So with this in mind if you are one of those silent readers let me give you some benefits for YOU on leaving comments not just on this blog but on others.

• You are letting me and my guest authors know who you are

If you leave regular comments and feedback not only will I recognise you but so will all the other readers of this blog. And if you leave something really great – maybe you could guest blog for me at some stage?

Peter Stephens has with his post ‘The importance of quality photography for your Website’

Sue Haswell has with this post ‘Why we should all get emotional about our clients’

Why not drop me an email if you want to write a guest blog post here.

• The community grows

This community grows around its followers, readers etc, I am regularly out and about on the Exeter networking scene and you will be amazed how much that community grows. So even if you are just surfing in a spare 5 minutes, please make the effort and leave a comment, even if its short – I appreciate them all.

• You are connecting with others who read this blog

Maybe a potential client is searching in Google and finds this blog, maybe they find the link on Twitter or someone directed them here, either way they share a similar interest – doesn’t it make sense to show your interest to?

• Your site will get more traffic

Lots of people don’t realise that when you leave a comment you also leave a link to your website, which people can then click on to see more stuff about you.

Blogging isn’t just about me or any of the guest authors saying their piece it is also about us all joining the conversation when and where it is happening, about exposing yourself to new ideas and about leaving a comment not just on this blog but others you like, you never know you may get business out of it.

So get started leave a comment now and introduce yourself not just to me but everyone else who reads this blog.

The first thing to remember is that ‘Search Engine Optimisation’ (or SEO for short) is not an exact science, there are things that we can do (and you) to try and influence the position of your website in search engine rankings but at the end of the day it’s down to Google (or Yahoo, or MSN etc) and not us to decide which site goes where in the listings. There are over 100 different factors that the search engines take into account when deciding the position of a web site, a good web developer will generally concentrate on the most important of those factors. Many of the things that influence the rankings are not even visible to the average user of the website. Things like page titles, hidden meta data, number of inbound links to the site etc. have a very large influence but don’t worry a good web developer will take care of this part for you.

As you may or may not know, the actual written content of your website is important and this is where you can actually help towards the SEO of the site. Simply write your content (or use a skilled copywriter) to ensure a number of your ‘Keywords and Key-phrases’ are used throughout. These are the important words on your site that you want to get found for in Google for searches and also similar and related searches. A keyword might be something like ‘jewellery’, whilst Key-phrases are usually a combination of 2, 3 or 4 keywords, for example ‘sterling silver jewellery’. Ideally we want the key-phrases to be in the same order that someone might actually type them into Google. Here are some basic guidelines for the descriptions.

• Remember that the content is for end user and should be clear to them.
• Use keywords and key-phrases frequently to increase search engine positions for these. (This makes the page seem more relevant to the search engines for people searching for these words and phrases).
• However don’t over use them, so that it doesn’t read well or just looks weird, make sure it flows and sounds natural.
• Keep the descriptions relevant to product.
• Be direct. Use short sentences. Break up the text with line breaks. Search engines don’t actually bother reading punctuation or line breaks but for users, it’s easier to read if it’s spaced out and not one big chunk of text.
• Use lists if appropriate; these are concise and easy to read.
• Don’t be afraid to repeat a little bit to get your point across, this could mean summarising with a final sentence or paragraph containing important keywords. However, it’s important to ensure that it doesn’t look weird or out of place.
• Up to 300 words on the page is ideal for most products and services. If there’s not much to say then it’s not always good to put something there just for the sake of it.

There are no restrictions on who can view the videos and it is very much a community website with a large demographic worldwide user base.

• YouTube hosts over six million videos, growing at about 20 percent every month.
• The videos take up 45 terabytes of storage — about 5,000 home computers’ worth.
• The total time spent watching YouTube videos since it started last year is 9,305 years!

As you would expect businesses have grasped the power of YouTube to connect with audiences in a different and innovative way, this sees things as diverse as tours of hotels to videos of theme rides, anything that can be used to promote their business model.
YouTube offers a number of ways for the users and advertisers to benefit from using YouTube as a tool in their marketing mix, these (direct from YouTube) are;

• [tag]YouTube Insight[/tag]: A free tool offered by YouTube that allows anyone with a YouTube account—users, partners or advertisers—to view detailed statistics about the videos that they upload to the site.

• The YouTube Partner Programme: Original content creators have the chance to generate revenue from their work and receive the same promotional benefits afforded to YouTube’s other professional content partners.

All in all a DEFINTATE requirement for any business wanting to expand their social reach.

See: Why does my business need a branded YouTube Channel?

Attracting new business and converting that into PR that we all talk about is something that takes really ‘big balls’ I think – would you change a worldwide brand website into rotating social media pages?

Well in a bold move that has generated tonnes of PR, Skittles has done just that in changing its entire website into a social media fest, today we have Wikipedia tomorrow it may be Twitter feeds, they’re moving through all the different social media sources.

They have a great hovering navigation box that helps you get to different areas of the site, as below, also they ask for visitors’ age as some content on these may not be suitable for kids.

http://www.skittles.com/friends.htm facebook
http://www.skittles.com flikr
http://www.skittles.com/chatter.htm Twitter
http://www.skittles.com/videos.htm YouTube

I love Twitter and everything is stands for, if anyone Tweets the word Skittles it will appear on the Skittles site in their Twitter stream.

“We are leveraging what we think are the key consumer social media touch points,” said Carole Walker, VP, integrated marketing communications for the brand. “Wikipedia is a definition of what the brand actually is.” She said in an interview with AdWeek.

So instead of pushing their own marketing message out, they’re letting consumers do it for them, a very ballsey decision, do they monitor all those feeds all the time? On the facebook page they have 590,000 fans and growing, they’ve got 16,500 pictures that match the criteria “skittles” on flickr and a growing number of Tweets.

I am sure they won’t be the last to try this out in targeting the exact tools for this market, is this a step too far, only time will tell.

The first thing to remember is that ‘Search Engine Optimisation’ (or SEO for short) is not an exact science, there are things that we can do to try and influence the position in the site in the rankings but at the end of the day it’s down to Google (or Yahoo, or MSN etc) and not us to decide which site goes where. There are over 100 different factors that the search engines take into account when deciding the position of a web site, we concentrate on the most important of those factors. Many of the things that influence the rankings are not even visible to the average user of the website. Things like page titles, hidden meta data, number of inbound links to the site etc. have a very large influence but don’t worry we will take care of this part for you.

As you may know, the content of the site is important and this is where you can help towards the SEO of the site. Keywords and Key-phrases These are the important words on your site that we want to get found for in Google for searches and also similar and related searches. A keyword might be something like ‘jewellery’, whilst Key-phrases are usually a combination of 2, 3 or 4 keywords, for example ‘sterling silver jewellery’. Ideally we want the key-phrases to be in the same order that someone might actually type them into Google. Here are some basic guidelines for the descriptions.

• Remember that the content is for end user and should be clear to them.
• Use keywords and key-phrases frequently to increase search engine positions for these. (This makes the page seem more relevant to the search engines for people searching for these words and phrases).
• However don’t over use them, so that it doesn’t read well or just looks weird, make sure it flows and sounds natural.
• Keep the descriptions relevant to product.
• Be direct. Use short sentences. Break up the text with line breaks. Search engines don’t actually bother reading punctuation or line breaks but for users, it’s easier to read if it’s spaced out and not one big chunk of text.
• Use lists if appropriate; these are concise and easy to read.
• Don’t be afraid to repeat a little bit to get your point across, this could mean summarising with a final sentence or paragraph containing important keywords. However, it’s important to ensure that it doesn’t look weird or out of place.
• Up to 300 words on the page is ideal for most products and services. If there’s not much to say then it’s not always good to put something there just for the sake of it.