Bing it on! September 27th, 2009

Whether or not you like Bing as a search engine you have to be impressed with recent events. Google the internet giant that grew from a garage start up in San Francisco has a competitor. As an underdog myself in the hosting world fighting to grow our business, I have to favour the smaller player. It is not often that you can refer to one of Bill Gate’s enterprises as a smaller entity. But smaller for how long? A little like a boxer who smiles at his opponent in the ring when he feels a punch that cuts him to the quick, he makes too much effort to hide the pain. Recently Google have been sparring in similar style scoring points with Microsoft over petty… Read the Rest »

Splitting the Google atom? April 8th, 2009

I had a couple of great discussions yesterday with an SEO expert who challenged UKFast on their “fast servers deliver better results” message. Google actually reduces your cost per click on faster sites and penalises you, charging you more if you have a slow site. FACT. (See the quality score rules in your Google Adwords account.) Why is this? Is Google acknowledging that faster sites give the customer a better experience? Absolutely! Is traditional SEO as we know it dead or is it evolving at such a pace that it has caught a large proportion of the SEO enthusiasts and internet users by surprise? Could it be that speed has always been a major deciding factor in ranking and no one knew about it? Or… Read the Rest »

Keyword shortcuts can backfire December 13th, 2007

I was asked in a focus group recently, whether Google allowed a company to put multiple ads under the same keywords. I have always been led to believe that Google does not agree with this, on the basis that it is unfair competition. It merely drives up the cost per click for other advertisers and allows them to monopolise the Google results. I know that from time to time UKFast advertises under the same keyword. However, we do so only when promoting completely different brands. Each brand has a different marketing strategy so it is very unlikely that two UKFast ads are ever seen next to each other. Whilst doing some research, I chose keywords that related to our industry. The two words being ‘dedicated… Read the Rest »

Caching in on Anita Roddick’s good name September 12th, 2007

Online marketing, where will it stop? In a desperate race to out do their competing news rivals, the Telegraph and Business Guardian both have added Anita Roddick’s name to their pay per click advertising. Traffic to the newspaper’s sites is so important; the media giants, who once ignored the Internet and search engines, now pay Google to forward them traffic. With businesses paying a premium to advertise on their sites it is imperative the newspapers grow their online presence. Any type of customer is a potential good customer and so we see topical stories driving the pay per click campaigns. Personally I don’t view it as a bad thing as I am great believer in freedom of speech and with that surely comes the freedom… Read the Rest »

Can enthusiasm dampen results? July 27th, 2007

How often do you type in your keywords on Google to see where your advert appears? If you are like the rest of us, probably quite often. Firstly it’s important to weigh up where your advert appears in the rankings. Are you going up are you going down? It is imperative that you measure your results. However, are you aware that Google calculates the number of times you view the adverts? If you do not click on them, after a relatively short time (undisclosed by Google) your advert disappears! Don’t worry it is still there for the rest of the world to see, however the search engine recognises that you keep ignoring it, so it serves you something else instead. Very clever, but how do… Read the Rest »