Many small businesses in the UK are failing to make the most of their online presence, with 47% of SME websites having either very basic or no SEO work at all.

A recent study - the State of UK Business Websites 2010,  looked at 1,001 SME websites and compared them against a range of SEO criteria.  A correlation between the size of a business and the levels of search engine optimisation was the first point found. It seems larger companies tend to have better optimised sites, while over 70% of companies with less than 50 employees have either very basic levels of optimisation, or none at all.

Amazingly, 12% of all business websites are not indexed in any search engine, which almost defeats the purpose of having a website in the first place. Many of the problems are down to businesses not implementing SEO basics. For instance, 35% of websites did not have unique page titles, and 56% lacked unique page descriptions. These are relatively quick SEO wins for small businesses.

Clearly, there are plenty of small businesses that are yet to see the value of effective SEO, or perhaps lack the knowledge to carry out the basics of site optimisation. These businesses should be looking to correct this as, implemented well, SEO has the potential to be a very important and cost-effective sales tool.

Whilst not every company will have the resources or know-how to run an effective campaign, simply getting the basics right, such as ensuring that a site can be indexed and contains relevant content, can make a noticeable difference to search results.

Businesses of all sizes and nature are flocking to social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn.

The fact is, that a presence on these platforms not only allows companies to engage in conversations with consumers, but also serves as an outlet to drive sales through deals and vouchers.

And while some of us have been participating in the social web for some time now, the rate of adoption among small businesses is increasing too. Social media as a marketing tool in small businesses has doubled from 12% to 24% in the last year. Last year, businesses were learning about social media.  This year, it's more about engaging it and using it properly to increase busines opportunities.

Businesses are finding different benefits and techniques to make proper use of social media marketing and it has become the most cost effective way of reaching the people we need to build a network and generate opportunities.

Since it's launch in February 2004, Facebook has become the most popular social networking site on the web.  This week, Facebook will reach a milestone of an impressive 500 million users.  

To celebrate, it’ll launch “Facebook Stories,” a visual memorial to all the ways the social network has changed people’s lives. Amongst the love stories and natural disaster reunion tales, it will be clear to see that the social network is no longer simply used by kids or peer groups - it has also become an important business tool.

Whilst previous announcements of the social networking leaders' milestones have been about the numbers, this time the company wants it to be all about the users.

This demonstrates the continued growth of the social networking site. People are now paying it the attention it deserves, and is has become the most cost effective way to do paid search and highly effective in reaching geographic and demographic areas.

Facebook reached 400 million users five months ago. This time last year, it had just reached 200 million and eight months before that it was at just 100 million. It's not surprising to see the social networking phenomenon has now become a key element of business strategy across the globe.

It looks as though search is about to enter a new era as it begins to mix into social media. Search engines have already attempted to place some kind of ranking on social updates and we already know that search engines take things like follower quality into account in how they rank tweets.

Now there is a lot of talk of Facebook "likes" and Twitter retweets taking the place of links. Not that they’re dying out – there's plenty of room for link sharing on either of these services, but in some ways these kinds of sharing are replacing links in many cases.

With Facebook's Open Graph and social plugins devouring the web, suddenly liking is taking the place of linking in some provisional scenarios.

While I don’t think anyone specifically saw the Open Graph stuff coming too long before it was announced, it's still reflective of what we've known for some time. The way people are obtaining information online is diversifying. Google's real competition isn't coming from other search engines. It's coming from different avenues of information access.

The biggest threat to Google the search engine (as opposed to the company, which offers a lot more) is people not having to rely on the traditional search engine. While I don't think Google has anything to truly worry about in terms of losing users, it has to worry more about users just not using it as often. Instead they're getting their information from apps, from friends via social networks and even when they're not necessarily at Facebook but on a site or app, via things like social plug-ins.

Here are 5 reasons Google and Search might not dominate the next decade:

    1. The search process is inefficient
    2. Mobile GPS Eliminates the need for location-based search
    3. Social Matching Could Create Valuable Connections
    4. Content Recommendations to Replace Search
    5. Suggestions Will Be the Core of Our Shopping Experience

On a not so negative note, Facebook likes may not translate to better Google rankings, but so what? It's not about choosing between likes and links. Both are ideal.

The point of all of this is it's not just about getting links anymore. Links will always be of use, but social interactions may equal them in importance, and in some cases may be of greater use to your visibility, and ultimately getting people to your site, your content, your store, or your shopping cart.

1.       Create a simple, clean website that includes keywords about your business so that people looking for your products or services can find you easily.

2.       List your business on all free directory sites available to you: Google Local Business Centre, Yahoo! Local, Yelp, YellowPages.com, and SuperPages. These are just some of the online business directory services that allow you to create a free listing. Add details such as your company website URL, a map, phone numbers, or business hours.

3.       An email newsletter is a great way to connect with your loyal customers. Create an email that includes a quick update on new products or services, and perhaps a printable coupon or promotional code. You can also add an image, a link to your website or a video you’ve posted on YouTube.

4.       Social networking is here to stay, so your company needs to get involved. Start by creating a Facebook business page and a Twitter account in your company’s name; both are free. If you have video content about your business, create a free “video channel” on YouTube. Encourage your customers to sign up for your pages by printing your Facebook address and Twitter handle on all your marketing materials.

5.       Try offering different types of promotions: downloadable and printable coupons that people can bring in to your shop or office, a 10%-off coupon for signing up for your email newsletter or a refer-a-friend discount to be redeemed online. You can promote these discounts via your email newsletter, in-store banners, Twitter, and Facebook.

6.       Use Google, Twitter, Facebook, and other search engines to find similar businesses in your city and in other areas to see what marketing tricks your competitors are using. Check out their social networking pages, websites and latest promotions. Sign up for their email newsletters. You’ll be able to see what’s worked for companies you admire, and fine-tune your own marketing strategies to compete with them.

7.       There are many sites where experts can provide answers to people asking questions: Yahoo Answers and LinkedIn Answers are some of the most popular. Search all of these sites for questions related to your business or service expertise, and then provide answers to them. Offer thoughtful, expert advice people can really use; that’s great PR for your business.

8.       Most people prefer to 'see' something rather than 'read' something – so create some videos for your business! Create simple marketing videos for free then add your company’s URL, phone number and address. Post your videos on your Facebook Page and on YouTube, and use them on your website and in your email marketing campaigns.

Let me introduce you to someone in our office… Siân. When Siân shops, she knows what she shops for. She types into Google... red shoes, high heel, size 5. When your site pops up, she clicks onto your site, ready to buy. Then you go and make the stupendous mistake of landing her into a page about handbags. Confused and disappointed, Siân clicks straight off your site and into your competitors, making a mental note never to visit your company again.

High street retailers, Next, noticed that they had a high exit rate from search pages for boys socks and they found that by testing more specific results, they reduced exit rates by 20% and increased conversions by 7%. Therefore if you had landed Siân into your shoe section you would have at least been on the right track, but if you had landed Siân into a page featuring high-heel red shoes size 5, then you too could reduce your exit rate and increase your conversions too.

Top tips for site search:

1. Check quality of results: Is your site’s search function working well? Ensure visitors are getting relevant results, even when they search on synonyms or misspellings.
2. Make site search visible: Visitors to your site should be able to see, at a glance, where to search. Consider enlarging your search box or making it more prominent.
   
3. Allow customers to sort results: People like to be able to sort through search results. Allow visitors to order what they see by anything from price or popularity to colour, style etc.
4. Lay out search results clearly: Ensure visitors can glance through search results and compare listings easily to decide where to click next.

Auto dealers say the Internet has given them the highest return on investment in five years and 96% of dealers now believe that the Internet will play the dominant role in the future of their marketing.

One hundred percent of respondents reported that their Internet strategies helped them through the recession, with the over 75% reporting that the Internet had been their highest ROI.

In comparison, 7.5% of dealers ranked TV first, 6.5% ranked newspapers and 2.5% ranked radio.

Dealers said the advantage of the Internet was being able to reach more customers, as well as the fact it’s cheaper and more targeted than traditional media, like TV & radio.

93% of dealers have increased their Internet marketing budgets in the last five years, with more than half (56%) boosting their Internet budgets by 50% or more.

According to 93% of those surveyed third-party leads continued to benefit dealers for the following reasons:

•    Having control over what I spend/how many leads I’m guaranteed to get
•    ‘Because so many consumers use 3rd-party research websites I’m able to capture ready-to-buy car shoppers’
•    ‘They’re cost-efficient and measurable’
•    ‘They enable me to expand my reach across the Web’

The shopping cart abandonment rate is a key metric that every ecommerce site should track. Changes in the abandonment rate give an insight to the changes in behaviour which impact every website.

New data has revealed that abandonment rates hit a high of 87 percent on January 5 and 6.

The evidence points to January being ‘bargain seeking’ month but it could also indicate popular items being out-of-stock. The annoying thing is that despite huge numbers of potential customers reaching you online, they have yet to be converted.

So how do you avoid falling at the final hurdle? Try the following steps…

1. Email your contact list with items on promotion that are in stock, and be careful not to include items likely to go out of stock quickly. Save these items for more targeted campaigns.

2. Remarket to shopping cart abandoners. It should go without saying that one-to-one emails to customers who almost purchased are one of the most profitable types of campaigns that you can run. Retailers have reported that these campaigns are typically 10 times more profitable! If widespread optimised follow-up programs were in place already, then we probably wouldn’t have seen that 87% drop in January.

3. We know that a customer almost purchased your product, but something held them back. We know that there is a very strong correlation between the website conversion rate and promotions. The most popular type of promotion with customers is free shipping. Consider extending free shipping offers or making them permanent.

4. If you have the ability to segment your customers based on browsing behaviour, now is the time to do it. Highly targeted, specific promotions—segmented by visitor behaviour and product interest—will score well. Remember that customers don’t want to miss a genuine bargain, and this may be the call to action needed to get the conversion.

5. While many marketers used Twitter and Facebook to publicise their Christmas offers, most have now stopped promoting their offers via social media. Don’t feel like there are only so many times that you can tweet about your promotions, there’s always a fresh spin you can put on it with a little creativity.

1. What’s your goal?

Make sure that when you redesign your website you keep what is important – not the colour or font but the increase in visitors, leads and customers. Focus on the RESULTS you want. So stop worrying about a colour scheme and start thinking up ideas to improve your online marketing.

2. Protect your assets

A website redesign can actually have a negative impact on your marketing results. There will be things about your existing website that your customers will actually like or automatically associate with you.  You need to find out what those assets are: great content, keywords you rank for, inbound links to individual pages, conversion tools? You need to protect these during the redesign, remember that you still have a say and "web design experts" are often just that; experts in design, not marketing.

3. Content that attracts and converts

To quote Seth Godin: "I'm going to go out on a limb and beg you not to create an original design. There are more than a billion pages on the web. Surely there's one that you can start with? ...Your car isn't unique, and your house might not be either."

If you have a tight budget, you’d be better investing in great copy rather than a fancy design. This is what people care about the most; this is how they find out about you and what you do. That doesn’t mean having a blank website; the design should still be good but not necessarily unique and expensive.

4.  Content Building

By putting an ongoing content building strategy in place you will be able to build and build your website and keep it full of fresh content.  A 100-page website is likely to attract more visitors than a 10 page website and therefore growing the business quicker. Obviously don’t throw in 100 pointless pages - make sure these pages are slowly fitted in and the content is interesting and relevant. If you don’t fancy writing thousands of words of content then blogs and news feeds are quick and easy ways to create more content.

5. Don’t forget the basics

Any website built today should always include the basics: a blog, RSS, landing pages, SEO.  They’re inexpensive, and they’re effective.  A blog is a great way to create content on an ongoing basis, RSS allows some content from your website to be automatically pushed out to other websites, landing pages actually get value out of your traffic and SEO gets your new website the attention it deserves.

I have previously written an article about the top SEO hints and tips you should implement into your search engine strategy to rank high in search engines amongst your competitors. Now I am about to tell you the major “don’ts” of SEO so you can avoid those crucial mistakes so your website can carry on succeeding in the world of search engine optimization.

• Firstly, do not leave SEO from your website for too long. You should always be considering your SEO strategy from the beginning of your website development. SEO plays one of the most important parts in your website and needs to be thought about from the start.
• Do not waste your time submitting your website to countless search engines. Crawler-based search engines will find your website more quickly as soon as you get a link from another website that is already being crawled. Search engine submission is a thing of the past.
• Never make your website un-crawlable. You should always make sure that your website can be crawled by search engine spiders, because if it cannot be crawled then the search engines will not find you. An un-crawlable website can be due to having a convoluted navigation menu that spiders can’t follow, developing an all flash site, or even simply too many variables in your domain name.
• Make sure you don’t target keywords that are too ‘general’. If you want the best chance to rank high, then don’t target keywords that are crowded with competition. You need to do keyword research on your website and find out the best keywords, with a fair amount of competition, this will give you a chance of ranking for number one!
• Don’t ignore usability. You should always make your website user friendly and efficient for users and search engine spiders. This can be achieved with proper site structure, local navigation and sitemaps. So avoid over complicating your website and making it harder to use and navigate.
• You should never give up on creating good content for your website. As I have said before, content is key. The less content you have, then the less chance you have to fill your website with keywords which gives you less chance of being linked to by search engines. That is why the more content you have, the more search engines will link to you because your website would be more relevant because of more keywords. Simple.
• Never spam to help your website get found. This will NOT work. Search engines disapprove of websites that use spam to rank higher, so this will not work to improve your rank on search engines. So you should avoid posting your link on blog comments, guestbook’s ECT, stuffing META tags with keywords and also putting keywords into your footer with lightly coloured or hidden text.
• Patience is a virtue; don’t give up on SEO once started. SEO is a long, time-consuming process and demands time, attention and commitment. You need to be patient when doing SEO work on your website, because it may take months to see the results.

Well there you have it. I have just told you what NOT to do if you wish to succeed in the search engine world. If you read my previous blog then you will also know what you SHOULD do if you want to succeed. Thank you for reading; I hope I helped you understand the fundamentals of SEO success!

If you would like more information about SEO success, please read my other blog.

Top SEO Hints and Tips