31 August 2017
Follow the Leader – Best Practice
Work smart, not hard. Do not do unnecessary work. Do not re-invent the wheel. These are mottos to live by. So, how do we apply them to a website? Well, if you’ve got an e-commerce site, look at Amazon. Look at what they’re doing and the way they are doing it. Look at other big, successful online retailers too. Think about what you can learn from them. If you’ve got a brochureware site (i.e. one whose sole purpose is to introduce your company and its products/services to potential customers), look at other companies’ websites. Take a peek at big blue-chip
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The Benefits of Validated XHTML & CSS Code
In my role as CommerceTuned UI lead, an essential part of the development process of our CSS/XHTML overhauls has been to validate all my CSS and XHTML code using the various W3C validation tools available. At first this was chiefly for debugging purposes – if the page looks strange then it could be as a result of mistakes in hand-coded XHTML or CSS – but the benefits of validation are by no means limited to aiding the website development process. Search engines love to crawl semantic mark-up Imagine search engine spider’s behaviour as like someone reading through the pages of a word document. A well-structured, validated xhtml page should be
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The Optimisation Scorecard
The optimisation scorecard is an holistic methodology required for benchmarking and goal-setting in both your external search engine optimisation campaign and your internal enterprise search across your website, portal, or Intranet. The success of an optimisation campaign cannot simply be judged on the number of well placed phrases your website has, or the speed and presentation of the results from your internal search. In order to measure the success and return on investment it is necessary to combine a number of different facets to see the whole picture. External search criteria search engine placements (number + relevancy + which engine) searches done
Read more31 August 2017
Measuring Value, not just hits
The explosive growth of Internet usage in the past few years has led to an ever-increasing investment from vendors trying to tap into online consumer spending which, according to Forrester Research, will exceed US$100 billion by the end of 2003. In parallel with this increase in retail spending, companies are also investing heavily on internal, web based systems, adding portals and application aggregation to their intranets and interacting with their suppliers and partners through extranets. But what drives this spending, and where will investment reap the greatest rewards? Without a way of measuring successes, and failures, there is no way
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The Google Sandbox Theory
In the past few years a semi-mythical beast has reared it’s head in the world of search engine optimisation and the building of new web sites, it’s referred to as the Google Sandbox effect. The principle behind this theory is that new web sites can be penalised – or rather prevented from achieving the same success in the Google rankings as more established web sites. SEO paranoia or a genuine occurrence? At this point let’s just make it clear that this article – like every other article on the Sandbox theory – is just that, a theory. No-one outside Google understands the precise
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The latest Google Page Rank rumble and the fallout
First off, welcome again to the CommerceTuned Newsletter. This month I’ll be looking at the latest Google Page Rank shift, what it could mean, and what actually happened. For those not yet in the now, Page Rank is Google’s method of evaluating the importance of a website. Their search algorithm involves a mix of various factors such as website longevity, frequency of content updates, size of site and number and quality of inbound links to the website. SEO specialists are perhaps the most guilty of viewing a high PR (1-10 in range) as being the Mecca of optimisation aims, get a high page rank
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The Ethics Behind Search Engines
For many years it has been made abudantly clear to the average Joe that there are things you can do and things you can’t do to your website in order improve ranking placements, most of which are specified by the search engines themselves on their sites. Good things: Make it interesting Make it unique Keep updating it Bad things: Hidden links Cloaking Hidden text What happens when good search engines go bad? However is it always so black and white? An interesting example of a potential conflict of these rules surfaced recently, when it was highlighted in some of the more
Read more31 August 2017
What goes up must come down (or how we lost Google placements for two weeks)
I always think that articles and research is so much more interesting to write about and talk about when it’s something that happened to you (as opposed to starting with ‘I once had a friend that..’), so I just thought I’d write an article about some recent issues we had with some of our ranking placements in Google. As every SEO worth their salt does, I have a tendency to keep an eye on the ranking placements of the CT site, but I don’t spend half as much time developing the website and building on it as I should –
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What is Viral Marketing and how does it work?
What is Viral Marketing? The principle behind Viral Marketing is that it encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others. The advantage of getting individuals to pass on a marketing message is obvious – these people become your marketing team, and do it for free. How does it work? There are 2 key elements to a viral marketing campaign that need to be addressed: The Incentive Easy Forwarding Design of Message 1. The Incentive The most successful viral marketing will provide people with an incentive to participate – i.e. a reason to pass on the message to others.
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Link Affiliation – Some simple tips
Exchanging links to other websites is a beneficial method of increasing traffic to your own site. Say you are a real estate firm focused on selling property within a specific County or State, you could provide links to local solicitors, house movers, and offer links to local businesses that all revolve around the purchase of a house in your area. By exchanging links to all the local sites you are also going to get increased traffic from their websites, benefiting by receiving targeted traffic if they are popular sites. Another key benefit to having sites link to yours is the
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Link Building – Why to do it!
The major search engines all have different ways of ranking websites and thus determining where you appear in search results on different phrases. Search Engine Optimisation is the common and often vaunted method of increasing your rankings and likelihood of appearing high up in results on search phrases. Google however use their own system for rating websites called PageRank (PR). This rating is out of 10 and refers to the importance of a web page according to the Google ranking system. No-one outside of Google can claim to understand 100% how this ranking works, but through constant analysis patterns develop and through
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Google punishing reciprocal links?
Everyone in the world of SEO has known for a link time that links pointing to your website are good, and the more you have of them the better. For years reciprocal linking has been a commonly used strategy for improving your Google page rank, gaining higher rankings and being the envy of all your friends. You approach a fellow webmaster requesting a link on their website and vice versa, you mutually oblige, slap each other on the back and off you go to find another link partner to dance with. However it really was only a matter of time before Google twigged
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Pay Per Clicks – Is it worth it?
The days of quality free search engine submission and listings have all but disappeared. The major search engines realised that providing a quality index of websites that was growing by thousands per day, and making the necessary technical advancements to remain competitive amongst the major engines was not bringing home the bacon. This problem created the concept of paying a fee to be placed within the index, and most recently paying for traffic directed to your website from a specific search engine – and pay-per-click marketing was born. So is PPC marketing worthwhile? The simple answer is yes, as long as it thoroughly researched
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Black Hat Search Engine Optimisation
Ever wanted that coveted top spot in Google so badly that you’d do anything to get it? There are all kinds of tactics and practices that can be applied to websites in order to artificially elevate the search engine placements; you are now entering the world of ‘black hat search engine optimisation‘. This term refers to the various methods used which are not considered ethical by the search engines themselves, and generally involves trying to fool them to some degree. There are numerous methods available – this article will no doubt spawn more sequels than Rocky – so keep coming
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Link Networks
Just recently I’ve noticed that there is some very strange SEO work being done by very big brands here in the UK. What seems to be happening is that companies are taking more and more risks and chances in their quest to get to the top of the Google listings. Obviously sites have always known that being ranked #1 in Google is a license to print money in a competitive sector, but now in the UK the stakes just get higher and higher due to recent reports that suggest that Google now has over a 90% share in the UK
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Pay-Per-Click marketing – what to consider when using paid search
Unlike an organic search campaign, a PPC campaign is very much a quantifiable entity, if set up correctly, you know exactly how much your advertising costs and pretty much what you get out of it. It is an ideal business model for working out your ROI (return on investment). Obviously this can be carefully ‘estimated’ with organic search but you can never be as sure of the variables involved as you can with a good, well set-up PPC campaign. PPC, for the most part, is fairly straightforward, but there are certain aspects of any PPC campaign that need to be considered and
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The increase in UK mobile search usage
Nielsen the independent consumer behaviour analyst has reported an increase of 25% of the number of UK users accessing the web via a mobile phone during the second and third quarters of 2008. This represents 7.3 million people compared to the 35m+ who regularly access the net via a computer who’s audience in the same period only grew by 3%. However, while Google remains the most popular site for those logging on via the desktop, on mobile internet BBC News is the most visited site, with nearly a quarter of mobile internet consumers using it. Kent Ferguson, a senior analyst with
Read more31 August 2017
Health Information at Your Fingertips with the Dr Foster Website Launch
The launch of the new Dr Foster website last week gives the public easy access to the information they need when choosing the right healthcare. CommerceTuned have been working with Dr Foster over the past four months to help ensure the drfosterhealth.co.uk website delivers the simplest access possible to the health information needed when deciding where to receive medical treatment. From searching and comparing the quality of UK hospitals to learning about the different options of maternity units available, the site aims to help patients and GPs make an informed choice about the medical treatment that best suits. With the following options
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