Posted by Ryan Holmes

* This blog post is part of Invoke’s participation in the 2008 Vancouver Blogathon for Charity

Invoke has always had a holistic approach to the internet. Creating a nice website for someone is a good thing, but that’s not enough. Strategy and creation are critical to produce a product, but promotion and marketing are what justify the creation of the product. Simply put, if you build it and nobody comes, there wasn’t really any point in building it in the first place. Realizing this, Invoke was active in web 1.0 marketing channels such as Search Engine Marketing, Online ad buying, and email marketing. Web 2.0 has vastly expanded the 1.0 channel mix for online marketing through newer offerings like blogging, video (viral), microblogging/twitter, social networking sites, facebook applications / open social applications etc.

Search is good. It provides a way for people to get the content they need fast, however as online users become more savvy they become less reliant on search as their sole destination. The advent of blogging, social networking, and niche social networking allows users to get connected to friends, access content that is more tailored to what they are looking for and ultimately reduces dependence on “traditional” search (google/yahoo). Google, Yahoo and MSN know that ultimately they need to acquire viewers (and clickers) for their advertising. As these users rely less on search, search engines need to extend their network reach which explains many of the acquisitions we see.

So if search engines are extending into these 2.0 marketing channels it arguably makes good sense for advertisers and marketers to be there as well. Banner advertising is one method and probably the easiest, but it is not enough. Marketers need to think more about a cohesive campaign strategy that incorporates all channels in a way that is more engaging than a “look at me > buy me” advertising model. This conversation and interaction is what 2.0 channels efficiently allow for; creative, well executed campaigns using these channels is the challenge that marketers, advertisers and agencies need solve. Good luck!

Posted by Milan Vrekic

Optimizing your website load time can be an important factor when it comes to overall potential for your websites success. Todays average web surfer is impatient and needs to have an interaction with your website within seconds.

From my experience, around 70%-80% of the ‘waiting time’ is spent downloading all the components on the page: images, style sheets, scripts, Flash, etc. Thus, reducing the number of these components on the page reduces the number of HTTP requests required to render the page. This is the key to faster pages.

The easiest way to achieve this is by taking the ‘less is more’ approach and simplify the site design. However, sometimes a client will insist on media and feature loaded pages. Here are some tricks to minimize the impact of this on the page load time. Remember, the final goal is to decrease the number of HTTP requests.

1. Combine files – There is no need to have 10 separate style sheets or a separate Javascript files for your menu items, form evaluations… instead, combine them all into one functions.js file. Do the same with CSS.
2. No tables please – Most browsers (ok, let’s say most browsers that matter) will display a <table> element only once it’s fully loaded and rendered. And that can result in a prolonged load time especially if your table contains a lot of images. HTML Tables are blast from the past so learn how to use CSS element positioning. Besides better load time you will also solve a lot of cross-browser incompatibilities.
3. Image Maps – Use image maps instead of a bunch of small images. The combined size of the images will stay the same (even smaller since your one big image will have only one file header) while the number of HTTP requests will be reduced. Avoid using image maps for navigation components.
4. Use a content delivery network – A content delivery network (CDN) is a collection of web servers distributed across multiple locations to deliver content more efficiently to users. Remember how we said that 70%-80% of the ‘waiting time’ is the time spent downloading page components? This means that the geographic location of the user in relation to the geographic location of the server is important. Using a CDN such as Amazon AWS or EdgeCast to host your media files will greatly improve the overall experience of user.
5. Put style sheets at the top of the page – Now this does not sound THAT important but it is. While working on a web kiosk project I noticed that when the style sheet is found anywhere other than in the header, it causes the browser to refresh and re-render the page before displaying it and then if the browser finds another CSS reference below it, it will then re-render the page once again and so on. â€?Nuff said.
6. Put JS scripts at the bottom – The HTTP/1.1 specification says that browser cannot download more than two components in parallel per hostname. The idea behind this suggestion is to display the visual elements first and then load the JS behaviors. Now, this is not always possible, especially when you are using document.write for example to control the layout of the page.
7. Reduce DNS Lookup requests – For those who don’t know, DNS server is like a phone book for the internet, when you type in google.com for example, the DNS server will match that domain name with the correct IP address and send the browser on it’s way to download the content. Your browser cannot download anything before it resolves the DNS name. It typically takes 20-120 milliseconds for the DNS to lookup the IP address for a given hostname. Reducing the number of hostnames will reduce the number of DNS lookups, thus reducing the amount of parallel downloading that takes place in the page. Another thing most people don’t know is that if you perform too many DNS queries in a really short period of time most DNS servers will penalize you with 100-500ms pause.
8. Use <link> instead of @import – this will enable progressive rendering rather than waiting for the component to be loaded and then render the page.
9. Optimize images – this is the most obvious one and probably the one that can have most impact on the page loading time. Most of the image editing software supports saving images ‘for the web’ or with optimized color palette.
10. Split components over multiple sub-domains – We said above that you can download only two components at a time from a single hostname in parallel. So splitting components over multiple domains will result increase of parallel downloads (for example, you can use images.yoursite.com, images2.yoursite.com…)
11. Designing for iPhone? – Safari on iPhone simply wont cache components over 25k in size. Keep the size of your components below 25k or if you have to, split them into two or more files where each is smaller than 25k.

Posted by Jenn Lowther

This will be the first in a series of three articles examining which online marketing initiative, organic SEO or PPC, will offer the best results for your online business requirements. (These are only two of the myriad of online marketing tools available, but they will be the focus of this series.) The likely answer to this question will be a combination of both, but this series aims to answer why and what benefits are associated with each to enable you to make an informed decision when moving forward with your overall marketing budget allocations.

You have an online business and you need to drive qualified traffic to your website in order to increase your ROI or KPI (key performance indicators), whatever forms these business indicators may take. The next step is deciding which Internet Marketing tool or combination of tools to utilize in order to achieve these specified goals. One major online marketing tool in your arsenal is PPC or pay per click advertising; this will be the focus of the article.

There are many benefits associated with using PPC advertising; the major benefits are outlined below.

Increased Traffic

Usually, the primary goal of any online marketing initiative is to increase traffic to your website. There are two main types of website traffic, targeted and untargeted. Untargeted traffic, are people who happen upon your website whilst not specifically searching for your product or service. Targeted traffic, on the other hand, are people who are specifically searching for either your business or people who are searching for the product or information that your website provides. This is the type of traffic that you want to draw to your website, as they are far more likely to convert (this can be many things, a download, a purchase, a lead – and is defined in your KPI).

A properly managed PPC campaign will provide your website with the later traffic type. Since you choose specifically which keywords to target in your campaign, you can ensure that the people who click on your ad are specifically searching for you, your product or the information that your website provides. Also, you only pay for people who actually navigate to your website, rather than pay for the number of people who view your advertisement.

Campaign Management

As with any marketing campaign, tracking of campaign ROI and other KPI is critical. PPC advertising offers quantitative measurements of these indicators that are unavailable in many other advertising mediums. In the initial setup of your PPC campaign, you can enable your campaign to measure each conversion the campaign makes, you are also able to specifically define what the conversions is, this is not limited to sales. This automatic tracking of campaign conversions, allows you to measure the exact ROI of the marketing initiative. This is simply not an option that is readily available in most marketing campaigns.

Advertising Timeline

This is can be one of the best benefits associated with PPC if it is utilized properly. Unlike SEO and most other forms of advertising both online and offline, which can take a long period of time to launch and begin to see the results, a PPC campaign can be conceived, planned, written, launched, and receiving results in less than a day. This highly compressed time frame allows companies the ability to seize opportunities that are not readily available with other marketing campaigns, due to the long planning and launch timelines. This is a particularly useful attribute with limited time sales or promotions, targeting developing events or news, major events (ie/ sporting events or elections), amongst many others.

This is also particularly beneficial to companies that not only have a sporadic need for instantaneous first page access to the SERP’s (search engine results page), but can be uniquely beneficial for companies that have seasonal or uneven demand trends within their business cycle. The ability to change your ad spend budget at will allows you to increase and decrease your advertising market penetration, with immediate results, in correspondence with the given level of demand.

Campaign Costs

The costs of running a PPC campaign can be precisely pegged at the onset of the campaign. Due to the billing format, you are able to choose exactly how much you wish to spend on ad clicks each day in a given search engine. This amount can be varied as you wish throughout the duration of the campaign, but this feature does allow you to accurately determine a budget at the inception of the campaign. The only costs that are associated with a PPC campaign are the amount you would like to spend on click traffic and, if you outsource the management of your campaign, a management fee that is determined prior to launching the campaign.

Unlike many other online pay for traffic or pay for impression advertising campaigns available, such as banner and email campaigns, there is no minimum spend required with PPC campaigns. You can pay as much or as little as you determine is optimal for your business goals.

In the short run, a PPC campaign is extremely cost efficient because there are no set up fees and you only pay for traffic as it comes in. This is particularly beneficial for companies that have a small advertising budget and need to get the maximum return on their small investment. Couple this with the fact that PPC has a lower CPA than most other marketing initiatives, makes PPC advertising an extremely option for smaller or extremely niched businesses.

Testing

Testing is perhaps the best and least utilized benefit associated with running a PPC campaign. The amount of data that you are able to collect and analyze is phenomenal. The easiest aspect to use and analyze is the ad testing functionality that is built into the search engines. You are able to use your ad variations to test which combination of headline and ad copy lead to the highest click through rates. Once you have narrowed the selection down to the best ad or two, you can continually tweak the ad copy to see which version has the best result. This data can be very useful for your on-page copy as well as your meta description tag, as this is basically the ad copy that is presented in the search engines and can greatly effect your organic listings click through rates.

You are also able to test your various landing page conversion rates by utilizing the a/b and multivariate testing functionality that is provided by the search engines. This allows you to tweak your on-page attributes to find the best combination to maximize your conversions and thus your ROI. This information is very useful for not only your PPC campaigns, but also your SEO campaigns and overall website conversion rates.

Finally, PPC campaigns give you a veritable gold mine of keyword and traffic data. This information can be leveraged in the planning stages of an SEO campaign. With this data, you are able to have an approximation of how often a term is searched, the click through rate, and most importantly, the conversion rate of a given keyword. This information can save you costly mistakes that can occur with an SEO campaign, as this information takes much longer to gather and analyze through and SEO campaign.

Branding

One of the added benefits of a PPC campaign is branding. A properly implemented PPC campaign will increase your brands visibility in the major search engines. By running PPC advertisements on keywords that relate specifically to your business, you can ensure that potential customers searching for information or products related to your field will find your company at the top of the search results.

If you are a large company, people expect to find your business in the search results. In this case, not dominating the SERP’s can tarnish your reputation in the eyes of your consumer, as not being there signals that other companies have greater relevance than yours for the given product searched, giving them the opportunity to take part of your market share. This is of increasing importance as greater percentages of people are using the internet as a primary method of sourcing product information and making product purchases. This gives other companies an opportunity to move in on your dominant market position and establish themselves as a leader in the field.

Conversely, if you are a small company, you can greatly increase your business’ exposure, and subsequently increase the value of your brand, by appearing in the results. By ensuring that your company is constantly visible, you substantially increase the chance that consumers will associate your business with the product or information they are looking for now and in the future.

There are many other benefits associated with a PPC campaign that have not been listed here, but this is a good start and should provide you with critical information when making your marketing budget allocation decisions. If you need more information regarding PPC campaigns or need a qualified company to manage your PPC campaigns for your, please contact Invoke today.

VIP Mountain Holidays has reappointed Invoke to manage their Internet Marketing services. The Internet Marketing campaign will focus on increasing VIP’s rankings in the search engines and driving qualified traffic to their website.

VIP Mountain Holidays provides full service, concierge holidays in Whistler BC. Their mission is to provide each guest a luxurious hassle free holiday by providing unparalleled service before, during, and after their Whistler Vacation. VIP Mountain Holidays has access to all of the top Whistler Accommodations, including Whistler’s Hotels, Chalets, and Private Lodging. The company philosophy of “no is not an option” has allowed VIP to provide the best service possible to all their guests. VIP has come to understand top quality service with over 35 years of combined ski industry experience and we are keen to introduce you to this type of service.

Posted by Jenn Lowther
One critical element of internet marketing is performing proper SEO on your website. When optimizing your website, there are many on-page and off-page elements that need to be attended to on in order to rank well in the major search engine result pages (SERP’s). Making things even more difficult is the fact that the three major search engines, Google, Yahoo, and MSN, each have a unique search algorithm which determines which websites will rank for a given keyword.

One of the most prevalent errors in SEO is to optimize solely for Google and overlook the other major search engines. Google does currently have the largest market share in the search industry, but Yahoo and MSN combined have an approximate market share of 39% – a demographic that you do not want to overlook. Although the algorithms for each of these search engines are unique, there is overlap, albeit with different weighting, as to what factors the search engines consider important when determining ranking. When designing/optimizing your website, it is critical to keep these factors in mind. Below is a list of some of the factors that the search engines use when determining the rank of a website for a given keyword.

First you need to ensure that your website is search engine friendly. Search engines cannot read flash or images. If you have these elements on your website, you need to ensure that you have written alt tags for all of them that are descriptive and contain the keyword(s) you wish to optimize for. This will start you on your way to ensuring that the search engines can successfully index the content on your website.

Your website also needs to have unique Meta tags for every page. These Meta tags need to be unique to avoid duplicate content penalties that will hurt your website in the SERP’s. You should also keep in mind that these tags are what are displayed in the SERP’s. Therefore, you need to ensure that the copy is also human friendly, as it is counter productive to rank well in the search engines if no one clicks on your result – in the end which is more important, rankings or traffic? You can get both if you properly optimize for both people and search engines.

The copy on your website is a critical factor in determining your search engine ranking. You need to have your targeted keywords sprinkled through out the copy on your website, making sure that you do not try to optimize each page for too many keywords. Be careful here though, you do not want to stuff your website with keywords, you will want to ensure that it is comprehendible to the people who visit your website. You can also get your website banned from the search engines if they determine that you are trying to game them by keyword stuffing.

A site map is also really important element to have on your website. It lets the search engines know that you have deemed those pages in the site map as important and helps the search engines to crawl those pages more efficiently. Google and Yahoo now have a feature that allows you to submit a site map to them directly.

You will also want to ensure that you implement proper 301 redirects to avoid any canonical issues with the search engines.

The most time consuming part of SEO is inbound linking, this is also one of the most important things that you can do to help your website rank in the search engines and if done incorrectly, one of the ways you can hurt your SERP’s the quickest. You want to get quality inbound links from websites that are related to yours. You will also want to keep track of the anchor text that you use when doing the inbound linking – as this is one of the factors that the search engines use in their ranking algorithms. You need to ensure that you adhere to SEO linking best practices so that you do not get your website banned from the search engines – you must not engage in linking to areas that the search engines deem to be ‘bad neighborhoods’ and your inbound linking must appear to be natural and should not consist solely of reciprocal linking.

If you have covered all of the above steps, you will have started your journey towards improved search engine rankings. For more information on Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimization, contact Invoke Media.