Where does your website rank in the search engines? On the first page? On the second page? In the top 20 pages?

SEO Book’s Rank Checker is a free utility that allows you to type in your key phrases, and then quickly reports where you rank in Google.co.uk, as well as Yahoo! and Live.

If you’re interested in where you rank internationally, RankChecker will let you know your web rankings in most of the search engines worldwide.

And if you save your settings, and then RankChecker will run the report for you automatically on a weekly basis, or whatever frequency you prefer.

It is only available as a Firefox extension, which means you need to get Firefox, and then download the extension.

Comprehensive instructions are available on the download page, so I won’t repeat them here.

Do remember, however, to:

• change the Google default to co.uk if appropriate
• tick the box to Don’t Use Google personalised results, which skews the results to your personal searching prefernces, which probably favours your own website
• set the delay to be a second or two between searches
• save your search settings to use them again later
• turn on the automatic search reporting for your weekly report.

When I talk about search engine optimisation, I tend to focus on text. Words. I think of Google as a text processing engine. However, today I want to talk about optimising images for search.

Google, of course, offers the ability to search for images, and it can be a highly valuable way of driving visitors to your website.

Looking at my own statistics, I can see images.google.co.uk is driving nearly 20% of the referral visitors to my website. And one image on my site in particular, a Sunday Times logo, is driving a large volume of visitors.

My assumption is that if your images are contained in a page of content that is highly relevant, then you can convert visitors to customers on your website. And hence this blog is an experiment in optimising an image for the phrase “optimising images” and I’m going to wait and see what happens in the search engine results.

So, what steps do you need to take to optimise your images for search?

First, check to see what images from your site that Google is already indexing. Go to Google’s image search and in the search box type in site:www.yourdomain.co.uk. Google will display all the images in the index:

Optimising images for search follows many of the standard steps for optimising content on any of your web pages:

Give your image a keyword rich file name. Consider putting dashes between the keywords in the file name. Notice the image at the top of this posting is optimising-images.jpg

Use the ALT tags correctly. That means using descriptive text in the ALT tag, that will contain the key phrase you are optimising for.

Embed the image in a relevant web page. Place keyword rich text immediately before and after the image, putting the image into context on the page. Indeed, the entire page should be optimised for the phrase the image is targeting.

Create internal and external links to the image, again with keyword rich anchor text in the links.

Enable Google Image Search in your Webmaster Central account. Google Webmaster Central gives you a wealth of valuable information about your site, and one setting is to enable Google image search on your website.

Include keywords in your image. Include labels in your image to describe the components or what the image is. Folk using Google Labeler (see below) are likely to respond to the words in the image.

Participate in Google Labeler. Google Labeler is a service on Google where you add labels (or keywords) to images on the web. It takes the format of a game: it pairs you up randomly with somebody else playing the game and you match each others keywords to describe each image. Match each others’ keywords, and you get points. Curiously addictive, I’d recommend you give it a go.

I’ll keep you posted to see how well this image does, or does not, rank…

Date: 16th May 2008

Time: 09:30 – 15:00

Unwrap the secrets to creating a great impression overseas at the 2008
International Communications Masterclass

Great international communication is about understanding your
overseas customers and their needs.

Understanding your customers and their needs will enhance
your profits.

emita’s packed programme provides delegates with a wide range
of activities and access to experts in the field.

See the full International Communications Masterclass brochure (pdf)

• 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

.

Date: 14th May 2008

Time: 09:30 – 15:00

Susan will be presenting web marketing workshops at EMARAN Spring Event.

Location:   Harborough Theatre, Church Square, Market Harborough, Leics, LE16 7NB

EMARAN’s third regional event puts the spotlight on artists living and working in rural areas. Regional artists will share their experiences of overcoming the challenges, and making the most of the opportunities, of living and working in the rural East Midlands. Experienced rural practitioners will share with us some national and international models for artists thriving in rural areas, and will explore real and virtual ways of marketing yourself as an artist. There will be a range of workshops and discussion groups, a tour of Market Harborough artists’ studios, and a long lunch break to allow for networking.

This event, including lunch, is free, and for individual practitioners, there is a travel allowance (see below).

Presentations will cover a range of artforms including sculpture, dance, literature and digital artforms. There will be plenty of time to chat with the artist presenters, and also lots of space and time for you to voice your opinion and network with fellow artists and with those working in the arts and culture sector.

This third conference is aimed primarily at artists living and working in rural areas, as well as those who work with, commission or employ artists, for instance, local authorities, creative industries, rural regeneration organisations, the education sector and the broader cultural sector.

For further information or to book your place, contact Jo.Turpin@leisureconnection.co.uk

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.

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!

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.

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.

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?

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.