The Double Glazing Fund

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...

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.

Beginners guide to link building

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.

Free Google Analytics Installation

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.

Strange Google Result!

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

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

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.

Looking for Motorbike Accidents in Google?

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.

Bloggers and Blogs in Nottingham

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.

New SEO Client: Ketech

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

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

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!

Using Panoramio for SEO

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

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!

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

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

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!

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!

Nice one Broomy..

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..

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 :)

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