So, as it turned out, three days ago I received a question, submitted to me via my page on FormSpring.me. Cole Roberts, a very talented Vancouver photographer with whom I had the pleasure of working while at Magnify Digital, did the honours as the first “human” (meaning, not FormSpring’s own robot) visitor to ask me a question. Below is a copy, and my answer:
Q: How can I get my blog to be #1 on Google search for ‘Vancouver Photo Blog’ : )
A: Hello, Cole – great to see you here, and thanks for being my first (human) visitor to pose a question.
So… how do you get your blog to be #1 on Google search for “Vancouver Photo Blog”?
As you know, this is not an SEO question that can be answered in a short paragraph, but let’s see what I can do to at least help you know a tad more today, than you did… say… 5 minutes ago.
First, the bad news: it looks as though you have your work cut out for you. A quick search on Google.ca shows that there are 17,300,000 search listings for that same term.
The good news: I’ve been following what you’ve been doing on your blog, and you’re on the right track. That contest you ran last year (http://ow.ly/Ywj3), which had the final draw broadcast on video, is an example of content that you can continue to do, to differentiate yourself from your competitors. One idea would be for you to keep on creating engaging, educational, informative, unique content on video, and post it to YouTube. According to data from October ‘08 (eons ago), YouTube, at that time, had more than 65 million unique users.
It also happens that videos are displayed among search results on Google. So… if you continue to develop catchy videos, and optimize them for terms like “Vancouver Photo Blog”, etc, there’s a higher likelihood that your videos will turn up on search results for those same phrases.
That’s just one element you can implement. Another one, which is critical, is the development of optimized text content for your site, focusing on “Vancouver Photo Blog”. Don’t overdo on the Title Tags, though. I’ve seen some pages where you’re just trying too hard.
Now, when it comes to text, you want to be careful. You don’t want to spam the text in your site with “Vancouver Photo Blog” written a thousand times, in sequence. There’s an art to this. Carefully chosen keywords, in carefully chosen places on a page, are part of the answer.
Now, last but not least… the easiest way for you to rank #1 on Google search, for “Vancouver Photo Blog”, is to… invest in PPC ads (AdWords). That’ll be quicker and easier, but the effects to your search ranking won’t be perennial…
Hey… you didn’t say if it had to be #1 in organic (unsponsored) results! : )
And when I happen to need photos made, you’ll be top of mind!
Would you like to ask me a question? Go right to my page on FormSpring.me and shoot it. Just to get your imagination going:
Q: “What’s your favourite city?” A: Berlin
Q: “Who was your favourite actor growing up”? A: James Dean
Q: “What is your biggest phobia?” A: Cockroaches. I can scare a bear away from my yard (which I’ve done while living in Whistler), but would run out of the house at the sight of a roach.
This was my first for-ray into live blogging. As such, forgive me in advance for typos, grammar errors or otherwise discombobulated sentences. The text below details Jason Billingsley presentation for the International Internet Marketing Association, covering the topic: 42 ways to sell more online.
Jason Billingsley is the founder of Flip Retail, co-founder of Elastic Path and the blog Get Elastic. He co-founded Elastic Path Software in November 2000 and held the position of VP Marketing where he helped the company attract over 200 customers. Global brands such as Google, Aeroplan, Nike, Time Inc., Avis, Samsonite, United Health Group, Telus, Garmin, and Sony. Most impressively, this was done with no outside equity financing.
Flip Retail’s mandate is to consult with online retailers on how to execute e-commerce best practices.
Ean Jackson is introducing Jason.
Don’t miss the events coming up in February, March and April. For more information, visit the IIMA website.
Jason got into e-commerce when he was 17 years, and his girlfriend asked him to developed a web page. From then on, he started Elastic Path. Right now, 140 people work at Elastic Path – one of the biggest success stories in the tech field in Vancouver. After 9 years, he retired from Elastic Path and is now a professional speaker and e-commerce coach.
Jason loves to travel and decided with his wife to go to a half-year cruise.
Jason is now talking and about to start presenting his presentation deck and the Elastic Path story.
Some of the clients in the Elastic Path roster right now are Virgin, Google, etc. For now, he’ll talk about e-Commerce.
Jason’s favourite e-commerce site of all times is Arngren.net – a Norwegian site. The moral is: no matter how bad the site is that you’re working with – Arngren is worse!
He’s now working on a checkout optimization for an international shoe retailer.
He’s starting with a math equation: c=4m+3v+2(i-f)-2a.
Jason is now taking a poll to see who’s selling products online, etc.
The variables in the equation are:
C=conversions
M=motivation (one element that we don’t have any control over). It comes in 2 forms: user is a hunter or a browser. Hunter knows what they’re looking for. A browser doesn’t have intent on buying yet. However, we have control over value proposition. More importantly, we have control over value proposition.
i = promotions, offers
a = last element of the equation, stands for anxiety
Jason uses this to look at any project, web site. Is this tactic addressing any one of these variables?
Jason is asking who’s got a base domain set up. A www domain is not the same as non-www domain. The proper way to do this is by setting a 301 redirect. By default, Jason uses a 301 redirect to set up a base domain.
Jason is a firm believer in placing products as close to the base domain as possible. They should live one level deep. E.g.: www.domain.com/product vs. www.domain.com/category/sub-category/product
The big thing, though is duplicate content issue, which acts as a filter in the eyes of Google. When someone searches for a product, Google may not display one page because the product is already showing on another page.
Now, to a chart about spidering, from seomoz.org/blog/diagrams-for-solving-crawl-priority-indexation-issues
Tips:
Link Deep, Link Often
- Use top ranked products lists on home and cat pages
- Cross-sell from entry points URLs
- Create anchor content
Important to get critical content deep into the site or identify key pages in hierarchy to lever links in the web site.
Q. from the audience: you have a product page. At the bottom of the page where the explanation of the product is, do you cross-link to the category about generic cough medicine?
Moving onto PPC – favourite hack that made lots of $ for a client really quickly!!!
- Duplicate “broad match” campaigns to “exact match”
- Bid “exact match” campaigns slightly higher
Results:
Higher CTR, lower CPC, lower bounce rate, higher per visit value
Q: Google penalizes your ad position if it under performs due to broad match:
A: You’ll need to pay more if it isn’t relevant, if page takes too long to load, etc.
Secondly, Jason separates content ads from the other ads: Rationale: Different motivation
- Use a different landing page
- Target ads by site. Create an offer: everyone from x store – click here to save 10%.
Now, moving onto emails. Ask for them!
- Site wide. Ask for it in a footer!
-Incent: get 10% off!
- Demonstrate
- Assure
- Capitalize w/ effective welcome email
Next item: Get In in the Inbox – Deliverability is Hard
- Test accounts
- Check your SPF (sender policy framework)
- Domain keys & DKIM (domainkeysidentifiedemail). Yahoo looks at these. Once these are in place, Google starts to recognize messages as non-spam.
- Bounce suppression. When an email address dies, when mail box is full, you get a bounce. If you get 1000 people on Yahoo, but 100 of those addresses are dead, Yahoo labels the rest as spam.
- Feedback Loops
Deliverability.com is a great resource to check these factors out.
Now, the right sender name:
- Do not user a generic info, such as info, customer service, order. Put a real name into it.
Format for success:
- Image only vs. HTML/image hybrid emails. Deliverability goes way up if you go into hybrid format:
Deliverability: 78% vs 98%
Open rate: 10% vs 13%
CTR: 3% vs 5%
Conversion: 0.4% vs. 1.5%
Next tip: capitalize on pre-headers. They show up in messages.
E.g.: Papa John says: Get an XL pizza with up to 3 toppings for only $145.99
Q: In Aweber, where’s the pre-header?
A: It’s in the first line in the content.
Q: Is there an email distribution service that you recommend?
A: If you’re a large retailer, work with a provider who’s used to issues. Aweber is best for small guys. VerticalResponse has also worked well for other projects.
Go to Jakob Nielsen’s site for some great resources.
Next: WIIFM (what’s in it for me? What does this mean?)
Support claim with testimonials, etc. It’ll give more weight to your claim. Jason rarely sees an example that he can use. But one great resource is GetElastic.com – a blog started @ Elastic Path.
Next: communicate a clear value proposition. Why should I buy? Give me some incentives. E.g.: ClassicCloseouts answered all these questions: can you solve my problem? Why should I buy? What incentives do you offer? “We’ve got your holiday shopping all wrapped up”!
Resource: Marketing Experiments and Marketing Sherpa.
Now, the homepage is just guiding people to the page where the product is. Get them closer to the goal, fast. Give people images in the homepage, not just text.
Capture attention w/ products & prices in homepage. Show them. Period.
Arden B’s homepage is an example of what not to do: image is huge, model distracts you. Be careful of using hero images. Be mindful of size. Actually sell something. Powerful images can hurt conversion.
Another thing: your logo is meaningless. If it’s too big, shrink your logo! Reduce vertical space! If you have a big image, make sure to link to something!
Jason is a bigger proponent of click-tracking that eye-tracking. When you use a model, make sure she/he is looking at the product, not you.
Category pages: best right now is Crutchfield. People want guidance.
Total pet-peeve: when you’re listing products, don’t list alphabetically or by price. Do it by merchandise assortment. You need to do this on your site. Do sort manually. Do sort by Top Sellers.
Most people don’t use drop-down menus. Don’t depend on this.
Show lots of products (min/ 50 per page)
Use large pagination i.e. Google. For example, if you go to Google, you’ll see large number of page search results at the bottom (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6…)
Jason is not a big proponent of using WordPress for e-commerce sites. Maybe as a platform that is supported by an e-commerce site, but not as the main platform for the site.
Jason says not to worry about below-the-fold. If people can tell that there’s more content below the fold, they will scroll.
Best example of visual & multi-sku items: Lands’ End. Show more SKUs available. Toggle front/back view on hover.
Product Pages is the key. Let’s go to it:
Image size and image context is more important than you know when you have crappy descriptions. The image can still sell. Make it as big as possible. Use 500 px by default. Show as many looks as possible -e.g.: open bag, closed bag, stitches. If using zoom, go from 500 px to 2000!
Show product in use. Show SKU options. Don’t skimp! Set up a great photo studio! It’s worth it, and easy.
Quick tip: instead of just having product name, have a headline to the product. E.g.: Kid Inc. Toy of the Year Monkey Blaster 9000.
The Price Structure is Right:
- Create a mental baseline: MSRP, List, Compare At.
- Current price most prominent + color
- Show savings: $ and %
What Jason Hates:
Pages that don’t focus on the product. Don’t give too many options! Focus on the product! E.g.: Timberland is bad at this. Good example: Heels.com. Put a “take me to” other options above the product to give option.
American Eagle is great e.g. of how to gateway to other items
Next Tip: Create Urgency. E.g.: on overstock.com, they’ve put “sell out risk very high”.
Next: Build Confidence (the “A” variable in the equation).
- Consider a third-party security badge
- Add geographic reminder. In a Canadian site, put that it’s a Canadian site.
- Eliminate fears, uncertainties, and doubts. For e.g. say that you’ve got plenty of customers, been around a long time, ships from Canada (if site is Canadian), price guarantee, hassle-free returns. But, use modal windows so people don’t get distracted from page.
Investigate this possibility: Eliminate Uncertainties ASAP. For e.g., let them know right away how much it’ll cost for the product for shipping. It’ll affect your abandonment rates, but you’re looking at the end result.
Another issue people have is when the product will arrive. If you can say that it’ll arrive on Jan. 14, for e.g., people ar more comfortable ordering from you. Apple does a good job at this. Jason acknowledges that this is tough to do.
Avoid the Coupon Dance. The biggest rise in search term this year on Google is for coupons.
- Prominent field can reduce conversion. Reduce prominent.
- Legit holders will seek where to put the coupon on your site. So it doesn’t have to be prominent. Jason uses a Javascript link that says “have a promo code”? Or use it in the checkout, where people can’t find it easily. Officemax actually had something interesting where it said “have a promo code? Give us your email address?)
- Use click-to-open
- Deeper in checkout
Enclose your check out. Don’t put the navigation bar at the top, because it will reduce people from focusing on other areas of the site.
Eliminate interruptions: no need for a sign-in/sign-up cut-off page.
Push Some Buttons!
- If you’re using red throughout your site, use a different colour for the button!
- Increase button size
- Add icons to buttons
- Add depth to buttons
- Describe what the button does. For example, make that the button says “proceed to delivery options”
Don’t Stop Selling – Receipt Pages:
- Yes breeds more Yes’es. Ask to refer a friend, ask them to share via Twitter, etc, give whitelist instructions, tell what’s next in the process (e.g. will be receiving call from Purolator, etc).
Speed Counts! If your site loads in 8 seconds, it won’t perform as well as site that loads in 2 secs!
- Reduce HTTP requests
- Use image sprites
- Combine external files
- Perceptual speed
- Much more…
- Check Webmaster Tools
Check out: http://code.google.com/speed/ and http://www.compuware.com/fastcalc. This last one will tell you how much $ you’re losing by having a slow site.
Get Critical Elements Higher
- Reduce size of header
- Move add to cart to header or higher on page
- Duplicate checkout CTA
Optimize for Brand and Coupon!
Overstock is a good e.g. of this.
Another great tip: focus on the solution that you’re providing, not on the product that you’re selling.
Q: What’s Jason’s opinions on blogs?
A: Use a separate URL for blog. That was done intentionally, so as to not confuse people. But he says its 6 of one, half-dozen of the other.
Q: Do you have specific experiences in going after people who have abandoned shopping process? E.g. abandoned shopping cart.
A: That works primarily with people who have logged in. There’s a success rate of between 5% to 10%. His suggestion is to test, ask customers how they feel about it. If it’s a product that they’re highly sensitive about, maybe that’s not a good idea.
Another tip: use customer reviews. Use as many third-party reviews as possible. If you don’t have any, look at the content at other sites where you can get 3rd party reviews from (BUT DON’T USE THEM! That would be illegal!). Make sure it’s in text. Use testimonials. It’s an underused tactic. This helps to reduce anxiety before the shopping cart stage.
Jason is available during the next little while to work with some e-commerce clients in his coaching practice. You may contact him through Twitter.
LeWeb is taking place as we speak, and they have opened up many of their presentations to UStream. Today is the last day of the conference, and it’s been definitely worth staying up to watch some of it (remember – they’re in Central European Time).
For your viewing pleasure, here’s the embedded video stream. Obviously, this will not be up and running after the conference is finished.
So far, I’ve watched a roundtable discussion with Twitter, Facebook, Ning and MySpace, led by TechCrunch, a presentation by Twitter, a very funny presentation spoof by Yossi Vardi. And, right at this very moment, a presentation by Danah Boyd.
If you’re not familiar with UStream, it’s a great channel that allows you to stream live video while also enabling chat next to the video player. If you’re planning on live-streaming a conference or special event, it’s definitely a channel to consider.
One of the appealing things that LeWeb is doing is broadcasting many of its mainstage discussions. Some people may argue that a conference such as this should not be open through live streaming, and that if you want to catch any of the action, you should pony up and pay for it. My take on this is that, if the content is good enough (which it’s been, in this case), people will watch the live online videos, and the content will serve as a magnet to:
Raise awareness of the conference
Through the numbers of recorded viewers, help prove to future sponsors that it’s worth for them to invest in the event
Some of the things that they’re doing right is integrating Facebook and Twitter stream on their homepage. For many, this may seem like an obvious thing to do, but it’s great to see that they haven’t forgotten about something so fundamental.
It’d be even better if their UStream video was available through their Facebook Page.
Another thing I’d to contemplate, if I were LeWeb, would be capturing people’s email address before they can view some (or all) of the live-streaming content. Then, I’d send updates on future conferences to those who have provided their emails. I know I’d consider this… an Internet conference in PARIS? Count me in! I’d work it into my vacation!
So here I am, playing with Google Wave. I’m still getting the hang of it, but it seems to open a lot of possibilities.
One of the most attractive features is the ability to incorporate a Wave into a blog. Of course, this will be even better once more people get access to Wave.
I’ve found it very easy to do so by, first, installing the Wavr WordPress plugin. Then, you will need to enter a code, akin to wave id=”yourwaveid here” into the post where you’d like the Wave to be integrated. This is the only part where I had a bit of hiccup, but the solution is simple:
- Login to Google Wave using your username.
- Select a Wave, then look at the address bar in your browser. You’ll probably find something that starts with
https://wave.google.com/wave/?….
To identify your wave id, just locate everything that includes and follows the exclamation mark, minus the period and the number towards the end of the line.
You will also need to replace %252B with +. In this example, we’d end up with: googlewave.com!w+XXXXXX.
Then, embed the wave id code as per the instructions provided by Wavr.
Once the embedding is done, whoever has access to Google Wave will probably see one ugly green rectangle in the blog post. As it turns out, those colours can be reset through the plugin’s settings in your WordPress admin panel.
Local Internet celebrity John Chow has been in the news quite a bit in the last few days, thanks to his introduction of ads to his Twitter updates (Here are the original articles in The New York Times and in The Gawker).
I have posted a couple of comments on other sites about this, which pretty much express my thoughts on this one – at least up until this point in time. I’d be a fool to think that my opinion might not evolve as I hear more on both sides of the equation.
The first comment I wrote was in response to Philip Novak’s link to The New York Times, posted in his Facebook page: It reads…
” I have mixed feelings on that one. On one hand, the original tweet about M&Ms did have “(Ad)” in its text. In addition, if people dislike John’s commercial tweets, they have a simple choice, which is to unfollow him.
As a marketer, I’d be very skeptic about recommending this ad platform to advertisers. It’d be interesting to see what kinds of conversions those ads receive, and how they affect not only the advertiser’s reputation, but also the reputation of the Twitter user who originally posts it.
As a Twitter user, I wouldn’t dare sending a Twitter ad to my followers. It decreases the intrinsic level of trust that brought Twitter to where it is now. And if someone I trust and follow began to post those ads, their reputation would take a quick plunge, leading me to unfollow them.”
Then, a little earlier today, I posted this second comment, on Patti Schom-Moffatt’s blog post:
“Hello,
As you probably know, John Chow made the news because he started incorporating ads in his Twitter stream.
I personally wouldn’t integrate ads in my Twitter updates, largely because I feel that it betrays the trust between myself and my followers.
Maybe John Chow’s followers may not have been surprised that he’d adopt this practice. In that case, whether or not he runs Twitter ads might not necessarily hurt his number of followers.
But what if an ad runs through a Twitter account where followers did not see it coming? In that case, it would be interesting to see the long-term effects on the reputations of both the advertiser and the Twitter account that published the ad.
I could see this ad model working for Twitter accounts that already include information about commercial offers, like coupons, discounts, local offers, etc, but not for others that have built their reputation based on the personal tone in their conversations.
Last but not least, if anyone is insulted by the ads, they always have a choice: unfollow whoever published them.”
So this sums up my thoughts on this… for now.
Would love to hear your opinion. Do you agree? Disagree? Why?
I read a few minutes ago that Biz Stone, Twitter’s co-founder, announced in London on Thursday that, at the end of the year, Twitter will offer premium accounts with features to help businesses capitalize even more on that social network.
These features will include access to analytics data, and according to MarketingVox, “the ability to geo-tag individual tweets” as well as “tools to recognize which users have higher reputations than others”.
So… that’s got me thinking. As we all know, recent events, such as Michael Jackson’s death, and several developments during the last elections in Iran (e.g. Neda’s death), were first reported on Twitter before being confirmed by many major news outlets, including CNN. Discussions abounded with respect to the fact that the Twitter population was largely accepting as truth what some Twitter users reported, before facts could be validated through standard journalism practices.
Here’s where I see a hypothetical opportunity for reputable news outlets to vindicate themselves on Twitter: take the soon-to-come geo-tagging feature, mix it with the ability to identify users that have higher reputation (partially through the number of followers), and just for hypothesis sake, add a touch of PageRank. What do you get? The ability to pinpoint Twitter accounts that are the most reputable at a specific location. (Post-edit: I know, I know. PageRank is a Google technology, but wouldn’t it be nice?)
Let me illustrate: the New York Times Twitter profile has a PageRank 7. For those unfamiliar with the concept, PageRank is a metric that Google uses to indicate the importance and reliability of a web page (not a web site). The higher that number, the more importance Google has assigned to that page. Not only that – NY Times’ Twitter account also had, at the time of this writing, 2,107,499 followers, which is a stratospheric number reflecting the importance that Twitter users have given to updates from that account.
Then, poor New York Post has, by comparison, a measly 19,983 followers, and a PageRank 6. What if you were looking on Twitter for an authoritative news source to read about what’s happening in New York, using the geo-tagging component?
Let’s imagine a map tool on Twitter, similar to Google’s own. You would then zoom into New York City, and the service would return a list showing accounts in that area, ordered from the most reputable to the least. It’s safe to assume that The New York Times would be, if not at the top, very close to it – while the New York Post would be ranked considerably lower.
In the event of a major news event, Twitter users would refer to that map to see which accounts could be trusted in that locality. What would they see? Surprise, surprise – NY Times’ account close to the top of the list, with others ranked lower.
When Michael Jackson passed away, this would have translated as LA Times deemed as a much more trustworthy Twitter account to follow than, for example, TMZ.
Now, this doesn’t mean that Twitter users would decide to follow what the LA Times has to say instead of TMZ – but at the very least, it would be a boost to “traditional” news sources’ visibility on Twitter.
Can’t wait to see what concoctions will be coming from the Twitter kitchen at the end of the year. What about you?
I haven’t disappeared. A lot has happened since the last time I published a post – all very positive. Life is now back to normal, so I’ll be able to maintain a constant blogging rhythm. In the meanwhile, here is a quick guide to some events that you might want to keep your eyes on, if you reside in the Greater Vancouver Area:
- Third Tuesday – the last speaker was Tod Maffin. Well worth taking the time to attend this informative – and entertaining – presentation. Tod Maffin frequently makes stops around North America, so if you have a chance to go to one of them, I highly recommend it. If you’re lucky enough to see the presentation that I saw, it’s likely that you’ll never see bees in the same light. This meeting’s profile on MeetUp.com mentions Joseph Thornley as the mastermind behind. Though I haven’t yet met him, I know that Monica Hamburg or Tanya Davis have always been doing a great job at organizing these gatherings.
- Net Tuesday – I’ve already blogged about this event and included some videos. Organized by Elijah van der Giessen, this group focuses on social media and Web technology topics relevant to non-profits organizations.
- The Vancouver Search Engine Marketing Group – if SEO is your thing (as it is one of my many online marketing addictions), you might want to check out this get-together. The latest meeting took place on November 17th, and featured a presentation by James Laitinen, from the International Internet Marketing Association, discussing why you should care about Bing in your online marketing tactics. This group is organized by the fabulous Mr. José Uzcategui.
A great resource to find other meetups around you is, of course, meetup.com. It contains a lists of meetups all across North America, and you’re bound to find a group that appeals to you.
So, you see, there can be an actual “social” element to your life in social media. Get out there.
Here’s the final video segment of Steve Williams’ presentation during Net Tuesday, on November 3rd, 2009, here in Vancouver. Pardon the shakiness in the video quality, as I recorded this without a tripod.
Kudos to Steve on a great presentation. It was very informative, for attendees from both non-profit and for-profit enterprises. Congratulations as well to Elijah van der Giessen for organizing this and so many other Net Tuesdays.
So, as it turned out, three days ago I received a question, submitted to me via my page on FormSpring.me. Cole Roberts, a very talented Vancouver photographer with whom I had the pleasure of working while at Magnify Digital, did the honours as the first “human” (meaning, not FormSpring’s own robot) visitor to ask me a question. Below is a copy, and my answer:
