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This post was inspired by a request I received when doing some work for a marketing company.

The request showed that there are people moving into online marketing who do not understand what keywords are or how they are used in the optimisation process

I was presented with a list of 5 key phrases and asked to add them to the current list. I discovered by the current list they meant the list in the meta keywords tag and the list in the ranking software. That was it, that was how they saw optimisation – the adding of as many keywords they could think of to the ranking software and meta keywords tag. There were already 38 key phrases in the list and the new ones took it to 43. This was, however, small compared to some of the lists that had been created, one of which was 85 phrases in length.

So why were so many keywords being identified and placed in the meta keywords tag? Because it was felt that is was important to identify as many keywords as possible to cover all the angles.

So what should they have been doing?

Well to start with, there is nothing wrong with how they started. Identifying as many keywords related to the subject matter as possible is fine but these then need to be refined through a process of analysis.

Let us remind ourselves of what keywords are. They are what we use to find what we want on the web through the use of search engines. These search engines, such as Google, crawl the internet indexing the content of websites and, using algorithms, return those sites in its search engine results page (SERP) that are relevant to those keywords. SEO is not about tricking the search engines into listing your site high in the results pages, it is about showing the engines what it is your site is about and what makes it relevant when a particular phrase is searched for – relevant enough for the search engine to place it, ideally, in the #1 position.

So lets take that list we have identified and look at it again but this time lets really look at it. Which of those keywords can we drop. Lets start with anything that is so broad that it will be frequently used by people searching for things that have nothing to do with our site. These maybe single word keywords for example.

Use the concepts of relevance, search popularity and competition level to further refine your list. Don’t worry, I’ll be posting more about these later. Meanwhile basic information on search popularity and competition level can be obtained from Google’s Keyword Tool. It’s free and a good place to start. Subscription tools that offer more options include WordTracker and Keyword Discovery. Once again, I will be posting more information about both of these soon.

Once you have done this whittling down you should be left with around 10 key phrases. There is no precise number it depends very much on how competitive the subject of your site is and the chosen keywords. If your keywords have a very high competition level you should be looking at one to two keywords per landing page. The number could be increased where the competition is lower but try and keep to a maximum of 4-5 key phrases per landing page even for the most unique subject area. With around the same number of landing pages we are still looking at a maximum of 20 key phrases.

All in all using this approach will help us focus on what it is that is important about our site and what the critical keywords are which in turn will help drive qualified traffic, increasing goal conversions. Something we are never going to achieve by placing 85 keywords in the meta keyword tag and calling it SEO

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Big hitters Microsoft explain how to get your online reputation mangement up and running with great advice for small businesss

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Beyond Monitoring

ORM can be divided into proactive and reactive actions.

Proactive

* SEO – One of the most important aspects of OEM is getting your voice heard, use search engine optimisation techniques to get your website pages to the top of the SERP.
* Getting involved – register with social networking and micro blogging sites and contribute to build a positive reputation. Comment on blogs and in forums as an expert in the field not as a blatant marketing campaign.

Reactive

* This is dealing with negative content as and when it happens.
* A speedy response is essential to minimise potential damage.
* Identify content as either:
* True – a genuine mistake on behalf of the company or concern of an individual.
* False – someone just attacking with no basis in fact
* Determine how far the damaging content has spread.

A genuine concern or complaint should be addressed openly and honestly.

Prioritise all the areas where the criticism is occurring based on popularity and address them in order by responding calmly and sincerely.

If the thread continues determine if it is the same individual or whether others are included.  If it does not continue, keep monitoring without further input.

When it is the same individual agree to disagree and be sure to let the individual know that their opinion has been heard. Where changes have been put in place make sure that this has been communicated. When it is others that are continuing the thread is it genuine concern or is it simply ‘jumping on the bandwagon’? With the latter do not provide more fuel for the fire. However, when it is genuine, respond to each unique concern individually and let participants know that anything learned has been incorporated in to the business and that the changes were due to there efforts. It may also be worth considering engaging some of the individuals as a ‘sounding board’ for the future.

In cases of online attack that has no merit or basis in truth privately refute the claim and provide proof that what is being stated is misleading. Ask for a formal recant and be sure to be involved in drafting it. If this is done leave it there but continue to monitor. If it is not retracted consider legal action.

Najm Clayton

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What and How to Monitor.

When monitoring the following should be considered the minimum:

* Brand names
* Product names
* Company names
* Key executive names

Some sites and ORM companies also recommend monitoring competing brands and organisations, industry terms, and general industry news.

All of the following are free methods of monitoring what people are saying about you and your company.

Google:
Set up a Google Alert for a particular keyword and be notified whenever it is mentioned in a news item/blog/website. http://www.google.com/alerts

There is more to Google search than the default page, select News from the top menu to see news specific results which can be filtered by time. From here it is also possible to access the blog search.  http://news.google.co.uk    http://blogsearch.google.co.uk

Both of these areas have RSS and I would recommend that a feed is subscribed to for each of the keywords you wish to monitor.

Twitter Search

A useful site that aggregates tweets being made for a keyword and again an RSS feed is available which will keep you informed without having to keep carrying out the search. http://search.twitter.com

Another site for twitter is http://monitter.com which shows tweets in real time for three keywords.

Blogs & Forums

Technorati http://technorati.com is a blog monitor that also provides a nice little graph showing blog post mentions per day for a keyword phrase. NB as with most searches putting the phrase in quotes will give an exact search – for example family law will return results with family, law and family law whereas “family law” will only return posts with the whole phrase. An RSS feed is available.

Social Mention www.socialmention.com has alerts like Google but for social networking sites and has the addition of a sentiment measure for searches. Sentiment is give as positive, neutral and negative ratings.

Blogpulse www.blogpulse.com is another online tool for monitoring the blogosphere with a few extras that may not be required but the conversation tracker is a good addition to the regular search.

Boardtracker www.boardtracker.com (discussion search) is a search engine for forums and message boards. It has RSS feeds by category and search term and can be accessed directly through the Firefox browser with a plug-in.

In addition to these free tools there are a number of companies that offer commercial solutions. These include: Market Sentinel www.marketsentinel.com; The Sayre Group http://sayreonline.com; Tiger Two www.tigertwo.co.uk and TruReputation www.trureputation.com.

@najmc

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Hat tip Najm Clayton @najmc who has written an article for us about online reputation management.  We will be over three posts inshallah

Part 1

What is ORM?

There was once a time when a company, organisation or individual could place a website on line and it would represent what they wanted people to know about them.

Sometimes a disgruntled hacker could gain access to a site and deface it but this was rare and generally aimed at large corporations.

With the development of the web 2.0 environment this is no longer the case. Web 2.0 has seen a revolution in web chatter. Interactivity is the key with blogging, micro-blogging, social networking, online bookmarking and sharing taking the place of the old ‘my homepage’ that came free with ISP accounts and rarely received more than a dozen hits. What’s more search engines love these types of sites. They are regularly updated, are keyword rich and quite often packed with authoritative content. They also have lots of inbound and outbound links without being link exchanges or link farms. Inevitably they perform well in the SERP’s (search engine results page).

Your company may be number two in the search results but what if number one is a blog saying how rubbish your customer service was or that your products are overpriced?

A reputation that has been built over years can be destroyed, or at least significantly damaged, within days (if not hours) of an initial comment attacking your company, brand, product or even key executives.

To minimise any risk it is important that online chatter is monitored and that any negative publicity managed. This, along with SEO, is  Online Reputation Management.

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Digital media’s hottest startup has online social networkers twittering about its first effort to drive revenue and build a viable business model.

Twitter Inc., the so-called microblogging platform that has taken pop culture by storm in recent months, has launched a Web site sponsored by Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) called “ExecTweets.” Microsoft declined to say how much it paid to sponsor the site, which is designed to allow corporate executives to message Twitter users.

Twitter’s move, coming just over a month after the company raised $35 million in venture capital and almost five months after it refused a $500 million buyout offer from Facebook Inc., offers the first glimpse into how Twitter will attempt to make money as online social networks struggle to spin their fast-growing audiences into gold.

Twitter, with just 29 employees in San Francisco, has seen its Web traffic grow 900% over the past year as politicians, business leaders and celebrities have made headlines with their tweets, and Web users from around the world have flocked to the service.

Comscore recently reported that Twitter.com was one of the fastest growing online social networks in February with over 4 million unique visitors for the month, up from 123,000 for the same month last year. It was the 14th largest online community that month, behind networks like MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn.

As its users gain large online followings, Twitter has been increasingly viewed as a potent, viral marketing tool for brands trying to tap the vast reach of the Internet, even as the company hadn’t earned a dollar from its service.

“ExecTweets is an early example of ways that major companies can use Twitter and other social networks for marketing.”
Matthew Dipietro

ExecTweets.com seeks to become a revenue generator for Twitter. The site aggregates tweets, or short bursts of text using Twitter’s online messaging platform, from executives at major U.S. companies and organizations, like Coca-Cola Co. (KO), Best Buy Co. (BBY) and the Lance Armstrong Foundation, allowing those executives to talk directly to the millions on Twitter.

Matthew Dipietro, director of marketing with Federated Media, the ad networking firm that built the site, said ExecTweets is an early example of ways that major companies can use Twitter and other social networks for marketing. He noted that many companies have been leery of lending their brands to the uncontrolled online platforms created by social networks, but that is changing.

“The question isn’t about whether you should or shouldn’t be on social networks. The question now is how do you do it,” Dipietro said.

By Nat Worden
Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
The full article can be found here: http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20090325-705583.html

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Ever wondered whether the Internet is evolving, how many domain names were registered, how many emails were sent  etc.  in 2008? Here is the compilation (courtesy of www.pingdom.com) for your attention.

Email

• 1.3 billion – The number of email users worldwide.
• 210 billion – The number of emails sent per day in 2008.
• 70% – The percentage of emails that are spam.
• 53.8 trillion – The number of spam emails sent in 2008 (assuming 70% are spam).

Websites

• 186,727,854 – The number of websites on the Internet in December 2008.
• 31.5 million – The number of websites added during 2008.

Web servers

• 24.4% – The growth of Apache websites in 2008.
• 13.7% – The growth of IIS websites in 2008.
• 22.2% – The growth of Google GFE websites in 2008.
• 336.8% – The growth of Nginx websites in 2008.
• 100.3% – The growth of Lighttpd websites in 2008.

Domain names

• 77.5 million – .COM domain names at the end of 2008.
• 11.8 million – .NET domain names at the end of 2008.
• 7.2 million – .ORG domain names at the end of 2008.
• 174 million – The number of domain names across all top-level domains.
• 19% – The increase in the number of domain names in 2008.

Internet users

• 1,463,632,361 – The number of Internet users worldwide (June 2008).
• 578,538,257 – Internet users in Asia  (39.5%).
• 384,633,765 – Internet users in Europe (26.3%).
  
• 248,241,969 – Internet users in North America (17.00%).
• 139,009,209 – Internet users in Latin America/Caribbean (9.5%).
• 51,065,630 – Internet users in Africa (3.5%).
• 41,939,200 – Internet users in the Middle East (2.9%).
• 20,204,331 – Internet users in Oceania/Australia (1.4%).

Blogs

• 133 million – The number of blogs on the Internet (as tracked by Technorati).
• 900,000 – The number of new blog posts in a day.
• 329 million – The number of blog posts in 2008.

Images

• 10 billion – Photos hosted by Facebook (October 2008).
• 3 billion – Photos hosted by Flickr (November 2008).
• 6.2 billion – Photos hosted by Photobucket (October 2008).

Videos

• 12.7 billion – The number of online videos watched by American Internet users in a month (November 2008).
• 87 – The number of online videos viewed per month per Internet user in USA.
• 34% – The increase in viewing of online video in USA compared to 2007.
• 3.1 – The number of minutes of an average online video.

Malicious software

• 1 million – The number of computer viruses in April 2008.
• 468% – The increase in malicious code compared to 2007.

Data sources: Compiled by www.Pingdom.com. Website and web server stats from Netcraft. Domain name stats from Verisign and Webhosting.info. Internet user stats from Internet World Stats. Web browser stats from Net Applications. Blog stats from Technorati. Email stats from Radicati Group via About.com. Spam stats from DCC. Virus stats from Symantec via Times Online. Online video stats from Comscore. Photo stats from CNET and Flickr.

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I came across this very interesting article on Birmingham Post‘s website about the research results conducted by Ofcom.

As the the article claims,  the research conducted  by Ofcom reveals many people from ethnic minority groups lack confidence finding content online and are concerned about content delivered on digital communications.

Ofcom’s media literacy audit of UK adults from ethnic minority groups draws on quantitative research from the four largest ethnic minority groups in the UK: Indians, Pakistanis, Black Caribbeans and Black Africans.

Despite almost all adults from ethnic minority groups showing interest in internet functions, they are less confident about general use of the internet.

For example, they are less likely to say they are confident finding information online (69 – 83 per cent, compared to 91 per cent of the UK population as a whole). All four ethnic minority groups are also less likely than the UK population as a whole to shop or bank online (19 to 29 per cent, compared to 41 per cent).

For example, between 65 and 79 per cent of ethnic minority groups say that they use the internet to listen to or download music online, compared to 57 per cent of the UK population.

The full article can be found here.

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