Does your on-site search help Specifiers find what they want?

Google Analyics have just produced a very entertaining video to show what Google Analytics is like in real life.

The video is aimed at e-commerce businesses but there is no reason why this video also contains a message for us marketers in the construction specification market. Can the specifiers who visit  your website find what they want? What are they searching for when they hit your site?Read More

Pauley Creative interview digital file sharing platform SpecifiedBy

A few weeks back I discovered SpecifiedBy via LinkedIn Groups, a digital file sharing platform for building product manufacturers. I approached the founder of the platform, Darren Lester to see if he would be up for explaining what SpecifiedBy is and who its for.

We know our readers are predominantly marketers from building product manufacturers and therefore felt this would be useful for our readers. If you would like to be part of the BETA testing team of SpecifiedBy platform then please email them here. You will also receive a 12 month FREE subscription to the platform for doing so.

Enjoy!Read More

5 construction social sites you’re probably not monitoring

All the rave is about commercial social sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn but since doing quite a few online competitor and mention analysis; I’ve come across some social sites, mainly forums, which I would consider absolute goldmines for information when researching mentions of your brand online.

Firstly I’ve some across many conversations about some of the biggest brands in construction that took place back in late 90’s. It’s probably safe to say these companies are not aware of them. Read More

What does good SEO on a website look like?

Firstly thank you to everyone who joined the webinar today on ‘What good SEO looks like on a website’. I hope it was useful and allowed you to assess your own sites and see if it included the basic elements of good search optimisation.

Below are 3 bits of material, firstly, the video recording and secondly the slides from the webinar – if you would like to download the powerpoint file then please click on the small link below the slideshare presentation below.

Finally, right at the end we have a bonus PDF checklist which you can download and go through your site to do your own assessment. It also includes links to some other useful resources which I’ve mentioned in the webinar. Check it out!Read More

4 things we did to grow organic search traffic by 208%

One of the key objectives of any search engine optimisation strategy is to increase the amount of traffic you get from search engines from non-branded keywords/search terms to increase brand awareness. Another objective is to then convert that traffic growth into leads (sample requests, registrations, enquiries, call backs etc) but lets focus on traffic growth for the time being.

Non-branded search phrases are queries which users enter into search engines without using your company name or product names/brands. If you want to know more about non-brand search optimisation then please do check out this MDiTV video.

Read More

Desensitise your sensitive information to win online

Our digital marketing strategy process is quite intrusive, uncomfortably so in some cases. On that point, I was recently asked how we handle our clients’ sensitive information given that we work in such a paranoid industry [his words not mine].

It’s a fair question that I’ve come to expect to answer at the outset of any engagement with a new client. In truth, on occasion, we’ll sign an NDA [non-disclosure agreements] or similar confidentiality agreement – principally because if it makes the client feel more comfortable with the process then that’s what we’ll do.Read More

What Architects want when seeking sustainable product information – 3 must-haves for your website.

This is a guest post written by our close friends over at Competitive Advantage who recently completed some research to find out what types of information Architects are looking for when sourcing sustainable products:

Designing with Sustainable Products Research

The architect is probably the most important member of the design team, distilling the requirements and advice of the other members. Recently Competitive Advantage completed research called Designing with Sustainable Products, this looks into how Architects design non-residential sustainable buildings and the information they need from manufacturers.Read More

Webinar: What does a well optimised building product manufacturers website look like?

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve noticed quite a few construction and building product manufacturer websites being launched – without even the basic signs of any search engine optimisation. I’ve been trying to work out why that could be. Could it be that the marketer didn’t plan for SEO? Or does the marketer even know what SEO is, is more education required? Could it be that marketers or their agencies just simply don’t know what to look for even if they think their website has been optimised for search engines and people?Read More

Why you will see an increase in direct traffic from mobiles in Google Analytics

Some of you will be keeping a close eye on mobile traffic through to your websites and noticing that the number is constantly increasing month on month, year on year. No doubt, majority of your mobile traffic will be coming from the Apple iPhone and Apple iPad.

Some of you may also dig a bit deeper to analyse where this mobile traffic is coming from (sources) so that you can see which sources to improve or add more resources to. With the launch of iOS6, the iPhones default browser, Safari, now uses Googles secure search (SSL) meaning the keyword or search phrases no longer pass through to analytics tools such as Google Analytics.

The refferer data is also missing which means if you are analysing the sources of mobile traffic you may start to see a dip in traffic sent via Google. Secure search is the reason why you are seeing (not provided) in your keyword report – it is people searching on Google who are logged into their Google accounts.Read More

It’s not about you…..part 2

I’ve been compelled to write a follow up to an article I wrote a couple of years ago titled ‘It’s not about you’.

It was a recent tweet that prompted me, a brief but telling interaction that said a great deal about where the ‘Tweeter’ was in their marketing thinking.

Here’s the long and the short of it…

We ‘followed’ a company on the Twitter (we do this a bit) and their brief response went something like this:

“thanks for the follow, to find out more about us visit our website www.yadayadayada”Read More