John (Super) Birch

Chris Stanbury and John Birch from Cravenplan Computers were hailed as heroes today when they stepped into the breach at the last minute to give a presentation on Search Engine Optimisation and on-line marketing.

Cravenplan were invited to the event held by business link as attendees, unfortunately the guest speaker was unable to make the event and just fifteen minutes before he talk as due to start, the organisers of the Open advice and support day at The Olive bowl Gillingham asked if Chris, who is well known for the popular Search Engine Optimisation seminars he presents, would step into the breach and give the presentation.

The audience were treated to an hour of well researched and up to date information about SEO and on-line marketing and questions were then invited from the floor, and following the lively Q & A both Chris and John were available for one to one advice sessions that proved extremely popular.

To be successful you need to associate with successful people on the web the same is true, you need to be seen to be associating with the best in your sector and the best in your sector need to be seen to show an interest in you.

This is the one secret of link building, it is what the search engines are looking for when it comes to ranking your site in the search engine rankings, so what are the search engines looking at when they rank you, in truth it is just two things and you have a lot of control over both.

So what are these two things that the search engines l are looking at when they decide where your site should rank in the search engines?

The first is pretty strait forward, what is the page of the website about, that is it the search engines need to know what the site is about, this is where search engine optimisation of your site can help, good SEO is about telling the search engines such as Google what your pages relate to, what they are about.

The second part of the big secret to ranking well in the search engines is what do other pages on the same subject think of your page, the way this is done is with links, if I like a website, then I will link to it in articles I write on my website, a bit like I did when I mentioned Google in the previous paragraph.

The search engines count up these links and look at who has linked to you and how they have linked to you and they then decide where on the rankings your site should be found.

If you need help getting your site found in the search engines let me know and we will see what search engine optimisation you need to help you get batter rankings.

As the top internet consultancy Dorset we are able to help you with all your internet needs, we can help your pages get seen and ranked by all the top search engines, Google, Yahoo and MSN all love websites that make it clear what it is they are about this is where good Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) can help.

Search Engine Optimisation tells the search engines what it needs to know about different websites, it tells them what the page is about in broad terms and also in exact details, this is one of the main factors that will determine where in the search engine rankings you will show up.

The other major factor is links, links are like votes to your site from other sites that deal with the same subject, so if I needed this page to rank really well I would need links back to it that were related to internet consultancy Dorset, this would be seen as a very positive vote for my site from the other sites about search engine consultancy Dorset and I would get ranked for the term higher in the search engines.

You should have two sitemaps on your website, one that is for your human visitors to look at and one for the search engine bots to check over, there jobs are different as is their layout the site map for people is normally created in HTML and the sitemap for the search engines would need to be an xml sitemap.

The human html site map should be simple to follow, it is used by visitors to your site in case they can not follow the logic of your links to find the page they are after it allows the user to go into one place and look at the page names and titles to establish how to find what he is looking for.

Xml is a format that was agreed by the big 3 search engines, Google, MSN and Yahoo to allow webmasters to create just one site map for the search engines that they could all follow rather than requiring 3 different formats to do the same job.

The xml sitemap is designed so that the search engine bots can look at it and find the links to all the pages you need them too, you are able to set different parameters such as the regularity of the updates of the pages, so you can tell the bots how often a page is updated and how important it is to your site.

Avoiding spammers using your site and annoying your visitors can be a pain, the spammers on the internet often add links to the comments sections on blogs or to the post signature on forums ad these if abused can put genuine users off using your site.

One of the easiest ways of deterring the spammers from your site is to use the “no follow” tag for forum post signatures, this puts a barrier to the spammer as he is after links that will help in the search engines but the “no follow” tag will not give him that search engine boost.

If you are using a blog you can set the comments so that they must be approved before being posted, this will also discourage the spammers from using your blog to post spam as it will never get seen by the search engines.

The next free seminar to be held at the Cravenplan site will be the ever popular ebay seminar, this is a favourite with people who are experienced users and those who know nothing about the subject.

You will learn

How ebay came to be the premier auction site on the internet

How to get the most from your listings

How to find items at rock bottom prices

How ebay can help your business

And much more

To attend the seminar on 12th March you will need to register at Free seminar Salisbury

Following on from the success of the Search Engine Optimisation seminar held at Cravenplan last month there was an amazing response to the new web2.0 and your business seminar held at the same offices in February.

With cash prizes given to out to a lucky attendee and everyone getting free books and notes from this informative and free seminar, the demonstrations of various aspects of the web 2.0 concept and the sites involved was exciting and a number of the business owners attending were shocked to discover they were already using some of the powerful ideas and applications that are considered to be web 2.0 strategies.

The free seminar covered a wide range of web2.0 aspects and following a lively Q&A session the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) team were on hand to discuss how these concepts could be put into use in business related websites.

The next free seminar at Cravenplan is on Ebay and this is proving so popular it is being held in the afternoon and also again in the evening, so if you have not already done so register for the free seminar Salisbury now.

Search engine optimisation Salisbury as a search term will generate more focused responce than just search engine optimisation or search engine marketing, this can be significant if you are looking to be found for a term in your local area.

Knowing this simple but often overlooked fact can help you be found more easly than if you are trying to compete for a competitive term, the results you get should also be more inclined to become customers as they were looking for your service in a given area rather than just randomly in the whole country.

If you do not offer your services in just one location it may be worth your while considering using 0845 numbers as these usful telephone numbers allow you to track where your callers are ringing from and you can then direct your marketing budget to where it does you the most good, The other hugh advantage of these 0845 numbers is that your customers only pay the same rate from where ever in the UK they call.

With the 3 golden rules the third one is Can you compete in this market? Is the competition too tough for you to get the top positions and attract all those visitors who are looking to spend money on your site.

To answer this you need to consider a couple of things are you going to be conducting the on-line marketing and SEO yourself or are you going to be using a professional search engine optimisation company to get you the positions you need in the search engines.

Competitor analysis is one of the three golden rules that you need to follow to ensure your success on the internet with your website, the others being are there enough visitors for the terms you are promoting and are they going to spend money with you.

Depending on your level of experience or the skill of your search engine optimisation company your answer to the question “can you compete in this market?” will be different, some will only be able to compete against less well optimised sites with a low number of competing pages others will be happy to promote you for terms with millions of competing pages, finding the right level for you is the key.

You need a balance between the amount of time and effort you put into ranking for a key word compared to the rewards you are going to get from that keyword.

Remember follow the 3 golden rules and your chances of on-line success will be greatly improved, break the rules and you will be setting yourself up to fail.

YouTube is a video sharing community that allows users to watch and upload videos, these can be humorous or business related and are as diverse as pets or cars, there are some restrictions as to the sort of video you can add but there is a wide range of subjects and the police have even caught up with criminals and speeding motorists who have filmed there activities and posted them on youtube.

Using Youtube to promote your business – You know that if you read an advertisment in te newspaper you skim it and only take in a little of the message where watching a moving image with sound makes it harder to miss the message and research shows that 55% of the information we take in is visual and only 7% is text.

You can use YouTube to demonstrate how products are used, this can save on paper if you are giving out instructions on your product or service, upload a video and direct customers to the YouTube page or as a viral advertising tool. Much like a blog by providing useful information you can show your expertise in a particular area. You can also use YouTube to promote products by making entertaining videos. A good examples of this are the Ford KA Sport Commecials.