Search Engine Optimisation
How to Beat a Behemoth SEO Competitor – The Big List continued
Mar 29th
One of the greatest pities in the SEO world is when a great company fails to optimise their site because they feel they can’t compete with another large company that has more online experience, more Google Juice, and a bigger website. It’s a pity not only for the company itself, but for the general public and potential consumers who may miss out on the option of having a stellar product! Today we continue our look at how you can actually beat a big SEO competitor. Even the mighty must sometimes fall…
1. Don’t compete on price
It’s the lowest common denominator on the web. It’s tempting to think that if you offer a cheaper product than your big competitor, you’ll eventually siphon off all their customers, link popularity, etc. Not true. In many cases, you just end up being seen as the cheap alternative to the ‘good’ product. Being at the top of Google is an automatic ticket to being seen as a ‘trusted’ brand, according to surveys. Being cheap, and lower down, just makes you seem ‘safe to ignore’.
2. Look first to thyself
Sayeth the God of web marketing to his true believers! Make sure your offering is great, that your web design is awesome, that your customer service is in order, before you engage in a full-scale assault on that top Google ranking.
3. Spy on your competitors … to create a point of difference
It may sound sneaky … but it all depends on how you use the information. Copying your competitors tactics will not usually help you beat them. As Ries and Trout (the 27 Immutable Laws of Marketing) suggest, it is better to be first than it is to be better. However, if you want to know how to market yourself as different to potential customers, you need to know what makes you different. Which means knowing what the customer experience at your competitor’s business is like.
4. Ask what your customers thought about transactions
People LOOOVE being asked what they think! And this tactic doesn’t only endear your customers to you … it provides valuable information about improving your business for the future. There may be a tiny piece of the puzzle that your competitor has mastered, but you’ve so far missed completely. Implement a ‘Feedback’ form on your website, or get in contact with people who have had orders delivered via email and find out what they thought about the transaction. It works on eBay!
Keep watching for more ideas from the big list for beating those SEO behemoths at their own game!
How to Beat a Behemoth SEO Competitor – The Big List of Underdog Tactics
Mar 26th
Sometimes an SEO campaign seems hopeless. Much like at Kokoda on the Owen Stanley track, your larger competitor outnumbers you in staff and resources. They seem healthier and more experienced … but if you have the guts and determination, and use a little ingenuity in your SEO and general web marketing strategy, it is certainly possible to beat them! Today we start our catalogue of tips for beating a seemingly unbeatable SEO competitor.
Not such a mammoth competitor after all!
1. Persistence
This is the first thing you need to remember as you launch into an assault on the top position. If you only half-finish an SEO campaign, you waste all of it … not just half. Be prepared to go the distance – know that it is possible!
2. Know your market
In some cases a ‘competitor’ may not truly be competing with your business. If you have a slightly different offering, aim to be at the top of Google for the search terms that best describe your business. Know your unique selling point, and exploit it to the max!
3. Use review sites to boost your business name
Ask your customers to leave reviews of your business on well-respected review sites. If you’re in the tourism industry, Tripadvisor is the big name – but every industry can use sites like www.productreview.com.au. Please avoid the temptation to use review sites to denigrate your competitor(s)’ reputations, though! Keep it clean, people.
4. Don’t forget Google Local
Make sure you use your Google Local profile to the fullest extent possible. Add all the information you can Add your prices in Google Local as well – so many people use the internet for price comparisons, and may simply pass over your business if getting a price is too much like hard work. Price isn’t always the determining factor in supplier choice for the majority of people, anyway.
5. Don’t forget Google Local Reviews!
These may be one of the first things that prospective customers see – Google Local results often show up very high on the results listing, and click-throughs are a lot more evenly spread for these ten results. Get your satisfied customers to leave reviews here to start boosting your traffic.
Stay tuned – we’ll be looking at more ways to beat a behemoth SEO competitor in the coming days.
4 More Principles of Customer Service in Internet Marketing
Mar 24th
We’ve been looking at how some non-SEO related factors can really suck up the true value of the SEO itself, and subvert its end goal … to make your business money. Inattentive or badly coordinated customer service is something that definitely needs to be sorted out before an SEO campaign starts – today we continue our look at the core principles of good customer service, minute by minute.
Laugh ... but have you heard someone at your organisation say this?
1. Got a complaint – deal with it
If you hear of any complaints from your customers, try your hardest to resolve them to the customer’s satisfaction, without overly compromising your business principles. In saying that, sometimes a measure of compromise will be necessary to keep people happy – you may have to give something away for free that people would usually pay for, for example. Take the angle that you are trying to ‘make up’ for the customer’s inconvenience, and know that this sort of attitude will help your business in the long run.
2. Always ask your customers if they need something else
If someone approached you in store and asked where the milk was, you’d probably take them there, then wait to make sure they found the brand they wanted. The equivalent in internet marketing is not just directing customers to ‘the Products section from the Home page’ … give them a link to exactly what they need. Then ask if they have any questions about it, or the ordering process.
3. Be positive, be genuine
Learn to be positive about your work, your business … and life in general! Greet people with “This rain will be helping the grass grow/farmers/health of the river” instead of saying “Horrible weather we’re having, isn’t it?”. Positivity from the start sets the tone for all your customer’s interactions with your company.
4. Make sure ALL your customer service staff know these principles!
Run customer service refresher courses every so often, preferably with the managers as mock customers so problems can be easily identified. Even if people tend to ‘act’ a little because they know they’re being tested, it will still help them keep the ideals at the front of their mind. And even in an internet marketing context, it is possible to use training tools like mystery shoppers.
It’s a crying shame to see a top Google ranking go to waste through a lack of understanding about customer service. These principles are very simple … but they make a real difference!
4 Principles of Customer Service in Internet Marketing
Mar 23rd
For some people, good customer service comes naturally. But in many companies (very understandably!), people who are really specialists in very diverse fields have to engage in the customer service. We talked yesterday about the impact that your customer service practices can have on your internet marketing and SEO. Today we look at how to make sure you aren’t a victim of the Anakin Skywalkers out there (!), by reviewing some of the core tenets of good customer service.
1. Answer phones, emails and instant messages
I certainly understand the reasons why some people don’t answer their business phones, emails or live help requests. You’re just too busy, and it can ‘waste’ big chunks of the day communicating with people. However, if you’re at the stage where you are too busy to answer calls and messages, perhaps it’s time to hire someone to do it … or risk never being busy again.
2. Keep your promises
If something isn’t firm, don’t make it into a promise. If you tell a customer that you will definitely have their order manufactured by Friday, make sure that you do. If you aren’t sure whether it will be ready by Friday, use vaguer language. There’s no harm in being uncertain, but there is in breaking promises.
3. Listen to what your customers are saying
In the old days, this simply meant ‘listening’. Funny, that! In the context of internet marketing, though, ‘listening’ means taking on a whole new set of tasks. Set up a Google alert for your business name as well as possible variations, regularly look for your company mentioned in Tweets and on Facebook Pages. If you find dissatisfied customers, try to resolve their concerns.
4. Be helpful for no reason
Apart from the fact that helping people for no reason fills you with the milk of human kindness and gives you a serious case of the fuzzies, it could also boost your business. There may be no immediate reward … but be helpful to enough people and you’ll reap the rewards in reputation and eventually, profits.
Why Customer Service and SEO Go Hand in Hand
Mar 22nd
We’ve often talked on the blog about how SEO and web design, for example, go hand in hand. We’ve talked about how SEO and conversion optimisation are two very complementary practices. Obviously, there’s no use in having lots of traffic if none of them spend anything on site. Today we’re looking at why customer service is another of the complementary activities to SEO and web marketing- because there’s no point being at the top of the rankings if your bad reputation precedes you, and people refuse to click no matter how high you show up.
Some customers don't get mad ... they get the Dark Side
The angry consumer
We’ve said it in jest before (not that long ago, when we were discussing ‘Why the Internet Sucks’), but it is true. Getting behind a keyboard and a screen allows people’s anger to rise to amazing levels. Someone that has a bad experience at your shop will vent in a much more vicious way if left to stew, and then explode online, than if you’d tried to resolve the issue immediately in-store.
What can the angry consumer do?
Some extreme examples of venting by frustrated consumers include the website BanTarget.org, set up in response to the Salvation Army being banned from collecting donations outside Target Stores a while back. Or how about iPodsDirtySecret.com, a site set up including an actual recorded conversation with an Apple customer service rep over the fact that when an iPod battery died, the only alternative was to replace the entire machine.
Other ways consumers get even
However, there are plenty of ways that consumers can vent about businesses they feel disappointed by, where someone doesn’t have to be annoyed enough to spend $25 on domain name registration and hosting. These include:
- Ranting on their own Facebook pages, and setting up Pages or Groups on Facebook that are anti-your business.
- Publishing negative tweets about your company
- Leaving negative reviews on review sites … including on Google Local’s feature, where if you rank highly, this will be one of the first things prospective customers see.
- File a report about your business with the Consumer Complaint Commission. US businesses can find complaints listed about them with the highly respected Better Business Bureau.
- Leave complaints on complaint sites, set up especially for the purpose.
- Write articles about your company online, create a hub page, Squidoo lens, etc
If you don’t treat your customers well, all that web marketing energy will go down the tube. The age of the internet is the age of accountability for customer service … both fortunately, and unfortunately 
4 Biggest SEO Cash Leeches
Mar 19th
SEO can be great for business. Can be really, really great for business. We’ve personally seen quite a few companies make million-dollar differences to their bottom line, in as little as 12 months. These aren’t the steps to getting to your goal (the number one rankings, the traffic, etc). This IS the goal! But unfortunately, there are a lot of ways you can waste money with ineffective SEO techniques. Today we look at some of the biggest cash leeches in an SEO campaign – they are all give and no take.
1. You’re paying for ads on the Google content network that are not highly targeted
For starters, we are firm believers in the idea that organic SEO has a huge range of benefits over and above pay per click, which is the way the Google Content network is designed. Click on the image above to view it at full size, and tell me if you think the advertisers in question were actively trying to target ‘travel insurance’. If your ads are displayed like this, there is a far lower chance of getting clicks, and of getting conversions from clicks that you pay for.
2. Not using analytics
I love John Wanamaker’s quote – “Half of the money I spend on advertising is completely wasted. I just have no idea which half”. John Wanamaker was the inventor of the price tag and a department store owner himself, and obviously lived in the time before Google Analytics! Ask your SEO company about setting up analytics, if it all seems a bit too much like hard work.
3. Designing, building and writing content for the company, not the customer
You can have the prettiest website and the most grammatically correct content in the world. But if it doesn’t speak in the same language as your customers do, or appeal to them visually, then it is terrible. Why? Because it isn’t achieving its goals.
4. You are paying to get traffic to an old, non-functional or poorly designed site
Without an attractive, usable website at the other end of the click-journey, you’ll be paying for SEO that is driving up not much more than you bounce rate. In fact, many SEO companies can help you with your web design as well. You may not need to switch companies for this little cash leech – just ask about additional services.
Getting to the top of Google is not a license to print money, unfortunately. There are plenty of other SEO-related factors you need to keep an eye on in order to make money in the long term. Talk to an expert SEO strategist if you want any pointers for your own site!
Why Does the Internet Suck?
Mar 18th
Ha haa! We hear so much about the benefits of the web, SEO and internet marketing… its power to make money, to connect people with other people and with products, to give us more decision-making power and information … etc etc etc. People never stop extolling the virtues of the internet. Today I’m going to tell you why the internet completely, absolutely, sucks! And then, most likely, kiss and make up with it – “Let’s stop the fussin’ and the feudin’!”.
The internet is not impressed at our assessment
1. It’s a black hole for time
We all know exactly how much time the internet can waste. Entire weeks of your life are at stake. Information is fascinating … but not always useful in a broad context.
2. We depend on it … but it isn’t always dependable
Your connection to the internet arises out of a complex array of different factors. Your computer, software, hardware, the phone line, your ISP all collaborate to get you online. If one link breaks … all hell breaks loose!
3. It creates angry, mean people
This phenomenon, I’m sure, arises out of the same mechanism that makes us instantly angrier every time we get behind the tonne or so of metal, glass and plastic that is our car. When there is a keyboard, a screen, and in many cases entire continents between us and other people, human consideration is greatly lessened. Unfortunately.
4. You can’t always trust it
If I had a dollar for every time a Nigerian princess had contacted me, for every time a company had claimed to be able to either enlarge or shrink various parts of my body, and every time I had been told I could make over $40 per hour working at home, I would be a rich, rich lady.
5. Sometimes, we don’t need all that information
One very real effect of the internet on our collective psyche is the way it dispenses us to worry. We now the intimate details of people killed in natural disasters across the world, about exactly how many kidnappings occur every minute, and how often someone is diagnosed with cancer. But SHOULD we?
6. It’s permanent
If you’ve ever bookmarked an awesome link and gone back to find it a week later, only to be informed that the site hasn’t paid their hosting fees, you may dispute this point. But a very real fact is that if you have posted it on the internet, even if it has since been deleted, it may still exist in some form in somebody else’s internet history – or at least, the Google cache.
Our relationship with the internet is definitely more love than frustration … it’s like a marriage. It takes work to have a happy life together, but you know that leaving is not an option!
Five Checkpoints Before You Start Social Media Marketing
Mar 17th
Social media marketing is going to be a critical strategy for businesses to learn to take up. Many traditional style stores find it incredibly counter-intuitive to ‘become friends’ with their customers, to share thoughts and opinions, or to remain anything but completely corporate and professional. However, in a world where everything is available to everybody, it is personality that will draw your customers to you, and set you apart in your niche. But before you start using social media to boost your web marketing repertoire, there are some things you should do …
Create a strategy before you jump into the swarm
1. Should you start social media marketing?
Do your clients use social media? Will they think its repulsive that you’ve started? Ask some questions of your existing customers if you can to try to gauge response. Also, see if any companies competing with you use social media, and what sort of response they have from people – do they have many Facebook fans or much Twitter interaction?
2. Consider the costs
Setting up most social media profiles is free. However, the time taken to administer them, to create content to submit to Digg, to contact people that send you questions through these media, all costs money. Be prepared to have dedicated web-based customer service staff if you push social media hard.
3. Set a personality and tone for your social media experience
Try to make it as close to your company’s real culture as possible, and set some boundaries regarding what gets posted or talked about. Will innocent sexual innuendo be okay … in fact what sorts of content in general will be okay and what will not?
4. Create a skills-based team dedicated to the social media marketing
Choose someone that is personable but professional, and also understands the legal and media implications of their public statements.
5. Set up a tracking system
You’ll need to know how all this effort is translating into profits for your company – decide on a method for tracking this before you start.
Slippery Websites – Do You Have One?
Mar 16th
I love the metaphor of ‘slippery’ for a website – I can just imagine the site trying to hold onto visitors that are like egg white … they fall apart in your hands and slip down your wrists. Or the site itself can be like a slide – people arrive at the top, and quickly make their way off at the bottom. If your SEO can get people to your website without a problem, but have trouble making the money you should, we look at some steps to take to slow the journey.
Is this how slippery your website is?
1. Find out who you are selling to
So, so many companies say “We sell to whoever needs our products”. This may be true – but every company finds that a large portion of their customers are derived from a certain demographic segment. They might be mostly women, they might be mostly of childbearing age, and they might be mostly located within your physical area. Demographic analysis of your current customers is the first step to getting rid of that slip.
2. Understand your market
Understand their preferences for colour, their design sensibilities, the way they search for information, etc. Then pander to those sensibilities in your website, whether or not they also appeal to you. Everybody is different … and the only people you need to please are the ones that are keeping you in business.
3. Do usability studies
Jakob Nielsen is the grandfather of usability (often the grumpy old man of usability, actually J), and his blog at www.useit.com has lots of good usability info, hints and tips for where you might currently be going wrong. Of course, there is no substitute for an expert eye in this arena … many web marketing specialists work on usability and web design as well as SEO.
4. Build trust on your website
If you don’t have SSL security certificates, a https: connection for your credit card entry page, security certificates for programs like Verified by Visa, etc, there are few customers now that would entrust you with their money.
5. If you have an ecommerce site, link to other products from many places
If consumers can’t quickly find what they want, or don’t see any indications that you might have what they want, they will often click straight off. Use Top Seller widgets, ‘Also Recommended’ sections, and include ‘Customers who purchased this item also bought’ sections, a la Amazon.
Conversion optimisation is a big topic and you can spend years refining it – but without it, every SEO dollar you spend could be wasted.
DIY SEO: Listing in Google Local
Mar 8th
If you own a local business and are doing web marketing, but haven’t yet looked at your own listing in Google Local … go do it. Right now, before you read any further. Drill Sergeant Pepper says go go go!
Now that you know your starting point, we’re going to show you how to make that listing prettier, help make sure that those reviews that show up are mostly positive (without cheating), and generally draw more customers through your sliding door. Here’s how to edit your Google Local listing, and what it could do for your business.
1. Go to www.google.com.au/lbc and add a new business
Most of this information is fairly straightforward, however close to the bottom of the listing page (as it stands currently) you’ll have to enter a description and category for your business. These will be critical in driving traffic to your site through Google Local. Make sure your description contains a variety of your keywords (don’t use word order variations, or singular AND plural versions). Choose your category carefully as well – use this list, and search the page with Ctrl+F to find your keywords and their associated category.
The other field you should take note of is the business name – it is likely that Google uses this to help rank you and display your results as well. If your official business name is ‘Making the Cut’, and you are a hairdresser, we advise you to list your business name as ‘Making the Cut Hairdressing’ in Google Local to have the best chance of being found.
2. Enter information
Throughout the rest of the process, enter as much information as possible about your business. Tell people how they can pay, tell them when you are open, tell them everything. Add photos, add videos, add all the additional details you can think of. The internet is there for information, and while some businesses have a competitive aversion to telling others what they do, customers expect it … and appreciate it.
3. Reviews
Check out where your competitors are getting reviews from in Google Local, and put up a physical sign in your shop asking people that had a good experience to post a review of your shop on that site. You will inevitably get some bad reviews as well – don’t worry too much about them. If you have a good business, you will get mostly good reviews.
If you have problems getting listed in Google Local, Web Marketing Experts offers Google Maps Optimisation and SEO services with guaranteed results.