Search Engine Optimisation Training Courses

Intermediate Search Engine Optimisation: Learn how to improve your rankings in Google

Location: Loughborough Innovation Centre (just 2 miles from Junction 23 of the M1, and convenient to Loughborough railway station)

• 16 June: click here to see course details, and book a place now
  
  
• 2 July: click here to see course details, and book a place now

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Website Review: Nottinghamshire & Derbyshire Chamber of Commerce

The Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire Chamber of Commerce have launched their new website, and my first impressions are a bit mixed, to say the least.

Let's start with the home page navigation.

Vincent Flanders coined the phrase "mystery meat navigation" on his WebPagesThatSuck.com website. Unfortunately, DNCC's site is a candidate for one of his infamous awards.

The navigation on the new website is a mystery: run your mouse over the various squares and watch menus flash around the page. Then try to remember what appeared where. Oh dear...

The point of Mystery Meat Navigation is that it may look cool, some might even use the word groovy, but it is a real hassle for the users of the site. The flashing squares are alarming and confusing.

A review of the user experience on a website should address a number of other questions, which might include:

1. Are the category and subcategory names clear and mutually exclusive?

The meaning of the categories of "Your Chamber" and "DNCC Members" is ambiguous. The meaning of "Business Support Services" isn't any clearer. As a result the logic for placing information within those categories is not obvious and logical. And it makes it difficult to find what you're looking for.


2. Does the Home Page provide access to the essential goals of the site?

I would have thought encouraging companies to join the Chamber would be a high priority of the site. But there is no Join Now call to action on the home page. And the Membership Application option is hiding away as the 17th menu choice within the "Your Chamber" section of the site. For some silly reason I thought joining the Chamber might be in the DNCC Members section.

Informing members of business issues and encouraging discussion of big topical issues like the proposed Car Parking Levy in Nottingham might be a big priority of the Chamber, but no sign of that on the Home Page.

3. Is essential information given priority?

I am a Chamber member. And I think the items given priority on the Home page are irrelevant to my business.

Does my business care about the Cinema Listings given priority on the Home Page? Nope.

With all due respect, as a company based in Nottingham, do I care about Derbyshire Community Information? I do not.

And do I care about the hot news in Caerphilly? Sorry, not relevant to me.

4. Does the keyword search on the website provide precise and comprehensive information?

I used the search box on the Home page to search for "Car Leasing", a typical concern for small businesses. Unfortunately, The Computer Says No: no results. This is not good news for the 7 chamber members who provide car leasing services. As it turns out, you have to search the members database separately. If you can find the mysterious pink search box.

I then tried searching the Members Directory for the word "Internet," hoping naively that I might find my business. Apparently Beeston Fields Golf Club is a better match on the word Internet than my business. Relevance does not appear to play a role in sorting the search results. Hey Ho.

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I know it is easy to snipe from the sidelines, and that isn't the point of this review. There is a lot of good in the new DNCC design.

But it is worth:

• ensuring you have a clear set of goals for your website
• producing a site that is intuitive and effortless to use
• testing the site with your user base before launch
• and learn lessons from other websites!

SFEDI Enterprise Trainer Award

Hallam Communications has confirmed it's position as a leading provider of Internet marketing training services by becoming one of the first accredited SFEDI Enterprise Trainers in the UK.

This award assures customers that they can rely on Hallam to deliver training suitable for the small enterprise environment.

Hallam's SFEDI assessor, Tracey Pepper, reported "Susan is very professional and extremely approachable, evidenced through the way delegates approached her and responded to the learning sessions in a extremely positive way.

"She makes it look effortless in her natural empathetic style. Susan is a natural networker, and shares her knowledge and has a genuine commitment to continued professional development."

Achieving the standard was a rigorous undertaking , but the accreditation took into account levels of experience and our current training portfolio meant we passed the award with flying colours on the first attempt.

As part of this accreditation, Hallam completed a rigorous programme of assessment that included client references and case studies, evidence of learning programmes, and classroom observation.

We are committed to providing exceptional levels of training to our clients. We chose to commit to the Enterprise Trainer kite mark because of SFEDI's independent assessment of the quality of training we provide to our clients.

SFEDI is a not for profit organised recognised by government as the standards setting body for training and qualifications for those thinking about, setting up or running their own business and all those providing business support.

Blogger Tips: Future Dated Posting

This blog is powered by Blogger, the freely available software provided by our friends at Google.

A new feature of Blogger is the ability to future date your posts; write your article now and then schedule it to get published automatically on the date of your choosing.

This is a very useful trick for time-strapped small business owners: just sit down one Sunday evening and write a few blog postings. Your new articles will appear magically at the appointed time, updating your website and feeding content into the search engine network.



Almost exactly a year ago I wrote an article on How I Would Improve Blogger, and this feature was one of the three things on my wish list.

My blog is now well over 3 years old now, and Blogger continues to add features to keep it on a par with the other major players like WordPress and TextPattern.

Blogger: if you are listening, here is what is on my wish list this year:

1. Insert images where I expect them to go. At the moment, every image I insert is placed by default at the top of the posting, instead of where my cursor is. I have to manually drag the image into the right position. Annoying, or what?

2. Provide some stats in my Blogger account that tells me my most popular postings, most commented, most linked to, and the like. I know integration of Analytics and Blogger is in beta, but just hurry up, OK?

3. Give me more choices of which posts to display, not just my most recent posts. At the moment I have to manually insert links to my most popular posts.

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Looking to read more about blogging? Try these articles & resources:

Blogging gets your content into Google... Fast!

Reusing your blog as a email newsletter

Your blog comment policy

Desire lines and blogging: what do you readers want you to write about?

Google Page Rank Update

It is that time of year again, folks. Google is updating our websites Page Rank.

And once again, small businesses go barmy over the magic number that displays in the Google Toolbar. I have to admit I am pleased to see my Page Rank returned to 5, following being downgraded to PR 4 in October.

I have said it before, and I will say it again: your Google PageRank score is not an indicator of how well your pages are going to rank in the Google search engine results.

Consider it an overall health check score from Google. If you get high quality, topical, trusted sites linking to your website, then up goes your Page Rank.

Buy links, sell links, get spammy links, or generally try to artificially manipulate your linking, and then down goes your Page Rank.

I am aware of several clients having an improved Page Rank, and I welcome feedback from other site experiencing a Page Rank change.

Customer Reviews, UGC & SEO

Customer reviews of your products and services can help to build credibility and engender trust with potential clients. Reviews can also increase the number of visitors converting to buyers on your site, and positive reviews can increase the price that clients are willing to pay.

Customers reviews form just one part of the huge wave of User Generated Content (UGC) comprising opinions, advice and commentary on the web. Reviews are found in blogs, discussion groups and forums, and social networking sites.

Small businesses are not paying enough attention to the value customer reviews can bring to their company websites and search engine rankings.

In my experience one of the biggest barriers to businesses implementing customer reviews is the fear of negative comment. Take a look at this article discussing how even negative reviews can benefit your business.

According to a global Nielsen survey of 26,486 Internet users in 47 markets, consumer recommendations are the most credible form of advertising among 78% of the study?s respondents.

Customer reviews and user generated content also plays an important role in your search engine optimisation strategy: 26% of search results link to user-generated content. (Nielsen BuzzMetrics)

And the Google search results includes local results Google Maps data displaying the number of customers reviews in the search result for any type of business:

Google Maps allows customers to write reviews about your business directly and then publishes the reviews immediately. Remember you must be logged into a Google account to write reviews.

Take a look at this comprehensive overview of how Google Review works.

Google trawls hundreds of different websites for reviews hotels, restaurants and the like, but for non-tourism and non-leisure businesses I found TouchLocal.com to be the primary source of UK business reviews that Google displays, aside from the reviews entered directly into Google Maps.

Other services like FreeIndex are also encouraging review activity:

Google Stereotypes: what we all suspect about Google

83.41% of statistics are pulled out of thin air.

And sometimes I do not trust those lie, damn lies and statistics. I prefer to go on my gut instinct.

Even so, sometimes it is reassuring to see that gut instincts are backed up by evidence from trustworthy research organisations.

Google evokes some strong gut reactions in most of us, and some recent research might serve to confirm what we all suspect to be true. Here are some of my assumptions:

Assumption 1: Rich People use Google, Poor People use Yahoo

I thought that assumption might get your attention. The Great Google Class Divide.

Hitwise have published a review of "audience strengths" comparing the Google-Using population to the General-Online population. Using the benchmark of the propensity of searchers to spend $500 online, Hitwise, found the richer you are, the more likely you are to use Google.

The top left corner shows the high users of Yahoo, and bottom right are the Google users:



Assumption 2: We only look at the first few results in Google, and if we don't find what we want, we change our search

JupiterResearch have conducted an interesting study into our searching behaviour.

The vast majority of us (68%) only look at one page of Google results, with a ruthless 27% only looking at the first few results. Nearly a fifth of us browsed through more than 3 pages of results in 2002, but that has fallen now to just 8%.




Assumption 3: None of us use those little Menus at the top of Google

Images, Maps, Shopping: those little menu choices at the top of Google are used for "Vertical Searching." Research commissioned by iProspect shows most of us don't use them, we just type straight into the Google search box, with only about a quarter of us dipping our toe into the Google Images search.


It is all Google food for thought!