Titman Firth together with two other local firms presented an hour long seminar to around 60 marketing profeshionals last week. The seminar hosted by the CIM Chartered Institute of Marketing provided practical steps you can take to make your site more search engine friendly covering technical, design and copywriting aspects of optimisation.

There is a huge amount of information available on search engine optimisation (SEO) but it can sometimes seems like a mysterious, complicated subject. But this seminar covered the essential principles of the subject and showed some highly practical tips and techniques to improve search engine rankings, and therefore traffic, leads, sales and ultimately profits.

The seminar provided answers to these questions and more:

- How do search engines work? (and what are the implications for your site?)
- What can you do to identify the right keywords and phrases?
- What are the design techniques that help (or hinder) SEO performance?
- How should you write or rewrite your site’s content to incorporate keywords?
- How can you build links from other sites to boost your ranking positions?
- What sort of monitoring will help you achieve ongoing improvements?
- If you want to bring in specialist help, where should you focus your investment?

Guests came away with an achievable checklist of things to do themselves with the option of contacting Titman Firth for further SEO development.

For further info please get in touch.

If you have read blogs before you may know what an RSS feed is and already be subscribed to some. For those of you who don’t know, it is a way you can choose by subscription to receive regular information.

Typically RSS feeds deliver information from websites that are regularly updated and where the content is of current interest. Information such as news headlines, weather updates and magazine articles etc are common. The platform you choose to receive the information ranges from computer based applications to mobile phones.

Subscribing to a feed is easy, you can subscribe to the Titman Firth Blog for example by clicking the RSS feed icon below, then simply select the a reader method of your choice. Our technical team currently favours ‘Newsgator’, this works both online for remote use, and with your Outlook email software and alerts you when a new post is published in the same way you are alerted to new mail.

The business benefits are great as the only people to receive the feeds are ones that have chosen to do so, which means they have an interest in the subject matter, great for current and potential clients. Better still is the fact that the process is automated, readers can subscribe, de-subscribe and receive all new posts automatically.

Additional information on RSS feeds and other types of feeds can also be found clicking the RSS feed icon below. For more information on website design and development including blog and post production please leave a reply to this post (and subscribe!).

Last week Titman Firth completed its latest re-brand project for employment law specialist PJH Law. The re-brand for the solicitor firm consisted of logo development, literature, advertising, folders, website and search engine optimisation.

What is special about PJH Law is their use of new media to communicate with their current and potential clients. Upon commission they already operated a blog and had podcasts on employment law changes.

We provided a graphic design and website solution that integrated their blog into their new website so the site would benefit from the content of the posts and thus improve the sites optimisation.

Upon launch PJH Law kindly put a post on their blog in recognition of Titman Firth’s efforts. Please take a look.

If you would like to know more about how we can help raise your firms profile and integrate new media formats please call us on 01733 253934.

For those who don’t know, a blog (short for ‘web log’) is a website (or part of a website) where posts are written in a reverse chronological order. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. Most blogs are primarily textual although some focus on photographs (photoblog), sketchblog, videos (vlog), or audio (podcasting), and are part of a wider network of social media.

Blogs can commercially work better that traditional newsletters and news sections of websites. Incorporating a blog into a company website can be far more beneficial for several reasons:

1) For providing potential clients with up-to-date relevant information on a regular basis.

2) Blogs tend to use content management technology and can easily be updated in-house.

3) They are great for optimisation benefit, if implemented correctly the content can count towards a websites total content.

4) A user can opt for an RSS feed and automatically receive new posts direct to their email in-box.

5) Because posts tend to be short they can more easily be created and made more specific.

6) They tend to be more effective as they are written in a less formal manner and more like a conservation.

7) Best of all they are interactive, comments can be made by readers and made to appear by the relevant post enabling credibility.

If you would like to talk about adding a blog to your current site, improving the SEO of a current blog or branding an existing blog with consistent graphic design to match your current website please get in touch.

If you know what SEO means (Search Engine Optimisation) then you may be familiar with the terms ‘Organic Searches’ and ‘Pay-per-click’.

For those who are unfamiliar, an Organic Search is where a key phrase is entered into Google or similar search engine and the results are not sponsored or paid for, they come up due to the relevance of the search. Pay-per-click, however, is the opposite and are generally titled ‘Sponsored Results’ they appear according to how much the promoter wishes to pay.

My view is that both cannot be ignored or part of your target audience may be. However it goes without saying that organic searches are far more popular and effective. Particulary from a cost point of view as they do not cost per click and are generally user preferred due to their accuracy. Statistics show that Organic Searches are 6-8 times more likely to be chosen than Pay-per-click links.

At Titman Firth we tend to assess the required balance on a case by case basis as every business has different needs. Often though if a potential client’s budget for Pay-per-click is far higher then that for SEO/Organic Searches we aim to reverse the balance resulting in increased traffic and long term cost effectiveness.

Interesting topic this, once upon a time a company who wanted to promote itself on video would have needed a huge budget to shoot, film and edit a production, and that’s without the cost of putting it onto video or DVD.

Now following the popularity of blogs and podcasts your business can add video blogs to the list!

Some companies may find the informal nature unsuitable to their target audience and I agree, but to some (particularly those where their staff are their product like with consulting firms) the benefits of what blogs and podcasts offer is only made stronger by video. With this medium comes a unique honesty as the result tends to house less bells and whistles and is less polished. Furthermore, the content is open to comment which brings a natural verification.

They are cost effective to do and place on line and when done right can reflect and enhance your brand while increasing traffic to your site. The Radio 1 Chris Moyles show launched Chris Moyles’s first video blog this week and from early reports has certainly made an impact!

To help sell goods or services is the overall initiative of any good sales or marketing campaign.

There are a variety of different approaches you can take, some being the more traditional such as direct mail or advertising. But the use of e-marketing is something that can really help increase the effectiveness of such a campaign and boost sales. (And that’s without mentioning the additional support that SEO can bring.)

Used successfully, e-marketing is a cost effective way of targeting tens of thousands of potential customers in an instant. It can have built in response methods that link to your website and aid the sales process way before a physical enquiry is made.

The success is limited to your target audience and like any campaign relies on effective targeting. Knowing your audience should determine the split between your usage of new media (e-marketing and websites) and print based promotion.

As a method of attracting new business I believe for certain sectors e-marketing can work well but the most important thing to remember is that no matter how may enquiries you may get, your company website and literature must be good enough to convert the enquiry into a sale. Good graphic design, website programming and print production all play their part.

Finally it’s worth noting that SMS marketing can also play its part, particularly towards targeting consumers.

All of the above services are available from Titman Firth.

A company’s website (assuming people can find it through promotion or SEO - Search Engine Optimisiation) is only as effective as its content. In recent years companies have tended to opt for their website to be re-designed or improved without any real thought into its continual development or its future.

Now more than ever websites are being used as the ‘convincer’, the place potential clients or customers go to before getting in touch. It is essential that the information presented is current and up to date. Not just for SEO reasons but to help ensure that as many website visits as possible are converted into sales.

At Titman Firth we have many clients who understand the value of continual web development and to maximise the potential of their website at acquiring new business have opted for us to develop their websites on a contract basis. This means that every month we put time into continually developing the design of the website, its content, the structure and size, photography and branding, together with many other SEO techniques.

I believe that the days of producing a site and then leaving well alone are gone. If you want to get the most from the potential of your site then please get in touch.