The internet became increasingly popular in the late 1990s and turned into a mass marketing medium. The online advertising industry grew from nearly 1 billion in 1997 to a projected $147 Billion in 2012. Advertising through the internet has proved to be an effective marketing strategy for a lesser cost compared to the conventional ways of advertising. It revolutionised how businesses reach out to their potential customers as the number of internet users from around the globe continues to rise and connection speeds continue to go faster and faster.

Marketing online is a cost effective way to market efficiently and effectively. Some of these benefits can be seen right away while some tend to happen further down the line - benefits that build upon those that are already in place. Listed below are some of the benefits of online marketing;

1. One advantage of marketing online versus the traditional marketing such as placing advertisements on the television, radios, magazines and newspapers is that you can change them anytime. By keeping track of your ads’ progress, if it is effective or not, you can decide to change a part of the ad, any wording or graphic, or the whole ad altogether, without any problems.

2.  Marketing online gives you real time figures and statistics. This can help you in determining your marketing campaign’s performance to help you in making key decisions that could mean the success or failure of your business. Although there are ways to track performance of traditional marketing efforts, results could not be delivered real-time.

3. The internet is available 24/7. Your ads can be seen anytime, anywhere compared to the limited airtime available in televisions and radios and limited space in newspapers and other prints.

4. On the internet, there is a variety of methods to advertise. You can use email, audio, blog, video, social media and newsletters. You have so many options in just one venue – the internet. If you opt to use these methods in traditional marketing, you would have to select several different media outlets, which can be tedious and very costly.

5. Marketing online allows you to target specific demographics – gender, age, location. You can even target would-be customers from specific income levels, education levels and occupation. This can also be done in traditional marketing but it often requires more effort.

Increasing traffic in your website is essential for marketing online. The more that you are able to get those interested in your products and services to go to your website, the better your leads are to make sales. You will get to see additional benefits of internet marketing when your website stands out from the rest. If your customers find the information they need from your website and the website is easy for them to navigate.

If you have a website and are looking for advice on how to market it effectively then why not get in contact with one of our consultants. Generate UK are a commercially thinking online marketing agency. We advise our clients on the best online options to suit their business processes, resource and available budget.

How long are you prepared to wait for a website to load until you get impatient and click away? One second? Two? Google recently carried out an experiment where they intentionally decreased the speed of their own website from 100 milliseconds to 400 milliseconds. The results showed decreases in the average number of Google searches from 0.2% to 0.6%.  Users were turning their backs on Google as the time taken for search results to appear was too long. Even after Google returned their site to the original speed they found that searches continued to decline for the next five weeks!

It is because of this dramatic affect that speed has on user’s experience of a website, that Google has announced faster websites will be ranked higher. This is the first time that Google has officially announced that Speed does have a direct effect on Rankings. SEO guru’s have suspected this for a while and a fast website is always desired for usability reasons, but Google’s announcement has put any debate over this issue to rest.

Google uses its Googlebots to test how long a page takes to respond as well as Google toolbar to test page load times. Generate UK have invested a lot of time and money into our server capabilities. This means that the sites that we host on our server have quick and smooth load times. As demonstrated by the Google experiment speed not only judges your Google ranking but that the amount of users actually decreases with a slow website. This in turn will also have an effect on your conversion rate. With a slow running website traffic is less likely to stick around and ultimately not buy into your services or products.

A lot of people are concerned that this change will really only benefit larger organisations as they can afford to pay more for hosting. I believe this is a misconception. Small sites can often react and respond faster than larger corporations can to changes on the web.  Making small changes on a larger website can often be a slow process due to internal bureaucracy; whereas smaller sites can often make those small changes to help increase the speed of their website.

Currently less than 1% of search queries are effect by site speed according to Google. However Google have already released a list of tools to help test your sites speed. This could only be the beginning for the importance of site speed. Google’s passion for fast internet and dedication to releasing new tools demonstrates that this could be an extremely important signal for the future. Google have been using speed as a signal for several weeks now and there has been no dramatic change. But this simply could be the beginning of a bigger campaign for faster websites.

Generate UK has invested in a high performance server infrastructure for customers websites we host. We ensure that our server is fast, efficient and reliable. Google says that a 0.5 second delay in the page load speed of your website can reduce traffic by 20%. As a business can you afford to lose this amount of traffic? Generate UK servers deliver up to 35% more speed over traditional hardware, this is to ensure that your website does not suffer because of server speed restrictions.

On page content can also affect the speed of your website. Having a large number of images, flash files or Javascript can increase the time your page takes to load. There are tools that you can use to run reports on your websites speed which will tell you exactly how long each page takes to load as well as identifying areas that are slowing you website down. Follow this link to see which tools Google suggest you use. Alternatively there are other sites you can use such as websiteoptimisation.com.

It is important to remember that this is only one aspect or signal of SEO. Along with speed we still have to take into account on page and off page SEO. These are all areas of search engine optimisation that Generate UK specialises in. If you would like to get your website ranking higher in Google then why not talk to one of our SEO consultants. We can help advise you on areas of your site that may need improvement to benefit from higher rankings.

5 SEO Fails!

SEO is vitally important to help your website gain valuable traffic for desired keywords. There are two types of SEO, on page and off page. On page includes meta titles, keywords and quality content. . . all the things you would find on a web page while off page includes back links and all the things relating to your web page that aren’t on your page, simple. Many Search engine optimisation companies or SEO ‘Gurus’ will make huge promises to you offering you top spots on Google by optimising your site or buying links for you. However you do need to be slightly cautious of such people. In this blog I have compiled I list of things NOT to do in SEO, which I have appropriately titled SEO Fails! They say people learn from their mistakes, well here are a lot of other people’s mistakes for you to learn from!

1) Make sure all your URL’s are friendly.

The tagline of this site is ‘Internet made easy’ ironically their URL is not easy to read. Google hates URL’s like this, it is long, complicated and says nothing about what content is on this page. Make sure none of your pages look like this or have any % or ~ in them, keep it nice and easy for example www.generateuk.co.uk/seo.htm. The two other problems I have highlighted on this page is the navigation keywords are in white, therefore not readable as well as the content not actually being found! You do not want this on your website.

2) Use appropriate page titles

I think this site sells guitar straps . . . it’s just a guess! Although repetition gets your point across it also looks incredibly spamy! This website was ranking number one, but Google took disciplinary action and they are now on the second page. The title of you page is a great place to put your keywords, but make sure it doesn’t look like spam!

3) Don’t link to too many other websites

Although reciprocal links and link exchange can be a good way to increase your rankings, you again don’t want to come across as spam. This is an example of a website which has almost 100 links in its footer. Not very user friendly at all!

4) Make sure you own your own domain name!

This domain name is www.jimmatheson.com! So there is just one small thing wrong with Jim’s site and that is that it is promoting Claudia, his opposition! Make sure you own your own name or company name as a domain otherwise you are open to attack from competitors! For those who are going to try and find this site, it was taken down after the American election.

5)Do Not Keyword Stuff

Not only has this website stuffed its page with keywords he has also made them internal links. In terms of on page SEO, keywords and internal links in content are good. Just not to this extent!

All the above sites are examples of bad SEO. Hopefully by looking at these sites you would have laughed as well as learned something new. At Generate UK we take Search Engine Optimisation very seriously and want to make sure that your site ranks highly for your desired keywords. If you are concerned about your current Search Engine Optimisation or don’t actually do any SEO and would like to, then why not talk to one of our SEO Consultants.

Summer seems to have finally arrived and the world cup is just around the corner. Sounds like good news for online retailers, but sadly a lot of e-commerce businesses will miss out on sales because their products and website will never be found or visited because of a poor or non-existent on-page and off-page SEO strategy. It astounds me to see so many companies that sell online, have not optimised their websites for search engines. It is like having a shop without a name, people will just walk on by.

With continued internet sales growing year on year and the dawn of web 2.0, the online marketplace has become very advanced and highly competitive and customers are turning to search engines to find products, services and more often than not, reviews. Search engine placement should be a vital part of an ecommerce website, yet many businesses fail to realise this or take advantage of it. Google products, formally known as Froogle, is becoming increasingly popular within Google’s search results and more and more buyers are turning to it instead of some of the more prominent search comparison sites and e-commerce retailers should be looking to get their sites fully optimised to take advantage of this.

One of the most important areas that should be focussed on, is Improving and optimising page content, adding reviews and how to guides to compliment pages can be the difference between having your products listed high up on search engines to not being found at all.  Another overlooked area is having unique title tags for each page and using keywords for the products of that page. These all form part of good on-page SEO techniques.

Having looked at some of the low cost and no cost e-commerce solutions out there, I have begun to realise that they offer very little flexibility in the optimisation department and they all too often fall short in the user experience category as well, not forgetting to mention the all important security and payment gateway provision. So it is no wonder that many e-commerce businesses have little or no optimisation and that their websites are static and lost far down in the search results of Google.

Investing in a professional, user friendly, search engine friendly and scalable e-commerce system makers the most sense, it is the most important and critical decision an online business will undertake, but with so much choice out there, how do you know which is right for your business? Many successful online companies have turned to Generate UK to assist them in setting up their e-commerce system, as e commerce and web 2.0 evolves, you want to be with a company keeping pace or, better yet, staying ahead of the crowd.

At Generate UK, we strive to understand everything about our clients business, we consult, educate, mentor, coach and provide knowledge to our clients and it is why we have become the preferred partner for many successful online retailers.

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.”

www.farewise.com

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

Bridging the chasm:
Where design should meet technology.

Website design can be a murky subject. I’m not only talking about the coding side of things, I’m talking about the graphics that jump out at you and bite your arm off. Given the impact your website design can have on potential prospects, why doesn’t it get more attention in SME marketing?

There are a few reasons, but key among them feature: the entrepreneur’s tendency to spend most of their time ‘fire-fighting’ and the disconnection between the graphics and the technology.

For those of you that haven’t heard of the term ‘fire-fighting’ used before in the business context, it is the scenario wherein our entrepreneur dedicates all their waking moments to patching up all the short-term problems facing the business. This prevents them from working towards a successful long term strategy.

Now, if I was given a minute sum of money for all the people I spoke to about website design who then told me “yeah it’s something we thought about but we’re way too busy doing other stuff right now”, I would be substantially better off. Granted we all have those busy periods, but how often is that due to making nothing but sales? Not often.

Now, how many of these same ‘very busy’ people would say first impressions are critical? I’d be willing to bet the majority of them would, with many making references to meeting new clients and interviewees.

The thing is, in today’s new media age where marketing communications are ridiculously fragmented, many people turn to a company’s website as the hub of their brand communications for the information they need.
This means that your website will often give prospects their first impression of your company as a whole. Remember what those entrepreneurs and business owners said about the importance of a first impression? That’s right, it’s critical. So why do so many of them forget to make their website look as fantastic as possible?

When these prospects visit your site, you need to communicate the values of the brand and what you have to offer them; otherwise they will take their hard earned money elsewhere. If you run an interior design company or if you craft incredible bespoke pools tables, you need to make this shine through on your site. Otherwise, your prospects will sit there thinking “Fantastic design services? Pull the other one, you can’t even get your own website design right!” There, you have just lost a potential sales opportunity and you haven’t even had the chance to speak to them yet.

Now, given just how important this first impression is, where does web design now sit on your list of priorities? I’d imagine that if you haven’t addressed it already, you may at least be tempted to give it a bit of extra thought, but whom do you turn to?

This is where design gets murky. For those business owners and entrepreneurs out there who have never fully engaged with online marketing and site design before, it can be a confusing arena to be in. Do you use flash? Java? XHTML? CSS? A combination of all of them? The trouble is many people don’t have the first idea. This is where the disconnection between graphics and the underlying technology come into play.

Many people marketing a small business will be tempted to go for the cheapest marketing options possible. Why? Because they think it will provide the highest ROI. This is a problem when they are potentially buying into something that they don’t understand particularly well.

This opens the door for anyone that wants to call themselves a web designer. Just because an eighteen year old played around with some HTML in college, it doesn’t mean to say they can provide you with a quality website that will genuinely add value to your business. By the same token, anyone that’s savvy with Photoshop can make an exciting website design, but that doesn’t mean to say they can actually make it work. Can you see gap? This is the gap you will need to fill if you decide to hire someone cheaply who has in incomplete skill set.

To develop a website that generates that WOW effect whilst simultaneously working flawlessly requires experience and a much wider arsenal of digital skills. A designer that also understands the complexities of the underlying coding and web technologies will be able to produce a great looking website that will be simple to manage, easy to use and most of all it will probably work.

If this individual also has sales and marketing experience, they can also design a website that will not only look good and work well for the end user, it will also be able to drive sales and influence the prospect’s decision. This is what ‘design’ really is, a creative work with an ulterior motive. In this case, that motive is to make you more money.

To illustrate this point, consider this. Have you ever visited a website that looked fantastic, did all kinds of crazy things and then after leaving, you remember it for being incredible? I bet you have seen a few and you may even be tempted to build one for yourself. I’ll also bet it was developed mainly in flash. There are implications with this however. A website developed entirely in flash will barely exist to the search engines. It’s nothing personal; it’s just that Google and the like simply do not understand it. Now, if you were looking for a particular product or service but didn’t have a brand in mind, where do you turn? I go to Google every single time, and where does this leave your flash based website? Lost in a digital sea of virtual clutter.

If the person designing your flash site had any marketing experience, this wouldn’t have happened. Why? Because apart from providing you with a fantastic website, they will also want to ensure your target audience actually sees it. This is because it’s the reason you wanted this website built in the first place and because all good designers want the world to see their work and give them a pat on the back. Otherwise all that time and investment will have been for naught.

The trouble is that many SME marketers and business owners don’t always appreciate this and they expect the product to sell itself, web design is just web design to them. Try to think about it this way, if you’re proud of your product and you have a lovely showroom or office that showcases this wonder that you have to offer the market, why should it be any different online? Marketing communications have to be consistent and must set customer expectations, so if you love your product in real life, love it online and show it the attention it deserves.

How can you do this?  Consulting with a digital marketing agency  is a good start. They will have seen all the pitfalls before and they will be able to advise you on how to WOW your prospects whilst making sure you get the maximum visibility possible. It’s a bit like buying walking boots. Buy some cheap ones and they’ll likely fall apart and cause you endless amounts of pain. Invest a little bit more and buy a good pair, and they will serve you well for years to come.

This is why we here at Generate UK are so good at what we do. We get to understand your key business drivers and motivations so that we can leverage the correct skills and technologies to deliver you results and opportunity. We understand the day-to-day pressures faced by SMEs and that is why our clients come back to us time and again. So before you do yourself some mischief by hiring the wrong person for the job, pop in and have a chat with us so we can steer you in the right direction. Stop fighting fires, start making money.

Recently Generate UK were tasked with helping deliver a series of email marketing campaigns on behalf of Speed Networking Berkshire to help promote a number of their recent events. In particular an event  which was held at Donnington Grove Country Club in Newbury during March and one of their upcoming events to be held on 16th June in Maidenhead.

Interestingly the Speed Networking Group has recently adopted a new approach to email marketing and analytics play a big part. John Halladay, Director of Speed Networking Events Ltd ‘We are getting smarter and faster in the way we are sending our email communications and we are in the process of investing into a new intuitive email marketing system with an analytics suite to help us measure response, allowing us to be more targeted in the way we deliver our future communications’.

Ultimately the overall aim of the communication was to ‘get bums on seats’ and email marketing is a fantastic tool to enable this process. People are becoming far more wary of email communications, so standing out from the crowd through flashy graphics often rings alarm bells for most people. Strong, relevant titles and quality content is massively important to achieving a successful campaign. One of the hardest tasks is to make people open the communication and we often find short, sharp titles works well and often using shorten acronyms i.e. RE: Event 16th June often work well.

If you’re lucky enough that people do open your email, asking them to read and digest your content is the next task. You probably have a 4-5 second window of opportunity so make it count. The first few sentences are vitally important to grab the attention to make the reader read more.

Helping Speed Networking Berkshire deliver a series of email marketing campaigns through the Berkshire region has been an interesting project, learning what works well and what doesn’t. The up side of email marketing is the fact that you can test your campaigns before sending them. Being able to judge the success of an open rate or a click through has a massive advantage. If you’re happy with the results then fantastic, if not you revise your message until you are happy.

When sending the email campaigns on behalf of Speed Networking Berkshire we tested a series of subject lines until we experienced a good open rate, it seemed to do the job as we achieved a massive 22% open rate. This had a positive effect on making their most recent event in Newbury a great success with over 40 business professionals attending which was one of their most successful events in West Berkshire.
If you’re struggling to achieve successful results from your email marketing campaigns take a step back, look at the campaign through the eyes of the receiver, send the message to yourself and ask the questions:

•    Does the subject line capture your attention or does it put you off?
•    Does the opening few sentences within the message make you want to read more?
•    Does the email encourage you to take action?

If you answer no to any of those questions then revise your email and the message within. Remember to test, test and test again until you feel that you’ve got it right….then test it on a friend to see what their response is? Often people can get wrapped up in their own campaigns and understanding a neutrals perspective will certainly help the overall success.

If you want advice about email marketing solutions please call us on 01635 550431 and we’ll be happy to discuss.

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.

Out of the ashes of Froogle and Google Products is Google’s take on what a price comparison website should be. Google Product Search is still officially in Beta; however any application where Google is involved is bound to attract attention and more importantly traffic and users.

It’s an interesting move by Google and it must have made the likes of Kelkoo, Pricerunner and the like sit up and take notice. These are the current incumbents in the price comparison market; their business model is to take a commission from sales of products they have referred (they also charge to place products higher in the searches). So their search engine ranking in the most popular search engine in the world is very important to them…..

So now they are in direct competition with the very same search engine they need to be ranked on in order for their business model to work. If that was not bad enough, Google has confirmed that there will be no charges to list products and they won’t accept payment in return for rankings. So on the face of it, not good for the price comparison chaps and it does not bode well in the future for other sites offering price comparison for insurance, mortgages, credit cards etc. Surely, it is just a matter of time before Google start to enter these markets too.

The good news for a lot of ecommerce store owners is that there is a new channel for them to showcase their products and services through; a channel which has the backing of the largest search engine in the world. So in terms of opportunity, it’s a big one and almost a no-brainer if you have an ecommerce store. The challenge is to work out the best way to use this channel and how to optimise your products so that they are shown and provide you with quality, targeted traffic.

The following tips and ideas are what we have seen when testing and playing with Google Products Search, some of these views will be open to debate, so it would be interesting to hear from others.

Before you start, the first thing to do is go to the Google Merchant Centre page and create an account.  This will become the home of your product feed and where you upload your product information. You will be asked to verify your account, to ensure that no one else has the ability to upload products.

The next step is to really understand what it is you’re trying to achieve. This article is about promoting your products for Google Product Search, so hopefully that is your objective. The idea is that by increasing your understanding of Google Product Search, the more likely you will be able to work with the product feed to ensure your product has the best chance of ranking highly for the keywords related to your product.

Improving your Google Product Search relevancy
The following tips and ideas are what we have seen when testing and playing with Google Products Search, some of these views will be open to debate, so it would be interesting to hear from others.

1.    Let’s get the obvious bits out of the way. Make your feeds relevant to the product they are promoting. Read and adhere to the terms and conditions and guidelines of Google Product Search.
2.    You can have up to 70 characters for your product title, our advice is to be short and concise as possible for the keywords you are going after. There is little point in going mad and trying to include too many keywords.
3.    The description field provides you with an opportunity to add to your product title with more information about the product, for example the benefits or the performance of the product. Remember this is about relevancy, so make the description relevant to the product and not your ecommerce store.
4.    Product Type is quite self explanatory and signifies the type of product you are selling. It is important to then ensure that the product fits into the correct taxonomy. If you are unsure, then you should look at Google’s Taxonomy Structure help.
5.    The Link page is what the viewer will click through to reach your site, so it is important that this is the relevant page and has all of the correct information on it. Think about general usability here and what  would expect if you were looking for a specific product.
6.    The next field is the all important price field, which is a mandatory field. Please make sure that this is the same price as on your website, so as not to encourage issues.
7.    Product ID, could be your SKU or part number. This is your number and your internal code; we have customers that refer to this as a part number, while others call it a product code.
8.    MPN or UPC identifiers refer to a recognised number (similar to a barcode) that relates to that product. It is a bit like a ISBN number for a book. If you have this information available it is definitely worth using as this could be used to create a search.
9.    The product image is self explanatory and really important not just for Google Product Search but also for your main website. We advise that you use the best image you ahve for your product as you can show more when the user clicks through.
What next?

If you have followed the instructions above, you should have a document ready to upload to Google Products Search.

The next step is decided what format to upload the feed. Fortunately, Google offers different options depending on what works best for you; these include web form, text file, CSV, FTP and XML file, it is also possible to connect directly using an API.

Once you have decided on what method you would like to provide your feed, it is time to log into your account and take care of the general account settings. This includes specifying your target country and the location where you would like your products to be shown. Think carefully about this part of the process because it is not necessarily about showing up in every search result, instead it is about being shown to the audience most likely to buy from you.
Give it go…

If you’re selling online, it is definitely worth having a look at Google Products Search; it will grow in stature as Google iron out the little bugs and quirks. Currently, not all stores are using Google to promote their products, so there is an opportunity to get ahead of your competitors.
If you would like to discuss this further with one of our SEO consultants, please do not hesitate to contact us 01635 550431.

Sometimes it pays to take a break from conventional e-mail marketing wisdom. In a business environment where fancy HTML ‘one-to-many’ e-mails is the norm, there are a few people out there trying a range of clever, different and sometimes downright unorthodox approaches to get their e-mails noticed above everybody else. In this post I shall include and discuss a few interesting notions I’ve come across recently.

“You’ve got lower open rates? Well… It could be a good thing!”

As those e-mail savvy among you already know, many of the most popular e-mail hosts block images by default. Many of those businesses that go to the trouble of creating fantastic, artistic e-mail pieces may not be getting the message across.

As a result there are a number of e-mail marketers out there that have instead decided to optimise their e-mails for image blocking, making sure that all their Calls to Action and key selling points are still clear despite the lack of imagery by using plain text and image ‘alt’ tags. The advantage of this of course is that the recipient is more likely to have read and digested the e-mail despite the images being blocked. The fancy e-mails on the other hand, may well be displaying as tables full of the dreaded little red crosses and will likely be ignored.

So how does this relate to open rates? Well, if your image blocking optimised e-mail was able to get the message across with text alone… The recipient will have had no need to click the ‘unblock images’  button thus failing to trigger an e-mail ‘open’, the result being lower open rates.
So if you are one of those e-mail savvy marketers that have gone to the trouble of optimising your e-mails and you are experiencing low open rates; it could be because of irrelevant subject lines and weak content. Or it could just be that you are incredibly good at avoiding the image blocking problem! Remember, there are external factors that affect e-mail metrics so open rates aren’t everything! To truly understand the effectiveness of your e-mail campaigns you need to weigh up the metrics against the end results of the campaigns in question.

This can be quite difficult when you’re not used to dealing with complicated metrics. This however is something we at Generate UK are brilliant at.  Our e-mail marketing system provides in depth metrics that you can use in conjunction with our help to convert those stealthy e-mail ‘opens’ into tangible results… results like extra sales for example!

“HTML e-mails out-perform against text based emails e-mails. So use them”

It sounds odd doesn’t it? The use of HTML e-mails and the fancy imagery therein has been proven in some cases to increase clicks by up to 50%. So why would anyone want to use plain text e-mail?

The world and his dog are familiar with HTML marketing e-mails, be it a newsletter, printable voucher or a list of the latest and greatest offers. As a result people are becoming increasingly familiar to HTML e-mails as a ‘one-to-many’ marketing medium.
This is precisely the reason why a text-only e-mail could do the trick. Something that doesn’t look like a fancy HTML e-mail may just stand out.

Not only this, but many people who receive personal e-mails receive them in plain text, be it from work colleagues, friends or even as proof of an important online transaction. Therefore a great deal of importance is attached to these. This makes text only e-mail a great medium for those of you wishing to deliver a sincerely personal message or when trying to tackle a charitable or emotional topic.

Making a move like this is worth some thought however. If you are known for your fantastic e-mail aesthetics, you don’t want to put subscribers off by making it seem like you aren’t trying. Inconsistency and disruption, despite raising some eyebrows and breaking the norm in a good way, can also be damaging. If you are still confused however, talk to us. We can deliver an equally punchy impact without damaging your credibility.

“Getting users to use a scroll bar in an e-mail? Pull the other one!”

As an e-mail reader, would you go to the effort of using tiny scroll bars to access content? Probably not. Many e-mail marketers would hark back to the notion that “the harder the recipient has to work, the less like they are to do it”. Fair play to them, this is typically true. You and I don’t want to spend our evenings scrolling for miles to find the content we want in an e-mail. We want it easy, but if a company were to inject a bit of fun into scrolling… it may be worth an extra five minutes of our time. This requires a hint of creativity however,  LocalsKnow.ca, have just that.

Click here to see the email used by Canada Travel.

Loads of scrolling involved, but it wasn’t so bad was it? Sometimes thinking ‘outside the box’ as cliché as it sounds, can be just the ticket to those extra click-throughs and sign-ups. In addition to that, it wasn’t graphic heavy either which allows it to fit in with the points above.

Personally, I thought this was a particularly novel idea. You on the other hand might think differently, so although such an approach may generally awe your audience, you risk cutting out segments of your contacts list that aren’t so appreciative. Before you hit the drawing board to cook up something equally interesting, be sure you understand your audience and segment your contact lists beforehand. This way you avoid the risk of aggravating your more serious prospects with your creativity. We’re masters of segmentation and we’re great ideas people here at Generate UK so if you have a pressing need to shock and awe your contacts list, give us a call on 01635 550431.