A fast server is intrinsic to your online marketing campaign

Lawrence Jones, July 4th 2008, 3:21PM

Did you know the speed and reliability of your website is a massive factor in the stickiness of your site, for both human visitors and search engines?

For the ever demanding customer, website response rates have to be immediate. How long do you spend on a slow page which doesn’t load properly? My guess is not long at all. And neither do your potential customers.

For slow websites the click-away rate is often incredibly high – and what do web users do when they’ve clicked away? They go to the next search engine listing, which just happens to be your fiercest competitor.

Speaking of search engines, many of the top ones use website response rate and server speed as part of the ranking process.

When a website responds more quickly, search engines see the site as more reputable and of a higher quality. These sites are rewarded because they offer a good customer experience and so they’re boosted higher in search rankings.

Fast websites are always located on quick and powerful dedicated servers. The hosting solution will often include more than one dedicated server for increased stability and performance – but that’s for another blog.

When you choose an internet hosting provider make sure you check out the reliability of their hardware. The speed of your server is as vital as other parts of your online marketing campaign.

Meta, keywords, PPC, dynamic content, great design and link building are all successful methods with which to advertise online. But what’s a great campaign if the website it’s based around is too slow to keep the attention of your customers?

Tags: dedicated server, marketing, ppc, seo, seo campaign, ukfast, websites
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The power of the press release

Lawrence Jones, March 6th 2008, 9:19AM

I’ve been collecting information for quite some time now regarding what you think is the most important thing for your website.

Currently the trend shows:
• SEO at 46%
• Link building at 26%
• PPC at 20%
• PR at 9%

However, if this was reversed would it really be so bad?

The highest ranking is currently SEO – if there is such a thing. This made me contemplate things. What exactly is SEO and how do we use it?

Search engine optimisation has evolved with the internet and it relies on a series of complex rules to place businesses in order of relevance to your search.

However, what’s the point in attempting to optimise your site if content isn’t regularly changed?

If your content isn’t changed, Google probably won’t recognise it anyway.
Plus, if content is substandard, no matter how high you get in the search engines, you continue to find that leads don’t convert into sales. People won’t stay on the site long enough to buy from you if the pages aren’t interesting.

At 26% and 20%, link building and PPC came in second and third which I find strange. Pay per click can be the most costly solution and therefore you’d think it would rank more highly in public opinion.

Coming in last place with a vote of just 9% is PR. In my opinion this has many more online uses than a lot of people realise.

Online PR has even more benefits in addition to the traditional function of building your brand and getting your business in the press.

With online PR you can distribute your release across the web in various different portals.

There are a plethora of online publications just waiting for your release. Not only are these sites trawled by local, national and international media relations professionals, each one can be linked back to your site.

As you know, links to your site increase your Google page rank and your position in the search engines, as well as serving to build your company reputation and get some press. So that’s dealing with link building, SEO and PR in one fell swoop.

And sending a press release is free.

By writing press releases you are essentially killing an entire flock of birds with one stone and yet figures show so many businesses don’t hold the idea in high regard.

In my opinion, the sooner you embrace the press release the better for your business.

Tags: keyword, poll results, ppc, pr, seo, seo campaign
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Keyword shortcuts can backfire

Lawrence Jones, December 13th 2007, 11:29AM

I was asked in a focus group recently, whether Google allowed a company to put multiple ads under the same keywords.

I have always been led to believe that Google does not agree with this, on the basis that it is unfair competition. It merely drives up the cost per click for other advertisers and allows them to monopolise the Google results.

I know that from time to time UKFast advertises under the same keyword. However, we do so only when promoting completely different brands. Each brand has a different marketing strategy so it is very unlikely that two UKFast ads are ever seen next to each other.

Whilst doing some research, I chose keywords that related to our industry. The two words being ‘dedicated servers’.

Immediately, I was confronted with a marvellous example of how you can take advantage of the system. The UK arm of a well established hosting company Rackspace, and indeed a competitor of ours, was ranked in spots one, two and three.

I spoke to Google this morning and they confirmed that at first look this is the case. They assured me they are already aware of the situation and it is with their policy team at the moment awaiting a decision.

I was pleasantly surprised that this organisation, who have grown so quickly, remain consumer focused and totally on the ball.

However, in spite of Google frowning on this type of monopolisation or abuse of the system, I imagine it is a very successful method of marketing.

Effective keywords are few and far between so it is easy to envisage the fun you could have if you literally own the keywords. Possessing the top three spots means tripling the volume of leads coming in.

But then on the other hand, I was brought back to Earth when I remembered a conversation I’d had recently. We’d won a piece of business from a company and our contact stated that he felt this cumulative marketing strategy was wholly unnecessary.

He’d needed quotes from three different companies and had to make many extra phone calls to really get a good overview of the industry. This monopolisation of Google top spots had really all been a waste of his time. Because of this, the way he now looked on our competitor was unfavourable.

So personally, my advice to companies wishing to use adwords to the absolute maximum is; ‘work within the rules’. There is no point cheating the system. Eventually you will be found out and it may reflect badly on the way you are perceived both by competitors and potential clients.

Examples of the domain names and their registrant details can be found below.

Domain name:
summit-hosting-guide.co.uk

Registrant:
Rackspace Managed Hosting

Trading as:
Rackspace Managed Hosting

Relevant dates:
Registered on: 28-Mar-2007
Renewal date: 28-Mar-2009
Last updated: 17-Jul-2007

Name servers:
ns.rackspace.com
ns2.rackspace.com

Domain name:
serverandservice.co.uk

Registrant:
Rackspace Managed Hosting

Trading as:
Rackspace Managed Hosting

Relevant dates:
Registered on: 15-Apr-2007
Renewal date: 15-Apr-2009
Last updated: 17-Jul-2007

Name servers:
ns.rackspace.com
ns2.rackspace.com

Tags: google, keyword, marketing, pay per click, ppc
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Can enthusiasm dampen results?

Lawrence Jones, July 20th 2007, 3:11PM

How often do you type in your keywords on Google to see where your advert appears? If you are like the rest of us, probably quite often.

Firstly it’s important to weigh up where your advert appears in the rankings. Are you going up are you going down? It is imperative that you measure your results.

However, are you aware that Google calculates the number of times you view the adverts? If you do not click on them, after a relatively short time (undisclosed by Google) your advert disappears!

Don’t worry it is still there for the rest of the world to see, however the search engine recognises that you keep ignoring it, so it serves you something else instead.

Very clever, but how do you check your adverts with out affecting the potency of the campaign?

Simple, go to:
https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/AdTargetingPreviewTool

This allows you to see all the adverts without any interference. This way you get to see everyone, including competitors etc. At the same time, by not clicking on competitors adverts, they are removed from the list as well, so it is easy to get a false sense of who really is competing in your market place.

You might be asking why does it matter to use the tool, and so what if you can’t see them, as long as your customers do?

Rest assured, Google is calculating the potency of your click-throughs and the volume of adverts that are being shown. Literally every view counts and therefore to guarantee best results, use the tool. In my opinion you should use this for natural SEO too, not just "pay per click".

Please note you can’t click through to the various sites from this page it is merely a read only application.

Tags: adwords, google, keyword, marketing, pay per click, pay per clicks, ppc, search engine, seo
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Click Flawed. Are you wasting money?

Lawrence Jones, November 22nd 2006, 11:01AM

There is no bigger fan of Google than myself, but is Google perfect? I often get asked questions about click fraud and from my close dealings with the Google team, I believe they work extremely hard to ensure click fraud is minimised. Of course you cannot guarantee that small volumes of unnecessary clicks will happen, however this in my opinion is a small price to pay for an overall effective market tool.

I think the problem Google faces is far greater and not too far away either. Over the past few years the people “in the know,” the SEO specialists have been making hay whilst the sun shone. They have been happily picking up a huge amount of new business from what seemed like a limitless pot.

Although this pot is growing each year with the numbers of users embracing the internet, it is not growing in the same proportion to the number of marketers prepared to use the internet to win business and their increasing marketing budgets.

So what happens when the expectations of the marketers bidding for a sector are greater than the volume of available visitors? Obviously the price per click goes up, but then what? In a perfect world if there are no more visitors Google would simply not send you more traffic.

There is a danger that when you use the “broad match” system that you receive visitors that are less potent. In my opinion it is imperative you remain in total control of the type of visitors you get to your site, and therefore recommend using broadmatch with caution.

More visitors does not necessarily bring you more customers. To combat this potential problem if you are using broadmatch, please make sure that you use negative keywords. This does limit the damage.

As someone who regularly stands up and talks to marketers across the country explaining how to create real success using the internet, I regularly sing the praises of Google and explain that they work diligently in their quest to be the best most effective search engine. I explain that Google’s goal is to provide their customers with the most relevant site possible. However be warned, it is very easy to make very expensive mistakes. I come across clients who make them all the time.

Tags: google, pay per click, ppc, seo, seo campaign
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