Octopus Labs Blog – Marketing “You” Online

In order for a website or ad campaign to be interesting enough for visitors to stickaround, or clever enough to be viral, it must be compelling enough to prompt viewers to stay, absorb, and pass it onto friends and colleagues. This does not mean that the media presented has to be salacious or somehow socially inappropriate.
Purposeful viral video websites and campaigns present meaningful theme-based messages within the context of an entertaining experience that is worth repeating and distributing. In other words, it must have both substance and style.
With illustrative case studies, the white paper goes on describe the 7 Elements of a Viral Video Campaign, namely:

• Engage: Grab Attention
• Enlighten: Provide Substance
• Stylize: Create An Experience
• Focus: Be Consistent
• Entertain: Be Memorable
• Resonate: Hit A Nerve
• Excite: Compel Action

Download the complete white paper from BrandChannel here.

There are two aspects to SEO – the on-site part, and what I call, the off-site part. Neither would work without the other.
In the end however, what you are actually doing for Search Engine Optimisation, is optimising the website so that it is more search engine friendly, which forms the basis of this book: Website Optimisation – Speed, Search Engine & Conversion Rate Secrets.
A guide to the tips, techniques, secrets, standards, and methods of website optimization, the book covers:

• Search engine optimization
• Pay-per-click optimization
• Optimizing conversion rates
• Web performance tuning
• Advanced tuning
• Web metrics

With case studies, and sections from people who are experts in their field, the book seems to have got the thumbs up, even at Amazon.
Know more about it at O’Reilly. 

A fully optimized Web site can take hundreds of thousands of hours to achieve. A site often has to be rebuilt to make it search engine friendly, and painstaking hours need to be invested in identifying key link-building opportunities and partners.
Similarly, a paid search campaign typically takes daily or weekly testing and tweaking to become ideal. A campaign will continually be in flux until the optimal balance of keywords and ad messaging is achieved, particularly if a conversion metric is being measured.

Julie Batten at ClickZ makes a good case for not scringing on these tools. Both of these are specialized services, which take painstaking research, as well as time and effort to get result – but when done properly, can be of immense help.
To know how we can help you with the Search Optimisation of your website, drop us a line in the contact form below.

Adobe has announced that it would begin providing optimized Flash technology to leading search engines that will make rich Internet applications (RIA) and dynamic content created using Flash more easily identifiable.
The optimized Flash technology will now allow search engines to identify text within Flash programs that would otherwise have escaped them without requiring any change in behavior on the developers’ part. The result should be millions of newly searchable RIAs and dynamic experiences, including brand experiences on the Web.

As archaic as it may sound, as long as search engines continue to place priority on “off-site” factors like inbound links over “onsite” factors like keyword placement, there will always remain a place in SEO for strategic link building.
What this means, is a need to ensure that your company has covered off on the basics before advancing to the more emerging and innovative ways to garner links.
There are two broad strategies that you could adopt:

• Actively seeking incoming links – search for potential linking partners, approach them and ask for a link (and often you provide one in return).
• Indirectly encouraging incoming links – create good content, and distribute it on the Web to encourage other sites to link to you of their own volition.

(more…)

Keywords are the building blocks of SEO. Although the days of the keyword meta tag being the golden ticket to top rankings are undoubtedly over, keywords themselves are still one of the most important aspects of good SEO. Just their application has changed. It’s not about stuffing a hundred keywords into meta tags or your copy to get rankings. It’s about uncovering the keywords that make the most sense for your business and using them in a way that drives targeted, qualified traffic to your site.
A bunch of links point to your site from reputable, authoritative, and relevant sites. But without the right anchor text, how much are those links really worth? Do you ensure your site is designed and developed in a way that’s intrinsically search-engine-friendly? If your pages don’t contain the keywords you want to optimize for, how will spiders know to return them for those queries?
You get the point: keywords are important. Let’s talk about finding the right ones. Read on …