Category: How To

Those website builders who are keen to boost their website higher up the Search Engine Results Pages will know that an essential part of the process includes building inbound links to your website.

As we discussed in our Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) guide, one of the ways to get inbound links is to send out online press releases.

Press releases can contain keyword rich links which point back to your website. And if they picked up by a genuine journalist then they can raise awareness in the traditional way too.

Read on to find the 10 essential steps to create your perfect press release.

1. Grab your keywords
Those of your following an SEO program will already have a list of keywords that you want to focus on. (For more information about SEO read our SEO Guide.)

Try to use the keywords in all sections of the press release we discuss below. Don’t squeeze them in so that it ceases to make sense – remember that the PR still needs to be readable by a human.

2. Decide what to write about
It’s best to focus on just a single point for your press release, rather than try and include all your news.

If there are any recent events that have taken place in your business, these might be right for a release. If you’ve opened a new branch; been nominated for an award; expanded; started stocking new lines, these could all be the subject matter.

Alternatively you can create your own news. Have you surveyed your staff or customers and found something of interest? Have you held a competition? Have you made a donation to Charity? These could be good subjects too.

Here’s the crunch bit: write down your news in just 1 line.

This keeps it simple, focused, and gives you something to refer back to. It also stops you wandering off topic later in the release.

3. Layout
Boring but important, there are some elements that a press release should always include. From the top these are:

Date. Your contact details. Company logo (if you have one)
Headline
The Intro paragraph
The main body
The closing paragraph
[Ends]
Notes to Editors

4. The Headline
Place the headline in the center of the page below the contact details, in bold. Use the headline to concisely describe the content of the release. You need to make it easily and quickly understood by a business editorial person.

The other important factor is to try and use a headline that uses keyword from your SEO list.

5. The Introduction
The first paragraph should include all the main points of your press release. It should work like an expanded version of the headline. If you haven’t mentioned it by the end of this paragraph, don’t mention it at all. Make it no more than a few lines long. Work on the basis that most people won’t read on from here, so you need to make your point quickly.

Classic journalism looks at who, where, what, and why. Include these and you’ve nailed it.

Again, try to use your keywords in this paragraph, but only where they are part of the organic flow of prose.

6. The Main body
This is where you can expand on the essentials covered in the introduction. The main body should be no longer than 2 paragraphs. Its a good idea to reinforce any points made by including a quote from a relevant source, often the Managing Director .

If you’ve got any colourful facts or supporting market research or statistics then the main body is a good place to include it.

7. The Closing Paragraph
The final paragraph can include more general information about the company, such as the number of years it has been going, where it is located.

8. Links
Gaining inbound links to your website is one of the main reasons to distribute online press releases, so you need to make sure to include some! As discussed in part 5, use keyword-rich anchor text to link to an appropriate page on your website in the introduction. Many online press release publishers will not include this link. For that reason, make sure you include a link at the bottom of your closing paragraph. This is the way we do it for WebEden:

for more information go to http://www.webeden.co.uk

9. Ends
After your final paragraph, you need to let editors know that the press release has finished by writing:

[Ends].

10. Notes to editors
After the end of the actual press release, you can write brief notes to editors who might want further information.

You may have high-res images for them to use, or be able to supply more in depth information to interested journalists. This is a good place to let editorial staff know about this sort of thing.

And that’s it

Follow this 10 point plan to get the most from your online PR. It will help boost you up the Search Engine Results Pages by generating inbound links, and will also raise awareness of your business amongst your target audience.

Last week we gave you some simple instructions on how to sign up with Twitter. Now you’ve done that, what’s next?!

Here’s a basic guide to using Twitter. Its not definitive – your comments are welcome!

Following people

1.    Start out by following people who you are genuinely interested in hearing from. This might be your industry figurehead, a national paper, an industry magazine, or a commentator
2.     Your customers. Show you’re interested in your customers by following them whenever you can. That will make encourage them to follow you, and open Twitter as a channel of communication
3.    Don’t follow people just because they follow you, unless they are your customer. Only follow people you are genuinely interested in.
4.    Avoid following people who have high numbers of followers and follows. These will just be using auto-tools to build their follower base. Lots are US based.

Tweeting your News

1.    Every time you add a new post or item onto your blog or website, Tweet it with a headline and a link.
2.    Every time you change your prices, have an offer, or have any other news that you wouldn’t otherwise have on the blog, Tweet it

Tweeting other people’s news and blog posts

1.    Set up an Feed reader with all your important writers’ latest posts. Here’s a guide on how to set up a feed reader
2.    When you see something that you find interesting, summarise it and send a link to it

Commenting on other people’s Tweets

1.    For the people who you are following, read their posts. If you’re interested, reply @them
2.    When people send you an @message, responding to it quickly

ReTweeting (RT)

1.    If someone compliments you, your website or your company then ReTweet it by copying it into your own post and prefacing it with RT @them:
2.    If you see anything of genuine interest that you want to attribute to the original Tweeter then RT it in the same way.
3.    Do your customers a favour by retweeting their messages to your audience

Direct Messages (DM)

1.    Keep any private messages to DM
2.    If someone RTs your message then thank them privately with a DM

General Guidance for Tweets

1.    Mix up your Tweets. Send some links to your site, some to others, and include no links in some. Have a mixture of general Tweets, @Tweets and ReTweets.
2.     Tweet any comments you get on your blog comments including a link directly to those comments. Try to get a debate going
3.    Ask questions to generate interest and get answers
4.    Remember that a lot more people will be reading your tweets than responding them. If you’re using it for customer service than showcase your finest work!

Tools

1.    Ping.fm Distributes your posts to multiple microblogging platforms
2.    Shorten URL Mozilla Add on. Puts a URL shortner shortcut in your  browser, makes for quick URL shortening
3.    TweetDeck. Desktop application that lets you monitor for mentions and direct messages across multiple Twitter accounts.
4.    Tweetpic. Allows you to link images to your posts.

Tracking

Twitter traffic is notoriously hard to track as it mostly comes from redirects.

1.    Bit.ly: This can give you click data about the traffic that your shortened URLs are generating
2.    Google Analytics. Using the URL Builder, you can manually add a tracking URL onto your website address before you shorten it.

And that’s about it! Any other ideas or comments? Please let leave them below.

We’ve discussed Twitter countless times on this blog, and I’ve just realised that we haven’t covered the basics: How to sign up to Twitter. Here’s some instructions!

1. Go to the Twitter Home page and press the sign up button on the right hand side. This is what it looks like:

2. Next you’ll be on the ‘Create an Account’ page. It looks like this:

For Full Name and Username you’ve got a few choices. You need to decide who you are Tweeting as. Will your account be:

a) Personal (EG ‘Ken Builder’). In this case put your first and last name in and, and for a username write your name straight through. If it looks better seperate your first and last name with an ‘_’ underscore.

b) Business (EG WebEden). In this case put your company name in as full name, and for username write your company name again.

c) ‘On behalf of’ (EG Ken Builder on behalf of WebEden). In this case put your actual first and last name, and add your company name as the username.

Keep the names as short as possible – it will give you more space to Tweet with!

Make sure you include your current email address as this is where your notifications and password reminders will be sent to.

3. Then you get onto a stage where Twitter can search your Gmail, Yahoo or AOL mail accounts to see if any of your contacts are already on Twitter. Here’s what it looks like, but I’d skip this step if I were you!

4. Next up you can look for high profile users of Twitter who you might want to follow. This is what it looks like, but I’d skip this bit too!

5. And that’s it. You’re on Twitter! Time to experiment…

I’m not going to talk here about what to do, what to say, and who to follow, except to explain the links across the top of the page that look like this:

Here’s what these all mean:

Home: This is where all the Tweets of everyone you’re following plus your own will appear.

Profile: This is where all your Tweets will appear

Find People: This is where you can search for other users of Twitter, and follow them. Try searching for webeden!

Settings: This is where you can:

• Change your Username and Passwords
• Add your website address
• Add a 160 character biography about yourself
• Change Your Background
• Add Your Photo (if its a personal account use your own photo, if its a company one use your logo)

Now that you’ve signed up why not follow WebEden on Twitter?

Leave a comment if you’re having any trouble signing up.

Today we’re lucky enough to have another Guest Blog by Alison Cross from AlisonCross4Webs.co.uk. Its all about getting more from websites by using RSS.

What is RSS?

You may have noticed a little orange radio symbol on your journeys through the various plains and jungles of the internet. Usually on a blog or news site it winks at you from the corner of the page, inviting you to click it.

But what is it?

It’s an RSS feed link, that’s what it is.

‘What in the tarnation is RSS?’ I hear you ask! Truthfully, I didn’t actually know what RSS stood for, but I am reliably informed that it’s short for ‘really simple syndication’. And it is just that – a really simple way to share information.

Let’s look at a normal working day. Do you log on in the morning and visit your usual sites – perhaps the BBC for news, maybe WebEden’s blog to see what Ken’s telling us about today, maybe a couple of sites to do with your business? Twitter?!

What often happens is that you go out looking for those new links. With RSS, you tell the sites to send the new stuff in to you.

Sounds Good! So how do I use RSS?

What you need to get your hands on first of all is an RSS Reader.  This acts as your central gathering point for the RSS information that you want to read.

It will not surprise you in the least that I’m about to point you in the direction of the Google Reader. You can sign up to Google Reader here. You’ll need a Google account for this, which you will already have if you use their Analytics or Webmaster Tools. There are load of alternative RSS readers – just search for ‘RSS Reader’ on Google.

Google Reader

Once you’ve activated your Google Reader, you can add feeds to it in two ways.

The first way is within Reader itself. In the top left hand corner of the Reader screen you’ll see a box that allows you to add a new subscription. Here’s what it looks like:

You can either type in the actual URL of the website you want to subscribe to, or you can type in a search term and browse about until you find one that you really like the look of and then subscribe.

The second way is to click on that little orange radio button (like the image at the top of this post) while you are on the site that you want to subscribe too.

When you click on that button, you’ll probably find that you are offered several Reader subscription buttons – and Google is usually one of them. Click on that feed button and next time you log in to your Reader page, there will be the fascinating feed!

Get a Bundle

Subscribing to RSS feeds can save you a lot of time. In fact, Google has even bundled together lots of different RSS feeds for people who haven’t got time to go hunting for relevant feeds.

As of today’s date, there are 449 different bundles available to you – from news feeds..coffee ..crochet…surfing…yoga…everything! If you can’t find a bundle that interests you, why not create a bundle of YOUR niche favourites and submit them to Google for other people to subscribe to?!

Finally

Why you should use RSS? Because it brings your internet world to YOU, you don’t need to go rootling about to find it and best of all, you’ll never miss an update from your favourite site again.

About Alison Cross
Alison Cross lives on the Isle of Bute where she has built over a dozen websites using our software. She also helps people use Twitter to market their business. For more info or advice about social media or web design, visit her website alisoncross4webs.co.uk.

A few weeks ago we blogged about how to put your business on the map with a Google Local Business listing. This is a great way to make sure that you appear when people search for your sort of business or service in Google local or Google Maps.

Google has just enhanced the local business listings so that you can now get great statistics about how many people view your listing, and how they found it.

To recap, once you’ve signed up to Google local business listings, this is what your listing looks like:

People can find these listings by doing a search on Google.co.uk or in Google Maps. Once they find your listing they can click on it to see your details, reach customer reviews, and get discount coupons . They can also get directions to your location.

All good so far.

But what would be really useful for you is to know how the people looking at your listing found it. Did they search for ‘taxi in edinburgh’ or ‘i want to go to the airport’ to find your taxi company listing? And if you do some advertising in the local paper, do you find more people searching for and finding your listing?

If you knew the answer to these and other similar questions, you’d be able to make better decisions about how to send more traffic to your listing, and what sort of information to include on it. And that, ultimately will lead to more customers.

Well now you can do just that thanks to a new feature that Google have launched in the local business center. They’re calling it a ‘dashboard’.

All you need to do is claim your listing and go through the verification process.

This is the kind of information that the dashboard will give you:

•    Impressions: The number of times your business listing appeared in the SERPs on  Google.co.uk or Google Maps search in a given period.
•    Actions: The number of times people interacted with the listing; for example, the number of times they clicked through to the business’ website or requested driving directions to the business.
•    Top search queries: Which queries led customers to the business listing. Was it ‘taxi in edinburgh’ or ‘fastest way to the airport’?

You also get access to a load of lists, maps and graphs which displays your data. Here’s what it looks like:

All the stats will get updated every day.

Those of you who are familiar with Google Analytics will recognise these graphs – they’re very similar. If you don’t know about Google Analytics, its a free tool from Google that lets you see exactly where your website visitors are coming from them and what they’re looking at on your website. Here’s a video tutorial on how to set up Google analytics for your WebEden website.

To find out more about accessing using the dashboard, take a look at the video below and then visit Google’s Lat Long Blog for a more in-depth overview.

Some of you might have noticed a logo on the left hand side of the blog that looks like this:

This means that we have offset the carbon emissions produced by the website WebEden.co.uk.

Its a little known fact, but PCs and web servers consume a vast amount of energy. Whilst your own PC uses plenty of electricity, all websites sit on servers in datacentres. Each server is basically a computer that is on all the time. And a data center is a vast room full of servers, which requires huge levels of air conditioning, due to the heat created by the servers.

All these factors combine to make sure that each website consumes a not inconsiderable amount of electricity. And of course where there is electricity consumption, there are carbon and CO2 emissions.

Most recent estimates are than a single server produces over 2 tonnes of CO2 every year. When you consider that the average UK household produces 5.5 tonnes, you can see the size of the problem. In all, the Internet is thought to consume 5% of the entire world’s electricity.

So we decided to offset the carbon emissions of WebEden.co.uk through the COCO2.org service. For a small annual fee, you can offset the emissions from your website. This means you get a nice COCO2.org logo to put on your website, which shows your visitors how green you are. In addition, you get a listing in the COCO2.org directory of carbon neutral websites.

The great thing about the directory is that you get a link to your website from a highly authoritative website, in a category that’s relevant to you. And as anyone who has read the link building chapter of our Search Engine Optimisation Guide will know, that can really boost your website up the Search Engine Results Page.

So how do you sign up to COCO2?

1.    Follow this link to start to offset your carbon emissions.
2.    Click on the ‘make my website carbon neutral’ link on the right hand side.
3.    Fill out the form about you and your website. At the bottom of the page you get the option to choose, shared, VPS or dedicated server. It looks like this:

Choose Shared.

4.    Pay using your credit or bank card.
5.    When filling out your entry in the directory of carbon neutral websites, be sure to concisely describe your business or website. Not only will this help boost you up the SERPs, but its also useful for people browsing the directory looking for carbon neutral websites.
6.    At the end of all this, you get a access to the logo to put on your website. You’ll need to use the HTML widget to display this logo accurately.

And that’s it! Good luck offsetting your website’s carbon emissions. And let us know if you have any problems.

Ever since we started selling domain names, the most common support queries we have concern setting up email services on a domain name. WebEden gives away 5 free email addresses with every domain, which means you can send and receive email with your own personalised website address. You can access the email service either through webmail or using a desktop client such as Outlook.

For those who prefer written instruction, please see our earlier posts.

This is how you set up your first email address.

This is how to set up your webmail.

And this is how to set up your email using a desktop client such as Outlook.

For those who prefer a video tutorial, check this:

Let us know if you have any problems

We’ve talked a lot about Search engine optimisation here on this blog. Boosting your website’s rank in the Search Engine Results Page is an important way to increase relevant traffic to your website.

But what about your own personal profile? It’s not widely appreciated, but ‘people search’ – searching for people online – makes up a large amount of search queries on all the major search engines.

This is another opportunity for Search Engine Optimisation. If you’re well known, or even moderately known – in your industry, your local area, or your business, then people may well be searching for you rather than your business.

But if they search for you, will they actually find you? The thing is, unless you’re called Zaphod Beeblebrox, the chances are that you share your name with a few other people.

Worse case scenario? Lets say your name is John Smith. Here’s what happens when I search for John Smith.

Am I looking for the Book Shop, the Beer, the Folk singer, the Admiral or the Politician?

So how do you make sure that people who are looking for you are able to find you?

Enter stage left: ‘Google profiles’. Google profile is a single web page created and edited by yourself that includes information about who you are and what you do.

To set up a Google profile page for yourself, you will need a Google account, which you can sign up for here. Once you’ve got one of those, click ‘create a profile on the upper left hand side. You can now start creating and editing your personal information.

You can include personal information such as a short biography; your interests; links to your social profiles on place such as Twitter and Facebook; facts about yourself; and even a few photos. Your profile also offers a way for people to contact you without giving out your email address.

If you want to use your Google profile to help people find your website, then it’s important to include links to your website. It is of course an opportunity to promote your website too.

Once you’re happy with your listing, hit save. It should look somthing like this:

It will take a couple of weeks for Google to index your Google profile page, but once it does so you should see it appearing in the Search Engine Results Page (SERPs) when you search using your name.

Since it is Google itself who are providing this service, you can expect a ‘Google’ profile page to appear high up the SERPs. So unless you share your name with a celebrity of other high profile industry veteran, you can make sure that people searching for you will always be able to find you.

Set up a Google profile, use it to promote you Sitebuilder website, and leave your comments below!

Having done a few tutorials of a really complex nature, its back to basics this week. This tutorial shows you how to extend your page length. It might seem quite simple using our website creator, but you’d be surprised how frequently we’re asked how to do it. Have a watch:

Let us know if you have any problems.

Lots of you have grabbed to new social networking features of the WebEden Website making system with both hands. Last week we showed you how to send out membership invitations to your website. This time around we show you send updates from your WebEden website to your Facebook and Twitter accounts. This really is exciting stuff!

How did you get on? Leave us a comment below