I’ve always been looking for a great tool to track rankings with ease, and it’s taking me a while to find one that works the best. Advanced Web Ranking is probably the best one I have come across, with its vast amount of features and tools it makes it a lot more diverse than other software or web based tools that I have used before.

The server version is great because it means that you are not performing the searches from your own computer and also it means you and other team members can access the same rankings.

Advanced Web Ranking allows you to check rankings and history for more than one site, so that means you can follow your competitors as well as yourself.

There is also a great range of customisation within Advanced Web Ranking, which means you can customise reports and then send them out to your clients.

The scheduling is great for busy people, or for people who have a lot of clients. It allows you to schedule your reporting so that it can do it overnight or at a time when you are away from your computer, so that you don’t have to sit there and watch it do its business.

You also get the ability to check Google Local Rankings, which is great seeing as Google local seems to be dominating a lot of search engine queries now, and for those of you who are like me, you will have a lot of clients who are looking for local based queries.

Advanced Web ranking uses a system which means that you do not have to worry about being detected, it basically will sleep between each keyword, so that your searches appear natural and therefore you do not have to worry about facing any sort of IP ban from search engines.

What I think makes this software great is the ability to export data and import it into standard office software such as Excel or Word, meaning that all the data gained from Advanced Web Ranking is very customisable. This a long with the ability to customise style sheets means that you will always be able to show your clients data in a way that makes a lot of sense to them.

Advanced Web Ranking includes a keyword research tool that will suggest and give you ideas of keywords that you may wish to target and also means that you don’t have to spend time coming up with keywords to target on your own.

There aren’t any restrictions with Advanced Web Ranking, meaning that you can track and follow as many websites as you wish.

The pricing starts from $99 and goes up to $599 for the enterprise edition. Although the standard version is great and houses much of the tools that you will need, I would definitely recommend purchasing the enterprise version if you are wanting to make use of all of the great tools that Advanced Web Ranking has to offer.

Overall I would recommend this software to anyone in the SEO industry who has a lot of clients but a limited amount of time to do things manually.

As a lot of us have noticed today, Google has by default added background images to the Google home page.

I for one find it rather annoying and it takes away from the ’simpleness’ that Google is about.

A lot of you agree and Patrick Altoft even created a twitition to remove the google image from the home page, so get signing!

In the mean time I have created 3 simple steps for a workaround.

1. Open Photoshop or any other image editing software (paint will do) and create an image with a white backgroun

2. Go to Google, sign in to your account and click the change background image link in the bottom left.

3. All you need to do now is select to upload and image ‘from my computer’ and choose the image you have just created.

Voila!

Good Times

It can often be hard for local businesses to find the correct advertising channel to generate the best leads and you often hear the question: “Should I move my advertising budget elsewhere?” The answer is that it should not be moved but spread across multiple platforms to allow for greater market reach and high quality leads.

Australian Yellow Pages provider Sensis opened up a temporary pizza restaurant in an alleyway recently and spread their advertising across multiple platforms. They had listings within their own online directory, paper directory and also across search engines and social media sites.

The results showed that 70% of their custom came from their online and offline directory as well as their search marketing campaigns. The remaining 30% came from blogs, social media and word of mouth.

Sensis’s aim was to prove that local directories are still an effective advertising medium according to Geraldine Davys general manager of brand and marketing communications at Sensis

“The overall aim of the campaign was to prove the value of Yellow Pages to our advertisers,” Ms Davys said.
Although 70% came from directories and search engines, the use of social media and blogs were an important part of this campaign. With the location of the pizza restaurant being hidden, Sensis could create an intrigue via the blogs and social media efforts by creating an air of mystery around the restaurant and encourage conversation within Facebook and other social sites.

The campaign brought over 8000 consumers to the restaurant and shows that directory listings are still key and can be enhanced with the use of blogs and social media.

Another area that is growing at the moment is mobile search, especially within local search. Many companies are providing users with apps for the iPhone and other devices such as the iPad and Blackberry. These apps provide a means for users to search easily when they are on the move. A great example of this technology is Yellow Pages Augmented reality app.

A combination of all these platforms provides the perfect advertising opportunity for your business!

Online directories are a great way to generate initial leads and are also a sustained stream of business from a proven platform.

Offline directories and newspaper listings are still important.You may find the majority of your market still does not use the Internet and this can be a major opportunity to bring in those consumers.

With the increasing use of social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare you can utilise social media campaigns and online conversation to entice consumers to your business.

Another more recent platform is mobile advertising, especially within the iPhone and iPad. Yahoo! Sketch-a-Search could prove to be a useful tool for advertising along with Yellow Pages Augmented Reality and other mobile app directories.

The key thing to remember is that your customers have their own personal methods of searching and within local search there are many different types of advertising. By utilising all of them you will be able to find the best methods for your business and generate the highest quality leads.

Infoserve are giving away 10 Free websites to charities in Hull, each website is worth around£600, so if you are one or you know a charity in hull please do take advantage of this offer!

To qualify you will need to supply us with reasons as to why you think your charity or the charity you have nominated deserves this Free website. We will then select the top 10 based on these responses and create a 3 page eStart site. These websites will include domain name and hosting so there will not be anything to pay!

Infoserve are also well placed to create Search Engine friendly websites through our Keyword Management and SEO products and parts of these services will be included in the web design process, so this really will help boost the online presence of these charities!

Please contact us using the form below and help the charities of Hull!

According to Delloitte 84% of the UK population owns a mobile phone, and with the increasing presence of smart phones such as iPhone and BlackBerry hitting the market it’s a good guess that a great deal of these users have used their mobiles to find a local business.

There are a growing number of apps for local and Geo targeted search hitting the app stores for iPhone and Blackberry. Each of these apps provides a way for users to find a business close to their location.

For example Mr Smith from Leeds is searching for a florist near to where he is for his wife on Valentines Day (He’s left it late so he needs the closest one!). There are a lot of apps out there that can give you a number and even a location for local businesses and these can all help Mr Smith find some flowers for his wife quickly and easily.

This platform is beneficial for the customer and the business, not only does the customer get what he needs fast but the business owner receives a customer with minimal effort. The conversion rate for this is extremely high!

There are probably certain businesses such as Florists, Restaurants, Plumbers, Electricians and Taxis that will receive the greatest benefit from this type of search, purely because their services are likely to be needed straight away and therefore there is a minimal search and review process.

On top of this the user could store the businesses phone number, company address or even website address. All this leading to repeat custom!

With mobile search and smart phone usage increasing, advertisers can capitalise on this by creating apps and mobile platforms to allow businesses to list themselves on mobile directories and giving more exposure locally.

Yahoo are currently testing a new search technology called Sketch-a-Search. This is Yahoo’s effort for make local searching on mobiles a lot easier.

The main feature is the ability to circle or draw an area in which you wish to limit the search. An example would be if you were searching for Accountants in Leeds and you wanted a specific area, say the city centre. With this tool you could circle the city centre on the map and it would then refine the results to that area.

I think the idea behind simplifying results for mobile searching is great! However I’m not sure how much of an innovation this really is. Currently you can search for local results on the iPhone in Google Maps and this will pinpoint results on the map, so I don’t think being able to refine the results after this will be that much help to the user as you can already see where the results are!

The idea behind this is to limit typing, however I’m petty sure that typing will still need to be involved if you were looking for a certain type business, If you were looking for a Restaurant you would have to type Restaurant.

This technology is still in Yahoo Labs in the testing phase, so there may be more developments on the actual user experience and if they can reduce the need for any typing at all that would make this technology much more interesting!

Infoserve currently provide local listings for UK Businesses in Yahoo, you can get your business listed from £199

Want an increased presence on Google Local? Well now you can!

Google have announced that soon you will be able to add certain “enhancements” to your local listing. These will make your listing stand out on natural and local search. An example can be seen below.

These listings are currently only showing on Houston, Texas and San Jose for testing, however they will soon be rolled out worldwide.

The enhancements that can be made to your listing are-

• Website
• Coupons
• Videos
• Photos
• Directions
• Menu
• Reservations

The costs in the US at the moment is $25 per month as a flat fee.

Google say that there will be no impact on your ranking from these enhancements however it will make your listing more prominent in search results.

SEOMoz launched Open Site Explorer yesterday which uses their own Linkscape data to provide link data about a website. This new SEO tool allows users to find link data about their own site or a competitors site, it even allows you to compare sites.

Below is an example screenshot of a report

open-site-explorer

Open Site Explorer shows data for the first 1000 links, however if you are an SEOMoz Pro Member you will be able to view up to 10,000.

The layout of this tool is so much better than other SEO and link tools I have used in the past, especially as it shows no follows clearly and the anchor text in which each link uses.

Some of the features included make searching for links a lot easier, especially the ability to sort links by Page Authority or Domain Authority, this gives me a great place to start when searching for link weaknesses and opportunities. There is also a feature to filter no-follows

You will see that there is an option to export to csv in the future which will make tracking links a lot easier.

If I was to give a rating it would be 10/10, unless anyone can point me to a better tool I think this is the one I will be using from now on! Thanks SEOMoz!

Mike Blumenthal posted yesterday that Google Local appear to be taking business reviews from non-tradional sources such as blogs.

Here is an example blog post- Von Ray is awesome. If you live in Portland and you need a trainer, you should call him to talk…

The section of text below is where Google Local is picking up the review from

You can see this review by searching for VC Fitness Portland in Google Maps

Taking a look at the above segment of text, it appears that Google are taking the telephone number and associating it with the Google Maps listing, perhaps also picking up on the location “Portland”

This is the same method that Google have been using to gain citations/links, from places like Yelp! and local directory sites.

The weighting of these are not really known yet but I can imagine they will be fairly high as a blog post with a review is a lot rarer than a review from somewhere like Yelp!

Infoserve Provide a Google local guide which can help you claim your business listing

I recently posted about Google Personalising Search, and commented on the unknown impacts that this may have. This along with Google’s site speed announcement are signs that Google are changing the way we search and these changes are likely to change our SEO approach. In order to combat the effects of this we need to be ahead of the game.

User Interface is something that didn’t really have much impact on Search Engine rankings, for example a site with a fairly poor design could be number one for a term purely through links and on page SEO. However I firmly believe that in order for a website to succeed it needs a good User Interface. User Interface is the backbone to success online, after all no matter how much traffic a site has, if that traffic does not convert, it is a wasted effort.

The personalisation of search has meant that websites with a good design and User Interface are more likely to benefit. An example of a site that provides a great user experience is Amazon. They have a great User Interface and have devoted time to developing it, they also have their own personalisation features to make it a more bespoke experience for the user. A user will go to Amazon because they know they can navigate it with ease. This means that Amazon is likely to get repeat customers, which in turn is likely to affect the position that Amazon appears in the SERP’s when Google’s web history is turned on.

Matt Cutts announced at PubCon that Google will be using site speed as a ranking factor in 2010, but just how much of an impact this will have on the ranking algorithm is still not known.

Google have even supplied tools to allow you to check your site speed and suggest changes, you can find them at Let’s make the web faster

Another area which can help you benefit is branding, purely because the more well known you are the more likely a user is going to go to your website again and again. There are many ways in which you can brand your website, one of these is social media and blogging. Twitter is a great tool to interact with customers and increase customer retention, often leading to repeat visits to your site. Blogging and RSS feeds allow users to interact and follow your posts which again can lead to repeat visits.

These repeat visits mean that Google will recognise that the user has visited your site before or several times before and therefore they must think your site is more personally relevant. This will mean that your website will appear higher in the SERP’s for that user. This is of course only likely if web history is turned on.

I still believe that Web History and the Google Caffeine update will not greatly affect a “normal” user, however I do believe that good User Interface coupled with great branding will give you that competitive edge which will allow you to benefit from Google’s recent and future changes.