We were looking at a variety of websites recently in the recruitment sector to show a client how we could optmise their web site for search engines.

We explained to our client that, websites that had more content or indexed pages had a better page rank, higher traffic volume, and were more visible on the popular search engines. This only proved our theory of how important it is to continually add fresh original content to your website as critical part in getting your website higher ranked for search engines.

Adding new and relevant content about the website could be in a variety of different places, for examples adding further details on your business products and services, updating industry news on the website and even update your company news with latest clients and testimonials. Displaying information and events about the company keep the website active and fresh and make it more search engine friendly mainly for Google. New content continues to refresh the website and gives the visitors the impression of credibility while keeping them engaged with something new to read when they come back to visit the business website.

Having a blog on the website helps in adding new content on a regular basis. A business website could perhaps add press releases to the website. An online retailer possibly could add a blog to the website and could also add review on one a product per day basis thus maintaining the content availability and continuity. Adding a message board, testimonials section, and latest news could be some of the other options.

Also, while adding content to the website it should be clear that the entire content should not be added to the website all at once but on a regular basis in a continuous fashion.

To learn more about adding content to your website for increase page ranking and search engine visibility, have a look at our website www.jamesblakeinternet.com or speak to one of our account managers on: 44 (0) 845 475 1302

The act of Googling oneself has become one of our favourite guilty pleasures in this new digital age. We suppose it is an activity enjoyed by many but admitted by few. The reason people search for themselves is that they are curious about what other people will see when they search for their names.

We are all a little curious to ponder on what kind of information is circulating in the digital world about us, even worse, what if there is an inaccurate detail posted about us??.Learning how to perform a complete search for yourself with Google therefore makes sense in a world where everything is online (well almost!!)

What does Google have to say about you and how you could control it- is important to know and we need to understand this:

Listing Your Name:

First of all, make sure that you are among the top people in a search for your name. This is not so difficult when you have an unusual name but slightly harder when you have a more common name like Lisa Sullivan! If you do have a unique or less common name, a moderate amount of online activity will put you above the handful of people with the same name. On the other hand, if you have a familiar name, like Steve Palmer, you have to work especially hard to even be on the first page of listings since there are many more Steve Palmer’s active online.

For those who wish to increase their digital footprint, building and optimising a website helps in increasing the visibility. Social media sites are also a great way to start, so it is a good idea to have and maintain an active profile on several of the popular networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter etc

In order to assist people in googling their names, Google has introduced ‘Google Profiles’, which helps people to control how they will appear in Google searches for their names. You just need to create a profile and point it to other relevant sites for those looking for you. The Google profile provides you with a personalised page on which you can include links to your blog, Twitter feed or company website, plus share online photos and link to your other profiles on sites such as Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn.

The more information you add to your Google profile, the higher your page is likely to be ranked on a Google search for your name and associated keywords.

Eliminating Unwanted Information

Even though you appear among the top most search results for your name or even if you come out first on the list, what comes up against your name might not be to your liking. What do you do?

There may be information about you which is incomplete or inaccurate. It is therefore important to take steps to rectify the situation. Contacting the website or company responsible for the error is often all it takes. In order to remove any obsolete information you could simply contact the people in charge of administering the space and ask them to remove or update the material.

Importance:

The ready availability of information on the Internet makes it easy for people to do free basic background checks on you or on other people before entering into business relationships. This is something you too should definitely do yourself before hiring anybody as an employee, consultant, or contractor or before entering into a business relationship.

So even though you have updated the information about you on the web and have taken measures to increase your search listings, you should maintain your online footprints by periodically performing searches on your name. Once a month is more than enough to ensure that your good name remains unblemished.

So take the next 2 minutes to run a Google search, or Yahoo or any search provider of your choice, and see what comes up

Social media marketing can be a phenomenal marketing channel for small businesses to exploit. It is a great example of how you can effectively communicate your message to a targeted audience.

The benefit of social media for companies is impossible to ignore and in order to help our web design business clients at James Blake Internet (JBI) achieve the best possible results through this channel; we have laid out five key important points that are essential to understand and effectively utilise this marketing angle:

1.Your brand or company should take a holistic, goal-oriented and authentic approach to social media marketing, rather than focusing on any one platform or method.

Every company, brand or product could be and should be “social”. Conversations about almost every brand and related products are happening everywhere, you just need to be a part of that conversation to gain the maximum benefit out of it. Explain your brand and approach without preaching or sounding like an instruction manual.

2.Use the tools available to reach to your target audience. One of the best ways for small businesses to leverage social media marketing is to use various social networks in combination with each other. The examples below helps us in understanding the marketing mix for a effective and efficient social marketing:

• Connect your Twitter account to Facebook ( or the other way round).This will let you leverage your time on Twitter and will also update your Facebook fans.

• Connect your LinkedIn profile to your Word Press blog. This will automatically update your LinkedIn profile with your most recent blog posts and hence reach to the desired audience.

• Integrate Twitter or Facebook tools onto your website. The use of ‘ShareThis’ tool enables readers to quickly share content on multiple social networks.

We need to keep in mind that not all social networks will make sense for every business. Learn which networks are best for your on-line business strategy and find ways to leverage combinations of those networks to make your marketing more effective.

3.Posting relevant content is important. Remaining true to your brand promise is the best way to approach social media. Utilise your brand promise as guiding principles across all your social media efforts. It should be reflected in the content created, the tone used, and the promotional programs being launched.

Though more attention is focused on social networks than on company blogs these days, however, blogs still continue to offer great value for small businesses as they help in listening, learning and engaging in conversations with your customers and as we know understanding your customers requirements is half the battle!

4.Make promotions fun. Marketing is not a campaign but a commitment. In order to build long-term relationships with your clients you need to invest in them genuinely..

A social media programme is a commitment to engage and communicate with clients when and where they want to communicate.

5.Attention to details matters since much of social media marketing is human capital it involves more thinking and execution.

The best way to start a social media campaign is by listening.Set up Google Alerts to look for conversations about your brand or product.Then participate in the conversation and just remember to be authentic, honest and transparent.

A brand which is active on social media and interacts with its clients will carry more credibility and rally more supporters in the future.

So what are Robots and what do they do? We have all heard of spiders and crawlers for search engine optimisation but for a brief explanation please read the following below;

Web indexing robots are used by many search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN and others. These web indexing robots are also known as spiders. These spiders/robots are the tools used by engines to harvest data for their search engines. When you submit your website to the engines, you are effectively asking the search engines to send their web indexing robot to your website so that it can be crawled and added to their database.

We recommend robots.txt files as a great way to keep portions of your site off limits to search engine spiders. For instance, there’s probably no reason for Google to index your personal folders / unwanted folders or your cgi-bin directory, so why waste their time and your resources by allowing spiders to access parts of your site you don’t need indexed.

Making sure search engine crawl the correct parts of your website is a very important part of your SEO plan.

One of the key aspects of having an efficient, fast loading and search engine friendly website, is the page load speed. This should not be looked at as simply part of your website performance analysis , but part of your overall search engine optimisation plan.

One of the first things to consider when looking at both your website performance and your optimising plan is the images you use. There is always a temptation to take pictures from a state of the art digital camera, download the images and post straight onto your website.

We at James Blake Internet believe that any images should be reduced in size before you upload it. One of the questions we often get asked is “everyone going on my site has broadband, so the speed will not be an issue”.

Unfortunately that although this might be true if you have a gallery of 20 images, each of 3mb, that page has to load and it will take time and bandwidth.

Most people are very protective of their images and so are reluctant to reduce the size as feel that it will affect the quality of the image. This is especially true if the image is personal to them on highlighting their key business service.

The ideal way to reduce the image size is with a professional image editor such as Photoshop which will help prevent the reduction in quality. There is also free software on the web to help help your image sizes down and worth a search on Google to find them.

There is no easy way to achieving an efficient search engine friendly website, but taking little steps like this will definitely help your website.

For more information please speak to one of our James Blake consultants on 08004751302

Important Tips for a fast loading web site

1. Optimise your HTML code
Make sure that your site doesn’t have any unwanted tags or broken links and that the code allows for quick load times. Errors on your web pages can slow down your website and so its essential that your website is error free!

2. Keep the use of graphics, images and Flash to a minimum.
These are the major contributors to the size of your web page so any reduction can only help, for example try using background colors and fills instead of heavy images. In editors like fireworks and flash you can see the various options in the preview panel to reduce the sizes. See how popular web sites like google and yahoo have pages that are very small in size and thus load in seconds.

3. Stick to simple designs
Most fast loading sites have very simple designs. Take the hint! Complicated designs will slow down your pages.

4. Spread out your content neatly
In case you find yourself having very long pages of content, break them down into separate logical sections and thus bring down the sizes of the individual pages.

5. Use Text Links instead of graphic buttons
Basically try to make use of text links as much as possible as they are easier to maintain. Use CSS Styles for text links to make them as attractive as buttons.

6. Use Server Side Include (SSI) files
SSI files once called from the web server reside in its cache so on subsequent requests they load faster. Use them whereever possible.

7. Use Div tags instead of Tables
Using Div tags instead of tables for your design is what you need to do for better load time and total control over your layout. It also ensures that it is scalable to allow for future design changes.

Effective Table Design: In case you must use tables use them wisely and sparingly. Design using nested tables instead of using cell merges and splits. Use separate tables where ever possible.

8. Check your W3C standard validity and Load time regularly
To maintain an excellent website you must give thought to how to improve your website on an almost daily basis! Maintain an error free website and tweek it regularly. Do remember to check your Load time and W3C code and CSS validity regularly.

So what are Meta titles, descriptions, keywords etc?

It really is not as complicated as you might think. Let’s start by asking a very simple question will adding Meta titles, keywords, tags, descriptions make your site shoot up the serach engines to the top?

Easy to answer this, no! However don’t give up on them as they do hold importance to search engine rankings and SEO optimisation. The correct Meta titles and keywords will help the major search engines such as Google and Yahoo index your site and understand what your site is offering.

Let’s look at the different functions

1) Meta Title:
This is what it says on the tin, the title! Have a look at the website in the very top left hand corner of the browser window and you will see the Meta title.
What is best to put here? Our advice is simple, put exactly what the content on the page is about.
It should contain keywords, but don’t over complicate this as the title tag will be the first thing on your page.

If we look at the James Blake Internet site (www.jamesblakeinternet.com) at the top of the page you will see
Web Design UK / Website Development / SEO Company UK / Professional website design company

2) Meta description:
This is the part that tells us about the company.
Firstly and most importantly this is a real chance for you to engage and interest the consumer as it might be the first thing they read about your company. Don’t bore them with a load of keywords, the idea is that they will click and visit your site.

Each page should have a description and the key is to tell the audience exactly what’s on the page, ie a summary. This will increase the likelihood of people clicking through.

The description you provide for your page has to convince the person that you are providing exactly what they are looking for. If a user comes to your site and the Title and Description Tags don’t accurately match the content they actually find, you are less likely to be considered a reputable source of information.

The description for a website should be no more than 250 characters
Again let’s look at www.Jamesblakeinternet.com

James Blake Internet Services is a professional web design & development and SEO Company in London UK, We provide Services including shopping carts website …

3) Meta keywords:
Finally the content itself on your pages ! To increase the ranking and occurrence probability on a search engine, words relating to the website /company or business are added to the website.
For example lets look at James Blake site again on the home page content and highlight some of the keywords that relate to our business.

James Blake Internet Services is a leading provider of internet solutions for business of all sizes, offering professional online services from web design and development to complete interactive e-marketing.

Finally
Please remember that whilst useful, Meta tags are not a magic formula and in need to be used in part of a whole SEO strategy not in isolation.

Please feel free to call us on 0845 475 1302 for more information

Interview with gdtalent director Gordon Milne

Recently James Blake Internet completed a new website for gdtalent and we thought it would be interesting to hear his thoughts about his business, building a new website and of course online marketing.

1) Can you tell us a little about your business?
gdtalent is a consultancy specialising in recruitment solutions for international businesses and candidates. More specifically, our expertise is in assisting companies recruit the very best, internationally experienced, Chinese speaking managers and professionals. As well as recruitment/search type services we also run career briefing seminars for candidates who want to know more about the job market in China.

2) How did you get into the Chinese market?
gdtalent is owned and managed by Gordon Milne who recently worked in Shanghai for 4.5 years as an expat for major recruitment businesses. During that time clients frequently commented on the following:
a) how difficult it is/was to hire good people given the finite talent pool;
b) how difficult it is to access Chinese experienced hires whilst they are studying or working overseas and
c) how poor sister companies are at supporting China recruitment. E.g. Company X in US, UK etc rarely properly support Company X’s hiring activities in China.

Some of gdtalent’s services are designed to specifically address the above.

3) What are your objectives and plans for your new website?
The web site was designed to be a reference point where clients and candidates alike can establish what we do and evaluate/verify our service offering. We decided to try to make the web site crisp, clean, professional, un-cluttered, easy to navigate and not too “hip” so it would not date so easily.

4) Will you be doing any on-line campaigns to help your business
Probably. So far we’ve only used Google’s AdWords with very limited success. Still early days though.

5) If our customers want to enter into the Chinese market can you help recruit the right people?
Certainly hope so! We have a good understanding of the Chinese recruitment/labour market as well as a database and network of candidates. Finally, our ability to conduct a direct or “headhunt” search means that our fulfilment ratios will always be high.

6) Have you got any tips for people who are considering setting up their own business on-line?
Planning and Patience come to mind. Quite a bit of work has to go in before you engage any service providers to design your web site. If you don’t know what you want, they certainly won’t know what you mean. And no matter how fast you want things done, allow for an overrun.

7) Finally for our own records, how was working with the James Blake Team
Good. I always felt confident that I would get what I wanted and I did. I have no hesitation in recommending the James Blake Team.

My marketing manager said SEO doesn’t achieve instant results?

Your marketing manager is correct to a certain degree in that SEO will not have instant results, i.e. if we start a campaign tomorrow your inbox will not be flooded with new leads. SEO is a medium term strategy to make you an on-line leader in certain areas. Generally we at James Blake Internet say we can make a difference within 3-6 months.

If you do need instant results then we would suggest mixing an SEO campaign with a pay per click campaign (PPC). This will help you get the benefits in both the short and medium term.

However we believe that internet marketing needs to be looked at in conjunction with other aspects of your business such as your offline marketing in order to maximise the potential of any campaign.

a) Establish a brand – what does your business really offer? By this we don’t mean fancy design and new logos etc, Is there an area you specialise in within your field and want to tell the World (on-line and off-line). Once this is established then there is a message to spread (online and offline)

b) Once you have established the brand and the message we suggest you look at all your marketing to see if this reflects your message. If you have a current website its vital you look at the design and structure to see if it’s in line with your brand and message. When people hear about your business they often go on-line to see who they will be visiting (even if referred). Does your website convey the message that your marketing (again both on-line and off-line) is saying. Otherwise you will not be maximising the potential of your spend.

c) I would then look at how people will get to hear about your business e.g. How many people will search on-line to find your business or how many people will use the yellow pages etc. If you feel that most of your business comes from referrals then that’s where you should now spend your money. If you think there is a strong percentage that search for your business on-line, i.e. Google, yahoo, Yell etc then this is the market that SEO can capture.

James Blake believe that online advertising should be done in conjunction with offline and not separately. Both need to have the same message as they complement each other.

Success for our SEO team

In terms of examples of success James Blake Internet have a few but I have taken the example below as the website recently was sold on the back of its SEO performance and think it’s a good example of James Blake Internet’s work.

Case Study - Avis Net Curtains - http://www.avisnetcurtains.com/

This is a Net Curtain business that had a small shop in North London. James Blake Internet got the website to teh top page and Number 1 on Google on a variety of the top keyword searches against much stronger and larger competitors (including national brands). The website proved extremely successful and the owner has just been sold to a competitor purely for its SEO value and ability to attract traffic.

James Blake Internet worked with the owner to understand the phrase that we all felt were most important to their business. James Blake didn’t need 1000’s of keywords, they actually just took 15 which initially is more than enough. The key was to get results on 1st page Google for most of them quickly as possible!

All the main SEO terms listed below for their industry they rank on Google 1st Page despite some heavy competition.

Keywords that were used in SEO Campaign
Net Curtains London
Net Curtains
Best Net curtains
Cheap Net curtains
Net Curtains UK
Net Curtains Shop
Net curtains online
buy net curtains
discount net curtains
buy net curtains

James Blake Internet achieved this by the same means as all their sites, having a close working relationship with the previous owner and understanding their business. This enables them to choose correct keywords and measure the effectiveness of our work continuously.