For a long time I was very negative about email marketing. For me it felt utterly outbound – buy a database, fire out a sales message, cross your fingers and hope that shear weight of numbers will see you through. No value. No relationship. No point.

I was wrong on two fronts. For a start, my pious attitude towards traditional outbound marketing was naive. There’s a reason why for decades outbound methods were the dominant form of marketing – when done well, they work. And no matter how fluffy and inbound we might like to think of ourselves nowadays, we all should all have a couple of strong outbound strings to our bow or we’ll be playing half a tune.

My second error was to draw such a distinct separation between the two models. Most comprehensive inbound marketing campaigns have an outbound component and vice versa. Email marketing is a cracking example of such conflation. Purchased databases may feel incredibly outbound but what about preference centres where visitors to your site manually opt in to receive specific information of their choice? If they found your site through your organic presence in the search engines or social media and signed up to a particular set of emails entirely of their own volition, then this all feels rather inbound doesn’t it? And then there’s the execution. Inbound marketing is built upon engagement and relationships. Can this realistically be achieved via such a seemingly uninteractive means of marketing as email? Well let’s consider a few examples of when it’s actually done well:

- Promotional offers – people love deals. Offer a voucher code or a coupon to someone who thinks they may have bought that product/service at full price anyway and they will thank you for it. As a red wine lover if a wine company sends me a brilliant deal for a case of really great red wines, in no way do I consider it spam. Targeting is the key.
- Invitations to free educational events – whether it’s an offline event or an virtual webinar, if somebody invites me to an educational event with considerable relevance to my business, then I’m only too happy to open it. Presumably the event or webinar will itself contain a strong sales message, but the email is asking for nothing. It represents value without cost.
- Referral requests – if I know lots other businesses or consumers that I believe could truly benefit from your products / services and you offer me an iPad to recommend you, then that’s value for all concerned. Value for me in the form of my iPad and value to my contact as I believe they really will benefit from the purchase.

So that’s the key – offer value first, sell second. And the secret to offering value is to truly understand your audience. If I don’t drink wine or if the educational event isn’t relevant to my business or I don’t know anyone that could realistically benefit from your products or services, then the emails are spam. They won’t work, you’ll cheapen your brand and risk getting yourself blacklisted.

What this all tells us is that when done well outbound email marketing is actually very inbound, and with email continuing to be the primary means of communication for the vast majority of businesses as well as a substantial chunk of consumers, surely no inbound strategy can be complete without it.

Dan

At the start of every campaign the question is always raised “What can I expect in the way of traffic and conversions, and by when?” It’s a reasonable question and certainly one I would want an answer to, but is there really a way to accurately generate such forecasts and, if so, what is their practical value?

Below is a process I run through to calculate such estimates. In truth projecting traffic and conversion figures is more of an art than a science, but I find this a useful guide to ensure my colouring stays well within the lines. It is not quick, but then keyword research never should be. This is your chance to explore deep within the search market, learn all about the target audience and uncover a couple of gold mines where opportunity exceeds competition.

Before you begin you’ll first need to decide on the time frames. Clients will naturally tend to be in a bit of a hurry but just keep in mind that the shorter the time frame the lower and less certain the projected figures. Typically I would aim for 12 months. After all, this is a long term vision and if they can’t see past month 3 then the campaign is going to be more about exploiting short term loop holes than developing a sustainable, brand-orientated strategy.

1. First, go to the Google Keyword Tool
   
2. Decide on exact, phrase or broad

   As with the entire process, there is no definitively right option here; just varying degrees of wrongness. You need to pair your natural intuition for the market (assuming you don’t have prior experience of it) with your 12 month content plan for the website. If by the end of the year you know you will have created hundreds if not thousands of pages, each with hundreds if not thousands of words, and more importantly know that the long tail traffic will be of real value (for many websites it isn’t), then you absolutely need to take into account the Broad search volume. You may do this for just one term if you feel it effectively encapsulates everything contained within the website, or if you feel the categories covered are too distinct then you may have to add up the broad searches for each separately.

   If, alternatively, we are talking about a small brochure site that has a limited number of landing pages each targeting a small number of specific short tail terms, then you’re more likely to add up the Exact or Phrase search volumes (the difference being that Phrase also includes search terms that add words onto the beginning or the end, such as “best widescreen tv’s uk” rather than just “widescreen tv’s”) for each of those terms.

   You now have your monthly potential search market audience for the website.

3. Estimate the proportion that is relevant

   You may feel that every last drop of the audience you’ve just calculated is relevant, but from my experience this is rarely the case, particularly if you’ve used Broad. We’re currently developing a website all about planets and Google’s Broad search volume may take into account all searches of the word “Mars” when calculating the broad figure, but what about all the people who were actually searching for Mars the company?

   Even with Exact and Phrase search volumes at least a small proportion is likely to be irrelevant. The best thing to do is search for the term and see what appears. If you find anything unrelated to your website on the first page then that’s probably a sign that a proportion of your audience may be looking for something different.

   Multiply the total potential audience (from point 2) by the average % you feel will be relevant. You now have your monthly potential relevant search market audience for the website.

4. Estimate your ability to hit page 1

   Realistically, what percentage of your content is going to hit page 1 within the 12 month time frame (I limit it to page 1 results for simplicity as the click through rates on page 2 onwards are typically very small)? If it’s just a few short tail terms then you may think they all will. If, on the other hand, it’s a big information site and you’re more about the long tail, then there is no way they will all hit page one. You need to use your best judgement for this but ultimately it will come down to the competition in the market and aggression with which you intend to hit your link building.

   Multiply the total relevant audience (from point 3) by the % of them that you believe will hit front page within the 12 months. You now have your monthly potential relevant and achievable front page audience.

5. Estimate click throughs

   From my experience you are probably going to average around an 8% click through rate for being on page one (up to around 25% if you’re in position 1 and down to a couple of percent if you’re in position 8-10. Note these figures may be higher if there are no paid results). If you are just targeting a small number of terms and you have absolute confidence in your ability to smash the SEO, then you may go with the top end of the scale. However, if you’re going broad or basing the figures on exact or phrase match across lots of different landing pages, then maybe you assume an average of a mid-position on the page, hence why I generally suggest around 8%.

   Multiply the total realistic front page audience (from point 4) by the percentage that you believe will be clicked on. You now have your monthly potential visitor volume after 12 months.

6. Estimate conversion rates

   First of all you must decide exactly what a conversion is; a purchase? An email Enquiry? A number of page views? An online quote? Once you have decided on what the primary conversion goal should be, you then need to work out a realistic rate for which to aim. Needless to say this will vary enormously based on the nature of the conversion and the market in which you or your client operates. You will need to take any experience you have of the market or the target demographic and make a judgement call about what is likely, for example:
   i. Email enquiries – 2%
   ii. Ecommerce purchases – 1%
   iii. Online quotes – 6%

   Once you’ve decided on a probably conversion rate (I would definitely encourage erring on the side of caution here as clients have long memories) then multiply it by your visitor volume (from point 5). You now have your monthly potential conversion figure after 12 months.

So from your initial entry into the Google Keyword Tool, you now have a meaningful figure to present to your client. Ultimately, however, whatever findings you end up with, there is only one thing you know for certain – you still know nothing for certain. This has been a series of best guesses and judgement calls designed to give an approximate indication of what could be achieved should the data you’ve based it on be accurate (which it won’t be) and should your market remain the same (which they never do). So what’s the point?

The point is you now know 3% more than you did when you started. You’ve researched the market, doubtless uncovering opportunities and dead ends in the process, and presented your findings in a way that gives your client confidence you’re a knowledgeable, diligent and honest provider. And while you still don’t know where the campaign will take you, you at least now have some idea of where to begin….

Dan

Having worked with James Macfarlane for the last couple of years, the topic of brand is always just around the corner during any conversation on long term strategy. For a while I resisted his arguments (largely because they were littered with his ridiculous Macisms and trademark bad grammar) but since Panda my defences have weakened, and now I have to concede that I am a full convert – long term inbound marketing begins and ends with the brand.

To dismiss the brand and focus on manipulative tactics may achieve great short term results, but Google’s march towards an algorithm that successfully closes all loopholes is an unstoppable one. So now, whatever method of inbound marketing I happen to be exploring, I always try to keep the brand implications at the front of my mind. Here are a few examples:

Building your brand through the domain

I’m not talking about exact match brand domains (although there is a huge advantage to them that I’ll come onto later) but about trust and credibility. If your company name is not reflected in the cleanest and most appropriate way within the domain, then you’ve immediately got problems. Users know that, given the choice, most companies would rather have the .com, .co.uk, etc, and certainly the non-hyphenated version. As soon as they see .orgs, .info’s, lots of hyphens or strangely bastardised versions of the true company name, it tells them that the domain the company really wanted wasn’t available and that they weren’t able to purchase it off the current owner. If you’re hoping to make a powerful first impression, this isn’t a good start.

Building your brand through design

This one’s so obvious yet still neglected by a staggering number of businesses. People will reach instant conclusions based on the information your website contains and the way that information is presented. Do you want to be seen as strong, unique, memorable and professional, or would you rather come across as shambolic, confusing, boring and amateur? When you operate online, perception is reality.

Building your brand through link building

This one’s a little less obvious but if SEO is an important route to market then it’s just as vital. Google’s no mug; it knows that naturally people tend to link with brand or URL anchor text (so The SME Marketing Company or www.smemarketing.com, for example) so if these don’t account for a significant chunk of your link portfolio then your SEO campaign is going to stand out like a huge, spammy thumb. Of course, this is where exact match domains are at a huge advantage, as the name of the brand is also a primary key phrase so you can be extremely aggressive with your link building for that key phrase and still look nice and natural!

Building your brand through social media

For a start there’s brand awareness; if you’re not active where your target audience is active then you don’t exist. Even then, simply being active isn’t necessarily enough. You need to offer something beyond the norm that enhances their experience on the social media site in question. For example, does your client base have a passion that you can embrace while having a bit of fun? If you own a gym then you could run a competition via Facebook where members compete to get in the best shape of their lives over a twelve week period. Then everyone could vote by liking photos on the Fan Page with the winner receiving 6 months free membership. It would be so simple, hugely effective and completely aligned with the core values of the brand. Furthermore, from an SEO point of view Google would see you had a vibrant social community which would instantly separate your brand from the countless spammy web pages competing for the same search terms.

Building your brand through email marketing

Brand development is not achieved in one hit. I can land on the best website in a market but if it’s a onetime only encounter then the brand has failed. You’ve got to find a way to cling on to that relationship and this is where inbound email marketing comes into its own. What key phrase was entered to lead the user to the landing page? Are there resources relating to that search term that you could provide free of charge via email? This instantly establishes a connection and one through which you can nurture their perception of your brand over the months and years to come.

Building your brand through content and functionality

This is the real substance behind building your brand online. Get it right and the links, likes and lasting relationships will follow. Start by asking yourself what one piece of content/functionality would be of exceptional value to your target audience. Could it be a useful tool? Instructional videos perhaps? What about a great news section that provides outstanding information on current events in your industry? Just pick one thing and focus all your efforts on getting it right. It’ll demonstrate to both perspective clients and Google that you’re a serious authority in your market as it attracts both links and positive social and engagement signals. James did a cracking post on branding via functionality just a few weeks ago.

I’m not suggesting that short term tactics that bypass the brand don’t have their place. They often achieve the fastest results and there is no long term strategy without short term progress. What I’m saying is that when we use these easy tactics, we must recognise their inherent fragility and never view them as a basis for a long term, resilient business.

It’s not so very different to traditional marketing really. The days of quick wins online through the exploitation of loopholes are (thankfully) coming to an end. If you want to be the most successful business in your market for a sustained period of time then you have to possess the best brand in your market. It’s the way it’s always been in the offline world and I’m pleased to say we’ve gone full circle.

Dan

Trust me, CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation) is going to be one of the most important areas of Inbound Marketing over the next ten years. Many marketing fads will come and go; huge social media sites will fall out of fashion and be replaced by the next big thing, better mobile and video technology will emerge that impact our internet behaviour and who knows, maybe even SEO will become obsolete (I can’t actually believe I just said that). However, while all these variables will be bouncing around uncontrollably, the art of understanding how your audience thinks and catering to their every quirk in a way that both engages and converts – that’s going nowhere! In fact, even if websites ceased to exist as we know them today, the fundamental principles of CRO would still apply to whatever platform took their place.

So where to begin? With so much data available in Google Analytics, the issue of knowing where to kick things off is not a small one. As fascinating as it is to dig deep into the numbers, scrutinising the apparent impact of one variable against another, we do all have jobs to do. So sometimes it’s nice to know there are simple fixes for simple problems. This is by no means a comprehensive list but we have repeatedly witnessed each of the below transform the performance of sites, often in a matter of hours:

1. Telephone number in the header – This one is so basic that I nearly didn’t bother including it, but I’ve seen it transform the fortunes of so many small businesses that it just couldn’t be ignored. When you first release your website into the wilderness it can be almost impossible to make sense of what’s working and what’s not, particularly if it’s a large ecommerce site. Maybe it’s the navigation that’s confusing people, perhaps the calls to action need reviewing, maybe you’re asking for too much information from the user or not displaying important product or service information in an easily digestible format. As crude as it may sound, the addition of a massive telephone number to the header can act as a temporary (and I do mean temporary – you will have to get to grips with that other stuff soon!) solution to these common teething problems. It doesn’t matter what page they’re on – it could be the home page it could be a checkout page – if a prospective customer is having difficulties with the site then they can just pick up the phone and give you a call. As much as anything this is a brilliant way of getting feedback from the only people who matter.

2. Clear calls to action – go to your most important conversion pages on the site and see if the first thing your eye is drawn to is the primary call to action. Think contrasting colours. If you’re primary colour is blue then a blue button may look pretty but is it going to be seen??

3. How does your site score on the trustometer? – testimonials, social media integration, money back guarantee, human photos and videos, landline telephone numbers, physical addresses on the contact page, use of PayPal in ecommerce, relationships with charities. There are so many things that you can do to boost your trust score and one of the biggest barriers small sites face is trying to gain the trust of the consumer. You need to do everything in your power to reassure them you are a real “bricks and mortar” business and not some deviant teenager hoping to steal their credit card details.

4. Commitment first, effort second – people love clicking big round buttons, they love choosing the colour of their new laptop or deciding on their optional extras for their stag weekend away. They do not like being asked to enter their delivery address, read terms and conditions or struggle with barely legible captcha forms. By structuring your sales process so that the fun, easy stuff always comes first, you can ensure users have already committed themselves to completing the journey by the time you present them with the boring stuff at the end.

5. Remove distractions – if someone’s on the home page or landed on a broad category page through a generic search term then fine, you need to present them with a variety of options. However, on when a user is beginning to trickle down your sales funnel, you need to keep all that noise to a minimum. A simple example would be removing a link to a partner website from the contact page. A more extreme example would be to remove the main navigation from the checkout process (something that iwantoneofthose.com do REALLY well) so the user can only progress in one direction.

6. Reducing wasted traffic – find those pages with a combination of high traffic levels and high bounce rates. These are your easiest opportunities for improvement. Then ask yourself “What would appeal to the kind of person that landed on these pages, that may therefore result in them giving your site a little more of their time?” The answer is simple – a link to something similar. So that could be a link from one blog post to a similar blog post, or one service to a similar service, or one product to a similar product (particularly useful when the first product may periodically be out of stock!). By keeping people on site you are far more likely to take value from their visit, even if it’s merely a secondary goal such as a Facebook “like” or a comment on a blog post. And don’t forget that Google may also treat these metrics as an important “User Engagement” signal, thus impacting your ability to capture traffic in the first place!

Just one final tip for those who happen to be considering a full redesign –NEVER try to re-invent the wheel. Yes you want to offer something that seems unique and imaginative, but keep these quirks superficial. There is a reason why massive sites like Amazon do things a certain way – it’s because it works! You will never have the resources to conduct the research they have into user behaviour, so the next best thing is to take the conclusions they have already reached and use them yourself. If they ask for an email address before anything else in the checkout process, then you know it’s not without good reason.

When you buy a mobile phone you don’t test talking into the back of it on the off chance that the designers thought that might make it a more interesting experience. Keep it simple. Keep it intuitive.

Dan

If you have an ecommerce site then there is no offline safety net to compensate for online inadequacies. It needs to attract, engage and convert all on its own, and if it fails then the business fails. You’re content therefore needs to be flawless. Moving into 2012 we can define this as:

• Unique – ecommerce sites tend to have lots of product pages and every one of these has the ability to bring in traffic. And we’re not talking about any traffic. We’re talking about red hot, ready to purchase traffic that has entered your site half way down the sales funnel with a product specific search. However, you’ll only attract this product level traffic if your product pages have lots of unique content. And no, by unique I do not mean substituting one product name or brand for another (note: there is nothing wrong with some duplicate content such as a standard sales message or testimonial – it’s just unlikely to ever be indexed).
• Remarkable – there is no better way of wasting time online than writing content for contents’ sake. Those days are gone. Now it needs to add significant value as Google turns to engagement stats (time on site, number of pages visited, return rate, etc) as a clear indicator of user satisfaction. And it’s not just for SEO; careless typo’s, inaccurate or incomplete data, boring and repetitive sales copy – all these things can be forgiven on a brochure website where the user saves their final judgement for the email/telephone communication at the end of the sales journey. But not on ecommerce. On ecommerce you get one chance. If the necessary product information is hard to find, if important details are missing or look like they’ve been thrown together by a drunk toddler, then users are going elsewhere, never to disturb your analytics again.
• In abundance – Since Panda it seems that pages with lots and lots of content are being treated favourably. Of course there are user implications to consider so always try to ensure some of the more visually appealing content, such as photos, graphics and videos, are prominent above the fold.
• Focused but natural – If you want a page to rank for lots of short and long tail terms then ensure every bit of content is talking in and around the subject in question. However, do not shoe horn the obvious keywords into each sentence. Keyword stuffing is the equivalent of trying to help a small child understand your meaning by repeating simple terms over and over again in a loud and patronising tone. The child is more than capable of understanding related words and phrases and is going to be smarter still in 24 months time, by which point it’s likely to think there is something seriously wrong with you. Use lots of synonyms and variations of phrases. It will work so much better in the long term and this is a long term strategy.

Follow these rules and every new product you add will mean more visitors, more engagement and more conversions. It really is that simple.

Dan

On-page and off-page optimisation have traditionally been treated as two distinct SEO tactics. So which is more important and where should you begin?

The first SEO I ever worked with was obsessed with on-page methods. Under absolutely no circumstances were any of our websites to include any dynamic content out of his control. These were finely manicured creatures and there was zero chance that he was about to let anyone mess around with them for so trivial a purpose as user experience! No, every last detail was, in his opinion, as good as it was possible to be, and therefore by definition any change would weaken our campaign.

The second SEO I worked with had almost the complete reverse outlook on on-page optimisation. In his mind it distracted you from the primary concerns of the website – the design and functionality. And besides, there was only so many short tail terms you could target via on page methods so the prize on offer was limited. Off-page optimisation on the other hand was boundless and had absolutely no impact on the user experience. Even a page filled with flash could be made to bring in big numbers if you swamped the net with enough shady links with exact match anchors.

And you know what, both completely contradictory views were correct. Well, I say correct, but perhaps a more accurate description is that they worked. For a time.

The first strategy was, back in 2007, remarkably successful. So what if the barely comprehendible, completely over optimised content on the site was never going to attract a single legitimate link? These were the good old days of article spinning and directory submission; real links were just for public bodies and Rand Fishkin. Likewise the second strategy worked disgustingly well and for precisely the same reason. The abundance of easy link opportunities meant you really could neglect your on-page efforts and still rank for massive terms.

However, with the birth of Panda came the turning of the tides, and suddenly Mr Fishkin’s advice on white hat tactics, which the broader SEO community had always found fascinating but best taken with several buckets of salt, suddenly made an alarming amount of sense. The days of relying on easy link opportunities had gone. Now the content mattered. To ignore the user experience, thus removing all possibility of natural links and minimising engagement metrics was to throw in the towel. But likewise to overlook on-page factors and rely on the 8000 dodgy article and directory links was equally hopeless. A tipping point had been reached.

So which is now the more important – on page or off page? Well since Panda there is almost no distinction. The less we are able to game the system, the more entwined on page and off page become. Nobody will give you a legitimate link or a positive social signal if the content isn’t worthy, and with competitive advantage ever harder to acquire, the notion that you would ever now neglect opportunities to use on-page tactics to build relevance is laughable.

However, while both are now absolutely essential, that is not to say you cannot be strategic about it. ALWAYS address your on-page first. If you get that right and successfully strike the balance between informing the search engine of the target terms on the one hand, and achieving positive social signals and engagement metrics on the other, EVERY single piece of off page activity you conduct thereafter (from white hat to black hat and every shade of grey in between) is going to make the impact on your website that little bit more substantial.

Don’t even think about your off page until the website itself is as good as it possibly can be. It may delay the initial move in rankings by a month or two, but after which it will not only create off page opportunities directly itself but make every one of them that much more worthwhile.

A picture paints a thousand words right? Not to Google it doesn’t. For years images were undervalued by online marketers as they had little or no inherent SEO value. Why bother with stunning pictures or exciting flash animation if all the Search Engines can see is an empty space? But as with all aspects of SEO, the gap between the way Google perceives the world and the reality is shrinking day by day.

While Google continues to rely on text for the vast majority of its signals, it is slowly getting better at incorporating imagery into the algorithm, leading to the phrase “image SEO”. In this post I’m going to be exploring the ranking of images themselves rather than how images can help to rank the pages on which they live, which is a subject tackled by Nick. While Vicky has considered their most important role of all – their impact on user experience.

So first things first, why do we even care?

• Increased traffic – for most websites, generating additional traffic to the site through image search is of little direct value as the visitors are far too broad. If my website sells train tickets then ranking a picture for the term “train” is unlikely to help me capture high quality leads. However, there are exceptions – if I generate revenue on the site through advertising then every visitor has value, and what about secondary objectives such as blog comments and Facebook “likes”? If you ensure your website is littered with these secondary objectives along with the right calls to action, then there is no such thing as worthless traffic.
• Great link bait – More often than not, when someone is looking for a particular image online, they start with Google image search. And if your image happens to appear and they like the look of it, you can probably expect it to miraculously appear minutes later on their web page/blog, with no reference back to you whatsoever. Rather than burying your head in the sand and pretending this won’t happen, how about you explicitly state next to your imagery “yes, it’s okay to pinch my images, but please just provide credit with a link back to my site.” Most honest web masters will be more than happy to oblige.
• Increased brand exposure – Unfortunately “honest web masters” are still a pretty rare breed, so in most instances a link back is probably out of the question. If you are particularly protective about your images, why not watermark them so at the very least these thieving little tickers will be doing a bit of advertising on your behalf.

The great news is that in most niches the competition is still pretty tame. Just getting the basics right will usually be more than enough to dominate your target keywords:

• Image Alt – this is the text that appears when an image cannot load. It is generally regarded as the single most important factor in enabling Google to determine the content of your image.
• Filename – image filenames are another signal used by Google to work out what the content is all about, so think carefully before you save the image rather than letting it default to a bunch of numbers.
• Surrounding text and images – Google will also use the context of the image to determine its subject matter. If the title of the page, URL, text, etc, is all about tea pots, then it stands to reason an image on that page would also be related to tea pots. We see evidence of this frequently when pages with lots of images but little or no text struggle to rank at all for the terms to which they relate.
• Image recognition – Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is used to take letters out of images which could be used to also determine the content. Likewise colours and dimensions can be identified by the search engines. The degree to which this impacts SEO is speculative but certainly we see it playing a large role in the automated censorship of inappropriate images.
• Inbound links – as with anything in SEO you now need to show to Google that this not just a relevant result, but the BEST result. Links pointing to either the image URL or the URL of the page on which it is hosted will help give the image an authority boost. Also important is the anchor text of those links and the relevance of the pages on which they are placed.
• Image size – Google wants to show images that are good quality but fast to load, so just avoid the extremes.

Let’s be honest, while any site can take some benefit from Google image search, the big benefits are only on offer for a pretty select niche, such as those that generate revenue through advertising or sell stock photos. However, don’t give up hope just yet – as Nick discusses in his post about the impact of images on traditional SEO impact of images on traditional SEO, there are other more conventional benefits to be had by the broader search community.

And don’t forget the significance of great imagery user experience. The typical internet browser is a shallow and judgemental creature, and will always struggle to see beneath the surface of your website. You must ensure yours does justice to the substance beneath, and Vicky’s post on website aesthetics will help you do just that.

Dan

If Google is the 21st century high street, your meta description is the shop window; the hook that stops passers by in their tracks and yanks them through the door. If you’ve ever owned or managed a high street shop, you’ll know just how much care and attention goes into bringing that space to life, as you jostle with the many other competing windows in the shoppers’ eyeline.

In less flowery terms, meta descriptions are the snippets of text used by the search engines to provide the user with an introduction to the content of the page in question. While of no significance to search engine rankings, they are critical in determining whether or not the users actually click through to your site. For all the hours, days, months and years that hard working SEO’s pour into their rankings, it never fails to surprise me just how little value they attach to this one simple task that will ultimately determine how well those rankings turn into traffic.

Here are a few tips to help you get the most out of you meta descriptions:

This is a sales pitch – There are nine other organic results and a bunch of paid listings, all battling for the attention of the searcher. Why should they bother with yours? If you have the lowest pricing or offer free delivery, these are probably things that a prospective client should hear. Furthermore, don’t forget to include the main short tail terms for which people are likely to be searching, as these will be bolded and brought to the attention of the user, further reassuring them that your result is the right result.

Don’t force it – If your landing page is content heavy with lots of long tail terms that could match a vast array of search queries, you’re ging to find it mighty difficult to choose a meta description that covers everything without being depressingly bland and vague. So you know what, don’t even worry about it. Just leave the meta description blank and Google will select the description that it considers most appropriate to the search term entered. It may not be perfect but it’ll always be specific.

Double quotes = truncation – The Meta Description uses double quotes in the source code and consequently it will cut the description off the moment you enter double quotation mark. Instead, if you absolutely need to use a quote, just use the single quotation marks.

Use your character allowance wisely – Stay within 160 characters to avoid truncation but don’t waste the space. The more SERP real estate you occupy, the more the attention you will enjoy. Again, think of that shop window!

Consider caps – Personally I think all capitalised meta descriptions look pretty awful; the online equivalent of dancing outside your shop door while wearing a purple dinosaur costume and a sales billboard. However, if your sole concern is getting noticed then give it a shot. In many markets it will have a noticeably positive impact on click through rates.

I’m going to finish with a quick example to demonstrate how powerful this stuff really is. About 6 months ago we began working with a big clothing website. All was going well and then at the start of August we were informed they had to temporarily suspend their operations which meant they wanted to minimise traffic to avoid upsetting customers. Now with SEO that’s a bit tricky. After all, you can’t just turn this stuff on and off. So we tried to think of other factors that would influence visitor levels but not harm the long term SEO. We knew that there wasn’t a perfect solution but it dawned on Nick that by totally removing our meta descriptions it may make us look considerably less conspicuous in the SERPs. Rarely one to question Nicks’ wisdom I went with it. The results are below:

As with any young campaign there is significant natural variance to be expected, but from consistently attracting between 190 to 240, the traffic suddenly fell to just 83! Same rankings just no meta description, resulting in an instant ~60% drop!

Okay, it’s a crude example, but compelling nonetheless. If removing meta description can reduce traffic by 60%, then what impact might increasing the number of characters have, or putting certain words in caps lock, or adding the price? So the next time you dismiss the importance of this stuff, think again; it could be the easiest (non-SEO) improvement you ever make to your SEO.

Cheers,

Dan

Traditionally there has been a tendency to be extremely focused with SEO. Pick half a dozen exciting phrases and pour all your time and energy into those. And it seems this is logic still felt by a lot of SEO’s; a point really brought home to me last week when a new client explained that another firm (a pretty good one in my opinion) was recommending that she begin with just ONE keyphrase.

On the surface this kind of focus makes a lot of sense. After all, if you’re a 100 meter runner you don’t also try and compete in the 1500m and high jump. No, you pick your best event and focus on that, knowing that by doing so you are giving yourself the best chance of glory.

Unfortunately SEO is rarely straightforward; there are always other factors that interfere and confuse, leaving you to navigate through the mess and settle on the best (or least flawed) route to market. I am not saying that being focused with your campaign is wrong. That would be a generalisation and matter of opinion. However, here are a few reasons why I tend to steer in a very different direction:

• Google is all about authenticity – A website optimised exclusively for one or two keywords smacks of manipulation. Human behaviour is far more diverse and unpredictable than that.
• Long tail is king – most campaigns attract more traffic from long tail phrases such as “Buy a widescreen tv online” than short tail such as “widescreen tv’s”. Neglect the long tail at your peril.
• Diversification is ALWAYS a good idea – That’s not just a golden rule of SEO, but a golden rule of business in general. Developing a broad keyword foundation will help you to sleep easy at night, knowing that your entire business isn’t precariously balanced on one particular ranking.

In short: lots of eggs, lots of baskets

Dan

There has been a lot of speculation in the last 12 months about how Google treats social signals in determining search engine rankings. Facebook likes, LinkedIn company profiles, YouTube videos – Google openly admits taking them into account, but how and to what extent? Does it mean you should draw up a long list of social media platforms and tick them off one by one to prove just how jolly sociable you really are? Is that what Google wants?

Personally I think not. This would seem like a remarkably unsophisticated approach by the most sophisticated search engine on the planet. I think we can give Google more credit than that.

Markets are like people – some get caught up with faddish trends, others plod along the same path they always have. Some embrace everything technology has to offer, others keep it at arms length. Some will share anything and everything with the world, others are more guarded. I think it extremely unlikely that Google fails to recognise these clear market variations. It seems so logical. So important.

I’d love to say I’ve conducted extensive research into the topic and established the value of each different kind of social signal on each different kind of market. I haven’t. Nobody has. As I discussed in my previous post, by the time data was collected for this type of experiment, the rules would have already evolved. As important for SEO as testing is, sometimes you just have to put yourself in the shoes of Google and ask yourself “What would I do to offer the best search results for the user?”

Personally I would do this – I would look at the other results competing for search engine space for the terms in question. What are they doing? I would take an aggregate for the market as a whole and treat this as a benchmark for what consumers in the market wanted. If lots of websites were using video, I would assume that any website without it was behind the times. If lots were on LinkedIn, I would assume that it was a corporate market and attach value to it. If there were countless Twitter and Facebook links pointing to the sites, I would conclude the topics in question were naturally very social. If, on the other hand, websites in the market were not doing these things and then one day a site suddenly had an overnight presence on half a dozen social media platforms, I would assume this site was trying to pull the wool over my eyes in a crude attempt to get ahead in the rankings.

So before you pour hour after hour into social activity, look at how social your market is. How much value will your consumers see in your videos, tweets, updates and shares? If you conclude that you are doing it for no other reason than to enhance your ranking, think again. Google is no idiot.

Of course I could be wrong

Dan