First One On - Search Engine Optimisation

Less is More with Email Marketing

2011-09-26T14:44:00.000+01:00

Emailmarketing if it is done right will work really well - however - blasting outhundreds or thousands of emails to unqualified end users will get younothing...

Yes email marketing is like any other marketing programme – it is a numbersgame, the more you send, the more chances that more people will open your email- but there is a LOT MORE to email marketing than just blasting out numbers!

A quality list of end users or subscribers who have agreed to receive youremail and have opted-in will get you results. The opted-in process works likethis – a potential subscriber completes a signup form on your website orthrough an email invitation and submits it to you, then an email is sent backto that person asking them to validate or give you permission to send thememail. Now you have an end user who is qualified as a valuable lead and is expectingto receive an email communication from you in the future. Now your chances of thosequalified leads reacting to your email is going to be a lot more positive.

An email sent to a qualified list is most certainly going to get a much higher“open rate” from subscribers who open the email and become exposed to yourmarketing message.

Thenext task is to get the subscriber to react to your marketing message and the keyis to get them to "click through" on your offer or “call to action” andland on your website page and ultimately to "BUY" into your offer.

Thecontent of the email must contain quality content that describes your valueproposition or presents an issue and asks a relevant question where theresponse, the click through to your website, will generate the opportunity tosell your stuff.

Ensurethat the content is to the point and does not require the recipient to readthrough long paragraphs of text to get to the point you are trying to make. Thecontent should be short and succinct, capturing the recipient’s interest andmotivating them to react to your message in appositive way.

Email marketing is very much a process that does work if it is done right.

Contact SEO Evangelist Peter Bowen at 0117 230 1880 - he is an SEO and marketing communications expert who delivers strategies that work and get results.

Building Less Links is Key to Success

2011-09-21T08:20:00.000+01:00

Backlinks - links from other websites that point or have a link to your website add to the value of a website in terms of search engine optimisation and there was a time when the more backlinks a website had the better - in fact webmasters would build hundreds even thousands and tens of thousands of backlinks or inbound links from other websites in the belief that more was better - wrong!

We do know that quality is better than quantity and this is very true when it comes to building value to a website and getting Google to see the value in a webpage because it has high quality content and a few very specific high quality backlinks.

It makes so much more sense to have a clean well constructed highly unique and original webpages that have really relevant content with highly optimised keywords, keyterms and long-tail phrases that have themselves been linked internally and externally to other relevant content.

It makes so much more sense to have less high quality relevant inbound and outbound links - just one link from a high PR (Page Rank) page has more value than 100 or 1000 links from PR 0 or even non-indexed pages.

One very important point here is that just because a page appears to be indexed by Google it does not mean that it can be found in a search - has Google cross referenced and catalogued the page so it is searchable?

It is easy to test if a page is indexed by Google by putting site:www.yourdomain.com into a search and let Google return a list of all of the pages that are indexed in it's catalogue - but and it's a very big 'but' - is the webpage searchable in a Google search? Can you find the page?

An easy test is to select a string of content words from the page that you want to test and then paste that string into a search in "string" and see what the result is - Google will try and match that string to the same string in it's index. Don't be surprised if two things happen:

1. No search results are displayed - this means that the webpage content has not been crawled and indexed by Google

2. More than one occurrence or result appears in the results page, which means that your content is not original or others have copied your unique content and used it on their own pages.

The moral of this story is: building less low quality links and more high quality relevant links is the key to the success of a webpage being found "first one on" Google.

How to improve conversion rates – People visit websites to get information or buy a product or service

2011-08-01T12:51:00.002+01:00

So you are getting a lot of visitors to your website every month and analyzing your stats you can see that your keywords are working and your bounce rate appears to be low – all good things, but you don’t seem to be getting many of those visitors to contact or call your firm – what is needed here is a better ‘call to action’ to improve the conversion rate of visitors into leads says Peter Bowen of First One On a leading SEO company in the UK.

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Measuring what works is vital to understanding the behavior of the consumer in your location, and yes, consumers in different regions react to different mechanisms – so what works here may not work there.

We often see “read more” on a webpage – referring to additional text about the subject matter being discussed but this doesn’t add any value – a better solution is to word it with a call to action like “click here to start your claim now”. What you are trying to do here is to get the visitor to take the next step toward your final website goal, and by doing this, you improve your overall conversion rate, which in this case is to get someone to register or call you to start a claim.

The eventual aim of the webpage then is to get more interested visitors or qualified leads who will eventually phone or contact you - but it is the visitor who is in control. Peter Bowen, Search Engine Optimisation expert says "if you don’t give your visitors a reason or method to communicate with you, then they won’t", and "they won't come back either".

Using a pro-active mechanism for instance enables you to ask for a name, email address and telephone number from your visitor so that he/she can then get useful information from you in the form of a free report or an answer to a question – by doing this you will accomplish two very important tasks; first, you qualify the visitor as someone who is interested in your services, and second, you get permission to contact him/her again. You need to build into your website a powerful reason for your visitors to give you permission to email or talk to them rather than expect someone to pick up the phone. People visit a website to get information or buy a product or service, so give them the means to get it.

Finally and most important of all is trust. You cannot sell anything if your audience doesn’t trust you. You can help them to trust you by prominently displaying your privacy policy, reference to the satisfied customers that have already bought from you, that you make it very easy to find contact information such as a name and address as well as support via email. You could educate via your website with articles and ‘how to sections’ or newsletters and instill trust over time. In short, your prospect must trust you to part with his or her money.

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Peter Bowen is a seasoned SEO Marketing specialist who has been involved with the internet since 1994 when he won the Entrepreneur of the Year award for developing an online internet shopping website. He has developed software for learning and now concentrates his efforts on helping others to understand and market their products and services through effective search marketing strategies. Search Engine Optimisation expert First One On helps clients through the maze of SEO to get top search engine rankings.

SEO + Social Media = More Business

2011-06-22T20:29:00.002+01:00

Connect to the power of social media networks and drive new business to your website and convert more visitors into customers.

First One On delivers much more than SEO services alone, now combined with the power of Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Blogs to drive new visitors to your website.

First One On delivers SEO + Social Media = More Business

If you need more business then you need First One On.

Build My Rank Review Has No Value

2011-03-21T07:30:00.003Z

Build My Rank (BMR) is just like all the other so called rank and link building tools and other worthless article tools out there – they just do not work.

Sure with BMR you MUST create an original unique article to get it published and that's where the value ENDS. The sites that eventually publish your article are not relevant to your article or what your website is about and are supposed to be high PR sites but the pages that your articles end up on are pages with PR=0 – OK so they may pass some link juice if they get crawled.

7 months later and our search engine optimisation team at First One On are still waiting for our articles on WORTHLESS websites to pass any link juice – hey wait a minute – they have not been crawled yet and they are not showing up in any link reporting, so they cannot possibly be of any value!

YES, there is value in creating original and unique article content, NOT SPUN rubbish, and YES there is value in having highly relevant content on RELEVANT websites with links back to your relevant content – BUT – in the case of BMR – there is NO VALUE whatsoever.

And the recurring offer that is about to expire is just another marketing scam to get you to buy into another worthless tool that only lines the pockets of those promoting and defending it as a valuable link building resource.

Our advice is stay away from BMR unless you like spending your hard earned cash on worthless SEO tools.

OK so on a positive note, the lesson learned here with BMR is, yes there is value in creating unique original article content and yes if you can find a website that is very relevant to what you do and you can get your link on to that website then there is a very good chance that your article will provide Value to your website – but please don’t waste your money with ~ BMR.

If you want high quality links that are honest and true – you will have to go out and find a few relevant to your website and get your high quality articles published – it is better to have a few articles on high PR sites than loads of useless sites with PR=0.

Search Engine Optimisation Overkill

2011-02-27T21:22:00.006Z

By Peter Bowen, Director, First One On

Struggling to get to the top of search engines' results knows no limits that some SEO - search engine optimisation firms will go to and yet only too often we hear about websites that have been temporarily or permanently removed from Google’s index because of erroneous SEO practices or the use of ‘black hat’ or dishonest SEO optimisation techniques. Search engines will not tolerate tricks and cheats that some so called SEO practitioners include in their arsenal. And even if search engines do not discover these underhanded attempts right away, your competitors might report you.

Keyword Density or Keyword Stuffing?

Sometimes SEO practitioners go too far in their desire to push their clients' websites to top positions and resort to irrational practices, like keyword stuffing – placing too many keywords into the content text on a webpage. Keyword stuffing is considered as a questionable practice because you are diluting the value and quality of the keyword. Bearing in mind that the recommended keyword density is from 2 to 5% of the content on the page, that is repeating the keyword twice in the first 100 words, anything more than this, say 10% density will begin to look very much like keyword stuffing and it is very likely that it will get noticed by search engines and could face penalties.

"Generally, keyword density in the meta title of the page, the main H1 headings, and the first few paragraphs really has more value", says Peter Bowen, SEO Expert at First One On. Needless to say, that you should be especially careful not to stuff these areas. Generally words that are in bold and/or italic are considered important by search engines but if any occurrence of the target keywords is in bold and italic, this also looks unnatural and in the best case it will not push your page up the rankings.

Doorway Pages and Hidden Text

Another common keyword trick is the use of doorway pages. Before Google introduced the PageRank algorithm, doorways were a common practice and there were times when they were not considered an illegal optimisation. A doorway page is a page that is made especially for the search engines and that has no meaning for humans but is used to get high positions in search engines and to trick users to come to the website.

Very similar to doorway pages was a scam called hidden text. This is text, which is invisible to humans (e.g. the text colour is the same as the page background) but is included in the HTML source of the page, trying to fool search engines that the particular page is keyword-rich. Needless to say, both doorway pages and hidden text can hardly be qualified as optimisation techniques.

Search Engine Optimisation expert Peter Bowen at First One On is considered by many to be a master craftsman when it comes to SEO techniques, and his expertise is sought after far and wide throughout Europe and North America.

SEO Secrets to Make Your Website More Visible

2011-02-21T10:25:00.004Z

By Peter Bowen, Director, First One On

No more smoke and mirrors please - if they say its guaranteed to get you to the top of Google it probably isn’t because there are no guarantees, and there's no such thing as 'free' - if it is free it has no value.

If you are serious about SEO - search engine optimisation and want to dominate your competitors by being at the top for highly competitive search terms when there are millions of other webpages all wanting top spot?, then read on.

Improving a website’s position in a search result is a gradual process that takes time – lots of time and patience, and it is possible for a small business to greatly improve its chances of landing on the first page of relevant search results using legitimate, "white-hat" SEO practices and honest search engine optimisation.

At First One On we highly recommend kick-starting a firm’s SEO by running a small pay-per-click (PPC) keyword ad campaign with Google AdWords linked to a highly relevant content rich landing page on the clients website – coupled with an explicit call to action, such as an invitation to call for a free phone consultation. PPC ads can begin delivering targeted traffic to your website within minutes or hours, versus the months that organic SEO efforts can take.

Here are six top SEO tips for boosting your website's search engine status

1. Determine Goals, Priorities, and Measurements
Before starting an SEO campaign, develop measurable goals and priorities, and plan to revise them periodically. Some questions to ask: What are your current business needs? Which of your products or services are most important to promote now? What do you want visitors to your website to do, buy, or learn?

Next, decide how to measure success. If you haven't already done so, add Google Analytics to each page of your website. Google Analytics reveals which keywords visitors used to find your site, and much, much more. There are other web traffic analysis tools out there, but Google Analytics includes all of the features that most small businesses need.

2. Research Keywords
Often, a business doesn't describe its products using the same keywords that its clients use. That's why it's important to talk to employees, partners, current and potential clients, and your sales staff to determine which words are most frequently used when people seek out your firm and its products or services. Use those phrases to develop an initial list of SEO keyword candidates.

Several keyword-research tools are available to help you choose the best terms for SEO. Google AdWords Keyword Tool helps you gauge how frequently keywords are searched in a local area, and how competitive a keyword is. The tool is designed to help marketers choose keywords for Google PPC ads, but it's useful for organic keyword research, too. You'll also get lots of keyword variations that you might not have thought of.

When choosing keywords, some site managers take into account the Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI), a mathematical equation that comes up with a score based on the number of times a keyword has been searched and the number of Web pages containing the keyword. The higher the KEI score, the better your chances are for "winning" that keyword.

3. Use Keywords Carefully
Using keywords effectively can make your site more discoverable. But overusing or abusing them can cause search engines to ignore you so be careful not to overstuff content with keywords – make sure the text content is meaningful and relevant to the search keyword term.

Optimise one page for each keyword (and its synonyms) that you were able to identify in the keyword research. When the entire context of a page is about a particular subject, search engines are more likely to see that page as relevant to the keyword being optimised.

Use keywords in the page's HTML title tag. Search engines place great importance on title tags when determining a page's relevancy to a query. Don't exceed 65 characters, including spaces and punctuation.

Add keywords to the page's HTML h1 and h2 headings, and use the keywords several times in the body copy--the earlier, the better.

Create a keyword-rich link (anchor text) elsewhere on your site to each page you're optimising.

Add keywords to your site's URLs whenever possible, as opposed to using generic URLs such as www.domain.com/page456.html.

Add keywords to each page's HTML meta description. Search engines often (but not always) display that description underneath each link shown in search results. But don't bother with HTML keyword meta tags: Google ignores keyword meta tags in page search ranking.

Don't try and be ‘smart’ . "Black-hat" tricks--such as presenting one page to search engines that's nothing but keywords, and another page to users--can get you kicked out of Google's index.

4. Create One Way Links
Editorial endorsements of your product or service from someone else, such as a high-profile blogger, can be pure SEO gold--especially when that endorsement includes a keyword-rich link to a relevant page on your site.
Bloggers and other people with content rich websites frequently post links to other great content. Make sure your pages have provocative, newsworthy, or extremely useful content--otherwise known as "linkbait." Spread the word about a new blog post, page, or article via social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Write an informative unbiased press release about your new product or service. Include a keyword-rich link to a relevant page on your site, and post the release on public relations sites such as PRWeb.com, PRNewswire.com, and PR.com. (Some PR services are free, while others charge.) With luck, your press release will get picked up by the media, and people will write online articles about you with links to your site.

Contact influential reporters, bloggers, and others in the media directly. You'll increase your chances of coverage and perhaps get links that your competitors lack. When other sites agree to link to yours, suggest the keyword that you'd like them to use in the link text.

Don’t participate in reciprocal linking – if a website asks you to exchange links, don’t be tempted, most have no value to you.

5. Make Sure Your Site Is Search Engine Friendly
Search engine "bots" primarily index text and follow links. Though they are getting more sophisticated, bots can't easily index nontext content, such as Flash animations.

JavaScript content, such as site menus rendered in Ajax, can stop a search engine bot in its tracks. The bottom line: If your Website contains lots of Flash, Ajax, and other nontext material, you're making it difficult for the search engines to index your pages. And if search engines can't index that content, searchers won't be able to find it when they perform queries. If you're planning a new site, make sure its design is friendly to search engines from the beginning.

6. Duplicate Content
We cannot emphasize this point enough now that Google is changing its position on sites that have duplicated content.

Make sure that your site doesn't have duplicate content or subscribe to content that is the same on other sites like news feeds or article libraries - these have no SEO value whatsoever. Duplicate content can hurt your search engine ranking and Google will ignore pages with the same title and content.

Be careful about accepting or paying for ‘syndicated’ content – content that you subscribe to and is listed on your site. Google is getting serious about ignoring sites that have the same content, news stories, and libraries of articles that are the same on other sites.

So having a website that is loaded with news stories and articles that are not unique serve no purpose in helping your website achieve high rankings, Google will see that your website is bloated with duplicate content and ignore it.

Summary
SEO isn't something you do once. You may rank well for a keyword search on Monday, and twenty-third for that same keyword search two weeks later. So it's important to set aside time, ideally every week, to review your Google Analytics, fine-tune your keywords, and look for link opportunities.

Yes, SEO requires time – lots of time and patience. The potential rewards can be considerable and its safe to say that your competitors are doing it.

Social Media Power Tools

2011-02-12T16:33:00.006Z

More than 75% of consumers today use some form of social media in their everyday lives - if you or your business are not one of those then you might be missing out on powerful ways to communicate and be seen and heard. Peter Bowen, SEO strategist at First One On says "it's quite easy to get involved with social media applications and here are four ways to get involved and start using social media power tools".

Start a Blog

Blogs are easy to create and easy to maintain - with tools like Wordpress or Google's Blogspot they offer free weblog publishing tools for sharing text, photos and video. These easy to use tools will enable you to quickly start creating high-quality content that is relevant to your target audience.

Start a Facebook page

Facebook is one of the most popular sites in the world (along with Google). To get started, simply create a Facebook page where you can post updates, link to your blog articles, and receive feedback from your friends, clients and customers. As you post relevant content and interact with them on your Facebook page, you begin to develop powerful relationships for building business.

Post videos on YouTube

If a picture is worth a 1,000 words, a video must be worth 1,000 pictures and 1,000,000 words! Plus videos get priority in search engine results and allow you to show a little personality. Start with a company overview or a product demonstration and build your video library from there.

FirstPost Helps Business Communicate with Social Media

2011-01-12T18:59:00.008Z

If you are not using social media tools like Twitter, Blogs and YouTube to get your message out, or to tell people what you are doing, then you are missing out on some exciting ways of communicating to potential customers who might never know about your services or products. Take for example the old way of getting messages out to the news media using press releases, direct mail, or newsletters - social media has actually enhanced all aspects of marketing communications.

In addition to enhancing a business’s message, Twitter provides real time opportunities to communicate on a daily basis. Blogs help to reinforce the message and provide longer lasting details with valuable links to other content and even webpages of more relevant and detailed content. And let's not forget the impact of YouTube as a powerful media tool for visually helping to get the message across to the potential customer. YouTube is also becomming an active 'search' tool to find out almost anything like 'how to'...

Since there are many businesses still struggling to embrace Twitter, First One On now offers a service called FirstPost that helps business customers to distribute their messages through social media channels. A news item, product announcement, or service offer is promoted through four different channels including, an article that is posted on a blog, distribution through a network of news sites, a web page with anchor text links, and 3 related messages tweeted over a 24-hour period with links to the customers blog and web page.

FirstPost can be purchased as a onetime event or subscribed to on a monthly basis. The premium subscription includes video clips that are posted on YouTube and optimised with proprietary knowledge based solutions developed by First One On.

To learn more about FirstPost please contact First One On

Small Business Marketing Training | The One Day Marketing Plan

2011-01-10T10:48:00.000Z

Small Business Marketing Training | The One Day Marketing Plan

Google Instant Preview Changes How Search Results are Viewed

2010-12-04T23:17:00.002Z

By Peter Bowen SEO Expert at First One On www.firstoneon.com

Google Instant Preview is a new feature following the September roll out of Google Instant which completes searches while they're being typed into Google's search field, with the goal of significantly reducing time spent searching.

But is the new feature really going to speed up the searcher's experience, or is it yet another complicated layer on what was once a simple and easy-to-understand search interface? Google's own research revealed that on average searchers using Google Instant Preview are 5% more likely to be satisfied with the search results they click after seeing a visual preview next to the organic listing.

Google Instant Preview essentially gives users the ability to see a website before they visit it. Google accomplishes this by taking a screenshot of every webpage in its index and giving users access to it via a magnifying glass icon that sits to the right of every search result.

When a user clicks on the magnifying glass icon, a screenshot of the webpage in question will appear to the right of the search result listing. It’s an at-a-glance view of the website page without actually having to visit the webpage.

One of the key elements to Instant Previews though is that Google sometimes highlights a section of the page where the page description occurs. Where this becomes a useful feature is if you’re trying to find information on a specific person on a page that lists dozens or hundreds of people. Instead of having to scroll through the entire page to find the person, you can just look at the Instant Preview and see where they are on the page.

"We realized early on that this kind of experience would only make sense if it was lightning fast. Not long ago simply downloading an image could take 20 or 30 seconds, and even today many websites take four or five seconds to load," Raj Krishnan, Product Manager wrote in the Google Blog. "With Google Instant Preview, we match a search query with an index of the entire web, identify the relevant parts of each webpage, stitch them together and serve the resulting preview completely customised to your search--usually in under one-tenth of a second."

SEO expert Peter Bowen at First One On says "while Google Instant Preview is designed to speed up the searching process what it actually does is to speed up the decision-making process of choosing whether or not to click on the link by previewing the visual screenshot of the resulting webpage".

"Google currently provides a lot of more data to help the searcher. At one time search engines just displayed the first two lines from a webpage under a search result, but now they include information like site links, date, cached content, jump to links and even Google Places".

Instant Previews can be helpful for many kinds of tasks. For example, say you looked at a page before and need to find it again—with a preview, you can tell if any of the results look familiar. Or perhaps you’re looking for an official website—looking for a logo and formal style and you’ll probably be able to identify it. Or maybe you’re looking for a how-to guide—it’s easy to spot a page with clear illustrations and step-by-step instructions.

From an SEO perspective the big question is how will Google Instant Preview affect our understanding of traditional SEO?, and what changes should we consider making to webpages so that they can be easily previewed in a tiny screenshot?

When a searcher performs a search and sees the search results page displayed, they do have a choice of whether or not to activate the Google Instant Preview feature by clicking on the magnifying glass icon.

“However, clicking on the magnifying glass icon is less of a commitment than clicking on a link, and you still need to convince the searcher that it is worth their time to preview a website” says Peter Bowen. “Therefore it becomes more important than ever to have a well defined and well written description of what the website page is about and it has to fit within the 150 character limit. So the Meta content description is what you will have to change and be aware of here”.

As we already know, Flash is not SEO friendly because it cannot be read by search engines and is even worse for Instant Preview as it shows as a black rectangle and cannot be rendered. The same is true for video files that also display a black rectangle in the preview, so consideration of this is important too.

It should be pointed out that because the image size of the screenshot is so small, unless the text in headings is large enough, it will be impossible to read.

So what does all this mean, well, we have to start thinking about the overall page layout and does it look god at postage stamp size or is it just a blur of text with no images to make it look appealing. This means creating pages that pay more attention to navigation, titles and headers, spacing, colours and objects, such as call-to-action buttons. Having a good looking page with relevant titles now may count as much as the content on the page itself.

It is likely that we will begin to see a lot more webpages with well defined graphics and other visual aids designed to get a searcher's attention. This makes SEO even more important than ever, make sure that your images are named with keywords and their filenames and alt text are descriptive and accurate.

Google Instant Preview is here to stay and designed to make the search selection process easier and according to Google, faster, but in the end, good SEO practices are what is going make the difference of whether or not you get discovered on the search engine results pages.
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Peter Bowen is a seasoned SEO Marketing specialist who has been involved with the internet since 1994 when he won the Entrepreneur of the Year award for developing an online internet shopping mall. He has developed software for learning and now concentrates his efforts on helping others to understand and market their products and services through effective search marketing strategies. First One On helps clients through the maze of SEO to get top rankings for their clients.

Digital Marketing Seminar Delivers Results

2010-12-01T08:59:00.003Z

Busines by word of mouth (mouse) in a world where Google, Twitter and Facebook write the rules was presented yesterday 30 November by SEO expert Peter Bowen, Managing Director of First One On and Social Media evangelist Paul Clegg, Executive Director of BNI (Business Networking International).

The weather was not the best and the roads were icy but delegates arrived from far and wide battling through adverse winter driving conditions to attend this morning event. The room quickly filled even before the 9am registration and the prime seats taken.

Paul Clegg presented an in depth look at how social networking is having a profound effect on the business of marketing products and services and how decisions are being made to buy services. He noted in his address the power of Twitter and how Facebook is being used by all types of businesses to reach consumers.

With barely a moment to refill cups at the 5 minute refreshment break, delegates were then treated to an overall presentation by Peter Bowen about how to get a websites' content pages to the top of Google and why most business fails to embrace the basic steps to achieve domination for primary keywords.

Changes to the way Google presents search results was discussed and examples shown for Google Places search - emphasising the need for even greater optimisation of page content to beat out competitors for top placement.

In a followup questionnaire, delegates agreed that further hands-on seminars would be of great value in the future - stay tuned for announcements from the Bowen Clegg team of a followup day long session in February 2011.

Google Place Search changes how local searches are displayed

2010-11-08T12:54:00.006Z

Google local and map have become a big influence on how people search and get results. We can demonstrate this by searching for 'accountant' and the search result returns a broad list of 'accountants' but perhaps too broad so we tend to search again by narrowing the result - adding a location to the search - 'accountant in city' and the results we see are now closer to home.

So its no surprise that Google should be taking a closer look at how we search and attempt to refine the process and provide a more meaningful search result by changing the Google Local search algorithm to make it easier for us to find what or who we are searching for locally.

Today, 8.11.2010 we see searches that reference local business and all the relevant places in that location in a new clustered visual display located in the upper right corner of a search result page. The now familiar map displays each business with red lettered pins, and links to each business. And as you scroll down the page the Google Places Map will scroll with the page so that it is always visible.

In addition to the way we see businesses displayed on Google Places a new product is being launched - Google Boost.

Google Boost is a Google AdWords product that allows local businesses to feature more prominently in local searches. It allows small to medium size businesses the ability to feature more highly in searches, and concentrates much more on the relevance and location of that business than ever before. Now searchers will see sponsored location searches appear on the Google Places map as blue lettered pins and in search results with the blue marker pin next to the content description.

Search results for the 'accountant in city' will now appear first below sponsored listings and above organic listings. What this now means is that results for a business in a location will now appear grouped with the other search results, making it much easier for searchers to find what they are looking for in a local area.

Google reports that Place Search results will begin appearing automatically when Google determines that you are looking for a 'business in location' search result.

Google also says "We’ve made results like this possible by developing technology to better understand places. With Google Place Search, we’re dynamically connecting hundreds of millions of websites with more than 50 million real-world locations. We automatically identify when sites are talking about physical places and cluster links even when they don’t provide addresses and use different names.”

Google Places is being rolled out across the world and will be available everywhere, in 40 languages once complete. Google are hoping to provide a better, local search to users, while exploiting a different revenue stream. It’s also competing with Facebook Places which was launched a while ago. Facebook was able to use very targeted advertising to provide a similar service to its users.

Google should have the advantage here though, as most Facebook advertising is passive, appearing alongside the primary content. Google’s Place Search is active and should have the advantage when it comes to conversion.

Location-based services are seen as a growing market, with Facebook Places and location aware services like Foursquare enjoying significant growth since their inception. Placing Google Place Search alongside search results, Google can hedge its bets while not detracting from its standard offering.

From an SEO perspective Peter Bowen at First One On says, "One of the downsides to this new display of results is how it will affect businesses that previously enjoyed number one placements for 'business in location' or featured well alongside the old Google Map".

"Now with the introduction of Google Place Search in results it is quite possible that businesses that had worked hard to get top placements on page one now find themselves listed on page two! Other businesses that did not even have a listing on the old Google Map are now being brought to the top of the search results based on the location of their business and business listing in Google Places".

What this means is that in the long run it will be more difficult for businesses to rank at the top of a local search unless they realise that they will have to spend much more time and effort on local search engine optimization. Businesses that had previously enjoyed a prominent position on the old Google Map without a website, which was possible before, will now find it almost impossible to maintain a listing without a well developed and locally optimised website.

Businesses will now have to have a visible and physical location if they want to be listed in a local search, in the past businesses could hide their physical location and yet still be found locally through their websites, but now consumers searching for a business in a location will be able to determine if they contact that business or not based on their location. So as Google exposes competitors in searches it is now revealing where those businesses are located – hopefully providing the consumer with more information before making a purchase decision in the long run.

First One On has been advising clients and optimising websites for some time that include not only business name in location but also business service in location.

Writing Articles that Boost Website Traffic

2010-07-05T09:20:00.007+01:00

Articles must contain searchable keywords

When you invest time writing articles to gain traffic to your web site they must appeal to both the search engines and your potential readers. Careful consideration must be given to the article structure and content, follow these steps to write effective articles that will boost website traffic.

Step 1. Choose a topic

Your goal is to write on a topic where you solve a problem i.e.
-7 reasons to use articles to market your web site
-How to write an effective article
-How to market your articles to boost your web traffic
Sometimes it's difficult to come up with a topic that you feel inspired to write about. An easy method is to write about a problem that you have come across while working. You will have an in-depth knowledge of finite details. Then after having solved this problem you should feel comfortable writing about it knowing that this article will then help others that may have struggled with the same problem.

Step 2. Keyword research

The primary goal of article writing is to make your article as search engine friendly as possible. Within the article include searchable keywords that search engines will spider. Therefore researching appropriate keywords before weaving them into your article is crucial.

Use the keyword research tool to find which words or phrases are searched on most often. It will display up to 100 top results depending on the data available for that keyword.

Make a list of the top researched keywords and write them into your article being careful not to repeat them too often so that it won't read smoothly. You want to your article to appeal to your readers also.

Step 3. Create an outline for your article

Your article should include a headline, an introduction, the content body, a conclusion, a list of resources and a bio.

Headline - make this as catchy as possible because your reader will read this first then decide if he or she will continue reading the rest of the article. i.e.
"Writing Articles that Boost Website Traffic"

Introduction - introduce the problem you will be discussing in your article or write a short story of your experience with the problem.

Body - discuss all the solutions to the problem you outlined in the introduction. Break up each point into separate paragraphs and keep them to about 5 lines. You may want to create a sub-heading for each point. This makes it easier to read as most people will scan your article when reading it online.

Conclusion - this should include a brief summary of your article and a call for the reader to take action.

Resources – This can be a synopsis of the article with some keywords.

Bio - this is the place where you can safely include a bio about yourself and your business plus provide a link to your web site or blog. This provides an opportunity for readers to visit your website and learn more about your product or services.

Step 4. Article length

Begin writing out your article without worrying too much about the length. It's more important to let all your ideas flow out of your mind first. If you think it's getting too long split it up into two or more articles. It's often easier to write a short article of 500 words than one of 1000 words.

Most article publishers prefer articles between 500 to 800 words and will not accept articles any longer than that.

Step 5. Take a break

After you have written the article, come back to it after several hours, a day or several days. This will enable you to take a fresh look at it, find new mistakes or even want to rewrite a paragraph or two to make it flow better.

Step 6. Check your article

After writing your article, run it through a spell checker first, then read it through a few times to check for spelling mistakes the spell checker may have missed and to correct the grammar and punctuation. Make sure it flows well by clearly identifying the problem, providing a solution and concluding with an action step or steps. Get someone else to read it over. Often they will find the mistakes that you missed.

Step 7. Format your article

You will need to format your sentence length at 60-65 words per line before submitting it for publication. This will enable people to read it in their email software. If the sentence length is longer than this the article may break up making it impossible to read.

Step 8. Conclusion

If you consistently write an article every other week and submit it for publication you will soon generate a steady stream of traffic to your web site for years to come.

Please let us know if you found this article on Writing Articles that Boost Website Traffic of interest by contacting First One On

Meta Title Tags are Gold

2010-06-25T07:18:00.008+01:00

How to write compelling page titles

From an SEO perspective, the title of the webpage is very important, these are the words that describe what your page is about and it is the first words that a search engine sees when it crawls your webpage looking for content to add to its index.

The page title is also what the searcher sees in a search result -so the page title is very important in describing what the page is about and if the title meets the searchers criteria, then it is more likely to be clicked on and your page will open.

It is safe to assume that the majority of searchers these days will be tempted to either click or ignore based on the content of the title. This is like your ad in the natural search section of the search engine results page.

Now that the impact of the title of the webpage is obvious, let us explain how to write an effective and powerful title.

First the basics! The webpage title aka the title tag is the synopsis of the content of the web page. So, as no two pages on your website are the same, hence why should their title tags be? Therefore, as a general rule, title tags for each page on your website should be unique. This is an added bonus from an SEO perspective, because now you can target many more keywords and hence spread your reach across search engine indexes.

The second thing to consider is whether you want to add your company name in the title tag? The answer is that it depends on your branding strategy. If your company name is a known brand, or if you want to promote your firm name as a brand or if your company name consists of keyword(s) that you want to target such as ABC Family Solicitors targeting the keyword "Family Solicitors", then by all means add your company name in the title tag. If not, then use the limited but valuable space to add your targeted keywords. If you do decide to add your company name, make sure that it is at the end of the title. This is because you want search engines and your visitors to first read the targeted keyword(s) for that page and then the company name.

It is important to remember that as the title tag is the synopsis of the content of the web page, we need to make sure that the title tag is relevant. For example, the title tag for an about us page is "About Website Design Company - ECommerce Partners". Hence, the title tag does its job of informing what the page is about. Now, you might have noticed that instead of "About Us - ECommerce Partners", we added "About Website Design Company - ECommerce Partners".

The reason is because "Website Design Company" is one of the key phrases we want to target and so, we replaced "About Us" with "About Website Design Company". This brings out an important point. We need to do a keyword analysis before we write an effective and powerful title tag.

Keyword mining and analysis is a very important part of writing compelling page titles and is a part of the Search Engine Optimization service that First One On provides to our clients.

The next step after keyword analysis will be to write down title tags for each and every web page on your website.

Please be careful when writing title tags and never, never over stuff keywords in the title. Doing so will undermine the power of title tag and defeat the purpose of better ranking in the search engines. The title tag is the title of your web page and so it must be relevant and meaningful. Remember, this is the title in your AD in the natural search listings of the search engine.

General Suggestion: you cannot promote all of the keywords in one page, normally, you should promote 3 to 5 keyword phrases per page. The 'Title tag' should contain up to 3 important keywords that match to the body of the page contents. If the keyword you are trying to promote is highly competitive, you can consider repeating the important keyword twice in the first 100 words of the page content.

Limit the length of the title keywords to 65 characters including spaces or less. There's no reason to cut off the last word and have it replaced with a "..." Note that the search engines have fluctuated recently and Google, in particular, is now supporting up to 70 characters.

Use a divider when splitting up the keywords, we generally recommend the use the "|" symbol aka the pipe bar. Others choose the arrow ">" or hyphen "-" and both work well.

Re-using the title tag of each page as the H1 heading tag can be valuable from both a SEO keyword targeting standpoint and a user experience improvement. Users who go to the page from the search result listing will have the expectation of finding the title they clicked on. Users will be more likely to stay on a page they're reasonably certain fits their intended search query.

Please let us know if you found this article on Meta Title Tags of interest by contacting First One On

Top Ten Tips for Powerful Email Marketing Campaigns

2010-06-18T10:11:00.004+01:00

Email Marketing with Newsletters

Building strong customer relationships with email marketing newsletters that deliver results is key in today’s business environment. Creating the communication and following these top 10 tips for successful email newsletters will help you to build and develop strong relationships with existing customers and market your services more cost effectively.

Email newsletters offer the ability to track on an individual level who opened your emails, who clicked on what link and what content they read, not only allowing you to measure the level of interest readers have in the content you are sending them, but also how readers are responding to it.

So here are the First One On top ten tips for successful email newsletter marketing:

1. Professional Looking Template – Instead of sending out a generic email, take time to customize your template to reflect the colours, fonts and other branding elements of your business and website. Using the same email template for your messages will help the recipient recognize your firm and generate feelings of trust.

2. Personalise the Email – Use the recipient’s name in your message whenever possible. Something as simple as customising the email in this way can make the recipient more likely to read through and act on your message.

3. Compelling Subject Line – The two second rule applies here – the recipient will scan the subject of the email and decide whether or not to open and read the communication. Therefore make the subject line as compelling as possible.

4. Email from a Person – Make sure that the email is from a person or firm name and not from an email address, this adds to the personalisation aspect of the communication and adds to the likelihood that the email will be opened and read.

5. Wite Engaging Content – Ensure that the content provides a value proposition or presents a current issue and asks the recipient a question where a response is expected to generate involvement.

6. Click throughs to your Website – Wherever possible the ability to drive recipients back into your website from a link for more information, or to engage the recipient is the major benefit of using an email communication.

7. Call to Action – Each email you send should spell out exactly what you want the recipient to do. Make links obvious and call attention to any special directions you are providing. And it’s okay to be repetitive when it comes to the call to action – include it toward the top of the message and mention it again at the end.

8. Sign your Email – Always include a signature at the bottom of your emails, as it’s one of the easiest ways to attract more traffic to your website. This signature should include your personal details, your company details, and an unsubscribe link. You can use your signature to link back to your website, and even to other services.

9. Regular Send and Despatch – When sending an email to your subscribers, always make sure that it’s sent on the same day, at the same time. For example, every Wednesday at 3pm. Your subscribers will come to “expect” your email to arrive in their inbox on the same day at the same time, meaning that they want to read your content and are generally more receptive to any special offers or promotions you may include.

10. Measure Results – You must be able to track who has opened your email communication, and better still to know who has clicked through on one of the links that direct the visitor to your website for more information or to complete a call to action form. Measuring which news items generated the most interest will help you to refine future communications.

Benefits of Email Marketing

The key benefit here is that any newsletter or email communication that you send will be an effective marketing tool for your firm. It should, of course, keep clients up to date with key information, promoting your firm as knowledgeable and strong on client relationships.

EmailMarketing builds Customer loyalty

Building continued loyalty of existing clients cannot be taken for granted, particularly as your competitors become more aggressive in their marketing techniques. The newsletter is a way of retaining an existing client during times when that client is not using your service.

Please let us know if you found this article on Email Marketing of interest by contacting First One On

Do You Need More Website Visitors?

2010-06-11T14:13:00.001+01:00

I want more website visitors who will buy from me

OK so you have a website and you have spent good money on making it look attractive and it has good design features and funky stuff...! but you don't seem to be getting any visitors knocking your door down to get your products or services - what is wrong?

You now have to think about how search engines work - they index your website content into a huge data base of information and when someone types in a search term the results that are displayed are relevant to the search term, so if you are selling yellow tennis balls then you would expect to see your website pages listed in a search result - but only if you have followed a few simple rules that define how pages get listed at all.

If you do not follow these simple steps then your page will not get listed and no one will ever be able to find your pages - OK so here's what you need to do:

1) Find keywords
Pick a list of words relevant to your business. Sort the list down to the most likely word or phrase that a visitor might use to find what you want them to find. Then pick one word or phrase to use on one page of your site. Contact First One On for more detailed information on keyword mining.

2) Put keywords in Page Title
The Page Title at the very top of the screen is one of the most important things that Google and other search engines look at to determine what is on a web page. Contact First One On for more detailed how to information.

3) Put keywords in Page URL
Google and other search engines also look at the text of the URL page name, the name of the folder or directory holding the page to determine the content of the web page. Contact First One On for more detailed how to information.

4) Put page keywords in Meta Data
The page meta data (the code behind the page) is very important in describing the page content to a search engine. Don't forget, search engines cannot see graphics, they only read text data. Put a short list of 3 or 4 primary keywords in the meta data keywords. Contact First One On for more detailed how to information.

5) Put description in Meta data
The description of what the page is about should be readable by a person and make sense and include the keyword. Contact First One On for more detailed SEO Strategy information.

6) Put keywords in the H1 text
The H1 heading tag in the code of the page usually contains the title of an article at the top of your content description. Google and other search engines can see this and they put extra importance on the words in the H1 text. Make sure your keyword or phrase is included in the H1 heading tag. Contact First One On for more detailed how to information on optimising pages on your website.

7) Use keywords in the page content
Putting the keyword in the page content also tells the search engines that the page is actually about the keyword. In general the keyword should appear at least once in the first 50 words and two or three times in the next 100 words on the page. Contact First One On for more detailed page optimisation information.

8) Measure your search ranking
After changes have been made and pages uploaded it is important to measure your search ranking. Tweaking and fine tuning pages may be necessary. Contact First One On for more detailed how to information on website analytics.

Please let us know if you found this article on search marketing of interest by contacting First One On