Getting British Business Online

February 28th, 2010

The headline of this post grabbed our attention too, but it was found tucked away in the Mail On Sunday ‘Enterprise Zone’ edition (28/2/2010) at the foot of the page. But, will it bring the level of expectation that is being offered to business owners who are not yet online with a website?.

There has been a number of funded campaigns in the past to help the UK business owner to be ‘trading online’. The headlines and marketing messages then were all too familiar, ‘Be Online in 5 days’ or ‘Set up a Website in One Day’. It is known that in the past such schemes have been doomed to failure as successful websites need planned properly if they are to survive.

This latest campaign being launched in April 2010 is to help create an internet presence for 100,000 firms. It is a partnership between the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, BT, the British Library Business and IP centre among others says the article. And not surprisingly Google is listed as a partner.

The Getting British Business Online initiative will allow firms that sign up to be given a free web address which will be registered in Google’s search engine. And here is the interesting part, a tool to help them create a website in 20 minutes. Can this really be done? Has anyone built a website in 20 minutes and months later said it really worked for them?
BT is going to offer free phone support to those who take part, but its going to be important that the person offering the business owner advice understands search engine marketing and how to build successful websites.

The part Google is going to play is easy, because when you build a website and launch it you do need to ensure that Google is told about your domain name. Google even provides an address you can go to where it says ‘ADD YOUR URL’. But that is just the beginning.

The Getting British Business Online scheme does not mention about the importance of having a Google Account but has at least made reference to some of the important Google tools needed to ’search engine optimise’ your website for it to be successful when it comes to search marketing. But how much time is needed to train the people to use these tools effectively?

A question that does need to be answered clearly, is BT going to be involved in hosting these 100,000 websites? It is important from a Search Engine Optimisation point of view as to where to host your website, this highlighted article explains it all.

OnlineXcellence has carried out a number of website audits for businesses who had put their trust in a british hosting company, only to find there website was on a cheap hosting solution in Minnesota!!.

Now Google has a tool to help you do ‘Geo Specific Targeting’ with your website. Unfortunately, in all tests done by many different professional we know in the field of website auditing, it does not really do the job. Just recently at the Search Engine Strategies Conference in London where all the industry thought leaders and real world practitioners in the world of search gather once a year. Even they, made the point, that your hosting location is really important. So, how important will it be for the BT help desk people to have an understanding of search engine optimisation?

Paypal are also participating in this ‘Getting British Business Online’ campaign. The article indicates they will help firms turn their free ‘20 minute website’ into an e-commerce website. Now this really is impressive, considering that the most successful ecommerce websites built by ‘good website agencies’ considered the ‘best in the business’ will quote you at least £12k for an ecommerce website. Or a quote that crossed our desk recently indicated it would be around £92k that included the website and all associated marketing for this wholly new website where the brand was not yet known across the UK.

So, during April 2010 this government backed initiative will deliver a series of activities run throughout the country by business groups such as the Institute of Directors and Government funded Business Link. These events will be promoting the benefits to business owners why they should have an online presence.

Now, other questions that could arise, how knowledgeable are the presenters talking to these businesses likely to be?
Are there any well known search engine marketing professionals giving support?
Have presenters a track record of showing they have helped businesses to be profitable from having a brochure website or an ecommerce website?

Only time will tell once we see the first ‘20 minute’ website roll off the Department for Business production line.

The OnlineXcellence program launched in Scotland is also to help small businesses be successful online with the aid of a website. This program is interested in the business achieving online success and achieve gaining ROI for the business. Successful websites can take longer to plan, build and launch.

The OnlineXcellence program provides either a new start business or one that is already established, with a website presence that not only provides a fit for purpose platform being put in place, but more importantly providing the necessary skills to manage the website day in day out. This step is always seriously overlooked, and yet its the most important to both the website owner and the person who is given this very important task, otherwise known as the website author or champion.

Having a website is one thing but understanding search marketing and knowing what to do in order for the website to achieve getting visitors and sales, well that is at the heart of having a successful online presence.

‘Getting British Business Online’ , must aim to provide positive results and meet with business owners expectations. We hope the scheme might prove that you can be successful with a website built in 20 minutes so it provides a range of positive deliverables.

It will be interesting to review any websites that come out of the program once these have been live for around 3 months.

But for now we welcome any comments about whether you think this scheme will work. We would particularly like to hear from website owners who are actively in the thick of things trying to keep their website ahead of the competitor curve everyday.

We would also like to here from small firms considering signing up to the scheme.

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Posted in Online Business Growth | 5 Comments »

SES London 2010 Snippets

February 25th, 2010

During the week 15-19 February 2010 the OnlineXcellence team was in London soaking up knowledge from World’s leading edge practitioners of online search marketing at the Search Engine Strategies Conference.

We thought this post should signpost you to a number of comments made by those who were in attendance.

Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz who presented on the Monday and Tuesday before having to return to Seattle on Wednesday has put his thoughts together by commenting on his blog about some interesting tips and tidbits he picked up during the conference.

Jaamit Durani over at Fresh Egg done well in capturing like a true journalist what was being said during some of the presentations Avinash Kaushik is one of the smartest people in Analytics and the OnlineXcellence team are testimony to this having been able to spend some time in Avinash’s company when we were last at SES New York.

Read what Avinash had to say in his keynote speach as captured by Jaamit when he opened the SES London 2010 conference.

Jaamit also neatly captured the debate of SEO vs PPC where in the blue corner the SEO proponents we had Rand Fishkin, Dave Naylor and Ralph Tegtmeier against those in the red corner the PPC evangelists Andrew Goodman and Paul Mead.

And if you really want to see the power of social media marketing then we have to give a thumbs up to Jonathan Allen over at searchenginewatch. Jonathan’s has put together an excellent blog of statistics on the impact blogging had covering SES London 2010.
As we come across other useful links from what has been hailed as another fantastic event from the SES Strategies team, then we will post them here at the OnlineXcellence blog.
Why not consider signing up for the OnlineXcellence program where you can learn how to accelerate your business growth online. And, we can guarantee you will end up joining us in attending the best conference event in the Search Marketing calendar.

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Posted in Search Engine Optimisation | 3 Comments »

OnlineXcellence teams post review of SES London 2010

February 19th, 2010

Scotland’s OnlineXcellence team headed up by website online business growth specialists Brian Mathers and Adrian Bereziuk have spent the week soaking up the latest trends in search marketing and getting lots of great tips and facts from the sessions delivered by the thought leaders and real world practitioner’s that most Scottish business owners have yet to hear about.

But, all that is soon to change. OnlineXcellence has already been blessed with the presence of one of the world’s TOP 10 SEO professionals Rand Fishkin, who thoroughly enjoyed his time in Scotland before facing massive audiences at the SES London conference.

During the London conference the OnlineXcellence team presented Rand with a bottle of whisky to thank him for launching OnlineXcellence on February 12. But this was no ordinary bottle containing one of Scotland’s finest single malt whiskies. The bottle was specially made by Stylish Whisky who provide unique whisky bottles that you can have designed to your own specification. So, with Rand being famous for his yellow shoes we had those prominently featured inside the bottle of whisky. So special thanks to Gyorgy Hodos who went to great lengths to ensure the bottle would impress our guest’s first visit to Scotland.

Rand contacted the OnlineXcellence offices when he returned to Seattle on Thursday and said “Very much appreciated Friday and am excited about Scotland’s potential to do remarkable things on the web. It was also great to see you again in London for SES and thanks so much for the kind words and amazing gift. I’m still overwhelmed by your kindness and generosity”.

Rand has informed OnlineXcellence he will now be returning to Scotland in August (2010) and we are already planning another mini event as the feedback from the Scottish Business community was overwhelmingly positive. One of the best comments we saw come through was “thanks for such a great event, seriously, this was the best SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) event in Scotland to date. It was a great venue, and I learned a lot”. This was the general concensus of everyone who attended.

At the end of SES London the OnlineXcellence team spoke with Matthew Bailey of SiteLogic who is situated in the Mid West of the USA. Matt has indicated we could see upto six of the top speakers lined up for Search Engine Strategies London stop off in Scotland as a precursor before the London event in 2011. So the OnlineXcellence team are in discussion with SES to host an even bigger event than what the Scottish companies attended a few weeks ago at Central College Glasgow.

The Secretary of State for Scotland provided OnlineXcellence with a statement of support when it launched in Glasgow and how he would like to see it grow to something much bigger by 2011. Now it looks like we are already on the road to delivering towards his expectations. Read Jim Murphy MPs statement about what he had to say about the OnlineXcellence program.

Apart from the impressive presenation that Rand Fishkin presented in Glasgow and again at SES London, who else did we think provided some great informative topics filled with tips and hints to impove a websites online performance. Where would you like us to start?

We will provide a seperate more detailed post, but lets give a name check here to just a few people who really influence us on the day and we were able to speak with during our time in London.
Let’s put our hands together for Matthew Bailey, Heather Lloyd Martin, Sheri Thrurow, Avinash Kaushik, Jim Sterne, Jim Boykin, Andrew Goodman, Bryan Eisenberg, Dixon Jones, Greg Jarboe, John Marshall, Maile Ohye, Matt Paines and Ralph Tegtmeier.

We could go on and will give more text space to others who also impressed us during the conference. The next post we put up will tell you why we feel these people are so important and why you should get to know their names and what their professionalism is.

We are here to promote OnlineXcellence a program for Scottish Business Owners that will commence in April 2010. If you want to have a successful website and know you have built it properly and it clearly demonstrates its fit for purpose, then you won’t want to miss getting a place on this program. And what is even more important for you to know, is that many of the people given a name check in this post could well be contributing to increasing your knowledge to manage a successful website.

Do stick with us, we don’t want to disappoint you.

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Posted in Xcellence Chat | 2 Comments »

TOP SEO Rand Fishkin impresses Scottish Business Community

February 14th, 2010

TOP SEO Rand Fishkin visited Scotland for the first time on Friday 12 Feb 2010 at the invitation of the OnlineXcellence team to help them launch a new initiative to help Scottish companies with online business growth.

Business owners from across Scotland who were either considering having a website or were already in engaged in either offering goods or services online learned what they need to do with their websites to satisfy the major search engines.

Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz based in Seattle is one of the top 10 most influential search engine optimisation professionals who is well versed in online search marketing tactics. Normally business owners would have to travel to London, New York, Chicago or other major locations and attend events such as SES Strategies or the SMX Conferences to hear from such top online marketers in the industry.

Online business growth professionals Brian Mathers and Adrian Bereziuk who are behind the OnlineXcellence program to assist business owners gain better leverage from their websites were honoured that Rand Fishkin agreed to visit Scotland and help them launch OnlineXcellence.

During the course of the day MDs and those responsible for the day to day marketing of their website were given an insight into understanding how search engines work and what it takes to build successful websites. Rand also gave his predictions on the strategies businesses would have to consider during 2010 if their websites were to achieve any degree of online success.

Now other influential speakers in the world of online marketing are gearing up to come to Scotland’s first OnlineXcellence centre at Central College Glasgow that will exclusively serve businesses located in the greater Glasgow region.

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Posted in Search Engine Optimisation | 2 Comments »

Ways to recognise a bad SEO Company

February 11th, 2010

OnlineXcellence is regularly talking to its colleagues and peers around the globe who are working hard to maintain goood search engine optimisation standards. And the most important task right now in 2010 is trying to educate the business owner in achieving onlinexcellence with their website. Lets prevent website failure and see businesses especially the smaller ones get a slice of the billions of pounds being spent a month online. But – you have to be serious if you want your site to succeed.

To recognise a bad SEO person or company you need to be educated towards understanding and following the rules. So that, your website gives you better miles to the gallon and you stop getting penalised for getting your SEO so wrong.

An SEO article written by Eric Enge in 2008 still stands true as we trundle into 2010. Eric is president of Stone Temple and of course is the 27th most influential marketer by readers of the Invesp blog. I know a few other good people on that list that I could recommend, but I suggest you read Eric’s article and leave him your comments.

There are tons of good interview articles on Eric’s site and so another interview we want you to read on Eric’s site is the one he did with Ken McGaffin of Wordtracker.com.

I have known Ken for a very long while now and I am already looking forward to our time together next week at the SES London Conference.

Read Ken’s article over at Stonetemple.

If you can’t make it to London on the 15 Feb 2010, for what will be a fantastic week filled with wealth, knowledge and the best search marketing talent on the planet, then read on………..

We have something special to tell you about here, why not get yourself to Glasgow for Friday 12 Feb 2009 and here about what you should be doing to your website by using best practice SEO techniques. World class top 10 SEO professional Rand Fishkinof SEOmoz.org is joining me for the day to launch the OnlineXcellence initiative. Come along, as you will not be disappointed. It all kicks off at 1000 inside Central College next to Queen Street Station.

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Posted in Search Engine Optimisation | No Comments »

National Statistics Omnibus Survey’s could be valuable to the small business website owner

February 6th, 2010

When it comes to marketing a website you need to decide where your cash rich target market audience is located.

It does not matter whether you have an ecommerce website selling products or a brochure website just promoting services, any website page has the ability to bring revenue into a business.

The information provided by the National Statistics office said in 2009 that 18.3 million households in the UK (70 per cent) had Internet access in that year. This was an increase of 28 per cent since 2006.

What was interesting about the statistics provided was that the region with the highest level of access was London, with 80 per cent, and the region with the lowest access level was Scotland, with 62 per cent.

Now that gets you thinking when considering to launch a website and, especially an ecommerce website. What businesses fail to do is tactical marketing. Where to aim your website pages in order to capture the cash rich and the large audiences that are in buying mode.

With any new website, the first year is tough if you are trying to grow your website organically. We say tough because we are referring to the smaller businesses who have great ambitions and high expectations to do well online. Especially if they are intent on selling products online. But depending on what marketing budget has been laid aside, will depend on how quickly that large footprint across the major search engines will take to develop.

And there are many small businesses out there who are spending very little or in some cases nothing at all on marketing their website and just hoping that traffic will come.

Organic search engine marketing takes time to mature, it could be 9 months or more depending on the marketing activities you apply to ‘fuel inject’ your website.
So flicking the turbo switch that is Pay Per Click advertising might be in your strategy to increase your websites awareness.

But many businesses jump into this with little or no knowledge of say, how Google Adwords actually works. If no training is sought and no PPC professional is hired, it is usually inevitable that the campaigns set up will lose the business owner money and the website not achieving a page conversion to sale or gaining an enquiry.

So, whilst the UK as a whole has seen an increase of 69 per cent since 2006 of households getting internet access, just how much sales would an ecommerce website achieve if only targeting Scotland?

And for those business owners spending less than £10-£20 a day on Pay Per Click Advertising are there any Scottish businesses out there right now who can say hand on heart that they are achieving excellent conversion ratios and high volumes of sales from such a small budget, and just getting there traffic from Scotland?

Or lets open this debate out more and ask of a Scottish business who can boast that for this small daily marketing budget they are achieving global reach into new markets and there PPC Ad landing page is a real revenue generator for their business.

And, one final question to the Scottish Business Community with websites, how many of you feel you are being successful and getting a reasonable slice of the £4billion a month being spent in the UK online?

The OnlineXcellence team would like to hear from you

Posted in Online Business Growth | 6 Comments »

OnlineXcellence appears to be on People’s minds

February 6th, 2010

As we head towards the most important date on the Scottish calendar Feb 12 2010 where Scotland is honoured to be graced with the presence of the most influential and leading expert in search engine optimisation Rand Fishkin, the OnlineXcellence team came across another great article from our friends over at Wordtracker.

We just love this article from their guest blogger Judith Lewis
Judith will be publicly speaking in London at this years Search Engine Strategies conference from Feb 16 2010. And of course the OnlineXcellence team will be there too.

But more about Judith who is raising the issue about SEO standards, getting accreditation, qualifications and a subject that is really important, and that is the business owner who wants a website, but we all have to manage their expectations.

We once came across a website agency not that long ago that said SEO was dead. But as Judith is trying to say there is SEO and then there is SEO. And this is where we agree, because we put it to the business owner, how do you know you are getting a good SEO Service? How much SEO knowledge could you achieve by yourself?

There are those website designers out there that are going to add in their website build quote to the business owner ‘SEO Services’. And a lot of the time the business owner doesn’t really know what that entails. Maybe the business owner doesn’t want to know, but, would you drive a car not knowing where to put the oil, fuel and water? How far would the car go without such ingredients?

A business owner does want their website to succeed, they have expectations, and usually high ones. There is no point paying good money for this glitzy looking platform if its not going to bring what is important to the business owner seeking online success.

We are of course referring to traffic, visitors, sales, profitability and wealth. A website is only going to achieve those things if the person driving the website everyday is knowledgeable enough to know what gear to put the website pages into.

And therefore OnlineXcellence and Judith Lewis in the opinion of this article are very much on the same frequency because it is true what we both agree on, SEO can make or break a website.

We love the website design community, without them there are no websites to market. But this is an unregulated community. When the OnlineXcellence team engage with a business owner who may already have a website or considering to build one, either way there will be a website company in the project.

As soon as we are hired, the shutters come down at the website agency, because they think we are going to upset their kitchen.

They could not be more wrong. OnlineXcellence is looking for a win win situation. If a website agency would freely admit they might not have all the skills or are willing to work with us so they can deliver on best practice and be even better at what they do, what is going to happen? Of course, more people will want to do business with that website agency.

And if there was some form of regulatory body that could point the business owner towards a best practice agency delivering OnlineXcellence, which is not just a ‘nice website design’ but a website that is bringing the client traffic, sales, profits, wealth and return on investment. Everyone’s a winner.

If your a business in Scotland and cannot make the pilgrimage to the really big Search Marketing shows in London, New York, Chicago and other fine locations around the world, then Friday 12 Feb in Scotland at Central College Glasgow from 0900-1530 come and hear Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz.org and find out how the OnlineXcellence initiative can help grow your business online.

Register for the event as you cannot afford to miss it.

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Posted in Online Business Growth | 1 Comment »

Online Xcellence to grow the Scottish Economy and create new jobs

February 4th, 2010

Hi everyone

I’d like to welcome you to this new and very exciting programme in Glasgow.

I have been working with so many companies over the years on matters like this and it is so refreshing to now have a fully fledged product available for businesses to take part in.

Trust me – you will find the process very worthwhile and enlightening and you WILL see the results when you start to implement changes that will bring your site into line with current day standards.

I sincerely hope you will join us on the 12th February and that you will be inspired to join the programme with Central College.

All the best

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Welcome to OnlineXcellence Blog

February 1st, 2010

Consider bringing OnlineXcellence to your business. If you have a website or are considering putting a website in place to support your company, then you might be surprised how the OnlineXcellence program can help plan your website, ensure you market the website properly to search engines and other media channels, learn how to manage your website pages and be more knowledgeable when discussing your website’s performance with your web developer.

Posted in Xcellence Chat | 1 Comment »