Boolian Limited Search & Digital Marketing Consultancy

Will video formats help small businesses find new customers online?

Upon first glance, TheInternet.co.uk (www.theinternet.co.uk) is just another classifieds directory for small businesses. It has a database of over 6,000 online shops and 1.7 million offline small businesses in the UK, selling everything from golf trolley batteries to eco-friendly washing lines.

But unlike the Yell.com-style ‘traditional’ local business directories, TheInternet.co.uk’s primary format is video. Each shop or business promotes itself via video profiles or clips demonstrating their products or services. In its property section, for example, Real Property Tours demonstrate – through video, of course - how effective a virtual tour of your property can be as a property sales tool.

TheInternet.co.uk’s founder Nick Brummitt explained in The Independent on Sunday yesterday (31st May 2009), “Our new site will allow small businesses to compete with the big boys which can afford to pay their Google ‘tax’. Companies such as Argos and Boots are still being caned by Google because they have to pay so much for effective ‘key words’ - but they can afford it.”

As a small business myself, I welcome any help that third parties such as TheInternet.co.uk can provide to SMEs in helping them to a web presence. However, I think Nick Brummit’s comment in the Indie is dangerous in that it suggests that small businesses can circumnavigate or replace Google (or the need to appear in Google’s results) by signing up to TheInternet.co.uk.

True, the golf trolley battery providers might not have the large PPC budgets that the Boots and the Argos’s of the retail world have, but blaming the increasing costs of keywords is a cop out. There’s much more to search marketing than PPC price inflation. However, I’m pretty sure that the current bid price for the phrase “new golf trolley battery” isn’t cost prohibitive, and isn’t this a perfect example of a long tail term, millions of which make up an increasingly large share of search queries? Alternatively, SEO is a very cost effective vehicle for small businesses looking to establish a web presence.

The biggest barrier to entry for small businesses isn’t the cost of search marketing, though – it is the web content. Many small businesses still don’t have a website, and thousands more have one, but it’s not fit for purpose.

Even in 2009 I still work with small business clients who are being blindly led by SEO-ignorant design agencies who favour flash-heavy, text-light website designs, and whose idea of a redesign is a culling exercise: so far this year I’ve had three clients whose number of web pages has been significantly depleted as a result of their web development agency’s ‘tidy up job’. Not only do clients still believe that the old adage “build it and they will come” applies to a website, but it seems that they believe the new adage “build it smaller, with less content, and don’t worry about the signposting”!

So while not every small business has a website in 2009, most people do have access to a video camera. And this is the innovation behind TheInternet.co.uk. Nick Brummitt is right in recognising that video content is a valuable currency, in the eyes of the search engines as well as in the eyes of customers. If optimised correctly for search, the independent skin care specialist in Bury, Lancashire will be able to demo its skincare products to Google users via video, while the Boots and the Yves Rochers fight it out for supremacy in the text-based PPC results.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Eurovision: who needs Terry Wogan when we now have Twitter?

I watched the Eurovision Song Contest for the first time in years on Saturday night. Being a big Tel fan (I’m following him on Twitter!) I was curious to see how Graham Norton fared replacing him as the Beeb’s Eurovision host.

The evening had all of the usual Euro gems: dodgy costumes, terrible singing, hilarious backing performers – including one who looked like a life size, blue version of Morph (Tony Hart’s little plastecene friend). Germany’s entry was accompanied by a burlesque performance from Dita Von Teese, while Denmark’s entry, written by Ireland’s very own Ronan Keating, was performed by a Ronan Keating clone – seriously, the likeness was uncanny!

Our city hosts Moscow excelled themselves with introduction and interval performances by the fabulous Cirque Du Soleil and Fuerza Bruta (who I saw at the Camden Roundhouse a couple of years ago – they are amazing). And of course every one of the 42 countries calling in with their votes said that Moscow had put on the best Eurovision ever – but they always do say that!

There was the usual bias Eastern bloc voting, and a very pleasing on the eye Duncan James from Blue delivering the votes from Royaume Uni. And for the first time in over a decade, United Kingdom didn’t disgrace themselves. Having Lord Lloyd Webber write the song and tinkle the ivories on the night certainly paid off.

And our Gray didn’t disappoint with his witty and sarcastic TV commentary over the top. He is an obvious and deserving replacement for the legendary Terry Wogan.

But I could have written this review any year and it could have been any Eurovision. Yet 2009’s Eurovision experience was very different and extremely enjoyable thanks to Twitter. Three hours is a long time to sit through terrible musical performances, but thanks to Twitter I had the best three hours in front of the Box that I’ve had in ages! Not only were my fellow Tweeters posting their own hilarious commentary and analysis after every country entry to compliment Graham Norton’s, but the BBC also had their own BBCEurovision thread, forewarning us of what was coming up, and providing us with added Euro stats and facts – it was simply Eurocheese Heaven!

So perfect an example of effective social media was it that I even replied @BBCEurovision to suggest that next year they have a TwitterTicker [tape] running along the bottom of the screen during the TV broadcast (so if they do adopt that idea in years to come, you heard it here first!).

It made the whole event much more dynamic and fun and gave it a great feeling of community. It was the perfect application for Twitter. I couldn’t have had more fun if I were dressed up as Agneta or Annafried at a fancy dress karaoke Eurovision party! And no doubt next year Twitter will be able to facilitate a truly multilingual community of Eurovision fans as more and more Web users from across Euroland sign up to Twitter.

Tags: Eurovision, Social Media, Terry Wogan, Twitter

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Women are more excitable and friendly, according to their exclamation marks!!!

Being a lingo luvvie I was loving an article in the Guardian this week by Stuart Jeffries re. the use and abuse of the exclamation mark (! - !) in this digital communications age (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/apr/29/exclamation-mark-punctuation - which, by the way, is a great example of SEO best practice for URLs).

Jeffries reported that women tend to be the worst offenders of exclamation mark excess, and cited evidence by Carol Waseleski, in her catchily titled paper “Gender and the Use of Exclamation Points in Computer-Mediated Communication” (! – oh no, it’s true!). Waseleski suggested that were a sign of both excitability and friendliness, and that one reason why women use exclamation marks more than men is that they tend to be less socially inept. Carol sounds like my kind of thinker!

And according to a similar paper by theorists D Rubin and K Greene called “Gender-Typical Style in Written Language” women may also strive to be more honest in their communication (an exclamation mark can equate to a sense of “I really mean this”). Another theory suggested is that exclamation mark abuse can signal a lack of confidence or stature; and that because one can argue that men are naturally more confident, they therefore tend to refrain more from using exclamation marks.

All very interesting linguistic stuff which fuels my ongoing interest in how digital communication and the semantic web is evolving human language patterns.

In a previous blog I summarised the Online Language Pathways research by CDA, which demonstrated that the language used when searching is influenced by brand content and messaging, but also that search language becomes more ‘mechanical’ during the information filtering process. And while punctuation usage is restricted to email communication, we’ve come a long way from the Latin origins of the exclamation mark (the first one appeared in print around 1400), which, it is argued, derives from the Latin word “Io” meaning joy.

Well, I’m all for adding a bit of joy to email communication! But then, I’m a friendly and excitable woman!

Tags: digital communication, email written language, online punctuation, Semantic Web

Posted in Semantic Web | No Comments »

You give Search a bad name! (Part 2)

In my last blog I cited the first industry example of giving Search a bad name (apologies to the organizers of SES, I’m sure they’ve had far more damning feedback than this in the past!).

Here’s my second example of industry behaviour and culture which gives Search a bad name:

2. It’s still just one big (yet not so grown up) boys’ club

I sat in on a session at the aforementioned SES London listening to the highly testosterone-charged male panellists interjecting and interrupting each other to gain the lion’s share of voice (while some poor yet extremely intelligent lady from Google could barely get a word in edge ways).

As my attention waned, I distracted myself by counting the ratio of men to women delegates in the room - 10:1. That’s probably fairly accurately representative of the entire industry – ten men to every one woman. Despite the fact that the marketing industry has for decades has attracted more and more women into the field. And from a service delivery perspective, I wonder whether it is a coincidence that SEO agencies and vendors, predominantly led by male management, continue to bamboozle clients with macho tech speak and over-complicate the practices involved. Do they just want to keep the whole industry as one big boys’ club, or do they actually believe that this alpha male communications approach sells Search marketing?

Returning to SES this year after a few years’ absence, I was amazed at how threatening an environment it still feels for women, not least because of the sheer dominance of male industry figureheads. And it’s not hard to work out why women are deterred from the Search industry when you read experiences of fellow female Search specialists like Lisa Ditlefsen of Verve Search. When interviewed by WordTracker recently Lisa described a conversation had with a male SEO at a LondonSEO party who asked her “Ok so you have a high profile in the industry, and I have no doubt all the guys in this room want to sleep with you, but do you actually know anything about SEO?”

Need I say more?!!!!

Tags: Lisa Ditlefsen, maturity of Search, SES, women in search

Posted in Industry best practice | 2 Comments »

You give Search a bad name! (Part 1)

Don’t worry! I’m not breaking into a Bon Jovi karaoke moment. Humour me on this title, all will soon become clear…

I have spent years defending best practice in Search and sitting on committee bodies such as the IAB and the IPA to support the maturity of the Search industry, particularly in support of the role of the agency. So it really angers me when such efforts are still being hampered to this day by practices and profiles that give Search a bad name or reputation.

Here’s a few examples I’ve come across recently (as I started to write these examples out, I realised there was enough evidence here to fill several blog posts, so there will be more examples to follow in the coming days!):

1. Good old Search Engine Strategies (SES)

I attended SES London a few weeks ago, after a few years’ leave of absence from this conference. But I was horrified to find that the panels had the same cronies on who were panellists in the late 90s, talking about the same outdated topics e.g. “link building, is it about quality or quantity?” - AND charging small businesses and enthusiastic practitioner delegates £000s for the privilege of learning nothing new from CEOs who haven’t coded a site or managed a PPC campaign for at least 10 years.

No wonder the once darling of the Search conference circuit has in recent years been superseded by SMX. Shot through the heart, and you’re to blame! Time for some new blood in terms of speakers, some new topics and probably a new re-brand too, please, SES!

(Part 2 of ‘You Give Search a bad name’ will be published in the days to come)

Tags: maturity of Search, search best practice, SES

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Search and Content are the Romeo and Juliet of the Web!

Search is all about content. So, should content be all about search? Are the two destined to be together?!

They certainly can’t co-exist without each other, and for one to lose the other might end in tragic consequences!

The savvier search marketers are realising that if editorial content can be planned according to search demand (which keywords people are searching for) then this content will be far more relevant – and effective – in the eyes of the search engines as well as the end-users.

And this means that ‘Search Content’ can dramatically improve a website’s search engine visibility - both across paid and natural, as the criteria for performing well in both demand relevance of editorial content.

And THIS MEANS infinitely more traffic generated in a cost efficient way.

So let’s learn from those tragic young lovers from Verona - search and content strategies must never be kept apart!

(The logistics of planning search and content strategies together, across agency or in-house team silos is another chapter and verse all together. Watch this space for future thoughts and advice on this subject!)

Posted in Content Strategy, PPC, SEO | No Comments »

Is Google Maps a travel site? Discuss

While flicking through Internet Retailing (not the most gripping of trade press reads, but it has some good retail stats-based case studies) I came across the article “Travel Remains Buoyant” which included a Hitwise-sourced table of the Top 15 UK Travel Sites, as ranked by share of visits.

Google Maps UK was ranked #1 with 8.32% - way ahead of #2 which gets 2.5% of UK internet visits. Languishing at #8, #9 and #10 were Expedia, TripAdvisor and Lastminute.com respectively with a measly ~1.5% each.

(And Opodo was nowhere to be seen in the Top15, to my personal disdain, because I bust a gut launching that travel brand online just after 9/11; I remember we had to re-design the banner ad creatives at the last minute - no pun intended - because they had images of planes flying passed skyscrapers – you couldn’t have scripted such bad timing!)

Anyway, back to Google Maps - which incidentally Hitwise also ranks at #4 (.com), with Google Earth at #11. Is Google Maps a travel site? I’m not surprised it’s top of any category – personally I would literally be lost around town without it. And yes, in that respect I suppose it helps me to plan my travel. But only in terms of day-to-day getting from A to B; not to plan my next beach holiday. I guess I’ve always associated the travel sector with the holidays industry, but I suppose it could include day-to-day travel?

So a ‘navigation tool’ maybe. But a travel site? Or, is it my definition of ‘travel’ that needs to be re-calibrated? Or, am I missing a trick in terms of my holiday planning? Should I be checking out the snow conditions on Google Earth before booking my skiing holiday?

Tags: Expedia, Google Earth, Google Maps, Hitwise, Internet Retailing, Lastminut.com, Opodo, Travel Sites, TripAdVisor

Posted in Google | No Comments »

Tips for time poor bloggers

I think we digital marketers can all now agree that blogs are a really great marketing tool. Both in terms of building dialogue with audiences, encouraging interaction with the brand, and also as a way of getting people to come and visit your web proposition (whether this is a standalone blog or one attached to a primary domain website).

But what we digital marketers struggle with is finding the time to write the damn things! Digital = dynamic = busy, busy, busy! If you’re out selling and doing digital, you’re left with very little time aside to write about it!

So here are some thoughts I’ve had as to how to make blogging less painful:

1. Share the load – partner with other digital marketers and create a rota, under one shared brand or vision
2. Sign up for a blog syndicate or pool, and stream this aggregated content into your blog
3. Use Twitter! Everyone in digital media is, because it’s shorthand blogging!
4. Write succinctly, don’t wax lyrical (do as I say, not as I do!)
5. Keep them to a maximum half page of A4. Your readers are probably time poor too!
6. Pose as many questions to encourage responses – get your readers to do the writing via their comments
7. Don’t force it! If you’ve got writers block, stop! Wait for some inspiration to come along. Otherwise the end result will be long winded and booooooooooooring! Remember: it’s about quality not quantity.

Hopefully these are good tips – let me know if you’ve got any more, because I simply don’t have the time!

Tags: blogging, Social Media

Posted in SEO, Social Media, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Can I keep my Karaoke resolution?

Bonnie gives it some wellyBeing a seasoned karaoke-goer, I have recently begun to tire of my (and of my friends’) repertoire. I can’t sing the same Blondie and Pink songs forever!

So I made it one of my new year’s resolutions to create a new repertoire in 2008. I’m sticking with “Alone” by Heart because I still haven’t perfected the high scream-like, yell-like warble two thirds of the way in!
I want to avoid some of the more popular choices: New York New York, for example, has got to be up there. According to EZ Tracks (http://www.ez-tracks.com) Barbie Girl by Aqua is the most popular karaoke song. Hmm, not sure if I believe that one!
I should also avoid any clashes with my karaoke inner circle’s repertoires. My friend, Jenny, for example, does a mean “Total Eclipse of the Heart” – although she sometimes selects the Nicki French version, which is distinctly inferior to Bonnie’s original.

(Incidentally, karaoke fans, did you know that TEOFT was written by Jim Steinman, of Meatloaf fame, and is inspired by the novel Wuthering Heights?)

So, if you’ve got any suggestions for any songs for my new karaoke repertoire, do let me know! Based on Pink and Blondie you might conclude that I like angry, balshy, female lead vocals. But I’m also very partial to a power ballad, rather like Bonnie T and the girls from Heart, much to my friends’ disdain!

Tags: Bonnie Tyler, Heart, Jim Steinman, Karaoke, total eclipse of the heart

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Online Language Pathways lead to new consumer insight and a better way of planning Search and Content strategies

Understanding how people use and respond to online language could be the key to improving online brand engagement, according to a new study from digital communications consultancy, CDA.

(before we go any further, I have to fess up to being the author of this study!)

The study formed the basis of CDA’s whitepaper, Online Language Pathways, and set out to understand how people think about and use language when searching online – in this instance for instant access savings accounts – and how that relates to the language of the web pages they choose to engage with.
One of the key findings was that the language people used to describe what they wanted to find online before they started their search – language of intent – was not the same as the terms and phrases they used when they actually started to search – search language.

Broadly, the language of intent can be described as natural and human, while search language becomes more mechanical and staccato.

Further, the study revealed that the language people used to deepen and refine their searches was often influenced by the terms and phrases they saw within the search results listing.

And finally, the language that people appeared to respond most favourably to when they actually engaged with a website was that that most closely resembled their original language of intent.

According to CDA co-founder and managing director, Clare O’Brien, brands can benefit from these insights by devoting more detailed attention to multiple language pathways: ‘That people seem to use more mechanical and learned language pathways to carry out their search while actually engaging with more human language mirroring their original intention or desire, is a significant insight that brands will be keen to explore more.

‘It means that to engage better with people online, brands need to use two broad types of language styles at the very least: mechanical search language to lay pathways to their sites and the natural language of intent to frame subsequent onsite brand language.’

A simple diagram representing the Language Pathways CDA has identified in its study shows how up to five different language styles can connect brands and customers.

user journey

The five principle take aways from the study are:

• Understand how your customers use the Web, what their information needs are and how they want to engage with you
• Use the right language – human language, not sales and marketing speak
• Make your content useful
• Develop the right search engine presence and deploy the right language in your content
• Harness the adaptive power of language

The white paper and more details about the study can be found on the CDA website: www.webwordsworking.co.uk

Interesting stuff, but many more questions remain unanswered (as always!) and indeed the survey leaves you wanting more similar research to be carried out e.g. across other industry sectors (this study focuses on personal finance) and also across different content platforms e.g. mobile.

Also, the takeaways are fairly obvious, which is fine. But we need to address the ‘So What?’ What do we do with this information and specifically how can we practically apply these learnings to drive more effective brand engagement.

And the good news is that all you have to do is watch this space!…CDA are looking to develop a practical application later in 2009.

Let us know what you think of the findings! And if it’s inspiring enough that you want to learn more along with us!

Tags: customer journeys online, online brand engagement, online language, online linguistics, search behaviour

Posted in Branding, Content Strategy, SEO, Semantic Web | No Comments »