2011 by iUniqueFx

2011 is here at last, and after all the speculation on whether or not Google Instant, Facebook or any other flavour of the month would kill SEO (here’s a clue – none of them have), we can safely say that Search Engine Optimisation is here to stay, and it’s time to start thinking about your plans for 2011.

Your SEO Calendar for 2011

The key to successful search engine optimisation is forward planning. So start looking ahead, and see what opportunities you could be taking advantage of in 2011.

January

Valentine’s Day: You’ll need to act fast, but you should have just enough time to put an SEO strategy in place for Valentine’s Day. However, if you’re in a very competitive Valentine’s industry (flowers, cards, chocolates), you may have more success with a Google AdWords campaign.

February

Easter: February’s the time to start thinking about your Easter campaigns. Easter is late April this year, so starting your SEO in February should give you enough time to target anyone buying Easter Eggs, looking for a bank holiday break, or looking for some spring bargains.

The Royal Wedding: Hot favourite to be 2011′s biggest trending topic, the marriage of William “Wills” Windsor to Catherine “Kate” Middleton is going to be a goldmine for anyone selling merchandise – and it might provide a great tie-in opportunity for anyone in the wedding industry. But everyone’s likely to be leaping aboard the bandwagon, so February’s going to be just about as late as you can leave your SEO.

March

As the first quarter of 2011 draws to a close, March is a great time to start reviewing the key phrases you’ve been using throughout the year. There’s nothing looming on the horizon until summer, so take this opportunity to tighten up your main SEO terms.

April

Word to the wise. If you can book off April 26th, 27th and 28th, you’ll benefit from a long holiday courtesy of the Easter Bank Holidays, The Royal Wedding and May Day. We know that’s not strictly search engine optimisation related, but hey, by April you’ll deserve a little break.

May

Summer: Refreshed from your cheeky April break, it’s time to think about your seasonal search engine campaigns for the summer. Any SEO changes you put into place in May will hopefully start to bear fruit by late July/early August, so it’s peak time for anyone in the tourism industry.

June

Of course, you can’t be expected to carry your drab winter and spring wardrobe into the summer season, so June is a perfect time to take a look at your website. Maybe it needs freshening up? Maybe it needs the odd nip and tuck? Maybe it needs to be made a little more search engine friendly?

July

Back to School: Children across the country will be hugely excited come mid July. The endless six-week summer break will stretch out in front of them. So bring them down to earth with a bump by starting your back-to-school SEO campaigns. That should cause a few tears before bedtime.

August

Halloween: Nothing puts you in the Halloween mood like the long, balmy August evenings. Or maybe not. But here’s a horror story for you – if you leave it too late to implement your search engine optimisation, you’ll miss out on a scarily large boost for Halloween!

September/October/November

Christmas: In September, you should be thinking about your Christmas phrases. In October they should be implemented, and in November you should be checking to see whether you’ll need an added Pay Per Click campaign. Why? Because Christmas is the most profitable time of the year for online businesses, and every year thousands of them lose out by not preparing a search engine optimisation campaign earlier in the year.

December

If you’ve taken our advice, then there are two things you should be doing in December:

1. Celebrating the boost in sales that your festive SEO is delivering
2. Planning for 2012!

If you need any assistance planning your 2011 SEO calendar, give FirstFound a call today on 0161 909 3400.

People enjoyed this so much last year that we thought we’d re-use it this year. Think of it as re-gifting.

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through your site
Not a product was selling, and your traffic was… Bad.
The shopping carts empty and checkout lists bare,
Dashed hopes that some customers soon would be there.

The meta titles were empty, and page load times slow,
Link architecture confusing, and the conversion rates low.
And to top it all off, not a single back link,
Out of date stock lists and a contact form on the blink.

When then from your telephone there arose such a clatter,
Your SEO Consultant calling up for a natter.
The reasons for your plight, he sees in a flash,
So the Search Engine Optimisation begins, to make you some cash.

The first thing he’ll do, is research all your keywords,
To attract paying clients, not just other SEO nerds.
Then, what to your wondering eyes should appear,
But a comprehensive list to attract clients far and near.

And your canny consultant, so lively and quick,
Explains which search engines will get you the clicks.
“There’s more than Alta Vista in this online search game!”
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name!

“There’s AOL! And Dogpile! And Ask Jeeves in the UK!
You’ll be on Yahoo! On Bing! On Google today!
To the top of the SERPs! to the top of them all!
You’ll be found from Birmingham to deepest Nepal!”

With Christmas approaching and no time to waste,
He started his process with the greatest of haste.
Ensuring the keywords are placed in the meta,
And checking the coding, right down to the letter.

And then, not forgotten on his SEO mission
Came building of links and directory submissions.
Your fortunes so bleak, were turning around,
Thanks to your consultant, who worked for FirstFound.

He spoke a few words, then went straight to his work,
And amended the keyword density, not a change did he shirk.
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
He gave you a nod, up the SERPs your site rose!

He explained that this was the start of the show,
That AdWords and blogging would help the site grow.
But you hear him exclaim, once his initial work was done,
“If you need us again, call 0161 909 3411!”

But if search results from leading mobile phone websites are to be believed, the HTC Grinch could be about to steal Apple’s festive cheer. Apparently the flagship iPhone 4 doesn’t even make it into the top five most searched for phones, with the top ten panning out as follows:

1. HTC Wildfire
2. HTC Desire
3. HTC Desire HD
4. Samsung Galaxy S
5. Nokia N8
6. Apple iPhone 4
7. Blackberry Curve 8520
8. Samsung Tocco Lite
9. Blackberry Torch
10. Sony Xperia X10 Mini

So what does this mean? Are people taking Tim Berners-Lee’s advice about avoiding Apple’s closed market, or are the nation’s parents just sick of buying kids very expensive mobile phones?

Whatever the reasoning, if your website is selling mobile phones, it might be a good idea to push your HTC stock front and centre as the Christmas buying season ramps up. With millions of pounds being spent online every hour for the next two weeks, it’s important that you make your website reach its potential in the festive season.

Don’t forget to follow FirstFound on Twitter and become a fan of FirstFound on Facebook

But that’s not stopped ideas from crossing the pond, and the latest American invention to reach these shores (courtesy of Amazon.co.uk) is Black Friday.

Black Friday Comes to Britain

So, what is Black Friday?

Black Friday is the name given to the day after Thanksgiving, and traditionally marks the start of the Christmas buying season in the US. Shops see their biggest footfalls and number of sales on Black Friday, after competing with each other by offering various loss-leading discounts.

The nearest UK equivalent would be 5:30pm on Christmas Eve, when petrol stations and pound shops play host to swarms of slightly drunk, scared and desperate British men, hoping that the perfect present for their wife or girlfriend will somehow be nestling just behind an unseasonal bag of firelighters.

So What Are Amazon Doing?

In order to entice customers into their online shop, Amazon is introducing thousands of loss-leading discounts. Games consoles, TVs and traditional big sellers will be offered at a fraction of their normal prices. With online spending set to hit £22.4m per hour in the runup to Christmas, this could well tempt online shoppers away from eBay and the glut of bargain websites that have cropped up following the recession.

There has been criticism however, with The Daily Mail criticising the site for being unable to keep up with demand. Apparently bargains are being snapped up by eager customers, and Amazon aren’t willing to sell off all of their stock at a loss. This might sound like a “disaster” to The Mail, but it seems like sound business sense to the rest of us.

If you’re looking to attract Black Friday traffic, you’ll need to act fast, with an AdWords campaign set to run tomorrow. Our AdWords team can help, but you’ll need to get in touch very soon.

It’s only two months until Christmas, and Duracell have released the Christmas Toy Report. And the results are surprising.

Instead of toys and games, British kids are all begging Father Christmas to fill their stockings with Apple gadgets. So before you go rushing out to buy Scalextric sets and Barbie dolls, take a look over this list:

Christmas Presents For Girls

1. iPod Touch
2. iPad
3. iPhone 4
4. Zhu Zhu Hamsters
5. Barbie Video Girl

Christmas Presents for Boys

1. iPhone 4
2. iPad
3. iPod Touch
4. Kinect for Xbox 360
5. Toy Story 3 Jet Pack Buzz Lightyear

Looks like it should be a bumper Christmas for Steve Jobs, or anyone that works in an Apple Store!

If your company stocks any of the gadgets on the Christmas list, you need to let your clients know. FirstFound are still running our E-Shot Offer, giving all of our clients a discount on professional email and landing page templates. So what are you waiting for? Put your products on everyone’s Christmas list!

Photo Credit

We know, we know. It’s July. The sun is shining. People are wandering the streets of Manchester topless (why?). Beer gardens are full.

Who’d be thinking of Christmas at a time like this?

Well, you should be for starters.

If you’re running an SEO campaign, you need to stop thinking about margheritas and start thinking about Eggnog. Why? Because November 29th is far too late to start changing your SEO to target those lucrative phrases. After all, people start their Christmas shopping in October!

SEO Christmas Timeline

July – Start considering the phrases you want to target
August – Make sure the site is set up to target those phrases
September – Fire off a few Christmas-shopping themed blogs and offers.
October/November – Christmas shopping season starts
December 25th – Turkey.

Photo Credit

• Take one leading SEO consultancy, and extract the staff from the office.
• Pour staff into tuxedos and dresses.
• Add to a large, city-centre venue and stir well.
• Add one DJ, a meal to line the stomach and allow to sit for around thirty seconds.
• Pour in the contents of a free bar, mix, and step back.

What you should now have in front of you is all the fun and frolics of the FirstFound Christmas Party, 2009.

The FirstFound team, fortified by a glass or two of fine wine, danced the night away at Manchester’s City Inn. Fun was had by all – including one plucky young consultant who spent his evening working his magic on the young lady DJ.

 It wasn’t all drunken kisses and bad dancing though, as the traditional Annual Awards were handed out to those people who’ve really made a contribution this year.

 SEO Consultant of the Year: Roger Davies. Roger walked away with the award for the second year running, thanks in part to the fact that he’s always the first into the office, and the last to leave (rumours that he’s moonlighting as the office cleaner proved to be unfounded).

 Sales People of the Year: Gareth Chadwick and Kristen Massey.  Gareth and Kristen took home the sales awards, thanks to their tireless dedication to keeping the rest of us in a job. Which is nice of them.

 SEO Manager of the Year:  Richard Hassall. Claiming his first award mere months after taking over as AdWords manager, Richard’s success could be put down to a combination of hard work, dedication and bribing the judges.

Sales Manager of the Year: Paul Cunningham. It takes a lot to manage a sales team. Threats, bribes and pleading seem to work well though, and it’s certainly enough to land Paul an award.

Director’s Commendations: Adam Ramsden and David Farrell. Those in the know suggest that Adam’s win was less about his design contributions and more about him begging for recognition. We can only assume that David was much more deserving of his award.

 Thanks again to the City Inn for having us – and if you want to see just what they needed to put up with, cast your eye over this rogues’ gallery.

The meta titles were empty, and page load times slow,
Link architecture confusing, and the conversion rates low.
And to top it all off, not a single back link,
Out of date stock lists and a contact form on the blink.

When then from your telephone there arose such a clatter,
Your SEO Consultant calling up for a natter.
The reasons for your plight, he sees in a flash,
So the Search Engine Optimisation begins, to make you some cash.

The first thing he’ll do, is research all your keywords,
To attract paying clients, not just other SEO nerds.
Then, what to your wondering eyes should appear,
But a comprehensive list to attract clients far and near.

And your canny consultant, so lively and quick,
Explains which search engines will get you the clicks.
“There’s more than Alta Vista in this online search game!”
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name!

“There’s AOL! And Dogpile! And Ask Jeeves in the UK!
You’ll be on Yahoo! On Bing! On Google today!
To the top of the SERPs! to the top of them all!
You’ll be found from Birmingham to deepest Nepal!”

With Christmas approaching and no time to waste,
He started his process with the greatest of haste.
Ensuring the keywords are placed in the meta,
And checking the coding, right down to the letter.

And then, not forgotten on his SEO mission
Came building of links and directory submissions.
Your fortunes so bleak, were turning around,
Thanks to your consultant, who worked for FirstFound.

He spoke a few words, then went straight to his work,
And amended the keyword density, not a change did he shirk.
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
He gave you a nod, up the SERPs your site rose!

He explained that this was the start of the show,
That AdWords and blogging would help the site grow.
But you hear him exclaim, once his initial work was done,
“If you need us again, call 0161 909 3411!”