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Why I’m buying an iPad

I’ve decided that I’m going to buy an iPad at the first opportunity I get, so here are my reasons:

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Hello, Park 458

Many years ago that’s how people used to answer the phone, confirming the number the caller had dialled. The reason for this? Phones were less personal and misdials were more common. Some people still do it, at home. Mostly it’s a waste of time, the percentage of misdialed calls is dropping as more people call from a phone that confirms the number dialled. In any case people answering company phone lines don’t quote the number back, they state the name of their company.

You may wonder why I’m mentioning this. It’s because I’ve noticed a fair number of websites recently using content management systems set up with no thought whatsoever to the SEO value AND usability benefit of having a well crafted title tag. Repeating the domain name is a waste of time – it’s already in the location bar of the browser anyway. Imagine calling Hertz and the phone being answered by someone parroting the number you’d just dialled: “Hertz, 08455 19 15 36″, completely pointless.

Take a few moments to check through your site. Your title tags should be:

1. Keyword rich
2. Non-repetitive
3. Written for humans, not used as a replacement for the meta keywords tag
4. Devoid of your domain name. Please.

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Elementary Advertising

Sometimes an opportunity comes along that’s just too good to pass up. This Czech car security company put an active or passive device in your car that makes finding it much more likely (98% success rate, and they list the cars they’ve recovered, to prove it works). They’re called Sherlog and they’ve been running ads like this all over town, coinciding with the cinema release of the Sherlock Holmes movie. I’ve no idea as to the backstory here – whether Sherlog are paying for all the ad placement costs or splitting it, but it’s a fun tie-in. The slogans are “Nothing escapes them” and “Nothing escapes us” respectively. Well done Sherlog!

Nobody seeks out vague promises

As marketers we all love to promise the earth but you need to be able deliver on what you’re offering. If you need to use weasel words and internal jargon to qualify your promises, you’re doing it wrong.

When you see an advert for flatscreen TVs offering a ‘free Blu-Ray player with selected TVs’ – what’s your thought process? Is it ‘ooh, I’m gonna get a free Blu-Ray player’ or is it ‘I bet the one I want doesn’t come with a free Blu-Ray player’. How about a sale sign that offers ‘Up to 50% off’? I guess it depends on whether you’re a glass half-full or half-empty kind of person. Maybe you get a nice surprise or maybe you’re disappointed. The one thing that word ’selected’ doesn’t do is fill you with confidence because it immediately creates a doubt in your mind.

Customers don’t know what ’selected’ means in that context, they don’t know what a company’s ‘primary service areas’ are. All they know is that the company wants their offer to sound good whilst leaving some wiggle room. Customers don’t care about a company’s ability to squirm out of providing something. They want what they’re promised.

Under-promise, over-deliver
That’s what we should aim for. That’s what gets customers telling their friends about us. The opposite can make people talk about us for all the wrong reasons.

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Domain name housekeeping

An often forgotten aspect of search engine optimisation is centred around various aspects of your domain name. For example Google’s search algorithm takes into account over 200 different factors, categorised as on-page and off-page. On-page is the content of your pages themselves – the visible text and the code. Off-page factors include things like external links and a whole host of things you mostly have no control over.

There are however a number of simple ‘off-page’ domain-related factors that you can control and that search engines consider when ranking sites:

1. Age of domain
   You can’t fake this, but you can buy up older names, sometimes it’s worth making an offer, if the domain you want is up for sale. If it has been registered for a few years, that may help you rank higher, even if it’s not currently in search indexes. Just do your due diligence first – check it doesn’t have a chequered past.
2. Domain ownership details
   Many domain name registrars offer a premium service of domain name anonymity. Google and other search engines aren’t so keen on this. They figure you have something to hide. If you’re worried about privacy and don’t want to put your home address, you don’t have to – nobody’s going to be posting anything to that address (or at least nobody you want to hear from).
3. Domain expiry
   Most people don’t pay for things until they have to. So you wait till your domain name is up for renewal and renew then right? WRONG! A domain with less than a year remaining till expiry is considered as a potential drop-out. Most domain registrars offer multi-year discounts and you don’t have to wait till your name is due for renewal to secure it for 3, 4 or more years more. At around $10 a year for a .com it’s a false economy to hold off on renewing your name till you start getting email reminders.

Now go get your domain in order!

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