In terms of keywords selection, there’s no straight answer. Ultimately it’s a combination of logic, research and an intuitive feeling that SEO specialists develop with experience. As for how we incorporate these keywords – in a way that increases its search relevancy – SEO specialists embed key terms and phrases (including variations thereof) onto the page and into the site’s coding.

This is effective because Google doesn’t view a website as we, the human viewer see it; Google sees a web page in terms of code. So optimising a web page with given key phrases enables search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and ASK, understand and index the relevant subject matter of that page.

The down side of page optimisation is the risk of making a page look completely artificial due to inexperienced web companies flooding their client’s site with keywords, page by page, and whilst this may increase a page’s relevancy, ranking and in turn traffic to the site, people simply don’t have the time or inclination to sit reading repetitive wafts of text. So, to make page optimisation work and make the site enjoyable and informative to visitors, we make every webpage as concise as possible and choc-full of content.

Instead of simply relying on page optimisation, we mix in other SEO techniques such as link-building and blogging to maximize the chance of the all important conversion.

By doing this, we can really improve our client’s online presence and business, rather than simply increasing the amount of visitors they get to their site.

On the 25th December 1990, Sir Timothy Berners-Lee made his first communication on what is now known as the world wide web.

In 2003 a new term was born in preparation for a conference, Web 2.0.

The term seems to have stuck and is now used to describe a multitude of applications and platforms.

Web 2.0 What Is It?

Typically with many things internet based, Web 2.0 is somewhat difficult to define.

Coined as a ‘buzz word’, ‘marketing campaign’, or ‘tech jargon’, Web 2.0 is a subjective word used to describe a new phase of using the internet.

Web 2.0 is a change in focus, or enhancement in the use of technology and applications.

Perhaps the most significant development which is branded as Web 2.0 is the increased interaction and collaboration by web users with websites. An example of this would be Facebook, which is a website that allows users to interact with each other, post information and content themselves and collaborate together.

Other applications described as web 2.0 include:

# Blogging
# Ajax and other new technologies
# RSS
# social bookmarking
# social networking
# wikis
# dynamic websites
# integrated applications

These are just examples of what some people refer to as Web 2.0, ultimately Web 2.0 is in the eye of the beholder.

ComScore conducted research, based on UK traffic visiting the most popular blogs and also individual blogs.

The research stated that 41% of the total UK internet audience visited at least one blog in August – that’s 14.5 million people!

Get Blogging!

Here at TH UK, we’ve been harping on about Blogs for years, literally!

Not only are blogs an excellent way to interact with an audience online, our blogs can also work as magnets with the search engines.

When you also consider that blogs are relatively inexpensive for us to provide, we consider blogs to be one of the most cost effective assets a business can have online.
Source: www.comscore.com/boilerplate

The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising’s Bellwether report for the second quarter of this year suggests that while increasing costs and falling sales have led to budget cutbacks across advertising in general, a significant proportion of firms still mean to spend more on the medium.

According to the publication, a third successive quarter of downward revision of advertising budgets means this is the worst period for the sector since the 9/11 attacks.

But Omnicom Europe’s Anthony Wreford said in the Guardian: “Internet spending will continue to grow as more clients see the importance of this form of communication and the ability to use this medium, like PR, in a tactical context.”

ZenithOptimedia recently released a report indicating that internet marketing’s share of the global advertising market will surpass the ten per cent mark this year.

A blog acts as a diary for a famous person/artist and is an ideal way of ‘celebs’ keeping up to date with their fans.

Blogs in the music industry: Most singers/bands have their own blog on their websites now. Some artists use it to write to fans directly and others use it to write about press information.

Blogs in the fashion world: There are so many independant fashion and beauty blogs out there at the moment and even high street chain Topshop have a blog. Asos, the ever growing fashion shop online has a fabulous blog that is updated regularly and makes for a great read for fashion lovers.

Blogs in the sports: Sportsmen such as David Beckham also have blogs, this is an effective way of them keeping up with their fans and logging their latest triumphs.

Perez Hilton, a name that if you haven’t heard of, already you soon will! The celebrity obsessed blogger has turned himself in to a celebrity. With his funny and often cutting remarks about celebrities, Perez now has his own tv show, can be heard on Radio 1 and has many other projects in the pipe-line.

If that isn’t evidence of a successful blog, then I don’t know what is!

Having a blog is the ‘in’ thing at the moment, have you got one??

There has been a lot of press¹ surrounding the Phorm company, but ‘who are they you?’ ask. Phorm are an online advertising broker, like Google Ads, or Doubleclick, what distinguishes Phorm from everyone else is the way in which they collect data and target their ads to you.

By partnering directly with your ISP (currently Virgin Media, BT, and TalkTalk) they receive information about your browsing habits (your browsing history) to build up a profile, and then serve targeted ads on websites that have signed up to Phorm.
Now, it is important to note that Phorm state they do not store personally identifiable information about you on their system. The only information relating to you is a unique identifier stored in a Phorm cookie.

Due to the rising popularity of Ajax websites and web-based videos,  content is being loaded with no web page reloading,  which doesn’t show any value for

Although Nielsen already measures average time spent and average number of sessions of each visitor to a site, it will start reporting total time spent and sessions for all visitors to give advertisers, investors and analysts a broader picture of what sites are most popular, AP reported.

Currently, sites and advertisers often use page views, a figure that reflects the number of Web pages a visitor pulls from a site.

Yahoo and others, however, are increasingly using Ajax, software that allows sites to update data automatically and continually, without users needing to pull up new pages. This has meant that page views decline as a result.

Nielsen’s rival, comScore Media Metrix, also has addressed the rise of Ajax with the development of site “visits”, defined as the number of times a person returns to a site with a break of at least a half-hour.

Page views also drop as people spend more time watching online video at sites like YouTube, owned by Google.

Scott Ross, director of product marketing at Nielsen, told AP: “Based on everything that’s going on with the influx of Ajax and streaming, we feel total minutes is the best gauge for site traffic.”

Nielsen//Netratings said it will still record page views, but they will no longer be formally ranked.

The link exchange market is very big. As a result, there are vast numbers of scripts, software, solutions, communities and programs that help to reach success with link building. Many of the tools are already lagging behind in the 20th century and their automation no longer meets modern standards of search engines.

Many aspects of link building can be automated without any loss of quality. Everything depends upon how exactly this automation is done and what aspect of link building is being automated. Yes, there are many different ways of link building, and I don’t mean – one way, reciprocal or three-way links. I mean the quality of link building. Many people still think that it is enough just to pile links on homepages. With this approach no automation will help.

Today primitive link building is useless. Period!

Still, those who understand exactly what search engines love, can succeed with automation and quality link exchange.

Preventing mistakes when buying a link exchange tool?

To be ready to choose a professional tool, you must understand what factors to consider and why these factors are so crucial.

FACTOR 1.

Link exchange tool must build professional, SEO-boosted link exchange directories.

Of course, the value of links is not only in SEO, but losing the chance to get higher in search rankings is the same to wasting huge potential. That is why when link exchange solution is automatically adding relevant content to link pages, is automatically naming URLs of categories with your keywords, is automatically using keywords in meta – the chances for success with this type of pages is much bigger. Search engines love when good links are blended into good, relevant content.

FACTOR 2.

Link exchange tool must have REAL partner-searching algorithm.

Otherwise you will see all possible junk among your partners. Hint: simple search on keyword in search engines will not help; many sites misrepresent, others don’t know how to present their sites. All this will result in sports sites in your investment link exchange directory.

Surely, the relevancy of link partners needs to invent special partner-finding algorithm from the inventors of link exchange solutions, but heck if they are inventors – they will do it. If they cannot – they are cloning the tools that are already outdated and left in the previous century.

FACTOR 3.

Link exchange tool must automate.

Or you are buried with work. You will hate link exchange, and without doing link exchange on regular basis your competitors will eat you.

It makes me laugh when the vendors are saying that you’ll have everything automated and when it comes down to using their tools – you do routine copy&paste, copy&paste, etc. Or when you need to create each category of your link directory manually.

Surely, not everything can be automated. But if you scale it, you will see that with good programming a big part of this job can be automated with no loss to quality. If you buy the tool, it should automate. Otherwise it is better just to buy link building services when other people do this job for you.

Summary.

With these factors you are much more prepared to judge the quality of link exchange scripts and software. But this is not all.

Last hint: before purchasing any tool, try to find out how exactly the link pages are created by this tool look.

If you just see a typical pile of links, especially when there are no keywords in URLs of categories/subcategories and not keywords in title, and no automated + unique content – think twice. Perhaps you are looking at the tool of 20th century. And we are already living in a new millennium, when search engines and site visitors request more.

If you see that sites that use this tool look nice and have made some achievements in their niches – chances for you to get the same success are also very high.

Don’t lose hope; there are good solutions on the market. And now you know what to look at before buying them. So, you are well-armed.

Time’s criteria to choose these sites is quite simple, they pick websites that help users improve their internet experience like yelp.com and its UK version yelp.co.uk – Yelp helps you find the best restaurant, pubs and other local services in your area.

Or another site that meets the selection criteria is Fora.tv; a site with a wide variety of videos in a variety of subjects that are piped in from the top leading conferences from around the world. Its a great site to visit when you are tired of watching cat videos on YouTube and you feel that your brain needs some intellectual stimulation.

Within Time’s 50 best websites for 2009 you will find a list of sites to help you surf the web better, enjoy yourself, shop or just kill time on the Web.

But the big surprise is that sites like Digg and MySpace were left out of this year’s list.

Digg, as most of you already know, is a leading social news site famous for driving tons of traffic when content is promoted to its front page.

MySpace needs no introduction, the second biggest social networking site on the web which over the past year or so lost its top spot to Facebook.

Over the past year both sites have encountered ups and downs which might explain why they were not included in this year’s list.

Do you know any site that should’ve been on that list, or do you not agree with some of sites you saw on it? Please leave your opinions in our comments section and maybe we can make our own top 50 websites list!

The politician is also planning to use social networking sites to try to get people involved in a global deal on climate change.

In his new role, Prescott is responsible for finding out the opinion of the public and reporting back to the Council before the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December.

The Copenhagen meeting will bring together more than 90 countries to find a way to keep global warming below two degrees C by 2050.

Mr Prescott is also launching a new website, New Earth Deal, designed to promote the idea of a fairer settlement on climate change by requiring bigger cuts in emissions by rich countries and financial help for developing countries.

Online Marketing is fast becoming the most effective way of promoting any kind of business or event and with the help of blogs and social media yours can now be found easier.

For more information on all of our online marketing services including blogging, website development and search engine optimisation please visit the Hedgehog Digital website.