Infoserve Group

Here at Infoserve, we speak with hundreds of companies every day and there is a huge amount of confusion about what online marketing can do for your business.

We just want to prove to you exactly what can be done through Infoserve’s portfolio of online local search marketing solutions.

So we’ve decided to write a no-nonsense guide to Infoserve’s products on this blog to really make everything as easy as possible.

Let’s start with Infoserve’s KeySite offering.

This is a really simple website that ranks highly in major search engines for chosen search terms.

The ultimate aim is to get your business on the first page of search engine results when someone is looking for your product or services in your local area.

Let’s play that one again. Would you like to be on the first page of search engine results when potential customers are looking for you?

An Infoserve KeySite can perhaps be targeted at a new product you want to push, a special service you offer, and it can either link back to your existing website or be a stand-alone website promoting your business.

And it can be written, built and be ranking in the search engines within a few weeks.

Just give Infoserve a call to discuss what search terms you want to rank highly for.

Or take a look at some examples we’ve already done for customers wanting to rank highly for garden maintenance in Coventry (click here to see KeySite), or car servicing in Dunstable (which you can find here).

It’s no surprise to hear that we are spending more and more time online, but a survey by The UK Online Measurement Company (UKOM) estimated that the average person in the UK is spending 22 hours and 15 minutes surfing the Internet every month, which equates to almost one full day per month!

This is great news for businesses with a strong online presence, good SEO and relevant content on websites, hoping to capitalise from their efforts – and a wake-up call to those who don’t…

It’s amazing just how quickly things are evolving and the huge difference in the way we use the Internet compared to a couple of years ago. If you don’t have an effective online presence, you really will be missing out given so many people now turn to the Internet to find what they are looking for.

The full stats can be found in an article published by the BBC, showing a full breakdown.

You may have noticed a change in the way Google has been searching for your results. In the past month Google Instant has been predicting your search as you go, ‘faster than the speed of type.’ Researchers found that people type slowly but read quickly and this new innovation modifies the displayed results as you type, saving you time every time you search.

The creators claim that Google Instant could save you between two to five seconds whenever you search, and they even say that if everyone used Google Instant around the world, it would save 3.5 billion seconds a day, which could mean that 11 hours could be saved every second. That’s a lot of time saved for both businesses and their customers.

Now you might be wondering what this means for Search Engine Optimisation, and why Google Instant is important for your company. The changes to Google have meant that webpage optimisation is vital; if the key terms that a customer is searching for are being predicted by Google, it is essential that a company’s webpage has as many of those key predicted terms as possible. In the UK where 90% of searches happen on Google, tailored, effective SEO is a must.

Customers will view their Google results as more accurate due to Google Instant’s predictions, so a listing on the second page just won’t cut it, and accurate, professional search optimisation is essential. Our City-Visitor product has 12 million number one positions and 22 million first pages on major search engines, including Google, Yahoo! and Bing. Infoserve’s SEO service offers your company results that are tailor made for your business and your requirements, and our goal is to help your customers find you as quickly and easily as possible.

Our products include a Keyword Management Report: the equivalent of an SEO health check for your website.

If you want to see your website ranking higher in the search engines and want to make the most of innovations like Google Instant contact Infoserve.

The latest internet advertising results are out, which provide really clear evidence of the direction of online marketing.

(They are particularly relevant given they are UK based stats rather than a lot of US information which is circulated, and secondly, they are the results for 2009 so are bang up to date)

The stats are from the Internet Advertising Bureau, in partnership with PricewaterhouseCoopers, and shows a growth in online spend despite the difficult economic conditions.

Key figures are:

• Spending on internet advertising grew by 4.2% year-on-year on a like-for-like basis.
• Paid-for search listings (the adverts that appear next to search engine results) were up 9.5%, display adverts down 4.4% and classified adverts down 5.3%
• The number of people online grew to 39.7 in Feb 2010, representing an increase of over four million active internet users in just 12 months

So what does all this mean?

In a nutshell, more and more people are spending time online and businesses are gearing their advertising towards appearing next to search engine results.

Ah, but aren’t paid-for search listings expensive I hear you cry?

It’s one of the biggest myths in online marketing. Tailored, relevant paid-for search adverts can in fact be a very cost effective way of securing more business. You can find out exactly what gives you the best ROI and you can analyse which keywords are attracting the most number of click throughs to your website. Win win.

Don’t forget though, there are many other cost effective strategies for appearing on the top pages of search engine results, such as search engine optimisation (SEO) to help improve your website’s natural rankings, or getting a listing on a business directory that features on the first page. You can find out more on all these approaches here

The award-winning Hovis commercial about the boy going for a loaf of bread and journeying through the decades until he arrives back in the 21^st century began a nostalgic trend.

The cleverly reworked Milky Bar Kid and Persil Mum showing the commercials through the ages quickly followed.

Having discovered that nostalgia reinforces strong brands and sells products it won’t be long before others follow suit.

But this approach will not work for everyone, especially those companies overtaken by technology.

Take Yellow Pages for example. As brilliant and memorable as the commercials were, we are unlikely to hear the ‘Good Old Yellow Pages’ strapline being repeated.

Although it is accurate, as online marketing has all but consigned paper directories to the bin, Yellow Pages will not want to bring attention to the ‘old’ method of business search.

Re-running the cult JR Hartley commercial would only serve to demonstrate the time consuming method we once used. Today, Mr Hartley would not have to ring countless bookshops to ask if they had his book. A quick search on the internet and he would have found it in a couple of clicks.

Business marketing in paper directories was fairly straightforward in those days. Pay a lot of money for a large advertisement and the perception is that you are a successful and trustworthy company. The bigger the advertisement the more likely you were to be chosen.

The consumer of today is much savvier. They can do a lot more research about a company via online local search now. Not only can they find the product or service they need quickly but by clicking on enhanced listings in an online business directory or a well optimised website they can take a look at the company’s website and find out much more about them.

Mind you with Government statistics suggesting that nearly 50% of SMEs do not have a website, even though an effective one can be produced for less than £100, it demonstrates a lot of companies are still missing out on potential customers.

Perhaps some are still clinging on to listings in paper directories. But even Yellow Pages must have realised the writing was on the wall when they brought out the TV commercial of the small boy standing on one of their directories to kiss a girl. The pay off line explained that there were so many other uses for Yellow Pages than looking for a plumber to repair a leaky tap.

Having said that, one part of their marketing campaign still holds true today.

You can still ‘Let your fingers do the walking!’… Except now they are more likely to be using a keyboard rather than thumbing through a paper directory!

Yet again Hitwise has come up trumps with some excellent stats demonstrating the power of search engine optimisation and advertising.

The new evidence shows that search engines drive almost half of all traffic to websites. It found search traffic rose from 37.1% of total traffic in January 2008 to 40.5% in January 2009.

For businesses, this is worth its weight in gold for anyone contemplating either the first, or the next, step of their online marketing campaign. It’s simple - reap the rewards by making sure you can be found easily on search engine results.

It’s also interesting to read this evaluation here, which begins to make the comparison with the social media phenomenon. There’s still a long way to go before social networks dominate the way we look for services and information, so despite the flurry of expectation, one thing remains clear: search engines continue to reign supreme.