The 5HITS

Fact 1: The cost of publishing online is cheap. If you are too tight to even pay for hosting, you can use blogspot or even Google sites, but hosting is essentially free these days.

Fact 2: Content is cheap and getting cheaper. The going rate for very at times average articles from India is around $10. That is cheap.

Fact 3: Google keeps on saying, “Write unique content for your users, or that people will link to, or that people will enjoy”

So how can we differentiate content. Huge slabs of content are daunting when a user lands and yet all too familiar. Users are lazy, full of self interest and are arriving at a remote server, with no word of mouth referral and you expect them to read 1,200 words in a single paragraph. Don’t let the click hit the close tab button before you’ve had a chance to get your message across. Getting people to your site takes effort and actions. Why waste this?

First things first. make sure you have done your keyword research and ensure your site is logically structured to allow people arriving to find familiar keywords and that the site hierarchy supports great search engine optimisation (SEO) for data retrieval and indexing purposes by the search engines.

Then think about what makes great content:

• Using headings
• Using bullet points to break up facts
• Using numbered points to show prioritised lists
• Short paragraphs and bolding to facilitate scanning
• The clever use of images to keep the reader engaged, not just smiling faces which add no value
• Conversion placements and options
• Alternate user paths to navigate the path from any page

When a user reads a page on your website, what do you want them to do?

Generally you want to communicate a certain point, and then get them to perform an action. In many cases unfortunately this action is seeing the footer and being not sure what on earth to do next.

Engage with your users, let them get value from your content and finish the page with a need for more.

A KPI alwasy available and seldom used is pages viewed and time on site. Surely, this should increase as your content improves? Look at the time on site for a specific page, look at the number of words on the page and calculate how many users are actually reading at an average reading rate of around 250 wpm. You may be shocked. If you are serious about user engagement, its not always about the biggest website but increasingly about the stickiest content. Watch Google make it so in coming months.

The Ipad has survived its first week in the house. Some facts and findings you may, or may not find interesting, but here they are:

• A single Mobileme account can support both your Iphone and Ipad, set it up in your Ipad then on Mobileme. Got to add an account in settings in the Ipad, then let Mobileme find the Ipad at mobileme.com/find
• Entourage is still the worst email system and will not properly integrate with Mobileme but Office 2011 for the Mac is apparently due in June 2010 with Outlook and which should rectify this
• Turning the Ipad to sideway gives a different and in most cases better working experience when using the Ipad and different functionality. Use the switch above the volume to lock this
• It does not and never will replace your laptop
• Most of the Ipad Apps used and tested so far are slow. Please optimise these, including the Australian newspaper app. Apparently it was done in a short timeframe. It shows and right now with advertising I don’t think is worth the money. Better checking out SMH or News.com in the Safari browser
• People on the bus read over your shoulder. Please everyone buy an Ipad so people will stop looking at you like you are a complete tosser when you pull it out
• Accessories are ludicrously expensive, Ali Baba would be embarrassed by the prices being charged
• Still no epiphany, waiting….
• Had some difficulties setting up pre paid wireless on some of the units, getting through to the Telco is a nightmare
• Otherwise, still a great device. Not too much buyers remorse. Easy, portable and accessible. For those who can work out what the hell to use it for there will be a massive updtake
• Multitasking will be good when released. This us limiting, especially on the Ipad
• No Facebook Ipad app yet

Short and sweet.

Does anyone know any good Ipad App review sites, most seem to be focused still on the Iphone.

While SEO is a great means of driving relevant traffic to your website, social media is screaming at us from all sides. Combine the two and you get a very powerful means of leverage, something we have been working on with numerous clients for awhile now.

Gary Elliott is a an ex colleague from Deloitte Australia and a Business Intelligence specialist working in the UK. Between family and work he also runs a blog at biandw.com. Unrelated to business intelligence, he has written a great detailed post on levering your profile across social platforms in a simple way. Not all will have access to the SAP platform but the rest is good. You can find the post on Social Media Integration here.

Thanks Gary.

After all the hype, I have an Ipad and have not beat it with a baseball bat or microwaved it. I preordered an Apple Ipad online expecting weeks of stalking the Apple store and significant scarcity, only to find I could walk straight into the Apple store and buy one on Friday afternoon and then cancel my preorder which was due for delivery sometime in June. In fact I think I have one prior to many folk who pre ordered their Ipads for the 28th may and still have not received them due to TNT being “overwhelmed”, What, no one told them they would have to deliver 7,800 Ipads in one day? I just feel sorry for the poor kid who had been waiting 2 months for his Mecano set and the sceduled delivery was Friday.

I then also purchased a second Ipad on Saturday morning on behalf of a friend from JB Hi Fi in Chatswood after discovering not all JB Hi Fi’s are equal and that the inner west of Sydney was not considered an Ipad buying belt. I was in relatively early due to kids and by 11:030 had some hurried looking guys my age asking me where I had bought them, as the Apple Store, David Jones and Myer were all out of stock. I did’nt mention the big yellow JB Hi logo on the plastic bag I was holding and merilly sent them off to, yes JB Hi Fi, they were in a rush and almost started running as I mentioned the name. Crazy. I was tempted to send them to Babies Galore but was worried they would come back and find me.

The Sydney Apple Store

The Apple store buying experience is also carefully engineered to keep as many people lined up on the street for as long as possible, while there is actually plenty of room inside. So keep your customers cold and behind barriers seems to be the motto. As someone who has a day job and who has to dress is business wear and who has a lot on, the thought of standing in a cue with buskers and fluffers is not appealing. But then I thought, who is actually going to by this thing? Students? People with no jobs who can spend the day in the cue? They must be a lot wealthier these days.  Definite mismatch in the experience. Anyway I was fortunate to be on my way back from a meeting and see a lull in the cue, in fact there was no cue, I walked straight in and out. Had I known David Jones or JB Hi Fi would also have been an option. Must mention that in the 5 minutes I was inside, a cue had formed again, unreal.

Anyway I have Ipad and am still waiting for the great epiphany. Nothing has happened, other than me becoming more anti social. Hopefully the lightning bolt of change and hope for all mankind will strike soon so I can realise there is justice in the world and that the Ipad is magical and revolutionary.

Ipad, some details you won’t in the user guide

After that rant, I must say it is a pretty cool device. Some things I would like to have known for the set up include:

• On first connection to Itunes, if you have an Iphone it will think you should have a sim card installed and will not let you do anything. Restart Itunes, connect, disconnect, ensure your Ipad is turned on and you will be on your way. Also ensure you have the latest Itunes software installed. No sim card is required to connect to Itunes with the 3G Ipad. Maybe this is obvious but it is not explicitly mentioned anywhere in the user guide.
• The Iphone apps, while they may work, render in a smaller resolution. You can upsize them to 2X, but they look blurred on the larger screen, so you will need to buy or download Ipad apps, of just use your iphone for some of them. It’s not great with a large screen and a little Iphone size screen of data in the middle.
• The email and other similar listings work differently to the Iphone in what I think is a less efficient manner. There is always an email open, but you have a new drop down menu to use, May take some time to get used to. Was not natural after using the Iphone. So for example if you sync your notes and open the notes app, it looks empty until you click on the little notes button at the top then the list of all your notes drops down. Could not also find a setting to change this.
• Finding the Mobileme settings aint easy, in fact I still haven’t found them, maybe its just me
• The Apps from your Iphone will load onto the Ipad but with no settings, of course. So every feed, URL etc will need to be reloaded. Set aside an hour or so depending on your apps to reload and set up everything. I just hope it does not crash and lasts for 20 years, it is a pain.
• It comes with a charger for the wall socket, not just USB charger. I would recommend the dock as well, so it stands upright. Can then also be used a photo frame.
• Movies are awesome to watch. $25 from the Itunes store for a movie is however ludicrous. In fact there is not much fro free in the Itunes store these days. Not like the good old days.
• Ipad apps are much more expensive and fewer, so if you want a paid app on both, you will need the Ipad version to render properly, and you will need to buy it again
• The sim cards are only available on prepaid, unless you in certain cases you are a business user. So while there is a lot of noise around this for that data, it is a circus to get a post paid sim unless you have an account and with certain providers are a business. Prepaid may well be better anyway. Telstra offer an extra 2GB free with their $30 for 1GB free is you activate before 30th June, but be aware the data only lasts 30 days and the sim around 6 months without activation. Welcome to more little monthly payments.

Other than that it is a big ass Iphone. Very neat, nice screen, heavier than I imagined. The plastic buttons on the side are a bit tacky compared to the Iphone and look budget.

I intend to use the Ipad for work, so no kids Apps on this one. As I work in an ever changing technical environment being on top of all changes continuously is critical. I belive the Ipad is going to be a big help here, given screen size and portability, allowing me to get access to updates, tools, website monitoring and other data quickly and easily.

I think there is a big “want it” factor but many will find this a useful tool, especially those of us who work online. Many niche business apps are also appearing for certain industries like estate agents and tradesman. Well done Apple, like your work.

Good article quoting Jeremy Bolt and Des Odell the Directors of Bruce Clay Australia on SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) in The Age today, written by Billy Adams.

http://www.theage.com.au/business/clevel/search-engines-the-new-marketing-frontier-20100524-w4ww.html

Covers the estimated size of the SEO market and why every organisation should be considering SEO.

You have to be a tad geeky to get this one.

Bruce Clay is hiring and needs to fill a number of SEO jobs in their Sydney office.

Bruce Clay is one of the leading SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) agencies in Australia and has the largest pure play SEO team in Australia, We only do SEO, we do not mix SEO and SEM. We also provide the global and highly rated 3 day SEO training to all of our staff, as well as on the job training from highly experienced managers and directors on sme of Australias best known and largest websites. Bruce Clay also has their own SEOToolset which we use in house.

PLEASE READ THIS FIRST. We are looking for graduates, or graduates with up to 1 year experience to start as SEO Analysts in our Sydney office.

We offer:

• Dynamic learning environment in the CBD, near Circular Quay
• In house training and ongoing technical updates
• Access to our global offices for technical and other ongoing updates
• The opportunity to work on well known Australian brands
• Remuneration in line with the market and the industry
• Bonus scheme
• Career opportunities totally linked to your performance
• Great working environment
• The best grounding and experience for a new SEO starter in the business

Who we are looking for:

• Smart, energetic individuals with a passion for the Internet
• Team players, who fit with our high performance culture and yet are down to earth
• People who are competitive, have initiative and have drive

If this is you. Send us your resume, we look forward to hearing from you. Apply here.

Wondering which browser is best, given the large amount of time we use them these days. Thanks to sixrevisions.com/infographs/browser-performance/ (See original) for this simple test. Interesting to see how Chrome performed, given it has also been unhackable to date. Now we just nee more add on’s.

So everyone has a website or a blog, or both. Many dream of retiring to a deserted island and running their networks of websites, getting rich and having this amazing work life balance. Well guess what? It ain’t going to happen, easily anyway. Of those with sites, many are limited by their developers to various CMS’s and expensive changes. For those who control and manage their own hosting, their main tool and marketing method (and Im talking small business here) is content and ofcourse SEO. You can get lots of content written around the world for $10 a 500 word article or less.

So setting up a site and getting content and even some basic SEO in place is simple, cheap and can be done by yourself with some experimenting and time. So anybody can publish and many are indeed. Whose making the money so far. The hosting providers and those selling ad ons for Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal etc.

So now all are publishing, what are the monetisation options?

• Ad sense, selling contextual ads from say Google
• Selling a virtual product, like an E Book
• Selling other ads or listings, if you can get them
• Being an affiliate
• Selling some sort of offline or related product or service

While all of these are valid, most of them require significant pageviews to make them viable. Click throughs can be as low as 0.25% on a banner or ad, affiliates also require conversion, so getting enough traffic takes lots of something.

To be continued…

SMX Sydney 2010 was held Thursday and Friday this week at the Hilton. SMX has grown in stature in recent years as the event for the search industry. Bruce Clay was an exhibitor and during my time at the booth met a number of interesting people and companies, all looking for more traffic from search online.

For more on SMX Sydney 2010 you can get the complete coverage from the Bruce Clay blog, the whole event was live blogged by our very own Bruce Clay blogger Marc Ellison. Read all the detail on the Bruce Clay SEO Blog, here.