Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-03-07

Mar.07.2010 Uncategorized (0)

• Half Price #Webhosting for any company registered in the UK within the past 12 months – http://www.instahost.co.uk #

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7 Sites to teach you SEO techniques

Dec.19.2009 seo (0)

When we  first started using online marketing many moons ago, our main focus was on paid search (Google AdWords et al) and our plans revolved around creating campaigns, bids, clicks, conversions etc.

Whether you are a complete beginner or you an SEO master, these sites have enough of a back catalogue and regular new information to keep you going for months!

1. http://www.seomoz.org/blog: Starting as an SEO agency they have used their blog to position themselves as a global resource for the industry
2. http://www.seobook.com/blog: A mix of practical advice, industry news and personal opinion
3. http://searchengineland.com/columns/: one of my favourite sites, the columns section covers all aspects of search marketing
4. http://searchenginewatch.com/sew_archive_experts&type=sew_experts/sem-101&issue=2009: Really good introductory articles to various aspects of online marketing
5. http://www.wolf-howl.com: This site has been around for years and it mixes advice with commentary and personal opinion
6. http://econsultancy.com/blog: The volume of posts each day can be a bit too much and some articles don’t go in to a lot of detail, but the percentage that do hit the money make it worth it.
7. http://www.toprankblog.com/: Good traditional ‘how to’ blog with some great advice for all levels of knowledge

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How to increase conversions by reducing your visitors perceived risk

Dec.19.2009 marketing (0)

One of marketing’s most important functions is to reduce the level of perceived risk a potential customer may have about your service or product. Weighing up ‘risk’ is a big part of the consumer’s decision making process, sometimes it can happen in an instant (e.g. low cost or regularly purchased items such as baked beans) or sometimes it can take months or years (e.g. one off high value items such as buying a house), and everything else in between.

There are 6 different types of risk:

• Physical risk (Will it physically hurt them or anyone else?)
• Functional risk (Will it work how they want it to?)
• Social risk (Is it socially acceptable within their circle?)
• Psychological risk (How does the product fit in with their perception of themselves?)
• Financial risk (Can they afford it?)
• Time risk (Is the time it takes to buy the product worth the effort?)

Your aim should be to use your website to provide visitors with the information they need to overcome their perceived risk.

Contact us, find us & about us pages
No one likes to spend money with a faceless company with no clear way of getting in touch if there are any problems. Easy to find ‘contact us’ and if you have offices, ‘find us’ pages show people there is someone on the other side. Equally ‘about us’ pages help to put you and your website in to context along with adding a personal touch, especially if you use photos of yourself.

Money back guarantee
The inability to see a product or touch it is one of the major hurdles people have to get over when purchasing online and a product can look very different in the real world to the image on the website. You can help reduce the financial risk by allowing them to return it and get their money back. This also goes for services.

Demo of product
In a similar vein to the point above, screen shots are not always enough for some visitors. Being able to ‘test drive’ the service before they commit to a purchase is a major plus for many visitors and will increase your conversion rate.

3rd party endorsements
Having your product endorsed by a business or personality well regarded in your field will reduce psychological and social risk by creating a sense of trust through your association with them. This can be as simple as listing your blue chip suppliers (e.g. Microsoft) all the way up to getting a celebrity on board (e.g. a football apparel website hiring a footballer)

Testimonials, case studies & customer comments
Being able to see there are existing (happy) customers is important to potential customers because they don’t want to feel they are alone. You can help to Increase the credibility of any comments and/ or testimonials with the person’s names, links to follow and putting the date of their comment to show how fresh they are.

Heritage
The knowledge you are dealing with an established and stable brand is important to customers because they associate that with being trustworthy. Few website owners can claim “Since 1908” but because the internet is so new and sites come and go so quickly, a web site as recent as “since 2004” can feel like an old horse!

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Search Engine Tips – Protect your SERP

Nov.15.2009 seo (0)

Whenever someone searches for your brand name using a search engine, they are also being shown 9 organic results on the search engine results page (SERP) that may not be your site and maybe even another 9 paid results for competitors bidding on your brand name, which means you could be competing with a total of 18 other results that aren’t your site!

To ensure the searcher a) comes directly to your website and b) doesn’t see any negative entries that can creep in to the top 10 results, it is important that you use as wide a range of branded content as possible for the search engines to spider and rank. Taking your position at number one in the SERP organic section as red, below are other methods to ensure you dominate your brand searches.

Paid search top result

It may seem strange to bid on your own brand name when you already have top organic position but with clicks likely to be as low as 5p to 20p per click you should view it as an investment in online real estate. Eye tracking research shows that people’s eyes start at the top of the SERP and as you go down the page fewer and fewer people look at that area (see the research here).  By having two entries at the top you are increasing the likelihood of a click and forcing other results further below the fold. You are also blocking anyone else bidding for the top paid spot on your brand name.

Put your blog on a sub domain

Google views sub-domains as separate entities to the main site which gives you a great opportunity to get a 2nd entry in the organic results by naming your blog something along the lines of http://blog.domain.com

Create a Facebook page

A well populated and linked to (e.g. from your main website) Facebook company profile should see your Facebook profile be shown high in the rankings. To set up a business profile go here http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php

Wikipedia page

Although the terms state that you are not allowed to write an entry about an organisation you are associated with, let’s be honest, it happens all the time. There are too many corporate entries for it no to! Google loves Wikipedia and ranks it’s page in the top 5 for countless search terms. Set up your own page to benefit from this love! Go to the home page here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page and click on ‘create account’ in the top right to get started.

Google Universal Search

Google is always trying new ways at presenting the web’s information, and it is rare to be shown a SERP that doesn’t have either some results from Google News, Product search, blog search or all three! If you don’t have one, get a Google account and start using the submission and feed features to make sure Google is picking up your press releases, blog posts and displaying your products.

Twitter

As we touched on in a previous post about Twitter’s integration in to the fabric of search, Twitter accounts are only going to become more prominent in the SERP, not less. Make sure you have an account and link to it from your home page to show Google how important it is.

YouTube channel

Following the same theory as Facebook and Twitter, a profile on such a large and heavily linked website will be shown highly in searches for your brand name if combined with a respectable amount of content and a little linking from your own site to the channel’s home page. Create an account here http://www.youtube.com/create_account?next=None

What about page 2?

How often do you go beyond the first page of Google? Probably rarely if ever, and that’s the same for the majority of searchers. The truth is, if you’re in position 11 to 20, you’re going to get crumbs, if you’re not in the top 20, you’re nowhere!

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Manage your hosting on the move with your iPhone

Nov.13.2009 Browsers, add-ons (0)

We have now launched our Customer Control Panel and eXtend Control Panel for the iPhone and Android powered phones.

Getting started
Using your iPhone you can manage your domain names, manage all your web hosting accounts , view the system status updates, view your invoices and go to the normal control panel. To access this, using your Apple iPhone, iPod Touch or Android phone go to your standard log-in  (http://instacontrol.yourfulldomain)  and log in.

INSTAhosts new iphone control panel

Whatever your thoughts about the iPhone there is no denying it represents a step change in the way we access data and spend our time on the move and thanks mainly to the ever growing app store we have immediate access to all aspects of our digital life. The success of the app store is well documented with over 85,000 apps to choose from, 2 billion downloads, over 6.3 million apps downloaded every day, and the iPhone OS is now the 4th most used OS. Our recently launched INSTA Host  iPhone control panel based on customer feedback and demand is testament to the increasing importance of mobile internet access and business use.

The downside to the success of the app store is the sheer volume of apps there are to search through is mind blowing, so we have done it for you! Below are some of the best apps (paid and free) we have found for managing your website through your iPhone. We are sure there are plenty we could have listed, but there is a good chance we haven’t come across them yet, so if you know of any, leave a comment below.

http://analyticsapp.com/: Access all your Google Analytics data through a specially designed interface for the iPhone making it easier and quicker to pull and report data.

http://www.ftponthego.com/: “FTP On The Go” lets you log into your server using your iPhone to download and upload files, and comes with an inbuilt text editor to amend files on the fly.

http://iphone.wordpress.org/:  The official WordPress app allowing you to  write posts, upload photos, edit pages, and manage comments on your blog from your iPhone

http://www.concentricsky.com/products/iphone/: CSS, HTML, JavaScript and  PHP cheat sheets on your iPhone

http://www.code-line.com/software/: Colour code selector including Pantone, web safe colours, and HTML colours.

http://ego-app.com/: Keep up to date with your web 2.0 stats including feedburner feed subscriptions, twitter followers, Google Analytics data etc.

http://www.freetheapps.com/app.php?app=crop: Crop and rotate  images without any loss of picture quality

http://www.itunes.com/app/sourceviewer: (Direct link to iTunes) View a web page’s HTML, CSS & JavaScript

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