For those of you who don’t follow me on Twitter, here is a summary of my Twitter observations for this week.

In general my Twitter posts are quite different to my blog articles, so why not try following me: @SusanHallam

• International SEO: Matt Cutts discusses the geographic location of your server and it’s impact on SEO. http://digg.com/u16gfj #
• 10% drop in UK PPC spend during Q1, and average CPC falls from 44p to 30p. http://digg.com/u16dva #
• Great examples of Calls to Action for your website http://digg.com/u16aJq #
• Love the new TweetDeck functionality that lets you manage multiple Twitter accounts. #
• RT @Econsultancy: How Journalists Use Social Media http://bit.ly/HX2Iq #
• SEO Training: Learn Search Engine Optimisation | 9 July | Nottingham . “Brilliant, entertaining, easy to understand” http://digg.com/u16elI #
• Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, speaking at Birmingham Symphony Hall tomrrow. I’ll be there – are u going? #
• Google displaying detailed Facebook, LinkedIn and Google Profile info in results.  http://bit.ly/ri09N #
• [Blog] Challenges of Search Engine Optimisation in Northern Ireland (SEO) http://cli.gs/m4v2HR #
• International SEO tips and tools. Please feel free to contribute and review to this Google Knol. http://tinyurl.com/InternationalSEO #

Efficient Frontier have published its Q1 2009 UK Search Engine Performance report based on a sample of UK search engine advertisers and there are a number of very interesting take away messages:

Search marketing advertising spend in the UK dropped 6% in Q1, year on year.

Advertisers’ Cost Per Click (CPC) is falling steadily, with average price falling from 44 pence in Q1 2008 to 30 pence in the same period 2009.

The volume of advertising impressions is on the rise as more consumers are using the Internet, and as the networks have lowered their minimum bid price bringing formerly inactive keywords into play.

As a result of the higher number of impressions, advertisers’ click through rates (CTR) have declined. By way of example, Google AdWords typical CTR dropped from 2.94% in Q1 2008, down to 2.06% in the same period in 2009

These results are based on a sample of advertisers in the financial services, travel, entertainment, retail and telco sectors.

You can read the full report here (PDF).

Google is experimenting with pulling through additional information from various social networking sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, and their own Google Profiles.  The search results are displaying not only a simple link to the site, but creating “added value” by selectively displaying additional information contained within the social networking profiles.

I’m seeing more of this activity in the .com version of Google;  some of these are not yet available in the .co.uk version, but I would suspect it is only a matter of time.

I have seen Google pulling through a snippet of information from my LinkedIn profile, inserting an additional line of information regarding my job title:

As for Facebook profiles, Google is now also displaying an extra line of text showing who your friends are.  Is this a good idea, or not such a good idea?  Apologies to whomever Mary Smith is for using her as an example:

Facebook friends appearing in Google results

And finally, Google is choosing to also display users’ own Google Profile in the search results, as well as prompts to discover people using other social networking sites like Classmates and MySpace. I’m not entirely sure how I ended up with two Google profiles, but that is something I need to get fixed:

Businesses located in, or search engine optimising for Northern Ireland face a number of particular challenges. The unique political, geographic and technical circumstances means there are a number of issues that will need to be considered if a Northern Ireland business is looking to improve its rankings in Google and the other search engines.

I recently had the pleasure of teaching 5 workshops on behalf of InvestNI, travelling to the beautiful cities and towns of Belfast, Newry, Enniskillen, Londonderry, and Ballymena.  During the workshops I found a number of key issues that kept cropping up, and thought it would be useful to compile them into a quick Northern Ireland SEO guide here.

Localisation: Northern Ireland IP Addresses?

Many businesses want to be serving customers in their own locality, ranking well for search terms associated with their local business community.  Google now serves local results tailored to the searchers location. For example, a search for even for a general term like “restaurant” or “plumber” will then trigger the Google Local Business directory, displaying results based on the searcher’s IP address.

You may be in Belfast, but if your IP address says you’re in London, then it is London local results you will see.

This presents particular difficulties for the Northern Ireland business community, as IP addresses are often incorrectly identified as being in England.  The inaccurate IP address problem is, by no means, unique to Northern Ireland, but it does seem to be particularly severe.

By way of example, I offered a set of course materials to attendees at the InvestNI workshops, and an analysis of their IP addresses shows that only 17% of the addresses were correctly identified as being in Northern Ireland, namely Belfast, Glengormley, Lurgan, and Newry.  Correct IP addresses are most commonly associated with larger organisations having a static IP address, so the correctly identified visitors could well be coming from government departments or universities.

London, as expected, was  incorrectly identified most frequently (40% of the time) with unexpected outliers like Royal Leamington Spa and Gateshead making an appearance.

What are the implications of incorrect IP addresses?

1. Google Local Business results will not be triggering correctly.  Instead, searchers will be seeing data tailored for their IP address location.  Whilst it is possible to customise your location, I’ve not seen evidence to show how many searchers are doing so.
2. Google Analytics data will be skewed toward counting most UK visitors as “English” visitors, and thus not providing any visitor location data that can be used reliably in terms of NI traffic.
3. Keyword research data (see below) will not be representative of the Northern Ireland search experience.

Using Keyword Research tools

There are some interesting vagaries in the availability of Google keyword research data.

Google AdWords Keyword Tools is one of the most popular keyword research tools, and it does provide aggregated UK data but does not provide data specific data for Northern Ireland, nor does it provide data for Eire (Ireland).

On the other hand, Google Insights for search does provide Northern Ireland data, as well as data for Eire.

Warning:  keep in mind the problem of IP addresses mentioned above!

In this example, Google Insights is providing comparison data for Northern Ireland and Ireland for searches for the term “facebook”.  Are Lisburn and Coleraine truly the hubs of search activity for Facebook users in Northern Ireland?

Optimising for Ireland

Many Northern Ireland businesses want to trade outside the province, and there are some straight forward techniques for developing a search engine optimisation strategy for getting business from the south:  Ireland | Republic of Ireland | Eire.

First, keep in mind that Irish searchers will be using Google.ie and as such Northern Ireland business will be doing international search engine optimisation to address this market.

In order to maximise visibility in Ireland, you should consider creating a website addressing that target market.

1.  Register a .ie domain name.

There are certain restrictions in applying for a .ie domain name.  Applicants must provide evidence demonstrating substantial trade or commercial activity within Ireland which includes:

• Copies of invoices (showing trade to or from Ireland),
• High-quality brochures showing a significant intention to trade in Ireland.
• a signed letter on headed paper from a bank manager, firm of chartered accountant(s), registered auditor(s), tax consultant(s) (where the tax advisor identification number is displayed), or solicitor(s) confirming the applicants trade with Ireland.

2.  Ensure your website is hosted on an Irish web server. You can check your hosting country using the Netcraft

3.  Create content that identifies your operation as being appropriate for Ireland.  This might include using an Irish contact address, mentioning Irish place names in your product pages, and the like.

4.  Get high quality inbound links from Irish websites. In particular, focus on the links that give local identification.

Related Posts

International Search Engine Optimisation: Improving Your Rankings

International SEO: Web marketing tools and tips

International Web Marketing Tips

Fermanagh Photographs: a teaching website used by Michael Hughes of InvestNI to teach Web 2.0 skills

Here’s what I’ve been Tweeting about last week:

• Matt Cutts on Page Rank Sculpting. There are better genuine ways to spend your SEO time. Hate to say “told you so.” http://bit.ly/yboqI #
• Get your own Google Profile. These are already ranking well in the USA, but not yet in the UK. http://bit.ly/2BbrZ1 #
• Got my Facebook username : http://www.facebook.com/susan.hallam Get yours at http://www.facebook.com/username/ #
• 10 Superb social media presentations http://bit.ly/3CSlIT from @econsultancy #
• Do you use IE8? Firefox plugins keep me loyal, but does IE8 give a better browser experience? http://bit.ly/17r6JL #
• Need evidence that Twitter is successful for businesses? DellOutlet makes £2M in sales by tweeting discount codes. http://bit.ly/w09lR #

Ann Smarty has produced an inspired article of the  Ultimate Collection of Online SEO Tools. All the resources she mentions are useful for search engine optimisation, are free, and are web based.

I think one of the best SEO books on the market is Planet Ocean’s Unfair Advantage Book on Winning the Search Engine Wars. The site is a bit hard sell, a bit cheap and nasty looking, but the materials are excellent quality, and I’m sure to review their monthly update.

There are many collections of tools on the web, but you might also want to take a look at, and it is worth evaluating to see which ones you feel suit your requirements best:

http://www.seocompany.ca/tool/seo-tools.html

http://tools.seobook.com/

http://www.seomoz.org/tools

Probably best to open the blog to comments, and see what other recommendations you all come up with…

The dust is starting to settle following the beta launch of Microsoft’s new Bing search engine, and the time is right to take a critical look at how does Bing compare with Google?

There’s been a huge amount written, and I’ve picked out a few highlights:

Bing’s Market Share

Hitwise have published the UK search engine market share figures for the week ending 6 June, and Bing has captured a very respectable  5.78% of searches, putting it ahead of Yahoo! and Ask.

Google’s market share across it’s various search properties tops 82%.

Comparing Bing Results to Google Results

I wanted to compare the Google’s results with Bing’s results, and Blackdog have produced an incredible useful gadget to compare the search results side-by-side. I have sign posted to the google.co.uk version, but there are also comparisons for many other country versions.

The differences are quite dramatic, and I would recommend having a look through to see where your own site ranks.

What Does Bing Say About Your Website

My company listing in Bing is similar to Google’s in that it at times it displays the information I provided in my own Title Tags and Description Tags, as well as pulling the information provided in the DMOZ Open Directory entry listing.

To the right of each result in the listings is an icon for a Quick Preview.  This is a true improvement on the search experience, providing additional information about the site before clicking through.  My own Quick Preview included copy scraped off the Home Page, again ignoring my own Meta Description Tags.

The Quick Preview also includes the equivalent of Google’ Sitelinks.  A big difference is these site links appear to display for all sites listed, not limited to the top rankings as per Google results.

Bing Additional Search

I have not been that impressed by Bing’s additional search functionality.

There is much discussion about Bing’s ability to provide results grouped by categories but working in the UK I do not appear to get this new feature.

Other cool features, for instance live travel information, search history:  they just don’t appear at the time of this review?

Shopping results are coming from the price comparison shopping engine Ciao.  This might present new marketing opportunities for online retailers in the UK, but doesn’t give a terribly trustworthy shopping search experience.

My Verdict?

Chandler Bing. Badda Bing. Bing Bling. Bingo was his Name-Oh.  Bing Crosby.  I can’t get my head around why they chose that brand.

Nevertheless, Microsoft is a powerful force to reckon with, and it has high aspirations for Bing.  For my own searching, I’m going to stick with Google for the moment, but keep a close eye on Bing developments, alongside Wolfram Alpha and a range of other new search engines.

.