Internet Marketing & Consultancy News
A good time to advertise in BING...
Many of you may have heard about Microsofts new search engine - BING, tipped to be the new engine to take on Google.
Whatever you may think of it's chances it's not a bad engine, and Microsoft spending $100,000,000 on advertising will certainly help wth traffic.
For this reason we would recommend that now is an excellent time to sign up iwth Microsoft Ad Center (if you are not already using this). It's the Microsoft version of pay per click (PPC).
As a general rule, bid prices are cheaper than Google and return on investment (ROI) can be better (although volume will be alot less - due to Googles dominance of the UK serach market).
Links:
Read a review of Bing vs Google from BulHalo
Leverage the power of SEO with the Google Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide
In November 2008 Google talk a really interesting step when they published their ‘Google search engine optimisation starter guide’ as a pdf file for anyone to download.
We understand that this document was originally done as an internal guide for support staff so that they could grasp of the basics of SEO in order to answer any questions they may get. However some kind soul decided that it was worth sharing it with the world at large in order to help people build more success with their websites – good for them!
The end result is that we now have a really excellent basic guide with first rate content and, if you follow their advice, there is no doubt in my mind that you will achieve significantly better SEO results.
However the really interesting thing is not so much what they say but what they can tell us by reading in between the lines. For example let’s consider the section may have on anchor text. In there they tell us that we need to ‘write better anchor text and also offer up ‘good practices for anchor text’.
In this section it talks about an example for a link to a site about ‘top 10 rarest baseball cards’ and uses the example below.
<a href="http://www.brandonsbaseballcards.com/articles/ten-rarest-baseball-cards.htm">Top ten rarest baseball cards</a>
They then go on to say ' This text tells users and Google something aobut the page your're linking to. Links on your page may be internal - pointing to other pages on your site - or external - leading to content on other sites. In etiher of these cases, hte better your anchor text is, the easier it is for users to navigate and for Google to understand what the page you're linking to is about.'
I think that we can assume that this link is from a page or an article that has an interest in baseball. Obviously the pages it's linking to is about the 'top 10 rarest baseball cards'. So what does this tell us about what constitutes a good link from Google's point of view.
Firstly we know that Google likes relevant links and will actually disallow links that it does not consider to be so. Essentially they view links as someone out there on the Internet voting for your page.
Let us now have a look at this in relation to the example. Firstly we know that the site where linking from is about baseball, we also know that the site we’re linking to is about the top 10 rarest baseball cards. Finally the anchor text in the link - 'top 10 rarest baseball cards’ - is on target so will Google count this as a relevant link? You bet they will!
This tells us that our links need to be in from sites that are related to ours in some way, that the anchor text in the link needs to be relevant and that lastly the link should go to a page on the target site that supports the whole theme of the link.
So please take some time to properly understand the SEO guide and implement its suggestions. We think you will have a lot of fun doing this and, more importantly, that it will really benefit you.
Shaping the future of the Internet
We are very interested to hear on of the fathers of the internet - Sir Tim Berners-Lee's comments about his vision of the future of the world wide web.
In his article on the BBC website he spells out some of the challenges that the bodies managing the internet are facing, and also how little of the world actually has access at the present time.
He also comments upon the use of the internet to spread disinformation, or bend thinking towards the will of large companies.
This is an important issue for all internet marketeers. There are still many ways to 'trick' your way to page 1 of Google and other engines.
It is our beleif however that with a sound strategy a decent company is perfectly able to achieve excellent SEO results based upon the effective communication of their business actual proposition and unique experiences, staff and selling points.
Recent ICG research has led us to an excellent internet marketing formula allowing us to harness the power of many of the internets strongest search influencers to push our customer websites into stronger positions, achieving page 1 status for many primary key phrases.
ICG is a strong beleiver in keeping infront of the curve in order to achieve excellent search resutls, not trying to cheat the system..
We were wrong about Web 2.0
Ok – so we need to hold our hands up and say we were wrong! About a year ago we went to a seminar where there was much talk about Web 2.0 and the impact it was going to have on website design and success online. At the time whilst we could see some of the benefits we thought that the whole thing was wildly over hyped.
read the full web 2.0 article here
Is this the future of search? - Search me!
At the suggestion of an Internet marketing colleague I spent some time looking at this new search engine – www.searchme.com – and at first view was very impressed. It ticks all the Internet ‘state of the art’ boxes as it is very web 2.0 friendly and fully takes advantage of the latest web technology.
Searchme is the product of a new start up company based in Mountain View, California and no, they are not a Google spin off! Their goal is to develop the ‘next generation’ search engine with the backing of venture capital and $43 million later this is the result so far.
Read the full future of search article here
Latest thwarted scam gives insight into SEO
The latest internet fraud scam to be intercepted gives an insight into just how important 'off site' SEO is becoming. Scammers achieved high search engine listings under highly contested seasonal keyphrases by creating many links from blogs and linking many different websites together. View the full article on the BBC website
New Internet Resources Section Added
We have now added a new internet business resources section to the website. Find recommended reading, tools and free seminar downloads. - Internet Resources
Business Link Seminars Across South UK
ICG has been contracted to create & deliver a new series of internet seminars for Business Link across the South of the UK including Milton Keynes, Reading, Kent & Sussex.