As of the 26th May, a new law will come into effect which will mean that all UK websites should gain the consent of visitors to serve them with web cookies.

What does this mean?

Well, to the general public, not a lot, as many people don’t even know what a cookie is and if they’re aware of them, they’re suspicious.  In fact, according to a recent consumer survey by Econsultancy, only 31% of consumers know what cookies are and what they’re for.  In addition, the same survey reveals that only 23% of consumers are happy for a site to set cookies when they visit.

So what are cookies then?

When you visit a website, assuming cookies are enabled on your browser, a simple text file will be saved onto your PC.  This contains information about which site you visited and what you did whilst you were there.  Information such as what was in your shopping cart on an ecommerce site, or your log-in details to use next time.  The idea of a cookie – which is what this text file is – is to enable sites to improve your user experience.  Functions such as autofilling a form so you don’t have to do it again, suggesting items for you to buy based on what you’ve bought in the past (e.g. Amazon), or targeting advertising that you’re most likely to be interested in (e.g. Facebook advertising) are all possible because of cookies.  However, some people are uneasy about this type of information about them being stored. You can find more information on what cookies are (from a consumer point of view) on the ‘What Are Cookies’ website.

What does the new law say?

In basic terms, the new ‘Cookie Law’ says that by 26th May 2012, all websites in the UK must ask visitors for permission to collect information about them to maintain privacy.  Compliant sites will have some sort of opt-in feature that appears when they land on the site, such as a pop-up or a banner.  It should ideally explain what a cookie is, and that they can opt-in to them being enabled, if they aren’t already.  Visitors can also block a site from appearing in their search results.

There are a few small exceptions in the law. One such exception allows e-commerce sites to place cookies on your computer without consent, but only to enable shopping cart functionality which would cease to function without cookies.

Does this apply to my site?

If your site uses cookies, then yes it does – and if you have Google Analytics set up, as most websites do, then you will most likely be serving cookies to your site visitors. You can check whether your site uses cookies using a number of tools such as TRUSTe’s website tracker and cookie audit or IECookiesView for Internet Explorer from Nirsoft.

What should I do now?

You can find some useful information on taking steps towards compliance and some examples of compliance in other articles by Econsultancy.  If you want to know more about the law and what you need to do to comply, or you’re not sure if your site uses cookies, you can always give us a call on 01952 462845 and we’ll guide you through the steps that you need to take.

Don’t assume your web designer will sort this out for you automatically – as a website owner it is your responsibility to comply with the law.

What if I don’t want to comply?

The new law is almost universally unpopular among website owners, who worry that displaying a privacy warning on their website will scare visitors off, and who are extremely concerned at the prospect of losing a lot of their Google Analytics data – if a large percentage of users opt out of accepting your cookies, you will lose a lot of valuable visitor information. If you wish to make your views known on the Cookie Law, have a look at this video and consider signing the online petition.

We’d like to say a big thank you everyone who came on our second WordPress in a Day course yesterday.

A great time was had by all and we received some excellent feedback. If you’re interested in a WordPress training course geared towards the beginner with friendly tutors, great food and free parking, please get in touch today.

Our next course dates are:

• Tuesday 22nd May 2012
• Wednesday 20th June 2012
• Thursday 19th July 2012

Click here for more information or to book online

Would you like to know how to make sure that your social media activity pays? Social Media Optimisation (or SMO) is no new thing, but it’s so important to make social media activity and search engine optimisation work hand-in-hand. This article tells you how; with 6 simple SMO tactics that will keep Google happy (and keep your site visible to the right people).

Most site owners know the importance of search engine optimisation in ensuring that their website receives maximum traffic from the right visitors. Many businesses also know the value of having a presence on, and engaging on, social media. However, not everyone is combining the two into what is known in the internet marketing trade as ‘Social Media Optimisation’ or SMO.
We’ve compiled 6 simple tactics that will help you to become more SMO-savvy and use social media to drive the right traffic to your site:

1. Guest blogging

   Which blogs do your target market read? Find them and see if there are any regular guest bloggers. If there are, see what they’re blogging about, what gets the most comments and shares and then approach the site/blog owner to see if you can get a guest spot for yourself. If and when you post your guest post, make sure you’re got the right keywords and use Rel=Author to link all of the content you post back to your Google profile (read more about how to do this here). If you get this right, you’ll start to see a photo of yourself and a link to your author profile popping up in Google search results, making your content stand out and improving its clickthrough rate!

2. Ads with a +1

   If you’ve set up a Google AdWords campaign, you can use ‘social extensions’ add a +1 button next to your ad. The main benefit, as we see it, is that this makes your ad stand out on the page, as well as obviously giving users the option to +1 your content, which may improve its search engine ranking. To read more about social extensions visit the AdWords help section.

3. Blog sharing

   When you write and publish a blog post, make sure you post links to it across all of your social media accounts. When you post the link, make sure it’s rich in keywords. In addition, you may want to consider having social sharing buttons on your blog so that users can easily share your content with others. There is a correlation between social media shares/likes and search engine rankings – you can read more here  – this article is a year old but the key points still apply.

4. Provoking discussion

   If you post a blog, provide a call to action or content that provokes conversations both on your comments and on social networks. Think about how your content can start social conversations using the right keywords. A way of doing this is to monitor discussions within your target market and see what gets people talking the most or see which blog posts get the most shares and comments.

5. Google places reviews

   If you have a Google Places profile (and if you don’t you can set one up here), you’ll know that it can seriously improve your Google rankings for local phrases, if done well. One particularly key element is to ensure you have lots of positive reviews from happy customers on your Places page. You can tap into your social media presence to increase the number of reviews by, for example, posting a link on your Facebook page to your Google Places page and asking your social media contacts to review your business on there.

6. Growing your network

   If you want to grow a network of people to promote content to, don’t worry about having thousands of followers, likers or connections. For a good on-going social media optimisation effort, you’re better off spending, say, 30 minutes per day connecting and engaging with people who are most likely to read and share your content. As usual, quality is often better than quantity.

The main rule for effective SMO is that if you have the right content and provide the links to it and the facility to share it, then you’ll ensure that your social media activity drives the right traffic to your website. The next step is to convert them on your site – we’ll talk about that another time!

Picture the situation; you’ve paid a large sum of money for a brand new website with all the bells and whistles. A few months down the line the web developer goes bust, and your site is left in limbo. With no support number to call, what would you do in this situation? You’ve bought a website, but does that mean you own it? Follow these top tips to keep your website under control:

Check your domain name is registered in your own name

If your domain name is registered in the name of your web designer, you may find it difficult later on to prove that it rightfully belongs to you.

Check on the copyright of website content

First, do you have the right to use all of the content you have put onto your website? Never reproduce someone else’s text or images on your website unless you have permission. Second, make sure that any contractors you use to create your website for you will agree to assign to you the copyright in any work they do on your behalf.

Find out what content management system your website uses

If the content management system or e-commerce package that your website is built in is proprietary to your web developer, then the system that sits behind your website is unlikely to belong to you. This means that should you ever wish to move away from that developer, you will probably not be able to take your website with you.

A good way to avoid nasty surprises is to have your site built using an open source content management system like WordPress or Drupal, or ecommerce system such as Magento. Open source software is free to use, widely supported and easier to move between different hosting providers.

Make sure your Google Analytics account is set up as a standalone account

Many web developers will set up all their clients as ‘profiles’ within one central Google Analytics account rather than as standalone individual accounts. While this may be convenient for them, it means you will never be able to have administrative rights to your own Analytics account – otherwise you would have access to all their other clients’ data. This may sound unimportant but if you ever want to take your internet marketing campaign beyond the basics, you will need administrative rights to your account.

Establish whether you’re buying or renting your website

Over the last couple of years we’ve seen a growing number of providers offering websites for a few pounds a month, rather than charging upfront for the design and build of a website. This can be a great way for small businesses to get started but you should be aware that if you are paying a monthly ongoing fee that this usually means that when you stop paying, you stop having a website. Typically, this means you will never be able to transfer the website to another party without rebuilding it from scratch. Make sure you’re clear about whether you’re buying or renting!

Keep good records & ask the right questions!

It’s hugely important to keep a record of any usernames and passwords associated with your website – any login details associated with your domain name, website hosting, content management system and analytics package, for example. These details would certainly come in handy if your web developer were to go out of business!

We’re big fans of WordPress at Ascendancy. The open source blog/CMS is our tool of choice when building new sites for many of our clients. It’s dead simple for clients to add new content to their own site, and easy to add new functionality, with new third-party plug-ins being created every day.

As some of our readers may already know, we started out as an SEO agency, so we’re big on ensuring that our clients’ websites perform well in Google’s organic search listings, and that they reach their intended target audience. Here are a few handy SEO plug-ins we’ve used and liked which can easily be installed on your WordPress-powered site. Remember – always backup your database and website files before making any changes to your site!

1. All-in-One SEO Pack

This is probably the best-known and most widely-used SEO plug-in for WordPress. All-in-One SEO Pack allows you to enter custom Title and Meta tags on every page or post on your site- allowing you to create more relevant, keyword-rich Title and Meta description tags, rather than the un-optimised and auto-generated ones that WordPress inserts by default.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/

2. Google XML Sitemaps

This plug-in can be used to generate an XML sitemap. XML sitemaps tell search engines about all of the pages in your site and where they are located so that they can be indexed – very useful if your site is difficult to crawl. You can also assign priorities to certain pages in your site (i.e. that product or service you really want to push) so that they are indexed by the search engines sooner and on a more regular basis.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/

3. Google Analytics

Having a good stats package like Google Analytics installed on your site is a no brainer – if you haven’t already signed up, we suggest you go here right now – http://www.google.co.uk/analytics ! This clean and simple plug-in lets you enter your Analytics ‘UA’ tracking number, and pulls some of your statistics into your WordPress dashboard, which is very handy! Knowing what search terms people are entering to find your site should help you to optimise your copy, Title and Meta description tags using the All-in-One SEO Pack plug-in.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-analytics-for-wordpress/

4. Redirection

If you’ve recently converted your site from a different content management system or static pages into WordPress, you will probably want to preserve the excellent page rankings you’ve no doubt built up on Google. This plug-in allows you to create 301 redirects from within your WordPress admin panel, rather than having to whip out a text editor and your thinking cap! A 301 redirect tells search engines that a page has permanently moved to a new location, transferring PageRank and the traffic that goes with it to the new location.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/redirection/

Have fun experimenting!

Over the last few months, you’ve probably heard quite a bit about Google’s latest attempt to break Facebook’s grip on our online social lives. Google’s previous social project, Google Buzz, never really got off the ground. This was partly due to the negative publicity the service received regarding poor user privacy and partly due to the fact that it didn’t really offer anything new.

Google launched its new Google+ service to great fanfare at the end of June. The service currently only accepts new users on an invite-only basis, similar to Gmail when that service first started back in 2004. In an attempt to remedy the damage done by Google Buzz, the service includes more comprehensive privacy controls and allows users to share posts with much narrower groups of people, known as ‘Circles’.

At this point you might be thinking ‘This is great, but how does this relate to my business?’ As yet, the ability to create a page for your business, like Facebook Pages, is unavailable. Google’s current stance is that the service is just for individuals. However, it is widely expected that Google will add the ability to create business listings in the near future – so keep your eyes peeled!

The ‘+1′ Button

Another area where Google+ could affect your business is in the field of Search Engine Optimisation. Just before Google+ launched, you might have noticed prominent ‘+1’ buttons appearing next to search engine results and on various websites when signed into a Google account. These are essentially Google’s equivalent of the ‘Like’ button on Facebook; a way of giving kudos to a product, service, or in this case a web site that you found useful. Whenever you ‘+1’ a page, it will appear under the ‘+1’s’ tab on your Google+ profile, and you’ll be given the opportunity to post a link to the site on your wall for all your connections to see.

At this point in time, there isn’t enough evidence to suggest a link between the number of +1’s a site receives and its organic search position. However, it has been found in the past that web pages which have been extensively retweeted on Twitter get indexed by Google more quickly than less socially-inclined sites. It’s quite likely that +1’s will have a similar effect on search engine results in the future; after all it is still early days for the service, and Google will want to give people an incentive for using their service rather than Twitter. Google are also known for sudden changes in their search algorithm and leaving their products in the beta stage of development for extended periods of time (yes – we’re looking at you, Gmail), so anything is possible!

Hopefully all readers of this blog should have access to a website statistics package – usually Google Analytics – that tells them how many visitors are coming to their website, what the most popular parts of the site are, how much of their traffic is coming from Google, and so on. (If you haven’t got this kind of information, you really should have – contact us if you need help sorting this out).

Many clients feel overwhelmed by all the data available to them in Google Analytics and aren’t sure which are the key metrics they should be looking out for. In particular, many new clients aren’t sure what ‘Bounce Rate’ is. Google’s definition is that “Bounce Rate is the percentage of visitors who left your site after only seeing one page”.

For most sites, a high Bounce Rate is bad since people are arriving, taking a quick look around, and leaving immediately. However, it’s not always bad – some sites are set up with the specific aim of referring you on to somewhere else – in which case a high bounce rate can be regarded as good. Blogs normally have a high bounce rate too, as visitors come in and only read the latest post. This does not mean there is anything wrong with the blog – it’s normal visitor behaviour.

What, then, can we say is a typical Bounce Rate, assuming your site isn’t a blog and isn’t trying to send visitors to another site?

Many in the industry regard the ‘line in the sand’ as being around 50% – anything over 50% being a poor bounce rate. Analytics industry expert Avinash Kaushik describes a bounce rate over 50% as ‘worrying’. From our own experience, at Ascendancy, we regard an average bounce rate of a typical website as being around the 45% mark.

Of course, you shouldn’t just look at your overall bounce rate but at the detail – are there particular search phrases which have a higher bounce rate than others? Do visitors who enter the site at a particular page have a higher bounce rate than visitors entering elsewhere? This kind of information is key to improving the bounce rate, and crucially, the conversion rate of your website.

So – how do Ascendancy’s sites compare with those built by other agencies?

We have access to many client’s Analytics – some who have had their site built by Ascendancy and some who have not, and use only our internet marketing services. We looked at 10 of our sites and 10 built by other agencies and compared the bounce rates. The sites were chosen at random, though we excluded any which are blogs or which are set up to drive site to other websites. Here are the results:

The average bounce rate of the 10 sites built by Ascendancy is 31.7%; the average of the sites built by other agencies is 48.4%. Need we say more!

Google’s ranking algorithm attempts to determine the most relevant and high quality search results from a particular query.  The search engine giant has recently updated their algorithm (the ‘Farmer’ update, also called the ‘Panda’ update) to penalise websites that have a large amount of ‘shallow’ or ‘low-quality’ content, in a bid to drive spam levels down.

We’ve spoken to a few clients who are concerned that this change may affect them. However, the good news is that sites which have a genuine aim of being informative and relevant to the requested search, should not be affected by the changes.

The update is intended to combat sites such as ‘content farms’ – sites which harbour thousands, and in some cases millions of pages of very low-quality or copied content. This type of site should now be less likely to appear higher in search results.  In effect, this should make it easier for higher-quality sites to be found.

Of course, it’s very difficult for a search engine to determine what constitutes high quality content and low quality content, so it’s entirely possible that some good quality sites may have been penalised unfairly while other low quality sites may have retained their good rankings – and Twitter and the search engine forums are full of examples which show that Google does not always get it right.

Our advice, as always, is to act responsibly on the web – sooner or later, sites which contain a high volume of spam or low value content may get caught out.  As a general rule, if you work in an ethical and responsible way on the web, providing quality content to your users, you’re much less likely to be affected by these types of changes.

At Ascendancy we work to benefit our customers in both the short and the long term. For more information on any of our services call 01952 462845 or email Helen.

You’ve probably heard the hype over the last couple of weeks that the new Google Instant is going to ‘change SEO forever’.

If you’re not sure what Google Instant is, here’s a quick summary. If you’re logged into Google with a Google account (which you will have if you’ve ever signed up to any of Google’s many services such as Gmail, Google AdWords or Google Analytics) then you will notice a difference when you search. As soon as you start typing in the search box, results will appear below it. So if you wanted to search for ‘Green Widgets’, as soon as you typed the letter ‘G’, Google would give you the search results for the most likely search query beginning with ‘G’. Then when you added the ‘r’, Google would change those results to the most likely search query beginning with ‘Gr’ and so on. Also, as you type, Google suggests the most likely phrases you could be searching for.

So why does this affect SEO?

The key difference to SEO lies in the fact that Google is giving you suggestions based on the letters you have typed into the search box. Imagine you were going to search for ‘green widgets’ but when you got to the point of having typed ‘green’, one of Google’s suggestions was ‘green whatsits’. You may then change your mind about what you were originally searching for and select ‘green whatsits’ instead.

The implication of this is that we expect the range of different search queries that visitors search for to decrease. People will tend to choose one of Google’s suggestions where appropriate rather than typing in the different version of the phrase that they originally had in mind, meaning that more searches will be concentrated on a smaller number of search phrases.

Is this good news or bad news?

Overall, we think it may be bad news, particularly for smaller businesses, because it means everyone will be competing for the same higher volume phrases rather than searches being distributed over a larger range of ‘long tail’ phrases. The long tail will still exist, but it will be shorter! Smaller businesses without the resources to conduct large scale SEO campaigns may find it harder to compete.

We think that rather than being the death of SEO, this change simply makes SEO even more important (and challenging) than ever before.

What about the impact on Google AdWords?

The key difference to Google AdWords advertisers is that their ads will quite likely now be seen more often. Every time a searcher pauses for 3 seconds, the AdWords ads shown on the screen will change to the current ‘most likely search query’. We think – although it remains to be seen for sure – that ads will therefore be shown more often for irrelevant queries than they are at present, so we are expecting impressions to rise and clickthrough rate to drop to reflect this.

Is this good news or bad news for AdWords advertisers?

Probably neither. If clickthrough rates drop then we simply have to re-learn what constitutes a ‘good’ clickthrough rate and a ‘bad’ clickthrough rate. It moves the goalposts, but as long as your clickthrough rate is strong relative to your competitors’, this should not actually do any harm.
It is also possible that your ads may be clicked on more often, since they will be shown more often. In which case, good news – as long as it is quality traffic.

When will I see an impact?

You may see some impact from this immediately, increasing as time goes by. At the moment Google Instant is only visible to users who are logged in, which will limit the initial impact. Once all Google searchers are seeing Google Instant, that’s when the full impact will be felt.

A great way to boost traffic to your website is to get your products and services listed on Google’s product search. Formerly known as Froogle, Google Product Search is a price comparison service and a competitor to well-known shopping sites such as Kelkoo, Ciao and Pricerunner. Google Product Search results are displayed alongside organic listings; for example if you search for “Breville kettle” on Google UK, results from Google shopping are displayed under the first result. And it’s not just for ecommerce sites – businesses can list their services and even events such as training courses. Depending on the relevance of your product listings, you could potentially appear on page one of Google.

There are a couple of points to bear in mind before you start using Google Product Search:

• Maintenance – Your product listings will need to be updated regularly, make sure that when you change the price of goods or add new products to your shop that you update your Google product listings as well!

• Optimisation – in the same way that you would optimise the copy on your website, creating keyword-rich descriptions and titles for your listings is crucial to ranking above your competitors.

If your site accepts Google Checkout as a payment option, customers are able to leave reviews of your store which are displayed on the Google shopping search results. These reviews can help boost your ranking on the search results if positive, or hinder if negative. The “Google Checkout Accepted” logo is also displayed beside your listings, which helps draw user attention to your products.

The real beauty of Google Product Search is that unlike other price comparison sites, it is completely free to list on; all you need to get started is a valid Google account and a spreadsheet in .csv format (also known as a ‘data feed’) containing a list of all the products on your website with prices, titles, descriptions and URLs. If your site allows it, you may even be able to set up an automated feed. So don’t delay, sign up and start listing today!

To sign up, visit: http://www.google.com/intl/en_us/products/submit.html