SEO Jargon

Some Of The More Colorful Terms From SEO Jargon

SEO

In perusing SEO literature (by gumbo, there’s a lot of you pecking away out there!), we like to stop and ponder a meme, phrase, or bit of jargon we encounter within the context of the SEO world. Search Engine Optimization has actually started to gain a culture now, and this is going to be the part where everybody looks back on “the golden age” fondly in 20 years.

  • astroturfing – Pretending to be a regular member of the audience while secretly being paid to push an agenda for a commercial or political group. Astroturf (TM) is fake, plastic grass, and regular people supporting a group is a “grassroots” movement.
  • bread crumbs – The little trail of links in a horizontal navigation setup, so uses can find their way back to the home page.
  • cloaking – Showing one version of content to search engines, and a different version to visitors. Instant black death when Google finds out!
  • Google bowling – An attempt to lower a website’s ranking by linking to it from dirty sites. May be an SEO urban legend.

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Online Order Processing

Make it Easy to Buy From your Website

Online Marketing

To make it easy for the customers, there needs to be an online order processing system. It mostly involves a shopping cart to select and store orders.

Slinky Digital Agency advise that you will need a payment option like PayPal. This involves getting a PayPal ‘business account‘ – which is quick and easy. PayPal will need to verify you as a legitimate person by several levels of checks ie: bank account, credit card etc

If you choose to accept credit cards via your own processing account, you will need a bank internet merchant account – which can be a tiresome process and more expensive to set up and operate. If you are a serious business – it is the only option in my opinion.

For this option you will need to sign up with a secure gateway provider, which sits in between your website and the bank website. Providers such as Securepay or Camtech in Australia are a good option. Others are Verisign (owned by PayPal) – but they are a more expensive option.

There has to be enough security to allow payments online. The credibility of the merchant is a very important factor to be checked. Your order form should be secured which may be done using SSL encryption technologies. Additionally, you may also offer a money back guarantee to people to build up confidence.

Remember that it is also useful to display a price list of your products. It makes it easier for the visitor to make a decision to buy from your site.

Unless you provide a simple system for the potential customers to buy from you, you cannot keep him happy. It is important to make a system that would not frustrate your potential customer.

 

Penguin Update

Will Google’s Reign Of Terror Over SEOs Ever End?

SEO

Once upon a time, Google and SEO were at a relative truce. Then Google began swatting at black-hat SEO tactics. Then gray-hat SEO tactics. And now, it just hauls off and clobbers everybody, damn your hat color. The latest news on the Penguin update is just par for the course. It’s just getting to where if you’ve ever made page one ever in your life, Google now hates you.

We’re wondering how long it will be until paranoid conspiracy theories develop in the SEO rank and file. Well, of course, that’s “more than the usual conspiracy theories”. Yet we don’t see demand for the old-school black-hat SEO diminishing in the slightest – the more Google punishes some behaviours, the more people stubbornly cling to them. It’s like a battle of wills between a domineering mother and a rebellious teenager.

Social Media Marketing

Grim, Tough Questions About Whether Your Social Media Marketing Campaign Works

Social Media

We have to admit, we flinched a little when we read, 10 Questions for Social Media Measurement Success. We know that a lot of ecommerce marketing right now is more enthusiasm than follow-through. Most web marketers still think in terms of ‘just push that message out to the public and they’ll click the link – something good is bound to happen, right?’

Well, actually, no. Even big companies are discovering that social media saturation only takes you so far. For instance, in 2010, Proctor & Gamble knocked themselves out on the biggest viral marketing campaign ever with actor Isaiah Mustafa making videos in a bathroom set and posting them on YouTube. The web audience laughed, sighed, applauded… and didn’t buy a single bottle of Old Spice. Thanks for the free entertainment, P&G!

Another example is more recent, clothing retailer GAP’s logo stunt… they changed their official logo to some bland plain text, and released the announcement to the media. Then retracted it in about 48 hours. Good thing, they generated some murmurs in the web for a weekend, they didn’t have to spend a lot of money, and it was out of our faces before we knew it. But most people’s reaction was “Who cares?” Well, that’s not what you want your customer to say about your products.