I’ve been busy writing about internet marketing for Sussex’s daily paid paper The Argus. Here’s today’s offering:

For the past week, Google UK has allowed Adwords users to bid on trademarked names. Advertisers still can’t use the trademark in their advert (unless the trademark is theirs, of course) but can bid to have their advert appear when someone searches for the name in Google.

For example, two weeks ago, a search for “iPod” brought up only two paid advertisers: Apple’s own online store and a price comparison site. Now, all of the major names like Argos, Dixons, Curry’s and Comet are bidding on the keyword, alongside niche websites (paying an average of around 60p per click).

This matters on a local scale too. One of Brighton’s many small estate agents, for example, could now bid on the name of a higher profile rival. “Gentlemen’s Agreements” not to bid on each others’ names are technically illegal (although there are murmurs that the large car companies are doing just this).

Google’s motivation for this change is clear: money, and lots of it. But where does this leave businesses? Not only can rivals now advertise on the strength of your reputation but, as the owner of a trademark, you now have to allocate more money to your own Adwords campaign to ensure that you still appear top!

Fortunately, there are some ways that you can put yourself at an advantage when bidding for your trademark (or any keyword). Firstly, word your advert carefully. Google will automatically give your advert a “Quality Score”, which is based on how relevant your advert is for a particular search. The higher your Quality Score, the less you have to pay to get high positions for your ads.

Also, remember that the content of your website itself is very important: have a sitemap and contact page on there, and make sure that there is text about the product you are selling. Search engines like text that they can read easily, so html is much better than flash.

If your website is well optimised for the search engines, this also has a positive effect on the cost of Adwords. Elements like site structure and which other sites link to it are very important. This is known as search engine optimisation, or SEO. Being at the top of Google’s natural results also brings a lot of visitors.

One very good (and easy) idea is to set up a selection of different adverts for the same search and see which one performs best over a couple of weeks. This is a great way of finding the right wording for your ad.

If you are confused, there are lots of online forums that can offer advice. Just search Google!

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Big developments are in the pipeline for our paid search consultancy. Keep your eyes peeled!

The domain name is yours for the meagre price of $5,000,000!

Nice work if you can get it, eh?

Facebook was the big internet success story of last year. The media, and the British public at large just couldn’t get enough of poking, posting and tagging. In fact, Brits took to the site more enthusiastically than any other nation and still spend a larger percentage of their browsing time on Facebook (and social networking sites) than any other nation.

So we’re hooked.

Recently, some people have been saying that Facebook has peaked and is starting to go the way of myspace (which is decidedly niche nowadays). The truth is far less clear cut. Social networking sites are maintaining incredible growth: 20.8 million Britons (63% of Britons online) visited at least one of the ten most popular social media sites in January 2008, compared to 17.1 million in January 2007 (stats from Neilsen). And while YouTube may now see more monthly UK visits than Facebook, which site do you think has a stronger infrastructure?

Judging by the frequent service outages and glitches that you find on YouTube, it’s hard to imagine that the site was expected to become as popular as it has. Facebook, on the other hand, has always given the impression that it is ready to swallow the world.

The recent addition of pay per click advertising has been subtle enough not to anger users, despite actually being quite intrusive. All of that information you added to your Facebook profile (your favourite films, music, brands & places, not to mention your marital status, sexual orientation, family etc) can now be used to create super-focused marketing. This gives brands the opportunity to zoom in much more closely on their target demographic and stay away from those potentially expensive wasted clicks.

I recently attended a talk give by Blake Chandlee, Commercial Director of Facebook UK, in which he talked about the power of Facebook for marketers. His talk brought up a couple of interesting points. Firstly, brands can communicate directly with people who have mentioned a fondness for that brand in their profile. This is marketing to those with open ears. Secondly, marketing through Facebook is pretty close to viral marketing, because of how newsfeeds work. Basically, interacting with a group/brand shows up in the newsfeeds of your friends, therefore giving them your “vote of confidence”.

This business is all about trust: if people trust a site they are much more likely to make a purchase. If people see your site at the top of SERPs they are much more likely to trust it. If a friend trusts your tastes, they will follow your paths on Facebook. But beware… someone will be watching!

In a policy shift, Google’s UK & Ireland operation has announced that, from May 5th, Adwords users will be allowed to bid on trademarked names. US users have been able to do this for four years.

The move has predictably stirred up a storm of complaints from Media agencies and companies afraid that rivals will be able to hijack years of hard branding work with one deft bid. Many more people are suggesting that this is an example of Google pushing the boundaries of legality to maximise their profits in an area where they already hold a virtual monopoly.

Bidders will not be allowed to incorporate the trademark into the advert itself, but can bid to have their adverts displayed when a searcher enters the trademark as a search term.

Google believes that this action is legal and nobody has yet challenged this assertion. It appears to be another area where the law has not kept up with the phenomenal pace of change that characterises the internet and search engine marketing in particular.

Of course, at Upstream Connections, we believe firmly in the power of natural search results. On average, a front page listing in Google’s natural listings brings three times the traffic of a paid listing. Drop us a line to find out more.

Hello there, and a happy Monday to everyone.

Upstream Connections is very much a Brighton SEO. Some of our longest-standing clients are based in and around the fine city of Brighton & Hove, with more around the whole of Sussex. In fact, Brighton is home to a bewildering array of internet startups, websites, design companies and marketing companies like ourselves.

The whole new media boom is very good for a city that, despite appearances, is not especially wealthy. Sure, property in and around town sells for a small fortune and you often see Aston Martins and Bentleys rolling along Western Road, but this wealth is generally generated out of town. The internet boom has allowed local companies to compete on a national level. Brighton SEO companies, web designers, programmers, developers and marketers have lower overheads than their equivalents in the Big Smoke and can offer much better value. There are even parts of London that can be reached more quickly from the coast than from the other side of London.

Brighton’s Search Engine Optimisation community growing by the day. Alongside the longest established Brighton SEOs, companies like ourselves are growing at a rate. We are very proud to be attracting major clients like the Carphone Warehouse, who would traditionally have gone with more a more famous name. That our relationship will shortly be going into its third year should speak volumes about our work.

On another note…
Keep your eyes peeled in tomorrow’s Argus for another “The Bottom Line” column. This week I have written about handling negative blog or forum posts - an issue that is becoming increasingly relevant as Google has recently started launching forum and blog posts to the top of SERPs in record time. What should you do if you find yourself victim of a bad post? Picking up a copy of tomorrow’s Argus would be a good start.

Hello there people of the internet! I’m Benjamin, the “video guru” at Upstream Connections. Our department focuses on the proliferation of media on the internet, something that is always on the up thanks to ever-increasing bandwidth and the recent growth of social bookmarking sites such as Digg. As much as we’re starting to dislike the term, Web 2.0 is very much upon us!

As a short example of the kind of thing we do, here’s a short demonstration video of the building that houses the Upstream office, the illustrious Intergen House.

Talk of white hats brings to mind cricket, the man from Del Monte and the Lone Ranger.

In the world of Search Engine Optimsation, “White Hat” is an umbrella term used to describe legitimate techniques for gaining rankings. This generally means ensuring that your site is choc-full of relevant content that is updated on a regular basis. It means ensuring that your site is visible to the search engines’ spiders and that every page can be cached. This is achieved through well planned design that sticks to some established SEO principles.

At Upstream Connections, we use only White Hat techniques to get top results for our clients. Fortunately, this offers us a great array of opportunities to be creative! It is probably easier to list a few things that Upstream Connections, or any SEO worth their salt, would never dabble with:

Link Farms. Spammy spammy spammy. Basically, you can purchase thousands of links from websites that only exist for SEO purposes. Google will promptly ignore these links, and probably give you a shunt down the listings for good measure.

Doorway Pages. Again, these are spamilicious pages which are stuffed with keywords. You will rarely actually  see one as you are instantly redirected to the real front page of a site. BMW hit the headlines a couple of years ago when their website disappeared from Google’s results.

Keyword Stuffing.  Amazingly, you will still find websites that are stuffed full of hundreds of keywords, misspellings and all. White Hat SEO involves making sure that the right keywords appear in the right places, Black Hat SEO generally involves cramming the words in there in text which is all but invisible.

Link Spam. Not all links are good links. Did you know that inbound links to your site from the wrong places can actually damage your site’s performance in natural search?

White Hat SEO means ensuring that visitors to your site see the  same site as the search engines. Google and the other search engines aim to offer the best possible results to their users, and rightly punish those seen to be abusing this service.

At Upstream Connections, we would never do anything to threaten our clients results. Yes, our work takes time and results are not achieved over night, but if you are online for the long haul, you will need an SEO partner with the same long term vision. If that sounds like something you’d be interested in, drop us a line.

Techcrunch thinks so:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/07/google-microsoft-bidding-for-digg/

This is hardly surprising. Google likes to let companies develop a strong infrastructure before swallowing them up. Also, what with search and social media sites becoming increasingly intertwined concepts, it is little wonder that Google would make every effort to tie in with the largest social media site.

Microsoft are also said to be interested, although Google appear early favourites to seal the deal.

This was my article about blogging in the Brighton & Hove Argus last week (we are a Brighton SEO, after all). Sorry if it’s a bit simple for the more technologically-minded out there.

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There’s a saying that you hear increasingly in the world of website optimisation: “content is king”.

A rough translation from geekspeak to English is: “if you want people to come and visit your website, there should be something interesting for them to see when they arrive.” The more often your site is updated with interesting content, the more people will come back.

Traditionally, this has presented a problem for many business owners. Even if you have a website, you can’t necessarily update the pages, either because you don’t know how or don’t have the necessary access.

Nowadays, with the availability of free blogging software, there really are no excuses.

A blog (abbreviated from “weblog”) is like an online diary where you can post text, images, videos or music for the world to see.

This may bring to mind images of Trekkies hunched feverishly hunched over their keyboards debating the twists and turns of the Starfleet, but this is increasingly distant from the truth. Keeping a blog is now the easiest way to ensure that your website is interesting and fresh.

Here are some simple tips:

Think about what you are trying to achieve. If you are keeping a blog for your business, goals could include showing more of your company’s personality to potential customers, demonstrating your awareness of current events by responding to developments in your industry, offering your customers a forum for debate or sparking debate of your own.

Whatever your goals, update your blog regularly. It is very easy to start blogging and then forget about it. This has the opposite of the desired effect – while the blog is there partly to keep your site fresh and keep people coming back, it will quickly look dated if your last entry is more than a couple of weeks old.

Be consistent. As well as posting regularly, make sure that the voice in your blog is identifiable. Try and avoid just posting press releases without any comment or analysis.

Read other people’s blogs. Comment on other people’s blogs. Whatever business you are in, there are blogs out there dedicated to it. There is a real sense of community among bloggers.

To make the most of a business blog, you should host it on your own site. This is because you want to have the blog closely associated with you and your work. If you write an interesting or useful blog, it will also drive more traffic to your site, which usually means more business.

Happy blogging!