How Lurpak's post-Xmas campaign was left with the scraps

Branding campaigns aim to build positive associations in the consumer’s mind so that they will look favourably on a company or product in the future.

It’s an investment in future sales and very different from direct response advertising, where the whole focus is for the consumer to take action now.

Traditionally, these two types of advertising have been miles apart, but the web changes all that.

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Posted 21 January 2008 09:00am by Ken McGaffin with 0 comments

Is all publicity good publicity in Google's eyes?

Businesses of any kind can fall victim to negative coverage in the press and online media. It’s a fact of business life and a real headache to deal with.

But is there a silver lining? Do the links from authority news sites generated by such stories bring a search engine optimisation benefit?

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Posted 05 September 2007 08:00am by Ken McGaffin with 1 comment

Keyword research – an essential market research tool

The web has made market research widely available but the conclusions drawn from different methods of research provide different and sometimes conflicting results.

The savvy manager will not just depend on one source of research about the market but several – and keyword research should be an essential part of any research project.

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Posted 02 July 2007 14:32pm by Ken McGaffin with 3 comments

Which are your best keywords? (you’ll never guess)

People who write regularly for online publications generally enjoy the process of writing and many don't want to get sidetracked into the technical area of doing keyword research.

Yet when one keyword can bring ten times as much traffic as another, we need to be very careful in our choice of words and use the best keywords wherever possible.

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Posted 29 May 2007 10:43am by Ken McGaffin with 0 comments

Keyword Creativity: An online opportunity for ad agencies?

In 2002, AT&T made a major mistake. As part of the launch of its mobile initiative m-life, the company purchased television advertising during the Super Bowl coverage. Nothing wrong with that – along with the Oscars, it attracts one of the biggest audiences in American television and is seen as a creative showcase for the best in American advertising.

But what AT&T missed was how its advertising affected later search behaviour.

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Posted 17 April 2007 08:04am by Ken McGaffin with 2 comments

Why online PR and SEO go hand in hand

Once you’ve optimised your website copy, you’ll find that the most important part of optimisation happens off the page – where links from external sites back to yours play a vital role in telling Google and other search engines how important your site really is.

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Posted 15 March 2007 12:01pm by Ken McGaffin with 13 comments