SEO Blog

SEO and Internet marketing agencies are often given a bit of a rough ride. As an industry, it is not without its charlatans and is still tarnished by the bad old days of black hat upstarts propelling websites up the search rankings through the shadiest of methods.

Search engines have made it increasingly difficult for websites to cheat the system. Their complex set of rules and finely tuned algorithms ensure a far higher level of quality from any SERP (search engine results page). Modern-day SEO is all about adding quality through a series of multi-faceted processes; not simply spamming select pages full of white text or keywords. It can take time and exhaustive effort to make up a few places in the rankings.
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It might seem a little early to be planning ahead to the festive season, but not so for online businesses…apparently. Preparedness is essential in the competitive world of Internet salesmanship. Despite Britain being bathed in summer sun and with temperatures looking set to eclipse all existing records, Christmas is already at the forefront of some people’s minds.

As highlighted on the Future Now blog, this Christmas is going to be more cut-throat than usual for many retailers. Consumers have less money to spend and will be looking to make it go further. Whilst it may not be the time to be decking the halls or dusting off your It’s a Wonderful Life DVD, e-commerce sites need to be ready earlier than ever with a winning Yuletide strategy.

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If you have a business blog, whether it serves independently or as part of a main website, you want to be ensuring that your posts are reaching out to the largest possible audience. Keywords provide a vital part of improving visibility on search engines, as such it is essential that you are targeting the optimum terms for your site.

Wordtracker provide an extremely useful service, allowing you to type in words and phrases before providing statistical data on the most popular examples relating to your search. Obviously if you’re in the middle of writing an engaging blog post you probably don’t want to be jumping between sites too often, so they’ve now come up with an incredibly helpful tool called SEO Blogger.

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The need for keeping content fresh and relevant is instilled in all SEO professionals. Regular moderation is required in order to ensure that everything on your site is as it’s supposed to be, just as we highlighted in an earlier post titled Craigslist & Facebook Highlight the Need for Standards in Content.

Unfortunately, this is a point that has been further highlighted by Richard Baxter. In a piece written for SEOgadget, he discusses how his Google rankings took a nosedive. What was the reason for this capitulation? Simple, inappropriate comments on his blog posts.

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Barely a day goes by currently without someone talking about the new Microsoft Bing search engine. Some of it positive, a good deal of it negative. But the word of mouth campaign that appears to be happening is seemingly getting under the skin of a few of the rival execs.

Yahoo executive Carol Bartz hasn’t pulled any punches in her damning criticism of Microsoft and Bing itself. She had this to say about Statcounter’s results that found Bing had overtaken Yahoo last week (as we reported in the post Bing Leapfrogs Yahoo! in First Week) “They didn’t beat us by much. It was one day. I think it’s gosh maybe it was in Omaha some place; It was some small area.”

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Google continue to haemorrhage key staff at an alarming rate. Today Business Insider announced that Google Adwords Operations Chief Grady Burnett is to jump ship and move to Facebook to head up their advertising arm.

Burnett’s departure is one of many high profile cases over the past few months, which have included David Rosenblatt, Tim Armstrong (CEO of AOL) and the suitably named Larry Brilliant, who was in charge of Google’s philanthropic section and now works for Skoll in a similar role. So maybe all isn’t as peaceful as it seems on the good ship Google. That said, ambition and skill set poaching are probably more accountable than any real underlying issue.

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We hope that you enjoy reading the information in our blog. It’s intended to be a mix of information for anyone interested in search engine marketing, together with observations and news stories related to the Internet and “search” in particular. We also use it, of course, to announce news related to Impact Media such as when a new client chooses us for their SEO or PPC management.

However, if you’ve read through the information in our blog and are still hungry for more, you really should pay a visit to the BIGLIST of Search Marketing Blogs.

BIGLIST of Search Marketing Blogs

This is a comprehensive resource listing some of the most popular blogs related to the search engine marketing industry and has over 400 entries at the time of writing this post.

The positives and negatives of social media within an office environment have been well documented. Whilst some companies are embracing it as the future (at least in a short-term capacity) of their online marketing strategy, others are chastising it for distracting workers and ruining reputations.

Whilst at polar opposites, both viewpoints can, in some cases, be equally valid. Never has it been so easy for disgruntled (ex) employees to spread vitriolic rage at their (former) employers. Whether deliberate or accidental, this type of corporate disrepute isn’t uncommon. Similarly, the large audience, which can be damaging, can also be a positive thing when it comes to bring in visitors to a website.

Clever campaigns utilising the full scope of today’s social media – Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter et al – have managed to propel companies and individuals to previously unattainable heights. The vast audience to which you are able to reach and the minimal costs involved have made this an extremely attractive proposition for many.

But if you’re planning to use social media for social marketing, should that courtesy also be afforded to employees? Well, the arguments against probably far outweigh the arguments for when it comes to social media being used in the workplace. With Facebook Addiction Disorder becoming a widely recognised ailment, clearly there are people out there who would, given half the chance, abuse the opportunity to use work facilities to satisfy their need to keep up with the social media soap opera.

Whilst they may not be communicating damaging messages that can be traced back to their work, clearly the distraction of having social media easily available could affect concentration and quality of output. This is why a number of companies have either blocked access to these sites or added wording into contracts that will dissuade them through the threat of disciplinary action.

The dozens of stories that have circulated throughout the media in recent years regarding employees getting sacked for their social media activities will undoubtedly make employers even more wary. Whether feigning illness and being caught out, being involved in illegal activities or criticising the company openly, the downfall of workers around the world has been widely publicised. Unfortunately though, there often isn’t a legal precedent to follow in such cases, leaving the company a tough decision on the action to take.

But whilst the negative side of social media in the workplace grabs the headlines, the positives are often sadly overlooked.  Marketers everywhere are desperately trying to improve visibility through whatever media is available. Unfortunately, as reported recently on B2B Marketing Online, some are coming unstuck due to the rules that are supposed to prevent employees abusing social media sites at work. The same report, entitled LinkedIn moving up the ranks with marketers, also shows the growing diversity of business networking as part of a social media campaign.

Whilst Facebook still leads the way in terms of popularity, LinkedIn is gaining fast. Designed almost expressly for businesses, this social marketing tool is a simple way to generate links to your site and get a name spread throughout a growing and active community. However and whatever way you choose to utilise social media as a marketing tool, always remember its power – both good and bad.

Even negative accusations can be spun on their head if you get out there and dispel malicious rumours. Being quick on the draw in reacting can minimise potential damage, whether from a poor review or an irate customer.

Undoubtedly having a strong social media presence can be hugely beneficial to any company or website. But clearly defined policies within the workplace need to be set out to avoid the potentially harmful repercussions. Businesses are finally starting to understand the power of this growing media and so are employees; however, a universal mandate as to what is and what isn’t acceptable usage still appears to be some way off.

It’s often not until you’ve actually tried to do copywriting yourself that you realise just how difficult it is. Of course, in essence, it is much the same as any conventional form of writing. However, there are so many additional factors that you have to consider – not least balancing readability with SEO strength – that it is a far more complex skill than some give credit for.

There’s a fine line between a categorical success and a stratospheric disaster; particularly when it comes to marketing your own website. So to help you steer clear of lexical limbo, we’ve put together this list of 5 copywriting faux pas that you should look to avoid:

1. Plagiarism

Duplicated content is a catastrophe waiting to happen. It will do nothing whatsoever for your website’s credibility or search ranking and can even get you in some serious hot water with the originators. Avoid copying a pasting from other sites at all costs; it really isn’t worth the trouble.

2. Typos & Poor Grammar

There are very few people who can claim to have impeccable grammar and bulletproof spelling skills. However, just a quick proof or two along with a decent spell-check should be more than enough to rid you of any glaring errors. If you’re trying to project a professional image and your copy is falling well short of the mark it’ll invariably undermine the message, which is ultimately a poor reflection on you and the site.

3. Impenetrable Language

If something makes sense to you, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it will to somebody else. Huge clumps of text on a page will put off even the hardiest of visitors. So too will never-ending sentences that could have quite easily been broken up into a few smaller ones. However, the one real bugbear that many people have is with jargon, and the overuse thereof. Showing your professional nature is perfectly understandable, but when you start overcomplicating the language used and dropping in excessive business terms, many readers may be left feeling a little nonplussed.

4. Minimal Content

Walt Disney famously immortalised the line “leave ‘em wanting more”; whilst that may be true in Hollywood, it doesn’t quite have the same resonance in copywriting. There is a lot to be said for keeping things simple and succinct; but if to do that you have to leave out some key pieces of information, it really isn’t a good thing. Almost every page on a website should have some copy, whether describing a product or welcoming visitors to the site, it all plays a part. Copy boosts your search ranking and helps customers find what they’re looking for a little more easily; therefore you need to be making sure that you’ve got enough to keep everybody happy without being excessive.

5. Trying to do too much Yourself

If you’re not a professional copywriter and have tasked yourself with creating a website from scratch, don’t be afraid to ask for help. Too many people aspire to create the perfect site and then start to realise just how much effort is involved and lose their way. SEO copywriting services are available and can really save you a lot of heartache and pain. By hiring an expert, just as with the marketing and design aspects of running a website, not only can you save yourself some time and a hefty burden, but you can really benefit from some top quality copy.

This is the first in a series of reports that we’ll be doing on the digitalisation of traditional media and how huge corporations are having to re-asses marketing strategies in order to tie-in with modern trends. Today’s looks at how API’s could prove to be the future of the printed press.

There’s no doubting that the media landscape is changing. Traditional outlets are being threatened by the all-consuming leviathan that is the Internet. Whilst an ‘adapt to survive’ mentality is being adopted by some, there are still many – including a well documented piece in the Washington Post by Bruce W. Sanford and Bruce D. Brown – who oppose and fear change as vehemently as The Luddites during the Industrial Revolution.

The Digital or Online Revolution, whichever way you wish to term it, has been in full swing for some time now. The epochal shift towards the Internet has undoubtedly taken a lot of established institutions by surprise. Some, however, appear to be accepting and embracing it more than others.

Few established media outlets in the UK have done more to harness the potential positivity of this new medium than The Guardian. Whilst the printed newspaper industry itself is suffering from dwindling sales and reductions in advertising incomes, there is undoubtedly still a place for professional journalism, and probably always will. Whether that place is printed in ink or digitally created on a screen however looks a little more unclear.

Innovation in the Printed Press

The reason why The Guardian – just like the New York Times before them – is leading the way in the British media isn’t because they have a strong social media presence, an inordinately high standard of journalism or are the first with all the breaking news; no, the reason why they’ve stolen a march on the others, is because of their Open Platform system.

Whilst some may argue that the aforementioned factors are equally important, and they may well fulfil all those criteria, it is the API that really puts them head and shoulders above others. By freely releasing archival statistics, reports and other content, The Guardian are getting their content used on sites right across the Web. For example, a Webmaster in Uzbekistan can access their old articles, sift out the data required and share it with their site’s community in an instant; how else would that be possible?

This makes the Internet wide open and allows quality newspaper content – rather than simply hyperlinking – available to anyone, anywhere and at any time. The Open Platform is further complemented by the Data Store. This is an application that allows users to obtain statistical data on pretty much anything; providing an invaluable resource for online users from all walks of life.

The Guardian Take Open Platform APIs to New Levels

Development of The Guardian Open Platform API is ongoing. There are suggestions that current content may well feature far more heavily, with up-to-the-minute news becoming available to the masses. However, since its launch back in March the publicity, concern and defence of an API as a viable future for all print media has been unrelenting. Some still question the sense of simply giving away your news for free; however, I think these doubters are missing the bigger picture.

The Guardian itself sells 346,757 copies a day on average according to their own statistics. The vast majority of these will be solely UK based of course, making their readership only around 0.58% of the entire population. That spread is relatively small, although it should be noted that doesn’t include online statistics for which The Guardian ranks well with.

However, with millions of sites potentially using The Guardian’s information and including references or links within that, their readership and visibility can only improve on an exponential level. Along with this growing online presence, they can then be assured of increased credibility and ultimately, potentially at least, greater usage of their revenue making outlets, i.e. The Guardian website and the newspaper itself.

Future-proofing Traditional Journalism

It’s a brave step into the new online forum, and one that could well pave the way for others to follow. It should ultimately mean a greater freedom of the printed press, better access to quality news and a viable alternative for institutions that may one day become redundant. It’s a mutually beneficial scheme whereby consumers, websites and of course The Guardian reap the benefits.

Journalism is under fire from all quarters. With professional bloggers, online news and 24 hour television reports, where does the printed press stand moving forward? The Telegraph and The Guardian have been competing tit-for-tat over the title of Britain’s most popular online newspaper in recent times. The Telegraph, as we reported earlier this week in a piece titled ‘Telegraph Dominating Online Breaking News’, has been creating a huge buzz with its successful social media presence and exclusive reporting of the current MP’s expenses scandal; but I’d suggest The Guardian’s API and Data will ultimately prove the more successful over time.

Can you see Open Platform being the future for traditional media? Is this something that you’d want to use yourself in websites? Or, indeed, is print journalism really on its knees at all, can it survive and flourish despite the Internet and not because of it? We’d certainly like to hear your views, so please feel free to post a comment.

Pay Per Click or PPC is a fast growing method of producing dramatic results for your business by advertising your products or services online. These are just some of the benefits:

• Precision: In a results oriented culture, being able to precisely target interested customers and clients is vital. The efficacy of PPC has been particularly demonstrated through the precision that the ads offer the advertiser. PPC allows greater control over who arrives at your website and through which keywords. This level of control is important to ensure that the correct customers are targeted.
• Budget Control: PPC allows complete control over what you spend on advertising. Campaigns can be arranged with a daily budget and this can be increased or reduced depending upon changes in your business.
• Ease of Measurement: Measuring the success of your advertising campaigns is very easy with PPC. Pay Per Click systems come with the type of tools that allow the advertiser to analyse the success of their online ads. By creating specific landing pages for each different ad, you can see how effective the ads are at driving traffic towards your site. The analytical systems will also allow you to directly measure the conversion rate of specific ads from ad to sale.
• Geo-Targeting: The ability for the advertiser to geo-target specific locations is one of the greatest benefits of PPC. By choosing precisely where in the world you want ads to appear, you can increase your global marketing or decrease your costs. Unfortunately there are still companies across the world advertising their services in countries where customers cannot buy them. Whilst this might expand the presence of the global brand, it is also a waste of valuable finances during this difficult economic period.
• Speed of Execution: Each aspect of PPC is quick to set up and execute. You should always write the ads in advance, but the actual mechanical creation time is very short. Once created, the ads can be up and earning you money within minutes. What’s more, in terms of speed, the time taken from click to sale has been drastically reduced to potentially a matter of minutes. Traditional advertising on television or in the newspaper simply cannot compete on any level with the efficacy of PPC.
• Capture Visitors: One of the strengths of PPC is its power to capture visitors. Someone searching for your keywords will be attracted to a well-written PPC ad. Once you’ve got that person to click your ad, you can use your website to help them make whatever decision you require.
• Boosting Brand Awareness: PPC is a successful way of increasing brand awareness. The complete control the advertiser has over the entire process allows them to easily promote their brand. Not only is each ad a potential sale, but even those users that do not click the ad are aware of the brand without the advertiser spending any money.

Pay per click is an exceptionally successful way to increase qualified traffic to your website but is only one part of a fully integrated marketing mix.

The Internet has completely changed the way that customers look for and get what they want. It has also changed where they search for and where they buy goods and services. Consequently, those businesses that wish to remain profitable are changing their marketing methods to respond to this transformation in their customer’s buying habits.

Traditional forms of marketing such as newspaper and television advertising, direct mail and cold calling simply do not integrate well with the powerful medium of the Internet and have become less and less effective as a result.

One of the most beneficial ways that the Internet has changed marketing is the dramatic reduction in cost. With direct mail for instance, someone has to be paid to produce the materials that are sent out. This involves designing, writing, editing and printing costs. It’s an expensive way of connecting with a limited number of potential customers and its difficult to measure the success of direct mail. In comparison, email marketing can be performed by anyone with rudimentary marketing skills and a computer.

In the past, a company in Southampton could not easily market their products/services to potential customers in Australia without great cost. Yet the Internet has no geographic boundaries and whatever marketing is prepared for Hampshire can easily be tailored for Queensland. Internet marketers can target customers anywhere in the world and anyone with a computer can respond to their advertising/marketing and purchase goods or services with the click of a button.

With the vast increase in popularity of the Internet, the speed of marketing has changed. Customers can be immediately responding to advertisements that were posted only seconds ago. These adverts can be changed with equal speed to respond to need.

The Internet is driven by information or content. The more high quality content you can provide a potential customer with, the greater your credibility and the increased chances that they will spend their money with you. Both building and web-based businesses need to address this issue and provide potential clients with the information they need to make the decision to buy from you. Again, the production of content is time consuming but not a costly activity, allowing companies of different scales to compete with each other.

Through social marketing, word of mouth or buzz is instantly created around products and brands. Again, social marketing is a low-cost/high benefit method of marketing online. Traditional marketing cannot possibly compete with the efficacy of Internet marketing for speed, accuracy of qualified leads and low costs.

Traditional marketing has been badly affected by the change to Internet Marketing. One only has to see how the commercial television stations have incurred massive debts associated with rapidly decreasing advertising revenue.

In the past 12 months, the traditional marketing department has all but died. Any company that wants to succeed in the new Internet-changed marketplace must create an integrated approach, a strategy for marketing that fuses together limited traditional methods with the multi-faceted approaches of Internet marketing.

In the past, Internet marketing has been ignored, labeled a ‘fad’, a phase that will eventually pass. Those businesses that do not want to disappear in the global recession can’t afford to share this outdated viewpoint.

The much vaunted potential ‘Google Killer’ Wolfram Alpha has finally been launched after a series of false-starts. Pulling in statistical information from all sources as well as providing a little computerised intelligence, it is in truth, quite a departure from the conventional algorithmic based search engine.

With its quick responses to simple questions, generated through a unique ‘computational knowledge engine’, Wolfram Alpha is an entirely new type of resource. You can perform mathematical equations, pluck out information about any date as well as getting all the data on various cities, animals and almost anything else you can muster.

Wolfram Alpha: Making Research and Homework Easier

Having only just released this Beta version, no doubt the Wolfram Alpha engine will develop and become a far more influential utility for researchers on a limited time-frame. At the moment though, I don’t think Google or even Yahoo should be overly concerned by this newcomer.

It is a fantastic source of useful information, but will invariably remain just that, free from the thousands of indexed websites that now clog up various conventional search engines. Perhaps in fact, Wikipedia may be more concerned, with Wolfram Alpha offering a far speedier and more succinct set of statistical results.

Paid search is, was and always will be an extremely hard-fought arena for online marketers. This looks set to intensify further after Hitwise reported that paid search traffic share is down 26% across the full range of sites that they monitor. According to their research, it now accounts for only 7.25% of total Internet visits in the past month.

This could of course be happening for any number of reasons; advertisers reducing ad campaigns, more of a reliance on organic search matches or fewer relevant ads being available to searchers could all be partially accountable for the slump.

Despite this fall, there’s no reason whatsoever to withdraw PPC campaigns. More than anything, this should serve as a wakeup call for anyone who has been coasting along with their paid campaign for a while and only achieving moderate results. It also emphasises the need for your website to achieve a high search ranking; because whilst PPC advertising may be suffering, it is evident that other areas, particularly organic search, must be benefiting. So this may not be the worst time to boost your SEO content.

In truth though, the most drastic drop in paid search was seemingly found in larger companies, such as Home Depot and USAA, who are likely to have diminished their advertising campaigns due to a naturally high search ranking. So perhaps this is more a sign of the current financial climate and the cost cutting measures that big businesses are going through, rather than a bleak vision of the Internet as a whole.

The advent of online social media has changed the face of conventional marketing forever. Twitter, Facebook and MySpace all represent a brand new opportunity to get your message across and reach out to a worldwide audience instantly.

You don’t need a huge budget or even a recognised brand name, eye-catching creativity and a good word of mouth campaign will often suffice. The online balance is shifting and this is very much the time to be capitalising on that.

Creative & Original Online Marketing Strategies

Of course, not every business or website will be able to create the same buzz, whether using social media or not. But these sites are a great way for anyone to really reach out to and interact with consumers, whether locally or internationally. Whatever you’re selling, whatever you’re marketing, be creative.

Twitter is very much the new kid on the block when it comes to social media. Whilst the site has been around for three years, its explosion in popularity over the last few months or so has taken the Internet by storm. Just as personal users may look to interact with friends or promote a blog, marketers too have been quick to get their messages tweeting across the forums.

As a developing medium, there still aren’t any finite codes about how best to market yourself on Twitter, or any other site for that matter. Spammers rarely prosper though; so if you are going to take this as a marketing avenue, be sure to offer something that the general public and customers alike will find interesting, informative or even entertaining. Filling pages with URLs and garish self-promotion will do your site few favours.

Apart from simply promoting your site through social media, you can of course integrate the two to provide a cross-linking cycle. Working on the principle that casual visitors may stumble across your site and then check out your social media offerings, as well as the other way around, you can really add some credibility with a strong understanding of the latest technologies. Just like maintaining a successful blog, showing an effective personal presence in the social media realm can really boost user interest and popularity.

Succeeding with Social Media Campaigns

Social media sites are designed to be fully interactive and provide a forum for innovation. With the multi-media opportunities that are available on MySpace for example, you can share images, videos, reviews and almost anything else that you can possibly muster. So effectively you can use these sites as a second online presence, helping build interest in what should be your primary site, the one that you were promoting originally.

Modern Internet users can be a fickle lot though, so you need to ensure that you’re offering something they actually want. If your social media campaign is lacklustre, don’t expect the results to be any different. Circulating a few promotional messages on Facebook isn’t a magic cure for failing marketing strategies. You have to engage an audience, show them what you’ve got and why, more importantly, they should want it.

The social media epoch that we’re now in has revolutionised communications on all levels. It has given a platform for people and businesses to share their world with others. Ignoring its power could see you drift into insignificance amongst an entire generation of Internet users. It is still by no means a saturated market either; opportunities are abound for upstarts to get a foothold in this highly lucrative market.

Doing your research and taking a unique approach that will resonate with your target audience should be time well spent. There’s no sure-fire guarantee with any form of marketing, but incorporating a strong social media presence within an integrated strategy can only be a positive thing. It’s cost-effective and certain to be the shape of things to come over the next few years at least.

Businesses are suffering and none more so than those who depend on traditional advertising for their revenue. From newspapers to large commercial television stations, companies are in serious trouble. ITV, the UK’s first commercial television channel is currently £700 million in debt and has lowered its advertising rates to levels that compare back to 1992.

The world’s advertisers are spending less, not just a little less, a vast amount less. This is devastating for advertising agencies, marketing companies and of course, the media which has propped itself up on revenue gleaned from traditional forms of advertising.

Yet, against the flow of traditional advertising’s decline, online advertising has never been more successful. While the spend on traditional advertising has drastically dropped, online advertising has grown year on year. Perplexingly, companies are still throwing good money after bad at television advertising, yet this broadly targeted form of traditional offline advertising is completely outstripped by online advertising in price and precision in targeting potential customers.

The smart money is being spent online, but that won’t stop companies wasting millions on traditional advertising, hoping they can still hold back the wheels of progress.

Advertising online is cheap and it’s effective. That’s because the advertiser online pays for what they use. And they’re only charged when someone uses the advert, which means that they’re only charged when a potentially interested party clicks on the ad and follows it to their website.

So while the big companies mindlessly pour millions into ineffective advertising, small and medium businesses have tripled the amount they are spending on Internet advertising. It seems that small and medium businesses, companies that don’t have money to waste, are ahead of the big corporations in bucking the advertising trend.

When you advertise your product or service online, you get much greater control over the sales process than traditional advertising. This is one of the major advantages that online advertising has handed the advertiser, the power to accurately and instantly test how well the ad campaign is working. The other major advantage is the amount of qualified leads you get visiting your website than you could possibly hope to get from traditional advertising. Online advertising massively cuts down the ad-to-sale time to a matter of moments, increasing impulse buying in online consumers and measuring the entire process with analytical tools designed to help you get the most from your ads.

Online advertising isn’t restricted to just a few Google ads, you can advertise using video too. Viral videos have been one of the most effective (and free) ways to develop a buzz around a product or service. Take a look at ‘Will It Blend’ on YouTube. The original was a cheaply produced video that would have cost the company over a hundred thousand pounds per advert on television. Yet by making the advert funny and encouraging people to interact with the company via the online ad the company, BlendTec, got huge amounts of completely free publicity and their sales rocketed. They never had to pay for the adverts to run on television; television shows showed the advert for nothing because it was so different. Now that’s canny marketing!

Companies of all sizes can no longer afford to put their heads in the sand and hope the recession doesn’t bite too hard. Online advertising is the way forward, businesses must find a way to make it work for them, the alternative is to continue wasting money and hoping for results in an advertising market that has completely changed directions.

In the current financial climate, it appears no job is safe. With 2.1 million people in the UK alone out of work, even search marketing careers appear to be under pressure.

In a recent survey, Search Engine Roundtable polled 400 search industry professionals and found that 7% considered themselves unemployed. This is in line with current UK unemployment figures, which equates to around 6.7% of the population of an employable age. However, these results are still sure to raise a few eyebrows.

But of course it isn’t all doom and gloom. Search marketing remains a dynamic and highly varied career choice. Whether working for an agency or going into freelance self-employment, there are plenty of search marketing career opportunities available in this fast moving industry. Plus, whilst this is a useful indication of what state this sector is in, it is by no means a definitive study. So no need to panic just yet.

There could soon be another powerful search engine to rival the current superpowers of Google, Yahoo and MSN. It seems Twitter Search is undergoing something of a makeover; taking it from simply reporting the latest tweets, to actually indexing URLs that are being included within messages.

Whilst there would be a good deal fewer websites indexed than your conventional search engine, they would be moderated to an extent by the Twitter users and updated in real-time. This represents something of a departure from the algorithmic searches we’ve become accustomed to and could even open up a whole new method of online marketing, should the concept take off.

Real-Time User Moderated Twitter Search

Rather than being simply keyword orientated, this new system will rely on the popularity of the site amongst Twitter’s users. In turn, each user will have a different weighting depending on their credibility; helping to eradicate spammers and superfluous sites, whilst ensuring only genuinely popular sites come to the fore.

The brainchild of Twitter’s new VP of Operations Santosh Jayaram, who coincidentally used to be VP of Search Quality at Google not all that long ago, Twitter Search could certainly be something to watch out for in the coming months.

Not all the information that we search for online is available in our native tongue. So other than going out to buy a dictionary and piecing together a site word-by-word, what online translation options are there available to you?

Google Translate and Yahoo Babel Fish are two exceptional services that offer free translation online. Whether looking to translate web pages or just convert a chunk of text, both programs are incredibly simple and easily accessible resources. You can insert a site’s URL in Translate or Babel Fish and either will immediately provide an alternate version of the page copy in your language.

Translate to and from a wide variety of languages at the click of a button. Both services are absolutely free, and whilst perhaps not entirely grammatically accurate, provide a very useful and informative translation guide that can help give a real your Internet searches and online content a real boost.

Tweets and Twitter have been the buzzwords lighting up the Internet in recent months. Since being embraced by Hollywood celebrities, endorsed by chat show hosts and paraded by media darlings throughout the world, Twitter has experienced exponential growth amongst the online masses. It has also become a potentially lucrative avenue for serial tweeters after the first Twitter account was sold last month; with CNN reportedly snapping up James Cox’s hugely popular @CNNbrk account.

But is this just a passing fad? Well, according to recent research from Nielsen, despite the huge growth in new members, Twitter’s retention rate (members who remain active beyond the first month) is actually relatively poor – coming in at around 40%. In contrast Facebook and MySpace, the two major rivals for the social networking crown, have both achieved and maintained rates of around 60% during their boom periods and are now operating at around 70%.

Member retention graph for Twitter, Facebook & MySpace

Twitter’s simplicity may well be its downfall for many users, as it offers little more than a portal into somebody’s day-to-day lifestyle. However, with millions of avid users across the globe contentedly tweeting to one another, Twitter still has the legs to continue long after the media furore dies down. Commentators have been plotting the demise of Facebook for the last couple of years, yet it continues to maintain huge levels of popularity with people from all walks of life; perhaps the same will be true with Twitter.

Whilst the retention figures may not make the best reading for Twitter’s owners, they are at least improving, as highlighted in the above chart. It also remains a very affordable and effective way to market yourself and your business to a wider audience; giving anyone a virtual soapbox from which to give their view of the world around them.

When looking to optimise any website’s search engine ranking there are a number of potential avenues to explore. PPC advertising, strong links and improving content to be more keyword orientated are just a few of the common methods.

Leading search engines have their own methods of analysing and ranking websites. One thing that they all look for though is good quality new content that is regularly updated. So rather than going through your site and adding or adjusting existing pages to boost visibility, why not set up a news section or blog?

Blogs are a simple and highly effective marketing device. By writing exclusively about your industry, using personal insight and knowledge where applicable, you can provide an exceptional service to clients, both existing and potential, as well as to your site’s online presence. It’s an extremely straightforward way of providing an added dimension to a company website, whilst also helping boost your content and hopefully your online visibility.

Blogging for Business Success

Remember, a blog needn’t be simply stating the daily facts and figures within your own company. Whilst it is good to keep customers informed of what is going on, there’s a whole world of related information and news that can serve the same purpose. Relating your company’s activities with the latest industry news and events can provide an interesting spin on the latest breaking stories, helping generate additional interest from organic searches.

If you visit any successful website, you can be sure that there will be a blog in one guise or another; in fact many include a whole range of them for individual sectors. The quality of content is obviously integral to its credibility. If you don’t employ an SEO copywriter in-house or anybody else who can provide the same high level of focussed copy, then you may need to outsource to a specialist just to ensure that you’re getting the very best results from your blog.

Unique copy, written to the very highest standards with thoroughly researched keywords and titles used throughout, is what every business website should look to achieve on each and every page. This of course is true of a blog too. Your blog articles should be about creating an immediate impact, but always keep in mind that they can also help boost your long-term rankings too. As they are archived and stored on your site indefinitely, articles can really aid optimisation of the overall content; providing a vital additional source of keywords and phrases.

Boost Your Site’s Search Engine Visibility

Successful blogs generally tend to have a unique niche or something else that distinguishes them from any others. Creating a preferred writing tone, perhaps reflecting that used elsewhere in your site, whilst also maintaining regular updates will help visitors build up a trust of your company. This credibility boost may even help turn sceptical visitors into long-term clients or customers.

Best of all, blogs needn’t take up too much critical time. A short post here and there throughout the week, along with a few more detailed articles when larger news stories break, will help keep your site fresh and new, whilst also drawing in those search engine spiders for a closer examination. If you have the time to dedicate to it and are able to produce useful and informative articles with greater regularity, the results should follow suit.

As with anything in business though, you tend to get out of it what you choose to put into it. Regardless of your site’s status, the ability to improve its visibility is at your fingertips. Site content is quickly becoming the most important aspect in any SEO strategy. So whether creating a cutting edge blog or just filling your website’s pages, quality and clarity of the copy used is essential in improving your popularity with the search engines and your intended market.

In times of an economic slowdown we all have to find ways to economise. In business, advertising and marketing budgets are often one of the first things to be reduced; but is this a false economy?

In order to continue generating business we all need to constantly reach out to our target audience. Therefore, simply streamlining your advertising funds can ultimately restrict who uses, or is at least aware of, the products or services your company offers. For small businesses, finding a balance between advertising costs and potential customer income can be particularly difficult. Do you stick with convention and target an expensive magazine, newspaper, radio or even television campaign without visible results? Or are there alternatives that can get the same potential exposure, but without the upfront costs?

Visible Online Marketing Results

The Internet has revolutionised many areas of modern communication; however, rarely is this more evident than in marketing. With a strong online presence, any company, in any part of the world can achieve fantastic results, drawing on a diverse global audience. The traditional face of advertising has been changed forever, thanks primarily to search engine driven pay per click (PPC) platforms such as Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing.

Without having to risk any capital initially, your website can target keywords and phrases in adverts that you’ll only pay for when someone clicks on them. Therefore your site will suddenly gain universal exposure at a minimal cost, helping to drive in extra traffic and hopefully keep business flowing. With PPC advertising you set the parameters too. So you can create a strict daily budget and ensure that advertising costs never exceed your limitations.

Pay per click services can play an important role for small businesses on many levels. Not only are they a cost-effective way to advertise, but they’re also easy to monitor too. Google AdWords, as well as its MSN and Yahoo alternatives, offer tracking devices that clearly indicate how successful your PPC campaigns are performing. For example, if swathes of people are clicking on one advert but are not being converted into direct sales, then you can adjust the keywords or landing page to better suit customer requirements, or simply cancel that advert altogether.

Small Business Pay Per Click Services

It’s a very fluid process and can be adjusted as and when required without a long-term tie-in. The ability to change budgets, replace and edit key campaigns whilst also being able to chart successes, makes this one of the most versatile options available to businesses of all sizes; hence why PPC marketing is rapidly becoming a leading force in modern advertising strategies.

As with most aspects of business, proper management of PPC accounts is integral to their ultimate success. Researching your keywords and ensuring that you are targeting the best possible searches can ultimately determine whether a campaign is a glorious triumph or dismal failure. This can be time-consuming and confusing, particularly if you’re not altogether savvy with online marketing techniques.

At Impact Media we offer affordable pay per click management services to suit budgets and businesses of all sizes. So if you’re on the lookout for someone to handle your PPC campaign, get a no-strings quote from us and start turning hits into sales.

Internet marketing professionals and SEO copywriters are always discussing the importance of keywords; but what exactly are they and what can keywords do for your site?

A keyword by its very definition is simply an important term, phrase or, of course, word. Whenever you visit a high ranking website you can be sure that someone somewhere has been optimising the site for keywords throughout. As with any SEO technique, they are designed to coincide with, and even premeditate, what Internet users are searching for in search engines.

Keyword Optimised Site Copy

The frequency with which the keywords are used, obviously within reason, will ultimately help your site achieve a better ranking for particular phrases. Some keywords are clearly more popular than others, so an important part of any good strategy is picking up on special niches. In a crowded marketplace like the Internet you have to find ways to make yourself visible, which is where a watertight SEO strategy, backed up by keywords, is invaluable.

Depending on the size and content of your site, the keywords could range from just a few essential phrases to hundreds of individual terms. Ultimately they are a reflection of what your company offers; whether that’s something as simple as a single specialist product or a complex construction of various brands and categories all from a range of different fields. Driving traffic to a site is no simple task though, so ensuring each page is optimised with relevant wording and as much quality content as you can muster is absolutely essential.

Boost Website Search Engine Visibility

Whilst Internet copywriting is, or at least should be, a largely organic process, keywords help to give you added focus and ensure that your copy remains on target; both for your audience and search engine spiders. In the bad old days you could fill pages with impenetrable language offering a keyword density that was so baffling it rendered the text unreadable. Search engines such as Yahoo, MSN and Google have made huge strides in eliminating such sites from their rankings; they have instead given greater weight to those who offer copy that is relevant, regularly updated and offers genuine quality.

Therefore you need to avoid the temptation of endlessly repeating the same phrase in the misguided hope that it will convert to ranking domination. There’s a fine balance to tread and everyone has their own opinion of what density is acceptable these days. But as long as your keywords are used within a free-flowing and informative body copy and in a natural manner, you should be on to a winner. Including them in Header 1 (H1) tags, Meta tags and sub-headings (H2 tags) will also help to really optimise your site’s content.

Copy plays a large part in the success and failure of any site. Attempting to cut corners and doing it all yourself or outsourcing to the cheapest available supplier can invariably end in disaster. Impact Media offer a professional SEO copywriting service to suit businesses of all sizes, helping to provide quality copy that can really make a difference.

During a recession, everyone has two objectives: save money and make more. Internet marketing is an effective way to achieve both objectives and here are 5 top tips for marketing during the recession:

1. Smart Spending

Experts at Harvard Business School conclude that spending on marketing and advertising is one of the best ways to beat the recession. But you must get the most for your money. Internet marketing has many advantages over traditional marketing, but the most obvious is the low pricing structures. Internet advertising and marketing are a fraction of the phenomenal sums charged by traditional marketing and advertising agencies.

2: Precision Targeting

Internet marketing helps you connect directly with your potential customers. This is a significant advantage during a recession. Instead of widespread blanket marketing (the expensive kind), you can target your market by the area they are in and precisely how they are choosing to word their searches for your products or services.

To ensure a smart spend, you can target your marketing to a geographic area and set a budget that you can afford. Once you’ve had time to analyse the results, you can make smarter spending decisions.

3. Measure It

To ensure the cost effectiveness, you must be able to measure the success of your marketing. This has traditionally been very difficult to gauge from a television advert or billboard. But online marketing is fully measurable. This means you can analyse how effective your various campaigns are and drop the ones costing you money but not delivering desired outcomes.

Google AdWords is one of the most effective marketing/advertising weapons in your contemporary marketing arsenal. It allows smart spending, precision targeting and measurable results.

4. Give It Away

You may have less money, but you still have another valuable resource, time. Marketing effectively during a recession means building credibility. This involves giving away your expertise for free.

If you sell “Red Widgets” and every time I’ve got a question about my current Red Widget, I find the solution on your website, then I’m much more likely to buy my next Red Widget from you when the time comes. Blogging and article writing are marketing activities that cost only time and build credibility, loyalty and a relationship with your potential clients that begins long before they make the decision to buy from you and continues long after they’ve given you their money.

5. Change Your Story

Your customer tells themselves a story when they consider buying your product. They imagine themselves using, and they tell themselves a story about the benefits that it will bring. Whether it’s new office equipment, a motorbike lift or a piece of software, they tell themselves stories.

But during a recession, the customer’s behaviour changes, the story changes and focuses on security and stability, but also a tiny sliver of hope that they can return to spending freely. When your customer’s story changes you must respond by changing the elements of your business that your customer uses to construct their story.

Even during these recessionary times, Impact Media’s search engine marketing services still offer a cost effective to promote your business online. Find out more and if you’d like a no-obligation proposal as to how we could help, contact us to get full details and a risk-free SEO analysis of your site.

No Marketing Manager can expect their company to survive these days without a comprehensive knowledge of Online Marketing. Whilst marketing on the Internet involves very similar principles, the means and methods are different and so we’ve produced this simple guide to introduce you to the basics of online marketing:

SEO

Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is a way of promoting your business online by optimizing your website and its content for the Search Engines like Google, MSN and Yahoo. The companies that rank highest for certain search terms or ‘keywords’ get the greatest number of visitors. Clearly, there is immense competition for certain keywords but legitimate SEO techniques can help you outreach your competitors. Part of the SEO process is developing a great number of inbound links, these are like tiny testimonials from other relevant websites and the Search Engines see this as a sign of your credibility and boost your rankings.

Paid Search (PPC)

Using Pay Per Click (PPC) ads, you can immediately begin advertising your products. But the important benefit of online advertising is that you are only marketing your goods or services to people that are looking for them! This vastly cuts your advertising budget immediately. What’s more, the response time from ad to sale is dramatically shortened, allowing you to see faster results.

Article Marketing/Press Releases

Article Marketing is a very cost effective way of getting people to visit your website. It means placing high quality, relevant, well written articles on your website or submitting them to the best article sites. Articles are keyword rich, which means they attract people searching for your product/services. Articles serve two further purposes. First, they build your credibility online by demonstrating your expertise. Second, they provide lots of the inbound links we wrote about above.

Press Releases are similar, they are keyword rich, they provide inbound links but they also raise online profile. Just like offline PRs, don’t release unless you think it’s newsworthy.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is often wrongly called ’spam’. A well-written and thoughtful email marketing campaign should be aimed only at people that want to receive your messages. Like articles, fill them with informative and relevant content and keep the sales pitch gentle. Build credibility and rapport by offering something of value. Sending thousands of these messages costs nothing, which means that you can afford to pay for a good copywriter to create your emails for you.

Social Media

It’s not a phase or a fad; Social Media Optimisation is the latest place to begin developing your online marketing. Facebook and BEBO allow ads, but better than this, you can give a face to your brand. Loyal customers can interact with you and offer direct feedback without the need for focus groups.

Blogging is a less formal way of article marketing and a great way to build a following. YouTube is a very popular way for people to communicate to thousands of people with a simple video. Releasing your ads on YouTube can cause them to spread across the world, so whilst you still pay production costs, your distribution costs rapidly shrink. Video Marketing is one of the latest and fastest growing sectors of the online marketing industry.

Blended Approach

As with any good marketing campaign, your approach must be a blend of off and online marketing strategies. Combining all of these different parts of the online marketing picture will allow you to develop a dominant position in this new marketplace.