Google has been cracking down on the addresses shown in Google Places listings, in some cases removing listings that don’t meet the Google Places Quality Guidelines.

The long and short of the issue is that if you don’t receive customers at the business address in your Google Places listing, for example if you are a self-employed plumber whose business is home-based, then you need to select the “Do not show my business address on my maps listing” option in your Google Places ‘edit listing’ page.

Failure to do so could result in Google removing your listing until the address has been hidden.

If your business is based at your home and you serve some customers there and some at other locations then you can still show your address, but it is also recommended that you use the ‘Service Radius’ feature in Google Places to show your customers the area in which your business operates (your ‘Service Area’).

Of course, if you own a brick-and-mortar business and all of your customers are served at the address shown in Google Places, then you are allowed to (and indeed should) show your business address.

While this may not be an ideal situation for some businesses (e.g. plumbers who like to show their address because it enables customers to find nearby plumbers) and there has been previous concern about the negative impact that the ‘Hide Address’ feature may bring (the general consensus now is that choosing to hide your address won’t negatively impact local-based rankings), it is surely better to have an address-free Places listing appear in Google searches – getting your business visibility among your competitors and showing customers your phone number – than nothing at all.

If you believe that your Google Places listing is in breach of the Google guidelines, please Contact Us for details on how to get your listing fixed.

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Mailr is our new collaborative cloud-hosted email service. It’s a low-cost, high-ability system designed to be an alternative to Microsoft Exchange and GMail for Businesses.

Many businesses are stuck using basic POP3 email accounts that come bundled with normal web hosting accounts; these are perfectly usable email accounts, but they lack any additional features to help your business work effectively. With the steady increase in mobile working, and the desire to be ‘in the loop’ when out of the office, more and more business are looking for email services that allow them to work smarter.

We can provide a lot more detail about the service features, but here’s a quick summary:

Key Features

Exchange Alternative
Exchange Server is Microsoft’s collaborative email platform. For most SME’s it’s prohibitively expensive to deploy and maintain. Mailr offers comparable functionality at a fraction of the cost.

Webmail Client
All your email, contacts and calendars are accessible via an advanced webmail client. Check and respond to email from any computer or device connected to the internet.

Anti Virus on Server
Mailr scans every email for viruses, and quarantines those that it finds, protecting your mailbox and PC.

Anti Spam on Server
Mailr features advanced anti-virus software to reduce spam in your inbox. The filter is configurable per mailbox.

Access Email Anywhere
Mailr stores all of your email and appointments on a cloud server. This means that you can access your mail from any device anywhere you have an email connection. If you read an email on your phone, it will be marked as read on your PC, any email you send from your PC will be in the sent folder on your phone. Appointments added to your phone will go directly into your webmail and PC calendars.

WebAdmin Interface
Mailr offers an advanced administration interface available on the web. You can add, delete and modify user accounts and setup email aliases across your domains.

Shared Calendars
Shared calendars enable you to see what others in your organisation are doing.

Cloud Hosted
Mailr is hosted ‘in the Cloud’. This means that it is always on and is scalable. You never need to worry about how much email you are storing (2GB storage available as standard, extra storage can be added at cost).

Push Support
Mailr offers PUSH support on a variety of mobile devices covering calendar events and email. Most users do not require this, but it is available as an extra cost option if required. A quotation can be provided on request.

Support Levels

The Mailr service is available with 3 support levels with corresponding price points:

No Support
No bundled support from WDL. A nominated individual has administrator access to your domains and can contact us with support issues; the resolution of those issues is charged at our standard hourly rate.

Admin Support
A nominated individual has administrator access to your domains and provides user level support within your organisation; issues they are unable to resolve can be escalated to us. The resolution of escalated support issues is included in your monthly fee.

User Support
All Mailr users within your organisation are able to contact us with support issues. The resolution of user support issues is included in your monthly fee.

We’re very proud of Mailr, and we think it’s worth mentioning that we use it internally for all of our email and calendars. Get in touch to find out more about how it can help your business improve it’s efficiency.

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If you’ve ever tried to manage an email marketing campaign using Excel and a normal email program, then you’ll understand the appeal of having a smart system to do the sending and list management for you. Having the right tools to help you communicate effectively with your hard-won customers can make a huge difference to the outcome of any marketing or newsletter campaign.

Our professional sending engine can schedule your campaigns, manage your bounces, and handle your unsubscribers. You get full reporting on each and every campaign, as well as optional Google Analytics tracking for e-commerce sites (track someone from clicking a link in your email right through to checkout).

If you’re interested in email marketing for your sites or services but don’t know where to start, our team can help you create beautiful emails, focus your content, and help you decipher the reports and analytics afterwards.

Key Features

Key features of the Circulate.it service include:

Subscriber list management
Automatic and manual subscription and unsubscription systems, list-specific statistics.

Campaign management
Create new campaigns with emails based on templates, previous campaigns or completely customise the new campaign.

Unlimited email templates
Additional templates can be commissioned (at cost) from WDL to be used in any of your future campaigns.

Full reporting
Complete statistics on opens, clicked links, bounces, forwards, deliveries and unsubscriptions for every campaign sent (as well as open / click behaviours for each subscriber list).

Website integration
The system can produce a form that allows users on your site to sign up directly to your marketing lists without your intervention.

Self Service
The Circulate.it service is available from any web browser via secure login. This means that you are able to build and send email campaigns yourself (WDL can look after this for you if required, additional charges apply).

Advanced Features

The features described above allow you to get started sending targeted marketing emails to your customers straight away. However, the system we provide is scalable, and we are able to provide you with an enhanced service.

Advanced Templates
We can design and build custom email templates for your use, fully integrated into the system.

Managed Service
If you don’t want to get involved in building and sending emails yourself, WDL can provide a managed service for you; all you need to do is send us your content, and approve the email before it’s sent out.

API integration
Of particular interest to e-commerce providers – ever wanted to send specific emails to purchasers of particular goods or services? The API for our service allows your website to add customers to separate or segmented subscriber lists on purchasing products from your store

Autoresponders
Not heard from a customer for a while? Our service can send a reminder or time-sensitive offer (free delivery? %age off next order?) to customers who haven’t ordered for a particular amount of time.

Initial Setup

There is an initial setup fee (contact us for pricing) which includes the following

• Setup and initial configuration of your account
• Addition of the relevant updates to your domain DNS (this can help reduce the chances of your emails being classified as spam)
• Import your existing customer lists into the system (assuming they can be supplied in a spreadsheet format)
• Creation of a single basic email template, usually reflecting the design of your website
• Addition of a form to your website to allow visitors to signup directly for your marketing campaigns
• 1-to-1 training

This is only a basic summary of how circulate.it can help you to communicate with your customers – give us a call or pop in for a chat about how we can help you to get the best out of your customer lists.

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Honk if you think 2011 went by in a blur (*honk*).

I know, right?

The main question that has been on my mind, as a Digital Marketer, is what does 2012 have in store for SEO, along with the general field of Online Marketing?

Content

What’s the score?

First things first, I know that content will remain King, although a lot more emphasis will be placed on the ‘freshness’ (thanks to the ‘Freshness Update’ Google applied to its algorithms on 2nd November 2011, which affected approximately 35% of searches) and quality (thanks to the ongoing iterations of Google’s ‘Panda Update’, originally launched in February 2011) of the content.

What can be done?

Make sure you update your site regularly with high quality, insightful, UNIQUE content which contains original analysis. Readers don’t want to see re-hashed articles on your site when they could read the original article in more depth on someone else’s site.  Remove or improve shorter articles because it is better to have one longer, in-depth piece on a topic than two pieces of shorter content virtually saying the same things but in a slightly different way.

Make sure you talk about timely topics as soon as they are relevant, to capture users who want information from your site’s point of view about a trending topic. However, there will be times that you just can’t generate enough original comment about a topic to put out a full article on it – in this case, write a tweet/Facebook post/Google+ post to acknowledge the event and here you will be able to at least express some sort of feeling about the event and what it means to your business. These social media posts may well be pulled by the search engines when someone searches for the topic.

However, bear in mind that search engines will also want to display general or historical information about a topic when it develops and pops up in the news again. Therefore, you need to make sure that your site contains ‘evergreen’ content about all relevant topics for which you want to have ‘expert’ status. ‘Evergreen’ content isn’t as time specific so can be read all year round. An example of this might be a ‘how to’ article on a bank’s website, for example ‘How to open a bank account’.

Authority and Trust

What’s the score?

Search engines want to rank authoritative and trustworthy sites well. This is all part of trying to provide the best user experience to searchers when suggesting potential pages to them in search rankings.

If users click through to your site from the search engine rankings, the search engine would rather the user enjoy the experience (website design is also important here) and stay on the site because it is a huge indication that your site is relevant for the search term that made your site appear.

Authority and trust play huge roles in user experience – who hasn’t gone to a website, seen the first page, screamed in horror in fear that just being on the site is going to end up in the theft of their identity and/or credit card details and clicked the back/close button faster than The Flash? I figured the number would be small.

Users are also looking for indicators that the information they are reading is accurate and that the person who wrote it is somewhat of an expert in their field. Are you more likely to click on an article about interviewing celebrities by ‘Parkinson’ or ‘Joe Bloggs’?

Remember that if a user (is logged into Google) visits your site from the search listings, is horrified by what they see and exits quickly back to the search results, Google registers this ‘speedy exit’ and then displays a ‘block this site from the search results’ link for the user to click on. If the user clicks this link, they won’t see results from your site when they next search using the same term (and it won’t reflect well on your site in Google’s eyes). You will have lost a potential customer and will lose traction with Google, who will likely reduce your rankings as a result.

What can be done?

Make sure that your site is designed well and contains accurate content by people who know what they are talking about. Proof read your content to check for factual and spelling/grammatical errors (I will NEVER buy stuff from sites that have spelling and grammatical errors – if they can’t be bothered to proof their text, how careful are they going to be with my credit card details?).

Give your authors an online presence by using authorship markup to enable Google to list your article along with the author’s name and a picture of him/her. Your readers will start to recognize the author (it’s easier to remember a face than a name) and want to click on their other articles when they see them, especially if they had a great read from the first piece?

If you are an ecommerce site taking payments online, register for industry standard security protocols (e.g. an SSL certificate) and display a badge, on your homepage, to show your users that the credit card information they enter will be safe.

Make sure that your site users can contact you and display contact information prominently. This will help because users will be able to see that they can contact someone who runs the site if they have an issue (and that it’s run by a real person/company and not a fraudster who is going to rip them off) rather than clicking back to the search engine results after 10 seconds.

Social Media

What’s the score?

Social media equals lots of user-generated content (blogs, images, videos). Firstly, search engines love new, fresh, unique content. Secondly, because people are looking for this type of content, search engines want to keep the users happy and want to present this type of content in search listings.

Social media is a great way to raise awareness of your brand because search engines will display items like Tweets, blogs and YouTube videos in the search listings. If you don’t have a presence in these areas, you won’t be there for search engines to list when the time comes.

Also, if you can get your users to talk about your brand and share content related to it, more people will hear about you and link to you which should increase the likelihood of being listed in relevant search listings.

What can be done?

Engage with your users via social media platforms, especially Twitter, Facebook and Google+. Do this by posting regularly and frequently. Share great deals on social media sites, tell users about your new blogs/other content.

Encourage your readers to follow your social media pages by adding buttons from sites like Twitter, Facebook and Google+ to key pages on your site.

Also, encourage your readers to share your content with their friends/followers by adding Facebook ‘Like’, Google ‘+1’ and Twitter ‘Tweet’ buttons to your content.

Finally, make it easy for readers to share your content on social bookmarking sites by adding buttons for sites like Digg, StumbleUpon and reddit to your content.
What are your thoughts for how to keep up with Digital Marketing in 2012?

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As you may, or may not be, aware, WDL employed a new Digital Marketing Specialist at the start of December 2011 to look after new and existing clients’ Internet Marketing accounts. That new employee is me, Emma.

I wanted to write a company blog post to introduce myself and explain more about my background, the work I do, and the work I will be doing, at WDL.

Colchester, here I come

Life in Colchester began for me when I was 18 and I moved from a very small town in the West Country – Devizes, in Wiltshire, is famous for its castle, the Wadworth’s Brewery (famous for its 6X ale sold across the UK) and having one of the most impressive set of canal locks in the UK.

‘Why did I leave the gorgeous countryside to come to Colchester?’ I hear you ask; I moved to study a degree in Linguistics at Essex University and hopefully start a new life in a bigger town with more opportunity than the small town I was leaving.

During my stint at Uni, I specialised in foreign languages (Spanish, Portuguese and Italian), how people learn foreign languages, the hidden meaning behind what people say (Pragmatics) and the neuroscience of language (how it is stored and recalled from the brain), including language disorders (e.g. Specific Language Impairment and Aphasia).

I graduated from Essex University in 2007 with a 2:1 (Hons) in Linguistics and moved into my first job five months later as Online Editor of Compareandsave.com.

What on earth is SEO when it’s at home?

Initially, I was employed solely to write the content (e.g. news, blogs, guides, etc.) for compareandsave.com but, to do this well, I first had to get to grips with how the internet can be used to increase the visibility of products, services and opinions.

So, it was here that I was introduced to the world of Digital Marketing (I define this as ‘communicating to your target audience about something, using the internet as the medium in which the communication takes place’), including Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising, Email Marketing , PR and, most importantly, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), which I’d never heard of before.

Within the first few days of my new job, I started to learn that a degree in Linguistics was actually going to come in handy in Marketing and SEO, much to my surprise.

After all, in my humble opinion, Marketing is about communicating to others and my knowledge of the language used to communicate was going to help. Plus, search engines need to be ‘linguistically trained’ in order to understand what a searcher intends to find when he types a query (a word or phrase) into Google or Yahoo so that the most relevant results (web pages) can be returned. What’s more, search engines need to know how queries/words relate to each other in case other results/pages might be helpful to the searcher (i.e. synonyms).

Being fresh out of Uni, I could write – I’d done nothing but write essays for the last 4 years (there was a bit of partying in there too, though) – and the search engines love content so it was a match made in heaven.

Oh yes, the worlds of SEO and Marketing are all about the Linguistics.

What does this mean for WDL’s current and prospective clients?

I have the training, tools and experience to help you achieve increased online visibility and get your site in a better shape to rank well in the search engines – and it’s something I love to do.

For example:

If search engines love content then, so do I.

After solely managing all the content for one of the UK’s biggest comparison sites, I bring with me the tools to advise clients on tailor-made content strategies for their website(s). Once the content is planned out, I can write (or commission someone else to write) content that meets your customer’s demands and those of the search engines.

If search engines like looking at your site(s) in minute detail then, so do I.

Search engines rank websites based on hundreds of relevancy factors. I have the understanding of these (publicly-available) relevancy factors and the keen eye to find elements on your site(s) that need to be fixed in order to have a better chance of appearing for the queries that your potential customers make in the search engines. I can also look at the wealth of information provided by analytics programs to find areas where your site is and isn’t performing optimally for your users.

Of course, my experience can mean a lot more to you than the above two examples so, if you are looking to improve your website, not only for the search engines but to give your customers/users a better experience on the web, get in touch with me and I will do my very best to help you on the way to Online Marketing success. I look forward to working with you in the future!

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You’ve gone to the trouble of setting up your business on various social networks because you know you need to. You’re still not quite sure why it’s important, and you find it hard to measure it’s success, but you regularly post updates because you know you should. And you tell yourself, “What’s the point in having it if I don’t do anything with it?” and you get on and do it.

Now, if you are still struggling to work out the benefits of social media, below are some useful ideas and tools which will help you measure and monitor your social media presence.

Firstly, and most importantly it needn’t be a chore. It doesn’t need to take hours worth of man power or have huge resources devoted to it. During the course of a few minutes a day you can check your online activity in 5 easy steps. Each of the following will only take 2 or 3 minutes, so give it try. You’ve not really got any excuses!

1) Twitter Conversation

You can use tools like TweetDeck or Twitter Search to monitor conversations about your company in real-time by searching for #(insert your Twitter name), or keywords related to your business.

2) Facebook Stats

Visit your Company Page’s Facebook Insights. This can be found under the page’s main photo if you are an admin for your page. Look at the active users and interaction stats. Monitor wall posts or new discussions and respond accordingly.

3) Google Alerts

Check Google Alerts for your company name, products, directors or brand keywords. It’s easy to set this up, enter your search terms in a Google Alert and select to receive updates as they happen or just once a day. When it’s set up you will be alerted as people blog about your business, products and services – an alert will be sent to your inbox. You can then read the articles and respond/comment as and when appropriate.

4) LinkedIn Questions

Search for questions on LinkedIn that you or members of your company can answer. When you find a relevant question, respond and include a link to your website or a relevant blog post that might be helpful to theaudience.

5) Google Reader

Set up RSS feeds for searches on your company name and industry terms in other social media sites.

Once set up, these will help you to see what’s being said about your business, your products and your services. It will allow you to respond quickly and easily and add comments, and to share your expert opinion and knowledge to other conversations. And perhaps above all, all this activity will move your ‘name’ around the internet, which at the end of the day can only be good for business.

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A few months ago WDL posted a small article outlining our Twitter and Facebook Setup service.

Since then we have developed the service beyond the setup stage to include posting and following.

Details can be seen below:

Twitter and Facebook -  Setup

To setup accounts with Twitter and Facebook using your business branding and company information.

Twitter and Facebook – Posting & Following

Option 1 (available weekly, fortnightly or monthly)

WDL consults via phone to establish 5 different posts
WDL posts to Twitter and Facebook over the course of a week, fortnight or month
WDL researches and finds 5 follows for Twitter

Option 2 (available weekly, fortnightly or monthly)

Client delivers 5 posts by email
WDL posts to Twitter and Facebook over the course of a week, fortnight or month.
WDL researches and finds 5 follows for Twitter

Option 3 (available weekly, fortnightly or monthly)

WDL consults via phone to establish 10 different posts
WDL posts to Twitter and Facebook over the course of a week, fortnight or month
WDL researches and finds 10 follows for Twitter

Option 4 (available weekly, fortnightly or monthly)

Client delivers 10 posts by email
WDL posts to Twitter and Facebook over the course of a week, fortnight or month.
WDL researches and finds 10 follows for Twitter

Option 5 (monthly)

WDL consults via phone once a week to establish 10 different posts (40 in total)
WDL posts 2 each working day (Monday – Friday) to Twitter and Facebook
WDL researches and finds 40 follows for Twitter

Option 6 (monthly)

Client delivers 10 posts by email on a day of the week to be arranged (40 in total)
WDL posts, 2 each working day (Monday – Friday) to Twitter and Facebook
WDL researches and finds 40 follows for Twitter

NB: Other combinations of the above or WDL can plan a bespoke package to suit your business needs.

For more information on why social media is important for you business, take a look at our blog post; Why Social Media Is Important For Your Business

For information about pricing and related services please Contact Us

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Unless you have been in hiding without access to any kind of media whatsoever it would have been hard to miss a QR code over the last few years. You will no doubt be aware of the strange looking little collection of black and white squares that adorn advertisements on bus shelters in magazines, shops and even on the television.

These little square blocks are QR codes and are a ways to embed information. QR codes are now used for any number of reasons by businesses and individuals alike. Dan Smigrod has a comprehensive list in his post ‘101 Uses For Quick Response (QR) Codes‘, which includes business cards with imbedded contact information, websites with secret/extra areas, discount codes for products and to release more content on dvd’s.

Wikipedia states “A QR code (abbreviated from Quick Response code) is a type of matrix barcode (or two-dimensional code) first designed for the automotive industry. More recently, the system has become popular outside of the industry due to its fast readability and comparatively large storage capacity. The code consists of black modules arranged in a square pattern on a white background. The information encoded can be made up of any kind of data (e.g., binary, alphanumeric, or Kanji symbols).The beauty of these codes lies in the fact that they are completely unobtrusive but can provide direct, location specific information when requested.”

A traditional barcode is scanned and directly turned into a series of binary values read from left to right. Examples of these can be found on any product you find any any shop. QR codes allow the information to be read both left and right, but also vertically. This means it can store far more information.

The four squares in each corner (see image above) provide information to the QR reader (you can download an app on any smart phone – for an Android version try QR Reader for Android , for IPhone try QR Reader for iPhone. They give the camera “anchors” in the image so that it can determine its orientation, alignment, and other features.

Many businesses are developing their own QR codes as smartphones become increasingly more popular and people want faster and more direct lines of communication between the products and services that they they’re interested in.

QR codes provide a quick and easy way for consumers and individuals to interact with the world around them and will no doubt continue to grow as medium of conveying information. WDL recognises the importance of new ways to promote your business and can create a unique QR Code for your business or product and add it to your website, your printed materials, or indeed anywhere you want it!

Contact us for more information about QR Codes.

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What are you doing with your marketing? Have you done any recently? If you are struggling with where to start, or even if you already have a marketing department, the best place to focus your attention with any online business is with SEO. If you can pull together a well thought out and implemented SEO campaign, you’ll generate more traffic coming to your website and as a result you’ll engage in more communication with prospective clients.

If you are a business that has a web presence the key thing to remember is the best customer service and most incredible content means nothing if no one can find you.

If you don’t know where to start here’s three ideas to get you going.

1. Site Structure

Search engines need to ‘spider’ your site to rank it and display it in their results. The idea is to make it as easy as possible for them to work out what your site is about and find it’s way around. To help them, make sure that your navigation is not just flash animation and images, it needs readable text, well structured menus and relevant content. Link between pages and use ‘anchor text.’ (use the actual text to link not just phrases like ‘Click Here’ and ‘Read More’.) These little fixes will sometimes have a big effect on your site. Remember this is just the beginning and will need to be reviewed regularly.

2. Get Inlinks

In an ideal world getting the content right and optimising your site and it’s structure would push it up the search rankings and put you in first position for the search terms that you have optimised your site for. But, it It doesn’t work like that and there are many factors involved in raising your sites profile in search engines. We’re only touching the surface of the complicated algorithms that they use to rank your site. Google and the other big search engines like to rank sites for their popularity as well.

The most popular sites are the ones that have the most votes (inlinks). This is the most time-consuming area of SEO and it needs to be ongoing. You have to contribute to blogs, forums, and message boards relating to your website, write and submit articles, become an expert in your field and actively use social media. In essence you need to contribute something of worth to the internet. If you can do this you will generate inlinks to your site and this in turn will help you rank higher.

As an online business it’s not an option to ignore this, you need to work out if you have the time to do it, or get someone else to do it for you. Doing nothing about it is business suicide.

3. Research Your Competitors

Chances are that you know who your competiotrs are. If you don’t know, then work it out! Study their websites, think about how they are ranking higher than you for certain keywords and phrases, or indeed why they are not ranking as high as you. Check how many links they have to their site (use a backlink checker – there are some resources here www.seorankings.com.) Are they using video? Are they on Facebook? etc.

Keep up the research, or you will never know how to leapfrog your more succesfully placed competitors in the search rankings.

Take some time, give it some thought, use the ideas above to gain a little more insight and act on it.

SEO is complex and relentless, but if you decide to implement and organise your own SEO campaign make sure you do it properly, plan it carefully and stick to the plan. If you don’t have the time or the resources contact us and see how we can help.

 
To see SEO in action type ‘website design colchester’ into Google and see where we appear (no.1 just under the ads…).

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Many businesses assume that all they have to do is launch a product or service online and the cash will come rolling in. They think all they have to do is drive traffic to their site, SEO everything to death and watch the £££’s grow. To a certain extent this is true. A great product or service will sell itself. But, there is more to it than that.

The most successful online businesses have a following – people who have bought the products and services, and who can’t wait until they get their next fix of your newsletter, receive an email from you, or buy your next fantastic product or service. Why? Because they form relationships with their clients.

Personality is a big part of the transaction between a business and a client. If you share little tidbits about yourself and allow a bit of the real you out every now and again you will start to build a loyal following. And this following will come back again and again.

It’s obvious really when you think about it. If you let some of your personality shine through when dealing with clients, or marketing a product or service they will like you for it, and will be more likely to respect you and your business because of it. It makes sense to inject some of your character. You don’t have to be a party animal or an intellectual heavyweight, just be yourself. What you will undoubtedly find is more and more people will start to trust you and bond with you. And that’s what you want. It’s got to be good for business, Right?

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