International Digital Marketing

During the London press conference last Wednesday, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced the first 1,930 applications received for the new brand, or generic, domain endings replacing .com. The list includes brands such as L’Oréal, Chanel, Nike, Gucci, Macy’s, Swatch, Target, Zara, Next and Wal-Mart.

Almost 50% of the proposals (911) were from North America, more than 30% of the proposals were from Europe (675) and 16% came from Asia Pacific region (303). Only 1% of the proposals came from Africa (17) and 1,3% came from Latin America and the Caribbean (24).

What is a brand domain?

Brand, or generic, domain means website urls ending .brand, .thing or .idea instead of .com. The idea is to allow businesses that joined Internet later to find alternatives to “dot com”, but in practice these domains would most likely sit alongside established domains such as .com and .org. The possibilities vary from hobbies, demographics, and professions to corporate brand names. Few examples are .lol, .bank, .baby, .music, .doctor, .loreal, .youtube, .google, .coke, .apple and .twitter.

ICANN announced that the companies that have applied for the brand domain names are now going through an independent review process with a 60-day comment period and a 7-month objection period. The organization will review each proposal, make a criminal background check for each applicant, and assure that company’s financial plan is stable and contingencies exist in case a company goes out of business. If there is a conflict between names, ICANN encourages competing bidders to reach an agreement together, but the organization will hold an auction if the parties fail to reach a compromise.

Expensive – but a trend to watch closely.

These domains do not come cheap.  There is a $185,000 fee per application, and so far ICANN has collected about $350 million from the bidders. ICANN states that the main reason for the high cost is the technical complexity as it is not simple to run these top-level domains. The first domains are estimated to go live in the first quarter of 2013.

It is expensive, but most of the brands are registering the domains for defensive reasons to avoid competitors and other public to acquire their brand domains. The application cost now might be $185,000, but if a competitor or counterfeiter registers the domain first, the acquisition cost in the future may become extremely expensive.

End of dot com or a passing trend?

Besides of applying for brand names, some companies such as L’Oréal are also registering generic domains such as .skin, .hair and .makeup. This is expensive, but it may be a very smart move against the competitors if the trend takes off and the brand will receive more traffic and consumer interest. It will be interesting to see what Google’s point of view is regarding the subject, and how this will affect the SEO as the keywords in domain name have a positive impact on ranking. Maybe Google itself will start giving or selling .google domains for businesses and users to increase its prominence in the cyber space?

At the same time, people are used to .com and country specific domains such as .co.uk, .es and .it. When the system is launched, how do you explain people that “doctor” is a website without www or .com? It is also to be seen how the system and new domain endings work in practice. For example, if the user types “doctor” in the browser bar, he is expecting location based search results. Instead, he might end up in the page of whoever owns the domain .doctor, which will most likely only annoy him. This is why the url structure change may result confusing for general public and the adoption rate may be low. If the consumer interest and adoption rate are low, after the first excitement brands may start simply redirecting these brand domains to their  .com site.

It is an expensive game to play and at the moment only the big players can invest in these domains. However, if the technical cost goes down after the first wave of brand domains, it might be the end of the “dot com”. Or then we only end up with a big bunch of 301 redirects.

Will 2012 be the year of Google?  Android continues eating Apple’s pie across the world, Facebook’s constant changes drive frustrated top influencers to Google+, Google analytics is  the most widely used web analytics tool with market share of 80%, and Google continues in its no. 1 position in search.

Google search: where are we right now?

Google has come a long way. Few years back the search giant was reluctant to invest in social, especially after not so successful attempts with Orkut and Google Buzz. Yet step by step the company has become more ambitious and seen the potential social has.

• 2009: Personalized Search : Ranking based on user’s history, clicks and location
• 2009: Social Search : Results based on user’s social connections
• 2010: Google Real time:  Integration of Twitter feed into the results
• 2011: Google Plus: Google social network + addition of Google+ pages for business
• 2012: Search plus your world: Personalized, Social, G+ and authors in the search result

What is “Search plus your world”?

Search plus your world is Google’s attempt to finally unify the search, social and its own G+. It means that Google has integrated the algorithm of social search, personal search and personalized search in one algorithm. This latest addition in search mix finds the content that the users shared in Google plus (photos, videos, posts, articles, etc.) together with the traditional web content. To search information of a contact, you only need to search for it in Google and you will get the social network results first.

The change to the algorithm has already been implemented, but at the moment it is only visible for people who are logged in Google.com and do their search in English. Google is planning to roll it out shortly to the rest of the world.

How Search plus your world will influence SEO?

Let’s be honest. Google owns 90% of the global search market so if Google says jump, we jump. So if Google says we need +1 buttons and a G+ page to improve our ranking, so be it. Logically, not only Google will show personal Google+ results for users, but the search engine ranks higher the pages that feature +1 recommendations and +1 also appears both in the paid and natural listings. As with Facebook “like” button, +1 is a social proof that the content is worth seeing and sharing. More recommendations you have, more likely users are going to click your page (and more likely Google is going to like it…sorry I mean “plus” it).

A very important change in the new search is that the personal results will appear first. How does this affect traditional search? Well, let’s say that if first 10 results are personal, they will already kick the traditional search results from the first page. Annoying!

What comes to Adwords, some experts say that Google is stupid to play with its biggest income channel and the change may be negative for the search giant. Yet when you think about it – if your real ranking is out of your control and depends on random users and their opinions, how much are you ready to pay to secure your place on top? The change might actually  push the Adwords bids very high creating more income for Google.

Regarding Adwords’ look and feel, I am curious to see what Google will do because the way they appear right now is likely to be different compared to the personal results. Maybe Google will create its own version of Facebook’s “sponsored stories”. Let’s see.

Goodbye Google ranking?

 Some people say that this is the death of Google ranking. Not necessarily, but it means that we have to stop focusing only in numbers, excel sheets, visits, clicks, conversions and results.We have to start concentrating also in people.

It is true that right now the effect is still very small, since penetration of Google plus is still low. You may think that it does not really matter that people see personal, social results when at the moment not so many of the users are in Google+. Maybe, but in the future it will. Therefore it is a good idea to start thinking about your Google+ strategy, to set up a Google+ page for your brand, and to start building your fan circle. Once the social results start to matter, you already will have a fan base and plenty of +1 recommendations to stay on the first page.

Meanwhile, it is not worth ditching the current SEO strategy and efforts. Google’s search project sounds good, but at the same time it has few downfalls. First of all: privacy issues. With the new search whatever we do in Google+ is visible in Google search for our family and friends, and if people add Google+ friends as carelessly as Facebook friends this might have serious implications. Secondly, Google is about relevancy, but what my friends (bless them) say in Social Media is not always very useful. This might alienate users from Google search and they might start preferring other search engines.

Let’s see if Google’s sneaky plan to integrate personalization, social and G+ into search will be successful, or whether it will be like many of its projects: ambitious … but rubbish.

Everyone wants a cool website. Awards in this digital industry go normally to sites and concepts that are cool. Clients and managers come up to us, saying they want something innovative and cool or that they have seen something cool their competitor has done and they want to replicate it.

Yet the problem many websites are facing is that we concentrate so much in creating cool, avant-garde, up-to-date “stuff” that we forget the end user. When creating and designing a new webpage, strategy, usability, content structure and SEO are as important, if not more important, as design.

What is the point of having an amazing looking webpage if your potential customers do not know how to use it or search engines cannot find it?

Tip #1: Make your website useful for the end user

Design for your audience. Analyse and find out what kind of features, content and information are useful and attractive for the audience you want to reach. What could add value to their experience on the website, so they will come back and recommend the site for others? Whether it is useful tips, expert advice, social experience, consumer reviews, games, or up-to-date information highly depends on your audience.

Tip #2: Make it easy for users to find your website

Do not make it hard for users to find your site. SEO optimise your webpage (title tags, headings, populate the content with keywords…), make sure that robots have found your site and the pages are indexed (make sure you unblock the search bots once you have published the site officially), and link to your webpage from other websites and social networks.

If you are using offline media, do not forget to add your page URL in the end of the commercial, press article, poster, video, display or whatever method you are using. Users can either search for it online or type it directly in the browser to find you.

Tip #3: Make it easy for users to browse through the website

Do not complicate things just for the sake of being pretty. An example of this is the hidden navigation. This means webpages that have hidden hot spots the user needs to hover over to find. Cool or not, it makes it difficult for end user to find content they are looking for.

Therefore it is good idea to stop and evaluate how your website is organized. Ask yourself whether the structure and categories make sense from user perspective and whether visitors can find the information they want quickly. Offer options such as back button, previous search and visible previous categories. Having the previous user journey visible makes it easier for site visitor to navigate. An e-commerce example: home -> women -> shoes -> high heels.

 Tip #4: Give different routes for users

Visitors come to your website through different channels (e.g. direct URL, social media, search, blogs…) and many of them do not land directly on your homepage. Visitors in different stages of purchase funnel also behave very differently and this is why it is very important to give them various routes to navigate through the website.

To help user continue their journey after landing to the page, use always visible navigation bar, site map, index page and navigation text links. Remember that this also gives more information for the search engines and helps search bots to navigate across the web platform.

Tip #5: Try to avoid flash

Flash is pretty, but complicated. Flash is not SEO friendly, flash is not mobile friendly and in some cases flash is not even user-friendly. Search robots do not read flash and even with Google visual search you only see an image of a puzzle instead of the flash site or video. Mobile phones do not read flash either, which means that you can lose the leads coming through these devices. Even a normal Internet user might get a barrier accessing your site if he does not have the right version of flash installed.

Of course, in some cases flash does add value to the website enhancing the user experience, for example by showing the product from different ankles e.g. car configurator. Yet before adding some nice animation to the page, think who does it really benefit. You and your managers, who see the page everyday and are bored … or the site visitor?

However, if you really want to have a flash site, create an html backup page and/or mobile site. If you really want to use an intro movie leading to your homepage page, use html5 instead (you can even add a like button if you wish).

Tip #6: Use text, not graphics

Search engines are biased towards text content and do not read the text in the images they run across. It means that even if the website seems to have text containing keywords, it may not be the case. Maybe the web designer is using image files to keep a certain font the same in different browsers or it is done to give the webpage cooler look and feel. Anyhow, the problem is the same: the search engines read nothing and the images take longer to download.

This also refers to graphic CTAs (Call-to-actions). They are very attractive and spotty, yet invisible for search engines. I am not advicing to ditch them, in contrary, since they encourage user to click, but it might be a good idea to also implement text links with long text into the normal html. By long text I refer to the links that are more than a single word and actually describe where the link takes you.

The importance of the SEO optimized text and content has increased especially after Google introduced a significant algorithm change, which puts more weight on fresher content and the text itself reducing the significance of the headers and title tags.

Tip #7: Create a custom 404 error page and redirect broken links

Website content changes constantly and webpages get unpublished causing broken links. It does not only mean that your site visitors might come across one on your website, but also links from other websites into yours get broken. That is bad news, since potential visitors as well as search engines cannot reach your webpage through these links.

This is why it might be worth creating a custom 404 error page, which displays in visitor’s browser if the server cannot find the page. An error page with links to the other areas in your site can help user and search bots find an alternative page on your site. Other solution would be 301 redirect for each link.

Tip #8: Make your website mobile friendly

What is very important to realize is that a standard computer screen is not the same as iPhone or Nokia screen and the PC website looks very different in mobile devices. It is essential to take in account the design and lay-out, the legibility and navigation, and the need of fast and efficient download time. For tips on how to create a mobile-friendly website click here.

Tip #9: Test the website with real users

Having designed and worked with the webpage for weeks or months, it is very easy to navigate across the site and find everything you need. However, pair of fresh eyes can point out the weaknesses and help you improve the user experience.

Tip #10: Do not make an ugly website

Useful and user-friendly are not synonyms for boring and ugly. Web-design is still very important, especially now when Google is using the visual search. Being number one in search ranking is worth nothing if people do not purchase from your site, because it looks … unprofessional.

Website can still be attractive and cool as long as the end user is not forgotten in the process. The point was: make the site SEO and user-friendly, then add the cool stuff on top and win some awards.

Earlier this week Google launched revamped sitelinks, changing the way these are displayed and organized in search results. Sitelinks are links that appear under certain search results and ads. They are Google’s way to allow users save time and find information they are looking for by analysing the link structure of your site and displaying the shortcuts under your main URL.

From user perspective sitelinks give them a quick overview of the website’s content and help them to access quickly most relevant parts of the site. From brand or company perspective the sitelinks allow webmasters to showcase areas of the site that normal users are not aware of.

New Google sitelink structure

Google changing the sitelink structure is nothing new, since the search giant has been experimenting with sitelinks for years. When Google launched these years ago they were only a single row of four links and since then the sitelinks have been shown in different ways from bullet points to separate results, until the company ended up with the current structure. Google increased the maximum number of sitelinks per query from eight to twelve showing title, URL and a small description of the page.

Google sitelinks impact on SEO

Previously there was no query-specific ranking of the sitelinks, but each site had a fixed list of sitelinks that would either all be visible or not at all. With the new structure, sitelink ranking and selection can be different for each query showing even more relevant results.

With more relevant – and more visible – sitelinks the CTR for your brand searches is likely to increase. Unfortunately the separation between the top domain and other domains is also clearer. It means that if sitelinks appear for the top result, then the rest of the results below will be from other domains. Not your website.

This is why it is very important to get the displayed sitelinks structure, title and description right. Check which sitelinks appear under your brand website. Are they the ones you want to appear, do they lead to main parts of your site and is there some important page missing? Is the title or description wrong or boring?

To manage sitelinks, login to Webmaster Tools where you can ask Google to remove sitelink you want. Google will then pick another sitelink however you cannot control which one will replace the current one. Please note that you can only try 100 times.

To modify the title, find out where Google pulls it from – it can be anchor text, footer, page title, headings or main body. To change the description, change the meta description tag of the page.

Google sitelinks impact on PPC

The AdWords sitelink structure remains still the same showing up to four additional destination URLs on the search-based text ad. However, the big difference between the organic search sitelinks and ad sitelinks is that you can control and edit the ad sitelinks while with organic sitelinks you have to rely on Google’s judgement.

This is why even if your brand has more visibility on the search results page with new Google sitelinks structure, it does not mean you should abandon PPC. Sitelinks will bring more clicks, but if competitor decides to bid and place text ads with more appealing sitelinks near your brand you might lose quality leads. Remember AdWords bring most of Google’s annual profit and this might be one of the reasons why Webmaster Tools does not allow you to choose your organic sitelinks.

Change for the better?

Depends on your ranking, displayed sitelinks and whether you are a brand, reseller or price comparison website. For brands this works out fine as long as the sitelinks are checked and optimized, since it gives them a higher visibility over the latter.

Happy to hear whether this has affected your search results or PPC campaigns in a negative or positive way.

“Our goal with Google+ is to make sharing on the web like sharing in real life, as well as to improve the overall Google experience. Circles let you choose with precision who you are sharing with. Not surprisingly this has been very well received, because in real life, we share different things with different people.”

Larry Page, CEO, Google

Google+, the new social networking service by Google, has already 10 million registrations two weeks after its launch even if it is invite only. Google +1 button itself was available since early June and its adoption rate is leaving Twitter behind. According to a study by BrightEdge, 4.5% of the analyzed sites have adopted the Google +1 plugin while Twitter Share was only adopted by 2.1% and Twitter Instant Follow by 1.3%.

Facebook still has a stronger presence than its competitors. Facebook like button was adopted by 10.8%, Like box 6.1%, Facebook connect 1.9% and Facebook Recommendations 1.2%.

What makes all this even more interesting is that the partnership between Google and Twitter allowing Google to integrate tweets into search results expired and it has not been renewed yet.

How to use Google+?

I discovered a very nice Google+ cheat sheet with small instructions on how to use the platform:

How does Google+ impact marketing and SEO?

Google owns 90% of the global search market and it is very important to appear high in the search results. Logically Google ranks higher the pages that feature +1 recommendations and +1 also appears both in the paid and natural listings. As with Facebook like button, +1 is a social proof the content is worth seeing and sharing, and more recommendations you have more likely users are going to click your page. Adding +1 button across your site will encourage content sharing and improve your ranking in Google. You are able to get the native button code here.

Please note that it only works in search for users who have their Google profile switched on at that moment, yet +1 buttons are visible in websites, logged in or not.

Google+ also has a mobile app for Android, iPhone OS, Nokia/Symbian, Blackberry and Windows Mobile. What surprises me is that +1 button does not appear in mobile search or websites accessed through mobile even if Google owns 98% of the global mobile search market and currently Google’s gross revenue from mobile advertising is over 1 billion dollars per year. Facebook like button and tweet button are visible.

Google +1 measurement

For marketers to measure Google +1 interactions Google has launched two additional tools:

1. Webmaster Tools support

A new set of menus “+1 metrics” within Webmaster tools.

2. Google Analytics social engagement report

The new Google Analytics Beta has a Social Engagement report showing the impact of different social media elements on your site. You are able to see which pages were viewed and which actions were taken. To set the report up, have a look at Google’s instructions. It shows how Google Analytics has setup interfaces for both Twitter and Facebook so for example Facebook Likes and Tweets can be recorded and viewed within Google Analytics.

Can Google+ take over Twitter and Facebook?

It is still very early to say what impact Google+ has over Facebook and Twitter. The launch has been very successful, but it is to be seen how many active users stay after the novelty value has been worn off. Right now Facebook is starting to get out of fashion among young people since parents, aunties and grandparents are joining the platform, yet I am not sure if Google+ will be used by the young generation or if it will be used more professionally. This is why I would love to see some Google+ demographics.

Anyhow, Google+ is an active network, which is intuitive and easy to manage. It has a simple and functional design and it is integrated with all the Google tools. Facebook basic functions such as “wall” are intuitive, but to be honest to manage which contacts have access to which content you need to be an expert. Google has created a friend classification system which is much more intuitive than what Twitter and Facebook have and user has a full control who they are sharing their things with.

Yet in the end everything depends on where your friends are, because if there is no one to share content with there is no point using the platform. If the adoption rate remains high and users recommend Google+ to their friends Facebook might become the new MySpace.

According to a study by GroupM Search, 48% of the online buyers use combination of normal and social search during the buying process and the percentage is increasing constantly. Consumers search every day brands their friends know and like, and 30% base their buying decision on their friends’ evaluations, 17% on Facebook and 9% on Twitter.

There has been a lot of discussion of social search threatening traditional search. As people spend more time in social networks, especially Facebook, it is to be seen whether users prefer results based on traffic and SEO or the results based on content voted (liked) by other users and friends.

But what if the battle between traditional and social search is not limited to computers, but takes place in mobile devices?

Increasing Mobile Internet, Search and Social Network usage

The quantity of Smartphones and users accessing Internet through mobile devices is increasing fast around the globe and ITU believes mobile devices will surpass computers as the most popular way to connect Internet within five years. According to Strategy Analytics almost 530 million users used the mobile Web at the end of 2009 and the company estimates the browsing to increase to over 1 billion by 2015.

Meanwhile, according to the Google Mobile, in Q1 2010 mobile search queries from high end phones on Google grew 62% over the previous quarter. Concerning the e-commerce, Google mobile searches on shopping-related keywords have grown 2500% in the past three years. Currently Google’s gross revenue from mobile advertising is over 1 billion dollars per year.

At the same time, social networking is increasing around the globe. EMarketer forecasts that the amount of Western European Internet users who visit social networks at least once a month will increase 16.2% in 2011. The company also estimates that the quantity of regular social networking users in the region will increase to 64.4% (141.9 million people) by 2015.

Social and Mobile Search

The search giant Google used to avoid social results in the past, but now the company is becoming more convinced of the importance of being more “people centric”. Even if Google Social Search was introduced few years ago, the social media related content has had a neglected role in the search results. Yet this is now changing: the recent update integrates information from Twitter, Flickr and Quora all over Google’s search engine.

What is quite funny to notice is that while Facebook is not included in Google Social Search, Facebook does not show web results by Google either, but by Google’s competitor Bing.

However, whatever the situation in computer search might be, currently in mobile search Google is definitely the king. According to Pingdom, Google owns 98% of the global mobile search market.

This is a very interesting detail since while Google is still the underdog in the battle between Android and iPhone, at least most of Steve Job’s iPhone users will be searching on Google. Which means big mobile ad revenues for Google whatever the OS might be. Not bad.

Mobile social search

Google’s current position in mobile search seems unbeatable, however according to a recent study by Ofcom, almost 25% of the consumers in the U.S., Japan, France, and the UK already access social networks through mobile devices. There are also various apps that use geolocation to search, such as Facebook places, and apps that use geolocation and users’ reviews combined with augmented reality.

What is curious to notice is that while the whole world focuses on the competition between Google and Facebook while discussing social search, Bing has already gone a step further and integrated a social search feature to its Bing for iPhone App. The user can use their phone to search through their Facebook and Twitter accounts and see combined status updates from their friends. In case there is an instant answer for the search, the app shows it first before social results.

This is a very interesting idea, since this social feature allows the user to see information from the web together with the opinions from user’s social network. This increases the relevancy of the result and user experience, since the user can see with one quick look if the place is worth visiting or product worth buying without browsing further or visiting social network app or site. Also the information user finds is easy to share in Facebook, Twitter and email, which means users can share and ask their friends opinions in real time.

Could this be dangerous for Google? Yes. Google is not able to do this as long as it does not want anything to do with Facebook, which has more than 500 million users across the globe. Therefore this might be Bing’s opportunity to stand out, since users, who have their main friend base in Facebook, would not like the platform to be left out from the results.

Bringing social dimension to mobile search can be the next big thing if it is user friendly and well promoted. Whether it will affect Google’s current position as a principal mobile search tool, depends on its flexibility to accept that also results “liked” by Facebook users can be relevant. If not, other search engines or Facebook can take advantage of this default and challenge Google  also in mobile search.

According to a 2010 study by Pew Research Center, the amount of young bloggers has decreased dramatically over the past few years by half. The number of blogging teenagers decreased to 14 % compared to 28% in 2006 and the amount of young adult bloggers (18-29-years-old) has dropped 9% since 2007.

Meanwhile, the older generation is getting more comfortable with blogging: 11% of the over 30-year-old adults blogged in 2010, compared with 7% in 2007. Also, during the last two years blogging by the 34-45 year-old Internet users has increased 6%  (up to 16%), 46-55-year-old bloggers saw an increase of 5%  (up to 11%), and even 65-73-year-olds blogged 2% more (up to 8%).

It seems like the blogger generation is getting older and younger generation prefers social networking – is blogging becoming the sport of “old” people?

Micro-blogging in Social Networks

“The first thing going on here is the broader movement from MySpace, which had a integrated blogging function, to Facebook, which doesn’t put its blogging capabilities up front as MySpace does,” says Aaron Smith, a research specialist at Pew Internet & American Life Project.

There has been a clear movement from long blog posts, “macro-blogging”, to quick status updates and messages, “micro-blogging”, offered by Facebook, Twitter and other similar social networks. Young people “do not have time” to write long blog posts nor can they be bothered to read “two page novels” of someone’s life or brand’s awards. The new generation wants it short, actual and in real-time.

Also, according to a 2010 study by Technorati based on respondents in North-America, Europe, APAC and South America, even users who are currently blogging say that their devotion to micro-blogging (30%) and social networks (28%) have reduced their blogging activity. Another very interesting detail was that on average the bloggers actually spent more time on social media sites (9.9h/week) than they spent reading other blogs (9.2h/week).

Increasing popularity of Smartphones

Smartphones are constantly increasing their market share around the globe, especially among young people, and as Japanese “Twittermania” has shown they are perfect for micro-blogging. With the augmented Internet use and social media apps, people spend more time checking the latest headlines and status updates, watching videos, commenting with few words and sharing interesting content through mobile devices.

Anyone who has ever blogged knows it requires hard work and concentration and anyone who has ever read a blog post in a mobile knows the effort it takes to read a long post in the small screen. More online or digital communications are happening through mobile devices and the amount of text user can type and read is quite limited.

So, are blogs getting out of fashion?

No. Let’s say they are just becoming more refined by age.

According to the Technorati study, bloggers are more affluent and educated than the general population: 79% have college degrees and 43% have graduate degrees, 30% has a household income of $75K+ and 25% has a household income of $100K+.

65% of the bloggers are 18-44-years-old and 81% of them have been blogging more than 2 years, which increases the quality of the content. In the early ages, blogging was seen as an entertainment for teenagers while now Facebook and other social networks are taking that role and “old” people are catching up. Also, the amount of companies using blogs for marketing has been increasing during the years as shown in the graph below.

Now let’s see. How much relevant content can you include in 140 characters or a Facebook status update if you cannot link it to anything? Why users would be interested in any of your posts if they cannot click to find out more?

Linking the posts only to the official website or other people’s content does not seem enough either. Blogging allows the brand to talk more than just products and services and explore more fun and creative ideas. Blog is also a great way to establish an image of an expert and let your or brand’s voice to be heard over the competition. Only passing someone else’s posts or tweets around without bringing anything your own to the content does not really show who you are or what you really are worth. People and brands without opinions are boring.

From SEO perspective, new and relevant keyword filled content quickly shows in Google, which increases traffic to your blog. Linking posts properly can increase traffic to your website, which in turn improves your website’s ranking.

In reality, social media, micro-blogging and blogs can complement each other. Including social bookmarking buttons into the blog posts helps it to spread around the social networks and promoting the blog posts in Twitter and Facebook increase traffic to the blog. Meanwhile, short relevant posts or tweets about the blog posts add interesting content to your social network sites.

New generation, new trends

However, it is very important to remember that in the end young people are early adopters of the new technologies and communication channels and “old” people are slow to follow. First blogs were for teenagers, then Twitter and Facebook were just for silly teenage talk and no doubt the increased amount of Smartphones will change the settings and trends even more. Whether new generation moves from micro-blogging to traditional blogging in the future is a good question, but at least for the next few years blogs will still remain a good channel to express more profound thoughts, ideas, expertise and opinions of current events and future trends.

20% of the searches on Google are related to location and according to Google 1 in 13 search result pages showed a Map. This combined with the fact that 96.63% of the users click the results in the first page, appearing in the little map on top can be very, very beneficial for the local business.

It is quite obvious that the search engine prioritizes in local searches companies and businesses that have signed up in Google Places, which makes it a good idea to create your own profile for your business. Google places is Google’s free business listing service, which allows local business owners to create a profile of their business with essential contact information, offers, images and reviews. And of course mark their business location on the Google Maps service.

There are 10 little tricks to further improve your Google Places page search engine ranking and help you stand out from the rest:

1. Include keywords in the description of your business

In the Google Places page you are able to describe your business or activity in maximum of 200 letters. Make sure that it includes the most important keywords, but without turning it into a chain of keywords. Write a clear, friendly and efficient description and remember not to address it only to a search engine, but for actual users as well.

2. Do not add keywords in your Google Places page name if they are not already in the original name of your business

It is not a good idea to add keywords to your page name if they are not included in your company’s actual name already. Google is intelligent and always vigilant to avoid users who cheat. In the short run it might improve your results, but you are likely to get caught and punished.

3. Use generic categories and terms to describe your business

When you create your Google Places page, you have the option to include a maximum of 5 different categories to describe the products and services you are offering. The most generic descriptions can help you to improve your ranking.

4. If you have various points of sale, create a profile for each one of them

Besides of adding links to your website or client reviews, it is also possible and necessary to include addresses, phone numbers and other relevant contact information. Therefore if your business has various point of sales, the best thing to do is to create a distinct profile for each one of them.

There has been some confusion if this is possible, since Google Places guidelines say there should be only one listing for each business location. However, Google’s goal with local search is to represent the offline world accurately online, so if you have various real life point of sales you should be able to include it as long as you can meet the quality guidelines. Google verifies the data with you and you are able to ask them directly if you are able to go ahead.

5. Include your brand or business also in other company and business listings

Being included in professional business and company listings is important, because Google gets  information from them to verify that your contact information is the same and also places these listings into your Google Places profile. Make sure all the other business information you create in other listings is consistent.

6. Diversify and plan your content updates in time

It is better to publish new information regularly, than suddenly launch a big amount of it at the same time. Do not forget that search engines and especially Google are always vigilant of spam, hoax or online frauds. This means that unusual action can be interpreted suspicious and will be punished.

Do not forget photos and videos either, since Google Places permits publishing of 10 photos and 5 videos. Whether it improves the ranking might be questioned, but for sure it will give more attractive information for the users who access your page.

7. Take advantage of the real-time updates feature

Google has recently added the ability to post real-time updates into the Google Places page. It allows you to promote an offer, sale, event, and freebies as well as provide incentives by adding coupons also specially formatted for mobile phones. It is a great way to talk more directly with your customers who are not yet your followers in Twitter or Facebook.

8. Motivate your satisfied clients to publish their review

Participation and opinion of the satisfied clients is easy and effective way to create a professional reputation not only in Google places, but also in other listings and external websites you can link to your page. Not only will it give potential clients a social proof, but it helps you get closer to the top.

To get reviews, send an email to your new and existing customers or ask users in social networks like Twitter and Facebook to leave a review. Or of course ask them to do it in person when they come to your store. Offer for example points or discount in the next visit as a reward.

9. Integrate your social networks with Google Places page

Google Places page is a good place to promote and include links into your social media platforms and social networks are great way to drive traffic to your Google Places page. As mentioned before, you can ask for client reviews through the social networks and with Google Places real-life updates you can inform users coming through search about your Facebook promotions.

10. Analyse regularly your page information in Google Analytics

Do not forget to analyse the statistic data and information Google Analytics. It includes data about how many times people have found your business on Google, what keywords they used to find it and even what areas people travelled from to visit your business. This information helps you to evaluate, understand and learn from the user behaviour, which allows you to improve your search engine ranking.

And of course, for the best results, do not forget to sign up also for Facebook Places. These two local business listings are similar, but the difference comes in the way users get to the results: Google relies on Search while Facebook relies on Social. On Google users use the search box and the search engine shows first the Google Places results before showing any organic results. In Facebook, users have three ways to get to Facebook Places: search, newsfeed and Facebook apps.

Both have nice benefits, because Google owns the search and has the largest mobile app (Maps), while Facebook can allow your promotion travel from user to user and expand very fast through networks. Facebook Places has also a new feature “Deals”, which has a huge potential. So why not take advantage of both?

One of the advantages of the increasing online marketing is the easier access to competitors’ information. The problem is: there is far too much of it.

Without specialists focusing on everything from SEO to eCommerce it is hard and time consuming to see and analyse really what is going on around you. Yet concerning the optimization of your online investment, analysis of your competitors may give you better results in SEO and online campaigns. This gives your brand bigger presence in the search engines, which will then increase the traffic to your site, which will then improve the brand reputation, which will then…you get the idea. So let’s spy…I mean “analyse” what competitors are doing.

#1 Search and find out who your competitors really are

Make a list of the competitors you want to follow and in which country you want to follow them. However, especially with the increasing globalization you might know your local competitors, but not your online competitors. They are the companies that appear in search  results when searching your industry, service or product. If you focus on a specific area or you are a SME, do not forget to include as well the geographic location.

Where to search?

• Google/Yahoo/Bing: obvious, yet remember that if you want to search for competitors in Spain, do not search with a different search such as www.google.co.uk. It will not show the results in same order.
• Facebook: Go to search and type name of your competitor, industry, service or product
• Twitter: Go to search.twitter.com and type in your industry or service or even the name of the competitor’s CEO.
• Youtube: Go to search and write down your competitor’s name. Then click search options and you will be able to select channels (official) or videos. You also can pick your industry in categories to have an overview and select the release date of the videos.
• Industry forums: Check which companies/products forum participants recommend.
• Local social networks: Not all is around Twitter, Facebook and Youtube. Find out which social networks are popular in your country (or country you’re targeting) and check if your competitors have presence there

 #2 Get organized

Create specific folders for each competitor, your brand and industry news. This way every time you spot a post, article or an ad, you will have a place to archive it immediately for later review. If you put everything in one folder, after a while it will become time consuming and unpleasant to go through it all and try to filter which news/article/ad belongs to which competitor.

#3 Write down what you want to know

To compare your competitors and your brand becomes difficult if you do not have the same information of each one of them. If you have the list ready before you go through their online activities, it is easier to spot information you are looking for.

For example:

• What services they offer
• What is their price range
• Who their clients are (testimonials/feedback page)
• Who are they targeting
• How do they market themselves (quality of the website, professional…?)
• What is their brand position and what makes them stand out from others
• Are they present in social media (links in the website, social media groups…)
• Which keywords they use

 #4 Search if there are any keyword packed domains available. If there is – get it.

 While you are searching, check if any of the search words you used shows up as  a domain name. If that is not the case, it might be a good idea to buy one part of the search phrase or the whole search phrase as a domain name. It will prevent your competitors using it and it can be used for a blog, landing page or other additional website. Or if you are just starting, you may start using it instead and redirect the old link to your new page.  

 #5 Follow your competitors separately

 Biggest error to do is to receive all the information only to one inbox. Especially if it is a work or personal inbox, Twitter or Facebook account. This will cause information overload and it will be time consuming to separate even after few days which news/tweet/post belongs to each competitor and which belongs to your colleagues and friends. However, some emails have separate filters to organize mail automatically and there is a possibility to create private lists on Twitter to follow competitors, industry news, advocates and critics. This allows you to organize Tweets by category and pull information out effectively.

 #6 Sign up for the monthly/weekly newsletter

 It is a great information package of your competitors’ offers, news and strategy. Do not use work email though: if they notice your company name you will be unsubscribed.

 #7 Be their “friend”

“Liking” your competitors on Facebook or being their “follower” on Twitter does not mean you support them. Instead by being their “friend” you will have a direct access to their promotions, offers, branding and other social network activities in real time. It will increase your reaction speed.

 #8 Set up a RSS feed on competitors pages

 To avoid visiting blogs, competitors sites, twitter lists, social media sites etc. regularly, set up RSS feeds to your specific inbox(es). 

You can also track competitors with Google Alerts, which are free and allow you to filter news based on the search criteria. When Google finds a relevant post or article, you will receive an email with a link.

 #9 Take advantage of the social media tracking tools and see what your competitors do in real time

Competitors’ social media promotions and branding campaigns have become relevant also from SEO perspective now that Google and Bing have included social network activities into their search results. IceRocket, Addict-o-matic, Seesmic, TweetDeck and other tools can show you what competitors do and what people say about competitors in real time.

#10 Take advantage of the SEO tools and find out which keywords your competitors are using

For a quick look, you can use the page source to see the keywords yourself. You can see website’s html code by right clicking and picking “view source” (IE) or “view page source” (Firefox). Have a look at your top competitors’ homepages. No need to read the whole page, because the keywords are near the top. Check if you could “borrow” any of them.

 There are also various advanced SEO tracking tools available:

• Open site explorer: Free. Detailed reports on sites where your competitors are, which will be great use for you to see why they are there and if you should be there as well.
• SpyFu:  Paid. It lets you to access industry trends and allows you to download the keywords used by the competitors. For example, which are the top keywords your competitor websites rank for in search engines and which keyword they use in PPC campaigns.
• Quirk’s Search Status: Free. Small tool at the bottom of Firefox’s browser that allows you to see every meta tag directed at the search engines such as title, description, keywords, author, generators and robot instructions.
  SEOmoz Term Extractor: Free. You give the tool an URL, and it extracts the keywords it thinks are being directed to the search engines. You can see single words, double word combinations, and triple word combinations.
• KeywordSpy: Free and Paid. This browser add-on allows you to see the list of keywords your competitors pay for, keywords they are listed for organically and ads they are running on the advertising networks.
•  Market Samurai: Paid. Analyses the strength of competition in all niches, finds the right keywords for it, builds backlinks to improve your site rankings etc. There is a free trial available.

These little tricks are great way to find out what your competitors are doing, but the idea however is not to copy. By analysing the data you will be able to optimize your online campaigns, websites and search engine ranking, find your competitors’ weaknesses to exploit and react quickly to your competitors’ campaigns, promotions and offers. Learn from the best practices and errors, and see how to best differentiate your brand.

It is also good to remember that your competitors may very well be “analysing” you right now, so check your database. They might have made the error of using their work email.

In my previous post I was discussing whether Facebook Pages will replace official websites and it is largely matter of an opinion. But let’s face it: right now Facebook Pages are “in”. So, why not make most of it?

Facebook’s newsfeed, invitations, and messages are an useful channel to reach your existing fans and their friends, yet it is possible to even SEO optimise your Facebook Page to reach Facebook’s entire database and search engines. Probably because of the questionable ranking of Facebook Pages in search engines, the platform itself has recently concentrated on offering new opportunities for Page owners to improve their Pages SEO – while creating benefit for Facebook as well of course.

How to SEO optimise your Facebook Page?

To start with, select carefully the keywords you want to implement since all your strategy will be based on those. Read how to select the right keywords here.

1. Use business’s real name as your Facebook Page name – and do not change it

Using too many generic keywords as your Facebook Page name can actually harm your Page’s virality rate inside Facebook. If the title seems too long and suspiciously “spammy”, fans are likely to hide your updates from the newsfeed and not share it with their friends – and if they do, friends are not very likely to “like” you. Picking completely generic page name like “Car” or “Australia” is not a good idea either, because Facebook has lately been disabling updates for generically named Pages.

That is why it is recommended to chose company’s/brand’s real name as the name of the Facebook Page. It should however not be changed, because Facebook uses the Page name in the title, and since search engines ding pages when titles change, changing it can give you a lower ranking.

2. Select optimised, long term URL for your Facebook Page

Facebook offers a possibility to pick a specific URL for your Facebook Page, meaning your Page’s URL becomes www.facebook.com/YourUsernameHere. Once you pick a Facebook URL for your Page, it cannot be changed – so think a proper, long term name. URLs can be selected at www.facebook.com/username.

It is an opportunity to use more generic keywords than the Page name itself or combine the Page name with additional generic keywords, yet there is a black list of generic usernames that Facebook Pages (and users) are prevented from registering. The platform has taken privileges from Pages with generic titles in the past, so it is possible that it might punish too generic sites by for example removing their status publishing rights.

Please note: Your Page has to have at least 100 fans before it can select a username.

3. Use keywords in the “About” text box below your profile picture

The “About” text box is the highest place in the CSS structure of the page to add custom text, because of the limitations of the default Wall tab. To add keywords in your Page’s “About” box, click the “Write something about [YourPage]” in the box below your Page’s profile picture (max. 250 characters).

4. Implement keywords and important links into “Info” tab

Facebook “Info” tab is a possibility to add descriptive metadata about the Page. Completing these fields increases the content score in many types of searches.

For example:

• Local searches: Address, City, State, and Post code.
• Product searches: Company Overview, Mission, and Products.

Also, direct links to your own websites or other social media sites increase their traffic and search engine ranking.

5. Create additional “Static FBML” boxes and tabs to include more keyword-dense content on your Page

Adding static text on the default tab of the Facebook Page is quite limited, but there is an app to create additional boxes or tabs that can have any kind of static content such as text, images, and links to increase your ranking. FBML is a subset of HTML and means “Facebook Markup Language”.

How to create a “Static FBML”?

1. Go to the “Static FBML” application on Facebook.
2. Click “Add to my Page”, and pick the page you want to add additional box or tab to.
3. Once done, close the dialog box, go to your Page, and click “Edit page” under your Page’s profile picture.
4. Click the pencil icon on the right in the application called “FBML 1″, and choose “Edit.”
5. Enter the title you want to call the box or tab in the “Box Title” field (max. 10 characters) and enter the HTML you’d like to use in the “FBML” field. Then click the Save Changes button.
6. Once saved, click the “Edit” link at the top of your Page to return to your Page’s application settings. Click the pencil icon next to the name of the FBML application, and choose “Application Settings.”
7. To add the FBML as a box, select “Add” next to the Box option and the FBML box will automatically appear on the Boxes tab. If you want to move it to the left side of your Wall tab, go to the Boxes tab, click the pencil icon on your FBML box, and choose “Move to Wall tab.”
8. To add the FBML as a tab, choose “Add” next to the Tab option. The custom content will by default appear on its own tab on your Page.

Remember however that search engines classify each tab as a separate URL.

6. Post direct links to your website in your Wall

Google favours the pages that link to relevant sites and does not like pages linking to unrelated sites or adding too many links suddenly. Placing links to your status updates gets them closer to the top of your Page’s CSS structure giving you better results.

There are two ways to post links into your Page’s stream:

1. Including the direct URL in the status update – anchor text cannot be controlled, but SEO results are better.
2. Using the “attach link” feature in the Facebook wall – anchor text can be changed by clicking the page’s title before clicking “Share” in the Facebook publisher, increasing keyword density.

7. Add events with keyword-dense descriptions, photos with captions…and a discussion forum if possible

Use all available descriptive fields on all the shared content. When posting photos, implement keywords into descriptions. When posting events, use keywords in the event description field. Adding a discussion forum to your Page and posting interesting content your fans can comment, can increase your ranking considerably.

8. Increase amount of inbound links to your Facebook Page by posting links to your Page on your website

Inbound links from authoritative websites to your Facebook Page can improve its search engine ranking. It can be done with text links, a “Find Us On Facebook” badge or a Fan Box widget for Facebook Pages .

9. Increase intra-Facebook inbound links by getting more fans

The default version of users profile pages include links to the Pages they are fan of. These pages are visible for search engines, which means that more fans you have, more inbound links you get.

10. Encourage fans to comment and like your content

Every time fans comment or like content in your Facebook Page, their name is linked back to their Facebook profile page. When your Page is indexed, search engines see more two-sided links between your Page and your fans, which is then interpreted as stronger bond increasing your link weight.

These little Facebook SEO tricks can help you to reach beyond the people your fans are connected to and show your Facebook Page to Facebook’s entire database. They also can increase your exposure through the search engines, such as Google, Yahoo and Msn. However, it is good to remember that these tips were created by Facebook to also promote their own platform and increase their platform ranking in search engines. Do not forget to SEO optimise your own site and include various links in Facebook Page directing users to your own official site. Otherwise Facebook can indeed absorb your official website traffic.