The Marketing Society UK and the Royal Mail have released their latest confidence tracker results, and marketing companies are going to have lots to smile about.

Over a third of marketing directors surveyed are predicting an increase in marketing spend, with SEO coming out as the most important medium. Obviously this is great news for SEO companies and marketers, but what does it mean for everyone else?

It Really Is Time to Invest In SEO

It’s not just the top marketing directors interviewed that will be investing. More and more people are beginning to prefer online purchases, and SEO is a great way to attract those customers. As such, more and more businesses are implementing an SEO strategy. Including your competitors. If you don’t want to fall behind, you’ll need to invest soon.

To make sure you’re staying ahead of the game, call FirstFound now on 0161 909 3400. We’ll help you top the search engines.

It’s not all about SEO – see how Social Media can help your business (and take advantage of our Free Guide), or find out about our great PPC offer.

As Google gear up to make some changes to their Image Search, traffic data has been released showing that over a billion image searches are carried out every day.

This comes as a boost for the search engine market leaders, especially as the young pretenders at Bing have increased their market share substantially. In the past 12 months, Bing’s multimedia advertising campaign has helped Bing corner 12.7% of the US market. Second place Yahoo are only slightly ahead on 18.9%, but Bing will need to pull out all the stops to overtake Google – who currently account for 62.6% of search traffic.

Strangely enough, image searches for FirstFound tend to take you to Optimise Magazine – which is well worth a read. And don’t forget to give us your feedback in our survey!

Long time readers of the FirstFound Blog and Optimise will know that web users are in the middle of a battle for Internet supremacy. On one side is the search giant Google, facing off against social networking leviathan Facebook.

Over the past few months, Facebook has overtaken Google as the most visited site in the world, with their fan pages and messaging functions competing with search and Gmail. But news outlets are reporting that Google is looking to encroach on Facebook’s turf with their own brand new social media site.

Google has been undertaking a research campaign to find out just how sites like Facebook, MySpace and Bebo operate – and the next step will be a survey launched from Google’s Dublin offices. Apparently surfers will be offered 60 Euros to tell the search market leaders just how social media affects their lives.

And the end result? Google Me – a brand new social networking site that will attempt to lure Facebook’s expanding userbase back into the Google fold.

Will it work? Only time will tell, but Google will be hoping to avoid the criticisms that have cropped up surrounding their controversial StreetView service.

In the meantime, you’ll be able to find FirstFound on leading social networking sites Twitter and Facebook – but expect us to give you all the information you need on Google Me as it becomes available.

Despite the meme that “typing Google into Google breaks Google”, certain team members’ propensity for searching for their own names and the fact that most of the internet is made up of naked ladies, the most searched-for term on the Internet isn’t Google, Adam Ramsden or Busoms.

No, it’s Justin Bieber. And that sound you hear is thousands of Brits scratching their heads and saying “Who?”

Who is Justin Bieber?

He’s not a social media guru or politician, he’s a 16 year old pop star who’s practically unknown outside of the USA. Which makes it all the stranger that he’s more searched for than internationalpop star Lady Gaga, international sarong model David Beckham and US President Barack Obama.

And it’s not just search. The youngster is also camped out in Twitter’s trending topics list, and has been the recipient of everything from online vote rigging to YouTube hacking.

So what does this mean for Search?

If anything, it means that searchers are getting younger. The chances of anyone over 18 searching for Justin Bieber are slim, so it’s safe to assume that American teenage girls have suddendly become a huge portion of the online market.

So maybe it’s time to rethink the business model and start selling Justin Bieber CDs?

Actually… We’ll stick to SEO.

If you want to trend on Twitter, take a look at FirstFound’s FREE Social Media Guide. And don’t forget to follow us on Facebook!

Here at the FirstFound Blog, we’ve been predicting the rise of the “Silver Surfers” for a while. Now new research from UKOM suggests that the over-50′s are the fastest growing online group.

Over the past 12 months, the number of UK internet users grew from 36.9 million to 38.8 million – and the majority of those users were aged 50 or over.

So if your website is set up to appeal to only the hip young things, you’re missing out on an increasingly web-savvy audience with a disposable income. Luckily, we’ve put together a quick three-point list to ensure that your site isn’t putting off potential clients.

Don’t Condescend!

If you’ve got the image in your head of a “doddery” person who can’t click a mouse, you’re approaching this with a ridiculous mindset. Your website shouldn’t be the equivalent of leaning over to your grandmother and yelling “COME ON GRAN! LET’S HAVE A NICE CUP OF TEA!”.

Don’t Overcomplicate!

That goes for any website, regardless of your audience.  Anyone new to the Internet, regardless of age, is going to be put off by overcomplicated site design. So clarify. Have a clear navigational structure, and do some user testing. If people are getting lost, they’re not spending money!

Learn From Others

According to the study, the three most popular sites with the over 50s are Saga, RealAge and Flixxy. All three are bright, clean designs. Dig a little deeper and you’ll see other similarities that you should recreate with your website.

Don’t forget to follow FirstFound on Twitter and Facebook!

After a career at illustrious clubs such as Manchester United, Real Madrid, LA Galaxy and two stints at AC Milan, David Beckham has signed a lucrative contract with another giant – Yahoo!

This move is the latest in Yahoo’s $100m brand marketing campaign, and will see the England player with most advert appearances notch up yet another cap. There is an official David Beckham content page which features some insights on how the midfielder prepares for matches, and who he thinks should be in the all time World Cup 11.

However, all of Beckham’s content was created before a ball was kicked in South Africa, so don’t tune in expecting insights on Emile Heskey’s superb striking ability or Rob Green’s legendary goalkeeping prowess.

If you want to follow the World Cup on Twitter, check out our handy guide. Or if you’re heartily sick and tired of the football, why not take the opportunity to download our free social media PDF?

Well, we’re a few hours into Google’s latest gimmick – a selection of arty backgrounds that slightly intrude on Google’s normally minimalistic homepage – and there’s alread a petition asking for it to be removed.

Luckily, we’ve done some digging around, and you don’t have to have the image showing (although there is a catch).

Simply sign into your Google account, and then click the “remove background image link” in the bottom left hand corner.

Of course, this will mean you’ll be subject to Google’s controversial “Personalised Search”, but you need to weigh that up against the prospect of using a Bing clone for a day.

Do you like the images? Hate them? Not know why anyone cares? Let us know in the comments section.

Well, it looks like the long wait is finally over. After almost a year of rumours, testing and speculation, Google has officially launched the “Caffeine” update.

The new update doesn’t change Google’s ranking factors or results pages (if the official release is to be believed), but instead changes the way that pages are indexed and added to Google’s listings.

Before now, the wait for a cached page to appear in Google’s index of results could be a long one. After Caffeine, this delay should be shortened significantly with Google claiming that they’re showing “results that are 50% fresher.

We’ll have to wait and see how this affects search, but we’re expecting tweaks and changes to happen as more feedback comes in from Google’s users.

Webmasters around the world are still trying to get their heads around the announcement that Google is adding SSL encryption to its primary search engine. For the moment the new encrypted search engine is at https://www.google.com (Notice the extra “s”).

What does this mean? To put it as simply as possible it means that webmasters will not be able to track where you came from, what search term you used or even how you got to their site. To put it in even simpler terms, your analytics software running in the background will be as useful as “an asthmatic ant with a heavy bag of shopping”

At the moment this new encrypted search is still an optional beta, but Google have announced that they hope to expand the service.

I still have mixed feelings about this idea but one thing is for sure, Google are trying to once again prevent any 3rd party from seeing their data. Good or bad? Watch this space for updates on the new SSL search.

If you’ve done any searching over the weekend, you may well have noticed that Google’s had a few changes.

We’re not just talking the tweaks to the logo (although it does look much brighter) – we’re talking about the changes to the search engine results page (SERP).

Yes, there are still ten organic results as default, and yes there’s still a fair few sponsored links dotted about, but there’s a whole new sidebar down that left hand side.

The new Google Interface

The first new addition is the “Everything” filter. Google will automatically show you absolutely everything that corresponds to your query, but the new sidebar makes it easy to find the specific book, blog or video that you’re looking for.

The next addition is the search tools bar. This is really worth playing around with, as you can use it to filter out older results, see when your subject is mentioned with the timeline tool and add or remove shopping sites to help you make that purchase.

There have been mixed reviews of the new interface, but we quite like it. Share your results with us below.

If you’re looking for some test phrases, why not search for FirstFound on Facebook, FirstFound on LinkedIn or Optimise, the FirstFound Newsletter.