Internet Marketing and eCommerce Expert – Nigel Burke's Blog

Search engine optimisation (SEO) can be defined as optimising your website so search engines can rank your website in the natural search results, as high as possible for those targetted keywords.

But is all the effort in SEO really worth it?
Should you put all that time and effort into optimising your website so that when the search engine bots come through, that your page will rank higher?

Should you even think about paying an SEO professional to do it for you? What return on investment can you expect?

There’s no  guarantees
No one can guarantee number one position for your chosen keywords for the natural search results. You might get emails in everyday with promises but still no real guarantee.

The statistics
The number one ranking website for any keyword has an average click through rate of 56%. So if 1,000 searches are done for that keyword each day, that’s 560 visitors each day on average.

Of these 560 visitors you get daily, 5% purchase a product – that’s 1 in 20 people. That’s a nice conversion rate and works out to be 112 new customers each day from that keyword. If the average purchase was $100, that’s $11,200 a day in revenue. That number 1 ranking is worth a lot of money.

Imagine if it was a popular keyword and it was being searched 100,000 times a day – 56,000 visitors a day and up to 11,200 new customers a day in an ideal scenario. That’s $1,120,000 a day. Now we’re starting to talk big business!!

Would your business benefit from this kind of traffic?
Any online business could benefit from this kind of traffic. On the Internet, targetted traffic is king. It earns money and it’s what some businesses survive on.

Competition is heavy in the search engines and the most profitable the keywords, that more likely there is going to be more competition.

Conclusion
SEO is definitely worth it and can take a company from being good to great! If your website is not search engine optimised, you are not helping the business at all.

If you have any questions about SEO, please contact me – nigel@burke.com.au

Many people may not have noticed this but Google has changed their homepage.

It’s not until you are told of the change that you would realize it.

Go to http://google.com but do not move your mouse. Only the search box and logo are visible. Once you move your mouse, the rest of the details appear.

This is just one of many changes Google has made that is not visible to the general Internet population. By writing and researching for this blog, I read about nearly every change.

Many of these changes are advanced and meaningless to users but as an Internet marketing expert like myself, they are important.

Your Internet marketing consultant should be aware of all the changes Google, Yahoo and Bing do so your website ranks at the top for your targetted keywords and stays at the top!

Twitter is one of the hottest social media tools today. Everyone is jumping on the bandwagon because … because everyone else is so it must be great.

I have been on Twitter for a few months now and yet to see real value from it.

I’m following 2,000 people because that is my limit but I’m not reading many of the tweets that come in. Maybe I am following the wrong people because most of them are about network marketing and making money.

It might be time for a clean out and following some better Twitters.

There is about 500 Twitters following me now. When I post a new blog entry, I normal send a tweet but I’m not seeing any traffic from it.

Is Twitter really worth it?
This makes me wonder if this company is really worth a billion dollars? It has no revenue and any advertisements are going to be ignored.

I see more value in the Facebook platform yet they are still having issues trying to make money from advertising.

Spam Tweets
I am noticing that many of the tweets that I receive are spam. I don’t read many of them because everyone is shouting out to get me to their website.

The statistics from January to November 2009.
The number of new users in July was 9.4 million down to 7.1 million in November. How many of these accounts are really accounts?

The number of Tweets has been increasing more. Are people using this as a real communications tool or are spammers using Twitter to help market their websites?

Conclusion
Will Twitter stand the test of time? Will people remember Twitter as a fad or will it keep growing into a important communications tool?

If Twitter cannot find a better purpose, with real people and less spammers, it may not be be really worth it.

Have you seen Will It Blend? It’s a crazy series of videos by Blendtec, a small blender manufacturer. The series has been seen by millions of people. My favorite is Will It Blend? – iPhone. If you haven’t seen it yet, do yourself a favor and take a minute to watch. This YouTube video has been seen nearly 7.5 million times.

Viral marketing is the phenomenon of other people passing along your ideas to friends via email or blogs or other online means…for free! Best of all, there is very little costs in setting up the costs compared to advertising campaigns. You could compare it to people handing out your business card to all their friends because they think it’s cool.

Here are some tips to make video go viral. Creating a video is easy and it is free to post onto YouTube. All you need is a simple $300 digital video camera, a YouTube account and an idea.

Most importantly: Your video needs to be funny or amazing or remarkable or have some fascinating information or be controversial. Basically the video needs a reason for people to pass it on. If you can find pass along value connected to your organization and its products, great. I’m not a fan of stupid contests or celebrity endorsements unrelated to a company and its products.

Tip # 1 – Homemade is just fine

You don’t need to hire a professional. A homemade quality video can work great. But plan ahead and shoot several takes to get it right.

Tip #2 – Your video should be no longer then 2 minutes (preferably less)

Think very short. You need to get to the punch quickly. Although YouTube will accept a video that is less than 10 minutes, smaller than 100MB try to make the video between 30 seconds and 2 minutes.

Tip #3 – Make your description clear and specific.

To best promote your video, you’ll want its text description on YouTube to be accurate and interesting. Use descriptive keywords and language that people will find when they search for videos like yours. And use the correct categorizations on YouTube so people will find it.

Tip #4 – Don’t attempt “stealth” fake customer insertions to YouTube.

Some companies try to sneak corporate-sponsored video onto YouTube in a way that makes it seem like it is consumer-generated. The YouTube community is remarkably skilled at ratting out inauthentic video, so this approach is fraught with danger.

Tip #5 – Try a series of similar videos to build interest

Sometimes a series of videos works great. The Blendtec Will it Blend? videos are a perfect example. The even sell t-shirts now!

Tip #6 – Tell everyone about your video!

When you upload your first few videos, you are likely to hear a deafening silence. You’ll be waiting for comments, but none will come. You’ll check your video statistics and be disappointed by the tiny number of viewers. Don’t get discouraged. It takes time to build an audience. Make sure people know it is there and can find it. Create links to your video from your home page, product pages, or online media room. Mention your video in your e-mail or offline newsletters, and create links to your video as part of your e-mail signature and those of other people in your organization.

Tip # 7 – make sure bloggers know about the video

Sending a link to the video to bloggers or commenting on other people’s blogs (and including a link to your video) is a good way to build an audience. If you comment on blogs in the same space as yours, you might be surprised at how quickly you will get viewers to your video.

Tip #8 – Experiment a lot to find something that hits

While I think it is difficult to purposely create viral marketing buzz, it is certainly possible. Create a number of campaigns and see what hits, then nurture the winners along. Think like a venture capitalist or movie studio and try a number of things in order to get that elusive hit.

Good luck. And if you do create a cool video, let me know.

Post Author: David Meerman Scott is a marketing strategist, keynote speaker, seminar leader, and the author of the hit new book World Wide Rave. His previous book, The New Rules of Marketing & PR is an award-winning BusinessWeek bestseller and is being published in 25 languages.

You can read David Meerman Scott’s blog here.

I am often asked how to get higher rankings in search engines. Perhaps the customer has done everything possible to optimize their website, what next?

Backlinks are key to getting a great search engine ranking.

Next time you send an email to say ‘thank you for doing business with us’, maybe ask that customer to do a blog post if they have a blog. You can return the favour by adding a blog post about them. It’s a win-win situation for everyone – you both will get inbound links to your sites and a higher search engine ranking.

Try and get them to add some links to your site with the keywords you are targeting if possible.

You may not notice a big difference with one or two posts about your business but think if 20+ posts are done about your website. Now that will help you search engine ranking!