On Line Marketing

Your Very Own Integrated BLOG and Social Bookmarking Service

2008-08-27T08:41:00.007Z

WHAT OUR SERVICE INCLUDES

We will build you a blog integrated within your domain and in addition we'll ensure your articles and blog posts are included in all the major social bookmarking sites and blog directories.

WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES?

In short, its a great way to increase your web site traffic AND improve your search engine rankings (Full details and the background to this and the benefits are included here)

What we'll do for you:

The Blog will use Wordpress technology - the most effective blogging platform for features and SEO compliance

The blog will match your website design - so your visitors will have the same look and feel between your blog and your site, and will be able to seamlessly navigate between the two.

We'll set up your blog with a series of categories and other content areas specific to your needs (It can include video and image content)

Options will include - calendar, blogroll, keyword clouds, comment feature, trackbacks

We'll ensure a RSS subscription and social bookmarking options are included.

We'll provide telephone assistance to get it working well for you

Every month we bookmark your article or blog post to 6 social bookmarking sites
(This could be the same article or blog post or a new one created by you)

We'll ensure that the article gets 'tagged' correctly with the relevant keywords - so people doing keyword searches at these sites will find your link

In addition we'll ensure you are included in all the major Blog directories

NEED MORE INFORMATION?

please call Jan Klin on 01928 788100 or email at jan@janklin.com

YOUR INVESTMENT

£495 plus £95 per month - plus vat

NOTE: If you decide you dont want a blog, but still want all the advantages of social bookmarking, we can replace the blog production with 'article' production. What this means is that we would create a keyword/backlink rich article for you, include it in a relevant place on your website and apply the social bookmarking process to it.

Blogging, SEO, links and Social Bookmarking - Too good to be true?

2008-08-25T11:10:00.007Z

What I hope to do in the post is provide you with a practical self contained strategy which will have a large impact on your website traffic and visitors.

Each of the items discussed here - blogs, links, social bookmarking - are very important items in themselves for increasing your website traffic, but used together in a coherent way, it really is a case of one plus one plus one equals five (or maybe even seven!).

So, lets discuss them one by one, then we'll show how to interlink them into a coherent online strategy.

BLOGGING

The benefits of blogging are well understood - but I'm going to repeat them nevertheless:-

-Firstly, from an online marketing perspective, what you want is a blog which is part of your domain and integrated in your site. That is, not externally hosted but actually a part of your site. (Wordpress.org is what we use for our clients).

The reason for this is that the search engines will see this as part of your site (eg www.yourdomain.com/blog) - so the links into it (good blogs will always attract links naturally) will count towards your Google Page Rank. Also if you are regularly adding new content to your website search engines will see this as a positive factor.

- As already stated providing you offer value added content on your blog (educational information about your industry, your services, recent legislation; tools and useful articles people can use to help with their business etc - there's no shortage really) you will attract links naturally which will bring visitors directly and add to your Google Page Rank.

(Incidenatlly, another neat idea is to create 'product reviews' where you can objectively discuss the pros and cons of specific products, allow customers to comment -moderated of course - with a link back to the specific product on the website)

-Also your blog, by definition, will be text and keyword rich so naturally disposed to getting good rankings (many people find their blog ranks higher than their main website) and the major blogging platforms - Wordpress, Typepad etc - automatically generate metadata in a search engine optimised format.

- The final point is that RSS sign up to your blog and social bookmarking options are a standard part of the technology, and these two items again are great tools for automatically keeping you in touch with your clients and prospects and increasing your web visibility.

So, in short, blogs are good for you. They will increase you search engine rankings and increase your direct traffic. But read on....
(Incidentally if you dont have the time to set one up your self we can do it for you - Blogs and Social Bookmarking Service)

SOCIAL BOOKMARKING

What is social bookmarking? Its very similar to using bookmarks in your browser for sites you want to remember - the difference is its web based so everyone can see your 'favourites' and you can see everyone elses.

There are many different social bookmarking sites, all with their own features and quirks. Some of the more famous ones are del.icio.us and Digg, in fact you can see the top 30 here.

Digg allows you to rate articles and the more highly rated the article becomes the higher it rises in the rankings. Del.icio.us is different again in what it does - the important thing is its other people providing comments on your articles/blogs.

So how will this help with your web traffic and how can you go about exploting these sites?

There are two ways, the first relates to search engine optimisation (SEO). The fact that you have links from these sites to your blog will have an impact on its (and your websites) rankings. (NB Some of these sites - not many as it happens - use 'nofollow' in the link meaning that the google spider will not follow and therefore not pass on any 'link juice'. So if this is you sole purpose in using them then you need to use ones which dont use 'nofollow'. There's a list here.)

The other reason of course is that they will drive traffic directly. These are very popular sites - the top 10 account for around 20 million visitors per month so having visibilty on them is a great way to generate visitors to your site/blog. Tagging your articles/posts with the correct keywords will enable searchers at these sites to find your link directly.

An example of how this works can be seen on this blog - you'll see lower down you have the opportunity to 'bookmark' this article through several of the important bookmarking sites. If you did this my blog would get more visibility and an all important link.

BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER

So, imagine having links from these sites to your own. It will help boost your search engine rankings and also bring additional direct traffic.

The process to implement this is quite straightforward:-

1. Build a blog (integrated with your website)
2. Write useful articles/content for your blog
3. Encourage people to 'bookmark' you - like I do in this blog
4. And...(very important!)....Get someone (eg us) to 'bookmark' your blog articles with all the major sites.

If you dont want to do it yourselves we can do any, or all, of this for you in a very SEO advantageous way:-

Here are the details of the service we offer - Blogs and Social Bookmarking Service

Either way you should get it done - it will make a big difference to your online marketing.

Are you optimised for Google's second page?

2008-06-23T11:35:00.003Z

Its a well known statistic that around 90% of clicks happen at the first page of Google (more for some keywords) and that around 3%-4% happen on page 2.

What that means is that by moving from page 2 to page 1, in broad terms, you will increase your visits twenty fold! - and in some cases much more particularly if you can get into the top 5 positions.

I've also noticed there are an awful lot of websites on page 2 which just shouldnt be there. They should be on page 1. I'll give you an example in a moment but the point I want to make is that if you are on page 2 for some of your important keyphrases, it may be that you have to do very little to get elevated to the first page. There are some factors to look at below to help you assess this but first an example.

Do a Google search for 'ground source heat pumps' (incidentally - if you go to 'Google Trends' you'll see this term has been rapidly growing in importance over the last 12 months). You'll see that www.gshp.org.uk - The Ground Source Heat Pumps Association - is languishing half way down page 2 (surely they cant want to be there given that their sole reason for being is to inform people about heat pumps!).

What they have got going for them is lots of inbound links (177), represented by a Google Page Rank of 5 and their domain is around 4 years old. Basically all the essentials to get a good ranking. We used to say if you have a PR 4 some basic on-page SEO is all you need to get a top 3 ranking. Its not quite as simple as that nowadays but you would certainly expect to quite easily move this site to page 1 with some basic on-page SEO. In fact that's all they need to do - get properly structured tags (they dont even have a meta description and keyword tag!), get a few more paragraphs of text with a few more repetitions of the keyphrase in question. Possibly a few anchor text based links from some other of their pages and that should be it. It'll certainly be enough to get them to page 1 and possibly in the top 5. Two hours work at most.

So the important factors, if this is something which you are affected by:-

1. Check you backlinks and Page Rank - If you have a PR 3 or above then, generally this is enough to get on to page 1 If.....
2. You domain is at least two years old, and....
3. you have at least 250 words of text on your ranked page.

If you satisfy these 3 points it should be just a matter of tweaking your meta tags (see Lesson 6 and Lesson 7) adding a paragraph or two of text and repeating the keyphrase a few times. Possible adding a few anchor text based links from other pages.

Obviously each case is different and so much depends on the degree of competition, but in 9 times out of 10 cases this is all we have to do for our clients.

Google Base SEO - A free tool for you

2008-06-19T15:00:00.004Z

The virtues of successfully optimising for google base are well known to you. (Here's a couple of striking examples Plumbnation and Copiersforsale).

One of the keys to ensuring you are optimised and stand a good chance of grabbing the top positions is firstly that you need a XML feed which you can resubmit regularly (lets say once per week).

Here's a free tool we've developed to enable you to do this...

Google Base XML Feed Generator

Best Wishes with it

Optimising for Images and Photos - Image SEO

2008-06-19T11:27:00.004Z

Why bother optimising your images and photos? There are two good reasons - one is that 'image search' is growing rapidly (see the Hitwise graph below) and on Google is now the number one vertical search option second only to Google's main search.

The other is that with Google Universal Search images will quite often appear in the main search results....

People like to see what they buy before they buy, particularly in the research phase, so there are good ecommerce reasons why you want your images will be found. Also having an image of yours appear in the google results maximises click throughs - it stands out from the rest and often dominates the maximum click through positions in the search listings.

How to carry out Image SEO

There are a few important things you can do to ensure your images get found, here are the main ones:-

- ensure the image file includes the target keyphrases in the filename (ideally a .jpg file rather than gifs which are for graphics with limited colour ranges)

- ensure your filenames are descriptive and naturally include the target keyphrase(s) (make sure words are separated with hyphens NOT underscores)

-Associate an 'alt' tag with the image - again a keyword rich description rather than keyword stuffing.

- Set up a Google sitemap specifically for the images and ensure search engines have access to your image folder

- Ideally links to the images should include keyword rich anchor text

-Ideally have the image on your webpage surrounded by some contextually relevant keyword rich text. Or at the very least a keyword rich description next to the image on the page.

In addition to this of course you'll want to ensure the metadata on the web page the image appears on is optimised and in particular ensure that the word 'image' and 'photo' appear in the TITLE tag as many people will use these words when searching.

Best wishes with it.

A hot new tactic for SEO?

2008-05-12T15:20:00.002Z

'PR Sculpting' is the tactic, and it involves using the 'nofollow' tag to hoard your link juice into specific pages and thereby increasing the rankings for that page.

How it works
As most of you know the Google 'Page Rank' of a specific page is a major factor leading to the high rankings of a specific phrase and the web page associated with it. (A crude measure of this is the green Page Rank indicator you can see at the top of your browser). Here's an example of a high PR (9)on the BBC site:-

The factors leading to the Page Rank of a page are the links coming into that page (both external links and also links from internal pages) and also links OUT of that page. Its a bit like the leaky bucket analogy used in marketing, but specifically here the quest is to maximise the inflow of link juice and minimise the outflow.

Maximising the inflow obviously involved increasing the backlinks to the page and also finding internal pages which can be used to link to the target page in an appropriate way.

Minimising the outflow involves using the 'nofollow' tag. There's a good article on the nofollow tag here where you can also see examples of how its structured. Essentially you are just telling the spider NOT to pass any link juice out to the linked pages. (Human viewers can still follow the link of course its just that the spiders wont).

What sort of links is this relevant to?

Obviously there are some pages you want to pass link juice to but many you dont - including the obvious 'terms and conditions', 'about us', sign up forms etc.

We're experimenting with this at the moment and so far the results are encouraging. Here's more detail on it Page Rank Sculpting and here's a good example - SeoMoz example.

Give it a shot - you have nothing to lose and only better ranked pages to gain.

A Website that does the business

2008-05-12T10:50:00.008Z

Here's an example of a recent web project that delivered an extraordinary return on investment.

Again the return was down to the power of Google Base. You can see the search example below for 'ricoh copiers' (click to enlarge the image) and the little shopping bag icon indicating the snippet has come from G Base.

This 'top of Google' result was delivered within one week of the website going live (it took around 2 weeks to build) and was responsible for - along with similar searches - the whole cost of the web project being offset within 2 weeks of going live. That represents a staggering return on investment. I cant give you the actual figures for the obvious commercial confidentiality reasons, but I think you can see that moving into pure profit after a couple of weeks if pretty impressive stuff.

Its quite a simple website as you can see below (click to enlarge the image).

Essentially its just of collection of very good product landing pages, with good calls to action with traffic driven from Google Base. So, if you've got products to sell get them on Google base and ensure you drive people through to relevant and well constructed product pages. You cant fail to generate business.

Thanks Google! - a great new solution to an old problem

2008-05-09T07:55:00.003Z

Ive discussed the issues of SEO and hosting before - in a nutshell where your site is hosted could have an impact on your search engine rankings. In particular if you have a .com (or .net, .biz etc) google will use your hosting location to determine where to give you rankings (eg - a .com domain hosted in the US will provide rankings in the US - so hard luck if you want good UK rankings). To check where you are hosted and for full details here's the full post - Rankings and Hosting

Google Webmaster Central to the Rescue!

We now have a neat solution to this problem - at Google Webmaster Central (GWC) you can now tell Google where you want your rankings. Just go to 'Tools' then 'set geographic target'- see below. Of course you'll need to register with GWC first - which is free - and which holds many other advantages.
(Click on the image to enlarge)

Some Other Useful Stuff you can do at GWC

You can see the details above but particularly useful is the 'crawl diagnostics' feature, and the 'statistics' which shows you amongst other things the top keyphrases you are getting found on.

Another problem in the past has been getting to know where your inbound links are coming from - the 'link' command at Google is notoriously unreliable, but now through GWT you can get a full and accurate summary of all links coming into your site.

The 'sitemap' facility is a good way to communicate to Google your web pages to ensure they all get spidered. Anyway, register and hava a play - its really useful.

Helping International SEO

It also provides a neat solution to the issue of getting rankings from different countries through the same site. Here's an example:-

Lets say your site is www.yoursite.com and you are looking for rankings in the UK. Lets say you have some translated French pages, German pages and US specific pages on your site through which you want to attract relevant keyword searchers from people searching in those countries.

You can use subdomains for these pages (eg www.francais.yoursite.com) or folders (eg www.yoursite.com/german) and either way you can use the 'set geographic target' facility to properly inform google where you want search results from for these pages. That is, you can tell google that specific parts of your site need to attract traffic from different areas.
If you want more detail on this here's a video clip at the GWC official blog.

Help needed - but theres' something in it for you...

2008-05-07T09:44:00.001Z

We have several customers who need specific help with their rankings on specific keywords. How can you help?

You are aware of the importance of quality links, in particular quality nowadays means links from sites which are authoritative themselves (lets say as measured by Google Page Rank of 3 and above); have some contextual relevance; and have the right anchor text in the link.

So, here are a few customers of ours who would like such a link from you. In return, I will give you a link from a Page Rank 3/4 from my own website (or blog if you prefer) which will be a quality link as defined above. Here are the specific companies and web sites. Please get in touch with me if you wish to partake and I'll sort out the detail for you.

Towmaster UK.

This company manufactures and distributes exhibition trailers and a wide variety of other types of trailer including catering and box trailers. If you visit their site you will also see a gallery of their products which includes advertising trailers too. The phrase they are seeking to improve on is exhibition trailers. Are you happy to link to them?

Plumbnation

A hugely successful web venture and now, after six months, one of the leading suppliers of plumbing and heating products on the web. One of their main products is heating boilers of various types. For the term 'Worcester Boiler' we have great natural and Google Base rankings but need some help with another major brand, Vaillant Boilers. Again if you are happy to trade a link get in touch please.

ALS World Movers.

This company has had great success with 'pay per click' advertising. The company ships products from any place in the world to any other place. International shipping and excess baggage is their sector and they are looking for good links on the phrases - shipping to australia, shipping to New Zealand, Dubai and Canada. Will a link exchange be relevant to you?

Cloggs uk

A major online brand for the sale of all types of shoes and other fashion items. They have great natural rankings on all major phrases including dr martens, converse trainers, skechers trainers and many more. Because of an upsurge in competition in Ugg Boots, this is a term we want to focus on. Is it relevant to you to link using this term in exchange for a quality link back?. Give me a call or drop me an email and I'll sort out the details.

Ross Handling

This company's specialty is in the provision of industrial castors for a wide variety of applications including shopfitting, point of sale and product display applications. Some are of a specialist nature like the heat resistant ones supplied to the bakery industry. Their castors come in a range of materials including rubber, nylon and steel.

A Hot New Tactic for Pay per Click?

2008-03-15T16:10:00.001Z

So, last week I was running a course in the Lake District for hoteliers. It was one of those courses where I meet the same people several times over a few weeks. Each week I tell them about something, they go away and do it, then come back and report their success, or otherwise.

The topic was 'pay per click' - something most had a passing aquaintance with and some already used extensively, but the challenge was to have another go using the 'best practice' principles I'd taught them.

I asked them to feedback their results. Predictably most had a reasonable level of success, but one stood out. They'd had overwhelming success. In fact their campaign had generated literally tens of thousands of impressions (not traffic because fortunately their budget restricted the number of visitors) but enough to fill their hotel.

What they'd done (inadvertently as it happens) is a great lesson to us all.

Firstly they'd thought laterally about their keyphrases. Most used the predictable 'lake district hotels', 'weekend in the lakes', hotel grasmere' etc , etc. as you might expect, but these folks thought about what people could do at their hotels - eg 'scrabble holidays' and variants around similar terms was one such theme.

Now has it happens they used the Google 'Content Network' facility (you may know you have the option of having you PPC ads appear on the main google page and/or external sites - those people that support Adsense). One of their ads appeared on Facebook. Unbeknown to them (and me) there is a large community at Facebook interested in online scrabble, and google's wonderful technology placed their ad in a contextually relevant area which drove masses and masses of interest.

Moral: (as well as thinking laterally about keyphrases) Dont underestimate the power of social networks in your online marketing. These networks - and Facebook is one of several - are the busiest places on the web. Go to Alexa.com and look at the top visited sites in the UK, you'll see that Facebook, Myspace and Bebo are all in the top 10.

Action point: go to these sites, find out what's hot on people's agenda's and see if you can correlate relevant keyphrases to your own products and services. Use Google Adwords(or Facebook's advertising services direct) to engage with these people. Also if you go the Facebook 'groups' section you'll see, for example, there are around 14,000 active participants in interior design. What a great place to communicate if this is the business you are in.

We're trying to 'package' a relevant service around this approach as we speak so I'll keep you posted about what we come up with

Success in SEO in the highly competitive Travel Sector

2008-02-28T18:03:00.002Z

Interview Between Jan Klin and Colin Maddocks of Future Travel Ltd

Preamble by Jan Klin:

The last time I met Colin was during a SEO course I was running. Surprisingly he had little content on his homepage and NO metatags (no title , description or keyword tags) but still ranked number one on Google for 'Nile Cruise'.

This is a great example of the importance of building quality links to get top rankings. After the interview below Colin explains in detail how he went about getting these links. A great lesson for all of us....

How would you describe your company and its mission?

We are an “online” retail travel agency business. We used to have 3 “high street” bricks and mortar shops on Merseyside but sold them to Going Places and moved “online” about 10 years ago.

Initially we had a “generic” travel website that allowed clients to search for almost any type of holiday but over the last few years we have started to create “niche” travel websites where we target specific specialist destinations, such as “Nile Cruises”, “Cape Verde Holidays”, “Cuba Holidays”, etc, etc.

How long have you had a website and what is its main purpose?

We have had websites for about 10 years but have had our “niche” websites for about 3 years and are adding to them all of the time. Our first real “niche” website was www.Nile-Cruises-4u.co.uk and our latest are www.ChinaHolidays4u.co.uk and www.goaholidays4u.co.uk

The great benefit to being online is that when we had our bricks and mortar agencies we basically only had our passing trade and when that passing trade had booked their holidays we found it hard to increase our sales. Plus there was great competition on the High Street which made getting our share of the passing trade that much harder.

Of course there is great competition online but I think the playing field is much more level. By that I mean that you can be a tiny company “offline” in terms of employees and resources but if you are reasonably interested in grasping “online” optimisation and strategies you can compete with the big players. In fact, because a small online company is usually able to create their own sites quickly and economically as well as alter them in an instant I think that they are much better placed than a major player to act very quickly to react to changes in the marketplace on a daily or even hourly basis. Plus its’ much easier to be “proactive” rather than “reactive” as a smaller player.

Does the site work for you? i.e. deliver the benefits you were expecting?

Yes the sites really do deliver the results we were looking for. Obviously it has taken a bit of time to reach the position we are currently in but now we know a lot more about what we are doing we can create and get a new “niche” site online within days, and, using an initial Google Adwords campaign, can be getting potential clients to the site the same day. In fact its’ a fantastically exciting business model. Un-reaptable in any other format.

What is your online marketing strategy? - which methods do you use to attract potential customers?

Our main strategy is based on trying to reach the first page of Google’s natural search results.

Our Nile Cruise site is currently fluctuating between number one and number two for the key phrase Nile cruise out of 567,000 and we are number two for the second search term Nile cruises out of 189,000.

Thanks to attending a breakfast seminar led by yourself last November and really taking onboard your recommendations, particularly back-links, we have reached those current placements pretty quickly and the difference is amazing.

Prior to being at number one or two on Google we conducted a Google Adwords campaign for the site that meant we spent £40 a day to bring in traffic. We usually paid about 60p per click which meant we were guaranteed to get a least 66 visitors a day to the site.

Now being at number one we get an average of 600 visitors a day to the site and as you can imagine our conversions from site visitors to actual sales has risen tremendously.

In January we received approximately 18000 visitors. If we were paying Google 60p per click/visitor that would have cost us £10,800!! Which we just could not have done.

How does your online activity mesh with your offline marketing?

To be honest we do not have any “offline” marketing strategy or budget. Everything is done online.

How much business do you do on the web?

100%

How do you see the future regarding your online activity?

To keep on developing “niche” travel sites, following on the “long-tail” concept that even though some of our “niche” sites will not do massive sales by having a large number of such specialist sites the combined sales figures will be excellent.

Plus, of course, implementing the various strategies I have learnt from attending your recent full day “Search Engine Masterclass” which I found fascinating, exciting and marvellously practical. So I’m very excited about our future online development.

What is the single biggest lesson you have learned about your web activities?

That it takes time, effort and enthusiasm. Plus you need to seek out the experts, (like yourself) and learn all you can from them. Then…keep on keeping on.

Can you imagine life without a website?

No. Our websites are our business. I would never go back to operating on the High Street. We now have thousands of clients from all over the country and from many countries overseas. This could never have happened without us being “online”.

How I Build my quality links.

Normally I will take my top 5 competitors for the same keyword/phrase that I'm trying to compete on and do a search for their links. For example I will use the "link:www.firstcompetitorsdomain.co.uk" search on Google to find out how many backlinks each of my competitors has. (Actually a more accurate way is to go to www.linkpopularity.com and click on the Yahoo 'click to view' option.) Then I'll take that list of back link partners and visit each one individually looking for an "add your site" button so that I can obtain a backlink too.

I then go through each competitor in the same way, searching out their backlink partners and asking them for a backlink to me. I sometimes have to provide a backlink from my site but not always.

I also use the list of directories supplied by SEOMOZ.com and I have also paid the $299 to Yahoo Directory as I have read many times that this is worth paying for.

Finally, I search out for "on-topic" blogs that I can add a post to ensuring that I add my name as whatever anchor text I'm trying to create backlinks for. So if I'm trying to be found for "Florida Holidays" I will "sign" my blog post answer as "Florida Holidays" which means that my name is my chosen "anchor text". I know that some blogs have a "no follow" rule for posts but just as many dont' and I have found this method a good way of getting good backlinks.

Search Engine Optimisation - What's different in 2008?

2008-02-28T14:35:00.004Z

As ecommerce continues its relentless rise (According to Nielsen, 98% of UK internet users now shop online) and Google continues to dominate the way we find products and services (around 76% market share whether we are researching or buying) you probably dont need me to remind you of the imperative to increase your website's visibility.

Here's the best way - Google Universal Search - I know, Ive talked about this before, several times, but its still the biggest thing to change the search landscape and provide real opportunities for exceptional traffic. For example, look at this.....

Anyone not on the map is effectively non existent as far as the searcher is concerned. As you may remember from previous posts over 75% of all visits come from the 'above the scroll' positions.

Its essential if you are a hotel to be on the map, but when you consider that almost half of all searches are for local services (insurance company kent, solicitor preston, lawnmower supplier manchester, search marketing company liverpool....) then there is a great opportunity for most companies to differentiate themselves from the masses by appearing on the map, like for example the following....

Of course this cabling company on the map will get a disproportionately higher number of visits than his competitors.

Here's how to do it from a previous post - http://janaklin.blogspot.com/2007/06/quick-way-to-google-top-spot.html

This is a good example of Google Universal search in action, where Google will bring in the most appropriate results, not just little blue snippets from its main database.

So, if you sell products get into Google Base, like Plumbnation....

If you have anything newsworthy post to Google News...

Why not get video clips on You Tube and images in Google images...

The point is you have a real opportunity to show up in different forms from different locations courtesy of Google Universal Search.

Over the coming months I'll be publishing a detailed lesson on each of the important areas you can optimise for (G Base, video, maps, podcast, image, news, etc, etc) so over a period of time you can make sure you maximise your exposure, your traffic and of course your business through the web. I'll refer to this as ADVANCED TRACK.

I'll also be republishing, and updating, my lessons for you to DIY your optimisation. I'll refer to this as FUNDAMENTALS TRACK.

In addition future posts will also have case studies and/or Q&A sessions - all designed to help your business get to grips with search marketing.

Meanwhile you can see some of the many companies we work with who are achieving great results through search marketing at http://www.janklin.com/clients.html

Q&A Spot: Does it matter where my site is hosted?

2008-02-28T13:58:00.002Z

Question: I've just discovered my website is hosted in Germany (that's where my hosting company chose to put it). Does this have any impact on my search engine rankings?
Angela Dunbar, Allied Equestrian, Perthshire

Answer: It doesn't matter in your case because you have a .co.uk domain name, so Google knows you are a UK company. On the other hand if you had a .com domain google would use your hosting location to determine your country of origin. In this case it would think you are German and give you good German rankings but poor UK results.

TIP: For any of you out there who think this may be a problem - go to http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/website-country/

Here you can check where your site is hosted. If you have a .com domain and you are hosted outside the uk, this means you will not get good uk rankings unless you transfer to a uk host.

More background information on hosting and search engine rankings.

When people carry out a google search, google wants to serve up the most relevant results. More often than not, local results are more relevant than others. For example if you were searching for new lawnmower, Google would assume a local supplier would be mor appropriate than, say, a German one.

How does Google determine where websites are in relation to the searcher? As alluded to above, if you have a .co.uk TLD (top level domain) Google assumes you are a UK company. If, however, you have a .com it uses the server location to determine which your country of origin is. As in the example above a .com domain and a German hosted site would conclude you are German, which would mean your UK search results would be poor (your German ones could be OK though!)

Taking this a stage further you can see that ideally, to get good rankings in a specific country, you need a local TLD ( .de, .fr, .it etc). If this is not possible a good compromise is a .com ( or .eu for Europe) and get the site hosted in the relevant country.

Even better you can use subdomains for your non uk sites with the subdomains hosted locally. So, www.yoursite.com in the uk; www.de.yoursite.com in German and hosted in Germany; www.fr.yoursite.com in French and hosted in France, etc.

If all this sound too much like hard work then 'pay per click' is the best route open to you since you can specify the country you want your ads to appear in.

Internet Marketing Nirvana

2007-12-05T15:47:00.000Z

Different types of internet marketing methods can all yield great results used separately, but use them together and optimise the way they interrelate and the sum is much greater than the individual parts.

Lets look at how and why using a combination of Pay Per Click (PPC), Search engine optimisation (SEO), Email marketing and website landing page optimisation does the business.

Pay Per Click

Many people use pay per click as their only form of online marketing - its easy, everything can be monitored and theres no need to make large scale changes to an existing website.

Just make sure you do the basics right:-

- choose a large number of relevant keyphrases (so you capture the 'long tail' as well as the volume terms)

- make sure your ads are written effectively (ensure the keyphrase searched for is repeated in the ad and that the ad entices a click through; and ideally ensure the url of the landing page contains the keyphrase)

-drive searchers through to an appropriate, optimised landing page.

If you do these things your campaigns will be effective and you will receive a reasonable to very good return on your investment.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Consider this search for 'dr martens':-

As you can see here Cloggs have two snippets in the top positions - a pay per click ad and also a SEO snippet.

In average terms you can argue that this is at least doubling your return on investment. Because once the SEO snippet is there its there for free so you are getting two click throughs for the price of one - actually its better than this because in average terms you get three times the click throughs on the natural, or SEO results, than on the paid-for ones. Any way you look at it your ROI is improved dramatically.

Landing page Optimisation

Consider this page - the landing page for a search for 'Worcester Greenstar Boiler':-
(Click on image to enlarge)

After doing the search for 'worcester greenstar boiler' and clicking on the snippet this is the page you land on, which is optimised, and by this we mean:-

- the searcher knows he's found what he's looking for - it says 'Worcester Greenstar Boiler' at the top of the page

- there's also an image of a greenstar boiler and a comprehensive description

- There are appropriate 'calls to action' that is the searcher can go on to buy the product if he wishes by using the ecommerce functions on that page OR, and very importantly, he can call the supplier via the very prominent phone number at the top of the page.

This is what we mean by landing page optimisation, a page which maximises the chance of soliciting the desired response from the searcher. (in addition to being optimised for natural SEO results)

You may know also that google promotes a PPC result higher in the rankings based on the effectiveness of this landing page. (ie what people do when they get there) and there is a further bit of synergy here between SEO and PPC. This page is optimised for both.

Email Marketing

Where does email fit into the picture?

Its an unpalatable truth folks that most people visiting your website wont do what you want - that is they wont buy or wont make contact with you, and certainly they wont try to remember your url for later consideration.

So the onus is really on you to keep the communications going, and this can best be done by asking them for their email address when they visit (obviously in return for something they will value in a regular newsletter) - educational information, seasonal offers, promotions - whatever is relevant to your audience but really the key is to keep the name in front of them for when they are ready to buy
(incidentally 4 to 5 of you reading this will become customers of ours as a result of this communication - so be careful!)

Collecting emails is simply done:-

The point is:-

-Dont ask them for anything other than an email address

-Spell out the advantages of what they'll get in return

-Make sure you include sign ups on many pages - not just one or two (AND, certainly on all your optimised landing pages)

So there you go, a well put together blend of SEO, PPC, Email and landing page optimisation will do the trick for you and deliver a huge return on investment compared to any other form of marketing you will do.

Please call if we can help and have a Great Christmas and New Year

Jan Klin - 01928 788100 - jan@janklin.com

Incidentally if you are a Manchester based manufacturing company (I know, its only a few of you) you can get a 50% grant for your ecommerce web projects - call if you need more.

High Quality Links Make the Difference

2007-11-06T16:46:00.000Z

Firstly, those of you who decided to swap a link with me recently thanks very much. I thought I'd let you know how successful its been and remind you how quality linking really works.

We are promoting local services in Manchester, Chester and Liverpool so wanted to gain some visibility by being top for appropriate phrases. If you search for 'seo Liverpool'; 'search engine optimisation chester' - and many other variants I'm now in the top spot after 2 weeks of creating the page.....
(click on image to enlarge)

In fact I needed only four links to get this position for 'Search engine optimisation chester'.

Just a reminder that to get the top spot you dont need many links you just have to make them 'contextually relevant' - mainly by making sure that the correct anchor text is included.

Below is an example of how this appears on one of your sites - note the link includes the phrases we want a high ranking for. (ie the correct anchor text)

Of course, in addition to this, the target page has to be optimised. If you go to the target page you'll see a great example of SEO copywriting at work.

I hope its been as successful for you as it has for me - so thanks again.
If anyone out there wants to see the specific piece of code I asked to be included as the link drop me an email and I'll send it to you. (jan@janklin.com)

SEO Magic! - A New Way to Hit the Google Top Spot

2007-11-06T15:37:00.000Z

Let's get straight into an example to show you what I mean....

You can see here that our customer, www.Plumbnation.co.uk , takes the top spot and their snippet has the shopping bag icon next to it indicating this result has been drawn from Google Base.

(Incidentally, Plumbnation will be the largest low cost, heating and plumbing ecommerce site in Europe - a great place to get the best deal on a Worcester Boiler)

There are a few important points to make about this:-

- They were number one on Google within a few weeks of their brand new website going live! on the search term you see above and many other variants of 'boilers'.

(In fact Google will display results for you within 24 hrs of you submitting your products to G Base.)

- These entries are free! - not only this but are more effective for click throughs than conventional SEO and pay per click because the shopping bag icon makes them stand out.

So, how much better can it get than having rankings which are both free and better than Pay per Click?

So much for the myth that new sites take a long time to get free rankings.

I cant tell you how much money this customer has made since their site went live, customer confidentiality prohibits me from divulging this, but I can tell you its surpassed everyone's expectations by a very wide margin. (I hope that seems understated enough - I'm trying desperately to suppress my desire to go overboard and hype this)

So, how does this work and why is it so effective? more detail later but there are a couple of points to make you aware of:-

1. The listings have been 'optimised' for G Base. A similar, but easier process, than conventional SEO.

2. Google Universal Search (which I may have mentioned before?) has a major part to play. Up until 6 months ago you would have to go to Google Base and do a search to see this result, but now, Google brings in results for its main search page from all over the place. (Including Google Base)

So, you need to go to Google Base and learn how to do this...
http://base.google.com/
Its all there including what sorts of products and services its for (most actually)

If you dont have time to learn about it and do it - we can do it for you. Just give us a call or email and we'll send you the details (jan@janklin.com; 01928 788100).
We have limited availability to run trials on this for some of you if you may be interested.

Dont hesitate too long....

'Whitelabel' SEO Services for Web Design Agencies

2007-10-04T16:46:00.000Z

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Use SEO Science and Make Money for Your Company

The ‘black art’ days of SEO are now a thing of the past. It’s now a recognised marketing science with the power to deliver real business benefits.

We offer a tried and trusted, credible, money-making subscription service to make it easier for you to get it absolutely right.

We’ve developed systems to ensure that you can give your clients higher rankings, tangible results and increased business.

Simple Service – Tangible Business Benefits….You and your clients win

It’s a “white label” service, at a reasonable price, so you could mark-up by as much as 100% and brand it as your own.

The benefits to you are obvious but worth repeating:

• A source of revenue – an add on service for your agency (with a typical 100% margin on our standard rates)
• Additional source of revenue – through client website updates and improvements
• Puts you at the forefront of SEO development
• Increases customer satisfaction, loyalty and advocacy – because of their high search engine positions
• Provides your agency with new skills, without the added cost of recruiting.

How does it work? We can help you identify your top three clients who would gain most benefit from enhanced SEO. This gives you the confidence to offer a full SEO service, knowing that these clients would get immediate improvements in rankings and a related increase in business.

We would provide:

• A comprehensive SEO report for each client, with detailed instructions on how to optimise their sites and maximise rankings
• Keyphrase and technical analysis from professionals with a long track record for working with the major search engines and web developers
• Guaranteed prompt e-mail and telephone technical support
• A monthly report showing keyphrase positions against major search engines (typically the top ten)
• Regular reports direct to you, the client or both - branded according to your specifications
• Copies of marketing materials to promote the SEO service
• Free access to our authoritative 'SEO Webinar’ to train your staff (normally costs £250 through the Institute of Direct Marketing).

How much does it cost? Its designed to ensure you make money from it – so you’ll get up to a 50% discount off our normal pricing.

What to do next? To hear about the benefits in more detail, question me on why our service is at the leading edge and offers tangible results, please call me or email.

Yours sincerely

Jan Klin

Jan A Klin & Associates -
01928 788100
07946 513521
www.janklin.com
email:jan@janklin.com

Would You Like a Link from Jan Klin's Website?

2007-10-04T14:52:00.000Z

Hi Folks

I will create a link for you from my site (from a Page Rank 4 page) complete with relevant anchor text for your most important keyphrase.

I'll also make it 'contextually relevant' for you.

Those of you who know the power of this type of link building should be answering the question above with a yes, yes, yes please Jan (but what's the catch?).

There is no catch - all I need in return is a link from your site to mine (from any page which does not have a Page Rank 0).

If you wish to do this (honestly you should because it will make a difference to your rankings) just drop me an email (jan@janklin.com) and I'll send along the details to you. Or call me if you wish. (01928 788100)

Best Wishes

Jan

Search Engine Optimisation Services - SEO - For Companies in Liverpool, Manchester and Chester

2007-10-04T14:33:00.000Z

I think its well known that we offer a range of Search Engine Optimisation services throughout the UK. In addition, because of our geographic location, we offer an extended range for companies in Liverpool, Manchester and Chester.

What do we offer:-

In addition to our normal SEO services and associated consultancy we offer training courses throughout the year in each of these cities. Dates and venues for the courses can be found at the following:-

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Liverpool
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Manchester
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Chester

Also we are able to offer 'in company' training designed to your specific needs where we will take you through the whole process of optimising your companies' website (or your clients if you are a web design company).

If you are a company in Liverpool, Manchester or Chester (or of course the surrounding area) you can see full details of the SEO training courses and all other associated services at our website www.janklin.com/SEO-Local.htm

Please get in touch if you wish to discuss your specific needs - Jan Klin - Direct Line: 01928 788100.

SEO Success in an Garden Office Business

2007-10-04T14:12:00.000Z

Interview Between Lynn Fotheringham, Director of Iobuild (www.iobuild.co.uk) and Jan Klin

How would you describe your company and its mission?

Small with a big website! Everyone who contacts us presumes that we are a large national company. I don’t think we are misleading them, I think because we have good rankings they assume we must be big.

Our mission is to design and build top quality additional living space in our client’s gardens. We solve accommodation problems in a unique way by building ‘housing quality’ home offices in people’s gardens.

We also design and build en-suite guest rooms and granny annexes for the bottom of the garden. A great alternative for people who don’t have the space to extend their house.

How long have you had a website and what is its main purpose?

We have had a website since the day we started trading four years ago. Our website is our only route to our customers. Because our clients come from diverse backgrounds and interest groups and can live anywhere in the country, contacting them through targeted, printed media is difficult.

Does the site work for you? ie deliver the benefits you were expecting?

The site does work for us, but I do need to work on expanding our marketing to drive more prospective customers to it.

What is your online marketing strategy? - which methods do you use to attract potential customers?

Our on-line strategy is purely based on search rankings. Thanks to your effort (Jan) we are positions one and two for our two main search terms.

More specifically for the term garden office we are second out of 157,000,000 competing pages! and for the term garden offices first out of 4,700,000!

Adwords for niche markets such as ours is prohibitively - up to £2 per click.

How does your online activity mesh with your offline marketing?

The market we are trading in is new and I have yet to find a reliable form of off-line marketing. I am always open to suggestions for off-line activity!

How much business do you do on the web?
100%

How do you see the future regarding your online activity?

I find it alarming that we have to rely 100% on the web, so I do value your work (Jan) as a way of protecting our valuable position.

What is the single biggest lesson you have learned about your web activities?

We have to fight hard to keep our position using ethical methods. Some of our competitors aren’t interested in trading ethically on the internet and use cloaking and other dubious techniques. I think this makes them the losers in the long run.

Can you imagine life without a website?

It would be nice, but I wouldn’t have a business

Largest Web Site for Heating and Plumbing Products Launched

2007-10-03T17:04:00.000Z

With the help of my company and several others www.plumbnation.co.uk is now live!

Plumbnation will eventually offer over 30,000 products making it the largest heating and plumbing supplies company in the UK.

The site sells every thing from major brand products - like Worcester Boilers - to the smallest pipe and fittings for DIY enthusiasts.

The site will be promoted through conventional offline means and of course aggressively through Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Pay per Click advertising.

Remember the 'google sandbox'? This site was number one on google for a 'Worcester TR212E' within one day of going live!

I'll keep you posted.

Jan Klin

Your Opportunity to Stand out from the Crowd

2007-10-03T15:55:00.000Z

'Google Universal Search' is something I've mentioned before, but I'm now convinced it will have a dramatic effect on the way Search Marketers go about their business.

It also means those of you who exploit it stand to gain substantial advantages over your online competitors.

Look at the following search:-

What you see here is one company dominating the first 5 positions. The significance of this of course is that their competitors are being kept out of the frame so their click throughs, and the number of sales or enquiries, is maximised.

(Remember that these 5 positions account for anywhere between 50% to 90% of click throughs.)

This possibility has been brought about through 'universal search'. Essentially it means that Google is now bringing its results from different databases to try to deliver the best results for searchers - not just their main index. As you can see above YouTube clips are also integrated.

Where else does Google bring it results from?

So, Google will now bring results from its main index, from You Tube, from its image database (like for Britney Spears below):-

Takes a good photo doesnt she?

And many other sources including blogs, google news, google local/maps and of course Google Base.

Raising The Bar for Search Marketing

So, the task for our clients is not just to get them one snippet at the top of the hitlist but to get multiple snippets in there to maximise click throughs.

Its not difficult to submit your images to google images; its easy to set up a blog; its simplicity itself to upload a clip to YouTube; Its essential to submit to Google local and get yourself on a google map (see previous post on how to do this).
Last, but by no means least, enter your products or services at Google base.. By doing this you'll even appear in search results if you havent got a website!

Of course as you do these things you'll need to optimise your submissions to ensure you get high rankings for them. For example if you add images to the Google images database you'll need to make sure the filenames include a keyphrase. I could go on but there's oodles of stuff on the web about this already - just do a search, for example, for 'google images SEO'. Interestingly if you do this you'll even get (courtesy of Google Universal Search) a videoclip of a chap from Google explaining how to do it.

If you need help dont hesitate to call us (01928 788100).

Q&A Spot: How important are the Keyword and Description tags for SEO?

2007-08-31T15:25:00.000Z

QUESTION: How important are the keyword and description tags for SEO ranking? Someone recently told me thay have no value

Imogen Davies, FreshFields Packaging, Carlisle

ANSWER: The keyword tag is relatively unimportant, however it should be completed as some minor search engines still appear to use it. There's some evidence that the search engine spiders look for consistency across the metatags even if they dont use them for ranking purposes so best to populate them.

In the past some people have commented that Yahoo may penalise you if you have keywords in the keyword tag that dont exist on the page. So, something like 4-5 words in the tag is what we generally do nowadays - making sure all words exist as visible text on the page in question.

The description tag is an important tag. Again its not generally used for ranking purposes (although I have seen pages ranked where the phrase getting searched on doesnt appear on the page but does appear in the description tag).

The main use of the decription tag is for maximising click-through rates. Look at the following example snippet:-

This is not bad. The term searched for is 'dr martens'. You can see the way Google highlights the term searched for in the description tag (and the title) so this is what your eye gravitates to in the searchlist thus maximising the click-throughs.

We always recommend that you repeat the keyphrase in question 3 times in the description tag which generally works quite well.

Also, you have 25 words available. Use them all to maximise the visibility of your snippet and push the competitors that bit further down the list. Make it a bit salesy as well, as in the above example, to encourage people to click through.

A final point on the description tag: If you dont enter one the search engines will take content from your page to populate the snippet. You dont want this to happen. Also sometimes your snippet content gets taken from the Open Directory (DMOZ) if you have an entry there; and sometimes from the Yahoo directory.

You can override this by using the NOODP tag and the NOYDIR tags in your code so your snippet content is taken from the optimised content in your description tag.

SEO Success in a High Tech Business

2007-08-29T16:24:00.000Z

Interview between Lisa Walker, Marketing Manager of Blue Chip Technology and Jan Klin

How would you describe your company and its mission?

Based just south of Chester, Blue Chip Technology designs and manufactures a range of embedded boards and industrial grade, rugardised computer systems.
Our single board computers bring the functionality of a complete computer to a very small board, roughly the size of a beer mat, which is then embedded into niche applications such as blood analysers, factory lasers, intelligent security cameras etc.

How long have you had a website and what is its main purpose?

The website has been in existence for best part of ten years, our target audience are mainly engineers who will go to the web as their first port of call when researching potential products.

Does the site work for you? ie deliver the benefits you were expecting?

We updated the website about four years ago - bringing in more material such as case studies and improving the structure. However, our Google referrals dropped, Google has always brought us the most enquiries and subsequent business. We worked with Jan Klin&Associates to improve our organic rankings - it didn't require any huge changes in content just more focus with things like key word placements, page titles and link building. Over a period of a few months we have seen huge improvements bringing us to a top five position across many of our key search terms.

For example if you do a search for “ industrial computers “ or “ single board computers “ we come 4th in Google out of 156,000,000 and 75,200,000 competing web pages respectively!

These terms get searched for tens of thousands of times per month and our positions bring in loads of enquiries.

What is your online marketing strategy? - which methods do you use to attract potential customers?

As well as SEO we pro-actively seek out industry relevant directories to appearin with a link back to our site. We also have a programme of e-shots, including a general newsletter and specific promotions/product launches. All communications include an opt-out. Respondees who do opt out are automatically blocked from receiving further communications from Blue Chip Technology.

Any activity like this is only as good as the database behind it - we're starting a program to clean and segment our data making it possible to tailor future communications.

How does your online activity mesh with your offline marketing?

We tend to combine a number of communications in any one campaign - e-shots, traditional post and telephone follow up. For example, we have metrics in place which collect open and click rates on e-communications which we can then use to prioritise any follow ups.

How much business do you do on the web?

Most of our sales - over 80%, our generated from web searches whether they come through via an enquiry form, e-mail or telephone call. Our customer base is proficient in using web technology and our product range is technically sophisticated - making the web the perfect marketing forum.

How do you see the future regarding your online activity?

I see improving our organic search engine rankings as phase 1, the next stage is to analyse the way people are using our site. Where do they come from, how do they navigate, what's popular, is there anything turning them off?

What is the single biggest lesson you have learned about your web activities?

When designing your website you will obviously strive to make it accessible and informative for your potential customers but don't forget about the Google spiderbot. On the whole, a website with a good repository of well structured, up to date information forms the basis of good search engine ranking but it does need to be optimised to really achieve it's full potential and put your name ahead of your competitors.

Can you imagine life without a website?

Absolutely not - it's our window on the world, today I've found out about the Low Pin Count bus, applying for a Russian visa and a recipe for Onion Soup.!

Changing Your Website and Search Engine Rankings

2007-08-29T13:38:00.000Z

A question we get asked a lot (and a problem we come across even more) is whether by changing your website you are likely to affect your search engine rankings.

Well, it depends. Its very easy to preserve your rankings by doing the rights things, its also very easy to screw them up by doing, sometimes inadvertently, the wrong things. So, what's below is some guidelines on what to do to maintain your hard earned rankings.

1. Here's the simplest scenario, that of just making design and textual changes to your existing webpages. This shouldnt present any problems at all. The only thing to watch here is to ensure you maintain the keyphrase density. For example if you are ranking for the phrase 'nile cruises' look at the number of repetitions in your current page and make sure you preserve this in the new. So if you have repeated the phrase 3-4 times on a page of 250-300 words, make sure this density is preserved.( Remember also these phrases can go in hyperlinks and navigation links as well as on the actual text.)

2. Here's the other end of the scale. A wholesale redesign of your site. Again there are no problems here providing you stay with the same pagenames/filenames for your web pages. The problem is quite often this will not be the case. For example one of your existing pages might be http://www.yoursite.com/?OB=5. On your new site the new web technology and content management system may generate urls' differently - the new equivalent new page for example may be http://www.yoursite.com/newpage.html.

As far as google is concerned this is a new page and you'll have to start earning your stripes again with links, ageing and so on. But there is a simple solution, and its called a 301 redirect.

301 Redirects

a 301 redirect will say to Google 'this old page has permanently moved to this new page'. The important thing here is that the Google Page Rank equity will be transfered as well, meaning that the rankings will be preserved (again, as long as you adhere to a similar keyphrase density as mentioned above.) In addition to this anyone trying to access an old page (maybe its in their favourites) will be seamlessly redirected to the new one. So, both users and search engine spiders will be kept happy.

NOTE: dont use a 302 redirect - this tells the spiders you have moved temporarily and they wont transfer the Page Rank equity.

How to Implement 301 Redirects

There's oodles of information about this on the web but here's the information in a nutshell and more references below for you.

For a Linux Apache server its just a matter of doing the following:-

1. Locate or create a .htaccess file on your server. Your .htaccess file gives search engine robots instructions on security and redirects.

2. If you don't have an .htaccess file on your server, you can easily create one using a text file. Name it ".htaccess"

3. If there is already an .htaccess file scroll down past the code that is already there and begin your new redirect instructions.

4. Put in your redirect information, which should look like this:
redirect 301 /directory/file.html
http://www.domainame.com/directory/file.html

*Note: The first part "/directory/file.html" is the location of the file being moved and the second part "http://www.domainame.com/directory/file.html" is where the file is being moved.

5. Upload the file to your server (The placement of the .htaccess file limits it effects: if you put it in your document root, it affects your entire website, but if you put it in a subdirectory, it affects that subdirectory and everything in it.)

For a Microsoft IIS Platform there are a couple of options:-

Method 1,
IIS Redirect
• In internet services manager, right click on the file or folder you wish to redirect
• Select the radio titled "a redirection to a URL".
• Enter the redirection page
• Check "The exact url entered above" and the "A permanent redirection for this resource"
• Click on 'Apply'

Method 2,

• Edit the old page.. “http://www.yourdomain.com/oldurl/”
• Remove the old code
• Place the following code in the page

<%
Response.Status = "301 Moved Permanently"
Response.addheader "Location", "http://www.yourdomain.com/newpageurl/"
Response.End
%>

Heres some more references for you:-

Theres a neat little video clip here about 301's and also some extra resource links below it:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/

Moving a Domain

This is a related point - moving your site to a new server, sometimes when you have your website redeveloped by a new company. Sometimes you'll want to change servers for different reasons.

Again, this is quite straightforward, its just a matter repointing the DNS to your new host. There are a few things to be aware of though and some complications if you have a complex site, so what Ive done below is reproduced an article Matt Cutts of Google wrote to help people with this.

I hope its useful, but please contact us if you need any help in doing this. It would be a dreadful shame if you lose the equity you have built up in your site over the years. (jan@janklin.com; 01928 788100)

Article by Matt Cutts of Google on Redirection and Host Changes

Moving a Domain
Several people have asked for the recommended way to move to a new webhost or IP address without having problems in Google. I tested this method this past Sunday and everything worked fine for me. I’ll walk you through my example, which is moving mattcutts.com from one IP address to another IP address by changing hosts. This is not an example of moving mattcutts.com to someotherdomain.com. I’ll talk about that a bit at the end.

If you have a static site or can afford a day or so where your site can be in limbo between two IP addresses, life will be easier. If you have a dynamic site with databases and such, it’s trickier, even though the idea is the same.

Step 1. Find a good web host and sign up for an account.

Step 2: Make a back-up of your site at the new webhost.

Step 3: Change DNS to point to your new web host.

Step 4: Wait for the DNS change to propagate through the net.

Step 5: Once you are sure people or Googlebots are fetching from the new webhost/IP address, you’re done. You can shut down the old site.

Let’s talk through these in a little more detail.

Step 1. Find a good web host and sign up for an account.
Research + references should help you find a good host. I liked my current webhost (csoft.net) quite a bit and I did a lot of research, but the site readership was growing faster than I expected. I asked a (non-SEO) friend who runs a heavily-trafficked site what he uses, and he uses pair.com. In this example I’ll refer to things by IP addresses, and we’ll be moving from csoft with an IP address of 63.x.x.x to pair.com with an IP address of 65.x.x.x. Just as a reminder, DNS is the system that maps pretty names like www.google.com to an actual Internet Protocol (IP) address that a machine can use, such as 66.102.7.147.

Step 2. Make a back-up of your site at the new webhost.

If you have a static website, this isn’t that bad; just copy the entire file structure over to the new webhost and you’re done. Harder is something like a blog, which usually has a MySQL or other database for storing posts. Harder still is some e-commerce site that has to have its database kept in a sync’ed state. In that case, you might have to set up database replication between the old location and the new location while you are doing the transition.

But let’s take the example of a WordPress blog with a MySQL database that can be down for a few hours without too much trouble. Assume that you’ve already used tar or FTP to copy the static files from one webhost to another. First, you want to create a new MySQL database at the new web host. Ideally, you can make it have the same database name and user name. If not, you’ll want to tweak the WordPress wp-config.php at the new location to update the database/username/password/etc.

Now that you’ve got the MySQL database ready to copy over, dump the old MySQL database, copy it to the new webhost, and load your database at the new location. Those three commands would look like this:
mysqldump –add-drop-table -uoldusername -poldpassword olddatabase > mysqlbackup.20051009.sql
scp mysqlbackup.20051009 user@newhost:~/
mysql -unewusername -pnewpassword -hnewdatabasehost newdatabase < ~/mysqlbackup.20051009.sql

Bear in mind that you have a username/password to login to the old and new webhosts, but you also have separate username/password for the databases at each location as well. You might even have the MySQL database stored on a different host, which is why I showed the -h (host) option when restoring the database. Again, if the new host has different options for your database, you’ll need to edit your wp-config.php file or WordPress won’t be able to access your database at the new webhost.

Now you have identical copies of your site at two different locations. If you’re just running a blog with a comment or two a day, it’s not a big problem if someone posts a comment or otherwise changes your database while you’re doing the transition to a new web host. If you run a big, industrial-strength forum or e-commerce site, you’ll need to do extra work to keep the two databases and/or file systems synchronized.

Step 3: Change DNS to point to your new web host.
This is the actual crux of the matter. First, some DNS background. When Googlebot(s) or anyone else tries to reach or crawl your site, they look up the IP address, so mattcutts.com would map to an IP like 63.111.26.154. Googlebot tries to do reasonable things like re-check the IP address every 500 fetches or so, or re-check if more than N hours have passed. Regular people who use DNS in their browser are affected by a setting called TTL, or Time To Live. TTL is measured in seconds and it says “this IP address that you fetched will be safe for this many seconds; you can cache this IP address and not bother to look it up again for that many seconds.” After all, if you looked up the IP address for each site with every single webpage, image, JavaScript, or style sheet that you loaded, your browser would trundle along like a very slow turtle.

You can actually see the TTL for various sites by using the “dig” command in Linux/Unix:

% dig mattcutts.com
; < <>> DiG 9.2.1 < <>> mattcutts.com
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER< <- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 37526
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 2, ADDITIONAL: 1
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;mattcutts.com. IN A
;; ANSWER SECTION:
mattcutts.com. 3572 IN A 65.181.152.150
...

In this case, the Time-To-Live for the IP address for mattcutts.com is 3572 seconds (a little less than an hour).

Time-To-Live is an important factor for a site’s DNS. Some sites like google.com, yahoo.com, and msn.com have really short DNS TTL settings like 300 to 900 seconds. Why? Well, if you have multiple data centers, you might want to take one data center down so that the data center mechanics can sprinkle fresh, magical index data onto the machines. With a short TTL, you could pull a data center’s IP address out of the rotation in just a few minutes.

That also helps explain the “Google Dance” of days gone by. The Google Dance would last for about a week, and people would see both old and new results, depending on which data center they happened to hit. The underlying reason was that each data center was brought down, loaded with new data or algorithmic settings, and then brought back up again. It took several days to switch the data at all data centers. During that time, webmasters used to love to check www2.google.com and www3.google.com because those DNS aliases usually pointed to the newest data centers. These days our production system is better equipped to switch things around quickly instead of over several days.

There, a little easter egg for the people who care about DNS. Okay, where were we? Right, switching DNS and Time-To-Live. You should care about TTL because if someone loads your website in their browser just before you update your DNS settings, and your TTL is one day, then that person’s browser will try to use your old IP address all that day.
In fact, it’s even worse. DNS is hierarchical. At the top of DNS there are 13 root servers that can handle any DNS lookup for a .com domain, but DNS caches flow all the way down to ISPs like Comcast or Cox. If someone on Comcast looked up your IP address just before you changed your DNS settings, all of Comcast would use the old IP address until the Time-To-Live expired.
So the upshot is that if you can make your TTL short (like an hour) instead of long (like a day), you’ll be in much better shape. Everyone will move to your new IP address in short order instead of having a mish-mash where some people are using the old IP address for hours.
The actual switchover process is pretty easy. Your new webhost will give you a pair of nameservers to use as the primary nameservers. If you have a domain registered with GANDI (the delightful French registrar that I happen to use), you go to account settings and switch from the old webhost’s nameservers to the new webhost’s nameservers. GANDI (and probably other registrars) is smart enough to recognize nameservers that are already present in the DNS system, so it can make the change pretty much immediately. If you’re going with a nameserver that no one has ever heard of before, you might have to wait 24 hours or so for things to percolate into the system.

Step 4: Wait for the DNS change to propagate through the net.
This is mostly a function of TTL and whether you’re switching to nameservers that are already present in DNS. Remember that DNS is hierarchical, and you have to wait for DNS caches to be flushed as Time-To-Live is exceeded. If you are using a smart registrar and a well-known set of new nameservers, the switch at the root level of DNS can be pretty quick. To verify that the root servers have the new nameserver, you can use the “dig +trace domain” command in Linux/Unix. The “+trace” option tells dig to go all the way up to the DNS root servers for the lookup:
dig +trace mattcutts.com
; < <>> DiG 9.2.1 < <>> +trace mattcutts.com
;; global options: printcmd
…
mattcutts.com. 172800 IN NS ns00.ns0.com.
mattcutts.com. 172800 IN NS ns176.pair.com.
;; Received 111 bytes from 192.5.6.30#53(A.GTLD-SERVERS.NET) in 84 ms
Above you can see that my nameservers have switched to pair.com nameservers. After that, you just have to wait for TTLs to expire for your new nameserver (and thus IP address) to wend its way out to everyone. If you are on a Windows XP system, you can use the command “ipconfig /flushdns” to flush your machine’s DNS cache, but it probably won’t do much good by itself. Remember that DNS is cached at each level, so your ISP probably has cached the previous IP address until the TTL expires.
Step 5: Once you are sure people or Googlebots are fetching from the new webhost/IP address, you’re done. You can shut down the old site.
When you ping your domain and see your new IP address, you know that you’re getting close. Previous visitors might still be using the old IP address from their DNS cache, but new visitors are getting the new IP address. It’s still a good idea to give a day or so in case anyone had a long Time-To-Live set, but most TTLs are a day or a few hours or less. After a day or so, it should be safe to deactivate the hosting at the old location. If you want to be ultra-safe, check your logs. When you see Googlebot fetching from the new webhost and no more visitors in your logs at the old location, it’s okay to turn off your old webhost.
Moving to a different domain

Now let’s talk for a minute about moving from mattcutts.com to someotherdomain.com. All other things being equal, I would recommend to stay with the original domain if possible. But if you need to move, the recommended way to do it is to put a 301 (permanent) redirect on every page on mattcutts.com to point to the corresponding page on someotherdomain.com. If you can map mattcutts.com/url1.html to someotherdomain.com/url1.html, that’s better than doing a redirect just to the root page (that is, from mattcutts.com/url1.html to someotherdomain.com). In the olden days, Googlebot would immediately follow a 301 redirect as soon as it found it. These days, I believe Googlebot sees the 301 and puts the destination url back in the queue, so it gets crawled a little later. I have heard some reports of people having issues with doing a 301 from olddomain.com to newdomain.com. I’m happy to hear those reports in the comments and I can pass them on to the crawl/indexing team, but we may be due to replace the code that handles that in the next couple months or so.
If it’s really easy for you to wait a couple months or so, you may want to do that; it’s always easier to ask crawl/index folks to examine newer code than code that will be turned off in a while