ionEcom - An Overview
Conferences 
Last week on Thursday 23rd April, Blueclaw headed over to Shoreditch to host ionEcom; an event which provided valuable insite for ecommerce retailers who attended. Presentations throughout the day looked at content marketing, site architecture, smarter marketing campaigns and categorisation of the web, with key speakers coming from Blueclaw, Google, Majestic, Buzzsumo and iV Platform.
The day started off with David Hellowell, Senior Technical SEO Consultant at Blueclaw, who took us through the technical factors which can improve the way Google indexes a website. David’s presentation looked at various ways of controlling page rank dispersion, but the main points to take away are the different ways robots.txt, robots meta tag – no index, robots meta tag - nofollow, and rel=”no follow” can be used to control page rank dispersion.
Robots.txt
Robots.txt is the physical .txt file which sits in the root director of your domain.
| What it can do | What it can’t do |
|---|---|
| Stop the content on the given URL, directory, filetype or path from being crawled | Guarantee that the URL won’t be indexed, due to external links or resources |
| Offer instructions to user agents before the URL is crawled | Offer a safe method for dealing with duplicate content |
| Steer search engine agents away from less desirable content | Protect private content |
| Cut off inbound flow from the rest of the website | Distribute PageRank via internal links |
Robots meta tag – no index
The robots meta tag NOINDEX is used in the <head> section of an HTML or XHTML page.
| What it can do | What it can’t do |
|---|---|
| Strongly suggest a search engine to refrain from adding the URL and its content to the index | Stop any links on the page from being followed by users or search engines |
| Allow pages to be kept out of the index while still acting as a conduit for PageRank | Stop the page and its content from being crawled by a search engine |
| Allow indepth page level control of indexation | Block the flow of PageRank through the site |
| Override a contradictor Robts.txt instruction |
Robots meta tag – no follow
The robots meta tag NOFOLLOW is also used in the <head> section of an HTML or XHTML page.
| What it can do | What it can’t do |
|---|---|
| Instruct a search enging not to follow any links on the given page | Stop the same links being crawled if external sources link to it |
| Keep a linked page out of the index, providing no other resources link to it | Allow PageRank to flow through via internal links |
| Create a dead end for crawlers and restrict the flow of PageRank from internal and external links | Stop the URL in question from being crawled or indexed |
Rel=”no follow”
Rel=”no follow” is a link attribute which is assigned to individual links, rather than an entire page.
| What it can do | What it can’t do |
|---|---|
| Recommend that a search engine doesn’t follow or crawl the destination link | Stop the same destination page being crawled by other external links |
| Allow granular control over links which are deemed unsuitable for search engines | Stop the URL in question from being crawled or indexed |
| Allow PageRank to accumulate on destination page | |
| Make up for the absence of a good site architecture and internal linking structure |
The next speaker Steve Rayson, Director of Buzzsumo, who took us through ways in which data insights can help to improve your content marketing. These are Steve’s six key tips:
- Find, share and comment on trending topics that your audience is interested in. This will build a deeper level of engagement and build credibility
- Research the content which your audience loves by looking at what they share and what they find useful by looking at the top shared ‘how to’ post in your sector
- Look at which sites are ‘winning’ by checking which domains get the most social shares, then track these sites for new published content and any trending stories
- Find out what form of content engages your audience, such as infographic, ‘how to’ posts, lists etc and focus on creating this type of content
- Find out which networks work best for your topics – e.g. business stories are more likely to be shared on LinkedIn, whereas DIY will be more influential on Pinterest. Spend your time focusing on the right network
- Amplify your content’s reach by networking with the right influencers. Anyone with an average retweet of 2+ is deemed influential and worth targeting
Buzzsumo’s new feature, Trending, is an excellent way of staying on top of trending content. It allows you to create topics of interest and see which articles and content are the most shared within specific time frames. Jumping on topics which are trending in the last two hours and getting out relevant content is a great way of engaging with your audience.
Third speaker of the day was Josephine Boyd, Commerical Director of iV Platform. Her presentation took ionEcom’s delegates through ways in which vouchers and coupons can actually be made into a smart marketing campaign, rather than purely used as a way of getting sales. This can be done by
- Creating a call to action, such as ‘Like’ a Facebook page to get voucher code
- Capturing customer data to enable push notifications and emails when voucher has not been used, driving more sales
- Using customer data to send targed vouchers as these have a 46% higher uptake
- Using vouchers to grow database
Next up was Fabrice Michel, Search Account Manager at Blueclaw, who talked us through how to get the most out of your text ads in PPC. For more detail, check out his post on Bing Ads Tracking in Google Analytics.
Tom Clark, Online PR and Content Manager for Blueclaw, presented on how to identify compelling content angles in any sector. Key points to take away from his presentation are:
- Get the entire team on board when coming up with ideas. Sticking to just the content team can eventually lead to stale ideas, whereas collaborating with other teams such as design, development and account managers can lead to new and exciting ideas
- Use data from Google Analytics to identify trends in regional, annual, age and sex differences in purchase and usage behaviour - what do these trends suggest?
- Be bold with your ideas – ask develops what can be done, rather than what is safe
The second to last presentation was from Neil Dulake, Industry Head of Retail at Google, who spoke about the future of technology in retail. Technology, and consumer adoption of that technology, as accelerating and the internet is acting as the catalyst of this acceleration. The take away points of his presentation are:
- Monitor Google Trends to track your customer and jump on trends
- The omnichannel consumer is worth, on average, four times more than a single channel consumer
- Retaillers need to bring offline online, such as in store location giving online push notifications for discounts
- Offline also needs to be brought online, such as the opportunity to try before you buy
- Marketplaces create new opportunities for online businesses, particularly when looking to attract customers outside the UK
- Brands should work to engage the community by identifying trends and producing editorial content which takes on board these trends
- Physical stores need to be interactive and engaging to hold the attention of consumers
The last speaker of the day was Dixon Jones, Marketing Director of Majestic, who took us through the importance of data grouping and categorisation of the web when looking at the distribution of page authority. Topical trust flow, one of the ways Majestic ranks the authority of web pages, allows us to see where the influence of a page lies as it categorises the data into sectors. This is useful for:
- Determining authoritative pages, people, sites and plugins in relevant sector
- Allows the right influencer to be targeted
- Prevents irrelevant influencers and websites from talking about your site, which can come across as spam
- Finding and targeting relevant websites which will increase your trust flow in a specific topic
If you are interested in attending any future ionSearch events, follow us on Twitter to be the first to find out.
