During March 2012, Facebook will roll out their new Timeline feature, which will organise all your previous posts since you joined the site in chronological order. Currently this information is still available to anyone prepared to trawl back through your previous pages of comments, entries and posts, but Timeline will make it far easier to find old information.

This is concerning for many users, in fact over 50% have expressed concern about their information from the past being more accessible.

Old posts, and comments that you have probably long forgotten about still exist in Facebook’s archive and depending on your privacy settings may well be available for anyone to look through.

Facebook are informing all users about the change before it happens and giving people a chance to change their privacy settings. Sometimes that is not as clear cut as you think however, as the privacy settings are more complicated than they necessarily need to be, meaning that for many, this unwanted information will be visible against their wishes.

The easiest solution is to set your account to only show your full information to accepted friends, as this limits outsiders from accessing what may be personal data.

Will this change lead to a backlash against Facebook? Only time will tell, without a viable alternative, users are unlikely to leave in large volumes, as currently all their friends are on Facebook too, but if enough people vote with their feet and move over to Google+ for example, then we might start to see a major shift in the popularity of the respective sites.

Facebook are keen to protect their market share as they have an upcoming IPO share offer later this year which will determine the valuation based on market confidence in the companies ability to build on the user base it currently has.

What do you think of Facebook Timeline?

During 2011, Facebook lost 7 percent of its UK user base as increasingly IT savvy users switched to alternatives. It is an indicator that Facebook may have reached saturation point here in the UK, prompting speculation that this news may harm the upcoming Facebook share offering.

Facebook is still the dominant site in the sector with 53% of all social networking visits in the UK in December 2011. This compares badly with 2010 when it had 58% share.

By contrast, Youtube saw Uk growth of 45% last year as video made it’s presence felt online. Accounting for 25% of all visits to social networking sites.

Twitter and Yahoo! Answers made modest gains, with 3% and 2% respectively.

By contrast, Google+ failed to register in the top 10 most popular social networking sites, although with 40 million users worldwide their user base is growing slowly.

Knowing which route to market is the right one for you is often not an easy decision. Each method of online marketing has its own merits and drawbacks, so here is a quick guide to both processes and the inherrent benefits, of each.

SEO

Ideal for national high traffic search terms
Not an instant route to market
Up to 8 x better conversion rate from Google through to your website
Long term cost savings when compared to Adwords
Provides a constant stream of traffic whether you want it or not
Suits SME’s with a marketing budget who are looking to build a long term authority presence online

Adwords

Instant marketing within an hour or two of set up
Can be an expensive route to market unless managed very carefully and set up efficiently
Can be paused during busy times reducing costs
Very targetable by location suiting local businesses
Ideal for testing the market prior to an SEO campaign
Lower conversion rate from Ad to click as Adwords are perceived as less trustworthy than Organic results
Suits businesses with a small budget who want to scale their business over time
Can be used to generate revenue to finance an SEO campaign

If you are a small start up with limited funding, especially if you are not national, we would recommend an Adwords campaign as it is a controlled, cost limited route to your potential customers.

If you are more established, especially if you are selling nationally, and looking to build a significant presence online, then a targeted, pro active SEO campaign focused on specific keywords that your prospects are actually typing into Google is the best approach. Results will not be instant, so in the short term you may want to consider an Adwords campaign in order to drive initial sales, but this can be scaled back and turned off as your SEO keywords begin to deliver traffic.

Google Panda Updates have changed the game forever

Since Google spent the bulk of 2011 trying to remove content farms from its index, or at least to reduce their rankings in SERPS, it is now more important than ever to make sure that your web content is grounded on quality. The days of producing low quality content to fill your pages is over, so for 2012 you need to embrace the concept of taking more time and effort to produce high quality, unique content that your readers will find useful and informative.

The age old premise that every page of your site should serve a purpose is now more true than ever. Each and every page of web content needs not only to be unique, but it also needs to inform, be constructed well, be gramatically accurate and to offer something to your readers.

Here is a list of points to consider for your content;

• Would you trust the information presented in this article?
• Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?
• Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
• Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?
• Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
• Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?
• Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
• Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
• How much quality control is done on content?
• Does the article describe both sides of a story?
• Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?
• Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?
• Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
• For a health related query, would you trust information from this site?
• Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?
• Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
• Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
• Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
• Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
• Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?
• Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?
• Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail?
• Would users complain when they see pages from this site?

If you follow these guidelines and aim to produce well written, good quality, unique content, that your visitors want to read, then your site won’t be penalised in search.

In time, as the Google Panda algorithm develops, it is likely that we will all need to produce ever higher quality content, so start now, and benefit not only from better rankings, but from better interaction with your clients too.

If you want the major search engines, Google and Bing to rank your site efficiently, then you need to use their respective webmaster tools to submit your site, add an xml sitemap telling them where your pages are and what importance to give them.

In addition webmaster tools will highlight and areas of your site that require attention, including the load speed, dead links, coding errors, duplicate content etc.

If you want your website to rank well then you need to pay attention to all these areas as if any one of them gives an error, your site will fall in the rankings, costing you traffic and sales.

Webmaster tools accounts are easy to set up, and adding and verifying your websites is straightforward, you just need ftp access to your site so that you can either add a metatag to your home page, or add a verification file to the root directory in order to prove your ownership of the site.

Once you have done that, you will have access to backlink information, load speed data, and much more that will easily allow you to maintain your sites performance.

With immediate effect Yahoo site explorer is no longer offering information about site back links. This will initially have a big effect for many smaller SEO companies and website owners who rely on this resource for back link data.

Yahoo are redirecting users towards Bing webmaster tools but from our research Bing isn’t currently offering quite the same service we had from Yahoo Site Explorer. For example, you currently can’t exclude internal links from their results, so the backlink information shown can be massively affected depending on the size of the site in question.

There are however several useful backlink services that will give you the info you need, majesticseo are a good starting point, and for those who require more detail you should try SEO Spy Glass which offers all the link information that you might require.

In time Bing may well offer information to rival Yahoo site explorer, but until that time, other solutions are available…….

Wednesday September 28th 2011 saw Google unveil its latest version of its Panda update. In its efforts to deiver the best results it can within search, Google has again been tweaking its Panda algorithm in order to affect the results given.

Since the initial Panda launch, we have seen several amendments;

• Panda Update 1.0: Feb. 24, 2011
• Panda Update 2.0: April 11, 2011
• Panda Update 2.1: May 10, 2011
• Panda Update 2.2: June 16, 2011
• Panda Update 2.3: July 23, 2011
• Panda Update 2.4: August 12, 2011
• Panda Update 2.5: September 28, 2011

Some of the biggest traffic losers seen so far during this update include prnewswire.com (down over 70%), technorati.com (down over 70%) and faqs.org (down over 80%), while hubpages.com (previously hit hard by Panda is up 10%) Youtube.com and android.com (Both Google owned are also both up by 10%).

Precise details of the exact algorithmic changes are always difficult to get hold of, but within a few days the SEO industry will adapt to this latest incarnation and normal service will be resumed.

Have you noticed a change in your rankings recently? Have you been affected by Panda 2.5? Find out how to fix your rankings by joining our SEO newsletter TODAY and be the first to benefit as we roll out the information other SEO companies don’t want you to have.

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Google+ has now been released to the general public. Initially it was being beta trialed to 25 million users, but over the last few days, the general release has been rolled out.

Google+ is Googles latest attempt to muscle its way into Facebooks ever growing user base. Google+ has a few features that differentiate it from Facebook, so that it hopes to offer something different that will appeal to a mass audience.

Google+ has a “Circles” feature, which allows users to group their friends, business colleagues, family etc so that users can choose what information they show specific people. This will have several advantages over Facebooks current structure as it will hide a users weekend antics from their work environment, instead of the Facebook model which currently shows all of your wall activity to all of your friends.

Facebook has, in the last few days added a new groups section of its own, but it appears to work slightly differently as it promotes your “close friends” posts to the top of the page, but still appears to show everything to everyone.

There is also some confusion over Facebooks complicated account permission controls, which are not particularly straightforward to administer.

Google+ looks to have simplified this process, making operation and consealment of what might be considered to be career damaging information a lot more straight forward.

Read more about Social Media here

Website conversion rate is the ratio between the amount of visitors that you receive compared to the amount of sales, phone calls, on information requests that you receive from those visitors. Many website owners believe, quite wrongly that if only they could drive more traffic to their website, that they would convert more visitors into paying customers.

To a certain extent this is true, but it can be an expensive way of growing your client base. It is far more cost effective to first improve your website conversion rate so that when you increase your volume of traffic, you benefit with a magnified effect.

Your website conversion rate is governed by many things. It might not be as straight forward as how many people complete a purchase from you, but instead, might include the volume of visitors who request more information, downloaded content or signed up to your newsletter. It all depends upon your call to action, how compelling it is and what your desired end result is.

Elements that can effect your conversion rate, include the colours that you use, the page layout, the specific words that you use, how you structure your content and your ‘call to action’ as well as the tone of your site which can have a major impact on the visitors experience depending on whether you have written it to display your products and services, or written it to show the problems that you can solve and then demonstrating your solution for your visitors.

The most important thing to consider when working on your conversion rate, is to test and measure everything. Only then will you be able to accurately determine the outcome of each action that you take. While you go through this process, it is important to bear in mind that some of the changes that you make will not necessarily be improvements, and only by testing changes one at a time will you be able to separate the successful updates from the failures.

Find out more about website conversion rate by clicking here…… what is conversion rate?

SEO is often shrouded in mystery, when in reality the process of website Optimization is nothing more than the application of mathematical criteria in order to illicit a response from each search engine.

Google and the other major search engines use a complex algorithm in order to measure and rank each website for the keywords that appear within the specific indicators on it’s pages. Understanding the desired intent of this algorithm is very important, as it will control the direction and focus of your SEO campaign.

We train individuals and groups to optimise websites to a professional level, whether you wish to position your own site at the top of search for specific keywords, or whether you want to build your own SEO company. You will learn everything that you need to know, from the basics of keyword research, and competitor analysis, to application of your chosen keywords on-page, and effective high quality link building.

We share everything with you that you will need in order to be successful.

Google measures many on and off page criteria including bounce rate, duplicate content, page load speed, and frequency of content updates. Keeping up to date with a fast moving industry like SEO is essential if you are going to remain competitive and retain your top rankings. We share the best sources of SEO news with you and share our strategies for testing algorithm fixes so that your websites don’t suffer the Google ‘slap’.

If you are looking to learn from industry experts who have been ranked in the top ten in Google for ‘search engine optimization’ since 2006′ then you need to talk to us. We will teach you the SEO techniques that 99% of the industry don’t know, understand or use.

To find out more about when we are running our next SEO courses, please SEO Training Courses