Posts About ‘reviews’

Book Review: Webs of Influence

Last year I got a copy of the book ‘Webs of Influence’, written by Nathalie Nahai. Nathalie is a web psychologist and therefore is moving on a playing field I myself am doing a lot with as well.

I read the book a while ago but never got around to actually writing a review about it. And since Nathalie is speaking at OMNLondon this week I thought, let’s get this online!

What is the book about?

Webs of influence is a book which looks at all sorts of different elements that make people take specific decisions online. And it translates those things in to actionable elements which you can use on your own website.

The book, written by Nathalie Nahai, is several things at once: a guide, a how to and a book with insights into the minds of people.

About the Author

Nathalie Nahai is known on Twitter as the ‘@TheWebPsych’ and with reason. She did a BSc in Psychology, which explains why the ‘Psych’ is there. But Nathalie has a very broad background. She went to art school and she is a musician as well, if you do a search on YouTube on her name you will find not just presentations of her about Web Psychology, but also several songs she sang over the years.

[youtube http://youtu.be/qnP0gJa98k8&w=640&h=360]

Her diverse background makes that she looks at things from a different angle, so her artistic background helps her look at sites differently, not as an SEO but more as a designer.

In the past few years she has made an art out of finding out and writing about ‘what makes people click online’. Not so much in search engines, but more on websites itself.

The book she wrote is about building reputational capital, social psychology principles that work to create more persuasive relationships and much more creative webspychology elements.

Last year I interviewed Nathalie before her talk at the Conversion Conference in London.

What is interesting about the book

In the book Nathalie combines psychology, neuroscience and behavioural economics to get a grip on why people click. And with her book she shows that so many sites still have room for improvement if they just start focussing on the user first instead of the content first.

How is the book set up

The book is set up in 3 parts:

1: Know who you’re targeting
2: Communicate persuasively
3: Sell with integrity

The book has some handy recurring elements in it.

Nathalie starts each of the different parts with something we mostly see online: an info graphic. This is a very nice way of starting a section because it will instantly get you ‘in the right setting’.

Nathalie also uses a lot of examples as in cases, a proven method which always works to make it more visible to people. The problem with cases however is that many cannot relate to them because it is ‘nothing like their own business’. Nathalie has a nice approach to that which partly solves this issue. There are several paragraphs called ‘Make this work for you’ which explains how you can ‘translate’ the examples Nathalie is giving onto your own website.

This is really a valuable add on to the book because many books that talk about psychology stop at explaining that something is happening and why but don’t take the next step to the ‘and now what’, which I personally find very useful.

What is missing?

As said earlier the book is very much focussed on what is happening on the site itself. Which is very useful, but also means the parts before that are missing. Nathalie does not look at how people get to the site.

I would love to see more about search, social and getting the attention and keeping the attention of the right audience. But that probably is a whole new book right there.

Who should be reading this book?

The book I think is fit for every webmaster, smaller or larger. It has to be a webmaster that has an influence on what is actually happening on the website though when it comes to design elements for example.

Someone working as a content manager who has no access to certain elements of his or her own site might get frustrated. So you need to have access to some design elements to make the tips work.

Why Read?

So finally, why should you read this book? Personally I think the answer to that is not just one answer. For me it was very interesting because the topic is something I do a lot with, but there is also a lot to learn from this.

The most important reason I think however is that it makes you think. It makes you think about your audience, something still too little marketers do.

You can see Nathalie speak at OMNLondon this week. Find below a presentation she recently did in the Netherlands.

[youtube http://youtu.be/1A5TeqAD0t8&w=640&h=360]

The Link Building Book by Paddy Moogan: A Review

Earlier this year Paddy Moogan told me he was writing a book and asked me if I wanted to read it. Knowing his articles here on State of Search and on other blogs I off course immediately said yes to that. His writing has always been insightful and valuable, so an entire book of that type of content would be a treat.

When I got the book it was in an e-book format, which makes sense because the subject, Paddy’s speciality link building, is a timely topic, so a hard copy book would be outdated before even published. The thing is with an e-book, unlike holding a real life hard copy book, you can’t immediately see how much is in there, there is not give away if the book is long or short other than going through the book.

That is why it has taken me a long time to actually write the review: there is so incredibly much (valuable) content in the book which I couldn’t imagine when seeing the cover of the book (don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice cover, but it doesn’t show you how much is behind). Although the title could have been a give away, it truly is “THE” Linkbuilding book. So yes, it has taking me a longer time than expected to get through it, but it’s worth it. I just wish… No, I’ll wait with that part, read the review below and find out. (more…)

Free Content for Free Spirits: MyBlogGuest WordPress Plugin Review

First there was God, and then came the internet. Our new religion has consumed us, and devoured us whole – every last megabyte. Content is the new Holy Grail, and links are our happy ever after, but what about legacy? What about the good of Mankind? Here we take a look at the shiny new plug-in from the guys at MyBlogGuest.com, to see if our prayers really have been answered. (more…)

Google’s Fight Against Fake Online Reviews

I think it’s fair to say that online reviews are hugely influential during your online search process to determine the right solution for yourself. Honestly, think about your own search behaviour – how often has your purchasing decision been influenced by customer reviews? For instance if a friend tells me that a particular restaurant is good I will take his word for it – the same accounts for ‘my’ personalized search results since they also show websites favoured by our peers.

I guess we all agree that fake reviews are becoming a big problem – and are altering the trust of potential customers. Interestingly enough (years and years ago!!) when I was working on my thesis the UK was just about to enforce a law to stop brands using fake reviews in the form of stealth marketing. A major case at that time were teenage bloggers who raved about Lady Gaga on online forums, social media sites etc, however they were actually ‘employed’ by Gaga’s PR agency – meaning that underaged individuals were incentivised and paid. The result? Gaga’s organisation ended up paying a fine. (more…)

Book Review: Global Search Engine Marketing by Kristjan Hauksson and Anne Kennedy

At SES New York a few weeks back I got a copy of the book “Global Search Engine Marketing” from Kristjan Mar Hauksson. His co-author Anne Kennedy wasn’t there, but I have known both of them for quite a few years now and I can tell you that these two know their international stuff. They travel the world, do business around the globe and have done global work, including some voluntary work at SEMPO. You can trust these two to write a book about International Search allright!

The moment that Kristjan gave me the book was nice, because you could see how proud he was with the book. He had been working really hard on it and it had paid off. So off course I started reading the book with anticipation. Not just because I personally like Kristjan and Anne, but also because I am someone who has an ‘international hat’ on. I am Dutch, but focussed on search world wide. So this book might just be made for me! Find below my review of the book with an overview of what you can expect from it. (more…)

Tool: Cognitive SEO Version 2: A Linkbuilders Tool

SEO’s love tools. If they can’t find tools that will help them succeed in their job they will build the tools themselves if necessary. And when on a conference like SES tools are presented in special sessions everybody attends or reads about the tools shared.

That is why in the past few years we are seeing a lot of new tools entering the market or old tools being revised. SEOs now can choose between tools like Linkdex, SEOMoz, Searchmetrics and Majestic SEO and many many more. Each with their own special features. One tool they can also choose today gets a new update: Cognitive SEO. (more…)

Searchmetrics Essentials: a Must-have for International Marketers.

There are a lot of tools to analyse your competitors’ and your own websites on the market. Most of them focus on the English-speaking countries, some of them on the German-speaking. But for me, for example, it has always been very hard to analyze websites in my home country: the Netherlands. Until recently there wasn’t a decent tool that covered our market. But now there is Searchmetrics Essentials and with just one subscription you can analyze SEO, SEA, Social and Link data in 15 different countries!
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Giveaway: 500 Extra Mouseflow Recordings

Recently I wrote about a very nice tool called Mouseflow which can be used to easily track the movements of visitors on a website. Mouseflow has now offered us some recordings to share with our readers. And who are we to say no to something our readers benefit from right?

If you want to give the tool a try you can sign up for a free account, after you added the Javascript code you have 100 free recordings per month. These 100 recordings aren´t much and so if you have more than 100 visitors per month you will run of out these recordings very quickly.

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Greplin: Search your Social Timeline

There’s search and there is social search. Usually “social search” stands for search through social media or searching with social elements embedded within the search, think the “x-many people +1 this” in the search results. Since a few weeks ‘social search’ stands for everything which is shared via Google+. At least, if you are logged into Google.com

In the shadow of Google there are a lot of small search engines who each try to beat Google at the social search game. Or at least they try to take a piece of the search pie. Can they be successful however?

“Personal search engine” Greplin is one of the social search engines which tries to grab a part of social search. It looks through your social accounts to find that one message or topic you lost or couldn’t remember who said it. I decided to take a good look at this search engine. To see if it is useful and if it is capable of being a Google competitor. (more…)

Record the Movements of Your Visitors With Mouseflow

Last year I wrote about an interesting, and a little bit “Big Brother is watching you” tool on my Dutch blog WebSonic.nl and I thought it might be interesting to also share it here. I’m talking about Mouseflow, a nifty tool I discovered in November thanks to @Anneliesje to easily track visitors on a website.

At first this may not sound that special, but when Mouseflow is special since after it is installed, a visit is actually ‘recorded’, and with that I mean the mouse movements are recorded. This way you can literary track and see what your visitors are doing on the website, were they click, how they move and you can even see when someone is filling in a form (in that case you also know who the otherwise anonymous visitor actually is!). Recordings are available immediately. (more…)

Review Snippets in Google: what about the current situation?

This is a guest post by Jan-Willem Bobbink, who is an SEO consultant at Internet Advantage in the Netherlands.

Since two weeks, Google has thrown its whitelisting policy regarding the display of rich snippets overboard. By accident I found out that review snippets appeared next to some results in Google for a sideline project. A reason for me to see where the boundaries are and how this affects the traffic. (more…)

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