Inbound: The Future of Branding 2012

Editor's Notes

• #14: When it comes to engaging with your audience there are a few different routes to take. Some routes are more complicated than others but the ultimate goal is to develop your brand; whether that’s through a popular blog, some helpful tools or the use of functionality to improve a user’s experience.
• #17: Great content leading to great links- Social Shares- Engagement
• #18: Great content leading to great links- Social Shares- Engagement
• #19: Great content leading to great links- Social Shares- Engagement
• #27: We’ll explain the animal references pretty soon, but I want to start by talking a bit about search relevance.Search relevance is just another term for onpageoptimisation. It’s the idea that you will rank higher in Google for a given keyword if your page is more relevant to that keyword.Any page on a website can rank for one or two keywords; and sites can have an unlimited number of pages.But to understand how Google spots relevance today, we need to start from the beginning, about 10 years ago.Let’s say that 10 years ago we wanted to rank for a keyphrase that has taken the world by storm...
• #28: “Cats with Funny Hats”First off, we’d want a headline on our page like the one above.We would have just limited this to the keyphrase that we wanted to rank for.
• #29: Then we’d make sure that the page we wanted to rank had a web address with the keywords in it.
• #30: Of course we would want to add some content; and back then we would have aimed to mention the keyword/keyphrase about 5% of the time.
• #31: .... some more content ...
• #32: ... maybe some more images ....
• #33: And there we are – inboundcats.com right there at the top...Don’t worry, to James’ disappointment this site doesn’t actually exist!But that’s just an idea of how easy it was to make a page relevant not too long ago
• #34: Now, while making sure your page has a relevant headline, content and imagery is all best practice – Google has changed a lot.About 5 or 6 years ago, Google stopped looking at content on face value. Semantics kicked in and Google was able to understand CONTENT based on CONTEXT.Let’s say you had a sentence on a page that simply said ‘that apple looked great’ ... There is no way to tell what we mean by apple – it could be a computer or it could be the fruit. But if we changed that sentence to ‘that apple looked delicious’, immediately Google would be able to interpret that as the fruit.So SEOs began to use synonyms to explain content more clearly to Google.
• #35: But modern day SEO has come even further.In February 2011, Google launched its Panda filter.This filter punished sites that overused keywords or published ‘thin’ or duplicate content. Content that added little value to a user.
• #36: i.e sites like cats with funny hats
• #37: Then, earlier on this year, Google launched a page layout algorithm.This punished sites that confused its users by placing too many ads above the fold. (Above the fold simply means the stuff visible on your screen when you first land on a page).This update could also see if content was being pushed down the page and hidden away only to be used for search engine purposes.But more importantly, it confirmed to SEOs that Google could actually see how web pages looked.
• #38: A bad example of stuffing adverts above the fold ... But of course, Google doesn’t have to play by its own rules and a quick search for ‘credit cards’ shows ONLY ads above the fold.
• #39: So where are we now? Well the focus for onpage SEO is now on what we call ‘user intent’. On the left, you’ve got all of the keywords that you want to rank for, this could be something as broad as ‘watches’, on the right you’ve got what your user actually wants to see.A user that searches ‘watches’ could be interested in buying a spiderman watch for their kid; or they could be a professional looking for a smart watch.If you want to rank for any term, you need to cater to all the possibilities of your users’ intent.The idea is that you want to make this overlapping section as big as possible! But just quickly, how do you know what your users are searching for? Well that link at the bottom is for Google’s keyword tool, it will give you all the traffic information you need about any keyword or phrase.
• #40: But while user intent is hugely important, there are some more modern SEO practices that we recommend everyone digs their teeth into.The first would be responsive design, the idea of displaying content that is structured differently to fit different screen sizes.
• #41: You also have click through rates. The most popular right now is Google authorship where you can increase click through rates dramatically just by having a photo in your search result.Also other markups will provide more information on your listing like here where there are reviews in the listing.
• #42: You also have click through rates. The most popular right now is Google authorship where you can increase click through rates dramatically just by having a photo in your search result.Also other markups will provide more information on your listing like here where there are reviews in the listing.
• #43: And finally website health is important. Making sure that your pages load quickly and that your links are all connected to the right places will go some way to improving your onpage SEO.But you can follow all of these best practices – and as much as it can confuse us... Google can still be really... really stupid...
• #44: And finally website health is important. Making sure that your pages load quickly and that your links are all connected to the right places will go some way to improving your onpage SEO.But you can follow all of these best practices – and as much as it can confuse us... Google can still be really... really stupid...
• #45: And finally website health is important. Making sure that your pages load quickly and that your links are all connected to the right places will go some way to improving your onpage SEO.But you can follow all of these best practices – and as much as it can confuse us... Google can still be really... really stupid...
• #47: Local SEO
• #48: Listing your business in Google Places
• #50: The Venice Update – 27th February – Local listings added to main organic results.
• #51: www.google.com/placesforbusiness
• #52: http://www.bing.com/businessportal
• #53: Citations – whitespark.ca
• #55: Review sites – critical for both rankings and click through rates
• #56: Brand citations need to be consistent
• #57: When it comes to engaging with your audience there are a few different routes to take. Some routes are more complicated than others but the ultimate goal is to develop your brand; whether that’s through a popular blog, some helpful tools or the use of functionality to improve a user’s experience.
• #59: Website design is important as it sets the tone for your brand and can give your user a very powerful first impression.But design can only do so much, and if the user experience is lacking then engaging your audience will become very difficult.
• #60: One of the first steps to creating an engaging experience is through the blog.And a blog doesn’t have to be called a ‘blog’, it can be just ‘articles’ or ‘news feed’ – what we mean by blog is that it’s fresh content, and that’s what’s important.
• #61: The blog can be used for anything and it’s a great place to post new and exciting content, whether that’s a webinar, a video or a press release. It’s basically your websites hub for creating adding content that wouldn’t fit anywhere else.
• #62: So let’s forget about search for now and look at three key factors for turning your blog into an engaging experience.
• #63: First up is new traffic. This is possibly the hardest of all – but getting people to find you is not too difficult if you time your content right.At the end of September, Google launched a devastating algorithm update, it affected something like 5% of all English search queries (that’s huge!!). I wrote a post that weekend (how sad), gave some insight on the topic and published it a couple of days later. This traffic jump was the result.So when it comes to getting new traffic, consider timing your articles in line with relevant industry news and hooking onto it.
• #64: So now that you’ve got your new visitor, consider engaging with them. Allow them to share your content on faceobok, linkedin, twitter or google+. But make sure also that you respond to their comments or prompting them to share your article. But one of the most effective ways to grab value from a blog visitor is through email capture.With email capture you want to provide something of added value; whether that’s post updates, guides or whitepapers. Don’t take a sales approach with email capture, keep it engaging and make it appealing to your user.
• #65: Seomoz have a great example of this. Every month they send out the top 10 industry updates to everyone on their list. There’s not a sales message anywhere to be seen and the content is of value; some months I won’t even open the email but it serves as a gentle reminder that they exist.This kind of value add is a very powerful way to engage your audience.
• #66: So now that you’ve got new visitors, they’re returning and you’re engaging with them – it’s now all about consistency. SEOmoz again, have a great example of this. Each week a member of their team will post a video called ‘whiteboard Friday’ – this is a dead simple 10 minute video where someone speaks while demonstrating on a whiteboard. SEOmoz have never missed a week, these guys make certain that a video is up every Friday and this type of consistency has turned ‘whiteboard Friday’ into a key part of the brand.SUM UP
• #67: Blogging is fantastic for engaging an audience on a personal level. But developing tools and improving functionality across a site can have clear and measurable benefits to your sales process.
• #68: A client of ours recently underwent a total rebrand; along with their new design they had a new and improved quoting process. This process involves 5 very simple steps with great visuals; it turns what would otherwise be a boring quote form into something that a user would enjoy filling out! The impact that this has had on conversions is impressive and we’ll be talking about that later on.
• #69: JAMES: And finally you’ve got a social and search overlap. Functionality can be used to take what is essentially some pretty boring and make it interesting. In this instance, these numbers actually increase in realtime on the screen to give you a sense of the scale of everything. I think James, it took your developer maybe 2 hours to finish? And it’s already amassed a bunch of links and loads more social shares.BRING BACK TO BRAND
• #70: Dan always uses the analogy of getting into a carBut engaging with your audience falls flat on its face if you don’t get the basics right. Users are used to a set way of doing things online. There is a reason why navigation runs across the top your website, why it remains consistent from page to page and why contact buttons are always on the far right. Don’t over complicate the process, make useful information easily accessible and logically structured.
• #115: We always say, quite obviously, that traffic – no matter where it comes from - is worthless if it doesn’t convert... but it’s even more worthless if you can’t see why it’s not converting!Tracking your visitors can give you really detailed insights into user behavior. You can see where they’ve come from (Google, Facebook, Direct), what keywords they found you by (sort of!), which buttons are performing best and even as much detail as how many days it took for a user to purchase from your site.
• #116: So how are we tracking all of this? What we’ve just shown you is data from a free tracking tool called Google Analytics. It’s simple to install, but drilling down into details requires a bit of getting used to.
• #123: DAN:Monitoring and measuring your conversions can be done in a few different ways.The first is goal tracking – this is for businesses where the goal of their website is to get users to fill out an enquiry or contact form. To track these goals, once a user completes a form they taken to a confirmation or ‘thank you’ page. With goal tracking, a goal will be triggered every time that page is visited. This is the most simple form of conversion tracking but can be extremely effective.
• #125: DAN: When we went through engagement earlier on we showed a stepped sales process for a garage door company. Well whenever there’s a stepped sales process or multiple pages that lead to a conversion you can track user behavior with ‘funnel tracking’. For that garage door company, we installed this funnel tracking to monitor how people used the step system.It turns out, that it’s incredibly effective with 47% of users that start the funnel, completing it with an enquiry. However we can also see that the last step loses a huge number of users – and we think that this is probably due to the price not being displayed onscreen; these users are probably just looking for prices but are not interested in actually making contact. So we’re currently strategising ways to deal with that and make the most of those users that we lose.
• #126: Our new website has got a big feature on the homepage. It’s this slider – how it works is that a user clicks and drags this slide from start to finish.The ISSUE iS- We have NO idea how well this is performing. We’ve had a ton of debates in the office on how it should work, but the only way to know is through goal tracking.So what we’re currently setting up is a simple tracking ability in Google Analytics that will provide us with details on exactly how users behave from start to finish, and if they get bored or confused and drop out too early.
• #127: Finally we have the most exciting tracking of all. Ecommerce tracking gives you complete insight into the performance of your website. We’ve blanked out the products for anonymity, but you can see that organic search is bringing in a ton of revenue – so now our client can make a well informed business judgment on scaling their organic efforts.