The Perfect Landing Page. 12 Landing page Tips and Examples

Landing page best practice advice

Most discussion of web design in companies still naturally tends to focus on the home page. But, for companies who are running a lot of online marketing campaigns, the effectiveness of the different pages deeper within the site is vital to getting returns from these campaigns.
So this prompts the question, which factors make for the most effective landing page? Is a ‘Perfect Landing Page’ possible? This post gives a summary of my top 12 and places to look to find more.
If you’re into landing pages I recommend this excellent post written since I wrote this, decomposing 10 landing page examples.

Salesforce.com – an example of the Perfect Landing Page?

To illustrate these tips, I’m going to use an example I’ve used in training for a couple of years – it’s the Salesforce.com lead generation page for its CRM service (click to enlarge).  I think it illustrates many good practices such as removing the main nav which can be a distraction. I’ve marked up what I see as good about this format. It’s maybe not perfect, but much better than most! Let me know what you don’t like about it! Or how things differ for consumer sites!

If you want to read more on techniques to increase web site conversion I recommend my Web design best practice guide. This has many other tips and examples on landing page best practice.

Defining landing pages

First, of all, what is a landing page or microsite? Not everyone knows this jargon and actually, there’s no simple answer.
My definition is that landing page or microsites are: “Specific page(s) on a web site created for visitors referred from marketing campaigns which are designed to achieve a marketing outcome.”
Anything referred to as a landing page is intended to maximise conversion of visitors to this page or series of pages to a particular marketing outcome – sale, lead or change in brand metrics.
Most typically, the outcome is conversion to action, typically data capture where a site visitor fills in an online form to generate a marketing lead.

Landing page goals

Effective landing pages are those that meet their objectives, so let’s start with typical objectives. Often it is thought that response is everything – so objectives are not though through, but that this can lead to data capture pages that are too simple.
Typical communications objectives in order of importance are:

• Achieve registration typically to generate a lead (such as a quote for insurance in our example) which leads ultimately to sale
• Profile and qualify the site visitor in order to deliver more relevant follow-up marketing communications
• Explain the value proposition offered by the company to differentiate from other sites the visitor may visit during the buying process i.e. Answer the visitors questions.
• Communicate the brand values of the organisation running the campaign
• If the visitor doesn’t want to disclose their details right now, provide contact details for traditional sales channels such as a phone number, or give the visitor reasons to return to the site or engage them through other relevant content or offers

It is important to run through these objectives since sometimes it is just the two primary objectives related to data capture that mainly determine landing page design and not the secondary objectives which are equally important. The majority of the visitors to the landing page won’t actually convert, so it is important to give them a favourable experience also.

Different types of landing page

We have to bear in mind that there are different types of landing pages that work best depending on the campaign objectives and whether it is a short-term or long-term campaign. There are two basic choices. The first is a landing page integrated into the sites stucture and consistent with standard page templates and navigation for the site. The second is a landing page specifically created for the campaign with a different look and feel. Here are some of the pros and cons.

A. Landing page(s) integrated into site architecture and style

It is most efficient in terms of effort in content creation to make landing pages part of the main site information architecture. The downside is that they may not work so well in terms of converting both direct referrers and browsers navigating from elsewhere on the site. They also need to be search optimised, which may add to costs of the campaign. This is an example of integrated pages for annual travel insurance (http://www.norwichunion.com/ travel-insurance/ annual-travel-insurance).
Such landing pages in particular category or product pages use what is known as deep linking.

B. Bespoke landing pages that are not part of the main site structure or style

These are used where a more “stripped down” page than standard content is required which focuses on converting visitors from an online ad campaign. Alternatively, if it is a short-term branding campaign then it may be more straightforward to create a microsite separate from the main site with a different look and feel. This often happens where resource cannot be found to create a microsite within the main site, or it is felt that the existing site look and feel cannot deliver the brand impact required.
So this approach is used since it can potentially produce higher conversion rates or produce a microsite more consistent with the campaign goals and style. The disadvantages are that this approach requires more effort and maintenance and often result in a poorer user experience since the page will look and work differently to elsewhere in the site. If it is a completely separate site with a separate domain, a big disadvantage of this approach is that due to the Google sandbox effect, it is not likely to be included in the search results for several months. Given this it is really essential that the site is incorporated within the same domain – for example www.quotemehappy.com redirects to the main Norwich Union site.
So, companies need to work out whether the cost of producing this type of page is offset by the potentially higher conversion rates and better campaign results. Although this approach is surpisingly quite common, I think the approach is often taken for convenience eventhough it is more expensive in the longer term. I know of one E-commerce manager for a multi-national technology vendor who tries to educate their hundreds of web and traditional marketing specialists to not use the bespoke landing page approach, but to always try to integrate into existing site structure.
Often though there is not one right or wrong approach and a hybrid can be used, i.e. you create tailored landing pages only for high volume/high expenditure generic Adwords pages or for major offline ad campaigns.

The home page can be a landing page

Note that a landing page could potentially be the home page although this is not typically best practice. But, if a company has a limited range of products or the main campaign objective is to generate awareness rather than response.

Different referrer types

To make the landing page effective, we also need to think through the full range of places the visitor may originate. There are 3 main origins we need to design the landing page to accomodate:

1. Online media placement. Visitors can be referred by clickthrough from any online referrer such as a search engine, online ad, affiliate site or e-mail campaign. There are two main types of landing page for these placements:
2. Offline media placement.
   Offline ads or direct mail may have a specific campaign URL (CURL) such as www.quotemehappy.com
   This is the landing page for these offlin referrers.
3. Visitors that navigate from elsewhere on the site. Such visitors are not using the page(s) as a “landing page”, but still need to be accomodated if you are using a deep linking strategy.

Landing page success factors

To be effective, landing pages need to combine the following:

• Usability
• Accessibility
• Persuasion
• Develop trust in the brand

My Twelve microsite success factors

Before I run through the success factors, remember that guidelines are only guidelines, they of course, have exceptions. The only way to be sure of what works for your audience and your market is to conduct tests such as usability studies, A/B testing or multivariate testing. Having the right web analytics tool is vital to this.
As a minimum, you should readily be able to view data on bounce rates (the proportion of visitors who leave the page without visiting more pages) and conversion rates (the proportion of visitors who complete the intended outcome) for different referral sources (e.g. paid vs natural search vs online ads). Ideally, it should also enable you to complete A/B testing where different visitors are served different pages so differences in bounce and conversion rates can be assessed.
Second, remember that the guidelines are dependent on the users typical viewable area of screen. While many still design for a minimum of 1064X768 or even 800 by 600, the latest data on screen resolutions shows that over three quarters are now higher than 1024 by 768 although this is skewed by the designer audience of that source! So check your own analytics!
However, if browsers open a new window, for example from search results page, the new window may be smaller than full-screen.
So finally! these are my top 12 guidelines for landing page effectiveness:
ONE. Deliver RELEVANCE.
Unlike casual visits by browsers, visitors arrive on landing page with a directed goal or intention in mind. So the first thing you have to do is instantly show relevance to help visitors achieve that goal.
A clear headline should show relevance and also engage the visitor to scan down the page. You need to show the visitor they have selected the right place to find the brand, product, deal, information or experience they are looking for, so the headline must clearly indicate this.
Other key “relevance messages” should be readily scannable through chosing the right headlines and with panels drawing the eye to the different areas as in the Huggies example. Tests tend to show that larger fonts give better response.
Since hitting the landing page is often the first experience of a company, we have to answer basic questions that the customer has about the company such as “Who are you?”, “What do you do?”, “Where are you?” “Do I trust you?” You may do these on the home page, but does the navigation on the landing page allow these questions to be answered. Standard menu options such as “About Us” or “Contact Us” can achieve these.
TWO. INTEGRATE with referral source(s). The customer journey to your web site started elsewhere. To deliver relevance also requires consistency with what they have already read and seen to meet their expectation.
So in terms of message, branding and creative the landing page needs to deliver an integrated communication. This applies particularly to offline ads, interactive ads and e-mails.
The key message on the landing page needs to be consistent with the key message of the referral source. So again, you need to show the visitor they have selected the right place to find the brand, product, deal, information or experience they are looking for, so the headline must clearly indicate this.
THREE. Provide sufficient DETAIL to support the response decision. More generally, the whole experience needs to be right to generate response.
For me, one of the most important aspect of landing pages, and one that is often not right, is that there isn’t enough detailed information on which the visitor can decide to signup.
To help determine the right-level of information, best practice is to use design personas to identify typical information required and the gap relative to what you deliver. Also think about the level of “domain knowledge” the user has – do your technical product descriptions make sense. Also think about “tool knowledge” – where your landing page requires using additional tools what knowledge is required to use them effectively and are you providing the right explanations.
FOUR. Start the user on their journey. The design should make the next step clear and minimise the number of clicks required for response since every extra click required in response will generally reduce response by 10%. It is best practice to include the initial data capture on the first page as shown in the Salesforce.com example.
If the response mechanism is on another page use multiple calls-to action to gain response since some visitors will respond to images and some text hyperlinks. Make all images clearly clickable, for example by making them look like buttons.
Form-related approaches to improve the journey:

• Limiting the options on each page is an effective technique.
• Grabbing attention in first 30 seconds through a headline and lead that reflects ad copy and “isn’t too clever”, i.e. be direct.
• If it is a multi-page form, then draw users in with easier initial questions.
• Allow the form to be saved part way through the quotation
• Use dynamic headlines related to referrer including search keyphrase to help deliver relevance
• Use focus groups to decide what to test – marketers who are too close to the problem may disregard factors that are important to customers

The words used to form calls-to-action are critical to create a scent trail that users of the site follow. An effective scent is delivered where the words match what the user wants to know or achieve.
FIVE. Use the right PAGE LENGTH. This is a difficult one to give guidelines on. The right copy / page length is one that minimises the knowledge gap between what the user want to know and what you tell them.
Some designers would suggest that content must fit on one page that doesn’t require scrolling at 800 by 600 resolution. But short copy is often inconsistent with Guideline 1. Also tests have shown that page can be scrollable – users will scroll if they appear scrollable. However, it is best if key information include response mechanism are above the fold.
To summarise, I would say, make it short (for impulsive readers) AND long (for readers who want to read more).
Of course, the only way to get the length right is to test. This Marketing Experiments test
suggested that long-copy outperformed when driving visitors to a product page from Google Adwords.
SIX. Use meaningful graphics. Graphics must be consistent with the campaign and generate empathy for the audience. Don’t understimate the importance of quality graphics – stock graphics rarely work. It is difficult to assess how graphics influence conversion rate, so the implication is test.
SEVEN. Remove menu options? Another guideline that causes disagreement. Removing menu options will often increase conversion rate since less choice of where to click is offered, but for those who don’t respond will give a poor experience and prevent them browsing other parts of the site. Often a compromise is best with a reduction in menu options to top-level options only.
EIGHT. Consider using a ‘flowable’ or liquid layout design This maximises real estate at a given resolution – Amazon do this, Orange don’t.
Although this can work well for a retailer to show more products above the fold in a category, this is achieved with a loss of control of design. For landing pages, a controlled, fixed design will often work best.
NINE. Remember search marketing
There are three aspects to this. First an offline campaign will lead to people searching on your brand or the campaign strapline.
Make sure you are using paid search to direct visitors to the relevant pages particularly during the campaign.
Second, if the page is integrated into the web site and will be used in the long-term, optimise it for relevant search keyphrases using the search engine optimisation techniques described here.
Three, Google sends out a robot “Adbots Google” to test landing page for relevance and speed, so make sure your <title>, headings and body copy include the keywords you’re using to trigger your ad and including in ad copy.
TEN. Remember the non-responders
Provide a choice for those who don’t respond despite your carefully crafted landing pages. Provide a reasonably prominent (trackable) phone number or perhaps a call-back/live chat option. Also provide some options for them to browse or search elsewhere on the site.
ELEVEN. TIMITI!
TIMITI is a term coined by Jim Sterne, author of Web Metrics
It stands for Try It! Measure It! Tweak It! i.e. online content effectiveness should be reviewed and improved continuously rather than as a periodic or ad-hoc process. Because the web is a new medium and the access platforms, user behaviours and competitor approach all change continuously, what works at the start of the year will certainly not work as well by the end of the year.
TWELVE. Consider landing page longevity
Landing pages are often used for short-term campaigns. If so, you need to carefully manage when they and links to them from within the nav are expired. Risks include out-of-date offers and visitors typing in URLS which are no longer valid. Use of a custom 404 Error page is essential to manage these problems gracefully.
Finally, remember that there are always exceptions to guidelines and some have suggested that many of the commonly held usability guidelines are myths
See also Bryan Eisenbergs ten unwritten Internet design rules
So that’s my guidance, as always, tell me what you have found. Share the approaches you have found effective. Thanks.

Editor: Alex Rojas writes articles related with technology, social media and marketing. Sponsored by Costa Rica Hotels, Motor de reservas en linea and Travel to Costa Rica

The Most Powerful Secret In Facebook Ads

Yesterday we discussed the trick to growing a Facebook fan base — to place the like button everywhere, get folks to like everything, as treat your fan base like an email list. Now that you have the initial set of fans, here’s where the fun begins.

Facebook has 3 types of connection targeting: users who are fans, users who aren’t fans, and friends of fans. It’s this last option that is amazing– so awesome that I’m afraid public mention of it may cause Facebook to remove it. And that’s why we keep testing, plus don’t reveal all our tips, but I digress.
Let’s consider a poker site– the National League of Poker. When we target only fans of the page, Facebook gives us an audience of 2,060 people:

The actual fan count is 2,894, but that’s because Facebook’s estimate are delayed and we’re automatically filtering by US 18+. By using the first connection targeting option, we can continue to nurture those folks who have become fans. As a marketer, you know that you want to say something different to folks who already know you versus those who don’t, right? So why is it that Facebook advertisers treat everyone the same? When you use the first connection option, you’re trying to move people from the interest stage to either desire or action. You should not be trying to generate awareness with these folks who are already fans. Note that how our messaging is quite different than “Learn how to play poker!”
If you already are a fan of the page, the like button won’t show up, by the way. It will just say “You like this ad/page”– and if you have other friends who like it, they’ll show up, too. Sometimes the unlike button shows- not sure what governs when it shows. There are so few advertisers that are sending traffic to Facebook pages and also using connection targeting that it’s hard to tell.
Finally, this is what you’ve been waiting for. The average Facebook user has 130 friends. So the 2,060 fans allow us to reach 304,800 people.

This particular example works out to 148 friends per fan. The larger the base, the smaller the number of friends per user. It’s partly that your initial users are more likely to be early adopters and have more fans in general. But it’s also that the more fans you have, the greater the chance of overlap between them, such that the unduplicated audience decreases. When you have over 500,000 fans, then your factor of reach vs fans may be only low double digits. While decreased reach may appear bad, this is actually VERY good, since it means that each time you show the ad, it’s showing MULTIPLE people below providing endorsements. Awesomeness on Facebook = maximizing PEER PRESSURE!
Consider an ad for a pizza restaurant that says they have the best pizza in town. Yawn. That’s what 99% of advertising is about– in fact, pretty much all advertising outside of Facebook is like this– we just tune it out. Now imagine the same ad, but below it, your friend says they like it. Might you trust the claim a bit more– perhaps even be more likely to drop in and order pizza the next time you drive by the place?
How do you think this may affect the CTR as well as the conversion rates?
What if we could say this to 304,800 people– showing each of them an ad that had their particular friend’s endorsement below it?
What if you got clever with your ad copy to make outrageous claims?

By the way, these are fake examples– you’ll have to see what you can get by Facebook’s ad review team. The winning psychology: if you’re doing retargeting (remarketing) on Google, then you can use similar ads in your direct fan and friends of fans (FOF) targeting. For example, if someone has abandoned their shopping cart, you can say “Hey, why didn’t you buy? Here’s 10% off now to make it worth your while!” And you can put a retargeting pixel on your Facebook page, but that’s something to discuss in a post by itself.
Now consider the reach you have when you multiply your fan base by 150 and hit each of those folks with ads that have endorsements attached. The Las Vegas metro has 606,460 people on Facebook.

UNLV has 14,151 fans of our page of their 3 Las Vegas stadiums. We can cover over 50% of Las Vegas Facebook users with an endorsed ad. Consider if you’re a dentist in a suburb of 100,000 people. You need only a fan base of 500 people to effectively dominate your town with endorsed (FOF) ads– to have more than 50% coverage of a geo-graphic area.
Now before you go crazy with FOF targeting, consider when it works and when it doesn’t:

• B2B: Nearly a complete FAIL. Why? When you do FOF targeting for an electronics manufacturer targeting design engineers, you end up targeting that design engineer’s family and friends who are decidedly NOT interested in the latest data sheets on your 16 bit transformer assemblies. For B2B, use workplace and interest targeting to hit their place of employment and title.
• Consumer products and entertainment: ABSOLUTELY! Targeting the friends of of your fans is highly likely to result in something interesting to them. Ask yourself what percentage of a user’s fans will be interested in their endorsement of a new movie, their favorite brand of soap, or whatever.
• Local: This is the goldmine of Facebook ads. People’s Facebook friends tend to be people they see and interact with in real-life. There is a high likelihood that you can leverage that fan’s recommendation broadly across their friend base. You can make it even better by adding a geographic and age filter, so you’re not showing ads to old college alumni or children, depending on what your business does. BlitzLocal has asserted that Facebook is the sleeping giant of local, because of the wealth of trusted information available and effectiveness of targeting. We don’t believe this will replace Google, but rather, augment it.

By the way, users who are being hit with this targeting aren’t aware that the advertiser is doing so– unless you are as blatant as the example I’ve provided. The ad itself doesn’t show what targeting criteria was used to match them to the ad. Note to Facebook: this would be a cool feature– and it would assuage many of the privacy concerns, where users are afraid that anything they have on their profile or interactions on Facebook is fair game for ad targeting.
There is a third targeting option, which is to exclude folks who are fans. Negation targeting matters only when your fan base is large enough that you risk showing awareness ads to folks who are fans.
TYING IT ALL TOGETHER
Few people realize that Facebook plays at all points in the conversion funnel– they simplistically believe that Facebook is just display advertising with social elements, and that Google is for conversion. It’s true that Google is primarily demand harvesting and that Facebook is more towards demand generation.

(image courtesy of Facebook)

More accurately, because you can target whether people are totally new to you, are connected to someone who does know you, or knows you– that lets you separate out your messaging and conversion paths. Most marketers are familiar with the AIDA funnel (Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action). And you can see how clearly Facebook’s ad system allows you to hit people at each of these points.

Advertisers inherently understand that word of mouth has been the most powerful marketing vehicle– previously unmeasurable. These ad options on Facebook, which we’ve only superficially covered here, allow not only for the measurement of word of mouth, but the aggressive amplification of it. Social media is inherently about leveraging trust to promote your business.
Was it Mark Twain who said something like “The key to success is to be genuine…. Fake that and you have it made!” Seriously, when you have a solid brand, you get an amazing boost from advertising on Facebook– the investment you’ve made in your brand means that users are already aware of who you are, are more likely to like your page, and are more willing to endorse you– whether they know it or not.
In our next article, we’ll discuss the next phase of your Facebook campaigns– how to manage your pages effectively such that you build upon the principles we’ve discussed so far. What if your company has multiple brands and multiple products in multiple countries. Do you create one page for each combination of country, product, artist, and language? Maybe have one page per country and then separate tabs for each product, so local fans can interact? Or maybe one page per product with tabs by country? The answer is none of the above and we’ll explain why.

Dennis Yu is Chief Executive Officer of BlitzLocal, a firm specializing in the intersection of Facebook and local advertising. Mr. Yu has been featured in National Public Radio, TechCrunch, Entrepreneur Magazine, CBS Evening News, and other venues. He is an internationally sought after speaker and 
author on all things Facebook. BlitzLocal serves both national brands and local service businesses.

Editor: Alex Rojas writes articles related with technology, social media and marketing. Sponsored by Costa Rica Hotels, Motor de reservas en linea and Travel to Costa Rica

Five critical trends hotel marketers need to know

There is no doubt that user-generated content and the Social Web have sent ripples through our industry, causing us to re-look at the way we approach online hotel marketing. This article outlines five key trends in hospitality that hotel marketers should be aware of as they approach online reputation management. by Paolo Torchio of Sabre Hospitality Solutions


There is no doubt that user-generated content and the Social Web have sent ripples through our industry, causing us to re-look at the way we approach online hotel marketing. When sites like TripAdvisor first grew in popularity, we found ourselves taking a reactive approach: how can we be sure that our reputations are not damaged by negative reviews? Today’s trends show that this content is not only here to stay but also growing, and hotel marketers have the opportunity to use this to their advantage. Below, Paolo Torchio outlines five key trends in hospitality that hotel marketers should be aware of as they approach online reputation management.

Trend to know: Consumers Believe Other Consumers, Not You

75% of people don’t believe that companies tell the truth in advertisements, according to a Yankelovich study. At the same time, Nielsen research indicates that 9 out of 10 consumers believe another consumer like them more than they believe corporate messaging. For organizations used to controlling the communication people hear about them online, this can be an unpleasant awakening.

The new reality requires us to take a different approach to the way we promote our hotels. We must understand how much the customer is in control, and how we have to operate in this new reality.

Opportunity for you: Encourage your guests and supporters to act as salespeople

Use this trend to your advantage. Instead of just being limited to the salespeople within your organization, plan a way to mobilize your entire customer base to act as brand ambassadors - selling for you.

How?

Design remarkable experiences that get guests talking. Consistently deliver extraordinary service, so guests feel safe and comfortable referring their friends. And then actively encourage guests to share this experience with others online. When you’re confident in the product you deliver, this should be easy.


Trend to know: Too much online chatter causes confusion, missed opportunities

Travelers are dramatically increasing the volume of data they publish to the web – both intentionally and unintentionally. Cross-posting between social media networks and increased integration means that a single activity by one person may be posted across 10 different websites. There is a lot of chatter on the social web, and not all of it is feedback we can use if left unfiltered.

If your organization doesn’t have the right systems and procedures to gather insights, you can quickly become paralyzed by the overwhelming volume of data.

Opportunity: Use better listening and reporting tools to stay ahead of the competition

Technology can give you the advantage over competitors in this area. By using a reputation management tool such as ReviewPro, you can identify and act on opportunities that your competitors miss.

Create position-specific reporting that executives, managers, and frontline staff can use immediately in their day-to-day jobs. Insights need to be simple and there must be no confusion on what action should be taken. It should not require a “guru” to interpret. 2011 is becoming the year of the practitioner, not the guru. If we are going to make social media analysis something everyone takes part in, then we need to simplify it so non-specialists can understand the action steps needed.

Trend to know: Consumers making last-minute switches based on online reviews

The World Travel Market’s 2010 Industry Report reported that 35% of travelers change their choice of hotel after browsing social media and review sites like TripAdvisor.

People go to sites like TripAdvisor and make last-minute decisions on which hotel to choose. Online review sites affect people in the final stage of the buying cycle - just before they make a reservation. They’re already decided on the destination, the length of their trip, and now they’re ready to buy. The question is: how are you presented when people come to buy?

Your Opportunity: Give the right impression at the right time.

Make sure that the reviews people see are positive if you want to capture these bookings. How? By listening to guest feedback shared through online reviews, making changes as needed, and continually focusing on improvement.

Trend to know: Negative reviews are directly correlated with lower revenues

But while many hotels are still looking at online reviews as a threat to their reputation and are afraid of losing control over their brand, we highly encourage you to see online reviews as an opportunity. The potential of online reviews on sales becomes very clear when Jennifer Davies, senior content manager at Expedia, explains: “On Expedia.com, good reviews of 4.0 or 5.0 generate more than double the conversion of a review of 1.0 – 2.9.”

In another interview, Expedia’s VP of Supply Strategy and Analysis, Brian Ferguson, shared that a 1 point increase in a review score (on a 5-point scale) equates to a 9% increase in average daily rate (ADR). At the point we are right now with hotels struggling to recover from the global economic crisis, and with no more cost cutting options available, measures that increase conversion rates and increase ADR are critical.

Your Opportunity: Boost revenues with more positive reviews

This trend can, of course, be taken positively. By encouraging positive reviews, you can increase revenue.

Trend to know: Real-time web makes delayed responses ineffective

Social media author and thought leader David Meerman Scott opens his book Real Time Marketing and PR with an anecdote of his days working on Wall Street in 1985. It’s a scene we’ve all seen in movies: brokers fill the trading floor, casually talking and joking with colleagues until the moment when the room is alerted to a newsflash that sets the room alive into the split-second, highly organized, “Buy! Buy! Sell! Sell!” type of chaos where many fortunes have been made or lost.

“Within that minute the traders who got their orders placed a split-second faster had earned their daily bread. Being first with the news is valuable currency that earns them lucrative deals from their clients,” says Scott. “Now, it’s like we all work on Wall Street. Social media is becoming real time media, and we have to act fast to capitalize on opportunities.”

Your Opportunity: Automate engagement and response :

Real-time social media tools and a solid response program are directly connected to higher revenue and increased customer engagement. Look into adapting a set of social media tools that will work together to maximize your interactions with customers, increase your conversion opportunities across the Social Web, and notify you anytime someone mentions your hotel in social media, enabling you to respond quickly.

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Paolo Torchio is Vice President of E-Marketing and Revenue Consulting at Sabre Hospitality Solutions. Sabre Hospitality Solutions provides marketing, distribution, and technology solutions to the global hospitality industry. Sabre Hospitality Solutions recently launched SocialConversion, a suite of tools to create engagement and conversion opportunities for hotels through social media. Additionally, Sabre Hospitality has entered into an agreement with ReviewPro to offer online reputation and social media monitoring solutions to its hotels worldwide.


Editor: Cristian Segura writes articles related with technology, social media and marketing. Sponsored by Costa Rica Hotels, Motor de reservas en linea and Travel to Costa Rica

Twitter podría incluir mensajes con publicidad

La famosa red social de microblogging, siempre ha mantenido una política de publicidad pasiva al solo promover algunas cuentas patrocinadas y ciertos mensajes de marcas en las columnas laterales en su web, pero ahora se han planteado la idea de incluir mensajes patrocinados en la línea de tiempo de los usuarios.

Esto quiere decir que las personas podrían encontrar entre los mensajes que escriben las personas o servicios que siguen, algunos con publicidad por parte de las empresas que llegasen a acuerdos con Twitter. Este cambio en las políticas de publicidad de Twitter podría darse dentro de ocho semanas, y la red social con esto ofrecería a las empresas la posibilidad de conocer estadísticas del éxito de sus mensajes y además podrían programarlos por horas y rangos de usuarios.

Esta idea no es la primera vez que suena, ya que hace un año la red social plantearía el volver su publicidad más activa, pero no es hasta ahora que se haría real. Además, ya es posible colocar en las "frases más habladas" (Trending Topics) campañas publicitarias mediante pago.

Editor: Cristian Segura writes articles related with technology, social media and marketing. Sponsored by Costa Rica Hotels, Motor de reservas en linea and Travel to Costa Rica

Google Forecloses On Content Farms With “Farmer” Algorithm Update

In January, Google promised that it would take action against content farms that were gaining top listings with “shallow” or “low-quality” content. Now the company is delivering, announcing a change to its ranking algorithm designed take out such material.
New Change Impacts 12% Of US Results

The new algorithm — Google’s “recipe” for how to rank web pages — starting going live yesterday, the company told me in an interview today.

Google changes its algorithm on a regular basis, but most changes are so subtle that few notice. This is different. Google says the change impacts 12% (11.8% is the unrounded figure) of its search results in the US , a far higher impact on results than most of its algorithm changes. The change only impacts results in the US. It may be rolled out worldwide in the future.

While Google has come under intense pressure in the past month to act against content farms, the company told me that this change has been in the works since last January.
Officially, Not Aimed At Content Farms

Officially, Google isn’t saying the algorithm change is targeting content farms. The company specifically declined to confirm that, when I asked. However, Matt Cutts — who heads Google’s spam fighting team — told me, “I think people will get the idea of the types of sites we’re talking about.”

Well, there are two types of sites “people” have been talking about in a way that Google has noticed: “scraper” sites and “content farms.” It mentioned both of them in a January 21 blog post:

We’re evaluating multiple changes that should help drive spam levels even lower, including one change that primarily affects sites that copy others’ content and sites with low levels of original content. We’ll continue to explore ways to reduce spam, including new ways for users to give more explicit feedback about spammy and low-quality sites.

As “pure webspam” has decreased over time, attention has shifted instead to “content farms,” which are sites with shallow or low-quality content.

I’ve bolded the key sections, which I’ll explore more next.
The “Scraper Update”

About a week after Google’s post, Cutts confirmed that an algorithm change targeting “scraper” sites had gone live:

This was a pretty targeted launch: slightly over 2% of queries change in some way, but less than half a percent of search results change enough that someone might really notice. The net effect is that searchers are more likely to see the sites that wrote the original content rather than a site that scraped or copied the original site’s content.

“Scraper” sites are those widely defined as not having original content but instead pulling content in from other sources. Some do this through legitimate means, such as using RSS files with permission. Others may aggregate small amounts of content under fair use guidelines. Some simply “scrape” or copy content from other sites using automated means — hence the “scraper” nickname.

In short, Google said it was going after sites that had low-levels of original content in January and delivered a week later.

By the way, sometimes Google names big algorithm changes, such as in the case of the Vince update. Often, they get named by WebmasterWorld, where a community of marketers watches such changes closely, as happened with last year’s Mayday Update.

In the case of the scraper update, no one gave it any type of name that stuck. So, I’m naming it myself the “Scraper Update,” to help distinguish it against the “Farmer Update” that Google announced today.
But “Farmer Update” Really Does Target Content Farms

“Farmer Update?” Again, that’s a name I’m giving this change, so there’s a shorthand way to talk about it. Google declined to give it a public name, nor do I see one given in a WebmasterWorld thread that started noticing the algorithm change as it rolled out yesterday, before Google’s official announcement.

Postscript: Internally, Google told me this was called the “Panda” update, but they didn’t want that on-the-record when I wrote this original story. About a week later, they revealed the internal name in a Wired interview.

How can I say the Farmer Update targets content farms when Google specifically declined to confirm that? I’m reading between the lines. Google previously had said it was going after them.

Since Google originally named content farms as something it would target, you’ve had some of the companies that get labeled with that term push back that they are no such thing. Most notable has been Demand Media CEO Richard Rosenblatt, who previously told AllThingsD about Google’s planned algorithm changes to target content farms:

It’s not directed at us in any way.

I understand how that could confuse some people, because of that stupid “content farm” label, which we got tagged with. I don’t know who ever invented it, and who tagged us with it, but that’s not us…We keep getting tagged with “content farm”. It’s just insulting to our writers. We don’t want our writers to feel like they’re part of a “content farm.”

I guess it all comes down to what your definition of a “content farm” is. From Google’s earlier blog post, content farms are places with “shallow or low quality content.”

In that regard, Rosenblatt is right that Demand Media properties like eHow are not necessarily content farms, because they do have some deep and high quality content. However, they clearly also have some shallow and low quality content.

That content is what the algorithm change is going after. Google wouldn’t confirm it was targeting content farms, but Cutts did say again it was going after shallow and low quality content. And since content farms do produce plenty of that — along with good quality content — they’re being targeted here. If they have lots of good content, and that good content is responsible for the majority of their traffic and revenues, they’ll be fine. In not, they should be worried.
More About Who’s Impacted

As I wrote earlier, Google says it has been working on these changes since last January. I can personally confirm that several of Google’s search engineers were worrying about what to do about content farms back then, because I was asked about this issue and thoughts on how to tackle it, when I spoke to the company’s search quality team in January 2010. And no, I’m not suggesting I had any great advice to offer — only that people at Google were concerned about it over a year ago.

Since then, external pressure has accelerated. For instance, start-up search engine Blekko blocked sites that were most reported by its users to be spam, which included many sites that fall under the content farm heading. It gained a lot of attention for the move, even if the change didn’t necessarily improve Blekko’s results.

In my view, that helped prompt Google to finally push out a way for Google users to easily block sites they dislike from showing in Google’s results, via Chrome browser extension to report spam.

Cutts, in my interview with him today, made a point to say that none of the data from that tool was used to make changes that are part of the Farmer Update. However, he went on to say that of the top 50 sites that were most reported as spam by users of the tool, 84% of them were impacted by the new ranking changes. He would not confirm or deny if Demand’s eHow site was part of that list.

“These are sites that people want to go down, and they match our intuition,” Cutts said.

In other words, Google crafted a ranking algorithm to tackle the “content farm problem” independently of the new tool, it says — and it feels like tool is confirming that it’s getting the changes right.
The Content Farm Problem

By the way, my own definition of a content farm that I’ve been working on is like this:

* Looks to see what are popular searches in a particular category (news, help topics)
* Generates content specifically tailored to those searches
* Usually spends very little time and or money, even perhaps as little as possible, to generate that content

The problem I think content farms are currently facing is with that last part — not putting in the effort to generate outstanding content.

For example, last night I did a talk at the University Of Utah about search trends and touched on content farm issues. A page from eHow ranked in Google’s top results for a search on “how to get pregnant fast,” a popular search topic. The advice:

The class laughed at the “Enjoyable Sex Is Key” advice as the first tip for getting pregnant fast. Actually, the advice that you shouldn’t get stressed makes sense. But this page is hardly great content on the topic. Instead, it seems to fit the “shallow” category that Google’s algorithm change is targeting. And the page, there last night when I was talking to the class, is now gone.

Perhaps the new “curation layer” that Demand talked about in it earnings call this week will help in cases like these. Demand also defended again in that call that it has quality content.

Will the changes really improve Google’s results? As I mentioned, Blekko now automatically blocks many content farms, a move that I’ve seen hailed by some. What I haven’t seen is any in-depth look at whether what remains is that much better. When I do spot checks, it’s easy to find plenty of other low quality or completely irrelevant content showing up.

Cutts tells me Google feels the change it is making does improve results according to its own internal testing methods. We’ll see if it plays out that way in the real world.