Archive for the ‘Google’ Category

Google are now contacting Adwords account holders to attempt to help them to Improve their campaigns aka ‘spend more money with them’. I would take advantage of any such offer you receive

As a reminder, there is still time to take advantage of the free, personalized consultation offer from Google. During your one-on-one consultation, we can discuss ways to improve your AdWords account performance such as how to:

* Drive relevant traffic to your website
* Increase the number of leads without increasing your budget
* Use advanced AdWords features to optimize your account
* Easily manage and monitor your account

Please let me know if you’re interested by replying to this email and specifying a few days and times that work for you, as well as the best number to reach you at.

I look forward to working with you!

Client told me recently they have been having some hard sell from a Adwords reseller that holds the lofty title of Premier Partner, the information they received from that partner is misleading and incorrect and is repeated in full here (with comments by delicious webdesign). After investigating their figures I found that in the last year the website has received less visits than claimed.

[message from Google Adwords Premier Partner] Please see attached the stats for your Google programme. Views are how many times the advert has appeared [Delicious Webdesign - shown as over 48,000] and CLICKS are visits to your website.[Delicious Webdesign - shown as 199 these figures are given over a 1 month period]

The only thing that maybe is stopping the user calling is that you only have MOBILE number on the website and NO ADDRESS so they cannot see where you are based ?????? [Delicious Webdesign - Address is on the site and its very shortsighted to say that they know the only thing that stops people calling is the lack of a landline number]

Maybe an idea to get a landline added and then divert it to your mobile. I know a builder who had the exact same issue and this definitely helped.

I have asked Yell to sort out the refund our end for the over payment. [Delicious Webdesign - no idea whats this is about]

Sorry about that. Let me know what you think about the landline ????

[Delicious Webdesign - message to client after he requested help ] Just checked your ‘real Google Analytics  Statistics’. The claim that the ‘clicks’ are visits to your website is incorrect as in the last 3 months your ‘real website stats report you have only had 18 visitors from Yell (you had the same amount from ebay!) .

My advice is as soon as you can stop paying for this advertising and will use your free £50 google adwords voucher and start your ads going on your own Google account.

Google currently sending this out to website owners that dont have an Analytics account associated with their site, interestingly we received one from a site that is not listed in webmaster tools, so does that mean Google is scraping email addresses from sites and cross referencing them against their Google Analytics account database?

We’ve noticed that you do not currently have a Google Analytics account linked to your AdWords account. Using Google Analytics gives you more visibility into your AdWords return on investment, as well as providing in-depth insights into how users interact with your website. Google Analytics is also completely free and can be accessed directly from your AdWords account.

When you use Google Analytics with AdWords, you are able to track the behaviour of visitors coming to your site from your advertising. This allows you to gauge the return on investment of your AdWords budget and optimise based on which campaigns are bringing in the most sales and leads on your website.

In addition to tracking your AdWords campaigns, Google Analytics can help you grow your business by identifying which geographical areas drive the best results for your business. You can then allocate your marketing budget and set your campaign location targeting accordingly.

Google Analytics can also help you to focus on areas of your site that could be improved to increase sales and leads. It shows you the pages on your site that have high exit rates which may indicate visitors are not finding what they want on the page, giving you the opportunity for improvement. In total there are over 80 reports within Google Analytics that can help you to track your return on investment and user interaction with your site.

If you already have a Google Analytics account, but have not yet linked it to an AdWords account, please follow our simple Help Centre instructions. To activate a new Google Analytics account today please click the link below where you can log into AdWords and select the ‘Reporting’ tab, followed by ‘Google Analytics’.

What do most people do when they need answers to problems, or need resources and inspiration?  Do they go to the Library, do they phone a friend or ask their mum?  No! They search on Google for answers.  So why not put yourself in front of them and provide some valuable resources so that they come to you!

But first you need to create something don’t you?  Once you have your website you need to be able to add content to it via a CMS system or a Blog.  If you’ve never written anything before, you might feel it’s a bit of a tall order, thats where we can take over this process and provide the content for you. Simply give us some guidelines about your services or news then we go away and write it in a search engine friendly way that allows Google to know what your offering and to give your website the best chance of ranking highly for your new service.

Always being asked how to get a website to rank higher well this video explains how search works and talks about the factors that determine where a site features in that search.

I found it a great video about search and hope you appreciate it as much as me

I got the long awaited email today saying that a website hosting company had “invited you to join him on Google+”. I had been looking forward to seeing Google’s new social network at its inception and as soon as I was signed in I invited my social circle and some work colleagues before exploring it.

The first time I found that I had a dilemma with Facebook was when my Mum wanted to be added to my friends on there. I thought about refusing but then accepted her only to put her in a list of other contacts I didnt really want looking at my wall or photographs. This is achievable in Facebook, but functionally its a  bit clunky using their privacy settings. Google+ is group centric out the box with the advent of ‘Circles’ in which you align your contacts into different groups or circles as soon as you invite them. I can see this will go someway to ensuring you keep your business and private life separate and will make the use of it more fluid. So my first impression of it was that it looks and works very well and on describing it to a Facebook friend I summed it up by saying its all about the circles in Google+ and its a perfect way to separate friends / work and family contacts.

I like the immediate inclusion of a chat client but would like to see it at the bottom of the page like MSN / Facebook chat.

Sparks initially seems useful its similar to Twitter and invites you to join Interests which broadly match the hashtag function of Twitter. Searching within Sparks gives you a Google Instant type search result.

The limited invite process is good for marketing but the only way this will succeed is if it gets a massive user base quickly.

Prediction for the future, facebook buys twitter and integrates it into its own ‘Sparks’ function.

Social Networking is going through its teen-years expect more turmoil.

This week I have taken two phone calls from clients that just wanted to tell me that they have noticed a big upturn in business inquiries through their websites, once company told me of 5 online orders in one day and one builder told me of 3 email inquires in one day. This has promoted me to write about our website promotion / improvement services otherwise known as SEO (Search Engine Optimiseation)

When we build a website, as standard practice we build it  in a search engine friendly way with some great search engine optimisation techniques, however there is so much more you can do with your website to boost your rankings. Google takes in over 200 factors when indexing websites and all these factors count towards your Google ranking. In general the more relevant content that the website has along with the more relevant links that it has tracing back to itself the higher you will be ranked. We have some excellent SEO packages to boost your website so you can get the maximum return from your website.

The most efficient way to increase the amount of business that you receive from your website is by making it grow naturally or ‘organically’. This natural growth can be achieved by spending time on your website by building it up and increasing the visibility of the website, which can be achieved in a variety of different ways. A few major things that should be done are: keyword research, content building semantic markup, optimisting the page titles, descriptions and headings, submitting your website to online directories, link building, creating sitemaps and submitting informative articles with links back to your website.

Basically the more search engine friendly your website is and the more you promote your website, the higher it will feature in the Search Engines. Google, Bing and Yahoo will see your website as being credible and will start to move you up the search engines and will therefore drive more traffic to your website. This natural method of improving your website is the most efficient and will give you better results over the long term, there are no hidden or quick fixes so it can be a lengthy process which doesn’t happen over night and it is a constant ongoing process to keep ahead of your competitors.

Our Search Engine Optimisation Packages are created to get your website achieving improved results in terms of increased visitor numbers and search engine rankings which will get your website the most exposure across all the main search engines (Yahoo, Google and Bing). All our SEO packages are mainly geared towards Google which is the most visited search engine in the world, and in the UK 70-80% of people use Google. You have a choice with our SEO packages which are designed to cater for the brand new website to established ecommerce websites in competitive areas. All our packages are created ultimately for website owners that want and need their site featured highly in the search engines for a variety of competitive search phrases. All of our SEO packages cover two essential factors of onsite and offsite SEO work. Success with search results relies on ensuring both onsite and offsite work is done in ‘harmony and all work needs to be completed to webmaster guidelines. Some of the offsite work relies on us leaving a variety of links / pointers and relevant / related information about your website throughout the internet. Whether it be from information articles through to directory listings We show you exactly what we do as part of our SEO packages so you can make an informed choice.

After initial SEO, monthly packages that include analytic reports are available for ongoing results.

If you want your website to be ranking highly and maybe on the first page of every Search Engine for a variety of competitive search term then good onsite and offsite SEO Techniques will help you get there. A SEO project from Delicious Webdesign normally follows a set of specific tasks that would be performed by us as your  SEO Company.

Search engines are one of the primary ways that Internet users find Web sites. That’s why a Web site with good search engine listings may see a dramatic increase in traffic.

We are a leading provider of affordable SEO services, dealing with companies in all sectors and have been performing SEO services since the days of Freeserve and Alta Vista.

Our SEO services include:
Content Writing
Link Building
Manual Directory Submissions
Paid Directory Listing
Blog Advertising Services
Forum Posting
Social Bookmaking Services
Article Writing
Article submission

Benefits of Our Service:
1 First of all we are an established and successful company so our stability and strength can be assessed from our long years in this business.
2 For us client satisfaction is of utmost importance, we are directly contactable so you can ask for any type of SEO support or advice or contact us for any clarifications or help.
3 We offer all white hat SEO services and products. (this means we do it as per Webmaster guidelines).
4 We give reports at every stage of your SEO project.

Please let me know if there is anything else you need from me to help you make your decision. Try us once, you won’t be disappointed, look here for our SEO program details.

Do you have a website but notice that you dont feature when you search for yourself and your local area? It maybe due to the fact that you havent got a Google Places account (previously called Local Business Center) setup.

Millions of searches are made for local businesses like yours every day on Google Maps, but how can you ensure that your business is included?

We can help customers find you on Google
On your behalf we can…

- Set up a dedicated listing via Google Places
- Add content to showcase your services
- Manage your listing ongoing
- Make sure people can find you on Google Ma

What will I get?
Your Google Places profile will include:
- Name and Address
- Description
- Categories
- Opening Hours
- Photo Gallery
- Video Upload

Contact us today to find out how we can get your local listing sorted on Google or how as part of our SEO program we can ensure you get your Google Local listing

Think its important to try to outline what you can expect from a new website in terms of search engine performance and visitor numbers as there are some people that have unrealistic expectations when it comes to how their website will perform when its build and then indexed by the search engines initially. The actual time it takes for the indexing of your website once submitted or ‘live’ on the Internet by the search engines depends where you put links to it, more established sites will get ‘crawled’ by the ‘bots’ more often and therefore if you have a link to the new site it will get discovered quicker. Its actually possible to have a live website for months and years before the search engines realise it exists as it may not have been submitted or may not have had links placed to it to aid the indexing.

Once you new website has been found and indexed by the search engines you cannot expect it to rank competitively for its targeted ‘search terms’ straight away as that would be unreasonable and unrealistic. You have to ask yourself when you search for something important that, would you want to find a website that was built and created yesterday, or alternatively would you want to be offered a website that has been built and improved over many years with many other websites giving it approval by ‘voting’ for it, by means of linking to it by having a ‘hyperlink’ from one of its own pages to the website in question. By giving this example you can see that the age of a website is an important factor and knowing this you can go forward with a strategy to help you get listed in the search engine results pages for your chosen search terms at a competitive level.

You could view the search engine ranking game as a race, a very long ‘unending’ race that you join at a walking pace when you enter it with you shiny brand new website. This new website is normally a small percentage of the size, in terms of page numbers and content, compared with established high ranking sites and has either none or very few links to it from 3rd party sites that give it that all important ‘vote of confidence’, that the search engines value so highly. You can try to address the balance by building more pages / content to your site then optimising or polishing those pages, this content will then go on to attract natural links from other websites, but this takes time and effort. Even if a site is launched with more valuable content and links than its competitors it will still normally not rank competitively for months if not years while the search engines determine the correct ranking position for it for its ‘search terms’. Additionally in the early months and years of a website being in the search engines its position fluctuates more than established / mature sites. As your site gains content and links the walking pace you started the race gives way to a gentle jog and as the years go past if you continue to add content and promote that content before you know it you will be running as fast as the rest.

We have found that the ‘website age’ aspect of the search engines algorithm becomes less of a negative factor once the site reaches the two year anniversary. Its probably that the engines have a sliding scale for website age that gives a larger credit (or reduces the negative impact) once it reaches 2 years of age. Perhaps, then smaller credits are awarded to it at subsequent anniversaries. Even though the domain age could be discovered (via whois lookup) its more likely that the search engines rely on their ‘crawling’ history of the domain to determine how long the website has been around.

Peoples expectations on what a website can achieve varies wildly but like most things in life the more you put into it the more you get out of it, meaning the more time and effort you put into building and promoting your website the higher it will naturally rise in the search engines bring in ‘free’ inquiries. When we get asked how many inquiries will a new website get initially, the answer is normally none within the first weeks and months, even if the client has us doing the website promotion / SEO project on their site, as new sites are held back slightly due to their age.

One strategy for ranking a website competitively in a short period is to concentrate on the local market instead of a region market. An alarm installation company that has a new website would not be able to rank among other established alarm company websites for the search term ‘alarms’ but maybe able to rank in their particular county or town for a geographically related service to their main business, so they should aim to be ranking for ‘alarm installation Essex’ or ‘Brentwood CCTV fitters’ instead of ‘alarms’ and ‘cctv’. These targetted / specific search terms are more likely to attract clients that want or need that service and as such will be more likely to convert these website visitors into paying customers. Of course there are more factors at play here and one big one is the ‘convertibility’ of the website meaning the power of the website to change a website visitor into a real client. For the majority of business brochure websites there is no point in having hundreds of daily visitors if they do not email you / send an inquiry or buy something from your website. How we convert these website visitors into clients is to be covered here shortly.

We cannot guarantee any top rankings initially once the site is launched and even as we mentioned above within the first weeks and months of a SEO project big gains may not be noticed, but the promotion of your new site is crucial to give it the very best chance of success. This is why we recommend that you get us to perform a SEO project on it and our Premium Plus Business Brochure site has this project built in to it which is one reason why this is our most popular package.