How to market content

1. Use your social media outreach

The best content will connect with people, it will get them to think about the subject matter of the content, whether it is an editorial, infographic or video and encourage readers to form their own opinion. Whenever we create content, that is always the end-goal – to get people to think, and hopefully to like it. The most difficult part for smaller businesses is getting content to be picked up by the community and read by people, but this is why social networks have the potential to be so effective.

Even small businesses with a relatively limited social media outreach might be followed by other highly influential people with extensive outreach. The key is getting people to share it, so just make sure you post great content at an optimal time and make relevant people aware of it.

2. Have a marketing strategy in place

Don’t simply create one single link on your social media networks and expect it to go viral within 30 minutes. Have a plan in place before you release the content to extend its visibility beyond that of Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Research the most active industry forums and decide how you are going to discuss it and generate buzz around it – what is the hook of the piece? Will it create controversy? Does it promote your products or services? Try to answer these questions and build a marketing strategy for your best content because this will help it achieve its full potential.

3. Time your release

In the ‘Science of blogging’, Dan Zarrella conducted a series of experiments aimed at discovering how the most successful blogs function. One of these experiments was testing when the optimal time to create a link on a social network was – when is the best time get retweets on Twitter, or the best time to get likes on Facebook etc. The results were surprisingly significant, and the vast dataset that the results were taken from makes them reliable, but obviously there might be some variations depending on the niche of the industry.

The results showed that the best time to post a link on Twitter is around 4pm on a Friday, whereas Facebook activity appeared to be much more prevalent during weekends, and generally during the mornings. Timing to launch your content at peak times is another great tactic to optimise your content for success.

4. Be Patient

Great content doesn’t always explode within minutes of its launch – of course there are exceptions, but generally it could take days, weeks or even months before a piece of content really achieves its potential. It can be frustrating because obviously a lot of time and effort is taken into producing high-quality content, but the best thing to do is have faith, and let it share and spread organically. Don’t repeatedly spam your social network profiles with repeated links to the same content if it doesn’t start attracting traffic instantly because you risk alienating your client base or damaging brand awareness.

Creating superb, original and creative content is one of the best things a company can do, no matter the size of the business. It is the best way to communicate directly with your clients and keep them informed about brand products, services and offers as well as achieving higher rankings in the SERPs. Hopefully these short tips can help you develop the reach of your content, but if you have any further comments then please feel free to comment on this blog.

Related posts:

1. Incorporating Social Networking Into Your Web Design One of the most powerful forms of Internet marketing these...
2. Optimising Your Site For Social Media Optimising Your Site For Social Media If you’d like to...
3. Hate Socialising but Love Money? You still need Facebook The growth of Social Networks in the last couple of...

Bing currently has a partnership with Facebook that allows them to use data that is publically shared through Facebook to personalise the results they show to signed-in users. This is similar to how Google are now leveraging Google+ data into their SERPs, and because of the aforementioned partnership between Bing and Facebook, they could theoretically recreate this. This is something Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Land briefly mentioned in a blog post covering the launch of ‘Search Plus You World’, but I’d like to go into a bit more detail.

How would Facebook and Bing integration work on this scale?

Facebook is arguably one of the largest depositories of private information on the web, but as I briefly mentioned, only information that is publically shared can be used to personalise the Bing SERPs. This allows a lot of scope for expansion, or at least deeper mining of Facebook’s data by Bing, who are in a position to tap into one of the richest sources of information that could be used to personalise search results in the world today. However, Google’s ‘Search Plus Your World’ update has left them under the scrutiny of the FTC after they had been reported for anti-competitive behaviour, and this could potentially happen to Bing or Facebook if they choose to go down a similar path.

The move could potentially increase Bing’s search engine market share, because of the popularity of Facebook. Conversely, if this was integrated into Facebook, it would help to cement their position as King of social media. While this observation is just based on speculation, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter, and whether you think this could be a potential move for Bing and Facebook? What do you think the results would be for internet marketing on a broader scale? Please feel free to comment with your thoughts.

Related posts:

1. Bing Goes One Better The Bing versus Google war is hotting up. With Bing...
2. Don’t Neglect Bing A major mistake being committed by many search engine optimisation…...
3. Do Search Engines Really Need Games? Internet marketing… is a funny old thing. Social gaming company...

Bearing this in mind, I thought it might be beneficial to cover some of the similarities between these two industries in a bit more detail.  It might even be worth discussing the differences as well because there are several important contrasts.

What is PR?

Firstly, it would be prudent to establish a definition of ‘PR’ or ‘Public Relations’.  PR is concerned with managing the reputation of a business with the objective of earning support and influencing the opinion of the public, particularly those that might be specifically interested in the service or conduct of an individual business.

Well, how is the comparable to SEO, I hear you say.  To achieve a higher online visibility, SEO strategists must determine the best channels of communication to distribute businesses content to an online community.  The content that the SEO copywriters create also has to be written in a very precise form that will appeal and interest that community, get shared through social media outlets and forums and win authoritative links.

In many ways the mind-set is very similar between the two professions, but because traditional PR is largely an offline practice and SEO is online, there are some differences.  I think the main variance is that search engine optimisation is ultimately about getting traffic to visit a website directly.  PR can more frequently be about simply making the public aware of a brand without implying explicitly that they should use that brand next time they are searching for a particular service.

Can I apply PR strategies to my SEO work?

There is one tactic that is employed lots by both PR and SEO professionals – that is to use press releases.  Press releases provide a great way to distribute information quickly and reliably through many reputable news channels that will be deemed as authoritative hubs of information by the online community.  They can be used to discuss new services, client acquisitions and research – anything that could be considered newsworthy by the online community.  The main difference between online and offline press releases that online ones are reliant on links and keywords to achieve maximum SEO value.  When press releases are being written by SEO agencies, they are written with increasing search engine visibility in mind.

It is also important to regularly publish and post other forms of content that are more distanced from advertising than press releases.  This can be the blog or articles that are published on a website and distributing them through Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn etc.  Regularly producing content that is suitable and interesting for the online community will help a business establish a solid foundation on which to build other facets of an SEO campaign such as link building and reputation management.

Another idea that has the same principles for both search marketing and PR company’s is to host a competition.  By hosting a competition you will be directly interacting with you clients, all the while building trust and establishing a positive brand association.  Online competitions are generally quite simple to organise and host.  For example, you can say raise awareness of a social media presence by offering a free sample of a service when your Twitter accounts reaches 500 followers, for example.

To conclude I would say that there are some striking similarities between SEO and PR, and often the skills from one profession are easily transferrable to the other.  Understanding how to interact with the community in order to transfer a brand message between a business and the public is a crucial practice in search engine optimisation and public relations.  Often the best SEO campaigns can strike a blend between the two, so if you have any questions about SEO or any of our other services please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Related posts:

1. Online Press Releases To Help Your PR Your business relationships with the public will be a huge...
2. Build and Reward a Social Community One thing that is becoming clearer by the day for...
3. Web Design gives your Company a Virtual Presence Having a web site or web pages within a web...

At the crux of the book is the argument that personalisation is fragmenting the web. Websites are increasingly tailoring their services to each individual user – this means that when we search Google, or one of the other search engines, for something such as ‘climate change’ or ‘immigration’ we are likely to be served results that support the preconceptions we already have on these subjects. The search engines are able to do this through monitoring what websites we have already visited, and determining which results in relation to a query we are likely to find more useful. This personalisation also extends beyond the search engines, Facebook use EdgeRank to determine which friends updates we see in our news feed, and it is argued that the recommendations Amazon generates are causing its users to become myopic because they aren’t being offered an unbiased selection of results. In this search marketing blog, I’d like to explore the argument in a bit more detail – and hopefully at the end you can leave you view on the subject.

Are we in a Filter Bubble?

I’d like to focus specifically on Google throughout this blog because, as a search engine, it plays an incredibly large part in how we receive information on any subject. It is true that personalisation affects most of the searches conducted on Google, and the majority of casual users don’t even realise that the results they are shown are tailored to their idiosyncrasies. The main argument that Pariser puts forth is that because the information we receive is suited to us, it is serving as a form of propaganda, solidifying our biases and leaving users with tunnel-vision as they are unwilling to listen, or just unaware of counter arguments against their beliefs.

Take, for example, a person that is searching Google for the query ‘climate change’ for the first time. The first link they click might be a webpage arguing that ‘climate change’ is a fallacy, from that webpage they follow links to other websites supporting this argument, and from those websites they delve deeper into this particular theory. The next time they search Google for ‘climate change’, instead of the SERPs being populated with unbiased information representing arguments both for its existence and against its existence, the results supporting the idea that it is a fallacy will be ranked higher, obviously making them more likely to be clicked. This starts a cycle where the searcher may just become unaware of arguments stating that ‘climate change’ is a reality, leaving them with a biased view and perhaps an unwillingness to accept other arguments. This is a bit of an exaggerated example, as it would generally take Google longer than one search, to really start influencing the results it shows, but it indicates how Pariser’s argument is structured.

The second part of the argument is that it creates a privacy nightmare, because websites are capable of harvesting vast data on individual users, and this is creating a ‘big brother’ level of paranoia amongst some digital and social commentators including Pariser. There is truth in this argument, particularly as Facebook have recently had to restructure their privacy settings by setting on limits on how long they can retain data on ad-clicks, amongst other things. Another argument of Pariser’s is that in authoritarian states, the algorithms that tell help filter results to suit our needs, can also filter out news that we shouldn’t see – it increases censorship. So, while there are some significant arguments supporting Pariser’s view, in the book he tends to ignore the counter claims to this argument – dare I suggest a hint of irony?

While personalisation does affect almost all internet searches, it is possible to remove all personalisation with a single click – a fact that goes unmentioned in the book. This may be because, as I stated earlier, many casual users are perhaps unaware that their results on Google are filtered. However, simply by clicking the ‘Verbatim’ search tool on Google, all personalisation filters are removed, and each Web Browser has the option of ‘private browsing’. It can also be argued that personalisation makes it more likely that serendipitous results are more likely to be favoured as interesting results are generated along with relevant results. This is supported by a study conducted by Microsoft in 2009 that states, “rather than harming serendipity, personalization appears to identify interesting results in addition to relevant ones.” This means that, perhaps as a consequence, a result we may not have come across in the deep 50+ pages of results the search engines generates, may be elevated to the first page based on our previous search history. This would suggest that personalisation is in fact opening more doors for us, rather than restricting them.

I would have to conclude that I disagree with Pariser to an extent, because I don’t believe personalisation is harming users as much as he states, however, I do feel it would be beneficial for more users to be aware of how personalisation affects them and what they can do to limit those effects. I would suspect the majority of internet marketing agencies and search engine optimisation specialists would agree, as there is also the argument that personalisation is driving digital marketing innovation and requiring agencies such as Click Consult to work harder than ever to produce the best results for clients. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the matter, so please feel free to comment.

Related posts:

1. To personalise or be generic in email marketing? Good business is all about relationships. Far too many business...
2. Making Clients Feel Special With Personalised Email Marketing One of the techniques in email marketing… includes personalisation. The...
3. Why are people scared of Pay per Click? You hear the ongoing argument of SEO vs. PPC… all...

A high bounce rate is caused by a person visiting a specific webpage, then leaving straight away back where they came from without navigating any further into the site.  So, how can this be a good thing?  Well, it all depends on the content or the purpose of that specific page, as I’ll soon discuss.  A hugely positive side effect of Google’s Panda update is that webmasters are keen to either delete or re-work any ‘low quality’ pages on their website.  Nevertheless, just because a webpage is generating a high bounce rate does not always mean that a page is low quality and there is no need to either delete or rewrite all pages that do have a high bounce rate.  Let me explain why.

I mentioned above briefly that understanding the on-page content could be a better way of determining the overall quality of a webpage.  It is necessary to holistically consider the overall role of a page within a website before using bounce rate as finite metric for judging quality.  For example, a user might be directed to a blog post on your site from the search engines, read the blog, then return straight to the search engines.  The fact could be that the visitor has ascertained the information the information they needed, so they would have no need to progress any further into the site.  The same principle can be applied to almost all pages that are loaded with informational content.  If a webpage provides information or could answer a potential user search query, then the bounce rate might not necessarily be directly related to quality.

With that being said, the opposite might rule might apply to the homepage of a website, for example.  The homepage is often the gateway to the other information on a website, so naturally a webmaster would want visitors to delve further into a site from the homepage.  If a page with navigational qualities commands a high bounce rate, then that webpage might need some reworking.  The structure of the page maybe clumsy, links may not work or the page design might not be user-friendly; there are many reasons why a webpage might cause users to leave straight away – and particularly for navigational pages, this does need to be addressed.

So, to conclude I would say that there are other factors to be considered as well as bounce rate in judging the quality of a webpage.  Primarily the function of the page – is it written or designed to answer a user query, or should it be helping users locate other parts of the website.  There are also other lesser-known metrics that might explain a high bounce rate on a webpage; if the user chooses to print the page or bookmark it, for example, might explain why they leave without visiting other pages.

If you have any other questions related to internet marketing or SEO, please feel free to contact us via our website.

Related posts:

1. Analytics Bounce Rate – Friend or Foe? If you’re not familiar with Google Analytics, you’re probably not...
2. Email Marketing Glossary Terms: Bounce Rate The bounce rate of an email marketing campaign is the...
3. 3 Click Consult tips for PPC Landing Pages When building PPC campaign I usually spend most of my...

At face value it might appear that this could be potentially detrimental to any SEO efforts by minimising the click-through-rate a webpage receives from the search engines because the user would have no need to click the link. However, the counter-argument is that the more eye-catching listings in the SERPs do demand a higher CTR, and this is supported by many search engine optimisation professionals who frequently use rich snippets for clients whose sites they are optimising.

Rich snippets provide a fantastic opportunity to give potential visitors a taster of the unique content that they are offering on their website. I have spoken before about the importance of including optimised Meta descriptions on your website, not only because of their technical SEO value, but because they can seduce users into your site. The rich snippets offer another dimension to Meta descriptions because they already show to the user that your site has information catered directly to their search query.

Another question you might ask is whether the implementation of rich snippets or Microdata will have any direct influence on ranking. Duane Forrester, the Senior Project Manager of Bing’s Webmaster Program has stated in the past that while they don’t directly influence rankings, they do help to distinguish your site in the SERPs. This should lead to a higher quantity of traffic and may indirectly influence ranking through other factors.

The conclusion is that rich snippets are becoming a great way for webmasters to create a more identifiable search listing. This helps searchers become more aware of a website and the type of content that they offer making it much more likely that websites will generate a great quantity of highly relevant referral traffic from the search engines. While they don’t directly influence rankings, increased exposure in the SERPs can contribute to other important SEO factors being improved upon, such as the organic link profile, and this will influence rankings.

If you have any other queries about rich snippets or any of our internet marketing services then please leave a comment or contact us via our website.

Related posts:

1. The Growing Popularity of Google Rich Snippets Rich Snippets have been around for quite some time but...
2. Keyword Rich Domains All SEO professionals know that domains that are rich in...
3. Understanding Search Engines Part 5: Search Engine Result Pages Understanding the role of search engines and how they use...

1. Bottomless Search

This was an idea suggested by several people – Google should have bottomless SERPs. Currently the user needs to click a button to reach subsequent results pages from after the first page of results. Bottomless SERPs would mean that instead of clicking, when the user’s scrollbar reaches the bottom of the page, another set of results instantly load up. Alternatively, there would be some sort of toolbar that would say ‘Click here to see more results’. There is currently a similar setup in Google’s ‘Image Search’.

So, would this affect SEO or digital marketing, and if so, how? My first thought is that it would make rankings lower down in the SERPs more accessible because it requires less work from the searcher to reach them. On the other hand, it could be said that this will dilute the overall quality of the search results that Google produces because of the increased accessibility to less relevant results.

2. Wayback Machine-like functionality

The ‘Wayback Machine’ was a kind of digital time capsule that was used to store archived versions of webpages – it is still currently in beta format at www.waybackmachine.org . Several people suggested that a similar functionality could be implemented directly into Google as an additional service.

I think this feature would appease user curiosity more than it would offer any technical SEO value; however, there are still several things internet marketing professionals could use it for. Research, for instance, because it could be used to examine how competitor websites used to be structured and where they were getting their links from. So, while search engine optimisation value is limited, it could offer a few useful features to our industry.

3. Less emphasis on local search results

Quite a few people voiced dissent at the increasing number of Google Place’s listings in the SERPs. Concerns were raised over Place’s results being so open to manipulation from SEO black hatters and because they are so dependent on reviews, it has been suggested that some companies manufacture them.

Lots of companies work hard to rank highly in Google Place’s listings and it’s particularly important for smaller companies focusing on local SEO. However, if Google did choose to put less emphasis on local search (which I don’t think they will), it would free up more room on the first page of Google results meaning that organisations with quality websites wouldn’t suffer too badly. As I said, I don’t think Google will place less emphasis on local search results, although perhaps they will come under closer scrutiny from Matt Cutts and his spam busters. I believe that the businesses investing in ethical local search will maintain high rankings and positive results.

While these are just a few suggestions taken from Matt Cutts original blog, there are loads of others that raise other interesting points about possible developments of Google and SEO in the future. If you have any suggestions you’d like to make why not leave a comment?

Related posts:

1. Get Great Exposure With Google Local Local businesses can benefit greatly by using Google’s tool, Google...
2. Geographically Targeted Keywords In the ever more competitive world of the internet, raising...
3. Advanced Local Listings If you are setting up geo-targeted PPC campaigns in combination...

Click Consult, with their specialist search engine optimisation division, SEO Consult, were victors in the ‘EA Technology Large Business of the Year’ category at the Cheshire Business Awards.  The search marketing specialists were shortlisted along with two other large local businesses from the Cheshire area.

Click Consult offer a wide range of search marketing services, with dedicated teams of experts specialising in Pay Per Click, web development, SEO, CRO and social media marketing.  Currently employing 85 staff members, the agency has developed an extensive global client portfolio and they are currently partnered with several high-profile brands across an expansive range of industries.

The success achieved by Click Consult since the company was launched in 2003 has allowed them to expand significantly in the last 12 months.  They have been able to invest more resources in developing and expanding their range of services as well as becoming a valuable source of local employment and they believe this success is set to continue in the future.

“Winning the EA Technology Large Business of the Year award at the Cheshire Business Awards is a fantastic achievement for Click Consult.  We are genuinely committed to developing our range of services and to offering our clients unparalleled levels of customer service.  I think by winning this award, that ambition has been recognised.” said Matt Bullas, Managing Director of Click Consult.  “We are a very customer-focused organisation, and this achievement will undoubtedly help us retain our valued clients as well as offering scope to expand our existing client portfolio.  Our plan for the next twelve months is to keep working hard to maximise the success of our clients and to maintain our ethical and transparent business culture.  With such a dedicated team of internet marketing experts, I fully expect the expansion and success to continue into the future.”

Related posts:

1. Click Consult Announce Record Results for the 2010/2011 Financial Year Click Consult, an award winning search marketing… agency, have announced...
2. Get Listed Locally These days, online consumers not only want to determine what’s...
3. Press Releases: The Forgotten Marketing Tool In the days before small and local business turned their...

Content Cloaking –

Content cloaking, in the context of search engine optimisation or internet marketing, involves showing the search engine bots that come to index a website different content from the user. When conducting A/B Testing, the software involved will show variations of the same webpage to users than to the search engines, using Java Script. Concern arises because the owner of the website would be worried about the search engines interpreting the testing as an act performed with the malicious intent to fool the search engines and gain more traffic.

Duplicate Content –

Duplicate content concerns arise when substantive sections of text from another source, or the same website, are repeated multiple times on a website. When conducting A/B or multivariate testing, large parts of text will duplicated across numerous other URLs where other in-page variations are being tested. The concern is that Google, or one of the other search engines will detect the replication of content and penalise a webpage.

Testing Should Not Raise Concerns

As the processing power in the search engines algorithms has developed over the years (particularly the PageRank algorithm), they have become increasing savvy at detecting testing on a website, and often conduct similar tests on their own site. To avoid any suggestions of hypocrisy it would be ludicrous for them to penalise other sites for implementing a process that they exercise.

Another reason why any form of penalisation for testing is unlikely is due to the way modern websites are constructed. Websites traditionally have a heritage of being built from static HTML, meaning the content remains the same on every page viewed by every user – there is no user interaction with the content itself because it is located directly in the HTML code. Modern websites are more likely to be built by integrating dynamic content such as AJAX or JavaScript – the content for these sites is usually housed in an external HTML file or a mysql database. This means that the users often interact directly with the content, and occasions will occur when the search engines and the users are greeted by different versions of the same webpage. Again, the search engines have evolved, as have their algorithms and they are now more than adequately equipped to deal with the concept of dynamic content.

A large proportion of concern can be removed simply by citing to the web user that as long as they are conducting the testing to improve the experience that users have on-site, then they are not going against the rules that the search engines impose. Webmasters should always remember that the search engines will not penalise any activity that is conducted to improve the relevance of the results they show – and by testing, you are helping the search engines attach relevancy to the content of your site. If you’re testing is not conducted as a veneer to mask malice behaviour then there is no cause for concern.

The search engines also provide ample opportunity for programmers to further minimise the risk of penalisation by creating Meta tags such as the rel=”canonical” tag, which can be used to nominate one page, or version of a page for indexation by the search engine bots.

In the image I have created above, you can see how Multivariate testing works; by assigning site visitors pages consisting of various combinations of on-page elements. This is just one form of testing, and it is a great way to optimise conversion rates. There is no need to people to shy away from website testing as long as it is don’t to improve user experience.  If you would like to find out more about conversion rate optimisation, or any other form of landing page testing, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Related posts:

1. Understanding Search Engines Helps You Understand SEO Successful SEO means first identifying what search engines want and...
2. Understanding Search Engines Part 4: Algorithms In order to determine which pages rank where in their...
3. How can A/B Testing help you with Conversion Rate Optimisation? There are several methods that internet marketing experts or search...

Page Ranking

One of the best ways to determine the value of a given website can be achieved by using the keywords given on that particular page, a website which ranks well for particular keywords is the clearest indicator of how well a website is actually ranked and valued in the eyes of search engines. This simple piece of research can give you an idea of which websites and more specifically, selected pages would be the most suitable to be linked and associated with when building a link strategy.

Number of links

The value that a link holds is found to be in proportion to the actual amount of links that are actually placed on a webpage. In the eyes of todays search engines, the fewer external links that are live on a webpage – the higher the value each individual link actually holds. Therefore this analogy needs to be used in order to find the most worthwhile opportunities available in strategy building. With this in mind, it is always best to build a link portfolio based on high quality links that will inevitably give you the highest return in value directed back to your website, that in the end will result in increased web rankings.

Earn links with high quality content

Building a website with high quality content on its pages can formulate a solid base for an online marketing presence. Not only do visitors want it but search engines also want to see this form of data present on a site so that it can in turn, reward a site with greater rankings. However there is another area that can benefit from this content and that is the concept of building backlinks. This natural formulation of links will come together when visitors like and find a website full of quality, relevant content that is specific to the organisations niche.

I hope that you have found the information in this blog useful, but always remember that the world of search marketing is a constantly changing industry and it is always advised that to keep at the top of the market, you must continually adapt and amend strategies to meet the requirements of the World Wide Web.

Related posts:

1. Finding Relevant Link Partners To Improve SEO The first thing we should do is qualify what we...
2. Creating Linkbait Pages For SEO Linkbait is a terms that is used to refer to...
3. Article Marketing For SEO Link Building Building links is a long term project that is an...