I have been very excited recently about the arrival of augmented reality Apps for my 3GS and this week I installed the Layers App. Very cool indeed but it as I went through the various databases of information I did wonder if it had a practical function. Certain functions such as the Wiki and other informational sources probably have no added value by being able to hold your phone up and obtain directional and distance data and so to for the Twitter functions, fun at first but do we really care where the tweets are coming from? I bet not one person initiates face to face dialogue as a result of a nearby tweet. The concept does however come into it’s own when it comes to the directional data. The local tube stops, banks etc is handy to be able to see on the screen rather than on maps, figuring out which direction is north, which way you are facing and which way you then need to walk. I have watched the Augmented Reality Sat Nav App video on YouTube and again it looks very cool but I have to say, even as a techy who loves the concept, I am sceptical at this stage!
Remember when you used to have that conversation about how you read a book from left to right although pick up a magazine and flick through right to left? We know that marketing science suggests that the reader looks at a page starting in the top left, across the top and them down the right had side and we base our advertising on this. Have you stopped to think though how these habits have evolved since digital communication platforms and social media have appeared on the scene? My tweets arrive on my phone and I scroll them down, Reading from the bottom up but apply this to a forum and you confuse the reader, the reader of a forum expects to read the first comment at the top followed by the responses as they scroll the page. A controversial one, but use the same theory for a comments box under say a video or tutorial and the reader now presumes they will read the most recent comment at the top. I say controversial as I do hear a debate the other day on the way we should implement a video portal with this scenario. So you might think it stops there but like you often click on replies to threads at the bottom of a forum post to read expansion and replies to certain threads, now think about how you consume your reading on a wiki site. You read as normal but intelligent linking offers the expansion of information based on certain keywords. For those who don’t need to you carry on reading as usual but if the keyword suggest an area in which you need more data in order to support the overall subject of interesting you break the linear reading convention and branch of to better your knowledge, combine d with your browsers functionality you return to original subject and read on, a little bit wiser. This has brought a convention, if you visit for example the Apple development site the pages / PDF’s are written in this way. It’s clever, offering consumption choices one stage beyond that of the chaptering and contents in a book, improving the efficiency of how much we actually need to read.
So my first question is this, and probably one for the eye trackers! given the changing viewing patterns for the media how does effect the placements of advertising on a page? If the eye no longer follows a routine patterns and documents are viewed in very different ways, is the header banner or the right hand (column 3) the best place for the advert.
This becomes even more interesting when we add video or interactive graphics to the mix and this is something I learnt a lot about following the Chinwag forum for IPTV producers. Obviously the initial trend was to include pre, post and mid role adverting or possible and overlayed advert that reacts to a mouse action but to what extent does this put off the viewer and also with a page of content, how much does the viewers eye deviate from the video during playback? Is there a pattern or obvious place to place advertising on the surrounding page? Again one for the eyetrackers!
Just a couple of thought and questions for next time you conduct your digital marketing campaign!
RSS feeds even now are something that people don’t really understand and utilise to their full advantage. Twitter is a great example of a site that took this sort of concept, created a searcheable platform, easy to update that users just seemed to just get, possibly helped by the status update function of facebook. So, how does RSS work and how can you make best use of them?
As a user they are a stream of information that you can subscribe to, the provider then adds to their stream on a regular basis but rather than you having to check back from time to time to see if their is new content, you asign a desktop program or website to do that for you. Each time you load that software it will check the feeds address to look for update and download them for you, just like your emails. This means at a glance you can see there is new information and read it at your leisure, or not.
As a provider you should consider RSS feeds for exactly the reasons above. Your users often will not have a not in their diaries to check your we site once a week to see if you have any updates, if they are subscribed to your feed they don’t have to, but they are as up to date as they possibly could be. Also a major point to note that search engines favour sites who’s content is continually updated and RSS feeds provide a simple and efficient way to do this. Granted, many won’t be able to write the XML document that powers a feed but there are programs and integrations that will simplify this process, I’ll save that for a different post but if you are keen to get started and add an RSS feed to your web page or website but do not have any coding knowledge why not look into a blog such as WordPress or Typepad as your RSS engine. That way you have a nifty little editor that will allow you to create fancy looking stories and your subscribable RSS feed will be created as you go.
iTunes (podcasting)
My first engagement with rss feeds and XML for that matter came about while studying my Design for Digital Media degree at Chichester University. I made it a personal learning project completely understand the workings of video podcasts, not using a third party solution but using a host, writing my own XML document and uploading my videos to a website. So podcasting is another great example of RSS feeds and uses the iTunes platform as the RSS reader, each time you load your iTunes the program checks your subscriptions for updated content and downloads it, simple as that. Don’t be scared of them!
You may often wonder why you might get such a high bounce rate on your websites pages and how you can improve this. For those who religiously follow their web analytics and spend time and money on ppc accounts, understanding your organic traffic can also help improve the quality of your traffic. When I first started to look into search engine optimisation I presumed it was all about achieving perfect accessibility, perfect code and checking in an seo browser to make sure your title, meta, and content achieved 100%. I later moved into the world of ecommerce and realised that it’s all very well being optimised, but it was as important, if not more so to be achieving high positions for the right search terms and following this up with content. A real life example I thought about recently, came about when walking past a little arcade that contained a computer shop / repairer. In the window he had placed a remote controlled helicopter. I went in and asked if he had any more helicopters to which he replied, ‘no… I just put that in the window to get people through the door’. My point is that the likilyhood of someone in the market for a helicopter is unlikely to just pop in and want their computer fixed or to buy a stick of ram. So, this is where it gets even more time consuming and complicated, whilst you think about all the points made in the introduction to search engine optimisation, you must also be thinking about the copy on the page and the words you use. For this reason, it always baffles me when companies offer to come in and optimise your site, unless they completely know your product and industries, they will optimise your site but you will attract all the helicopter buyers!
So, you will develop your own technique to get the balance right, you will often have no choice on the content of your page if you are running somebody else’s site, but you must insist on the freedom to rewrite the content. Use google adwords keyword tool to assess the key words you have used and use the traffic estimator to best drive traffic. Once you have your content choose the highest traffic drivers (keywords) to build into your h1 tags, follow this up with a similar technique for the page title, then for now copy this page title into your meta description. Based on your choice of keywords for the page content, copy 5 to 10 of the most used AND most relevant to your site into the meta keywords. Don’t make the mistake of listing as many possible keywords as you can think of into the meta keywords this will have the opposite effect and google will see it as spamming. Give it a few days and check the site in domain tools to see how each individual element we have just talked about scores. Once you start tweaking things, monitoring is extremely important, record your figures and make one change at a time, if you see an improvement then implement it site wide. If you see things get worse you know what had this effect and you can change it straight back.
Intoduction to Search Engine Optimisation – SEO Learn at lunch
Search engine optimisation is now far more than putting some keywords into a page and mimicking them in your meta data. Search engines have brains and combine a whole heap of site tests in order to assess where your site should appear on the search results.
Most importantly, it is vital that the content in your page is correct and reflects the pages purpose, this is not just in the text but also, the images should be named accordingly to reinforce the content and ALT Tags used to aid the visually impaired user. A good example of this would be a product on an ecommerce site. The product has a brand, possibly a model and what it is. This text will no doubt be on the page but the search engines will check the pages images to see if it matches the content and so imagery should be named accordingly.
In this example the image should be named Dakine_101_Rucksack.jpg the underscores allow the search engine to see the text as separate words and therefore understands exactly what it is. The ALT Tag should read Daking 101 rucksack.
Approach – Assessing the site
A good place to start is to access the site. I use Domain Tools to get an initial overview of how the pages are scoring and the Alexa page rank gives you an idea of your website overall placement out of all the websites in the world (more detail on the Alexa site) I then move onto the SEO Browser located on the right hand side of the whois lookup on domain tools.
By clicking on here you will get to see how a search engine views the site and what the true content looks like. In the top right hand corner you will see a percentage score for the site. By clicking on the I button on the top left of the browser you will see a break down of the score and what needs improving in order to achieve 100%
The SEO Optimisation notes on this page are broken down into the following categories; Meta, General, Keywords, Composition, Links, Images and Terms. All are very important and getting everything right will result a massive shift in search engine placement.
Note: Achieving 100% on this assessment is all well and good and is quite easy to do but the score must reflect your initial copy, content or purpose for the website. Getting this wrong will not attract your target audience and even run the risk of being seen as a spam site.
As touched upon earlier search engines are also very conscious of accessibility for disabled visitors. The Images category in the SEO Browser reflects some possible issues such as alt tags (alternative text) missing and also images not having height and width attributes assigned within the html.
At this point I would move to the W3C (Web Standards) website and use there tools to check the page for accessibility and also for correct use of html. The Markup Validation Service will identify missing code (often accessibility issues) and also errors in the code. Again two identical sites one with errors and one without would affect the websites position on the search engine.
Using Google as a benchmark is always good as search usage figures of their competitors does not even come close to that of Google, as you can see using analytical software on any website. To begin with, installing Google toolbar to your web browser will allow you to see the Google page rank of every page you visit marked out of 10. This is not only useful in accessing your own page but also that of your competitors.
For far more detail on page ranks and how they are achieved you can also use the webmaster tools in your Google account. The webmaster tools are generated when your Google sitemap is submitted and pages are indexed on the Google database. This service provides various assessments broken down into the following categories, Overview, Settings, Diagnostics, Statistics, Links, Sitemaps and Tools.
This sitemap should not be confused with a sitemap page within a website. These pages are designed to ensure there are link trails throughout your site and do help the spiders navigate your entire site but are not used to index your site on a search engine.
Sitemaps in another session!!
Note: Similar sitemap submissions are necessary for other major search engines including yahoo and msn.
So… knowing what we now know and lets say we have applied all our changes to improve naming conventions, errors, accessibility etc, how do we climb the search engines?
I like to work backwards and reinforce what we have already achieved. At this point it’s good to know and assess where your existing traffic is coming from. This can be easily identified with Google analytics or AWStats. and allows you to identify the terms that users are searching for and arriving at the site. With this information, greater density of keywords and terms can be added further in the copy and stressed back through the meta data page title etc as identified with our earlier tools. Also it is useful to quickly identify keyword and term frequency, a useful site for this is LinkVendor words appearing a number of times within a page are not always used in the Meta keywords, description and title and as a search engine does not understand subject matter these words should be considered. Finally, and this is one of my favourites SEMRush formally known as seodigger. Pop your domain name in here and it will reveal loads of search terms, where you appear on Google for each term and the traffic they generate. SEMRush are now providing the same for adwords keyword terms.
It is also good practise to look at your Google Adwords and your Google organic traffic as a cost saving exercise for your Adwords account and also to identify terms to work into your natural traffic sources but that’s a whole other project.
Final Thought – All this is useless if you make a number of changes at the same time as you will not know which has worsened or improved your placement also unless you monitor your progress you have no means of knowing if it is working.
Useful Tools
Also available from my head.
Sitemaps, PPC Campaigns, Analytics, quality linking, usability,
My first experience of online Social Media was Myspace. After being introduced to the promotional power of the platform through a friend in the music industry I thought I’d give it a go. Although I think if I am honest the the largest breakthrough for me in keeping in touch with my friends had to be in 1998 when I got my first mobile phone and discovered text messaging (this will become apparent later), I later discovered Facebook and used this for my personal social networking mainly because it excelled in the uploading and tagging of pictures which far exceeded the capabilities of Myspace. I had no need for flicker or other image banks because as far as I was concerned Facebook did it all and I soon reduced my usage of Myspace. I was aware of twitter and until recently didn’t see a purpose for a platform that merely mimicked the Facebook status field, although I was fascinated that it could be updated from a mobile phone whilst going about your everyday business.
It all became clear when I recently upgraded to an iPhone. I already used a PDA phone that integrated well with my PC applications but was always keen to take this further, the iPhone allowed me to do this. The free internet access made a huge difference but it was as I installed apps I realised the true power.
My prediction: Quite obviously we see trends in social media and if you read the magazines they will say this one is in and that one is out, which I believe is true to some extent. My prediction is linking, not just that of your online spaces but also the linking of your devices (which is why I mentioned the forgotten mobile phone earlier) and now apps that offer massive extensions to your device. Here is an early example; I use mapmyrun to work out how far I run, which in itself has become a social network site with profile and the ability to share runs and view others, but none of my friends are on Mapmyrun!! So I installed iMapmyrun on my iPhone which automatically maps my training using the inbuilt GPS then sends my data to the site when I complete my run, upon receiving the data the website then updates my tweet on twitter and adds it to a box on Facebook, Genius! And all I needed to do was hit save, a perfect example of the linking of web 2.0 and mobile applications.
So I have Facebook, I have myspace, twitter, mapmyrun etc, but I do not have the time to maintain them all. As an experiment I have taken this one stage further. I have set up my first blog to provide the link in the chain (in fact I think this will be my first post). In theory my twitter which I can operate from my phone now updates my Facebook status and is included in a mini feed both on my Facebook page and my blog, this is also fed by the app iMapmyrun which also populates a space on my Facebook. Facebook will also offer a direct link to my Myspace profile and each blog entry now offers the option to post to Facebook and the users can post each blog post to their own profiles using “share this”, now one update from my phone will spread across my own network. I also have plans for my Youtube and Ebay accounts! But I am aware of how much I have written! This will all be monitored with Google analytics installed on the blog and sitemaps regularly submitted to all major search engines.
A little bit round the houses but here is how I think this has implications on research. I recently researched QR codes, one of the largest mobile phone functions in Japan that despite been taken onboard by some large UK companies still doesn’t seem to have caught on. As I discussed with a colleague this in itself has research implications although I think it carries a greater message. It offers a choice to the user that they do not receive when they are stopped in the street, answer a call or a knock on the door. In an age where most now fear identity theft and not all are embracing shifts in technology, I believe it to be beneficial that the user now believe it was their decision to be forthcoming with information and this is where apps, applications and social network style platforms can play a role.
My final thought and an example of how this has been achieved is Pruhealth. I found out through the Martin Money Saving Expert website forum that I could achieve free gym membership if I signed up for Pruhealth medical insurance and became a frequent user. They have designed a point scoring system whereby the more points you score the cheaper your gym membership. The clever trick is that my Pruhealth account links (reoccurring theme) to my nectar card and Pruhealth know when I buy fruit and veg (I’m sure they know when I buy chocolate bars and pork scratchings too, but I don’t get points for that). Pruhealth also follow my ebay account and know when I buy sporting goods, again I’m sure they are not just watching my healthy purchases. Most importantly and in my case, every time I swipe my card at Nuffield Health Centre formally Cannons gym and for others it might be Virgin Active or LA Fitness they know about it. This has allowed for me to achieve £4 a month health insurance and free gym membership, but most importantly this is achieved because Pruhealth are safe in the knowledge that I am a low risk customer.
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