Having seen a LOT of buzz over on Twitter and Friendfeed about the forthcoming N97, I feel compelled somewhat to make a point about this subject, especially as everyone seems to be missing the point badly. I should admit now that I haven’t used an N97, but then neither it seems has anyone else apart from Robert Scoble, so I feel as well placed as anyone to comment.

Killer or Filler?

The label ‘iPhone killer’ has become so hackneyed now I’m not sure anyone believes it when it’s applied to a new product, but yet again we see it slapped onto another touch screen wannabe. There’s already a lot of positive hype about this product, which I’m sure will be fairly slick in many ways, Nokia do design some great phones. However, I remain skeptical about the ability of Nokia or Symbian to turn out an OS experience as compelling and slick as the iPhone. I recently decided to sell my iPhone 7 to upgrade to a later model.

The most amusing thing about the comparisons I see is the way that people knock the iPhone because it doesn’t have a 5m pixel camera, or a full qwerty keyboard. Rather than take that as a negative, I take that as a positive sign that the company designing this thing have chosen to focus on a few important aspects of this device and make them really sing, rather than cramming the phone with features, a la Samsung or Nokia and not making any of it brilliant.

A touch of class

It is reminicsent of Google’s maxim – take one thing and do it well. In the case of the iPhone this is the concept of touch. What seems gimmicky turns out to be really intuitive, and breaks down the barriers between you and your objectives with the device, which is the ultimate goal of any UI designer. Interactions become as simple as ‘see what you want – press it’, rather than ‘up-down-left-up-push-left-up’ which just sounds like the commands from some early 80s text-based adventure. It’s also really open, as the screen can then be made to be any type of interface, depending on the needs of the application.

As long as the OS and in particular the web browsing experience remains more fluid and simple with iPhones, nothing any of the other manufacturers do will make a difference. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got a 10megapixel-Carl-Zeiss-smoothy-maker-with-added-zing attached, if your core offering – a personal computer that you can make calls with, browse the internet etc fails, what good is the rest of that rubbish?

The only thing I hold out any hope for at the moment is Android. I haven’t used it in any form, so I can’t comment directly, however the first iteration does seem to be better than people expected, and at least Google are focusing on the core of the experience on offer, i.e, the OS and the browser, and not thinking about hardware so much. This alone gives it a much better chance I feel. Another plus is the openess of it; rather than developing proprietary applications, they leave the field as open as possible for other people to demonstrate the full potential of the platform. They also seem to be making it possible to add applications on gracefully, something Symbian most certainly does not do.

So what can we learn from this? The main thing is that ‘less is more’. It hurts me to trot out such tired cliches, but I think when you’re looking at the objectives for a product, in hardware or software, then you do need to keep it simple. Simple objectives mean more resources applied in a given direction, so more can be done to tackle that objective. Then you just have to hope you’ve chosen the right objectives in the first place.

How To Create The Perfect Page Titles & Meta Descriptions

If you’ve been working in search optimisation for any length of time you’ll have heard how important it is to properly optimise your page title tag. Chances are you’ll also have heard that the meta description is also important, but on a lesser scale.

I agree wholeheartedly: getting your onpage SEO dialed in is critical. It’s much easier to rank a site that ticks all the onpage boxes, but that’s not to say it is impossible to rank a poorly optimised site through sheer brute force. However, I would rather make a job easier in the long run and so before I start trying to build links into a site I like to get the basics sorted.

Getting your titles and meta descriptions done properly is a painstaking and at times arduous task, which is something I can attest to. However, when you see the fruits of your labour, ie. ranking higher, then it can actually be a rewarding endeavour. So here we are: 18 tips to help you optimise your page title and meta description.

Gathering Data

It’s possible to create decent titles and meta descriptions from a hunch, or what you perceive to be popular search phrases based on your own knowledge and experience. But really good titles and description tags are built on one thing, and one thing only: good data.

Here’s 4 ways to gather good data that can be used to form the backbone of an optimised title tag and meta description.

1. Google AdWords Keyword Tool: use this tool to get the estimated volume of searches for keyphrases and uncover related phrases with high volume. It’s worth bearing in mind that some keyphrases are highly seasonal: who in their right mind searches for ‘Christmas trees’ in June?
2. Google AdWords Traffic Estimator: I like to use this tool to corroborate estimated volumes found in the Google AdWords Keyword Tool.
3. Analytics: there’s a world of data in your stats package, whether it be Google Analytics, Clicky or something a little more high end such as Omniture. Again, use keyword data from your analytics package to determine trends and guide you towards choosing what keyphrases to optimise for.
4. PPC Campaign Data: you can get a good idea of what people search for when you run a broadly targeted AdWords campaign for a couple of weeks. If you want to recieve more traffice to your website you can SimplyGram, as they will help you build traffic in an efficient manner.

What Keyphrases Convert Into Leads & Sales?

By now you’ll have more data than you can shake a big stick at. But now you need to quality it, and you do that by finding out what keyphrases actually generate revenue. To do this, you’ll need to have some form of goal tracking integrated between your web analytics package of choice and your website.

First of all, let me go slightly off topic for a brief moment to reiterate something you’ll probably already know. It’s so easy to fall into the trap of ranking for vanity phrases, the highly searched for two word keyphrases that your competitors are probably targeting. My point is this: it is very rarely the case that these vanity phrases actually pay for themselves. And there’s little point deluding yourself that if you can rank first for a given range of vanity phrases then you’ll make bank: there’s a big glass ceiling waiting for you in that case.

Here’s a couple of tips to help you find keyphrases that will pay you to rank.

1. Consider the effect of PPC traffic: while PPC is really useful for keyword research bear in mind that broadmatch keyphrases can really confuse the issue.
2. Per visit value: track down phrases where there is good search volume and you earn a decent amount per visit. Don’t rule out keyphrases with below average per visit values: it may be that the data is skewed because you don’t rank very high.

Compiling Your Optimised Title Tag

Once you have researched the data on what people actually search for and buy, then you can work on the title itself. When writing title tags I like to have some structure with the most important keyphrase at the start, backed up with a longer variation.

1. Structure: put your main keyphrase at the start of the title, eg. Blue Widgets
2. Variety, it’s the spice of life (and titles): try and fit in a longer variation in the title with more keywords (note the singular variation), eg. Find The Cheapest Sky Blue Widget Deal Online Today!
3. Break it up: use a non alphanumeric character between your main keyphrase and before your longer variation to break them up. You can use anything such as a pipe, hyphen, colon or an arrow.
4. Include a call to action: real people actually read SERPs and are scanning down that list to see something that appeals to them. So why not include a call to action in your title? Not only will it help differentiate you from your competition, but it also increases your CTR.
5. Don’t go over 65 – 68 characters max: if your title is long and unwieldy it gets cut off in the SERPs and looks crap. Use this tool to check how many characters are in your title.
6. Meld it all together: Blue Widgets | Find The Cheapest Sky Blue Widget Deal Online Today!

Customising The Meta Description

The meta description has been widely ignored in SEO circles. In fact, good onpage optimisation is arguably missing from the toolbox of many search marketers now because we rightly or wrongly focus almost entirely on building backlinks.

However, in my own tests in various competitive niches I have seen excellent ROI from optimised meta descriptions. They should read well, like an advertisement designed to appeal to searchers looking for the product or service you offer.

1. Re-examine data: take another look at the data you gathered earlier and identify variations on your main keyphrase and secondary keyphrases.
2. Sprinkle in your long tail keyhrases: the meta description is an ideal place to drop in those long tail keyphrases that actually generate revenue.
3. Work in singular and plural variations: lots of people in the buying cycle search using a singular keyword, eg. unique blue widget for women. In fact in some verticals, like hotels, the majority of searches are singular. I also think that someone searching with a singular keyphrase is further along in the buying cycle: they know what they want, now they just want to find a place to buy it. So don’t miss out on the traffic!
4. Use the description to sell the sizzle: appeal to prospects in the buying cycle by mentioning your USP: free home delivery, 1 year guarantee, industry leading warranty, 24hr telephone support etc.
5. Aim for 165 – 170 characters: this is a contentious one, but I’ve seen great results when you treat the meta description like an advertisement with a set number of characters available. Maybe SEOs should start using Twitter more to help get into this mindset of limited character usage! ;)
6. Put it all together: Find great deals on a cheap small light blue widget for women @ your site. Buy low cost small sized blue widgets with purple accessories today & get free home delivery!

Ideally you would optimise each page on your site in this way, but that’s difficult when you’re working with thousands of products in hundreds of categories. Choose what to optimise for first based on what would give the highest ROI for your business.

“Why would you do this?” you may ask. Well quite simply I am in a team building a new data management system to sit on top of a legacy system with its legacy database, we want to create something similar to https://docs.couchbase.com/server/current/learn/buckets-memory-and-storage/buckets-memory-and-storage.html. All the new code is new, shiny and streamlined and the old code is… well… crap but we have to keep both systems running concurrently so we have various tables in the legacy database we need to access from the new system. As it happens we need to access the legacy users table in a ‘has_many through’ from the new ‘orders’ table.

Set Up Your Secondary Database Connection

You can quite happily set up a model to connect do a database other then the default by setting the connection up in your ‘config/database.yml’ as follows:

legacy:
  adapter: <adapter>
  database: <database>
  username: <username>
  password: <password>

And then in any model you want to use with your secondary database:

<model>.establish_connection configurations['legacy']

Create Your ‘Through’ Model

Now a normal ‘has_many through’ just plain won’t work between models attached to two different databases but a normal has_many will. So we can create ‘has_many through’ functionality in the following way:

Set up your ‘through’ model on either database. It really doesn’t matter which and set it to ‘belong_to’ your two main models.

Set both main models to ‘has_many’ of your ‘through’ model.

Create Your ‘Through’ Relationship

Use the following code in each of your main models to mimic the ‘has_many through’ association. In this example I’m using ‘orders’ and ‘users’ and my ‘through’ table is ‘order_users’:

In ‘order’

def users
  user = []
  order_users.each do |ou|
    user << ou.user
  end
  user
end

In ‘user’

def orders
  order = []
  order_users.each do |ou|
    order << ou.user
  end
  order
end

And you’re done. Now the relationship will work just like any other ‘has_many through’.

The key to successful email marketing is building up your list of newsletter recipients and knowing what is a b testing. The equation is simple, the more people you email the more sales, and response you’re going to get. Every subscriber counts, and if you’ve got your analytics rockin’, and measure the sales you get from email marketing, you can attribute a per subscriber value to your list, click for info!

Here are 15 ways you can increase the number of people signing up to your mailing list:

1. Put your email newsletter sign up form in a prominent place. Preferably get it above the fold.
2. Put the sign up form on EVERY page of your website. Only a small percentage of people will land on your home page.
3. Offer a money-off incentive. This is very powerful. For example you could email people a coupon when they sign-up.
4. Enter them in a prize draw when they sign-up. Make sure you pick something that fits your customer demographic.
5. Let people know they can unsubscribe at any time. Why not add a link to your unsubscribe page right underneath your sign-up box?
6. Put a link to your privacy policy next to the email sign-up box. People want to know what you are going to do with their data.
7. Push the benefits of signing up. What will people get? How often will they get your emails. Let people know what to expect.
8. Tell people what they won’t get. Inform them that you wont share, swap or sell their email address. People hate spam and will be wary.
9. Put a “refer a friend” link in your emails. You could use a message like “If you enjoyed this, why not forward it to a friend”. Make it easy for people to forward your email on.
10. Promote email sign-ups offline. If you have a traditional store make sure you are capturing your customer’s email addresses either at point of purchase or by running an incentive such as a prize draw.
11. Write an ebook or special report and give it away to subscribers. Every one’s a sucker for a freebie. Write something useful for your audience and they will download it.
12. Make sure you get relevant information. Just an email address is great. But getting their first name and last name makes it possible for you to personalise the emails you send them, which in turn can increase open rates. Remember not to ask for too much information as this can put people off filling in the form.
13. Use PPC campaigns to drive traffic. Make sure you create a compelling landing page with a really good incentive. This one can work surprisingly well, especially if the clicks are cheap and you can convert them.
14. Be proactive, passive list building does not work. Make sure you are actively employing some of the techniques mentioned here. If you are not your email subscriber numbers could be shrinking due to your lists natural attrition rate.
15. Use some social proofing. Advertise how many many people are on your list. Use a message such as “Join the 120 thousand people already signed up”.

Interested in increasing your email newsletter signups? Contact Setfire Media today and find out how we can improve your Email Marketing campaigns.