Despite the Credit Crunch, Internet trading seems to be holding up, with 10% Christmas online spending growth predicted this year by Deloittes. I hope this pattern carries through to your own business, and hope that by next year we are looking at a brighter business scene for everyone.
For us, we end the year on a high, having maintained our position as the only low price SEO company in TopSeos Top 10 list – see section (4) below.
In the meantime, I and the Net Commerce team send you best wishes for a Happy Christmas, and the best possible 2009 for all of us.
1.NET ISSUES
Significant issues that could impact on your website approach
Article Marketing – how to use it effectively
a) Understand your purpose - the aim is not to show your command of your subject but to write an article that will be accepted and read, and provide links back to your own site.
Good quality articles are an important source of content for many web sites, particularly ezines, (article hosting sites) and such sites will accept, and host articles containing a link back to your site.
Those links back are a wholly valid way to grow your link volumes and build your site Page Rank. Moreover, visitors may follow the link to the full article on your site.
b) Put the article on your own site – this creates fresh, keyword-strong material for your site which will help your Google rating (Google assess sites with a steady flow of new content more highly than those which change rarely).
The version of the article on your site should be longer, and hold more detail than the version you submit to the ezines – this extra content adds additional interest for your site visitors, and demonstrates your competence. As an example, see the full version of this article on our articles page.
c) Don’t rely solely on Article Marketing - you should follow other link building and site promotion actions, including reciprocal links, directories, and online press releases.
d) Use only high quality article hosting sites – the key step is to find good quality article hosting sites. These will carry articles with good content, and will typically have a good Page Rank of their own. Such sites specify their article submission guidelines clearly.
In many sectors there are a few knowledge sites, or portals, which carry articles and possible sector news. Finding these sites however can be hard going. Additionally, they often require articles to be submitted by email, rather than via automated processes – this can be very time consuming.
For most site owners, it may be best to just create the base article, and then ask a web promotion company like ourselves to actually submit the articles.
e) Prepare your submission material– for each article, collate your submission material before you make any submissions. Typically this can be a Word doc which holds the article, a brief article summary, a brief author bio and image, the keyword list, and HTML links.
Prepare also a version of the article in Notepad, in case the article hosting site require this format. With the material assembled, and the material in paragraph (f) to hand, you can
submit each article very quickly, mainly just copying and pasting the text from the Word doc or Notepad.
f) Be careful with your data – prepare a spreadsheet to hold details of the article hosting sites including author name, user name, and password. Note the key submission rules and link formats permited by each article site. This does take time, but when completed, your author accounts can be quickly opened, and articles submitted very efficiently.
We have extensive experience of this promotional option – just contact us if you wish to pursue it.
2. NET HAPPENINGS
News, themes and trends from the Internet – home and abroad
Digital channels are still developing strongly.................
Text messaging - In Q3 2008 volumes reached 6.5 billion per month, ie c217m text messages are being sent daily in UK. Figure has increased by 38% on 2007 levels. (themda.org)
Mobile web use – the number of Britons accessing the web via their phones grew by 25% during H2 2008 to a figure of 7.3m. This compares with growth of only 3% in the number using PCs to access the web. (Neilsen Mobile)
Time Online – Europeans spend on average 12 hours per week online – the figure has grown by 36%, from 8.8 hours per week in 2004. (EIAA/nma.co.uk)
Social Networking – Facebook had 14.2m unique users in August (versus Bebo at 5.0m users. (Nielsen Online/nma.co.uk)
Online Shopping Update - UK growth continues............
• forecasts for UK 2008 online Christmas spending growth range between 10/15% (Cap Gemini/Deloittes) and 39% (Verdict Research/nma.co.uk)
• UK internet shopping spend is likely to reach £44bn by 2012 (Verdict)
Internet Promotion – shift to new media continues…....
• online advertising income in the UK is predicted to increase by 26% during 2008,reaching c£3.6bn pa. By contrast TV ad spend is likely to reduce during the year (endersanalysis.com).
• this would mean that online advertising revenues will surpass TV ad spend for the first time, and become the largest advertising outlet in UK.
• paid search, particularly with Google, will be over half the £3.6bn total.
3. NET TIPS
Some hints you could consider
Google is king – but don’t overlook other engines – with over 80% share, Google clearly matter most. But other search engines where competition for keywords is lower now provide good Cost Per Click value. Thus, Yahoo/MSN should also be used within the mix of PPC providers - typically, we do include them within our PPC programmes.
Natural Search Results – recent data (Axandra/iProspect) shows that 60% of web users select a natural (unpaid) search result in preference to a paid search result.
Although we run many PPC programmes, and business spend on PPC is increasing strongly, we have many years experience in natural search management – see our Pay Per Click section.
4. NCS FOCUS
News and services from NCS that might help
NCS ranked in the UK top 10 organic search engine optimisation companies – the ranking is given by TOPSEOs.com, a well known independent authority site on search vendors – NCS held this position between August and December and is the only low price UK company within the top 10.
Multilingual/International Sites - we act regularly for internationally-based clients, providing them with multilingual text, as required, for all or part of the site. Recent sites
include clients or activities in US, Morocco, Ireland, China, Portugal, France. We always use professional translators whose home tongue is the target language.
However, it is essential for the website developer to know enough of the target language to be able to put the translated text to proper use. NCS uses people fluent in French, German, Italian and Spanish, to ensure the translated text is used in the right way.
As part of this we have set up International Pay Per Click processes e.g. for UK, Germany France and Spain - contact us if you intend to extend the reach of your own business.
Add Call Back to your site– we have recently added call back functionality to client sites – initial feedback is positive – let us know if you think this could help your contact processes.
VAT rate change - many people without a regular website development company found the VAT rate change problematic. All VAT rate changes sought by NCS customers were
completed on time without fuss. If NCS are not yet managing your website, just call us on the number below.
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.
