Today ebuyer.com, the computer and technology etailer, launched a £1 clearance giveaway. As they hoped, the demand was high but perhaps they didn't expect their capacity constraints to bring the entire site down with such a bang!

Within minutes of the website stalling, eBuyer.com found a tirade of critical posts on their facebook page and I'm sure a number of their staff scratching their heads saying "why didn't we spot this as a possible issue?"

The fact is, just because your website runs well in your normal day-to-day opperations, before you embark on a significant scale in demand, you must be sure your services can cope. Cloud based hosting is an option, the cloud gives you the flexibility to scale as your demand increases and scale back when demand reduces. Often such changes to capacity can be tweaked in realtime meaning no reboots or significant outage times.

eBuyer.com, we hope you manage to the fix the issue quickly and as always are more than happy to assist your scalability in the future so such problems don't happen again.

When thinking about engaging in social networks like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and others. Its best to understand the audience, as it is with all marketing, but more importantly in these online circles, it's vital to understand who is going to be contributing, creating or just spectators to the conversation.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just plug in an age range, a location, a gender and discover what the percentages of creators, critics, collectors, joiners, spectators and also inactive people there are in that group?

There is obviously more to the pot of strategy, but knowing that only 19% of female 25 to 34 year olds in the UK actually create content in social media sites compared to 38% of 18 to 24 year olds. Have a little play with this created by Forrester's, it's quite interesting and useful, especially if you don’t have the resources to create a full social media strategy.

Understand the different engagement names with this slideshare.

There was once the everyday mantra of the everyman SEO consultant that said your PageRank ("PR") is the most critical metric for tracking the performance of your search engine ranking improvements.

"PageRank?" Most clients would say, "what's that?"

To which the everyman SEO consultant would roll into an explanation of quality inbound links and the value links have to the pages they link to and so on. However today, PageRank is only one in many metrics the everyman SEO consultant should be talking about. Nowadays, Google is more interested in "engaged web pages". Ok, hold the phone once again! "Engaged web pages… what is that now?"

If you imagine a website that is top of the search engine listings and is therefore clicked regularly, however the website simply doesn't deliver the correct message to enough visitors. Would you consider such a site worthy of the top position? No is our guess and this is Google’s feeling also. Google wants to deliver quality content quicker and it gauges quality based on the duration and interaction a visitor has with each website. This is what engagement is and is what you should certainly track within your analytics on a weekly and monthly basis.

However, don't rush off to Google Analytics just yet. There isn't an "Engagement" button or nice pretty graph in Google Analytics, not yet anyway.

You need to keep track of the following statistics and try to get them to improve over time;

Bounce Rate

You want to see the number of people that visit and then move straight away reduce over time. You are always going to have a bounce rate, but you don’t need to be too concerned about it when it hits 25% or less.

Page Views

Page views are the average number of pages each visitor looks at each visit. Again, once this is above 3 you're doing ok, but try to increase this to at least 5. (It's a tall order for most, but worth increasing this).

Clickthrough Rate

This is the number of times your website is displayed in a search engine result compared to the number of clicks it receives. For example, if your website is displayed in search results 100 times but clicked on only once, your click through rate will be 1%. For SEO and organic searches your clickthrough rate should be 50% or more, however if you also run AdWords or PPC campaigns a clickthrough rate of 3% is good.

You can read more about some of Google's recommended actionable metrics here.

Normally when I get woken up by my 5 year old son Zack at some atrocious time in the morning, his needs are very simple! "Can I play with your phone daddy?” he asks, to which I reply “Yes, now shhh son, Daddy’s sleeping".

Yesterday, his hour of alertness was earlier than normal at 04:30, so he got hold of my iPhone 4 and started to play, after, of course, ensuring the volume was turned all the way down. Ok, so now wind forward a few hours and Zack goes off to a party and I settle down to look at my emails and read through a few articles I’ve been meaning to catch up on. As my PC whirls up I remember thinking that perhaps I should have done this on the iPad as it starts so much quicker, but take a sip of my coffee and decide that it is Sunday and there is no need to rush.

So Outlook opens and I have 54 unread messages. This is unheard of, I mean I cleared my inbox on Saturday night so I must be being spammed. Damn that spam filter we purchased, what a load of shhhh…… Then I realise, that these are actual contacts emailing me, all with a very similar subject.

Re: Hey! I need a wingman.

I of course get an instant flashback to 1986 to Goose and Maverick dog fighting, but that’s a whole other story.

It turns out that Zack was playing with some jetfighter game and he must have been prompted to invite others to play. Not knowing what he was doing, my little angel selected “Yes to All” and off went a few hundred emails.

So now I have to send an apology email to my whole contact list explaining why they received the email. Needless to say, I was not happy.

As it turns out, the email was affective in making contact with people that don’t normally respond to our marketing emails. Yesterday and this morning I have heard from people that I haven’t been in contact with for a very long time, so in actual fact Zack was quite an effective viral marketer.

Viral marketing is not about selling a product or service; it’s about engagement and getting people talking. Since these emails went out everyone I have come into contact with today and yesterday afternoon has, in some way, mentioned or alluded to a “wing man”. So if you are thinking of a good viral campaign, don’t think product, think more about capturing peoples imagination or simply giving them something to smile about.

Back in the 90’s, a revolution started. A revolution that’s speed and adoption impacted the world quicker and with more long term bearing than any previous transformation of the world’s technical landscape. Of course I’m speaking about the Internet. Yes, I guess we can debate my assertion, I guess we could discuss how the invention of electricity was a bigger and more important an event and that it was needed to facilitate the Internet, but hey, this is just a blog post, so a little poetic license please.

Anyhow, now almost 20 years on the landscape is ever growing but equally changing. Currently there are approximately 1.8 billion desktop based Internet users worldwide, this is compared to a massive 4.6 billion mobile Internet users. More than double the audience is on the move and statistics also show us that mobile users are more engaged.

Mobile phones, smartphones and mobile devices such as iPads are all being embraced by an ever increasingly diverse demographic of individuals. Whether they are waiting for a bus or perhaps a meeting, or just sitting in front of the television at night, these devices have their users more engaged because they are more accessible. They no longer need to wait until they get home to get access to their PC or Mac. Their iPhone, Android handset or tablet is accessible and instantly available. Hence, mobile Internet browsing is normally longer than desktop browsing sessions.

The future doesn’t look like its going to change either. Matt Brittin, Managing Director of Google UK, says that research indicates that in the year 2020, there is going to be an estimated 5 billion desktop based Internet users compared to a huge 10 billion mobile users.

Hence my question: “Shouldn’t we rename the Internet to Mobinet?”

Good job we can build side-by-side websites for Desktop and Mobile users!

I met with an old friend, soon to be client, the other day at his shop. The guy’s been running retail shops longer than I’ve known the meaning of retail. Anyhow, he really knows his stuff; he was telling me that he moved one of the cash desks the other day because there wasn’t enough space for customers to get through, plus if he moved it to the lower left corner he could get another 2 sets of shelves in etc, etc…

While telling me all of this he notices a small mark on a carpet tile, I’m not kidding, 10 feet away! "We need to get that cleaned or replaced" he barks while pointing at this dot! Anyhow, I guess his attention to detail and knowledge of his domain was really impressive to me, he has retail in his DNA.

The flip side to this is his website, not quite the same authority at all. Misshapen images, products with no descriptions or very poorly written ones. Categories duplicated and in some areas over 5 levels of navigation. And don’t get me started on the checkout process! I mean, does he want to sell anything? "Am I adding to basket or to the cart? Are they the same? I don’t know, let’s see! Ah, what’s this, I need to login first, ok, I’ll create an account then. Why exactly do you need my credit card to allow me to add something to my basket? I mean cart! Oh, whatever!"

But that’s not the worse part at all! Search good ol' Google for his business name, and his website comes below the fold at position 6 or 7. We can only guess his products are visible to the "page 10 brave".

The shame of it is that we see this kind of situation so often. Experienced business people that understand their realm of commerce so well, but when it comes to launching their Internet empire, they are convinced they can do it alone, with no prior experience or guidance. However, that in itself is not the issue. I’m all for self development and taking responsibility for your business’s progression. However, this is not the case. None of these sites are updated or have had any attempt made to make them better. The same problems exist online and offline, if someone has a bad experience in a shop, they are likely not to return and, online, the same applies.

Those old-school retailers with retail DNA coursing through their very being, need to find a way to have the Internet DNA spliced with theirs. And until they can, they need to find someone, or some- team, that can truly drive their online ambitions home.

It has long been the common phrase of SEO professionals!

"Search engines can't index or understand Flash content!"

But is this statement really true?

For some search engines maybe, but Google has been working with Adobe now for 2 years or so and they now claim that "almost any text a user can see as they interact with a SWF file, can be indexed by Googlebot". Our friends at Google say the same about Urls in Flash files also.

However, is this truly enough to enable quality optimization of websites that are based on Flash?

In terms of quality search engine optimization, we don't just want our content to be indexed, we want it indexed for the right reasons. We want to guide crawlers & bots to the pages, images and other content that we wish to expose. In HTML terms this can be achieved by clever use of words within certain HTML tags. We can control the priority of pages through sitemaps, robots.txt files, meta data and link titles and text. However, influencing even Google to prioritise Flash content is still a challenge.

Furthermore, quality search engine optimization is not just about getting visitors to web pages, there is also a need to analyse and respond to on page events such as which links are being clicked on. Flash once again restricts our ability to truly add value in this area.

When looking at websites and pages that run predominantly through Adobe Flash technology, we must still consider these pitfalls and simply advise our clients accordingly. Just because Google boasts it can index the content, doesn't mean the content can be optimized effectively.

Twitter is probably to blame! But Url shorteners are becoming more and more prevalent with a multitude of providers and differing services.

Just a little while ago, tinyurl.com was the king of this realm, but then came a whole host with http://bit.ly often being cited as the market leader. However, now that Google has entered the space, we believe they are well positioned to make an impact in this area. Then again, Twitters http://t.co soon native shortener may well give Google a run for its money.

What do shorteners do?

In basic terms a Url shortener take a large web address and converts it into a manageable length, for example;

http://www.mylongwebsitedomainname.com/somefolder/yetanother/a_long_page_name.php?parameter=long+bit+of+test&anotherparam=evenmore+text

Into something like;

http://shorturl.com/W4f8Jp

All that happens, in this example, is that the shorturl.com website, creates a permanent redirect to the full page.

However, behind the scenes there are 2 things going on;

1. Trust is one, the person clicking the short Url must decide to trust the url shortener system. Google is likely to have this trust already. Within the Twitter community, bit.ly and also t.co have the trust already, so Google have a little work to do.
2. Protection is where we believe Google will be able to flex their muscles more. Google already verifies its search index against known and pending web threats such as suspected malware, phishing sites and spam sites, so applying this against the shortener system will be easy.

We are switching all tweets to http://goo.gl for the moment and will perhaps look closer at t.co in the future.

A close look at when and when not to use redirects on your website from a search engine optimization best practice approach.

Yesterday I was asked by one of our International clients to help resolve a pressing matter regarding a redirect that occurs on their websites.

As they are an international company with an emphasis of sales in the US, Canada and Europe they run 2 primary websites. One focuses on their US and Canadian markets and the other is targeted to all other countries. They provide hosted and installable time tracking software and project planning software.

Anyhow, the main issue is to do with infrastructure, if a visitor arrives on the US website and chooses to signup for a Free 30 day trial, but they are resident in the UK, the trial needs to be setup in the UK server farm to ensure the very best performance.

A redirect to the UK website when the visitor clicks "Sign Up" is simply not the right thing to do, Google and other search engines can look quite unfavourably on such redirects, so what's the solution?

It all comes down to rules really, the key here is to understand why you need a redirect and what are the other solutions available. So the first thing we do is try to fit the requirement for the redirect into one of these categories;

1. Removal Of Website Content or Change Of Website Address
2. Provide Different Content Based On Criteria
3. Do Something In The Background Depending On Criteria
4. Deliver Different Content Based On Visitors Credentials

So lets break these categories down a little further;

Removal Of Website Content or Change Of Website Address

In this circumstance a passive or temporary redirect is not the correct way to go at all. In both cases, you should get your webmaster to configure a 301 Permanent Redirect.

If you are deleting a page from your website do the following;

• Add the page(s) to your Robots.txt file and ensure that they are also removed from your Sitemap.
• Setup a 301 Redirect from the deleted content to a live page or website area
  • If this is not possible, ensure the web server delivers a custom 404 (Not Found) page to the user. The need for a custom one will provide the visitor with a branded page rather than a default error page which will result in you loosing the visitor for ever.

If you are moving your website to a different domain do the following;

• Create a secondary web-space and label it with 301 or something indicating that it's the 301 redirect site
• Add the old host name (e.g. www.myoldsite.com) to the 301 redirect web-space and remove it from the original
• Add the new host name (e.g. www.mynewsite.com) to the original web-space
• Setup a 301 Redirect from the new 301 web-space to the new host

This will instruct search engines that your web address has changed for good.

Provide Different Content Based On Criteria

This is probably where most people feel the need to redirect visitors. Sometimes the criteria will be the search that the visitor originally did or perhaps the redirection is to do with geographic information or maybe the type of browser or operating system the visitor is using.

In these cases you should try your best to avoid a redirect. Your alternatives for these circumstances are to;

1. Use Ajax or client side scripting to display the alternative copy. Our Keyword Webware is a great tool for delivery of specific page content based on the search terms visitors used to get to the websites we manage.
2. Localize your website using static pages rather than redirects. If someone searches in their local language, they will end up on a localized page. If they drop in to your standard home page, by just typing it in as an example, you can provide the different language options at the top of the page.
3. Most variations in display performance can be managed using CSS (cascading style sheets) and conditional CSS (speak with your webmaster about CSS). If the websites HTML is correctly planned, it is also easy to deliver alternative CSS based on the target platform/browser rather than creating redirects to alternative pages/sites.

The above suggestions assumes your website is either being developed/designed or is fairly new. If you are running a legacy website using old HTML/CSS, you may need to bite the bullet on these points.

Do Something In The Background Depending On Criteria

If your website needs to alter something in the background, for example in the database, or perhaps needs to configure a service in variable locations, a redirect is not the best solution. Speak with your developers and webmaster about setting up a web service or Ajax enabled REST service to manage the background processing. Let the web pages simply negotiate instructions with the server directly rather than redirecting to alternative sites/locations.

Deliver Different Content Based On Visitors Credentials

If you are going to run redirects only when a visitor is logged in, then redirect away! There is no issue from a search engine perspective as the search engine can't see the protected content anyway.

As always, I have tried to keep this high level and as clear as possible. Please drop in a comment if you have a question or if the comments are closed, use the contact link above.

I haven't been here for a while, I think between working with customers and trying to get along with everything else that life throws at us, alas, the blog suffered!

Anyway, we are now back on blog and I have spent today refreshing the look of it. We have also dropped the Beginning Internet Marketing branding and we will gradually bring both our website and this blog in line with our new 24-7 Branding. Hey cool, can't wait for that!

Ok, so for now I'll keep it short and will work on some material for you all in the coming days. Let me know if you want anything specific discussed.

Until the next time!

Graham

You may have started to find that people you follow on Twitter are appending the hash-tags #in or #li to their tweets.

Basically, what has happened is, Linked-In (www.linkedin.com) has started integration with Twitter allowing its members to make their Twitter feed available to their Linked-In profiles.

Unlike many similar integrations, Linked-In allows you to select all Tweets to display or just the ones with the #in hash-tag appended.

A word of warning, Linked-In say that you can append #in or #li in their newsletter, but in the settings it only mentions #in, so if you want to feed your tweets into Linked-In be safe and stick with #in.

As an example, I just tweeted the following post. You can then see it displayed in our Linked-In status without any copy/paste or other nonsense. Very cool!
Don’t forget, appending the #in hash-tag to your Tweets will save you time as you don’t have to post the same status to Linked-In also.

Feel free to connect with me on Linked-In at http://uk.linkedin.com/in/fasttrackit

With the launch in December of our new email marketing platform we thought we would write a few of our thoughts on email marketing.

We start this series with perhaps a surprising statement. "You don't have to use an email marketing solution to be effective with your emails!"

Every time you send an email throughout the day, you have the opportunity to spread your message. Apart from ensuring you write your email well, you should also consider your email signature.

Remember Your Telephone Number

I hate receiving emails from people when they don't provide at least a telephone number under their name, even if I know the person. If I want to respond by phone I now have to dig around and look for their number. So always ensure your signature includes your telephone number, next you should ensure your web address is visible and is a link which can be clicked. Don't worry about including your email address, that's what the reply buttons for.

See an example of a poor signature below. Michael is suggesting I call if I have any questions, but doesn’t provide a telephone number.

Promote Your News

However, as well as your contact details you can become a little more interactive and suggestive with your signature. For example, if you write a blog or have a RSS newsfeed on your website, you can very easily add what’s called a headline animator to your email signature. Below is an example of our headline animator created using Feedburner. You can find out more about burning your blog/RSS feed and creating a headline animator with Feedburner at http://feedburner.google.com.

Get more followers

If you use social media sites such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter, you may also want to think about adding links to your pages. This can encourage more followers/fans.

Below is an example of our signature, notice that just above my name I include what I call an encouraging message. This can, and should, be changed periodically and can discuss new product launches, project performance etc.

24 is a great show! You just get hooked into Jack Bauers' hellish existence, a day-in-the-life of an all American super hero.

The season just gone (24 Day 7) brought with it a new president, Mrs Allison Taylor. At first, I was sceptical, we haven't seen a president as cool as David Palmer, played by Dennis Haysbert since the first few seasons. I wouldn't say Allison (Cherry Jones) was cool, but she was all good and although her decisions were tough, they are never easy in 24, she did the right thing in the end.

Hey, Cherry, well done on your award, day 8 is looming... Is Alison gonna play the part again I wonder?

p.s. I cannot for the life of me remember why I recognised her from many years ago. Did she used to be in a really popular show years ago. I seam to remember her as a child or perhaps a teenager. Any ideas anyone?