week3- Marketing
SEO
Search engines' aim to present the user with the most relevant web pages and ranked by popularity. The two ways that they do this understanding relevant is more about on-site SEO but understanding the popularity of a website is more influence by something called off-site SEO.
SEO is ongoing refinement of a website's content and popularity that understood by search engines and ranked as highly as possible; this is what search engine optimisation is, and it never stops.
On-site SEO refers to the content itself. All criteria of it are all within the direct control of the webmaster. Off-site SEO refers to outside influences on a website ranking, in particular quality and quantity of inbound links; and social media signals.
The way that Google decides which website appear at the top of the search engine in the result page is usually related to the number of other website that link to it. Social media is becoming really important in SEO. For example the number of likes that one website has will influence on the ranking of the site or something which is talked about it in twitter a lot would have same result on ranking of the site.
The job of search engine optimisation is always changing. Search engines don't publish their formula that how they rank a website, so a lot of thing that we learn of trough other peoples try and error. No one knows the certain of what Google use to rank the site.
Keyword research & on-site SEO
From Matin's, Ozoma's and Laura's presentation
Keywords are words or concepts of great significance, important words. Keyword Research should be conducted at the initial stages of a project, before writing any content and or building the site. First step for finding the keywords for your site is brainstorm. Look for common word or phrase relevant to your business. Search for it and make a list of keywords that are relevant.
Some methods of compiling your keyword list:
- Brainstorm and ask friends
- Thesaurus
- Google search bar
- Google Ad words
Best places to put keywords:
- Domain name
- URLs
- Title tags
- Meta Tags
- Meta Description
- H Tags
- Main body
- Alt text/image names
- Links
- Strong and em tags
- First line of first paragraph of each page
Some useful SEO tips:
- Age of a website
- 404 page
- Site map
- Robot.txt
Generic vs "The Long Tail" / niche searches:
the concept of the long tail is, the more generic at term would bring back loads of result and the competition would be intense. As you make your keyword more specific the number of result is much lower. The teaching of the long tail said that, all the specific keywords searches add it up are actually more than as few generic term add it up. So you could write lots of text content for your website in cooperating lodes of specific fraises and you will be surprise of the number of hits that you get from people typing specific things.
Off-site SEO
This is the influence on the SEO coming from outside of your website.
Inbound links are the most important thing that can make your website popular. Because each link from another website is a vote to your website and search engines count up how many links are coming from other places. Quality of inbound links is more important than the quantity. So a good quality inbound links is which comes from a website that authoritative website in same industry or related industry to your website. A poor quality link is an unrelated website that itself has not gut much authoritative.
One way links are much prefer.
Link generation techniques
- Great content that people want to link to / share without prompting.
- Use share buttons on your website to give people an easy way to link or recommend you by social media. ( offer an incentive for people to link to you. Give a way something for free but in return they have to link to your website.)
- Offer an incentive to link, perhaps something for free in exchange for a link
- Link exchange. You contact websites who are similar to yours and try to exchange links with them. It is not as valuable as one way links but it worth doing.
- Directories
- Seek partnerships and promote each other's services- links and banner ads
- Ask for links from suppliers.
Directories
Directories are websites that are lists of websites. In some of the directories you have to pay a submission fee and in return a human editor will look at your website and decide whether it is good enough to be included to the directory or not. This is a paid link because you are paying to be listed in these directories but the reason Google like these one is because a human being review your website and decided whether it is good enough or not.
Google places
The businesses that have fully completed information on their places listing might rank higher than ones that haven't. If you own a service that has a physical premise using Google places would be one good way to increase the ranking of your site in search engines as it is another way of marketing in net.
Article marketing, guest blogging and PR
It is similar to appearing to the directory except that you have to write an article as well as have a link. The idea is; you write an article on the subject of your website and then you put your link at the bottom of the text.
Guest blogging is another technique where you could contact to bloggers who are blogging about related industry to your website and offer to write content for them. It's a good way to promote a new website. You can write an article for them and within that authoritative article you are linking to your website. Some bloggers pay for high quality articles.
PR: if the business owner of your website has just launch a new product you could use an online PR agenises who will write a press release for you and they will distributed to a network of journalist, bloggers also some peoples might publish the article and they are not free and you have to pay for it.
RSS feeds
Whenever you publish a new article on your website your RSS feeds in updated automatically and people can subscribe to RSS feed. One challenge of RSS feed is that it is difficult to analyse how many people have signed up and how many people are clicked on it. But if you distribute your RSS trough Google feedBurner service then it allows you to track how many people signed up to it and how many people clicked in the links of it.
Viral marketing
Viral marketing is use of the internet, particularly social media, to spread brand messages and advertising. Common formats are video, images, time wasting games or useful unique content.
Email marketing
For good email marketing, first you need to generate your own list on your website and you need a sign up box. Don't try to trick customers the nice way to do it is that they have a tick to opt-in rather than tick to opt-out.
Newsletter content must be genuinely useful.
Be clear about what they will receive by email, and how often.
Publish an example newsletter, before they sign-up.
Offer reward for signing up, e.g. shopping voucher
Be very wary of buying mailing lists, no matter how reputable the company selling them
Recipients will not be expecting your emails and they will be considered spam
Show "unsubscribe" link clearly on newsletter
Publish your company name and address on the newsletter
Provide a web version link, in case reader has difficulties viewing in email client.
Offline marketing
Think of opportunities where you can get the website name in people's faces. Such as flyers, stickers, business cards and stationery, press ads, sponsorship, and web address on premises and vehicles.