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Infographics – A New Frontier or Too Much at Once?

February 8, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Unless you’re completely new to developing SEO optimized content, or have been living under a rock for the last couple of years, you’ve certainly heard of the infographic – many outlets and marketers have extolled the virtue of including infographics in your content marketing mix.

Some have placed them on a high pedestal, going so far as to say you’re really behind the curve if you’re not including them in your content mix.

Others, while enthusiastic about infographics, are a bit more restrained.

Commenting in an interview with CMI, co-founder of JESS3 Leslie Bradshaw says that infographics should be viewed as a “…high-level tactic that are good for educated audiences.” For consumer audiences, infographics may be a bit much. “Consumer audiences are much more likely to share something on Facebook that’s really ‘snackable,’ Leslie explains.

So in order to develop “graphic” types of content that will get shared through Facebook, Google+, Pinterest and others, Leslie and her team develop what they call “data graphics”, which are basically shorter visual representations of one or two data points.

We of course like to take a more restrained approach…

Understanding what infographics are, and more importantly how you should approach them is way more important than putting one together for the sake of doing it.

However, we certainly appreciate the old saying “a picture is worth a thousand words”

Visualization is very powerful, and the ability to convey complex information graphically is what lies at the heart of an infographic.

Infographics is a short hand term for “information graphics” – they can be defined as graphic visual representations of information, or as explained in this CMI piece by Ahava Leibtag, a true infographic takes “…a complex data set and translate(s) it into an easily understood picture.”

Ahava goes on to explain that many pieces marketed as infographics, while good, are really “posters” since they lack complex data. While her example from Copyblogger is a really great, informative piece of content, it really lacks the sophisticated data that takes it to the infographic level – I would suspect Ahava would have the same opinion of an infographic, or “poster,” we did for an e-cigarette client some time ago…

If you’re looking to include infographics in your content mix, there are a few rules you need to follow says Paul Gustafson at CMI. These rules include:

  1. Tell a story
  2. Communicate complex data simply
  3. Make sharing through social media easy

Some of the most successful infographics in fact take very complex information and concepts and boils them down into their simplest, most easily digestible form.

Avaya provides us with some questions you must consider before embarking on the infographic voyage. Answering the following questions is critical to developing a successful infographic she explains.

  1. Do you have something relevant?
  2. Do you have a clear call-to-action?
  3. Can you post the infographic in more than one place?
  4. Do you have a good designer?
  5. Does the infographic approach fit into your branding?

In the end, it all really boils down to determining the purpose of building an infographic in the first place, its relevancy to your brand and message, and its ROI potential

Once you’ve addressed these important questions and you determine if and how an infographic will work for your site, you’re ready to get started.

There’s a plethora of templates out there for you to check out, or you can design a custom one…this handy infographic from Infographic Labs (below) provides a great overview of the “how.”

So in the end, are infographics the new content nirvana, or do they overload audiences and not deliver on the promises so many claim them to hold?

The answer of course – it really depends on a host of factors. If your audience in more “consumer” driven, perhaps you should consider the smaller, or more “snackable” pieces JESS3 develops.

If your audience is more sophisticated (some B2B), perhaps a two-level infographic makes sense…

We should caution though, you have to address the fundamental questions of purpose, goals, relevancy, sharing, ROI and more before you develop an infographic.

Have you developed any infographics for your website? If so, how did they work out?

Let us know in the comments field below or on our Facebook or Twitter profile today.

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What Is An Infographic? by Infographiclabs

 

Filed Under: Copywriting/SEO Content Development, Online Marketing, Social Media, Tip of the Day Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Keeping your Content Above the Fold and Easy to Find

December 10, 2012 by Leave a Comment

All the way back at the beginning of 2012, Google rolled out a new page layout algorithm. This October, the search giant provided an update on the algorithm, claiming it was affecting just under 1% of searches.

As the name suggests, this algorithm change was designed to evaluate a page’s layout and the amount of viewable content.

At issue – some pages on the Internet, while otherwise properly optimized for the search engines, are pretty top-heavy in terms of ads. Visitors to these pages have to scroll or otherwise spend time looking for the main content. After receiving many complaints from users, Google developed an algorithm to weed out pages that may have too many ads “above-the-fold,” or the area of a page you see when it appears on your screen.

Generally speaking, users want to see content right away, not scroll through ads. When we click on a link from Google, we expect the page to have the content readily available…ads are okay, as long as they’re placed in way that doesn’t interfere with the content showing “above-the-fold.”

In Google’s advisory on the update, sites with what the search giant considers a normal amount of ads placed in the right way will not be affected.

“We understand that placing ads above-the-fold is quite common for many websites; these ads often perform well and help publishers monetize online content. This algorithmic change does not affect sites who place ads above-the-fold to a normal degree, but affects sites that go much further to load the top of the page with ads to an excessive degree or that make it hard to find the actual original content on the page.”

However, sites with little to no content “above-the-fold” will be, or have already been affected. Compounding the problem is the fact that it could take awhile for the Google spider to recrawl your site and take any changes of this nature into account.

What do I do if my site has been affected by the page layout update?

The consensus – both at Google and here at our search engine optimization firm – is to focus on your user’s experience. Consider how you use your “above-the-fold” space. Ads are okay of course, but you must be mindful of where you’re placing them. Don’t make your visitors scroll or hunt for what they’re looking for.

In other words, this update is yet another confirmation on the importance Google, Bing and others put on content.

Remember Penguin and Panda?

Well this is another perspective on the same issue – does your site deliver useful content in way that’s easy to find?

To help you visualize how your page looks on different screen resolutions, Google has developed a special tool within Google Analytics you can use. The original tool announced in January, Browser Size, has been discontinued.

While Google says this update only affects pages with ads, will it one day be tweaked to include image “sliders” or even static images?

That’s an interesting question our lead web designer Gaby asked upon hearing news of this update. It’s certainly possible – with Google, it’s anyone’s guess it seems.

Other search marketing pros are more critical though, even going as far to claim hypocrisy on Google’s part. Barry Schwartz, a.k.a. Rusty Brick at S.E. Round Table, points to Google’s own search results pages as an example – the top 2/3 of this example below is all ads!

Image Courtesy of Search Engine Roundtable

Rusty Brick also points out how you couldn’t plug in a Google SERP into the Browser Size tool (discontinued) to see if it would pass muster or not.

From the discussion we’ve seen, many feel the update isn’t fair, especially considering how many of Google’s own pages would not pass their guidelines.

Regardless though, it’s something that must be dealt with on the part of SEOs and webmasters.

One thing we can be certain about – Google will have many other updates to their updates, and even more updates after that. So be on the lookout…

Was your site affected by this update?

If so, how long did it take for you to make up any lost ground?

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Filed Under: Forum Watch, SEO Technology, Site Architecture, Tip of the Day Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Fixing the 15 Most Common Business Blogging Mistakes – Part II

September 11, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Last week, we explored some common business blogging mistakes as outlined in this ebook from Hubspot… 15 Business Blogging Mistakes – And Easy Fixes. There simply was too much information for just one post.

So we’re here to deliver the remaining 15 business blogging mistakes and things you can do to address them.  Continue reading for more, and download the ebook for more detailed information.

Common Blogging Mistake #9 – Rushing Blog Titles

It’s quite common in fact – you’re rushing to get content created for your blog and forget to develop a strong title. Headlines though are perhaps the most important part of any piece of content. It briefly, often times in only 2-3 words, describes what your page is about. Many, if not most visitors, scan this headline to determine if they want to read any further.

To spur interest and ensure the reader stays on the page, try and develop blog titles that are actionable, clear and definitive. Try and integrate an important keyword and keep it brief…you only have a few short seconds to capture someone’s attention.

Common Blogging Mistake #10 – Not Sourcing Content

Another common mistake business blogs make is not finding additional sources for content. While its great you’re showing your expertise through completely original content, it’s also easy to run out of ideas. Besides, your readers would welcome additional insights from other writers.

To help you diversify your blog’s content, you can consider guest posts for example. You could also serve as a content curator – meaning you aggregate relevant stories and videos into one place, which helps visitors find all relevant info in one easy to refer place. You can also encourage employee contributions. In fact, it’s better for a blog to have multiple authors.

Common Blogging Mistake #11 – Not Optimizing for Leads

It’s incredible the number of blog posts we come across that have no call-to-action whatsoever. If you’re not optimizing your blog with offers and a clear call-to-action, you’re missing out on a tremendously powerful lead generation tool. Therefore, be sure you include a clear CTA in all of your posts and consider permanent CTAs to the top or sidebar of your content.

Types of call-to-action can include: content-focused offers (i.e. free e-book, webinar) or product-focused offers (i.e. free 30-day trial). Review the e-book for more information on placement.

Common Blogging Mistake #12 – Not Sharing your Posts on Social Media

It’s easy to just write a post, put it online and then forget about it. Not sharing your content on social media channels like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn means you’re leaving a large pool of readers out of the loop. To address this, share new content on your company’s social media profiles. Also, make it easy for your readers to share your posts with their online friends by including a social “share” button on each post.

Common Blogging Mistake #13 – Ignoring your Blog’s Analytics

While you’re just blazing away with new content, it’s easy to forget how to check to see how successful your blog actually is and whether your efforts are paying off. Not doing so means you could be doing something that turns your audience off for example. Carefully reviewing your blog’s visitor data can help you determine what kind of posts are the most popular, or the least popular.

Look at data like number of site visits, source of visits, bounce rates, inbound links, page views and keywords that brought in the most traffic to get an inside look at how your blog is working.

Common Blogging Mistake #14 – Not Testing Blog Elements

Meaning, you use the same methodology for every post you write – same design, same call-to-action, everything. Simply assuming what you do works isn’t the best way to approach your business blog. If you haven’t tested anything, how can you know what works and what doesn’t? Neglecting to test elements like your headline, call-to-action, design and subscription signup means you’re missing out on valuable data that can really help you improve your blog.

To combat this, simply use different types of titles – is it better to pose a question or do actionable titles work better? Does including a number (i.e. 15 Common Blogging Mistakes) generate more interest. You can also try a different call-to-action in each post – try different sizes, colors, placement, formatting and language to see what garners the most conversions.

Common Blogging Mistake #15 – Expecting Overnight Success

This is perhaps the most common, and persistent mistake in blogging. As the old saying goes, Rome wasn’t built in a night. Success takes time and requires a lot of effort. Unfortunately, many businesses start blogging and don’t see any significant results quickly…soon, the blog is abandoned altogether. The opportunity to build a new source of web traffic and leads is gone.

The important thing to remember is this – don’t give up. Realize it will take a good bit of time before you really start seeing a lot of new prospects and conversions from your blog. We don’t like to estimate a time frame since, but it will take up to a year to develop a resource that’s getting good, consistent traffic.

We certainly recommend checking out HubSpot’s e-book for more information. This post is mainly an overview of the common mistakes and what you can do to correct them. For more details on correcting these mistakes, we urge you to download the e-book.

From looking at this list, are there any of these 15 mistakes that grabbed your attention?

If you’ve taken any corrective measures, did you see additional traffic and engagement?

Feel free to share below using your Facebook login!

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Filed Under: Copywriting/SEO Content Development, Tip of the Day Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Fixing the 15 Most Common Business Blogging Mistakes – Part I

September 7, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Anyone involved in marketing businesses online know the importance of blogging. Not only is blogging important from a search ranking perspective, it’s also how you deliver timely content and connect with your audience to build that all important authority and trust. As far as your blog’s visitors, the ultimate goal of course is to entice them into visiting your main site, or where your main conversion pages are.

Without a blog of consistent flow of fresh content, your site likely will fail to connect with visitors and build long-term search rankings.

Often times though, the rush to build a useful resource through a blog leads to mistakes that rob your blog of its potential, both with connecting with your audience and aiding in your site’s search rankings.

A recent e-book from Hubspot, 15 Business Blogging Mistakes – And Easy Fixes, explores these issues and what you can do to address them. Continue reading for a brief summary of the first 8 of these mistakes and steps you can take to get your blog back on track.

Be sure to check back with us in a few days for mistakes 9 through 15 in part II.

Common Blogging Mistake #1 – Not Integrating your Blog with your Main Website

One common mistake that we’ve seen a lot is a company that doesn’t include its blog on the same domain as its main website. Many in fact publish on a free blogging platform from Blogger.com, WordPress.com or TypePad.com. This has several consequences from both an SEO perspective and branding perspective.

To address this issue, you can either set up a subdomain (e.g. http://blog.website.com) or have a sub-folder on your main site (http://www.website.com/blog). Each of these options will one, make it easier for your visitors to find your blog while still contributing to your site’s rankings. Choosing a sub-domain though allows for additional flexibility with your blog’s layout and design.

Keep in mind that you may experience difficulty in moving your blog if you’ve used one of the free blogging platforms listed above. If you switch, there are ways to maintain your search rankings but you will likely need the help of a programmer or SEO familiar with these kinds of transfers.

Common Blogging Mistake #2 – Publishing Too Much Product-Centric Content

If people are visiting your blog for thought leadership and educational content, then having too many posts on your products or your company’s achievements can really hurt the number of readers you ultimately attract to your blog. Consider spending more time developing content that informs or is thought provoking.

Examples of this type of “thought leadership” content include:

  • Industry/market data
  • Industry best practices
  • Reports based on industry research
  • Content that educates readers about your industry
  • Content that motivates someone to think
  • Industry case studies (not ones focused on your specific products)
  • News related to your industry, and your opinions of that news (…encourage your audience to share their opinion)

Common Blogging Mistake #3 – Infrequent/Inconsistent Publishing

We certainly understand this mistake – often times, company’s get so focused on their core business, they forget to write posts for their blog. For a blog to be successful (…meaning it draws visitors to your main site that convert), it has to be developed consistently over a long-time. According to HubSpot research, businesses who post at least 20 times per month generate over 5 times more traffic than sites who blog less than 4 times a month.

To build more content on your blog, start by committing to at least one post per week.  If you have limitations, consider hiring a freelance writer or find guest posts. To make your blogging go quicker and smoother, sit down every so often and develop an editorial calendar. Once you’ve developed a good routine, try and increase your blog posts to two per week.

Common Blogging Mistake #4 – Publishing Content that’s Off-Topic

If your blog’s content is unorganized and lacking any concrete, unified theme, it will certainly suffer. If your goal is to generate a following, and ultimately new customers, you have to give your readers a reason to keep coming back. Take some time and decide on a focus/topic for your blog and keep this focus in mind when developing content.

A few tips to help you define your blog’s focus/topic include: consider your blog’s goals (1), generate a list of applicable keywords and see if that helps you come up with a focal point (2), write about specific industry-related topics you can share special insight or expertise on (3), and determine what your audience wants (4).

Common Blogging Mistake #5 – Offering No Variety in your Content

Having a blog with the mountains of the same type of content is sure to bore your readers to death. Limiting the type of content your produce in turn limits the audience you will ultimately reach. While people like consistency, they also need variety to keep them engaged. Spice up your blog by introducing some variety – think outside the box and brainstorm a few ideas.

Other types of blog content can include – text-based copy, charts/graphs, audio/video, infographics, guest posts, curated lists, book reviews and Q&A type posts.

Common Blogging Mistake #6 – Failing to Encourage Audience Participation

Another common mistake we see in blogs is the failure to cultivate any kind of response or engagement from the audience. Blogs are meant to be a two-way conversation, not a one-way platform for your ideas. Think about this – nobody likes the guy at a party who just talks about how great he is. If you fail to engage your audience though, this is exactly how your blog will look to most readers.

Foster interaction by keeping blog comments open and replying to all comments in a timely manner. Ask questions in your posts to get people thinking and be sure to listen, and reply to all feedback.

Common Blogging Mistake #7 – Not Optimizing your Blog for Search

Not taking the time to optimize your blog for SEO is another mistake that can dramatically affect your blog’s potential. As we briefly mentioned in mistake #1, not optimizing your blog for search robs you of a tremendous opportunity to increase your keyword rankings and grow your traffic from organic search. Therefore, be sure you’re identifying important keywords relevant to your industry and optimizing your blog content with those keywords.

Common Blogging Mistake #8 – Implementing a Poor Blog Design

Although content is a major part of any blog, ignoring important design elements can hurt traffic and leads for your business’ main site. Even though your content has to be amazing, the design also has to be clear and focused on leads for the blog to truly be successful.

Although there are an infinite number of design choices out there, many successful blogs share a few similar traits. Including a clear call-to-action in each post is a great starting point. Include clear social media sharing buttons as well as a clear call-to-action for any subscription options. Also, make sure your blog has a clear connection to your website by having a clear navigation that ultimately connects to your website.

This concludes part I of our summary of the most common blogging mistakes and steps you can take to address them. Check back with us in a few days for part II of our summary.

There’s a few of these mistakes we’ve caught ourselves doing here…did any jump out at you?

While you’re waiting for part II, check out some of these related posts on blogging, keywords and design that can help you ensure you get the most out of your blog copywriting.

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Filed Under: Copywriting/SEO Content Development, Tip of the Day Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Is SEO and Usability Separable or Inseparable?

August 23, 2012 by Leave a Comment

As a search engine optimization company specializing in helping businesses dominate their respective industries online, we spend a lot of time considering what makes a website not only good, but stellar.

Of course, we spend a good bit of this time evaluating the metrics (a.k.a. algorithm) Google and other search engines use to rank web pages. What makes a certain website appear on page 1, or at the top of page 1?

However, this isn’t the only question we consider.

While search is the dominant way people find information online, we’re also mindful of the experience users have once they land on a website. Therefore, we don’t cater to every little SEO trick out there thinking all we need to do is pepper the right keywords in the right frequency, put up some good metatags and call it a day.

Over doing SEO can certainly “…undermine the user experience” according to a recent column from Jakob Nielsen’s weekly column.

Initially, it’s easy to see SEO and usability as two separate topics – search engine optimization is about “attracting people to your site” by making it show up high in the search results. Usability on the other hand is about the user’s interaction with your site after they’ve found it.

Therefore, the goal of SEO is to attract visitors while the goal of usability is to maximize the numbers of visitors that become actual customers.

Both SEO and usability have to be impressive in order for your site to succeed

If your SEO is stellar but your usability is lousy, plenty of people will find your site but none of them will actually convert.

Likewise, if your usability is great but your SEO is lousy, your site just won’t see too many visitors.

So even though SEO and usability focus on different parts of the lead generation process, there are many ways in which these two elements work together. However, there are a couple of ways they conflict, which I’ll get into below.

One of the first points to understand is that SEO goes well beyond Google. Studies have shown how search is “…the main resource discovery strategy” for most people. This concept applies to those already on your site as well. Many websites though don’t spend much time thinking about their site’s internal search usability, which can kill conversion rates in the end.

This is especially true when it comes to e-commerce type sites – one of the first laws of e-commerce is that your products must be found before they can be purchased. For general, mainstream websites, many users go straight to the site search rather than using navigation. Often times, the internal site search is so bad that users get frustrated and go all the way back to Google to find what they’re looking for.

Therefore, websites have to employ basic SEO techniques in their internal site search functionalities to ensure their site’s usability, and specifically their site search, is the best it can be.

In the long-term, good search rankings will come from how well your site helps users

Since the advent of ranking factors, search engines must use a variety of indirect metrics (i.e. number of links pointing to it) to determine a site’s quality. But as Google and others increasingly move toward evaluating user behaviors, search rankings will more and more be based on usability criteria.

In the short-term, you can try and game the search algorithms…but long-term, this is a losing proposition since these algorithms are always changing. Instead, focus on providing a good experience for your users.

In the long-term, this will generate not only high search rankings, but high conversions as well.

Good short-term SEO and good design are equally important though

Only focusing on how current search algorithms work is a bad idea, yes. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t design your website to work well with today’s search engines.

Offer stable URLs so other sites can easily, and directly link to any piece of content on your site. Use terms in your titles, headline and main content that visitors will use in their searches – meaning, you should avoid cute sounding headlines or words that may sound catchy but no one will understand.

You need to also be sure you use plain text to ensure your site gets indexed in the first place. Information architecture is important too – a clear navigation not only helps your users easily find the products/ services you offer, it also makes it easier for search engines to crawl your site and determine where in your site’s hierarchy a page is located.

Finally, be sure you develop compelling content that attracts links and chatter on social media.

These steps are things you should be doing anyway. But considering these SEO/usability guidelines in tandem will ensure you not only see sustained search rankings, but that you will see increased numbers of click-throughs as well.

Although SEO and usability often go together, there are instances where they conflict

One clear example of this is keyword stuffing. While it may help search rankings in the short-term, keyword stuffing makes your content harder to read.

Fat or obese footers is another point where SEO and usability conflict. While including informative, keyword-rich landing pages in your site’s bottom navigation may be good for search rankings, it can play havoc on the usability of your site since you have so many links going to disparate pages that are hard for users to follow.

In the long-term, sustained search rankings come from having a crawlable site that’s both informative AND usable. As Google continues to increase its reliance on user behavior in determining a site’s quality, you will need to be increasingly mindful of your site’s usability to ensure you stay on top of the search results.

We want to hear your thoughts on how SEO and usability either work together or conflict.

Do you consider one more important than the other?

What do you spend more time worrying about – your site’s ultimate rankings or the user experience once they land on your site?

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“Don’t Make Me Think” – A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability – Part I

“Don’t Make Me Think” – A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability – Part II

“Don’t Make Me Think” – A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability – Part III

 

Filed Under: SEO Technology, Site Architecture, Tip of the Day, Usability Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,
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