Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-04-18
Apr.18.2010 
- Peterborough RetroFit Event – Tomorrow at 09:30 at the EIC -Agenda and details here>http://bit.ly/cnjgZi. #
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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-03-07
- Half Price #Webhosting for any company registered in the UK within the past 12 months – http://www.instahost.co.uk #
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Search Engine Tips – Protect your SERP
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.
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!
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-11-01
- #webhosting accounts – eco friendly servers from just 99p per month – http://www.instahost.co.uk #
- #Blog Update: A new way of writing internet addresses has been approved http://bit.ly/2N6Fev #
- # Instaprise Blog Update Twitter, the flawed genius? You decide : http://bit.ly/qSzN5 #
- # Instaprise Blog Update: Free xmas tools for webmasters….. http://bit.ly/4GzZ25 #
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insta Google apps
You can now setup your domain name to use Google Apps in just one click. Google Apps are a suite of free tools from Google that help you stay connected and be more productive, they include:
- Gmail – Fast, searchable email with less spam
- Google Talk – IM and call your friends through your computer
- Google Calendar – Organize your schedule and share events with friends
- Google Docs – Share online documents, presentations, and spreadsheets
To setup Google Apps for one of your domain names login to our control panel, click “Manage Domain Names”, select the domain you wish to update and then click “DNS Management”. On this page there is a new section called “Setting DNS for Google Apps”. Click the link in this section and all the settings will be made automatically for you.
To find out more about Google Apps visit: http://www.google.com/apps/
