Apex Internet Blog

Online Marketing For 2012

aidan@apexinternet.co.nz (Aidan Rogers) — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:45:02 +1300

Last year was an exciting year in the online marketing industry - Google certainly kept search marketers busy with multiple of major algorithm changes. With January over already, now is an excellent time to reassess and realign your online goals. So where should you focus your marketing energy and efforts this year?

Here are six online marketing strategies worthy of your attention in 2012:

1. Mobile Search

Approximately 3 million New Zealanders own a mobile phone or have a Smartphone in their pocket. As mobile technology becomes cheaper, more accessible, and more widespread at home and at work - browsing the web via a phone is rapidly becoming the norm. Start thinking how user friendly your website is when viewed on a mobile phone.

Google are very active on promoting mobile search and released a tool allowing you to test how mobile friendly your site is.

Expect mobile search to skyrocket in 2012.

2. Online Reputation Management

You do not want to lose potential customers because of a negative comment appearing about your company on the web. Offense is normally the best defence in online reputation management. Make sure you are listening to the right channels and good making use of social media. This year be prepared to combat any negative feedback before it could appear and promote positive responses from customers.

You cannot ignore your company’s online reputation in 2012.

3. Local Search

More and more, people want to know what is near them when they search. Google noticed this a while back and now returns locally relevant results for a very high percentage of search queries. Have you checked whether your important keywords trigger local listings? Local rankings require a different approach to traditional SEO.

In 2012 expect more competition in the local results as competitors begin to catch on.

4. Google Analytics

Google Analytics no longer reports keywords searches from users logged in to any Google product. You may notice many visits from “not provided” search terms in your analytics this year. This change was apparently in the name “privacy”; however, Google Adwords still provides keyword referral data. Instead of worrying about it, start to think about what else you can improve on. What is working and what is not? Google analytics can provide plenty of insight into how visitors interact with your site.

2012 is the perfect to time to focus on the user experience of your website.

5. Conversion Optimization

You may be getting decent traffic, but how well does your site convert your visitors? Are they filling in that form? Do they download that PDF? Do they click that button? Conversion rate optimisation is about testing what is working on your site and what is not, and then making improvements.

In 2012 we think New Zealand companies will invest more in conversion optimization / AB testing as they begin to understand its impact and continue to improve their conversion rates.

6. Content Marketing

Are you creating content around the needs of the customer? Are you publishing content that will earn you natural backlinks? In 2012, we believe Google will start identifying and devaluing unnatural looking linking patterns, while rewarding sites that deserve visibility. Therefore, it is critical you are marketing content people find useful and enjoy consuming. Content marketing increases the chances of people linking to you purely on merit.

Think quality over quantity this year for your content. Does your website have the best possible source of information on your topic?

We believe these six online marketing strategies will give you a significant advantage in 2012. Take action now and achieve more with your online marketing this year. For better results today talk to us - we are happy to help.

For a more indepth view read this excellent post on online marketing best practices in 2012 .

Google start charging to use their map on your site - not to worry

nigel@apexinternet.co.nz (Nigel Wells) — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 11:39:54 +1300

Google appear to be changing a lot of things these days and one of them is the policy around using their Google Maps API on your website.

The basics of the new policy is any site that has more than 25,000 page loads per day of their map, for more than 90 consecutive days, will be charged. The charge is only a few dollars for an additional 1,000 page loads. What constitutes a page load? If there is a map on your contact page then a page load would be every visitor (including repeat visitors) to that contact page. Once the page is loaded, however, they can use the map as much as they like and this won't count towards the 25,000 limit.

Clients first response is usually one of unease as not wanting to get charged any extra and also not wanting their map to suddenly disappear. There are two important facts to be aware of. First, your site needs to break the 25,000 limit every single day for a period of 90 days before any action will be required. This 90 day limit is to allow for sudden peaks in traffic to your website e.g. if you posted a high profile blog article or video that attracted tens of thousands of visitors from around the world for a few weeks and then went back to normal. Secondly, we have checked over our clients statistics and even our most competitive clients were only reaching around 4,000 page loads per day.

So what does this mean for you? Not a lot. This policy change is really aimed at the high profile websites and companies using their service. Google always intends to help support the smaller companies and, if they can get a few dollars out of the large companies to help pay for it, then that's exactly what they'll do.

To read more about the change, and see some FAQ around it, click here

Using Content Marketing to Communicate Without Selling

mark@apexinternet.co.nz (Mark Vassiliou) — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 11:37:23 +1300

It's no secret that over recent years consumers have grown increasingly immune to traditional advertising methods. The advent of MySky has meant many New Zealanders are no longer forced to watch TV commercials, meanwhile magazine and newspaper readers have long ago learned to ignore the print ads that add clutter to the stories we're really interested in reading about. As consumers we're getting better and better at shutting out the world of traditional marketing and are instead turning to friends, family, ratings and reviews to help us gain insight on purchase decisions.

As such, smart companies are quickly learning that they can connect with their consumers with greater impact (and for significantly less budget) by using digital channels as opposed to traditional television, radio and print mediums. To this end, one online marketing approach that we've seen grow increasingly prominent over the past 12 months or so is that of 'Content Marketing' - a strategy built upon the belief that if companies provide valuable content and information to buyers on a regular basis, buyers will ultimately reward those companies with their business and loyalty.

Content Marketing - what is it?

In essence, Content Marketing is the art of communicating with prospective and existing customers without selling. Instead of pitching or attempting to persuade someone to buy your product or hire your services, you're delivering information that educates buyers and makes them more intelligent. Instead of developing ads designed to interrupt customers, you're looking to create targeted, useful and relevant content for your audience using a variety of mediums including (but by no means limited to):

blog posts
white papers
feature articles
newsletters
videos that benefit customers and promote value (e.g. tutorials)
podcasts (.mp3s)
infographics
webinars/training opportunities

Why use a Content Marketing strategy?

There are a myriad of reasons why you might choose a Content Marketing strategy to attract and engage with your target audience. For me, the following three are up there with the most important:

When done right, Content Marketing is a great way to build credibility and trust with potential customers. Your willingness to share information and educate your audience also shows that you're passionate about your products/services and can also serve to position you as an industry leader within your niche.
It's affordable. Compared to traditional advertising methods, Content Marketing is very affordable. Of course, producing a series of how to blog posts or videos or hosting a webinar does take time, but the results are clearly measurable and the content produced is likely to have a much longer life span than a traditional print or radio ad.
From an SEO point of view Content Marketing is great way to generate traffic and links to your site. The key here is that the content needs to be created with quality firmly in mind so before you even start thinking about links and traffic you should first consider how you can best serve your audience, whether it be by educating them, helping them solve a problem, or addressing any anxieties they may have about making a purchase decision. In short, if the content you create is useful enough and of a high quality standard, the links and traffic will come with time (and a little promotion).

Content Marketing in action

OK, so now you've hopefully grasped the basic concept of Content Marketing, but if not here's an example of a NZ based company that's doing a good job of producing targeted content that's useful, educational and well presented.

Xero (www.xero.com) provides an online accounting solution for businesses, complete with invoicing/billing, accounts payable, bank reconciliation and bookkeeping.

By taking a seemingly 'dry' product and regularly producing a raft of good quality content they've helped build a loyal following of users, some of whom might in time even become product evangelists (if not already). Xero has achieved this not only by offering a great product which is easy to use, but also by giving away lots of free, good quality information about the product via their blog, not to mention their online events, training opportunities and seminars. Having said that, do bear in mind that the content you produce always needs to be high quality and well aligned with your audience or else you'll run the risk of a backlash, as Xero recently experienced.

Getting started

So, you're ready to get started with Content Marketing but not sure where to start? As with any foray into a new kind of marketing activity the hardest part is often the start. With that in mind the following list offers a few simple ideas that you should be able to get up and running in a relatively painless fashion.

Create a buyer’s guide about your product/service. Use it to answer the questions prospective customers are most likely to want answers to. Educate buyers about the things they need to watch out for and tell them the kinds of questions they should be asking.
Take part in industry-specific sections of popular Q&A sites (such as Quora) and help other people to solve problems they have that are relevant to the products/services you offer. Make sure that your answers are not self-promotional (i.e. 'tell', don't 'sell') and use this as an opportunity to present yourself as a helpful expert in your field. Also, provided you've included a link to your website in your profile people will be able to learn more about you if they wish.
Publish a white paper covering a topical issue that's impacting your industry. Explain what it means, why it has occurred and give your personal opinion on it. You might also like to consider collaborating with other experts and getting their opinions too. This kind of approach helps to build the credibility of the information you're presenting.
Start a regular email newsletter.
Write a guest post for a blog. Say you're a lawyer who specialises in conveyancing; talk to a local real estate company about providing them with a guest post for their website which outlines a recent change to some aspect of the property purchasing process, or perhaps a post discussing the pros and cons of the various ownership structures for rental properties (in layman's terms).

Whatever you do make sure you know what the key topics of interest are for your audience and ensure the content you produce is written at a level that easily connects with your target audience. Prepare an informative blog post that addresses a particular problem that your target audience is facing and promote it to your network via social media and/or your email newsletter.

For example, if you're an insurance broker you could write a detailed post about the impact of the Christchurch earthquakes on the New Zealanders' ability to get insurance in the future and the impact of rising premiums to compensate for the losses suffered in Christchurch. You could possibly outline some scenarios as examples of how typical New Zealanders will be affected and offer some suggestions for New Zealanders to consider going forward.

In closing…

Regardless of whether you're a large, established brand or a fledgling start-up, there are always opportunities for incorporating Content Marketing into your overall strategy.

When preparing content make sure to stay laser focused on your audience and try to think of yourself as a teacher/educator, not an advertiser. Help your buyers to learn more about our products and your industry so that they can make informed purchase decisions when they're ready to buy.

Before creating any content make sure to ask yourself the following question: "Would anyone find this content useful or interesting?" If you're in doubt, then move along to another topic or kind of content. And last but not least, remember that Content Marketing should focus on your audience and their needs; it's not just about you and your business. Adopt this approach and create good quality content on a regular basis and over time you'll see more visits to your site, more enquiries and more customers.

Redesigning Your Website The Right Way

mark@apexinternet.co.nz (Mark Vassiliou) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 15:05:40 +1300

The start of a new year - a time when many people take stock of the year that's passed, set personal goals and make plans for the year ahead. For many businesses the dawn of a new year is also a time for goal setting and scoping out improvements that can be made or achievements that can be built upon from the previous year.

From our experience in the web industry it's also a time when many businesses reconsider their existing online presence - the image they portray online, the level and type of online functionality they offer via their website, and the way they promote their business via the Internet.

As exciting and rewarding as the website redesign process is, it's vital that it is done so taking into account your site's existing footprint on the web. Failure to take the correct steps can result in you having a beautifully designed website, but no visitors because your site's disappeared from the Search Engines. Therefore if you're considering a redesign of your site, and preservation of your existing traffic and SEO is important (it should be be!), then you'll want to consider the steps detailed below.

Familiarise yourself with your competitors

Before you embark on any redesign/relaunch process a good way to start is by getting a handle on what your online competitors are doing with their sites. Are they offering a really useful piece of functionality on their site? Are they publishing great blog posts on a regular basis? Have they committed to using Social Media to engage with and grow their list of prospective (and existing) customers? It can also be useful to look at what businesses similar to yours overseas are doing with their websites. Is there anything you can learn from what is being done overseas that you could emulate on your new site?

Get your timing right

If your business is seasonal then it's likely that the volume of traffic to your website is also seasonal. If so, it is best to time the redesign and launch of your new website during a down period. That way you've got the time to spend making sure all elements of the site are the best they can be, plus if traffic dips as a result of the redesign it won’t hurt leads or sales as much and you'll have time to rectify any issues prior to your next busy period. Use your Google Analytics data to help you identify periods of the year when visitor traffic volumes are typically lower.

For this site the months of April and May look like a good time to launch a redesign.

Identify existing performance benchmarks

Before you start making changes you should try to collect as much information as possible about your existing web presence. That way you'll have a line in the sand from which to measure any performance gains or drops following the launch of your new website. Having this information available is also necessary for ensuring that the transition to your new website goes as smoothly as possible.

Examples of the information we suggest collecting prior to your redesign include:

Information about any back-links currently pointing to your website (and which pages they're pointing to). This helps you to identify links from other sites that are driving targeted traffic to your site, and which links in particular may be helping the pages of your website reach higher positions in search engine results.
Details of the pages (URLs) indexed by the major search engines. If the URLs for each page are going to be different in your next site, you'll need to ensure the correct 301 redirects are in place to the most appropriate page on the new site in order to try and preserve the value of any links pointing to pages on the previous website.
Use Google Analytics to identify the best performing pages and content on your existing website - you’ll need to make sure each gets a new home in the new environment. You want to make sure you don't delete one of your website's top performing pages!
Use Google Analytics to understand which keyword phrases are driving traffic to the site and via which pages. These keyword phrases will be the benchmark that you’ll use to measure the health of the new site.
It's also helpful to pull a complete site map of your existing site before your new site is made live - that way you have a listing of all the pages on your existing site.
Get a handle on your conversions. One of the biggest impacts people often experience following a redesign (other than a traffic drop if the redesign is not properly managed) is a change in the number of conversions their website generates. Use Google Analytics to find out how many conversions your site receives over time and use this as a benchmark when your new site launches.

Minimise changes and reuse URLs where possible

Wherever possible, try to avoid making significant changes to your site such as changing the URL structure or file names for each page. Also try to avoid changing the domain name as this can result in you losing all of the 'domain authority' your domain has built up over time. While there are steps that can be taken to minimise the impact of these kinds of changes (such as correctly implemented 301 redirects from old URLs to new URLs), we suggest avoiding these types of changes unless absolutely necessary.

If you've got no option but to change the URL structure (for example, if you're changing the content management system that the website is built with), it will certainly impact your site's performance in the months to come unless you minimise the impact of changes to URLs by applying 301 permanent redirects from old pages to the most appropriate page on your new site. Please note that this step is absolutely critical – if you fail to 301 redirect old pages to new, you'll almost certainly experience a significant traffic drop because the Search Engines won't know where your pages have gone.

Spring clean your site's content

A redesign is a great time to take a good hard look at your site's content on the site. Sift through each page and identify the best quality content (tip: Google Analytics can be helpful here too - look for highly trafficked pages and pages with high average time on page and low bounce rate metrics). Consider removing or rewriting poorly performing content and recycle/reuse the good content. Where possible make sure you keep your existing title tags, header tags, internal links and meta descriptions intact on your new site.

Pre-live measures

Prior to launching your new website there are a number of simple things you should do to give it every chance of being indexed quickly and accurately by the Search Engines, while also minimising any impact on Search Engine traffic.

Update your XML site map so that any new pages get found quickly by the Search Engines.
Check your robots.txt file to ensure it is accurate and isn't blocking any sections of your site that you do want the Search Engines to crawl and index.
Create a custom 404 error page so that if there is a breakdown in the system, visitors to your site will be served a helpful error page that helps them understand what went wrong and provides links to other useful pages.
Make sure that none of the pages you want crawled and indexed contain the 'noindex' tag. This can often be a hangover from a staging site environment and would result in the Search Engines ignoring these pages.
Check to ensure that none of the staging site's URLs are still present in the live version of the site.

Monitor the site closely at go-live

As soon as your new site goes live you'll want to check it for crawl errors and broken links using Xenu or a similar crawling tool. Fix any broken links immediately.

Over the coming days you should keep a close eye on your Google Webmaster Tools account to see if there are any 404 page not found errors. Make sure to take the time to upload your new XML site map to Google Webmaster Tools and verify it.

You'll also want to monitor the SEO performance of the site carefully for the next few weeks/months. Use Google Analytics to keep a close watch on your visitor traffic via the Search Engines and compare visitor traffic, keyword metrics and conversions against historical data.

As you can see there's a fair amount you need to consider when redesigning and relaunching a new website. The key to a successful redesign project is careful planning and having a clear understanding of the pitfalls and steps needed to mitigate the risks. Certainly don't be put off from doing a redesign due to a fear of getting it wrong. When managed correctly, the benefits of a good redesign will undoubtedly outweigh the risks. And of course, if you're in doubt simply talk to an SEO specialist who understands web design or web designer who understands SEO.

9 User-Friendly Tips For Your Website Forms

jessica@apexinternet.co.nz (Jessica Murray) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 14:23:37 +1300

Getting visitors to your website from an organic search results page or a paid search advertisement such as a Google AdWords text ad, is only step one. Step two involves making sure that these visitors stay on your website and complete what you consider to be your conversion goal. These goals may be to buy something, sign up for your newsletter, become a member, make an enquiry via your contact form - the list goes on – but what they all have in common is that they all require a consumer to take the time to fill in your website’s form details.

Surprisingly many website owners still believe that all the hard work has been done after they have achieved step one, and then wonder why their websites are not delivering the required level of sales and enquires etc.

While your site’s overall aesthetic appeal and ease of navigation will have a large impact on retaining visitors, a common conversion killer when it comes to keeping visitors on websites is the lead generation form submission process or the shopping cart process. Complex and ambiguous forms more often than not frustrate users to the point where hitting the back button is easier than persevering. There are many excellent examples of awesome forms on the internet that are user-friendly, well designed and efficient, making the submission process seamless. Sadly, there are also many examples of poorly designed and confusing forms.

9 Features of User-Friendly Forms:

Make use of headings that clearly lay out the steps required. A new customer should never have to think too hard about how to navigate your submission form process.
Ask for the minimal amount of information. Don’t make users feel like they have to give their life history in order to purchase/enquire about something.
If you have several options to select from, make it easy for users to view all options in one area and simply check which one applies to them. Don’t include long scrolling lists that a user has to trawl through.
Clearly label the required and optional fields. Don’t resort to adding tiny fine print at the bottom of the form to identify these fields.
If someone makes a mistake or adds the wrong information into a field, allow for a polite and clear message to alert them. You could also colour highlight these fields, making it easier for the user to see what was missed.
If your submission process involves several steps, let users know where they are at in the submission process with a breadcrumb e.g. Step 2 of 5.
Include trust, security and authority symbols that offer assurance, particularly if you have an ecommerce site. It is also good practice to have a link to your privacy policy from this page as well.
If you have an ecommerce site, do you offer an option to go straight to checkout without first becoming a member? Oftentimes all a visitor wants is to buy the product first, and if it is good, then consider becoming a member.
Once a user has completed the submission form let them know this with a short thank you message (preferably one that resolves on its own URL so that it’s easily traceable via Google Analytics).

The above form lets users know that they are on step 1 of 3 and indicates which field requires information first.

Finding out what people do on your website after clicking through from an organic search listing or paid search advertisement is essential to understanding how well your website is working. There are various tools such as Google Analytics that allow you to track a vast array of information about visitor interactions with your website, in particularly how they use your online forms and where in the process they seem to face problems. This information helps you to find areas within your submission form process to improve on.

Enlisting the services of a professional and experienced Search Engine Marketing Company who specialise in Google Analytics and conversion optimisation is one of the best ongoing investments you can give your online business. Keep visitors on your website with user-friendly conversion forms.

Online marketing tips for the holiday season

mark@apexinternet.co.nz (Mark Vassiliou) — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 08:43:13 +1300

The onset of Christmas and the holiday season spells a time of increased business activity for the majority of business owners. Typically retailers and sales-oriented organisations are subject to the biggest upswing during this time, however this increase in activity also flows on throughout other industries and markets, making it the most financially buoyant season of the year.

With this is mind, any business that operates a website and is looking to grow their number of visitors and customers should also take steps to ensure that its web presence is optimised to make the most of this increase in activity. The following guidelines are just a few of the things you should be considering with your website as we approach the busy festive season. Some of thiese ideas are more suited to e-Commerce websites, however many of the principles apply regardless of your website’s functionality or role in the sales process.

Get your delivery right and make your delivery times obvious

If you can’t deliver an order in the amount of time your prospective customer wants, you won’t stand a chance of making the sale. Make your final Christmas shipping dates obvious for all users and consider offering an express delivery option for the holiday period - something which is especially important during the final days of the Christmas rush. This will not only make sure they don’t miss out, but can help to assure prospective customers that they will receive their goods on time, thus encouraging them to buy from you.

Make sure your offer is competitive

Christmas is one of the most competitive periods of the year for many industries. As such you'll need to take steps to stand out from your competitors - you might want to consider offering enticing incentives such as free delivery, buy 1 get one half price, or a free gift with each purchase (or other similar types of discounts/incentives). Another option could be to offer incentives based on order values - just make sure the incentives you offer don't end up costing you money.

Offer gift cards

Buying gifts for other people can be a stressful task, particularly if the gift buyer isn’t familiar with the product/service they’re buying. To avoid losing sales, consider offering the option of a gift card or voucher – a welcome tonic for even the most experienced gift buyer.

Ramp up your AdWords efforts

If you advertise using Google AdWords now's the time to really focus on squeezing the most out of your campaigns. Consider creating Christmas focused ad text or adding 'gift' focused keywords to your campaigns. Also keep a close eye on cost per click (CPC) bids and make sure you remain competitive by increasing your daily budgets and CPCs during this time of increased competition. It's vital that you get your timing right here too. If the last day for delivery by Christmas is Monday 19th December, then make sure you've allocated more of your monthly budget to the period leading up to this. After all, there's no point in keeping budget aside for the remainder of the month if you cannot service Christmas orders after the 19th.

As CPCs often increase during this time in response to the increase in competition, do everything you can to ensure you have the highest AdWords keyword quality scores as possible so that you don’t start paying considerably more just to keep up with your competitors. In addition, make sure you stay competitive by monitoring your daily budgets and maximum CPCs closely and increasing them as necessary.

Make good use of unique, high quality product descriptions

Online shoppers are increasingly tech savvy and detail oriented and are highly likely to engage in comparison shopping online. As such, make sure your products / services stand out from your competitors by providing a clear, detailed and accurate description for each of the products / services you offer. Although this should apply regardless of the season, the impact (positive or otherwise) of this is more pronounced in times of high competition such as during the holiday season.

Publish your festive season operating hours

As the end of the year gets closer it's also a good idea to update your website to let prospective and existing customers know when you'll be closing down for Christmas and when you'll be opening up again in the New Year.

Make sure your site renders properly in the major web browsers

Lastly, another point that should apply year round, but now's a very good time to check it anyway. Make sure your website renders correctly in all of the major web browsers (Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Apple Safari). Don’t risk losing sales because your website's layout is broken, or your checkout/booking/enquiry functionality doesn’t work correctly in all major browsers. Consider how your website renders on smartphones too.

The key to making the most of your web presence during this busy time of the year is planning ahead and starting early. In doing so you'll be a few steps ahead of your competitors when the rush hits, instead of languishing trying to play catch up.

10 Ways To Leverage Your Social Media Marketing Efforts

jessica@apexinternet.co.nz (Jessica Murray) — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 08:56:33 +1300

Thousands of companies have jumped aboard the social media movement by creating profiles, such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, with the objective of achieving particular goals including ongoing customer engagement, brand awareness, driving more traffic to their website and/or as a way of learning more about what consumers want and need from their products and services. Social media profiles, when integrated into a social media marketing (SMM) strategy, require time, commitment and dedication to work effectively and achieve your SMM goals.

An often overlooked area when setting up and managing social media profiles are the many ways in which you can leverage your efforts across your other SMM channels and traditional promotional materials. The options are endless, but hopefully the following tips will assist you in getting started with leveraging your SMM efforts.

Include your Social Media icons/addresses in all your promotional materials from business cards, billboards, calendars, email signatures and online press releases, to traditional newspaper/magazine and radio advertising.
Spend the money getting your website/brand design and aesthetic integrated into your social media profiles (e.g. your Twitter background or a custom landing page on your Facebook page). Your website designer/developer can assist you with this.
Be consistent with your branding across all of your SMM channels and promotional materials. Retaining a consistent brand theme/message will allow for instant consumer recognition with those already familiar with your brand and help build awareness for those new to your brand.
Add social sharing icons to your website and blog – www.addthis.com has a huge selection of sharing icons to choose from. Social sharing allows for your content to reach an even wider audience.
There are many cross platform promotion tools such as Hootsuite and TweetDeck which you can use to manage and publish updates across all of your social media profiles at once. When it comes to using pre-scheduled and automated updates however it is important to use these cautiously. Having a constant stream of automated updates from your Facebook page to your Twitter profile can make it seem like there isn’t a ‘real’ person behind the scenes. We recommend using these sparingly, and instead use mostly personalised updates if you want to foster reciprocal communication/engagement with your social media audience.
Ask you developer to add your Facebook and/or Twitter news feeds to your website. This can encourage visitors to your website to follow conversions, events and competitions for example that are happening on your profiles.
Update your frequently asked questions (FAQ) section on your website to include commonly asked questions made via your social media channels - i.e. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Then when someone visits this page on your website, you can be sure that you have covered many of the popular questions asked regarding your product/service. Likewise, these questions may make excellent blog posts, articles and news items for your website.
Join already established SMM groups with a steady following to build relationships and participate in conversions with others in your industry.
Remember, ‘word of mouth’ isn’t just an offline form of communication. It exists online too and has the ability to reach a lot of people with one simply update/tweet. Keep on top of questions posted to your profiles – always answering in a timely manner. Likewise, look for referral opportunities, even if not directly related to your business – help people on Twitter with their questions, suggest helpful websites on Facebook and so on.
Measure you SMM efforts with a free tool such as Google Analytics and find out how many visitors each of your respective SMM channels are generating to your website, amongst a wealth of other useful information.

Unfortunately, many business social media profiles are set up quickly and without much, if any, consideration of objectives and goals from the outset. What is worse, is when profiles are setup and left with no or limited activity – not a good look for when interested consumers do find your profile!

If you are just starting out, I recommend you focus on doing well with one or two social media channels first, and then include more (if necessary) once you get the first one up and running, while leveraging your SMM efforts at the same time.

If, on the other hand, you are completely new to the social media marketplace, but know (or have been told) that your business should be involved (especially if your competitors already are) then contact us today to discuss a social media strategy that can be catered specifically to your company’s objectives and online marketing goals. If you are uncertain about social media and its benefits, then read this post – it addresses common social media fears that many businesses have and how you can overcome them.

Having Trouble downloading your Xtra Mail

david@apexinternet.co.nz (David Law) — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 09:59:53 +1300

Are you an age-old Xtra email user, and have you suddenly discovered that you are not getting email from your Xtra email account. This is most probably because Yahoo!Xtra appear to have recently changed their login authentication requirements to now require a full email address. The majority of users will have been using their full email address for years anyway, but for users who have had Xtra mail accounts for 10-12 years or more this is a change in protocol. If for instance your Xtra ID has always been joe.bloggs, you now need to use joe.bloggs@xtra.co.nz as your username.

Link Building - 4 Basic Link Building Methods That Still Work

aidan@apexinternet.co.nz (Aidan Rogers) — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 19:12:54 +1300

Ever tried link building?

If you are a website owner and know a little about SEO, you will be aware of the exceptional value of building links. It’s a game changer for good search visibility and the backbone of any successful SEO campaign. If you have ever tried to build links yourself, then you will also be very conscious of how difficult link building can be.

Over the last few years as an online marketer, I used to think some of these link building methods were not worth the time invested, mainly because of the hype created by certain perceived SEO “authorities” on popular SEO blogs. However, after actually testing them for myself, I can confirm that ‘yes’, these types of links do help with search visibility when built in a sensible way. In saying that, some of these methods may not be the best fit for sites in competitive industries, especially when dominated by large brands.

There are literally hundreds of ways to build links. In this article, I will stick to some basic link building methods that have been around forever. Here are four link building methods that are old, still effective and great when you are starting out:

Reciprocal Links

Ah, the good old 'you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours' – pretty much the granddaddy of link building.

Good Reciprocal Linking: Contact sites that are of a high quality and very relevant to your industry - go right ahead.

Bad Reciprocal Linking: Done in a mass, automated fashion or swapping links with any old site willy nilly – this can be dangerous.

Reciprocal links are as natural as the web comes and I believe are fine as long as they are part of a diverse link profile.

Article Marketing

Article marketing has also been around a long time but still gets results. A good idea is to target long tail keywords that the article could rank for, while at the same time gaining credit with a link back to your site.

Good Article Marketing: Write an interesting article to distribute to decent article directories. Make sure that the article is relevant or helpful to your audience (real people!) and be mindful of things like spelling and grammar. Make sure the article has some depth/meat - even more so in a post panda world.

Bad Article Marketing: Article spinning the same one article (which has been rewritten by software) hundreds of times, then adding these articles to junk to sites with other spun articles. Should you take this approach? No, just no... unless you don't care about your site burning to the ground.

Building links via article marketing as also a good way to build deep links to your site.

Directory Submissions

Link building with directory links still holds some value and is worth considering.

Good Directory Submissions: Finding a selection of directories that are either local or niche related, and have a focus on quality control.

Bad Directory Submissions: Find someone to submit your site to say 1000 directories for a mere five cents each. Bang, 1000 links just like that. Link building all done and dusted right? No, not really.

Aaron Wall offers an older but still worthy summary of what makes a good directory and the sort of things to look for.

Internal Links

Work with what you’ve got - link from pages in your website to other pages deeper within your site.

Good Internal Linking: Do link to pages that are relevant and helpful from other pages in your site. Make sure you are using relevant anchor text for the keyword you are targeting. Also, be mindful of your websites usability when practicing internal link building.

Bad Internal Linking: Linking every mention of a keyword you are trying to rank for back to the homepage, unless the goal of your site is to make people leave and not come back ;)

Internal linking is a simple often-overlooked method that still works well for some sites.

There we have it - four link building methods that are old and easy as it comes. Yes, these methods still do work for many sites - just make sure you are not too reliant on any one type of link. Take your time to do it right and you should see improvements.

Avoid Taking Shortcuts

Some website owners and SEO companies try to cut corners by automating the above tactics. Building links in mass worked wonders once, but as search algorithms continue to evolve and get smarter, they are pretty clued on to this sort of behaviour as it is very easy to detect.

When you try to build links in a very fast or spammy way, you only end up painting a big red target on your website with a giant kick me sign on the homepage. The strength of your link profile is not pure volume anymore; it has not been for a long time.

If you are using the bad methods for link building then sorry, the links you'll get probably won’t count for much (if at all) and I should know - I've tried them all! If they do count, it is only a matter of time before your site is penalised. So choose wisely.

Yes Link Building Is Tricky

The reason why many people find link building so hard is because it actually takes effort.

It is time intensive discipline and there is no way around it. Therefore, if you are going to do it yourself, make sure the links you are chasing actually hold value - otherwise you are just wasting time.

Other reasons link building is time-consuming (well decent link building anyway) are:

You need to know what sort of sites you are competing against, so you know what types of links you need.
You need to then sort and value the potential sites you want links from in terms of quality.
You need to then pursue the good quality ones with a strategy to convince others to link to you.

Link building is a slow and tedious process. Just like anything worth doing, it takes time and effort. The reason why many fail to go beyond the above four methods is the simple fact they do not actually have anything worth linking to in the first place.

Want Better Quality Links?

Take a step back and imagine for a second that you do not own your site/business. Look at the page on your site you want links for (keep in mind the needs and wants of others, not your own). Ask yourself this question:

"If I owned another site, would I link to this page?"

If you can honestly say without any bias that yes, you definitely would, then you are ready to take your link building further. If you cannot give a solid reason - hold your horses.

Give Me A Reason

I'm not going to harp on about the old "content is king" argument, because if this were true, we would never need to build a single link to good content. What I am saying is this - before you even begin thinking about pursing better links, address the content issue. You will have greater success if you meet the criteria first. Give people a decent reason to link to you.

Start With A Blog

So you don’t have anything really worth linking to? Start with blogging. Adding a blog to your site is an ideal way to create content for your site and to test what people respond to. Blogs are also a great platform as they can encourage conversation and are an excellent tool for building relationships with others.

I encourage you to put effort into your link building and avoid taking short cuts. When you finally do get decent rankings:

Website visitors are far less likely to bounce.
Your site will more likely survive a manual review because, well...you deserve to be there!

The Value Of Relationships

Until the day comes when Search Engines no longer heavily rely on links to determine results, you have to have to link build in order to achieve a good level of visibility. If you want even more valuable links, you need go beyond the four link building methods described above. Give people a real reason to link to you and better quality backlinks are yours for the taking.

Remember it’s people that link, not websites.

Landing Pages Becoming More Important

jessica@apexinternet.co.nz (Jessica Murray) — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 10:30:37 +1300

If you are familiar with managing Google AdWords campaigns then you will know of the importance that landing pages play in getting you the results you want, in addition to other equally important factors such as having a good campaign structure, tight knit ad groups with targeted keywords and effective text ads with strong calls to action.

Earlier this month, Google announced that more weight is going to be given to relevance and landing page quality when it comes to determining Quality Score and your ad’s position on Google. This new approach follows trials carried out by Google in Brazil, Latin America, Spain, and Portugal. Quality score is a measure of how relevant your keyword is to your ad text and to a person's search query.

The goal behind the recent change, which is being rolled out globally over the next few coming weeks, is to continue improving user experience with search ads. Part of managing a successful AdWords campaign has always been to ensure that after a user has clicked on your ad, they are taken to a page that is clearly relevant to the promise made in your text ad. The new AdWords algorithm tweak means that even more importance is now being placed on the relevance of your landing pages to a user’s search query. Advertisers who provide users with highly relevant and useful landing pages are rewarded with a better Quality Score, which can lead to their ads achieving a higher ad position and lower cost per click.

In the past the focus on landing pages was to penalise ads that pointed users to poorly crafted and/or misleading pages by disapproving an ad until the landing page was improved. In extreme situations some advertisers have even had their AdWords account suspended due to poor or misleading landing pages. The new focus on landing page quality provides advertisers with more incentive to craft highly relevant pages that deliver on the promises made in their text ads, by associating a positive factor with these improvements.

If you notice your keyword quality scores and ad position are negatively impacted in the coming weeks we recommend taking an objective look at your landing pages and improving them where necessary. In doing so you might even find your campaigns generating more online conversions with AdWords as a result of your changes.

If you would like to find out more about Google AdWords PPC Advertising and how it can assist your online business, contact us today.

Why You Should Have a Blog on Your Website

lizette@apexinternet.co.nz (Lizette Bretherton) — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 11:18:49 +1300

Like Social Media Marketing everyone seems to be talking about blogs too, so why should you have a blog on your website?

First, let’s look at what a blog is:
Blogs provide your business with a chance to share your expertise and knowledge with a wider audience. They can be used as a news interface or to create excitement around a service or product that your business offers, allowing you to interact and create dialog with your audience around topics of interest to your business.

How does a blog help from a Search Engine Marketing point of view?
A blog increases the amount and freshness of content on your site as well as increased traffic to your site. Search Engines monitor the frequency of updates and the growth of a website’s content. These updates are a part of the ranking algorithms which the Search Engines use when considering how visible your site should be to their audience i.e. a searcher.

Having quality informative blog entries also means that you increase your likelihood of building backlinks to the blog itself too, which from an SEO perspective is an all important part of helping to make your site visible in the Search Engines.

Ultimately your goal is to drive targeted visitor traffic to your website. A website is built for people to use it to find out more about your business and your products/services, so of course you want traffic. If people conduct a search in a Search Engine and then click on a search result that takes them to your blog, then you have traffic. If they find your blog post interesting or informative, they may even take a further look at the rest of your site after reading the blog. That means you have potential to sell your products or services to these people, who might not have found your site if it were not for your blog post.

How do I make my blog successful?
Part of a successful blog means gaining exposure to the blog itself. This means building a following by exposing your blog to the Blog Directories and having tools such as RSS feeds, social media sharing functionality and such like available on your blog.

You also need to blog regularly. At least once a month is a good start, but more than that is great, and this is what you should be aiming for. The beauty of blogging is that all of your staff (if you wish) can write an entry each month and then you will easily have a number of entries to upload without placing the responsibility on one staff member only.

When writing blogs, try and write about hot topics and include keywords where you can (without getting carried away!). This can all help with allowing your blog to show in search results for relevant search queries.

Also don’t forget to write to your target audience i.e. don’t fill it up with a whole lot of jargon that only you and your staff understand – you want potential customers to be able to understand what you are talking about so that they will look at your blog as an expert resource and keep coming back for more.

If you are blogging about products or services be sure to include links back to relevant pages on your site. This will provide opportunity for your readers to look further into your site to find out more and also help with the internal linking structure of your site.
If you are interested in finding out more about blog marketing and how you might be able to use it to benefit your business, talk to us today.

Xtra Email Filters

nigel@apexinternet.co.nz (Nigel Wells) — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 15:25:38 +1300

Are you an Yahoo!Xtra email user and have you noticed that some of your email has not been getting through?

We have recently noticed an increase in clients claiming that they have not received emails that they were expecting. Analysis of our Server mail logs showed that the email was being successfully delivered to the Xtra Mail Servers – so what was happening to the email?

The answer it turns out is that Yahoo!Xtra appear to have overzealous spam filters enabled on their servers. We say overzealous, because while it is a great idea to have a spam filter, what you don’t need is false positives – that is genuine email being flagged as spam and not delivered to your inbox.

If you do not have any other spam filter in place then we suggest you check the Yahoo!Xtra Spam and Trash folders regularly for incorrectly blocked email. If you do have your own spam filter, we suggest turning off the Yahoo!Xtra mail filter altogether.

To do this, log in to your webmail account at

http://mail.yahoo.co.nz

Select Options from the top left of the screen and then mail options.

Select Spam from the menu on the left and check off the checkbox for “Automatically send suspected spam to my Spam folder”

Click Save Changes at the top left of this screen

Facebook Page or Facebook Group - Which to Create

lizette@apexinternet.co.nz (Lizette Bretherton) — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 13:06:02 +1300

A common question asked by those who are looking into Facebook for business purpose is whether they should create a Page or a Group. In the past Facebook Pages were notorious for having limited functionality and were not easy to administrate at all and because of this many people set about creating a Group rather than a Page. In recent times Facebook have been making changes to the way that Pages are set up and they are becoming easier to understand.

Here we look to answer the questions surrounding Pages and Groups to give you a clearer understanding of which option is better for your business entity.

What is a Facebook Group?
Facebook Groups allow the creator to build awareness around ideas and are generally for short term active discussions.

Think of Facebook Groups as a place where you can start an active discussion about something that others share a common interest in. For the purpose of this let’s say we want to start a Group around the rugby events happening in 2011. A Facebook Group would be ideal for this as it allows anyone on Facebook (depending on the settings) to come together to interact and share information, photos and videos around this topic.

What is a Facebook Page?
Facebook Pages allow companies and public figures to interact, engage and create long term relationships with fans and customers.

I like to think of Facebook Pages as the business version of a personal profile. Facebook Pages have been made for the purpose of businesses, public figures, organisations and such like to create an authentic public presence on Facebook. Just like you can ‘friend’ a personal profile a user can ‘like’ a Facebook Page, which then allows them to receive updates in their News Feed and interact with that page. (In previous years to ‘like’ a Facebook Page was commonly known as becoming a ‘Fan’).

With a Facebook Page you also are able to do the following, (whereas with a Group you can’t) :
• Check visitor statistics via Facebook Insights
• Have a vanity/username URL rather than a long string of numbers
• Promote your page via Facebook Ads
• Use Static FBML applications to better design landing pages and such like

What about from a Search Engine point of view?
While Facebook Pages and Groups are both indexed by the Search Engines, Facebook Pages do have greater opportunities, in that you can have the username URL’s and you can have a specific landing page (with Static FBML applications) created with links back to your website, both of which are good from an SEO point of view. Groups do have some Search Engine value, in that they will show up in search, but perhaps not so personalised as Page.

If you are looking to create a Facebook presence for your business, it’s likely that a Facebook page is the right option for you. Talk to a Social Media Marketing company if you would like assistance in creating your Social Media presence.

Updates: Google Preview, Google Plus & Google News

jessica@apexinternet.co.nz (Jessica Murray) — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 12:59:14 +1300

You may remember last year when Google launched Instant Previews – the ability to click on the magnifying glass next to the search result to see a screenshot of the page, without having to click through to the actual page. Last week, Google released a new update to this feature whereby you now just have to hover over the search result of interest; then two grey arrows will appear to the left of the listings – simply move your mouse over these arrows and the instant preview of that page will appear.

Google’s new social networking site ‘Google Plus’ after much anticipation has been made public, with everyone now able to sign up. Previously, you had to be invited by others to join, which many found frustrating. Along with opening up to everyone, there are nine awesome new features available to users including: Hangouts on your phone, Hangouts on air, Hangouts APIs, Search in Google+ and much more. The move from the testing site to beta in the USA is estimated to have seen Google+ record nearly 3.58 million Web visits, according to analysts from Experian Hitwise. You can now also share +Snippets from Google Maps with people in your ‘Circles’ on Google Plus.

As you can imagine, much attention has been given to how Google’s new social networking site will compete against the well established and highly trafficked social networking site Facebook.

Another update released just this past week by the search giant, is a news content feature for news organisations and journalists – the Google News ‘Standout’ tag. This new tag can be used by news organisations and journalists to help showcase ‘standout’ content within the news results. Google recommends that the tag is used no more than seven times within a calendar week.

Get More Online Conversions With Google AdWords

jessica@apexinternet.co.nz (Jessica Murray) — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 11:54:39 +1300

Do you find it difficult to advertise certain products and/or services online? It may be that your online business sells a number of products and services, but only a few of your key product lines do well within the organic (natural) Google Search results. It is also possible that you have a new website and are finding it really difficult to compete in the natural Google SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). If you are targeting goods and services that are very popular and have a lot of online competitors, chances are you will find it challenging to compete effectively in Google’s natural SERPs without any form of regular, online promotion. It is highly likely that those companies you see dominating the first page of Google’s results (including the integrated Google Places Pages) have invested in years of search engine marketing to secure those top SERP placements.

So how do you get instant traffic to your website and increase conversions such as sales or product enquires, while also working at increasing your online presence in Google’s organic SERPs? Fortunately, there is a way to get your company’s brand name, plus products and services appearing above and alongside the natural search results in Google straightaway, and it is called Google AdWords.

What is Google AdWords?
It is a form of online advertising known as pay per click advertising (PPC). In a short space of time you can achieve impressive return on investment results, no matter what your online marketing budget is. The beauty of Google AdWords PPC advertising is that you are targeting an audience whom are already interested in your products and/or services. Like an auction system, you compete with other advertisers by bidding on a series of keyword phrases that are relevant to your product/service offerings. Unlike an auction system however, price alone will not determine which advertiser’s text ads obtain the top positions. Google AdWords strives to show the most relevant ads to users search queries, therefore this means that they evaluate an advertiser’s campaign (plus landing pages on your website) based on a number of relevance factors, rewarding those advertisers with relevant and targeted ads (to a users search query) with higher ad placements and lower cost per clicks.

How do I set up a Google AdWords Campaign?

It can be relatively straight forward to set up a new campaign; however the jargon, metrics and components of the campaign will likely leave you utterly confused if you have never heard of it before. Not everyone with an online business has the time to learn the ‘ins and outs’ of a complex system like AdWords. The consequence of not learning how the system works is often a poorly performing PPC campaign, which falls short of your goals, compared to a great campaign that has been designed with your goals and targets specifically in mind. To get the most value from your PPC investment, we strongly recommend enlisting the services of a professional search engine optimisation and marketing company, with Google AdWords management consultants whom hold Google’s AdWords Qualified Certification (GAQC). This qualification can assure you that the people managing your campaign(s) have met the strict criteria set by AdWords, and know what they are doing.

So if you want to help boost the visibility of your websites poorer performing products and/or services in Google’s SERPs, or you have just launched a new website and want to start getting targeted website traffic and conversions as soon as possible, contact us today to discuss how a Google AdWords campaign can work for your online business.

Understanding, Analysing and Improving Bounce Rate

mark@apexinternet.co.nz (Mark Vassiliou) — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 10:19:43 +1200

When it comes to measuring and monitoring your website’s performance using Google Analytics, 'Bounce Rate' is one of the most important metrics that web marketers use to determine the effectiveness of a website. In this post I'll take a look at what bounce rate is, why it is important, and what you can do to improve it.

What is bounce rate?

Google define bounce rate as "the percentage of single-page visits in which the person left your website from the entrance (landing) page." Essentially, bounce rate is a measure of whether people are viewing other pages on your website beyond the first page they originally arrived at. Google Analytics presents bounce rate as a percentage. For example, if 100 people visited your website and 42 of those people left your website without visiting any other pages, then your Bounce Rate would be 42%.

If people come to your website and don't visit any other pages before leaving, there's a good chance that your website is not doing all it could be doing to hold their interest or make them want to learn more about your products or services. By reducing your website’s bounce rate you’ll also go a long way to converting more visitors into customers. Consider this; every page your visitor sees is more exposure for you per visitor, which means more opportunities for you to get them to sign up for your newsletter, submit an online enquiry form, or make a purchase from your website. As such, taking steps to reduce bounce rates is an important component of conversion rate optimisation.

What is a good bounce rate?

Before answering this question it's vital to understand that there is no 'one size fits all' benchmark for what constitutes a 'good' vs 'bad' Bounce Rate. It’s important to take into account the type of website (e.g. brochure site, e-Commerce site, portal, blog and so on), the size of the website, individual pages on a website (e.g. a campaign specific landing page), the source of traffic (e.g. direct traffic, referrals from other websites, organic search traffic, paid search traffic), and the target audience (i.e. B2C or B2B).

That said, a fair starting point for a bounce rate benchmark is somewhere around the 40% - 50% mark. If your bounce rate is below 50% then you're on the right side of the ledger, although there is definitely room for improvement. This means that more than half of your visitors are coming to your website, finding good content, and visiting other pages to find out even more. On the other hand if your bounce rate is higher than 50%, then more than half of the visitors to your website are leaving without visiting any other pages. In my experience, a Bounce Rate in the region of 30% - 35% can be considered very good.

Bounce rates for blogs

The nature of blogs means that people who read them will quite often only read the latest post or the post they have arrived at following a keyword search in a search engine before leaving your website. As such, a high bounce rate is to be expected with blogs (or blog sections of a website). For example, with blog content it is not unusual (nor should it be alarming) to see bounce rates around the 70% - 80% mark.

Analysing bounce rate

Don’t analyse your website’s bounce rate in aggregate. It's important to understand that different sections of your website and different sources of traffic will display different bounce rates. Therefore you should always segment your traffic in Google Analytics to identify which traffic sources or pages of your website are responsible for the highest bounce rates.

In order to get a more accurate understanding of your website’s bounce rate, consider the following:

Are there particular keyword search phrases which have a higher bounce rate than others?
Does it vary according to the source of traffic source (e.g. organic search traffic vs referral traffic vs social media traffic)?
How does bounce rate compare for New vs Returning visitors?
Which individual pages or types of content on your website have higher or lower bounce rates?

Understanding this information is crucial to improving your website’s bounce rate, and more importantly, your website’s conversion rate.

Is a high bounce rate always a bad sign?

Although a high bounce rate can be an indicator of a website’s poor health, it doesn’t always hold true that a website with a high bounce rate is a poor website. Take for example an information website where a visitor lands on a page contains all of the information they need in order to satisfy their goal. In this case there may be no valid reason for the visitor to view any other pages on the website, and while their visit will be recorded as a 'bounce', this does not reflect the fact that their visit was actually a successful one.

Then again, if you're in the business of running an e-commerce website your efforts to reduce bounce rates are much more important, particularly as your goal should be to get a high percentage of visitors to view other pages in your website (hopefully the shopping cart pages). In this instance any successful efforts to reduce bounce rate will often also have a positive impact on your bottom line.

What can you do to improve (reduce) bounce rates?

The first step to fixing a high bounce rate is to isolate the traffic sources or the pages on your website that are predominantly responsible for the high number of bounces. Once you've identified the main culprits, undertake an objective review and analysis of each landing page or top content page that displays a high bounce rate. If it's a particular traffic source that's largely responsible for your website’s high bounce rate, question yourself as to why that might be. For example, traffic from social media sites often has a higher bounce rate due to the way that visitors come across your website as part of their social interactions rather than as a direct result of their search for specific information.

When seeking improvements to your website's bounce rate, consider the following factors:

Design factors
Presentation is extremely important. Website that have high bounce rates often contain poor design elements, have too many ads, or are too cluttered. Make sure you review (and where necessary address) these factors.
Website navigation structure
Make sure your navigation is simple and intuitive. Poor/complicated navigation is one of the leading causes of high bounce rates. Make it easy for visitors to find the content on your website.
Copywriting
Make sure you use proper copywriting formatting (i.e. headlines, sub headings, short paragraphs, and lots of bullets points). Copywriting should be 'benefit focused' and free of typos.
Page load time
Long page load times can cause visitors to bail out of your website, thus leading to higher bounce rate. For this reason make sure you’re using a good quality web hosting service. Google are now placing more emphasis on page speed and as such have developed a range of tools designed to help you make page speed improvements. Check out the following link for more information - http://pagespeed.googlelabs.com/
Quality content
Providing good quality unique content and delivering fresh content on a regular basis goes a long way to building your website’s reputation and ensuring that visitors are more inclined to want to read more of your website.
Create related content and make it easily accessible
Provide links from each page to other related content on your website. With blogs in particular you should display links to related content next to or below each post.
Use a clear and consistent call to action
Having a clear, compelling and consistent call to action is a simple yet very effective way to get visitors to your website to want to take the next step toward finding out more about your product/service, thus lowering your bounce rate. Give people something to do, or encourage people to take action before they leave your website.
Use testimonials and icons from credible associations
Make sure your website contains positive testimonials from real customers, along with logos or icons from reputable associations to which you belong. Doing so helps add credibility and serves to reduce any anxieties a visitor might have about moving on to the next stage in your
Provide clear contact info
Make sure you have clear contact information available throughout your website. If possible provide both local and toll free phone numbers.

Conclusion

The reality is that not every visitor who arrives at your website is going to find precisely what they are looking for. Nevertheless, by making even small improvements to your website’s bounce rate you’re likely to see an improvement in the volume of conversions you receive. The key is to not get hung up on aiming for some magical bounce rate figure, but to instead focus on making improvements, however minor they may be.

And remember that while it's important to monitor bounce rate, it's even more important to understand which traffic and which content is bouncing. Only then can you really start to consider what changes should be made to reduce your bounce rate.

If you'd like to know more about analysing your bounce rate or the steps you can take to improving it, please drop us a line or get in touch.

A New Look For Google Sitelinks

jessica@apexinternet.co.nz (Jessica Murray) — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 12:51:05 +1200

Have you done a search recently in Google and seen the new layout for Google Sitelinks? This feature, which is often displayed beneath listings within the Google Search Results Pages (SERPs), is not new, it has been around for many years, but the presentation of them has changed greatly. While in the past you would commonly see just four Sitelinks in a single horizontal line associated with a listing in the SERPs, now you can see up to twelve!

Check out the following Google SERP listing for The NZ Herald – twelve subsections of the NZ Herald website have been categorised beneath the main website. Just look at how much real estate a listing can take up in the SERPs now!

Why The Change To Google Sitelinks?

Like everything Google does, their ultimate goal is to provide their users with the best search engine experience possible – with a strong focus on relevancy to a users search query. The Official Google Blog post on this latest update notes how a user will often start a search with a broad search query, such as company name, and then continue to search the website for another area, such as a particular brand or product.

It turns out that sitelinks are quite useful because they can help predict which sections of the site you want to visit. Even if you didn’t specify your task in the query, sitelinks help you quickly navigate to the most relevant part of the site, which is particularly handy for large and complex websites.

How Do I Get Google Sitelinks?

Unfortunately, you cannot tell Google which Sitelinks you would like them to display beneath your websites SERP listing. What Sitelinks are displayed are at the mercy of Google’s algorithm.

What we do know is that Google’s algorithm analyses the link structure of your website looking for quick routes that will direct users to various sections of your website that may be of relevance, and that it is best practice to use anchor text and image alt text that is informative. How Google views your website in terms of authority and relevancy are likely to be big factors too.

It is important to note that just because Google are now showing up to twelve Sitelinks with a search listing, it does not necessarily mean that you will always see twelve; you may only see eight, or a single line of four.

If you would like to make sure that your website is optimised and structured in the best way possible to take advantage of Google’s new and improved Sitelinks, get in contact with our search engine optimisation and search engine marketing professionals today.

Online Consumer Reviews and Your Website

jessica@apexinternet.co.nz (Jessica Murray) — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 12:39:55 +1200

When it comes to online consumer purchasing decisions, one area that is growing in significance is the influence of other people’s opinions. Similar to the offline world, word of mouth is equally influential online. It is also helpful to remember that reviews read and shared online don’t just stay there, the people who wrote or read these, may also tell others whom they see at home, in a social environment or at work.

According to Marketingcharts.com, research performed by Deloitte’s Consumer Products Group showed that the two top factors that influence a consumer’s decision to purchase a new product / brand are a) the reputation of the manufacturer or supplier and b) friends and family comments.

Consumer generated reviews have been shown to be a critical factor in influencing a consumers purchasing decisions. These platforms may seem like an inconvenience to some business owners, but in fact they offer a great way for you to monitor your brands reputation online, find areas where you can improve on, respond to both negative and positive feedback in a constructive way, and even identify new product ideas or marketing initiatives.

Where Do You Find Online Consumer Reviews?

Online reviews can be found in many places on the web including: your website testimonials page, on blogs, on consumer product/service review sites such as TripAdvisor and The Review Centre, on Google Places listings and of course on social media profiles where consumers have posted product/service feedback to people in their social networks.

Social Media & Consumer Reviews

With the emergence of social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, the opportunities for people to find out what others think about a particular brand, company, product and/or service is quick and instantaneous.

When it comes to Facebook and Twitter for instance; friends, work colleagues and family opinions are only a status update or Tweet away. A simple, ‘What’s the best (your product or service)? Where can I buy one?’ will get instant feedback. A global online shopping report performed by Nielsen Wire reported that ‘while checking online reviews are popular for some products—particularly consumer electronics and cars—shoppers still trust the recommendations of friends and family’.

By having your business on one or both of these social media platforms, you can get your brand/company out there, build up brand awareness, monitor your brands reputation and keep in contact with users of your brand. Investing in a Facebook marketing and/or Twitter marketing campaign is a great way to provide product/service information to consumers during the purchase decision making process and as a way of keeping fans/followers up to date with new brand/company information .

Google Places & Consumer Reviews

If you have a Google Places page for your local business, then something important you may not be aware of are the recent changes to the layout and content available on these pages. Google removed reviews from third party sites including TripAdvisor, focusing solely upon reviews made directly to a Google Places page instead. Therefore, if you have a Google Places page for your local business it is imperative that you encourage your customers, clients and vendors to login and post feedback about your products and/or services directly. If you are not familiar with Google Places pages and you have a local business you should definitely set up or claim your business’s page today. Now that Google Places pages are integrated with the Google organic search results, having your Places page appear in these results can attract valuable traffic to your website. The number of reviews associated with your Places page appears alongside your listing in the search results – so the more you have the more likely a consumer will be to click on your Places page and read others comments.

Help Consumers Find Your Website and Your Reviews

With a huge array of product and service websites saturating the online marketplace, it can be quite daunting for new and established website owners trying to snare a segment of this market, whilst attracting new consumers and retaining existing ones. If you want to compete successfully in the online atmosphere it is vitally important that you consult with a professional and experienced search engine optimisation company who also specialises in search engine marketing, Google Analytics, social media marketing, blog marketing and pay per click advertising. Not consulting with such a company will mean that your website remains a needle in the haystack, and the online consumers out there looking for your products/services won’t find you.

How to implement Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO)

mark@apexinternet.co.nz (Mark Vassiliou) — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 11:19:36 +1200

In an earlier post I introduced just some of the ways you can try to improve your website's conversion rate and get more visitors to complete a desired action on your website such as submitting an enquiry, signing up for an offer, providing you with their email address, making a purchase, and so on.

In this follow-up post I'll introduce you to the process of Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO), while also highlighting some of the tools that can be used to help you measure, test and monitor the performance of your CRO efforts.

Conversion Rate Optimisation Process

At its most basic level a typical CRO process can be summarised using the following diagram.

Step 1 - Measure & Evaluate

The first step in the Conversion Rate Optimisation process is to measure the performance of your existing conversion process. It's vital that you can determine how many sales/leads/enquiries/downloads etc are you currently receiving via your website in its current form. By doing so you can set benchmarks against which all of your Conversion Rate Optimisation efforts can be measured. When establishing benchmarks it's also important that you consider any increases or decreases in conversions (and visitors to your website) that can be a result of changes in seasonal demand for you products or services. Tools such as Google Analytics are fantastic for helping you to monitor these seasonal trends, while also making it relatively easy to measure your website's performance using by setting up analytics goals, and where relevant, conversion funnels.

Step 2 - Analyse & Investigate

Once you've established your website's existing conversion performance and established existing performance benchmarks, the next step is to analyse that level of performance and investigate what opportunities there might be for improvement. For example, from your Google Analytics data you might find that of those people who visit your enquiry or lead generation form, only a very small percentage actually go on to complete the form. At this stage you need to consider reasons as to why that might be. It can be helpful to put yourself in the shoes of the visitor (prospective customer) and try to understand what types of things might be acting as a barrier to them completing the form. For example, are you asking for too much information up front? Is the layout of your form confusing? Is it clear what the visitor is going to get by completing the form? (Remember the 'what's in it for me' mindset of most people browsing websites).

In addition to Google Analytics, other tools that can also prove invaluable at this stage include Crazy Egg (a simple and affordable heat mapping tool that allows you to visually understand user behaviour) and Click Tale (a powerful website analytics program that lets you study movies of how people actually interact with your website).

Click Analysis - Crazy Egg

Heatmap Analysis - Click Tale

Step 3 - Implement Changes

Armed with your analysis and identification of possible barriers to conversion (along with any other potential usability issues identified in the analysis and investigation phase), you can then set to work coming up with possible solutions. Examples of solutions could include adjusting the layout of your lead generation form or reducing the number of required fields that need to be completed on the form. If you're finding you're not getting enough visitor traffic to the lead generation form itself then you might consider making improvements to the placement or wording of your existing call to action (assuming you have one - which you definitely should!), or changing the existing text content so that it is more benefit focused and delivers more impact.

Once you've identified the solutions you would like to test, the next step is to create an alternative version of the page/content that you're wanting to test. Essentially you'll have one page that contains the original content (i.e. the 'control'), as well as a new version of the page which incorporates your proposed solutions (i.e. the 'experiment').

Step 4 - Test & Monitor

In order to test the performance of the 'control' page against the 'experiment' page you will need to use split-testing software such as Google Website Optimiser - a free website optimisation tool that makes it possible to test variations of pages/content alongside each other. This is known as 'split testing' or 'A/B testing'. Google Website Optimiser will control and monitor which page is displayed to each visitor to your website. It will also record which page delivered the most conversions (leads/sales/newsletter sign-ups) and will continue to do so until a clear winner is identified. How long your experiment will run for depends on the amount of traffic your page receives, the complexity of your experiment, and the difference in conversion rates for your different page combinations - less traffic, more complexity, and very similar conversion rates will contribute to a longer experiment time frame.

Using Google Website Optimiser and the results it provides from the testing phase you will have all of the necessary information to help you determine whether your solutions/changes have had the desired effect of delivering more conversions. For example, if your 'experiment' (new page) outperformed your 'control' (original page) you can take steps to update the website to reflect the improvements revealed from your testing process. Once updated you should continue to monitor the performance of your new page vs the benchmarks you originally established in the first stage of the CRO process, and if you're extra keen you can start the whole process all over again in an effort to achieve even greater conversion performance gains.

If you'd like to know more about the Conversion Rate Optimisation process and how you can take steps to improving the conversion rate of your website, please feel welcome to get in touch.

Tourism New Zealand Launches New Website

mark@apexinternet.co.nz (Mark Vassiliou) — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 14:46:29 +1200

Late last month Tourism New Zealand launched its new travel website - www.newzealand.com. The site is designed as a one stop shop where potential visitors to New Zealand can research activities and experiences, update and add content, and read articles contributed by locally based travel/tourism related companies and travellers alike. Furthermore, by using the website visitors can explore New Zealand and interact directly with tourism operators in order to create and book their own unique New Zealand experience.

For tourism operators and businesses involved in New Zealand’s tourism industry one of the website’s most significant new features is the 'explore' function which enables New Zealand travel operators to provide their own content and travel/tourism deals to the website along with links back to their own websites. All articles submitted are ranked and displayed based on the ‘richness’ of their content (e.g. use of images and videos) and feedback from other consumers. By taking this approach Tourism New Zealand hope to encourage businesses to provide high quality articles that are inspirational and relevant to potential travellers.

According to Tourism New Zealand the benefits of businesses actively participating in the website were made clear during an initial pilot phase which saw businesses that contributed at least one article being 58 times more likely to be contacted by a customer than those that had not submitted an article on the site. In addition, businesses that loaded at least one deal on the site were four times more likely to be contacted by a customer, three times more likely to have their pages shared with a friend and 1.5 times more likely to receive comments or questions on one of their articles or listings.

For the 2011 year so far visitor traffic to www.newzealand.com has been tracking about 60% above a year ago at 1.2M unique visits, and is providing businesses with approximately 150k referrals per month.

How can your business benefit from registering and contributing to newzealand.com?

You’ll have an opportunity to grow your business by being better able to connect to the people interested in visiting your region or experiencing your services
By using an extended business listing you’ll able to provide more information and you’ll also be able to take a booking directly via the website with no commission
You’ll be able to add special deals and offers related to your content and your business
You’ll be able to contribute content that you know potential travellers will be interested in
It’s free to register and it’s open to all tourism/travel businesses (regardless of size or location in New Zealand)

How can we help you increase your exposure on newzealand.com?

If you’re interested in participating and taking advantage of the many benefits outlined above, we can arrange to set up your free listing on your behalf, plus for a small fee we can also arrange to provide professionally prepared articles about your business and what you can offer potential travellers to New Zealand. Contact us today to find out more.