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Getting on Page 1 of Google

Tuesday, January 10th, 2012

Background

Our client, Flexachem UK Ltd is the UK division for the Flexachem Ireland group. The company manufactures and distributes a range of engineered products for the chemical, petrochemical and pharmaceutical industries.

In 2011 the company set about creating a dedicated UK website at Flexachem.co.uk, whilst leaving the main ‘group’ site hosted at Flexachem.com. The objective of creating a dedicated site was to allow the UK based team to target and promote specific areas of the business aligned to the needs of their local domestic market.

Studiowide were not only given the task to develop a new website – based on the original format, but we were also commissioned to provide an introductory Search Engine Optimisation programme in order to establish the new domain name within search engines.

The challenge

The challenge was getting on page 1 of Google for five chosen keywords. At this stage of the project it was unclear as to which segments of the business would be targeted and by which keywords until a full keyword analysis was undertaken. From doing such an analysis we quickly establish the level of hours required in order to get the new website onto page 1 of Google search results pages.

The solution

Keyword research is the cornerstone to any search engine optimisation (SEO) programme. By conducting some industry analysis and keyword research we were able to determine the competitiveness of certain key word phrases within the industry and target those keywords that had a sufficient level of web traffic.

Keyword Phrases

There are 7 steps to finding the right keywords:

1) Brainstorm
2) Categorise
3) Research
4) Compile
5) Winnow
6) Determine competitiveness
7) Select

Once we had selected the right keywords the task was to now get the final chosen keywords into the website content. This can also apply to images by way of the image Alt attributes (alt tags).

We initially conducted our on-page optimisation across the Flexachem website to ‘creatively’ weave in the specific chosen keywords. There is a fine line when conducting search engine optimisation relating to the insertion of keywords. Too many and the main communication and overall message of the website gets affected and watered down, too few and the process becomes futile.

So often we hear this part of the optimisation process referred to as the ‘sprinkling’ of keywords or even worse keyword ‘stuffing’. Getting the right on-page optimisation done, in particularly using keywords in content, is all about the user. Users come first, the final content must make sense to people, not just to search engines, this is why we approach this part of the process whilst inserting the keyword content, with an element of creativity in writing.

Search Engine Optimisation in HTML tags

There are many tags used when coding webpages and there are some tags that when keyword phrases are used within them can help the search engines determine the relevancy of the web page. Such tags are;

·        Title tags – these are the most useful of all html because search engines give them lots of weight
·        Meta description tags – These should describe the page so that it entices users to click on your listing in the search engines
·        Header tags – These are great places to use keyword rich headlinesAnchor text – this is the words you use in the clickable part of any text link
·        Image alt attributes (alt tags) – Used when you have image navigation on the website

With the Flexachem website we did not place keywords in all of the potential tags above – we recommend that just because you can put keywords everywhere, it doesn’t mean that you should. Therefore, in this project and in all of our projects, we only use the keywords where it makes the most sense for each page.

Once we had conducted effective on page optimisation we then turned our focus to further content. As part of our web development project for Flexachem we included a news and information feed which could be picked up by newsreaders as a RSS feed.

RSS feeds are one of the best methods of getting fresh content out to the search engines on a regular basis – this is our number 1 tip for building web site authority within the search engines. Having someone internally who can do this part of the website maintenance is a great advantage.

However, with this project we opted for the traditional method of backlinking, where we post content onto relevant websites with a URL link back to the Flexachem site.

The results

As with any search engine optimisation project that we undertake our client receives a monthly snap-shot report of how the programme is performing. Within 1 month we had hit one of our objectives with Flexachem. We had achieved a page 1 listing for one of their 5 chosen keywords. Over the 6 month period we achieved listings on page 1 of Google for 4 out of 5 keywords.

At the end of the 6 month project we have firmly established Flexachem within the search engines and provided a platform for further on-going promotions. Our overall objective was met and the client was very happy.

Tags: optimisation, search engine, seo
Posted in Case studies, Internet Marketing | No Comments »

Custom facebook pages

Sunday, June 12th, 2011

facebook pages provide you with a valuable opportunity to engage with your target audience. Whilst this can be fun and interactive, ‘pages’ are increasingly becoming a ‘second home page’ for businesses online.

If you look around closely enough, you’ll realise that anyone who is ‘anyone’ offering products or service, are promoting themselves through facebook. The main reason for this is that facebook is a very large platform supporting all types of promotions, and additionally, everything about it happens to be extremely easy and familiar to access, especially from a usability point of view.

However, there are certain things to be cautious about. Just because facebook is easy to use doesn’t mean that everyone will succeed with their marketing attempts. Whether or not you decide to set up the facebook pages yourself, you will certainly stand out from your competition if you invest in experts to develop the contents of the facebook page for you.

A custom facebook page can be either of the following;

Splash pages – this page will look more like an ad or a poster. This will briefly state what the page is about and why people need to become fans.
Rich media (pictures, audio, video) – image sliders, video galleries, audio players; almost anything is now supported with facebook iframes.
Social widgets (share, subscribe, invite fans) – these types of facebook pages attracts new fans and incentivises existing fans to spread your content.
Lead generation (e-mail subscription, sign up) – want people to join your newsletter or sign up to your service right from the facebook page? This can also be done.

Your main website will remain a powerful marketing tool. A custom facebook page will not replace your website; however what it does is extend your brand presence online, along with providing new and existing customers with a different way of engaging with your business.

facebook has recently discontinued its support for FBML. All custom pages are now handled via iframes through the facebook app developer’s facility. This is great news! From now on we have almost no restrictions in creating custom facebook pages for our clients! Literally anything can be done with an iframe!

With over 600 million facebook accounts, and the UK population spending approximately an hour a day on social media sites, it’s a great way to raise the visibility of your brand, along with getting to know your target market and driving traffic to your website.

We are offering facebook custom pages from £99.

Tags: facebook pages
Posted in Internet Marketing, Web development | No Comments »

e-newsletter design

Wednesday, April 7th, 2010

How to improve your email newsletters;

Getting the layout and content right for an e-newsletter is a creative technique and ultimately effects how your readers perceive your brand. If you’re involved with this process then read on as we’ve put together a few pointers to steer you in the right direction.

• Promote your logo to be instantly recognisable.

You might already use a company logo on your designs, but is this large enough so that people know who their email is from before they press the delete button? Also, repetition of design elements and the use of company colours will also help promote and re-enforce the identity.

• Talk to your audience using jargon free terminology.

Heavy use of Jargon in headers and content is off putting. Be educational but also remember who you are writing for.

• Titles should fit in with the theme and guide your readers through the layout.

Using bolded sub headings and strong emphasis points with italics will provide structure and clarity, instantly informing what lays ahead. Avoid obvious and boring titles and keep away from underlining text as this creates confusion with hyperlinks.

• Don't make your e-newsletter like a music poster with loud backgrounds and block text (unless you are a music promoter).

Be subtle with the contrast and ensure colours complement each other, using sufficient contrast between text and background.

• A lot can be said about white space in design techniques.

Use this space wisely to control and give relaxation to the reader’s eye. Text will be much easier to follow resulting in a far great experience.

• Don’t add borders and shading just for the sake of it.

Your layout should have enough natural alignment through the use of placed images and text, without the need for harsh borders and containers.

• As a rule, no more than two font types.

Structure can be added using different font sizes and emphasis such as bold or italic. Plan your layout with header 1 , header 2, sub 1, sub 2 etc. Be consistent throughout and stay away from overly decorative text, unless appropriate to your brand.

• Try to add images but keep them relevant to your story or products.

Avoid making your e-newsletter into a photo album (unless you’re a photographer). We hope the above tips will help go towards improving the layout and design of your e-newsletters, resulting in a greater experience for your readers. If this all seems a bit too much then why not pass it on to us, we would gladly take this over for you as part of our integrated email newsletter service.

Tags: e-newsletter, email newsletters
Posted in How To Do..., Internet Marketing | No Comments »

Leverage your email newsletters

Wednesday, March 17th, 2010

Written by Carl Da-Costa-Greaves

If you think about it, newsletters are the most convenient, oldest and economical modes of spreading your company information. If you haven’t converted to full digital versions as of yet; distributed through emails, blogs and RSS, then you should most definitely be considering this now as a worthwhile and cost effective way to promote your business. Most people are now online and some come to expect certain features such as blogs and regular news updates via feeds, so entering into this arena is basically giving your customers what they want. But rather than scratching around for content, why not convert your email newsletters to blog posts and news feeds? You can effectively reach the same customer base, and more, which will leverage the content of your original email newsletters.

How to get your email newsletter to become a blog?

Most people understand what a blog is and even subscribe to them, but when asked to write a regular post about their favourite topic, then out comes the writer’s block. But if we consider all of the existing news items that are published about your company as part of your regular newsletter, whether electronically or printed, this alone can be separated into individual pieces and thus provide a wealth of information. The way to enable this to work is through content management systems. These are available as part of a web package or can be hosted on your website as part of your existing design, in a matter of a few hours.
Your blog becomes your email newsletter

By introducing the content of your email newsletters though your blog or online news feed, with no extra effort, you can then streamline your email marketing and newsletter send out process and in turn give your customers a far better user experience. So if you’re committing valuable time to publishing a newsletter, either printed or email newsletters, then it stands to reason that you should leverage this and get as much of a return on your investment out of the process as possible.

A word of caution: just because you publish all of your content on line it doesn’t mean that people necessarily want to read it. Think about adding value to customers or prospects by providing useful, exclusive content or freebies, mixed in with your standard product and company updates.

Tags: content management systems, email marketing, email newsletter, news updates
Posted in Internet Marketing | No Comments »

Spring clean your newsletters

Saturday, March 13th, 2010

By Carl Da-Costa-Greaves

Whether you’re creating your own email newsletters or writing for someone else, if you’re anything like me, you will always be looking for ways to improve, even going right back to the drawing board. With growing competition online and new technologies emerging every day, the last thing you want to do is get left behind by your competitors.

Why reinvent your email newsletters?

You‘ve been writing email newsletters for your business, publishing them and distributing them for years so why change now? A few reasons might be because: • Your users are reading the same newsletter, making the message monotonous as there’s not much more to read that they don’t already know about you. • In the age of the digital era there is so much more information that can be collated quite quickly, such as product profiles, feedback reviews, testimonials etc. If this type of information has got you the reputation you have today then you should share this pride with your readers so they know exactly where their suppliers brand stands in market. • Think big and think different. Why do the same things others are doing?
How to be different

Now you know why your newsletter may need changing, it’s time to work out how you can make it different. Writing good email newsletters requires absolute creativity that you need to put in from the start. Some areas to think about are: • Interest your readers by tapping them into the wider knowledge base of your industry. By doing this you are showing a willingness to educate outside of your own products, adding innovative generic industry information. • Change the design of your newsletter. Why stick to the same boring way of presenting your newsletter? Play with colours and design styles. Use other interesting newsletters that catch your eye for ideas, design patterns and choice of colours. • Add some reviews and testimonials about the products and services of your business. This will help your readers gain faith in your brand. • Keep your readers regularly updated; once a day is too much, once every 6 months and they will forget you. • Leave your readers in anticipation for the next publication. You can do this by dropping some hints about upcoming offers in your next editions. If you haven’t changed your email newsletter in the last 2 years then the chances are it’s going to look a bit outdated. Leverage the power of email marketing and try incorporating some of the ideas above the next time you publish.

Tags: creativity, email newsletters, Internet Marketing, spring clean
Posted in Internet Marketing | No Comments »

Growing your email marketing lists

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

In previous posts we’ve discussed how to write winning email newsletters. However, If you’ve just started out in business or only recently started capturing email addresses through sign up forms etc then you probably don't have a big list to send your email marketing campaigns or email newsletters to. So what do you do?

Here are some inspirational ideas to grow your opt-in email marketing list:

• Place your email newsletter signup form on your home page. Or if this doesn’t fit with the look and feel of your design then have a visual cue, or noticeable link to take users directly to the signup form page.

• Link to your signup form from every page of your website (you might even add a link to your footer or side navigation).

• Place a link to your email signup form in your email signature (ask everyone in your company to do the same).

• Offer free giveaways to one lucky subscriber (it can be an exclusive promotional discount or a limited edition offer of some sort).

• Post free whitepapers or helpful articles on your site. They'll get downloaded and hopefully spread around the web if you offer them for free and with no registration. Inside your whitepaper you could place your add or promotion of your newsletter and the benefits of signing up (see above).

• Send out personal, one-to-one emails to all your clients who haven’t already opted-in and ask them to please sign up to your newsletter.

• In your "Contact Us" form on your website, add a checkbox to "signup to our newsletter"

Already Have a List of Customers?

What if you already have a customer list with email contact details of people that you've been doing business with for years? Just because they're your customers it doesn't necessarily mean that they want to start receiving your email newsletters. For example, if you run a small consultancy business with a about 25 clients who are very close to you. If you just assume they'd want your newsletter and you automatically subscribe them to your list without their permission, you're just going to irritate a lot of them (or worse, get yourself reported as a spammer). If you've got an online store you're probably sitting on a huge email list of customers who have purchased something from you in the past. But if they didn't check a box for email marketing, or if you haven't emailed them anything in years, you shouldn't start sending them emails out of the blue. So what can you do? If you have a list of customer email addresses and you want to start sending them email marketing, but you don't have their permission yet, ask them for permission by sending a "Re-Introduction Email." It can be extremely effective in re-energising dormant contacts and will certainly help you on your way to increasing your opt-in subscribers.

Tags: email marketing, email marketing campaigns, email newsletters
Posted in Internet Marketing | No Comments »

Writing email newsletters

Friday, February 26th, 2010

Written by: Carl Da-Costa-Greaves

Email newsletters are a great medium for imparting knowledge, news updates or to even just touch base with your customers. In today’s digital world you can engage with very little up front costs, making regular contact to keep you “front of mind”.

However, the key to a successful newsletter is learning how to write the winning piece. The first thing about your campaign is to keep in mind and plan a relevant theme or a subjective issue towards which the attention of the reader needs to be drawn. Once the theme or content is decided, you must plan the flow of information in such a way that the entire message comes across in a logical manner. Content should be meaningful and not too confusing that you leave the reader bewildered as to what message is trying to be conveyed. Even more so today as we’re bombarded with so much information that our time span on cluttered content is zero.

The next point that needs our attention is that we get to the facts quickly in the first part; possibly in a bullet pointed format. We do this to allow the reader an insight so they can rapidly decide if they wish to know more about the topic and further delve into facts, figures and other data, or move on. Incorporating images if you have them is a great way to graphically illustrate the content and is pleasing to the eye. Images also break up the page and can give a more inviting appeal to cold blocks of text. It also goes without saying that a good email newsletter is well researched and the writer, if handled through an agency, has a thorough understanding of the client requirements, a clear target is agreed and a thorough understanding is gained about the target readership.

The mark of any winning newsletter is one that keeps building on the interest of the readers. Hence you must make careful considerations as to what is exactly relevant and will add value from the first line right up until the end of the final paragraph. In fact a winning email newsletter would be considered one that leaves the reader craving for more content even after they have finished reading it completely.

Written by: Carl Da-Costa-Greaves

Email newsletters are a great medium for imparting knowledge, news updates or to even just touch base with your customers. In today’s digital world you can engage with very little upfront costs, making regular contact to keep you “front of mind”. However, the key to a successful newsletter is learning how to write the winning piece.

The first thing about your campaign is to keep in mind and plan a relevant theme or a subjective issue towards which the attention of the reader needs to be drawn. Once the theme or content is decided, you must plan the flow of information in such a way that the entire message comes across in a logical manner. Content should be meaningful and not too confusing that you leave the reader bewildered as to what message is trying to be conveyed. Even more so today as we’re bombarded with so much information that our time span on cluttered content is zero.

It also goes without saying that a winning email newsletter is well researched and the writer, if handled through an agency, has a thorough understanding of the client requirements, a clear target is agreed and a thorough understanding is gained about the target readership.

The mark of any winning newsletter is one that keeps building on the interest of the readers. Hence you must make careful considerations as to what is exactly relevant and will add value from the first line right up until the end of the final paragraph. In fact a good email newsletter would be considered one that leaves the reader craving for more content even after they have finished reading it completely.

Tags: email newsletter
Posted in Internet Marketing | 1 Comment »

Microsites plugging the SEO gap

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

Not to be confused with the one page sales letter. Microsites with carefully selected content and a solid plan can be turned into highly optimised promotional tools that can plug short term gaps in your marketing campaigns and could even drive your main website further up the search rankings.

The advantage of setting up a microsite is that you get a highly focused promotion, targeting a specific product or service using a few carefully selected keywords. This could be further specialised by the purchase of keyword specific domain names, leaving prospective customers with a clear indication just by looking at a URL as to what information they will be getting when clicking on the link. Tie this in to a Pay-Per-Click campaign and you could have a worthwhile and extremely content specific promotion up and running in a matter of hours, attracting relevant searchers to your offer.

Also, because a microsite landing page can be highly optimised for your specific product or service, with the main keyword in the domain name, then it will be looked on in favour by Google when placing you in their PPC rankings, resulting in a lower cost per click acquisition. But the promotion shouldn’t end there.

If you’ve created the microsite content on a blogging platform or content management system (we’re partial to using WordPress because of its support for such powerful features as tag clouds, tag pages, Technorati tags, RSS feeds, podcasts, pings, comments, trackbacks, etc) and have highly optimised for your few chosen keywords then you’re in a very strong position to begin increasing the natural ranking of the new domain by adding further content, therefore switching strategy from Pay-Per-Click to SEO. Reciprocal linking this back to your main site will bring even more benefits. So, this could be the plug that you’re looking for in your internet marketing strategy whilst waiting for re-indexing or even new domain names to gather history and popularity, promote in parallel and get immediate benefits.

Tags: internet marketing strategy, microsites, pay per click campaign
Posted in Internet Marketing | 1 Comment »

Cost of Internet Marketing

Thursday, January 14th, 2010

Whether you’re just starting out or re-evaluating your online strategy it’s important for you to get both your plan and budget right. To be successful, you need to have a solid internet marketing strategy and be realistic about the true costs of doing it properly. The rule “Build it and they will come” rarely works in online space. For example; too many businesses spend £1000’s on getting a website developed, only to find they have no money left to promote it. Here’s our top 5 list of what you should plan for with any new internet marketing campaign:

1. Microsite/Website development/design & maintenance -The development of a new website or microsite has many variables and overall cost depends on factors such as whether it’s static or dynamic, whether it includes a blog or shopping cart, is the design bespoke or a template. The functionality of your website will be determined by your overall internet marketing strategy. Remember: in the online world, all promotional activity with eventually lead to your website.

2. SEO – Search Engine Optimisation The bottom line is that the majority of website traffic comes from search engines and directories. While the organic search engine traffic is free (no click costs), you do need to invest in some sort of SEO program to ensure you’re maximizing this free search engine traffic.

3. Pay Per Click (PPC) If you’re looking for some quick wins in terms of traffic and results from your website then PPC can offer this. With a well setup Google AdWords campaign, you can have highly targeted visitors delivered to your website almost instantly. It’s a great way to ensure you’re still getting a return on your website investment whilst your SEO and other strategies take effect.

4. Email marketing Email marketing is a very cost effective form of direct marketing. The biggest challenge, especially for start up businesses is finding and building permission based contact lists. So it often comes into its own after a business is up and running for a while, and you’ve had a chance to build a decent subscriber base.

5. Blogs Hosting and authoring your own blog can be extremely refreshing and insightful as it requires a regular analysis and reflection of your business, markets, successes and failures in order to create up-to-date content; all of these are the by-product of blogs, but I think are just as much an important benefit as to the blog itself. Whether used for general news, training, product guides, promotion or notices, blogging is firmly rooted as a favourite tool for internet marketing. Guide to expected costs With the above in mind you now get a much clearer and more realistic picture of what is required in order to get serious about your online marketing. To give you even further insight we have put together a list of average market pricing (at the mid range) for the above services.

Please note this is in no way a firm quotation from Studiowide, but more of an indication of average market costs.

	Cost Guide
Website Development – standard functionality	£700+
SEO – 2 x 6month programs	£2400+
Pay Per Click – 6 months	£720+
Email marketing – 12 months	£1400+
Blog – 12 months (assuming this is linked with Email marketing)	£1000+
TOTAL (Annual cost)	£6220+

Tags: direct marketing, internet marketing strategy, search engine optimisation
Posted in Internet Marketing | 3 Comments »

E-mail marketing and the GTI Project

Thursday, January 7th, 2010

Written by: Carl Da-Costa-Greaves

Image courtesy of Volkswagen GTI Project

E-mail marketing is a subtle art and anyone utilising this marketing tool should be aware of every bit of detail that may influence the customer. Think in terms of pea-shooter rather than an elephant gun.

You should be considering things like the subject line and who’s the stated “sender” (“from” panel at the top of the e-mail). Also, at what time is the mail going to be sent in order to get the best response.

Consider producing dedicated web pages or microsites and use your e-mail campaigns to guide your readers to the sites. Take a look at the creative use of the Volkswagen golf microsite, the GTI project, to entice and engage customers, creating a talking point around the user experience. http://www.gtiproject.com/

These are a few other variables that can help get your email response rates up but the biggest thing that’s going to determine whether you are ‘read or dead’ will be your content. How relevant it is to the user is key. For example, promoting efficiency cost savings through, let’s say, proper equipment maintenance, to a Human Resource manager, isn’t going to work. But the same campaign focused at Production Managers, who are targeted with the overall plant effectiveness, and can gain from what you are offering, will get a much better read response.

Each campaign rules will be different from company to company and as interaction and rich media becomes easier to integrate and more popular they are also becoming increasingly expected as part of the user experience. The key is to match the email that arrives in the user in box, at the right time of day, offering the right product that will satisfy a demand, at the right price. ‘Is that all?’ I hear you say. So how’s it going to work?

Well creativity and interaction can help not only capture your intended target market but can also spread virally through social networks and the GTI Project is a great example of this. Interesting and quirky campaigns brighten up anyone’s day and result in being passed around to friends or colleagues or spread via the blogosphere, increasing your exposure.

Tags: e mail marketing, gti project
Posted in Internet Marketing | 1 Comment »