The take out of this blog is: don’t forget to consider ‘traditional’ media when planning your website promotion campaigns.

If you want your website to deliver revenue into your business then it must attract increasing numbers of quality traffic, i.e. visitors (quality visitors are those who are more likely to do something positive when they land on one of your pages: but something, sign up for something, download or watch something or contact you via email or phone).

Attracting quality traffic can be done, of course, via many different channels, some of them online (e.g. Google AdWords and other forms of online advertising) and some of them offline. Getting the most effective and cost-efficient balance between online and offline marketing channels is a challenge that all businesses face.

Here are two examples of using ‘traditional’ advertising, in this case posters on the London Underground to promote online-only brands (i.e. they do not have physical shops or retail premises).

The first example (you can see why this captured my interest when travelling on the Northern Line) isa poster for the men and women’s clothing brand Figleaves.com.

The second poster is for the giant web hosting, domain name registration and website builder GoDaddy.com

.

The purpose of both these posters is a) to build brand recognition and b) to drive traffic directly to a website.

So, take note: using ‘traditional’ media can work very effectively to both build your brand and drive traffic to your web pages.

Jeremy Nelson-Smith, Internet Marketing Expert.

New set of Social Reports released by Google.

In terms of building visibility and authority on the Web, which is what largely determines your search rankings, the value of what I call online PR and within that social media is growing by the day.

Up to now it’s been difficult to measure the effect of social media engagement through Google Analytics but now Google have just announced a new set of reports that will show you which social channels actually help to drive visitors to your site and which are directly or indirectly influential in achieving your goal conversions.

Here’s the Google Analytics Blog announcement about these now essential reports:

‘Measuring the value of social media has been a challenge for marketers. And with good reason: it’s hard to understand exactly what is happening in an environment where activity occurs both on and off your website. Since social media is often an upper funnel player in a shopper’s journey, it’s not always easy to determine which social channels actually drive value for your business and which tactics are most effective.

• Identify the full value of traffic coming from social sites and measure how they lead to direct conversions or assist in future conversions
• Understand social activities happening both on and off of your site to help you optimize user engagement and increase social key performance indicators (KPIs)
• Make better, more efficient data-driven decisions in your social media marketing programs

The Social reports allow you to analyze all of this information together and see a more complete picture of social impact than often used today.’

And here’s a sample of the new Overview Report that shows a snapshot of Social Value:

Here’s a salutary lesson for anyone out there considering buying an Apple iMac or MacBook Pro.

Beautiful to look at? Yes.

Lovely to use? Sure.

Reliable? Absolutely not!

In the last two months my 27″ iMac has needed a new screen (in warranty fortunately) and my two year old MacBook Pro has needed a new battery (£100) and now a new hard drive (£150).

So if you’re in Apple buying mode get yourself an extended warranty; expensive but probably worth it in the end. Also probably worth doing for an iPad as well.

Jeremy Nelson-Smith, Internet Marketing Expert.

www.theinternetspecialist.co.uk

Two sets of statistics hit the headlines this week that show just how the U.K.’s love affair with the Internet and World Wide Web continues.

10 millionth .uk domain name registered: firstly Nominet announced that the 10 millionth .uk. domain name has just been registered. That compares with around 4.5 million small businesses in the U.K.

UK has biggest G20 Internet economy: secondly Boston Consulting Group released data showing that amongst the G20 group of countries the U.K. has the biggest Internet economy, contributing to 8.3% of the U.K. Total. BCG estimates our Internet economy is worth £121 billion, that’s £2000+ per person.

That in itself is pretty staggering, but when you consider that it’s now bigger than the healthcare, education and construction sectors, then things really do start to fall into perspective in terms of just how important the Internet has become to businesses.

And what’s more this growth is only going one way and that’s up: predictions are that it will continue to expand at a rate of 11% per year for the next four years, reaching a total value of £221bn by 2016. That compares with projected growth rates of 5.4% in the US and 6.9% in China.

BCG research shows that some 13.5% of all retail purchases were done over the Internet in 2010 and this is projected to rise to 23% by 2016.

So, if your business is not already geared up to take advantage of what’s happening then you need to do something and do it fast.

Thanks for reading.

Jeremy Nelson-Smith, Internet Marketing Expert

www.theinternetspecialist.co.uk

On Feb 27th on Inside Search, its official search blog, Google announced: “Link evaluation. We often use characteristics of links to help us figure out the topic of a linked page. We have changed the way in which we evaluate links; in particular, we are turning off a method of link analysis that we used for several years. We often rearchitect or turn off parts of our scoring in order to keep our system maintainable, clean and understandable”.

This snippet was directly beneath, and no doubt related to this one: “Panda update. This launch refreshes data in the Panda system, making it more accurate and more sensitive to recent changes on the web”.

The words ‘We have changed the way in which we evaluate links; in particular, we are turning off a method of link analysis that we used for several years’ are potentially extremely significant to anyone engaged in the often lengthy, frequently tedious, mostly frustrating but always mega-important (as I always tell my clients) task of building a portfolio of quality backlinks into key web pages.

Quite what Google’s changes mean in terms of how your web pages will rank in natural search results remains to be seen, since the only people privvy to the details are secreted deep inside Google.

So, I recommend you keep a close eye on your rankings for your primary (i.e. most important keywords). If you see an immediate drop in some rankings don’t panic, this may well be temporary. However, if your most important rankings do drop and don’t recover, then a detailed look at your backlink numbers and quality will be in order.

By the way, if you’re fairly unfamiliar with this backlink business and how it affects search rankings then as a rule of thumb you should be spending 20% of your SEO effort on on-site SEO, e.g keywords on pages, and the remaining 80% on off-site SEO, e.g. building a portfolio of quality backlinks from relevant, authoritative web pages and other sources out there on the Web. That’s how important it is these days.

Wishing you every success with your link building efforts.

Jeremy Nelson-Smith

Internet Marketing Consultant. www.theinternetspecialist.co.uk

This blog was prompted by an article by Fred Attewill in the Metro free newspaper that many Londoners grab on their way down the Tube every day.

I quote “Tweeters admit only 36 per cent of the tweets they receive are of any interest, about 25 per cent are actively disliked and the rest are instantly forgotten. That means 130 million messages a day sent out on Twitter are simply not worth reading”.

I can’t speak for the veracity of Mr Attewill’s research but by any account those are pretty staggering numbers. Basically it means that tweeters are flooding the online world with a load of junk that hardly anybody is interested in. If you use Twitter you may agree (I do). Personally I think this applies as much to business-to-business tweeting as it does to ‘proper’ social tweeting.

The main point of this post is to encourage you (in your business tweeting particularly) to:

a) Only spend some of your precious work time tweeting if you know that your target audience actually wants to receive your tweets (you can ask them via an email or web page poll). You may be surprised (pleasantly or otherwise) at the answers you get. If you carry on tweeting regardless you may be spending a lot of time that you could be devoting to other more productive internet marketing activities (I know some companies that do this, in the mistaken belief that they are going to drive web traffic, build their online customer base etc.).

b) Only tweet when you have something genuinely interesting and worthwhile to say. Your followers will thank you I can guarantee it and you’ll keep them following you for longer.

c) Don’t use your tweets to sell, sell, sell; keep them informative and relevant to what your audience wants to know about and your sales or new business enquiries will benefit.

Can using Twitter as part of your internet marketing mix work? Yes, of course it can, but like everything else you are (or maybe should be doing: Facebook anyone?) it has to address the needs of the most important people of all, i.e. your existing and prospective customers.

So keep your tweets customer-focused and highly topical and relevant!

Thanks for reading as always.

Jeremy

A short article in the February 16th Metro that mentions recent survey data from Cisco Systems, the computer networking company, should be a clear indication to both internet marketing consultants and business owners (who depend more on internet marketing to drive sales), that the world of mobile is one that must seriously be addressed in terms of ensuring that the demands of consumers are met.

According to Cisco mobile devices will outnumber the world’s population in just four years; by 2016 there will be more than 10 billion devices that connect to the internet.

About 90 per ent of mobile data will be viewed via smartphones, laptops and portable gadgets Cisco say. The computer networking giant predicts that mobile data traffic will grow by almost 80 percent a year.

All of this has major implications for anyone who is involved in marketing products and services on the internet.

Asking how best to connect and service the requirements of both existing and potential customers who use smartphones is one that should be uppermost in the minds of business owners and their advisors right now.

Thanks for reading.

Jeremy Nelson-Smith, Internet Marketing Consultant.

www.theinternetspecialist.co.uk

It never ceases to amaze me how many businesses do not take the time to set even the simplest of objectives for their website.

Many businesses actually develop a strategy, even a complicated one, without having any clear idea of what objective(s) the strategy is designed to achieve. I was always taught that setting objectives comes before developing a strategy!

Objectives do not have to be complicated. One side of A4 or less will suffice to put them down, so they can be referred to, progress measured, amendments made.

So, if you really, really want your website to maximise its ROI (return on investment) I heartily recommend you:

1. Set SMART* lead generation objectives.

It’s essential to set SMART* lead generation objectives so that you can determine what does and doesn’t work. Set specific targets which you can track and measure.

Check your progress regularly, at least once a month (more often for some activities like new Google AdWords campaigns).

If you don’t spend time setting your objectives, how will you ever know how successful (or not) your lead generation programme has been and what ROI it has delivered? Just do it!

(*SMART = Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-limited)

Wishing you every success with your business!

Jeremy

Setting objectives is just one of the many tips to be found in my free booklet ‘How to Generate More Revenue from Your Website – Guaranteed!’. Visit my Home page to get your copy!

Internet Marketing Consultant London Blog

New cookie regulations came into force in May 2011. Website owners have until May 2012 to comply. So, if you’re a website owner you need to a) be aware of the regulations and b) ensure you comply with them by May 2012.

These regulations are designed to ensure that visitors to websites are made aware of how the site uses cookies and that their consent is obtained for the use of certain types of cookie.

So, what are cookies? Most of you reading this will know what cookies are but for those of you that don’t here’s the definition from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO):

A cookie is a small file, typically of letters and numbers, downloaded on to a device when the user accesses certain websites. Cookies allow a website to recognise a user’s device. (More info on cookies at  http://www.allaboutcookies.org)

The regulations are complex and by no means completely clear, which is why the Information Commissioner, Christopher Graham issued his ‘Half-term Report’ into how compliance with the regulations is going (or not), on 13 December. You can download a PDF copy of this from http://www.ico.gov.uk/news/blog/2011/half-term-report-on-cookies-compliance.aspx. Just click on the link in the fourth paragraph.

I strongly recommend that you read the document and talk to your web designer, web master or web/internet marketing consultant to ensure you comply with the law. If you don’t have any of these and want clarification about how the rules might affect you then please email me at jns@theinternetspecialist.co.uk.

The good news is that for many businesses, particularly those using cookies mainly to collect anonymous website traffic data (through Google Analytics for example), it is not going to be too difficult or expensive to comply. But comply you must!

Thanks for reading.

Jeremy

Internet Marketing Consultant London Blog: