I'm writing to you today to run a little experiment... I want to find out who's using an XML Sitemap. Do you know whether or not you have an active sitemap on your website? Don't know? Check out the bottom section to find out how to know if you have an active sitemap.

Let me tell you a bit about what a sitemap does, and why it's important to have one.

Your website has various pages on it, telling users about you, your company, your services, your products... but how does Google find these pages?

Yes, Google will stumble upon web pages as it crawls the web, but there's no real definitive source that you can control that says to Google "Look! My pages are here! Pretty please index them!"

An XML Sitemap can be filled with all of the pages on your website, and then that sitemap can be submitted through the wonder that is Google Webmaster Tools.

Now, keeping a Sitemap updated can be an arduous task. You need to stay on top of new pages on your site, make sure they're added to the sitemap.xml document on your website then you need to check that it's being updated in Google... it becomes more of a chore than a useful exercise, and we more-than-often find that people keep it updated for a little while, and then it gets left by the wayside.

Well, that's where we can help!

We have a range of Sitemap Generation and Submission services where we can maintain your sitemap for you, and ensure it's being correctly submitted to Google... we'll even alert you if we find a problem!

These services start from just £25/month, so give me a buzz on 01923 201855 to see how we can help you.

Thanks for reading and have a great day, 

Matt Wall

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.

So, if you've been living under a rock for the past few weeks and have emerged, bleary eyed and wondering "What on Earth is this Google +1 button?" Then you've come to the right place.

The Google +1 Button is like… the "Like" button on Facebook, but instead of being for people's posts, updates and photos, it's for the web. Instead of liking a post, you're liking a website, a blog article, someone's profile… anything! To use it, you have to have a Google Account and, in turn, a Google Profile. If you've just got an account, you can still +1 a page, but you'll have to click "Create a Profile" when you first try to use this new feature. Why not try clicking our +1 button at the top to get into the swing of it?

The Importance of the +1 Button

The Google +1 Button is going to be important for many reasons; Google will begin to tailor search results so that if you've got a friend associated with your Google account that has liked a page related to what you're searching for, chances are, Google are going to rank the page they 'Plus-Oned' above the pages that they didn't. The other thing is, even if none of your friends have Plus-Oned a page, chances are the pages that have more will rank better.

It's for this reason, and this reason alone that we deem this new +1 button as very important. People are starting to speculate that if the +1 button kicks off a lot, Google might start to favour the pages using it over the pages that aren’t...

We also know that the +1 button is a surefire way to make sure Google knows about your page. All +1s will be stored, somewhere, in Google's complex database systems, but Google's algorithms will be looking at this list to make sure it is regularly spidering the pages people are 'Plus-Oneing.' (How many of these have we created?!)

If you have any questions, or need any advice, give us a call at 24/7 FastTrack IT on 0845 838 7801.

Learn more on the official Google +1 Page.

We've got 5 copies of our Beginning Internet Marketing DVD to give away! The DVD takes you through how to make your site search engine friendly, how to get it indexed and provides a fantastic resource for any internet marketer!

For your chance to win one of these DVDs, all you need to do is post a comment on this blog article outlining how you would increase a Facebook Profile's coverage, make it more appealing and/or increase the number of 'Likes!' The best five comments will get a copy of the DVD!

So, what are you waiting for?

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.

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.

Included at the bottom of this post is a special discount offer code. More information…

I am asked all the time questions like ;

"How can we get more visitors from search engines like Google™?"

To which I normally exhale and say my normal response of;

"Well, it depends on why you want more visitors! I guess you're really asking for more buyers from Google™ aren't you?"

Most of the time, the person asking the question looks at me kind of funny and says, "I thought you are an Internet Marketing guy, not a shrink!" I guess I have to expect such reactions when answering a question with a question!

Anyhow, there isn't a single, simple answer to the question, because it is about the purpose and function of the online material. Ok, hold the phone, what the hell is Online Material? Well, this can be a commercial website, blog, Facebook page/group, Twitter page, Linked-In profile, YouTube video etc, etc. So for the purposes of this post, let's just call it a website or blog.

So now we want to look at the words "more visitors" a little closer. If you sell Fridge Freezers and other kitchen white goods, I'm guessing having 100% more visitors from the student demographic is not really what you're looking for! What you want are more relevant visitors. So you really want people who are in your marketplace and interested in what you have to sell or discuss.

Funnily enough, this is exactly what search engines like Google™ want to do also! So your both singing from the same hymn sheet, your ships are sailing in the same direction, you're both speaking the same language! Google™ wants to send relevant visitors to you, and you want more relevant visitors. A match made in heaven!

However, communication with Google™ is a little different to explaining something to a customer in person or online. After all, Google™ is software at the end of the day, very smart software, but its computer code and doesn't interpret nuances or inflection in speech or the written word. It certainly doesn't understand images or cool looking animations and definitely doesn't get catchy or friendly titles.

If you are looking for a quick win, e.g. sales straight away, you should be looking in the arena of Pay-Per-Click or affiliate marketing. Having said this, promoting your website and/or blog through the natural organic listings in search engines (the free ones), is and should be the ultimate goal of any and every website owner.

In order to improve your position in the natural listings you need to play the game with Google™ and communicate effectively with it. At the same time, you mustn't forget your real target audience is still human, they want and need to be able to find the information quickly, they also don't want to crawl through pages and pages of text, just to get to the point. Hmmm, maybe I should shorten this post!

So, a few points to consider are below, but if you want more in-depth knowledge and understanding why not take advantage of our 10% discount promotional code available on our Understanding Search Engines DVD. The discount code makes it a steal at just over £35.00 including worldwide shipping. Users of the DVD have found that they received 30% more visitors from Google™ after using the training DVD! More information…

Things to look at and think about on your website;

• Webpage copy includes the keywords people are using in search engines regularly. (Finding the best keywords to use is discussed & demonstrated on the DVD)
• Each webpage has unique meta page titles and descriptions, uses well structured images, links & headings (The DVD explains this fully)
• Each webpage has a unique and specific purpose. If this is not possible each separate section of the webpage is clearly broken up with headings indicating the purpose and information found underneath. (Examples of this are provided for on the DVD)
• You publish your website or blog to search engines regularly through Xml Sitemaps and other publication methods such as directories & postings. (Examples of search engine publishing is both discussed and demonstrated on the DVD)
• You seek out related and relevant websites and blogs to create link partnerships with, in order to make your webpages popular in search engines eyes. (The DVD demonstrates the process of finding possible link partners and also discusses contact and communication strategies)

The list goes on! So if you are looking to improve your position and visibility in the natural listings of search engines, start by using the Understanding Search Engines DVD as a kick start.

Today our friends at Google(tm) released Fetch as Googlebot. This is a new tool available in your webmaster control panel (http://www.google.co.uk/webmasters/) under the Labs link in the Dashboard links.

It's purpose is to display what Google sees when it visits your web pages. The reason this tool is going to be useful to webmasters is that it will enable them to ensure that what Google received is what you intend them to see. This is not a tool to allow you to change the content you send to Google, that would be a real no, no and is a sure fire way to get your website blacklisted. However, it is intended to allow you to check all of the;

• HTTP headers
• Cookies
• Content types
• And overall web page content

At the moment the results are very raw and displays a basic dump of your web pages headers and HTML markup. We feel there is more to come though, we are going to add some comments to Google Labs feedback to include;

• Highlight ignored page elements
• Highlight issue elements found on page. e.g.
  • Poor markup
  • invalid doctype
  • invalid links
  • not followed links
  • un-indexed page areas
• Page Improvement recommendations
• Heat map of indexable content so that a webmaster can see areas of the content which are going to have higher index priority than others.

Why not let us know your thoughts and together we can make the Fetch as Googlebot a tool for everyone to benefit from.

PageRank™ is passed from web-page to web-page. It does this through links, everytime you link to a page on your own website or to pages on a partner or an information website you pass across PageRank™. You vote for that page!

So this is a good thing for who you're linking to and can be a good thing for you also, it demonstrates a sense of sharing and helps Google™ and other search engines crawl the web, you have now become a source of links. However you are not yet trusted!

To be trusted you too have to grow your own PageRank and have others vote for you, but that's another post and tutorial all together. If, however, your interested in this check out the Understanding Search Engines DVD.

OK, so on with the topic in hand. What can you do when you wish to link, but not vote? In real world terms it's like telling someone you know a plumber but can't vouch for them as you haven't used them before. In this case you can direct Google™ not to follow a link. There are 3 ways to accomplish this;

1. Meta tag directive 
2. Anchor (link) tag directive 
3. Robots.txt files

Meta tag directive

The meta tag directive is a small piece of code you add to your HTML head tag. It has a number of different settings, but in terms of PageRank voting, you need to use the 'nofollow' attribute setting as follows.

<html>
 <head>
  <!-- Other tags such as Title, meta description etc. --> 
  <meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOFOLLOW">
 </head>
</html>

This instructs the search engine not to follow any links found on that web page. You can also instruct the search engine not to index the page by using the following snippet;

<meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW">
 

Anchor (link) tag directive

Similarly to the meta tag directive, you are also able to add no follow instructions at the lower level of just a single link. You may have a number of links on a page and only a handful are not to be followed, in this instance using the Meta tag or robots.txt file is not suitable. You use this tag as follows;

<a href="http://www.targetsite.com/subpage.html" title="something interesting" rel="nofollow">Stuff I may not trust in the future</a>

The rel="nofollow" directs Google™ not follow this link.

Robots.txt Files

A robots.txt file sits in the route folder of your website and provides search engines with hints of what it can and cannot crawl. Therefore the robots.txt file is more of a NOINDEX directive than a NOFOLLOW one. A basic file may look like this;

User-agent: *
Disallow: /links/

However, you can add specific instructions to certain crawlers by adding the crawler name to the User-agent like this;

User-Agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /links/

This would have the effect of stopping Google™ from crawling the links folder but allowing other search engines to crawl it.

We hope this helps, please comment if you have any questions.

Google^TM has recently updated their verification process for their webmaster services. The changes are small but are slightly different to those described and shown in the Understanding Search Engines DVD.

The first change is that the Meta tag verification will no longer be generated based on your email address. Previously it was and caused verified sites to become unverified if your email address changed.

The second is to do with the file verification process. Now Google^TM will provide a file for you to upload to your website rather than just providing you with a file name to create. Therefore to verify your website using a file, use the download link they provide and then upload it to your website as instructed on the SEO Training DVD. 

Today Google Translate has gone on-line. The new system from the search giants is available as a small snippet of HTML & Javascript code which can be placed on almost any web-page. The result is a translation of the page to any of the following languages:

Afrikaans, Albanian, Arabic, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (Simplified),Chinese (Traditional), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Malay, Maltese, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Welsh and Yiddish.

You should consider however that only standard text will be translated. Text in images and flash movies won't be translated. In order to support these elements as much as possible remember to add well worded alt tags to your images and titles to your links. You can find out more about alt tags and title tags as well as best practise for managing images on websites with the Understanding Search Engines SEO Training tutorials.

You can find out more here about Google Translate.

It's not what we say! It's the actions we take and the results we achieve.

The following is the full narration of the video "SEO Case Study".

You know, talk is cheap, but actions, well actions, they speak louder than words!

I mean, around the Internet today, you hear a huge amount about search marketing, SEO and optimising websites so that you can win more traffic from, as an example Google.

There is a lot of talk! But very little found which truly illustrates ACTIONS or RESULTS!

So I thought we could look at search engine optimisation outputs, rather than just concentrating on what it is. In this way, you will understand how making some changes will dramatically improve your websites productiveness.

In this video, I’m going to show you how a small e-commerce website increased their website traffic from Google™ alone by 30% and grew their exposure and position in all search engines by a massive 50%, all in just 3 months.

Back in May 2009 For-Keeps.co.uk, a small on-line retailer of fashionable bags. Started down the route of optimising their website. They had 2 options;

1. The first was to subcontract an SEO specialist or
2. Learn the techniques and concepts themselves  

Cost was obviously an issue, but they wanted to develop the skills within their business, they felt that they could make better decisions about their Internet Marketing strategy now and in the months and years to come.

So they opted to follow the Understanding Search Engines tutorials. This is what happened!

After working through the tutorials and before they started the optimisation process they did 2 main things!

1. They picked out 25 keywords they wanted to be found in search engines for and;
2. They benchmarked their position in the major search engines for all of those keywords.

What they found was that they had;

• 2 top 3 positions
• 7 top 5 positions
• 9 top 10 positions
• 11 top 20 positions and finally
• 15 top 30 positions

Now this is a summary of all 25 keywords across Google, Yahoo™ and MSN™ (or what is now called Bing™ ).This isn’t so bad really; they had a total of 9 top 10 positions across the search engines, which means they would be found on the first page of these search engines for 9 of the keywords they selected.

OK, so now they run through the optimisation tasks they learnt and record their statistics again 3 months later in August.

What do the figures look like now? Well, they now have;

• 3 top 3 positions, which is an increase of 1
• 7 top 5 positions which hasn’t changed
• 13 top 10 positions is an increase of 4 
• 19 top 20 positions is a big increase of 8 and finally
• 23 top 30 positions which is also an increase of 8

Now these numbers may appear small but if we add all of these positions up and work out the difference we will have an indication of what their exposure increase has been.

They started, in May, with a total of 44 and in August it jumped to 65. This is an increase of 21 or 50.17% more search engine exposure!

So we have seen that they are found more frequently and higher in the major search engines. But has this also increased the number of visitors they get?

Here we can see that in May, they received a modest 323 visitors. In August, they received 396 visitors which is still quite reserved, but shows a 22.6% increase. Imagine if they continue to grow like this every 3 months. After 1 year, they would have more than doubled their traffic.

OK, again, that’s all very nice but how about website traffic from Google? Well, back in May, Google™ sent 152 visitors to the website compared to 199 in August, that’s a massive 30.92%.

Again, in May, Yahoo™ sent 11 visitors but in August that increased to 22, that’s a 100&perc; increase. There is no doubt that the number of visitors need to increase, but again, just taking Google™ as an example, if they continued to send 30% more traffic every 3 months, the website would receive almost 3 times the traffic from Google™ in just 1 year.

Now imagine how this growth could affect your website! But before we go, what do you feel about getting 30% or more new visitors from Google™ every month? Would it benefit YOUR business if you received over 20% more visitors per month? It’s easy, it’s affordable but most importantly, as we have show here, IT WORKS!

The Understanding Search Engines DVD, get it today and grow your website tomorrow!

Get more information on the Understanding Search Engines DVD by visiting our SEO Training website.

One of the things that frustrate Internet searchers immensely is being directed to a page which doesn't seam to have any relevance to the actual search they did.

In some cases the cause can be that the web page has changed but the search engine hasn't been updated yet. Spam used to be a big cause also, but search engines are becoming much wiser to pages that just throw in keywords without any real relevance. However the main cause is that the relevant content is just low down in the page.

As we know, people are impatient and only a couple of people in a hundred will take the time to hunt down the information they want. So Googles release of deep links will mean that a searcher will be taken not only to the relevant page but also to the relevant part of the page.

So, how do website editors actually support the new feature?

Well Google^TM is implementing the functionality through named anchors. A named anchor has the structure of; <a name="keyword_here" /> What Google will do is generate a link as a standard website address (URL) and append a hash instruction to the end e.g http://mysite.com/mypage.html#keyword_here. The users browser will then automatically scroll to the position of the named anchor.

So a few tips are;

1. To ensure that you include a named anchor next to each heading in your web pages.
2. Also consider adding named anchors to sections of your web pages which have clear and concise messages.
3. Name your anchors differently and uniquely throughout your page.
4. Although its not vital, try to use keyword rich names, but do not use spaces or any other characters other than hyphens and underscores.
5. Finally, try to include a table of contents ate the top of your page. The links in the table of contents should link directly to the named anchors.

Are you getting the most out of Linked-In?

Many people in business have a Linked-In profile nowadays but many are not getting the most out of the service!

Some people see Linked-In as just another website where they can promote themselves or their companies. Well this is certainly the case but it also comes with features that are not only passive but proactive in lead generation.

The real value of Linked-In is your connections and the 2nd and 3rd removed connections. i.e. You connect to your business contacts that connect to others who connect to yet more people. This is called your “Network of Trusted Professionals” whom you are able to connect with either directly or through introductions.

As an example, if you have 50 direct connections this could translate to around 500,000 trusted professionals that you can leverage through introductions. (These figures are for illustration only)

Getting in contact

Lets say that you are looking to partner with a company on a particular project or are interested in connecting with a particular business sector. Linked-In provides you with a search function which allows you to find people based on criteria you provide.

From the results you have 2 options;
1. Be introduced to these people through an existing connection of yours or
2. Send an In-Mail^TM

Introductions are free to all users and can be quite effective especially if you are trusted and well-known by the individual who’s introducing you.

In-Mail^TM don’t require any intervention by your connections and can be sent to any Linked-In member that allows In-Mail^TM messages. However, this service is charged for but comes with a guarantee of response. E.g. If you don’t get a response from the member within 7 days of sending your message, Linked-In credits your account with an In-Mail^TM message. The chaps at Linked-In say that In-Mails^TM are charged for because they help reduce SPAM and therefore In-Mails^TM are normally considered by recipients of them as more of an opportunity than just junk.

Building your profile

Linked-In is a significant website, that is to say that it is trusted by major search engines. If you are a member of Linked-In and you search for yourself in Google, your Linked-In profile is very likely to be found. Likewise the information you have loaded into your profile will be associated with your profile page and if your profile links to your own website you could be adding value to your website as a result.

Your profiles completeness is recorded in the bottom left hand corner of your Linked-In home page, try to get this as high as possible by completing as many sections as you can.

Get Recommended

Recommendations are great tools in assisting your sales process and Linked-In provides you with the ability to ask for recommendations and approve those recommendations before they are published on your profile.

Once you have some recommendations on your account you can direct prospects to your profile and show them that these recommendations have come from real customers and business partners and show more credibility in your company.

Answer Questions

Linked-In provides a facility for any member to ask questions. Other members can then answer these questions and be scored by the answers they give. If you provide the best answer, the person that raised the question will normally flag you as the expert and this will be displayed on your profile.

Answering questions adds value in two ways;

1) Questions and answers are picked up in search engines such as Google and will be displayed to Internet users that are asking the same questions.
2) If you get flagged as giving the “Best Answer” you will be considered an expert in that field and again this can be used to add further credibility to your profile.

General points for social networking

Generally networking websites are great for distributing your message and getting in-front of a wider audience. Some are more effective than others and we feel that Linked-In is one to interact with at least once a day.

Others such as Facebook, Twitter, StubmleUpon and Digg (to name just a few) are also useful but are less business focused but can be used to increase the traffic to your website and in some cases improve your websites visibility in search engines.

The technique of optimising a website so that it's found in search engines and, more importantly as high up as possible in search engines has been the dark secret of those that hold the key to the art form!

However, search engine optimisation (SEO for short) is only knowledge of what's involved. Ultimately, a website owner simply needs to know the processes and have an idea of what to do and when to do it. Furthermore, many business owners look to outsource many activities like SEO nowadays, but they certainly do this at their peril if they don't know what needs to be done and have an idea of how to track the effectiveness of what is being done.

The fact is that you can make a few, very simple changes, and see dramatic changes in your websites effectiveness in search engines such as Google^TM, Yahoo^TM, Bing^TM and Ask^TM.

Sure, after you have got the basics in place, it may well be time to pull in a specialist but to start with, you really need to bring your understanding up to speed and get the basics in place. Watch our introduction video and perhaps have a look around the contents of the Understanding Search Engines DVD features.

The DVD has been designed for both business and website owners as it covers both concepts and tactics which are ideal for management along with core hands on tools and techniques to be applied and used by website editors and administrators.

Its taken a little while, but we now think it has life. Yep, it breaths!

We want to give our clients and followers an interesting experience when they visit our realm. We hope that this blog fits well in the scheme of things.

So what can you expect from our new weblog?

Well, we intend to keep our posts up to date quite regularly and rather than just post boring stuff about how you can improve your websites visibility across the Internet using our training material. (Hold on, is that boring?) We are also going to be touching on some current affairs and some entertainment themes, after all, we would like to keep you interested!

We hope you and enjoy, and don't forget to post any comments, questions or ideas of your own.