New Diesel Tuning web site goes live.

Well we burned the midnight oil last night, and went live with the new web site for Diesel Tuning UK, a great business run by Andrew Pawley in County Durham.

Having build web sites before for Andrew and done quite a bit of web marketing to support his business we already had a good working relationship (I hope!), but this site was a little different to say the least. The difficulty if you can call it that, is that the old site though a bit rough round the edges was already generating really good business for Diesel Tuning UK, and while upgrading the site we had to do so by evolution rather than revolution, so as to ensure there was no prospect of losing the good rankings that the site had already developed.

The chosen technique was to extend the existing site rather than replacing it, (evoution not revolution) and so its existing simple content management system had to be restructured and extended using the PHP programming language, but integrating best practice and search engine friendliness into the design. This was in many ways restrictive to what we could do, and we found ourselves having to write fresh code that would already have existed had we used one of our preferred open Source systems.

(We normally tend to shy away from writing custom systems for just this reason - they involve unnecessary "re-inventing of the wheel", when great content management systems already exist that will do whatever you need. However in this instance we decided in partnership with the client that the additional effort was justified.)

Our designer came up with a clean new look to the page - again a bit like the old site but clearly upgraded, and the catalogue of vehicles had to be upgraded to reflect the latest vehicles, and the new products that were available with DTUK.

We have added blogging to the site, so its now up the Andrew to get in there and start the blogging habit; often a challenge for many web site owners.

The payment process has been streamlined - we took a number of clicks out of the payment process, though PayPal has been retained as the payment gateway for the time being, it may well be upgraded in the future.

Overall the number of pages in the site has been greatly increased, as has the ability of the content management system to configure those pages in the proper manner. We are looking forward to seeing how the site now grows and matures, and of course to ensuring that Andrews customers enjoy the experience of the new site and continue to choose him before his competition.

Overall we'd welcome feedback and ideas for the web site - but for now just please go and have a look around! (By the way they make your diesel car go really well - and save fuel too!)

http://www.diesel-performance.co.uk/

Social Media integration just got better - Twitter and Linked-In

Good news for Social Media followers is that Linked-in and Twitter have now announced a long overdue integration between the two sites.

For some while it has been possible to post your content to one Social Media web site and then feed it through a number of others via a network of integrations and data feeds. What matters to the business owner is that they can achieve coverage through more networks and to more people, while minimising the workload on themselves - after all why post the same thing 10 times, when you can post it once and have the machine do the work?

Twitter and Linked-In are perhaps two of the most useful Social Media tools for a business owner, but for totally different reasons.

But first Facebook - why not? Well Facebook may be the biggest network in the world and don't get me wrong, it certainly has its place in your marketing and PR lexicon, but its very nature tends to move it towards its intended groupings - friends and family, and restrict your ability to build and distribute to large and well targeted groups of people. Its great for friends and family however, and pretty good if you don't mind sharing the same information with friends as you do with business contacts.

Linked-In is better for business, mainly because it is for that, and that the right kind of Social Media communications on Linked-In are far less likely to look like an infringement on someone's leisure time. It actively encourages you to form business groupings, inform about your business activities, refer, recommend, and ask and answer business related questions. Linked-In really is the par-excellence business Social Media platform today.

So what of Twitter? Well that is totally different again. It gives very short news updates which keeps everything succinct, but it also allows you to "follow", or be followed by anyone in the world. No precious selection of friends here and turning down requestes from people that you don't know - the ethic of Twitter is very much a free-for-all. This lets you talk to and be heard by a variety of people that may previously have been far out or your easy reach.

Twitter's immediacy is also very refreshing, and it has already become, on a number of prominent occasions the first source of important breaking news anywhere in the world.

But for a Social Media Marketing there is something more prosaic about Twitter - it helps you to distribute your content (or "Tweets") to a large number of other sources. Hence you have for a while been able to send your Tweets to Facebook, MySpace, Plaxo, your web site, and a wide variety of other sources. So it really does act as the "Glue to Web 2.0", and a piece of your Social Media toolkit that you really don't want to do without.

So with the announcement of the Twitter / Linked-In integration the circle is complete.

You can now feed your marketing communications (learn to do it nicely please - only the very very slow are still bashing everyone over the head with their sales message) from your web site or blog, via Twitter to Linked-In, Facebook, and pretty much every other Social Media site work their salt - or your precious time!

The Whitehouse goes openSource

We were delighted to hear today that the Whitehouse has made the sensible decision to switch to open Source software for their own content managed web site, using Drupal as their system of choice for the new official Whitehouse web site.

Drupal is an excellent content management system, and like other open Source products its code is freely shared by the developer community that made it, meaning that web designers and developers like us can use all its fantastic technology for our clients sites.

Interestingly a number of the Whitehouse staff appear to be slightly confused as to exactly what their new software does, or how the open Source movement works, but none the less they have the web site, it looks great, works even better, and is a clear statement of the ongoing success and growth of the open Source community.

So why is open Source so good that the Whitehouse has chosen to use it?

• The source code is free to use.
• It has been developed by thousands in a well organised developer community, so it is of a very high quality.
• No need to re-invent the wheel - when you can use well written code that already does 99% of what you need.
  
• The open Source communities have each built many extensions which can be added to it, so you can easily grow and extend your site with shopping carts, galleries, forums and much more.
• The software is not specific to a single developer so you are never held hostage. It is unbelievably common for web site owners to want to leave their developers, or lose touch with their developers, and have no way of continuing maintenance on their web sites. With open Source you just go to another member of the large worldwide community.
• open Source code is easily customisable, so if you want to build new functionality that does not yet exist, then a good developer can do that for you.

There are many different types of open source software, but some of the most commonly used ones (there are a number of examples in our web site Portfolio) include Drupal, Joomla and Wordpress, openERP and SugarCRM to name but a few. Great names I know, but they mean high quality content managed, interactive web sites for businesses and other organisations, at a fraction of the cost of just a few years ago.

Putting a rocket under your web site!!

It may be rather stretching the metaphor, but we feel that many Cornish business would benefit from putting a rocket under their web site - something that might propel their traffic and sales figures sky-ward anyway.

(No - don't put it on the bonfire!)

We are running the next installment of our popular "Internet Marketing Course for Cornwall" on November the 4th, where you can learn how to get your web site really contributing to the profitability of your business, by making it a high traffic / high converting destination.

On the day we show you how to identify the right keywords for your web site, how to avoid buying the wrong kind of web site, how to convert visitors into customers, and increase your visitor numbers using SEO - much of which you can do yourself.

Relationships and loyalty are essential, so we look at the methods by which you bring people back to your site time and again, until you become their most natural first choice supplier.

Social Media is this year's biggest buzz-word (barring perhaps "recession"), and we look at how you can use Social Media Marketing, not for wasting a few hours on a Friday afternoon, but as a way of enhancing your web marketing efforts, bringing more visitors, and making real sales.

There's lots more information about this on our main web site - please do drop by and have a look, and get in touch if you have any questions.

And before I finish I should mention that although the normal price is £139 + VAT, FREE places are also available for qualifying Cornish Businesses courtesy of DPN (Digital Peninsula Network), and if you get in touch we can give you the application details for these too.

Here also is a video featuring some of the attendees at one of our courses earlier in the year:

Internet marketing Course Video

Further Information

Contact Form

Joomla Cornwall Group Accepted

We're very pleased that the new Joomla Cornwall Group has been accepted by OpenSource Matters, and that we have now been listed in the official Joomla Groups directory.

There is more information about the "Joomla Cornwall Group" on our main web site, and anyone interested in finding our more, or attending events when we start them please do contact us to express your interest.

Best Regards,
Pete

SEO and Social Networking Courses on June 9th

We're pleased to announce that we will be running an additional pair of Internet marketing courses next week - on Thursday June 9th, being....

• Basics of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) for a small business - AM Course,
• Making use of Social Media Marketing (Twitter, Facebook etc) - PM Course.

The courses are based on the already popular Internet Marketing Course for Cornwall, which has helped a large number of Cornish businesses to become more competitive on-line since we started running it at Channel Computing 2 years ago.

Free places will again be available thanks to continuing funding available from DPN (Digital Peninsula Network), and which allows qualifying Cornish businesses to have a place (normally £137 + VAT) fully funded by the Convergence fund, and the drive towards developing the Knowledge economy in Cornwall.

You may come along to either the AM course (SEO) or the PM Course (Social Media), or just roll the two together to make an informative and useful day.

The focus of both courses is on using these channels to drive traffic and sales through your web sites, and to build easy to use web marketing strategies that really impact the bottom line of your business.

If you are a Cornish business and would like to apply for a fully funded place on this course, please contact DPN on 01736 333700, or via their web site: www.DigitalPeninsula.com

The usual round of internet Scams - Adwords and SEO this week

Today I wanted to highlight a couple of Google Adwords and SEO Scams going round at the moment. This is nothing new I know but people keep on falling for them, so its worth explaining a bit about how they work.

Here are a couple we've seen recently.

Scam 1. "We'll get you on the first page of Google for £99 per month"
This consists of paying for Adwords, and in many cases only for 5 keywords. Looking at the keywords being "offered" on one such email, it seems that they select some which are never being searched for, so that they will not have to pay your money for anyone actually clicking on the ads. That means they can hang on to more of it themselves.

In addition 5 keywords are not usually sufficient for an effective Adwords campaign. With a new campaign you normally start with quite a lot of keywords, and then filter it down to the ones that convert the best, and bring you the most business.

So to summarise the above offer it is not exactly theft, but it is a very low qualty offering, which decieves the innocent into believing that they are getting a great deal more than they really are.

OK, on to Scam 2. This one says....
"We'll SEO your site for Free - you only pay if we get you on to page 1 of Google for agreed keywords."

This is another naughty one, because it fails to explain the massive difference between "easy" and "difficult" keywords.

Firstly lets look at a "very" easy Keyword.
it is going to be "piddlesnotpot". A few days after this post has gone live you will be able to search for this word in Google, and I guarantee it will be on Page 1. So that wasn't very difficult was it?

Lets take a more regular easy keyword (or phrase).
How about "laptop computer cornwall". Now only 172 sites use this exact phrase by today's count, so you could rank on Page 1 for Google for it very quickly. I could offer you page 1 ranking for a variety of phrases like that - not mentioning that no one is actually searching for them!

Now lets take a difficult Keyword. This is one that you'd really like to rank for - lets say "Laptop Computers". It would be fair to say that you could retire on a page 1 ranking for this phrase, because not only is it searched for approximately 5 million times each month, but the opportunities for converting those searchers to a valuable sale (£1000 per sale perhaps) are significant.

If the kind gentleman offering me a page 1 ranking would accept "laptop computers" as our chosen keyphrase, then I'd happily take him up on his offer, but somehow I doubt he will!

Summary:
There is a bit more to setting up either a Google Adwords or SEO campaign than these over simplified offers. The selection of the best keyphrases to optimise for is the crucial first stage, based on factors including traffic numbers, relevancy to your business, and the difficulty of ranking for each.

Then whether you are paying for the traffic (Adwords), or want to be on the google organic listings (SEO), you have to put a proper strategy in place which will get you the most traffic for the amount of cash you have to spend.

However tempting these offers may sound they do not meet either of these requirements, so please don't be taken in - we've heard from too many people who have suffered from schemes like this, and ended up spending money on either nothing, or not what they thought they were getting.

Some of them luckily do end up going on to doing proper SEO or a well managed Google Adwords campaign, with all the fantastic and measurable results that these marketing tools can offer. Some of them probably just end up thinking the SEO or PPC advertising just doesn't work, or perhaps doesn't work for them, which would be a shame, given how powerful and cost effective it is when done properly.