OUR BLOG

Full technical SEO audits deliver huge benefits to the sites analysed when done by an expert with the right tools. There are many tools on the market that can help gather intelligence and test the website, but the latest one creating a buzz is the Web Developer Plugin for Firefox and Chrome, which comes with a serious amount of functionality. Key features include the fact it can turn off Javascript, offers easy viewing of a page’s meta tag information, checks if images have alt text, and can view all the link information on a page in one place.You can…

There’s no doubt that full SEO website audits are worthwhile and deliver great results, but the time, effort and cost involved often puts off small and medium-sized businesses. Why Conduct a Lite SEO Site Audit?  This is where a lite SEO audit comes in - an expert looks over your site, pointing out weaknesses and missed opportunities that can be fixed relatively quickly and cheaply. Simple and effective, and a move which still has the potential to have significant benefits for your traffic and search engine rankings. Common problems found in these type of audits include old pages not…

Fundraising events are the lifeblood of charities, offering supporters the chance to donate their money, time and talent to your good cause, raising serious amounts in the process. But independent fundraisers and third party fundraisers are becoming more common, particularly online, taking the time and effort away from charities in the organisation of large-scale money-making events. These Independent Fundraising Events (IFEs) raised an estimated $800m in the US in 2008, so they’re a growing force that charities in the UK should be looking to harness. Analysis of the limited data available by Blackbaud showed much of this activity was…

With the continued growth in online giving, there has never been a better time for charities to harness the power of the internet, in particular the power of key words in Google. Google Grants offers up to $10K of free advertising each month to UK charities, allowing them to target adverts to relevant searches. So far, so brilliant - but in order to make maximum use of this charities need to take into account three key things. Increasing the number of keywords attached to your campaign is likely to attract new donors, especially if you use words such as…

Whenever a business or charity asks about video I always recommend posting video content on YouTube and then funnelling the videos back onto their own website.   Not only does YouTube invest heavily in its server infrastructure – far more than you can likely to afford if you did it yourselves.  But also there’s loads of SEO benefits that come from the social liking and linking aspects of YouTube. YouTube’s Non-Profits programmes supports charities in the UK by giving them premium features for free, including clickable calls to action in videos and donate buttons to increase fundraising. All this for…

I’ve met with a number of charities in the last few weeks who’ve wanted to get more traffic to their website.  It might be to raise their profile, to sell their latest idea, or to raise more funds, but it all starts with Google. What surprises me is that so few charities know about Google Grants a programme for charities which offers $10k of free advertising on Google per month.  That’s right, $120k of funding per year. Think about it, if part of your charity delivers services which help to fund your good work, such as meeting rooms or…

For many B2B small business owners, gaining new leads through Google is their holy grail. At all costs their new website must deliver new leads.  As in many walks of life understanding the beast can help you master it, but many small business owners fail to grasp how Google works at an elementary level.  That’s a real problem. This article from SEOmoz gives a (fairly) gentle overview of the way that Google works and how they’re trying to make improvements to the worlds favourite search engine.  It’s really worth spending some time studying, as once you understand the way…

Yesterday I started talking about how Google works.  If you’re a business owner, and you treat your website as an important source of new business leads, then I think it’s critical to understand the Google machine.  Just a little bit of time spent understanding the way Google works can really help the average business owner drive their website project forward in an informed way. At it’s core Google is incredibly simple to understand, and at the same time massively complex and hidden by a veil of secrecy.  Google aren’t too keen to share their secrets as it will make it…

Almost every business I meet wants more leads.  They want more leads quickly, and with the least effort and cost.  It is, for many business owners the reason their website exists – and their number one priority is driving more leads from Google. Google search results fall into two categories - paid search results (or sponsored links) and natural search results (one’s you can’t pay for). I’m going to start with paid search results, these are the ones that appear in a Google search at the top of the screen and to the right.  They’re boxed out, to draw your…

Following on from yesterdays discussion of infographics, this article from Econsultancy gives examples of other free tools you can use to satiate your desire for data as art. Read on... How to make an infographic online.…