theEword is a Manchester-based agency specialising in online marketing, web design and search engine optimisation.
We provide marketing, design, editorial and technical support to companies looking to establish or extend their online presence. The aim of our blog is to share stories about ourselves and our clients, as well as provide an insight into who we are and how we work. We'll also be discussing the latest industry news and all the breaking stories affecting search engine optimisation and online marketing.
A 404 error page doesn't just have to be a bland message; theEword creative director Tom Glass talks us through some of the options available for web designers when creating an error page.
Creativity:
This interactive 404 page, from an American film studio, is creative brilliance. It demonstrates how a simple error message can emphasise the innovation and originality of an organisation.
Be witty:
The 404 page from the BBC takes an iconic photograph and turns it into a subtle joke at the corporation's expense. It's witty and charming, capitalising on the company's heritage to create an innovative 404 page.
Call to action:
This computer commerce store uses its 404 page to advertise its services to the user. The phone number is positioned for maximum exposure, inviting potential consumers to contact the business for more details.
Present other options:
The social network Vimeo offers waylaid users an opportunity to go to other areas of the site. Use this technique to stop readers completely bouncing off the domain after a 404 error.
Use humour:
The 404 error page from Twitter client Hootsuite uses humour to explain that an error has occurred. It gives the brand a personality and allows the user an insight into the working culture of an organisation.
Google followed through on its threat to stop censoring results from the Chinese version of its search engine this week, directing Chinese citizens to its unfiltered Hong Kong service. The move came in response to a cyber attack originating from the country in January.
David Drummond, chief legal officer at Google said he hoped the decision would be accepted by the government.
"We very much hope that the Chinese government respects our decision, though we are well aware that it could at any time block access to our services," he said.
Chinese officials quickly responded to the search engine's decision, saying Google had "violated a written promise" and its actions were "totally wrong". A spokesperson for the US National Security Department said the administration was "disappointed [the two parties] were not able to reach an agreement."
Twitter's spam shortage
The Twittersphere celebrated this week after the social network site revealed it had drastically reduced the amount of spammers using the service.
Writing on the official Twitter blog, Abdur Chowdhury, lead scientist at the site, said spam accounts on the network currently contributed one per cent of all tweets. This total is down from its peak of 11 per cent in August 2009.
"We’re constantly battling against spam to improve the Twitter experience and we're happy to report that it's working," he wrote.
"While the battle will never be over, we're doing well on the front lines. Advertising Age recently profiled our Trust and Safety team noting the strong progress we've made keeping Twitter light on spam."
Despite this victory, industry analysts are speculating that spammers will continue to abuse the social networking site.
"The interesting thing now will be to see whether the spammers will try to come back in this arms race - and quite how they'll do it," wrote the Guardian's Charles Arthur.
Mobile market
Mobile marketing hit the SEO headlines this week as both Google and Yahoo provided industry professionals with some tasty news morsels to digest.
Google caused a stir as Diana Pouliot, director of mobile advertising at the company, revealed one third of all Google searches via the mobile web relate to the user's local area. It's worth nothing that Google has made some interesting changes to its mobile search, most recently allowing advertisers to include a link to their number in sponsored searches.
Meanwhile, Yahoo celebrated successfully completing the gauntlet of iPhone app approval after its innovative Sketch-a-Search was released by Apple. The app allows users to see local listings in a specific region on a map.
"With the fast pace of mobile browser development, this is an exciting time for our industry," said Shashi Seth, senior vice president of Yahoo Search Products.
Today, the Conservative Party launched Cashgordon, the latest site in their online election campaign. The website, which automatically features Twitter statuses containing the hashtag 'cashgordon', immediately gained the attention of UK social media users.
Inevitably, those with a dislike for the Conservative Party began to abuse the application; posting offensive messages and updates with the hashtag in order to appear on the homepage.
Here, two theEword staffers examine the positive and negative repercussions of automatically posting Twitter updates.
For
"There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about." Oscar Wilde
There's no better way to generate traffic and conversation than under the pretence of mistake. By allowing open hashtags on their homepage, The Conservative Party have motivated thousands to post a comment about the party. At its peak, nearly 1 per cent of all the updates on Twitter including the phrase #cashgordon. This was a successful viral campaign.
Online engagement has been a large part of the Conservative election strategy . By showing unmoderated comments, the political group has shown that it is willing to welcome all to contribute to the debate. No matter how puerile their comments.
And in the end, isn't that what democracy is all about?
Against
"Those who can't remember the past are condemned to repeat it." George Santayana
This was a peculiar tactic for The Conservative Party. While my honourable friend has an astute point about the nature of viral, the sheer negativity on display on the site can't help but paint the Conservatives in a negative light.It's a testament to the unflattering comments that the site has since been taken down.
The same strategy was employed by Skittles in 2008 and, as a result of the following PR nightmare, the use of unmoderated Twitter feeds has been strongly discouraged. It was perhaps naive to think the same process would glean different results.
Today marks the departure of Rick Roberts and Emily McCleave, the two Manchester Masters placements who joined our online marketing department three months ago. The pair, who were part of the winning ten students in last year's competition, have been working on a range of different projects during their tenure, including a number of online marketing campaigns.
Speaking to theEword blog, Emily said:
"I've really enjoyed my time here at theEword. I've had the opportunity to learn a lot about SEO and online marketing, as well as get some great hands-on experience thanks to the team here."
Rick added:
"I was given the chance to try my hand at a range of new things. I've learnt a lot and hope to build on the experience I've gained at theEword."
To mark the departure of Rick and Emily, Rachel Holce, online marketing assistant, baked a tray of cupcakes. They had an excellent conversion rate.
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Foursquare, the rising starlet of the social media world, has enjoyed a successful week. The site, which allows users to broadcast their location to friends online (via Twitter, for example), recorded a record-breaking 347,000 'checkins' at the beginning of the week.
While the surge in users came during one of the most popular technology conferences in the world, Austin's SXSW (South-by-South-West), industry leaders are speculating that the event is a landmark for the success of the site.
The official Foursqure Twitter account revealed the news with the tweet, 'Holy numbers, Batman...347,000 checkins yesterday.' Responding to the success of the news, notable social media cheerleader Mashable.com said that Foursquare was pulling ahead of its geotagging rivals.
"Very worthy competitors like Gowalla and Yelp may be putting up a fight, but as far as checkins are concerned, Foursquare is on top right now. Only time will tell if it stays that way," reported Samuel Axon, a writer at the social media site.
Facebook for all
The SEO industry raised an eyebrow this week after Facebook was crowned the most popular website in the United States. A report from Experian Hitwise showed that the social media hub received more visits than any other website in the country for the week ending March 14th. This is the first time that Facebook has been the most popular internet site in the United States.
The social networking giant clambered over Google, Fox News and Amazon to claim the top position, receiving 7.07 per cent of all internet traffic. Google scored 7.03 per cent of visitors for the week. Still, despite the news from across the pond, industry analysts have expressed their doubts over whether Facebook can achieve the same results in the UK.
"Facebook is the second most visited website in the UK – and has been for a while now – but Google.co.uk remains ahead of it. Last week, Google.co.uk picked up 9.34 per cent of UK Internet visits, while Facebook accounted for 6.01 per cent," said Robin Goad from Experian Hitwise UK.
As one of our Manchester Masters placement winners, Emily McCleave, comes to the end of her internship at theEword, she reflects on the past three months.
I had been looking forward to my work placement with theEword since my first meeting with Al and Tom a year ago and I can hardly believe that my time here is now drawing to a close. The past eleven weeks have not failed to meet my high expectations as theEword has delivered a full three months of insightful and exciting experiences.
Taking into account its size I was immediately amazed by the number of successes this company had achieved over the previous years; however after my first week in the office I soon came to realise that this was largely due to the refreshing company culture, a fully committed team and of course plenty of free tea, coffee and fruit.
Initially, I failed to see how I could contribute to such an established agency however I was fortunate enough to participate in a number of online marketing tasks ranging from Pay Per Click management to content writing. Alongside these daily jobs I was also able to assist in evaluating and streamlining some of theEword’s business processes which included conducting interviews and an internal employee questionnaire.
Considering my limited knowledge in digital services prior to this work experience I feel that I have learnt an immense amount about the search market and the intricacies of online advertising. Although I am currently undecided on a career choice I am sure that the skills and knowledge I have acquired at theEword will be valuable in future years regardless (but perhaps not so much during my gap year travelling).
Overall this internship has been a terrific opportunity and despite this being the end of my placement, I truly hope that this is not the end of my relationship with theEword.
Today marks the silver anniversary of the internet and 25-years ago, the first dotcom name was registered. SEO copywriter Tom Mason celebrates this auspicious event with the top 25 facts you may not know about the online world.
The first dotcom name was registered in Massachusetts by Symbolics, a computer firm.
By the end of 1985, only six dotcom domains existed.
The first adopters of the dotcom were Xerox, Hewlett Packard and the Stanford Research Institute.
Dotcom domains were originally administered by the United States Department of Defence.
Apple registered the 64th domain in February 1987.
The internet may be the next winner of the Nobel Peace Prize after it was revealed to be among the 237 individuals and groups nominated for the award.
The web was suggested for the prize, won by US president Barack Obama in 2009, by the 2003 Nobel winner Shirin Ebadi and Nicholas Negropone, founder of the $100 laptop project.
"The announcement of this year's laureate will be made on the 8 October," said Geir Kundestand, director of the Nobel Institute.
The creators of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, Larry Roberts and Vint Cerf, have also been nominated for the prestigious prize. The winner of the accolade will be announced in December 2010.
Bing blitz
Microsoft geared up for another marketing offensive against Google as it launched a three month advertising blitz in the UK. The multi-million pound push includes a print and television campaign which focuses on the differences between the two search engines.
"People feel overawed by the internet and what they turn up when they are searching," said Ashley Hingfield, managing director and vice-president of consumer and online at Microsoft UK.
"This is a big moment – we are taking out our slingshots and taking on Goliath," he added.
The campaign will run during March, winding down around June. Staff at Microsoft will be hoping the marketing push will increase Bing's three per cent market share in the United Kingdom.
Writing on Marketing Pilgrim, Andy Beal said that he doubted the campaign would be successful.
"Google achieved 90 per cent share in the UK via word-of-mouth. Bing has been available to UK users – albeit in beta – since June. If they felt that Bing was truly revolutionising search, they would have pushed the needle already."
Twitter turns the tables
Twitter has had a busy week. The site, still reeling from a host of phising attacks seven days ago, launched a series of new products to retake the initiative.
On Tuesday, the company announced the implementation of a URL shorting service, while today it revealed a new geotagging tool for web users.
Users who post tweets through a third-party API such as Tweetdeck or Echofon have had access to geotagging for quite some time, although it is the first time users will be able to share their location when updating their status via the web.
"Ever had something you wanted to share that would be better with a location? By turning on this feature, you can include location information like neighbourhood, town, or exact point when you tweet," read a statement on the site.
Believe it or not, it has been nine long months since the launch of Bing. Microsoft launched the successor to MSN Live Search amid a blaze of publicity in June 2009. At the time, Microsoft insisted it would shake up the search engine market by providing more accurate results than ever before. Bing was carefully positioned as a "decision engine", not a search engine.
Bing's back story
In truth, it has been a turbulent few months for Bing. A rumoured £60.89 million marketing budget and rave reviews made it the early adopters' site of choice in the early days. However, progress seemed to stall towards the end of 2009 with research even suggesting it was losing users. Since the turn of the year, however, things seem to be looking up for Bing.
Search figures from comScore
This week, digital marketing specialist comScore published its eagerly awaited US core search rankings index. It showed that Microsoft's share of the American search engine market rose 0.2 per cent in February 2010. Now that may not sound like a lot, but it's pretty impressive growth in a single month. Perhaps more important was the revelation that Google's share only rose 0.1 per cent – so Microsoft is catching up, albeit painfully slowly. For the record, Microsoft's share now stands at 11.5 per cent while Google is sitting pretty on 65.5 per cent.
Hitwise shows a similar search trend
But that wasn't the only good piece of news for Microsoft. Fellow digital marketing specialist Hitwise also released figures this week, showing that Bing has increased its slice of the pie for the third straight month. Microsoft's share of the US search engine market grew by a hugely impressive 0.33 per cent in February 2010 while Google dropped by 0.54 per cent. According to Hitwise, Google now accounts for 70.95 per cent of the industry, while Bing has 9.7 per cent.
Explaining the Bing bump
So what is going on? One explanation is that Google has been hit by a barrage of bad publicity in 2010. The Nexus One was criticised for a lack of ambition by many smartphone experts. Meanwhile, privacy complaints have dogged the launch of its social network Buzz. And the European Commission has decided to investigate whether Google's search engine results and PPC models are anti-competitive.
Another explanation is that Bing is doing a better job of getting its message across. This week saw the launch of a major new UK TV and online ad campaign to promote the quality of Bing's results. Microsoft is clearly still willing to throw resources behind the site.
The final explanation is the simplest of all. Perhaps Bing is growing because people just prefer using it.
theEword developer Nick Price gives a brief introduction to Webmaster Tools and talks through how it can be used to help your site.
Google Webmaster Tools is a great way of collecting and viewing information about how your site is performing. It provides a number of methods for troubleshooting your site and increasing its position on search engine results pages.
Here is a brief introduction to some of the sections in Webmaster Tools and what they can help you achieve.
Configuring Webmaster Tools
The Site Configuration section of Webmaster Tools provides you with a number of options that allow you to set exactly how you want Google to treat your site and ultimately make the process of being crawled and indexed faster and easier. The Settings page gives you access to a few basic options, namely the ability to set your geographic target and preferred domain. Geographic target allows you to inform Google where your site's target audience is based, increasing traffic from that location. Preferred domains inform Google how you’d like your indexed pages to appear (with the leading 'www' or without), which can prevent duplicated pages appearing in Google's index.
Getting the information
Once your site is configured and indexed, you’ll start to see information appearing under the ‘Your site on the web’ section of Webmaster Tools. From here you can view any links into your site, the most commonly used keywords on your site and the top search queries your site appears in. The latter is one of the most useful tools available and will display any search terms that your site is listed for, along with the position it appears at and which queries generated click-through from the user.
Troubleshooting your website
The Diagnostic section of Webmaster Tools is a great place to find out what is preventing your site from indexing as well as it could be. One of the most useful tools here is the Crawl Errors page which will display any pages and links that Google attempted to view but wasn’t able to access. This is a good method of tracking down broken links, old pages and performance issues that might be affecting your site's SEO.
The research, conducted by Inside Facebook, concluded the social media goliath would pocket an impressive £233 million from performance advertising alone. Brand advertising was also estimated to draw in £150 million, while its popular virtual goods market scored an impressive $10 million. This estimation dwarfs the £472 million of profit predicted by the Wall Street Journal in 2009.
Those of you not overly impressed by the financial prowess of the site may want to cast your eyes towards a new survey relating to its usage. According to a study by JESS3, a creative agency based in the US, Facebook serves up 37.4 trillion page views per year.
Wales goes to War
Google got into a bit of hot water this week after its St. David's Day logo was criticised for being anti-Welsh. The logo (pictured) portrayed a picturesque castle - flying the Welsh flag - overlooking a serene river.
Many Welsh searchers were upset the search engine chose to celebrate the national day of the country by featuring a landmark constructed by an English king.
One user said:
"While it is very nice that Google celebrates St David's Day by adapting its front page, it's very insulting that it uses a castle built by the English king who wanted to prove his power over the Welsh!"
"The castle looks very similar to Caernarfon castle, which was one of a series built by Edward the First. While most people know that Wales is full of castles, it is not the Welsh that built them - it was the English!"
ASA to monitor content
A new report from the Home Office has suggested the Advertising Standards Authority should extend its oversight to include internet content. The study, conducted by celebrity psychologist Dr Linda Papadopoulos (last seen on Big Brother), recommended the ASA monitor advertisements.
The research found young people were being overexposed to sexualised images on commercial websites, suggesting that the ASA move to monitor the content of adverts.
Dr Linda Papadopoulos said:
"I recommend that the government recognises the work being work carried out by the Advertising Standards Authority and supports it in taking steps to close this regulatory loophole, by extending the existing standards to include commercial websites."
A spokesperson from the ASA commented that changes to the ways the group monitored online content were imminent.
"The industry is in very advanced stages at tackling concerns surrounding the online regulatory gap by extending the ASA's remit online."
WordPress is the ideal solution for most people and companies wanting an online presence. It's not only a very cheap way to build a website, it's also one of the fastest and easiest content management systems available.
One of the biggest reasons to use WordPress is flexibility – you can do just about anything with its themes, widgets and plug-ins. Here, we run down the top WordPress plug-ins:
Akismet
Akismet comes pre-installed but you will have to register for a WordPress activation key. The main purpose of this plug-in is to filter out spam comments by filtering them against rules such as the poster's IP address. It is definitely a must-have because it will save you a lot of time later on filtering out spam.
All in One SEO Pack
This one does pretty much what it says. It makes all the main SEO changes you would want on a site such as:
controlling meta keywords and description
using no index on categories and archive
fixing canonical urls
rewriting the title tag format
Google XML Sitemaps
I don't know why WordPress hasn't built this one into the system yet but it is another must-have. It generates a search engine-readable sitemap of your entire site in both XML and GZip format.
Ultimate Google Analytics
Although it can be pretty easy to copy Google Analytics into the footer of a WordPress template, you will be missing out on all the extra features of this tool. These include more accurate stats by filtering out users logged in as an admin and automatic Google Analytics code upgrade.
WordPress Database Backup
Another simple but amazingly useful plug-in for WordPress, this one can set up scheduled backups and automatically email them to you. Even if you have confidence in your server and database, it's always good to have a backup.
Twitter for WordPress
There are a few good Twitter plug-ins for WordPress that offer similar features. The main reason to use one of them is the free back link to your site, which you can set up to post automatically whenever a new blog post is added. They also allow you to feed in tweets to share with your blog.
theEword SEO copywriter Tom Mason reveals the top 10 reasons to use lists in content.
Lists are easy to write. An SEO copywriter does not have to spend hours researching a subject and it's relatively easy to compose two or three lines on a particular point.
Lists are easy to read. Users can quickly absorb an argument or opinion in a minimal amount of time. This is compared to larger documents which make take a significant period to digest.
Lists are ideal for social media. Readers do not have to spend their time wading through whole paragraphs to deem whether a piece of content is worthy of a re-tweet. Similarly, copywriters can include an influential blog or twitter user in a list to boost the chances of a mention from that particular account.
Lists are a great way to cover a lot of information quickly. The format gives copywriters the opportunity to broach a number of different topics without fear of losing the reader mid-paragraph.
Lists require brevity and copywriters need to be able to make an argument in a limited amount of characters. If nothing else, the format is good practice for working within a set number of characters; Twitter, for example.
Lists can be creative. This format allows SEO organisations to present information in a fresh and interesting format.
Lists are great linkbait. They are perfect for attracting inbound links from related blogs and sites.
Lists are perfect for those wanting to focus on a specific keyword. The nature of lists allows for the subtle repetition of certain words and phrases.
The lengths of list can vary considerably. Ultimately, the number of bullet points is chosen by the writer and a list can be as comprehensive or concise as necessary.
The final point in a list can be used as a plug for a service or company. For example, theEword offers bespoke SEO copywriting and you can contact us for more information.
