Copyright © 2010 I-COM International 2010-09-02T19:54:03+0100 2010-09-02T19:54:03+0100 http://www.i-com.net/blog/ Leading Manchester SEO, SEM and web design agency blog. http://www.i-com.net/blog/ http://i-com.net/images/icom-net.gif http://www.i-com.net/blog/ Leading Manchester SEO, SEM and web design agency blog. I-COM International blogmaster at i-com dot net I-COM International I-COM International en SEO, SEM, Web Design, Web Development 1440 http://www.i-com.net/blog/seo-superheroes-387/ I recently watched the movie Kick Ass and it got me thinking how a regular guy, with no super powers, can still make a difference. I then began to think how SEO consultants can be compared to superheroes like those in Kick Ass. In the world of SEO superheroes Google, Bing and Yahoo have replaced Gotham City, New York and Washington DC, and the SEO consultants have become the new superheroes. May I introduce Super SEO Boy, fearless protector of the Google SERPS, with the power of superior content writing and link building. Secondly theres PPC Girl, with the power to identify profitable and effective keywords. Finally the tremendous Social Media Man who communicates his brand, ideas and trending topics with thousands of online users each day. Through creating a super search engine friendly website that is packed with valuable content and keywords, the SEO superheroes create trust amongst the city search engines of Google, Yahoo and Bing, and therefore the people who are searching for your site or products.All Back to the I-COM Cave From trending topics on Twitter, to tattoos of the Google logo, to SEO chick t-shirts, thousands of people are realising that SEO is more than just a service. I-COM's SEO superheroes are constantly working hard to help our clients achieve effective and successful results for their site, and to also save them from the deadly third page ranking for an inappropriate keyword. Just like the people of Gotham City, thousands of companies are looking out for true SEO superheroes to help them generate new business online. However, rather than a bat light shining bright in the night sky, companies can contact or e-mail I-COMs SEO superheroes anytime they want - it really is that easy. Search Engine Optimisation 2010-09-02 16:49:26 http://www.i-com.net/blog/seo-superheroes-387/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/introducing-the-seo-book-club-389/ Over the past month some of our SEO guys have been involved in setting up an SEO book club. We wanted to read more and, in turn, improve our copywriting skills. Last night we got together at Font Bar before the Manchester SEO meet, sat down with some drinks and discussed 'Into the Wild' by Jon Krakauer. We came to a decision at the end of July that we would be reading this book and we would meet 26th August before the SEO meet. Afterwards we thought it would be quite interesting to get other digital companies in Manchester involved in our SEO book club... we wanted some more friends! If you are interested please get in touch.Website and TwitterWe have set up a Tumblr that will have details and information on the book club, there will be more stuff added throughout the month and keep checking back as I will regularly update it with things like the book for the month, location, who will be attending, recommendations for next month and other stuff. You can visit it here http://seobookclub.tumblr.com/.Also we have set up SEO Book Club on Twitter as well so follow us and we can keep you updated on there :) And to show you we are really good at seo... ... BOOM!!!Get InvolvedIf you fancy getting your head stuck in a book and reading something new then get in touch with me on Twitter or by email it would be good to get some more people involved, then we can head down to the Manchester SEO meet for some more drinks and good times. I-COM News 2010-08-27 14:23:42 http://www.i-com.net/blog/introducing-the-seo-book-club-389/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/is-twitter-the-new-myspace-388/ You know that Twitter has crossed over into the mainstream when instead of bands telling people to check them out on MySpace, they instead ask the audience (several times) to follow them on Twitter.Last night, in front of a packed crowd in Holmfirth, Wedding Present and Cinerama front man David Gedge, asked the crowd to follow him on Twitter (he's @weddingpresent) and assured us all that it is, indeed, him doing the tweeting and that he is in fact extremely interesting and he does reply to people.It's the first time I've seen anyone tout for more Twitter followers at a gig and if you're really bored, try checking on how many new accounts referencing the Wedding Present have been set up since last night.... Social Media Marketing 2010-08-27 10:37:27 http://www.i-com.net/blog/is-twitter-the-new-myspace-388/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/is-the-book-an-endangered-species-386/ I love reading books. If I am on holiday for 2 weeks I can easily get through a good 4 or 5 books and then steal the one my husband has only got 30 pages into, and finish that off. It isnt just reading the book itself, it is going into Waterstones with its creaky floors and spending hours reading the synopses, trying to decide which ones I want. When I was little my sister and I went into town with my dad every Sunday to pick a book from Waterstones and made sure we finished it before our next Sunday outing. Sad (and not in the boo hoo sense), you might say but I dont think people, especially children, read enough now. My mum is a teacher in a primary school and she said since I was at school the reading ages of children has significantly dropped, with some having never set foot in a book shop.When the iPhone ebook app came out I was horrified. Why dont people just buy a paperback? Dont people love the Waterstones experience? After wondering how you could sit on a beach on holiday holding an iPhone flicking through pages of the latest novel, I decided maybe it wasnt such a bad idea. If it gets people reading, albeit on an electrical item, surely that is a good thing. As a BlackBerry user (far more sensible than iPhone users, he he) I have no such app, however, I have seen it on friends iPhones and I cant say I really get it, but I do understand its uses. If you are constantly travelling by train for example, or just waiting to meet someone, reading your ebook is a lot less hassle than making sure you are constantly carrying the real thing. As long as book shops dont become obsolete because of apps like this, I think the good old fashioned hardback reader can live happily alongside the modern electronic reader. Technology 2010-08-25 09:05:53 http://www.i-com.net/blog/is-the-book-an-endangered-species-386/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/i-think-there-is-a-world-market-for-about-five-computers-385/ Well, it's been debated whether Thomas J Watson, the Chairman of IBM, actually said this some 67 years ago, but I think that the quote is evidence of the mentality of the day. I-COM currently has more servers than this in-house, and it's been discussed, sometimes heatedly, as to whether we should have more, or should have less. Either way, there are a few more than five computers in the world today. I travel to work with at least 2 and I reckon Thomas Watson didn't dream of me doing that every day. My train of thought wanders a lot (those at the company meeting on Friday will certainly know that!) and I often sit and think about our systems and servers at I-COM. Do we really need more, or should we need less? I certainly believe in being as energy conscious as we can be but I also want an infrastructure that can expand and cope with what I see us needing in future, and to some extent what I don't see. I certainly do not support the current mentality that having a few extra CPU cycles to hand is going to provide me with beach holidays in the Arctic! After all, I have a bit of a backing in science and it doesn't take that education to realise I'm not finding sticky black footprints on my servers and that my skiing holidays are safe. I'm as concerned my distant descendants might need warmer clothes rather than SPF 50 lotion! [Note to self: I'm digressing] I-COM's dedicated Network Administrator role was created when I joined, my predecessor of sorts is a developer first and administrator second.  I believe that I-COM's Directors felt that they needed someone who was going to surf the seas of technology and drive I-COM's systems into the future. As such I work on anything you could consider IT, except the online stuff; I can leave that to the rest of the teams, who really are dedicated and talented. Since I began in May 2009, we've probably had more setbacks and failures than the West Coast Main Line (no offence intended), yet, somehow, I still have a job! What has happened for certain is that we've pushed and developed our systems so hard in 18 months that things were bound to go wrong at some point. This said, I-COM could have outsourced my position; they certainly know enough IT Outsourcing firms that could do that, even some of our clients can offer to do that for us.  But they took the chance and hired me, thanks guys, I really need a 25 hours a day job to keep me occupied, no, really, I do. Would I be sat here in bed at the minute, thinking things through if I didn't want to, no! I'd be up to 27,182 sheep by now. [Digression lingers again!] On that thought I'd better wrap things up for now, but be sure to come back for the ending and more tales of interest. I'll try to make them meatier than a steak and kidney pudding sat on a bed of gammon steak! I hear the next sheep is ready for counting! Goodnight, take care, peace and blessings to all. Phil x Technology 2010-08-22 01:33:54 http://www.i-com.net/blog/i-think-there-is-a-world-market-for-about-five-computers-385/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/what-your-bounce-rate-says-about-you-384/ Google Analytics is a very powerful tool but sometimes its results can be misleading. It is very easy to see a green improvement percent and think that all is well. Even metrics that we have benchmarks for don't always mean what we think they do. A good example of this is Bounce Rate. If you've never heard of Bounce Rate before, check out the Analytics glossary at the bottom of the page.Bounce Rate benchmark If a Bounce Rate is over than 40%, I take it as an indication that site visitors are not getting involved with site content. That is to say, more than 40 people in every 100 visits are clicking on the page and clicking off immediately without checking any other content on the site. Broadly speaking, a high bounce indicates one of two things. The landing page does not match the expectation the searcher had when they clicked the link to reach the page. The landing page is technically flawed. For instance, the page may be slow to load or presented in a way that makes the content hard to read. How to lower your Bounce Rate You can address the issue of visitor expectation by improving the anchor text or tailoring the page more to the keywords that are already in the anchors. If this high Bounce Rate is from search-engine traffic and the keyword that visitors use to find the page does not appear to fall within the focus of the page, this keyword could over-emphasise an aspect of the page that distracts from the main topic. To improve the bounce rates for visitors from unexpected search terms, create a new page about the stray topic and use the unexpected keyword as anchor text through to the new page. Eventually, the new page should become the landing page for the unexpected search term. A landing page should provide the information and services that the link you clicked on promised. For website links, that is the anchor text. For search engines, that is the listing text, which Google takes from the Meta information. The second issue requires a re-evaluation of your site design and might involve employment of a designer or developer. A simple (if drastic) way to find this out is to remove your CSS file for a few days and see if the bounce rate drops for this period. If there is a substantial drop, you know that your layout is confusing your visitors.Bouncy bouncy bouncy fun fun fun Having said all this, we can't always assume that a low bounce rate is good news. A user may be clicking on the page, thinking it looks like a reasonably trustworthy page and clicking on to see if they can find the information they require, not finding it, but keeping on clicking. Unfortunately, though we cannot take this to be a good thing unless visitor converts. Just as a high number of visitors means nothing if all those users are leaving the site instantly, a low bounce rate means nothing if the users who are clicking through the site do not convert. The moral of the story is, keep an eye on the statistics, but also keep in mind what those statistics mean. Positive looking numbers have absolutely no value without context.Google Analytics Glossary Visits This is self-explanatory; it shows the number of visits your page receives. Think of the hit counter on your old GeoCities site. It's like that. Bounce Rate Percent of visits landing on a single page that left without further interaction with the site. The use of the word "bounce" refers to people pressing the back button; but can also occur when the visitor closes the browser or tab. Conversion Rate Percentage of visits resulting in an important action that you have defined as important. For example, completing a contact form or exceeding a set amount of time on site. Search Engine Optimisation 2010-08-19 10:42:19 http://www.i-com.net/blog/what-your-bounce-rate-says-about-you-384/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/changes-to-dmoz-hopefully-so-383/ I received the following message when I tried to submit a client to DMOZ this morning. Apparently this occured last month as well. Hopefully these "behind the scenes" improvements will lead to a much better directory submission service and maybe even bring back the glory days of DMOZ? Enlarge image in a new window Search Engine Optimisation 2010-08-18 11:49:43 http://www.i-com.net/blog/changes-to-dmoz-hopefully-so-383/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/unlocking-foursquares-marketing-potential-382/ Starbucks About 2 months ago, Mashable broke the news that everyone's favourite American coffee chain was planning on introducing a new Foursquare marketing campaign. Similar to rival chains' loyalty card systems, which give you a stamp every time you buy a coffee and eventually allow you to claim a free coffee when you've saved up enough stamps, for a month US branches of Starbucks rewarded their the Foursquare mayors of individual Starbucks stores with a $1 discount on a Frappucino. According to the Foursquare blog, the campaign was a roaring success for the coffee brand: "Since running their Mayor Special on foursquare, Starbucks (already the most checked in retailer on the platform prior to running the Special) has seen a 50% increase in Check-Ins at its locations." In the UK, Starbucks also introduced the 'Barista' badge, allowing Foursquare users to add a Starbucks badge to their profile following a check-in at one of their many outlets. All this is obviously fantastic for both brand loyalty and awareness, not to mention the coffee chain's wider online marketing campaign. An innovative social media promotion such as this can't help but generate a huge amount of buzz online, not just on Foursquare but across all social media platforms - particularly when you consider the integration Foursquare has achieved, as it allows users to feed their updates into both Twitter and Facebook - and buzz generates links. This blog post, this article on Mashable and this in the New York Times, are good examples of the kind of coverage this campaign is getting. Of course, Starbucks is already a huge brand and therefore garners a great deal of media attention anyway, but there's no reason why a smaller or un-established brand can't increase their online presence by utilising services such as Foursquare to offer customer rewards, whether they're real world or imaginary (although the value of a Foursquare badge for an unknown brand is questionable).Domino's In the UK, Domino's is offering free pizzas to the Foursquare mayor of a given outlet and free side dishes to all Foursquare users spending over 10. Chris Moore, CEO of Dominos, said, "Our customers are heavy users of social media so it makes sense for us to communicate with them in this way. Following the success of our recent Facebook superfan initiative and affiliates widget, Foursquare was the obvious next step". Once again, this kind of promotion generates a huge amount of buzz on social media - the only issue is the ease with which Foursquare users can 'cheat', by checking in to a Domino's outlet from home until they become mayor, and then turn up to claim their free pizza. As a huge company, Domino's can easily eat up that cost, particularly when they take into account the publicity they'll gain as a result of the promotion - but could a smaller firm?Foursquare for I-COM clients I-COM has already started claiming the Foursquare locations for its clients - the next step is working out exactly how useful Foursquare can be for non-global brands. After all, it's all very well for Starbucks and Domino's to take their already considerable real world following online - it's a whole different matter for a start-up company to actually generate brand awareness. Foursquare remains a niche interest in social media terms, and it's domination of the location-based social media market is currently under threat from rival application Gowalla, however its marketing potential, and that of its ilk, are evident and are an area that will be interesting to exploit in future online marketing campaigns. Search Engine Marketing 2010-08-16 08:37:27 http://www.i-com.net/blog/unlocking-foursquares-marketing-potential-382/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/changes-to-google-trademark-policy-381/ From 14th September Google has announced that they will be bringing their UK trademark policy into line with the US advertisers will now be able to include trademarked terms in ad text. The policy states ads must use the term in a descriptive or generic way, and not in reference to the trademark owner or the goods or services corresponding to the trademark term. It also states that trademarks must be used in a nominative manner to refer to the trademark or its owner, specifically the following: Resale of the trademarked goods or services: The advertiser's site must sell (or clearly facilitate the sale of) the goods or services corresponding to a trademark term. The landing page of the ad must clearly demonstrate that a user is able to purchase the goods or services corresponding to a trademark from the advertiser. Sale of components, replacement parts, or compatible products corresponding to a trademark: The advertiser's site must sell (or clearly facilitate the sale of) the components, replacement parts, or compatible products relating to the goods or services of the trademark. The advertiser's landing page must clearly demonstrate that a user is able to purchase the components, parts, or compatible products corresponding to the trademark term from the advertiser. Informational sites: The primary purpose of the advertiser's site must be to provide non-competitive and informative details about the goods or services corresponding to the trademark term. Additionally, the advertiser may not sell or facilitate the sale of the goods or services of a competitor of the trademark owner. The most obvious beneficiaries of this will be retailers and resellers who will now find advertising a lot easier. For example do a search for Apple or Dell currently and you will see a lot of empty space down the right hand side or a lot generic ads that just dont appeal. These brands are notoriously protective of their brand terms even with official resellers. This of course will in turn improve the user's experience on Google as ads will improve in quality they will be more accurate & relevant through closely targeted ad text. Generic ads can currently be very misleading to the consumer and dont exactly speed up the search process.What does this mean for I-COM clients? Well for retail clients and official resellers this will make the job of writing ad text a lot easier! We would expect to see quick improvements in ads click through rates and quality scores as ad text becomes more accurate and relevant. We will of course see a rise in brand CPCs as the floodgates open and competition increases bids. The increases to brands on their own trademarks should be marginal though if they have a good quality score and relevancy built up historically. Of course all is not lost if as a trademark owner you still want to protect your trademark. If you do not want resellers to use your trademark you can still prevent this through your relationship with them, or through your affiliate terms just not through Google. Its worth also remembering that this policy change does not affect competitors they will not be able to include trademarks, as stated above the ad text must link to a page relating to the trademark not a competitive product.  Through stronger enforcement your brand will still be protected. Search Engine Marketing 2010-08-12 14:09:01 http://www.i-com.net/blog/changes-to-google-trademark-policy-381/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/setting-expectations-for-an-seo-campaign-380/ Here at I-COM, our SEO consultants cut through the confusing gibberish of the internet like a knife through a lasagne sandwich (lasandwich to those in the know). If you're a business new to internet marketing, with a little SEO training we can help you understand all the great things that SEO could be doing for your business. Good SEO can improve the number of visitors to your website, improve your conversion rates and help raise your brand profile across a number of internet platforms, from organic search to social media to image search. One thing that we, as SEO consultants, often struggle to convey to people who are only just embarking on their first serious internet marketing campaign, is what they can reasonably expect to achieve from their websites for the budget they have available. The speed at which any SEO campaign achieves ROI is often out of the hands of your SEO agency for a number of reasons: Your budget - How much budget you have available determines how much work we can do at any one time. The longer it takes us to do the remedial work necessary to convey the subject of each page the longer it will take search engines to start showing your pages in the right search results subset. Your competitors - If nobody in your industry is engaged in SEO then it may be that you achieve ROI very quickly. However, in all likelihood at least one of your competitors is working hard at SEO; it could take months, or even years to see a ROI, particularly if your budget is a lot smaller than your competitors' and they have a head start. It would be reasonable to expect to appear in the top 100 for some keywords, above sites that are not actively optimising, but to get into the first page of results will take time. Website age - If you have a brand new domain your SEO consultant should not go crazy and acquire loads of links immediately - buying a high volume of links for a brand new domain can do more harm than good. They will have to start by generating few authoritative links at a time, slowly building your link acquisition to a decent rate. This means that it will take you longer to catch competitors who have been at it for a while. It's not impossible, it just requires patience. Search engines - Every search engine is a little different and every search engine is constantly working to tweak and refine the results they deliver. If Google, for example, feels that giving too much weight to links is causing searchers to see a lot of poor quality pages, then they will take some value away from links within their algorithm and rely more heavily on another factor. Thus, even if you do absolutely everything right - build a search engine friendly site that's full of great information, which is linked to by relevant, authoritative sites - it may still take time to see a ROI because while you're working to rank better for the most relevant search terms, so are your competitors. Moreover, nobody can predict how quickly the search engines will not only understand what your pages are about, but at what point they will decide that your pages are more valuable to a searcher than somebody else's, and thus entitled to a more prominent position in search results.  Search Engine Optimisation 2010-08-11 17:14:52 http://www.i-com.net/blog/setting-expectations-for-an-seo-campaign-380/