Google recently expanded the listings in its search results, so that organic search results will now include full-size links, display URL and a one line description below their listing from the pages meta description tags.

So, how can you take advantage of this change?

The first place to start with is your content. Basically, Google is now displaying around 30-35 characters from your meta description tag in each sitelink. While this is not a lot of room to work with, you need to ensure that those opening words result in a meaningful, relevant snippet. You can do this by having well written and concise meta descriptions across all pages on your website.

If each of the pages on your website doesn’t have a meta description tag, then its time to get busy creating them. Otherwise this is how your listing could look in the Google SERP’s:

Copywriting expert Heather Lloyd-Martin has been quick to jump on the idea of optimising content specifically for these expanded sitelinks through a video which you can view below.

Heathers advice includes examples of what you should and shouldn’t do with your meta description tags and is well worth a look.

So only with a few changes in the meta description tags, you can now expect to see an increase in your organic click through rate (CTR).

A year ago I was asked to revamp a website called Affinity Law. However, after this was done, the owner of the site, Mr Steve Stapleton, asked me to also use the design on another of his websites, namely Schools Commercial Gallery.

As the job progressed there were additional features requested/added & I was also asked to buy other domain names, with a view to building other sites. The initial job(s) was completed in a matter of days, as I was told that the time was of the essence & I was told by Mr Stapleton that he was very happy with the work I’d done & I was paid in full by cheque……..however, shortly before I was due to go away on my first holiday for years, the cheque was returned by my bank, stating that it had been stopped!!

Assuming this was a simple mistake, I contacted Mr Stapleton, who told me that this WAS a mix up, caused by the company changing banks; he would find out what had happened and get me paid asap. This was in April 2010 & I have still never been paid for the work I did!

During the course of the last year, I’ve asked Mr Stapleton to pay a number of times, but have always been told to ask again in a couple of months, as the company has no money!

So now a year has passed & still nothing has been paid – promised yes, but paid, no. As a result I have decided to take this case to the small claims court & see if a CCJ will at least prove my outstanding claim, should the company go into liquidation (assuming that’s what happens when a company owes money but has none!).

I’ve used Money Claim Online to start proceedings; which is Her Majesty’s Courts Service Internet based service for claimants and defendants! Assuming you have a Government Gateway account, it’s very easy to use & a claim notice has now been sent by the court. The cost of issuing a notice varies depending on the amount due, but hopefully this will break the stalemate in some way!!!!

What concerns me is that the Schools Commercial Gallery are supposedly involved with fundraising for schools! “We work with the Extended Schools Coordinators to maximise income generation and fundraising to support the development and sustainability of new events by identifying opportunities and working closely with the schools and the local business community”.

As an advocate of plain english, I have no idea what the above statement really means – it’s that business speak that sounds great, but is pretty vague in its meaning! All I know is that I have been promised payment for MY services a dozen times, but have yet to see a penny & it’s that sort of statement that I DO understand!

The one thing that I changed about my business after this episode, was to charge people 50% up front before I even start a project! I hate doing it, as I feel it infers that I can’t trust the client, but I can’t take the risk of spending weeks working on another project, only to not get paid again!

Hopefully an update to this post will be a happy one!!

I recently completed a new niche dating site for UK black singles.

This takes my dating portfolio up to 13 sites & I think that’s enough for now!

There may be some other niche site opportunities in the future, but for now I need to focus on promoting the existing ones!

I’ve been running an Adwords campaign for UK Black Dating & this has been pretty successful so far – good click through rates & a good number of sign-ups as a result! The CPC on this site isn’t too bad either, at just £1 per click, which is very low for a dating site! I’ve utilised negative terms to avoid non-relevant clicks and created different Ad Groups for men, women & general long tail phrases, with multiple ads in each group.

I might finally be getting the hang of this AdWords lark

I’ve decided to target any new dating sites to more niche markets & to this end, have just set up Uniformed Dating, using the Dating Factory platform, which allows for a wide range of targeted sites, such as uniformed, vegetarian, disabled, BBW, black etc.

This choice was taken after carrying out some research into the most popular & well searched terms on Google. It appears that uniform dating is a very popular phrase, with over 70K searches a month at present & relatively low competition. Obviously, there is an established uniformed dating site (which advertises on national television), but in comparison to the generic dating sites, this appears to be a comparatively unsaturated market at the moment!

Uniformed Dating is free to join and has lots of women and men in uniform including Police Officers, Firemen (and women), Soldiers, Military Singles, RAF Personnel, Nurses, Doctors, Pilots and even Civilian Air Crew – in fact, ANYONE who wears a UNIFORM!

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Google and Bing both just confirmed that both Twitter and Facebook do impact SEO rankings! It’s been suspected for some time but now they’ve both announced how!

Bing: We do look at the social authority of a user. We look at how many people you follow, how many follow you, and this can add a little weight to a listing in regular search results. It carries much more weight in Bing Social Search, where tweets from more authoritative people will flow to the top when best match relevancy is used.

Google: We do use it as a signal. It is used as a signal in our organic and news rankings. We also use it to enhance our news universal by marking how many people shared an article.

You need to be on Twitter and sharing content that gets retweeted!

Bing: We calculate the authority of someone who tweets. For known public figures or publishers, we do associate them with who they are.

Google: We do compute and use author quality.

Bing: We calculate whether a link should carry more weight depending on the person who tweets it.

Google: We also use this as a signal, especially in the “Top links” section [of Google Realtime Search].

You need to be actively building your follower base and improve your “author authority” (so your tweets and retweets of your tweets help you more and carry more weight).

Thanks to these comments, we now know that those link sharing activities on Twitter + Facebook are evaluated based on the person/entity sharing them through a score Google calls “Author Authority,” and Bing calls “Social Authority.”

If you aren’t yet on Twitter or Facebook (with a Fan Page) you need to get going – it’s only going to become more important as time goes on.

I’ve recently been asked to carry out some e-mail marketing by a client, but it seems that the e-mail marketing market is a circle of contradictions!

My client is a small business & cannot afford the exorbitant charges that Google Adwords now runs up in order to attract business to their website. They are in a particular sector of the market & only want to target the construction sector. After some research into data lists I chose to purchase 3000 B2B e-mail addresses for construction sector companies in just three local counties. The company I purchased from claims to be a member of the Direct Marketing Association as well as several other bodies & assured me that all the addresses were opt in.

Because most web hosts restrict the amount of recipients you can send an e-mail to, to between 30 & 50, it’s necessary to use an e-mail marketing company in order to send the e-mails. However, most of them will not let you use purchased data or 3rd party lists! Their answer is:

“We will design a form for your website, which people can then go to in order to sign up for your emails”. But hang on; isn’t this absolutely useless if people are not aware of your company?! If they’ve been to your website to sign up for a newsletter, then they already know about your company & what service you provide! Yes, I can certainly tell them about the latest offers if they sign up for a newsletter, but it’s useless when the main purpose of this marketing is to make other businesses aware that this company exists & what it does!

I’m bombarded by spam all day, every day, but whilst I’m constantly filtering out Viagra ads & web design offers from India, it appears that legitimate UK businesses are prevented from e-mailing relevant, targeted companies. Surely e-mailing companies to make them aware of your service is surely no different to sending out a postal mailshot, or cold calling by phone. It simply makes another company aware of what you do & that you exist, when you can’t afford to pay thousands for Google Adwords!

Whilst I hate SPAM as much as the next person, if the marketing is targeted & relevant, I don’t mind the 10 seconds it takes me to decide if it’s something I require. I’ve found out about a number of things that I’ve then purchased, or services I’ve used, because I received the e-mail equivalent of a cold call. These are products/services I would never have been aware of if they hadn’t told me about them & I certainly wouldn’t have gone looking for them, because I didn’t know they existed!!!! In fact, I’m much more likely to take up an offer sent via e-mail than if someone phones me, because I like  the opportunity for further research & the chance to decide in my own time, rather than being pressured on the phone!

However, it appears that we’ve become so obsessed about SPAM in the UK, that you are prevented from e-mail marketing companies unless they have already visited your site & signed up to receive marketing from you………..surely this defeats the main point of e-mail marketing…………getting NEW customers.

These restrictions for UK businesses don’t  stop the REAL SPAM – the endless “enlarge your penis” & “buy from this Chinese wholesaler” botnet type junk mail that is the real bane of my life………oh yes, because they don’t follow the UK rules!

Aaaaagh!

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