blog.

More and more Company web sites are using ME. By that I mean they talk about themselves. A lot. "We have a great range of pipe cleaners". "Our business has been running for 250 years and we are brilliant". "Look at our interesting news all about us".

It's boring. And self-orientated. Even when including keywords and SEO-focused copy, the content itself still needs to be interesting and effective for the reader. Customer-focussed, if you like.

SPOT THE DIFFERENCE
We are WidgetWeb! We have a huge range of products including waterproof widgets. We offer good prices and are a well-established business of 30 years. Browse our site now!
OR
Got a leaky sink? Need to fix it fast, and at a low price? You'll find a full range of waterproof widgets here. In a hurry? No problem. You'll love our super-speedy order process.

Why has your web visitor come to your site? They have a leaky sink and need to find some waterproof widgets - quickly - and for a good price. They’ve not come to hear about how long you've been running for and a load of flowery 'me me me'.

See how Apple are putting this in place - lots more 'you' than 'we' in this iPad piece.

The copy on your site needs to address your visitor and their needs, quickly and effectively. Keep them focussed and you'll have a better chance of them making a purchase, or making contact, or downloading your latest offers... Talk to your customers, not at them.

And finally... For every instance of we, try to say 'you', at least twice.

If you'd like to chat about your web copy with one of the team here at Focus, drop us a line here.

Digital strategy is something which every company should be considering, but what is a digital strategy and how do you go about developing one?  

According to Wikipedia a digital strategy is……'the process of specifying an organisation's vision, goals, opportunities and initiatives in order to maximize the business benefits digital investments and efforts provide to the organisation.'

At Focus we have worked on a large number of digital strategies for our clients as well as our own. If we had to explain a digital strategy to a client we would say that it is the initial and ongoing development of processes that will achieve set goals and aims using digital technologies and channels.

We’ve put together our thoughts on the process involved in developing a digital strategy.

The initial thoughts that need to take place when developing a digital strategy is reviewing your current processes and procedures, digital channels currently utilised and results of these activities over a period. Of course you may not currently be undertaking any at the moment. 

Once you looked at how you’ve done things – it’s now time to look ahead. Working out a list of goals that you aim to achieve is key part to the process of developing a digital strategy. This may include some of your current business objectives.

It’s then all about understanding how to achieve these objectives, is it through SEO, social media, development of your website? Once you’ve understood what is it you want to achieve and how you’re going to do it – it’s about the process and procedures to achieve your desired objectives. Another key element to remember is measurement – you’ll want to measure your return on investment.

Once you’ve spent time implementing these ideas into practice you’ll need to continually evaluate the results and ensure you evolve your strategy over time – we here at Focus love the phrase ‘continuous improvement’. It a methodology which is extremely important in the world of digital. 

During our recent office move I found an old checklist that we used to provide clients in the late 90's that covered submitting web sites to search engines. At the top of the sheet in big, bold text was the first instruction: "Put yourself in the position of the user". Many years later and that statement remains the important fundamental step when thinking about keyword research.

Keywords are the building blocks of search engine marketing - whether it's natural, organic optimisation or pay-per-click campaigns using AdWords and alike. Keywords are thoughts - they are transferred from the brains of users and translated into words and phrases that a search engine has to decipher before deciding which web sites to present as relevant, in an organised and ranked list. Keywords are also often questions - from users looking for solutions, and you hope that it's your web site that can provide answers through your products and services.

Users tend to create keywords in one of a few general ways:

 - they can be explicit or exact: a description of what the user is looking for. If they are looking for more RAM for a computer, they may search for 'computer memory'.

 - they can describe the problem they're having or symptom being experienced: 'cannot run photoshop', or 'computer running slowly'. Both these might be solved with more computer memory, but the searcher doesn't know that yet, they're merely describing the issues they face.

 - they can also search for precise brand or product names: 'DDR3 1333MHz PC3-10600'. Keywords like this might be the easiest to monitise towards, but they're also likely to be the most competitive.

Immediately you can see that picking keywords from your brochure or your marketing department might not be the best way to start your research. Users don't think like you or your organisation does, they may not use jargon familiar to you. It's crucial to look beyond the keywords themselves - and examine the scenarios and situations that may be causing someone to need your product or service.

Keeping abreast of SEO news is just one of the many things we try to keep tabs on here at Focus Towers.  Mumblings and grumblings about Google's latest update - termed the "Dewey Update" after a blog post from Matt Cutts - have been growing over the past few weeks.

Has this affected your site rankings?

I'd be really interested to get any feedback from anyone affected by this latest change.

Links
Surviving the Dewey Update 
Dewey Discussion
Spanish SEO commentary
Useful tool comparing searches across disparate data centres

Finding a recommended restaurant took up a large part of my lunchtime today, even though I was told its name and general location.  This common irritation could be a thing of the past if Okkam takes off in the next few years.

We have previously mentioned rivals to Google's domination of the online search, just as we've touched on the importance that such a powerful tool has on our ability to retrieve relevant information from the ever-expanding web.

Okkam - an academic initiative from Trento University - is finding a better way to publish, link and find information using a “web of entities”.   It will put information into context, making it possible to identify 'Paris' as an annoying, talentless celebrity, as opposed to the capital of France, for example.

Still in the early stages, it appears that the success of the project will depend largely upon how widely it is taken up in the first two years.  The target for 2008 is to get a million 'entities' on board, with use by application developers crucial to its long term success.

Already big in Portugal, it will be interesting to see how long it will take for Okkam to join Google in the British vernacular.

We've just read Jay Adelson's piece regarding the democratisation of information, care of the internet's burgeoning blogging community.  He describes the situation well - the way we assimilate knowledge is changing due to the proliferation of 'news' outlets (we're all increasing coming across information regarding new technologies from independent blogs and not from conventional news sites). 

Despite this explosion of information I think the power still lies with Google.  You can only access a fraction of what is out there without a search engine and the rules that govern SEO are constantly being rewritten.  Which really means that those complying with Google's latest guidelines get the largest amount of traffic.