Posts Tagged ‘Web Optimisation’

SEO and the impact on your brand

August 31, 2014

Jeff Bezoz, Amazon - Branding quote

A Simple test ….do a Google search using the keywords that describe what your organisation does and see how your website performs.

‘Crisis PR in Ireland’ , ‘PR firms in Dublin‘ …. Do your own search for your relevant keywords and see what happens. Include your location in the search, which is what most people normally do when they are searching.

From a business point of view it makes clear sense that if someone is looking for what your organisation is offering that they find you easily online. The very best way is for your website to perform for these ‘key‘ searches organically or naturally. If this is not the case your website is more than likely not properly optimised.

If you have done all you can to optimise your website and it is still not performing well enough then it makes sense to implement a Google Adwords campaign to ensure your website is appearing for ‘key’ searches in a prominent position.

While your website performance is essential for business is this the only reason your site should perform well for searches?

I feel another big reason your website should perform well is that it is an integral part of your overall brand. This might seem like an unusual reason at first as we normally thing of ‘descriptors‘ when we discuss someone’s brand attributes.

Jeff Bezoz of Amazon described a brand as ‘what other people say about you when you are not in the room‘. While it might be up to others to describe you this can clearly be shaped by how you portray your organisation through your actions, behaviours, products, services and all the visual cues or representations of your brand.

Your website plays a key role in this, not just in how it appears but also where it appears when searched for.

It’s difficult to appear as a ‘leader in the sector‘ if a random Google search for the services and products you provide has you appearing well below your competitors or possibly so far back on the search results you are not found at all.

If this is the case you need to optimise your website, which is mostly a very straight forward but methodical process and if necessary support this with Google Adwords pay per click advertising.

The opposite is also the case and with a well optimised site it is possible to take on the big guys who normally dominate in your sector.

Where you appear is just as important as how you appear!

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion provide online consultancy and website optimisation services from our offices in Dublin and Cork in Ireland

Tags:, , , , , ,
Posted in Branding, Business Planning, Marketing, SEO, Web Marketing | Leave a Comment »

Getting your business found online with Google Adwords

July 31, 2012
Website Marketing

Looking for traffic to your website

I heard a really funny story from a client of ours who was dealing with an elderly couple.

The gentleman asked one of his salesman a question about one of their products. His wife told him not to be bothering the salesman as he was too busy – “When we go home we can Doogle it” she said.

The salesman bit his lip as he tried not to burst out laughing but it does show you how we all use Doogle.. sorry Google to find what we are looking for these days.

We use Google Adwords campaigns for many of our clients and I even lecture for the Digital Marketing Institute on the topic of Pay Per Click advertising, of which Google is the main player.

I call Google Adwords “Sniper Marketing” – when executed properly you are able to target anyone online who is looking for exactly the products and services that you are offering.

If your website is not being found online when one of your possible prospects does a search then you are simply “not in the game”.

With a combination of a well optimised website, supported by a Google Adwords campaign you can ensure that you don’t miss any of that important online traffic.

Easy?

The big problem as I see it, is that a Google Adwords campaign is too easy to set up yourself!

With a few clicks you can run adverts on keywords you start bidding on, and before you know it your credit bill is creaking.. often without a lot of success.

I was that soldier until I found a guide to Google Adwords many years ago written by a guy called Perry Marshall. After downloading this guide I quickly realised what I needed to do in order to create value for money campaigns. With Perry’s advice I learned how to create effective campaigns at the lowest possible cost.

Operating successful Google Adwords campaigns requires skill, knowledge, hard work and practice and Perry’s guide set me on the right road.

Ultimate Guide to Google Adwords

Ask Perry Marshall!

Recently I came across an updated version (3rd Edition) of “The Ultimate Guide to Google Adwords” and this time Perry Marshall has enlisted the help of Byran Todd, another experienced marketing consultant and adwords specialist.

Google and the online world in general has moved on and this guide brought me nicely up to date with some of Google’s new features and opportunities. The basics are explained in a really practical and interesting manner – study these and put them into practice on your campaigns as you work through the guide. The guide also offers other resources for deeper analysis and insights.

The guide touches on other areas such as web optimisation, social media and a benefit I did not expect was a lesson in marketing! Follow the advice and you will learn even more about your customers and the magic words that will have them making enquiries and placing orders.

I’ve already applied the learnings to both our own and client campaigns and I can see the improvements.

If you are are contemplating a Google Adwords campaign or you are already running one I can guarantee you that this guide will save you money and help you achieve better traffic and results.

Thanks Perry and Bryan for the refresher course – you have made me a better “G” man!

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion offer Web Marketing Services for clients including the management of Google Adwords campaigns .

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Google Adwords, Online Advertising, SEO, Web Marketing | Leave a Comment »

What do you think of me?

October 26, 2010

Greg Canty - Fuzion Communications

Greg Canty - Fuzion Communications

“What do you think of me?” is a strange question to ask anyone but every day we are putting ourselves out there in the firing line and whether you like it or not, people will judge you and are thinking of you either negatively, positively or neither.

My son recently told me it annoyed him how I use Foursquare as he ends up seeing updates from me constantly on Facebook about where I am and what I am saying about these places.

It got me thinking…

If that is annoying him then what does everyone else think of me, what do you think of me?

In the new world of communication with the different Social Media platforms making it much easier to spread your message quickly to a wide audience, those of you who embrace the available tools are asking that question on a regular basis.

Every time you publish a blog, upload a photo, upload a link, give an opinion, join a conversation, pass on interesting information, make a video or simply make a status update you are putting yourself on the line with friends, clients, very lose acquaintances and possible new clients.

Social Media without a doubt is a terrific way to convey information about you and your business, spreading valuable messages but if you get it wrong you can just as easily turn people off as you can turn people on!

While social media is very much in the fast lane we are still at the very beginning, with the functionality and features evolving on a constant basis and the rules and etiquette still forming.

Chris Brogan a very popular writer and total expert in this area published a book called “Trust Agents” where he acknowledges the power of the web to build your reputation but acknowledges that the most important stepping stone is behaving in a manner that first builds trust online. With trust you can spread your message, without it you can waste a lot of time and run the danger of turning people off you.

If you are going to dedicate time and resources on social media both building a following and spreading your message it’s vital that you get it right.

There are no right or wrong answers here but how and what you post and how you conduct yourself generally online will determine how people will think of you. Even how you set up your social media tools, the pictures you use of yourself and your even choice of features such as LinkedIn automatically updating from Twitter, which updates automatically from Four Square can also affect how messages are delivered and interpreted.

When I start analysing how I behave online there are so many unanswered questions:

I try to use a particular style of title that grabs attention for my blogs – does that annoy the reader?

I try to be a little informal and “unstuffy” with my posts – does that suit the clients I am trying to attract?

I talk about everyday things as well as topics relevant to our business – does that make me look foolish and should I just stick with industry specific items?

I like to use a positive approach as much as possible – in the current environment, does that annoy people?

I post discussion items on various LinkedIn groups about once a week – do people get fed up of seeing these so often?

I follow some incredible marketers and I have a link from their blogs, which populates the Fuzion Facebook page – does this annoy people?

If I see something funny or unusual I will photograph it and upload it on Facebook – maybe my friends or acquaintances think these are silly?

On Twitter I use a mix of my name and the business name “GregCantyFuzion” as my identity – what do people think of this compared to funnier, customised or descriptive names?

Right or wrong all you can do really is measure your effectiveness as best as possible – watch traffic to your blog, see if your LinkedIn and Facebook posts get a reaction, watch if people engage with your discussion topics, see if your posts are retweeted. Also you can observe other people’s behaviour online and take on board the style of activity you like and more importantly the style of posting that you don’t like.

Better to burn than to fade away, better to put yourself and your business out there, drawing attention to your message and trying to make sure you maintain your online visibility. That’s a decision I made and I invest time in it. My one piece of definite advice is to be true to yourself or else you will not come across as being genuine.

So, back to my question.. What you think of me?

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion Communications

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Marketing, PR, Social Media, Web Marketing | 20 Comments »

The Irish Bank Robber and Facebook

August 22, 2010

When the renowned Irish American bank robber, Willie Sutton was arrested having been caught after one of his many bank heists he famously gave the following response to journalists who asked him why he kept robbing banks, “Because, that’s where the money was!”

Willie Sutton, The Famous Bank Robber

Willie Sutton, also known as “Slick Willie” and “Willie the Actor” (he was a master of disguises) was born in Brooklyn in 1901 and lived till 1980. He managed to rob 100 banks in his 79 year career, spending much of this in prison after many captures. Toward the end of his life he ended up fronting an advertising campaign for a bank who were introducing card ID’s with the person’s picture on it.

Besides being a notorious bank robber his quote earned him everlasting fame as his surname is now often quoted to refer to any situation where something is clearly “obvious”. In medical circles in particular his name comes up as “Suttons Law” to describe a situation where a diagnosis is exactly that and accountants even use it when talking about Activity Based Costing, “The Willie Sutton Rule”!

In the business of Marketing & PR we often get resistance when we recommend to clients that they should be engaging pro-actively with users on Facebook. We get the arguments about not liking computers, not having enough time, that all users are youngsters and generally not knowing how to use Facebook and not seeing the relevance to them.

Worldwide users have reached 550 Million with the figure in Ireland just over 1.4 million. Of these over 700,000 are over the age of 30. Many of these are your customers!

On average people are using Facebook about 25 minutes per day. Facebook has individual users as well as many businesses who have their own “business pages” and are interacting and influencing Facebook users on a daily basis. Starbucks, the famous American chain of coffee stores have over 12 million people signed up as fans.

The next time we talk about the relevance of Facebook with a client we might just quote the famous bank robber, Willie .. after all it’s very obvious!

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion Communications

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Business Start Ups, Marketing, PR, SEO, Social Media, Uncategorized, Web Marketing | 21 Comments »

Bill Gates and his last dollar

July 4, 2010

 

Bill Gates

“If I was down to my last dollar I would spend it on PR” was the famous quote that Bill Gates made and one that many of us in the PR industry use when we are trying to draw attention to the importance of our services.

Ironically many of us are nearly down to our last dollars, or Euros and you might question does this piece of advice really hold water, how applicable is it and is this really what Bill Gates meant when he made the comment?  Was he ever down to his last dollar? – I wonder..

Does he really suggest that when a business is really tight that it spends its income in such a way?

When the recession kicked in how did you react in your business? What overheads got the chop? I’m suspecting that Marketing & PR budgets were given the scissors treatment – was this the right thing to do? How did this affect your business and the attitude of those working there?

Positive Attitude, Positive Activity and Positive Spend

Not knowing Bill I can only guess but this is my interpretation of what he meant ..

PR is as much an attitude, a process, a set of beliefs, a way of behaving positively as much as it is about Press Releases and actually employing a PR resource.

PR or Public Relations is all about Managing your Reputation– protecting, maintaining, building and managing your reputation. Even if you are down to your last dollar you need to keep investing or doing this.

There is nothing more valuable as a good reputation and this is about a lot more than employing PR companies or about issuing press releases. Your reputation is every single aspect of how your business relates to the outside world, your customers, your prospects, the general public and the media. This applies equally to a self employed candlestick maker as it does to a large multinational.

Ok, how about 16 Tips for improving and managing your Reputation (PR) for €1

1.    Answer the phones politely and helpfully
2.    Return missed calls promptly
3.    Return email enquiries quickly
4.    Deliver a good service to customers
5.    Handle complaints fairly and efficiently
6.    Deliver products and services on time
7.    Ensure your billing is correct
8.    Be polite, fair and efficient with your suppliers and staff
9.    Keep customers and prospects up to date with new products, features and services
10.    Treat your suppliers fairly
11.    Treat your customers with respect (even if they are experiencing difficulty and are under financial pressure)
12.    Ensure that all correspondence is well laid out, with correct English, is easily understood, professional and properly reflects your business
13.    Ensure your premises and vehicles are kept neat and tidy
14.    Ensure the attire of your staff is in keeping with the standards of your business
15.    Ensure your staff always talk up your company and do not air grievances outside of the four walls with external people – make a pact to sort things out internally
16.    Talk up the achievements of your company and the staff working there – their talents, skills and achievements

This is not an exhaustive list – have a think about it and add another 5/10/20 points to improve your reputation even more. Even better get your team to help you with this task.

Ok, all of this is good for your business reputation, it didn’t require the intervention of third party consultants and oh yeah, it didn’t really cost a shilling – you still have your €1 left!

So far we have looked at some housekeeping reputation issues.

Positive Attitude

As we mentioned PR is in essence a positive attitude – first and foremost you need to declare war on this recession and ensure that you and everyone in your business understands the importance of your reputation and a Positive Attitude towards your business. You will thrive in this environment and if you are alert you will not only survive but you will be in a position to seize on unique opportunities that may arise.

Back to the job of spending our last €1..

Communicate that you are going to invest in positive activity for your business – You have been in Retreat mode and now you want to invest funds in forward mode – you want to “Storm” this recession. Your staff must understand that every €1 is vital, that you want maximum return from it and challenge them to achieve this. Show and positively display the faith that you have in the business and communicate that you and your team are adopting “attack” mode!

This positive mind shift is essential for the business.

Where do we spend our €1?

–    Refresh your Website – review and refresh the text, besides being new and positive it helps your Search Engine ranking
–    Optimise your Website (do a Google search on this and you will learn find how to do it for free)
–    Update the News items on the website – announce new customers, products or services
–    Set up a Facebook business page, it’s free – take the time and build a following for your business online. Ask customers to sign up, email them, ring them, tell them..
–    Start using the other social media sites such as Twitter or LinkedIn to build your contacts and spread awareness for your business, products and service. If you’re not sure how to do this – Google it .. there are plenty of articles and tips available online
–    Prepare Press Releases about your company or services . Do you have anything interesting or new happening in the business? – let the press know.
–    Advertising: maybe you have an advertising campaign running with the local papers or a trade publication – negotiate that you get some free editorial to support these adverts (keep it interesting, they won’t print boring stuff!)

All of this is positive – have you ever noticed that you like being around positive people? In business we are no different and we like dealing with positive, successful businesses. Behave like one of them.

Build your reputation, shout it from the rooftops and make this a clearly understood activity in your business.

Big problem… we still haven’t spent that €1

Print a few posters and put them around your business “We are Storming the Recession”

If you have more than €1 to spend feel free to give Fuzion a call and we will help you achieve the maximum from your Marketing & PR budget.

Bill, thanks for the PR thumbs up ..

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion Communications

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Marketing, PR, Recession, SEO, Social Media, Web Marketing | 16 Comments »

Get it off your chest Online!

April 20, 2010

Have you found yourself in the frustrating position of getting absolutely nowhere with a complaint?

Now this could be on a small scale in a corner shop, at a restaurant where you have had a lousy meal or it could be against one of the big guys. The old saying goes that a bad experience travels quickly with word of mouth as we do tend to share our frustrations with friends, loved ones and anyone that will listen! If anyone is really annoyed about something they tend to share it with a lot of people.

TripAdvisor Logo

TripAdvisor

Spreading the frustration has now got much faster and easier and with a much bigger reach with the onset of the web and the powerful free tools available including Trip Advisor, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and blogs.

These tools can work for you in that they can help get rid of that frustration and genuinely hurt the culprits but they can also help to actually resolve your issue to a satisfactory conclusion.

If your issue is with the “big guys” your activity online can really work in your favour and help to get that proper attention that you have been looking for.

The “big guys” and a lot of the smaller companies are very conscious of their reputations and are often carefully tracking what is being said about them online using tools such as Google Alerts and Twitter searches.

To demonstrate this point I will share with you a small real life example of how this worked for me.  I recently had a problem with one of our national phone service suppliers and was very quickly getting nowhere fast. After nearly 12 months of total frustration and the realisation that this problem was not being sorted out by the normal means I decided to write about my issue in my personal blog, carefully naming the offending company in a way that, if they were paying attention they would definitely notice!

Having completed my blog post I then shared the blog with my Social Media Community, my Facebook contacts, my Twitter followers and my connections and groups on Linked In.

All I had to do then was wait and see if my nothing to lose experiment would actually work ..

Within a few hours not only did I have a bucket load of responses from other people with similar complaints but I also received a call from the offending company in response to my blog issue!

Not in response to my complaint but to my blog!  To be fair to the guy calling he wanted to sort out my problem and I was able to take him through it in detail and within days the whole issue was sorted and I managed to negotiate a fair rebate, which I was told was impossible up until then.

Was this a company eager to satisfy unhappy customers or one that didn’t want to be “red-faced” online? – to be honest I didn’t really care, I finally managed to solve a problem that had been dragging on forever.

The lesson in all of this is that if you require it, you have a very powerful and effective voice available to you online if you choose to use the  tools available , to make your point.

However this can be a double edged sword!

Exactly the same can apply to your own business and you should pay attention to what is being said about you online.  Use the simple to use tools such as Google Alerts and Twitter Search and hear first hand about the good, the bad and the ugly!

If it’s good then highlight the unprompted testimonials on your website and in your newsletters and presentations. If it’s bad or it gets ugly then deal with the problem and don’t be afraid to share how you solved the issue online. Use the issue as an opportunity to show you genuinely care about your customers.

There is no hiding place online!

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion Communications

Tags:, , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Customer Care, Irish Economy, Marketing, Social Media, Web Marketing | Leave a Comment »

Click Your Way to Success

August 11, 2009

Do terms such as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Web Marketing make your eyes gloss over and bring on a wave of sudden tiredness?I totally understand how you feel but I can promise you that getting this area right will definitely lead to more business for you. In a tough economic climate this is one of those areas that you can improve easily and it won’t break the bank.

The good news is that it is not that complicated!

Just think of SEO or Web Marketing as “making it easier for potential customers to find your business online”

The Importance of Web Marketing
It goes without saying that being found on the net easily could be the difference between doing business and not doing business.Your website is in effect your ‘on-line brochure’ and it is vital that it is easily found by potential clients who may be looking for your services or products. Over 50% of all product and service searches are instigated by searches on the web. While this figure may vary from industry to industry it is constantly increasing.

Whether someone is searching for a Tax Consultant in Dublin, a Maternity Clothing Store in Limerick or even a PR Company that provides web optimisation services!, it is vital that you are found online if you provide any of these services. Can you afford not to be visible?

For the sake of argument, quickly do a Google search on one of your key services and see how your website performs – if I do a search for ‘PR in Cork’ it is important for my business that Fuzion appear in a prominent position. There are a number of areas to consider as part of your ‘being found easier on the web’ campaign:

Your Website = Your “On-Line Brochure”

It goes without saying that your website should present your business properly and much of this will be down to the ‘look and feel’ of the website in exactly the same way as a professionally designed brochure would create a good impression.
Just like the old saying ‘paper doesn’t refuse ink’, exactly the same applies for websites.

Google and other search engines, while very sophisticated in many ways are actually quite simple. If they are returning the results of a search query they are attempting to match the words that you have searched on with the index or catalogue of words and websites that they have on their giant database.

In doing this the search engines follow certain criteria but the bottom line is that they are trying to find the best match for the query. Words are the key to every search – it makes sense that if I search for ‘Tax Consultant in Dublin’ the search engine will return a website that has these words featured prominently on the site but critically used correctly. They are clever enough to know that a website with Tax Consultant in Dublin written 100 times is trying to cheat the system!

So, words are important but they must be used in the right way.

When planning your website decide on your key services & products and then make sure that the site is optimised specifically for each of these. I would advise a separate page for each key service, which should then in turn be optimised properly. Yawn, I can feel it coming on..

Optimise – this means ensuring that the content includes the important keywords, that the headings on each paragraph carry the keywords and the first introductory paragraph carries the keywords. Search engines can’t read pictures, except for the labels embedded on them – be careful with too many pictures.

If my company specialises in PR then Google expects to find the words ‘PR’ in prominent places on some pages of my website. Besides the content you see on each page there are a few things in the background that the search engines place huge importance on.

The title of each web page, the description for each page and the keywords for each page are really important. These are programmed into the background but it is important that they include the words that are important to you: ‘PR in Cork and Dublin’ should feature on my PR Services page.

How do you know if this is being done for your website?

The title of each web page appears in the line at the very top of the web browser. When you look at any page of your website click a button on the browser called ‘View’ and then ‘Page Source’ which shows you the code that runs behind the scenes. Check to see the content that appears after meta “description” and meta “keywords” and ensure that these include the keywords that are important for this page.

Outside of this your website should be easy to navigate, should be updated regularly (a Content Management System will enable you do this easily yourself), should carry links to relevant sites and make sure it is easy for someone to make contact with you.

Off-line activities

Another good and quite obvious tip to encourage awareness for your website is to use your web address prominently on all advertising, uniforms, packaging and on company vehicles.

This is an area that’s very basic but is often overlooked.

Paid Search (Pay per Click)

If you have done all you can in terms of optimising your website naturally and you are still not achieving a position on web searches then I would suggest trying Google Adwords.

This is very effective in drawing very specific traffic to your website. Google will display ‘paid results’ alongside organic\normal results. These are the websites that appear at the very top of the page and on the right of the page.

In simple terms if you want your website to be displayed when someone searches on a particular keyword, you can ‘bid’ on that keyword. This is often referred to as ‘pay per click’ as you are only charged when someone clicks through to your website from your advert.

Until your organic or natural position improves, it is a great way of achieving a good position with relevant search queries and if your advertisement delivers exactly what a user is looking for then they will be inclined to click onto your site. It is advised that these campaigns are set up very carefully to ensure your budget is not wasted.

Summary
Being found on line is critical for every business. If your website cannot be found easily than this is great news! This can only mean more business when you sort it out, which is hopefully now easier than you originally thought.

After all that a strong coffee is required!

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Marketing, SEO, Web Marketing | 7 Comments »