Search Engine Optimisation - The Archaic way

Today we received from our very reputable domain and web hosts, Namesco, an ACT NOW! offer:

{Last day of the offer} - "You can get your website listed and noticed with our FREE search engine submission service worth £50 with any new annual website hosting plan." Namesco Ltd customer email - 29.9.08

Why does this stuff even exist?
Well in 1997 / 1998 when around 30 search engines controlled about 80% of the total searches made by consumer and the technology that their 'spiders' or 'robots' used to gather website information was far less sophisticated than it is today, it made some (limited) sense to build software that 'pinged' search engines saying "come and look at my site'. Some of these web services even made a sales differentiator out of annoying the search engines with a daily request for them to visit your site. This served to get new sites increased brand name web exposure and therefore increased traffic due to the spread of search engines used by your customers. Now however, a great way to get exposure on Google, Yahoo and MSN (the 3 that really matter in 2008) is certainly not to tap them on the shoulder everyday.
If you would like to have a conversation about how to increase you market share through increased traffic from Google's organic search listings then give us a call. DONT take up offers like this one.

Is the time now?

The technology sector has been guilty of starting every article with one of a variety of “The time is now” statements. Many incarnations of this statement have underpinned key changes in the evolution of the digital marketing medium.

There were, to my mind, two points in time when the captains of our industry were most active in playing town crier. The 1st was undoubtedly upon the commercial roll out of the World Wide Web in the late 90’s when messaging centred around “get online or become a business dinosaur.”

Now that broadband arguably becomes the standard 81% of all UK internet connections* (up 20% on 2005) and we enter into the next phase of the growth in the role of the internet in the lives of consumers, many clients look to take independent advice on opportunities for increasing traffic to their site and converting more of that traffic into customers and in understanding how changing media patterns should affect how they plan their marketing.

The way we consume media has already changed greatly and the modern digital marketer needs to embrace the idea that they are no longer in control of the mode of communication. Long gone are the days of revelling in the infallibility of a TV advertising slot within News at 10 or Coronation Street.

New media marketing communication as a discipline is about adaptability to change – sponsorship will increase in prevalence as the next bedroom born user generated content (UGC) phenomenon explodes to levels of popularity that we have seen from Friends Reunited, then Bebo, then Pop Bitch and Facebook.

*(BMRB Oct 06)

Safari is coming onto your radar very soon

I'll confess to having been a long standing member of what was called the "Mac Minority". Of course I use PCs as well for client browser testing and (as an aside) my Subaru Impreza tuning software is not Mac compatible. The launch of the new 3G iphone at £100, (almost a third of the price of the original iphone) last Friday created so much demand on the O2 website that its servers fell over. The web development community has often done well to avoid adding Safari browser (now available on the PC too) to the list of browsers for testing in the web development project scoping documents. As the touch screen browser experience using the iphone's only web browser becomes more common place, the web design industry must sit up and realise the the 4% of web users on Safari (Stats from WC3) are very soon set to mushroom. If you would like to understand how mobile browsing is likely to affect you communications strategy over the next 2 years then give us a call for a chat.

Second Digital Picket Line

The web has without doubt revolutionised the way pressure groups and political activism has mobilised. In China, where the media is still somewhat restricted, worker blogs have exposed illegal working conditions in factories producing big brand western goods. Hong Kong also had its 1st ever strike earlier this year in a climate where the most populated country in the world is having to reassess the value of labour. This could not have been done without the usage of web communication as a mobilising factor. So what next? The French (who since Monsieur Guillotine rise to stardom) have never been shy of taking to the streets in protest took to submitting a raft of blogs to the employment tribunal in protest at FNAC the music retailers redundancy proposal.
There has been a lot of discussion about whether brands should be setting up stall in the virtual world of Second Life. Well it now seems that Second Life's role has influenced the traditional bricks and mortar life of one of the technology sector's founding fathers. Last September 2000 Italian IBM employees logged on to 2nd Life from home and staged a virtual protest on IBM's 2nd Life campus. Dramatically the event resulted in the resignation of the Italian Head of IBM and the RSU Union agreed a new pay deal. We have not seen the last of this - The King is dead - Long live free internet publishing.

What does Web 2.0 really mean in the marketing brief?

Some marketeers will be unaware of the origins of the term “Web 2.0”. Oh so briefly: When US web strategist Tim O’reilly (Oreilly Media) formed a planning group of big- brains to analyse the changes in internet usage, the output created the 1st coining of the “Web 2.0” phrase. They examined the changing face of portal strategies from 99-2001 when the large media sites Yahoo, MSN, Lycos other search engines and BBC strived to provide all things to all men online. Since then we’ve seen the rise of empowered consumers defining product choices in vast forum groups, the phenomenon of online voyeurism in blogging exponential popularity growth. Google’s Pay per Click (PPC) launch (their 1st revenue stream) combined with increasing market share of searches and the impact of this on traditional marketing media is also central to the Web 2.0 era. Oreilly media’s site has an extensive article for those interested.

No-one can criticise a client’s desire to keep up with changing ways in which people are using the internet but its worth acknowledging that successful UGC initiatives providing active interaction with a brand requires skilful planning and intuitive implementation – its anything but plug and play. I saw a client brief recently that defined Web 2.0 as being UGC and “the ability to design web pages with rounded corners” – not entirely correct.

So how do brands build a reputation for being Web 2.0 compliant?
Listen to your online customers. It sounds basic, but many clients do very little analysis on their site traffic. How do they interact with the brand? What level of passion do you customers have for your products? What are your customers doing online now? If a brand attempts to engage its audience through a UGC concept without due consideration for your audience, customers may regard the efforts as misguided and perhaps damaging to their brand perceptions.
The danger to brands negating the planning process can be seen on many websites (I’ll avoid pointing out any examples) that have a discussion forum void of any discussion.

Web 2.0 should perhaps be considered as finding gold dust through brand depth – you can’t demand it you have to earn it through searching for increased respect from your online customer base.

What does this mean for brand managers?
-Surrender some control of your brand to your customers.
- If you moderate your UGC, do so retrospectively (get out of hours cover off-shore)
- Consider asking and rewarding some loyal customers to also act as moderators in responding to negativity rather than removing it.
- Look laterally at the opportunity to invite people to UGC – If your consumer product interest levels are already high then its most likely happening already. The last 2 cars I have owned have both had full ‘nuts and bolts’ forum attention in over 3 online sources each – none of these resources were provided by either car manufacturer or by a dealer network.
Overall avoid knee-jerk reactions and take advice from customers, and people in-touch with your brand who have UGC experience then review your options.
If your online customer engagement opportunity is strong then growth of awareness can be enormous and “Web 2.0” can therefore have significant meaning to your brand.

Pay Per Click Industry in Limbo

Nathan Levi, the Search Director of Razorfish wrote an excellent article in New Media Age on the 8th of November. I praise primarily, his honesty in acknowledging that the Paid Search / Pay Per Click / SEM industry is in limbo with the gold rush of super cheap customer acquisition costs in competitive markets now well and truly over. The question I ask is, whether the end of the honeymoon should primarily be an SEM agency headache? Well by the nature of pitching and the chest puffing process in competitive tender situation is, of course it is. However my message is directed to clients in saying that while PPC is a unique advertising media (the only media that is not paid by visibility but only charges when customers are pre-qualified by search term then by reviewing your ad) it should not be treated as the 'magic media' forever. Competition for TV eyeballs in the eighties made News at Ten and 'Corrie' the most prized TV spots. How did we achieve cut through in traditional media - through better creative standout, better marketing planning, brand building and the slickest fulfilment of customer expectations. If we apply the same rationale to PPC we should be looking at a raft of assets to maximise the budget (even if cost per clicks are increasing). Timed campaigns, landing page test, competitor tracking, supporting brand campaigns to increase generic searches and combining complimentary natural SEO strategies. When PPC is managed as a channel in its own right it still performs very well. I won't profess to know Nathan's specialism as well as he, but I will reiterate that increased focus on the customer experience rather than just "buying traffic" will increase conversions and repeat traffic to that Paid Search can remain the most cost effective paid marketing medium for the business. Who takes responsibility for the shape of the end-to-end customer journey is down to you.