Department store giant Myer will push online sales as a key growth factor during the next five years but warns expensive shipping continues to be a problem, chief executive Bernie Brookes has said. However, one retail expert says the take-up of online retail in Australia…
Businesses constantly updating their websites with new content will be the main beneficiaries of Google Caffeine, which will add sites to the search index merely seconds after they are uploaded, SEO experts say.
But SMEs don’t need to change their SEO strategies dramatically to take advantage of the new program, as it only affects the speed at which pages are uploaded and not the order in which they are ranked.
Google introduced its Caffeine update last year, but that was only for testers and now the new index is being rolled out for all users worldwide. It should be live over the next few days.
In a blog post, Google software engineer Carrie Grimes explained the new index was a response to more “real-time” pages being updated constantly, like news, forum posts and updates on sites like Facebook and Twitter. These sites are being updated by the second with new user content.
The Google Caffeine update will mean a user can search for new content just seconds after that content has been uploaded.
The majority of internet users are focused on connecting with friends, downloading illegal movies and discovering bargains, according to Google’s list of the most popular 1,000 websites.
But in a disappointment for Australian online businesses, only two local sites managed to crack the list, and one of those was the local subsidiary of online auction giant eBay. The other was news portal Ninemsn.com.au.
Reseo chief executive Chris Thomas says it isn’t surprising Australian websites didn’t make the top 1,000, with the country lacking an international “blockbuster” site.
“One aspect of that is that a lot of Australians access international sites, such as Facebook, which helps these international sites get even bigger,” he says.
“But the main reason is that we just haven’t come up with a big global website that a lot of users want to be a part of on that scale. There needs to be more of an international presence.”
While Thomas says the local industry lacks the sort of venture capital needed to start such a large international site, he says smaller businesses can take some notice from Google’s list and use analytics tools to compare their performance against rival sites in order to increase traffic.
“Use tools like Google Analytics to stack up sites against you and see how you are going, and use sites like complete.com. That’s how a lot of sites start to realise how they can get more traffic.”
Here are five business trends to take from Google’s list of the top 1,000 most popular sites.
The email branding survey, which builds on a 2005 Epsilon study, explores the impact of permission-based email marketing as well as specific vertical product categories, including financial services, retail, CPG, and pharmaceuticals/healthcare, MarketingCharts reports.
Epsilon found that permission-based email marketing campaigns extend far beyond e-commerce transactions and also have a significant impact on purchasing behavior and consumer loyalty in the brick- and-mortar world.Key study findings:
> 57% of consumers feel they have a more positive impression of companies when they receive email from them.
> 40% said that simply receiving email has a positive impact on their likelihood to make a future purchase a company.
> 71% remember email communications when making purchases at the sending company’s web site.
> 50% said they’re more likely to buy products from companies who send them email, whether their purchases are online or at a place of business.
> One-third said they usually visit sites directly instead of clicking on an email link.
A new worldwide study from ComScore has shown that whilst Microsoft, and in particularly Windows Live Messenger, still dominates time spent online with nearly 15% share of attention. However YouTube and Facebook alone accounted for nearly 10% of the 27 billion hours spent online in September 2009 with 1. 2billion and 1.4 billion hours respectively.
If you’re one of the 175 million people who log onto Facebook everyday, then you may be constantly exposed to marketing messages, according to sociologist Hope Schau. Cal State Long Beach Associate Dean for Accreditation Mary Wolfinbarger-Celsi introduced Schau to about 110 people in the…
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