Join SEMPO the Search Engine Marketing Organization and get stuff

Posted by on October 31, 2011 No comments

For those thinking about joining SEMPO, they are giving those that do access to tools and services worth $2000. SEMPO yearly memberships are as low as $125 but you get some of the best tools of the trade as a bonus. Read more »

Basic: More Content Brings More Leads

Posted by on September 5, 2011 No comments

Just checked a recent survey conducted by Hubspot for over 4000 companies!  The results from a marketing perspective make quite a compelling case that more is better when it comes to creation of content for websites. We know that blogs, landing pages and indexed pages are critical pieces of inbound marketing methodologies and Hubspot data shows that the online pages with more content generated more leads and traffic back in return.

Some interesting revelations of the data include these facts:

  • Businesses that blogged 20 or more times in a month got the maximum return in traffic and leads
  • Businesses with more than 400 indexed pages generated the most traffic and leads
  • Businesses with more than 31 landing pages generated the most leads

The obvious conclusion that ‘more is better’ can cause some organizations to think that they should pad up their websites, start splintering the pages and post small blogs 4 times a day! But this notion should be counter balanced by the brawny inbound theory that content has to be unique and valuable to visitors to be truly effective. The ‘return in traffic and leads’ would only be possible for websites that have content worthy of being read. And what does the ‘splinter strategy’ bring for your website? Only some sparse descriptions, inconclusive arguments and vague lead conversion paths!

So how does a business climb uphill for bigger blog, indexed page and landing page totals while also ascertaining that content is fresh, interesting and adequately productive? Let’s check a few points that can be taken care of:

Write about every angle of your business

The topics that are crucial to your business and industry should be talked about as much as possible. The need for a product/service, its uses and advantages, the tips for selecting a certain product or service, latest news and trends in the industry, posts with encouraging questions and comments make your page interesting and provide informative content fodder to the readers. Even the negative angles of your business offerings make an interesting read for some of the online visitors. But why would you include that in your blog? Obviously, to prove the criticism wrong! So write about the perceptible ‘disadvantages of your products/services’ and then subtly spin the content back in your favor with a conclusion that strongly supports their worth and advantages. You can double your blogging output without being trapped in the ‘writers block’.

And remember – do not go for tricky short cuts in order to beef up your content pool. Use of article spinners and duplicating the content will not help. It might also be tempting to split exiting posts into multiple blogs but all you will get in the end is a poor quality, parched website that does not deliver productive user experience.

Use multiple landing pages to let more customers reach you

You do need to have more landing pages to generate more leads – probably a different one for each set of target audience and more landing pages imply that your business has more to offer. The landing pages look livelier when they have meaningful offers for the page visitors. Here are a few tips that can be used to create and add oomph to landing pages:

  • Set the purpose of each landing page before actually developing it. Decide what you want the visitor to do when he/she visits the page
  • Send the user to the pages that load quickly – do not use many pop-ups and do not link to pages that were disabled. Do not make your page visitors wait for too long!
  • On each landing page, highlight the specific benefits that your products/services offer
  • While designing web landing pages, try to enter your prospects’ mind and answer the questions that could be asked by them.

All it takes is to just examine your keywords and adgroups to determine what the user (who uses those search terms) really wants. Then deliver them to the offer page as seamlessly and with as few steps as possible

Sending all the traffic in a campaign to the same landing page is always a big mistake. The keywords that the users employ for a search already describe their aims. Each step in the landing page process can make you lose customers if you do not directly send them to the destination they are searching for. Why bother your customers through a complete website maze when they can take a detour to land on the exact spot?

Get more pages of your website indexed by search engines

Do you have different web pages for all regions, cities, or states that you service or work in? If they are in any way different, shouldn’t they ideally have separate web pages? You do comprehend the significance of product differentiation for marketing success in various areas. A quick audit can help you to discover some opportunities that you may be missing in the online scenario. For increasing your site’s number of indexed pages, take a few minutes to establish an inventory of what you already possess. Read more »

Successful Video Marketing Can Do Wonders For Your Business

Posted by on September 2, 2011 1 comment

Successful Video Marketing for your business: With the popularity of such sites as YouTube and Vimeo and other that are more regional sites such as Nico Nico Duca in Japan and Youku in China, it is evident that videos do play an important role in promoting a product or a service. Indeed online videos are proving to be the fastest way for business organizations to spread a word about their offerings in a creative manner. The videos help to bring a more personal interaction between the customers and the business. The mix of visual effects and sounds helps to capture audience attention effectively.

The delivery of useful information to the target audience becomes fast and simple with online videos. It is well understood that ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ but when the right animation and sounds are also added to these pictures, it may be worth a million for the business. A good online video can enhance brand reputation and give a special identity to the business. It may be to describe and demonstrate the functions of a product, to introduce a company, for online seminars, conferences or advertisements, an online video can attract a lot of traffic for your website. Even search engines like Google give more importance to websites with videos related to a search and give high rankings to such sites.

At present YouTube, the video search engine offered by Google is the leading online video destination and thousands of videos are uploaded on the website daily. Created in early 2005, YouTube not only allows users to upload videos but also share them on social networking websites like Facebook and Orkut. Users can also comment on the videos and show their appreciation by hitting the ‘Like’ tab. Recent stats reveal that this video search engine serves up a million views about every 90 seconds. Certainly, any business considering the video marketing strategy would like to put up an optimized video clipping on YouTube. However, for a more successful online marketing campaign, other avenues also need to be explored to reach customers via online videos. Read more »

Icelandic Media sites in contrast to International sites

Posted by on September 1, 2011 No comments

Every media company knows that if they are not appearing on page 1 of search engine results for their news specific keywords, they are likely to be missing out on thousands of targeted visitors and potential ad revenue, whilst competitors benefit.

However, research from Majestic SEO highlight that some of Iceland’s top media organisations are failing to market themselves online, restricting their online brand reputation and visibility.

(Buzz table below is updated daily)

Only 6 out of the 8 major media organisations tested currently appear in the Majestic Million, a Buzz table, of internet sites which ranks the top million global websites according to their connections from other sites. Read more »

Next Conference Stop SMX East New York

Posted by on August 26, 2011 No comments

Stacked with conference coming up this winter. In September alone I will be speaking at three conference and have been advising on the fourth one. The conference I will be speaking at next is the SMX in New York. The session I am participating in is on the “Analytics & Conversion Track” and is called “Video Search Success Stories”.

Session description:
YouTube is the leading online video destination, which makes it in turn the leading video search engine (and by some measures, the second or third search engine overall). So it’s a given you’ll want to have search optimized videos on YouTube – but don’t stop there. Read more »

What is your competitor doing online?

Posted by on August 26, 2011 No comments

Doing a session at SEM Konferansen in Olso called “What is your competitor doing?”

The internet makes marketing efforts close to 100% transparent, you can track everything you do through analytics and file reports that would make any off-line marketer jealous. But that also has a dark site as there are tools out there that can be used by your competition to track your online marketing efforts and in some cases know things that not even you know if you are not vigilant and on the guard. Read more »

Quality Score – Fair and Just

Posted by on August 11, 2011 3 comments

I recently read a book about Quality Score entitled Quality Score in High Resolution by Craig Danuloff. The book really shed light upon the different factors that influence Quality Score calculations. This made me realize that there are currently an endless number of amature and professional blog posts that have created a lot of confusion in this area. This confusion appears to have led account managers, amatures and experts, to the conclusion that Quality Score is the enemy; however, this is not the case.

Quality Score is Google‘s way of helping the good and punishing the bad. It serves as a motivation for advertisers to create well organized and honest PPC campaigns, ensuring that there is more to online auctions than just over bidding. Read more »

Is Organic Search Cannibalized by Paid Ads?

Posted by on August 7, 2011 No comments

I was reading an interesting article the other day on why companies advertise their own brand items when they are already ranked no.1 for those items. It is during the course of my reading that I finally got some insight on whether paid search advertisements cannibalize traffic from their corresponding organic listings for the very same keywords. Read more »

Speaking at SEM Konferansen 2011

Posted by on July 26, 2011 No comments

This is going to be fun, speaking at the SEM Konferansen 2011. Check out the video below:

 

Just joined the Nordic Advisory Board for SMX Stockholm 2011

Posted by on June 21, 2011 No comments

It has recently announced that I am joining the Nordic Advisory Board at the SMX Stockholm 2011 Internet marketing conference. The board and me included will be helping to pick speakers for this year’s conference in Sweden. The Advisory Board will be lead by Sara Andersson, Founder & Senior Strategist at Search Integration. with us there will be a great team that includes Anu Ilomaki, Team Lead at Google Ireland, Simon Sunden, Digital Director at Honesty, Bernt Johansson, CTO for Klikki and Mikkel deMib Svendsen, Creative Director at demib.com.

For further information can be found at http://smxstockholm.se/.