Firstly, what are ‘organic’ search results?
Organic search results found in search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo, are those that are not strictly altered by anyone and are not paid for. They are results that appear centre-left on the screen after you put in a search term.
Doesn’t organic mean ‘pure’?
Yes, it does. This term is ideal because unlike the many paid/sponsored results, the purity of the organic result means that they are free from blatant advertisements pushing a product or service.
Search engines such as Google are great at separating the two. The paid adverts are usually columned off to the right.
So just how important are organic search results?
Very important! In fact 83% of commercial purchases come from them in comparison to paid results. So that’s 5/6’s of all potential business. Whilst PPC is a competitive and additionally important SEO element, if it only accounts for 1/6 of your overall success then organic results must be made priority.
Okay, so now I know about organic results and PPC results – but I’ve heard about sponsored or ‘paid inclusion’ results – what are those?
Paid inclusion is a search engine marketing tool where search engine companies charges fees for the inclusion of particular websites in their search index. These websites are then known as sponsored listings.
This sounds surprisingly similar to PPC…isn’t it the same thing?
Well, the line between PPC and paid inclusion is a thin one. Some believe that any paid listings are advertisements (which is essentially what PPC is), while others insist they are not because unlike ads, webmasters do not control the listings content, it’s ranking, or even whether it is shown to any users.
Okay to sum this all up, what are the differences between all three?
1. Organic traffic: includes the free-of charge results off to the left side of the page.
2. PPC listings: are the ads typically at the right side of the page. Occasionally they will appear at the top & bottom of pages too. When PPC ads appear above or below organic results in most search engines, they are in a coloured box which helps make it that little bit clearer.
3. Paid inclusion results: are mixed in with regular organic listings however paid inclusion is known to have no effect on relevancy. They are simply blended into the search results anywhere and cannot be easily distinguished from the other search results.
However, some search engines such as Google, feel as though paid inclusion is a conflict of interest with relevancy, this is why they have never had a paid inclusion program.
Okay so back to organic results…how do I improve them?
- Be an expert on your site. Literally know everything you need to know about it – it is extremely likely there will be competition, so that little bit of extra information is what will help you to stand out.
- Research the competition to see how competitive the keywords you are using are.
- After you have found the most effective and unique keywords make sure you include them in your meta-tags, your page title and everywhere you can on the page.
- Submit your site to as many directories as you can find (that are relevant your location) If your services go as far as the South East of London and you are submitting to American directories, you may be found in the USA – but then ignored.
- Each page should have a specific focus – whatever you mention on one page should stay there, no need to keep backtracking, it’s repetitive and ideally you want to be found for different things in search engines rather than just the one service/product.
- Search for spam in your keywords and report any you find – you may be able to them removed.
- Build links. This is the most effective element of SEO that exists. If you aren’t building links, start!
- Remember that content quality matters much more than quantity. Don’t waste any time putting a site together with tonnes of useless or badly planned out information when you haven’t got any strategy on what to do with it.
Google Adwords is a fantastic way of advertising your business online. However, the key to success with this tool is to properly optimise your advertisements so that they reach the intended audience – and you don’t end up paying over the odds.
There are some obvious ways to do this and some tips you may not have come across before, this post will outline both:
Effective keyword matching: With Adwords you can specify how closely you want your keyword to match the users query on the search pages by selecting either “Broad match” “Phrase match” or “Exact match” – Avoid broad match. Why you ask? Simply because under a broad match, if a user searches for a specific term such as “woolly hat”, your advert will appear whenever a search for “woolly” or “hat” is made in any order and even alongside other terms (such as woolly mammoth).
Trying dynamic titles: ‘Dynamic titles’ are an efficient way to improve your CTR and conversion rates. They work by causing the phrase that the user is searching for in Google (for example woolly mammoth), to become the title of your advert when it appears. This of course means that your ad is more targeted.
Landing pages are important: This is the first page a person will see when they click onto your advert and come to your website. You can make this any page you wish, however you should probably avoid using your homepage if your product isn’t being pushed there. Whatever page you do use, it is a good idea to optimise it with information about your product.
Quality control: Do – work on the quality of your advert and rely on its CTR to get you into the top spot. Don’t – on the other hand get into a bidding war with a competitor vying to pay whatever it takes to remain in or get into the number one spot. This is never a good idea because it is actually the quality of the ad that will shine through meaning regardless of the position your ad appears in, you can still gain the top spot if you get more clicks over time. The best thing about doing it this way is that you will still be paying the lesser amount of being second place, even when you climb to first place.
Keeping track of everything: High CTR do not necessarily mean success. Try not to fall under the illusion that because the CTR is high, you are making money. You could in fact be losing money. Using Google’s conversion tracking codes to link Adwords with Analytics is a good idea and will help you to understand how each keyword is performing so that you can optimise your campaigns buy getting rid of any that do not work well, and putting more time and effort into the ones that do.
Use the direct approach: Keywords such as “Bargain” “You” “Free” and “Deal” all speak directly to a user and sound enticing. Use these. This also works with ‘call to’ actions which are phrases that provoke an action from the user. Some examples include “Buy Now”, “Free Delivery” and “For a Limited Time Only” etc. Such keywords cause a sense of urgency and give the impression that the user must act quickly or lose out. There are many other direct ways you can talk to a user including the use of questions to engage them. This could work particularly well if you ask questions that aren’t particularly clear or answerable, for example “woolly hats or woolly mammoths?”
Spell things wrong: With Google’s “did you mean” feature it’s pretty easy to get away with the odd typo in a search and still successfully get where it is you want to go. The bottom line is, people spell things wrong, often. Take advantage of that by doing the same.
Stand out: Capitalising each word (not the entire word just the first letter) will help you to stand out. With competitors going after the same customers as you, this is almost essential.
Leave your number: This is beneficial for two main reasons. If your ad is seen, appears to have everything the user is looking for and has a telephone number, it could lead to a conversion if the user calls you up and completes a transaction. Also, you’d save on some money as you would have avoided the click! Bonus!
We’ve all been there, needing to show a friend or colleague something we’re seeing on our monitor but don’t want them to see the entire screen, so we reluctantly fire up photoshop (or paint!), then crop the image, save the image (thinking up some temporary filename and cluttering up yet another folder) and finally email the resulting image – wasting precious time and losing focus on other tasks at hand.
I got tired of this monotony so came up with a solution… 
Using the tool that sits next to your clock you can very quickly highlight a portion of your screen and either copy to clipboard, save to your computer, or upload to dowce.com – where you’ll be given back a unique short URL to send out to people. You can even add a caption and password protect your capture. It literally takes a few seconds and lets you get on with your other jobs.
Pre-launch, members of the team here at Datadial installed it on their office computers and found it to be really useful when composing emails to clients which needed to contain screenshots of statistics and website layouts. Friends have also started using it to show each other winning (and losing) hands of online poker! It’s one of those tools that once you pick up, you use more than you would expect.
To give you an idea of what’s on offer, here’s a screenshot of the options you get after you’ve made your selection:
If you choose to Save to dowce.com you’ll receive a unique link to your capture…
It’s as simple as that! For a full demonstration of how it all works and to download dowce for free, visit www.dowce.com
We’re a very healthy and environmentally concious bunch here at Datadial – 7 out of the 10 of us that work from the office are commuting cyclists. So we now have our very own dedicated Datadial Bicycle stand right outside the office!
If you are coming in for a meeting and are cycling distance, please feel free to bring your bike and park it here, there’s plenty of room 
I recently went to a talk on the different forms that e-tailing is taking over and beyond the traditional e-commerce site.
Below is a distilled version of the talk with just the best bits. A lot of these examples are only availabe in the US at the moment but by reading this you are getting ahead of the curve!
(The talk was by the big cheese at Pod1 – Fadi – so credit to him for researching it all)
E-commerce via Apps
Squareup.com
Start accepting cash and card payments with Square. No contracts, monthly fees, or hidden costs. Effortlessly manage the money you take with an easy and intuitive interface. US only at the moment and only for payments less than $60 but one to watch for sure.
See corporate video
And a review on how it works
Google shopper (Android only)
This APP allows you to scan barcodes, the co
vers of books and media, and even search by voice – the app will tell you where you can buy the same product and at what price. Pretty nifty if it works!
It took 12 months for the location-based social network to attract one million users and by stark contrast; the second million only took three months. Ever since February 2010, the site has been registering over one million ‘check-ins’ a week.
See how it works:
New e-commerce software
Vendr create POP-UP shops – They say that you can create your e-commerce site within 15 minutes. These are basic obviously sites now but I guess they will improve. In any event they will probably do for many home based businesses.
from their site: “Works with your current website: Add a “store” button to your blog or website, and your store will simply pop-up over your content — no more sending your customers elsewhere to make a purchase. Vendr functions as a part of your existing site. ”
Alvenda software allows you to create e-commerce shops within sites such as Facebook – Alvenda’s first customer, 1-800-Flowers.com, launched during the Mother’s Day holiday in 2009 and recognized a 10.5x lift in shopping activity by making it easier for people to shop.
New E-Tailing concepts
Cutting out the middle man – Harnessing the power of social media to revolutionise product manufacture and pricing.
Furniture:
http://www.made.com/
For furtniture design and manufacture: You choose what makes it into our collection. Vote for your favourites and the most popular will be made available to order.
Wine
http://www.nakedwines.com/
Buy early, pay less
The earlier you buy an air ticket, the less you pay. Now you can do the same with wine. Save £££!
Car Rental
Whipcar
WhipCar is the first service in the world where a car owner can rent out their vehicle for money, whenever they are not using it. WhipCar pairs sensible drivers with spare car time
Sergio Davison and Matthew Sawyer have signed up for the London Bikeathon Challenge.
We will be cycling 50 Miles through the streets of London on Sunday the 27th of June 2010.
Please sponsor us in our challenge and help those great guys and girls @ Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research.
Any amount you give big or small will be greatly appreciated.
It’s easy to donate online with a credit or debit card – just go to my JustGiving page:
http://www.justgiving.com/Sergio-Davison–Matt-Sawyer
JustGiving sends your donation straight to Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research and automatically reclaims Gift Aid if you’re a UK taxpayer, so your donation is worth even more. I hope you’ll join us in supporting Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research .
Many thanks to the Biblical Suppliers Association for listening to my talk on:
How to build a Successful Search Engine Friendly Website.
You can download the presentation here.
Seminar-powerpoint – 20 minute version -Biblical
I have also added some extra slides on attitudes to Social Media at boardroom level.
Also there is a slide of Resources slide for links to keyword tools, Datadial’s Reputation Management tool and a few other links worth looking at.
Thanks
Rob
Following on from my post after Day One…
The Best
John Hicks giving his talk (image from m-king)
My favourite today definitely has to be Aral Balkan‘s session. He really knows how to present and make learning fun! It was very inspiring and encouraging on how to make your designs that little bit better by adding an emotional element to your apps/sites. He got the longest applause I have heard at a conference!
But then the loveliest thing was when he acknowledged my tweet of thanks on twitter and his blog. What an awesome guy!
The Worst
umm…
ermmm….
ahhh…
Nope… I really can’t think of anything for The Worst… did I miss something?
Honestly, the whole thing was amazing. I’m really shattered now, but it’s a good tired because I’m also really excited to start doing so many of the things that were presented.
If you couldn’t make it to FOWD this year, I would definitely recommend buying the video pass. It would be really worth it. I’m looking forward to the videos myself because I wanted to go to both tracks so many times today… shame we can’t clone ourselves when the need arises!
In summary…
(I’ll add links to slideshows and downloads as I get them)
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Progressive CSS3 Design (Molly Holzschlag)
Molly presented the plans and workings of the W3C and asked for any web designers who are keen to be voices to the W3C. What I found most exciting was her mention of IE9′s capabilities – it sounds like my optimism about CSS3 in IE9 may be closer to reality than I first hoped!
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What will Web Design Look Like in Two Years? (Simon Collison)
According to Colly it’s going to evolve quite a bit, growing up and getting comfortable with the medium of being online. For example, no longer will we mimic tables with paper and coffee stains; but instead embrace the pixel, the grid and typography. Of course this does require a more mature understanding of grid systems and design fundamentals, but this will make the professionally designed sites stand out from the sea of online content.
View Slides & Examples -
The Art of Emotional Design: A story of pleasure, joy, and delight. (Aral Balkan)
As I mentioned above, the whole presentation was a pleasure, joy and delight. Aral showed us examaples of how he has made his apps come to life by adding in little emotional attachments, like his famous bird turning red and singing in Feathers.
Read Keir Whitaker’s write up on Think Vitamin -
How to Build a HTML5 Website – Live Demo (Bruce Lawson)
Up until today I haven’t dabbled too much into HTML5, but Bruce did a live demo which helped to demystify it all. HTML5 is definitely going to be mainstream, and soon. The capabilities of it are awesome, and it is so easy to still support older systems that don’t understand it. In particular I’m looking forward to the day where we can use the <video> tag without having to provide a Flash alternative for IE.
http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/
Another good introduction from Smashing Magazine -
Rethink Your Job (and Earn More Money). (Brett Welch)
Everyone knows Web stuff is becoming increasingly commodised, but where the value remains is in expert knowledge, advice and helping your client’s goals. Brett also emphasised starting small, growing in iterations, and the importance of having a marketing plan in place following the site’s launch. We all really admired him for not actually plugging his product in the talk.
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Icon Design (Jon Hicks)
I don’t do icon design very often, so it was really valuable to hear these tips and guides for when I do need to. It’s also very exciting to hear about future abilities like using SVG for icons.
http://www.hicksdesign.co.uk/ -
Blending Usability Testing with Interface Design, Prototyping and Rapid Iteration (Dan Rubin)
I always want to do more and more usability testing, and Dan’s excellent talk really got me excited about it even more. He talked us through a case study of how they had assessed a current site, found the good things and bad things about it, and came up with some suggested changes. He then detailed their technique for testing the changes and how they were able to accurately test them while keeping it in a format that was easy to change and adapt as they went (basically using image maps with an exported Photoshop comp). Definitely a great technique for getting the most value from a test.
The Future of Web Design conference is amazing this year – here’s a quick update after Day One.
The Best
jQuery for Designers session
The format of this year’s conference is tons better than last year. The atmosphere of the Brewery is great, and the food (which is also outstanding) at the break times gives people a chance to talk to each other and network. It has been much easier this year to meet people and talk to other designers.
It’s really hard to choose a favourite speaker because they’re all so great! I think jQuery for Designers is probably going to have the most impact on my day to day work because it has encouraged me to take a new step into jQuery.
The design clinic time was great, and it was a wonderful opportunity to talk to designers you really respect. I got some great feedback from Mike Kus, who has to be one of my all time favourite web designers because of his original work.
The Worst
Definitely had to be font.com’s sponsor slot. Not only were they the ugliest slides of the day, the introduction was dated (we know about using @font-face already) and then followed by a whole sales pitch on why we should all buy their service. It was very amusing to see the tweets coming in during the talk!
Don’t get me wrong, their service is great and no doubt I’ll be using it soon, but the talk and presentation definitely gets labelled the worst, after everything else was so amazing.
More to come tomorrow, but in summary…
(I’ll add links to slideshows and downloads as I get them)
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Play. Destroy. Create. from Brendan Dawes
I loved his reference to maths and nature, and seeing how he had turned that into something new. It’s about observing things like the trend of technical stuff to non techy people. Some of the things he was showing was simply play to explore and provoke reactions. He encouraged us to play, have passion and love what we do!
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How to Get Started with CSS3 from Dan Cederholm
After doing a lot of CSS3 work already, I wasn’t expecting to get much from this session, but was very pleasantly surprised. I now have a list of things I want to try, tools to use, and new ideas generated from this session. Definitely ideal for people new to CSS3, but still lots of great stuff in there for those of us who have already been using it.
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jQuery for Designers: All You Need to Code (Remy Sharp)
Very inspiring stuff, and I’m now eager to take the plunge into jQuery!
Download slideshow
http://jqueryfordesigners.com -
Accessibility in Web Design Robin Christopherson
I’ve seen Robin speak a few times, and each time he has something new and very informative. This time he encouraged mobile versions of websites, as the format of them is also much more accessible. He also encouraged the use of Text Captcha because it’s accessible, free and offers a comprehensive API. You Tube are now also providing automatic captioning on their videos!
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Learning to Love Humans: Emotional Interface Design (Aarron Walter)
Making things usable is not enough – we should also make them enjoyable. Don’t compromise on the base needs for t»he user, but look for ways you can add that extra layer of emotive enjoyment – like the Mailchimp quotes!
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UX Masterclass with Web Standardistas Web Standardistas
This flowed on really well from the Emotional Interface Design and looked at the secret for making something that is usable really great. The secret is YOU!
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Smart Tips for Wireframing Brad Haynes
Wireframes help communication, focus and workflow. This session was a good practical reminder of why we should be using them and looked at which techniques to use where, including some good tools.
As much effort needs to be put into offline follow-up as your website itself. You are the main event of your website, and whether or not you follow up enquiries is a huge reflection on your organisation as a whole.
Check out this comic from The Brads
I like to use a website contact form because they’re quick and easy. It’s not always convienient to pick up the phone, especially when you may be on hold for half an hour.
Lately I have had a couple of enquiries for Camden City Council. Although I get an instant confirmation email (from no-reply@camden.gov.uk) it includes a disclaimer reading “If you do not hear directly from the team involved within 10 working days you may contact the Central Complaints unit direct on….”
If it was suitable for me to call them then I would have in the first place, but for whatever reason I have chosen to email them, and it’s not unreasonable to expect a reply. I still have not had a proper response from them about my enquiries.
Likewise, an enquiry to Traid for some photos following a revamp event I attended fell on deaf ears – I didn’t even get an aknowledgement.
These are just 2 examples; unanswered enquiries happen all the time. It’s so common that you’re probably thinking “Well that’s what you get from filling in an enquiry form.”
But I have huge faith in websites, and I know encouraging contact is the main goal of many sites – so why is this rudeness acceptable and website enquiries go ignored?
Janey at Basically Black is an example of how to do offline follow-through well. We recently did a survey of her customers and almost everyone said how friendly and helpful she had been with choosing sizes, placing orders and managing returns.
It’s no surprise she’s seeing a lot of repeat customers and verbal recommendations – and it’s a shame others are missing the trick.
Datadial are pleased to announce the launch of their online reputation monitoring tool. Designed for business and agencies that wish to monitor the online profiles of their brand, products, key staff and competitors.
We have designed the user interface to be as intuitive as possible, with an emphasis on speed of use and productivity, while at the same time a feature-rich interface gives in-depth data about the source of mentions and enables you to tag, comment or share mentions for further action.
- This service should be seen as part of any effective online marketing strategy.
- You will be able to track and measure what is being said.
- Armed with this information you will be able to see the effectiveness of your campaigns, gain customer insight, learn how your brand, products and services are being perceived and also join in the conversation and, if necessary, react to any adverse publicity.
- The results will help you with planning for future campaigns, enabling fine-tuning and therefore saving you money.
At this point the software is still at a beta stage, so we are inviting as much user feedback and suggestions as possible on design and functionality. Signup to track one phrase is free, so please go here to signup for an account.
Thank you to Steff for passing on this lovely graphic illustrating the differences between Helvetica and Arial.