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Yahoo! & Microsoft Sign Deal

Yahoo! and Microsoft have finally signed a deal which they hope will mean they can compete with Google - in fact I would say that it allows Microsoft to compete much more with Google.


Yahoo! and Microsoft have been having talks for quite a while, at least a year, about joining forces and today those talks finally came to a conclusion. You can read more about it on Search Engine Land's website, but in short, the deal gives Microsoft access to Yahoo!'s search technology, but Yahoo! will display search results and sponsored links from Bing - Microsoft's search engine.

To me, this really seems like Yahoo! is bailing out of search and is allowing Microsoft to take over. I've always preferred Yahoo!'s search results to Microsoft's previously named Live search engine and even its new Bing search engine.

In the UK, Google has around 85% share of the search market and the rest more or less divided between Microsoft and Yahoo! Now Microsoft's share will leap to around 15% of the search market - however, will it convince people to move away from Google and use Microsoft more? 'The proof is in the pudding' as it were, but getting people to change old searching habits isn't going to be easy! For most people not involved in the world of search, it's not going to be a very big deal to them - they'll just continue with their existing searching habits.

For me and my clients, this does mean that gaining higher rankings on Bing is going to be more important than it has been, I just hope they sort out the length of time it takes to index new sites and changes made to websites, from my experience, Microsoft has been by far the slowest!

Is Your Website Putting Off Your Visitors?

Many of us who have websites don't always look at how visitors perceive our websites as we think we know what they want, and what information should be on our websites. For most small business owners, using a focus group would cost a small fortune, so it's not something many of us do, other than asking for feedback.

However, there are things that can really put visitors off websites, and it's particularly important for me to figure this out for my own website now, as I'm having it overhauled. So what are the things you should be looking at on your own site?

1. Make sure your contact details are easy to find, preferably on each page of your website. On my own site, my phone and email address are on each page of the site, with a separate contact page too. It's surprising how many sites still have their contact details buried away.

2. Make sure you tell people what you want them to do - lead people through your website, tell them which pages to visit first and make sure you put a call to action on your pages, such as contact us now, buy now, subscribe etc. If you don't tell your visitors, it may not be obvious to them.

3. Equally, don't give too much choice - you really don't want to give your visitors half a dozen things to do or look at otherwise they won't know which way to go either. If you're promoting your own products, make sure someone else's aren't on the same page as yours (for example if you also have affiliate links on your site). You don't want to steer them away from your own offering when you've put time and effort into getting the visitor to your site in the first place!

4. For service providers, explain the outcomes of using your service, how the visitor will benefit from working with you, how you will solve their problem. Don't explain the process as most people won't be interested in that, it's the end result that they want.

5. Equally if you sell products, give your products descriptions that will resonate with your target market. A poorly written, bland description probably won't motivate them to buy from you.

6. Scatter testimonials around your website, don't just hide them away on one page. I always tell clients to put their testimonials around the site and on the corresponding product/service page.

7. Check your web stats regularly - if you've got a high bounce rate for particular pages on your site it could be that the page is poorly targeted, so look at the keywords you're targeting and how the information on the page is presented.

8. Finally make sure that you're writing for your target market and that they understand your terminology. Avoid using jargon that people won't understand or writing in a very formal style. People scan web pages so highlight important points in bold, use bullet points and a more informal writing style.

I'm going to be looking at all of these points for my own site over the next couple of months. If you want to read more on web usability, Steve Krug's great book, Don't Make Me Think is well worth the read.

How I'm Getting On with my New Mac

Last December (after procrastinating for a few months), I went ahead and exchanged my ageing PC for a mac. I'd been researching the pros and cons for a few months, but threw caution to the wind and finally did it!

So how did I get on, do I like using a mac and what don't I like about it?

Well, transferring to the mac really wasn't a big deal after all - it hasn't taken me long at all to get to grips with the operating system which I really like, plus I did get MS office for mac which has made life much easier. I've had very few compatibility problems and when I have, have found a solution fairly quickly. In all I'm very fond of my new mac and think it would be hard to go back to a PC as my main computer.

Why did I transfer?
I'd been thinking about it for a while, mainly because so many people dislike Vista and have had all sorts of problems with it. My old PC regularly used to freeze and was bulky which isn't good in a small office. Virus updates always took forever and when you own a PC, the threat of viruses is a real pain! I guess part of the transfer was vanity, I really liked the idea that the whole thing was behind the screen, so no more towers under the desk taking up space. The resolution is fantastic for image editing, I love the big screen and it's so fast!

What do I like?
As above, I love the speed, the resolution, the ease of using it, particularly finding everything in one place. Installing software seems to be so much easier and you don't end up with executable program files being stored. The in built back up is excellent and the icons at the bottom of the screen makes it easier to get to all the programs you use regularly.

I've also found some great software such as Filemaker Bento and now have all my contacts in a proper database and can track what I'm doing with each client. I've also bought Swift Publisher and have managed to create some much nicer flyers for my business than I ever managed to do with MS Publisher.

OK, the downsides
I hate the mouse, it drives me nuts, when I click I often get various menus I don't want, when all I want to do is click on a link etc
Some of the keys are now in different places on my keyboard, but I guess that's just something to get used to
Editing html files in text - I always used to do this on my PC and haven't managed to do it successfully, so now use software called Kompozer for my website edits.

There's tons of information and support on the Apple website, so if you get confused, there's usually a solution somewhere.

All in all I'm really pleased I made the move - now all I need to decide is whether to replace my ageing laptop with a macbook or a bog standard windows one!

Are You Being Yourself?

With more and more people going into social networking, it's really important that you put across your true personality in your interactions with the people you come into contact with. Most people are happy to do this, after all, online networking is about building relationships in the same way as going to a normal offline networking event. People buy from people and that's what networking is all about.

However, recently I've come across a couple of cases where people are looking for someone else to do this on their behalf. I was quite surprised to find an email in my inbox recently offering services to set up and manage a Twitter account on my behalf, including doing the 'tweets'. How could someone else possibly know what I'd want to tweet about, my views on something, what I like to re-tweet, who I like to talk to - and above all, my know my business that well? It would be the same as sending someone to networking events on my behalf. Most people on Twitter are quite savvy and would soon smell a rat anyway. What would that do for my business? More harm than good I suspect. I was also recently asked if I knew anyone who could handle online networking for someone, of course, I warned them that it was a bad idea!

Perhaps people are trying to spread themselves too thinly and believe they should have profiles everywhere to make social networking work, but it's not like that. If you feel you should be networking online but haven't really got the time for it, then take one site at a time. Start with an easy one, such as Twitter and see how you get on with it before taking on an account with Facebook or LinkedIn. They all require some commitment, but once you find out which of these sites work best for you, you'll soon find there's only one or two sites you spend most of your time on, and you certainly don't need anyone to do it for you.

Don't ever be tempted to allow someone to do your networking on your behalf. By all means get advice, a strategy from an expert, but at the end of the day it all has to come from you. It's your own personality and how you interact with the people you meet that will really make the difference.

Moving from Typepad to Wordpress

Last week I spent about half a day sorting out moving the Savvy Marketers blog from Typepad to WordPress. I'd been quite daunted about doing it for a while and read up on what other people had done, but in the end it turned out less difficult than I initially thought.

The reason for moving the blog is so that we can develop Savvy Marketers without the restrictions of Typepad, as there are a few things we want to do with the website that we can't do within the Typepad platform. WordPress (the self hosted version), will give us much more flexibility to do what we want!

I won't go into the nitty gritty of what is involved in moving the blog, but there are a few things you need to consider if you want to set up a site on the self hosted version of WordPress.

1. Find a hosting company that supports WordPress. For my TouteFrance site, I used the existing web hosting company I use for my static Forty First website, but have had various things which haven't worked very well as they're not really geared up for WordPress. They offer php and a MySQL database, which are the basic requirements of WordPress hosting, but things still don't work properly on the site. For Savvy Marketers, we're using Heart Internet for our hosting, who seem to be much better. Hosting costs vary quite considerably, so it's worth shopping around.

2. Make sure you're able to move your domain easily if it's hosted in a place away from where you want your WordPress site to be hosted. I was able to do this within a control panel on the website I used to buy the domain, but did have to pay to move the domain to the new web hosting company.

3. You'll need some technical knowledge if you want to use WordPress.org (unless you're paying someone to do all the techie stuff for you), but it's worth understanding basic FTP as you may want to use 'plugins' that will enhance your site without asking someone to sort it out for you each time.

4. Once your new web hosting and domain is set up, you'll need to choose a nice theme for your blog. There are plenty out there, a good list is on Smashing Magazine, but you can pay for themes too, we use Thesis and another paid for theme is Elegant Themes.

5. Invest in a copy of WordPress for Dummies - this book has saved my bacon a couple of times and went through the set up of WordPress as well as importing the Typepad posts in an easy to read, non-techie, step by step way. The newest version of the book covers the latest version of WordPress.

Importing the Typepad posts to WordPress was really easy and WordPress even recognised the multiple authors. I had to customise the urls in WordPress to match the Typepad urls and the only thing left to do is edit all the images in the posts, which currently point to Typepad. I've had a few other WordPress problems to deal with but on the whole, we're very pleased with the move so far!

The Future of SEO?

As an SEO specialist, I read lots about what is going on in the SEO industry so that I can keep up with all the changes. But with the two way web (web 2.0), things are changing fast and I’m beginning to wonder how relevant SEO is going to be in the future.

The traditional way of finding websites has always been to go to Google, type in your keywords and look through the results to find the information you’re after. Don’t get me wrong, search still drives huge amounts of traffic and the evidence is there from all the web stats I look at on a regular basis, my own and my clients.

But, if you haven’t already noticed, social media is very much making its mark on the way people use the web. So rather than just going to Google, searching and hoping you find what you’re looking for, people are going to their favourite social networks and asking their personal network to recommend websites, products & services instead. This may only be the start, but with the numbers using sites such as Facebook & Twitter, this is only going to grow.

So where does this leave SEO specialists like myself who’ve been using SEO to promote websites for many years?
Well, rather than just selling traditional SEO services, we need to be using all of these tools ourselves so that we can talk to our clients about using the many different ways to promote their businesses online. I’ve always told my clients that they need to be using a variety of marketing methods, not just rely on one or two things, particularly as the way we use web is constantly evolving.

Search engines are becoming more and more sophisticated in the way they produce results, which are much better quality than they used to be and they now also allow people to personalise their results within their accounts, e.g iGoogle. Therefore, if a person searches within their personalised account, results may be different from the general search results. This also means that measuring rankings should not be used as an indication of the success of any SEO campaign (which should never be based on just rankings anyway) and we need to make sure we understand what our web stats are telling us instead.

So is there a place for an SEO specialist in the future?
As long as SEO specialists keep up with the changes and help clients to use keywords in as many ways as possible, then yes. Keywords aren’t just for traditional optimisation, but to be used to find new ideas for content, used in blogs, across social media and other forms of online marketing. We need to be broad minded and embrace the changes, not only for our own ends, but for our clients ends. It would be impossible to specialise in every aspect of online marketing, but knowing how it all works will give you more leverage to help your clients and find others who can support these activities.

I’d be interested to hear your views on the future of SEO!