Just what is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and why is it a crucial element of your online business? Search Engine Optimization refers to a number of different techniques used to improve a websites placing in the search engine results pages.
The idea of SEO is to make your website more visible to web users who use search engines to search for content (which is essentially anyone who uses the World Wide Web at all).
The aim of SEO is to place your website on the first or second page of a search engine results page, based on the keywords or search terms that are input by the person doing the searching. If you look at your own surfing habits I bet you would rarely look at any sites placed other than those listed on the first one or two pages.
If your website is a personal page meant primarily for yourself and perhaps a small number of family members and friends, it may not be all that important to you to have a site which is optimized.
However, if you run an online business, it matters a great deal. Think of it this way: if a non web based business decided to stop being listed in the phone book, took the signs and awnings down and stopped advertising, how successful would it be at attracting new business? Be it online or offline a business needs to be accessible and in peoples faces to succeed. That is why advertising is a multi billion dollar industry.
In order to attract (and even retain) business, you need to have a high profile where your customers are likely to see you – and these days, this place is online.
It once was that if people couldn’t find you in the phone book, your business was in serious trouble. Now, of course the question is how easy it is for people to find your website.
One of the things we should look at first here is what the search engines actually see when their crawlers come to your site. The search engines don’t know (or care) about your site’s design in terms of graphics, though they will read the alternate text for these images.
All the search engines see when they look at your site is text and nothing but text. For this reason, sites which are entirely Flash-based are not generally recommended from an SEO perspective (many visitors don’t like this either). What the search engine crawlers are looking at on your site is the actual text contained on your website as well as the information contained in what is known as the headers of your site’s HTML, most notably your title tags.
These tell the search engine crawlers what your site is about – if you don’t include these (or use an entirely graphics or animation based site), the search engines really can’t tell what your site is supposed to be about.
This can be fatal to your site, as it basically assures that no one will be able to find you with a search engine query.
As for how the search engines determine page ranking, this is a much more complex question. The answer is based on the relevance of your website content in relation to the search terms that were input, but the relevance of any given website is calculated in a number of ways.
The exact nature of the algorithms used by each search engine is different and each is closely guarded proprietary information – to further complicate matters, these algorithms are constantly evolving.
However, there are certain things which the SEO experts have managed to figure out which apply across the board. This is what enables an SEO consultant to look over a website and suggest changes to the site to increase its visibility to the search engines.
A relevant portion of the whole equation as to how high your site is placed on the search engines result pages depends on how popular your site is. This is based on how often your site is searched for, how often it is visited, and how many other sites have linked themselves to yours.
An easy way to increase your sites page ranking is to create back links. Learn more about backlinkshere. I use a simple free automated system to distribute my articles (including this one) and in turn gain valuable backlinks to my websites, which increases my sites page rank in the search engines. Have a look at Free Traffic System
The alterations which can improve a site’s search engine rankings include fine tuning the copy on the site to make it tune with the site’s content, its meta tags or especially popular search terms which are relevant to the content.
There are other changes which will improve a site’s search engine ranking which are not visible to visitors to the site.
These are changes which affect what the search engine crawlers see when they visit the site and help this to more accurately determine what the site is about. There are yet other SEO techniques which your site should avoid using.
What should you avoid?
Let’s take a look at a hypothetical scenario. Suppose your kitchen wares business has a website which is doing well in the results for tea kettles, frying pans and the like.
However, you’d like to further increase traffic – how about trying to rank high in the search engine results for some other non-kitchen related search terms?
This may help to increase traffic to your site, but there are reasons why everyone doesn’t do this. If SEO really worked like that, every site on the web would optimize their content for whatever the most popular searches happened to be.
There are many websites which do this simply to get you to their site by any means. This is one of the several different SEO techniques which are considered “search engine spamming” and should be avoided.
If you’re considering working with a professional search engine optimization firm, you should avoid any company who uses this technique or any of the others which follow:
* Keyword stuffing. * Misleading redirects and link/URL cloaking. * Duplicating content between pages of a website. * Misspelling words and names commonly used as search terms. * The use of unrelated links (also known as link farming). * Or for that matter, any other technique aimed at fooling the search engines.
These “black hat” SEO methods can work as a means of generating traffic, but they only work for so long before the search engines (and the public) catch on.
Once search engines figure out what you’re up to, they often respond by un-indexing your site, making it impossible for anyone to find you with that search engine.
Don’t think you won’t get caught either; the major search engines encourage users to report these deceptive tactics. You can get better and more lasting results with ethical SEO methods; and without having to worry about having your site blacklisted.
Is Your Site Doing Well Enough In Search Results?
Unless you’re already in the top couple of results in the major engines, chances are you’d like to do better regardless of where your site stands at present.
As any expert search engine optimization consultant will tell you, SEO is a process, not a single task. It’s something that you’ll likely have to continue working on as your site slowly but steadily makes its way up the rankings.
This organic SEO approach is the most effective and will get you to where you want to be sooner or later; the most important thing is to ensure that your business’ website is optimized for search engines.
Failing to implement good SEO practices is one nearly certain way to set yourself up for a fall. It is much like the unadvertised, unlisted and unmarked business we discussed earlier.
People who are ready and willing to do business with you will pass you by, unaware that your site even exists. Whether or not to use SEO as an integral part of your marketing strategy isn’t even a question anymore – the question is how you’ll go about it. I have found
Free Traffic System is an invaluable tool in my SEO strategy
Struggling to get blog traffic? Click here

To best explain website popularity and it’s relevance to your site, lets start with a quick example:
Let’s say that you are approached by a friend asking your advice about the best place to buy golden widgets. Now, as a person of some knowledge, you happen to know that there is an over-abundance of widget specialists around, many of whom sell golden widgets – but what you don’t necessarily know is best place for your friend to shop.
You’ve never had cause to use a golden widget yourself let alone buy one and, as far as you know, one golden widget shop is as good as the next. One thing you do know for sure is that there’s a particular supplier of golden widgets across town where it seems a lot of people go to shop … and you also know that there are some very important people around town, people who know more about such things, that speak very highly of that particular store.
So it would be quite natural then to tell your friend that there is an abundance of widget shops, many of whom stock the golden variety … but there’s this one particular store that is regularly frequented by some of the most highly respected “widgeteurs”.
Your friend would be grateful for this advice. The internet is the same in that when someone searches for golden widgets, the search engine aims to present it’s user with recommendations on the same basis as you would. The search engine database is overwflowing with addresses of websites that are related to widgets and, more specifically golden widgets. Some websites appear to the search engine to specialise in them exclusively.
But, in determining which order to display it’s recommendations, the search engine needs to consider which are more popular than others – particularly those who are being recommended by other well-respected, popular websites.
How do they do this? Well, their spiders follow the links to and from your website, they count how many there are, they look at the relevance of those that link to you and they look in turn at the popularity of those websites.
Google, for example, keeps this type of information about your website (and every page within it) on its database and makes it available for everyone to see. They call it Google “pagerank” and if you have a google toolbar in your internet browser you can instantly see the pagerank of every web page that you visit.
As a side note, I highly recommend that you download the Google toolbar as soon as you’ve finished reading this article if you don’t already have one – it is absolutely free and will be very handy for you in seeking out potential “popular” linking partners as well as measuring the progress of your own websites’ pagerank.
In short, for your website to get maximum exposure it not only needs to be relevant to the search terms used, it needs to have as many important websites linking to it as possible.
But not all at once!
Just like you, a search engine would prefer to recommend the golden widget merchant that has become consistently more popular over time than one who has just arrived in town with instant popularity … probably because this is an indication that the popularity may have been artificially induced – as opposed to popularity that has been earned by reputation over time.
How do you achieve this? Gradually, systematically and also with a bit of help. As I have stated in previous posts I use a simple free automated system to distribute my articles (including this one) and in turn gain valuable backlinks to my websites, which increases my sites page rank in the search engines. Have a look at Free Traffic System. Its free and I recommend it.
Struggling to get blog traffic? Click here

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is everywhere on the internet. Any agent looking at web design or a new website will have heard of SEO, but have you heard of YTO?

YTO does not stand for ‘Your Total Overlord’ or even ‘You’re Too Old’, but YTO stands for ‘YouTube Optimisation’.

‘Why do estate agents need to optimise their YouTube Videos?’ It boils down to the same reasons as to why websites are optimised; being found in search engines and within YouTube.

YouTube was established in February 2005 and by April of this year 5 Billion videos had been viewed in the UK alone. Worldwide, YouTube now streams a staggering 1 billion videos every day and an overwhelming 20 hours of video are uploaded every minute.

In recent news, YouTube has upgraded into HD whilst Google will also be adding speech recognition technology to every English speaking video by the end of the week, which is great news for people with hearing disabilities.

By next week every English YouTube video will have subtitles which will be used when indexing content.

Troy Stanley, CTO of Resource Techniques comments, ‘This could mean that a new wave of YTO will be ushered in. Estate agents must plan a deliberate script with intentional keywords so that it shown at the top of Search Engines and by YouTube’s own search function.’

This script isn’t the only way estate agents can optimise their YouTube videos.

Below Resource Techniques will take estate agents through the process of YTO.

Firstly estate agent agents need to organise the video files that they take. Excellent for personal organisation but also YouTube will automatically add the file name into the video title.

Changing the file as soon as estate agents load it onto their computer means that they will be able to keep track of the videos that they upload and they can evaluate their chosen video title when they upload it to YouTube. Putting themselves in the shoes of a property searcher, estate agents will be able to contemplate keywords such as the address, type of house as well as the word ‘video’.

For example, estate agents can use ‘52 Web-Design Street, London NW4 4DD [Company name] estate agents viewing video’. Although this is full of keywords, it is not very user friendly. Why not try, ‘House for sale 24 Design Street, London, Video by [Company name] estate agents/estates.’ Estate agents must design the title for both the end user and search engines.

Next, fill in the description section with lots of keywords describing what the video is about such as; estate agent, property, viewing, one/two/three bedrooms, garden and the estate agent name. Widespread advice suggests that a link should be inserted at the start of the description linking to the property. This gives users a chance to view in-depth property details on your website.

Last thing on this page is to fill the tags section. Here estate agents need to insert individual keywords that have been used in the description of the video.

Once finished, estate agents should click on the link ‘My Videos’. Estate agents will be able to overview, edit, delete and add captions to their video.

Once there, click on ‘edit’. From here estate agents can edit broadcasting options. Ideally estate agents will want to edit the security settings so the video can be commented on, rated, have video responses and embedded as possible. This means that your video will be able to be shared, talked about, reviewed and embedded as much as possible.

The last thing for estate agents to consider is captions and annotations as they can also be used towards their YTO. Agents need to be aware that although they can provide useful links and extra information, many YouTube users find them annoying and in the way of the video. Overusing them will cause users to click away from your video.

Troy Stanley gives a final comment on how estate agents can improve their YTO even further, ‘Any estate agent that is serious about uploading property videos to YouTube needs to use YouTube Insights which is available in ‘My Videos.’

‘This is an analytics feature that gives information that will help estate agents to optimise their videos. Areas such as location, discovery and daily views will help estate agents to become the leading YouTube estate agent in their area.’ – Troy Stanley.

Do you use YouTube to market your properties online? Are you considering starting to market your properties through YouTube? Let us know via our Twitter or Facebook page.

Earlier this year, the world’s first ‘virtual divorce’ thrust an intriguing debate into the limelight: what is the relationship between virtual worlds and the real environment we inhabit, and can we still distinguish the two?

Amy Taylor ‘divorced’ husband David Pollard after she discovered him cavorting with a prostitute in virtual reality game Second Life. The couple spent so much time playing the game, that when she found him at the computer watching his 3D character having sex, she considered his online infidelity as real as if it had taken place in the bricks and mortar world.

Sceptics view dealings in such online games as a poor substitute for ‘real life’ interactions. Yet the impact of virtual worlds cannot be underestimated. So far, over 15m people have established avatars in Second Life alone, with membership increasing by around 70,000 people a day. In June 2009, market research firm Strategy Analytics predicted global membership of virtual worlds would increase from 186 million today to 640 million by 2015 (as reported in Virtual Worlds News).

That’s a staggering one hundred million people per year, creating characters for entertainment, engagement and business. Online multiplayer gaming such as Xbox LIVE is also increasing in popularity, allowing people from across the globe to interact in real-time. We’ve even seen the first ‘virtual murder’; a Japanese piano teacher was recently arrested on suspicion of killing her ‘virtual husband’ after becoming enraged when he divorced her unexpectedly in an internet game.

This explosion of growth raises some interesting questions about the nature of relationships in cyberspace – and virtual worlds are just one part of the ever-expanding, sophisticated world we inhabit online. From Match.com to mysinglefriend®, Sugardaddie.com to ratemybody.com, the digital environment plays cupid for a vast array of relationships. To some extent, email and texts have replaced the love letter, instant messaging has become a substitute for telephone calls and social networking is now key to social contact. These days, we’re just as likely to give potential dates a poke on Facebook, Skype Chat them up or tweet sweet nothings to attract their attention.

Clearly, many of us now view the internet as crucial to modern-day communication –and not just in our personal and social lives. From a professional perspective, the web – and Web 2.0 in particular – has fundamentally changed the way we do business. Monique Lester,the Digital Media Marketing Queen of London Digital PR, says,”Web 2.0 has become an integral part of how businesses promote themselves and build a relationship with their clients. Social media marketing, SEO techniques and then a great online PR and marketing strategy have become a necessity, for both corporate and SME’s.”

London Digital PR on Work, Life and Love in a ‘Virtual’ Climate

With over 40 million members, networking tool LinkedIn demonstrates the internet’s importance to how we make successful contacts. We meet people and connect on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and the like, and we use email and instant messaging for work just as much as in our private lives.

In marketing and media terms, the explosion of online communications has come as both a blessing and a challenge. In publishing, it’s little surprise that media use via the Internet is displacing traditional forms such as printed newspapers. In the developed world, we now get an increasing amount of our news and entertainment online. Add to this the huge growth in listening to and watching online programmes, and we see just how far we’ve come.

Marketers continue to spend more online than on traditional channels. Forrester Research recently released its five year forecast, predicting that by 2014, 21% of marketing spend in the US will be on interactive tools and services. Overall advertising in traditional media will continue to decline in favour of more effective online methods – with social media, email and search highlighted for particular growth.

This in itself is hardly surprising, for we live in the world of the virtual consumer. We only need consider our sphere of influence when making purchasing decisions. We research online, bank online, shop online, book holidays online. From branded emails and online customer service to consumer feedback, staff training and social media activities, brands have countless opportunities to form relationships and start a two-way dialogue in new and often unexpected ways.

For marketers who tap into the zeitgeist, the possibilities are endless – and a lot can be achieved with minimal budgets. Built around two similar sounding words, the recent ‘Compare the meerkat’ campaign used an effective and quirky viral concept to boost brand awareness, drive traffic and enable cost-effective search. A series of excellent digital executions include YouTube clips, a Facebook page and amusing Twitter feed, along with a full spoof microsite. The campaign’s success is evidence that by adopting an integrated approach driven by personality, brands can maximise the potential for engagement.

For charities too, the online world has tremendous power to influence through the ability to form relationships with people on an individual basis, on a mass scale. In essence, so-called ‘virtual interactions’ can make a real tangible difference to people’s daily lives. By using Twitter as a driving force for event organisation and providing information on Facebook pages and Vimeo’s video community, Twestival was able to provide clean water for over 17,000 people earlier this year. This is just one of many examples of social media’s power to drive change by appealing for people to join together.

Monique Lester says, “Our online interactions are not a substitute for real life, but a fundamental part of it. The challenge is to embrace all the opportunities the Web brings while still maintaining our core values.”

Turning back to the debate, it’s clear that in developed and developing countries, the online world has penetrated every part of our existence. From Facebook to LinkedIn, email to ICQ, all are controlled by real people, with real feelings, instincts and motives. Our lives and relationships are a complex series of online and offline interactions – and we can no longer see the virtual and real worlds as separate spheres operating independently. We live our lives in a post-digital age; the Internet is no longer an alien concept to be dabbled with on occasion, but something that pervades our entire lives.

Contact:

Amelia Bate
London Digital PR
info@londondigitalpr.com

Monique Lester
London Digital PR
info@londondigitalpr.com
+44 (0) 7958 411653

The Event

Alex In London was about  Internet Marketing, Optimising and repurposing. by Alex Mandossian.

Wow thanx to Alex for his fantastic Preparation(96 hours), He is undoubtedly the best presenter I’ve had the pleasure of being trained by, without question.

Another thanx goes to the man that got into action and created a PPC (Pay Per Click) campaign that brought me into the loop.

Through the joint effort of these two wonderful guys, I purchased a ticket to the event that was definately worth what I paid within the first 10mins.

I now have a solid plan, the skill, a teacher/learner and the contacts to hold me accountable. I believe like never before that success is now inevitable Could You put a price on that.

Alex Mandossian, has a gift for simplifying and making complicated techi stuff easy for the layman.

I hope this is a useful testimonial.

Yours Positively

Richard Saupe I turn Marketing into Market CHING!

www.richardsaupe.com 07538538138, 07956490722 or 077 TALK TO ME

Ps. Be warned if your competition get this event before You do, You might aswell hand them the keys!

PPs I would like to Introduce You to Geoff Alexander.

I'm the one with long hair!

Web Stats for Lincolnshire Fireworks

Yes – you did read that right…

11 thousand percent increase in traffic over a 1 month period.

All achived with SEO by design101.

Beat That!

SEO company UK

Many small to large businesses realize that if they want to create a succesful internet store or a succesful online presence then search engine optimisation implementation is a required

One of the issues that alot ofonline companies face is the lack of knowledege in search engine optimisation

because of this to this alot companies signe up to search engine optimisation services not knowing exactly what they should be expecting the company to do for them.

In addition to the above many companies turn towards PPC advertising as search engine optimisation becomes to complex for them to understand or they dont have the time to take on board SEO

Once Pay Per click has been tested many of these small companies realize that its not a cost affective way to gain exposure so then end up back to stage 1 looking for a seo company to provide seo services.

In my 8 years experience as a seo consultant I can say that at least 75% of all businesses have been hit by what we call black hat seo agents

Black hat is using non ethical techniques which the major search engines frown upon.

If you have experienced black hat seo techniques then you will know that they can provide you with results very quickly but then you will also be blacklistedby the search engines very quickly and your site will be penalized.

Another point mentioned by many of these companies is the fact that a good seo company will charge very high rates

This is true to a certain extent.

The key in getting good seo services done for your website while keeping the cost to a minimum is by using a UK based seo company that has staff based in another country.

One thing that we need to consider is the fact that a seo campaign heavily consists of link building which is a long repetative task.

Now if the company is hiring staff and paying for the staff in the UK then they will be much more expensive.

If you are looking for a highly qualified team of seo agents who can provide you with results then I would advise you as I advise all of my clients – go to seo services uk and get a free website report. You will not pay more then £500 a month – I have recommended this company for some time now and all I get is thanks from all of my clients – As standard I use these myself.

best of luck

Companies can spend a five figure sum on a website that can potentially achieve great things for them – and then take a £99 hosting deal somewhere, thinking it doesn’t really matter. Hosting may be comparatively cheap, but you really shouldn’t skimp!

There are some important issues – like downtime, backups, technical support and server options – that you must consider, and which are well documented in numerous articles across the Internet. But some factors are less obvious – and just as important for your company to consider.

One of these is geography. You should ensure that your website is hosted in the UK; for cost reasons, many UK ISPs’ server farms are actually in the Netherlands, the USA or elsewhere. But their cost saving might could be costing you dear.

Google and other search engines use geo-tracking technology, which will adversely affect your ranking if your site is hosted off-shore. When potential customers make a “UK” only search, you can – and often will be – ranked lower in the search results if your site is hosted offshore. If you want to check where your site is, type your web address into http://www.virtualviewing.co.uk/IpLocator.

Speed is another important factor that affects both the user experience and your search engine rankings. Just like a user, if the search engine sees your site is poorly hosted – and therefore slow – it will downgrade its ranking compared to its competitors.

A slow site not only gives your users a poor experience, it also makes your company harder to find on the Internet and gives your rivals an edge. Even if you think your site loads quickly for you, search engines may still be marking it down.

You can check the speed of your website – and your competitors’ – using the online tool at http://www.virtualviewing.co.uk/WebSiteSpeedTest. You should be aiming for an absolute maximum speed of 0.03 seconds per KB of data transferred. If your site is slower than this (shown by a higher figure) – or slower than most of your competitors – perhaps you should consider changing website host?

I have been listening to a free ebook (also available in print..at a small cost.. but more about that later)  from the Chris Anderson called “Free” via podcast on my iPhone over the last few days.

He mentions in his eBook the declining cost of information due to what he calls the “Triple Play” of the digital age.

1. Processor power doubling every 12 months
2. Bandwidth increasing at an even faster rate every year due to technology moving Terabits (they are a 1000 times larger than a Megabit) over the same optical fibre instead of just “mere” Megabits
3. Storage costs dropping at an even faster rate, so that every time January one passes, you can have more storage on our iPhone than our PC had 5 years ago at a fraction of the price

The essence of his book reminded me of an article I had read 12 months ago by Kevin Kelly called “Better Than Free” where he discussed what he believes, are the types of  experiences, services and products that people will be willing to “pay for” in the digital age where the price of information is dropping to Zero, due to the capability of the Web as  a ” Copying Machine” to create, package and deliver information anywhere, anytime for so close to no cost, that it might as well be free.

He said “When copies are super abundant, they become worthless, stuff which can’t be copied becomes scarce and valuable..When copies are free, you need to sell things which cannot be copied”

So what are we giving away for free in Social Media?

• Unique content on your blog, website and other digital mediums
• YouTube Videos on how to peel a banana.. or maybe how to use a new “Twitter App”
• eBooks that tell you how to tune a 1969 Jaguar
• Podcast on how to Use LinkedIn for networking
• Webinars in Video, Audio and Text formats that instruct us how to almost do anything  
• Images on Flickr under “Creative Commons Licence” that I use on my blog posts.. for free
• Powerpoint presentations on “Slideshare” that  reveal valuable “IP”  (Intellectual Property) that has been developed over decades of blood sweat and tears
• Whitepapers on how to create an online marketing strategy.   

Why are these given away and for what purpose?  Well may be to

• Create trust
• Attract some “attention”
• Gain credibility
• Display you and your company as a “thought leader”
• Position yourself as an authority in your market
• To be “benevolent”  
• Because you can
• You like to share

So, what can’t be copied and can be perceived to be valuable that people are willing to pay for  ?

Here is Kevin Kelly’s take on what people are willing to pay for and why.. he calls them “Generatives”

” A generative value is a quality or attribute that must be generated, grown, cultivated, nurtured. A generative thing can not be copied, cloned, faked, replicated, counterfeited, or reproduced. It is generated uniquely, in place, over time. In the digital arena, generative qualities add value to free copies, and therefore are something that can be sold”.

So he lists 8 Generatives that can be sold and monetized because they can’t be copied,cloned or faked.

1. Immediacy — Sooner or later you can find a free copy of whatever you want, but getting a copy delivered to your inbox the moment it is released — or even better, produced — by its creators is a generative asset.
2. Personalization — A generic version of a concert recording may be free, but if you want a copy that has been tweaked to sound perfect in your particular living room — as if it were preformed in your room — you may be willing to pay a lot.
3. Interpretation — As the old joke goes: software, free. The manual, $10,000. But it’s no joke. A couple of high profile companies, like Red Hat, Apache, and others make their living doing exactly that. They provide paid support for free software.
4. Authenticity — You might be able to grab a key software application for free, but even if you don’t need a manual, you might like to be sure it is bug free, reliable, and warranted. You’ll pay for authenticity. There are nearly an infinite number of variations of the Grateful Dead jams around; buying an authentic version from the band itself will ensure you get the one you wanted.
5. Accessibility — Ownership often sucks. You have to keep your things tidy, up-to-date, and in the case of digital material, backed up. And in this mobile world, you have to carry it along with you. Many people, me included, will be happy to have others tend our “possessions” by subscribing to them.
6. Embodiment — At its core the digital copy is without a body. You can take a free copy of a work and throw it on a screen. But perhaps you’d like to see it in hi-res on a huge screen? Maybe in 3D? PDFs are fine, but sometimes it is delicious to have the same words printed on bright white cottony paper, bound in leather. Feels so good. And nothing gets embodied as much as music in a live performance, with real bodies. The music is free; the bodily performance expensive. This formula is quickly becoming a common one for not only musicians, but even authors. The book is free; the bodily talk is expensive.
7. Patronage — It is my belief that audiences WANT to pay creators. Fans like to reward artists, musicians, authors and the like with the tokens of their appreciation, because it allows them to connect. But they will only pay if it is very easy to do, a reasonable amount, and they feel certain the money will directly benefit the creators. Radiohead’s recent high-profile experiment in letting fans pay them whatever they wished for a free copy is an excellent illustration of the power of patronage. The elusive, intangible connection that flows between appreciative fans and the artist is worth something. In Radiohead’s case it was about $5 per download. There are many other examples of the audience paying simply because it feels good.
8. Findability — Where as the previous generative qualities reside within creative digital works, findability is an asset that occurs at a higher level in the aggregate of many works. A zero price does not help direct attention to a work, and in fact may sometimes hinder it. But no matter what its price, a work has no value unless it is seen; unfound masterpieces are worthless. When there are millions of books, millions of songs, millions of films, millions of applications, millions of everything requesting our attention — and most of it free — being found is valuable. The giant aggregators such as Amazon and Netflix make their living in part by helping the audience find works they love.

So how does Chris Anderson make money using this “Freemium Model”?  He will gain trust, attention, credibility and knowledge leadership via “Free” that will allow him to be highly paid for

• Personalised consulting to corporations
• “Embodied” Public speaking
• “Embodied” copies of his book

So how are you converting “Free” into cash ?

… but, please dear Lord, nothing borrowed or blue.” Weddings? In a web development blog? Have I been overdoing the coffee? What I’m talking about is web site content – and, more particularly, the words. It seems such an innocuous subject, doesn’t it? It’s just words, after all. Slap up the text out of the brochure, bung in a few press releases and bingo! Well, no actually. It’s not that simple. What is still known in some circles as ‘new media’ actually demands some old-fashioned skills from what our geekier friends used to sneeringly refer to as the ‘dead tree industries’.

Even a simple web site, with a page count fewer than the number of fingers on even the most nail-chewing MD’s hand, requires some discipline in providing the right words for the situation. From our experience of working with companies during web site development, this presents one of two challenges:

1. Small companies don’t typically have a wordsmith on the payroll: it’s just not a part of their core business
2. They already have some sales material and ‘that will do’.

The first problem is easier to solve – Virtual Viewing can provide a copywriting service for website development. The second requires a little education as to what is actually needed. The simplest way of putting this is ‘editing’: this olde worlde skill is very much alive (or should be). And one of its mantras has always been ‘write for your audience’.

Stop talking and say something
It shouldn’t need saying, but the Web isn’t a newspaper, a book, a brochure or a television, even if it shares attributes of all of these. More importantly, people use – and read – the Web differently. Like most other things ‘new media’, accelerated timescales apply. Web users skim read: they’re in a hurry. They’ve Googled for something, your site has (you hope) come up, but so have a lot of others. You have only a few seconds to get its point across. It’s like the X-Factor, only you’re not Louis, Cheryl, Danni or Simon.

Unless your product or service is hugely visual, make sure all the key information is there and plainly expressed – in words – in the first paragraph. Possibly the second. Unless they like the first and second, they won’t read the third. If there are three or four key points – that are important to your customer, not to you – use headings and use those words at the start of them. Avoid the teasing metaphors, the cunning puns and the witty phrasing. If you sell widgets, tell them which widgets you have.

A digging implement by any other name …
… will still be a spade. Call it one. (When you fall over one, you’re allowed to call it “a bloody shovel”, otherwise just stick to the basics.) Anyone skim-reading your page wanting a spade won’t spot that beautifully crafted sentence about horticultural utensils. And anyone using a site search – or an Internet search engine – will probably be skim-reading someone else’s site by now.

By all means mention your product name, invoke your branding and all your other marketing collateral. But don’t forget to mention it’s a spade, or they may be buying it elsewhere. An Internet audience is impatient and can move along as fast as teleporting: give them information rather than patter. (Unless you sell patter, in which case good luck.) On the web, the new black can any colour you want (full colour, no extra charge), but telling is the new selling.

File it carefully, or everyone loses it
Once your site grows – and customers like content-rich sites – try to resist the temptation to just shovel content in there. A web site is not a compost bin, and throwing more things on top of it won’t make it mature into anything nutritious – for you or your reading public.

Just as calling a spade a spade within a page can work wonders for readers, it can also work wonders for those wondering where you keep your spade. At this level, content management for the web calls on another ‘dead trees’ skill: indexing. Classify information into categories that are obvious and meaningful. Imagine a library where they just bunged the books on the shelves because the colours went nicely, or the shapes looked tidier that way. Now imagine you want a book on native fauna of the Sussex Downs. Happy? Of course not. You’d be off to another library pretty quickly, wouldn’t you?

Content that can’t be found is a waste of time, energy – and frankly of disc space. Divide it into meaningful slices. Add keywords so that your internal site search can retrieve them too. And use keywords and terms that your customers would – and do – use. They’ll be doing the searching, and those are the words that they will use. (Your web stats should be able to show you these, but bear in mind we can help you by providing an ADAM (ADwords Administration and Management) campaign that will not only increase your web site’s visibility but also giving you a wealth of information on which words and phrases your customers use when they’re looking for you.)

Don’t beat about the bush: the web is no place to be discombobulating the fauna. All you’ll wind up doing is using a plethora of horticultural implements to reposition an immensity of excrement. Sad to say, most of it still stuck to the blanket.

Give your content some thought – or let us help you to do it – and you’ll be doing everyone a favour. If you want to take optimising the content of key pages several stages further, then talk us to us about our SUE (Search-engine Upgrade and Enhancement) service, which embraces all this advice in greater depth to not only enhance your pages but lift their ranking in the major search engines.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could generate revenue without the bother of producing your own content? If there was some way of collecting information from around the internet and wrapping it in your own ads and serving it from your own space online? From solo operators building sites for pure SEO, to article aggregation and snippets of content surfaced through search, this particular business model is endemic on the web. With the publication of PR, offline media is also tainted by this practice.

‘Tainted’ maybe a little too pejorative a word. Think of it more as the practice of collating content and attempting to creating value through this process. What matters is that this method for creating content, generating traffic and creating revenue is scalable. As so much of it can be driven by software, it is the tool of choice for those without the resources to produce hundreds of pages of content a week. Once you multiple this over a few dozen domains, or in the case of some aggregators, establish a massive SEO blackhole of a site, the benefits of a process that requires minimal human oversight is obvious.

Using the content of others to generate revenue without directly compensating the content creators is not going to go away. As long as this practice helps generate traffic and create more advertising inventory, and as long as the content is there and easily copied, this is here to stay.

best to call me it would be a whole lot wiser.

regards

Richard Saupe 07538538138

Time what a great commodity! When other people are not stealing it!

I read a good little book by spencer johnson & kenneth blanchard

something about monkeys

Approximately they are saying that every problem that comes your way is a monkey small and manageable. but these little monkies grow up in some cases to be huge gorillas which are not manageable.

So when accepting responsibility from others be sure that the monkey belongs on your shoulders. because maybe it should just stay with them!

Blood suckers and passion killers, beaware of these two, you probably know whom they are and they will hover around you until they drag every last bit of energy from your soul. they will leave you lifeless and worn out.

They’re are the same type when on a hi, that won’t answer your calls, basically they will disappear until they need a fix.

Don’t allow it, if they’re not there for You. find new friends.

HOW, easy really get out and network (get some business cards made up and  join clubs, social events, just go salsa.

just scan the net for stuff to do in your area or just ask people you do like that reciprecate your energy and pump you up when you’re low if they have any connections that you may get on with too. (try not to sound desperate).

What ever you do cast off the ballast and fly.. and remember to make things happen you just need to make a decision and take action!

regards for NOW

Richard Saupe 07538538138.

2 new books being published First things First(My personal Blueprint secrets for entreprenerial success or how I turned my 15,000 business into a 250k marketing super star!) and Get Googled NOW!(killer stratergies for dominating online) £27. each published Feb 10 they will be upto date! pre-order now  just 5000 copies each and already more than 700 sold in the first month… if you want both books that I call the business fast start tune up kit.  signed copies of both. You get them now  for just £47

Ps My books are aimed at the layman easy to ready and strategies to easily implement in your business today!

I love keywords. The most fundamental aspect of SEO are the keywords that a site uses and this is just a basic introduction of its uses and benefits. Without this aspect of SEO it would be make finding your website that little bit harder. Keywords are important to keep both yourself and your site on track with what you want it to convey and who you want to bring to your site. Search engines index your site by looking a the text on it and this is used when people search for something online. So if you sell something like flowers then you better have flowers as a keyword. The best way to find keywords or phrases is to look through your site content and write down what the key words and phrases are. So for example a flower shop would be:

First of all your basic keywords:
Flowers
Flowers shop
Roses
………etc

Then you want geographic elements in your keywords:
Flower shop in bristol
UK flower shop
…..etc

Then you want more targetted terms:

Bristol flower shop
How to buy flowers
How to keep flowers

Using googles adwords tool is a great way of finding keywords that you wouldn’t think of which could be killer. Killer keywords are the words or phrases that your consumers use often and that bring them to your site.

There are many ways to find keywords that can be used to promote your business online:

• Brainstorming with colleagues
• Looking at competitor sites
• Keyword websites

Well what do you want to use your keywords in:

• Your website content
• Meta tags
• Advertisments

Or simply put on the website both on it and within it, as well as all your other marketing activities. Always check your keywords and keep a list of the ones you are using. As with any other article written about keywords and SEO I will stress that on your website it is always the king. Keywords help get your potential customers there, you just have to keep them.

I was going to review this social media survey in less than 500 words (the  original report is 43 pages) but I found the revelations compelling so it ended up being over 1,000 words. It shows that companies are taking different approaches both bold and conservative. It also unveiled the fact that most companies are not ignoring social media but implementing it in ways that fits their culture and processes, whether that be taking a long term approach or short term.     

Mounting research, including the fact that 46% of US adults now participate in social networks, and a quarter do so weekly, make it increasingly difficult to pigeon-hole social media as something relevant to only specific demographic groups or personal vs. work lives. Social media is here to stay, and marketers need all the help they can get understanding this new communication channel. 

Business.com’s 2009 Business Social Media Benchmarking Study assessed current trends in the use of social media in North American businesses. It is based on 2,948 valid responses to a Social Media Benchmarking Survey during August and early September, 2009, 

The study was focused on social media utilization – how people and companies are using social media in a work context today – and not on adoption. All study participants currently used social media in their day-to-day jobs as a resource for business-relevant information and/or worked for a company currently managing, developing or planning social media initiatives. 

The report was organized into two sections. Section one is about how social media is utilised to find business relevant information and section two are the initiatives, benchmarking experience with social media for business, top social media activities and how companies judge social media success today.  

Section One: Finding Business Relevant Information

Top Line Findings

1. Nearly 65% of respondents reported using using social media as part of their normal work routine to find business relevant information such as
   • Reading blogs
   • Visiting business profiles on Facebook
   • Viewing professional profiles on LinkedIn
   • Using Twitter to find or communicate
2.  Who uses Social Media as a resource for business information?

The Top Five by Job Role

• Consulting
• PR/Corporate Communications
• Construction/Real Estate
• Marketing
• Accounting Finance

Interesting findings that aren’t expected

• IT used social media as a business resource less than any other department
• Micro Companies (less than 10 employees were more disposed to use social media than the large (500+ employees) who ranked last.. maybe due to banning or blocking of social media sites by large companies.
• Real Estate and construction were the most active users above those from other industries.. this is worth asking.. why?
• Most popular Social Media resources were
  • Webinars/Podcasts  at 69%
  • Reading ratings and and reviews 62%
• Least Popular
  • Social Bookmarking sites 28%
  • Participating in dicussions on 3rd party websites 29%
• Average respondent used nearly six different social media resources
• 14.4 % used ten or more

Section Two: This covered

• Corporate Social Media Initiatives
• Benchmarking experience with social media for business
• Top social media activities
• How companies judge social media success today.

 Top Line Findings

• The vast majority (92%) are directly involved in planning or managing these initiatives 
• They spend, on average, 18% of their time in a given week on business social media activities
• 35% of people surveyed had spent less than one year managing or involved with social media initiatives 
• 30% of employees having between one and two years of direct experience
• 71% of companies have less than two years of experience with social media initiatives
• Top ten social media initiatives (all at or above 50% participation)
  • Maintenance of company social media sites 71%
  • Monitor company related mentions on social media sites 60%
  • Maintain one or more company blogs 60%
  • Participate in micro-blogging (Twitter) 56%
  • Monitor and or support company ratings or reviews 54%
  • Monitor competitor mentions on social media sites 53%
  • Participation in discussions on 3rd party sites 51%
  • Advertise on social media sites 50%
  • Manange an online community for customers or prospects 50%
  • Participate in online Q&A sessions on 3rd party sites such as Yahoo answers or Linkedin 50%
• Companies are planning, having in development or running on average seven social media initiatives 

Interesting Findings that were unexpected.

1. How Companies Judge Social Media Success

• Website traffic increase 61%
• Engagement with prospects 57%
• Brand awareness 54%
• Engagement with customers 50%
• Revenue 42%
• Brand reputation 42%
• Prospect lead volume 36%
• Prospect lead quality 33%
• Useful product feedback 23%

Note: I was surprised by this as an element of ROI  (Revenue) took fifth place after what I would call non-financial impacts being viewed as sufficiently important to take precedence over short term financial  gains. I was expecting ROI to be taking a top spot.

2. What are the Top Social Media Sites That Companies Participate In?

1. Facebook 80%
2. Twitter 56%
3. LinkedIn 39%
4. LinkedIn Companies 38%
5. YouTube 35%

Note: Facebook continues to take the prominent role in Social Media ( I suppose 300 Million people can’t be wrong) 

3. Social Media Monitoring Tools

 Companies can use a wide variety of tools to monitor company, brand and/or competitor mentions across blogs and other social media sites. Free Tools are dominant in social media business use and are used much more broadly then fee-based tools.. and the difference is striking.

Free Tools

• Google Search 61%
• Google Alerts 49%
• Twitter Search 44%
• Yahoo! Search 35%,

Fee-based Tools

• Factiva 3%
• Nielsen BuzzMetrics 3%
• BuzzLogic 2% 
• Biz360 2%
• Radian 6 2%

Note: Free wins over fee.. not unusual I suppose

3 Top Revelations

1. The average company in this study used four different success metrics

1. Web site traffic
2. Engagement – with prospects and customers 
3. Brand impact – awareness and reputation 
4. Leads – both quantity and quality

Note: Companies measuring leads are more likely to also measure the revenue impact of social media initiatives than companies which don’t focus on leads. Also, companies judging the success of their social media initiatives on engagement with prospects and/or customers are more likely to also measure brand impact than they are revenue or leads. 

This reveals two types of mindsets

1. Those wanting to measure and verify ROI
2. Companies who are taking a longer term view and at this stage are willing to accept that the pre-cursors to achieving a financial impact will reveal a long term positive ROI.

2. Top Social Media Sites To Which Companies Upload

• YouTube 64%
• Flickr 26%
• Slideshare 12%
• Photobucket 12%
• GoogleKnol (Googles version of Wikipedia) 11%

Note: YouTube’s dominance is due in part to the growing value of online video as a valuable social media content asset and the emerging importance of video as Gen Y takes an emerging and growing role in managment.

3. Social Media Banning at Work

• 54% of companies ban two of the most popular social media sites for business Facebook and Twitter
• 10% of the 1,400 CIOs surveyed indicated that they give employees full access to social networks at work.

Note: This knee-jerk concern about squandering work time on personal issues has been seen many times before (telephones, cell phones, Internet, e-mail, etc.) and establishing the business value in social media can help companies placing themselves in the position of attempting to understand and utilize this new communication channel without the ability to actually use it at work. 

Comments From Survey

Three revealing comments from the survey:

Comment One “The most useful social media resource is the webinars. I feel that they offer the most, don’t demand that I travel, spend a lot of money, or even make a huge commitment of time. They are usually well focused on a topic and therefore don’t waste my time with a lot of unrelated topics.”

Comment Two “Twitter. The people I follow provide me with more relevant links and information than any other tool. It saves me time and helps me learn about new technologies or innovative ideas, as they are happening.” also

Comment Three “The power of combining social media resources (i.e., the social connection provided by social media) – discovering something interesting on Twitter, following it to a blog you haven’t seen before, and then subscribing to the blog – as well as the ability to interact with others about the topic on Twitter and in blog comments.”

So do your companies activities reflect a similiar pattern to the surveys findings?

These days every website wants to appear in the top 10 list of search engines or rather Google. Thus to reach on the top one needs to understand the functioning of the search engines and should make proper changes in order to attain the desired goal. An effective SEO strategy is required to achieve the benefits of search engine optimization. The best strategies involved with the SEO are keyword search, link popularity and website marketing.

Carrying out the correct research and deciding the correct keywords combination results in the proper ranking in the search engines and generation of traffic on the website. The content is considered as the ruler or it is the content which represents the website therefore the content should include the keywords that are important for the website and the website should optimized by a search engine optimizer so that the search engines crawls the website without any problem. The inner pages of the website should be crafted in a manner that it revolves around the theme of the website and the inner pages should be related to each other.

The first look of the website should express about the quality and the quantity of the website therefore if a visitor visits the home page of the website for the first he should understand the theme of the website and the services related to the website. Search engine optimization is the best way to increase the traffic on the website.  The main reason of optimization of the website is to get ranking in the search engines. If a website gets a first rank in the popularity rank of Google it means that the website will be viewed first if a person searches the key word related to the website.

Most of the websites are updated on regular basis rather daily and are crawled daily. If someone wants to purchase high PR links and lessens the hang on time and get the website on the top. The other important aspect which should be kept in mind is the broken links one should check for the broken links on the website on regular basis so that it doesn’t puts a negative effect on others of the website.

The good quality articles are quickly cracked and are published prolifically. A good article is published on the website and gets another link reverting back to the site which over all increases the popularity of the link.

It should be ensured that each web page focuses on a specific keyword or key phrase and the article of the page discussed about the website of the product and includes the keywords or key phrases from the list.

Microsoft’s Bing is now adding more applications and tools to challenge Google, the current search engine market leader. Currently Bing ranks third in leading search engines, behind Google and Yahoo.

First launched in May 2009, Bing introduced some changes last week that keeps the user on the same internal page when it answers Internet user’s questions. Currently Google and others search engine websites respond to users’ search queries by providing links to other websites that online users can get information easily.

Now the Bing results page, will display more information about up-to-date weather forecasts, travel options, product details, events and attractions in destination locations,  and even hospital reviews. The results are now obtained from multiple sources, including some which are the result of partnerships Microsoft has  formed. For those mathmatically challenged can now type in complicated math equations or even ask Bing a math question and get accurate answers.

The increased functionality will be commence on Bing in the following days.

At the Web 2.0 San Francisco in October, Microsoft made a deal with Twitter in its ongoing attempt to compete with Google in many fields.

Posted by Kevin Andreassend Co-Founder of the Tweet Twins
http://www.simdeck.com http://www.iqrite.com http://www.digitaldaytime.com

Hi it’s me again.

Google Alerts You have to do this now!,  how else are you going to know what people are saying about you online.

get over to google now and add google ALERTS!.

Add your name, brand or company name and a couple of keyword phrases and of course your major competition..

yours positively

Richard Saupe Marketeer & strategist online and offline!

07538 538 138 01206 43 43 43

Quote of day “commonality of the super successes is their speed of implementation, in other words they have an idea and they implement it now. they don’t wait they do it now” Mike Litman success coach says You don’t have to get it right You just have to get it going.

How much I charge is irrevelant to the value I produce, anyway it’s FREE if it doesn’t work!

Credentials if you can call em that..

I’ve studied and seen  Alex Mandossian, T Harv Eker, Eben Pagan, Richard Bandler. studied materials of  Jay Abraham, Abraham Maslow, Richard Koch, Spencer Johnson, Ron holland, Richard Denny, Tom Hopkins, Tony Robbins, Zig Zigler, Jonathan Jay, David Ogilvy, Claude hopkins, Michael Senoff, PPC affiliate Classroom, Frank Kern, Dan Kennedy, J Levinson, Tim Ferris, Dan Pena, Bill the billionaire, Bob Procter, Napoleon Hill, David Scwartz , Maxwell MALTZ and a hundred others good and not so good

I’m not mentioning this to impress you, but to impress upon you the idea pool that feeds my imagination. I only study people that have actually made a million or more B4 they started selling books and seminars. in other words people that take action and walk their talk.

I’m Excited today, I had the pleasure, along with about 150 people to spend 8 hours in the pressence of a Dragon…Yes A Dragon!  Doug Richards. Courtesy of  the Business Hub at Essex University(free tickets for new and existing businesses in Essex and Suffolk)The crowd was a real eclectic group from unversity students with bags of enthusiasm(comes from a Greek word “entheos” meaning God within)to entrepreneurs well on their way to their first million!

If you haven’t seen or heared Doug Richards speak. You need to get across to Schools for startups and book your self onto one of his courses. Doug Richards talks about business both of common sense and about stuff that is intuitive and counter intuitive. He really knows how to seek those hidden assetts and opportunies in a business and then help you to realise them. He demonstrated that money is not the only asset, but a creative mind and some balls are equally as powerful. Doug is really amazing and if I could get him to be a partner or a mentor I would pay the price. He would certainly shake my little world up!

 Pps Call Now. Before I get too busy.  I have lots of personal interests related to my passion (business).

Microsoft has teamed up with a web tool once hailed as a rival to Google to provide results for its search engine Bing

As statistics from renowned internet measurement groups show, every day, more and more people who are searching for valuable information or data (around 19% of all searches according to Neilsen) are moving away from classical search engines, which produce reasonable but random results of varying degrees of reliability. The “new search engines” are now to be found in the social media field, and are based more on ‘trust’ ‘authenticity’ and ’confidence’ – so, for example,  recruiters now start researching a person on an application like Linked In or they examine his or her Facebook site, instead of just hitting Google and hoping.

Therefore, tailored search apps that can ‘go beyond’ the normal limitations of search engine optimisation - a technique which web site ‘owners’ either know or don’t - and that restricts where on a final opening page list the ‘perfect’ search result will finish on a Google query, are now rapidly going to become the norm. Hence Microsoft and its decision to allign itself with Wolfram Alpha in order to increase the relevancy and accuracy of Bing – its new Google-targeting baby. 

Wolfram Alpha aims to answer questions directly, rather than display a list of links like a search engine. The “computational knowledge engine” is the brainchild of British-born physicist Stephen Wolfram. It will be used to bolster Bing’s results in areas such as nutrition, health and mathematics. The partnership will initially be rolled out in the US.

Bing has been gradually grabbing market share from other search engines since its launch in May. Figures from Experian Hitwise suggest its market share in the US rose from 8.96% in September to 9.57% in October. The figures put it well behind market leader Google which has 70.6% of the market.

‘Diet tool’

Wolfram Alpha differentiates itself from standard search engines by attempting to answer questions directly. The tool computes many of the answers “on the fly” by grabbing raw data from public and licensed databases. People can use the system to look up simple facts – such as the height of Mount Everest – or crunch several data sets together to produce new results, such as a country’s GDP. The data it consults is chosen and managed by staff at Wolfram Research who ensure it can be displayed by the system.

The Wolfram team said the new partnership with Bing would allow Microsoft to access “tens of thousands of algorithms and trillions of pieces of data” to incorporate into its results. Microsoft said that the nutritional and fitness data in Wolfram Alpha could be of use to the “roughly 90 million Americans” who choose diet to each year.

“When you search for specific food items on Bing, you’ll get a nutrition quick tab that allows you to learn more about it,” the firm said. “You also get a nutrition facts label at the bottom of the results page that summarises all information on that food item in a very familiar and friendly format.” The partnership was made possible by Wolfram’s decision to offer an API (Application Programming Interface) in October. APIs are a set of protocols and tools offered by a firm to allow third party developers to build tools and services for a platform. They have become increasingly common amongst web firms, such as Facebook and Twitter, who use them to extend their reach beyond their own website

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8356217.stm

Search engine optimisation is critical for driving traffic to websites.  We all know that.  Some organisations spend an lot of money constantly reviewing, optimising and tweaking their site to get to the at all important #1 result.

Small business in NZ don’t often have access to the same kind of resources or budgets, so must focus on the fundamentals that are going to get maximum return for the level of investment they can afford.

So what is the biggest mistake we see?

“I type my company name into Google and I come out on top!”

Well – yeah.   If it worked that way, we wouldn’t need the yellow pages – the white pages lists company’s alphabetically and is easy to use.

Of course your business is going to be the first result if your company name is even somewhat unique.  But it relies on people having already made the decision to deal with you.

The sale is half way made already!.

Your businesses may be missing out on all the potential customers that don’t know you .

NZ small business rely a lot on networks and referrals.  This is fine but why wouldn’t you want business from those people who you haven‘t met yet?

To be fair, with their limited resources, SEO can be daunting for the one or two-man band.

Other common mistakes include:

• Leaving it to their web developer – who doesn’t really care
• Relying on a short term PPC campaign run by a take-your-money-and-run outfit who don’t care about anything but their fee.
• The usual collection of meaningless or missing title tags, non sensical description tags and missing headings
• Minimal amounts of content
• No understanding of the keywords and phrases being targetted
• No linking strategy
• No measurement or tracking of search behaviours

A good SEO consultant should be able to provide a level of assistance to suit any budget.   And you’ll see the return.

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the natural or organic method of getting your website placed higher in the search engines, as opposed to paying for online advertising.

As a result it is a task that is never ending, always requiring you to be one step ahead of your competitors, and any successes tend to be short lived, as Google responds to all new material that is posted online, and it is always the latest contributions that are indexed at the top.

But it is a process that should not be ignored. Even if your website or latest blog post reaches its desired placing for a short time, it has got there, and who knows will look at it or read it while it resides in its lofty position. The more times you manage to attain this prize, the higher the chances of recognition, acknowledgement and conversion through response.

To explain simply, SEO work on three main elements: new content, links and keywords. I know all SEO experts out there will be saying ‘Oh, but you’ve forgotten this element’, and of course they’re right, as experts they should have many tricks up their sleeves to attain the final goal: get as high as you can in Google. But if you understand these three elements, there is no reason why anybody can’t give it a try.

New Content: search engines rely on their spiders: mathematically driven robots that ‘crawl’ the net looking for new material that has been posted. Once found, they feed greedily on it before passing it onto their master, the search engine, to be indexed. If your website or blog, especially the blog, has regularly published new content, it stands a better chance of being placed higher than any old material from your competitors.

Links: spiders need to have a method of entering and leaving your website or blog. Think of links being the doors or portals spiders use to find new content. Incoming links allow spiders to enter and feed, and outgoing links (especially if they are relevant to the content and final destination) will enable them to leave and visit other suitable sites, giving you brownie points as they do so.

Keywords: relevance is vital for spiders to work effectively. Keywords should be relevant to the content, destinations of links, and popularity of searches, eg what people are searching for at that moment. It would be wise therefore to properly research suitable keywords that are not only popular but truly reflect your new material and business. It’s simply like a game of snap, and the best results are attained through correct recognition of a match!

Now that you know these three elements, take them into consideration next time you post up something new on the net.

Social Media Marketing has emerged in the last 12 months as an essential part of your Marketing Tool Kit and a good business blog is a key cornerstone of your marketing assets. This short video looks at 10 essential elements of a business blog and why they are important. This is not an exhaustive list but is designed to guide you and get you started with some of the fundamentals. 

What do you think are the essential elements of a business blog?  Would really like to hear your feed back and thoughts

Through my Twitter feeds I was sent this article regarding explosive results within the ever growing social media marketing environment, it still amazes me how quickly these marketing directions grow, it seems like only a few months ago that I was still hearing people dismissing Facebook as social rubbish for idiots who have forgotten how to communicate with others face to face and Twitter as one step down the food chain from that.

Now these sites and feeds are the “new black”, the hottest property with a vast amount of information suddenly appearing as to the best ways to target this. the man/woman hours it must have taken preparing all of this info, but thats the point.

Blogs like this one have been around for a long time and the social media sites are the same beast in a different outfit, all at the same dinner party sharing ideas, thoughts and contcat details feeding a common goal, I for one think its great and I am already seeing results for my own business and my clients for whom I provide the same services.

Article: http://www.sitepronews.com/2009/11/10/7-social-media-tactics-for-explosive-results-in-your-business/

This article covers:

• Explosive Social Media Tactic #1 – Hot Content
• Explosive Social Media Tactic #2 – Niched Network Nuances
• Explosive Social Media Tactic #3 – Simplify Sharing
• Explosive Social Media Tactic #4 – Consistency
• Explosive Social Media Tactic #5 – Think Engagement
• Explosive Social Media Tactic #6 – Three-Way Connection and Communication
• Explosive Social Media Tactic #7 – What’s In It for All?

All a facinating read hence I subscribe to the feeds that send this information my way.

http://www.designvent.co.uk

http://www.vent-SEO.co.uk