Things learnt (and what not to do... or say) from experience in the skincare and beauty industry

Guy says to his girlfriend who has Eczema... "You've got a cracking body!"

Things learnt (and what not to do... or say) from fourteen months spent marketing B2C and B2B in the local Australian and emerging international skincare and beauty industry.

After managing a local Perth marketing agency it has been nice to work in-house this past year or so in an Australian skincare brand, applying real-world best practice marketing strategy in a fully integrated approach across traditional offline and current online channels.

Branding - brand consistency. The brand is what your consumers say about your business! So go and actually ask and listen to them. Determine your ideal consumer persona profile so you can match the marketing delivery to suit their interests and go to where they hang out so you can engage where it is appropriate and they are ready or wanting to make a purchase decision.

Rebranding is a big decision and don't take it lightly. Learning is an ongoing exercise in refinement and if you measure you can make informed decisions rather than purely emotional or personal preferences that don't align with your ideal client persona. A shorter product and company name makes many things easier!

Compliance is a complex area and important for all members of the sales and marketing team to be on the same page. Creating a set of rules of engagement for the brand which covers local and international regulations for advertising and data management is similar to having a style guide for the business to be consistent and compliant.

So what pay-per-click (PPC) channels did I use?

Google AdWords with remarketing, Facebook Ads, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn Ads. All with highly structured targeting to narrow in to the desired intended audience. Providing reinforcement to other campaign activities and as social supported sales actions.

What were my principle marketing channels and what was my preferred provider tools?

EDMs - eMarketing using MailChimp. MC is so powerful and versatile with quality template management, list building tools (built our B2C list up to 100K active subscribers this year), connects into ecommerce platforms such as BigCommerce, has detailed campaign tracking with ecommerce reports so you can make informed decisions about ROI and the automation tools are very powerful.

FAX - old school but still effective for B2B and the Ozmedia online platform is convenient, cost effective and has some great prospecting lists to increase reach in with this medium particularly for PR.

POSTAL - Direct Marketing to CRM segments with personalisation and strong brand design created awareness and part of the multi-touch point approach to connecting with warm leads and a prospecting CRM database for B2B that I built with over 10K+ leads that was central to the marketing activities.

Did I just do Facebook for my social strategy? No! Though I built a strong, loyal and highly engaged following of 28K+ followers on Facebook who enjoyed sharing their stories and creating genuine positive sentiment towards the brand, and Facebook was certainly the best performer when it comes to ROI in advertising, I still created substantial cross pollination and brand reinforcement across many popular social media channels including; Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+ (yes it's still active), Flickr, Tumblr, Ello, Snap, YouTube and Vimeo. This substantially assisted building inbound links to the website for SEO and for search engines to learn about the positive sentiment around the brand. Social assisted sales improve through a commitment to content and engagement within these channels. Preparing a comprehensive library of canned responses to FAQs improves reply response time and ensures consistency to the brand message and style.

Other exciting and highly effective strategies included identifying key influencers across social media channels and collaborating with these as part of content marketing and building inbound links, building a substantial network of bloggers working on creating brand awareness and product testimonials. Positive product reviews are the backbone of generating trust signals for converting new consumers and useful for CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation) when placed at pivotal points of the sales funnel.

Another CRO tool I implemented quickly was an exit pop within the shopping cart in an attempt to capture consumers abandoning the shopping cart part way through to save the sale which worked very well and was also supported by email automation with follow-ups an hour after leaving the shopping cart and next day with suitable incentives.

Adding an Affiliate Marketing solution integrated with the BigCommerce shopping cart tied into the Key Influencers is a more recent addition to the marketing strategy deployed. It can exponentially grow brand visibility and sales. LeadDymo was my tool of choice and a very powerful affiliate platform to connect, manage, provide a resource library, measure and pay the affiliates.

The tools I used almost daily included; Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premier, After Effects, Acrobat, Google Analytics, AdWords, Hootsuite, and each social media channel app on phone, tablet and desktop, BigCommerce, MailChimp, WordPress and a few others.

It has been a very beneficial experience working hands-on in this industry with B2B and B2C marketing challenges, particularly the opportunity to explore marketing in the Asian pacific region and with China's Tmall, JD and Alibaba shopping channels and WeChat social media, and even the influential Chinese Daigou buyer network.

Anti competitor behaviour, negative SEO attacks, including negative review posting by competitors and other aggressive competitor behaviour is apparent in this industry and requires companies to be vigilant and constantly monitoring their brand mentions and have strategies prepared to deploy rapidly to counter common sniping attacks.

Training and educating the staff on social media, social networking to build contacts and selling to engage in the sales cycle helps to amplify the company's social posting and increase reach. LinkedIn is a powerful B2B channel that many businesses fail to identify and leverage.

Well I hope you found something useful as I did, from this look back across my recent experience. I'm now back into an agency role this Monday with Toby Creative as the Head of Marketing, and I look forward to providing insight, strategy and technical support potentially for your business should you wish to engage.

Find me on LinkedIn to learn more about my 20+ years experience in marketing:
http://au.linkedin.com/in/mattlynchseo

Looking at robots.txt for SEO optimisation

What is robots.txt?

Robots.txt is a text file that contains rules to control the behaviour of search engines as they crawl your site, known as the 'robots directive'. You can create using any text editor software such as Notepad.



Each website created may include a robot.txt file located at the root level of the server. It may also be located at domain.com/robots.txt. This file is what search engines initially look for when they start to identify and crawl your website. As a robot directive, it explains to the search engine what it can and cannot do on the website. The file can either communicate to all search engines or selectively isolate and put independent requirements on individual search engines.

What should you exclude in your robots.txt file?

The robot.txt file may exclude areas in the site that you don’t want the search engine to discover, crawl, or particularly index. Without the robot.txt file, the results will be published in the search engine results page, allowing the general public to identify and access sections of the site that may not be appropriate. These sections may be directories of programming elements, a secure or admin section on the site, or components of your content management systems, depending on what you’re using, that can be blocked from the robots so they don’t crawl and index those elements.

Robots.txt Example:


It is important to be aware that some useful sections of the site could be inappropriately blocked. A common example is the /images directory. On average, five to seven percent of search results may be initiated through an image-based search with a user clicking through to the actual website. When the images directory is blocked, search engines may not be able to discover, identify, and list within their own directories of image search capabilities those images that are related to your business. For many businesses, this could benefit and support Search Engine Optimisation activities.

Sitemaps Location



Another thing you can see in a robot.txt file is a pointer to the location of your Sitemap. A Sitemap is a digital directory written in extensible mark-up language (XML) format which lists all the pages of your website that you wish to have indexed by the search engine. Putting a pointer within your robot.txt file to this location allows search engines to automatically discover your Sitemap and additional Sitemap files you have included, such as a geo Sitemap, and an images Sitemap. Supporting search engines in discovering these is beneficial for your site. For this reason, consider having a pointer to either a master Sitemap file or individual Sitemap files for your website.

The robots directive not only blocks certain robots’ actions as well as the pages to be crawled and indexed. It also determines speed. If the site has any particular issues in hosting, for example, where a crawl may slow down the actual site’s performance and affect the users’ experience, you can actually put speed controls to determine how fast the robot approaches and works its way through your website.

Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) and Bing Webmaster Tools (BWT) allows you to remove individual page files through single requests. The crawling speed may also be supported and addressed within GWT and BWT apart from being listed in the robot.txt file. You can even monitor the traffic, speed, and the amount of data used by the search engines over a period of time to determine if the performance relates to any issues or concerns for your website.

HTML Meta Directives

If you want to specify rules per HTML page, you can do this using HTML meta directives. This informs the search engines a specific action for a certain page.

Google, Bing, and Yahoo have implemented a number of HTML Meta directives including the following:

• NOINDEX META Tag – This tells a crawler not to index a certain page.
• NOFOLLOW META Tag – This tells a crawler not to follow a link going to another content on a certain page.
• NOSNIPPET META Tag – This tells a crawler not to display snippets in the search results for a certain page.
• NOARCHIVE META Tag – This tells a crawler not to show a cached link for a certain page.
• NOODP META Tag – This tells a crawler not to use a title and snippet from ODP (Open Directory Project) for a certain page.

Having your content indexed by major search engines can be a frustrating and time-consuming experience, but it can be done. By executing the techniques mentioned above, you can get confidential content removed quickly and prevent it from showing on search results pages. 

Search Group, a local Perth SEO company helps keep your business visible online through effective SEO and Internet marketing strategies. Visit www.searchroup.com.au for details about our services.

New Client Branding Case Study: GoCrisis

Vorian Agency, a West Perth based digital marketing company, is a certified Google Partner, Bing Ads Professional company, Hootsuite Solutions Partner and MailChimp Expert company.

We have recently undertaken a complete branding exercise for new client GoCrisis in preparation for their inaugral conference to be held at The Duxton Hotel Perth this Thursday 8th October, 2015.

The conference 'Crisis Management Leaders Summit' features speakers including; the Crisis Director Malaysia Airlines, Curtin University, Computer Emergency Response Team, Former Queensland Premier, GoCrisis, Air China, Vorian Agency's own General Manager Matt Lynch and many more who will share their personal experiences, discuss the latest research and trends on the risks that businesses face, the impact that social media and the real-time news cycle have on crisis and emergency management, leadership in crisis and what we can learn from recent world events and how to apply these lessons to corporate crisis response. The conference website, speakers list and agenda can be seen here. Follow the conversation online around the conference #gocrisis #vorianagency

Vorian Agency's diverse service range has contributed to GoCrisis with;

• New Logo Design, and Style Guide
• Responsive Website Designs for both the Company and Event
• Custom Event Booking Payment System
• Responsive MailChimp eNewsletter template
• Search Engine Optimisation
• 16-page glossy Training Brochure printed and .pdf for web
• 2-page glossy Conference Agenda printed flyer
• 3 different pull up conference banners

Vorian Agency provides customised marketing solutions including; search engine optimisation (SEO), pay-per-click advertising (PPC), social media marketing (SMM), web design and development, branding, print and graphic design, as well as video and audio production services that are aimed at promoting your brand’s products and services through a variety of results oriented strategies.

Find out how Vorian Agency can help your business today. Call 1300 100 333 now and arrange a no obligation free meeting with our friendly marketing team, and receive a free website evaluation report. Or email info@vorian.com.au and learn about the extensive range of services that Vorian Agency have to offer. Please visit our website: vorianagency.com.au

Did you miss out on our recent Google Partners Event? Here is a recording of the livestream with Google so you can find out more about 'Micro-Moments' in marketing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWMYkhI7qtk

Crisis Management Leaders Summit, Perth 2015

Crisis Management Leaders Summit, Perth 2015

Perth 8th October 2015
#gocrisis #vorianagency
http://www.perth2015.gocrisis.com/

Business and government are experiencing an unprecedented increase in risk and an exposure to crisis; globalisation of supply chains and customer base, climate change, population growth, large demographic shifts, new technologies, an explosion of regulatory requirements – more than ever, it seems that the need for preparing for the unexpected is necessary. We are faced with a surge in the occurrence of product recalls, unexpected fatalities, natural disasters, data loss, disrupted supply and, as a consequence, the expectation from those affected by crisis – customers, the media, public, employees, shareholders – are more demanding.

The Crisis Management Leaders Summit focuses on the current topics concerning today’s crisis realities and how businesses and governments are coping. It offers delegates a unique opportunity to look at crisis management from different viewpoints and to learn cross-industry lessons and best practice.

With contributions from the Crisis Director Malaysia Airlines, Curtin University, Computer Emergency Response Team, Former Queensland Premier, GoCrisis, Air China and many more, our speakers will share their personal experiences, discuss the latest research and trends on the risks that businesses face, the impact that social media and the real-time news cycle have on crisis and emergency management, leadership in crisis and what we can learn from recent world events and how to apply these lessons to corporate crisis response. We will look at global organisations in crisis and learn from their failures and successes.

Find out how to Manage Social Media in Crisis, I am presenting on this topic at the Crisis Management Leaders Summit, Perth 8th Oct, and you can find out what is in my own #EDC (Every Day Carry) Marketing Tool-kit.

The Scout Motto is 'Be Prepared'

"Be Prepared... the meaning of the motto is that a scout must prepare himself by previous thinking out and practising how to act on any accident or emergency so that he is never taken by surprise."
Robert Baden-Powell 

How prepared is your business?...

An invite to our Vorian Agency Google Partner Event

We would like to invite YOU to our Google Partner Event

The Internet gives every business a chance to achieve success. We'd like to invite you to join our agency for a FREE Google event where you'll learn from digital marketing and advertising experts; Lucinda Barlow, Head of Marketing, Google Australia & New Zealand and Duncan McGrath, Google Ads Product Specialist & Marketing Manager, about how to grow your business online.

When: Wednesday, 30 September 2015
Time: 10:00am - 12:00pm WST
Where: Vorian Agency
Address: Level 1, Suite 90, 102 Railway Street, West Perth, WA 6005
Book Now: https://partnersconnect.withgoogle.com/event/vorian-agency

Vorian Agency, a West Perth based digital marketing company, is a certified Google Partner, Bing Ads Professional company, Hootsuite Solutions Partner and MailChimp Expert company. Our online marketing specialists are Google and Bing Adwords accredited and have had many years of experience working with thousands of clients across a broad range of industries and campaign types.

Vorian has affordable and cost effective SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), SMM (Social Media Marketing) and PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising solutions to suit everyone, from small businesses, start-ups, through to large enterprise clients. We have managed clients of every scale and budget with ROI (Return On Investment) and CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation) top of mind by increasing click-throughs, maximising conversion rates and reducing acquisition costs.

Are you ready to receive targeted, highly qualified website traffic, who are ready to buy from you and right now? As we are ready to deliver. Our team of Adwords specialists can get your campaign live and operational in days.

With CPC (Cost Per Click) advertising, pay only when someone clicks through to your website. As Vorian Agency is a Google Partner, we offer new business users to Google Adwords a $100 FREE Ad Spend credit when you spend $25. Your campaign is assigned a dedicated Google AdWords account manager. Our specialists research only the most effective search term combinations, and continually refine the campaigns through effective A/B testing, measuring and with transparent regular reporting.

What better way for your business to be found online and start directing qualified traffic to your business immediately. Find out more today with a no obligation free meeting with our friendly marketing team, and learn about the extensive range of services that Vorian Agency offer by phoning 1300 100 333 or emailing info@vorian.com.au. Call now to get your free website evaluation report!

Vorian Agency also offer an extensive series of free ongoing marketing training courses to support local small business growth and staff development #voriantraining. There are currently fifteen different two-hour courses presented by Vorian's General Manager, Matt Lynch. Bookings through the website http://www.vorianagency.com.au/resources/seminars/. Visit our Facebook page to hear the reviews from our satisfied trainees.

Google My Business Photography - Can you be found?

• 81% of internet users use search engines to find a website.
• 73% of all online transactions begin with a search engine.

Google Map Locations for businesses, the old ‘Google Places’ is now known as Google My Business. But it is now more that just a management console for your business location details… The Dashboard integrates: Location, Google+, Insights for your Business, Review Management, Google Analytics for your website, YouTube, Adwords Express, and even the ability to start a Hangout video call.

Vorian Agency is a Digital Marketing Agency based in West Perth, and we are Google Partners, Bing Ads Professionals, a Hootsuite Solutions Partner as well a MailChimp Expert company.

We're here to assist businesses of all shapes and sizes to be found online. Apart from a range of SEO and Marketing packages we also have a Google Certified Photographer who can photograph the interactive 360-degree Virtual Tours for your business for Google Maps or to place on your website or social media channel. We also have professional photographers to update your social media profile pictures, take product shots or images of your business.

Interested to see what a 360-degree Virtual Tour looks like for your business? Click here to view Vorian Agency and visit us virtually. Then call us on 1300 100 333 or email info@vorian.com.au to book your own photo shoot.

Using Canonical Meta Tags to address Duplicate Content site issues

If you are conscious about your website’s ranking in the search engine results, then one of the last things you want to find out is that you have several instances of duplicate content in your site. In case you do find an accumulation of duplicate content, don’t worry. You can always use the canonical meta tag as an effective means to address the issue.

What is the canonical tag?

The canonical meta tag is placed in the HTML header of a web page. It tells search engines that the page is a copy of the URL indicated in the tag and that it should be treated as such. This prevents search engines from imposing penalties for duplicate content on your page because of the existence of said copies. This is the canonical tag:

<link rel="canonical" href="URL here" />

“Wait,” you say. “I don’t create duplicate content. I don’t need the canonical tag.”

Indeed. Any responsible website owner knows that creating duplicates is one of the easiest ways to drop out of the rankings. As such, many go to great lengths if only to ensure that every page is populated by unique content. Duplicates, however, do not necessarily have to be created by you. Here are some of the instances by which duplicate content may be created without your knowledge—or consent:

·         The system may create session ID URLs in lieu of cookies or other URL trackers if they are disabled in your system.

·         Different URL cases are usually redirected to the same location but at times, they may be recognised by search engines as duplicates of each other.

·         E-commerce pages often make multiple URLs for the same page, especially if there are multiple available options for a single product. They also tend to use country-specific URLs to accommodate different currencies but these may be identified as duplicates of a single page.

·         The mobile version of a page is also prone to getting mislabelled as a duplicate.

·         Different mirrors of secured pages are often crawled separately and as such, may be read as duplicate content.

The canonical tag can be used to prevent these instances from having a detrimental impact on your website. While the process itself of applying the tag is straightforward, there are a number of ways that you can get it wrong.

1.       Do not have more than one canonical tag in a single page. A single canonical tag at the <head> section of every page is enough. Having more or putting the tag in the wrong place will lead the crawlers to ignore the tag(s).

2.       Do not use the canonical tag for multiple pages. In cases when you really must deal with multiple pages, you can use the prev and next tags instead of the canonical tag. You can also redirect crawlers to index a “View All” page instead. This page collates all the results together for easy review.

3.       Do not use your homepage as your preferred site. A canonical tag tells search engines to crawl the indicated URL instead of the page with the tag. Use this opportunity to have search engines reference the other pages in your site.

4.       Do not use canonical tags for featured content. There is a good chance that these pages will be ignored, making you lose some of the traffic for your features.

5.       Do not use 301 redirects and canonical tags interchangeably. While they do have similarities, 301 redirects are useful for when you have performed changes on your site’s structure. A 301 effectively redirects traffic, too. Canonical tags redirect crawlers, not traffic, and are great only for addressing duplicate content.

For all its apparent benefits, the canonical tag is effective only when you use it correctly. Keep in mind the proper mechanics before implementing it in your pages. You can look for strategies on the Internet on how you can use it or which other tags and techniques you can pair it with to give you better results.

Vorian Agency’s dedicated SEO – Search Engine Optimisation division is Search Group. Vorian Agency is a Google Partner, Bing Ads Professional, Hootsuite Solutions Company and a MailChimp expert company.  We provide free seminars on SEO and marketing best practices for businesses in Perth, Western Australia. We will help you get acquainted with the tools you can use to help you reach your marketing goals. Contact us now on 1300 100 333, visit us at www.vorianagency.com.au or email info@vorian.com.au to get started.

Crawling versus Indexing for Search Engines (SEO)

If you want a basic introduction into how search engines work, Google in particular, then crawling and indexing should be among the first processes you need to understand. Just think about it this way: without them, Google would not be able to provide you with the same quality of results, if it can at all.

The need for information is the main reason for the existence of Google and other search engines. They allow users to access data stored online, such as text content, images, videos and PDF file, amongst many other formats. For them to be able to do this, they must efficiently gather and organise information in a way that will provide value for their users, and match the profile, past search history, location, and specific search query terms that the user enters within the search field.

Crawling and indexing are vital to the search engines’ ability to provide information to their users. Crawling, in laymen’s parlance, is the search for information. It requires the use of “crawlers,” which utilise links to examine the pages within a website and gather data. The information acquired is then stored in the search engine’s servers for later retrieval. You can influence the movements of crawlers through a sitemap (indicating which pages need to be crawled) and a robots.txt file (indicating which pages should be excluded from crawling).

Indexing is the process of organising gathered information. Once the information is gathered, the search engine organises the data to make it easier to process and retrieve. The index contains basic information about the data and where it may be found, much like the index you find in a book. Once a user conducts a search, the search engine uses its algorithms to look up answers from within its indexed information. Today’s search algorithms do not just process text results; they also analyse the search terms to determine whether the keywords correspond to other forms of content, too.

Obstacles to crawling and indexing

While search engines are usually able to successfully crawl and index sites successfully, there are times when they would be hindered from doing so. As a website owner or webmaster, you’d want to eliminate obstacles so that your site is crawled smoothly and indexed by search engines.

Here are some of the factors that can hinder crawling:

1.       The absence of links to a URL

2.       Slow servers or server downtime

3.       Robots exclusion prohibiting access to files

4.       Links that do not contain valid URLs (JavaScript links)

5.       Broken <html><css><js> code

6.       Excessive top heavy code

Meanwhile, here are some of the variables that hamper indexing:

1. Duplicate content
2. Unreliable server deliveries

Removing the problems listed above from your site is a good way to ensure that your site is successfully covered and that it appears in the search results every time relevant keywords are used as search terms.

Simulating crawlers

Search engines do not see your site the way you see it. Looking at your site from the perspective of a crawler will help you identify aspects that need improvement, as well as various ways to optimise your site for maximum results. Here are some of the tools you can use to simulate what crawlers see when they visit your site.

Spider Simulator - SEO Chat

http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/spider-simulator/

Spider View - Iwebtool

http://www.iwebtool.com/spider_view

Search Engine Spider Simulator - Anownsite

http://www.anownsite.com/webmaster-resources/search-engine-spider-simulator.php

SE Bot Simulator - XML Sitemaps

http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/se-bot-simulator.html

SE Spider - LinkVendor

http://www.linkvendor.com/seo-tools/se-spider.html

Spider Simulator from Summit Media

http://tools.summitmedia.co.uk/spider/

Page naming conventions for your webpages

“What’s in a name?” Juliet Capulet asked.

Now you may be surprised why I’m opening with a line from Shakespeare here, but I promise that the question is relevant to online marketing. Names, you see, are a big deal even when your goal is to get the best ranking in the search engine results pages.

As a recap, search engines gather information by crawling your website. The key to getting a high rank in the search results is to ensure that your site is crawled properly. While search engine optimisation (SEO) offers a number of strategies to achieve this end, a good start is essentially following the appropriate naming conventions for your webpages.

Search engines assume that the most important elements of your site are in your main navigation area, which is found is virtually any page in your site. As such, their rankings formulas are tuned to grant more weight to the pages that are featured there. You can take advantage of this by placing your primary keywords in the filename or URL for these pages. Search engines place the bulk of their attention on the keywords found in the title text and the content of the page, but keyword mentions in the URL do bear some weight.

As an example, all factors considered, a webpage with the URL “www.abcd.com/macbook-air-review” is likely to have a higher rank for the search term “Macbook Air reviews” than websites with the same content but have URLs like “www.wxyz.com/apple-laptop-review” or “www.wxyz.com/top-10-best-laptops” in the SERPs.

Writing the best webpage names

So how do you make good webpage titles? First, make sure that your URL is not overstuffed with keywords. Search engines are programmed to react negatively to this practice. Keep the title of your entries, as well as the URL of your pages short and descriptive. As mentioned above, mention your keyword if possible. Search engines often rank pages highly when their URL matches with the search terms used by the searchers.

CMS and blogging platforms such as WordPress allow you to use custom URLs that may be different from your entry’s title. In such cases, make sure to create good URLs. You can use the following formula: www.yourURL.com/keywords1/keywords2.php

Here are some great examples:

Title: I do not wish my screensaver to lock my computer, thank you.
URL: disable-screensaver-password

Title: Get your search fix with two videos
URL: free-search-seo-videos

Title: Protect yourself: get a free credit report
URL: free-credit-report

Title: How to back up your Gmail on Linux in four easy steps
URL: backup-gmail-in-linux-with-getmail

Title: How to stop junk mail
URL: stop-junk-mail

Title: I love my pedometer
URL: best-pedometer

Title: Crap. My Ubuntu machine won’t boot
URL: ubuntu-freeze-no-resume

Title: What are the best iPhone applications?
URL: best-iphone-application

While your webpage’s URL may not be the biggest factor in determining search rankings, ensuring that it follows the right conventions makes it easier to organise and retrieve. So what’s in a name? A lot, apparently, but having the right keywords is a good start.

Search engines: How do they work?

If you have spent enough time online, you must have heard of the likes of Google, Bing, Yahoo Search and probably AOL. They are all search engines used for one of the most popular activities in the Internet—search. They are more than just digitised encyclopaedias; most of them come integrated with an extensive array of functionalities and features and cast an influence that almost literally affects the entirety of the Internet’s surface.

If your business can’t be found within the Search Engine, you don’t get the traffic…

When we talk about “Organic” or “Natural” Search, these are the results that appear in the main body of the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page), that aren’t paid for, and are determined by Google (and the other search engines in their own platforms) based on an algorithm that considers the content of your website and matches this to a consumer’s search query.

Did you know?

• 81% of internet users use search engines to find a website.
• 73% of all online transactions begin with a search engine.
• 87% of users only look at the first page of results.
• 85% of clicks are organic clicks

The Search Engine

Search Engines are online tools that scour the Internet to provide users with the information they need. The resources they allow users access to are virtually limitless, explaining their immense popularity and making them invaluable tools for any Internet surfer.    

To explain the scope of the Search Engine’s influence on modern living using a few words is practically impossible. The way they place information within any individual’s reach has affected the way we do business, communicate, study, eat, and conduct ourselves, among others. Their influence and power grows as the number of their users increase, and as Google has proven over the last few years, any changes can have dramatic effects on the Internet as a whole.

How it works

Search engines use automated robots, otherwise known as “spiders,” “bots,” “crawlers” or “indexers” to find content in websites. As the Internet is a figurative jungle made up of vast troves of information, search engines use links as pathways or guides. They follow these links in order to “spider” the sites and “index” the information in the site.

Webmasters also may also use .xml and .txt feeds as site maps of the content they want search engines to index in the directory. Ideally, these lists contain each of the URLs in the site. All indexed information is then gathered and stored in huge servers for easy retrieval at a later time. When a search is performed, search engines take indexed information matching the search query and present them as search results.

When using the robot method, search engines look at a number of factors to determine how deeply and frequently they will index your website. Some of these factors are:

• The uniqueness of the content in your site
• The uniqueness of the content in a page as compared to other pages in the site
• The uniqueness of the content in a pages versus all other pages in the Internet

To ensure that search engines find your content and index them, you need to keep an eye on one key factor—your links. Search engines determine the quality and the quantity of inbound links to your site. As a rule, it is best to ensure that your links come from high-quality sites. This will encourage search engines to index your site more frequently. It will also lead them to consider you as a high-quality source yourself and give you a better ranking in the results pages.

Obscure or “deep” search makes up a significant percentage all searches performed via search engines. As such, it is important that you pair great links with high-quality copy. Many website owners tend to think this means suffusing their web content with keywords. This may be a mistake as the practice tends to sacrifice readability. One thing you need to remember is that search engines today are focused on providing positive user experience and as such, they favour content that are easy for users to digest and understand. So when you write your copy, make sure to write for both humans and search engines.

Needless to say, the workings of a search engine may not be as simple as this post connotes, but this gives you a good idea. The extent of search engines’ influence over the net may be complex in itself, too, but remember that ultimately, they are tools for humans to use. Your focus therefore, should be the humans using them just as much as the spiders themselves.

Interested in a deeper understanding of Search Marketing for your business? Come along to our free marketing seminars at Vorian Agency. As a Google Partner and Bing Ads Professional Company, we also offer a comprehensive range of Search Marketing services. www.vorianagency.com.au

What SEO do I need in 2015?

It’s the middle of 2015. Have you begun your SEO campaign? Despite the predictions you might have read in the past year, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is still alive and kicking, and in fact, remains as one of the best ways to boost your traffic, get more from your website and raise returns for your business.

What is SEO?

Let’s do a short recap of what SEO is all about. It is the process of identifying the keyword phrases that potential customers use in search engines to find products and services. SEO helps ensure that your website faces little to no obstacles in capturing the maximum possible volume of relevant incoming traffic.

SEO revolves around the idea that by giving your website a boost, you are providing your business with distinct advantages in an Internet-driven business environment. It helps get your business found more easily. Through this, you gain more leads, better chances at conversions and greater potential to make sales, among others.

Organic traffic is a key element in search engine optimisation. It is the type of traffic that is derived from natural search engine indexes, as opposed to traffic bought through search engine marketing (SEM) campaigns such as Google Adwords. To achieve organic traffic, pages in your website have to be optimised so that they conform to search engine algorithms and as such, get ranked in the search engine results pages.

Needless to say, algorithms can vary from one search engine to another. Google’s ranking criteria may differ from that used by Bing. SEO seeks to optimise your website for any algorithm so that you are guaranteed a good ranking in any search engine. Additionally, search engine algorithm changes periodically—keeping up with the changes and ensuring the best results every time is part of the aims of SEO.

SEO for 2015

A lot of things have changed for SEO over the last couple of years alone, thanks to shifting demands and Google’s changing algorithms. That, however, does not necessarily mean that it is too late to engage in SEO. Here are a few pointers to remember for SEO this year:

·         Google’s goals remain unchanged.

Google may have gone through many algorithm shifts but their purpose has always been to provide users with the best search results. The search giant has always considered user experience a priority and as such, has consistently rolled out algorithm updates that moved towards accurate, informative search results in websites that are easy to use.

That said, your SEO campaign must have user experience as its foremost goal as well. Put yourself in the users’ shoes and imagine what would make your search easier and much more fruitful. Will you benefit from a website that loads quickly? If so, then ensure that your own site loads fast. Would you, as a user, benefit from having more pictures in a site? If so, then add more images to your own site. Obtain the assistance of experts to ensure that the steps you take are in line with current search engine standards, but putting the interest of your site visitors first is a great way to start.

·         Never underestimate content.

As it turns out, one of the best ways to provide optimal user experience is to make information readily available through content.  Blog posts and other forms of web content are now considered as key elements of most content marketing campaigns, and are religiously integrated into many businesses marketing strategies.

To maximise results, make sure that your content is high-quality. Readability and comprehensibility are huge factors for users. They can affect how they see you as a potential resource and how often they return to your site for your content. Boost your web content with SEO strategies to increase their effectiveness and their visibility.

Moreover, content is a great way to spread your links and strengthen your backlink portfolio. Users searching for resources will be more than happy to link back to your content and your website if your posts are informative enough. This is just another reason to invest in well-created content.

·         Go mobile.

Google reported that a large percentage of search queries nowadays are sent via mobile devices. Consequently, the search giant rolled out a mobile-friendly update last April. The update rewarded websites that have adopted a mobile-responsive design.

As more and more users surf the Internet through their mobile devices, it is within reason that your SEO strategy this year should prioritise mobile optimisation. A good start would be ensuring that your website is mobile-responsive. This would mean that users would be able to use it conveniently and comfortably even through the small screens of their mobile devices.

That said, you should be careful about potential errors, especially as the technology is relatively new. This should, however, not discourage you from taking the path to mobile-responsiveness as, with adequate preparation, the benefits far outweigh the potential risks.

The year 2015 is not too late for you to get started on your SEO campaign.  The Internet offers plenty of insights into the many steps you can take, as well as the many ways you can enhance your online marketing campaign. Get started now with Vorian Agency – a Google Partner, Bings Ads Professional company and a Hootsuite Solutions Partner.

Google Delivers Local Users Local Content

I've been saying this for a while to my clients, the important of putting local relevancy into their Search Engine Optimisation efforts. From geo locator information using geo-tags behind the page within the metatags, for the location to their physical store location, supported with on-page SEO activities of ensure all location information is included on the contact page; street address, suburb, post code, and even embedding a Google Map on the page.

Google normally assumes that users are looking for and will want to be directed to local business content in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), and tends to favour local results, based on IP address and/or search history. The algorithm component behind this is that a local result is likely to be a more relevant result.

Additional areas that website owners can consider to contribute to the overall local search penetration is supporting this with ensuring they select firstly a local TLD (Top Level Domain) such as using a .com.au extension for Australian websites.

Hosting of the website will also impact. If hosted locally there are several benefits, firstly in the lookup performed by search engines determining the hosting locality to support the intended distribution, and speed increases that are gained by reducing the number of hops for end users accessing the website hosted locally compared to in another state or country and so making each component call quicker in response for rendering the page to the end user computer. Another component to consider is even in the details registered for the domain name that can be sourced via a WHOIS lookup. I would suggest providing the local physical office address in the registration details to aid in supporting again this concept of local search reinforcement.

Tie all of this in with Google Places http://www.google.com.au/places/ a free online business listing. When potential customers search Maps for local information, they'll find your business: your address, hours of operation, even photos of your storefront or products. Now when consumers search within Google, and Google detects they are intending to search for location specific things Google will deliver a map with relevant locations within the SERPS where your business can appear.

www.SearchGroup.com.au generates a suitable and extensive Google Places listing for all businesses when they engage Search Group for Search Engine Optimisation services, along with all the many recommendations suggested above... and then a few more!

Google Zeitgeist - Search Trends across the world from Google

Google's Zeitgeist provides an insight into the search behaviours of billions of search queries people typed into Google this year.

http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/zeitgeist2010/

Find out what the top global events are, with fastest rising queries; South Africa's world cup, the Olympics in Canada, Haiti earthquake, Mexico's oil spill or Iceland's ash cloud.

Google provides a visualisation of data from their Insights for Search and Google Trends.

Aussies are searching more and more for social sites this year, with sites like Chatroulette, Formspring, Tumblr and Omegle showing our love for connecting with people and sharing information. We’re also getting into entertainment, with lots of searches for Event cinemas, ABC3 and, of course, the 2010 World Cup

So who were the five most popular people for Australian searches... andy irons, justin bieber, julia gillard, lara bingle and katy perry.

Look to Google Trends http://www.google.com.au/trends to give yourself an immediate update on trending popular searches that you can include in your Social Media topics list.

An Advanced look at the use of Sitemaps

A sitemap is such a simple, and quick win to aid your Search Engine Optimisation efforts, providing a structured overview of your entire website, and all its pages, videos, pdfs and more. This hand-holding exercise with the search engines enables you to tell the search engines directly what is on your site, improve your site saturation, and increase your search visibility for your business. If you would like some direct assistance with a sitemap for your business let me know, and the team of http://www.searchgroup.com.au/ is available to assist in getting the most for your business from your online marketing activities.

Using Sitemap index files (to group multiple sitemap files)
You can provide multiple Sitemap files, but each Sitemap file that you provide must have no more than 50,000 URLs and must be no larger than 10MB (10,485,760 bytes).
If you would like, you may compress your Sitemap files using gzip to stay within 10MB and reduce your bandwidth requirement. If you want to list more than 50,000 URLs, you must create multiple Sitemap files.

Sitemap Generator Tools

SiteMap Generator
http://www.sitemapdoc.com/
Fill in client's website address. It goes through and generates a dynamic list. Allocate priority, frequency. Then click on [XML Sitemap] to provide layout.
Click anywhere below to highlight all 56 entries, then right click, choose copy. Paste into notepad. Then save as sitemap.xml

Google Sitemap Generator: Installation
http://googlesitemapgenerator.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/doc/gsg-installation.html
Gsitemap Free Google Sitemap Generator Tool for Windows - VIGOS
VIGOS Gsitemap is a 100% FREE, easy-to-use but versatile Windows sitemap generator tool to help webmasters and website owners to create, edit and submit sitemap files.
http://www.vigos.com/products/gsitemap/

XML Sitemaps
http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/
Create an XML sitemap that can be submitted to Google, Yahoo and other search engines to help them crawl your website better.
Create a Text sitemap to have a plain list of all your pages.
Create a ROR sitemap, which is an independant XML format for any search engine.
Generate an HTML site map to allow human visitors to easily navigate on your site.

GSiteCrawler
http://gsitecrawler.com/
The GSiteCrawler is available for free and runs under Windows.
The program also offers tons of options, settings, tweaks, and more - if you want to do more than generate just a simple sitemap file. How about a urllist-file for Yahoo? an RSS feed? a ROR file? a HTML sitemap page? It's all possible with the GSiteCrawler!


If you do provide multiple Sitemaps, you should then list each Sitemap file in a Sitemap index file. Sitemap index files may not list more than 1,000 Sitemaps and must be no larger than 10MB (10,485,760 bytes). The XML format of a Sitemap index file is very similar to the XML format of a Sitemap file.

The Sitemap index file must:
Begin with an opening <sitemapindex> tag and end with a closing </sitemapindex> tag.
Include a <sitemap> entry for each Sitemap as a parent XML tag.
Include a <loc> child entry for each <sitemap> parent tag.
The optional <lastmod> tag is also available for Sitemap index files.

Note: A Sitemap index file can only specify Sitemaps that are found on the same site as the Sitemap index file. For example, http://www.yoursite.com/sitemap_index.xml can include Sitemaps on http://www.yoursite.com but not on http://www.example.com or http://yourhost.yoursite.com. As with Sitemaps, your Sitemap index file must be UTF-8 encoded.

Sample XML Sitemap Index
The following example shows a Sitemap index that lists two Sitemaps:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<sitemapindex xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
   <sitemap>
      <loc>http://www.example.com/sitemap1.xml.gz</loc>
      <lastmod>2004-10-01T18:23:17+00:00</lastmod>
   </sitemap>
   <sitemap>
      <loc>http://www.example.com/sitemap2.xml.gz</loc>
      <lastmod>2005-01-01</lastmod>
   </sitemap>
</sitemapindex>

Example Sitemap.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9 http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9/sitemap.xsd">
   <url>
      <loc>http://www.example.com/</loc>
      <lastmod>2005-01-01</lastmod>
      <changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
      <priority>0.8</priority>
   </url>
</urlset>

<changefreq> options:
    * always
    * hourly
    * daily
    * weekly
    * monthly
    * yearly
    * never

Using Social Media for Link Building

Link building is one of the important aspects of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) activities.

Promote Your Content in Social Media

If you want people to link to your content, they need to know about you, so start spreading the word. Get involved in Twitter, Digg, Facebook, FourSquare etc. Connect with people in Google Groups or LinkedIn Groups. Ensure you have a profile for yourself in LinkedIN as well as your business. Simply do whatever you need to do to connect with your audience in a way that’s engaging for them. The aim, is to become a valuable resource and they will be more likely to link to your content.

The key concept here then becomes making your content shareable.

Make sure to put links on your site so that people can tweet and share your content via facebook. Instead of spreading the word about yourself, let people take the initiative to spread the word about you!

Remember, as I have recently mentioned, links in social media now count as inbound links for search engines.

Maximise your efforts in your Social Media bios

Regardless of the Social Media platform, I strongly recommend that you don't leave your bio blank, or created with little thought, time and effort.

In the exercise of setting up your new online presence in each Social Media channel, take some time to consider firstly your choice of username (does it include any useful keywords for your industry for example?)

When your Twitter account shows up in the SERPs, your description will also show up in the SERPs. This makes is quite helpful when trying to be found for a keyword and/or phrase in your industry vertical.

Many Social Media channels enable you to upload images, backgrounds and customise the design. Use this important screen realestate to reinforce your brand and business logo, keep consistency with your corporate colour scheme, and include useful information such as web address, email address, physical address, and other contact details.

Now take note, if you weren't already aware, Bing and Google confirmed in December that social media positioning, and commentary has a direct impact on rankings. So let's use the value from this to aid your online marketing efforts and get it all tied in together for your business.

The Initial SEO Audit process for clients

In today's post, I thought I would go through the process that I follow for a new client's initial SEO (Search Engine Optimistation) audit of their website, so that I can understand what has been done so far for the site, what obstacles may exist and create a structured plan of action tailored to the client's website requirements.

In this initial audit process I don't just put the SEO hat on, but look at Social Media engagement and opportunities, Online Marketing activities, Design and Usability issues, as well as hosting, coding and site performance efficiencies.

Business Details
Company:
Contact Person:
Position:
Business Address:
Industry:
Phone:
Fax:
Mobile:
Email:
Website:

Comments on visible front page:
* In this section I'll review elements of the front page and list all issues seen and opportunities of where to add in improvements. This includes functionality and usability.

Google SERPS:
* Here I'll list the primary listing for the front page of the business from Google's results, and pick it apart.

Developed by:
* Determine who created the site, and whether that carries any common and known issues. Surprisingly, working with many web design companies throughout Perth and Australia, I have come to recognise many of their stock standard template deliveries and issues that keep being generated.

Shopping Cart/eCommerce:
- SSL cert type:
* Any information about their online shopping cart and security is noted.

IntraSearch tool:
* Do they provide an internal search tool, how effective is this, do they provide any specialist product/service search tools as part of their site.

Newsletter Subscription Option:
* Is one provided, if yes, subscribe and test it out and make recommendations.

RSS Feed:
* Does the client provide RSS/Atom feeds via the site, how are these implemented.

Number of pages from site indexed in Google:   Yahoo!:   Bing: 
* Check on how many pages (site saturation) for the client website in the major search engines. Looking also at canonical (www and non-www issues).

Google PageRank:
* A look at how Google scores the pagerank for the front page and some inside pages.

Domain Age:
* How long as the domain been registered and in use.

URL matches business name:
* Does the domain name reflect the business (not an acronym), is it keyword rich in the industry vertical, have they used an appropriate TLD (Top level Domain) such as .com.au for Australia.

Title Tag: <title></title>   * Review the current home page title tag and comment upon its structure.

Meta Description Tag:
* Review the current home page description tag and comment upon its structure.

Meta Keyword Tag:
* Review the current home page keyword tag is used and comment upon its structure.

Heading Tags on page: x<H1>, x<H2>, x<H3>, x<H4>, x<H5>, x<H6>
* Review how heading tags are being used on the front page, and comment.

Number of images on the webpage:
ALT Tag attributes:   images are missing their ALT tags.
* Review how images are used on the front page, naming conventions and file structure, as well as whether ALT tags have been appropriately implemented.

Site uses Frames:
* Determine if the website use frames/iframes in any shape or form.

Site uses Flash design:
* Determine if the website uses flash, and how, and work out any impact and navigational issues, or display issues for mobile devices (eg iPod/iPhone).

Different titles are used on inside pages:
* Determine if different titles are used through inside pages (no duplication).

Canonicalisation Issue:
* Determine if any form of canonical issues affect the site.

Robots.txt:
* Has a robots.txt file been created, is the structure correct.

Sitemap.xml:
* Has a sitemap been created, and is the structure correct, is it missing pages etc.

Custom 404 error page:
* Does the website have a customised 404 error page, and analysis its design.

Google Analytics code in page:
* Confirm the presence of GA code, or other types of website stats being used on the site.

Number of backlinks to website on Google:   Yahoo!:   Bing:
* Determine how many sites (not including itself) link back to the client's website.

Directory listing on DMOZ:   Yahoo!:
* Any listings exist on either DMOZ or Yahoo directory?

Social Media backlinks:
* Find out who may be talking/linking back to the client's website.

Twitter username: twitter.com/ is available:
Facebook username:  is available
YouTube username:  is available
MySpace username:  is available
FourSquare username:  is available
LinkedIn username:  is available
* A look at some of the more popular Social Media websites to check if the client already has a presence and if a suitable username is available for their engagement.

Wiki article:
* Is there any wikipedia articles generated about the client.

Does site use Favicon.ico:
* Confirming the status of the use of the favicon.ico for the client matching their business.

Site hosted in:
* Listing a lot of technical mumbo jumbo about the hosting, server, webserver, location, IP, DNS, concerns or issues.

gzip Compression:
* Does the website use compression?

Comments from looking at source code from front page:
* A review of the code behind the page looking at a range of elements.

Any obvious site loading issues/concerns:
* Checking for 404 errors, Site Validation, Speed issues, image compression and much more.

Keyword Density:
* Reviewing the use of text on the page, and the subsequent keyword density from this.

Keyword/phrase group:
* Outlining what keywords I believe best summarise this business.

Related Sites:
* Determine what competiting sites exist in the client's area, and how they are doing.

Keyword Traffic Estimate Volume:
* Generate some stats on keyword traffic volumes and CPC bidding estimates.

Careful with your choice of Domain Name

Such a simple thing, and yet one of the most important and fundamental decisions a business will make initially in their foray into the online space will be the selection of an appropriate domain name.

The Search Engines will look upon this as one of the most important factors in determining what your website is going to be about and hence presenting your site in the Search Engine Result Page relevant to audience queries.

Unfortunately since the internet has now been around for so long, there is relatively limited choice in some aspects for good domain names that still exist. Be careful the choice of Top Level Domain structure and ensure it is appropriate to your location (localised search factor) eg. .com.au for Australia, and not just going for a domain extension because it is available... as this may lead to consumer confusion as they expect the 'norm'.

Keyword rich domain names are the ideal choice that match your business segment. Hyphen separated domains are okay, but do and can add to confusion for typing in the name by the consumer so aren't an ideal first choice, but a good second when nothing else exists.

But beware the acronym, the abbreviated version of your business name purely based on its initials. Particularly if this is not a brand naming convention that users may be aware of. Firstly it is most likely, and certainly not keyword rich, so a back step from the very beginning. However I can understand the use if you have a very long business name. But my concern comes from what sometimes is over looked, in that what does that acronym or abbreviation perhaps mean in another context or even another country? Do your research, search particularly across the Social Media sphere just in case your particular acronym has sinister connections and associations that may already be established and which then may make you reconsider your choice... Research really is an important element of your initial steps into the online space, so step carefully and wisely.

Wikipedia.org – Online Notability Guidelines

Wikipedia.org remains one of the most reputed sources of editable content in the world.

Within hours of posting content on Wikipedia, it can be indexed in Google and Yahoo!

However, the editorial guidelines are very strict and it is critical to understand that editors police postings. It is vital to have “reliable secondary sources” as references in any Wikipedia.org posting to ensure it survives the human editorial test.

The Notability Guidelines are detailed below.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability

List of Web Server Error Messages

Errors on the Internet, and those annoying error messages, occur quite frequently, and can be quite frustrating, especially if you do not know the difference between a 404 error and a 502 error. Many times they have more to do with the Web servers you're trying to access rather than something being wrong with your computer. Here is a list of error messages you might encounter while surfing the Web and their respective meanings to help you figure out just what the problem is:

200 If a page is missing, it's replaced with the custom error page.

302 If the page is missing, it's replaced with a temporary redirect to a custom error page.

301 Redirects errors to either a custom error page, or some other page in the site (i.e. sitemap, homepage or best guess).

400 Bad File Request, usually means the syntax used in the URL is incorrect (e.g., uppercase letter should be lowercase letter; wrong punctuation marks).

 401 Unauthorized  Server, is looking for some encryption key from the client and is not getting it. Also, wrong password may have been entered. Try it again, paying close attention to case sensitivity. 

403 Forbidden/Access Denied,  Similar to 401; special permission needed to access the site -- a password and/or username if it is a registration issue. Other times you may not have the proper permissions set up on the server or the site's administrator just doesn't want you to be able to access the site. 

404 File Not Found, server cannot find the file you requested. File has either been moved or deleted, or you entered the wrong URL or document name. Look at the URL. If a word looks misspelled, then correct it and try it again. If that doesn't work backtrack by deleting information between each backslash, until you come to a page on that site that isn't a 404. From there you may be able to find the page you're looking for. 

408 Request Timeout, client stopped the request before the server finished retrieving it. A user will either hit the stop button, close the browser, or click on a link before the page loads. Usually occurs when servers are slow or file sizes are large. 

500 Internal Error, couldn't retrieve the HTML document because of server-configuration problems. Contact site administrator. 

501 Not Implemented, web server doesn't support a requested feature. 

502 Service Temporarily Overloaded, server congestion; too many connections; high traffic. Keep trying until the page loads.

503 Service Unavailable, server busy, site may have moved, or you lost your Internet connection. 

Connection Refused by Host, either you do not have permission to access the site or your password is incorrect. 

File Contains No Data, page is there but is not showing anything. Error occurs in the document. Attributed to bad table formatting, or stripped header information. 

Bad File Request, browser may not support the form or other coding you're trying to access. 

Failed DNS Lookup, the Domain Name Server can't translate your domain request into a valid Internet address. Server may be busy or down, or incorrect URL was entered. 

Host Unavailable, host server down. Hit reload or go to the site later. 

Unable to Locate Host, host server is down, Internet connection is lost, or URL typed incorrectly. 

Network Connection Refused by the Server, the Web server is busy.