Whiten Marketing Blog

SEO in Kent

2011-10-22T11:34:00.003+01:00

In future please contact Webscape Marketing Ltd for any SEO in Kent projects you may require assistance with.

Webscape Marketing can assist you with SEO audits of your website, search engine optimisation of site content, SEO backlinking campaigns and even SEO training so you can do some of this work in house.

Based in Folkestone Kent, Webscape Marketing can help other Kent companies with their SEO as well all other aspects of online marketing, social media and web content.

Social Media ROI Coming Under the Spotlight

2010-09-08T12:23:00.000+01:00

After the depressingly predictable social media goldrush seen this year, it appears that questions are starting to be asked of social media and its actual commercial impact.

It's probably about time that some of the heat was taken out of the social media sector. For example just take a look at the starting salaries for social media jobs, the number of self titled social media consultants cropping up around the place, and training courses available. An offshore SEO company contacted me the other day about their services, including what they now call SMO (social media optimisation).

However I recently learnt of a social media debate at Marketing Week, in which Mark Ritson challenges whether Twitter is really a relevant online space for commercial brands to occupy, or instead the preserve of celebrity driven personality culture. As Ritson puts it, social media is a "new and relatively insignificant communications tool that has limited potential for a very small proportion of brands". Ouch.

Then this morning I just read a very good post by Joe Hughes about social media ROI, which illustrates the different ways in which the value to be gained from Social Media could and should be measured. However, Hughes does conclude that Social Media can be very valuable as a brand reputation management tool.

Personally, I can see some value in social media, and feel it is worth participating in. But I am yet to find a good example of a website which has been able to transform social media activity into a core promotional tool that generates value. Twitter followers don't always mean revenue!

Useful Sites For Finding People To Follow On Twitter

2010-07-08T10:27:00.000+01:00

Here is a really useful list of sites to help find people to follow on Twitter. In addition to this list I would add the Twellow directory.

Of course the idea of following people, it to get followers back, and so you want an auto follow thank you message in place which mentions your site and message. You can set this up automatically for multiple Twitter accounts at Social Oomph.

Google Caffeine and it's Impact on SEO

2010-07-01T14:05:00.000+01:00

Google fully rolled our their new web indexing system, Caffeine, on June 8th this year. But what are the implications for SEO and link building?

If you weren't already aware, when you search on Google, you aren't actually searching the internet in real time, you are in fact searching Google's latest version of the web stored at their many data centers around the world. It's one of the reasons why Google searches are so fast and the search engine made such an impact when it launched, compared to the chronically slow search times of the previous generation of search engines.

Of course to keep their version of the web up to date, Google constantly indexes the real web. The way that they do this has been updated to a new system, named Caffeine, which Google claims will help it index a rapidly expanding web in a faster and more effective way.

Caffeine has been available for testing since August last year, and so there has been plenty of time for SEO experts the world over to speculate on the impact it will have on search rankings and results.

One of the issues identified is that Caffeine will start to give greater priority to websites which participate in their online community through forums, social media, social bookmarking and so. Websites which become the topic of social chatter, and get linked to, may perform better in search results as they are seen to have human votes of popularity instead of the purely link based popularity used by Google Page Rank in the past.

If true, this could be seen as an attempt to better 'socialize' Google search results in the face of the ongoing growth of Twitter and its potential to become a real time search engine for what's being discussed right now.

I have also read rumours that links on sites like Friendfeed for example will carry greater credibility for backlinking (tacit admission that Friendfeed still does better what Google Buzz set out to emulate?).

So the upshot is that your social media strategy for your website is likely to become even more important than ever, and probably needs to be broadened out from just Twitter and Facebook to include niche networking sites, forums and so on, ideally within your industry vertical.

Distribute Tweets on Twitter in Advance

2010-06-17T17:43:00.000+01:00

Just been setting up a new Twitter account for a client, Sygma Solutions, and came across a feature of Social Oomph (formally known as Tweetlater) that allows you to schedule the advance distribution of Twitter tweets.

I've already used Social Oomph extensively as a third party tool for manually scheduling tweets for a range of client twitter accounts, but I hadn't come across the 'Distribute Scheduled Updates' function before.

It appears to allow you to schedule a batch of tweets to be broadcast regularly at intervals of days, hours or minutes (if you have a lot to say!). You can also schedule your tweets to appear within set times and on specific days of the week.

Where did Twitterfeed go?

2010-06-02T14:07:00.000+01:00

Twitterfeed, the online service which lets you send RSS feeds to your Twitter account, seems to be having some problems.

Their site appears to have been replaced with a spammy domain holding page. Maybe the owners have pulled the site down, or someone else has managed to renew it? Also, the feeds I had set up don't seem to be publishing.

Whatever the reasons this is a real shame - I've been using Twitterfeed for months now to send third party feeds to client twitter accounts, to help increase their tweet volume.

I've been looking for replacements, and am trialling http://rss2twitter.com. It doesn't seem to have all the same functionality as Twitterfeed, like scheduling of updates of the RSS feed, but we'll see how it works - at the moment its set up to send 3 rss feeds to http://twitter.com/dressingupideas.

Free Directory Submission Software Reviews

2010-06-02T12:08:00.000+01:00

I've been test driving a couple of free directory submission software programs. Now normally I tend to take the 'quality over quantity' approach to directory submissions and do a small number manually.

However I have so much link building work on the go at the moment, including some sites with pretty much 0 backlinks, that I thought I'd try out a few programs, ideally free. I also thought about using a directory submission service in India, but don't quite have the time to wait (or the budget) for some of these projects.

The first one I tried was http://www.fastdirectorysubmitter.com/ which offers a free download for a trial. Fast Directory Submitter includes 2000+ free web directories. In the free mode the program allows you submit the site to 150 directories only.

The download was smooth enough and then the interface seemed fairly simple to use, to set up a campaign first although there was quite a lack of explanation. However as soon as I set her rolling, the whole program crashed - not very encouraging.

Then I tried a free download of http://www.sliqsubmitter.com, which again offers a free version that submits to just 100 directories, but you can upgrade to a monthly program to get the full list.

I really liked the interface on this, really simple with lots of rollover help comments and suggestions making it a good proposition for use by temps and freelancers who might do work for me. The submission seemed to go well, although you do have to remain involved to handle the category selection and recaptcha completions for submissions, and it is quite slow. You feel a bit like you are watching a machine in a factory after a while!

I also checked out http://directorysubmitter.imwishlist.com/ but I'm afraid the US style never ending sales landing page kind of put me off, and I don't think it is genuinely free to try (just a free download of the software).

Trying out PeerPower B2B Social Networking

2010-06-01T09:37:00.000+01:00

I've been invited by an old contact, Julie Anderson at http://www.rapinteriors.com to try out what looks to be a new b2b social networking site, http://www.peerpower.com. So far it has quite nice functionality but most members seem to be based in India. I will wait to see if the weblink on my profile page gets detected by Google Webmaster.

New Features for Google Webmaster

2010-05-18T14:32:00.000+01:00

Google have at long last released some useful new features for the Google Webmaster Central control panel.

One of the most handy additions is the new way of granting access to individual sites to other Google Accounts - gone are the days of having to create a separate Google Webmaster account to share with a client, because you don't want to grant access to all your client sites.

There's also a new way of verifying your site ownership using a DNS record.

Finally, there is a lot more detail on impressions and clicks from natural search terms, but I've been reading a fair amount of criticism over the accuracy of the data when you compare it to stats from Google Analytics for example.Far too many long tail search terms are just categorised as getting <10 clicks, which could mean 0 or 10 - there's quite a difference!

How Twitter Followings Illustrate Link Popularity on Google

2010-05-14T10:12:00.001+01:00

I've been setting up some new Twitter accounts for clients like Premium Sofas and Zen Cart Web Design, and working to get them more followers. In the process it occurred to me that the relative value of different Twitter accounts based on the Followers/Following quite resembles the theory of link popularity which Google uses to assess popularity of a website.

For example on Twitter, a lot of Followers make a user look good, just like a lot of backlinks to a site look good. But look deeper and if you have more Followers than people you follow, you look even better. More sites linking to your website than you link to, also looks good (which is one of the reasons I don't tend to focus huge amounts of effort on self cancelling reciprocal links).

But then I thought about how your new Twitter account can gain kudos just by having a very popular Twitter user follow you. I mean, imagine the impact of say Stephen Fry following you, based just on the number of people who follow him (nearly 1.5 million followers at time of writing). This immediate surge in publicity is kind of like the extra brownie points Google gives your site when you get a link from a really credible and authorative website, that in turn has a lot of links which point to it.

This is why whenever clients send me a cold link request they've received and ask what I think, I always check the Page Rank of the site offering to trade links first. If it's not popular, there's little point.

In the future I wouldn't be surprised if Twitter replicates some kind of version of Page Rank (if they don't already) based on the difference between your Followers/Following, and the number of Followers your Followers have got.

Great use of mobile marketing

2010-05-12T10:19:00.000+01:00

The Museum of London has launched a free iPhone app called StreetMuseum, which guides users to more than 200 historic sites in the capital, where, if they hold up their iPhones, they can see a photo of the past emerge as an overlay across the present scene.

What a fantastic use of smart phone functionality - its truly mobile, feeds geo-specific content to users, and promote the Museum at the same time. Next time I'm in London I'll give it a try.

Quote of the Week: New BMI Social Media Strategy

2010-05-07T10:14:00.000+01:00

"We have designed our social media strategy to offer an exponential increase in added value for our customers who choose to engage online, whilst ensuring the sustainability of interaction through a newly re-structured digital team," said Callum Adamson, head of search and social media at bmi.

Now what on earth does that mean? Answers on a postcard, sorry - I mean on an online engagement.....

Where are your website hotspots?

2010-04-29T12:29:00.000+01:00

Two recent reports released by web usability guru Jakob Neilsen have shed new light on just whereabouts on a website visitors look the most.

In one report Neilsen revealed that "Web users spend 80% of their time looking at information above the page fold. Although users do scroll, they allocate only 20% of their attention below the fold." The fold he refers to is the traditional direct marketing term for information above or below the fold in a letter or mailer. In web terms, he means information below the bottom of edge of your browser window.

In his other report, Neilsen confirms that: "Web users spend 69% of their time viewing the left half of the page and 30% viewing the right half. A conventional layout is thus more likely to make sites profitable."

So in summary if you want to push one thing on your web page - a newsletter sign up, top products, enquiry form etc. - then you should put it on the top left hand section of your web page.

There's also a possible argument for creating short pages that within most browser windows without the need for scrolling, although I have also read a lot of material which says that sales oriented conversion or landing pages should be as long as possible - go figure!

Search Latest Twitter Chatter Using Google

2010-04-29T12:15:00.000+01:00

Now here's a nifty trick - you can search Twitter traffic in real time or past discussions, using Google.

Simply search for a search term on Google like normal, then click on “Show options” on the search results page, then select “Updates.” You'll see a graph showing the frequency of mentions of your search term on Twitter, which you can extend to a longer period of time. Here's an example on the search term 'volcanic ash'.

An amusing distraction, or evidence of the growing importance of Twitter activity?

Creating yet another mixed Twitter account

2010-04-28T15:10:00.000+01:00

This is getting to be something of a habit - I've just been working on creating another new Twitter account for a client, in this case www.zencartwebdesign.co.uk who sell Zen Cart e-commerce add ons, hosting, installs etc.

I firstly created their new Twitter account at http://twitter.com/zencartwebsites then I found some third party RSS feeds from Zen Cart forums and sites. I plugged these into my account at http://twitterfeed.com which aggregates them and pushes the feeds to the Twitter account.

Then I went through the client's website and pulled out 30 odd products and articles, and wrote a tweet about each one, with a link of course. Then it was off to my account at https://www.socialoomph.com where I pasted each tweet in, pre sent to publish one a day for the next month (I noticed that if you pay to upgrade to the Pro, you can create a reservoir of tweets and have it publish one a day randomly).

So now we have a nice new Twitter account publishing numerous tweets daily all on its own, with each tweet packed full of keywords so they'll appear in searches on twitter!

Now I just need to submit to some twitter directories and start following some e-commerce twitterers to get the ball rolling.

Playing with Plugged.it

2010-04-28T15:02:00.000+01:00

I've been playing around with a new social networking site called www.plugged.it (you can see my profile at www.plugged.it/joshwhiten).

I quite like the premise, in that its for all of us people looking to plug things online - products, businesses, websites etc. I'm still trying to get to grips with the best ways of doing this though. I've added a link to my own site in my profile, but I really need to find how to get client sites mentioned. I've started by doing a blog post on a new client, www.zencartwebdesigns.co.uk.

Will wait to see if the links appear on Google's radar, by using the Google Webmaster links report.

There ARE real people at DMOZ!

2010-04-26T14:36:00.000+01:00

I just received an email from an editor at DMOZ, the open source directory project. A listing on DMOZ is widely accepted as helping improve your rankings in Google natural search results. The email says;

"Thanks for suggesting that we list http://www.youressex.net within our directory. Sadly, it's not possible for us to evaluate the site without a logon and so it's been declined. If you suggest it again, please include logon details in the description like this [User, PW] They won't be published."

This must be the first time I've ever had any human contact with DMOZ let alone such a prompt review - I submitted the site on24/03/10 so that' approximately 1 month. The last site I got accepted took over 6 months! Plus of course some useful feedback about actually letting them got into the site, which is a little odd as they have accepted sister sites without asking for this. Must just be the views of different human editors.

Kent 2020 Exhibition: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

2010-04-23T11:02:00.001+01:00

Isn't it strange how people behave at exhibitions? I had an interesting and somewhat varied afternoon at the Kent 2020 business exhibition yesterday.

It was really good to catch up with a few old faces like John Fassum at Golden Fleece Promotions, and Chris Parker at CP Digital. Plus I met a few new faces like the guys at Eonic web developers.

Then there were the handful of bored looking people with no exhibition selling skills, or the ones with too much sales bravado who literally grab you out of the aisle onto their stand (I shan't name names).

But I will name the rudest exhibitor of the day; the guy from Sagittarius Digital who literally stopped mid-conversation to go and talk to a passer by, came back then decided when he'd enough to just turn his back on me! Bizarre! I know I was talking to him as a fellow digital marketing professional and not, so he obviously thought, as a potential client, but then surely that's called networking isn't it? Next time a larger client asks for web developer recommendations, I'll know who not to mention....

Listen the Latest Episode of The Bottom Line with Evan Davis

2010-03-22T10:07:00.000Z

I can really recommend listening to the latest episode of the BBC radio business programme, The Bottom Line.

The episode broadcast 18th March has an excellent discussion between the bosses of a drinks firm, a housebuilder and an online gambling website, in which they look at issues such as competition, market trends in the recession, benchmarking and regulation.

The talk also touches on the topic of market disruption and disruptive technology on the internet, particularly from the view of the online gambling site, which is a general topic I hope to return to soon.

Check out Tweetfeed for Building Quick Twitter Accounts

2010-03-18T22:28:00.001Z

I'm currently a big fan of Tweetfeed, a free online tool for aggregating RSS feeds from different sources and then pushing them out to different Twitter accounts you manage.

This is a useful exercise because if you want to use Twitter to attract new followers and website visitors, the best way to think of Twitter is like a mini search engine.

If you make sure your tweets have got plenty of keywords in them, and there are plenty of them, then Twitter users will find the tweets and then choose to follow your account.

If you get enough followers, then you can start to send some of them to the website and hopefully turn them into leads.

One way to boost the number of Tweets is to use news feeds from other places like trade magazines or news websites, then send their news out via your Twitter account. This also makes your twitter a bit like a central resource of useful news and information.

For example if you look at http://twitter.com/youressexnews which I set up for another client, most of the tweets come from third parties like the BBC and local media, and then we just add in the clients tweets in between them. It ‘s only been live a few weeks but the twitter account is now getting a couple of new followers each day - not much but there's no work needed.

I've also extended the same principle onto a new Twitter account for Oriel at http://twitter.com/orielnews, which takes the client's own news items (submitted from their Blogger blog) and mixes them up with industry news from trade magazines.

You can check out Twitterfeed at http://twitterfeed.com.

Is the Facebook vs Google PPC Face-Off Coming?

2010-03-18T22:17:00.000Z

A recent report on Brand Republic announces that "Social network Facebook has overtaken search giant Google to become the most visited website in the US for the week ending 13 March".

Now we usually expect new developments in the US to soon make their way over here (housing market crash, credit crunch, bank failures etc.) so it will be interesting to see how long it will be before Facebook possibly overtakes Google for usage in the UK.

For me, if Facebook does move ahead, the most important implication will be for Pay Per Click advertising. Let's face it, the mighty Google Adwords is in a pretty dominant position, yet Facebook adverts offer a range of interesting differences, and dare I say it advantages.

If Facebook can deliver the missing ingredient of volume to it's PPC program, there could be interesting times ahead.

A Bad Day for Facebook

2010-03-09T20:48:00.000Z

Facebook has been plastered across the media today because of its use by a sex offender, Peter Chapman, who posed as a teenage boy to meet a young victim on Facebook, Ashleigh Hall, who he subsequently met and tragically murdered.

Its an awful case that has repurcussions for everyone involved - the local police force which lost track of Chapman for 9 months, plus of course the social networking site he used, especially as he has now been dubbed the 'Facebook Killer'.

Whilst Facebook can't be held legally responsible for the actions of it's users, it does just remind us all quite how easy it is to pose as just about anyone online - after all what identity checks does Facebook use when signing up?

It also reminds us all about the importance of reminding young people about the often overlooked dangers of social networking online. When I was running a focus group of 13 year old social networking users for the planning of www.kent.co.uk, we discovered just how little structured education these youngsters felt they received from either their schools, or especially their parents.

It will be interesting to see if/how Facebook and other social sites grasp this important opportunity to help educate web users.

(Then, just as the Facebook team thought things probably couldn't get any worse, the site has been mentioned in another case of a man who murdered his former girlfriend, prompted it is claimed, by her entries on her Facebook profile.)

New Online Media and Advertising Rules on the Way

2010-03-09T14:15:00.000Z

How up to speed are you about the forthcoming new rules about how businesses promote themselves online?

Last week the Advertising Association submitted recommendations to the Committee of Advertising Practice to extend the non-broadcast code to company websites and even branded Pages on social networking websites like Facebook.

It's been suggested that a refreshed version of the Code will come out in Autumn and will be enforced by the Advertising Standards Association, who already enforce the Non-broadcast Code (CAP Code) which already covers paid for online advertising.

My guess is that like most of us, this has one has crept up unawares, especially on smaller businesses. So I'll be reviewing both the current code and the new proposals shortly and will report back on the implications for websites, socil networking and online advertising.

ASBO's for Dogs? Now thats what I call tactical.

2010-03-09T10:12:00.000Z

Just heard a BBC radio news headline about a government proposal for ASBO's for Dogs. Yes really.

Now doesn't that sound just like something from an episode of satirical political comedy The Thick of It? Ollie Reader throws his desperate Minister a quick headline grabbing policy idea to take the heat off - "Quick Ollie, give me something I can go to Cabinet with this week; ASBO's for dogs? That'll do!"

Or maybe it's just coincidence that the proposal comes from the department of Home Secretary Alan Johnson; a former postman.

In either event, it sounds awfully like a short term tactical measure, at a time when surely the attention should be on strategy, and dare I say it the 'bigger issues'.

In other words, sounds like the tail is wagging the dog.

Are Ebay and Amazon underated as E-commerce sales channels?

2010-03-04T13:19:00.001Z

I've just been having a catch up with a former client who's coming back for some more work, and our discussion has raised some interesting issues about the use of Ebay and Amazon.

They run a b2c niche e-commerce store which is well designed (but still has a few SEO issues to sort out). None the less, it's been going a while so the site is doing pretty well in natural search results and the client also uses a modest amount of Google Adwords for some targeted product ranges.

What really surprises me though, is the fact that the majority of business is done through an Ebay shop and an Amazon marketplace seller account. They've been on Ebay for a while and always done well, but Amazon has only recently been added and is already generating more sales than Ebay.

This makes me wonder how many other e-commerce stores are overlooking these sales channels? Of course they aren't for everyone - I guess it would depend on your target market and products sold.

More specifically, I know a drop ship e-commerce retailer that has had problems with Ebay when their supplier can't fulfil a specific product and the ebayer gets a but precious about accepting an alternative to the product they bid on. Amazon isn't perfect either - their Seller central system doesn't let you obtain the email addresses of your customers for use in repeat marketing to protect their precious relationship with the buyer, which I find surprisingly short sighted - especially from someone like Amazon who obviously know that in e-commerce the lifetime value of a customer is often more important than their initial order.

Plus, the cost of sales needs to be borne in mind - my client pays about 15% in selling fees to these platforms. But then, how does this compare to the cost of sales from Google Adwords?

If you can make it work for your business, it seems to be that marketplace channels like Ebay and Amazon shouldn't be overlooked, especially in the current economic climate.

Useful Free Link Analysis Tools

2010-03-02T12:24:00.003Z

Here are a few useful free link analysis tools and backlink checkers....

xinu

SEObook Back Link Analyzer Link Popularity Software

Website Grader

Yahoo! Site Explorer

SEO Company Site Stats

Why Don't all Backlinks show up in a link: Search on Google?

2010-03-02T12:18:00.002Z

Here's a nagging little issue that's been bugging me for ages, and recently came to a head when a client asked me why they had so few backlinks showing up when they use the link colon command?

If you're not familiar with it, the link colon command can be used to give you a list of sites that links to a specific page in any website. It looks like this: link:http://www.bbc.co.uk and the url of the site can be changed to whatever you want it to be. You type the whole command in the search box on Google, not in the address bar of your browser.

So anyway, back to the problem with this useful but frustrating little trick - the number of backlinks site colon displays is never the same as the amount you can find when you verify and implement Google Webmaster. I've tended to just accept the discrepancy without ever really questioning it, but thought it was about time to find out why.

The best answer I've found is in this video interview with Matt Cutts of Google, which is pretty self explanatory. If you don't have time to watch it, Google purposely don't show all backlinks in the results from a link colon command, to ease pressure on their servers and protect site owners. Therefore these results are designed to give a 'flavour' of the backlinks point to the site in question.

So if you want the full picture on backlinks to your site, use Google Webmaster (a drastically under-used resource in my humble opinion).

If you use link colon, then use it to compare link numbers between different sites, on a like for like basis.

And if you really want to identify backlinks to your competitors, then try using one of the third party link analysis tools available.

Now is the time to sign up to Google Maps

2010-02-10T12:09:00.001Z

If you haven't used the Local Business Center to add your company to Google Maps yet, you'd better pull your finger out!

It looks like Google is starting to add suggested businesses to Google Map search results under the name of 'Nearby place you might like...', as reported in a Google Maps blog.

We've already seen other business results have been slowly creeping into map pages, and have also seen an aggressive push from Google to encourage businesses to ad their details. We recently received a Google mailer ourselves (yes, offline promotion from Google!) pushing the very same thing.

Adding your business takes just a few minutes, and you can even add details on opening times, payment methods accepted etc.

But best of all it's free, so what are you waiting for! Sign up now

Hyphens in Domain Names Help SEO?

2010-02-02T10:18:00.003Z

I've recently been analysing a potential new client, www.red-art.co.uk, to see where they can improve performance in natural search.

I've got Google Webmaster implemented on the site so I can see the 'gospel according to Google' when it comes to backlinks and search terms the site ranks for.

Looking at the search term rankings some interesting results start to appear. Almost all the terms the site ranks or include the word 'red' in them. Phrases like 'red wall art', 'red canvas art' and so on.

So that made me wonder where Google is picking up the word 'red' from, and why is it thinking it is a key describer of the site's content, when it just happens to be part of the company name?

Strangely, Red does not appear in any of the usual suspects. Page Titles have already been optimised by someone else with product related terms (although they probably rent as focused as they could be). The term Red does not appear in site content, only as an image of the logo, and that doesn't even have an alt tag completed. Red does appear in the anchor text of backlinks to the site, but not as the top term.

Which just leaves one candidate - the URL. Now I'm not normally a fan of hyphenated domain names. They are cumbersome to type and read out, and just look messy. But in this case it seems that the hyphen in the url is flagging up Red as a key search term for Google and influencing search results accordingly.

Now in this case I can't suggest changing the site URL, so there's a fair bit of work to redress the balance in favour of non-red phrases.

But for other projects and clients, this raises an interesting hypothesis which I will need to test. I'm already getting good results with using keyword rich domains on holding pages to point back to client sites. Now I'll try some with the use of hyphens in them and see what happens.

Do .com domains get indexed faster than .co.uk?

2010-01-13T19:18:00.004Z

I've been continuing my my current trend of creating 'sponsored' microsites for client websites, each targeting a specific search term with a keyword or phrase rich URL.

The latest batch I've done are for Treloar's school and college, and include both .com and .co.uk domain extensions:

www.disabledschools.com
www.disabledschools.co.uk
www.disabledcolleges.com
www.disabledcolleges.co.uk
www.disablededucation.com
www.disablededucation.co.uk

They were created in December, and just had basic Wordpress installed with a single page, and a page title matching the domain name - no content, backlinks or anything.

I've just been verifying each site in Google Webmaster and was pleasantly surprised to see that 3 out of 6 sites are already indexed (although no phrase rankings are yet being reported). The 3 indexed are all the .com domains.

All the domains were registered at the same time using the same provider, Heart Internet, and the same registrant address in the UK. So how strange that Google should still favour the .com domain extensions for the new sites.

Is it because decent .com domains are so rare to find these days that if you can get one, it still gets indexing priority?

Using SEO Microsites to Target Search Phrases

2009-10-27T16:21:00.002Z

I have recently been doing a lot of work for clients registering additional domain names based on products or relevant search terms. Sometimes the choice of domain name is aimed at a phrase the clients site finds it hard to get ranked for, or simply to prevent other competitors from owning and using a relevant domain.

Whatever the motivation, I usually upload a single page of content for the domain, with a link back to the clients website. There are two benefits; its another backlink to the clients website to help its Google performance, plus the microsite may get ranked better than the clients site for the search term it targets.

In some cases you can go further and build a 'sponsored' microsite with several pages of content. Here are some examples...

Microsites pointing back to www.orielgroup.co.uk:
http://www.recruitmentagencyadvice.co.uk
http://www.recruitmentstartups.co.uk
http://www.contractorpayments.co.uk
http://www.gloucestershireaccountancyadvice.co.uk

Microsites pointing back to www.expressyourselfmums.co.uk:
http://www.medelabreastpumps.co.uk
http://www.elletensmachine.co.uk
http://www.dreamgeniipillows.co.uk
http://www.medelaswingbreastpump.com
http://www.medelafreestyle.co.uk

Dynamic Page URL's and Google Analytics Goals

2009-10-27T12:04:00.003Z

We keep coming across this issue when trying to create Goals within Google Analytics.

If you've never used Goals, they allow you to 'tag' a specific URL in your site so that Analytics can report separately on visitors who go to that URL - where they came from, what route they used to get there etc.

You usually use Goals to identify the pages people end up on after they've completed an action on your site; completing a purchase, registering on the site, requesting more information etc.

The problem comes though when a site is built dynamically and the URL people see when they complete an action doesn't change. So you can't plug a unique URL into Analytics to track as a goal. An example might be someone signing up on a website using a page called signup.php but all the steps in the process are actually done within the same page - it doesn't refresh to a new page when its all done. All very clever using javascript and ajax on page stuff, but doesn't help with your marketing.

Tell me before you PDF me!!!

2009-10-26T14:15:00.003Z

Here's a polite request for all you web developers and content generators out there...

If you are adding a link to a PDF document on your website please mention that fact in the name of the link!!! Maybe you could add (PDF) at the end of the name of the link. It's only polite after all.

It's just that sometimes a bit of warning would be nice before I click innocently on a link that then takes 5 minutes to open a new tab, locks up my broswer, and then tells me it can't open your PDF anyways.

Grumble over.

The ultimate affiliate site inspired by Cheryl Cole

2009-10-22T12:20:00.003+01:00

Yet another content site that doesn't sell anything itself, but makes money from affiliate marketing (promoting online merchants in return for a commission). Nothing new in that you might say.

But here's the thing - the interesting differences are the sites theme and its attention to detail. An affiliate site, Cherylcolestyle.com, has been set up around the styles of media darling Cheryl Cole, and selling similar outfits through affiliate merchants. It kind of takes the concept of ASOS.com to a whole new extreme.

I particularly like the way they categorise outfits according to when they were seen during Cheryl's strenuous judging duties on the current series of X Factor.

And according to the site's owners it's only going to be there until the end of the current X Factor series run. A brave move considering the time it could take to achieve real traction in natural search (They ain't doing too good yet for the phrase 'cheryl cole style', let alone more general search terms).

On the other hand, if they have some very clever SEO tricks up their sleeves (and the site founders are all from the SEO and web industry) then they could pioneer a new trend in 'tactical affiliate marketing' - short term yet well constructed revenue generating sites designed to tap into fads and trends.

Perhaps 'Jordan's Dating Site' will be next....

Would you work for free?

2009-06-16T14:18:00.004+01:00

BA asks staff to work for nothing

This story grabbed my eye today.

I don't question that BA's motives are genuine, in really trying to cut costs and survive. But it does raise an important question.

Has BA ever offered its staff bonuses of 1 week to 1 month's salary in the days when they used to make a profit?

It reminds me of the old days of pre-online marketing consultancy, when you'd seem to get approached at least every month by someone with a new product or business idea, who wanted you to help them market it (or in other words do all the sales) in return for a mumbled promise about commissions, incentives or so on. Basically work for free and take all the risk.

Now, marketing consultants probably shouldn't be completely averse to taking on the odd speculative project, but only ever if you have significant downtime you're willing to use up, and you can afford to turn away paying work.

Personally, if I ever get any of this thing called spare time, I've got a very long list of things I'd like to do for myself thanks!

This is what happens when you don’t pay your web designer

2009-06-10T08:13:00.001+01:00

Read this strangely absorbing tale of intrigue, duplicity and non payment in the world of big band music at this blog.

Facebook Ads - Not so Bad After All

2009-06-09T11:46:00.004+01:00

Sometimes you have to learn when to admit you were wrong. So, sorry Facebook.

I always thought the Facebook advertising program was rubbish - a poorly conceived attempt to monetise your impressive site traffic retrospectively, and no substitute for the mighty Google Adwords.

This impression was reinforced by the focus groups we did amongst social networking users at the back end of last year, for the www.kent.co.uk project. After all when a teenager told me 'why do I want to see adverts for mortgages on Facebook - I'm only 14!', I kind of had to agree with him.

But I now stand corrected. We have just started running a PPC campaign on Facebook for, ironically enough, another social networking site and it really is working. CTR is low, but I'm not too worried because we've plenty of volume of impressions to work with, and our conversion rates are very nice indeed.

I also particularly like the targeting options when you create your campaign - you can target users by their ages, with nicely refined age breaks amongst younger users, and most importantly their town/city, within a chosen radius.

This opens up a whole world of opportunities for regional and local marketing for clients targeting a younger audience, especially as I've always found geo-targeting to be imperfect on Google Adwords. I suspect Facebook geo-targeting is going to be far more accurate, as its based on the data provided by users when they sign up, not on Google's best guess based on IP address.

Now, the advert manager interface isn't perfect. The help guide is sketchy to say the least, and its very much a single user application, without any easy ways to share access with colleagues. But it's still not as bad as Yahoo Search Marketing so I can live with that.

So to conclude, I have now realised that my negative judgment on Facebook ads in the past really wasn't Facebook's fault - it was down to those bozo advertisers using the program poorly and clumsily. Just like the majority of Adwords advertisers who do PPC badly.

Why Wordpress is great for domain holding pages

2009-06-06T10:15:00.003+01:00

I've always thought that spare domain names are only worth something if you actually do something with them.

If a domain can get indexed by Google and start to build some domain history it will start to gain real value. Or when you decide to add a proper website to the domain, you wont have to spend frustrating time waiting to get indexed.

But a single holding page (or even worse the dreaded 'under construction' message) does really look a bit naff.

So that's why we've been using the free Wordpress blogging software install (with a few tweaks) to build microsites on domains for a number of clients, and ourselves. Here's one of the most recent: www.mediterraneanconnections.com.

With a few pages of text, some clever use of RSS feeds, a free design template, a few Wordpress plugins, and a bit of time, you can create a holding site that should start to build sonme really useful indexing history.

You an even monetise your holding site with Google Adsense or some relevant affiliate banner ads from a program like Tradedoubler.

But dont forget, if you are oing all this hoping to sell on your domain for big bucks, remember that a second hand domain name is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it, which might not always be what you think its worth.

www.kent.co.uk Goes Live

2009-04-28T19:05:00.002+01:00

The new social networking website, www.kent.co.uk, has just gone live with a soft launch to local networks of potential users.

The creation and development of the site has been a major project for Whiten Marketing since Autumn 2008 and its great to see the site live, although you instantly start to pick holes in it and want to make hundreds of minor improvements!

We are focusing first on increasing the user base though, improving core usability and then launching our paid for premium business listing in the next couple of weeks.

If you live in Kent, join up free and check out Kent.co.uk.

When Was the Last Time a Recession got Branded?

2008-10-24T18:40:00.005+01:00

I notice the BBC have now given the downturn/creditcrunch/recession (depending on your state of pessismism) it's own fancy branding. Plus their web content guys have ground into action, creating a nice interactive guide to the current economic crisis, full of features like Remember the last recession?, and an Audio Slideshow by Robert Peston which explains the causes of the global crisis. What fun!

Why Social Media Shouldn't Exist

2008-10-17T12:07:00.004+01:00

I've just been reading about a one day seminar on The Future of Social Media, and it made me realise just how big a deal this sector of the internet has become. Just check out some of the 'big name' brands who'll be attending (and the price tag of course).

But then it got me thinking about the validity of Social Media - as a buzzword, a trend, niche, sector or topic. Is it possible to argue that Social Media or Social Networking as descriptions shouldn't even exist, because all our online activities should be social in one way or another?

Is it time to move beyond the Social Media catch all and start trying to integrate the pinricples of communication, interaction, dialogue, recommendation and opinion sharing into everyday websites?

For example, if the Boden website allows it's customers to post and share their own honest reviews (sometimes negative) of their produts, then surely the Boden site is social. Each review even includes details about the reviewer; gender, location, age, and frequency of purchase. It would be one simple step to enable Boden customers to actually find and engage directly with each other based on these criteria, on a social basis, or for users to see what else the reviewer bought or where they shopped just like the same principle of social bookmarking.

Maybe social recommendation by a site's users and customers will be the next evolution of Amazon's classic 'people who bought this also bought this....' sales tool, once that technique gets so overused it loses effectiveness (or users start to mistrust the recommendations of site owners).

It certainly makes a case for websites to start engaging users in a more active way, through the creation of user generated profiles integrated with internal transactional and buying behavoural data... think Facebook for ecommerce shops.

Marketing Through a Downturn - Tip 1

2008-10-13T10:46:00.007+01:00

'Target those customers and market segments which you think will be most recession proof, at the expense of those that you think will suffer the most'

Now I'd been thinking a lot about this one recently, for my own online marketing consultancy business. I'd been trying to think of industries and market segments which might do well out of an economic downturn, especially with PPC.

I thought of the debt sector, which I have done work on in the past, but I know I'd have to be incredibly selective about who I work with as I really wouldn't want to profit from other people's misfortune.

Then I thought about the addiction and rehab sector - another market I've worked on which spends big on PPC. But a contact of mine from this area, said this market could in fact be hit at the upper end by city exec's getting their health insurance slashed, preventing them from checking in for a detox.

It eventually took someone else to point out the obvious. I was discussing my relief at the recent article I'd seen about online ad spend being up with Anna, who works with me part time on SEO. I backed this up with some evidence of old small business leads getting back in touch with me after a few years.

She pointed out that maybe I should forget industry sectors and look at products instead - which led us to think that clients might not be so likely to engage people like ourselves on an ongoing consultancy basis, but instead small businesses might be more keen to pay for training in Adwords and SEO so they can do the work themselves.

I really like this idea, as I've always been realistic and comfortable about people trying to implement our advice themselves if they don't have a large budget, and I think training sessions will really appeal to small businesses who know they should be doing something online but don't know how (or what).

So that's what we are now working on alongside regular consultancy work - a programme of seo and ppc training courses starting off for small businesses in Kent. I'll keep you posted!

If I wasn't a Marketing Consultant (2)....

2008-10-13T10:42:00.003+01:00

...I'd be training to be something medical.

I heard some boffin on the radio at the weekend saying that in a recession the NHS definitely won't be downsizing, mainly because research shows that unemployed people are more likely to get ill!

Not sure where that leaves my wife Sarah who's just started studying to be a midwife, as pregnancy is hardly an illness. But then again maybe people will be staying in more to save money, and so birth rates will soar up!

The Banks Must be Really Hurting

2008-10-13T10:40:00.002+01:00

BBC NEWS Business UK banks' £37bn bail-out unveiled

I'm amazed that the government (and in theory us taxpayers) will be getting such a massive share of RBS, 60%, and Hbos/LloydsTSB - 40%. I never dreamt the government would have exacted such a high price for the bail out they've given the banks.

Surely after this, banks will finally have to become more customer focused and start treating consumers with more respect and humility than they have in the past. I'm thinking of things like taking 3 days to transfer BACS payments, excessive bank charges, and so on.

Business Start Up's Booming

2008-10-12T17:38:00.004+01:00

I recently researched and released this news story on behalf of Selectabase, which announced the fact that over the last few months the number of business start ups has leapt up.

Compared to the same period last year, the number of new businesses setting up shop in the UK grew by over 11% between June-August. Up till then, starts ups had been down compared to last year.

It's a really surprising trend, given the current economic turmoil. You'd be forgiven for wondering who on earth what want to be starting out and leaping into the cauldron of fire which is the small business sector (not estate agents, that's for sure - they were one of the types of business start ups to be DOWN on last year).

But then I heard recently that teaching recruitment had increased, often amongst city workers. In fact public sector recruitment could benefit in a number of areas - a senior police officer friend of mine told me some time ago his force had plenty of applications from mature candidates seeking a career change.

I also think the figures are reliable, because at a recent trade fair I attended on behalf of Jim Garrahy's Fudge Kitchen, another client of mine, we noticed lots of new coffee shops, farm, shops and deli's planning to launch in the next couple of months.

So good to luck to those bold entrepreneurs starting their business just now, and lets just hope their confidence is rewarded.

If I Wasn't a Marketing Consultant...

2008-10-12T17:26:00.002+01:00

...I'd be applying for this job as Director of Marketing for the British Army. Wonder if you get a uniform? Or a camo desk?

Online Ad Spend up 21% - What a Relief!

2008-10-12T17:12:00.002+01:00

Phew, that was a relief.

It had all gone a bit quiet there for a while with regards to how the online advertising sector was coping. As an Adwords consultant that was a bit worrying.

Now it turns out online advertising (and let's face it, that means Google Adwords) is up 21% whilst 'conventional' advertising is down, according to a report on Brand Republic.

This reinforces the hunch I'd had that businesses won't cut back on online marketing, and in fact more will start to use this method because of the benefits it provides in measurability, immediacy and cost effectiveness.

So with a bit luck, the current career path might just hold up. Doubles all round!