IYES e-Solutions

Book Source

ian — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 10:50:53 +0000

BookSource.net is a book distribution company based in Scotland but with a worldwide market. We are currently undertaking a web marketing exercise.

A month after undertaking a comprehensive on page optimisation and search engine optimisation exercise, the website is at the top of the searceh engine rankings.

At time of writing it is no 1 on Yahoo (out of 62 million results) and no 4 on Bing. So far top of page 2 in Google and rising (watch this page for updates).

This is a surprisingly competitive sector and long tailed phrases are the key to success.

The sit has taken longer to index in Google than is normal and we are monitoring closely to gauge the pattern.

Happell Products

ian — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 10:28:42 +0000

Asked to assist with the optimisation of a small website promoting the products of sculptural wall designer.

The seearch engine strategy was to concentrate on the key markets and services. On indexing the site after optimisation, the site was page 1 for all key phrases and no 1 for the most important key words.

No 1 Google for key phrases 3d tiles and sculptural wall tiles.

Link Building. Is it worth it?

ian — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 11:22:04 +0000

The number of inbound links that any site has has lng been touted as a highly important metric in promoting any website’s page rankings. As a consequence SEO firms (and we have been no different) have been diligently finding directories to which to add our clients’ sites in the quest for the Holy Grail of page 1 Google. This is an extremely time consuming activity and when all is said an done, does this manual addition to relevant directories actually make any difference?

The perceived wisdom is that 100 inbound links are the minimum required to have any beneficial effect. Our experience is that it takes an hour to submit to around a dozen directories – so do the math – a day and a half to submit to the minimum 100! Even with the most relevant of directories it could take 6 months for it to appear in the directory.

Now, of course, there are those directories which will give you immediate posting for a fee. At around $5 a throw, that becomes prohibitively expensive and there is absolutely no evidence that paying for the link is more effective than those which do not charge.

Let’s be controversial here. Does every site with great P/R in Google actully appear in Google Page 1? Well, no. And the converse is also true. Websites with great on page optimisation which can be found on Page 1, Google, don’t all have brilliant P/R either.

Smaller, niche sites may well be found reasonably easily on the search engines after some judicious searc engine optimisation but won’t necessarily have great P/R. In the end it is being found by prospective customers that is important, or is it?

This might seem obvious, but our experience is that very few websites are built with any marketing objective in mind. Even e-commerce sites where the ultimate objective is to sell goods online rarely have any marketing objectives. As for brochure websites which are the main stay of the web – how many are ever considered as part of the overall marketing mix or promote the company’s branding. All too few. Our first question to prospective clients is always – “what do you want the website to achieve?”. Invariably the answer is “more sales”. Fair enough answer, but as we probe further it is clear that few people treat their websites like their printed equivalent.

We then discuss their markets, their business strategy and then how to convert that into a web marketing strategy which will start to make their website more appealing to prospective customers and consequently attract more traffic, which we will hope to convert to enquiries and so on.

This cannot be done in a couple of days of keyword bashing and needs to be developed over weeks and months. It is, however, a whole lot better use of time than submitting to directories which may or may not ever display the site.

Think on!

SEO and W3 Compliance

ian — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 12:32:44 +0000

There has been much debate over the years about how much influence that having a site validate to w3 standards has on Google page rankings. Matt Cutts has come out and states that it has absolutley no effect at all on P/R. Does that mean the end to all the hard work? I don’t think so.
The main reason that folks want sites to validate is that it makes it easier for sites to be cross browser compatible, which regardless of what the philistines say, is actually quite important. However, I no longer subscribe to the “must validate” at all costs philosophy. Not all validation errors are fatal to browser rendering. Take the use of the ampersand in coding. If not written as “&” then it will cause a W3 validation error. Now although this would clearly be better from a coding point of view,if not then it is no big deal.

It is true, though, that some errors will stop the bots spidering past the error even if it doesn’t prevent the site rendering and if the following piece happens to contain the all important key phrase or phhrases, then page ranking is bound to suffer as a consequence.

There are some who argue about the need for compliance to the above standards, but surely if the web is to develop then we should be ensure that there are standards that browser developers can work to and make life easier all round.

Ever ask the question, if Microsoft had not released IE6 (and IE7 for that matter) and IE8 had been closer down the line, then FireFox would not now be the second larget browser in town?

New Web Marketing Project

ian — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 08:40:59 +0000

Just started a web marketing project for leading hosting company. We will be involved in analysis and monitoring of statistics of new campaigns. These could be in the form of micosites, banner or Adwords. The focus of the project is the immediacy of the reporting with samples being taken very quickly after commencement in order than any fine tuning can take place. End of the month will be too late.

This is an exciting project for IY e-Solutions and demonstrates our credentials as web marketeers. We will be reporting on progress in the coming months.

Slow Broadband Speeds

ian — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 08:31:44 +0000

So you think that you have slow Broadband speeds? A South African Company was so frustrated that the challenged their telcom that a carrier pigeon could do better. The pigeon took just over an hour to reach its destination and some 40 mins or so to upload the data from the USB it was carrying. In the same time only 4% of the data had been uploaded by the telcom company. Don’t know about you but the prospect of our information winging towards us by pigeon has a certain symmetry about it in these days of everyone wanting us to hgo back in time to save energy.
See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/8248056.stm for full article.

Director Level Jobs Portal

ian — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 08:38:00 +0000

We are currently working with CorporateEagles in the design and build of a new portal for senior executives and Board level directors.

Google Maps Tracking

ian — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 08:29:10 +0000

Two of our websites are blogs charting the progress of two sailing yachts Jalan-Jalan and SY Concerto. Almost simultaneously, they each requested the facility to have people track their progress.
Using the Google map protocol and a combination of php and kml scripts this was embedded in a blog page.
There are a number of options which can be utilised in tracking depending on the number of co-ordinates that are in the code. In open waters it can be set up as a “track” but with coast hopping, it is better ste up as a number of points – otherwise one can have the track going over land – never a good thing with a yacht.

Although, the skippers forward the co-ordinates to me for uploading, this can be done simply by the crews – providing the co-ordinates are written in a specific fashion – and uploaded using ftp.

See where Jalan-Jalan and SY Concerto are currently.

Spanish version of the Swipe

ian — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 08:10:16 +0000

As a large proportion of the hits for The Swipe – guitar string cleaner – are from Spanish speaking countries, changes were made to the code to allow the inclusion of Spanish text to the site. These include Spanish language meta headers. eg Limpiador de Cuerdas de Guitarra is Guitar string cleaner.

The code is driven by a neat piece of php coding which recognises the langauge chosen by the user.

As El Swipe is currently no 1 in Google.es, we are confident that this strategy will drive even more traffic to the site.

Web Template Launch

ian — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:12:33 +0000

In recognion of the need for small businesses to have a simple, cost effective internet presence, we have developed a range of web templates. The entry point is a brochure type template. All the client needs to do is supply the logo and content and the web site can be online the same day.
For more advanced users who wish to display their products or general photographs we offer a portfolio template. We will upload the photographs, logo and content and have you up and running the same day.
At the top end of the range is our premium template. This has a strong content management system which allows users to manage their content whether it be purely content or photo rich.
All templates are fully customisable to the client’s requirements in layout and colour, are cross browser compatible and comply with latest W3 protocols on valid html/xhtml.

Included in the price is one year’s hosting and if required a .co.uk domain.

So if you are a small business owner, sole trader or club web development officer, these templates are developed with you in mind.