Contact Us – Website ‘Call to Action’

When you visit an ecommerce website the 'call to action' that guides you to make your purchase is pretty simple, it's usually a lovely big button that says 'BUY':

So why, when you visit an information based website, or for example, an accommodation website this 'call to action' button is missing?

Category for Google Keyword Tool

From apparel to the most unique category, that's what Google's Keyword Tool now offers:









How beneficial is this for the SEO and PPC aficionado, well it basically cuts out a lot of the mix up and the huge list of irrelevant kewords that the tool used to generate.

And just in case you never noticed before, and weren't adding 'sneakers' to your USA PPC for the UK word 'trainers' or were simply mixing up USA & UK keywords, now the tool also clearly depicts location.

Good work Google

Facebook Business Profile Visible to Public

There are probably 2 reasons why your Facebook business page is not visible to the public; even though your using the correct business profile URL, e.g.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/My-business/123456789...

And it's frustrating, because you click on the link and get the log-in page:














But it is easily fixed.

Website Domain Name Change - Think First!

You want to change your website's domain name, why? Is it because you want one with your business' relevant keywords in it - simple or maybe not.

You probably started out with a funky or quirky domain name, say:

www.bobscoolstore.com

But now a few years down the line you realise you want to actually generate some money through the website, its vanity role is over. So, your business is selling blue widgets, therefore you think the optimum domain name would be:

www.bluewidgets.com

Blogspot to Custom Domain with LCN Registrar

You want to transfer your Blogspot Blog, that's Google's free Blogging platform, to your own custom domain, and your website is hosted with the LCN registrar, that is:

http://BLOGNAME.blogspot.com
to
http://blog.websitedomainname.com

It's all a lot easier than I initially found.

I won't go into the ins-and-outs of why you want to make the change from Blogspot to custom domain because if you've got this far you've made the decision that you want to make the change.

Firstly I don't need to re-run through the whole procedure because here is a cracking page which explains How do I use a custom domain name for my blog?

Once you've got past these two stages:

Webmaster Tools +1 Metrics

A nice new addition to Google's Webmaster Tools this morning is Google's +1 Metrics. These include a breakdown of:

• Search Impact
• Activity
• Audience

I believe for most website owners these pages will stay empty for quite some time. That isn't saying that the +1 won't be used, just that for a lot of smaller websites it won't be used.

It will be interesting to see the integration of +1 into the web stats, especially seeing that Google is now going to integrate the +1 into AdWords PPC ads, you can read more on that here Google +1 for PPC.

I do have a slight gripe though, and that is Google have gone to all this trouble to add these new pages to Webmaster Tools, but still haven't done anything regarding the 'benchmark' reports, which I know a lot of SEOs sorely miss.

Website Usability and its Importance

You've got you're SEO (search engine optimisation) organised for your website, but your now finding your bounce-rate has increased and you're still not getting any extra customers or sales?

You see SEO is exactly what it says it is: it is work carried out to improve the ranking of your site in the search engines: Google, Bing, Yahoo!, Ask, &c.

To ensure you can convert your surge of new visitors into customers you now have to ensure you're website's usability is user friendly, website usability covers a plethora of metrics including:

• Is the website easy to navigate: i.e. can visitors find what they want easily?
• Does it use a layout that follows website protocol: i.e. logo top left corner, search box top right, navigation left-hand-side?
• If there's a check out is it fluid: i.e. has it got the minimum amount of steps and are they clearly displayed?

Website usability is just as important as SEO, it just doesn't seem to be quite so fashionable, yet it could be the making or breaking of your website.

From Website Consultancy: ensuring your website's usability works hand in hand with your website's optimisation to improve all around performance.

Google XML Image Sitemap – Hit & Miss

When and most likely if you get around to submitting a sitemap-image.xml for your website, you’ll probably see lots of different versions of how to…

The image sitemap is pretty similar to the standard sitemap.xml that is: in its protocol as well as its mistakes. You see so many website owners think that simply running their site’s URL through a sitemap creating tool and submitting it will do the job, this is far from the truth, both sitemaps need optimising – but I’m not here to talk about standard sitemaps.



Above is the standard coding required for an image sitemap, that’s all pretty straight forward, all you need to do is insert this at the top of your notepad or whichever web editing document you prefer. Now we’ve got to insert the URL of the page:

Keywords - What are They?

What is Keyword Research
Keyword research is the process you use to find the keywords and key-phrases that are relevant to your website and will enable it to rank well in the search engines. Meaning, these keywords or key-phrases are the ones that your potential customers will use to type into the search engines to find products and services that you supply.

Why is Keyword Research so Important

Irrelevant to whether you’re a large company with a huge website or a small company with a niche website, without targeting the correct keywords and key-phrases you won’t get any visitors, or at least you won’t get many! This isn’t only relevant to natural ‘organic’ search; it’s also relevant to paid ‘PPC’ marketing. So if you’re not using carefully crafted keywords and key-phrases in you’re: Titles, Meta attributes headings and body – you’re likely to be short of visitors from the search engines.

Website Consultancy: ensuring your website operates at its optimum with website management, usability assessment, optimisation and paid advertising.