Internet Marketing Blog From Wolf21

In the online marketing world, we talk a fair bit about driving traffic to your business site. Getting people there is the lion’s share of the battle, or so we all assume. But what if you are getting traffic to your site and then they leave right away? How do you get people to stay?

One thing that comes to mind is driving the right traffic to your site. If you are selling books and the people you get coming to your site are looking for vacations, the vast majority of them will not be buying what you are selling. Sure, one or two might find a book on their vacation spot of choice, but if those couple of people are your entire purchasing power out of one hundred people landing on your site, pretty soon your company will be broke. Or at the very least wondering why your website is ineffective at driving sales. So, the trick really is to get the right people coming to your site.

Carrie Hill’s article “Two Simple Rules for Fixing High Bounce Rate Pages” and assures us that with her two rules, “you can address 75% of the issues caused by high bounce rate pages”. Even if your exact number is not as high as 75%, there is a lot of ground to be gained by following her suggestions and taking a few simple steps in evaluating your website. It’s a winning situation for any business.

The first way is to check the organic phrases used to find your web pages. Determine if those phrases are really phrases that will drive your business. If a potential customer is looking for shoes and finds that you have books about shoes, that customer will just leave in a flash. Targeting your traffic will net more business. Misleading queries will only contribute to your bounce rate.

The second way to make sure that potential customers continue to browse your site and shop is making their path clear and easy once they arrive on your site. The harder it is to figure out where to go next or how to buy an item, the easier it will be for people to just go elsewhere. Make it simple, clear, and easy.

There are many ways to test the ease of use on your business’s webpage, from complex tools to hiring experienced web analysts to just having a few friends do a quick and dirty test. Your choice will depend on how web savvy your business is and how much money you have allocated to the task. Hill suggests using either Attention Wizard or Click Tale to determine where the eye and mouse are going on your page.

No matter how you go about decreasing your bounce rate, it is important to take a bit of time and allocate some resources to this aspect of your online marketing plan. The whole point of internet marketing is to get people to your site who will buy your products and services.

The big trend in electronics and software is flexibility. We all want our gadgets and our programs to do as much as possible, as easily as possible. Since the death of Windows 3.1 and single use computing morphing into a multi-use experience, we want our laptops to run music, download email, check the weather, and help us to write the next report all at the same time. Instead of logging into Twitter proper to post your tweets, there are programs that allow you to send off tweets via third parties, so you don’t have to go to the trouble of logging in and out several times a day.

Social media is all about connections, but as our abilities with our social media programs grow, so do the demands on networking sites to get bigger and better. Those who do not grow may not survive in this market and mindset. Our electronic consciousness demands solutions to our problems, whether they are perceived problems or real ones.

LinkedIn is responding to this mindset and positioning itself to be seen as an innovative service by allowing its users to edit their profile layouts. It probably seems like such a basic step to make to most of us, but the article “LinkedIn Allows Users to Edit Profile Layouts” points out, “most people like having a measure of control” and LinkedIn is smart to cater to that desire.

What does editing your profile layout mean anyway? Well, if you’ve ever had a resume to write that had a special case, like a stay-at-home parent who is returning to the workforce, a career change, a layoff, or even just inexperience, you’ll know that sometimes putting the right information front and center can make the difference. In this case, having tabs that can be dragged and reordered in LinkedIn allows you to do the same thing as reordering your resume. In the resume writing field, people pay substantial cash for a professional to do just this for them. Now you can just click and drag a heading to accomplish the same thing.

According to Aaron Bronzan, an associate product manager at LinkedIn, this change is “just the first of a huge number of enhancements that are coming to your LinkedIn profile in the upcoming months.” Which means that LinkedIn users and social networking gurus will be waiting and watching for changes in the next while.

You wouldn’t send a flawed resume out into the world to represent you, so it makes sense to demand the most from your online networking tools, be they social or professional. It’s good to see LinkedIn stepping up and making changes to ensure that their users are getting better representation.

Sometimes, I take a while to jump on board with new technology. Certainly, I am never the first to buy and try the latest and greatest. I like to watch and listen. Read up a bit. Compare different platforms. Basically wait until the original glitches iron themselves out. We’re a little cautious in our house, but we love to drool over every new release and debate their merits. It’s been some time that we’ve talked about mobile technology in our house.

To say that I would love a mobile device is a bit of an understatement. I’ve not felt like it was the right time to jump into this market yet. Until today. Chris Crum wrote an article entitled “Firefox Finally Goes Mobile” that has me about ready to throw on my coat to go buy a Nokia N900.

You see, I am particular about my web browser. I’ve tried a few. I know Microsoft will roll over in their fancy corporate desk chairs, but I’ve never been enamored with Internet Explorer. For a long time I was a fan of Netscape, but that ship sailed off a number of years ago. These days I toggle between Mozilla Firefox and Chrome. I’ve been all but a Firefox pusher in the past, but there are some nice features in Chrome too.

All of this is to say that my browser of choice has now gone mobile. Don’t underestimate how happy it makes techno geeks when their tools of choice line up.

So, if you love Firefox and are drooling at the prospect of using it on a mobile device, Chris has summed up its the features well:

• Awesome Bar – Go to your favorite sites in just a couple of keystrokes with intelligent and personalized searching
• Weave Sync – Sync your Firefox tabs, history, bookmarks and passwords between your desktop and mobile device for a seamless browsing experience
• Add-ons – Customize your Firefox by adding small pieces of functionality, like games and news readers, that help make the mobile Web browser your own
• Location-Aware Browsing – Get maps and information relevant to your location
• Tabbed browsing – View open tabs as thumbnails to easily identify and select the Web page you’d like to go to next
• Safe Browsing – Get an Instant Web Site ID and easily access and edit security settings
• Available in more than 30 languages and counting

Better yet, the popular add-ons of Firefox are available for its mobile version, so if you wanted to use geo guides or the TwitterBar on your mobile device (sounds like a great match, doesn’t it!) you will be able to do it. Firefox has over 40 add-ons available for its mobile application, so there should be something for everyone. Even those of us who tend to wait for a perfect moment in technology to jump on board.

Although sites like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn are all incredibly popular options for social media, it is wise to examine your intended use and fit that use with the right site when planning your marketing strategy. There are many success stories with each possibility, such as the story about Pizza Hut using Twitter essentially as a cross between customer service and marketing, but today’s article by Doug Caverly, entitled “New Twitter Stats Highlight Lack of Stickiness” show trends in social marketing that shouldn’t be ignored.

The crux of the article is that many people and businesses sign up for Twitter and either never use it or use it a few times. Even more concerning is that some accounts have never taken the time to build a network of followers on Twitter. Here are the bare statistics that have come to light:

- At the end of 2009, there were 75 million Twitter accounts, with July being the peak month for increased membership
- Each month 6.2 million new accounts are activated (2-3 per second)
- 25% of accounts have no followers
- 40% of accounts have never sent a single Tweet
- 80% of all Twitter users have tweeted fewer than ten times

These are grave statistics for Twitter to consider, and surely, there will be growth in the future and changes to address the underlying issues that may be contributing to the statistics that show a large number of users either give up on it before they really get started or just fail to build any network on the site at all. Still, with the growth rate that Twitter is maintaining, there’s no need to throw your hands up and walk away. The fact is that lots of users are employing Twitter: if you just flip around the statistic on how many people are not using Twitter more than 10 times to find the 20% that are using it repeatedly, we see that 15 million users are tweeting. That’s still a respectable number.

For now when assessing your online marketing strategies, it is important to be aware of some of the limitations of social media. It’s not just up to Twitter to fix itself, but up to us to know how we will use these tools effectively. Working creatively with sites like Twitter and Facebook can gain your business followers and sales, but it will still be work to get a network up and running. They won’t run on their own and they do need regular attention. Internet marketing experts can guide you through this process, which may be the edge needed for your business to gain ground in this new realm of marketing.

Every so often while I am reading SEO news, I find something that tickles my funny bone. This morning, it was an article about Bill Gates’ blog and the SEO tactics that are either missing or need improvement on his site. I love this kind of tongue-in-cheek commentary, but better still, Danny Sullivan, author of “Some SEO Advice for Bill Gates” brings some good tips to light by using Gates’ site as an example. Although Sullivan digs much deeper, today I’d like to highlight two aspects of web page design that can increase your search ratings if they are improved: titles and meta-description tags.

Like many blogs and web pages, Bill Gates’s blog does not come out on the top of the heap when searched through Google. Shockingly, Bing doesn’t even rank this site in the top 10. Sullivan points out that although it is in the top 10 on Google, there are parody blogs ahead of him in the rankings.

Here are some of the main points I’d like to bring to your attention about titles:

1. Include the most obvious title for your page in the title text. In Gates’ case the sites that outranked him in Sullivan’s search did so because they had titles that said “Bill Gates Blog”. You might think that this phrase is too obvious to put in the title text, but it will drive up the site’s rankings. Sometimes it is about the obvious.

2. Each page on your website should have its own title, as this will provide another opportunity to be found by search engines. A little research on keywords can go a long way to increasing your site’s ranking if you include the top keywords used to get to your site in your title text.

3. Think of your website’s title as another opportunity to brand yourself and your business, but remember to combine branding with the top known keywords for maximum results.

4. Adding the word “official” to a website or blog can help rankings in certain situations. In the case of the Bill Gates site, it could make his blog stand out in the crowd of search results if he includes “official” in his title.

Sullivan’s information on meta description tags is also valuable. He points out that if you do not fill in your own information for your website, then “what shows is likely to change depending on the exact search someone does that brings up your home page. Usually, Google and Bing will try to automatically form a description based on what someone enters.” Meta description tags – which are done by – are another way for you to brand your own site and speak for your site, business, or person.

These are small things that can increase your site’s visibility, but small things do add up in SEO. If Bill Gates doesn’t have a handle on them, then there is a chance that your own website could do with a little tweaking too.

Late last week women on Facebook began posting their bra colours. The aim of the game was supposedly to raise awareness for breast cancer. And, indeed, the creator of the Facebook group called What’s Your Bra Color??? promised to donate $500 to Susan G. Komen’s foundation for the Cure if that group had more than 1,000 members by this past Monday. The casual campaign to post bra colours has garnered media attention and netted the What’s Your Bra Color??? Facebook group 4,500 members.

Some critics claim that the meme is only a pointless flirtation device, aimed at teasing men. Others claim that we are all already aware of breast cancer. While still others, including Susan G. Komen, praise the action, saying anything that gets people talking about and thinking about breast cancer is a boon. And it did get attention! The fact that the colours have vanished from Facebook statuses, but there is still talk about whether it worked or not is proof that it got people talking.

Regardless of your stance on this particular rash of Facebook posts, the deeper awareness for SEO and internet marketing gurus is a reminder of the deep reach that social media now employs in our society. If a post about bra colour has received this kind of attention, both on Facebook and from the media at large, it is worth talking about social media as a tool for attention for your business.

We’ve talked about the importance of social media within your marketing campaign before, but it bears repeating with this kind of example of its potential impact at our feet.

One big aspect of social media is that it is a new spin on the old adage about word-of-mouth being the best sales tool out there. Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter are the electronic versions of word-of-mouth. Although there is some time and energy taken in setting up and maintaining accounts, when your business takes off in these electronic spaces the word-of-mouth rule begins to apply. The bra colour campaign is a perfect example of how well a focused, fun idea can capture the attention of a social media group, sell that idea, then result in action. It’s a perfect business marketing model. The next time a business tells me that they are hesitant to employ social media in their marketing plans, I am definitely going to use this example to show them that social media can get people talking about your business and products.

Now, I have to go and find an old picture to post, pick up the closest book and pick a sentence to post in my status, and make sure my settings are set properly. Social media really is all what you make of it!

As someone with a vested interest in SEO tactics, I’m always interested in what the official word is from the biggest players on the scene. Namely, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo. Every so often their officials put information out there that especially catches my attention.

I like the way linking works. It fascinates me that linking can help to build your ranking on Google. As much as I try to wrap my brain around it, there is always another caveat and always something new to learn about this technique. It’s a little like editing the English language: just when you think you have all of the exceptions and rules figured out, something else crops up to dig into and to consider. Basically, I like it because I learn something new all the time and there is always a curve ball somewhere. Not everyone finds these sorts of things entertaining, but suffice it to say that those of us who do are incredibly entertained by Google and linking.

Here is Matt Cutts from Google, answering the question: “Links from relevant and important sites have always been a great way to get traffic & acceptance for a website. How do you rate links from new platforms like Twitter, FB to a website?”

Chris Crum covers this video in his article “How Google Rates Links from Facebook and Twitter”, and he and Matt both basically tell us that Facebook and Twitter links are ranked the same way as every other link out there. Matt Cutts goes so far as to pointedly say that Google’s search criteria does not discriminate based on platform. A link is a link is a link in the world of Google searches.

This claim does have a bit of a caveat to it (it’s those exceptions that tickle me so much) in that Facebook pages can have private settings. When a Facebook page is not public, Google cannot crawl it or rank it. And most links on Twitter are nofollowed anyway, which changes their interaction with Google.

So, if you thought that a .ed or a .gov website would carry more weight in the rankings, you’ve now been reassured straight our of the mouths of Goggle that their search techniques just don’t work that way.

We’re a household that loves gadgets. I work in SEO and my husband is a programmer. Gadgets are the backbone of our lives. Our kids were barely upright when they began trying to poke at our computers and bang on the laptop keys. So you can imagine that the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) has been a hot topic in our world.

Chris Crum gives a nice overview of the gadgets of the year in his article “A Glimpse of this Year’s Upcoming Gadgets”. From new products in televisions and blue-ray players to touch notebooks and e-readers, there really is something to appeal to everyone at CES. I know a number of non-technical people who will be excited about the developments in television related products, while the more technically oriented are drooling over the latest and greatest computer gadgets. It’s a wide range.

As an SEO aficionado, there were a few releases that caught my eye on Chris Crum’s list:

- Microsoft and HP combining their efforts and providing Bing as the default search engine with MSN as the default homepage for HP PCs in 42 countries.
- Intel’s new family of processors.
- Palm’s updates to their webOS platform.
- Yahoo’s announcements of their new hardware partnerships.
- The availability of professional service options for the Cisco Eos social entertainment platform.
- A new browser release for Opera.
- RIM’s newest BlackBerry achievement: a presenter that can show PowerPoint presentations, PDFs, etc straight from a BlackBerry device.
- Ford’s Internet-ready vehicles.

Some of these announcements are changes in the way computers work. Updated webOs platforms, new processors, and bigger and better BlackBerries can change how much we do online, how fast the experience can be, and the flexibility of our computers, regardless of their size. SEO takes interest in these developments so we can try to predict the next big changes in the way we use the Internet and how businesses access the Internet.

Other announcements, like Internet-ready vehicles, provide opportunities to expand our Internet usage and provide growth in markets like the developing mobile website marketplace. And still others have the potential to shift search engine market share, like the deal between Microsoft and HP that will expand Bing’s exposure, or swing social networking to a newer forum; both of which can have a big impact on SEO strategies.

Of course, while all of these new gadgets and releases are fun to look at and speculate about, only time will tell what will take hold of the marketplace and what will fizzle out. Right now, we’re all just looking and making notes to keep an eye on some of these developments

Now that the presents are opened and the left-over turkey is being made into sandwiches, we’re all slowly moving on to preparations for the New Year. Although resolutions are sometimes done alone, they can be done on a bigger level. In our family, we often take time to talk about what we would like to do and see in the coming year as a family.

It makes sense to think about making resolutions – a pretty fancy word for plans – for your business too. If your business is a small one, a breakfast meeting with some brainstorming and then making a few concrete plans may do the job. Bigger businesses will require input from different groups across the company and several meetings, but the end result of these resolution meetings is the same: brainstorming and planning. Regardless of the size of your company and scope of your SEO resolution project, the beginning of a new year provides an opportunity to figure out what worked in the past, what needs improvement, and what new projects ought to be tackled now.

Duane Forrester focused on resolutions in his article “6 New Years Resolutions for In-House SEMs”. He suggests starting with these steps:

- Hold an internal SEO summit: from a small breakfast meeting to a catered day or two with several speakers, this is the opportunity to talk about different aspects of your online strategy, uncovering the positive and negative attempts of the past year, and proposing projects for the new year. You never know where the best suggestions will come from, so keep an open mind when issuing invitations to this meeting.
- Get Robots.txt and Sitemap.xml docs in place: your business wants to let engine crawlers know how to interact with your site and how to access your freshest content, which is what robots.txt and sitemap.xml docs do. If your company has these documents on your website, be sure to update them. If they are not on your website, now is the time to get them up.
- Open and use Webmaster accounts: Bing, Yahoo, and Google offer contact with their search engines through dedicated Webmaster accounts. As Forrester explains, ”These accounts provide a wide range of services from alerting the engines to updates on your site to feedback directly from the engines themselves around how they are interacting with your website.”
- Establish the ROI on SEO investment: determining your ROI (return on investment) for your SEO strategy is not a straight calculation. Figure out what has been done, what increases your business has see through your web presence, and go from there.
- Integrate SEO and Social Media efforts: link building is a complex effort, which is propelled forward with your social media endeavors, so don’t leave social media out of your resolutions.
- Schedule and hold a senior executive-level SEO review: be sure to get your company executives on board, as they will help you move your SEO strategy across different levels of the company effectively.

Don’t let mobile websites be your business’ telephone banking blind spot.

The other day, I was thinking about how slow I was to adopt online banking. It took nothing for me to go to telephone banking, but my mindset was stuck there for years. I knew about online banking, but my mentality was very much “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it”. I liked telephone banking and it did everything I wanted it to do, so why bother? Then I switched over to online banking and I realizedI had a telephone banking blind spot.

Sometimes the way we use technology is just like telephone banking. It seems like it will do all you want it to do, you’re comfortable with it, and there is no impetus for change. I get that, because I’ve been there. I’ve looked at a new development and thought “Cool, but my (insert whatever you want here) works just fine, so why make the switch?”

Except that in business it is never that easy. Technology is proving that it can make or break a business, especially in tight economic times. And technology can change the way we all interact with each other; Twitter and Facebook have changed how we keep in touch with our friends and they are now morphing into fabulous business tools. As entrepreneurs, we all have to take these lessons to heart. No need to be the last business on the block to take up the mantle of new technologies.

Mobile websites are just such an animal.

With the growth of mobile devices and a growing segment of the population using mobile devices to access the internet, mobile websites promise to grow too. Joshua Odmark wrote about this promise and explains some of the potential for business growth in his article “Top 10 Reasons Your Website Should Go Mobile”.

Here are the 10 reasons he states:

1. Google has a separate index for mobile content.
2. Your regular website is not going to cut it.
3. 1/5 of Americans access the mobile web each day.
4. Mobile web will overtake the desktop within 5 years.
5. $1.6 billion purchased from mobile devices in 2009.
6. 93% of U.S. adults own a cell phone.
7. 5% of the top 500 online retailers have a mobile website/iPhone app.
8. Mobile advertising spending will surpass $6.5 billion in 2012.
9. Users average 13 hours online per week, up from 7 in 2002.
10. There are an estimated 2 billion cell phones worldwide.

With this growing market at your fingertips, your business can adopt mobile website development, and it could even influence how the mobile web scene will grow over the next few years.