Archive for February, 2007

February 28th, 2007 - Article on Link Building Best Practices

Links are easy to come by, but links from highly qualified, relevant sites are the ones you want to work for. This article in BizTech Magazine explores some of the ins and outs of good link-building. My thanks to those who participated.

http://www.biztechmagazine.com/article.asp?item_id=211

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February 26th, 2007 - New Virtual World Taking Shape in Australia

I’m working part-time hours with Quarry, leaving me with some time to write. Unfortunately this blog hasn’t been the recipient, but I did connect with the editor of The Age in Melbourne. The Next technology section appears in both The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald each Tuesday. Today’s paper features an article I wrote about a new virtual world (like Linden Labs’ Second Life) being developed by an Australian team.

Take your pick:

http://www.theage.com.au/news/biztech/yoicks-its-another-virtual-world/2007/02/26/1172338546871.html

http://www.smh.com.au/news/biztech/yoicks-its-another-virtual-world/2007/02/26/1172338546871.html

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February 24th, 2007 - New Australian Website Statistics Available

Alexa, an Amazon-owned provider of web usage data, recently made changes to their reporting tools at www.alexa.com to include regional data. What does this mean to Australians? Well, where formerly Alexa let us know that nine.msn.au was the 522nd most popular website in the world, now we can see that it’s the 8th most popular site in Australia.

Alexa has been used for years by web marketers to estimate the popularity of web sites (both friend and foe), but never before has this data been available on a regional basis. These free tools also now show the regional breakdown of the site, other sites visited by the same users, and estimated page views. A review of Australia’s top 100 most popular sites reveals the following:

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February 19th, 2007 - Remote Testing, Global Audience

I chat with colleagues in Canada via Skype in the morning. During the day (daytime hours in Australia that is) I spend time dealing with Australian companies remotely and in-person, as well as contractors in Europe and Asia via email and phone. Also, I have the occasional late night WebEx coference to attend with clients in the US and Canada. Is it just me or has the world gotten smaller?

This is a thing of beauty for companies with a wide geographic reach. Technology allows them access to customers that were previously out of practical range. The insight gained from this contact can lead to better products and better ROI.

Australia is uniquely isolated from the world, but even in the US we’ve seen tremendous value from remote access to customers. Our usability tests of software products, conducted with web conferencing and webcams, provide access to all the corners of the US. This includes smaller markets where, because of the low concentration of customers, it simply doesn’t make sense to visit in person. Yet here is that power-user in Alabama, sitting at his everyday desk and using his regular keyboard shortcuts, showing us how he uses the software, his pet peeves, the features he loves. All the while the product management team, logged in from their desks in Boston and London, are scribbling notes furiously.

These remote interaction design assessments have several benefits including reduced cost, unlimited geographic range, and convenient audio, video and screen activity recording.

But the benefits of having remote access to customers goes well beyond usability tests. Persona research could be conducted in this manner, dramatically reducing travel costs for the type of research global companies need. Similarly, qualitative research that relies on interviews could also be conducted in this manner.

There is so much to be learned from the customer. So many simple things that are hidden beneath our noses because we’re too involved in everything but end-user activities. Cost has been a convenient obstacle preventing companies from going afield to learn from users in different parts of the world. But today, valuable customer insight is incredibly affordable. As the battle for differentiation continues, those who are closest to the wants and needs of their target market will be in the best position to deliver an unparalleled customer experience.

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February 17th, 2007 - Article on Sitemap Best Practices

I recently had an article published by BizTech magazine on website site maps. A pragmatic view of a website’s content structure, the site map has long served as the last ditch method for the information-seeker. These days, the site map has taken on the added responsibility of ensuring search engine spiders reach all of the pages in a website.

It was a fun assignment to explore some best practices for site maps, and to look at some innovative uses of dynamic site maps. One slight refinement to the article is worth noting. Of the two Stephen Hawking site maps mentioned, only one is used on the scientist’s website. The other was submitted for use on that site, but was never adopted and is available at the site map creator’s website.

http://biztechmagazine.com/article.asp?item_id=187

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February 5th, 2007 - Contact Me

I’m always eager to hear from readers and learn about your current projects and marketing challenges. You can reach me through the following methods:

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February 5th, 2007 - Search Engine Marketing, Aussie-Style

The growing dot com pool, coupled with the global nature of the internet, makes it difficult to winnow a global audience down to real potential customers. The clients I have worked with typically face one of two problems. The first is a lack of traffic. They’ve built what amounts to a billboard in a basement. The second problem occurs when a site has good traffic volume (often arrived at through efforts to solve the first problem), but the quality of traffic is low. It’s wonderful to rank well in search engines for a competitive search phrase, but if your product is only available in Australia, how much time and bandwidth can you afford to waste dealing with North American visitors?

Here are some simple steps to help solve both problems:

Understand regional search qualifiers. In our lab setting at Quarry, we’ve watched many people search for regionally-limited products or services. Here’s the most common pattern we’ve noticed. Typically, they will start with a fairly broad search, then scan the results looking for regional pages, in this case judging location by URL and page title. After three to four seconds, if they haven’t found a match many will search again using a regional qualifier. If the original search was for “car insurance information”, the next search is for “car insurance information Australia”. A subset of users will repeat the search after selecting “Australia web pages only.”

With a good keyword research program you will know in advance which regional qualifiers potential customers are actually using to search for the products or services that you offer. Without this, you are marketing in the dark. Our keyword research process goes further, next looking at the search volume of these keywords and comparing it against the number of competing pages. When you find medium to high search volume on a regional phrase and also few competing pages from other sites, you’ve found some low-hanging fruit.

Host locally. One of the factors a search engine will use to determine where your website is located is through the location of your Web server. If your site happens to be hosted overseas, you can still compete with Australian websites, but the hill is steeper. Switching your hosting location is no trivial effort, and probably not worth it for this reason alone, but keep this in mind for future hosting decisions.

Build local links. Search engines are placing increasing weight on the quality of the inbound links that point to your site to determine how it ranks in search engine results. If your focus is on the Australian market, you will want to work hard at creating a strong network of Australian link partners. This will boost your relevancy for those regionally-target search phrases. Also, let’s not forget the other thing that links do: drive traffic. I have seen search marketers conduct aggressive link-building campaigns, adding links from everywhere and anywhere, who are somehow surprised when their links in those web directories in Korea and Taiwan actually start sending traffic to their site. “Whoops, sorry, our product is only available in our region. Australian links mean Australian traffic.

Geo-target PPC: I’m still a little surprised that marketers spend eight times as much on pay-per-click advertising as they spend improving their organic search rankings. But when it comes to targeting a geographically-defined audience, nothing beats the precision of pay-per-click advertising. Here you can define your advertising region by country, by city, or by defining a targeted radius on a map.

Start with a Solid baseline: I’ve heard horror stories from clients who launched an SEO campaign without a full understanding of how their site currently ranks for relevant search phrases. The problem is, despite some good intentions, the changes you make to the site can inadvertently wipe out any quality search rankings that you currently have. Always first have a good understanding of where your traffic comes from and what top 20 or top 30 rankings you have in Google, Yahoo, MSN, and their local search engine offerings. Quarry offers a free SEO report that shows your current rankings, your competitor’s rankings, some keyword research applicable to your industry, top pay-per-click bids for the keywords you choose, and specific recommendations to help your site get better rankings. Yes, I did say free.

These tenets should help you get the attention of a local audience as you plan your search engine marketing efforts. Consider this a local supplement to the standard set of SEO and PPC best practices discussed on this site or the articles I have linked to.

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