Search Engine Optimisation and life…
My company, eSoftware Solutions is changing it’s name to Online Digital.
Why? Because I feel that it says more about what we do. Our services including anything that concerns online digital media, such as Web Sites, Web Applications and Search Engine Optimisation. We are extremely passionate about what we do and want to portray the right image to our potential clients.
To find out a little more about what we do pop over to our new web site.
Well, another year end is almost upon us – and doesn’t time fly when you are having fun!?
It’s that time when us SEO’s start to look forward to the new year, and what challenges and changes it brings to the world of Search Engine Optimisation. 2009 saw alot of change and revelations such as Google denying the duplicate content penalty, changes to Page Rank sculpting and the introduction of real time social media being included in search results.
So what challenges will 2010 present us with? Here are my top 5 predictions.
1. Real Time Search will be huge in 2010 – but to what benefit?
The growth of social networking sites, such as Twitter, simply cannot be ignored. Late in 2009 Microsoft started to include real time social media feeds in their results pages, and Google promptly followed. However, this isn’t neccesarily good for SEO as it potentially detracts from the need for quality content and inbound links. Why not just tweet about a topic in order to get noticed? The flip side of this is that real time search surely can only show the results for seconds as live results will change nearly every millisecond.
2. Search Engine Results Evolution could me less traffic
What do I mean by this? Over the last 6 months we have seen more and more results displaying additional information in the actual search engine listings. For example, type in the name of a Football Club whilst they are playing a live game and you will probably see the actual realtime score in the SERPs. Great for searchers who are looking for quick fire information, but maybe not so good for site owners relying on click throughs.
3. Organic SEO spend will rise
More and more companies will turn to organic SEO in an attempt to increase traffic to their site. Organic SEO continues to outpace PPC in terms of growth, and 2010 will be no different. More and more searchers become ‘suspicious’ of PPC results whilst trust in the organic results grows. This is surely a sign that the search engines have been doing the right thing when it comes to delivering results that searchers want to see? What this might mean is that SEO’s are employed in house, rather than as an external resource. Time will tell.
4. The conversion metric will be king
2010 will see a greater emphasis on conversion. In the past SEO’s have mainly focused on driving traffic, whilst the more dynamic SEO professionals will also have put a strong focus on conversions. I personally beleive that 2010 will be the year of improving bounce rate and converting prospects to enquiries and enquiries to sales.
5. The Top 3 positions in the SERPS will become more valuable then ever
Generally speaking, sites that have been on the first page of the search results have tended to get the majority share of the traffic, but towards the end of the year we saw a trend that our sites in the top 3 ranking positions started to grow dramatically in terms of visitors. This could be mainly down to the amount of information that Google is now trying to cram onto the first page of the SERPS since its ‘Caffeine’ engine was implemented. Never the less, this makes SEO much more competitive and potentially more expensive for clients but the ROI from investment could also be much more rewarding.
In Summary
Of course, as we have seen with 2009, the world of Search Engine Optimisation can change on a regular basis and our friends at Google are quite happy to keep the majority of these changes under the hat and keep us all guessing.
What I am certain of though, is that 2010 will be a very big year for search, and with the right mindset and SEO company it could also be a very rewarding year for your business.
Have a very Merry Christmas and prosperous New Year from all of us at eSoftware Solutions.
There is a rumour on the rounds that Twitter will be releasing premium ‘paid for’ accounts for businesses before the end of 2009. The primary intention for these accounts would be marketing, promotions, customer relations, advertising etc. The benefit over standard Twitter accounts is that you would be able to view statistics and analytics on your tweets.
However, word on the street is that there wont be a great amount of interests in these accounts, especially for smaller businesses. Some smaller businesses on Twitter benefit from the word of mouth and personal touch that a standard Twitter account offers as a marketing tool.
So, when the Premium accounts are made public, would you register for one? If you do, make sure that, with any paid marketing or Search Engine Optimisation stategy that you have clearly defined goals in place so that you know what you want to achieve from your investment.
Just a quick note to apologise for the lack of update to posts over the last few days.
We are currently working to clear a back log of requests so have had little time to post regular insights into the world of Search Engine Optimisation. Hopefully normal service will resume shortly.
Cheers
There has been a lot of recent talk about Google aquiring Twitter due to the enormous amount of interest and activity the social networking site has generated over the last few months.
Would it be beneficial for Google to purchase such a network?
It’s an ideal channel for product marketing, viral marketing and such what and could fit in well with Googles strategy.
The recent news about Ashton Kutcher breaking 1 million followers is said to be a milestone in the use of social networking sites, and one that has raised a few eyebrows and opened a few eyes.
This story is of interest to SEO’s as Google seemingly see’s great value in social networks when it comes to Search Engine results.
but a pain when they dont.
Following our office move last week we are still without phones – so if you need to get in touch or have tried in the last few days then please email me at ian@esoftware-solutions.com
Cheers
Ok, not strictly an SEO post – but adding Live Chat to your web site could be the difference between capturing that sale or someone leaving your site to go somewhere else.
Here are 5 reasons why you need to add live chat to your web site:
1. Communicate with your customers / potential customers instantly. Sometimes people don’t want to send an email or pick up the phone. They want a quick response to a question via online chat. Online chat modules have become more and more popular on web sites these days, and you could leave your customers dissapointed if you dont offer the facility.
2. Reduce shopping cart abandonment rates. Increase your sales with pre-sales enquiries over live chat. If a shopper gets a fleeting thought of doubt whilst getting to the end of the checkout then let them talk to you! You can even offer an incentive over the chat to close the deal!
3. Help customers find specific areas of your web site. OK, if your site is well optimised and your navigation is efficient then this point should be null and void – but sometimes people can’t find things that easily and need a little helping hand.
4. Build trust and credability by being able to deal with customer enquiries quickly and efficiently.
5. See stats about your web site visitors. Find out what pages they have visited and build up a history of interaction through click throughs and transcripts
For more information on how you can add Live Chat to your web site visit http://www.liveperson.co.uk. We highly recommend this chat client and find that the cost is very reasonable!
New figures just out show that the number of people using Twitter in the UK has gone through the roof over the last year.
It’s not just the public using the site either – celebrities like Barack Obama, Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand have all jumped on the bandwagon.
Market research company Nielsen Online says Twitter grew by 1,689% from February 2008 to February 2009.
That means there are now more than 1.78 million people signed on.
This time last year the social networking site only had 100,000 members.
The same figures, however, show Facebook is still far and away the leading social networking site, with 17.8 million users and steady, strong growth of 114%.
Social Networking sites are still a great way of getting your products and services out in the public domain.
Today I came across a great article, written by Shane Richmond.
He comes up with a brilliant opening line of ” Search engine optimisation can ensure content attracts maximum web hits. And it doesn’t mean conning readers, says an online editor”.
It does seem that, although SEO has been around for a number of years that journalists are just starting to understand why it is important.
How SEO is changing journalism
If you get chance give it a good read.
In a recent report, Hitwise said that the length of search queries has increased over the past year. Longer search queries, averaging searches of 5+ words in length, have increased 10% from January ’08 to January ’09 they noted.
Ask has an interesting interpretation of this data:
In a nutshell, users are now expecting search engines to not just index the Internet, they are expecting search engines to process the data on the Internet. Searchers don’t consider their query to be just keywords; they are starting to expect that the search engine will understand the intent of the query better. Expressing a query with intent requires more words, and the user’s investment of more words means that his or her expectations on the search engine are higher. We are clearly experiencing a transition in the way that people are using the Internet.
FAQs are relevant results to targetted searches about what your business offers. What a powerful, yet simple and overlooked concept. And considering the emphasis Google seems to be putting on brand it sounds like a can’t-miss when it comes to Search Engine Optimisation.
