulate the information online. They certainly won’t recommend you to anyone else. They’ll most likely badmouth you to all of their friends, family and colleagues; by the end of it, they will deter a fair few people from ordering with you.

Good customer service costs nothing; bad customer service can cost you everything.

Paul

Little Big Voice has a broad range of SEO clients and we work uber hard to ensure that we offer the very best in terms of advice and guidance on Search Engine Marketing.

We often get asked many questions about SEO and over the past few years we’ve seen every type of business from ecommerce through to consultancy so we thought it was about time to write a blog in an effort to give clients and new readers a chance to understand keywords and SEO campaigns.

All good blogs of this nature need some kind of case study of course, so for the purpose of demonstration let’s assume that you’re a gift retailer in London and start from there.

The first thing we might want to look at is what keywords you need to rank well for in the search engines.

This might be a number of things – such as category specific products like ornaments, flowers, picture frames or it may be more general and include things like gifts for men, gifts for women, unusual gifts, funky presents etc.

Depending on what kind of budget you actually have and the in-house resources you may have then you have to be realistic about what can be achieved.  A good Search Engine Marketing company will tell you how it really is and won’t make any false promises or guarantees of any ‘speedy’ SEO results.  In fact, should someone do this walk the other way.

So how can I work out what the best keywords will be?

There are billions of web pages out there and you only need to search for a few terms to see what kind of competition you have.

It is a bit of a maze and that’s why a Search Engine Marketing professional is always recommended as they will know the kind of things you won’t find in a book.

See below our search for ‘gifts for her’ example to see that there are 369,000,000 pages!

So you’ve seen some competition, now as a keyword you need to work out whether you’ve got a budget that will cover that kind of competition or whether you have more specialised products that you may want to rank for that will put you at an advantage.

The age of your domain will also make a difference.  Remember that a new domain has a lot of work to do (probably months in fact) before it’s going to start seeing decent organic traffic results.  In fact it’s something that many people don’t realise with Search Engine Marketing.  They want instant results but won’t usually get that without a bit of hard labour.

Bigger brands will always get better results than you so it’s not always worth trying to compete with them.  Their sites have thousands of pages usually, so time will be the teller here.  Again, better to define your unique selling points and use those to gain traffic to a more bespoke market and build upon that moving forward.

You are not only competing with others on a selling level either.  There will be plenty of ‘how to’ articles, suppliers and manufacturers, as well as bloggers and indeed anyone else that has some kind of website presence that has a link to what you do, so it isn’t going to be easy.

Get good advice

Your Search Engine Marketing company will be able to tell you where to start and what you should be focusing on.

They will also hopefully help you define what your initial keywords will be and work with you to develop new ones and expand on those that need tweaking.

SEO is a bit like plate spinning.  The keywords are the plates and your SEO company will have to keep them all spinning.  So, at times some of the ‘plates’ will need a bit of a push while others are spinning quite happily until you’ve got all the plates spinning nicely, which in turn gets you a round of applause (or better rankings!).

We will be continuing this series so do come back in the next couple of weeks to get more information how to enhance and understand Search Engine Marketing activities.

Paul

See: SEO and Keywords – Part 2

Every year, Christmas seems to come around faster than ever, but here at Little Big Voice we’re always prepared and while we don’t like to mention Christmas with the summer only just disappearing, we thought we’d give you our very best tips for your ecommerce site this year.

Check your site

This may seem obvious but there are many people who forget to do this.  So go through the checkout process on your website to ensure that the checkout and the shopping cart are all working correctly and that there are no problems.

Hopefully your website will be busy and therefore if there’s an issue you don’t know about, you could end up losing sales.

Things to look for include the mechanics (check you can purchase items properly) but also that your website works in all the major browsers.

We looked at a site just yesterday and discovered not one bit of the content was displayed correctly in Firefox!

Don’t decide you suddenly want to ‘tweak’ your site

This is the last thing you should ever do coming in to Christmas season.  If your site is in working order then don’t touch it!  If you suddenly decide that something will work or look better elsewhere and change it, you might end up breaking something else on the site.  Leave it until the New Year!

SEO and your online Advertising

Talk to your Search Engine Marketing company about promotions and other things you can implement to make the most of the Christmas shoppers.  This could include free postage and packing, some discounts and even a free gift.

Ensure that your SEO keywords and promotions are in line with those promotions.

We recommend that you set-up a separate Christmas campaign – outside of your usual activities.  It is much easier to manage and will allow you see how successful you’ve been.

We also suggest that you look at Google Trends to get an idea of where people are looking but also how many searches are being done for particular products.  If you do this, then your ads can pick up on those searches and drive people to your website.

Social Media can work for you

Once you’ve decided on what promotions you will be running, then make sure you use all your arsenal to tell people about it.  Facebook, Twitter and even your blog should be places you use to tell people what’s going on.

Social Media is excellent if you have products that ‘sell out’ quickly.  For example, electronic games consoles or this season’s ‘gold dust’ toy.  If you’ve got it and no one else has, then tell people in virtual ‘real time’ and they’ll buy.

Help your shoppers buy

We all have different approaches to the way in which we shop.  You might like to add things like price options for buyers (gifts by price) or gifts for him / her.  This will make navigation much easier for people and they’re more likely to stay on your site if you make searching a breeze.

Stocking fillers please

A company with £2 million + turnover a year, always said that on an ecommerce site you should always have a £5 or under range of items as they knew that they’re great for adding to the average shopping purchase totals.  Stocking fillers can be lower value items but are always great additions when you shop so if you’ve got this as an option, make sure you use it.

Shipping information and returns

When people buy online they have worries when it comes to Christmas presents in particular.  If they’re buying clothes for example, there’s always a chance it may not fit, or the recipient may not like it.

Therefore, be really clear with your shipping policies and returns and if possible, try to have them on each and every product page so they are very clear.

This will instil confidence in you as a company but it will also save a lot of time for the buyer.

Many people forget to do this at any time of the year, yet it is the single most important factor for many buyers who have time constraints.

Offer a gift wrapping service

A very easy thing to do for your customers, is to gift wrap their purchases.  Many people buy presents and get them sent direct to the recipient and a gift wrapping service means you can add charges on but also offer a better shopping experience.

Again, a simple service and an option to buy a gift tag will add to your average shopping price per person and are especially relevant during the Christmas season.

Do the work for your customers

Another option at Christmas time is the concept of you creating a gift package for your buyers.  Items that match or go together in some way can be an attraction option if one gift just won’t do.  If you’re selling scarves and gloves, then offer a discount if the two are purchased as a set.  This will really boost your sales considerably and will not require too much effort to implement.

Be very clear

When you operate an ecommerce business there is one thing at Christmas that everyone wants to know.  When will my parcel arrive?

You must let your customers know when the last day of shopping is for guaranteed delivery of their purchases.  If you can’t answer this then you will lose sales.

So check Royal Mail as soon as you can or indeed whichever courier company you’re using and get that information up on your site as soon as possible.

Returns

As we’ve said, people worry a great deal when they buy at Christmas as you never know what the recipient will feel upon receiving a gift.  Therefore, make sure that you are clear on your policy with returns and make it really easy for your customers to find it on your website.  You can have this information in the confirmation email a buyer gets, you can have it prominently on your site and if you want to use it as a way to sell, consider using better language such as ‘no quibble’ returns or similar.

Make it look festive

Just like your office, make sure you give your site a Christmas feel.  You could consider a simple header change perhaps just to give the site a festive feel that will help your customers to get in the Christmas mood.

Is your server up to it?

As we’ve mentioned earlier, extra traffic on your website will affect your server. So best check to see what kind of usage you’ve had over the year and what you think may happen come Christmas time.

You should expect extra hits which in turn will affect your site and you don’t want it to crash, so make sure you’ve got this covered above everything else.

It’s one thing to run out of a product, but if customers can’t even get to your site because it’s too slow you’re in trouble.

Allow your buyers to ship to recipients

It’s worth making sure your shopping cart has this as an option because as we get closer to Christmas you’ll find more buyers will want to know they can get their gifts sent quickly.  To resolve this, you just need to make sure your shopping system will support a billing address as well as an alternative delivery address.

Customer service and order fulfilment

This is the most important factor of any ecommerce website business and therefore you should make sure that you are ready but also willing to convey Christmas promotions and discounts with your clients sooner rather than later.

Also, if you are busy with the orders, make sure you strive to deliver on any promises and get those orders out the door and to their recipients in good time.

This part of the process really requires you to be ready so ensure you have enough staff and support to give a brilliant quality of service.

Be consistent with advertising

If you do have promotions, make sure that your site visitors can find them easily.  You will want to be consistent with the branding across all mediums, from landing pages on your site through to emails and leafleting.

The more relevance your site conveys in relation to your other promotions the more sales you will be able to make.

Gift certificates anyone?

These are very often under-utilised by many ecommerce businesses, but they are a brilliant way of turning over more business.

The Christmas season is a busy time and very often people get stuck, not knowing what to buy their friends or family, so having a gift certificate option will encourage purchases.

They are particularly good for the last minute shoppers as well – so whether it’s a paper gift certificate or if you have an option to offer a ‘virtual’ gift certificate – make sure you get them out there!

Wishing you a Merry Christmas

Paul

Well, if you are then you should consider a new trend online that will eventually become the norm!

We always like to stay one step ahead of the game here at Little Big Voice and over the past three years, we’ve watched as You Tube has become an all encompassing machine of how to, how not to, what to do, product review videos – and that’s without the entertainment content available.

Early on, clever companies like Firebox offered video demonstrations of their products, offering the buyer a much more intensive view of something they were interested in online.

So how does a demonstration video work?

If you imagine you’re looking at buying a new desk online.  You see the photograph (which has been created professionally in a studio) but when it arrives suddenly you realise the colour you thought it was, is actually much darker and you’re now not so sure about the handles!

Well a video demonstration can offer the buyer a much better view of what you’re offering.  It allows you to get close up, to open the drawers, to look at the handles and see it against something else to produce a sense of scale.

This makes it much easier for a buyer to make an informed decision.

Videos can be short (perhaps 30 seconds) or a bit longer (say up to 1 minute) but if it’s something that is a big purchase (such as a video camcorder) you can probably spend a bit more time demonstrating all the features.

Video: An example of a good instructional video demonstrating the fitting of an aftermarket vehicle suspension system

How much does video production cost?

This is a big area in video but you’d be very surprised what you can achieve with a smaller budget.  Obviously if you’re heavily branded you may feel that a highly polished video is the answer, but more and more, You Tube users like to see real people simply demonstrating the products and talking about features.

For this reason, a good quality HD camera will work.  The only thing you will really want to be sure of is the sound quality.  This is very often forgotten when it comes to producing of videos.

So, for demonstrating it’s best to use a clip on microphone, rather than a directional one.  The sound quality is usually much clearer and you will find that it makes the video look a lot better!

If you are using a directional microphone, then you’ll need to be extra careful when filming and check levels regularly.  If in doubt, stick to a clip on microphone that is good quality!

What kind of stuff can be demonstrated?

You can choose a massive amount of things to demonstrate.  There is one company that features very simple videos of their furniture and have done for the last three years with success!

Technical videos that cover what a product can and can’t do are good, as well as gift videos that demonstrate a product more closely.

Pretty much anything can be demonstrated as long as you’re willing to put in the effort.

Sound Advice

The main thing to remember is that unless you’re a skilled editor, you are probably best opting for a close up demonstration of a product with a voice over, rather than trying to achieve Spielberg style shots.

While it’s nice to mix things up with close ups and mid-shots, unless you really know how to frame something you are best leaving it well alone.

A good option if you want some simple editing is to film the demonstration twice.  Once as a close-up and then again as a mid-shot, so you can then intercut between the two in the editing process.

However, again, we would repeat, the simpler you keep things the better result you’ll get.  Remember that people using You Tube are looking for advice, not high production values that cost the earth and that don’t really do what they’re supposed to do.

And before the curtain goes down

Obviously in retail terms, you will find products come in and out, so it’s probably not worth trying to film them all.  Instead, have a think about your popular products, what people tend to ask you about them and then put these in to your video.

Also, if you want to be really clever and get people to your videos, make sure that you tell them in any literature you send out with products so that they know they can come back.

Paul

Today’s chuckle came from what can only be described potentially as a slightly ‘stupid’ individual perhaps?

Tell us more…

Unbelievably, a man in Texas was recently charged with contempt of court for a ‘social’ faux par as it were, where he essentially asked to be friends with the wrong person in a court case!

No it wasn’t the judge – that would have been beyond stupid, but it was the female defendant he friend requested during the trial!  Surely this must rank as the second most stupid thing you can do with a Facebook account?

What possibly possessed him to do such a thing is frankly beyond me but this one action has created a lot of trouble for him it would seem.

He was charged with four counts of contempt of court and was promptly dismissed from the jury (because he had also updated his profile with details of the case???) but that wasn’t even the end of it…

Once he’d been thrown off the jury and perhaps realised the error of his ways, he then proceeded to contact the defendant to apologise for his actions!  I’m sure she was thrilled that the entire case had to be rescheduled and was delayed because of one jury member.

The sacked juror apparently wanted to tell her how sorry he was and that he now knew what it was like to be prosecuted.  Perhaps this is evidence of why he wasn’t suitable in the first place.

What a sorry, sorry mess!

We don’t know what the specifics of the case are sadly (maybe we’ll see if there’s any evidence suggesting that the other Jurors befriended the defendant?) but rest assured he is unlikely to be asked to jury duty again in his lifetime.

On the upside, at least he’s got another new friend on Facebook I suppose.

Despite his misguided actions, he actually was very lucky with the sentence that was handed out to him though.  He got off very lightly with just two days community service – unlike a recent UK juror who was given an eight month prison sentence for similar activities in a court room.

A lesson learned

While we’ve all become Facebook friendly and we love to update the world with our news, perhaps it’s the fact that people don’t always realise what they share on Facebook  won’t actually necessarily stay on Facebook that we should all understand.

It is also a fairly good indication that the authorities do look at social channels more often these days as criminals are silly it would seem and don’t mind what information they share on Facebook!

Advice

We would never condone any of this kind of behaviour but in terms of your own security, it may always be worth checking your security settings.  Your photos, friends list, wall and updates can be viewable by anyone if you have not restricted the settings.

Ho hum…Big Brother is watching you!

Paul