Engage Web January 2010 - Page 2 of 6 - Engage Web

Content writing is first among equals in SEO

Posted on January 26, 2010

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a complex sphere of activity and reputable SEO firms offer no guarantees. A range of strategies can be employed and their specific nature should be tailored to the precise requirements of the business concerned. That said, there are some general principles which apply to most web strategies. One of these general principles is that the major search engines and potential customers welcome content that is relevant, regularly updated and rigorously checked. (more…)

Posted by Jenny C

Duplicate content penalty

Posted on January 25, 2010

There has been a lot written about the supposed duplicate content penalty and how if your website features duplicate content, you could find your Google rankings disappearing fast.

Rather than go into the whys and wherefores, we will instead look at just what Google is trying to do with its rankings, and by understanding that you should hopefully understand how duplicate content is bad.

Firstly though, what is duplicate content?

Duplicate content is web copy on a page of a website that exists in whole, or in part, on another page on the Internet. That page could exist on the same website, it could be on another website or it could be on multiple websites. You can find out if a page of your website has been copied on (or copied from) another website by using Copyscape and entering the URL of your page. Copyscape will tell you if the content on that page is similar, or exactly the same, as somewhere else on the Internet.

You can also take a sentence from your web copy and (more…)

Posted by Carl Hopkinson

Fergie calls time on Manchester United players’ Tweets

Posted on January 24, 2010

It emerged this last week that Manchester United manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, has banned his players from using Twitter to communicate with fans. The news came just after Liverpool’s want away Dutch player Ryan Babel Tweeted about his omission from the Liverpool squad to play at Stoke last weekend.

Manchester United announced that it had laid down the law to its players, just in case any of them felt the urge to upload squad selections onto Twitter. A United statement indicated that none of the United players were allowed to:

maintain personal profiles on social networking websites.

United’s rivals in the second leg of the League Cup semi final, Manchester City, made a similar announcement this week stating that (more…)

Posted by Cheryl Mathews

Is your article writing too long and too short?

Posted on January 24, 2010

Some people maintain that it is easy to be a critic. Article writers can be sensitive about their best efforts. They may feel that a critic does not appreciate the constraints under which they do their best. Imagine how an article writer would feel if someone told them their work was simultaneously too long and too short. At this point, there would probably be some confusion because the critic has apparently adopted a contradictory stance. (more…)

Posted by Matt Jones

Rent movies on YouTube

Posted on January 23, 2010

Since buying YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006, Google has tried many different ways to turn a profit from the video sharing website. Despite being one of the most visited websites on the Internet and enjoying a userbase that can spend literally hours on its website, watching a reported 10 billion videos in 2009, YouTube has still proved a drain on Google’s limitless resources.

The high bandwidth costs of YouTube are one of its main costs.

Google has now come up with another way that it hopes YouTube will begin to make money, and it’s bad news for companies such as Blockbuster. Yesterday Google launched a new service whereby Internet users in the USA could pay to rent movies from (more…)

Posted by Matt Jones

A little SEO knowledge can be dangerous

Posted on January 22, 2010

Nobody likes to think of themselves as ignorant, but we’re all ignorant of some things. Perhaps it’s to do with cars, and when our cars go wrong we have no idea what the fault could be. Maybe it’s plumbing, and we would never even consider changing a washer in the kitchen tap, or perhaps it’s DIY – and we wouldn’t know the first thing about building a shelf from scratch.

We all have our expertise, where we know as much as we feel we can, and we have our ignorance, where we know nothing and are happy to rely on the expert. Where it can be dangerous however is when we know a little and start to second guess the expert based on our own limited knowledge or experience.

For example, if you know of one fault that you car often has, and how much it costs to fix it and how long it should take, would you then argue with the mechanic whenever your car needed work, insisting that it was (more…)

Posted by Carl Hopkinson

Don’t commit the three sins of writing for search engine optimisation

Posted on January 22, 2010

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a complex blend of art and science. The basic goal is to increase the rankings of a website with the major search engines in order to improve the performance of the business concerned. However, when wading through the abundant advice on SEO some inexperienced UK copywriters do not perceive some common errors to avoid. (more…)

Posted by Cheryl Mathews

How much should I pay for SEO?

Posted on January 21, 2010

With so many different websites offering search engine optimisation (SEO), it can be difficult to know which one offers the best service for the best price. As with most things that we buy, whether for our personal lives or in business, cost is always an issue (as it should be) and we’re not going to pay over the odds for something just because it’s being offered from a flashy website, or from a company that comes with a reputation.

So with that in mind, how much should you pay for SEO services? If you look around the Internet at different SEO companies you’ll find that prices for SEO can vary wildly, with some companies offering to SEO your website for thousands of pounds each month, down to the one-man-bands who offer you SEO for peanuts.

The problem is of course that much of what an SEO specialist does for you is unseen, so you have no real way of knowing whether spending £5,000 or £50 will yield better results.

The real question you should ask yourself is (more…)

Posted by Cheryl Mathews

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