Search Engine Optimization in the UK

St James Systems Wins Quality Assured Status

2009-11-21T13:37:00.003Z

21 November 2009 - Leicester

St James Systems are pleased to announce that they have achieved the full East Midlands Brokerage Quality Assured Status.

This means that St James Systems are an approved supplier for Business Link and the East Midlands Development Agency (EMDA).

Sam Goddard, senior consultant at St James Systems said: "We are very pleased and feel that this shows the company's desire to grow, to approve and to adhere to the highest, externally vetted standards".

Free Stompernet Internet Marketing Test Drive with 40 pieces of Content

2009-09-14T23:54:00.002+01:00

The guys over at StomperNet have really hit the ball out of the park: if you go to their Stomper999 site and sign up for a free Test Drive StomperNet account, you can get over 40 pieces of content - no charge! Just click here

Guess when you've got over 1400 training videos in your extensive Library, you can afford to give a *lot* of stuff away.

While you're there, you should also check out their new StomperCommerce software - this thing is *really* easy to use to build a search-engine friendly shopping cart. Take a look here

I hear a rumor that StomperNet is building up for some kind of nuclear weapon drop first part of next week - if I didn't already know about the 11 tools that new members will get I probably wouldn't believe there was anything left!

Happy Internet Marketing

Sam

P.S. Don't forget to go check out the Free Webinar page at Stomper999 - they're having webinars for the next week with the faculty talking about their areas of expertise AND reviewing the new tools:

Click Here

Do You know the Holy Grail of Internet Marketing

2009-09-12T18:42:00.002+01:00

My friends over StomperNet have lost their minds!

They're giving away Stomping the Search Engines 2 for free as part of their amazing Stomper 09/09/09 launch.

Click here to go to the launch

This formerly $500 product (priced way too low) is just one of the things they're giving away today.

Don't know how they do it.

But there's no doubt they know this stuff - they were teaching SEO before anybody even KNEW about SEO.

Click here to find out more

Teaching - that's what StomperNet does.

And they also announced something called StomperSyndicator, yet another free tool you'd get if you joined.

This thing is the mac daddy of syndicating and distributing content for SEO.

So go check out Day 3 of StomperNet's launch. If you've missed Days 1 and 2, easy to get caught up while you're there.

Check it out now

Stompernet 09/09/09 - The Internet Marketing Story of the Year

2009-09-08T00:02:00.004+01:00

There's only one place to be this Wednesday morning at 9 Eastern:

HERE

I've got it on good authority that StomperNet is reopening for new members for the first time in over 16 months. And they're looking for new Stompers to be part of the Success Story.

Let's face it: for 3 years, StomperNet has given its members a pretty serious leg up on their competitors.

So if them reopening was the ONLY good news, that would probably be enough.

But there's more...WAY more.

The word is that StomperNet is going to be WAY less expensive to join AND offer a lot more (how do those guys DO that?!?)

Apparently they've cut some serious deals and now will have a bunch of great tools included in the membership, to go along with the world-class library of cutting-edge content and the Faculty that just hit 20 strong.

So, get ready to go check it out - only a couple days away now - clear the decks because Wednesday at 9 am you're going to want to see this page:

Stompernet

Once you see it, you're probably going to WANT to be that next Success Story.

Stompernet Live 8 Reading List - What Do the Experts Read

2009-08-10T01:09:00.010+01:00

Hello all who attended the Stompernet Live conference or who are interested in finding out what has inspired some of the world's top speakers.

I have been to a number of Stompernet conferences and have always made a note of the reading list. I have found this reading list invaluable & I thought you would do too.

The list isn't complete as I could only be in one place at one time & so I welcome your comments and additions.

Joe Polish:

Jo's story started with the world of offline marketing and charted his life and success as a marketer following turbulent periods of addiction in his late teens. The book he recomended says as much about addiction to ilicit substances as to our addiction to practices and habits that we know are harmful to ourselves, our attitudes and our business.

Change or Die - Alan Deutschman

On the extreme difficulty of changing your habits & engrained behaviours

Dan Thies:

Dan delivered a talk on the 6 things you must know to survive in Internet marketing. The books he recommended related to copywriting, an often neglected part of eCommerce and conversion that can make a significant difference to your bottom line.

Web Copy that sells - Maria Veloso

Catalog Copy that Sells - HG Lewis

Lisa Lang:

Lisa & Brad Falon spoke on the importance of using the Theory of Constraints in developing your business. The greater the throughput, the more money you can make and the better your company is positioned to be able to offer what the competition cannot. Books relating to Brad & Lisa's talks are below:

The Goal - Eli Goldratt

The first of the Theory of Constraints books. It's written as a novel & is very easy to absorb. It's a brilliant & through-provoking read that provides all sorts of excellent analogies for the Theory of Constraints.

It's Not Luck - Eli Goldratt

The follow-up to The Goal. This books takes the thinking of The Goal to the next level. It is again written as a novel and is extremely engaging.

The Critical Chain - Eli Goldratt

This book applies the Theory of Constraints to project management and is essential for anyone who wishes to plan and execute any kind of project in a way that will save them time or money. Whether you're designing & building a website, or working on a planned expansion for your business, this is a great read.

Brad Fallon:

Brad's talk was a fairly high-level analysis of business and business practices. As well as talking aobut the Theory of Constraints, brad also mentioned the following books:

Sway: The irresistable Pull of Irrational Marketing - Ori Brafman

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions - Dan Ariely

The Only 3 Questions that Count - Ken Fisher

Twitter in Denial of Service Attack

2009-08-06T16:57:00.007+01:00

For those of you who searched for Twitter today & found that it wasn't there, the site was taken down by a denial of service (or DDOS) attack.

"On this otherwise happy Thursday morning, Twitter is the target of a denial of service attack," said company co-founder Biz Stone on the company's blog.

It is estimated that there are over 45 million users of Twitter, making the service on of critical importance for people, businesses and Internet Marketing companies alike.

"Attacks such as this are malicious efforts orchestrated to disrupt and make unavailable services such as online banks, credit card payment gateways, and in this case, Twitter for intended customers or users." said Stone.

UPDATE:

The Register reports that the attack was the result of a JoeJob spamming campaign.Joejobs are spam messages that are designed not to push Viagra but to induce someone to click on a link in the hopes of harming the site being linked to. Essentially, millions of people get an email that says something benign like "Please click the link to my blog"; the link points to Twitter rather than the blog & people clicking on it are not aware of the harm that they're causing.

Increase your Twitter following

2009-08-05T17:22:00.006+01:00

There are myriad tools on the market that can increase your Twitter following. Some of these tools are better than others, some are free & some cost a lot of money.St James Systems have tested a large number of Twitter tools over the last 12 months with varying degrees of success. Many were excellent but only one could tick all the boxes. This was Tweet Adder.

The features that we are after as Internet marketers may well be a useful benchmark for those who are looking to build their Twitter profile & following. We are particularly interested in the following:

The ability to use multiple accounts quickly and simply
The ability to follow users who have mentioned a particular keyword or phrase in their tweets
The ability to follow users who mention keywords in their biography
Follow people within a certain distance of a geographical location
Automate the process of following people who are relevant
See statistics on the effects of this automated following in order to find the most successful following techniques over time.
To cease following when the following/followers ratio gets too high.
Automatically unfollow.
Maintain a 'Safelist' of users who are never to be unfollowed.
Send posts.
Schedule posts.

The results of using TweetAdder were impressive and the speed at which a following could be built up, when compared to the risk that the user was taking in following unrelated people was exceptional.

St James Systems were able to build up a following of 2,623 followers in under 2 months with an 18.3% conversion rate of following to followers.

For more information, visit the TweetAdder site: www.TweetAdder.com

Peterborough Cathedral Website Live

2009-08-03T18:20:00.004+01:00

St James Systems have just launched the new Peterborough Cathedral website. The site, which is the largest Cathedral website in the UK, has been a labour of love and a test of project management skills. 12 months went into planning and developing a site that aimed to showcase all that the Cathedral has to offer in a way that was not bamboozling to visitors.

The aim of the site is to attract visitors and to provide useful information to tourists and regulars alike.

The new website is built using a content management system that allows Cathedral staff to create and manage their own content, news articles, images, news and press releases.

We feel that the site showcases our web design skills and shows our ability to manage large and complex projects.

The site can be viewed here: www.peterborough-cathedral.org.uk

Sam Goddard to Feature in The Net Effect Magazine

2009-01-12T12:17:00.003Z

Samuel Goddard, Senior Consultant at St James Systems is to be featured in The Net Effect magazine. The magazine's communicaitons team singled out the contributions of St James Systems and the company's online success as well as its novel Internet marketing techniques.

The Net Effect is a publication that has a worldwide readership of 18,000 Internet Marketing professionals.

The Heckington Show - Contract Won

2009-01-07T20:13:00.004Z

St James Systems are proud to announce that they have won the contract for the redevelopment of the Heckington Show website.

The Heckington Show is the largest village show in England and attracts 30,000 visitors per annum: It has been running since the 1860s and boasts many truly startling stories. For example, the world's first bike race was held at the show and it is now the home of the world's oldest cycle race.

The show is a quintessentially English affair, a weekend in the sun enjoying truly English pursuits and having a great time with a uniquely friendly and helpful community and St James Systems are proud to be involved.

The mockup of the new site can be seen in the portfolio album on our Facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/St-James-Systems/20350889982

Website Promotion

2008-09-14T15:15:00.001+01:00

Who do you know who has a website on the Internet that sells products?

Who do you know who wants a website that sells products?

St James Systems are looking to get in touch with companies who are interested in making the Internet work for them and who want to make more money and find more customers than ever before.

Our Internet marketing and search engine optimisation programmes have increased our clients income substantially.

Our results:

We have increased the turnover of one of our clients by 9 times within four months

We have increased the number of people visiting our clients' websites by up to 10 times

We have a number of means of working with clients including:
Building, marketing and managing a client's website from scratch
Working with existing websites
Working for a fixed fee or for a commission

If you know anyone who might like to increase their website traffic and turnover, please refer them to us and we will be happy to help.

We include one such letter below:

Having dabbled with Search Engine Optimisation techniques ourselves over the past year and to no great avail, we finally decided to hire the services of St James Systems. Soon after, a report was produced along with a list of suggested improvements that could help our e-commerce site increase targeted traffic and, more importantly, turnover.

Over a period of just 2 months, our turnover has increased from just £350 a month to £1800. In that time we have been introduced to a variety of exciting Search Engine Optimisation techniques. We have worked closely with Sam at St James Systems to improve our website, not only improving its search engine ranking, but also focusing on the customer experience and usability issues.

Our visits have increased from 289 in June to 1,061 in August. St James Systems really do seem to have the 'black art' of Search Engine Optimisation sewn up, and we look forward to working with them over the next few months to further increase the success of our store.

Richard Lang
Digital Design Manager
Tintisha Technologies
www.tintisha.com

Facebook - Are you a fan?

2008-09-12T12:19:00.002+01:00

St James Systems are one of only a handful of firms around the world whose search engine optimisation and Internet marketing is focused on social networks. These social networks like Facebook & LinkedIn attract millions of loyal users every day. Facebook has over 100 million daily users, many of whom use their network of friends and contacts to find the products and services they are looking for rather than the search engines.

St James Systems recognise that the perception is that these social network groups are a colossal waste of time but the number of people who use them every day eclipses the number of people who use the search engines. The next person to find your website is far more likely to do so through social media than through the search engines and there are not many people who are making the most of this opportunity.

If you are a user of Facebook, why not come along and take a look at the St James Systems Facebook Page?

A Facebook page is a very simple means of interacting with your clients, fans and potential customers, of getting their feedback and of entering into a conversation with the people who are most likely to buy your products and services. Fans of your Facebook page will get updates of your latest news and additions and you will be able to build relationships with your customers quicker and more cheaply than ever.

If you are looking to build up strong relations with customers, Facebook can be a dream come true.

Would you like a Facebook page for your business? If so, please get in touch with us and we will be happy to help.

Saving Time

2008-09-11T20:47:00.002+01:00

Recently, we uncovered a shocking statistic:

The average parent spends twice as long with their email as they do with their own children.

Let's give you an example of how you might be losing time and not realising it.

If opening an email using a keyboard takes 3 seconds (Press CTRL+O) and closing takes the same amount of time (ALT+F4 - go on, try it!) then opening an email by taking your hands away from the keyboard, moving the mouse, clicking, and then putting your hands back on the keyboard might take 15 seconds. The difference is 12 seconds. If you have to open & close 100 emails a day & create & send 50 emails a day, then 12 seconds * 300 clicks = 1 hour.

There is potentially one hour you could be saving a day just by learning how to use your computer more effectively.

We have been musing on these statistics and have been working on a solution. What we have come up with is twofold. Firstly, we are offering free cheat sheets for Windows - lists of shortcuts that save you time & effort. Please contact us for a copy. Secondly, we are offering some touch-typing software for £35+VAT. Let's look at another example.

Yesterday, I wrote 5,000 words worth of reports and articles.

At 30 words per minute this would have taken me 2h 47 minutes.

At 60 words per minute this would take 1h 13 minutes.
If I spent an hour each evening for two weeks using some touch-typing software and increased my typing speed from 30 - 60 words per minute (it is possible) then:

I'd be able to gain the time I spent learning within 10 days.

I'd save myself an hour and a half per day from then on.

At £35+VAT, this software is cheaper than a secretary and it helps with matters that secretaries can't deal with (emails, personal matters, etc).

We hope that this article is of interest to you. If you are finding that your knowledge of Windows shortcuts and your touch-typing ability is constraining you, then please ask for a free cheat sheet and let us provide you with some inexpensive touch-typing software that will help you to type quickly, in an entertaining way and at your own pace.

Microsoft's Non-advertising Advertising with Jerry Seinfeld

2008-09-09T00:45:00.004+01:00

In an attempt to distance themselves form almost everyting, Microsoft have released an advert featuring Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates. The advert is like the Seinfeld observation about the advert for Dockers that didn't mention the product.

The advert does not mention any of Microsoft's products and features a rather wooden Bill Gates. That Bill Gates is prepared to appear in a rather wooden fashion looking rather geekish is something but otherwise the advert is completely pointless.

Whereas pointlessness was the point of the Seinfeld comedy series, Microsoft is facing stiffer and stiffer competition and, despite its near monopoly is having a job justifying its operating systems and office suites in a time of increased possibilites made through the web.

Apple has done a good job of beginning to take back market share form Microsoft in recent years. As their handheld devices work and work well, so the public's trust in the Apple brand increases. Likewise, Google is muscling in on Microsoft's turf with a new free browser. Furthermore, Linux is becoming more important as an operating system platform.

In short, Microsoft's market is being eroded and the need for packaged software products are dwindling in an age where more and more applications are web based and Microsoft has a shrinking share of the web.

With this in mind, does a quirky, pointless advert just make Microsoft appear quirky & pointless?

What do you think?

Google's Real Problems

2008-09-02T20:18:00.007+01:00

As search engine optimisers, we get the impression that a search engine's biggest nightmare is the work we carry out. Not only is this egotistical but it is also untrue. Most optimisers try to give the sites they work with the best possible rankings for what they have and, in so doing, help to show the sites that are serious about their web presence, and make sites more accessible to the search engines and to people with all abilities and disabilities.

'Black Hat' search engine marketers might cause Google to miss a step occasionally as they find ways to fool the search engines but these efforts are short-lived and the brainpower of Google's 100 Doctors of Philosophy are either a step ahead or ready to react quickly.

In truth, Google's problems are much more mundane than industrial espionage or seditious optimisation practices: the main problem is that of scale.

Scale has been a constraint for all kinds of organisations and empires throughout time - the Romans were hampered by their limited mathematical abilities and could not grow beyond the limits of around 100AD and the British Empire found itself becoming the world's policeman, a title that came at a tremendous cost. Likewise, Google's size gives it tremendous problems. Here are a few that you may not have considered.

Breakdowns: It is estimated that Google runs 500,000 servers. At any one time there are going to be several machines that have gone down. Mechanical problems mount up and even if 1 in 1000 servers fails completely in a given year, that's 500 to be changed. With our experience with computers, things go wrong all the time & Google might expect 1000 servers to be down at any one time.

Power: Google has 3 main datacentres, each of which chew through power at around $5000 per hour. Such massive power usage causes massive headaches. Google has recently invested in solar power and put time & money into RE

Revenues: Furthermore, search is a costly area with an estimated 85% of searches being non-commercial and thus difficult to wrap advertising around. Google only has one tried-and-tested means of making money - advertising. But for that, they do not have a business. With the advent of social networking sites like Facebook, with the rise of other media like Video, more and more people are interacting with the Internet without needing search engines; they can get their information and products by interacting with friends rather than by asking a search engine a limited or clunky question. Google has to try hard to preserve its revenue stream - it has grown fat on search revenues and shareholders will demand that they continue to grow and do not get syphoned off by other Internet companies.

Costs: There are massive costs involved in search. Apart from the employment costs (of Google's 100+ doctorates), the costs of machinery, power and research are limiting.

Data: Google's index has grown to 20 billion pages, a gigantic amount. It takes 6 weeks for them to index the sites on the Internet. This amount of data, however, is dwarfed by the 1 trillion pages that they know about. If your dataset is 2% of the data that is on the Internet then you have to ber VERY good at indexing the right data or else searchers will go elsewhere. Google has to be sure that it provides the results that people will find useful very quickly or else users will go elsewhere - too much information and there will be spam and drivel in the index and too little and searchers will miss out on the Internet's variety.

Furthermore, the Internet is growing massively. With Web 2.0 applications like blogs that allow people to quickly & easily publish their information on the Internet (this blog is just one example), the Internet has grown exponentially. Around 140 million people were online in 1998 when Google Inc started compared to 1.4 billion today according to internetworldstats.com and all of them have access to publishing tools that were not available 2 or 3 years ago. There is the problem that the amound of information online might grow in excess of Moore's Law (the rule of thumb used by the founder of Intel in 1965 which basically stated that the number of transistors on an integrated surface doubles every 18 months). This means that if the amount of information on the Internet doubles in less than 18 months, Google either takes longer to compile and analyse the data or it must invest in more & more computing power.

Even more troubling is the problem of infinite scalability. I do not know the limits of technology but there must be significant software problems in co-ordinating the data on 500,000 servers and there must be a limit to the complexity of such a system. With a rapidly growing dataset with which to compute, Google is at the limits of the possible as far as computing is concerned.

These problems of scale mean that Google spends more and more time and money worrying about physical constraints than about giving the best search results that get the most advertising revenues. Will the company be able to continue to grow beyond these constraints and keep searchers & shareholders happy? Will they be able to continue to try to take market share from companies like Microsoft on browsers that do not earn them any money? Time will tell.

Thanks to Leslie Rhode & Andy Edmonds for their opinions.

Enough of the new search engines - how about a new browser?

2008-09-02T11:14:00.003+01:00

There have been a number of interesting search engine offerings over the last few months and we wanted to write about something new.

Increasingly, we are finding that customers are interacting with the Internet in different ways and that their next purchase might not necessarily come from an interaction with a search engine. Video now dwarfs search with 10 billion pieces of online video were viewed in December 2007 & with 141 million Americans viewing video online every month (did you ever wonder why Google paid $1.65bn for YouTube?) as does social networking (with over 100 million people using Facebook alone). The common elements to all of these facets of customer interaction is the brpwser as everyone needs a browser to use video, social media and the search engines.

If the aim of the game is to influence people as early as possible during their Internet experience then the browser hould be one of the most important things. Browser wars, however, are old hat - Netscape bowed out of the race years ago and today Internet Explorer & Firefox have the market sewn up between them (IE had 72.15% of the market & Mozilla 19.83% in August 2008 according to hitslink.com). In this environment, a move by Google came out of left field. That said, moving into the browser seems like a logical step for a company like Google which needs to protect its advertising revenues.

This move could have real repurcussions for Mozilla which, until now has had a close relationship with Google (their offices are across the road from Google's) and, as such, might show Google's intent to topple Microsoft's dominance. If this is the case, then the next logical step to influence people beofre they are online is for Google to release an open source operating system. You heard it here first.

Atacama Audio - Contract Won

2008-08-29T14:01:00.003+01:00

St James Systems are pleased to announce that they have won the contract to look after the Atacama Audio website. The company aims to increase the profile of the Atacama company online and to increase the conversion rate of Atacama's companion site which sells its products.

The agreement sees St James Systems working with another of Leicester's largest manufacturers and comes as very good news.

St James Systems welcome Atacama's ambitious plans for their websites and look forward to helping them in any way they can.

The Assault on 'Party Products' - The High Seas Part 3 - The Press Release

2008-08-13T15:02:00.004+01:00

A press release can be an important part of any PR campaign. It can open up your product or service to markets all over the world very easily. There are a number of ways of doing this including writing to local media outlets, writing to interest groups over the Internet, writing on your blog and sending a press release through an Internet portal.

In this instance we are using PRWeb, an online company who make press releases on your behalf. The cost of a submission is around $200 but, if you have the right product to sell, the coverage can be invaluable.

In the press release we have written, we have talked up the size of the Party Catalogue and that it does not rely upon advertising to gain its income.

Press releases must be written in a particular way so that the news media can quickly pick up what you have to say and so that your headline and a quick summary can be posted across the news and the web with the greatest of ease. Anyone interested in writing a press release would be welcome to contact us for advice.

it is always worth consulting with a professional before you send off your press release. At $200, you might be wasting your money and, with copy and content the most important considerations, you want to do it right.

The release is scheduled for 12.05AM PST. Wait & see what happens.

The Assault on 'Party Products' - The High Seas Part 2 - Lines of Attack

2008-08-13T14:42:00.004+01:00

You may remember that we have been trying to get The Party Catalogue to the top of the search engines for the keyword Party Products. It's steady as she goes this week with the website sitting in the smae position but we have made a number of decisions.

We will be attempting to lift The Party Catalogue in 5 ways:

- Changes to the site
- Link building
- Social Networking and Social Bookmarking
- Article writing and article submission
- Good old PR

Each of these attempts will enhance the reputation of The Party Catalogue and, through the provision of well-written content, will help to deliver increased, targeted traffic in the long term.

Onsite changes will include a rewriting of the META data on the site (this is information that tells search engines about a particular webpage but remains hidden to viewers), a rewriting of the cop on the site and an increase of the copy on the front page and a restructuring of the site to ensure that the search engines focus on the fact that The Party Catalogue is a place that sells party supplies rather than anytihng else.

Link building will involve a campaign that will ask webmasters of sites in the gifts industry if they would consider linking to our site. Links act like votes in the search engines and each link on another person's site is an exit form their site and an entrance to yours - this is a very powerful tool.

Social media work will involve making the most of the new applications that the web is being put to. With over 90 million people on Facebook, with over 10 billion pieces of video media being viewed per month and with people quickly and easily communicating with each other in ways that do not involve the search engines, it is important to have a social presence.

Article writing is a way to enhance the reputation of your brand and to get targeted customers to visit your site. This is a matter of writing good content and finding good content partners.

PR is the art of figting a guerrilla war through the media to get the maximum exposure for the minimum of effort.

Over the next few weeks, you will find out how we use these tools to gain favourable positions for our clients. Stay tuned to find out more.

The assault on 'Party Products' - The High Seas Part 1

2008-08-08T16:28:00.010+01:00

We thought you might be interested in a serialisation of how we mount an assault on the search engines. This might give you ideas about how to promote your own website as well as giving you a chance to gague our own success. We've been working with a company called The Party Catalogue recently and we've picked out a number of keywords that we want to see them rank for. For this serialisation, we've picked two keywords for the homepage, party products and party supplies.

We hope you enjoy reading about the rise & fall of the company on the high seas of Google & look forward to seeing what happens. We've done a bit of preliminary work on the website & the site has begun to show up - a Google UK search currently reveals position 85 for party supplies & 19 for party products.

Search Engine optimisation is shrouded in mystery and we aim to remove that mystery & we hope you'll be interested in the results. From our studies, we know that being on the front page of Google can mean getting five times as many visitors as being on the second page and so there is the potential for revenues to increase by 5 times. That said, the top spot on Google can have 3 times as much traffic as lower spots on the first page and so competition is fierce.

Some Cold, Hard Facts:

On average, there are 595 searches a day for the keyword party supplies and 160 for party products.

We are competing against 15,700,000 & 21,200,000 other sites respectively & so we're not doing too badly to start with.

If you'd like to help and you have a web page or a blog, please put the following code into it:

and lo, we might make a difference.

Female Voiceover - the site & the sounds

2008-08-08T16:18:00.004+01:00

We have recently uploaded a new site for Louise Wilson Voice Imaging, a company specialising in providing voiceovers for corporate videos, e-learing courses, websites and on-hold marketing. You may well have heard Louise's voice but you're going to hear a lot more of it as time goes by.

The website aims to be simple and clean and to show Louise's breadth of experience. A full FAQ aims to answer many of the queries and problems that Louise has encountered in her work and aims to provide an informative resource to potential clients.

Testimonials are vital for any business and in LW Voice Imaging's case, they don't come much better as she has worked for a number of high profile clients.

Finally, there is an audio showreel, which showcases Louise's talents and works as a 'greatest hits' for her voiceovers and which gives her customers an ideal chance to 'try before the buy'.

We hope you enjoy it and welcome your comments.

Cuil - the fallout

2008-08-01T15:24:00.004+01:00

As with every young pretender that promises much, obscurity is an ever-present threat. The naysayers and detractors are waiting in the wings.

Part of the reason for the failure of a new search engine is the symbiotic relationship that many companies and search engine optimisers have with Google. Google gets 60% of the searches and so those who want to get the best from their websites will focus on Google and encourage people to use Google.

Another part is the failure of the search engine. Although the verdict is still out on Cuil (pronounced 'Cool') there are whisperings that it's not all it's cracked up to be and that hubris reigns at their Palo Alto HQ. Sarah Carey, a journalist and friend of Cuil CEO, Tom Costello, was somewhat taken aback by the profligacy of the operation being amazed that the company pays for muffins, drinks, a personal trainer and a gym membership for everyone. Dragons will be rotating in their dens at hearing this. With only $33 million to play with, can such expenses be justified in a fight against multi-billion dollar search engines?

Time will tell for Cuil but things don't look good already.

Cuil - the future of search...again

2008-07-30T19:47:00.003+01:00

With search eninges being the gateway to knowledge and power on the Internet and with the massive amounts of money that can be generated through controlling this, it is not surprising that there are young pretenders jockeying for positioning.

Search engines live or die by the information they can provide. If you search for something and don't get what you want you will go somewhere else. If you search and find spam the search eninge will get a bad name and will lose market share, money and the eyes & ears of a legion of fans.

Cuil is one of these young pretenders. It claims the largest index (120) billion pages and it is developed by former Google search engine developers. The budget for the search engine was arounnd $30m which pales next to Google's billions but small & nimble is often an advantage in the Web 2.0 world.

Verdict:

Results are laid out pleasingly in columns with pictures to give an added sense of what is happening.
Form a small sample, results seem less spammy.

Behind the scenes with search engine optimisation

2008-07-30T19:13:00.003+01:00

There are many methods that a search engine optimiser can use in order to help their site to gain more favourable rankings. By far the most important part of this is building links. This effectively channels some of the importance from other sites into your own. This influence (or Page Rank as Google call it) flows through links and, as a general rule, the more links there are to a page, the higher the Page Rank for that page.

In order for the work of link-building to be put to best effect, it is important to channel the influence your pages carry properly. This can be done with the rel="nofollow" attribute. This attribute is used by search engines like Google to prevent link spam and it allows you to tell search enignes not to follow a particular link and thus to assign a greater importance to the other links on the page. If you nofollow the links on your site that lead out to sites that you don't want to give influence to or the links that do not contain your keywords, then the links on your site that link to your content using the right keywords for thaat content in their anchor text will be given a far greater level of importance by Google.

Wikipedia is an exponent of the nofollow attribute. In order to stop people from changing Wikipedia entries in order to gian links to their websites, Wikipedia used the nofollow attribute on all external links. This means that people interested in external resources from Wikipedia can follow the links if they so choose but the search engines will not and will not give any extra importance to the sites behind them.

An example of the practice of using the nofollow attribute in a business context can be seen at Tintisha's website. The site is optimised for the keyword speaker stands and so links that do not relate to speaker stands or to any of the other keywords that the site uses are nofollowed. This means that the site can use navigational elements to help people find what they are looking for but inform the search engines that the deeper content on the site relates to the keywords you deem to be correct rather than those that anyone else thinks is right.

In order to see this in action, you can either use your browser, click on View & then Source Code. This shows the code that goes to making up the web page you see. You can then search for the word "nofollow" and see which hyperlink it pops up agianst.

To save time, however, if you have a Firefox browser you can download the Search Status plugin that puts some useful optimisation tools into the browser. Once installed, you see an extra bar. If you click on the 'q' on the bar and select 'Highlight nofollow links' you will now get a visual representation of nofollow links on a given website. Nofollow links will be ighlighted in pink and you can see how people use this attribute and get a sense of how to harness it.

St James Systems Facebook Group - Are you a Fan?

2008-07-24T11:25:00.003+01:00

In an attempt to drag ourselves kicking and screaming into the 21st Century, St James Systems have created a Facebook page as a showcase for the company and its work. the page, which can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/St-James-Systems/20350889982?ref=ts includes pictures, recent work and this blog.

Facebook is an important social networking medium with over 60 million members at the time of writing and St James Systems would urge any other company interested in gaining business over the Internet to do the same.

If you would like to talk about the benefits of an Internet marketing or search engine optimisation campaign then give us a call on 0116 2836699. For now, however, go along to www.facebook.com/business and sign up for yourself.

Tintisha.com

2008-07-23T13:31:00.003+01:00

St James Systems are working with Tintisha.com on a project that has changed the look of the site and increased its profile on the Internet.

A blog has been introduced to keep customers and those in the audio visual industry up-to-speed with what is going on, a forum has been installed which will aim to answer the questions of anyone who uses audio visual electronics. The site has been revamped and St James Systems have begun optimising it for the word speaker stands and for many others.

Yesterday, 10 times as many people visited the site as when St James Systems started working with Tintisha at the beginning of June.

The aim is to make Tintisha.com the online market leader for speaker stands and gadgets. St James Systems aim to increase the level of traffic visiting the site and the conversion rate (turning those that visit into customers).

Peterborough Cathedral - Website Design

2008-07-23T13:27:00.003+01:00

St James Systems are proud to announce that they have won the contract to redevelop the Peterborough Cathedral website. St James Systems will be maintaining the current website until the new site comes on stream. The new site is expected in October.

St James Systems are excited as phase 1 of the developement is an exciting project including new content management tools and phase 2 will introduce some web 2.0 elements, allowing visitors to get involved and interact in a way that is not being done on any Cathedral website.

New Websites - An update

2008-07-23T13:21:00.004+01:00

We have been putting a number of new websites online recently and we wanted to show you a couple of them:

Harborough Tiles - Bathrooms, Bedrooms, Kitchens & Tiles: www.harboroughtiles.co.uk

This site has a flash-animated gallery and some information on the different facets of the business.

Louise Wilson Voice Imaging - Voiceover services: www.female-voiceover.co.uk

This is a relatively simple website but very effective. Louise lives & dies on the sound of her voice so we've put up some recordings & we've included a comprehensive FAQ so that her potential clients can feel confident in her.

Planning your office network

2008-02-12T18:16:00.000Z

When running an office there are enough things to worry about without the perils of an IT infrastructure. IT is something we want to be as unobtrusive as possible. When there is a problem and the network goes down, it seems that everything is wedded to computers and that there is nothing we can do. This is more the result of bad planning than the inexorable march of technology on our daily lives. With a bit of thought, with redundancy and backup procedures built into your system, you need not lose valuable time if there is a problem.

In order to have a well-planned network organisations need to think about the following facets of IT:

Network Layout - A periodic review of the changing layout of buildings and the changes in technology that might make for a more reliable network shoud be undertaken. Networking speeds have increased steadily over the years with Fast Ethernet (100mbps) overtaking Ethernet (10mbps) as the common networking speed and then with Gigabit Ethernet (1000mbps) becoming more common over the last three years. It is worth bearing in mind that data transferred using Ethernet speeds will theoretically travel a hundred times slower than that over Gigabit Ethernet. As Internet speeds increase, as more tasks are accomplished over the Internet and as the IT system becomes more integrated, it is important to assess whether the benefits of increased speed in the network outweigh the costs of upgrading equipment. Wireless networking has been in its infancy with limited speeds and ranges being unsatisfactory for use in the office environment but the upcoming 802.11n protocols will mean wireless devices have a wider range and faster transfer speeds. This may be a viable option in the future.

Users - The number of people using the system and their needs should be kept under observation. Each user requires bandwidth, a network identity and licenses for the software you are using.

Hardware - A strategic look at hardware purchase is often advisable. This might mean that the majority of hardware is purchased at the same time ensuring uniformity for users and lower prices. Furthermore, regular diagnostic checks of the hardware can keep everything running smoothly and help in identifying pieces of equipment that need upgrading or replacing.
Software - It is worth keeping a record of the software used across the network and periodically polling users to see if they have changed anything or added any software that might be useful to other users. Furthermore, if an organisation's policy is to bring a certain degree of uniformity to the network, software should be volume-licensed. This will ensure large savings in the long-run. By doing this, it is also easier for people to understand what is happening and quickly pick up on work should a staff member be away.

Shared resources - Some thought should be given to the resources that can be shared over the network, be they public emails, shared files and folders, shared databases or anything else. Sharing resources across the network can save large amounts of time and can avoid duplication of work and resources.

Remote access - Many office networks can be made available online. Company members should be able to check their email or access their PCs remotely. This can be beneficial for sales staff out on the road or for directors or partners that need to check that an important correspondence has been received whilst on holiday.
Upgrade schedule - A schedule that could give a timescale for the upgrading and replacement of PCs is useful on a budgetary level and it would ensure that staff neither become frustrated nor waste their time staring at egg-timers.

Future needs - The future needs of any organisation must be looked at and budgeted for. There is no point in one department replacing some equipment to a system that will be redundant in six months. A strategic look at the future needs of users in terms of what they would like and what hardware and software is becoming available would be of benefit as it will give users a sense of technological developments and allow technology to fit their needs rather than vice-versa.

Current problems - A list of problems is something that can be easily drawn up on a departmental level and shared. It is often the case that these problems can be dealt with quite swiftly once recognised rather than being allowed to fester.

Current labour-intensive tasks that could be automated - The identification of the most tedious parts of every department's day could help to inform the IT policy.

Backups - It is important to have a strategic plan to back up and secure information. Organisations must know what information is being stored where. Furthermore, backups should be stored safely and, preferably, offsite to ensure that work is not completely lost should the worst happen. If the worst happens, a good backup is one less tihng to worry about and can mean you can get back to work as quickly as possible.

Redundancy - Try to analyse the parts of the network that are mist used and most valuable and ensure, that if they go down, you can stil continue. Redundancy can be built into any system in several ways, including having backup Internet access, having a RAID storage array that copies files to multiple disks & having uninterruptible power supplies that will keep equipment working in the event of short power ourages and shut it down safely in the event of long ones.

Inventory - An inventory often helps inform policies for upgrading. Its use might mean that equipment is down for less time when there is a problem as support information can be gleaned more quickly.

Website - The web is fast becoming the easiest way of getting information. More and more people use it every day and it is ever more important to provide fresh, up-to-date content over the Internet. It is therefore important to know who is in charge of reviewing the information on the website, who will keep the site up-to-date and how often this information will be checked and changed. Furthermore, periodically polling each department in your company to see if there is more information that they would like to include can be a good idea as it enables new ideas and initiatives to be better communicated to the general public.

Syncing - An understanding that files can be synced can be helpful as it means that more resources can be made available offline.

Terms of use (network, email and Internet) - there are a number of important steps that the companies can take to ensure that their staff are aware of what conduct is satisfactory over the network, email and Internet. New staff might have terms of conduct written into their employment contracts and organisations might consider the use of a disclaimer on all outgoing communications.

If you are thinking of changing your network infrastructure and would like either to approach the issue strategically or to find an IT firm who will, please call us on 0116 283 6699 or email info@stjamessystems.com and ask for a free consultation with one of our experts. We can oversee all of the issues outlined above and will be happy to hear from you.

Satisfaction 100% guaranteed

2008-02-12T18:14:00.000Z

In a move that makes St James Systems unique in the UK, a 100% money-back guarantee is now offered on all web services including design, optimization, copywriting and marketing.
This means that if you are unhappy with our work. for any reason. we will not charge you for it.

This decision was reached after research undertaken on 250 businesses in the Midlands which revealed that our confidence in our services could be better used. The moneyback guarantee means that we can stand behind our services and that there are no risks for our customers. This is a win-win situation.

Planning Your Web Presence

2008-02-12T18:11:00.000Z

These days, a website is a must for businesses. With over 8 in 10 businesses using broadband, the Internet has become as useful a resource as any to find information.

Ask yourself how you find information about potential suppliers. Do you use the Yellow Pages, do you look in the newspaper or in trade magazines or do you finds search engines like Google are far quicker and can deliver informaiton that answers all your questions?

The planning of a web presence should never be taken lightly. You are creating a shop window (or even a shop) that is acting as your online ambassador 24 hours a day. If you judge the people you do business by how they appear then people will judge you by your website. This can be truly liberating, however, as the Internet gives even the smallest business the chance to shine. This can only happen, though, if thought is given to the following aspects of your online arm:

Domain Name - The first step in gaining a web presence comes with registering a domain name. Ensure that your name makes it clear what your company is about as this will help your search engine rankings in the long-run.

Hosting - In order to put your site on the Internet, it must be hosted on a web server. There are a myriad of hosting companies offering different services. You need to think whether you're going to stream video or audio from the site, whether the site is built on a database, what scripts the server needs to run (do you just need a contact form or will you need something more elaborate) and how many people will use the site in order to make an informed decision.

Copywriting is an important part of selling online. Our research has shown that clear, well-written copy on the homepage of an e-commerce site increases sales by 40% on average.

Design encompasses a number of subjects from the logo to the look, feel and structure of your site. Be sure to set up your site in a way that emphasises what you do and why you do it better than anyone else. Try to devote seperate pages to different elements of your business as this will help larger portions of your site to be of relevance for those searching for you.

Optimization is a key part of any business's web strategy. Without trumpeting yourself to the general public you are practically invisible. Without favourable search engine rankings you limit your audience to those who already know about the site which is not helpful at all.

Try to find an optimizer that knows the specifics of the UK market and the details of UK searches. Be sure that the firm offers statistical packages showing not only how you are improving in the rankings but how many people are visiting your site as a result of the optimization process.

Marketing - A good design firm should be able to offer marketing services. Marketing can cost as much or as little as you want it to and it can bring massive rewards. Try to include a news page so that your site's content is kept fresh and up-to-date. Include anything that is newsworthy in this section and people will begin to pick up on it.

Advertising - If you are advertising products or a high-value service you may need to consider a pay per click advertising scheme. This can bring you instant traffic and sales. See if your design firm has pay per click services.

Email campaigns - In order to keep your clients and customers up-to-date, an email campaign can be an unobtrusive but highly effective way of increasing sales. Try to run a campaign before every special offer or change in your company's practices. Be sure that your campaign tracks the number of emails that are read, the number that are bounced back & treated as spam and the number of sales made as a result of the email so that you can calculate your return on investment.

If you are thinking of starting a website and would like to approach the issue strategically, please call us on 0116 283 6699 or email info@stjamessystems.com and ask for a free consultation with one of our experts. We offer all of the services outlined above and will be happy to hear from you.

Data cabling & New Electrical Regulations

2008-02-12T18:07:00.001Z

From July 1 2008, all commercial, domestic and industrial wiring installations must be designed, constructed, inspected, tested and certificated to meet the requirements of BS 7671: 2008 the new IEE wiring regulations.

This new set of regulations offers the first new edition of electrical standards since 1991 when the 16th Edition was first printed and enables the combination of new products & technologies into a safe electrical framework & it allows for continues harmonization with European standards.

St James Systems have undertaken a number of data installations since 2003. With wireless speeds being up to 20 times less than the speed of wired data cabling and with wireless networks being far more susceptible to environmental factors, a wired network is always preferable to a wireless one in a business setting. St James Systems have worked with a number of firms across the midlands installing networks for as few as 2 computers and as many as 200. We have recently worked with companies like JCB and with Alstom to develop and refurbish their offices and to enable the smooth, fast and efficient transfer of data between different members of the organisation.

If you are considering installing data cables, please ensure that they will be compliant to the new standards. Please call us if you are thinking of having any data cabling or electrical work done on the buildings within your organisation and we will talk you through. If you would like for us to arrange for an electrical engineer to visit your site and discuss your proposed changes, we will happily do so.

2008-02-12T18:07:00.000Z

Maximizing your returns in a difficult economic climate with IT

2008-02-12T14:08:00.000Z

For many people, computers and technology are the bane of their lives, a necessary evil in the world of work. Not only can computer systems be unreliable but every so often there is another program to learn or the ‘Save’ button of an existing program which seemed to work quite well is hidden in a completely different place. We end up becoming slaves to IT rather than masters of it.

In an economic slowdown, however, businesses can maximize their return on investment by taking control of their IT system. There is still business to be had and companies can get it by maximizing their exposure to clients and potential clients. This article talks about four relatively new facets of IT, their benefits and utility.

Search Engine Optimisation

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is unique. There is no better way of putting businesses in touch with targeted customers than by placing your company right in front of people who are looking for the services you provide. SEO opens up a market of people who have no idea about your company but who want your products and services.
In order to do this, your SEO firm should take the time to get to know you, your products and services. They should try to get the most targeted visitors to your site rather than maximize the number of visitors (as 100 people interested in the mechanics of a car will not do the same business as 1 person interested in buying a car).They should give you a strategy of changes both on the website and off and their details of a link building strategy. If we imagine that search engines are a meritocracy with the best information being placed first, the more links to a site from authoritative websites effectively mean that there are more votes for that site as an important destination. A link-building strategy thus helps your site leap up in the rankings as it means that sites with authority in your area of expertise are recognising you.
SEO is often much cheaper than an advertising campaign (such as one using Google Adwords) and it is much more long lasting – your products remain in the search engine even after your budget limit has been reached.

Email marketing

Email marketing provides a way of reaching your clients and prospective clients for a fraction of the costs of a mailshot or advertising campaign. A monthly newsletter or a listing of special offers can pique the attention of prospective customers and get them to find out more about you. The Direct Marketing Association in the United States recently reported a return on investment of 57 times. For each £1 spent on email marketing, £57.25 is received in sales.

The advantages of an email marketing campaign are that an unlimited number of emails can be sent for practically no cost (when compared to the cost of a mailshot, this is quite an eye-opener). More importantly, the sender can find out who has opened their email, who has not, who has clicked through onto their site and who has done this many times, helping businesses to build up a picture of those interested in their products.

The downside of email marketing is spam. Your IT consultancy should give you advice on appropriate use of email marketing and should prevent you from killing the golden goose. However, the reason we have spam is that email marketing works and works very well. Although spam might not have a high return, the return on 0.02% people buying a product that has been emailed to 4 million is still very high.

Spam aside, all companies have lists of clients and customers who like to be kept in touch with developments. Many companies build up a lot of good will with clients who like to know about the latest range or discount and, by using this good will responsibly companies can considerably increase their turnover.

Customer Relations Management

Customer Relations Management (CRM) is relatively easy in the early days of a company when there are not many clients and businesses are struggling to find prospective clients. When the number of potential clients and opportunities gets into the hundreds, or even the thousands, it becomes very difficult to keep on top of everything.

In difficult times, companies have to rely more on service and contact with their clients to sustain and grow their business. As a client, t is extremely frustrating when someone says they will call but does not and, as a business, it is extremely disconcerting when you realise that you have missed out on some business because you forgot to make a ‘phone call.

CRM software can make a big difference, automating the processes behind keeping good relations with your clients from reminding you to make a call to helping you see just how many opportunities you are converting, to seeing the return on your investment to linking with the contact page on your website to ensure that clients who reach you electronically are not lost in the bowels of your email.

If you pride yourself on service and want to increase your business in difficult times through good service then CRM can help to take your business to the next level.

Remote access software

Remote access software can be a massive timesaver for businesses. For small companies whose owners go home at night but wish to look at information and emails on the company’s computers, for businesses whose main fee-earners often travel on business and for companies who cannot afford in-house IT staff but need problems resolving quickly, such software can enable companies to work much more efficiently.

IT can be a frustrating and ephemeral sphere but, with a bit of careful planning and advice, in a slowing economic climate, there are numerous opportunities to gain market share over your competition, maintain good customer relations as your business grows and increase your return on investment. IT can, when used with a bit of strategic thought, get workers away from tasks that take time and help them maximize the time that they spend making money.

Tafiti - The future of search engines?

2007-12-10T10:17:00.001Z

I have recently been trying the beta version of a search engine called Tafiti, built by Microsoft. It seems to have some particularly useful features. The name 'Tafiti' is Swahili for 'do research': the search engine is more robust than most making it a very useful platform for researchers and for anyone who needs to do multiple searches to compile what they need.

Whats makes Tafiti stand outout is its ability to 'stack' individual search results together. If you type in 'Charles Darwin' & you can see that of a result is of interest to you, you can drag it to a 'stack' and continue to search. You can drag pictures, rss feeds, maps and pretty much anything to the 'stack'. These collections of resources can then be named and the excerpts you have selected are put in an html page that can either be emailed to you or to your colleagues or it can be published to your webspace.

Search results can be further filtered so that you can see items of specific interest within a broader category. For example, within my Charles Darwin search page, I might filter for articles with the word 'Beagle'.

There is a 'carousel' which enables you to view the results by different types (pictures, web pages, feeds etc) without clicking away from your page.

Finally, the search engine has cross-browser support and your searches can be saved for later, say if you were researching from home & from work.

I believe that the search engine has been in beta form since August but it's well worth a look. It is far more dynamic than most search engiens and offers functionality without complication.

Stuck for Content - How About an FAQ?

2007-12-05T10:06:00.000Z

One of the problems that small firms have is the size of their budget. Often a website budget has been based on that the design of a website costs and does not take into account the value of good copy.

Well-written copy, in my research, increases the business done on e-commerce websites by 40% on average. Well-written copy gets browsers enganged & gives them the key facts & entices them without bambozzling them with science.

Many firms do not want to pay for this service, however, and would rather write the content themselves. This can be fine but it's amazing how many people are dumbstruck when it comes to writing about their business, even if they go out and sell it all day every day.

One way to get started is with an FAQ. By thinking about the questions you get asked the most, by polling your clients to see what most concerns them when they make a decision involving your industry and by formulating questions and answers for each of the aspects of your business you have done three things:

Formed the basis of each section of your site - you know the questions people ask when they're interested in your services now write your copy accordingly
Created extra content for your site - you now have a user-friendly FAQ that people can refer to, allowing them to feel reassured by you & your business.
Gained an extra page for optimization - you can link each question back to the relevant pages of your site with anchor text.

This can be an invaluable way of showcasing you as a source of good advice, of creating extra content & of increasing the content and relevance of your pages within the search engines.

It's Official - Paid Links Can Harm You

2007-12-04T09:18:00.000Z

After the recent drop in the rankings of certain directories, it seemed that Google was on a mission to cut out the practice of webmasters paying for premium listings on websites. A recent update to the Google Webmaster section now shows this to be true:

Google and most other search engines use links to determine reputation. A site's ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to it. Link-based analysis is an extremely useful way of measuring a site's value, and has greatly improved the quality of web search. Both the quantity and, more importantly, the quality of links count towards this rating.

However, some SEOs and webmasters engage in the practice of buying and selling links that pass PageRank, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google's webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site's ranking in search results.

Google's arguement is that paid links can create inequity in searches with the people with the deepest pockets being able to buy prestige which does not correspond to their standing or merit within the community.

Buying and selling links does have a place, especially in directories that need to invest time & effort analysing their content but links sold purely for advertising purposes have no place in Google's new world and sites found exercising this practice will be penalised.

Link Building - Tips for Emailing

2007-12-02T14:37:00.000Z

Part of any link building strategy involves contacting the webmaster of the sites you have identified as good targets. The most unobtrusive way of doing this is by email. It is not pushy & means that people can get back to you at their leisure. That said, because email is more leisurely & less pressured, you need compelling reasons why people should link to your content.

Eric Ward at Search Engine Land has identified a typical email that might be sent:

Greetings;
My name is Ga+++++ +++++++++, and I'm in charge of getting links of web site. I have visited your site http://www.ericward.com/articles/index.html and I believe a link exchange could benefit us both.
I'm offering you the following: If you place a link to my site in just one single page in your website, I'll place a link to your website in 3 different sites. I'll provide you the details. These are my sites info:
Title: Web marketing GroupURL: http://www.webmarketinggroup.co.uk/Description: Online marketing solutions delivering measurable results. Services include search engine optimisation, website design and digital magazines.
And these are the sites where I would place a link to your site:
http://www.wmwebtech.com/ : PR6http://www.dcadultliteracy.org/ : PR6http://www.usalah.org/ : PR5
As you can see, all of these sites have a decent PR, so if you are interested, please add the link to your site, reply to this mail and I would gladly add your link in my sites after I verify them.
Thanks a lot for your attention, hope to hear back from you.
++++++++++oup.co.ukGab++++++ ++++

On the face of it, it's not too bad & you may well have sent something similar at some time, but, on closer inspection, there are a number of problems that would put off a number of webmasters.

These are:

ADDRESS - the address that this email is being sent to is wrong, this shows a slapdash approach. If you want to link to quality sites, you wouldn't expect to find one at the end of a poorly thought-out email. Furthermore, the emailer is mailing an address that has not asked for content form the site. This makes the email unsolicited.

IMPERSONAL - there is no name included despiste the link to the ericward.com website.

'GETTING LINKS' - this person is obviously paid to get links and so you might not trust the content.

JARGON - terms like 'link exchange' and 'PR' are used which might be of no use to the webmaster.

GMAIL ADDRESS - although you might not be able to tell this, the email comes from a gmail account which is not very professional.

When people make the decision to link they want to link to relevant well-thought-out sites. They do not want to do it because a link exchange would be of benefit (this is not quantified), they just want to find good content.

Using Digg as part of your search engine marketing campaign

2007-11-29T09:10:00.000Z

Many optimizers try to find new traffic in a variety of ways. One more modern method is by trying to create a stir on a social networking or social bookmarking site. One of the bigest sites, as far as new, informative content is concerned is Digg, a site that allows users to recommend (digg) or 'bury' a story according to their perception of its usefulness to the community. This can be a hit & miss affair, subject to whimsy and to the fact that you are promoting something rather than doing something for altruistic purposes. The results, though, can be more than worthwhile, with massive numbers of browsers being drawn to a site that has something which evokes zeitgeist.

The frustration of trying to work out just what makes a good story or just how Digg works can be eased in knowing that Digg has an algorithm in order to assess which pages are the most popular at any given time & should be thrust into the limelight of the Digg homepage. The algorithm is used to ensure that community participation is fair and that no one can unduly influence content promotion. Therefore, the algorithm is kept secret from the community to prevent people from bypassing or manipulating it.

Unlike editorially driven sites like Slashdot where news is handpicked by a tiny group of individuals, socially driven sites use the votes aggregated by the community to decide what content gets promoted to their home pages to be viewed by the masses. At the same time, content promotion isn't as simple as just comparing absolute number of votes that each submission gets and then promoting the ones with the most votes. There are several other things to consider:

Recent participation rank of user and followers

Depending on how successful you have recently been on Digg, subsequent successes may be more difficult. The rank and recent successes of a user are taken into account both when you are submitting a story and also while Digging (voting on stories). If you get a quick succession of Diggs from "high-value" users, you are likely to be promoted faster and at a lower number of Diggs, than if even dozens of new users Digg you. This, of course, is to ensure that the Diggs are of good quality and the community is actually doing its work by voting for good content and burying bad content.

Voting activity

The number of Diggs your story will require to reach the home page is correlated to the number of votes (Diggs) generally being cast on Digg at any given time and how your story compares to the average.

Submission category and activity in the category

Competition in some categories (Technology, Word and Business) is much fiercer than in other categories (Sports, Entertainment) and therefore it is much easier to submit and have something promoted in the Sports/Motorsport category than Technology/Tech. Industry News. Also, along with being compared to general voting activity on Digg, your content is compared more directly (and probably with more weight) to content in its category. For example, it is possible to have a story promoted at 50 Diggs even though it's not high on the upcoming queue for all sections, as long as it is at the top in the queue for its category.

Speed of votes and diversity of voters

The faster a story gets votes, the lower the vote count has to be at which it is promoted. For example, a story may collect 120 Diggs over 24 hours and not be promoted. If the same story gets 90 Diggs in one hour it will almost certainly hit the front page. At the same time, however, it is incredibly important to have diversity in votes. Diversity helps prevent people from banding together into "voting-rings" and unfairly pushing their stories to the top. This is one of the reasons why you see stories from top-ranked users sit at the top of the queue for hours waiting to fulfill the algorithm's diversity requirement (i.e. they are penalized for having a following of users that Digg every one of their stories).

Buries received

This is quite straightforward. The more buries you, the longer it will take for your content to be promoted. If the Bury to Digg ratio (which is not 1:1; buries are weighted more heavily than Diggs) is too high, your story will completely be removed from the queue. That said, it is possible for a story to acquire enough votes to outgrow the Buries it gets.

Comments and comment ratings received

Participation in the comments can help push a story over the edge. People think that inserting "great article—thanks!" will help further their cause, while in reality these fake comments have the exact opposite effect. There is nothing easier than spotting a spammy submission with fake comments and burying it to oblivion. Naturally acquired comments (and ones that are voted up by the community), on the other hand, help tip the content promotion algorithm in your favor.

Myths

There are a number of misconceptions about the algorithm that are worth addressing. Following on from above, most of them are common sense but they can save you masses of time whe you know them. These mosconceptions are:

An absolute number of votes is required

There is no absolute number. The number varies daily and even hourly. As mentioned before, the number of Diggs you need varies based on submission category, recent participation record of the submitter and subsequent Diggers, as well as the number of votes and the time in which they are aggregated and the diversity of the voters.

You're doomed if your story isn't submitted by a top-user

There is no such thing as content being automatically promoted to home-page. Even the best content, submitted by the most consistent user can get buried if enough people don't like it and Bury it. The algorithm tries to ensure a level playing field for all users (though this doesn't always work), and in fact is sometimes harsher on top users than on newer ones.

Wrong: Number of friends is important

The number of friends you add on Digg is completely irrelevant. What Digg looks for is diversity in the Diggs a story receives. Digg friends are likeminded people & will not help your diversity.

There is a 24-hour window for success

A small number of submissions do get promoted after submission if people continue to regularly show interest in them. The key is in the story being interesting rather than in a timescale.

Planning your web presence

2007-11-28T09:25:00.000Z

These days, a website is a must for businesses. With over 8 in 10 businesses using broadband, the Internet has become as useful a resource as any to find information.

Ask yourself how you find information about potential suppliers. Do you use the Yellow Pages, do you look in the newspaper or in trade magazines or do you finds search engines like Google are far quicker and can deliver informaiton that answers all your questions?

The planning of a web presence should never be taken lightly. You are creating a shop window (or even a shop) that is acting as your online ambassador 24 hours a day. If you judge the people you do business by how they appear then people will judge you by your website. This can be truly liberating, however, as the Internet gives even the smallest business the chance to shine. This can only happen, though, if thought is given to the following aspects of your online arm:

Domain Name - The first step in gaining a web presence comes with registering a domain name. Ensure that your name makes it clear what your company is about as this will help your search engine rankings in the long-run.

Hosting - In order to put your site on the Internet, it must be hosted on a web server. There are a myriad of hosting companies offering different services. You need to think whether you're going to stream video or audio from the site, whether the site is built on a database, what scripts the server needs to run (do you just need a contact form or will you need something more elaborate) and how many people will use the site in order to make an informed decision.

Copywriting is an important part of selling online. Our research has shown that clear, well-written copy on the homepage of an e-commerce site increases sales by 40%on average.

Design encompasses a number of subjects from the logo to the look, feel and structure of your site. Be sure to set up your site in a way that emphasises what you do and why you do it better than anyone else. Try to devote seperate pages to different elements of your business as this will help larger portions of your site to be of relevance for those searching for you.

Optimization is a key part of any business's web strategy. Without trumpeting yourself to the general public you are practically invisible. Without favourable search engine rankings you limit your audience to those who already know about the site which is not helpful at all.

Try to find an optimizer that knows the specifics of the UK market and the details of UK searches. Be sure that the firm offers statistical packages showing not only how you are improving in the rankings but how many people are visiting your site as a result of the optimization process.

Marketing - A good design firm should be able to offer marketing services. Marketing can cost as much or as little as you want it to and it can bring massive rewards. Try to include a news page so that your site's content is kept fresh and up-to-date. Include anything that is newsworthy in this section and people will begin to pick up on it.

Advertising - If you are advertising products or a high-value service you may need to consider a pay per click advertising scheme. This can bring you instant traffic and sales. See if your design firm has pay per click services.

Email campaigns - In order to keep your clients and customers up-to-date, an email campaign can be an unobtrusive but highly effective way of increasing sales. Try to run a campaign before every special offer or change in your company's practices. Be sure that your campaign tracks the number of emails that are read, the number that are bounced back & treated as spam and the number of sales made as a result of the email so that you can calculate your return on investment.

Before planning a new website or upgrading an existing one, it is important to bear all of these things in mind. If you can find a firm that can offer a comprehensive service or at least if you think about these aspects of a web presence for yourself, your site will be better planned & there will not be problems down the line. It is easy for an optimizer to get involved beofre a site has been designed than after and some simple advice can make a massive difference to your rankings.

Link Building - Starting Out

2007-11-24T23:08:00.000Z

The most important part of any optimization campaign is link-building. Getting relevant links from relevant sites to your content will improve your rankings like nothing else.

In order to get you started, I've assembled a few pointers:

Apply to the Open and Yahoo! directories

Submit to solid directories such as Joe Ant, Skaffe and Gimpsy

Join your chamber of commerce, industry association, marketing organisaition, masonic lodge or anything to get your name out.

Issue press releases on a regular basis. Printed media gets you know & media websites will include the printed text & links.

Buy a list of high-profile journalists and contact directly for one-on-one interviews

Backlink your competitors and those ranking ahead of you for link and advertising leads.

Announce your new site in targeted industry magazines. Buy advertising, if necessary.

Comment on the sites of prominent bloggers in your industry to get your site known.

Create a blog and update it regularly. If your site is seen as a destination rather than a passing-place, you will receive more weeks. Add the blog to all the blog directories & RSS feeds to RSS directories.

Some of these things cost money. If you are just starting out, you will learn far more by not paying in the first instance, you will find out how to get links for free & you will quickly find what works. If you have a budget, split it wisely and do not exceed it.

Finding Quality Directories

2007-11-24T10:11:00.000Z

There are a number of directories on the Internet. From the Yahoo Directory which started out as Jerry Yang's way of cataloguing interesting sites, to the Open Directory, Google's pet project, your entry in a directory can show your site's intentions as being serious. However, there are thousands of directories out there and, with last month's shake-up many have lost their value as they fail to provide useful or filtered information.

Paying for an entry in a directory may appeal as it is a guaranteed way to get your site listed and linked on the Internet for free. The problem is that this can be unending. It is hard to know if you should pay for a listing and where you should draw the line. Matt Cutts, Google's mainstay on optimization issues, gives the following guidelines on the usefulness of a directory:

I’ll try to give a few rules of thumb to think about when looking at a
directory. When considering submitting to a directory, I’d ask questions like:-
Does the directory reject urls? If every url passes a review, the directory gets
closer to just a list of links or a free-for-all link site.- What is the quality
of urls in the directory? Suppose a site rejects 25% of submissions, but the
urls that are accepted/listed are still quite low-quality or spammy. That
doesn’t speak well to the quality of the directory.- If there is a fee, what’s
the purpose of the fee? For a high-quality directory, the fee is primarily for
the time/effort for someone to do a genuine evaluation of a url or site.

If your fee is extortionate, if it guarantees you entry to a directory or if it enables you to get the anchor text you want on the link, you should not
entertain buying it.

Do not rule out directories altogether, though, as the good ones include an element of human interaction that search engines cannot provide. Search engines reward such resources as they inform searches and help to make them relevant.

Keep assessing your keywords

2007-11-20T11:45:00.000Z

The Internet, more than anything, is subject to fashions, fads & whimsy. Everything is transitory and people and their wants change too. Keywords are the same. As users become more savvy & niche markets are opened up, trends in searches change. It is worth keeping on top of this if you want to continue to drive qualified browsers to your site.

In order to research your keywords successfully you need to seek out keywords within your niche; analyze your keywords for potential profitability & decide which keywords are appropriate for your business. Just because a keyword is popular doesn’t mean that it will be profitable for you. That’s where you have to analyze the keywords themselves as search terms and weigh them against your own site concept.

Recheck the keywords you are using every six months. You might not need to make changes but you may get a sense of how your market is changing and what your company needs to do in order to keep up.

Localise your website

2007-11-14T11:09:00.000Z

It is often very difficult to make your website's local advantege count for anything. UK-based companies look to find advantages to having a UK-based website but don't want to be seen as UK-only enterprises nor do they like beign lost in the global results that many search engines can give.

Last week, Google began to offer a solution. Business location can be registered through Google Webmaster Central. In the tools tab, thee is an option to set the geographic location.

This is especially helpful if businesses trade over the web with a .com domain or if large companies have country-specific sites.

Goes Google Count Clicks Against a Search to Weight its Algorithm?

2007-10-22T11:11:00.000+01:00

One issue that has come to light recently is: "Does Google count the number of clicks to different sites in a search and use it to weight its rankings?". The theory is that if your page is number 2 in the search but gets more clicks than the number one site, Google might rank your site more favourably.

There are a number of reasons to suspect why this might be the case:

Relevance: Search engines thrive on producing relevant results. The more relevant the result to the search, the easier it is for someone to find what they are looking for using a particular search engine.

Adwords: Googles Adwords will weight adverts that get a higher clickthrough ratio. If you have two adverts for a particular product and one gets twice the clickthrough rate, then Google will show this more often. Again, relevance is involved. If an advert is more relevant (it must be if more people click on it) then search engines need to show this more often to improve the user experience.

The problem with this theory is that there is no way to verify it other than by anecdotal evidence. There will be a host of factors that bring your site a good ranking and anyone of these could make a difference. Furthermore, a link may be clicked on but users could 'bounce' straight away if they realise that the site is not what they'd wanted.

The best thing to remember is that once you're in the top 10 and certainly the top 5 you've made it. Traffic increases massively if you are ranked on the front page. It won't necessarily matter if you are 2nd 3rd or 4th if the description used against your site isn't relevant or enticing. If your description is well written, relevant and useful you will get people coming to your site. It's as simple as that.

Meta Keywords - Myths, Misspellings and Mysteries

2007-10-21T22:22:00.000+01:00

In earlier, more innocent times, the meta keywords tag was used by web-designers and website owners to indicate the content of their web pages. Keywords were in use form around 1996 onwards.

By 1998, however, Search Engines had wised up to misuse and more cynical practices. The practice of "stuffing" tags with multiple copies of the same word or even with material unrelated to the contents of the web page was all too common and the keywords tag was rendered next to useless.

Because, historically, there has been a lot of emphasis put on keywords by website designers, the myth about their importance has continued. A look at any search engine forum or a chat about web-design will quickly encompass the keywords topic. Nowadays, however, there is little emphasis placed on them. According to a test performed by Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land, Google and Microsoft do not use keywords when a search is made.

Inasmuch as it is useful, the keywords tag can be used for misspellings. In the search engines that do use the tag for indexing (Yahoo & Ask), text in the tags is treated as if it was on the page. Misspelling words on your page can have the effect of making you look unprofessional. Hidden away, however, you can encompass common misspellings and not lose face.

As far as getting better rankings is concerned, if the keywords tag was the way, optimizers everywhere would be obsessing on this point. This is not the case and a simple viewing of the source code of any high-ranking site would show you the use of the keywords tag is sparing at best. Keywords will not substitute good copy. Well-written copy will not only get your site ranked but also, the visitors who come to your site will enjoy the content.

Nowadays, search engines worry far more about the links to your site than the keywords text and time spent on keywords is time wasted elsewhere.

Directory Submissions: Directories to Avoid Paying

2007-10-18T20:29:00.000+01:00

Below is a list of directoris that have recently been penalised by Google for underhand practices. Basically, these directories are far more interested in gaining revenues from submissions than in providing well-vetted and useful content for search engines.

AvivaDirectory.com
AliveDirectory.com
Haabaa.com
DirectoryDump.com
BigWebLinks.com
ElegantDirectory.com
eWebPages.org
LinkBook.org
Trincas.org
CBravo.com
CDHNow.com
FreeWebIndex.com
Mingleon.com
PremiumDir.com
Submission4u.com
Aerospect.com
Bakie.com
LinkForever.net
LinksArena.com
LinksFactory.net
LinksHolder.com
WebVerve.com
Wezp.com
BestInternetResource.info
DirSpace.com
Eonte.com
Frogengine.com
LinkLister.co.uk
LinkVerve.com
LivelyDirectory.com
Submitdotcom.com

Registering your site with a directory can give you a rankings boost. Registering with the Yahoo and Open Directory is a must for websites that want to be taken seriously. Some rigour (financial & intellectual) has to be gone through in order to get a listing here.

This is not always the case, however, and some directories market by promoting search engine link value rather than their own intrinsic value as resources. If webmaster can pay for a premium listing that gets multiple links to their site with their own choice of anchor text then the directory is there for Search Engine Optimisers rather than for the general public.

Be careful when registering your site with directories. It can be tempting to pay for an increased ranking by these means but it is a short-term view and will provide you with no long-term benefit.

Selling Links - Not the way to go.

2007-10-16T18:21:00.000+01:00

With a lot of chatter, arguement and debate on the subject of paid links, the debates seemed to have reignited this week wen it came to light that Google have confirmed they are penalising sites that sell links.

Paid links, those that are put on a site in return for a fee, have often been a way of raising a site's credibility, PageRank and exposure extremely quickly. The problem with this is that the democratic nature of search engines is usurped by those with the most money to splash around. If we imagine a Google search as a democratic system where the most popular sites appear at the top of the rankings, links become votes. The more links to a site, the more search engines perceive it as a destination, a place people want to go to. When money exchanges hands, extra votes can be bought and extra influence & greater standing in the search engine ranks can be gained.

There is a case to be made for paid links. For one, Google uses paid links to conduct its Adwords campaign and links are a highly valuable advertising tool. The differene between these adverts and paid links, however, is that adverts are often clearly marked. In a newspaper, adverts are separated from content & media owners disassociate themselves from the advertised content. The media outlet isn't recommending a product in an advert, the advertiser is. Paid links muddy this issue in order to work. In order to influence Google's PageRank system, these links must be like any other on a website. the advertised content and the publised content are indistinguishable.

Danny Sulliavan reported at Search Engine Land that Google have begun to talk about lowering the PageRank of those companies that have been selling links and it would appear that they intend to do this more in the future. It would be hard to identify a lot of the sites that sell links but it is not a valuable long-term strategy as far as search engine optimization is concerned as the penalties are reduced visibility in the Search Engines but, more importantly, lowered trust within your community, something that can tarnish you for a long time. There is no real sens in mixing up paid content & free content & it gives a skweed view of the Internet if you link to sites whose only intrinsic value is the money that the links were bought with.

Adverts but without advertising

Useful Browser Tool

2007-10-15T09:47:00.000+01:00

For those of you interested in dynamic linking, the 'Search Status' tool from quirk is extremely handy. You can choose to see rel="nofollow" links on any given website. This is interesting as you can see how other SEOs or even how Google oversee the links on and from their site.

The toolbar has a number of other useful tricks up its sleeve. It'll enable you to quickly see the Meta information on a page, get an overview of the number of links of all different types to and from the page. This information opens in new tabs so that you don't lose any information on the page you are browsing. Furthermore, it shows the Google & Alexa Page Rank.

The toolbar sits snugly wherever you want it to in your browser & doesn't take up much room.

It's currently at v1.21, released on 22 August.

Building Words

2007-10-13T11:15:00.000+01:00

One simple way to ensure that your content covers as many search terms as possible without looking contrived and clunky is to use building words.

Building words are simply the words that you can use to build keywords that relate to your site. They come in 5 major flavours:

Global keywords:
These are the main categories that your site falls in to. Let's say we're optimizing the party supplies site. These main keywords could be: Party, anniversary, wedding, birthday.

Stop words:
These are words that search engines do not index because they are too common but that can make for a smooth writing style. If you ever research keywords on sites like Wordtracker and find results like 'balloons UK' and think "why would anyone search for that?", the chances are that they have searched for 'balloons in the UK' but the search engine has removed the stop words. Stop words include words like: a, about, all, me, the, as, is, but, to, for. This adds up to rather a large list of words which is worth remembering. A more comprehensive list of words can be found by typing 'Stop Words' into Wikipedia.

Localised words:
These can help to give your keywords a localised theme and can give you an extra chance to use a keyword. Village & town names, the name of your region or the countries that yours site is focused on can all help.

Modifiers:
These are words that add more meat the bones fo your general keywords. There are some more universal modifiers like help, info and ideas but if you search competitors sites for general keywords, you will find a host of modifiers attached to them For example, with the party site we have: favours, themes, supplies, decorations and so on.

Brand, Product & Event Names:
These names can mean you do well in a search for targeted keywords. It is important to know your market & trends. Current party supply brands include: Bratz, Harry Potter, Bob the Builder, Barbie and Winnie the Pooh.

If we begin to combine these words we can cover a multitude of keywords:

The keyword 'birthday' would make us an also-ran in a race with 179 million competitors. Furthermore, someone searching for the word 'birthday' could be looking for the birthday of a famous person,they could want cards or facts or they might want to buy presents, none of which are necessarily relevant to you. When we add modifiers, localised words stop words & brand names, however, we reduce the competition and increase the percentage of people who know what they want from a search. 'Bob the Builder birthday party ideas' not only has 8 competitors but your text also includes a number of different arrangements of keywords - "Bob the Builder', birthday, 'birthday party' birthday party ideas', 'party', 'ideas', 'party ideas' and so on meaning that, whilst you are writing naturally, you are making your site appealing to people who want to know about all of these things.

Writing naturally is the name of the game, however. it is worth writing a list of these keywords, stopwords, modifiers, brand names & localised words & then knowing which major keywords you want to focus on for any given page before writing but you should not try to religiously include all combinations of these words as your text will not appeal to the people who do visit your page - this is counterproductive.

The Irrigation Approach

2007-10-13T03:28:00.000+01:00

An approach that I have used to help people understand the dynamic linking side of search engine optimization is 'The Irrigation Approach'. In order to raise your site up the rankings, especially the Google rankings, it is helpful to imagine your site like an arid field: Your job is to sluice as much water to it as possible to make it thrive.

We want people to be able to get onto the site easily & so we need to make sure that the sluice gates to our site are open in order to let people and spiders through. In this case, getting as many well-qualified links to your site is good. Not all links will raise you up the rankings but if you take an holistic approach, each link allows people to flow through onto your site and so although a link might not have any worth to some search engines, you should always be open to the possibility that if it's allowing people in, it's broadening the market for and increasing the interest in your website.

If you imagine that each link is a leak in your irrigation system you can then decide whether you want a hole in a particular place or not. Some of the holes are beneficial - they may allow people and search engine spiders to leak into the places you most want them to visit.

Each link that has anchor text on it will deliever an accurate and focused sprinkle of people and spiders to your page. People will respond to the anchor text and you will get targeted visitors to your site and to pages on the site & the spiders will recognise how you have taken time to construct your irrigation system to deliver this timely sprinkle.

Each link that takes people away from the pages on your site that you want browsers to see is an unwanted leak. Each link that carries people out of the site is an unanted leak. Each link that takes search engine spiders away from the areas you want to index and appear high in the rankings is an unwanted leak.

You can use links at any interval on your site to allow people and spiders to leak anywhere. By using rel="nofollow", you can allow people to follow links (say to your terms & conditions) but keep spiders following along the channel. You can allow spiders to flow out in a pressurised torent to a few sites that you want to link to but if you link to many sites, then you will not have enough water in the system to make your land thrive.

There is a point where metaphor becomes confusing, but if you can imagine water springing out of each link to your site, it might help you to visualise the changes you need to make.

Wordtracker for the UK

2007-10-12T18:31:00.000+01:00

One tool that many SEOs consider to be essential is Wordtracker, a website that enables you to see how popular certian keywords are by showing you how regularly people search for them and how many sites compete against that keyword.

Wordtracker offers its services to UK as well as US users. The UK data is available within the Keyword Researcher which can be accessed from the members home page.

On the options bar beneath the seed keywords box there is a dropdown box with the option to select the UK or the US database. The results from Wordtracker's UK data sources are held in a different database to that of the US. It is therefore easy to find keywords that are relevant to a UK audience as these may differ greatly (in spelling & taste) to those that a US audience would choose.

The strange thing about the Wordtracker site, however, is that the projects button on the homepage will only take you to US data, something which I have asked the lovely people at Wordtracker to address.

Pitfalls for Search Engine Spiders

2007-10-11T15:06:00.000+01:00

When putting together your site, you need to bear in mind a number of factors that will hinder or prevent search engine spiders from crawling over and indexing your site. The following cause massive problems for spiders and should be avoided at all costs:

Deep Content: Any pages that cannot be reached within three clicks from the homepage.

Session Pages: Pages requiring a Cookie to enable navigation may casue problems because of the way spiders navigate.

Frames: Search engines do not like sites built on frames.

Pages Generated By a Database-Driven Site: URLs with ?, % & = signs are like red flags to search engines. It is easy for spiders to get lost in dynamic content & so much of it is not indexed.

Pages with More Than 150 Links: Search engines do not crawl large numbers of links on a site.

Pages Behind a rel="nofollow" Link: Google spiders will not follow these hyperlinks.

Pages That Require a Button to be Clicked: Pages that are only accessible using a submit button, drop-down menu or search are not indexed.

Pages Requiring a Login: Because spiders won't be able to log in.

Pages that Re-direct Before Showing Content: This is called 'cloaking' and can cause sites to be banned.

The simplest way to get your page spidered and indexed is to have HTML links to the pages you want to be crawled. Everything should be availalbe within 3 clicks of the homepage as a general rule & you should have an XML sitemap on your site to ensure that all of your content can be seen by spiders. Each page on a sitemap is considered relevant to users of search engines.

Optilink

2007-10-11T14:50:00.000+01:00

One piece of Search Engine Optimization that is not regional is link building. All sites need good quality links on order to get a good showing in Search Engines.

Search Engines look at the web like a large voting system. The more links there are to a site, the more people are voting a site as something of interest, a destination.

There are many free tools that enable us to analyse sites to see who is linking to them - the Google Toolbar has a 'Backward Links' button that will show Google's analysis of a particular page but Optilink provides more detailed analysis from a number of search engines including AOL, AlltheWeb, Altavista, Google, Hotbot, Inktomi, MSN & Yahoo. You can request up to 1000 links at a time & you can see the anchor text that webmasters are linking to the site with.

I've enclosed a link to the video of the software which details the application in 2 minutes: http://www.windrosesoftware.com/optilink/video/ol-qs.html

Increasing Blogging Traffic

2007-10-11T12:43:00.000+01:00

Part of the Search Engine Optimizer's job is marketing. One way of doing this is by creating a blog to draw traffic to a website. The problem is that it takes time to get people to know your blog exists, time to then get them to your blog, time to get it seen & time to have it trusted.

A company called Blog Rush have got around this with a novel solution that aims to bring many more people to your site than you would otherwise get. I have included a video below to explain this idea. It might look like a pyramid scheme but it works & it doesn't cost anything so give it a go. Please take a look at the video:

I've put the widget up in the top corner of this website & will report on the difference that it makes to this new blog. However, from reports of friends & colleagues, this can make a massive difference to blogs with high quality & can draw much needed attention to your blog and, by extention, to your site.

Please click the bottom of my widget to sign up & join the fun.

Mantra for all website owners

2007-10-10T11:37:00.001+01:00

I read an interesting passage in one of Dan Thies's books the other day which said:

Search engines don’t care about you, they don’t care about your website, but they do care about their customers. If I get what I’m looking for when I use a search engine, I’ll use it again. Search engines are trying to deliver the most relevant resultspossible for every search.

It sounds harsh but it's excellent advice for anyone trying to create a website that needs to be plugged in to search engines. When thinking about your company's website, be sure to build it with your customers and with the search engines in mind. It is all very well wanting a snazzy or 'flashy' site as it makes you look good but if there is no content, users will not stay around ling & the search engines will not look favourably on your hard work.

This is where some of the sites I have been asked to look at recently have come unstuck. If you look at the Ice Cricket website or the party supplies website, you will notice that they are all light on text-based content. As a result, they will fall behind sites that provide up-to-date detailed text-based content in the long-run.

If you're thinking of designing a website for any reason, please let me know & I'll try to help you where I can.