SEO Belfast

Codefixer desperately needs a refresh as it’s been the same for the last 7 odd years.

I’ve settled on 3 logo drafts

Image 1

Image 2

Image 3

Anyone want to give some feedback on which they prefer? I quite like draft 3.

Just passed the Google Adwords Professional Exam with an 85% mark so I’m very happy.

I’d hoped to do slightly better than that but in mitigation I was absolutely shattered when I took the exam, and I took the exam on the spur of the moment a couple of weeks earlier than I had planned as I wanted to get it out of the way and move onto important client work.
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I first started using Google’s Pay Per Click system way back in 2004 to promote some of the software products that I sell. I signed up and opened an account, used the usual keyword suggestion tools, set up a few campaigns with a whole host on unrelated keywords, set a budget, URL destination and left the account to run on auto-pilot while at the same time hoping that the sales and conversion statistics would jump through the roof.
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Well according to Yell’s advertising literature 90% of their customers considered their advert to be good value for money.

Unfortunately that’s not my experience. I may as well have rolled it up and smoked it!

It’s been at least 6 months since I took out advertising in the Yellow Pages and just to let you know that I got a second call last week. So 2 calls in 6 months for a £400+ relevant ad (designed by Yell) with the first being a service I didn’t even offer isn’t the best value for money by anybody’s standards. There has been a few other inquiries but they have all been for work experience.

Incidentally the second caller wanted a comparison quote, he was making his way through all the listings.

If it goes the way it’s been going and I don’t get a rush of unexpected calls then that’ll work out at £100+ per call. If only it had even been 3 or 4 genuine calls a month then I’d have settled for that.

In the last couple of weeks I’ve been running a Google Adwords campaigns and for a fraction of those costs have had plenty of leads. Time will tell whether they convert or not though it does seem a good advertising model for some types of businesses.

One of the motivating factors in taking out an ad was the credibility issue though next year I don’t think I’ll bother with the Yellow Pages and instead spend that revenue on online advertising. It’s been a lesson learnt but one I’m happy to share.

If anyone can give any reasons to advertise in the Yellow Pages for ‘Internet Web Design’ or has any success stories or opinions then I’m all ears.

That’s funny, I just stumbled across the website for www.2bscene.ie a web design and internet marketing company down south and they’ve plumped for the same header graphic that my company www.CodefixerSoftware.com uses albeit in a very different style.

I’ve been on their site in the last few months so they must have just redesigned some of it.

Anyway it’s a good choice. I like their site and the layout, its very much in a style that I would use.

I just read 6 reasons why ‘I’d hate to be an SEO’ by Gavin over at IrelandSEOMarketing and it got me thinking.

On the contrary I’d love to be a full time SEO consultant. I’ve spent the last eight years promoting websites and although certainly not an expert by any stretch of the imagination I do have a good deal of knowledge and an interest when it comes to ranking in Google. There are no great hidden secrets to becoming fairly proficient in SEO. Google sets out the guidelines for webmasters and like many things on the net there’s plenty of support out there from people who know better and are willing to share. If you’re willing to work incredibly hard (I’m writing this article at 5.00 am on a Monday morning before I start client work) and have a passion for what you do then the benefits definitely out do the negatives.

Making cleanly coded crawlable sites, that have been researched against their competition and analysed for their keywords, with good content and backlinks are the backbone basics to helping a website perform.

Dealing with clients is part and parcel of any job. Always set out the parameters and make sure the client has realistic expectations. Personally I would underplay what can be achieved rather than oversell it. If they want guarantees they can buy a link or banner ad.

In the North a lot of companies particularly web design companies offer SEO as a standard buzzword. Though if you do a bit of research it’s pretty easy to work out that there is very little real commitment to putting this into practice even for their own company websites. The market is ripe for a company in the North to lead the way. There’s also plenty of regional keyword pickings to be had.

If you can deliver then you can set your own professional price provided it’s within reason. Being an SEO consultant is well paid and if you get good clients and provide quality work then you’ll be worth your wait in gold.

The more successful campaigns you put together then the more word will spread and the more job offers you’ll get. It’s the same for the cowboys, the more disgruntled clients they have the more people will hopefully be aware to avoid them like the plague.

Every professional has client problems, pricing issues and competitors. Solely based on the lack of competition it’s a great time to be an SEO consultant in N.Ireland. The market is definitely growing with website owners becoming more and more aware of what search engine marketing is and how their site has been poorly promoted in the past.

I’ve spent the last week working on what should be a fairly straightforward booking system using PayPal as the payment provider. I’ve been using the PayPal Sandbox to test the code and I’ve encountered very strange and confusing results.
There doesn’t seem to be any logic to what happens when the payment is completed and I’m returned to the confirmation page.

If I’ve selected ‘UK’ as the country I get a ‘the parameter is incorrect’ and if I select ‘Aruba’ as the country and enter the same details except I enter ‘Not sure’ for the state rather than Antrim then the confirmation page shows the correct message i.e. ‘Thank you for booking’.

If anyone can explain this then I’d be very glad to hear from you. I’ve posted this issue on the pdncommunity forum and am still waiting for a proper explanation.

Today I’ve completed the initial design for HouseBuyers365 and the site has gone live.

If you’d like to sell your house quickly in the UK HouseBuyers365 are keen to purchase it no matter what condition it’s in.

In relation to the site any constructive criticism is always welcome. The next step is to push the site on the net, get it ranking well for it’s keywords in the search engines and get as many qualities backlinks as possible.

Here’s a nice little checklist I came across for the best and worst SEO practices
http://www.webconfs.com/15-minute-seo.php

After some nightmare traffic chaos in Dublin that added an extra 11/2 hours on to my journey I managed to arrive at SMW 2007 about 20 or so minutes late and stumbled into Danny Sullivan’s basic introduction into Search Engine Marketing. Fairly straightforward and nothing new.

Danny touched on the long tail concept and the importance of ‘less important’ keyword terms. He also discussed how crawlers work, Google being the most important browser, the importance of the title tag, design layout, link analysis, age of the site, clickthroughs and the neighbourhood your site is in.

Danny also discussed the Nike website which underperforms compared to less known brands suchs as Zappos. He used the Nike site to emphasize the importance of avoiding splash pages, flash and euphemisms. Some of his information was a little dated, might have been nice if he had had more current and up-to-date stats. Somehow I got the feeling that he had done this talk before!

One other thing, if you want guarantees then buy an ad. That’s a line I must remember for my customers.

After that talk I headed to grab some breakfast and managed to arrive late again to the talk on ‘Writing Search Engine Optimised Content’, which meant standing at the back of the room and being unable to see the speaker Chris Sherman. Again there was nothing revolutionary, but it did reinforce the important of using unique title tags and dispelled a few myths that you might see on one or two forum postings. SEO does need some effort and thought and sloppiness won’t be rewarded.

A question was raised at the end of the talk as to the importance of keywords in your domain name, Chris suggested that on the whole they were beneficial and certainly wouldn’t do any harm. In my experience I’d have to agree with that, and if you can get a keyword or two naturally into your domain then go for it.

Next I ended up in the great hall for the talk on the future of search. “The mobile internet will be the next big thing in 2-5 years”, as long as the killer application comes along. So in short the mobile internet will be big when the killer application comes along. Anyone got any ideas as to what the killer app will be?

I was looking forward to the Google Adwords talks, though I was somewhat disappointed that the talks were almost the same apart from maybe 5 mins or so of content. The advanced talk didn’t really go that far, and for those even fairly acquainted with Adwords it was a case of nothing really new. Tightly themed keywords, repeat your keywords in the text and calls to action were the order of the day. Include special offers, prices, locations and specifics that set expectations.

Improving your quality score would result in paying less for your ads and raise your ad up the listings against your competitors. One other thing mentioned was to run split tests on ad campaigns. The two talks were fairly standard stuff that you would find mentioned on most marketing boards.

Next it was Keywords with RingJohn, and again nothing new. John was very dubious as to the quality and number of searches alot of these keyword suggestion tool counted. His theory was that to test the number of searches for your possible keywords, it was best to get the credit card out and run an adwords campaign. That would let you know in no uncertain terms and hopefully not break the piggybank.

Finally after a long day I decided to relax a bit in the Click Fraud talk. That was rather interesting, one of the speakers suggested that Click Fraud wasn’t that big an issue, but he had all the Google Badges and no doubt makes a handsome sum from Google advertising so I’ll take his comments with a pinch of salt.

Ghosemajumder from Google assured the listeners that Click Fraud was under control and that Google took proactive steps to lessen the impact by discounting ‘invalid clicks’ and leveling everything out. Not too sure about that but he did seem very confident and competent to his credit. Would have been nice to hear from Yahoo and their efforts to tackle the issue.

After that it was back to the bus station and back to Belfast. It was a long day that had begun in the very early hours. The traffic jam chaos had thrown me off course and next time I’ll probably learn from that and get down the night before. Neverthess it was very enjoyable, nothing grounding breaking but well worth the time and effort invested. Just to say that the venue was superb and well done to the organisers.

Oh and to the taxi man that told me the internet was shite and Irish websites were crap because he couldn’t find a spare part for his car, well he provided the entertainment!