Who do news monoliths like Google rely on for up to the minute information? Networks like Twitter, where millions of people share real time information, of course. But sometimes they can get it wrong…

On June 25th, 2009,  Google experienced a huge bottleneck of online searches as people all over the world rushed to confirm rumours of the death of Michael Jackson were correct. Millions of people searching for the deceased superstar’s name on Google the found they were greeted by an error page : Google Error Page

Google warned searchers “Your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application” -Official Google Blog.

Was it because it was unthinkable that Pop’s Peter Pan could die and create a global information overload? Or was it because the information overload was so vast? The volume of searches on Michael Jackson all pointed to one thing to the Google-trons - VIRUS.

Google was not the only website to be overrun with enquiries; everone’s favourite micro-bloggin / rumour-mill,  Twitter simply crashed with the sheer volume of people using the service. Just before their servers crashed it was noted that “Micheal Jackson” appeared in more than 66,500 Twitter updates!

Since then there have been numerous reportings of celebrity deaths - Jeff Goldblum, Natalie Portman, even the much beloved and maligned Rick Astley was today a victim. Thanks to Twitter, Calm were able to find one of the sources, a call to arms from the network that perpetrated the “virtual death” of Rick Astley http://imgur.com/95HOu.png.

Money can’t buy this kind of viral activity - and if I were Rick I’d be releasing a single quick smart to capitalise on this phenomenon.

But fun and games aside, it seems even Google needs to check the source of stories when a huge internet event happens, and not just rely on the bots to tell them whether it’s a virus.

I watched last night’s BBC Panorama about the fine line between the privacy law and free speech – the freedom our media has to report [almost] anything.  I wondered if, in the week of the Iran election and an impending review of privacy vs free speech, social media represents a shining hope in keeping this gift alive.

If the many tweets from the likes of @persiankiwi and thousands of other Iranians desperate to let the world know what the government doesn’t, it would seem at first glance that social media has the ability to give us an instant, much clearer, more accurate insight into what is really going on in the world. The people are reporting what they see, instantly. Photos from mobile phones, tweets, uniting others through groups, and updates what they see show  us so that we can see it through their eyes. The BBC is getting its breaking news from these services today – CNN was yesterday criticised for missing the boat. The downside is, as China did with Twitter  in the aftermath of last year’s Earthquake, regimes have the option to simply shut down networks that allow people to propagate information. It’s up to individuals to find innovative ways of plugging into their networks – and they do.

So our privacy report may mean that the BBC and media groups may have to be more mindful of what they broadcast, but if it’s in our interests, I feel very confident that word will get out and find its way into the mass consciousness. As long as we don’t build our own “great firewall of China” that is.

Not quite! But as in most industries, terminology exists to differentiate between types of services-here’s an overview of some of the terms that you might of heard whilst talking to people within the industry…

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Search Engine Placement (SEP) are terms used to describe the practice of modifying or tuning invisible website content according to the key search terms it is required to be found for. Some parts of this process are on-site: the modifying of the actual website - some work involves establishing external links (link building) from other websites to yours. Careful work with site content that is efficient (and useful for the site visitor), organic and well structured is usually the first step of a long, but well worthwhile journey to becoming a website of authority status.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a natural evolution for SEO, but is more far reaching in terms of using other methods to achieve high numbers of visitors and general exposure. This is a form of on-line marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results through the use of paid inclusion, paid placement or contextual advertising i.e. Google Adwords (PPC).

Social Media Optimisation (SMO) is related to SEO, but the main focus of this is on driving traffic from other sources, rather than search engines. i.e. RSS feeds, social news buttons, blogging, social media sites and other media exposure can contribute extensively to a website popularity.

Conversion Rate Marketing (CRM) is the science of detailed analysis of a website to goal settings and funnelling strategies of all on-line traffic. This procedure often involves highly detailed visitor data for the website (metrics). An in-depth refinement process can be be conducted through multivariate testing, heat maps and other other methods that constantly refine and improve the sites structure, layout and also navigation. All text content, ‘calls to action’, persuasion paths and other elements of design are changed to convert more visitors and massively reduce bounce rates. Raising visitor retention considerably (often in excess of 50 percent) makes interesting reading from the point of view of a Return of Interest on moneys invested.

I hope this helps! If you have any questions or require any further information regarding these or any other terms, please give us a call or check out Calm Digital.

The majority of people think of (SEO) Search Engine Optimisation as an art to improve their search engine rankings, being a time studied profession that, without putting a great deal of time and effort into it,should be left to the techies. Wrong! Yes, improving search engine rankings in competitive areas does require a huge amount of knowledge and expertise and search engine optimisation techies are needed, but most websites aren’t in hugely competitive areas. Many of them can achieve effective rankings by applying some of these search engine optimisation basics.

SEO is the art of achieving high search engine results, increasing website traffic. It’s when the content is set out so the search engines can read it easy and effectively, and most importantly, it is about creating real value for the searcher. SEO is about attracting visitors specifically focused around predetermined key search terms. A valuable user experience will be rewarded by the search engines by increasing your Google Pagerank. SEO is all about making sure your website delivers what it says it will!

SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimising a website involves writing its content and HTML coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords. Sometimes a site’s structure must be adjusted too. Because of this, SEO needs to be considered at the design phase of any project and a strategy created specifically. It is critical that all the elements work together including the content and how the website is designed:

• Keyword analysis
Using our SEO expertise we will research and refine keywords into a definitive list. Using our specialised software Calm Asylum will run searches on keywords to understand how many people are searching for them and how competitive they are. The aim being to find popular search terms which are specific to your offering allowing you to rank as high as possible.

• Title tag
The keywords or phrases must be present in this tag. The priority of the keywords run from left to right in the title tag, so more important keywords are placed first. The title tag is indexed by the search engines in its own right and its influence is multiplied if the keywords within it are also used inside other elements.

• Meta keywords
Meta keywords allow you to provide additional text for search engines to index along with the body copy. Although this tag is indexed by search engines, text appearing within it only has limited relevancy as it is text and cannot be seen by the user. Like title tags priority runs from left to right, separated by commas. Keywords should never occur in meta keyword tags unless they also appear in the page text and generally should not be any longer than 255 characters including whitespace.

• Meta description

The meta descriptions allow you to influence the description of your page with search engines. The meta description has to contain your keywords and also relate to the copy on the page and be ideally no longer than 128 characters in length.

• Keyword distribution
It is essential that the predefined keywords are evenly distributed throughout the web page without simply keyword stuffing or spamming. To prevent this, keywords should not be used to often, but used in every paragraph, heading, subheading and also links. This simply allows the search engines to know that is what the content is about.

• Page URLS

Search engines love static URLs as they are sure that the pages content is less likely to have changed since last being indexed and not have duplicate information. An affective URL should be short and contain your most important selected keywords making your pages more trustworthy to search engines.

So as a round up if you have a spanky website and are fed up paying for Adwords why not contact Calm Digital for a chat and discuss in further detail how Calm can help.

Twitter seems to be all over the media like a rash at the moment. So much so that I’ve been forced to revisit my twitter after it had lain dormant for months. And guess what - it’s so addictive that I’ve had to limit my time on it. So what’s happened?

It’s hit the Tipping Point!

In his book, The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell explores three personality types that are essential for reaching out to people: Connectors, Mavens and Salespeople.

Connectors: These are folks who naturally build links, networks and connections between individuals and groups - think twitter fiend Jonathan Ross.

Mavens: In the best sense of the term these are people who love to gather practical information and share it with others, think  Stephen Fry, Arch Twitterer.

Salespeople: Folks who love to sell because they are passionate about people and twitter. - Phil Schofield fits this archetype.

Of course there are also those who by their very status can ifluence simply by adopting, like Barack Obama.

These personality types are enjoy people and effectively build community. Prominent personlaties fitting these archetypes can influence individuals and organizations who may adopt Twitter, becoming contributors, followers and ultimately twitters best advocates.

Add to the mix a global networking frenzy in the form Twestival, a live networking and fundraising event in 202 cities in the world, and yo, twitter hits the mainstream in a big media glitz type way.

As generously shared with the masses by @seotimeline on twitter and re-shared by Calm Asylum yo.

It really is an essential roadmap for all your social media / networking needs, detailing both community and B2B social networking sites, search engines, video sites, micro-blogging and texting, tools and platforms, blogs, wikis, photo sharing sites, social bookmarking and podcasting. The full palava really. Check it out here.

Calm Asylum has found the blog of a true genius. The periodic table of social media elements is so cool and it even gives you links to social media movers and shakers like Guy Kawasaki and The Real Shaq.

Calm Asylum has made friends with super Saltburn-based photographer, Cathal Carey. His shots range from glossy home-ware brochure sets, to Audi advertising and shiny happy people - oh yes, even Prince Andrew was a most willing subject for our Cathal. View Cathal’s recent work click here.

Event ‘Keeping a Calm head in business 2009.’ 4th February 2009.

We have received fantastic feedback from the event and we want to share it with you.

If you would like a copy of the presentation please contact Anna Smith at anna.smith@calmasylum.com

If you attended, please feel free to comment about the event below. Simply click the “comment” link below, log in and leave your comment. For all those new to blogging, and in need of a helping hand, please contact Anna Smith anna.smith@calmasylum.com 0845 058 0511.

If you were unable to attend, please contact Anna Smith for a copy of the day’s fantastic presentation’s.

We hope you enjoyed the event as much as we did, and look forward to seeing you at any future events.

The Calm Team.

www.calmasylum.com

www.harlands.co.uk

www.nicolacook.com

For those who attended, please check your emails  ‘for your eyes only’ special offers.

This is one of those incredible ultra-high definition that allows you to get up close and personal with Obama, and members of the crowd!

Zoom in  (’double-click on an area) ….and watch it focus on the inauguration of President Obama. Then zoom some  more… and wait for it to come into focus. You can almost see what’s written on his note-pad!

What a surveillance tool this is. And what a record of one of the biggest events in our lifetimes!

This picture was taken  with a robotic camera and weighs in at 1,474 megapixel. (295  times the standard 5 megapixel camera). It was a Canon that  pulled together over 200 individual shots.

Each zoom in  takes a second to focus …and then you can see some amazing  reactions.

Bonus points if you find Yo-Yo Ma ….  taking a picture with his iPhone! (Well, you would, wouldn’t you)?

To view the image click here.

Gone are the days of spending thousands of pounds a year allowing you to track and monitor your customer journey on your website. Now you are able to use a free web analytics solution, Google Analytics. This allows website owners and also bloggers who previously couldn’t justify the cost to take a good hard look at how hard their site is working for them. Just like another saying my Father taught me, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure”

Its all very well having all this data on your customer journey, but how do you use it to your benefit without getting bogged down. I have put together some top tips on how to use your analytics to improve your website in laymen’s terms (I am Scottish its the only way I know how)!

Page views

No matter what kind of site you have, you will most likely benefit from visitors viewing a higher number of pages on your site. With every statistic you aim to improve, get an average number and investigate further before attempting to increase. Think about what you can do to your site to increase the number of page views.  Do your research and check out your competitors (nick their idea’s) and be willing to change things. Are you cross-promoting similar products people might be interested in?  Are you providing useful content to go along with products, as we all know content is king!

Referring Links

Take a close look at your inbound links, what sites are referring traffic to you through normal links. Why are they doing so? Is it possible to improve those relationships to get even more traffic from them? Are there more sites like these that could be approached and perhaps linked with via a reciprocal relationship?  Are there any types of sites you think you should be getting links from but aren’t? Why not? If not, maybe you should focus on your content and create some good quality content to go with your products. If so, are there more links you could get from external sites who like / need your content. You have to have something they want i.e (content, tools) that would add value to their site and their customers.

Geographic Reach

Examine your geographic location statistics and see what areas of the UK or world you receive the majority of your traffic from and the areas you are weak in. What can you do to improve traffic in places you’re weak and what can you do to strengthen your traffic in areas where you’re strong? Are you marketing yourself to your weak regions?  Should you invest in Pay Per Click or optimise your site for searches in your weak areas? Contact me if you want to know more about PPC marketing.

Organic Search Terms

Just like referring links, what can you learn from organic search terms? Can you get more traffic and better rankings for the terms that are doing well? Are there terms you’re not ranking well for? Can you create more  content for those? Should you consider reviewing your current strategy and contacting a digital agency.  It is likely you will need to review your SEO strategy and adjusting your link building strategy accordingly.

Constantly update your content

Examine your most commonly visited content and analyze why. Is it because it has the most links to it? Because the way the website is structured? Or is it because it’s the most useful or relevant content to visitors? Once you know why, expand that content and add further depth.  Your most popular content may be a certain product or category. Is it possible to add more products of that type or category? Are your most desirable products being found and is it possible to create feature rich content that Google will love. Is the top content really the products you want to have the most traffic?

Monitor Your Bounce Rate

Generally your top [hot] content generates traffic from natural search listings and becomes an entry point to your site. This because either organic search terms or links send visitors to your top content first. Google analytics and most analytics tools have a Bounce or Exit rate. This is vitally important as the percentage indicates the visitors that have exited on the same page they arrived on, not finding what they were looking for.  A low percentage indicates they clicked on other parts of your site before leaving, and a large percentage is very bad as it means they have just viewed the page and left.  Obviously the lower percentage the better as ideally you want them to find the information they were looking for and move on to look at other pages and ultimately convert the sale. (happy days).  Investigate the path you want your visitor to take from the landing page to reach the information you would like to supply them with.  Is your sales process working correctly?  Are you giving the visitor all the information they require in order to make an informed decision and complete the cycle and purchase?

Monitor Website Parameters

Google Analytics and most analytics packages allow you to see things like what operating system your customer is using, what resolution their screen is set at, if they have Flash installed, what browsers they are using and host of other data which can be used.  There’s nothing worse than finding out 50 percent of your audience are Apple users and you’ve never seen how awful and un-rendered your site looks on an Apple Mac.  Check this regularly to make sure your site is designed to look and operate well as much of your audience as possible. You should rigorously perform cross-browser testing to make sure your not providing a bad user experience - once a customer has had a bad experience you’ve lost them for good.

Goals

Always establish your goals in advance as you can always change them once you’re up and running.  Google Analytics and most other analytics apps allow you to setup conversion goals of different types.  This isn’t always a sale; on a non ecommerce platform it could be a set goal of having someone request further information or subscribe for a news letter, view a certain amount of pages, or view a particular page or just pick up the phone and contact you. Once you have set up these goals, you can then track them and monitor how well you are performing. There are loads of analytics and analysis that can go into this which I will be discussing at a later date.  But basically track your conversion rate (visitors divided by sales) new avenues for relevant traffic, and improve your statistics from your average stats.

Page Rank And Alexa Traffic Rank

These are important gauges of how well your website is performing and often over-looked.  Google Page Rank is on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest only available to the likes of the BBC. This is scored by Google indicating the web pages relevance and also value. Alexa Traffic Rank is based on 3 months combined traffic computes the reach and number of page views for all sites on the Web on a daily basis. A tool I found useful for checking other sites particular competitors is yowzaa and also a cool tool bar which will allow you to monitor every website you visit is toolbar.

Round Up

Start spending a bit of time looking at your analytics, because like me once you start it is like being on eBay, it’s addictive…..  Allowing you to work out exactly how many visitors you need to reach your revenue goals and changing content constantly watching the money roll in.

Its great having this data as it will allow you to improve your website and gain a better understanding of your customer journey which is invaluable. I hope this helps and should you need any clarification please don’t hesitate to contact me.

A free event: Wednesday 4th February 2009, Crathorne Hall (near Yarm), 9:15 - 12 noon.

Calm Asylum Communications presents a one-off seminar that will give you valuable tips and insight into ways in which you can steer your business calmly through the current financial storm, without any big-spending.

We will give you solid advice that you can really use, and let you in on marketing, business and sales secrets that you can implement yourself so that you can see 2009 through with a stronger profile than ever before.

You will walk away with a raft of ideas that translate into real value for your business. And you could also walk away with some fantastic prizes:

A free Financial health check from Harland and Co.
Valued at £500.00
Calm Media Centre: web syndication for your news etc
Valued at £2,500.00
A New You – Book by Author Nicola Cook
Valued at £10.00 (but the content is Invaluable)!

Calm will be delivering this event in partnership with Harland and Co. Financial Planning and engaging speaker, Nicola Cook of Aurora Training.

Presenters:
Simon Brown – MD, Calm Asylum
Bianca Robinson – Calm Asylum
Philip Murray – Harlands
Nicola Cook – Aurora Training/ Nicola Cook.

There are only 30 places available for this one-off event. Book now and reserve your place visit keepcalm.calmasylum.com or phone  0845 058 0511 .