H2L Online Marketing South Africa

Local Search Engine Optimization

2011-12-22T11:57:00.000+02:00

1. Local Search Engine Optimization

The first type is local SEO, which means getting listed in Google Places. We recommend small business owners start with local SEO, because it's the easiest and fastest to setup and start seeing results.
Recently, Google has made local business results much more prominent by displaying local business results at the top for millions of searches. For many searches, the local results are even more prominent than the regular "Top 10? results.
If you've been stuck on the sidelines and haven't been investing in SEO because you thought it was too complex or too expensive, you no longer have that excuse. It's much faster and easier to break onto the 1st page of Google with local SEO.
Here are the 3 main ingredients for a successful local SEO campaign are:
i. Demand
What keywords are your potential customers searching to find your type of business?
You don't need to guess. Google has a free keyword research tool, available here: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
ii. Relevance
You need to edit and optimize your Google Places page to make it relevant to these keywords, so Google knows to display your business listing when people are searching for your type of services.
C. Authority
You need to prove to Google that you're a credible, trusted business. And the 2 main authority ingredients are citations and reviews.

We created a step-by-step training program that shows you exactly how to do all of this, so you rank at the top of Google's local results. Learn more about it here: SEO Courses

2. Traditional Search Engine Optimization ('Top 10? SEO)

The other type of SEO is the type you're probably already familiar with. We call it traditional SEO (or Top 10 SEO) because these are the techniques to get you listed in the regular (non-local) Top 10 results.
Traditional SEO is a little bit more complex than local SEO, but has the same 3 main ingredients:
i. Demand
You need to do keyword research to find what words your potential customers are using to search for your services. Same as with local SEO, use Google's keyword tool as the starting point.
ii. Relevance
You need to make your website relevant to your keywords. And specifically, you want to focus on 1 keyword per page. So, if you offer a bunch of different services, then you should have a page for each of those services.
iii. Authority
The main factor Google looks at when judging the trustworthiness of your site for the Top 10 results is your incoming links (or hyperlinks). Links are like positive votes in favor of your business.
If you include these 3 ingredients in your traditional SEO campaign (keyword research, content, and links) you will begin to rise in Google's Top 10 results and start getting more visitors to your website.

A Note About Building Links...

Most of the small business owners I've been speaking to have only been focused on getting reciprocal links by setting up link exchanges with other websites.
Reciprocal links can be OK, but in some instances they can actually be counter productive. Overall, link exchanges really aren't the best way to build links, so I don't recommend spending too much energy there.
You want to get a lot of different types of links to your website. And instead of focusing on link exchanges, you should focus more of your time on building one-way links to your website (where other website link to you, without you linking back to them). One-way links are much more helpful for building up your website's authority.
Why would another website link to you? Maybe it's because you are providing a helpful resource on your website. Or perhaps you write an online column for a local newspaper's website, and they let you place a byline link back to your website. There are many ways to build links, and that's outside of the scope of this post.

2011-11-23T11:13:00.001+02:00

What Is the Meta Description Tag?
It’s a snippet of HTML code that belongs inside the section of a web page. It is usually placed after the Title tag and before the Meta keywords tag (if you use one), although the order is not important.
The proper syntax for this HTML tag is:

If you’re using a content management system (CMS), look for a field to fill out that’s called Meta Description, or possibly just “Description.”

There are 3 important ways that Meta descriptions are being used today that make them an important part of your SEO and overall online marketing strategy:
1. They can be used as the description (or part of the description) of your page if it shows up in the search results.
2. They are often used as part of the descriptive information for your pages when Google shows “extended sitelinks” for your site.
3. They are often used as the default description in social media marketing links such as Facebook and Google+.
Let’s look at each of these in more detail.

1. Meta Descriptions in the Search Results
People often think that whatever they put in their Meta description tag will be the default description that the search engines use under the clickable link to their site in the search results. While this is sometimes true, it’s not always the case.
Currently, if you’re searching for a site by its URL (for example www.h2lonlinemarketing.co.za) Google tends to use the first 20 to 25 words of your Meta description as the default description in the search engine result pages (SERP). However, if you have a listing at DMOZ, also known as the Open Directory Project (ODP) and are not using the “noodp” tag, they may default to that description instead. (Do a search at Google for www.amazon.com to see an example.)
Bing and Yahoo!, on the other hand, don’t always default to the Meta description tag for URL searches. Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don’t. A search for www.h2lonlinemarketing.co.za at Bing or Yahoo! shows content from my home page as the description rather than the contents of our Meta description tag.
Of course, real people aren’t typically searching for a site by URL, so what the search engines show for those types of search queries is not as important as a true keyword search. So don’t get hung up on what you see when you search for your site by its URL or if you’re doing a “site:command” search to see how they’re indexing your pages.
Instead, go to your favorite web analytics program and find the keyword phrases that are currently bringing you the most traffic. Then see what your description looks like at Google when you type in those keywords.
And surprise! What you’ll find is that your search results description will be different for every search query! You may see any combination of the following used:
* Your entire Meta description tag text as the complete description (typically if it’s highly relevant and contains no more than 25 words).
* A full sentence pulled from your Meta description tag, but not the entire Meta description (if it contains more than one sentence).
* Text from one part of your Meta description mashed together with text from another part of it (if it’s more than 25 words long).
* Some text from your Meta description mashed together with some text from the page.
* Some text from your page mashed together from some other text from your page (nothing from the Meta description).

Some of the circumstances that cause Google to not use text from your Meta description may include:
* The information in the Meta description tag was not specific to the page it was on.
* The search query used some words that were not in the Meta description, but those words (or some of them) were used in the page content.

My recommendation is to always use keywords on any pages where you get search engine visitors (or hope to get them). Make them very specific to the page they’re on by describing what someone will find when they click through to the page from the search results, while also using variations of your targeted keywords.
Because Google will show only show around 20 to 25 words as your description, many SEOs recommend that you limit this tag to a certain number of characters.

For instance, if you’re optimizing a page for 3 different keyword phrases, you could write a 3-sentence Meta description tag, with each sentence focusing on a different phrase. You could probably even insert more than 3 phrases in those sentences if you’re a good wordsmith. The idea, however, is not to stuff this tag full of keywords, but to write each sentence to be a compelling marketing statement – a statement that naturally uses the keywords people might be typing into Google to find your site.

Overall, the Meta description tag gives you a little bit more control over what people might see before they click over to your site. The more compelling it is, the more clickthroughs you should see. If your Meta description tags can help with that, then it’s certainly worth the few minutes of time it takes to create interesting, keyword-rich tags that sum up what users will find when they arrive!

Using Facebook for business

2011-11-21T13:40:00.001+02:00

1. Invite by welcoming

The Welcome-tab is an essential tool. Yes, big brands like Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Fretzie Bercede etc. use it. No, you are not imitating them; just making use of what is available to all. You can make your page look different and exciting. This would organically invite people to your page. The welcome page is the influencing page which can present a clear ‘call-to-action’ to your page visitors; if it’s good then your page would be liked by many automatically!

2. Coupons, offers available
You can dole out “special discounts and offers” to your fans (only!). Also, the people who are not your fans can be enticed by showcasing your offers but not providing them. This would be a compelling tactic that would make them ‘like’ your page. Giving discounts and offers is an old marketing technique of course, but in social media it performs as a ‘likeable’ tool!

3. Learn more of their expectations

Your company is in the process of building up and formation. So it’s always better to learn what your consumers demand from you. You can create quizzes or polls for a particular query and know what your customers are looking for! The level of participation would also let you the number of people interested in your business. Use the polls app on Facebook to know your customers best!

4. Updating is crucial

Your page needs to be updated regularly. Make activity on your page, keep it going! Update about the customer-friendly stuff your company just created, the deals happening etc. Share as much as possible! Let them know your company works just like the large busy industry. Make an impression.

5. Yes, you’re answerable!

You owe responses to all the comments by your fans. If you are responding well, your customers would certainly feel they have a space in your business. Respond them positively and be transparent. Further, accept criticism since they’re the experiencers of your products. They know the faults best. Accept it and correct it abidingly. Respect the complaints by your ROIs.

Mobile Website Design

2011-11-05T10:00:00.001+02:00

Did you know that in the world today there are more than 2.4 billion mobile phone users, and a thousand more are added every minute!
About 30% of these mobile phone owners (more than 700 million and growing) have browsed the Internet through their mobile phones. This is the reason why mobile Web browsing is predicted to become the next predominant Internet platform.

The Basic Principles of Mobile Website Design

First, you have to know that the Web site design and construction generally used for computer browsers is not compatible with that of mobile phones. For your site to work well on a mobile handset, it must follow the accessibility design guidelines for building mobile Websites which are set by the W3C.
In mobile phones, the technology called the WAP is used for browsing. Because of the limitations of WAP browsers in terms of screen size and allowable download, you will need to strip down your current design.
The easiest way to build your mobile Website is to modify your existing Internet site to make it compatible for mobile handsets. If you decide to do so, expect that there will be big changes in terms of layout, design and construction.

Here are some principles about mobile Web design that you should take note of before proceeding to build one of your own:

Websites which make use of tables for the main layout will not look right on mobile phones.
Your site must use CSS for the layout to ensure maximum compatibility.
It is easiest if your site is coded using either XML or XHTML, with your character encoding set at UTF-8.
You have to consider that different mobile phones have different screen sizes. This can be a major headache if you want your mobile Web site design to run on all of them.
Remember to put all the most important information that you want mobile users to see on the top of the page. It can be time consuming to browse through a mobile site, not to mention tedious to read through. Make your mobile site design convenient for your consumers.
It is difficult to enter text in mobile Web sites. You may want to offer your user the convenience of radio buttons and lists, which they can choose from depending on what they need.
If you wish to put images on your mobile Website, it should be in jpeg or gif format.
A good mobile Web site design provides back buttons and links. Many phones are not equipped with back buttons, so try to provide one.
Keep in mind that the maximum page size for a mobile page is only 20 kilobytes. Make everything fit into that number.
Lastly, you should bear in mind that users are actually paying fees to access your mobile Website. Make sure that they are getting their money's worth!

Having a mobile friendly website is especially important for businesses who want to increase their exposure onto a fresh, up-and-coming platform ahead of their closest competitors. However, designing and optimising sites for various mobile platforms is very challenging due to the amount of smart phone platforms available .

The fact is that people accessing the web via their phone are having to deal with smaller screen and slower connection times, meaning that a site that looks impressive on a PC may lose quality and functionality when accessed with a mobile.

There’s a lot to take into consideration when it comes to this kind of specialist website design development. Sites need to be optimised for all of the latest browsing devices, such as iPhones, iPad, Blackberry and Android platforms (amongst others), which can be a time-consuming process.

Scream Media is proud to offer affordable solutions when it comes to mobile web development and urges any company lacking a sound mobile presence to get in touch before they lose out on exposure and revenue generated from on-the-go web browsing.

The not so humble Description Tag

2011-10-12T11:25:00.000+02:00

Meta tags are often very misunderstood, people often get confused with the different types of tags available. In short your meta description tag is often used as the snippet on the search results pages to describe your site. So apart from including keywords, it has to do the job of convincing people to click on it.

A nonsensical list of keywords is not going to convince people to click so you have to balance it out with an appealing sentence, preferably including a call-to-action or reason to click.

Yes, it’s important to put your keywords at the start of the tag if you can, but you have up to 160 characters in that tag indexed by search engines, so you should use the space to your advantage. Having a short, unimaginative meta description tag or simply copying your title tag is not going to make any difference to your overall rankings and is more likely to turn your potential visitors off.

Google admitted that it no longer considers the meta description tag in their ranking algorithm anyway, so, other search engines aside, the main job of the tag in Google SERPs is to convince people to click on the link and visit your site.

Put it this way: if you were in the market for an antique chair and you saw the following two listings in Google, which one would you click on?

Site1.com – “Antique Dining Chairs.”
Site2.com – “Antique Dining Chairs – over 500 chairs on display at the Glebe Antique Centre. Dining chairs to match your table, occasional chairs for that special place in your home.“

I’m thinking Site2.com – am I right? And – oh look! The longer tag managed to include *dining chairs* twice and a whole bunch of other keyword phrases as well: *dining chairs Glebe*, *chairs Glebe*, *occasional chairs*, *Antique(s) Glebe*.

Got it? Why not let the experts help. Contact Scream Media today on 021 5590800

SEO and Blogs

2011-10-11T13:30:00.000+02:00

If you don't optimize your blog—or other online content—there's a good chance you're missing out on higher search-engine rankings that could extend your reach well beyond your site's current readership. But take heart: Sometimes all you need are a few tweaks here and there.

SEO Friendly Blogs help you get found on Google

Arrange your post's content in logical order. Think back to the essay format you learned in grade school: an introductory paragraph followed by supporting evidence and a conclusion. It improves readability for human visitors, and will earn a search engine's approval.

Pay attention to word count. According to Google an article should contain at least 200 words. (For eyeballing purposes, most Get to the Po!nt newsletters are between 250 and 300 words.) We recommend writing to a target length in the 400-to-500-word range.

Be sure to use local keywords. If your company offers products or services to a specific region, incorporate terms that local customers will likely use when searching for companies in your area.

Choose an image that complements your text. This provides visual interest for the reader, and you gain SEO points with a keyword in the photo description tag.

Don't duplicate and resubmit content. As with keyword stuffing, this raises major red flags for search engines—and they'll likely treat you like a spammer. "That could be the kiss of death for your site.

Remember to deep link back to your website. In bound links are essential for SEO, with a Blog you have control over these ln bound links. Look at the heading of this paragraph and you will see exactly what I mean!.

Tweak it one more time. If your blog delivers valuable content, you're already winning most of your SEO battles

The Importance of Anchor Text for SEO

2011-09-30T11:38:00.000+02:00

Anchor text is perhaps one of the most important aspects of Search Engine Optimization but it is also one of the least talked about. Anchor text is the visible text of a hyperlink, for example the text link below links to our home page www.h2lonlinemarketing.co.za with the anchor text - h2lonlinemarketing.

This one element of SEO is important to understand because it can help your page get ranked for a target keyword and also help you evaluate your competition more precisely.
The latter is critical and, in fact, if you don’t take anchor text backlinks into proper consideration when looking at the competition for a keyword you could be missing out on some hidden gems that are easy to rank for.

What Is Anchor Text?
Anchor text is the hyperlinked text you see on a webpage. It is the visible words that you can click to take you to another page. Anchor text html code looks like this:

<a href=”http://www.yoursite.com”>Your Anchor Text</a>
On most websites, you typically see this as blue text that is underlined and when you click on it with your mouse, you are taken to the corresponding url.

How Bloggers Use Anchor Text
Bloggers and website owners use anchor text naturally to point to other pages on their website as well as pages on other sites that they find relevant to what they are blogging about. You’ve probably even done this yourself when writing a post where you referenced another post on your site, an affiliate product or even a post on another site.
Usually a blogger will use a phrase that indicates what the page is about in the anchor text, as opposed to a url, so that the sentence reads correctly.
The anchor text in these links helps both the visitor and the search engine spiders figure out what the ‘linked to’ page is about.

How Search Engines Use Anchor Text
Search engines use anchor text to help them figure out what the hyperlinked page is about. So, as you can see, getting anchor text backlinks with relevant phrases in the anchor text is pretty important if you want the search engines to rank you for a particular keyword phrase.
In fact, anchor text is such an important factor in ranking a page that pages can rank for a keyword phrase even when that phrase does not appear in the url on the page!
There are several cases where this has happened, but perhaps the most famous is where the Adobe Reader download page ranked number
1 for the search term ‘click here’ for many years even though those words were nowhere on the page. So many people had linked to that page using the anchor text ‘click here’ that it got to the number 1 spot without any on page SEO for the term.

Search engines place a large importance on external anchor text (links coming in from other sites) and some importance on internal anchor text (links from within your own site) when ranking a page so it stands to reason that you should make getting anchor text backlinks with your target keyword phrases a priority.
One important thing to note is that it is widely thought that if two links on the same page target the same url, that only the first link is counted by Google so you want to be sure that you use your desired anchor text in that first link.

How Anchor Text is Important When Judging Competition for a Keyword
If you think about how important anchor text is to the search engines when determining ranking for a keyword, then it’s easy to see why it is a critical component of analyzing the competition for a particular keyword phrase.

Allinanchor:”your keyword phrase”
This will return the pages which have anchor text pointing to it that contain the quoted keyword phrase.
I hope you can see how powerful this is – first of all, Google must think it is an important element of a page because it provides the allinanchor operator. Just the existence of the operator would seem to indicate that it uses the anchor text when deciding what a page is about and ranking it.

Secondly, using this operator will show you which pages are optimizing for your chosen keyword phrase!
It makes sense that only the pages that have anchor text backlinks with your phrase are the ones optimizing for it so you can forget about searching for your phrase in quotes or any of that nonsense.
Not only that but, you can take a look at the actual backlinks for each of your competitors and see how many of them have that anchor text and what the strength of those links are to make a more educated guess as to how difficult they will be to beat out for that top spot.

Anchor Text “Best Practices” For Your Website
Now that you know how important anchor text is to your rankings, I’m sure you will want to pay more attention to it in your SEO efforts but you don’t want to go hog wild and create tons of anchor text backlinks all with the same keyword phrase or you might find that your efforts don’t yield the results you want.
Here are some things to consider:
1. Vary Your Anchor Text – We all know that Google prefers it when people link to you naturally and when that is the case, they don’t all use the same anchor text. So, when you are linking to your site from your articles or web2.0 properties you want to
make sure you don’t always use the same phrase as well. Using your target phrase in about 50% – 60% of the links is probably a good idea.

2. Links From Relevant Pages – For the best results, you want your anchor text backlinks to come from pages that are related to your topic. This is what would happen naturally if people were linking to you and it would most likely be from a blog post on the same topic.

3. First Link On Page – Don’t forget that Google only counts the anchor text from the first link that it sees so if you have more than one link to the same url on a page, act accordingly.

4.Plan For Natural Linking – There’s nothing better than having people just naturally link to one of your posts but, of course, you can’t control the anchor text they use when they do. Since most people will naturally use your headline as anchor text, you want to be sure to consider that when coming up with the title for your blog posts.

Anchor text is crucial to both your SEO efforts as well as when analyzing the competition for a keyword phrase. Taking the time to use it properly can be the difference between ranking in the top 3 and not ranking at all so it’s in your best interest to start putting better anchor text practices to use in your business today!

Facebook Myth's

2011-09-12T10:02:00.001+02:00

Facebook promotions take many forms.

One brand will give away instant-print coupons behind a “like” gate. Another will reward random fans for posting on the brand’s wall. And still another will host a sweepstakes in a custom third-party application.
Can you guess which one of these is violating Facebook’s rules and is likely to see their page brought down?

Alas, Facebook resembles the wild west of social networking. And just as the lawless land of email marketing was tamed a decade ago, the ever-evolving Facebook platform is being settled by emerging best practices, updates to the user experience, and Facebook’s stringent promotion guidelines.

If an objective of your contest is to “go viral”, Facebook wants to stop you. Why? First, Facebook wants you to pay them to drive impressions and engagement through its advertising
platform. Additionally, thanks to game publishers like Zynga (the makers of Farmville and Mafia Wars), viral tactics are now widely considered annoying by Facebook users. Facebook’s desire to make money while delivering an uncluttered user experience means the virality you seek isn’t likely to happen.

MYTH: Clicks on your "Like" button = brand engagement.
REALITY: It's not that easy. Make your brand worth spending time with and you'll achieve real engagement: passion and loyalty. As social media blogger Jay Baer candidly quipped, "I have a deeper engagement with a can of beer than I do with the 'Like' button."

MYTH: Trolls will take over my contest and fan page. REALITY: A clear, thought-out social plan and solid promotions will keep trolls on a short leash. People are people, online as in life, and they'll share negative (and sometimes inappropriate) views as well as positive ones.

MYTH: Giving away an iPad is enough. REALITY: Making fans do stuff for prizes is ineffective; they know the odds of winning are low. Align prizing with your brand and ensure everyone walks away a true winner!

MYTH: I don't need rules for my Facebook contest. REALITY: The legal ramifications of running a contest on any medium are complicated, especially when you're doling out prizes. Seek legal counsel before your promotion, make the rules of the game very clear to players, and safeguard against abuse of those rules.

The Po!nt: Don't be fooled by Facebook's pretty face; it's a jungle in there. Thankfully, that jungle has safe pathways. Take time to learn them, and you'll produce a bunch of cool new inroads with happy, engaged fans. Scream Media has over 8 years experience navigating Facebook and other Social Media platforms. Contact us today on 021 5590800 for a free, no obligation quote.

How can I get people to revisit my website?

2011-08-31T14:14:00.000+02:00

To get people to keep coming back to your website, you need to give plenty of reasons why they should. If you think about it, it's just common sense. You wouldn't keep going to a shop every day if nothing had changed each time that you went. You need to continually add to your site in a variety of different ways. Add new blog posts/articles, tutorials, videos, pictures, interviews, competitions, news, events, etc. Doing this regularly gives people an excuse to click on your site and catch up with what's new. Not only that, but it shows to new visitors that your site is not dead, there is an active presence online.

When just starting out with a brand new website, you should have an almost endless list of things that you need to add, so you have got more than enough to get you started. A lot of people think that they need to add everything at once before publishing their site, when actually a single blog post is a great way of starting. As long as you build upon that on a regular basis, then that is enough reason for people to revisit your website.

Techniques to bring traffic back to your website

Apart from regularly adding content, there are a number of other ways to encourage people to come back to your site.

Email Marketing!

This is a great way of getting people back to your website. The key is to build a large email list of your customers/visitors. When people register to become a member, you get their email address. When people sign up to your weekly newsletter, you get their email address. The more ways there are to get someone's email address the better.

With an email list, you can build a brand, recommend products, promote any events/workshops that you may be holding and more importantly to can encourage people to keep returning to your website.

Just don't go overboard with emails so that they are viewed as spam! Nobody likes spam!

Newsletter!

These are a great way to encourage people to return to your website. Within your newsletter you can keep referring people back to your website. You can automate the whole process as well, letting it run on auto pilot.

RSS Feeds!

These are great for informing people about your latest updates. Feeds update themselves automatically when you add to your blog. People that have chosen to subscribe to your RSS Feed are automatically told about your new content, giving them incentive to check it out.

These are so easy to set up and do everything automatically for you. Google Feedburner is a great tool to use to do this. This is something that you should definitely include on your website.

Be Friendly!

If someone takes the time to email you with a question, then put the effort into replying. Even if you don't know the answer to the question asked, perhaps you could refer them to somebody that does, or be honest and say I don't know! The fact that you have shown to actively respond to a visitors question can go along way.

If you are getting lots of emails about the same question, then that might be a good subject to write about in an upcoming blog post. You could send emails back thanking the individual for the question and stating that you will be writing an in depth post outlining the answer for him.

Post comments on your own posts answering peoples questions, refer to people that have asked questions in videos, etc. This all helps to build a community around your website. Doing this sort of thing shows to your visitors that you aren't a faceless website that doesn't interact with its viewers, that you are willing to help if you can.

Network!

Get in contact with other people that are involved in your field of interest. You may not get too many replies if you still have a small reputation, but that will change as you grow your online status. You could offer to link to their website in return that they similarly link back to you. This can help your credibility and increase your reputation.

As the saying goes, "It's not what you know, it's who you know that matters!"

Homework!!!

These are just some ways to get people to come back to your website. Again, this is something that you have to continually work on, it won't just happen over night. Get in the habit of adding articles/blog posts every few days, regularly tweeting, posting things on your social media sites, running competitions, making videos, etc. If you continually produce reasons for people to return to your site, then they will.

When algorithms control the world

2011-08-23T16:13:00.000+02:00

Globe with binary code Algorithms are spreading their influence around the globe

If you were expecting some kind warning when computers finally get smarter than us, then think again.

There will be no soothing HAL 9000-type voice informing us that our human services are now surplus to requirements.

In reality, our electronic overlords are already taking control, and they are doing it in a far more subtle way than science fiction would have us believe.

Their weapon of choice - the algorithm.

Behind every smart web service is some even smarter web code. From the web retailers - calculating what books and films we might be interested in, to Facebook's friend finding and imaging tagging services, to the search engines that guide us around the net.

It is these invisible computations that increasingly control how we interact with our electronic world.

At last month's TEDGlobal conference, algorithm expert Kevin Slavin delivered one of the tech show's most "sit up and take notice" speeches where he warned that the "maths that computers use to decide stuff" was infiltrating every aspect of our lives.

Among the examples he cited were a robo-cleaner that maps out the best way to do housework, and the online trading algorithms that are increasingly controlling Wall Street.

"We are writing these things that we can no longer read," warned Mr Slavin.

"We've rendered something illegible. And we've lost the sense of what's actually happening in this world we've made."
Million-dollar book
Cover of the Making of a Fly The book was briefly one of the world's most expensive

Algorithms may be cleverer than humans but they don't necessarily have our sense of perspective - a failing that became evident when Amazon's price-setting code went to war with itself earlier this year.

"The Making of a Fly" - a book about the molecular biology of a fly from egg to fully-fledged insect - may have been a riveting read but it almost certainly didn't deserve a price tag of $23.6m (£14.3m).

It hit that figure briefly on the site after the algorithms used by Amazon to set and update prices started outbidding each other.

It is a small taste of the chaos that can be caused when code gets smart enough to operate without human intervention, thinks Mr Slavin.

"This is algorithms in conflict without any adult supervision," he said.

As code gets ever more sophisticated it is reaching its tentacles into all aspects of our lives, including our cultural preferences.

The algorithms used by movie rental site Netflix are now responsible for 60% of rentals from the site, as we rely less and less on our own critical faculties and word of mouth and more on what Mr Slavin calls the "physics of culture".
Leading role
Hollywood sign Code is playing its own lead role in Hollywood

British firm Epagogix is taking this concept to its logical conclusion, using algorithms to predict what makes a hit movie.

It takes a bunch of metrics - the script, plot, stars, location - and crunches them all together with the box office takings of similar films to work out how much money it will make.

The system has, according to chief executive Nick Meaney, "helped studios to make decisions about whether to make a movie or not".

In the case of one project - which had been assigned a £180m production cost - the algorithm worked out that it would only take £30m at the box office, meaning it simply wasn't worth making.

For another movie, it worked out that the expensive female lead the studio had earmarked for a film would not yield any more of a return than using a less expensive star.

This rather clinical approach to film-making has irked some who believe it to be at odds with a more creative, organic way that they assume their favourite movies were made.

Mr Meaney is keen to play down the role of algorithms in Hollywood.

"Movies get made for many reasons and it credits us with more influence than we have to say we dictate what films are made.

"We don't tell them what the plot should be. The studio uses this as valuable business information. We help people make tough decisions, and why not?" he said.

Despite this, the studio Epagogix has worked with for the last five years does not want to be named. It is, says Mr Meaney, a "sensitive" subject.

If algorithms had a Hollywood-style walk of fame, the first star would have to go to Google.

Its famously secret code has propelled the search giant to its current position as one of the most powerful companies in the world.

No-one would doubt that its system has made searching a whole lot easier, but critics have long asked at what price?

In his book, The Filter Bubble, Eli Pariser questions how far Google's data-crunching algorithm go in harvesting our personal data and shaping the web we see accordingly.

Meanwhile, a recent study by psychologists at Columbia University found that reliance on search engines for answers is actually changing the way humans think.

"Since the advent of search engines, we are reorganising the way we remember things. Our brains rely on the internet for memory in much the same way they rely on the memory of a friend, family member or co-worker," said report author Betsy Sparrow.

Increasingly, she argues, we are knowing where information can be found rather than retaining knowledge itself.

Flash crash
Traders at the New York stock exchange Move over traders, there's a new code in town

In the financial markets, code is increasingly becoming king as complex number-crunching algorithms work out what to buy and what to sell.

Up to 70% of Wall Street trading is now run by so-called black box or algo-trading.

That means, along with the wise guy city traders, banks and brokers now employ thousands of smart guy physicists and mathematicians.

But even machine precision, supported by the human code wizards, doesn't guarantee things will run smoothly.

In the so-called Flash Crash of 2.45 on May 6 2010, a five minute dip in the markets caused momentary chaos.

"We are running through the United States with dynamite and rocksaws so an algorithm can close the deal three microseconds faster.”

Kevin Slavin Algorithm expert

A rogue trader was blamed for the 10% Dow Jones index fall but in reality, it was the computer program that the unnamed trader was using that was really to blame.

The algorithm sold 75,000 stocks with a value of £2.6bn in just 20 minutes, causing other super-fast trading algorithms to follow suit.

Just as a bionic limb can extend a human's capability for strength and stamina, the electronic market showed its capacity to exaggerate and accelerate minor blips.

No-one has ever managed to pinpoint exactly what happened, and the market recovered minutes later.

The chaos forced regulators to introduce circuit breakers to halt trades if the machines start misbehaving.

The algorithms of Wall Street may be the cyber-equivalent of the 80s yuppie, but unlike their human counterparts, they don't demand red braces, cigars and champagne. What they want is fast pipes.

Spread Networks has been building one such fibre-optic connection, shaving three microseconds off the 825-mile (1327km) trading journey between Chicago and New York.

Meanwhile, a transatlantic fibre optic link between Nova Scotia in Canada and Somerset in the UK is being built primarily to serve the needs of algorithmic traders and will send shares from London to New York and back in 60 milliseconds.

"We are running through the United States with dynamite and rock saws so an algorithm can close the deal three microseconds faster, all for a communications system that no humans will ever see," said Mr Slavin.

As algorithms spread their influence beyond machines to shape the raw landscape around them, it might be time to work out exactly how much they know and whether we still have time to tame them.

Exerts for the BBC

Social Media - New Age Marketing

2011-08-15T15:52:00.000+02:00

In the good old days customers would communicate with you via letter, phone or in person. Today things are very different. Now they can send you a tweet, post a comment on your blog or leave you a message on Facebook.

In the past if someone was unhappy with your service the 'bad press' was usually limited to a few of their friends and family (unless it was seriously bad service and the wrote to the Editor of your local paper). Now a single tweet or Facebook message could potentially be seen by millions.

Now, more than ever, you must have procedures in place to deal with social media communications. You have to think about how you will monitor them, how you will respond to both positive and negative comments and how you'll interact with your audience.

Enhancing your online reputation is essential in todays transparent culture. Here are 3 easy things you can do to make sure your company holds its head up high and shines.

1. Thank you

Manners cost nothing and a simple 'thank you' can be a very powerful tool.

When a follower retweets you, leaves a comment on your blog or sends a referral to you, thank them. It doesn't take a lot of effort and shows that you are listening and that you care about your customers. And in the eyes of your customers, that translates into the image of a company they want to do business with.

But you don't just have to keep an eye on your social media platforms. There are many other ways you can be talked about online so it's important to monitor the internet to find out what's being said. There are a number of tools out there such as Google Alerts which will email Google results based on your query or topic:

Using these tools will help you keep track of what people are saying about you online so you can see how your brand is perceived and, as a customer service tool, enables you to solve issues quickly before they get out of hand.

2. Blogging

Loads of people blog so that should tell you its a valuable tool to use within your business.

Not only does it allow you to own more of the web, it also is a great way to add value to your customer relationships because you can offer them tips and advice that will make their lives easier. Plus it will help position you as an expert in your field which is always good.

But the trick is to ensure you write stuff your readers want to learn about. If you are a building firm and blog about holidays, you're not going to be adding value. But if you wrote about important issues in your trade, design ideas etc., you would create a connection with your readers and inspire them to make the most of their homes.

Take this blog for example, as an online marketing manager I not only write about marketing but also general marketing issues, social media, seo etc., which are all topics business owners find useful. Therefore not only do I get traffic to my website, the people that come also find the experience useful.

3. Focus on benefits

Whenever you write about your products or services, always focus on your customer; why they will benefit from it. By writing for them you are showing that you understand what's important to them and want to help them achieve that.

Showing that kind of connection will identify you as a company that cares about its customers and not just its profits. And let's face it, you tend to buy from people you like and trust. So if you come across as arrogant people aren't going to buy from you.

When marketing your business it's all too easy to get wrapped up in it and lose sight of what's really important – your customers.

Make sure they are at the forefront of everything you do because without them you don't have a business.

Interact with them, thank them and go out of your way to make sure they are happy. Use social media to your advantage.

The importance of website loading times

2011-08-02T07:07:00.001+02:00

You always hear webmasters talking about how fast their site is and how they can speed it up even more. But why is that so important?
Why Speed Matters
If you've ever visited a website that takes forever to load, you know the answer to this. Visitors leave before you've even had a chance to convince them you have what they're looking for. Google has taken this one step further by including it in their list of ranking factors.

So, how fast a page loads does really sort of matter. Not that 1/100ths of a second will make that big of a deal, but if you can improve your load time and your code, there's no reason not to spend some time on it.

Tricks for Speeding Up Load Times

You can do tons of little things to speed up a page's load time:

Caching -- Plugins and tools such as WP Super Cache turn PHP into quick HTML, to ease the burden of heavy files and display pages faster. It's effortless and only takes a few seconds to set up.

CSS Sprites -- If you're a little more familiar with code, or have someone available to help tweak your code, you can consider using CSS sprites. Basically, this trick combines all of your graphics into one file and positions them correctly using CSS. You can find out more about CSS sprites on Spiced2.

JavaScript -- While pretty, JavaScript can eat a lot of resources and require a lot of time to load. By eliminating as much of it as you can, and minimizing the scripts on the page, you can quickly cut down load times. Also, because CSS can load at the same time as the rest of your site, move your JavaScript files after your CSS files. Rusty Brick also suggests delaying the loading of resources until after the visitor mouses over them. You can find out more at BetterExplained and JavaScript Guides Advanced.

Redirects -- While often necessary, redirects can really inflate page load times. Save yourself and the visitors the time by eliminating them where possible. As an added benefit, you'll also find you can deter people from linking to the wrong URL.

Images and Videos -- These things can eat up a lot of resources too. Get rid of any that aren't necessary (If your site is slow, a ton of ads in the sidebar is often the culprit). Then, compress and shrink them to the right size.

Analytics Programs -- While extremely helpful and useful, analytics can take a long time to load up. Save yourself some headaches by eliminating the code for any analytics programs you're not using. You also may want to switch to an asynchronous tracking code to speed things up.

Hardcode -- While all the gidgets, widgets, and doodads can be really nice, they can also require a fair bit of time to load. By hardcoding things like the header, footer, and sidebars, you can eliminate this time by causing it to load with the rest of your site.

Databases -- Just like trying to find something in a messy room, a messy database takes a lot of extra time to use. Clean it up, fix it, and optimize it regularly. You'll find plugins that do this, as well as an option to do this in phpMyAdmin.

Hosting -- If your host is slow, optimizing your website isn't going to help you any. And chances are if you went cheap on your hosting, it's slow. You may even consider setting up and using a proxy server to act as a go between your host server and your site visitors.

For a FREE SEO scan of you website, including speed test, contact Scream Media today on 021 559 0800 or sue@scream-media.co.za

The importance of recruiting the right person

2011-08-01T09:46:00.000+02:00

The direct and indirect costs associated with hiring the wrong employee is seldom calculated, yet severely felt by organisations, says Jenny Venter, an Organisational Development Specialist at Softline VIP, part of the Sage Group plc. “A growing trend in the industry sees both large organisations and SME’s, placing proper job profiles and performance practices in place in an effort to attract the correct candidate in addition to retaining and developing the talent once the person is employed,” says Venter.

Recruitment practices are influenced by the supply and demand of the labour market, economic conditions, competitor practices and technology. It is a dynamic process that differs from industry to industry. This has never been more relevant then in the space which Scream Media occupies

The urgency to recruit more cost effectively and more accurately measure the output of employees after appointment can, in part, be attributed to the economic downturn. “Although South Africa was somewhat shielded from the global economic crisis, the SA National Treasury reported that near to a million jobs were lost as a result of the economic downturn. Despite the over-supply of applicants in the job market, talent remains limited and many industries still experience skills shortages,” explains Venter.

A survival syndrome has however become evident amongst the labour workforce. “Most employees are less likely to job hop and many retrenched employees are willing to accept positions where they earn less than in their previous position. Due to a need for security and a decrease in vacancies, employees are willing to put up with more frustration depending on the scarcity of their skills. Organisations should however still endeavour to be an employer of choice and actively engage employees, or they may find their top talent exiting as job recovery starts to set in,” Venter warns.

Another trend that is prevailing in the Recruitment industry is the increasing number of organisations that have taken their recruitment function in-house. “The majority of recruitment policies adopted by organisations state that they must first recruit using internal resources. This does not only refer to sourcing talented employees within the organisation, but also extends to using formal and informal professional networks, employee referral programs and social media such as Facebook to source skilled employees. Some larger organisations are headhunting recruitment consultants from agencies that allowed them to secure specialised in-house recruitment expertise,” says Venter.

HR Information Systems have also become increasingly sophisticated, says Venter. “It enables recruiters to process large amounts of applications by using HR technology to screen candidates that do not comply with the minimum job requirements. It also manages the different phases during the recruitment process and provides valuable recruitment metrics.”

Does that spell doom for the formal recruitment industry? “External recruitment services are still utilised, but we do find that more and more organisations are using this avenue as a last resort. For this reason many recruitment agencies have begun to diversify their service offerings to include other HR Services. External recruitment agencies that specialise in sourcing scarce skills, especially in the finance, engineering and building and construction industry still remain popular,” concludes Venter. - Curtsey of Gauteng Business News

Scream Media is currently looking for an intern to join our marketing department, contact us on 021 559 0800 for more details.

Social Media and SEO

2011-07-12T04:59:00.000+02:00

SEO experts have spent the last decade preaching a gospel of optimized page-level elements and inbound links. Those things are still important today,but getting real SEO results these days requires not only a technically optimized website and relevant inbound links but also a strong, vibrant Web presence that supports your overall brand. Which is where social media comes in.

Promote your content at sites like Facebook and Twitter. Search engines use shares and tweets as a factor when ranking content—so be sure to publish your most recent how-to articles and blog posts where readers can express their approval.
Interact with your fans and followers. You can't just dump content in social networks and expect it to go anywhere. If you don't have many engaged followers on these social media sites,there won't be anyone to help promote your content via shares and re-tweets.
He also suggests driving engagement with tactics like these:
Use keyword research to drive content development. The keywords that visitors use to find your site provide a good indication of the content they want to read. "Look for areas of high search volume, and develop content around those subjects,"
Use historical keyword data to exploit seasonal trends. For example a client's traffic spiked on the term "motorcycle safety" in May. After discovering May was Motorcycle Safety Awareness Month, we prepared content ahead of time so it would rank well during that period.

The Po!nt: Socialize to optimize. Social media matters to search engines—and that means it matters to you.

Improve your sales online with SEO

2011-06-15T03:42:00.000+02:00

Search engine optimisation is something that a lot of small, medium and large businesses will already be familiar with. The idea behind the discipline is to tailor business marketing strategies to the online world and this is a positive move for a number of different reasons.

Clearly there must be some clear motivation for the worldwide increase in internet marketing. The simplest explanation for the rise is that businesses are working hard to keep in step with the attitudes and behaviour of their customers. The internet has become more and more of a domestic resource in the last few years and thanks to social media, email and internet search, the general public now has a plethora of reasons to get online.

Businesses that ignore these trends are likely to miss out on a huge amount of potential traffic. However, it is important to note that having an online presence is not all it takes in order to profit from public fondness for the internet.

Without an effective search engine optimisation strategy, businesses often find that they don’t get the results they expect from their websites. This is particularly the case for enterprises that are just starting out, but it is also relevant for established businesses, because other companies that are especially adept at SEO have every chance of getting ahead of the competition.

The clear business value of using an SEO company is they constantly keep a track on the trends and changes in the search market to help maximise ROI. An example of the scale of these changes known as the “the Google Dance” can be seen by Google announcing it plans to make around 500 tweaks to the algorithm that it uses to rank web sites in 2011. Some of these may be small with little affect but others can dramatically change your web sites rankings.

It is possible to put a certain level of SEO into practice without professional help, but if you want to muscle in on the major players in your area, then it makes sense to involve SEO experts in your campaign. Professionals can lend their own expertise to your company website in order to snare more traffic and secure greater prominence on globally recognised search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo!.
Obtaining a higher ranking from these search facilities is an excellent way of making sure you reach a wider audience – especially in the mobile age where prospective customers have uninterrupted access to the internet.

Guaranted Google Rankings

2011-06-14T03:52:00.000+02:00

Many SEO companies entice new potential clients with the allure of guaranteed Google rankings. This type of guarantee seems attractive to the client because it appears to decrease the client’s risk. However, we believe guaranteed rankings are actually a very risky bet

3 reasons why guaranteed SEO services are a red flag:

1) Worthless Rankings
Most of the time when an SEO company guarantees rankings, they’ll rank the client’s website for random keywords nobody is searching with any frequency. That means there’s no real competition for the rankings, so it’s pretty easy to gain exposure. But the reality is that, because very few people are searching these keywords, these types of rankings are virtually worthless for the client
The "worthless rankings" scheme is the most common SEO scam. The unsuspecting business owner is proud to have gained some rankings in Google, but isn’t attracting any new customers as a result. Instead, the client is only lining the pockets of the SEO company.

2) Promises They Can’t Keep
It’s unethical for SEO companies to promise that they can rank a particular website #1 in Google.
He explains, At the end of the day, SEO firms don’t decide – Google decides who is going to be on top. Of course at Scream Media we’re usually able to secure very profitable rankings for our clients. But we can’t predict or guarantee that Google will rank our client’s website on top

In fact in our experience, no serious SEO professional would guarantee rankings. "If you’re speaking with a SEO consultant who is offering guaranteed rankings, there’s a good chance that person doesn’t really understand how search engine optimization works. The fact is that there are no guarantees when it comes to Google’s current or future search engine ranking algorithms"

3) A Sign of Desperation
The third reason clients should avoid "guaranteed SEO" is because this offer may be a sign of desperation on the part of the SEO company.
"Whenever we see an SEO company offering ’guaranteed rankings,’ we assume it’s because they’re simply desperate to take on new clients. I imagine they’re doing whatever it takes to sign up a new client – and that would be a big red flag for me, if I were a prospective client"

Are All SEO Guarantees A Bad Idea?
There are certain guarantees an SEO company can make to its clients without being deceptive or creating conflicts of interest.

Scream Media provides the following guarantees to its SEO clients.

1. Timely. "We’ll get the work done on time and according to the specifications in our proposal"
2. Transparent. "We’ll be up-front and transparent with you about what we’re doing to help improve your website’s ranking in the search engines"
3. Accountable. "We’ll provide detailed reporting to show you what progress we’re making and to keep us accountable"
4. Reachable. "We’ll make ourselves personally available for a conference call every month to discuss your SEO campaign and answer any questions you have"

"We believe this approach to ‘guaranteed SEO’ is professional, ethical, and much more effective for reducing risk for the client guaranteeing specific search engine rankings"

Twitter versus Facebook

2011-06-03T13:12:00.000+02:00

Twitter Aggressively Expands Strategy, Should Facebook Be Worried?

Let me preface this by saying that in the end, this is not just about Facebook and Twitter. Both companies provide services and features that overlap with plenty of other players out there - companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, and others. We tend to think about Facebook and Twitter, however, as the frontrunners when it comes to social networking.

Can Twitter give Facebook a run for its money? Tell us what you think.

It would appear that Twitter is getting more serious about competing with Facebook. Obviously there has been a lot of overlap between the two social networks (though neither actually likes to be called "social network"), but Twitter is getting a lot more aggressive in its strategy.

Facebook has certainly become a lot more Twitter-like over the years, particularly with its news feed feature, but Twitter has done little to become more Facebook-like. However, this week alone, Twitter has launched the new "follow" button which can already be seen right alongside the Facebook "like" button on many sites. It has also announced a new photo upload feature and search revamp to make results more relevant - both things Facebook offers.

There are way more people using Facebook than Twitter, but Twitter use is growing. A new report from Pew Internet finds that 13% of adult Internet users have used Twitter (up from 8% in November 2010), and that Twitter use is spreading to a wider range of ages. Those between the ages of 25 and 44 have experienced notable adoption growth since late 2010, though the younger the generation, it appears, the greater the adoption.
Facebook and Twitter both serve as online IDs, providing log-in integration on numerous web properties, and ID is really what it's all about. Google wants to be the ID too, and former CEO Eric Schmidt has been talking about the company's shortcomings in this department this week.

Watch to see how the online ID and mobile payments elements of our lives merge in the future (an area where Google is making bold moves with Google Wallet). This is another potential area where Facebook and Twitter could clash down the line (again, putting aside the rest of the players for a minute). Facebook already has its Facebook Credits. But Twitter for payments? Well, there's already TwitPay (which Eric Schmidt has reportedly invested in). And let's not forget that the recently returned co-founder Jack Dorsey does also run Square (which recently unveiled a very interesting way of paying with its card case). Things are moving much quicker and more aggressively at Twitter since his return. They've already got the ID part. It doesn't sound out of the realm of possibility for Twitter to get into payments does it?

Facebook wants to be considered more of a journalist tool and resource for news in general. It certainly can be both, but the mainstream news media is sure all over Twitter (and Twitter is all over the mainstream media). Twitter, and its more public nature simply seems to attract more of the breaking news - not only from actual journalists, but from citizens. This is nothing new, but it's one area where Twitter has an edge over Facebook.

Twitter is also making more moves in the monetization area. In fact, just this week, the company acquired two thirds of the AdGrok team to add to its revenue engineering team. Ironically, the other third went to Facebook.

Alt Tag Those Images...

2011-05-11T11:23:00.001+02:00

Ever wonder how much meaningful traffic or links could come your way if you search-optimized your images? The answer might be, More than you'd expect.

Thanks to Google's universal search results, images can help you show up on the first page—or, in some cases, even at the top—of results lists. In the process, you can increase click-throughs, ad views, and AdSense impressions. Best of all, optimizing images could help you complete more leads.

Here are five ways to get your images to rank like a star:

Filenames. Use "jpg" or "gif" files, and include keywords in the image file names.

ALT Text. Use ALT Text for its intended purpose; but wherever appropriate, also incorporate keywords as signals for the search engines.

Headings and Bold Text. Optimize important images by using boldface or a heading tag with your targeted keyword, in the text immediately preceding the image.

Image Captions. When possible, place the search term at the front of the caption.

Image Size. For best results, use images that are larger than 100 x 100 and smaller than 1200 x 1200. Linking to a larger picture with thumbnails can also be helpful.

The Po!nt: Don't overlook image optimization. By applying a few SEO tactics, you can actually make a picture worth a thousand words!

XML Sitemaps

2011-05-03T18:43:00.000+02:00

A sitemap (or site map) is a tool to help search engines crawl and index pages on a website more effectively. That can mean search engines will index more of the pages on your site, more quickly than without a sitemap. That in turn makes it easier for people to find your website.

Google and other search engines will spend only a limited amount of time crawling your site. A complete XML (Extensible Markup Language) sitemap can direct search engines to your most important pages, increasing the likelihood that these pages will be indexed and then discovered by the people you want to attract. This is called "crawl efficiency," and an XML sitemap can improve yours.
Most websites need only a simple HTML sitemap, which has the benefit of helping people, as well as search engines, find individual web pages. If a site is large or complex, or if you want to add more information to a web page listing, Google recommends having both an HTML sitemap and an XML sitemap following the sitemap protocol that major search engines adhere to.

Google Places - Free Ads if done right!

2011-04-28T19:29:00.001+02:00

Google Places - Every business should take the opportunity to register for this free advert. But like every search based service offered on the internet, there are certain factors that decide how each of the local listings rank. In short, you can optimise your Google Places entry to maximise its impact.

There are a lot of people talking about just which of these factors have the most impact? What we have decided to do is to create a simple set of tips so that people can get the biggest bang-for-their-buck without diving into the technicalities.

One point to keep in mind is that you don’t actually need a website to rank in local listings – some industry watchers seem to be of the opinion that site-based changes have only limited effect on local listings. Though making changes to your site to increase its relevance to your operating area is a positive move irrespective of its eventual effect on local listings.

Some of you may be thinking: “I’m not sure all of these techniques apply to me”, well you know your business better than anyone. I would just suggest that you do as much as you can!

So let’s dive in…

Age Of Listing

OK, it may seem strange to start with something that you can’t actually optimise, but think of it as something to spur you into action if you don’t currently have a Google Places listing. It seems the longer the listing has been in place the more weight it carries. So register your Places listing today!

Claimed Listing

So what is a claimed listing? A claimed listing are listings that have been verified by the company themselves (which can be done by phone / SMS / mail). Greater weight is placed on listings that have been authenticated, so be sure to claim your listing.

Citations

Citations are basically references to your company being located in a particular area. These can be achieved by submitting your site to directories (especially local ones) and by setting your location to the specified area.

Distance to Centroid

This is the distance of your address to what Google sees as the centre of the specified location: e.g. if someone searches for ‘London Bakery’ and your address is in outer London then this will hurt your rankings. Obviously this a little difficult to optimise. Some people have talked about setting up a post box in a central location, however I’m a bit wary of this. Especially as…

Match your Contact page address with Google Places address

Simply keep your address standard across where you use it. This strengthens your claim to be located in that area.

Include References to Region in Page Title + Description

This is a fairly easy on-page change that anyone can make to their site, just include references to your particular location in the meta title and meta description tags for the pages on your site. I know that sometimes it feels like there is a lot of information to pack into these restricted spaces, but with some clever writing it is almost always possible. This is one site-based change I would recommend performing.

Photos

Yes, actually getting some decent pictures taken of your business. If you aren’t a shop location then still get some decent pictures of the van or transport you use. This not only adds more weight to your Places listing but serves to reassure potential customers that you are a legitimate business.

Videos

Similar to Photos, upload a video to YouTube to advertise your business. Not sure what your video should be of? It can be anything, an interview with yourself or others in the company, shots of people working, maybe even a little humour if applicable.

Coupons

Your Google Places listing has the facility to offer coupons for prospective customers to redeem at your store. This is good for attracting customers but there seems to be a spread of opinion whether this actually increases the strength of your Places Listing.

Local Phone Number

This may seem a little obscure, but if you are offering a localised service then using a phone number with a local area code can be an advantage. After all, a rival with a 0800 number could be anywhere, a local number ties you to that area.

HCard

HCards are basically a way of including contact information in existing files such as HTML pages. Google has been looking at this data for a while now: for example they made reference to these ‘microformats’ when they introduced their Rich Snippets for some search results.

Customer Reviews

Positive customer reviews are your friend here, and although generating these is not always the easiest thing in the world. Their existence can not only help your word-of-mouth traffic and Google Places listing but can even help with your online advertising. Finding ways to incentivise happy customers to write online reviews is definitely time well spent.

Negative Google Places Ranking Factors

Using Keywords Name + Description

I’ve mentioned this negative factor as it seems like something of a contentious issue. For many it’s a great way to boost the relevance of your listing for a particular keyphrase, for others it’s a good way to get your listing penalised.

Some suggest just adding words to the business title if they seem applicable – e.g. ‘Mc Millans’ might enter ‘Mc Millans Bakery’ – but Google’s guidelines specifically rule this tactic out.

“Do not attempt to manipulate search results by adding extraneous keywords or a description of your business into the business name.”

This is not a complete list of factors but an amalgam of the cacophony of opinions available on the web. Keep an eye on the Google Places guidelines to make sure you aren’t being pulled astray, but know that time spent making the most of your Places listing is a great free way to boost your Google Profile.

Too much info? Contact Scream Media today and let us do the hard work.

Google's new +1 Button and how it will effect SEO

2011-04-27T08:58:00.001+02:00

Do people care about search like they care about friends?

Last month Google unveiled its new +1 button, which the company came right out and said would contribute as a ranking signal for its search engine. While it has yet to roll out to everyone (you can opt-in for it), the button has the potential to either be a huge win for Google (and search in general) or a huge bust.

There are a lot of questions surrounding the button, and the impact it will actually have.

Do you think the Google +1 Button will succeed or will it be another flop?

1. Will publishers adopt the button?

One of the reasons Facebook's "like" button is so popular is because publishers all over the web post it on all of their content. It helps drive engagement among readers, and potential traffic as users share that content with their friends.

Google already offers the Buzz button, and it does appear on many content sites. It stands to reason that any site currently using the Buzz button will adopt the +1 button, as it should do essentially the same thing, while also contributing to search rankings. Why not use it? that leads us to the second question, but before we get to that, it's also worth noting that the Buzz button is not nearly as omnipresent as the Facebook Like button. Again, the search implications may still encourage sites like these to adopt the +1 button.

The +1 button is shorthand for "this is pretty cool" or "you should check this out."
Click +1 to publicly give something your stamp of approval. Your +1's can help friends, contacts, and others on the web find the best stuff when they search.

Tiny URLs - are they killing your SEO?

2011-04-23T10:31:00.001+02:00

With Google looking more at social media these days, in terms of ranking signals, a lot of webmasters continue to wonder how Google treats URL-shorteners in terms of SEO.
Which URL-shorteners do you use to promote your content? Let us know.
This isn’t completely new information, but it still seems to be a topic that continues to come up fairly regularly. Google’s Matt Cutts addressed the issue in a video posted to Google’s Webmaster Help YouTube channel.
“Custom URL shorteners are essentially just like any other redirects,” he explains. “If we try to crawl a page, and we see a 301 or permanent redirect, which pretty much all well-behaved URL shorteners (like bit.ly or goo.gl) will do, if we see that 301 then that will pass PageRank to the final destination.”
“So in general, there really shouldn’t be any harm to using custom URL shorteners in your SEO,” he continues. “The PageRank will flow through. The anchor text will flow through, and so I wouldn’t necessarily worry about that at all.”
“Now, just to let you know, if you look at, for example, Twitter’s web pages, many of those links have a nofollow link,” he adds. “So those links that are on the webpage, may not necessarily flow PageRank, but we might be able to find out about those links through some other way – maybe a data feed or something like that. But just URL shorteners, as far as how they relate to SEO, are not necessarily a problem at all.”
When we spoke with Gil Reich of Answers.com at SMX Advanced last summer, he suggested using shorteners that let you get keywords in the URLs.

Googles "Kung Fu" Panda puts the squeeze on Microsoft

2011-04-16T08:35:00.000+02:00

However, the update benefited many other media sites including Tech Radar rival Tech Crunch, owned by AOL, which saw visibility increase by 41%. Mirror.co.uk, ITV.com and Metro.co.uk all saw visibility boosted by about 20%.

The search visibility data was compiled by Berlin-based search analytics company Search Metrics that looked at how sites’ visibility fared before and after Google’s Panda update against popular keywords.

SearchMetrics CTO Marcus Tober says the brands affected by the Panda update can still turnaround their search visibility.

He says: “One of the important things to remember is that you must make your site useful to your visitors first - by putting information up there that is truly valuable and different.”

Tober adds that it is likely Google will fine tune its algorithm update in the coming weeks so that some sites will not take such a “painful hit”.

Top 20 ’losers’ from Google’s Panda UK update (Source: Search Metrics)

Domain   New visbility   Old visibility   Change   %

moneypage.com       25   39231   -39206   -99.94
pricedash.com       127   55141   -55014   -99.77
njobs.org.uk       92   30693   -30601   -99.7
voucherstar.co.uk   126   38748   -38622   -99.67
osoyou.com       96   26668   -26572   -99.64
zath.co.uk       161   39768   -39607   -99.6
shoppingvouchers.co.uk   134   30056   -29922   -99.55
discountshoppinguk.co.uk491   66270   -65779   -99.26
just-food.com       293   39282   -38989   -99.25
webdevelopersnotes.com   583   54948   -54365   -98.94
netvouchercodes.co.uk   1935   152376   -150441   -98.73
pocket-lint.com   2128   165956   -163828   -98.72
killerstartups.com   869   52717   -51848   -98.35
wakoopa.com   1334   71525   -70191   -98.13
aceshowbiz.com   907   46188   -45281   -98.04
everydaysale.co.uk   3822   175800   -171978   -97.83
hotfrog.co.uk   1124   44863   -43739   -97.49
phonesreview.co.uk   864   33418   -32554   -97.41
electricpig.co.uk   1678   60882   -59204   -97.24
kgbanswers.co.uk   1009   31427   -30418   -96.79

Top 20 Winners from Google’s ’Panda’ UK update (Source: Search Metrics)
Domain   New visibility    Old visibility    Change   %

ebay.co.uk       1469346   1034302   435044   42.1
techcrunch.com       174797   124220   50577   40.7
national-lottery.co.uk   292053   209357   82696   39.5
econsultancy.com   186175   135804   50371   37.1
thisismoney.co.uk   234717   180377   54340   30.1
siteslike.com       175869   140279   35590   25.4
mirror.co.uk       275876   220937   54939   24.9
blogspot.com       1006719   819832   186887   22.8
mashable.com       295137   240714   54423   22.6
itv.com           345470   282300   63170   22.4
metro.co.uk       181507   149271   32236   21.6
independent.co.uk   471896   388280   83616   21.5
mozilla.org       146282   122471   23811   19.4
youtube.com       8856696   7446902   1409794   18.9
vimeo.com       168979   142182   26797   18.9
wordpress.com       331836   279738   52098   18.6
laterooms.com       150533   127297   23236   18.3
dailymotion.com       577590   490328   87262   17.8
soundcloud.com       150998   128569   22429   17.5

Quick fix for SEO

2011-04-08T14:07:00.000+02:00

Just as fixing technical issues at your website is an important part of search engine optimization, so, too is optimizing your site's overall structure.

Site structure helps search engines understand your site's "topic" and more easily find and index relevant content. "By creating a good structure, you can use the content you've written that has attracted links from others, and ... spread some of that 'linkjuice' to the other pages on your site,"

Visualize the overall map. Using tools like Visio or Excel, map all the pages and sections in your site as a tree. Make your site structure look like a reasonably balanced pyramid, with 2-7 main sections, No section should be more than twice as large as any other section.

Name your sections with targeted keywords. Use Google Trends, the Google AdWords Keyword tool, and Microsoft's Keyword Group Detection to make sure your section names include the keywords for which people are most likely searching.

Connect the sections of your site. Increase your site's rank-ability by building a fluid internal link structure. Keep links between pages relevant to each page.

Create URLs from your new site structure. Each URL should describe the content of that page, yet it should be as short as possible. Always include the most important keywords in your URLs.
Well-defined categories, balanced content development, internal links between relevant pages, and URLs that make sense for your site are the secrets to search-optimized site structure

Getting the right Website Design

2011-04-06T18:30:00.000+02:00

Keeping clients beats acquiring new ones, that’s what many companies believe in. There’s nothing wrong with enlarging your market and extending to new clients, but because companies depend on the patronage of their customers, they make it a point not to lose any of them. In online business, this is also correct. Getting new visitors to your website is good; it means they have acknowledged that you exist. However, you will also keep on dropping them if you don’t have anything absorbing to offer them. Make your website design fascinating enough to get them to come back.

Although visual design has a huge role in the web industry, an effective website design is much more than stunning pictures and appealing hues. There must be substance as well. Give your site with fitting content and update it on a regular basis. So if there’s a web surfer who stumbled upon your site when he’s looking for particular data, he will keep on repaying to you if there’s something different you can provide on your website.
Keep your website design current and absorbing to make one-time surfers frequent clients. Even if you are selling the same old service, keep the pictures up to date, give more details, and present new information on how they can aid readers.
Maintaining your website regularly can also help remove obsolete texts and dead links, which frustrate visitors and discourage them from even trying to browse the rest of your web pages anymore. Clean those out by altering the content and design of your website frequently.
Still, website design does little effect to the traffic of your website if it isn’t supported with a good SEO or Search Engine Optimization. Simply adding fresh content and layout won’t rank high on search engines, like Google and Yahoo. So before you can have visitors come back again and again to your site, you have to stay visible on the first pages of search engines to let them know that they can surf your website.
In today’s really aggressive online market, merely setting up a site doesn’t help you get customers. The keys to staying on top are continuous website design upkeep and great SEO.

SEO basics

2011-03-09T15:47:00.000+02:00

Only 10 percent people go to page two of a search engine,Moreover, it is estimated that while 43 percent click on the top three links, only 16 percent go further, making it imperative for a company to get in the top three on page one. That’s where SEO (Search Engine Optimization) comes to play.

SEO is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines. With Google commanding nearly 2/3 of all Internet searches – SEO trends are determined mostly by what works or not for Google. Search engine optimization is useless if you don't know what you're trying to optimize: in this article we share with you the do’s and don’ts of SEO.

1. Choose the right keywords
Keywords are critical in turning searches into leads; therefore it’s crucial to accurately select them. Many companies futilely endeavor to get a top placement by using broad keywords. Not only does this fail in generating traffic given that users rarely search for broad terms but it also lowers SERP (Search Engine Result Page) ranking. Google calculates the number of times users didn’t choose a listing and the number of times they returned to the search results to choose a different website.

Various keyword-research tools help in the selecting the best terms for SEO. The free Google AdWords Keyword Tool and SEO Book Keyword Suggestion help you gauge how frequently keywords are searched and how competitive a keyword is. Besides employing organic or free techniques, many companies invest resources to find the best keywords. Sponsored Ads and paying for high end design and usability are common SEO practices.

2. Original website content
Distribution of keywords on a page is as important as their selection. When the entire context of a page is about a particular subject, chances at getting noticed by search engines increases. Therefore, optimizing each page for a particular keyword (and its synonyms) increases the relevance of a page.
Another SEO tip is using keywords in the page's HTML title tag. Search engines emphasize on title tags when determining a page's relevancy to a query. Ideally, the title tag and the Meta description should be 65 and 250 characters respectively, including spaces and punctuation.

A well-written, unique and correctly spelled content matters most in SEO. Although Google auto-corrects search words, typos can translate into huge losses in ecommerce sites like eBay where no one bids for ‘Tiffanny’ bracelets. According to Tanuj Nigam, Co-Founder and Director of Bindaas Bargain.com, India’s first daily deal e-shop, “Keywords need to be free of spelling errors, except in cases where the incorrect form of a words is more popular than its standard version.

For example, Genealogy, Tattoo and Britney Spears are largely misspelled as Geneology, Tatoo and Britany Spears. In such cases, it’s wiser to include both the spellings as keywords.

3. Search engine friendly website with linkable content
An easily navigable website allows Google to index all its pages thereby improving its search results. Implementing a valid HTML code and a sitemap using static text links (hyperlinks) facilitate crawling. So does minimizing the file size of all attachments, pictures, and videos.

Another aspect of SEO is linkable content. These include external (within different websites) and internal (from one page to another within a website) links. Both are highly valued by Google and improve a site’s search result ranking. Internal links have anchor text which should accurately reflect the content of the target page. Instead of words like ‘Hint’ or ‘Click Here’; two to three keywords should be used as link text.
Don’ts: Apart from the must-do’s, a lot in SEO is dependent upon what not to do. With BMW Germany being spammed by Google for implementing Black Hat techniques, SEO experts are increasingly conscious of avoiding any SEO trick that Google considers unethical or illegal.

• Stuffing Keywords: An effective usage of keywords enable search engines to discover your site but an overuse can cause them to ignore you.
• Unnatural Link Building: - Link Farms
One of the Black Hat techniques is when websites try to get a large number of back links using various spam techniques. Once caught, Google blacklists such sites, banning them from its search results.
• Plagiarism: Duplicate content is a huge challenge for SEO. Often search engines fail to discriminate between original and copied versions. This causes problems with Supplemental Results in Google.
• Avoid Frames: These cause website accessibility and usability problems and make a site uncrawlable.
As countless websites inundate the internet, SEO helps companies connect with their target audience. As search engine algorithms become more complex, the race for top ranks is heating up. Those who stay committed to the process are the ones who will stay ahead in the quest to be number one.

Paid links and other forms of web spam

2011-02-23T09:44:00.000+02:00

Last week, J. C. Penney was penalized by Google because they used paid links to advertise their website. This week, Forbes.com has been penalized because they sell links. Is your website in danger? Which search engine optimization methods are safe to use?

Google's most recent activities focused on paid links spam. However, that's not the only form of spam that will get you in trouble with Google. Earlier this year, Google announced that they are going to fight web spam stronger than before in 2011.

In addition to paid links, Google considers the following spam:

made for AdSense websites that consist of scraped content
cloaking and false redirects (Google gets other pages than real web surfers)
keyword stuffing and pages loaded with irrelevant words
hidden text or hidden links
misspellings of well-known websites
fully automated, unrelated and centralized link farms
other methods that try to trick search engines

Scream Media

Facebook Pay Per Click - Set up tips...

2011-02-16T13:17:00.000+02:00

Getting started advertising on Facebook
Set up a simple Facebook ad to promote it. Low campaign budget is recommended $10 – 20 per day and a low cost per click. Put the click budget way lower than what Facebook recommend (ignore the warning that the bid is too low). If you do not get any clicks then bump up the clicks to the next bracket.

CPC versus CPM?
Initially CPC (cost per click) is better to test the campaign and then roll out to CPM (cost per thousand impressions) as you know your metrics.

High CTR
The goal is to get at least .30 CTR (click through rate). Whilst the average CTR is .03 Jen thinks a high CTR will lead to success for distribution. Use images every time. Eye contact is important.

Use pictures
Get a picture of a happy smiling women (from the waist up) who is looking you in the eye. If that happy smiling is doing something that relates to the product that can be great for CTR. Amateur photos showing the thing that you are selling work really well.

Add text to images
Get photoshop, Gimp or snagit to add text to the photo. You can put text in images to extend the headline. This really helps when you advertise a fan page. Use a matching font to the headline to give it the appearance of being a longer headline.

Drive Traffic internally a fan Page or externally?
If you have a custom fan page you can send them there. If the fan page is bland or auto-posted then you should send traffic offsite. Engage people or lose them. If you are going to send them to a website you can squeeze emails and you can also do that on Facebook now.

Targeting
Google and Facebook are very different. Before you create your ad you should have a great list of all you competitors and targeted people who your customer will be following. Pay particular attention to the demographics of your market. Ads should target your ideal client is massive detail according to country, state, gender, marital status, school, suburb, fans and job. The insights section of your fan page will tell you who is visiting.

Ninja Targeting Secret
You can bid on competitors names as an interest (if they are there) in the like section and it will show when people visit there. This is seriously like a stalker ad with social proof mice in. Under Jens guidance I tested this for my latest SilverCircle mastermind round and my ad followed people who were interested in me for about 35,000 impressions.

Managing other peoples accounts
We at Scream Media manage other peoples accounts because it is much easier for them than setting up Facebook aid advertising from scratch. Putting through many thousands of dollar a day takes a risk tolerance and watchful eye. Some clients use a paid service on a start stop basis so that the market can ramp up promotions.

Pausing Ads versus stopping them
Facebook is a fully manually approved ‘self serve’ pay per click engine. You will get different results for the same ad. The ad inventory draws from different ‘buckets’ and this means that you may get good or bad impressions. You have to test it.
Conversion tracking

If the only traffic is Facebook – you can easily see the results you are getting from Facebook. It is ideal to use a service like Tracking 202 to see which group of people are buying from you. Invest the time to setup a proper tracking campaign and you will get the results. We prefer statcounter for this

Time of day tips
The vast majority of traffic for most campaigns is prior to lunch. It seems not every worker is working! Get your campaigns running early in the day for the best results. Remember to test.

Web Design - Cape Town

2011-02-08T15:27:00.000+02:00

Creating a good Web Design is the first aim of every aspirant business person who wants to start an online business and be found on World Wide Web. A professional web design is a vital. It is not about creating a website with mere content and leaving it as a show piece. But rather how effective the website is to produce sales.

While accessing the website on the internet, the opening time of the website as well as the time a users will spend on your website plays a very important role. Therefore, good web designers think about how to attract visitors within a few seconds by effective and impressive display of the home page or landing page of the site.

Internet users check for a good website which consists of relevant information E.G , how- to articles, news items and ease of navigation. Make sure the web design company you choose has a good knowledge of web design principles. Ask to see their portfolio "this should be online" and request a mock up of the design in Jpeg or Gif

Fast Loading: Make sure your website loads fast without wasting time. This will enhance the interest of visitors to further access through your content. First ask yourself how much time will take before I see anything and before you can read any text? What interesting thing you should display first? How long will it take a visitor to understand the main purpose of your site?

Good Graphics Presentation: Having a good graphics format presentation in your site is advisable. Its an important part of a website that a web designer should never neglect when planing the layout of a website design.

Using Video in Social Media

2011-02-07T10:25:00.000+02:00

In the must-have online marketing checklist for your business: you’ve checked off “website,” “search engine optimization,” “email marketing,” and “social media” (hopefully some type of social presence relevant to your audience). So what other online tool can you use to make an impact?
Have about online video?
Once deemed too expensive, and too slow in the pre-broadband era, video is rapidly gaining in popularity as a business tool. In fact, video capability was the fastest-growing website feature for small-business advertisers in 2009, with one in five hosting website video by the end of the year, according to a study released last year by Irvine-based WebVisible.
Video can be used to tell a story, provide product demos, and highlight happy customers. They can be hosted directly on your website, or through numerous video platforms such as YouTube. Another bonus: they are easily shareable. Here are the different types of videos you might consider, depending on your goal:
• Screencasts — Inexpensive and easy to produce, a screencast is a video screen capture that includes audio narration. They are GREAT for online product demos. You can find them everywhere these days, on websites, in social networks, and distributed with digital press releases. Two services worth checking out are Camtasia and Screenflow (Mac only).
• Explantory videos — These videos have also become very popular in the last couple of years, sparked by CommonCraft.com, which used animated paper cutouts to great effect. Many businesses use these graphical videos to explain – in a very simplistic way – an industry problem and how their service is the solution. Check out the front page of DropBox.com, which pretty much just let’s their video do the talking. Beware, however, these videos can be costly, thought very effective. Visit commoncraft.com/network to see a good list of vendors.
• Customer testimonials — It’s always good to get happy customers talking about your brand, and video testimonials are far more effective than written ones. Testimonials in general help prospects feel more comfortable with your product or service. The price, however, can vary depending on the video quality, whether you set up a Flip camera, or hire a professional to shoot from different angles, these testimonials can be integrated into corporate videos, but the price for a polished corporate video is steep.

• Video e-mail — OK, this isn’t for your website per se, but using video e-mail is great for breaking through the clutter of e-mails, Tweets and Facebook postings. I’ve personally used video e-mail to reach prospects who failed to respond to traditional e-mail, but immediately responded to video content. Vendors here include EyeJot.com and TokBox.com.

• Viral videos, branded webisodes and more — There are many different types of video content you can produce and add to your website, or push out on the social web to garner attention. One site, albeit for bigger brands, is PopTent.net, a crowd-sourced video site where a large community of semi-professional videographers compete for your project. Speaking from experience, the results are impressive.
Once you have the good videos, you can distribute, manage and track the results through sites like Viralheat.com, ReelSnap.com, TubeMogul.com, and others.

The web is no longer static — it’s interactive, and video is become an increasingly popular form of content to engage and retain customers. Consider adding it to your digital marketing checklist.

Watch Out Content Farms, Google has your number

2011-02-02T10:06:00.000+02:00

After receiving a lot of crtisism, over the past few months, regarding the quality of its search content Google has finally decided its time to look into this problem and fix it.
Earlier this week Google announced that they realized that the detoriating quality of search content on its search result page were posing a serious threat to the reputation of the company and that they will be taking action againts spammers.

Matt Cutts said in an interview that the spam content on the English result pages are less than half of what it was five years ago but they have noticed a small but significant rise of spam over the past few months. This certainly correlates with the feedback we recently got back from you, our readers.
Here is Matt’s view of the issue:

"Google has been thinking for quite some time about how to deal with content that isn’t obvious spam but is clearly not designed with the best interests of the user in mind. Google needs to be open to ways where we can improve."

Cutts also stated that his team was already on the job and that some changes will be made in the search algorithms to specifically tackle the recent increase in spam results that are showing up on the search result pages.
According to Matt, after the launch of their a new version of Google Caffeine, Google has been indexing a lot more content that include spam and to deal with the spam content they have recently launched a redesigned document-level classifier that makes it harder for on-page spam content to rank highly.

The new classifier is better at detecting spam on individual web pages, e.g., repeated spam words—the sort of phrases you tend to see in junky, automated, self-promoting blog comments.

Apparently, Google has also been developing its hacked site detecting ability and is testing some new changes, including one that penalizes websites for copying the content of others without having original content of its own. Sounds pretty good to me!
Google hasn’t forgotten about content farms either – they are firmly in their sights in 2011. Google has introduced two changes in its search algorithm that will block the low-quality sites from showing up with high rankings on the SERPs.
It would appear that Google isn’t going to let anything stand between it and search quality, even if that means taking down thousands of spammers and content farms in the process.

Online Marketing Budgets set to increase

2011-01-28T13:04:00.000+02:00

With more companies connected to the web than ever before, B2B online marketing budgets are expected to rise yet again during 2011, according to a new survey conducted by BtoB Online.

Overall, 51.9 percent of B2B firms plan to spend more on marketing this year. For the majority of respondents (78.5 percent), online will be their primary focus, with many forecasting a double-digit growth for their marketing expenditures.

"More and more we are going interactive; but for our integrated campaign, kicking off a new company, we are definitely going to use print," said Eduardo Conrado, senior vice president and chief marketing officer of Motorola Solutions, highlighting the importance of multichannel marketing initiatives.

The majority of campaigns will be centered on customer acquisition (69.1 percent), although brand awareness and customer retention are also top goals for many firms.
Search marketing was the leading channel in 2010, with many firms investing heavily in both B2B search engine optimization and paid search strategies. During the first half of the year alone, businesses in the USA spent more than $5 billion on search marketing initiatives, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

Google - Schmidt is out as CEO

2011-01-21T11:33:00.000+02:00

We don't normal report on our blog, we tend to post information.. However this announcement by Google definitely warrants a mention. Google just dropped a bombshell: Eric Schmidt is out as CEO (as announced in the company's earings report)
He will step down from the role starting April 4, and co-founder Larry Page will take charge of Google's day-to-day operations as CEO. Co-founder Sergey Brin will devote his energy to strategic projects like working on new products.

Schmidt will assume the role of Executive Chairman, focusing externally on deals, partnerships, customers and broader business relationships, government outreach and technology thought leadership--all of which are increasingly important given Google's global reach. Internally, he will continue to act as an advisor to Larry and Sergey.

Social Media makes up 22% of time spent online

2011-01-20T11:39:00.000+02:00

The onslaught of new social media sites has fundamentally changed the role of any marketing or communications professional. Every day millions of users are spending significant periods of time on social networks. In 2010, social media use represented 22 percent of the time spent online by users. The impact of social media on business cannot be ignored but how much is too much? For many organizations, hiring a social media specialist isn’t a viable option due to budget constraints or the responsibility for managing the social media programs falls on the shoulders of the communications department. It’s a role often already filled with deadlines and juggling of priorities between internal and external efforts, media relations, content creation, meetings and more.
The bottom line: Don’t chase every shiny object in the marketplace. A quick search on “social networking websites” and a visit to Wikipedia gave me 201 options. Now sure, some of these are very small and specific to a niche but it’s interesting to look back at all the ideas that someone thought were brilliant and revolutionary for their time.
The sad fact is that for every useful site like Caring Bridge or big hit like Facebook, there’s a Bolt or a Google Buzz that came and went or never took off at all. Set goals on what your company needs to achieve and create a set of key questions that you use in reviewing any new tool you want to explore. Think about using those filter questions as a screen to evaluate opportunities in front of you.
The questions will vary but take some time now (after a few more paragraphs at least) to think about and talk with the key stakeholders in your organization about the right questions. Filters should be specific enough to give you real, measurable information that can inform you about the potential success of your investment (time or money) in a social platform.

Does this generate enough direct revenue to offset the staff time required?
Will this expand our opportunities into a new market of interest to us?
Is this tool effective enough to get customers to take a specific action whether its click to buy or visit a store?
What level of speculative time investment are we willing to make?
Could this lead to collaboration or co-promotion opportunities that will benefit the company?
Does this effort align logically with our existing initiatives?

These are of course just samples and there isn’t a single way to do it. Perhaps 20 percent of a full-time employee’s time to execute a program with unknown success is worth it in your model or the opportunity to create an entry to a new market.
Even once you create filters, there are times when you should try new efforts that don’t fit or take a chance. But by slowing down to evaluate the opportunities you at least make sure you’re not adding yet another task to your role without thoughtful purpose and a good chance at success.
How much of your time do you estimate goes into social media on a daily basis? And what has worked for you in balancing the requirements of social with other essential roles? If you are looking to outsource Social Media Marketing, look now further the Scream Media. Contact our marketing team today for a free no obligation quote. 021 5590800 or sue@scream-media.co.za

Cutting Edge Website Design

2011-01-17T16:37:00.000+02:00

More and more people are starting their own online businesses, and the competition within any particular marketplace is getting more and more intense. This is why having the right website design is now such an important part of the success of any online enterprise. Remember that your website is your store window, and just like any good store, the best window dressing will attract the customers in their droves.
Many newbies tend to make the same mistake, and that is to scrimp on the amount of money they spend on their website design. The problem is that there are a number of online businesses that offer cheap or even free website design. But the truth of the matter is that is that these low or no cost websites are very basic. Often they are simply templates that you can personalize in a limited way with choice of colors and font styles, but if you are serious about wanting to run a successful website, and your ambition is to handle lots and lots of traffic, you need a website that is capable of handling that sort of activity.

Finding a good website design company is not hard, and the website that you commission doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. But for a small outlay, you will be investing in your own future and your own online success. You must have the right tools for the job, and quality website design is fundamental to that success.
A good website design company will give you two essential things. The first thing is a website that looks aesthetically pleasing, and the second thing is a website that incorporates cutting edge technology and state-of-the-art knowhow. Let’s examine these two elements a little more closely.
Your website design needs to be aesthetically pleasing because you only get one chance of capturing a visitor’s attention. When traffic first arrives on the chosen landing page of your website, it is vitally important that you capture their immediate attention and interest. You need a visually stunning website that not only grabs and holds their attention, but also leads them further into the website to eventually clinch a sale. Lose them and they are gone forever.
But as well as being visually stunning, your website design must also include cutting edge technology. For example it should have the capability of streaming video, which is superb for great advertising and marketing messaging. It should also include state of the art coding in its links and structure because it is these links that enable search engine spiders to crawl all over website, indexing it for the major search engines which will enhance your website’s search page rankings.
A good website design company will also help you with your content, making sure that it is interesting, relative and informative, because this too will increase your website’s search engine ranking, making it much easier to find for customers seeking out the sort of products and or services that your website promotes.
Finally the right website design company will design your website making sure that it operates at a high conversion rate, meaning that it takes newly arrived traffic and stands a much better chance of converting casually interested visitors into cash paying customers. The best website design companies are not just there for the short ride. It’s not just a case of design a website, then leaving it all up to you to make the best of it on your own. A good website design company will be a permanent partner to you, always being there when you need them to tweak your website in one particular direction, or to insert some new form of technology that keeps your website at the cutting edge of current effective website design.

Social Media

2011-01-16T10:55:00.000+02:00

When discussing social media with business executives, I'm frequently reminded of the fable of the elephant and the blind men. In the story, six blind men, hearing that an elephant has been brought to their village (and having no idea what an elephant is), go to the village square to investigate. One feels the elephant's side and proclaims that an elephant is like a wall. A second, feeling one of the elephant's legs, says it is like a pillar. A third, touching the tusk, describes the animal as being like a solid pipe.
Although each man's description was accurate, each perceived only part of the elephant; none had a perspective of the entire beast.
It's the same with many business executives and their views of social media:

"Social media? Twitter isn't appropriate for our market."
"Our company already has a Facebook page!"
"We don't have time to maintain a blog."
"Several of our people use LinkedIn."

Such statements reflect perceptions of "parts of the beast"—components (tools) of social media. But using one or more of those tools, with no clear objectives for benefiting the company, doesn't constitute a strategy.

Phase I: Observation
"You can observe a lot just by watching." A bit of research and observation up front will make your participation later much more productive and prevent false starts and missteps.
Some of the questions to answer in this phase:

Where are people talking about our company, industry, and competitors? Which social media platforms do they congregate on?
What are they saying? What are the hot topics?
Who's doing the talking? Which voices seem to have the most influence?
What opportunities do we have to respond and participate? What kind of content seems to be most popular?
What questions are people asking that we can answer?

Phase II: Preparation
Every company with more than a handful of employees is already involved in social media—whether those running the company know it or not. That's because nearly half of all South African are now active on at least one social network. And though employees may be using these networks primarily to share pictures of the kids or to plan which clubs to hit next weekend, most will bring up the workplace at some point:

"Our new CEO, John Doe, is an incompetent jerk."
"I sure hope our new product works because we've really skimped on the testing."
"If I owned any stock in this company, I'd dump it now"

Though employees may share positive thoughts about your company with their friends, family, and followers, they may also post comments like those above, leading to bad PR, reduced sales.
One common objection voiced by executives about social media is that it can't be controlled. That's true, but when it comes to what a company's employees are saying, it can, at least, be guided. Developing a social media policy is a crucial first step toward making social media a constructive, rather than dangerous, communication channel. If you would like a copy of our Employee Guidelines drop me a mail on sue@scream-media.co.za
In short your guidelines should include

The company's approach to social media. What are the goals, limits, and rules? A small restaurant will use social media much differently than a heavily regulated financial services company.
Guidelines. What's acceptable and what's not? Don't rely on "common sense." Spell it out.
Consequences and questions. Let employees know what will happen if guidelines are violated, and point them to someone who can answer questions for any "grey area" issues.

Once the decision is made to embrace social media, companies need to establish plans. Based on the research conducted in the Observation phase, the plan should address issues such as these:

What are the objectives?
Who will be involved?
Which social media platforms will be used?
How will results be measured?
What types of content will be produced?
Who will create the content?
How will content be optimized across platforms? (e.g., executive profiles on LinkedIn link to the company blog; blog posts are tweeted and posted to LinkedIn Groups)

Phase III: Participation
With the groundwork laid, monitoring in place, and plans developed and approved, the company can begin "officially" participating in social media—or, more likely, reassessing initiatives already in place, as many firms have already jumped into the social media fray without proper planning.
Participation can take a variety of forms, from simple monitoring of and responding to brand mentions to actively creating thought-leadership, informative or entertaining content, and promoting across social media venues.
For companies that produce content, a blog is often at the center of the effort. More than half of B2C firms and nearly three-quarters of B2B vendors maintain company blogs.

The key to successful social media participation is engagement. Sharing content shouldn't be viewed as broadcasting to the market but rather as seeking to start conversations. The point is to draw in interested parties, key influencers, and ultimately sales prospects by engaging them in discussions and building business relationships.

Phase IV: Integration
Most companies think of social media first in terms of marketing and PR activities, and they begin their social media efforts in those areas. But those at the highest level of social media maturity and integration are using social media for a variety of purposes across the organization.
Just as it would make no sense to provide telephones only for the sales force, or email access only to accounting, there's no need to limit social media interaction to the marketing department.
At this advanced stage, companies may be using social media not only in marketing and PR but also in a variety of other areas, including the following:

Human Resources. HR departments use social media to recruit and prescreen candidates, improving new hire quality while reducing recruitment time and cost.
Customer Service. While no organization should overly rely on social media to resolve customer-service issues, it can shorten the "time to answer" some customer queries and reduce costs. Large enterprises that have incorporated social media into their customer service options include Woolworths (check their Facebook page)
Sales. Social media has changed the buying cycle. Prospects are now much more informed before they even begin a dialogue with sales; they've researched alternatives, developed a short list of vendors, and know what key features they're after. The ability of buyers to do all of this before ever contacting a vendor has increased their expectations of salespeople as well; they expect sales pros to know what their company does and what challenges their industry confronts. Social media is valuable to the sales force not only for prospect research but also for generating leads and building credibility.
Product Development. Whose input could be more valuable to product development efforts than your customers' and prospects'? The Wall Street Journal has described social networks as the new focus groups because of the high value and relatively low cost of use. Because of potential legal issues involved in using someone else's ideas, firms often use public networks for basic research and rely on their own branded online networks, with clear rules spelled out, for more direct suggestions.

I hope this article has sparked you interest in using Social Media to your benefit. If the above all sounds a little too much to handle then consider outsourcing your Social Media. At Scream Media we have over 7 years experience promoting our clients online, contact us today for a free no obligation Social Media health check.

Website Design

2011-01-13T14:13:00.000+02:00

Everybody thinks they’re a designer. Just like everybody thinks they’re a good driver. But there is a big difference between being a good driver and being a race car driver. The same thing can be said for web design; there is a big difference between having somebody who thinks they have good taste lead the design for a website and an actual designer who does it day-in-day-out and considers the user experience just as much as the best mix of colours. Once you have the goals of your website redesign established the best thing you can do to ensure it’s success is by involving the talents of a professional designer with a background in user experience.
There are many graphical designers out there that have made the jump to web design, but when it comes to doing a good job the best web designers look beyond aesthetics and plan for interactivity. I concede that there are other disciplines beyond professional design that are required for a successful website redesign (I.e Search engine optimization, content strategy, programming performance, etc.) but, if something’s not designed well to begin with it won’t get used. It’s that simple.
Appreciation of design, like any art form, is a very subjective thing since we all have our personal tastes and preferences, but when it comes to websites the most important person to impress is the user. You are not the user and neither is your boss, so it is critical to look at things from your website visitor’s perspective and the goals they are looking to fulfill when interacting with your digital presence. Although I have an appreciation for good design and have knowledge regarding best practices, I’m not a designer.

Kewords are Key

2011-01-11T11:54:00.000+02:00

You've no doubt optimized your site and marketing materials for top keywords, but have you thought about the influence they can wield in less traditional ways?
Consistently optimized messaging across all of your company content—from its name and description to your employees' titles to your site content—helps create an image in customers' minds that establishes your identity, argues Jeffrey L. Cohen at the Social Media B2B blog.
Cohen offers these tips for unorthodox but effective keyword placement:
Make your company's description a corporate mantra. Encourage your employees to describe their company with the same keywords and phrases online and offline—whether for social media profiles, during speaking engagements at events, or in casual conversations with friends and colleagues. "Customers and prospects will start to search for those specific terms and find your company," he explains.
Incorporate keywords in your company's job titles. According to Cohen, LinkedIn has profiles for 132 Hubspot employees with "inbound marketing" in their titles. "Hubspot is an inbound marketing company and they have used this subtle approach to influence the search results of this term," he says. "People begin to think of Hubspot as an inbound marketing company when interacting with their employees, and search using these terms."
Optimize all printed material—not just sales and marketing online content. Brochures, fact sheets and whitepapers can all plant keywords in prospects' mind—terms they will likely use when they conduct follow-up research online. Also consider that your human resources, customer support and finance departments often post FAQs and other informational content as Web pages and PDFs. Using keywords in all your copy will aid your organic search chances.
The Po!nt: Careful how you say it. Put your keywords to work anywhere they might influence a potential customer's online search

Link backs - Keep it Real!

2011-01-06T13:38:00.000+02:00

Link backs are an essential part of SEO. But is it really worth while getting genuine, quality link backs for your website?
A senior Google employee was asked exactly that, the question posed was "what is Googles stance on Link Spam?" Below is his answer "We're already aware and have taken action on some of the sites mentioned, so now's a good time to point out that even if we have taken action on a site to address bad linking, it doesn't always mean that you'll see the results of it in such an obvious way like a site being completely obliterated from the index and not showing up for site: queries.
That said, we can take pretty strong steps to preserve the quality of our results, and link schemes are one of the toughest violations for a webmaster to recover from."

Pretty strong stuff. So be warned, if you were thinking "link farm" to grab those all important links, think again Google is watching ! Need help with gaining quality link backs? Contact Scream Media at 021 559 0800 and speak to our SEO team today.

SEO in 2011 - new SEO trends to look out for

2010-12-21T13:33:00.000+02:00

With 2010 nearing an end, we are all looking ahead optimistically towards 2011. In the world of web technology, we have not witnessed any major upheaval this year. Being head of marketing and SEO for Scream Media it's all but natural for me to become curious about what the future holds for us in 2011. The most interesting area to look forward to is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) without which no website under the sun passes the fitness test. The SEO domain has acquired a tremendous boost from the growing popularity of social networking sites and various improvements in search technology.

Social Media Optimization

Close on the heels of Search Engine Optimization, comes Social Media Optimization, the newest incarnation of SEO. I know that you are no longer surprised by this new term thanks to the tremendous popularity of social networking sites worldwide. Webmasters should not consider Social Media Optimization as a distraction from their normal SEO efforts; but this new activity should be deployed to boost a site's SEO prospects. Social Media Optimization activities may include back links from individual social media sites, development of a credible profile on these sites, and targeting towards real time searching. The greater impact you can have on the social networking sites, the more your SEO prospects will improve in the coming year.

Website Speed and On-Page SEO Activities

There are some webmasters who rely on off-page optimization rather than on-page optimization. But in 2011, you should give equal, if not more, attention to on-page optimization. Most importantly, the site load time is going to be the litmus test. Google, in its effort to improve website performance, has decided to penalize those sites that have a longer load time. Also, improper use of Meta tags in website coding will have a negative effect on site rankings in the major search engines in the coming year.

The Web Is Going Mobile

Smartphones are getting more and more ubiquitous and people have started surfing websites on their mobiles more than ever. This trend is going to grow in 2011. The number of mobile Internet users has touched 90 million already. The need for optimizing your site for mobile users will naturally be more pressing. Your site needs to be optimized for relevant mobile applications, such as Google's Mobile Search Services and mobile keyword tool in AdWords. Google itself has stated that mobile search results take precedence over desktop search results when it comes to mobile searching. This underscores the need to invest your time and money in mobile SEO in the coming year.

Using CSS to Re-Order Content vs Display

2010-12-16T08:47:00.000+02:00

Using CSS and/or Javascript to re-order how content appears on a website, means that search engines get what they want and visitors get what they want. It's a win, win. For example, you can have [h1]Keyword Phrase[/h1] at the very top of your source code, but it is wrapped in a [div] tag called "displaynone" . Then at the very bottom of the source code is some javascript with a function called "DisplayH1" that actually displays the [h1] text at the bottom of the page. So, the [h1] is first in the source code, but last to display on the page in a browser.

One can also have several paragraphs of keyword rich text at the top of the source code, with [h] tags, keyword rich links, etc. However, you can also use [divs] and absolute positioning to have all of it physically appear at the bottom of the page when viewed in a browser, below all the links, pictures, etc.

This type of use of CSS can go a long way to getting your website to #1 & 2 in Google's organic results for competitive key phrases.

All sound a little Greek?! Give Scream Media a call on 021 559 0800 and we will take care of your SEO starting with the code for your website, using techniques like these above and more. Contact us today for a free no obligation SEO health check

Our Personalised Adwords Thank You

2010-12-15T19:02:00.000+02:00

As a Google Pro Adwords company, we received this amazing video (featuring one of our clients from 2010 Kobi and Liel) We are very proud to be associated with Google Adwords, and invite you to try our Adwords PPC management services in 2011

http://www.youtube.com/adwords10?hl=en-us&forcelang=false&x=4202cb5e4afb4716bedcb2d25c7f3aa6

The Social Media Landscape

2010-12-14T13:05:00.000+02:00

Facebook

Wikipedia says: Facebook is a social networking website that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. Users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region. People can also add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves.

Facts:
• More than 250 million active users
• More than 120 million users log on to Facebook at least once each day
• More than two-thirds of Facebook users are outside of college
• The fastest growing demographic is those 35 years old and older
• About 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States

Scream Media uses Facebook to connect fans to our products and brand. When we do a media campaign we use our main Kodak Facebook presence to increase its audience base. If we created different Facebook pages for each campaign it would dilute our message and work against building a core fan-base.

Twitter
Wikipedia says: “Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers who are known as followers. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications.
Facts:
• 72.5% of the 44 million Twitter users joined during the first five months of 2009
• 93.6% of users have less than 100 followers, while 92.4% follow less than 100 people
• More than 50% of all updates are published using tools, mobile and Web-based, other than Twitter.com. TweetDeck is the most popular non-Twitter.com tool with 19.7% market share.
• There are more women on Twitter (53%) than men (47%)
• Twitter age demographic (% of total) Ages: 25-34 - 20%, 35-49 - 42%, 55+ - 17%

For your business, you can use it to quickly share information with people interested in your company, gather real-time market intelligence and feedback, and build relationships with customers, partners and other people who care about your company. As an individual user, you can use Twitter to tell a company, or anyone else, that you’ve had a great, or disappointing, experience with their business, offer product ideas, and learn about great offers.

Improtance of Social Media Links in Google and Bing Search Results

2010-12-03T10:08:00.000+02:00

Links Shared in Social Media Matter in Search

Search and social go well together, and the search engines are finding more and more ways to use them together. In fact, the right combination's of these two elements could eventually dictate who has the most useful tools for users.
It's become more and more clear over time that having a strong social presence is helpful in building a strong search presence for a variety of reasons, but it's not been so clear, just how the search engines have looked at things like Twitter and Facebook profiles when it comes to organic search ranking.

Search Engine Land Chief Danny Sullivan posted an important article about this very topic, with some rare and surprisingly direct answers from both Google and Bing. While, neither exactly gave away their respective secret sauces, it would appear that they have set some things straight.

Google

Google reportedly uses when an article is retweeted or referenced in Twitter as a signal in organic and news rankings (even though links on Twitter are nofollowed). They also use it to enhance the news universal results (based on how many people share an article).

Google "computes and uses author quality" for when someone tweets. When Sullivan asked if they calculate whether a link should carry more weight depending on who tweets it, Google Responded, "Yes we do use this as a signal, especially in the 'Top links' section [of Google Realtime Search]. Author authority is independent of PageRank, but it is currently only used in limited situations in ordinary web search."

Google says it treats links shared on Facebook Fan pages the same way as tweeted links, but they have no personal Facebook wall data. Authority for Facebook Pages is also treated like Twitter.

So, the more authoritative the crowd sharing links to your content, the better. Not that different than PageRank.
Bing

When it comes to Twitter, Bing tells Sullivan it also looks at social authority of users and more specifically, looks at how many people they follow and how many follow them, adding that this can add "a little weight" to a listing in regular search results (though it carries more in Bing's separate Social Search). Bing decides when links should carry more weight based on the person who tweets it.

As far as Facebook, Bing currently looks at links shared on Facebook that are marked as being shared to "everyone" and those from Fan Pages. "We can tell if something is of quality on Facbook by leveraging Twitter," as Sullivan paraphrases Bing's response. "If the same link is shared in both places, it’s more likely to be legitimate."

Bing does not use its new Facebook data in ordinary web search...yet.

Is your website ready for mobile devices?

2010-11-19T17:30:00.000+02:00

Is your website content ready for mobile devices?

By the year 2013, forecasts predict that there will be 1.7 billion mobile internet users.
And it’s a pretty safe bet that at least a few of them are visiting your site, and seeing it on a screen that takes up just a few inches.

So what happens when readers feel cramped or have to work hard to navigate your site or read your content?
They leave.

Connection speed can also frustrate readers. A lot of the time, people are trying to access your site on slow cellular data connections. And despite the attempts by providers to increase capacity, it still feels “slow,” since the more they add, the more we consume.
You want both regular and new readers to have a great experience with your site, whether it’s at home on a nice large screen or while they are mobile and seeing it on a tiny device.

Many folks spend a lot of time working on the design of their site for modern browsers, but fail to realize the ever-increasing percentage of site visitors that come by way of mobile devices.

Not only is having a great site design important, you also need to prioritize usability and a quality user experience.

So how can you make sure your site is up to par for all those mobile readers out there?
Well, as luck would have it, there are some fairly easy things you can do to assure a more mobile-friendly site.
Here are some quick improvements you can make, starting today.

Create smart navigation

How’s your site navigation? Creating smart, thorough navigation for your website is a key aspect to making your site mobile friendly.
Make sure you offer readers clear and distinct ways to get to your most important content.
For example, do you see the red tabs along the top of this site? Those are examples of links to cornerstone content. Not only are they great ways to attract traffic, but they are perfect examples of clear navigation.

Write clear content

Now more than ever, you need to grab reader attention instantly.
When your site is being viewed on a much smaller screen, make sure you have compelling headlines that let the reader know she’s going to have a great experience reading this content.
Clear content that gets right to the point also assures readers can digest your material on their mobile devices, even while they’re distracted and busy.

Don’t use too many images

I’ve been guilty of this one. And I’ve also noticed in my analytics that when I include a lot of images in a particular article, I get less traffic reading it on mobile devices.
Lately, I have been limiting my use of images to one or two, and now my articles are getting read more by those with mobile devices.
Images are a great way to get a point across or break up text, but just try to imagine someone reading your content on a really slow connection with a tiny little screen. It might mean you don’t need that 20th image after all.

Don’t rely on Flash or Javascript

All arguments aside about the relevance of Flash, it is generally a safe bet that not all mobile devices will be able serve up either of these technologies.
Even if they do, it tends to be an extra step or two to actually view the content. The best practice is to stick with plain (X)HTML/CSS standards.

Practice good design

In the non-mobile web version of your site, it might be easier to get away with a few design problems that are far more visible and obvious in the mobile version.
Keep in mind the whitespace around paragraphs and words. If your content is so cramped that it makes readers physically uncomfortable, they might not hang out for very long.
Making your content scannable and breaking up long blocks of text is great for all readers, but even more so for mobile readers.
And cluttered, visually busy sites are hard enough to read on a large screen. Don’t ask mobile readers to go there!
So there are several ways you can begin making your website content more mobile friendly. Get started on a few of these and you will be way ahead of the competition.

Search Engine Optimisation Trends

2010-11-11T11:19:00.000+02:00

"What's the hottest trend in search-engine optimization that you've never heard of (yet)?"
It's LDA - Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA)—a context-based algorithm for determining search relevance. According to SEO research, on-page content may play more of a role in your rankings than previously thought.
That's because the LDA algorithm (which Google will be using ) "looks at the total picture of the content and its context,". A Web page about World of Warcraft, for example, needs to mention "paladins, death knights and fish feasts" to rank well with LDA.
So, how do you act on this knowledge? Here are three ways to optimize on-page content for LDA's critical gaze:
Use the rel=canonical tag on all your original content. As contextual content becomes more important to search engines, the temptation to use someone else's content, will be much greater. To assign some level of ownership to your content, we advise applying the rel=canonical tag to your site pages.
Stay on topic. Your website content "needs to have lots of original, high-quality, on-topic content using semantically related words … that correlate to the search terms you're going after". You must "do the hard work of creating good stuff in order to leverage this algorithm effectively,"
Stop giving away so much. Don't give away the keys to the kingdom—your fab content—to social-media sites. Though it's fine to share excerpts, draw the line at giving away large chunks of context-rich copy to sites you don't control.
The Point: Time will tell whether LDA is an SEO game-changer. In the meantime, you'll never go wrong creating lots of original, standout content on your site—and protecting it.

Time to Look at your B2B Sales Procedure

2010-11-05T09:16:00.000+02:00

"The Web makes it too easy for your competitor to lure away interested buyers before your people have had a chance to contact them," warns Steven Woods in a post at the Harvard Business Review blog. And that reality, he argues, demands some fundamental changes in the B2B sales process. To support his case, he cites results from a study his firm recently conducted—but first, he asks readers to take a quick quiz:

Which is the better prospect: (a) a potentially ideal customer who's mildly interested in your offerings, or (b) a less-than-perfect fit who expresses a lot of interest?
After a prospect registers on your website for the first time, is it better to (a) spend two weeks crafting a highly customized email to the target, or (b) send a less-customized message within 24 hours?

"Salespeople would typically pick 'a' for both," he states. "They assume that as long as the target is a good fit, a talented and diligent sales team can make the sale." They also "obsess" over the quality of their messages, he adds.
But the study finds that approach to be misplaced:

Companies that showed some initial eagerness, even if they didn't appear to be typical buyers, were more likely to buy than "ideal" customers who had expressed mild interest.
A highly customized email sent two weeks after a prospect registered online got much less response than a "semi-standardized outreach" sent within a day.

"Both factors mattered, but interest trumped fit in actual sales,"
The bottom line? It's time to free up your sales team to make contact with more of the people the Web sends your way.
The Point: Strike while the interest is hot! "Whatever the disadvantages of a poor fit, they're outweighed by the advantages of buyer receptiveness,"

Scream Media has over 7 years experience marketing on the internet, contact us today on 021 559 0800 for a free analysis of your online marketing needs.

B2B marketing on Twitter

2010-10-22T08:42:00.000+02:00

"For some B2B marketers, Twitter isn't intuitive," notes Ardath Albee in a recent post at the Marketing Interactions blog. "I could come up with a list of reasons why not, but you can probably do that on your own," she adds.
But here's the good news: Albee has been working with Twitter for some time—and based on her experience she has some realistic advice for her fellow marketers.
Through "some very unscientific analysis,” she says, she has discovered, among other things, that B2B tweeters should:
Use other folks' Twitter handles in your tweets. People like seeing their handle [username] in a tweet, Albee notes. "They'll include you in their thanks tweet or RT your tweet with a 'thanks'—giving your tweet more exposure."
Always attribute. It also helps to include the name of the blog, person, company or other identifying characteristic of those you tweet about, she advises.
Ask folks to re-tweet your messages. "Putting a 'Pls RT' at the end of your tweets can help encourage people to do so," Albee notes. "Asking will encourage even lurkers to take action and help you spread the word."
Use hashtags. "Many people have columns [a search-like feature of Hootsuite] set up to follow hashtags (e.g., #marketing, #B2B, etc.), so you can gain a lot of additional exposure to those who may not be followers by using them," she says.
Finally, Albee urges marketers to think before they tweet: "Instead of just grabbing things to post and moving on, take the time to put some thought into what you post—even if you post less."
The Po!nt: "B2B-social" is not an oxymoron. By using a few proven tactics when tweeting, B2B marketers can boost their engagement and productivity on Twitter.

More Customers with Email Marketing !

2010-10-19T17:53:00.000+02:00

Whether you're a seasoned graphic designer or a marketer branching out into design, there's one thing you need to know: designing effective HTML email marketing has its own unique set of challenges. Are you ready to overcome those challenges? Does your design have what it takes to compel recipients to take action? Are you sure your email design includes all of the latest best practices?

When it comes to effective email design, there are three things you always need to keep in mind, whether you're creating an e-newsletter for your entire list or a sales-focused mailing to a select group of customers and prospects: the basics, the best practices, and the pitfalls. Let's take a look at each of these three categories and explore how each one can have an impact on your overall email design. Ask yourself each of these questions to ensure that your design makes the grade.

Checklist One: The Basics

Did You Create Two Versions?

When scheduling the design time for your email marketing campaign, always plan to create at least two separate versions of your email - one in HTML and another in plain text. Why? Because if you only provide an HTML email, any subscribers whose email clients are set up only to handle text messages will display a jumble of text, odd characters and HTML code. You may also want to consider developing a third version in Rich Text Format (RTF) to take advantage of those email clients that do not render HTML but that are capable of presenting rich text.

Did You Design for the Top 5 Email Clients?
Keep in mind that your email design doesn't just need to look good in the email client you use; it needs to render properly in the most common email programs used today. According to a MarketingSherpa 2010 Email Marketing Benchmark Report, nearly 80% of email users use one of the following five email clients:

Microsoft Outlook (MarketingSherpa's Report notes that 4 out of 10 email users open email in some version of Outlook)
Gmail
AOL mail
Yahoo! Email
Hotmail

If possible, test email in more than one version of an email program - see how it renders differently in Microsoft Outlook 2010 compared to Microsoft Outlook 2007 - and also see how it appears in the same email programs on different computing platforms, like Macs and Linux computers or even the iPad.

Did You Include a Link to a Web Version? Even though you test for a number of different email clients, you probably have at least one subscriber using a non-standard program - or perhaps you have a growing number of subscribers accessing their email from smartphones or other mobile devices. That's why it's important to include a link in your email to a Web-based version of your email message. Doing this will ensure that all subscribers can access the information as you intended even if the email they received didn't render properly.

Did You Use the Right Page Dimensions?
When designing for the standard email client, page width should be top-of-mind; after all, forcing readers to scroll horizontally isn't exactly their favorite thing to do. To stay on the safe side, ensure that your email designs are between 500 and 650 pixels in width. And don't assume that readers will scroll down a long page of content either - make use of landing pages to explain offers and benefits in more detail.
Did You Consider the Right File Size?
Page pixel width isn't the only number with which you should be concerned - you also need to ensure your message is the appropriate file size. Because some recipients may have file size limits within their email client, a good rule of thumb is to keep your message sizes to between 40 - 50 KB to avoid potential issues.

Did You Use Color to Your Advantage?
No one can deny the role that color can play in effective email design. Done well, color can highlight a call to action and draw the reader's eye to the email's most valuable information. Done poorly, color can confuse the reader, causing them to overlook important elements of your email - if they even read it at all.

Make color work for you. Ensure that the background colors, font colors and the colors of any buttons or images in your email complement each other and work well together. Experiment with color combinations until you find one that effectively calls out important information while staying true to your brand. And avoid any color combinations that may negatively affect readability.
Checklist Two: The Best Practices
Did You Follow W3C standards for HTML coding?
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has developed standards related to HTML coding. Abiding by these standards ensures that your HTML email marketing will be accessible to all recipients, including those with special needs.

Did You Use Standard Fonts?
No one enjoys squinting to read a tiny font, and even non-designers know how distracting it can be to try reading something printed in a font like Comic Sans or Impact. Help your readers more quickly and easily access your email's valuable information by using a standard, universally-supported font that is at least 10 pixels, 10 points, or size "2". Examples of fonts that are universally supported are Arial, Times New Roman, Verdana and Tahoma.

Did You Employ Appropriate Graphics and Buttons?
Images and buttons are an excellent way to add visual interest to your email, to break up or offset blocks of text, and to draw reader's attention to a specific area. Using graphics and buttons are an effective way of highlighting your email's call to action and compelling people to take action. Ensure that your graphics enhance your email rather than detract from it, and ensure that your call to action is the graphic that most gets your attention.

Did You Use Image ALT Tags?
Two-thirds of respondents in MarketingSherpa's 2009 report have their email images turned off by default. That means that all of the hard work you've put into the design of your HTML email may not ever be seen by email recipients. Email that arrives with blocked images oftentimes looks like a puzzle full of blank boxes with red Xs in the corners. Using ALT tags can help your email content better communicate with those whose images are blocked.

An ALT tag is a written out "ALTernative" to what is depicted in the image. Make use of ALT tags to describe your offers, and to spell out your call to action. If your large email image shows several cozy winter sweaters on sale, ALT tag text of “Cozy winter jerseys - in wool, angora and cashmere - are available in a variety of colors from R19.99!” may just be enough to entice the recipient to turn images "on" or click through to the Web version of the email.

Did You Include Plenty of Links?

Another method to increase your email open and clickthrough rates is by increasing the number of links within the email content. Why? Apparently a higher number of text, image, and navigation links appeals to the consumer because it signals to them that there are more ideas and actions available in the email.

Need help with email marketing? Let the experts take care of your email marketing needs. Contact Scream Media today on 021 559 0800

Seo Content for your Website

2010-10-11T19:25:00.000+02:00

"You have a great website. It has beautiful images, a compelling theme and intuitive navigation, all designed to take eager visitors to complete descriptions of your proprietary products and services," "The only problem is your website shows up somewhere after page 10 on search-engine results."
To rectify the problem—and optimize your content for search engines—Wessley has advice like this:
Before making any changes, clearly establish what you want to achieve. Don't be distracted by the glittering allure of top rankings for each and every page at your site. "Rather," , "the goal should be to incorporate search-engine-friendly content that performs well on the most important 'money phrases.' These are areas that you've identified that typically lead to additional action by visitors and prospects."
Carefully select your keywords—and remember they're likely to be keyword phrases. If you sell doors, explains Wessley, you'll get nowhere with a generic term like doors. "A better keyword phrase would be aluminum exterior house doors or solid core wood doors."
Organize your chosen keywords into thematic silos. "[These] may be interior doors, exterior doors and garage doors," she says, "with the specific types of each category being grouped together."
When writing copy, err on the side of making sense to humans. Don't forget customers—not search-engine spiders—are the ones making a purchase. "Search engines may love you but if your content isn't attractive to your visitors and they choose to leave your site, all your work is for nothing."
The Po!nt: Think clearly, and state it clearly. Implementing a common-sense SEO strategy is the best route over time from page 10 to page one of search results. Let Scream Media assist you with SEO friendly content and optimisation of your website

Tips to make sure you're making the most of Twitter for your brand.

2010-10-06T12:09:00.000+02:00

Today's discussions no longer center on whether a brand should participate in social media. Companies of all sizes, across all industries, are rushing to create their Facebook page and Twitter account.
But there's more to Twitter than amassing followers and broadcasting your latest news. The real-time conversations that fill the Twitterverse offer an abundance of market insight and unprecedented visibility into consumer sentiment.
Moreover, properly engaging in the right discussions can earn customer goodwill and brand awareness.
Here are some tips to make sure you're making the most of Twitter for your brand.

1. Track conversations about your brand
People are talking about your company and products throughout the social Web—and each mention is an opportunity for you to engage those people. Track your brand names and product terms. Don't forget to include common misspellings.
And remember, the names or terms used internally at your company may not necessarily be the same lingo used by your customers. Use Google Analytics to learn commonly used names and terminology, and make sure to include those keywords and phrases in your brand tracking.
When you see an interesting mention about your brand, dive into the conversation to give instant support, advocacy, or thanks. If you come across a complaint, engage directly to remedy the issue; you just might be able to turn a vociferous critic into a key supporter.

Example:

2. Track industry keywords
Look beyond your brand and follow any general terms that are relevant to your market. Chime in on relevant discussions to share your expertise, guidance, or point of view. In such conversations, successful brands are participants, not promoters. This is the time to say "We love llamas too!"—not "Check out our products."
And whether you're monitoring words related to your industry or brand, always listen and learn. Tapping into the dialogue on Twitter gives you a real-time focus group to help drive innovation and adaptation.
Establish proper processes and channels to make sure important feedback reaches the right individuals and teams within your company.

3. Track public comments about your competition
Use Twitter to gather critical market intelligence by keeping a close eye on any mentions of your chief competitors. Of course, just remember your own tweets and mentions are in the public timeline as well—instantly available to anyone who's looking. Keep that in mind when crafting what to say and how to say it.

4. Measure success
As with any marketing campaign, metrics provide valuable insight into what's working and what should be tweaked. Analyzing campaign results not only helps justify investment into social media programs but also sheds light on priority areas to focus your attention and resources.
For Twitter campaigns, consider more than number of followers. Track the total number of clicks per day for each of your Twitter accounts. Break down that data by geographic region and time/date to see where and when you're having the most impact.
And most important, make sure this data gets to where it can have the greatest impact by sharing weekly, easy-to-digest reports with key managers.

Keep an eye out for more free Twitter advise from Scream Media

How to promote new content on your website

2010-10-05T15:39:00.000+02:00

You now have a finished piece of content on your website. How can one go about getting the most visitors to the new piece? Having faith that users will magically gravitate to your new page is extremely optimistic. The following contains 5 actionable tips for marketing your website content.
Pretend it’s for Print
It all starts with the quality of your content. Treat the piece that your writing as if it’s not easily changed after you’ve put it out there. Publishing content on the web has made us all a bit lazy with this. Knowing that we can just go back to fix or tidy up after the fact puts a little less pressure on us to produce perfect content. Remember that people are taking time out of their lives to focus their attention on you. Make it worthwhile.
A Dash of SEO with that Please
After you’re happy with the content take a once over for the search engines. Don’t bastardize it. But if you want to get the most long term exposure for your content try to align your web page’s message with your website’s search engine optimization strategy.
You could adjust:
-Your page title and meta description. Remember that these are the only two elements that search engine users see on search results pages. Try to have it read like a newspaper headline.
-The name of your post. If you can have good keywords here by all means do so.
-The permalink. Adjust your URL to be relevant to your content, keep it void of unnecessary words like “and, the, or” and include keywords.
-Your on-page headlines and actual copy. Skim through all of this for keyword opportunities that will ADD to the quality of your piece.
Just make sure that you are covering your bases seo-wise. If you set up your page properly you will give your writing every chance possible to be picked up by search engines down the road.
Remember Email Marketing?
If you’ve built an email list over the years then send out a quick campaign about the article. I wouldn’t suggest that you copy all of your post content into the email. I would use the email as a teaser. Give the email recipients reason to visit your website and read it there. My reasoning for this is that there are many more viral opportunities if the content is digested on your website vs in the email itself. Be sure to give enough useful information in the email itself though. This way if they don’t click through they wont feel their time has been wasted.
Feed the Birds
After you’ve done this go share your post on your favorite Social Media Channels like Facebook and Twitter. Be careful not to sound too sales-like here. People can get easily turned off by this. Ask for reciprocal links in a non demanding way. Saying things like “The most brilliant post on widgets EVER!” will get you no-where fast. If a comment is left make it a priority to respond.
Make it Easy to Share
Be sure that you give your readers every chance possible to share your content with their tribe. This is where the real potential of Social Media Marketing begins to shine. Someone sharing your post with all of their community has just exponentially increased your articles reach. It’s free marketing! Most content management systems have ways to add this functionality to your posts and if you aren’t using a CMS it’s not hard to hand code.

How SEO can benefit your Website.

2010-10-04T15:30:00.000+02:00

In this article, I am going to detail some of the stories I’ve heard, which frequently tells more about some of the people in our industry, than it does about the effectiveness of search engine marketing.

PROBLEM #1 – “I rank number one in Google, and yet, I have never earned a cent from my website…”

When I first heard this story, I was very surprised… After all, if your SEO company did good keyword research, there is no reason why you should not be getting traffic and a few sales from a top ranking in Google.

I pressed for more details… I learned that the company who built the website also did the search engine optimization.

It only took a couple of minutes to learn that the website design company optimized this fellows’ website for the name of his company. There was no other optimization performed on that website.

LESSON #1 – It is rather pointless to optimize a website for the name of the company. UNLESS that name is a descriptive URL - "keyword rich url" The only consumers who will be searching for the name of your company are existing customers.

But, if your company is unknown to the general public, then the people who would like to buy your products or services will not be able to find you among your competitors.

If you sell widgets in Cape Town, your future customers will be typing “Cape Town widgets” into their favorite search engines, trying to find your business. And, if your prospective customers cannot find your business, your business does not exist in their minds.

PROBLEM #2 – “I had a company build a website for my business, but I have never received a single customer for my business, through my website…”

Are you sure?

Asking this question is not meant to offend you, but rather to get more details as to how you track incoming business.

If you are the average off-line business owner who has built a website to promote an off-line business, chances are real good that you probably have never received a single customer from your website.

However, if your website does not request for your prospective customers to let you know how they found out about your business, then chances are that people who did find you through your website would never tell you that.

If more than one person answers the phone at your business, chances are just as good that someone may have mentioned finding you on a website, but no one conveyed that information to you.

In your business, you should have systems in place to track and record where new customers have found your business. To do otherwise is like driving your car in the fast lane during rush-hour traffic with a blindfold over your eyes. At Scream Media we give all our clients a FREE Statcounter account with their own login.

LESSON #2 – If you are not asking your customers how they found your business, you will never know what kind of advertising is producing profits for your business and which advertising is sucking the wind out of your business.

PROBLEM #3 – “I spend a great deal of money on PPC listings (pay-per-click) to get my business in front of search engine users, because after spending thousands of Rands on SEO, I could not rank in the search engines at all…”

What keywords were you trying to rank for in the search engines?

“Travel. I have a travel business based in Cape Town that caters to business professionals…”

Have you ever noticed the caliber of companies who rank on page 1 in Google for the keyword: travel?

Those are companies who spend millions of dollars per year to market their businesses online and off-line. Do you have a marketing budget that will allow you to effectively compete with Travelocity, Expedia or Priceline?

Besides that, where do the majority of your customers work and reside?

“Johannesburg of course.”

If that is the case, why would you spend your limited marketing budget to target consumers who would never buy from you because they are outside your local marketing area?

“I never really thought about it in that way…”

Most of your competitors are making the same mistakes that you are. That is to your advantage because when you start to market your business in a more realistic and cost-effective manner, then you will be able to compete with your competitors, while spending far less money than your competitors are spending.

LESSON #3 – If you operate a local or regional business, do yourself a favor, and stop trying to compete in the national marketplace.

Final Thoughts…

Listed inside this article are three lessons that could potentially help your off-line business to find new customers and to generate new sales, as a result of your online advertising.

Depending on the average ticket price of purchases in your store or service business, how much could an extra 20, 50 or 100 new customers bring into your business each month? You do the math.

You could spend the next ten years learning what we have learned to maximize the effectiveness of your online advertising. Or you could employ us to work on your behalf to support your local business in your local marketplace.

More consumers are ignoring their phone books and searching for products and services online. If you don’t want to compete for those consumers, your competitors will thank you.

Social Media Platforms

2010-09-17T10:51:00.000+02:00

Social Media platformsA core component of formulating a social media marketing plan is to understand the ins-and-outs of each of the major social platforms so you can create relevant strategies and tactics around each one. The following outline will help you determine which profiles should be incorporated into your social media marketing plan.

Facebook

Community mindset: connect
Primary demographic: 25 to 45
Ideal fit for: entertainment, lifestyle brands, and non-profits
Biggest opportunity: using ads to build fans
Biggest challenge: few appreciate Facebook advertising
Metrics: fans, comments, likes, wall posts
Helpful tools: Lexicon, ad interface, applications, analytics, connect, etc.

MySpace

Community mindset: connect
Primary demographic: 15 to 25
Ideal fit for: music and entertainment
Biggest opportunity: providing music samples
Biggest challenges: noisy; losing market share quickly
Metrics: friends, favorites, groups, impressions
Helpful tools: Open Platform, MyApps, MySpace Toolbox

LinkedIn

Community mindset: connect
Primary demographic: 35 to 55
Ideal fit for: service providers, industry associations
Biggest opportunity: creating thought leadership via Q&A and Groups
Biggest challenge: time commitment
Metrics: profile connections, best answers, group members, discussions
Helpful tools: Applications, Salesforce plug-in

Blogs

Community mindset: create
Primary demographic: 35 to 55
Ideal fit for: technology
Biggest opportunity: develop thought-leadership
Biggest challenge: requires significant resources over time
Metrics: feed subscribers, comments, Technorati score, pingbacks, inbound links, visibility in search engines
Helpful tools: WordPress plug-ins

Twitter

Community mindset: create (microblogging)
Primary demographic: 35 to 45
Ideal fit for: service industry
Biggest opportunity: customer service, consumer insight, sales and marketing
Biggest challenges: noisy; reliability issues; platform limitations
Metrics: followers, @ replies, retweets, direct messages, custom hashtags
Helpful tools: BingTweets, TweetBeep, TweetDeck, HootSuite, CoTweet, Mr. Tweet, Twitalyzer, blog plug-ins

YouTube

Community mindset: vote
Primary demographic: 25 to 45
Ideal fit for: big brands and entertainment
Biggest opportunity: creating viral content
Biggest challenges: noise; conversions
Metrics: views, comments, subscribers, ratings
Helpful tools: TubeMogul, YouTube Insight

How to choose the right Website Design Company

2010-09-14T10:46:00.000+02:00

Your website is your company’s calling card on the internet so you need to have one you’re proud of and does the job it’s meant to, and offer pleasant viewing for your browsers which can only be achieved with quality web development. That means getting a professional web development company to develop your site and create web based solutions for your business. But before approaching a web design company, you should clarify your requirements. Here’s how you do it.

Firstly, you must establish your goals. What’s the purpose of your web site? Are you selling products, displaying your portfolio, announcing your services? What do you want your visitors to do? Put yourself in your visitor’s shoes. What do they expect to find at your website?

Next you have to set your budget. Having these figures in hand at the beginning can help in your negotiation with the web design companies. But don’t reveal your budget. Always get quotes based on your needs first. The first thing you would probably do if you live in Cape Town is, go to Google and search for web design companies in Cape Town. Take the advantage of the global reach of the internet and search for web design agencies in South Africa. Also take into considerations if you have any technical staff you employ, would you need to do the maintenance of the sites yourself? If you do not have the staff, then web based solutions could be the right option for your web development, which are offered by many web design agencies in South Africa, how would you find these companies? Just do a quick search in Google for web design agencies South Africa, or one stop marketing company and it should bring up a long list of web design agencies in South Africa. But then it is down to you to single out the right company for your web development needs. However, you could do a more specific search for certain areas like web design companies Cape Town , which would be more local so you can go to see your web development company when you may need to. Web design companies in Johannesburg would tend to be more expensive compared to the rest of the country

Establishing your goals in this way allows you to clearly explain your requirements to the web design agency that you choose. In fact, these are the same types of questions that web development companies ask at the start of any project. Having the answers readily at hand means you have a better chance of getting the site that you want. Plus, the information you gather from these questions can help in choosing the right web development company.

Finally we come to the all-important step of choosing a web design company. Remember that building a website involves the separate skills of design and development. You need a company with expertise in both web design and web development. And if the firm has business skills, then better still, as you will find if you search for web design companies in Cape Town, they have a lot of all round skills in web development and offering web based solutions.

In fact the ideal web design and web development firm should also offer SEO consulting and marketing advice. Searching for web design companies Platterkloof would give you less choice of web development and SEO, however, if you searched for web design companies Cape Town or web design companies South Africa, you would find more companies with mixtures of different skill sets to make your web design and web development project successful, also the firm should be knowledgeable about the fast-changing world of ecommerce and be able to offer solutions such as database integration, content management, and shopping carts, for example. A firm that has this all round knowledge will be able to come up with ideas and advice that lead to total development solutions. So how do you find your dream design firm?

The first thing to do is to make a shortlist of website design and web development companies and check their online portfolios. See if their designs look like they’d work for your concept. Is the layout clean and easy to navigate? Is the image of the company presented well and is the website’s purpose immediately clear? Be wary of designs that are heavy with flash animations, or feature graphics but little text. This suggests the design firm values form over function which is ineffective if you’re trying to sell something. Check if the company has offered web based solutions in the past, ask if you can speak to any of their client who have had web based solutions and web development done from them. Remember, you want to find one firm that can handle both the design and development aspects of website creation. Finally, you should ask for customer references. Then, get in touch with existing clients and ask about their experience with the web design company.

It’s not easy to find the right website design company for your needs. But if you follow the above guidelines, you’ll be able to find the right web design agencies in South Africa for your business. You can find web design companies in all of South Africas major cities such as Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban.

Email Marketing - Measurable Result

2010-08-31T10:05:00.002+02:00

The difference between marketing and advertising, is the ability to track results and measure your efforts.
And, for a business owner, this is a valuable ability.

You see, when you measure your marketing efforts...
and then take the time to make the appropriate changes,
you are going to see the results in the increased number of sales.

So how can you measure your marketing efforts?
Well, good tracking and measuring is going to take
a combination of Internet know-how and automated,
marketing systems. But, between the two,
you can easily track and measure:

Lead sources
Email open rates
Email opt-in rates
Email links
User interactions
Promotion responses
And, of course your resulting sales!

When you are able to SEE what is working,
your marketing will become more specific,
targeted, and successful.
Even with a stellar marketing campaign,
there is always room for improvement.
Measuring your results gives you the
chance to keep getting better,
and bring in more and more sales.

When uncertainty rules...
marketing campaigns are nothing more than a shot in the dark!
With the ability to measure, track, and tweak,
you can become a marketing powerhouse and start
adding more money to your bank account!

At Scream Media we make use of one
of Europe's leading email marketing platforms,
Vertical Response provides tracking on all aspects
of email marketing. Contact us today for a free no obligation quote.

Website Home Page Design Guidlines

2010-08-26T11:02:00.000+02:00

The first impression customers get of your website and your business is geared by the impression made by your website homepage. It has a major effect on its success or failure.
Your website homepage can be the determining factor in the reader’s choice to delve further into your site or bounce off after a cursory glance, to go back to the search engine and look for something more relevant.
Despite this, many websites miss this great opportunity to lure in its readers, simply by having poorly targeted or poorly displayed homepage content that does not immediately inform them what the site is about.
You have just 4 brief seconds to convey to a potential customer what your site has to offer. Each moment wasted where visitors try to decipher your website, is a moment lost to create the right impression.
To create effective, compelling homepage content, here are some easy to follow guidelines:

1. Your homepage serves as the introduction to your company. You should be seeing to welcome your visitors – throwing out the red carpet for them.
On entering your site, the reader should be able to know immediately what you and your website offers, without having to click around or scroll. In your introduction, or your website header area, do not assume that the reader has previous knowledge or understanding of your site’s products or services.
It’s a good idea to add a breakdown of how it works if you’re offering something innovative, and new to the market to help customers understand your online offering. If you want to, it’s a good idea to add in a link or two about your company. (But be careful not to make your homepage all about your business! Customers find that really dull!).

2. Your homepage should contain contemporary content. Fresh homepage content, if suitable, appeals to the reader as it shows that your sit e is current and up to date.
Change the content as needed by displaying popular or hot features that are relevant while keeping the design consistent. Doing this will attract more readers but does not alienate your regular audience. If your homepage looks dated, customers will question the validity and credibility of that information – worse still, if it looks really old they might think you’ve gone out of business!

3. Your homepage should have a set of unique selling points (USPs).
Your USPs must explain the benefits of your site to prospective clients or customers and should be in a prominent position on your homepage. They also tell your reader why your site is better than others similar to it and what you can offer them that others can’t.

Summary
Remember, you only have a few seconds to encourage your website visitors to find out more about you. The customers whole browsing session at your site is determined by how they rate the experience of visiting your homepage and learning more about your business (or not!).
Before you invest in any offline or online advertising campaigns, like pay-per-click (PPC), make sure your prospects are going to understand, and value, the place you’re directing them to – otherwise you’ll be wasting money.

For more advice on having a clear, effective website homepage, contact the friendly team at Scream Media today on 021 559 0800.Customer-friendly website have been proven to make more money online for their owners

Link Backs - Link building Techiniques

2010-08-25T09:58:00.000+02:00

Whether links or content is King, we see enough questions on forums about link building techniques to know that backlinks are central to success in the SERPs (search engine result pages).

Link Bait. The most powerful technique, hands down, is to create content that will attract links. The rest of the "self service" links - those that you can create yourself - have some value, but there is nothing like the "citation links" that come from other webmasters. Where to start with link bait:

* Freebies - Give away an e-book or a tutorial or?
* Review products in your industry
* Write about news in your niche
* Develop a tool and share it (another freebie, yes)
* Interview someone famous in your industry and publish the article on your own site
* Start a controversy
* A Contest or Award Program
* Create a Resource: lists of the best the books in your industry, a glossary of terms for your niche
* Report on Statistical or Financial trends in your industry.

Social Media. Not all links are created equal. Some links from social media are followed, some are not. But as in many things in life, you get what you "pay" for. Twitter links may not be followed, but if you put in the effort and post useful information, the traffic will come. With the right information in your Tweets and on your website, you will attract more links from your visitors.

What is the motivation for one web site owner to link to another web site? The fundamental principle of the web is to allow any document to link to and to be linked from any other document. This is how Tim Berners-Lee intended it when he first proposed the hypertext protocol in 1989, before most of us had ever heard of the Internet. Initially developed as a way to help researchers interlink related documents from computers all over the world, the web was soon discovered by those more interested in commerce, and several years later, here we are.
It's interesting to me that nearly every commercially related web development since its founding has been in some way related to the link (that is, an attempt to find new ways for one site to be linked to another). Banner ads are, at their core just a link from one site to another. So are text ads, whether on web sites or in newsletters, or in an email message. And buttons, badges, icons, etc., are all just another form of link. A PPC listing or a Twitter tweeted URL or a list of search results are nothing more than links. Your Yahoo! directory listing, BBB member page listing, even that cool widget you created -- no matter how you spin it -- are all links.
Anything to be clicked on that shuttles people from one place to another while online constitutes a link.
The development of all form and fashion of linking types has never improved upon the original, and no amount of cleverness will ever change one universal truth: the less useful your content, the less likely you are to ever receive a link to it.
"The less useful your content, the less likely you are to ever receive a link to it"
If we think of the word "useful" as a continuum, then the most useful sites are those that provide rich, quality content on a specific subject on which the editor or provider is an authority. Think of the U.S. Government's CancerNet site aka The National Cancer Institute. Now there's the ultimate example of content on the right side of the continuum -- tens of thousands of pages on every facet of cancer, all free, all generated by experts in the field.
In fact, with no marketing department, the CancerNet site has tens of thousands of links pointing to it from other sites around the world. It's one of my standard sermons: Useful content gets linked.

But...the reality is we can't all be CancerNet. Most sites simply do not have the kind of content that engenders tens of thousands of links. So what do you? What if you are simply trying to sell a few widgets and don't have any reference to quality content? If your site lands on the left side of the useful continuum, you accept that you are not going to get many links. And those links you do get, you will probably have to pay for. And those links you pay for are not likely to help your rankings, and might even hurt them.
If you don't want to accept this reality and truly want to earn links to your site, you have one (and only one) other option available to you. Make it link-worthy.

What is a linkworthy site? Let's imagine you have an online magic store that caters to professional and amateur magicians. On your site, you sell tricks, supplies, hats, capes, and wands, even the saw-the-person-in-half gag.
If your content were nothing more than an online store, why would anyone link to it? You might get a few links on any magic-site web guides and link lists. But then what? If you are an online store with nothing but products as your content, then you MUST look to associate/affiliate programs as a means of generating links. Basically, paying for them.
But maybe there is something more you CAN do, if you are willing to roll up your sleeves.
What if, along with your products, you create a searchable database of information on magic. What if you had complete biographies of more than 700 magicians? What if you had a section devoted to magical world records, or a glossary of magical terms, or a directory of magicians on the Internet?
This would then be an excellent example of how a store site can add rich, relevant content, value, interest, and community to its web site, as well as sell merchandise. This site would be covered by just about any writer who writes about magic and/or reviews web sites.

It's difficult to find high-trust online media outlets and curator/site reviewers willing to cover or link to marketing/sales sites. The more a site offers deep information on a certain subject, databases, community, guides, forums, reviews, etc., the more likely the editors are to want to cover it. Whether it's a business or consumer site, the more content-rich the better, especially if the site's mission is sales. A site designed to sell a product is far different than a true reference site with hundreds and hundreds of pages of free information on a particular subject.

Website Design trends for Small to Medium Business

2010-08-10T11:58:00.000+02:00

The importance of having an attractive website that converts visitors into buyers and helps cleverly promote your small business is essential in these fiercely competitive times.
Your website has to capture a visitor’s attention, entice him or her to stay and browse around, create an interest in your product or service, and result in sales. For small businesses with limited time and budgets, design is an essential factor in both attracting and converting potential customers.
With this in mind, here are five current design trends that most small businesses can utilize to great effect.

1. Minimalist

While this web design style has been popular for some time, it’s worth revisiting as no small business owner wants to turn visitors away with a cluttered, overbearing and hard to navigate website.
Minimalist design effectively strips away the excess and helps the user concentrate squarely on the content. If a page has too many elements, the user will easily become confused about where to focus on, with many elements vying for attention.
With page weight now affecting your Google ( search engine position, it’s the perfect time to reassess how streamlined your design is.
There are several principles and steps you can follow to create a more minimalist design:

Go through your site and prune any unnecessary widgets or elements which aren’t serving a real purpose.
Make good use of whitespace, which is the space between different elements of a design. Used well, it will allow for easier scanning of your site and help frame the elements on each page.
With fewer elements, choosing the right color palette or accent color is critical. As color has great significance and meaning, it’s best to test how certain colors interact with each other.
Browse your site through the eyes of your visitors, evaluating if there is too much information, confusing or off-putting elements, or sufficient calls to action. Answering these types of questions truthfully will help you prioritize the essential elements.

A minimalist design doesn’t have to be bland and boring; it can easily be modern, fresh, sophisticated, elegant or refined, based solely on the details within the design.

2. Unique Photography

Two men shaking hands, a group of people in suits sharing a joke, the call center girl: these are all tired, clichéd images that litter thousands of business websites. These types of images fail to convey either information on the company or a sense of the site’s character, and are essentially meaningless.
Using custom photography or artwork whenever possible is recommended, though for small business owners, both time and budget are limited and stock photos are a relatively cheap and accessible resource.
So when choosing stock imagery, it’s best to keep in mind these four tips:

Research your competitors and industry and take note of the images used. You can then find a unique way to represent your product or service.
Avoid being too literal in your choice of imagery as abstract compositions often give a more dramatic and memorable effect.
Don’t always opt for the cheaper low-res image, as pixelated imagery devalues your overall design and looks unprofessional.
Veer away from the bland and predictable and let the images ‘break out of the box’.

Imaginative imagery will reinforce your brand message and add greater character to your website. So, when you must use stock imagery, do so with great care and take the time to find the right piece that will convey the true personality of your service or product.

3. Bold Typography

Web design at its core is about communication, and typography is a vital component of that. Great web typography helps bring order to information and creates a coherent, visually satisfying experience that engages the reader without their knowing.
A recent trend is the use of big, bold typography which helps to create contrast between other text while grabbing a user’s attention. Oversized text can help create hierarchy and ensure users understand your message loud and clear.
In order to utilize typography to create a bold statement, keep in mind the following tips:

Determine the single most important message you want to emphasize, as too many messages can lead to choice paralysis. Understand the qualities of the message you are trying to convey, and then look for typefaces that embody those qualities.
Choose a typeface that will match the character of your work. For instance, if your company embodies the feel of an Old Style font, you should consider Bembo, Garamond and Sabon. It will also greatly depend on what you want to convey with the type, because legibility is as important as the character of the type.
Give the typography the prominent position it deserves by surrounding it with a generous amount of whitespace. This will add emphasis and create even more focus on the typography.
Test out some of the various font replacement options such as Typekit or Typotheque. These allow you to license fonts to embed within your site, and help you to experiment with beautiful typography.

Typography is an art and the decisions you make are subjective; however, carefully selecting a typeface can make a huge difference to the quality of your design.

4. Clear Calls to Action

As a small business owner you want your visitors to complete a certain task when they land on your page. It could be to download, sign up or checkout, but these calls to action are one of the most important (and overlooked) elements in a small business website.
You want to grab your visitor’s attention and move him or her to take action. Crafting a clear, concise call to action is essential.
Here are four tips to keep in mind when designing a call-to-action button or advertisement:

Language: Keep the wording short and snappy (always start with a verb), but also explain the value behind the action the user is taking. In some instances it also helps to create a sense of urgency using words such as ‘now’, ‘hurry’ and ‘offer ends,’ with ‘free’ being the number one incentive.
Positioning: Ideally, calls to action should be above the fold, and be placed on every page of the site in a consistent position. For instance, Squarespace , not only has a large call-to-action button at the top of the page, but also has a slightly smaller button in the footer of every page.
Color: The color should make the call stand out from the rest of the design. Brighter, more contrasting colors usually work best for smaller buttons. For larger buttons, you may want to choose a less prominent color (but one that still stands out from your background), so as to balance out its size.
Size: The call-to-action button should be the largest button on any given page. You want it to be large enough to stand out without overwhelming the rest of the design

It’s vital you test different combination's of call-to-action buttons and see how each affects your conversion rates (see A/B Testing below). It’s also best to make sure they fit within your overall design.

5. A/B Testing

With competition growing fiercer online, it’s important for small businesses to have a website that converts visitors to buyers and creates a competitive edge. That’s why it is important to continually measure and improve site performance, usability and conversions.
One of the foremost ways of optimizing your web design is via A/B testing (sometimes referred to as split testing). An A/B test examines the effectiveness of one landing page over another. The two versions are randomly shown to site visitors to see which generates the best results. You then evaluate the performance of each and use the best version.
Various elements can be tested, including, layouts, copy, graphics, fonts, headlines, offers, icons, colors and more. Here are a few tips for A/B testing:

Clearly define your goal before beginning any test. For example, if you wanted to increase sign-ups, you might want to test the following: type of fields in the form, length of the form, and display of privacy policy.
Start with elements that will have the biggest impact for minimum effort. For instance, you could tweak the copy on your checkout button to see if conversions can be improved.
Don’t use A/B testing in isolation as this alone won’t give you a well-rounded picture of your users. Instead, use other feedback tools, such as Feedback Army or User Testing, in conjunction with A/B testing to get in-depth analysis of user behavior.

A/B testing won’t make a bad design great, but it will prove an effective aid in optimizing your current design’s usability and conversions until you decide to overhaul your website design completely.
These are just five web design trends that small businesses can take part in to enhance their websites. Which web design changes would make the most sense for your small business? contact Scream Media today on 021 559 0800 and one of our business consultants will assist you to make the right choice for your business.

Is Google displaying the correct Sitelinks for your website?

2010-07-30T12:35:00.001+02:00

When Google displays Sitelinks below your website listing in the search results, it's very likely that your website will get more clicks and more visitors. The majority of searchers click on the top 3 results. For that reason, getting more links in the top three results increases the number of clicks that your website will get.
Unfortunately, Google does not always display the right Sitelinks. This article explains how to check your Sitelinks and how to make sure that Google displays the right Sitelinks for your website.
How to check which Sitelinks Google displays for your website

It seems that Google only return Sitelinks when they are confident that the search query is looking for a specific site.
If you want to see the Sitelinks for your website, search Google for your domain name without the .co.za or for any other keyword for which your website is listed on the first position.
For example, if your domain name is "bluewidgets.com", search Google for "bluewidgets".

Which type of Sitelinks does Google display for your website?

If you search Google as explained above, Google will display one of the following Sitelinks below your listing:
Google shows up to eight text links that are identical to your website navigation links. If you see these links, the navigation of your website can be parsed by Google and it divides your website into separate categories. This is good.

Sitelinks that go to random pages on your website. If you get these links, the navigation of your website probably can't be parsed by Google and Google took the pages with the most backlinks for the Sitelinks. This is not so good.

Google does not display any Sitelinks. If Google does not display any Sitelinks for your website then it's very likely that your website is not search engine friendly and that your pages cannot be parsed correctly. This is bad.

How to get better Sitelinks

Google generates the Sitelinks for your website based on your website navigation and based on the links that point to your website.
If Google shows the wrong Sitelinks or no Sitelinks at all for your website then you should work on your website navigation:
Avoid JavaScript and Flash navigation and try to use regular links as often as possible.

If you use images for your website navigation, make sure that the images contain alternative texts that allow Google to categorize your links.
If your website has a clear navigation, it will be much easier to get Sitelinks for your website.
Do not use too many navigation links and make it easy for web surfers and search engines to find out which pages of your website are the most important pages. The better a web page is linked, the more likely it is that it will appear in the Sitelinks.

Site links can make your website listings on Google's result pages more attractive. However, they have nothing to do with the position that your website gets in Google. If you want to get high rankings on Google for the keywords of your choice, you must make sure that your website has both optimised content and good backlinks.

Get more traffic to your website with Twitter

2010-07-26T13:46:00.000+02:00

Twitter is a brilliant way to drive targeted visitors to your Web site. You should not forget about other traffic sources but using Twitter is totally free and will definitely acquire a few more targeted visitors to your site. You got me right, I said free targeted visitors in the last sentence.
Nothing is better than a never endless stream of visitors. There are lots of ways for you getting free traffic to your Web site. But there is a huge difference between free traffic and targeted traffic. You could have heard about traffic generating websites sending out tons of people to your homepage. These offers are good to give your traffic stats a push but you will not actually generate a sale or find a prospect for your product. Visitors delivered to you by free traffic Websites will usually leave your Internet site within a few moments.
Targeted visitors instead are interested in the items or information you are offering on your Web site, prepared to break out their credit card!
What you will need in first place is a twitter account, naturally. I recommend avoid using your own twitter account. If you are having different niche sites create a single twitter account for each niche Web site you have. Please don’t leave the default twitter background and avatar, choose an avatar and background image that fits your product or info best, as it will show your followers that you care about your account.
The next step to do is to deliver content – business relevant good content. The majority of the content you will provide is created by others and will never include references to your own stuff. This may sound strange to you, but here I explain why we will do it.
Make sure to provide best content to your followers and unless you write loads of crappy content or outsource your article writing you just don’t have the cash and time to write all that quality content yourself in a short period of time. When you tweet your own stuff only on every occasion you will seem to be a spammer. Individuals will stop following you when you behave like a spammer. Incidentally, tweets are what the short communications are called that you send out with your Twitter account.
Second part of the process is to build a landing page or helpful blog post about your business. This part will be the most significant and you really must ensure to supply good articles. But where will you find all the business relevant content ? Either you can out source this to a professional copy writer or you can add an RSS feed to your landing page or blog post. (this is not nearly as effective as unique content written for your business) Ensure to pick out high quality RSS feed content. That will make your followers trust you. When they trust whatever you tell them it will encourage them to click your links sooner or later. The links you place in your landing page or blog post is the origin to monetize the traffic you are receiving from Twitter. The MOST IMPORTANT idea behind this is that you place links to your products or service you would like to share or sell. The writing in the displayed link should contain a strong anchor text that will call to action and make them click the link that will lead them to your cash site. Here you offer your product or information you want to sell or share.
So, the most important thing is to place a link to your money site at the end of your landing page or blog post. Ensure the link incorporates a strong call to action. The final section of this action will be to build up an email address from your visitors or to get in touch through a contact form or to even make the sale. Because now you are have a targeted visitor on your Web site seeking information. To catch their email address offer a free of charge business relevant ebook or report through an optin form. Once you have your visitors email address you can add it to your email list and feed them with any information or products of your choosing any time you like.
Every tweet you are posting must be of very high quality and so your followers believe in you. When people trust you enough they will make your tweets go viral and at this moment in time magic happens.
So, the most significant thing is to place a link to your income site at the in the text of your landing page or web log post. Make certain the link contains a powerful call to action.
That just about is it. The great thing about this is you will not have to spend tons of money to get rolling. Contact Scream Media today, we will set up your blog or landing page, write your content and post your tweets.

Get Noticed, Get Read and Get Customers - content writing for your website

2010-07-23T14:22:00.000+02:00

Your website’s content will get noticed, get read and get customers if you use your headline and first paragraph to let readers know what is in it for them. Here I’ll introduce you to some techniques you can use to make that happen.

Never Stop Marketing – Every Page is a Marketing Page
Visitors may first enter your site through almost any page. And for various reasons no matter what you do, many will not read more than one page. Therefore, to maximize response you must treat every page as a marketing page. So add adverts to where they will be seen.
But only a small percentage of readers will respond when first seeing even quality adverts. You’ll have to work a bit harder for the rest of your readers. You’ll have to use your pages’ content to make them consider a marketing offer (perhaps another day). You must prove that you (and your brand) are expert at delivering what’s wanted, and can be trusted. To do that, your page must first be read.
Who is Your Site for… and What Do They Want?
When you’re busy creating content, it’s easy to forget that your website exists to sell your products and services to particular groups of people. And even if you would never forget such a thing – can the same be said for everyone who writes for you?
As well researched and expert as you are in your field, it can be hard to put yourself in the position of your targeted visitors who, when they come, will spare just a few seconds to find a reason to read the content.
When constructing an argument or presenting a product, it seems logical to first present the building blocks of your case before giving the end result. The end results should be something that will make your readers’ lives better. But…
People Buy Benefits Not Features
If you want readers to read on, you must spell out the benefits before describing and explaining the features.
Features are the characteristics of what you’re selling. Benefits are the things that those features will do for you.
For example, people don’t buy light bulbs for features like being long lasting, bright and cheap. People buy light bulbs for benefits like saving money or the planet and helping them do things in what would otherwise be darkness.
Your Headline is the Most Important Part of Your Content
If your headline does not promise something of interest, then your article won’t get read and you’ll struggle to sell. This is because most visitors arrive at a page, read a headline and then make a decision to stay or go.
Also, if a page is linked to from elsewhere on your own site or others then your headline is likely to be used for the link. When reading headlines, potential readers are looking for what a page might do for them. They are looking for benefits and if your headline does not deliver, they are gone.
Here are a few guidelines for headline writing:

Promise benefits – tell readers what the content will do for them.
Don’t be clever or obscure and don’t make the reader think too much.
Don’t be ironic because most readers won’t know you are being ironic.
Don’t force readers to read the story in order to understand the headline.
Try asking a question about a problem and entice with the solution.

Your First Paragraph is the Second Most Important Part of Your Content
Make your first paragraph (aka the lead or the stand first) as succinct, clear and uncluttered as it can possibly be.
If a visitor has been interested enough in your headline to read on, the next thing they will read is your opening paragraph where you have to give the same benefits with a little more detail.
You can’t explain everything with your first paragraph. So find the most important idea you want to put across, explain what it is and perhaps begin to elaborate on it.
For example, this article’s lead is:
“Your content will get noticed, get read and get customers if you use your headlines and first paragraphs to let readers know what is in it for them. Here we’ll introduce you to some techniques you can use to make that happen.”
It starts with a benefit:
“…get noticed, get read and get customers…”
…and then comes a summary of how to achieve that:
“…if you use your headline and first paragraph to tell readers what is in it for them”
Then the second sentence repeats the benefit with some detail about how this will be achieved:
“…we’ll introduce you to some techniques you can use to make that happen”.
Hopefully we’ve achieved what this first paragraph set out to do and in the future no visitors to your site will leave without you having done everything you can to get them to read on and reach your marketing.

Need help with content writing? Contact Scream Media today. Our team of professional content writers are waiting for your Call - 021 5590800

Website Design

2010-07-21T12:58:00.000+02:00

Each day thousands οf nеw websites appear οn thе web. Each one οf thеm іѕ trying tο drive more traffic towards thеіr website bу implementing ɡοοԁ web design, information rich content, аnԁ interactivity. Small businesses frοm асrοѕѕ thе globe hаνе already joined thе web аnԁ using іt effectively tο reach out nеw markets аnԁ more business. Thе first thing thаt a web surfer visiting уουr pages notices οn уουr website іѕ thе Design.
Design іѕ a рƖаn tο ԁο something. In terms οf web, design іѕ thе way a website іѕ represented οn thе screen. Thіѕ includes thе layout οf thе whole webpage, colors, images, placement οf items, аnԁ thе whole scheme tightly bounded together. Thе purpose οf аnу design іѕ tο mаkе thе resulting product a more usable, effective, аnԁ efficient way tο ԁο thе job. In terms οf web design, thіѕ means thаt thе purpose ѕhουƖԁ bе tο mаkе thе website more usable, more goal-oriented аnԁ efficient іn terms οf using thе available resources. Thеrе аrе ѕοmе common ɡοοԁ practices thаt аrе οftеn advised tο web designers, thеѕе tips аrе аƖѕο useful fοr small business website owners ѕο thаt thеу саn mаkе sure thаt thеіr web design follows thе basic web design principles.
Colors
Colors аrе very іmрοrtаnt aspect οf аnу design scheme whether іt іѕ thе design οf a skyscraper, a car οr a website. Using thе rіɡht combination οf colors саn mаkе уουr website more usable аnԁ hence more goal-oriented. On thе οthеr hand using a bаԁ combination οf colors саn hаνе thе adverse affects οf mаkіnɡ уουr website nοt usable аnԁ far away frοm achieving thе goals.
Easy Navigational Structure
People generally ԁο nοt spend much time looking аt a website, ѕο іf thеу cant find thе information thеу needed іn thе first few seconds thеу аrе probably going tο leave уουr website аnԁ ɡο elsewhere. Sο іt іѕ іmрοrtаnt thаt уου рƖасе аƖƖ уουr іmрοrtаnt links аt a visible spot thаt саn bе easily seen whеn a user opens уουr pages.
Typography
Typography аƖѕο plays a very іmрοrtаnt role іn аnу design. Using thе rіɡht combination οf fonts аnԁ using thе rіɡht sizes саn mаkе a simple web document look elegant аnԁ pleasant. Thе fonts ѕhουƖԁ bе сhοοѕе based οn thе criteria thаt thеу ѕhουƖԁ look pretty іn large аѕ well аѕ small sizes. Thе font size уου υѕе οn уουr web design ѕhουƖԁ bе nеіthеr tοο small nοr tοο large.
Power Tools
Thеrе аrе lots οf things thаt people mіɡht want tο ԁο whеn thеу arrive οn уουr website. Fοr example thеу mіɡht want tο search уουr website fοr specific information. Fοr thаt уου provide thеm a search box conveniently located. Thеу mіɡht want tο share уουr website wіth thеіr friends οn social networks, ѕο уου ѕhουƖԁ hаνе buttons fοr thаt tοο. Mаkе sure thаt іt becomes easier fοr thе users tο υѕе уουr website іn thеіr οwn style.
Once уοu hаνе uploaded уοur website аnԁ іtѕ working, you still need tο collect user feedback οn уουr website tο see іf thеrе іѕ аnу feature thаt уουr visitors wουƖԁ Ɩіkе tο see οn уοur website.

SEO critical steps for ranking

2010-07-20T10:31:00.000+02:00

There are a variety of misconceptions surrounding search engine optimization today. One big misconception that many website owners have is that once they have their site set up and they submit it to search engines, they’ll get traffic right away. The truth is that there is a lot more to bringing traffic to your website. Search engine optimization is a task that is ongoing and it does take quite a bit of work. Instead of submitting your site to the search engines right away, here are a few critical steps to great SEO that you should take first.
Step #1 – Research Your Keywords
One of the important steps you need to take for great SEO before you submit your site to the search engines is to research your keywords. No doubt, you already know what the topic of your site is all about. It is important that you choose the right keywords now before you submit your site. When you select keywords, keep in mind criteria that the search engines have for keywords. Look for niche keywords instead of keywords that are so broad you’ll never rank well with them.
Step #2 – Improve Your Title Tags
Another step to take before submitting to the search engines is improving your title tags. One of the biggest things that will determine your score within the search engines is the appearance of keywords in the title tags. Do not go with title tags that don’t use your keywords. Your title tags should be keyword rich, which can help you ensure that you get strong rankings when your site is submitted to the search engines.
Step #3 – Check Out Your Site Technology
Take some time to check out your site technology before submitting your site to the search engines as well. Some technology built into sites can end up confusing the spiders that crawl through websites. Image maps, CGI scripts, frames, and other types of technology may not be understood by many of the spiders out there. Go through your site carefully and ensure that technology is not holding you back from getting high rankings in the search engines.
Step #4 – Check for Errors
Checking your website for errors is also going to be a critical step to great SEO. It’s a good idea to use a site maintenance tool to make sure that you catch any errors before you start bringing customers to your website. Any errors in HTML can end up causing problems for search engine spiders. Not only can errors cause problems with spiders, but they can also be frustrating to site a user, which means they may leave your site. Now is the time to ensure that any errors are taken care of.

Each of these steps is essential to the success of your website. Before you submit your website to the search engines, go through these steps and ensure that your site is ready. For professional advise on SEO contact Scream Media today - make sure your SEEN on the web.

Choosing a Domain Name

2010-07-14T14:50:00.000+02:00

There are two ways of selecting a domain name. You can choose the domain name first and use it as your organization name or vice versa. Most of the old organizations prefer to retain their brand name in their URL.
Many startup organizations select their URL first and then name their organization. This is because of the non availability of the perfect URL.
Your website URL is your online identity that is visible to millions of internet users. It impacts your organization name, website SEO and future business endeavors. All these factors should be taken into consideration before selecting a URL.
Boost Your Website SEO with the Following Domain Selection Tips:

Choose a Keyword Rich Domain Name: A keyword rich URL is a bonus for any website. It helps boost ranking in the search engine results pages. If the desired keyword rich URL is not available, you can add a prefix or a suffix to the keyword. A URL which contains a combination of keywords helps in drawing more traffic to the website.
Include Hyphens in the Domain Name: Search engines can distinguish between hyphenated keywords very easily. This helps in ranking better in search results pages. Hyphenated keywords in the URL are a good option if the desired keyword rich URL is not available. There is one pitfall in using hyphens in the URL. Your website visitor can land on the competitor’s website if they forget to add the hyphens. Webmasters should include hyphens as a last option to obtain the perfect domain name.
Select A Top Level Domain Name: A website URL should be selected based on the geographical location of the customers. If your website caters to the customers at a global level, a dot-com domain is suitable for you. If the dot-com domain is not available, you can opt between dot-net and dot-org. If your organization is based in United Kingdom, your top level domain should be dot-co-dot-uk. A non-profit organization should opt for dot-org as their top level domain.
Purchase a New Domain Name: A domain name should be researched well before purchasing. It is an important to get a URL related to your niche.

Tips for purchasing a new URL:

The name should be easy to spell & remember.
URL’s are inexpensive. You can register multiple keywords rich URL and redirect them to the main domain. As a result, a lot of traffic will be directed to the main site.
Make sure that you are not infringing another organizations brand name.
If your organization belongs to a particular region, Purchase a geo specific URL. This helps in capturing the target audience.

Purchase an Aged Domain Name:

Always check the background of an aged domain before purchasing it. Aged domains can give your website SEO a good boost. Tips for purchasing an aged URL:
Check the domain age. This will give you an idea of how old the domain is. Google gives a lot of importance to aged domains in search results pages. Your chances of ranking well improve with the age of the domain name.
Note the page rank of the aged domain. As the page rank increases, the importance of the domain increases.
Calculate the number of backlinks of the aged domain. An aged domain should have a few hundred backlinks. If the backlinks are not sufficient or are of poor quality, move on to purchasing another aged domain.

A good domain name should not exceed 67 characters. Look for a reputed service provider to host your URL. Register your URL for a few years instead of one year. Your website will leave a good and lasting impression on Google.

Writing content with Effective Keywords

2010-07-13T16:34:00.000+02:00

So, you have your list of keywords and you’re wondering how to incorporate them into your article titles. You’re wondering if it’s possible to do SEO article writing that also makes sense to humans.
If you go overboard with your key phrases, then your article has a good chance of being declined by publishers right off the bat.
How can you effectively use keywords in your article titles?
Is it possible to please search engines, publishers, and human readers?
Yes! This article spotlights a few techniques you can implement to effectively and correctly use your keywords in your article titles.
First, let’s lay the ground rule:
*Your title must serve your reader, first and foremost. The purpose of your title is to tell the reader what your article is about. A title is a great place to use your keywords, but the title must still make sense, be grammatically correct with proper spelling, and accurately portray the subject matter of the article.
Now, on to the tips:

Your title must reflect what your article is about. Most of the time this decline reason comes up when a person writes an article and then tries to include their keywords in the title as an afterthought, when the article is not really about the keywords. For example: If your article title is “10 Heart Healthy Soups”, then your article must talk about 10 heart healthy soups. Whatever is promised in the title must be delivered in the article.
Resist the urge to use a minimalist keyword-only title. If you’re extremely focused on your keywords and the impact they can have on your search engine ranking, you might wonder, “Why not just make a title that is totally keyword focused?”

For example: Hiking Boots
What is wrong with that?
Well first of all, this title is not very specific, nor does it draw a reader in. If you’re using a two word key phrase, most likely your phrase is extremely general and not specific enough to make a good title.
Your title should specifically indicate what your article is about, and if your article is about a specific aspect of “hiking boots”, then the title should reflect that. For example: “Hiking Boots: Top 5 Best Performers”
If you’re using long tail keyword phrases (3-5 words long), then the title almost writes itself sometimes. For example “How To Eat Healthy” may be your long tail key phrase, which also works well as a title.
But many long tail key phrases need extra words added to them in order to make sense. For example, the phrase “Used Car Values” is pretty general, and the article is likely about a more specific topic, such as “Used Car Values: How To Negotiate The Best Price For A Used Car”
3 – This almost goes without saying, but unfortunately I see this sometimes: Your title should not be a list of keywords.
What would you think if you saw a “title” that looked like this:
Used Car Pricing, Used Car Values, Used Car Deals
This type of title does not make sense, is not helpful to the reader, and was obviously an attempt to get as many keywords in the title as possible. Most publishers would immediately decline an article with a title like that.
The main idea is to write for your human readers first by creating a helpful and specific title that reflects what your article is about. You may use your keywords in the title if they sound natural and make sense.
If you would like a free no obligation quote for your websites copy writing, contact us today

Website Design

2010-06-30T16:57:00.000+02:00

More and more people are starting their own online businesses, and the competition within any particular marketplace is getting more and more intense. This is why having the right website design is now such an important part of the success of any online enterprise. Remember that your website is your store window, and just like any good store, the best window dressing will attract the customers in their droves.
Many newbies tend to make the same mistake, and that is to scrimp on the amount of money they spend on their website design. The problem is that there are a number of online businesses that offer cheap or even free website design. But the truth of the matter is that is that these low or no cost websites are very basic. Often they are simply templates that you can personalize in a limited way with choice of colors and font styles, but if you are serious about wanting to run a successful website, and your ambition is to handle lots and lots of traffic, you need a website that is capable of handling that sort of activity.
Finding a good website design company is not hard, and the website that you commission doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. But for a small outlay, you will be investing in your own future and your own online success. You must have the right tools for the job, and quality website design is fundamental to that success.
A good website design company will give you two essential things. The first thing is a website that looks aesthetically pleasing, and the second thing is a website that incorporates cutting edge technology and state-of-the-art knowhow. Let’s examine these two elements a little more closely.
Your website design needs to be aesthetically pleasing because you only get one chance of capturing a visitor’s attention. When traffic first arrives on the chosen landing page of your website, it is vitally important that you capture their immediate attention and interest. You need a visually stunning website that not only grabs and holds their attention, but also leads them further into the website to eventually clinch a sale. Lose them and they are gone forever.
But as well as being visually stunning, your website design must also include cutting edge technology. For example it should have the capability of streaming video, which is superb for great advertising and marketing messaging. It should also include state of the art coding in its links and structure because it is these links that enable search engine spiders to crawl all over website, indexing it for the major search engines which will enhance your website’s search page rankings.
A good website design company will also help you with your content, making sure that it is interesting, relative and informative, because this too will increase your website’s search engine ranking, making it much easier to find for customers seeking out the sort of products and or services that your website promotes.
Finally the right website design company will design your website making sure that it operates at a high conversion rate, meaning that it takes newly arrived traffic and stands a much better chance of converting casually interested visitors into cash paying customers. The best website design companies are not just there for the short ride. It’s not just a case of design a website, then leaving it all up to you to make the best of it on your own. A good website design company will be a permanent partner to you, always being there when you need them to tweak your website in one particular direction, or to insert some new form of technology that keeps your website at the cutting edge of current effective website design.

Links Backs - SEO tools

2010-06-23T10:22:00.000+02:00

Quality Link Building is About the Long-Term

SEO changes all the time as search engines make adjustments to their algorithms and user interfaces, users adopt new technologies, etc. Still some things never change, like Google's view on spammy links.
The first piece of advice Google gives is to get involved with the community around your topic. If you were still not convinced that social media plays a very big role in search, consider this is coming straight from Google. Now the networks your community hangs out in may vary, but engaging with the community is simply a good way to get links and build credibility, which also will most likely lead to more links. Engaging is good for increasingly visibility outside of search anyway. Nothing new. Just reiterated by Google.
Another tip Google suggests is to create content that solves problems for your users - things like tutorials, videos, and tools, surveys, research results, etc. Users who find helpful content are likely to pass it on.

Google notes that humor and other link-bait tactics can work for the short term, but does not recommend counting such tactics. "It's important to clarify that any legitimate link building strategy is a long-term effort," says Google Search Quality Strategist Kaspar Szymanski. "There are those who advocate for short-lived, often spammy methods, but these are not advisable if you care for your site's reputation. Buying PageRank-passing links or randomly exchanging links are the worst ways of attempting to gather links and they're likely to have no positive impact on your site's performance over time. If your site's visibility in the Google index is important to you it's best to avoid them."

Don't kid yourself, quality link backs take time and effort to get, but are very worth it in the long run. If you don't know how or simply don't have the time, let Scream Media handle this for you as part of our SEO - Marketing service. Contact us today on 021 5590800

Linkbacks and web directory submissions

2010-05-27T15:25:00.000+02:00

As the number of websites grow everyday, it is becoming increasingly difficult for a new site to attain good rankings on search engines. Since major search engines factor link popularity heavily into their ranking algorithms, building relevant links to your site is perhaps the single most important component of search engine optimization.
For a new site with no, or few inbound links, buying text links on more established related sites could provide a boost to your link popularity. But this strategy could prove prohibitively expensive, especially in a highly competitive market where you’d have to buy lots of links to catch up with the competition. Also Google is NOT a fan of paid links and can actually decrease your ranking if you have links to so called link farms.

Web directory listings represent a viable alternative to link buying. Apart from driving traffic to your site through direct referrals, web directories provide one-way inbound links to your site, boosting your link popularity and ultimately improving your search rankings.

There are thousands of web directories on the net, with dozens sprouting up every day. Some are general directories; others cater to specific niches. Some are free; others charge inclusion fees. Some are free only if you provide a reciprocal link in return. Many feature both free and paid listings.

Some directories charge inclusion fees that are too high for the listing to be cost effective. When considering a listing, look at not only the Google PageRank of the homepage of the directory, but also that of the subpage where your link will actually reside. While it may seem like a good deal to have your site listed on a PR5 directory, the offer becomes far less attractive when you find out that the internal page where your link is placed is only PR2.

If you’ve ever submitted to web directories before, I don’t have to convince you that the process is extremely tedious and time-consuming, especially when you submit to a large number of them. Unlike search engines that send out robots to index web pages, web directories rely on more detailed submission forms to gather information about your site. Since each submitted site must be reviewed by a real person, most directories require that submissions are also performed by a real person, as opposed to an automatic script. Many directories use a visual code verification process to prevent automated submissions. Apart from complying with the directory’s guidelines, manual submission is the only way to ensure that your site is submitted to the proper category.
Because of the time involved in manually submitting your site and the sheer number of directories on the web, it’s important that you know which directories to submit to. Obviously, you’d want to submit to only the high-PR directories and avoid the low-PR ones, right? Not really. Just because a directory has a low PR does not mean that it’s not worth submitting to. The directory may be brand new and not around long enough to be ranked by Google. In contrast to the more established directories that continually experience a back-log of submissions, newer directories tend to review and list sites more quickly. As the directory becomes more popular, so will your link. So, don’t judge a directory solely by its PageRank; rather, base your decision on the overall quality of the directory and most importantly the relevance to your website
Another important thing to look at is whether or not the directory you submit to is search engine friendly. Search engines like static web pages whose content stay the same regardless of who visits the page, or when they visit, not dynamic pages that are created on-the-fly. Browse to a couple of categories and look at the URL in the navigation bar.
In sum, submitting to web directories is a highly effective link building strategy that should be an integral part of any search engine optimization campaign. Manually submitting to a large number of directories is both laborious and time-consuming. Just keep the above points in mind to make the most of your time. If you would like to have your website professionally submitted to web directories then contact Scream Media today for a free no obligation SEO quote. 021 5590800

Article Marketing - Do's and Dont's

2010-05-26T11:59:00.000+02:00

As you’re writing articles for article marketing, you may wonder what sorts of topics are appropriate for you to write about.
Can you write an article about one topic but then have a link in the resource box going to a website on a completely unrelated topic?
This is an excellent question on a topic that can dramatically impact the success of your article marketing campaign:
What topics should you cover in your articles?
You should always write articles on the general topic of your website.
For example, if your website is about website design and internet marketing, then all of your articles should be on topics related to website design and internet marketing .
Why in the world does it matter what your article topic is so long as you have a link going back to your website in the resource box or text links?
Put yourself in your reader’s shoes for a minute:
If a reader is getting value from your educational article on website design and internet marketing, he will likely be interested in additional information on this topic. He will read your article and then think:
“This author knows his stuff about website design and internet marketing. He is surely an expert in his niche. I’d like to take a look at his website to find more information on this topic.”
When you’re writing articles on your topic, that is the way that things should go.
But what would be the result if your website was about website design and internet marketing, but you decided to write an article that was about how to grow tomatoes?
A reader interested in growing tomatoes would enjoy your article and then be hungry for more information on this topic. He would look to your resource box or links to find out more about you and your specialty. He’d also like to see your website to see if you have any additional information about growing tomatoes.
And what does he see when he looks at your resource box?
Information about website design and internet marketing! What is up with that?
You had a reader on the hook just ready to be reeled into your website, but you lost him because your article was not on the topic of your website.
Remember, article marketing is not just about the links. The article matters. The article will be read by human readers who may then click the link in your resource box or text links that leads back to your website. Writing on-topic articles makes the most of your article marketing efforts and increases the number of people who click the links.
Now, let’s consider how the topic of your article affects your ranking in Google.
Every link is not the same. Google likes to see that the link in your content relates to what your website is about.
One of Google’s goals when looking at the links of your website is to determine what your website is about. If your article is about website design and internet marketing and your website is about the same topic, then the link in your article affirms to Google that your website is about website design and internet marketing. This is why an article on a topic that is unrelated to your website is not very helpful to Google.
Writing on-topic articles increases the significance of each link that you build.
Additionally, when you write articles on the same topic as your website, your articles can help establish you as an expert in your niche, which goes a long way in winning customer confidence and increased sales.
Writing articles on one specific topic takes more focus and effort, but the result is worthwhile.
Need help with copy writing , blog writing or article writing? Why not contact the experts, the Scream Media, marketing team will work with you to make the most of links and content for your website. Contact them today on 021 5590800 or via the quick to use contact form.

Want more visitors to your website?

2010-05-25T15:36:00.000+02:00

Many visitors to your website will arrive via a search engine. Making your website more visible on search engines will hook potential customers, so follow our simple steps to improve your ranking.

Things to do today…

• Make a list of keywords and phrases that best describe your products and services. Run keywords through a keyword tool to identify any additional possibilities and find out how frequently they are searched for
• Go online and find appropriate businesses that might be able to provide reciprocal links to your website

Short term actions

Use search engine optimisation There are certain things you can do to improve your website’s search engine ranking.

• Make your site accessible. Well- written, easy to navigate pages will attract repeat visitors and may
help push your website up the search engine rankings (see chapter one).

• Use keywords and phrases.
Decide which keywords and phrases are unique to your industry products and services. Be fairly specific, eg ‘organic local apples’ will generate more qualified search engine leads than ‘apples’. Run these through a keyword tool to identify additional possibilities. Target these key phrases in web content, page titles, headings, sub-headings and any metadata included in the page code.

• Include an HTML link to a basic site map on every page of your website. Search engines will then be able to index pages of your site, increasing the chance of your site appearing in searches.

• Include reciprocal links. Use search engines to find websites that have high rankings for appropriate key terms and phrases. Contact them and ask if they will include a link to your website in return for a reciprocal link.

• Make sure your website is useful. This will encourage others to link to your site of their own accord. These one way links are often more effective than reciprocal links.

Top tip
• Don’t compromise the quality of your web copy in an effort to fill it with keywords. Search engines could penalise you for this and your rating will drop.

Start a pay per click campaign
A pay per click (PPC) campaign will further improve your web presence.

A PPC campaign involves posting sponsored links or adverts on search engine websites. When users search for keywords related to your business,
2. Search engine marketing

your sponsored link appears in a column often to the right or above the natural or organic search results.

A PPC campaign is cost-effective as you only pay for click-through to your site. The results can be easily tracked allowing you to optimise your campaigns. Set a daily budget and your advert will be switched off once your allowance is spent.

Plan your pay per click campaign Careful planning will help you maximise the success of your
PPC campaign.

Consider the following:

• Which visitors you want to attract.

• Whether you want to target local or regional customers, a particular age-group or
particular-interest customers.

• How many unique adverts you want to create for each advert group. These will need to be tested against each other to find the most effective.

• When you want adverts to be activated and for how long.

• Which keyword searches will generate your sponsored link.
A broad match will trigger your advert more frequently than an exact match and could mean your advert is shown inappropriately.

• How much you are willing to bid initially for each click.

For more information about running a successful online advertising campaign contact Scream Media today for a FREE no obligation quote.

Placing website elements

2010-05-20T12:02:00.000+02:00

Placing website elements

If you want your visitors to feel right at home at your site, there are a few things that you should keep in mind when creating or updating your site. Unless you are an artist (and want your site to bean usual piece of art), you probably want it to make it as easy as possible for the visitors of your site.But how do you do that? There are several approaches you can take. The approaches listed below have been used successfully by Scream Media over a period of 6 years to build our clients "websites that produce results"

Approach #1: The scientific way

There have been several studies (Shaikh & Lenz, 2006; eResult 2003-2009) about this. They asked a number of people where they expect several elements of the website, like login link or search function. The answers to these question have changed over time because the way the web sites usually look also changed. Some things are quite logic (like putting less important links to the bottom), but others are more like the “culture of the web”, like putting the navigation to the left.Perhaps it will be on the right in a few years?

To put it in a nutshell, here’s a summary of where the users expect website elements to be:

Function Expected position
About us Bottom or top navigation
Home link Upper left corner
Login Upper right corner
Logo Upper left corner
Navigation Left or top
Privacy Bottom,
Search Upper right corner
Sitemap Bottom

The same data as a sample website:

Logo, Home link Login, Search
Navigation
About us, Privacy, Sitemap

The results cannot be surprising since they’re mostly the sum of all the websites that we visit everyday. Not all websites look like this, there are some exception, even popular ones. For examples Wikipedia placed the search function on the left instead of the upper right corner. Well, if you’re Wikipedia, you can probably get away with this.

Approach #2: Do it yourself

If you don’t believe this or want to know about other website elements, there’s a simple way. Use an empty piece of paper (or a heavily blurred image of your website) and ask yourself and others where you would expect these elements. That’s actually quite simple and more or less the same how the studies worked.

Naming website elements

Now you know where to put the elements. But how do you name them? Do you log in or sign in? Do you have a shop or a store? Some of the typical website functions are not always named the same. we tested 30 popular sites of different sectors and counted the wordings that they used. Here are the most popular versions:

Sign in: 54% (Others: log in: 42%)
Sign up: 55% (Others: Create an account: 23%; Register: 14%)
Store: 50% (Others: Shop: 20%)
Privacy Policy: 52% (Others: Privacy: 34%)

Naming your products

If you want to sell something to your customers, you should make it easy for them to find and understand products and product lines. This may seem obvious to you, but it’s not always obvious for others. Here’s a example. When shopping for my new computer, I visited Dell. This is the result on the left.
Did I want a Studio, an XPS or an Inspiron? I didn’t have the faintest idea and bought the computer somewhere else. Check your website to see if you make the same mistake.

Summary

Making it easier for your website visitors increases the chance that they visit you more often and or make a purchase. Often it’s not enough to make a few simple changes to make a difference, like move an element from the left to right or change a few words. A long hard look by a professional will pay dividends. Final word of advice: Let a friend visit your website while you sit next to him. Don’t help him, just watch if and how he reads/downloads/purchases something and where he has problems. This can be a real eye-opener…

For a free no obligation website accessibility test, contact Scream Media - H2L today and our friendly team will send you a full report on your website.

Why Local is Lekker.

2010-05-19T12:53:00.000+02:00

Local search has become one of the most affordable and important ways for small businesses to be found by their customers. In a recent .Com Score study, they found that 42% of local searchers wanted to find a business within 6-15 km of their home or place of work. Searchers are looking for more relevance than ever before. With statistics like this, it’s more imperative you are giving those local users every opportunity to find your business.

The reality is that there are many factors that can contribute to a successful local, online presence. In today’s market, it takes being available at different times and in varied formats to reach the right audience. One of the main ways prospects can find you is through a local business listing. With prime placement right at the top of the search results page, these listings give a previously unheard of visibility to small and local businesses.

So what can you do reach that coveted prime placement, a.k.a. the Google “7-pack”?

   1. Submit your listing- Seems pretty simple, right? Well, it’s a crucial step. Just submitting and verifying your listing can sometimes be enough in less competitive markets. Google takes the verified information as the most trusted, so make sure your listing is claimed.
   2. Have only one, optimized listing for your business – When you submit your information to Google, you could have the option to choose existing business information, if it exists for your company. You don’t want to have competing listings out there, so always claim the existing information and optimize it- so there is only one active listing. I have seen claiming another listing significantly help a business rank better.
   3. Choose correct categories for your business – Google provides different industry options for you to choose from. These are one of the main factors that determine which searches your listing could show for. Make sure these accurately describe your products and services.
   4. Put your industry and target area in the title of your listing- This information helps Google, but it also improves your visibility for those keywords.
   5. Be sure to use a local phone number in your listing- Using a local number lets both the user and the search engine know that you are in fact located where you say you are.
   6. Create a description that’s informative- This descriptive area provides you the chance to give the most information about your company. Use your keywords and provide the details that would be valuable for your customer base.
   7. Reviews are important! Positive reviews are a huge factor on whether or not someone will choose you business over another. Not only that, but the presence of reviews (both negative and positive) can increase the ranking of your listing. In some industries, I have seen listings perform better by simply having more reviews than their competitors.
   8. Keep your listing up to date- Updating the information tells the search engines that it’s relevant. It can be as simple as updating a coupon, or other details.
   9. Make sure your listing is 100% complete! Don’t underestimate the value of having a completed listing. Google is all about the user experience, and a complete listing shows that your business is providing the most information.
10. Submit your info to other directories as well. Google actually pulls your business info from other sites, so it would behoove you to have accurate, standard information about your business from as many sources as possible, any good directory will offer FREE listings. Think twice before paying for listing on so called directories who drive no traffic.

Ranking your website can be hard work and very confusing, and if done incorrectly can hurt your website rather then benefit it, if you would like the experts to perform your SEO for you, look no further then Scream Media. Contact us today on 021 5590800 for a free no obligation chat about your website needs.

Scream Media - Cape Town - online marketing - ppc - seo - social media marketing - website design

Using Twitter to build your Brand

2010-05-13T11:55:00.000+02:00

Five pointers for smart internet marketing with Twitter trends:
1. Ride The Right Trends - Not every high-flying topic is going to be brand-supportive, so choose trends wisely. Know what your bottom line is, and make sure your chosen keyword won’t detract from your brand equity.
2. Timing Is Everything – Just as today is a chance to introduce your business through exciting, new trend associations, yesterday’s buzz is just that—in the past. It’s best to stick to the day’s trends to attract as many eyes as possible.
3. Be Creative – Engage the banter around trending topics through clever promotional copy. If you own a cleaning company and wanted to catch today’s #nowplaying trend, think about unique plugs and points of reference for your brand. A client’s home entertainment center, perhaps. You could run with this: ” #nowplaying in your living room: Clean, Calm, Collected.” Just remember to link to your service.
4. Pace Yourself – Piggy-back on Twitter trends strategically. Don’t abandon straight-forward promotional tweets as part of your marketing mix just yet. You should still routinely communicate who you are and what you offer to your core market in plain Twenglish. Use trending creatively to boost short-term sales through web-exclusive incentives, or to remind consumers of recently-launched products.
5. Invent The Wheel (Or Word) If You Must – Don’t see enough opportunities to creatively spread the word? Take initiate to get new keywords trending by tagging a concept, category, or catchphrase. Who knows? Maybe you’ll start tomorrow’s top trend—and drive brand awareness through smart internet marketing while you’re at it. Don’t miss an opportunity to promote your brand and your product with personality. Don’t be afraid of using humor (carefully!) when there’s an opportunity to shine. Twitter’s snappy stream of top trends is a high-low stream of abridged messages—the perfect platform to stand out with short, sweet and smart internet marketing. Spread your message by turning your Tweets into a conversation. Make your 140 characters worth a thousand words by knowing which trends work for you, seizing its moment, starting a conversation—and most importantly, using it when it’ll help you most.

Here’s a smattering of today’s top Twitter trends:
#breakuplastwords, #ihatequotes, #nowplaying, #OMGIKnowRight, #Justin Beiber.
It may be hard to believe these words are worth repeating, but this chatter could mean traffic for your website and business. How do you run with the word-flow without getting lost in a deluge of diatribe?

If all this tweet is making your head spin then contact Scream Media today for a FREE no obligation quote, on professional managment with your Twitter and Facebook Marketing

The New Look Google

2010-05-10T10:09:00.000+02:00

Now that the masses have access to Google's newly redesigned results pages, it's time to consider this in an SEO light if you have not already been considering it.

How do Google's New SERPs Affect SEO?
Google has had its search options available for about a year, but they have not been in the face of the user like the newly redesigned SERP is. With this new design, users don't have any choice but to notice the options that are available. It's not too different from Bing or Yahoo in that respect (Danny Sullivan notes that Ask pioneered this design). The difference is that way more people search with Google on a regular basis (in fact, last month Google reportedly dominated the search market by even more than usual).

SEO Strategies and Increased Engagement from Searchers
The new SERPs may shake up SEO efforts, simply because users will start going to the different options Google provides them, taking them to different sets of results. Now that the options are in the limelight, users are more likely to use them.

Yahoo tells us when they added features to their left-hand navigation bar, engagement increased. "We've been steadily adding more filtering options and relevant search suggestions to our left-hand navigation bar...and have seen engagement and click-throughs for those features double over the past seven months." I can't imagine why Google wouldn't also see an engagement increase for certain features that are now more visible.

It's going to come down to evaluating the different options for any given query that you wish to rank for, and focusing efforts upon those. Make sure your site is SEO compatible contact Scream Media today for a free no obligation SEO health check for your website.

Starting an Online Business

2010-05-07T10:33:00.000+02:00

If you are thinking about starting an online business the first step you should take is to find a niche product or service. A niche is a product or service that serves a highly targeted audience with specific needs. Why is this important? Because with all of the different businesses establishing a presence online it is important to choose something that caters to an underserved audience with a demand for a specific product or service.

Many people who are new to online business make the mistake of choosing a product or service that is currently considered “hot” without thinking about the high rate of competition and the fact that the market may already be saturated. In addition to that, you can end up paying a fortune in advertising with nothing to show for it in the end.

If you choose a niche that serves a highly targeted audience with specific needs you will stand a much better chance of succeeding with your online business. Here are a few tips on choosing a niche that will help to improve your chances of success.

What Are You Passionate About?

Sit down and make a list of things you are passionate and knowledgeable about. The list should include interests, hobbies, professional skills, and any other topics that you would be happy working with on a daily basis. At first, you may find this a challenge if you have been caught up in the 9 to 5 grind and forgotten what you are passionate about. Be patient and enlist the help of some friends if you wish.

It is important that you are passionate about what you do because this will show through when you build a client base. If you are enthusiastic about what you do this will reflect on others and they will return to do business with you time and again. Additionally, if you enjoy what you do it will never feel like work.

Research Your Market

Once you have decided on a topic the next step is to start researching the topic on the Internet. You can begin to find your audience and where your position will be in your market by participating in forums related to your topic, social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and any other sites where you can find people discussing your topic.

As you visit these sites listen carefully and take some notes on what people are discussing. This will help you to discover exactly what they are looking for when it comes to your product or service. Listening to the needs of your audience will help you to determine a niche for your online business.

For example, if your topic of interest is landscaping it is important to find out what people are looking for with regard to landscaping. Landscaping is very broad topic with a lot of competition. What about landscaping? What are people specifically looking for? Are they looking for landscaping professionals? Are they looking for landscaping tools? Perhaps they are looking for tips on how to do landscaping.

The key here is to drill down into the term “landscaping” and find a specific niche related to this topic the serves a highly targeted audience with specific needs. Landscaping plans for small backyards would be an example of a niche that serves a specific audience.

Keywords

Once you find your audience and what they are looking for the keywords you choose will help your targeted audience to find you online. Once you get to know your audience you can brainstorm keywords they might use to search for your product or service. You can use one of the many keyword tools that are available online for accomplishing this task. Google has a fantastic free keyword suggestion tool

Just like you had to drill down to find a niche you must find keywords that relate to the niche. Let’s go back to the landscaping example. If you simply choose the keyword “landscaping” you may get a lot of visitors to your website but they will be untargeted. If you are selling landscaping plans and they are looking for tools they will leave your site. If you choose the keywords “landscaping plans for small backyards” you know exactly what the people are searching for and it makes it easy to deliver the solution when they arrive at your website.

Take the time in the beginning to choose your niche and get to know your market and what they are looking for. The time you invest will help you to build a solid foundation for building a business that will last over the long term.

Our marketing team has over 25 years experience in both on and off line marketing. For a professional analysis of your online business plan, contact us today to set up a no obligation meeting.

Website Design

2010-05-06T11:08:00.005+02:00

Design is not a magic pill

If you don’t have a basic marketing plan in place, design can’t cover that up.

The first question we ask our clients when we talk about a new project is, “Who are you trying to reach?” It’s shocking how many businesses have put hours of thought into their design without ever considering the most basic of all marketing questions: “Who am I selling to?”

If you’re not clear on who you want to appeal to, the most gorgeous website design in the world won’t help you make sales.

Figure out who you want to reach first, and focus on design after you’ve made that decision. You’ll find your design works a lot better when every color choice and pretty picture is especially made to appeal to the people you want to draw to your business.

Design is NOT your message

Before you add design into your marketing mix, you have to know what you want to say.

That’s why it’s strange that there are people out there who think they can rely on their design alone to communicate their message.

Think about it this way: you have a beautiful website. It may stop people in their tracks long enough to want to learn more. That’s great, but if they read on only to discover that you have unfocused or boring content, you will lose them.

Good design may get customers in your door, but great content keeps them from walking right back out again.

When you implement both good design and solid, valuable content, you’ll double the power of either of these elements alone. Don’t rely on design alone to communicate your message.

Design is not about you

Don’t make design decisions based on personal likes or dislikes. Make them based on what appeals to your target market, and the colors and forms that will best communicate your message.

If your target market thinks yellow is an appealing, fresh, happy color that endears them to your services, then it doesn’t matter that yellow is your least favorite color.

When you let your site or materials reflect only your personal tastes, you’re risking your design not resonating at all with the people you want to bring to your business.

Check your ego at the door and think about who you want to sell to. For great prices on website design contact Scream Media today!

Website Mareketing Challenges for 2010

2010-05-05T12:30:00.000+02:00

Following is the list of pointers to get your website on top, reach out to potential customers and ensure brand visibility in 2010. Need help with implementing any of these actions, contact Scream Media Today

Decrease Webpage Load Time. Google’s Matt Cutts recently hinted that the load time of a website may affect its ranking in the search engines. That is, the faster a website loads, the better its chances to rank well for its niche keywords. Website load time is touted as the next big step towards improved rankings. The pre-requisites to a good webpage load time are; reputable web host and fast internet connection.
Get Listed in Google Local Search. Getting listed in Google Local Search ensures brand visibility in front of visitors from the nearby places. It has been proven that the number of visitors to a website increase exponentially when listed in local search results. The reason being, a customer will always prefer to purchase a quality product which is easily available in his or her vicinity rather than order it from another unfamiliar city or state.
Get Involved in Social Media. Social Media is the flavor of the season and in 2010 organizations are going to actively engage in conversation and social networking and reach out to their potential customers. Social Media Marketing is a must for every organization as it helps create brand awareness and build relationships with consumers in the highly competitive market. Micro targeting and Personalization will be the keywords in 2010.
Optimize Your Website Mobile Users. With and ever increasing number of people tweeting and using Facebook from their mobile devices, a lot of organizations are now finally paying attention to how their websites appear on mobile phones. You can have your website appear on the mobile under the same URL or have a special domain for the same. The most common way is to have the domain name as mobile.websitename.com.
Apply Web Analytics to its full potential. There are hundreds of web analytics tools in the market which provide a mountain of data pertaining to the visitor’s usage. Some of the most well known web analytics tools are Omniture, Google Analytics and Yahoo! Web Analytics etc. Web Analytics tools can answer the “how” but not the “why”. That is, you can find out how many visitors checked the product catalogue webpage, but not the answer to, why the visitors didn’t place an order for the product. Organizations need to dissect the data from web analytics tools and successfully apply its learning’s to enhance their visitors experience and in turn increase sales revenues.

In 2010 companies must go beyond organic search engine optimization by integrating social media marketing and optimizing their websites for mobile users.

What does Google say about content? Matt Cutts comments

2010-04-26T08:55:00.000+02:00

Two important points I get from this video: A. Google's really trying to drive the point home that they work on their algorithm every day and most likely mostly in regards to spam catching (and speed) and B. Get your good content out there...social media.

This informative article by Barry Schwartz entitled Google Makes One Change Per Day To Search Algorithm, posts a video by Matt Cutts where he is asked the question "how many changes did Google make to their primary search algorithm in 2009"?

Matt clearly states that Google tends to roll out 350 to 400 [changes] per year or "about one thing per day"...

He says the changes could be in how they segment a language, relate better synonyms or web spam improvements.

Take notice of the web spam improvement. - "significant but not always noticed outside of Google"...

He's also asked about content and whether content is still king and he answers "I think content is necessary, it's not always sufficient because people have to find out about your content. You have to find some way of marketing to people...or find some hook or some appealing way to get people to want to find out what information you have......but if you don't have good content it's a lot harder to do good search engine optimization for your site. I would start with that and once you have good content think about how to find out where the rest of the world is so you can tell them, hey this is the great content that I have".

OK so content isn't king anymore unless it has links to it which is basically what good content should give you in the end if people link to you.

Either way, over 300 algorithm changes a year and get your good content out there. I guess he's talking about social media. Agree?

Dont get left behind, Check out what Scream Media can offer you regarding Social Media Marketing and SEO today!

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Local Search Engine Optimization

1. Local Search Engine Optimization

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A Note About Building Links...

Using Facebook for business

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The Basic Principles of Mobile Website Design

The not so humble Description Tag

SEO and Blogs

The Importance of Anchor Text for SEO

Facebook Myth's

How can I get people to revisit my website?

When algorithms control the world

Social Media - New Age Marketing

The importance of website loading times

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Social Media and SEO

Improve your sales online with SEO

Guaranted Google Rankings

Twitter versus Facebook

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Google's new +1 Button and how it will effect SEO

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Googles "Kung Fu" Panda puts the squeeze on Microsoft

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Watch Out Content Farms, Google has your number

Online Marketing Budgets set to increase

Google - Schmidt is out as CEO

Social Media makes up 22% of time spent online

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Social Media

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SEO in 2011 - new SEO trends to look out for

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Create smart navigation

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Search Engine Optimisation Trends

Time to Look at your B2B Sales Procedure

B2B marketing on Twitter

More Customers with Email Marketing !

Checklist One: The Basics

Did You Create Two Versions?

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Seo Content for your Website

Tips to make sure you're making the most of Twitter for your brand.

How to promote new content on your website