Last week’s eBusiness Conference was a big success, and I think most delegates left with brain ache from all the new ideas presented in the Search Engine Optimisation and Social Media Marketing presentations.
I thought a quick summary of the buzz might be useful–
I was planning to write a post about using Region Tags on your web pages to help Google recognise your UK location.
Why are region tags important? They help to geo-target content, and they will present additional information in the search page to help users to select the most suitable result.
The problem is I’m just not sure Google understands the UK. Not really.
I live in Nottingham in the UK, but there is also a Nottingham in both Pennsylvania and Maryland in the United States.
A search in Google UK for “Nottingham potato” from a computer with a UK based IP address brings results in 5 of the top 10 positions being filled with American results for Potato Chip Factory tours in Nottingham’s in Maryland and Pennsylvania.
And worst of all, Google local brings up Derby as the top result on the Google map. Heaven forbid!
By the way, if you’re not impressed by my Nottingham Potato example, then scroll to the bottom of this post for some more serious examples.
Who ever thought watching potatoes get peeled and deep fried could be so much fun….
What did I expect to find when I searched for Nottingham Potato?
I would have expected to find lists of organic potato farming tips and ideas for people in Nottingham, or food wholesalers selling potatoes, or take away restaurant menus from Nottingham serving jacket potatoes, or catering suppliers.
Actually, what I would have liked to have seen is Bing’s results…
I know Nottingham Potato is silly example, but there is a more serious underlying issue:
it’s not so silly is when you search for Birmingham Airport, and as a UK user I’m served the Alabama results:
How about a pharmacy in Boston, searched on Google.co.uk:
The East Midlands eBusiness Programme FREE one-day conference about doing business online will be taking place at the East Midlands Conference Centre, Nottingham on Thursday 3 December.
I’ll be speaking about Social Media Marketing for Small Businesses, and Ian Lockwood will be providing an update on Search Engine Optimisation.
The blurb from the recent e-shot let’s you know more:
If you want to keep up to date with the latest developments in Search Marketing and Social Media marketing, then this is the conference for you. Delegates who have previously attended any of the eBusiness Programme’s extensive range of workshops will discover brand new content with practical steps you can take to promote your business effectively on the Internet.
The conference will teach you how to effectively market your business online by bringing you all the latest in the rapidly changing world of Internet marketing. Attendance will benefit any business that uses search engines as part of their online marketing and those experimenting with social media marketing.
Registration for the conference opens at 09:00 am, and the presentations will begin at 10:00 am. The presentations will end at approximately 16:00 pm giving you the opportunity to network with conference delegates.
The Conference Programme in detail:
What’s New in Search? – Presenter: Ian Lockwood
The world of search engines is ever-evolving and businesses need to be up to speed with the latest developments. During the morning we will introduce you to the new business developments, changes to search engine algorithms, updates to pay per click engines and additional features added by the search engines that you could be using to increase your exposure, particularly on Google.
Social Media Marketing for Small Businesses – Presenter: Susan Hallam
Social media is hot, it’s trendy, and ever so sexy. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Blogging. But are they genuinely useful for small businesses? Do they give good value as a return in return for the investment of your time and effort? And what are the best ways to get started using these new marketing techniques?
The afternoon session will provide practical examples of how small businesses can use social media to deliver communication, collaboration, or online visibility objectives in support of your business Internet marketing strategy.
It’s been a few weeks since Google started tweaking the UK search results, and a number of folk have been asking me about the changes and why they are taking place.
Matt Cutts, over at Google, has produced a useful video (see bottom of this posting) explaining that not all UK content is hosted on a .co.uk domain name. I think most Brits would have to agree with that assumption. And as a result, Google appears to be placing less emphasis on the top level .co.uk domains and introducing other content appropriate to the UK audience coming from other top level domains such as .com
So far so good, and I’d have to agree with the underlying assumptions.
However, it just doesn’t seem to be working well. And I can’t prove it, but it seems an awful lot worse at the moment.
I have two examples for you.
I wanted to get my hair cut in the neighbouring village of Bingham, Nottinghamshire and couldn’t remember the hairdressers name, so just used Google.co.uk to find a hairdresser in Bingham.
Google gave me as the top result the charming Trisha….. a hairdresser in Las Vegas. I’m not sure I would gamble on a haircut in Vegas.
And I suspect Trisha will be well confused if she looks at her web metrics and sees gaggles of visitors coming to her site from England.
Taking another practical example, I was demonstrating how Google localises the results based on your IP address, and did my neato-keen trick of searching for a generic phrase like Accountant.
A beautiful map of Rotherham appears, and I did the usual explanation of inaccuracy of British IP addresses and their impact on the Google results. I’m actually in Nottingham, but Rotherham is sort of nearby, so it is kind of accurate. Well not really, but I digress.
But then I was aghast to see within the top ten results for my “accountant” search was the US Department of Labor Statistics website and not a British statistic to be seen.
Surely the word “labor” as opposed to “labour” might have some bearing on the results?
There is a single occurrence of the word “British” on the high ranking page (”British Institute of Certified Public Accountants”) but surely this should have been outweighed by the bulk of other American references?
Or a Washington Zip Code rather than a postcode, or the US telephone dialling code?
Surely the fact that a US government department will have relatively inbound links from UK sites will matter?
2. Whilst I accept that a .co.uk top level domain name is not the single most important indicator of sites suitable for British tastes, I can’t understand what other signals are being used to deliver the best UK search experience.
3. Matt has indicated that there are no plans to change the current strategy of placing less importance on the top level .co.uk domain name. I’d like to encourage some feedback from UK users to say that Google is not giving the kind of search experience we expect. Matt Cutts is inviting feedback, and can I suggest we work on getting some appropriate examples to share with the team.
It is always difficult to find appropriate data to help you measure just how well your email marketing campaigns are going as compared to other companies.
You want data from British companies, from companies in a similar sector, and it needs to be data from other small businesses rather than big international corporate companies.
Sign Up To, an email marketing service provider, has produced some benchmarking data based more than 200 million emails sent over the last 12 months, sent by small and medium sized (SME) businesses in the UK.
There are always some difficulties in measuring email campaigns, and you need to take this data with a pinch of salt. Nevertheless, it gives you a yard stick to start measuring with.
Some quick findings:
There are wide variations in Open Rates of emails. If you are in a profession like accounting or legal practice, property, or sports and leisure then you might experience an Open Rate of just 13%
I’ve always said an Open Rate of 30% is very good, and indeed there are only two sectors achieving that level of success: Government, and New Media. Strange bedfellows, and hard to figure out what kind of synergy they might have.
There appears to problems with the email lists being used by Manufacturing/Industrial companies, with a Bounce rate of bad email addresses as high as 13%
Emails from the government are well received: the highest open rate, the highest click through rate, and very low number of bad addresses.
I recommend you read through the report to understand how the data was collected, and the method of analysing the recipients’ behaviour.
More changes are a foot in the lucrative search marketing arena as BT Yahoo! jumps into bed with Google - BT Yahoo! is now using the Google search results for both its organic and pay per click results.
That’s right, BT’s portal which is branded Yahoo! is using Google… not Bing.
I have to wonder what Microsoft think of this arrangement in light of their big partnership announcement hooking up Yahoo and Bing in the USA.
To be perfectly frank, I cannot imagine Microsoft are very worried about the BT deal.
On the one hand, BT remains the UK’s largest broadband provider with 4.8 million broadband customers, or 35% of the DSL broadband market share. It doesn’t follow, however, that these BT customers are then using the BT Yahoo! portal for searching.
Internationally, Yahoo! search can claim some big numbers, with 78 million visitors last month using search.yahoo.com
Looking at the British Yahoo! properties, however, we see only 21,291 unique visitors using the UK property ( bt.yahoo.com ) in the month of July 2009.
By way of comparison, google.co.uk had 910,000 unique visitors in the same period.
The Brits aren’t using the BT Yahoo! service, apparently preferring Yahoo’s other UK properties:
Google keeps nibbling away, growing its market share. Getting a major ISP on it’s side certainly won’t hurt. But BT isn’t a major player, and I don’t see this changing search marketing strategies in any big way.
I am pleased to announce Hallam Communications has achieved approved supplier status on BusinessLink West Midlands’ Select Supply database.
As an approved supplier we are able to supply our Internet marketing services to services to clients who contact Business Link to ask for advice or funding support for their project.
The accreditation process involved an assessment of our areas of expertise,verification of our credentials, obtaining references from clients, and demonstration of necessary professional insurances.
If your business is based in the West Midlands, and you would like advice or to explore the availability of grant funding for your project, then contact BusinessLink West Midlands on 0845 113 1234.
Government grants are available for East Midlands businesses looking to develop their strategic Internet marketing skills.
The £500 training and development grant is available from the Learning and Skills Council’s “Leaders First” programme. This is an outright grant, and your business does not need to make a financial contribution.
That means you can have individual coaching with me for free, or you can attend my training courses for free.
An additional £500 grant is available if you are available to match the money, making a total grant of £1000. That means you can have £1500 of management coaching, bespoke training, or public training courses at a cost of just £500.
We are working with an number of clients who are using the grant to use our training and consultancy to create a competitive edge with their Internet marketing activities. You might want to improve your Internet skills, develop a more effective Internet strategy, or use the training to keep pace with the rapid changes in online marketing.
The projects we have worked on include:
developing a strategic Internet marketing plan
planning a strategic search engine optimisation campaign
designing and delivering surveys on the Internet
improving Pay Per Click campaigns by developing in-house skills
Who Can Apply?
Businesses with between 5 and 249 employees are eligible to apply for the grant funding. Funding is available for the development of senior managers or key decision makers. One grant is available per organisation, up to a maximum of £1000 grant. You will need to undertake a skills diagnostic and develop a Personal Development Plan (PDP). If your plan includes Internet Marketing skills, then the grant can help you along your way.
Get in touch if you would like to discuss your requirements, and I can provide details of next steps.
Funding for the eBusiness Club has been cut, and as a result no further free training for small businesses in the East Midlands will be arranged following the final courses in August.
EMDA has reviewed its budget commitments, and the axe fell on the eBusiness Club.
Literally thousands of businesses have benefited from eBusiness training courses, including the Web Academy, breakfast briefings, conferences, and grant support.
All of this is due to end in August.
Perhaps we could persuade EMDA of the value of this programme. I think money could be found to continue to offer this programme, and as we all know, the squeaky wheel gets the grease!
I’m looking to reach as many businesses as possible to demonstrate support and evidence for the good work the eBusiness Club has delivered over the years. Please sign the petition, join the Facebook group, or leave a comment on this blog posting.
I will submit all the evidence of businesses supporting the club to EMDA on 3 August 2009.
There has been a groundswell of social media marketing opportunities for folk wanting to learn more about the benefits of all things Web 2.0
Here’s a quick round up of what’s on offer if you want to keep abreast of the latest in SMM:
MediaCamp is a free one-day “unconference” covering the latest digital trends, with a focus on Media, Technology & Culture. It is taking place over the weekend of 9/10 May at Lace Market House, Nottingham.
Web 2.0 Surgery is an informal gathering of experts and clients to discuss all things Web 2.0, with a view to creating a Web 2.0 marketplace in Nottingham.
Nott Tuesday is a technology industry forum for Nottingham, aiming to position Nottingham as its rightful place as a technology powerhouse. It takes place every second Tuesday of the month, in Nottingham.
Network Nottingham is online networking environment for business professionals; looks like lots of web 2.0 geeks are hanging out here.
Second Wednesday has been brought back to life; originally established in 1999, it has returned after a 3 year hiatus. Geeks unite for drinks, industry gossip and networking.
