When I find a website I like one of the first things I look for are the contact details. I always do this when it’s a site I’m considering buying from, but I also often do it on information sites. If a site is purely informational I can understand they may not have this information but if you are selling products and services online your contact details are a must.

I want to know who I am buying from and if I can’t find any contact details or they are hidden and I have to hunt them out I wonder why. What are you trying to hide?

Make your contact details clear and easy to find. As well as helping convert visitors into customers they’ll help your rankings in local search queries.

Social Media Marketing is currently the BIG thing in search marketing. I’ve heard both positives and negatives for it but until now now have not delved into it too deeply. Luckily
Miriam Ellis-Loraditch of Solas Web Design has taken the plunge with a great article talking to a number of search marketers, including me, about their experiences with Social Media Marketing.

There’s some great stuff in it and it’s well worth a read.

John Scott over at V7N is one of the smartest internet marketers I know. He has just written an excellent post, John Scott on Link Building, which is a must read for anyone interested in driving targeted traffic to their website.

There’s a ton of gems but here’s a few:

You see, Google is still running link based algorithms. Google, however, wants to count links which were meant to be legitimate “votes” for a web page. Google does not want to count links as votes if those links were placed on a web page for monetary reward, or as spam.

Links remain the most important part of any search engine marketing campaign. Links are SEO. The difference between link building in 2002 and link building in 2007 is that the search engines are better equipped to evaluate those links, and this forces website owners to up their game.

Nice post John!

My friend, Kim has a great video interview out talking about SEO and Usability. Kim is a great proponent on ensuring a website is usable once a visitor lands there. As she says there’s no point in being number 1 in the search engines if visitors can’t find what they’re looking for on your site.

Kim also talks a little about the start of Cre8asite Forums, my home away from home. It’s a great interview and well worth a look.

I come across a lot of people who are under the assumption that a website must be optimised for their one main keyword phrase only. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Your website should contain hundreds of keyword phrases all targeting variations of the sorts of words people would use to find the products and services you are offering. As a rough guide focus on one or two phrases per page.

You can also use this approach to target both competitive and not so competitive terms. For example the keyword phrase “blue widgets” may be extremely competitive whereas “buy genuine blue widgets” is far easier to rank well for. By combining both on a page you can effectively target both competitive and non-competitive keyword phrases. You may rank quite quickly for the non competitive phrase, whilst ranking well for the more competitive phrase might take more time and effort.

So now you know how to approach distributing your keyword phrases but how do you know what the right phrases are? This is where keyword research come in.

Start with reviewing your marketing materials and talking to staff to get an initial list of phrases used to describe your products and services. You should also look at what industry jargon is used and what words your clients and customers use to describe your offerings. Use these words to form a seed list.

You now need to research those phrases. There are a number of keyword research tools out there that can help you do this. This research can help you determine how popular and competitive a keyword phrase is and help you choose the best ones for your website. Here are some great keyword research tools you may want to try:

• Word Tracker - offers a free trial as well as paid subscription options.
• Keyword Discovery - also offers a free trial and monthly subscriptions.
• Google also have a great free keyword tool to help you find relevant phrases for your website.

These tools will help you come up with a comprehensive list of appropriate keyword phrases for your website.

Finally nothing beats testing. Analyse your website’s visitors and work out which keywords are performing for you. Ongoing tweaking and adjustments will help ensure you are targeting the right keyword phrases and getting targeted traffic to your website.

I had the pleasure of meeting a new client today. He told me a little about his history (he’s been on TV) and I mentioned I had read some of it after Googling him. He hadn’t heard of being Googled before. Which I also hear from many clients, friends and family.

So question: do you Google yourself?