Posts by Louis Venter

Louis Venter is the founding director and CEO of MediaVision, a Search Engine Marketing (SEM) company specialising in all areas of search. His particular interests are organic search marketing, paid search marketing, conversion strategy and online PR. More articles and bio from Louis Venter
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A checklist for International Search Success – Andy Atkins-Kruger – #SMXISS

Andy started the conference by setting the scene for the international search landscape. Search is a billion dollars bigger than it was last year with the majority growing in the international markets.

1)      Research and Planning

Culture is very important – local research is vital or your marketing message will miss the target market. This is where keyword research adds a lot of value in this regard. Google, Nike and Unilever have all made mistakes in this regard. Keywords can’t be translated, you miss all the nuances in the local markets. For example in the UK a beamer is a BMW but in Germany it’s a projector. Google images does help to show subtle variations in languages. (more…)

The Case of Measuring Offline vs. Online ROI

ROI-online-offline

One of the most frustrating things I face on a daily basis is other marketing channels reporting back using BS metrics. Today I’d like to share a recent example of measuring ROI across all channels and levelling the playing field to determine the performance of the different channels.

A bit of background

In the example I am going to use the digital marketing budget is 30% of the overall marketing budget with
SEO getting less than 5% of the overall budget. We continually went back to the client with exceptional ROI numbers and areas where we can deliver increases but they constantly said that there was no room for budget expansion and no more time could be spent on the account.

We then were asked to sit in a broader marketing meeting I was amazed at the fluff and rubbish that was reported back from the offline marketing channel. Cost per response in my opinion is fluff and it takes 5 seconds on a spread sheet to return an ROI percentage. It won’t be 100% accurate but it’s far better than not measuring at all. They were also not reporting back on how the offline spend was affecting direct traffic or brand search traffic and we saw consistent declines in both. They just assumed that it happened and had a flippant attitude to it. From my perspective it was time to shake their ivory tower a little. (more…)

Firefox adopting Secure Search will Allow Snake Oil SEOs to Thrive

google-billboard

Last year when Google announced that they were going to make search more secure and this would impact keyword data I saw the whole thing as a bit of a storm in a teacup. It was estimated to impact about 10% of all search queries but in my experience thus far it seems to be affecting a higher proportion than that. Now that Firefox is going to use secure search by default the volume of ‘not provided’ keyword data is set to grow even further.

I do believe that it is a huge double standard on Google’s behalf given that it doesn’t apply to paid search traffic but the bigger issue in my mind is that it will allow very poor SEO agencies to thrive. (more…)

Is retargeting and re-marketing for you – #SESLondon

Re Targeting is one of the growing marketing strategies and the two speakers were both very knowledgeable.

Guy Levine from Return on Digital

Guy started by saying yes definitely and he went on to share about how it works and case studies.

The basics:
It’s a simple way to connect with users based on past interactions with your website
Integrated into Adwords
Person visits your website a tracking cookie is dropped. A user leaves the site and visits other sites on the web. You then show them banner ads and paid search adverts. User then clicks on the ads and comes back and makes a purchase.

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The Business of SEO – #SESLondon

Lisa

This is quite a unique panel about the business of SEO. Jake Langwith concentrated on headhunting for good people whereas Lisa concentrated on winning new accounts.

Jake Langwith from Firebrand

Jake is a head hunter specialising in SEO recruitment. Forget job adverts it’s all about the proactive search.

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Key Link Building Strategies – #seslondon

Lisa

Obviously Link building is a huge part of any SEO strategy and it was great to hear from two great speakers on the subject.

Patrick Altoft from Branded3

Patrick started the session indicating that he was covering a lot of the basics.
Links are important, once you have completed your onsite optimisation everything else should be focused towards link building. Most people don’t give it the attention that it deserves.

Link analysis
Very important to define what types of links your site is going to need to compete. Every site is different and you won’t know what links are needed until an analysis is complete. Look at anchor text link profiling against your competition. Segment them into brand vs. non brand links which will identify the areas that you are strong and weak in.
Domain authority reports through open site explorer shows your number of links from quality domains. Very useful for pitching too.

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SES London Keynote – Avinash Kaushik – #seslondon

ses-london-avinash-kaushik

It’s almost two years to the day that State of Search was launched and I heard Avinash speak at SES. He was truly inspirational and some of the ideas he presented that day I still use on a weekly basis today. Needless to say I am a huge fan and was really looking forward to the keynote.

He started with a favourite quote from a Kenyan Farmer, “information is powerful but it is how we use it that will define us.” We spend a lot of time making love to data but very little happens as a result. The key is trying to find out how to move beyond that information to drive change in your company.

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What Google Revenues Might Mean to the SEO Industry

internet-money

Last week Google announced that their Q4 revenue in the UK surpassed $1 billion. While this didn’t impress Wall Street a great deal it does show that ad spend in the UK search sector is very healthy indeed. See a breakdown of international numbers here. Another interesting stat that was corroborated widely by many PPC agencies was that the number of clicks rose significantly in the fourth quarter yet the amount they charged per click fell by 8%. So what does all this mean to the SEO industry?

In my opinion SEO is still very much the poor neighbour of the search market. SEO traffic is often viewed as “free” traffic which simply isn’t the case, it needs budget to deliver outstanding results. The fact that you can measure the ROI similarly often also lands on deaf ears. Adwords, it seems, is an easier sell yet in most cases a solid SEO campaign will deliver far more ROI than a similar budget placed in PPC. A client may not get full value in the first month but once the traffic intersects it keeps growing unlike the fairly flat curve that a PPC campaign often generates. I’m not going to turn this into a SEO vs. PPC post though, they both work. (more…)

All we want for Christmas

present

Since Christmas is literally around the corner now I thought I would pose that age old question to all State of Search bloggers. What do you want for Christmas? They get to ask for one real life present and one from the search engines. Some were whacky and some were very sensible so if you are an engineer from one of the engines pretty please can we have a few! (more…)

SEO Tactics to tame the Panda

panda-battle

Daniel Bianchini who is a Senior SEO consultant at SEOptimise started with an update about Panda. Since Panda has rolled out in February but has run 5 times since February. He doesn’t foresee the end of Panda any time soon. He actually predicts a lot more Panda slaps in the future.

Google suggests evaluating all the content on your site and removing or moving all low quality content. Improving all the quality of pages across the site is also advised. Really good actions to evaluate low quality content involve analysing bounce and exit rate. Ask the question if people actually read this, is the content up to date? Is the content factually good content, is it stylistically correct? It’s is a factor of overall domain authority so it’s worth getting it right. Google has 23 quality questions that help to evaluate your content. Set this up as a survey and see what your visitors think. (more…)

Copywriting for Conversion

This is coverage of the session “copywriting for conversion” at A4U Expo. The session was run by Dr Karl Blanks from Conversion Rate Experts.

Proven strategies to increase sales

Step 1: Become able to sell the product face to face

Know how to take that information and apply it to the website. Speak with real sales people understand the questions that your customers ask. Make sure you address most of the key questions. (more…)

5 checks to Make Sure You’re Getting Value Out of Your SEO Agency

bush-scratch-head

SEO is a complex industry to be involved in as you can ask 5 experts to solve a websites ranking problems and you’ll most likely get 10 different strategies. The issue is 8 out of the 10 will work and each one will have strengths and weaknesses.

So how do you appoint an agency?

Hiring a reputable agency with a strong track record is the route a lot of companies go with but that also has its weaknesses as you may get the A team in the pitch but the C team actually works on your project. Conversely hiring a small agency may mean that they simply don’t have the resource or aren’t geared up for expansion leaving you frustrated with your level of service.

Having seen a few of these scenarios lately I thought I’d write a post on a few quick checks you can make to ensure you are getting value out of your agency. (more…)

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