As with most SEO subjects there is a lot of misinformation surrounding the percentage of keywords you should include within your website text. The video below is a good, simple explanation direct from Google, in summary:

1. No hard and fast rules when it comes to keyword percentages
2. It can vary by site, subject and area
3. You should mention your keyword 2 maybe 3 times, after that it is diminishing returns
4. Repeat the keyword to much and your in danger of doing more harm than good
5. Make sure you have good, relevant copy and add keywords in a natural way
6. Ask someone to read your text to double check that it does sound natural

Both the articles summarised below are a bit longer than the ones we normally share but they are both worth reading and we certainly found good advice and ideas in them. As always please don’t try and embrace everything you read all at once, break it down a bit. It’s OK to take bite size chunks and start working on them straight away and then keep other parts for later. Just make sure you don’t forget about them!

The first article is from Chris Brogan, 97 Ideas for Building a Valuable Platform. Chris has broken down the list into 9 categories, we have listed the categories below with our favourite idea in each one.  LEt us know if you agree and then check out the full article for the other 88!

Start Somewhere
Get in the habit of writing daily, even if you don’t post daily. Start with 200 words. Then 300. The current best bet for a blog post’s length is between 300-500 words. You can get that.

Video. Video. Video
Get a YouTube account. You can use any other platform you want, but you must also use YouTube. It’s the #2 search engine in the world. Why would you NOT use it?

Embrace Brevity
Writing commentary about other people’s ideas is great – occasionally. Start formulating your own brief ideas.

Ideas Drive Platform
Hoarding ideas is like stashing ice cubes under your mattress for later. Use them when you get them, and share them liberally.

Be Yourself
Remember that praise and criticism are the same: other people’s thoughts that shouldn’t sway your overall mission. (We tend to accept praise but loathe criticism. Learn to loathe it equally.)

Your Three Roles
Whether or not you want to be, you are now in sales and customer service, along with whatever your main goal or drive might be.

Overnight Success
Doing the work requires more time and effort than not doing it. Unemployment is also easier than working.

What to Talk/Write About
Deliver instruction. Teaching someone how to do something never goes out of style.

What to Avoid
Want to wow people? Don’t write nasty posts about your competitors.

Second article is from Social Media Examiner, 26 Tips for Writing Great Blog Posts. If we are being honest not a week goes by without seeing a ‘Certain amount of Tips for Blogging’ type article and we usually end up reading them all. Most give advice such as ‘write engaging content that your audience will want to share’ and a pretty much a waste of time but as usually Social Media Examiner have put together some good advice. We have listed the 26 topics below, unfortunately they don’t make that much sense on there own, you will need to take 10 minutes out and read the full article.

#1: Anatomically Correct
#2: Blogging Platform
#3: Categories
#4: Description
#5: Editorial Calendar
#6: Fine-Tune and Revise
#7: Guidelines for Writing for Search Engines
#8: Headings
#9: Images
#10: Journalistic Approach
#11: Killer SEO and Blog Design
#12: Lists
#13: Metrics for Blogging
#14: Names, Titles and Bio
#15: Original vs. Curated Content
#16: Publish and Promote
#17: Questions
#18: Research
#19: Stand Out
#20: Title
#21: User-Centered Content
#22: Valuable Content
#23: Word Count
#24: (E)xcerpt
#25: Your Story
#26: Zone for Writing

We often post about the use of QR codes (Try searching this site for more posts) and we are fans of the use of them but the popular train of thought is that Marketeers love using them but the consumer is not that engaged. Why? Well simply because they don’t really understand them and there is a certain apathy to actually scanning them.

However, it would seem as though they are going to be around a bit longer and we came across a nice article about the creative use of them. The image below shows just how the obvious ideas are often the best, bar codes and basic information has to be printed not he label anyway so why not go just that little bit further?

Pop on over to Mashable to see the original article and the full slideshow of ’10 Creative Ways to use QR codes.’

In order to rank your site Google looks at round 200 different factors and much less than half of Google’s attention is on your website, they are mainly looking at where you are mentioned on the World Wide Web and who is linking back to you. So if you want your website to help in your search engine efforts it is important that it is up to date and that you are adding good relevant content on a timely basis. Lots of businesses find this difficult to do because their website is out of date and it lacks the necessary features for collaboration and conversion. All the websites we build use WordPress. WordPress is a content management system, it is often referred to as the best content managements system in the world and rightly so in our opinion. You can find out more about WordPress here. Why do we use it? There are lots of reasons but to keep it simple:

• Very straightforward to add content
• Automatic software updates
• It is free to use
• Excellent third party themes and features

Basically you can get a feature rich great looking website without all the hassle of coding and programming, it all pretty much comes straight off the shelf. Take a look at some of the themes below, the design and functionality is taken care of, all you have to do is think about content.

Example Themes

Came across a good article on Google Webmaster from Kiss Metrics. It is an update on a previous version and takes into account all of the recent changes and updates and how to get the most from them; including setting up your Webmaster account, the types of information available and integration with Google analytics. Google Webmaster takes a bit of time and effort but it is well worth adding your website. Below is a bit of information from Google including a nice little video that simplifies what Google Webmaster can do to help your business.

• Find out how Google sees your site: Verified site owners can see information about how Google crawls, indexes and ranks your site
• Analyze search data: See how many people found your site in search results, and how many people clicked on it
• Receive alerts in your inbox: We’ll tell you if we detect that your site has malware or generates errors
• Check who links to you: We track links from all over the web, and we’ll show you who added a link to your site
• Tell Google about your site: Submit Sitemaps and see how many pages we added to the index

Came across this article on Marketing Week’s Website and thought it was worth sharing. Model brand Hornby is to launch its first ever brand campaign and it’s aiming it at adults rather than children! Sky Sports and ESPN will replace the normal children’s’ TV spots and ads will also run in cinemas. Logos for all of the companies brands will appear at the end of the advert, can you remember them all? Check out the video below to see if you were right…

We are always looking for new sources of good info to share, just started reading this blog and thought this info graphic was worth sharing based on the fact that the research seems sound and it is really easy to understand. If you pop on over to the original post on Dan Zarrella’s blog you can check out where the figures came from.

More importantly start to incorporate these ideas into your daily twitter schedule, focus on one or two points until you don’t have to think about them anymore and they just become habit, then move on to some of the others. Twitter like all Social Media is about sharing good content that YOUR audience will engage with but you may as well give yourself a helping hand along the way and use some of these tips.

]]> http://mwmarketing.co.uk/how-do-you-get-more-retweets/feed/ 0 http://mwmarketing.co.uk/google-talks-about-search/ http://mwmarketing.co.uk/google-talks-about-search/#comments Mon, 28 Nov 2011 16:27:07 +0000 MW marketing http://mwmarketing.co.uk/?p=37023 Past, present and future.

Nice video from the Google Blog about search, how it was developed, major milestones and what the future holds. It’s interesting to see how far they have come and how quickly we have taken for granted the service that Google supplies. Well worth a watch, enjoy…

Google have been running a Good to Know Campaign for some time now in conjunction with The Citizen’s Advice Bureau. The campaign gives internet users all kinds of advice on data, privacy and overall surfing safety! The latest addition covers:

• Passwords
• Phishing
• Malware
• Secure sites
• Safe networks
• Mobile security
• Check your Gmail account
• Family safety
• Shopping safety
• Signing out of public computers
• Google’s security tools

Take a look at the video below for more information or check out the original at Google.

Beautiful video below that we came across on Mashable. The view from space is not really the type of topic that we would normally blog about but we thought that the production itself warranted a mention because it is an excellent example of how best to showcase great footage. Nice soundtrack, good attention to detail and very engaging content.

The video was originally posted on Vimeo.