The Value of eMarketing Today
- Did you know that 80% of people use search engines to find websites on the internet?
- And did you know that 80% of people use Google as their chosen search engine?
You can have the best website in the world, but if customers can’t find it when they search on Google, what value does it actually have?
If you want your website to be successful, eMarketing is something that you can’t ignore. The eMarketing service provided by eSterling helps you to reach customers that are searching in Google by optimising your site to be ranked within the search results.
It’s so important to get your website placed highly in Google and you can take the first steps to achieving this by getting in touch with eSterling. We will be able to talk you through our SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) packages and recommend a service that will suit you best. Email us on enquiries@esterling.co.uk for more information.
You can not underestimate the value of eMarketing today, because without it, 80% of potential customers may not be able to find your site!
The Freddie Mercury Google Doodle
When you work with search engines every day, like we do here at eSterling, you inevitably notice when one of them has had a makeover.
Yesterday our good friend Google livened up its homepage with a brand new Google doodle celebrating what would have been Freddie Mercury’s 65th birthday. The doodle features pictures of the Queen frontman making up the Google logo, with a large play icon in the middle. Make sure you’ve got your headphones on for the next bit, because when you hit the button you will be treated to Queen’s 1978 hit Don’t Stop Me Now and a colourful animation of the singer in full swing.
When the doodle is done, you will be taken to the search engine results for ‘Freddie Mercury’. Here you can read more about the singer’s life (and how it was tragically cut short in 1991) by reading Freddie’s Wikipedia entry, buy Queen merchandise using Google shopping; or have a look at Google image search to see what pop stars wore in the 70’s…
For those of you who are unfamiliar with Google doodles, they are graphics that replace Google’s normal logo to celebrate a special occasion, birthday or anniversary that is happening on a particular day. Over the years Google has created over 1000 doodles, some of which have become infamous in the internet community. Some memorable doodles include an interactive Pac-Man doodle to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the arcade game and a playable electric guitar to celebrate the 95th birthday of Les Paul.
The best thing about Google doodles is that they change every day and are used to celebrate anything and everything. But just don’t take my word for it – take a look at the Google homepage every day to see what doodles pop-up to catch your interest.
And whilst you might not be able to have your own Google doodle for your business, eSterling can help you achieve brilliant search results for your website. Get in touch with us for more information about our Search Engine Optimisation services by emailing helpdesk@esterling.co.uk.
Google releases +1 button for social search recommendations
The social web has just moved +1 closer to influencing Google Search.
Its recommendation system is similar to Facebook “Likes”, except the big difference being that +1’s also appear in Google search results.
This will only appear for users which are signed into their Google Account and you’ll also need to update your settings via the Dashboard (when it’s fully released). However at the moment it’s not fully live, so in order to get started now you can activate it via Google Labs here as an experiment.
What can I +1?
• Organic search results
• Paid search results
• Website pages (if the visited website incorporates the +1 button)
It’s likely that +1 buttons will be added to other Google properties too.
How will +1 help?
Is Google Natural Search the place for social recommendations? But recommendations are great, right? So why wouldn’t you want them in your search results?
+1’s appear publicly in search, on ads, your Google profile and across the web. This means that the results recommended by your friends will appear in relevant results. (So let’s hope you trust all your “friend’s” recommendations). It won’t just show your friend’s recommendations it will also use other connections such as Gmail contacts and Twitter followers, for example.
Your own +1’s will appear in a tab in your Google Profile. However, this will depend on whether you have allowed your +1’s to be visible to the public.
How will +1 influence PPC?
Google states that no changes will be needed with your current search ads as this won’t affect your Quality Score. Google go on to mention that : “(+1s will be one of many signals we use to calculate organic search ranking)”.
This strengthens the case for social media to influence rankings.
Is +1 going to be the new hurdle for customer services? Or will social media only effects results for socially active consumers?
Search Engine Optimisation 101
I was talking to a client the other day about the factors that Google uses to order the SERPs, it made me think that this information could be useful for our blog readers. So here we go, a brief SEO 101.
On page Techniques:
- Use of keywords in your Title Tag, preferably at the start.
- Use of keywords in the root domain name, in otherwords a keyword domain.
- Use of keywords in your H1 headline, preferably at the start.
- Use of keyword anchor text in internal site links, preferably contextually and not just on your navigation.
- Use of keywords in the first 100 words of the page.
Factors the Search Engines are looking for:
- The level of trust and authority held by your domain, so PR factors like domain age, links, references on the web, returning traffic and so on.
- The number of links pointing to your page.
- The keywords used in the anchor text of the links pointing to your page.
- The keywords used in the text of you webpage.
- The amount of traffic and the click through rate from the SERP’s for your domain.
Things to avoid:
- Malware on your website.
- Buying links rather than building links – avoid known link brokers.
- Links from your site to spam sites.
- Clocking by user agent, JavaScript or any other method.
- Server down time and unreliable hosting.