What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is the practice of improving a site’s ranking in web search engine results (such as Google, Yahoo and Bing) for specific search queries, or keywords.
It is often assumed that if a website is online - the world will visit your website, masses of people will start signing up for your services, purchase your products and you will receive a flood of enquiries all within minutes of the site being launched to the World Wide Web...
Unfortunately it doesn't quite work like this... if your website is not search engine friendly what is going to invite search engines such as Google to visit the site and understand what your website is all about?
This article is to provide your business with an overview on SEO best practices and tips to help your website get found online for the right reasons!
The difference between Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Whilst SEO - Search Engine Optimisation and SEM - Search Engine Marketing both relate specifically to search engine applications - their goals and techniques are quite different.
If you own or run a website you will most likely be approached by organisations or individuals offering SEM - Search Engine Marketing services.
More than often they will claim they can "Get Your Business on the First page of Google Search Results" - what they are often referring to is paid per click advertisements (such as Google Adwords) not organic search results.
Whilst search engine advertising can be quite effective for many businesses to gain traffic to their website, it can get expensive over time, especially if there is a lot of competition, and if it is not done properly with thorough keyword research and analysis the results may not be successful.
We will discuss SEM - Search Engine Marketing techniques further in depth in another blog article.
This article discusses best SEO practices to help improve the ranking of your website on relevant organic search terms - the ideal place to start for your business to succeed online.
Why is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) important?
There is no point on investing in a website unless it is going to be found!
It is all about connecting people with your business based on relevant searches.
There are four main elements to SEO - a quick overview of each is below:
1. Keyword Research
2. Content Development
3. Web Design and Development
4. Link Building
A few other tips to help your website get found:
We at GemStar Interactive build all of our websites with SEO in mind and provide practical marketing advice to help your business succeed online.
Contact us today to talk through your web requirements.
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It is important to optimise every image for web design and also html email newsletters.
What does optimise mean?
To achieve maximum efficiency and optimum results. By optimising your images for use in web design and html newsletters means reducing the file size to reach the best outcome for the reader / end user.
Why optimise images for Web Design and HTML Newsletters?
If you have lots of images that have large file sizes, your website or email will take a long time to load – and let’s face it no-one wants to wait – your most likely going to have your customers ignore your website or your email without reading it.
Some email servers will even reject emails with large image sizes labelling them as spam so the email never reaches the inbox.
It’s all about getting the right balance between file-size and picture quality.
As a rule images should not go over 150kb as an absolute maximum and you should aim for them to be under 30kb (ultimately around 10kb if possible).
What type of images should be used on the web and in emails?
Jpeg (.jpg) is best for photographic images and .gif for drawn graphics. You can also use .png however this will often result in larger file-size. Images for email and for the web should be RGB colour formatting and 72dpi resolution.
Imaging programs such as Photoshop and Fireworks offer a great ‘save for web’ feature enabling you to scale the reduction of the images and visually view the results. Of course not everyone knows how to use (or has the budget to purchase) such advanced imaging software, fortunately there are many great free imaging programs available online.
Here are some great free to use advanced imaging editors:
http://www.splashup.com/splashup/ A powerful online image editor similar to Photoshop.
http://www.gimp.org/ A powerful GNU Image Manipulation Program.
To techy to understand? Try using the easy to use tools listed below, they have less flexibility with options but make optimising much easier.
http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/imageoptimizer/ just browse for the image on your computer, and click convert to – choose jpeg for photo images and gif or png for graphics.
http://www.imageoptimizer.net/Pages/Home.aspx You can use the online editor or download a copy to use on your computer. This is a simple to use program just follow the instructions provided (works on PC only).
There are many great tutorials on image optimisation available on the web, so try a quick google search if you need more information.
Email Campaigns are a cost-efficient and effective method to promote your products and services and are a great way to stay in touch with customers as well as expanding on sales.
When sending email campaigns there are some essential factors to keep in mind to make sure your message is received.
Tip 1: Plan your campaigns
Start by identifying the purpose of your campaign - will the email be in the form of a newsletter, an advertisement or a singular article?
Think about what you would like to write about in your email campaign. Here are some example campaign topics to get your started:
- Share your expertise with how-to tips, this is usually the easiest content to write and can be a friendly and personal way to engage with your customers.
- Company news - promoting recent business developments and launching of new products or services, keeps your loyal customers up to date and also encourages sales from new and existing contacts. Put yourself in the recipients place and ask ‘what would I want to know about this product or service that would make me buy it?’.
- Business feedback - occasional feedback surveys are a great way to gain input from your customers and to promote a sense of community.
- Testimonials - by including testimonials in your mailouts, helps to build repour with your customers.
- Special promotions - everyone likes a freebie! send discount coupons, promo codes, and other offers to encourage sales of your products or services. Holiday periods are a great time to send these campaigns as people are always looking for bargains to buy or pressies to send to loved ones.
Tip 2 - Email Content - Getting it right
Subject Heading
The most important part of the message is the subject heading.
The first thing a recipient sees when they receive an email is the subject heading, so you want it to be short, descriptive and eye catching to draw in attention and provide the reader with a reason to open and read your email.
Best practices in writing email subject lines:
- Summarise exactly what the message is about.
- Avoid using the terms - Free, Percent Off, Help and Reminder in your subject headings as they often trigger a spam filter resulting in your email going straight to the junk folder.
- Use a Standard Heading Style – meaning that the first letter of each word in a phrase is capitalised. Stay away from using “all lower case” or “ALL CAPITALS“.
- Do not overuse the same heading – email newsletters tend to start with a high open rate, experiencing some reduction over time. Try not to repeat the exact same subject for each newsletter as this will quickly reduce interest.
- Subject Line Length – keep the subject short and punchy within 50 characters or less.
- For promotional or informative emails, avoid using exclamation marks or splashy phrases in the subject heading.
Email copy
When writing effective email copy, use a conversational and informal tone to make the message friendly, open and intimate. Keep the message short and sweet, if the content is boring readers will quickly lose interest.
Evn tho many mod day ppl use short term to txt or sms it is best avoided with emails as it can come across as unprofessional. Resaerch shws that most poeple are albe to read mispselld text as lng as the first and last characters are correct such as used in this example, however you should always read and re-read your email before sending to check for spelling mistakes.
Before hitting the send button, take a 10 minute break away from your computer and then come back and read your email again before sending. You may be surprised how many mistakes you missed on the first check!
Personalise your message
The more you personalise your message the better the response will be from your subscribers which will result in more sales and more enquiries.
Dear Scarlet,
We thought you might like to know our Brisbane store is having a clearance sale on all ladies shoes. Scarlet, did you know you can save up to 70% off...
The self-hosted GemStar DIY mailer enables you to create an unlimted amount of custom fields to store information about your subscribers such as first name, age, gender, location etc. This allows you to make a single email message look like you have personally addressed your email to each individual recipient. Read more on the GemStar DIY Email Campaign system here.
Tip 3 - Using Images in your campaigns
Depending on your recipient’s computer settings and choice of email program, they will not all see the images automatically when they first receive the email.
Many email programs show the email in a preview window not fully displaying the email – usually only the top half or part of the header section. If the recipient has the email showing in a preview window and the top of the email is a graphic which does not automatically display - what is going to make the recipient open and read the email?
The above example shows a typical example of a html email in a preview window. Although the header graphic is not automatically displayed, you can see descriptive text informing you on what the email is about.
This is called the alt attribute which is alternative text, to be displayed if the image has failed to load or if the email program has images turned off.
A clear summarised subject heading combined with descriptive alt tags on all images in your email will help your readers to identify who the email is from and what it will be about, encouraging them to open and read the email.
The above tips come from the DIY Email Campaign Tips N Tricks ebook written by GemStar Interactive to help customers receive results with their email campaigns - regardless of which campaign system you use.
This ebook guides you through the stages of setting up your email campaigns, from planning your objectives, creating your mailing lists to sending and reviewing the outcomes, as well as providing practical marketing advice and suggestions to ensure the success of your campaigns.
