Website Design Improves Search Rankings

We often come across fantastic businesses that have brilliant products and services to offer, but unfortunately struggle with search engine ranking. This is such a shame, not to mention frustrating for the business as the internet is one huge pie and everyone is fighting for a bigger piece.

There are so many reasons why investing in your business website is a good idea, if not essential for surviving in the competitive online market. It’s like having a beautiful car but having no license to drive it. If you really have great products to sell or services to offer, whether you can offer amazing value or specialise in a niche market, your website is the face of your brand, so it needs to look good!

So you might now be thinking ‘what makes a website good in the eyes of a search engine and potential customers?’ In answer to that: lots of things. In attempt not to babble on for too long, below is a bullet point list of summarised points;

• Content- text- Content needs to be fresh, original and unique, it needs to provide useful information that isn’t simply spammed with keywords because search engines are getting cleverer and more advanced; they pick up on this! Quantity is essential for search engine ranking, but quality is equally if not more important.
• Content- graphics- It may seem obvious, but don’t over complicate things. A website with great graphics may be pleasing on the eye to potential customers, but even though major search engines like Google can read most types of pages and files, search engines are in general text based. This means content needs to be in text format in order to be crawled, however Google can now index Flash content.
• Size- The more pages and more content you have on your site will improve search rankings no doubt, but as mentioned- content needs to be good quality and not the same regurgitated stuff. The broader your website, the better- but don’t just create pages for the sake of it. If you have nothing more to say, then offer free resources to tempt web users to visit and re-visit your site.
• Regularly update your site!- This is really important for search engine ranking as search engines pick up on fresh content. Once a search engine creates its search results, these are by no means permanent and are constantly updated to provide more accurate results for the user. If the information on your site is outdated, your search ranking will drop. Simple things like creating a blog, regularly refreshing text on your site, contributing to forums and submitting fresh content to other sites will help keep your site active in the eyes of a search engine.

At the risk of losing you to a coma, we’ll leave it there. These really are summarised points and there is so much more to be said! But if you go away having learnt anything, let it be this- your website is what sets you apart from your competitors and is possibly the most important part of your online business. If your business is worth it, make sure your website is too.

Adrac’s Ethical Link Building Follows Search Engine Guidelines

Many websites fall foul of organic link building and use unethical practices as a way of gaining publicity for their sites. Adrac has always maintained ethical link building techniques, reinforced by a recent blog post offering link building recommendations from Google.

Google’s recommendations for building quality back links mainly boil down to one thing; good content will earn you quality links.

To summarise Google’s recommendations for quality links;

• Produce good quality content which users will want to share within their community and link back to your content.
• Get involved with a community around your topic through contributing to forums and blogs- make sure what you have to say is positive and not just about spamming your site.
• Using humor can gain great links and get people to talk about your site. Try using viral and social media channels.
• Directory submission; Google suggests tackling this carefully as directory entries can be a great way to promote young sites on the internet, but only if the directory is topical and of good quality. Google discourages mass directory submission, but instead recommends using a moderated and well structured directory.
• Dabble with social media; linking to your site can be made easier for those who aren’t as tech savvy, through social media sites and bookmarking on sites like Facebook and YouTube.

This is all good news to us, as Adrac consistently use good practices to build great quality back links and believe that using good quality content and great interaction will bring you out on top.

Google Add-On Blocks Web Analytics

Google has launched a new version of its search facility with an add-on allowing users to opt out of having their Web usage tracked. This has sparked some concern for internet marketers who rely on web analytics for their industry.

Google reported in their official blog that the encrypted version of its web browser; Google SSL, will effectively inhibit third parties from intercepting a user’s web usage information. For web masters, this will mean less information about how a user came to visit a particular website. If a user is using Google SSL, it is unlikely their keyword data will be stored in web analytics.

As a result this could have serious implications for search engine optimisation as information about how users reach a site, and which key terms they used, is unavailable.

Google SLL does not offer complete anonymous browsing however, Google will still collect search data in order to improve its search service.

Google Merges Web and TV

Google has unveiled the ‘smart TV’ which lets users watch television as well as surf the net. The Google TV service will be available via special TV sets or through Google TV boxes which can be attached to a normal television.

Users will be able to watch live TV, while having the option to access content websites such as YouTube and Facebook, as well as being able to download applications. Google predicts the first TV sets, produced by Sony will be available in the US this autumn, and in Britain next year.

The majority of Google’s revenue comes from selling advertising on its website; analysts are suggesting that Google’s move into television will be a further extension of its business.

Yahoo! Buys Associated Content To Boost News

Yahoo! is competing to be one of the top news providers by buying a freelance news site. The web giant is hoping this will help it better connect with users and create “avenues for advertisers to engage with consumers”.

Associated Content publishes news from over 380, 000 freelance contributors and Yahoo! has announced plans to supplement its own traditional news content with independently produced material.

Yahoo! says it will integrate the Associated Content articles with articles written by dedicated Yahoo! staff and those from other media outlets as well.

Google Announce Change To Search Results

Google has announced it will incorporate millions of ‘short answers’ at the top of its search results pages in response to fact seeking search queries. Questions asking for a celebrity’s date of birth for instance, will be presented with a date above all the other search results and the source from where Google found it.

Google has just launched its redesigned version of its results pages and hopes the latest changes will help to keep it in competition with the likes of Bing which also introduced a similar feature, incorporating ‘instant answers’ into search results.

Microsoft Launch Office 2010

Microsoft today launched their latest version of Office software- featuring a free online component, Office Web Apps. Office 2010 has been launched to businesses and is being seen as retaliation to Google Docs.

Google Docs offers free online business tools which had been detracting core business from Microsoft. With the launch of Office 2010 and the free Web Apps, Microsoft has to be innovative to keep up with the ever present competition from other providers.

Microsoft is also offering the software to users of social networking site Facebook.

Google Gets Multi-Lingual

The Google Goggles application for the Android camera phone has now incorporated a tool to translate foreign languages. Back in February we blogged that the application was able to translate from German to English, but the newer version now includes French, Italian and Spanish as well.

Users of the Android phone can simply take a picture of an object and almost instantly receive information regarding that object or query. With the translation tool, the phone allows users to take pictures of signs, menus, instructions they don’t understand, and have them translated into a language they do!

Microsoft Develop Social Media Aggregator

Microsoft has announced plans to develop a social media aggregator tool allowing web users to see and access all of their social media activity in one place. Spindex will place a user’s social stream from each social networking site; Twitter, Facebook, Bing etc on one page, removing the hassle of having to log in to each individual page.

Spindex works in a similar way to products such as Friendfeed and is currently only available to those at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, with hopes of rolling it out in the near future.

For now, social media advertising remains a popular stream for internet marketers. It will be interesting to see what, if any, effect Microsoft’s Spindex will have on the social media advertising sector.

Yahoo Chief Predicts Problems For Google

Carol Bartz, the head of Yahoo! has suggested Google faces ‘a problem’ if it does not diversify its business. In an interview with the BBC, Ms Bartz claimed that Google’s problem is they are only known for search.

Yahoo! has an audience of more than 200 million according to analysts Nielson, and is one of the largest sites in the world yet Ms Bartz reveals only half of it is used for search. They compete with Google in the search market, who according to Comscore currently hold 65% of the US market compared to Yahoo!’s 17%.

But Ms Bartz has hit out claiming search is 99.9% of Google’s business and they must find other avenues to explore. Yahoo! own more than 70 websites and services but has been criticised for not making use of acquisitions and growing too large.