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Search Engine Weekly Round-up #26

The Search Engine Weekly Round-up is where I look at the finest articles, talking points and general news from the week, all from the worlds of SEO, Marketing, Social Media, etc. This week features blogs about converting from 404 pages, viral email marketing, speaking to non-technical clients, and breaking the news of Penguin 2.0 to your clients.

Valuable 404 Pages
Ben Cook
Follow @Skitzzo
I’m sure that we’ve all seen 404 pages that are entertaining, creative or funny, but you seldom see 404 pages that can convert, which is what this post is all about.
Ben Cook ended up implementing a contact form into the 404 pages of his client’s website, which also contained a small apology, stating that the user can send an email and receive a link/file in regards to what they were looking for originally.This can help create a rapport with the user, whilst showing a fine level of customer service.

Ben’s idea ended up proving profitable, as said rapport opened further talks, which eventually led to sales. This is a fantastic post, offering a very simple, actionable idea which can be a huge boon for your company.

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Viral Marketing: The Short Story Of A Targeted Email Campaign That Went Viral
Tzvi Balbin
Follow @tybalbin
This guest post on the Vero blog is a very interesting, quick story of how Tzvi Balbin’s targeted email campaign ended up being a rousing success. After checking out which domains his company’s customers were using, and decided that the more niche, company based domains could be the equivalent of long-tail. For these customers, Tzvi sent emails containing personalised coupons in the hope that these people would share the email, beginning the virality of the email.

Well, it certainly paid off, as Tzvi noticed that click-through rates had increased by 55%, and conversion rates had risen by 86%. As well as this, the virality of the emails meant that revenue figures were 35% higher than the analytics reported. This post is certainly worth a read if you’re looking at implementing a targeted email campaign, which as you can see, can pay dividends.

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How My Mom Thinks Search Engines Work
Rob Toledo
Follow @stentontoledo
In light of Mother’s Day, Rob Toledo had a quick conversation with his mum, all about SEO and how search engines work. Whilst this is a really entertaining, interesting read, Rob’s point in this post is that it can be valuable to remove yourself from the “SEO echo chamber“, being able to bridge the gap. He does raise a point, SEO-related jargon probably sounds completely mental to those who aren’t as well-versed. I mean, imagine asking a non-technical client “how do you think the Penguin update will effect SERP clustering?” for example. Anyway, Rob wraps up the post by offering three items to take into account: Take non-SEOs out for coffee, get active in non-SEO communities, and follow non-SEO folk on Twitter.

Tweet Rob’s blog: Tweet

Penguin 2.0: Breaking the News to Clients
Joel Klettke
Follow @cstechjoel
According to Google’s Matt Cutts, the second coming of the Google Penguin update will be implemented rather soon. In light of this, Joel Klettke has taken the time to lay out a couple of template emails for you to send to your clients in case things haven’t gone as smoothly as expected. A few of these templates include blaming the intern, taking the money and running, getting angry, etc.
This post is a nice, light-hearted way to wrap things up for the week, and any post that ends with “Dear client, surprise! We’re dickheads!” is probably a winner.

Tweet Joel’s blog: Tweet

That’s all for this week’s round-up. I hope that you’ve enjoyed reading, and have enjoyed the content that has been mentioned. Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments section, and if you fancy sharing the content which has been cited, click the corresponding “Tweet” buttons.