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I just think that not enough people are seeing the silver lining. Sure, they see the pouring rain right before they complain about catching a cold after trawling the high street for 5 hours on a Saturday. I think it’s great, maybe even a blessing, that people grumble about the horrific conditions – for online merchants wanting to capitalise, it’s not far from terrific and I’ll tell you why:

• Road Traffic
• Parking Charges
• Nowhere to actually park
• Lack of public toilets
• Wayward germs flying about the communal air
• Being bombarded with enough promotion and advertising to last you a lifetime
• There not being a basket left, or having to use that tyrant shopping trolley with wheels that have a life of their own
• Screaming children zooming about the floorspace
• Queuing for longer than should be legally possible
• Having to put up with some idiot using a card for a less than £2 purchase
• Having to deal with being classed as the idiot for using a card for a less than £2 purchase

You get the idea…but, if you do get the idea, why is your site still a part of the problem, rather than the solution? The points above may highlight the things that make people more Scrooge than Santa over the holidays, but if my virtual reality mirrors my reality in terms of these horrors, you’ve just doubled my stress. Let’s explore this with equivalents:

• Road Traffic
  

Overload of traffic causing your website to crash

A different kind of traffic, but even though I’m not stuck in my car in the middle of the A4, I still cant get to where I want to with your substandard server. Upgrade, to a service that doen’t fail under the pressure of more than 100 people accessing your site, or I wont be coming back.

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• Parking Charges

Hidden charges (VAT, delivery, overseas)

After a swift parallel park into a spot so tight Hamilton would be impressed, the one thing to ruin that triumph is the £2.50 p/h charge for the space, up until 8pm (even on a Sunday these days) when I know that I’ll be at least 2 hours and when I know that the shops close at 8. I’d be happy if council understood that since I’ll be blowing my wages in this area in that time, clearly promoting the district, parking should be free, or reasonable, or well communicated. In comparison, only too many times have I bought something online, only to be faced with a tubby postman telling me I can’t have the product unless I cough up another 20 quid. Again, I won’t be shopping there again.

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• Nowhere to park

Nowhere to be seen

If I cant park, I wont park. If I don’t park, I drive elsewhere, which means wherever I intended to go, changes. If your SEO sucks, I wont find your site. If I don’t find your site, it doesn’t exist, at least not to me. Sort that out, please.

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• Lack of public toilets

A “timeout/start again” situation

When your bursting for the loo, in a shop, restaurant or wherever and there isn’t one, you’ll find one somewhere…else. The only thing is that, if you need to “go” before you’ve paid, eaten or whatever – and there’s a queue and you leave – you join the end of the queue and you deal with that. You might not join, if you grow annoyed at the fact that establishment doesn’t provide a toilet and the one you found sells an equivalent of what you want. If the website I am on “times-out” too quickly, and I have to keep starting again, I won’t be coming back.

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• Wayward germs flying about the communal air

Your site looks as though it needs a disclaimer

Someone coughs into the air and does not cover their mouth. Disgusting. There’s a possibility you could catch a cold now, or the flu. Similarly, if I enter your spammy little site and it is complete with badly written (illegal) paid-for reviews where everything has a 5-star rating, something needs to be downloaded in order for the site to run, some software with techy jargon is installed onto my computer and the checkout system sends me to ‘Timbuktu’ to enter my personal details and information…I wont be coming back.

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• Being bombarded with enough promotion and advertising to last you a lifetime

Adsense, Wordads, Adcenter…

A simple walk through Regent street at Christmas is enough to make you dizzy. Between the flashing lights and the flashing ads, its a wonder anyone  can walk in a straight line. On your site, too many ads on a page is bad for SEO. Google has already sent in the panda a few times to teach naughty webmasters a lesson on this, so why are there still pages like this?

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• There not being a basket left, or having to use that tyrant shopping trolley with a life of it’s own

I can’t carry my goods like this!

My previous post made my feelings clear on the dodgy checkout process online – but I need to get there first. If there are problems with the process of carrying my goods; disappearing basket items, not calculating bulk goods so I lose out on a discount, only telling me there is no stock for that particular product until I am at checkout – I wont be coming back.

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• Screaming children zooming about the floorspace

I didn’t ask for that noise, thanks

The first thing I do when I load up a site blaring any music at me I didn’t expect or ask for, is click “close.” I don’t want that. I click close for the same reason Vue have created screenings for movies that only over 18′s can attend after a certain time at night -  not because the movie is unsuitable for youngins but more because that crowd doesn’t want to share a room with said youngins. Choice. if you are going to have pop-up videos, music streaming from the site or anything, I urge you to give me a choice of stopping these streams or, I wont be coming back.

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• Queuing for longer than should be legally possible
• Having to put up with some idiot using a card for a less than £2 purchase
  

Quick and easy please

Amazon’s “1-click” is great because it’s quick. Amazon have blended so many desirable e-commerce features into one site that it’s so easy to spend money on things you wont read or use after the initial excitement of it being a bargain has passed. Sites selling me anything that boxes me into one mode of payment I am not used to, sites being badly configured so that I have to click back & forth, re-enter details or open new pages in tabs rather than a pop-up window, cause me extra hassle. You could only really get away with this before the Amazon’s and the eBay’s of the world were born. Cause me any unnecessary hassle and, I wont be coming back.

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Outrageous extra’s

• Having to deal with being classed as the idiot for using a card for a less than £2 purchase

If I’m the person being huffed and puffed at because I don’t have the change or don’t want to split a £20 note on something that’s 49p – the huffs & puffs are as far as it goes. If online, I’m buying something for 49p and the shipping is £4.99, something is wrong with that picture. Please allow shipping to reflect the cost of the product in question. People can spot a rip-off from afar and if like me, they feel cheated – they wont be coming back.

Check out the infographic below for some interesting and helpful Christmas e-com shopping stats:

Infograpic by Deals.org.uk

I hope this post inspired you. Happy Holidays!

1. Where are you based?
2. What kind of business are you?
3. How many people work in the business?
4. What other services do you offer besides SEO?
5. How many clients do you currently manage?
6. Do you contract your clients for a set period of time?
7. What is your usual client contract arrangement (i.e. how do you charge for your work)?
8. Your average charge per month for SEO services?
9. Typical client retention period?
10. Biggest issues facing your business today?
11. Biggest barrier to sales?
12. Biggest source of leads?
13. What activities are included in a typical campaign?
14. Link building tactics- what tactics do you employ for the majority of your campaigns?
15. Do you buy links? (what SEO survey would be complete without this question? )
16. What 3rd party tools do you subscribe to?
17. What keyword tools do you use primarily?
18. How long on average do you spend reporting to a single client?
19. What metrics do you include in your standard reports?
20. How did you get into SEO?
21. What skills do you consider to be the most important skills for an SEO?
22. Have you ever had a site penalised?

The results of the survey are pretty interesting- take a look for yourself below:

Click to enlarge

Embed this:
<a href="http://www.datadial.net/">Datadial</a><a href="http://www.datadial.net/blog/index.php/2011/12/06/seo-industry-survey-results-infographic/"><img src="http://www.datadial.net/blog_content/uploads/2011/12/seo-survey-results.png" alt="SEO industry survey results" /></a>
We’ll be releasing the source data as promised in the next few days. Let us know how your company compares to these averages in the comments below!

One of my colleagues here at Datadial talked about the peculiar QR code and its uses previously on this blog. Fast forward to now and it seems to have evolved (or caught up with Japan who created them, since technically we live in the stone ages in comparison).

eBay are getting in on the act…

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A post from the good folks at Econsultancy informs us of a new-age phenomenon set up by eBay, that will see customers sent online to buy goods only after scanning their bar codes with QR compatible devices.

After reading it,  I started thinking about the future of shopping as a whole, with Google taking over the virtual world and taking on everyone from Apple (with Google Music) to Facebook (with Google+) are we living in a world where soon instead of buying food in-store we will be asked to produce our phones first, to then scan a code, pay online and wait for said food to be delivered? Could it become as outrageous as to be used in convenience stores for quick snacks like a chocolate bar or a packet of crisps?

If this is the present already, what does the future hold…?

Both funny and annoyingly true right? …and that’s just online shopping. If we are entering into a world of offline/online mergers what else could happen? I mean sure, in theory there are many problems it could solve:

• Store space would no longer be an issue (just like it no longer was for Cassette’s, CD’s and vinyl after iTunes was born)
• No heavy bags to carry home
• Lesser feelings of guilt because money becomes virtual too; if we can’t see it disappear from our purses then we might forget what we spent
• Scheduling goods to arrive at a time that works best for us

However, what if the downfalls included…

• The wrong item turning up at the door
• The annoyance of having to exchange an item and there being no store front to take it to (or in-store employee to blame for the journey)
• No bag to carry (everybody enjoys a little logo-bragging from time to time)
• That silly little “sorry, you were out when we called” card that the postman surely writes before he even knocks the door in anticipation of you taking longer than he’d like to walk down the stairs & answer it…

To conclude, I agree that this pop-up store (due to launch near Oxford Street, London on Dec 1st) is a great PR stunt for eBay, but is there any real use for the QR code if most people are happy just Googling a URL? – Or perhaps it’s just me that really dislikes the matrix-esque appearance of those ugly squares being forced on the nation…

The data cover 81.9m visits to merchants and 1.57m sales. Admittedly most of affiliate traffic is usually acquisition traffic but the results are also borne out by other data from other suppliers.

Fashion sites showed the highest conversion rates showing double the percentage of total sales of other sectors. This is not true for other devices.

Ipad users are converting at a higher rate than desktop users despite a poorer user experience in some cases.  Why might this be so?

According to Affiliate Window’s Matt Swan:

 iPad users typically have higher amounts of disposable income, know what they want to purchase and are using their iPad’s to transact. We typically see that a lot of desktop traffic is where consumers are in the research phase. This traffic is not necessarily going to convert and is why we are seeing lower conversion rates through desktops.

In addition, the way in which people are using Ipads and tablets may also impact this. People use their iPads at home, perhaps browsing while in bed on a Sunday morning, or on the sofa while watching TV. In short, it’s more of a lean-back experience.  The fact that jumping between websites on an iPad is also slightly more painful on an Ipad may diminish the desire to price compare in great detail, particularly if price is not the largest decision factor.

Only 16% of companies are conducting any kind of usability testing on tablets, but these stats show that retailers (ad fashion brands especially) need to take notice of the iPad.

The update places more importance on the relevancy of a landing page when calculating Quality Score- a component in the formula which determines where your ad displays in search results and your cost per click when competing with other advertisers. Essentially- it’s now more important than ever to ensure that landing pages used for PPC are as relevant and optimised as possible- rewarded by higher positions with lower cost-per-click costs.

In an interview with Search Engine Land’s contributor Pamela Parker, Google’s Director of Product Management- Jonathan Alferness suggests that the current user experience for AdWords users could be improved:

What we’ve seen is that there are ads available in the auction that are as good a quality as the top ads. But the landing pages — the merchant sites, the advertiser landing pages — are of much higher quality than the ads that we see at the top of our auction… This means the user experience isn’t what it could be…

In the end, we believe that this will result in better quality experience for the users.

How will this change affect you?

With added emphasis on landing page Quality Score, it’s important to be aware of this change and now is the time to assess your current landing pages. We can expect to see an initial change within AdWords as this change initially rolls out to the rest of the world:

As the changes roll out, some campaigns will see variation in keyword Quality Scores and typical ad position. Within a couple weeks, things should stabilize and we expect most campaigns will not see a significant change in overall performance.

Past this, sites with lower quality landing pages may expect to see lower quality score values, lower ad positions, and possibly higher cost-per-click prices when competing against advertisers with better quality landing pages.

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Are you aware just how many kinds of links that are relevant to building the Page Rank of your own website? Are you convinced that  mindlessly spamming Joe Bloggs’ blog (see what I did there?  Ha! ) with comments totally unrelated to the topic at hand, in hopes to receive some free link juice in the form of a back-link is the answer to success?

If this still works on particular blogs, chances are they are not very high quality ones, are probably unmonitored, and are places where your comment & anchor text are left to dwell in the company of other usually very dodgy peers.

So what other links exist & how do you create them?

Here is a list of a variety of different links available to a website with a quick breakdown of how they work:

Reciprocal Links

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As suggested by name, these are links gained in return for giving links. This can be achieved by guest posting for instance, where you write content for another blogger which they include on their blog and somewhere within the body of that content, you include a link back to your website. Usually the blogger writes some content for you too, leaving their link; hence it’s reciprocal as you are exchanging links.

One Way Links

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As their name suggests, these are the opposite of reciprocal links. You receive a link to your site but do not give a link from your site. Think of it like following a celebrity Twitter profile that doesn’t follow you back, the numbers show the power here. Search engines catch onto this and class your site as valuable and useful because other sites wish to promote you asking for nothing in return. Ranks can dramatically improve with such links and they also help to generate a good amount of direct traffic to you.

If you can achieve these naturally you are on to a winner.

Authority Links

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An authority link is a back-link from a site Google trusts in terms of its Algorithm. Trust comes from a site being detected as an authority (because of its page rank, it’s number of strong back-links and many other factors) the beauty of such links is that the sites they are placed on  get more visibility in search engine results for keywords that are both related and non-related to the sites topic.

Directory Links

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These are links submitted to and contained in web directories which are an online resource specialising in linking to other web sites and categorizing those links. Links can be searched for and found on in a way similar to a search engine search engine however this is not to confuse the two as unlike a search engine, which uses automated methods to index it’s web-links, directories usually use humans, you know people – to do this. This is good news in terms of quality, as someone actually deciding that a site is quality leaves less room for undeserved sites to rank highly through use of “spammy” techniques.

‘Run-of-Site’ Links

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Less popular in recent times, these kinds of links are (or were) in used in footers on websites or links in “blog-rolls” usually in seen in the left of right panel of a bloggers site. As the site grew, gaining back-links and content, the worth of your link would grow too. The name ‘Run of Site’ comes from the fact that the link remains in the same place throughout the entire website (in that left panel or footer).

This had its time. A person could have their link planted on a website that grew to have 1, 000 pages & the link would count as 1, 000 back-links. However, search engines smartened up which has resulted in any one link only counting once in these positions.

Edu. & Gov. Links

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The birth of the Internet came about from successful research funded primarily by the American government and educational institutions who shared information with each other.  When it was ready to give to the wider world, these government and educational sites were its main content and were later followed by directories and search engines which were initially built to catalogue these sites.

The older algorithms were less advanced than today’s and once it became obvious that the best way to increase Page Rank was through linking, techies started using edu. And gov. links to spring to the top in terms of ranking for keywords. This has changed however as webmasters began to crack down on people spamming for links, making it difficult to achieve these days.

‘Presell’ Page Links

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Without the jargon, these are paid links.
A presell page is one that you create yourself, complete with titles, descriptions, content and of course, links!
You then hand over cash to similar sites in your niche and hope for them to put it up on their domain, link to it from one of their pages and pop it on their site-map too. It totally goes against Google’s guidelines because unethical methods such as ‘cloaking’ are usually used among other things so probably isn’t something you want to be getting into.

Dofollow links

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The opposite of nofollow links, (which are crawled by “spiders” in the same way, but are not given any “link-juice” or value once the nofollow tag is added because search engines do not follow them) these are links that webmasters allow spiders to crawl with the intention of giving some authority to the link. When spiders crawl a dofollow link, that link gains a little “juice” because search engines are being told that that site is trustworthy, which helps its Page Rank. Over time, as you build up a list of links to your site that are “followable” your site will grow in authority. You are likely to find dofollow links in the comments section of blogs and profile links on some social media websites.

RSS Links

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RSS feeds can be rather helpful in aiding your SEO and enhancing your ranking efforts because of the fact that they get picked up by search engines quite quickly. Feed results can appear for the keywords that your website is ranking for and often such feeds are actually more likely to appear than a regular SEO result for other pages on your site simply because news feeds are updated more frequently (think blogs). To achieve this, ensure you have a feed/subscription option on your site and ensure this is not written in javascript, as search engines cannot crawl these.

Article Marketing/Author Biography Links

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This can certainly be effective if the article you write is a good one, contains the link to your website in the biography snippet and gets a considerable amount of traffic. This is because  the more your article is linked to acorss the web, the higher the amount of links there will be to your site from other peoples sites which is the key to ranking success.

Three-Way Links

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These links work the same way as reciprocal links whereby each site links to another. With this kind of link however, there is a third site in the equation and the process works by website A linking to website B, and website B not linking back to A. Website B does however, link to website C and instead of C linking back to B, it links to website A (see image above). Reciprocal links are very common and it isn’t unlikely that search engines aware of them might question how natural they are over time. The 3-way link provides the same benefits whilst looking as natural as possible to search engines, which will improve your site rankings.

So, now you know how to ‘think link’ – go get ‘em!

Credit SeoMoz

Firstly we need to look at how people actually use search engines. In their early experiences with search portals users tend to put in short, generic terms into the search engine. As users become more skilled in searching for the items or information that they want, their search terms become more specific and descriptive.
Instead of using short, generic keywords when searching for a pair of shoes for instance, the user might be inclined to be more descriptive of the type of shoes they are looking for using far more adjectives, e.g. light brown, leather, high heeled ladies court shoes, in the hope that it would be more specific to get exactly what they want.

It is also worth considering the search buying cycle as this especially impacts upon conversions.

Firstly think about how you yourself might behave online when you’re researching buying a product.

Taking a typical online purchase for something like a television. You might start with a search query for a very general phrase like TV or television. You’ll see that there are several irrelevant results for our purpose such as the BBC and ITV results, but using the informational properties such as Wikipedia, or the Google shopping results you may then make a decision that you’re looking for a plasma TV rather than an LCD TV.

Of course you may also decide to visit one of the commercial websites listed for these queries, or buy from the PPC listings, but it’s more likely you’ll want to research a bit more first.

Next you’ll probably search for Plasma TV, this is looking a bit more promising, there are several relevant shopping results some reviews websites and a few more relevant commercial sites appearing. After reading a few of the sites you decide that the Panasonic 50PZ800B looks fairly impressive and you want to find out a bit more about it.

Of course you search for it, possibly adding terms like review, test or comparison to bring up the more informational resources.

It’s about now that you feel you’re happy with your choice, you have compared it against other makes and models, you’re happy that it’s what you’re looking for and you want to go ahead and purchase.

To find online shops selling that specific model you may use buying trigger search terms such as buy or cheap, or possibly even adding geographic search terms such as London or UK.

As a site owner you need to be prepared to be targeting as many of these longer tail phrases as you can with your main site, no easy task when you don’t even know what they are!

Try to develop good (great) content on your site, category and product pages warrant special attention for this. Getting this right will result in high levels of targeted, focused, converting visitors.

Those retailers interested in applying to become a trusted store will need to furnish Google with certain consumer information as the company is of the opinion that retailer’s data is more trustworthy than customer surveys. In order to qualify for the Trusted Stores status internet retailers will need to demonstrate good customer service and a record of shipping goods on time. In terms of customer service retailers must have evidence of resolving any customer issues and disputes in a timely manner.

When customers move their mouse over the Trusted Stores badge, they will see the store’s customer service and shipping grades. Unlike the Google Checkout the company states, there is no connection between the new program and Google Adwords. Google further reiterated that the program is still in its early stages and too soon to speculate on how the program might be enhanced and expanded.

With respect to the purchase protection package mentioned earlier, it appears to work in a similar way to credit card companies that extend manufacturer’s purchase warranties. Google however, does not offer guarantees rather the $1,000 is potentially money back where retailers fail to resolve problems. The customer can only benefit from this package if they have chosen the free purchase protection option. The consumer should contact the retailer first where there is a problem, if this is not resolved, then the customer can call on Google to deal with it, or be able to claim money back. The fact is that Google is capable of getting retailers to find quick problem resolutions.

While Google have stated that their motive for introducing the program was to increase buyer confidence in online retailers, some may suspect the company of having hidden motives. Notions of a future tie in with Checkout or Adwords are at the moment, pure speculation. As yet it’s unclear precisely what data Google will be capturing, but if customers choose the personal protection, the retailer is more likely to have a record of the transactions.

credit

When it comes to setting up and establishing a local business, there are a number of milestones. Getting your business letterhead, a merchant bank account and customers who aren’t family members, are just some of the hurdles that spring to mind. As soon as your business has grown sufficiently to warrant a mention on Google Places or Yelp, then you start to get customers’ versions or reviews of their experiences. The comments on your Yelp page should make you smile due to your conviction that you’ve provided people with excellent service.

The initial glow of customer reviews may not last, while it’s great to read the rave reviews about your business, it’s likely that you’ll see some that are bad, and possibly even a fiction of the writer’s imagination. The following should give you an inkling of the experiences of review sites that have befallen business consulting clients of mine.

• Customer is unhappy not to receive a refund when they have eaten their meal at an eating establishment, and to further his argument, adds other fictional complaints.
• Competitors who believe that bad mouthing someone else’s business is a valid marketing strategy.
•  A negative review that was actually about a business other than yours

We could go on, but you get the picture. To some extent the kind of reviews you get will vary depending on what type of business you’re in and where it’s located. In some cities bar owners try to get along by arranging to have special nights or offers at different times, while in others the thing is to try and beat your competitors to the floor. No matter what your experience, you will need to find means of dealing with reviews of your business, and below are a few tips.

1. Even if a Customer Declares War, They are not Your Enemy

When there is a customer dispute, especially in the current economic crisis, and following reports of labor abuses, the business owner is always in the wrong.

Don’t respond to negative reviews and even downright lies with more of the same, if you do, you will harm your business even further. Take an approach that assumes the customer is genuinely mistaken, and maintain a professional manner.

2. Offer to Find a Solution to the Problem

If you want to safeguard your reputation, don’t admit to any wrongdoing, but offer to help the customer with their problem. If you’ve had a false detrimental review, try responding with something like the following (depending on what business you’re in)

Hi Paul, sorry to hear you thought we overcharged for your Pizza. We do our best to ensure that customers get exactly the toppings they order and all the prices are listed on our menu. We’re actually on the list good value for money pizza parlours. Please contact me, either by coming into the pizza parlour or giving me a call on the above number to see whether we can resolve this situation. Look forward to hearing from you, Steve.

If you already know the customer, it’s probably easy to get hold of them, sort out the problem and you may even persuade them to take the review down. You need to be careful when you contact a customer directly as it requires more tact than you might need on a review site, so take a sympathetic approach to the issue.

3. Be Ready to Accept that There Might be a Real Problem

While I’m not suggesting that the customer is right, if there is even a hint that the complaint is legitimate, then you still have to resolve the situation, and you need to ensure that the same thing never happens with another customer. You may find that your staff need retraining or you might even have to let a person go. Managing and training staff is extremely important, especially when they are in constant contact with customers and only earning minimum wage.

Perhaps your ingredients are not as good as you thought and you either need to improve them, change the supplier, or lower the price you charge. Sometimes it is possible to contact the review site and have a review removed, especially if the reviewer seems to be making a personal attack on you alone. If you have lots of positive reviews than the impact of one bad one should be minimal, ask all your satisfied customers to leave reviews as this will further boost your credibility against the occasional bad one.

More than 90% of the annual cost of spending on paid search came from PCs, tablet users spent only 2% and the other 5% cam from smartphone users. The trend tracking was undertaken in the third quarter. According to the report the CTR or click through rate for the ads on tablets was much higher than on PCs. However, when it came to the advertiser’s average CPC or post per click the rate on tablets was 29% less than on smartphones and PCs. The volume of clicks for advertisers with Bing and Yahoo was up 43%, yet there was a drop of 10% in CPC.

The growing use of tablets could mean a shift in advertisers’ strategies for paid search ads, according to Ed Stevenson, the Managing Director of EMEA and APAC for Martin Software He further added may change their strategies for advertising and spending to cope with the shift in browsing habits to things like the iPad. More importantly, advertisers may need to work on device specific programs to improve results. Coincidentally this report was released at the same time as the quarterly report from Google, stating that in the three months finishing the end of September, earnings rose to £6.16bn ($9.72bn), a rise of 33%.