Joomla Cornwall Group Accepted

We're very pleased that the new Joomla Cornwall Group has been accepted by OpenSource Matters, and that we have now been listed in the official Joomla Groups directory.

There is more information about the "Joomla Cornwall Group" on our main web site, and anyone interested in finding our more, or attending events when we start them please do contact us to express your interest.

Best Regards,
Pete

SEO and Social Networking Courses on June 9th

We're pleased to announce that we will be running an additional pair of Internet marketing courses next week - on Thursday June 9th, being....

• Basics of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) for a small business - AM Course,
  
• Making use of Social Media Marketing (Twitter, Facebook etc) - PM Course.
  

The courses are based on the already popular Internet Marketing Course for Cornwall, which has helped a large number of Cornish businesses to become more competitive on-line since we started running it at Channel Computing 2 years ago.

Free places will again be available thanks to continuing funding available from DPN (Digital Peninsula Network), and which allows qualifying Cornish businesses to have a place (normally £137 + VAT) fully funded by the Convergence fund, and the drive towards developing the Knowledge economy in Cornwall.

You may come along to either the AM course (SEO) or the PM Course (Social Media), or just roll the two together to make an informative and useful day.

The focus of both courses is on using these channels to drive traffic and sales through your web sites, and to build easy to use web marketing strategies that really impact the bottom line of your business.

If you are a Cornish business and would like to apply for a fully funded place on this course, please contact DPN on 01736 333700, or via their web site: www.DigitalPeninsula.com

The usual round of internet Scams - Adwords and SEO this week

Today I wanted to highlight a couple of Google Adwords and SEO Scams going round at the moment. This is nothing new I know but people keep on falling for them, so its worth explaining a bit about how they work.

Here are a couple we've seen recently.

Scam 1. "We'll get you on the first page of Google for £99 per month"
This consists of paying for Adwords, and in many cases only for 5 keywords. Looking at the keywords being "offered" on one such email, it seems that they select some which are never being searched for, so that they will not have to pay your money for anyone actually clicking on the ads. That means they can hang on to more of it themselves.

In addition 5 keywords are not usually sufficient for an effective Adwords campaign. With a new campaign you normally start with quite a lot of keywords, and then filter it down to the ones that convert the best, and bring you the most business.

So to summarise the above offer it is not exactly theft, but it is a very low qualty offering, which decieves the innocent into believing that they are getting a great deal more than they really are.

OK, on to Scam 2. This one says....
"We'll SEO your site for Free - you only pay if we get you on to page 1 of Google for agreed keywords."

This is another naughty one, because it fails to explain the massive difference between "easy" and "difficult" keywords.

Firstly lets look at a "very" easy Keyword.
it is going to be "piddlesnotpot". A few days after this post has gone live you will be able to search for this word in Google, and I guarantee it will be on Page 1. So that wasn't very difficult was it?

Lets take a more regular easy keyword (or phrase).
How about "laptop computer cornwall". Now only 172 sites use this exact phrase by today's count, so you could rank on Page 1 for Google for it very quickly. I could offer you page 1 ranking for a variety of phrases like that - not mentioning that no one is actually searching for them!

Now lets take a difficult Keyword. This is one that you'd really like to rank for - lets say "Laptop Computers". It would be fair to say that you could retire on a page 1 ranking for this phrase, because not only is it searched for approximately 5 million times each month, but the opportunities for converting those searchers to a valuable sale (£1000 per sale perhaps) are significant.

If the kind gentleman offering me a page 1 ranking would accept "laptop computers" as our chosen keyphrase, then I'd happily take him up on his offer, but somehow I doubt he will!

Summary:
There is a bit more to setting up either a Google Adwords or SEO campaign than these over simplified offers. The selection of the best keyphrases to optimise for is the crucial first stage, based on factors including traffic numbers, relevancy to your business, and the difficulty of ranking for each.

Then whether you are paying for the traffic (Adwords), or want to be on the google organic listings (SEO), you have to put a proper strategy in place which will get you the most traffic for the amount of cash you have to spend.

However tempting these offers may sound they do not meet either of these requirements, so please don't be taken in - we've heard from too many people who have suffered from schemes like this, and ended up spending money on either nothing, or not what they thought they were getting.

Some of them luckily do end up going on to doing proper SEO or a well managed Google Adwords campaign, with all the fantastic and measurable results that these marketing tools can offer. Some of them probably just end up thinking the SEO or PPC advertising just doesn't work, or perhaps doesn't work for them, which would be a shame, given how powerful and cost effective it is when done properly.

How to post links in Forums

One of our trainees at the eCommerce course this Thursday asked me to send some more information about building links – especially in Forums, so I’ll put it here for everyone to benefit.

And the point is?
Remember the most important thing – what you want to do is put links on other sites, that link to your site. The sites where you may do this include forums, commenting on other peoples blogs, writing your own blogs elsewhere, article sites, PR sites, and profile pages on social sites and on-line directories. There were some long lists of these in the notes from our first internet marketing course.

Remember when posting links to do it nicely. Although you want the link for its own sake, you also represent yourself in a public way when you post around the web, so try to add value wherever you are posting. If posting in a forum, ask or answer a legitimate question which has some relevance to your field. Even answering an old question is OK - there will still be other people reading it, and the link back to your site counts just as well and helps your rankings to improve.

Finding a good forum to post on:
Search for “Your Keyword” and “forum”, and register for one or two that look popular and relevant. When you join a forum you can normally create a profile with a link to your web site, and a signature in which you can put your name and a link to your web site. The signature will automatically be put at the bottom of all your forum posts.

Writing a Hyperlink:

Most hyper-links are in html – and written in this format:

<a href="http://www.channelcomputing.co.uk/keyword-rich-page-name.html">Your Keywords in Anchor Text here</a>

This shows up on a web page like this: Your Keywords in Anchor Text here

If there is a “text editor” on the page where you are writing there is often a button with a symbol like an 8 on its side (chain link like web link), which you click to turn some words (your anchor text) into a link. If that is there you don’t have to write the full HTML version, because it produces the same thing.

However when posting in many forums they don’t let you use html, but something similar called “BB Code” instead. This stands for Bulletin Board code. The equivalent link in BB Code looks like this:

[url=http://www.channelcomputing.co.uk/keyword-rich-page-name.html]Your Keywords in Anchor Text here[/url]

Now you can probably see this will do the same thing as an html link, but is formatted slightly differently.

The easiest way to create your own BB Code link is to use this web page: http://www.seabreezecomputers.com/html2bbcode/ Paste in your HTML link and it will create the BB Code for you put in the forum.

(When I am looking for that site I always search for this: “convert html to BB Code”, and it comes up top.)

So Which style of link do I need to do?
When posting on Forums it is worth looking around to see if they use BB Code – most do. However if you are in any doubt about which format of link to put in, I suggest:

1. Trial and Error.
2. Use the “Preview” button if there is one to preview what your post will look like before you actually save it.
3. If you’re still not sure just put in the raw URL like this: http://www.channelcomputing.co.uk/search-engine-optimisation/web-site-traffic-building-and-seo-services.html.
   Although it doesn’t have the benefits of keywords in its anchor text it is still a good link, and most forums and web pages will automatically detect that this is a link and turn it into one.
4. Just get on with creating a few links and don’t worry too much if one or two don’t work, just move on and try another one!

OK Good luck, let us know how you get on!

Web site optimisation for Photographers and Artists

There have been a number of instances recently where I have looked at improving the number of visitors to very visual sites - typically for an Artist or Photographer. I'm lucky enough to have a few good friends that are really excellent photographers, so its a personal interest of mine to make sure they do well!

However there always seems to be the same essential mismatch between what the photographer / artist does, and the requirements of good search engine marketing.

Lets start with their site. Typically this has been made by a designer - a really funky designer who the artist thinks is going to portray their really delightful works of art in the most favourable and appropriate light. As they would. However the first mistake is right there, as the web designer uses Flash to display the images - Flash being a bit of a search marketing No-No before you go any further.

Next the front page of the site may well be a splash page - "click here to enter", meaning that the most important page of the site contains no words at all.

And thirdly the sparse-yet-beautiful designer layout may omit one important thing from the entire web site - you've guessed it: words.

So why would our visual artist require words on their web site, when their images are quite beautiful enough to do the talking?

Well this brings us on to search engine marketing, and the one thing that search engines can actually read - words.

So the artists site is essentially invisible. No words - no search visitors. If I were optimising the site I might be looking to have pages optimised for phrases like "Cornish alternative Art", or "London Magazine photographer", or one of the phrases that people are actually searching for. Once this is done properly the web site will start to attract significant visitor numbers - yes you've guessed it - the people who are actually looking for the "Alternative Artist in Cornwall", or the "London Magazine Photographer".

Instead the site is only visible for the few words it contains - which might be "JohnSmithPhotographer.com", or something similarly unlikely to attract any searchers who didn't already know the photographer any way.

So what strategies could be put in place to make this image-rich site into one that is actually capable of attracting visitors through search, who want what my friend does, but don't know him yet.

(Remember with most sites 60% - 95% of all new visitors will come through search)

Let's list a few....
1. The site needs some words. Its no point putting them on the flash pages as they won't really count there, and every time you change them it will cost a fortune to pay the designer. You need words you can add and change, and the best way to do that is with a blog. The blog can be added within the same domain (like this one for example), but be completely separate from the structure of the Flash site. Each can link to the other, and the blog will have regular posts designed not only to use a variety of texts and pictures to inform the visitor what it is that my artist friend is all about, but also to attract the search engines for those target phrases we listed earlier: "Magazine Photographer in London", or "Alternative Artist in Cornwall".

2. So over time the blog will begin to make up the dearth of words on the site, and give the search engines something to get their teeth into. Luckily almost all photographers and artist sites make exactly the same mistakes, so my artist friend is already starting to get an edge over their competitors' web sites. You just need to keep blogging those words (and images of course) - "here are the latest photos from the shoot I did of the new BMW XYZ 123" etc.

3. However to rank highly for competitive phrases ("london photographer" returns 4.8 million results on google.co.uk today for example) the site will also need some links pointing to it. These links tell search engines that the site is considered important, and to rank it more highly. Normally we get these links from other texty web sites, and the content of those texty web sites should be relevant to ours: kodak.com would be a great place for my photographer to get a link from, for example. So we have to write more words, and post them elsewhere on the web. Press releases, directory listings, articles etc are all popular ways of achieving this. But what about the images, mu artist friend squirms?

4. Well you can get links with images, and it relies on an extent to giving some of them away, or giving them away a little bit. What you do it make a low resolution version of your piece of art, or photograph, and make that available on the web. You can do this via:

- Google Image search. Using "Google Webmaster Tools" you just tell Google that its OK to index the images on your site (make sure you really do own the copyright on them before you even put them on the site of course). Then you make sure every image has a really descriptive alt and title tags to make it clear what they are about, and Google will list them all in images.

- Flickr is another place to post some of your images, and each one of these too can contain a link back to your site.

- Panoramio is a Google property that allows you to post images with high quality back links to your site, and it has the added advantage of an integration with Google Maps, so you can locate exactly where the image was taken, painted, or what it represents. Again more good links back to your site.

- Scribd is another site where you can post all types of documents, images included, or perhaps a PDF containing your images, as well as a description of what you are all about (and containing your main keywords), with a link back to your site.

Other sites: There are a pile of other places where you can list your images and other graphical works, while they contribute to the search rankings of your site. Remember however that people can steal them - so you may not want to use everything you've ever produced in this way. You can water mark images, however making them that much less attractive to view may not help you too much. Remember that you are only ever putting a low resolution version on the web, so people will at worst be able to use them on their mobile phone's screen saver, or perhaps their web site. If they want a good quality version, they still have to come to you.

Remember also that you need words in your links to your site, just like you need them on your site. So it really pays to have a lot of links that say "Alternative Art Cornwall" or "London Photographer" in the anchor text, to make it perfectly clear that is what the link is about.

At the end of the day you may be perfectly happy to use your web site as a kind of portfolio for people who already know you to look at your word, and if that is the case then your Flash site will do just fine without any further help.

But if you want the site to bring you new customers that don't already know you, particularly in these difficult economic times, then you should consider doing some of the things listed here: and you need WORDS!

Guests at the Internet Marketing Course

The internet marketing course went well again yesterday, with the usual interesting selection of businesses coming through to understand how to do better on the web. There were a coupld of good local designers there, so I had to be carefull what I said about the effect of too many images and Flash on the Search engine optimisation of a web site! A lynching by designers at the morning coffee break was narrowly avoided.

An additional bonus was that we had a number of old friends in the room, which obviously makes for a pleasant environment for me at the front.

Speakers in addition to Mike Kevern and myself were: Roger from the 12 Volt shop, who talked about the main lessons learned from building up his eCommerce business over the last year. Penny Paddle from Follett Stock gave the module about the legal implications and requirements of trading on-line, and Belinda Waldock from Business Link came in during the afternoon to talk about additional support available to businesses and internet entrepreneurs in Cornwall.

At the end of the day we had the political visitation, from MP Mark Prisk (Shadow Minister for Corwall no less), and Sarah Newton (the local conservative PPC - Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Truro and Falmouth). So the training room reverted to conference format in 10 minutes flat, tea and coffee were served, and we took the opportunity to talk politics. We were impressed by the ability of the political types to have a proper little chat with everyone in the room individually - clearly there is a lot of work into being elected to Parliament, but its always good to meet people that have done that leg-work and made the effort, and to find out a bit more of what they are about.

Please note that although this might appear to be a party political blog post I am strictly neutral, and having Twittered with Charlotte MacKenzie (Labour PPC) and a brother (Arthur Graves) who is a Camden Councillor (Lib Dem), Sarah Newton and I have decided to ensure balance by arguing vociferously via the social networks once we get her to start tweeting!

Forgive me for going a little "Hello" magazine on you now, with a few shots of our trainees and the Follett Stock crew chatting with Mark, Sarah and others.

David Tandy (FS), Martin Pearse (FS), Sarah Newton(PPC), NeilCaddy (JMC) and Chris Lingard (FS)
















Iona and Charlotte, recovering after the Internet Marketing Course.












Lucy Morgan and Kathryn Worlock from Follett Stock, and Peter Channon from Over Cornwall.













Belinda from Business Link and Richard Scrase from Follett Stock.













Conveyancer Terri from Follett Stock with Mark Prisk MP - could they be discussing the property market?













Shaun our Cameraman still apparently cheerful afer a long day.













So a final note of thanks to everyone involved on the day particularly our hosts Follett Stock, and looking forward to the next events that we are currently scheduling for April.

Shadow Minister to meet Cornish Internet Entrepreneurs

An Exciting development for our Internet Marketing Course this Thursday March 12th, is that the Shadow Minster for Cornwall Rt Hon Mark Prisk MP is going to use it as an opportunity to meet Cornish business people, as part of his brief to be the voice for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly.

Mark's visit will take place at the end of the day once the course work is complete, and I'm sure our trainees will be delighted to relax at the end of the day and exchange views with one of Cornwall's senior politicians. Mr Prisk was born in Redruth and went to Truro School, though was elected to Parliament as Conservative MP for Hertford and Stortford in 2001.

Internet Entrepreneurs:
The businesses attending the course on the day are among Cornwall's most go-ahead businesses, with their commitment to making their businesses competitive on the Internet a real sign that they have what it takes to prosper in the information age. As you may know the world of the net makes it possible for a small business to compete world wide against the big boys - as long as they are smart about how they use the net, and are prepared to do the leg work that is required to make their site successful!

Giving these businesses a chance to meet policy makers is a real reward for their efforts, and we hope also rewarding for Mr. Prisk as he works to engage with local people and businesses.

Visitors:
On the day we have businesses in attendance including designers, marketers, those in the tourism industry, marine sector, artists, entrepreneurs, as well as representatives of Follett Stock Solicitors, Digital Peninsula Network and Business Link.

The course partnership:
We have been able to build up a partnership we're proud of in this course, having started with Mike Kevern and ourselves, we then were please to get Follett Stock involved to provide the legal content of the course, and later moved the course into their own conference room in Truro. This year DPN have joined the crew and also had a huge positive impact, by making fully funded places available to Cornish businesses, which has greatly broadened the reach of the course to help more SMEs in the area.

Last week I delivered the content to 30 of DPN's own trainees, a lovely group who seemed really excited about the opportunities that this information opens up for them.

Follow up Course:
We're also offering a new follow-up course to those who have done the day - learned the theory - and now want our additional support to really put the theory into practice on their web sites. The follow up will be called the "Kick Start" day ( I am after all a biker at heart), and will be available to our previous trainees starting this April.

But for now we are concentrating on the course this Thursday, the opportunity for our trainees to meet with Mr Prisk, as well as working increasingly closely with Follett Stock, DPN and Business Link to make the course available to more Cornish businesses.

Additional Information:
Here is a link to our press release about Mr Prisk's visit.
The web site of Mark Prisk MP.
Here link to Digital Peninsula Network.
Here to Follett Stock Solicitors.
Here to Butterfly Business Development (Mike Kevern).

Please note that this week's course is full, but that we are keeping a waiting list for those who might want their names down for future courses.