Page rank and green dots no substitute for $$

It occasionally comes as somewhat of a surprise that when some people discover the term “search engine optimization” (SEO) that all rationale and logic to what otherwise might be a sound business strategy flies out the window in pursuit of little green dots in page rank graphs, or search engine results page (SERP) rank.

Now don’t get me wrong, page rank and where a website appears in organic search results is important if a site is to attract web traffic and if the internet is going to be an effective marketing tool for the products and/or services a company offers.

However, if too much attention is spent on these factors the risk is that the overall aim – that of generating sales, or at the very least interest in a company’s products and services, will be lost.

Lets face it, the majority of websites are created to either sell or promote a company’s products or expertise. At the end of the day the cost of developing and hosting a website should be seen as an investment and like all investments a positive return should be expected.

The time to concentrate on SEO and the identification of keywords you want to target should be as much a part of the website creation or update as the graphic design and programming elements.

To prevent duplicated effort keywords should be identified early on in the process and weaved throughout webpages at the time copy is being written, with sufficient human resources tasked with the process so that results are obtained in the shortest possible time.

Many a company has gone bankrupt in the past, or lost a competitive edge, because of dallying around in getting a great idea or concept to market.

I was recently performing some work for a Canadian/Thai company where logic and reasoning had all but disappeared in the pursuit of little green dots, Google search results, and not allocating sufficient human resources.

This company, which will remain unnamed, maintains a number of travel websites, as well as performs website development for offshore companies – the majority of which are based in North America.

Wholesale Thai handicrafts

Thai handicrafts such as these delicate soap carvings in Chiang Mai. Photo John Le Fevre

The Canadian owner decided selling wholesale Thai handicrafts and wholesale Thai silk fashion and Thai silk fashion accessories was a market ripe for the tapping.

The in-house graphic design and programming team utilised the time in between developing websites for other people to put together the backbone of an eCommerce site over a couple of months so the company incurred no additional costs from that point.

However, when it came to filling the site with sell-able items the project became something of a train wreck.

Customised Thailand holiday plans

Amongst the travel sites operated by this company was one designed to enable tourists visiting Thailand to have customised Thailand holiday plans developed for them.

The way it works is that Mr and Mrs Blogs would send an information request through the website saying they are planning a holiday in Thailand on these dates and would like a customised Thailand holiday plan covering x number of days, starting in such and such location and ending in another.

The prospective client would then detail what they would like to see included in their customised Thailand holiday plan, as well as what standard of hotel the customised Thailand holiday plan should include.

Customised Thailand vacation planning was labour intensive with no return. Photo John Le Fevre

Two staff members would then spend anything up to three days developing the customised Thailand holiday plan for the potential clients, noting names and locations of hotels, brief details of sites to be seen, and the cost, and then send the customised Thailand holiday plan to the prospective client.

Often the prospective client would want to make changes to the customised Thailand holiday plan and so more time was spent refining it.

This all sounds wonderful for Mr and Mrs Blogs and the travel agency, however, now armed with a detailed customised Thailand holiday plan that covers the number of days they want, includes the sort of sites they wish to see, and even lists the names of hotels along the way, the end result was that Mr and Mrs Blogs inevitably was never heard from again.

After all, why would Mr and Mrs Blogs need to pay hefty commissions to a Thailand travel agent, when all they need to do upon arriving in Thailand with their customised Thailand holiday plan is to find a driver and a vehicle and then follow the itinerary?

The service is, I suspect, also of great benefit to travel agents booking Thailand holidays for people who “want to do something different”.

Simply log on to the website, give the details requested and then sit back and wait while a Thailand travel agency spends it’s time and human resources, along with it’s local knowledge in putting together a customised Thailand holiday plan FREE of charge.

In reality it’s a travel agents dream. After a dew days a customised Thailand holiday plan pops up in the email inbox, complete with all the details necessary for a unique Thailand holiday, including the names of hotels and sites to be seen along the way AND the cost.

From here all any enterprising travel agent needs to do is check with the assortment of online hotel wholesalers, find the best prices available, book each hotel, find a driver and vehicle to undertake the journey and then pocket a nice commission for very little work.

The end result was that 99 per cent of these customised Thailand holiday plans ended up in no sales, while the time of two full time staff was heavily utilised in putting together customised Thailand holiday plans for people who may or may not have been genuine.

Website development train wreck

With the new wholesale Thai handicrafts website taking shape in development, the company owner decided that the two staff responsible for developing the customised Thailand holiday plans should also be the people responsible for putting together the range of items for the new wholesale Thai handicrafts website, as well as writing the descriptions for each item.

With insufficient human resources being devoted to the wholesale Thai handicrafts site, another train wreck was in the making.

Wholesale Thai handicrafts

Inevitably companies retailing or wholesaling Thai handicrafts almost always focus on handmade Thai silk fashion and handmade Thai silk fashion accessories. Thai silk fashion items and silk fashion accessories are found throughout the country and sourcing suppliers is as difficult as finding a girl in a bar there.

Handmade Thai silk fashion items and handmade Thai silk fashion accessories are one of the most common items found in markets and the handmade Thai silk fashion and handmade Thai silk fashion accessories industry is a multimillion dollar earner for Thailand.

In fact the handmade Thai silk industry and its reputation is so important to the country that Thailand’s Agriculture Ministry uses a peacock emblem in four different colors to grade authenticate genuine Thai silk items and protect it from imitations.

Most tourists to Thailand don’t know this, and overseas buyers almost certainly don’t, but the peacock emblem serves as a guarantee of quality for specific Thai silk types and production processes. Most handmade Thai silk products sold by internet sales companies are supplied without a peacock sticker – an indication of their quality.

Likewise genuine Thai pewter products have a long association with the country and handcrafted Thai pewter tableware and Thai pewter dining accessories are a favorite of overseas purchasers.

Thai pewterware has been found dating back over 1,000 years and these days handcrafted Thai pewter products are available in a wide range of designs and patterns.

Saa (mulberry) paper is another traditional Northern Thailand handicraft with a wide range of products such as saa paper greeting cards, saa art paper, and saa paper stationary items being made from this 100 per cent sustainable source.

By the time the wholesale Thai handicrafts product range was eventually compiled, the descriptions written, and the bugs ironed out of the payment system, more than 12 months had elapsed.

SEO fanaticism versus good business judgment

Just when the wholesale Thai handicrafts website was about to go live, a member of staff presented a new list of keywords that she thought should be used throughout the site and which would provide great SERP rank.

With a large inventory of hand painted Thai silk scarves, hand dyed Thai silk scarves, genuine handcrafted Thai pewter products and sets of Thai saa (mulberry) paper greeting cards, saa paper birthday cards and saa paper Christmas cards already assembled, going back through all of the wholesale Thai handicrafts product descriptions, URL headings, sub-headings and the like and inserting a whole new range of keywords is not a quick task.

Given the potential for the wholesale Thai handicrafts site to generate income, and in light of the fact that in almost 12 months the customised Thailand holiday planning service had not generated one sale, it’s fair to say that most business owners would have ditched the customised Thailand holiday planning service and concentrated as much energy as possible on getting the new site finalised and live. Especially given that this was in the months of September, October and November – in other words, a prime selling period for the sort of medium and smaller size purchasers being targetted by the wholesale Thai handicrafts website.

It should be noted that the wholesale Thai handicrafts website was already reasonably well keyworded, had optimised URL titles, H1 and H2 headers, cookie trails and a site map.

The site had already been online for many months (purchasers were not able to place orders) as new wholesale Thai handicrafts and features were added to it, so it had already been crawled and indexed, as well as submitted to numerous directories giving it good page rank in certain organic searches and providing a significant advantage over just dropping a new website onto the web and waiting for it to be crawled.

To suddenly stop the launch and go back and start re-writing the body text for hundreds of wholesale Thai silk fashion accessories, Thai silk scarves, saa paper greeting cards, handcrafted Thai pewter products and Thai handicraft items and change tags and possibly some headers would mean a time delay of several weeks, if not months.

Despite my best advice this is what the company did. The better approach in my mind would have been to launch the site and then tweak any non-performing pages and seeing what the result in organic search listings was.

The end result was the wholesale Thai handicrafts site wasn’t launched until well into January – well after the prime selling period for the types of Thai handicrafts the website was set up to sell, and more than 12 months after the project had began.

Given the amount of fanatical work that went into the keywording and SEO of the wholesale Thai handicrafts website, the owner can feel well pleased with his results.

Personally though I would have rather had the wholesale Thai handicrafts website operating and revenue rolling in the doors – especially as a number of new wholesale Thai handicrafts suppliers with larger ranges of products have emerged selling similar wholesale Thai handicrafts, handmade Thai silk fashion accessories, and saa paper greeting cards. A greater range of wholesale Thai handicrafts and handmade Thai silk fashion items means more product descriptions for genuine handmade Thai silk scarves, hand painted Thai silk scarves, handcrafted Thai pewter and the like resulting in greater keyword density forcing down the lesser range of the Canadian/Thai company’s ranking in SERPs.

Not only was a prime selling period for wholesale Thai handicrafts missed, but the hard-worked for SEO and keywording was not enough to maintain SERP rank.

ENDS:

© John Le Fevre, 2009

Customised Thailand holiday plans; Internet ; Internet marketing; Mulberry paper greeting cards;  Saa paper greeting cards; SEM; SEO; Thailand; Thailand travel; Tourism/travel industry; Travel website; Website design; Website optimization; Wholesale Thai pewter; Wholesale Thai handicrafts; Wholesale Thai fashion accessories; Wholesale Thai silk

Online travel bookings soar but online video advertising flops

57 per cent of British travellers booked their last international holiday online

Internet banner advertisements more effective than fancy video advertising

Research conducted by the Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA) gives an interesting insight into the travel purchasing methods of British travellers, while  research conducted in America paints an interesting picture on the effectiveness of online advertising.

Delegates at the annual ABTA travel convention were told earlier this week that a survey conducted on behalf of the association has revealed that 57 per cent of British holiday makers booked their last international holiday online, with a further 19 per cent doing so by telephone.

According to ABTA, which represents more than 5,500 UK travel agents and a further 900 UK tour operators having almost 7,000 association-registered websites between them, only 35 per cent of Britons traveling abroad booked through a travel agent, with 21 per cent booking directly with an airline.

Interestingly however, an Ipsos MORI poll conducted on behalf of ABTA showed that 45 per cent of 16 to 24-year-old British travelers, more than any other age group, booked their international travel though a shop-front travel agency.

The same survey showed that British travelers aged between 25 and 44-years-old were the most internet aware, with more than 68 per cent booking their last holiday online.

Across the Atlantic, iPerceptions one of North America’s leading web-focused attitudinal analytics providers was releasing online advertising response figures that should cause web designers and internet advertising consultants to sit back and take stock of how and where they spend their online advertising dollars.

IPerceptions analysis of user generated feedback from 14,000 visitors to leading media sites during August 2008 showed that online video advertisements are unpopular, with consumers more likely to click on traditional text or banner advertisements instead.

While online video content and meta tags on photographs might be great for improving search engine results, online video advertising left people cold.

The study found that despite the internet advertising industry’s buzz about online video advertising, it is not necessary to spend large amounts of money on glitzy online advertisements to reach consumers.

The survey found that 25 per cent of consumers are most likely to click on simple text advertisements, 20 per cent on right banners, and 12 per cent on top banners.

Only 11 per cent of consumers said they were likely to watch online video advertisements, with those in the 25 to 34-year-old age group just as likely to click on a right or top banner as an online video advertisement.

The highest viewing audience for online video advertising was found in the under 25-year-old age group who accounted for one-third of the online video advertising viewing market.

The iPerceptions study also unearthed some important data about how income level and frequency of visits impact consumer online advertising preferences.

On average 40 per cent of consumers are likely to click on any online advertisement have an annual income of less than $US50,000 a year, with only 15 per cent earning over $US150,000 a year.

For those clicking on online video advertisements only 13 per cent had an annual income of $US150,000 or more, with 49 per cent earning less than $US50,000.

Jonathan Levitt, iPerceptions vice president of marketing, said, “our research clearly shows that media sites that offer consumers compelling content and features – encouraging repeat visits – generate much better ad click-through rates than less engaging sites.

The results of the IPerceptions survey would appear to be directly at odds with so-called online advertising gurus who are actively encouraging their clients to spend big on online video advertising, as traditional advertising areas are cut-back due to the current world-wide economic climate.

There is little argument that online video helps when in comes to placing websites further up the list in organic web search results.

However, claims that the expense involved in producing online video advertising is recovered due to greater consumer appeal and higher click-though appear to nothing more than a myth perpetuated by those in the business of making online video advertisements.

As has always been the case, a well balanced advertising or communications campaign comprising a mix of different methods will always bring the best results.

ENDS:
© John Le Fevre, 2008

A more detailed report on the ABTA survey can be found at Travel Mole, the online community for the travel and tourism industry here: http://www.travelmole.com/stories/1131905.php?mpnlog=1&m_id=s~dnvY!~A

The full IPerceptions survey results can be found here: http://www.iperceptions.com/en/news/iperceptions-study-uncovers-consumers-real-online-

Internet; Internet marketing; Website design; Internet advertising; UK travel booking trends; British travel agents; UK travel agents; Online advertising

Bad website design gives no advantage to UK travel agents

Google – undisputable king of the search engine market. Image Search Engine Watch

An analysis of 115 travel websites belonging to members of the UKs largest travel industry consortium, Advantage Travel Centres, has shown that only 12 per cent scored well for search engine optimization (SEO), with bad website design blamed for the poor results.

Conducted by technology consulting firm Click With Technology (CWT), the survey found the majority of the groups independent agents’ suffered from such bad website design that most did not appear in Google, MSN or Yahoo! searches for travel websites.

With more than 750 independent agents and an annual group turnover of more than £2 billion per year, Advantage Travel Centres is a high-profile UK travel and tourism consortium offering packaged holidays, cruises and flight tickets throughout the UK.

According to CWT head of marketing Dan Caplin, many Advantage Travel Centres members websites were so badly designed that many did not even contain telephone numbers, while 35 per cent of the sites surveyed did not have enough reciprocal links pointing to their domain to maximise SEO¹.

Being part of such a large travel network, this last point is particularly surprising.

An examination of the Advantage Travel Centres members indexed travel website pages showed that only 49 per cent of sites scored well in this area as well.

According to Mr Caplan, most users only look at the first page of a Google or Yahoo! search, with many people not looking past the first five listings.

The survey highlights the problem of badly designed websites, and poor website maintenance, and the blasé approach many people take to what is a key component of their marketing.

SEO and the correct use of keywords is as vital to any company’s internet presence and marketing as a bank account is to the operation of a business.

Despite this, many people look for the cheapest option when it comes to creating their internet presence from both a website content and a website design stand point.

While there are numerous search engines crawling the internet, the lions share of the English language search engine market is indisputably “owned” by Google.

According to the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool, Google searches accounted for 69.17 per cent of all US searches for the four weeks ending June 28, 2008, well ahead of it’s nearest rival Yahoo! search, which received just 19.62 per cent.

In the UK Google searches accounted for 87 per cent of all UK searches in June 2008, compared to 4 per cent for Yahoo! searches, while in the Australian market Google search dominated again with an 88 per cent share of the market compared to second place-getter MSN search, which accounted for 7 per cent of all searches².

With such a dominant market share it makes sense that owners and designers of websites optimise their sites for Google’s web crawler.

Despite the fact that there are many good SEO tools available that people can use for free, many web designers, web masters, and content managers fail to make use of them.

In an ever competitive market the use of these SEO tools is vital if a company is to stand out from its competitors.

While well written, grammatically correct text is a must, consideration also has to be given to including selected keywords and phrases in the text itself, along with meta tags, alt descriptions, etc to maximise search engine results.

Again, there are numerous online wesbite tools available for free that will provide you with an overview of what web crawlers, or web spiders, see when they index your website, as well as what keyword terms or phrases are detected and the density of those words.

For travel industry websites there is little use trying to gain search engine ranking with keywords such as “travel agency”, “online travel agency”, “travel”, “airline tickets” or “cheap airline tickets”.

If these are the only keywords that web crawlers find on your site then your internet presence is largely wasted.

A quick examination of the above phrases returns the following results in Google: travel agency, 29 million; online travel agency, 7.5 million; travel, 1.3 billion; airline tickets, 51.7 million; and cheap airline tickets, 6.7 million.

Similarly, a furniture manufacturer needs better keywords than “furniture” (346 million results), “wooden furniture” (2.34 million results), or “outdoor furniture” (8.1 million results).

Funnily enough though, such useless keywords are often the only ones found on many companies websites.

I was recently asked on three separate occassions, with the prospect of ongoing work dangled in front of me each time, to examine the website for 1staudiovisual.co, an English company based in Thailand selling cheap televisions and electronic items into the UK, Australia and the Thailand market.

After spending considerable time analysing 1staudiovisual.co’s website, the surprising find was that it’s most common keywords, apart from meaningless gibberish referring to television models, were: “lcd” “plasma”, “interest”, “cheap televisions”, and “pound” as in the English currency.

A further examination of the 1staudiovisual.co website showed no three or four-word keyword phrases.

1staudiovisual.co took this information, which took several hours to compile, along with a detailed outline on the costs and methods to improve this situation and I have heard nothing more from them since. Thank you very much.

The point to all this is that use of some simple analytical tools will enable web designers and content managers to refine their text to include commonly searched for terms and phrases and make informed decisions on what keywords they should be competing for in organic search results.

Ideally between three and five keyword terms or phrases should be targeted and interwoven into the text to obtain a keyword density of around 2.5. Over use of the same keywords can lead to search engines penalising a site for keyword stuffing.

There is little point though in performing even this level of SEO if, when people land on your site, they cannot easily find contact information, as in the case of the Advantage Travel/CWT results cited above.

Alarmingly the same CWT survey found that only 29 per cent of the Advantage Travel Centre’s sites surveyed did a good job of displaying prices and offers.

It makes no sense that a company or organisation establishes an internet presence and then makes it difficult for visitors to either contact it, or find out such important information as pricing or product specifications.

While many companies boast of having a web site, the simple fact as highlighted in this survey is that many of those sites are of questionable value to their owners, or to the people who visit them.

Ends:
© John Le Fevre, 2008

Sources:
¹ http://www.travelmole.com/stories/1131714.php?mpnlog=1&m_id=s~dnvY!~A
² http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/080715-152041

Internet; Internet marketing; Technology; Tourism/travel; UK travel agents; Travel websites; Internet advertising; Website design; 1staudiovisual; SEM; SEO; British travel agents; website optimization