Peter James - WSI Digital Marketing Consultant

SEO in The New Google World

peterjames — Tue, 21 May 2013 09:11:23 +0000

The Google Panda and Penguin algorithm updates continue to wreak havoc in the realm of search engine optimisation. Particularly at risks are those sites that have…

Poor quality content
A high bounce rate (visitors take an instant dislike and return to the search results)
Poor quality and spammy inward links

However, some of us are doing quite well under the new Google regime. Why is that? The reason is that the algorithm updates are separating out the good from the bad so, if you’re good, it’s easier to stay ahead. All of my clients sites are doing better in rankings, visitors and conversions as Google continues to improve its algorithms.

So, what do you need to do to stay ahead in the SEO race? It’s quite simple really.

Your website must have good quality and relevant (to the search keywords) content that engages the visitors and gives them what they were searching for. If you haven’t got this then it’s really not worth bothering about anything else – you will fail!
You should develop good quality listings in the key online business directories. You only need to focus on the top 10 – 20 in your area. In particular, you should claim and optimise your Google+ business profile.
For good inward links work out where your customers are visiting and put up articles and other stuff there which will encourage them to visit your site. This will not only give you some good inward links but, if you do a good job, referral visitors as well.
Build up your social media presence and link these to your website.

It’s all easy really. So why isn’t it working for your website? Perhaps you need a good digital marketing consultant! If so, please call me on 0118 335 0401 or email me at peter.james@wsidigitaladvantage.com and I’ll make the web work for you.

Panda and Penguin Are Your Friends

peterjames — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 11:39:45 +0000

There has been a lot written about the impact of the Google Panda and Penguin algorithm changes that have been made over the last couple of years. They have had a major impact on search engine optimisation and many of the techniques used by SEO companies now no longer work. This has damaged the Google rankings of many sites that have used such techniques. However, Panda and Penguin can actually be good news for your website.

Why Google Are Doing This

Let’s look at this from Google’s point of view. They want to deliver the most relevant and quality web page content as a search result. Therefore, anything which artificially promotes the ranking of content which is either less relevant or of poor quality is a bad thing as far as they are concerned.

Panda and Penguin are the steps that Google have taken to prevent poor quality and less relevant content being ranked highly. Put simply Panda looks at the quality of the content and Penguin looks at the quality of the inward links to that web page (as Google ranks pages more highly if they have inward links from good sites).

How This Can Help Your Site

Therefore, if your site has poor quality content and dodgy artificial inward links then your rankings are going to get hit. If you haven’t been hit yet, you will be!

The solution is quite simple. Make sure that your site has good quality content that is relevant to the search terms for which you want to be found. Also, as I’ve advised before, make sure that those desired search keywords are reflected in your URLs, titles, headings, link names and alternative text. There are other things you can do including social sharing signals and customer reviews. If you want inward links make sure they too are from quality sites that are relevant. Also, take advantage of Social Media and online PR.

So, if you you have a site with relevant quality content then Panda and Penguin are going to help you because they are going to push down the rankings of your poorer quality competitors.

Love Your Website

peterjames — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 18:06:52 +0000

Does your website generate business for you? Does it pay its way by return on your investment in the form of additional customers, revenue and profits?

If your answers to these questions are both yes then that’s excellent.

However, if your website isn’t working for your business then you need to think why. Is it shy and so doesn’t get many visitors? Is it lazy because it’s not converting visitors into paying customers? Is it both shy and lazy?

Maybe your website is shy and lazy because you’re not taking enough care of it. You need to love your website.

Your website is a business investment. It should be giving you an excellent return on that investment. If it’s not then here are the most likely reasons why…

Potential customers aren’t finding it when they search for the products or services that you supply.
When potential customers find it on a search engine results page they don’t find the description compelling enough to click through.
When potential customers visit your site they don’t find what they’re looking for and go straight back to the search page.
Potential customers aren’t compelled to buy online or contact you.

I see these problems time and time again with my potential customers. Fortunately for them, I know how to fix these problems but it seems like most website designers and SEO specialists don’t.

It’s not enough to simply employ a web designer to create a website and then just sit back. You have to understand what your customers want and make sure the website gives it to them and gives them compelling reasons to buy from you.

Also, it’s not enough to simply employ an SEO company to get you good rankings in Google for some random keywords. You have to rank in those search terms that your customers are using. When you appear in search results the description must be compelling enough for the searchers to take that next step and visit your site.

How Not to Become Roadkill on the Digital Highway

peterjames — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 13:38:12 +0000

In 2012 both Comet and Kodak became roadkill on the digital highway. In previous years we have lost Borders, Blockbuster, Virgin Megastores, Woolwoths, Circuit City, Tower Records and Polaroid. Currently, there is doubt about the future of both HMV and Yell.

Most (but not all) of these companies have been involved in retail although some have been involved in technology or media/advertising. They have all been swept aside because they have been unable to compete in the new digital economy. They have either been blown apart by a new technology (e.g. Kodak by digital photography and Blockbuster by digital downloads) or they have been hit by the tsunami of the change in retailing (driven by Amazon over the Internet and by supermarkets expanding their ranges).

The Fate of Small and Medium Sized Companies

However, it’s not just big companies that are becoming roadkill on the digital highway but smaller companies are failing as well. We just don’t here about them. Think about the fate of small bookshops. If you’re a small or medium sized company then how do you survive the digital onslaught? Here are a few tips…

Make Sure That Your Prospective Customers Can Find You

Prospective customers are looking for your products and services. Make sure that they find you because if they don’t find you then they’re going to find your competitors!

Have a website which will answer their questions. Make it easy for them!
Get found in Google searches for your products or services.
Get listed in (free) online business directories.
Use social media if appropriate.

Get Out (online) and Find New Customers

There are a wealth of channels, such as email and social media, by which you can use to actively go out and seek new customers.

Use email marketing but make sure that your emails are interesting and/or useful for your targets. For more guidance see my blog entry on Email Marketing.
Use Social Media to contact prospects. There are a number of ways you can do this. For example you can use Facebook (if your customers are consumers) or Linked-in (if your customers are businesses) to advertise directly to those who might need your products or services. I’ll be writing a new blog post on social media in the near future.

Understand How The Digital Economy and Technology Trends are Affecting Your Business

This is really important! Take some time out to work out how all this tsunami of change is going to impact your business, your customers and the way they buy your products or services. Then decide how you are going to adapt to those changes. Remember, if you don’t like change then you’re goin to hate extinction! Also, remember to get the basics (such as information security and back ups) right.

Adventures of A Mobile Marketing Consultant

peterjames — Wed, 16 May 2012 10:39:43 +0000

As a mobile marketing consultant, I have to be mobile! This is how I stay online wherever and whenever as well as what I do online and what this means for businesses that want to market to people like me.

How I Keep Mobile

In my job as a digital and mobile marketing consultant I travel a lot. I always need to be online. I used to lug around a laptop and a mobile phone nowadays I use an iPad and and iPhone. The iPad is a lot lighter than a laptop and the batteries last a lot longer so for me it’s ideal. Here’s some tips and tricks that have been really useful to me…

Don’t buy a 3G/4G enabled iPad – just get the WiFi version. I have a separate MiFi modem on a different network to my mobile phone. I bought an ulocked Huawei E586 which I’m currently using on a ’3′ prepaid sim with 3GB of data for 3 months at £11. I can also use my iPhone as a wireless hotspot tethered modem (just make sure that this is include in your mobile price plan) if I’m out of ’3′ coverage. Thus, I have two networks behind me so I very rarely get coverage issues. I can also put a foreign prepaid sim in the modem when I’m abroad to avoid extortionate roaming costs. It’s important to note that, as well as putting in the sim card into the modem, you need to set the right profile (APN) into the modem. This is easy to do and you can find details for most networks here for UK and here for overseas.
If you’re going to be out for more than a few hours take a spare battery of some sort. I have one which can charge up my iPad to about 50% and also has adaptors for charging up my MiFi modem.
If you need a keyboard then there are a variety of combination keyboard covers for iPads. I bought one for £20.
Use Dropbox to synchronise all your files so you have access from both iPad and iPhone.

What I Do When I’m Mobile

Obviously, I have access to email all the time.
I use Kindle and Newspaper apps to read newspapers and books.
I use Keynote for client presentations. When online I can also take a client through SEO and website analysis reports.
I use the iPhone for weather and travel information including maps.

How To Market to Mobile People

When I’m looking for something local to me I use Google Places. If you get business from travellers then you need to be listed on Google Places. A mobile website which is easy to view on an iPhone (or similar) without ‘pan and zoom’ is also a good idea.

A Mobile Marketing Consultant in Paris

peterjames — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 17:46:57 +0000

Last week, I attended the annual WSI Global Excellence & Innovation conference in Paris. This is where all we WSI Internet Marketing Consultants get together to exchange ideas and best practice as well as listening to some of the world experts in digital marketing. As well as talking about the conference I’m also going to talk about some practical aspects of mobile marketing and mobile use in Paris.

Internet Marketing Conference

The keynote speaker was Avinash Kaushik. There were also presentations on the future of organic search and paid search. Here are some key take aways…

Print newspaper advertising in US rose to $60Bn by 2000 but has collapsed to $20Bn since then. Although 29% of advertising spend is on print consumers only spend 6% of their media time reading print. Therefore, it seems like print advertising revenue is going to fall further and digital (both Internet and Mobile) advertising revenue will continue to increase.
Successful search engine optimisation is mostly about great content. Only 10% – 20% of searchers click on paid search adverts and 95% don’t look beyond the 1st page of search results.
The perfect landing page loads in less than 2 seconds and fulfills the promise in the ad or search results.
Think who are the most important (prospective) visitors to your website, how are they going to find you, what would be valuable to them and what you want them to do.

Mobile Paris with an iPhone and an iPad

I recently bought the new iPad and decided that I’d do the trip without a laptop. The advantages of an iPad over a laptop are that it’s smaller and lighter as well as having a much longer battery life. There are disadvantages such as you can’t use PC applications (and most of my applications are delivered as software as a service over the Internet anyway) and there is no easy way of getting files off a USB stick but I was able to live with these over a few days. As long as I had a decent Internet connection I was fine. Also, using the iPad for reading books and newspapers as well as surfing the web was great.

The other thing I wanted to do was to be online all the time but to avoid extortionate data roaming charges. I had bought an unlocked mobile WiFi modem in UK and tried it with a french prepaid SIM card. Unfortunately, this didn’t work (I now know how to do this and will post on that later) but a local Orange WiFi modem with 400GB of data only cost me €54. So, I was able to use my iPhone to look at maps, work out metro connections (using the excellent Paris RATP apps) and keep up with email throughout my travels.

Of course, I used Google Places to find reviews on all the restaurants and cafes that we considered and also wrote Google Places reviews on them afterwards. Google Places is now an essential marketing tool for any business (such as a restaurant or bar) with mobile customers.

It’s now important to know how to maximise the effectiveness of mobile technology both as a consumer and as a marketer – to find and to be found!

Why Your Website Needs an Internet Marketing Consultant

peterjames — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 16:46:20 +0000

In addition to developing new websites, a lot of the work I do is in analysing, optimising and promoting existing websites. Often, the websites I look at have been beautifully designed but aren’t working for their business because they’re either not drawing in enough visitors or not converting enough of those visitors into customers (or both).

Good Web Design is Not Enough for Search Engine Optimisation

A good web designer will build a brilliant looking website but, in my experience, they are rarely able to optimise the website for search engines and don’t pay enough attention to calls to action for converting visitors into customers. Optimisation is specialist work that requires special skills, experience and tools.

How an Internet Marketing Consultant Can Help Your Website

Here are the sorts of things an Internet Marketing Consultant can do for your website and your business.

Competitive Analysis

Conduct a full analysis of your website and your competitors’ websites to see how you rank against the competition.
Identify the most popular search terms used by those searching for your products and services.
Determine the most effective keywords to help you rise above your competition.

Search Optimisation

Provide instructions to your web developer on how to deploy the selected keywords in content, titles, URLs, headings, link names and alternative text.
Ensure that page descriptions are compelling so that they draw in visitors when they appear in search results.
Provide instructions to your web developer on how to improve visitor conversion.
Review the changes made and ensure that Analytics are set up to monitor performance.

Website Promotion

Use directory listings, social bookmarks and article marketing to provide valuable inward links to your website.
Where appropriate use online PR to build high value links to your website.
Use social media (e.g. Linked-in, Twitter and Facebook) to further improve your online presence.

How Your Optimised Website Will Help Your Business

With your website optimised for the search keywords, Google will properly index it and give it a better ranking in searches. The online promotion will build inward links and further improve rankings. The compelling descriptions will draw visitors to your site. The conversion improvements will help turn more of those visitors into customers.

Welcome Number 7 Billion

peterjames — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 14:22:53 +0000

Sometime last week the 7 Billionth person on Earth was born. Of course we don’t know who that person is or where he or she now lives but it’s the number which is staggering.

Well, here are some more staggering numbers in the Billions.

There were 1.8 Billion internet users at the end of last year. That’s over 25% of the world’s population and the number is going to be even higher now.

You think that’s amazing? Well, again at the end of last year, there were 4.6 Billion mobile phone users. That’s over two thirds of the world’s population.

Let’s say that again. Over two thirds of the world’s population use a mobile phone.

Those numbers are going to keep on rising as the Internet and mobile phones become even more pervasive in the poorer countries. The ubiquity of the Internet will change the way people in the less prosperous nations communicate, interact and get information. This better access to information and communication is going to help them improve their lives – not least via better education.

It’s worth noting that the number of people with mobile phones is more than double the number with Internet access. The significance of this is that, for many, new Internet access is going to be from a mobile device rather than a PC. This is actually just a continuation of an existing trend because, for many, their access to the telephone network is via a mobile rather than a fixed line phone.

So, let’s consider the implications of this…

There is going to be a huge demand for cheap mobile devices that access the Internet. Some suppliers are already gearing up to meet this demand. Similarly, mobile phone networks need to be able to support lots of fast Internet access from these devices.
This will drive further improvements to communication, interaction and education. Again, this will result in greater wealth and more trade.

So, when we think of markets we should be thinking of today’s and tomorrow’s marketplaces and not yesterday’s marketplaces. Our customers are going to be both informed and global.

How to Help a Lonely Website

peterjames — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 16:36:52 +0000

Here is a picture of an unhappy website – it’s very lonely. It’s lonely because it’s not getting many visitors.

How do you help a lonely website? Simple, you bring it more visitors by doing two things…

Make it easier for people to find.
Make it engaging so that people want to visit it.

This article has got some advice on how to bring visitors to a lonely website and make it really work for your business. Your website will be happy and you’ll be happy too because it will be bringing you lots of customers.

Search Marketing – How to be Found on the Web

Imagine that you’re going to a sales presentation in a really big conference centre that has loads of rooms. You’re going to need very good directions and signposts to find the right room. Well, you can imagine that the Internet is like a conference centre with over 50 Million rooms so your going to needs some really good directories and signposts to help visitors find your site.

Signposts for your Website

You’ve got to market your site to search engines so they can help visitors find you – this is known as search marketing (or search engine optimisation) and these are some of the things that you need to do.

Make sure that Google indexes your website against the search terms that prospective customers will enter when looking for your products and services. Google will use titles, headings, link names and descriptions (not just keyword tags) to index your website. You want to make sure that these titles, headings, link names, descriptions and keywords match up to the terms that people will use when searching for the products and services that you provide. It’s particularly important to make your description tage compelling as this is what will appear when your website appears in search results.
Build lots of inward links into your website from other sites. This has two uses. First, Google ranks sites higher the more inward links they have so if you have lots of (relevant) inward links then you will appear higher in the Google search results (you need to aim to be on the first page at least). Second, you are setting up more places on the Internet that will point visitors to your site – just like signposts. Article sites and business directories are the best ways of building inward links to your site.
Make sure that you’ve set up your Google Place. This is another free directory entry and will appear in search results when people search for your products and services along with a geographic reference (e.g. a city or region).
You can also use paid search advertising to drive visitors to your site. This is useful in the early days as the indexing and link building will take some time to work. Depending upon your business you may want to consider using Linked-in or Facebook for paid advertising in addition (or instead of) search advertising.

Make Your Content Valuable

search engine optimisation brings website visitors

Once prospects have found your website they not only need to actually visit it they also need to make money for you buy buying stuff (or at least contacting you or signing up for your newsletter so they may buy stuff in the future). This is known as ‘conversion’ (i.e. converting visitors to customers).

You do this by making your content and sales offers valuable (and hopefully unique). The content has got to be engaging – interesting, useful or entertaining. The visitors need to be given reasons for conversion (i.e.to do what you want them to do). These reasons need to be very clear and the path through your website blindingly obvious.

If you do all these things right then your website won’t be lonely any more as it will have lots of visitors! Also, you’ll be happy too because those visitors will be buying stuff from you.

How to Choose an Internet Marketing Consultant

peterjames — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 15:28:50 +0000

Most small firms do not have their own in-house internet marketing or web development capabilities. This is because they do not have the need (or the funding) for a full-time dedicated Internet Maketing specialist. Therefore, small companies will need to outsource their Internet Marketing and Website Development to an external consultant or specialist. This Internet Marketing Consultant will work in partnership with the company to use digital media to help grow the business. Such companies will need to choose that consultant carefully as a good partnership is vital for business success.

Here are some tips for helping choose an Internet Marketing Consultant for that vital partnership.

What to Look for in an Internet Marketing Consultant

The consultant should not only know his or her stuff about Internet Marketing (and maybe Mobile Marketing if required) but should be able (and willing) to explain that stuff in terms that the business can understand. The emphasis should be not only on how Internet Marketing services and solutions work but also how they can benefit the business.
The consultant should also know your stuff. He or she must be able to understand your business and your customers needs.
The consultant should have the tools, knowledge and experience to analyse your online competitive position and to make recommendations. The consultant should be able and willing to explain the analysis and recommendations.
The consultant should have access to a range of digital marketing solutions and services to implement the above recommendations. He or she should be able to provide you with a single point of contact to implement those solutions and services as well as reporting on progress and issues.
The consultant should be able to customise these solutions and services to your particular business needs. Identikit solutions will probably not work very well as every company is different. In any case, do you want to have exactly the same digital marketing approach as your competitors?
If you are a small company then you will probably want to deal with a small digital marketing consultancy. This way you will get a more personal service from somebody who understands small companies. Make sure that they have good connections to other companies who may provide some of the solutions. A franchise operation, like WSI, is a good choice as such an organisation will have a strong network for knowledge sharing and training as well as powerful economies of scale for purchasing from other suppliers (you will also have back up if your consultant has problems).

A partnership For Business Growth

Avove all, remember that your relationship with your Internet Marketing Consultant is a long term partnership. Your business and the consultant should work closely together with lots of interchange and communication. There must be no barriers between you.