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Do you see what your clients see?

Categories: In the news Online Sales Organic search Principles
July 12th, 2010 by Pete

You might assume that everyone sees the same thing on the internet, but we don’t. Your clients might see different search results than you, and your website may even look very different to them.

Make sure you don’t loose sales from these situations:

Personalised searches

In Dec 09 Google introduced personalised search which examines your search history and ‘adjusts’ your search results accordingly. Read more here: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/personalized-search-for-everyone.html

Are you really ranking that well ?

While the concept of personalised search sounds great, there are a couple of pitfalls you should be aware of.

To explain lets say you’ve been monitoring your website ranking by occasionally searching for it. Google’s personalised search will kick in and display your site  with a higher rank, but just for you. Meanwhile everyone else including your prospective clients will see (or may not see) the site in its real ranking position which may be way down the list and out of sight  :(

In your personalised search induced naivety you’ll believe your site is doing real well, but actually it might be doing really, really bad!

A suggested solution
If you do monitor your site’s ranking, (and I commend you for doing this!) then use your browsers ‘stealth mode’ to check rankings  and see what the rest of the internet sees.

Most browsers have a stealth mode but it can be a bit hard to find so here’s some clues:

  • Internet Explorer 8 calls it ‘In private Filtering’ Ctrl Shift F
  • FireFox calls it ‘Private Browsing’ Ctrl Shift P
  • Chrome calls it ‘Incognito’ Ctrl Shift N
  • Safari calls it ‘Private Browsing’

How much does Google know about you?
The other way that your search results might differ from what your clients see, is when you are signed into your Google ID.
Google may  skew results based on info stored  in your Google ID.

The solution here is to log out of your Google ID, or again use your browser’s stealth mode.

Invisible Flash

Apple iPhones and iPads are becoming increasingly popular internet devices. Sites I monitor have up to 6% of visitors arriving on their iPhones and I suspect iPad usage will explode soon to take this total number much higher.

Flash is used to provide visual interest in websites, and is important for emotional based sales i.e. selling products and services that make us feel good. Flash is also good at attracting attention.

As any iDevice devotee will tell you, iPhones & iPads don’t display Adobe Flash.

Any Flash in your website looks like a gapping black hole to these visitors. There’s no emotional sales value, it looks ugly; even defiled and predictably undermines your website’s ability to engage iDevice visitors .

Read what Apple has to say about Flash and why they are unlikely to ever support it.  http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/

What does this mean for your business website?
David Radzikiewicz from A7 Designs suggests, split your web presence over two sites; your traditional site and then a mobile visitor site. Visitors are automatically sent to the best site for their internet device by coding in the site.

If your target market is likely to visit using an iDevice then take action soon.

Display Standards

The last and ongoing display anomaly relates to web design standards. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has a set of technical standards for websites to ensure they all display OK, but many  sites don’t comply.

Display compatibility is complex as your website must be displayed faithfully in the plethora of browsers each with multiple software versions. As context; in the last 30 days, 52 different browsers/browser versions visited just one clients’ site.

This is has been further exacerbated by browsers that didn’t comply with the W3C standards (Microsoft being one of the worst offenders), and as a result W3C has lost relevance for some frustrated Web Developers.

Who cares about standards, I just want sales!
Fortunately there are typically few display issues for non-compliant websites, but occasionally the outcomes can be catastrophic sales-wise:

  • Menus don’t work properly, so the visitor can’t access product information or sales pages.
  • Product information is displayed completely off the screen and unable to be read.
  • Search engine spiders are unable to navigate the site, so products don’t feature in search results.
  • Text and/or images are displayed over the top of other content making it impossible to read

These are all excellent sales preventers and something I’m sure you dont want in your site.

Is my site W3C compliant ?
Fortunately W3C has an easy to use validation tool that you can check each page in your website for compliance. http://validator.w3.org/

I suggest you discuss any W3C errors your find with your Web Dev as some are trivial and might cost you a lot to achieve very little.

http://www.browsershots.org/ is also an excellent free resource to see how your site looks in a wide range of other browsers.  It also interesting just see see how many there are out there…

Where to from here

  • Monitor the traffic in your site
    I strongly recommend Google Analytics. Its free and world class.
  • Use Analytics to check your website’s visitor clickstreams to see if they are doing what you want them to do. If not, take action.
  • Use Analytics to identify then check correct display for the more popular browsers used to access your site.
  • Check the main pages in your site for W3C compliance

Summary

Dont assume that everyone sees the same as you online. Your Clients may have a very difference experience, and its their reality that determines your online sales success.

This blog is based on the Succinct Update newsletter from July 2010.
You can subscribe directly to our newsletter here

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Reflective Advertising in AdWords | Listening to your clients

Categories: AdWords Principles
June 4th, 2010 by Pete

Reflection is a listening technique where the listener echos key aspects of the conversation back to the speaker; it is a confirmation of understanding; a signal that the listener is engaged and paying attention to the speaker. It is a powerful strategy to engage a speaker.

Not surprisingly, a similar technique also applies to online advertising, and is also equally effective in engaging the searcher.

In my experience a ‘reflective ad’ will typically outperform even the most creative text ad.

Building a reflective ad

To build  a reflective AdWords ad we are going to use Google AdWord’s  Keyword Insertion capability to reflect the searchers term back at them.

Keyword insertion is a special ad statement {Keyword}  that substitutes a  searched term into the ad text. This can be added into your ad copy, the display URL or even the destination URL

When the ad is operating, the searcher sees their own search term where ever {keyword} appears in your ad eg assume the searched term was premium widgets

Practical reflective ads

All good so far, but ad text lengths still apply, so if your searcher enters a long term, your ad could be too long, so keyword insertion provides an alternative value should this occur.

So in this example, a long search term would end up looking like this:

Proper case

A final refinement with the Keyword Insert is it ability to change the case of the original search query. This subtle but important presentation refinement is set by the capitalisation used in the keyword command word itself viz:

Your ad’s title How the ad title appears to users What part of the keyword is capitalised?
Buy {keyword:Puppies} Buy golden retrievers No part
Buy {Keyword:Puppies} Buy Golden retrievers The first letter of the first word only (sentence capitalisation)
Buy {KeyWord:Puppies} Buy Golden Retrievers The first letter of each word (initial capitalisation)
Buy {KEYWord:Puppies} Buy GOLDEN Retrievers The entire first word and the first letter of each additional word
Buy {KeyWORD:Puppies} Buy Golden RETRIEVERS The first letter of the first word and the entirety of each additional word
Buy {KEYWORD:Puppies} Buy Golden Retrievers The first letter of each word (initial capitalisation)

Note that AdWords Capitalisation rules also apply which dictate there should be no excessive capitalisation

More information on Keyword Insertion is available here: http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=74996

So, set up a reflect ad in your campaigns, and test my theory that they will outperform your other ads.

Ill be interested to hear your results

Cheers
Pete

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The Analytics data access & ownership dilemma

Categories: Analytics Principles Website Analysis
May 14th, 2010 by Pete

A dilemma that I am encountering more frequently arises when good meaning web developers create and deploy Analytics sub-accounts (Analytics calls them a ‘profile’) for their clients.

The ‘issue’ only arises after the clients engage an internet marketer, who will want to access the site’s Analytics information to better understand the website’s history and traffic characteristics.

Analytics enthusiasts like myself will refine the Analytics settings for improved reporting, specific investigations etc which requires Admin access, and this is where the problem emerges.

Granting Analytics Admin to enable these refinements, also provides access to all profiles;
ie the web dev’s others client’s in that Analytics account.

This is not desirable from either the web dev or the internet marketer’s perspective, and as a result admin rights are not typically granted. This in turn impedes the internet marketer’s ability to deliver services.

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SiteLinks | The Extended SERP

Categories: Principles WebMasters Tools
February 24th, 2010 by Pete

Occasionally you might see a Google search result ( a SERP) with handy links, even a search input box. They make it easier for searchers to find relevant content in your site,and so are very likely to attract more visitors to your site.

How can you get this extended SERP showing on your site ?

Sadly, as mere mortals we don’t have the option to ask for these extended SERPs (Google calls them Sitelinks)
Google decides if it will display Sitelinks with the SERP, but it seem to be based on the site home page having a Google PageRank of 5 or more and the search keyword very relevant to the site

For example the Medibank Private site has a PageRank is 7 and a search of medibank private is as you could imagine very relevant hence a Google search result displays:
A SERP with Sitelinks

It is possible to use Google WebMasters Tools to remove selected Sitelinks

So if your site has a PageRank of 5+ then highly relevant searches may bring up a SERP with Sitelinks

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Campaign to increase sales

Categories: AdWords Organic search Principles
October 9th, 2009 by Pete

Looking to increase sales? Even if your site is already generating leads or sales, there is scope to improve it further through campaigning i.e. short promotional activities designed to engage client interest.

In supermarkets we see these as ‘specials’; and we get bombarded with them in TV advertising, so consider using a campaigning strategy to promote your business via your website.

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Urban myth | Stronger than fact | The keyword metatag

Categories: Keywords Organic search Principles Urban Myth
September 25th, 2009 by Pete

The power of urban myth is not something to be toyed with.

In a recent meeting a debate arose after I said that Google doesn’t use the keyword metatag. I was challenged on this point by someone confidently asserting that Google is indeed using the keyword metatag once again. He inferred that any suggestion that they weren’t was simply uninformed.

We agreed to disagree. The customer was confused. My creditability was compromised.

I blogged about the keyword metatag back in 2008. More recently even Google’s Matt Cutts once again debunked this urban myth, but the mighty keyword metatags’ magic powers will continue to persist…

My point is that there is so much SEO mis-information that the sheer mass generates its own pseudo-creditability much along the lines of …Oh yeah that must be true because I heard it the other day….

Metatag Basics
A metatag is a special place inside the web page HTML code that can store variables for example the Description meta tag which is used in SERPs

The keyword meta tag is one of a number of common HTML metatags, traditionally used to store a string of words that represent the content on that page.

Its use has persisted, particularly in Content Management Systems where editors are invited to add ‘search words’ etc that are then published into the keyword metatag by the CMS.

The keyword metatag was identified as being open to abuse around 2002, and no longer used by Google from that time and I suspect by many other search engines for the same reason.

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PDFs are great content for your website!

Categories: Organic search Principles
September 12th, 2009 by Pete

Adobe’s PDF (Portable Document Format) is a convenient format for making any document universally viewable, and an especially useful format for putting content into your website

Newsletters, brochures, annual reports etc. in fact anything you can print or scan you can turn into a PDF document and have in your website.

Visitors to your site can download the free PDF viewer from Adobe (and others) to have your document faithful represented on their browser independent of operating system and browser differences.

Of course you need to link the PDF to your menu or content so visitors and search engines can reach it. Search engines? Yes! They treat a PDF as if it’s another page in your website.

PDFs are a great way to increase the amount of content on a key subject to support search marketing efforts, not to mention the benefit of providing additional sales and product information etc that prospective clients can read to support their decision to purchase from you.
busted
Search engines can’t see inside a PDF
This is an urban myth about PDFs that we really need to bust.
Google has been indexing text content and metatags inside PDFs since 2001

Google cant read images inside PDFs
Another myth busted. In fact in Oct 2008 Google announced that they could OCR (Optical Character Recognition) PDF images. That means they can turn images inside of PDFs into indexable text.

Where are your PDFs ?
Use this Google search to find PDF documents in your website:

inurl:pdf

for example inurl:pdf www.succinctideas.com.au

The INURL search operator tells Google to restrict search results to a particular document type. Read more about Google’s inurl: search operator

Statics show that visitors will more readily open another page in your website rather than open a PDF so keep a balance of content types.

So PDFs really are quite genuine content, engaging sales visitors and search engines!

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Matt Cutts | Are sites treated differently by Google?

Categories: Organic search Principles WebMasters Tools
September 2nd, 2009 by Pete

Matt Cutts is a well known Google’s technical guru, who often makes public statements on behalf of Google, including responding to questions from the internet marketing community.

This is one of a series of YouTube videos that clarify important information about how Google works, because frankly there is a lot of mis-information out there.

To catch more of Matt Cutts and other Googlers on YourTube go to the GoogleWebmasterHelp channel

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Beware website changes that loose sales.

Categories: Principles Tales from the trenches
April 22nd, 2009 by Pete

An effective website is a work in progress.

The content changes to reflect the evolution in your business; your offerings, even your target clients. But sometimes changes can quite innocently have a catastrophic impact on your website’s sales effectiveness.

Let’s examine which changes to your site can impact its sales effectiveness:

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Google's Content Network | The hidden paid search marketplace

Categories: AdWords In the news Principles
April 21st, 2009 by Pete

Google’s Content Network is emerging strongly as an independent and unique online marketing medium. This is clearly highlighted in Google’s recent report on Content Network Cost-per-Acquisition (CPA) performance.

Including the Content Network in your online advertising; and particularly understanding how to optimise this medium is becoming an important aspect of a successful online campaign.

The statistics from Google are staggering:

  • More than 6 billion ad impressions (i.e. displays) per day globally
  • Reaching 80% of internet users.
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