Grand Designs Finalist!

Congratulations to Mike and his team at Greenenergy (eu).  Their infrared heating panels made it into the final five at this year's Grand Designs awards.  There is "rumour" this may lead to a TV appearance for the products in one of their building conversion projects.  Given the breadth of competition, this is a stunning achievement.  Read more

Optimising for "Social Search"

There is a tug of war between Google and Facebook for the number one most popular website (although Google still consistently tops F/B).

I don't believe we're looking at Facebook and other social networks as being a replacement technology for Search, but they are rapidly becoming strong sources of "Referral" traffic for web businesses:

- There is always going to be a need for a "Hub" where you can find a business (a bit like Yellow Pages) - and this is what Search Engines are best for and are unlikely to get toppled any time soon. A key distinction here is that a person has "something in mind" they want to find;

- social networks offer far more of an "incidental" and "referred" type of traffic. People become exposed to business messages through association with the activity they are performing on the social engine. (e.g. if they are talking about skiing with friends, the social engine displays an advert about skiing, or their friend might recommend a place they have just been-to). In both instances the person can access a relevant site immediately from the social network. The key distinction here is that a person is not explicitly searching for an item when they find it on a social network.

This year I am seeing increased social referrals in the analytics on my own client sites and I believe small businesses have to leverage both Search as well as Social to maximise their traffic. However, such is the "youth" of this phenomenon and the overwhelming amount of opinion and debate about them, I have decided to compile an online "Brain" containing my own digest of the copious materials I have read about Social and how to leverage Social Networks to market your site. 

So rather than providing you a link to an article here, here is a link to my "Brain". I only had the idea for it as I was writing this article so it is very new. But please bookmark the link and return often as I add to it. See my Brain!... (Play around with it - you'll soon get the hang of it).

Sites of interest this month

I have been involved with the following sites since I last wrote:

International Casting is a modelling agency specialising in sourcing for television and advertising. We are in early discussions about web marketing for this exciting business.  We have already reviewed the existing site and will be taking our recommendations forward with the owner and designer.  See International Casting's website.  Huge potential.

Green Energy (Eu)

We really had to leverage the great news the company was generating, whilst not losing the strongly optimised website text (and search engine positions).  I have consequently added a data feed to the site from the company's blog to give repeat visitors to the site something new to interact with each time.  Of course the Grand Designs news is a fabulous new example of that!  Have a look at the site alterations.

HolidayGites.co.uk

We have made a start with the link building strategy for Holidaygites.co.uk which is a directory of Family Holiday gites in France.  This one will be a good candidate for social network linking which offers a fresh chance for this site to stand out in a competitive market.

Work continues on the "Nearly Heaven" proposition.  The "learn-to-fly" site is now on Google Page 1 for target phrases and so is the new "Hungarian Vizslas" website (which used to be part of the same original site as the flying).  This "divide and conquer" approach has paid dividends in terms of searchability and the analytics at present are still all trending upwards!  Social networks are beckoning...

Also in April / May...

We created a prototype website for "Socratic Consulting" and are presently waiting to put the finishing touches on this site. 

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