Is adspend growth limited to SEM?

It’s not merely adspend on SEM that would rise this year. Are UK companies on a spending spree? At least this is what the E-consultancy research seems to indicate. According to the research, expenditure on pay per click (PPC) search is poised to rise by 23% to reach £2.24 billion. A closer scrutiny shows, however, that although expenditure on PPC will grow by double digits, this expected growth is lower than that recorded in previous years. This may be due to a weakening economy. On the other hand, the Search Engine Marketing Buyer’s Guide published by E-consultancy reveals that spending on search engine optimisation (SEO) would surge 32% to £330 million.

What are the key trends for the current year?

Now, this does not mean that companies in the UK are being extravagant. Increased spending is definitely being bounced off the results it produces. In fact, the research has indicated that companies have increased their scrutiny of the performance of search advertisements due to economic considerations and change in consumer behavior patterns. The latter is likely to pose a challenge for search marketers. The survey by E-consultancy reflects that search marketing will become more complex as the search market matures.

E-consultancy Editor in Chief comments on the survey results
Editor in Chief Chris Lake said that there were a number of reasons for the lower growth rate. The ad industry will be impacted by economic concerns and the search market is not insulated against a cut in company budgets, Mr. Lake added. Growth in return on investment is constrained by the fact that marketers and agencies are more savvy today than they have ever been. “Growth in consumer Internet usage is flattening out but the sector is certainly more robust than other media channels that have a less measurable return on investment, and should continue to grow for years to come,” the Editor in Chief explained.

While SEO is a powerful tool, it does not yield results if not used properly. So, here are ten SEO tips to direct relevant traffic to your website.

1. Add your company name, address and contact number to your website
Use a standard format to add this information across pages on your website. Search engines are increasingly recognising addresses from various websites and adding them to their databases. If you provide your contact details in the universally accepted format given below, it will be easier for search engines to identify and pick out this information from the rest of the contact.

2. Submit company information to Google Local
Google is the most widely used search engine across the world, with a more than 65% share of the market. Creating a Google Local profile will enable you to enter detailed information about your business, which can then be available to people searching for related information online.

3. Make use of an analytic program to improve your site
An analytic program allows you to track activity on your website. Knowing about the people who visit your website can help you in further optimising your site to suit their preferences. One such program is Google Analytics, which can be installed free of cost. Google Analytics provides you with crucial information regarding your visitors, including how they found your site and which pages they visited.

4. Check the title of all web pages
The titles are a pointer to the relevance of each web page to the search terms being used in a search engine. A title, such as Welcome or Home, does not show the search engine or the searcher the information contained on the web page. The result is a lower number of people willing to click on the site link and less relevance to the search terms used to seek your information.

5. Submit your business information across as many free directories as you can
Enter business information in directories such as Yahoo! and DMOZ. Do the same in any directory related to your niche and location.

6. Optimise keywords
The key to best results is the use of relevant keywords. To identify the relevant keywords, put yourself in your target reader’s shoes and ask yourself what you would type if you were looking for the business you are in. These key-phrases and keywords should become part of the content on your site.

7. Build a sitemap of your website and submit it on search engines
A sitemap is quite simply a map of your website. For websites that have yet to be found by search engines, a sitemap is the easiest way to let them know everything you have on your website.

8. Add META tags
META tags, which are used to list keywords relevant to a web page, were at one time the most important factor on which website rating was based on search engines. Even though the importance of META tags relative to keywords has declined, they still need to be included across every page on your website.

9. Validate your HTML code
The syntax of the HTML code used on your website must be validated. This would ensure the structural correctness of your website and improve the chances of a search engine reading your site correctly. During the validation, common mistakes can also be caught and rectified, which would help your on-page search engine optimisation.

10. Choose your SEO company wisely
While you consider which SEO company to choose for your business, avoid going by the recommendations written on the webpage of any SEO company. Do your own research on the industry. Beware of SEO firms that guarantee rankings and boast of having a “special relationship” or even a “priority submit” understanding with Google.

1. Social media is easy
Social media is often thought of as an easy medium. “Anyone can do it” is the general attitude and very few people or organizations study the channel and the opportunities it provides well enough to actually use it to the fullest. While being powerful, social media does not work automatically.

2. Social media is fast
Social media can generate excellent results. But this may take time and it definitely will take experience and perseverance to achieve desired results.

3. Social media is for kids
Yes, “Generation Y” does spend a lot of time on the Internet and teenagers form a very large percentage of the social media users. However, there are different networking sites that attract people of different age groups. So, if you’re targeting people of a particular age group, all you need to know is where to go.

4. Social networking sites generate low quality traffic
The quality of traffic is not inherent to any social media site. You need to have a sound strategy to target the audience desired. A well-planned SMO (social media optimization) campaign can attract the right set of people to the site.

5. There is a formula for success
There is no one set of rules that fits all social media sites. Success depends to a large extent on planning and each plan is unique. Plans would vary greatly depending upon what you wish to accomplish.

6. Better results are produced by having a presence on a greater number of sites
There is no direct relationship between results and the number of sites on which you have set up accounts. It is better to focus your efforts on a few sites that are better suited to you, your company and your products, rather than wasting time ensuring a presence on every social networking site possible.

7. Only the top 5 social media sites should be targeted
While it wouldn’t hurt to have a presence on MySpace and/or Facebook, these top sites may not be the place where you and your company get “noticed.” There are a plethora of other, very popular sites that you can leverage.

8. Social media can substitute SEO and PPC
For best results, your SMO, SEO and PPC campaigns need to go hand-in-hand. Each one plays a distinct role in your overall marketing campaign and meets different objectives.

9. I’ve tried it before… social media does not work for me
You or your company may have tried to leverage social networking sites before… maybe a couple of years ago. However, recent developments have made social media immensely more powerful.

10. Anyone can yield results
Yes, anyone can use social media and most efforts would yield some kind of result. However, without sound planning and execution, you would be shooting in the dark.

In July 2008, Reuters published a story (giving credit to Market Wire) about the results concluded from the first ever email industry report by Atlanta-based email provider MailChimp. The so-called Chimp Charts report analyzed the performance of more than two hundred million email messages across over 50 industries.

According to the results of the analysis, IT provider campaigns demonstrated an open rate of 62.28%, marking the highest open rate among the industries considered. The publishing industry also faired well, with an open rate of almost 46%. These open rates compared remarkably well with the average of around 26%.

In terms of the click rate, the publishing industry sped past the IT industry, with a rate almost touching 10%. The second position was grabbed by the Imports industry, with a click rate of 8.95%. The study computed an average click rate of 4.02%.

According to data featuring on MailChimp’s site, while industries such as Hotels and Healthcare/Medical barely touched the average open rate, exhibited significantly high click rates. The data also revealed only a marginal difference in click and open rates among companies of various sizes. The four categories of company sizes considered were 0-10, 11-25, 26-50 and 50+.

Market Wire quoted Ben Chestnut, founder of MailChimp, as saying, “The data shows great variance in opens, clicks and other key metrics and marketers should be able to use this information to measure performance against as they design and deliver their campaigns.”

Well, this refers to the growing popularity of an online advertising medium where the advertisers are basically online merchants who have products or services to sell. This also includes pay publishers, who are basically independent parties that promote products or services of an advertiser on their website. The “pay-for-performance” model is a situation where those who introduce new clients to a business receive some form of monetary compensation.

In affiliate marketing, this process is a little different because advertisers pay the publishers only when a new client introduction ends in an actual sale. This establishes a minimal risk zone and ensures a high-reward model for both parties involved in this marketing model.

TradeDoubler moves into expansion mode

TradeDoubler is a performance-based global digital marketing company, which has recently been making headlines across the world. Leading at the forefront of performance-based marketing, TradeDoubler is increasing its scope to push ahead with cutting edge solutions and boost tangible business results for a diverse array of brands.

In April 2008, the company’s contextual advertising solution, AdMatch, gained great momentum. This was designed to optimize the performance of online advertisements. AdMatch focused on enhancing advertising relevancy across its client websites to drive higher quality clicks and boost results not only for advertisers but for website publishers as well. This also enabled TradeDoubler to gather a vast resource pool of advertisers to match their ads to the content from their affiliate network. At the same time, vast breadth transparency was provided to optimize accurate targeting of the advertiser’s intended audience. This ultimately enhanced the overall results.

TradeDoubler Announces New Appointments to Fuel Expansion

The latest development at TradeDoubler was the announcement of the appointments of Ben Wood as its U.K. Managing Director to boost its U.K. management team and Lara Kelly as its Client Services Director.

Ben Wood is likely to target ways to broaden the performance-based offerings of TradeDoubler, spanning ad networks and pay-per-call product areas.

Lara Kelly’s main focus would be on increasing the range of TradeDoubler’s consultancy offerings not only to deliver on but to exceed their client objectives.
The growing client base that TradeDoubler currently enjoys spans a vast cross-section of key industry sectors. This is due to its vision of building longstanding relationships with pay publishers, advertisers and agencies.

How does Lively work?

Every Google account user can have his/her own avatar, which can be used on any Lively virtual room. Lively must, however, first be downloaded by users. Also, users need to either have a Google account or a Facebook account to create Lively rooms. Users will be able to access pictures from photo sharing sites and use these to wall-paper their Lively virtual rooms.

Virtual rooms on websites

Lively works on Facebook and may even extend to MySpace. But it goes beyond social networking, with this 3D application from Google allowing users to place virtual “rooms” on websites. It also affords users the ability to decorate their fantasy worlds using images or video clippings from Picasa or any other online source.

The opportunities for communicating better and creatively seem endless. Users can invite friends and family onto the virtual reality platform and interact just like characters in a game. The more time users stay on Lively, the more money Google is likely to make. With frequent and regular web surfing, there will be more money making ad clicks that would get displayed on search results and across millions of websites.

What does this mean for businesses?

Business owners can use Lively anywhere they want on any room on the web once they have signed into their virtual account. It is almost like an active destination site – providing business users various options to browse across rooms randomly to make new contacts.

With Lively, businesses will be able to re-structure their office and meeting related facilities. Lively enables your avatar to wander about, check out available conferences and interface with others. You can organize interviews, calls, meetings and do much more in the virtual world setting.

Lively also provides room templates, which business users can use to create their own customized rooms. This enables improved business collaboration and communication, while helping business owners create their unique brand image.

What does Lively mean for users?

You can unleash your creativity by customizing your avatar’s look to suit your style. Be it eye color, hair color or skin tone, it’s all up to you. You can interact with others using the animated action options. This just shows how limitless our imagination can be while using Lively.

What this announcement also means is that it will allow the search of Flash-based web content on Flash. This will help the pages inside Flash-based sites to be displayed higher in the search results. So the Google and Yahoo! search engine spiders will now be able to index SWF content. This also includes Flash “gadget” options, such as menus or buttons.

What does this mean for users?

For a user, this means that search results would cover better and more relevant details.
Adobe will provide Google and Yahoo! a particular software code and a special Flash player version to expose its earlier-hidden Flash content. With this technical hurdle out of the way, new business opportunities are bound to emerge.

This improvement in technology will also enable sites, such as Google and Yahoo!, to identify a vast range of text embedded within the Flash-based content. As we already know, most of the Flash sites are splattered with advertisements or sell products or promote movies. With the improved Adobe technology, these sites will be displayed more effectively when consumers click their search queries.

Remember, the main aspect is that Flash sites will be shown higher in Google search results. So, consumers can have better choices when they determine what they want to click on.

What does this mean for web designers and website developers?

For web designers and developers, Adobe’s latest move means that they can save considerable amounts of time and effort to minimize the tricks they typically use for Flash enabled sites. These tricks had until now helped them to get around the problem with search engines. Now, the searches for Flash content will no longer pose a problem.

The good news doesn’t stop here. Adobe is also planning to explore better ways to make this technology available to other search vendors.

As more content gets indexed and search engine result rankings show up with more relevant content from Flash powered sites, search engine optimizers would be ready to leverage better ranking methods on these Flash-based web sites, just as they do on HTML-based sites.

Simply put, these web design contributors explained the “10 commandments for Web Design for 2008.”

So, here’s a recap of what these 10 commandments mean and how they can help you improve the web design of your site:

1. Stop Flash abuse. Flash abuse is a common website design problem. Users are forced to tolerate uninteresting sequences on a site. This really ends up distracting users while they navigate through your site. Remember, simple designs are not only user-friendly, they are IN.

2. Don’t hide content. Many sites have more advertisements popping up than valid content. A user visits your site to access information that is interesting and informative. So when content is hidden, it ceases to interest the user.

3. No clutter please. A cluttered website will deter users from searching for the information they want. Users will be forced to wade through piles of information before they can find what they are looking for.

4. Discard glassy reflections. A commonly copied design is the glassy reflections style. This looks slick and cool but is so common now that designers believe it is time to discard it.

5. Don’t cut out vowels. Funny nomenclature patterns are emerging as websites come up with weird sounding names. Don’t cut out the vowels just to sound weird or grab fleeting user attention.

6. Respect typography. The most successful web designers insist that typography has become popular. So don’t dismiss plain text while using cutting-edge designs.

7. Engage users with powerful content and functionality. It isn’t enough for websites to look good. Sites like Facebook draw millions of users, who then remain glued to these sites for ages. This is what brilliant content and functionality does to drive up website traffic and retain user attention.

8. Get social. The mantra for your website should be “Get Social.” Users love to communicate on sites that are browser based.

9. Embrace elements of proven technologies. Sites like Facebook and Wikipedia are a part of the daily web browsing routine. So, add their successful elements into your site design. Connecting with users in a meaningful way is what makes all the difference.

10. Let Content Lead. Remember, content is King for your site. So surge ahead with compelling content and let aesthetic design follow.

The bottomline is that the content and design of the website is what attracts users and drives maximum traffic – and this is what lies at the core of any successful business.

No wonder, Google’s announcement of privacy policy measures created widespread ripples and led to mixed reactions across the world. Google provided a link to lead a user to the Privacy Center web page.

Critics are crying foul at the timing of Google’s announcement. It seems to be a strategic move to quell controversy about Google’s privacy policy rather than a measure to ensure that standard safety practices are followed for the sake of users.

Interestingly, all of Google’s competitors, such as Yahoo, Ask.com and AOL, already provide links to privacy policies on their home pages.

This raises several interesting questions:

• How could Google be so complacent about its privacy policy?
• Why is Google so late in conforming to the law?
• Why has Google’s announcement provoked competitors like Yahoo to suddenly revise their current data retention policies?

After all, till Saul Hansen questioned the Google privacy policy in his column, this issue wasn’t even something any one noticed. To read Hansen’s column, click here.

If you have a website that’s working well and you are wondering why a privacy policy matters to your website business, read this:

• The privacy policy of your website impacts how any given search engine, including Google, evaluates the quality of your web pages.
• The moment you add a privacy policy to your website, you add a sense of reassurance for your users that your site would not misuse any information or disclosures. It also indicates that your business is truly legitimate and works legitimately as well.

Safeguarding the trust of your target audience is of utmost importance. That is why a privacy policy has gained so much importance.

Coming back to Google’s announcement, it might seem ironic that lesser known search engines are better at respecting user privacy concerns. Take http://ixquick.com for instance. This site makes it a practice to delete the IP addresses of its users within 48 hours. This was in fact the world’s first known search engine to guarantee improved user privacy policy way back in 2006.