• If you want to give a $5, 10 or $20 donation to the Red Cross, head to GrabOne. The company has pledged $25,000 and had sold over $65,000 worth of donations. Vodafone users can also text ‘quake’ to 333 to make an automatic $3 donation. ASB has also opened an account to accept donations (12-3205-0146808-00), as has BNZ (02-0500-0982004-000) and Westpac (03-0207-0617331-00. ANZ is taking international donations (SWIFT CODE: ANZBNZ22, account no: 011839018893900 Ref: Canterbury Earthquake Appeal). And here are some other ways you can help.

When the first Canterbury earthquake struck, TVNZ broadcast live through the day and smoked TV3 in terms of its coverage. TV3 weren’t going to make the same mistake again and have committed to broadcasting live throughout the night, with one commercial free broadcast planned at 6am tomorrow. But perhaps this enthusiasm to let that fact be known might come back to bite them.

As for Stuff, not only did it buy search terms, it also stuffed up its post.

Tower is the most recent addition to the search term party.

What do you think? Acceptable or reprehensible? It happened during the last Canterbury earthquake, and our man says the Australian Advertising Standards authority deemed it inappropriate to buy search terms during cyclone Yasi. In the UK and the US, he says there is an unwritten rule that web traffic shall not be increased by buying search terms around natural disasters and he firmly believes it is “a practice that shouldn’t be allowed to happen” here either.

So you have worked really hard to get more visitors to your website and more enquiries/bookings or sales. You know search engine optimisation (SEO) is important and have tried to ‘optimise’ your page title tags and increase the number of relevant keywords used on your website. You may have even tried some pay per click (PPC) advertising such as Google Adwords. But you are still not being found on the first page of organic search engine results, and all the PPC has done has put a hole in your back pocket. Well, here are five suggestions that may help you in getting your online marketing and SEO on the right track.

1. Own your keyword niche and be realistic in your expectations

The reality for small operators is that you are unlikely to rank in searches for more generic keywords without significant investment. If you operate a bed and breakfast in Auckland, it is unlikely you will be able to rank well for ‘New Zealand bed & breakfasts’ or even ‘Auckland accommodation’. There are just too many other players out there. However, you may have a chance to rank highly for a more specific search such as ‘bed & breakfast Auckland’.

Likewise, if you operate a skydiving company in Rotorua, it will be extremely difficult for you to rank for ‘Rotorua attractions’ or even ‘things to do in Rotorua’. You should instead be focusing on getting top results for ‘skydiving Rotorua’, and related similarly-targeted keywords. You should work on gaining and maintaining top ranking results for phrases that combine “[location]+[brand]“, and phrases such as “[location]+[category/niche]“.

PPC/Google Adwords can assist to ensure visibility for search phrases, even if your website is not ranking well for these terms. But don’t go too broad with the PPC or Adwords you choose. Think about return on investment: you will get more for your money if you make sure you are visible to those people most likely to book with your business. Exact match is your best friend when it comes to online marketing.

The top ranked natural search engine result gets 45 to 55 percent of all clicks on the first page and if you are not there, you are missing out. If you have already optimised your website structure and content as much as possible (by including key search terms within your content near the top of the page, in page titles, etc), look at what keywords are working and do more optimisation around them. And also ensure you take a look at off-site factors such as other websites and blogs that link to your site.

2. Establish online partnerships

Partnering with other organisations/websites can help you extend your website reach and be seen as an ‘authority’ on a given topic. By creating links between your own website and those of like-minded businesses, you can boost the number of visitors that are linking through to your website via search results, and also leverage off existing visitor numbers to a partner’s site.

To discover potential partnership opportunities, perform a search in Google for “[location]+[generic category]” (e.g. “Dunedin attractions”) and see what websites are displayed in the search results. Identify those that are complimentary rather than competitive and approach them with your request to feature on their website.

The search results for most location-based phrases also brings up the Google Maps results. If you are not on Google Maps results and do not have a Google Places business account, I strongly urge you to open one and claim your listing.

3. Engage with and understand your target market’s behaviour

It is important to listen to your customers, understand their needs and improve your offering to suit. TripAdvisor has become a leading source for travel reviews and can rank highly in search results when travellers are searching for holiday accommodation. When consumers are visiting a foreign country and looking at an unknown brand, they are likely to seek reviews either from friends or strangers before purchasing.

Despite having good search rankings, if your reviews on TripAdvisor or similar websites read “This place stinks, stay somewhere else” or “dirty hostel and rude staff” you will not get the business you might have otherwise got! Likewise, good reviews may entice a traveller to try something new.

Understanding what others say about you is more important than what you say about yourself. Facebook is an excellent tool to listen to what people have to say and then respond to them. Perhaps travellers are looking for specific information and your website is purely transactional. If so, there would be an opportunity to increase value. Perhaps the same questions are asked in enquiries over and over, so make this information prominent on your website to increase conversions.

Understand that overcoming purchase objections or barriers is a critical part of increasing your bookings. Listen first, then act.

4. Publish unique, engaging and useful content

As you understand the needs of your customers more, develop and publish content that will appeal to and engage that audience. If it is relevant and engaging (or humorous) enough, consumers will find it, read it and share it with their friends or post it to their blog. This increases awareness and can tap into people’s networks of similar-minded individuals, extending your reach without the media costs associated. And links back to your website from these reviews or mentions on blogs and other websites may assist with search engine rankings.

The power of strong content should not be underestimated.

5. Differentiate and over deliver

With so many tourism operators each vying for travellers’ attentions, it will be those who offer a great service and consistently deliver a fantastic experience that will get positive reviews and be talked about. In the online world, these positive mentions generate inbound links to your website and boost your search engine presence, which means increased visitors to your site and the potential to boost your business and bookings.

These things combined, and applied consistently, will work together to deliver results and give you an unfair advantage over your competitors, at least until they catch up.

• This article originally featured on www.tourismnewzealand.com.

In paid search, choosing the right keywords can be the difference between a campaign that delivers results at a great ROI and a campaign that just costs you money; in search engine optimisation (SEO), choosing the right keywords can help you to achieve search engine rankings, resulting in increased visitors from natural search results, and increased sales; and on your blog, compelling headlines that are keyword-rich have the potential to attract many more visitors than just compelling headlines by themselves.

All of this means choosing the right keywords is absolutely crucial when building links to your website. In fact, in the 2009 SEOmoz Search Ranking Factors survey, the number one factor as agreed by SEO experts was ‘Keyword-focused anchor text from external links’.

We know that many things can drive external links, including press releases and articles: so do your press release and article headlines contain appropriate keywords, and are these also included in the content? Are you using keywords in your social profile links and signatures? And have you thought about how important keywords are in other areas?

If optimised correctly for the right keywords, YouTube videos can also appear in the search results for relevant phrases and more people will find the video via a search on YouTube. Are you generating as many viewers by including relevant keywords in the video title, description and in the assigned tags? If not, you may not be leveraging this media as much as possible.

Real-time results such as those from Twitter are also now included in the search results. If you are in a competitive industry, this offers another opportunity to be seen in the search results for relevant phrases.

The use of brand keywords is absolutely essential for online reputation management success in the search engines. And by including keywords in social profiles and leveraging those profiles, you can increase the number of positive results for brand-based keyword searches.

Keywords are of extreme importance in so many ways. So it’s important to take advantage of these opportunities to optimise and increase results.

• Grant Osborne will expand on this topic at the Social Media Junction event on 17 May.

SearchIgnite will provide First Rate, whose clients are spread over 50 industries including retail/e-tail, financial services, education, energy, travel, and software solutions, with an advanced suite of tools to manage, optimise, track and report on SEM campaigns for its clients, with features including cross-channel conversion path analysis and end-to-end automatic optimisation of creative, bids and landing pages.

Jon Ostler, founder of First Rate, says the company carried out an extensive, worldwide search for the best SEM technology available and chose SearchIgnite because of the technology’s leading bid management methodology, unique direct marketing features and proven client results.

First Rate chief executive in New Zealand, Kevin Francis, says there has been slow take up of SEM in New Zealand compared to other countries, but there is now a rapid increase in demand as the catch up begins.

“We are excited to introduce cutting edge technology into the country that many local advertisers would not normally be able to access,” he says. “Over the years, we have found advertisers that take full advantage of contemporary online marketing channels like search gain a huge competitive advantage. We expect the deployment of this technology across our New Zealand clients will extend their competitive advantage further.”

Roger Barnette, the founder of SearchIgnite, was impressed with the reputation and leadership position First Rate had built up around their search marketing services and hopes this new strategic relationship will grow that position further.

• The arrival of real-time Google search means whatever the twittering classes are saying about you or your company now has the potential to make it on to the front page.
• The US music biz attempts to reclaim online control of its content with the launch of music video service Vevo.

Plug it in, plug it in. eBuzz 10-December-09