Research plurals and singulars

Some people search Google and co for goods and services using plurals, others use singular words and phrases.

Here’s an example. Say you sell bathrooms. One of your most popular search terms might be bathroom suites. But it’s also worth finding out how many potential customers search for bathroom suite.

If your main competitors are busy fighting over a singular key word or phrase, focusing on the plural alternative – and vice versa – can give you a useful competitive edge in the search engine results pages.  

If you’re neck deep in DIY SEO and want to find out your latest positions in Google’s search results, don’t forget to disable the personalised search option first!

What are personalised search results? In the interests of improving your search experience, unless you tell Google not to it’ll return results based on your previous searches and the sites you’ve visited in the past.

Why disable personalised search results? As a normal punter they’re harmless enough. As a marketer they’re misleading.

If you want to check your positions for various keywords you want clean data. You need to see what the rest of the world sees, not results that have been skewed to take your own tastes and behaviour into account. 

So how do you avoid getting personalised results from Google searches? Simple.  

Go here and download this excellent plug-in, which works for both Internet Explorer and Firefox.

• The golden rule of marketing is – give your customers what they want
• The golden rule of targeting is – go where your customers go

Perfect. If you’d like to get a regular email from Drayton, each packed to the rafters with the best in direct response wisdom, just register on his home page here.

Research by http://growsmartbusiness.com/ indicates a recent increase in social media marketing by small businesses:

• one in five of the 500 US small business owners questioned confirmed they use social media for marketing
• 69% post status updates, news and links on social networks
• 61% claim they use social media to find and attract new prospects and customers
• 57% have built a network of new prospects via social media websites
• 39% run an industry-specific blog
• 50% of small businesses who use social media for marketing say it takes up much more time than they’d expected it to
• 17% feel that social networks are negative, just encouraging consumers to criticise their business
• 6% said using social media has done their business more harm than good
• 45% expect social media to break even or turn a profit in the next year
• overall social media marketing is the third biggest investment small businesses are planning to make over the next two years

There’s still no sign of social media marketing giving birth to new revenue streams. So far it seems to be working very much like offline ‘above the line’ advertising, slowly building brands and reputations rather than driving direct sales. It’ll be interesting to find out exactly how businesses will make social media marketing profitable in the next twelve months.

I flounced out of Facebook at the weekend.  

Why? Because recently, Facebook has delivered more pain than gain. I’ve always enjoyed it but the last two interface relaunches have found me struggling to find stuff, people, messages… 

As a rule when I encounter something new it only takes a couple of goes to get it. But for some reason the latest generation Facebook baffles me anew every time I visit. I’m beginning to feel like a bloody goldfish.

So much for a logical, intuitive, simple, common sense graphical user interface!

Facebook updates regularly so I might re-register one day if things improve. Until then I’d rather be lonely.

Alternatively perhaps it’s time to defect to Google’s new social network offering, Buzz.

Do you need a straightforward, plain language guide to DIY SEO? 

I’m lucky to have strong personal connections in the UK SEO industry. So I know a good SEO guide when I see one.

Too few SEO ebooks are written in plain English. And too many authors blind their readers with science. This ebook is different. It is well written, in logical order, set to a wonderfully clear format and it covers everything you need to know about DIY SEO. 

Win Google’s Love: Tips for Increasing Traffic to Your Website comes highly recommended.

If you know absolutely nothing about SEO this ebook is a great place to start. If your knowledge of SEO is sketchy, it’s a great way to fill the gaps. If you already know a lot about SEO it’s a great aide memoire.

Test them!

This sounds blindingly obvious but it’s a really good idea to check your website every time you make even the tiniest change, just to make sure you haven’t broken it.

It’s horribly easy, especially when you’re busy or distracted, to forget to close a tag, make a spelling mistake or even delete chunks of code inadvertently.

A quick check can make all the difference between having to spend an extra few minutes mending your code and complete ecommerce meltdown!   

Conversion is the percentage of website visitors who ultimately buy from you.

For example if you get 1000 site visitors a day and 19 of them buy something, that’s a 1.9% conversion rate.  

Attracting people to your site is one thing. Getting them to buy is another. Here’s eleven common sense ways to increase sales conversion:

1. create clear, compelling, inspirational sales copy, targeted directly to your core audience’s needs
2.  lose the small print, avoid jargon, turn every potential negative into a persuasive positive
3. make it easy for prospects to ask questions. Then deliver the answers as fast as possible
4. make buying a clean, smooth, logical and pleasurable experience. The more complex, longer or exasperating you make it, the fewer people will stick it out to the end
5. provide plain English reassurance about security and privacy in the right places, at the right times
6. cater for everyone’s needs by giving people a choice of ways to buy wherever it’s practical. Online, over the phone, in writing…
7. …the same goes for payment methods. The more choice you give, the more prospects will be able to buy from you
8. use a buyer’s name – personalising the buying process helps people feel a human connection with your business 
9. build and manitain a good, trustworthy reputation by fulfilling orders quickly, efficiently and politely
10. keep your prices competitive. If they’re too high you’ll lose sales to your competitors no matter how much you spend on SEO, advertising and marketing
11. test different offers, prices, descriptions, images, sales processes etcetera until you identify the best converters

Email opt outs are usually negative, which is probably why most marketers prefer to make them as unobtrusive as possible.

Because people tend to respond very well to honesty and transparency, I prefer to give email opt out text fair prominence. And I like to make it positive. That way it reinforces the brand I’m writing about and adds to it’s credibility.

Here are three examples of positive email opt outs:

1. I’m sending you this offer because I genuinely believe it’ll help your business. If you don’t want to hear from me in future, just let me know and I’ll never darken your doors again!
2. I found your contact details on your website. I hope you don’t mind me emailing you.  All you have to do is let me know and I won’t bother you again. Otherwise I’ll keep sending you exciting, relevant stuff !
3. We’re a respected organisation and we  only make genuine offers. We respect you too. If you’d prefer not to hear from us we’ll take you off our special list straight away.   

Last night I got an email from a friend saying they’d left me a private message at flixter.com.

Because I trust my friend, I followed the link.  And opened up a whole world of shady marketing practices.

Clicking the link took me to a registration screen. Fair enough. Ronnie had left me a private message after all. So I filled it in.

The next screen asked for a whole load of personal information, at which point I took a step back and became suspicious. Why do I need to give them all this info just to collect a message?

I skipped that page and went to the next, which involved waiting while they allegedly ‘created my account’. They advised me to click through a load of special offers ‘while you wait’. So I did. There are pages and pages of adverts. Not good. At this point I ducked out of the process because it felt so dodgy.

This morning I had another go, to see if it felt as nasty in the cold light of day. It did. 

Not only that. I unsubscribed from any more contact with flixter, then tried to register under another email address to check the process out again as reference for this post. Aha… they say my second email address is already registered. As is the third email address I tried. Buggers… I don’t like this at all.

In my view there’s so much wrong with flixter from a marketing perspective that it’s hard to know where to start. So I won’t go into detail. But this is direct marketing  without morals. 

In fact it’s so piss poor that I can’t be certain flixter isn’t just a mechanism for harvesting personal data. Possibly for nefarious purposes. That’s the impression it gives. I also don’t believe my friend Ronnie really sent me a private message. I reckon flixter are spammers.  

Flixter’s based in the US so they’ll probably sue my arse if they read this post. So be it. Go ahead and sue. 

Watch out for flixter emails. They’re downright nasty. If I were you I wouldn’t touch flixter with a bargepole. Time to report them to Google…