Expressly SEO

Google’s SEO Plans
Matt Cutts of Google recently posted a rare overview of Google’s plans for the next few months for organic search – what website optimisers and webmasters can expect.

Summary of Key targets:

1. Stop advertorials that pass PageRank
2. Improve SERPs that are traditionally more spammy (adult, for example)
3. Better link analysis to deny value to link spammer
4. New hacked site detection methods and better webmaster communication about them
5. Detect true authorities better in various niches – better authority signals that could help moderate Panda impact
6. Improvements planned for host clustering – to make overly dominant results less common

During the overview, Matt Cutts said this was just a rough snapshot of the potential that’s in their mind right now.

It’s not a guaranteed promise because things can always change as these projects evolve and we all know of Google’s ever changing ‘rule base’.

Social Media Optimisation
Got something to say? With Social Media Optimisation (SMO), it can help you spread the word about your company, brand, service or product. Social signals are now a very important part of the search engine algorithms and it should now be an essential part of any SEO strategy.

Social media optimisation is becoming increasingly important for search engine optimization, as search engines are increasingly utilizing the recommendations of users of social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ to rank pages in the search engine result pages. The implication is that when a webpage is shared or “liked” by a user on a social network, it counts as a “vote” for that webpage’s quality. Thus, search engines can use such votes accordingly to properly rank websites in search engine results pages.

How important are Twitter and Facebook to my search rankings?
Very important. The search engines are now looking at what they call ‘social signals’. At the moment the main signal is how many likes and follows you have on Facebook and Twitter. Google want to display the most relevant sites at the top of their search results and the higher your number of likes and follows is a good indicator to them that your site is more relevant and and they will rank you site higher.

With almost 800 million people on Twitter and Facebook combined! There are literally millions of people out there, waiting to hear about your products and services.

Direct Submit Internet Marketing

Promoting Kids Fitness and Dance
Direct Submit are continuing to work with Kidz R Fit to help promote their diverse range of kids fitness and dance opportunities for children. The company have become very well known for helping convince both parents and the children that ‘children’s fitness can be FUN’ and encourage a healthy life style.

Kids R Fit provides children with a professional, supportive and friendly environment to take part in fitness activities, which benefit them socially, mentally and physically. Many of the fitness and dance packages are located within local within schools, nurseries, playgroups and communities, affording easy access for all.

Having done extremely well at a regional level Kidz R Fit are now looking to broaden their horizons and expand into the National Kids Fitness arena. The team at Direct Submit are pleased to be able to help Kidz R Fit continue on their business journey.

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 requirements.

Internet Marketing by Direct Submit

University Fund to Train Cybersecurity Experts
A £7.5m university fund has been allocated to train cybersecurity experts in the UK.

High-level cybersecurity experts are to be trained at two university research centres, with £7.5m in government and research council funding. Royal Holloway, University of London and Oxford University will develop specialisms in resisting cyber-attacks. This will support the UK’s national cybersecurity programme.

“We must do everything we can to tackle this threat,” said Universities and Science Minister David Willetts.

From this autumn, two university centres will be set up to train postgraduate students in the increasingly sophisticated battle between hackers, on the one hand, and businesses and governments.

They will be funded by £5m from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and £2.5m from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. This is in addition to 30 GCHQ-sponsored PhD places, also supported by the national cybersecurity programme.

The government’s National Security Strategy classifies the cyber-attack threat as being on the same Tier One level as terrorism, and warns of risks from rogue states as well as criminals. According to the government, its own internet gateway faces an average of 33,000 “malicious emails” a month, which can contain links to “sophisticated malware”.

HTML Code and the Title Tag
As most savvy website owners now know, search engine spiders or crawlers can only read text and when a search engine spider scan a website it actually scans the HTML code for that particular website. One important such piece of the HTML coding is the ‘Title Tag’. The title tag plays a crucial role in optimising any website, and Its content should reflect the overriding theme of the website with the search engines giving substantial importance to this tag.

The title tag offers the initial impression of the web site and its content for crawlers, and all the major search engines evaluate the relevance of the website on the basis of the keywords present in the Title tag. This tag is also displayed on the SERP and results contain the text included in Title tag.

The Title Tag holds significant weight and it should be crafted carefully and with some thought to ensure that it holds the offers SEO effectiveness and also appeal to the searchers.

Since the Title tag plays a vital role in determining your site’s ranking in the SERP, you need to pay a lot of attention to the words and the order in which they appear. You need to develop a crisply worded Title tag that includes your most relevant keyword phrases and performs the function of announcing the summary of your web page’s content. For example if the web site is about SEO, then the appropriate Title tag may be “Search Engine Optimisation | SEO Optimisation” etc. For example, a simple HTML title tag might look like this:

<Head>
<Title> Search Engine Optimisation | SEO Optimisation</Title>
</Head>

Though there are many views and opinions about on page factors and its importance in SEO, although most SEO experts would agree that the Title tag is highly significant within any SEO campaign. However, it should be remembered that good keyword placement and usage of key phrases can impact on positive rankings, especially when allied to the effective use and application of the title tag.

Why Internet Marketing Services
There are many reasons your business should use Internet Marketing to promote your business. Are you looking to expand to a wider customer base? Are you looking to raise the profile of your company to a much wider audience, perhaps UK wide or Global. Using the Internet to promote your business has many benefits, for example, allowing customers from the world over to find your business and purchase your products.

Some of the benefits of an Internet Marketing campaign include:

Potential for more sales and repeat business
Attracting new customers
Diversifying into new business
Increased market profile
Opportunity to expand marketing
More cost effective and flexible than offline advertising
Promote your Bricks & Mortar business – 24 x 7 days presence

Internet Marketing is Important
As you can see, having your website found in the major search engines is important for many reasons. Increased sales opportunities, achieved by attracting quality traffic to your website and increased branding opportunities for your product or service will help achieve a higher market profile for your business.

At its simplest, Internet Marketing & SEO are systems used to get your website in front of as many of your potential potential customers as possible. Internet Marketing specialists do this by targeting specific key phrases that potential visitors relevant to your business might type into search engines such as Google or Yahoo.

By strategically placing key phrases throughout your website and reviewing the core website content you can significantly improve the chances of seeing your website appear on the first pages of the major search engines.

If you are serious about selling your products, services or enhancing your company profile online then talk to us at Direct Submit Internet Marketing Services. We are a professional, ethical online marketing company who offer a comprehensive range of Internet Marketing Services including search engine optimisation, pay per click, link development and directory submissions.

Search Engine Optimisation Targeted to Local Business
Local search, or searching for local businesses on search engines, has quickly become one of the most popular search types on the web as more and more people start to use search engines to search for a local service. For example, within the North East, people are using the search engines to search for local companies who provide the service they are seeking. Exdamples could include ‘motorhome rental North East’ or ‘car hire in Gateshead’ and it is reported to be one of the fastest growing areas for ‘searches’ online.

If your business isn’t using proper search engine optimisation targeted toward local searches, wherever you operate in the UK, you could be missing out on a stream of potential visitors who are twice as likely to buy than visitors who come across your site by any other means.

If you have a service or product you want to promote to the local community, you need Local Search Engine Optimisation. Direct Submit Local Internet Marketing Services can provide you with a Search Engine Marketing solution to help your company increase the effectiveness of its website in the Search Engines and give it a distinct advantage over your local competitors’ websites who aren’t optimised for local searches.

Contact us today on 0845 272 2350 for a free, no obligation SEO review to find out how effective Local Search Marketing and SEO can help you increase the amount of business you do in your local area.

Google’s Matt Cutts Explains Fluctuating Page Rank
Google’s fluctuating Page Rank can be confusing and although your new website or webpage might rank well initially in Page Rank, after a week  or so, this value may begin to fall, declining over time to a specific mid-range level. Why is this so?

Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Web spam team, recently put together a video to explain this.

Google’s Cutts said Google’s algorithms can, initially, have a hard time figuring out the original source of new content. Time changes that, however. He continued, “Writing a search engine is kind of a complex task, You’re trying to make sure you return the best quality result but you also have to do that with limited information”.

Cutts likened the ranking process to the reporting of breaking news during an earthquake. He said, “one minute after an earthquake occurs there is limited information about what happened, ten minutes later there is slightly more information and an hour later a lot more information”.

Cutts said initial rankings are often Google’s ‘best guess’ on how relevant a page or piece of content is. As more information becomes available, Google incorporates its new knowledge into the mix and, typically, things then settle down into a steady state, Cutts added. “When there is a steady state, we’re better able to guess how relevant something is”.

Armed with that information, Google can then determine if the page or content would be better served by QDF (queries that deserve freshness) or evergreen.

QDF is a component of the Google algorithm for queries that need frequent updating, such as breaking news stories. If Google determines the best results for a particular search will change daily, or even hourly, it will designate the search QDF. Such designations means new and relevant content will make its way to the top of the search results. It also means, however, that content will quickly be bumped as newer relevant content is posted.

Evergreen, on the other hand, is a term Google applies to pages or sites that are frequently updated and are likely to attract both first-time and repeat visitors.

“A lot of people think there should be one set of rankings, it should be completely uniform, and everybody in the world should see the exact same thing” Cutts said. “The fact is, we have different results for people in different countries, even in different cities. And the results can change over time. Not just because links change or the content on the page changes, but because we are better able to assess which pages are more relevant”.

Internet Marketing Services: Direct Submit

PC Sales Hit Landmark Low As Tablets Take Over
Tablets, smartphones and Windows 8 are blamed for the biggest decline in sales of home computers in nearly 20 years.

PC sales have seen the steepest decline in nearly 20 years due to the increasing dominance of tablets and smartphones, according to a leading technology tracking firm. Sales of personal computers plummeted 14% to 76.3 million worldwide in the first three months of the year, marking a significant milestone in the decline of the age of the PC. It is the biggest drop since records on sales started in 1994.

Family computing has increasingly been driven on to tablets and smartphones, however, the decline in sales has also been attributed to the unpopularity of the new Microsoft operating system, Windows 8.

The 14% drop recorded by International Data Corp (IDC) far exceeded the 7.7% drop forecast. It was the fourth consecutive quarter of year-on-year declines.

Competing data tracker Gartner Inc’s figures show an 11% decline for the same period.

Mcrosoft saw its share price drop more than 5% in early Thursday trading while chip maker Intel dipped nearly 3%.

The sales drop has been blamed on fading sales of netbooks, the small laptops that have been rendered obsolete by tablets, and more consumer spending going toward smartphones. “Consumers are migrating content consumption from PCs to other connected devices, such as tablets and smartphones,” said Mikako Kitagawa, an analyst at Gartner. “Even emerging markets, where PC penetration is low, are not expected to be a strong growth area for PC vendors.”

Analysts at IDC said that Microsoft’s new Windows 8 actually deterred potential PC buyers as users felt they could not afford touch-screen models required to make the most of the new system. He said that other users were simply uncomfortable with the system, which lost the familiar start menu and replaced it with colourful tiles to represent applications.

Jay Chou, a senior research analyst at IDC, said: “Users are finding Windows 8 to offer a compromised experience that doesn’t excel either as a new mobile interface or in a classic desktop interface. “As a result, many users find a decline in the traditional PC experience without gaining much from new features like touch. The result is that many consumers are worried about upgrading to Windows 8, to say nothing of business users who are still just getting into Windows 7.”