However, the latest change has been deemed important enough that Google Web Spam supremo Matt Cutts has felt the need to announce it:

“We’re evaluating multiple changes that should help drive spam levels even lower, including one change that primarily affects sites that copy others’ content and sites with low levels of original content.”

“That change was approved at our weekly quality launch meeting last Thursday and launched earlier this week.”

“Less than half a percent of search results change enough that someone might really notice. The net effect is that searchers are more likely to see the sites that wrote the original content rather than a site that scraped or copied the original site’s content.”

So, in short, if you’re the sort of person who loves to scrape articles and content (and we know you read the FirstFound Blog as we’ve found pieces you’ve “borrowed”), you’re going to have real trouble ranking.

In that case, you might want to consider asking for help from some expert search engine consultants…

For everyone that’s invested in ethical, white hat SEO – congratulations! You won’t have to compete with content scrapers for much longer!

But are you placing enough importance on one of the key marketing tactics you’ll need to use in 2011? Or are you ignoring search engine optimisation?

So before you sign off on your to-do list, make sure you’ve added SEO in the right places:

Web Design

It’s a cliche, but lots of people get to January and think “New Year, New Site“. Unfortunately, they tend not to think “New Year, New Site, New SEO Campaign“. If you’re having your website redesigned, then make sure you use designers that will consider the SEO implications of your design. It’ll mean that your website ranks quicker, and starts to provide a return on your investment.

New Content

Maybe in 2011, you’re going to re-do some of the wording on your website. Refreshing your copy can be beneficial to your search engine rankings, but only if the copywriter you use knows how to write for the search engines as well as your clients. If you’re having trouble finding someone to do the job, you can always ask your FirstFound search engine consultant for advice.

Networking

If your plan for 2011 is to make some new business contacts, make sure you’re considering search engine optimisation. Can the person you’re befriending help your SEO with a link, or by providing you with a slot for a guest blog post? If they can, your prospects for the year will start to look a little brighter.

Suppliers and Clients

And of course, it’s not only new contacts who can provide you with a link. Don’t forget to ask your suppliers and your clients – it’ll help your relationship and your search engine optimisation!

Whatever you’ve got planned for 2011, make sure you keep search engine optimisation in mind. And if you’re having trouble, remember – the friendly SEO team here at FirstFound are always ready and willing to help!

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.

Google Instant – Everything You Need to Know

Following two teaser doodles, Google’s big news was finally unveiled to the world on the evening of 08/09/10. The launch of Instant Search.

But what does that mean for searchers? For SEO? For businesses?

You’re about to find out, as The FirstFound Blog takes you through everything you need to know about Google Instant.

What Does Google Instant Mean For Searchers?

First of all, you need to know what Google Instant does. In the simplest of terms, it searches as you type (if you’re signed into a Google account).

That means if you’re typing the phrase “Search Engine Consultants“, you’ll see a number of results pages:

• First you’ll see the results for “Search“. This is without hitting enter. You start typing, Google starts showing results.
• These results will then instantly and automatically update to show the results for “Search Engine”
• By the time you’ve typed “Search Engine Cons“, Google’s autosuggest will guess that you want “Search Engine Consultants” and show you that result.

All of this happens in the time it takes you to type. There’s no waiting. Within a second or two, you’ll have seen at least three seperate results pages.

This should make search faster and more intuitive for searchers. Admittedly, it won’t speed things up by more than a few microseconds if you know what you’re going to search for, but Google are claiming that over a day it will save 11 man hours per second. Which will only make a substantial difference for you if you’re making a few billion searches a day.

For at least a few weeks, people will be trying Instant to see what the fuss is about, and they’ll probably enjoy the experience to begin with. After that though, it could well get distracting, but it can be turned off with a few clicks.

In short, as a searcher Google Instant will either save you a few seconds every year, or it won’t do anything because you’re not using it.

What Does Google Instant Mean For SEO?

It means more reading. This Twitter post just about sums it up:

“[phrase1] google instant will [phrase2] SEO”. Dynamic seo blog post title generator for the next week.

Over the next week, or month, lots of people are going to claim lots of things about Google Instant and SEO. But this hasn’t changed the way that Google ranks sites, it’s just made search faster. It’s too early to see what effects (if any) Google Instant will have on SEO, but here are a few of our instant, knee-jerk predictions.

• The Long Tail won’t die. It’ll thrive. The novelty of Google Instant is that the more you type, the more fun it is. So people are just going to keep typing. They won’t put in one generic key phrase and start drilling down, they’ll just keep amending that key phrase until it’s extremely specific.
• Instant won’t kill SEO. It might mean that SEOs have to change the way they do things, and it may mean looking at key phrases differently, but it’s not changed the Google Algorithm. The majority of what we do has no reason to stop working overnight. Besides, if you read some blogs, everything will kill SEO. Nothing’s managed it yet.
• The novelty value could wear off. Google Instant doesn’t offer that many benefits to searchers. It’s not saving much time when people know the phrase they want to search for, and it’s easy to turn off when it becomes distracting. Yahoo! tried a similar thing a few years ago, and it bombed.

What Does Google Instant Mean For Businesses?

It means you’re going to need some sort of SEO, if you don’t have it already. With instant results, people are going to refine their searches more. They’re not going to type “shoes” and then sift through pages and pages of results – they’re going to get more and more specific until they find the results they want. And if the novelty wears off, then a professional SEO campaign will still bring in more business from people using the vanilla Google search.

If you don’t currently have any SEO on your website, give us a call on 0161 909 3400.

In Conclusion

Google Instant might not be the game changer we all expected. It’s going to make SEO more relevant to businesses, not less – so it’s probably going to lead to more of the same. It’s too soon to say what it is going to be, but what it isn’t is an SEO killer.

A Pivotal Moment for the Internet

I believe this recent clash between Google and China will mark a pivotal moment for the Internet itself. From a political standpoint, we will see the cooling of already chilly relationships to all-new sub-zero temperatures. Google’s next move will leave a lasting imprint on the history of the Internet itself. In today’s official post, Google reminded China that they were not happy censoring results in the country – a move designed to appease the Chinese government some time ago. They went on to say they will revisit this decision, and the broader idea of all their operations in China:

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China

Google’s message could not be clearer – they are considering withdrawing from China altogether. I hope this is not the case, and I will certainly be watching Google’s next move with baited breath.

Network & Internet Debugging & Discovering iPhone App

Ping (Mochasoft) is a great iPhone app for debugging any network. The lite version if completely free and does exactly what is says on the tin, you can ping or trace to any other. If you splash out and get the full version you can to a ping sweep which is a great way to discover and identify all devices connected to a particular subnet. The full version also comes with a telnet console.

FTP and File Sharing iPhone Apps

Files Lite (Fresh Apps) is a great ( and free!) app which allows you to map your iPhone folder as a virtual drive on your computer. The bonus, is it will also open and read your Microsoft format files : Word Documents, Excel Spreadsheets and so on. I Also find that FTP Lite is a nice, simple, no-nonsense App that turns your iPhone into an FTP server.

Remote Desktop iPhone App

To help manage Windows IIS servers (or if – like me! – you just like being able to set your computer doing something without having to get up from the couch!) then my first choice would have to be Mocha VNC. It provides a very responsive remote desktop service for your computer, and will happily handle multiple displays and works on many different systems including Linux, Mac OSX and Windows. I found it useful to reduce the colour depth to 256 colours to make it even faster and can be effectively be used across the web, not just on your home wi-fi connection.

Telnet, Secure Shell (SSH) & Terminal iPhone Applications

If (like me!) you practically live in terminal consoles and command line’s, then either: : iSSH (Zinger-Soft), SSH (ThroughPut Inc.) or TouchTerm (jbrink.net) should float your boat. Obviously you are somewhat limited as to the available space on the screen, and I personally like iSSH. Although it is more pricey than the others, it supports several protocols including xterm and even supports colour (making it more advanced than the one Microsoft ship with their operating systems!

MySQL Web Database iPhone App

MySQLi is a fantastic MySQL App, completely free, it will allow you to update an arbitrary database on the web, provided you have all the connection information.

SEO & Website Ranking iPhone Apps

Pokeseo ( John Christiansen ) is a neat little tool which allows you to check your web rankings for a key phrase in the 4 top search engines. SenseEarn ( Hans Schneider) gives you a neat way to view your AdSense account history and track your visitors activity. Some of the code which Analytics relies on in order to draw all graphs doesn’t work properly on the iPhone that’s where Analytics App ( Inblosam LLC ) comes in. This app allows you to connect with a clean and straight forward interface and track your visitors activity on the move. SEO Automatic ( Leon Huang ) is a great tool for tracking your websites position for as many keywords as you wish. SERPS ( Hans Schneider )was also quite a neat little tool, which will not only track as many keywords as you like in Google, but will allow you to select which language version of Google you test each phrase in.

Yes, the iPhone is truly a device that grows around you. I even found out today, that if you visit the Google homepage and click the link to activate local services (below the search bar), all your Google local searches will use your location to find the right shop, restaurant or bar near you.

Just what kind of impact does your website design have on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)? It’s easy to think of your layout and usability as totally unconnected with your search engine rank, but the truth is that all of these factors play a subtle but important role. Getting the visit is the first obvious step. But keeping the user on your site and encouraging them to browse your products is an essential part of SEO which will have a direct impact on your average time spent on site and therefore your search position. By following this simple checklist, you can be sure to use your design to maximise your SEO and chances of making that conversion into a sale!

No Second Chances for a First Impression – Establishing Trust

They say that a book is judged by it’s cover, but this is also true for your website and products.  Most people will have decided whether they feel comfortable purchasing from you within the first 30 seconds, before even browsing your site! First impressions are not only important to be taken seriously in your industry, but are especially important for businesses taking payments online. You are asking potential customers to trust you with their credit card details, and even the slightest doubt in a customers mind can cause them to look elsewhere. Be mindful of your industry, take a look at competitor websites in your industry. How does yours measure up? 

There are a number of neat ways you can further bolster your first impression. Could you include testimonials or positive feedback somewhere within the pages? Are you approved by any major dealers, trade organisations or perhaps have any awards, logos or stamps of approval which might be tidily included in the design of your pages? Perhaps you have worked with a particularly big client which the public might recognise. All of these devices can be used to give your website professional feel.

Behold! A Call To Action! Just How Usable is Your Layout?

Remember that your website is here to server a purpose – we want your visitor to pick up the phone or write an email and place an order. Just how easy is for them to contact you? Are your contact details clearly visible on every page? Remember that it is just as easy for a visitors to click back as it is for them to click ‘contact us‘ in the menu!

Navigation plays a key role in the usability of your site. You may view your website on a day-to-day basis, so it makes sense to you. But people have a very short attention span on the Internet, and the easier you make it for them to find what they want, the longer they will stay! Perhaps you could get a second opinion from a fresh pair of eyes that does not regularly view your website? Take all feedback very seriously!

Greater numbers of links between pages are almost always better to include than too few. If you discuss a topic in the text itself, don’t be afraid to include links to relevant pages when you use important phrases (even if these pages are already linked to from the navigation menu itself!). Think of your website as a shop, the more connectivity you have between paths, the better your traffic will flow. Do not rely exclusively on your navigation menu!

Avoiding Any Barriers

I often see people attempt to control this first impression with a ‘welcome’ page (or ‘splash page’) which is usually displayed before the homepage. It may seem like a good idea, but pages like these usually present an extra barrier for search engines to get around, and it moves your products one extra click away from your customers! Also, a lot of traffic will not enter your site from the ‘front door’, but will land on an inner page, making the whole thing rather pointless. There are some exceptions where this extra page might be helpful – multinational companies or businesses with multiple offices may wish to direct people to a particular branch or language website. Or perhaps just different departments of a very large company.

Bear these points in mind when next reviewing your design and you’ll not go far wrong. If in doubt, simply give your website to someone else to test and listen to their feedback carefully. As we enter 2010, I predict we will see a lot of new websites as companies prepare for the new year. If it has been a while since you last did some interior designing, perhaps now is a good time to consider a website revamp?

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!”

Foursquare – One Giant Promotion Possibility

Foursquare is an addictive social networking game, played on the mobile phone. Players are awarded points for visiting shops, cafes, restaurants, parks and other places of interest. They use their mobile phone to ‘check in’ to a location and can leave ‘tips’ – brief notes telling other people about fun things to buy, see or do at that particular venue. I can’t help but see this as one giant promotion possibility!

How do you get involved in this game? It’s simple! The basics you already understand, so the obvious thing to do is sign up and make sure your business is featured.  Anyone can add a new venue, and signing up is a relatively quick and painless affair.

Once a player has visited a venue more times than anyone else, they are awarded Mayor of that location for the week. If I ran a business, the very first thing I would do is offer each weekly Mayor one free drink, sandwich or maybe a small discount on a purchase. Just a small incentive that will encourage everyone to compete to be your best customer!

There are a number of other creative ways you might further influence potential customers – perhaps you could leave a tip, encourage people to try a particular product or service. You could even let people know about a great deals or offers you have (be careful to write it as advice from another member of the public, not too obviously promotional!).

Each badge is won by a player doing something specific. For instance, the Bender badge comes from checking in to the same venue four nights in a row, the School Nights Badge is won by checking in to a venue after 3pm on a weekday.  There are a lot of badges, awarded for all sorts of crazy scenarios. Many businesses will probably find there are some good reasons to encourage people to obtain a particular badge from them. For instance, if you find yourself busy at weekends but are not seeing many sales during the week then the School Nights badge would be perfect! Could you encourage people to earn it at your shop?

Launched in March 2009 in the U.S., Foursquare has steadily expanded across the globe, entering a large number of UK cities only last month.  At the time of writing this is still a growing phenomenon and little known outside of the U.S. It is also more suited to the newer generation of mobile phones such as the Blackberry or iPhone, where Foursquare provide their own custom software that runs using your Internet connection.  Potentially anyone can play using SMS to ‘check in’ with any phone.

As this continues to expand, those who get involved early will have more space to promote themselves and a greater potential to lure customers to visit more often!

But after some careful thought, I realised it actually made perfect sense. The Internet offers more choice, operates faster and more efficiently, ultimately ensuring that sales are less expensive for most businesses to make. In a recession, why wouldn’t everyone turn to the Internet to do their Christmas shopping? The added bonus is not having to depend on the British weather, nor negotiate your way though hordes of people to grab yourself a Christmas bargain!

The Second Busiest Online Trading Day … Ever!

But this is no isolated spike, either. Early data from research firm comScore suggests that yesterday was actually the second busiest online trading day in the Internet’s history. Sales are up 15% on this time last year, which was itself a new record, beating the one set in 2007. Despite my television constantly reminding me how gloomy the economic world is behind my curtain, it is clear that a vast chunk of these sales have not dried up … they have simply moved to the web.  This is a trend we can expect to see continue for some time.

We are now in December, with only 24 days until Christmas.  It is very easy to lose focus of our goal once the short-term flurry of activity has died down.  It is tempting to walk away with the message that: ‘Christmas is becoming an Internet thing’, rather than taking a step back, and seeing the bigger picture which indicates a steady migration of business to the Internet, year upon year.  As a search engine consultant who spends his life matching patterns, I can tell you that Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is for life, not just for Christmas! 

Quite a number of people ask me to optimise them for seasonal phrases to ensure they are able to catch a lot of the holiday traffic. This makes perfect sense on the surface – but in reality – SEO itself responds quite slowly and is probably not the best tool for the job. The smart person will be investing in their website now, carefully manoeuvring yourself ready for Christmas 2010.

The Most Effective Way to Target Seasonal Traffic

Does your website have a blog or news section? If not, you should probably look at getting one installed. This is an increasingly popular self-promotion tactic that will allow you to post news about your seasonal promotions and offers. You will find search engines are far more responsive to blogs and news which will prove more effective at capturing your slice of the seasonal traffic. What about your websites page structure? Could you add more information pages to your site, or improve your websites page structure to allow for better quality traffic? When was the last time your website had a face lift? Trends in programming techniques on the web are constantly shifting. A few years ago it was acceptable to use table structures for the design, but this has become a tactic that is now frowned upon.

If you have an SEO consultant, then perhaps it would be worth having a chat about web development work that will help you get more out of your online presence in the long term? Rather than a sudden reaction to short term trends, this is best done in response to the gradual trend which shows the Internet is likely to play an increasingly dominant role in our shopping habits in 2010.