Keynote Talk

The opening keynote talk was Amit Singhal (Google Fellow, Search Engineer) talking about the future of Google’s search engine, making particular reference to their continued desirability to improve the usefulness and relevance of their results for people. There was an emphasis on achieving this through the ability to distinguish and interpret words and meaning the same way that a human being might.

In order to give people a better idea of what he meant he used the Star Trek computer as an analogy. This computer although clearly not real, was so intelligent that it would ever rarely make a mistake based upon confused meanings resulting from the input by the end user, say carrying out a search by voice. This computer almost always seamlessly knew what the end user wanted to find, do or achieve.

In order for Google to go about achieving this he explained how Google’s continued investment in acquiring knowledge and meaning through a vast collection of data sets grouped and sorted into “entities”. These entities could either represent a particular concept or notion based on its collected contextual meaning and understanding.

Apple (Computers ) vs Apples (the fruit)

The New Periodic Table of SEO

Google’s precise search ranking algorithm is a closely guarded secret. In the world of SEO we’re largely dependent upon real-world testing, observation and intelligent guess work and theories coupled with Google’s quality guidelines and information released around updates.

This session covered the findings, experiences and a number of speculative theories based on graphs and evidence of a number of established internet search marketers including Marcus Tandler, Marcus Tober and David Naylor.

What did I take away from this session?

• Establish a strong brand for your business if you want to do well in search
• Having branded anchor text links is crucial in order to establish trust, credibility and a more natural link profile for when Google evaluates your website’s rankings—especially since Google’s recent Penguin update.
• Observation: Websites that consistently rank highly do not make use of banner advertising.
• Socially shared content and signals were becoming more important, however links are still absolutely crucial for optimisation efforts and have the most impact.

Life In A [Not Provided] World

Scott Krager gave a lot of positivity to a subject and situation that clearly seems to have a lot of SEOs and search marketers worried, this of course being Google’s decision to no longer provide Google Analytics users the list of search queries of users who are logged into a Google account (Gmail or Google Plus for example).

This session will probably be most memorable for its dialogue between Duran Inci (Optimum7) on the talking panel and Pierre Far (Google Webmaster Trends) seated in the audience discussing and justifying Google’s subsequent decision to hide these particular keywords.

Scott stated his belief that Google would be incredibly unlikely to reverse this decision and predicted that the future of knowing keyword queries bringing in traffic were likely to become more and more scarce for example as browser such as Firefox automatically omit this data from it’s web browser.

During this session a number of short term tips and strategies were suggested that would allow you to balance out the effects of this change as well as how he saw. Whilst this may have been a hit on SEO Marketing he reiterated that the quality of the web is actually being improved through other updates and changes whereby Google now wields the stick against the websites that have long been ignoring its quality guidelines in order to artificially inflate their respected websites’ ranking positions.

What I took away:

• It’s likely in the future that the majority of searches using keywords will be hidden and that this information will no longer be available to us. This is not just Google, it’s a growing trend.
• Everybody is in the same boat, and it’s up to us to find more creative ways in order to analyse, report and action beneficial improvements that are not entirely dependent upon knowing the precise keywords used to bring a visitor to a given website.
• Google are starting to reinforce their quality guidelines in a less wishy-washy fashion than they once did, and that if you’re not going to play by their rules you face losing out in spectacular fashion.
• Webmaster tools will play a more significant role in complimenting Analytics information
• Trim away your poorly performing content or turn it into something great

Hardcore Local SEO Tactics

Unfortunately the first two speakers near put me to sleep, however I was incredibly thankful for Aleyda Solis who brought and put so much vigour and energy to her Local SEO talk along with great advice on how businesses can and should be improving their local presence.

She suggested that reaching out to engage and form relationships with local communities and other businesses would allow acquiring business citations, links, mentions and other social references from other local websites and authors is hugely beneficial in terms of optimising businesses local search presence.

• Start producing very beneficial localised content. This means going beyond rehashing your existing content with local search terms!
• Choosing the wrong CMS and technology behind your website can be detrimental to SEO for larger organisations wanting international reach
• Mobile optimised sites are going to continue to be far more prominent for local businesses who serve customers on their doorstep

Schema and Authorship

This session communicated the advantages and benefits of websites using rich snippet based information. Google want to put a face behind the content on the web, and this session talked about the potential advantages and appropriate usage and best practise of the Google Plus rel authorship and more specific Schema mark-up.

• Google want to put a face to online authors, writers and content producers through their authorship designation and they’re making it easier to link authors to websites’
• The additional contrast and interest created through authorship information appearing within the search results makes for a more visible, trusted and overall more appealing result in order to pull in the clicks
• Schema mark-up makes your information more accessible to non-humans in order they can understand the relationship and context of your information
• Don’t inappropriately blitz your website with rich snippet information whereby not appropriate or beneficial to people or a search engine. Quality guidelines still apply.

Have you ever wondered what your competition is optimising and trying to rank for in Google?

There are a few simple things you can do to gauge what they’re doing just by knowing where to look, what to look for and and what tools are available to help you do this. I’m going to show you some of the basics and give a few real world examples along the way.

Select Your Competition

Just to clarify, your competition does not necessarily have to mean the business down the street that provides or sells the same products or services that you do.

If you’re trading online, the Internet means your actual competition could potentially be based at the other end of the country and is very applicable if you provide goods or products that can be shipped, services that are conducted remotely or whereby your potential customers are prepared to travel to your location.

If you’re a business owner that depends upon local customers visiting your shop or premises then by all means pick your competition based upon who are most similar to you or whereby your interests clearly overlap.

A recent Google change to its search engine nick named Venice, now means they’ve started to favour showing local businesses in their results which pertain to the same or similar geographic region as the person searching regardless of where a town, city or place name is used.

i.e. if I were to type in “hair dressers” it will automatically detect that I’m in Nottingham and show me local hairdressers, rather than waste my time with businesses that aren’t nearby.

Find & Identify their website in Google

If you already have a good idea of who your competitors are then you can fire up a new browser window with Google ready & open.
So let’s imagine for a minute that I’m a driving instructor, and I recognise Elliot’s School of Motoring as another driving instructor that routinely works within the same areas as me and for all intents and purposes is a competitor.

Let’s type their name into Google.

Start by doing a search for your chosen competitor’s company name and following through to the subsequent set of search results.

Check out their Title tags

The Title tag is the first line of blue hyperlinked text that appears above the website address.

The Title tag is used to define or list the words and search engine queries a business or website would like to be found for when someone searches for a particular query.

If I’m a driving instructor, then it makes perfect sense that I would want someone to find my website when they type “driving lessons” into Google!

Notice how Ellitot’s have this phrase in their title. This is an indication that their website is at least in part optimised for the phrase “Driving Lessons”.

At this stage I might be asking myself: What would I like to be found for in Google? Or what else would my competitor want to be found for that might also benefit my business?

Now click through to your chosen competitions’ website

Anything written in the Title Tag will then also appear within your browser at the top of the window.

We can now also more clearly see they’re attempting to optimise and be found for “driving schools” “crash courses” and “cheap driving lessons”.

The Early Things to Look Out For

The pipe symbol > | < is used to segment and separate one keyword or phrase from another. If their Titles are using this symbol, it’s a very obvious sign that they’re either doing SEO or may have done it in the past.

They’re very evidently doing SEO! Should you also be doing this?

They’re not doing SEO. Could you be?

A clear sign that someone is NOT doing SEO, or they are doing SEO very badly is when their Titles contain fluffy messages like “Welcome to our website” or incorrectly use the name of the page such as “Home Page” (as seen above) Seeing a website that pipes its keywords is not an absolute indication, but a very common tel. They might also be using commas or hyphens.

Check their Meta Keywords Tag

There exists another special HTML tag called the Keyword tag (HTML code is what your website is written in) that’s purpose was once upon a time to provide a bearing on what any given page was about as well as serving as the words you wanted to be found for when someone searched.
Due to extensive misuse, Google now ignores this tag.

However people still continue to use this on their website because it was once such common practise. Now it can be used to obtain a handy list of the words and phrases you can be reasonably certain they’d like to be optimising for. Unlike the Title tag, the Meta Keywords tag isn’t mandatory, so there might not be one present!
How do you check? It’s possible to view the HTML source code of their website. Just right click on the web page itself and cheekily select “View Source”.

Fortunately Elliot’s do have a Meta Keywords tag present on their website!

Wow, so now I can see a whole list of the words this business wants to be found for through web based searches such as Google.

 “Driving Lessons Derby, Driving Schools Derby, Crash Course Derby, Cheap Driving Lessons Derby, Driving Instructors Derby, Automatic Driving Lessons Derby, Female Driving Lessons Derby, Reliable Driving School Derby”

[These words were copy & pasted straight from the code of their website.]

By having this on their page do they rank higher? Nope! Does it still show the intentions behind what they think they’re optimising for? Yes!

These are very rough checks and are by no means conclusive, but they’re a great early indicator that yes they are doing Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) along with what words they’re optimising.

And remember just because somebody is doing SEO, it does not mean they’re doing it right!

Should you copy your competitors?

Now you might be tempted to copy what your competitors are doing.

By all means it’s useful to know what they’re doing. If they’re appearing at the top of the results for the sorts of words and phrases you know are also good for your business then it makes perfect sense that they’re doing something right.

However, how do you know they’ve chosen the most beneficial keywords? It might stand to reason that a phrase such as “learn to drive” might have more people searching for it and have less competitors optimising their websites for the same phrase. This is determined by carrying out Keyword Research.

If they’re doing something wrong then by copying them you also risk repeating the same mistakes they’re making.

Further Reading
How to Perform a DIY SEO Health Check
A Guide to the Google Local “Venice” Update
We Do Comprehensive Competitor Spy Reports

…and SEO.

Have you checked your Google Webmaster Tools recently?  Google is warning web site owners when  they are engaging in poor quality or artificial link building (“bad neighborhoods”) as part of the Google drive to maintain quality search results.

Unnatural link building, usually done as part of cheap link building search engine optimisation service, is against Google’s quality guidelines.

Bad links don’t happen by accident.  And quite simply, bad quality links will be hurting your rankings in the search engines.

Here is an example of what the warning looks like:

What is a Bad Neighborhood?

A bad neighbourhood is a collection of interlinked websites, networked blogs or link directories whose main purpose is to provide links for increasing search engine rankings.

You should avoid both being linked from, and linking to one of these bad neighborhood websites unless you want to risk the negative repercussions whereby the search engines think your website is also one of these bad websites out to cause trouble for it’s own search results.

A bad website will typically not exercise discretion, relevancy or appropriateness when linking out to other website and can thus become categorised as being part of a bad neighbourhood.

If your website receives too many links from these bad websites, you may then fall victim to negative rankings or find that your site is penalised or even removed from search indexes. On the flip side, it can also hurt your rankings if you link out to too many non-relevant or inappropriate websites that do not share a similar theme to your own website. Doing so means you risk devaluing your own ranking potential by being seen or perceived as a link spammer or member of a bad neighbourhood.

How do unknowingly you fall victim to bad neighborhoods?

If you’re paying for someone to provide you with link building services, do you know precisely where your links are coming from? Or are you simply paying, hoping for the best and choosing not to ask questions.

Quality links that point back to your website are hard to get. Good links take time to acquire through both relationship building with the people who have the potential to give or provide links and the authoring of better than average content that is valuable to a website. Remember, a few quality links will yield far greater results than a high quantity of irrelevant links.

Fortunately there are tools such as the Bad Neighbourhood Link Checker available that will make the process of identifying whether or not you’re linking out to any bad neighborhood websites from your own website so that you can spot and correct this.

How can you tell if another website is part of a Bad Neighborhood?

• How can you tell if a website is part of a bad neighbourhood?
  The Google toolbar provides the facility to see a site’s toolbar Page Rank, which is an indication as to how well Google trusts a website. If the toolbar Page Rank of the website you’re viewing is 0, then this is a good indication that Google doesn’t trust the site or the site is very new. If the site does not look or feel new, then it may well have been penalised for being a bad neighbor.
• When looking around a website, who are they linking to? Do they link to the sorts of people, companies, organisations or websites you might expect them to be linking to? Or do you see the site linking out to off topic websites? Is the website related to adult themed or illegal industries? i.e. Gambling, drugs, pharmaceuticals or sex…
• Is the content of the website you’re viewing been written with care and attention?
  Website owners that en devour to take short-cuts in their own content often accept content with links to other off topic websites and is a strong indication of a poor quality. A quality website, would only accept content that is on topic and of value to their own readers or audience.
• For the reason that poor quality sites have a greater potential to be part of a bad link neighborhood you will want to avoid being associated with any of these sites in order to protect the reputation of your site from being hurt, which in turn can hurt your rankings.

Further Reading

What does Google know about you?
Finding Blogging Opportunities
Why Won’t Anyone Link to my Website?

Video content can be used in a variety of adaptable, effective and meaningful ways to benefit your business, from helping to optimise your various local citation pages such as Google Places ensuring your business is found by your local customer base online to creating content that can be shared socially to generate interest, encourage interaction and raise awareness of what you do. You can even place this video on your own website to engage and communicate with people who respond to more visual stimuli, useful if your site is very text heavy.

Hiring a video production crew can be expensive in terms of both time and money for a business without the resources, however here I’m going to show you how you can create some basic video content simply using a collection of photos and the software inherent to your desktop PC.

This method is quick, inexpensive and easy to do. The only real limitation is your imagination…

To follow this simple tutorial you will need access to a PC running Microsoft Windows with Windows Movie Maker (since renamed Windows Live Movie Maker) and a collection of photographs that are appropriate to your business, and I would recommend anywhere from between 5 – 10 photos or images.

Whilst not everybody has a digital video recorder, almost everybody has access to a digital camera or a mobile phone with a sufficiently good camera built in that will allow you to take pictures for your project.

Ideas of what photos to take… you might want to show people the sorts of products that you stock, what your services involve, the faces of your team or staff, what makes your business tick, where do you work? Whether an office, a warehouse, or driving out and about? What projects are you working on? What does the inside of your store, shop or premises look like?

Once you’ve decided on the theme of your video, you’ll need to either go out or take the photos that will present the story you want to tell or select some from a batch of existing photos. Either way, once you’ve decided you want to organise these in a project folder somewhere on your computer.
In this example, we’re going to use our team photos.

• Find and navigate to the Windows Movie Maker software.

Start > All Programs > Windows Live Movie Maker

You will be presented with this screen once the program loads

• Open your containing photo folder and then drag and drop your photos into the main empty workspace pane as seen on the right side of the screen grab above.

• Rearrange the order in which your photos appear by clicking, dragging and dropping the various thumbnail photos shown in the workspace pane.

• Apply some simple transition effects that will link from one photo to another in order to give more flow and interest to your video.

Use the “AutoMovie themes” box to select a transition effect

Once you’ve happy with your order and composition, you will want to export your video as a playable file that can be uploaded to the web. Potential locations include YouTube and Facebook, who will both allow you to upload and share your video for free as well as the ability to place and embed your video on your own website.

• You may wish to create a title or cover page and author credits, however this isn’t strictly necessary. These extra pages are automatically generated for you upon selecting a theme or effect in the previous step.

If you do not wish to include these pages in your video, feel free to select them with the mouse and pressing delete to remove these from your finished video.

• Now save and export your finished video. Videos require more processing power from your computer to make, so be patient when saving your file.

Save and export your video

Our Result

Now see our further reading to learn how you can use your videos effectively to market your business.

Further Reading
How to Optimise a YouTube Video
Videos in Google AdWords
Making Online Video Work for You

A while back I discussed the benefits of being able to clearly identify and track the non-branded traffic that was coming into your website. Now I’m going to show you how to setup and create an Advanced Filter within Google Analytics so you can easily and conveniently see your non-branded keywords on your Google Analytics dashboard.

We’re going to pretend we’re looking to filter out the branded keywords for a company called Raspberry Dance Shoes.

Firstly, do you have Google Analytics setup on your website? You do? Great! If not, don’t worry, however you might like to talk to us about setting this up for you.

Warning: You won’t be able to follow this guide without Analytics already running on your website.

Navigate to the Google Analytics product page: http://www.google.com/analytics

Enter your Google account login credentials into the username and password boxes. This must be the Google account that is associated with your Google Analytics data.

Select your Google Analytics website profile

Using the left side menu, navigate down to Organic traffic as shown in the picture below:
Traffic Sources > Sources > Search > Organic

The main window within Google Analytics will then become populated with the keywords people have used to find your website and the number of click-throughs you received from each keyword.

I’ve intentionally blurred the keywords out in this example above.

You will likely notice that a significant number of these top keywords contain your business name, a variation of your company name or a common misspelling of your name.

In this example we’d like to exclude all of these instances of business name in order that we can be left with a clean list of unbranded keywords that people have used to find your products and services.

We’re now going to create an “Advanced Filter” that will separate out these branded keywords from the non-branded keywords.

 Select “Advanced” from the menu bar as pictured above.

In the first drop-down box select “Exclude”, in the second box “Keyword” should be highlighted and in the third box select “Matching RegExp”.

In the next box I would like you to enter your company name along with any popular misspellings people use. If we have a business called “Raspberry dance shoes”, that sells dance shoes we would be looking to exclude the keyword “raspberry”.

Each phrase is separated by a pipe character | The pipe character is created by holding the Shift key and then simultaneously pressing the Backwards Slash key on your keyboard.

In our example, the filtered keywords might look like: raspberry|raspbery|rasberry —These represent the branded portion of the name, where as customers would likely be searching for “dance shoes” —so we don’t want to exclude these!

An example of a popular high street shop might look like: wh|whsmiths|smiths|whsmths

For ourselves we would exclude just the word “Hallam” and leave Internet in the results, because this could also represent our Internet Marketing Services.

Enter your branded terms separated by the pipe symbol |

This will now filter your list removing all instances of your brand name, giving you a much more accurate view of the phrases your website is both optimised for and successfully bringing in traffic. The key words or phrases with the greater number of visits are likely to be appearing much higher in the Google search results.

You can now add this information to your main dashboard as a report widget, so you can review your non-branded terms each time without having to repeat the steps above!
Click the “Add to Dashboard” button

Select “My Dashboard” from the drop-down list and check both boxes to display “Timeline” and “Table” views.

By default they will display as “Visits” and “Keyword” at the top of your dashboard.

By clicking on the cog icon in the top right corner it is possible to name these reports so we can better understand what the information is showing us.

Click the cog of the appropriate widget you would like to rename

Give your new Dashboard Widget an appropriate name

Once you’ve named your new widget, click Save and repeat the process for the second widget.

I recommend calling the Timeline Graph “Non Branded Keyword Traffic” and the Table of keywords “Non Branded Keywords” so that this makes much more sense next time you come back and look at your analytics reports.

Armed with this tool, you’ll now be able to make quicker decisions based around the existing keywords that are bringing traffic to your website without the numbers and graphs being distorted by people searching for your brand or company name.

Further Reading
What is Non Branded Keyword Traffic?
Allow Cookies or Delete Cookies?
How to Setup a Goal in Google Analytics

Should I invest in a One page website or a traditional Multi-page website?

In order to make this decision you need to understand the practicalities of both One Page websites vs Multi-page websites in relation to what it is that you’re striving to achieve and the marketing methods that you’re using or may want to use in the future in order to get there.

Over the last few years One Page websites have become more popular as designers continue to push the boundaries of the technology available to them in order to create a more fun, functional and seamless experiences for people who would use and visit these sites.

Here’s an example of a one page website for a French holiday cottage:
www.giberges.com

Notice how people can view a description of the cottage, it’s history, pricing information, a contact form and terms without ever having to leave the page!

Most websites you have ever encountered use the traditional multi-page format and model, whereby clicking on a menu item will take you to a new separate page. This is how our own website works.

As a leading agency providing search engine optimisation services we want you to be aware of the potential short-falls of purchasing or commissioning a website that is constructed upon a single isolated page in order for you to be able to make the right decision for what your business needs.

Limited Keyword Targeting

A crucial factor of optimising a website to be found in Google search is the careful selection and placement of keywords within the document’s Title tag and Meta Description. Every page has just one Title tag and Meta Description that can be used.

This typically means you can optimise for a small selection of inter-related keywords or phrases within a single page. If you’re purchasing a one page website, you will be limited to targeting a very narrow selection of keywords, as you will simply not have the additional pages in place that would allow you to go after or target more words or phrases.

Here’s an example title and meta description from off the top of my head

Title: Private Tuition | Tutoring | Lessons | Teaching | After School | GCSE
Meta Description: I provide reasonably priced and tailored private tuition, extra lessons and teaching  for a range of school GCSE subjects within the comfort of your own home.

This would allow you to target phrases such as:

• Private after school lessons
• After school teaching
• Private tutoring
• Private tutoring lessons

(There will of course be other variations or combinations within the above title…)

However if you then decided that you also wanted to start targeting phrases by a particular subject such as French, Mathematics or Music Lessons, it would then be necessary to create new pages, write new page copy & content  around these specific subjects and optimise new Title tags and Meta Descrptions.

However the more words and phrases you place within your Title, the more diluted and ineffective your pages’ ability to rank well for those phrases becomes. It’s also not possible to talk about all the unique benefits of all your services or areas of expertise within one short sentance that comprises of your page Meta Description.

You’re simply adding too much water to your squash and search engines of course don’t like this because it suggests the information you’re providing on your topic, service or product is far too general and watered down and not relevant enough. It will also make it harder for Google to understand what your site or pages are about if it talks about too many things.

Things to note:

• Google likes strong, relevant and well optimised pages.
• You will benefit from people finding your websites’ pages through Google
• However pages that are optimised for Google do not always deliver the best user experience

Limited Analytics Data

If you would like to take advantage of web analytics and metrics tools such as the popular free Google Analytics package in order to get an insight into how people are using your website and what keywords are bringing people to your site in the first place, then you will need the ability to identify what pages people like and which pages they do not like.

This will then allow you to tailor the content or design of these pages in order to make them better and more effective in order that you can then identify and meet the expectations of your visitors in order to maximise your investment and returns.

If the information that you might normally split across 5 or more pages is all rolled into one single page, there will be no obvious or clear way of identifying which information on that page people like or dislike.

Who might actually benefit from a One page website?

If your business relies more heavily on word of mouth recommendation (be honest!), social media, or other inbound marketing strategies or tactics then search engine optimisation may not be critical to your business. However in our experience it never harmed anyone done correctly!

Blue chip companies and big brands often have so much reach and influence that they don’t ever have to indulge in SEO.

Many restaurants, bars or cafes have a preferred bias towards highly attractive, well designed sites’ that deliver a great experience over being found by search. For example, take the website of this bar in London: http://www.thepaxtongipsyhill.com/ —this is still only one page!

It’s important to make the right choice and set the right direction for your website, unless you make a potentially costly mistake that could have further reaching ramifications or complications down the line.

I’ve actually seen single page websites that have since been chopped up and converted in a multi-page websites, most likely so they can take advantage of capturing peoples’ Google searches in order to get found. So if you’re only a small business or SME that does not have the clout or reputation of a big brand then reaping the benefits of having a search engine optimised pages may be more beneficial than that a single one page website.

Further Reading:
Are Captcha Forms Good or Bad for your website?
Blue Cheese!

It’s necessary to avoid duplicate content on your website in order to ensure your site’s pages are healthy, being indexed for the web, and being displayed when people try to search for your products or service using a search engine such as Google.

What is duplicate content?

• A significant proportion of the same information and content is used on more than one page
• Your pages use the same titles and meta descriptions across all or multiple pages
• A single page is accessible from more than one URL i.e. www.mysite.com/services/ and www.mysite.com/?id=22

Why does duplicate content harm your website?

• It can prevent your pages from ranking in the search results
• It can prevent your pages being indexed
• People may link to the same information as seen across different pages. This will dilute the ranking benefits these incoming links will have.
• Google isn’t interested in showing the same information to people, so it actively filters out any pages that are not original, which means other people won’t find this when searching.

What should I avoid?

• Copying large chunks of content from another website if you’d like the page to appear in Google
• Avoid using canned product descriptions provided to you. You should ideally spend some time re-writing them to be original for your website.
• If you’ve ever published a press release online, there’s no point using the same content on a page of your own site if you’re expecting it to be ranked

What repetitive items are safe to have on your website?

• Your website might use the same slogan or strap line on every page
• Your footer might include a message you would like to be seen from every page
• Contact information
• Navigation labels
• You can still quote other content; just ensure this material doesn’t make up the bulk of your page. Where possible use paraphrasing if you share the same points or ideas.

Tips for ensuring your content is original

• Set up the ability for your customers to write reviews
• Ask for testimonials and place these next to your relevant services
• Record yourself speaking about the topic of your page and pick out the key points and transcribe this
• Try to imagine what questions your potential customers would ask? Remember that they’re not all going to be as knowledgeable as you are, so try and answer them putting yourself in their shoes.
• Install a blog on your website. This will allow you to talk and write about things that you don’t want appearing within your main navigation

Further Reading
Do it yourself website health check
How to get great customer testimonials
3 Reasons for having a blog

“He who would cross the bridge of death
Must answer me these questions three
Ere the other side he see”

What am I talking about?

The above example is taken from the British cult comedy classic film Monty Python and the Holy Grail or you might know it as “that film where the old guy on the bridge asks the three questions”.

King Arthur’s knights seek to cross the Bridge of Death on their quest, however the old sinister bridge keeper prevents just anybody from passing by ensuring everybody correctly answers three questions in order to be allowed to continue their journey. The ones who do not answer correctly do not get to continue.

I’m using this to illustrate the barrier that websites big and small all across the world are actively but unknowingly using to deter their potential customers from converting to paying customers. This is of course web form CAPTCHA testing.

‘CAPTCHA’ stands for “completely automated public test to tell computers and humans apart”. You know you’ve been CAPTCHA’d when you attempt to use a web form that prompts you to correctly enter an obscured set of words or randomly generated characters into a box before you can proceed further.

Here’s what a CAPTCHA might look like:

CAPTCHAs are used in order to separate the wolves from the sheep—robots that would love nothing more than to create accounts in order to generate and send SPAM, as opposed to genuine potential customers who would really just like to use your product or service, send a message or buy an item.

Whilst there is argument both for and against the use of website form CAPTCHA tests, pay attention to best practise or risk losing customers and new potential business.

Why are CAPTCHAs unpopular?

• They are purposefully hard to read and thus hard to correctly enter, which often leads to great frustration
• They impose a barrier between your user and what they want to achieve
• If a user cannot correctly guess or enter your CAPTCHA test they will leave
• They will reduce your number of goals and customer conversions (Contact enquiries, new sign ups and even online purchases)
• Even intelligent, competent and well sighted people are thwarted and deterred by CAPTCHA tests

Why are CAPTCHAs used by so many people (including Google, Facebook and Amazon etc.)?

• They prevent their respected website systems being over-run with duplicate profiles and accounts
• They prevent robots from being able to send you SPAM and other unsolicited e-mail when used on a contact form
• They are incredibly difficult for non-humans to pass

Ask yourself do you really need to use a CAPTCHA?

A steady stream of customer enquiries is the lifeline of many businesses. If it came to choosing between having to delete the ‘spammy’ e-mails and still receiving more enquiries than having no spam and very few enquiries, I would still choose the former option.

Do you use CAPTCHA on your website, or have you been the victim of a frustrating CAPTCHA form experience? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Further Reading

Google vs the Film Geeks
How Accessible is your Website?
Why 301 Redirects are Essential for your Websites Success in Google

Facebook confirmed that Brand and Business Pages would be  going live with the newly adopted Timeline style as of April 1st, and this means your Page will be fundamentally changing.

You have the chance to put a big banner at the top of your Facebook page, and this is called your Facebook Cover.

Do you know what will be changing? Are you prepared?

What’s changing?

If your page relies upon using the traditional 5 photo thumbnails to convey important messages or branding, understand that this space will be disappearing soon and being replaced with the new Facebook Cover feature.

Our page currently does not have a Cover.  See the five small images at the top;  these are going to disappear

This is an example of a Cover; notice there is a banner image giving great branding opportunity.

The position of your company logo (or avatar) has moved, and is slightly smaller so you may need to edit your logo.

Why is it changing?

Facebook has already made these changes to people’s personal profiles, and they are now rolling the Cover out to business Pages, too.

What’s the purpose of the Cover?

The cover image has been designed  to allow you  more effectively brand your Page. You now have a physically larger and more prominent position to communicate your brand values, and key messages.  However, there are rules limiting what can go in the Cover, and in brief it cannot be hard sales.

• Your cover image must be free or prices, promotions or special offers
• Your cover must not contain any contact information (no phone numbers, email addresses, websites or twitter handles)
• Your cover must not make reference to Facebook interface page elements such as the Like or Message buttons.
• No marketing messages or Call to Actions.

How big will it be?

If you want to take full advantage of the screen space provided you will want to size your own banner as follows:

width: 851 pixels x Height: 315 pixels. The image you upload here must be at least 399 pixels wide or Facebook will reject it. However note that your image will always be rescaled and stretched to the bigger size. Like stretching a canvas print, doing the same on your computer will result in blurriness and reduce the appearance or quality.

It’s always best to make an image the perfect size rather than letting Facebook stretch it to fit.  You may need help with this!

What will my page look like if I don’t provide a cover?

You can preview what your current Facebook Page will look like in the new version.

In this example, you can see the large grey area next to the Hallam logo, and this is where the Cover should be.

Whilst it’s not the end of the world if you don’t have a Cover, you will be missing out on one of the best opportunities yet to customise your Page. As a Page administrator you’ll be reminded to upload a Cover using the box displayed top right. Normal fans or members of the public won’t see this.

 Need more information?

If you’d like to see what others are doing there are plenty of great Facebook Cover examples being used by brands that are hot on the tail of Facebook.

We’ll let you know how we get on, we’d love you to share your stories or experiences with using the new Facebook Page Covers if you’re an early adoptor.

 Further Reading

Monitor your Facebook Posts and Comments
Using Facebook Insights to Improve Your Page
Facebook Pages for Business

How do online reviews create benefit?

• They add credibility and good standing to your individual services and offerings. Socially validated services benefit from having the associated trust that come from having other people write about your services in a positive light.
• They help to increase your online visibility in terms of organic search and actively place you in front of people who are looking for what you offer or provide. Google in particularly favour ranking websites higher that actively feature fresh, current and topical content. An online review will tick most of these boxes.
• They help other people and potential customers to quickly make an informed decision based on what others have said. This plays on the fact, if something is good enough for somebody else they’ve had a good experience then you may as well.

Where can my customers leave online reviews?

• Google Places
  At the current moment in time one of the most beneficial by far is Google Places, because Google love to shout about and draw upon their own products and services whenever they can.Your positive reviews may even be displayed directly within the results when somebody searches, these results will get more focus and attention than that of a listing, which does not have any good reviews to display.
  www.google.com/places
• Niche focused review websites
  Other popular review websites that are appropriate to your niche or industry.
  • Hospitality — www.tripadvisor.co.uk
  • Takeaways — www.just-eat.co.uk
  • Restaurants — www.restaurant-ami.de
  • Bars & Pubs — www.beerintheevening.com
  • Hotels — www.hotelguide.com

How can I request a review?

Some industries and people in particularly don’t like to be seen as being pushy when it comes to asking for things from their customers out of concern that they may cause annoyance, so here are a few soft and unobtrusive ways that you can encourage people to leave you online reviews.

• Have a special card designed that asks your customers “What did you think of us?” – have a link to your preferred online review website; don’t overwhelm your customers with choices, preferably just one.  Notice it doesn’t say “Please write us a good review!”, this tact would sound quite aggressive.
• You might even like to utilise a QR Code to enable individuals with smart phones to access the page without having to type or search, which will help to ensure more people write and leave reviews.
• Write a clear message and call to action with a link directly to your page where they can write you a review linked from on your own website or social profile or page, so this would likely include your Facebook page and broadcast through your Twitter profile.

Further Reading:

Don’t Write Fake Reviews!
Customer Reviews, UGC and SEO
How to get Great Customer Testimonials

Image from www.FreeDigitalPhotos.net