Online B2B marketing in 2013: SEO is not a goal

by Marketing ON 5 February 2013

Staying ahead of the game. Being proactive. Reading the play. These are the type of terms marketers have drilled into their ears almost daily. Stand still and you go backwards – there’s another – so how exactly do marketers avoid these catchphrase?

Thorough research of the market, knowing your brand better than anyone and believing in the outcome, according to Sarah Pern of g2m Solutions, a Sydney-based B2B marketing agency. Pern has outlined several major trends for online B2B marketing in the year ahead.

Valuable advice

Pern predicts the demise of the culture of pumping out keywords in the hope of sailing to first page placement in search results. Why? Because everyone is doing it, and the market is saturated – plus with Google’s increased focus on personal endorsements and social signals, the area is close to flooding.

So what to do? Shift focus from ‘content creation’ to ‘value creation’ – more creative, unique and insightful use of marketers’ time. By investing more into exactly ‘what’ content target clients are after, you will see benefit. Be at one with them by focusing on neglected niche markets and even becoming thought leaders within that space – before soon word will spread.

Community calling

Relationship building and social interaction trumps mechanically-driven SEO. Many successful B2B online marketers are now spending more of their resources visiting LinkedIn groups, Google Communities and cultivating relevant, interested Twitter followings.

Participation and engagement is the rule here. Don’t just get in to this sphere for content distribution, instead look to create real value and cultivate relationships by personalising everything. Work from a single database, keep it simple and connect at an individual level.

Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm and its new Graph Search application will be integral for marketers, helping us search for content within personal networks and zone in on specific markets.

Content types

Content is king, but context is better. Look into the world of infographics, video, and creative blogging to suit what your audience needs, and be creative it with, like these guys:

Be an expert

“Smart B2B marketers are already focusing on their Klout scores and Google’s author rank, as they have picked up on the fact that personal online reputation impacts search rank, social reach and online influence,” says Pern.

Building relationships, reputation and leveraging social rank also benefits organisations as it is all these factors that will have you informed when converting a sales conversation into a genuine sale. Know your stuff and reap the online marketing rewards.

Beware of the ‘smartest’ guy in the room

by Kimon Lycos ON 12 April 2012

Everyone loves an expert. I certainly do. When I’m taking my car in for repairs, getting a job done around the house, or using an accountant to do the tax thing every year, I rejoice in the fact that there is someone smarter and better than I am in a special field of knowledge. That leaves me to crack on with the stuff I’m good at. It’s a comfort to know that there are people dedicated single-mindedly to a task, because naturally if you spend all your time in one special area of expertise, you would have to be pretty damn good.

This is true for all experts, in all fields except for volcanologists. I’m thinking of that Earth-burp known as Mount St Helens back in 1980. The experts said not to worry, let’s evacuate people to a distance of 13 kilometres into a ‘safe’ zone. There was just the small issue that the experts’ only knowledge base was Hawaiian volcanoes, which have open craters to erupt in a violently controlled manner.

Mount St Helens was a completely different kettle-of-fish, no open vent, and even when a massive bulge appeared on the Northern flank, no-one except for a chap called Jack Hyde pointed out how nasty it could be. Jack was not a part of the ‘expert’ panel, so his voice was not heard at the time. What came next was a catastrophic explosion beyond comprehension. The world’s greatest landslide screamed 250 kilometres per hour down the mountain, carrying enough material to bury Manhattan to a depth of 120 metres. Then the main show with an explosion of five hundred atomic bombs, killing people as far away as 30 kilometres, as the blast went out of that bulge, the experts had considered as ‘insignificant’.

On second thoughts there are experts in other fields who also get it wrong, such as (pause for effect) digital media people. In fact they are so far off the pace, they don’t even have a proper sounding title, at least volcanologists have that much going for them. On the other hand, when a ‘digital media person’ cocks-up it’s not quite as cataclysmic on human life, so I guess on that score, it all evens out.

The real issue is, when an expert digital media person talks about B2B, are they an expert with B2B? They could by all rights be a borderline genius with digital media, but in the world of B2C, creating buzz for corn flakes or launching ecommerce sites, which creates impressive bio-copy, stating how much business their digital media expertise has generated. Problem is, without a deep understanding of B2B, innovation and technology companies are blowing holes into their budgets and credibility following the advice of ‘experts’.

The most striking example is in the world of SEO, with many taking the same approach to selling large capex products as you would when flogging collectable Hot Wheels. The most obvious difference is the time to buy. My boy takes about 20 seconds to decide what Hot Wheel he wants, a B2B buyer will take 2 years or more, just on the due diligence. Perhaps the best illustration of the expert gap is with key word strategy.

B2C searchers often use well-known brand names, such as Hot Wheels, because many already know what they want to buy. The real hunt is for the best source. If a B2C searcher uses a generic term, expect less variance such as ‘toy car’.

B2B keyword strategy is more complex, because often there are many ways to skin a cat. Imagine for instance, you sold cat-skinning technology, not a bad thought at all really. In any case, you have a business, which sells technology licensing for a remote controlled plant that skins a thousand fur balls per day, using various ingenious methods.

To attract licensees/investors/customers, you need your key word strategy to cover not only the bleeding obvious such as your brand and ‘cat skinning’ but also ‘slaughter systems’, ‘slaughter technologies’, ‘food processing’, ‘animal management systems’, and dozens of other related and specific search terms.

You also have to consider the variation of what to call things, because people will use weird combinations of words because of industry-specific lingo or generic terms. Your typical B2B searcher uses words focused on the need or problem, rather than a product or solution. Add multiple searches during the buying cycle and multiple parties influencing the sale, B2B SEO keyword strategy can quickly become more complex than a weasel chasing a snake in your trousers.

New top-level domains to trump .com in Google search results

by Adrian Kinderis ON 14 March 2012

The introduction of new website suffixes (known as new top-level domains) such as .ibm, .afl, .law, and .shop is set to cause a shake-up in search engine land. Websites ending in .com, which currently dominate the internet real estate market, are about to get some new competition on the block and face possible relegation down the rankings.

Applications for new top-level domains (TLDs) are currently open and they’re expected to hit the web in early 2013. They will allow brands, entrepreneurs and governments to own a branded version of .com – moving from iinet.net.au to .iinet for example – dramatically changing the way internet users around the world navigate to find content online.

There are more than 131 billion searches conducted online each year (or more than 175 million per hour) and with a large proportion of these queries leading to the $8 trillion worth of ecommerce transactions made every year, there is a lot riding on the results. This means your position in Google search results is of paramount importance and any impact from new top-level domains could be significant to the digital economy.

The biggest debate (some may call it ‘heated discussion’) among search industry experts has been around the potential impact of a new top-level domain on a brand’s ranking in Google.

Will a new TLD web address automatically be favoured by Google over a .com equivalent? Quite simply, yes it will. I’ve been researching this topic since development of the new TLD program first began (around 6 years ago) and have closely followed the opinions of the many search industry experts who have taken a great deal of interest in the introduction of these new domains and the impact they will have.

The more I research, the more I have no doubt that a new TLD address will trump its .com equivalent. And here’s why.

Why will Google prefer .anything over .com?

We can partly answer this question by observing the way search engines like Google handle information contained right of the dot (.com, .info, .biz, etc.).

The basis of good search results is having the ability to present the most useful and relevant information in ascending order. An easy first step in this process is an assessment of the TLD the website is located within. We know this currently occurs because you can see search engine preferences to .edu websites for educational search topics, likewise with .gov websites for government related search topics.

Google bases its results on what it believes the intent was behind a search. For example if you type in ‘Nike’, Google assumes it’s more likely that you’re looking for the Nike website versus a shop that sells Nike runners (it’s a clever machine). So for searches where intent is clear, brands that own a .brand will have extra weighting behind them and are likely to rank higher.

But there’s even more benefit than that.

Domain name bias in action

Where I actually believe new top-level domains will have the biggest impact is with what the search industry calls ‘domain name bias’ (aka website credibility). This is when a web user chooses to click on one domain name in the search results over another because it looks more trustworthy.

In Australia, internet users have become biased towards .com.au domain names because they’ve learnt they’ll end up on a site that belongs to an Australian business. The same applies with .co.uk, so I’m sure users will become biased towards other TLDs if they’re taught it contains trustworthy and relevant content.

A research report by Microsoft found end users have learned to trust some domains over others. The report states that, “Viewing content on the internet as products, domains have emerged as brands. And users have developed such fierce brand loyalty that their clicks are tainted by domains.”

Think about when you search for information. Say you typed ‘tax rates’ into Google. Have you ever noticed yourself scanning the search results for a website that looks more credible? If the top search result wasn’t a trusted authority on tax (e.g. a government website), you probably would have skipped down to the government website, even if it was ranked 4 or 5 on the list.

That’s domain bias.

Ask the experts

I wanted to validate my opinion so I contacted a few experts and sought their advice. Karen Nelson, independent search marketing expert, spoke about how SEO benefits might occur:

“New TLDs are likely to be built with a sense of community and a specific audience in mind – so if the owners of new TLDs put restrictions in place for who can apply for web addresses at the second level, that would create exclusivity and trust in the domain name, which consumers will begin to recognise.”

“From a credibility point of view, new top-level domains will get more click-throughs from search results – even if they’re not ranked at the top. They’re shorter, neater and more appealing for the millions of eyes that scan Google search results every day. Behaviour change will start to happen and Google will pick up on this – that will be a strong benefit for brands.”

Ruth Stubbs, president of iProspect and Digital Media Asia Pacific, reinforced the notion of domain name bias:

“Google’s organic search results have a strong bias towards domain names, I believe. Therefore, if you can afford it, it’s an easy way to get yourself above the noise, particularly if your brand happens to be a competitive keyword.”

Zoe Warne, co-founder of award winning digital agency August and Committee Member of the Australian Interactive Media industry Association, spoke of the importance of online trust and relevance:

“Today’s internet users are quick to adapt and learn online trends. Not only do they seek instant gratification, they are also lightning fast to judge whether or not they trust an online source. And once you lose them you don’t get a second chance. For a brand to own its own trademarked TLD presents a rare opportunity for them to reassure consumers they are in the right, most relevant place. New TLDs have the potential to act as a lighthouse for brands online.”

Conclusion

Ultimately, the big question is: will car.insurance rank higher than carinsurance.com (for example)? All the evidence suggest the answer is yes, provided that the .insurance namespace builds value and perhaps verification into its space to ensure it is a signpost for good, trusted and authoritative content. That is where the real winners will come from in the new TLD program.

It’s here I remind marketers that buying a new TLD isn’t just about buying a key word to the right of the dot – it is about buying an entire slice of the internet. So whilst a new TLD provides clear Google ranking benefits and domain name bias, a first class content strategy to underpin a new TLD will help even more.

Define a target market, create credible content for your new TLD community and the Google results will follow.

More importantly though, it seems the credibility and trust that comes with a TLD is invaluable. Whilst behaviour change takes time, internet users do learn to acknowledge the credible content under TLDs and this can only be of advantage to new TLD applicants.

SEO and the backlinks buying conundrum

by Peter Applebaum ON 9 March 2012

Content providers, be warned. Backlinks can be bought, but they can end up doing more harm than good for your brand

Stomach tucks, executive office furniture, even – God help us – penile pustule removal… all of them can be found on the backend of many a blog. They are the comments awaiting approval, the scourge of content providers and the most irritating element to not only generating content, but also, crucially, getting that content out there.

So why are they there in the first place, and what should you do about them?

Here’s a scenario content providers large and small are familiar with. You’ve created your blog through WordPress or another format. You’ve invested time and money on it. You’ve worked hard to create content that you think will appeal to your target audience. You’ve made good use of images, you’ve utilised video and yet the engagement you’re after doesn’t seem to be forthcoming, because although you know you’re getting reads, you’re not getting that proof of engagement in the shape of comments you had been hoping for.

The importance of user-generated content

User-generated content is one of the holy grails of social media and content marketing. It’s a way for companies to spark conversations and then be a part of that conversation, while also allowing customers to have their say. Done well (for example, Coca-Cola on Facebook or über-blog The Huffington Post), it gets people talking – and drinking and reading and buying.

But those sorts of super-success stories are the exception rather than the rule. In most cases, generating user-generated content through posts and comments can seem elusive to the point of being impossible.

There are a number of reasons why. It could be that your content simply isn’t as engaging or as well-presented as you think it is. But chances are, it owes a great deal to the ‘1% Rule’. Put simply, the rule states that for every person actively creating and/or uploading content, there are 99 others who simply receive it, read it and may even act on it, but they don’t add to it.

Which means that while your message may well be getting across, you have no tangible evidence that it is reaching your target audience.

Of course, in this day and age of measurables and an all-consuming need to be able to demonstrate return on investment, that isn’t enough for some organisations. So, almost in desperation, they turn to buying backlinks as a means of spreading the word.

What are backlinks?

Backlinks are now more important than ever when it comes to search engine optimisation. As we explain in this Tick Content white paper, Google’s algorithm changes favour links from other sites when it comes to improving the search ranking of your own site. So some companies will happily pay money to ‘backlink farms’ that essentially spam other blogs with links.

The problem is that such an approach will almost always backfire. As every email account holder knows, spam is a massive pain in the proverbial and the chief reason why the ‘delete’ key is the most-overused on the old keyboard. The same is true for blog providers. Although everyone would love to be able to list dozens or even hundreds of comments for every story, do you really want to be promoting stomach tucks in the process?

Didn’t think so. So what do you do?

Create a targeted backlink strategy

The answer is to spend the time (and associated monetary costs) creating strategically targeted backlinks. Do your research to find blogs that operate in a similar field to yours (competitors exception, of course!) and write thoughtful, intelligent comments that have a legitimate purpose and reason for being there. In time, chances are those blogs will return the favour – and your search ranking will be boosted as a result.

At the same time, use social media to syndicate, syndicate, syndicate! Tweet about your latest story (you can do it two or three times without annoying your followers), use Facebook to drive traffic to it and adopt new social media platforms like Instagram to spread the word.

It may take a little longer, but such an approach will pay dividends. And, thankfully, there won’t be a penile pustule in sight!

Digital footprints

by Marketing ON 5 January 2012

This feature first appeared in the September 2011 issue of Marketing magazine.

They say if you really want to get to know a person, you need to walk a mile in their shoes. Matt Granfield talks to some of Australia’s savviest digital marketers and finds out how they’re tracking the digital footprints of the nation and then using that information to lead consumers to the checkout.

You’re being watched. Every move you make is being tracked.

Keep your head down. Stay calm.

Whatever you do, don’t look behind you. That’s not where they are. They’re in front. In the screen. In the computer. They know everything. Everything.

Sit down. Go to google.com/history. Log in. There it is. Everything you’ve ever searched for. How to yodel – the number to order a pizza – the answer to the pub trivia question you were asked in June 2006 (the capital of Turkmenistan is Ashgabat, in case you’ve forgotten). Google hasn’t forgotten.

And that’s just one website. There are thousands, perhaps millions more. You have been watched since the moment you first went online. The news knows what news you like. Facebook knows who your friends are. Your bank knows when you last checked your balance. Your favourite charity knows precisely what time you read your email. You will be watched tomorrow. If you’re on a computer, or a mobile device, you are being watched right now. Don’t worry though. They’re watching you for your own good.

They’re watching you, so they can help you.

Does it sound creepy? You’d want to hope not, because you’ve probably done a bit of watching yourself.

You’re a marketer. You use Google Analytics. You know where your visitors are from. You know how long they stay. You know what keywords they use to find your site and you know which pages they visit. Whether you realise it or not, you’ve been placing cookies on their computer so you know when they come back. It’s all good though, cookies are cute. Cookies never hurt anybody.

Actually, that’s a lie. Maureen Govern was hurt by cookies… 650,000 of them, in fact. Govern was the chief technology officer at AOL in 2006 and she was in charge when the company publicly released the search history of 650,000 users for ‘research’ purposes. The users were identified only by a number, but The New York Times did some snooping and discovered that it was fairly easy to connect a person’s search history to a person. They released some names, and let the world know there were people out there searching for ‘Beauty and the Beast Disney porn’, among other more sordid queries. Govern resigned.

Your search history may be vanilla by comparison, but that doesn’t make your digital footprints any less interesting to marketers. In fact, as the world’s information shifts into a digital cloud, smart marketers are getting more and more sophisticated in the measurements they take – if you can learn to read the cloud properly, you’ll know when it’s about to rain money – and the technology is getting a lot more sophisticated than Google Analytics.

The shift from website analytics to customer intelligence

While Google’s website visitor analysis program (or its earlier forefathers) was the first stepping stone on a path to online enlightenment for many marketers, companies like Experian have made multimillion-dollar businesses out of showing companies a lot more than just the IP address of a user. In fact, online customer behaviour is now starting to drive innovation in areas as diverse as product development, supply chain management and purchasing trends.

Matt Glasner, general manager of Experian Marketing Services, explains how the world has changed. “Australian consumers are spending more and more time in the online space. The increase in digital media usage has subsequently increased the collection and analysis of data, which was very difficult in an analogue world,” he says.

“Not only are organisations now capturing customer data from online activity, they’re also analysing and drawing insights from the activity. The data that this consumer activity provides can drive innovation through the detailed measurement of customer and market data that is more readily available in a digital world.

“Businesses can take this data and use it for not only product development, but also marketing material. For example, (budget electronics retailer) Kogan recently launched above the line ads based on recent real-time social media feedback, so they are taking the sentiment of their existing customers online and replicating this to their target audiences on a larger scale above the line.

“When businesses harness the power of these technologies and interact directly with consumers online, they provide a faster, more relevant and responsive way of engaging with existing and potential customers.”

And that engagement gets a whole lot more profitable once you can lead it down a sales funnel in an online shopping environment.

Paul Downs is the co-founder and director of Hitworks, an ecommerce consultancy that helps retailers make the most of their online stores. A former CIO (chief information officer) of City Beach, he decided to start Hitworks when he realised just how little Australian retailers knew about what was actually possible when they started tapping into the data available online.

“One of the biggest opportunities online is in the wealth of data you can capture through the transactions your customers are making,” says Downs.

“The data allows you to get a much better understanding of what your customers’ buying patterns are, and you can start a dialogue with them and you’re then able to tune promotions to what they’re looking for. Through continual harvesting of information on their buying patterns, and by talking to them, you can start to do that. You can get to a level of sophistication where your ecommerce system tailors the products that are presented to the customer when they come to the site. The Utopia is that you end up presenting the right product at the right price to the right person at the time they’re looking for it.

“Amazon is a good example. When I log in to my Amazon account, it recommends me products because it knows what I look at and it knows what I’ve bought. So, rather than me logging in and just cruising around looking for stuff, it says, ‘Hey, you might be interested in this’.”

Downs says smart retailers are doing more with user data than just deciding which products to show people. Smart marketers, he believes, use data to profile their customers in detail and then use that knowledge over time.

“Great retailers in this space understand their customers’ consumption behaviours and are therefore better placed to understand what a certain type of customer will spend in a given cycle, say annually. That then drives the level of discount and offers presented to that customer to drive increased sales.

“My experience with a number of Aussie retailers is that they are a million miles away from the concept of customer intelligence, let alone the execution of it – which means there is a fantastic opportunity for those prepared to embrace what Europe and the US have been doing for some time.

“For example, if you know customer type ‘A’ spends a few thousand dollars with you a year, you’re more likely to give them a 20 percent discount than someone who shops with you once. The software and platforms to do this are available now.”

Remarketing

But it’s not just website visitors who are providing marketers with digital footprints to follow. Tracking technology is now being applied to online advertising, allowing brands to target ads to people who’ve visited their website once they’re long gone.

In 2010, Google launched an innovative ad product called Remarketing, which allows advertisers to show ads to users who’ve previously visited their website as they then go on to browse the web. It works by allowing a company to tag pages of its site that correspond to certain categories it wants to promote. For example, an electronics retailer could add a ‘TV’ tag on all of the pages where it sells televisions and then create an AdWords campaign to show messages to people who’ve visited these pages as they browse TV-related sites across the Google Display Network (publishers who have elected to display Google ads on their web pages).

Google Remarketing product manager Aitan Weinberg says companies have been quick to embrace the technology.

“We rolled out Remarketing one year ago across the Google Display Network, and we think we have a hit on our hands,” he says. “In 2010, the total number of advertisers using Remarketing grew an average of 113 percent every quarter after launch.”

He adds that Google is continuing to develop the product and is beginning to use complex algorithms to mine user data for the best results.

“In the year since launch, we’ve boosted performance and scale with three key enhancements to make Remarketing even more powerful for the largest to the smallest of advertisers. First, we now enable you to show a relevant ad right after a potential customer leaves your site, when our internal analysis shows they’re most likely to click. Second, we’ve improved the algorithm that helps determine, in real time, how much you should pay for each impression in order to maximise the possibility that a user will click on your ad. Finally, the growing reach of the Google Display Network means you can reach your customers on more and more sites across the web.

While Google can’t point to any specific Australian case studies, Weinberg highlights three US firms that have experienced success with the program:

the Yankee Candle Company, which used Remarketing to re-engage shoppers and increased conversion rates by 600 percent while cutting cost-per-conversion in half
Lenovo, which increased sales by 20 percent and lowered its overall expense-to-revenue ratio by 14 percent in a campaign that included Remarketing and display across multiple networks, and
etrailer.com, an online towing parts retailer that saw twice the click-through rate at a 75 percent lower cost-per-click with Remarketing, compared to its typical display advertising campaigns.

Digital footprints in email and B2C communications

While the retail industry is starting to get display advertising runs on the board by utilising smart data, it’s still the one traditionally struggling to get its head around how to communicate directly with consumers without being labelled as spammers.

Lisa Arthur, chief marketing officer of marketing automation software company Aprimo, says that satisfying educated consumers requires that marketers provide the right information, when, where and in what forms these educated consumers want it.

“The blast campaigns of the past produce low response rates, and just a half a percent spam complaint rate will start to get you blocked by major mailbox providers all over the world,” she explains. “As a result, marketers must master new ways to answer critical, long-standing questions about the overall effectiveness of both traditional and new interactive online marketing programs. For example, what level of interest was generated by last week’s special offer? Is the marketing program reaching the desired demographic regions?”

Arthur says that to take full advantage of interactive marketing, B2C marketers need to adopt a holistic approach based on the simplification of processes and the integration of deep customer intelligence.

“Email blasts of the past have been replaced with online marketing that creates a dialogue with consumers, requiring the creation of custom content that can hold the attention of the educated consumer,” she says.

Arthur outlines three key ways a B2C marketing strategy should be using data to achieve maximum results:

built-in capabilities for triggered/event-based email marketing to allow marketers to personalise content and introduce rules-driven communications that can be scheduled to meet campaign objectives
interactive dialogues that can be triggered from email or landing page responses, as well as web-browsing history on company website properties, and
the ability to quickly and flexibly set up m-sites, landing pages, and forms to suit each project.

Arthur says that interactive marketing also requires marketers getting access to the right information – particularly in heavily ‘siloed’ organisations where IT, customer service and marketing all keep different sets of data on who is interacting with the brand.

“Customer data is typically gathered and managed by multiple departments and organisations within each business,” says Arthur. “Many marketing tools limit the amount and type of customer data that can be referenced. B2C businesses must fully leverage deep data drawn from multiple channels from offline connections to email response, form and survey data and company website browsing history. As a result, marketers can create highly focused content for uniquely engaging customer experiences.”

Successful campaigns, she says, should be able to segment users into groups based on the frequency of marketing communications they respond to, send ‘win back’ messages to those recipients who aren’t engaging, use social media to invite opt-in subscription requests from new fans and followers, and create interactive experiences on dedicated landing pages to engage users.

“Clearly, to build trust and loyalty, you can’t spam your customers and their contacts. The era of the educated consumer is here, unleashing revolutionary changes in how B2C marketers must interact with audiences. Nowhere is this new balance of dialogue, education and selling more evident than on the web,” concludes Arthur.

Google+ makes changes to Pages as engagement flounders

by Marketing ON 22 December 2011

The transparent approach to Google+’s evolution continues, with changes to Google+ Pages announced on Google’s blog on Monday. In the weeks since launching pages, Google has listened to feedback and implemented the most requested changes for Page owners.

The changes are part of a raft of improvements to the social network. For Pages, three changes have been implemented:

Multi-manager support: You can now delegate up to 50 named managers as administrators for a page
new notifications flow: Notification are now visible whether the page owner is viewing Google+ as themselves or as their page to make it easier to keep up with activity taking place on the page, and
unification of +1 and circles: Follower numbers now aggregate the count of users that have +1’ed your page or added it to a circle to give both page owners and visitors an at-a-glance summary of who is interacting with the page.

If you can’t see the video below, please refresh your browser

These changes come as research reveals that engagement on Google+ remains low. According to Mashable, US research company BrightEdge found that 77 of the top 100 global brands (as determined by Millward Brown’s Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands 2011 list) now have G+ pages.

Meanwhile, another researcher, Simply Measured, which looked at Interbrand’s Top 100 Brands, found 61 had Google+ brand pages.

However, Simply Measured’s research found that only 13 of those top brands had followings of 5,000 or more. Of non-Google brand pages, H&M, Burberry, Dell and Amazon are among the most-followed, but comments, shares and ‘+1’s across the brands involved in the study remain low.

Closer to home, Tourism Australia is one of the local brands that has started a page on Google+. According to executive general manager of marketing at TA, Nick Baker, engagement with the Australia brand on the network is low.

“Engagement is pretty low and not much is going on at the moment, but we sense that it will come,” Baker says.

“We are looking to the future and still experimenting with it to work out how it will fit. There are some interesting areas on it in the way that Hangouts and Circles are used. It is a question of how they will develop for consumers.”

Google hasn’t released a figure for Google+’s total membership since October. At that time, the company claimed that the social network had 40 million users.

3 reasons SEO should be central to content strategy

by Marketing ON 27 September 2011

Victor Navarro, commercial manager at Outrider Australia, argues that the Australian marketing industry needs to re-evaluate its approach to search by embedding it at the heart of the strategic planning and content creation phase.

‘Content is king’.

It’s a well-used adage in digital marketing. It is a mantra for our industry, with good reason. Great content builds connections with consumers, drives engagement and creates a deeper understanding of brands. Content, in its various forms, is the glue that integrates multi-channel campaigns together.

But great content without great SEO is often content unseen. As an industry, SEO is all too often overlooked during initial planning and strategy stages, especially when multiple stakeholders are involved. As a consequence, the quality of the content is diminished as brands retrospectively drop keywords into content in order to achieve what is now a tactical goal.

With search existing across more devices than ever and becoming increasingly important to brand exposure and recognition, the question has to be asked: Why do we reverse engineer digital content to incorporate keywords? A recent study commissioned by Outrider into online consumer behaviours indicates Australians are relying on search more than ever and are turning to brands for that information. This presents a real opportunity for marketers to use SEO strategically and directly engage consumers where they are making their purchasing decisions.

It’s a question that needs to be asked, especially when there is so much to be gained when SEO is incorporated early in the planning stages. Here are three reasons why SEO shouldn’t be an afterthought in your next digital marketing campaign.

It’s cost-effective

In this current climate, it’s never been more important to create cost-effective campaigns with cut-through. And with the growing influence of digital, that cut-through can come through well-executed SEO and researched keywords.

However, the current system is inefficient and often costly. Incorporating keywords after the fact often requires an increase in investment due to significant copy rewrites. It also often results in poor copy that lacks any real relationship to keywords being inserted. This aspect of today’s poor practice creates a disconnect between your tactical SEO goal and the overall objective of your website or campaign.

By incorporating SEO earlier in the process, starting at the design and content development phase, budgets are not consumed by costly rewrites and edits. It also means your keywords and content will work together seamlessly as part of a larger SEO strategy aiming for long lasting and positive online brand awareness.

Greater relevancy

Organic search results inspire trust; irrelevant content pumps up bounce-rates. Keywords that have no real relationship to the content often result in a poor user experience, with browsers quickly recognising unrelated material and leaving the page or platform immediately.

Content that is optimised for SEO can also improve the consumer journey and ensure it’s part of a larger call to action. Websites and content with SEO at its core will be more relevant to the search query, experience fewer bounce rates and result in greater conversion rates. The reason being that content and keywords won’t act in isolation, but part of a purchase journey that ensures visitors are participating in fluent and intuitive process.

The result: a better consumer experience and a greater return on investment.

Shorter lead times

Make your content count by ensuring your target audience sees it in a timely matter. Well-executed SEO, implemented early in the planning process, will generate longer lasting and higher ranking search results sooner.

Rewrites to insert keywords are costly, they also generate inefficiencies further down the line. Each edit or rewrite requires a resubmission to Google, slowing down the process for indexation. The logic is simple. If you submit optimised content earlier and with fewer edits, visitors and Google will recognise your content sooner and index it higher.

Integrating SEO as part of the overall strategy from the beginning also means keywords won’t simply be added haphazardly, but act as just one tactic in an array of strategies that optimise the page and its content for greater and long lasting online brand visibility.

SEO is perceived as a technical discipline within the digital mix but the truth is that effective SEO counsel at the right time in the planning process can be the difference between great content that works and great content that misses its mark.

You can teach a man to fish or buy him some links

by David Iwanow ON 13 July 2011

Back at the start of 2011 of the biggest US retails JC Penny & OverStock.com were penalised by Google for the practice of buying links to influence and manipulate their organic search rankings. Why this is still of interest is that it was only recently that JC Penny was moved out of the Google sinbin and back into the organic search results. Being that it’s a new financial year I thought it was still a good opportunity to examine what happened, what was the financial impact and did business learn anything from this public flogging?

The background starts with an unusual twist in that the manipulation was not discovered by a Google’s anti-spam algorithms but by one of their retail competitors. Typically in the search industry such practices as “dobbing in others” are seen as promoting bad karma but this type of dirty play is nothing new to the traditional marketing channels so it’s surprising that it did not happen earlier based on how obvious JC Penny’s tactics were.

The real JC Penny issue blew up so quickly and Google cracked down hard was due to the massive coverage initially provided by journalist David Segal of the New York Times but also the sheer scale of the impact on quality of Google’s search results which also embarrassed the Google quality team.

The NYTimes article did place blame solely on SearchDEX, who were at that point the search agency of record for JC Penney’s online marketing campaigns, but missed the mark when they talked about the black-hat techniques employed, as it just amounted to lazy link building. It was interesting that there was so much hype around JC Penny, it also raised questions about similar practices by another online competitor. OverStock.com which was flagged by The Wall Street Journal later that month for the same sketchy link building practices. The practices involved building a number of keyword friendly links from a number of questionable websites. That’s not really cutting edge and not really blackhat, it’s just lazy.

How did these sites get caught?

It’ fairly easy to use any number of free tools such as OpenSiteExplorer for sites to see their back links profile and understand how they are trying to game the SERPs. I wanted to get a better insight into how obvious the blocks backlink purchases were using MajesticSEO and you can see the massive growth in backlinks leading up to December which does not appear natural. The other point around the link data that stands out is the slightly higher than average number of educational links pointing to these sites, as Educational/University domains don’t typically point to commercial properties like JC Penny or Overstock.com unless there is a commercial incentive.

What amazing insight into SEO?

With some hindsight, the fast rise of JC Penney in the search rankings around so many generic terms did not take a genius to gain the insight that maybe something was suspicious especially leading up to the business shopping period of the year Christmas. The journalist also had some assistance from another search agency who was happy to highlight what was hiding in plain view.

What JC Penney did wrong?

JC Penney fired the search agency that had been at the heart of their whole online strategy to buy links and entice educational websites to link back to them to receive discounted products. The biggest problem with firing off your search agency is that they had a detailed understanding of what was being done to game the Google SERPs and they were in the best position to rectify the issue quickly.

The knee jerk reaction was a rookie mistake by the management team at JC Penny because SearchDEX understood what links would need to be removed as part of a re-inclusion request to be re-included in the Google index. Any new agency brought on board may struggle to sort through the thousands of links trying to find the handful that trigged the punishment, similar to trying to find a needle in a haystack. Not to be disgraced easily, the CEO of SearchDEX still claims innocence via an official statement on their blog, but a quick check of one of their other clients by myself shows they also seem to have a similar sketchy backline profile.

JC Penney said it wasn’t me?

While this is cute when Bart Simpson says it on TV, this is clearly not a satisfactory response from such a large retailer who was caught red handed benefiting from the link scheme. The problem is many businesses still hold onto the twisted idea that if ‘I don’t know about it, I can claim innocence’. This naive and reckless attitude amounts to sticking your head in the sand while singing “I can’t see you so you can’t see me” all the way to the bank. Shifting the blame does not make the problem go away and put’s your shareholders and investors at risk but also makes it look like you are not in control.

The problematic factor is that ‘just don’t tell me if you are doing something sketchy’ is a fairly common statement from companies looking to get the most possible traffic from organic search, and it’s possibly the last statement any company should make. The problem is that if you push and push your agency or staff to get blood from a stone, something will usually break and it might be your online business model. The practice of pushing too hard or too fast to get results is not a sustainable practice and will not lead to a long term sustainable business model.

It’s not a free market

The factor that many businesses fail to grasp is that Google & Bing are commercial products that allow the public to use its resources to find products and services online. Since they are run for profit, they make their money on advertisers paying for sponsored placement on their AdWords/adCenter platforms not on the organic traffic that JC Penny was manipulating. Search engines are always concerned that any loss of trust in the quality of their search results impacts on their business model and can discourage advertiser’s spending money on their Ad platform as they might shift budgets to other areas to game the search results.

So a key learning is that if you violate the search engines terms and conditions, you actually have no recourse or legal avenues for grievance, as they are commercial companies that let you benefit from traffic they drive to your website. So you can choose to play by their rules or you don’t get to play at all.

Buying links to punish competitors?

One constant rumour circulating around is the idea that companies can buy suspect links that might negatively impact on your search rankings, which is always a great PR move to shift blame away. But this impact has been repeatedly talked down by Matt Cutts and his team but it’s still a large concern for business.

The interesting twist on the JC Penny issue is that the spokeswoman said it was not them who did it, but you would question who or why would someone else provide JC Penny such a massive benefit to their search rankings for such high traffic terms?

The investment required by a competitor to shift the Google search results that much by just buying links would not make the project cost effective. To put this concept into perspective, JC Penny has around 5.18 million backlinks from around 70,000 different domains and OverStock.com has around 41 million backlinks from 142,000 different domains. The amount of links purchased to even cause a minor bump based on their backlink profile is more than most companies spend on their entire annual marketing budgets.

JC Penney claimed it was a competitor?

While they are technically correct, it was likely a competitor or competing search agency that first highlighted something was going on to the NYTimes reporter. The recurring issue is that many companies still work on a flaw metric that good search rankings is a pure numbers game and resort to brute force acquisition of links as their only strategy. Basically it seems a combination of laziness by a few people on the either the JC Penny online marketing or search agency team or someone managed to dropped the ball and was caught with their pants down after several months.

Are your competitors buying links?

A common issue for business trying to improve their online market share is that it seems to be that Google’s spam team is slow to respond to complaints of competitors clearly buying links and building low quality spam blogs to rank higher. There is also the fact that there are millions of spam reports that are processed by their team, and if you read any SEO blog or even the Google forums they do take action eventually.

The only factor that you are not always taking into account is that only the Google algorithm knows how much of your competitor’s sketchy efforts actually help improved their ranking and the rest might have been some of the other 200+ factors they use to calculate their search rankings.

I believe that slowly marketers are slowly accepting that Google often works to use algorithms to reduce manipulation of its search results as they don’t want to be seen as judge, jury and executioner by punishing individual websites or companies. I do know that Google tries to avoid what you might coin punitive punishment and seeks to take “corrective action” to reduce the impact a particular techniques might have on its search ranking algorithms.

What was the impact of the gamble?

The impact outside of bad PR for JC Penny was limited because the penalty was not enforced until February, which was well after their big Christmas season the impact may not be noticeable until this Christmas period. Early review of the gamble seems from their financial statements was that this time the gamble might have paid off as JC Penney’s online sales revenue rose 6.7% and overall the company profits grew 36%. The downside for the Google spam team is that it increases the chances that other retailers will take the risk come this Christmas.

Dead in the water?

Because they are such a big retailer, it’s unlikely JCPenney.com would be dead if they stayed out of the Google organic results. According to KeywordSpy data they have an average daily AdWords spend of at least $43,792 buying them over 100,000 daily visitors. This much spend on AdWords will help keep the cash registers ringing and, based on my research, a bulk of the organic keywords driving visitors are JC Penney are brand terms that would not have been impacted by the penalty.

It’s a slightly different story with Overstock.com who recently announced they would be rebranding to O.CO so did their link buying punishment have a larger or potentially long term effect that sped up the rebranding decision?

Google’s reaction to it?

I reached out to Google Australia to get a statement about the issue, while they were unable to comment on specifics around the retail sector or about government regulations, because they are a business, they were did provide a broad statement about the paid links stance.

A site’s ranking in Google‘s search results is automatically determined by computer algorithms using hundreds of factors to calculate a page’s relevance to a given query. Ourwebmaster guidelinesprovide general design, technical and quality guidance. More detailed information can be found at our webmaster tools helpsite.

Many owners of high quality sites can and do get their site listed well in Google‘s search results without any outside help. Most often, some basic, relatively simple tweaks go much farther than any secret “tricks”; for instance, using a journalistic mindset to write page titles — concisely answering who, what, where — can be of great help to both users and search engines. Understandably, some site owners prefer to have someone else check and optimise their site, and for these folks we’ve published some guidelines relating to evaluatingSEO companies. We also have a GoogleSEO Report Card which has some ideas to improve certain web pages.

In cases in which we feel that sites are violating our webmaster guidelines, we make adjustments to counterbalance and also discourage those efforts, including lower ranking or removal from the index. We have algorithms in place designed to detect spam and automatically take action. In addition, if we see a site that violates our guidelines or a get a valid spam report, we will take manual action against that site. If webmasters feel that their sites have been removed or otherwise significantly impacted due to violations of our guidelines, we encourage them to stop the violations and visit Webmaster Central to fill out a reconsideration request.

Sites sometimes violate Google‘s webmaster guidelines in an attempt to game our algorithms and trick their way to the top of our results. If they succeed, this hurts the search experience for people coming to Google, because high-quality information gets buried by spammers and sites don’t get to compete on a level playing field. Our webmaster guidelines are designed to protect users, and when a site violates them, we take action to preserve a good user experience. This helps ensure that in the long run people can find the best possible search results on Google, and website owners can compete on a level playing field for traffic.

-“Google Australia 20^th May”

Where Google and industry groups differ

One of the big points of contention is that Google wants paid links “nofollowed” so they don’t influence their search results but most industry groups are focused on enforcing the mandatory disclosure to consumers that it’s paid link. The UK is leading the charge with the Advertising Standards Authority and Committee of Advertising Practise requiring full disclosure if they have placed paid links on their website so normal consumers visiting the website know that it’s a paid link and they can see the clear relationship between blogger and advertiser.

The UK Office of Fair Trading last year took steps to secure a precedent around blogging disclosure and confirming its previous views that any paid-for promotions that are not disclosed are deceptive under fair trading laws. Their focus is not around manipulation of organic search results but more on transparency for consumers to make informed decisions on how to spend their money.

Paradox of Disclosure?

The interesting paradox is do advertisers/websites focus on seeking to stay within Google/Bing guidelines on their links to ensure they don’t risk penalties, or do they disclose paid links and potentially highlight them to the search quality teams? It’s becoming tougher for advertisers and websites who now have to make business decisions, as they risk upsetting the search engines that drive traffic to their website or the industry groups that regulate the advertising industry and may incur punitive punishment.

Disclosure for who and where?

I spoke with Darren Rowse of ProBlogger at a recent Blog For Good event about disclosure, because he has guest bloggers, paid writers and advertisers to deal with each day. He has built a successful business around blogging, but even he found the issue was not easy to give a simple answer as he said he always worked to stay within search engines guidelines, but also had to now consider not falling afoul of regulatory issues in different parts of the world.

He said there are times when writers come back around the issue saying that they have to disclose this or that based on their country of residence, but there is not always one correct answer. The curve ball in all of this is that other factors such as what country your web hosting is based may also start to play a role in what disclosure is needed by websites/blogs.

There are still so many questions that still seem un-answered and I would welcome your views on…

If the paid links are clearly disclosed, will Google still seek to enforce a penalty?
Should Australian retailers think they are immune from being punished for buying links?
Do small retailers/websites still see it as the big boys are too big to fail?
When will Australian organisations such as ADMA, AIMIA, ACCC, IAB begin to examine following the UKs lead on disclosure?; and
Do you think government regulation of the advertising/advertorial industry make it more transparent/easier for business?

Check out David’s Blog

Whats in Google searchs first pageview?

by Marketing ON 5 July 2011

Google's search results page has come a long way from the original plain ten blue links. Over the years these ten links have been joined by a wide range of other kinds of information. Google has stated that their goal is to answer searchers' questions faster and with more relevance, so the results page has become more informative and the content displayed more diverse. Video links, image search results, news or updates and map information are just a few examples of the kinds of information Google has begun to show in their universal search results. This trend is not limited to just Google, as both Bing and Yahoo! have been adding additional content types too. As a result, search engines are becoming more of a destination in their own right, and the search engine results page is more like an algorithmically generated portal page than a simple directory.

Google has stated that their goal is to provide more relevant information to the user faster. Over the last few years, Google has implemented a number of innovations in pursuit of this goal:

Displaying more information from the sites they spider
Including relevant information from other Google products
Making page previews available on the results page
Rolling out Google Instant search

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These changes have been made using Google's rich snippets, other markup standards like Schema.org and services like Google Places and YouTube. With tags for products, events, travel and business details accessible to Google's spiders and information added to Google Places and YouTube created with tags, descriptions and other information included, it is easier than ever to present the right information to a user as a part of the normal organic site listings.

Since Google first started two years ago to read and use semantic markup like rich snippets from the pages they spider, their search results have displayed more information in their organic listings. Movie times, product listings, flights, review scores and other kinds of information are now a part of the organic results, along with results from other Google search products, like news and images. Paid listings such as Google AdWords can also include more than just a link and some text. Ads displayed in the top spots immediately above the organic search results can include a number of different content extensions. These include click to call, sitelink extensions, locations and products.

With more types of content being displayed by Google and larger listings for some of it, the number of organic site listings visible in the first pageview has decreased. As more information is added to Google’s search results page, competition to be seen in the first pageview is increasingly limited to the top few results for most users.

Getting visibility in search with just a plain website is becoming harder. Getting visibility in the organic listings is no longer a matter of competing with other websites. Potentially, a site listed in number one for a query is in competition with paid AdWords listings, listings from Google Places, video results from YouTube and photos from Google's image search.

Search optimisation is becoming about more than just the site and it is no longer viable to work only on rankings. This trend towards a more portal-like search experience is not going to end anytime soon, and search strategies need to adapt. Content created for YouTube or Google Places, implementing the appropriate markup on the site, news search and social media sharing all matter. Traditional SEO still matters, and a lot of best practices for search also help meet user experience and information architecture goals, but it is no longer the only thing. Just as personalised search makes social media shares more important, Google's universal results page make diverse content matter.

As Google tries to 'provide the most relevant answers as quickly as possible' and Bing seeks to 'find and organise the answers you need,' getting the information your customers want on the results page is more complicated than simply links and H1 tags. Generating content both on your own site and through other channels is more important than ever to ensure visibility in Google.

You’ve got them to your website, now what?

by Marketing ON 8 December 2010

Strategically implemented search engine optimisation (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) are a vital part of any digital marketing strategy and can be extremely effective ways of increasing and driving high quality traffic to a website. But what’s the point in having a clever search strategy if your website isn’t equally as clever – yeah, they’ve found you, but now you need to keep them engaged to continue the lead generation process, or whatever function your website provides to assist in achieving your marketing objectives.

The experience a visitor has on your website is a critical part of the overall customer experience. If it’s the first interaction they have with your company, it will almost certainly determine the relationship they have with your brand and can mean the difference between acquiring and retaining customers and prospects – or deterring them from ever returning!

Here are six tips to assist you with creating an engaging website that maximises lead generation and creates a loyal customer base who will return time and time again:

1. Build a database of your existing and potential customers. This can be achieved through registering for an e-newsletter, a seminar you are holding, an industry news service you provide or downloading company whitepapers or articles.

2. Actively engage visitors on your site. A great way of keeping your visitors on your site for longer is by creating interactivity and encouraging dialogue. This can be achieved through forums, encouraging user comments on blog posts, a feedback mechanism, polls – about your company, industry or even a relevant social issue.

3. Keep it fresh and interesting. There is nothing worse than a static site that looks like a marketing brochure, a website needs to be constantly evolving and ready for customers. Use your website as a resource or information hub for visitors and customers. Things like regularly updated blogs are a good reason for a return – even if it’s not to make ‘purchase’ it can works as a brand engagement tool.

4. Prompt a call to action through your design. Encourage visitors to bookmark your site, to ‘join’ or ‘register’ or ‘buy now’ – make it visible, accessible and intuitive.

5. Offer higher levels of customer service than you would at a physical store. If relevant , provide a troubleshooting section and FAQs. Provide a mechanism where visitors can ask for help or enquire for more information but be sure there is someone at the other end to maintain this. People often go online because they want information fast – so give them what they want and you can almost guarantee repeat business.

6. Don’t let design out way functionality and usability. Make sure your site features consistent and intuitive navigation, there is no point having a flashy design if the visitor can’t find where anything is – keep it simple and obvious.

How hosting can affect your SEO strategy

by Marketing ON 25 November 2010

We’ve all heard about the benefits of a strong SEO strategy for businesses, such as increasing traffic to your website and appearing higher in search engine rankings, but have you ever thought about how much it matters where your website is actually hosted. With the NBN soon to be a reality for Australia, maximising your business presence online will become even more critical as more and more competitors, spanning B2B and B2C markets, enter the online market-place.

Having your site in the right environment can make all the difference between a prominent placement in the search rankings and falling behind your competition.

So what are the options and how do you go about choosing one over the other? There are two options to consider, a dedicated hosting environment and a shared web-hosting environment. A dedicated hosting environment is a type of internet hosting by which you are given an entire server for use whereas a shared web-host is where many websites reside on one web server that you share, more often than not with other organisations. Whilst the shared-option generally costs less, there are a number of items you should consider before taking that route.

The key difference with it comes to delivering real SEO benefits centres around the fact that a dedicated server ensures your site has a dedicated Internet Protocol (IP) – An IP is a code assigned to the location where your website is hosted. Whereas with a shared-hosting environment, any number of sites could share the same IP address, which can give rise to a number of issues. Included below are some key points explaining why you should think about where you website is hosted when defining your SEO strategy:

Security

In a shared hosting environment, data persistently resides on the hard disk even after files have been deleted, meaning there is no guarantee your business’ data is safe. Anyone serious about security and in need of encryption, such as banks and ecommerce websites or anyone with sensitive customer data, requires a dedicated IP to enable secure browsing over the internet via HTTPS (a combination internet protocols to provide encrypted communication and secure identification of a network web server.)

Avoid being penalised for illegal activities on other sites

A dedicated hosting environment also eliminates the possibility of becoming susceptible to being blacklisted or penalised in search engines such as Google and Bing. In a shared hosting environment, any number of other users sharing the same IP could be conducting illegal activities, such as sending spam. This in turn reflects badly on all sites hosted on the same IP, regardless of whether you are responsible or not, and can impact on their operation.

Improve SEO: supported back-links

A website’s ranking on search engines, such as Google, can be dramatically improved with dedicated hosting because you have control over what websites are hosted on your server. In a shared hosting environment, search engines devalue back-links between sites hosted on the same IP, which means if you have 50 links to your site all originating from the same server, Google will significantly discount the impact of those links when ranking the importance of value of your page.

Improve SEO: speed

Also contributing to search engine rankings is the speed at which a website loads. Shared hosting environments usually have imposed bandwidth restrictions, which during high activity periods can impact on server speeds – irrespective of how busy your own site is. In a dedicated hosting environment, the responsiveness of the server is generally significantly greater.

Improve SEO: web crawlers & reduced site complexity

Google recently identified the issue of the limited ability for its ‘spiders’ to crawl websites on shared hosting environments. Spiders, or web crawlers, browse the internet in a methodical, automated and orderly fashion seeking new pieces of information to document for the search engine. The process is important as it’s a way of obtaining up-to-date information, and therefore contributes to search engine rankings. How hard or effective a spider crawls a website can be affected by the site’s complexity. Generally this wouldn’t be a problem, however it has been suggested that sites hosted on shared servers can be perceived as too complex and therefore limit the depth at which spiders crawl. This creates a limit on how many pages will be fetched or tracked from the server. With a dedicated server, only a small number of sites will run on it, and therefore this problem will never be experienced.

In addition, Google’s ‘spiders’ only allocate a set amount of time to search an IP address for new data, if many websites share the same IP address – as seen with a shared hosting environment – then each website is only allocated a small fraction of that ‘spider’s search time.

If your site is hosted in a shared environment offshore the speed at which your website loads can be negatively affected. This is because of the poor latency due to the actual physical distance from the data centre where the site is hosted. This can also negatively impact Google’s ‘spiders’ which as stated above only assign a set amount of time to each IP address to scan for information.

Greater up time

A shared host is more prone to experiencing down time due to the fact there are often hundreds, if not thousands, of websites on the same server all running different scripting or programming languages. A poorly written script can easily cause performance degradation within the server, or even an outage, affecting all sites hosted on that same server, meaning the risk of your site being affected negatively is much higher.

Application flexibility

A dedicated server can be customised to your specific requirements, which offers increased flexibility. In many instances applications have specific requirements to run properly, having a dedicated server provides the added advantage of being able to specify what applications you want to have running on your server, whilst a shared web-host will only offer a preconfigured server.

On face-value a shared web-hosting can be seen as the most cost-effective hosting option, in the long-term a dedicated hosting environment provides many benefits to improve the likelihood of your company being found online. With the NBN soon to become a reality, catapulting many Australian businesses online, you don’t want to risk being the one business left in the dark.