Today Euston Digital gained homepage exposure on the highly respected Search Enginge Optimisation authority Daily SEO Tip.

This was thanks to yesterday’s insightful post by SEO Head Charly Wargnier on how to avoid the Robot.txt writers block.

The tip helps SEOs learn from the big sites by using the simple formula “inurl:robots.txt filetype:txt”.

“I’m really please to be able to help with SEO community with a few tips” said Charly. “Its the first of many… so keep reading.”

If you want need an SEO agency in London to boost your website to the top of Google, Yahoo and Bing then, and want to benefit from the latest SEO tips and tricks from Charly then get in touch.

When doing SEO changes for large scale companies, implementing a proper robot.txt is crucial.

I will not go back to the robot.txt definition bla, bla… millions have done that before us and here at Euston Digital we hate duplicate content… we prefer focusing on stunning link building services!

No, instead, just a simple formula to use whenever the geek inside you has a Robot.txt Writer’s block!

So, type “inurl:robots.txt filetype:txt” and, ta-daa! See what the big names are doing.

You will find the robots.txt file from Google, Wikipedia, WebmasterWorld, the White House, Microsoft, W3.org, Facebook, IBM, Amazon, Ebay, New York Times, CNN, YouTube, etc.

Have Geek Fun and stayed tuned for new SEO tips soon.

Charly Wargnier

You might wonder why this blog post has the title ‘Review us on Bing‘. What exactly does that mean? And why have we created it?

Review us on Bing

The answer might lie in how you found this post.

Just this morning an article was posted on SmallBusinessSEM that shows that there are just 3 results on Google for the search term ‘review us on Bing’. So we reacted to that and posted this article, because we knew that SEO pros and business owners like you might then test out the theory that there are just 3 results of the search ‘Review us on Bing’.

This shows you how Euston Digital is an SEO agency that can react quickly and exploit short term opportunities to grab traffic for our clients.

If you want to know how Euston Digital can deliver sharp, effective and rapid tatics for your SEO program, then get in touch.

Link building has long been a cornerstone of Search Engine Optimisation. It’s one of the main ways that you can build the value of your website in the eyes of Google. Search Engines need links in order to find your website; and they need links to work out how important your website is. Links can give your website ‘authority’, a key goal of SEO.

Since you have to do link building, here are my top 10 things to remember when carrying out your link building.

2 amazing free tools for link assessment.

Let’s start with 2 free tools to assess the value of a domain/or page:

The old but always amazing SEO Book Toolbar for Firefox

The Brand new Open site explorer from SEOMoz -don’t forget to create a free account to extend the access!

1. Choose quality over Quantity

It’s not about the sheer volume of links to your website. It’s about where those links are coming from. A few high value links will push your site higher than many low value one.

But how do you work out what is a ‘high value’ link and what isn’t?

2. Assess the number of outbound links of the link-giving website/page.

Outbound links are links that direct the Internet user to another website.

If the website giving you an inbound link has many (20+) outbound links, the authority that it passes to you will be lower than if it just has a few.

If the website giving you an inbound link has many inbound links itself, the authority that it passes to you will be higher than if it just has a few.

Remember this equation for the Link Giving website:

Lots of inbound links + few outbound links = Great website to get a link from!

Also, as mentioned in the “Design and content” guidelines section from Google, the “100 outbound links maximum” recommendation is also a good one to follow.

Zillions of free tools exist to assess number of OBL but SearchStatus for Firefox is our tool as it can do many other things!

3. Make sure you are using targeted anchor text

Your inbound links must built using keywords that you want to rank highly for. These links can then tell Google not only how important your website is, but what keywords it should rank you for. Make sure you vary your anchor text however, otherwise Google will be suspicious. Use three different keyword phrases, and occasionally your website name too. Image links need to have anchor text in the ALT tag of the image.

4. What is the link-giving website all about?

The best websites to get inbound links from are those that are an authority in your particular market. If you sell glasses, then you want inbound links from editorial websites that write all about glasses, lenses, vision etc. High value links come from websites and pages that are relevant to your website. Also, we have to stress that point 3 and 4 are linked: ignoring the anchor text when evaluating the topicality of the on-page content would be just plain stupid.

5. Have a look at PageRank or better, MozRank but take them with a Pinch of salt!

PageRank is the ‘value’ Google used to place on a page. Although pretty Obsolete as a “precise” metric, it gives a broad idea of a page authority.

You can see the PageRank of each page by looking at the green PR bar on the Google toolbar. Whilst it’s not the be all and end all, and whilst the bar is often out of date, it is at least a measure of the ‘importance’ of that web page in the eyes of Google.

That said, we would advise not to use PageRank. The main problem is that it could up to 9 months for the PR data to be updated. A site could i.e have suffered from a penalty from Google in the meantime.

Mozrank would be a better option as they use roughly the same information but updates it more frequently.

Mozrank can be tracked w/ many tools including SearchStatus (see it does many things!)

6. Where on the page is your Link located

Links coming to your website are best when high up the page or buried within editorial. Links from footers or sections called ’sponsors’ or ‘partners’ are of much lower value.

7. Link-giving website domain

Links from websites with some domain name extensions are worth more than others. Google values most highly links from .com, .co.uk (in the UK), .edu and .gov.uk (in the UK) domains. Others are worth less (but not worthless!)

8. Don’t ignore links from Social Network websites

Although most of the links on social media Networks (Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Stumbleupon etc…) are no followed (due to shortened URL which are redirects), People have to think about the SEO authority that will come from editorially given links resulting from the social media exposure.

Also it seems that these ‘active web’ links are becoming taken into account to a great extent by Google, so bear them in mind.

9. Don’t ignore forums or blogs

Take some time to participate in and build links from relevant forums and blogs. Make sure they ARE relevant though – that’s the key. Aside from bringing some SEO value these links might actually be followed by genuine users.

I couldn’t stress enough on the fact that links on forums (if not no followed) carry little SEO value. They would hence be a relevant strategy only if they bring quality traffic to a site –which is generally the case when you gives good advice… on time!

10. Make sure your inbound links are ‘followed’.

Website owners can add some code to their links that instructs the search engines to effectively ignore them. Check the source code of the link giving website. Find your link and check that it does than have the value rel=”nofollow”.

Okay… that’s a bit Old School! Here are 2 handy tools to save you a lot of times by automatically highlighting the “no follow” attribute:

• For Firefox: Guess what? SearchStatus… again!
• For Google Chrome META SEO inspector: http://goo.gl/ju9U
• For IE: uhm…sorry?

And that’s it!

Link building is an important way to build the authority of your website, and tell Google what your website is all about. But it can be time consuming too! Follow these basic guidelines to make sure you build links in the most effective and efficient way. If you want Euston Digital help with your link building campaign then get in touch.

Charly Wargnier

For those of you who need reminding Valentines is now only 6 days away. Why would you need reminding? You see it everywhere. Shop windows, web pages, email reminders, it’s everywhere!

Plan your Valentines Day content

Many of you will be planning Valentines related content  or offers on your sites over the next couple of days. But it doesn’t stop there. 16th of Feb is Pancake Day, 14th of March is Mothers Day, 17th March St Patricks Day, 2nd April Easter starts.

Make the most of the Event

The question we’d like to ask is does all this ‘event’ related brand association increase conversions on your website? Of course, there will be a different answer for every product on every site.  Will the content reduce your bounce, or are many of your customers so un enthralled they’ll click away immediately? Does the themed content carry a product offer with it? Is it the offer that increases conversion rates or the theme.

Test different Messages and Landing Pages

Euston Digital can help you find the answers to these questions. If you’re planning new content themes for and future event, or just wanting to test a new layout, we can A/B test the traffic we send through and monitor conversion rates to give you the insight as to whether it’s good for conversions or not?

For a one off fee of £200 you can get information which would enable you to optimise all your future themed campaigns.

Don’t waste your time and money

Don’t waste time, labour costs and marketing budgets on campaigns that don’t improve conversion rates. Euston Digital can help you focus your spend on the marketing that delivers results.

Euston Digital are excited to be taking part in the Google AdWords Remarketing BETA.

What is Remarketing?

Lets say someone visits your travel website looking for a hotel:

They look at a few hotels, and then leave your website.

Later on that day they’re browsing a website that is part of the Google Content Network. With Remarketing, we can reach out to that person and show them an advert for your website:

The user will be reminded that they were on your website, and decides to return and buy.

Why remarket?

Remarketing has been credited with a real boost to conversion rates. Only 5%-10% of people visiting your website end up buying from you. ‘Remarketing’ targets those people who leave without buying, and nudges them back to your site. They’re already familiar with your brand, and are therefore more likely to convert.

Network Performance

Compared against other Advertising Networks, a Remarketing network outperforms in almost every case.

Campaign Results

Early results indicate that click through rates and conversion rates make these campaigns amoungst the best performing.

Scale

The Google Content network is huge. Make it work in a small way and it will really scale.

How does Remarketing work technically?

We work with Google to produce javascript tags. You will need to place these on your website, on your sign up process, and on your confirmation page.

This javascript sets a user cookie that tells Google whether:

*They’ve visited your website

*They’ve entered the sign up process

*They’ve bought something from you

We can then target those users according to which of these situations apply to them.

For example, for those users who have entered the sign up process but then left, we might want to reach them with an advert that gives them that product at a discount.

For those users who have bought something from you, we might want to reach them with an advert for a complimentary product.

Here’s  a good visual:

For more information about how Euston Digital can use Remarketing to boost your sales, get in touch.

Here at Euston Digital we have found that an effective and efficient return on on investment can be achieved by running a Pay Per Click AdWords campaign in conjunction with a TV ad campaign.

The mediums work in tandem – TV advertising drives people to search online, and online adverts can raise receptiveness to TV advertising. And if you get it right, then 1+1 can often come to more than 2.

But there are a few things that you need to do to make sure your PPC campaign is capitalising on your TV Ad spend.

Budget
A basic one this, but TV ads can hugely boost both your brand searches, and general searches in the market advertised. You need to make sure your daily caps are set way in excess of any theoretical limit. It would be the worst possible situation for your TV spend to drive people to Google, only to find that the user couldn’t find your site

Use all search engines
PPC specialists tend to put all their effort into Google and give Yahoo, Bing and others require token attention. But the difference with TV adverts is that they tend to make less experienced users search online. And less experienced users are more likely to use search engines other than Google.

Position
It goes without saying that you need to make sure that you are in position 1 across all your brand terms. Many companies survive by picking up the search tidbits left by big spending competitors. A large advertising campaign will drive brand searches: others will try to capitalise on the users’ lack of experience by grabbing their attention high up in the SERPs.

Bidding strategy
Now is the time to be more flexible with your CPA targets and to get more aggressive on generic search terms. Your television ad spend will drive general searches in your market; its reassuring for searchers to find your ads at the top of the SERPs as well as on television. It makes them more likely to buy from you. Its worth raising your CPA targets in the short term to grab as much market share as possible.

Message: Be Official
To start with you need to make your brand name really stands out in the ad copy, so that users are sure that the company they saw on the TV is the same one that they’ve found on Google. Put the brand name in the headline of your ad, and make sure that you use official ‘TM’ signs to add a stamp of authority.

Message: Use your strapline
If your TV campaign has a strapline, then repeat that in the final sentence of your ad. It makes sure that users get the a consistent take-away from all your advertising. Again this adds reassurance.

Message: Try to be tailored
Continue to test tailored headlines. It might be that your TV advert does not have strong brand recollection; you need to continue to make sure your adverts reflect the terms that users are searching for.

Create a ‘product + TV’ ad group
If they can’t remember your company name, users will often search for you product + TV, in the hope that Google can find the people who have advertising on TV. For these keywords, it makes sense to create a dedicated ad group and to include a ‘As seen on TV’ message in your advert.

Use keywords from your Strapline
Some users will not be able to remember your company name, but may well search using your strapline. Make sure that you’re bidding on these keywords and consider them as ‘brand’ traffic.

Summary
TV advertising in conjunction with a PPC campaign can deliver strong ROI. But to make sure that you get the most from both, your PPC campaign needs to cover a lot more bases. For help on how Euston Digital can boost the returns from your Pay Per Click Internet marketing, get in touch.

Any comments, please leave them below.

As a market leading PPC, SEO and Social Media agency Euston Digital spend lots of time and money driving traffic to our clients websites.

But getting people there is just a small part of the marketing mix. Converting those visitors into customers are what distinguishes a good website from a great one.

We work with our clients to improve their website conversion rates. An important way to do this is by using moving images and audio. That’s why we’re very pleased to announce the launch of our website video service.

We can create and deliver short videos, and place them on your website. We’ve used these videos to boost website dwell times and retain eye-attention thanks to our imaginative creative.

Here’s a short showcase:

Our video film projects range from 30 second clips to much larger projets. If you’re interested in finding out more about web video production and whether your website would benefit from having a tailored video, get in touch.

Social Media Marketing is the new media buzzphrase of the moment. The Internet is starting to burst with opinions and ideas of how to use social media to market your business.

We’ve not been afraid of that either, with our basic guide on how to use Twitter.

However, when people talk about social media they’re usually referring to Facebook, Twitter and sometimes MySpace.

The social network that is often overlooked is LinkedIn.

The traditional approach to LinkedIn is to use it to promote your own personal business interests and connections, often as a career tool. But the power of this business focused social network can be bring leads, sales & revenue too.

LinkedIn is a bit different

Whilst other social networks are good at reaching focused demographics, interest groups or the mass market, LinkedIn is a place to find specific individuals. For this reason, it makes more sense for sales of low volume high value products where decision makers are harder to find.

Using your employees’ contacts

LinkedIn is all about individual people reaching out to other specific individuals,. As a starting point, you need to utilize your and your employees network contacts, From there, you need to move onto people that they’re connected to (2nd degree contacts). And so the process will continue.

But don’t be Spammy

Every time you reach out using LinkedIn will will show your real, professional, and company name. Therefore its important not to turn off those contacts – or in other words, don’t be spammy. Every move you make, every contact you reach will be visitible to your networks, so bear that in mind so as not to appear over zealous.

How to get going

1. Find an ‘open networker’

An open networker is someone who has linked to as many people as they possibly can. They have messaged everyone in their network, and every new contact, to expand their contact list as much as possible.

To find an Open Networker (or LION – LinkedIn Open Networker), search on LinkedIn for ‘LION’. When you find one, invite them to your network. If they accept, you then have access to their 1st degree and 2nd degree contacts. Sometimes LIONs include their email address in their LinkedIn profile name, making it all the easier to invite them to your network, even though you’re not  connected to them at all.

You can also find open networks on TopLinked.com.

2. LinkedIn Answers

Anyone can ask a question on LinkedIn Answers. Anyone can answer. It allows you to interact with people who are not in your network, which of course helps to make new contacts.

If you ask a question many people can answer you. Once the question closes (after a few days or whenever you decide), you choose the ‘good’ answers. Of these “good” answers you then choose a ‘best’ answer.

The person who gave that answer gets an ‘expertise point’ that shows in their LinkedIn profile.

You could therefore use LinkedIn Answers to display your expertise.

In addition, people sometimes ask “where can I get a…” types of questions, often with regard to specific services. If you have a product or service that fits, you can answer these questions with a link to your website.

Sometimes it might be that you can offer a small answer, and then say ‘for more info’ or ‘for my full answer see…’ and then link to your blog, where you can answer the question in full.

3. Get recommended in ‘Services’

Another method is to get as many people in your 1st and 2nd degree networks to recommend you for a particular service. Some users will scour services to find a supplier. The more times you’ve been recommended, the greater the ‘reach’ of those recommendations. And the more positive your business looks.

4. Find ‘buyers’ in a organisation

Since every profile in a business includes a job title, its much easier to reach out to a specific person in order to try and sell to them. Most people will be connected to others in their organisation, so if your first degree contact is someone in a business you’re trying to target, the chances are that you can use their contacts to find the right individual..

5. Building Links

LinkedIn used to offer ‘followed’ links, which were an important method of link building as part of your Search Engine Optimisation program.

These days however, these links are either ‘no followed’ or redirected. Nevertheless, they can be an important source of referral traffic to your website. Links still get clicked on after all.

Make sure all employees have links to your website in their profile. Make sure the links are visible and can be crawled by the search engines by making all profiles include the “show website” feature. You can do this in “Edit My Public Profile“. Click “Full View” and also “Websites”.

That’s it

Often overlooked as a source of new business, LinkedIn is a powerful tool to reach specific buyers in organisations. Make the most of your network contacts using the techniques above.

If you want Euston Digital to help you with your Social Media marketing then get in touch. Any comments please leave them below.

Twitter represents a huge opportunity for any business to have a one-many conversation with their current and potential customers. Despite this only a minority of businesses have made the leap onto Twitter. Those that have are often unsure what to do when they start.

With that in mind, we’ve written a basic guide on how to use Twitter for your business.

Choosing a Full Name and Username.

Your details will be displayed in the page title (and therefore in the SERPs) as:

Fullname1 + Fullname2 (username) on Twitter

Therefore the full name and username will influence the keywords for which your Twitter profile will appear in the SERPs.

Either Choose:

Full Name1: Keyword1
Full Name2: Keyword2
Username: Company Name

Or

Full Name1: CompanyName
Full Name2: Blank
Username: Keyword

Following people

1.    To start off, just follow those people you are genuinely interested in. This might be your industry leader, your industry magazine, a national paper, or a commentator in your market.
2.     Follow your customers. Show that you’re taking an interest in your customers  by following them. Doing so encourages them to follow you back, and opens up  Twitter as a channel of communicate with them.
3.    Don’t follow people just because they follow you, unless they are your customer. If someone follows you and you don’t know who they are, and aren’t interested in what they’ve got to say, don’t follow them. A classic way to build your followerbase is by following people who follow you. But at the end of the day you end up receiving lots of irrelevant Tweets in your timeline, which makes it hard to discern those you are genuinely interested in.
4.    Try to avoid following people who have a high number of followers and follows. These will probably be using auto-follow tools to build their follower base. Lots are US based.

Tweet your News

1.    When you you add a new post onto your blog, Tweet it with a headline and a link.
2.    When you change your prices, have an offer, or have other news that you wouldn’t otherwise have on the blog, Tweet it
3.    If you have a problem, some downtime or delivery issues, make your followers aware by Tweeting that. Your natural tendency might be to hide bad news, but Twitterers will appreciate your openness. And far better that they find out about downtime from you, rather than finding out through some other means. You need to control that sort of news. And it might save your support team a few calls too.

Tweeting other people’s news and blog posts

1.    If you follow news from several websites and blogs, set up an feed reader that includes all your data sources.
2.    When you read something that you find interesting, Tweet a link to it and a summary, or your take. If its interesting your users will appreciate being notified of it, and may ‘respect’ your opinion a bit more.

Commenting on other people’s Tweets

1.    Try to read the Tweets of the people you follow. If you’re interested in what they’re saying, reply @them
2.    When people send you an @message, make sure you respond to it in a timely manner. Nothing stamps a conversation out as quickly as a gap of a few hours between Tweets.

ReTweeting (RT)

1.    When someone gives you, your website or your company a compliment then ReTweet it. To do this,  copy their Tweet into your own post and preface it with RT @them: This will create a positive glow to your profile, and demonstrates how good you are to your other followers.
2.    When you see somthing of interest that you want to attribute to the original person then RT their Tweet in the same way.
3.    Bond with your customers by occasionally retweeting their messages to your audience

Direct Messages

1.    If you want to keep it private, then direct message people (DM)
2.    Wehn someone Retweets your messages thank them privately with a DM
3.    If you’re asking someone to share potentially sensitive information then publicly ask them to DM you with the details.

Editorial Guidance for Tweets

1.    Include a mix of Tweets. Send links to your site, some to others, and occasionally have no links at all – just a statement. Use all types of Tweets, @Tweets and ReTweets.
2.    Tweet any comments you get on your blog comments and include a link to those comments. This shows your followers that there is a conversation going on, encourages people to get back to your website. Try to get a debate going
3.    Asking questions generate interest, interaction, conversation and answers
4.    Remember: a lot more people read your tweets than respond to them. If you’re using Twitter for customer service then its an opportunity to showcase your finest work!

Tools to save time

1.    Ping.fm: Useful for distributing your posts to multiple microblogging platforms
2.    Shorten URL Mozilla Add on. Lets you drag a URL shortner shortcut into your  browser toolbar, makes for quick URL shortening
3.    TweetDeck. A great desktop application that lets you monitor for mentions, searches and direct messages across multiple Twitter accounts.
4.    Tweetpic. Allows you to link images to your posts.

Tracking

Twitter traffic is hard to track with analytcs platforms it usually comes from redirects. These can help

1.    Bit.ly: This URL shortner can give you click data about the traffic that your shortened URLs are generate
2.    Gooogle Analytics / DC-Storm. More long winded. Manually add a tracking URL onto your website address before you shorten it.

This isn’t an A-Z of Twitter but is a good and easy guide to help your business start using this social media platform. Get it right and Twitter can become a powerful way to interact with your current and future customers.

If you need any help with your Social Media Marketing then please get in touch.