Blog•
on March 17th, 2010•
Research company Hitwise just reported that Facebook passed Google as the most visited website in the USA last week. Facebook had 7.07% of all visits to the web and Google had 7.03%. The bigger side to this story is that Facebook’s traffic is growing at rapid rates while Google’s traffic has more or less plateaued.
This has enormous implications for online marketing. What this says is that people trust Friend Results more than Google Search Results. This may be obvious to marketers everywhere, but have online marketing companies changed tactics for their clients?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) seeks to place a website high in Google rankings. This is still valuable. Extremely valuable. You’ve heard the joke, ‘what do you call someone who is #1 in google for a particular keyword?’ – A millionaire.
But SEO is step 1. If there are 30 movies at the movie theater, which one do you see? You see the one your buddy John recommended. Same is happening with websites. Google may point you to the best 30 websites for purchasing a used guitar, but your buddy John, who purchased a guitar last month and had a great experience, will help you weed through the noise.
This is the power of a Facebook network. I see my friends make posts all the time that ask for recommendations for certain products or services. And many people respond with good or bad experiences from specific companies.
Other ways we are seeing recommendations take place are in sites like Angie’s List. Angie’s List allows people to rate contractors. You need a plumber, you search here and see what your neighbors have ranked plumbers in the area. Now, you are not trying to do a Google search to find a random plumber, but you are basing your decision on reputation.
Blog•
on March 10th, 2010•
For a recent website design of mine, I received some interesting feedback from a blind user. It had never crossed my mind to design websites in a way in which they would make sense if they were read aloud to the user. Blind users likely access your site through a Screen Reader, meaning they hear your website instead of see it.
The more I got to thinking about this, I realized that creating websites with the blind in mind just might help in search engine rankings as well.
Consider the following suggestions that I received from the blind user. Most of these will also assist in your Search Engine Optimization techniques:
- Use Alt text for every image. This is SEO 101, but be descriptive in the alternative text you use for the image. The blind user will hear this text, so describe the image using keywords relevant to your page copy.
- Use a healthy balance of text and images. I know the trend is fewer words and more images, but make sure the point of each page is clearly stated not only visually but also in your text copy.
- Don’t have music auto-load when the user opens up the website. For someone hearing the site read out to them, this interferes and can be difficult to find where to turn the music off.
- Use Alt text for links. I rarely do this, but think about it. If you just post a text link in your page copy without including alternative text, the full link is read aloud, numbers and all, instead of “Link to Atlanta Plumber.”
- Flash cannot be read to a blind person. Flash is read aloud as a button. Google can’t read Flash, iPhones don’t display Flash, and the blind user can’t hear Flash. If you are going to use Flash, don’t place it at the top section of the page. This will be the first thing the blind user hears. If your entire page is Flash, you have completely alienated the blind user.
You can find further information on website design at the links below:
American Foundation for the Blind
As my entrepreneurship professor recently said, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) should be the major focus of a website developer, as long as the year is 2005. SEO is the process of optimizing your website through keyword research, competitive research, keyword strategy, and then deploying this strategy through Meta tags and website content. It also consists of obtaining links to your site from people who recognize your worth.
In 2005, SEO was important. It still is, and being #1 on Google for a particular word or phrase is guaranteed website traffic. But SEO is no longer enough. Thousands of pages of websites are added to the Internet every day. It is becoming more and more difficult to get high placement on Google just using SEO techniques.
The major pitfall of SEO is that even if you get high ranking for a certain product, and people come to your website because you are #1 on Google, why should they trust you in making a purchase on your site?
This is where online marketing and social media tools come into play. When I speak of online marketing, I am not just referring to the bland Google Ads or flashy banner ads, I am more referring to the utilization of social networking tools and blogging tools.
SEO may get you high placement in the search engines, but it does not build trust.
Social networking tools and blogs have the ability to build trust. Blogs in particular have the ability to portray an expertise in a given field. For my website clients, if I feel their particular business will not rank high in Google due to competition or low search for that niche, I recommend another approach. I will still optimize their site to the best of my ability, but the approach I recommend is for my clients to show that they are experts.
Many of my clients are experts in what they are doing. They have traveled the world and have done business in areas you don’t read about in the papers. Their stories would be more entertaining and educational than any graduate school text book. If they began sharing these stories through blog postings, people would begin to find these blogs and come to think of that person as the go-to person for questions or consulting in that field.
If my clients are not experts in their field, I still recommend blogging. But their blogs should not be an attempt to portray expertise, but as a story-telling method of where they are in their business. If they are entrepreneurs, I suggest writing about the process of getting their business up and running. Of writing about successes and failures. A photo of you on your website will let people in a little bit. Opening up and writing about your business struggles will have people connect with you and will build trust that is the foundation of any business interaction.
It is then the role of the social media outlets, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc to point people to these blog postings. Also, by writing these blogs, content will be continually updated on a website for topics that relate to your business. You will be fulfilling SEO strategies by continually adding keywords to your site that reflect your business.
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