At Fluid we try to be different by being transparent in our work and methods, setting realistic goals and expectations. We don’t sell SEO as an instant business-making silver bullet, but as an important and sustainable part of your overall marketing mix.

Have you been subjected to aggressive SEO sales pitches, or tempted by promises of quick search engine rankings that seemed too good to be true? Tell us your stories, and perhaps we’ll uncover some more common tricks of the Shady SEO Salesman.

With the prevalance of so many social media outlets, it can be overwhelming to follow what is going on.  On an individual basis, it may not matter to you if you end up using some sites more than others.  However, for brands and businesses it is now more important than ever to have an online presence and in this domain it is vital to have as many users, subscribers and followers as is relevantly possible.

For us regular online socialisers, Google has recently rolled out it’s Social Search which appears to aggregate search results relevant to us based on our online social profile.  Whether companies will be able to adapt this to their online strategy is yet to be seen so in the meantime what other means do they have of monitoring their online campaigns?

Many would argue that the only ‘metrics’ that need to be monitored is whether your brand is being talked about and whether your sales are up.  I agree with this to an extent however there are plenty of factors that can be examined when your online strategy fails to bring a return on investment:

Web Analytics

• Visitors/Unique Visitors -  don’t get these two mixed up.  The number of visits that your website has had will give an overinflated view of how popular your site is.  Some of these visits will have come from some people visiting more than once.  The number of unique visitors will give a clearer picture of popularity.
• New Visitors – measure the percentage of new visitors to your site to indicate the spread of your campaign’s influence.
• Returning Visitors – we all know that ‘content is king’ so a measure of repeat visitors will indicate how useful, interesting or functional your website’s content is.
• Page Views Per Visit and Bounce Rate - Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who arrive on one page and then never stick around to check out more pages.  A very high bounce rate indicates that there is something fundamentally wrong with the page (poor layout and design, error messages, accessability problems, etc).  If visitors don’t leave immediately then the average number of pages that people are browsing will be indicated with the Views per Visit metric.
• Number and Quality of Backlinks – a high volume of links to your site isn’t necessarily an reflection of the quality of your website.  Links from high quality, reputable websites are a much stronger endorsement of your product.
• New links to your site – the rate at which you acquire new links to your site will be a good indicator of interest in your site.
• Improved search engine rankings – the higher your website appears for certain search terms (particularly competitive terms) the more likely you are to attract a higher volume of relevant traffic.
• Increased Conversions – this is a good way of measuring the quality of your product and also how good the design and functionality of your site is.

Blogs

• Number of Subscribers - if you have something interesting to say, people will want to subscribe – simple as that!
• Number of Comments and Trackbacks – a high level of engagement and interaction with your blog is suggestive of quality content.  Trackbacks from other blogs and Twitter will show how many of your readers like your blog enough to spread the word.
• Frequency of Visits – this is another good indicator of how good your content is.  If you consistently have something interesting on your blog then people will eagerly return to see what else you have to say!
• Conversion rate – it is up to you to decide what consists of a conversion when it comes to blogging.  Perhaps it’s RSS subscribtions, file downloads, video views, product downloads or product sales.  On the other hand it could be pretty much any of the suggestions on this list!

Social Media ROI

• Influence - how is your social media exposure influencing opinions and attitudes?
• Engagement – are people interacting with your site?
• Bookmarks on Delicious - a high number of bookmarks on the popular social media bookmarking site, Delicious is a sure fire indicator of popularity.
• Twitter mentions/retweets – companies have been embracing Twitter in increasing numbers as it is simple to keep track about what people are saying about their brand although it is just as easy for negative views to be propagated as it is for positive views.  Just ask Ryanair.
• Number of Twitter Followers – this is a nice simple metric to measure how popular your Twitter profile is.  The most popular accounts on Twitter tend to be those of celebrities who engage with their followers.  It can be easy to fall into the trap of just ‘tweeting’ out your latest deals and offers.  The most successful brands on Twitter go out of their way to interact with their followers.
• Thumbs up on StumbleUpon – in a similar vein to Delicious, a large number of thumbs up on a StumbleUpon article will not only indicate popularity, but will also be a good way to exert influence on a wide audience.
• Amazon Reviews – the great thing about Amazon is that it allows customers to review products, allowing potential buyers to make a decision as to whether to purchase.  If you feel that your online presence is strong, then perhaps it is the product itself that is flawed or perhaps expensive compared to those of your competitors.
• Google Blog Search Links – if you have something that is worth talking about then a good way to find out what people are saying is via Google Blog Search.  The popularity and simplicity of blogging means that it is extremely easy to gauge the cross section of opinion.
• Facebook (Group) Members - like Twitter followers, if your Facebook following is substantial then you know that you are doing something right.
• Positive/Negative brand mentions – not only should you be keeping track of influence, you should be noting whether it is for the right reasons.  Positive mentions are of course flattering, but negative opinion will give you clear indications of where you should be improving.

Email Marketing

• Number of Emails sent out – very simply, the more emails that are going out the more chance they have of reaching the right audience.
• Delivery rate – you will be able to calculate the number of emails received by deducting the number of bounced email from the number of emails sent.  Do bear in mind that some email spam filtering software will stop even some legitimate emails from getting through.
• Actions - are people opening any links upon receiving your emails?  Keeping track of the click through rate will be an indicator of this.
• Unsubscription rate – the rate at which people are opting out of your mailing list may give you an indication as to the relevance of your product, or perhaps the means in which you are engaging your customers.

Online Survey

• Customer satisfaction – offering an online form for customers to fill in will be a good way to gauge feedback on your campaign and affinity for your product.  Such forms can often been seen as a chore to complete so it could be worth offering some sort of incentive for doing so.
• Referrals – an increase in the number of referrals you are receiving is a good indicator of influence.  Word of mouth is a powerful thing.

Virals

• Number of views on YouTube/Vimeo – people enjoy being entertained and informed.  A good viral video will spread like wildfire, often generating hundreds of thousands of views withing the space of a few days.
• Brand/company mentions in media - if your video is one of the few that gets a massive following then it will likely get picked up by the many media outlets that regularly report on popular online videos.  As they become less relevant and immediate, newspapers in particular are always looking for ways to fill column inches and regularly have features on what videos are popular.

By happy coincidence the North West Marketing resource, How Do hosted it’s first Creative Business Forum as well yesterday.  This was a high end networking event where various key topics were debated by a panel consisting of various prominent managing directors, chairmen and chief execs of the regions digital sector.  My invitation to add some credibility to this panel must have got lost in the post but fortunately I was able to keep up with proceedings via How Do’s Twitter feed.  During the afternoon a quote attributed to Code Computerlove MD, Tony Foggett caught my eye:

This was a hugely interesting and relevant point, especially since How Do also reported that Kellogg’s had also chosen that day to announce they would be looking to recruit a digital operations manager as well as a digital planner.  You’re too late, Tony – it’s already happening!

It’s far from a revelation that bigger corporations contain their own in house creative and online marketing specialists, especially those working in fiercely competitive sectors.  But if the future trend is that companies in general are more likely to embrace in advertising online and as a result invest more in recruiting their in house staff, where could this leave creative and digital agencies?

At the moment there is increased focus on the ability of Universities to provide volumes of graduates with the appropriate skills for the digital sector so what happens when the recession lifts?  I think the problem could be even more urgent than we expect:  if speculation is correct and in the future we see a wider range of companies fighting it out over the few graduates – and indeed other qualified jobseekers – the supply may be no where close to meeting demand.

Obviously this post is just speculation and this was the first thought that popped into my head upon reading How Do’s tweet.  With the news that companies will be spending more online combined with the eventual (hopefully!) lift out of the recession, we really will be in uncharted waters and I think there will be as many opportunities for those companies and individuals in the industry as there will be threats.

I’m not going to pretend to offer any insights as that would just be plain naive but I’m genuinely interested to hear what everyone thinks as I reckon that we’re in for some very interesting times!

So whether you work in design, development, search, social media, education or indeed recruitment – do leave us your thoughts!

Google continues to be the world’s favourite search engine with an estimated 55% of people starting their web browsing through it’s search page. For this reason, search engine marketers are targeting Google as the platform on which to have their websites listed in the top results.

Google’s exact ranking criteria are unknown to all but a small selection of Google engineers. Search engine marketers therefore use a selection of tried and tested techniques to help websites rank in the top ten of Google’s search results. Although no search engine professional can know all of the techniques to help a website rank highly, they will know about the techniques and pitfalls which can dsmaged and restrict the rankings of a website.

Below are some of the activities that should be avoided if you are to stay within Google guidelines.

Keyword Stuffing

When writing content, titles and headers for your website, carefully consider the keywords that may be applicable to the page, and ensure they’re present in these vital elements. However, remember to write for your users first and formost, so avoid going overboard, stuffing keywords into the content so that it becomes repetitive or nonsensical. You may feel that plugging in additional keywords might aid you in your search engine rankings, but in reality, it can have the opposite with sites using this method being penalised and banished from the search results.

Hidden Text

Many webmasters, in an attempt to add more relevant keywords to their website’s copy, try to hide text within their content pages; This is usually done by merging the font color of the text with the background colour of the page. Although not visible to the site’s users, search engines can see it and will penalise for it!

Link Farms

Avoid linking to sites that interlink with each other for the sole purpose of increasing their link popularity, trying to manipulate their ranks in Google. These sites will usually be poorly managed, often consisting of a number of pages containing little more than pages full of irrelevant links in particular order. These pages differ to most online directories, which review sites before inclusion, and add them to relevant categories. Linking with link farms is a sure way to ruin your website’s trust factor resulting in a massive fall in search engine rankings and in some cases even banning from the Google index.

Cloaking

Cloaking is defined as serving a normal page to the users whilst serving an optimised version of the same page to the search engines. Although this method can help you to rank highly for a short period of time, Google will eventually pick up on, and the consequences can be severe, even for huge multinational companies.

Fluid Creativity has a online marketing team that can help you rank well using what are considered ‘White Hat’ tactics which meet with Search Engine Guidelines. Contact us today to discuss our online marketing services.