My budget is tight, what’s the best bang for my buck getting more traffic to my website?

Author: Chris Thomas on 9th November 2009

Traffic. It's the blood that courses through your website's veins.

But there's good traffic and there's bad traffic, and anyone can get a bucket load of crappy traffic. All you have to do is wander over to Google and type in "buy traffic" then pick a site and spend a few hundred dollars buying tens of thousands of visitors a month!

I can tell you now; you might as well pass the time at home setting fire to $100 bills (unless you need to get banner ad impressions up!). While the stats in your analytics package will look impressive, the needle on your website goals (sales, conversions, newsletter sign ups) won't have moved an inch. That's because the traffic you buy (through expired domain redirection - and a host of other ‘shady' pop under tricks) isn't targeted.

You'll probably melt your server too, so be warned.

But be my guest, knock yourself out. Try it for yourself!

So what's good traffic?

Good traffic is targeted traffic (it's a mantra, so keep saying it over and over again). It makes up the second pillar of online marketing, no matter how big or small you are.

You need:
1. A good product or service.
2. Targeted traffic.
3. A website that converts.

Targeted traffic comes from a search engine, a Google Ad, Facebook Fan page, Twitter, other referring sites and bookmarks.

So frankly speaking, I'm not interested in pure numbers, I like to see the best quality traffic hit your site because it has the highest chance of converting.

Works every time.

Top tips for cheap traffic building:

1. SEO - can take time, but if you get it right and are patient enough, high rankings in search engines will provide lots of traffic for many years to come.

2. Affiliate Marketing - not for everyone, but affiliate marketing can deliver free and targeted traffic into your site and you only need to pay someone for it once a conversion has occurred. It can also be a useful link building tool for SEO as (if you've set it up properly) each link on affiliate site can create link popularity.

3. Google AdWords - yes you need to pay, but if you're keeping an eye on your ROI (conversions versus AdWords spend) then it's worth every penny.

4. Social Media - Facebook fan pages can drive a lot of traffic to your site, and the more fans you get, the more traffic you'll probably receive too. It takes a lot of work, but can be well worth it in the long run. Really great info on how to build a Facebook community here.

5. Twitter - some of our clients are receiving a lot of traffic from Twitter. Build your list of followers, make awesome, compelling tweets and link those tweets to your website. Slow going in the beginning, but can be worth it in the long run. You could also explore advertising on Twitter - try www.ad.ly - and have your ‘tweet' message forwarded (and to some extent, endorsed) to 675,000 of Nicole Richie's Twitter followers! One guy recently made $15,000 in a month using Ad.ly. Scary.

6. Secondary Networks - Getprice, myshopping, get your product list up on these sites and get quite cheap, targeted traffic.

7. Don't forget offline - Display your web address on your car, business card, letter head, email sig and press releases you might send out.

8. Web 2.0 (remember that?) - Any content you create from a blog post to a new article - Digg it, Stumble it, Delicious it, Reddit, etc.

Obviously outsourcing much of the above to an agency will make things more expensive, and if you have the time then that's sometimes the only cost involved. What's the price of time spent with the kids?

I'll leave that for you to decide.

Chris Thomas heads Reseo, a search engine optimisation company which specialises in creating and maintaining Google AdWords campaigns and Search Engine Optimisation campaigns for a range of corporate clients.

Why Use Paid Search (PPC) When You’re Already Ranking Organically?

A common question often asked in online marketing is whether or not to continue using paid search if you’re already achieving top organic search rankings. Why would you pay for traffic when you’re already in position 1 or 2? There are in fact a number of key benefits and sound arguments for keeping your paid search campaigns active despite these great results.

High organic rankings do not always warrant high click throughs

Just because you’re ranking #1 in the natural search results does not guarantee visitor click-throughs. Quite often, a PPC ad itself can be more successful than the organic listing. Why? The calls to action within paid search listings are generally much stronger and more compelling than the title and description found in the natural results. You may well find that turning off your PPC campaign in favour of your highly ranked organic listing results in a vast drop in overall traffic and conversions.

Have a look through your analytics, are your highly ranked pages returning good conversions? Or is the bulk of your traffic coming via your paid search component? Do your organic results contain a clear marketing message? Even if they do, you most probably have more than one offer or more than one target audience to communicate to.

You can’t possibly be ranking #1 for all your keyword phrases

Achieving top rankings for all your keyword variations is extremely difficult in a competitive market. Paid search can give you visibility for those harder to rank key terms. Depending on your business, there are potentially an infinite number of possible ‘long-tail’ keywords and phrases that can only be tapped in to via a fully optimised paid search campaign.

Paid Search enhances your online visibility

Appearing in both organic and paid search listings can help in achieving a stronger brand awareness and visibility online. It can also help to build the overall credibility and trust of your business according to some studies. Dominating the search results has also proven to be an effective online strategy in highly competitive markets.

Paid Search sends additional traffic

Increased search visibility generally leads to more traffic. Studies have shown that multiple exposures within the search results can increase your overall click-through rate (CTR) as customers are more likely to buy when exposed to a company's brand in multiple places.

Further studies have shown that you can double your traffic by being at the top of both paid and organic results.

What’s more, on average, 20% of searchers click on paid search results on any given search. So, if you can obtain additional targeted traffic through a PPC campaign, why wouldn’t you?

You can’t rely on organic rankings

Organic search results are forever fluctuating and are served differently from one searcher to the next. Whether through algorithmic updates, competition, data centres, personalised or universal search, PPC can act as a sort of back-up to the ever changing search landscape.

Paid Search supports SEO

Lastly, but of considerable importance, paid search campaigns are an ideal testing ground for search engine optimisation. The information generated through paid search campaigns is invaluable for an effective SEO strategy. Paid Search campaigns are able to target an endless number of keyword variations and can be tracked extensively to identify which keywords and ad copy send the most traffic and which ones convert.

In the end, having a well optimised and successfully integrated SEO and PPC campaign is a powerful combination. SEO and PPC work hand in hand in delivering superior results and maximising your overall brand exposure and ROI.

Annemarie Hunter - Search Marketing Specialist

How does Google's algorithm work?

Perhaps the eighth wonder of the world should be Google’s mysterious “Algorithm”. By the way, I do say that with tongue planted firmly in cheek (never really understood that turn of phrase, if any one can tell its origins that’d be great).

But I do regularly get asked about it. What is it? What’s in it? What does it do?

Today, I’ll take a bit of a stab at what it is and what we know about it.

I think I mentioned many-a-blog-post-ago that there are three parts to a search engine, the robots, the index and the algorithm. I’ll do a very simple re-cap to put it into context.

Remember, the ‘bots’ go out over the internet and find and collect web pages. When they find a page, they scurry back and plonk it into Google’s massive storage system, the index. The third part of the ‘engine’ is the algorithm which effectively analyses each page for relevance. When someone performs a search, it tries it’s best to sort all pages in the index, ranking the most relevant result highest then the second most relevant page, well, second, and the third and so on.

The problem for you and I is that Google doesn’t tell us exactly how the algorithm works. It can’t really, because for starters, if Google did “give it all away” competitors would no-doubt copy it, and there’d be an optimisation free-for-all by every website owner out there.

It’s Google’s own “11 secret herbs and spices” recipe.

I read recently that in 2007 Google changed or tweaked the algorithm around 450 times. That’s more than once a day! Talk about a moving target! That’s the main reason we will never guarantee a number 1 position at Google. Customer expectation management 101.

I think the most important thing to remember about the algorithm is that while it’s been written and updated by humans, there is no human involvement in a website’s ranking position. It’s best summed up by Ubi Manber, Google vice president who oversees search quality.

"If we find, for a particular query, that result No. 4 should be result No. 1, we do not have the capability to manually change it. We have to find what weakness in the algorithm caused that result and find a general solution to that, evaluate whether a general solution really works and if it's better, and then launch a general solution."

While Google might be constantly fiddling around the edges, there are things about the algorithm which tend to remain fairly constant. Over at SeoMoz (effectively the SEO industry’s version of Smartcompany), the world’s top SEO industry experts were invited to vote on what they believed were most important factors to influence Google’s algorithm. The Title Tag came in first, followed by body text and Headings etc. Certainly, links are also a play a huge factor, and the anchor text of in-bound-links to a site was of “exceptional importance” to all respondents.

Even so, the algorithm doesn’t always get it spot on. The main inspiration for this post was the research I was doing to the AIMIA speech last week, “the future of search”. When I typed that key phrase into Google for some inspiration, the number 1 result’s content was written in 2004. So, there’s still some work left for Google to do!

SEO and website design

As they say, a great looking website is no guarantee of success. If potential customers can’t find your website because you’ve compromised its chances of a good search engine rank, you’ll need to resort to expensive Pay Per Click, Banner advertising and/or affiliate marketing campaigns for the life of the design.

When you commission a designer to build you a new website, it’s really up to you to make sure they design your new website with SEO in mind. Obviously design and usability is the designer’s job; they want to make your new site look as beautiful as possible for humans.

But sometimes designers (and I should also mention developers) overlook how a search engine might respond.

You can have your cake and eat it too, so let’s look at the elements involved in website design that really matter to search engines.

1. Textual content
   
   I often see designers create quite ‘image heavy’ designs, particularly on home pages. Remember, search engines can’t ‘see’ or ‘read’ images, so we need to give a search engine some text to hang their hat on.
   
   While you can use image ‘alt tags’ to populate text onto an image heavy site, search engines place less weight on them, so it’s not a genuine workaround. Search Engines typically need a minimum of 350 words per page to get a clear ‘relevance picture’ of the theme for each and every page in your website.
   
   Search engines like key phrases in headings, body text and links (in the form of anchor text).
   
2. Technology - flash
   
   Just as search engines struggle with images, they also struggle with flash. At the moment, search engine robots can’t access and index content from flash files. I would be very wary of a home page (or indeed an entire website) presented solely by a flash file, if you want to rank well.
   
3. Technology - javascript
   
   If you don’t have a sitemap, search engine robots need to follow links within your site (and from other websites) in order to index all your website pages. Search engine robots are unable to follow javascript links (which are often a feature of drop down animated menu systems for example).
   
   If your designer recommends using javascript based navigation, ask if it’s possible to use a CSS driven navigation system instead.
4. Site Structure
   
   I have mentioned this before in a previous blog, but when you’re developing your sitemap, dedicate some thought keyword research for each directory name and file name.
   
   Designers often build your sitemap with quite uninspiring directory names like http://www.autobarn.com.au/products/17/159/.
   
   I often use the example of Seek Learning as one of Australia’s best overall websites in terms of design, usability and search engine optimisation.
   
   Seek Learning’s site structure is something to behold, it’s obvious they had significant input from a SEO specialist during the sitemap creation phase of the project. Given that Google does place importance on keywords is directory and file names, it’s vital you do too!
   
   
   

Next Thursday and Friday I’m attending the Search Marketing Expo in Sydney, so I’ll report back to you on some of the latest trends and idea’s coming from Google and other industry leaders!

Website relaunch & SEO. Your website re launch checklist

So you’ve built, or about to build a brand new website. It’s exciting and nerve-wracking all at the same time isn’t it!

So let’s make sure it goes as smoothly as possible so that you reduce the chance of a drop in traffic from search engines.

1. 404 Error – Page Not Found

‘Page not found’ errors are really annoying! A good, user-friendly website should handle it by helping your visitors rather than allowing a browser to show the error.

I guess the key thing to remember here is that your existing website has pages indexed by search engines and those pages are bringing traffic to your site. Usually with a new web design you’ll have signed off on a new site map. This means the new site will have a completely different structure.

From a search engine’s perspective, the minute you kill the old site and launch the new one, for a few days at least it’s going to have the old pages still showing in the results. When users click on those results, they’ll be taken to a page that no longer exists. That’s a classic ‘404 page not found error’. Trust me. That’s bad.

I’ll talk about how you can avoid this problem in a minute, but for now you should have your developer set up a custom 404 error page anyway.

I’ve seen two really good custom 404 pages recently. The first is Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre www.MCEC.com.au – they have rebranded (and have a new URL!) from Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Centre – or www.MECC.com.au. Quite a bit to get your head around, I know.

Let’s have a look at some screen shots to illustrate how a good 404 page should work (especially after a website launch). The first is the old MECC site still indexed over at www.ninemsn.com.au (note this test may not work for you as ninemsn may have re-indexed the site by the time you read this):










The second is a screen-grab of the custom 404 page www.mcec.com.au has created which was shown to me after I clicked on the link on nineMSN. Basically, it’s grabbing the referrer information and cleverly inserting it to connect to the user, helping them navigate as quickly as possible through the new site to the information they’re after.



The other example I like is the custom 404 page at the new www.MembersEquityBank.com.au site. Nice and friendly, and I like the “report the broken link to us“ feature.



2. Permanent Redirects

OK, this could be a bit dry, but bear with me.

Getting this right is critical and virtually guarantees no loss of traffic from search engines, affiliates, online advertisements (i.e. Google Ad’s) and other link partners if your site is restructured. It also means that custom 404 page you’ve just built will hardly get used at all!

The idea here is to compare your existing site map with the new one. Where you have two pages with the same topic, you need to get your developer to permanently redirect the old page address to the new page address (also known as a “301 permanent redirect”). It can be a big job which is best setup in a table, but well worthwhile.

A good developer can write a script to perform this task automatically.

3. Notify your link Partners!

Any decent site has other sites linking to it. Again this can be a big job, but if you setup a Google Webmaster tools account you can see exactly who’s linking to your site and which page they’re linking to. If you can’t setup permanent redirects then it’s a process of contacting them, crossing your fingers, and hoping they’ll modify their links to your site.

If you have an affiliate program, it’s even more important to notify them! Affiliates will be mightily, um, upset if the links and banners they have on their site deliver affiliate traffic to pages which ‘404’.

And don’t forget to update your Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing Ad’s. You’ll be throwing good money away if you don’t sort that out as soon as you launch.

4. Update your Google, Yahoo and MSN Sitemaps!

As soon as you launch the new site, generate and upload new sitemaps for the search engines to re-index. It’ll speed up deletion of the old pages and re-indexing of the new ones. You can use www.gsitecrawler.com to build a sitemap quickly (if your new site doesn’t generate one automatically).

5. Test

Finally, run a broken links tool once the new site is fully uploaded and goes live. A couple of sites to visit include:

http://validator.w3.org/checklink

http://www.dead-links.com/check_links.php

All the best with your re-launch!

Please. Dedicate some thought to SEO before you build

The tips I’m going to give you today will enable you to perform search engine optimisation before your new web site is even built!

I touched on the importance of getting SEO right when I blogged about the Commonwealth Bank’s new website launch a few weeks back.

Just as an aside, Liesl and I met with Adam Farraway from the CBA last week in Sydney. Adam kindly took some time out of his day to chat about the article and the Bank’s position. It was a very interesting insight into the world of big bank websites!

Back to the topic!

In my experience, SEO is nearly always called in after a website has been built. Soon after launch a website owner gives me a call saying they need their site Search Engine Optimised. This usually presents several problems:

1. The site has been built using SEO unfriendly technology like flash, javascript navigation or an ‘el-cheapo’ Content Management System (CMS) that won’t allow you to change meta data or title tags etc.
2. Their directory structure is all over the place (thematically speaking). This is a time consuming problem to fix.
3. Usually little or no initial thought has gone into keyword research while the site’s copy is being written.

So let’s start with item 2. – your directory structure/sitemap, because fixing the issues in item 1. usually means an expensive re-build!

Every website has some kind of directory structure (unless it’s built using flash or just a one page website!). Draw up your site map with all the likely pages and their content. Do this as logically as possible, so you cater for humans and search engines.

Then for each page you’ve created, perform keyword research to find the most popular keywords and phrases. Download this keyword tool.

Here’s a fantastic example from one of the best optimised websites in the country: www.seeklearning.com.au. Look at the way the web builder created the directory structure so that’s optimised for “short course”:

http://www.seeklearning.com.au/short-course/computer-short-courses.asp



As you can see the site ranks really well!

Seriously, this stuff sends a geeky shiver down my spine!

There’s no doubt they were thinking about SEO before (and during) the build. It’s much easier to get this correct at the beginning than to go in and change the structure of your website later.

The benefits are obvious. You get a logical, thematically structured website for humans and search engines which ranks like mad and brings lots of targeted traffic!

http://www.seeklearning.com.au/short-course/accounting-and-finance.asp
http://www.seeklearning.com.au/short-course/leadership-and-communication.asp http://www.seeklearning.com.au/short-course/teaching-English-overseas.asp

When it comes to really competitive key phrases (and all things being equal), Google will rank your site higher than your rivals if you have keywords and phrases in your website’s directory structure.

It’s just one of the 120 or so factors Google takes into account when working out who’s going to rank where when someone makes a search.

Get the foundations right from the beginning and you will be rewarded!

BIG google rank shake-up for the world's most highly prized keyphrase!

Goodness knows what Google's upto this time! Yesterday I blogged about why Australia's top ranking website http://www.webprofits.com.au/ ranked 1st for the key phrase "Search Engine Optimisation".

Today they're gone!

Outta here!

Yep, Google's done a serious little dance and pretty much changed the entire top 10 - BUT FOR AUSTRALIAN RESULTS ONLY.

I haven't had time to analyse the top sites in much detail, suffice to say I can't for the life of me understand why the websites which now make up the top 10 are there. Most of them are barely on topic and seriously thematically diluted.


Here's a screen shot of Monday's results:

Here's today's!

Seriously weird stuff going on!

There are two answers.

1. Webprofits and the majority of top sites were either buying links or simply 'over optimised' and got busted (copped a ranking penalty).

2. It's a ranking anomoly (which can happen on occasion) and everything will go back to normal in the next 48 hours.

Let's wait and see.

Buy me a scotch for helping you with SEO? Sure. Why Not!

Katie May, founder of http://www.seek.com.au/ and now growing http://www.kidspot.com.au/ (at a rate that would put a Japanese bullet train to shame) was interviewed by Online Magazine http://www.smartcompany.com.au/ (coincidentally where I contribute weekly!)

Here's an excerpt of what she said to SmartCo. I love her comments, she's saying all the things I've been pushing for years...

Katie May - permanent marketing priorities.

It’s all about getting the traffic then building the brand. “I don’t want to be a slave to Google for the rest of my life,” she says.

1. Make really, really, really good friends in the area of search engine optimisation (SEO). “Buy them a bottle of scotch,” says May. “If you get that (SEO) wrong, you will have to spend a bomb to get it right.
   
   Build your web pages in ways that are easy to index, have good page titles, key words for each page, all the links you need to boost your Google rankings. Get the basics right and you’ll do fine. We invest in it every month.”
   
2. Try and cut a deal to reduce search engine marketing costs. To avoid those 15% commission fees on search engine marketing, try and negotiate a deal to grow the fee as you get the results. Kidspot buys 100,000 keywords (some keywords cost 1c, others a lot more), often buying expensive keywords for a day or so, then concentrating on cheaper, related search terms.
   
3. Build links. Use contra to build links, affiliates and online partnerships.
   
4. Get outdoors to build the brand. Billboards are the best way to build a brand, May says. “Experience and research tells me this works to build a brand,” she says.
   
5. Cultivate word of mouth. “Everything we do, we ask ourselves ‘Can we get word of mouth?’. Anyway to get people to send information about us on to friends and colleagues, we do it — and it’s free.”

SEO and Australia's Biggest Bank - Which Bank?

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia launched it's new website recently. Full marks on the design. It looks good! But if we take a peek under the bonnet, there are some search engine optimisation basics which have been completely over-looked.

First of all, the home page title tag reads "homepage". Bit of an oversight there.



Secondly, they have no meta content description tag, or meta content keywords tag. Unforgivable.



Thirdly, none of the images on the home page have been alt tagged for usability (and ethical seo).

Coming up next is the old DMOZ issue! Read this carefully because it could be affecting you too!

Look closely at the following images and compare:

This is the DMOZ listing for the Bank...


Next: Google's result...



What's happening here is Google is using the DMOZ editor description (if your site is listed in DMOZ), replacing the Meta content description tag from your own website! Google doesn't always do it, but if you don't have a Meta description tag, the DMOZ description is better than nothing!

What the Bank needs to do here is place a command in its header tag which tells Google NOT to use the boring old, unoptimised, DMOZ editor description.

meta name="GOOGLEBOT" content="NOODP"

(Note: please encase the tag in <>'s - Blogger software won't let me put the tag around!)

DMOZ is the world's largest human edited (volunteer) directory. You've got to be good to get included! Google likes websites listed in DMOZ because they've been evaluated for quality by a human (something Google doesn't do with its spidering technology). Once you're in, your rankings will improve. But don't hold your breath, it can take years to be included once you've made your submission.

Finally, a quick look around the site, and none of their pages have had much thought to the most important aspect of Search Engine Optimisation. Title tags and Meta tags.

To their credit, there's pretty good content on most pages, with search engine friendly navigation, the site works fine with javascript and stylesheets turned off.

I'd be optimising their anchor text if given the chance. Often I see juicy links like this:

Home Seeker Approval - that's a link on their home loans page. I don't think there are many people searching for "home seeker approval". It should be changed to "Home loan pre approval".

Of course I couldn't help myself, I sent a note to the Bank with a few suggestions. Here's a excerpt of the form submission...

.... Your home page title tag reads "homepage". Change it to something like, "Commonwealth Bank. Home loans, Business loans, Bank accounts, Credit cards, Insurance, Personal loans" etc, etc.

Add meta content/description and keywords tags to the home page.
Add image alt tags - describe your images for usability and Search Engine friendliness.

Do a site wide review for keyword popularity - i.e. on your home page you use the word "super". In fact "Superannuation" is more popular and is typed in more than 15,000 times a month at Google.

All pages need keyword analysis followed by on page-optimisation, with clever but subtle anchor text optimisation for cross linking.

Hope this helps,

Cheers

Chris

Today is Tuesday 23rd of October. I wonder how soon it will take to get fixed? Click here to see if they've made the changes I've suggested have been implemented.

It never ceases to amaze me how much effort businesses put into their website design, usability and content. SEO is often 'called in' as an after-thought! Big business often spends huge amounts of cash on a new website, getting them up and hosted, along with hefty monthly maintenance fees too.

It's amazing how they balk at allocating a small part of their initial (and ongoing) budget to SEO and SEM advice and optimisation. A good seo provider will always bring ongoing value, long after the web design company has disappeared.

Reputation Management

It's interesting how the Commonwealth Bank has also tied up most of the top 10 at Google with their own results and business divisions if you search for "commonwealth bank". I've got hand it to them, that's very good reputation management!

Online Reputation Management is a whole other topic for another day, but basically, businesses like http://www.websalad.com.au/ help large brands with their online reputation; amongst other things monitoring blog posts (like this one - who says I'm paranoid?) and helping them to tie up the top 10 spots at Google. By doing this, whenever bad news hits, often people will turn to Google for information, but only get the company message, so to speak because no one else is in the top 10. It's a form of reputation damage control.

However, now that Google Universal results are hitting home - showing up-to-the-minute news stories in the Google results - online reputation management will become increasingly difficult.

So to finish, the lesson is this. Before you launch your site, step back make sure you've checked everything off the list and get the whole package right before launch! (or indeed, lunch).