While the main goal of search engine optimisation is undoubtedly to generate visitors from within a target market, one of the often overlooked side effects is the positive impact that a high ranking website can have on your company branding.
 
According to the Chartered Institute of Marketing, a brand is “The set of physical attributes of a product or service, together with the beliefs and expectations surrounding it - a unique combination which the name or logo of the product or service should evoke in the mind of the audience”
 
Meaning that everything a business does contributes to the way a person views its brand and the connotations this has. Businesses are realising that being seen at the top of Google can have a very positive impact on the mindset of a surfer, and almost as if it is a vote of confidence, coming at the top of Google gives a company an instant authority.
 
If I search for “Nike running shoes” and Google, the biggest search engine (AND the search engine that I trust) thinks you are the best place to buy Nike running shoes then you must be doing something right. Even if I am already thinking of making a purchase elsewhere, seeing your site listed amongst the top results will leave an impression.
 
Not only are you more likely to take a share of the searches, but your brand will be seen by members of your target market and find itself placed into their memory. Just like traditional advertising often centring around advert repetition - trying to become memorable by presenting a message over and over again - search engine marketing can help in the same way. With constant appearances at the top of the search results for a whole range of keywords related to your industry, you should soon see a positive impact on not only your traffic, but also your perceived clout.
 
What should you do?
 
Often there may be nothing to do, as this is a by-product of having a well optimised, high ranking site. If however you want to make sure you get the maximum brand value that you can from the search engines there are a few things you could consider.
 
The first is your keywords. While you should already be targeting the terms that generate good enquiries/sales, what about the terms that will help improve your brand image? If a lot of people searched for “best shoe shop” or “environmentally friendly building supplier” then wouldn’t you want your shoe shop or DIY store to show here?
 
You could also address the call to action that people see in the search results. Your page title, meta description and URL should all contain your keywords but how about putting a message in there that meets your brand objectives? If you want to differentiate your company in a certain way then this may be how you reach those searchers that would be swayed by this characteristic.
 
Of course, the most important thing is to have the skills of experienced search engine optimisation professionals. All the branding benefit in the world will casually pass you by if your website fails to show at the top of Google, Yahoo! and Bing. If SEO isn’t your strong point then that’s where we step in…

Google has recently filed for a patent where part of the ranking calculation is made up by the click through rate of web pages that have previously been listed for that search. See here for in-depth details.

This means that if your site appears on the first page for "cheap MP3 players" below Amazon.co.uk but receives a higher rate of clicks for that keyword then there is a chance your site could start showing above theirs.

Search engine optimisation and in-bound link building could now only the first half of the battle when it comes to winning the search engine war. If people aren't clicking your listing then you may start slipping back down the results.

How do you combat this? Strong calls to action.

The search results show three things that you have control over: your page title, your meta description and your URL. Make them really work for you.

Page title - Along with making sure your main keywords are in here try adding a sales message that will help people click through, e.g. "Cheap MP3 Players. Huge selection of low price MP3 players."

Meta Description – This is where you should see a big difference. In the meta description you have up to 160 displayed characters, so can create a couple of really strong sentences that will entice searchers towards your site. Make sure you include the keywords a couple of times too. e.g. "Cheap MP3 players. Full range of MP3 players from iPods to Zens. Cheapest price guarantee plus FREE shipping."

URL - If you have search engine friendly URLs then make sure the keywords show, as this increases click through rates. e.g. www.example.com/cheap-mp3-players

This just goes to show that you never know what's next in the world of search engine marketing. Many search engine optimisation companies and webmasters have ignored meta desciptions for years, writing them off as 'old-hat' and of no real value. With this update though, spending time on your meta data will once again be a fundamental part of online marketing.

Some search engine marketers are already reporting changes in the ranking of their sites since the recent Google update, with many suspecting historic click through rates already playing a part.

The number of companies that invest in online marketing is growing by the day, and the amount they spend is growing by the minute. Investment in activities like search engine marketing, pay per click advertising, and social media marketing is now really starting to take money away from the more traditional, offline marketing campaigns. A new study from Forrester Research shows just how large this marketing budget shift will be.

Looking at companies in the US, Forrester expects the amount of money spent on internet marketing activity to increase from the $23 billion that was spent last year, to almost $55 billion in 2014. This extra money is, for the most part, being taken from the more traditional marketing avenues, like print advertising and direct mail.

60% of the companies interviewed by Forrester stated that to fund further ventures into the digital world they would be "shifting money away from traditional marketing." Only 14% of respondents said they would be increasing spend for online marketing as well as offline forms of marketing.

Direct mail is the traditional marketing method that will be hit the hardest over the next five years. 40% of companies said that they will be decreasing the amount spent here to fund further online activity. If the companies interviewed are representative of US businesses as a whole then print media will also feel a very real change. Owners of newspapers can expect a 35% reduction in advertising spend and magazine publishers will see client budgets drop by 28%.

With internet marketing proving itself more cost effective and easier to measure than traditional marketing campaigns, companies have been making the transition for years. This research shows that these changes are starting to accelerate, even though it is something that has been predicted by experts within the online marketing world for a while. Last month the Society of Digital Agencies released a report that showed how more than 87% of advertising agencies and 73% of digital marketing agencies have started moving their own marketing budgets from offline to online. If we’re all now doing this, then shouldn’t you be too?

Online marketing intelligence company, Hitwise, has recently released a report showing that the number of words being typed into search engines is growing. It seems that internet users have taught themselves that the longer the keyword phrase, the more relevant the websites shown in the results.

The report, based on search engine usage in the US, shows a continuing rise in the percentage of people typing in over three keywords when using Google and the other search engines.

This is good news for smaller businesses, as one and two keyword phrases are often very competitive and dominated by larger, well funded, and well optimised competitors. Optimising your site for longer search phrases can bring in very targeted traffic and is much easier to rank highly for.

How can you start taking advantage of these “long tail keywords”? Head over to the Google keyword tool and type the your main one and two keyword phrases in your market. In the results you’ll see some of the related long tail keywords that people search on. Some of these will be much more specific to what you offer and will still have a nice level of traffic. Work out which ones are worth competing for and start optimising your web-pages, your copy and your in-bound links for these words. If you don’t know how to do that you can always call us (029 2076 6467).

Another in a long line of great internet marketing tools from Google is Insights for Search.

It allows you to see search trends for keywords across the globe. You can filter results by country and search term and it has an indicator of news related to chosen keywords, so you can see the effect the media had on search volume.

This is the kind of toy that digital marketers and webmasters play around with for hours, but is it of any use to the small business owner?

Almost certainly. It can help you identify large areas of traffic and see if the number of people looking for what you offer is growing or shrinking.

Pretend you run a magazine and website that reviews cars but you don’t really know where to best spend your time. Using the Google Insights for Search tool will allow you to see the kind of cars that people are interested in exploring further, and therefore the ones you should dedicate more space to. For example, search on “BMW” and add “Mercedes” as a second search term, filter the results to the UK in the past 12 months. The figures show that a lot more people in the UK search for information on BMW models than they do on Mercedes. You now know that, everything else being equal, reviewing BMWs would make your site appeal to a larger audience that one that reviews Mercedes.

You can use this tool to get an idea of where a market is heading and can see if your business is keeping up. Keywords surrounding Payday loans have risen almost 300% in the past 12 months. If your business offers other types of loan then is this an area that you should consider expanding into? If your business already offers Payday loans but your enquiry levels haven’t risen then shouldn’t you fire your marketing team?

One word of caution though. As the tool is still in BETA testing phase I’d take the figures with a pinch of salt and not bet my entire marketing budget on the results shown.

The number of people in the world that use the internet has surpassed 1,000,000,000. According to Comscore, a company that tracks web usage, December 2008 was the first time that one billion internet users went online within a single month. It could be as soon as 2015 that this figure exceeds two billion.

There are a number of predictions regarding the implications that this growing user base has in store for businesses. It might be worth bearing these in mind when looking at your digital marketing strategy:

E-commerce will carry on growing. It typically takes people a few years from their first internet experience to when they are confident enough to start spending online. With this in mind sales are expected to more than double from where they currently stand, as more and more users start to shop online. Many of the early adopters thought nothing of spending money on websites, no matter how they looked or worked, but the same isn’t true of the new users. To take advantage of the whole user base an e-commerce site must be user friendly, approachable and built with the needs of technophobes in mind. 

User demographics will change. In the 90’s the main internet users were people already in the world of technology, often referred to as geeks, and eager to embrace the web.  This isn’t so true these days. The number of older people browsing the internet is in the hundreds of millions and quickly growing, as is the number of younger users, with digital media a part of the curriculum in many primary schools. Another change is in the education of surfers. People without higher education and IT qualifications are becoming heavy internet users, and as services such as broadband continue getting cheaper and more widely used this will continue.

International usage shifts. It is believed that by 2015 over 85% of internet users will be from outside the US. China and India, in particular, have seen huge growth, and this doesn’t show any signs of slowing. English will start to be used less and less and foreign money will become more readily available online. Businesses that have separate websites, or pages, that target and attract people in various countries will flourish, and international sites that don’t match what local sites offer will not retain the interest, or receive the money, of surfers in that locality.

It was only a decade or so ago that in order to present and sell your products to someone from the other side of the world would have cost huge amounts of time and money. These days though you only need to find out what people are looking for and make sure your website comes up the next time they search for it. With the minimum amount of cost and fuss, technology can take care of all the time, currency and language differences that have previously plagued international trade. With a few clever tools, your website can act as a 24 hour, international salesman.

The beauty of the internet, and the reason why so many businesses use it as their main marketing avenue, is that any company, including yours, has the ability to sell to this gigantic market. Just make sure that you take the needs of the second billion users into account when trying to win the first.

There is a lot of talk in the online marketing world about how large a part digital marketing played in the success of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. He certainly embraced the internet, in particular the social networking platforms, and reportedly spent over $16 million on online advertising during the run up to voting day.

His digital campaigns included spending over $640,000 on Facebook, creating profiles on MySpace and Twitter, using search engine optimisation for his sites, blogging whilst on the road, and creating a YouTube channel.

Whilst most of those are fairly standard ways of raising awareness and promoting something on the web, the Obama team also came up with some original advertising. A clever tax calculator was placed on his site and links to it were spread around the web. The calculator shows just how much tax an individual could save under Obama’s proposed tax laws when compared to McCain’s and the number of direct links to it stands at over 6000, according to Yahoo!.

Obama’s marketing team also used the internet to communicate with hard to reach audiences. By putting billboard adverts inside the online version of the Xbox 360 game, Burnout Paradise, they took steps towards a demographic that McCain struggled to engage.

It is clear that the people advising the Obama administration knew the benefits that these digital marketing activates held. By having a presence on the social media networks Obama was opening himself up to his audience and coming across far more personable and  approachable than his competitors. By placing things like the tax calculator on his site he took advantage of viral linking, where people started broadcasting the message further on his behalf.

There is no doubt that these digital marketing campaigns helped Obama win the presidency. Future politicians will have taken note and the next time an election is looming it will be interesting to see the new and creative ways they use to web to get surfers to vote for them.

Figures released by the government today confirm that the UK is officially in recession. In the 4th quarter of 2008, the economy shrank at the fastest rate in almost 30 years. We haven’t been in an economic climate like this for almost two decades.

To anyone living or working in the UK, this isn’t exactly news. Times have been hard for a while and not a day goes by without another well known business making mass redundancies or calling in the receivers. What may come as a surprise is the fact that the current situation might offer you the best opportunity to grow your business that you’ve ever had.

As Harvard Business School’s John Quelch famously stated “It is well documented that brands that increase advertising during a recession, when competitors are cutting back, can improve market share and return on investment at a lower cost than during good economic times.”

Godfather of Advertising, David Ogilvy, agreed by saying "Studies over the last six recessions have demonstrated that companies which do not cut back their advertising budgets achieve greater increase in profit than those which do cut back.”

It takes real guts to increase marketing spend during a recession. Many of your competitors will pull back on their advertising, which gives your messages a greater chance of being noticed. Customers will be more likely to build a relationship with your brand and less likely to return to previous suppliers that no longer engage with them.

So, you need to market your way through this recession, but just how do you do that with every penny you earn being used to survive?

A couple of pointers to get you started:

- Analyse everything. Do you know where your customers are coming from? How much does it cost you to acquire a customer from each source? Does the amount these people spend differ depending on how they came onboard? With these figures in place, you will know your most profitable marketing activities as well as ones that could be operating at a loss.

- Make more of your existing customers. Some marketers will tell you that it’s seven times cheaper to convert an existing customer than it is a new prospect. Other marketers will tell you it’s ten times cheaper, and some say fifteen times. Whatever the correct figure, it’s certainly reason enough to start directing money at your customer database. Perhaps you could send a newsletter, or some promotional materials, to your existing customers with the aim of cross selling, i.e. getting them to purchase additional products/services from your company. Even if they are not ready to buy right now, you’ll be at the forefront of their mind when they are.

- Use the internet to your advantage. If you aren’t selling via the internet then it’s time to start. Businesses are often surprised with just how cost effective online marketing can be. As you are selling your products or services online, your door is always open and there are no geographical limitations. Test out search engine optimisation methods and Pay Per Click advertising campaigns to see what brings in the most revenue.

Marketing your way through the recession doesn’t have to cost a fortune. By working smarter and making every penny count, you could see your business come out the other side of the downturn in a much stronger position than it is in now. Good luck.