So it’s interesting that Google has been developing a new algorithm for indexing textual content in Flash files of all kinds, from Flash menus, buttons and banners, to self-contained Flash websites.

There’s plenty of arguments and comments, my opinion for what it’s worth is that I’ll try and stick to semantic HTML code with plenty of content that does return good rankings.

Ramada Hotel Wednesday 11th June, Shaw’s Bridge Belfast £95+VAT (all day).

Topics amongst other things include:

• Blogging and Blogging platforms
• RSS feeds
• SEO
• Social Media
• Market Research

The event is being sponsored by InvestNI and no doubt some of the bigger development and marketing companies will be attending. Should be interesting, and hopefully I’ll have something to report back on.

You can read more on it here.

**** Updated ****

Apart from a very warm squashed room the seminar was enjoyable and provided plenty of food for thought. Jeff from Quadraconsulting gave the presentation.

Blogs, blogging platforms and the benefits of blogging obviously took up much of the presentation. Blogs give website owners the opportunity to engage and create an online relationship with their readers. Nothing out of the ordinary here, though I’m far from convinced that every site should have a blog or that existing static sites should move over to a blog/cms platform.

Very quick skim over SEO, touched on inbound links, keyword targeted sites, title tags, and anchor text, and importance of content. Nothing out of the ordinary here apart from the 303 redirect, (What’s that all about?), might have been nice to spend a bit more time on this subject and have a few examples for those in the room that don’t know what anchor text is or how SEO can benefit your business, but time constraints no doubt.

Page Rank isn’t the holy grail of search engine rankings. The higher the PR doesn’t necessarily mean the higher you’ll finish up the Google rankings. Might be a factor though a quick search on Google for a specific phrase will provide plenty of evidence of pages with less PR being returned higher up the rankings. No point in having a high PR if your site isn’t delivering targeted traffic from search engines.

Social networks such as Facebook again were covered as another method of online engagement. Not something I’m heavily into but I can definitely see the benefits of targeted groups and networks, though hasn’t this always been the case.

There was very little on Google Adwords and the benefits of Adwords. Might have been nice to cover this in a bit more detail. Keyword research was covered and Google Adwords as a great keyword research tool wasn’t mentioned. I can find out plenty on competition, market research, keywords, keyword usage that some of the other tools don’t give.

The business benefits of running a successful SEO campaign are there for all to see. Just ask yourself how much you spend online, where you, your family and friends find and research services, companies and products. Your searching habits are more than likely the same as everyone else’s.

If you’re not high up the rankings for keywords associated with your business then it’ll be one of your competitors that win the business.

Unfortunately simply having a website hasn’t and won’t be enough to guarantee online success. There are millions of websites that look great but don’t bring any return. They just sit pretty and in some cases clutter up the Internet.

SEO is a long-term strategy that your business needs to invest in. It can be a cost effective and measurable strategy, and the good news is that it works for small to medium sized companies just as well for the big boys.

One strand of SEO in particular is concerned with best practice web development. It shouldn’t be an afterthought, you should make sure that you get the site’s structure correct at the planning stage otherwise some drastic measures such as a complete redesign might be required.

So what are the business benefits?

• You can attract highly targeted traffic to particular pages on your site. Every service or product page that you offer can be the page that the searcher arrives at, making your site as wide a net as possible to catch potential customers with.
• Every keyword related to your business gives you an opportunity to bring traffic to your site.
• More visibility and a higher profile, coupled with an attractive functional website should bring you more inquiries, more sales and more business.
• Promote and reinforce your brand, the higher up the rankings the more perceived value and credibility your site and company will have.
• Receive an excellent cost effective long term Return on Investment from 24/7 online promotion.
• In many markets and many regions smaller companies can still compete online with bigger companies and out punch their weight.
• Allow customers to easily find you. I had one client recently who’s own name didn’t even bring up their site when you searched on Google.
• Target the local market or international market. Sell anywhere and everywhere around the world.
• Track, monitor and improve your website. Your website analytics is a goldmine of information and can tell you so much about your business and your products.
• There’s no doubt that more and more people rely on search engines as opposed to offline directories such as the Yellow Pages. In some sectors this is dramatic.

To make an online success of your business search engine optimisation is one of the most successful online marketing strategies that you can use, it’s not the only one by any means and it shouldn’t be used in isolation. Pay Per Click advertising can compliment it very nicely.

SEO is an investment that many businesses should seriously consider. Offer a good service, product or advice, get it in front of your targeted market and you’ll reap the benefits. A well designed, structured website, with some age and with only a few links from other sites around your niche is sometimes enough to help your site rank well. It can be a very lucrative business, done right of course.

Figure 1 shows where you ads can appear. The PPC ads appear as ‘Sponsored Links’ on the right or sometimes above the main search results. These areas are marked with a red box, the main results are in the green box. To get listed in the green box ‘the organic results’ takes a lot longer and is a different ball game. So if your site is new then Google’s PPC program lets you advertise straightaway rather than having to wait in some cases months for your site to appear in the ‘organic listings’.

Figure 1

For the paid search PPC listings you can research and choose the keywords that you want your ad to appear for. So if you’re a dentist in Belfast you could do the keyword research and decide that you want your website to appear when someone types in ‘Dentist in Belfast’, ‘orthopedic dentist in Belfast’ ‘Dentist needed urgently Belfast’ or whatever you deem relevant.

Not only do you set the keywords you also can set the amount you’re willing to pay for a visitor. You have control of your spend and can set a daily budget. You only pay when someone clicks on your ad. If they don’t click, you don’t pay.

You can set your ads to appear locally, nationally or internationally. So if you are a software company in Belfast, you might want to sell your software internationally, if you’re a painter in Belfast you might only want to target your services locally. It’s up to you.

Google Adwords isn’t simply a straight bidding auction. The more you pay doesn’t necessarily mean the higher your ad will be placed. You can pay less than your competitor and appear above them. The more relevant your ad, the better the campaign structure you use the more you’ll have in your pocket to invest wisely, and the more inquiries and sales you’ll get for your money. Appearing above your competitor doesn’t necessarily mean that your site will convert better. You need to find your optimal position. A few listings down might perform better than right at the top.

You can continuously test, monitor and tweak your campaigns to make them more profitable and effective. If a campaign isn’t working then you can simply stop it, there’s no ongoing commitment.

If you’re interested the Google Adwords learning center goes into it in alot more details. For businesses there’s no long wait to begin selling or getting leads online, PPC is immediate.

Outside Google and the other 3 major search engines (Ask, Yahoo & MSN) these other search engines are pretty much worthless. Submission to 10 or 400+ search engines is a nonsense, and monthly submissions is pointless.

Most web design companies won’t even submit your website to Google manually, they’ll simply get it indexed by obtaining a few links on other popular websites that are regularly visited by Google’s spiders. The link to your site will be picked up and visited by Google and your site will be added to Google’s listings.

Talk of monthly submissions again is nonsense and old hat.

Avoid these types of search engine submission offers, and query the companies that offer them. Certainly don’t make these extra offers the deal maker!

When I mention PPC people often seem shocked and respond with “why should I or why would I want to pay for a click?”

Well in the offline world If you owned a furniture store and somehow knew that there were potentially 50 couples in your area that wanted to buy a black leather sofa, and that’s exactly what your shop specialised in, would you pay to get these visitors into your furniture shop and then try and convert them into sales, or would you rather just wait and hope that they turn up irrespective of any marketing.

Chances are that they won’t know that you exist, what your prices are, or that you specialise in black leather sofas, or even if a few of them do then the rest won’t. Even if you paid them a little something to turn up you’ll still make a hefty profit if your profit margins are good and you know how to get them to part with their money. PPC works on the same basis. Target people looking for the exact product and service that you supply, and if it’s a quality product at a decent price on a decent looking website then you’re on a winner.

Below are the 10 reasons:

1. PPC is immediate. Pay per click online advertising gives you visibility straight away. Create an account, set up billing preferences, campaigns and adgroups, do keyword research, set up your landing page and you are off and running. Takes an awful lot more time to target the organic listings with a full campaign, particularly if it’s a competitive market and you’re on a new domain name and you don’t already.

2. PPC gives you a greater reach. You can target a wider range of terms and a greater geographic region relevant to your services and business that you might not rank for in the organic listings. If one day you decide you want to branch out and target the South of Ireland or the UK then you can do that straightaway.

3. PPC has great accountability. With PPC you can monitor your performance. PPC and Adwords lets you control your spend, set a budget, set the regions you wish to market in, set the maximum price you’ll pay for a click, pay only for clicks you receive, count the number of conversions. You can see your return on investment. If it’s not working then you can stop it.

4. Google Analytics. You can link your Google Analytics with your Google Adwords PPC account and track your keywords to see which ones provide leads and sales and which ones don’t.

5. The vast majority of your competitors aren’t using SEO and they aren’t using PPC, in fact believe it or not most of them aren’t even using the internet! As I’ve said before, the web isn’t just about global markets for the majority of businesses it’s about local markets, so if you’re a solicitor in Belfast, a graphic designer in Dunmurry, or an accountant in Lisburn it’s time to get an internet strategy. It doesn’t cost the world, but there are very good returns with proper investment.

6. Online Marketing has taken over from other forms of marketing. Online marketing is profitable, it DOES work. Yellow Pages and offline paper directories just don’t cut it for many business models. Not all online marketing works though, you’ll need to test them to see if they suit your business.

7. PPC can bring you targeted traffic, from targeted areas. Set a region, country or area that you wish to target and your ad will only show for that area. If you’re not too convinced about Google’s location targeting you can use regional qualifiers e.g. “Tax Accountant in Northern Ireland” and this will only show your ad when someone types in those exact words so it’s very relevant.

8. Even if you do run a successful SEO campaign in the free standard organic listings, PPC can provide you with more real estate and more clout on the front pages of Google. If you appear in both listings then that’s 1 less spot for a competitor and it can definitely be a credibility factor. If PPC is profitable then keeping it running.

9. It’s cost effective, you only pay for clicks. With a targeted campaign that’s looking for conversions rather than as many clicks as possible you can dissuade clickers. For instance I mentioned the example of an ‘expensive leather sofa’, well you can make sure your ad doesn’t show for those that are looking for ‘cheap leather sofa’. Target more specific words that are more likely to result in a conversion and you’re on a winner.

10. PPC is a great market research tool. You can find out exactly what terms people are using to find your service and product, what they are looking for and what converts. This information is a goldmine and can help you create a more profitable organic campaign or if it’s a disaster make you think twice before investing more.

Pay Per Click like Search Engine Optimisation and like Web design/development can be profitable. Businesses are profiting handsomely from their investment, maybe it’s about time the businesses (both small and large) in Northern Ireland tapped into some of these markets.

Venue: Harbour Master Dublin
Date: Saturday February 9th
Time: 7.30PM

Some of Ireland’s greatest criminal minds in Search Engine Optimization, Search Marketing and web design/development shall be in attendance, and there’s even a warm-up event if you like your rugby.

Below are some of the speakers already signed up for the event.

Cormac Moylan
Dave Davis - Redfly Marketing
Louie - Eire Web Design
Richard Hearne - Redcardinal
James Larkin - Forbairt Media
Allistar - Logon
Eoghan McCabe
Gavin - Ireland SEO & Marketing
Ken Stanley
Gavin Doolan
David Behan

If you’re attending and want a quick mention then let me know.

Now I’ve just gotta convince the wife it’s strictly a business networking event and not a pub crawl.

You can read more of the details on IWF.

Potential customers in Belfast or further a field are searching for your product or service every day and if they don’t find you they’ll find your competitor.

So if you’re a lawyer, an accountant, a chiropodist or whatever then there’s a huge opportunity. If you don’t have an online strategy, not just a website parked on the internet where no one gets to see it, then you’re missing out big time. Phone Books, News Papers or TV ads won’t suffice these days. It’s the internet that people are searching on for your product or service.

It’s pretty obvious for searching Google that companies in Belfast haven’t cottoned on to this or grabbed the bull by the horns. There’s also no doubt that many have tried in the past and got a poorly performing website.

A quality website, a good service or product and online marketing done well can bring a great return. It’s time local businesses got started and don’t miss the boat.