Expressly Seo

UK Trails in Speed figures
The UK continues to lag behind the rest of the world when it comes to broadband connection speeds, according to Ofcom’s latest report.

In 2008 the telecoms regulator pledged to publish annual reports on how the UK’s communications sector compares with other countries.

The second Internatic__ Communications Market Report, published in December, looked at the UK, France, Italy, Germany, USA, Canada, Japan, Poland, Spain, Netherlands, Sweden, Ireland, Brazil, Russia, India and China. It showed only 10 per cent of broadband connections in the UK get speeds of over 8Mbits/sec. This compares to 26 per cent in France, 33 per cent in Sweden and 37 per cent in the Netherlands.

The report will put more pressure on the Government to fulfil its pledge to provide everyone with a minimum speed of 2Mbits/sec by 2012. Despite this, Ofcom said the UK is an advanced digital nation as people continue to embracedigital communications services. Over the five years to 2008 the UK had the second highest growth in broadband lines among 12 countries surveyed, with 23 connections per 100 people.

The report also noted the UK had some of the lowest costs for broadband services. Prices have fallen by 10.1 per cent since 2003 to an average of around £16 per month, compared with £20 in the US, £23 in Italy and £25 in Spain.

However, Richard Thurston, analyst with Analysys Mason, warned that while UK prices are some of the lowest ever recorded they may rise in future. Source: computeractive.

Top tips for great keywords
As an Internet Marketing company we are often asked to offer advice on selecting the most appropriate keywords for a clients Google adwords campaign.  We recently came across the following advice supplied direct from Google itself, so thought we’d include it in our blog. Hope this helps…

Keywords are the search terms (words or phrases) which trigger your ad, and they are critical to the success of your AdWords advertising. This email explains how you can choose the most effective keywords, assess your keyword performance and how this affects the amount you pay.

A great keyword is:
• Ideally, 2-3 words long
• Specific (keywords that are too broad or general will not reach users as effectively as keywords that are highly targeted)
• Directly related to the text in your ad
• Directly related to the page your ad links to (specified by the destination URL)

What keywords should I choose?
First, look at your website content and write down every word, word combination or phrase that describes each category of your business. This is the starting point for creating your keyword lists.

Include all brand and product names as well as plurals, synonyms and alternate spellings for each word or phrase. Capitalisation does not matter. Take out keywords that are very generic, irrelevant, or obscure.

Then, group your keywords into close-knit themes and create a new ad group for each theme. Put your keywords into these new ad groups. For example, if your campaign is for digital cameras, you can group together mini digital cameras in one ad group and SLR digital cameras in another.

Try using negative keywords. Negative keywords prevent your ad from showing when a word or phrase you specify is part of a search term. If you specify the negative keyword -repair, for instance, your ad won’t show for search terms such as digital camera repair.

Google may end operations in China.
Google may end operations in China after hackers targeted Chinese human rights activists’ e-mail accounts.  The company did not accuse the Chinese government directly but said it was no longer willing to censor its Chinese search engine google.cn. This could result in closing the site, and its Chinese offices, Google said.

Google said the e-mail accounts of Chinese human rights activists were the primary target of the attack, which occurred in December.  The search engine has now said it will hold talks with the government in the coming weeks to look at operating an unfiltered search engine within the law in the country, though no changes to filtering had yet been made.

Google launched google.cn in 2006, agreeing to some censorship of the search results, as required by the Chinese government. It currently holds around a third of the Chinese search market, far behind Baidu with more than 60%.

Nearly 340 million Chinese people now online, compared with 10 million only a decade ago. Last year, the search engine market in China was worth an estimated $1bn and analysts previously expected Google to make about $600m from China in 2010. But unlike most markets, Google comes second in search in China.  It has 31% of the market compared with about 60% controlled by market leader Baidu, which has a close relationship with the Chinese government. Yahoo has less than 10%.  Microsoft has a tiny share of the Chinese market with its new Bing search engine, but in December the technology giant said it was committed to China, calling it “the most important strategic market”.

Monkeyfishmarketing & Direct Submit
Direct submit have now been working with Monkeyfishmarketing for 2 years. Monkeyfishmarketing based in the Dylan Harvey centre in Burnley. Direct Submit have helped monkeyfish marketing with blog work and link building and together gained some fantastic results for Monkeyfish clients. It’s been great that to companies in the same field can work together to better both companies client’s results.

Phillip Monk MD of Monkeyfishmarketing said: “Yes their great, working with Direct submit a very experienced company based in the north east has been a pleasure. I’ve worked with Keith now for around 5 years and his work and knowledge is fantastic. Keith has always gone that extra mile when it comes to monkeyfishmarketing clients. Keith is an expert in all areas and together we have achieved some great results for our clients”. “Keith has great knowledge of SEO and is a great copy writer and has done many jobs for clients of ours. I know personally that one client is very happy with Keith and his article writing ability for the client Girls-love-pearls.co.uk has seen her blog turn in to a traffic magnet. Monkeyfishmarketing have just grown in size and moved to the Dylan Harvey B1 centre in Burnley. Toby Whittaker the MD of Dylan Harvey has also seen work done from Direct submit and is also very happy with Direct submit work. We look forward to the visit of Direct Submit in 2010 at our office in the Dylan Harvey centre”.

Monkeyfishmarketing are looking forward to many more years working with Direct Submit. If your looking for SEO or internet marketing in the north east or you want local targeted marketing then give Keith a call he is sure to be able to help you like he has helped our clients in many ways.

Writing an Effective Title Tag
Your <title> tag is the most important tag on your page. Remember that we’re talking about the <title> tag that appears in the <head></head> section of your Web page.

Why is it so important? When you go to a search engine and search for a particular keyword, you’re given a set of results from your search. Almost all the engines use the contents of your title tag in those search results, and they often use it exactly as you’ve written it.

Keep in mind that while wanting to craft a title and description that will appeal to the search engines, you also want to appeal to the humans in your audience. If you present a keyword-studded title and description designed to achieve top rankings in the engines that can also entice visitors to click to your site, you will get more traffic than a higher-ranking site that doesn’t present an attractive title or description.

You can also see it in any page’s source code. Both the <title> and META description tags are in the <head></head> section of your Web page, along with your other META tags. However, the only way most visitors see the title tag is when it is displayed across the top of the browser window or when it is included in search results. The engines, though, see the title and consider it when determining relevancy.

What Makes an Effective Title?

• Is appealing, captivating, compelling, or eye-catching
• Exhibits professionalism
• Uses your keyword phrase early
• Is simple and easy to read and understand
• Solves a problem
• Makes a reader curious to know more

When discussing your title tag, remember that we’re not talking about the title that you may have put on the top of your Web page. We’re talking about the contents of your <title> tag.
For further information on creating the perfect title meta tag for your webpage contact Direct Submit Internet Marketing.

Should I worry about my pages’ toolbar PageRank?
There are two kinds of Google PageRank, the actual PageRank that is a part of the ranking algorithm, and the toolbar PageRank that is updated from time to time and is aimed to provide webmasters with a general idea of the actual PageRank of the webpage.

The actual PageRank is one of 200 plus factors that influence webpage’s ranking, it is constantly recalculated. Lately, its importance has decreased even more seriously.

Susan Moskwa, a Google Employee has informed webmasters: “We’ve been telling people for a long time that they shouldn’t focus on PageRank so much. Many site owners seem to think it’s the most important metric for them to track, which is simply not true. We removed it [from Google Webmaster Tools] because we felt it was silly to tell people not to think about it, but then to show them the data, implying that they should look at it. ”

Unique content, inbound links from relevant, authoritative sites and keyword-rich link text are the things that will influence your site rankings, and not the toolbar PageRank.

Why Add a Sitemap
I’ve just spent some time today discussing the online marketing of one of their client websites with a local web design agency. One of the topics they asked about was Google sitemaps, so I thought I’d repost this article relating to the benefits of adding a sitemap.

It is extremely important for search engines to have their serch engine index up to date. That is why Google, MSN, Yahoo, and Ask jointly support the sitemaps protocol. The simplest form of a sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site, along with additional metadata about each URL (when it was last updated, how often it changes, and how important it is relative to other URLs across the site) so that search engines can crawl the site more intelligently.

Sitemaps supplement and do not replace the existing crawl-based mechanisms search engines use to discover URLs. And using the Sitemaps protocol does not guarantee the indexing of all Web pages. However, a sitemap provides crawlers with hints that help them do a better job of crawling the site.

The main benefits of a Sitemap from the SEO point of view are that with a sitemap search engines can crawl pages that aren’t otherwise discoverable and you can give search engines information about pages priority with optional tag in the sitemap. This can help them to order the crawling of the Web site based on priority information

In addition to providing more intelligent navigation for search engines, sitemaps are useful as a secondary navigation aide. Research studies confirm that a sitemap is an important benefit for visitors because it gives them an overview of the site’s areas at a single glance. Besides being dedicated to the visualisation of the information architecture, sitemaps act as a guide to a Web site.

Hope this helps…

Changes to the Google User Interface
While Google has been criticised recently for being slow to update their user interface, Search Engine Land reports that there are some changes planned for 2010. Google vice president of search product and user experience Marissa Mayer outlined several changes that are being planned to the user interface, including adding a permanent left-hand column for search options, allowing the user to switch between results, images, news and more.

Mayer said the changes are being instituted to bring more consistency to how and where search results appear. She compared the current way they are presented to free-form jazz music.

“I don’t like jazz, because you never know what’s going to happen next,” Mayer said, continuing on to apply the musical style to Google’s search results. “I’ve been calling this problem ‘user interface jazz.’ This result looks this way, and that result looks that way [something much different], and it really does slow you down.”

Google is also moving to a three-pane design. This would include leaving the search options window open permanently, with the results in the middle and ads on the right. Mayer said that from one to three percent of Google users will see the changes soon as part of a six-week series of tests, with a full site roll-out pending the feedback of the selected focus group.

Writing PPC Ads
Writing effective Pay per Click ad copy can be difficult as you are having to address two seperate agendas. Firstly, the search engines quality scoring mechanisms for your ad placement and secondly, and most importantly, you must look to the potential customer, whose attention you are trying to attract with the campaign. So what should you consider when writing pay-per-click ad copy:

1.    Focus on your most important benefits and your unique selling proposition. Free shipping, same-day shipping, wide selection, excellent customer service, industry-leading expertise in your field, discount prices, free information, hard-to-find items, awards you have won, etc.

2.    Decide what is most important to your customers and what differentiates you from your competitors and highlight these benefits in your ad copy. If you are creative you may be able to fit more than one benefit in your ad (one in the title and one in the description). Make sure the benefits you highlight in your ad copy, are also featured prominently on your landing page.

3.    Present yourself as the answer to your customer’s problems. The solution could be a specific service, product or piece of information. Think about the problems your prospects have, how you can solve those problems, and then determine how you can present the best solution in 95 characters or less. Show the user that you are relevant to their problem by highlighting the correct keywords, and solve their problem by conveying the benefits you have to offer.

4.    Get the keyword into the ad at least once if possible.
Never lose sight of the primary objective, to convert clicks into conversions, and you’ll be on the right track to creating effective pay-per-click campaigns.

Making a Website Work

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.