It’s coming to the end of the academic year and I’ve got results on my mind, so when a colleague forwarded to me a copy of Conductor’s report on Natural Search Trends of the Internet Retailer 500 Q2/2010 (full of statistics and grades) I immediately got excited.
You can get your copy of the report here.
It’s well worth picking up and certainly contains some food for thought (and much that I agree with) but parts of it left me baffled, particularly its grading system.
When we started looking into the world of video-SEO at the beginning of this year, we came across a number of technologies which we knew would allow us to get really creative and generate some great results for our clients. One of the most exciting technologies was hotspotting; the creation of an interactive, clickable layer on a video which allows viewers to interact with what they are seeing.
We loved it because it fitted nicely with our SEO-PR ethos- that is, developing creative ways to gain links and selling these creative ideas in to the media from a PR perspective- and complimented the existing work we were doing for our retail clients. Westfield London shopping centre was one of these clients and footage of the ‘Greatest Fashion Show on Earth’ event struck us as the perfect opportunity to create our first hotspotted video. By creating a virtual front row, we could bring the excitement of a catwalk show to life for fashion fans who could not attend the fabulous event themselves.
So, we set to work researching all of the items in the video, creating countless landing pages and tracking each and every model in the footage as they walked the runway.
This month Propellernet will be exhibiting at Internet World from 27th – 29th April, where we are set to challenge people’s perceptions of Online PR. Our team will be sharing some of its valuable SEO, creative link development and online PR expertise with Internet World visitors, on-stand and at two talks by members of the team. We will invite people to ‘explore the vast galaxy of SEO-PR’ and challenge visitors on their perceptions of Online PR.
This week an Italian court surprisingly convicted three Google executives over the uploading of a video in which an autistic teenager was bullied. Despite removing it within a matter of hours after being notified by the Italian police, David Drummond, Peter Fleischer and George Reyes were all found to be guilty of violating Italian privacy laws.
This is not the first time the Google giant has had problems with privacy laws. Just last week Google’s new social networking site Buzz came under fire from The Electronic Privacy Information Centre who lodged a complaint with the US Federal Trade Commission claiming Google breaks consumer protection law. It will be interesting to watch how that develops.
However, this latest development threatens to set a dangerous precedent in Italy in which sites can be held accountable for what’s hosted on their servers. This could have major ramifications for sites which rely on user-generated content such as social networking sites.
The holy grail of SEO, a self-feeding SEO machine, and all that jazz…
When the quirky meerkat Aleksandr Orlov appeared on our screens in 2009 to inform us of the difference between Comparethemarket.com and Comparethemeerkat.com, some brilliant linkbait was born.
The spin-off site Comparethemeerkat.com (where you can compare thousands of meerkats), has attracted nearly 10,000 inbound links, from people compelled to spread the meerkat word. By linking the spin-off site to the main price comparison site, Comparethemarket.com will have been able to pass on valuable link-juice and gained some well-earned Google-love. Simples!
So what is linkbait?
According to the head of Google’s Webspan team and SEO-guru Matt Cutts, linkbait is anything “interesting enough to catch people’s attention”. More specifically, linkbait differs from viral content in that it’s not just designed to be spread around, but to be linked to aswell. And while the primary purpose of linkbait is to attract inbound links, it can also help to generate press, create a buzz and drive traffic.
The beauty of linkbait is that once you have created your interesting content and told a few key people about it through any type of media channel, it can quickly snowball around the net and translate into numerous inbound links from blogs, Twitter, social networks, etc … These key people are often referred to as the LINKERATI (a term coined by Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz fame) and carry a lot of weight in the world wide web.
As a leading online and social marketing agency, customer insight is at the heart of everything we do. Using our unique revenue potential model and persona insight tool as part of a strategic planning phase, we identify the most lucrative keyword areas and ensure we build a holistic view of our clients’ brand, their customers and their journey.
How does this influence how we create an online PR campaign?
Persona insight is a crucial part of our strategic planning phase and shapes our clients’ overall marketing strategy, but it also determines so much more in terms of online PR.
Our online targets, the tone of voice we use, what content we create and what messages we put into a campaign are all determined by the results of the Persona Insight research. So before we develop any content for online we always conduct a media audit and evaluate this back to our client objectives and targets. This ensures the content we produce for online not only captures the attention and interest of the target audience but also the media we are positioning it to as well.
Let’s face it, we all love Christmas. It’s a great time of year where we reflect on the year just gone, eat mince pies, watch the Queen’s speech, listen to The Pogues on the wireless (oops DAB Digital Radio) and laugh at Grandad as he drops his false teeth in the dog’s food bowl and farts as he bends over to pick them up.
However, the build up to this festive event (Christmas, not Grandad’s farting), is a frenzy of activity for retailers as they fight for customers both on and off the high street.
Christmas shopping online is becoming a growing trend. I for one plan on buying most of my presents online from the comfort of my own warm home, away from the crazed masses on the wet and blustery high street. But with so much choice online, how am I supposed to choose one e-tailer over another?
Here’s a few tips to help online retailers stand out from the crowd and get those all important extra sales.
I recently told a friend of mine who is a journalist that I was doing online PR. “Ah”, she said, “you’ve become the enemy!” We had a good old giggle, but this illustrates perfectly the love-hate relationship journalists have with PRs and why it is such a challenge for us PRs to pitch to them.
Just to explain how it all works, here is what I do. As a PR, it’s my job to ‘manage the flow of information between an organization (my client) and the public (target market)’. Just like with offline PR, I need to create personas, or target market segments, find out which publications they read (in my case websites) and then get their products onto these websites, for free. Some people think this means pushing out an offline press release on a news wire, but it is much more than that and with online PR particularly, the relationship with the journalist is key.
We are increasingly aware of how customers are looking to get the best price for the best product, but how can us online marketers ensure that we reach these potential purchasers and get under the skin of what really motivates their buying habits?
We need to go back to basics and forget about the traditional demographics which have influenced marketing campaigns for years. Of course age, sex, income and marital status are important but what you really need to think about is who are your target customers, what influences their spending decisions and which sites do they visit during their spending journey?
Its time to get personal and the answer lies in creating personas…
Personas are fictional characters. They take on identities and represent your customers by their buying trends and search habits. The persona will put a human face to data and create something that can seem real and familiar. Ideal online customers are no longer just ABC1’s, they are individuals sat in front of their computer, researching their next purchase.
Whether it’s PPC marketing, email marketing, affiliate marketing or natural search driving traffic to your website, your landing page is critical to the campaign performance - and it’s your big opportunity to engage with a potential customer.
So why do so many sites get it so wrong, and what are the most important things to remember?
What’s wrong with my landing page you ask?
Well firstly, you have to realise everyone uses the internet differently - so don’t try to pigeon hole all users in the same place. Some users scan a whole page within a few seconds of landing on a site, while others focus on a block of text and read carefully - it all depends on the visitor.
With this in mind there are 6 things worth considering to ensure your landing page is optimised to its full potential:
