SEO and Meta Robots

The parameters for the meta robots tag on a website’s homepage and contents page can cause problems if not installed correctly. Since meta robots tags can be confusing to work with, checking to see if major pages have been incorrectly marked as “noindex” or “nofollow” can go a long ways to ensuring that the pages are indexed correctly. Checking out meta robots tags can take a good bit of time to do correctly. There are a number of “quick fixes” advertised, but they sometimes miss important elements.

SEO and Robots.txt Files

Sometimes all it takes is one wrong keystroke to ruin a website’s indexing. By checking the website’s robots.txt. file (which can be found at www.example.com/robots.txt), it can be discovered if the robots.txt files are blocking things that are important to the website. This is an SEO error that even professional web developers can easily make.

SEO and Canonical Homepage

If there is one thing that is known for interfering with a website’s ranking ability, it would be Canonicalization errors. Checking to make sure that a website’s homepage is canonical is an important part of SEO evaluation.

SEO and Text-Only Cached Version of a Homepage

If a the exact URL of a website’s homepage is not in the major search engines, you could very well be looking at a problem. It is important that the homepage be THE first result in a search for the exact URL. If it is not, there is a chance that the site is being penalized, which means that you have a very big problem indeed. If you are searching in Google, you need to make sure that you click on the “Text-only version” link to ensure that you keep JavaScript-based page elements as well as CSS and Flash from being included in the search. This sort of search will reveal unclear navigational as well as spammy links.

SEO and Google Site Commands

Checking the website from the search engine’s point of view can reveal things about a website that would otherwise be difficult (if not impossible) to root out. This is why it is very important to check how many pages on the site are indexed in the search engine. Very high numbers can indicate duplicate content while extremely low numbers can indicate crawler traps, both are bad for a site’s ratings.

A final word of advice; when you are asked to check a website’s SEO, go through these 5 things first. It can prevent you from spending unnecessary hours tracking down ‘phantom’ problems that can result by one or another of these listed items not being correct. Good luck to you!

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It needs to be understood that in order to fully utilize the power of social media, marketers need to be able to integrate the information they collect into their organization’s pre-existing decision-making processes. So, what are some of the obstacles to integrating this information?

Obstacles in the Way of Web Marketing Success

Some of very basic problems encountered when attempting to use the information obtained through social media into pre-existing layers of an organization include not only poor integration of social media and traditional marketing methods, but a lack of measurement for the value of social media information, hit or miss tactical campaigns that don’t contribute to ongoing marketing methods, failure to engage potential customers one-on-one, a continual dependence on the old mass-marketing techniques that are no longer applicable in the internet world and, perhaps most importantly, a failure to chart clear marketing returns on social media input.

Charting the Channels

To be able to take advantage of the power of social media, integration of all an organizations marketing efforts – including social media insights – must be achieved. To do so requires applying relevant marketing tactics from both a traditional approach as well as through digital channels.

The most important thing to understand about channels is that you need to be able to understand and engage customers – and the old tried and true methods of the traditional approach are not necessarily going to get you where you to go in today’s digital age.

It used to be that a marketer’s only choices were those of broadcasting (both television and radio) outdoor marketing, print marketing, and direct marketing. In digital marketing the channels change from day-to-day and some digital and social medial channels will fall by the wayside, but you have to be open to the new channels that are taking their place.

In order to market effectively you can’t be wasting your time on specific channels, but instead you need to be consistent in methods for interacting with your customers and potential customers.

Some of the methods you can use to interact with your customers and potential customers include maintaining methods for tracking your customer’s interactions and means of capturing their input as well as identifying new approaches and channels that may be coming to the forefront. You will need to coordinate your marketing efforts across all the available channels and be able to weave social media information in with information gleaned from traditional marketing channels in order to build a strong marketing fabric.

In order to create this extra strong marketing fabric you need to not only improve customer awareness by creating manageable profiles on customer behaviors that you glean from social media, but be able to centralize decision making to engage segment audiences based on not only social but on demographic information in order to pinpoint the best marketing opportunities. But most importantly, you need to be able to coordinate all of the channels that you use – both traditional and digital – so that they work together seamlessly.

Technological Solutions

There are a number of technological solutions for coordinating the multiple marketing channels that you will be using in your new approach. You can ensure customer awareness by using ad clickthroughs, measuring site traffic and direct mail responses, charting blog pingbacks; make use of cookies, instrument widgets and tracking codes to capture potential customer interactions. In fact, it is actually advisable to use all of these methods in order to create the most comprehensive over-view of the impact your combined marketing methods are having, especially in the realms of social media.

But it is not enough to simply combine the traditional and digital marketing information. You must then be able to coordinate your decision making process to ensure that the customers get the products that your marketing information shows that they are looking for. You must also be able to identify the persons or groups who act as opinion leaders or who influence others to purchase certain products so that you know who to target with your advertising campaigns.

And last but not least, you need to be able to target these opinion leaders with personalized messages by multiple marketing channels so as to ensure that you capture their attention by means of direct mail, email, social sharing links and even pop up web offers.

Taken together, these strategies will not only make certain that your social media marketing campaigns are fully documented and valued, but that, combined with traditional marketing approaches and integrated into decision making processes, that they will become a strategic part of your marketing approach.

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There are a number of ways in which you can increase the appeal of your website’s content and also optimize it for search engines. These include things like creating hooks, enhancing scanability, using intellectual formatting, and ensuring purposeful content, using a variety of distribution methods and not going for the quick sell.

Write for People and the Search Engines will Follow

With the sheer amount of information people are dealing with on a daily basis, it is extremely important to be able to ‘hook’ a person’s interest. It doesn’t matter what kind of content you are dealing with, you need to be able to let the person know what you are offering within the first two sentences. If you are using written content, the first two sentences need to summarize the rest of the document. If your content is a webinar, podcast or video, the first two sentences uttered need to do the same thing. Hook the person’s interest in your product or service. Once that is done you can provide them with the details you deem necessary.

Optimizing the content, but how?

Your content is having to compete with an extremely large amount of information. It is an accepted fact of the digital age that those using the internet are having to multi-task a number of different projects. The long and the short of this is that they may not be able to take in the entirety of your content, but they will “get the idea” by scanning your available content. By scanning the information you provide they will determine whether or not it is worth their time to pursue it in more depth. To ensure that your material “jumps out” at your readers, you need to provide “scanable” contents. The generous use of sub-titles in your content is an ideal way to do this, ensuring that they get a feel for what you are saying, and hopefully tempting them to read further.

Let Users Know you Think They’re Smart

Today’s internet users aren’t stupid. Most of them have at least some college education and even those who don’t resent being treated as if they are in grade school. By providing intellectually stimulating content as opposed to dumbed down versions of your material, you will appeal to their intellectual side. While articles about “top ten tips” or “Five Important Things to Remember” can bring up your ranking scores, using actual articles and stories (re-written of course for scanability and geared to hook your reader’s interest) will give them the sense that you are appealing to their reason and not just trying to get them to click on your site.

Write Content with a Clear Objective

You need to be clear on the purpose of your content. Knowing what purpose your content will play will go far in helping you to determine what sort of format you will be choosing. If the purpose is to get a “lead” – to get your reader to give you their contact information, they your content will need to have something which your reader thinks is of interest for the exchange. Simply promising them something to get their contact information will do nothing for your reputation – you need to be able to deliver on your promise. A video or webinar is an excellent way to get this information and make them feel as if they have gotten something in return for their trust. Make them feel being rewarded.

Getting Your Information out There

There are a wide variety of methods for getting your marketing content out to the public. You can create a video to distribute on YouTube. You can create fliers to distribute by direct mail. You can provide a white paper in a PDF format, create Webinars or Podcasts or simply give them articles explaining your product and attempting to convince them of its value and worth. Obviously, the more methods you use, the greater number of people you will reach in your distribution attempts, so do not limited yourself to just one distribution method, experiment in several, and combine them to find the most effective combinations.

Reeling Them in

The buying stage is a tricky point, and not one to be taken lightly. All of your content and distribution methods and hooks and attention to details will come to nothing if you can’t convince your potential customer to purchase your product. But what can convince them to buy? One way to convince them that your content or product is worth purchasing is to provide them with “lead up” information that will bring them to a desire to purchase your product. Blog posts and articles dealing with your product or service, reviews and newsletters that have to do with your type of product or service are good ways to keep your foot in the door. Once you have developed a rapport with your potential customer; once they have gotten used to receiving honest and useful information from you, they will be all the more likely to purchase your product or service seeing as that you’ve already given them something they deem of value.

Putting it all Together

As an internet marketer, you need to be able to capture your potential customer’s attention; make them feel good about the material you are presenting, and be able to reach as many people as possible by embracing a variety of formats for your content and be able to distribute this contents in an efficient and effective manner while maintaining your organization’s credibility and reliability in order to achieve your sale. Sound impossible? If taken together, the points listed above can ensure that the dedicated internet marketer can not only get their marketing content into as many hands as possible, but ensure that a good number of those who receive it go on to purchase your product or service.

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But it isn’t just relevancy that is being taken into consideration by today’s buyers. More than half of buyers surveyed replied that they are taking more time researching and considering which vendor to hire. In fact, over 48% said that they are not only taking longer, but they are using a broader spectrum of sources during their initial research and 59% said that they are sharing the information that they glean in their research with other people who are researching the same vendors.

In addition, 66% of buyers reported that consistent messaging by vendors was a big consideration in the buying decision and 77% said that they did not follow traditional approaches when going through the buying process.

Putting all of these things together means that, for marketers, not only will you need to improve relevance and provide your prospects with adequate information during their research phase, but you will also need to be able communicate effectively and provide alternatives to traditional purchasing methods. To help you make the most of your marketing content’s value; there are eight methods that you can follow for the best results.

The Eight Approaches to Increasing Your Marketing Content’s Value

Approach #1: Scanning the Blogs

The increased popularity of blogging in today’s online communities means that there should be a wide variety of blogs active regarding your particular industry. By following these blogs, particularly by paying attention to customer comments, you can glean much useful information regarding what your potential customers expect from someone in the business.

Approach #2: Explanatory Webinars and Podcasts

There is a great deal of technical and explanatory information on the internet regarding issues of importance in your particular field. Much of this information can be found in Webinars and online Podcasts of different organizations. Paying attention to these sources can help you to pinpoint important issues and how that particular organization is addressing them.

Approach #3: Watch Your Language

Make sure that you are talking the same language your potential customer is. Using too technical – or for that matter to simple of language is not going to attract them to you. You need to pay attention to how your potential customers are describing their problems and issues and be prepared to address their concerns in the same manner.

Approach #4: Using LinkedIn Groups

It is helpful to be able to have a baseline of your particular prospect segment. By tracing their participation in different groups you can get a handle on their views on specific subjects. Participating in this way however, should never be in a way that will show that you are selling something or are in any way looking for information on them, it should be totally innocuous.

Approach #5: Getting the Most out of Twitter Streams

By using a hash tag search for keywords through programs like TweetGrid or TweetDeck you can use a full two –three columns to fine-tune your search. These keywords should be pertinent to those searches made by your prospective clients.

Approach #6: Using Bit.ly Links

A good number of Twitter’s links are created by Bit.ly, the URL shortener. By cutting and pasting the link into your browser, tacking on a plus sign at the end and hitting enter a scrolling feed of users who have Tweeted the link (including any comments they added) will be visible to you. This can be an invaluable tool in determining how much interest a particular topic or link is generating.

Approach #7: Metering Metrics

One of the best ways to determine the effectiveness of your email campaigns is by tracking the bounces to and from topic-specific Website pages. This, together with the amount of time a prospective client spends on specific content can help you to determine keywords that can help you in developing content that will attract your prospective clients.

Approach #8: Using Feedback

One of the most effective methods of getting prospective clients reactions to your services and opinions regarding your products are by collecting and analyzing direct feedback. How many comments have you received regarding your services? How many people have filled in your surveys? How many Webinar viewers stay for the entire webinar? What are the top complaints registered by your customer service representatives? Collecting feedback from a number of sources can help you to determine the effectiveness not just of your products and services, but of your advertising methods as well.

Putting it all Together

As you can see, by combining the eight approaches we’ve discussed you can develop a far richer and fuller view of where your organization stands, how effective its methods are, and be able to fine tune your methods to best suit the potential clients you are striving to reach. By increasing your marketing content’s value to potential customers you will also increase your effectiveness and number of potential customers who will desire your services.

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It is said that balance is key to living a fulfilling life, but balance can be hard to obtain when it comes to the world of advertising. How, after all, can you balance the advertiser’s need to get their ads noticed with the consumer’s desires to be left alone?

When considering traditional print or media advertisements, the balance is easy to discern. The advertiser puts their advertisement in a prominent place or on a prominent station, and the consumer has to the choice to either read it, or watch it – or not as they see fit. Internet advertising, however, is another ball of wax altogether.

Intrusive Internet Advertising

When considering internet advertising the advertiser is competing with a continual cacophony of interactive media and the ads, by necessity, become progressively more intrusive; ad capture pages that require some sort of acknowledgement, scrolling text, eye-catching animation, oversize images and videos or music that play automatically when the page opens. All of these methods are used on a regular basis to ensure that ads get the attention the advertiser believes that they deserve.

But what good does an advertisement do if it annoys your potential customers to the point that they move on to another website? In fact, intrusive enough ads have been proven to catch the consumer’s attention in the wrong way and studies show that consumers are more prone to remembering an advertiser or brand because of an intrusive ad and then avoiding the purchase of that brand.

In an interesting coincidence while the same studies showed that most internet users ignore banner ads and prefer to give their attention to simple PPC text advertising. So remains the most effective type of internet advertising, this should tell you something.

So how can you capture your potential customer’s attention without shoving your ad in their face and risk losing their patronage?

Subtle Advertising Attention Getters

Just because consumers tend to react adversely to “in your face” advertising does not mean that you have to take your chances with dull PPC text advertising. By using the tips and techniques of annoying advertisements – but twisting them to be of use to your potential customer, you can draw attention to your ad while maintaining a discreet distance and allowing the consumer to maintain a semblance of control.

Some ways this can be done would be by giving customers the chance to take part in a poll regarding a product, or be able to provide feedback on something they have purchased. You can use Flash animation to let the customer view a product from all angles IF they chose to do so. How about an embedded live twitter feed, or a chance to ‘like’ the product or company on Facebook?

Advertising Don’ts

Don’t detract from the page that is being read. This means avoiding the use of auto-expand ads, ads that automatically play music or videos without prompting; ads that incorporate loud and unexpected noises or which use animation that does not stay corralled in its own ad frame.

Each of these are examples of what not to do when creating your Internet ad, but if you should find yourself wondering if a particular advertising method is going to be too annoying for your potential customers, there are two things that you can do: First, ask yourself how you would feel if you opened up a page and this particular ad jumped out at you when you hadn’t asked for it. Would you be annoyed? Secondly, plant a small child of about age four or five in front of your computer and play the page. If they automatically start laughing and pointing to the ad, it is a fair bet that it is going to be too annoying for most adults.

The Balancing Act

Advertising in today’s media rich climate is a balancing act. As an advertiser you must be able to be interesting without being annoying; be informative without being condescending; and be able to be engaging without becoming the used-car-salesman of internet advertisements. You walk a fine line, and the future of your company may very well depend on your ability to keep your balance.

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It is very important then, when you are creating a new website, to spend some time giving serious consideration to what you will use for a domain name. It may seem like a trivial part of the process when compared to the development of the site or the writing and SEO optimization of the articles, but in truth a good domain name can be the keystone on which a website is made – or broken.

In the following section you will find a series of tips that you may want to consider when you are considering selecting a domain name.

A friend of mine collects great domain names. Every time he thinks of a really great domain name he writes it down, and then claims it! He doesn’t use it, but he owns it so, if someone else wants that particular domain name, he can sell it to them.
When a new site is being conceived or designed one of the critical items to consider is the naming of the domain, whether it is for a new blog, a company launch, or even just a friend’s website. Here are 12 tips that will be indispensable when helping you select a great domain name:

Tip#1: KISS

Keep it simple, stupid. And never were truer words spoken, especially when you are considering your domain name. The simpler the domain name, the easier it is going to be to remember. After all, everyone knows how to get to Amazon (www.amazon.com). It would be another thing altogether if it were called “thesitethatsellseverything.com”

Tip#2: Create an Expectation – then live up to it!

When someone sees your domain name, there should be no question as to what your website is about. If your website is for book lovers, then www.booklovers.com would create an expectation in the person’s mind that the site is for – or about – book lovers. Of course if your site is not about book lovers and you are simply trying to corner that particular market, then when they come to your site and see that it is about magazine subscriptions, their expectations will fall flat and your reputation will become tarnished in their eyes.

Tip#3: Use your Keywords!

You should be able to know – without even blinking an eye – what five keywords that describe your site would be. In the example of the book lovers’ site, the keywords would be: books, reading, readers, book lovers, bibliophiles. See? I got six without even trying.

Try it, sit down with a piece of paper and just start writing the first words that come to mind when you are thinking about your site and what it offers. Stick with the first ten words that come to mind. Now start pairing those words up until you come up with a name that jumps out and grabs you.

Tip #4: Uniquely Yours

There are so many websites (and domain names) out there, how can you get yours to stand out from the rest? Having a unique domain name; a domain name that no one else even comes close to; is a good start.
It won’t do you or your website any good to have your site confused with a more popular site, especially if they offer the same goods or services, and at a lower rate! In fact, it could break your website to have that happen. It is much better to have a domain name that is yours, and yours alone, while keeping in mind the nature of what it is your website is promoting.

Tip #5: Make it easy to remember!

The easier a domain name is to remember, the more often it will pop into people’s heads when they are thinking of a place to go to get that particular product or service. This is where you can get creative and use rhyming words or words that have double meanings in order to associate your domain name with a particular product or service. For example; www.thebeesknees.com would be easier to remember for a site that sells beekeeper’s equipment than www.thebeekeepersstore.com.

Tip #6: Make it easy to type!

A domain name that is easy to remember AND easy to type is a winning combination every time! If you use words that are unusual or that people have to think about how to spell, chances are that you will lose customers. If we go back to the book lovers site, if you were to choose the word “bibliophile” as part of the domain name, you may get your serious book lovers, but those who are just looking for a good read would probably get lost in typing it out.
The same holds true for avoiding those letters on the keyboard which it is hardest to reach, such as the letters z, x, c, p and q. If one of these letters is part of a simple word, that is all fine and good, the value of the easy memory will outweigh the difficulty of moving the fingers around to get to the awkward letter. But a combination of those letters with words that make you blink is a sure sign of impending disaster.

Tip #7: Don’t Include Hyphens and Numbers

Whatever you do, don’t include numbers or hyphens in your domain name. Hyphens and numbers are both difficult to type and make it difficult to express your domain name in a clear and concise manner. Also, for those who are not award-winning typists, both hyphens and numbers are much harder to type, harder even than those hard-to-reach letters on the keyboard.

Tip #8: Create a Brand

One of the best ways to set yourself apart is to create a unique brand that will get you recognized. If we go back to the book lovers site, if you are selling products for book lovers (reading lamps, bookmarks etc.) www.bookbeat would be more memorable than www.thebookloverstore.com.

Tip #9: Don’t be tempted by Trends

There have been trends throughout the years, such as multiple hyphens, uninspiring short adjectives or oddly misspelled words. They may be all the rage, but chances are they will be short lived.

Tip #10: Avoid trademark infringement

Infringing on another company’s trademark can be a big mistake. It can destroy your website. In order to make certain that your site’s name is not an infringement on anyone’s registered trademark, you may want to visit the U.S. Patent and Trademark office website and search out your proposed domain name before you purchase it.

Tip #11: Choose a dot-com if you are selling

If you have something to sell, only choose a dot.com domain name. If building name recognition and branding is not an issue or, say, your website is mainly informational, then a .net or .org domain name is perfectly acceptable. But for those who are looking to make money through their website, a dot-com domain name is a must.

Tip #12: Use a Domain Selection Tool

Now that you have put together some possible domain names, it is time to see if the ones you have selected are available. To do this you will need to use a domain selection tool such as Ajaxwhois or Domjax. These sites make it simple to determine domain name availability. Once you have determined that the name is available, you can proceed with registering that domain name.

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Thankfully there are not enough of them to make us quit what it is that we do but still, it is a good thing to be able to see what is coming in advance so that we can prepare ourselves – mentally at least – to be able to deal with them in a professional manner. And so it is that we have come up with seven warning signs that we look for when dealing with a new potential client. Seven signs that will indicate if the person we are dealing with have the potential to become a bad SEO client.

Warning #1: They want it for Less

Never mind that your prices are competitive with the rest of the market, this client will attempt to talk you down, clearly not understanding the sort of work that goes into Search Engine Optimization in order to get it done right.

This client (or should I say potential client, because if you heed this particular warning sign you won’t take the job) always knows of someone who got the job for less – or who does the job for less. This should cause the big red warning light in the back of your head to start blinking. If the potential client balks at the idea of paying a deposit before you start work on their project, add a strident alarm to that blinking red light.

And whatever you do, under no circumstances allow the client to talk you into an arrangement where the final amount of the agreed upon price (when they finally do agree to a price) only becomes available to you when the SEO work you are doing for them begins to generate a specific amount of traffic to their site. Don’t do it. It’s just opening yourself up for trouble. No matter that you may have done your job perfectly well, there may be other issues that cause them to not make the #3 spot on the Google listings (or whatever they are using as an indicator of successful SEO work).

Warning #2: The Impatient Client

This client insists that they cannot follow your normal schedule, the project they are working on is far too important to wait. In fact, it should have been done yesterday, but okay, they’ll give you a few days or at the most until the end of the week. This is a primary indicator that the client is decidedly impatient.

This client doesn’t care that you may have other projects in the works to which you need to devote your time, effort and energy. This client doesn’t particularly know – or care – how much time it takes to do a job right. They just need it done now. This client also tends to leave a lot of emails or call repeatedly before the project deadline wanting updates on how the project is going and leaving not so subtle hints that it would be “really nice” if you could speed things up a bit. I’ve personally seen clients who placed an order and then, within hours, were sending me emails wanting to know what the status of the job was.

3. Their website is one which no amount of SEO work is going to be able to help

Make sure you visit your potential client’s website before you ever agree to take them on as an SEO client. I can’t stress how important this is. If the potential client’s website is a nightmare, chances are that they need to invest in a good website designer before they come to you, for there is only so much SEO work that can be successfully done on a website that looks like it was cobbled together on someone’s laptop in the dead of night. With both their eyes closed. And with one hand tied behind their back.

Not only will SEO optimization on such a site probably not help them, but it will NOT look good for you, especially if it leaks out that you had anything whatsoever to do with that site.

4. They did it all Themselves

If your potential client tells you that they did all the work on the website themselves; web design, writing, everything. Chances are that you are not going to be able to work with this person, as they will continually be feeling that they could have done it better themselves. They are also going to want to be involved in every step of the process, which can, quite literally, make your working life a nightmare. And not just your working life! I personally had an SEO client who somehow managed to get my cell phone number. Let’s just say that I had to learn very fast how to identify his number and let it go straight to voicemail.

5. The Client has a hard time Getting their Point Across

Poor communication is probably one of the most insidious of destroyers when it comes to working relationships. Just because someone is easy to talk to on a personal level does NOT mean that they are going to be able to communicate their professional needs just as easily.

A hint (more like a strong suggestion) do not accept a client until you have talked to them through multiple communication channels. Don’t just talk to them on the phone, talk to them by email and in person if at all possible. Get a feel for their body language and their grammar. Yes, grammar. I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve taken a client who had bad grammar, under the assumption that it really didn’t mean anything, only to realize (too late) that it did mean something, they didn’t know how to express themselves clearly, and, in some instances, expected me to read their mind.

Another indicator of an inability to communicate effectively is if they can’t explain what it is that they want. “Well, you know what I mean” is a sure sign that they have a communication problem as is “I know what I want, I just can’t describe it.”

6. In Need Constant Contact

The client in need of constant contact with you doesn’t trust you – plain and simple. They want to micro-manage your time. Check that, they want to micro-manage the project. This client will have you in more meetings and phone-conferences than you will spend on their entire project. Many times this need to micro-manage comes from their inability to communicate effectively. They know what they want, but they can’t describe it, so they figure if they watch you like a hawk they’ll be able to point you in the right direction as the need arises.

7. “If you do this right, I’ll have more work for you.”

Don’t do it. Seriously. The person who starts a working relationship off with those words has some serious problems regarding their own professionalism. Anyone who has ever worked in SEO, or contracted SEO work out, knows that if you do your job right your client will be back for more, or will recommend other people to you. The need of a person to let you know that if you do their job to their specifications, means that not only are they not secure in their own professionalism, but that they also doubt yours. Or, and sometimes this is even scarier, they want to keep you for themselves, ensure that you “belong” to them and will be available whenever they need you .

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Tracking

One of the great things about the Internet is that it has some very useful tools for helping to track your ROI. These include (but are not limited to):

• Press Release Syndications. You can track the distribution of your press releases by counting how many times they get syndicated on portal sites. Many newswire services offer reports that will alert you when a press release has been syndicated. Some services you may have to check on manually, but it helps to keep track of these syndications for your records.
• Google Alerts. Google Alerts has a mention tracking option that will let you know if your site/brand/article etc. has been mentioned anywhere – including social media sites and blogs. It even breaks it down for you as to whether the mention was positive, negative or neutral.

Evaluation of Reach

One of the things that you will want to be aware of is just how broad is your reach in certain market areas? To help you with that there are online methods of determining just how broad your coverage is, there are free analytical tools (Alexa, Compete, etc.) that will note how many times your brand or site or page or something directly related to your company was mentioned on any internet sites, blogs, podcasts and online radio shows.

You may also want to determine just how far your reach extends in the Social Media sites themselves. Both Twitter and Facebook, as well as most blog sites, contain tools for tracking how many fans or followers you have, which helps you to know just how many people you are reaching.

Comparisons

There are also ways to compare your company against competitors. You can use Google Alerts to track your competitors’ status. Programs like “Compete” and “Website Grader” allow you to compare your site against your competition on many different levels.

A Few Other Tips of Measuring your ROI

There are a few other helpful online resources for tracking your marketing effectiveness.

• You can analyze your website’s sources using Google Analytics. This will help to determine how people are finding you online.
• You can count how many awards you have won.
• You can use tools like “Net Promoter Score” to determine customer loyalty.
• You can insert a “How Did You Find Us” feature on your website when customer’s order or exit in order to gauge the level of marketing effectiveness.

Each of these tips, as well as all of the methods listed above, can be used to determine the effectiveness of your marketing campaign and Return on Investment you are receiving from the money you are putting into it.

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However, just as there can be unforeseen trends in financial markets, it looks as if some of the projections regarding online advertising that were made back in the first years of the 21st century may, in retrospect, have been a bit conservative.

While it was predicted that paid search advertising would overtake display advertising, the actual numbers show that it happened faster than was expected. In 2006 paid search advertising overtook display advertising as the dominant advertising format in Europe. By 2007 it accounted for 43% of Western European online ad spending. By 2009 it was up to 46% with projections showing that the initial estimates that paid search advertising will account for over 49% of the online advertising market by 2012 may be inaccurate, it could very easily account for over half of the Western European online ad spending by that time.

Higher Than Expected

These unforeseen numbers are due to several factors, the first being an unexpected growth of paid search advertising even in those markets considered to be “mature” markets. Secondly, there has been an unprecedented use of social media sites, a phenomenon that has opened up large segments of new display ad inventory. Thirdly, advertisers have been quicker than in expected in reacting to the switch from traditional advertising methods to online advertising.

As JupiterResearch predicted, spending in the various categories of online advertising, primarily paid search, display ads and online classifieds has been increasing exponentially each year. In fact, it now seems that their prediction of €13.9 billion being spent on online advertising per year by 2012 may actually be exceeded.

Hardly surprisingly, social media sites have proven to be one of the biggest reasons for the jump in online advertising. These large untapped markets have proven to generate rapid growth in display ad inventory across Europe but they are quickly adapting themselves to paid search advertising markets. The ability of adservers and ad networks to improve the value of their inventory can be credited in part to the effective leveraging of new targeting and optimization technologies.

While advertisers are continually looking for “new” markets to develop, it is interesting to note that online markets do not run out of steam nearly as quickly as traditional advertising markets. This may be due in part to the incredible flexibility of online advertising and its ability to adapt to changing markets and market trends. This is particularly true of paid search advertising.

Paid Search Advertising

Even in the UK, which is considered to be a “mature” market, revenues generated by paid search have continued to show an increase each year since 2006 when JupiterResearch presented their initial report. But even though indications are that the UK market is slowing, it is just coming up to speed in other paid search markets, primarily France, Germany and the Netherlands and there is no predictable end in sight.

Online Classifieds

But paid search advertising is not the only kind of advertising that has shown an increase over the last four years. Online classifieds have shown an increase in European markets as well. While online classifieds are more popular in Austria, Ireland and the Netherlands than in the UK and Germany, online classifieds as a whole still account for 40% of the online ad spending in Europe.

Banner Ads

Banner ad networks has improved as the advertising platforms that support them, platforms such as Google, AdSense, Yahoo! and MSN, integrated sophisticated adserving technologies. The surge in growth in the use of these platforms has generated a tremendous growth in banner advertising. The projected 2012 revenue of €1.5 billion in the European market may actually have been underestimated.

Video

Video advertising is another segment that has grown faster than was expected. In fact, it has increased from € 87 million in 2006 and has almost reached its predicted 2012 mark of €929 million, which means that the actual 2012 numbers may be far higher than originally expected. Much of this growth has been generated by in-stream ads as Europeans have increased their watching of online video content. In fact, video advertising has been becoming progressively sophisticated. Indeed, it is hardly a stretch to accept that by 2012 rich ad formats including rich media and video, will account for more than half of Europe’s display ad spending. Rich media has already nearly caught up with traditional image-based display advertising, not surprising given the amount of time that the average consumer spends online.

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In days gone by if you wanted your website to be successful your primary concern was to ensure that it was listed in the major desktop search engines. While this is still true to a degree, searches conducted from mobile devices are quickly approaching critical levels, especially among young mobile users, and it is an accepted fact that mobile searches will outnumber desktop searches in the not-too-distant future.

For the time being we are, in effect, living in two worlds; during the workday desktop usage is very high, but in the evenings, mobile searching rules, and as more work places become more mobile, the demographics of searches will be changing.

What is Driving Mobile Search Growth?

The iPhone, Android and BlackBerry are primarily responsible for the exponential growth in mobile searches. These smartphones, coupled with the growing number of Wi-Fi hotspots and high speed broadband systems, not to mention the technologically savvy young people who are using them, are changing the way that people around the world regard their mobile phones. No longer are they primarily phones with a few extra features, now they are mobile, palm-sized communication centers where it is nearly as easy to check your mail and do your banking as it is to make a phone call or send a text message. The people have spoken, and the word they have spoken is “mobile.” The question is; are the retailers and website owners going to be able to adapt themselves quickly enough to answer?

Desktop vs. Mobile Searching

In order to successfully take your website mobile, there are a number of issues regarding mobile searching vs. desktop searching that need to be understood. The first and foremost is the very structure of the mobile search environment.

Mobile search differs from computer-based searches primarily due to the dual path system of the mobile search environment. Every phone comes set up with a default search engine chosen by the mobile carrier. These self-contained systems only show the results of the mobile carrier’s chosen search engine, a search engine that, as often as not, is the mobile carrier itself. This means that there will be fewer choices showing up in the search results, and unless the search engines you are listed with have a contract or deal with the mobile phone carrier, those particular customers may never see your site.

Thankfully, for any phone that has online capability, there is also access to standard search engines such as Yahoo! or Google, which are accessible by opening up the web browser. The downside of off-system searching is that not all sites have been optimized for mobile browsing and uploading a data heavy, un-optimized site can slow things down to a crawl. So it is very important to make sure that your site is mobile search optimized so that customers will not give up before they ever see your merchandise.

Another issue with desktop vs. mobile searching is how the results are displayed on the device being used. When using a desktop, all results display the same no matter what sort of a desktop or laptop you are using. But with mobile display, it depends entirely on the brand of mobile being used.

And finally, mobile searches usually display only up to five results with very few mobile browsers bothering to scroll to the second page of listings. For the website owner, this means that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is becoming crucial in ensuring that your website gets put at the top of the list.

What Does This Mean For Marketing Your Website?

The short, short version is that for the time being, not only consumers going to have to master two different kinds of internet searches, but website owners and website designers are going to have to master be not only design websites that are searchable by traditional desktop searches, but that are flexible enough to adapt to mobile search parameters and the increased dependence on SEO optimization that mobile systems demand.

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