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Provoke's Online Marketing Insight, What Would You Like To Know About?

Online Behaviour Reports Cross Channel Hopping!

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If there’s one clear lesson to be learnt from the explosions caused by Smartphone and netbook accelerating online search is that business marketing strategies need to stay on top on top of user channel switching behaviour driving webwatchers dizzy!

Savvy business owners and their website design boys and girls keep close to website analytics. They know that nothing stays the same from minute to minute and if a PPC adword or newsletter email marketing campaign is to bring in the desired results then they must stay in touch with their target market niche segment.

In other words, in 2010, online marketing means engaging with every single visitor and knowing what they are looking for and how they try to find the object of their search.

A recent Cross-Channel Commerce study reports that increasingly online consumers are switching between channels when both researching and making purchases, with the overwhelming majority using at least two channels in their purchase decisions.
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Search Engine Optimisation – The Spiders Are Not From Mars!

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Google algorithms pulse to an ever changing beat when searching and indexing site content. With so many new factors in play, from mobile and realtime to personal search, short-sighted SEO obsessed businesses need to take a website refresh and a long hard look at their campaigns.

Paranoia at the heart of net! The constant scouring of the SERPs field of competitors with everyone trying to get to Google PageRank One in the quickest time!

Businesses often just fail to grasp that there is no one single SEO formula for PageRank climbing! The search engine spiders may not be from Mars but their site visits spin ultimately, unknowable threads that vote on your website accessibility, quality content and relevance.

Patience is key. Establishing brand identity is a long term investment of continuous link building within your own specific market niche. To really understand online marketing is to play the long game! Your ranking can remain static or suddenly change, and it’s outside of your control.
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Google Caffeine High Ranks Social Media!

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Announced by Google in August 2009, Caffeine is an algorithm update aimed to expand indexing, sharpen relevance and increase speed. For eCommerce and online business, taking their Caffeine hit means the rules of the game could be changing for website optimisation!

Emerging technology platforms and their applications are always predicted to affect online marketing practice. An early impact on current SEO practice could see it spreading out to be employed in the evolving three key areas of search:

• Personalised
• Mobile
• Real-time

Alongside mobile search, Google’s focus on personalised search to display tailored user results is central to the goal of returning relevant results – dependent on fully optimised website accessibility. By indexing more pages through Caffeine, Google is aiming to be able to offer a broader range of results dependent on a user’s past search history and interests.
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Google Wins Brand Name Trademark Case.

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Google’s victory this week at The European Court of Justice in Luxembourg ends a long-running legal battle with major brand, Louis Vuitton. The ruling in their favour means Google did not infringe brand owners’ rights by allowing advertisers to buy keywords corresponding to trademarks.

Recently referred to on the Provoke blog, the buying of a sponsored link on a high profile brand name keyword, such as Louis Vuitton or Levis, for example, has been often the most successful of online marketing tactics and particularly cost effective, as the retail stockists do not pay for using the brand name.

However, the European Court also cautioned online businesses who use trademarked brand keywords to boost sales traffic that henceforth, the identity of the seller must be made clear to the website visitor, adding, ” Advertisers… cannot, by using such keywords, arrange for Google to display ads which do not allow internet users easily to establish from which undertaking the goods or services covered by the ad in question, originate”.
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Google Adword Brand Use Battle!

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In the beginning … was the word – the global brand name! And Google, came into their sacred garden selling Adwords to advertisers who used company brand names as keywords and thus, allegedly infringed trademarks! As online keyword ownership battles take to the European high courts, the spotlight is on the power of the link!

Nothing drives visitor traffic like PPC – paid search via sponsored ads – and SEO keyword link building. Both methods are recognised as essential toolkits in today’s business online marketing environment to build progressive brand identity.

It’s small wonder that the biggest players are now looking seriously at how their brand names have been monetised by Google’s Adwords. The paid search service allows advertisers to pay a fee which enables the ‘sponsored links’ to their own websites to be most likely, the first returned to a visitors keyword search result.
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Sony Vivaz – new Smartphone with not so smart marketing?

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The recent introduction of the Sony Vivaz HD Touchscreen smartphone is supported by an online sponsored ad campaign top of Google Page One rankings whilst their own national TV ads promoting branded word search only puts them into second place!

So why is this? Not enough viewers entering Vivaz into their search engines? A marketing strategies failure at Sony marketing department? A recent Provoke blog posted here discussed some of the assumptions attached to SEO keywords and PPC campaigns.

Google is not necessarily impressed with the one word search term, especially if it is a designated brand name. The search engine tends to place higher value on unbranded, long tail search word terms indicating specific niche search interest. Short tail branded words might have higher volume search numbers but are more likely to be considered ‘less’ valuable than an organically built up search term.

Google algorithms are tricky to please!
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Building Link Love Boosts Your Ranking!

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The art of effective link building is more than competing to place a couple of your most common niche keyword search terms in a sponsored ad on Google page One and waiting for the visitors to click your way! Many won’t even bother just because the ad has been paid to be there and doubt the quality! To get the best long term results, it’s all about making link love!

Google search engines have evolved sophisticated, chameleon algorithms to recognise and index genuine ‘quality’ web content, even though they appear to operate seemingly complex yet rigorous criteria, and often confusing changes to what is considered valuable.

Today’s reality is that the most effective online marketing campaigns, which aim to maintain long term presence, are no longer so entirely dependent on repetitive, mechanical keyword compilation! Google, Yahoo, and Bing consider that links to your site from other sites clearly show that there is a belief in your site having value, especially links coming from high quality and high ranking sites.
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Microsoft New Cross Browser Access Menu

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The announcement that Microsoft would introduce a browser menu screen, which would offer a choice of alternatives to Internet Explorer from March 2010 onwards, is a reminder to check that your website can be seen, as intended, across the major user browsers.

Following a long anti competition campaign waged by rival browser providers, including Opera, who had opposed Microsoft for restricting website accessibility standards by only offering Internet Explorer with Windows, the move comes after Microsoft reached an agreement with the European Competition Commission in December 2009, and is designed to provide nearly 200 million European Windows users with a choice of default browser.

For businesses and their website design partners, it may be a good opportunity to check that your website is fully functional, accessible and it looks the way intended across the first five highlighted, leading browsers, in featured order: Opera, IE8, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari.

There are a further seven to choose from : Avart, K-Meleon, Flock, Flashpeak, Maxthon, Sleipnir and Greenbrowser, which requires users to scroll to the right in order to view.
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Marketing Mash Up for the Single Mobile Lifestyle!

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The big buzz in 2010 seems to be the thrust towards the all-singing, all-dancing mobile that is the total living your life solution! Everything you’ll ever need when you need it – for work, rest and play!

The phenomenal success of the iPhone and the explosion in apps downloads has given rise to predictions that we are moving away from a ‘web of content to a web of applications’. Consequently, there has been some talk recently of paid search slowing as the rapid spread of gadgets and apps indicates that the way we access content is increasingly bypassing search engines to go directly via the mobile app!

If this is true, what does this revelation mean for business online marketing and future website accessibility?
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Pay Per Click – Giving Keywords Some Stick!

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The problem is we can all get complacent or rely on habit when we should be looking with a keen eye! Taking care of adwords campaigns can become routine as the same product keywords are shuffled around!

If your PPC campaigns have been a little lacklustre recently, time to boost your online brand identity! Get tweaking on any tired online marketing habits and fire up your SEO keywords for warming user’s clicking forefingers! Drive your traffic back up the Google rankings again!

Retail and eCommerce sites are always most in need of keeping their sponsored ads flying high on Google Page One to propel high volume click rates.

So if your sales conversions are no longer at the ‘tipping’ point, then here’s a few ‘tips’ to help get traffic moving:
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eCommerce Site Design – Ten Usability Tips To Keep Your Visitors Happy!

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Common errors of site design caused by a lack of understanding ‘website experience’ will simply mean your potential customer quickly becomes impatient, abandons their purchases and clicks elsewhere!

Even more than the high street, expectation levels now of the eCommerce experience show that customer demands are high when it comes to online purchasing. From instant website accessibility, to product/service finding and completing correct payment, just one error or the slightest reason which prevents a quick and easy sail through the transaction process will immediately affect the sale.
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Mobile Internet – Driving Change To Site Design Usability?

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Anything you need to find out, do and see – on demand, on the move, on your mobile, NOW! As smartphone apps take targeted search to a new level of bringing the dream ever closer, 2010 looks like the year when your business may need to step up a gear and get your website accessibility ready for hyper drive site search!

If it’s true that the future is literally in your hands, then the mobile smartphone is set to become the doorway to the human/web interface! If your company specialises in online retail and eCommerce, and your marketing strategies integrate social media networking, then you may already be seeing the growing demand for mobile access to your website, and products and services to be made available to people who are on the move.

The landscape is changing and online marketing is spreading out across all platforms and channels. If the age of the deskbound PC is being increasingly challenged by the portable access devices of iPhone and very soon the iPad, then it may be time to seriously think beyond the planned website refresh, and consider reshaping your site design to include mobile usability.

Here’s a few pointers you might want to ask about with your web design and developer team:
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