07.09.08
Posted in Events at 4:14 am by Carla Fourie
We are very excited to announce that on 2 September 2008 Christine da Silva from AlterSage will be presenting a workshop at the 10th Annual Conference on World Wide Web. Her topic will cover “The role of search: practical search engine marketing and other online brand building techniques.”
The World Wide Web Conference is co-hosted by the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) and the University of Cape Town (UCT) and will take place on UCT’s Cape Town campus. Five workshops, including Christine’s, will commence on 2 September. The Conference itself will be running from 3 – 5 September 2008. Numerous keynote speakers will present at the Conference and more than 60 peer-reviewed papers will be discussed.
Christine’s workshop will look at the evolution of search engines and user techniques. The workshop will provide attendees with techniques and tips to ensure that their information is seen in today’s environment. This can be done by increasing their online brand awareness and exposure, user base and ultimately the profitability of their online presence. For a full overview of Christine’s workshop, please click here.
We’re very pleased to be involved with the World Wide Web Conference especially since it caters for a wide variety of attendees: from students, to business people, to high-profile academics. At AlterSage we aim to educate others on how online marketing can work for them – no matter how big or small their business. It is still a very unknown area for many and therefore companies are too scared to venture into online marketing. Back at AlterSage, we host regular internal workshops to grow the AlterSage team to industry leaders and to keep them up to date with the ever evolving online industry.
If you would like to register for the Conference, please click here. For more information on the conference, you can go here. We hope to see you there J
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07.07.08
Posted in Online Marketing at 11:20 am by Christine
Search Marketing Agencies are seemingly constantly fighting battles to prove the worth of their services. Why is this? Especially when it just makes logical sense? In a world predominantly driven by search engines and online activity why is it that so many agencies and companies are still resisting the medium?
Mandy de Waal’s recent Search Marketing Report delved a little deeper into the South African environment an hesitancies from Traditional Media Agencies. The international environment has already adopted the success and achievements of working together with Search agencies and have seen the value proven ten times over.
As Search Marketers we’ve been fighting the traditional marketing agency buy-in battle for a long time. At first they feared us for the potential risk of stealing away their clients to the medium. It has taken years to convince them that combining traditional strategies with online strategies is first prize. Only very recently have we seen the two sides of marketing working together to produce campaigns that feature just that.
And it works.
Perhaps now that the importance of search engine marketing is becoming more apparent in the local environment is precisely the reason for our next battle.
Development agencies.
I personally hoped that we, as Search Marketers, had overcome most issues when it comes to working with third party development agencies. After all, it’s a win-win situation?!
The battle seems for site updates… To perform well at Search Engine Optimisation one must continuously make edits to your website, adding content and ensuring that it is structurally sound.
To save clients and their developers’ time, it is not unheard that the SEM company would implement the changes themselves, however there are some developers that do not like sharing their clients’ access details…for fear of whatever reason…
It is to these development agencies that I say “Embrace the Search Marketer”.
We are not here to steal your clients, or to cut you out of the loop.
We are here to assist you and save you time to focus on larger updates and developments.
Yes, I have seen some Search marketing companies insist that their clients move ALL their updates (and in some instances even their hosting) to them and away from their current web development/maintenance providers. Being an idealist, I believe that we could all work together and always try my utmost not to insist that we update and implement from our side. Unless of course the site uses techniques that blocks search engines from indexing it. Then we’ll advise, but never insist changing providers. We choose to focus on what we’re good at.
We need commitment and buy-in from the development agencies first and foremost.
If you work together with a Search Marketing Agency:
- Your company looks good. Your development, bespoke CMS and structure looks good, because the site succeeds in delivering traffic and conversions.
- Get more work. You might be issued more work from the client because of this success.
- Referrals. The Search marketing company might refer development clients to you, because you have a good relationship.
- Word-of-Mouth. The client might refer potential contracts to you, because their site was a success.
- Robust Bespoke CMS systems. The Search marketing company can advise you on global system capabilities such as Joomla, Drupal and WordPress etc and also help you to implement search and user-friendly methodologies in your bespoke systems.
- Leader of industry. Displaying forward thinking in terms of website set-up. Your ‘out-the-box-system’ just became that much more valuable.
To see all 10 reasons, read the Top 10 reasons on Techleader.
I welcome the opportunity to speak to development companies that are skeptical about such a relationship. It is win-win concept. Experience it.
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Posted in Uncategorized at 7:40 am by Christine
Recently Mandy de Waal caught up with us to discuss the state of the nation of Search Marketing in specifically South Africa’s environment.
She has written an incredible report which, with the help of other industry contributors, has really turned into a valuable piece.
Read the full report on ITweb or download the pdf article here:
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04.10.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 11:19 am by altersage
Now this is a feature that I’m looking forward to playing around with…
Industry Benchmarking, a beta feature now available in Google Analytics lets you compare your metrics against industry verticals. Of course for the moment its quite biased as it can only compare with other sites of similar vertical that have subscribed to sharing their data on the Analytics side. But as subscribers grow, so of course will data also… The data your receive is completely anonymous, so although you won’t be able to use it like Competitious or for ORM necessarily, at least you are able to get, well, a benchmark of the industry. Watch this space as we test away 
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Posted in Uncategorized at 10:39 am by altersage
So, I posted on the AlterSage FB group that I would do a round-up of the NMM Conference, but alas, time ran away with me….besides when there are already some great roundups available, I’m not going to rehash what’s already been said.
Take a look at the following sites / blogs of the conference:
I will however give you feedback from the workshop that we hosted on the last day. Albeit that we had attendance of about 10 people, I feel that we made a difference and contributed to their understanding of Online Marketing techniques. The feedback that I had personally received from the attendees of the workshop was that they would have preferred to have attended our workshop prior to the speakers, as then they would have understood the topics that much more. Well, I’m glad that I could at least make sense of everything they listened to, afterwards 
Joey and I also attended the Joburg 27. Vastly different format to the Cape Town 27, in the sense that it’s definitely more ‘business oriented’ whereas Cape Town is more informational and general community catch-up IMO.
In general it was great to make future business contacts, meet new people, catch-up with ones we already know, and also put faces to handles on twitter
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03.13.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 4:10 pm by altersage
This was of course the big news making the rounds today. AOL is apparently to pay $850 million to purchase the social network.
With MS investing a pretty penny (1.6 percent stake for $240 million) for Facebook, it was invevitable that another SE should invest in what is a very upcoming Social network - Bebo.
And by SE I mean, Google does of course own a percentage of AOL (back in 2005 it bought 5%) …so besides Orkut.com, now Bebo.com, which is making a bit of noise as the fast contender to FB.
We have already seen quite a bit of interest in the world of Application development enquiries for specifically Bebo…
Bebo itself is not that small with a global membership of more than 40 million users already, but according to statistics it does still fall behind on daily, and even monthly visits compared to FaceBook and MySpace.
Read more in the article which details a little further on the AOL Bebo investment.
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Posted in Uncategorized at 3:45 pm by altersage
I am…
This is a great little article on disconnect anxiety courtesy of AlterSage copywriter Lulie who is trying to tell me something…
If you can tick yes to at least 8 of these you might be a candidate too:
- Strongly or somewhat agree with the statement “My cell phone goes everywhere I go?”
- Use your wireless device “frequently” at home instead of your home phone?
- Strongly or somewhat agree with the statement “When I leave home without my cell phone, I feel cut off”?
- Spend four hours or more using the Internet—work or personal—per day on average?
- Used IM (instant messenger) in the last week?
- Have a Facebook profile that you visit at least once a day?
- Strongly agree with the statement “The world is not as safe as it used to be”?
- Used a laptop in your living room or bedroom in the last week?
- Text-messaged on a regular cell or sent email using a BlackBerry, Treo or similar in the evenings or the weekend in the last week?
…but that also makes at least 95% of everyone that I know candidates too
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02.21.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 11:13 am by altersage
Just flew into London last night. A long flight brought us safely to a cold London. Cold compared to the beautiful summer days of Cape Town we have just left.
Quite an exciting trip for us at AlterSage as we’re planning on visiting our clients located in and around London whilst we are here.
In addition we are also eager to meet up with new individuals and agencies looking to learn more about our services, potential outsource purposes and new opportunities. We have proven global experience in just about every facet of online marketing for a wide range of industries. Three of the additional benefits of working with us is of course the significant reduction on cost based on our location and exchange rate; English; and similar time zones!
It’s going to be a busy 10 days to fit our ambitious plans into - but we are really looking forward to this. We’re definitely also throwing in some sight-seeing must-do’s and visits to friends in between.
Travelling with me is my hubby, Joey - champion of FormFunction - a digital consultancy specialising in web and mobile application development with a strong focus on web 2.0 and social media applications. With Social Media Applications really being a hot-topic (yes, still!) Joey has great insights to bring to meet-ups too!
If you are in the abouts or wish to meet-up with us over coffee (or tea ), we welcome the opportunity. We are in London from today until Thursday the 28th before we head further afield. Please contact me directly at christine [at] altersage [dot] com or skype on “altersage”.
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02.13.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 4:16 pm by altersage
Last night was the sequel to the first FB Developer Garage Cape Town that was held in October 2007.
This event was driven by FormFunction a recently launched digital consultancy already making great headway in the Social Media App sphere in South Africa.
Held at the Leslie Social Sciences Building at the UCT Upper Campus, it proved a really nice location and served the purpose for this event. Smooth registration, great FB swag, sponsored drinks from Joyent, food supplied by Butlers and of course a t-shirt to all attendees proved ingredients for a great evening.
In general the event was really well put together and everything turned out great despite the last minute drop-off by two of the night’s speakers . The turn-out compared to the first event was a bit lower. There was a confirmation total of just under 90 guests and by my last count it was around 40 people that were at the event. However the people that were there, were definitely there for networking, finding new business and learning new tips and tricks from other developers. It was great to see all the networking going on, which really does make one feel that you belong to a little community.
The format: This time there were 8 speakers in total (of which 2 unfortunately dropped out last minute) and each had about 20 minutes to present their topic. 4 speakers pre-break and 4 speakers post, thereafter a communal Q&A to speakers.
The speakers on the night: Chris Mills: MC - FormFunction, Christine da Silva: Importance of Usability of Facebook Applications - AlterSage, Tim Lambrechts: The process of managing a Facebook Application client - WiredCommunications, Joey da Silva: Developer Tips for Managing client expectations - FormFunction, Jacques Marneweck: Introduction to Memcache - PowerTrip, Steven Bayhack & Grant Fleming: Facebook Application Monetization - TextStream.
The topics were really well presented, and compared to the last one you can see that a lot more time had been spent around the platform and getting to know the tricks of the trade. The Q&A session also really drilled down to the nitty-gritty, with questions ranging from the sustainability of applications to initial launch and buy-in and a few questions about information scraping and security.
It was really enjoyable and we look forward to the next one, which I believe will be closer to September, so keep watching the CT Dev group on FB.
As per the last event, I’m sure that FormFunction will make the presentations available to all those interested. I’m sure all attendees will be duly notified via the FB group.
Well done again! Looking forward to the next one!
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01.31.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 7:01 am by altersage
This is a little debate started on Eric’s blog yesterday which got quite a few people involved. It was quite interesting to see the reactions from various people IMO.
Not a new debate at any rate, but a SEM conspiracy theory going on for a few years now already. I wrote an article around it and a few other conspiracies a couple of years ago as well.
Initially the conversation started from an acquaintance that saw dramatic changes to his key-phrases on organic SEO only after he had activated his Adwords campaign.
SEM is quite subjective. Every search marketer has their own style and way of doing things, and I’ve often thought it incredibly amusing how everyone thinks that their style is better or worse than the next.
SEM is certainly not rocket-science. Anyone can do it, but its the experience (and passion for it) that counts. Knowing how to sift through what works and what doesn’t. Knowing how to combine various techniques to get the best results for the industry in question.
So back to the question at hand. Does PPC influence SEO organic SEO?
The short answer is No.
This was my response in the thread:
1. the PPC algo has evolved to factor in many organic elements as well. What I mean by this is that to run your PPC campaign optimally (as you know), your landing pages’ content need to reflect keywords accurately too and be highly relevant to the ad & keywords you’re bidding on. This brings down click costs and boosts ranking.
2. Now I can’t speak for your acquaintance as I do not know the variables of the situation: how long was his site running before he commenced a PPC campaign, did he make any changes to his content pages? What keywords / key-phrases are we talking about? Is the industry competitive (altho what industry isn’t competitive anymore…) etc etc
So one scenario could be that his site had been running a while, and just so happened that when he ’switched on’ his PPC campaign, the natural organic side kicked-in….
3. AND also because his site was getting more traffic all of a sudden, therefore more interaction and activity on his site - which SEs will pick up, Google ‘naturally assumes’ the site to be more relevant (Quality Score improves), therefore paying more attention to the content, therefore boosting the key-phrases it finds the site to be optimised for on the organic side too..
Andrew Smit pointed everyone to an article on Search Engine Watch which elaborates a little more on the topic, and reminded everyone how Matt Cutts had on several previous occasions denied the allegation.
At the end of the thread, the initial person who posted the question returned a very apt response stating “To be perfectly frank I don’t really care that much as to why it had such a dramatic effect. Happy that it did though…”
Isn’t that what all our clients want to see anyway? Results?.
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