Net Syndicate Blog
I often get asked to discuss some top issues to consider when writing copy for my website or blog. Here are my top 5 to keep in mind:-
1. Quality content matters:- whatever the subject, your content can reach a massive audience and is not just for SEO potential. Your content, whether for a blog, website or article/PR release, well written and interesting can not only help page rank but potentially reach new contacts, like minded organisations and new clients. Also, stay focused on the subject and get the reader’s attention with a good title or heading. Do not duplicate content as this is a big negative for search engine optimisation.
2. Keywords:- don’t cram keywords and phrases into your copy, spread them through the article. Try using only a couple of keywords per 50 to 100 words.
3. Use meta descriptions:- Meta descriptions are 150 character descriptions of your content and are a must for optimisation. Make sure your content has meta descriptions with keywords included. This is a great way to get Google to recognize your content and increase its ranking.
4. Tags:- Google and other search engines give your content the highest placement possible when it appears professional and well structured. Using the appropriate tags for your content will do this. Use h1 tags for titles, h2 tags for subtitles and so on. This concept will also help structure your writing by encouraging you to put your most important/compelling ideas first.
5. Related images:- Search tools like Google Image Search Assistant will help you find related images that are free to use without any chance of copyright infringement. Having related images gain the reader’s interest and attention.
Contact David Swain at www.netsyndicate.co.uk for more on SEO.
August 29, 2010 | Topic: Uncategorized | 0 comments »
One of the recent changes is Latent Semantic Indexing.
Google would look for the presence and number of times a keyword would appear on a webpage to determine its relevancy to the search request. However, this can give inconsistent results because of failure to distinguish between polynyms (words that have multiple meanings) such as “apple and “computer”, as opposed to synonyms, such as “car” and “automobile” where search results might distinguish.
Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) is a way to understand keywords in the context of the words and phrases on a webpage, by analysis of pages that have words which are often used in the same context. For example, “apple” and “computer” may also have “Mac OS” and are therefore relevant.
Net Syndicate can provide you with a website evaluation at no charge.
Contact 0845 009 5560 or go to our website at www.netsyndicate.co.uk
July 6, 2010 | Topic: Search Engine Optimisation, Technocrati | Search Engine Optimisation, Website evaluation | 0 comments »
Google announces that the speed of your website is now included within their search
ranking algorithm.
The Official Google Webmaster
Central blog confirms it is using a new signal, site speed, which is the speed at which your website responds to requests. Google is using different sources to determine how fast your site is relative to other sites.
This algorithm change only applies to google.com at the moment, and for searches in English. A sure thing is that google.co.uk will follow. Whilst this is new for Google, it is relevance of a page that remains the primary search ranking factor, and fewer than 1% of site rankings are influenced by the site speed issues.
Check the Labs menu choice in your webmaster tools for more information.
Site performance
This page shows you performance statistics of your site. You can use this information to improve the speed of your site and create a faster experience for your users. Learn more
Performance overview
On average, pages in your site take 0.3 seconds to load (updated on Feb 1, 2010). This is faster than 99% of sites. These estimates are of low accuracy (fewer than 100 data points). The chart below shows how your site’s average page load time has changed over the last few months. For your reference, it also shows the 20th percentile value across all sites, separating slow and fast load times.
Page Speed suggestions
These are some example pages from your site and some suggestions on how to optimize them, based on the Page Speed tool.
NOTE: These suggestions are based on Googlebot’s view of the page. It is possible that resources are served
differently to your site’s users, in which case some of these suggestions may not be applicable. For better results, please install and run the Page Speed extension for Firefox yourself.
Net Syndicate can provide you with a website evaluation at no charge.
Contact 0845 009 5560 or go to our website at www.netsyndicate.co.uk
May 17, 2010 | Topic: Internet Marketing Companies, Search Engine Optimisation, Technocrati | 0 comments »
Many companies use email marketing, but what tips will make our campaign successful?
A lot of companies use a sign up for a news letter or latest product information on their websites. Once you have captured these emails you can effectively use them within your email marketing campaign. An email to a list of people who have not expressed interest in your products or services is classed as spam. These emails will end up in a spam folder and can, in some instances, leads to a server being blacklisted.
Try these tips for a better email marketing campaign:-
- Give the email and unsubscribe option, their option to be taken of your email marketing list
- Address the email to a named person, personalise the email if possible
- Put the most important information at the top, give short snippets of information with links back to specific landing pages within your website
- Don’t make the email too long, get to the point quickly, review the copy, check grammar and spelling
- Don’t send out near a holiday period, or beginning and end of the week.
Email marketing can be a cost effective way of reaching your audience and drive traffic to your website.
Net Syndicate can help you make the most of digital marketing for your organisation.
Complete our form at: http://www.netsyndicate.co.uk/ to receive a free evaluation of your current digital marketing and the opportunities available to your organisation.
February 16, 2010 | Topic: Internet advertising, Technocrati | email marketing | 0 comments »
Digital marketing is the new battleground for brands and those that embrace online marketing can grow their brand quicker and at a lower cost.
Consumers are driving this shift to digital marketing and major brands are responding.
This is particularly true within the 18 to 30 age group,where traditional advertising channels such as TV and print are becoming less effective. The following link outlines this well.
“Southern Comfort pours entire media budget into digital”
Their entire budget favours online properties such as Facebook, Spin, Faber, Pitchfork and Hulu.
To read the full article from Advertising Age, click the link below.
http://adage.com/article?article_id=138202
Governments are also moving to capitalise on the opportunities digital marketing offers.
“The Government’s spending on digital marketing increased by 84% to £40M in 2008-2009. Continuing a series of rapid increases.” To read the full article from Kable, follow the link below.
http://www.kable.co.uk/coi-digital-marketing-spend-21jul09
Net Syndicate can help you make the most of digital marketing for your organisation.
Complete our form at: http://www.netsyndicate.co.uk/contact/evaluation to receive a free evaluation of your current digital marketing and the opportunities available to your organisation.
August 6, 2009 | Topic: Internet Marketing Companies, Internet advertising, Technocrati | Digital marketing, Internet marketing | 0 comments »
The HTML Title tag is one of the most important factors in search engine optimisation, yet it is often overlooked or used incorrectly. A well written Title tag can support search engine rankings and also increase the clickthrough rate to the website.
The Title tag should be included in the ‘head’ code section of every website page and remains one of the key elements within the SEO factors on a website and page. There are 2 reasons for this - firstly, because a still plays an important role in keyword targeting, and secondly because the text that’s included in the Title tag also forms the hyperlink from the search engine results page. In addition, this text also appears in the browser bar when a user views the page, although the length of the tag is important in both of these cases as the number of characters being displayed will be limited by Internet Explorer and also by Google within the ranking results.
Websites should be built with this in mind and not just reflect the page name (such as ‘Home Page’ or ‘About Us’) or will use a generic wording throughout the site (such as ‘Welcome to XYZ Company’). This is really missing a great opportunity to improve the ranking potential of a site, whereby the targeted optimisation of different search terms throughout all pages of the site should be driven by the page content and the focused use of 2 or 3 search phrases in the Title tag.
The selected phrases should also be reflected in the description tag and the body content of the page, including headlines where appropriate. This will give the website a better opportunity to rank well for relevant terms in its market, although the tag may need to be adapted and tested in different ways to establish the best possible ranking position that can be achieved at the time.
You may see an immediate impact coming from some basic changes to the Title tags, whereas others will need to work harder on getting this optimisation factor to work well with the rest of the site.
Contact www.netsyndicate.co.uk for a free website evalutaion.
April 23, 2009 | Topic: Search Engine Optimisation | Add new tag | 0 comments »
I was visiting a client recently and he asked me what were the key factors he needed to consider for search engine optimisation?
While you’ll never totally know how the search engines work, there are a number of important elements that lead to higher rankings. I summarised them for him as:
Keywords Selection and Use
• Keywords in the title tag
• Keywords mentioned in the body tag
• Keywords in H2-H6 headline tags seem to have a greater influence than H1 headline tags
• Keywords in bold or strong tags seem to have an effect
• Keywords in image file and alt tags
• Website that have keywords in domain name improve rankings
Web pages that use few parameters in the URL (?id=123, etc.) or no parameters at all rank higher
Inbound links of quality, Google rank 4 +(top links usually have 4 times as many as position 11).
Good Html Body Copy/txt – focus on what matters to visitors
HTML Page Titles
Ensure website doesn’t stop crawling
Age of domain.
He looked at me and said that seems a whole lot of work!
No I said, make a plan to spend 3 to 4 hours a week over the next three months and cover the above items. But remember, search engine optimisation is an on-going process. Once the main actions are done, monitor the results and tweak the website. then aim to spend an hour or so a week on optimisation.
I’ll let everybody know how he gets on.
David
December 19, 2008 | Topic: Search Engine Optimisation, Technocrati | Add new tag, optimisation, seo | 0 comments »
E-consultancy have published their annual Digital Rate Card Survey.
Small and medium sized businesses are still dominant in the digital marketing sector, with more than half of all agencies having fewer than 10 employees. A relatively small proportion of digital agencies are located outside of London, with the Midlands being relatively poorly represented.
The daily rate for Directors of online marketing businesses outside the South East averages £802 per day.
The report includes daily rates by agency size for a number of different roles. For small agencies the average daily charge out rate seems to be averaging around the £575 mark.
Technical roles: £577
Online marketing strategists: £575
SEO consultants: £588
PPC consultant: £572
Digital marketing remains a high growth sector with agencies projecting to grow their turnover by 28% year on year in 2008.
Ashley Friedlein, CEO of E-consultancy, comments: “With 11% of UK agencies reporting growth of 100% or more, year on year, optimism within this thriving sector is well-founded”.
July 30, 2008 | Topic: Internet Marketing Companies, Search Engine Optimisation | digital agencies, Internet marketing | 0 comments »
What is Internet Marketing?
• Devise your Business Strategy
• Good website design and coding
• Quality Content, regularly updated
• Communicating with your market
With the main objective being to increase relevant visitors and maximise conversion rates.
No. 1 Business Strategy
Define your strategy, the business purpose, market segment, website purpose, performance criteria, metrics and budget.
No. 2 Website Design and Coding
Design and navigation issues, usability, calls to action, fit for purpose.
Page coding, on-site optimisation, page headers, titles, image tags etc.. set up metrix.
Auto responders:- incentives to join, sign-up, minor/major sale, relationship building.
No. 3 Content Management
Specific keyword and phrase research and selection.
Content building, regularly updated, integrated with blog technology.
No. 4 Communication
Using the following techniques:-
• Blog technology
• Press releases
• Link Building/directories
• Article submission
• Social networks
• E-mail broadcasts
• Pay per click and on-line marketing/advertising
• Monitor results and Analyse visitors.
Using the 4 key areas above, implement a 13 or 26 week plan which is regularly monitored and amended as dictated by the results and measures in place.
