There are so many exciting projects forth coming and with a new concentrated effort on lead generation through our larger sites, something had to give and consultancy, as well as a few other projects are, at least for the time being, not being offered as a separate service to the main core businesses.

The SEO training programme set up last year, will now be re-launched, as we constantly have communications from smaller businesses that just cannot justify or afford the cost of  an SEO campaign, where their local markets are not large enough for a reasonable return from the investment. As you know, we always give clients honest advice and we we don’t think you will get a return on your investment, we will tell you so. Often the solution is for that small business to do their own SEO in house, so we offer SEO training for these situations. This training will occur at the Wilton Centre near Middlesbrough, easy to get to from most locations in the North East.

There has always been demand for this training, but previously other priorities meant we did not have the flexibility to set key dates in the diary that matched those wanting training, we now intend to get this right with regular monthly  dates planned.

As we mentioned earlier, lead generation is key to the FOKM core business (again for those where their own SEO  campaign  by themselves can be too expensive). Leasebam the car lease lead generation website is going from strength to strength and with new projects planned that include skip hire, mortgages and solicitor leads, (and a whole load we cant mention here) you can see there is much growth planned.

By using a simple spread sheet and measuring all top 20 results we will then aim to fill as many of the those 20 places as possible, using secondary owned sites, social media sites and ideally third party sites. Sub domains are treat as a separate domain, so it is possible to use sub domains to enhance the brand name within.

This followed by Tony Wright CEO WrightIMC, who talked about managing reviews sites out there. Negative content on review sites can damage your reputation on Google, especially in within Google controlled sites, such as Google maps. So thinking a head and avoiding bad comments, as well contact customers and asking them to reverse comments, can be  beneficial to your business on the web. It fits in well with customer service anyway.

FOK Marketing don’t have these issues in house as we only do SEO, but clearly when working with sites that have been developed by other people, the same issues arise if not greater. Clearly communication between people is the key, but when someone does not understand why flash can harm SEO, or why the size of images can affect load times and also rankings, it can become challenging.

So clear instruction and priority setting with everyone working to the same goal, even if personal artistic preferences are out on the shelve, is key, as the client is obviously a priority and without customers they often have nothing. We have also had these challenges, but fortunately we have now a network of developers who work within our guidelines, so many of the challenges stated in the conference, we do not suffer any more.

People I met ranged from someone who has started a network of 75 intro branded sites, to on page marketing consultant, a lead generation company in Spain for the education sector an a Google reputation specialist, which is right up my street.

Google reputation is critical for good sustained rankings, so to find out that 95% of what I do is just what others are doing, was good news, but it was the 5% that was the most interesting, and  how external links strategies have changed recently. In short it was  where the outgoing links went to, with authority sites now being just too common. Linking out to good sites, which are different to the norm, is good providing it directly relates to the subject matter in hand.

The pan is to do some blogging as it occurs, some after the event, I won’t be revealing everything, but hopefully some information that will be useful.

There are many sets of stats out there, but a sample is that only 18% of people will venture to the second page of a search and only 5% will venture to the third page. In terms of business return, if you are not on the first page of Google for the correct search terms, your return from your online investment will be small if anything at all.

We mention Google in this scenario, based on the fact that it pretty much dominates the UK search results, with over 90% of all searches going through the big G. Bing, Yahoo and Ask make up the rest, with other offerings not even touching and results scale. The massage has to clear, there are no half measures with online marketing or search engine optimisation, you just have to be on the first page of Google.

It lasts for 3 days, but it is the networking meeting where FOK marketing will be focusing on contacts to obtain quality web links and services. Some may think there are other reasons to go and I am sure some will take advantage of what Vegas offers, but there is no doubt that results is wahta we are all about, so it will be work first and pleasure second.

For the search professional it has been a year of mixed opinions and results. For many the implementation has shown no change and rankings have remained constant throughout, but for a small proportion of webmasters certain algorithm changes have been a nightmare to overcome. There are certain areas that have become more sensitive, especially relating to IP addresses and links from the same server.

It is astonishing how much information Google can handle in any one second, if a web page was a paper page of information stacked on top of each other, Google  would process 3 miles of paper each second. The job of any seo company is not to find ways around Google for a quick win. but to work within Google’s guidelines that benefit the user, so speed is not a ctical factor on the new algorithm

In a nutshell the answer is this:

There Are Too Many Uncontrollables In Search Engine Optimisation

Here Are 2 Examples Of Things That I And No One Else Has Control Of:

1/ You Are Playing In An Ever-Changing Playing Field. Nothing Stays Still.

It is not just what you do to your website, but what others are doing to theirs. As you are constantly trying to improve your results, so are all the other websites around you.
Even the websites, who you have a relationship with and link to you, can affect your rankings. If they change their website, say by adding different content or doing something wrong, it can affect the link value back to your website and affect your rankings also. Many of my sites have thousands of links from hundreds of websites linking to me. If any of these change what they are doing, this could affect my rankings.

2/ We Have No Control Over Search Engine Algorithms

An algorithm is just an equation that calculates where certain websites should rank for certain search terms and is different for every search engine. No one knows exactly what the algorithms are, but we can have an educated guess of many of the factors through trial and error. These algorithms can be and are changed in a heartbeat, if that particular search engine decides it wants to refine its search results. There are no warnings; there is no notice of change, we have no control, we do not even have a legal right to be included in their rankings at all should we complain.

Search engines change these algorithms to suit the millions of pages of information added to the Internet everyday and to combat spamming techniques and improve results. Again this may not have a direct affect on your website, but it may affect the websites linking to you which may have an indirect affect, losing you rankings. (Or improving).

The good news is that the opposite is also true, for every website that loses ranking another must improve. So at every algorithm change there are losers and winners, but I would never guarantee which is which beforehand. What I do know is this. Quick win tactics never last through change. Only clean quality search engine optimisation techniques have the best chance of surviving change or improving though change.

There are many more examples but too much to write in one newsletter. Just remember this, if you want a guaranteed natural search engine place on Google then you must first own Google.

So if anyone guarantees you a top place then ask him or her. “Do YOU own Google?” and if the answer is no, you know what to do.

Some Search Engine Optimisation Advice To Get You Going.

You Must Know Your Search Terms

It is not about optimisation your website for you business name (unless it is a popular brand name), it is about optimising for the search terms that your potential customers are looking for. Before I even start making a website I research the search terms to ensure my page names are named after them.

Knowing what search terms are the most popular and ensuring your pages (notice I said pages not homepage of website) will give you the most traffic. Make sure they are optimised by writing unique quality content on that subject including those search terms within this content, this will give you the best start. Never copy and paste anything.

You should only write content on one page for a maximum of 3 search terms, 2 is better and 1 search term is ideal.

So if you have 30-search terms for your business that you know will bring in traffic, you need at least 10 pages (3 search terms each) but ideally 30 pages of content, i.e. 1 page of content per search term.

Big Mistakes For Search Engine Optimisation

You can see from the above that not many 6-page websites will now ever deliver a high amount of traffic for competitive search terms, yet most new websites consist of just that, 6 pages. For example: 1, home page, 2, about us page, 3, services or products page, 4, contact page, 5, privacy page and 6, sitemap.

So if this business has 30 search terms it wants to be high for, then it should have ideally 36 pages. The more search terms you learn and the more pages you write the more unique doorways you have to let your customers in. It is a bit like having several shops down a high street rather than just one all belonging to the same company.

Every day I see businesses asking for quotes for 6 page websites. Unless they have a separate marketing budget that will send visitors to their website through other marketing channels, they are wasting their money. Why have a website if it is never seen? What I find worse is so called professionals advising a client that is all they need. Of course there are always the clients who even after good professional advice will opt for a cheap option rather than the one that will give a return on their investment. A website is not just a website. It is a silent marketing machine that will deliver you customers and more profits if done correctly, but a waste of money if not.

How Do I Find My Search Terms?

You can buy software to find these search terms, (do a search on Google, no advertising products here) but you can also get a few free terms a day from wordtracker.com. You would multiply this figure by around 10 to get the full amount of searches over all the search engines.

That’s it for now.

It is a perfect example of how business has changed in the UK over the last 40 years or so. Who would have though back then, that 40 years later the picture would be totally different and we would be looking for the car built in the UK, or even worse, find the car that is owned by a UK company.

So What Has This To Do With SEO?

I find it astonishing to still find businesses that think the way they do business today will be the way they do business in the future. I am not saying the Internet would have saved the UK motor industry, but I am saying that back in 1965, the motor industry was probably as complacent as many businesses are today about what their customers would want from them in the future years.

Today you may not be interested in the Internet or being top of the search engines, but do you know whether this will be the deciding factor of your business success in the future?

Here Are Some Questions To Ask

Is it possible that all the widgets you sell may be bought abroad from a competitor and not from you, because your customers were able to find another supplier online?

Is it possible that all the widgets you sell may be bought nationally from a competitor and not from you, because your customers were able to find your competition online?

Is it possible that the your UK market size of your sector will be not be big enough in the future to sustain your business; so would you need to sell abroad?

Is it possible that your customers will no longer need to buy locally and will shop around nationally or internationally to find the best deal for them?

Those who look to how they intend to take the their business forward rather than trying to keep what they have got are likely to be the long term winners.

Here Is The Bad News! A website By Itself Is No Longer Enough.

You can switch a website on, but you cannot switch good Search Engine results on. There is a natural timeline to all sectors to get to the first page and some, even now can take months if not years to get there. If it was that easy, we would all be in Barbados now on the beach.

SEO takes a lot of hard work by someone or a company that knows what it is doing and is prepared to tell you the truth about SEO and not false promises.

So what will the future years bring to you?

Another SEO Tip

After you have researched your keywords or search terms, make sure you name your pages names after them. For example if you sell purple elephants, then name your page “purple-elephants.htm” etc.

Most websites consist of a page that is named services or products. This is too generic and does nothing to help the search engine find out what you site is about, in order to rank it correctly.

That is it folks See you later