Engage Web June 2010 - Engage Web

How can you damage your reputation online?

Posted on June 30, 2010

Damage to your online reputation requires a great deal of reputation management to put right. Once something has gone wrong and blogs and forums start cropping up all over the Internet, filled with comments from dissatisfied customers slating your service, rolling out an SEO campaign to deal with the problem is often too little, too late.

Once something happens to trigger unhappy customers to put keyboard to website and tell the world (and it really is the world) about how unhappy they are with your company, you could find Google’s search results quickly filled with negative press when someone searches for your company name.

Yes, reputation management can have an impact after the fact, but it’s better to control search results for your company name and website address before anything bad crops up online (and hopefully nothing ever will).

It’s better yet to ensure that nothing goes wrong in the (more…)

Posted by Cheryl Mathews

Choosing a voice or style for SEO

Posted on June 30, 2010

One of the first things that can turn visitors away from a website is the tone of voice. This is a subjective aspect of the content, but SEO could be undermined if visitors arrive and immediately feel alienated. Creating the right voice is a skill that SEO copywriting experts are able to provide and is one reason why it can be beneficial to outsource content writing rather than attempting a DIY approach.

Variations in tone can be quite great even for websites that might seem fairly similar at first glance. This is because the same products and services can appeal to different kinds of people not all of whom approach them in the same way. For example, a website selling running gear to hardened fell runners, who sprint across mountain ranges in all weathers, would almost (more…)

Posted by Matt Jones

Annoying Flash ads in Hotmail

Posted on June 29, 2010

As an SEO company, we pretty much despise Flash in all of its forms. Its inaccessibility for search engines is matched only by its capacity to annoy people when used as an advertising medium.

Recently, I spent a few house using a Hotmail inbox. Don’t ask, it was necessary. Anyway, while I was using this inbox to deal with a seemingly endless stream of emails I was presented with an advert on the right hand side of the screen. This ad showed a police officer running, and looked to be a static image ad.

Oh no, upon rolling over this ad (by mistake) it opened up, covering the screen with its full motion video of a policeman running through the streets. While I was using Hotmail for a few hours, this ad must have opened up over a dozen times as I accidentally touched it (more…)

Posted by Matt Jones

Paying for content doesn’t ensure quality

Posted on June 28, 2010

This weekend we watched the Germany v England game, but no, we’re not about to lament another poor performance at a World Cup, another defeat to the Germans or even the blind referee who failed to notice the ball was two foot over the line (Tottenham fans know all about that one already).

No, we’d like to talk about the awful subtitles we had to endure before the football began, on ITV’s F1 coverage. Subtitles require that content is written very quickly; transcribing what has just been said. This is a difficult skill, but when transcribing commentary on a sporting event, it’s a thankless one too. No matter how fast the person writing the subtitles can be, they’ll always be behind the action – so will end up writing about something that has happened maybe 30 seconds ago, when the action has moved on since.

This is also done during the Tennis, which is currently being played now, so imagine the subtitles of ‘a backhand volley, a forehand smash, another backhand, forehand, backhand winner…’ which describes the action from two rallies ago! Utterly pointless. In addition to being way behind the action, it also covers vital parts of the screen. Subtitles during Wimbledon cover the (more…)

Posted by Carl Hopkinson

Is a series of articles better for SEO?

Posted on June 28, 2010

While the majority of articles on the Web stand alone proudly, the series is a less often used, but perhaps more potentially useful, mode of content writing. SEO copywriting ‘rules’ often state that pieces of writing should be limited within a certain length, be broken into easily digested chunks and contain helpful headings, all of which can help a writer trying to get a point across to readers without losing them before the article finishes.

However, having a series is another way of holding interest while imparting large amounts of useful information, which readers could find extremely valuable. A series is one way of attracting a lot of attention and links and (more…)

Posted by Cheryl Mathews

Are you afraid of spiders?

Posted on June 27, 2010

If you’re anything like me, you have a very healthy fear of spiders. Now, some people will say that a fear of spiders is a phobia, which is an irrational fear. However, any fear of spiders isn’t irrational at all, it’s a perfectly understandable fear based on the fact that spiders are the perfect predators.

Their scale speed is faster than humans, they are stronger than humans (again, to scale) they have eight legs, more eyes than is really necessary and can see in every direction at once.

As if that weren’t enough, they paralyse victims with a single bite and their homes are traps to catch their prey. Oh yes, a perfectly rational fear indeed.

Of course, web spiders are very different. They won’t lie motionless for days on end, appearing to be dead, before scuttling out in front of the TV when you’re sat on the sofa. They won’t drop on you from above when you (more…)

Posted by Darren Jamieson

How having a content strategy affects SEO

Posted on June 26, 2010

Rather than haphazardly assembling a baggy and disjointed collection of SEO copywriting, having a strategy for content can make a big difference to the appeal of a website. The first step involves assessing the content which is already present on the site, analysing the variety of topics covered and deciding how relevant they are to the tone, aims, keywords and target audience of the website. The relative amount of content under each subject heading should also be inspected. Maybe there is a gaping hole in one topic area that needs to be filled in, or there are two dozen pages on something that is much less important to the business. Once the established content has been (more…)

Posted by Jenny C

Rozzers to come down hard on Google

Posted on June 26, 2010

Google may soon be feeling the long arm of the law due to the collecting of data from its Google Street View cars. The cars have driven all over the UK (and much of the world) photographing every major, and not so major, road – together with houses and buildings. The photographs have been stitched together to form Google’s Street View, which is a great system that allows you follow routes and directions as if you were really there.

While privacy campaigners have complained about the issues of photographing every detail of people’s homes, this particular issue that could see Google’s collar felt doesn’t concern the pictures themselves. This time, it’s the data Google inadvertently collected via unsecured Wi-Fi networks that has brought them the attention of (more…)

Posted by Cheryl Mathews

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