Being a marketing manager, or ecommerce manager means you need to make decisions about what channels to invest in, or rather, what channels to convince your boss into investing in. SEO can be a strange channel to explain to old school Bosses. It doesn’t follow traditional advertising channels like Magazines, TV and Pay Per Click.

SEO is about increasing your natural visibility in the search landscape, meaning free traffic (each click costs £0) for years to come after the initial investment (sometimes there may be a maintenance fee in competitive markets).

We though it would be great to tell you about one of our clients Bright Assessing winning the Small Business of the Year Award in the Pride of Stratford Awards 2012. We would just like to say a massive congratulations
to Bright and the team for achieving this award. It’s great to be a part of your marketing efforts.

More about Bright

Bright Assessing part of the Bright International Training Group specialise in delivering assessor, verifier and teacher training to the highest standards achievable to employers and colleges internationally. They help to develop your teaching career to ensure it’s a bright one. Bright Assessing are there every step of the way, right from your first day all the way through to the completion of your first candidate. Not only this they are there to help and support you all throughout your career.

Bright have become the UK’s leading Further Education training company always striving to be the best – a claim supported by their completion and retention rates which are up to 90% higher than the national average.

Bright also delivers other training services such as:

• PTLLS, CTLLS & DTLLS training
• NVQ Training
• International Training
• Soft Skills and Leadership Training

More about the Pride of Stratford Small Business of the Year Award

Every year Stratford District come together to celebrate the best achievements in business and the community for that year and this was no exception in 2012. Prestigious awards are presented to only the best businesses, individuals and organisations in the District.

Bright Assessing were voted and were the winners of the Small Business of the Year Award 2012. Judges were looking for a business that had a clear plan and ability to demonstrate the achievement of business objectives. Not only this the winning business must have a clear understanding of the needs of the customers and market. Bright Assessing shone through and ticked all the boxes and took the award at the end of the night.

 

What type of seo service is best for my business?

The answer to this question depends on many things such as in-house knowledge of SEO, and by knowledge I do not mean someone saying ‘I will have a go at that’ or even ‘Yes I can do that’ but someone in-house who has a proven track record of SEO achievements that show definitive highly ranked results in a competitive market on high traffic search terms, and secondly that they have the time available to spend on the promotion, unless you have these things available you will need to look at choosing a SEO company to help get you your ranking results.

Lets look at the other options available to you if you don’t have specialist knowledge in-house or insufficient time available to manage the campaign if you do.

1. Onsite seo package / service / software.

Onsite SEO consists of setting the site up so that when the search engines read the site they understand what search terms you are targeting with each of the pages, this also includes making the site as SEO ‘friendly’ as possible, by creating friendly url’s for example – the TEKnet ‘SEO’ page url is – www.teknet.org.uk/seo , we have named the page that to re-enforce the fact that that page is related to ‘seo’ the original page url was called – www.teknet.org.uk/pageid=&17 which is not relevant to the page content or search term we are targeting. The onsite seo is important to any promotion and has to re-enforce any offsite campaign but it is important to remember that onsite seo alone will not gain you rankings in a highly competitive market.

2. Offsite seo package / service / software

Offsite SEO consists of setting up links to a website based on the search terms that you are targeting, this is a crucial part of any campaign and how you build links is very important to the overall success of a campaign. Not all links add value, and where they come from also affects how much value they add to your page, as does how many other links are on the outbound page and how relevant the content is to the target search.
This is why you need to be very careful about SEO packages, services and software. With bronze, silver, gold packages for example, how do you know which ones will suite your requirement? They may show lists of links and articles etc but how many do you need to compete with your chosen search terms? It is very difficult or even impossible to understand the effectiveness of these types of packages without more information and knowledge to understand what you are trying to achieve and what needs to be done to catch up and overtake the sites already at the top of those searches.
The software solution is also fraught with danger because if you do not have enough base knowledge to understand SEO then no matter how good the software chances are the overall promotion will not work.

3. Linkbuilding

Again link building is another possible route to unsatisfactory results, unless the on-site seo is correct and you have analysed the requirement correctly to ensure that you don’t just catch up but overtake the highest ranked sites there is a possibility the link purchase may not work. You still need to factor in the different values of the links that you are generating in comparison to your competitors and any work that they are doing at the same time (A quick look only gives you a snapshot of that point in time and not how fast they are progressing) plus you also need to factor in the age of the results you are viewing at the time of comparison (Most analysis tools use old data for analysis).

I believe that link building services can be effective but only if you have advanced SEO skills, your on-site seo is up to speed and you know what your competitors are doing in detail.

4. Bespoke service

For most companies that do not have sufficient time or skills available in house I feel that a bespoke service is likely to get you the best results.

Bespoke services include all aspects of SEO, firstly making sure that you are targeting the correct search terms that will deliver traffic and results when you are visible, secondly they will ensure that the on-site SEO is all correct and also targeting the chosen search terms in the correct way, thirdly they will look at your competition on those terms and monitor them to ensure enough work is being done link building to both catch and overtake your competitors within the agreed timescales of the promotion.

TEKnet only offer bespoke service to our clients for exactly these reasons, after nearly 18 years in the industry I know that I cannot match every business requirement with 4 package types and even several promotions in the same field can be very different from one another, therefore the only way to gain measurable results for every client is to take every promotion as ‘different’ and create a bespoke tailored solution to give that client the best results possible for their budget within the agreed timescales.

To find out more about TEKnet’s bespoke approach to digital marketing please contact us today.

Julian Salmon
Managing Director
TEKnet

FREE website re brand with every SEO campaign over £500 per month.

When we start any SEO campaign with any client we want to ensure your website is able to convert all of the traffic were going to be throwing your way! Which is why we have decided for JANUARY we will re brand, edit and tweak your current website to ensure everything is perfect to convert that much needed traffic into sales, clients and prospects for your business.

Take a look below at some simple changes we can make to help re brand your website!

Click image to enlarge

You can see on the above image that changing the logo, graphical banners, colour schemes and calls to action can make a hell of a difference between a good website and a GREAT one!

So if your looking to not only improve your visibility within the search engines but are also stuck for ideas on a website re brand for 2012 then let us help you! Lets help your customers find you and turn traffic into sales!

Joe Taylor
Digital Marketing Strategist
0845 8 388 488 EXT 407

Earlier last month I started working on a Conversion Rate Project with one of my client’s and WOW the results were astonishing!

We’ve been working on Search Engine Optimisation for this client for sometime now and achieved top rankings for all of the keywords we have been targeting. We have seen significant organic traffic increases and other than planning a longer tail keyword strategy (which I’m just working on) we are pretty much dominating there organic market. So the next question was… “What is going to be the biggest growth for this business in 21012?”

Our Answer? Conversion Rate Optimisation

For those of you that are reading this and wondering what Conversion Rate Optimisation is, then you should head over and check out our CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation) page.

Ok so it’s not 2012 yet and CRO is nothing new to us but we were itching to get started on this project.
We started off by establishing what a “Goal” was for their business and here they are (in priority order):

• Locker Creator
• Call
• Request a Call
• Contact Us
• Download Brochure

Click image to enlarge

A pretty obvious change right? We split tested our new variation against the current home page by sending half of the website traffic to each. See the results below.

Click image to enlarge

We’re currently running lot’s more tests with this client and completely analysing there whole marketing and buying funnel. I will keep you updated.

Joe Taylor – Digital Marketing Strategist

P.S One word of advice. Never implement a gut feel change without testing, testing a bit more and testing again. You may loose and reduce conversions. The key to increasing conversions is the test’s! We know what to test, what to analyse and how to come up with proposed changes which are more likely to have a positive effect.

A question that I have pondered on every time I have paid out for new IT infrastructure, servers, RAID, daily onsite and live offsite backup systems, then, today it all paid off…..

Whilst everyone was working away this afternoon we suddenly experienced problems on the network and then it went down completely, we started off with the usual re-boots throughout the offices but discovered it was far more serious when the server would not boot up again. Upon further investigation we found out that the main data hard drive had fried itself losing all data stored, basically everything in the business!

Due to having the correct equipment in place we were back up and running within 20 minutes, the main hard drive of the server was mirrored via a RAID controller to a second identical hard drive within the server so we did not lose any data whatsoever with the crash. Even if we had lost both drives we have an onsite daily backup routine meaning we had everything up to close of business yesterday on tape internally and once that had been restored we could then have called down todays new and changed documents from our online offsite backup provider meaning again we would have lost nothing.

It is so important to have these systems in place to protect your business that cost is almost a secondary issue, I dread to think of the financial cost to us here of losing all our data, let alone the physical cost of trying to re-build the business almost from scratch!

Note to self: “don’t moan about cost of systems again, they are worth it”

Julian Salmon
Managing Director
TEKnet

How did we get on I hear you ask? Did you get a trainer? Do you have an apprentice at all?

Let me finish the story and bring you up to speed with what happened….

Having been told by the second provider that we had a ‘key skills’ gap and our candidate needed to complete a 3 month course in a few days we set about trying to get a provider and him booked on a course, we found a provider in Walsall and booked him in for an induction, this was not a simple process as they did not seem to understand that we needed this done quickly. After a very long conversation with many different people there we managed to get him an assessment meeting for the following Monday (1 week prior to the course start date). The candidate went in and sat an assessment test, which he passed and they then charged me £80 + VAT for the course and issued him a certificate. I don’t know about you but I felt cheated – to ask me to pay for a full course when all they did was assess him and tell me his skills were OK.

Having got him through that he started college the following week on what was meant to be a 1 day per week course however when he actually turned up for his first day he was told that the course was full and so he needed to be enrolled on another similar course but this would be 2 days per week instead of the agreed 1, again I was not happy but accepted it as it was an all or nothing deal, no other providers available and term had already started. They could not see why I was bothered at all and did not even apologise for the change which was more than a little frustrating to both myself and the candidate.

Anyway the final outcome is that we now have a candidate who is on a level 4 IT course at a local college, fully funded training for the 2 year course and an open place at Birmingham University following that should he wish to take it, (and if I get my way, he will!).

End of story I hear you say? Well not quite!

Whilst all of this was going on the first training provider had been trying to get me to take another candidate through them, they re-advertised the position and submitted a list of candidates however they also sent over a table of charges for the courses, as follows –

16-18 Year old Candidates are fully funded and no Employer Contribution is required.
19-24 candidate that a 50% employer contribution of £ 3500.00 for level 2 or £ 5500.00 for level 3 Programme would be required.
25+ Candidate also incurs a 50% employer contribution £2800 for level 2 or  £ 4400.00 for level 3

I nearly hit the floor with shock and immediately called every college within reasonable travelling distance from our offices, and what do you know? not one of them would charge anything for any of these courses we were looking at.

This was upsetting on so many levels but here are a couple of the bigger ones-

If the government have capped tuition fees at £9000.00 per year for universities starting next year how come it is acceptable for a local college to charge £11,000.00 for a level 3 ICT course? £2000.00 per year more than Oxford or Cambridge University!!! That can’t be correct!!!

And secondly – this one left a worse taste in my mouth to be honest – this is discriminatory against 19-24 year old candidates due to the costs involved, surely the cost per candidate to run a course is the same regardless of their age!!! Not here apparently.

I was so shocked that I called them and arranged a meeting with them and a NAS representative to talk through my concerns. The meeting date came around quickly and when they all turned up we sat down in the boardroom to discuss my concerns. I explained that I had spoken to all the other colleges in the area and checked prices with each and none of them wanted to charge me at all, also brought up the fiasco with the first candidate and obviously their commitment to him as someone who wanted to work and be on the program (They seemed to be more interested in training someone else than getting training for him as the right candidate).

I received no real answers from anyone but I was told that they appreciated the feedback and would pass it on up the relevant channels, I did get that each college has a set of guidelines from which to work but freedom in how they are interpreted. Useless guidelines then! is how I interpret that!

Overall then, a complete nightmare from start to finish, BUT! And this is a massive BUT!

The candidate we have taken on is fantastic, he has fitted in with the team and his work ethic and skills already are amazing, I am so glad that I persevered with this process as I know that I have found a great asset for my business and clients moving forward.

And that is my final note on apprenticeships really, try and work through all the red tape and hassle of the process because there are some shining stars out there in need of opportunity and a chance to prove themselves, they need a chance now more today than ever before and if nurtured correctly can be future assets to any business!

Julian Salmon, MD

Seo Campaigns Usually Start With The Head Terms

Most SEO campaigns start off with a handful of keywords, some competitive and some not so, based on search volume from certain SEO tools. Once the SEO campaign is underway the website will start to get increased traffic and decent rankings, depending on how good the SEO company is

The website will not only start to receive traffic from the handful of keywords that are proposed in the initial planning of the campaign, but also from a plethora of related keywords. Once the site is established and has been building links for a significant amount of time you can expect the ‘longtail’ to be responsible for 70%+ of the overall website traffic. The 10 or so head terms you were originally targeting will be bringing in about 30%.

The Longtail Is More Important

Long Tail image from Shunt Money

So this really flips around the importance of those head terms onto the long tail terms. The long tail terms are generally more targeted than head terms.Someone searching for ‘Widget’ is considerably less qualified to buy than someone who is searching for ‘Red Widget That Makes Noises’. The person searching for ‘Red Widget That Makes Noises’ is probably searching with one hand, because the other one is holding a credit card.

But… This Doesn’t Mean Ignore The Head Terms

You’re ranking for all these ‘long tail’ terms because they are related longer phrase variations of the head terms. By link building for the parent or seed term, you are indirectly helping the variations rank. So it is a great idea to hook your link building strategy around the head terms (obviously mix your anchor text), with a view to maximize the long tail traffic using a lot of content that contains a lot of related phrases on the targeted pages.

Link Build To The Head Terms, But Use Content To Maximize The Long Tail

You should make sure your targeted pages include long tail phrases and terms. It’s infeasible to link build to every single long tail anchor text, it’s also a bit pointless looking at traffic for each separate long tail phrase (they are so minimal). You should use a mix of common sense and very quick keyword research to decide what terms to include in your content. I usually try and target 10-15 variations on each of my target pages. It may be an idea to create extra pages if you don’t want to clutter your money pages with content.

It is best site practice to make sure every page on your site has great content, including long tail phrases and variatons.

Keyword Modifiers To Qualify Buyers (Secret Sauce Of The Blog Post)

Whatever your product is, it will have some modifiers that qualify buyers in the market. These are the perfect longtail searches! For most ecommerce markets it is the following:

• Cheap
• Order
• Buy
• Purchase
• Online
• Shop
• Delivery
• Deals
• Offers
• Review
• Comparison
• Vouchers
• Best

So shouldn’t these keywords be included in our content? Hell yeah, these keywords are the most important longtails of all! The searcher is TELLING US they want to buy, and these searches exist, even if Google tells you they have no searches. Just trust me on this one

Cheap widgets
Order widgets
Buy widgets
Purchase widgets
Online widgets
Shop widgets
Delivery widgets
Deals widgets
Offers widgets
Review widgets
Comparison widgets
Vouchers widgets
Best widgets

If Nothing Else, Include Keyword Modifiers In Your Content To Catch Some Long-Tail BUYING Traffic.

Do this today, and your website will make more money.

If you liked this post share it on Twitter and what not

Cheers

JoeD, SEO

About 3 weeks ago now Google released a new search engine update in an attempt to make online search more secure. This has been referred to as the Google SSL Encryption Update.

You will have probably noticed already in your Google analytics that one of your keyword referrals will be (not provided). If you haven’t noticed, check your analytics account carefully!

(not provided) will soon be the worlds most converting keyword accross all websites, industries and platforms. With this in mind we decided to purchase the domain name www.notprovided.co.uk

Why am I seeing the (not provided) keyword?

What this means is that when users are signed into a Google account like Gmail, when they make a search query this will now be made through a secure connection (https). If that search query leads the user to an organic results then the keyword referral data will no longer be provided in Google analytics. Instead you will be provided with the keyword (not provided).

Read more about the Google SSL Encryption Update and how the keyword (not provided) has in increased in analytics across some of our clients.

Help stop Google – Sign the petition!

This issue is only going to rise and rise and the keyword (not provided) will only become more common. It will effect website owners, content publishers and online business owners all over the world! Please help to voice our dissatisfaction by signing the (not provided) Google Petition.

Joe Taylor – Digital Marketing Strategist

We get asked this question all the time. Although we are very selective with our clients and like to work with larger companies, we do often work with local companies (because we like bringing local businesses on the web). Quite often the local businesses don’t have a ‘marketing department’ or anyone that already ‘gets it’. So a lot of questions get asked in the initial stages of preparing the campaign.

This post is to help small businesses out there who are looking for SEO services, to give you more of an understanding how legitimate SEO companies operate. It will also give you an idea of a good mindset to have when planning an SEO campaign for your business. The metrics and KPI’s you have in mind for success may not be the right ones. (Being #1 for a search term should not be your KPI.)

When Will My Site Be #1?

The question shouldn’t be ‘When will my site be #1?’, because who can answer this? Anyone that can is lying. The only people that potentially could is the guys over at Google.

The question should be ‘When will I start seeing leads, sales and more business in general from our SEO efforts?’

This is a better question that we can estimate a reasonable answer. We say within 90 days we can expect to start seeing results: More traffic, more leads and sales, and higher rankings of course.

Some SEO companies do not guarantee anything, and openly admit there are no certainties in SEO. This is also a sign of a legitimate SEO company.

Legitimate SEO companies follow best practices, and add value to your site. No SEO companies work with or for Google, and no SEO companies can guarantee positions.

REMEMBER: It’s about your website’s sales and leads. Not the #1 ranking for a specific term. You may be #7 for that specific term, but between #3 and #1 for plethora of other ‘long tail’ terms. These long tail terms put together will equal a  lot of highly converting traffic. Look at your sales and leads from the web before slating an SEO service for not getting you #1 for a specific term – but these success metrics and KPI’s should be discussed in great detail before the campaign starts.