Provoke Design

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

Why Social Media Is Still Not All Happy Talk!

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Fickle customers confound social media! The route to market is as tricky as it ever was, as a recent consumer report shows, human behaviour appears to be the ‘same old same old’, on whatever channel and platform they choose to use.

Who said online marketing was going to get easier with the development of social media networking channels? Don’t believe the hype! Yes – there are considerable opportunities opening up for eCommerce and business brands to harness social web mediums and engage by mobile app, smartphone and tablet as well as PC and laptop.
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Stone Age Online Marketing Alive In 2011!

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New surveys show that while two thirds of b2b companies will continue with more traditional search marketing using email in 2011, incredibly, an overwhelming number have failed to even optimise their websites sufficiently or utilised paid search. Not surprisingly, one in three SMEs are concerned over their lack of online visibility and social engagement with potential customers.

In the age of the interactive and real time social media web, where the art of online marketing has diversified into a multiplicity of channels and platforms to engage with specific market segments by Twitter and Facebook, newly released figures suggest that UK business spends less than 10 per cent of their marketing budgets to implement SEO or PPC paid search.
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Social Search–Optimising Is Not An Option!

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If there’s one message that needs to be clearly understood in 2011 by website owners, it’s that Google is no longer the only game in town! Social Search and Mobile Web are carving up the online landscape and opening up alternative routes to drive visitor traffic and convert niche customer engagement.

Yes, aspects of established online marketing will still prevail and email marketing continues to play a valuable role on the user platforms and channels of a rapidly diversifying web. Google, itself, has been recalibrating algorithm, search indexing and SERPS to more accurately reflect relevant, semantic content activity and bring more personalised results, with indications of ‘social signal’ acknowledgement.
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Wave Goodbye, Say Hello To SEO!

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The confusion some business owners still have over SEO and what works and doesn’t work and the time and the cost of it all! As we move into 2011, the year mobile commerce, iPad apps and the socially engaged web will sort savvy brand leaders from the non-runners, it really is time to wave goodbye, say hello to SEO!

Google looks at and ranks inbound links from quality sites to quality content and frequent activity at your own site. User search behaviour needs to be constantly monitored and website visitor activity tracked and assessed on a non-stop basis.
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Waving Not Drowning In The Social Swim!

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Website owners swimming in the open seas of uncharted social media tend to stop frequently in an effort to contain the flowing waters of content sharing behaviour. Having dived in the deep end and flayed around for a while to no avail, they suddenly want to know who their targeted customer is and the social media services they consume!

The endless quizzing over social media utility and the return on time and effort continues unabated. The incorporation of social engagement into a 21st century ethos of online marketing has never sat too easily in the minds of some business owners. But having been grudgingly persuaded to get involved or get left behind by the Facebook and Twitter revolution, it’s all too apparent how little to no thought has gone into what they are doing with the channels and what results they might realistically expect.
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PPC – No Quick Fix Spree!

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PPC and SEO can often be misunderstood by business owners as a quick fix to falling sales or solving a deeper company malaise! Before throwing money at paid search, identifying aims and careful research are crucial.

The key to developing successful online marketing campaigns is based on forensic SEO keyword research, constant monitoring of daily visitor traffic, potential customer site behaviour – and constant testing of PPC ads, web page layout and content.
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If Your Website’s Not Got These Your Visitors Are Not Coming In!

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Every website must have a reason to live! A purpose to serve both your business and potential visitor search needs. Google wants to see a genuine, high linked traffic resource of content with interest, value and activity. To get PageRank visibility, your website needs to contain essential results generating task pages.

A website that is little more than an online brochure can still be found on the web! Admittedly, the companies concerned may wish to invest a little more in building a better brand identity online and will “get round to it eventually”. Except, website design moves on and those companies not marching in step with the evolving eCommerce terrain will be very confused and bewildered indeed whenever they try to catch up.
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Active Websites Win Higher PageRank!

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Recent changes to the Google algorithm highlight a new way websites are now indexed for all-important ranking. It’s good news for online marketing, because the more traffic arriving at all pages from multiple different sources, the higher site ranking is now likely to be.

In the constant battle to combat mass link building by software programmes, Google has placed a limit on the numbers of backlinks, and their frequency to specific website pages. Any attempt to deliver an excessive number of backlinks too quickly in a short space of time, is obviously, not the result of organic traffic, and will actually be voted negatively, harming ranking and possibly, incurring a ban as well!
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Google Algorithm – All Change To Quality Content Search

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Google’s algorithm update in May was a significant event. Following rigorous trials, the revamped search bots were unleashed upon the web, programmed to hunt down websites optimised for higher quality content. This spells the beginning of the end for cheap, badly written content, of no interest value or worth in today’s social media sharing world.

Companies have appeared who manufacture written content on an industrial scale assembly line at low cost to drive traffic and obtain PageRank for their clients. In other words, the old school “Pile ‘em high, sell ‘em cheap” principle, meaning the the first casualty is quality.
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SEO 80/20 Rule Still Good!

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Google algorithms are not robots, y’know! Fashioned in the image of their human creators, they have constantly evolved to now become fabulous, sophisticated life forms designed to seek out and record signs of ‘quality’ website life rather than just plotting dull, repetitive keywords every business wants to bid upon.

Sure, carefully researched SEO keyword phrases are important to use in order to develop effective PPC ads and link building strategies. But what really counts is how Google and other important search engines ‘sees’ and ‘votes’ for the ‘quality’ and ‘relevance’ of your website.

It’s now not just a case of adding keywords into your various HTML tags, uploading your files and waiting for the results. The role of web design and integrated marketing strategy is a daily, if not hourly concern and requires constant attention to stay in touch with your target audience and market sector, as events unfold!
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The benefit of Local Search for businesses

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Each  year the web gets bigger and as such the competition gets harder, this means it becomes increasingly harder to get listed towards the top of the search engines. Smaller local businesses can get lost or struggle to get listed on the relevant keywords or phrases.
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Getting to the top of Google

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A little under a year ago one of our clients (Managed Networks) approached us with the task of helping them rise through the rankings on Google.

They had been using pay per click adverts for a while, and had a good idea on what keywords were returning an investment for them. In fact they had identified that 42% of all their enquiries came from a single keyphrase: “it support”.
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