How to maintain a successful SEO Strategy – Day 1

The demand for high organic search engine ranking (Search Engine Optimisation) in Google and other major search engines, has dramatically increased for website designers. Entrepreneurial companies and SMEs are becoming ever more aware of reaping the benefits by appearing on the first two pages of Google/Bing i.e. increased traffic, reduced pay per click costs, increased return on investment (ROI) and a bigger profile within your trading place. 


However, when business clients initially inquire about SEO for their websites they are discouraged to take action due to the time scale involved in seeing results. Businesses want to see pronounced SEO success, but gaining fast results is a constant battle in such a competitive marketplace. This creates a need for specialist website designers. As a result, website designers have trawled the internet for new and improved ways of speeding up search engine optimisation and as always are disappointed to find that there are limited, ‘White Hat Search’ engine (acceptable methods) techniques available to webmasters. However, this has now changed with the development of a new seven day plan for rapid and guaranteed improved search engine rankings (SERPs). Read, enjoy, learn and act today to achieve the results you require for your website. Any questions, feel free to contact our dedicated, expert team. 

Day 1 – Key Word Optimisation

Choose your key words wisely. This will be one of the most labour-intensive jobs you undergo creating your campaign. Unless you have a substantial budget available for SEO or a large amount of time, you are unlikely to compete with high volume search terms such as Apple, You Tube, Manchester United Football Club, Design, Newcastle Hotel etc. You need to be more specific to your business and aim for longer stem keywords e.g. Luxury Spa Hotel Brighton, New Apple IPod Nano Accessories or in Pipon Solutions. This way you have less sites competing against you for those converted search rankings (as it is a more niche phrase) and if customers do find your site after typing in the specific search term into Google, they are more likely to take action because you have provided them with exactly what they have searched for.


One of the best free tools for finding the best keywords is the Google Keyword Tool Selector. Once you have chosen your keywords select three (maximum) for each page of your site. Don’t use the same key words for each page on your website – use each page to target different key words and gain extra traffic through each page of your site ranking highly on different key words. The three key words or terms selected need to be implemented into your anchor text and page title.

Anchor text – this is the clickable part of a hyperlink e.g. Camden website designers. And the HTML code to make this link is Camden website designers. Search engines rate these highly so remember to use your main key words in your anchor texts and vary the wording slightly e.g. website design Camden, Camden website design, web design Camden, web designers Camden, Camden website development etc. Remember these are the same phrases you will use when you have a website place a link to you, post on forums or submit to directories. 

Page title will be displayed in the title bar of your browser when you visit different sites. Your title text is entered near the top of your HTML code e.g. Camden bespoke website designers - Pipon Solutions website design & development - Supporting Local Business . To optimise the title it should be short (100 characters maximum), consist of your main key words and not contain any unnecessary stop words such as and, or, the, this, etc. We can help you through this process, find out tomorrow how to optimise in our Day 2 special bulletin. 

Top 10 Tips to Optimising SEO

Optimising for search engines and shopping engines is all about accessibility, authority and relevance.

When rigorously optimising for search and users, sometimes the basics get ignored or overdone leading to entire sections of the site being blocked, duplicated or rendered useless for search engines.

Ensure you follow these salient rules to avoid falling into the "low visibility" zone. 

1.  Check noindex rules across your site

If you have implemented the noindex meta tag on extensive sections of your site based on certain guidelines, revisit these guidelines to make sure they are still relevant and do not conflict with other rules on the site. Do not submit pages with a noindex meta tag in your XML sitemap to search engines or shopping feeds. Double check that rules in the robots.txt and noindex tag are consistent.

2.  Check robots.txt on every sub-domain

Are you blocking sections of your site in the robots.txt file? If so, ensure that you are not inadvertently restricting the search engines from accessing product listings or related content because the entire directory is accidentally blocked in robots.txt.

3.  Don’t embed HTML in the code of your feed

When submitting feeds to shopping engines, embedding html or stuffing promotional text in the product titles and descriptions will lead to messy and truncated titles and descriptions. Do not stuff promotional text into the product description as it could end up truncating irregularly or even worse be removed from shopping engines.

4.  Redirects

If you have recently relaunched a section of your site and redirected old pages to new ones, make sure the redirects are 301 (permanent redirects). If the pages have 302 or temporary redirects implemented, the new pages will not get indexed because the search engines will continue to think that the redirect is temporary.

5.  Duplicate Meta Titles

If you are generating meta titles dynamically based on the changing content of the page, check the rules and ensure that the meta titles and descriptions uniquely identify a particular page and are not so broad that they lead to duplicate content. Check your webmaster tools to check pages on your site that have duplicate meta title tags and/or duplicate meta description tags.

6.  Out-of-Stock products

When you submit your product listings to search engines or shopping engines, do not provide landing pages (URLs) that are broken, redirected or contain out of stock products. This will affect the CTR (click through rate) to your site as well as user perception with regard to the quality and consistency of your site. If the engine has a quality score in place, your site could be down ranked based on high bounce rates, that is people clicking away from your page.

7.  Avoid duplicate product URLs in the feed

Don’t provide multiple URLs or landing pages for the same product or item. This will lead to duplicate content and will risk down ranking of all URLs due to this issue.

8.  Push external links to product specific pages

Don’t rely on external links to your homepage or domain. Analyse the distribution of quality external links to your home page vs. deep links to product-specific pages.

9. Spider webs

Got a new site you want spidered? Submitting through Google’s regular submission form can take weeks. Another approach is to get your site spidered is by getting a link to it through another quality site.

10.  Update product price, stock status, product description and best uses

Content has a shelf life and needs to be updated regularly to maintain its value. Outdated content, when not monitored and evaluated, can snowball and lead to negative perception about the quality of your site. With the increased focus on quality content and value add pages in the search index, it is important to keep content current and clean. Updated content will keep conversions high and will also draw in new users based on.

Both search engines and shopping engines are advertising platforms for your site. Strong, clean feeds are a requirement for success. Optimising and updating the listings you feed to search engines will help your site compete for a higher share of visibility as well as perform better from a conversion and revenue stand point. Use these tips as the framework towards a smart strategy for your brand or product. Pipon Solutions can help you get these basic components right. 

London Will Be Connected...By 2012

“Every lamp post [and] every bus stop will one day very soon, and before the 2012 Olympics, be Wi-Fi enabled”. 

A promise made by London's mayor, Boris Johnson, back in 2010 and plans have now been initiated. It has been reported that almost half of London's underground platforms will be wired with Wi-Fi access to be ready for the 2012 Olympic Games.

Tests were carried out in October last year, giving access to tube commuters' in selected underground lines and central London stations. Lasting six months, the test was funded by BT (British Telecom) broadband service, which reported the trial to be successful. However, WI-Fi access will be limited to the London underground's platforms; commuters won't have access on the tubes. 

Although BT carried out a trial run, it hasn't been given the full contract by Transport For London (TFL), London Underground's managing company. An invitation to all Telecom companies has circulated, inviting interested parties to bid for a contract to outfit Wi-Fi access to 120 of London's stations by June next year. 

Johnson's plan was part of a broader strategy to position London as a world leader in technological innovation. However, as exciting as this would be to many Londoners, the mayor has a long way to go to reach this goal in comparison to other cities. Singapore, Berlin and Tokyo's underground users (to name but a few) already have Wi-Fi access and currently New York City's subway system is working with Transit Wireless LLC to bring Wi-Fi to its commuters.

How do you think Wi-Fi will affect your journey?

Five ways to ensure Quality Inbound Links

One of the fastest, most efficient ways to improve your search engine rankings is to build high-quality inbound links—links from other websites to your website. In fact, successful search engine optimisation (SEO) demands a focus on inbound link building, also called backlinking.

This is vital because Google (in addition to other search engines) evaluate scores of factors as they rank your site against the thousands of other agent sites online. Inbound links are among the most powerful determinants of where your site will show up in the list of results.

Also, building more relevant links to your website will bolster the chances of consumers (if your site is industry-specific) finding you as they naturally surf the web.

In essence, inbound links are other websites linking to yours. The best way to benefit from this is by acquiring links from relevant sites of high quality, which are popular and established with your industry. Once you’ve developed a high level of quality links your site will start to rank higher on search engines, page rank will rise thus subsequently traffic will increase.

Pipon will show you five FREE methods of promoting your site and establish quality inbound links:

Reciprocal Link Exchanges

·         The simplest way to get free inbound links.

·         FREE link to a site in exchange for a link from you.

·         Benefits both sites owners and is easily accomplished.

However, it is important to ensure the links come from relevant sites in terms of topics and your target audience, as links from non-related site are considered and regarded as low quality links.

One-Way Link Requests

·         Consider a higher quality link method than reciprocal link exchanges.

·         Getting FREE links from other websites without linking back.

·         Getting links from sites without asking because of a site’s unique and top quality content.

Directory Submission

·         Thousands of directories on the Internet with various websites categories.

·         FREE links and quick results to a site because directories are already fully indexed by search engines.

·         Some directories require a reciprocal link back to the directory, others do not.

Some directories are specific to a certain niche such as Finance, SMEs, real estate, or Florist while some target a specific geographic location, gender, or age group.

Article Submission

·         Numerous article websites online seeking unique content articles.

·         Personal signature at the bottom of the article with FREE link.

·         Help establish a site owner or blogger as a trusted and knowledgeable source in your industry.

·         Articles can become free content available to other websites who pick up your article and put it on their own related website. 

·         An article can be spread across the Internet leading back to your website as the originating source.

Press Releases

·         Press release websites allow news item with FREE links regarding a website or business.

·         Spreads across the internet somehow similar to the way article submissions do.

·         Benefit and suggested to larger websites and businesses more with a wider audience than personal or small businesses.

Many press release sites charge for posting an news article on their channel. 

Therefore, if you’re thinking of starting a blog or a site with a low/no budget use these pointers to get the ball rolling. It will help boost search engine rankings, brand recognition and ultimately traffic.

Facebook & Snaptu Bring Apps To Mobile Phones

It's been an exciting week for people that don't own a smartphone, as Facebook announced its latest acquisition, Snaptu, a start-up company that designed a technology to bring mobile apps on simpler "feature" phones. The company was founded in 2007 in Israel, is estimated to have been acquired by the giant social network for £43 million ($70 million).

Snaptu's technology will enable users to use web services such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Facebook on almost any phone. This will be available through a number of applications designed by the company, which are Java-based apps holding similar features to smartphone apps.

Facebook looked into similar companies to acquire and chose Snaptu because it's technology worked on over 2500 different mobile devices. The social network company with over 500 million users, approached Snaptu earlier this year to create a Facebook application, which the start-up company achieved by designing an app resembling the one on smartphones.

Snaptu explained their choice to be part of Facebook on their blog in stating: “We soon decided that working as part of the Facebook team offered the best opportunity to keep accelerating the pace of our product development...And joining Facebook means we can make an even bigger impact on the world.”

Pipon thinks that this is a very smart and soon to be lucrative move by Facebook. Although the rise in smartphone users has somehow quadruple since the device entered the market and also with latest technology such as 4G soon to be worldwide, there are still millions of people who prefer feature phone to smartphone but opt to this because of the apps, but now it seems they won't have to.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TWITTER!!!

Five years ago today, a revolutionary method of communicating was delivered to the world and was named Twitter. The social media platform has possibly surpassed its founders' expectations and capabilities of its usability. Since its launch, the microblogging site has launched careers, reunited long-lost relatives, given users direct access to celebrity gossip and even to some extent brought some dictators down.

"just setting up my twttr" was the first tweet posted by Co-founder, Jack Dorsey, in 21/03/2006, which has been re-tweeted over 100,000 since then. Twitter now holds approximately 200 million users, who have been estimated to tweet over a billion tweets every week.

In celebration of Twitter's birthday, Dorsey has been tweeting about Twitter's historical moment in the last five years since it's launch & he's contribution to the social media site's reign. "5 yrs ago today, the eve of launching twttr to the company. Moving from @Biz, @florian and me, to all of our peers using it. Nervous. #twttr" tweeted by dorsey on Sunday.

Twitter is now regarded as a significant method of communication. It has a record of 6,939 tweets per second, and took 3 years, 2 months and a day to reach one billion tweets. The average number of tweet a day is currently 140 million.
Twitter was estimated, last month on the Wall Street Journal, to be worth £4 to £6 billion ($8 to $10 Billion).

Pipon would like to wish Twitter a HAPPY BIRTHDAY & to its founders a big thank you for bring such a useful tool to both internet users & businesses, and especially search marketing.

Google Has Too Many Products!

A statement by Marissa Mayer, Google's VP of Search, declared last week that "Google Has Too Many Products..." during the SXSWi conference in Austin, US.
Pipon agrees with Mayer, including internet and mobile users, perhaps you do too?

Mayer, who has recently changed focus from search to location and local services late last year, referred to Google's local products saying that she thinks Google has "too many products and we need to condense them”.
She also explains that there are so many Google local products because the giant company is consistently experimenting on new products.
Currently Google's local products varies from Google Earth, Google Hotpot, Google Latitude, Google Street View, Google Maps, Google Places... and many more including different mobile versions. During her presentation, she informs the audience that 40% of Google Maps users access the product through mobile devices.

Pipon agrees with her statement to consolidate some of the products, which sounds more practical. The idea of making some of the products into features, such as Google latitude and Google Hotpot could ultimately conceive a powerful product.

You can watch her presentation here

What do you think about Google products?

Skype displays Advert

Last week's blog post covering Skype, reported on the company's new advertising venture. Skype users were exposed to adverts from the likes of Groupon, Visa and Universal Pictures on the company's home page. This endeavour is an attempt by the company to create a new revenue stream.

Skype's chief marketing officer, Doug Bewsher, stated that the company ran some test ads on Rdio, "the all-you-can-stream, social, multi-platform music service" also owned by Skype.

Bewsher also reassured users on the company blog that these new ads will not be obtrusive and will be affecting their Skype experience. The ads will not be displayed based on users demography data, which is an addition to the option given to users to opt out from sharing such information.

This is the company's solution to maintain quality services and keeping some of its services such as Skype-to-Skype calls free. This could be a serious potential sources of income predicted by Fortune to accumulate more than £120 million ($200m) in annual revenues.
Pipon thinks that this is a great idea for both Skype and marketers utilising the site as an ad space. With more than 400 million people using Skype worldwide, marketers will get a large amount of ad exposure.

First Yahoo, Then Google & Now Bing Instant

Pipon blogged about the release of Google Instant a while back, mentioning the changes Google implemented on its search engine. Microsoft is now on the move following the latest reports last week about the implementation of new features and changes on its growing search engine, Bing.

Last week, buzz surrounding the industry and Microsoft was on its plans to release a new version of Bing powered by HTML5. The buzz focused on some of the latest features available to users such as the one similar to Google Instant, which will allow users to preview their search as they type.

Microsoft is planning on unveiling a preview of the new HTML powered version of Bing simultaneously with their release of Internet Explorer 9, which could be officially launched this April during the MIX11.
However for you're eager to have a taste of the new version of Bing, there is a a preview site which is currently live and accessible through here.

Let's Stay In & Rent A Movie... On Facebook

According to CNBC, Facebook users will soon be able to rent movies on the largest social networking site.

Currently Warner Bros is testing the possibilities of offering a purchase or rentals services to users through the public pages of selected movies on Facebook.

The testing service is only open in the US and was launched on this Tuesday, starting with Warner Bros successful movies, "Batman: the Dark Night".

A Facebook application is used to stream the movie and fans of the official movie page will be able to access the movie by clicking on the "watch" icon. The service will cost them either 30 Facebook credits, or $3 per movie. Renters will be able to watch the movie for up to 48 hours with unlimited replay capabilities.

Warner Bros's president, Thomas Gewecke, stated that "Making our films available through Facebook is a natural extension of our digital distribution efforts". The Movie company also stated that additional movies will be made available to rent or buy through Facebook in the coming months but it did not state which movie titles.

Pipon recognises this as a big change to both the movie industry and Facebook as the largest social networking sites enter the movie market.
This also could be the opening various opportunities to marketers, such as promotional deals which could be made to offer users free credits to use to rent or buy movies on the social network sites.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY GOOGLE APPS MARKETPLACE!!!

Google just posted an article announcing the first birthday of its apps marketplace, which was launched on 9/03/2010. The marketplace was created with 50 web apps integrated into Google Apps, and according to Google it was to make it "easier for organisation to customise web-based solution for their specific needs".

Harrison Shih, one of Google's Product Marketing team members informed on the blog that since Google apps marketplaces's launch a year ago, the platform has expanded further that it now "offers 300 apps accross 11 categories, including a new set of education apps.

We would recommend the platform here at Pipon, as we all utilise it, it does simplify the way we all communicate.

Do you use Google apps marketplace, tell us what you think?

YouTube Is The Best... According To Users Satisfaction

This was concluded by a study conducted by Netpop Research. It's findings suggested YouTube is more likely to be recommended by its users than Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media sites' users.

The method used on the study to determine the finding is called the Net Promoter Score (NPS), which measure user satisfaction.
It works by concluding which of the users are "promoters" (scoring 9-10), meaning enthusiasts that refers others; "detractors" (scoring 0-6), meaning dissatisfied customers with capabilities to damage a brand and "Passives" (scoring 7-8), meaning satisfied but unenthusiastic customers.
Once establish the percentage of detractors are subtracted from the percentage of promoters.

The study found that 50% of YouTube users would recommend the YouTube, while 36% of Facebook users would recommend Facebook, 33% of Groupon users would recommend Groupon, 30% of LinkedIn users would recommend LinkedIn; 11% of Twitter would recommend Twitter.

However, it is important to note that the study was conducted in the US alone, among 1,253 broadband users from the age of 13 onwards in January 2011. The study illustrates some very interesting findings, but not really relevant to certain parts of the world, user satisfaction could change over time and not everyone use broadband nowadays with mobile devices growing evidently. Nevertheless, Pipon thinks these findings could help marketers establish an effective strategy to launch a viral campaign on the internet.

Facebook & Skype Rumour Sparks Up Again

Pipon reported a while back the rumours surrounding Facebook and Skype's collaboration on integrating a video chat feature on the biggest social-networking site, however nothing developed further from the rumours.

Now it seems just as internet users were giving up hope on what could be a powerful feature on Facebook, Bloomberg sparked the rumours giving more life by reporting last week, “Facebook Inc., the world’s biggest social-networking company, is holding talks with Skype Technologies SA about offering Web video calls to its 500 million users, two people familiar with the discussions said.”

Although still referred to as a rumours, this venture would benefit both companies and the internet marketing world by increasing the numbers of users, thus increasing the numbers of audiences to promotional marketing tools.

Pipon will be sure to report on any further development, but we can state that no confirmation of an announcement nor the amount of money it will cost.

How do you think this new feature will affect both Facebook and Skype?

Who Is Mark Zuckerberg?

To most of the world, he's mostly known as the youngest billionaire who revolutionized the way the world utilises the internet as both a socialising & marketing tool with the famous social network site, Facebook.


To some he is also perceived as an arrogant & self-confessed genius with an 'asshole' complex, from his depiction in the successful biographical film, The social network, which details the conception of Facebook.


To help those interested in answering the question, a comic book was released last month on the 23rd, produced by Bluewater production & written by Jerome Maida, a freelance journalist.
The comic book is solely about the CEO & creator of Facebook and about his life achievement & creation. Maida wrote the 48-page issue based on compelling research on Mark Zuckerberg and declared it "a fascinating story" as "hardly anyone knows much about him. It's amazing".


With Facebook currently as its peak, here at Pipon we think it seems the right time to release this book. Check back later to see what we think once we've had a chance to read it.

Google's New Algorithm

Last week, a post by Amit Singhal and Matt Cutts on Google's official blog, informed readers of new changes in their algorithm that could affect some website's position/rankings on certain search results. The reason for their algorithm upgrade is to improve Google's ranking system, and this would impact 11.8% of their queries.
The improvement will mostly affect the low quality sites by reducing their rankings. The quality of these sites is based on their "copy content from other websites" which Google defines as sites containing "low-value add for users".

The new update will be launched in the U.S only for the time being, but Google plans to roll it out globally over time. If you're not familiar with search engine marketing, then Pipon would advise getting in touch with an internet marketing professional to advised or potentially assist in optimising your site, as Google explains on the post that they "...can’t make a major improvement without affecting rankings for many sites. It has to be that some sites will go up and some will go down."

Do you think this new algorithm may affect your website ranking?