Many online marketers will still remember when world wide awareness of the earthquake in China in 2008 was dispersed through Twitter and social media sites long before the major news channels ran with the story. Even Google was left behind as it’s major source of current events, new websites, failed to deliver articles in time.

Social Media and the Search Engines: 2010

In 2010, Google will continue to explore how information garnered from social media websites can be harnessed to provide quality, relevant information about world events, as they happen. What this means for online marketers is the importance of social media isn’t just about brand development and positive customer interaction as it has been in the past. It will be a new focus for search engine optimisation. The relevance of social media to ever evolving search engine techniques is three fold. Firstly, real-time search will feature social media sites, blogs and other sources relevant to real-time search, secondly, social media mentions of your company brand or products will in some way be taken into account and thirdly, links from sources such as Twitter and Facebook will become a valuable asset. The impact of this on internet marketing in 2010 will be higher investment in social media marketing and optimisation, with the focus on regular tweets, blogs, status updates and so on and a more diverse set of link building opportunities.

Internet Marketing 2010: Conversion Rates and Optimisation

Let’s take a step back a second and list some of the opportunities to drive traffic to your website:

• Search engines organic listings
• Search engine paid listings
• Display ads through content networks
• Social Media sites
• Email marketing
• News and Media sites
• Television advertising
• Print advertising
• Radio

That’s just 10 out of perhaps 20 different marketing verticals and counting. Internet marketing is an area full of opportunities to develop traffic, so how should you allocate your marketing budget between them? Discover which vertical delivers the greatest value for money in terms of traffic number? No, you use goal tracking and conversion tracking to see which delivers the best value in terms of profit. Google Analytics has made some significant changes to it’s conversion tracking functionality which will contribute to 2010 being a big year for the rise of conversion rate optimisation.

Conversion rate optimisation doesn’t stop at the sources you drive traffic from or the keywords you used in your campaign. Google has implemented A/B split testing, so it’s much easier to test which is the best performing design. Instead of getting a number of design versions from your web designer, you can just trial each of them and see what your users think! And finally, you can make improvements to conversion architecture, or the journey from a visitor landing on your website to completing a purchase.

Internet Marketing 2010: Some Conclusions

It appears that real-time search, social media mentions, social media links and conversion architecture are set to feature more prominently in the online marketing landscape in 2010. I think Google Analytics is going to play a more central role in campaign optimisation using improved goal and conversion tracking as well as split testing. My advice is to keep up-to-date with new features, regularly visit search engine optimisation blogs and broader internet marketing blogs so the exciting new opportunities for 2010 don’t pass you by.

When planning search engine optimisation strategies, keyword competition is an important consideration. For businesses in competitive industries it can be unrealistic to aim for what would be key search terms. This is especially true for businesses which are new to website SEO and in the early stages of establishing a web presence.

When keyword competition is high, long tail optimisation can be more effective and profitable, especially if the keywords chosen for optimisation are targeted based on maximum return on investment. Google Adwords statistics and Google Analytics are invaluable sources of information to highlight high performance keywords, especially when features such as goal tracking, conversion tracking and ecommerce tracking are implemented.

WSI Yorkshire is in a very competitive space, being in an SEO company, the competition is against other search engine optimisation experts. Consequently, we optimise for geo-targeted keywords using on site and off site optimisation on the search term Yorkshire and key cities including, Leeds, Huddersfield and Sheffield. We have clients in the North West and London but it’s better to have a focused geo-targeting campaign.

Optimising for SEO Leeds, SEO Huddersfield and SEO Sheffield

There are several ways in which geo-targeting can be approached and the best will depend on the opportunities presented by your business model and website. At WSI we focus on developing links to businesses in Leeds, Sheffield and Huddersfield using the appropriate anchor text for each City/Town. For example, SEO Leeds would be appropriate link text from a company based in Leeds. Relevancy and rank are important factors when linking so sourcing links from website with relevant content and high ranking is crucial. On site optimisation includes writing or re-writing content to contain keyword phrase such as SEO Leeds, SEO services Leeds and variations for each of the cities. Search engine optimisation is a long term process that evolves and is diversified overtime. At WSI we’re no different and our content optimisation is still in its early stage of development. We’ll be having a SEO drive in the New Year so look out for those changes to find out how we’re tackling geo-targeting.

Remember to be comprehensive when conducting search engine optimisation and capitalise on all of the opportunities available. A really effective and easy way of geo-targeting in Google is using their local business listings. Adding your business to the Google Local Business listings can have as much of an impact as a considerable amount of SEO work.

What are the advantage of Website SEO using Geo-targeting?

The advantage of geo-targeting over generic long tail optimisation is achieving a higher conversion ratio. A visitor on the generic long tail keyword “SEO company,” for example, may be searching in London and decide that a Huddersfield SEO company isn’t what they’re looking for and continue until they find a more local SEO company.

10 years ago SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) was basic and simple, competition was limited. Success with PPC (Pay Per Click) campaigns (on Yahoo then on Google) was simple. Link Building (to improve Google page rank) was less selective.

Latest developments in online Marketing now mean that Internet Marketing is far more complex and even in-house teams can now benefit from the advice an Internet Consultantcan give: For example an Internet Marketing Strategy and  integrated campaign will include all of the following elements:

E-mail Marketing
Landing Page Development
Conversion Analysis
Website & Web Page Optimisation
Social Media Marketing
Pay Per Click Marketing

and more..

Indeed any of these elements can be broken down into discreet strategies by the consultant, for example Social Media may cover such elements as:

♦Social Media Monitoring
♦Social Media Advertising activities such as: Facebook Advertising; MySpace   Advertising; Linked In etc
♦Social Media Portal Personalisation on site such as:

•FaceBook
•Linked In
•MySpace
•YouTube

♦Profiles and entries on Propeller & Squidoo
♦Questions and Answer Sites
♦Wiki Entries
♦Blogging
♦Article Writing
♦PR & PR Distribution
♦Mobile & FaceBook Applications
♦and of course Twitter!

It is therefore vital that in selecting a consultant that you know that they have the tools to analyse your website with such tools like the WSI Webscan , and that they have the expertise to advise and execute as required, whether it is overarching strategy or detailed execution of the strategy.

Clients must no longer be satisfied with the one trick ponies who do a bit of PPC or a bit of SEO. Internet Consultancy is now a fully integrated marketing science, but this space is developing so quickly University Courses are out of date before their intake has started.

So some pointers in choosing a consultant might include:

♦The pedigree of their clients
♦The pedigree of their testimonials
♦Do they practice what they preach?
♦What tools do they use?
♦Can they explain each element of the strategy clearly and non technically?
♦All elements of any campaign should stack up. Does what they say make sense?
♦If you feel uncomfortable or it seems too god to be true, follow your instincts.
♦Look at a selection of their campaigns is it one size fits all? It shouldn’t be, each clients’ campaign should be unique.

Anyone looking to expand their business should look online, identify a great Internet Consultant who can help and guide them through the maze of Jargon, and will deliver a an Internet marketing strategy to match their budget and ambitions and that they will be accountable for.

After all Internet Marketing when done properly is the best value for money investment, but it is down to clients to make sure that they get value from their Internet Consultants by holding them to account on the results, nearly every aspect of Internet marketing is provable, and the deliverables should be quite easily demonstrable.

Make sure you have a documented, probable Internet Marketing Strategy developed for your business by your chosen Internet Marketing Consultant

WSI based in Huddersfield, Yorkshire operates nationally throughout the UK, even though our primary client base is concentrated into Leeds & West Yorkshire, Sheffield & South Yorkshire, Manchester, Cheshire & Lancashire. We aim to provide real value for money marketing to large multinationals and SMEs who believe that their future success and survival  is online. WSI is an Internet Marketing Consultancy providing all leading edge Internet Services.