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2011 in Online Marketing

Friday, December 9th, 2011

Hear that mournful whistle? That’s the winds of change, my friend. 2011 is almost at an end, and it’s been an enormously exciting and dynamic year for online marketing. Here is our round-up of the most important online developments and changes we’ve seen in the last twelve months.

Google Panda Update

In February Google initiated its so-called Panda Update, tweaking the algorhithm the search engine uses to determine rankings in search results. The goal was seemingly to ensure the primacy of original content by demoting ‘content farms’ and other sites which use copied or recycled content. This had a noticeable effect on the article marketing we do, which involves essentially farming out content to other sites in return for links pointing back to our client’s website. It still works, and forms a part of most of the SEO campaigns we run for clients, but it is now no longer the quick win it once was!

Emergence of Mobile Browsing

It’s been on the up for a while now, and 2011 saw the continued rise in popularity of people using smartphones to access their emails and other online content. As of October, it was estimated that just under half of the UK population owned a smartphone, and we can safely assume that proportion is likely to go up a bit further on Christmas morning this year!

This key development is something every business with an online presence needs to be aware of, and in the next year or two we are sure to see a trend towards websites being optimised for mobile browsing. This means taking into account some of the important differences and limitations of mobile, so while an slick all-singing, all-dancing Flash based website might seem like a good idea, when you consider that the most popular smartphone, the iPhone, is unable to render it, it may make more sense for going for something plainer and more universal to avoid losing out on mobile traffic.

Google+

After a few problems getting off the ground in the summer, Google + is motoring on fairly well now, up to 40 million followers worldwide (for comparison, Twitter has 200 million, and Facebook has over half a billion). Time will tell if it can pick up enough momentum to challenge the big two of social media, but since Google + has now introduced brand pages, we think it certainly wouldn’t hurt any businesses setting up their own page and starting to build up their own mini network. Here’s what I wrote about potential SEO and customer engagement benefits of Google+ businesses may see in future.

Changes to Facebook

I wrote a piece on the Facebook changes back in October, and it’s interesting to see how some of the changes have since become an integral part of the Facebook experience, and others have been almost ignored entirely (Facebook video chat, anyone?)

The biggest thing that changed from a marketing perspective was the shift from a purely chronological wall feed to one in which posts are given prominence according to how important to you Facebook deems each one to be. This means that businesses on facebook can no longer just rely on getting as many likes as possible - if an individual ‘likes’ a business but does not ever engage with them, then Facebook will consider posts from that business to be of low relevance, and will bump them right to the bottom of the user’s feed, where they are unlikely to be seen.

Twitter

2011 was above all else surely the year of Twitter. Its role in the revolutions that swept the Arab world showed the incredible power and potential of social media as a tool for uniting people in creative and unprecedented ways. Take the example of the protesters in Egypt, who used the hashtag #cairo to tweet updates on their activities, meaning that even those in the city who didn’t personally know any protesters could easily find out where and when they were gathering, and join the demonstrations themselves.

As well as helping to topple governments in North Africa, Twitter users also caused a major headache for the UK legal system by flouting the super injunction imposed on Ryan Giggs’ off-field antics. A great leveller, Twitter was able to subvert the long-standing monopoly over news and information held by traditional media in this country, probably for good.

So in such a tumultuous twelve months, what was the biggest trending topic of all – the Arab Spring? the death of Steve Jobs? The London riots? The Japanese tsunami? No, in fact more widely talked about on Twitter than all these things was floppy haired teenage singer boy Justin Bieber (click here to see the full list of top Twitter trends in 2011).

As a barometer of stuff people on Twitter care about, the top trends list makes pretty desperate reading, but don’t give up on Twitter just yet. It may have its inane and trivial side, but this year also we’ve seen what a tremendously useful marketing and customer service tool Twitter can be, especially for those businesses who are willing to put the time in and use it the right way.

Just here in Dorchester, we’ve seen local traders take to Twitter with enthusiasm and energy in recent months, creating a vibrant little Twitter community based around the town’s shops, arts organisations and interest groups.

Conclusions

So what lessons have we learnt from the year? Despite changes to the Google algorhithm, content is still king – well-written, relevant content on your website, blog and social media platforms is still the core of any online marketing campaign. Huge new opportunities are opening up in social and mobile web, so it’s vital to stay on top of those and not be left behind. These points are well worth mulling over when you are considering your marketing priorties for 2012, and remember if there’s anything you’d like to discuss with us, you can give us a call Monday to Friday on 01305 755609.

Chris Redhead

Tags: facebook, google, Google Panda update, mobile browsing, twitter
Posted in General, Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation, Social Media | No Comments »

Why Brand Pages may be the Saviour of Google+

Friday, November 18th, 2011

In the five months since its initial exclusive launch, it hasn’t been all smooth sailing for Google+. The new social network has struggled to really get off the ground, with the number of its registered users rising steadily but unspectacularly since it was first introduced.

There is one big lifeline for Google+ though, which is that it has just announced business pages, a long-awaited development that will enable businesses to create a new customer hub that could prove extremely rewarding in terms of social engagement and SEO.

So what is a Google+ brand page, and is a significant enough addition to offer a real challenge to Facebook’s domination?

A Brand page is a google+ profile designed specifically for businesses, akin to Facebook’s fan pages. Before their introduction, firms could only get a standard Google+ profile, so there was nothing to differentiate them from regular users. Google have announced a number of unique features for brand pages, including customisable visuals and multiple admins.

There are a lot of businesses currently mulling over whether to set up a Google brand page – some commentators say ‘Google+ is Doomed’, while others insist Google+ is simply too good a marketing tool to ignore. My advice is to just go for it.

Benefits of Google+ Brand Pages

Lots of businesses already have Google’s +1 button on their website, and you will now able to tie these into the +1s on your Google+ page. Perhaps the main advantage is that messages posted on Google+ pages will be picked up in Google’s search results, which from a marketer’s perspective gives them a big advantage over Facebook posts and Twitter posts, which Google is unable to see. In the not too distant future, expect to see a firm’s website and its Google+ page as the virtually guaranteed top two results when you do a search for their name on Google.

Google is currently working on lots of fresh creative ways to link Google+ with search results, with the stated aim of making joining a brand page’s circle as easy and natural as doing a search. So for example putting “+Honda” in Google’s search box will in future be a way for you to subscribe automatically to Honda’s brand page.

Though not currently active, it has been revealed that brand pages will soon become location-aware, which is ideal for small businesses which only operate in one part of the country. The video hangouts feature (also a feature of standard profiles) is a particularly interesting one for businesses. Dell have already floated the idea of using Google+ hangouts for customer service, allowing for face to face communication between consumers and businesses in an easily managed and simple way.

Google aren’t actually pitching brand pages as an alternative to Facebook, but as a new channel to supplement your existing social media marketing strategy. It goes without saying that with different customers using different networks, it makes sense to spread your message as wide as possible, and this, added to the potential for serious SEO benefits down the line, should be more than enough to persuade you to sign your business up to Google+ at the nearest opportunity.

Click here to see the Key Multimedia Google+ Page and add us to your circles.

Chris Redhead

Tags: google, social media strategy
Posted in General, Social Media | No Comments »

First Impressions of Google +

Friday, July 15th, 2011

Remember your first day of school? Remember how you didn’t know anyone there, and weren’t sure where you were meant to going and what you were meant to be doing?

That lost and baffled feeling is similar to what you get when you first enter any new social networking site, and was certainly what came to my mind when I set up a profile on Google +, the new social network aiming to challenge the well-established dominance of Facebook and Twitter.

Features of Google +

On first inspection, the look of the Google + site is quite neat. Lots of white, quite minimalist – all very Ikea. The layout seems a bit unfocused though, and it takes a bit of time to get to grips with all the options you are presented with.

There is ‘Circles’, the control panel for your contacts, separated into groups according to their relationship to you (i.e. friends, acquaintances, relatives, work colleagues). Google hopes this will better replicate the actual experience of communicating in real life. For example, there are some things you might want to share with your close friends, but not with your parents, and Google + allows you to decide for each post you make which circles will be allowed to see it.

Currently Google + is available to a small number of people on an invite only basis, so my circles are looking a little empty right now, but will hopefully fill out a bit when it gets a general release!

There is also ‘Sparks’, which seems to be kind of a news feed based on your interests. Initial impressions are that it’s (to put it politely) a bit rubbish - I entered ‘copywriting’ and ‘music news’ as two of my interests, and it gave me a seemingly quite random list of articles and news stories related to these categories (One was for a country music festival taking place in Ohio this weekend. Thanks for that, Google!)

Finally, there’s the Hangouts option. It’s a video chat feature that allows you to invite a number of people from your circles into a group video conversation via webcams. This would have been a great little USP were it not for the fact that Facebook, not wanting to be beaten to the punch, announced a tie-in deal with Skype last week, enabling them to offer video chat as an extension to the existing (and very popular) Facebook Chat.

Marketing Potential and SEO Impact

From a marketing perspective, it’s difficult to know at the moment to what degree businesses will be able to utilise Google + to market their brand. The site is still in the testing stage, and Google has warned businesses not to start using it yet until it’s ready. What is clear already is that Google have decided to give an awful lot of influence on its search results to recommendations made by other people in your circles.

I did a search for ‘phone insurance’ (an extremely competitive search term) during the week, and found that a client of ours, iProtect Insurance, was showing on the very first page of my results (usually it would be expected to be around page five). The reason for this incredibly high ranking was that it has been shared by someone in my circles via the Google +1 feature.

If Google + starts to really take off, I can see this becoming a hugely important aspect of SEO in the near future. Getting a recommendation from an influential and popular Google + user could become extremely valuable to companies, and we may see marketers actively courting and incentivising users to endorse their site with +1s.

Will it take off though? Google + definitely signals a big shift in the way Google operates and wants to be seen. Up until now it has measured its success largely by its ability to get people on and off of its site as quickly and efficiently as possible, striving to shave even milliseconds off the amount of time it takes to do a search and get to the results you are looking for. Now Google is hoping to persuade us to stay put, to hang around and spend some time building up our circles. Are people going to respond well to this?

To go back to my statement at the beginning of the article, starting up on a new social network can be daunting, confusing and can initially require quite a bit of work. Whether or not people decide that commitment is worth it will depend ultimately on whether they see Google + as genuinely providing something more than Facebook and Twitter are already currently offering them.

If you fancy giving it a whirl and would like an invite, send us your email address and we’ll give you your golden ticket invite to the Google + network. Contact us at info@keymultimedia.co.uk and let us know how you get on!

Chris Redhead

Tags: google, google plus, Social Media, social networking
Posted in General, Social Media | No Comments »

New Media Age’s Online Marketing Show

Friday, July 1st, 2011

Every once in a while, the Key Multimedia team manages to drag ourselves, bleary eyed and squinting, away from our office computer screens and out into the world outside. One such occasion arose this week, when we travelled up to London for New Media Age’s Online Marketing Show

This was a two day exhibition event in Earls Court, with experts in online marketing and web technology sharing advice and ideas on the latest developments online and how to best make use of them.

One of the real highlights of the show was a presentation by Matt Britten, MD of Google UK, who gleefully laid out Google’s vision of where the web is taking us, and the myriad opportunities arising from this process of evolution.

Fast and Happy – The Importance of Speed

Britten’s first point was of the crucial importance of speed – as proof he provided the incredible statistic that Amazon experiences an average 1% drop in sales traffic if their website runs just 100 miliseconds slower than usual.

Online shoppers in 2011 hate waiting for pages to load, and the smallest time margins can mean the difference between a customer completing their transaction or giving up and abandoning their cart. This kind of information is simply not being heeded by many online retailers who think gaudy, all-singing, all-dancing Flash-based websites with tons of features are the best way to attract customers.

Also demonstrated were some of Google’s latest innovations in the mobile sphere. Google have been working on making synching between a PC and phone much easier and more intuitive, meaning that with Google Chrome you can now send data from your PC browser to your mobile with one click of an icon.

Snap it, Tap it, Type it, Say it…

As for the future, Google see online search as becoming far more than just typing in words in their search bar. They’ve already pioneered voice search (say “weather” into Google’s Nexus S smartphone and it will pull up a page displaying the forecast for your local area), and have now introduced a tool called Google Goggles. Terrible name, but the idea behind it is a fascinating one.

Take a photo on your phone of something in front of you, and Goggles tool will try to identify what it is, and more importantly for Google, tell you where you can buy it. Britten demonstrated this by taking a photo of a front cover of a book using the Goggles tool – it was immediately able to tell us what it was, and pulled up a link to the Amazon page for that book. Amazing!

Social Search

Another interesting part of the exhibition was a discussion panel with one of the heads of Microsoft Advertising and other search engine experts.

They all emphasised how search engines (taking their cues from social media) have become much more personalised and dynamic in recent years, so that now no two people will see exactly the same search results even when using an identical set of search terms.

This of course presents a challenge for SEO companies, which will probably require a shift towards a more precise, targeted approach in future rather than just trying to optimise for everyone in a general way.

Another key point raised was the different weighting the various search engines ascribed to social media networks – the guy from Microsoft (in a roundabout way) confirmed that Bing is more heavily influenced by Facebook, while Google gives more emphasis to Twitter - a useful insight for anyone launching a new social media campaign!

What really emerged overall from the event was that the web marketing industry finds itself in a really interesting place at the moment – faced with very rapid change in some areas, such as the vastly increasing use of mobile online, and continuity in others, like the continuing importance of good quality content as the pillar upon which any commercial website or online marketing campaign stands.

Chris Redhead

Tags: google, online marketing show, search engines, Social Media
Posted in General, Online Marketing | No Comments »

The Week in Web News

Friday, May 13th, 2011

It’s been a busy week in the online world – there have been good ideas, bad ideas and more jostling for power and backstabbing than an episode of the Apprentice.

The big story this week was the revelation that Facebook secretly hired a PR company to smear Google. They hoped to get stories into newspapers and blogs claiming that Google was breaching privacy laws and gathering excessive amounts of data on its unsuspecting users.

Facebook were hoping to do this all on the sly, but when the PR company, Burston-Marsteller, approached bloggers with the stories they were challenged on the information, and admitted that Facebook had put them up to it.

To some degree Google expects these kind of attacks – you don’t get to be one of the biggest, most profitable businesses in the world without making a few enemies, and it’s safe to assume that for every one of these smear stories where the perpetrator gets uncovered, there are several more that don’t.

However, when companies like Google find themselves being attacked and smeared from all sides, it means they have to spend a lot of their time putting out fires and defending themselves, and less time focusing on the more important task of finding new ventures and evolving their business.

Microsoft Wins Battle for Skype

Some would say that being forced to adopt a defensive posture because of smears and criticisms was the biggest problem which plagued Microsoft throughout the previous decade, and has now caused them to lose their leading position in recent years. Microsoft’s big news this week was their acquisition of Skype, the online video phone service. Several other companies, including Facebook, were said to be interested in the purchase, but Microsoft secured it with a deal thought to be worth around £5 billion.

Like many of the internet companies which are being traded for sky-high prices at the moment, Skype doesn’t actually make itself an awful lot of money (it actually made a loss last year). It is massively popular – it has around 660 million users worldwide, but these users don’t spend very much on it, and the challenge for Microsoft is how monetize this huge customer base.

One option would be to integrate it into other services – Skype used to be owned by eBay, who bought it in 2005 with a plan to integrate it into their online marketplace, hoping this would allow buyers and sellers to talk to each other more efficiently via internet phone. It didn’t catch on with eBay users, but Microsoft could try something similar – for example by finding a way to integrate the technology into MSN Messenger, or even Xbox Live?

Apple is Top Banana

It’s been a relatively quiet week for Apple, but it still managed to make the news this week by topping the list of the world’s most valuable brands in the Brandz annual top 100 global brand power list. This is the first time Apple has topped the list, beating off competition from the likes of McDonalds, Google, Coca Cola and IBM.

So what does this all mean? For me, this week’s news all comes down to the crucial importance of brand image.

You could put so much of Apple’s success down to the way it has built itself a fantastic image, becoming known internationally as a company which consistently makes desirable products people love. Consumers associate the Apple brand with stylish design and superb user experience, and this gives Apple an enormous advantage over some of its less glamorous competitors.

Google has an equally positive brand image – its mantra – ‘don’t be evil ’, reflects its values and reputation for ethical business practices. The Burston-Marsteller smear campaign this week was presumably Facebook trying to bring to the limelight a darker side of Google’s business, and hoping to cast some doubt on their ‘nice guy’ image.

Microsoft, meanwhile, has serious brand trouble. Compared to Apple and Google, Microsoft is in danger of becoming perceived as an uncool brand, associated largely with joyless suits who give dreary powerpoint presentations in offices and go to sleep at night dreaming of spreadsheets.

Microsoft has taken a major punt by paying so much for Skype, but it is part of a new generation of thrusting young internet companies, and Microsoft may be hoping that by bringing Skype into their fold a bit of that cool will rub off on them.

Chris Redhead

Tags: Apple, eBay, facebook, google, Microsoft, Skype, twitter
Posted in General | No Comments »

Google Brings +1 to the Social Media Party

Friday, April 8th, 2011

Well, this is exciting. Google has announced one of its biggest forays yet into the social sphere with its new +1 tool. +1 will take the form of a clickable button which will appear on web pages and will allow users to recommend sites and share their recommendations with friends and contacts.

Watch Google’s explanation of the service here:

If it all sounds familiar, that’s because Facebook has been doing the same thing for a while now with its ‘like’ button, which is becoming an increasingly common sight on third party websites across the net. There’s also the Twitter ‘retweet’ button, which offers an almost identical service for Twitter users.

So it’s a classic me-too product from Google. Is this a sign that the great innovator is now resorting to playing catch-up with its more genuinely edgy, boundary-pushing, and social media-savvy rivals?

Google’s Social Woes

When companies get really big (and Google is certainly that), there is always a tendency for them to take their eye of the ball, and this allows the younger, hungrier rival companies to take advantage.

The social element of the web in particular has been a real Achilles heel for Google in recent years, and its high-profile stumbles have opened the door for other companies to steam ahead and steal a march in the social media arena.

Last year Google launched Buzz, the much-derided social network meant to challenge the hegemony of Twitter and Facebook. The service was a massive flop, seeing a very poor uptake by users and ending up being quietly shelved by Google not long after.

Despite all the many great achievements of Google, there remains a suspicion that Google doesn’t really ‘get’ social media. It could be partly the culture of the corporation, which was founded by engineers who made Google such a success in the field of search through a winning combination of logic, problem-solving and scientific efficiency.

Unfortunately, this no-nonsense approach doesn’t always apply to the social side of the web, which to some degree is all about the nonsense! It’s not just about creating the best algorithms, it’s about interaction between human beings, and therefore requires a humanistic approach which Google has sometimes been lacking.

Google are hoping that is what this new +1 tool will help to provide. It’s a way to personalise searches and ensure your search results are relevant to you and your friends. And despite their patchy track record with social, we think there’s every reason to expect that Google’s +1 will be a success.

Probably the biggest single factor that sunk Buzz was that people didn’t have time to commit to using another social network, with the important part of the market already largely nailed down by Twitter and Facebook. Google +1, on the other hand, requires only one click, so users probably won’t be put off from the service because of time constraints or ‘social networking fatigue’.

From a business perspective, the real impact of the +1 service could be when the +1s start to influence Google’s search rankings. In the near future, we are likely to see that sites with the most social recommendations will begin to be rewarded with more visibility in search results, and of course, given that +1 is Google’s own feature, you can fully expect that +1s will be given more weight in terms of influencing the Google rankings than Facebook ‘likes’ and other rival services.

If you would like to know some more about utilising social tools and boosting your search engine rankings, call us for a chat on 01305 775609

Chris Redhead
SEO Copywriter

Tags: facebook, google, google +1, social tools, twitter
Posted in General, Social Media, Tools | 1 Comment »

History of Google

Friday, November 6th, 2009

If you thought you knew Google - then maybe think again.

Here is a quick potted history of Google in a swift couple of minutes.

Great video presentation as well……

Tags: google, History of Google
Posted in General, Search Engine Optimisation, Web Analytics | No Comments »

Real time Search

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

The search engine landscape is hotting up! Although Google is still the dominant search engine (according to market research firm Hitwise, Google accounted for more than 87% of the UK search market in 2008), in recent months, the search engine market has gotten just that little bit busier.

With several new acquisitions, partnerships and enhancements coming out over the last few weeks Google is facing some stiff competition.

Microsoft’s Bing was launched back in June and appears to be having a good crack at Google’s dominance, delivering fast search results. A lot of our clients are seeing an increasing amount of traffic come via Bing.
Wolfram Alpha entered the search market place with its "computational knowledge engine"
and a revamped Ask Jeeves have also entered the fray

Real-time Search Results

The big noise at the moment is all about "real-time search" and the ability of search engines to rapidly index the very latest content on the web and make it available via their search tools.

Google have had their Web Options tool as part of the standard search engine for some time now and it kind of gave an idea where things might be heading.

Today, we caught first sight if their new search tool which is their "first step in improving the speed, accuracy and comprehensiveness of search results".

Nicknamed "Caffeine", the beta search tool is able to carry out searches at double the existing speed and also introduces real-time results and news feeds.

So what does Real-time Search mean to most everyday users?

Well probably not a lot.

Most of us won’t even notice a difference, the search interface hasn’t change it is simply the algorithms being used to display the results.

But with Caffeine picking up news stories and putting fresher content higher up the search results, there has never been a more important time to keep your website content up to date and perhaps even think about adding a blog to your online presence.

Tags: ask jeevs, bing, blog, facebook, google, real-time search
Posted in Search Engine Optimisation | 1 Comment »

Google Search Tips

Friday, January 11th, 2008

How to get the most out of searching using Google and other search engines. A short interview with Matt Cutts - Senior Engineer with Google - who explores some of the best methods for searching.

I will also bet you a Â£1 that there is at least one tip that you didn’t know you could do via Google!

Dave

Tags: google, search engine
Posted in General | No Comments »