Many web and e-commerce success stories we see can often be attributed to a clever idea, a well designed product or a fantastic marketing campaign. The domain name is often irrelevant to their targeted search terms (think Amazon or eBay for example). However, more and more it is suggested that a strong “keyword rich” domain name can play a huge factor in deciding your success within the search engine results pages.

Take for example the search term “kitchen supplies”, we see that it ranks number one in google. This can be as a result of a number of factors, including quality links, content and so on.. but notice how the search term is highlighted within the search results. This is not only good as a visual aid to draw customers to click, but is argued to play a strong role in shall we say “aiding” the websites position for the search. This method of including the keyword within the website name is common practice, but close study and research of the most popular search terms within your business niche may give you an edge on your competition.

Submitting your website to online directories can be a great way to increase the number of backlinks to your website. The effectiveness of this as a promotional tool can be reduced however, if a large percentage of your submissions are rejected by the directory moderators. I have outlined some useful tips for increasing acceptance rates into these directories below; which will hopefully save you alot of time in the long run!

1. Keep the title/description between 20-50 characters and avoid cramming it with keywords.

2. Submit only the root directory, and not “deeplinks” (unless the directory is a specialist “deeplink” directory)

3. Write a quality page summary describing the content or services your website provides.

4. Avoid writing in caps lock or Making Every Word Begin With A Capital Letter.

5. Submit your site to the most appropriate category possible. I can imagine directory owners taking a half second look at your websites content, and if the category and description dont match they delete it!

By avoiding writing anything too spammy, and following some of these tips you should see a steady increase in your directory acceptance rates.

The powers of MySpace and Facebook as a marketing platform have been realised for a long time, but how can they be utilised for your websites promotion?

These sites are a potenital gold-mine of visitors for your website, and best of all it is a free resource. Some tried and tested methods for generating visitors are:

• Posting funny videos or interesting videos.
• Having a useful service or profile page.
• Offering free services or trials or
• Giving discounts on interesting services.

Although your reach can be huge on a site like MySpace, the best results come from relevant, targeted links that are enticing for the specific readers. For example a post on a bands profile page of “10% Discount on all CD Albums today - Buy now!” would be much more effective than an unrelated advertisement selling hair-growth pills for example ….

These platforms are also valuable resources for brand building, and allows your logo or comments to be seen on popular profiles. Use this to your advantage - go forth and promote!

One avenue of a websites link building strategy often over-looked is Article submission. In a nutshell, this involves writing articles on topics relevant to your site and submitting them to various article submission directories. In doing so, you will gradually build links to your webpage on topics that readers are interested in and create additional traffic to your site. This is a valuable tool to help your Search Engine Rankings.

Some things to bear in mind when writing articles:

1. Keep the content unique and interesting for the reader. You want as many views as possible.

2. Dont make the article an obvious sales pitch for your products; let the reader want to visit your company website.

3. Submit your article to high quality directories and industry specific sites to increase your article’s effectiveness.

4. Become active within the article communities, and aim to be viewed as an industry expert.

5. Give readers insider tips or advice on the topics in hand to gain their trust.

By using some of these tips when thinking about writing articles, you will gain invaluable backlinks to your site and targetted traffic to go with it.

You may have noticed a new look to the Onlineworx website recently. Pete has given our website a re-design, and continued with the slick black and red design theme. Very nice! If you have any comments, let us know!

The Manchester Website Design team have recently moved into luxurious new offices on new New Mount Street, near to the Manchester city centre. Located in the trendy Northern Quarter area, the newly refurbished office has great access to all of the amenities to be found in the city centre.

Although the new office is not a great distance from the last place, the added room is definately a bonus!

Why not give us a visit? Alternatively give us a call on 0161 212 1090.

Will SEO services help my business make more sales? That’s one of the most common questions we hear at Onlineworx from customers considering our SEO services.

Because each business is totally unique with different budgets and targets; selling SEO services generically can become quite difficult as the best way to carry out an SEO campaign that’s effective is to tailor a completely bespoke plan to ensure the best possible results.

To find out if SEO can help your business ask yourself the following three questions:

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We have just launched a brand new tool designed to help you acquire a quote for your company website in seconds. Now you can get a free website design price instantly or you can spend a few moments to fill out your detailed specification and receive a price for your website within 1 hour sent straight to your inbox.

Click here to get your free web design quote.

Is Google broken? I doubt that very much!

However tonight I noticed these results on page 3 when doing a search for “affordable website design” It’s very strange that nearly all the results on the page are displayed as URL only listings. All the sites I looked at that are listed in this way have titles and descriptions and it’s not as if there aren’t many pages competing for that phrase (only 125,000,000)

I tried quite a few varying terms but everywhere else I look the results seem to be fine. I haven’t noticed anyone talking about this on the SEO forums yet so maybe it’s only a bug relating to the term I tried.

Here’s a screen shot of the results incase it’s only on the datacentre I’m hitting……. Read the rest of this entry »

Ok, I just stumbled across this result when searching on Google. Here’s a picture for anyone who doesn’t like to click links.

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