International Domain Names

In 2010, another interesting development arose that seemed like it would vastly impact search practices ongoing.

This of course was the development of the International domain names.

In 2010, ICAAN had accepted that the domain names would be used and adopted by countries to have domain names appear in their own local language. What is significant about this is prior to the ICAAN agreement, all domains that were Top Level Domains (also known as TLD’s) had to be registered as in the Roman alphabet.

This would mean that countries would be able to write their own domain names. The question that presents itself in organic search is what impact will this have towards localised search results ongoing in organic search?

From what we know, the localised domains render in non-latin characters within the web URL bar depending on the web browsers HTML headers. UTF settings also need to be applied via Unicode or Punycode to the domains and the URL extensions.

We know that Unicode can produce non-latin characters in formats such as in XML sitemaps. Google has been the first to pioneer with displaying URLs with different writing scripts, such as Cryllic, Chinese and Sanskrit into organic search results.

The benefits of internatinalised domain names in relation to SEO is still unclear at the moment. However, there is an expectancy that there will be more significance placed on localised keywords and that there might be some influence in regards to Geo-localisation.

It would be ideal for websites to begin looking into International Domain Names to extend their keyword reach and ownership across multiple relevant languages.

Glossary

Unicode – This refers to the computing industry standard for the consistent representation and manipulation of text expressed in most of the worlds writing systems.

Punycode – Punycode refers to the instance of a general encoding syntax (Bootstring) whereby a string of Unicode characters can be transformed uniquely and reversibly into a smaller, restricted character set.

IDN -This is the acronym for International Domain Name.

TLD -This is the acronym for Top Leve Domain.

URL Extension -This refers to the file name extension on a domain. For example, http://www.domain.com/url-extension.html

Search Relevancy -Refers to the relevancy of a web page in relation to the search query.

XML Sitemaps -Refers to website sitemaps that are created in the XML computer language to assist search engines with finding web pages and indexing content.

Webmaster Console -Refers to the console provided by search engines to monitor the technical and content elements of a website in relation to organic search.

Organic Search - Refers to the search results that are returned to users that appear on the left side within a search engine. These results are typically returned based on content relevancy, technical accessibility and offsite credibility.

Google beleives the impact of the new button will improve the quality of searches for websites. Check out their video below.

Google +1 is a new feature for Google, however, there has been similar features like this offered by social bookmarking sites for a few years. StumbleUpon has offered their toolbar for years and it highlights the web pages that have been liked by users in their social community. It will be interesting to see how different or how much influence this will have on Google’s searches and social reach.

Will it impact SEO?

It’s unclear to say how much of an impact this will have on organic search at the moment in regards to Google’s algorithm considering the bookmarking with the button. The Google +1 button is their version of Facebook’s Like button and is essentially working like a social bookmarking tool. It seems like Google is also trying to capture more of the online social market place with this new button also.

It would be ideal to monitor the influencing factor that Google +1 will have on search results and searcher behaviour, as the +1 button also extends to paid search ads too.

Please feel welcome to share your thoughts and any related links to content in the comments below.

Mobile Advertising

With the mobile space increasing every year due to the improving capabilities that are provided in mobile phones, it is becoming increasingly important to ensure that one is leveraging the consumer mobile search space and to increase brand awareness and revenue growth offered by this space.

The additional element of mobility now see’s advertisers challenge to provide a solution to ‘real time needs’. In mobile, this tends to focus more around location search queries.

Both Google and Bing are pioneering in the mobile search space via operator partnerships and phone content development. Bing have sought to exploit this via apps and games such as Angry Bird, Facebook Search and FourSquare, whereas Google has focused more on its tailored mobile search platform. Mobile search isn’t just limited to phones, but also to the tablet devices such as the Ipad.

The search volume in mobile search isn’t as high as in traditional search platforms, but it is a channel that is continuing to grow. For companies that rely on geographic or location based search queries, it is important to take advantage of the emerging mobile search trends to penetrate the market that the mobile search space has to offer.

Some of the ways that brands can take advantage of this in the mobile search space includes:

• Incorporating SEO for mobile to improve call to action via ‘Click To Call’ organic search listings.
• Incorporating Paid Search for mobile via mobile specific campaigns that are tailored to consumer’s mobility actions and intent.

By incorporating these into your website, you can ensure that the foundation elements of your online brand is present within the mobile search landscape. Additionally, it will ensure that your brand remains present in each step of your consumer’s journey.

Image Credit: Robert Bejil Photography

Canonicalisation

Last week, Google updated their algorithm to filter out low quality content sites from search rankings. This has been done to improve the quality of content that appears within the organic search results. The search engines have maintained that content is king, which still rings true to this day.

A simple practice that webmasters can adopt is to ensure that their site doesn’t have the online behaviour of these sites that provide keyword relevant content that is low in quality. One measure that they can take is by ensuring Canonicalisation is adopted into their websites.

Canonicalisation is a term used in SEO regarding the process approach used to managing the duplication of content across one or more URLs. Canonicalisation is important in SEO as search engine spiders may not be able to determine the correct URL content that should be indexed into the search database. Having a canonicalisation process allows the search engine spiders to know your URL’s preferred format and indicates which URL content should be indexed into the search engine database.

How do canonicalisation problems occur?

Canonicalisation problems tend to occur during the website development stage. Normally, the website would have been built in a way that see’s multiple URLs pointing to the same content on a single web page or multiple web pages, depending on the web platform and server setup. This makes it difficult for search engines to determine which URLs should be indexed into their search engine database.

What effect can this have on your websites’ SEO?

There are a few negative impacts that could occur without canonicalisation being adopted into your website.

1. There is the potential impact for your website to be split into multiple sites. This would cause duplication of content across your website, which is against the majority of search engines ‘Terms and Conditions’. This is something that is best avoided.

2. Due to the splitting of the site, this could potentially have your website flagged as a content copier.

3. Your website’s backlinks and PageRank may be split between the two indexed URLs.

What practice should you do?

It would be ideal to ensure that all links are pointing to the correct preferred URL for that unique content.

Image Credit: Dave Bleasdale

Email Marketing

Email marketing is a very effective way of generating additional revenue in your online portfolio. Often, it can be tricky to entice consumers to take action to purchase your products or services. Below are 5 quick tips to assist you with increasing your sales revenue from email marketing.

1. Honeymoon Tactical Pricing

Create a ‘Honeymoon’ tactical pricing campaign that see’s the price of the product or service discounted from it’s original price and increase back towards it’s original price over a set timeframe. This will create a purchase incentive with those consumer’s who are ‘price sensitive’and will entice them make ‘impulse purchases’.

2. Discount

Discounts are normally the easiest tactic to implement, as it offers a chance for people to make a price saving on the product being offered. Variations of discounts can be in monetary figures (save $20) or in percentages (save 25%).

3. Credit Purchase

A credit purchase offers people a ‘Try before you buy’ option. This tactic see’s the consumer pay a minimal fee on their credit card for a trial period and is then given the option to return the product or to purchase the full product, which would then be charged the full amount at the end of the period. It’s important to note that this tactic is more risky and that a process should be in place to ensure that transactions can be processed smoothly after the trial period.

4. Utilise Economies of Scale

Provide product or service bundles for consumers to purchase. This can be done with your company’s offerings or via joint ventures with other product/service providers.

5. Loyalty Program Initiative

Improve the loyalty with your customers by having a rewards program that will see them receive a gift from you when they make a certain amount of purchases. By providing a ‘loyalty card’or keeping a track of their purchase loyalty, you can drive consumers to make seasonal purchases with your email campaign drives.

Image Credit: Maywong_Photos

Broken Link - 404 Error

Broken links occur when web pages are moved or deleted from a website and the original URL still exists. When the original link is followed, there is no file located at that address and an error code (404) will be presented.

404 errors can be logged via servers or webmaster consoldes. 404 errors are unfriendly for a users web browsing experience and also isn’t good for the search navigation element in SEO. It is advised that webmasters have a process in place for managing broken links to improve the web user experience and also the search navigation for a website.

The importance of managing broken links in search engine optimisation impacts the search visibility of your web page contents existing visibility. Typically, a broken link that serves as a 404 error will normally become de-indexed over time. However, if your content is still online, it would be ideal to forward web users following the old URL address to the new URL address.

What actions can be taken?

It would be ideal to set up a process to ensure that broken links are kept to a minimum on your website. This includes:

• Having a process in place to find and identify broken links
• Having a process to map the content of the old broken links to the relevant content of the new links
• Configuring the process with your server setup

Once these have been put in place, a time latency schedule should be put in place to determine how often this process should be adopted. Depending on your resources, it would be ideal to conduct this activity on a weekly or monthly basis.

Additionally, your website should also have a customised 404 error web page to improve the web user’s experience and to assist them with finding the content on your website that they are looking for.

Image Credit: Adactio

Pandora's Box

In October last year, Google released their latest development ‘Google Instant’. The launch of this development sent waves through the search industry as to the impact that it could have on search and SEO as we knew at the time.

When Google Instant was launched, it was only available to users if they were logged into their account. Furthermore, users would have the choice to turn it on or off after they had logged into their account. However, with Google being Google, they rolled it out across their general interface quite quickly so that users did not have to be logged in for Google Instant to start functioning.

One of the major concerns that people within the search industry had was ‘Is this new development going to contribute to the decline of search as we know it?’. This was probably a little over exaggerated, however search specialists now find themselves in a position where they have to adapt their approach to the Google Instant functionality.

From a paid search perspective, Google Instant has created a sharp increase in the amount of impressions that an Adwords ad is shown for. This makes it slightly more tricky with measuring if impression share is one of the KPI’s. Impressions are also shown in the Google Webmaster Console for organic search queries. Although Google puts an emphasis on this within their console, it is questionable (as most Google Data is) to use in organic search information.

And the other concern people had was that the algorithm for SEO had been changed for Google Instant. Google has said that the search results are based on the historical indexing of websites. This means that the same indexing process is adopted for organic search and that the optimisation processes that were required pre Google Instant still apply post Google Instant.

We see the change in consumer intent with Google Instant, as well as higher impressions for keywords and long tail searches aren’t as prominent as they once were neither. So 4 months on since Google Instant, it seems like there isn’t too much cause for concern. However, being Google, Google Instant can still prove to be a pandora’s box.

Image Credit: Beer30 – http://www.flickr.com/photos/beer30/400138567/#/

QR Code

One of the emerging digital marketing elements in the 21st century is QR (Quick Response) codes. QR Codes are a 2 dimensional square pattern that consists of patterned black and white square modules

The interesting thing about the QR codes is the information that you can store inside them. QR Codes can be used to unlock information and data from URLs to text and more.

With the development of the smartphone, mobile users have engaged mobile tagging activities. This is predominate with the popularity rise in photos being taken with mobile phones, social tagging applications being used on the phones. Things such as FourSquare. QR codes will continue to grow in popularity with the ever increasing development in smartphone technology.

Users with camera phones and the QR reader application will be able scan and unlock the data within the code. An example of how the QR code is decoded is provided below.

So, how can QR codes be used in marketing?

At first, it can seem a bit quirky and some marketers have seen these codes as being a temporary fad. However, these codes offer ‘Real Time Marketing’ in mobile and is instrumental in the emerging mobile marketing communications market.

Brands can leverage ‘Real Time Marketing’ to their advantage by integrating it in their guerilla marketing and further combining it with their online and offline marcomms display advertising.

The range of channels that QR codes can be used include:

• Billboard ads
• Guerilla marketing campagns^[
• In-store displays
• Event ticketing and tracking
• Trade-show management
• Business cards
• Print ads
• Contests
• Direct mail campaigns
• Websites
• Email marketing
• Couponing
• Online Display
• Point of Sale

QR codes offer digital marketers an emerging channel for developing brand interaction and loyalty by enticing consumers to proactively seek information from the branded QR code.

I Take Off My Hat To You!

Yesterday, I came across an interesting article that was posted by Matt Cutts that provided insight into Google’s stance and approach with black hat link building.

http://searchengineland.com/new-york-times-exposes-j-c-penney-link-scheme-that-causes-plummeting-rankings-in-google-64529

In SEO (Organic Search), there are different methods that are adopted to doing link building. There is the ethical way, which means that links are created naturally by the web user or by others acros the web and are generally in the form of an editorial link. These types of links are encouraged by search engines as their algorithm takes into account the linking factors (age, relevance, link type and more) to determine the credibility of the link source and the linked to website.

The other link building method that is used is in the form of black hat. This refers to purposely creating links which solely manipulate the crediblity factors (for example, on Google it is PageRank) to improve the organic search positions. Some of the methods that are typically adopted include:

• Link Farming
• Rented Links
• Text Link Networks

There are quite a few SEO companies that believe that it is fine to adopt black hat tactics and techniques in order to acquire results in the search engines and to keep their clients happy. However, the impact that it can have on the client sometimes isn’t accounted for; which is why the article that Matt Cutts points out bears relevance to what impact it can have for companies that have a strong brand presence.

JCPenney.com is one of the latest high profile companies to be caught out with black hat link building activities being used to improve their search presence. In 2006, BMW.de had succumb to a similar fate with hidden doorway pages which were keyword built to drive niche keywords to the site, and effectively spammed the search engines.

Practices like these on smaller websites will generate a penalty from the search engine, such as the website becoming sandboxed. However, for larger websites that have a strong brand credibility that serves as an asset to their overall marketing mix, the negative buzz impacts the brand perception and immediately increases the problem recognition that is associated with the brand. This further impacts consumers decisions as brand perception is key during a customer’s evaluation and selection of a brand for purchase. Short term unethical practices can only bring about short term gains, but the long term impact will see current and future customers lose confidence and the brand leverage deminishing.

Read the original article here:

The Untold Secrets In Search

Google Lego

Since search engines became the dominant elements in the web space, one of the keys to survival has been for search engines to deliver as much relevant information as possible to searchers.

In the nineties, the two leading search engines were Yahoo and Google. At present, Google supercedes Yahoo with its current offering to web users. However it is worthy to note why Google got the edge over Yahoo in the beginning in the first place.

One of the key things search engines did back then was to serve as a platform that delivered all types of news and information on a status board. Google at the time was the only search engine to defy this and provide users with a specific platform interface that was for one purpose…Search.

Additionally, Google created and defined a search algorithm that would ultimately change the face of web search to what we know presently. This was done by improving the relevancy of search results for users search queries by including link analysis into the algorithm.

However, another major contribution was the simplicity the platform interface. And even though Google had expanded throughout the years, their platform always remained at the forefront of search relevancy.

However lately there seems to have been too much development happening with their search interface. Whilst Google still seeks to make their search platform deliver as much relevant information as possible, it seems as though they have forgotten  their roots in regards to the integration of information into their search platform.

Nowadays, Google has integreated Universal search (the integration of digital assets) into their organic search results. These assets include images, video, maps, shopping sitelinks and more.

In 2010, Google also introduced real time search which includes live discussions from microblogs which makes use of Content Query Freshness and is served into search results.

Additionally, Google also unleashed a dynamic interface which includes real time search integration and Google instant which serves results with a keystroke.

The amount of information that is now on the Google page compared to it’s original platform page echoes the ghosts of Yahoo’s platform interface. The original Google interface was one of the key USP’s within the search space.

With the great things that Google has done over the past 15 years, have they lost the balance with their development innovation? Or are they pioneering in a direction that search is evolving to?

Where do you stand?

Image Credit : Keso – http://www.flickr.com/photos/keso/108805307/