Sunday 26 February 2012

Top 10 Google Products you might not know about

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A lot of people who aren’t interested in search engine optimisation might not realise the quantity of products that Google offers outside search.  Google spend a lot of time developing new and innovative features to strengthen their hold on the search engine market and advertising, that generates the majority of their revenues.  They also build and own many products outside what would typically be thought of as’ search’, and some of their most notable products include YouTube and Android as well as Gmail.  In this SEO blog I’ll cover some of those products you might not have heard of, and discuss a little about what they can be used for.  In no discernible order…here they are:

1.    Google Code

Google Code is their site for developer tools, APIs and technical resources.  On ‘Code’ there are application programming interfaces (API) available for Google Maps, YouTube and a number of other Google Apps.  This site also features several developer products and tools that have been built specifically for software developers.  These include the Google App Engine, a hosting service for web apps and the Google Web Toolkit, which allows developers to use the Java programming language to build Ajax applications.  This particular Google product is obviously aimed at people with a technical or programming background that use Google on a regular basis.

2.    Google Scholar

Google Scholar is a platform that allows users to browse scholarly literature that has been uploaded to the web.  The ‘Scholar’ concept was first trialled in 2004, but the service received an upgrade in 2006 when Microsoft released ‘Windows Live Academic Search’, which could have been a potential rival.  Journals or articles in ‘Scholar’ can be found in a number of formats, with the most popular being PDF, and while some can be downloaded free, the majority have to be paid for after a free sample.  Google Scholar is most likely to be used by students, academics, or researchers looking for academic texts relating to a specific topic.

3.    Google Translate

Google Translate is a free machine translation service offered by Google, which translates a section of text, a website or a document into another language.  The user can choose between 63 different languages, including Welsh, Afrikaans, Basque, Yiddish, Traditional and Simplified Chinese, Persian and Polish.  Google announced earlier in the year that they are to close down the free version of the service due to the financial burden caused by people abusing it, however, it is to be replaced with a paid service.  This product had numerous users, including website owners who might want to publish their content in the native language of geo-specific domains, or just casual users who need a phrase translated.  Google’s decision to shut down the free service has been widely criticised.

4.    Google SketchUp

Google SketchUp is a 3D modelling program designed to be used by architectural and structural engineers, game makers, filmmakers and other related professions.  The software, which has been designed for ease of use can be downloaded in two versions; one free and one paid for.  The free version is marketed as being intuitive and fun to use, allowing users to re-imagine living spaces and model buildings for Google Earth.  The paid version, called SketchUp Pro offers the same features as well as the ability to exchange files with other software, the creation of compelling design documents, and the option to generate reports and PDFs.

5.    Google Trends



I have spoken about Google Trends in the past and how it can be of benefit for both SEO and internet marketing campaigns.  As Google puts it, Google Trends allows you to compare the world’s interest in your favourite topics.  Essentially, it allows you to enter five different topics, and Google will provide the corresponding search volume data for each of those queries, allowing you to look for trends in the data.  It can be used by SEOs to identify patterns in user behaviour, specifically seasonal behaviour, and what keywords an audience use at a specific time of year.

6.    Google Talk



Google Talk is a downloadable chat application.  There are two ways that users can operate Talk.  One is through a video and voice plug-in, which allows chat within Google Mail, iGoogle and Orkut, and the other is a downloadable software application which allows you to host ‘MSN’ style chats from your dashboard.

7.    Google Earth



Google Earth is an application that lets you go anywhere in the world and view satellite imagery, terrain, 3D buildings and numerous other features that make this product a fantastic play-thing as a well as a potentially useful tool for professionals.  Google Earth can be operated from the user’s desktop, in Google Maps and also on mobile devices, and there is the option to save information about the places you visit and share that with friends.

8.    Picasa

Picasa is a product Google acquired, which helps users organize, edit and share their photos – it’s almost like having a digital photo album for free.  The name is a blend of Picasso, the famous artist, and the Spanish word ‘casa’, which means house and this quite delicately sums up what the product represents.  This is another user product that doesn’t necessarily have a definitive or strict user base, but it’s intuitive and user-friendly design has been almost universally praised by critics.

9.    Google Product Search



Google Product Search is a hybrid of two former Google products called ‘Google Products’ and ‘Froogle’.  It is a price comparison service where users enter the desired product into the search box, and Google returns results about numerous products relating to the search query, and price listings for a select number of vendors.  Unlike many other price comparison websites, Google doesn’t receive money for listing vendors, nor can those vendors pay to have their items listed at the top of a Google product search.

10.    Google Alerts



Google Alerts is a service that lets you have emails sent to you when Google finds new results related to a search term that you have entered.  The Alerts the user asks Google to send can be as broad or as defined as the user dictates because you can choose specific result types to get alerts for as well as how often you receive them.  Google Alerts could be used if the user is following a particular news story – perhaps they are waiting for the verdict of a court trial.  They could ask Google to alert them as soon as a result is found relating to the trial verdict ensuring they get the information almost as soon as it released.
So, those are my top 10 Google products you might now have heard of.  If you don’t agree with my list, or would just like to contribute your own suggestions then please feel free to comment and someone from SEO Consult will get back in touch with you.

Google personalises your search results even further with “Search Plus Your World”

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Google recently announced another feature they have included in searches they dub “Search Plus Your World”, whose rollout began today. It’s a new idea that brings public and private search results together into one mixed set, giving a diverse set of results tailored only to you. Not everyone will see the change yet as it is still rolling out, and is currently only for those searching in English and are signed in to Google.com.
One of the first concerns of this new feature is privacy. Private content may be shown in the results which may make it appear as public, even though it isn’t and this may inadvertently share more than was intended. I would personally argue that anything private should never be put on the internet, but other less knowledgeable users may not be under the same pretence.

So what can we expect from this?

First off there is a new view called “Personal Results” which displays only your personalised results based on social connections and behaviour. This includes shared posts and content from your Google+ account. In the search results you need to select the personalised results button, shown below, to get these personalised results. If you don’t have the button yet, don’t worry, Google are rolling it out over the coming days. If you want to try and get it early you can try following the instructions here, as I did on http://goo.gl/R1cVy and then (and this is important as it only works this way) visit Google.com (not .co.uk, etc) making sure you’re signed in and are viewing in English.
As an example, I performed a search for “SEO”. Next to the buttons, you can see that Google has found 10 personal matches, and 1 billion regular search matches for the search term.

Some of the personalised results are blended into the SERPs as shown below.

 What personalised content will we actually see?

Google says you’ll see content from yourself, and “content that is shared with you by suggested connections that have Google+ profiles.  If you have Google+, your personal results can also include content that has been shared with you by people in your circles”.
In summary, personalised results will include:
Regular organic listings
Listings boosted by your personal behaviour
Listings boosted by social connections
Public Google+ content, including photos
Private Google+ content that has been shared with you
The final personalisation is a very big change and may cause concerns for some searchers, but I’ll go into this a little later.
I wanted to see what personalised items I could bring up for myself, so I shared an article about Crystal LED Displays to just a small group of people in one of my circles. I then searched for “Crystal LED Display”. Because I made this private, it shows up as “Limited” in the post yet it still shows up in the SERPs when I search for it. This could cause concern for someone who has posted something private and they think its public. This is made clear by the use of “Limited” and “Public” next to the post in the SERPs.



There are many ways this kind of search can be useful. If you post something on your Google+ account but later can’t find it, you can conduct a search and it will appear in the SERPs, allowing you to be reunited with said content. Google wouldn’t have found these items previously in a regular search, but providing this directly in Google.com opens a new era in social search.

If you want to see just personalised results, you can do this by clicking the link shown in red below. Clicking “See all results” brings back the regular mixed search.


Searching for people

You’ll no doubt be aware of Facebook search. When you type in something to search for, it includes apps, pages, people and more. Google have now integrated a similar looking system for searching for people within Google search.
Below I’ve searched for “Matt”. Now I could have been talking about anyone called Matt but I only have one Matt on my Google+ profile, and that is Matt Cutts.

Selecting the result for Matt Cutts, the results now change to be personalised completely around him. This includes his Google+ posts, his personal website and other sites he has been mentioned on. However you’ll only see public content, or private content shared with you. You won’t see anything you’re not supposed to.


Back to privacy

Going back to concerns over privacy, some may be reluctant to share anything on Google+ anymore because of the new ability to search for it. It doesn’t bother me personally as I’m aware that Google will not show this content to others, but for other people who are not familiar with how it works, they may get concerned.
Personalised results are personalised only to you, they’re never made public. The content is only shown to you unless shared with other people, in which case they may also see it in their personalised search too. My only concern is if someone then takes that content and makes it public on their Google+ account. This will then begin showing up in public searches as well and that deeply concerns me. However, as with all things on the internet, if it’s private it’s best not to post it anywhere on the web otherwise there is always that fear it will get loose.

It could get you into some serious trouble


I sit here asking myself what other problems open content and these searches may lead to. Consider this: You accidentally post something that is slightly out of context and it is made public. Little mistakes keep being made and this leads up to something bigger. One day someone gets overly concerned and conducts a search on these things and your name keeps popping up. That has the potential to get you into serious trouble especially if it’s based around your place of work or family.
Another example is something you posted, but forgot and want to continue having forgotten. One day someone searches and this pops up and they decide to share it. It gets brought back to life and suddenly you’re aware of it again.
These things may sound small but they can amount to a whole lot of trouble.

So despite some concerns, this new way of searching is a good thing?

Definitely! It can change the way we search for content we really want to look at. This is something Google has wanted to perfect for a long time and this is one extra way to get us there. Weeding out irrelevant content is also good for us because it saves time. There’s nothing worse than searching for something and not getting the right information quickly. I’ve frequently found myself searching dozens of SERPs just trying to find what I need. Now, if someone I know has posted content on the same subject, I’ll be able to find it and that content is likely to be more relevant than a generic search.
It will take some time for us all to see the benefits, but after a week or two using the personalised search I can see it having a big impact on the content we look at.

Is ‘Search Plus Your World’ anti-competitive?

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I know what you’re thinking, not another ‘Search Plus Your World‘ article!  It’s true that that the blogosphere has become over saturated with commentators analysing the update from every angle you could possible think of.  Is it a positive move?  Is it anti-competitive? Is it an attempt to get Facebook investigated for privacy violations? Is it damaging SEO? Is it improving SEO? Should more brands adopt Google Plus profile pages?  Somewhere, all these topics and more will have been covered, but I’d like to go into more detail about the anti-competitive allegations that have been thrust at Google.


There are two main points that these allegations focus on; the Google+ profiles listed in the Google search drop downs, and the additional Google+ People and Pages that are suggested when certain terms are searched for (see the images below).

The top image above shows how Google+ profiles are appearing directly in Google’s drop down suggestions.  This happens for celebrities, friends and bloggers with a profile on Google+ when their name is entered in the search bar.  In the example above, which was highlighted in the Google blog post announcing SPYW, we can see that Trey Ratcliff’s Google+ profile is suggested to me despite him not being a pre-existing connection.  The problem, as many have pointed out, is that if Google+ is listed, why aren’t Facebook and Twitter?  They are, after all, more established social networks, and there’s a good chance that they contain more information about the person being searched for than a G+ profile.  Google are all about providing quality to its users, so surely if a search is conducted with obvious social intent, then Facebook and Twitter profiles should be suggested with as much visibility as a G+ profile.  Trey Ratcliff, the person in the example from the image, does have a Facebook and a Twitter account, so is it not anti-competitive of Google to promote their own social network as a suggestion in the drop down without suggesting Facebook and Twitter?
In search, Google have developed their market share naturally overtime through consistently providing the best user experience, and the most relevant and reliable search results.  For this reason, they can often shrug off the allegations of anti-competitive behaviour aimed at them by those who might feel their domination of the search engine market place is damaging user experience.  More significant problems arise when they begin using that position of superiority to start leveraging products that are peripheral to search; Google+ is one of these products.  Because of the way Google+ received advertising directly on Google’s homepage, and the way it is now being integrated into the SERPs, there is a good case that the search giant is unfairly favouring Google content over non-Google content.  This seems to be reinforced by the ‘People and Pages on Google+’ suggestions.
The same allegations have been made about the ‘People and Pages on Google+’ suggestions.  If we look at the image above, we can see the people and pages that are suggested when a search for ‘music’ is conducted.  Imagine if you are a brand or do social media marketing for a brand, and you see these profile pages listed for searches.  Naturally, you will see this as an opportunity and immediately begin focusing on optimising your Google+ business page to get your brand listed there for relevant searches.  This might also mean that you take some of the focus from your Facebook and Twitter marketing campaigns, and potentially, this could be hugely damaging to the business models of them both because they might lose the investment or support from key advertisers.  Why aren’t the Facebook or Twitter profiles of Britney Spears or Snoop Dogg also suggested, because potentially they will have more value for me as a searcher.  There are other ways these suggestions impact searcher experience, for example, if I conduct a search for ‘Facebook’, it will be suggested that I add Mark Zuckerberg to my connections on Google+:

The thing is, Mark Zuckerberg has never shared any content on Google Plus, nor does his profile have any information about him, or about Facebook.  In what way is Mark Zuckerberg’s empty profile relevant to me, as a searcher, looking for information about Facebook, and why is it given such a prominent position in the SERPs?  Surely it would offer a much better user experience if his Facebook account was listed there instead, because this provides lots of valuable information.

From my experience then, these criticisms of ‘Search Plus Your World’ being anti-competitive are justified, but perhaps the more noteworthy observation is that, on occasion, my experience as a searcher is negatively impacted by this update.  The Zuckerberg instance above being a prime example.  Before you tell me that personalised search can be turned off at the click of the button, I’d like to point out that these suggestions remain even when personalised search is disabled.  That means someone with no Google affiliation, with no prior Google search history, or even someone with cookies disabled, will have Mark Zuckerberg’s empty G+ profile suggested to them when they search for ‘Facebook’.  This seems like Google are blatantly promoting their own content, or products while sacrificing user experience.

Do Google have a counter-argument?

Of course they do! This is Google, after all.  In an interview with Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan after his appearance at CES 2012, Eric Schmidt discussed some of the allegations being put forth.

In case you haven’t got time to watch the video, Google’s argument is, essentially, that Facebook and Twitter haven’t given them the permission they need to crawl and display that kind of profile information.  However, they would be happy to ‘sit down and have a conversation’ with the companies in an attempt to reach some kind of agreement.  This has been disputed by the search engine optimisation community because of the fact that Facebook and Twitter profiles can appear in the organic SERPs, and therefore there should be no reason why they can’t be given the same prevalence as G+ profiles in the SERPs.  However, I wouldn’t want to comment on this too much as their might be a genuine legal reason why other social networking profiles aren’t appearing with the Google+ profiles.
Already there are blogs cropping up with titles like “Why Every Marketer Needs a Google+ Strategy“, “Why Google+ is an Inevitable Part of Your Content Marketing Strategy” and hundreds of other blogs along the same lines.  Do you think words like ‘inevitable’ and ‘need’ could have been applied to Google+ before the Search Plus Your World update, or are other SEOs just threatened by Google’s bold strategy?  I’d really like to hear your thoughts on the matter, so please feel free to comment.

Can SEO still be effective without Social Media Marketing?

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The start of a New Year marks a time when significant voices within an industry begin making their predictions for the next twelve months within said industry.  This is very much the case in search engine optimisation, and numerous ideas and theories have already been put forward about what 2012 holds in store for SEO.  One suggestion that really jumped out at me came from Rand Fishkin at seoMoz, who said, “SEO without social media will become a relic of the past“.  I’m a big fan of social media marketing, and while I don’t necessarily believe SEO without social media marketing will become extinct, I strongly believe that in the right context, social media can increase the efficiency of an SEO campaign tenfold.  I hope to use this blog to explain why I think this is the case.

How can Social Media benefit Search Engine Optimisation?

Social media marketing allows businesses to embellish their other online marketing efforts by engaging directly with potential customers, and influencing significant commentators that themselves have a lot of outreach with potential customers.  Traditionally, the success of an internet marketing campaign is judged by achieving a higher ranking in the search engines, and whether this is the correct way to judge success is up for debate.  While social media marketing is becoming an increasingly powerful metric for determining ranking within the SERPs, its true value lies in being able to target and bring in relevant traffic direct from the social networks, and building brand reputation.  The most obvious way to target this traffic is by looking for something called ‘social mentions’ or ‘direct mentions’.
The best examples of these are through Twitter.  By using the search bar located at the top of every Twitter profile, businesses can search for their brand name to find examples of which people are talking about them, what they are saying and looking for ways to engage with those people, if appropriate.  It might be the case that someone has mentioned the brand name on Twitter to express unhappiness at a quality of service or product.  This provides just as good an opportunity for a business to engage with a person as if they had said something positive.  You can try and remedy the situation by finding out what went wrong, and if necessary offering some form of compensation.

Other, less direct, social mentions come about when Twitter users Tweet something that includes an industry related keyword.  Let’s say you are in charge of a catering company – you might search Twitter for ‘catering company’ or ‘caterers’.  This will provide you with a list of Tweets that include those words, and in this is the opportunity to market your services.  You might find someone who has recently tweeted something like ‘Panicking about sorting a catering company for my wedding!’ or ‘My son’s birthday is in two weeks…I better sort a caterer…’.  Both these examples provide the opportunity for our imaginary catering opportunity to engage in some inbound marketing, but how they go about conducting that marketing is more important than finding it in the first place.
There might be a temptation, if our catering company was a bit lazy, to auto-reply to all mentions of certain keywords with a bland stock Tweet such as ‘It sounds like you need catering!  Come check out our website @ www.example.com’.  This is likely to be flagged as spam, because it really isn’t offering anything of value besides letting people know that your business exists in the first place.  A much more effective strategy (although this takes more resources) is to respond to each Tweet individually with a personalised and insightful message.  I would also say that it’s not necessary to directly market your services when you begin engaging with someone, just communicate with them and find out more about their problem before you dive in with the big sales pitch.  That’s the great thing about using social media channels to conduct marketing, it gives you a context that is absent in cold calling and some other forms of offline marketing.  Perhaps the person who needs a catering company for their wedding lives in London, and you might offer discounted prices for weddings being conducted in the London area.  All these things come about through talking to these potential clients before you try to sell them your service.
Outside of Twitter, other opportunities to look for social mentions can be found at Google+.  G+ is becoming a more recognised platform for bloggers, and using the search feature you can find out which bloggers are discussing catering, or wedding planning, or party planning.  These are likely to be influential, and you can begin engaging with them in an attempt to get mentioned in their blogs, or on their website.  For some companies, this might be a better way to increase online visibility than through an increased rank on the search engines.
The above examples I’ve mentioned are just a couple of examples about how social media is influencing search engine optimisation.  While I don’t think that traditional SEO, absent of social media marketing, will become entirely defunct – adopters of this new inbound marketing technique are much more likely to have an advantage when it comes to increasing the online visibility of their business.
SEO Consult have a dedicated social media marketing department, so if you have any further questions then please feel free to contact us or leave a comment on the blog.

Need Good Content? Learn from the Best

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Whilst there is much more to making your site successful than writing content, the vast majority of your visitors will notice if you gloss over it. At the very least, content should tell the reader where they are and what they can expect to find within your site. Beyond that? Well, that really is up to you. But what if you have no idea where to start?
When looking to strengthen the quality of your site’s content, studying trusted sites which rank highly can be a fantastic way to pick up some tips. You should pay attention to their style, their register, their use of keywords, their tone, and how they engage with the customer. You can learn a lot from the top sites by viewing them with an attentive eye, and following their lead. Obviously, this does not mean you should plagiarise, but rather that you should study what works, and what doesn’t. This way of learning can help you gain an insight into just one part of what helps make a site successful.

However, another useful way to research before writing is to take a look at the sites within your field which rank at the lower end of the SERPs. Just as the leading sites can teach you some valuable lessons, so too can the rest. Pay attention to the way they present themselves, and the tone they use. Is their writing sloppy and stuffed with keywords? Do they fail to explain who they are and what they do or sell? Or, have they neglected to include any substantial writing in their web design process altogether (as some do)? Focusing on what works and what doesn’t is a cheap and resourceful way to improve the writing on your site, which will ensure visitors are met with informative, professional copy when they arrive.
Effective SEO content (on every page, not just the homepage) should be easy to read, coherent, and include enough keywords to serve their purpose without irritating the visitor by making them read ‘red and yellow hats in London’ for the fifteenth time in two paragraphs. If you have a business blog or online press release section, this too should be written with care, following in the footsteps of those other sites you have studied. If you use social media to promote your business and engage with your customers as part of your internet marketing strategy, then your writing here should also represent your company at its best; just because other people make terrible spelling and grammatical errors on Facebook and Twitter does not mean you can too. An internet marketing company can provide professional copywriters who will ensure your content is the best it can be, whilst subtly enhancing it for SEO purposes.

Twitter the first for big news?

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Last week I read an article about the new Google initiative Search plus Your World. In this article Twitter argues that this new search innovation will make breaking news harder to find for users also stating that Twitter is first for big breaking news. The article can be found here:
After reading I couldn’t help but wonder is Twitter becoming the best for breaking news? Some eye opening points were made in the article like how many tweets are made per day (250 million!) most of those tweets will be made by news readers, celebrities and even companies trying to promote or market new products. Twitter has helped inform us in some of the biggest stories last year like the John Terry racial abuse incident during the Chelsea v QPR game in October 2011. As a very passionate Chelsea fan when the story broke out that a fan filmed John terry allegedly using racial abuse and posted it on twitter I was shocked. I was even more shocked to hear the next morning on Sky Sports News that the media never caught up with it during the game….in fact nobody knew until it was posted on Twitter.
This became one of the most controversial sports headlines over the past year and has now prompted a government investigation into racism in football.
Twitter over the years has become one of the most powerful online sources in this case becoming more informative than the media themselves. Before if you wanted to know anything new you will go to Google first or purchase the latest newspaper but the power is shifting towards social networks. Will people start to look at social sources to be the most relevant therefore making the Rupert Murdock’s of this world insignificant?
You can follow us for the latest up to date search and social news

Make Crowdsourcing part of your SEO Strategy

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One of the best things I have found about working in search engine optimisation and internet marketing, is that you come to really come to appreciate the great ideas and innovations on the web that might pass by people whose understanding of SEO is relatively limited.
I was recently shown a blog hosted by Starbuck’s called ‘My Starbucks Idea‘, where members can suggest ideas they have for products.  These ideas are then voted on and discussed; as the suggestion gains the attention of the community, it also gets the attention of the company, and ideas that aren’t well received are eventually vetted out of the system.  This seemed to be a great idea for several reasons – it creates almost a constant stream of user generated content that might attract long-tail traffic to the Starbucks website or at least remind them of the strength of the Starbucks brand, it’s a great example of crowdsourcing (which I’ll discuss in more detail later), and it is costing Starbucks practically nothing.

I’m more than aware that very few businesses have the resources, or the brand reputation to host this kind of blog on a scale the size of Starbucks, but I’d like to explain the principles in a bit more detail, and how it could be applied on a smaller, more manageable scale.

What is Crowdsourcing?

I’d like to stick to the Wikipedia definition of crowdsourcing – it is the act of sourcing tasks traditionally performed by specific individuals to a community or crowd in an open forum.  So, essentially Starbucks are using ‘My Starbucks Idea’ almost like their own Research & Development department, by having people suggest ideas, then getting feedback on those ideas directly from their target market – it functions almost exactly like a focus group.  This means that ‘My Starbucks Idea’ is exploring problems and generating ideas for new products quickly and inexpensively, they are building their brand reputation around this community and also gaining valuable insight directly into their target market.  It also means that they don’t have to reply on the in-house talent for all their innovation, as they can handpick and adapt the ideas that the community are suggesting.  It really is a fantastic idea, and I think lots of businesses could benefit from taking a similar approach to their SEO or web marketing strategies.

How can I apply crowdsourcing to my SEO strategy?


It’s really quite simple, and you don’t need to host a separate blog or micro site to do it.  Here are a few suggestions:
•    Ask for ideas on your blogs – Many modern businesses now host a blog on their website.  It’s a great SEO tool because it means (if you update it regularly), that it is going to be a good source of fresh content, meaning that your website gets crawled and indexed more often.  It’s also a great place to discuss any ideas you might have relating to the products or services that your business offers.  Through these blogs you can ask the community of blog readers you have to discuss the idea, providing your website with additional long-tail content as well as extra insight into the suggestion you have made in the blog.  It’s not on the same scale as Starbucks, but you are adopting their approach and it could potentially be very beneficial.
•    Consider hosting a forum on-site or at a microsite – Depending on the scale of your business, or the resources you can place on search marketing, it may not be possible to create a microsite.  If this is the case, it might be worth considering hosting a basic forum on your website, where users can publically ask questions, and receive answers from you as well as other members of the community.  Hosting a forum as a microsite minimises the opportunity and effect of spam, but a fully systematic administration of the forum may drain a lot of resources meaning that this approach may not always be possible.
These are just a few suggestions, but there are many others that businesses can use to create and promote user-generated content.  As I’ve mentioned, this can be a highly effective strategy because it can mean that ideas for products or services can be analysed quickly and in a cost-effective manner.  The additional long-tail content that is a by-product of crowdsourcing is an additional SEO bonus.  So, with that said, I’d love some discussion on whether you think crowdsourcing is a viable SEO strategy.  Please feel free to comment, and I’m sure members of the SEO Consult team will get involved.

Google updating privacy policys

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In just over a month, Google will be making some changes to their privacy policies and Terms of Service.
Google have over 70 privacy documents covering all of the different products which is somewhat complicated so they’re rolling out a new main privacy policy that covers the majority of products and explains what information they collect and how they use it, in a much more readable way. Some privacy notices will have to remain separate however over 60 will be consolidated into the new main privacy policy.
These changes will take effect on March 1.
What does this mean in practice? The main change is for users with Google Accounts. The new Privacy Policy makes clear that, if you’re signed in, Google may combine information you’ve provided from one service with information from other services. In short, Google will treat you as a single user across all our products.
This is said to allow Google to provide further relevant results, allowing better figuring out of what you really mean when typing keywords such as “Apple”, “Jaguar” or “Pink. It’s said to allow provide more relevant ads too (for example, it’s Jan and you’re not a gym person so fitness ads won’t be shown to you). Aswell as relevancy for searches & ads, it’s said to allow Google to improve spelling suggestions & even provide reminders that you’re going to be late for a meeting based on your location.
Google are also rewritting the Terms of service-terms so they’re easier to read by cutting down the total number, so many of their products are now covered by our new main Google Terms of Service.
It’ll be interesting to see how far Google will take this. Will they associate’s sites that are within the same Analytics/Webmaster Tools account for example?

24 Signs (You’ll Recognise) That You’ve Been Doing SEO Too Long

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1: You’ve spent longer than 30 minutes crafting a title tag.

2: You tell your colleagues that it’s “all about TRAFFIC, not RANKINGS!”. Yet you are secretly as obsessed as they are.

3: When you’re not at work you check rankings on you’re phone, making sure to go through a proxy to get desktop SERPS, naturally.

4: You’ve been so happy that a website was finally ranking on first page… before realising you’re signed in.

5: From now on you’re OCD to check you’re not signed in, your location is set to the right place and Safe Search is set to “moderate”.

6: One day you’ll give Rich Snippets a try. Honestly, you will.

7: You do of course deplore black hat techniques… but secretly thumb up a YouMoz post that mentions a good trick.

8: You can instantly list 6 good reasons why you’re client’s developer’s idea for an Ajax site is a terrible idea.

9: You’ve gasped when a URL you’re looking for doesn’t have a Cache. “Probably just the data centers” you say, not really knowing what that means.

10: You have at least one secret SEO theory you’ll take to the grave.

11: You’re not on Facebook when you shouldn’t be, you’re “investigating how social networks have helped this piece of content spread”. Or something like that.

12: You’ve made an SEO joke to a non-SEO friend. He understood but didn’t laugh.

13:You join the WWF because of the Panda update.

14: You occasionally joke that you’ll “phone up Google” to get something fixed. You know this is hilarious.

15: You’re jealous that with PPC it is so much easier to control rankings.

16: When you see someone using Bing of their own free will, you are amazed and point at them like you’re at the zoo.

17: You have never actually seen someone click a PPC ad, unless they were testing that a landing page works.

18: You’ve scrolled up and down the original PageRank paper deciding whether to read it. You quietly clicked Back.

19: You stare at the board in your office, reminiscing of Whiteboard Fridays gone by.

20: You can spot an out of date Analytics code from 20 paces.

21: You’re half way over to Yahoo! Site Explorer before you realise it’s gone.

22: The word “canonicalization” just rolls off your tongue.

23: Infographics are your top shelf magazines.

24: Getting comments on your blog post make your day… Hint, hint.

SEO strategy tips for Mobile Apps

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Search Engine Optimisation techniques are well documented throughout the internet and are consistently applied to websites all over the world on a daily basis. Yet with the growing importance of SEO for mobile web applications, these techniques seem to be getting overlooked.
The fusion between Desktop and Mobile worlds has been created by the explosive popularity of apps which is reshaping web links around the App Store and Android market. The most popular apps listed in the App Store and Android Market are dictated by the volume of downloads and the ratings each one receives. Yet these app profile pages are also webpages and are driving the expansion of backlinks and social popularity of these pages thus giving them and extraordinary influence over organic searches.

Think about mobile app SEO

Instead of optimising your application for search, you need to optimise the description and your metadata on the application stores you use to release your app. You need to think about you target audience and the users you’d want downloading and using your app.

Make your brand feature prominently in the app name

To tap into the link juice that mobile apps provide it is critical that the app name within the App Store and Android Market is also the link anchor text, in order to get these sites to link to your app profile page. Also make sure you include the brand name in the URL for the download page.

Link from your home page to your profile page


Build a landing page dedicated to your apps and include links to direct link juice from the most important pages on your site to your apps landing page, this section should contain reviews, screenshots, features etc.

Feature the brand name in any anchor text that links to your app download pages

You have to tell the search engines that the App store or Android app page is all about your brand, many brands make the same mistake by linking to their app profile page without including the brand name or worse case by linking to the page using a graphic. Be smart and use your anchor text wisely.

Google tests direct email subscription in search results

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Google is currently experimenting with Adwords and has gone beyond the regular text ads we are all used to seeing and added Google Email Subscription Ads.
The new ad format allows companies to buy ads which will automatically fill in the “Subscribe to newsletter” slot with the persons email address (if logged in). If the person chooses to subscribe the email address is sent to the advertiser directly, however this is only made clear to the user if they click on the privacy button which details this.
Currently I have only seen examples of this from Honda, AWeber and Constant Contact on Tech Crunch. It has not been made clear from Google if this will become a permanent extra feature but if it does this could be interesting for the future of email marketing.

“Source: Tech crunch”
This will allow companies to capture email addresses without people even visiting their websites and will allow users to sign up for email subscriptions more easily. This is good for people that have already visited your site and therefore know what they are signing up for, but how many email subscriptions will you get from those that have never visited your site? Whilst the initial purpose will be to get email subscriptions, it could bring more focus to the advert which in turn will hopefully increase the CTR to the site.
This new feature will interest a lot of email marketing companies and is something a lot will want to try out if it’s made a permanent Adwords feature.

Google+ Censoring Profile Images

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As we all already know, Google+ has been known to actively censor usernames; only real names can be used on Google+. It is however less commonly known that Google+ actively censors profile pictures too. This week, this came quite known after TechCrunch writer MG Siegler’s Google+ profile picture vanished twice. The first time it vanished; he thought it must have been a bug however when he uploaded it again and it then vanished a second time, he received the following message from a Googler:
As the first point of interaction with a user’s profile, all profile photos on Google+ are reviewed to make sure they are in line with our User Content and Conduct Policy. Our policy page states, “Your Profile Picture cannot include mature or offensive content.” Your profile photo was taken down as a violation of this policy. If you have further questions about the policies on Google+ you can visit http://www.google.com/intl/en/+/policy/content.html, or click the “Content Policy” link located in the footer of Google+ pages.
The profile picture that MG Siegler uploaded was of himself with his middle finger extended to the camera. Whilst we welcome Google making the decision to censor Google+ (it’s a family friendly social network after-all!), we’re not too sure Google took the best option initially of deleting the image completely with no notification. MG Siegler wrote a blog post regarding the situation and quite rightly said:
“My problem isn’t so much with the fact that I couldn’t have a profile picture of myself giving everyone the finger — which I can and do on Twitter and elsewhere — it’s that no one bothered to tell me or warn me before they just went into my account and deleted the picture. What if this was the only place I had stored the picture?”
It’s worth double checking your profile pictures to ensure your profile picture can’t be seen as offensive or you could end up picture-less like MG Siegler.

Pinterest – A New Online Marketing Opportunity

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With over 6 million users, and counting, Pinterest is the site everyone is talking about. Created in 2008, but only recently gathering pace, Pinterest has blasted into the top ten most visited social networking sites of the past year, and continues to gain popularity.
Pinterest is a social bookmarking site where users can gather images to share with others. It is useful to think of the site as a virtual, interactive scrapbook, where you can organise pictures (or videos) that you find interesting or inspiring. Whenever you see an image you like, anywhere on the web, you can “pin” it onto your pinboard, creating as many pinboards as you like. People are using Pinterest to plan weddings, decorate homes, and collate recipes, but you can create a pinboard for any topic imaginable!

Pic sourced from dabblelicious
So, what can brands gain from Pinterest? At first, you may think the site seems too niche to accommodate brands, but several brands have already signed up to the service, and there are opportunities. As Pinterest gathers pace, more extensive features may be introduced to benefit brands, such as promoted pins, sponsored boards, or subtle advertising. Right now though, brands are using Pinterest in the following ways:
To showcase new product offerings. Retail outlets are using the site to gauge interest in new products, so if a user repins an image, or posts a positive comment, the business will know that they approve. As the site still has a relatively small number of users, compared to that of Facebook and Twitter, brand managers can measure acceptance of a new product relatively easily, and gauge whether it is wise to continue with mass production.
To get seen. Pinterest is a place to discover new things – users follow each other based on interests, and recommend things to others using pinboards. For SMEs with small budgets it is the perfect platform to plug your business, as you don’t need big advertising budgets to get your brand known – the “stumble upon” culture of Pinterest will allow people to find your business in other ways.
To get backlinks. Everytime someone pins an image from your site and places it on their pinboard, you automatically get a link from it. You could get multiple links, if the image is repinned, building a healthy number of backlinks to your site. These links have great potential as the popularity of Pinterest grows.
To communicate a brand. For companies that provide a service, rather than a product, Pinterest provides a platform to showcase brand personality. For instance, a magazine can showcase photos of places it has sent its journalists, or its coverage of events, and provide a description and a link to the original story. This allows the brand to give its story, mission and future plans, all via a pinboard.
Pinterest is an exciting new platform for brands, and as the site gains popularity, marketing opportunities are only going to grow. Once you have added the “pin it” button to your site, it is a good idea to follow others and get your brand known. Encourage them to follow you back and repin your pins by frequently repinning their pins to your boards. You should create boards that go beyond your product and your brand – for example, a bakery could pin images of kitchen appliances to bake with.
In time, the benefits of incorporating Pinterest into your online marketing strategy will become more apparent, but any work you do now should put you in good stead. However tempting, it is not advisable to use Pinterest for self-promotion, as this could get you banned. The most successful brands on Pinterest will be the ones that put aside self-promotion, but instead provide something unique to the Pinterest community.

Quick SEO Tip – Internal Linking

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Hi guys,
I’m going to be starting a new quick tip series for the beginners out there, but there may be some use for the advanced SEO’s out there to maybe recap or spark some conversation. Today’s tip is the truth about internal linking.
Internal linking can be useful to improve information hierarchy, help spiders crawl and spread link juice around your site but it can sometimes be misunderstood when we bring search engine algorithms into the equation, take this HTML for example:
<h1><a href="www.doma.in">Company Name</a></h1>
<p>This is some seo content that is rich in keywords and then
we have a link like this <a href="www.doma.in">Keyword</a> that
creates our internal linking.</p>
This looks great and the link looks natural but how does Google or Bing see this?
If two links are pointing to the same page, according to Matt Cutt’s the first takes precedence. Meaning our link with the keyword anchor text in the content won’t be considered, pretty annoying right? You should take this into consideration when creating a website, if a link that you put in a page is already in the navigation it most likely won’t count. For some more guidence on this check our post on content layout optimisation and best practices.
So is there any secret fix?
There has been tests done previously on ways to get around this hurdle and one way was to add a hashtag to the end of link, for example:
<a href="www.doma.in/#1">Keyword</a>
What this basically does is tricks Google into thinking that the link is going to a different page but really the hash is just a fragment identifier that doesn’t exist, meaning logically both links would count. The success rate of this is rather sparse though and can’t be guaranteed, but why not try it?
I hope this quick tip helped you out in some way and if you have any suggestion for the next one let me know in the comments, cheers.

The Facebook Fix

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I can’t really decide if the following is good news or bad news. A recent study in the journal Psychology Studies has found that the urge for a ‘Facebook Fix’ if you may, is just as strong, if not stronger than the decoy of tobacco and alcohol.
My last blog post for SEO Consult was back in July of 2011, exploring the gamification of social media and in the presence of the social stock market, Empire Avenue. If this recent study is anything to go by, then pardon the speculation, but I’d expect that users Facebook shares have rocketed.

Brilliant news for Facebook, not such good news for many partners, or so called ‘social widows’. Just over one year ago Digital Buzz highlighted that “48% of 18-34 year olds check Facebook right when they wake up… About 28% check their Facebook on their smart phones before getting out of bed”. However that was early 2011 and in the world of social media, that could be decades ago (no exaggeration there at all). At the end of December 2011 Facebook announced that they had 845 million monthly active users with an average of 483 million daily users. Looking again at Digital Buzz (I should be on commission) they highlight a statistic from GigaOm that 25% of college students and young professionals alike experience between 3-5 social interruptions in a given hour, while 84% get interrupted at least once while trying to complete an assignment.
I find these figures astonishing, I am certain that I can go longer than an hour before my mobile phone goes off, granted this should maybe be an alarm for me to stop stalking those at Digital Buzz and make friends in the ‘real world’ but in my eyes the figures speak a thousand words. They are highlighting the true addiction that is Facebook. If I had a pound for every time I heard “I saw on Facebook” or “Did you see what x said on Facebook” lets just say I would be giving Mark Zuckerburgs bank balance a run for its money.
Modern life is only feeding addictions, making it easier all the time for users like myself to check their Facebook feed. So this gets me thinking, I know I’m not alone, but I would like to hear from you if your news feed has become your night time reading and portal to the world each morning. When will you get your next Facebook fix?

A new social media player in town…

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With a staggering figure of 1 billion users expected to be using Facebook by August of this year, Google + reported to have reached the 100 million member mark earlier this week and Twitter to reach 500 million uses by the end of March, there may not be a better time for businesses to exploit these platforms – however have we got a new player on the social media horizon?
Largely gone under the radar of many social media users, Pinterest has slowly become ever more popular over the last year and with this week’s announcement of Facebook’s IPO filing there have been many people looking into the competition that the market leader will face going forward – and there is one on the tips of many tongues…and that is this latest social media craze.
Pinterest can be best described as a virtual pinboard which allows users to post, collect and share their favourite images and ideas from anything from photographs to recipes with other users. One benefit that is brought to light by Pinterest is that “Best of all, you can browse pinboards created by other people. Browsing pinboards is a fun way to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests” and this one major user ‘selling point’ discussed by the platform – the sharing of interests.

The site has been around since March 2010 but has recently exploded into life reaching over 5 million users at the turn of the year. Currently getting set up on Pinterest is only achieved through requesting an invitation but with the current high demand and media interest surrounding the platform this is likely to change in the near future to help build its social profile presence in the market.
The ideas surrounding this latest concept are seemingly endless, but one area of interest is how this could be used in the world of business as part of a social media marketing strategy. One difference that Pinterest will bring to companies is the ability to visually illustrate the company and connect with customers through a vastly different marketing channel – a major difference to the likes of Facebook and Twitter that is mainly based through text. A further highlighted feature that could be incorporated into a strategy is the use of ‘group pinning’ which would allow brands to promote within a topic related community pinboard – potentially targeting specific market segments.
Going into the new year social media will continue to play a major part role for organisations to utilise as part of their marketing strategies. However it is key to remain alert and at the forefront of this ever changing social media market, so could this be the year for yet another major player to make their introduction? I believe it’s just around the corner…

Quick SEO Tip #2 – Keyword Performance

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Hi guys, we’ve got the second instalment in the quick tip series for SEO here.
When starting an SEO campaign, create a list of possible keywords to target, that you think are relevant to the site. Pick the 5 most relevant keywords with the most search volume with the least competition. Pick atleast another 5 keywords to use on Adwords. If you find that the keywords that you’ve chosen to use within Adwords are converting well, look to see if it’s possible that you should change the keywords that you’re targeting within organic search for the given keyword.
While it’s best to change the focus as early as possible, there’s no point in continuing targeting keywords that aren’t converting well. So if you find yourself at page one however the keywords aren’t converting as well as you thought – look to see if there’s any other keywords that are related to the site that you could change the focus to by utilizing the above technique.

Website Competitions

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We all want to have a chance to win something, it brings a light optimistic feeling being part of a competition you might not win…but still have a chance. Should websites do this in order to add to traffic though? Could prize draws help in overall sales conversions? It’s an idea isn’t it depending on the companies’ budget and scale of popularity of course.
Recently Google released a new scheme with Screenwise which allow users to “get paid while browsing the web” (the scheme is now closed). Just by signing up to it you receive a $5 (£3.15) voucher for Amazon and every 3 months you are in the scheme you keep getting $5 Amazon vouchers. The scheme has 11,000 Google + 1’s it doesn’t show Facebook activity but you can assume that it’s pretty healthy as well as Twitter.
What are the best tactics to promote website competitions? First of all the prize has to be interesting, it has to be worth the time and effort for users to enter. We all have different tastes but prizes of products that have a decent mainstream appeal can help. This leads on to my next recommendation which is to create buzz around the competition.
Some of the buzz can depend on the prize and when it’s done for example in summer a competition to win a holiday to Spain or Greece can be appealing. Or if there’s a very popular product like an iPad 2 a competition to win one would be interesting. But to make these competitions stand out you could:
• Create blogs about the contest and sharing it
• Create and distribute a press release stating the information about it
• Try to get sponsors for the product which will add to the promotion of the product and the website in question.
• Making it easier for people to win if they complete simple tasks like sharing the website on their social network profiles, joining a weekly email list, writing about the competition and sharing it e.t.c
The most important way especially for the users is how to enter the competition. Try to make it as easy as possible to enter plus make it attractive. Develop a page on the website from which the home page links to make sure users are able to share the content using social networks.
The benefits of holding a website contest can range from an increase of traffic to increased sales conversions and overall popularity of your website. But it can be time consuming plus it’s about finding the right time to do it. You could do a number of competitions and find that you are not getting enough entries, so in a way it’s all about trial and error and once you get it right let the magic happen.

HOW TO: Boost Holiday Sales With Commonly Overlooked Marketing Strategies

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You might want to add customer experience to the annual list you’re making and checking twice. Gift buyers are finding new ways to shop with feature-rich smartphones and immediate delivery of digital products and services. Here are a few suggestions to help retailers make one final push for a merry customer experience that will drive sales this season.

Digital Gift Cards

Shoppers are now looking for digital equivalents to gift cards to bypass the barrage of plastic many receive this time of year. Retailers can benefit from digital gift cards by avoiding postage fees and paper processing. Additionally, some studies show that more than 20% of customers spend more than the initial face value of their gift card — a clear sales booster right there.

Applebee’s restaurant chain is selling gift cards on Facebook. Fans who purchase there can personalize the cards with Facebook album photos and audio messages.

QR Codes

2D bar codes, often called QR codes, that link to mobile websites, product videos or click-to-call numbers are gaining popularity. Target is using QR codes in an effort to increase sales and awareness for new toys. Users can scan bar codes in the catalog and instantly get product and pricing information from the company’s website. Some bar code readers provide analytics such as number of scans, unique users, handset information and demographics. It’s a great way to push a product that you’re having trouble selling or learn a little more about your customer base.

Wish Lists

Encourage customers to make the right gift-buying decisions with mobile-accessible wish lists available wherever they shop. The key benefit for retailers is to convert first time shoppers into loyal customers. You might want to include comment functionality so friends and family could chime in on what gifts they think would be good for the person. After the holidays, companies can encourage wish list owners to purchase items at discounted prices that they didn’t receive as gifts. The products may not otherwise be on sale unless you took part in creating a list.

Geo-Fencing

This hyper-local marketing allows retailers to track the location of customers through signals sent from their mobile phones. Shoppers who opt in receive a mobile text message as they get near a store location or other relevant point of interest. Messages can be tailored to a different time of day and area. This “moment in time” communication shows promise of strengthening relationships with customers through relevance.

Companies, such as The North Face, plan to send customers branded text messages about weather conditions as they reach hiking trails. L’Oreal and Starbucks are also getting into the game by offering text coupons at nearby locations for their opt-in users.

More Traditional Ideas

If these tips are overwhelming, grab some hot chocolate and relax with a few simpler ideas.

Seasonal Creative: Reminding customers that it’s the holidays through visuals is a simple concept that’s often overlooked. Anything companies can do to add little touches, such as creating seasonal versions of a logo or navigation bar, will also remind customers that it’s time to buy some presents. Amazon.com has simple red, green and blue seasonal designs on its website. Google also does a good job of introducing visual cues.
Persuasive Page Titles: Gift shoppers are searching for the best deals with keywords like “free shipping” and “holiday sale.” Including these words in page titles ensures search engine results pages appeal to shoppers and encourage them to visit retailers’ websites. Emphasizing the benefits of shopping online with practical examples, like “avoid lines,” is a simple tactic that also helps.
Some shoppers will do all their holiday buying on their mobile phones or online, mowing through offers like an advent calendar. Inside the mind of the increasingly value-conscious and progressive consumer, “tech-savvy” becomes synonymous with convenience. It’s not just about standing out anymore. It’s about making peoples’ lives easier through experiences that surprise and delight.

The 12 Days of Holiday Revenue Maximization for Your Online Store

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Coremetrics data shows that online spending on Black Friday this year was up 15.9% compared to last year, and up even more on Cyber Monday. That is a great start, but it is too early for online retailers to rejoice. While it is good news that more holiday dollars are being spent online, most online retailers will fall short of achieving their full revenue potential this season.

For those of you who are committed to maximizing revenue during the holidays, here are 12 ways — for 12 days — to do just that. If you can address these 12 important opportunities in the next two weeks, your holiday revenue could dramatically surpass your expectations.

Day 1: It’s All About Quality Control

Check for major bugs, code errors, security errors and long load times on browsers, new and old, including IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox 3.0, Google Chrome, and Safari. Also, ensure your site is highly usable by making sure the following elements are present on your site:

A highly visible “View Cart” button on the top right of your site (this is where consumers expect it to be)
An “Add To Cart” button that sticks out like a sore thumb on your product page
A ”This Site Is Secure” promise above the fold on your shopping cart
Product review stars that accompany product thumbnails on your section pages (not just your product pages)
At my company, we’ve run scientific conversion tests on these elements and, for most sites, they should have a significant impact on conversion rates.

Day 2: Check for Content Thieves

Dozens of shopping portals have emerged this year as popular destinations for shoppers. Most of the traffic that goes to these shopping portals, however, comes from search engines. Quite often, these shopping portals have a search engine optimization strategy that relies on literally copying unique product descriptions from a merchant’s site and then using the descriptions to outrank the merchant.

The first sign that you may have been a victim of content theft is an abrupt, seemingly unexplainable drop in your traffic at some point in the past 12 months. Try searching for snippets of your unique copy in Google (one or two sentences at a time, with the text in quotes), and if you find shopping portals ranking above you with your copy, you’ll want to take action. For example, it is usually helpful to ensure that the public XML feed of your products does not include your unique copy.

Day 3: Map Promotions for the Holiday Shopping Season


Many online retailers leave holiday promotions until the last minute. This year, plan your promotions well in advance to ensure that your website, paid search campaigns and e-mail campaigns are all in sync. There is nothing worse than promoting a free shipping offer to a shopper through e-mail or paid search advertising, and then having that shopper abandon your site because they can’t find the details of the offer on your site.

Day 4: Build and Promote Clearance Pages

I hereby dub 2010 the year of the “daily deal.” Many online shoppers are hyper-focused on finding time-sensitive, extraordinary offers. Don’t ignore this huge source of revenue. Create a clearance center, promote it aggressively on your homepage, populate it with deals that are truly too good to pass up and swap the deals out on a regular basis.

Make sure you encourage shoppers to sign up for a special mailing list or to join you on Facebook and Twitter to be notified of new deals. Tools like the DailyDealBar will help you to time deals in advance and automatically post them to your Twitter and Facebook Page each day.

Day 5: Show a Pulse

If you operate an online store that is not backed by a well-known brand name, shoppers will be immediately skeptical of you. They’ll wonder if you’re a real company, and if you are, whether you care about customer service and helping them give gifts this holiday season.

One of the best ways to overcome this angst is to show a pulse. Update your site’s header to reflect the colors of the season or to showcase holiday promotions and/or promises. Go a step further by beefing up your “About Us” page by writing content that talks about your mission, your commitment to your shoppers and showcases pictures of your employees that are accompanied by their personal commitments to serve shoppers well.

Day 6: Promote Specific Products on PPC

Many online merchants spend significant time and money chasing clicks from shoppers who are very early in the decision-making process. Such shoppers may be searching for very general phrases like “gifts for Dad” or “golf gifts.” During the holiday season, however, you have a better chance to drive profitable sales on searches that relate to a specific product that shoppers have already decided to buy. Invest time in creating campaigns in AdWords and AdCenter that promote specific products that have the potential to be big sellers.

Day 7: Analyze Bounce Rates to Re-merchandise Key Pages

Identify the most highly trafficked pages on your site (likely homepage and section pages), and assess the bounce rate for each. Once you’ve identified pages that don’t encourage shoppers to browse deeper on your site, drill down further to identify the bounce rate for each of the keywords sending traffic to that page. Then, re-merchandise your products on that page to ensure the inclusion of products that shoppers intended to find on this page when they originally clicked into it from a search engine. This will help conversion rates and SEO.

Day 8: Clear Your Cart of Distractions

“Yes, Mr. Shopper, I understand you would like to purchase a leather briefcase, but before you do, I’d like you to first browse through our catalog of jewelry boxes, money clips, and fanny packs…”

Is that the message you want to send to shoppers? Probably not. That is the message you’ll send, however, if your “View Cart” page (the page a shopper sees after adding an item to their cart) has your standard left-hand navigation on it. My company has run countless tests on shopping carts, and quite often our testing leads us to make the following recommendations:

Remove your standard navigation from your cart page (except for shipping/return policies)
Make the proceed-to-checkout button more visible than anything in your cart
Highlight the fact that your cart is secure
Include only relevant cross-sell items
Simplify your cart pages as much as possible
In the meantime, you can easily install tools like The Cart Closer that are proven to prevent shoppers from abandoning your shopping cart.

Day 9: Create a Shipping Calendar, Communicate Milestones


If I buy it today, will it arrive by Hanukkah or Christmas? That’s the question on the mind of many of your shoppers this time of year. FedEx, UPS, and the U.S. Postal Service have posted holiday shipping guidelines on their sites. It is important that you review these guidelines early, use them to create your own internal shipping deadline calendar, make it easy for customers to find and update your site regularly in order to keep your shoppers informed.

Day 10: Schedule Rating and Product Review Requests

Let’s face it: online shoppers love reading reviews. The two reviews that matter the most are reviews of your store and reviews of particular products purchased from your store.

To get more reviews of your store (the kind of reviews that show up in Google next to your site’s listing), schedule e-mails to go out to your recent shoppers after their merchandise has arrived and ask them for reviews. Give them a direct link to your page on several sites that collect reviews for you, such as BizRate and PriceGrabber.

To get more product reviews (the type of reviews that will show up on your website), pre-schedule an e-mail to holiday shoppers that they will receive on the afternoon of December 25 or sometime on December 26.

Day 11: Update Your Return Policy

Many shoppers have disciplined themselves not to buy from an online store that doesn’t have a clear return policy. Make your return policy easy to understand, and include all of the specific information that shoppers will need if they decide to return merchandise after the holiday.

Day 12: Build Your Q1 Strategy

It sounds counter-intuitive to spend a lot of time thinking about Q1 of next year while you are in the middle of this year’s busiest shopping season, and I agree with that sentiment. That said, it would be a mistake to ignore Q1 all together. January, February and March are big months for many online retailers. Think about how you can convert Q4 customers into Q1 customers, and how the lessons you are learning this holiday season can be applied to next year’s big holidays that fall early in the year.