Hi all,

Welcome to part two of our June Newsletter!

Firstly, let’s get you in the loop. As you may or may not know, Google has released a new feature: Web History– this is fairly major, so we want to let you know what it is and how it is going to affect you. We’re carrying on from Marketing 101 with "Your Opportunity with RSS”, which takes a look at some RSS examples and awesome ideas for your RSS.

I also want to remind our clients of our June Promotion with the launch of our new website. We are keen to show businesses just how well RSS can work for them, so for the first person to subscribe to our RSS feed in the next 24 hours, we will give a free RSS strategy and implementation for your business! (Just email us to let us know you’ve subscribed)

Until next time!

Enjoy!

Robyn

We would love to hear any questions, comments, or ideas for future articles… just email us at info@optymise.co.nz.

In this issue:

» Web History - It's Changing the Rules of Search Marketing
» Marketing 102: Your Opportunity with RSS

Web History - It's Changing the Rules of Search Marketing

This past month Google unleashed what is potentially their most disruptive feature ever! It's called Web History—and it gives them an over-the-shoulder view of the web, promising to reveal the precise surfing habits of millions of Internet users.

At first glance, Web History looks simply like an expansion of features that Google has been offering for some time now. They started introducing personalized search under the Search History banner back in February. Now the name is changed to Web History to reflect the fact that they've begun tracking your entire web browsing experience—not just keeping a record of your searches. Web History now records and stores a full-text version of every site you visit and even makes it available for later viewing. All one must do is log into their Google Account (Gmail, Calendar, Personalized Homepage, AdWords, etc.) and have the Google Toolbar installed with the PageRank feature activated. After that, big brother runs on automatic. Although we all know that Google's been watching many of us for some time now (especially SEOs using the Google Toolbar) and that Web History is not something that's turned on by default (yet).

The SEO perspective:

Google is tracking all this data about where people go and what they look at, all the while recording the time they spend on a site. You can bet this data will find its way into the way it ranks websites. Simply put, Google will no longer be guessing about site popularity based on links. Their search results model is clearly gravitating towards tracking real popularity based on actual traffic and time spent on a site.

That means the high ranking websites of the very near future will be the truly popular sites. Sites that get a lot of return traffic and where people spend a lot of time viewing a lot of pages.

Since Web History allows Google to so easily track site visitor activity, the sites that offer popular, well-presented content will rank the best. This also means that RSS feed subscriptions through Google Reader and Google Personalized Homepage, bookmarking through social sites like Del.icio.us and private bookmarking sites like Google Bookmarks, and other means of tracking popularity are all likely to become increasingly important as ranking factors going forward. Conveniently, so will pay-per-click or any sort of advertising geared to increase traffic.

Think back to high school: the popular kids get to decide who else is popular. Likewise, endorsement will become a front running search engine strategy. If a really popular site say's 'you're cool' AND you really are cool, then your coolness will be rewarded with traffic that sticks and returns over and over, which leads to more traffic and raises your stock even further on the popularity scale. It all adds up to capturing mind share. Look for this to become the SEO model going forward—for at least as long as Google has anything to say about it.

The SEO client’s perspective:

Even if the general search public doesn't immediately see the impacts of personalized search, the user who has Web History enabled certainly will. Once an enabled user clicks your listing, browses several pages and spends time on your site, and returns to visit your site again, the chances of your site ranking high in future searches by that user increases considerably.

Sources: Google Blog, Search Engine News

Your Opportunity with RSS

As promised, Marketing 101 is carrying on from Part One with ideas on how you can use your RSS. (Next month we will have more information about RSS in action, a step by step guide of how it works for the user and the business).

RSS is an acronym for Really Simple Syndication. It is what it claims to be: a quick and easy way to create and use "associated content" such as news headlines and announcements. Some websites use RSS to deliver articles and article previews to readers who are simply too busy to browse to websites and dig up the content they are interested in. Other sites use RSS to alert customers of new products or upcoming events.

We discussed in Part One how RSS allows your subscribers to decide exactly what kind of things they want to hear about (for example, particular job listings, certain news headlines, niche products). Rather than browsing or searching for new content related to specific types of news, they can subscribe to your related RSS feed and they will be sent the news. It allows your customers to easily stay informed by retrieving your latest content about the topics they are interested in.

Here’s some ideas of how you could use a RSS…

• Deliver your latest company news
• Announce your bestsellers
• Communicate with your affiliates
• Announce special deals
• Provide your customers with latest updates and downloads
• Deliver audio, picture, video and text content
• Deliver educational information such as white papers
• Deliver newsletters
• Publish living digital catalogues of your products – love this one!
• Publish your press releases

Here’s what some websites are doing with RSS…

is using RSS to announce their bestsellers and to help their users keep track of releases they are most interested in

uses RSS to keep readers instantly updated with news headlines:

uses RSS to deliver savings coupons and related information:

is using RSS to keep customers up to date with changes in the search world and marketing tips:

international recruitment agency uses RSS to advertise new job listings:

uses RSS to deliver important headlines to its readers:

“RSS for me puts me in control - I get what I want when I subscribe and privacy taboot and if I wish to unsubscribe, click and no more unwanted infomation. Putting the power back in the consumers hands, I like that as a consumer.” … Chris Jordan

Sources: Lockergnome, MarketWire

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