KeywordIntent Blog including SEO Tips and Tricks

As of Monday 21^st November 2011 Yahoo Site Explorer has been shut down.  Yahoo made their offical announcement on 18^th November on their blog. This marks the loss of a vital tool to the SEO industry.

Yahoo site explorer was an incredibly valuable tool as it allowed users to perform searches and explore the link profiles of any website. This allowed users to evaluate their competitor’s incoming links and devise strategies to gain the same or similar links to boost their own rankings. Similarly SEO consultants were able to view the highest performing sites in a particular industry, analyse their incoming link portfolio and strategize with their client in methods of gaining similar links.

Since the move to Bing webmaster tools most of this functionality has been lost. Both Bing and Google Webmaster tools only provide link data about a site that has been claimed within their systems. Therefore neither provides information about a site that is not owned by the user.

Google has deliberately suppressed link information and does not condone the reporting of link data through any of their services, therefore loss of Yahoo site explorer equates to the loss of all free comprehensive link reporting tools.

Third party tools such as SEOMoz Open Site Explorer and Majestic Site Explorer are available; however, they are subscription based and their resources are not exhaustive. Blekko, is a search engine that offers link data reporting tools, although it is much smaller than search engines giants Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

As of November 22^nd Google will no longer offer their Gmail app on BlackBerry smart phones. They are also removing the application from the Blackberry app world marketplace so it is no longer available to be downloaded.

For those who already have the app, it will not disappear or stop wording and users can continue to use the service as usual, there will just be no Google customer support team to assist with issues.

Google claim these changes are being implemented to provide a great Gmail experience in the smart phone browser.

BlackBerry users are currently accessing their emails is through the BlackBerry application software and the improvement lies in Google being able to deliver updates through their own platform straight to users.

As the new BlackBerry 6 and BlackBerry 7OS systems use webkit browsers this provides a better experience than previous models and allows Google to update their system more directly instead of relying on the BlackBerry application standards.

This comes after a three day outage last month that left millions of BlackBerry users across Europe, North and South America.

What do you think? Should Google allow users to choose between a browser or an app, or is it okay for them to make this change because they know best?

Consumers, customers and clients alike are heading to the internet more and more often for information about products and services. Gone are the days when people relied on one way communication for information about brands and companies – the internet has revolutionised the world in hundreds and thousands of ways, one of those is marketing.

As consumers head to the web, internet marketing as an industry continues to evolve to match the interest shown by users. One of the most significant shifts in the way marketing is presented is the communication channels.  This shift in the industry has also accommodated a shift from one way communication such as,

1. television advertisements,
2. radio advertisements,
3. newspapers,
4. billboards,
5. direct mail, and
6. spam

To two way communication channels such as,

• content marketing including

1. whitepapers,
2. video blogs,
3. pod casts,
4. infographics and
5. eBooks,

• social media platforms including

1. Facebook,
2. Twitter,
3. LinkedIn,
4. Google plus,
5. As well as blogs.

As internet marketing has grown there has been an overall decline in the efficiency in old forms of marketing as customers are gaining more control over the media content they consume. This has triggered a fundamental shift in the way brands and companies are communicating with their audiences. Traditional marketing tactics do not provide any extra value to the consumer as they are not developed to educate or entertain audiences – they gain consumer attention by ‘beg, bug, or buying their way in’.

Another reason traditional marketing is becoming less effective is because products and services are being pushed, most times rather intrusively, on consumers when they are not necessarily receptive or interested.

In contrast to this, internet marketing is designed to be useful, educational and/or interesting to gain the consumers attention and earn their respect and trust, hence forming a relationship from which the consumer and business both prosper.

This is one of the main reasons internet marketing has become so effective – consumers now go to the businesses for information. They are engaging with products and services when they are interested in the content – for example, a consumer looking to buy pet food will enter a search in Google and will have a list of businesses selling pet food – this consumer is likely to convert into a sale as they are specifically looking for this product.

A few statistics taken from Voliter in relation to the rise of internet and content marketing are,

• 44% of direct mail is never opened.
• 86% of people skip television ads.
• 200 Million (Americans) have registered on ‘Do Not Call’ lists
• Traditional or Outbound marketing is 62% more expensive than inbound marketing

This last point highlights one of the other major reasons there is a massive incline in inbound marketing: it’s cheaper. Not only does it cost less than traditional marketing, it provides a better return on investment.

Blogs have the best ROI and lead generation with social media and SEO being second and third respectively.  Direct mail and trade shows are at the end of the list.

It is clear the way we interact with businesses is transforming on a fundamental level – but this is a positive change for both consumers and businesses alike. Consumers are able to ignore and avoid sales-y and intrusive marketing and find entertaining and educational information relevant to them when they are interested. Businesses are now able to focus on the quality of their products and services and devise ways to creatively earn attention and target their audiences more efficiently.

 Voltier Digital VIA Mashable 

As an SEO consultant I am frequently asked about blogging as a business venture. Whether adding a blog to a website will increase search traffic, help convert sales, or improve search engine rankings.

To answer succinctly – yes: but only if you are committed. There is nothing worse than finding a website with good design and layout, keyword rich and engaging content only to look at their blog to find their last entry was six months ago about their new website launch and nothing else.

The idea of a blog is not just to create it and be done with it – Google does not award points to websites for simply having a blog. The reason blogs are known for helping websites gain rankings is because they produce fresh and unique content.

It is SEO best practise to frequently update your website, as Google sees this as you ensuring your content is relevant and up to date with the market. A simple and easy way to do this, without having to change content around on your product pages and risk losing traffic from words currently converting, is by writing blog posts. In turn you can be rewarded with higher page authority and therefore better rankings.

Continually adding blog posts also means you are continually adding pages to your website. Each new page you add can be seen as a sales person and the more sales people you send out, the more likely you are to get a return.

When Google recognises that you have updated your website frequently they send out crawlers more often to index pages on in your website. This means there are more of your websites’ pages to be found within Google search results.

You can increase the chances of your content being found further by choosing keyword rich titles and including these keywords throughout your text. You can determine which keywords are being searched upon by your customers in Australia as well as globally by using Google Adwords Keyword Tool. This tools allows you to research keywords and determine how often people are searching for those words.

For example if you are wanting to blog about the importance of using a harness when training puppies, you could title your blog “Puppy Training”.  However, while this keyword may gain thousands of searches, it is very vague. Increase your chances of being found and converting traffic (either into sales, to register for a newsletter, or simply to leave their details) by choosing titles that have a mixture of different search volumes (people that are actually looking for this phrase) and relevance to your topic – ‘Training Puppies with Harnesses’.

Another important factor to consider is where you will host your blog. It can be created on your website, as a subdomain, or on a separate website altogether. It is strongly recommended that you create your blog within your current navigation and not as a subdomain or on a separate website. This would make the url YourPageDomain.com/Blog (Puppy.com/Blog).

The url to a subdomain blog page would be Blog.YourPageDomain.com (Blog.Puppy.com) which is essentially a completely separate site. The third option is to host your blog on another site such as tumblr which would make the link YourBlogName.Tumblr.com (BrisbanePuppyTraining.Tumblr.com). Either of the second two options will signal to Google not to count the traffic from your blog in the total traffic for the rest of your website. By sending your traffic to a separate website you are diluting your traffic and therefore your authority.

To summarise, a blog can definitely help increase your search engine rankings, increase traffic to your website, and convert visitors – but you have to be committed. Updating your blog frequently is key; but it is also vital to write engaging, unique, and keyword rich content.

There are many people still asking the question “what is a webinar”?  So, we thought it an important post to discuss what webinars are, how to become involved in a webinar and how webinars work.

Webinars are a flexible, interactive and cost effective tool for communication, allowing people to conference or train together over the internet.  Webinars are also used to market and sell products or services.

Some of the main advantages of webinars are they have the ability to reach a larger audience, costs are reduced and participants are able to digitally record the event to enable future playback.

Where does the term Webinar come from?

For those who are interested the term “webinar” was coined last century – 1998 in fact, when Eric R Korb used the term to brand the online meeting service he created for his company.   The term webinar is short for “Web-based seminar”.  There have since been varying versions of the term “webinar” and among those commonly used are online workshops, online seminars, live meeting and web conferencing.

Join a Webinar

Since 1998 webinars are more commonplace, with people feeling more at ease when being invited to attend one.  All you need is a computer, internet access and a phone line for listening to any teleconference portions.

For those who have not yet received an invitation to attend a webinar, a good way to become familiar with one is to invite yourself!   There are a lot of free webinars to be found on the internet.  Often these are promotional webinars to market and sell products and if you do your research you can find one to join on a subject matter you enjoy.   Once you’ve booked your place on the webinar, set yourself up with a coffee (or tea) have some pen and paper at hand and along with some good quality earphones – join in.   Typically webinars are one-way from the speaker to the audience however some may include limited audience interaction.

Hosting a Webinar

If you want to host a webinar of your own, it is important to choose a company which can accommodate both your budget and your requirements.

Webinar hosts usually offer a variety of services such as programing, producing and delivering the webinar.  There are also different formats e.g.: live webinar, pre-recorded webinar or your webinar host can fully produce, present and moderate the webinar.  The latter is commonly used for people with limited public speaking experience.

If webinars sound like something you would like to do and if you are interested in having a webinar hosted, Keyword Intent are more than happy to discuss the best options with you.

With systems such as PayPal and internet banking we are all used to being able to shop online without a physical credit card in hand. But imagine walking into your local convenience store, petrol station, or even department store without your wallet, or even credit card in sight and paying with your smart phone.

Through use of near field communication (NFC) technology this is exactly what Google have envisioned and created. The Google wallet.

NCF simplifies transactions and data exchanges through a wireless technology that allows information to be passed between two devices, typically a smart phone and payment terminal, in close proximity.

Google has harnessed the power of near field communication and partnered with US bank Citi to enable customers to make payments in store by tapping their smart phones against terminals. Customers are required to register their Citi credit card details with their smart phone, or opt to create a Google prepaid account and register other credit cards to top up their ‘card’.  Once account details have been registered and confirmed customers are able to start shopping at PayPass affiliated stores – wallet-less.

The search engine giant has released Google wallet in the US with companies such as Coca Cola, Foot Locker, and Radio Shack to name a few, who offer support for the services.  The vision for Google wallet is that it will eventually be available in all stores worldwide and will be able to store loyalty cards, gift cards, receipts, boarding passes, tickets and even your keys! – it will ultimately replace your entire wallet

There is, however, a down side: this technology is not yet available in Australia.

But we are not far behind. We currently use ‘tap and go’ payment terminals which allow certain credit cards to make payments under $100 without the need to swipe and verify – simply by tapping them against a terminal.

This technology has paved the way for Google wallet to be easily introduced into the Australian market. Although at this stage Google has no official time frame for introducing the product into the country.

Venturing into the vast and opportunistic world of social media generally elicits excitement from most marketing and communications experts. But have we chosen the most efficient platform? And are we really making the most from our social media efforts?

Facebook is a great way to take advantage of social media for both personal and business purposes. It is one of the largest social media applications and has a vast reach with over 800 million active users, 50 % of which log on to their accounts on a daily basis. 350 million of these users do not just access Facebook from their PC’s – they log in via their mobile phones.

So Facebook has an excellent user base with good reach but which is type of account is best for you? Facebook groups? Pages? Profiles? Or business accounts?

It actually entirely depends on your purpose, requirement, and intentions for social media as they each have different functions. However, Facebook themselves have branded profiles as purely for personal use. If you are an individual looking to connect with friends, keep up with events, and engage with brands and interests then you need a Facebook profile.

Business accounts are as their name suggests – an account for individuals representing a business or celebrity (authors, models, actors and etc) used to manage Facebook groups and pages. As their main purpose is actually simply to manage other accounts they do not have the same functionality as a personal profile, group or page.

As for creating a social media presence for a business or person, you have two options – Facebook page or Facebook group. Here are the advantages and disadvantages of each,

Facebook Username

Username URLs

Only Facebook pages (and personal profiles) can apply to have a username URL. This is a short link that redirects to your Facebook page.  The purpose of username URLs is for promotion so a person or business can say ‘Find me at Facebook dot com slash company or person name’.  Facebook groups do not have this ability.

Mass messages

Facebook groups have excellent messaging capabilities – this is one of the most beneficial aspects of groups. Groups are able to send out mass emails direct to their members’ inboxes; however this is capped at 5 000 friends. Pages allow you to send messages to unlimited followers, but only page notifications, not inbox messages. Messages sent direct to inboxes are proven to be more effective in engaging conversation, but this feature becomes less useful if you are targeting an audience larger than 5 000 friends.

Facebook Insights

Measurability

Facebook pages have ‘insights’ which is data collated by Facebook allowing you to analyse your social media use and determine your traction and engagement levels with your audience. They also allow you to see which form of media is being consumed most frequently – audio, posts, video, as well as many other features. This allows businesses to report on social media use, effectiveness and ROI to an extent. The group feature does not have insights.

Widgets

Facebook pages are able to deliver promotional devices such as the ‘Find us on Facebook’ friends or a likes counter. This is basically an image displaying profile pictures of current likes that links to Facebook, allowing people to easily ‘like’ your page. This feature is also not available for Facebook groups.

Facebook Widgets

Friend Restrictions

Facebook groups have the ability to restrict access to certain individuals although it also depends on the type of group – there are three: open, closed, and secret. Open groups and Facebook pages work similarly – anyone can join and are automatically accepted. Any Facebook user can request to join a closed group; however, they must be approved by an administrator before being added. Secret groups cannot be found in searches, and the only way to join is to be invited.

Facebook Location Targeting

Location Targeted Posts

Facebook pages offer the ability to target the location of your post to a language, country, state or province, and even city. Allowing you to send specifically targeted messages based on language and location. This is an incredibly valuable tool for marketers, as they can create social media campaigns that use one page to focus on several locations and languages, while still sending specific information to each segment.

SEO

Both Facebook pages and groups are indexed by Google and generally receive good rankings. Although for SEO best practise Facebook pages allow for more opportunity to optimise their content.

For example including keyword rich text in the ‘About Us’ box is beneficial as it is high up in the html code and is one of the first and only places accessible to search engines.

Also Facebook usernames (which are available to pages, but not groups) allow you to enter keyword rich URLs which Google ranks as quite important.

Facebook Default Tab

You are also able to change your default tab with Facebook pages, but not groups. It is recommended that a keyword rich page such as your wall or info page is chosen above a welcome page.

One SEO practise available for both pages and groups is creating a relevant link neighbourhood. If you are a pet store, linking out to dog groomers, vets, and dog obedience pages creates a good link network. You should also attempt to receive links back to your Facebook page as this is a very effective way to gain rankings.

Overall your objectives and goals for social media will drive your decision in choosing which method to display your communications. However if you are an individual looking at keeping a circle of friends, hosting and attending events, and engaging with groups of interest and brands a Facebook profile is the most suitable option.

Facebook groups are an excellent way for people to congregate and discuss issues pertaining to a particular topic or issue. They are also an excellent means of creating and organising small to medium events.

As for a business or company that wishes to have a social media presence to connect and communication with their customers a Facebook page will allow you more flexibility in discussion, distribution, analytics, optimisation, and promotion.

Reference: http://www.allfacebook.com/facebook-page-or-group-2010-07

Using social media tactics and strategies to engage your audience on a platform that is user focused rather than company focused is fast becoming common practise. But how well are you measuring your social media performance? How far is your content being spread? And how much traffic is twitter actually sending to your website?

Christopher Golda, a Canadian technology entrepreneur recently has said that most people struggle to accurately capture twitter analytics.  Golda is the creator of BackType, a social media analytics platform that allows companies to analyse their social impact as well as social media’s impact on their business.

It was the acquisition of BackType by Twitter that gave birth to Twitter Web Analytics. Launched just two weeks ago, it is said to be able to,

1. Track how much of your websites content is being shared
2. Analyse the effectiveness of your twitter button integration
3. Measure the amount of traffic twitter sends to your website

Currently this new technology is available to only a small pilot group, but it said to be made available to website owners worldwide in the next few weeks.

Is it worth trialling? Most definitely.

Measurability is key to success in a market that is already difficult to analyse due to the fast pace of the industry and many want to know how social media is directly affecting their bottom line.  The ability to accurately report on the effectiveness of social media campaigns, the use of social media as a support for direct marketing, the ROI of outsourcing to social media consultants will be a well sort after tool.

The question is how effective will Twitter Web Analytics be?

Article Source https://dev.twitter.com/blog/introducing-twitter-web-analytics

Scott Huffman, Engineering Director, Google

Do you sometimes wonder why your website is indexed highly one day and almost nowhere to be found the next day? Or why Google has subtle changes one day to the next? Don’t worry, you are not alone and for the most part it will be a recently introduced Google algorithm change from Matt Cutts and his team at Google.

In most cases Google doesn’t announce a change to their algorithms and there is generally no prior warning, but it doesn’t take a good search engine optimization company long to undertake some speedy research in internet land to find out what changes have been made.  Often followed by a large panic by their clients wondering what went wrong with their SEO plans.  Depending on your relationship with your search engine optimization consultant, you should be advised of a Google algorithm change that will affect the indexing of your site – before your monthly report arrives in your inbox!

Why Google makes changes and improvements to algorithms

Google wants to have a search engine that works for users that allows them to find what they really want to find – the first time.  Before Google makes algorithm changes they put in a huge investment into understanding what works for users.  Every year Google will implement over 500 improvements to its search algorithms to make sure they achieve the best results for each user.  Scott Huffman, Engineering Director at Google says “we really analyse each potential change very deeply to try and make sure that it’s the right thing for users”.

The process for changing algorithms

If Google sees a set of motivating searches that are not performing as well as Google would like, the engineers will then come up with an hypothesis about what signal or data can be changed in the algorithm.

A change or improvement to the algorithm may also start with a creative idea, but it always goes through a testing process.  “All ideas are tested through rigorous scientific testing” says Amit Singal, Google Fellow.

After a change has been made to the algorithm the first test is with “Raters” who are external people trained to judge if one ranking is more relevant and of a higher quality than another.    These results are laid out side by side on the screen for queries that the engineers’ experiment might be affecting.

Once this has been tested Google then uses what they call a “sandbox” which is where they send a small fraction of actual Google traffic to the sandbox and are then able to compute lots of different metrics.  In 2010 Google ran over 20,000 different experiments.  Amit Singal says “if scientific testing says this is a good idea for Google users, we will launch it on Google”.

The importance of an optimized website

Taking all of the above into consideration it’s not difficult to see why SEO companies have to work extremely hard to keep your site optimised and why SEO companies really need to be on the ball.  With over 500 changes to the algorithms each year it shows how important a continued relationship with your SEO Company is!

Smart Phone Image Courtesy of flickr

Google has teamed up with IPSOS research to unravel some of the mystery surrounding the boom in smart phone popularity. And the results? Australians have the highest smart phone usage second only to Singapore.

Although not usually known for our technological advancement or consumption 37 per cent of us are using smart phones.  We are now more likely to conduct activities such as social networking, internet banking, viewing Google maps, and even real estate searches through mobile phones compared to our British and American counterparts.

Not only do more Australians use smart phones, but we also use more apps each, with the average person having 17 unpaid, and 8 paid applications on their phones. This is compared to 23 applications on American and British phones.

The study has also found that our usage is on the rise with this boom in smart phone consumption being relatively new as participants claimed their smart phone was the first they’d purchased, or they’d purchased it within the last three to six months.

One of the most interesting facts the research has unveiled is that smart phone users are shopping from their phones.  Over a quarter of Australians have gone shopping and purchased an item with a smart phone at one point. PayPal recorded in 2010 their mobile phone transactions increased by 25 per cent every month. This is clearly a huge market on the rise – yet 80 per cent of websites are not optimised for mobile phone browsing.

This is a massive gap between demand and supply that needs to be filled. There is a huge call for website owners, especially of ecommerce stores, to have mobile friendly websites. Not only do websites need to be optimised for mobile phone usage – the importance of search engine optimisation is just as prevalent on mobile phones as it is on PC’s.

It is essential for ecommerce store owners to have their websites optimised for mobile phone usage, and also for search engine optimisation – as once your website can be used on a mobile phone; it also needs to be found.

With this boom in smart phone usage it will not be long before all websites have mobile phone compatibility, but those who merge onto this new platform first using SEO best practise will reap the benefits far earlier.

Article Source:http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/mobiles/australias-white-hot-smartphone-revolution-20110908-1jz3k.html