I heart Manchester (I Love MCR) was definitely the theme of Augusts’ Bank Holiday Weekend.

After the recent riots in Manchester, it was great to see so many people out over the bank holiday supporting Manchester regardless of the weather.  It just goes to show a city united and Manchester did it really well.

The weekend kicked off with the increasingly popular Manchester Pride Parade, the turn-out was massive and there was a sea of “I Love MCR” flags lining the streets.

Monday was a great day for all Mancunian’s as we had Jenson Button driving his Vodafone McLaren Mercedes F1 car through the streets of Manchester, so many people turned out to show support in their “I Love MCR” t-shirts.

Being part of something so patriotic was amazing and has, I have to say, made the minority who recently decimated out wonderful City look even more foolish and idiotic.

So what can you do to show your love for Manchester? You can do this in many different way’s.

Firstly, you could visit the ‘visit manchester‘ website and follow them on Facebook or Twitter.

Secondly, you can head into Manchester and support some of the shops affected by the riots and do a little shopping, don’t worry you don’t have to spend a fortune, just a coffee will do. And we don’t need any excuses to do that? !

We all love to save a few pounds don’t we? Well get yourself over to ”mcr loves you” for some great offers, be quick they won’t last much longer.

Now, when you click on the button you are sent to page 2 of the results page as depicted below.  As you can see the page has a large number 2 in the uppermost left of the screen, this gives a much cleaner look to the results page.  If you click the ‘show more results’ button a few more times you will be presented with more pages of results, with the number in the upper left incremented by one, each page still has paid ads.

You can scroll through all the results if you wish, which is great.  Will this become a permanent feature and do you like the changes?

Using effective SEO services has many advantages. It will help people to find a business and get the product or service offered out to more potential customers. Finding relevant websites to build links with and effective keyword niches both create higher rankings among search engines. Professional SEO companies also can avoid some of the common mistakes that a “do-it-yourself” approach may create, which can actually harm a website’s rankings. Owners of smaller businesses may not know all the tricks that can be used nor even how to properly register their site with the vast number of search engines out there.

Optimising will improve website traffic, which will result in increased sales, expanded recognition of the product brand name, and a stronger reputation overall. Niche markets are especially good candidates for SEO, as it can be a confusing and difficult task to create proper links in order to let the world know about the specialty services or products being offered. Expert SEO consultants are experienced in the techniques that are used to expand markets into areas that can be easily overlooked by a business owner. They are also able to track the activity of competitors’ keywords and find ways to challenge them.

To a small business owner, the price of hiring an SEO consultant may not seem within a tight operating budget. If a business website is designed purely as a convenience within the context of an established local business, this may be true. To a business that seeks to expand their product to outside sources, SEO is essential. With products that are easily marketed across large areas, especially international markets, the benefits far outweigh the costs.

The same is true of businesses offering services in a large local area where competition may be heavy. If a business owner is computer savvy, then they can do much of the work; otherwise, hiring someone to do the work for them is the best course of action. Good SEO can mean rapid expansion and leave even less time for a business owner to spend learning and implementing all the tricks and techniques of optimisation.

At any level of business, good SEO is helpful. Serious business owners should consider the benefits of hiring a professional SEO consultant to handle this work for them. The Internet is a major marketing and communication tool in the modern world and can mean the difference between success and mediocrity.

Instead of the usual “no thanks” , I was rather intrigued. I listened while the salesperson told me why this information was so important and why it should be kept up to date. He went on to tell me why this information was so important to my SEO (Local Search) efforts, they seemed to have all the answers, and he appeared very well versed.

Now I don’t dispute the important of local directories and the role that they play in local search, what I do object to is the pressurising sales tactic they use. Nowadays you can’t get a listing on Yell or Thompson Local without speaking to someone first, someone who wants to confirm the information you provided them with in the first place and use it as an opportune sales tactic.

Verifying the information that I’ve just added to their system in the first place is a bit counterproductive isn’t it? Having to then re-verify again via an email link, which is then sent to the email account you registered in the first place- a considerable waste of time. All this for a basic listing in their directory. But given I wanted to be listed, I had no choice other than to accept the interruption as part of the course.

The salesperson then told me that I only had 20% coverage in the local business directories, my natural reaction was only 20%? But 20% of what? So I asked the question what other business directories are there that I need to add my business to? Apparently there are 24,, but he couldn’t tell me which ones.

The reason for this became instantly clear, they wanted to me buy the report that was worth £350.00, but if I purchased it today, I’d get it for the “special price” of £150.00. So what does that report contain I asked? Apparently it contains a list of business directories and instructions on how to list my business on these directories to improve local search. A great deal at that price or not?

Well not. So I decided to have a look at where the bulk of my traffic comes from using Google Analytics and most of my website traffic comes from the major search engines and social media platforms, not business directories.

Why? If you were searching for products and services, which would you use first? Yell or Google? In 99% of cases it would be Google and that’s the hard facts of the matter. I’m not saying you shouldn’t have a presence in these business directories, what I’m saying is don’t pay for the enhanced listing if you’re a small to medium size business as most of these enhanced listings are oversubscribed and your advert will be shown infrequently.

In conclusion, the power of the business directory is fading. And this is evident in the other sales tricks they are trying to promote. Don’t fork out hundreds of pounds for reports which are not needed when you can go to http://uk.getlisted.org/ and check your local business (local search) listing for free, also they have a list of business directories to submit your site to so do it today.

A few weeks ago I was at a mixer in Manchester and I happened to come across the director of PushOn, a very personable man, so I decided to ask him this question.

You must have heard the question – which came first the chicken or the egg?  The same principle applies here. 90% of the clients that I’ve dealt with consider SEO as something that comes after the design.

This question has bothered me for sometime and I wanted an answer to my question from one of my peers.  Should a client wanting a web presence spend all of their cash on a website that looks great but doesn’t convert? Or should the web designer have a basic understanding of search engine optimisation principles?

Also, should the web designer /agencies advise his/her customers to the virtue of search engine optimisation?  I’m 100 percent sure that a web designer isn’t going to discourage a potential client by offering them a long list of services. What should be offered is sound advice on the benefits of SEO as opposed to just taking the money for a site that doesn’t convert.

On my SEO travels I’ve come across customers who don’t seem to understand or see the value of SEO until it’s to late.  This could be down to not seeing organic SEO as a tangible commodity, like buying a packet of crisps from a shop (instant gratification). But that could be addressed by pay per click advertising.

I understand that with organic SEO it could be months before you see a return on your investment. But that’s no reason to ignore SEO altogether and only consider it when your online business is failing – even basic SEO is better than nothing.

Is Search Engine Optimisation Tangible?

I would say yes it is, using analytics packages like Google Analytics and ranking tracking reports, make SEO tangible for your clients. With the use of reports you can show steady progress on a weekly or monthly basis in turn giving the customer confidence.

He also said, “every web designer should understand the basic principles of SEO, and if they don’t, how can they build a website that is SEO friendly?” Search engine optimisation is not something you can learn in a day, it keeps on changing and evolving.  It’s a beast that will never be tamed, you just have to test and then test some more, but their some basic principles that must be followed.

So which should come First Web Design or Search Engine Optimisation?

Well the answer is really simple they go hand in hand. So if you’re a web designer or agency that doesn’t have a in house SEO department, or an SEO consultant on a retained basis, I would consider doing so.

Go that extra mile and give your clients what they need, good advice. If they don’t want to spend the extra on search engine optimisation that’s fine, as long as they know about the benefits of SEO. The last thing the customer wants is a website that doesn’t convert.

Shameless self-promotion, if your looking for a SEO Consultant to assist you on a project give Winston Henry a call on  0161 408 5106.  Search engine optimisation should be considered before during and after a website is built.

So I decided to remove the traffic stats for Bing and Yahoo from my monthly reports to see if my clients would notice, and surprisingly, they didn’t.

Google is the largest player in the UK as far as search is concerned with a market share of 90% according to Experian Hitwise. Google has the largest UK market share over its rivals, with Bing and Yahoo having 4.26% and 3.08% respectively.

Have you ever heard the saying that you shouldn’t keep all of your eggs in one basket? The same principle applies to Google. If all of your marketing efforts are geared towards Google’s products and services, what would happen if your business were penalised by Google?

Well your small business would suffer. Many a business has gone to the wall because it has relied solely on Google instead of spreading it’s online marking budget across multiple services offered by multiple vendors. If Google were to hit your business with a penalty, your ranking could go from page 1 to page 10 overnight and we not what happens then, a reduction in traffic. Even though Bing and Yahoo have a small percentage of the UK search market compared to Google, you could still acquire reasonable amounts of traffic from them.

So why don’t small businesses spread their marketing budget across different search companies like Google, Bing and Yahoo?

I believe its because of time and the steep learning curve when trying to use services by Bing and Yahoo, as opposed to Google. Time is a precious commodity for small and large businesses and SEO has a forever changing landscape and would require a large investment in time. But this shouldn’t stop you from optimising your pages for Bing and Yahoo, tapping into those multiple streams of traffic.

The same principle should be applied to pay per click campaigns, we are all guilty of learning how to run a ppc campaign on Google Adwords and because we’re comfortable with Google Adwords we just stick with that, when there are other options.

If time is a precious commodity for you and your business, consider using the services of an SEO Consultant or SEO Agency, as they have the skills necessary to ensure you have a presence on all of the major search engines.

When he first signed up to fb, he did it, like many others when it was called “thefacebook.com” (as you may have noticed if you have watched the social network). It was fun back then, in the good old times, as you only had to check it once every 2-3 weeks or so and there was no bullshit with the status updates that ape twitter, as you have it now.

Also, there were no adverts (can you believe it??!!) back then and you actually needed to be referred on by a university mate to join the site.

So are we all suffering from social media sensory overload and is Facebook suicide the answer?  What I’m trying to get at here, is that we have so many social media services which offer social interaction, but do we really need so many?

Is today’s Facebook trying to be everyone’s best friend, is it trying to be our social hub and do we want it to be?  I admit in the beginning I was hooked on Facebook like a junkie on crack, I was using it everyday and would spend hours on it, but now I rarely use it.

Why? because I just don’t care anymore, I don’t want everyone knowing my business or where I intend to be dining this evening, I just want to be private. If I want to share something with my friends I will update my status once i’ve performed it or or heaven forbid -call them.

Are your Facebook friends true friends? and how often do you interact with them?  I must first apologise to my friends on Facebook, I have about 120-150 of them and I do know who they are and admittedly they have touched my life in one way or another in the past.  But I would argue that most people on Facebook notching up 300-400 and often even 1000 “virtual friends” have never met these people before.

I have 4-5 really close friends and my partner has the same which we interact with on a daily or weekly basis and these people are true/real friends not virtual friends. So what do we really use Facebook for? Self- promotion? Are we embedding ourselves in a facade? Is Facebook truly indicative of our regular lives?  And is the reason why we have so many “virtual friends” on Facebook because they will never get to know the “real” us?

So what do we want Facebook to be?

I just wish Facebook would go back to the Facebook of old, when it was nice, simple and less complicated. Not this ad hungry application that’s trying to sell us stuff at every given opportunity or at least allow us to turn of the ads (user control) or there will be more of us committing Facebook suicide.

So I will continue to communicate with my friend, but I’m afraid it will be by the good old fashioned methods of email, telephone and Royal Mail, and I can 100% confirm that he is very much alive and kicking following his act of Facebook Suicide.

There are benefits to optimising your internal linking structure.  The following article talks about how you can apply simple steps to boost the internal links on your blog without making things difficult.

Keep in mind how you direct page rank on your site, and you need to be aware of the PR you send to those pages that really do not require it. Every blog has pages that are not very important such as the privacy policy page, terms of use, disclaimers, etc. You should have those pages, but it is not necessarily required.

Don’t Make Things Hard: You want your visitors to easily locate the most vital pages on your website or blog, so don’t bury them behind an excessive number of links. Your most critical articles or pages should not be further than two clicks from your main page, both from an SEO viewpoint as well as user happiness. Search engines favour those pages that are easily accessible from the homepage.

Like many other websites or blogs, you can include a menu in your sidebar that has a list of all your popular posts or pages. So keeping this in mind, select all the high priority pages on your site and link to them from the main page.

For blogs write a Summary: You can also create summary posts regularly featuring links to your most recent and best articles, with a small description of each one. This is another chance for you to add some great internal links to your blog while also making life easier for your readers, so those who are new can find your best content and those who have been visiting your blog for a while can catch up on anything they may missed. When you create a summary of your links, you draw the attention of search engine spiders to some of your older posts while also making sure they get plenty of traffic. It is important that you always look for new ways to create links to older articles.

Any text you post the is slightly related to another article you have written should include a link right away.

You can also improve the CTR from RSS readers by including internal links in the first few paragraphs of your articles. Your ultimate objective should be to have an organised blog or website that contents great content and simple navigation. Every single internal link that you add to your blog should lead your reader to something more relevant and helpful.

About the Author

Winston Henry is an SEO Consultant, he spends most of my time optimising websites, blogging and learning as much as he can about the art of Search Engine Optimisation.

So, how do you get potential customers to your new website?   By using one of the tools in your tool kit, search engine optimisation otherwise known as SEO.

Here you are most likely going to learn some of the fundamental SEO techniques that you should be using on any site you create. Website Placement can be split up into two separate choices. The two varieties of search engine optimisation are usually on and off page optimization. On page search engine optimisation is exactly what it sounds like, it is how your page is optimized for the serps in order to get your site positioned high in the results pages. The off page search engine optimisation is just how much attention your website obtains from other websites, by way of backlinks. This will furthermore help to boost your ranking in the various search engines.

Here are a few recommendations for effective on page website seo. Each page you build should be targeted around only a couple of search phrases. As one example let’s say you have a site about weight loss and you wish to rank for the phrase “Learn How To Lose Weight Fast”. The first thing you will certainly want to do is have that term as the title of the page. Then as you are making the page, you will want to include that term in the first sentence of the content if possible. If you are unable to get it in the first sentence at least be sure it is in the first paragraph.

Your keyword should also be included inside every other paragraph of the posting, don’t fill all the written content with the phrase as you might be penalised for key phrase stuffing. So as an average article or post will have about 7 to 8 paragraphs of content, depending on the writer, your keyword phrase should be included 4 or 5 times throughout the post. You will also want to make sure that the keyword phrase is also somewhere in the last paragraph of the post.

So now for the off page seo. The time is right to start building back-links for that page determined by the keyword phrases you want your page to rank for. By doing this when people find the keyword targeted phrase and just click on the link they shall be on their way to visiting your website. When search engines like google see a lot of links pointing from other websites to your site, and they are utilising targeted text links, the search engines end up providing you with better search positions for those keywords.

While there are lots of ways you can build these links, article marketing will probably be the best and easiest way to build a lot of high quality backlinks to your website. All you have to do is to create a different article on the very same topic and include a keyword targeted link in the piece of content. Once that part is completed take the articles and submit these to article internet directories. Each time the article is published you get a link pointing back to your web page.

What Is the Link Exchange Scam

This is the standard pitch you might receive through an email. An innocent-sounding webmaster proposes a link between your site and theirs. Naturally, they’ll open with a generalised compliment about your site. Here’s an actual e-mail, completely representative of this type of come-on:

You should never pursue such link exchanges. No matter how innocent-sounding and personal, these e-mails are sent hundreds of thousands of webmasters, if not millions. The sites promoted by such e-mails are nearly always bad neighbourhoods (sites that you don’t want to be associated with) or link farms. The risk of getting Google slapped or penalised for linking to such sites is very high.

What to do if…

If you receive emails of this type, don’t reply to them, just delete them.

About the Author

Winston Henry is an SEO Consultant, he spends most of my time optimising websites, blogging and learning as much as he can about the art of search engine optimisation.