A couple of years ago I decided to research the SEO strategy of buying and acquiring old domains for the purpose of increasing natural rankings.

Before I tell you some of the strategies, here’s some information on a domain I purchased that goes against all the theories about resetting the rankings of a domain when the WHOIS information is changed.

I bought the domain www.3business.com from pool.com which is a drop domain catching service, and after 1 month transferred the domain to a new ISP, changed the DNS and hosting. A new Joomla site was installed and I built a few links to it and it still has its original ranking and page rank. This is now a quality web directory and is used for directory submissions.

Since then we have bought many domains, moved them etc and have never experienced a drop in page rank. There may be a drop in natural keyword rankings temporarily, but this is not something to worry about if you the domains purpose is for back links. As long as the domain maintains its page rank – that’s what matters!  To reinforce this point! Would Google penalise you for selling your domain or moving it from a poor web hosting provider. I doubt it!

We also study the backlinks of a lot of competitor sites before we engage with our clients, and time and time again, and I see keyword rich domains being used for back link purposes for a lot of the top ranking sites on the first page of Google.  These domains are sometimes purchased new and sometimes they are acquired and bought from the various domain drop catching services like Snapnames.com, Enom.com or Pool.com. These domains are not used for 301′ng purposes but for placing back links on to the target sites home pages and inner pages. This is a viable strategy for SEO link building, and is a strategy that is used by many.

Example: A website that is targeting ‘water sports’ keyword phrase.

A. SEO Short Term Strategy: Buying old domains.

(1)  Search for some relevant keyword rich domains that are up for auction, sale or about to expire. Go Daddy has an auction section where you can bid for domains.

Other places to get domains is www.pool.com where you can create an account and start searching for domains straight away.

Here’s a search on domains with the key phrase ‘water sports’

Here you can see some potential domain names that require some further research.

(2) Analyse the page rank, back links and check the SEO ranking using opensite explorer – a great free SEO tool.

This will confirm what the linking sites are and if the anchor text is relevant.

(3) Once you have found a well matched domain, make a bid and wait to see what happens.  If successful all you have to do is wait 30 days before you can change the registrar.

One disadvantage with pool.com is that they do not have a domain forwarding service so you have to move the domain out if youd don’t want to pay their high hosting prices.

B. SEO Longer Term Strategy: Buying new domains

(1)  Purchase 2-3 new domain names with the word ‘water sports’ in it. Try and restrict the domain names to 3 words and avoid hypens if you can. eg. www.waterfeaturesuk.com

(2)  Populate these sites with different content that is relevant to your target keywords.  20 pages for each site.

(3)  Build links to these sites and aim to gain page rank of 2 with in a year. You will need to build back links using a mix of social media and other sources. Be sure to use the domain name as the anchor text from the backlink – this will give the site a natural link profile.

(4)  Use the domains and back link to your home page and inner category pages. Do not 301 the whole domain as the domain being 301′d will lose authority due to de indexing of the site. The backlinks to the 301′s site will still be passing link authority, but

(5)  You could 301 one of these domains

There is another way to purchase dropped domains by becoming a name registrar and building your own drop catching system but this option requires some technical expertise and a small pot of money. Only worth doing if you run a lot of website businesses.

Rankability can advise your company and implement these types of SEO strategies to get you to the top. Speak to one of our SEO consultants to find out more…

Having spent some time playing with this new social media music Toy, it was quickly thrown out of the pram and relegated to the social media toy box after about about thirty minutes.

In my opinion, Apple has arrived late on to the social media music scene, as Spotify did with their recent rush release of it’s new Social offering.  I have been using mflow for over five months now and it offers a lot more than Ping, and within a well designed and thought out download app.  If you want the freedom to really talk about music and discover new songs then try mflow – it’s the real deal!

You see, I have quite a few facebook friends and how am I supposed to interact with Facebook mates and drop comments, status messages and graffitti on other peoples walls in true hip hop style. Apple intended to launch with Facebook connect, but apparent last minute demands by Facebook proved ‘too onerous’ for Apple, Steve Jobs revealed. So when can we expect facebook and Apple to add each other to their friends list again?

Apples latest addition was supposed to be synchronising with users Facebook accounts according to the initial apple video tutorial, just prior to release.

This was noticed by a few including Jonny Evans of ComputerWorld, an expert in Apple matters.

So I decided to take the plunge. The sign up process was easy and straight forward although I felt short changed as I could only choose up to 3 of my favourite music genres. What is it about Apple?  They love rules don’t they!  Isn’t the whole point of communicating with other people about letting your personality come across. For your information Mr Steve Jobs, I have an eclectic taste in music from Billy Joel, James Morrison, Ray Charles, Mose Allison and a proclivity for 90′s dance music as well as the good ole 80′s era and some classical.

Once all the way in to the Ping interface, you can search for artists, people, comment on albums and music and you can invite your friends by email.  It’s a plain and simple no frills interface, and allows users to be able to share details of the songs they have purchased, and discover what their friends are listening to.

People have given mixed reviews on Ping so far. Om Malik, a well known technology industry commentator, said that the music-discovery tool “represented the future of social commerce”, while Jonny Evans, Apple expert at  said that Ping was “no Facebook killer”.

From a user point of view, initial feedback has been indifferent in that Ping’s recommendations do not match their musical tastes, while others have criticised the current restrictions in integration with other platforms.

What else is happening in the music search arena?  How will it effect SEO?

Google have announced a music search facility called One Box that is due to be launched in the US later this year. It will bring the power of search to the music industry.  You will be able to type in the lyrics of a song and the search results will give you sites where you can buy the music. But Google appears it will be partnering with specific music sites like imeme.

This is currently a US only service, but no doubt will soon be available across Europe pretty soon.

There’s no doubt that social media is now an integral part in the music industry, for artists, music sites and labels.

Ignoring this fact could mean you are missing out – it’s  time to get colourful with your social media campaigns.

Our SEO research team have been analysing online businesses and link building profiles for a  few years now and have revealed some interesting information in the area of link building.

Here’s a brief in site into Link Building from Directories:-

Many SEO companies submit their clients sites to web directories, but it’s not advisable to over do it. There’s no use in submitting to all and sundry and expecting good rankings.

The link building secret is to be selective.  Ensure you submit to the most appropriate category – an obvious one.  Often directory web masters do not provide a particularly useful and maximised SEO friendly environment- they use the default category listings and some don’t even have a keyword rich title tag. Try and submit to only quality human edited directories that are within your niche and preferably have your targeted keyword in the domain and certainly in the Title tag of the category page you are submitting to.

Here’s an example: If you have a car site selling used cars, and you are looking for a good directory to submit to, you want the category to be called ‘cars’ or ‘used cars’, NOT  ’automobiles’. In this instance the directory web master should rename the top level category to ‘Cars’.  Some submitters don’t realise that this is important and just submit anyway.

Are Web Directories a Viable Source for quality Links?

Yes and No! You didn’t expect to get a straight answer did you? To put this answer in to context; Yes, they can be if not over done and kicked the ass out of! No if they are not part of a wider varied link profile from other types of link source. (Social Media, niche sites/blogs etc). You may have a site that doesn’t match a category for keywords so adding your site and links to directories is probably not the answer on the whole.

Also check how many other listings are in that category as well as the page rank of the page you are linking from – too many out bound links will only dilute your own link.

Maintaining a less than 20% back link volume from directories would be a smart SEO strategy for any site in the ever increasing complexities and cleverness of the Big G algorithm.

Our experience is that if you want to achieve top 3 rankings on Google, you have to be the best and use a link building strategy that is better than your competitors.  If the top 3 competitors  have kicked the directory submissions method into touch, and mostly have niche related links, then you are going to have to do better than directory links.

Look out for the next post on ‘Are article submissions still effective?’ next week…

I proceeded to check this trimmed down version on my HTC mobile on O2 network. It worked a treat and straight away could get to my Inbox and messages with ease.

This is of course good news for facebook which will help them to further embed their social networking culture to more users though the operators, pre-installing the app on new mobiles.

Mobile providers and operators will now be able to encourage mobile usage and possibly leverage revenue by charging for the richer multimedia inclusive version compared to the free version. There are already 100 million users accessing Facebook from their mobile devices.

Facebook Zero will be an even lighter version of Facebook Lite, an existing service designed for social users in the developing world and rural areas of the UK with inferior broadband speeds.

The first thing I notice is that the BBC site is ranked at the bottom of the first page. Fifa are obviously ‘number uno’  but some of the domains listed on the first page of Google are  keyword rich domains;

www.worldcup2010southafrica.com, www.world2010cup.com.

Ofcourse Wikipedia is encroaching the online landscape – do we really need telling what the world cup is about by an over grown dictionary!

Glancing further down the page I see a world cup gambling site and the second page is freighted with world cup 2010 keyword rich domain names.

So what are the Benefits of buying a domain name with your keywords included?

Well it helps a lot is the simple answer.  It can mean the difference between a couple of positions in ranking. One of our clients ranks number 1 for ‘toys and games’  above the illustrious Amazon.  Of course there are many in bound links, and it is easier to rank your home page than an inner page like Amazons, but it maintains top spot on Google and has been there for a few years now.

So what is but a domain name?

It can help greatly with rankings to buy a keyword rich domain. That’s a fact!  With good on page SEO and a few inbound links and depending on the competitiveness, you can more often than not get top rankings quicker for a wide range of related search terms.

If you are targeting a specific geographical area, then this keyword name geo-targeting can be  a very effective SEO strategy. Example: a domain called  london-web-design.co.uk or a subdomain say,  london.domain.co.uk will give you the edge over other non keyword rich domains, although the sub – domain method would still require a seperate active link building strategy but would how ever inherit some link authority from the parent domain.

The downside of this type of domain that is won’t really stand out in a competitive industry and look too similar.  If you are also trying to launch a new brand name, this won’t be the way to go.  For affiliate marketeting, these types of domains can be ideal for squeeze pages.

So if you are searching for world cup related sites or just looking forward to the televised world cup 2010, maybe curious about the world cup in 3D TV, here’s an example of another domain that  conforms to the aforementioned SEO strategy. For more info on watching the world cup in 3D, read more here  www.3dtvwatch.co.uk

There are a myriad of SEO companies and experts out there to choose from, and a mountain of information and articles about how to do SEO, but how do you differentiate the chaff from the wheat – the myths from reality!

Like any industry there is the Good, the Bad and the Ugly!  To help you decipher some of the SEO terminology and myths, we have highlighted some of the things to look out for when wading through your SEO proposals and choosing the right SEO company to manage your SEO campaigns.

Rankability have recently un-covered an invaluable SEO report that reveals the top 7 SEO myths, and how to avoid some of the less virtous so called SEO experts that do not want you to know the full picture.

Rob Wells, the managing director of Rankability says  “There is a kind of cloak or veil of secrecy around SEO and how it is done, and sometimes this is used to levarage an advantage over clients who do not possess the means or knowledge to determine what is being said has any credence or not.  We sometimes hear from clients who have experienced  a poor return on investment with a previous SEO campaigns, and have been misguided by certain information that is freighted with jargon and untruths. Our report will clear up some of the confusion, dispell the myths and allow business owners to make an informed decision with the confidence  they need to commit to an SEO campaign.

He adds that  ‘We are different in our approach to SEO in that we go to the trouble of explaining our processes and are fully transparent in our online marketing methods, the effort required to achieve your goals, where the budget is spent and the potential return on investment for your business.

Rankability hope by publishing this report that it will clear up any ambiguity for all online businesses, and and help them understand that SEO is an invaluable and effective marketing weapon in achieving your online business goals.

Our purpose is to throw some light on some of these myths and engage with customers in helping them understand how they can benefit from our proven ethical SEO campaigns and the online success that our clients are experiencing.

To access this report, sign up using the form below:-

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I was looking for Simon’s official blog today and low and behold, there isn’t one. Punching Simon Cowell into Google (maybe not the best verb to start a sentence with for those who may be skim reading this bit)  brought up the following results:

Take a quick scan of the first page results on Google. Here’s my point, many celebs have their own websites or blogs so they can convey there own image and message online, so they can show balanced opinions and views about themselves to other people. We can see that Piers Morgan is sponging of Simon Cowells X-factor status via Google News. Not much you can do about that, but Simon doesn’t appear to have his own official blog or if he does, it’s not good enough to appear on the first page. The first real blog site to show up is basically a fan site, not an official Simon Cowell version;www.simoncowell.org. I’m sure Simon would like to counter some of the written content and  opinions about him.

I know Simon is predominantly in the news and every man and his dog wants a piece of him (even Gordon Brown realises that he could be shunted aside if he decides to put his name forward as an independant candidate at the next election), but in a few years when Simon has been relegated to obscurity to the lesser known channels, he may have to rely on his blog to let the world know what he’s up to.

On Page SEO needs the X-Factor

There are a few simple rules to look our for when optimising an article on a blog and making it search engine friendly so it will rank high in the SERPS.

Step 1: Choose your title tag carefully and ensure it has the keyword phrase with in it

Step 2: Configure your on page headers correctly with H1, H2 & H3 headers

Step 3: And the description tag? This isn’t really a step as Google doesn’t rank your pages using the description tag – it never really did give it much weight. Some other search engines do still use it as a ranking factor.

Step 4: Write atleast 750 words and use synonyms –  the more words for the search engines  the better, but be careful not to keyword spam.

Step 5: Ensure you have an RSS news feed so your subscriptions get ll the updates immediately. If you don’t have an existing audience to speak of, bookmark it yourself to give it some link juice.

Step 6: Link the article from the home page to give it some PR weight.

Step 7: Make it interesting and valuable to the potential readership. Include images to illustrate your points.

Reputation Management is an SEO service that enables you to take control of the top results and attenuate the negative remarks/comments that people may write about your company or you personally.  This can some times have irrepairable damage to your brand or name.  You can plan for this before it is too late, by carrying out a targeted SEO campaign on your brand name and dominating the search engine results, before anyone else does.

“It’s easy for Simon to shut people up on his shows, he normally just raises his hand, but there is no equivalent oral straight jacket for the search engines.”

Maybe Mr Cowell isn’t bothered about running his own blog – he orchestrates his ideals and news through the media, but when he gets voted off the telly, and has to rely on the internet to spread his message, he may need a blog that ranks higher than any un-official fan site, relaying bad press on him.

I personally think Simon is a fair bloke, so if Simon is ever on the look out for a professional SEO company with the X-factor, then Rankability are here to help, and I would be happy to give him a discount for sponsoring Rankability on his T-shirt for a week.

More and more I hear website owners carrying out SEO and ranking well, but they are not reaping the potential benefits from their website and making a decent living.

No 1 rankings on google and other search engines is great for any business, but does it always mean success?

Simply the answer is no!  It is the job of  SEO companies to achieve the rankings for their customers, but it is just as important for the customer to know their business, competitors and market share.  You must have something unique or a hook to get that sale and keep your customers coming back to succeed online – free delivery, lowest prices, product that solves a problem. Too many owners setup similar business that are already saturated online and think that top rankings will get them a ton of sales.  It’s more important now than ever before to build up a brand and a trusted one at that.

This can be a tall order when competing with high street retailers who have been around for ever and have a team of in house marketeers and five or six figure marketing budgets.

It’s more difficult if you are a new online business and especially with Google’s personalise search implementation will favour the big brands, making it even more difficult for the small and medium size companies.  Website design is also all important in getting the right feel and navigational aspects right and needs to in still trust in the customer at all stages.

Take for example www.dreams.co.uk who sell beds online. Their website is simple, clean cut and easy to navigate showing all the necessary customer service related links within easy clickable reach. They  obviously have a high street presence, so potential customers will be quite familiar with their name and brand. But what about their smaller competitors? Well they will need to have a website that delivers on all these things and more…if they’re going to compete in this tough economical climate.

Success is more than just SEO.  Search marketing ecompasses a number of key elements -  SEO, conversion rates, content and behaviour analysis, analytics, PPC, direct marketing channels, affiliate marketing, social media optimisation and attribution management. All these different channels  need to examined in tandem with each other to ascertain what measures are converting well.

If you would like some advice in marketing you business online, feel free to get in touch with our Sales department at Rankability.  We have the experience in all areas to deliver  a full comprehensive marketing solution for all types of businesses, whatever the size or background.

There are a myriad of articles online about link building and how not to link build,  but not too many on how to specifically build fool proof links; eg.  links that look natural and achieve robust long term results on the first page of the SERPS.

Rankability have studied link building patterns, and carefully monitor the behaviour of rankings related to building links, and can offer some invaluable advice on how to link build effectively.

Myth 1: You only have to use your keyword as the link anchor text. Wrong: Often those high performing websites are those that do not have too many links using the keyword anchor text. These sites have a good variation of anchor text, and more often than not are mainly linking back (75%) using their domain name or company name. Tip: Vary your anchor text. Build a foundation of links using your domain name/company name before targeting your anchor test for your keyword.  This way is more natural and you won’t be setting a precedence later in always having to build links with anchor text at a too faster rate.

Myth 2:  Off Topic links are not good.

Wrong: Google knows that you as a webmaster do not have control of who links to you. Off topic links from sites out of your niche are ok, but you still require a number of on topic links for good measure and robust rankings in the SERPS.

Tip: Conversely it’s ok to link out to other web sites, especially sites with in your niche. They may link back at a later stage if they find your site interesting and content worthy.

Myth 3: ‘No follow’ links are not worth having.

Wrong: No follow links essential for a natural link profile. If you only go after ‘do follow’ links, this looks suspect and un-natural. Many web 2.0 sites and social bookmarking sites are ‘no follow’ and help give the impression of natural linking.

Myth 4: Forum Links are spammy

Wrong: For low competitive keywords this can be a good strategy if mixed with other sources of links. Links from forum sites with in your niche are definitely worth having and will mature over time.  Be fussy which forum sites you comment on – look through the forum topics and see how many people are dropping links. Don’t link from a page with already too many OBL. Start your own topic, give some valueto the forum, solve someones problem or issue and don’t always link back using your keyword.

Tip: Remember  if you don’t rely on one sole method of link building over a given period, you won’t get caught out! Varied source and type of links with varied anchor test is the key!

Myth 5: Building too many back links too quickly will get you penalised by Google.

This is said many times but no one ever seems to quantify or give any examples.  Basically this is called link velocity.  Building links too quicky can often only have short term ranking gains. If you build say 25 quality PR 4 back links in a day from different domains, this can be dangerous and will set a precedence in that Google will expect to see this link velocity continue. Do you really want to spend more time gaining links than you have to? Build slowly and with variation.  A site wide link that heralds say 125 links on your keyword anchor text will see you benefit, but needs to be followed up by links with your domain name as the anchor text or other variations.

Example: Let’s say you are targeting the keyword,  ‘scuba diving holidays’ to your domain called www.scubydoobydoo.com (this is made up obviously). It would be a good idea to link build using the following varied anchor text;

‘www.scubydoobydoo.com’  ;  scubydoobydoo ; www.scubydoobydoo.com scuba diving ;  ‘scuba diving holidays’ ;  ‘scuba diving” & ”http://www.scubydoobydoo.com’

The number of links for each will really depend on your competitors – how many links and quality of links they have.

Next time, we will talk about how to carry out a competitor analysis on your rival companies and cut throught their rankings with a carefully planned seo strategy.

Tip : Having more back links with your domain name as the anchor text than your targeted keyword is a very good idea to look natural.  If you have good on page seo aswell, you can reap the benefits of top 3 rankings.  Many no 1 companies with the no 1 position and placement in Google do exactly this.  You can choose not to do this, but you may find you are more likely to be placed bottom 5 than top 5 positions, expecially for the more competitive search terms. This is big difference when it comes to

Typical Scenario:

Some SEO companies will start building you links and gain some improvement for your rankings, but you will then drop off. You call them up and they say you require more links (more money obviously)  and you improve for a short period. This pattern continues and is increasingly costing you money.  It is very likely that they are targeting yor keyword with too much vigour and are relying on link velocity to push your rankings up. This is not a robust long term link building strategy, and probably points to a lazy SEO company who doesn’t seek varied links from different sources including social media etc.

Rankability can offer in house training to companies seeking to create or further develop their internal search marketing  teams. If that’s not for you, we can do it all for you and create a tailored SEO plan for your business.

How good are we? Well, type ‘managed link building’ into Google. We are No 1 in Google.  Need I say more..!

Read how important social media marketing will be in a few years.  You can’t not join the social media revolution.

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If you are looking for an SEO company that can deliver on results and has a proven track record with satisfied clients, contact us today for a free consultation.

Google’s anticipated real-time communication software launches today. How ever you must be invited to Google Wave in order to use it.

The difference with this product is that it is open source. Google want help completing the development of Google Wave as it’s currently in beta and on the Google sand box platform.

Google wave is seen as a communication and collaboration tool that basically hosts objects that contain conversations between many people. Unlike email it is real time and dynamic in the way that it stores and sends messages. A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more. A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.

A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time. It can has a real time spell check, play back facility so you can play back previous conversations. You can embed waves onto your web pages using the Google Wave APi, which based on the previous Google Math API. A wave can also be embedded into a blog using the API’s, which includes all the UI and messages. You can follow a conversation from many sources and theres no need to go to each of our sites – it can all be viewed in the wave client. It looks genius!

The embed API can also intereact with other social media sites. The Google demo uses Orchid where you can embed and create a new wave on Orchid. You can also use your social media contacts in Orchid aswell as yoru wave contacts. You can also embed a search panel so you can search for contacts and conversations. Wave is of course mobile where you can interact with your waves remotely using your mobile phone.

There is only one copy of the wave at any one time.  So editing the wave is easy; you can edit say image captions which also then propogates the changes on blogs etc.  Other people can also edit your waves which can be usefull for say collaboration on meeting notes between a number of people. Changes to text and messages are marked up in a different colour so you can see each others edits. By default everyone can edit the wave, but when something is changed the author is notified and everyone can see who changed what.

This makes for a very powerfull collaboration tool. How can this be applied to a document?  Well waves can be cleverly used in the editing and production of a document and this also has playback where you will be able to manipulate the entire history of the wave. Once a document is completed, you can hide and show discussions. More features are promised in the final cut of the wave product for document collaboration with the ability to merge waves and documents.

A clever thing is how wave allows multiple people to transmit messages, edit documents at the same time in real time. This is really concurrent editing.

So, Google wave! Will it catch on and be a big hit amongst the online masses or just a specialised tool for the few? Let’s wait and see – I’ll let you know after a few weeks of use. I’ll keep you posted!

‘Bringing your family closer together’ is the message strap line and the idea is based on the concept of families joining their site and sharing information like diaries, photos, files, messages and creating gift lists. They are also soon to release a mobile based application, so watch your fridge for some more cool stuff!

I like the whole concept and it certainly earns it’s own space in the online arena.  There are many social networking sites around – but not one aimed purely at families.  There are other family based social media sites like the Famiva family blog that serves as a tool to build up your family tree, aswell as a place where you can upload pics and videos, but Famiva is different, and FamilyFridge is therefore unique in its offering.  Provided they instill confidence on the security side of things, (giving all that personal information away in one place – fraudsters could potentially have a field day), I think this site will do well!

From an SEO point of view I decided to take a quick shifty at their search optimisation and social media strategy. First impressions, I can see how the simple and clean design has already earned it an early award, but lets get to the heart of the site – forget the shiny metal fridge exterior and lets turn on the light and see what goodies are inside. Well it’s hosted on a linux red hat server and the domain was only registered in Aug 2008, so it’s a fairly young domain.

A site like this needs to look good so on page optimisation is limited, but I thought that the home page title tag could have included the phrase ‘family social networking site’. Don’t get me wrong, but for this type of business, the best digital marketing techniques will be  deployed using offsite advertising methods and leveraging online partnerships (Family Fridge is already partnered with one of the top online gift stores), but if they are going to top the SERPS for search terms like ‘social networking site’  they have a lot of catching up to do with sites like ‘Facebook’ or ‘Twitter’, and they need all the help they can get.  They could have utilised SWF Image Object replacement for some keyword phrases – a missed opportunity in offerering a few words the way of the search engine spiders instead of using pure images. Anyhow, I would have atleast expected a H1 or a H2 header on the page.  SEO guy was off sick that day no doubt!

Looking at the number of back links to the site, they have a cool 49 backlinks (50 now I’ve kindly allowed one from this article) and a very decent home page rank of 3. Now that”s not a massive amount of links, ‘could do a lot better’ even for a site that has been up for just more than a year, but would have expected a more active link profile, especially from a social media networking site. Nice to see they have registered with FriendFeed and also got some attention from sites like ‘mumsnet’,  No doubt Dragons Den helped shed some more lime light their way and maybe a few more backlinks,  but expected to see a few backlinks from a couple of top UK newspaper sites.  Undoubtedly, that will come as the buzz spreads further up the social networking tree and not forgetting his new boss, Meyer (lets be honest who wouldn’t want to work for her, she can boss me around any day of the week),  as she adds her midas touch to the mix. To sum up it looks like there’s a lot of work needs doing in the social media optimisation department. It’s early days yet, but utilising more social media traffic, forming relationships with other niche related sites and some heavy weight PR must be on the agenda now, if FamilyFriend is to raise the roof and reach the internet stratosphere.

On the Geo targeting side of things, I would have probably used the dot com domain, so as to attract a wider global audience – the business model does seem to have a global potential, not just in the UK.  Incidentally, as the site is hosted in the UK and they are currently using a .co.uk domain, they would not be as prominent in other countries search results, such as the US , compared to if they were utilising the .com domain. If it proves successfull in the UK, no doubt this idea could translate well to other countries and other languages. (Obviously the American fridge will have to be twice the size of the UK’s, but that would also mean a whole bunch of extra traffic.)

So a familiar plot then! A good business model, great website design, but not the most convincing SEO.

Interested in Pay Per Click Management for your company, see our PPC Management info here.

This opens up gambling sites to the paid advertising route offered by the AdWords system to online Poker and Bingo web sites.

Google’s change in stance on PPC  gambling could bring in hundreds of millions of dollars to Google, a needed boost to their flagging PPC income in the current economic turmoil.  On the flip side,copy writers and content producers and new search engines may lose out on work, as gambling sites have relied on distribution of fresh content and articles to gain popularity.

If online casinos and betting shops want to use Google adWords all they need to do is set up an adwords account and fill out some legal declarations. They can now advertise their sites as long as they are only targeting a UK audiences,  easily done with Google’s Geo targeting.

The requirements are listed here:-

Requirement 1: Register your business with the gambling commission organisation

Requirement 2: Only target online users 18 and over.

Requirement 3: Place a link on your website to gamblingaware.co.uk/gamcare.org.uk which should be prominently placed on your site.

We have been approached many times from different companies on how we can help them combat negative comments about them on the internet.  Most customers online research begins with a quick visit to Google, Yahoo or MSN to check out the credibility of a company or business. The customer may be about to spend a lot of money anything from £20.00 – £5000 upwards depending on the product. ‘Bad news travels a long way’ and can cost a company a lot of money in lost sales.

The first thing they will type in is the business name or website address.  If anyone has banded about any negative press it will normally come up in Google’s auto complete feature. eg. “company name reviews”  “domain name reviews” “company name scam” and so on…this is sometimes not favourable even if the comments or news aren’t actually about your business.

Here are some of the strategies we employ to manage and improve your online reputation:

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

The goal of SEO in a reputation management situation is to rank positively-charged information highly and to push negative information onto the secondary search engine results pages.

With the correct on page optimisation skills and aligning your pages with specific search terms, you may have some highly ranked pages with good page rank (PR) you can use and tweak for some of the negative search terms and write some positive copy to counter the negative stuff.  Maybe link out from your website to other of your positive directory listings (type in your companty name and see what listings appear on the second page), drop some links to these pages to give them a push.  If say a negative listing is coming up for your company name and the word scams, you could create some new content optimised for say ‘Company Name scams and how to avoid them’ and book mark this page.

More on Search Engine Optimisation

Paid Search Campaign

One of the fastest ways to counter negative comments is to setup a paid search campaign (PPC) that positions the affected party’s message prominently within the top positions of the search engine’s result pages. This approach can be used to effectively combat negative organic and other negative paid search listings.

More on Paid Search Campaigns (PPC)

Social Media Implementation

Use social media to your advantage and create micro sites based on your company name.  Create sub domains and host a blog and write fresh news articles – this is a great way of displacing 1st page results.

Create a network of layers using social bookmarking, web 2.0 sites, your own domains or sub domains and your main website.

• Flickr profile — http://www.flickr.com/
• LinkedIn profile — http://www.linkedin.com/
• MySpace profile and blog — http://www.myspace.com/
• Friendster profile — http://www.friendster.com/
• Yahoo profile — http://profiles.yahoo.com/
• Yahoo 360 page — http://360.yahoo.com/
• Bloglines blog — http://www.bloglines.com/blog/
• Typekey profile — http://www.sixapart.com/typekey/
• GooglePages page — http://pages.google.com/
• Blinklist page — http://www.blinklist.com/
• WordPress blog — http://wordpress.com/
• Blogger blog — http://www.blogger.com/
• LiveJournal page — http://www.livejournal.com/community/
• Geocities page — http://www.geocities.com/
• Fortunecity page — http://members.fortunecity.com/
• Tripod page — http://members.tripod.com/
• AOL Hometown page — http://hometown.aol.com/
• Freespaces page — http://freespaces.com/
• Squidoo lense – http://www.squidoo.com

Legal Action?

This is sometimes neccessary when diplomacy fails but the first port of call is to contact the review site or blogger and ask  them to remove the damaging keywords or article.  If this fails you may have a legal case to if they are using your brand name or trade mark in the wrong way.

Monitor Your Online Reputation

For reputation management purposes, you should configure Google Reader to send you alerts on the following keywords:

• Your business name.
• Your domain name.
• Any trademarks or branded terms you have that are closely identified with your business, such as the names of products or services you’ve created.

In today’s socially connected world wide web, customers are being influenced by what they see on line whether it be forums, review sites or blogs. Positive experiences establish trust and ultimately, influence purchases. By monitoring what is being said about your company or busienss, promoting positive attributes and actively addressing negative comments, Rankability can help manage your most valuable asset – your online reputation.

The success of our process depends on the skilled blending of marketing, writing, promotion, public relations and search engine optimisation skills. To work effectively, these steps need to be performed on an ongoing basis until the objectives are achieved. Unfortunately, depending upon the severity of the bad publicity, results can take many weeks to achieve. Call us now to find out how we can help you..!

Albeit I was half asleep at 10.35pm, the time of the live lottery draw – maybe he was banking on most of the UK population being half cut after Englands 5-1 drumming of Croatia. I’m sure everyone is wondering how he seems to achieve the impossible.  I’ve checked some comments on a few social media sites and I am now actively following Derren brown on Twitter looking for clues. Derren Brown is certainly intriguing and like me, you’re eager to learn how the master trickster did it!

There are a few theories being banded around and to the savvy TV viewer, there were a few idiosyncracies that may explain the method. The most obvious that I noticed was that his reveal was done after the live draw, apparently a BBC legality that means they have got to be first to reveal the numbers

1. That the lottery is possibly recorded a few minutes behind and he’s privy to this recording.

2. That he has worked out a system

3. A clever camera trick

4. He secretly signalled the numbers by tapping his shoe using morse code.

5. Derren covering his mouth as the lottery numbers were revealed. Something sneaky going on?

6. He is Omnipotent and God like.

Watch out for Fridays show where he will reveal and give hints on how he did it! What ever the answer, he’s a big smarty pants!

Anyone got any interesting theories?