MediaVision Blog : Search Engine Marketing

There is quite a fuss being made about how online video SEO (search engine optimisation) can help most small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Using video as a method of enticement can substantially increase your website traffic and also your conversion rates. Many are already using online video SEO to help drive actions and sales, but many more fail to see the benefit of using online video as a viable (additional) marketing tool.

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Visiting a website for the first time is an exciting experience, what with all the naïve expectations about what it might look like and what it might offer you as a consumer or potential client. Sadly, many sites do not live up to these expectations, by offering below standard front-ends and not investing enough time or effort in making the site more user-friendly.

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After doing everything you can think of to improve the performance of your website, you may still find yourself wondering why it is not achieving its set goals. You’ve made the design user-friendly, you’ve added valuable content, and you’ve invested money and time into marketing it. Yet your Analytics report displays a rather dangerous looking bounce rate, which doesn’t show an inclination to decrease anytime soon.

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How do you stand out from the crowd as an SEM agency? The competition is getting tough and we have to up our tactics if we want to stay ahead of the masses. The best way to do that is high quality of work and service, service, service…

The customer or user in this case is, to be politically correct, king or queen. The trends show that SEO/SEM firms are gradually focusing their attention on the user, specifically offering website usability as a service. I feel that it is very important to acknowledge that usability requires its own skills set and shouldn’t be confused with SEO. Usability addresses human interaction with a web site while SEO addresses the search engine interaction with the web site. Saying that, all SEOs should have knowledge of usability and every SEM agency should look at adding SEO to its repertoire.

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Our office is a fun and diverse place where you can witness a debate of great minds in just about every room you walk by or outside while having coffee or in the boardroom or in the games room or…well, you get the point. We all have our own opinions and most will share them whether the rest of us want to hear it or not. I like to think everyone wants to hear my opinion and that is why I’m going to write a post about one of the more talked about (unresolved) arguments we have in the office.

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When dodging the slavering jaws of the spambots, it’s best if your site looks like a lousy supper. That means reducing the rewards of getting the spam message onto the site. Even if spammers make the necessary code changes to help their spambots navigate the web, they may simply decide that it’s not worth the extra work and maintenance if the incentives are too low. My assumption is that spammers are in the hunt for a good Google PageRank score; it’s about boosting their results in search engines. The rel=”nofollow” tag when added to links tells Google and other search engines not to index the link. Admittedly the pace of spam has only increased since the rel=”nofollow” tag was introduced by Google and a group of blog software makers a couple of years ago. My optimistic hunch is that new apps that support this tag from the get-go won’t be as big a target. We’ll see.

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They are many factors to consider when optimising a site, but arguably one of the most important is the onsite layout and internal linking structure. To follow are a few points on this subject that work for me.

• Make all your links count. Remove secondary keywords that aren’t relevant. Make sure all your links are fully written out. Don’t be lazy by just giving /pagename.html; you should give http://www.yoursite.com/pagename.html. By doing it the proper way, when the page ages and rises in the SERPs, you can bring up the ranking of other pages in the site. Another advantage of doing it is when someone scrapes your content (touch wood) you will be getting a link back.

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If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one around to hear it, does it make a sound? Similarly, if a webmaster hides text under images using the z-index and no one sends it to the Google spam report team, is it unethical SEO?

For those less in the know, the Z-index is the 3rd dimension in a web page that the programmer uses to declare which content sits on top of what. And yes, some less than ethical SEO’s actually place images and other content on top, to hide keyword rich text beneath, in a cunning yet perilous attempt to fool the search engines and users simultaneously.

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It’s not rocket science. Trust is critical in any relationship, be it personal or professional.

If the client is going to give you work, he is going to have to feel a strong level of trust in your business. There are different degrees of professionalism, based on your target audience. But alas, there are not varying degrees of trust. If that client is going to pass on his private information, he either trusts you or he doesn’t.

When you are trying to get your website off the ground, portraying a high level of professionalism is absolutely vital to the credibility of your website.

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There is the saying that beauty is only skin-deep. But what is the point of having a beautiful / hi-tech exterior with a boring / dull interior?

On the other hand, have you ever spent a marketing budget on well-designed brochures only to leave them in the closet and forget about them? What is the use of a modern, stylish website that appeals to your target market but is never seen be them? Just like nature, it’s all about balance. It’s important that your design and marketing compliment each other.

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