For many sites on the Web, social traffic coming through Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace is beginning to rival, and in some cases overtake, search traffic as the single biggest source of traffic

While this may strike fear into the hearts of SEO experts, it’s something they have to embrace, whether they like it, or not.

The essence of the article is, with over 5billion pieces of content shared on Facebook every week, it’s becoming clear that people now prefer to broadcast their information rather than email it, and that includes links to sites.

So - to summarise, your site doesn’t just need to be found on search engines, it needs to be on the Social Media sites too…not ground-breaking news, but nice to hear someone else say it!

Buzz is a new Social Networking App from Google. The system is built into Gmail, the idea being that you can start conversations with your existing friends rather than having to start from scratch like you do when joining other platforms. You are automatically set up to ‘follow’ the people you email and chat to the most, so you don’t even need to ask them to be your friends. The system allows you to share photos, videos and links either publically or privately, and you can even have pre-defined groups - to make sure you don’t share something aimed at your family with your workmates for example. Buzz will later be rolled out to business and schools which are already using Google Apps, with added features for sharing within organisations.

So what makes it different from the other millions of social apps? Well, Google Buzz for mobile allows you to automatically add your current location as context to your posts - a nice crossover with the other Google products. Also, Google have worked with Flickr and Twitter inorder to integrate their features into Buzz in an aim to make it a sort of social platform rather than a stand alone system.

Views have been mixed so far, so let us know what you think of Google Buzz.

The idea is that if a user is connected to people, results from those people will have relevance because the user knows and trusts them. Google says, “You can improve social search results for your friends and contacts by linking to content you have created such as blogs, photos and videos on your Google profile.”

How to make the most of social search results (from Webpronews):
1. Make sure you have all of your important links on your Google Profile.
2. Make as many connections as possible.
3. Encourage customers to follow you via social networks.
4. Participate in social media so people will engage with you.
5. Encourage sharing of content
6. Include social network info on business cards/signage, etc.

Clearly Google want their profile pages to gain importance in the Social Media circles, but is it going to be as beneficial to the user as it will be to Google’s status?

So what is Caffeine? Well, the new architecture is to include crawling, indexing, and ranking changes. What’s makes this different from the other changes, is that for the first time, Google provided a developer preview and asked webmasters a to try it out and give them feedback before it was launched. Caffeine won’t just be a set of new features, but is to be an entirely new search infrastructure that will replace the existing one.

In Google’s own words:
“The new infrastructure sits ‘under the hood’ of Google’s search engine, which means that most users won’t notice a difference in search results.”

So why do we need it? Judging by what Google have written, Caffeine is being designed to crawl the web more comprehensively, determining reputation and authority more effectively, and returning more relevant results quicker. If you notice changes on how Google has been indexing your search results over the last few days, let us know.

Thanks to all who supported us last year. The Marina Dalglish Appeal and The Prince & Princess of Wales Hospice were the benefactors of all money raised.

If you’d like to take part, the 5km Santa Dash takes place on December 13th 2009, leaving from George Square at 9.30am. Register through the Glasgow Council website.

If you’d rather make a donation and leave the running to us, please contact us.

Wish us luck!

An SEO copywriter should be a blend between an SEO specialist and copywriter. This means that that they should have all the technical know-how of what search engines look for when ranking a page, but also should have a gift for writing compelling copy and content for your audience.

Why is SEO copy so important?

“Content is King” may be a cliché, it is also true when it comes to websites. Text is the most important thing on the web. Once you have stripped away all the pretty images and dissected the latest gimmicks it will be information that you are left with, and that’s the thing that your customers come back for. Graphical trimmings and gimmicks will change with the seasonal fads whereas information will remain and be sought after.

Your site’s content will; determine how search engines rate you; bring visitors to your site; and determine what happens to your visitors once they arrive.

There are a lot of different factors that are part of the delicate what-makes-a-successful-website recipe:

• Good design
• Accessibility
• Good Navigation
• Sense of trust
• Functionality
• Quality images
• etc

For now though, we are just concerned with content.

SEO Copywriting gone wrong

We have all been there - the site at the top of the search results can waste hours of our browsing lives. A site that is so stuffed full of keywords that there is no longer any content to read, to make sense of. We are an educated audience and we have high expectations of what our web results should be. This does not include badly designed web pages with text that does not make much sense and ultimately makes us hunt for what we were originally searching for.

This is the perfect example of SEO copywriting gone wrong. Unless you are just selling impressions, you want your audience to find you, stick around long enough to see what you have to offer and ultimately complete what you define as a goal - whether that’s a purchase, a click or an enquiry. There is no point being at the top of the search results if you do not convert the traffic generated. I feel slightly dirty saying this but if Content is King, Conversion is definitely Queen. A good SEO copywriter will know how to make this relationship work for the search engines, the audience and for YOU.

Content Optimisation

Search engines are mainly interested in one thing “relevancy”. The trick to creating good content for search engines is to keep your page focused. Be concise, to the point and do not write in an abstract manner. Here are some more hints and tips on optimising your content:

1. Optimising Meta Tags
Meta tags are your chance to write for the search engines, to tell them what your web page is about. Although, these are becoming less important in the search engine battle they do still play a very important role.

2. Keyword Optimisation
The trick to optimising your content is using the correct amount of focused optimised key phrases, increasing relevancy for search engines but also remaining readable and informative for your audience. When writing for search engines keyword density is of great importance, search engines will use this to rank your page and determine its focus.

3. HTML Markup and Page Hierarchy
Search Engines and your audience like certain things. The web is an impatient environment and we must know what a page is offering in seconds or we will quickly move on. A good SEO copywriter will break your page down into well marked, bite-size sections with clear titles, take advantage of the header tags in HTML to format your page, and use formatting to emphasise your keywords.

4. Using Quality Content
The myth was that the bigger your site the better you were ranked, but this strictly speaking is not true. What is true, is that the higher quality your content the better you will be ranked. So if you combine quality content with a large website you give yourself the best platform for the optimum results.

5. Fresh Content
Try to keep your website up-to-date, fresh and relevant. Sites that have home pages that regularly change are visited more by the search engine spiders but also keep your audience coming back.

On this note blogs, rss feeds, forums and many other forms of social media allow you to keep your site fresh and continually changing. To find out more, visit our Social Media Marketing help.

6. Avoid Duplicate Content
Duplicate content can be heavily penalised with high ranking sites disappearing from the search results almost over night. We are all interested in unique quality information and the search engines are no different. Sometimes this can not be avoided but through the use of 301 redirects and the canonical tag you can make sure that you are not penalised.

7. Punctuation and capitalisation
This is less to do with search engines but makes a massive difference with your audience. Remember your punctuation, capitalisation and your overall grammar. There is nothing more off putting than some one saying “secure transaxions buy now”. Your copy needs to be professional or you will tarnish your own credibility and in turn your conversion rates. If in doubt, ask someone who does it for a living…a copywriter for instance!

So why are SEO Copywriters so important?

SEO copywriting was once looked down on as a spammy dilution of “true” copywriting. Now it is starting to be recognised for the art form it is, and has a justified place online.

Expert SEO Copywriters will be able to create content that both satisfies the search engines need for relevancy, tag hierarchy and optimisation flags whilst still appealing to the audience with compelling, exciting and informative copy that encourages call to action.

The professional copy writer knows the subtleties between “buy” and “buy now”, and the good copywriter will not only increase your search engine traffic but also increase the conversion rate of your website.

Find out more on how an expert SEO copywriter can improve your site content and increase conversion!

Your Adwords audience is one of the best converting groups, these people are coming to you rather than you having to approach them. The quality of leads are generally higher as they are not incentivised (e.g. affiliate) and they are an educated audience, knowing what to search for is half the battle won. These people know what they want and hopefully you are that person to provide this.

Good copy is not difficult to achieve - it can even be seen as formulaic: Headline, 2 lines of copy, destination URL and we will look at each in turn and give you tips on how to appeal to your audience.

The anatomy of an ad.
Headline (25 characters)
Line 1 (35 characters)
Line 2 (35 characters)
Display URL (35 characters)
Destination URL

Headline
Although all elements contribute to the overall optimisation, the headline is the most important. This is the first thing you read and generally the first thing you notice. It is at this stage that you decide whether the ad is relevant to you. So what does this tell us? Firstly, you must make your headline relevant and try to catch your searchers’ attention by using compelling headlines that also contain keywords.
The best tips I can provide are:
- Always include the keyword in the headline if you can. e.g. SEO Services Glasgow
- Use a question e.g. Interested in S.E.O.?
- Use an instruction e.g. Increase Conversion. Increase your Traffic
- Buy or not buy? All over the net you will see advice that you should not use “buy” in your headlines. This is not strictly true as with all things there is a time and place and the right thing for one situation isn’t always the best course of action for another. It is true that the word “buy” in a headline can be off-putting but if you are specifically selling something it can drive targeted traffic. Think about it in these terms, if someone is looking to buy something your ad will appeal to them, if they are only looking for information they will not click your ad and you will save money. You might not get a chance for your site to do a pre-sale but at least your advert is being direct and getting only the qualified traffic coming through. One of my favourite examples for this was an e-commerce company selling mobile I.T. equipment, the budget was constantly being sapped and we could see that we were getting high click through rates for our more generic terms but few conversions in relation. Now we did not want to drop our generic terms but we wanted to only drive traffic that was interested in buying so we stuck “buy” in the title. Our traffic did drop but so did our costs the important thing is that we did not drop in conversions. We removed the purely information seeker from our budget and focussed solely on qualified converting browsers.
- Use a price - this only works if you are competitively priced. Professional Web Design from £245
- Use title case e.g. Professional web design or Professional Web Design
- Do not repeat your company name in the headline as they should already be able to see it in your display url

Copy
- Be specific, always focus around your main objective. Be direct and make sure your message is clear. Generic ads under deliver when compared to targeted copy.
- Every character counts, do not waste vital space with bridging words or phrases. e.g. Online Marketing Glasgow not Online Marketing in Glasgow
- Use this space to tell a story, offer instructions, divulge information, make bold statements. e.g. Increase your online revenue by 35%
- Create trust e.g. UKs Largest supplier. Cisco certified. This must be proven or you will be banned. e.g. Award winning web design 2007-2009
- Adding elipses (i.e. …) at the end of your second line implies that you have more information to offer and encourages a greater click through. e.g. Professional web design, e-commerce, bespoke solutions…
- There are specific keywords which seem to gear people into action: free, download, how to, e.g. How to increase site conversion in 3 easy steps…
- Use strong call to actions - order now, limited offer. Today only. e.g. Web Design from £249. Limited Offer - Order Now!
- Add seasonality to your ad copy, but keep it updated or it will count against you. e.g. Summer Clearance! Order now to secure your place…
- add benefits and usps unique selling points: free next day delivery, why my product helps you.

Display URL
- Experiment with capitalisation e.g. KukaStudios.com
- Add keywords to your URL e.g. KukaStudios.com/WebDesign

In General
- Think like your audience (this is generally true for all marketing) what are they searching for, what do they want to find e.g. Local Web Designers
- Do not use repetitive keywords in your headline and copy, always try to differentiate. e.g. Professional web design, professional templates and solutions…. or Professional Web Design, Quality templates and solutions.
- Always check what your competition are doing and see what their USPs are and the tone of their delivery. e.g. Do they offer free delivery?
- What makes you different from your competition? What do you have to offer?
- Although this is often overlooked, correct spelling, punctuation and casing will make all the difference. Would you trust someone who can’t even spell an ad correctly with all your money and credit card details?
- Wording is also very important and you should always test this to see what performs better in terms of ROI e.g. Half Price Web Design or Web Design 50% Off.

Testing
- Test everything! Run multiple ads and measure their performance against each other in terms of CTR and Conversion. Take the best elements from each and create new ads until you have streamlined the “perfect” ad.
- Small changes make big differences - one word can make all the difference so can an exclamation mark - you should constantly experiment
- Mix up the placement of your keywords
- Always experiment with new copy and keep it fresh

There is another thing that I won’t go into right now, but is worth knowing about, and that is dynamic keyword insertion. This is where you can take the searched for term and have it dynamically inserted into your own copy. Although this sounds ideal and can be used to great effect there are also pitfalls with it if not thought through fully. Google’s full FAQ can be found here.

For more information on Google Adwords and the copywriting services that we offer, contact Kuka Studios.

According to Google:
The AdWords system calculates a ‘Quality Score’ for each of your keywords. It looks at a variety of factors to measure how relevant your keyword is to your ad text and to a user’s search query. A keyword’s Quality Score updates frequently and is closely related to its performance. In general, a high Quality Score means that your keyword will trigger ads in a higher position and at a lower cost-per-click (CPC).

To read the full Google help article, click here

The quality score will affect what your minimum bid is, where your placement will be and even if you are legible to show at all.

Why should we care?
As with all marketing we are measured on maximum return for minimum expenditure, by optimising your Google adwords account you can reduce your CPC and with the use of bespoke landing pages potentially increase your conversion rate. The great thing about Google adwords is that this can be implemented and assessed very quickly.

Where to begin?
There are so many things that we can go into right now such as:
- how to set up and structure a Google campaign
- top tips for optimising ad copy
- what elements make the best landing pages
- final optimisation tips to squeeze the last of your budget

For now my main aim is to briefly tell you how to improve your quality score and each of the points mentioned above will be covered in future posts.

So let’s begin, Google’s mantra is “relevancy”. Whether it is SEO or PPC you are reading up on, this keyphrase comes across again and again and who can blame them. There is nothing more annoying than having precious online time wasted by misleading adverts and mismatched websites. When we search for something we know what we want and we are already part of the way along the conversion path. At this stage if we can give the user something relevant we increase our conversion rates and overall reputation. Google has the right idea here and if we follow their guidelines and recommendations we will ultimately save ourselves money and increase our conversion rates.

So let’s look at the top tips for increasing the relevancy of our ads.

Targeted Advertising

Ad Group Structure
Think of all the product groups or categories you wish to promote and use these as the basis for your ad groups. Being specific rather than general with your setup will save you money but will also increase your relevancy and therefore your quality score. You should aim for creating groups targeted at specific products, these should contain 15-20 related keyphrases.

Ad Copy
Use your top key phrases in your title and copy. Try and have your display url contain your keyphrase. From experience, PPC and most online marketing campaigns benefit from using bespoke landing pages that are optimised for lead conversion or for sales. (This is covered fully in another post). In the case of Adwords quality score it also helps if these are named in such a way that they contain the key phrase as part of the file name / URL.

Bespoke Landing Pages
Use bespoke landing pages that target the keyphrases that you are using in your targeted ad group. Amend your meta tags to include your ad copy, ensure that you have H1 tags that reflect your ad or keyphrases. Rewrite your content to include many of the phrases you are using. Ensure this landing page loads quickly. It is beneficial if you also include a privacy policy link on this page.

Adgroup History
Now you have to wait for your ads to build their history. The more clicks you receive the more data is built up about your account and you will grow in rankings, history and quality.

I feel like I have only touched the tip of the iceberg with the methods above. There are so many finer details to implementing and optimising Adwords which will take too much time to go into just now, but even though this is just an overview I think we need a conclusion of sorts.

Conclusion

This approach is taken with all clients but one that stood out was a Dental company. Their existing ad structure was scattered and unfocused, they were spending an obscene amount of money with very little return. As part of the optimisation process which also included restructuring, keyword analysis, copy writing, analytics, landing page optimisation and maintenance we specifically set out to increase quality score. This had been down in the 1/10 to 3/10 range, they were pointing all destination URLs to their home page which was not keyword rich and didn’t mention their services, the page had no relation to the advert or the services offered.

We took the approach mentioned above:
We identified the low quality keywords and put these into their own seperate groups. We wrote content specifically for these targeted services and pointed them to bespoke landing pages e.g. teeth whitening manchester, etc.

The performance had a quick turn around with the quality score jumping from 1/10 to 9/10 and even 10/10 within a couple of weeks. As the history grew we were able to reduce our bids without losing our position and because the landing pages were so relevant to the search terms conversions went up as expected. Overall the budget was halved, the conversion rate tripled and we could re-use the budget to expand the service groups further.

If you need more help or advice with your Google Adwords, feel free to contact us

1 - All commercial websites in the UK must permanently include:
a) the company’s name
b) the registered office address
c) an email address - not just a contact us form
d) the company’s registration number;
e) any Trade or Professional Association memberships;
f) the company’s VAT number.

2 - To prevent being classed as ‘Spam’, you must have someone’s consent before emailing them marketing information and you must include an “unsubscribe” option with every marketing email.

3 - Reproducing content of any sort, without referencing the source, even on blogs and other social media outlets is a copyright violation. Visit Out-Law’s Copyright pages for more information

4 - If you register a domain name that conflicts with an existing trade mark, you can be taken before a dispute resolution body or a court by the trade mark holder and your ownership of the domain may be cancelled or transferred.

For a full list of legal requirements your UK website must follow, Out-Law’s checklist is invaluable.

1. Make your navigation clean and simple.
A successful navigation system should tell a user where they are, where they have been, and where they can go. Keep it in the same format and place on every page and use text rather than images for links. Include a text-based sitemap and a site search box.

2. Keep the content simple and easy to read.
You might be desperate for an all-singing all-dancing site design, but if people can’t tell what you do they won’t hang around to find out. Good text is the best way to improve search engine rankings, and gain the trust of your customers. Emphasise the important words and

3. Keep the design consistent
Choose your brand colours carefully and use them consistently. Visitors should never click on an internal link in your site and wonder if they’ve left your Web site. Similarly, page layout and fonts should be consistent.

4. Plan before you start
Websites can grow arms and legs as a company gets bigger and as its needs grow. If you want all the hard work you put in at the start to still be worthwhile in a year’s time, take time to plan your navigation and needs before you start. It will help the site grow organically.

5. Test the site on real people
If your web designer friend likes it - it doesn’t count. Ask your mum. If she’s too biased, ask your little sister or someone not so internet savvy. Unfortunately the most powerful business man and the biggest spenders on the high street can have something in common - a fear of technology. Make sure that your site caters for them by testing it on them.