Googlers still talk about the 100 page website.  This is the effect that we see in Google rankings when we see websites pass the 100 page mark for indexed content.   Like any aspect of SEO it is an inexact effect.  However, experience shows that when a website has about 100 pages of well written orginial content on a consistent theme then Google grants it the status of an 'authority site' and lifts its rankings accordingly.

Whilst we have advocated effective use of Social Media (facebook, Twitter, Youtube) for businesses selling to consumers, it until now we have generally advised business-to-business users to concentrate on doing a good job with traditional online marketing such as SEO and website conversion optimisation plus building up their blogs and LinkedIn profiles.  It is not that we have not appreciated the potential value, especially looking forward, more a matter of focus.

Last Friday, I joined a WSI President's Circle conference with "guru" Jeffrey Eisenberg.  Jeffrey is co-author of internet marketing classics "Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?" and "Call to Action" which are the bedrock texts of Persuasion / Conversion Architecture in online marketing : one of our passions at WSI.

He started by speaking of the influence he and his company, FutureNow Inc, have had on businesses through helping them to succeed online.  Whilst they have consulted for many of the Fortune 100, he explained that he is most proud of the impact he has had on some of his SME clients.  Where perhaps doubling or tripling their website conversion rate has meant the difference between success and failure of the business for their owners.

I got one chance to ask him a question which was this:

Reviewing the ranking for our various Bristol-based SEO clients' keywords there has been significant volatility over the last couple of months since the big Google algorithm update in late May/ early June.  A number of the sites disappeared down the index which is always a concern, however as we have learnt to expect most have now re-appeared back in their original position or higher.  Where this has not been the case, it is because there are a large number of US sites listed in the top positions of Google.co.uk.  In there we have noticed a number of web directories such as DMOZ and Business.com which is very strange as these clearly cannot be the sort of results that searchers are looking for.  Clearly Google knows they are not UK website site because when the "UK" button is selected, our keywords ranking back in their old Page One positions.

It is always advisable to protect your brand name by purchasing an advert for it as a keyword. 

This will ensure that searchers looking for your brand name can always find you. The price of each click on it will usually be only a few pence because it is unlikely to be a competitive term (unless you have many distributors or retailers bidding on it).

However, we were recently approached by one of our Bristol internet marketing clients - Idhammar Systems.  Idhammar the UK's leading providers of  software for overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) and computerised maintenance management software (CMMS).  It had another overall equipment effectiveness competitor bidding using its trade name Idhammar.  Was this legal?

This last six weeks we have seen a surge of interest in our search engine optimisation services from companies across a wide range of sectors in the Bristol area.  A common themes is that they are looking to get results from their current website before investing in upgrading it.

Further to my blog post last week hoping for great things from Microsoft's new search engine "Bing".  I had an email last night from the people at MSN / Windows Live Search / Bing inviting me to take a look.  They explained:

Looking across all our different clients' web analytics each month, we think Microsoft has set itself a hard job. Nevertheless, we hope 'Bing' will give Google some competition : despite their disparate industry sectors Google invariably brings our clients 80% - 90% of their search engine traffic.

According to industry reports the new search engine will take over from MSN/Live in June.  It promises a radically new interface with search results from a wide range of sources - and varies them according to the subject of the search.