Google has never been one to stand still, but has lately been making changes to its search result displays at a rapid rate. Most will have noticed the “Google Instant” changes that now display results as you type (before hitting the search button), as it’s a really obvious and quite amazing change.

However, a change with much bigger implications is now upon us in the form of a new update to Google Places, along with a change to how and where local results are displayed. The Google Places local search changes may seem innocuous enough, or just a layout tweak, however I believe it will have massive repercussions in all areas of SEO, and may in fact change the face of search forever.

What is Google Places – a bit of recent history.

Google Places (formally Google Local Business Centre) refers to the locally based listings that Google displays high up on page 1 of search results. These were first introduced by Google as a way of providing searchers with more relevant results for search terms where Google believed that people would be likely to prefer local results.

This fitted quite well in with Google’s aim of providing the most relevant search results for each person. Local businesses got more exposure – some would argue undeserved as many with results don’t even have websites – and people searching would have a chance to first see a business near them instead of one on the other side of the country. Originally these local results only came up if you typed in a search term like “Lawn Mowing Albury” (including a place name). Later Google began include Google Places results for a wider range of searches as Google began to attempt to understand where each user was located, and to provide personalised results based on their location and search preferences.

On the other hand, if you weren’t looking for a local business the results next to the map were easy to ignore (in the same way many ignore Google Adwords). Even in cases where they appeared at the top – it was clear where they started and finished, and you could just scroll past them if you wanted – until now!

What are the actual Google Places Changes?

In simple terms, Google now shows the map at the side, above the “secondary” right hand side Google Adwords advertisements. This smaller map moves as the page moves, so it’s always on screen. Seems like Google REALLY wants us to see this map!

Google Places - The new style, incorporated into search results

Now with the map moved to the side, one would think that the amount of space taken up by the actual local search listings in the main column would be reduced – surely it’s a space saving mechanism? Wrong! The local Google Places results, despite the map now being moved, now in my opinion seem to actually take up MORE of the screen real estate, particularly above the fold. Of course this varies from search to search, sometimes the local places results are above all the organic listings, in a lot of other cases there are 1, 2 or 3 organic listings above the Google Places listings, but where they appear, I haven’t yet found an example where more than three regular organic listings appear above them. Some have even found examples where the listings are each showing a photo as well, which takes up even more room.

Beyond all this, there is also a new feature called “Google Boost” – a new paid listing product from Google which further complicates things. This I will discuss further down.

Why Would Google Change Google Places Like This?

Google is about two things – serving up relevant content, and making money. In reality the two are one, as while they continue to they serve up relevant content and provide a superior user experience people use continue to use Google to find information verses using other search engines or methods, and they can maintain market share. While user experience is important, above all Google likes to utilise this amazing market share and level of traffic to make money. Although Google has a whole bag full of tricks to make some coin, by far and away the lions share up to this point has been via selling Adwords, which accounts for the vast majority of its vast revenues.

Google Adwords (the paid results at the top of search) were once up a time quite good value, and remain so in some industries. In others however, the price has gotten so high that those using Adwords can find that Google is making far more money from their business than they are, and it can be hard to get conversions high enough to even pay for the advertising. Most would agree that Adwords prices paid can’t really go much higher and still be viable as an advertising method, so Google can only increase it’s revenue via one of two methods – either increasing it’s number of visitors and market share, or increasing the percentage of visitors that click on paid results. And when you have the biggest market share already in a saturated market (plus Facebook looming),  an increase in visitor numbers isn’t likely. This leaves them with their best revenue growth strategy being to develop ways to encourage more people to click on Google Adwords instead of organic results.

Currently many people (myself included) see Adwords as an ideal “short term fix” that in many cases isn’t as cost effective long term as investing (time, money or both) into building your organic search rankings – SEO basically. SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) can be do-it-yourself and totally free, but rarely is for competitive, search terms which usually require specialist assistance. Money gets invested, but Google isn’t the one making it in this case, which they don’t like!

Now here is the kicker – most people are lazy, and they don’t like to scroll. So being “above the fold” – above the point people have to scroll down – has always been vital. I simplistic way of looking at it is that if Google can get more paid listings above the fold it will win. But people don’t like too many paid listings. So Google has been even cleverer with its Google Places product – it’s managed to make it harder for non-local businesses to get “above the fold”, without actually changing the number of Adwords results.

What are the Organic SEO Implications of this “above the fold” concept?

Once upon a time, Google in its main column would display results so that in general 3 paid results and 5 organic results could be seen without scrolling down. This then became in many cases 3 paid plus 4 organic, with a Google Images listing taking up space. Google News, real time twitter or Facebook results and more are added for many search terms. Google Places in original format was added, then started showing up based on personalization.

The result? Excluding local results, the amount of organic listings showing without scrolling is getting less and less. In many cases now there are between zero and three organic listings showing, which makes these so much more valuable, and the reduces the value on being on the rest of Page 1. I remember reading one comment that basically said that top 3 is the “new page 1”, 7-10 is like page 2 used to be, page 2 like page 3 and so on.

I believe Google is doing this to make organic SEO not only harder, but also reducing the effectiveness of “reasonable” results such as say a position 7. Google’s aim – to try to make it better value for a business to pay for Google Adwords than to pay an SEO consultant to get them onto page 1. Will they achieve their aim… maybe. People prefer organic results, so if you can get to the top 1-3 places you may do better than ever before. If you are stuck in positions 4-10 or beyond you need to make a choice – do I invest in further SEO to get to the top 3, or do I give up and pay Google for every click. I can’t give you an answer to this as which is best for your business, as every case is different, but that’s what I suspect Google is up to!

Where Google Boost results appear

Paid Local Google Places Listings Google Boost & Google Tags

The Google Places local search display changes aren’t just to take up space though – Google has a plan, already in place, to make money from “Local” as well.

This plan in the form of two new products called Google Boost and Google Tags.

Google Boost is so far only available in three locations, for selected categories, being San Francisco, Houston and Chicago in the USA, but with plans to roll it out much more widely. This system puts a Blue marker pin next to the local based Adwords results, and then puts a blue pin on the map, which tends to stand out against all the blue pins. Information on the product direct from Google is here. Pricing is based on the same system as Adwords – a bid based system. The implications of this are widespread, as this now means that Google is mixing both organic and paid results in a way we have not seen before. Previously most would agree that Google has been very clear with it’s policy of making it known which are advertisements and which are organic results. With this new product I believe that they have crossed this line in a way that many within the industry will not be comfortable with.

USA based example of a Google Tag - not available in Australia yet.

Google Tags is another new Places / Local Search product, and are in some ways even more interesting. It’s already available anywhere in the USA, and I suspect will come to Australia very soon, if Google’s other recent changes such as Google Instant are anything to go by.

This product is a big step away from the standard Adwords model of Pay Per Click, and is instead charged at a flat fee of $25 per month no matter how many clicks, views etc are charged.

This Google Tags product puts a yellow Tag next to the standard listing next to the standard Google Places listing for local search results. This tag can have next to it:

- Photos of your business
- Videos of your business
- Coupons for your listing
- Menu for your restaurant
- Reservations page for your business
- Posts about your business (up to 160 characters)

As part of this new system, some have even reported to have been telemarketed to by Google employees selling this new tag system. This is a big step away from their previous policies of almost no phone based on contact with customers, and is another evidence that Google is trying really hard to open up new revenue streams for itself within it’s main search product. See this blog post for example regarding Google’s Tele Sales Campaign in the states.

Now Google claims that signing up for Google Tags won’t affect where in the list of local results your business will come. But I personally can’t see Google leaving paid/tagged results on page 2 or 3 behind those who aren’t paying, and the examples I’ve seen the are all up the top though. It’s hard to know though – Google has always kept Paid and Organic listings pretty separate up to now, so under this new paradigm of paid and organic being mixed in together, who knows where it will end up.  Whatever the final implications, local search marketing just became an even bigger piece of the SEO and website marketing pie.

What do they have to do with SEO?

I’m a regular participant in the small and micro business forum Flying Solo and often get involved in discussions regarding topics such as online marketing and search engine optimisation. On a recent discussion a topic came up related to the value of  content vs links for SEO purposes, with an odd example phrase of railway sleepers Sydney brought up to illustrate a point regarding links not being of importance, as the top search result for this terms is a company who specialises in selling railway sleepers and includes the word Sydney on their page, but has few incoming links. However the lack of competition and SEO efforts by competitors targeting these keywords is why it ranks well, not the fact that links are bad or irrelevant as suggested in the Flying Solo post.

I contend that relevant content is most important for low competition keywords where few competitors have strongly optimised sites. However for industries where there is a lot of competition, good content along with quality / quantity of incoming links is required to succeed, and good content alone will never get the rankings you desire.

For a bit of fun, and to make some interesting SEO points I’ve decided to create this post the topic of railway sleepers for sale in the city of Sydney, with the aim of getting it to the top 5 in google.com.au within 48 hours. I’ll be interested to see if I can succeed, but may have to eat my hat if I can’t!

What are the SEO lessons from this?

The first point is that the first step in SEO is to ensure you page is actually relevant to the search term you are targeting, and actually includes the words and phrases on the page itself, in the title etc.

The second point (although is probably not effectively illustrated by this ultra-simplistic example) is that if there is any significant level of competition quality linkbuilding efforts will be required to rank. The more competitive the keyword and stronger the competition, the more the focus shifts from content to link building.

The third point is how little most Australian small businesses understand about Search Engine Optimisation,  and I’m constantly amazed how many pages fail the basics of SEO. Often I see sites I’d just love to “fix”, but of course I can’t unless they ask me! So, if this is you, please don’t hesitate to contact me via my main Marketing Web site.

Finally, just to finish this post off, I’m going to post some content about Railway Sleepers! Feel free to tune out at this stage.

Matt

Railway Sleepers

For those looking to redo their garden or find some solid hardwood for woodworking purposes, used railway sleepers can be an ideal choice.

Railway sleepers originally used in train tracks are often retired from service as track works are completed. Made from hardwood, some may have rotted or deteriorated over the years but many sleepers will still be solid an sturdy; quality wood that is too good for the scrap heap. These type of railway sleepers can become a classic case of the value of reusing a product rather than relying on recycling.  Used railway sleepers are available at many garden products suppliers and specialist suppliers in locations Australia wide including Sydney, Melbourne and most capital cities and regional areas.

In addition to genuine used railway sleepers, imitation wood styled in the same way as railway sleepers is also widely available, particularly in locations such as Sydney where the demand for railway sleepers often outweighs the supply of genuine used sleepers. If your are purchasing this product, ensure they are hard wood and not pine, unless that’s what you are after for your railway sleepers of course.

Genuine used railway sleepers are often the cheapest, heaviest, most sturdy and hardest to cut when building an outdoor retaining wall for example, and will provide a sturdy wall with character.  However they are not as “pretty” as the brand new imitation ones.  In the end the choice can come down to price and availability, and of course your personal preference.

Short for “Globally Recongnised Avatar”, a Gravatar is an image that follows you from site to site and will appear next to your name when you publish content or comments on many thousands (perhaps millions) of blogs, forums and other websites all over the Internet. While most commonly used on WordPress blogs, plugins and code exist to integrate the Gravatar system with almost any website, including integrations with PHP, Python, Ruby, ASP.net, Silverlight and many more. So developers can interface with the Gravatar system on almost any site, to improve the experience of their users.

How to get a Gravatar

Getting a Gravatar is simple, and equally importantly, free. Simply visit http://en.gravatar.com/ and click the “Get your Gravatar today” link, and follow the prompts including uploading your photo and confirming your email address.  Simple as that.

How the Gravatar system works

Gravatars are linked to your email address, so it’s important to add any additional email addresses you use for blog commenting and the like to your profile. There is no need to create more than one profile though – multiple addresses can be linked to one Gravatar account. If you choose to operate under a bit of a “split personality” system online or have other reasons for ensuring everything isn’t linked, you can even upload different images and link them to different email addresses within a single Gravatar profile, if you want different images and different email addresses for say business and social uses. While there is nothing stopping you signing up for separate Gravatar accounts for each, the power and simplicity of the Gravatar system should solve the requirements of most. Gravatars can even be rated G, PG, R or X, and sites will either show or not show your Gravatar depending on your self rating.

Does the Gravatar appear on every site that uses avatars?

Important to note is that getting a Gravatar doesn’t guarantee your image will appear on every WordPress blog or forum that has avatars (avatars being the little photo or image next to your name), as not all avatars are linked into the Gravatar system. However with so many sites and blogs supporting it, it’s well worth signing up for.

Why should I have a Gravatar?

Quite simply, having an avatar next to your posts and comments is a big part of personal branding and brand building. In this Web2.0 world of social media, interactivitiy and online networking, it’s important for people to know who you are and following this what you stand for – your brand values so to speak. And besides, people respond better to faces than to faceless people. It’s the same concept as any internet dating site, where profiles with photos get a lot more response than the faceless masses.

SEO Benefits of Gravatars

It may initially seem that Gravatars are a purely visual thing and that SEO / online marketing benefits would be limited to encouraging people to click through to your website should they find you attractive, interesting or intelligent looking for example. However there is another important benefit, do to with one of the “social engineering” aspects of SEO.

Most people will know that one of the many ways of increasing inbound links to their site is through blog commenting. As part of a diversified link building strategy this is a great technique, although it’s of course important to keep it classy, and avoid looking like you went to the same SEO school as the spammers advertising certain “pills”! Given most blogs are moderated, it’s important to ensure your comments are of high quality and are relevant contributions to the discussion in order for them to be approved. And while the quality of your comments is most important, all ways that help build credibility with the moderator can help.

As well as appearing next to your post, Gravatars also appear in the admin control panel of WordPress where the moderator looks when approving comments. So if you have a genuine looking photo of yourself there most people are much more likely to approve the post than one without a Gravatar – simply because most spammers don’t bother, and it’s basically another way to make yourself stand out as a genuine commenter it what can become a sea of spam.

Conclusion

Just get one. Now. What are you waiting for? Visit Gravatar.com

Disclaimer: I’m unfortunately not paid anything at all by Automattic for posting this glowing review of the Gravatar system. But I wouldn’t say no if they did offer!

While most systems aren’t built with SEO in mind, most that support plugins, add-ons, or modifications (mods) of some type can be extended and adapted in ways that will help you get more of that “Google love”. And because there is usually someone very clever who has wanted to do this before you, most of the time these mods are available pre-built, and often at little or no cost. (On a side note – this isn’t true for all systems, so make sure you take this into consideration when choosing website software).

Today we are going to focus on WordPress, and some of the basics you need to get your site more search engine friendly. Remember though – installing a plugin or two is a start, but it isn’t the entire answer! If you need some professional assistance in getting this right please feel free to contact me via my Marketing Web site.

For this post, I’m using the example of the WordPress site located at www.resourcingchange.com.au , which is operated by my younger brother. It’s a site which provides change management resources for those in Social Work and related professions. While quite new, it promises to be a valuable site within the industry, but it does need some SEO help which I’m doing as I write this article.

Don’t block search spiders

First thing I notice when I log in is that WordPress itself needs updating, as do many of the plugins. After backing up the site and all plugins, I notice an interesting message at the top which simply states “Search Engines Blocked”
This is a default option on some installations, so if it isn’t noticed and changed you have zero chance of search rankings. So, if it exists, click it, and change your settings to “I would like my site to be visible to everyone, including search engines….”

Setting up Permalinks

Permalinks is a term that refers to the “permanent link” address of each post on your site – the link people can go to if they want to visit or link to a particular post, instead of the home page. The standard naming structure for these is absolute rubbish for SEO, however it’s something that can be easily changed to create search engine friendly URL’s.

To change these, click Settings on the left hand menu, and then select Permalinks

The default value is basically /postnumber so it generates addresses like /?p=123 at the end of your URL, which is useless for SEO. Instead, we want something with text in it and no variables. To change it, simply pick “Month and name” for a much improved structure.  “Day and name” is also acceptable, but I definitely wouldn’t recommend the other standard options (Default or Numeric), but you can alternatively enter your own custom structure, for example just %postname% if you just want the post name with no date.
All in One SEO Pack

There are a number of different SEO plugins for WordPress, with the most popular known as the “All-in-One SEO Pack”. There is some debate as to if this is the “best” option or not, but for me I’ve found it quite good, and it allows you to control most of the important aspects of SEO for WordPress. For the adventurous, you could also try the HeadSpace2 SEO plugin which I believe is technically better, but more difficult to set up.  You could also try SEO Ultimate which also looks good (although I haven’t tried it).

For simplicity though we are going to focus here on the All-in-One SEO Pack, which for brevity I’ll refer to from here as AIO SEO.

To Install AIO SEO, simply select “Plugins” on the left in WordPress, then pick “add New”. Simply search for “SEO”,  and the AIO option will be in the top two or three in the list. Simply click “install now” to install it.
Next, it needs to be Activated

You will then likely get a message on your screen as follows. Don’t let the bit about unexpected output worry you, it’s normal – the output it mentions is actually just the message in red above. From there, go to the admin page as it advises.

All-in-One SEO – First Section.

In the first section, make sure the plugin is set to Enabled. This is important to check as the pack will re-set itself to Disabled when updates – so make sure you check this.

Next fill in your Home Page Title, Home Description as well as Keywords (although these are far less important than the other two). Advice on how to write good descriptions and titles is available in my previous blog post “SEO Basics – The Title & Meta Description Tags”.  Please note that the info in this first series of boxes is only related to the home page, not internal pages, which are either controlled by a series of rules described below, or edited on a per page basis.

You will also want to definitely leave Canonical URL’s ticked. What this means is beyond this blog post, but basically it sets a single “standard” address for each file/post/piece of content even if it can technically be found at different addresses. This avoids any dilution of “link juice”. If this doesn’t make sense, don’t worry – just leave it ticked.

Your top section should now look something like this:

All-in-One SEO – Second Section.

From the second tick-box down mostly relates to creating standards for title and other tags for the individual posts and pages of your WordPress site/blog. This is important as it’s bad SEO practice to have every page the same.

With this section, I tend to leave most of the options as standard in most cases, however you can change them as you wish. While it may look scary at first something like %post_title% | %blog_title% isn’t as confusing as it looks. So if your blog was called “Widgets World” and your post title was “Selecting the Best Widgets”, the title would simply show up as “Selecting the Best Widgets | Widgets World”

All-in-One SEO –  Third Section.

In the third section, I change a couple boxes from default.

1)      Tick the “Autogenerate Descriptions”. This is useful inc ase you forget to add an excerpt to a post.

2)      Tick “Use noindex for tag archives” – there is no need for these to be indexed in my opinion. Overall these noindex options are designed to avoid duplicate content, which is important.

The boxes below this can be left blank. From here, just click “Update Options” and this part of the job is complete. (Make sure you don’t click “Restore Settings to Defaults” by mistake!)

Getting WordPress SEO right for each Post

On each additional post/page you can also add in some extra info to help with SEO. Generally this isn’t that difficult, and it’s probably more important to note what to keep blank than what to fill in!

Firstly, be sure to create an except of each post. This is a short summary of your content. Make sure you make it under 160 characters including spaces.

Generally, that is all I recommend for SEO for each individual post. You may however note within each individual post there is a section down the bottom of the page marked as “All in One SEO Pack”. Here for example, you can put in a title, description and keywords. However if you leave it blank, the title will be in the default format we specified earlier (ie “Post Name | Site Name”) which is fine in the majority of cases. Description will by default match the except we filled in above – or the first 150-160 characters of the post if you forget to do an excerpt. If you want to have the description or title as something different, go for it, but it’s not a requirement.

More things to consider

Getting the above right will be a good start towards effective Search Engine Optimisation of your WordPress based site. For some more things to explore, the following additional plugins are suggested.

-   Google XML Sitemaps Generator

-   Google Analytics for WordPress

-   Broken Link Checker

-   Legible Comments

For assistance with WordPress SEO, or any other aspect of optimising your website and building links for improved search engine ranking, please do not hesitate to contact me via my main website, Marketing Web.

Before I start, note that while this post is designed for beginners, even the more experienced may get something from it. But I’m not interested in semantic arguments over if it’s a “Title Tag” or “Title Element” or the like, as in the end it doesn’t really matter.

The Title Tag

Most important SEO element on the page is the tag. No to be confused with a heading, it does not appear on the page itself. Rather, it appears in the (usually blue) bar at the top of the window, usually with – Internet Explorer or – Mozilla Firefox etc after it. It also appears as your page title in search engine (eg Google) results.

Rules for your Title Tag

I’m a big believer in “some rules are meant to be broken, but you have to understand the rules before you have the right to break them”. So following the below rules is the best bet.

• - Use a different title tag on every page.
• - Keep it to 65 characters including spaces. Otherwise you are at risk of having the last word cut off and replaced with “…”. Note that in a lot of cases Google will now support up to 70 characters, but 65 is safest. Using the Word Count function in MS Word is one way to check this easily, noting “characters including spaces”.
• - Don’t make it too short. You have 65-70 characters to play with, don’t sell yourself short by only using a few of them!
• - Include Keywords in your title. Search engines including Google take a lot of notice of the title in working out what the page is about. So putting just your company name is bad, and just the word Home even worse!
• - Include your Site/Business Name. Some may argue this, but in most cases it’s best to include. There are arguments for at the start or at the end, I tend to use both depending on a number of factors, but be consistent!
• - Make the title tag what the page is about, not what the site is about – except for the home page of course.
• - Use a separator. When you are splitting the page subject from your brand, or splitting parts of the title, use a separator. I often use a | (called a pipe), others use a  >  (greater than arrow) or a – (dash).
• - Be consistent. There may be times you need to include your brand at the start in some cases, and at the end in other cases, but don’t mix up lots of different methods. Once you have worked out a good system that works for you, stick with it.
• - Make sure your page matches the title. If you ensure the page content accurately reflects the title and is what the searcher is looking for, then people will stay longer and be more satisfied with your site. If they have to search for another page on the site to find what the title promised, they will give up and leave.

A title tag example:

The homepage of this site at time of writing is: 
Brand Police | Marketing, SEO, Website Design & Brand Building Blog

Brand Police is at the start, as I felt starting with the topics would make it too generic looking (although I reverse this on internal pages).  Total characters are 67 and outside the 65 characters but within the 70 character upper limit and I’ve confirmed Google displays it correctly. I use a | separator between my brand and the rest, and also get all my main page keywords in the title while still keeping it readable. Remember though – this is just for the home page. Every page needs to be different.

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The Meta Description Tag.

There are a lot of “meta” tags out there, however the only one with any relevance these days to search engines is the “meta description” tag.

The meta description tag doesn’t appear on the page at all, and is purely for search engine benefit. Google for example uses it as the description below your listing in most (but not all) cases. I also believe it’s taken into account in terms of boosting your ranking for keywords it contains, although this is debated by some. However, the main reason you want to get this right is for the benefit of searchers.

A well written meta description tag

Some points to consider:

• - Think of it as a mini advertisement for the page. If your page comes up in a search result, this text is the best chance of convincing them to visit your page.
• - Keep them unique. Describing the page, not the site as a whole helps visitors know what to expect. Plus – Google penalises sites with duplicate meta tags.
• - Write in sentence form. This is a not a spot for a list of words separated by commas. The benefits of clear and readable are obvious; they encourage click-through..
• - But still use keywords. Google highlights words in your description that match the search term, also encouraging visitors to click. Plus there may be some search ranking benefit in this (a topic of debate, but it can’t hurt).
• - Keep it under 160 characters (including spaces). Google will generally only display the first 160, Yahoo displays 165 and Bing even more. Sticking to 160 characters max will also challenge you to write succinctly.
• - Don’t make it too short. Your have 160 characters of advertising copy space. Don’t waste the opportunity and only use half!
• - Remember – it’s an art more than a science. Writing good meta description tags can be challenging, and a subtle change can greatly improve your click throughs and conversions. If these are bad compared to your rankings, test different options here and see how it goes for you.

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The Meta Keywords Tag

Finally, a word about the Keyword Tag. And that word is… “Useless”. Maybe that’s a bit harsh but it’s as close to Useless as you can get. Yet it’s the one thing I see most people actually using when they build a page. Maybe it’s because the concept seems so simple … “I write the words I want the site to rank for in here”.

The meta keywords tags is almost completely useless, yet is the one tag amateur designers seem obsessed with.

This used to work well – up until about 5 years ago. Now Google ignores it (read it here from the horse’s mouth if you don’t believe me). Yahoo and Bing etc don’t completely ignore it, but they have devalued it greatly. So my rule for this is – put something in there if you can be bothered, but don’t obsess over it. But make sure not to include any words not on the page itself as this has the potential to be seen as keyword stuffing.

Hopefully this will help someone, I would love to see any comments on this or just let me know if it was of use!

I regularly receive emails from a couple different so called “Internet Marketers” offering me brand new systems with a name like “Nuclear Article Pro” or “Mass Niche Unlimited”, where I can make some figure like $13481 in only two weeks using their magical methods – because their year 10 dropout mechanic friend just did this – complete with “proof” in the form of a doctored Clickbank earnings report complete with the word proof and a red squiggle created in MS Paint. Or maybe some of them are real… either way not the sort of thing I would personally want to be involved in!

I’m sure you have all seen them; It’s never their idea, it’s some friend / “guru” who they just begged to tell them secret but he wouldn’t but now he’s releasing it to the world – the ENTIRE BLUEPRINT about how you can make seven figures of passive income with little effort in only a few hours. If you visit the sales page websites, not only does it have seemingly unending pages of text with lots weird fonts, there is always the classic yellow highlighted text, coloured box with a dotted line around and a testimonial in the font known as Courier New (who even uses that other than for programming code samples?), as well as a video from the guy telling you how much money he made, and finally a price of (usually) $97 – heavily reduced. Also included are bonuses, up sells, and a promise I will miss out forever if I don’t move soon, and so many P.S.’s and P.P.S.’s that they nearly run out of P’s!

A typical internet marketing proof shot!

And don’t forget a brightly coloured rendered graphic of a software box to give the impression it’s a “real” product. And finally – when I try to leave the site, I’m asked to OK or Cancel before I can go – seriously, the minute I see one of those, I lose any small amount of trust I may have had!

I believe that a lot of these so called “Internet Marketers” are basically the multi level marketers and snake oil salesmen of the Internet age – no longer selling vitamins, cleaning products or magical elixir, but e-books, video training courses and get rich quick schemes, all for a commission as an affiliate. There are definitely real products out there so don’t be scared of all affiliate based systems, just make sure you don’t get too caught up in the emotion and make wise decisions on what you buy!

Don't be a snake oil saleman!

So, you say, what does that have to do with anything – my business isn’t like that! Well for a start, as much as I abhor their tactics and sales pages, in some ways they work! Obviously they don’t work on everyone, but they do on enough people to make some quite successful. Leaving aside the fact that using the term “Internet Marketing” grates my soul when marking is so much more than that, let’s look at what lessons we can learn from them;

1)      Find a formula that works, and stick with it. Aim for continuous improvement, but don’t lose what works for you in the first place

2)     Define a clear target market, and seek to understand the promotional tactics and types of copy that will influence that market.

3)      Position yourself as an expert, not just a “me too”.

4)      Get your pricing strategy right – you don’t have to be the cheapest but you do need to consider the effect of your pricing and how you communicate it.

5)      Give people and incentive to buy now – rather than thinking about it.

6)      Create a brand or brands for your products or services; preferably something without the words “power”, “unlimited” or “funnel” in it; but do make it memorable.

7)      Testimonials work! Most people are cautious followers not trail blazing pioneers, and like to hear that someone else has been happy with your product or service before they purchase.

8)      Make sure you have a sales pitch – providing information is great, but you also need a strong call to action on your website and most other marketing collateral.

9)      Content matters! I don’t suggest the pages and pages of never ending text some use, but a good amount of solid information will both position you as an expert, and improve the amount of “Google Love’ you get.

10)      Overall – get people’s attention, work out what your customer’s buttons are – and push them!

That all said – make sure you do it with a bit more class! I don’t want to be responsible for anyone putting in pop up boxes, yellow highlighted text or proof videos on their websites!

As an active member on several forums I often participate in discussions and reviews of website that aspiring entrepreneurs have launched – in some cases as a promotion tool for an offline business, and in other cases an attempt to create a business through the development of an ecommerce driven website.

I love helping out new and micro businesses online, but one thing I’ve been trying to get my head around lately (unsuccessfully) is how best to help people entering ultra-competitive niches online with tiny budgets and no SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) or online marketing experience. In many cases there is also unfortunately not much of a business or marketing plan beyond “if I build a website that sell widgets, people will visit my website and like it and buy them and I’ll make money”.

Unfortunately the simple “if you build it they will come” simply isn’t true in most cases, and the “great e-commerce dream” can quickly turn into a nightmare. Once your website is complete it may seem like you have a achieved a lot – which you have – but the fun is really just starting.

“the great e-commerce dream can quickly turn into a nightmare”

To digress, If you have the advantage of being an established business in the “real world” and are looking to using your website as a tool, it can be sufficient simply just to have a website – you can put the address on your business cards, your display advertising, in your yellow pages advertisement (if you still have one!), sign write it on your vehicle, whatever. And if you are “known”, people might search for you by name, find you, learn more about you, find your contact info and go from there. This isn’t the most effective use of a website, but it’s not a failure either.

On other hand if you are a new business based online only, you don’t have the benefit of any brand recognition yet, and no one is searching specifically for you by name. So, to get customers you need to get people to your site first. That’s where things like search engine optimisation (SEO) to improve search rankings comes in, as can many other forms of online marketing.

In an increasingly competitive marketplace online I’m rapidly coming to the conclusion that a new online business needs one or more of the following if each if they are to have any chance at succeeding:

1) A niche that has a good number of searches but isn’t very competitive.

2) Money to invest in a good search engine optimisation or online marketing specialist (pick me, pick me!) as well as on the implementation of the strategies developed.

3) A good understanding yourself or willingness to learn SEO and other online marketing strategies, and the time to put into implementing them.

The more competitive your niche the more effort that needs to go into your marketing strategies (usually including SEO), and if you have a very competitive niche and not much money you WILL need to learn a lot more about SEO and/or online marketing and do a lot of online marketing & SEO grunt work if your business is to succeed.

“The more competitive your niche the more effort that needs to go into your marketing strategies”

The learning curve can be steep, and there are few shortcuts. Uphill battle is probably putting it mildly. Don’t give up, but do work hard on your planning, get good advice, ensure you have sufficient capital to start, be realistic, be prepared for a lot of hard work, and never stop learning.

Some time ago while driving with my wife on a “road trip” I happened to pull up behind a work vehicle displaying what I consider to be the worst logo I have ever seen.

Now because the business is a small Australian one rather than a large corporate, I’m not going to fully “expose the guilty” – in fact I’d rather keep their identity hidden as much as I can. Also before I start please note that I really have no intention of hurting anyone and this post is not a comment on what I’m pretty sure is an otherwise capable and professional business with high quality product (I’ve seen their website, but I’m not sharing). This is just about the logo, as well as a bit of satirical fun!

The abbreviation of this business’ three word name is ACE, so they at some point decided to use the “ace of spades” for the image part of their logo. While the business has nothing to do with gambling or even gardening implements, it’s actually not a bad choice as it does create a similar type of association to those taught by memory experts when helping people remember information.

Sometimes I like to make up stories about things, so this is how I think this one went….

I’m guessing the business owner himself or his 11 year old daughter who is “pretty good on the computer”  decided that they would turn their brilliant word play idea into reality. So far so good.

And I’m guessing, that’s where the trouble started. Despite a lack of design skills or experience, no concept of the undo key, and being armed only with MS Paint, our intrepid business owner and daughter set to work.

The first side went well, but the second one was all wrong. But with a bit of an extra drawing over the top of the mistake… there it finally looked like an ace! Now for a diamond shape around it – because everyone knows the ace of spades much go inside a diamond! This one didn’t go so well, but never mind the undo key, steady as she goes, oops, scribble over that little booboo….there, all done!

Mr Business owner stand back and admires the work. It’s not perfect, but it should do the job, and no time to waste doing a second one – besides the daughter is proud of the work, so must stick with it.

Now here is where it gets worse. Our budding entrepreneur then takes the logo to a sign writer to sign write his vehicle, and another for a sign for his factory. Now I can’t say here if it’s poor advice from a lazy sign writer, or a stubborn business owner who doesn’t want to listen, but what should have happened here is the rough drawing be taken as a “concept” and then redrawn into a professional looking logo. But instead, this amazing MS Paint creation somehow ends up like this, complete with pixels all over the place, neat lettering next to it, and me writing this post!

Ok, so obviously this is an extreme example of logo design issues, but I see strange logo examples all the time that just don’t work for various reasons. So, what’s the moral of the story:

Even if you consider yourself somewhat proficient in MS Paint, Photoshop or even Illustrator, always get a professional to design your logo where possible, or at least to redraw it properly if you have created the initial concept yourself.

If even that’s out of reach when just starting out, at a very minimum ask the opinion of someone experienced enough to know what they are talking about. Your mum, dad, husband, wife or friends will often say something looks great, but only because they love you. Siblings are potentially useful as they have long ago learnt to criticize everything you do, but unfortunately may not have the desired expertise. A better source of review and advice are design forums or small business forums on the Internet, or even right here on Brand Police (please feel free to contact us). That type of strategy will get you a usually unbiased review (at no cost), and can avoid obvious pitfalls like this.

In one sense though this really isn’t the worst logo ever. The worst logo ever would be one that completely confuses the customer and conveys the wrong message about who the company is and what they stand for – or even worse convey something offensive by mistake.  Plus this is memorable. So in one sense, it’s probably not so bad – but it really is ugly! For some more really bad logos (mostly for a different reason), check out Bored Panda.

Often confused understandings of marketing reduce it to a shadow of what it really is.  Most people I’ve met either think the word is interchangeable with sales, interchangeable with advertising or possibly promotion if they have a little knowledge, or at worst see it as a bunch of tricks and tactics such as those used in the jobs often advertised as sales and marketing, but are in reality just involve standing at a train station trying to flog American Express cards. I’ve even seen the question posed recently of “marketing or advertising – which is best for my business?”, as if they were two distinct entities rather than one being part of the other.

The 4 + 1 P’s of marketing.

At risk of being a marketing nerd, I’m still a big believer in marketing being at it’s core about the 4 or 5 P’s that are introduced in probably the first lecture in first year of any university (and probably TAFE) marketing course. The definition I’ve come up with, with apologies to many before me, is: Marketing is an analysis and implementation of strategies related to Product, Price, Place (distribution strategy) and Promotion, plus an added 5th one I like of “People”, with the aim of achieving company goals such as an increase in sales, market share or profitability.

Marketing is concerned with every step of the process from production of the product or service right through to when the consumer well, consumes it.  A full discussion on the “4 P’s” / “5 P’s” / “31 P’s” or whatever is beyond the level of this blog post, but what it comes down to is that all elements of marketing need to be considered in order to achieve success.

“Marketing is concerned with every step of the process from production of the product or service right through to when the consumer well, consumes it.”

What about Promotion? Where does that fit into things?

Promotion is clearly a key element of marketing, and  is concerned with how companies communicate with their customers.  While not the only factor in a successful business, getting your promotional activities working for you across all areas of how your customer communication will go a long way towards building a strong business.

And Advertising? Is that important?

Remember that Advertising, while important, is one element of one of these 4/5 areas of marketing (Promotion). Beyond advertising, other promotional strategies can include Public Relations / Publicity, Sales Promotion, Personal Selling, and dare I say it, even Search Engine Optimisation and Social Media. Traditional advertising will always be important, but in a so called “Web 2.0″ world that is changing consumer behavior like never before, it’s important to ensure your business doesn’t become a one trick pony in it’s promotional strategies. Your advertising needs to be complemented by a variety of other promotional tactics. And while on that point, SEO will often be one of these tactics – but by itself it will also rarely be enough to build a great business.

Equality important are things like pricing strategy (cost leader vs premium pricing etc) and how this influences the market, how you distribute your product (through wholesale, online, company owned stores, retail outlets and if so what type etc), what products out of your range you choose to promote, manufacture or stock etc. And the “People” part of marketing I relate to the sales process – how the people within your organisation operate, build relationships, serve customers,  and implement sales strategies.

So what’s most important to focus on?

Obviously there is quite a bit to this, so don’t just jump in feet first!  Make sure you have a marketing plan before you start or get one if your business has already begun. It doesn’t need to be complex early on, but it will help you think things through and avoid a lot of wasted resources, wasted opportunities and heartache later.

My name is Matt, and I’m passionate about all things marketing and website related. While I am definitely a technology guy, more often than not it’s my “inner marketing nerd” that will come out to play, so if you are looking for web programming hints you are probably at the wrong site. Same goes for so called “Internet Marketing” get rich quick schemes, which I generally find have two things in common; you don’t really get that rich, and it takes a long time! If you are however interested in improving your marketing and growing your brand through a greater understanding of what’s important and what’s not, then welcome!

Topic areas covered will include putting marketing strategies into practice both online and offline, search engine optimisation, website development, graphic design including discussion on logos, back to basics marketing strategy, and probably lots more – let’s see where this takes us!

As for the name? The Brand Police take no prisoners, and on this site I tell it like it is, for better or worse. I’ve been called blunt, but I prefer the term honest, even if brutally so sometimes! And it’s not all exposing bad guys, the aim is to “serve and protect” brands as well. One aim for this site is to in time provide specific branding and marketing advice at no cost, including website, logo and idea reviews in the form of case study. If anyone is game enough to be first up, please contact me as I’d love to hear from you.