Search Clinic Blog news stories about online marketing

Online Marketing cost guide by Dr Search. Although we at the Search Clinic are pretty open about our services- both what we offer and how much it's going to cost you, when we found this recent post at INeedHits we thought that we would repeat it as a third party independent guide for your benefit.

Whether you’re just starting out, or re-evaluating your website strategy, it’s important for you to get your plan and budget right.

The rule “Build it and they will come” rarely works in the online space. For you to be successful with your website marketing strategy – you need to have a solid plan and be realistic about the real costs of doing it properly.

Too many business owners spend £1000’s on getting a fancy website developed, only to find they have no money left to promote it.

One of our sales guys uses this analogy
“It’s like building a shopping mall in the desert. Without the budget to promote it – who’s going to find it?”

So to help you get your website design and marketing budget right – here’s a quick guide to what you need and the approximate costs to do it properly.

The development of a website has many variables. Accordingly the costs can vary significantly depending on factors such as whether its static or dynamic, whether it includes a shopping cart, is the design bespoke or templated etc, etc, etc.

The reality is that websites can vary from £1000 – £50,000, and 90% of the time, you get what you pay for.

If it’s really cheap, it’s likely that there won’t be much functionality and it’ll use a template. The flip side of that is that if it’s too expensive – ask yourself whether you “really” need all the bells and whistles.

And most importantly – shop around. Draft a detailed requirements document and then check with a few website designers/developers to get the best price.

Also, don’t forget to budget for hosting and maintenance. Websites need to be updated in terms of content and systems (e.g. cms) regularly, and without hosting - you wont appear anywhere.

The simple truth is that the majority of website traffic comes from search engines and directories. Most of our clients see upwards of 60% of traffic coming from search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing. While the organic search engine traffic is free (no click costs), you do need to invest in a professional SEO program to ensure you’re maximizing this free search engine traffic.

SEO campaigns again vary significantly. To hire an industry leading SEO consultant can cost as much as $1000 per hour.

Here’s a guide on SEO pricing that Rand Fishkin from SEOmoz posted 2 years ago. As you can imagine – prices have grown since then…but it serves as a guide for the premium end of the scale:

Professional SEO is an investment. If you’re in business for the long haul, you’d be crazy not to allocate a decent proportion of your initial online budget on SEO – (or if your budget is tight, then study hard and invest the many hours needed to do it yourself).

To get started with an SEO campaign (fully managed by an experienced SEO professional) that’s going to generate serious ranking and traffic results – you should be looking to pay at least £500 per month - minimum.

As with all things, you’re probably looking for some quick wins in terms of traffic and results from your website. This is where PPC (pay per click) Search Engine Advertising (e.g. Google AdWords) helps.

With a well setup Google AdWords campaign, you can have highly targeted visitors delivered to your website almost instantly. It’s a great way to ensure you’re still getting a return on your website investment while your SEO and other strategies take effect.

Professional PPC campaigns, depending on your industry and how much traffic you need, can cost as little as $200 per month and the sky is the limit. But be aware that with cheaper campaigns, you’ll find most of your investment is going into the setup and management – rather than the media (click costs) – which makes it hard to generate decent ROI.

A serious PPC campaign for a small business should start at approx £500…and depending on your goals – go up from there.

Affiliate marketing is a very cost effective way of generating traffic for your website. With most affiliate networks offering CPA models (cost per acquisition) – it allows you to generate traffic that you only pay for when the visitor converts (makes a purchase, signs up for a newsletter, submits a query).

The challenge with affiliate networks is that they take time to be effective and the best networks are often very selective as to who they promote.

Most decent networks will charge a small set up fee ($500-1000 upwards) and then take a commission on every sale or acquisition. Some of the larger ones will also charge a monthly management fees to help you optimize your campaigns.

Most publishers will be looking for between 10% - 30% commission on sales, or a decent bonus for lead/enquiry based programs.

There’s a range of other website promotion opportunities such as Social Media, Email marketing and Ad Networks.

With Social Media, it’s definitely an area that small businesses should be getting involved with, but remember; it’s not a fit for every business and Social media is like SEO - it’s an investment and normally takes a while to generate good results.

There are plenty of other ways to drive more traffic to your site, but in reality – the areas mentioned above will be your main traffic sources.

So with that in mind – you can now get a much clearer and more realistic picture of what it costs to get serious results online. Even if we use the lower end of these costs as a guide, small business owners should be looking at

Now that’s only a starting guide, and as I’ve mentioned previously - the cheapest options aren’t always the best in terms of results and generating good ROI.

So if you’re starting a new website project - you can see there’s more to consider than just the website design costs. If you want your new website in 2010 to be a success - be realistic when doing your planning and budgeting!

Whilst the overall advertising environment in 2009 was fairly gloomy with revised strategies to address the credit crunch new trends developed. 

The online marketing industry evolved, and the lessons learned will likely pay off in the year ahead. For example, advertisers started to look at the need for accountability metrics beyond the simple “click-through” and on to campaign-specific performance. 

They also started to embrace burgeoning social networks and consumer generated media to bring consumers closer to a product or brand.

Top Advertising Trends for 2010

   1. Optimizing media convergence is a top priority. A better understanding of media convergence will manifest in order to deliver a better return on investment. The ability to accurately measure activity and link online ads to offline purchasing behavior will be critical.
   2. New models emerge to take advantage of smartphones. Accurate mobile measurement will be required to stay head of the snowballing growth of that media platform.
   3. More cross media ad campaigns surface. The massive growth of online video games played and shared online leads the way for more successful interactive and cross-media advertising campaigns to appear. Growth in the adoption of this innovative advertising across screens and activities will increase.
   4. Commercialization of social networking hubs increase. Social media will provide a new sales channel for establishing product awareness and commercializing brands to better support traditional advertising or text-based ads.
   5. More interesting and interactive online ads appear. Increased use of more creative advertising and content models online such as video, attention-seeking page takeover ads and mechanisms for greater interactivity will drive the next era of Web development.

From:

http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/consumer/talking-back-top-five-advertising-trends/

Increasing the external links to your website is one of the most important elements of a successful optimization strategy. 

They can boost your rankings in the search results, drive traffic, and increase your presence across the Web. But securing external links can be a challenge. That’s why it’s important to explore every opportunity to acquire them.

Standout B2B websites are usually brimming with great content, including lead generating materials such as whitepapers, articles, and case studies. 

Because this type of content generally includes interesting and useful facts or best practices, a target audience is likely to share the information via email, blogs, and forums. Given that, such content represents considerable opportunity to generate external links via proper online citation.

But despite the valuable time and resources spent on developing great content, it often doesn’t get the chance to fully live up to its potential to create external linking opportunities. Why? 

Because more often than not, little thought is put into making sure that the website gets cited when the content is shared online. In fact, many marketers simply assume that when someone cites their content, they also automatically link to the website. Unfortunately, that is not the case. As a result, many marketers are missing the opportunity to leverage their content to secure valuable external links.

For example, let’s say that a consumer research firm publishes a whitepaper about shopping trends by the day of the week. The document is emailed to existing clients, who then copy and paste key callouts in emails to their colleagues, quote the whitepaper in their blogs, comment on other blogs with snippets, and mention it at a meeting, prompting others to search for it.

Obviously, the content succeeded in engaging the target, and it was shared amongst many potential customers. 

However, there is nothing to confirm that the interest generated resulted in a single link back to the firm’s website. If the firm were using some type of proactive method to ensure citation, they may have increased their external links. Instead, the lack of attention to SEO-friendly citation translates into a huge missed opportunity to increase their link credibility for search.

To effectively leverage your content for external links, you need to ensure that your shared content is accompanied by a link – even when it’s just snippets. But keep in mind that generating external links through online citation is not the responsibility of your visitors. 

After all, even if they do link back to you, they may not do so in an SEO-friendly way. Given that, automating the online citation process may yield the best results. Below are a few tools that will help ensure you receive proper online citation and net external links when visitors share, post, or copy and paste your content:

   1. Social Bookmarking – An old favorite, social bookmarking widgets have evolved to encompass nearly every social media platform and network available – from Facebook and Twitter to more niche sites such as Slashdot and Sphinn. These widgets are commonly customizable to match the aesthetic of your website and the platforms you prefer, and are easily implemented with the code generated by the provider. 

Many of the most popular social bookmarking widgets are free, and some come packaged with analytics to track click-throughs. My personal favorite is Social Twist’s Tell a Friend, whose tabbed format offers social bookmarking, blogging, social networking, email, and IM options.

   2. Site-Hosted jQuery Script – Search and Share, a jQuery script for your website, takes automated citation to the next level. Recognizing that when visitors highlight your content they’re most likely interested in sharing it with others, Search and Share automatically provides sharing options when text on your site is highlighted. In addition, the script embeds the source page’s title and URL when the content is shared — even when a mere snippet is copied and pasted. 

If your target audience is highly engaged in blogging and forums, the benefits of this script are undeniable. Instead of hoping that your site will receive a link when your content is quoted, you can feel confident that Search and Share will make it happen automatically. As a result, it will simultaneously increase the links to your site, and decrease your dependency on your visitors for proper online citation.

   3. Providing Optimized HTML – For online marketers, it’s sometimes hard to remember that not everyone on the Web is an HTML whiz. Considering that, one of the simplest ways to make sure people are linking to you in the way that fits your optimization strategy is to actually provide them with the code. 

For example, take a look at PR.com’s Link to Us page. PR.com has provided pre-formatted HTML code for people to use when linking to their site. By eliminating the work of coding a link, PR.com is increasing the chance that their target will follow through. 

Providing an exact HTML link enables you to pursue any optimization strategy you choose, thereby increasing the effectiveness of the links on your search visibility. This strategy can be especially beneficial when securing a link from a business partner or vendor, as you may have more flexibility in determining the format of the link.

If you are going to invest in developing interesting and engaging content for your website, be sure to leverage it as a means to generate external links via proper online citation. Don’t make the mistake of assuming that your visitors are citing your content. With several tools that eliminate the hassle and increase the likelihood of linking back to a site, there’s no reason to miss this opportunity.

With thanks to Search Engine Land at:
http://searchengineland.com/3-tips-to-ensure-b2b-content-gets-seo-friendly-citations-30456

The Free Dictionary definition for optimize is: op·ti·mize:  To make as perfect or effective as possible.

Ergo the long standing definition of Search Engine Optimization (SEO): “Making your site the best it can be for users and search engines.”

SEO is both as simple and as difficult that

Making something optimal by its very nature is going to be hard work. Being the best you can be at your job, your schoolwork, your relationships, or anything else is not easy. Very few people, if any, will ever be optimized, or perfect. The same is true for websites. But that shouldn’t stop you from attempting to be optimized.

Rule #1: Optimization shouldn’t turn people off
Take a bartender who has a great sense of humor, but can be sarcastic at times. While thick-skinned patrons (like me) find her extremely witty and amusing, others don’t. These folks didn’t come to a bar to be teased, thus, making this bartender not truly optimized. Or take the bartender who can never quite pour a full beer and doesn’t notice that your glass is empty until 10 minutes later. He or she is far from being optimized.

As it applies to your website: Is your website stuffed full of keywords? Is it extremely slow-loading and/or all Flash? Is it optimized for search engines, but not people?

If you answered yes to any of those questions, you’re turning people off and therefore, your website isn’t optimized.

Rule #2: You can’t fake optimization
As it applies to a bartender: Take the one who is super-duper nice to everyone. While you might think she is an optimal bartender, she’s not; her extreme niceness comes across as phony to many. While it does fool some, and may even be optimal for them, she’s not optimized because she’s only pleasing one segment of her clientele.

As it applies to your website: Are you creating doorway pages/domains? Are you writing about “the history of whatever”? Are you using automated software to scrape articles off others websites and then mixing up the words? Are you hiring someone to write hundreds or thousands of low quality articles?

If you answered yes to any of those questions, then you may be faking your optimization. While it may appeal to some search engines for a time, it’s certainly not optimal, nor will it provide you with long term results.

Rule #3: Optimization is hard work
As it applies to a bartender: The optimized bartender is not necessarily perfect, but she is authentic. Everything she does on the job is to be the best bartender she can be. She works her butt off to please each and every customer the way they want to be pleased, which is no easy feat. 

Every patron is different and what’s optimal for them won’t necessarily be what’s optimal for another. If a patron likes to be flirted with, she can do that, but not so much that they think she wants to date them. On the other hand, she would never dream of flirting with a guy who was with his wife or girlfriend.

The optimal bartender treats both genders equally, and quickly learns their drink preferences, where they like to sit, little tidbits about their family, etc. She also discloses bits of personal information about herself and family, but not so much as to be always talking about herself. She’s humorous and can be self-deprecating, but in good quantities. And by the end of her shift, you know she’s exhausted (it’s often exhausting just watching her!). You can bet that this level of optimization is hard work.

As it applies to your website: Like patrons at a bar, every website is different. While there are basic strategies and tactics most websites need, there’s no SEO formula that will work for each and every one. 

Are you spending time every day making your website better? Are you being authentic and putting yourself out there in your blog or newsletter? Are you thinking about each and every potential customer, client or user of your website and making sure your website has exactly what they need? And are you working your butt off to do all this?

If you answered yes to those questions, you are probably tired! But you’re also on your way to having a successful website and business online. Congratulations! But first, go take a nap–you deserve it, and will need it before the real work begins!

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a science. Crafting rewrite rules and so forth is pretty geeky stuff. The science side of SEO is where Dr Search spends most of my time.

A dichotomy is that SEO is both subjective and objective. The point at which a title tag, URL, or headline is “good enough” and thus moving on to the next task is warranted — that is certainly subjective. Also consider what might comprise the most optimal URL structure? Does it end in / (slash) or a file extension like .html? Again, subjective.

In my view, SEO for the most part is cut-and-dry, it’s objective. That’s because it can all be boiled down to an algorithm, and in fact, it already has. The algorithm I speak of, of course, is Google’s (or Yahoo’s, or Bing’s). 

The SEO practitioner’s challenge is to reverse-engineer that algorithm to the best of their ability. But it shouldn’t stop there. Why not write your own algorithm — an approximation of the search engine’s own algorithm, one that teases out the various signals and accurately assesses the quality, relevance and importance of these signals without human intervention/assistance?

Running algorithmic analysis on a site-by-site and a page-by-page basis will then allow you to ascertain a site’s SEO health, and more importantly, the subsequent actions required in this never-ending process known as optimization. That is data-driven decision-making, my friends, and it will be a key driver in the next stage in the evolution of SEO.

To be effective, SEO scoring has to get granular. Knowing you scored an 89 out of 100, or a B+, overall with your SEO may be reassuring, but there weren’t any next steps that followed from that knowledge. The same is true even if you individually score each of the major SEO areas of focus. 

In my SEO Report Card column for Practical Ecommerce, I (arbitrarily) chose the following areas of focus: Home Page Content, Inbound Links and PageRank, Indexation, Internal, Hierarchical Linking Structure, HTML Templates and CSS, Secondary Page Content, Keyword Choices, Title Tags, and URLs. I don’t claim that these are the best “buckets”. Nonetheless, scoring such broad areas is still not actionable, really.

Score the title tags, internal anchor text, keyword prominence, H1s, meta descriptions and so forth separately, and on a page-by-page basis, and now you’re talking!

SEO effectiveness can be deconstructed into its many components. It can be benchmarked against competitors. Inferences can be made, priorities can be set, content can be massaged, link juice can be directed. Consequently, the SEO practitioner relies less on their gut and more on the data to drive their actions.

How easy is it for search engines like Google to crawl your site?

To help you out with this, Google have shared some of their key takeaways on the topic of crawling and indexing your website URLs.

Google’s Webmaster Trends Analyst, Susan Moskwa, describes the relationship between website URL and the search engine crawler as like a bridge. Here is more on the analogy:

URLs are like the bridges between your website and a search engine’s crawler: crawlers need to be able to find and cross those bridges in order to get to your site’s content.

If your URLs are complicated or redundant, crawlers are going to spend time tracing and retracing their steps; if your URLs are organized and lead directly to distinct content, crawlers can spend their time accessing your content rather than crawling through empty pages, or crawling the same content over and over via different URLs.

There are a few things that Susan recommends you follow when ensuring your URLs are set-up correctly, which will help the crawlers find and crawl your content faster. These include:

* Remove user-specific details from URLs.

URL parameters that don’t change the content of the page—like session IDs or sort order—can be removed from the URL and put into a cookie.

* Disallow actions Googlebot can’t perform.

Using your robots.txt file, you can disallow crawling of login pages, contact forms, shopping carts, and other pages whose sole functionality is something that a crawler can’t perform.

* One URL, one set of content

Have you got a tip to make is easier for the Google crawler to crawl your website URLs? If so, we would love to share them with our readers, simply let us know your suggestion.

Not all keywords are equal. The Dilbert principle states that roughly 80% of effects will come from 20% of the causes. Search is no exception to the rule.

In fact, search marketing efforts often exhibit an exaggeration of the principle because it’s very common to observe 1% of the keywords in a given account driving 50% of the cost and even more of the revenue.

So, what does this mean? Behavior is unique for these high volume/value keywords and as a result, steps need to be taken to make these terms more visible for daily account management and analysis. The first step is to identify and isolate these top terms to help prioritize where to focus.

Here’s a simple exercise to identify the top terms in an account:

1. Run a keyword report and sort the data by cost.
2. Filter out branded terms, as these terms should be isolated in a unique campaign.
3. Filter out terms that constitute the top 50% of the non-banded cost.

Typically this keyword set is very small, but accounts for the same cost as the remainder of the account. It’s important to note that the top terms as I have defined them only refer to top spending terms. If your SEM effort is ROI focused, at this point, take the opportunity to identify if there are terms that are in this keyword set that do not drive revenue.

Now we’ve got this keyword set comprised of the most significant keywords in an account. What to do with it? It has been rumored that isolating a keyword in a unique AdGroup will increase quality score. While this is not necessarily true, it highlights the reason why it’s important to have an organized account: control.

By placing each of these top terms in a unique AdGroup, you can create keyword/ad/landing page associations that are more relevant—effectively increasing Quality Score, clickthrough rates (CTR), and subsequently driving down cost per click (CPC). While it seems logical to do this for all terms in an account, it’s not a scalable solution for an account with thousands, if not tens of thousands or more terms.

Thus you have identified a small sub-section of terms, our “top terms,” that have a very significant effect on the account. Because this set of terms is a cross-section of the account, we can take successful elements, such as ad copy and landing page combinations, from the top terms and apply them to similar terms in the rest of the account to increase CTR and Quality Score.

As I mentioned before, another important set of terms to isolate and manage independently from the rest of the account is brand terms. Brand terms generally have very high Quality Scores, are cheap, have great CTRs, and observe the best conversion rates, often making them the most efficient terms in an account.

As a result, you can maximize the impact of brand terms by activating them on all match types: exact, phrase and broad. The same rules for optimization apply: isolate high volume terms into unique AdGroups within the brand terms campaign, create relevant ad copy, and make sure landing pages are as relevant as possible.

Landing Pages- are your landing pages feeling tired? Is your conversion rate stagnant? Not quite sure what to try next? To re-energize your post-click marketing, it can help to step back and evaluate your approach from several different perspectives.

Here’s a quick exercise, the Landing Page Wonder Wheel—as in, “I wonder how to improve my landing pages?”—that can give you fresh inspiration.

The Landing Page Wonder Wheel consists of eight dimensions on which you rate your current landing page creative and management capabilities, on a scale of 1 to 10. A 1 means you’re not doing very well there, while a 10 means you may be the best in the world at it.

1. Message match. How tight is the continuity between your adverting and your landing pages? If you run lots of ads across different keywords, but you’re driving everyone to the same few landing pages, then your message match probably isn’t very good. For example, if someone clicks on an ad for home refinancing, but they’re sent to a page that generically talks about mortgages, that’s not as tight as a page exclusively on refinancing.

2. Visual design. How good do your landing pages look? From the high-level concept and layout, down to the details of execution such as fonts and image cropping, are your pages attractive? For most people who click on your plain text search ads, the landing page is where you will make your real first impression.

Just as you probably shouldn’t show up to a job interview looking as if you rolled out of bed five minutes ago, tossed something on, and stumbled out into the world, you don’t want your landing pages to looks disheveled or uninspired either. This is a quintessential branding moment.

3. Depth. How much substance do your landing pages have? Depth is about delivering meaningful content rather than fluffy marketing-speak. Landing pages shouldn’t be superficial—otherwise they’re a waste of time. You want to share real information, tailored to the search that respondent was pursuing.

Depth doesn’t mean you should shovel a ton of content on to a single page though. Multi-step landing pages, where respondents drill down to the content and offers that are best aligned with their interests, can be highly effective.

The key is to make sure that with each extra click, you live up to expectations, providing a deeper and more relevant experience. Microsites focused on a particular topic or idea can work well too. But ultimately depth is more about quality than quantity.

4. Freshness. How frequently do you revisit your existing landing pages to update them and inject new life? If you have stale pages out there from a year or more ago, then your freshness score is low. If, on the other hand, you systematically check your pages each month, your score should be climbing. This is more about landing page management than landing page design.

The basics of freshness are making sure that content and offers are current. There’s no surer way to damage your brand than to proudly present someone with an expired offer or a stale fulfillment piece (e.g., “fill out this form to receive our hot-off-the-presses 2006 research on the state of social media”).

5. Interactivity. Are your pages flat text and images, or do you provide interactive ways to capture a respondent’s attention? In the age of YouTube, a video can be a compelling way to build rapport.

A Flash or AJAX widget that lets respondents click on tabs or thumbnails—or perhaps play with an animated diagram of your key benefits—can get them involved with a low hurdle. The secret is to incorporate these features as part of your design and messaging, not something garish or slapped on as an afterthought.

Social media is another way—albeit more experimental in this context—to add interactivity to your pages, such as bringing in Twitter feeds or Facebook Connect applications. You have to be careful about reinforcing your message and not distracting from it. But if you can use social devices to humanize yourself early with a new prospect, and coax them into a conversation, then you’re ahead of the curve.

6. Launch speed. How long does it take you, concept to completion, to launch a brand new landing page? Maybe there are technical or administrative hoops you have to jump through.

Maybe you get held up waiting for someone to take the URL live, or add a tracking code to your checkout page. Maybe you just don’t have the time or resources. But whatever the reason, if you can’t deploy a new landing page as quickly as you can publish a new AdWords ad, then there’s room for improvement.

7. Non conversion value. How well do you do with the respondents who don’t convert on your landing pages? This may seem counterintuitive at first, but if your conversion rate is 20%—which would generally be quite good!—then what are you doing with the other 80%? After all, if they clicked on your ad, they demonstrated non-trivial intent. Just because they weren’t ready to convert on that specific offer at that exact moment, doesn’t make it a throwaway experience.

8. Boldness. Do your landing pages charge forward with bold, new ideas—or are they tepid and formulaic? Landing pages can be a fantastic sandbox in which to experiment with gutsy offers, spirited language, and vivid presentations.

Since any given landing page handles only a sliver of your traffic—and because it’s usually easy to do A/B testing in this context—you can push the envelope without taking big risks. If a daring idea doesn’t pan out, you can quickly pull it down. If it catches fire (in a good way!), then you can expand its reach.

How good is your wheel?

Now that you have your self-assessment scores, mark them on the wheel on each corresponding spoke, moving outwards for higher scores. So a 1 would be placed near the center of the wheel, while a 10 would be placed on the outer rim.

SEO Top Tips for a new designed website by Dr Search

Although the Search Clinic optimises many websites which have already been constructed, we often get asked for top tips on what a business owner should be briefing their web designer, if they are redesigning their website.

Below are the top 7 features to ask for which will help your website become SEO friendly from day 1.

1) Ensure your URL’s are keyword rich and avoid dynamic URL’s which normally contain characters such as “?, % or =”. The URL of a Nike shoe model for example should include your desired keywords and look something like http://www.wisemoney.com/bad-credit-home-loans.htm

2) Ensure your copy and navigation is text based and not an image. An easy way to check this is by trying to highlight the text on your web page and copy/paste it into an editor such as word. If you can edit the word that you have pasted in your editor, it means the search engine can also read it and index that content accordingly.

If you can't see the text then neither can the search engines.

3) Ensure your images have ALT Tags. This is basically an explanation of what the image is as Search Engine crawlers can not easily recognize images.

In the UK this is also a legal requirement and is high on Google UK's key ranking criteria.

4) Ensure a sitemap is included in your web design and linked from your homepage. This enables search engines to navigate your whole site. XML sitemaps are also a great way to inform search engines of all of your web pages.

Dr Search posted about sitemaps recently.

5) Avoid websites with frames. Search engine crawlers have trouble navigating these and hence don’t give you the SEO power from your content.

6) Avoid an over reliance on flash in websites. Search engines cannot adequately categorize the flash content. If you really can’t do without flash, ensure you create a html version of your website also.

7) If buying a website with a CMS, make sure you have access to altering the Title and Meta Tags, as well as adding text on the web page itself. You would be surprised how many CMS systems don’t even allow these features which can help with the ranking of your website.

By having as many of the above features readily available, it will ensure that you have built a solid foundation which can allow an SEO company to optimize your website for much better results. For top 20 guaranteed results Dr Search suggests that you have a look at the Search Clinic Gold SEO service.

SEO- will search engine optimisation still exist in 5 years? Mr Google, Matt Cutts was recently asked if SEO will still exist in 5 years.

Matt kindly put his answer in a short video which you can check out here:

The short answer from Matt is yes, SEO will definitely be around in another 5 years.

Matt used the analogy of SEO being like polishing your resume; you will continue to apply polishes to your website through SEO, especially through canonicalization.

The one thing that Google hopes to change within the 5 years is for black hat SEO (or “crap hat SEO” as Matt calls it) techniques to become less productive and eventually disappear altogether.

With so many white hat SEO techniques being used, I tend to agree with Matt, I can’t see SEO dying anytime soon. What do you think? Share your thoughts below.

Need some help with your website’s SEO? Check out our range of affordable SEO solutions here.

Title tags are one of the oldest and most effective aspects of on page search engine optimization.

Your title tag is displayed as the main clickable link in search engine results and as such, has a considerable impact on how many people visit your website, as well as its ranking within search results.

The good news is, writing an effective title tag is easy and can have a dramatic impact on your search engine success. Below are 3 tips to get you started:

Company Names & Title Tags
There is often a big debate about whether your company name or brand should feature prominently in the title tag. The deciding factor here is how valuable and important your brand name is.

Unless your brand is very specific, an industry leader or well recognized in its field, it’s probably best to leave it out, or put it at the end at least.

This may come as a shock to many people, but think about it; If you searched for ‘flower delivery service’ you’re much more likely to click on a listing titled “Flower Delivery Service” rather than “Brand Name.com”.

Different Titles for Different Pages
It’s no use having the same title tag for every page within your website, as it leaves search engine spiders and humans confused! Your title tag should be individual to each page and accurately describe what the page is about.

Title Tags and Specific Phrases
It’s essential to make sure your most important keywords are at the beginning of title tags, as search engine spiders may only read the first 80 characters. The aim here is to write a title tag that contains appropriate keywords while maintaining readability for the end user.

There is no use stuffing your title tag with keywords that form a pile of mumbo-jumbo, as its unlikely anyone will actually click on your listing.

In summary, here is how to create effective title tags for your website:

1. Perform keyword analysis to uncover the most suitable keywords for your website
2. Create a short and sweet title tag that contains these keywords in a readable yet search engine friendly manner.
3. Repeat this process for all pages within your website

It might take a while to get used to, but once you have the hang of it, you should be able to cover your site in no time. Alternatively, if you would prefer to have your website professionally optimized, please just ask Dr Search

There has been speculation across various search marketing blogs that Yahoo! has recently updated their ranking algorithm.

According to reports on Webmaster World and Digital Point forums, many different webmasters have noticed a change in their Yahoo! rankings.

The update appears to have started around the 29th March and resulted in a general shuffle of the SERPs with no major changes being reported. Here are some reports on the change:

"Minor moves, both up and down, for most of my keywords;

yes… this happened to me as well. one of my main keywords was number 10 in yahoo (was number 2-3 about 1.5 month ago)and yesterday and today I rank number 1 for my keywords;

I’ve also seen some drops in Yahoo SERPs for some of my main keywords from about 3rd position to 7th and now 6th. Hoping I get back to the top shortly."

Yahoo! last updated their algorithm on the 27th Feb, so the timing of this update sounds about right based on Yahoo’s monthly update cycle.

While there has been no official word from Yahoo just yet, they still hold around 21% of the search market, so it would be a wise idea to check your ranking just to be safe.

If you’ve noticed a change in your Yahoo! traffic or rankings, let us know in the comments below!

In June of last year, Google announced they had improved their indexing of Flash files - and web designers around the globe rejoiced.

Many web designers love flash because it frees them from the creative shackles of HTML and can give them the “WOW” factor when presenting new websites to clients.

Unfortunately, while flash sites may look great, they’re a nightmare when it comes to SEO. Google’s improvements in flash indexing did help some flash sites to rank, but most of the fundamental problems with flash still remain.

Below are 4 reasons why Dr Search believes business owners should avoid building flash based websites.

1. Different content is not on different URLs
Because your content is all contained within a single SWF file, there are no additional pages for Google to index and this severely impacts things like bookmarking your site, analytics etc.

2. Basic SEO tags are still missing
While Google can read text from within SWF files, most of the time, basic SEO tags will be lost. Examples of these are link anchor text, H1/H2 tags, image alt tags and bold text. Missing these tags is going to have a negative impact on your ranking.

3. Not all browsers have flash installed
If the user does not have flash installed, or is using a device that doesn’t support flash (eg: Apple’s iPhone) the content is going to be lost completely.

4. Flash sites don’t receive a lot of links
There are a number of reasons why flash sites don’t earn as many links as HTML pages. Some of these reasons include:

* Less social media links because users can’t link to content within your site.
* Less blog/news links because users can’t easily quote your text.
* Less one way links from resource websites because specific content is not on a separate URL

Overall, Dr Search believes the benefit of building a slightly more interactive flash based website is far outweighed by the negative SEO impact it can have. If your website designer is determined to use flash, ask them to use it sparingly rather than designing your entire site with it.

The position of keywords in your website’s URL’s has always been a bit of a grey area, but Google’s Matt Cutts recently clarified the situation.

He was asked whether the position of keywords in a URL has any effect on one’s Google ranking. Here is an example of what the question is asking:

Is example.com/keyword/London any better than example.com/London/keyword when it comes to ranking in Google?

Effectively, Matt says that webmaster shouldn’t obsess about the order of the words but he said having keywords in the URL does help a little bit.

He warned that webmasters shouldn’t go stuffing keywords in the URL as this just looks spammy to users. He also suggests keeping the number of keywords in a URL to a minimum of 4 or 5.

Barry Schwartz from Search Engine Land took this query a bit further and asked Matt directly to clarify his answer in a few specific situations – with both existing and new websites.

Firstly, Barry asked Matt if webmaster should go back to their existing sites and change URLs without keywords to include keywords in them.

"If you’ve got an existing solution that works for you, it’s not really worth going back to change your urls. It may worth considering when you’re doing a new site."

Next, Matt was asked if all news sites should make sure to have keywords in the URL.

It makes sense if a) it’s easy for you to do in your content management system, and b) the keywords are useful and descriptive–definitely don’t overdo it.

So if you’re worried about the keywords in your URL, take the advice straight from the Google master and “don’t obsess” over it. Hope this advice helps! If you have any feedback, feel free to let the Search Clinic know.

Google have expanded their local business listings on Google Maps to boost the number of clickable search results from ten to hundreds of businesses.

Instead of just plotting the first ten search results on the map, Google now includes hundreds of other businesses across the map using small red circles.

For example, the search for “lighting in Gloucetsreshire” now returns the following map showing hundreds of businesses across the local area:

You can click on any of the circles to get more information about the business they represent, essentially giving many more local businesses first page exposure on Google maps. It should be noted that the top 10 listings will still appear as pins on the left hand side of the map.

This is great news for businesses with local listings as it now gives you even more exposure across Google maps and in local search results. It should make it easier for local customers to find your business and also see specific areas where related businesses are grouped together.

If you’re a local business without a Google maps listing, now is the time to get included! Please ask the Search Clinic of you need any help.

The Search Clinic updates you woth the latest search engine and online marketing news, releases, industry trends and great DIY tips and advice.

If you're looking for help with promoting your website - check out our range of affordable search engine marketing services.

This has to be one of the more bizarre SEO stories of the year. Google have penalised one of their own sites, Google Japan, after they were caught paying bloggers to write positive reviews about their services.

Google have taken the drastic move of dropping the PageRank of Google.co.jp from a 9 to a 5 after reports emerged, and Google expert Matt Cutts stated, "I expect that to remain for a while."

So how did this come about? Let's look at the story of Google Japan.

Firstly, it should be noted that Japan is one of the few countries where Google is not the dominant search engine. Yahoo! rules in Japan with 51.2% market share compared to around 39% for Google.

In order to compete with Yahoo!, Google have been releasing a number of Japan only services, including a recent widget for blogs that displays the top 10 hot keywords from Google Japan searches.

To let people know about this service, Google hired internet marketing company CyberBuzz to promote the keyword feature in a pay-per-post campaign. This effectively means Google was paying bloggers to write about and praise their new service - something that's strictly forbidden in their webmaster guidelines.

After this story was uncovered across various blogs, Google's Matt Cutts came in and confirmed that Google Japan would be penalized.

Google Japan have since offered an apology for the incident, which has been translated by Asiajin:

Google Japan is running several promotional activities to let people know more about our products.

It turns out that using blogs on the part of the promotional activities violates Google's search guidelines, so we have ended the promotion. We would like to apologize to the people concerned and to our users, and are making an effort to make our communications more transparent in order to prevent the recurrence of such an incident.

If there's been one positive for Google out of this, at least they will be seen as enforcing their rules fairly, even against themselves!

As the pinch of the current financial situation takes hold, many businesses will be trimming costs, and unfortunately these are often valuable marketing strategies.

In terms of search marketing, search engine optimization (SEO) is often the cost that's cut as it's believed that benefits take longer to realize - few quick wins. However, dumping SEO can mean forgoing a great cheap growth opportunity.

If you're one of the businesses re-evaluating the future of your SEO strategy, consider the following before making your decision.

1. Ongoing Value.
The value of SEO continues well after the optimization has finished. Unlike other marketing, where the value diminishes quickly after a campaign, SEO continues to generate results.

2. Traffic is free.
While we are strong advocates of PPC (fast, guaranteed, qualified traffic), it does cost for each visitor you receive. You stop paying, and your traffic stops. SEO on the other hand provides free traffic, so your costs are easier to control.

3. Against the trend
While other businesses shy away from SEO, it's a great chance for businesses to capitalize on marginally lower competition. It could help generate quicker results.

4. Untapped Opportunities
There are still many untapped niches in terms of SEO, especially within localized and specialist industry segments. Again this offers great growth opportunities for smart business operators.

5. Leverage the trend online
Consumers are being more frugal with their spending and the online space is where they're doing their comparison shopping. It's vital for your business to be in their consideration set, which is why SEO is critical. Google is where the comparison shopping begins, and where you need to be found!

Given the above benefits and the fact it's much cheaper than other online marketing initiatives, it's seem logical that SEO should remain in your marketing plan.

If you're looking for help with promoting your website - check out our range of affordable search engine marketing services.

Pay Per Click Marketing explained

Further to my previous post- Search engine optimization (SEO) explained now the follow up article taking a more detailed look at pay-per-click programs, and how you can use them effectively to boost your web site's income.

This first part focuses on helping you decide which pay-per-click programs to join. Just like affiliate programs, there are a variety of factors to look at when evaluating pay-per-click programs to determine which are best for your site, and which are going to have the best impact on your wallet (and your ability to fill it!). But, first let's take a quick look at why you might want to consider pay-per-click programs for your site.

Pay-per-Click programs offer a variety of advantages and disadvantages compared to affiliate programs. The advantage pay-per-click programs have are that they are generally easier to set up and maintain, and that they pay commissions even if your visitors never make any purchases.

Another key advantage of pay-per-click programs are that they are generally targeted towards a very general audience. Affiliate programs are best promoted by specifically targeting what is sold to your visitor's interests. This may make pay-per-click programs a better choice if it is difficult to determine what products or services your visitors might be interested in.

Pay-per-click programs also have disadvantages. Because of their general nature, they might not be the best choice if your site has a narrow focus and a targeted audience. Pay-per-click programs also generally pay less than affiliate programs since you are trading higher commission rates for a higher probability of earning income (since your visitors need only click, rather than purchase).

Additionally, pay-per-click programs also have the tendency to be more likely to balk on paying their affiliates or to cancel an affiliate site's membership just as payment is due (sometimes justly, sometimes not). A final disadvantage is that pay-per-click programs can't generally be promoted in email newsletters, making them unsuitable if you have developed a mailing list which relies on affiliate program income.

However, for many sites, being paid for every click, rather than waiting for a sale or two to trickle in, is an appealing advantage. If you do decide to add pay-per-click programs on your web site, there are several main factors to evaluate before signing up and adding banners to your site:

1) How do they count click-throughs?
2) What do they pay and what is their payment history?
3) What are their payment terms?
4) What are their terms and conditions of staying a member in good standing?
5) What other tools or features do they give you?
6) What is the quality of their advertisers?

Let's take a look at each of these.

1) How do they count click-throughs?

This is an often overlooked factor of pay-per-click programs, since it is usually not highlighted and often is only mentioned in the fine print of the program's operating agreement. Most programs are set up to pay you one time for each unique IP address that generates a click in a 24 hour (or longer) period.

The reasoning behind this is simple: it prevents the program from being cheated by an unscrupulous affiliate that makes it their full time job to click over and over again on their own banners.

However, this method of preventive action also poses a threat to your ability to earn a fair income. Since many ISPs, especially larger ones, assign IP addresses dynamically, it is entirely possible that a large number of clicks would not be counted since they are coming from different people, but using the same ISP, and therefore the same IP address. Also, clicks from the same person, in a 24 hour period, even if they came during different visits to your site, would not be counted.

There are programs that have lower restrictions than once every 24 hours, but you need to be wary of many of these program also. Some programs with these 'loose' guidelines have gotten in over their head as far as their ability to pay affiliates, and are generally more likely to cancel your account since they have lower tolerances for cheating.

In the end, this is a factor to be aware of, to know what their guidelines are before joining so you can know what to expect. There is no definitive answer as to what time period is best for counting clicks. However, programs that have very high restrictions (48 hours or more) should generally be avoided.

2) What do they pay and what is their payment history?

What a particular vendor or network pays is perhaps the most obvious factor for judging a pay-per-click program. This is simply what can you make per click you refer from the program. Pay-per-click programs range from paying £0.01 to £0.20 or more per click. However, many webmasters sign up for pay-per-click programs without researching whether or not the program has a solid history of paying their affiliates.

A general rule of thumb is to avoid programs that offer what seem to be too large of a payout to webmasters. For example, many webmasters have been encouraged to join the CyberThrill casino program since it promises high payouts of £0.20 per click. However, the catch is they NEVER pay their affiliates what they are truly owed. Many webmasters referred hundreds or thousands of dollars of clicks, and never saw more than a few dollars in a 'token' payment.

I won't spend to much more time on this subject since this is the easiest part of a program to evaluate. Just be aware that the programs that offer to pay the highest are not always the best. If they offer £0.20 per click but never pay you, you would have been much better off accepting £0.10 or £0.15 from a trusted network.

Also, avoid programs that pay under £0.05 per click, since they are generally not worth your time given the number of clicks you need to refer to make a decent income from your site.

To help you find the programs that have the best reputations for paying their affiliates, I make this one of my top criteria for determining how pay-per-click programs are rated. Some of the most consistent programs include ValueClick, Advertising.com, and Burst!.

3) What are their payment terms?

This is another factor that is often overlooked by webmasters. Many programs have strict criteria on when they make payment to their affiliates for click-throughs. Be aware of the minimum amount you must accumulate in commissions before they will mail a check to you.

Generally, a pay-per-click program should send checks when between £25 to £50 in commissions have been accumulated. Less than that is preferable of course, but be on the look-out for programs that require higher conditions to be met, or which combine high minimum with low per-click payouts.

For example, the ValueClick pay-per-click program generally pays £0.12 per click and pays you once you have accumulated £30. This means you need to send them 250 clicks before you receive payment. However, another program, yellowpages.net, requires £50 to be accumulated, and generally pays only £0.02 per click. Here, you would need to send 2500 clicks to them before you earned that first check, exactly 10 times more!

4) What are their terms and conditions of staying a member in good standing?

A common practice on pay-per-click program operating agreements is a statement that the program has the right to cancel a web site's membership at any time, without notice, if they suspect an affiliate of cheating.

This is legally in their right, as this practice protects their advertisers AND legitimate affiliate web sites from cheaters. However, it is important that you know what guidelines they have set up, and how not to lose your membership if you are only using their program legitimately.

Many programs have clauses to protect themselves capping payments at a 3 or 4% click-through. This means if your site were to generate click-through rates higher than this, you would not receive payment for anything over their set percentage. Unfortunately, this also often means that they will open an investigation into why your account is generating such a high response. This is actually somewhat hypocritical of pay-per-click programs, since they penalize you for success. However, there are good reasons behind these guidelines.

4) Making the Most of Pay-per-Click Programs

The industry average for non-targeted banner ad click-throughs is generally considered to be about 1% (and falling). So, to reach these limits, you would need to refer 3-4 times the industry average. Given that most pay-per-click networks host untargeted, general audience banners, this would be statistically abnormal.

The key here is that almost all programs have these types of limits, and some might use them to cancel your account if they expect abuse. The best solution is to be aware of their limits, and keep an eye on your account. Being aware of their terms, even if they do not always seem fair, is the best way to make sure you remain a member in good standing, are paid for what you are owed.

As a general rule of thumb, the programs with the best payment histories are often the least likely to use these types of guidelines as a reason to cancel their members. Those with the worst payment histories do so quite frequently. For example, CyberThrill routinely used this method to cancel nearly ever affiliate that was owed a substantial sum of money.

5) What other tools or features do they give you?

An additional factor of evaluating pay-per-click programs is to determine what other tools or features they offer you to assist in generating the most income from your site. Some programs give you online tools to easily manage your account and to allow you to easily determine which ads you would like to host, and which you would like to block. ValueClick is a good example of this, giving you the ability to select which ads are inappropriate for your site.

Other features include giving you the ability to earn additional income by referring new webmasters to the program. For certain types of sites, this can be an excellent additional source of income, however most sites will not see a high enough volume of referrals to make much of an impact. ValueClick, TeknoSurf, and eAds all have excellent two-tier referral programs if your site targets other webmasters.

6) What is the quality of their advertisers?

Another factor is the quality of the ads that the program runs. If a network hosts many professional ads from proven web companies, you will be more likely to see higher click-throughs than one that hosts poorly designed ads from unknown companies.

However, be aware that many ads hosted by pay-per-click programs are designed to generate brand awareness, rather than to generate click-throughs. Some ads are purposely designed to NOT generate click-throughs, but to rather improve a company's brand name or image, or to drive their URL into the person's mind, in hopes they visit at a later date.

Summary

In summary, selecting a proven pay-per-click program that pays consistently and is fair to members can (unfortunately) be a difficult task. Working with programs that have proven histories of paying their affiliate sites is perhaps the most important consideration. I fully recommend checking with other sites that are hosts to see if they have been paid, and to check the ClickQuick site for frequent updates.

If you have feedback to share, good or bad, about pay-per-click programs you have experience with, please send it my way. And, look for the next article to focus on tips and strategies for making pay-per-click programs more profitable for your site.

Search engine optimisation (SEO) should be the foundation of your digital marketing. Not only is the most cost effective element of the marketing mix but also forms the basis of focus for effective online sales conversion and possible future pay per click campaigns.

Search engine optimization is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results.

Typically, the higher a site's "page rank" (i.e, the earlier it comes in the search results list), the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO can also target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.

As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines.

The acronym "SEO" can also refer to "search engine optimizers," a term adopted by an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients, and by employees who perform SEO services in-house. Search engine optimizers may offer SEO as a stand-alone service or as a part of a broader marketing campaign.

Because effective SEO may require changes to the HTML source code of a site, SEO tactics may be incorporated into web site development and design. The term "search engine friendly" may be used to describe web site designs, menus, content management systems and shopping carts that are easy to optimize.

Another class of techniques, known as black hat SEO or Spamdexing, use methods such as link farms and keyword stuffing that degrade both the relevance of search results and the user-experience of search engines. Search engines look for sites that employ these techniques in order to remove them from their indices.

Eye tracking studies have shown that searchers scan a search results page from top to bottom and left to right (for left to right languages), looking for a relevant result. Placement at or near the top of the rankings therefore increases the number of searchers who will visit a site.

However, more search engine referrals does not guarantee more sales. SEO is not necessarily an appropriate strategy for every website, and other Internet marketing strategies can be much more effective, depending on the site operator's goals.

A successful Internet marketing campaign may drive organic traffic to web pages, but it also may involve the use of paid advertising on search engines and other pages, building high quality web pages to engage and persuade, addressing technical issues that may keep search engines from crawling and indexing those sites, setting up analytics programs to enable site owners to measure their successes, and improving a site's conversion rate.

SEO may generate a return on investment. However, search engines are not paid for organic search traffic, their algorithms change, and there are no guarantees of continued referrals. Due to this lack of guarantees and certainty, a business that relies heavily on search engine traffic can suffer major losses if the search engines stop sending visitors.

For more information please ask at the Search Clinic