Yes. If you can afford it!

Here’s why:

• Prospects are much more likely to enquire/buy from a local site.  I.e. Americans are much more likely to enquire/buy from a .com site rather than a .au site
• Google will rank your site higher in America if it is on a .com TLD (Top Level Domain), likewise a .au site will rank higher in Australia, etc
• The IP address of your site (while minor) does go someway to affecting your Google search results – so ideally the site would also be hosted in that country
• Content is king – and should be localised to the country you’re targeting.   Content is such a critical aspect of your SEO, and needs to be considered for each country individually
• Credibility – if you can get your hands on a US phone number and address to plaster all over your .com website – all the better – even if diverting to a messaging service
• In-bound links – another critical aspect of SEO is in-bound links.  If your local site gets links from other local sites, you’re also creating much Google love

Some things to consider:

• It can be expensive to build several websites, so try to ensure they’re very similar, and also use a CMS platform that supports multiple sites (I.e. Drupal for websites, Magento for eCommerce) to minimise development and maintenance costs
• Each of these sites requires their own SEO strategy, link building efforts, etc – which can be expensive.  Look to get discounts from your provider for bulk link building
• If you can’t afford all of this, then consider using sub domains or sub directories for country specific “satellite sites” that are optimised for those countries, then send the traffic back to your main site
• There are compromises you can consider – talk to your agency for some advice

I wrote this article a few years ago, but it still applies. Anything other than sensible link exchange where you are thinking of the user experience, and NOT your site’s optimisation – doesn’t make sense. Anyway, here it is again to explain why:

Introduction – the link phenomenon

One of the important factors in ranking well on search engines such as Google is ensuring that you have a number of links pointing from other websites to your website. Website links can be a confusing thing, there are many terms used to describe them including one way links, reciprocal links, backlinks, inbound links but to explain what I’m talking about here – lets say you own ACME Shoe Sales, and you are on another website say www.great-aussie-footwear.com and you see a link that says “Visit ACME Shoe Sales” and you click on it – and it takes you to the ACME Shoe Sales, then this helps the ranking of ACME Shoe Sales.

This type of link is called an “inbound link” to ACME, or confusingly, is sometimes referred to as a Backlink for the ACME website. These backlinks or inbound links tell Google that someone else thinks that your website is worth linking to. If lots of people think your website is important enough to create a link to, then this tells the search engines that your website must be important. Fundamentally this is because when someone writes an article about your website or product, they often link to it. Google know about this phenominon (links which attribute you credit, or give you recognition for something), and so recognise it as a thing of value.

So how do you get these links to your website?

Well, there are many ways to do this including posting messages to forums with links to your website, listing your business in online directory websites, getting business partners to link to you, paying people for links (a risky practice these days), general off-line PR activities, and “Reciprocal Links” where you agree to link to someone if they link to you. This Reciprocal linking is also called “Link Exchange”. Many people still exchange links with others hoping that they will rocket to the top of the search results because “their cousin who’s an IT guy told them that was how to get ranked on Google”.

Reciprocal links – will they help?

The answer is yes and no. A few years ago, reciprocal linking alone would get you ranked well on the search engines. The problem was that everyone figured this out and so many professional SEO companies abused the practice and setup massive reciprocal linking programmes – have you ever got one of those spammy emails from people asking you to link to them if they link to you? The practice is still alive and well. Given the disproportionate number of links that various websites ended up obtaining by the practice, the search engine companies caught on that most of this was an artificial practice, and they started to discount the value of links pointing to websites where that website linked back to the linking partner.

So they wont help?

The answer is yes, and no. There are two benefits you get from a link from someone else’s website that points to your website.

a) Referral benefit
b) Ranking benefit

Referral Benefit

By this we’re talking about the fact that if someone is on the other website, and they come across your link and they click on it – well they arrive at your website. If the place they found your link was on a site that is somehow related to your business (if you sell shoes, they may have been on an othopaedics website, or an price comparison website showing differnt footwear available for purchase in your country) then they may well be interested in shoes and so this could be a valuable website visitor. If they found your link on an online gambling website and clicked on it by mistake – well clearly there is limited benefit you receive from their visit.So typically speaking, referral benefit is strong when the link comes from a related website that is not competetive in your field (if you sell pillows, think bedding websites, if you sell tyres, think car websites etc)

Ranking Benefit

Ranking benefit is what we discussed earlier where the search engines will recognise this link as a vote of your websites importance and give you weighting / ranking for this.

So back to Reciprocal Links – will they help?

The answer is yes and no….but this time, we’ll try to really answer the question I promise! If a website owner approaches you who has a website that is related to your industry but not competetive to your business, and you think that people on their website may be the right sort of target audience who you’d like to have come to your website, then by all means exchange links with them.

Forget about the search engine ranking issues – if this business attracts people who are the sort of people who would buy or deal with your organisation (ie same area, same interests, same product category) then having a link from their site to yours has enough inherent value to exchange links. Same applies to whether a link should go on your website. Are your visitors going to find it interesting? Will it add value to their experience of your website? If so – go for it.

If a website from an overseas website approaches you but you don’t sell to overseas customers, or if a website from an unrelated industry approaches you, then don’t exchange links in the hope they will deliver strong rankings. On the issue of ranking, there is still much debate in the SEO industry about whether any rank is achieved from exchanging links. My personal view based on our SEO experience is that a small number of link exchanges with high quality “authorititive” websites in your industry will help to some extent. Be careful though, as linking out to a range of useless link partners who have sites filled with thousands of spammy links could actually hurt your rankings. If the person asking you to exchange links fits this category don’t do it.

This article, was written by Phil Baddock, Salsa Internet’s Search Marketing Director. If any of this didn’t make sense, or if you need help with building high quality links to your website, Phil can be contacted on phil@salsainternet.com.au , or read the Free Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) eBook.

A lot of our customers use POS systems to manage inventory, front of store transactions, etc.  The providers of this software are great at creating Point of Sale solutions – that’s what they do.   Some of these providers offer eCommerce software platforms (which integrate with their POS solution.  This is fine for customers with a need for a very simple eCommerce website.  For large companies wanting a professional approach to eCommerce, unfortunately these providers will sometimes be a bit opportunistic and over state the capabilities of these POS eCommerce solutions.   In short, it’s often the case that these eCommerce “add-on”s to a POS solution, are unsuitable for a professional eCommerce sites.

Apart from the fact that these eCommerce solutions are proprietary (see my post about the problems with this), they pose the following advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages of an eCommerce solution offered by a POS provider

• They integrate seamlessly with the POS system – they’re created by the same vendor, so obviously work very well together.
• They’re typically much cheaper to setup.  The solutions are usually rather simple, and quick to setup, with a few configuration files, and few  template files to be edited to suit.

Disadvantages of an eCommerce solution offered by a POS provider

• They’re typically not SEO friendly (they may have some basic SEO capabilities) and they’re not built with SEO in mind.  They’re built with integration in mind, and the software vendors expertise is in POS systems, not eCommerce, so SEO is overlooked or given limited focus.
• Closed platform (proprietary).  As mentioned already, this makes it hard to customise, and almost impossible to partner with an expert eCommerce agency, as they’ll know almost nothing about the vendor’s system, and are unable to modify it to maximise your ROI.
• License costs – as with most proprietary software, there will be license costs.
• Product evolution – since the software has been written by a POS company – whose expertise and main focus is selling more POS systems, the product evolution will be slow in comparison to a dedicated eCommerce platform provider.
• Addons & customisations – if you need a new component built, or changes to the standard product, you need to pay the provider to do it – which is likely to take a while since they’re busy writing and selling POS solutions and may have many large customers – are you big enough to be a priority in their product development stream?

All of this is important to consider, however the overwhelming issue we see with most POS based proprietary eCommerce solutions is that they are an afterthought of the POS software;  they’re created to fill a perceived hole in the market, and while you may end up with a “suitable” software solution, you can often miss out on a “business changing”, well thought out, professionally executed, eCommerce solution that opens up a new channel to market for your business – which is what a good eCommerce solutoin is all about.

There are a bunch of new technologies popping up (is it just me, or do they sound like ice-cream flavours? Just me? OK).

My head is spinning trying to keep up with all the latest and greatest.  I’m enjoying it; loving learning new things.  I’ve included a few items in this post, with my understanding of what they do, and some opinions on how useful they are/not, or might become…

Quora.com. Their home page describes it nicely – “A continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it.”.  Basically someone posts a question, and people answer it.  Others then comment on, or vote for the answer.  The goal is that it will eventually create a useful body of content for people to use to find answers to common questions.  I guess it’s kind of like Google, except utilises the “crowd sourcing” concept to gather comments and votes to determine what is ranked higher, compared to Google which uses in-bound links & content to determine which results are given priority.

RockMelt.com. ANOTHER web browser!  If it is as good as it claims, I think it will be awesome (except for their terrible logo). I already run 3 browsers – Firefox for business, Chrome for personal, Safari to run my Google calendar. I’d likely drop Safari and use Chrome for Google Calendar, and perhaps rockmelt for personal if its good enough.  I’m waiting for my early access invite to arrive, but from watching the video on their site.  It appears to do something I’ve been whining about for ages – bringing all your social experiences together.  LOVE that idea. Can’t wait to try it.

blekko.com. (still in beta).  A new search engine. Are they bloody crazy?  Actually, it’s pretty cool.  Will it last? Who knows, it’s pretty out there!  The CEO seems like a nice guy (watch his demo video), so I hope they do.  Pretty tough competition – they’re striving to become “the 3rd biggest search engine” (to Google & YouTube I guess).  The short of it: each site in the search index is tagged with keywords. When you do a search, you can use a slash ‘/’ to refine or order your results based on those tags.  For example, search for “web developer”, then add /design to find those that also have a design team.  You can use /date to sort chronologically.  Blekko also has some pretty cool SEO features – allowing you to easily view links into a site and also SEO information.

If you have experience with any of these tools, and/or have an opinion on them, I’d love to hear it.

It is a question that is asked of Web Designers perhaps more than any other.  What aspects of a website make for great design?  Well, here’s a few top tips using a site we’ve recently designed for a Melbourne based client as an example.

1.  Clear navigation structure
Do visitors know where to go to get the information they need and can they get there easily?  Ensure your navigation uses language that is easy to understand and is hierarchically organised according to the type and importance of content.

2.  Engaging and relevant imagery
A website without imagery is almost like a pub without beer – bland and unmemorable.  That said, getting the imagery right is also crucial.  Select imagery that is directly relevant to both your brand and target audience (if you can afford a few extra dollars custom imagery is best).

3.  Text – dynamic, legible, accurate, brief
The heading says it all.  Ensure that text on your site is spelled and punctuated correctly, updated often, is of a size large enough to be read by the average person with average eyes and is written with brevity in mind.

4.  Simplicity
There is nothing worse than a site that has been over-designed and is cluttered/crammed with information.  Keeping your site clean and simple yet engaging will ensure that visitors have as positive an experience possible and aren’t scared to return.

5.  Embrace the space!
As per the above point, there is nothing wrong with the strategic use of white space, particularly if there is a product or service you want to place more emphasis on.

6.  Web-optimal typography
Web browsers generally favour the use of a standard set of fonts/typefaces so if these are used consistently throughout the site, you are more likely to ensure your visitors see what you see!  Google actually publish a list of open source fonts you can use in your website that they support.

7.  Use colour wisely and appropriately
Colour is best used strategically and in close alignment with the brand of your business.  If the nature of the business necessitates colour (think kids websites etc) then you can afford to be a little more liberal, otherwise it’s best to keep it nice!

8. Call to action
It is always ideal to have some aspect of your website design function as a call to action – be it to find out more about a specific product or service or send an email enquiry.  Getting visitors to interact with your site in some way is crucial.

9.  Searchability
Can users search for something on the site if they choose to and will they get accurate and useful results?  If the answer is yes, you’re on the right track.  If no, time to get cracking with implementing a search function.

10. Testing 123
This is where so many websites that have been designed with the absolute best of intentions can go horribly wrong.  Testing.  It is absolutely vital to try and break the site on every browser and platform before it goes live.  It’s a bit like a restaurant with a dirty bathroom – despite the food being okay it has the potential to completely ruin your experience.

-  No image for this as all our sites work perfectly, of course! –

In the course of designing websites for a living, it is truly frightening how often I come across spelling errors in all manner of contexts.  Email is a particular bug-bear of mine, however it is, on occasion, equally disheartening to see the content within so many existing websites (and the planned content for new ones) lose its credibility because the Author who penned it had a limited propensity for, or interest in, linguistics.

These range from very simple, presumably unintended errors (typo’s) to ridiculously obvious ones (I came across a recent example that included the words ‘calender’ and ‘festivel’ repeatedly on different pages throughout a clients existing site).

Journalist for Melbourne newspaper The Age, Christopher Bantick, said in a 2003 article he wrote on the subject of poor spelling that “the importance of correct spelling as an indicator of clear communication has been reduced through our increasing dependence on technology.”  Seven years later, in 2010, this couldn’t be more true.

Along with the core forms of media and communication we have come to know, love and develop an almost unprecedented reliance on, such as television and the internet, the enormous growth in the peripheral digital landscape, incorporating social media, blogging, online communication tools (MSN, Skype, Yammer…the list goes on) and mobile content / application development, to name a few, demands we pay even more attention to the way we assemble and articulate words and sentences.

To further encourage our apathy on the subject, we also have to cope with a world which is being increasingly flooded with an elaborate and seductive spectrum of visual data – one in which images, rather than words, are rapidly gaining supremacy.

It is therefore those individuals, businesses, enterprises and organisations that make the paying of attention to these semantic details a critical component of the success of their daily operations, a big step ahead of those that don’t.

Looking at the web in isolation, correct spelling is also imperative for SEO-motivated reasons, if none other.  You want users to find you.  And you want them to find you using the correct terminology.  If you do drawings for a living then you may need to expand on, and further clarify that when it comes to defining search terms.  A quick search on dictionary.com should explain why (as of September, 2010 there are approximately 60 definitions of the term ‘draw’).

In summing up, there are some basic steps you can take to ensure you minimise your chances of eternal intellectual humiliation by spelling mistake.  These include:

1.  If a word doesn’t look right, chances are it probably isn’t.  Use the spell checker (and even dare to click the ‘change or ‘change-all’ button) in whatever application you are using to create content.

2.  If unsure, or for particularly tricky words and concepts, invest in a good dictionary.  These are worth their weight in gold and make an attractive addition to any desk.

3.  If you suffer from extremely low spell-esteem, hire a proof-reader / copywriter / copyeditor.  Make sure they are, however, appropriately qualified, professional and experienced.  Ask to see samples of their work.  Your mate Jim from school who was good at English may not be the most suitable person to write your website content.

I don’t profess to be an expert on the subject but I have found the above tips to come in handy on numerous occasions.  I hope you will too. As Descartes was overheard saying at drinks with friends one night, ‘I think, therefore, I spell correctly.’

Many people look at Google on a daily basis to check where they are ranking for a particular keyword or a few keywords, and obsess over competitor rankings for that word, but with online marketing, measuring success doesn’t have to be based on limited comparisons of only a few popular or obvious keywords.   It’s not uncommon after we start working with a client, to get a phone call a few weeks later asking why they are still at a particular spot in the google results for one or two keywords – with the client deeply concerned that their SEO investment isn’t being effective.

SEO takes a little time to take effect – usually a few months after you commence work (some limited results are immediate, but strong success is a process that needs a few months to gain momentum), and also Google traffic comes from users who type a huge myriad of keyword combinations into Google.  Ranking highly for 1 or 2 obvious keywords is not necessarily the be all, and end all of your SEO success.  Often ranking strongly across 100′s of more specific keyword searches can work just as well, or even better !

The real measure of success of your SEO investment is whether your traffic, and your sales/inquiries are increasing!  Sounds obvious right?   You’d think so, but it’s amazing how often people obsess over a few ranks for a small number of specific keywords, or how their competitors ranks for these words, without looking at how their overall visitor traffic, or sales / leads are travelling.

Ask your SEO company to run a Google Analytics graph over the last 6 months showing Google Organic traffic only (that’s the visitors who come to your website after clicking on your listing on the left hand side of Google, not the sponsored links……these are the listings that are affected by SEO and Google optimisation).   This will show how your overall traffic levels are trending, and give you a view of your visitors arriving based on ALL the keywords typed into Google, and not just a few.   If your SEO provider is doing their job, then you should be seeing traffic trends heading upwards.

It’s vital that this isolates only Organic / Natural search traffic, as looking at all of your website visitors can hide upward or downward trends in individual sources of traffic (3rd party referring websites, paid advertisements or directories etc) leading you to think all is ok, when in fact your organic traffic may have collapsed while other traffic sources have leapt up to compensate.

Ask them to run a report of “conversions” over the past 6 months (conversions are the actions that you want a user to take on your site, such as contacting you, or buying something, or signing up for a newsletter), and review the results in detail to ensure your conversion numbers are being maintained, or growing.  Typically, the % of users who go on to perform your “conversion” action, once they are at your website is purely a function of page layout, and clarity of message and navigation, and prompts or “call’s to action” to get users to take this action.

So if your website has a prevailing conversion % of 3% for example (3 in every 100 who arrives, go on to convert) then naturally, once you know this – usually after that point, it becomes a numbers game.  You need to get as many people coming to your site (who’ve typed something relevant into google) as you can….if you double your visitors, you’ll double your conversions……so SEO success is achieved by seeing increasing numbers of visitors.  If you suddenly rocket to #1 position for your favourite keyword, but don’t see overall increases in traffic – then this wont help you in the way that you are hoping for.  And yes, if you move to position #1 for 1 specific keyword, this definately isn’t a guarantee that your overall site traffic is on the increase…..it could be a reflection of a narrow, one dimensional SEO campaign that ignores the breadth of your product offerings.

To see the trends in these reports, you can use Analytics to switch to “week” view or “month” view to show you the numbers aggregated across these time periods.   This makes it easier to spot the trends as you compare results week to week, or month to month.

These are some basic, but crucial metrics in ensuring your SEO programme is doing its job.    If you aren’t getting that sort of information from your SEO provider, you should contact them and arrange to review this, to ensure you’re getting value for your SEO investment!

Clients often wonder how “Link Building” works, why they need to have it, and how to get the most out of Link Building. There are a few basic guidelines that you need to follow to get positive results from Link Building campaigns and we’ll have a look at them in this post.

There are two main categories to consider when Link Building, On-page factors and Off-page factors.

On-page factors include the following:

The key here is volume of links and links that take advantage of targeted keywords.

Recently Google have placed a strong emphasis on frequency of content updates on a site as well as freshness of links.

When it comes down to the page rank for incoming links you have a number of choices. Typically, you’re able to get lots of links which have varying page rank at an affordable rate OR you’re able to get fewer links which have relatively better page rank at a higher cost.

Typically high pagerank links come via:

• privately negotiated paid links or;
• naturally occurring incentives for other high profile sites to link to you based on the value of your website or its information, or tools, or relevance to their audience or;
• paid links (text-link-ads or similar), or;
• link triangulation deals or reciprocation deals

It is very rare to be able to simply request a link to your site from a very high page rank 3rd party site or page – and get the link with nothing offered in return (who would have thought, there’s always a catch!).  We don’t engage in paid link strategies for clients, as if found out – Google may penalise you.

When you sit back and look at the way Link Building works, it does indeed make sense. Search engines such as google will review all the links coming into your site, along with the content on your site and give you a rank compared to other sites on the web. There are many factors that come into play to determine who should appear first, second, third etc but the main message still holds true…

Build targeted links to your site, do it on a regular basis, with content on your site which is keyword-rich and updated as often as possible. The more links, the better, and the more you can hone in on your keyword niche the better.

Happy Googling!