hal9000.ie

Optimising a site for searchers involves doing some keyword research to see what exact terms searchers are using to find what they’re looking for. And the Google Keyword Tool is your friend here. Once you’ve discovered which keywords have the highest traffic, then you optimise the page accordingly.

But what if your searchers can’t spell?

Take a look at this piece of research from Google where they show just how many ways Britney Spears fans spell her name.

Then you might want to start optimising the site for the misspellings. But having poor spelling across your site is not the ideal situation either.

It’ s much easier to target these kinds of spelling variations in a PPC campaign as you can target any spelling but this spelling does not have to be in your ad.

But for SEO it’s a bit more challenging.

Take Dún Laoghaire for example. Even if we ignore the fadas, some research shows us the local monthly search traffic in Ireland on the term and it’s variations.

1. dun laoghaire    135000
2. dunlaoghaire    110000
3. dun laoire             12100
4. dunlaoire                8100
5. Dunleary                   720
6. dun leary                  590
7. dun laoghare            28
8. Dunleery                    12
9. dun leery                     5

Google itself is very good at understanding different spelling variations and will often show you results based on what it thinks that the searcher meant. Which is very handy when your typing is wonky.

But one way of optimising a site for a term is to use the anchor text in a link to the site to associate the site with the different spelling. For example, a fantastic site was built for Dun Laoire and you can find Dunleary news and the Dun Leary gallery on the site.

Want to win €500??

Well it’s the last chance to enter the BlueBrick Video Competition. The idea is to create a video which encourages prospective students to visit BlueBrick and upload it to YouTube – what could be easier.

BlueBrick is an education portal that allows visitors to search for a huge range of higher level courses throughout Ireland and also to compare and then apply online.  The projects aim is to increase the number of part-time and flexible learning students in Ireland.

Video Marketing has become a huge growth area and is a great way of engaging visitors on your website and helps to decrease bounce rate. Also, having well-optimised videos on YouTube or Vimeo and video-sharing sites is a great way of link-building.

For example, if you’re interested in digital media what about taking a look at this digital media course in Dublin?

The law relating to the use of cookies by websites changed on 1st July 2011, but it’s not clear exactly how this affects website owners.

What is a Cookie?

A cookie is a small text file which is placed on your computer when you visit a website at the request of that website’s server. They are used for things like tracking site usage with analytics software, for personal recommendations on shopping sites and storing user names for sites.

Old Law on Cookies:

Previously, the law stated that a visitor should be able to opt out of using cookies. In general, website owners interpreted this in such a way that the Terms and Conditions on the site (or Privacy Policy) said that agreeing to use the site constituted opting in. The statement would also usually say that users can disable cookies in order to opt-out.

New Law on Cookies:

Now however, the EC (Electronic Communications Network and Services) Regulations 2011 is more specific and requires that:

• A user has given consent
• Information about the use of cookies is prominently and comprehensively displayed for the user

The only exception to this is where the storing of a cookie is necessary to carrying out the task that the user has specifically requested eg. items in a shopping cart. And in this case the cookie should be deleted at the end of the session.

Why is it a problem for site owners?

Most sites are running analytics which involves the use of cookies. Google Analytics is the most commonly used. It uses 1^st party cookies – this means that the data they collect is not shared and is not personally identifiable data. In fact it is one of the conditions of using Google Analytics that you have a privacy statement which states their use and explains how they are used.

The problem in complying with the law now is finding a way of getting consent from users that doesn’t get in their way and interrupt their browsing experience. Nobody wants to see pop-up boxes.

And the law is not clear on how to do this.

Possible Solutions

• The use of pop-up windows would ensure compliance with the new law, but would provide a poor user experience.
• Browsers could be implemented so that the default position is NOT to allow cookies or to make the settings more obvious to users. This solution is outside the control of site owners.
• Website terms and conditions with a positive indication eg. where the user has to tick an agreement box.

In the UK, site owners have been given 1 year before having to comply with the new law. In the meantime, the UK government is engaging with browser companies like Microsoft, Mozilla and Google to reach a workable solution.

What do the lawyers say?

Legal teams have been looking at the new law, but are not in a position to guide website owners on technical solutions. See what McCann Fitzgerald have to say.

Conclusion

It seems to be a bit of wait and see. It looks like browsers will be the way forward.

In the meantime, make sure your T&Cs or Privacy Policy makes it clear that you’re using cookies (if indeed you are).

Your website will probably be the foundation for your online presence, so be sure to put the right bricks in place before you start.

Read on to see some factors involved in the decision and get some inspiration from seeing how others have done it.

Cool Domain Names

Ma.tt – This is the blog of Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress, the open-source blogging and CMS platform. The.tt is the country code for Trinidad and Tobago. As you’d expect his blog also has a great theme. The Digital Marketing Institute’s site is built on WordPress.

Jenn.ie - Actually, I haven’t got this one yet, but I’d rather like to..

Appvise.me -another way of creating a cool domain name is to get a.me. This young Icelandic company is building a recommendation engine for apps.

.Me domains were formerly the domain names for Montenegro until they became so popular with the ‘call to action’ and virtual ‘me’ brigade. It’s quite difficult now to find available .me domain names that have active verbs.

Ow.ly – this is a URL shortener used with Hootsuite. So, of course it’s short. It’s also the ccTLD for Libya.

Sift.ie – sift.ie is an Irish start-up and the name has a nice ring to it. They offer a service to ‘sift’ through the deals from voucher sites like CityDeal and email only the relevant deals based on the user’s preferences.

Optim.al – this company aims for ‘optimal’ Facebook ads. It’s easy to remember and optimal.com was taken many years ago. The domain is Albanian.

Sociable.co – the domain hails from Colombia and the similarity to a company suggested these might become popular. But there aren’t too many.

Brand Building

It’s generally advisable to try and register the different TLDs for your name to protect your brand. Also, re-direct them to your main domain. Visitors often forget whether it’s a.ie or a.com when typing in a name, so it’s good to have both. Even if your business starts off small, allow yourself the online real estate for future expansion.

Next.com – you might think this was the UK clothes retailer, but you’d be wrong. This one is owned by Apple and re-directs to the new ‘white’ iPhone 4. A neat idea. But to find clothes, you’ll have to go to www.nextdirect.com.

DropBox.com – one of the most useful services I use is DropBox. This is a great name that is easy to remember. You ‘drop’ documents into the ‘box’ on the cloud and then you can access them from any device online.

hal9000.ie – when you go to develop your brand you need to do some research on domains and see what’s available. You may choose a name that you feel reflects your business. For us, the name hal9000 was chosen as it refers back to the supercomputer called Hal, Series 9000, in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. This was a time before the internet, or digital marketing, existed. Hal reflected futuristic computer technology at the time, but now technology has moved on radically, so it serves as a play on the original name.

It wasn’t possible to get the hal9000.com domain and this is a weakness. Having said that, our target market is primarily Irish and the .ie is the most relevant.

Read more about brand building.

Irish Businesses

.ie domains are the best for those sites which target Ireland only. However, you generally need to be a registered business or trademark to get the name. See Irish Domain Registry at IEDR.ie for more details.

Irish domain name registrations are very popular and are currently running at an increase of 37% each year. Because they are more difficult to register, they tend to be higher quality sites and less spam-like. In fact,.ie domains are amongst the top five safest domains in the world [IEDR.ie]

Why.ie – this one belongs to the IE Domain Registry and the name says it all. It aims to promote.ie domains. This is a useful site giving you the advantages of a .ie domain.

123.ie – there’s a sing-song vibe to this and the radio jingle has been very effective for the company. It’s an example of a domain name that has no keywords but has established a brand name to set them apart. It’s distinctive. Avoid names that are hard to say, for example those with hyphens

Ireland.com – the Irish Times scooped up this one a long time ago (14 years ago – older than Amazon.com). Domestic and international traffic is guaranteed with a name like this.

International Markets

In targeting international markets, it’s generally best to have a country-specific top level domain name (TLD) of the country you’re targeting. For example,  .co.uk in the UK or .fr in France, .de in Germany etc. However, sometimes this is not possible. In France, for instance, you need to have a physical presence in the country in order to register the domain. China has experienced a huge growth in .cn domains.

www.Pants.com -   this might have you think undies (or maybe nonsense!), but in the US where this .com is presumably targeted, they’re selling trousers. This illustrates the importance of having the right keywords for your target market. Even if you start small, you may be exporting globally eventually.

WWW or non-WWW

The www at the beginning of your domain name is optional and leaving it out will make your name shorter. Also Google (in Webmaster Tools) allows you set a preference for the www or non-www version of your domain name. For search engine optimization (SEO) reasons, re-direct the www to the non-www (or vice versa), so that all links are being counted by Google to the one domain.

Quick Top Level Domain Overview

A top level domain (TLD) is the last part of the domain name. Here are the main ones:

.com – most popular and used for sites with an international audience

.org - for non-profits and informational sites

.net – used for business

.info – relatively cheap and so often used by spam sites

.eu – with a European audience and theme

.edu – used for educational (mainly US-based)

.tv – useful for multimedia sites

.mobi – mobile sites – often a subdomain of a main site can be used to hold the mobile specific site which can be picked up by a mobile browser. However, building an app may be a more appropriate solution.

Here is a sneaky way of finding out who else is targeting your keywords. It’s a Google search parameter called ‘allintitle‘. This is a quick and easy way of seeing which other web pages have this keyword in their page meta Title. Having a keyword in the meta title indicates that the site is targeting this term for search traffic (if they’ve done any SEO work anyway).

You simply type in allintitle:your keyword into Google and the results will show pages that have this in the title. You can then refine the results for a more localised Irish picture by selecting ‘Pages from Ireland’ on the left sidebar.

For example if you are targeting the term “online credit card payments” then this is what it will look like:

You can use parentheses to get an exact match or no parentheses to get a broad match.

If you use this in conjuntion with the Google Keyword Tool to research search volumes for terms, then you have a valuable insight into what’s being searched for, and how competitive the term is.

Shift Happens

WorldNet TPS are running an event in May to explore the changing nature of online payments. It’s called Shift Happens and features presentations from some key people in the industry including:

1. Dermot Daly, founder of Tapadoo, one of Ireland’s leading app creation companies
2. Damian Lawlor, Managing Director of Google Media Business Solutions
   
3. David Johnston founder and MD of Owjo
4. James Grimes, Sports Book Product Manager, Paddy Power
   
5. John Clarke, Head of Product Innovation with WorldNet TPS
   

It’s an invite-only event (due to space restrictions) and will be on May 5th 2011 in the Guinness Storehouse (and yes – there is a pint on for the attendees).

Discussions will surround the need for merchants to support multiple online platforms for their customers and also how different channels are opening up new opportunities for growth.

“Multichannel” retailers, those with traditional and online outlets, are gaining in market share against the internet “pureplays” (Amas)

Mobile Commerce

51% of UK’s population buy online and 15% do so via a mobile phone (Amas).

Social Commerce

1 in every 11 people are on Facebook (642 613 700) [Q2 2011](SocialCommerceToday.com)

For those who can’t make the event, we’re going to video the presentations and tell you the key takeaways from the afternoon, for your delight. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, prepare your jaw for dropping with the following infographic from SocialBakers:

Engagement is the holy grail of online marketing today and one of the emerging digital trends is the ‘gamification‘ of online platforms. It means the adding of game-like functionality or features to non-game applications.

Everyone likes to play games right? So, give them something fun to do and you’ll keep them longer, and they’re more likely to come back. The key thing is making it goal oriented. One of the biggest examples is FourSquare where you can attain the goal of becoming Mayor of a place.

The approach takes ideas from games and applies them to other areas where the aim is to encourage certain behaviours, such as returning customers. This Google Insights chart shows the rise in interest in the term as shown through search. The graph largely reflects US search, resulting from the more mature online market there.

Ways of gamifying include:

• giving badges for achieving goals (eg. FourSquare)
• showing a progress bar for things like form competions, profile completions eg. LinkedIn
• achievement levels for customer loyalty
• games with virtual rewards
• games with real rewards like entering a draw or getting a discount
• adding small games to entertain and encourage site retention

One of the recent ones created in Ireland was for Tourism Ireland and is a game on  Facebook. You can play it for yourself at IrelandTown. What would be interesting to see is how successful the game is and how the success is being measured. Tourism Ireland seems to be the first national tourism agency to use a game like this to promote their country and it is certainly an innovative strategy to use. By playing the game the user agrees to:

• allow IrelandTown access to the user’s basic publicly shared data
• allow direct emails from IrelandTown
• allow wall updates
• allow IrelandTown access the user’s data

This is valuable data and is most likely well-targeted in that people who play the game will probably already have some interest in Ireland.

But it’s not just a digital marketing trend, gamification is being used in training and various kinds of product design.

In the online context, it’s a little like the incredible popularity of social networks – people like to be social. Like all the best ideas, it’s obvious in hindsight. The online technology and broadband facilitated this growth. Similarly, people like to play games and earn things. Again the technology is there (and accessible) to facilitate. The key thing is tapping in to human behaviour.

Learn more about gamification in Business Week’s CEO Guide to Business Gamification.