Speedy SEO through blogs

There are many methods to attract new visitors to your website and the terminology SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is fairly commonly known nowadays.  We’ve referred to blogs as being one such method in a previous newsletter but now we want to focus on how your blog can gain high Google positioning within just 5 minutes of posting it live.

There are various systems for blogging but Custwin are particularly keen on WordPress, which we use to produce our blogs.   We don’t send out huge amounts of blogs but as with any company, have the option to do so.  

Earlier this month we wrote a blog that was titled ‘Top Companies for SEO’
(http://www.custwin.co.uk/blog/2010/01/05/top-companies-for-seo/).  The blog was posted to focus on how stupid companies are to make wild claims about being the best at SEO, but it’s secondary aim was to see what position we could get in Google for that blog title of ‘Top companies for SEO’.

We have Google Alerts set up so that we get alerted when there’s any reference to Custwin online and within 5 minutes of us posting the blog we received an email telling us that a new blog had been posted.  This meant that if Google had picked that up, then there was a chance of getting reasonable search engine positioning, as has been the case with previous blogs.  

So we typed ‘top companies for SEO’ into Google (UK) and there we were, in position 3 of the natural results.  Now, although that’s not going to be a phrase that attracts tons of people (because it’s not so generic as ‘SEO companies’, ‘best SEO companies’ etc.), the point is that it can be done.   So, if you sell purple widgets and one of your target markets is midgets you could write a blog about ‘purple widgets for midgets’ and you’d likely get high positioning for that phrase and probably elements of it (e.g. a search on ‘purple widgets midgets’ or even ‘purple widgets’).

Most companies could be churning out a blog every day and each blog could have a slightly different focus.  The blog has one aim – to pull people into the website so that there is potential to keep them clicking on what else you have to say within your blogs or the rest of your website.   You’d be really lucky to get even 1 in 100 visitors to your blog as convert into an enquiry but the point to be made here is that if it doesn’t take you a lot of time to create your blogs, then once they’re up there, they just carry on working (until they get overtaken by other search results of course).  One blog a week is 52 a year. If each one of those brings in 100 visitors a month that’s 62,400 visitors a year.  If even 0.1% of those visits became enquiries, that’s about 62 per year.  If a third of those convert to business then it’s very healthy indeed.  Multiply all this up to create blogs more often and things start to get really interesting.

How many people wouldn’t invest up to 30 minutes per day to post up a blog with useful content, that demonstrates their expertise, and could potentially lead to new business from the high Google visibility that can so easily be achieved?

Want to know more about this subject?  Just contact us – we’ll be happy to advise you without obligation to use our services.

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Welcome John

Custwin has now become bigger and better having been joined by John Allen.  We’ve also moved into a lovely new office at the Canterbury Innovation Centre, having passed the challenge of building IKEA furniture.

Custwin has been growing rapidly and it became necessary to build up the underlying strength of the business by introducing John’s skills and mindset, which will further benefit existing clients while providing more capacity for taking on new clients. 

Our focus with clients in 2010 is in accelerating growth of business via website strength.  We’ve always been obsessive about clients getting the best results from websites but now we have the capacity to make that step up a gear so that clients get those increased results at a faster pace. 

For Custwin these are exciting times and we have big goals to double our client base over the coming year whilst of course ensuring the high quality of service to clients is kept and built on.  John is a very welcome addition to Custwin and will be a key part of our goals being achieved while our clients gain even higher levels of business in 2010 and beyond.

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Christmas Day email

It may have appeared odd to receive the Custwin December 2009 email newsletter on Christmas Day but there was a reason for doing that.  No, it wasn’t because we were sad enough to be working (it was sent out on a timer) but it was done to get a feel for response times and more.  That experiment threw up some results that may be of interest to you.

The first statistic was surprising because 24 people opened the email on Christmas Day, many shortly after it was sent.   This is actually useful information because, although there may be a few people who are on their main computers on Christmas Day, it’s a fairly safe bet that most of the people who opened the email were accessing it via their mobile devices (phone being the most likely).  For anyone sending an email newsletter who wants to gain an insight into how their subscribers interact with the web, knowing that they access email using a mobile device can provide useful insights.

The second statistic was less surprising.  Out of those 24 people who opened the email on Christmas Day, only three of them clicked on a link.  That’s a relief to see that although the email was opened, few people wanted to dig deeper at that stage.  You three people – you know who you are – next year, switch the phone off – it’s Christmas! ;-)

The third statistic showed that including Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Years Eve, and the days inbetween, 95% of all those who had opened the email newsletter had done so during that last week of the year.  That high percentage was very surprising as it had been expected that many people would take the whole week completely off work and wouldn’t be interested in their emails.   Again, although it seems a bit ‘big brother’, it can be useful to gain insights into which recipients are work-focused at a time of year that would normally be assumed to be downtime.  1st January 2010 though had no-one opening the newsletter – a few hangovers around perhaps!

The fourth statistic was that although many people opened the newsletter between Christmas and New Year, and a good number of those clicked on the links in the newsletter, many of the people who had initially opened the newsletter during that time, came back to it after the Christmas period and then clicked on links to investigate further.

The fifth statistic was that on 4th January, the first day back at work for many people, 27 new people opened the email.  That was only three more than Christmas Day!

The sixth statistic was that over the period since the newsletter was sent out, and late January 2010, the impact of the newsletter being sent out on Christmas Day was negligible with there being only 1% less people who opened the newsletter than the previous month and 3% less people who clicked on any of the links.  Obviously, if an email newsletter had been a purely ‘sales’ message then the results would have been disastrously poor if sending out a newsletter on Christmas Day.   What was reassuring about this minor loss in interest was that recipients have a certain level of interest in the Custwin email newsletter and although they may not read it immediately, it does happen in the following days and weeks.

The seventh observation was related to people who had set up autoresponders to say that they were away on the day that the email was sent.  Only 7% of recipients had set up autoresponders to say how long they’d be away from their email.   This is relevant because people tend to assume that emails are received, or in this case may have assumed that people were working during the week following Christmas.  If one person is working and has sent an email but the recipient is off work but hasn’t set up an autoresponder to say they’re away, then that could have a negative knock-on effect.  This wasn’t intended to be part of the analysis but we thought it could be of interest.

In summary, the purpose of the experiment was to determine the level of loyalty there was to reading what Custwin had to say and we’re pleased to see that the loyalty is there.  What we didn’t expect was so many people to be working over the Christmas period (when even Custwin took the time off).   We don’t know whether that tells us something about the need for people to be focusing on work as much as possible in the current economic environment, or  something else, but we’d welcome any feedback from subscribers with your views on ‘working over Christmas’ or anything else within this article. 

Obviously, it’s not generally advisable to send out email newsletters on days that you think you’ll get low responses to them but in cases like this, when trying to assess loyalty, it can be a useful experiment.  For month to month use though, it goes without saying that if you’re sending out email newsletters and either don’t have the ability to monitor statistics on open rates etc., or you’re not making use of the analytical technology available to you, then you can learn a lot by starting to analyse the results.  If the whole area of analysing results from email newsletter sendouts is new to you then please do feel free to contact us for free advice – we’ll be happy to help.

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Trusted source misinformation

How many times have you acted on information you’ve been provided with and then fallen flat on your face because the information wasn’t good enough?  This newsletter is an example because although it provides information, who’s to say it’s totally right?   What if another ‘web’ email newsletter provided contradictory information – who do you believe?

This isn’t an easy issue to resolve but it becomes even harder when you get misinformation from a source that could be considered ‘trusted’ to most people.  An email from Business Link last week raised exactly this issue.

Business Link are generally perceived to be sources of useful information and advice.  Their remit is to help businesses succeed.   The January 2010 newsletter received last week though had a link to Tips to create a successful pay per click campaign.   If you click on that link you assume you’ll get good advice.  After all, being Business Link, you’d expect them to have fully researched information that could help or hinder a business.

The landing page is supposed to be focused on creating a successful pay per click (PPC) campaign and it does contain some relevant information.   However, if people tried to create a PPC campaign based on that article they’d quickly find themselves throwing money down the drain.  Some of the incorrect content of that page, and the pages it links to are:

• It assumes that you want to sell something to someone on the page they’ll land on.  This is so wrong. If you’re selling widgets then fair enough but if you’re selling a service or what you sell isn’t an instant purchase item, then there will be various other website pages (e.g. customer case studies, testimonials, more information about the company) that you’ll expect people to click through to before making a decision to make contact. 
  

• It focuses on attracting clicks to a website but no company should do that unless they have a clear picture of how well the existing website traffic is converting visitors to enquiries.  When they have that understanding and have tweaked the website to become more effective it then makes sense to use PPC advertising.
  

• The page Choosing a pay per click agency implies that you need an agency that’s accredited (e.g. Google Adwords Qualified).  That is utter rubbish.  Getting accredited means that you have followed a set procedure of understanding the system as recommended by the PPC system providers (e.g. Google).  There is no followup quality checking to such accreditations nor penalties for doing a bad job.  At Custwin we have seen numerous examples of so-called accredited companies who have created a right mess of campaigns, to the detriment of their clients.  It’s a badge to display on a website that makes potential clients think there’s some sort of seal of quality and unfortunately, people get suckered into that.  Of course, there ARE many companies that are accredited and do wonderful jobs but the point is that Business Link are implying that someone with such a ‘badge’ is going to get a better result than someone without one.  Our own client base proves that this couldn’t be further wrong.

There’s plenty more that could be pulled out from those pages on PPC advertising but the point to be made here is that although it’s good that trusted organisations such as Business Link provide such guides (which may or may not have been created by outside companies), they can (in this case) provide misinformation.   Anyone thinking about creating a PPC campaign could print off the various pages of the guide, could go and create their campaign and is highly likely to fail because the guide allows them to go off down paths that would harm them.  This doesn’t just apply to PPC of course, it could be any guide and it could be any trusted source of information so the point of this isn’t to pick on Business Link – they just happened to be in the right place at the wrong time.

So how can you avoid pitfalls, whatever subject you’re trying to find out more about?  ASK people!   Most people know other people within certain types of industries – when looking at articles such as the one referred to here, get the opinions of other people.  The same applies when reading any of the articles written by Custwin within our newsletters – get other opinions and even engineer the coming together of two conflicting views so that you can make a more informed choice.

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Google aren't God

Linked to the previous article, the issue about ‘trust’ in an organisation is vitally important.  Google have got themselves into the enviable position that people will listen to what they say and people will even listen to other people who make wild claims that they’re best mates with Google.  To many, ‘Google are God’ because they’re dominant in their field and so should be trusted.

Wrong!  Google are good in many ways, but a foolish person is the person who lets Google themselves set up their PPC campaign as was demonstrated so clearly to Custwin recently and many times in the past.

We first met what are now a new client just over a week ago.  They told us that they’d gone to Google directly, who set up a PPC campaign for them and although they got numerous clicks to their website, their levels of enquiries from those were poor.  Over £6K of wasted clicks budget and a conversation with us later, and the PPC campaign was halted.

This all too familiar story retells itself over and over again.  Google set up a PPC campaign, provide a certain period of support, rake in the cash, and then the client is left thinking “have I just been fleeced by a brand I’m supposed to trust?”.  Whether it’s a case of there being some people within Google who just aren’t up to scratch (whereas others may be), or for other reasons, a PPC campaign set up by Google can often lead to disaster.

In this particular case, the client website didn’t have enough strength to convert good levels of clicks to enquiries.  But Google conveniently didn’t focus on that, preferring instead to help the client to make themselves highly visible.   Then there was the way in which the campaign was set up, which made the adverts visible huge amounts of times but usually in contexts that weren’t beneficial to the advertiser.

We’ve come to the conclusion that there must be some sort of target setting within Google, which means they have to get a certain number of companies onboard using PPC, but the targets don’t include how long those companies stay onboard after the initial support period.   This isn’t dissimilar to the PPC industry privately – numerous sales staff paid on commission to try and get companies to buy into PPC through them and after that point they don’t care because they’ve earnt their commission for getting the sale.

So if you’re considering having a PPC campaign set up, don’t go to Google directly, in the same way that you wouldn’t take your old car to a main dealer to have it serviced.  Ask around to find out how different companies (Custwin included of course!) would handle the creation of a PPC campaign and what the expected results would be.  You’ll get a wide range of responses and would hopefully make the right decision.  To help you along with this, our own very quick guide to successful PPC campaign creation and management is below …

• Consider whether PPC is right for your line of work.  While many PPC campaign providers will happily take your money, look out for those who would rather say “it’s not cost-effective” and refuse your business, if that’s applicable.
  

• Assess how well your existing website is converting visitors to enquiries. If it’s poor then focus on website strength before considering actively promoting the website.
  

• Initially create a very small PPC campaign, focusing on a handful of phrases that are highly relevant to your business and don’t aim to make your adverts top position at first.  Obsessively measure the visitor paths from every click you get to your website.
  

• Only when convinced that the existing level of clicks are getting a reasonable return on investment should you consider raising the adverts positioning (often, it’s not advisable for a range of reasons) and adding in new keyword phrases, all the time analysing results.
  

• All along the way compare your expenditure on PPC clicks (and consultancy where used) with the profits made on sales that are linked to those clicks.  Sometimes such sales can be ongoing and so an initially higher cost of clicks can result in longer-term benefits that bring the average cost down over time.
  

• Never be satisfied with what you’ve got – there are usually many ways in which you can attract even more clicks to your website and as long as they convert to enquiries, keep pushing yourself or your PPC campaign provider to come up with new ideas.

 

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