Placing Search Engines at the Heart of Web Development and Strategy

Search engine optimisation has traditionally been the practice of increasing the ranking of an existing website by altering the content and promoting inbound referral links from other highly ranked pages. The first part (altering the content) can be a bit like trying to panel beat a rusty VW Beetle into a Ferrari. Often to be effective, the entire structure and content of a website needs renewing, including with the coding (especially websites built in tables or Flash), making it a very costly exercise.

A New Beginning

In truth, the best way forward is to completely rebuild the site with fresh search engine optimised text, structure, coding and often design. This way a company can also take advantage of new advances such as content management systems for greater control of content; database driven content to automate the process; RSS news feeds to keep the site current; and standards compliant coding for greater accessibility and usability.

A website may also need to adopt a more sales-driven digital approach that converts into greater online sales or stimulates a greater response, thus building your customer database for future opt-in mailings. Or it may need to be more interactive and useful to people to encourage return visits and recommendations.

Referral Link Generation Starts at Home

While the new website is being developed, the task of promoting referral links must start in earnest. This is an ongoing process that takes time, effort and imagination. Begin with any websites already under your control. Make sure you are making the most of links from highly ranking pages from websites you own, if it’s appropriate to have links. Then approach suppliers and affiliates. Make sure any existing links from their pages to yours contain core search term keywords and not click here or visit the website. Then try the free listing business directories. Assess the quality of paid for listings, and if your competitors are there, it makes sense for you to be there too.

Online PR is in Your Hands

Many links can be generated through a variety of promotional techniques. Submit your website for review; invite journalists to review your products or services; write your own articles and submit them to publishing websites; create blogs to air your opinions on your trade and use social networks such as Linkedin. As long as it’s ethical and honest, it’s a valid way of generating links to your pages. Dirty tricks such as blog spam can back fire and destroy your reputation.

When the site is complete, continue this process by generating links to specific landing pages to increase their ranking too (remember, your homepage is important, but it can’t do everything in terms of SEO so spread the load).

The SEO Blueprint for New Websites

All new websites should put targeting, content and SEO at the very heart of the process.

These issues must be addressed at the outset:

• Who is your audience and who is most valuable to you?
• How will you reach them?
• What will encourage them to use and return to the website?
• What will stimulate them to buy or respond?
• How will you use the customer data to build relationships?

With these findings you can formulate:

• Core search term keywords and phrases
• Site structure with key landing pages
• SEO text, ensuring good keyword densities within URLs, page titles, meta tags, H tags, body text and alt tags
• Other useful content

Then begin the process of identifying and creating referral link opportunities:

• Within your existing website network
• On your supplier and affiliates web pages
• On free business listings
• On paid for business listings
• By generating PR
• Through self published articles
• Through company blogs
• Through appropriate social networks

Always remember that Google ranks web pages according to relevance (the content of the page) and importance (the number of links to it from other important websites). By doing so your website need never languish at the bottom of the heap. And what’s more, when your audience increasingly finds your website, they will be thrilled by its up-to-date, fresh, relevant and engaging content, and won’t fail to respond in the way you want them to.

Peter O'Flynn is Creative Director of Marketing Team Direct the Integrated Marketing Agency that places search engine optimised website strategy at the heart of business.

What's the Matter with the Matter Box?

Tim Milne’s Matter Box is a new Direct Mail device. Boxes full of various company's promotional items, are destined to start landing on the doormats of young affluent professionals from Jan08.

But for me, it seems to miss the whole point of Direct Marketing. The power of DM is unleashed only when high quality data is used to identify and target individuals at the right time with a relevant message. When you deliver timely messages in a creative and focused way, you can stimulate a response and ultimately build relationships with your customers. It’s a highly personal, targeted and measurable medium. It’s not Advertising. It’s not Design. It’s Direct Marketing.

Asking design consultancies to approach their clients with quirky ideas for the box is putting the cart before horse. Strategy, planning and coming up with the ‘big idea’ must be put first. Only then can the mechanism be developed, designed to deliver the message in a creative and original way.

If the Matter Box can grow and develop a high quality database, and each individual box can be completely personalised, delivering targeted messages (brand and tactical) in an innovative way, then you have a very effective and lucrative channel. But if it just ends up being a box filled with useless gimmicks sent out on mass, then it’s hard to see the value to the recipient, or the more importantly the client.

Peter O'Flynn is Creative Director of Marketing Team Direct the Integrated Marketing Agency that knows it’s stuff.

Digital Marketing - how to know your SEO from your PPC

Online marketing has become a confusing place. With so many new buzz words, acronyms and old thinking around it can be hard to work out what and who to believe, and more importantly, where to invest marketing spend.

I have decided to collect as much up-to-date thinking on this subject and try to make sense of it all. Some of this you will already know, hopefully some you won't. There are no magic answers here, just honesty and common sense.

A few questions any company with an online presence should be thinking about:

• Are we getting enough traffic and are our visitors responding the way we want them to?
• Should we invest in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), pay-per-click campaigns and other web marketing strategies?
• Is our website working hard enough to convert visitors into customers?
• How should we split our marketing budget between offline and online activity?

The best place to start is to really understand the performance of your current web strategy by analysing traffic, content and conversion rates. Then you can plan how offline promotions and marketing can crossover in an effective and streamlined manner.

Getting quality traffic - direct it and help it find you

There are 5 main ways of directing traffic to your site: search engines, links on other websites, online direct promotion, online advertising and offline promotion. n It makes sense to maximise the potential of all of these channels, but budgets can be easily wasted by putting too much emphasis on one or more area.

Organic search engine rankings – should you use Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?

Many companies turn to SEO specialists to solve what they see as low traffic to their website or because it doesn’t rank highly for certain search terms. Unfortunately they don’t always realise what SEO really means in practice. Generally, SEO specialists will attempt to recode existing pages and insert keywords and phrases in order to make them more attractive to search engines. These ‘repaired’ pages can soon seem hijacked and incomprehensible due to text that doesn’t make sense.

Rather than fixing pages, create better ones

A more effective approach is to create new high quality content that’s designed to be found, along with a reassessment of the whole website. Web users respond to well flowing but punchy text and Google will reward proper syntax with better rankings.

It’s not just about “optimising” your existing site either. Companies need to regularly assess the site and try new ways of engaging with their visitors. Brochure style sites are fine for browsing, but may not stimulate visitors to respond or return. Think of more creative ways to captivate your audience, perhaps have a blog, fresh news items etc. A more lively, current or sales orientated website will give better results. Make the site “sticky” and visitors will stay longer and return more often.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is the creation of Search Engine Friendly pages with highly crafted content designed to be ‘findable’ for specific search terms. By defining your target audience, researching the keywords and phrases that they might use and then creating compelling content for them to find, you’ll get the right customers to visit your website. This also applies to PPC, and when the two are combined they become a powerful marketing tool.

What is a good Search Engine Ranking?

Many companies get this wrong, including most of the big ones. Search for ‘Microsoft’, and unsurprisingly www.microsoft.com is ranked 1st. Search ‘Microsoft Vista’ and again they make the top. But search ‘Microsoft Vista Questions’ and they are nowhere, swamped by a host of sites that offer more relevant content. Big brands tend only focus on the brand itself and forget what people are really looking for in relation to their brand and offering. Look at it from your customer’s point of view. What might they be looking for? What language might they use? By getting this text into the pages you’ll create content that will be found by the people you want to find it.

Google PageRank

Google PageRank ranks all web pages between 1 and 10. This is Google’s way of ranking a website’s popularity. It has nothing to do with traffic to your site, but more about its standing and place in the pecking order. For example, Google is ranked 10, www.microsoft.com is ranked 9, www.bbc.co.uk is ranked 9. A website with minimal inbound links and a new URL may only achieve a ranking of 0.

Many SEO companies attach a lot of importance to Google PageRank, but if you install Google Toolbar and search for relatively niche terms, you’ll notice that its not always the higher ranked sites that get the top positions. This is because regardless of the ranking, when it comes down to it, Google always puts content relevance over popularity.

While ranking is important, niche search terms can still be effective for low ranking websites (e.g. ‘two bedroom apartment in Harrow, London’), but if you need more traffic on more general terms (e.g. ‘Apartments in London’) you may need to use PPC in the short term and work on improving your ranking by increasing high quality inbound links and developing content in the longer term.

To understand Search it helps to understand Search Engines

So what is Google’s, Yahoo’s and MSN’s goal in life? Making money, of course. Google makes its profit not from search, but from advertising. Google’s success in the Search Engine business relies on 2 things; the quality of its search results and the relevancy of its advertising (Adwords and Adsense) to the viewers of those results. When a user types a search term into Google they have to trust that Google is delivering the most relevant pages in order to supply the best answers. It does this by trying to work out the quality of the page content and the popularity of the website that hosts the page.

Content and Popularity – driving your Search Engine Results Placement (SERP)

They are many different variables that govern your result position, but page content and website ranking are the most important. Content is about building well designed, well written and well coded websites and is the area we have most control over. Popularity, however, is a much harder nut to crack as it relies on how the rest of the web interacts with your website. To understand it we need to know how Google measures popularity.

For a better insight, let’s look at how Google views the web

Imagine the web is a large social community and web pages are the people that live in it. If someone needs advice on a matter, it’s best to consult the most knowledgeable and trusted person in that community. The problem with large communities is finding that person. The best way might be to ask other people who they believe is the best person. After all, personal recommendation is generally a good measurement of quality and trustworthiness. If the majority of people recommend one person, then you’ll have more confidence in consulting them. Google sees links from one website to another as a recommendation by association and by mapping the whole web it can count these links.

Inbound links - quality over quantity

In the past, Google used to regard the quantity of links to a website as a measurement of popularity, but as with everything this is open to abuse. Link farms sprang up selling hundreds of links to your website for a small fortune – claiming to guarantee high rankings. As Google is constantly measured by the quality of its search results, this sort of cheating was in danger of damaging its reputation, so it changed the rules. It now looks for quality rather than quantity. Instead of listening to 1000s of low ranked websites recommending your site on a search term, it prefers a few select links from what Google believes are ‘important’ websites (ranked 5-10 by Google PageRank) in the same field, or who are well regarded in general.

Try looking at it like this: There are 2 new rock bands on the scene. One band has 500 12-year old fans. The other only has 50 fans, but 3 of them are Noel Gallagher, Keith Richards and Amy Winehouse all saying that the band are the going to be the next big thing. Although neither is guaranteed to be successful, the latter has the support of real heavyweights with influence, and Google likes that.

Launching new sites – the Age Filter Sandbox

All new sites are subject the Google 'aging filter'. This means any new URL is indexed by Google, but not page ranked for 6-8 months, leaving it with a low SERP. There is currently no effective way around this, other than to either get a holding page up ASAP on any new site, or to add to an existing site with good page rankings. Don’t forget there are other search engines out there like Yahoo and MSN who don’t employ such filters yet, and PPC can help increase traffic when needed.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

Time for some definitions. Google Adwords are Google’s name for pay-per-click advertising. These ads can bring targeted traffic to your site as a direct result of people searching on Google, or one of their search partners such as Ask, Netscape and AOL. You’ll probably have noticed the ‘sponsored links’ that appear on the right hand column of Google search results pages. Sometimes a few of these links will appear at the top of the page above the main ‘organic’ results.

How PPC works

First you select keywords and phrases tailored to your offering and what your customer will search for. Then a bid level is assigned to each one. A text advert is placed with Google and will only appear when the search engine matches a search term to your keywords. The top page ‘sponsored links’ are, in Google’s opinion, the closest matches to the search term, in order of bid level. You only pay the bid price when a user clicks through to your site.

The key is to craft the keywords and phrases well and create compelling offers. Only use words appropriate to your offering as money can be wasted bidding on popular terms such as ‘cars’. Better to bid on ‘used cars chester’ or ‘used small cars’ Then set the bid level, and monitor its performance, changing the level when necessary.

Remember, getting the click through is only the first step. The page they go to needs to be able to convert that customer. PPC is great for short term traffic, but don’t use it at the expense of a longer term website strategy. It is pointless to use PPC without giving potential customers a compelling message and conversion orientated landing page to click through to.

Pay-Per-Action (PPA), the new kid coming to town

Google will soon introduce a new advertising model called pay per action and will probably be the successor to PPC. The difference is you only pay when someone clicks through your sponsored link and is converted. You agree the goal with Google and the amount bid. This should hopefully make spam less productive (less ‘tricked user’ clicks) and encourage site owners to work harder to convert traffic.

HTML Email

HTML emails can drive sales and boost awareness of promotions and services. They are cost effective, highly measurable and quick to implement. When planned and executed correctly, integrated email campaigns can drive business and build strong CRM programs. However, many companies try a DIY approach at their peril. But, if poorly designed and built, they can damage the brand, alienate customers and waste time and money.

Companies are increasingly trying to do emails themselves with 3rd party software but these have a habit of going wrong (missing images, text, poor display). HTML email template software can also place extra code into pages making them slow and incompatible with many email clients and platforms. While no html email will work perfectly on every email client or web browser, simple design and coding guidelines with testing can avoid most issues.

Best practice is to hand create and fully test all emails before broadcasting. Many
web-page coding conventions do not apply to html email and are counterproductive.

Templates don't really work anyway because while common design and brand features are important, each campaign should be different and follow the look of the 'big idea' which is rolled out across offline and online media, keeping messages fresh, smart and relevant. Also remember, the email itself is not enough. It needs to point to a landing page, and then onto simple, easy to use pages designed to convert the visitor.


Now you’re getting quality traffic, how do you make the most of it?

Web Stats v Web Analytics

Most website owners are familiar with occasionally looking at their website’s logs and noting the amount of visitors, pages viewed, keywords used and time spent on the site. While this is valuable information, it doesn’t really say much about visitor behaviour.

Your site may get high levels of traffic, but that traffic must consist of the right visitors finding the right content and being motivated to do what you want them to.

Web analytics can give valuable insight into:

• Which buttons are clicked on the most and which are ignored?
• Which keywords are the most effective and profitable?
• Which pages are exited immediately (bounce rate) and most often?
• Where are people entering the site and where do they end up?
• How many visitors achieve the goals you want them to?

Google Analytics can help answer these important questions and understand how to address them. It can give clues as to what content is working for you, and which isn’t. Only by continually assessing a website’s performance, balanced with web advertising, HTML email and offline promotion performance, can you really know if your marketing strategy is repaying your investment in it.

Goal Conversion

Virtually all websites have a goal; to get someone to subscribe, to register, to enquire or to buy something. The conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who complete the ‘goal’ you have set on the website. A low rate could be the result of many things; poor design and navigation, an unclear or undesirable proposition, complex or tiresome paths to the ‘goal’, or just the wrong people viewing the site. This can only be rescued with regular assessment, leading to action that either increases the quality of the traffic or improves the content of the site. Keep paths to conversion simple and make offers appealing and easy to redeem.

Linking transaction and PPC data into Google analytics

Google analytics offers the ability to track traffic and monitor conversion rates, and this is made all the more powerful when transaction data is added. This is simple for a developer to implement and should be part of any e-commerce related website. Also, when you link PPC data to conversion you can monitor the effectiveness of you campaigns and quickly take action if they are under-performing.

Content is King – keep it fresh and up-to-date

This makes sense for your visitors and your SERP. A site that is updated regularly and has innovative content will retain visitors and encourage them to return. It will also give other sites, feeds and blogs a strong reason to link to your site.

Also, many site owners are unaware that Google will begin to ignore web pages that aren’t updated regularly. Companies should focus on producing fresh, clear and relevant web content, rather than wasting money on SEO tricks. More and more web analysts agree that high quality, search engine friendly content is the key to higher search engine rankings and more effective traffic.

Keep it HTML – clean and accessible to all

Search engine bots love clean html content because it’s the easiest to crawl. Other content, however, can become a barrier to effective results. PDFs, for example, are useful for displaying floor-plans, maps and copies of brochures etc., but shouldn’t be a replacement for real web page content.

Although Google and other SEs can read PDFs can display their results, when a web user clicks and views the PDF, they cannot navigate back to the main site, thus going down a Cul-de-sac and ending their journey. Heavy use of PDFs can disorientate the user by continually guiding them out of the website. Also, if not compressed enough, PDF files can be too large for dial-up users to download, making people abandon them, and your website.

Best practice is to always create findable content as xhtml css based pages that comply with w3c validation.

10 steps to online and offline integration:

1. Decide the goal
2. Define the proposition
3. Identify the target audience
4. Select the mix of channels (on and off line)
5. Create a creative theme that works across all media
6. Produce offline and online content simultaneously
7. Craft the Keywords and Phrases for web pages and PPC
8. Build landing pages, microsites and goal pages that are SE friendly and
9. simple to navigate
10. Make sure HTML email, banners, printed material follow the creative theme
11. Continually assess all aspects of each campaign and learn from them.

At Marketing Team Direct we believe that by:

• planning and executing integrated campaigns
• managing online content and keeping it fresh
• using search engine marketing techniques and building SE friendly pages
• managing targeted pay-per-click and banner advertising
• continually assessing visitor behaviour, click through and feeding insights back into current and future campaigns.

This way our clients can maximise their marketing budgets across all channels and make their whole offline and online strategy work hard for them.

Peter O'Flynn is Creative Director of Marketing Team Direct

Integrated thinking

My name is Peter O'Flynn and I am a creative geek. There - I've admitted it. For years people like myself have been forced underground, afraid of revealing our true identity. Well today I'm coming out.

Suspicious character
As I've gone through my career in Marketing (Advertising, DM and now Integrated Marketing), I have found that many people are suspicious of anyone who displays a flair for things both creative and technical. It's like you're not allowed to be good at both - something about different sides of the brain is the normal reaction.

While it's true that creative and technical thought requires different processes, haven't we all at some time solved a technical problem in a creative way and vice versa. Personally, I believe people who only use one side of their brain are missing out on something. I generally try to use both.

Time for new partnerships
In this world of increasing technological dependency, creatives and technologists both need to embrace and have an appreciation of the other side. For creatives, technical understanding and partnerships are now just as important as art director - copywriter partnerships have been since the 60's. You wouldn't expect an art director who didn't understand the writing process or be able to contribute to it to be worth much. Equally, art directors now need to forge similarly close partnerships with technologists.

The web is bringing us together
The internet is still a young child. Still growing up and learning to make its way in the big bad world. Designers, writers and developers have been working out how to work together with mixed results. In the past all three have been guilty of just doing their own thing and have been able to get away with it. But, this is no longer the case. As web users become more savvy they're quick to weed out poorly designed, written and built websites. We need to see things from a different perspective:

1. Developers need to care about the visual look and how easy it to navigate because the web is mostly a visual medium.
2. Designers need to care about the functionality because the web is interactive.
3. Writers need to care about search engines because websites need to be found and easy to digest.

Also, clients now have a better understanding of what their online activity should be achieving and want to make their budgets work harder. That means all of us need a much greater appreciation of strategy and planning.

So - by getting both sides of our brains to integrate, we can start integrating our talents, which will lead to better integrated marketing. We just need embrace all sides of ourselves.

Peter O'Flynn is Creative Director of Marketing Team Direct