What is One Channel?

The new One Channel design has been described by Google as turning “a video-based site into a channel-based site, where subscriptions rule”. So what’s new?

You can now add a large banner -dubbed Channel Art- to the top of your layout to act as your visual identity. The new banner is also responsive meaning your content will look good on all devices. Scaling accordingly from TV to tablets, you now have peace of mind that all your traffic sources benefit from your content in the same way.

Another new feature is the furthered ability to create and organise bespoke playlists to cater to your audience’s needs. Unlike before, you can now add these playlists to customisable sections on your channels home page, giving you more control on what your viewers see when they land on your page.

Unsubscribed Trailer

The most exciting new addition to the design is the welcome trailer. Effectively this will be the main featured video on your channel that auto- plays when non- subscribers land on your page.

The design of a YouTube channel has always been used to reinforce branding but the new trailer function gives you the ability to introduce your brand and engage non-subscribers in a way that hasn’t been available before.

The new component will hopefully increase the number of your viewership by showing them the value of hitting the ‘subscribe’ button.

Top Tips

Creating a trailer can be a daunting task. Below are a few tips to make the process a bit easier and to help you optimise your trailer for maximum effect.

It isn’t a sales pitch

The easiest way to put off non-subscribers from your channel is by creating a sales pitch. Make sure your content is geared towards showing the benefits of subscribing to your channel, not the benefits of purchasing your products or services.  People visit video platforms for advice, entertainment and information not for advertisements.  Your other videos – not the trailer- should be geared more at converting viewers to customers.

Keep it short

If you cannot sum your channel up in 30 seconds to a minute you need to rethink your edit. People like digestible chunks of video not long running features. The trailer is there to welcome someone to a channel not describe every aspect of your brand.

Keep it short and keep it sweet.

Calls to Action

Calls to Actions (CTA) should be used on most of your YouTube videos but should be specifically used on your channel trailer. This is as the trailer is probably the only video where the sole goal is to convert viewers to subscribers. Make sure you insert annotations and spotlights to encourage viewers to be part of your subscribership.

Adding InVideo Programming to your videos will also let you feature interactive tiles that lead both to your channel (if being watched off channel) and feature a video of your choice.

Go HD or go home

Your trailer should be recorded in HD (high definition) in either 1080p or 720p. With most smartphones now having the ability to display and record in HD there is no excuse to go SD (standard definition).

Filming in HD also gives you a 16:9 ratio opposed to SD that gives you a 4:3 ratio, giving a more cinematic look as seen below:

The basics

You have finished creating your trailer and you’ve done a good job. Like many other channels do not fall at the last hurdle by having your text truncated. There is something frustrating about a tittle or description that has been cut o…

• Your descriptions should be 144 characters in length.
• Titles should be 45 characters in length.

If you want add the YouTube One Channel Design to your channel click here.

5 Best brand trailers

Here are a few brands that have decided to take the early switch to the YouTube Once Channel design and have set the benchmark on how a trailer should be done.

Further reading

12 Valuable Tips for Video SEO Beginners

Building a Video SEO Strategy

Using YouTube to Build Your Brand, Authority and Business

There are thousands of bloggers in the world wide web stratosphere. Excitedly chatting away about their passions and interests, each blogger has a story to share with potential and loyal readers. Foody bloggers, beauty bloggers and gaming bloggers are just a few of the cliques that have taken over the blogging platforms, making consumer reviews the forefront of product recommendations and suggestions.

It is an obvious pathway, that as a blogger who spends hours of their day writing content for others, that perhaps they want to benefit someway, somehow. By benefiting, I mean gaining something other than likes, shares and followers, although they are extremely rewarding. I am of course talking about cold, hard cash. Yet, benefiting has become a huge faux pas within the Internet world and with every Google update comes the downfall of someone who is knowingly, or innocently unknowingly, cheating the system.

Here’s my Vote!

Linking from your blog to another blog or brand is meant to be a thumbs up in their direction. It is supposed to be entirely trustworthy and a way of directing your traffic to their site because you wholeheartedly think they deserve it. It is not supposed to be because you have been paid off by someone desperate for a link from your website, for the purpose of gaining traffic and increasing domain authority.

Just in case you are new to the jargon, each website has a domain authority which in simple terms is a calculation of a websites credibility on the Internet based on its content, frequency of content and links pointing to the site.  For example, a website of great credibility online such as BBC News, Facebook or The Guardian Online, have domain authority’s reaching nearly 100 on a 100% scale. If a brand was able to somehow have the Guardian mention their website with a link to their homepage, the brand’s domain authority would be given ‘juice’ so to speak and would be significantly increased. For a fashion brand for example, gaining links from fashion bloggers is a great way to increase their awareness, build up referring traffic and develop a web of links that will boost their domain authority. From the perspective of the blogger however, selling such links to a company in exchange for a mention manipulates Pagerank and reduces the credibility of referring links.

Google only gets Smarter

This sort of process is highly frowned upon by Google and with each update they launch, more and more companies are being punished for buying their links rather than earning them. It seems that soon, the blogs that are selling these links will also come under fire. So how does Google know?

Google is all seeing, all knowing and is even cleverer than you might give it credit for. If you are mentioning that you have been sponsored or paid to write a piece of content and add a link from a company who has contacted you, Google reads the ‘sponsored’ notice, reads the link and comes to conclusions.

Learn by Interflora’s Mistakes

You might have heard about Interfloras recent downfall at the hands of their link building strategy. Sending out bouquets to bloggers as gifts and reaping the domain authority rewards by hundreds of links pointing towards the Interflora website, it was only time that stood in the way of Google cottoning on. Whilst Google heavily punished Interflora by removing them from the search engines and submitting Interflora to a complete nosedive in traffic overnight, it is only a matter of time before they begin to punish those who allow brands to cheat.

As I mentioned before, bloggers are hoping to benefit from their hard work and are jumping on the sponsored post train as an easy route to a little pay off. With some bloggers sending out word documents to brands containing their ‘fees’ for writing posts, extra fees for more than one link and other fees to create trend boards and wishlist posts, it begs the question of whether they are aware they are diving into deep water.

Selling Advertising Space

Some bloggers mention the fact that they have advertising spots on their sites, charging newer or less popular bloggers upwards of £5 to have a 200x200px advert on the sidebar of their blog. Rather than linking to the blogs they love and read loyally, these bloggers are instead cashing in on advertising space and charging bloggers and brands to appear on their pages. This is allowing blogs and brands to gain untrustworthy links and is again against Google’s terms and conditions. Especially as some blogs openly label their advertisements as ‘Sponsors’, they are almost sending out a beacon to Google to flag their page. Here is one example from an anonymous blogger who sells their advertising packages at a price.

Google wrote about this recently in a clear reminder to all:

“The consequences for a linkselling site start with losing trust in Google’s search results, as well as reduction of the site’s visible PageRank in the Google Toolbar. The consequences can also include lower rankings for that site in Google’s search results.”

You are allowed to charge for advertisers as long as you make the links no-follow.

What can bloggers do to stay safe in shark infested waters?

1. Be aware that charging openly for links on your website is against Google’s terms and conditions. Writing ‘Sponsored Posts’ at the end of your post to convey to your readers that you were paid or gifted to write it, will no longer give you a get out of jail free card. It instead shows Google that you charge for links and are enabling brands to buy you. The same goes for mentioning that you are a ‘Sponsor friendly Blogger’. If you have been paid to write content, make the link back to the brand a no follow link so that it will not manipulate Pagerank.

2. As above, do not advertise the fact that you charge for advertising spots. If people have paid to be on your sidebar, labeling them as sponsors will send out a warning flag to Google. At the end of the day, you should not be giving them fake votes for money, in order to raise their page rank. Instead, why not link to those blogs or companies for free if you are a loyal reader or fan, or instead make the links no-follow, to enable the websites to gain traffic without manipulating the page ranking system. The no follow attribute is easy to implement into all of your links after the a href attribute. For example <a href=”Blog Website Address” rel=nofollow”> Blog Name</a>. This tells Google not to count the link as a vote for the website when it calculates Pagerank and therefore you will not be bypassing Google’s terms.

Mainly, just be aware that you should not sell links for rewards and Google is cracking down on this much sooner than you think. The last thing you want is your hard work to drop off the search engines because you were not aware of the terms. If you are working on the Internet, it helps to know the rules of the game.

• Img1 src = theinspirationroom.com
• Img2 src = playjazzloud.blogspot.co.uk
• Img3 src = internetmarketingat16.com
• Img4 src = koozai.com
• Img5 src = Anonymous Blog Screenshot
• Img6 src = Anonymous Blog Advertisement Screenshot

Whether they are on the go and interacting on their mobile devices or sat at home on a PC, we have seen the likes of Google Plus, Facebook and now Pinterest introduce new and improved platforms for their users.

However, it is not just the consumer who can benefit from this. Businesses now have the opportunity to produce creative and engaging visual content to suit their target audience and their needs. This is particularly the case on more visual-based platforms such as Pinterest, who have now launched an analytics channel for verified businesses on their platform.

How do I verify my Pinterest business account?

This is a frequently asked question by many of our clients and the answer is simple (and slightly geeky). You can either download the HTML verification file and upload it to your server or you can simply verify it with a line of code that needs to be added to thesection of your website and placed within the Meta data.

Once you have done this and saved it onto your site – by either method – you will be instructed to click “Verify” on your Pinterest page, resulting in a small tick appearing next to your website address, offering validity to your business account.

Businesses on Pinterest

From here you are then able to begin your Pinterest social strategy. Start by following influential people to your niche, uploading engaging images that include comments and links to the relevant pages for the image. But more importantly, you can now begin tracking data to see how effective your pins are with your target audience.

After you have been engaging on the account for around a month (we say a month minimum so that you are able to track a reasonable amount of data) simply click on the drop down option in the right hand corner and you will see the option for Analytics.

When arriving on the Analytics dashboards you are given the option to set the date range and select from ‘Site Metrics’, ‘Most Recent’, ‘Most Re-pinned’ and ‘Most Clicked’.
Similar to Facebook Insight, you are also able to export this data into a CSV file so that you can keep a history of your Pinterest data.

Pins vs. Pinners

This data is taken from the Return on Digital Pinterest account over February. We can see the number of pins we have uploaded are in blue and the number of people who have pinned our posts are in orange. We can also compare how many posts we are repining (blue) and how many people have repined out posts (orange).

Impressions vs. Reach

The next section of the analytics is probably the most important for businesses, as this is the data that shows you the impressions and reach of your posts. This is particularly important as it allows you to review the content that is being posted and establish what is working with your target audience.

Clicks vs. Visitors

Below this is another important factor, which is the number of people who have clicked through to your website or visited your site through the images posted. This allows you to see who is interested in your business and its product or service.

Like any other social measurement tool, it is important to review the data and understand what your target audience wants/needs from your brand on a social channel.

For some people it’s a cute animal picture for others it’s a helpful infographic. However it is now, more than ever, important for businesses to understand what will work with their target audience in order to make the most of their social media marketing.

101’d
When a site is not found in the top 10 pages / 100 positions of Google search results.

301 Redirect
This code tells the Google bots that a page has been permanently moved to another address.

404’s
A code that indicates a webpage cannot be found and a  404 page (if one exists) will be displayed instead.

Algorithms
The (top secret) formula a search engine used to work out what results should be displayed. Similar to Willy Wonka’s everlasting gob stopper recipe, kind of.

Anchor Text
The text on a page that will link through to the relevant site.

Backlink
A link on a specific external site which links back to your website. Used by Google as a vote of confidence when assessing a site’s authority.

Image Source

Black Hat
Methods used to get a site ranking that are firmly against Google’s guidelines and can result in a penalty or penalisation if caught.

Boom!
An expression shouted out aloud when an SEO’er has achieved a positive result.

CMS = Content Management System
The system used to amend any content on a website. These come in a variety of out-of-the-box to bespoke versions and from the simple-to-use to the impossible.

CRO = Conversion Rate Optimisation
A process of implementing various changes onsite to improve the number of conversions per number of visits.

EMD = Exact Match Domain
A method used to gain higher ranking positions for specific keywords. Google’s algorithm is becoming increasingly aware of these EMD’s and weakening their influence.

FTP = File Transfer Protocol
You will often hear online marketers request “FTP Access” when the developers are being particularly difficult.

GWMT= Google Webmaster Tools
A free-of-charge web service used by webmasters and SEO’ers to view errors and information that Google associates with a specific website.

Guru
A term no professional online marketer should place after their area of expertise.

Indexed
When the pages of a site have been logged and displayed within Google’s search results.

Keyword Density
Worked out by the total number of keywords in an article divided by the number of times the keyword is used in the article. This gives an idea of whether a page has been “keyword stuffed”.

Keyword Stuffing
An old-school method where as many instances of one keyword is stuffed into the page content to make that page rank highly for that keyword.

Image Source

Long Tail Keyword
A specific search phrase with intent usually made up of several words.

Matt Cutts
The man behind the Google Algorithm team striking fear into SEO’ers worldwide. Behind the playful smile and Lego man hair is a Do No Evil genius.

META Data
Information placed in the code to appear in the search engine results letting Google and your users know what a page is all about.

Image Source

Negative SEO
The online equivalent of putting a “Kick Me” sign on the back of your competitor. Something frowned upon and not offered by most discerning agencies.

PPC  = Pay Per Click 
Also known as “Paid Search” these are the adverts which appear at the top and right hand side of Google search results charging the advertiser every time the ad is clicked.

SEO = Search Engine Optimisation
The process of increasing the number of visits and rankings for a website by using various onsite and offsite activities.

Those in digital agencies tend to say “SEO” forgetting that most people don’t know what it means. Let’s also not forget that SEO can also has other ‘common’ uses including:

• Synchronous Equatorial Orbiter
• Sociedad Española de Ornitología (Spanish Bird Society)
• Survivability Enhancement Options
• Special Equipment Operator

SERPs = Search Engine Results Pages

UX = User Experience

SEO Text Speak (FTW!)

Any SEO’er with a phone and a sense of humour will  (probably) regularly use the following text speak:

LOLcano Source

YOLO      You Only Link Once

LOL         Lots of Links

OMG       Oh My Google

ROFL      Rolling On The Floor Linking

LMAO     Linking My Arse Off

FTW        For The Web

TBH        Too Black Hat

BRB         Build Relevant Backlinks

BTW       By The Way-backtime Machine

ASL         Always Share LOLcano

Feel free to share your favourite abbreviations, terminology or SEO text speak in the comments section below.

There are plenty of buzz words within the online marketing industry – The most prolific of which is the term ‘content marketing’. It may sound like a no brainer for effective marketing, so why does it fail?

All too often, businesses create a great piece of content that is beautifully designed, interesting and informative, but it is not made with any clear aims or objectives in mind. When this is the case, you can’t expect sales, even if it’s a fancy infographic you’ve produced. Similarly, you’re not going to gain social shares if you’re primary campaign is offline.

It’s about finding the appropriate content, for your relevant target audience, and setting yourself a goal you want to achieve upfront.  Failing to do this is a waste of time and, perhaps more importantly, money.

Head of Digital Marketing, Justin Butcher explains the top reasons why content can fail and how to go about create appropriate engaging content for your audience. In this 30 minute lunchtime webinar we will cover:

1) The top reasons why content marketing fails

2) How to create great content that your audience wants to read and share

3) The best strategy to get outstanding results and a ROI on your marketing activity

Join us FREE on Thursday 28th  March  1.00 pm – 1.30 pm

To register for this event:  Click Here

In the meantime if you would like to discuss how content marketing can help your business  you can speak to a member of the business team on 0845 86 22 122.

• Targeted areas
  Newsfeeds will be introducing specific areas to segment what users see. This will include a Music section, a Games section and a Following section – a list of who you have subscribed to. Facebook will note which areas you are viewing the most, and make these more prominent in your navigation. It’s interesting that there was no mention of Facebook Graph Search here, as I personally think this new navigation will be a strong indicator for the tool. Give someone a music section and they are likely to fill it in, therefore adding more personal data, valuable to advertisers.
• Larger images
  Facebook have noted the increase in imagery on timelines over the past 2 years, and put a great emphasis on rich content as a result. With Pinterest, Instagram and Vine making their mark in the social arena, it looks like Facebook want a slice of the action.
• Consistent navigation and structure
  Although once, it might have been a different experience viewing Facebook on your mobile than on your PC, now whichever platform you are viewing the social network on, it will be uniform. It will appear the same and all tools and features will also be the same.

So what can businesses do with this new information?

Get Visual

Facebook have noted that their audience is using the social network more times a day, but for shorter periods of time. Long text-based status updates run the risk of becoming lost. For business, this means you need to tell your story in a more visual manner. Make sure imagery on your website is up to scratch if you’re planning on driving traffic in this direction and you might want to learn how to use Photoshop too. Screens are becoming clearer as each smartphone is launched. Blurry photography and shoddy image editing isn’t going to cut it.For advertisers, an emphasis on the visual could mean mean more prominent banners and advertisements on your target audience’s timeline so if you’ve not thought about Facebook advertising until now, why not give it a test run when the changes have rolled out to everyone.One interesting addition to the newsfeed is the appearance of shared content. If a number of your Facebook friends share a video, for example, instead of this appearing as multiple updates, these will be aggregated and the video will take on an enlarged format on the timeline – with the profile picture of those that shared it alongside – not all that dissimilar to a +1 on Google Plus. It effectively lets you know what content is deemed good by your community. So businesses, when you’re thinking about what you’re posting, ask yourself:

Is this shareable?

Re-evaluate your target audience

Is your audience really going to respond to more visuals? If not, it’s time to invest your efforts elsewhere. It might sound drastic to jump ship, especially when Facebook can really bring in a lot of money for businesses - and it can. But, if you have plenty of likes, but not much interaction, after the new changes, it’s unlikely that your updates will appear in your audience’s newsfeed. With users given additional ways to tailor what they see, unless they specify that they want to hear from your business and interact with your business page on a regular basis, your statuses will become lost, and engagement, social referral traffic and social conversions are going to drop. Allow me to go off-topic for a second. There have been a number of reports in the past fortnight that business pages are reaching less of their audience. Promoted posts are one such way to can guarantee that more people are reached, but at a cost. Per post.

Facebook hit back at any accusations that their newsfeed changes were just to make an extra buck, and stated that overall, engagement on posts from those with more than 10,000 followers had increased 34% year on year. Although this is fantastic news for big brands (who would arguably already have budget for promoted posts and Facebook advertising anyway) for small business trying to reach out to a larger audience, this poses a problem. And remember, there are approximately 5 million of these in the UK, a number that can’t be ignored. If they can’t reach a large audience on Facebook, it’s safe to say they will find it elsewhere (Google+ anyone?)

Optimise for mobile

If you haven’t already considered your mobile audience, now is the time to do so.  Going visual is essentially going mobile. Many assume that their audience are viewing content as when it is created: but most business content is written on a large-screened desktop computer at the office when Facebook users are more likely to be on a tablet or mobile. I recently wrote a  post on how businesses can adapt their Twitter strategy for mobile and many of the principles are the same for Facebook. Make sure you think to yourself: how would this look on a mobile before posting anything to Facebook, and if you’re posting to links or to your website, ensure they look good too.

Conclusion

Mark Zuckerberg introduced the press event by explaining how he wanted Facebook to be the very best personalised newspaper for each individual user. Well, my background is in journalism and I know that to feature in a newspaper you’ve either got to be newsworthy (i.e relevant to your target audience) or pay to advertise. It looks like Facebook are going to follow a similar pattern and businesses should take note.

You can see what the newsfeed changes will look like and join the waiting list here.

If you’d like to discuss your options for social media marketing, get in touch and we’d love to help.

So what is Vine?

Vine is a new Twitter-owned app which lets you record short videos with your phone and post them to Facebook, Twitter or your Vine profile. As is the case with good ol’ fashioned tweeting, the aim of the game here is brevity – you can only record video for up to 6 seconds. These can be in the form of continuously shot clips or stop-motion videos made up of still images. Think of the latter as a high quality GIF with sound.

The beauty of Vine lies in its accessibility and ease of use – just as Instagram made it a doddle to create and share photos, Vine lets even the most novice of users shoot video with ease. To start recording, tap the screen. To pause, take your finger off the screen. Aaaand….that’s it. Vine then stitches your video together, allowing you to share at will.

Currently, Vine is only available on Apple devices – iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. Non-Apple users desperate to try out the app need not panic though, as Twitter is “working now to bring it to other platforms”.

Twitter thinks the 6 second time limit will inspire creativity. Are they right? Well it’s still early days and Vine users (Viners?) are still figuring out how to use it effectively, but there’s certainly a lot of potential for brands. Below are four ways in which brands can use Vine and some early examples of it ‘being done right’.

Encouraging User Created Content

As a business utilising social media, it doesn’t get much better than seeing someone advocate your product or service and shouting about it online. Fashion retailer ASOS does this well on Instagram and American confectioner Reese’s posts their fans’ recipes on Facebook. As for Vine, Cadbury seem to be having fun with it and have been encouraging their followers to get involved:

Just mucking about with #Vine and some #Cadbury #EggNSpoon – you can do better right? vine.co/v/bgnUKFFUuvp

— Cadbury UK (@CadburyUK) February 24, 2013

‘How To’ Videos

How To tutorials make great content, providing they’re unique and interesting. Pinterest for instance is full of arts & crafts tutorials and interior design tips. Similarly, Vine vids can offer quickfire step-by-step guides relating to any industry or hobby. I was planning on showing you a typical Vine ‘how to’ clip but came across this not-so-helpful effort by artist Jhonen Vasquez, which I found amusing nonetheless:

A tutorial on how I created a recent squee image. vine.co/v/bvDzKvgaLtQ

— Jhonen Vasquez (@JhonenV) February 12, 2013

Product Promotions

Vine will allow marketers to really get creative with their new product promotions. American fashion retailer Nordstrom has experimented with this nifty vine-within-a-vine effort to promote some new Puma footwear. Vineception, anyone?

#VineonVine by #Nordstrom social. #Puma #Fashion vine.co/v/bnzmw09l2hP

— Nordstrom (@Nordstrom) February 4, 2013

Competitions

Always a consumer favourite, competitions are perfect for encouraging engagement on social networks. Using Vine, brands will have to try to explain what the competition is, how to enter, and what can be won, all in just 6 seconds. It sounds difficult but I think Confused.com has managed it quite well:

Win £250 in our pet #competition by sharing your #petvine vine.co/v/bn2ALQZ3qhi

— Confused.com (@Confused_com) February 8, 2013

Vine’s Potential

By now it’s perhaps common knowledge that visual content is the most popular type of post on social media. According to Hubspot, photos on Facebook get 53% more likes than the average post. Taking this trend into account, Vine could well be the next big thing in social media marketing, even on the traditionally text-y Twitter. It offers a distinct blend of image and video, giving you the instant content hit of the former and the creative options of the latter.

Personally, I can’t wait to see what brands come up with on Vine in the near future. After all, the app is only one month old, yet we’ve already seen a slew of clever ideas. Feel free to share your favourite Vines (by brands or individuals) in the comments section below – I’d love to see them!

Often we notice trends developing over time and we can implement optimising techniques in conjunction with these trends however with a ‘one-off’ event it is more important to notice the trends early as the campaigns may only be running for a short period of time.

Recently we provided a successful PPC advertising campaign for a ‘one-off’ weekend event in London. After extensive research we decided to split the budget between campaigns in the ‘search’ and ‘display’ networks (including a remarketing campaign). The campaigns began 30 days before the event so we had to hit the ground running! With a limited amount of time available here are 5 tips to make sure the client receives a good return on their management fee:

1) Preparation is key – We are fortunate to have a wealth of knowledge when it comes to providing PPC Campaigns for ‘one-off’ events however each business has its own personality so full preparation is essential. Researching your project, thinking about your target audience and what action you would like your audience to perform can help decide what type of campaigns are most suitable. For optimising purposes, it is a great idea to create a Google Analytics account and to apply both conversion and remarketing tracking tags to the relevant website before any campaigns are activated.

2) The importance of display advertising – Often advertisers prefer to focus on the search network, dismissing the display network as it is considered to be more useful as a branding exercise. However we have found ads appearing in the display network have the potential to receive a higher volume of conversions and at a lower ‘cost per conversion’ than search network ads when advertising ‘one-off’ events! Naturally results will vary depending on the type of event however using adverts on closely themed websites in the display network can be beneficial in the lead up to an event. To make the most out of display network campaigns it is beneficial to:

• Use a wide variety of text, image and if possible video ads as you can always pause low converting ads at a later date
• Use a strong call to action in the ads so your audience know what action you want them to perform and include the date and time of the event to capture the attention of the audience
• Keep the landing page quality score strong by using a page that is highly relevant to the event and includes a clear option to complete a conversion without clicking off the page
• Use a variety of targeting methods such as closely themed keywords or closely related placements and further refine your target audience by selecting ‘topics’ & ‘interests’ under the display network tab

3) Check your campaigns daily – With a limited amount of time available it is even more important than usual to check your campaigns daily and weed out those low converting placements, keywords, ads and campaigns. If you are on a tight budget remember to check what days and hours the ads receive the strongest results and optimise bids or amend the ad scheduling accordingly. It is also important to note the volume of visits and subsequently the volume of converting traffic tends to increase in the few days prior to the event so it’s a good idea to save a good portion of the budget for this period of time.

4) Use Google Analytics – Google Analytics can be a great way to provide you with up to date data from the moment your campaigns go live. For example, the ‘Matched Search Query’ report in ‘Traffic Sources’ enables you to establish what your audience are searching for immediately and can help with negative keyword ideas from day one!

5) Make those big decisions quickly – You may notice data patterns emerging in the first few days and with a limited amount of time it is vital that big decisions are made quickly. Ask yourself; is there potential to reallocate budget to the strongest performing network, remove under performing campaigns or write a new set of adverts?

Hopefully these tips can help you make the most of your PPC budget when advertising a ‘one-off’ event however if you would like assistance advertising your event, please contact Return on Digital to see how we can help.

Late last week, rumblings appeared on Twitter that Interflora, the major florists, had completely dropped off the face of Google, similar to the J.C. Penney saga in the U.S. a couple of years ago.

The penalty placed upon J.C. Penney was due to their violation of Google’s guidelines, specifically, the purchase of links. After 90 days, the penalty was lifted due to J.C. Penney’s removal of the offending links. Whilst the actions by Google against J.C. Penney seemed to dissuade many against these frowned upon practices, it seems as though those carrying out SEO for Interflora did not heed this warning. Martin MacDonald created a great graph (and an accompanying great post) showing Interflora’s reduced search visibility; I would be underselling it by saying it takes a nose-dive.

What caused the penalty?

Martin also mentions a potential reason for the penalty, paid blogger outreach, in the form of being given exact anchor text and URLs to use. In a nutshell, Interflora are sending free bouquets for influential bloggers to review, and in the process gaining links back to their site. Whilst having people review products is fine as a PR campaign, not setting these links to ‘no follow’ can be seen as ‘buying’ links. Some sites are using seemingly innocuous anchor text, which are ‘probably’ unrequested links back to the site, “Interflora” or “blog” being great examples of this. Others are not so.

Hmm, questionable anchor text choice, maybe not specifically asked for. Let’s see another.

Whilst this type of SEO linking may have been more commonplace when the post was put live on the site, it was after the J.C. Penney fiasco that the alarm bells should have been ringing. Interflora should have noted that this type of activity is no longer tolerated by Google and that the links should be removed.

In fact, looking at Martin’s graph again, we can see that the site was actually originally penalised not long after that last paid-link was put live, taking a massive dip until late last year.

By not cleaning up their link profile fully, they have succumbed to another penalty.

The above are just a couple of examples of a whole host of manipulative techniques. Whilst bloggers may have been given flowers to review for links, looking deeper into the anchor text and sites pointing to the Interflora site reveals it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Site-wide adverts using keyword rich anchor text? Check

Low quality low relevance directory links? Check

Advertorials on news sites have also heavily been used. Whilst those in PR agencies use these on a regular basis, the extent that they have been used by Interflora is a cause for alarm. Anthony Shapely looked into the sites hosting advertorials for Interflora and noted that there is a huge Page Rank drop since the Interflora penalty took place.

Such a massive hit on so many sites that link to Interflora certainly would affect their rankings quite dramatically, however maybe not enough to cause the penalty on its own. The anchor text used on these sites almost certainly plays its part in the penalty.

Having such keyword rich anchor text (never mind such a jarringly written article) stinks of trying to game a system that pretty much dried up in 2011 with the Google penguin update.

Future Penalties?

Whilst searching around Interflora’s backlink profile, something other than their links stuck out to me.

Whilst I know that Google+ is gaining in popularity, come on…really?

Looking into their profile we can see an ‘engaged community’ who are really adding to the conversation.

Whilst we all know that there are issues with fake accounts on Twitter and Facebook, adding so many to a company account surely will end in tears, especially as it’s Google’s own social network, and one that is being integrated into their search engine (a search engine which has already penalised Interflora. Twice.)

Future proofing

To put it bluntly, Interflora have paid the price for not listening to Google. Their guidelines are set out quite clearly and they have been ignored by a brand that thought that thought they were too big to fail.

One lesson that can be learned from this saga is: don’t carry on kidding yourself. Any ‘black-hat’ techniques that may have been previously used are not forgotten by Google – they will be seen, be that through a widespread update like panda and penguin or through a manual penalty. This can manifest itself as a drop of a couple of pages in the SERPs or by being taken out completely.

We all know that the bar has been raised on what Google finds acceptable in terms of links, and Interflora’s penalty is a stark reminder of what happens if we fall below this level.

LED TV – Generic search term, which has loads of search volume, however is less likely to convert.

Sony 55-inch Widescreen SMART LED TV – Long tail search. The user knows what they are looking for and further down the conversion path.

How to see your current long tail traffic

To look at the number of long tail search queries you have, go into Google Analytics. Change the date range to 12 months and navigate to: Traffic Sources > Sources > Search > Organic.

If you go to the bottom of the page and change the number of keywords to 25, then go to the URL and change Count%3D25/ to Count%3D5000/. This will display 5000 rows which should be enough. If it isn’t, then just up that number to cater for the amount of keywords you have.

Export this file out in a CSV and you will get a list with all of the data. In the cell G2 paste the following formula in:
 =IF(LEN(TRIM(A2))=0,0,LEN(TRIM(A2))-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A2,” “,”"))+1)
This will count the number of words in the cell.  If you then put a filter on this column you can quickly tally up number of words used.  Then export this out into a pie chart which will give you a visual break down of what keywords are most popular.

By targeting users that are further down the conversion path, you do not have to convince them to buy the product or service: You only have to convince them to buy it from you.

How to implement Long Tail SEO

Sounds simple doesn’t it? This type of strategy can only be successful if the foundations for the campaign have been set correctly. First things first, look at your head terms. Have they been targeted correctly? I know you will read this and think, “But you just spoke about the benefits of targeting long search queries?”  Yes I did, but for that to actually work to its fullest potential your campaign needs to have head terms for the site which are correctly targeted and optimised for.  The long tail strategy works off that strength that has been built up from these head terms.

So you will need to go through your site making sure that all of the targeted pages are optimised with the correct Meta information as well as the correct content. In addition, whilst you are there make sure there are a few calls to action with a phone number, contact form or email address. I will talk about creating a good landing page in another blog post soon.

The next step is to start adding content to the site. The easiest way to do this is by simply having a blog.  This way you can write about your industry and not have to edit (and potentially damage) pages you have on your existing site. While adding the blog posts you can link to the relevant service pages which helps build strength between the pages.

If you are thinking that your company doesn’t need a blog, you can just add it to the service pages of a site. It will work, but it means you will be potentially harming the chances of the service pages converting. I can guarantee that no-one wants to read more than they have to when they are looking to buy. You want to add relevant content to the site and you want to try and get into the mind of the user and how they search.

How do you find out what to write about?

A good way to do this is to log into Google Analytics and select a good date range of around 12 months.

Then, in Google Analytics navigate to: Traffic Sources > Sources > Search > Organic.

This should give you all of the keywords that have brought traffic to the site. So how can we use this data to help us with content? Well in the search box, if you type in a “?” you will find all the keywords which were a question. You can use the secondary dimension feature to see what landing page they were going to.

The next step is to analyse and check the pages users are going to and see if the questions are being answered. If not, you have just found the titles of your first blog posts. You can also use “How”, “What”, “When” and “If” – most of these words will help find questions your visitors are asking.

When analysing the keywords, those that use “what” in their searches are trying to find answers to a question. This can be tied to the earlier stages of the conversion path. By adopting a remarketing strategy you can “follow” users after they have left your website to continue to advertise your products and services. In addition, promoting your activity on social media gives you the opportunity to remind visitors of your presence and encourages them to purchase when they may be further down the conversion path.

By looking at the keywords that are driving users to the site you can identify if there are any areas which are weak or not generating as much traffic as you’d like. Again, adding this content to the blog will help with the strength and relevancy of your overall site.

If you have internal site search set up in Google Analytics, you will be able to look at how much interaction there is between users and the search box on your site. If there is little interaction with this then it usually means that the users are easily finding the information they need. The next stage then, is to analyse the queries that users are typing in which will give insight into the information that they are struggling to find as well as bounce and engagement rates.  If you can see that engagement is low within certain search terms, you either have no content on what they are looking for, or the content you have on there isn’t dealing with their needs.

Business Benefits

So you have read this far, you have seen how you can implement a long tail strategy but what are the benefits to your business?

Well firstly, by being relevant and providing users with the content they are looking for, you become a key figure within your industry. The relevancy will help you within the SERPs and it also helps with outreach opportunities.

The second benefit and the main one – as it will be affecting your bottom line – is that as you are targeting users that are further down the conversion path and buying cycle you are ultimately targeting more business.

The third benefit is that you are casting your SEO campaign wider than a normal campaign. You will target synonyms as your typical user will not be using the exact terminology you think they will use.

So once I do that, that’s my Long Tail SEO sorted?

The long tail campaign never ends. There will always be questions that will need to be answered, and there will always be content that can be added to your site.  If you have any questions about long tail SEO or how this strategy could be applied to your business, please get in touch with us by phone or email.