The difference between success and failure when working with SEO is on how you create an effective strategy. Many businesses that until today wonder if their company is suitable for SEO can benefit from better rankings. What they need to do is partner with specialists to build a tailored and efficient SEO strategy.

The ultimate goal for e-commerce websites, for instance, is to boost traffic and, hopefully, get higher conversion rates. Choosing the right keywords will help select targeted traffic instead of random visitors that are unlikely to complete a purchase transaction. As an example, for a company selling products that aim to facilitate everyday life, such as storage solutions, some of the keywords to be considered would be:

Search volumes per month in Australia:

1. garage storage: 1900 searches
2. plastic storage containers: 1600 searches
3. storage containers: 1600 searches
4. toy storage: 880 searches
5. car storage: 320 searches
6. car boot organiser: 260 searches
7. boot organiser: 110 searches
8. stackable storage: 40 searches
9. storage products: 30 searches
10. car boot tidy: 20 searches

The search volume shows the level of interest the public has for some terms and the analysis is quite simple: higher volume, higher interest. By analysing thoroughly these keywords the company will decide which of those should be included in the SEO strategy. There isn’t a general rule as to which keyword is the right one to get better rankings. The right keyword will be the one that is right for each specific company and it depends on what the company goals are for that SEO strategy. If the organisation wants to reach a very specific part of the market, then it’s better off focusing on really specific keywords, even if the search volumes are lower if compared to broader terms. However, if the objective is to actually be known by a more comprehensive target market, then selecting generic keywords with higher search volumes will most likely bring the desired results.

There is only one ‘one-size-fits-all’ piece of advice that is worth sticking to if you’re looking for long-term ranking results: customise your SEO strategy to fit your company.

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Technology has allowed us to do things we couldn’t imagine 20 or 30 years ago would be possible. For instance, trying to picture one place where we could search closely to everything and get answers within seconds would be inconceivable. Yet, today this is possible and search engines make that happen. There are a few available in the market nowadays however the most used are Google, Yahoo! and Bing. And since everyone is using search engines to look for websites or more information on their interests, companies then realised it would be important, not to say crucial, to have a good ranking for their website. Good rankings can easily translate to an increased click-through rate which means more people accessing your website (and that would be the ultimate goal of the first part of the company strategy to convert visits to sales). That explains why possibly every company in their industry wants to be (and is trying to get) on the top of search results.

If you’re aiming to be a rock star of search results for your desired terms in Google then Webmaster Tools can help you get there. For those unfamiliar with it, Webmaster Tools is a free program provided by Google and it’s particularly useful for those maintaining and managing a website (known as webmasters) and wishing to turn it into a Google-friendly website. Google makes available a number of videos and articles that explain different aspects of the Webmaster Tools. For instance, you can learn about snippets (a short description of a page content that appears right under the page title on search results) and how they get picked, how to make sure Google crawled your website, the importance of unique content and specific page titles and many other topics. It’s also possible to link you Webmaster Tools to your Google Analytics account so you’ll have all the data you need in your Analytics page.

After you add your website to the Webmaster Tools you can have access to your visitors queries, check your website’s health (against errors, for instance), remove a page from the search results on Google and much more. Finding out which words visitors are using to find you is an essential information if you’re working on SEO to optimise your website and its position on search results.

Webmaster Tools is a great tool for those trying to succeed on their Marketing strategy as it can give you insights on how to correctly adjust your website and avoid penalties which can vary from losing positions in the search results to even getting your website removed from Google’s search results.

For more information visit: www.google.com/webmasters

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Catherine Blum writes an overview on Google Analytics and emphasizes how useful and important this tool is in the marketing industry. Google Analytics makes it easier to measure results and returns on investments.

If you’re an online marketing company or someone aspiring to be an online marketing manager then you should be familiar with Google Analytics. Known as an essential tool in the industry, everyone or every company trying to succeed in the competitive market of online marketing should know its ins and outs.

Google Analytics is responsible for providing statistics for websites, videos, apps, Facebook pages and more. And once you set up your Google Analytics account you can configure it to analyse more than one website at the same time. So if you’re an organisation with 10 websites you don’t have to set up 10 different accounts to track each one of them.

This post will introduce the main aspects of Google Analytics so you know what you’ll be dealing with (or at least so you’ll know what you’re missing out on). When you login to Google Analytics you’ll notice a left sidebar that looks like the image on the left. This gives you a brief idea of how many features Google Analytics has. In the dashboard there’s an overview of your website statistics. First thing you should know is that the dashboard displays information of the last 30 days but in case you want to analyse other periods you can easily change the settings by clicking on the date displayed on the top right of the dashboard. You can also compare periods thus it’s easier to see your website progress. In the standard dashboard it’s possible to check the number of new visits and unique visitors, location of visitor, which browser they’re using, the bounce-rate (when people exit the website through the landing page without actually interacting with any other page), how long visitors are spending in your website (average visit duration), the revenue (if you have an e-commerce) and you goal completions, but you can customise the dashboard and set it to show only the information that are more important to you. In fact that’s one of the great things about Google Analytics: it’s customisable. Besides the dashboard you can also customise your reports so you’ll have easy access to your essential data. In addition, Google Analytics allows users to export data to several different formats, including excel and PDF, as well as e-mail it straight from the dashboard.

As the name suggests, Shortcuts permit users to create shortcuts that keep saved settings of a report they need to access frequently, whilst Intelligent Events shows alerts when a specific metric performs differently from what was expected. And Intelligent Events is another customisable feature in Google Analytics. There are two types of alerts: the ones that Google Analytics identify unusual activity in a metric or a custom alert in which the user defines when to be warned when a specific metric behaves unexpectedly.

Real-Time reports show updated information on how many users are on the website at that moment, where they’re from and what content they’re looking at. It’s a great feature for those working with social media as you can see public response right away.

Audience might be the most known and used feature of Google Analytics. Knowing your visitors can help you adjust your campaign to ensure maximum return. In Audience you get information on you visitors demographics (age and gender), interests, geolocation (language and location), behaviour (how many new/old visitors, how often they visit the website and how they interact with the pages), the technology (browsers) and mobile devices they’re using. It’s also possible to see the visitor’s flow in the website which means you can check their track, which pages they navigate on including landing pages and drop-offs.

The tab Acquisition is all about understanding the traffic your website is getting: where your visitors come from, if from a search or a referral website for example, how many pages they access per visit, how long are the visits, as well as the bounce rate. Within this tab you’ll find a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) feature which is only available after you connect your website to the Webmaster Tools. In this feature you can find out what keywords your visitors are using to find you, which is a vital element for a successful SEO project.

Behaviour reports are about the website speed, the effectiveness of the search box in your website and more. In Conversions you can set up goals to monitor your website and pages progress as well as track your online store performance (if you have one of course).

This short overview doesn’t cover all the potential and benefits Google Analytics could bring to your business. There’s much more to be absorbed from this service and it can be done by accessing Google Analytics Academy in which you can do a course on the subject and learn how to use and understand all the features. For more information visit: https://analytics.google.com/analytics/academy/

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Why keyword research is important for your business?

Imagine you lost your phone and you’re trying to find your friends at a crowded music festival. You have several different ways of doing that and one of them is just wander around looking and trying to see if you recognize anyone. But let’s face it: that wouldn’t be the most efficient way. In fact, the chances of finding them would be as big as finding a four-leaf clover on a clover field. So next step would be remembering you’ve defined a meeting point in a case the group got lost from each other: the pit area next to the stage. Ok, things are getting better but there are still a lot of people. So you remember they mentioned they would be close to the bathrooms in the pit area. That narrow things down a bit. Then you remember they were wearing customized t-shirts. And bingo! You’ve found them! At the concert, in the pit area next to the bathrooms and wearing those customized t-shirts.

This example shows how being specific helped finding a group of people in a big crowd. The same concept applies for when you’re defining keywords for your business: the more precise and relevant the easier will be to find it. Keywords will allow your business to be found by your customers among many different companies in which many of them are your direct or indirect competitors. If you don’t get found you have no chances of playing the game of attracting customers and it’s most likely you’ll lose potential business for your fellow competitors. So you’ll want to make sure you get this right if your goal is to be number one in search results.

Therefore rule number 1 for defining keywords is: think about your customers. What are the words they would use to find you? How do they think? What are they looking for? Once you’ve understood what they want it will be easier to narrow down the possibilities. For example, if you sell flowers online one option would be using ‘online flowers’ as a keyword.

Rule number two: check your words popularity. Which of the words you’ve judged relevant are the most popular among your clients? Once you know this it will be easier to target your efforts and work your way up to the top of search results.

If you misjudge the importance of the previous steps and without doing any research decide by yourself the keywords you’ll use it’s guaranteed at least half of your efforts will be wasted (considering the other half is just luck for getting one right). Keyword research will lead your company the right way and maximise the efforts and resources to the desired result: being easily found by your current and potential customers.

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Phone companies make huge profits on restricted data and text plans.  Now there is an alternative to contacting and standard texting with Kik Messenger which is a totally free, crazy-fast, cross-platform instant messaging solution business people are using all around the world to keep in touch with team members in real-time.

The application is available for most iPhone, Android, Windows Phone 7, Symbian and BlackBerry. It combines individual and group chats across wifi and 3G. Use Kik to chat, upload photos, sketches, smileys, share photos privately, voice messages and other content, making it a highly useful app for entrepreneurs.

Save money with Kik. Send text without bothering about exceeding data or text allotment. Kik permits you to send several texts as you would like without having to worry regarding the huge phone bill that”ll be waiting for you at the end of the month.

Compared to SMS (text messaging) Kik is faster, it has a real-time feel. It’s like having a real conversation with your team.  This makes the option of business conference chats and communicating via messenger to co-workers in other countries more than possible without sacrificing your text messaging box, skype minutes, and even Facebook login.

With the added ability to send & receive photos, Kik is the best business communication tool. You won’t need to attend an hour conference when you can just message it in. Picture sharing feature lets you check status of production as they happen.

You can have a group conversation or conference simply by adding your staff to the conversation.

The Kik application has a simple design that is easy to use, which makes it a popular business tool. The user interface is simple, straightforward and not cluttered with advertisements and nonessential features.

Kik provides message status notifications, letting you know if your message has been sent and delivered to your team and the time it has been read and when the other person is typing a reply for you.

You don’t have to run Kik all day. It has a push notification; you can close it and still know when you have a message. You can even leave an offline message. Close it when you are done.

Privacy is important in business communication and Kik’s username rather than phone number allows for more security than some other competitors. You can save yourself from annoying phone calls. Kik lets you create your username and give you complete control over your privacy. You can block anybody you don’t want to communicate with. If somebody new wants to contact you they will get a notification that you have to send a message to them first.

Kik also integrates HTML5 powered apps called Cards. The Cards enable Kik to quickly create and deploy cross-platform that lets users find, watch and send YouTube videos, forward images or create sketches across the web and share them with coworkers without exiting the app or downloading anything new.

Give Kik a try today for your business and see what you’ve been missing out on!

If you”d like Kik Messenger for Business Training or management and development by our social media agency in Sydney call 1300 321 814.

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