SEO Nottingham

The Double Glazing Fund

2011-12-15T11:56:00.001Z

A few weeks ago I finished a website that I started last year when I moved house... With one thing and another I forgot about it! Then, when the cold weather kicked in, it dawned on me pretty quick that the rooms without double glazing are a bit chilly.

The website, is designed to replace or restore my sash windows so they are warmer! Aparently, sash windows are a bit more expensive than the standard upvc ones. I have looked around, but I havent found any "buy-one-get-one-free" offers.

Anyway... please feel free to help out with my cause! If you are looking for help with building a website, developing an existing site, improving your search rankings through SEO or online marketing then please get intouch. You can improve your online presence and I can keep warm, I think that works out well for everyone doesn't it?!

Please have a look around the double glazing fund website, if you'd like to find out more information then please get in touch through the contact page.

How to perform Video SEO...

2011-08-02T21:13:00.000+01:00

Image from SXC.hu

Video has become a major part of our online lives, from watching music videos to past sporting events – nearly every topic imaginable can be watched!

Now, video is becoming an ever increasing must have for any website and can be used as a SEO strategy. Simply uploading a video to YouTube and crossing your fingers for it to rank well in Google is a familiar story and unfortunately won’t work (unless you are targeting an ultra long tail key phrase).

The post breaks down the process into:

Creating the video
Launching the video
Promoting the video

To find out more about the above, click here which will take you to Dave Cain's SEO blog, who is a SEO Nottingham pro.

The Assemble Online £500 Website Offer

2011-03-24T13:10:00.002Z

Are you currently considering, or getting quotes for a new website? If you are, this offer is something you should certainly consider!

For a limited time, Assemble Online are offering a fully content managed website for just £500 (+VAT). All of the websites feature:

Content Management System - which allows you to edit the content and add/remove pages

Bespoke Design - to meet your requirements which will be consistent with your branding and appropriate to your industry sector

Image/Gallery Scroller - which will make your site more interactive

Contact form - for people viewing your site to get in touch

Google Map - which will make it easier for people to find your premises

Google Analytics - this allows you to measure and analyse the traffic your website receives

Free Hosting for 12 months - on a secure and optimised server based in the UK

If you are after a larger site with additional functionality then we can use the £500 website offer as a starting point and then add on any additional features you require. These additional features could include an integrated blog, a product database, e-commerce or even an online booking system.

For more information please get in touch.

Beginners guide to link building

2011-02-18T08:58:00.001Z

Image from SXC.hu

So one of the big tasks with SEO is link building, and it’s a timely job! But if you want to achieve those top rankings its a must do!

There are a 3 core rules with link building:

1) Keep it consistent; gaining 10 links a day, everyday is better than gaining 300 links in one day and none for the rest of the month

2) Avoid reciprocal links, there's not much value in linking to each other

3) Google is becoming extremely smart when it comes to link selling programs - so don't buy links - you could be kicked off Google!!!

Link building can be broken down in to 15 areas, these include:

General business directories
Niche business directories
Local area business directories
Business Forums
Niche business forums
Blog posting
PR article websites
Social bookmarking
Social networking
General link directories
Guest blogging
Link bait
Video creation
CSS Gallery Submissions
Testimonials

To find out more about the above areas, click here which will take you to Dave Cain's SEO blog, who is a SEO Nottingham expert and advisor.

Supplying businesses with cheaper gas and electricity prices

2010-07-21T16:01:00.001+01:00

Cost Advice Services Ltd (CASL) are based in rural Derbyshire and have been assisting businesses across the UK to secure cheaper commercial gas and electricity prices since 1994.

Dedicated account managers at the company provide a free analysis of current commercial gas and commercial electricity suppliers and help companies - regardless of employee size or turnover - identify areas where commercial energy savings can be made. They actively negotiate amongst the leading commercial energy suppliers to ensure customers subscribe to the most competitive energy prices in today's varied business energy market place. Over the years, Account Managers at CASL have formed strong relationships with leading energy suppliers such as British Gas, EDF, Scottish Power, Scottish and Southern Energy, NPower, E-On, Total, Shell and Gazprom.

Although they compete in a very volatile & established field, they boast an impressive and very satisfied client list. For example, St Pancras Housing in London, made savings in excess of £100,000 within their first year of changing energy suppliers through CASL.

To attract more customers to take advantage of their industry contacts for sourcing cheaper commercial energy prices, CASL have asked Creative Heights - website designers & SEO consultants in Chesterfield Derbyshire - to embarked upon an online marketing campaign looking to bring new customers from online searches. The website www.casl-uk.com is being optimised to attract online custom for businesses searching for cheap business electricity prices & cheap business gas prices. Visitors to the website can then either complete an online form or simply call an Account Manager to start making the changeover to cheaper commercial energy supplies for their business.

Artisan Images

2009-11-09T15:42:00.008Z

Artisan Images are a Leicestershire based company specialising in classic and traditional wedding photography. All of the services and packages that Artisan Images offer can be tailored around individual requirements.

Each wedding photo package includes full coverage of your day from the bridal preparations until the first dance. No two weddings are the same, therefore Artisan do not specify time limits, which is a limitation of other photographers.

Artisan are based near Kirkby Mallory in Leicester, allowing them to offer wedding photography in Leicestershire, midlands wedding photography and they will also travel nationwide if required.

On their website they offer tips for successful and beautiful wedding photography. I have picked out my favourite ones:

Make a shot list even if you would only like two photographs taken, it will ensure those two photographs are not forgotten in the excitement.

Have fun, you could have employed the top wedding photographer in the country but if you are worrying about who great uncle Bob is offending, your images will reflect this (apologies to all inoffensive great uncle Bob’s)

Feed your wedding photographers, they will in most cases have been with you from early morning so if you are hungry they will be too.

For more information about the services on offer, you can contact Atrisan through their website.

Leicester Business Event 2009

2009-09-16T23:54:00.006+01:00

Anicca Solutions are proud to be exhibiting at this year’s Leicester Business Event, on 1st October 2009: Walkers Stadium, Filbert Way, Leicester, LE2 7FL.

We will be running an advice zone, where we will be able to advise on any technical or marketing issues you may currently be facing with your website. The 1-2-1 sessions with members of our team will be available in 30 minute slots. It will be a great opportunity to discuss items such as:

How to drive more traffic to your website
Engage visitors through great web design
Improve conversions and save money in the process
Writing interesting and keyword rich content
Manage and maintain a successful blog
Increase sales through email marketing

If you would like to make an appointment, give me a call on 01162 242 096 or if it's easier, drop me an email

Fitness Options - New Online Store

2009-09-07T23:45:00.005+01:00

Creative Heights, web designers in Chesterfield have recently redesigned and launched a new ecommerce website for Fitness Options; the first dedicated fitness equipment specialist store in England. The company have been operating for around 20 years, having moved into Europe’s largest fitness equipment showroom in 1999.

The design of the new website was heavily influenced by the branding styles used in the Fitness Options print material. The site uses a simple grid style structure to display the many fitness products on sale.

The fully editable, custom e-commerce site features over 800 product lines. The site design ensures that it is easy for customers to find products & place orders online, plus efficient for Fitness Options staff to add, delete and amend the product database.

To attract more visitors to the site, the pages are to be optimised for many of the leading brands and products including Nautilus fitness equipment, Life Fitness treadmills, multigyms, elliptical crosstrainers, home gym fitness equipment & commercial gym equipment.

Summer may be coming to an end, but thats no excuse to start kicking back on the fitness plans!

Free Google Analytics Installation

2009-06-08T23:41:00.003+01:00

Are you aware of how many people visit your website each day, week or month? Monitoring the visitor traffic is now an essential task for webmasters and marketeers.

Google offer a free web statistics package called Google Analytics. The service has been around for several years, yet surprisingly there are still a lot of webmasters and marketeers who are not using it - despite a recent study of 400,000 websites by Berkeley students which suggested that the adoption rate for Google Analytics was around 88%!

The system is very user friendly, it presents a wide range of statistics in a very user friendly dashboard which is pictured here:

In order to track the visitor stats for your website, a few lines of java script code must be added to each page on your website.

So what are you waiting for? Until the end of July I will be offering to install the Google Analytics tracking code to your website free of charge. If you would like more information or have any questions, please get in touch.

Email Marketing Fail: Gocompare

2009-05-18T15:32:00.004+01:00

I have just received this email from Gocompare.

I'm not sure why, but it frustrated me that much I wanted to put it on here.

I have used their website in the past, and I'm pretty sure that I filled in all of my details correctly.

If you are trying to make an email more personal by inserting names into it, surely you should take the data from the right place?!

How many people are likely to click through to the site when they get something like this wrong?

MediaCampNottingham - 9th & 10th May

2009-05-05T21:24:00.003+01:00

Get ready for MediaCampNottingham which takes place this weekend.

MediaCamp is a FREE one day event for digital media professionals wanting to share and expand their knowledge, and businesses or social enterprises who are curious about the digital phenomenon wanting to learn more. This event is to share, explore, challenge and build understanding in digital media. Veterans and new comers alike can learn about audio and video podcasting, blogging, web marketing, graphics, email campaigns, Second Life, Twitter and other social media tools.

If you would like to attend, you can register and browse through the list of other attendees on here on the MediaCamp wiki: http://mediacampnottingham.pbworks.com/register

Information about the different sessions can be found on the sessions page. There are still some slots available for anyone who would like to run a session.

The event takes place at:

Lace Market House
54 - 56 High Pavement
Nottingham
NG1 1HW

For more information about travel and directions please see this link:
http://mediacampnottingham.pbworks.com/where

Strange Google Result!

2009-03-30T13:04:00.003+01:00

I just searched in Google to see where my blog was ranking and this is a screenshot of the results!

There's clearly more that 2 results per domain appearing! Must have been some kind of temporary glitch, searching for the same keyword a moment ago the results were back to normal.

Uploading Images to Google Local

2009-03-30T12:41:00.004+01:00

In the past I have found it really frustrating when adding pictures to Google Local listings.

This morning I was uploading pictures for one of our Metafocus clients, Pemberton, caterers in Nottingham. Often, uploading pictures is a really slow and painful experience! Sometimes the images don’t upload properly, and on many occasions fail.

I have found that hosting the pictures online and then using the “Add a photo from the web” option works much more effectively. Rather than sitting through minutes watching the upload icon wondering what is happening, you just copy and paste the links into the box and click “Add Photo”. When uploading the pictures stored locally on my computer, I sometimes loose track of which images have been uploaded. The thumbnail images are not always displayed, which makes it easy to upload the same image twice without realising.

Using this method has also helped me to keep track of which photos have been used for the Google Local listing. Having the images hosted in a file on the server means they are easy to find and locate. This can save time in the future if any of the pictures need to be reused for other directory sites, blog posts or on the clients website.

Differences between google.co.uk and google.com

2009-02-24T14:51:00.005Z

Recently while working on some of our clients sites I have been noticing some really big differences between the rankings for some sites in google.co.uk and google.com

I first noticed the problem with a new website we created for Kim’s Chilled Couriers, a local haulage firm who offer refrigerated transport and frozen transport. Monitoring the keywords in google.co.uk was providing some very disappointing rankings. One day, using the search box in firefox I searched for “chilled couriers” and the site was ranked in the first result. I wasn’t signed in to my google account so the listing hadn’t been voted up using the search wiki, but the search box in firefox searches in google.com, not google.co.uk. It was clear, that despite our efforts, Google was not associating the site to the UK.

I thought this was quite surprising. Admittedly the site does have a .com url, but it is hosted on our server in the UK, the geo target had been set to UK in the Google Webmaster Tools and the site was listed in Google Local.

I asked on various forums to get help with the problem. Some of the suggestions that I received:

- Build more UK links
- Add UK to the title tags
- Add UK to the address on the page footer
- Add United Kingdom to the address on the Contact page
- Submitting the site to local directories

It was also suggested to change the html < html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> tag to this:
< html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en-gb" lang="en-gb">

Over the last few months a combination of these factors have helped the site to rank much higher in google.co.uk. Here are the screen shots from google.co.uk & .com

co.uk:

.com:

As you can see the site is still ranking slightly higher in .com, but the rankings in co.uk have really improved recently – at one point they were about 80 positions out!.

This example clearly demonstrates that, given a choice, it is a much more sensible option to choose the local domain associated with the main target users. We were asked to use the .com address in this case as they had already used it in the past.

The Kim’s Chilled Couriers site is solely focused to people who are based and searching in the UK, I firmly believe that if we had been able to use the .co.uk address, it would have taken far less effort to improve the google.co.uk rankings.

New Website: Let’s Fish Spain

2009-02-03T22:57:00.004Z

It’s been a while since I posted anything on here! I seem to have a collection of old, half started and incomplete blog posts.. It seems a bit late for a post on new years resolutions, so that one might get saved till next year!

I have recently built and designed a website for one of my friends who has moved to Spain and set up a business taking holiday makers on organised fishing trips around Southern Spain.

The site has been live for about a month and is begining to rank well for some keywords such as costa blanca fishing, and fishing on the costa blanca.

Here's a selection of pictures taken from the gallery page:

Looking for Motorbike Accidents in Google?

2008-12-04T23:01:00.003Z

I found something interesting in Google this morning while I was planning a PPC campaign for one of our clients. I was doing some work for Recover-Compensation, a group of solicitors who specialise in a wide range of accident claims including road accident compensation, head injury compensation, whiplash settlements and accidents at work.

I did a search in Google.co.uk for “motorbike accident” and in the top 15 results there were 6 results for videos. This wasn’t the real interesting thing - it was where these videos had come from. The videos were from quite a wide range of different sites:

Metacafe
Google Video
Sumo.TV
Broadcaster

I’m not sure why people feel the need to upload and share things like motorbike crashes, but it looks like there are plenty of these videos out there!

In the past whenever we have had video footage for any of our clients we have mainly concentrated on uploading the video to YouTube and not really experimented with many of the other sites.

After a some research on the internet I have found a list of alternative video sharing sites that everyone could consider using:

Google Video
BrightCove
PhotoBucket
YouTube
DailyMotion
iFilm
Myspace
Vimeo
BuzzNet
Flixya
GoFish
Kwego
Lulu
MyHeavy
PutFile
StupidVideos
Vmix
ZippyVideos
CastPost
Dotv
Famster
MeraVideo
Porkolt
VideoWebTown
Vidmax

If Google and other search engines are starting to place more emphasis on video then working through this list and utilising other video sharing sites will no doubt have a positive effect on improving your online profile and generating traffic to your sites.

Gift Vouchers from The Adrenalin Jungle

2008-11-27T16:03:00.002Z

The Adrenalin Jungle have recently launched a new way to book their events. They have introduced a selection of Jungle Gift Vouchers, which are a great choice if you don’t know what to buy people this Christmas.

The vouchers differ slightly from other similar gift vouchers on offer. You are booking a voucher directly with the provider, with no booking agents. The Adrenalin Jungle is a Nottinghamshire based company run by local staff, who deliver great events! You will only pay for the event and not for a middle man agent.

There is a range of different packages to suit different budgets and varying tastes. The vouchers have been grouped into categories to make it easier to find what you are looking for

Vouchers for Boys
Vouchers for Girls
Vouchers for Groups
Vouchers for Families & Kids

If you don’t see anything in the range of vouchers that you think is suitable, or if you just can’t make up your mind which one to purchase then you could buy some Jungle Dollars - The Jungle Dollars are essentially an open voucher. You decide the amount you wish to spend, then the lucky recipient can decide for themselves which events they want to try.

All of the Gift Vouchers and Jungle Dollars are valid for 12 months from date of purchase. Some of the events do require a minimum number of participants and all vouchers are subject to availability, however they guarantee to offer sufficient availability to enable participation within the 12 month period.

If you would like any more information then please give the Adrenalin Jungle a call on 0800 952 4232 or click here to send us an email.

Bloggers and Blogs in Nottingham

2008-11-26T14:24:00.007Z

I was reading the forum on Leftlion the other day and someone posted a thread about blogs in Nottingham. It got me thinking about how many different blogs there are from people or companies in and around Nottingham.

Many of our monthly SEO clients have blogs. The blogs allow us to regularly generate content for their sites and help to attract more visitors and inbound links.

Some of our client blogs include:

Metafocus - Our work blog with info about online marketing, company news and client details.
Bournes Debt Solutions - Information and advice about managing your debts
Cascades Diary - A luxury bed & breakfast near Matlock in Derbyshire.
Four Corners IFA Nottingham - A Nottingham based group of Independent Financial Advisors.
Globus Worldwide - A Russian language school who provide Russian language tuition in Moscow & St Petersburg.
Gonalston Farm Shop - A farm shop in Nottingham selling local farm produce.
The Jungle Blog - An outdoor adventure playground in Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire.
Mobility Buddy - News, reviews and information on Disabled Scooters and Walking Aids
Morley Hayes News and Events - A hotel and golf course near Derby
Online Marketing Nottingham - Online Marketing news from my colleague Stuart
Internet Marketing Nottingham - Internet Marketing news from my colleague Rich Moore

Some other interesting Nottingham blogs that I read are

May Contain Notts - Nottingham related chelp and mither
Nottingham Daily Photo - Daily photos taken in and around Nottingham
Logic Flip - a Nottingham based company who build web applications that are easy to use

If anyone has any other Nottingham blogs then get in touch and I will add a link to them on this blog.

Study Russian in Russia with Globus

2008-11-14T10:54:00.003Z

Here is a selection of photos from on of our clients, Globus Worldwide. Globus give people the opportunity to study Russian in Russia with their selection of Russian language courses in Moscow and St Petersburg.

This pictures show a selection of Globus Worldwide staff and students enrolled on their courses.

If you would like to learn Russian and would like more information about the Russian Courses please contact Peter on 01623 490206.

New SEO Client: Ketech

2008-11-12T10:10:00.005Z

Over the past few weeks I have been working on the SEO for a company called KeTech.

KeTech offer a very large and wide selection of services. Established in 1998 to provide communication systems consultancy, design, engineering, software development and maintenance services to the transport sector. Over the past few years they have expanded into several different markets by taking over several firms. This has led to the creation of several new KeTech divisions: KeTech Systems, KeTech Defence and KeTech Detection.

Recently the company have launched a new website and we will be optimising certain areas of their site which represent the main services that they wish to promote.

The KeTech site is aimed towards a fairly specific niche business to business market. This can throw up some challenges and can mean that the website will be optimised for quite “low traffic” keywords.

Some of the keyword research for the site took longer than expected. For example, KeTech were keen to promote their vehicle tracking and wireless communication applications. A keyword such as “wireless communication” receives a high number of daily searches, but it is quite general – there are lots of different results when you search it in Google. For many of their keywords we had to come up with longer tailed keywords or synonyms of popular keywords. Examples of keywords we are optimising the site for include radio communication systems, explosive detection, baggage x ray, remote telemetry, retail telecommunications, and transportation information systems.

The website was built using our Web Manager 1 CMS and contains about 80 pages. I was initially surprised at how big the site was when I started working on it. It is taking quite a long time to go through the pages adding in links and keywords in appropriate places.

After working on the site for just a small amount of time we are starting to see some very encouraging results in the search engines. This trend will continue as we build link in links and develop the content on the site.

L3 Living - Serviced Apartments in Liverpool

2008-10-27T13:52:00.003Z

Over the last few weeks I have been working on a website for a company called L3 Living who provide a range of serviced apartments in Liverpool.

The site was built and designed by a company in Chesterfield called Creative Heights. At Metafocus we are helping with the SEO and Online Marketing, to drive visitors to the site and improve their Online presence. The site, which has been online for around 12 months, has primarily used PPC to generate visitors in the past.

The keyword research for the site was interesting. I used a new method called KOI keywords that I read about in an SEO book by David Viney. The method uses the allinanchor command in Google to find the number of websites that use a keyword as anchor text. I think the formula to calculate the KOI score needs some work, at the moment it just doesn’t separate out the really competitive keywords from the less competitive ones! For example, on my spreadsheet keyword 1 and keyword 2 had similar KOI figures but the number of sites competing for keyword 1 was 45,000 and keyword 2 was 8 million!

On the L3 Living website you will find a range of luxury apartments in Liverpool. All of the accommodation is centrally located in the City Centre, in very stylish and sought after buildings:

Unity Building Liverpool
Tower Liverpool
Albany Liverpool
Trafalgar Warehouse Liverpool

Over the next few months we will be adding some more changes to the site. The accommodation is great for people visiting Liverpool for football, or even Grand National accommodation! It’s a shame that the Oasis stadium tour next year doesn’t visit Anfield or Goodison Park.. but then it’s probably not that surprising for Manchester City fans!

Russian Lessons with Globus Worldwide

2008-10-23T17:15:00.002+01:00

Recently I have been working on the Globus Worldwide website, a Russian language school based in Moscow and St Petersburg, who give students the opportunity to study Russian in Russia.

We have started adding a series of Russian Lessons to their website. On a monthly basis we have started adding examples of different vocabulary that will help anyone studying Russian.

On the website you will be able to find the following lessons:

The Russian Alphabet
Asking Directions
Shopping Vocabulary
Booking Accommodation

Keep checking back to their site if you would like to keep up-to-date with the additional lessons that will be added to the site!

Kenwood Energysense JK450

2008-10-11T20:20:00.002+01:00

I bought a new Kenwood Energysense JK450 kettle today! Big news eh? I have made a video and put it on YouTube as an experiment to see how high the video would rank if you search for Kenwood Energysense JK450. The video was also a good chance to try out using iMovie - it’s pretty easy to work out how to use, which was nice.

I uploaded the video about 5 minutes ago and it is already ranking in about the 13th position. I will build a few links to the video and have a look to see what happens.

Please feel free to rate the video!

Using Panoramio for SEO

2008-10-06T11:54:00.005+01:00

Have you ever noticed that when you look at Google Maps there are often photos added to the map? These photos are from a website called Panoramio - it is very similar to flickr, allowing you to upload photos, give them a description and then tag them with locations on the Google Map.

I have just looked at the Google Map for Nottingham and this screen shot shows a small snippet of the city centre:

Clicking on the images will open up a slightly larger thumbnail which displays the photo title. It can be a great way of exploring cities and also sharing photos with friends and family.

This month I am going to upload pictures for our SEO clients. Today I have added some images taken at the Paintball Jungle, a Paintball Centre in Nottingham. The company have lots of pictures of people having fun at their Mansfield Paintball venue.

The Panoramio site is a great way to share photos and also hopefully generate some extra traffic to their website.

Checking the Search Results

2008-09-19T11:21:00.004+01:00

It can be quite frustrating checking keywords! Every day I come into work and end up searching in Google for the same keywords!

Some examples of keywords that I check on a regular basis are:

B&B Derbyshire
Learn Russian
Mortgage Advice Nottingham
Debt Advice Nottingham
B&B Chesterfield
Chilled Couriers
Midlands Team Building
Mansfield Paintball
Quad Biking Midlands
Open Gardens Derbyshire
Hotel near Derby
Beaver Castle

One that will soon be added to the list is Nottingham Marathon - for my new blog that I'm working on at the moment!

It’s important to regularly check keywords to monitor how they are performing in the search engine results. Any SEO work we have done on our clients sites can then be assessed more accurately. It is interesting how quickly some work we do can effect the rankings for some clients!

Lost in the Jungle!

2008-09-17T15:05:00.005+01:00

This morning I have spent some time working on one of our clients sites, the Adrenalin Jungle website. The company have three websites in total: the Adrenalin Jungle, Paintball Jungle and the Corporate Jungle – plus the Jungle Blog too!

Over the last few months there seems to have been a big rise in the number of sites who are competing for some of the Adrenalin Jungle keywords. For example, if you search in Yahoo for “Paintball Nottingham” (a keyword that they have ranked number 1 for the past year) the Paintball Jungle site is currently ranked in around 5th position behind several sites which have appeared. This must show the advantage that can be achieved by using keyword rich URLs

The Adrenalin Jungle site uses our Web Manager 2 CMS. The system makes it easy for their staff to update and make changes to the site. It can cause some problems though - when pages are deleted or changed some of the links on the pages will no longer work. This can have an effect on the SEO for the site, one month the rankings for the Go Karting Nottingham fell drastically, and this was after the page had been renamed! Today I went through the site ensuring all of their keyword text links go through to the correct pages. I have also updated the xml sitemaps, to make sure that any new pages are included.

The Corporate Entertainment website has only been around for a few months. They are currently finalising and adding content to some of the pages, something that can often take much longer than clients anticipate! We have started the SEO work on the site, optimising for keyword such as teambuilding, team building activities, outdoor team building and corporate entertainment midlands.

If you think that your online presence could be improved, or if you have any questions about search engine optimisation, web design or pay per click management then give Metafocus a call on 0115 947 0011

Our Progress with Bournes Debt Solutions

2008-09-17T15:05:00.003+01:00

One of our clients came into the office yesterday to arrange a meeting about expanding her website. The website is for a company who specialise in debt solutions for people who need help to rectify their financial problems.

Bournes Debt Solutions can help with any debt related issues such as

Debt Management Plans
Debt Solutions
Charging Orders
Basic Bank Accounts
Consumer Credit Agreements
County Court Judgments

The site has been live for nearly a year and the SEO and online marketing is really starting to have a positive effect. The debt solutions market is very competitive with lots of other sites competing for the same keywords.

Since working on the site our approach has been revised several times. The keywords for which we optimise the site have been reviewed and also the methods used to promote the site have also changed.

In the past we used PPC to promote Bournes and their services. The competition for the keywords was high, with some of the keywords costing upwards of £10 per click! The PPC was effective at driving traffic to the site, but the number of real enquiries was quite low and it was very expensive!

Optimising the site for general terms such as bankruptcy or credit advice is not a realistic approach. At the moment, the domain and site are still quite young so we are currently focussing on a more localised and targeted approach by optimising for keywords such as debt advice Nottingham and charging orders nottingham. In the future, as the site matures and the number of relevant inbound links increase, the site will be able to compete alongside some of the bigger sites in the industry.

The meeting next week will be a good opportunity to review the work on the site and plan for the next six months.

Global Online Marketing

2008-08-29T14:50:00.009+01:00

Metafocus is once again a global online marketing company!

Well, nothing much has changed except that I have put up another sign on the building that had been pulled down last weekend.

This time the sign has been put up slightly higher and with bigger screws.. Hopefully the current sign will last a bit longer than the last one – will keep you posted after the weekend!

No Index means No Index!

2008-08-28T00:16:00.002+01:00

I made a bit of a mistake the other day. The website for my club night Audiophile has recently stopped being indexed in the search engines.

I have been scratching my head over it for a few weeks and thought that it might be something to do with the wordpress theme, or maybe a problem with the hosting (it's hosted with Fasthosts - say no more!). Finally the penny dropped and I thought I’d better check the code to see if there was some sort of no index tag in there. Bingo!

< meta name='robots' content='noindex,nofollow' />

The no index metatag gives webmasters control over their sites, allowing them to avoid search engines automatically indexing sites or certain webpages. Some things just shouldn’t end up in Google - search for “businessplan.xls” or “expenses.xls” and you’ll see what I mean!

Even though we do most of our online Audiophile promotion through music forums, facebook and myspace it still helps to make sure that our website is indexed in the search engines!

Google Offices in Zurich

2008-08-22T17:24:00.001+01:00

One of my friends posted a link to some pictures of the Google offices in Zurich this afternoon on Twitter.

Wow!

Pretty similar to our offices in the Lace Market, Nottingham.. I think we’ve got more plants than them :)

Nice one Broomy..

2008-08-06T15:42:00.002+01:00

This afternoon while I was working on the Four Corners website the unthinkable happened…

I heard the noise from the kitchen while Andy was making the drinks, but I never imagined that it was my favourite mug that had gone crashing to the floor.

His grinning face did very little to make me feel any better.

Making Money cont..

2008-08-05T23:49:00.010+01:00

I’ve reached the end of my July deadline and I think I’ve come up with a few ideas that I can start to put into place during August.

Over the last month I have registered two new domains and I am currently working on the designs for two new websites.

One of these sites is Beaver Castle. The main source of income from this site will be from Adsense and potentially other advertising. I’m confident about making a steady income from this, the holding page that is on the site at the moment is receiving quite good levels of traffic already from people mis-spelling Belvoir Castle.

My other domain that I have registered is turnoffyourlights.co.uk. The plans for this site are a little more complex than with the Beaver Castle site, but I will let you know as soon as I feel happy with them :)

Using Twitter

2008-07-30T15:38:00.002+01:00

I have recently started using twitter on a regular basis. I registered with the site about 6 months ago but never really got into using it.

A few weeks ago I went back to it to see what all of the fuss was about. I started adding more friends and a few different other users such as The Guardian and the BBC. I'm sure that these sites have noticed the same thing as me, that the site is a really effective method of generating traffic.

It seems a bit geeky logging in to a website which is no more than a glorified facebook status, but it is quite addictive. Adding the news sites makes the site act like a little Google Reader giving tiny 140 character bite size nuggets of info. You can quickly catch up on what's kicking off around the world.

Twitter also allows me to keep tabs on my new SEO best friend Edward Lewis, so what more reason do I need to keep going back?

Propeller has had a facelift

2008-07-24T00:01:00.002+01:00

It's all kicking off this week.. It seems like lots of sites are revamping for the summer.

Facebook is at it..

Metafocus have launched our new Global Internet Marketing site..

and now Propeller has done it too..

One thing I noticed though, the new Propeller logo looks very similar to the Allan & Heath X:ONE logo

One of these logos is for a world class dj mixer, the other one is for a website that isnt quite as good as digg :)

Google Alerts for SEO

2008-07-23T16:58:00.002+01:00

One online tool I have recently started using much more is Google Alerts. It is an automated system that emails you when it discovers new online material relating to your alert criteria.

Currently there are 6 different Google Alert types available: Comprehensive, News, Web, Blogs, Video, Groups and Comprehensive. These relate to the different search options available in Google.

The alerts are designed to be set up for keywords, but I have started using them for urls. This is quite a handy trick for anyone who works on a site’s SEO. The Google alert lets you keep tabs on any developments to your web pages – It is very handy when you find out where and when people have linked to them, very important if you are building links into the site. A friend on the David Castle SEO forum also suggested that the Google Alert technique could be used to help get new web pages or new domains listed in the search results.

I currently have lots of Alerts running. I have quite a range of different types and keywords. Examples of these include: a comprehensive alert on my SEO Nottingham blog url, and several of our clients keywords such as “luxury bed and breakfast” “hellebores” or “global online marketing”

Give them a try, keep up to date with your competitors and stay up to date with changes to your keywords and urls.

Making Money on the Internet.. Update

2008-07-21T23:47:00.000+01:00

Well.. it's been a few weeks and I am fast approaching my deadline of the end of July to come up with some big suggestions.

I have managed a few ideas. I have registered a new domain for a Beaver Castle site I am going to create. At the moment I am working on the site design and also writing some content.

The Beaver Castle domain was only registered a few weeks ago, but it is already ranking quite well in Google for its main keyword. It's quite suprising, the site is ranked in the top 10 Google results in the space of a few days, with no inbound links (the above link is the first one!) and very little content on the page - just shows the importance that the domain name plays in a website's SEO.

Overall its been a fairly productive few weeks. I have got a few more ideas in the pipeline which will hopefully work out quite well.. On a plus note, I have also made £7 selling bits and bobs on ebay :)

Oh No!

2008-07-18T10:12:00.002+01:00

I think the internet is broken..

SEO at Metafocus

2008-07-11T09:54:00.005+01:00

One of the biggest sites which we have built recently at Metafocus is an ecommerce site selling male grooming products called Aspetto.

The site has been live for around six months and has presented lots of interesting challenges for us with the online marketing and SEO side of things.

At Metafocus we have a wide range of consumer and business facing websites. Speaking honestly, I find it more interesting working on the consumer facing sites! I think it’s more appealing thinking about “birthday gifts for men” and “mens skincare” than say something like “potassium permanganate”.

I often find it a bit strange that while I was studying marketing at Leicester University, most of the course content related to business to consumer (B2C) rather than business to business marketing. I think that this might be why working on consumer sites feels more familiar.

When we devise an online marketing plan for a site like Aspetto there is always a big selection of sites that we can incorporate and use to our advantage. We try to use lots of different social networking sites, blogs and forums to help attract visitors to the site. This makes it more interesting for us, and also by casting our nets a little further we should also get better results.

If you think that your business needs help to grow online, or if you are interested in search engine optimisation give Metafocus a call on 0115 947 0011.

Word Up with Camino!

2008-07-10T11:06:00.002+01:00

I have been spending time looking in the analytics for my blog this morning and made an interesting discovery.

I have had one visitor viewing my site using a browser called camino. I had never heard of it before, but after checking out their website I think I might download it when I get home.

The Camino browser is for mac OS X users and designed to be as functional and elegant as the computers it runs on. The site says that the Camino web browser is powerful, secure, and ready to meet the needs of all users while remaining simple and elegant in its design.

Sounds good! I love firefox 3, but i do find on some computers it takes a long time to boot up. It would be boring to use the same browser all the time wouldn’t it?

Hanging in there with SEO!

2008-07-08T17:35:00.002+01:00

At Metafocus we have got a fairly wide selection of clients who are enrolled on our monthly SEO program. A full list of our clients can be found on our links page. They range from small hotels in Newark, luxury bed and breakfasts, to haulage firms and contemporary architects.

As you can imagine, with such a wide range of clients comes an extremely long list of keywords. Good keywords should be relevant to the site and also be receiving traffic in the search engines. What’s the point in optimising sites for words that people aren’t typing into Google? Contrary to what some SEO companies may say, there is no point!

For some sites there is no choice but to optimise for fairly competitive keywords. There are many reasons for this, for example often clients will insist that their sites are optimised for specific keywords, or trying to optimise the site for more long tailed or localised keywords may result in very low levels of web traffic.

One of our clients is a group of strategic management consultants in Nottingham called Watson Sessions. Their domain is quite new with having only been registered in February. They do currently rank well for localised keywords such as “marketing consultants Nottingham” and “Business consultants Nottingham” but for other less specific keywords such as “strategic management consultants”, “strategy consultants” and “business consultancy” the site does not currently rank so well.

Over time as we build more links into the site, promote the site online, and as the domain matures the website will climb up the search positions for these important keywords. At the moment it feels like we are putting a lot of effort into promoting the site online for very low rewards. We just need to be confident with what we are doing – one day the site will rank well for “executive coaching and mentoring” and “independent business advice”.

Making Money on the Internet

2008-07-08T00:37:00.003+01:00

Tonight I have made a decision.. I have set myself a challenge: to make £500 through the internet by Christmas. I work as on online marketing executive, for a company called Metafocus, so technically you could say that so long as I dont get sacked I will be earning money through the internet. I’m not counting this.. the £500 has got to be earned in my spare time through some sort of online scheme.

I have no idea about how I am going to do it, but I know that it is a fairly realistic challenge.

Thinking about it logically I have got around 6 months to come up with an idea and then put it into action.

I think I will spend the rest of July doing some research and hopefully by the end of the month I will have some sort of workable scheme.

I will use this blog to document my progress and hopefully share information to help you out too. Fingers crossed anyway!

If all things go to plan, then hopefully I wont end up selling my imac on ebay the week before Christmas!

Russian Classes with Globus Worldwide

2008-07-04T12:39:00.002+01:00

One of the Metafocus SEO clients, Globus Worldwide is a modern and friendly Russian language school.

Globus offer a wide range of Russian language courses. For anyone who is thinking about moving to Russia or plans to spend long periods over there, Globus give people the opportunity to study Russian in Russia. This allows students to also learn about Russian culture and also interact with Russian people.

Currently, Globus provide Russian language tuition in Moscow and St Petersburg. If you would like to learn Russian in Russia, details on the Globus Russian classes can be found on their website here.

Don’t be put off applying! Globus offer a very wide range of programs including basic Russian language, corporate Russian courses, and intensive Russian courses.

Photoshop Disasters

2008-07-01T10:26:00.002+01:00

This is kind of linked to yesterdays blog post about image optimisation!

I have started reading a new blog, recommended by Jon Winstanley! It's called Photoshop disasters and features loads of pics found on the web or on print material that have been photoshopped.. errm.. badly!

There are loads of funny ones looking through the achieves!

SEO Info: Image Optimisation

2008-06-30T17:00:00.003+01:00

I read an interesting article by Sue Hallam few days ago with some tips on how to optimise images.

Image optimisation is a useful tool for optimising a website. Depending on the content, it can be a very good way of driving traffic to the web pages. One of our old clients who’s site contained pictures of cakes used to get lots of hits from images.google.co.uk.

Sue’s article suggested some of the following tips for optimising images:

1. Use keyword rich filenames eg hellebores_001.jpg.

2. Make use of the alt tags – describe what the image is.

3. Use the image on a relevant webpage. For example, a selection of images featuring hardy perennial flowers should be used on a page devoted to hardy perennials.

4. Try to create internal and external links to the images. A blog post like this is an excellent opportunity to create external links to images on your website.

5. Using the Google webmaster tools, it is also important to make sure that the image search is enabled for your website. Participating in the Google Labeller service lets users label and describe images too. Labelling images can be quite fun and well worth filling a spare 5 minutes everynow and again!

All of these tips will help ensure that the images on your site will be ranked higher in the search engine results.

One great firefox extension for searching through the Google image results in called PicLens. Install it and get searching!

If you search for SEO Nottingham you will find one of my pictures take from the Nottingham Eye which was used in a previous blog posts

Big changes to the internet and the world of SEO?

2008-06-27T00:03:00.000+01:00

The way people use the internet could really change over the next few years. Today, in Paris, Icann, the internet regulator voted in favour to relax the current rules on “top-level” domains.

What does this mean? Well, when picking a domain, instead of picking from the standard list of .com, .co.uk or .net etc it will be possible for people or companies to set up their own user defined domain names. The new plans make it possible for top level domains based on any string of letters in any script.

This means that we could soon see web addresses with a host of brand names and keywords appearing in them. This is likely to have a very big impact on SEO and the search engine optimisation industry.

Some of our clients could be in a position to change their domain names. For example, the Paintball Jungle could change their address to something like www.nottingham.paintball or us at Metafocus could change our address to www.metafocus.seo. The possibilities could be endless!

It isn’t all good news though! The cost of creating a customised TLD is estimated in the very least to be a 6 figure amount!

One country who looks set to loose out will be the Polynesian Island of Tuvalu. They have been making lots of money leasing .tv domains to television production companies!

TV action at the Adrenalin Jungle

2008-06-24T14:48:00.000+01:00

One of our SEO clients, the Adrenalin Jungle were recently pleased to welcome a crew from Yorkshire TV to film a feature for the Calendar program for their ‘What’s On?’ series.

TV presenter Carolin Hodgson was sent to check out some of the outdoor activities on offer at the Adrenalin Junlgle. Carolin, dressed the Jungles obligatory combats and safety gear was filmed trying her hand at the 4 x 4 course, archery and quad biking. The feature aired a few days later and received a great response from the public.

The Adrenalin Jungle often get TV crews filming at the site. The Nottingham and England cricketer Ryan Sidebottom was filmed playing paintball for the Question of Sports Mystery Guest competition.

If you would like a day at the Adrenalin Jungle, just like Carolin and Ryan did, then please see their range of Activities in Nottingham, Midlands Paintball or Teambuilding Events then please click on the links.

Mobility Buddy - New Metafocus SEO Client

2008-06-23T12:38:00.002+01:00

One of our recent SEO customers is a company in Nottinghamshire called Mobility Buddy.

The company have over 20 years experience in selling mobility aids such as Walking sticks, Zimmer frames and disabled scooters.

On the website I was surprised to find such a great range of living aids which could make everyday life much easier for everyone! I think that certain products like commodes and rollators are aimed towards elderly and disabled people, but the living aids could be used by everyone.

I’ve picked out a selection of items which I think could make modern life a bit less stressful!

Bottle & Jam Jar Opener

Say good bye to the damp tea towel method! Never say to someone else again “you hold the bottom, I’ll twist the top!”

J-Popper Ring Pull Opener

I’m not really one for looking after my nails, but I do know it hurts when you bend your nails opening awkward cans. This opener could probably work on beer cans too!

Bed Tray

I was ill last week and worked from home for a couple of days. I had problems using my laptop in bed and resting it on top of the duvet made it get quite hot. This tray would have been perfect!

Book Butler

When I was back at Uni I think this would have come in useful. Most new text books wont stay open on a flat desk, and this Book Butler means you don’t have to sit hunched over holding pages down with your elbows!

Have a look on the website and I think you will be surprised what you will find! For more information contact 0800 107 8445

Mobility Buddy: http://www.mobilitybuddy.co.uk/

Metafocus YouTube Channel

2008-06-20T13:22:00.000+01:00

Youtube is a great and fun way of publicising our clients services. The videos are also a great compliment to the other search engine optimisation (SEO) work which we carry out on their websites. In the past we have uploaded videos for a number of our clients including The Adrenalin Jungle, an outdoor activities centre in Nottingham, and Cascades Gardens, a luxury bed and breakfast in Derbyshire.

We have recently created out our own Metafocus YouTube channel. Here we will be able to collate together all of our clients videos.

The first video we’ve uploaded to the Metafocus channel is a short video made by the UKTI. They came to our office to film us at work and to interview Alan Clements our MD. The video mainly focussed on the chinese websites and chinese online marketing services which we are currently providing for a number of clients.

You can view our YouTube channel here: Metafocus

Has anyone seen our sign? It was last seen in the UKTI video, but has since vanished!

Firefox 3

2008-06-19T22:21:00.001+01:00

Seems like i might have missed the Firefox 3 download day, but I'm happy to say that i'm now hooked up big style!

Download a copy for yourself from the Mozilla website.

Technorati Registration

2008-06-17T16:45:00.000+01:00

I have nearly signed up to Technorati..

Looks like I will have to finish it later :(

Whitton Lodge - B&B in Chesterfield, Derbyshire

2008-06-17T11:54:00.000+01:00

Whitton Lodge is a luxury bed and breakfast in Chesterfield, Derbyshire. The B&B opened in April 2007 and has enjoyed a successful 14 months with many satisfied customers. The luxury B&B are one of our monthly SEO clients who’s site we spend time working on each month.

The house of the B&B in Chesterfield was once part of the Hardwick Estate and used as a working Stud Farm for the Estates horses. Be under no misconception, the modern day house is very different! The B&B in Derbyshire boasts some fabulous facilities which include a swimming pool, a sauna, a gym and a games room. For those who prefer a less strenuous break, after enjoying the spa facilities they can arrange for a local beauty therapist to call in to treat you to a new hairstyle or give you a relaxing massage.

Recently the website for the B&B in Derbyshire has undergone some changes. We have taken new photos of the bedrooms, the great facilities and pictures of the exterior of the house. You can browse through the new pictures on their website: http://www.whittonlodge.co.uk/

Audiophile BBQ & Music Workshop - Stealth - Sat 21 June

2008-06-13T12:26:00.000+01:00

Ok.. it's not entirely SEO related, but it is the biggest thing happening in Nottingham over the next few weeks!

It’s the longest day of the year so it seems fitting to hold our biggest Audiophile party to date on the summer solstice day!

Audiophile and Shrink Records present a music workshop in association with Ableton and JazzMutant at Stealth in Nottingham.

The full line up:

Chris Finke (Atomic Jam/Split)
Max Cooper (Shrink Records/Evolved Records)
Allan Banford (Evolved Records)
Raw Hedroom (Shrink/Flux)
Tom Select (Girls and Mathematics/So HOT right now, Budapest)
Shapshankly (Electric Circus/Virus B-23)
Delirium Funk Live (Spectrum)
Mark Pearson (Frakah)
Matt Burton (Leftroom/Shrink Records)
Lee Spicknell (Sound Alliance)
Nick Lawson (Shrink Records)
Pollyy (Shrink Records)
The Chosen Ones (Audiophile)

Entry during the daytime is free, then the usual Stealth Saturday night prices:
£5 adv / Free before 10.15pm / £6 NUS / £7

Like music? Like BBQ’s? In the dark confines of Stealth's underbelly we're setting up an AV system to give willing students a techno-education. A selection of artists from around the country will be giving talks on a variety of topics relevant to electronic music production, which will include:

Beat programming and Ableton Live 7's drum racks
Guerilla solder (Circuit bending)
Making things pump! (Sidechaining)
Live performance interfaces
Synthesis techniques

Representatives from Shrink, Flux Recordings and Evolved Records will be on hand to discuss any label-related issues.

Beginner? Seasoned producer & performer? Grab a drink, find a good view and pick up some skills (and maybe some Ableton/Jazzmutant goodies!)

After the talks have finished we’re going to clear everything out of the way in preparation for a big night ahead.

For more information: click here to view the facebook event

We’d like to say a big thanks to all of our sponsors who have helped to make this event happen:

Ableton JazzMutant Flux Records Evolved Records Atomic Jam Split New College Nottingham Bar Eleven Stealth

Audiophile

.

Debt Advice Across the UK - Bournes Debt solutions

2008-06-11T09:39:00.000+01:00

Bournes Debt Solutions are enrolled on the Metafocus monthly SEO Nottingham program. Each month we spend time working on their site to improve its search engine visibility, building quality inbound links and promoting their services online.

Recently the company have expanded across the North East and North West of the UK. Bournes Debt Solutions can now offer their services in the following areas:

Debt Advice Nottingham
Debt Advice Newcastle
Debt Advice Durham
Debt Advice South Shields
Debt Advice Manchester
Debt Advice Oldham
Debt Advice Stockport

The Bournes debt advisors can offer advice on many financial areas including charging orders, County Court judgements, basic bank accounts, consumer credit agreements, credit card debt, bank overdrafts, personal loans, gambling debts, mortgage debt and hire purchase repayment.

Selecting a debt advice agency is a big decision, so you will want to be certain that you’re choosing the right firm to give you professional legal help and advice. You will be reassured to know that if you are looking for debt specialists in your area, you need look no further than Bournes Debt Solutions.

The Bournes debt management plan is a six stage process which is designed to give their advisors a full understanding of your current financial situation. After they have assessed your needs they will be able to create a debt management plan to suit your requirements.

Bournes debt advisors can often be with you within 24 hours of receiving your telephone call. You can contact Bournes Debt Solutions by completing the online enquiry form on their website or by calling them direct on 0845 845 0140

Millar Management - Contemporary Architects

2008-05-23T17:05:00.000+01:00

Millar Management are a Modern Architects and Project Management Company based in Derbyshire. The website for the British Architects, can be found here: http://www.millarmanagement.co.uk.

Metafocus, recently redesigned and rebuilt their current website using their Web Manager 1 Content Management System (CMS). Millar Management have also enrolled on the Metafocus monthly SEO program. Each month they will spend time working on their site to improve its search engine visibility, building quality inbound links and promoting the Millar Management services online.

Millar Management specialise in architect designs, baggage handling systems and project management. The company have an internationally recognised expertise working in the aviation industry. They have designed baggage handling systems in many airports around the UK. In addition to the work in the aviation industry Millar Management has successfully completed a large number of projects in the Industrial Sector, Health Sector and in Residential Property Development.

If you think that your online prescence could be improved, or if you have any questions about search engine optimisation, web design or pay per click management then give Metafocus a call on 0115 947 0011 or send us an email.

Metafocus: http://www.metafocus.co.uk