Optimising Website Images

Many website owners understand the benefits of optimising their on-page content, text and copy. Fewer, however are aware of the search engine optimisation (seo) benefits from optimising website images.

GIF’s and JPEG’S
If you want to optimise your website images the first thing you need to know about is the two image formats recognised by your web browser. These are GIF and JPEG. Both JPEG and GIF are compressed. That means that information has been organised inside the file in a special way in order to minimise the file size.

The difference between JPEG and GIF is the way that they compress the data. JPEG compression is designed to optimise photographs or images with fine gradations of colour. GIF compression is designed to optimise images with large continuous areas of colour, such as illustrations.

Image Search
To leverage image search, the image file names could use keywords relevant to the product. Alt text used in the coding of the web page describing the image could do the same as well as a short text caption beneath the image.

The image(s) can be submitted to image sharing web sites like Flickr.com with relevant keywords in the image category, title, description and tags. The description of the product on the image sharing site can include a link back to the product web page on the company web site.

Associating relevant keywords with the image will help media or image search engines understand what the image is, and subsequently categorise and rank it. The link from the image description on the image sharing site can send both visitors and search engines to the product page.

LASTLY…
DO NOT resize your images in your website design program. The result will be a small image with the same file size.

Resize your image in your image editing program.

PubCon Search Marketing Conferences

Betwixt would like to introduce PubCon to it’s readers: 

PubCon (TM) is a wholly owned production of WebmasterWorld Incorporated.

WebmasterWorld is the leading source for Search Engine and Internet marketing news, best practices and educational events. Founded by Brett Tabke, an early ’80s innovator in running BBS (Bulletin Board Systems), the WebmasterWorld Forum began in 1996 and is now the largest community of online marketing professionals with more than 2 million posts and more than 100 discussion topics.

WebmasterWorld Conference and PubCon events are for thought leaders in search engine and Internet marketing professionals to gather to share best practices in the design, development, promotion and marketing of their businesses and brands.

PubCon Las Vegas 2007
Where: Las Vegas Convention Center, Las Vegas Nevada
Topics: Search, Web 2.0, Net Marketing, SEO/SEM, Affiliates, Domainers, Video, Multimedia : aka: Webmastery.
Levels: PubCon is scaled from novice (light content) to advanced experience levels (heavy content).
Keynote Speakers: Craig Newmark (Craigs List), Richard Rosenblatt (DemandMedia), Matt Cutts (Google)
When: Dec 4-7, 2007.

Google Analytics – Great Web Tools (1)

As the Betwixt search marketing blog is gaining new readers every week we feel it is imperative that we guide webmasters and interested parties through the most relevant and useful online tools.

Google Analytics (GA) is a free service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about the visitors to a website. Using GA on your website will help you to monitor, track and analyse visitor behaviour on your website. Enabling you to improve your site and increase marketing ROI.

Use Google Analytics to learn which online marketing initiatives are cost effective and see how visitors actually interact with your site. Make informed site design improvements, drive targeted traffic, and increase your conversions and profits.

Google is always developing and rolling out new and enhanced features to GA. You can read all about the latest discussion and debate on GA over at the official Google Analytics Blog.

You will need to sign up for a Google Account in order to run Google Analytics on your website.

Glossary of Search Marketing Terms – Absolute Link

Definition
Hyperlinks that include the complete URL, which is the domain name, pathnames (if used), and file name. 

A link which shows the full URL of the page being linked at. Some links only show relative link paths instead of having the entire reference URL within the a href tag. Due to canonicalization and hijacking related issues it is typically preferred to use absolute links over relative links.

Example absolute link

<a href=”http://www.betwixtmarketing.co.uk/services.htm“>Services</a>

Guaranteed Web Clicks – Is the Jury Still Out?

Guaranteed web clicks – heard of them before? Ok, a little explanation is in order!

Do you already have a web site? If the answer is yes, a guaranteed web clicks package will bid for, buy and manage keywords for your business while delivering a (guaranteed) number of clicks to your web site.  Common features of guaranteed web click products offered by companies such as BT Web Clicks and DEX Clicks include:

• Sponsored links on multiple search engines
• Experts choosing optimised keywords
• Fixed prices to suit your budget

Your partner company will manage the bid process across major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN and other smaller search engines, while you get all the business! By utilising the strength of up to 30-40 search engines you will drive prospects directly to your company’s web site. 

However previous incarnations of guaranteed web clicks packages were not particularly well received by web site owners.

Often guaranteed click package fulfillment isn’t done by the partner company themselves. Instead, it’s passed out to a select number of virtually anonymous fulfillment providers.

Guaranteed click fulfillment providers must position a structured, constant click package on volatile Google and Yahoo PPC platforms, where both bidding and search volume are in constant flux. Such an environment isn’t well suited for advertising products based on predictability and stability.

Many thousands of small business advertisers will agree to guaranteed click packages. When they do, they’ll seek the ads they bought. They’ll hunt for their ads on Google, Yahoo or MSN. They’ll grow frustrated. They’ll wonder what they’re doing wrong.

Then, they’ll pick up the phone.

What happens next is played out every day in the world of small business search marketing.

“I can’t see the ad I bought anywhere,” they’ll tell the customer service rep.

He’ll reply, “Well, you’re getting the clicks.”

Google Updates Information on Paid Links

We noticed a recent post on Google Blogoscoped which outlines and illustrates a change to Google’s guidance on Paid Links.  Webmasters who buy and/or sell links to boost (Google) PageRank on their website need to take heed of the following:

OLD
“Buying links in order to improve a site’s ranking is in violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results.”

NEW
“Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results.”

Further information and assistance for webmasters can be found over at the Google Webmaster Help Center.

Advertising on Yahoo and MSN Live Search

The success of Google Adwords and the domination of online search by Google has turned many advertisers away from using sponsored advertising on Yahoo and MSN. There are however, instances where utilising the online marketing services of other major search engines makes sound business sense.

A good point was made to me recently. A client was looking to attract more female prospects/customers to the business by using a (search engine) pay-per-click platform. It was noted that the majority of the female staff in the (clients) office had set their home pages to either Yahoo UK or MSN UK - not Google.  Why?

The reason for this is that both the Yahoo and the MSN home pages are packed full of information such as shopping, lifestyle, weather, music, dating, horoscopes, all subjects which appeal to the fairer sex. Men, however will more often opt for the simple, no frills functionality of Google as their home page.  

Pay-Per-Click with MSN Search and Live Search
Every month, over 5 million people type keywords into MSN Search and Live Search to find products and services they’re interested in. Microsoft adCenter gives you direct access to these people at the exact time that they are searching for your product or service.

Yahoo Search Marketing
Over 2.3 billion searches occur on Yahoo! each month. Ads for your business appear in search results on Yahoo! and other popular web sites. Prospective customers could be searching for what your business offers right now. Cutting edge features such as geo-targeting enable you to target specific markets.

PPC Advertising – Where to Start?

This subject has been covered in depth by a multitude of websites and blogs in the past. However, it still makes good sense for Betwixt readers to gain a fresh analysis and insight of this subject.

Definition
Pay per click (PPC) is an advertising model used on search engines, advertising networks, and content websites/blogs, where advertisers only pay when a user actually clicks on an ad to visit the advertiser’s website.

While online PPC advertising spend continues to grow at a rate of knots, thousands of companies across the globe are willing to part with hard earned cash to be part of the PPC marketing revolution.

Could it be possible that a considerable sum of this marketing spend is being wasted on pay-per-click campaigns which are poorly thought through, time consuming and lacking a carefully implemented bid management process. It is possible to achieve a successful PPC bid management process by:

• Identifying Your Maximum Cost Per Click (CPC) 
• Identifying Your Conversion Rate (CR)
• Start Your PPC Campaign In One Search Engine

Using In-House Data to Identify Relevant Keywords
One of the most critical parts of setting up and managing a PPC campaign is keyword research. If you run Google Analytics on your website utilise the data provided to kick start your own keyword research.

Google Analytics is a very valuable yet still under-utilised free tool. Google Analytics can be used for much more than simply seeing who links to you and how many visitors you get, it can also be used to create valuable keyword lists.

Glossary of Search Marketing Terms – Above the Fold

Each week we will provide useful information on a particular search marketing term. It’s probably going to be easier to work through alphabetically, thus for week one we begin with the term – Above the Fold.

Above the fold is a graphic design concept that refers to the location of an important news story or a visually appealing photograph on the upper half of the front page of a newspaper.

In email or web marketing it means the area of content viewable prior to scrolling -”Above the scroll“, a concept in web design referring to location of an item near the top of a web page, which can thus be viewed in a browser without scrolling.

Some web marketers have called this “above the crease” referring to the way in which newspapers of yesteryear were folded and creased.

Universal Search – An Introduction

Universal Search is fast becoming a mainstream term. The latest and greatest versions of the popular search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask.com) include more than the text based web pages in the search results.

These “upgraded” search features from the major search engines now also find and bring back results in varying media formats including: images, news, local listings, video, blog posts, products and more depending on the particular search engine.

Thus, Universal Search has opened up new opportunities for businesses to rank in the SERP once reserved for plain text results.

Google Universal Search
At the forefort of the concept are Google who are undertaking the most radical change to its search results ever, introducing a “Universal Search” system that will blend listings from its news, video, images, local and book search engines among those it gathers from crawling web pages. Google has also unveiled a new navigational interface.

Many websites and blogs now focus their articles on the new art of optimsing images, news, video, and blog posts for the search engine results page (SERP). The general consensus of opinion with the search marketing industry is that Universal Search is here to stay!