St James Systems Wins Quality Assured Status

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

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

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

Website Promotion

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

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

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.

Satisfaction 100% guaranteed

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

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.

Maximizing your returns in a difficult economic climate with IT

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.

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

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

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.

Selling Links - Not the way to go.

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

The Irrigation Approach

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.

Optilink

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

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

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.