On Monday, 16 August 2010, Carla Franklin filed a lawful appeal in which she wants to force YouTube, owned by Google, to provide her with the identity of a cyber cipher who posted unauthorized videos of her on the online channel. Various derogatory comments were made about her “indie film” which caused Franklin “personal humiliation” according to her attorney, David Fish. Although Franklin isn’t suing Google, she is demanding that her taunter’s actual identity, i.e. name, address and phone number, be disclosed to her.

In a recent interview on CBS News, Franklin stated that Google has thus far been very communicative towards her and that the only reason she filed this case was because of an ongoing harassment situation where she has been stalked offline for over 4 years. In order to get a restraining order though it is required that all the connections be made between the person’s harassing behaviour both online and offline.

Thus far Google has not been accepting any interviews from the media, neither have they made any comments with regards to the Franklin case. They did however issue a response via a spokesperson stating the following: “When we receive a subpoena or court order, we check to see if it meets both the letter and spirit of the law before complying… Google has a track record of advocating on behalf of its users.”

Only last week Google had to deal with a similar case when Liskula Cohen requested that a blogger’s name be made public. After winning her landmark case in a New York Supreme Court, Google supplied Cohen with the identity of the blogger. A media frenzy erupted around Rosemary Port’s blog “Skanks in NYC”, which angered the former model. According to Port her right of privacy has been violated and as a result she is now suing Google for $15million.

As the Franklin case continues it would be interesting to see what effects this case is going to have within the online world. For one thing a High Court ruling was made in June in the United Kingdom stating that bloggers do not have the right to keep their identities secret anymore. In South Africa, well its citizens enjoy the freedom of expression…but only to an extent.

One of the key concerns which have caused major debates on the subject of Facebook is the matter of privacy. The fact of the matter is that this social media website has completely revolutionised the way we interact with people online. Without a second wasted people share their every thought, feeling, comments, photos, videos and shared links, and considering that 350million people are registered, Facebook is the undisputed king of social networking.

While many people revel at the mere thought of sharing all kinds of details about themselves, there has been the global concern about privacy and how sharing private information could affect us as individuals. The user did have the choice though as to how much information they are willing to share by merely going to the privacy setting and choosing what they want to share with whom. This changed dramatically though in December, 2009, when Facebook’s privacy settings changed in a fundamental way in that Facebook users couldn’t restrict access to their profile the way they used to.  Of course the reaction was one of outcry as this raged the debate of privacy, public information and Facebook even further.

The latest in the “Facebook privacy” saga came about on the 18^th of August, 2010, when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced their newest venture – Facebook Places – a Smartphone-based service. This foray into the world of location-based services’ main aim is to bring about 3 things:

• To help users share their exact location for social purposes;
• To help you as a user see who of your friends are nearby; and
• So that you may discover nearby places as well as new places by means of your Facebook friends’ profiles.

In light of the privacy debate focus was placed on Places’ security features wherein it was pointed out that the “check-ins” that users would select when pinpointing their location would be, by default, only visible to their friends. Of course the user will be able to customise the setting should they want to share this information with a broader group or restrict it to only a few selected friends. Moreover, people will only be able to tag those on their friends list in when checking in on Places. To ensure that mischievous behaviour is limited the service will only allow you to check in a friend if the user checks themselves in too, thereby avoiding users to check their friends in at embarrassing places. In case a user was tagged but prefer not to be, they will have the option to remove the tag or opt out from being tagged at all. There will also be a reporting feature on Places where users can report any locations listings that are either offensive, erroneous or outdated.

The day after the announcement Facebook launched the read API which allows people to read check-ins as well as providing them with information about a place. The write- and search API is currently in beta testing phase and said to be soon rolled out by the developers.

The question still remains though whether or not this is sharing too much of one’s private details. Facebook’s VP of Product Chris Cox shared his enthusiasm about the future and how this device will be able to tell us all kinds of facts about a place and which of our friends are there or have been there before, what pictures they shared when visiting the place and whether or not they had a good time. You need to ask yourself this though – do you really feel the need to share so much of yourself as individual? On the other hand, this could only mean great things for business owners and their online marketing strategy.

It is a known fact that during economically difficult times one of the areas that are mostly affected is advertising. Businesses look to find the ways and means to save money and their marketing budget is usually cut to save on expenditure. But history has a way of a proving case, such as marketing during a time of economic recession would actually be the best time for advertising. Point and case – Kellogg post the Great Depression. While other brands cut their advertising, Kellogg’s name was still visible, and as people never stopped spending, Kellogg was in the forefront of everybody’s mind. Their campaign paid off in the short and long term and until today Kellogg’s consumers are still loyal.

During the recent economic recession the majority of companies took a hit, and even those who were considered to be doing well, also felt the hunger pains. Advertising agencies in South Africa of course experienced this more than most and many had to retrench employees in order to stay head above water. This was of course because of the fact that again businesses cut on their marketing – the time when they needed it most to build on their equity and solidify their client base, not to mention gain new clients and taking on their competition.

Times have changed however, and so has the ball game. Where offline advertising – such as television, radio, newspapers, magazines and billboards – used to be the only way you could go about advertising your business, the birth of the World Wide Web quickly changed this. Today we have online advertising that represents businesses with new ways to go about marketing their service, product and/or brand. Although both kinds of advertising have their benefits and advantages, it has become clearer that online advertising have one or more advantages above offline advertising. But let’s compare shall we?

Costs

If you were to weigh up the differences in costs online advertising is by far cheaper than offline advertising. Purchasing airtime for a TV commercial is very costly, especially if you want the prime time spots when most of the targeted consumers are tuned in, and the risk is there of the channel being changed during ad commercials. Online advertising on the hand can afford you with a decent cost per click (CPC) budget and website advert. Moreover, an online advertising campaign will be sure to be more cost effective and controllable in the long run.

Target Audience

People tend to think that you simply need to design and create a website in order for it to be seen, but business owners need to remember that there are literally thousands of websites. Don’t let this scare you however because you have to keep this simple fact in mind. While consumers may read the newspaper or watch television on a daily basis, they are not particularly looking for a product or service. With online searches on Google for instance, they are specifically looking for a product or service, and are therefore much more likely to take the time to read your advertisement.

In this case your advertisement would be your website. With online advertising you can be very particular who your target audience are. Moreover, if your website is set up correctly, you will be able to track your statistics. This will give you the particulars of your viewers, such as their age, location, how they came upon your website, what keywords were used to search for your website, and so forth, thus giving you an edge on your marketing strategy.

Reach

With offline advertisements you can never be sure that your particular target audience paid much attention. Yes you can definitely say that X-amount of viewers was tuned in, but were they actually paying attention? With print ads there is of course the chance that the reader will simply page over. The fact is that online readers look at this form of advertising differently. They typed in those specific keywords into the search engine looking for a product and/or service and came upon your website. This is why online marketing plays such a significant role. When your website is properly optimized, you will be sure that your website will be one of the top search results that the reader finds, and by tracking the readers actions, you will be able to see exactly what pages they went on to on your website, how much time they spent on a page, and even if they left your website directly or clicked through to another page. In the online world this is referred to as the click-through rate (CTR) which is used to measure the success of an online campaign.

Speed of Campaign

Another advantage that online advertising have above offline advertising is the speed at which campaigns can run. While most offline ad campaigns can take quite some time before the reader/viewer even sees the ad, advertising online is much quicker. From the moment you publish a new page, story or pay per click (PPC) ad it will be live on the internet and have the potential to be viewed by your targeted audience instantaneously. This means that you have to be much more particular with your timing of running an ad campaign offline, while online allows you to take that new story or ad live here and now.

While we still believe that offline advertising definitely still has its place in the world, the fact of the matter is that online advertising is growing rapidly because of several reasons – most mentioned above. Does this mean that you should let go of your offline campaign and go fully online? Not necessarily. But you should definitely include online advertising as part of your marketing strategy. Not only is it much faster, cheaper and targeted, but online advertising is also more flexible and offer you as business owner options to get your message across. At the end of the day you can be certain that even during tough times, you will see a positive ROI turnout.

If you think that search engine optimization – or more commonly referred to as SEO – is all about keywords, then you might want to make yourself comfortable in front of the screen and continue reading this article. Although keywords have a very important role to play when optimizing a website, there are many other factors that have to be accounted for. This is especially true if you want to enjoy the monetary privileges websites holds in store for their owners.

If you are a business owner who are about to have a new website created from scratch, then you need to make sure that your website is ‘search engine friendly’. Suffice to say that the best way to go about creating a new website is by making use of the services of a company who has the proper know-how and experience in both website designing and SEO, such as iLead Online. If you have an existing website it can be used and optimized to your advantage. One factor that Google pays attention to though is the age of a website, which is why newer pages on an older website will definitely get faster recognition as a new website’s pages.

Now, say for instance that you are about to have your new website designed which will be optimized, the first thing you need to ask yourself is what it is that you want your website to achieve? Do you want readers to purchase your product, request your services, fill in an enquiry form, or simply contact your business directly? It’s only logical that you need to set up your goals at the very beginning so that you will know in which direction to steer your online marketing strategy. Once you have established your goals it will be necessary to evaluate your site, as well as your competition’s, to see what route should be taken to achieve the highest results.

Optimizing a website requires labour. So if you think about taking all kinds of short cuts you will learn that, although it may show some kind of success, the only way to achieve real results is by investing precious time. Moreover patience is a virtue when it comes to optimization as you may very well not see the fruits of your labour within weeks since you began. This is why you need to think of it this way – SEO is a long term investment. And seeing that more and more things are happening online, this is the place you want to be.

Apart from properly doing your research and planning for your website, the following factors will need to form part of your SEO campaign:

• Design – It is human nature that we use our senses in everything we do, which is why it is important that your website is visually appealing. Easy on the eye is always a good thing.
• Keywords – As mentioned before, keywords do play a significant role when it comes to search engine optimization. Be sure to find the keyword phrases that aren’t as sought after, but still attracts the right kind of readers to your site.
• Domain Name – Choosing the right domain name is vital as it can be used as part of your keyword strategy.
• Meta Tags – The Meta tags consists of the title-, description- and keyword tags. Properly optimized websites will always have Meta tags that are created (written) in a specific manner best suited for your website.
• Content Pages – This is where the services of specialised SEO Copywriters are needed. They will provide you with high quality, informative, optimized content pages. These pages can really make or break a website, as it will be bad for your business if the content is of no use to your reader, while good content can act as bait to achieve your goals.
• Navigation (Internal Links) – An efficient tree-like structure is a must.
• Link Building – Link to good sites with good rankings, and be sure to avoid link farms.
• Website Speed – Google recently decided to include ‘site speed’ into their search ranking algorithms.
• Freshness – It’s always good to keep on adding fresh content and changes to your website as Google likes fresh pages.

The abovementioned are merely a quick description of some of the things you need to do if you want your search engine optimization strategy to be successful. And as you can see this is not so much for dummies but will require a keen eye, passion, dedication, knowledge and experience – something we at iLead Online can proudly offer you. So without further ado be sure to begin your SEO process today by contacting us.

In our online world one thing is certain – content is king.  It is for this very reason why we place such emphasis on the importance of creating informative and genuine content pages specifically aimed at search engines, particularly Google.

Writing copy for websites is no easy task though.  While many people think that there is no difference between offline copywriting and web copywriting, nothing could be further from the truth.  To begin with there are more than 15 SEO factors that the copywriter needs to keep in mind while optimizing content.  Then there’s the daunting idea that failing to do so with any one of these factors might lead to an overall rank drop for the site, which is why we insist on using the services of professionally trained and experienced SEO Copywriters.

Another reason why web copywriting differs so much from offline copywriting is the fact that people interact differently to content on the web.  Google estimated that the average reader takes approximately 30 seconds to decide whether or not they find a particular page relevant and interesting. So instead of reading content like you would a book or magazine, the reader is scanning through it to find highlighted thoughts and links, following links from page to page. From this we can take it that the importance of optimized content is to draw your potential client in in order for them to get to know your product or services better after which they can make the ultimate decision to engage with your company.

In our last blog post on The Importance of Website Speed we briefly touched on the subject of content relevancy. Without a doubt this factor carries the most weight in Google’s search ranking algorithms, the “calculation” by which Google determines what website pages to give as result to your search. Whenever you do a search for a particular product, brand or subject Google’s spiders are sent out into the world wide web of websites and within mere seconds provide you with pages most relevant and of the highest quality in terms of your search. This is where keywords definitely plays a major role and why it is absolutely imperative your website is well optimized, making use of meta tags, link building, and so forth.

At the end of the day optimized copy serves not only as relevant and useful information to your visitors but also affects the overall ranking of the website by attracting the search engine spiders that will ensure that your website does well in general. This will enable you to set up goals to achieve, like getting a reader to fill in an online query, purchase a product or download content.  Whatever your goal/s may be though, you need to take the time, money and effort to invest in informative, relevant and well optimized content as an essential part of your marketing strategy.