Before the Panda Google algorithm update in 2011, many websites got away with publishing low quality content for the sole purpose of increasing organic search traffic. If the domain had strong authority, it was possible to publish a slightly modified template page targeting a long tailed keyword and reap the rewards. This could be repeated 100s or 1000s of times across a whole range of phrases without effecting the rest of the site. Using a tactic like this nowadays would not only be ineffective, it could also have a negative impact on your entire website leading to a drop in rankings.
Yesterday we received several calls from our newsletter subscribers enquiring about the changes in Google search results that happened over the weekend.
On Friday, April 27, Google released the “Penguin” update. This is a second attempt by Google to prevent over-optimisation, when search engine rankings come before usability and offering good quality content to users.
A younger and more advanced brother of the “Panda”, “Penguin” is an algorithm created to catch out any websites using Search Engine Optimisation methods that are against Google’s policies.
Branded as black hat SEO these methods include cloaking, article spinning, keyword stuffing and buying links. There has also been a surge in cases whereby some website owners add links to their competitors from websites that have been blacklisted by Google, and in that way ensure the competitors get penalised for being in a “bad neighbourhood”.
On the Penguin update, Google’s head of the web spam team Matt Cutts, said it better identifies websites using “aggressive web spam tactics” (that have been against Google’s quality guidelines for years) for the purposes of gaming their way to top spots in Google’s rankings.
The web spam algorithm update will affect about 3.1% of English Google queries, but noted it would have a bigger impact on heavily-spammed languages, such as Polish.
If your website has been affected by Google’s Penguin update, and you have not resorted to any of the SEO methods that would have been unacceptable by Google, firstly check that you do not have incoming links from suspicious websites.
If you are confident you have been penalised by mistake, you can
Google+ has many critics, but when it comes to boosting your organic search results, this study finds that it is far more effective than both Facebook and Twitter. It is hardly a huge surprise given the fact that Google owns the service, but the extent of the results might come as a surprise to many...
With all sites wanting to gain as much traffic as possible and the workings of search engines becoming more complex, a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategy has become an integral part of any website strategy, but like all strategies, there will always be those who will try to game...
It feels like this week is focused mostly on Google news and the research done around their products, topics like mobile advertising via search and their own self-promotion emerging this week. Now another study has arrived but this time it's from Google itself, or more specifically, their research team...
Figuring out how to improve your site's Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is perhaps one of the most confusing tasks for any business that doesn't have a web background. However, if you've been paying attention to Google's Webmaster Central Blog, you would have noticed...
Choosing the best niche keywords is fundamental in SEO.
The majority of websites fail. The #1 reason for a website failing to achieve its objective is that the appropriate keywords have not been targeted.
A niche keyword is currently in range for a specific website to achieve top page positioning on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS) in general and Google in particular.
Success depends on:
The keyword difficulty.
The Homepage PageRank of the website.
Whether it is the Homepage of the website that is competing.
The best niche keywords for a website are those that will attract the largest number of new targeted visitors.
Do you recommend choosing your keywords before writing a page and optimizing during the writing process, or writing the page totally from the user’s point of view and optimizing later?
Each page must be based on a theme that relies on a few related keywords. Once you select your theme, write a nice article about it for your webpage. Write for the user and not the search engines.
The search engines are increasingly capable of monitoring user signals. If users are not impressed by the content or the quality of the presentation, this will be picked up by the search engines as minimal time spent on your website by users.
From an SEO point of view, there are three categories of webpages:
Simon Penson, of Zazzle Media, answers a few questions about the Panda update (the most exciting and revolutionary algorithmic update by Google e
ver) and the SEO of the future. You can follow Simon on Twitter.
What is the Panda update? Could you give us a brief history?
The Panda update actually started life as the “Farmer” update, and was Google’s answer to the increasing prevalence of commodotised content-scraping sites and other low-quality offerings spamming search results.
It was first introduced in February of this year, initially in the USA only and, after a few tweaks, was rolled out internationally.
It was initially thought that the update was actually an algorithm addition; however, it is now clear that Panda is, in fact, a whole new layer, or filter.
What is certain is that it is by far the most impactful update for many years and official estimates suggest that as many as 12% of all searches have been affected in some way.
Such a wholesale change to the way quality is monitored and graded will always create some unwanted side effects, of course, and Panda certainly has.
For this reason, Google immediately began “tweaking” the filter to better surface the right kind of content and to avoid overtly punishing those sites that were actually trying to do the “right” thing, but were, perhaps, not professional copywriters or journalists.
Since Februa
ry, the filter has undergone at least four updates and now affects “only” around 7% of searches (down
{lang: 'en-GB'}Are you looking for ways to enhance the effectiveness of your online copy? If you missed the webinar that Ann Donnelly and I hosted in early May you can now listen to the recording. Your online copy is critical in your blog posts, sales ...
The Digital Marketing Institute has announced that we will be running the next Diploma in Digital Marketing in Galway on Wednesday 18th May
This Diploma in Digital Marketing Course is designed to enable you to create a real and focused digital marketing plan that can help you and your organisation to increase online brand awareness, traffic to your site and intimately sales for your products and services, therefore allowing you to become more profitable.
It is a part-time evening Diploma, delivered between 6.30pm and 9.30pm commencing on Wednesday 18th May 2011 and running every Wednesday for 12 weeks.
This course is for marketers and business leaders who need to understand what the impact of the fast evolving digital marketing will play on their company and profits. We have developed this course for the modern SME to enable to to develop a clear, concise and focused digital marketing strategy that can help you and your organisation become more efficient and more profitable.
This course includes modules and lectures by some of the leading lights in the digital marketing sector in the country. the modules include lectures on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Online & Display Advertising, Mobile Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Online PR, Affiliate Marketing, Web Site Analytics and much more. Your trainers include people from companies that include Adforce, Radical, Digino, H&A Group, RingJohn.com, BizGrowthNews, Ion Online Marketing, Cybercom and many more. All of your lecturers are experience industry practitioners who share with you their extensive experience - each module is a mix of lecture, hands-on workshop and interactive discussion.
In designing this accredited Diploma, we share with
Investing in SEO training and internet marketing is no longer an option - it's a necessity. Search engine optimisation or SEO is the first step taken by many businesses to make sure their website is visible on Google and the other search engines. Once you've decided to undertake SEO as part of your marketing activities, you have to consider how you will implement this within your organisation. Your first decision then will be whether to outsource your SEO to an external agency or to invest in SEO training.
DMI is running an Advanced SEO Training course on May 17th and 18th.
Booking for this course will be available shortly. In the meantime, please call Peter on 01 271 1816 for more details.
Digital Marketing Institute delivers high quality training courses in all aspects of current digital marketing. We have recently partnered with the Cork College of Commerce to bring the course to Cork city.
This is a 12-Lecture Part Time course (taking place over 8 weeks) which takes place on Tuesday and Thursday evenings between 6:30pm and 9:30pm.
Where: Cork College of Commerce, Morrison's Island, Cork, Ireland
When: Start date Thursday 3rd March 2011
Time: 6.30pm - 9.30pm Each Week for a total of 12 weeks
Week 1 - Thursday 3rd March Week 2 - Tuesday 8th March & Thursday 10th March Week 3 - Tuesday 15th March Week 4 - Tuesday 22nd March & Thursday 24th March Week 5 - Tuesday 29th March Week 6 - Tuesday 5th April & Thursday 7th April Week 7 - Tuesday 12th April Week 8 - Tuesday 19th April & Thursday 21st April
Overview
As we are all aware, the Internet plays and ever-increasingly important role in our lives, whether in business or at home. For businesses, especially as the economy falters, businesses are looking to use the internet as a method of communicating, selling and marketing their products, services, brand and vision and generally interact with customers.
This course has been developed by digital marketing professionals for existing and aspiring digital marketing professionals. All of the lecturers are expert practitioners in their field. This course therefore provides attendees with comprehensive introduction to the concepts and application of digital marketing. It introduces a range
Digital Marketing Institute is running a 12 Week Web Marketing Course in Galway.
This Web Marketing course in Galway starts on Tuesday 8th February in Galway at 6.30pm
Overview of this Web Marketing Course
As we are all aware, the Internet plays and ever-increasingly important role in our lives, whether in business or at home. For businesses, especially as the economy falters, businesses are looking to use the internet as a method of communicating, selling and marketing their products, services, brand and vision and generally interact with customers.
This course has been developed by digital marketing professionals for existing and aspiring digital marketing professionals. All of the lecturers are expert practitioners in their field. This course therefore provides attendees with comprehensive introduction to the concepts and application of digital marketing. It introduces a range of innovative approaches that have been taken in applying these ideas to online Marketing. Real life case studies and a very practical approach provide a cornerstone to this course, ensuring that students understand both the theory and be in a position to apply this in their own business.
Course Overview
The course includes all aspects of current thinking and application of online and digital marketing, including
Search Engine Optimisation
Pay per Click Marketing
Banner and other Digital Image marketing
Web site architecture
Web 2.0 technologies
Podcasting
Blogging
Social Networking
Affiliate Marketing
Email Marketing
Web Site Analytics
Dealing with Digital Agencies
Facebook
Twitter
Upon completion of this course, students will have an understanding of the essential concepts required to develop a career in Digital Marketing.
Google (UK) has just launched a series of Free Google AdWords Training Course Videos to help advertisers start with, and then get the most from, their Google AdWords advertising.
If you're interested in creating a stronger online brand presence or drawing a high volume of traffic to your site, the Google AdWords Online Classroom can help you accomplish both by giving you access to the world's largest online video-streaming and -sharing community.
There are a whole bunch of video's to help you get started with Google advertising. The titles of these videoa includes:
Create an AdWords account
Ways to Boost Your AdWords performance
Measuring Success
Beyond the basics
This is an excellent series of video's for beginners.
There is also a video specially for marketing agencies trying to get to grips with the digital advertising world.
Wordpress and other blogging application have evolved significantly over the past 10 years or so, due to the popularity of blogging. This has resulted in Wordpress and the likes becoming one of the best ways for businesses to easily build feature rich, simple to edit, search engine friendly web sites.
With 2010 nearing an end, we are all looking ahead optimistically towards 2011. In the world of web technology, we have not witnessed any major upheaval this year. Being an ardent web surfer and a webmaster it's all but natural for me to become curious about what holds for us in 2011.
Local search is set to dominate first page results for all local search terms. Small, local businesses should take advantage of this by implementing some or all of the tips above which will allow them to compete with much larger businesses who have until now monopolised the first page results by investing in aggressive SEO campaigns.
This Diploma in Digital Marketing Course is designed to enable you to create a real and focused digital marketing plan that can help you and your organisation to increase online brand awareness, traffic to your site and intimately sales for your products and services, therefore allowing you to become more profitable.
Search marketers are discovering how social media marketing can seriously assist in their search engine optimization efforts. People surveyed by Covario stated that their #1 priority for SEO for 2011 is the integration of search with social media. According to the report, “leveraging social media for scalable link-building efforts is a major initiative for advertisers.”
The Digital Marketing Institute has announced a January intake for Ireland’s leading Postgraduate Diploma in Digital Marketing.
“Digital skills are a crucial element of the knowledge economy and Irish marketing professionals cannot be held hostage to the academic calendar” commented Ian Dodson, Course Director of the Digital Marketing Institute’s Postgraduate Diploma in Digital Marketing. “The postgraduate Diploma was over-subscribed when we launched it last September and we have been inundated with requests for the next intake.”
Companies who don't even advertise online are now using digital marketing tools to shape their offline marketing campaigns. A client of ours was recently preparing a national radio campaign advertising their new service. They run these radio ads once per quarter and while discussing their possible use of the web we suggested they do some keyword research before writing the script of the radio ad to see exactly what words and phrases their target audience were using to describe their products and services.
2010 marks a watershed for digital advertising in Ireland, with the publication of the first study from IAB Ireland/PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Digital advertising was worth €97.2 million in 2009, or 10.3% of the Irish advertising market. With advertising spend suffering a 20% fall in 2009, digital is proving to be more resilient than other categories.
I recently audited a new client's digital marketing strategy and implementation.
They were frustrated with the results of their efforts so far and wanted some advice and guidance on how to get better return for their investment. Their budget was significant but the return was negligible. Having reviewed their digital activities, I was struck by a common theme in each of the channels they were using. All of their activities had one goal, drive traffic to their site. In trying to explain to them what was wrong with their digital marketing I told them about an Aunt of mine.
I have an aunt who insists that all parties in a house should happen in the kitchen.
She emigrated from Ireland 40 years ago and when she returned last Christmas she stayed with my family for our new year celebrations. She has fond memories of growing up in Ireland and all of her memories are of being with her family in the kitchen. She insists that any gathering or event in a house should take place in the kitchen. Invariably after a few glasses of wine she carves off one of the guests in the sitting room and works them slowly towards the kitchen. Which is always empty and cold.
Much digital marketing is wasted when all it tries to do is move the party.
We try to move people from where they are online to our empty websites. We expend all of our budget, energy and efforts trying
Investing in SEO training and internet marketing is no longer an option - it's a necessity. Search engine optimisation or SEO is the first step taken by many businesses to make sure their website is visible on Google and the other search engines. Once you've decided to undertake SEO as part of your marketing activities, you have to consider how you will implement this within your organisation. Your first decision then will be whether to outsource your SEO to an external agency or to invest in SEO training.
Let’s start with the good news. For those of you running excellent businesses, the relationship between how you run your business and the impact of your marketing has never been closer.
Significant shifts in society, accelerated by the internet, hav...
Let’s start with the good news. For those of you running excellent businesses, the relationship between how you run your business and the impact of your marketing has never been closer.
Significant shifts in society, accelerated by the internet, hav...
Let’s start with the good news. For those of you running excellent businesses, the relationship between how you run your business and the impact of your marketing has never been closer.
Significant shifts in society, accelerated by the internet, ha...
Video is taking over the Internet. After Google, You Tube is the second largest search engine in the world ahead of Bing and Yahoo. Last year they hit 6.6 billion streams and currently have over 73% of the online market. With this in mind, anyone who wants to seriously market themselves online needs to be [...]
Google AdWords Dynamic Keyword Insertion is an advanced feature that can help make your adverts more relevant to a diverse audience. To use keyword insertion, you place a short piece of code into your ad text. Each time the ad shows, AdWords will automatically replace the code with the keyword that triggered the ad. Find out more about Dynamic Keyword Insertion and how it works.
We were using this advanced technique for a client and were struggling to get the search terms to trigger. We tried everything - we analysed the various blogs on the topic and we were sure that we were doing everything right. The only issue that we thought might be causing the problem was the fact that the Quality Score was 3 on the keywords that were NOT triggering the keyword insertion - we had to turn to Google to clear this up. Below is what they said - which is a confirmation that you HAVE to get your QS above a certain level of Google will simply not enable keyword insertion. And you know what, I agree with them - the ads should be high quality, relevant and targeted.
Google says:
Thank you for your patience. Keyword insertions only work if the keywords
meet a certain quality threshold. For keywords in the ad group that have
low quality scores, the default ad texts would be used instead of the
keyword insertion. This is the reason why your keywords that have a low
quality score are not inserted into your ad text through dynamic keyword
Charlie sells business supplies. The web offers him the ability to sell to clients outside his normal geography of 50 miles around his distribution centre. His wholesale supplier can deliver directly to all of his new clients anywhere in the UK and Ir...
Charlie sells business supplies. The web offers him the ability to sell to clients outside his normal geography of 50 miles around his distribution centre. His wholesale supplier can deliver directly to all of his new clients anywhere in the UK and I...
Google has been adding a number of advert extensions in Google AdWords to help make ads more useful and relevant to people searching for information. Advert extensions expand the standard text advert with one or more lines of additional information, such as and address and phone number (location extensions and phone extensions), more page links (ad sitelinks), and product images (product extensions).
Here is the AdWord Extensions short Intro Video
In order to manage and track the ad extensions in your campaigns, Google has launched a new Ad Extensions tab within your AdWords account. From the Ad Extensions tab, you can see statistics for any of your campaign ad extensions. You can choose to see "All" or "All but deleted" extensions, and you can also choose the type of ad extensions to view, such as location or product extensions. For example, if you select “Locations,” the tab will display all location extensions for that campaign (on the campaign details page) or all campaigns (in the “All Online Campaigns” overview).
The Ad Extensions tab automatically appears in your account when you've enabled ad extensions in at least one campaign. You can also enable or disable the tab for your account view by clicking the arrow button next to your existing tabs above your performance table.
For more information, call our AdWords experts on 01 271 1816 or visit www.WebKitchen.ie
I’m sure you’ve seen Google’s new search engine results pages by now – very interesting! As a user, there are now a lot more obvious options for getting results from Google in the left hand column. These options have, of cours...
It was startling last November to read that spending on online advertising in the UK had for the first time surpassed spending on TV advertising. This watershed was more incredible given how far behind Ireland is in terms of adoption of Digital Marketing. Spend is the ultimate litmus test of where an industry is in terms of its embrace of a particular channel. And while we await propper figures from the IAB I would like to gaze into my crystal ball and predict that spend on digital marketing in Ireland as a percentage of advertising budgets still won’t pass 10%. Why do I make this prediction? For digital marketing to spend in Ireland to come anywhere near UK levels we must overcome 3 hurdles....
Forrester Research's latest findings are explained in the follow post on Tech Crunch where Fliqz CEO Benjamin Wayne reveals some of the secrets of using video to help boost the search results rankings of your website. Video SEO tops Google Search
Without a well-focused list of prospects and clients, your email marketing goes unseen. This article is all about how to go about building and maintaining your contact list so you can reach the people your business covets the most: loyal customers and members.
1. Ask in person
When your customers or members come into your place of business or attend one of your events, are you asking for their email address? Letting them walk out the door without asking is equivalent to losing a valuable asset. Why not ask?
You'll be surprised that customers will give you their address more often than not. You just have to ask for it.
There are multiple ways to do so. One way is to give your team an incentive to ask. I recommend making it a contest to see how many email address one can collect over a given shift or time period. Everyone likes to win, so make a game of collecting email addresses.
You should also advertise the availability of your newsletter throughout your establishment or event venue. Put placards on tables, a signup book by the register, and signs on the walls. At your event, ask people when they check-in or register if they would like to be added to your email list.
2. Ask online
Asking online might be a little easier for some, since it removes the human fear of rejection. And there are multiple touch points where you can solicit your customers for their email address on the Web.
If Charles Dickens will allow me I'll hijack and invert a quote of his. Companies who are successful online are successful in different ways, whereas companies who fail, all fail in the same way.
Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin plan to sell five million Google shares each over the next five years, in a trading plan disclosed Friday in a regulatory filing.
The sales, if completed, would provide each of the founders $2.75 billion based on Friday’s closing price of $550.01.
Now, here'e the interesting thing ... if you read the NY Times, they tell us that the lads would not lose control of the company that they founded. But if you read Techcentral.ie (an Irish basedtechnology news wire) they give a completely different spin.
New Yowy Times says .... "The sales would bring the founders’ combined voting rights to just below 50 percent, 48 percent to be precise. But for all practical purposes, Mr. Page and Mr. Brin would continue to have effective control of the company. What’s more, Eric E. Schmidt, the chief executive, has an additional 10 percent of Google’s voting rights, giving the triumvirate absolute control over Google’s fate as long as they remain united."
Techcentral.ie says .... "Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page are to cede majority control of the company with a forthcoming share sell-off. The duo's stake in the company will fall from 59% to 48% after the sale is completed over a period of five years. It will mean the pair lose majority voting rights, although given that CEO Eric Schmidt has 10% voting power, the company's senior management will still remain firmly at the wheel."
Nearly nine out of every 10 businesses intend to maintain or increase their marketing budgets in 2010. One half expect their customers to be spending more in the coming year.
Email Marketing and social media marketing are at the top of the list of marketing tactics respondents will increase spending on in 2010. Search Engine Marketing came in third.
Combining social media and email marketing is a growing trend. More than four out of every 10 business executives said integrating the two tactics was one of their most important email marketing initiatives for 2010, just after improving performance and targeting and growing opt-in lists.
Around one-quarter of respondents had already implemented an integrated strategy, and another 24% had formulated a strategy and were researching how to put it in practice. But 18% of business executives wanted to add social components into their e-mail campaigns and did not know where to begin.
The above results camefrom a survey comnducted by StrongMail
More information and further analysis available at eMarketer.com
Early in December 3rd last Microsoft Bing went wallop!
The search engine (which claims to have up to 15% market share, depending on who you listen to, although we have yet to meet ANYONE in Ireland who uses the product - except for the nice people who work in Microsoft and therefore appear to have no choice!) went offline for about 30 minutes last week.
Microsoft has apologised for the outage, which had web surfers be greeted with an error message on the search engine's site. Microsoft stated that a "configuration change" made to the site during testing was the cause of the outage.
This, it said, had "unfortunate and unintended consequences" which included making the site unavailable. The glitch led to people either being unable to find the site or having their queries returned unanswered, Satya Nadella, one of Microsoft's senior vice-presidents in its Online Services Division, wrote on the Bing blog.
"As soon as the issue was detected, the change was rolled back, which caused the site to return to normal behaviour," wrote Nadella, who added that the problem was corrected in about 30 minutes.
Microsoft was looking into the root of the incident in order to take preventative measures to prevent such an incident from happening again, Nadella wrote.
You can read the blog posting (written by Microsoft) here.
This 1/2 Day course, which takes place on Wednesday 24th January 2010, starting at 9.00 for half day, will clearly explain how you can create (or update) your own web site using WordPress.
This is an introduction course and takes students through the process of purchasing a domain, hosting and implementing WordPress. We then show users how to design and develop your web site using the tools provided by WordPress and also by using various “plug-ins” that are designed to assist in building great looking and functioning web sites. This is a very practical class.
75% of SME's and small businesses will increase their spending on email marketing next year. 70% of themn will also spend more money on social media and social marketing. This is all according to a survey conducted by VerticalResponseand email marketing provider.
Less that 4% of those business surveyed will NOT be using email marketing as part of thier online marketing mix.
However,one of the interesting things to come out of the study is that more than 70% of them would not engage in either TV or radio advertising.
Amid the popularity of email and social media marketing, more than one-half would do no banner advertising in 2010.
You can read more about this survey on the eMarketer web site.
Most of Google's business comes from search advertising (also called Pay per Click - PPC). This is the little adverts that appear at the top and to the right hand sid of the the search results. However, they are also, to a very small extent, in the display advertising business. To prove a point, Google paid $3.1 billion for DoubleClick in 2008, one of the leading players in the display advertising business.
Yesterday, Google announced that it was acquiring a company called Teracent, a dynamic ad serving and optimization startup company.
Teracent's technology displays ads in real-time. Ad elements go in and Teracent's technology figures out how they can be combined to produce the best results:
Teracent's technology can pick and choose from literally thousands of creative elements of a display ad in real-time — tweaking images, products, messages or colors. These elements can be optimized depending on factors like geographic location, language, the content of the website, the time of day or the past performance of different ads.
This technology can help advertisers get better results from their display ad campaigns. In turn, this enables publishers to make more money from their ad space and delivers web users better ads and more ad-funded web content.
Google's announcement shows the product of a Teracent optimization:
The ad on the bottom is the product of Teracent picking and choosing ad elements using machine learning, and ostensibly converts better than the ad on the top.
Google believes that Teracent's technology "has great potential to improve display advertising on the
The Irish Internet Association has appointed Joan Mulvihill as new CEO. Joan succeeds Fergal O'Byrne (who is now CEO at SONRU.com). Joan has a strong background in the SME sector in Ireland having previously been a senior manager in BDO Simpson Xavier.
Joan stated: "The Irish Internet Association is unique among Irish business associations in that it offers all companies the opportunity to network beyond and across sectors and scale. Membership of any association must bring value for money, value to the bottom line. IIA members benefit from excellent networking and business development opportunities. seminars, training and our Net Visionary Awards programme. Members also have the opportunity to participate in our working groups which provide a platform for policy and best practice development."
The Digital Marketing Institute pretty much agrees with Joan's statement.
The Digital Marketing Institute developed it's core training course, the Diploma in Digital & Online Marketing, in close conjunction with the Irish Internet Association and continues to work with the IIA as the course gets updated and developed.
The latest search market data from comScore shows that both Bing and Google have inrecased ther market share in the search sector in October. Yahoo continues its decrease! Google remained steady at the top of the search pile, with 65.4% market share, up slightly from September’s 64.9%. Microsoft's Bing managed to post a 9.9% share, an increase from their previous share of 9.4% in September.
ComScore’s October search market analysis is in and it’s good news for two of the Big Three search engines. Google and Microsoft both posted gains for the month, while Yahoo suffered a decline.
Overall, search volume was up 30.8 percent from October 2008.
And Yahoo (YHOO)? Well, the company’s search market share slipped to 18 percent in October from 18.8 percent in September.
Digital Marketing Institute has just announced that we will be starting the next Diploma in Online & Digital Marketing in Belfast on 25th November 2009. The details for the course are as follows:
Start Date: Wednesday 25th November 2009
Time: each Wedneday for 12 Weeks at 9.30 - 9.30
Venue: Radisson BLU Hotel, The Gasworks, Belfast
Cost: £1,495
Booking: Visit the Apply Page on the Digital Marketing Institute web site
The Digital Marketing Institute Diploma course has always included Social Media Training modules, wherever we have run the online marketing training course.
Now, as a result of student feedback, we are now offering Social Media Training in Dublin as a stand alone course. The first of these courses takes place in the Radisson Blu Hotel in Dublin on December.
Details for this course are as follows:
Date: Thursday 3rd December
Duration: 1 Day
Venue: Dublin
Cost: €495.00
Details: See Below
This 1 Day course introduces attendees to the various social media marketing platforms that are currently available. We also introduce attendees to the various Blogging platforms available. During the course of the day, we will set up a blog and also set up various social media accounts and steer the attendees through how to set up their own accounts online.
We have been asked who our online marketing training diploma course is aimed at! Well,, the majority of the attendees are marketing people and business oowners.
The marketing people come on this specific online marketing training course specifically to upskill themselves to the online marketing world. Many of these folks are already working in the digital sector and now want to learn about applying these skills to the fast-expanding online marketing.
Business owners also see that, by gaining and using online marketing techniques, they can play with (and beat) their peers and the larger organisations without investing the same budgets as larger corporates.
If you want to find out about how online marketing training can boost your business, check out some of the courses that we offer or feel free to call us in Dublin on 01 271 1816.
WebKitchen.ie & the Digital Marketing Institute.ie currently have a position available for a motivated project manager with the ability to manage multiple clients, programmers and projects simultaneously. As project manager you will handle all client relations for the project. You will develop timelines and manage programmers to see projects from start to completion and ensure client satisfaction.
Ths blog contains a few testimonials by some of the most recent attendees on the 1 Week Boot Camp Diploma course that took place in Dublin Ireland (start date 24th August 2009).
As you know, this week we are running the latest Boot Camp. This is the compressed version of our 12-Week Online Marketing Diploma. Well, such is the feedback and demand for this format of the course that we have announced that we are running the same course again during the week starting Monday October 12th 2009.
Today we are completing the 1st of our 1-Week long online marketing boot camp's. The general feedback so far has been excellent, so thanks to both the lecturers and the students for taking part. We implemented some changes to the course - for example, we increased the time allocated to Social Networking. We also had a couple of new lecturers: Michelle O'Keeffe of Travel Affiliate gave the lecture on Affiliate Marketing and John Ring of RingJohn shared with us his experience of implementing and using Google Analytics in a business environment. Finally, Michael Dwyer, managing director of Pigsback.com provided the students with an insight into how to build a successful online business from the ground up.
We have just announced that we have filled our first ever Digital Marketing Institute Boot Camp and, at teh same time, are announcing that we will be running this course again in August.
The details are as follows:
Date: 24th - 28th August 2009
Time: 09:30 - 17.30 each day
Venue: Dublin City
As before, your lecturers include some of Ireland's leading Online Marketing experts. Here is a list of your lecturers.
Click here for full details of the Boot Camp.
You can now import your Goals from Analytics directly into your Google AdWords account.
If you use Google Analytics to trackl your web site stats, you can now track the return on investment (ROI) generated by your AdWords campaigns directly inside the AdWords USer Interface - even if you have not yet implemented Conversion Tracking.
By importing Google Analytics Goals and Transactions data into AdWords, you can view metrics such as conversions, conversion rate and CPA (Cost per Action) alongside click and impression data. This conversion data can also be used with the Conversion Optimiser.
In order to activate the feature, you have to do the following three things:
You have linked your Google Analytics and Google AdWords accounts
You've have selected at least the "With other Google products only" options under "Share my Google Analytics data."
You've created at least one Google Analytics Goal
Once you enable these actions, a link with the text "Link your Analytics goals and transactions" will appear in the Conversion Tracking section of AdWords.
From there, just follow the wizard a short import process.
See the Google AdWords blog post and Help Center for more details and instructions.
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On the final night of her Online Marketing Course in Dublin, Rita Tobin of T2 cornered me, Anthony Quigley, of SEO death match fame, and created a quick video interview regarding the positive effects blogging can have on SEO. The main aim of the video, from my point of view, was to see if we could get high up the Google rankings just by blogging!
This video was created on 15th April - search from the terms " impact of blogging on seo" (or similar) and you will see that the positive affect is quite startling!
One other thing to note about this - the tagging of the blog is very important - study the tags that Rita put into the blog
Read Rita's blog and associated video here
But I am also adding the video below as I KNOW that it will have a positive benefit to teh Google ranking for this blog entry!
With the start of the next course just about upon us, I thought that I would share with you a testimonial from a participant on the course that started in January .....
“Upon completion I was very happy with myself. I learned loads……Did I mention I loved it? I loved it…..The course is taught by industry professionals, many of whom are minor celebs, in the world of SEO and online marketing, in Ireland….”
This was written by Rita Tobin of T2.
Feel free to read the complete testimonial which is published on the Irish Internet Association web site.
Every year, Google hosts a major conference for Developers of products around the Google product suite. This is called Google I/O. This year, the even took place over 27th-28th May in San Francisco. You can get all of this years I/O sessions from here.
One of the session that really caught my eye was the one where they introduced and demo'd a product that they call Google Wave. This is a new (yet to be resleased) collaboration and communication tool. Having watched the demo a few times, it really looks like Google are moving email to another level, altogether.
The session on the Google Wave is an hour and twenty long but is well worth wacthing to give you some idea of what the folks in Google and up to behind the scenes.
Last month, Google introduced a range of tools called Google Search Options that let you slice and dice your Google results. Within Search Options you'll find the Wonder Wheel. The Wonder Wheel visually presents connections between related searches and your search term as an interactive diagram. The Wonder Wheel can be a powerful tool for building contextually targeted content campaigns.
One particularly useful application of the tool is to identify new ad group themes for content campaigns. Since your ads are matched to publisher pages at the ad group level, creating different ad group themes helps you target your ads more precisely on the Google content network.
Have a go by going to Google, search for anything at all, then click on "Show Options" (at the top left) and then click on "Wonder Wheel" at the left hand menu.
Introduction to Diploma in Online Marketing by the Digital Marketing Institute. The following video is an introduction to the Diploma in Digital Marketing. This video is delivered by Ian Dodson who is the lecturer in the areas of email marketing and client centric online marketing.
Getting your keywords right is an absolute must for a PPC campaign. The more relevant your keywords are, the more likely they are to get potential customers to click when searching for your products and services. Here are a few pointers to consider when researching and selecting keywords. Good research will have an impact on how many serious customers you reach.
Common Issues with Keyword Selection
Your potential customersuse different language and therefore different words than you. You're probably used to using the correct terms for your own product, but your customers may not be. Step outside of your own world and start to think like your customer. They may well type in brand names when looking for products, like ‘Hoover' when they mean 'vacuum' or ‘Kleenex' when they mean 'tissue'. They might also misspell words or use abbreviations and sometimes try other unexpected variations. Take , for instamce, "cllimate change" versus "global warming". In many respects these means the same thing, but one of these terms gets about 10 times the search volume that the other (I'll let you figure which is which!)
Terminology changes with the times. As markets develop and update, so too does the associated language. Words that were popular when you did your first keyword research might not be quite so common now, so continue to do research for new and updated terms. Remember, iPhone did not exist a few years ago!
Are your keywords too specific? You can broaden your keyword list or match type to get more impressions, which is
Microsoft officially launched their new and updated Search Engine, called Bing, on28th May 2009. In this article we have a quick look at the product and, obviously, compare it to the (current) king of search engines, Google.
[caption id="attachment_1496" align="alignleft" width="640" caption="Microsoft Bing Search Engine"][/caption]
Firstly, I have to say that Bing has a refreshing (as well as a super-cool) interface. The screen that I am looking at is an image from the Italian coastline. There are hotspots on the image that allow me to then jump to related images, videos, maps, etc. However, this is the USA view (to get to this view, you need to go to http://www.bing.com/?cc=us. If you simply type in bing.com, then you will be taken (in Ireland) to Bing.ie and the experience is radically different. So, like Google, the development of the USA version is ahead of the European counterpart (have a look at the French, Italian, etc versions and you will see that they are the same as Ireland).
The search itself appears to be very fast and focused and compares well to Google.
However, the product really comes into it's own when you search for videos - the results are a series of thumbnails that, when you hover over one, it plays within that thumbnail! This part of their product has raised some issues around the legality of these. The following is from the Financial Times: "Among the most striking features of the Bing service, launched on Monday, are small, “thumbnail”-sized video clips that play automatically when a cursor hovers over them.
Up to now, when you search for local results in the some markets, then Google would include a map listing in the results. So, for example, if you search for "hotels in belfast", then Google woould supply the searcher with a map of Belfast along with a list of the (top 10) hotels and directions to the hotel - see image below:
The problem was that this was not available in Ireland (ie searches on Google.ie, searches from Ireland).
Now it is!
So, if you are a business, you had better get onto Google local. Here's why. Let's say you are a restaurant in Gorey, Wexford. Now lets assume that you went to the trouble of getting onto the major restaurant review sites and the tourism sites, etc. So, yesterday, the results for "restaurants in athlone" were
#1 - Boo.com
#2 - IrishTourist.com
#3 - Ireland-Guide.com
Today, they are now pushed down and this is the result:
So, now, there are bunch of competitors who weren't on the first page of Google eating your lunch!!! All they did to get there was to add their details to Google Local. So, get over to Google Local and add your business as fast as possible!
The following video shows how to implement Google Local for your business:
The Digital Marketing Institute has just announced that our next Dublin based Online Marketing Diploma training course is due to start on 24th June 2009. This course will take place in our offices in Dublin city center (on Fitzwilliam Place)
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To register your interest for this course, visit the Apply page.
For a detailed breakdown of the course structure, visit the Online Marketing Course Details page.
For a list of your lecturers, visit the Lecturers page.
Last week Google supplied me with a Promotional Code to help clients get up and running with their new AdWords campaigns. This code entitles you to €50.00 worth of Google AdWords. The only catch seems to be that your account needs to be less than 14 days old.
This AdWords promotion code expires on 30th June 2009.
The promotional code is 5DAD-HQSS-UGAN-NXQA-2SA
To redeem this voucher, you need to go to the "Billing" section in your account and enter the code provided above. Watch the video below if you are in any doubt as to how to achieve this.
Once again, though, your account needs to be either new or no more than 14 days old.
Today we were figuring out how to create a YouTube Channel, create a video usinga phone and then upload it. It is pretty simple affair and I will post a more comprehensive blog later on how to achieve this. But for now, what we would like to do is to see if we can use this blog to get the term Online Marketing Course Cork to the top of Goolge.
So have a look at the following video that is the rogue's gallery, also known as the Online Marketing Course students in Jurys Hotel Cork
As I go around the country speaking at various events, I would tend to browse the web as part of the presentation. I invariably swap between the main browsers and someone ALWAYS asks a question about versions and products. In summary, there are 4 main brands - Mozilla make a product called Firefox, Microsoft make Internet Explorer, Apple makes Safari and Google makes Chrome (each of the links is to the download page for the latest version of that browser).
I am afraid that I tend not to use Safari (it is a PC versus Apple thing!) and would bounce between the other three.
I am then usually asked which is best - I would say that they are all pretty much equal. As a user, I am interested in getting the web page that I am interested in to download, and fast. Each of the browsers mentioned above meets this requirement, so I would tend not to favour either one over the other.
As an SEO person, I would usually gravitate towards FireFox, as it has a whole range of plug-ins avalailable (go to the FireFox web site for more information on this aspect of the product).
For current web browser market share information, have a look at a site called Market Share.
I sometime lecture on the history of the browser (I was personally involved in the early days of the Internet Explorer versus Netscape browser war) and you do worse than to get this historic browser information from our old friend Wikipedia.
Now, to close this article off,
When you manage a number of web sites and you are updating web pages and moving files, it is possible to generate broken links on the site. Broken links happen when a page or file is requested by the browser and the destination path of file has been changed.
There are a number of excellent tools, freely available, that allow you to find a broken link. Note that these applications will not fix broken links, but will simply point out which links are broken, allowing you to identify and fix them.
The following two products are ones that I have used and I can vouch for as reliable link checkers:
The first one is from W3 - the World Wide Web Consortium and therefore has some “gravitas” associated with it. The exact page that you want to link to is the W3 Link Checker
The second one that I find useful (and gives the correct broken link information) is from Dead-Links.com
Try out these broken links checkers and let me know whether they work for you.
What about dead links in WordPress? There is a Broken Link Checker Plugin for Word Press available. If you have a Word Press based blog and want to check any broken links, then you might want to install a Plugin for Word Press called the “404 Notifier”. This product will email you about each of the broken links which was hit by visitor and got 404. You can get this product from Alex King's Web Site or on the Alex's WordPress Plugins Page.
Of course,
Google places value on the age of your site - for more information on this, visit the Google Help page. So, how do you find out how long your site has been live? There is a tool, called the Wayback Machine, that not only allows you to see the age of your own site but you can also see that of your competitors sites. In fact, you can also use this tool to see a cache of the old web site that you are looking at.
The following is an image of the Wayback Machine. Simply type in the name of the web site that you want to view.
Follow this video to get the process:
Further to a previous blog post, we have been asked to explain Google PageRank.
It's a strange thing that Google do not appear to provide a simple and suitable answer to the question "What is Google PageRank?". However, Wikipedia has a great description, simply search for "What is Google PageRank?".
In summary, "PageRank is a link analysis algorithm used by the Google that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of "measuring" its relative importance within the set. The algorithm may be applied to any collection of entities with reciprocal quotations and references."
In laymans terms, PageRank is a value that Google places on a web page. PageRank is valued between 0 and 10, with 10 being the highest. You can see the value of PageRank of any web page by installing the Google Toolbar.
One very specific way to increase your PageRank (and therefore your Google Search results ranking - ie the ranking of your web iste in Google) is to increase the number of Inbound links to your site.
Of course, this is not always the case. Have a look at the following:
(This is also from Wikipedia)
Mathematical PageRanks (out of 100) for a simple network (PageRanks reported by Google are rescaled logarithmically). Page C has a higher PageRank than Page E, even though it has fewer links to it: the link it has is much higher valued. A web surfer who chooses a random link on every page (but with 15% likelihood jumps to a
As you may know, the country in which a web site is hosted is often (not always) critical to whether that site achieves Google ranking.
For example, we have been doing some SEO work for a client. We went through some initial On Page Search Engine Optimisation (title tags, content, description tags, etc) and we would normally notice some indicators as that suggest that the site is at least making some moving on the Google rankings.
We did not see any of these indicators and started to get slightly concerned. It immediately occurred to me that the web site, which is targeted on Ireland and Google.ie, may not be hosted in Ireland (which can cause a problem).
Typically, in a situation like this, I would consult SEOMOZ. However, when I did this, SEO MOZ could not give me any further information as to the location of the site. So, I thought that I would pop over to MaxMind. However, in order to determine the location of a web site through MaxMind you have to have the IP address. So, in order to find the IP address, we have to go to another site, for example, Self SEO. ONce you go to this site, all you have to do is enter the domain and it return the IP address.
In fact, if you only want the country that the site is hosted in, then Self SEO will do fine.
Of course, if you are a little bit techie, then you can do this throught the "DOS prompt" (or command window) in
Google Page Rank is a value that indicates the importance of a web page on the internet. Google figures that when one page links to another page, it is effectively casting a vote for the other page - this is how they calcuate the Page Rank. The more links (and therefore votes) that are pointing to a page, the more important that page is. Also, the importance of the page that is casting the vote determines how important the vote itself is. Google calculates a page's importance from the votes cast for it and then gives it a Page Rank. How important each vote is is taken into account when a page's Page Rank is calculated.
There are 6 main activities in Google AdWords that require your attention after you get up and running with a Google AdWords campaign. The following six activities will help to improve your ad performance over time:
Setting Goals
Selecting Keywords
Developing Ads that Work
Creating Destination Pages and Sites
Tracking Your Results
Optimising Once Again
In this article, I will look at Goal Setting in Google AdWords (future articles will go into the detail of each of the other 5 activities that you need to address in your AdWords campaign)
Setting Goals
Every company is unique. And therefore evey company will have a different set of business and marketing goals that they will set for themselves. These will then be translated into advertising and marketing campaigns. Here are some of the questions that you and your staff will have to consider in order to correctly set campaign goals:
What is you PPC Budget?
While this might appear to be a relatively straightforward question, there may be different answers, depending on a range of things that are going on in the company. You may want to simply continue to spend what you have been spending for the past few months. However, using Conversion tracking, you might decide to increase the spend (as each click is bringing in a profit).
What kind of results would be best for your campaign?
Lead Generation? Your campaign might be targeted on simply finding Qualified Leads, which are prospects who fit the profile of your best customers and have even asked for a follow-up.
Increasing Conversion? Conversion is a measure of the number of visitors
Google and the other search engines do not like duplicate content as it gets in the way of showing searchers the most relevant pages. This is a problem if you are targeting multiple countries from the same site. When Google's index includes multiple URLs that all lead to the same page, Google uses the Duplicate Content Filter to refine search results and ensure that only unique pages are returned to its users.
If you are an Irish company targeting many countries, you should ideally create, develop and maintain separate sites for each country. The search engines can then determine which site to show searchers from different countries.
However, most companies only have one domain. But what if you have only one domain and several versions of your site in the same language (say, English) and want to target different English-speaking countries (UK, Australia, USA)? What will happen here is that you might well have duplicate content and therefore Google will filter the duplicates and leave the "original".
If you don't have regional domains for every country and have a single web site and you host all your content for the various countries onj this site, then there are some things that you can do:
Create a subdomain (or a subfolder) for each version of your regional content. Plan your site architecture depending on your conditions.
Localise the content: Re-write each of the pages so that visitors from each of the countries that you are targeting will find those pages valuable.
Place a section of unique content on a page that has
The principle behind Google's Conversion Tracking is that you "track" the number of visitors that have "converted" after they come to your site via an AdWords campaign. To find out how many have "converted" into a sale, lead, etc, all you have to do is track the number of people who land on a particular page on your site (for example, the number of visitors who land on the "Thank You" page that they are taken to after they purchase a product). Let's say that you spend 1,000 EUROs getting 1,000 visitors to your site. And then let's say that 100 of these people purchased something (and therefore land on the Thank You page. You now have a conversion rate of 10%.
If your product has a profit margin of 10 EURO, then you break even. If it has a profit margin of 15 EUR, then you make money. Finally, if you only make 9 EUR from your product, then you might have to re-think your approach!
In order to set up Conversion Tracking in Google AdWords, you need to add piece of code (that Google provides) onto your web site ( the "Thank You" page in the previous example). You can then track sales, leads, conversions, downloads, etc.
In your Google AdWords account, click on the Conversion Tracking link and follow the simple instructions.
Choose the Conversion Page
Once you have the generated the code necessary to track conversions, simply drop it onto the page that the visitor is brought to after they completed the action that you deem
Google Insights for Search (released in August 2008) provides and up to date view of what people are searching for around the world. Using this tool you can compare search volume patterns by multiple keywords across categories and time frames in your chosen geographic region.
Insights for Search shows the following search data
Relative keyword search trends for keywords (and A/B comparisons between keywords) - note that the Google Keyword Tool will provide specific keyword volume data. This tool provides relative trends.
The tool will also provide you with the top related keywords and fastest rising related keywords
You can also get category based top keywords and category based fastest rising searches (and overall top 10 rising searches)
Sub-regions in which the searches are most popular (there is little enough information on the Irish market, so sub regions - ie county - often reveal zero information as yet. I provide an example below.
Keywords are "normalised" so that the top volume day is given a score of 100 and other searches are relative to this top score.
As with other Google tools such as Google Trends and Google Keyword Tools, by default Google Insights for Search defaults to the broad matched version of a keyword.
In the example below, I have compared search volumes for O2, Vodafone and Eircom.
As you can see, I have chosen Web Search for the past 12 Months (obviously in Ireland).
The trend for these terms is shown as follows:
The Regional Interest for each term also available:
And, finally, the Google Insights for Search tool provides the Top Searches and also
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The top internet users in Ireland are aged between 25 and 35, live in rented accommodation and belong to the AB Social Grouping. This is according to a recent Study of Online Marketing trends by AMAS as part of their ongoing "State of the Net" publication.
he interesting things is that these top internet users, who spend about 11 hours per week on the internet (as indicated in the graph below), do NOT use the services of Eircom. Most users regard surfing as a leisure-time pursuit and have a positive attitude to how technology has impacted on their lives.
The profile of these heavy internet users correlates with that from another source, TGI Ireland, as shown in the Internet power user graphic in the Autumn 2008 issue of State of the Net.
Amas provides a quarterly study called the State of the Net which is a study of online marektign trends in Ireland.
Sitemaps are to Google what maps (or, for example, a car navigation GPS system) are to humans! The sitemap is one of the first places that Google looks at when it visits a web site. Google looks for a file called "sitemap.xml" on the root directory (ie home directory) of the web site. The contents of this file explains to the search engine hoe to navigate around the site, where the links are supppsed to take it and what to expect when it follows a link.
In short, the sitemap is in an simple way for site owners to inform Google and other search engines about pages on their sites that are available for crawling.
A Sitemap is an XML file that lists all of the URLs on a site, along with additional information about each URL (when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is, relative to other URLs in the site) so that search engines can more intelligently crawl the site.
Web crawlers would normally find pages from links within the site and from other sites. However, sitemaps supplement this data to allow the search engine crawlers that support Sitemaps to find all of the URLs in the Sitemap. It allows them to learn about these URLs using the associated metadata.
Using the Sitemap protocol does not guarantee that web pages are included in search engines, but provides hints for web crawlers to do a better job of crawling your site.
Google and the other search engines highly recommend that you implement Sitemaps
We attended Search Marketing World 2009 in Dublin today. This is a conference specifically for Search Marketing folks. I spoke at 3 of the sessions:
Search Engine Marketing Fundamentals: The Need to Know
Keyword Research for Killer PPC Ads
Keep SEO in Mind: Search-Friendly Web Design
The first session was attended by about 50 folks and we covered the basics of SEO.
The second session was moderated by Aisling from Interactive Return and the other speaker with Ian Howie who was representing Wordtracker. The interesting thing is that I thought that Wordtracker was just about gone as a tool. But how wrong I was!! They are alive and well and they appear to have a great product there. During this session I spoke about the Google Keyword Tool (and wnet through a demo of the product) and then Ian discussed some of the new, cool things in Wordtracker. You should have a look at it sometime. Note that they are currently in Beta for the new version.
I met Ken McGaffin, the Chief Marketing Officer for Wordtacker - he contributed to the session and appears keen to extend the beta program, so if you are interested, then I am sure you can contect him at support@wordtracker.com. I am afriad that I did not manage to get a video from the conference yet (it is not over yet!), but I have found an interview with Ken on YouTube, so here you go ...
The third session that I did was a follow up to the first. I found out last night
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Google Analytics is one of the modules on the Digital Marketing Institute course. This video, from the Google Business Channel shows you how to use Google Analytics to find poor performing keywords in your Google AdWords account and improve the return on your advertising investment.
Google's Matt Cutts has posted a video in which he responds to user questions regarding Google's [link:] search operator. He answers the following two questions:
How accurate is Google's backlink-check (link:...)? Are all nofollow backlinks filtered out or why does Yahoo/MSN show quite more backlink results?
If you have inbound links from reputable sites, but those sites don't show up in a link:www.domain.com search, does this mean you aren't getting any "credit" in Google's eyes for having inbound links?
Ckick on the video to hear the answers:
The video comes from Google Webmaster Central's YouTube channel, which is full of useful videos for webmasters. The channel has videos not only from Cutts, but from other knowledgeable Googlers as well. Cutts himself has been posting informative videos on his own in an effort to bring his presentations from various conferences to the audience at home.
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The keywords that you use will definitely have an impact on how many and the type of customers you reach.
Here are some common issues that we see with Keyword Selection
Customers are using different language. You're probably used to using the appropriate terms for your product, but your customers may not be. They may well type in brand names when looking for products, like "Hoover" when they mean 'vacuum cleaner' or "Kleenex" when they say 'tissue paper'. Are they searching for “Global Warming” and you use the term “Climate Change”? They might als incorrectly spell words and use abbreviations and try other variations on the actual names of your products and services. Try to cover them all! It certainly is not easy but the Google Keyword Tool helps!
Terminology changes. As markets evolve, so too so the terminology. Words that were common when you did your first keyword list might not be quite so popular now, as new terms come in by the dozen. Always keep up to date, where possible. Examples might include the names of the latest mobile phones.etc.
Your keyword phrases might be too specific. You can broaden your keyword list or match type (Broad match, Exact match and Phrase match as well as Negative matching are all available) to get more impressions. This can assist early on in the campaign, but may lead you to have too many words in the AdGroup. However, using Broad match might get you the wrong type of clicks, so make sure to actively manage the keywords as well
In May 2007 Google introduced something called Universal Search. Nearly to years on and Google, Yahoo, Microsoft Live and the other search engines are delivering results for this Universal Search.
You therefore need to make sure that all of the items and attributes on your web site need to be optimized correctly. Including videos!
In this article, we discuss video optimisation.
Video optimisation in itself can be a great way for you to expose your brand to new and existing users. With the launch of Universal Search from Google, you can expect to see more and more video results occupying the search engine results pages.
Here my Top 10 video optimisation tips
1. Make sure that your video clips are relevant and informative - Videos that demonstrate step by step procedures are great, videos that express an opinion about a specific topic can be useful too.
2. Give your video a useful Title - Video can be used to bring visitors to your site. One way to get users to view your video is to give it a useful title that contains relevant keyword phrases.
3. Optimize your video for Important Key Phrases - Optimise your video for terms users are likely to be searching for. Learn how to tag the video with these terms.
4. Keep Your Videos to five minutes or less
5. Tag Your Videos - tag your videos with key phrases that are reflective of the content.
6. Brand your Video with your Logo - Video is a great tool to generate brand awareness with your prospects. Take advantage of this
There are some basic principles that apply when implementing email marketing.
The email marketing newsletter tool that we use is available from www.Email-Marketing.ie
Here are our Top 8 Email Marketing Tips, if you decide to implement an email marketing strategy:
1. From Line: Do not send your email from info@domain.com or sales@domain.com. Get Personal! You have a much higher chance of getting the email opened if the email comes from a person, preferably a real person. However, if you would prefer not to have your name of that of one of your colleagues, then simply create an alias.
2. To Line: Once again, get personal. Do not send to info@yourcustomer.ie. Get the name and email of the person that is going to receive the email. Once again, you are much more likely to get the email opened if you can personalise it!
3. Subject: Once again, the aim of this point is to get the email opened (we have not even got into whether the recipient reads the email!). Take the time to put yourself in the mind of the recipient - what would entice you to open this email? People are completely bombarded with messages on a ongoing basis, so why would they open yours? I might spend half an hour on the subject line of the email. This is the main decider as to whether the email is opened. Remember, do not use terms that will get caught by the SPAM catchers (such as SAVE €€€, BUY NOW, etc).
4. Call to Action: Once you get your email
I came across this excellent video that offers an Introduction to Google Keyword Tool. I will be posting more videos over the comign weeks , mainly from the folks in Google.
This article should help you to do some keyword research for a small to mid sized web site ....
1. Get a list of about 10 keywords from the client
2. Go to Google.ie and type in each of the keywords into Google.ie
3. Look at each of the top 5 ranked sites in Google, analyzing their keywords, looking at the meta data, etc. Take a note of all the new keywords that are being added to the original list
4. The list of keywords should now be longer than the original 10 or so.
5. For each of the new list, go to Google Keyword Tool. Click on the Website Content Radio Button
[caption id="attachment_1003" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Google Keyword Tool - Website Content Option"][/caption]
6. Type in the web address for each of the web sites that you found in Step 3 above, once again analyzing each of these sites for each of the keywords. Take note of the keywords and terms that that they are using and add any new ones to the list of keywords that you are developing.
7. Next, using Google Keyword Tool, click on “Descriptive words or phrases”:
[caption id="attachment_1004" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Google Keyword Tool - Descriptive Words or Phrases Option"][/caption]
8. Take each of the keywords in your expanded list and use this tool (focused on Ireland) to further anlayse each of the keywords on this list.
9. For each keyword, Google will provide you with a list of up to 200 other keywords. (In theory, therefore, if you start with a list of 20 terms, you could end
Matt Cutts (a chap from Google who seems to know a bit and blogs about what he knows) has released an SEO related video presentation where he discusses (a) what Google did for webmasters in 2008 and (b) what he sees happening more and more in 2009. Future predictions mostly deal with where blackhat search engine optimization is headed and it looks really nasty.
At any rate, the video (which I have embedded below) is interesting and if you can sit through 23 minutes of Matt Cutts boring you with dry talk of what Google has done then I'd recommend taking a look just to see if you find anything you didn't already know. A small recap - and this isn't everything he discusses - appears below. These are just a few of the topics that are worth mentioning because Google actually did produce something worth talking about:
Optical Character Recognition for PDF files
Google Trends
Android
Flash crawl
List of sites that link to 404 pages
Google Chrome
Google Analytics advertiser segmentation
These are products and services that Google rolled out in 2008 that are worth looking into more. If you haven't heard of these then you should look into more information about them. There is plenty more that Matt Cutts talks about.
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It's amazing! People in the business of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and Google AdWords keep talking about "Landing Pages" and the importance thereof. And guess what? Just like every other industry that has it's own gobbledygook speak, we do too!
Many of the people that I speak with on a day to day basis are being bamboozled with speak that is foreign to them! I was asked yesterday (St Patrick's Day!) what a Landing page is and why it is impoartannt. Here is a definition of a Landing Page for an AdWords campaign:
A landing page is used in Google AdWords, or pay-per-click (PPC) marketing as the web page that appears when a searcher clicks on an advertisement. This landing page should reflect what you are saying to the searcher in the advert - for example, if you are advertising Twitter Services, then bring the searcher to a Landing Page that talks about Twitter Services - do not bring them to a page that offers them a whole range of Online Marketing Services!
I would suggest that your must make an effort to constantly test at least two (and possibly multiple) landing pages and optimise them to improve conversion.
The goal of a landing page, therefore, is to provide content relevant to the searchers search phrase or to persuade the visitor to complete a transaction.
So, why is this important?
Google is interested in providing relevant results. Therefore, think like the searcher. if they are looking for Twitter Services, then the Advert should offer them Twitter services and the Landing
The Digital Marketing course that is due to begin on 30th March is nearly full. There are a few places left. Further information is available on the online marketing lecturers and booking.
As I am one of the lecturers on the Online Marketing Course currently being delivered by the Digital Marketing Institute, I certainly promote the idea of blogging as part of the online marketing mix. And, indeed, this was one of the topics that I covered during the lecture that I gave recently.
One of the students on the course has decided to take this to heart (well done) and has been blogging away. her blog is at www.t2.ie. In fact, she is running an Online Marketing Course for the Kilkenny County Enterprise Board.
Now, the reason that I found out about this was that I was searching for "Online Marketing Course" in Google. And there it was, right there, ranking #3 in Google.ie. So, what did this tell me? Well, it is a great example of how blogging can indeed be a great driver of business to the web site with a very short period of time (the blog was posted on 26th January and was appearing high on the Google ranking by early February!).
So, this tells us that this blogging stuff works.
However, the reason that I am writing this is to see whether the TYPE has an affect. The Digital Marketing Institute lecturers are not prolific bloggers and therefore the amount of blog activitiy on this site is minimal. So, now that you have got to this far in this document, you might realise what I am trying to do!
If it is possible to blog in January about an Online Marketing Course and appear pretty close
The Digital Marketing institute has announced that they have added further classes to the schedule. The latest courses to be added will take place in Cork, Ireland and will commence on April 16th 2009. This course follows the same format as previous courses. This 12 week course and takes place between 6.30 and 9.30 each of the 12 evenings. Click here to book this online marketing courses or register your interest.
Eoin Clarke is Sales Manager for TradeDoubler in Ireland. Eoin will be lecturing on Affiliate Marketing, how affiliate marketing has affected online marketing and how you can design and implement an affiiate marketing program within your business or on behalf of a client.
Martin Murray, MD of Interactive Return will be delivering lectures on the subjects Online PR and Google Analytics.
Further details regarding the content of these lectures will be available over the next couple of days.
Yes, of course. Search Engine Optimisation is a fundamantal aspect of online marketing. SEO is the process of ensuring that your web site is highly ranked by Google (and the other search engines, of course!), ensuring searchers find your site.
