As we show in (2) below, online sales are already far surpassing last year’s levels. However, we highlight in our lead section that the hurdles to getting a share of this are being steadily raised, with the rewards going increasingly to those who can manage their sites most actively.

We hope that – possibly with a little help from us! – you are part of this process, and that the continued strong upswing in online activity helps to push your own figures along, both now and in the New Year.

In the meantime we send you, and all our clients, every good wish for a Happy Christmas, and a successful 2006.

1. NET ISSUES
Important issues that could impact on your website approach

Managing your web site ranking

Google, Google…….– they increasingly dominate internet coverage. This simply reflects that the visibility (ranking) of websites is arguably becoming a more critical competitive factor than website design and development.

Google’s recent announcements, particularly the Jagger changes (see (5) below), all place a premium on going beyond simply building reciprocal links, to achieve a good results ranking. Increasingly, sustaining a high position in Google search results requires also:

• a higher proportion of non-reciprocal links – these can include both paid, and non paid directories – good quality directories can be extremely useful, and can help to reduce the proportion of reciprocal links.
• refresh your site content – Google reward those sites which show continual changes in their text and content.
• don’t just rely on old links – Google like to see a flow of new links as well as a good volume of well-established links.
• it is related links that matter – increasingly, relying on links from sites in non-related activities will be ineffective – you need links from sites whose activities relate closely to your own – the more closely related, the better.

Overall, to get strong positions in the search results, these issues now need to be managed more actively – if required, we can assist you in this, and in the detailed monthly position tracking, both of activity and ranking levels, which is needed.

2. NET HAPPENINGS
News, themes and trends from the Internet – home and abroad

Technology enablers still developing strongly…………….…………..……………

WAP – during 2005, WAP volumes are running at 24% higher than in 2005 – an average of c59m page impressions are served up each day (mda.org).

Text messaging – in the 3rd quarter of this year, 89m text messages were sent out on average each day in the UK. This underpins a forecast of a total of 32 billion messages in 2005! – up 25% on 2004 (mda-org).

Broadband – broadband adoption has doubled over the past year. Over 8m UK homes are now connected, and the UK now has a higher level of broadband penetration than the USA (iabuk.net).

Online Shopping Update - UK figures showing strong growth……………….….

• Latest online shopping figures show that online shopping is growing 130 times faster than high street sales. UK internet year-on-year shopping grew by 40% by October, while total retail sales for the month were up just 0.3% on October 2004 (imrg.org).
• PayPal report that the average UK shopper now spends £157 per month online – with men spending more (£175 pm) than women (£137 pm).

Internet Advertising – continued shift away from traditional media……….

• Internet advertising spend is soaring – the online ad spending has grown by 62% this year, compared to growth of only 3% in the total UK advertising spend.
• Online advertising spend now exceeds outdoor advertising, and radio ad spend (iabuk.net).

3. NET TIPS
Some hints you could consider

Local Search Marketing – locality features increasingly in web searches. On all new sites where the local dimension is critical, we put the address and postcode in the footer of each page, and we now include the name of the city in the Title tag.

Page rank matters – we can readily tell any of our clients how they can quickly track the page ranking of their own site and their competitors’ – despite many Google changes the Page Rank indicator is still an invaluable indicator of progress towards getting a higher position in search results which will increase your targeted visitor volumes

Articles count – articles can be a useful source of inbound links. Many sector sites and directories value knowledge-based articles highly. If you provide an article of this nature, those sites will often give you a link from their site – as this is on a non-reciprocal basis, this carries extra weighting under Google’s current assessment process.

Designs can date – although content is always king, the look and feel of any site is critical, and designs do need refreshing over time. Are the colours too “solid?” Do the pages look too static? – would revolving graphics, or dissolving images increase the visual interest? We use an increasing range of visual features in our new designs, (whilst avoiding excessive use of Flash which can hamper search engines).

4. NCS FOCUS
News and services from NCS that might help

NCS Managed Search Engine Marketing – site owners increasingly need to manage their site positions actively. NCS can assist in this by insourcing the management of the site ranking.

We now manage the sites of a number of clients on this basis, and provide detailed monthly assessments and actions to help them sustain a high position in the rankings. We are happy to provide fuller details of the basis of our approach and the costings which apply – in the meantime, just click here to see further details

Multilingual Site Copy – we are seeing an increase in the number of sites which use foreign language copy. This varies from foreign language product details, to individual country pages. Via our translation partners, we are able to provide the translation also, and can easily incorporate these within the structure of the site.

5. NET NOTHINGS
You probably already know that:

The Jagger Update does not refer to a pop idol – it is a set of significant algorithm changes introduced by Google during last Sept-Oct. Very briefly, it rewards sites which have high quality link programmes, and correct and ethical optimization.

Inbound links matter for your site ranking and position – but you may not know that Microsoft had 29 million inbound links the last time we looked – it shows how seriously they take link building!

“Cloaking” is not just winter attire – it is a system of showing web pages to the search engines that differ from those shown to web surfers. It can deliver short term ranking improvements. Equally, though, should Google detect this on a site – as is quite likely - they may well delist the site in question. Like other unethical optimization techniques, it should be avoided!

Developments in web marketing, site design, and web services  

Social Networking and Mobile web use remain the two liveliest
issues in Web marketing currently - good use of both is a platform for getting better value from your site.  In the next issue, we give an action check list on Social Networking, so this month we lead on Mobile web use – I hope the article and the rest of the content help you win more users for your site.

1 NET ISSUES
Significant issues that could impact on your website approach

Using Mobile access to bring more visitors to your site

Use this approach to increase your site traffic through Mobile web access:

a) Scale of web usage - using mobiles to access the web has stepped up sharply over the past year  - according to Scoot UK, web traffic from mobile devices increased by over 4000% in the last 18 months.  Apple hold by far the greatest share of this - their devices now handle more than 70% of mobile traffic on the web.

Even a year ago nearly 70% of i–phone users visited web sites via their phone on a daily basis.

b) Most popular uses - the most popular use of mobiles on the web is for email (59% of users); news headlines (46%) and social networking (41%)

c) Web brands – the most popular web brands were Google (55%); Facebook (42%); BBCNews  (40%); E-bay (30%) and  YouTube (77%)

d) Trends - Gartner reported in May that, worldwide, smart-phone sales increased by 85% year-on-year, so web usage trend seems likely to continue growing.

Clearly website owners should consider carefully the extent of the need to tailor their sites to suit mobile phone visitors, and how best to do this.

e) Our Approach - NCS assesses the degree of mobile relevance for all sites we develop, especially potentially high usage sites, e.g. information only sites, forums, social networking,  sites addressing young user market.

Lower priority sites e.g. within certain industrial/commercial sectors will be identified also with, typically, a different technical solution being offered.  Optimal domain usage, i.e. whether .mobi is best option, or whether non mobile domains will be adequate, are considered also.

f) Technical solutions - the optimal technical solution will be considered, e.g. for simple sites– the existing web site will often suffice for majority of mobile phones, with minimal content change needed, and .mobi use not needed.

For complex sites, e.g. for mobile-relevant sites with high content levels, (e.g. offering a wide range of products) a .mobi domain may be appropriate; the text content may need simplification; use of the flash/javascript content of existing site may need removing and image formats may need changing.

We will consider with clients the optimal level of search spend, once the site is up, to achieve the necessary level of visibility for the site.

g) Cost - the cost of specifying and developing fully mobile-friendly sites depends on the profile of individual sites.  In some instances an effective solution can be delivered for minimal additional cost, as all requirements can be incorporated within the basic site specification.

In other cases it may be necessary to radically tailor the site content for mobile visitors - effectively a separate, mobile - orientated site is needed, although it can detect the mobile device and serve up a different set of pages suitable to them.

Under all options we closely tailor the price to reflect the work needed, with maximum re-use of existing content.

2. NET HAPPENINGS
News, themes and trends from the Internet – home and abroad

Mobile web usage - UK web traffic from mobile devices has increased by over 4000% in the last 18 months.  Apple hold by far the greatest share of this - their devices now handling more than 70% of all mobile traffic (scoot.co.uk).
                                               
Social Networking - Facebook remains dominant – in the US 50% of the population is now on Facebook (Dreamgrow.com) – followed by YouTube and Twitter.
 
Online Shopping Update  - UK online shopping is growing at 18% pa – the UK is Europe’s leading e-retail economy, with online sales likely to reach c£75bn in 2011 (imrg.org).  By contrast, overall retail sales have actually shown falls in recent months.

Internet Promotion – double digit growth in online advertising spend is expected in 2011 – being driven by higher social media use, video, and display advertising.  Paid search and mobile show strong growth also (nma.co.uk).

3. NET TIPS
Some hints you could consider

Use correct anchor text  - when you put links to pages on your site, use terms for the clickable link which are the terms people will use when searching in a Search Engine for that activity. e.g. if you are a golf equipment e-tailer, and want to link to your new products page, don’t use “our new products” for the link, but describe the page more specifically, for example, “latest golf hybrids and drivers” – Search Engines attach far greater weight to specific terms like these.

Having said this, it is also important to vary the anchor text in your links – so don’t put the same text in all your links.

Get a long tail – long tail keywords are those which have several words, not a single word as the search term. Recent research (axandra.com) has highlighted that long tail keywords are much more likely to result in a sale than more general ones and often have less competition from other sites.

Thus, you will get both better conversion rates and more visitors if you focus on long tail keywords, rather than a single word, for your keyword.

Get on top  - research (optify.net/axandra.com) has confirmed that if you get to the top positions on page 1 of Google, you not only get more clicks (the top 3 get 60% of the clicks), but you get a higher click through rate. Optify conclude that if you you double your site promotion spend to get to from 2nd position to 1st, you might triple your visits for that keyword.

NCS has 10 years experience in Search Engine marketing, so please contact us  if you need help with this.

Think Firefox – the lastest Statcounter browsers statistics show that by May, Firefox held a share of 42% of browser usage -  Internet Explorer was below 25% with Google Chrome increasing to nearly 26%. Clearly, Web owners need to check that their sites operate effectively with each of these browsers.

4. NCS FOCUS
News and services from NCS that might help

New Sites – we have launched a number of sites since the last newsletter – just visit our News Release page for a sample or click on our Portfolio page to see a much wider selection of our work.

Content Development -  Google are reducing the rankings of shallow content sites, ie sites with minimal content. So be wary of relying on a minimal, passive, brochure site, to gain the search engine ranking you need. We have massive experience developing content for sites across a wide range of sectors – just approach us if you think your content needs enhancing.