When faced with the threat of online divergence in holiday booking trends, Fare Wise Travel understood that they had to move fast or lose potential business. As an independent travel agent, they understood that more and more people are searching for and booking their holidays online with many looking for their dream holiday outside of normal business hours. In order for Fare Wise Travel to continue serving people with their unique adventures for ‘the real traveller’ they had compete and be counted.
The travel industry however has diversified and the way people find and choose their holiday each year has become very different. More and more people are turning to the Internet to research their destination, their accommodation, decide upon their itinerary and then find the best possible price.
Fare Wise Travel has built an amazing reputation for providing quality service and fantastic adventures. However they needed a way to effectively communicate their services and experience to those potential clients and to proactively target those that search the internet out of office hours. They understood they too had to embrace Internet marketing to succeed in this swift changing business environment and so they turned to Generate UK.
A website was agreed to be an essential part of their business moving forward, acting as Fare Wise Travel’s shop window out of hours and proactively generating inbound enquiries and leads.
Following an initial meeting to understand Fare Wise Travel’s website requirements it was clear that the business required an easy to operate content management system (CMS) so that Fare Wise themselves could update products, create promotions and new travel destinations as and when needed. Generate UK was chosen as the partner of choice due to their online experience in delivering stunning websites using the correct technologies for the appropriate business requirements.
From a design perspective it was vital that the new site represented the great travel destinations Fare Wise offered including communicating the fact that they were not a typical travel agents trying to find and sell the cheapest package available.
Using Generate UK’s proven project methodology; the process to launch was exceptionally efficient and completely visible throughout. The website now provides Fare Wise with a platform to continually build business through. The website design includes stunning imagery from around the world and the content is synonymous with the great service Fare Wise offers.
Veronica Bailey, Director of Fare Wise Travel stated “I wanted to work with a company that understood our business and what we were looking to achieve. Our old site was completely out of date and we needed a dynamic looking site which represented the unique service we offer. Generate UK were excellent and I now have a website of which I’m exceptionally proud. It has already provided enquiries and I’m looking forward to developing the site moving forward to generate more business. Generate UK really did encapsulate exactly what we’re all about, our style, personality, great experiences and quality service. I look forward to working with them again.”
Here at Generate UK we believe in leveraging the best technologies and methods to suit the specific needs of your business. This successful, tailored approach has delivered business and opportunity to our clients time and again. If you too would like to find out more on our stunning web design and user-friendly CMS solutions, please visit us at www.generateuk.co.uk
Oh dear… has your site been banned by Google? I know the feeling you currently have, that gut wrenching fear and loss of control. Where has the site gone? Why has the site gone? When will it be back? I have been developing and marketing websites since 2003, many of those sites I promoted using techniques that today would be considered “alternative”. I don’t shy away from this because it means that I have the scars of battle with the search engines…. believe me, you can quickly achieve a short term gain with Black Hat techniques, however long term it is not a viable marketing strategy.
View the search engines as your source of free targeted traffic. Don’t mess with them, give them what they want… great content and information. Play by their rules and they will reward you. Every business in the UK should follow the webmaster guidelines, if you don’t then you’re running the risk of being banned.
If you do not know whether you are following Google Webmaster Guidelines, then start asking some questions. Click on the link and read through what they say. If you work with an SEO agency, get them to confirm and demonstrate that they are not risking your business by using SEO techniques outside of the guidelines.
Ok, if you’re on this page it is probably an emergency and you’re keen to get to the meat of the problem. So let’s have a look at some of the reasons your site might be banned, or lost its ranking. We’re looking at the quality (sometimes technical) part of your website, rather than the look and feel. Please note this is a summary of potential issues, if you know your site fits into any of the points below then it is worth doing something about it as not doing anything will affect your rankings.
Broken Links and incorrect HTML
There’s not much more frustrating that broken links, 404 pages, error pages etc. If you consider that Google wants to provide relevant and helpful content to its users and your site and your competitors site have similar content; the next step for Google will be to check the quality of the links and code. If your competitor matches W3C and has not broken links compared to your site, then guess who gets shown first.
Dynamic Pages
You won’t get banned from Google for having dynamic pages, however it is not going to help you. An example of a dynamic page is a URL that has a ? in the title and is created because the site has queried a database; often this refers to shopping carts. A dynamic page URL by nature changes, whereas a static page does not. This means it can be indexed by the search engines, which is good.
Number of links on your page
You should not have more than 100 links on your page. That is a rule and part of the Google Webmaster Guidelines. If you have more than 100 links on your page, then you have broken their terms. Lots of sites do this, especially today when a lot of sites include links to social media and bookmarking sites. If you’ve lost a bit of ranking recently and not sure why, then this could be one of the reasons.
Make your web pages for users
There is a temptation for website owners to try and deceive the search engines, the upside for this is more traffic and more sales, so you can understand why people are tempted to do it. One method webmasters have used is cloaking, which means that the search engine is presented with one set of content and the user is presented with something completely different. This is a technique that will get you banned.
Don’t use tricks to try and outsmart Google
Google is one of the biggest companies in the world today; they are also the smartest search engine and know their onions for sure. So why anyone would want to try and outsmart them is beyond me. As already mentioned in this post, in the short term you may get away with it, however if you’re looking for a long term search marketing strategy, it will not work for you. In simple terms, anything outside of the Webmaster Guidelines is a trick, so try and keep to the rules.
Links
This is a big one. In the early days of the Internet, optimising your website was simply about throwing a website up and getting loads of links. This strategy no longer applies and falls into the “tricks” category. The areas to look into here are:
1. The sites you’re linking out to… bad neighbourhoods don’t go near them. Don’t be associated in any way with them.
2. Link building schemes - Run for the hills. It is about natural link growth, if you’re part of a link exchange scheme, this could be having a detrimental effect on your ranking. If you need more information about the definitions, visit Google’s Link Schemes page
3. Reciprocal links are ok, they are not going to get you banned but it is worth considering your reciprocal link strategy.
4. Buying and selling links is not a good strategy for increasing your search engine rankings. If you’re buying links to increase traffic, this is slightly different and can be neutralised from a SEO perspective by using the “nofollow” technique.
We recommend that you think about why you are linking to a page, is it for the benefit of your visitors/users or is it because you believe you are getting an advantage from the search engine. If it is the latter, then you’re playing the wrong game.
Hidden text and links
I have to be honest, this used to be one of my favourite techniques. It would be very easy to hide text and links on a page and the search engines never used to mind. Times change and Google very much discourage this technique, usually if you are caught you will be subject to a ban.
Make sure you do not have malware or other bad code on your site
This is a serious one and has been on the increase in recent years. The premise of this advice is simple, don’t create pages that phish for information, install Trojans or virus etc. So this is quite obvious why Google would not want to rank your site. However, sometimes this types of software can be installed on a site without the webmaster being aware of it. So this can be about security of your site. We saw an example recently where phishing pages had been uploaded to a website. The only time the customer knew about it was when their server company contacted them to say they had suspended their site.
Keyword stuffing
A lot of webmasters “keyword stuff” their pages without knowing the affect. Unfortunately, it is an issue within our industry and a result of poor advice. Too many keywords on a page is keyword stuffing, so try to create content first and foremost to be read by your users.
Duplicate content
There are two types of duplicate content, one type is content that has been taken from another website and repurposed in the same way. There are many reasons why you would do this and it happens regularly without issue as long as a credit is applied. The challenge happens when you try to rank well for that page. If you think about it logically, Google has already indexed a piece of content that is the same as yours. The original piece of content was there before yours, so why would they choose to rank you above the original source?
The other less known issue with duplicate content is when you have duplicate content on your own site. Sometimes this can be an issue when a site has not defined its www.domain or http://domain properly. Google effectively has 2 pages to look at and decide which is most important, this can impact your rankings significantly.
There are a few other reasons your site could be banned or losing rankings. The important thing to note is that whatever the issue, as long as it can be identified and fixed; then your website has every chance of recovering its Google rankings. If you would like any help and advice in this area help and advice in this area, please feel free to contact with our SEO Consultants.
I have decided to create a series dedicated to the best marketing campaigns of the 20th century. Each Friday for 6 weeks a different member of the Generate UK team will discuss one of their favourite campaigns explaining why it stands out against its competition and what makes it so successful. This series will reveal some of the most creative, successful and the just downright weird campaigns to have been launched in the last 10 years.
Name: Ian Fergusson Position: Marketing Executive Campaign of choice: McDonalds Billboard (2008)
McDonalds does not have a good reputation in the fast food world as being ‘healthy’! In fact it has been sued a number of times for its advertising targeted at kids and for promoting un-healthy living. During the ‘noughties’ we saw a massive boom in healthy living and keeping fit, in my opinion borderline obsessive with fitness videos and new diets advertised wherever we looked. McDonalds clearly felt that if they didn’t alter their reputation soon, profits could ‘dip’. They left it up to the wonderful Leo Burnett to get across to the public that McDonald’s salads really are fresh!
Leo Burnett created a Billboard that over time grew lettuce, to form the words ‘Fresh Salads’. Creatively I feel this is ingenius. In a sense we see here the first ever living billboard. This wasn’t the fastest campaign ever launched, the sign took 3 weeks to grow, but the message delivered is clear and strong, If McDonalds can get fresh lettuce on a sign, surely that leaf in my double cheese burger is just as fresh and healthy. Creativity is the driving force behind a message; this innovative idea generated top class media coverage that lasted several months after the campaign had finished. However, I’m not a big fan of McDonalds as a brand, so I felt the need to criticise at least one aspect of this campaign. I do not like the Green on a grey background. I feel this is a slip up on the art direction and I’m sure many creative’s were confused over that decision. I hope you found this interesting and please post any opinions you have about this campaign. After all it is you McDonalds are trying to impress, has it worked?
Next week it’s Mike Robinsons’ turn to share his Marketing Highlight of the past decade.
It’s a new year, a new decade and time for a new start. My name’s Ian Fergusson and I’ve recently joined the team here at Generate UK as a Marketing Executive. I am on a placement year whilst studying Marketing Advertising and communications at the University of Gloucestershire. I am a born and bred Essex boy, but moved to reading in 2009 to become a telemarketer. I have previously worked as a Marketing Assistant for an International dental company and as a PR assistant for Chelmsford Borough Council.
I am extremely privileged to be joining Generate UK at this exciting time of growth. 2009 was such a successful period for the company I look forward to seeing what we can achieve in the New Year. I knew I wanted a career in Marketing since I was 14 years old. Whilst watching the series ‘Cold Feet’ Helen Baxendale became a career role model for me as her character played a Marketing executive for a publication agency. I have managed to pick up a plethora of skills on my marketing journey and I’m looking forward to learning a ton more at Generate.
The team here at Generate are proud of the success we have achieved throughout 2009 and are working hard to make sure 2010 exceeds its high expectations. Joe Baily summarises 2009 by saying:
“We’re extremely proud of where we are as a business. Our team have worked incredibly hard over the last 12 months, working to understand our customers as well as we possibly can. This approach has enabled us to deliver a profitable year and more importantly enabled us to work with brands such as Honda, NHS, National Trust and Senspa. We have also worked hard to forge relationships with local businesses as well, such as Pine and Oak, Donnington Grove, Q Associates, Chris Fidler, Momentum Windows and many more. It is important to us as a Newbury based business to work with Newbury based customers.” What does 2010 have in store for Generate UK? First of all Generate UK were asked to take part in a technology programme due to air on the BBC. Keep a close eye on our blog and twitter for our aired date. 2010 will also see the launch of Generate UK’s new website which will reflect Generate UK’s focus on design, development and Internet Marketing capabilities. In March 2010, Generate UK will be back in Newbury for their popular marketing seminars. Further details of this event will be on their website shortly.
Happy New Year to all,
Kind regards,
The Generate UK team.
NHS South Gloucestershire is a Primary Care Trust whose aim is to provide and plan health services for approximately 258,800 people who live in South Gloucestershire.
Part of their continued development plan is to forge closer ties through effective partnerships with organisations and local people. Part of that process is to bring more health services closer to local people by effectively communicating them through an interactive and informative website.
NHS South Gloucestershire required a new website after their previous one became out of date and hard to navigate so after producing a website project brief, they proceeded to tender for a new public facing website and following a comprehensive tender process Generate UK won the project.
“We chose Generate UK because of their obvious enthusiasm and commitment to service. This project demonstrates a significant investment by NHS South Gloucestershire to help increase communications within the local community and it is imperative that we get it right. After a rigorous tender process we believed that Generate UK’s partnership approach to their clients gave us the comfort we required to take that next step” Sue Pratt - Communication Manager, NHS South Gloucestershire.
The project involved building a new public facing website which complied with W3C web content accessibility standards and conformed to priority level 2 AA. The site was to be built upon Sitekit content management system and the design was to take on a clean, concise and attractive look and be compliant with NHS guidelines and colour scheme. Overall the design, structure of the site and information was to enhance the end user experience and be reflective of the South Gloucestershire population.
The Generate UK project team worked with the PCT’s communication team and through detailed project scoping were able to understand the exact requirements. This was fully documented and used as the base for the project to move forward to the design phase. Through the production of wire frames this enabled the designs to be structured in a clean and precise fashion taken into account all sections of the website’s navigation, usability and accessibility.
The result: Generate UK used their online project experience and proven methodology to produce and deliver and excellent new public facing website for the PCT. http://www.sglos-pct.nhs.uk/
Generate UK, a dynamic and commercial thinking digital marketing company based in Newbury, Berkshire offer professional web services and a number of other related online marketing services that would add value to any commercial and public sector organisation.
We are exceptionally happy with our new site, Generate UK have excelled during the project through excellent communication, creativity, online knowledge and overall project management. We now have a website that is easy to navigate, is far more interactive and presents NHS South Gloucestershire’s information and services to the local community which is easy to assimilate thereby forging closer relations. The next step is to create a staff area for the site to help increase the levels of communications with our employees - Fiona Reid – Head of Communications, NHS South Gloucestershire
The Eight Bells is an independent pub in Long Crendon, Buckinghamshire the home of the famous Midsomer Murders!
The Eight Bells is an attractive friendly pub that has been serving the local community for over 400 years. The pub has gained a reputation as a great pub to enjoy a relaxing drink in beautiful surroundings. The menu at the Eight Bells is traditional home made pub food, which is locally sourced and produced wherever possible.
In recent time the Eight Bells have won awards for Real Ales; with the Cask Marque accreditation and also the Beautiful Beer Gold award. Recently, they were included in the Good Beer Guide 2010 and were awarded Aylesbury Vale’s Community pub of the year 2008
Unfortunately the old site did not represent the pubs great atmosphere, great service, excellent beer and pub food which it offered so they decided it was time for a change.
Generate UK worked with Helen, the owner of the Eight Bells to understand her exact requirements. Increasing traffic, improving the design and most importantly it was evident from the start that Helen required a content management system (CMS). This was to allow Helen and her team to update the website in the future with content changes, new menus, images etc
Whilst design was very important to Helen, to make sure the Pub was presented in the correct way the Eight Bells also wanted to focus on making their site highly visible within the search engines both locally and regionally.
Generate UK built a great new design and integrated it within the Generate CMS platform which now allows the Eight Bells to take full control of their own website. Focusing on location, primary and secondary keywords i.e. pubs in Long Crendon was essential as this has now ensured that location based searches will present the Eight Bells pub high within the organic search engines. The result of this will increase traffic and raise the venue’s profile locally throughout the surrounding counties.
This has already substantially increased the number of unique visitors to the website which has generated more visitors to the pub which in turn has delivered more business.
Helen Copleston, Proprietor of the Eight Bells Pub stated “A key challenge for any small business is finding the right company to work with who will give you honest advice and won’t charge the earth. I found Generate UK brilliant to work with; they’ve built the Eight Bells a great new website and guided me through the whole process, advising me on keywords, design structure and even budget. They were very reasonable in cost and for what they have delivered I am over the moon! We now have a future proof website that my team can amend as and when is needed and the content management system is really easy to use. The overall experience was great and as a result is generating more revenue, a great investment. Many thanks!”
Dance2Xtreme is the online shop of an independent family run business based in Maidenhead, Berkshire. They carry a wide selection of quality dancewear and accessories for ballet, tap, modern and jazz. They also provide the latest fashions for ballroom, gymnastics and ice skating costumes.
Dance2Xtreme have traditionally sold from their shop in Maidenhead, they decided that they wanted to offer their products online as this would provide them with a new route to market. It also meant that they were able to extend their reach and sell to new customers outside of their traditional geography.
Selling products online was a new experience from Dance2Xtreme, so it was critical that their ecommerce system was easy to use and flexible. In particular adding new products, editing products and the fulfilment engine, which automatically creates emails and invoice information for their customers.
The other important factor for Dance2Xtreme was that they wanted to “future proof” their site and offer features that they may not use from day one; this included the ability to offer promotion codes/vouchers, gift wrap service, wish lists and customer reviews.
The Ecommerce system from Generate UK was the perfect fit. It is an advanced shopping cart system that was designed with the business owner in mind. It is very intuitive and runs via a simple control panel where you can manage every aspect of your store, right down to the customisation of your product variations such as size and colour.
The shopping cart scales to support an unlimited number of products and can quickly and easily be managed by anyone without HTML or other technical skills. It even integrates directly with Royal Mail for real time delivery prices, which can be rolled out across the store or changed per product.
The Dance2Xtreme website is an exciting next step for the proprietors; they are looking forward to marketing the website and welcoming new and existing customers to order online. In the future, new products and brands will be added to the store as well as a unique custom dancewear design area, where customers can work directly with Dance2Xtreme to design an exclusive piece of clothing.
What Dance2Xtreme had to say; Lin Sweeney, Director stated “Initially I was very nervous about the whole project until a friend recommended Generate UK. Their knowledge was amazing and they made the whole process easier than I thought it would be. They often went above and beyond what was needed and that I’d signed up for. The site looks great and really easy to operate, thank you for all you help! Lin Sweeney Owner - Dance2Xtreme “
The Fish Brothers Group is a multi franchise, family owned car dealer group based in Swindon. They offer new and used cars as well as contract hire, servicing and parts. In a competitive market, Fish Brothers were keen to identify new ways to promote their annual sale and at the same time improve their communications with customers and prospects.
Fish Brothers Group were looking to promote their inaugural sale, entitled The Big Sale, this is a large scale event aimed at increasing car sales in the run up to the new registration plates. Via previous marketing activities, Fish Brothers already had a well qualified email marketing list, so they decided to embark on an email marketing campaign.
Email marketing is a fast and effective way to communicate with your customers. Segmenting your data based upon previous interests means that your emails can be highly targeted, which will increase your click through and conversion rates.
Fish Brothers’ list was split into different interest groups based on car manufacturer; it was then split down further based on Fish Brother’s own criteria which determined what type of communication the recipient would receive. In addition, each email included a unique code and voucher which ensured that each email was unique.
The major benefit of email marketing is that it provides the ability to look at the campaign statistics, which enables the marketing department to make more informed decisions and to continuously improve their email communications.
Sara Hodkin, Fish Bros Group Marketing Manager stated “We chose Generate UK to help deliver a number of complex and tailored email campaigns to form part of a wider sales strategy. The service and execution was excellent and results were brilliant helping us drive footfall into our 12 main dealerships. Since those campaigns we have continued to work with Generate UK where they have helped us set up our own branded email marketing system, provided infrastructure and on-going support through web and email consultancy.”
A few reasons why you might like to consider our Email Marketing System
Your own easy to use, flexible email marketing system which is continuously supported and enhanced, meaning your system adapts to your changing requirements.
No more costs per email; once the system is installed it is branded as part of your business.
Instant access to analytics to help your reporting and your decision making.
Supports multi-users across different departments, so you can provide different levels of access to different people based entirely on their needs.
Still not convinced? Give us a call on 01635 550431 and ask for a demo.
You’re currently reading Generate UK’s Top 20 Digital Marketing ideas. Over the course of the next month, we’ll be sharing our experience to help you marketed your business on the Internet.
Feeds are also known as RSS. There is some discussion as to what RSS stands for, but most people opt for ‘Really Simple Syndication’. In essence, the feeds themselves are just web pages, designed to be read by computers rather than people. News feeds allow the user to see when websites have added new content. The user can receive the latest headlines and video in one place, as soon as it’s published, without having to visit the websites you have taken the feed from.
The big benefit to RSS is that individuals can opt-in to content of interest and totally control the flow of information that they receive. If the quality of the content in the feed declines, users simply remove the feed from their RSS reader and they will not receive any additional updates from that source. The RSS reader acts as an aggregator, allowing users to view and scan multiple content streams in a timely fashion.
If you would like to learn more about how RSS feeds can help your business, contact us on 01635 550431,
DIY Pest Control has been actively involved in urban and rural pest control since qualifying through the British Pest Control Association in 1991. In 2009 diy-pest-control.co.uk was launched, its aim is to provide the best advice and latest technology to help you to control pests in your home or office.
DIY Pest Control have noticed an increase in natural and organic pest control solutions, and alongside traditional pest control products wanted to support the new site launch by targeting traffic via Google Adwords.
Google Adwords is Google’s flagship advertising product; it offers pay per click (PPC) advertising and site-targeting advertising for customers. Advertisers specify the words that should trigger and present their adverts and specify the maximum amount that they are prepared on a cost per click basis.
PPC is certainly the best way to make an impact and to be visible on the search engines, especially if your organic listings are not quite there yet. We advise clients with new sites to carry out some form of PPC activity while their organic listings mature.
The objective of DIY Pest Controls campaign was to raise awareness, increase traffic and increase sales. It was also a great opportunity to learn and analyse the traffic trends and customer behaviour, as unfortunately this information was not available due to the website only just recently launching.
Initially, Generate UK worked with DIY Pest Control to establish the target keywords; these would be the keywords/phrases that would be bid for in order to attract targeted traffic. Once the keywords had been identified, they were put into relevant keyword families, each family focused on a small number of keywords/key phrases.
The campaign contributed to a huge increase in visits to the site, accounting for as much as 69% of total visits. The increased traffic also contributed to a growth in the number of sales of products, which in turn helped grow the DIY-Pest-Control.co.uk database. Using Google’s own Goals Overview system, it was possible to see how the sales funnel was performing and make informed improvements on the fly.
Rowland Park, Director at DIY-Pest-Control.co.uk stated “I approached Generate UK to help me understand and make sense of PPC as a whole and especially the keywords I needed to target, as I didn’t want to waste any of my PPC budget on words that weren’t going to deliver results. Generate UK showed me that people now search using two, three or even four words rather than just one. They helped me categorise my keywords into groups and structure my PPC approach taking the more generic words and creating more targeted phrases from them. The results were fantastic and the service and insight they provided helped me not only understand the whole process but also delivered me some well needed business, many thanks!”
If you would like to discuss how Generate UK can help you achieve more from your next Pay Per Click campaign, please do not hesitate to contact us on 01635 550431.
When faced with the threat of online divergence in holiday booking trends, Fare Wise Travel understood that they had to move fast or lose potential business. As an independent travel agent, they understood that more and more people are searching for and booking their holidays online with many looking for their dream holiday outside of normal business hours. In order for Fare Wise Travel to continue serving people with their unique adventures for ‘the real traveller’ they had compete and be counted.
NHS South Gloucestershire is a Primary Care Trust whose aim is to provide and plan health services for approximately 258,800 people who live in South Gloucestershire.
The Eight Bells is an independent pub in Long Crendon, Buckinghamshire the home of the famous Midsomer Murders!
Dance2Xtreme
The 
DIY Pest Control has been actively involved in urban and rural pest control since qualifying through the British Pest Control Association in 1991. In 2009