Duplicate Content Penalty Remedies

There is much concern amongst website owners that their website pages may be dropped or that severe penalties will be imposed on their rankings if Google detects that there is duplicate content. This is, to some degree, a misnomer. Read more to understand the impact that duplicate content has on your Google rankings.

What is duplicate content?

Duplicate content means that there is a substantial amount of repeated content that matches rather closely (or exactly) with other content either on the same website or across multiple websites on the Internet. Duplicate content often occurs unintentionally and with no ill intentions to trick the search engines.  Some websites have the same or similar pieces of content within one domain, other company’s innocently enter into shared content partnership as a business strategy, and company’s are increasingly syndicating their website articles to multiple article banks and publisher websites as part of their Web PR strategy.

Sadly though, there are instances where content is duplicated across multiple domains in an attempt to manipulate search engine rankings or where content is simply plagiarized by other website owners with the intention of claiming credit for the content.  These issues are addressed below and as far as possible; a suggestive remedy has been included.

What is a duplicate content penalty?

A duplicate content penalty is not really a ‘penalty’ as such. You will not be penalised or dropped from the Google index for having duplicate content on your own website, or sharing content with another website, however you should be aware that only one page get’s the credit for the content. In other words, the page that is first indexed for the content by Google is the one who usually receives the ‘credit’ for it.  All that really means is that the duplicated content may not show up in the Google search results.

Remember that the purpose of a search engine is to provide the most relevant and unique content to the browsers. Therefore, not every duplicated page should get displayed in the search results. This also protects website owners against having their stolen content rank higher than the original content.  So to prevent Google’s users from seeing the same duplicated content they have created duplicate content filters to detect pages that are already indexed.

How to remedy duplicate content issues?

Duplicate pages on your own website:

If you have a page that sells ‘new boats’ for instance, and another page that sells ‘used boats’, however the general marketing copy is very much the same except for the word ‘new’ or ‘used’ that alternates, then don’t go into a panic thinking that you will be penalised for this. The very worst that will happen is that possibly only the ‘new boats’ page (or alternatively, only the ‘used boats’ page) will get credited for the content. In other words, only the one page will show up in the search results when searching for a phrase ‘new or used boats’.   

How to best remedy this: Make sure that your similar pages are at least 60% different (different words, page titles, headlines, hyperlinks and images).  Another scenario is when you have a printer version of the same content. In this instance you should rather direct the search engines to index the preferred (original) content as opposed to the print version. If you leave the search engine to decide the most relevant page, it may display the print version in the search results instead. You can disallow the printer versions from being indexed in your robots.txt file. You can also use 301 redirects (”RedirectPermanent”) in your .htaccess file to redirect both the search engines and human visitors to the preferred page.

Republished pages (articles) on other websites:

If you have created an article or press release and have distributed it to other website owners or article banks to be published, you could stand the risk of them being indexed for your content instead of your own website ranking for the same content.

How to best remedy this: Makes sure that your articles or press releases appear on your own website first. Submit this page to the search engines (e.g.: www.google.com/addurl/) and then check that the page is indexed by the search engines before you submit it to other websites to be published.  If you are syndicating your content you should make absolutely sure that you include a link to your web page where the original content resides to ensure that your content benefits from the back links to your website, ultimately giving the original page a higher PageRank.

Sharing your content through white labeling:

Many website owners go into affiliate partnerships where they agree to share the content on their website with other websites to be published under a white label (where the content is served by the owner onto another publishers website surrounded by the other website’s look and feel under a sub-domain). The problem with this relationship is that quite often the white labeled website gets indexed by the search engines and could ranks higher on the search results than the original website (owner of the content).  As a result, the owner may drop down the rankings and the sub-domain appears higher, ultimately decreasing the original website’s rankings in the search results.

How to best remedy this: As the content is shared under ‘multiple domains’ it is regarded by Google as duplicate content. There are two options that you could consider here. The first option is to ask each of the affiliates (partners) to block the duplicate pages (sub-domain only and not the root domain) from being indexed by the spiders in the robots.txt, however this may be a little difficult if all sub-domain’s point to the same file.  The second option is to dynamically create a meta noindex, follow in the head of the respective pages.  Another consideration is if other sites link to yours using both the www and non-www version of your URLs, you can notify Google as to which domain you would prefer to have indexed by utilising Google’s Webmaster tools.

Plagiarized and scraped content:

Unfortunately there may be times when competitors scrape your content from your website to republish it as their own.  This could provide reason for concern regarding duplicate content with the fear of the competitor getting credit for what is actually your content. Don’t stress too much as it is highly unlikely that this deviant act could impact negatively on your own website’s ranking on Google.

How to best remedy this: You can file a complaint with Google’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act to re-claim ownership of your content.  To detect duplicate content make use of Copyscape’s Website plagiarism search tool.

The best advice that I can offer in terms of duplicate content issues is simply to be aware of it and become mindful on the measures that can be implemented to ensure that both the search engines as well as the user receive the most relevant and most unique content when searching for information.

  

Top 10 Internet Marketing Tips for 2008

Internet Marketing has grown phenomenally over the last few years but the shift has quite clearly moved to a market that is driven by the consumer and that is no longer dictated by journalists and corporates.  Social and search marketing is clearly leading the way together with email & mobile marketing, website optimisation and Web PR strategies. Online consumers are responding more favourably to non-intrusive, relevant and socially attractive campaigns and have quite frankly had enough of intrusive, forced online advertising campaigns.   

The top 10 internet marketing tips for 2008 are:

1. Optimise your website’s content
2. Create a content development strategy for your website
3. Invest in a paid search (pay-per-click) campaign
4. Publicise your website through article marketing
5. Develop a social media marketing strategy
6. Create a Company Blog
7. Experiment with video marketing
8. Engage your audiences with web widget marketing
9. Discover the benefits of mobile marketing
10. Create an effective email marketing strategy

1.  Optimise your website’s content

First and foremost, get your website content right.  Make sure it is easily read by both humans and search engines.  An essential variable applied by Search Engines in the way in which they rank websites is based on the relevancy of the content that the search engine is indexing.  To ensure that the content is being indexed correctly by search engines, it is essential that a number of variables are applied correctly to each article, press release, media announcement, promotional copy or information content that is placed on the website.  SEO copywriting techniques should be applied to all content.

Benefit of Optimised Content:-

• Ensures that your website is identified as a subject matter expert
• Creates unique, relevant and superior content
• Prevents duplicate content
• Encourages correct page architecture
• Ensures correct theme alignment of related content
• Increases Search Engines Rankings for targeted keywords
• Increases traffic to the website
• Increases customers
• Increases turnover

2.  Create a content development strategy for your website

In addition to optimising the existing content on your website, it is essential that you develop a strategy to continuously increase your website’s content on an ongoing basis.  All new content should be written specifically with the web reader in mind and should also be optimised for the search engines.  A website should acquire an adequate number of pages related to the specific subject matter in order to be seen as an expert in the specific industry.  The more frequently the website’s content is updated, the more frequently search engines will be able to spider and index the website appropriately and apply a suitable ranking to the websites individual pages of content.  

Benefits of Increasing Website Pages:-

• Ensures that the company is identified as a subject matter expert
• Encourages more frequent spidering by Search Engines
• Creates more opportunities (pages) for Search Engines to rank
• Increases content offered to visitors
• Creates additional content for theme alignment
• Improves inbound linking strategy
• Offers additional opportunities for internal and external linking

3.  Invest in a paid search (pay-per-click) campaign

When you pay for traffic (visitors) that click on your advertisements that are being advertised on search engines, this is called pay-per-click or search engine advertising. Paid search allows you to quickly leverage search engine traffic by bidding for keywords that are related to the products or services that you promote and sell on your website.  Paid search advertising is particularly beneficial to companies who are not yet well ranked on search engines through natural search.

Benefits of Paid Search Advertising:-

• Can achieve top ranking through paid search if not ranking through natural search
• It’s non-intrusive as you are reaching people when they are actively looking for information about your products and services online
• Send targeted visitors directly to your offering on your website
• Increases brand awareness
• Keeps your competitors off the pages
•  It’s scalable and controllable and you only pay when people click on your
• You can appear on search engines almost immediately

4.  Publicise your website through article marketing

Article marketing is regarded by Internet marketing experts as one of the most effective promotional methods to publicise your website and to increase the number of back links (incoming links) to your website content.  To ensure ongoing awareness, articles should be submitted to suitable article directories, content publishers, article announcement lists and content syndication (RSS feeds). Prior to submitting articles the content should optimised for search engines.  By submitting different versions of the article there is far more chance that pages displaying your article will avoid relegation, will maintain and grow Page Rank, and maintain the status of a high-quality non-duplicated content page.  Each article should be published on your own website first and should include a bookmark button to encourage social bookmarking.  

Benefit of Article Marketing:-

• The more articles you write, the more web sites will choose to publish your articles online, the more inbound links your site will receive
• More back links from articles increases the value, meaning that ranking in search
• Published pages have a higher Page Rank
• Generates long-term traffic directly as well as boosts your search engine rankings
• Enhances your reputation and credibility as a subject matter expert 

5.  Develop a social media marketing strategy

Studies show that by the end of 2007 more than 60% of top global companies will have had some form of social media marketing strategy in place.  Corporates and small business owners should create a clear social media marketing strategy as part of an integrated communications and marketing strategy.   Social Media has become an essential component of online marketing and search engines are adjusting their rankings to include search personalisation.  SMO will continue to get broader use from marketers interested in building traffic and buzz online, moving far beyond linking strategy and smart SEO into the marketing mainstream. 

One of the effects of the social media revolution is an exponential increase in the amount of content online.  This will continue to lead online users to search beyond the algorithm for new ways of finding information.  A key method for this is where people are sorting content on the web, creating their own groupings and sharing that with others.   It is important that you continuously engage with social communities through reaching out to social communities to bring attention to your company or brand.  It is an effective means of off-site optimisation for your company’s website and ensures that your website is optimised for a broad range of content in every applicable media or vertical niche.   

Benefit of Social Media Marketing:-

• Brings attention to your brand
• Creates instant exposure
• More visibility for your company
• Encourages repeat visitors and shared content
• Improves search engine rankings 
• Strengthens your brand within a targeted or niche community
• Increases back links to your website
• Drives additional traffic to the website 

6.  Create a Company Blog

In the past, corporates have been focusing marketing and communications efforts on becoming faceless.  This has changes significantly. Where the online consumer has become very much in control, companies will no longer be able to connect with their customers in a meaningful and emotional way without having a personality.  More and more companies are starting to realise the significance of establishing a company personality and we are starting to see more Corporate Blogs coming alive.  Business Blogging will continue to become more lucrative as more and more people look to new media such as Blogs and social websites for insight.   Companies should focus more time on establishing new touch points for customers to interact with the true personality of a brand.   Allowing your employees to Blog on your company Blog has many advantageous. 

Benefits of a Company Blog:-

• Blogs are search engine traffic magnets
• Positions your company to be a thought leader in your industry
• Gives you the power to publish at an instant making it a very powerful update tool and great for crisis handling
• Helps to build relationships with customers by engaging in conversation with them
• Provides an avenue for your to solicit feedback from your customers
• Puts a human voice to the company
• Encourages you to find out what others are saying about your company 

7.  Experiment with video marketing

There is tremendous power and revenue-generating potential in Video Marketing. With the rapid ongoing growth of YouTube’s traffic in addition to the emergence of Internet Television websites, streaming video is dominating the international web and marketers are quickly scrambling to capitalize on this exciting channel. Although South African companies still struggle with the bandwidth issue, globally video sharing has become increasingly popular.  Companies that provide the ability to syndicate your viral videos to Video Sharing websites will grow in popularity. 

As companies seek to simplify video sharing, video marketing will become more interactive which could have huge implications for Affiliate marketing. As broadband penetrations increases in South Africa, streaming video will start to become a very popular marketing tool.  Whether a B2B or B2C marketer, video is an enormous opportunity to engage, educate and entertain.  Many brands are producing instructional videos to help customers install or use their product or service. Others create pure entertainment, hoping to build brand affinity or drive traffic to their website.

Benefits of a Video Marketing:-

• It is usually free to post video’s to video sharing websites
• Video’s are included in search engine results and usually receive high rankings
• Provides you with an opportunity to engage with your customer in an entertaining manner
• You are able to show the benefits of your products or service through visual education
• Increases the viral marketing potential for your business 

8.  Engage your audiences with web widget marketing

Widgets have made significant strides as an accepted marketing technique in recent months.  Many new Blog oriented services are launching Widgets providing businesses with the opportunity quickly introduce their services and new products to audiences.    Web Widgets are small applets that live in HTML and provide miniature versions of a specific piece of content outside of the primary web site. Web Widget Marketing is not only an exciting new marketing technique; it is fast becoming one of the leading brand-building marketing strategies for businesses advertising online. Audiences are becoming immersed in websites that provide cool and interactive marketing messages and companies have to find innovative ways to engage with these consumers. 

Web Widget Marketing will help companies keep up with its audiences and stay abreast of consumers, or at least stay ahead of competitors.   Web widgets cannot simply deliver an advertising message; it has to be a practical extension of the company’s brand.  It should provide a highly usefully application that is able to demonstrate the brand’s unique offering and can deliver on that promise. 

 Benefits of Web Widget Marketing:-

• Widgets are cool, slick and playful
• They spread quickly on Blogs and social network profiles
• Combines the power of brand propagation with interactive content and transactions
• Provides a platform for companies to introduce new products or services to an audience
• Creates an online connection with customers
• Can provide unprecedented access to hard-to-reach targets
• Offers branded entertainment to an audience

9.  Discover the benefits of mobile media marketing

Mobile media marketing has continued to grow at a meteoric pace as many web companies recognise the huge potential in mobile marketing. As new technologies emerge and standard websites are converted to ones can easily be accessed by mobile devices, companies will need to ensure that there websites are mobile-friendly.   The mobile phone is a device on which we find all the traditional forms of advertising such as print, image and voice, wrapped into one small but widely used device. This leads the way for new and innovative opportunities to provide the consumer with improved brand and marketing experiences.  

Benefits of Mobile Marketing:-

• Mobile campaigns are relatively easy to create and fast to execute
• Delivery of SMS messages to mobile phones is almost guaranteed
• You can market your messages to consumer mobile devices anytime and anywhere
• Text messages or personalised content is targeted to individuals who have opted to receive them
• Encourages viral marketing with the built-in tools for forwarding of the messages to the existing social networks 

10.  Create an effective email marketing strategy

Introduce an effective Email communications strategy as part of your marketing strategy to grow your existing customer base and to expand your client base significantly through permission marketing and regular targeted communications. Engaging your customers with relevant, targeted information when, where, and how they want it is crucial to marketing success. By combining technological advances with tried-and-tested best practices, the future still looks bright for email marketers.   

You should focus on developing a strategy that combines a highly functional website with the power of direct-to-consumer email communications.  It is important to develop a close-loop strategy that incorporates careful planning, testing, execution and measurement of the success of your email marketing campaigns.   

Benefits of Email Marketing:-

• Increases lead generation and cross selling
• Increases customer lifetime value
• Low cost, instantaneous channel for sending messages
• Opens up a two-way dialogue with customers and prospects
• Hypercharges your existing marketing messages
• Instant, measurable results 

To conquer commercial combat, a significantly powerful Internet presence, supported by a brilliant E-Marketing Strategy, is paramount to ensuring that you remain competitive, increase revenue and magnetise your customers!

Internet banking fraud on the increase

While the rise of machines and the dawn of ‘Technological Armageddon’ have made life much more easier, they also brought a litany of misery and pain in the sense that criminals are effectively using these tools to inflict incalculable damage to people and businesses.

According to Neville Melville, South Africa’s outgoing ombudsman for banking services, Internet banking crime – whereby fraudsters obtain information enabling them to get access to people’s accounts and clean them out – has increased by 20% over the past year.

Melville also said that hacking of personal and business computers and mobile phones is increasing at a similar rate.

As more and more South Africans become Internet junkies and use the web to perform business transactions, including banking and shopping, they run the risk of becoming victims of cybercrime, which according to research has become the fastest growing white collar crime in the country.

“Easy to defraud and vanish”

“The anonymity, which the Internet offers, is a huge advantage for fraudsters and fortune-seekers who have been quick to exploit this opportunity,” Yoav Tchelet, director of Virtui, said.

“Since many businesses on the web exist in virtual space without any brick and mortar address, it is very easy to defraud and vanish,” Tchelet emphasised.

Virtui, a venture capital company that invests in and develops online businesses, has created and developed Trustme.co.za, an online project that verifies the authenticity, legitimacy and trustworthiness of websites.

“While there are numerous forms of cybercrime out there, we focus on consumers who buy through the Internet and often do not know whether a website offering the product is trustworthy and will neither defraud them nor pass on personal information,” Tchelet said.

Lack of proper legislation

He said that cybercriminals are taking advantage of the fact that the country lacks a proper legislation to deal with Internet crime, adding that the SA police and judicial system also lack resources and equipment to effectively investigate crimes and successfully prosecute cybercriminals.

A total of 50 international cybercrime experts met during an international conference organised recently by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) to formalise a formal proposal to create a stronger global movement to fight cybercrime.

“At the moment, cybercriminals see Africa as a safe haven to operate illegally with impunity,” Hamadoun Toure, secretary-general of the Geneva-based ITU, said.

“Cybercrime in Africa and other developing regions will become even worse as broadband technology takes off, allowing criminals to operate more effectively,” Toure warned.

Individuals and companies

While countless individuals continue to bear the brunt of the ‘side-effects’ of the digital revolution, companies around the world are also feeling the heat of fraud.

According to the 2007 PricewaterhouseCoopers’ biennial Global Economic Crime Survey, over 43% of the companies interviewed reported suffering one or more significant economic crimes.

The average loss from fraud per company increased nearly 40% in two years from roughly US$1.7million in 2005 to approximately US$2.4 million in 2007, the report said.

The report, which covered 5400 companies in 40 countries, added: “In SA, 72% of companies have fallen prey to economic crime in the past two years.

“No industry is immune from the threat posed by economic crime although different sectors are impacted by different types of fraud.

“It is generally accepted, by criminologists and fraud investigators that three things must be present for a fraudster to set to work: the opportunity to commit fraud, the incentive to commit fraud and the fraudster’s ability to rationalise their own actions.”

For more information, go to www.trustme.co.za and www.pwc.com.

Source: www.Bizcommunity.co.za

The internets coming of age

Ever heard of the term Web 2.0? Have any idea what this is or what it means to web users? If you have any knowledge about this topic, congratulations, you are a step-ahead of most internet users and e-business owners.

The best way to explain Web 2.0 is as such; picture the World Wide Web as a toddler and for differentiating purposes we’ll name it Web 1.0. Like all children the web came into existence with much excitement and anticipation, a birth that would change the world forever. The “www” age set out on a course destined to develop, learn, make mistakes, fall once or twice, get back up and keep growing. Companies created websites detailing their products and services, educating internet users of their offerings. Individuals created home pages to publish personal information and detail their skills and interests. As users began learning the ways of the web, so the web too was learning. One of the biggest lessons that “little” web 1.0 learnt during its “childhood” education was; although there was a wealth of information spreading across the internet, its central focus revolved around reading and visitors to websites were unable to interact beyond reading the documented content.

When looking to define Web 2.0, there are many technical explanations around detailing this somewhat taboo era of the web. I will define it for you the way in which I have come to understand after sifting through the jargon filled explanations. Web 2.0 is an evolved and matured way in which the World Wide Web is conversing with its users. It flourishes on network communities who literally round up the troops and let the majority rule. I as the web user will choose what I want to read in the headlines, and decide who I allow to influence my thoughts, experiences and opinions. I decide when, where and how I want to receive and display this highly personalised content and I have the choice whether I contribute to this new collection of sharing or not.

From child to young adult Web 1.0 has matured and we find ourselves talking about a new generation of the World Wide Web with more depth, and meaning. Web 2.0 carries a new set of priorities, responsibilities and has been streamlined to provide a more collective experience for the user. Web 2.0 may be best understood by detailing the new personality or applications that it now provides. These new applications have one common factor; their purpose to bring the user into an interactive environment where the core activity is reliant on peer to peer (P2P) interaction. These applications are founded on hyperlinking and user generated content where the human user provides more accurate and relevant feedback based on their real life experience, making web 2.0 a user driven, intelligent web.

Blogs
A blog is a webpage where users document their opinions, personal experiences, diaries, interests and any other content they wish to express.
Blog entries or post’s are arranged chronologically displaying the most recent entry first and allow other users to comment on the material posted. These posts are usually tagged with certain keywords which then allow for subject matter to be to be categorised and filed into theme based menu systems.

Wikis
Wikis are web pages where users are able to edit, add and remove content and is very much a collaborative instrument facilitating group user work. Through simple hypertext style or hyperlinking between pages wikis are easy to navigate and content is simple to find.

Social Bookmarking
Social bookmarking allows users to create lists of “favourites” or “bookmarks” to content they wish to view on a regular basis. Bookmarks are stored on a remote service and not on the user’s browser so encouraging social sharing in which other users using the remote service to bookmark their favourites are able to share common interests with one another. 

Tagging
Tags are keywords that are assigned to digital content such as websites, images and video clips. A tag is not a classification system but rather words and phrases used to describe the content. Tags are also used in bookmarking and in fact it is through tagging that users partaking in social bookmarking find common interest bookmarks.

Multimedia Sharing and Podcasting (Audio Blogging)
Multimedia sharing (video clips) and Podcasting (Audio clips) are means by which users can upload and share multimedia and audio content with other users. Users are able to upload and share any content they choose ranging from interviews, lectures, audio blogs, commercials and family videos.

RSS feeds (Real Simple Syndication)
RSS feeds enable users to easily find content updates on RSS-enabled sites. With RSS feeds, users don’t have to visit the site in order to access the new content. Through syndication and making use of a feed reader (aggregator), selected content is streamed to the feed which the user has subscribed to.

These are just a few of the applications that encompass Web 2.0 and it is clear that with user centric applications the web brings a new era of computing and networking. If you thought the world was small before, it just got even smaller. The “Global Village” we once knew has quickly become a “Global Suburbia” where users with common interests, goals and aspirations reside together creating mini communities within our virtual society. As taboo as the term Web 2.0 may be, the fact remains that this is the new way of the “World Wide Web” and as with all things in our lives that are fluid and changing, it’s up to you the user to go with the flow or swim against the tide, the beauty of Web 2.0 is that the choice is now yours.

Written by: Camilla Patten of bidorbuy. 

Launch of second SA e-commerce awards

Jump Shopping has launched the second 2007 South African E-Commerce Awards. The format has not changed and the purpose of the awards is still to give recognition to excellence in the e-commerce arena in SA.

The awards are only for SA online stores, listed and operating in SA. Stores can be nominated for awards in several categories, including; Best Computer Store, Best Book Store, Best Auction Website, Best Ecommerce Enabler and the sought-after award of Best E-Commerce Site.

There are currently approximately 1000 websites in South Africa dedicated to online shopping and e-commerce. The total spent on online retail goods in SA in 2007 is expected to be R929 million, up from R688 million in 2006, according to the recently released “Online Retail in South Africa 2007″ by World Wide Worx.

Nominations by the public for their favourite online stores will close on 19 October and voting will commence on 22 October until 23 November. Winners will be announced on 26 November.

The website for the awards is www.jump.co.za/awards/2007.

The judges for this year’s awards are as follows:

• Andrea Mitchell, www.34.co.za
• Arthur Goldstuck – www.theworx.biz
• Eve Dmochowska – www.ideabank.co.za
• Gillian Meier – www.bluemagnet.co.za
• Mike Stopforth – www.cebrera.co.za
• Matthew Buckland – www.mg.co.za
• Vinny Lingham – www.vinnylingham.com

Last year’s winners include:

• Best Auction Website: BidorBuy (www.bidorbuy.co.za)
• Best Automotive Website: Autostyle Motorsport (www.autostyle.co.za)
• Best Online Bookstore: Kalahari.net (www.kalahari.net)
• Best Clothing and Accessories Store: Woolworths (www.woolworths.co.za)
• Best Computer Store: Digital Planet (www.digitalplanet.co.za)
• Best Electronics Store: eDreams (www.edreams.co.za)
• Best Flower and Gift Store: NetFlorist (www.netflorist.co.za)

• Best Food and Wine Store: Woolworths (www.woolworths.co.za)

• Best Game Store: Take2 (www.take2.co.za)

• Best Home and Garden Store: Kalahari.net (www.kalahari.net)
• Best Jewelry and Watches Store: Have2Have (www.have2have.co.za)
• Best Kids and Baby Store: eDreams (www.edreams.co.za)
• Best Movie Store: Kalahari.net (www.kalahari.net)
• Best Music Store: Kalahari.net (www.kalahari.net)
• Best Property Website: Private Property (www.privateproperty.co.za)
• Best Sports and Outdoor Store: eDreams (www.edreams.co.za)
• Best Travel Booking Website: SafariNow.com (www.safarinow.com)
• Best E-Commerce Enabler: MWEB Business (www.mwebbusiness.co.za)
• Best E-Commerce Website: Kalahari.net (www.kalahari.net)

Source:  www.bizcommunity.com
 

Look Out for Outlook 2007

If you are currently a very active email marketer, you should be aware of the some of the hurdles that may be faced with by the new version of Outlook 2007.

It should already be a given that you test, test and test your email marketing campaigns before you send them out. So if you’re already testing in multiple email clients, do not neglect Outlook 2007.  You may find that your planning phase may require a little more strategic thinking when it comes to this new enhanced version of Outlook 2007 as the rendering engine for HTML emails moves from Microsoft Internet Explorer to Microsoft Word.

The new version will not support:

• Flash and animated GIFs. These will appear as static images, so do not rely on images to convey your message.
• Javascript and forms will not be displayed in the same way as previous versions, so consider placing a link in your newsletter to an online version of your form in stead.
• Background images.  Background images in both CSS and HTML tables will not work Design your emails with clean white background and normal clear text. 
• Complex CSS (cascading style sheets) properties.  the most basic CSS – inline (recommended) or embedded (acceptable) – will work in Outlook, assuming you’re using them only to specify basic font sizes and colours and nothing else too major.
• CSS div, float, word-spacing or list-style tags will not work in any Outlook 2007 email client.

The decreased functionality for HTML due to the use of the crippled Microsoft Word rendering engine will cause messages that rendered just fine before to de-format or not display at all in Outlook 2007.  Click here to see a list of Outlook 2007’s rendering capabilities.

If you’re wondering why your email campaigns are not receiving the desired conversions, you may find that this new version has had a rather significant impact on how your email was received and viewed by the targeted recipient.

You can read more about Outlook 2007 and download a free trial version of Outlook 2007 here.

The Aesthetics of Good Email Newsletters

An email newsletter (if used correctly) is one of the most effective means to communicate with new and existing clients. •Let’s take a quick look at some of the main reasons that makes email communication both effective and widely popular to marketers:

• Can be used to exploit or overcome seasonality
• Can generate immediate action and direct sales
• Provides information to drive offline sales and actions
• Increases and reinforces brand awareness
• Can be used effectively to launch new products and services and introduce them to customers
• Reinforces relationship with existing customers
• Increases sales
• Customer support or important customer announcements

Considering that you can do so much with email marketing, it is important that you put a little effort into the aesthetics of the actual content of the newsletter.  Here are a few useful tips on email aesthetics:

• Use animation only where necessary.  Don’t flash your customers away!
• Try to stick to global standard fonts.  Your fancy font may not appear as you had hoped on your customer’s client.
• Avoid white text on black (or very dark) backgrounds – it’s very hard to read.
• Don’t go overboard with font colours.  Stick to a basic colour scheme, but just don’t go crazy with too many colours and sizes of fonts throughout the newseletter.
• Have many working hyperlinks (clicks) in the body of your newsletter.  The more hyperlinks you have, the better the click through rate.  Studies have indicated that newsletters with more than 25 hyperlinks generally have a better click through rate than newsletters with few hyperlinks.
• Keep your ‘admin’ stuff away from the top.  The top of your newsletter is prime “real estate” space – don’t waste it on administrative details.  Move admin stuff to the bottom of your newsletter (i.e. Signature tag and subscription details)
• Make your message easy to read.  Present your information in bite-size chunks. Short and to the point.
• Ensure that your navigation is easy to use.  Avoid lengthy emails where the user has to scroll  left and right or up and down extensively to read the content.
• Try to stick to a maximum width of 500 pixels wide.
• Include a contents (e.g. ‘In This Newsletter) list that is hyperlinked, to the top of your newsletters.
• Put a catchy teaser in the top left ’sweet spot’ (usually seen by all preview pane types)
• Make sure your newsletter is ‘disabled images’ friendly. In other words, if the user has images disabled, make sure you have enough relevant text to support your message.  Don’t rely solely on images to get your message across.

Remember, you only have one chance to make a good first impression!

Top 10 SEO Ranking Criteria

Search Engine Analysts around the world believe that (although Google does not reveal the answers) the following Top 10 criteria are most likely to assist you in achieving better Search Engine Rankings and improved placement on Search Engine Results Pages:

1. Keyword in Title Tags
2. Global Link Popluarity of Site
3. Anchor Text of inbound links
4. Link popularity within the site’s internal link structure
5. Age of Site
6. Topical relevance of invound links to site
7. Link popularity of site in topical communities (Social Media Optimisation)
8. Keyword use in body text (frequency, distribution and density)
9. Global link popularity of linking site
10. Topical relationship of linking pages (theme alignment)

This information was obtained from the SEOMoz Survey 2007.

Good Linking Strategies for Improved Search Engine Rankings

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is the latest buzz word amongst webmasters and internet marketers. Everyone’s competing for that top spot on the search engine results page, but with so many racing to overtake the one in front of them, website owners are becoming desperate and are ‘clutching at straws’ to try to beat their competitors.What Constitutes A Good Linking Strategy?

A good linking strategy comprises of three core parts: Internal links (links within a website to related content), Inbound Links (links from other websites citing your website) and External Links (links from your website to external authority or expert websites whose content compliments your own.Internal Links

Before embarking on a search engine ranking project for your website, ensure that you have given substantial thought to your linking strategy. Ensure that you have created a strong layer of generic landing pages and carefully align these pages vertically or horizontally to the relevant themes ensuring that the important keywords or key phrases that have been selected for those themed pages are distributed across the page in a natural, spam-free manner.

External Links Too many websites are creating pages with hundreds of external links to other top ranking or authoritative websites. Google will only count the first 100 links, so anything more than that is not going to be considered. Search Engines place emphasis on websites that are considered authority websites (or experts) and as such, when linking to an external website it is more important to establish if the website is in a clean neighbourhood (not on a server with other blocklisted websites) and more importantly, that this website does not participate in linking farms.

Inbound Links

Similarly, it is imperative to establish exactly who links to you. When websites offer to link to your website – or simply just link to your website without you even knowing – find out if these sites have a clean record and are not involved in link-farming or live on bad servers. When a good clean authority website offers to ‘cite’ you on their website, accept the link and request that they link to you using your keywords or key phrases as part of their anchor text.

Linking MythsThere are a number of ‘myths’ that are still being tired and tested by website owners every day. Link swapping is just one of them. It is alarming to still find so many website owners (and top publishers) offering to barter a link swap as part of their so-called ‘linking strategy’. A quality linking strategy is just one of the very strong legs that will keep a good website ranked highly on search engines. Experienced SEO analysts such as Bruce Clay has confirmed that, although link swapping may not get you blacklisted, it certainly won’t help your rankings either. The internal link simply cancels out the external link to the same website.

Another popular technique practiced so frequently by website owners these days is to buy as many links as they can on other websites with high page ranking. (This is the ranking that Google gives to pages out of 10 in order to demonstrate the overall importance of a website. A high ranking out of 10 does not necessarily help a website’s rankings). Search Engines (such as Google) are highly intelligent and can identify when a link exists on a website that is predominantly seen by its spider as an advertising website, and as a result it automatically assumes that this link has been paid for thereby offering little or not credit as part of the websites ranking score. Unfortunately this too does not help a website’s ranking on search engines. It is not about how many highly ranked pages you can link to, but rather about how many quality websites you cite and how many authority websites are citing you.

© Copyright Blue Magnet Web Intellect

Search Engine Friendly Copywriting

Gone are the days when journalists are commissioned to write grammatically correct copy for websites.   What website owners tend to forget ever so often, is that search engines are not humans. They do not see images and certainly do not read words the way that humans do.  It is our job as Internet Marketers to help search engines read our websites.

To come up in a search results you need to ensure that you have considered all relevant criteria that makes up the very complex algorithms used by search engines in order to decide who is most relevant and who gets to rank highest.   There are a number of criteria that internet marketers and website owners need to take into consideration for ranking; however one of the most important areas is writing copy that is search friendly and rich in keywords or key phrases. SEO copy writing requires writing content that search engines see as relevant, unique and meaningful.  Here are some guidelines to writing search friend, keyword rich copy:

• Start by writing your copy normally, so that it makes sense to you.
• Create a list of keywords and key phrases you believe people might type into the bidorbuy search bar, or search engine’s search bars (such as Google).
• Choose one or two most important key phrases rather than individual keywords as there is too much competition for single words.
• Add these key phrases or keywords to the title, with the most important words towards the front.
• In addition to the title, add a heading (HTML – H1) to your copy and include the key phrase or keyword in the heading as well.
• Surround your keywords or key phrases with similar or related words (stick to a theme).
• Add your keywords or keyword phrases to the main body copy in places where they have a natural fit (with minimal disruption to sentence structure).   Don’t repeat key phrases too many times and try to ensure that you have distributed your keywords evenly across the page.
• If you are writing copy for an information or research page make sure that you have a large amount of content (over 400 words at minimum) on the page.  However, if writing for shopping sites, keep your copy short and use bullet points and lists as opposed to paragraphs.  
• Use <strong> as opposed to <bold> to place emphasis on your keywords or key phrases.
• Create a hyperlink from your key phrases or key words to link directly to other similar pages of content on your website.
• Mesh singular and plural terms together on the same page.

•  Use synonyms for your keywords or key phrases where possible.  

Here are some guidelines on spamming (‘blackhat’) techniques to avoid:

• Don’t overdo it.  Don’t stuff keywords into your descriptions in a manner that does not make sense to the reader (user).
• Your copy must look ‘real’ (natural) and not appear to be ‘spamming’ the site.
• Never use white text on a white background.
• Stuffing keywords into images is regarded as spamming.  A reasonable text description (doing exactly that i.e. explaining the image in text) is acceptable.
• Do not place hidden text in your code that is displayed above the page (i.e. can be read in your code by a spider, but cannot be seen on the page by the user.

Always ensure that your copy is real and looks natural to ensure that you do not appear to bespamming the website.  If you attempt to fool the search engines, you stand a very good chance of being dropped or blacklisted by them.  Remember, although you are writing copy to be seen by robotic spiders, you still have an end user to consider – your customer.  No matter how well ranked you are by a search engine, if your customer does not get what he or she wants from your site, they’ll click right out and continue searching for someone else – your competitor.

© Copyright Blue Magnet Web Intellect