Need Help Marketing?

Ok, the first time I heard about the Google Wonder Wheel, my initial reaction was the “Wonder what?”. But then I had one of those “Aha!” moments and realized how powerful it could be to use for brainstorming.  I will walk you through how to use the Google wonder wheel. So lets start with an example close to home, I recently needed ideas for what to add to this blog that were relevant to our readers. So my first step was to log in to our web analytics system and find out what keywords our visitors were using to find our website content.

The keyword phrase that stuck out the most was “i need help marketing” which is perfect for our website content because our web address (domain name) is NeedHelpMarketing.com. So naturally it is a perfect keyword phrase to focus on, but the real question I wanted to find out is what you, our readers, want help marketing about. Please do leave comments for marketing questions and future topic ideas.

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Now that we know what keywords people use to find our website on the Google search engine. We can then find out more about what related topics they are interested in. I encourage you to try this out for yourself as we go along.

• First Step: Go to Google and enter your search phrase

• Second Step: Click the “Show Options” option on the top left side of the results

• Third Step: Next click on the “Wonder Wheel” option on the left hand column

You should now see the search results represented in a diagram similar to this:

Google Wonder Wheel Example

In looking at the above example you can see more refined and more specific topics centered around our initial search phrase “i need help marketing” and by clicking any of these links you can see further results and drill into these topics for more information.

Key topics for future topics should concentrate on:

• Internet Marketing Help
• SEO Marketing
• Affiliate Marketing
• Marketing Graphic Design
• Marketing Help Coaches

Google Wonder Wheel – Related Topic Results

By taking this a step further and clicking on one of the results you can see more specific related topics of interest (shown above). The power of the wonder wheel is that it is such a natural way to brainstorm and very much mimics using pen and paper or a white board. Think about when you are brainstorming in a team and are making groups of ideas and drawing lines linking similar topics. In a very visual fashion Google is helping you to brainstorm using their vast knowledge of years of analyzing what people search for and how topics are connected together. From a brainstorming and market research perspective that knowledge is priceless.

Very specific related topics and ideas for future website content:

• Marketing with Postcards
• Marketing with Meaning
• Marketing with Color
• Marketing with Facebook
• Marketing with Twitter
• Marketing with Care
• Marketing with Flair

For another technique that is just as powerful take a look at Idea Generation using Word Clouds

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Every website needs to have a branded error page. Everyone is human and can make mistakes, maybe some one deleted content on your website accidentally or it was out of date. However the content and website link may still be referenced in search engine results.  Maybe your website has some old content that some people are still looking for though and happened to come across a  404 Error Page which is Internet speak for Not Found.

When this happens it can be jarring for your website visitor. They were looking to find something and clicked on a link to get more information but the last link they tried resulted in a not found error page. If you do not have a custom error page the web browser can and will substitute  it’s own. However this is not the experience you want for your prospective buyer. By having a custom error (404) page you can provide a better user experience and direct your buyer, reader as the case might be to another page.

Something you might not know is if a search engine is crawling your website and building an index of the contained links. And it encounters a 404 page it could stop following and cataloging the links on your website. However if you have a custom error page with additional site links or a common navigation menu the process can resume.

What should you include on your custom 404 Error Page?

1. You should definitely include your company logo
2. Your contact information
3. Support details if applicable
4. Website search box to find what they were looking for
5. Suggested items that are similar. Especially important if you have an e-commerce site because you don’t want to lose a possible sale.
6. Links to a sitemap or other categories to help navigate them back through your website

Also just as important is making sure that your website administrator is notified of all 404 errors by either recording them or sending an email to asking to correct the problem. Which solution works best will depend on how large your website is and how many times a 404 error page is likely to occur. You may even want to call out on your 404 error page that you have been notified of the error and it will be rectified shortly. This will give the impression that you take issues seriously.

Take a look at some fun examples of 404 pages.

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