Is Your URL Working for You?

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So we have discussed content and meta data.  Next we need to look at:

IS YOUR URL WORKING FOR YOU!
Quite simply, if it does what is says on the tin – then its going to work for you!  Company name specific URLs are great to be found for a search featuring your company name, but why not also register URLs containing your keywords.  For instance, if you repair televisions – also use www.tv-repair.co.uk.  You can have as many URLs as you like pointing to your website, but I would suggest you keep it real.  Try to keep to the highest regarded URLs – such as .co.uk or .com.  Although I have recently been told that more credence is being given to .net extensions.  Similarly .co extensions are one to watch out for. Nevertheless the search engines still hold the main two extensions in high regard.

In addition to your your main URL, use your keywords in your page URL trailing slashes.  For example, the “about page” for our television repair company could be www.tv-repair.co.uk/about tv repairs/.

For more information, or to receive an optimisation report for your website, simply give me a call!

Let's Look at META Data

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Last week we discussed the importance of content.  Although that is probably the most important factor, it’s still only a fraction of the battle!  

LET’S LOOK AT META DATA

This helps describe an item and allows it to be found by the search engine spiders.  Your website will have three main meta data fields <title>, <content> and <description>.  If you right click on your website and select “view page source”, this will be clearly visible in the code.   You can also use this technique to see what your competitors are using.  This meta data needs to reflect your chosen keywords, but unlike the content of your website you can simply list your keywords and it won’t have a negative impact.  For instance, if you are a patisserie your <description> could be “homemade patisseries, cakes, desserts, puddings and confectionery”.   Make sure you use this meta data to best effect, because the search engine place a high value on this.

Next week I’ll discuss how to make best use of your tags.  If you would like us to run our report, which compares your website to your top ten competitors and advises on ways to out-perform them, simply give us a call!

RIP Steve Jobs

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Today the world of technology and business mourns the loss of a great man. Steve Jobs led Apple and had a huge influence on the technologies that have changed our lives and changed their respective industries.

He was renown for being a great speaker and below we have compiled some of our favourite quotes to remember Steve Jobs, 1955 – 2011.

“Stay Hungry, Stray Foolish”

“If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on.”

“When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: ‘if you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.’ It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘if today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been No for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”

“We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and ever one should be really excellent. Because this is out life.”

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”

“Design is not just what it looks like. Design is how it works.”

“I want to put a ding in the universe.”

“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful, that’s what matters to me.”

“You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.”

“My model for business is The Beatles: They were four guys that kept each other’s negative tendencies in check; they balance each other. And the total was greater than the sum of the parts.”

“I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.”

Steve Jobs. 1955 - 2011

Facebook Will Never Charge You to Use It. Here’s Why

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Recently I saw some people posting in their facebook status something along the lines of ‘re-post this before October 1st or Facebook will start charging you for your account’ it’s similar to others I’ve seen, which went along the lines of ‘re-post this before xx date or facebook will delete your account’ Both of these are daft and annoying, Facebook will never charge you for it’s service due to it’s business model and I think that an account would be deleted for inactivity a long time after you’d forgotten about it!

But just to help re-assure some people out there though, when I found this great article on the Mashable website I thought I would share it with you.

Article taken from Mashable website click here to read the original piece

The rumor that Facebookwill suddenly start charging users to access the site has become one of the social media era’s perennial chain letters.

While Facebook prominently advertises that its service is “free and always will be” on its homepage, it hasn’t stopped false rumors of a pay scheme from going viral on numerous occasions, most recently in conjunction with the major profile redesign that the site announced earlier this month.

Given the ubiquity of these rumors, we thought it was worth exploring their origin — and why we can guarantee Facebook will never charge you to use its service.

A Long History

Chain letters — which date back to the days of snail mail — have dogged nearly every online service that achieved critical mass. While they vary in the details, the general premise is that something negative will happen to your account unless you spread the message to your friends.

On AIM, this took the form of IMs that needed to be shared with friends to avoid account deletion. On Friendster, rumors spread that the service was getting “too crowded” — and hence, they needed to determine which accounts were active and remove those that weren’t. On MySpace, word was that the service was getting so popular that the site would soon start charging members, and the only way to avoid the fees was to — you guessed it — forward the message to your friends.

Of course, none of these situations ever actually materialized, but it didn’t stop millions of users from passing the message along. Snopes has a detailed overview of these scams and others that have permeated the web over the years, going all the way back to the early days of Hotmail.

Facebook’s Business Model

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – tips to achieve higher rankings

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I need to drive more traffic to my website, by achieving a higher ranking in the search engines!  Sound familiar?  Well there are two ways of doing this on and off-site optimisation.  It is quite simple really, although many digital marketing agencies like to make it sound complicated.  I intend posting regular blogs each week, to help you make the most of the internet – the first of which is below:

THE IMPORTANCE OF CONTENT
By far the most important way of optimising  your website is to ensure the content is correct.  The search engines want to present the most appropriate results to a user searching for a specific keyword.  Hence you need to think carefully about the most appropriate keywords for each page.  Use the Google Keyword Tool to find out the highest performing keywords with the least competition.   Use these keywords within the content, but don’t overdo it – too many will have a negative impact and you will be seen as a “keyword slut”.  Around 3%  density is right – that is one keyword for every 33 words.  Put one keyword in bold, as that will make a difference.  An average website will only be able to host about three keywords for each page, so it is important you get this right!

If you have any questions about the content on your website, simply post on this blog and I’ll do my best to answer them! Alternatively we can run a report, which will compare your website with your top ten competitors and advise how you should change the content and code to out-perform them.

 

 

The Blog is back!

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Great news, you may have noticed that our blog has been resurrected!

We’re not proud to admit that we haven’t been practising what we preach recently, but things are going to change, we’re resurrecting our blog and we’re going to start doing more of the things we know and love for ourselves!

If you want to be kept up to date with all that is happening at IT Pie then you might want to jump onto our website (www.itpie.co.uk) and subscribe to our eNewsletter.

For the time being, keep an eye on the blog for more exciting posts.

 

Welsh Rugby Players Association (WRPA) Website Redesign

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Great news! The WRPA have engaged us to redesign and develop their new website and e-marketing campaigns.

homepage v2

Following on form their corporate rebranding, we have attended several meetings with the executives to discuss design and functionality.  They seem to be impressed with our proposals, to the extent that we have been instructed to build the new website.

It is going to feature lots of interactivity including offers, promotions, news, articles, members login as well as an e-marketing portal.

Let us know what you think of the design?

The Ten Most Important Tips for Email Marketeers

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Let’s begin with the most important information first. Here is what we feel are the ten most important tips for anyone managing the email marketing process.

  1. Only send emails to persons who have requested to receive them.
  2. Only include content relevant to the type of content the person has requested.
  3. Be consistent with your sending frequency. Pick a schedule, whether it is weekly, biweekly, or monthly and as often as you can stick to that schedule.
  4. In most cases it is best to send business to business emails Tuesday through Thursday. We’ve found that the best times of the day to send are just after the start of the day around 9:30am or just after lunch around 1:30pm. It is best to avoid sending business to business emails after 4pm or on weekends.
  5. In most cases it is best to send business to consumer emails either between 5pm and 8pm Tuesday through Thursday or between Friday evening and Sunday afternoon.
  6. To improve deliverability, add a message at the top of your emails that says something like: “To ensure receipt of our emails, please add something@yourcompany.com to your Address Book.”
  7. Make the From Name for your messages either your company name or the name of a person at your company. Once you choose a From Name, keep it consistent. During the split second decision subscribers make whether to open your email, the most important factor in their decision is whether the From Name is familiar to them.
  8. Be sure to include both a plain text and an HTML version of your newsletter. Our System will automatically detect which subscribers can view the HTML message and which can only see the plain text message. If you don’t include a plain text message, around 5% of your recipients will see a message with nothing in it.
  9. Don’t use all caps or multiple exclamation marks within your subject line or body. Doing this will trigger spam filters.
  10. Build your list at every opportunity you have. If you have a retail location, add a point-of-sale sign-up form. At conferences or events, bring a paper sign-up form or have a laptop with a sign-up form set up and available for interested parties. Finally, add your newsletter signup form to every page on your web site. You can use the signup form generator within our system to automatically generate the code you need.

How to Maximize Email Response

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What good is sending an email if it doesn’t get opened??? Today I’d like to share an article on how to maximize your open rates by writing really good subject lines. Enjoy!

For most people, a majority of emails received are junk email. As a result, each of us has developed a little ritual we follow when checking our email. Initially, most people look first at the subject lines to determine whether to read a message. Today, however, studies have shown that recipients glance at the “From” field to see if they recognize the sender’s name or email address. Then, only if they recognize the From Name do they look at the “Subject” field to see if it’s of interest to them. This is why we recommend using a From Name that is either your organization’s name or a well known person within your organization—and to keep that name consistent with every mailing.

Regarding subject lines, we have found a good strategy to be having one part of the subject line be consistent, and the other be variable. This way recipients can recognize your newsletter when it comes in as well as get a small taste as to what type of information might be featured for that issue.

Some examples of bad subject lines are:

The PermissionBased Email Marketing Monthly for September, 1 2005 from [YourCompany]

This subject line is simply too long. We recommend keeping subject lines between 20 and 50 characters whenever possible. This 84 character subject line is likely to get cut off in most email clients and could cause the message to have a higher chance of being blocked by a content based spam filter.

[FNAME]’S ENTREPRENEURS CHRONICLE FOR SEPTEMBER

This subject line is in all caps, which will increase the change the message will get blocked by content based spam filters.

Garden Tips

This subject line doesn’t provide any information as to what the message is about. We would recommend adding at least what month the message is for.

OxyPowder Special – Save £10 Today Only Buy Now!!!!

This subject line includes both a pound sign (£) and multiple exclamation points. Both of these things would cause the message to have a higher chance of being blocked by a content based spam filter.

Here’s is a revised version of each of these subject lines:

  • PermissionBased Email Marketing Monthly for September

  • Geraint’s Entrepreneuers’ Chronicle for March

  • Garden Tips Monthly – Are Year Round Orchids Possible?

  • OxyPowder Special: 15% Off

By following these tips on From Names and Subject Lines you can maximize the chance of your message being opened by your recipients.

How to Avoid Sending SPAM

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I don’t think anyone likes SPAM. In fact, most of us despise it! So naturally, you don’t want to be perceived as a spammer. Thus, in today’s article I talk about how you can ensure you don’t get labeled as a spammer by mistake.

What Is Spam?

Spam is unsolicited email, also known as junk mail or UCE (Unsolicited Commercial Email).

If you send any email in bulk to more than a handful of recipients who have not requested to receive it, it will be considered spam, regardless of the contents of the email. By sending email to only to those who have requested to receive it, you are following accepted permission-based email guidelines.

There are numerous laws restricting spam, including the United States’ CAN-SPAM Act, the Australian Spam Act of 2003, and other laws specific to a country, province, or state.

How Can I Avoid Sending Spam?

Our system is a permission-based email-marketing tool that follows the most stringent permission-based philosophies in order to protect users from sending spam:

  • Communication – Your subscriber registration page must state why you are collecting the site visitor’s email address and how you plan to use their address. Additionally, by accepting our license agreement you have agreed to not sell or rent your lists.
  • Verification – we can automatically sends all of your new subscribers an email confirming their interest in receiving emails from you to ensure that they have agreed to be on your mailing list.
  • Unsubscription – Every email generated from our system contains an unsubscribe link which automatically updates your subscriber lists in order to prevent the distribution of unwanted emails to visitors who have unsubscribed.

Here Are Some Questions You Can Ask To Ensure You Are Not Sending Any Spam:

  1. Are you importing a purchased list of ANY kind?
  2. Are you sending to non-specific addresses such as: sales@domain.com, business@domain.com, webmaster@domain.com, info@domain.com, or other general addresses?
  3. Do you have any abuse@, postmaster@, or hostmaster@ domains on your list?
  4. Are you sending to distribution lists or mailing lists which indirectly send to a variety of email addresses?
  5. Are you mailing to anyone who has not explicitly agreed to join your mailing list?
  6. Does your email’s subject line contain false or misleading information?

If you have answered “yes” to any of the above questions, you may be labeled as a spammer.

Need help with e-mail marketing? Let IT Pie run your campaigns for you ensuring you get the best results – contact us today for help.