Posted at: 2:58 PM by David

A new eye tracking study shows the importance of high rankings in both Organic and PPC search results for visibility and click through rate.

The visual heat map (below) suggests how users scan the results on Google and which areas tend to get the maximum attention.

The "Golden Triangle" is formed.

Organic Ranking Visibility

The percentage of participants looking at a listing in this location:

Rank 1 - 100% Rank 2 - 100% Rank 3 - 100% Rank 4 - 85% Rank 5 - 60% Rank 6 - 50% Rank 7 - 50% Rank 8 - 30% Rank 9 - 30% Rank 10 - 20%

The study suggests that if your website is in the top 3 then 100% of searches will notice your listing, but it doesn't mean the same amount of people will click on positions 1,2 and 3. Far more users click the website in position 1 compared to the rest.

The amount of eye movement declined rapidly through the top 4 or 5 results, and then at the bottom of the screen, tends to become more constant through to the end of the page. There seems to be a F shaped scan pattern, where users tend to scan horizontally at the top then travel vertically along the left side of results, forming the Golden Triangle.

Notice the thick red line, which is called the fold line and is where the page needs to be scrolled. Much less attention is placed below the fold line compared to the top 4.

Conclusion: A top 3 listing could be up to five times more effective than a listing in position 10. Contact Persona today to find out how we can get you there.

Labels: google, marketing, seo

Posted at: 12:12 PM by David

In order to know how far you are from reaching your goals you will need to find some comparison factors to allow you to measure your success. Analysing your competitors will give you a better idea of all the required factors needed to reach where they are in the search engines or better.

It's a good idea to analyse local businesses first. Go to Google and type in your main keywords + your location. For example if you were a web design agency located in Nottingham then the keyword you would type in would be "web design in Nottingham". Next, look at each site and visually assess their strengths. Answer these questions when looking at each site:

• What are the strengths and weaknesses of each site? Remember their weaknesses could be your strengths.
• What target markets are my competitors reaching?
• Are there services that my competitors are not providing their customers that I could provide?
• How much of a market share can I anticipate?
• If you are selling products, are you competively priced?
• Is it easy to navigate around the site? How easy is it to buy, fill in forms, find support?
• Do they have strong calls to action? Look at how they attract customers to buy or enquire.
• Do you see the same site rank well for various keywords?
• Are there lots of high quality content pages on the site?
• Do I have the finances required to compete?
• What is my competitive advantage?

After you have identified your local competition find your top competitors by searchign for your main keyword. Using the example above; typing in just "web design" will show my top competitors. This list will prove vital when considering site design and keyword selection so make sure you spend a decent amount of time collecting data on your competitors.

I am using Adwords, are there any tools out there that show me how much my competitors are spending?

SpyFu is one such site and is my top recommendation for you to check out. SpyFu let's you see which keywords your competitors are bidding on and which keywords they are optimising for. You can effectively spy on your competitors and find out their every move.

Is spying on your competitors legal? Yes, 100% legal. You can search by keyword, company name, domain name, category or industry and SpyFu will show accurate, up-to-date information. Although this tool is not free, it is an essential tool for those of you who invest in PPC campaigns.

Above is a snapshot of what SpyFu displays when you search for a domain name. For this example I have chosen to spy on Amazon UK. Look at their daily budget, sometimes as much as £36k!

Using SpyFu you can find the following competition intelligence:

• Estimated Daily Ad Budget
• Total Clicks/Day
• Average Cost/Click
• Average Click/Day
• Average Ad Position
• Average Ad Competitors
• Average Ad Percentile
• Organic Keywords
• Paid Keywords
• Top Organic Competitors
• Top Ad Competitors
• Sub-domains
• Related domains

Conclusion

Analyzing your competition should not be a one-time step taken during the early stages of your campaign but rather an ongoing process. Identifying where you are in relation to your competition will give you an advantage. You may take top spot one week but the next week your competition could improve their site and take the top spot back. You will have to spot their changes and make improvements to your site. Failure to keep up will result in your site dropping out of the first page or missing out on potential Ad goldmines.

Summary of Tasks:

• Look at your local competition
• Do a search on Google for your main keyword to find your top competitors
• Use competition tools such as SpyFu to identify your competitions spending power
• Periodically check your own site and your top competitors for movement
• Make appropriate changes

The next chapter in the series talks about creating your content and how to insert those keywords into your site.

Labels: competition analysis, local competition, marketing, spy on competitors, spyfu

Posted at: 11:08 AM by David

In this chapter I shall be discussing the importance of choosing the right keywords, where to find them and what to do with them. Following my advice can greatly increase the amount of traffic you currently receive which, in theory will result in increased sales.

Keyword Research is possibly the most important online marketing technique to get right. If you just guess what people are looking for, you take the risk that you'll be wrong, consequently missing out on huge traffic potential. So why take that risk when keyword research can give you a tremendous insight into what people are really looking for?

Step 1 Create a list of basic keywords

Jotting down notes will get you started, but it won't give you any where near the full list of possibilities. Nevertheless, writing down what you believe to be good keywords is the best way to start.

When I start a new keyword project, my preferred method is to write down a few keywords then research competitors to see what they are doing. I read through their sites and note down the main ideas and concepts that are covered, and list what I believe to be the main keywords. I usually look at 10 websites to get a good idea of the important issues and ideas that are currently being discussed in my target industry. A great tool to analyse your competition is SpyFu.

For this exercise I'll make a list of around 20 main keyword ideas. The next step is to put these keywords into a Keyword Suggestion Tool to find out how popular they really are.

Step 2 Input Basic Keywords into a Suggestion Tool

At this point you should have a notepad with a list of keyword ideas that you believe to be the most important. Great! Now we shall visit a few keyword suggestion sites to see if you are right.

My first port of call is usually Google's free keyword suggestion tool. Primarily targeted towards Adwords users, this tool will tell you how many times a keyword gets typed in each month on Google and suggests related terms.

For example if I type in Web Design the tool generates a list of 150 keyword combinations that contain Web Design. I get results like dynamic web design, web design companies in London, budget web design etc. I only choose the keywords that are related to my business profile as you will find some keywords that don't fit.

Use that list that you created in Step 1 and type in each keyword to find related terms. This process is time consuming but should give you hundreds of keyword suggestions. Save them somewhere on your computer, preferably in Excel format. Group your keywords into themes - for example brochure design can be grouped with name badge creation as part of a major section on graphic design.

Step 3 Advanced Keyword Suggestion

There are other keyword tools out there that will provide you with more advanced keyword information. You will be required to pay a small fee to use them and some of them offer a free trial. Although they are not essential, using them will provide you with a better keyword set.

Wordtracker

Wordtracker is one of the most comprehensive keyword research tools on the market and offers you a free trial to test it out. The full version of Wordtracker gets keywords data from 8 major sources, including Google, MSN and Yahoo. Their keyword database is made up of around 300 million keywords typed in over the last 90 days. The interface can be daunting to start with but creating basic reports and saving them is pretty straightforward. After a short while you will be generating thousands of powerful keywords in just a matter of minutes.

Keyword Discovery

This is my personal favourite and I highly recommend you check this tool out if you are serious about keyword research. The interface is simpler to use compared to Wordtracker; making saving projects a breeze. Their keyword database is much larger too; an estimated 32 billion searches are compiled from over 180 search engines. Instead of comparing data over 90 days Keyword Discovery gives you the chance to compare over a 12 month period which is perfect for analysing seasonal trends.

Step 4 Find Long Tail Keywords

If you want to see first page rankings within a month or two then targeting the long tail is an absolute must. The Long Tail are those 3 and 4 keyword phrases which are very specific to whatever you are selling. Going back to the web design example, my long tail keywords would be small business web site design, award winning web design and web design companies London. It is easier to get high rankings with long tail keywords than it is with shorter more competitive keywords such as web design or graphic design. Not only are they easier to rank for but they generally convert into sales better than generic searches. So where do you find long tail keywords?

You will be able to find suitable long tail keywords using Google's free keyword tool but to get quality and accurate long tail keywords it's recommended you use Wordtracker or Keyword Discovery. Simply input the keywords you have amassed in steps 1 & 2 and look for related terms that are less generic and more specific.

Next, look at the daily search counts to get an idea of the relevant importance of each term. Don't be put off by low numbers; you may find you can jump straight to the first page when targeting that term and although there may be low traffic you could find it converts well. Using this technique, you can very quickly build up a matrix of hundreds, if not thousands, of quality keywords directly related to your business.

Just remember that keyword research should be an ongoing process and it's important to experiment with different keyword combinations. If you feel like this is too much for you to handle Persona can take care of your keywords research. Contact us to find out more.

Step 5 Input those keywords into your content

Now that you have established your target keywords, you're ready to start looking at how well your competition is doing. We'll look at how to do that in the next article of the series.

Labels: keyword discovery, keyword research, long tail, marketing, wordtracker

Posted at: 10:55 AM by David

Before you start any design or marketing it is important to clearly understand why you're building the site and what you hope to achieve. It may seem obvious but knowing your goals will help focus your ideas and give you the best opportunity to make the new site a success.

Get out your paper and start answering the following questions:

10 questions to ask yourself before setting up a website

1. Who is your target audience and what is the demand for your products/services?
2. Is there a lot of competition?
3. Have you got a design, need inspiration or require the services of a professional graphic designer?
4. Are you planning to sell products, promote services or non-profit?
5. What is your advertising budget?
6. If you are selling products, what ecommerce software package will you use?
7. Do you want visitors to email you? Call you? Subscribe to a newsletter?
8. Will you advertise other businesses on your website?
9. How will you promote your site? (paid for advertising, search engine optimisation, social media)
10. Have you set goals?

Setting your primary goal

You will need to ask yourself what is the main purpose of building my website. Here are a few primary goal ideas you may want to set:

• Sell products or subscriptions
• Become an information resource
• Create a community
• Become a leader in your industry

It's easy to say "The goal of my site is to sell more subscriptions" or "We want to increase sales of our flagship product." But how will you know when you have achieved your goal? The short answer is you will never know.

Set goals you can measure

Try to come up with some specific, measurable objectives related to your primary goal. For example, "We expect the new web site to increase sales of subscriptions by 30% in the first 6 months". This is important for at least two reasons:

• It gives you a specific target to aim for. If everyone working on the project keeps this target in mind, it will focus their efforts on the tasks that need to be done to achieve it.
• It gives you something to measure results against. If after 6 months sales have only increased by 10%, what went wrong? Were your objectives realistic? What could you have done differently? Of course if sales increase by 60%, you can give yourself a well-earned pat on the back!

It won't take a long time to come up with answers to these questions. Doing this preliminary groundwork will help you understand the reasons to why you need a new website. And while this approach doesn't guarantee success, it will greatly improve your chances of building a web site that works.

Labels: marketing, website goals, website planning, website strategy

Posted at: 10:35 AM by David

Hello! My name is David Coveney, welcome to my first post as Online Marketing Executive here at Persona. It's very exciting to join such a young and professional agency; I am privileged to be part of the team.

I have joined Persona after acquiring 5 years experience in web design, development and most importantly online marketing. I've had great success promoting all types of business - from small to large - and public sector organisations.

My aim is to use this knowledge to successfully promote Persona's services as well as optimise our client's sites. Along the way I shall try to help you understand the world of online marketing by regularly posting informative marketing news that aims to help your online business become a success.

Online Advertising is Soaring

Internet advertising has seen phenomenal growth over the last few years. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers an estimated £7.5billion was spent on online advertising last year. This soar in spending has helped hoist Google into the stratosphere making it the market leader in online advertising. Can your business afford to be left behind? Or, is your business paying the price for ineffective marketing?

Although paying for visitors can be an expensive exercise if done incorrectly Persona can provide strategic account management to help maximise your Return on Investment (ROI). I will post more info on pay-per-click, banner advertising, directory listings and other paid for marketing activities.

Invest in SEO so you don't have to pay for visitors

Investing in pay-per-click campaigns are not the only to get more visitors to your site. On the contrary, there are many ways to market your business and get it known to the wider audience. Search Engine Optimisation is one such activity and is the active practise of optimising a web site by improving both on-page and off-page aspects in order to increase organic traffic from the search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN.

SEO is a broad subject and can be split into smaller sub categories such as keyword analysis, competition analysis, copywriting, link building and a few others. I intend on writing blog posts on each of these so stay tuned. To find out more about Persona's Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) services get in contact with us.

Social Media and Web 2.0

Social media has turned the web upside down in the last few years and has the power to literally make or break your online marketing campaign. Done well a social media campaign can result in increased brand exposure, thousands of new website visitors and natural links to your site. In turn this will increase those all important search engine rankings for your target keywords.

Social marketing is a great way to promote your business and become part of a community. Never before have you had your customers grouped together in such an accessible fashion. I will be posting a lot more information on social media, social bookmarking and social networking sites.

Get in touch

So if you are looking to promote your website and make it work harder for your business I would love to hear from you! Send me a comment or email (david@per-so-na.com).

Labels: marketing, online advertising, ppc, seo, social media

Posted at: 12:18 PM by Hammad

The recent exhibition stand we produced for Picsolve has been so sucessful that it's been sent out to their Far Eastern division in China and we've been commissioned to produce another one for the European market.

The design of the stand included a number of innovative ideas and combined with the striking artwork throughout is clearly world-class. Some of the things we did on the project:

• Engineered a new wall hanging / hook system to create a seamless and roll-top finish.
• Built a centre console in-house for their kiosk, that can be packed down into standard flight cases.
• Embeded mini-touch screens to make the stand interactive; including artwork.

Labels: exhibition, marketing, picsolve

Posted at: 11:59 AM by Hammad

Persona Media has gotten off to a flying start in 2008, as it seems many of you are keen to get out there and promote all the good things you're doing.

Our good friends over at Picsolve are no exception and as brand stewards for the global imaging leader, we've produced an eye-catching new exhibition stand for the sales and marketing team to use - debuted in Cannes, France and already scheduled for a Pan-European tour.

The stand was designed and manufactured end-to-end by the team, but in a way that easily breaks down for transportation and modular layout flexibility.

Labels: exhibition, marketing, picsolve

Posted at: 6:13 PM by Hammad

Is there no end to our domination of the press?

Well, not just yet there isn't.

One of the UK's most popular trade magazines, 'Web Designer' (www.webdesignermag.co.uk) has a 3 page profile all about Persona.

The feature is in a team interview format; with Hammad, Lisa and Stuart sharing their thoughts on the recent Transformers/Toshiba project and Andy, Mark and Lewis discussing how the production went down.

Be sure to pick up a copy in your local WH Smiths before it's too late!

There is also still time to get a copy of .NET Magazine 168 - with a 6 page cover feature from Persona discussing online user experience.

http://www.netmag.co.uk/zine/podcast/episode-18

Labels: magazine, marketing, persona, podcast, pr, web design

Posted at: 10:30 AM by Hammad

Just like we did 12 months ago, we're making three predictions for the year ahead - which should help you focus your 2007 marketing plans.

Poor quality digital marketing will no longer be acceptable

The Internet and the associated outlets for digital marketing are well and truly mature. Any organisation who thinks they can either use it as a place to experiment or cut corners is far behind the times. All of us who consume digital media (such as Internet, Email and mobile content) do so on a regular basis - and we switch off from anything of poor quality quicker than any other area of media.

Because digital content gives us so much control, we can choose to consume it or avoid it very easily. The old marketing concepts of forcing the marketing message in front of the public just don't work online. A poorly designed web site that never gets updated is as useful to a brand as a home made brochure that's 5 years old. Similarly, email newsletters or direct campaigns that are badly constructed, trigger junk mail filters and don't comply with data protection are a huge risk to those who think amateurism is acceptable. Not only can your recipients unsubscribe from your mailings, but they can report you for abuse and also get you blacklisted on a global scale. A scary thought, but only if you don't take the delivery seriously in the first place.

The advice we are giving for 2007 is this: If you're not going to do a professional job with online media, don't bother at all. Poor quality will no longer just be ignored from customers, but it will simply not be acceptable for any organisation wanting to be taken seriously.

Depending on whether you are a 'cup half full' or 'cup half empty' type of marketer; you'll see this as either an opportunity or a set back. Which one are you?

Companies will start to take their brand seriously again

Over the last few years, there has been a lot of talk about branding being a dead end - consumers are so fickle that they have no loyalty to anybody. This is not strictly true; yes we are less brand loyal than before, but the main concepts of branding are as important as ever and professional organistions are re-investing in their brands in droves.

There is no denying that people like consistency, familiarity and value - something that your brand activity can help you deliver either consciously or subconsciously to your audience. If you haven't made any specific steps to build your brand before (or it's been a while since you took a look at it), 2007 is a good time to give it some thought. As your organisation has no doubt grown and evolved, have the brand values changed? Maybe the emotional response your branding provokes doesn't match up with where you are heading, or you need your brand to drive you forward rather than hold you back.

Brand value is something we are always passionate about at Persona, so we'd be more than happy to discuss your brand with you to see where you can take it next.

Online PR will become even more sought after than printed PR

Most of the large media groups are falling over themselves to be seen as pioneers and leaders online. Rupert Murdochs purchase of MySpace has given News Corporation a massive lead in the social networking space, with everybody trying to copy and catch up. Googles purchase of YouTube and ITV snapping up Friends Reunited are another two examples of media might and their attempts to 'buy' public interest.

However the so called "Web 2.0 boom" shapes up, online PR outlets are plenty; with publications such as the Sun reporting over a billion readers last year! Column inches in print will always be important and add that extra level of credibility compared to online, but organisations hoping to actually get value from their publicity (rather than an ego boost by seeing their name in print) would be well advised to focus on Internet based publicity.

We recommend developing your PR strategy to include consistent submissions to RSS news feeds and web publications. Making sure you are syndicating your regular news via your own RSS feed is also very easy now, so make sure you are giving people access to this. Online PR also allows us to easily track the coverage you are getting; by using search engines to keep on top of where your content is being indexed and linked from.

But what of last years predictions? Read on...

Did mobile marketing actually come of age?

There is no denying it now - nearly everybody in the UK not only has a mobile phone and most of them are Internet capable. The only problem seems to be the network providers are still charging a small fortune for getting online whilst on the move. More and more of us are adopting PDA style phones (such as a Blackberry or Windows Mobile) and whilst mobile web hasn't quite taken off, the importance of email in your pocket is an area not to be ignored - and is the best place to start thinking about your mobile marketing strategy.

For many businesses, SMS/MMS marketing campaigns just aren't practical. The message costs and the lack of data can be prohibitive and most people just don't want to get messages sent to their personal phone. Email however is a little different. If you already have a well managed email contact database (You do have one don't you?) then these recipients are already warm to campaigns you send out; all you have to do now is tailor the content to be a little more mobile friendly.

Some quick tips on how to do this include:

• Keep your opening quick and to the point. Many mobile email clients default to the first 5kb of the message (or just the headers) - make is stand out!
• Pay attention to your text-only email - many mobiles won't display the pretty HTML version, so make sure you are getting the most out of your content by making it accessible to all.
• Use a simple, clear layout for your text-only email; this will prevent any ugly formatting appearing on different phones.
• Provide a link to your web site; even better if it browses well on a mobile!

There is enough momentum and user take up to start testing the waters with mobile marketing in 2007 and those who do will reap the benefits. It's a great way to show your customers and contacts that you are innovating and working to keep your services relevant and accessible to them.

A few other things you could talk to us about include:

• Mobile-friendly web services and content
• Text and Multimedia Message services
• Building your mobile database now, for campaign delivery later

We're already working on our own mobile marketing strategy as well as a few pilot projects, so if you want to stand out from the crowd, come and join in the discussions by dropping us an email/call.

Is ethical marketing and consumerism being taken seriously?

2006 was a big one for eco-friendly issues as well as ethical consumerism in general. Jamie Olivers well publicised lobbying for healthy meals wasn't the only major shift. The Conservative Party have adopted a Tree for their new logo, fast food advertising has been kerbed and supermarkets are falling over themselves to distance their brands from plastic bags and anything that doesn't suite our GDA for food consumption.

It's not just the retailers getting in on the act either. Bio-fuels and recycling are now accessible to all of us; in business and at home.

In 2006, we worked with a number of our clients to promote their ethical brand values. East Midlands Centre for constructing the Built Environment (EMCBE) gave huge support to sustainability in the construction trade and we helped them publicise the agenda. Urban Planters, the UK's largest interior landscaping company also flexed their ethical muscles by promoting the health benefits of planting in offices and are now making big strides to help publicise their impact on reducing carbon footprint. We're also working with another client to help publicise their long history in professional products that deliver the results - whilst being environmentally friendly as an added extra. Sustainability is a buzz word we keep coming across these days and the public are opening their ears to it.

Along with a major launch by the Carbon Trust, there has been some major happenings in this subject over the last year and we predict that not only will the trend continue in 2007, but consumers will genuinely start to adopt ethical brands, products and services as a viable alternative.

Given that we backed this idea from the beginning, we're in a good position to help advise you on both how you can adopt a more ethical approach to your communications as well as provide the same assurance as we do with all of our advice - that it's based on our experience, facts and ability rather than personal or biased opinions.

Has the boom in digital marketing led to more integrated campaigns?

Undoubtedly! the lines between digital campaigns and traditional media campaigns (above, through and under the line) are blurring more and more all the time. It's commonly accepted that the digital space will become the centre piece of almost all media activity and some would argue that this is already the case.

Most companies taking advantage of digital marketing are not limiting their campaigns to online only. The upsurge of YouTube has allowed small and large organisations alike to produce and distribute video content to the masses; often using this as an extension to TV adverts or printed campaigns that lead people online.

The message is clear - integrating your campaign across all the available media helps gets better results. Brands that are seen to have a consistent message and encourage their customers to engage with them are seeing their customer loyalty and retention stay strong.

Labels: branding, digital, marketing, media, mobile, persona, pr, prediction