Expressly Seo

Is your website Optimised or are you just being Optimistic?

For many businesses the focus when starting out on their Internet campaign is the design of a great looking website, a website that not only looks good but also reflects the right image for the business. However, it is also very important that the company website lists well in the major search engines and many businesses quickly move to measuring the value of their website in terms of the number of visitors to the website. Why, because what is the point of having a great looking website if no one can find it and it attracts only minimal traffic. Businesses quickly become aware that increased levels of traffic can potentially lead to potential for increased sales and market profile.

One thing to consider is that over 80% of all Internet traffic comes from the major search engines with Google, Yahoo and MSN currently responsible for the vast majority of all Internet traffic. With such an overwhelming amount of traffic coming from the search engines, it makes sense to put a lot of effort getting your website noticed.

Regardless of how you measure the success of your website, the bottom line is that to succeed on the Internet you are going to have to bring more visitors that are looking for the information, content and/or products that you are providing.

Internet Marketing by Direct Submit

Choosing and Researching Keywords
It can be difficult to choose the keywords that describe your company and its products or services so that users will see your website when they perform an online search. Obviously, you want people who are searching for what products or services you provide to find your website near the top of the search engine results pages, so how do you achieve this?

The answer is “by using keywords and key phrases in your website content.” These are the words that people type into search engines when they are looking for something.

Choosing and researching good keywords is a process that takes several steps that can essentially be broken down into the following stages:

Initial keyword Research
Have a brain storming session with your staff and, if possible, customers. Ask other people for ideas, too, including your family, try to get as many opinions as possible. You will often discover that what you consider your optimal key phrases are not those typically used by your customers.

Use Key Word Research Tools
There are several online keyword research tools that offer information about the number of times users perform searches for specific words. These can help you identify key phrases ‘related’ to your products or services that might help generate quality traffic to your website.

Selecting of Key Words
Use the research you have done and select the most appropriate key words that is likely to deliver the best results for your business. Note this may mean you choose a key phrase that isn’t the most searched for (which will probably be the most ‘competitive’ in terms of achieving a page 1 result on the web) but which will bring you high quality traffic in numbers that should help generate you business.

Analytics
After you’ve chosen your keywords and optimized your site, you need to perform measurements to see whether it’s delivering the amount of traffic and conversions you expected. You can use this information to make adjustments and refine your keyword strategy.

The above represents a fairly basic overview of choosing effective key phrases for your website and the web is full of more in depth articles and guides to help you.

For more information on choosing the right key words for your website call Direct Submit and see how we can help you make the most of your Internet project.

Search Engine Lisitngs Update
The days of the 10 blue links are numbered. Search engine companies were once more or less content to spit out a list of Web sites ranked by a computer algorithm, and send off users to navigate the Internet wilderness on their own. Increasingly, however, they’re offering more of a guiding hand.

Companies like Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are dedicating the top of their search engine results pages to panels that allow users to refine queries by category; to information that attempts to directly answer questions; and to quick links to businesses where they can buy tickets, songs, meals or products.

In the process, the companies are working harder to understand user intentions, exercising greater judgment about the credibility of online sources and, in some cases, pointing consumers to their own services.

“The layout of the search engine results page has gotten a lot more diverse and lively than it’s ever been in the past,” said Kevin Lee, chief executive of New York search marketing agency Didit. “There’s a drive toward relevance and trusted information sources, but also toward potentially being the information source yourself, so you can make more money off of it.”

The trend will often make it easier and safer for people to quickly accomplish tasks online, by delivering users information directly and steering them clear of untrustworthy or malicious sites, he said. But it can also make it more difficult for reputable sites to get noticed, especially when the search company offers a competing service, Lee said.

Internet Marketing by Direct Submit

Online lifeline for local charities in the North East
Six charities in the region are being given the opportunity to boost their online profile and fundraising potential thanks to Webdurance.

Webdurance is the first North East fundraising webathon and takes place this July 15th and 16th in Newcastle.

The free event, Webdurance, will see the regions best tech’ experts compete to create new websites for local charities in just 24 hours.

Chosen charities span the region and represent a wide range of worthy causes within North East communities including child safety, disability support services, mental health issues to support and training opportunities for those living in disadvantaged communities.

The struggling charities benefitting from the best talent in the region being readily volunteered at Webdurance have been announced.

They are: Azure Charitable Enterprises, Tynemouth Blind Welfare Society, Key Enterprises, The Children’s Foundation Whoops Child Safety Project, Children North East and Meadow Well Connected.

Internet Marketing by Direct Submit

Grabbing the Prospects Attention
If you are not new to marketing, you have surely heard about the AIDA formula. AIDA is an acronym for Attention – Interest – Desire – Action;  these four mental steps are necessary for you to inspire in your prospect if you are selling her your product or service.

Attention – attract your potential customer’s attention; Interest – raise customers’ interest by focusing on advantages and benefits; Desire – convince customers that they want and desire your product and that it will satisfy their needs; Action – lead customers toward your targeted action: ordering, purchasing, or subscribing.

This formula may be used to convert your virtual website visitors into real local and loyal buyers so its well worth spending some time to make sure your website meets these requirments.

Internet Marketing by Direct Submit

Follow the Code to Stay Safe Online
The internet opens up a wonderful world of entertainment, opportunity and knowledge. To help your children to enjoy it all safely, the UK Council for Child Internet Safety has developed the Click Clever, Click Safe code.

The code has three simple actions: `Zip it, lock it, Flag it’.

It’s easy to remember when talking to children about online safety and it’s designed to help keep them safe on the internet.

ZIP IT 
Keep your personal stuff private and think about what you say and do online.

BLOCK IT
Block people who send you nasty messages and don’t open unknown links and attachments.

FLAG IT
Flag up with someone you trust if anything upsets you or if someone asks to meet you offline

Talk to your kids about the Click Clever, Click Safe code — to help them to enjoy the internet safely.

For advice on internet safety go to www.direct.gov.uk/clickcleverclicksafe

Apple announce Bing Search Option on the iPhone
In the latest love-hate relationship with search giant Google which is developing rival products like its Android operating system and Google TV among others, Apple announced Bing as a third way for people to search on the iPhone alongside Google and Yahoo.

Mr Jobs referred to Microsoft, its former enemy as having done a “cool” job with Bing.

“That Bing is now a search option is unbelievable,” said analyst Michael Gartenburg of the Altimeter Group. “Microsoft is clearly the new Switzerland and Google is the new enemy.”

While chunks of the iPhone release might have sounded like a deja vu, the same could also be said for the unveiling of the new operating system which Mr Jobs personally launched back in April. The big news there was a name change to iOS4 because it will cover the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.

The software update will bring multi-tasking to the iPhone, allowing users to run multiple applications and programs simultaneously, and will also let users organise their mass of applications into folders.

Internet Marketing by Direct Submit

Google Defends Search Changes
Google has defended the introduction of a panel on the left-hand side of its search results page, after it received criticism from surfers. The change, along with slight modifications to the Google logo and colour scheme of the search engine, happened earlier this month.

“A common way to expand the flexibility of a website has been to add a left-hand panel of links, often I referred to by designers as a ‘left-hand nay’,” said Jon Wiley, senior user- experience designer at Google.

But 60 per cent of visitors polled on Webuser.co.uk said that they didn’t like the new design and wanted to return to the old version of Google’s results page. “Why could they not simply make it optional? For example, there could be a very narrow ‘column’ on the left that users could expand to see all the options by clicking on it,” one visitor wrote.

PPC Landing Pages
Setting up a Pay per Click campaign, such as Google Adwords and attracting visitors to your website will not necessarily create sales for your particular product or service. Having a poor quality landing pages could mean click thru’s – and therefore your money, are wasted by the client being taken to a page that does not provide the specific information the visitor is looking for.

Your landing pages should be a direct reflection of the copy used in your Pay per Click advert. Picking one generic page of your website to send every visitor to is not the right approach and, as I’ve already said, it’s likely that, with this approach, youl could well be losing potential sales and money with this approach.

Having your visitors land on the home page of your site is not the most effective strategy for any Pay per Click campaign. Look to have a targeted landing page to send your PPC clicks thru’s. Not only do you want the page to reflect the details from your Pay per Click advert but it is very important to have some sort of call to action items on your landing page.

 If you want the visitor to call you don’t assume that they will know to do this. Make the contact telephone number and other contact details stand out as much as possible in multiple areas of the landing page.

Put yourself in the shoes of the person clicking your ad and anticipate where you would like to land. What would you think of the landing page? Would it induce you to part with you hard earned money?  Does the landing page offer the product advertised in the Pay per Click advert, is the page attractive and is there a call to action which is both simple and tested. Make sure it works!

Finally, check to make sure link is not broken on your advert. You would be amazed at how often this happens and it is a sure fire way to put a potential visitor off from visiting your website as well wasting your PPC campaign budget.

In short, if you want to make the most of your Pay per Click campaign, make sure you have good quality, advert specific landing pages set up.

Internet Marketing by Direct Submit

Making a Website Work for You
In a perfect world, SEO would be developed while a website is still in infancy. While this ideal situation rarely occurs, the following steps summarise the process as it should occur every time.

(1) Key Phrase Strategy and Website Development
Before building your website, you must have a keyword strategy. Select key phrases that are relevant to your business and receive an acceptable level of traffic. It is often appropriate, particularly for smaller / new businesses, to avoid the most competitive phrases where the level of competition you would be up against would be significant. You can always develop to these phrases as your business grows.

Once you have selected your keywords you can begin to develop the website using basic SEO site structure principles. These include the Meta titles, Meta descriptions, linking strategy, clear site navigation, optimised coding and great content.

(2) Web Analytics
Try to include some web analytics platform that will allow you to monitor users are coming from and what search terms they are using. One free example is Google Analytics which provides a reasonable level of feedback on the traffic levels and sources to your website. This information will enable you to monitor and update your website to try and achieve the best results possible within your market sector.

(3) Driving Traffic to the Website
Obvious really, but look to get your web pages listed in the main search engines as quickly as you can.  You can submit the website, but also look to get your URL linked to from websites already in the search engines. Subscribe to directories and develop a strategy for effective link building. Remember, with links, it’s about quality, not quantity; a handful of links on top-notch sites is worth hundreds of links on irrelevant, insignificant sites.

Incorporate off site and traditional marketing methods. For example, include your web address on your stationary and have it displayed on the side of company vehicles.

Consider employing the services of an Internet Marketing specialist to help with the Search Engine process. At Direct Submit we regularly see clients who have spent thousands on a website wrongly assuming, the traffic will just come, only to find their lovely looking website is not SEO friendly and they have no identifiable SEO strategy in place.

(4) Monitor, Evaluate & Refine
After you campaign has run for a time, review and look to assess how the project has been working. Are your keywords receiving the most traffic and bringing in the best ROI, is your website listed in the major search engines and do you need to update /refine the website content.