toinfinity's blog

Website re-design: Nicholsons Garden Design

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 08:07:31 -0700

We worked with Nicholsons in May of this year to re-design and re-structure their Garden Designs website to create a more structured and attractive site.

To visit the site to see our work please visit: www.nicholsonsgardendesign.com

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EU Cookie Directive Effects on Your Website

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 04:34:33 -0700

As of the 26/05/2011, the UK laws based on the EU’s Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive require websites to obtain visitors consent to store cookies*. According to the Information Commissioners Office (ICO), website owners that make no effort to comply could face sanctions.

What does this mean for your website?

Fortunately, everyone has a year to comply. Currently the law allows cookies that are needed in the course of business eg. remembering what has been added to a basket in order to complete a transaction.

By May 2012, you have to be seen to have taken action. This exemption is to also allow a technical solution to be provided by browser companies within the settings of the browser itself.

Efforts to show that you have taken steps to comply may include:

· Adding a pop-up to websites to confirm users consent to cookies

· Adding cookie consent into terms and conditions that users agree to when registering with a site

· Or in an interesting loop hole as pointed out by the culture minister Ed Vaizey, consent can be given after or during processing of an order for example (such as clicking the “submit order” button.) There is not a specific requirement to give prior consent.

Our view on this new directive

There’s a LOT of discussion about the implications of this directive in the online community. Cookies are an essential part of running a website and giving customers the best online browsing experience. It is interesting that a suggestion from the ICO is to use pop-ups to gain consent as we all know how much everyone enjoys pop-ups when browsing. See Dave Naylors take on this.

The directive overlooks the issue that the majority of cookies are not used to individually identify visitors on a site for sinister purposes but to improve customer relationships and experience by giving customers targeted content (i.e. something that they are interested in) and an improved website for them to browse / purchase from because the owner understands how visitors interact with their website. Yes, the end goal for the website owner is to make more money, but why shouldn’t they if they are providing a good customer experience?

Because this is such a hot issue politically, we won’t be surprised to see more changes put into place over the course of the year. In the meantime, we recommend you review your current website terms and conditions to ensure that your cookies policy is clear.

We will keep you posted...

* What are cookies?

Cookies are small pieces of information maintained by your web browser to enable websites to provide you with a more personal and/ or useful services such as storing items in your shopping basket, remembering what items you last looked at or retaining preferences on how a page is displayed.

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Social Media for Business Workshop

Wed, 18 May 2011 03:03:10 -0700

Last week saw the inaugural Social Media Power Workshop series from toinfinity spring into life.

We had a boardroom of delegates that each worked through aims and strategies for engagement in social media. Not just Twitter or Facebook strategies alone, but a combined plan of action focussed around content and the reasons why you should be engaging in Social Media.

When it comes to anything online, content is king. Google loves it, people on Twitter love it and it builds your credibility online as an expert in your area of expertise.

Many social media workshops focus on how to use Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter - we can help by showing you these on a 1 to 1 basis. These power workshops transcend the mundane nature of learning to use a system and help you to work a plan into your daily and weekly to-do lists to engage properly in social media and produce content in a planned way. Essentially we help you focus on building relationships, establishing credibility and talk through how you will make money using this marketing tool.

Here is some feedback from last weeks session:

"The Social Media Workshop put on by Toinfinity was excellent, Ant Hodges clear and intelligent presentation has left me with lots to think about, and lots of new tasks to complete which I know once implemented will strengthen my new business's proposition" Jo Minnaar - Countryside Marketing

"I found the course very interesting and with much practically useful content ... I've been on too many courses where the content is forgotten (sometimes actively) before I reach the car park afterwards. It's a very interesting - and, to us outside, nebulous - topic that was covered clearly and concisely." Scott Morris

We will be running more courses in coming months. To be notified when the next course is, subscribe to our email newsletter over on our website and we will let you know accordingly.

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Social Media Engagement for Retailers

Thu, 21 Apr 2011 01:55:29 -0700

When you think about it, social media is one of those new fad 'things' that seems to have swept through the business world at a rate of knots and it keeps building momentum.

Working with retailers and ecommerce businesses, we recognise the need for these consumer focused organisations to be engaging with people in social media… and that is the trick that many need to learn… how to engage.

A report from the customer experience specialist Right Now showed that, of those surveyed, 46% of customers join or like a retailers Facebook page to engage with post-sale activity. It was only a mere 4% of people that actually received updates and notifications of this sort.

This is one of the main reasons that many online retailers are failing in social media. The engagement factor is just not there. It is also the reason why Foresee Results suggested that only 3% of website traffic to retail sites were influenced by social media.

Success stories of companies such as Morph Suits, bringing in over £2m from Facebook traffic in 6 months, get washed away in the plethora of 'bad news' stories.

If you are a retailer and someone joins your Facebook page, follows you on Twitter (or any other social network), the key thing is to engage. If you need help to understand how best to engage, then we can be of assistance.

With over 30 years combined experience in working within online marketing for retailers, we have walked many customers through a strategic way of getting social media working for their businesses. We are best placed to give you this advice and training to help you achieve success not failure in social media - understanding the retail space and the online world.

If you would like to speak to the team here at toinfinity about how we could help you, call 01793 238697 or visit our workshops and training page on Social Media for Business. The next workshop is on the 12th of May 2011 in Swindon and it would be great to see you there. For more information visit http://toinfinity.co.uk/social-media-for-business/

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Social Media for Business

Fri, 15 Apr 2011 08:30:00 -0700

Social media is loved by many and hated by many. Whether you like it or not, it has a crucial role now in the way that businesses need to operate in online marketing.

Everyone seems to be talking about it and there seems to be social media experts popping up all over the place, but with so many people touting to take you social media marketing away and manage it for you, train you how to do it or tell you all the secrets there are to know about it - which way do you turn?

Experience is key, together with showing some real results and feedback from clients. Swindon's specialist Online Marketing agency toinfinity has been helping clients understand what social media is all about and how to correctly apply it to their marketing strategy rather than treat it as something different.

Recent interviews on the BBC and from local and national press has also enabled toinfinity to spread the word about how important social media is for business today.

"Jumping into social media marketing without having a clear strategy is like jumping out of an airplane without a parachute. Most just plummet into the abyss that is Twitter or Facebook, they get hung up on spending too much time in it, see no results, crash and then give up quickly.

"Learning how to have the right mindset, strategy and a structured way of planning time and resource will help you succeed." - Ant Hodges, toinfinity's Social Media Consultant.

After running over 40 different social media road-mapping sessions with individuals and businesses, toinfinity is in demand for it's highly informative training session and this is why they are announcing their first monthly power workshop.

"We found the Social Media session from toinfinity incredibly useful. It has definitely increased our knowledge about social media and feel confident that we can use it as a powerful tool in the Business First marketing strategy" said Gemma Widdowson from the Business First Team at Swindon College. "We would recommend it to all businesses that want their brand to stay up to date in the world of social media!"

Roger Ogle from the Swindon Link magazine is also a local business that has benefitted from working with Ant and the team at toinfinity. He said, "toinfinity has greatly assisted us in understanding the impact of social media and how to use it more effectively. There are serious implications for the success of any business that does not engage with social media. Make the time and find out why."

Today toinfinity are pleased to announce that starting from the 12th of May 2011, they will be running monthly group sessions to help businesses succeed in social media. These Social Media for Business sessions are three hours packed with information, strategies, how-to's and you will walk away with a clear understanding of how to structure your time in social media to make it work for you and your business.

With a combined 30 years experience in online and digital marketing, toinfinity are best placed to show how social media can work as part of your online marketing mix and how it integrates with PR, blogging, email marketing and the huge benefits it has for search engine optimisation.

For more information on these Social Media for Business sessions, please contact the team at toinfinity on 01793 238697 or visit www.toinfinity.co.uk/social-media-for-business to book into a session today.

Tags: Social Media Training, Social Media for Business

Photo by www.johncassidyphoto.co.uk

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Appear at the Top of Google for Free!

Thu, 14 Apr 2011 01:36:00 -0700

Yes, you did read it correctly, you can appear at the top of google search results whenever you want! We’re offering everyone that’s not tried Google Adwords (Pay Per Click) advertising £50 of google AdWords credit for FREE!**

Google Adwords is the quickest way to get your brand across to as wide or as targeted an audience as you want online. With Google still dominating the search engine audience share, there has never been a greater time to take up this offer.

Contact the Toinfinity team now, to find out more on how Google Adwords can work for your business.

** Please Note: This offer is restricted by Google to those customers who do not have a Google Adwords account already. We can help you manage your campaigns to gain a greater ROI if you have an account already, but wont be able to offer you the £50 of advertising spend.

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Pay Per Click Services, Google Adwords

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Google Adwords Retires Position Preference

Thu, 07 Apr 2011 00:21:00 -0700

An email from Google arrived this morning announcing the retirement of the position preference tool due to “low adoption” of the feature. The email also pointed you in the direction of a recent blog post “Understanding the Average Position Metric” which explains how ads are positioned on the SERP (search engine results page) and how that position changes over the period of the day .

The interesting point that they make, is that they found that conversion rates don’t vary much with the position of the ad on the page. From our own testing with different client accounts, we find that with certain keywords, position 1-3 is not necessarily the best return on investment, and have used the positioning tool to optimise this at position 4 with fantastic results.

It is fortunate, that there are alternatives to this feature, and over the course of the month (before position preference is retired in May) we will be adding automated rules to our campaigns to ensure we are optimising the opportunities for our clients.

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Welcome on board Caspian Caviar

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 06:49:00 -0700

We would like to welcome on board Caspian Caviar as a new client.

Caspian Caviar has over 10 years experience in supplying Caviar and other luxury food produce to restaurants, private clients and hotels. Their aim is to supply only the world`s finest foods on an exclusive basis. They were founded to supply caviar direct to your home. They supply the lowest priced legal caviar in Europe. All their caviar is caught processed and shipped, under strict adherence to the CITES rules and regulations.

We will be working with Caspian Caviar to improve their Search Engine Optimisation. We will be optimising their own website as well as utilising our link building knowledge to deliver them greater visibility in the search engine results.

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SEO, link building

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Comic Relief Supported by Toinfinity and Other Basepoint Licensees

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 03:59:45 -0700

Al and Ant from Toinfinty joined forces with the other Basepoint Licensees on Friday to raise money for Comic Relief, in Swindon.

From buying, and eating cakes, to jumping in the Basepoint car, £175.12 was raised and sent off to Comic Relief. Pictures of the "How many people can get in the Basepoint Car?" are below - taken by Roger Ogle of the Swindon Link Magazine.

Businesses that joined in the fun were Basepoint, Toinfinity, Revolution Health, Clarity Assessment Specialist, Presenting Binders, Sensata, The Affinity Partnership and 1job.co.uk.

See the full gallery on Posterous

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Case Study: Email Marketing for the Happy Puzzle Company

Mon, 14 Mar 2011 08:17:33 -0700

We were approached by the team at the Happy Puzzle Company to help and assist them with a new step that they were looking to take into email marketing.

Having operated as a mail order business with catalogue mailings being sent out and a website that was delivering many online sales each day, email marketing was something that was missing from the marketing strategy - and so entered the toinfinity team and BeyondMail.

Our Solution

After looking at the customer database from people that had bought within the last two years or had opted in to receive marketing information from the Happy Puzzle Company, a database of over 60,000 people was pulled together.

After installing this data into the BeyondMail email marketing system, a custom designed HTML email template was produced for use in each campaign. This was tested in over 20 different email clients to ensure that the design was compatible and was also tested through the latest versions of the most popular SPAM filters to ensure maximum deliverability.

The Results

Following a series of email campaigns that started in September 2010 through to January 2011, over £110,000 of sales was delivered directly from email campaigns sent and in-session purchases (in-session purchases are defined as a purchase someone makes after clicking on an email, before closing their browser and returning later).

We continue to deliver email campaigns for the Happy Puzzle Company and are looking forward to an exciting 2011 of working together.

“Quite simply, e-marketing works. Toinfinity know how to get the very best out of each situation. We are being fully guided by the team to make the right choices. Of course, it takes time to understand what your customers want to receive by email – actually, Toinfinity identified that very quickly. It’s been a rollercoaster ride – one in which we feel we are being thoroughly well looked after” - Gavin Ucko, Managing Director of the Happy Puzzle Company

Visit www.beyondmail.co.uk for more information on our email marketing system.

The Happy Puzzle Company's website is over at www.happypuzzle.co.uk

hpc-case-study.pdf Download this file

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The Social Media Guys Ride Again!

Wed, 09 Mar 2011 01:08:00 -0800

Wednesday the 16th of March will see Ant Hodges, Business Development Director and toinfinity's very own Social Media Nut, presenting at the Andover Business Expo, with fellow Social Media Guys Nigel Morgan and Graham Jones.

A short while ago Ant, Nigel and Graham met for coffee in a pub in Hungerford to chat about the current state of social media. This expanded and grew into a drop in session with many people coming along and joining in the conversation, ask questions and get insight into how social media could help business.

Now the trio are in high demand, speaking at events up and down the Thames Valley and beyond, and work together under the guise of The Social Media Guys - a formidable force when it comes to Social Media.

The breakfast seminar on Wednesday the 16th March 2011, at the Andover Business Expo, will help aim your business objectives for social media in the right direction for greater success. It will give you an insight on how to make the best use of social media marketing both now and in the future.

As a special bonus for anyone that books into The Social Media Guys breakfast seminar, TWA Events have promised free tickets to Futrologist Ray Hammond's keynote presentation on the day.

For more information and to book in,
visit the Andover Business Expo site at
www.andoverexpo.biz.

See you there!

Advanced Notice: In June of this year, The Social Media Guys will be delivering workshops and speaking the Social media Conference in Bracknell. Click here for more information.

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SEO and Social Media - How do I combine them together better?

Wed, 02 Mar 2011 03:41:00 -0800

Is it really that important to have both search engine optimisation and social media strategies working hard for your business?

At The Future of Marketing & Advertising event in London yesterday, two of the speakers I heard were saying that social media and social media marketing will wipe out the need for us to use Google and the other search engines to promote our business. Is this something that businesses should be listening to and acting upon?

The argument put forward is that if you use social media in the right way, then you can go on the hunt for people that have problems or issues that your products or services can help to sort out.

The reason that you can do this is that the search engines built into networks like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, allow you to very easily find what people are talking about and the groups or pages that they have commented on. Enter in, introduce yourself, provide a link to some good value content on your blog or website and they may just choose to take a look at it, see that you are an expert in your field and buy from you - better still syndicate it to their networks.

But what if you don't have the time to go hunting?

The bigger question should be, what if you don't have the right gun?

Time is a critical factor, but hunting in social media is a skill that needs to be grown over time and honed, but starting today is a good plan. All you need is the right strategy to monitor social media and the applications to do it, engage and build up your credibility as someone that helps people… don't launch into it expecting to sell your wares!

My concern with platform speakers saying this at conferences and events, is that businesses will think that they can forget SEO tactics and link building strategies all together and focus on social media on it's own.

In my opinion that is the wrong thing to be doing now. In a few years time maybe, but for now it is something that will potentially hurt your business online.

Many websites still see Google as the main source of referral to their site in their website analytics. Social media and blogs are growing, but they are still not overtaking the referrals sent from Google. Taking this into account, it shows that many many people are still finding sites by using Google.

Getting high in the listings of natural search, and even paid search (Google Adwords) is still an important strategy. In looking at the stats of our clients, I would say that it is even more important than social media, based on the ROI generated.

Getting involved and learning what social media is all about is vital for the future success of your business. Don't treat it as the saviour of online marketing yet! Let it mature, learn how it works and how to use it, but keep your focus on activity that is driving visits to your site and continue to measure the success of your marketing activity. If it continues to produce a positive ROI, keep going. If the ROI falls, tweak it to try and improve it or get some professional help to review it and sort it out. Then after a few of months, if you want to ditch it, consider it based on facts and stats. Don't throw it out of the strategy immediately.

We can help take a look at your online marketing activity for your business and review what you are currently doing. Afterwards we will suggest ways to improve things and give you an objective view on where to go next and what to plough resources into. Call us on 01793 238 697 or email info@toinfinity.co.uk, and we would be more than happy to chat to you.

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SEO Company Swindon, Social Media Consultant Swindon

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Testimonial from SuperCarHub

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 08:28:59 -0800

It's always nice to hear from clients that they have received a good service and that the work that we have done has achieved some great results.

Take a look at the testimonial we received today from Andrea at SuperCarHub:

Thanks Andrea!

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It's always nice to welcome new clients.

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 09:47:15 -0800

Outsource UK Ltd, an IT recruitment specialist based in Swindon, have enlisted the services of the team here at toinfinity to review their current online marketing activities and make recommendations for improvements.

In a busy and competitive marketplace, such as recruitment, differentiating your self online and doing the 'right' things well, will enable you to win over your prospects and clients even more.

Other recent additions to the toinfinity client roster, taking services such as Pay Per Click Management, Search Engine Optimisation and Link Building also include: Pegasus Medical, Portland Apartments and Webnetism.

If you would like to chat to us about how to improve your online marketing activity and see it deliver some real value, call 01793 238697 or email us at info@toinfinity.co.uk

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SEO Company Swindon, Search Engine Optimisation

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Website SEO Reviews… worth paying for?

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 07:58:49 -0800

From time to time I bump into the odd search engine optimisation company that is offering FREE Website SEO Reviews for clients and potential new customers.

What do you get for a FREE SEO review from an SEO Company?

In life we are told that nothing is for free. Is this just a ploy for them to be able to offer you a proposal for doing some site SEO for you?

Do they just throw your website through a free online tool and send you the results in a branded PDF, or do they actually sit down and go through your site page by page and give you some real direction on what you can do to improve your website's performance in the search engines?

Fight on top of the right foundations

Getting a website to the top of Google can be a bit of a fight and you need to make sure that before embarking on any kind of link building campaign or social media marketing, that the foundations are in right for your website.

By this we mean taking a good look at the structure of the code behind your site, the content on it, the titles and other parts of your pages, navigation and media that you use on it.

Once you have a solid site, that is search engine optimised, you can go running into ongoing SEO work. Forget to get your site sorted before you start any SEO work and it could well be a waste of time doing.

So do we offer a free Website SEO Review?

Here at toinfinity we offer a chargeable Website SEO Review service that is not an automated report generated from an online tool, but a report from our expert SEO specialists.

We take a good look at your site with human eyes - the way that it is coded and built, the content within it and how it can be improved. When acting on the advice we give, you will get:

• Greater targeted traffic to your site

• More sales or leads responding to you

• Improved visibility in the search engines

For more information on this or to chat to us about optimisation of your website - visit our Website SEO Review page of our site or call us on 01793 238697

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SEO Company Swindon, SEO Services, Search Engine Optimisation

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BeyondMail Email Marketing System Goes Public

Thu, 03 Feb 2011 03:08:00 -0800

Building relationships and staying in touch with customers is an important aspect of any marketing campaign and email marketing is a hugely effective way of doing this; BeyondMail has been serving clients for a number of years as Toinfinity’s own email marketing program but now we are opening our email marketing system to the public: www.beyondmail.co.uk.

BeyondMail makes the process of email marketing easy and provides you with the most advanced features available for an email marketing system. Best of all you have our team of experts on hand, via live chat or on the phone should you need any support or advice along the way!

BeyondMail aims to make email marketing easy for you. With great features such as:

Live tracking
Free account
Telephone support
Built in Spam testing

Our email system allows you to work as independently as you wish and our helpful team are only a phone call away to aid you in your email marketing journey.

The BeyondMail system enables you to:

Create and send your own emails:

It is easy to import your own custom HTML email template or use our standard plain template that you can re-brand yourself. However, if you would like something more eye-catching our team of designers will be happy to help you.

Auto manage your lists:

BeyondMail handles all list management, taking out bounces and unsubscribes automatically, with this system you will never have to see the messy side of managing an email list again.

Real-time LIVE statistics to monitor your emails performance:

BeyondMail comes complete with built in analytics tools which allow you to accurately measure the effectiveness of every campaign that you send.

Not only is BeyondMail a great system but it comes with great prices too, £10 per campaign and 1p per email address sent to!

We also offer unlimited monthly send contracts and bulk discounts. To find out more about these please call: 01793 238697 or to sign up for your FREE account visit us at: www.beyondmail.co.uk.

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Keeping Perspective in Your Marketing

Wed, 02 Feb 2011 03:43:56 -0800

So if you follow us or are regular readers of our blog, you will find that we champion online marketing and the whole social media thing quite a lot. Namely because this is an area that we feel many businesses 'think' they understand, yet when digging under the surface the way that they understand it sometimes lacks perspective.

(Warning: Huge generalisations may follow…)

By 'perspective' we mean, there is consideration for it in their marketing mix, but many businesses feel it needs to dominate over all other marketing activity.

Granted when a time of austerity is being promoted by the government and businesses need to spend wisely, a FREE marketing tool such as social media appeals to the better nature of the finance director and little else gets signed off.

What we would say to any business that thinks social media marketing alone will get them through the storm, if they just batten down the hatches and keep tweeting… have a re-think.

There are many other ways to generate interest in a brand and sell products that don't cost the earth. Granted they may need a little bit more of your time and energy, but if your marketing budget is tight, don't cut back on marketing activity, optimise your spend.

5 Quick Tips

1. First up, check that people can contact you quickly from anything that they get given (business cards, brochures) or when they visit your website. Clever marketing sometimes confuses people and a difficult website to navigate though can be a huge problem if you are an online retailer - help them find things easily.

2. The £5,000 budget for a trade show may need to be swapped for a £100 stand at a local business expo.

3. The £1,500 full page advert in a trade journal may need to be cancelled in favour of a £95 piece of PR from a local PR specialist.

4. Your £1,000 a month budget for Google adwords could be optimised to make you more money (by being more targeted) than making more money for Google (when they tell you to be very generic).

5. And the £500 a year membership plus the monthly costs for a networking group may need to be swapped in favour of FREE local business networking events and seminars or even SEO work to get you to the top of Google.

There are ways to cuts the spend without cutting the activity. They just need to be worked out.

Social media is not the saviour of small businesses - it is just another tool that you can use. When used effectively it can yield great results.

If we can help just shout - we can be reached on 01793 238697 or by using our online contact form.

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www.toinfinity.co.uk SEO Swindon, Pay Per Click Services, Online Marketing Agency

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SEO Strategy: Is your website important?

Mon, 31 Jan 2011 07:48:47 -0800

When it comes to online marketing and search engine optimisation strategy, there seems to be many people that you can turn to.

There are generic marketing professionals offering SEO and online marketing strategy, many 'one man bands' pretending to be agencies, those that went on a one day course and walked out with an SEO business/franchise… and then there are those that have been in the game a wee while.

The trouble with much of the advice out there is that on the surface it makes sense and some of it actually helps. Other SEO hints and tips, online marketing advice and even some of the 'done for you' services, could do you more harm than good.

Let me give you two examples.

A client last week asked us to take a look a company that was bidding on their brand name in Google Adwords. This is a case of the company in question running Pay Per Click adverts and were getting high ranking adverts by bidding on our clients brand name.

After advising them that this was in break of their registered trademark and requesting them to remove such ad's, they obliged but advised us that they had been told by someone to do this. A case of bad advice.

The other example is a tip from someone today saying (which got me writing this post) that your SEO strategy should not only include your website, but also your social networks and blogging. This is good advice, but in reality your website should be sorted before you implement an SEO strategy and the use of social networks are just one part of an ongoing plan that should be implemented.

Some people may just take the tip above as read and only focus on social networks for SEO. This may produce some fruit for you, but it should have been linked to a blog where different SEO tactics are displayed and where is says that your website (the foundations an SEO strategy should be built on) needs to be nailed before you start any ongoing SEO work. Part of the story sometimes doesn't help all that much.

So where do you go for the best advice?

My first thought is that you need to look for people that niche. If you see people that try and be all things to all people, are they just as "jack of all trades - master of none?" Are they best placed to give specific niche advice in online marketing and SEO? A generic marketing agency may even outsource it to an SEO agency. Look for those that niche and are specific about the services they offer.

Look for the credibility in terms of testimonials and case studies from happy clients and ask to see the results from the work done. This will show you if the money that you are about hand over is going to be worth it or not. A recent toinfinity case study is available here showing over 2,000% ROI in Pay Per Click management.

And the biggest piece of advice - look for recommendations. Linkedin profiles enable you to see recommendations from clients and colleagues, recommendations from your friends and colleagues will also help.

Avoid the people that have little working experience in the online world and choose to work with experts that have proven time and time again that they CAN deliver… and continue to do so for many clients.

If we can help, please do call 01793 238697 or send us an email via our contact form.

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www.toinfinity.co.uk - Online Marketing Swindon, SEO Agency Swindon

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Name squatting on Twitter - Good news!

Fri, 28 Jan 2011 00:35:31 -0800

Today is a good day!

The support team at Twitter have confirmed to us that we have won our request to take domant Twitter username @toinfinity from someone who was name squatting.

Name squatting in Twitter where you open an account to distract or confuse other users from thinking that it is the official representative from the named brand, or an act of deliberately preventing others from using that account.

Name squatting is against The Twitter Rules and as such any account that is seen to be engaging in name squatting could be removed without notice. Accounts that are also inactive for 6 months could also be removed without you being notified.

Todays news is that we have won the Twitter username @toinfinity from an inactive account and are able to use this for our company Twitter account. Anyone that was following us previously will automatically be following us on this new user account. If you have any programmes set up that you entered our old username, you will need to update this to @toinfinity.

Effectively, through support, they have activated a username transfer. This only changes the username of your account. All the content from your old account account (followers, Tweets) will remain intact. The old username will then be released immediately for use by other accounts.

This is the second brand/trademark request that we have successfully won in the last week, together with the case of one of our clients competitors who was bidding on their brand name in Google AdWords, removing their adverts. It's been a week of protecting brand names and trademarks in Twitter an Google.

If you think that someone is name squatting on your brand or registered trademark and you would like some assistance with getting this for your business, call us on 01793 238697 and we would be more than happy to assist.

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Pay Per Click Services - Is Your Ad Copy Hold You Back?

Tue, 25 Jan 2011 01:45:00 -0800

Are you struggling to come up with new and inventive ideas for writing ad copy for your pay per click campaigns?

Here are some ideas on how to trial all aspects of your message in adverts.

Make the purpose of the advert clear

Use your advert to separate out the traffic you don’t want and the traffic you do want. This will prevent you spending money on people who are not going to buy from you and increase your conversion rate. E.g. Sofas starting at £2,000. This will then filter out people who can’t afford a £2,000 sofa and drive people who are looking for a more expensive sofa.

Keyword Tool

Include the keyword in the title of the advert. Google’s keyword tool is a handy gadget to insert the keyword into each advert.

Always feature special offers in your adverts

This is a great way to make your adverts stand out! People always like to feel like they are getting a bargain!

Depending on your type of business, humour is always a good eye catcher

Trial rhyming or metaphors in order to get people’s attention HOWEVER be careful as Google may disapprove yours adverts if you take things too far.

Choose an attitude

Have a tone to your advert, hyped or sympathetic these will have more appeal than bland text.

Call to Action

Always have a call to action in your ad copy. E.g. Buy Now Offers Ends 31st Jan or Get a Quote Now.

Landing Page

Ensure that your landing page matches your ad copy otherwise people are likely to leave, giving you a high bounce rate.

Make your URL stand out

****UPDATED (25th Jan '11)**** The URL is one of the most important aspects of your advert. We used to suggest testing it's appearance to see the difference it makes to the performance of the advert. You used to be able to make it more noticeable by using capitals for each word, such as www.ToInfinity.co.uk. Now Google will be forcing all domains to be displayed in lowercase. ie: www.toinfinity.co.uk. Will this make a difference I wonder? (Check out Googles official blog post on this)

Visit our page on pay per click for information on our services and you would like to have a chat give us a shout on 01793 238 697.

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