Following my post earlier this week re thinking about Web 2.0 in terms of your customers as opposed to your competitors an interesting follow up note relates to identifying your target market and therefore the Web 2.0 technologies that might appeal. Perhaps these 5 steps might be applicable:

1. Identify the nationalities and age of your ideal customers;
2. Answer “what are the key fears customers have about using your products”;
3. Decide on the key message to your ideal customer - alleviate their fears and appeal to their senses;
4. Decide on the image or perception to attract the ideal customer; and
5. Review peer websites in your ideal market and their style

In the last month I have been involved in a number of website review processes and found that I have started applying a pretty regular (if not cliche) list of headings that might best be described as The Theory Behind a Website. The list in it’s basic form is:

• Website vision
• Objectives
• Unique selling propositions
• Competitor analysis - space definition - strategy canvas
• Measurable objectives and calculated return on investment
• Website usability and navigation
• Design
• Layout of homepage
• Establishing trust and credibility - authenticity and authority
• Site map
• Internal page structure
• Website promotion and traffic generation
• Booking process

Hope this helps - it is an interesting place to start by simply listing all the headings and then making a short discussion about each one. It soon leads to many branches worth exploring in evaluating your current site and how any future strategies and developments might be tackled.

Following my rant last week regarding the amount of work involved in SEO and companies that charge just $99 per month I have been inundated with queries regarding just what is Optimisation (as opposed to Internet Marketing as expressed in my post). See my post here. So, I thought it prudent to give brief summary of some of the elements I consider to fall into the on-site optimisation category.

1. Keywords and content

I have discussed before (see relevant posts here) some of the methods of researching keywords and the importance of selecting the right keywords for your website. The goal is to generate more and better quality traffic to your website. The rule is to focus on 5 to 8 keyword phrases. Your chosen keywords should be contained within the main content generously. The ideal situation is to have your main keywords at the beginning of the page and toward the end of the page. Keywords can also be made bold to emphasise them as long as this is done liberally. The most important rule however about keywords relative to the content is that the content must make sense to the reader (see my earlier posts on The Art of Writing Web Content).

2. Image Optimisation

Images should be labelled with your keywords and the alt text used to clearly identify the image using where possible your keywords. Alt text enables web readers with disabilities to have the image described to them. Search engines can’t view images either and so use the alt text to build up their database of information regarding your site. Using keywords in your alt text helps search engines build up a “picture” of your website.

3. Meta data

The use of meta data in the web page head is believed to influence search engine rankings less and less. However, there is some minimum data that should be supplied; including the author of the website, the date the website was created, the type of content (whether it is general or adult), and a description of the website. One of the biggest mistakes in meta data is to stuff lots and lots of keywords into both the keyword meta tag and the description meta tag. At the most the description and keywords should be about 250 characters long each. The text in the description meta tag may also appear in the search results so consider these carefully.

4. Title and heading tags

Earlier this month I posted a piece on the importance of links in which I discussed how a search engine page rank algorithm mimics the concept of referencing other published articles in a scientific journal or similar. As an extension of this concept search engines place weight to the structure of the document. The title of the web page therefore being considered the most important - that which draws the reader in and is most often referenced. Subsequent headings are given weight at a diminishing rate. Using your keywords in your titles tells the search engines that your keywords are important to the overall theme of your website.

5. Other optimisation techniques

There are other factors which are perhaps the most important. These mainly centre on the physical code of your website. Ensure, firstly, that search engines can index your website thoroughly. Search engines can not navigate flash (and many can not even read the content) or other fancy dynamic menus, therefore, ensure that all pages within your website can be reached through simple text based links. Text based links describe the purpose of the link better to search engines than image links (and once again you should use your keywords here). Moreover, search engines will deprecate the value of your website if they find dead links - that is, links that don’t go anywhere. Likewise, search engines do not like dynamic URL’s nor URL structures that are heavily deep in folder structures. The reason is that search engine programmers fear the search engine spider may become trapped within the website URL structure linking round and round within the site. Websites containing deep folder navigations and long dynamic URL’s (those usually containing the question mark) are often abandoned by search engines before the whole site has been indexed.

Finally, this is probably one of the least talked about elements and one of the most interesting for us at Xebidy. There are a few rules that should be applied to the development of all websites to make the search engine ready. One of the most important ones is the code to content ratio. In my opinion sites should be developed in CSS as much as possible thereby removing any formatting code from the actual web page and storing it in a separate file. Likewise any Javascript code for menus etc should be stored in a separate file. Code order can also be used to advantage. As I said before the higher that keywords appear in your content the greater weight they are given by search engines. If you main content appears higher up the coded page the more important it will be viewed by search engines. In this way if menus etc. exist in the left hand columns techniques such as relative and absolute positioning and floating the divs left and right can be used to not render the website correctly on screen without necessarily coding in strict chronological order.

These are just some of the main techniques we would use in getting your website ready for a search engine to visit and therefore index. However, as I clearly stated in last week’s rant these are only the start of any effort to increase search engine rankings and are certainly not sufficient to guarantee high rankings - nor maintain them!

An interesting task came across my desk today; “We want to know what are competition are doing that is Web 2.0″. Unfortunately, this is completely the wrong attitude to take.

I am assuming that by Web 2.0, the person asking the question means what are my competitors doing with many of the social technologies of the new collaborative Internet (see my article on What is Web 2.0 for more explanation) - which is still the wrong question! Businesses should not view mediums such as Blogs, RSS feeds, wikis, podcasts and so on, not as technologies that will necessarily accelerate the sales process but rather as the tools that will improve communications and increasing engagement with your customers.

The question therefore, should relate to the customer; “I target the luxury market (or backpackers etc.) - what do they expect from our businesses website in terms of Web 2.0?” Different customers are demanding different information and methods of receiving it - the younger market is more in tune with blogs and forums, other markets are well versed in RSS feeds (it is now standard practice with newspaper feeds and the like), and female travellers are more likely to use social networks such Facebook and MySpace. Obviously, there is enormous market and technology crossover, but most importantly, the focus should not be on the competitor but on the customer themselves and on how your business communicates with them to create the best possible relationship.

It is kind of the unofficial launch day of our new logo and overall look. Thanks to our visiting illustrator Chris Cooper we have finally got a look and feel and feel that we hope will stay with us for many years to come. The original Xebidy logo and website was designed by me in Portugal and was really a stop gap representing where we were at that time. With 7 crew on board and lots and lots of projects well underway it was high time that we also stepped our own image up a grade.

I say it is the unofficial launch as although the illustrations are all finished we still have some way to go to complete the redesign and development of our website. We did however, get new business cards today - so it is impossible to keep things under wraps - and therefore the unofficial launch. Expect to see the logo replacing old ones in emails, letterheads, project documents etc over the next few days.

But, if you are expecting a nice corporate image - think again! Chris has a pretty unique style and he has created something that is, well, pretty out there to say the least. As I guess you can tell from this post - I am proud as punch.

User-generated content is certainly a revolution and those that are harnessing its’ power are winning the web game to attract customers. But are they?

I am involved in a very interesting project with Base Backpackers that has somewhat run aground. I first proposed the use of inbound RSS feeds from blogs etc as a means of building up independent content about the 11 hostels across Australia and New Zealand, however, following a strategy session in Sydney it was decided to take a gigantic leap of faith in the product and take comments about the hostels directly from Hostelworld.com (the largest online booking website for hostels and backpackers with many many user reviews). Of course, I was right into the idea - an awesome real Web 2.0 initiative. The decision in the strategy sessions were that Base Backpackers was focusing on delivering a superior product and therefore this was very much firstly about facilitating the flow of information between customers to spread the word that Base Backpackers hostels were good; and secondly about setting transparent checks and balances for hostel managers to strive to.

All sounded good those days in March when the plan was hatched. However, as we moved toward going live on Friday we struck a huge snag - comments are not as appealing as it was hoped. In the majority they are not that bad - but there are those that are simply not complimentary. Surprisingly, the one that has caused the most problems is kind of completely left-field, encouraging customer to stay there if they want sex (in a few other words) - not really a complaint against the hostel but certainly not something you want displayed on the front page of the website.

We have not really been involved in the design of the website only the execution and now it is crunch time in the project. The plan is to make the Hostelworld reviews appear on the site automatically, but at present we are simply taking them to text file and then manually putting them onto the site at regular intervals. The most recent comment is displayed as a leader on each hostel home page, which then links to the other comments. We also take the ratings of each hostel from Hostel World and display these on the website. Once we automate the process the ability to edit is completely removed.

So, now in going live the questions are overarching - do we intervene and only show positive comments on the home page as the leader to all the comments? Or, do we go a step further and delete all the negative unwarranted comments from the site completely?

The theory of Web 2.0 is that the masses generate a collective intelligence, that a bad review is outweighed by good reviews (that is, if the product is good) and that one off reviews such as the review posing problems for Base Backpackers are immediately seen through by the customers. All good and well, and you know that I am a huge promoter of this, but what if there is simply not enough comments to generate the critical mass of collective intelligence? Moreover, what about travellers on long travel time frames, such as Backpackers - also tight on a budget; are they not less likely to take the time to write in a good review? Things were fine, thank-you very much, stayed for a few days, moved on - can’t really be bother filling in the online survey, reviews and ratings form.

So there you go - a real world Web 2.0 conundrum!

Following my rant yesterday a number of emails have come in asking for better explanation of why links are so important and why Google et al. places so much weight on them. The explanation is in fact easy.

When Sir Tim Berners Lee designed the Internet it was meant as a method of sharing scientific documents for review and contribution. Each document was in effect a web page. The first Internet browsers then grew out of this as a means of publishing documents (known as web pages), but without the ability to contribute to this documents (see me article on What is Web 2.0 for an explanation of why). The Google algorithm amongst others is rooted in this premise of documents; when any article is published say in a scientific journal it is published for consideration by others experienced in the appropriate area. Other articles are subsequently published with references back to the original article. The more references in subsequent articles the more we consider the original article to be of importance - to be an authority on the particular subject.

Search engines apply this basic principal - the more links that a particular page has from other web pages the more important that page must be. Search engine algorithms obviously have to take into account an enormous amount of factors that we as humans either consciously or sub-consciously take in when we read an offline article and consider its’ references to other articles: is the other article relevant to the information we seek and should we read that article, being probably the most considered. Search engine algorithms therefore have to be able to consider the content of the web page that is making the link to original page and therefore give weight to the relevancy of that content and reference. This is the basis of the page rank notation.

It is no surprise that we are all trying to “beat” the search engines - achieve higher search results through creating a perception that our web pages are of more relevance than others on a particular topic - so it is also no surprise that the search engine algorithms are having to continually develop at such a fast pace to keep up with the ongoing manipulation battle. Take for example the process of reciprocal links - if links are the most important in a web pages ranking, then I will swap you a link from my page for one from yours. Not what Google had in mind- solution, deprecate reciprocal links. How about I buy a link then? Again not the idea - links are supposed to be based on your content quality - solution, Google now has the ability to report sites that are buying links in the webmaster toolbox.

There are some clear rules on how to get good quality links. Firstly, create good quality content that other sites want to link to. Secondly, seek links which have your keyword phrases in the anchor text, that is, links that explain with relevancy the nature of your content. Thirdly, get links that link exactly to the page that has the content that is relevant to the page that the incoming links are from. Finally, in the same way that a reference to your offline article from a well know professor on your subject is worth more than lots of references by his students, so too is one good link from a reputable site of relevance to your website subject than lots of links from completely irrelevant link farms.

It seems a regular occurrence the mis-understanding, or worse mis-representation, of companies involved in SEO of what is actually involved. In the past few weeks I have seen a number of proposals from so-called SEO experts to partner and client companies of Xebidy’s for Search Engine Optimisation programmes. Most of these seem to amount to little over $99 per month.

This is simply ridiculous! SEO involves the preparation of your website for indexing by search engines. In essence this invovles keyword research, competitor analysis and the reworking of onsite elements such as the code, image names, links, heading titles and meta-data. Sure you can probably do this for $99 per month, but is questionable whether it is being done well, and certainly very questionable if it is going to make that much of a difference to your search engine rankings. There might be a short term boast, but it is certainly not going to lead to exceptional, sustainable results. What’s more, it strikes me that companies that are charging so little are in fact doing their keyword research properly. Even using the exhaustive list of free (and not so free) tools available on the Internet it takes us days to narrow down the best list of “right” keywords for your business. Keywords to target vary by country, target customers and exactly the goals of your website (that is, what you are selling). Discovering the keywords that drive not just traffic but qualified buying customers to your business is not simply a stab in the dark once off task.

Then there are other SEO steps that are integral such as submitting your domain name to search engine and industry directories. Many companies will offer this through an automated service - this is bad!! Most search engine submission forms expressly say, don’t use an automated service. Automated services do not examine the rules carefully, they do not give due consideration to which category or sub-directory your website should be in. In fact, they amount to little more than spamming the search engines. Search engine and submission directory is laborious as one of our favourite clients Aventure Linguistique in Geneva found out recently. We researched a host of Swiss industry and search engine directories with Denis and he went about examining each one, researching the appropriate listings for each directory and submitting. About 60 submissions took about 3 days - certainly makes a charge $99 per month hard to get a meal ticket.

I have discussed before the distinction between Search Engine Optimistation and Internet Marketing, but they can not be considered mutually exclusive. Internet marketing can probably best be described as the going out and getting customers to your website. At the very heart of Internet marketing is getting quality links back to your website from other reputable and highly ranked websites on complementary topics. The easiest way to achieve this is to provide good quality content that others want to link to. But usually this alone is not enough and a good SEO and Internet marketing company should work with you to identify an extensive list of potential links and go out and actively pursue them. I have talked about this before, particularly in my articles, there is then a plethora of parallel marketing opportunities that will raise the numbr of high quality links and traffic to your website. Such tools might include setting up Squidoo Lenses, article syndication, press releases, setting up You Tube channels or videos on OE.TV etc, hosting company images on Flickr and Photobucket, getting involved in social networking sites (see some of my earlier posts on the success of Oz Experience on Facebook), and getting involved in forums and discussion sites. These are just some of the myriad of steps that a “real” SEO company would tackle to achieve top search engine rankings for you - and that is, search engine rankings that are sustainable over time, not just a flash in the pan short term rise.

Unfortunately, companies continue to get burned choosing the cheap option over the laborious expensive route; but those that do see the light are dominating the search engine rankings and increasing the chasm that others will struggle to cross. The ongoing investment being made by the knowledgeable ones is delivering search engine and financial rewards.

It has been 10 days since I have made a post, primarily because of the immense amount of work we have on at Xebidy at the moment. We are finally getting the Base Backpackers website to soft launch today (it was supposed to happen on Friday but the staging server we were using was attacked and we could not access anything - these things happen but it was extremely frustrating to trip at the last post). The new site will be seen at www.stayatbase.com and will merge the current www.basebackpackers.com and www.gobeyond.co.nz sites in time. We are also tackling the online marketing for Base Backpackers also. This is really exciting and we have had our in-house Internet Marketing guru , Johnathon Dixon, work on this and over the next 12 months he will share some of the experiences of the programme with you via this blog.

Base Backpackers is not the only project taking time; this week we have the new Adventure Tours, Wayward Bus, Backpacking Queensland and Breathe websites all being finalised into the Bootstrap content management server and some of the first new fangled functionality being tested. Over the next month or so the content in these sites will be being built up and they should be live in the next 6 weeks - watch this space. Wayward Bus and Adventure Tours should be the first as we are having Bruce Thurlow from ATA coming to work in the Xebidy office for the next 2 weeks to work on content.

The Wayward Bus website is really exciting as we have had some very unique illustrations done by English illustrator Chris Cooper. They look awesome and should really make the site stand out. Chris has also been working on a new Xebidy website and we are bursting to bring this out very soon. Here is a sneak preview of an initial concept drawing for Wayward Bus - we are really excited about having Chris on board with us for awhile.

In driving into the office this (Sunday) morning, I was listening to an interesting article on Radio New Zealand. It involved leading members of the media discussing the demise of newspaper and television news consumption. Part of this panel was also a guy from Scoop - New Zealand’s leading online news agency (I am sorry I joined the article late so did not hear names).

The thing that interested me was just how much these guys did not get it. The interviewer kept pushing a point that the public had lost interest in news and were therefore consuming less. There was a lot of discussion around how consumers are choosing to consume their media at different times (i.e. at work via the Internet) but absolutely no discussion about consumers are demand “pull” media, as opposed to “push”.

We have discussed this before in length in my articles explaining how consumers are choosing what they receive as news and when they receive. Instead on waiting to fed the news on TV at 6pm or in the morning paper, technologies such as RSS feeds and social book-marking websites allow consumers to choose the news articles they are interesting in (or in the case of social bookmark sites such as Digg.com and Del.icio.us what the general masses consider to be relevant) and to choose when and how they consume them. For example, I have a number of different RSS feeds for my news (everything from CNN, Sky, BBC, New York Times, and NZ Herald) and I will regularly read about the same incident from two or three of these feeds getting a different slant on the news and making my own, what I perceive to be, “real truth” conclusions.

In fact, I think this is the point that these guys were missing in this radio article: the consumers appetite for news has increased exponentially, along with consumers distrust on the impartiality of mainstream news reports. The ease of these “web 2.0″ technologies has mean’t that consumers can create their own news, receiving information on topics they are interested in, and filtering out the political or other spin on the news. In my recent article on “What is Web 2.0?” I gave two examples of a more pertinent form of journalism, known as “citizen journalism”. In the UK The Sun newspaper now provides a single mobile phone number for the public to submit copy and photos, and in South Korea the OhmyNews service has over 50 journalists editing content regularly received from 40,000 citizen journalists. A fundamental
shift in people’s perception of who has the authority to ‘say’ and ‘know’ underpins the Web 2.0 ethos.

One of the points made is the growth in consumption in these off line medias (newspapers and TV) of faux journalism - by this they mean lifestyle information etc in your Sunday papers. One commentator suggested this was because consumers were sick of the news. Quite the opposite, in our daily routine we are happy to consume much more news, rather it is because reading the lifestyle section of your Sunday paper is a form of escapism from the rigours of the week of business and work. Unfortunately, by the time Saturday or Sunday, or for that matter 6pm on a weekday when TV news is on, there is no news current enough for our appetite. There is no news that we have not already digested through our computers throughout the day. An interesting term is media snacking; taking snippets of information from a multitude of media in order to consume more information earlier and faster. these snippets might be coming from our RSS feed readers, online news sites, traditional news media, and increasingly media sharing sites such as You Tube and Flickr.

So, are newspapers and TV newspapers dead? In their current format I think so. In was interesting that the section of the article that I listened to the guys from Scoop did not speak too much rather just confirming many of the statements, such as a noticeable increase in traffic at 10am and 6:30pm. It is clear that those media outlets that recognise the insatiable appetite for fast unfiltered news will be the winner.