Investing in SEO training and internet marketing is no longer an option - it's a necessity. Search engine optimisation or SEO is the first step taken by many businesses to make sure their website is visible on Google and the other search engines. Once you've decided to undertake SEO as part of your marketing activities, you have to consider how you will implement this within your organisation. Your first decision then will be whether to outsource your SEO to an external agency or to invest in SEO training.
DMI is running an Advanced SEO Training course on May 17th and 18th.
Booking for this course will be available shortly. In the meantime, please call Peter on 01 271 1888 for more details.
WordPress and other blogging application have evolved significantly over the past 10 years or so, due to the popularity of blogging. This has resulted in WordPress and the likes becoming one of the best ways for businesses to easily build feature rich, simple to edit, search engine friendly web sites.
If you are currently considering either building or re-developing your web site, we would strongly suggest that you have a look at WordPress (which is a free application). WordPress has, over the past few years, rapidly transformed itself from being a blogging tool to a very powerful Content Management System.
You can use WordPress to create your entire website (whether you include a blog or not!). Of course, if you want your site to be found on Google or the other search engines, then you will want to include a blog into your digital marketing strategy.
One of the best functions of this set-up is that anyone in your company can update and edit the site including adding pages, text and images without any knowledge of HTML or web design software.
WordPress is now such a popular tool for building web sites that you can get one of literally thousands of “themes” wither for free or for a nominal amount. What this means is that you do not necessarily have to engage a designer to design a look and feel that suits your business – you can literally download this theme (or template) and hey, presto! – you are up and running with a web site!
Great premium themes are available from a whole host of suppliers - here are some ....
Web sites using a blogging technology (such as WordPress) general score higher rankings (than static web sites) in the search engines, particularly if you include a blog. The software automatically optimises any new pages that you write and the RSS feed from the blog makes it much easier for search engines to find your site.
Plug-Ins for WordPress
As there are so many people using (and developing add-on tools – called Plug-Ins for) WordPress, there are hundreds of additional plug-ins that you can get for free. These will take advantage of the WordPress platform and allow you to add extra functionality to your web site just as easily as you edit new pages.
Anyone with a little web site design and set-up knowledge should be able to use one of the themes above to create an entire WordPress web site.
If you are still not convinced, or simply want to understand how to put all of this together for your own business, come along to our next WordPress training course on 25th January 2011.
Punch Above your Weight Online - Localised search results have recently experienced a major overhaul within the Google SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) which has resulted in a fantastic opportunity for small and medium-sized businesses.
Local search results were previously relegated to a small map, which would appear within the first page of results, but now they enjoy first page domination for local search terms.
The benefit of this to small businesses is that they can now appear above their much larger revivals who are relegated to the last few results on page one of Google.
Don't miss out on local search results; they're your next customers. Here's 10 tips to help you capture them:
1. Claim your Google Places listing - it's easy to do and if one doesn't exist for your business then you can quickly and simply create one. What is it? A Google Places listing is effectively a profile attached to Google's local search results. It is important because Google ranks these profiles above all others in their new first page local search results.
2. Add pictures to your Google Places listing. The effectiveness of your Google places listing is impacted by its completeness. Images will not only flesh out your listing, but when they appear in the search results, besides your Google Places listing, they are eye-catching and attractive which will increase clicks.
3. Gather citations - citations are instances on the web where your business is mentioned, Google uses the consistency of the information it finds and the authority of the referring site to boost your rank in local search engine results. The quality as well as volume of citations is an important factor in local search engine optimisation.
4. Include your locality in on-page optimisation - revisit your META and Title Tags to ensure your town is included wherever possible. Make sure your address appears on every page and that you have a contact page.
5. Submit your site to local directories including Yell.com, Qype.co.uk, Hotfrog.co.uk, local Chamber of Commerce and business directories. Local directories will have greater relevance in local search as it narrows your field of operation for Google to a localised area.
6. Manage your online exposure - make sure the information distributed across the web that pertains to your business is managed carefully. Trawl local directories and existing listings, double-check that your details are correct and that they match both your Google Places contact information as well as your websites contact page.
7. Get your reviews and testimonials on the web - no doubt you will already have testimonials collected from customers, these need to go online as well as in other marketing materials. Put a process in place of asking satisfied customers to review you online if at all possible. Pen a short email with instructions of where and how you would like the review left and send this to all satisfied customers.
8. Use a local phone number instead of a 0800, 0845 or 0870 - this again refines your location making it easier for search engines to place you within a specific region.
9. Target local keywords - when link building make sure you target some local variations on your keywords in the anchor text of your links.
10. Use your supply network - think about local search as being similar to networking. No doubt you will already have a network of local contacts, associates and suppliers who all allow your business to thrive. Simply transfer this network online by linking to each other.
Local search is set to dominate first page results for all local search terms. Small, local businesses should take advantage of this by implementing some or all of the tips above which will allow them to compete with much larger businesses who have until now monopolised the first page results by investing in aggressive SEO campaigns.
About the Author: Kriss Davies - If you find local search engine optimisation confusing or simply don't have the time to optimise your local online presence you can call on the of an SEO expert. For Google Places listing and local search engine optimisation visit www.libertymarketing.co.uk.
This is an interesting question: “Why DID the chicken cross the road?”. Unfortnuately, this question has been pondered for many years and it would appear that the answer remains a mystery.
Imagine if you could get yor chosen key-phrase - in this case “Why did the cicken cross the road” - to the top of Google on a regular basis. Would this help your business. Damn right it would!
We can help.
The Digital Marketing Institute is running a 12 Week Part Tim Diploma in Digital Marketing in Cork starting on 6th April. We would love to see you (or a colleague) there.
Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin plan to sell five million Google shares each over the next five years, in a trading plan disclosed Friday in a regulatory filing.
The sales, if completed, would provide each of the founders $2.75 billion based on Friday’s closing price of $550.01.
Now, here’e the interesting thing … if you read the NY Times, they tell us that the lads would not lose control of the company that they founded. But if you read Techcentral.ie (an Irish basedtechnology news wire) they give a completely different spin.
New Yowy Times says …. “The sales would bring the founders’ combined voting rights to just below 50 percent, 48 percent to be precise. But for all practical purposes, Mr. Page and Mr. Brin would continue to have effective control of the company. What’s more, Eric E. Schmidt, the chief executive, has an additional 10 percent of Google’s voting rights, giving the triumvirate absolute control over Google’s fate as long as they remain united.”
Techcentral.ie says …. “Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page are to cede majority control of the company with a forthcoming share sell-off. The duo’s stake in the company will fall from 59% to 48% after the sale is completed over a period of five years. It will mean the pair lose majority voting rights, although given that CEO Eric Schmidt has 10% voting power, the company’s senior management will still remain firmly at the wheel.”
Nearly nine out of every 10 businesses intend to maintain or increase their marketing budgets in 2010. One half expect their customers to be spending more in the coming year.
Email Marketing and social media marketing are at the top of the list of marketing tactics respondents will increase spending on in 2010. Search Engine Marketing came in third.
Combining social media and email marketing is a growing trend. More than four out of every 10 business executives said integrating the two tactics was one of their most important email marketing initiatives for 2010, just after improving performance and targeting and growing opt-in lists.
Around one-quarter of respondents had already implemented an integrated strategy, and another 24% had formulated a strategy and were researching how to put it in practice. But 18% of business executives wanted to add social components into their e-mail campaigns and did not know where to begin.
The above results camefrom a survey comnducted by StrongMail
More information and further analysis available at eMarketer.com
Early in December 3rd last Microsoft Bing went wallop!
The search engine (which claims to have up to 15% market share, depending on who you listen to, although we have yet to meet ANYONE in Ireland who uses the product - except for the nice people who work in Microsoft and therefore appear to have no choice!) went offline for about 30 minutes last week.
Microsoft has apologised for the outage, which had web surfers be greeted with an error message on the search engine’s site. Microsoft stated that a “configuration change” made to the site during testing was the cause of the outage.
This, it said, had “unfortunate and unintended consequences” which included making the site unavailable. The glitch led to people either being unable to find the site or having their queries returned unanswered, Satya Nadella, one of Microsoft’s senior vice-presidents in its Online Services Division, wrote on the Bing blog.
“As soon as the issue was detected, the change was rolled back, which caused the site to return to normal behaviour,” wrote Nadella, who added that the problem was corrected in about 30 minutes.
Microsoft was looking into the root of the incident in order to take preventative measures to prevent such an incident from happening again, Nadella wrote.
You can read the blog posting (written by Microsoft) here.
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Investing in SEO training and internet marketing is no longer an option - it's a necessity. Search engine optimisation or SEO is the first step taken by many businesses to make sure their website is visible on Google and the other search engines. Once you've decided to undertake SEO as part of your marketing activities, you have to consider how you will implement this within your organisation. Your first decision then will be whether to outsource your SEO to an external agency or to invest in SEO training.
