Online Marketing Training – resources from recent presentations
Right then – this post is primarily for those who attended my recent online marketing workshops which took place in Derry through September – but there’s plenty here for anyone interested in understanding more about how websites work – especially in relation to search engines and social media.
So, I’ve broadly categorise the resources as follows:
My Presentation
- My presentation as a PDF
- My presentation as a power point document – which contains my notes for each slide where applicable.
Setting Goals / Objectives for your website
- an extremely good book I read which covers this subject is Paul Boag’s Website Owners Manual I recommend it without reservation
- Paul has also written good articles about the business of owning a website – check out his blog and in particular when he writes about marketing and web strategy
Working with Search Engines
During the course, the area we spent most time on was working with the search engines – and search engine optimisation. Probably the best single resource for this area is Google’s own guide – you can read their web page here and at the top of that document there is a link to their PDF guide which I recommend everyone reading. Download it here.
- I also used this book for some background research into the topic – Search Engine Optimisation, an Hour a Day. It’s a good book and a good methodology – but it’s hardly essential reading for most of you.
- A great resource from a company I mentioned in a couple of the presentations – SEO Moz. They have a free guide – written from a more commercial perspective than Google’s guide, and you can download it here from a link on the right hand side of the page
Getting started with Social Media
A couple of presentations I used to get statistics / information from:
- a good intro ‘What is Social Media‘ which contains some basics and some good stats
- here’s a really good book that I again recommend without hesitation – but really only if you’re determined to get stuck in to facebook: ‘Successful Facebook Marketing‘ – which is also available as an eBook here: NetTuts Marketplace
That’s about it. I should point out that where I’ve linked to books, I’ve used affiliate links – i.e. if anyone finds this blog post and purchases a book from one of the links above, I’ll make literally Some Pence from the sale. That said, all the books mentioned above I own and recommend – and all were used to varying degrees when preparing the seminars I gave in September.
Great. If you’ve got any questions, just holler.
The wearisome inevitability of the Google +1 button
So, I let out a deep sigh when I read this this morning from Wired Magazine:
Google is making plans to turn its +1 button into a crowdsourcing tool that helps it re-order search results and fight web spam.
+1 always faced a fight to elbow it’s way into a social sphere totally dominated by facebook, but if it becomes a factor in search engine ranking well, it kind of forces it’s way onto websites. If you’re generating content, and you don’t display a google plus one button on your site then, potentially, you stand to lose search engine positioning.
Facebook shares it’s data stream with Bing – microsofts search engine. Facebook is never going to share it’s data with google … so, google have to react – and this is their reaction.
Expect to see a lot more plus one buttons cropping up everywhere. This blog will be no exception. But I wearily resent the encroachment of these sharing tools as they become a means by which search engines can rank one source of content over another. Of course – as the article points out – google already have over 200 ways of ranking content, but this feels a bit more intrusive.
Maybe it’s just me.
Online marketing training in Derry
Right, so I’m signed up to give 4 seminars in Derry in September … each Friday of the month. So, here’s a little plug for it. If you’re in the Derry City area and want to learn some of what’s involved in successfully marketing your business online, get in touch with Louise Breslin at Derry City Council on 028 7136 5151. I put together a broad training plan for it which you can check out below, and I’ve attached their flier for good measure. Hopefully see you there!
1) Understanding the goal of your website
More on google caffeine
More on google caffeine – this time from as close to the horses mouth as we’re allowed to get: Matt Cutts
Google caffeine – what it means for SEO
Okay – so, here’s the new news: Google Search is getting an upgrade …
Fair enough, the current google search is 10 years old, or thereabouts … so, time for some new thinking.
Whilst the new version (code named Caffeine) is still in beta it’s difficult to make recommendations for changing your search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy – but the consensus seems to be that whilst semantic coding will still be very important, less emphasis will be placed on ‘title’ tags, heading tags and the like, and more will be placed on keyword strings in the text, links in to social media sites, diverse content – video etc. … and so on.
Nothing concrete so far, but when I talk about ‘the consensus’ I guess I mean the following links:
So, what does it mean … well, in a sense, nothing’s changed … if you’re using ‘white hat’ SEO techniques then you shouldn’t see much difference, so long as you’re keeping up to date with other aspects of the web (social media – for want of a better term). Hopefully though, the link farms and other link spammers who currently benefit under the existing system, will be thwarted. Here’s hoping.
You can try Google Caffeine here
Basic Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) tips
There are a ton of good SEO beginners articles out there … this one is good because it focuses on the basics of how to best use your keywords … most of it is pretty good common sense, although I hadn’t thought about optimising for synonyms before.
Best practice search engine optimisation
Google has helpfully just published a search engine optimisation primer called ‘Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide‘ (PDF – 550Kb) … it’ll become required reading for all clients!