Ok so Rolf Harris I ‘aint. But when I was asked to explain why you might not want to spend a fortune and invest huge amounts of time in PPC and SEO I remembered an article I read on the web a few years ago. The author (apologies for not remembering your name if you ever read this) had a fantastic graphic of a dinosaur with a long tail.
Let me introduce you to my version – Gerald the long-tailed dinosaur! Yes I called him Gerald, come to peace with it.
Well hopefully this article won’t stretch on for quite as long as Gerald’s tail but the purpose of this article is to explain Long Tail Theory.
If you look and try to imagine Gerald’s spine is an exponential curve looking at the axis you can read from this graph that general keywords return more results whereas more specific keywords generate less.
Still with me? OK the theory goes like this. Say you’re the owner of a chocolate shop (you don’t have to say that out loud). On your website you spend hours shoe-horning as many instances of the word chocolate on your website. You spend hundreds of pounds on PPC advertising. What happens? Well a major high street retailer spends loads more on their PPC increasing the price for the keyword chocolate and steals your place. Their TEAM of website editors upload loads of pages about how they purchase their cocoa beans from the most ethically sound sources and how wonderful it feels when you’re eating their chocolate that you think you’re making a real difference to the village the beans came from!
Basically the big guys win! However Gerald’s got a very long tail. At the end of the tail you’re still getting people interested in your products or services but THERE’S LESS COMPETITION!! So if we go back to our chocolate shop If you spend some time working on a keyword strategy to target the other end of the tail (e.g multi-coloured aniseed flavoured chocolate for diabetics) you’ve got much more chance to reach your audience and make that sale.
Don’t forget that when it comes to search engines content is king. So you need to get lots of content on your website about multi-coloured aniseed flavoured chocolate for diabetics or whatever it is you’re trying to publicise. A great way to do that is by writing articles about your subject. This allows you to reference your keywords naturally without tailoring your content to the search engines making it less readable. What’s the best way to get content on your site that’s readable and easily passed on and indexed by search engines? Simple – START BLOGGING.
This article has allowed me to mention blogging, SEO, PPC, Long-tail theory, multi-coloured aniseed flavoured chocolate for diabetics, and Rolf Harris. Not bad for less than 500 words!
So when you’re thinking about SEO PPC and keyword strategy don’t forget Gerald’s Tail!
PS I can’t wait to check my analytics in a month or so to see if I’m getting any hits from the search term multi-coloured aniseed flavoured chocolate for diabetics.
Right, look at the image on the left and tell me that it doesn’t make you smile. You might not want one but the vast majority of us have a very special place in our memories for the old VW camper.
However a close look at this particular camper shows you that it’s in great condition and has obviously been refurbished and renovated within an inch of its life. However all is not as it may seem. This particular camper is BRAND NEW.
These campers are still being made in Brazil and retail in this country at prices of nearly £30,000. Yes, you heard me £30,000! Imagine paying that sort of money for a vehicle design that is over 40 years old. But this kind of illogical pricing example is far from unique. Consider the Porsche 911. The general design has not changed a great deal since release in the early 1960s. Yet both of these vehicles are still extremely popular and if you want a brand new one you’re going to have to go on a waiting list.
Yet this anomaly is not restricted to cars. In fact better examples can be shown that are even older. You’ve decided to take the plunge and ask your partner to marry you. You plan it all to the last detail. You’ll propose over dinner from a menu you’ve agonised over. You’ve chosen your outfit and the engagement ring with great care. Over a candlelit dinner you get up from your seat and go down on one knee and make your proposal. Analyse the whole process. The institution of marriage – thousands of years old, The candle – light bulbs work well and even they’re quite old now. The clothes you’re wearing, styles change but they’re more or less the same. Finally cooked food – caveman Ugg didn’t have the luxury of a Michelin starred restaurant or the delight of daytime TV chefs to advise and inspire.
The point I’m making is that your website, websites are not much more than 20 years old as we know them now, need to use the latest technologies to enhance user experience and administration easier for you. But don’t forget to accommodate old technologies that people like and feel comfortable with. So make life easy for your visitors and customers, think about payment methods, think about posting your address and telephone numbers on your website. Consider easy article or page sharing buttons. Basically make it easy for your website visitors or customers to spread the word about you and do business with you.
You need to be.
So apart from having an excuse to have a picture of Dolores O’Riordan on my blog why am I asking if you’re listening?
Have you ever heard of ‘Word-of-mouth’ marketing? Of course you have. It’s where a customer tells a friend, colleague or family member about a great experience they’ve had with a shop or service provider. Likewise the reverse is often true. We’ve all told horror stories of how a certain company or business let us down once and how we’ll never use them again.
Word-of-mouth marketing is an essential and almost free weapon in your better business toolkit. It’s really important that we get the word out about our services or products to as many people as possible and one of the online tools at your disposal is your blog or website.
Most CMS and blog packages have a comment feature as part of the basic package. And unfortunately most small business owners turn comments off. Now I can hear you all shouting at the screen now, ‘What if some lunatic with an axe to grind puts negative and false stories about my business on my website?’. Well I hear you loud and clear, but turning off comments is a bit like using a pneumatic drill to crack a crisp.
The problem with not allowing comments is that you’re also not allowing positive, glowing tributes about your business. Any half-decent CMS or blog will allow you to moderate comments and deleting blatant lies and falsehoods is one way of dealing with inappropriate or libellous content. However a much more clever way to deal with negative comments is to respond.
Newspapers (and at the moment they’re doing a lot of responding) always offer a right-to-reply. So if someone has posted a negative comment on your website how should you react. This is your opportunity to show your readers that you take an interest in your business reputation and customer satisfaction is very important to you. So here’s what to do.
- Don’t take it personally. Read and re-read the comments and truthfully think about what has been written. Is there any basis in truth as to what has been said?
- Consider your response. If the comments are totally un-justified then say so in a polite way but back up your response with evidence. If something has gone wrong at your end then say so. Apologise and ask the customer to email you so you can attempt to rectify the situation.
- Tell the world. When everything is cleared up ask the customer to say so on the comments form and you follow-up with a killer closing sentence. “Sorry I didn’t hit the bullseye first time round but I’m really glad WE managed to sort this out and I’m glad to have you as a customer.”
I know it sounds a bit cheesy but by showing your readers that you’re human, and you care, a negative issue can be turned into a positive one. I’ve had countless situations where I feel I’ve been let down as a customer but the way the business handled my complaint has made it easy for me to tell friends and colleagues how great the business after-sales care was.
To sum up. Word-of-mouth is virtually free so make it easy – COMMENTS ON.
Global Edge
Services: Hosting, Domain Admin
Year: 2011
One of the directors from Global Edge decided they wanted to move from their existing host as they were experiencing all too frequent periods of downtime. They owned 2 domains – theglobaledge.com and theglobaledge.co.uk. The site was recreated in WordPress (the existing site was a custom CMS) and when they finished I moved the DNS and parked the other domain to point towards the new site.
Rob Steed
Services: Hosting, Domain Admin
Year: 2011
Rob Steed is a business consultant based in Cambridgeshire who has worked all over the world (over 40 countries and counting). He needed to move from his current web host and as an existing customer (he’s a director of Global Edge) he brought his own website to stay at WebDO.co.uk.
Little Windmills
Services: Hosting, Domain Admin, Website Transfer
Year: 2011
Little Windmills came to me via JoRiches.com. I do a lot of hosting for Jo’s business and she shares my love of WordPress. Jo’s company uses WordPress as their development platform as it makes for an easily maintained website for her clients. The original hosting contract for Little Windmills was due to expire in a few weeks and Jo asked if would like to host the site for her. The only trouble was I would have to transfer from the existing host and recreate it on my server. Well this is a WordPress site so it wasn’t too tricky and I’m happy to be hosting it.
LeeArt.co.uk
Services Provided: Hosting, design, training.
Year: 2011.
Lee is a painter based in Shropshire and asked me to produce a website for her to act as a gallery on the web for her. Art websites are always quite a challenge as the design mustn’t detract from the art work so design needs to be subtle but stylish. I decided on this design and presented a mock-up to Lee and she was very excited as the simple Polaroid style image frames were very reminiscent of an exhibition she had put on a couple of years ago.
Lee can upload new images and text as and when necessary and the homepage automatically updates when she posts an entry on her blog or uploads a new art work. There’s a simple PayPal plugin so the site is a very cost-effective ecommerce solution.
Pop along to Lee’s website and treat your plain walls to a splash of colour with culture.
Noteboards by Rebecca Claire
Services Provided: Hosting, design, training.
Year: 2011.
Rebecca needed an easy to update website that she could use to display her fabulous noteboards. She already had a colour scheme but apart from that this site was built from scratch. The site comprises a scrolling image slider on the home page which is fully editable so new images can be uploaded as and when necessary. The shop page shows all current available stock and has a shopping cart with itemised PayPal connectivity allowing for a very cost-effective e-commerce solution. All the remaining pages are easily updated with new text and images. In fact Rebecca updates the site using her iPad from her sofa!
So why not visit Noteboards by Rebecca Claire for a fabulous house-warming present, a stylish place to keep your shopping coupons or appointment cards.
COMPETITION IS CLOSED
However my Buy now – Pay later hosting is available at http://WebDOhost.co.uk
Well as some of you may already know I also host as well as build websites. I posted a great tweet from WordPress ThemeShock a couple of days ago. I’m a big fan of using WordPress as a development platform so when I saw this great offer I wanted to throw my hat in to the ring as well.
If you’ve been thinking about getting a website and fancy having a go at using WordPress as your development platform how about a free prize giveaway?
FREE WORDPRESS HOSTING ACCOUNT PRIZE DRAW
I’ve got 10 FREE website hosting accounts worth over £100 each to give away. To enter the draw you need to join my email newsletter (sign up on the right). Your email address won’t be sold on to anyone else and my newsletter subscribers are the first to hear about special deals, free offers and useful tutorials. 10 lucky subscribers will be pulled at random on Monday 8th August 2011 at 13:00 UK time and one of those lucky 10 will receive a FREE .co.uk domain name as well.
- 50gb webspace
- Unlimited bandwidth (play fair though, excessive use policy applies)
- Unlimited number of pop3 email accounts
- FTP access
- Linux server
- 1 click installs for common web scripts like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal etc
- Online control panel
- ATmail webmail service
- and a FREE .CO.UK DOMAIN NAME for one of the lucky 10 subscribers!
When Google speaks I tend to listen. When I read an article on the BBC News website that Google has decided to start withdrawing support for older browsers such as Internet Explorer 6 and 7, Safari 3, Firefox 3.5 I could almost hear the sigh of relief from web developers the world over.
Why am I relishing the prospect of Google abandoning these old browsers? Well it might just mean that the days of having conditional stylesheets for various incarnations of IE are now numbered. A conditional stylesheet is a bit of web code that detects what browser you’re using to view a webpage and then selects the appropriate stylesheet for the browser. Why do web developers have to do this? Well IE6 in particular interprets webcode in a rather unique way (yes I am being polite here). Most developers will start coding in something like Firefox (because it follows webs standards much closer than IE) to get the look of their site right.
Then the dreaded moment comes when you view you work in IE6. Depending on the positioning of the elements on the page you may have to tweak your code to get it to display correctly in all browsers. Having multiple browsers means multiple browser and version testing before releasing websites. This leads to increased development costs and longer timescales for delivery.
So why do we have so many browsers and versions out in the wild? Well people are creatures of habit and whereas some of us can’t wait to upgrade to try out new features and make our systems more secure there are some people out there who like what they have because it’s familiar or they lack the technical skill to update. You also have large business customers who for one reason or another prefer to stick with a certain browser. In fact I once worked for a major car manufacturer and they used IE6 in their customer relations department and I’m afraid to report that they still are.
Microsoft* have been trying to stop people using IE6 for the thick end of 2 years now but according to Statcounter 1.72% of Browsers in the UK are still on IE6, 6.66% are running IE7, and 3.5% are running Firefox 3.5. Not to be left out Mozilla, who administer Firefox, started their own campaign to get users to upgrade earlier in the year.
With Google’s annoucement that they are going to stop supporting older browsers it remains to be seen whether this will be the final push needed to get people to upgrade their browsers. Hopefully the big kid on the block will win this fight and we can wave goodbye to IE6 once and for all.
* 04/06/2011 11:37 – Rather embarrassingly Microsoft’s IE6 countdown page wouldn’t load when I wrote this post but I thought I should link to it anyway.
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