A study by MyVoucherCodes.co.uk has focused on which logos are the ones that get viewed the most. And the winner? I’m afraid there’s no prizes for guessing that one: its Google.

According to the study the average person views the Google logo once every nine minutes every day. And the reason? Its because we all set Google as our homepage (or at least 47% of do).

50 times a day!

Amazingly, this means that the majority of respondents saw the logo more than 50 times every working day. 52% in the study said they used Google to search for something between 10 and 20 times a day.

The second most-viewed logo was Microsoft, followed by Facebook in third, and Apple fourth. Coca Cola led the charge for non-media technology, being the 5th most viewed logo.

It’s ALL about Search Engines

This is of passing interest – hence why we decided to feature the story here. But what is of more interest is the fact as so many of us have set Google as our homepage. We all recognise that the most important online activity is searhing for something. And as a website builder, that’s an opportunity to use Google to get your website in front of people.

To help boost your website higher in the Search Engine Results Page, we have beta launched our own SEO and Pay Per Click services to help your website rank higher on Google.  Drop us a line or give us a call if that suits you.

We talk lots on this blog about search engines. As a website builder, search engines will probably be the single biggest source of traffic to your website.

Search engines can deliver traffic to your site from two separate sections of the results page.

Here’s an image that shows the sections I mean.

The lower left hand side (highlighted in green) is called the ‘organic’ or ‘natural’ listings. To boost your site higher up this section of the page you need to carry out Search Engine Optimisation. Take a look at our SEO Guide on how to do that.

The upper and right hand side (highlighted in red) is called the ‘sponsored or ‘paid-for’ or ‘AdWords’ listings, To boost your site higher up the top and right hand side of the page, you need to carry out Search Engine Marketing or Pay Per Click (PPC). We’re shortly going to be launching a full guide to PPC, and offering our own PPC help service.

The big question for every website owner is: Is a visitor from the organic or paid listings worth more?

The only real answer for your website can be found by analysing your Google Analytics data, and working out which visitors led to sales. Here’s a video tutorial on how to set up Google Analytics.

But from a ‘top down’ perspective, Google themselves have recently released an economic study suggesting that clicks on the sponsored listings are worth more than those on the organic listings. In fact, Google say that clicks from the natural listings are worth just 70% of those from the sponsored listings.

Google don’t give any background on why they have made this assumption. So here are a few thoughts of our own:

1.The Ads are more controlled than the organic listings. Organic listings are Google’s best judgment about what you’re looking for. But an advert is specifically targeted at your search, judged by both the advertiser and AdWords as being relevant.

2. Ads are deep linked. Ads should take you straight to the page on the website that is most relevant to your search. Organic listings often send traffic to home or category pages.

3. Once you click on an ad, you have identified yourself as someone with specific intent. You’re not turned off by the ad, and you click it with the intent to complete an action.

4. Users clicking on an advert know they’re entering into an open commercial relationship with that advertiser, and are therefore more likely to carry out a transaction.

5. There’s less competition in the Ads. At most there are a few thousand advertisers on a keyword. The organic listings by contrast have 10,000, 100,000 or even a million results.

6. By a process of analysis, the only advertising that survives is the stuff that’s working. Advertisers only put money into keywords and ads that work, and pause it if it stops working. The organic listing, by contrast, deliver visitors even beyond the point where the website deems its interested in having them.

Are you using PPC or SEO to drive traffic to your website? Which option is giving you the best results? Leave us a comment below.

Hopefully by now some of you will be following our Search Engine Optimisation Guide (SEO) to boost your website up the Search Engine Results Pages on Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Search Engines are usually the single biggest source of traffic for any website, so having some kind of SEO program for your website is an important way to boost visitor numbers.

But when it comes to SEO, just how high up the rankings do you have to be? How high is high enough? First 5 pages? Page 1? Top 5? Top 3? Top spot?

The percentage of people clicking on each link has been a closely guarded secret for some time, but we came across some information on the SEO blog SEOMoz that has let the cat out of the bag.

The data is a bit old – comes from an AOL release back in 2007, but we reckon it probably hasn’t changed all that much.

Here’s the figures:

Very interesting. This shows that the reward for being top spot is so much higher than number 2. And if you’re outside the top three then you’re only going to be picking up the crumbs.

I think it’s also interesting that more than 10% of results clicked are on page 2. I never bother going that far, so assumed that others didn’t either.

If you want to boost your website higher in the search engine results pages then have a look at our SEO Guide.

How are your rankings getting along? Get much traffic from Google? Which keywords? Leave us a comment below.

Here’s some good news: when it comes to Internet marketing British businesses are ahead of the rest.

A recent survey by the AT Institute of online marketing and website traffic has shown that UK businesses are considerably more successful at it than our European counterparts.

The Institute compared levels of investment in online marketing across several European countries. They then looked at the source of visitors to business websites, and whether they came as a consequence of that marketing or for other reasons.

And the good news is that each pound spent by a UK business in driving traffic to their website goes a lot further than it does on the continent.

The study uncovered the fact that online marketing by UK businesses accounted for in excess of 50% of visits to those business websites.

This figure was way in excess of all others including France, Germany and Spain.

If you want to drive more visitors to your website then there is plenty of useful information on this blog that can show you how.

If you want to push your website high on Google, then make sure you get to grips with our Search Engine Optimisation Guide.

If you want to use Social Media, Twitter and Facebook to drive new website visitors then take a look at our Social Media channel. You can of course always integrate your WebEden website with both Facebook and Twitter.

If you’re planning on creating a media story then why not take a look at how to write a perfect press release.

Of course, once you get traffic on your website, the next thing is to turn visitors in our customers. This article will show you 10 essentials for every business website.

Any comments please leave them below.

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.

If you sell products to teenagers, or have a website that is aimed at 12-15 year olds, then a new report from Ofcom indicates that its success depends on getting to the top of the search engines.

According to the report, 37% of 12 to 15 year olds believe that search engines rank results according to relevance. Another 32% think that the Search Engine Results Page is ‘truthful’. They believe that those websites ranking highly are truly the most relevant appropriate for the search query.

Just 14% think that companies pay money to get to the top.

Here’s the full graph.

It’s nice to think that at that age kids have not yet grown cynical about how the search engine results are ranked. It’s a shame there’s no corresponding research for an older age bracket, which I feel sure would be more aware of the manipulation of the SERPs by companies vying to get to number 1.

Of course, just because you want to boost your website up the search engine results page, and carry out a program of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) to do so, doesn’t mean you are doing anything wrong or ‘manipulative’.

At the end of the day, Google wants to deliver the most relevant results for search queries, so if your SEO efforts prove to them that your website deserves to rank highly, then there’s no harm done.

Have you had any success or otherwise with SEO? Can you share your experience? Leave us a comment below.

Anyone who has been following our Search Engine Optimisation guide (SEO) will know that one of the most important things to decide before you start building a website is which keywords you’re going to focus on. Choosing keywords that are both relevant to your website, and that are also being used frequently on search engines, will decide how much potential traffic those search engines are going to send to your website.

So if choosing certain keywords plays a roll in how much traffic your website gets, do some website builders and publishers only choose those keywords that can in fact bring lots of traffic? Undoubtedly so, and there’s nothing wrong with that, as long as the keywords are highly relevant to what the web page is all about. But what if you’re a news organisation? Do you choose stories – and keywords – to write about simply because they will get visitors onto your site, rather than them being genuinely in the news?

This was the charge levied at thetelegraph.co.uk in a recent article in satirical news magazine Private eye. It was claimed that stories on the telegraph website were being chosen simply for keyword popularity, in order to drive more traffic onto the website. Moreover, the article suggested that reporters were required to stuff as many keywords as possible into the opening paragraph, to improve the chances of that article ranking more highly, and therefore getting more traffic. The text from Private Eye reads: “Telegraph news hacks are sent a memo three or four times a day listing the top subjects being searched in the last few hours on Google. They are then expected to write stories accordingly and/or get as many of those keywords as possible into the first part of their story”.

We recently discussed how theguardian.co.uk tried keyword stuffing – with a particularly ‘fruity’ theme – to whether it is possible to trick Google into boosting some football pages onto the first page for less seemly search terms. And it worked. But surely a large and respected news organisation such as the telegraph must report the actual news, as objectively as possible, rather than allow user searches to define what makes it into the news, mustn’t they?

Shane Richmond, the communities editor attempted to dismiss the story by responding: “Normally I’d chuckle and move on, but the Private Eye item seems to have caused a little confusion, which I want to dispel”.

The Telegraph, apparently, does push their reporters towards using certain keywords, but this is to help readers to find stories, rather than the other way around, whereby stories are written so that they fall into the path of the searching public.

“So yes, of course, that’s what we do and our staff are regularly updated on the performance of our stories in search engines and told when a vital key word is missing”, continued Richmond.

But he also strongly contested that specific keywords were compulsory, and nor were keywords playing a role in what made it into the news.

It all sounds like quite a fine line, and illustrates how ‘the news’ is a two way dialogue between broadcasters and consumers. Anyone relaying the news must always shape their stories to their audience. That, for example, is why a huge event in a distant land appears as the fourth item on the news whilst a UK celebrity choosing to adopt a baby can make it into top spot. There is most clearly describes the symbiotic relationship between reader and writer, between news giver and news receiver.

Of course bloggers have always known that if they have any hope of attracting new readers from the search engines then they have to lay down stories that have a chance of appearing highly on some high traffic keywords.

So, news receiver, lets swap roles. What do you think? Your feedback is always appreciated – show me how symbiotic we are by leaving a comment below!

Search queries – the words that we type into the search box on Google (or Yahoo, or MSN) – are getting longer, according to research from Hitwise.

Whilst this data is US specific, the same factors apply here in the UK.

In previous years the vast majority of searches were single, two or sometimes three word combinations. These days searches of four words and up are on the rise. In fact, more than 50% of searches are now at least three words long. And a third are four words or longer.

Here’s the table:

From this, you can see that 1 and 2 word queries are actually becoming less common.

Hitwise say the trend for longer search queries is ever increasing. These longer search queries are often referred to as the ‘long tail’ of search terms.

What does this mean if you’re building a website? At the most basic level, people using search engines are getting a lot more specific about what they’re looking for. This is possibly because Google is getting better at delivering results that are more relevant to them.

This has a significant impact in terms of both your Search Engine Optimisation efforts and also your Pay Per Click activities. (We’ll be producing a Pay Per Click guide soon – so keep reading).

The main action you need to take is to make sure your website is optimised for keywords that are very specific to your business. People who are using very specific (and therefore longer) search queries are more likely to carry out an action when they arrive on your site. They have a clearer idea of what they want, have moved along from the ‘research’ phase of their searching, and are ready to take the next step. If they find what they want on your website then they will buy / leave their details / make an enquiry.

For example, a few years ago if you ran a bed and breakfast in Somerset you might have wanted to focus your efforts on keywords such as ‘b&b’, bed and breakfast’, ‘West country.’. When your website popped up in the Search Engine Results Page (SERPs) you would have had to rely on those people who were looking for a B&B in the West Country to pick out your website.  These days it might make more sense to look at longer tail keywords such as ‘b&b exmoor’, ‘cheap b&b somerset’, or even (and of course only if its relevant), ‘award winning bed and breakfast near horse riding’.

Whilst the number of visitors won’t be huge, those that do arrive your website will be highly relevant to your site, and therefore more likely to carry out an action when they get there.

Have you had any direct experience of changing your keywords that you can feedback to other readers? Leave us a comment below.

More research from HitWise this week reveals the subjects that we, as a nation, are most interested in.

Hitwise analysed the top 1,500 search terms from Google, Yahoo and MSN for the last three months of 2008. They then placed each search term in a category. For example, the search term ‘the apprentice’ was placed in the category ‘TV’; and ‘Coldplay’ was in ‘Music’.

And the result? It seems that as a nation we’re obsessed with TV and online gaming. If you take out non-brand searches, over 14% of searches are related to TV, and just under 14% are related to Online Gaming (such as World of Warcraft). The next three categories are Travel, Sport and Finance.

Breaking it down further, the most popular search terms in the TV category were ‘strictly come dancing’, ‘eastenders’, ‘x factor’ and TV listings. So as we mentioned in our blog post about the UK’s most searched for celebrity, we haven’t completely lost our interest in pop, soaps and that sort of thing.

Delving further into the other top categories, here’s the top search terms for each sector:

Online gaming:
games
free online games
car games
free games
cooking games (really!)

Travel:
train times
cheap flights
cheap holidays

9 out of the top 10 sport related terms were football related, with ‘arsenal’ topping the list. ‘F1′ was the only one from any other sport.

And when it comes to finance, the list was headed by ‘currency converter’. The words ‘exchange rate’ were right up there too. So it seems the weakness of the pound is on lots of people’s minds.

What does this mean if you’re a website builder? Well one thing to take from it is that if your business or hobby falls into one of the popular search areas, you have the potential to get lots of visitors to your website. Follow our search engine optimisation guide (SEO) to maximise your chances. Of course what also might be true is that since these are the most popular search terms, they might be the most competitive too. Therefore work out which niche you are best catering for, and concentrate your SEO in that area. For example, if you run a B&B in Somerset, near Exmoor and you specialise in horse riding too, then make sure you’re optimising not just for ‘B&B’ and ‘Somerset’, but also ‘Exmoor’, the local town, and possibly horse riding in Somerset, Exmoor, and the local town.

What are you searching for right now? Leave a comment below.

How do you get your website to the top of the search engine results page (SERPS)? If you are diligently following our search engine optimisation guide (SEO) then you might want to turn away now.

The techniques of SEO – boosting your website to the top of the SERPs – can be broken down into two types, called ‘white hat’ and ‘black hat’. ‘White hat’ techniques are all the best practice methods we talk about in the guide. These include making sure you include your keywords in the title text and visible copy of your website; linking your pages together clearly; and then generating inbound links.

The ‘Black hat’ techniques – referred to as such since they are suspected to include elements of sorcery! – involve ‘tricking’ the search engines into placing your website at the top of the SERPs.

Black hat techniques include building thousands of keyword rich ‘cloaking’ pages that the search engine spiders will see but that users never will, so that the search engine thinks you’re writing about a particular subject in great detail whereas your website might be about something else entirely.

It should be noted here that if Google finds your web page using any black hat technique they will surely boot your web page out of their directory, so it won’t be found at all. However, since it’s not always easy to discover that a website is using black hat – in fact it’s often only found out when the website in question is reviewed manually – websites get away doing black hat SEO for months, and sometimes years at a time. These websites are normally those in markets that some might consider slightly shady themselves, such as gambling or pornography.

There have been lots written about ‘black hat’ SEO, and how the search engines are trying to clean out their directories of websites guilty of it. So The Guardian website decided to try their hand at these techniques as an experiment to see what happens.

The Guardian stuffed a load of irrelevant keywords into the header of one of their football news pages. These were keywords that generate lots of search volume, but are from the more tabloid end of the keyword spectrum. They included ‘Paris Hilton’, ‘how to make money without working’, and some other words that we’re not going to mention on this blog… if you get my meaning.

And did it work? Not in all cases: Yahoo! and MSN weren’t fooled, but the mighty Google and Ask started to rank the website in the top tens search results for some of the saucier keywords. It remains to be seen how long they will stay there, but since this is now a news story someone at Google might be adding that page to their banned list.

So is black hat SEO worth trying? Well it probably depends what market you operate in – if you’re building a website all about poker then it may be your only choice. But if Search Engines are your main source of traffic, and you’re using black hat SEO, you had better find an alternative source of visitors for when Google do finally kick you out of the SERPs.

Have you had any experience of Black Hat SEO? Do you suspect a competitor of doing so? Leave us a comment below.