How To Be Number One In Google

At last!  After 10 years of trying, I can now say I am number one in Google.

No, I am not some boiler-room SEO sales guy.   Yes, I do have an ego.

Search for "David Norris" and you get me as number one.  Well, you do if you are me, today, from the UK.  Who knows if this is a Google A/B test.

Joking aside, this is a clear sign that Google are taking on Facebook and building a social strategy.  What better incentive to get people to complete their Google profiles than to provoke their ego.  "Want to be number one in Google for your name search?  Get your profile up to date".

I noticed this because I was checking Google Analytics for the traffic to my Google blog (Blogger) and saw a spike in traffic yesterday.  I looked at the source and keywords used and saw a large number of searches for my name delivering traffic.

I did the name search and saw the screenshot above with my name number one with my Google profile with an "edit" button. (Of course! Because I have a Gmail account).   As I use Picasa and Google Contacts, my profile is starting to become very integrated.

It's clear, Google are in battle.  Let the games commence!

Local Business SEO - The Game Has Changed For 2011

Local businesses need to realise that for 2011, there is a step change in search engine marketing.

The old rules of SEO no longer apply. I'll explain why, then I'll suggest some key points that local businesses need to think about.

So - what's changed?

This morning I noticed that the traffic to one of my most visited pages on my blog had seriously dropped.  In early 2008 I wrote about "Raja-Fashions Tailor-Made Hong Kong Suits, Online Meets Offline". It was an experiment, to see just from copy writing using the right keywords I could achieve a good search ranking for "Raja Fashions". Just for kicks.  And it worked.  Number 2 in Google for "Raja Fashions" after the business itself.

In the last two weeks, traffic to this site has halved.  Looking at the reasons why made me realise that as far as Google is concerned, the game has changed.

What's happened now is that instead of being number 2 in the results, high up on the page, Google has massively increased the amount of screen space it uses for the relevant local business result.  Now the "place page" has taken centre stage.

Now as you can see, my blog isn't seen on the screen.  I can count already 17 links to the Raja Fashions site, 4 links to their place page and a two links to "more results from rajafashions.com".

(Now - I am stuffing this blog entry with lots of Raja Fashions keywords, but in this case I'm just doing to tell the story, I'm not doing it to try re-claim my ranking, that's for sure! Although, I can recommend having a high ranking page with lots of opinion on it to use as leverage when you're dealing with a Chinese salesman and you're negotiating on price - but that's another story...)

3 important implications for local businesses...

1. Claim your place page.

Local businesses need to claim their place page more than ever.  These pages will get more traffic, make sure the information is complete and accurate.

2. Design your website navigation with Google in mind. 

Local businesses need to make sure that their website navigation has key call to action and information categories on the menu so that these links are the links shown on the Google results page under the main result.  For example if you were a restaurant, you would want a "Book A Table" link on your primary navigation and a landing page for that purpose.  As well as having the booking interface on the homepage as well of course.

3. Bid on your own brand name

This will push all the aggregators even further down the page because you're claiming the top slot on the page. More real estate for you.

Strategically, here's how I read the situation...

Google has always struggled to sell to local businesses.  They've not got a sales force, unlike yellow page companies or Groupon.  So - they need an automated touch point.  By pushing the place page they do two things.  They drive more traffic to place pages so that local business owners start to take notice.  In parallel, aggregators have to pay to be seen because if you're aggregating local businesses, you're not going to get the same returns that you used to on SEO as there's less and less first page screen real estate to be seen on - so better PPC revenues.  Then, they develop their own automated promotions engine on the platform, coupons, vouchers etc.  Groupon, watch out.

Restaurant Marketing Post-Recession

Where can you get great restaurant marketing advice?

Before the recession it was boom-time in UK restaurant-land. Lots of celebrity chefs, lots of new exciting concepts, lots of new openings. Pubs went gastro. There were more seats available at more tables serving more great food.

Then there was the recession. Restaurants could no longer get bank funding. New openings slowed to a snail's pace. Diners thought twice about dining out. Food inflation. Vouchers became common place. It was a triple whammy; higher costs, lower revenues, lower demand. Ouch!

Some smart restaurants have survived and thrived, through ruthless attention to their proposition and adapting their marketing to the new world.

Next up we have VAT being increased to 20%, unemployment coming from the public sector. The tough times are not over yet.

If you're a restaurateur looking for inspiration and advice to thrive in the internet age, you should check out Abbie Hanks' latest post from theblackboard.net, it's a great restaurant marketing blog with loads of tips and tricks, from SEO to social media to website optimisation and everything inbetween.

In hard times, invest in marketing.

Seven Steps To Heaven

Where online marketing fits in creating customer value, and what this means for return-on-investment calculations

Ecommerce is relatively young, but it’s maturing fast. Increasingly there are few businesses that don’t / can’t exploit the online channel as a route to market.

Many have used online marketing to great effect, and there are plenty with experience and success in areas such as email marketing, SEO, paid search and affiliate marketing.

Of course, the great thing about these methods is that they can be measured and spend can be justified with the success that it brings. However, all too often these channels are viewed in isolation and success is sometimes simply measured by the number of transactions that can be directly attributed to the relevant email, affiliate or search campaign.

It’s clear to me however that to measure success, online marketing investments must be viewed in their context of the overall marketing strategy.

Getting back to basics - what is marketing?

Marketing is concerned with creating value for customers and extracting value from customers.

Long term value creation is based on sustainable competitive advantage, which is derived from the ability to provide superior value for customers and provides the reason why customers consistently buy from one company rather than another.

In ecommerce the value we can provide for customers is based on a number of different factors, including, but not limited to...
- Price
- Choice
- Filter and choice selection tools
- Ease of purchase and payment
- Brand reassurance (if the site is well known)
- Personalisation
- Reviews / advice from other customers
- Delivery and shipping
- Customer service

When we spend money on marketing activity to communicate our proposition to our customers and our potential customers, we are doing three things...

1. Bring new customers (acquisition)
   
2. Generate repeat purchases from existing customers (retention)
   
3. Generate more revenue per customer (development)
   

Given the above I think it really helps to understand WHY you are investing in SEO / PPC / Affiliates / Email etc. A good starting point is to think about customer value and then think about how much a customer is worth to you over their lifetime.

I’ve been a customer at Amazon.co.uk for about 10 years now. I may well be a customer there for another 30 years if they don’t screw up. Clearly, whatever activity they did 10 years ago to get me on board worked, but importantly, it must be measured not against my initial purchase but on the total lifetime customer value.

Over 10 years, I have purchased 190 items. I just checked, on my account history, it’s all there! Plus I rented DVDs on a subscription for 3 years. I am probably worth to Amazon about £4,000 over the 10 year period. PLUS – being a fan I’ve recommended many people over the years.

My first order was Steve Redgrave’s book of rowing, £16. Great book. I don’t know how much Amazon had to spend to acquire me as a customer, but I know for sure that if they had measured their marketing investment on my first purchase only, they would have got it completely wrong.

How to calculate a lifetime customer ROI...

CUSTOMER VALUE
[Price] x [Annual Volume] x [Customer Years]
+ Referral Value
+ Promotional Value
= Total Customer Lifetime Value

VALUE CREATION COSTS
(Cost of Acquisition)
+ (Cost of Retention)
+ (Cost of Development)
+ (Special Requirements)
+ (Marketing Overhead)
= Total Value Creation Costs

TOTAL VALUE = (CUSTOMER VALUE - VALUE CREATION COSTS)

On a really simple level, to gain a sustainable competitive advantage any business needs to provide
- the best customer value (however the customer judges value)
- and the best return on marketing investment over the full customer lifecycle

To help put this into perspective, I find the following model useful.



It shows the key stages in “owning” a customer and for each stage; specific promotional goals are required to achieve the customer response. For a company to be truly successful they need to draw potential customers through all stages.

These stages are the steps by which customers receive and use information in reaching decisions about what actions they will take. From not knowing about your product/service to recommending it to others, there are 7 steps to heaven.

The highest marketing costs are usually for the first stages, on the left. The biggest returns come from the stages on the right.

Now to the crux of what this article addresses...

Where do all of the “online marketing” methods fit on the model above? By understanding this, you have a framework to better present your marketing spend in its proper context.

Awareness: Does the customer know that the product/service exists?

• Online PR, social media marketing
  
• Finding a link to the product when doing a Google search on a relevant keyword (PPC / SEO)
  
• Finding the site on a search from their mobile phone
  
• Clicking on a banner advertisement
  
• Seeing a reference from a known company (contra deals / competitions)
  

Interest: Does the customer think that product might meet their needs?

• If the customer does not know what they are looking for: inspiration is needed, ideas and suggestions
  
• Special offers can drive interest for price-sensitive customers
  
• SEO/PPC must match on specific keywords used and tailor the ad copy to that interest
  

Evaluation: Does the customer have enough information to make a decision?

• Build great content. Photos, maps, specifications, availability
  
• Peer reviews and expert reviews, the community can provide the content
  
• Provide booking services that allow customers to compare and contrast options. Search and filter tools are needed to narrow down choices
  
• Create a shortlist, share with friends (collaborative decision making)
  

Preference: Does the customer choose your product to purchase?

• If the customer already knows that they want a specific product and they search by product name, be sure your PPC / SEO / affiliates takes them directly to the product
  
• Have the product in stock
  
• Ease of purchase (payment methods)
  

1st purchase: Can the customer make a purchase easily?

• Always available, real time, 24/7
  
• On all places where the customer might be (as many websites as possible – affiliates, plus own website)
  
• SMS / email confirmations. Delivery and shipping instructions. 
  

Repeat purchase: Can you easily communicate with existing customers and maintain a relationship with them?

• Make it easy for your site/product to be found again through search 
  
• Maintain a customer database
  
• Email marketing
  
• Segmentation / personalisation of messages
  

Advocacy: Is the customer so impressed by the service that they tell others and generate even more business?

• Customer satisfaction emails
  
• Customer reviews
  
• Guest recognition and personalisation
  
• Case studies and customer-based PR stories, distribute online
  

I find that looking at online marketing as part of the overall marketing strategy helps to provide a better understanding of how to calculate a meaningful return-on-investment beyond the immediate gratification offered by same-session conversion metrics.

What’s obvious to me from the above is that not only is online marketing core to the success of an ecommerce business, but that website product management is also clearly a marketing activity. Often there’s confusion about who owns the website functionality. To me it’s clear; it’s part of the overall customer experience, and forms part of the marketing mix.

One important final note; as we are all different as individuals, so are companies and products. There are some products that do not lend themselves to a lifetime customer value view as much as others. Products or services that are bought infrequently need to mainly address customer acquisition, whereas products or services that are bought frequently or repeatedly required much more emphasis on retention and development.

I’d love to hear comments on how the above list could be expanded. If you have any thoughts about what should / shouldn’t sit on the 7 steps to heaven, let me know!

Don't Be Mediocre, Be A Generalist

Here's a problem. Most e-commerce websites suck. They're average, sub-optimal.

They suck. If they were high street shops you'd see what I mean. Some would not be signposted. My mother would not be able to find anything she wanted in the store, let alone figure out how to pay. They might not even be found if you called directory enquiries. Lighting would be poor, there would be no space to park and you'd be unsure if you were being served by rip-off merchants or a legitimate business.

Sure, there are some great websites out there. A few. However, because web customers are in many ways "invisible" to the businesses that are trying to serve them, site managers running these sites get away with mediocrity.

Small businesses or large businesses, the problem is the same.

In small businesses you need an all rounder running your web business: he or she needs to be able to do a bit of everything and do it really well to be effective. These all-rounders are few and far between. So - good websites for small businesses are few and far between.

In a large web business, you end up with different "specialists" taking on different roles. You get the design team, the merchandising team, the online marketing team, the tech team, the product planning team, the analytics team, etc. They are all brilliant at what they do. Brilliant.

Just why does the site that you end up with suck if they are brilliant? The really great websites are the ones where the teams do "joined up thinking". The site design team know something about SEO. The analytics team knows something about PPC. The product planning team understand affiliate marketing. If they all understand the basic principles behind all of the main disciplines, you'll do fine. If not you can end up with mediocrity. Division of labour brings pockets of excellence and general mediocrity.

The solution to me is clear: every person involved in delivering the website and running it should be familiar with the basics of how all the main disciplines work.

I will give somple examples of what are these "key disciplines" that are needed to overcome mediocrity and suggest 5 tips on how to acquire those skills. I don't for a moment suggest that anyone can be an "expert" in all of these areas. What I am suggesting is that everyone in an ecommerce business that can affect the business results needs to be a "generalist" and be fluent in the basic principles.

This is true whether you are a one-person site manager doing everything or whether you are a specialist in a big company.

Consider ecommerce websites to be like high street shops. If you are running a traditional "bricks and mortar" business, you need to do three things...

1. Attract customers
2. Persuade them to buy when they come through the door. (And ideally, maximise this so that they
buy more than they would normally have done).
3. Encourage them to come back to shop again and become a regular "repeat customer".

Quite simply, running a website / web service is all about customer acquisition, conversion and retention.

Acquisition

Retail is all about selling the right product to the right person at the right time. So to get this right, there's some preparation needed in terms of customer insight / research, developing a brand, building a proposition, product planning & strategy, business case modelling. Then once you have a product you need a communications plan, (including, but not excluding online PR). On a technical side, you need to understand search engine optimisation (3 core pillars; site structure, content and reputation), search engine marketing (paid search), affiliate marketing, social media optimisation, RSS, blogs, ad serving.

Conversion

Here, the most important discipline is user-centred design, also information architecture, followed closely by merchandising techniques and understanding effective calls to action. Think about good error handling, optimising shopping "funnels", accessibility, compelling copy writing, tactical promotions and you might just have scratched the surface.

Retention

Plenty to learn about here too, from email marketing to direct mail (CRM), use of confirmation emails, special offers, customer database management and that's just scratching the surface.

And more...

Underpinning all of the above is a good understanding of web analytics (for traffic sources, keyword analysis, conversion tracking - and a whole lot more).

And to get stuff done, to make it all happen they also need to understand a little about technical things like technical architecture, software development methodologies, project management techniques, be a great tester.

To add some real flavour to the mix, key principles of many academic disciplines come in useful, economics, sociology and psychology.

And to be effective in business generally, you need to know about HR issues for the countries in which you operate, be a great manager, have good negotiation skills, know a little bit about contract law.

If you find someone who does all of the above well and them let them loose on your website - now you're talking! Also, point them my way, I'd love to meet them!


So - if you're just starting out...

5 tips to become a great E-commerce "generalist"

1. Work with great people

We learn so much from working with other people. Put yourself with the best you can find and learn from them. Soak it up.

2. Apply yourself

This industry is only about 10 years old. Most of the so called experts became experts by just applying themselves and learning from their mistakes. You can too.

3. Attend training

If you can, go on specialist training courses. There are few places such as e-consultancy.com where you can get a kick start

4. Read, read and read

You can never read enough. Some of my favourite books are listed here if you need ideas.

5. Have a go

For me this is the most important advice of all. Have a go! I didn't know anything about setting up RSS feeds until I had to do one for this blog. Figure it out, and just try.


One day, most websites will be great. Until then, if you are a "generalist", go make some money!

"The General"

Why Can't I Find You On Google?

Yes, we've all done, it, Googling our name.

I'm as guilty as the rest of them, but I have the challenge of competing with a footballer, a sculptor and a senator for getting a ranking. David Norris - it's hardly a unique name.

More and more "name searches" are taking hold as we "Google" our future employers, our future employees, dates, friends and celebs.

Can you be found if you Google your name? If so, what do you get? If you're in business, your professional repuation will increasingly depend on what people read about you online.

A new start up has just launched that aims to help us all get found. The site is still in Beta, so if you get in there now, you might get a listing for free before they start charging.

It's called lookuppage.com.

Here's how it worked for me:
1. Sign up
2. Create a simple profile
3. I received a call the same day enquiring about how I heard of the service and they explained more about their plans
4. The next day I found my page at www.davidnorris1.com through Google - it was listed in the paid ads! (I didn't pay for the ad - they did)



Interesting business model here. They buy me a domain, pay for PPC, it won't cost them much. I tell all my friends, they sign up, and soon their user base expands fast virally. When they get enough critical mass, they start charging for premuim services and work with corporate accounts. If this works, sales focussed companies and small businesses with low web presence will be eager to get a quick low cost visibility for their key people.

It's great too because I get a legitimate link to this blog from the new page, every link helps!

So - you've nothing to lose, go get your page now before they start charging.

The Answer To Life, The Universe And Everything

Friday fun.

Google is pretty damn clever these days.

Try this search for answer to life, the universe and everything.

Love it.

How Facebook Will Break Into Search

Earlier this year Sproose was launched, a new kid on the block in search.

Using the principle of combining regular algorithmic search engine results with "votes" from users, it's kind of a cross between social bookmarking (think del.icio.us / Digg / Reddit) and the established search engines.

Why is this significant?

Search engines depend on relevancy. If users say "yes this is great site", it probably is. If you can capture that democracy and add it to a wider crawled base of sites, you end up with potentially relevant results.

Does it work?

Not yet. This project really depends on getting critical mass. I looked at the high volume terms for the travel sector "cheap flights" and "hotels" and there were 1 or 2 votes for the top 10 sites listed. These terms get hundreds of thousands of searches a month yet there's only 1 or 2 votes for the top ranked sites.

So if Sproose doesn't work, what will work?

If you combine an established bookmarking site such as Facebook, with an established search engine such as MSN, you could do the same thing, and (most importantly) get it in front of millions of users who would adopt it. If you had an advertising network to monetise that traffic, you'd be onto a winner.

Now didn't Microsoft just buy a share in Facebook?

Next Generation Breadcrumbs - Internal Linking For SEO

Five steps to internal linking heaven...

Breadcrumbs are a useful navigation tool indeed. Nowadays they have been given a "best practice" vote by the customer experience minded folks. Indeed Jakob Neilsen, king of usability says in a post Breadcrumb Navigation Increasingly Useful.

I know I like a page to have breadcrumb navigation. It makes it easy to jump up a level or up a couple of levels without going back to "home".

I often think of pages as being "parents" or "children" in a site. If the home page is your Matriachal Great Grandmother, the category homepage might be the grandfather (her son), the product group page the mother (his daughter) and the product page the child (her son)...

Home > Category > Product Grouping > Product

or...

Great Grandmother > Grandfather > Mother > Child


What have breadcrumbs got to do with SEO?

Breadcrumbs have everything to do with SEO. The search engine spiders will use your internal linking structure to determine which pages you think are most important. If you link more often to a page yourself, you must think it's important and search engines take that logic onboard when mapping out your site. Given that a breadcrumb consists of many links on all pages, it's a good place to start.


Step 1 - The basic state

Imagine the following (hypothetical) site with 4 levels in it's heirachy:

Home (1 page) > Category pages (8 pages) > Product grouping pages (30 pages per category) > Product pages (200 per category grouping).

This gives me a site with 6,249 unique pages.

Assume that the homepage does not have a breadcrumb, but that all the others pages have one do according to the site structure given above.

The total count of links into each page type created by breadcrumbs will be
Homepage: 8 + 240 + 48,000 = 48,248
Product category page: 6,030
Product grouping page: 200
Product page: 0

In this example, the homepage gets a huge number of links. After that, the page that gets most links from breadcrumbs is the product category page. The product page itself is not getting any links.


Step 2 - The medium state

You may not be happy about sending all of your links to your category pages. Perhaps on your website these pages are not the ones that you want to rank highest. Maybe your aim is to get the product grouping pages to rank higher. What can you do?

The next step is to try and add in some peer to peer linking. By this I mean linking from every page to all of it's "brothers and sisters". This could be done using say a side navigation bar. From a a usability point of view it might make sense as well - your users will be able to browse in a horizontal fashion. We do all the time in the real world. When we look at a pair of trousers in a clothes shop, we look at many pairs before trying some on - you wouldn't expect to have to go to the aisle end every time you'd looked at a pair.

The lower down pages in the heirachy have more sisters and brothers than the ones above them in the heirachy.

New links from "brother / sister" linking:
Homepage: 0
Product category page: 7
Product grouping page: 29
Product page: 199

Let's also assume also that your site template has "tabs" in the header that link to all of the category pages, plus the homepage.

New links from primary navigation (tabs)
Homepage: 6,248
Product category page: 6,248
Product grouping page: 6,248
Product page: 6,248

The new totals for internal links now stand as follows...

Homepage: 54,496
Product category page: 12,285
Product grouping page: 6,477
Product page: 6,447

We're getting there, but our category grouping pages need more help.


Step 3 - The advanced state

I'm still need more links to my product grouping pages. These are the ones I want to see top of Google's rankings.

What can I do?

Here's a simple idea. Link to every product grouping page from my site footer. This appears on every page of the site, that's another 6248 links (one from every page on the site) to each product grouping page.

New totals:

Homepage: 54,496
Product category page: 12,285
Product grouping page: 12,726
Product page: 6,447



Step 4 - The enlightened state


Here's the crunch point. Here's where you might want to mess with your nice neat site structure to benefit SEO. It could comprimise your usability, maybe not.

Here's what you do.

Change from:

Home > Category > Grouping > Product

To

Home > Category

And

Home > Grouping > Product

The Category page still has home as it's parent. However, if you navigate from this page onto the Grouping page your breadcrumb does not show the category page as the parent, it will still show Home as the parent.

"No no!", I hear the purists cry. I agree that this is less than optimal for usability, but just remember this - that your category pages are still accessible through the tabs.

Why do this? Well, if I do some calculations on the resulting link count per page it now ends up like this:

Homepage: 54,496
Product category page: 6,256
Product grouping page: 12,726
Product page: 6,447

Apart from my homepage, my product grouping pages (all 30 of them) are the highest linked pages on the site.

Job done. Or maybe not. You could still do more...


Step 5 - Linking nirvana


You might want to consider adding some "children" to your product pages. How about "product reviews", "colour options", and "sizing options". That's 3 pages per product page (6000 products), so that's another 18,000 pages you've just added to your site. That's 18,000 footer links, 18,000 header links and 18,000 breadcrumbs from pages you're not too fussed about whether they rank or not. What does that do to your link count?

Homepage: 72,497
Product category page: 6,256
Product grouping page: 48,726
Product page: 24,448

Now we're rocking.


Summary

Every page should have it's position in the hierarchy (family)

The URL does not need to reflect the hierarchy

The hierarchy does not always need to reflect the user journey

The hierarchy should create more links to your most important pages

I hope I've got the maths correct in this post. If you find any errors be sure to let me know, but either way, the principles behind it do work.

Search Engine Strategies Conference 2008

Want to understand SEO? This is a good place to start.

I've been to the Search Engine Strategies London conference for several years now. It's a 3 day event that focuses on both PPC and SEO (natural and paid search).

For 2008 it will be held at the Business Design Centre, Islington (North London).

For a fiver less than a grand you get to attend for all 3 days (February 19-21, 2008). I suggest that you carefully plan your visit to focus on the areas that you're most interested in. Once you're there, don't be afraid to leave a session that isn't giving you what you need.

You should come away from the conference having built up a very good awareness of the key issues to address when optimising a site. At the end of the day it's pretty simple: if a site is built well it will be both well optimised for users and for search engines. They are not mutually exclusive.

If you need a hotel or accommodation in London during your stay, try hotels in London from Expedia.co.uk. They have a good range of hotels to choose from at good prices.

Online Copywriting Best Practice

So how should you write for the web? Here's some top tips to get you started.

1. Keep sentences short

Short sentences are easier to digest. They require less brainpower. Your visitors are one click away from your competitors, so don't make it difficult. If your sentence can be written simply, write it simply.

2. Get the message across quickly

You can get the essence of your communication across in the first few words. Don't make someone read through a whole paragraph to get to the point - they'll not get that far.

3. Use the words of your audience

Your vocabulary needs to use the words that your readers are familiar with. There are 2 good reasons for this. One: it's easier to understand. Two: these are the words most likely to be typed in by your visitors to Google. If you put these words on your page, your copy will already be on the way to being optimised for search engines. Use Google's keyword suggestion tool to research what words to use.

4. Keep paragraphs short

A good example of this is the BBC news site. Each paragraph is simple, short and easy to digest. Long paragraphs are just hard work.

BBC example article: Facebook's developer platform

5. Use good grammar and spelling

It sounds simple, and it is. I don't claim to be perfect either. I do however see sites that lose credibility at the last hurdle with a spelling mistake.

6. Be consistent in your style

By style I mean the way in which you use numbers, abbreviations, dates and terminology. It just makes your site more coherent.

7. DON'T USE UPPER CASE

It's so much easier to read sentence case!

8. Use headings, subheadings and bullet points

This gives your article structure, makes it easy to scan read. Website visitors rarely read every word - they need to be able to scan through quickly and select what copy they feel like engaging with. Ask yourself the question: "can I see at a glance what this article is about from 5 feet away?"

Related articles

• Interesting article from Jakob Neilson: Passive Voice Is Redeemed For Web Headings
• Fantastic site for online copy writing: Nick Usbourne's Excess Voice - copy writing tips for the web

50 Ways to Make Google Love Your Web Site

Steve Johnston has just published an ebook called 50 Ways to Make Google Love Your Web Site. It is a great SEO read for webmasters.

Who is Steve Johnston? He's a Google Consultant, he specialises in getting under the skin of your website and making sure that you know what you need to do to get your site ranked in Google and to do it in a way that it above board with no hidden tricks. I've employed Steve on a project and was pleased with his professionalism, work ethic and advice.