You might think that here at WebEden we bang on too much about search engines. But as the recent Hitwise data shows, if you’re building a website then you need to know about search engines too. Search engines will probably be the biggest single source of traffic to your website. So they are a fundamental part of any website project.

We’ve previously talked about the Google keyword tool, where you can enter a keyword and find all the other words that are similar to that keyword. It will also give you a rough idea of how many searches per month there are for that keyword. This is a really useful tool to use when deciding what keywords you want to use for your Search Engine Optimisation programme.

A few months ago Google released another tool which has been seen as an enhancement of the keyword tool above. Google Insights for Search is designed to help website owners understand even more about which keywords are right for their website.

It calculates total searches for keywords, looks at the data historically, and produces graphs to show how a particular search term has trended over the last few years.

It then allows you to categorise the search trend by industry sector (called ‘verticals’) and geographical region.

Here’s a good illustration of how useful that can be, by looking at the search term ‘apple’. The vast majority of searches using the word ‘apple’ will be related to the computing brand ‘Apple’, as in ‘apple mac’. Lets say you’re a fruit seller, you obviously don’t want your website to appear high up for searches related to ‘apple mac’, but you still want a clear idea of the number of searches that are relevant to apples the fruit. You can use Google insights allows you to filter the results to just those that fall within the Food & Drink category. The result is the search trends, and related search terms, for just those searches about apple the fruit.

Lets say too that you’re hoping to sell apples online, but just to your local area or region. You can filter by geography to get just those apple related searches that are specifically about apples the fruit, in your area.

Seeing search volume trends can be really useful if you sell a seasonal product. If you sell valentines cards, then type ‘valentines cards’ into Google Insights and you can get a historical guide to the peaks and troughs of that search term. As you can see from the screen grab below, searches for valentines cards actually peak on the 11th February, so anyone looking to maximise sales of valentines cards need to make sure they’re maximising their marketing efforts before this time, and holding plenty of stock on this day.

Google Insights is also really useful if you’re thinking about stocking a new product on your website, or choosing to no longer sell another. Before you make any decisions, type the product name into Google Insights and see whether searches for it are going up or down. Anything that is climbing fast is clearly rising in demand, so its probably a good idea to sell it. If the trend is downward, then you might not want to restock that item when your current stock runs down.

The draw back of this product is that Google won’t actually put a figure on the number of searches for each term, but rather expresses the trend line as a percentage of the total number of searches. And bear in mind, search volumes are gong ever upwards, so if the number of searches for a using a particular keyword is remaining static, this is actually represented as a decreasing trend line.

Despite this, Google Insights will still show you a clear and accurate guide to the level of interest in your products, and the related search terms. You get all this data historically, and it’s all free.

Have a go at using the tool, and then leave your feedback below.

On average, almost half of all traffic that arrives on a website comes through search engines. This is according to recent research published by Internet traffic measurement company Hitwise UK.

Whilst in January 2008 search engines contributed 37.1% of total traffic to websites, by January 2009 this had climbed to a whopping 40.5%.

Here’s a graph from HitWise:

Apart from anything, this shows that if you want more visitors to your website, you need to make sure that your website appears high up in the search engine results page (SERPs). Read our guide to search engine optimisation to boost your website up the SERPs.

The dominance of search engines in website traffic is a huge opportunity for small businesses. Big brands used to be able to dominate the media landscape. What small company has the money to buy advertising on television, in national newspapers or in glossy magazines? But when it comes to search engines the game has changed. You don’t need big  budgets to reach out to potential customers, just an understanding of how search works, and a product or service that people want.

The flip side is that search has made it harder for large companies to ‘own’ consumer interest. Just because you’re a big brand it doesn’t mean you’re going to appear high in the search results. And spending lots of money on search doesn’t necessarily mean lots of traffic. A well optimised website of a small business or an individual will beat a poorly optimised big company website every time.

Just search for a common household product and you’ll see that the results page is full of unknown websites and unknown brands. None of these could afford to buy airtime of on TV. Before search engines, how would these brands have been able to reach potential customers?

The other interesting information arising from this research is the way in which we are now using search engines. 90% of the top 1,500 terms were brand specific. This means that people are using search engines to navigate the web, rather than typing a website’s address directly into the address bar. That’s the same sort of user behviour as seen in Japan, where people almost always use search engines rather than type in a domain name.

Do you a have a big budget competitor that you’ve managed to beat in the SERPs, using the WebEden website making tool? Leave us a comment below.

This article first appeared over on Computer World last week.

If you’re an online marketer and you use AdWords to drive traffic to your website, it can be frustrating (and expensive) when your current customers click on your sponsored listing just to navigate to your website.

For example, lets say that you want to buy something from John Lewis, and you’re previously bought stuff from John Lewis before.

Do you go to your address bar and type in ‘http://www.johnlewis.com’ or do you go to Google and search for ‘john lewis’? If you do the latter, and you click on the ‘sponsored listing’ at the top of the page, then you’re costing John Lewis money. They have to pay Google a few pence each time someone clicks on their sponsored listing. These costs really mount up! A well known brand like John Lewis might get more than 10,000 clicks per day on their sponsored link from people who are just clicking as an easy way to navigate to the website, rather than genuinely searching for a product that John Lewis might stock.

In an ideal world, online marketers spend money on advertising to drive new customers to their websites, not current customers.

But if that’s a frustration here in the UK, just imagine how annoying it is in Japan. Over there, hardly anyone makes use of the address bar when navigating to a website, and almost always use a search engine, even when they know the exact web address of the site that they’re going to.

They continue to do this even when its a site that they use all the time. For example, many people in Japan have Yahoo as their homepage, and they like using Google to search for things. Rather than deleting ‘Yahoo.com’ out of their  address bar and writing ‘Google.com’, they search for ‘Google’ in the Yahoo search engine.

Last year there were so many people searching for Google in the Yahoo search  engine that the word ‘Google’ was the 4th most searched for term in Yahoo!

This preference for the search box rather than address bar is used by advertisers in Japan, At the end of TV or radio adverts, the user is invited to  search for their product using particular keywords. For print and outdoor adverts, a small picture of a search box with the keywords already inside it is usually printed on the bottom right hand corner, as a call to action.

The only time we’ve seen anything like that in the UK is in a recent advertising campaign by Orange, who invited users to search for ‘i am’.

The reason this is so common in Japan originates from the relative rarity of domain names (the bit that goes in the address bar) using Japanese characters. Early Japanese sites used English (Latin) letters instead. Its obviously a really long winded process for broadcasters to phonetically spell out the Latin characters of a domain name at the end of every advert. Just imagine a call to action for Webeden.co.uk. It would go something like this: ‘Visit duh-bul-yoo-ee-bee-ee-dee-ee-en-dot-coa-dot-yoo-kay’.

Thanks to this preference for using search engines to navigate the web, rather than the address bar, just imagine how much money the major search engines are making from people clicking on sponsored links for websites that they use every day!

Its not going be long however until domain names in Japanese characters become much more common. But now the search habit is so ingrained, will it ever change?

If you’re not clear yourself on the difference between a domain name, an address bar and a search engine then we’ll shortly be producing a ‘what is tutorial’ for browser basics.

In the meantime, feel free to search for a domain name to go with your Webeden website!

This story has been picked up in lots of places including the BBC. For about 40 minutes on Saturday, anyone doing a search on Google would have found the warning ‘this site may harm your computer’ alongside every link in the search engine results page.

How alarming is that! We already know that Google want us to spend more time on their website, and less time on any elses’. And we all trust Google as though it IS the Internet. Then then they tell us that every other website is potentially harmful?! That’s going a bit far isn’t it? (Mock shock)

Apparently this was not what they meant to say, and was merely the result of ‘human error’. It was all to do with uploading a list of problem websites into their directory. The problem was quickly rectified, but as Google makes about $1bn a month from sponsored links, we reckon this little error probably cost them close to $1m in lost advertising clicks. 

That makes me feel a bit better about the odd spelling mistake I make here. And its nice to know Google is human too, isn’t it?

As a website builder too, have you dropped any clangers with your site?

Earlier this week I posted some news about Microsoft and the EU coming head to head over anti-competition issues. I also made reference to the question of whether or not Microsoft products are all that good anyway.

Nowhere more so than in online, websites and Search Engines can we see how far Microsoft lags behind. With a measly 4% share of the UK search market, people are voting with their mouse in opting (mostly) for Google instead.

What’s interesting is that Microsoft have just released their trading figures, which have been analysed a great deal in lots of places.

And it appears that not only do we, the users, not like Microsoft’s search products. They’re also costing the company money. Lots of it. In fact, Microsoft have lost $500m in their online business in the last 3 months, and that’s off the back of revenues of more than $850m.

Do you think that they should cut their losses and stick to desktop software? Or do they need to make online work because the next generation of software will be ‘in the cloud’, just like this website builder?

Update 23.01.09: Interestingly, Google have just released their trading figures too. Their revenue is up 18% year on year, at $5.7bn for the quarter. Now there’s a company who knows how to make money online! 

Leave us a comment and let us know.

Getting to the top of the search engines is one of the most cost effective ways to market your website. The ‘organic listings’  or the left and side of the the search engine results page can drive thousands of visitors to your site. However, getting your website listed there has always thought to have been somthing of a ‘dark art’. But it doesn’t have to be a mystery! We’ve put together a 5 part guide to show you how to do it with your webeden.co.uk website builder.

Part 1 – The ground rules

Search Engine Optimisation with SiteMaker is much like Search Engine Optimisation with any website. The key is to make sure that your site contents are focused and relevant to the keywords that you wish to rank highly on. This means making a real effort in a number of places to make sure the terms you use are consistent. And don’t be too ambitious, you’re never going to beat the big guys if your words are too general and competitive.

This guide is based on our experience and generally accepted guidelines on how to improve website search rankings. It doesn’t guarantee results, but will point you in the right direction ;-). If you want more specialist help, employ an SEO consultant, or read the huge range of SEO articles available online.

Throughout this guide we make reference to a website www.joeslondontaxis.com which was built using SiteMaker to test the theories in the articles and show how to get practical results. All results were correct at the time this guide was written.

Ground rules!

Firstly nobody can guarantee you positions in the search rankings. Search engines keep their search algorithms very secret and update them regularly to make sure they produce true and accurate results.

The second thing to know is that SEO takes real work. You’re going to have to give it some thought and make changes to all the pages in your site. This will take time and you may want to adjust things after a few months as you start to see results. The Internet is a great potential market but you need to invest time and effort in marketing your site if you want it to be successful. SEO is a good way of doing this but like most things it doesn’t always come easy.

Next, it’s going to take time for your rankings to improve. Search engines can take months to even list your site and then further time to assign you a rank. They will then review your site periodically and check for updates but the frequency of this can vary. So don’t expect too much too soon. Be patient, build your credibility and presence, and good things will come. Many sites that rank highly have been around a long, long time.

And finally, SEO isn’t everything. There’s never an excuse for not marketing your site in other ways if you’re serious about getting it noticed. Traditional offline marketing, online marketing (banners or AdWords), putting your URL on letterheads, posting it on industry specific directories/message boards, etc., can all help and these actions will also support your SEO efforts too. So don’t forget to look at other forms of marketing too.

First things first

So now the ground rules are out of the way, here are the basics. If you are building a new site, you have two challenges: getting your site listed, and improving its rankings. Even getting your site listed is a subject surrounded in controversy but it also closely relates to how you get it optimised.

In terms of optimisation it’s important to know that search engines look for consistency and relevancy within a number of different areas of your in-page content and within your referral links. These include:

1.    The URL (or web address) of your page, e.g. www.joeslondontaxis.com, or www.joeslondontaxis.com/taxibooking, etc.

2.    Your Page title in the HTML, e.g. “London taxi company”, or “London taxi bookings page”

3.    Your Keywords metadata in the HTML, e.g. “London taxis, London taxi, Joes taxis, West London taxi, etc.”

4.    Your Description metadata in the HTML, e.g. “London taxi company provides taxi services…”

5.    Your page content, e.g. the text that is on your page, including headings (or section titles) which are treated differently from body text

6.    Links on your page, including the anchor text, e.g. the text on which the link is set

7.    Images on your page, including the name of the image file, and the link (if any) set on the image

8.    Referral links to your pages, including the anchor text of the referral link, e.g. a link on another site referring to your site

9.    Points 1-7 are easily within your control as they all relate to the contents of your site. Point 8 requires linking to your site from other external sites, which is less easy to achieve, though there are a number of ways in which you can go about doing this.

Remember, while search engines are mechanical they are not stupid! They are in a constant battle with link spammers who attempt to manipulate ranking results for profit. Optimising your pages and encouraging genuine link backs from other relevant sites will help but getting involved in link spamming and other dodgy techniques such as spamming keywords or content can get your site black listed. So more isn’t always best, make sure links, content and keywords are all genuine.

This guide will go through each of these points in turn and discuss how they are relevant to SiteMaker as well as how to go about achieving each one of them.

Like I said, none of this is solid fact, but it is based on perceived wisdom and what little guidance search engines give out. However, we also want to encourage debate. So if you know something useful or have found a good resource please let us know using the form below.

What’s next? Here’s a link to our Search Engine Optimisation Guide Part 2, which is all about choosing keywords.

Why did you build a website? OK, there’s lots of different reasons, I know. Some of you want to show photos of you, your friends and family, your club or your band. For others its a chance to have some fun, let go creatively, express yourself. And lots of others have a website for their business, a chance to showcase their company, their products, or to sell something.

But all websites have a critical need, something without which they have no purpose. Any guesses? That’s right, its visitors. Without visitors, your website is just a light on in an empty room – if no one sees it then there’s little point.

Now lots of people will see your website because you tell them about it, by word of mouth. Or maybe you put your web address on your email signature, on your business card or your offline advertising. But the way that people usually find websites for the first time is through a search engine.

The search engine (and we’re talking Google here, since in the UK Google is behind 80% of all searches on the web) is the starting point for over 65% of all journeys on the Internet. So all those times someone sits down at a computer without a definite idea of which website they want to visit, in most cases they will start by carrying out a search. If they’re looking to buy something, there’s an even greater likelihood of starting with a search engine: four out of five journeys on the web that end with a transaction have started with a search. So if you want to drive potential customers to your website you absolutely have to appear in the Search Engine Results page.

Those users will decide what website to visit based on the results they get when the have put their search terms into the search field and press ’search’. Therefore, its in this page of results that you want your website to appear.

(By the way, I’m not talking about the sponsored listings here, which usually appear on the right hand side. Its the left hand side or ‘organic results’ that I’m on about. We’ll let you know in a subsequent post about how to use the sponsored listings to drive quality traffic to your website).

And here (at last I’m getting round to the point) is where your Webeden.co.uk website can really excel. A few of the more advanced of your may know that that your website is produced in a programming language called ‘flash’. Flash is fantastic for producing really compelling, engaging and great looking websites. But its traditional shortcoming is that the search engines have been unable to ‘read’ it. The way that search engines find out what your website is all about, and therefore which searches to make you appear for, is by sending out little robot programmes called ‘Spiders’ to your website. These spiders ‘read’ your text and the meta information (an invisible bit of code that sits at the top of your website) on your site and tells the search engine what your website is all about.

Well the problem has always been that these ’spiders’ were unable to ‘read’ flash. They couldn’t tell what your website was all about, so there they didn’t know what searches you might be relevant for.

The types of website that spiders do really like are built in a language called HTML.

Here’s what we think is quite cool about Webeden.co.uk. We let you build a website in flash, so you can produce something exciting and great looking. And we then, behind the scenes, copy the flash and build the same thing in HTML. We make this HTML version sit behind the flash. So whilst you concentrate on producing a great looking website, we make sure that website is really easy for the search engines to ‘read’.

In fact its even better than that. On the Internet there is an independent group of people who set down the standards of website programming. They write a code of conduct of what is and is not acceptable for websites. Its a voluntary code, and if you subscribe to it and if you follow its rules, makes sure that a website is fully accessible to any person using any browser.

This organisation is called the World Wide Web Consortium or W3C for short – you may well have seen their logo before, it certainly appears on millions of websites.

What I’m coming round to is the fact that every Webeden.co.uk website is fully W3C compliant, so it meets the highest standards for an HTML website, even though all you ever see is the funky looking flash one.

All this means that when it comes to getting ’spidered’ or read by the search engines, a webeden,co.uk website is very very good, and your website stands a stronger than average chance of appearing. There’s lots of ways in which you can boost your position in the search engines, and we’ll be giving you a whole guide to this is 2009.

Well that’s it from me. If you having any great successes or failures in the search engines why not share them with us – afterall we may have a tip that can help you to the top…