The Social Media Blog - Methodical Madness

Why AdWords may be hurting your SEO strategy

AdWords is a powerful tool, but many brands have become dependent on it at the expense of their organic search strength. And this could be hurting your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy.

90% of SEO spend globally is on AdWords, and only 10% spent on organic search results. AdWords are the small ads that appear on the right side of your Google search results. One of the benefits of AdWords is that you only pay for people who actually click through on your ad. So it's easy to understand why this is an attractive option for companies. AdWords provides a feeling of control and economy.

However, this focus on AdWords seems out of proportion when you consider that only 10% of search traffic is generated by AdWords while 90% comes from organic search. That means 90% of Web users never click on paid links—they click on Google’s organic search results. So if you rely on AdWords too much, you are effectively turning your back on 90% of the Web traffic.

 

If you want to wean yourself off of AdWords and focus a bit more on organic search strength, start by following these fundamental rules to build strong links.

1. Go for quality, not quantity
   How much a link boosts your rank depends on how highly Google values the page. So one link from a page with great content and high traffic is worth far more than 100 links from pages filled with almost nothing but other links.
   
   
2. Anchor text is key
   Anchor text is the text that appears in a hyperlink—in this case the word “hyperlink” is the anchor text. To rank on the first results page for certain keywords, those keywords need to be in the anchor text of a lot of your in-links.
   
   For example, The Duffy Agency is an advertising agency with offices in both Sweden and Boston, MA. If we wanted to increase our ranking for the keywords "Sweden Boston advertising agency", then instead of linking "The Duffy Agency" to our Web site, we are better off linking "advertising agency in Sweden and Boston." When asking others to link to your site, it’s a good idea to send them the anchor text you want to use.
   
   
3. Find the strongest sites
   You will get some link strength from any site that links to you, but sites that are related to what you do reinforce your authority on the subject. Higher performing sites, i.e. sites that are highly ranked on Google, will get you much greater link strength. Seek out the most popular blogs, sites and online resources within your industry.
   
   
4. Convince them to link
   Once you’ve found strong sites, you’ll want to do a little research on the site owner to learn how to approach them. You know why you want the link, but figure out how it will benefit them. Perhaps you have useful content, or you can give them a link in return, or maybe they have a history of being hostile in these situations. It’s better to know things like that in advance.

Kevin Duffy is the Creative Director for The Duffy Agency's Boston office.

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Will QR Codes Change the World?

Links are what makes the Internet the Internet. It's a simple idea and one we all take for granted. Click on a link and go from one area of the Web to another. Now imagine living in a world where the hyperlink is brought out of the online world and applied to the real world.

Quick response (QR) codes, those funny looking square symbols beginning to appear on some goods, are the mechanism that bridge that gap and bring "linking" into the real world.

 

Originally developed by a subsidiary of Toyota and used to track parts in vehicle manufacturing, QR codes are beginning to pop up more common places. In fact, consumer electronics retailer Best Buy started employing QR codes on their in-store fact tags. Using their smart phones, consumers can scan the QR codes on the fact tags and access a site where they can read consumer reviews, compare features with similar products, and e-mail details to a friend.

There are even some QR readers for smart phones that help you compare the price of the item you are looking at with other retailers. This has the potential for being an amazing resource for consumers and potentially a nightmare for smaller retailers who must now compete on price for virtually everything.

Real estate brokers are starting to put QR codes on signs outside their properties that give home buyers the opportunity to take a virtual tour of a home.

MarketingProfs published a story on Thursday about a Russian company that used QR codes as a scavenger hunt game by embedding the QR symbols throughout Moscow. The event was to promote their energy drink. 

However, these applications are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to using QR codes. In an article posted yesterday in Mashable, some potential uses for a brave new QR world were outlined. Imagine these applications:

Your are sitting in a hotel lobby waiting for your friend. You glance over and see a great looking lamp on the hotel coffee table. Thinking it would look great in your bedroom, you scan the object's QR code with your phone and your instantly brought to a site where you can buy the lamp. If manufacturers QR code everything, then everything can be for sale. 

For those particular about the origins of the food they buy, imagine scanning a cantaloupe, for example, to find out when it was picked, where it came in from, and how it was grown (pesticides use, etc.). Something similar is already being done in smartphone-obsessed Japan.

Of course, for QR codes to gain wider acceptance, the availability of the networks they need to run (3G and wireless) has to expand. However, research by Nielsen shows that by 2011 51% of all Americans by will be carrying a smartphone. So the equipment and infrastructure for support of QR coides is developing.

It seems like the uses of the QR codes are only limited to our imaginations. This blogger can envision a day when we can wear special glasses that not only scan bar codes but also employ augmented reality cues to form a new layer of data instantly accessible through the lenses of our glasses. Think the movie The Terminator, but better and with less cyborgs.

What do you think? What are some of the best uses you've seen for QR codes?

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Why it all matters: the importance of knowing your brand online

The Internet isn’t your friend. It’s not your buddy or your pal. The Internet is a machine that lays in wait for that one moment for you to do something wrong, so it can document that mistake for all time. As more sites race to get their users indexed in search engines, your random comments, your friends’ random comments about you and stuff you did years ago can all come back to haunt you.

I did a recent vanity search (searching your name on Google to see what appears) and I was surprised at the variety of sites I found related to my name. I have a unique name, which means that almost all of my search results related to my online activity. Check -in’s with GoWalla, comments on blogs, Wikipedia entries I’ve edited, blog posts, Twitter comments, reviews I’ve written, Facebook comments, friends’ Facebook comments about me, my activity on GoMiso.com and more all appeared in the search. This has changed a lot from a year ago when did a vanity search. The depth and scope of my online activity is more specific and paints a more interesting and accurate picture of my online movement.

With more sites making their data searchable by Google, Bing and Yahoo, what you do and what your brand does is more transparent than ever. What will clients find when they do a search for your company or your employees? If you’re on the hunt for a new job, when potential employers look you up, what will they find? Oftentimes, you can’t remove an offhand comment or embarrassing moment. 

There isn’t much you can do to remove negative search results, but there are several things you can do to make sure they aren’t ranked high.

SEO - Proper SEO on your websites mean that Google will index more pages on your site and they will rank higher in search results and move negative results further down the list

Ask nicely - Ask the blog or your friend to remove the negative comment about you. If you’ve left a comment on a blog post, odds are you can probably delete that yourself.

File a DMCA takedown notice - If a website is infringing on your trademark or copying your content, you can file a Digital Millennium Copyright takedown notice with the online service provider. Online service providers don’t like confrontation and rather than risk a potential lawsuit, they’ll get the offending material taken down.

Pay them off - This is one of the last methods I would attempt. Once people find out you’re paying to have negative material taken off a website, it opens the floodgates for far more slanderous material to appear.

Threaten a lawsuit - Most people don’t want the hassle and expense of going to court battle. Usually the threat of a lawsuit will be enough to get people to take down material. Again, this can backfire on you. Sometimes of the threat of litigation brings out harsher sentiment and can make your defamer even more aggressive. 

Knowing your online reputation or your brand’s online reputation is becoming increasingly important. As more people are active online and every brand is hanging a shingle up on various websites, knowing how the public sees your online activity and what they’ll find when they look you up is more important than ever. Just like a large corporation, your name is your brand and protecting it should be high on your list of things to do.

What are some of the strange things you’ve found when searching for your name or your company?

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When PayPerClick (AdWords) is better than SEO

It’s difficult to justify a long term SEO strategy to someone when their boss is breathing down their neck, demanding to see improved traffic at next week’s meeting. You may recall that we dedicated a previous post to how PPC is, in the long run, a waste of money. While we still hold to that, the truth is the fastest way to get more traffic is to pay for it, so using AdWords as a supplement to your SEO efforts is a good idea in certain situations. Let’s look at how to make a smart campaign using AdWords when the need arises. 

Too often, companies run costly AdWords campaigns with a huge list of keywords that all point to the same landing page. This results in lots of traffic to that one page, but that page may not be relevant to the visitor. The main goal for a successful PPC campaign is to make sure everyone who clicks one of your ads will be satisfied with the results they get, and that result needs to be tailored for each individual keyword. 

For example, if someone Google’s “parts for a ’65 Ford Mustang” and they see your Google Ad, it should link to a page about ’65 Ford Mustangs and not to the homepage of a site about cars. If you can direct a visitor to the exact information they’re looking for, odds are they will stay longer, visit more pages and buy more items.

People searching don’t care about your homepage or promotion for your products. If they don’t get the results they’re looking for, they will leave right away. Which means you are paying for a click with absolutely no value. 

So when exactly should you use PPC? There are a number reasons a short term traffic boost can be worth paying for, but three stand out:

When you are launching a new product
It’s extremely difficult to get a new product on Google’s first page right away if there’s any competition to speak of. Adding a couple of smart ads can help you get the message out quickly.

When you launch a new website
This is the biggest time to use PPC. A new domain and a new website are always hard to compete with for Google spots. You have no links and no strength in your domain. Even with the best on-page SEO, it will take time for Google to categorize your site by keywords and search phrases. Put up some ads and hopefully people will like your website enough to add some links to it, giving you extra traffic you don’t have to pay for and strengthening your site's SEO. 

When you are fighting for extremely competitive keywords
This one is both difficult and expensive. But to get heaps of traffic, you need to hit some of the big keywords. If you get people to your website on a search like “cars” and they like what they see, they will surely come back. And hopefully they will tell their friends about the cool website they found. Getting your ads onto that results page won’t come cheap, but the payoff may be well worth it.

We always recommend SEO over PPC, but having ads on Google can be an effective supplement while you’re trying to climb the organic search results. Keep perspective by bearing in mind that while 90% of Googlers ignore the ads, companies still spend 90% of their search engine marketing budget on them. 

The best solution for you may well be adding the expertise to do both. That way, your expert can decide how much should go to SEO and how much should be spent on PPC. And once the SEO starts to attract huge amounts of traffic, scale back the PayPerClick budget till it’s all organic traffic. After all, you shouldn’t have to pay each person to visit your site. The content should be all the incentive they need.

 

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How Google Instant has fundamentally changed SEO

The game may have changed, but don't go proclaiming the death of SEO just yet

If you live in the US, you probably noticed that Google has been acting funny the past couple days. The search giant has implemented Google Instant into their engine, showing you streaming search results as you type. It’s a major shift in how Google functions and, big surprise, has the SEO world in a tizzy. Below is a video from Google explaining the new service.

 

Google’s algorithm hasn’t changed, but the user experience sure has. Time will tell if users love Google Instant and it leads to a major change in how we search. Understanding how people search is the core of SEO, and that being shaken up has a lot of SEO professionals shaking in their booties. But for SEO thought leaders, changing up how they do things is part of the game. In a way it’s actually what the whole game boils down to, as Google is always updating and users constantly change the way they use the internet. As long as SEO pros keep their heads and meet the challenge head on, they should be ok, even if old tricks became obsolete overnight.  

Here are some thoughts on what the latest change means for the future of SEO.

The top three spots are more important than ever
Being in the top three has always been a key measurement of SEO success since an overwhelming majority of clicks go to those results. With Google Instant, that’s likely to become even more the case. Users can just keep refining their search terms until they see exactly what they want sitting on top, and as such there is less impetus to scroll down through the results hoping what you are looking for will be there.  

Keyword research has to expand
Since searchers will be exposed to many more results, you have many more competitors. Many of those results won’t be of any relevance, but some of them will. It’s now imperative to go play with Google Instant when you’re deciding your keywords to see what other phrases may be thrown in front of your target before they get your site in the results list. Also, Google will be predicting what users are searching for and there’s no way to know for sure what it will be showing them without experimenting with it yourself. And as it’s easier than ever to refine your search query, users are less likely to settle for almost right. This all means that there is greater pressure than ever to find the perfect keywords and that you need to consider adding more of them to your SEO mix than you have in the past.

The riffraff will be weeded out
There are no shortage of SEO “experts” out there who rely on gimmicks to boost search rank. Many of those won’t work anymore, and if they can’t put some brain cells into adapting to the new situation they won’t survive. Google Instant adds yet more factors to SEO and ups the challenge. Expect to see the pioneers and thought leaders not only survive, but do even better. And expect many of the following horde to be picked off. 

Proclamations of SEO doom are much like any other such ballyhooing (think Y2K, 2012). The short-sighted among us panic when things change. The ones with perspective roll with the punches and keep moving forward. SEO might one day die if the importance of search engines as a traffic source tanks, which is certainly not impossible. But as long as ranking number one on Google equals massive traffic, there will be people clever enough to keep SEO relevant. 

Jason Ross is a copywriter for The Duffy Agency. He loves working on both traditional and social media projects and speculating on the future of the ad industry.

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5 rules for creating a successful Twitter campaign

Like any media, social media takes planning and commitment. Unlike other mediums, social media requires a level of understanding and commitment not necessary for traditional media like TV and print.  Before tweeting for your brand, campaign or recognition, it’s important to understand the medium. Sure anyone can open a Twitter account but to run a successful Twitter account there are many steps. We’ve boiled it down to five, but each of these could be their own blog post (in some cases, they already have been their own blog post). 

1. Research - This is often overlooked but it can make the difference between a successful Twitter campaign and a failed one. Before launching a Twitter campaign you should know who are the thought leaders, what are the keywords associated with your campaign and which Twitter profiles are the most active in your area.

2. Develop Content - When developing your message for your Twitter profile as yourself the following questions. What are you going to say? What do you want people to know when they view your Twitter stream? What kind of people do I want to attract? 

3. Build Your Profile -  If you want people to take your seriously on Twitter, make sure you fill out your profile as detailed as you can make it. This will be important for SEO purposes as well as attracting the right kind of followers. Here is a handy guide to help you create a Twitter profile that screams “Follow Me!”

4. Follow Others - Starting out, if you aren’t following anyone odds are no one is following you. Start with following the thought leaders and anyone already using hashtags or are tweeting about your field. There are several tools currently existing that will help you locate the people you need and want to follow.

5. Engage - This is the most difficult part. Anyone can broadcast their message through Twitter. The Gods of Twitter are the brands and people that engage their followers. You’ll be able to establish authority and spread your content even further once people feel that you aren’t only broadcasting your message but are also talking back to people that respond to what you are Tweeting.

Successful Tweeting is more of an art than a science, but with an understanding you’ll go from painting with your fingers to masterworks in no time.

Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He loves to talk about social media.

Writing meta tags: the great equalizer

You may be out-ranked, but you can still out-traffic the competition

You pour blood sweat and tears into SEO, clawing your way to the top spot on Google, triumphing over adversity like Rocky climbing stair after stair in Philadelphia. And you still don’t get the clicks. 

Like your mother always told you, winning isn’t everything. Being in the top spot in search rankings doesn’t guarantee people will be impressed enough to click your link. It’s likely enough they’ll take a look at the few entries below you and go elsewhere. That’s why your click-through rate (CTR) is the real measure of your SEO success.

Getting that high CTR is all about your meta tag descriptions. These are often neglected since search engines have been ignoring them in their rankings for many, many years. Which doesn’t make much sense as, whether it’s organic search traffic or pay per click, the meta tag is where you pitch your website to surfers, telling them what they’ll find on your page and why it’s worth their time.

 Follow the subtle arrow to find the meta tag

But hey, you’ve got the first spot, so you’ll still get most of the traffic right? Actually, you could be missing out on 80% of it. Traffic can vary between 20%-60% of clicks with a brilliant vs. rubbish meta tag description. If we’re talking about tens of thousands of searches, or more, that’s one heck of a lot of missed visits. 

Let’s look at an example. Here are the top 5 search results for “international ad agency.” Which one would you click on?

I would go for the second or third entries and skip the other ones entirely since their meta tag descriptions are far from convincing. 

Now that you know how important the meta tags are, here are some tips for writing them:

• Keep it within 150 letters as that’s all Google will show
• Run searches for your keywords and take a look at what competing sites have written to get a better idea of how to make your tags stand out
• Be convincing without being misleading - a good CTR doesn’t mean anything if you have a sky high bounce rate 
• Think of them as ads for your website

One last thought to mull over as you ponder how to handle your meta tags – if you don’t write them yourself, you may be in for some character assassination at the hands of Google. Just look what kind of spin the meta tag below put on an innocent writer, who in the context of the article is actually held in high esteem. Not so much on Google.

The best use of keywords is not SEO

Supercharging your site with keywords isn’t nearly as effective as building it around them from the ground up

Working on several SEO projects here at The Duffy Agency, I’ve come to realize keyword research has an even better use than optimizing a site for search engines – it should guide the entire focus of a site from day one.

Us SEO geeks usually start projects by doing some intense keyword research to make sure we’re optimizing an existing site for the search phrases with the greatest potential. This does help your content get found by a whole lot more people, but your chance to reach the masses may already be out of reach.

If you want to build a massively successful website in today’s overcrowded cyberspace, you need a cunning strategy. Keyword research is your secret weapon in crafting a strategy to give you a leg up on the competition. Without this research, you’re leaving your fate up to wishful thinking, hoping that your target is already searching for exactly what you’re creating and that you can steal traffic from competitors. But by taking a close look at what your target is searching for, you can tailor your content so that it gets placed where millions of targeted individuals are looking for it. But there's a catch: your site’s core content might not end up being what you had planned.

I can sense your skepticism. After all, if you want to sell bikinis, why should you go and make a website about swimming, workout tips and dieting instead of simply setting up an optimized webshop?

Because there aren’t many people searching for bikinis. Moreover, your webshop would be competing against every other company in the category, and the best SEO in the world won’t put you in front of the global giants. On top of that, you’ll only be fighting for the people typing “bikini” into search engines.

When you do the research, you see that most people interested in upgrading their beach-look are between 13 and 40, they work out, they dream about vacations in the Bahamas, and even though they want your product, most of them never search for it

. But they are searching for pictures of beaches, reading blogs about working out and trying out diets to lose a couple of pounds before bikini season. In other words, you discover swimwear is actually a small part of a bigger need your customers are trying to satisfy.

So instead of creating the website www.wesellswimwear.com you create www.getreadyforthebeach.com.

And instead of targeting the keywords "swimwear," "bikinis" and "bathing suits," which are being intensely fought over by a slew of competitors, you use "beach," "vacation," "work out" and "diet tips," since they get millions more hits and are less contested by the competition. 

There’s still competition to deal with, but you won’t be competing against other webshops struggling for their piece of a small audience. You’ll attract customers from a huge group of people who want your product, even if they aren’t looking for it directly. And you’ll still have pages on your site devoted to your webshop where you can fight for a place on the first “bikini” search results page.

The moral of this little hypothetical tale is that keyword research shows you what content your audience is out there looking for, and it’s likely not what you’re selling, whether it be a product, service or obscure amusement. You can’t do a whole lot with that information after your website is up, so doing the research in the beginning and engineering your site to give your target exactly what they want, where they’re looking for it, will lead to far greater results on search engines and higher traffic in general. Maybe a site that is all about you is exactly what you need, but you won’t know without the research. And if you don’t do it until after you’ve poured your time and money into making a site, your golden opportunity may have passed you by.

 

SEO and Twitter: How to get your page ranked

Adding search engine optimization to a website is as essential as good design and content. SEO is the cornerstone of making sure a website is found by search engines, which helps increase site traffic and authority. Most people are catching on to SEO these days, but they still don’t associate it with Twitter. Which is a shame because they’re missing an easy opportunity to increase their exposure. 

Twitter is highly indexed by Google and taking a few simple steps will help your Twitter profile appear on the first page of results when someone searches for you. Too often we’ve done research for clients and found that a company’s Twitter page doesn’t appear in the first few pages of a Google search. If that applies to you (go and check, we’ll wait), by making a few changes to your profile, you can boost your ranking.

Profile name - Picking a username is one of the most important things you can do. A username should either reflect your industry, a name you’re well known by or your company. This is how people will find your profile and associating your account with a name that is already associated with your industry will increase its value. Avoid dashes and try to keep the name as short as possible. 

Your website - Don’t bother adding “www” in front of your url. Twitter will add “http://” so the shorter you can keep your url the better. Twitter will only show the first 20 characters and the first 7 are pre-filled in. Just use the domainname.com. Avoid using url shorteners like Bit.ly or Tiny Url. 

Bio keywords - With only 160 characters allowed in your bio, don’t waste characters with words that don’t add to your value and have no search relevance. Your bio is a short introduction to who you are and will be displayed in the search results. It should tell people who you are, what you do and what you’ll tweet about.

Avatar - Most people don’t think about this, but Twitter doesn’t rename your profile photo like some sites do. By giving your profile photo a correct name, it will appear in search engine image results. This is important when it comes to making sure people are using the correct version of your logo or picture.

Use your account - Now that you’ve set up your account to maximize search engine results, use your account. The more active you are on Twitter, the higher Google and Bing will rank your profile in search results. This will lead to more people finding your profile, getting more followers and increasing your brand authority. 

After making these changes, let us know how it changed the search results for your Twitter profile.

Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He loves to talk about social media.

SEO tips: writing title tags

How to create the perfect title tag – and why you need to

A lot of friends ask me for advice when it comes to SEO. Nine times out of ten the first question is: How can I make my website/blog perform better on search engines – without spending any time or money?

Since I have to be the bad guy and inform them that, at least on our planet, that’s impossible, I give them the best place to start: their title tags. Writing great title tags is the most important thing you can do to explain what your website is about, both to Google and to potential visitors. It’s also one of the least time- and money-consuming SEO tactics you can use, while often making a very quick, noticeable difference in your search engine rankings.

The title tag is that blue link that appears in Google search results, and also the name of each webpage that appears at the very top bit of your web browser. Google’s search bots read these tags first to start judging what your page is about and what keywords are most relevant, so they basically tell Google that your site is what users want to see when they look for certain keywords.

 

As this tag is what appears in search results, a well-written one is likely to get you a higher percentage of click-throughs. Consider a potential visitor searching for new Ray Ban sunglasses. Which title do you think they will find more appealing:

"Sunglasses – Check out the new collection of Ray Ban sunglasses" - or -

"Welcome to my website!"

The tricky bit is appealing to the human beings you want to click your link while squeezing the most relevant keywords in there. With a little extra thought, it’s very doable. Here are six tips to help guide you in writing the most effective title tags for each page of your website.

1.  Make the first word/words of you title the keywords you want to capture users on – if you haven’t figured out what keywords you want to focus on, you can go here to see what keywords related to your content are getting the most searches on Google.

2.  Make the title reflect the information on the page. Misleading people will lead to an extremely high bounce rate and very few conversions.

3.  Don't use more then 63 characters. Google wont show the entire title if you do.

4.  If it makes sense to do so, use your title as the headline of your webpage – users expect to find the title on the page and it also reinforces the keywords you’re using.

5. Getting your brand/site name in there is a good idea for establishing trust and expanding your footprint, but you should generally put it at the end of the tag after a vertical line so the search focus is on your keywords.

6.  Your title will end up as a link in the search results, so make it compellingly clickable.

That’s about all there is to writing a great title tag. The most difficult part is determining which keywords to focus on for each page’s tags and content. Stay tuned for a future blog post on just that. 

If you want more information about writing the perfect title tag, check out the video below by Gareth Davies of GSINC Ltd.