Hit Search Limited liverpool 0845 643 9289

Content is Key to a Successful SEO Campaign

By Andrew Redfern @ 6th July 2011 8:20 am Online marketing

Everybody wants their website to show up on the first page of an internet search but for that to be possible, you’d need one hell of a big page. Search engines are designed to present their results in order of the pages’ relevance to the search criteria and their quality, based on a number of factors.

Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO, refers to a range of techniques designed to ensure that your site demands as much of the search engine’s attention as possible. Because you could offer the best product or service in your field, but if nobody can see your site, they’re unlikely to ever know it.

One of the most important facts to get your head around when trying to optimise your site is the power of the written word. They say a picture speaks a thousand words, but search engines don’t see pictures, so we’d take the thousand words every time.

Of course it’s not quite as simple as that.

If you’re selling bikes, there’s no point transcribing ‘War and Peace’ over your homepage. The key is to feature plenty of text that’s relevant to the searches you’re hoping to feature on. In this example, that would mean featuring words like ‘bike’, ‘bikes’ or ‘bicycle’ for the search engine crawlers to pick up on.

A beautiful image of a shiny, new bike might look great, but the search engines simply won’t know that it’s there.

That’s why when designing your site, it’s crucial to remember to include plenty of relevant text based information. The search engine spiders can crawl through text, but not Flash or images.

Hit Search calls for help for digital push for SME’s

By Andrew Redfern @ 28th October 2010 12:43 pm Online marketing

According to the ‘Connected Kingdom’ report commissioned by Google, the UK internet is now worth more than £100 billion. A significant finding of the report was that the internet in the UK is growing at a rate of 10% every year, in 2008 it made up 7.2% of the UK economy and is predicted to generate up to 10% of the UK’s economy by 2015.

“As the report highlights the UK is the leading nation for e-commerce and the Internet is one of the key drivers for steady growth in the economy in 2010.” said Andy Redfern, Director of Hit Search Limited, online marketing specialists.

The UK has the largest per capita online market and the second largest e-commerce market in the world according to the report. Redfern add “At a time when the government is spending vast amount of time on austerity measures – a greater focus on getting the majority of SME’s digitally enabled from a sales point of view would no doubt help increase the country’s GDP.”

The report also found that the growing online industry accounts for approximately 250,000 UK jobs and will play a vital part for the UKs economic recovery during the next few years. Within the UK, the online industry is already larger than the construction, transport and utility sectors. Redfern commented “I am proud that our industry directly employees over 250,000 staff and growth of SME’s that use internet marketing outstrips those offline by a ratio of four to one. “

Redfern concludes “The Digital Inclusion task force focus was on the general public, this report highlights that greater investment is needed to push our business community online.”

TSD-HS-28910

Social media and online video boost UK online ad spend

By Andrew Redfern @ 27th October 2010 11:31 am Online marketing

A report into the 2010 H1 Ad Spend by the Interactive Advertising Bureau UK shows an increase of 10% to almost £2bn in online advertising spending between January and June 2010 despite of the UK recession. One of the main drivers for the growth was online video advertising spending, which has increased fivefold in the last two years from £3.9m in the first half of 2008 to £20.7m in the first half of 2010.

Hit Search Director Andy Donaldson comments ‘We have actually noticed that as times got harder for clients of ours over the past few years, return on investment came to the fore front of marketing discussions and these discussions eventually ended up with online marketing at the centre of recent strategies. With the tracking tools available today, ROI is a key measurement for clients and one that strongly guides marketing spend.’

The report by IAB in partnership with PricewaterhouseCooper attributed the growth to an 8.9% increase in investment in search advertising and a 6.3% growth in display advertising.

The entertainment and media industry was the biggest spender on social media advertising followed by finance then FMCG brands with increased interest and investment by running major new media campaigns.

WND-HS-271010

Growing Trend: Mobile Search in the Travel Industry

By Andrew Redfern @ 15th October 2010 2:49 pm Online marketing

A shift towards increased use of mobile technology, especially the use of Smartphones for mobile search will have a huge impact on the travel industry. Google’s view is when, not if mobile devices will overtake the desktop as the web access point of choice for users. Businesses will have to consider how much time and funding to invest in focusing on mobile technology. Not enough focus may disadvantage them by loss of connection with the target market, whereas too much focus may lead to miss direction of resources.

More sophisticated devices and location based applications are being developed all the time; this will soon enable travel booking to happen anywhere, at anytime. Businesses and mobile web users will be able to make their communications more relevant to where the traveller is located at any given time.

Thetrainline.com has recently launched a series of apps for iPhone, Blackberry, Nokia and Android devices to revolutionise the purchasing of train tickets. Passengers will now able to buy their train tickets at anytime and at any place, using the app which will update the user’s account and deducts the fare from their bank account. It also has an optimised mobile website launched 3 years ago; it is planning to re-launch this to enable customers to make transactions in the next few months.

Over the next year mobile web will play a major part in the travel industry as social and web browsing trends are set to change. The mobile market is starting to gain serious momentum; its growth opportunity is far too large to be ignored.

No Shame Link Spamming On Search Engine Watch

By Andrew Redfern @ 23rd December 2009 12:08 pm Online marketing

Tis the season of goodwill to all (except spammers) – however a recent post on Search Engine Watch really gave me a belly laugh this morning.

An excellent article written by Ron Jones CEO of Symetri on Search Engine Watch was focusing on how you can build links ethically by adding value to other sites and the focus was always on quality. Some of the sections included excellent copy on – including…..

Again the focus on the article is on quality, quality and quality.

However, minutes after the release, without a hint of irony, the first comment back on the search engine watch site was comment from a spammer promoting one of his sites. Quick fire comedy or link spamming naughtiness? You decide

Ron’s insightful article entitled “Link Building Tactics 101, Part 1 – Search Engine Watch (SEW)” can be found here http://bit.ly/6pHVd7

Paid advertising on social media becoming more popular

By Andrew Redfern @ 14th August 2009 12:50 pm Online marketing

It has been highlighted recently how more and more big name brands are turning to social media outlets for their advertising. A report in today’s Financial Times reports that Facebook is now attracting input from global giants such as Starbucks and Coca-Cola.

Facebook is an interesting case study because it allows companies to establish a presense on their site for free using it’s Pages funtction. This is complemented by a paid advertising system that displays targetted ads on the right hand side of the screen. As Facebook’s chief operating officer points out “If you look at people’s profile pages, you’ll see a lot of commercial activity even without advertising.”and this makes it an excellent medium for building up a promotional presence.

The advantage inherent with social media sites like this is that the very nature of the sites makes it extremely easy to target ads at specific users. The advertising systems can cross-match the data contained in user profiles with the parameters selected by advertisers in order to get their ads showing to a very specific target audience.

The problem social media advertising has is a question of user motivation. If someone is search on Google they are actively looking for something, generally users are not looking for products and services whilst on sites like Facebook. Therefore the types of promotion highlighted needs to change, the focus should generally be on informational content and event announcements. This is key to running a successfull social media advertising campaign with a tangible return on investment. It is essential to be providing something that will be of interest to a user rather than trying to meet a pre-existing demand as with systems like Google adWords.

Also it is fair to say that currently the model for dedicated social media advertising is very much B to C, there is little evidence to suggest the benefits of a B to B campaign using Facebook. LinkedIn, which has a much more corporate model, is served by the Google Placement Network.

So social media advertising with it’s targetting advantages is opening up a new avenue for companies wanting to advertise however it is not as simple as just picking your audience and running your ads. A report in today’s Telegraph highlights research that shows that despite it’s growing popularity social networking adverts fail to engage with over 90% of users.

The article quotes Liane Dietrich, managing director of affiliate network company LinkShare

“Less than 10 per cent of our respondents are interacting with adverts across social networking sites. This just proves that there is still long way to go until people using networks, such as Facebook, are converted to online shoppers through targeted advertising. We don’t think brands should walk away but rather need to evolve what message their adverts are conveying. Online users are information shoppers – they are looking for buyer reviews – so adverts need relay more information to cater for this need.”

This shows how picking the right message and displaying it in the right way is vital to the success of a social media advertising campaign. They do however offer unparalled accuracy in reaching the exact audience advertising are hoping ot engage with and so, if the underlying message is engaging enough, offer outstanding value for money.

Marketing – Your Way To Beat The Credit Crunch With SEO

By Andrew Redfern @ 16th July 2009 5:14 pm Online marketing

Do you own a company and are looking to generate more business? Has your business started to see a decline due to the number of people not looking to spend as much as they used to? There are answers for you providing you have a section of your business that trades online. If you don’t have a marketing package or team that is willing to provide you with a comprehensive internet marketing package, then you could very well be losing a fair bit of business.

There is still a large volume of people searching and spending money on the internet every single day, even though the high street shops have seen a decline in sales, certain sectors of the web has seen a dramatic increase in its online sales. How do they achieve this? The majority have a search engine optimisation company that will perform and help them through every single step in internet marketing.

What search engine optimisation is, is a way in which your site is altered and improved in a way in which to increase your rankings in the major search engines like Google and Yahoo. This increase is where you site is then seen by people who search the web. This form of search engine marketing can help dramatically increase your overall traffic each month which in turn helps you increase your sales online. Results are not seen over night however there are other marketing packages such as Google Adwords that can also go alongside SEO to help you get a quick return on investment.

If you’re reading this and believe that your website is suffering and need some advice, then please don’t hold round and wait for someone to contact you. Look at internet marketing companies who have a proven track record in increasing sales and traffic through websites.

Would you like to know about Marketing? If so, contact Hit Search on 0845 643 9289

Other Related Stories That May Be Of Interest: