As you read this article, the chances are that you’re currently connected to a broadband network. The days of dial-up modems (and that noise) are now a distant memory, as BThave announced that 15 million users are accessing their broadband network.

This does include other, competing broadband companies, but it does show how many Britons are now online.

A recent Ofcom report indicated that over 71% of UK residents are hooked up to broadband, a statistic which is backed up by BT’s latest release.

So with so many people using high speed internet for everything from chatting to shopping, it’s never been more important to make sure that your business has a website that’s performing well. Get in touch with FirstFound to see how your site can be improved.

In case you can’t wait until Monday for your next FirstFound Fix, why not take a look over some of the articles our bloggers have contributed to other sites.

Will Twitter Make You The FirstFound?

Being the FirstFound – SEO Steps That Secure Success

FirstFound Social Sharing Tips

FirstFound Reviews and Reputation

Have You Chosen the Right SEO Company?

Blogging – the Key to Online Success

Social Media Sites to Take Your Business to the Next Level

Spotting Scam SEO Techniques

The Importance of Being the First Found

Making the Most of Social Media

Rookie Mistakes that Ruin Websites

Ten Weeks’ Hard Labour for FirstFound’s Charity Volunteer

What Social Media Platform Should I Join?

Become a Better Blogger in Two Minutes

Four Cliches to Create Compelling Content

A month or so ago, FirstFound launched our first free ebook, “Making the Most of Social Media“. Clients and readers of the blog alike have downloaded, digested and used it, and feedback has been positive.

So we’re throwing our next guide open to you readers. What do you want to see from us?

What topics can we cover that’d help you make the most of your online marketing campaign?

Leave us a comment, and we’ll see if we can help.

This quarter’s Optimise Magazine has been dispatched to all of our clients.

On the off chance that you’ve missed it, here’s what you’re missing out on:

• First Birthday Bonanza – 50% off AdWords
• Is Your Finger on the Pulse? Find out with our survey
• Free Stuff!
• Bikes, Tubas and Google’s New Design
• Can you establish trust visually?

Plus even more SEO News, Views and Comments.

Whether you’re a FirstFound client or not, it’s well worth a look.

Finding it Hard to Understand Social Media?

Twitter, Myspace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, Mixx… Do any of those words actually mean anything to you? If you’ve spent the last few years building your business instead of surfing the web, then the rise of social media might have passed you by.

But now you’ve heard about it, you’ve probably got some questions. What is Social Media? Who’s using it? And the big one…

Wondering How it can Benefit Your Business?

How can social media benefit your business? Thousands of self-styled gurus have written millions of blog posts calling social media everything from a magic salve to snake oil, and you just don’t have the time for trawl through everything that’s ever been written on the subject. What you need is some help. What you need is…

Need Expert Advice and Assistance?

Expert advice and assistance. A helping hand from someone who knows what they’re talking about. Someone who knows online marketing inside out, someone who’s been around for a while and has seen everything the Internet has to offer to businesses.

Not to be too cocky, but you want someone like FirstFound to show you what’s going on.

Help Is At Hand!

That’s why our online marketing experts have spent the last month putting together a guide for you.

Making the Most of Social Media - The FirstFound Social Media Guide

Covering everything you need to know about putting together a social media strategy for your business, Making the Most of Social Media is a free 13 page ebook designed to get you on the road to social success.

With overviews of popular sites, explanations of how social media can help your business, and a sample campaign to inspire you, Making the Most of Social Media is an indispensable guide for anyone looking to take their business into the social networking sphere.

So don’t delay, click here to download your free copy!

And please, leave any feedback you have in the comments section below.

Photo Credit

For more social media advice, visit the FirstFound Blog Archives or follow FirstFound on Twitter.

Image by Keith Bacongo (flickr)

Online marketing has acquired a bad reputation over the years, and it’s thanks to scam artists. For every professional company committed to ethical techniques and White Hat SEO, is a band of rogues just trying to make a quick buck. To try and help you distinguish the one from the other, the bloggers here at FirstFound have put together a Scam Guide. It’s by no means comprehensive, but it will help you avoid some of the more prevalent scams.

The FirstFound Scam Guide to Shady SEO

The Number One Scam – Guaranteed Rankings

The whole point of SEO is to get your business listed as high up on the search engines as possible, as that’s where your prospective customers are looking. It’s the goal every SEO company strives for.

But sometimes, it just isn’t possible. So any company that out and out guarantees you a page one listing is being economical with the truth. Either that or they’ve got a keyword lined up for you that nobody is searching for. Also be sceptical of anyone saying a “space has opened up on Page One” – that’s not how search engines work.

FirstFound’s Tip to Avoid the Guaranteed Listings Scam: Ask them what keyword they want to target, and then ask yourself if you can imagine anyone putting it in to Google. Also check that they’re talking about organic search, as with enough of your money, they can get to the top of the Pay Per Click listings.

The Too Much of a Good Thing Scam – Link Spamming

High quality, relevant, dofollow, one-way links are SEO gold dust. We’re not going to take issue with that. In fact, we wholeheartedly agree that a few good links are usually essential for SEO success. No, what we take exception at is the people who only remember the last part of that sentence. If someone tells you “links are SEO gold dust“, you need to dig deeper.

When you’re talking about thousands of low-quality backlinks from unsavoury sites, links are not gold dust. They’re potentially harmful. At worst they’ll get you blacklisted, at best they’ll waste you money. Either way, they’re not going to help your listings.

FirstFound’s Tip to Avoid the Link Spam Scam: Ask them where these links are coming from. If they can’t tell you, or mention astronomical numbers and no guarantee of quality, steer clear. You want to hear words like “relevant” and “good quality”.

The 2D Pyramid Scheme Scam – Triangular Linking Schemes

As we touched upon above, one-way links carry more weight with the search engines than reciprocal links. Cunning scam artists have found a way around this though. If you link your site to site B, site B will link to site C, and site C will then link back to you.

But if site B and C both need more links, then surely they won’t have any authority to pass back to you? The triangular linking scheme sounds good on the surface, but you can be sure the sites you link to and are linked back from won’t be of a good quality. They probably also won’t be relevant. And a relevant reciprocal link is generally better than an irrelevant one way link.

FirstFound’s Tip to Avoid theTriangular Linking Scam: Ask the SEO in question what the Page Rank of the two sites you’re linking up with is. Then compare it with your own. Chances are that you’ll all have a PR of 0-2, and will be passing very little authority round in a circle. Also ask for URLs and check out the sites yourself. On the off chance that they are relevant, email the owners yourself and save a few pounds!

The Your Site Isn’t Your Site Scam – Intellectual Property Rights

This applies more to web designers than SEOs, but it serves as an example as to why you should always read your contracts. Once you’ve paid for a domain name to be registered, paid for a site design, paid for the build and then paid for it all to go live, you’d think you now own a website. It’s a reasonable assumption.

However, some companies retain IPR on website designs, meaning that if you decide to leave them, or have work done elsewhere, they’ll turn your website off and redirect your domain name back to their site. Leaving you with no website, and considerably out of pocket.

FirstFound’s Tip to Avoid the Intellectual Property Rights Scam: Always, always, always read the small print. If it looks dodgy to you, make sure you at least buy your own domain name and hosting through a third party. That way if they do ever turn your site off, you’ll be in a position to have a new site built straight away, and you won’t lose any links or authority your domain has built up.

The My Mate Said Scam – We’ve Got an Insider

This is a particularly transparent scam, but one that seems to be used a lot. Sometimes an SEO will claim to have a “man on the inside” at Google or Yahoo, and have access to “secret knowledge and techniques”. Without wasting too much of your time, they don’t.

The Search Engine algorithms are changed almost daily by teams of dozens of engineers. The chances of one of those engineers knowing all the inner workings of the search engines may not be astronomical, but the chances of such a person selling that knowledge to SEOs is.

FirstFound’s Tip to Avoid the Insider Scam: Laugh. Laugh long and laugh loud. Then hang up.

We’re not here to name names, to comment on selling practises or to try and drum up business at the expense of our competition, just to provide you with honest advice on some of the more unscrupulous tactics and techniques the shadier quarters of the SEO industry employ. If you have any additions to the FirstFound Scam Guide, please leave a comment in the comments section below.

With a tag line of “Bing and Decide” Microsoft aim to show customers how different their search engine is companied to the others and say it functions more like a “decision engine”.

There is certainly a bit of a dig at Google as they show people suffering from information overload and total chaos with search results. Then it simply claims they can solve this problem.

Ashley Highfield, managing director and vice-president consumer and online Microsoft UK, said: “The ad campaign brings to life the concept of Bing as a decision engine, a tool that both cuts through the information overload and offers a new search experience. We’re confident that this will help grow our user base.”

Last month Microsoft and Yahoo got the all clear from the regulators for a 10 year partnership. The battle for online supremacy with the search engines continues.

Some of Bings other adverts here.

If you’re looking for a recipe for a sparkling Christmas cocktail, we’ve found a cracker of a  recipe:

• 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.

Fresh from his recent BBC Manchester interview (see October’s FirstFound News article), FirstFound supremo Chris Bellamy made the short trip across Manchester city centre last night to appear on Channel M news.

During his five minute interview, Chris covered burning questions such as “What do Search Engine consultants do?”, “What is split testing?” and “Is the Internet replacing the high street?”

With Christmas fast approaching and the weather worsening, Chris was quick to point out that people would much rather do their Christmas shopping in a warm house than on the sunny streets of Greater Manchester, and confidently predicted that Internet sales would rise again over this festive period.

Chris’ full interview with Channel M reporter Andy Crane can be seen on the MEN website.

Hannah Wilson, from our credit control team is off on Maternity leave from Friday onwards. Hannah’s baby is due in a few short  weeks  and she is expecting a little girl!

We wish Hannah, Partner and new arrival all the best and we shall look forward to seeing Hannah in the Autumn.