Tari's blog

The Do's and Don't of Using Article Submission Sites

Fri, 06 Jul 2012 14:01:28 +0100

However each one has their own rules and regulations, and if not followed properly submission can take hours rather than seconds. There are a few do’s and don’ts to bear in mind when submitting an article.

DO

Make sure your copy is original

It doesn’t matter if it’s one of your articles that has been published elsewhere, or if it’s been lifted from a website that tells the story better than you assume you could. Some article submission sites do allow you to post articles that have previously been published online, however the majority see it as cheating and will penalise you as such. This is also false economy as a good bulk copywriter will be able to offer you completely original affordable articles that add value to your brand. So if you don’t know what to say, let someone else do it for you.

Make sure your link is relevant

Some sites allow you to insert more than one self-serving links, yet each one must be relevant to the topic in hand. For instance if you publish an article about diet tips when your company sells bath products, your article will be rejected.

Make Sure your Article is Informative

This is where a lot of people slip up, as they use article submission sites to promote their business. With this method in mind, their offerings are usually promotional detailing the special products or service of the business they want to promote. Article submission sites have tightened their rules and if your offering doesn’t give information or add value to the reader, it will be rejected.

A good copywriter will help with this, for instance, a company that sells teeth whitening products could publish articles on:

• How to Maintain a Good Oral Hygiene Routine

• The History of Teeth Whitening involves a Prostitute, A German and a Sausage (It truly does)

• Celebrities who partake in teeth whitening

• A Review of the Book White Teeth by Zadie Smith

The keywords teeth whitening can then be inserted naturally with an integrated link to the teeth whitening website. This will subtly lead readers there whilst still providing valuable content that Google will recognise as it pushes your site up the ranks.

DON’T

Spam

Don’t be encouraged to spam, no matter what the subject, you may be tempted to overload the article with your favourite keywords. Although on your own website a keyword density of 5% may be optimum with submission sites, 3% is usually the limit.

Assume your Customers Will Never Read It

Although article submissions are a wonderful way to increase Google rankings and create backlinks, many assume this is their only purpose. Submitting any old copy just so they can insert the valuable link, people forget that these articles are also read but thousands of people that could use the link to travel to your website. Treat every article as a first impression, as if you submit rubbish, that’s exactly what these potential customers will think your business is worth.

Just Leave it There

Once your article is published you may assume that’s a job well done, however for it to be recognised as valuable content you need people to read it. So share, share and share. Post it on twitter, on your Facebook business page, on Linked in, or even give it a link on your own website.

Why Content Should Always Be Valuable

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 10:07:52 +0100

Recently Google introduced Spam bots, whether these are actual people or clever algorithms remains to be seen, however this has meant a big shift in the way we see our external copy when producing backlinks for businesses.

We’ve always understood the need for valuable copy, as some businesses would throw anything out there just to insert a link or keywords; we know that nothing beats unique and original content that adds value to a reader’s experience. However, it seems that Google knows this too, and if your copy is considered to be lacking in information or entertainment they’ll quite literally bypass it ignoring the valuable link you’ve worked hard to insert.

Think of Your Target Audience

Take Google out of the picture for a moment and think of your business and your target audience. Many people believe that customers won’t read the articles submitted to submission sites, or the guest blogs that create backlinks. They use these mediums solely as a way to push them up the Google ladder, however inadvertently every piece of copy you put out there, is also a wonderful advertising tool.

You wouldn’t dream of littering your landing page with copy that would make a seven year old despair, and external copy is no different. If your customers are searching for your product or service they will happen across these articles and if they are quite simply rubbish, they’ll move onto someone else.

Think of the Potential

Although initially your external copy may be a means of creating backlinks, whenever you submit copy to the internet, others will read it. Imagine every piece of copy as being your first impression to a potential customer, and inadvertently you can turn those readers into buyers. If you create copy that contains good information that entertains the reader making them want to read more on the subject, they will click on your link creating an extra visitor to your site. Use information relevant to your brand such as recipes if you sell cookware, relaxation tips if you sell bath products or recycling tps if you own a skip hire company.

A Win Win Situation

So although Google have moved the benchmark once again, this change is actually for the best. Businesses will be encouraged to submit quality copy that not only promotes their business in the best possible light, but increases traffic from every possible angle.

How To Drive Traffic To Your Site

Fri, 18 May 2012 10:24:50 +0100

You could have the best product ever to hit the market, or your service could receive 100% positive feedback, or your offers could be lower than any of your competitors. However, without the traffic to your website, word will never get out. Although some methods do require professional services, such as an SEO specialist or link builder, there are proactive ways so you can make sure you’re doing your bit to increase the online awareness of your brand and business.

Good Old Google

Everyone desires that elusive top spot on the first page of Google. Of course this is the perfect advertisement, as it places your product or service directly in front of the customer, at the point when they’ve already made a decision to buy. A good SEO expert will help you climb the ranks and may even promise a place on the 1^st place podium. However, Google appreciates your efforts too and can be impressed by our input such as:

Quality Content

As Google changes their algorithms, many businesses now understand the need for quality content. Keywords are great, but if a homepage is scattered with them, providing nothing more than a landing point that gives no value to the reader, Google will simply move on. Make sure with your content that you speak to the audience: add information they wouldn’t be able to find anywhere else: give them a reason to visit rather than just a full on sales pitch and you’ll find that if you build it, they will come.

You can do this in a variety of ways - add blogs, guest books, interactive content that entertains and informs and appeal to your community. For example, if you sell tools, why not add blogs about DIY; how to mend a leaky shower tray; how to use a jigsaw etc. These all make sure that people find your site useful and they may just buy your tools to do the job!

Get Involved

There are so many online communities out there and one for every business model. By becoming involved, participating in forums and answering people’s questions, you will show your experience and knowledge, whilst having a handy portal where you can add a link for the customer to read more. (This extra information just so happens to be your own blog on your website). For example, if you sell fitness equipment, join the forums and offer advice to those looking to build muscle or lose weight. Don’t spam though, as some people simply insert a link or copy and paste info which is easily overlooked.

Be a Social Butterfly

Twitter is ideal for drumming up business. Firstly, follow everyone that is even slightly involved in your business or product. For example, a gardening business could follow over 5000 people such as gardening writers, magazine editors, columnists, garden centres. The list is endless. Keep in touch and tweet them directly. Then move over to Facebook and create your own business page there, adopting the same technique as you invite similar businesses and people to like your page.

Top Copywriting Tips

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 13:58:48 +0100

Hiring a copywriter is an ideal way to make sure your copy pulls your client or customer into your brand, a good copywriter will also make sure your keywords are integrated successfully so only Google notices them and the insertion of these little magic gems doesn’t interrupt your visitors experience.

However, many new businesses are on a budget, with design companies, marketing gurus, SEO specialists and developers there’s seems little left over for the copy for content. Here we let you into a few copywriting tricks and tips so you can try to optimise your content yourself.

Make it Personal

People adore convenience; however we are a nation of a “have it all” society. You can use this to your advantage. Although many of us enjoy the anonymity of shopping online from an office or comfortable home environment, we also yearn for the days when we’d be greeted by the sound of a shop bell and a warm welcome from an assistant behind the counter. I follow the three C’s when copywriting, to make sure each visitor feels the warm welcome they deserve. These are:

Clear, Concise and Conversational

You need your customers to feel as if they are being greeted personally; many business owners make the mistake of using an online thesaurus to find lengthy words of three syllables or more when they would never dream of using these if selling face to face. These dictionary words only serve to alienate your customer, making them feel a little silly for not understanding your message.

Speak to Them

Just as you would in conversation, use the second person as much as you can. This pulls the visitor in and makes them believe your homepage was written with them in mind. By creating this bond, you are attracting loyalty for your brand so instead of saying “people love our products” try, “you will adore our products because…”

Be Confident

A lot of copywriting simply needs a little injection of confidence. People feel silly bragging about their brand online, however if they are not confident in the product they are pitching; customers will be unlikely to buy. We don’t have to be over the top, or make claims we can never live up to, however by placing an emphasis on your unique selling points along with the parts of your business you’re proud of, you’ll exude a passion that promises profits.

Understand the Scanner

Internet users don’t read webpages the same way they would do a magazine. In an age of convenience, most of us scan a webpage taking in the first and last lines of a paragraph as well as mentally storing any important words. We also read a web page from the top right hand corner first (the perfect place for your contact details) to the middle, the top left and finally the bottom right. Understanding the way people scan pages helps you to organise your copy effectively.

SEO Headlines 13/04/12

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 19:27:26 +0100

Adwords gets cheaper

Three online advertising firms have that all reported a decrease in the cost per click of using adwords over the past 12 months. Efficient Frontier claimed that CPC had become 5% cheaper on average. The retail sector has seen a bigger drop of 17%. However ad costs on Bing are reported to have increased in cost by 15%.

How to get links to new content

Rand Fishkin has shared 5 great tips for getting the most out of new content:

Find the people you want to share your content, before you create it. Then email them asking for their feedback on your ideas for content. It makes a great ice breaker.
Find a group of people who feel passionately about a subject (such as political issues, charity or even a brand), then create content which panders to their interests.
Find poorly present data and make it interesting.
Go into forums and social websites to see what people in your industry are talking about, to find ideas for content which will interest them and others. Make people talking about the subject aware of your content.
"Rank stuff". Create lists and rank people, businesses or anything in your industry. Find a few criteria you can use, and then combine them to create a ranking score. Rand claims that this strategy almost never fails to get attention.

Google+ redesign

After just 9 months since launching, Google+ has undergone a complete redesign. The main change seems to be that the site can now be personalised to a greater degree. Icons for Circles, Profile, Games, etc. are now listed down the left hand-side instead of along the top and can be rearranged by dragging and dropping.

However the change which seems to be getting the most attention is that content is no longer centred. Instead it is aligned to the left and additional content spreads outward to the right. When there is no additional content to display, it leaves a lot of whitespace to the right, especially on large monitors.

The whitespace issue was even trending on Google+. That's right, "trending" phrases are now highlighted in Google's social network, in exactly the same way a certain other social network uses them, and as a result is constantly referenced in mainstream media. It seems like Google wants a slice of that pie.

Google+ membership doubles over 3 months

Along with the redesign, Google announced that 170 million users now have Google+ profiles, that's up from the figure of 90 million which was announced exactly 3 months earlier. How many of those are activity using their accounts was not revealed.

Pinterest now endorsed by world's largest stores

Both Amazon.com and eBay have decided to add Pinterest buttons to all of their product pages. If you still needed convincing that the latest social media/image sharing craze was going to catch on, you can't get a much bigger recommendation online than that.

Yahoo restructures

Yahoo has downsized considerably by axing nearly 2,000 of their 16,000 employees. Surprisingly, despite the fact that they now use Bing for search instead of their own engine, they still have 2,000 people employed in their search sector. What exactly they do is unknown.

All search engines used more in 2012 (apart from Yahoo!)

Good news if you run any of the most well known Internet search engines, people are using your service more (unless you run Yahoo)! We're not just talking about the expected increase in Google (10%) and Bing's (19%) usage, even AOL (5%) and Ask.com (7%) are have grown in usage in March 2012 compared with March 2011. The only decline was seen by Yahoo, whose usage fell by 5%.

Google applies for several gTLD, but why?

Google have forked out several bundles of $185,000 to obtain multiple gTLDs. That means they can make web addresses be anything they like without having to add a .com or .co.uk to the end.

The search giant hasn't explained what it plans to do with its new Top Level Domains, but Miranda Miller has a good theory. We know that Google isn't ashamed to copy ideas for its social network from other networks. So it seems surprising that business's and people's profiles can't be found on simple URLs like "plus.google.com/taridigital/". Instead they are located on somewhat ugly URL such as "plus.google.com/107770281848490849734/".

Could it be that Google are waiting for their gTLD to be approved so that they can give people pages with extremely simple URLs like "taridigital.google" or even "taridigital.g+"?

SEO Headlines 06/04/12

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 19:20:07 +0100

Google takes action against cowboy link builders

My biggest frustration with the SEO industry is highlighted by the number of people who come to Tari looking for SEO work after the previous company they hired didn't do anything for them. When I looking into the work the previous SEO company did, it is almost always just link spam. I hate to see that well meaning SMEs are being ripped-off while dodgy characters get rich out of their SEO scams.

With that in mind, (and last week's news of spam link networks being de-indexed) it is good to see that Google are taking action which will help website owners become aware that they are being ripped-off. To do this they are sending a messages to website owners through webmaster tools to report if a "site’s pages may be using techniques that are outside Google’s Webmaster Guidelines".

The message goes on "Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes."

While Google have simply stated that they are improving communications with webmasters, it seems that part of the reason for these messages may be, an effort to protect businesses from SEO scams, since most people performing black hat SEO for their own websites don't need Google to tell them that they are doing it.

Most popular social media strategies for business

You won't be surprised to hear that Facebook and Twitter are the most popular uses of social media for businesses but what else are businesses using?

[image]

As you can see above, LinkedIn is clearly the third social network for businesses. Blogs are important for 61% of businesses while video content is used by 57% of companies. Google+ is fairly far behind the other social media networks with just 40% of businesses using it actively, however 67% of those asked plan to increase their Goolge+ usage.

As with any comparison of Goolge+ and other networks, it's important to keep in mind that Google+ is still less than 1 year old, but also that it is owned by one of the most influential organisations in the world.

Australia court case finds Adwords guilty

On Tuesday Google was told it was responsible for misleading adverts which appear on its network. The company has been ordered to develop a program to comply with consumer law and pay the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission's court costs.

On Thursday US lawmakers raises concerns about a more extreme misuse of adwords, as Google was accused of profiting from human trafficking since they were not proactive enough to prevent this type of advertisement.

Google Tweaks

Here are the highlights of this month's official Google search engine updates list.

Improved indexing of over 200 social sites' profile pages

Freshness of web pages now important for all queries (not just news related searches)

Improvements to how anchor text is used (vague, I know)

The following symbols will now be indexed by Google (previously they were striped from searches): % $ \ . @ # +

Each of these changes could be fairly important or barely noticeable but it's interesting to see Google looking even closer at social websites and once again increasing the importance of updating your website regularly.

SEO Headlines 30/03/12

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 17:22:42 +0100

Who rules Google?

Recent reports have indicated that Wikipedia appears on page one of over 40% of Google searches. This was somewhat controversial news but when you consider that Wikipedia is a helpful reference to hundreds of millions of people every month, without taking any profit for themselves (when they could be making billions), it's seems wrong to resent them.

More worryingly, a new study suggests that Wikipedia isn't Google's most recommended website. In fact a very much, profit-lead website is dominating the search results, that website being Amazon. In fairness, the keywords used in the research focused on high value keywords which are more likely to be searched for by people looking to make purchases, but perhaps that makes it worse.

The question is, should Google be directing so many users to one retailer which ensures a good experience for its users, or should they be taking a larger social responsibility and supporting thousands of smaller businesses?

Mobile ads become a substantial portion of the market

A new report indicates that at the current growth rates, a massive 25% of search ad clicks will come from mobile devices by December 2012. It might be time to put a little more thought into that mobile strategy!

Google wins a victory over a link spam network

In recent months there has been a growing concern about the number of websites making successful businesses out of spam link networks. These networks are usually made up of a large number of websites which don't provide people with anything useful, but include links to anyone who pays in order to fool Google into thinking a website is important.

So it is heartening to learn that one such network has decided to close down, since on the 19^th of March Google deindexed the "overwhelming majority" of their websites. There are also reports that a number of other networks were hit.

Android phone users' location monitored for road traffic estimates

Google Maps is now reporting how busy roads are in real-time. Google have stated that the information comes from a "combination of data from third party sources and information that Android users have chosen to share by opting in to the My Location feature on Google Maps"

Facebook improving its search engine

A team of engines from Facebook, headed by an ex-Google employee, are working on improving its inbuilt search feature. It is unlikely that Facebook would dare to challenge Google in this area but there are benefits from revamping search within its own website. Users would be able to find which other users are talking about subjects that interest them and Facebook would benefit from PPC ads as well as more data mining, allowing for even more targeted advertising.

Why your Google Places listing may be taken down

Several small businesses have reported receiving phone calls from Google asking if they serve customers at their business address. A few days later their Google Places listing has been taken down.

On the 22th of March Google updated their quality guidelines to read:

"If you don't receive customers at your location, you must select the "Do not show my business address on my Maps listing" option within your dashboard. If you don't hide your address, your listing may be removed from Google Maps."

The good news is that it seems that changing your address setting, as suggested above, will quickly bring your listing back. So don't get too worried!

SEO headlines 23/03/12

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 16:18:37 +0000

New over-optimisation penalty on the way

During a Q&A session, Google's Matt Cutts has revealed that Google are working on a new penalty to lower the ranking of websites which have focused too closely on trying to win at SEO instead of creating the best content.

While he didn't go into specifics, he mentioned, "We are trying to make GoogleBot smarter, make our relevance better, and we are also looking for those who abuse it, like too many keywords on a page, or exchange way too many links or go well beyond what you normally expect". The change to the algorithm is likely to occur in the next few weeks or months. Don't worry, any website who focuses on user experience over keyword density, probably won't be affected.

Going viral on Pinterest

Reaching 10 million users in January, it seems like Pinterest is the next Twitter. If you don't know, Pinterest is basically a social network for "pinning" images which interest you to your page. So if you want to jump on the bandwagon early, Colby Almond has provided a great insight into the effect of content going viral on Pinterest and how he achieved it.

In the heyday of Digg, Colby could achieve up to 40,000 visits by his content reaching the homepage. With Pinterest he managed 200,000 visits, with an average time on site of over 2 minutes, in comparison with 10 seconds from Digg traffic.

Colby's tactic for gaining Pinterest traffic is to create what he calls "instructorgraphics". These are step-by-step guides in a graphical form. The key element is to make the image larger than 2,500 pixels long. This ensures that Pinterest users will have to visit your website in order to read the instructions. Very clever.

Rich snippets & poor webmasters

Another critical look at Google from SEO Book, points out how Google is encouraging websites to use rich snippets with the incentive of more noticeable search result listings; but then the website is stung, by Google using the information in the snippet so that users don't need to visit the providers website.

Firefox hides Google search data from webmasters

In a bid to increase piracy for Firefox users, Mozilla are testing methods of using SSL to prevent data sent to Google becoming available to 3^rd parties. Most web users are always happy to hear about increased privacy but for website owner, it is likely to result in a reduction in data available to them through analytics software.

The real worry is that other browsers won't want to fall behind in the "we care more about privacy" wars, and if they all jumped on the bandwagon, we could lose most of our search query analytics information.

Google removes Chrome penalty

After 60 days, Google has lifted the self-imposed penalty it gave itself when paid-for-links were discovered pointing to the browser's download page. If the penalty for breaking Google's rules only last 60 days, that doesn't seem like much of a deterrent in comparison to the benefits of a high ranking.

In spite of this, at Tari digital we will continue with our ethical SEO – you can be sure Google would be less tolerant of others breaking the rules.

Wikipedia appears in search results 46% of the time

Back in February we pointed to some research that showed Wikipedia pages appeared in the results of searches for single word nouns, 99% of the time. A new study has come in this week which has assessed the visibility of Wikipedia on more typical types of searches. Instead of just studying the results of searches like "cat", the new study also includes searches like "funny Valentine's cards". The new research found that Wikipedia appeared in just 46% of search results on page one, much less than previously estimated.

The New iPad!

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 11:43:55 +0000

With a little careful and strategic planning on behalf of the Tari Digital team (we walked into our local store after lunch!), we were able to get hold of the latest member on the Apple 'tree' on the release date (Friday 18th March 2012), without having to queue up! We did feel sorry for the poor chaps who had camped outside their local store since the announcement, but it just goes to prove - patience is a virtue!

Hopefully Victoria will have it in her hands within the next couple of days and she'll let us who what she thinks of the hottest gadget around!

Seo Headlines 16/03/2012

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 09:35:46 +0000

Tool for finding link patterns

Yesterday I was moaning to anyone who would listen about how some websites seem to get away with building hundreds of links from websites which exist, blatantly just to manipulate search engines. I was manually checking spam backlinks to a website and noticed a very simple pattern that all the links came from just three types of places; profiles, blog comments and automated articles on private blog networks (blogs that attempt to look normal to search engines but their content is machine generated gibberish).

Today I've come across something which could have saved me the trouble, a new (and not quite finished) tool for finding the types of links which point to a website. Very useful for getting an overview of a website's backlink profile.

Linkbuilding with memes

According to Takeshi Young, memes — usually in the form of images with a humorous caption in a large font typed on top — are apparently great for getting social media exposure. All you need to do is work out which memes are currently popular (or come up with your own), and make a version relevant to your industry. Then when you share it on Facebook, your post will end up being shared by lots of people, if they find it funny.

Should "SEO" rebrand as "inbound marketing"?

The phrase "SEO" holds negative connotations with some, thanks to the sorts of spam mentioned above, so there is talk of some SEO specialists changing their job titles to "Inbound Marketer". It's not just the negative feelings for SEO that are causing this feeling, today the job of an SEO professional really encompasses a lot more than optimising a page's meta tags and keyword density. It's about writing interesting articles, filming and editing entertaining videos, producing informative images, engaging with people through social media, networking and much more.

The term SEO seems too narrow for some. But to me the word "inbound" is even less descriptive of what the job involves. I'll just stick with "Internet marketing".

Video: Behind the scenes at Google

For the first time, the Google Search Quality Team have recorded a meeting and posted it on their blog. The idea is to let us see how much thought goes into every decision they make. In this case, the team are discussing the advantages and disadvantages of a minor change to their spell checker.

SEO is even more important now, then at the last time we told you how important it was

The way most websites gage the effectiveness of their SEO campaign is through Google Analytics. To do this, they look in "traffic sources" then look under "organic" to see how much traffic it brings to their website. But a new report suggests that doing this means you miss a big part of the picture.

Your direct traffic (people who typed your address directly into their browser) also owes a lot to SEO. The report shows that unless you run a well known brand offline, chances are that most of the direct traffic comes from visitors returning who originally found your website through a search engine.

The study suggests that the value of direct traffic is overvalued and because of that, organic search traffic is undervalued by as much as 82%!

SEO Headlines 09/03/12

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 14:20:42 +0000

Hints at "Search Plus Your World" expanding beyond the US

Google began encrypting searches of logged in users from Google.com in October. This prevented site owners from seeing the keywords being searched for by some in their analytics tools. When "Search Plus Your World" began further personalising results in the US, it seemed that the encryption was mostly due to that.

Google have announced that the encryption is soon moving to international variations of the search engine outside of the US. That seems to indicate that "Search Plus Your World" will follow, not long after.

Stop Press: Google is the most popular search engine

You probably won't be surprised to hear that a recent survey of 1,900 people found Google was the most popular search engine, being used by 83% of those questioned. 85% showed concern about search engines collecting data to personalise results. But search personalisation isn't as new as most believe. It is unlikely that many of those questioned realise that search results have been personalised in some way since 2005.

Google Webmaster Tools now available to multiple users

It took Google+ pages just three months to allow multiple administrators but Webmaster Tools has only just enabled it after 5 years. New administrator can be granted different levels of access, from complete control to just being able to view stats and messages.

Thanks for the +1

A new feature has been spotted on the Google search results page. Next to images of results which have been +1'd by someone in your Google+ circles, some searchers have seen a "thank" link. Clicking it open a Google+ message box to the person who had +1'd the page.

Google say that in the same way you would thank a friend for providing a helpful recommendation, this feature allows you to do that online.

Google's double standards

Aaron Wall highlights some more examples of Google using double standards to allow big businesses to get away with the sorts of thing which would cause small businesses to face a penalty. He notes that when BMW and wordpress.org were caught using black hat techniques, they got their rankings back within days, yet in 2009 Google handed out 30,000 lifetime bans to Adwords advertisers. One unfairly banned user got their account back because they knew an ex-Google employee. There was no such relief for people who didn't have friends in high places.

And the winner is... New iPad Competition Winner

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 18:46:47 +0000

Thank you to everyone who took part in our very successful "Win an iPad" competition.

Congratulations to Ms. V. Smith from Stockport who is our winner.

Ms Smith opted for the new iPad which was announced in the news, which includes, 5MP iSight camera, Retina display and 4G connection.

Stay tuned for more details - maybe Ms. Smith will give a brief review of the new iPad?!

iPad Competition Winner

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 20:57:49 +0000

The winner was entrant number 1710, which was randomly selected from the list of 4,232 competition entries. Our winner will shortly be notified by email.

Furthermore, our competition closing date has fallen conveniently just two days before (what we believe to be) the launch of the brand new iPad3.

The competition has been a great success for all involved and we plan to launch a new competition later in 2012.

Regards,
the Tari team

Win an iPad competition is now closed

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 00:07:20 +0000

Check back later today to find out who the winner is.

Good luck to all entries.

The team at Tari

iPad3 Incoming? – Your chance to win

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 18:09:04 +0000

Back in January we launched our iPad competition. In it we promised to give away the latest iPad in early March. We said that if a new model of iPad was released between then and the end of the competition, we would give that iPad away instead of the iPad 2.

The exciting news is that it seems the iPad 3 will be getting its highly anticipated release just in time for the end of our competition.

We can't guarantee it but on Tuesday Apple made an announcement which got the world's tech journalists salivating with excitement. An invitation to an Apple press event read "We have something you really have to see. And touch".

The event is scheduled for 7 March. If the item that we "really have to see" is a new model of iPad (as most Apple fans expect), you could be amongst the first to get your hands on it if you are the lucky winner of our iPad competition.

If you have not already entered our competition, head here, and you might just be receiving a free iPad 3 later this month.

SEO Headlines 02/03/2012

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 16:31:46 +0000

Google producing very poor quality results

Wil Reynolds asks people in the SEO industry to think of the most respected SEO companies, then search for "SEO Companies". His research shows that while the respected SEOs have hundreds of subscribers to their RSS feeds, lots of Tweets about them and people in their Google+ circles, Google would rather rank websites with seemingly no social interest and lots of dubious back links. Maybe it is time Google took social metrics more seriously!

Black hat tactics work... but don't use them

Rand Fishkin has also been checking out black hat tactics and to his disappointment thinks they are working. However, he still thinks the money is better invested in PR tactics like purchasing popular blogs instead of purchasing links.

Bing lets you pick which results your friends see

A new feature at Bing allows you to confirm which web pages are about you, so that when a friend searches for Dave Jones, they will see pages about the Dave Jones they know. To set the feature up for yourself, you need to log in to Linked Pages with your Facebook account. Then you are shown the search results for searches of your name. Each result has a button which allows you to link that page to you.

Florist uses questionable Adwords strategy for Valentine's Day

Shortly before Valentine's Day, ProFlowers placed an adwords bid on the names of their local rivals. The ads read along the lines of "[Rival Name] $19.99 – Sold Out for Valentine's Day". ProFlowers claimed they were simply pointing out that their own flowers had sold out for Valentine's Day and took the ad down shortly after receiving a complaint via Twitter.

Apple buys app search engine

Apple are reported to have spent $50 million buying Chomp, a search engine for apps. The deal is expected to bring improved search technology to the App Store.

Google: 1 million small businesses will build mobile websites in 2012

Google have made a number of predictions for 2012 about the growth of the mobile web. They include: 1million new mobile sites for small businesses, 1 billion people will use mobile web more than desktop internet access and tablets will more commonly take their place as people's 4th screen.

Algorithm updates

Along with 40 other updates, this month's official Google search update tells us that on 28th February 2012, Panda version 3.3 made Google more sensitive to recent changes (which seem to be a consistent theme of these updates recently).

Also, Google say, "we are turning off a method of link analysis that we used for several years". The feature being turned off relates to how the topic of a page is determined by links, but no more clarity on what had happened was provided.

Local search is now using more information from traditional search results, meaning that using traditional SEO methods such as link building will be more effective at ranking you higher in searches, which include locations.

CALLING ALL ASPIRING JOURNALISTS!

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 17:30:09 +0000

Tari Digital would love to hear from anyone who has something to say about running a small business or all things Internet related.

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How to access Google Plus Your World in the UK

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 11:42:49 +0000

All the excitement (and anger) in the SEO world recently has been geared towards Google Plus Your World. But the controversial new feature doesn’t appear to have rolled far outside the USA, leaving us in other parts of the world wondering what all the fuss is about and anxiously awaiting this substantial change in search results pages.

Well, we don’t need to wait any more. There is a simple way to access Google Plus Your World in the UK and (presumably) other parts of the world.

Normally if you type “google.com” into your browsers address bar, you will be redirected to your local Google address (“google.co.uk” for the UK). But on your Google homepage, in the bottom right hand corner you should see a link with the words “Go to Google.com”. Clicking this does what it says, without redirecting you. From there you will receive all the functionality of Google Plus Your World.

After the criticism of the initial launch, it seems that Google has reduced the amount of Google+ content in their search results, but we know how Google likes to gradually increase the amount of advertising/self-promotion on new products, so it is likely to return as we get more use to it and as media attention dies down.

Learn more about how Google ranks pages and the advantages of online advertising.

SEO Headlines 17/02/12

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 11:36:34 +0000

Study: Wikipedia on page 1 for 99% of Google searches

Research shows that almost every search on Google will provide Wikipedia as a top result. Not only does Wikipedia appear on the first page nearly every time, it is in the top two results over 75% of the time. The research only included one word nouns as search terms which would tend to favour an encyclopaedia.

SEO for Google+

Even if Google Plus Your World hasn’t arrived in the UK yet, it’s worth getting ready for it by optimising your profile. Two guides provide a lot of detail on how to get business’s profiles seen by more people. Here are some of the main tips:

Give a status update at least every 72 hours
People whose posts get +1’d more often tend to show up more
1+s are more influential than shares and comment counts
Number of follower has a big impact
Put keywords in your introduction, employment, education, places or even name. Having it in more than one of these will help

Dr. Google

Google have noticed that a large number of people search for symptoms of health problems, then almost immediately search for information on the condition they discover. To help people find what they could be suffering from quicker, after a search for a symptom , Google will be listing possible causes at the top of the page with links to searches for those conditions.

4 SEO trends for businesses in 2012

Clickz.com have published a list of expected trends for enterprise SEO. Very briefly summarised, the trends are;

As competition for organic search results continues to grow, companies will continue to increase expenditure on on-site content, link development and social media.
Rich snippets, such as the author images in search results, will grow to the point that not using them will put you at a disadvantage.
You can’t fight it, you need to develop a Google+ strategy.
Domain Authority is still the most important factor. While social media will make big changes to SEO, good old-fashioned links are still going to be the most important factor.

SEO Headlines 10/02/12

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 11:58:02 +0000

Google willing to pay $5 to monitor your web activity

Google are gathering a panel of web users to install a plug-on for Chrome which allows them to monitor your web activity in order to gain a better understanding of how normal web users behave online. In return users will receive a $5 Amazon gift voucher every 3 months.

Various Google updates

Google’s relatively new monthly update list reveals a few changes in the search engine. These include; Panda related updates are continuing to grow in importance, freshness of webpages is becoming more important, detection of the date pages were published has improved, auto complete search phrases are now faster and better at recognising spelling mistakes, and News results will be shown at more appropriate times.

How to get responses to emails

Reaching out to others via email is one of the building blocks of a link building campaign. For years many have suggested ways to make it more effective. Finally someone has done some statistical research. With a sample of 400 successful guest posts, James Gate has shared data about what makes people more inclined to take up the offer of a guest post.

Theory 1 – Being a woman will get you more links

Many say signing off with a woman’s name makes you seem more trustworthy and more likely to get a response. 790 potential websites were contacted by a team of males and females. The women hit a 64% success rate while the men managed just 46%. Unfortunately (in this situation), the women in the team were real women. It would have been a fairer test if it was the exact same person sending very similar emails, but just signing off with the a male name 50% of the time and a female name the other 50%.

Theory 2 – Job title matters

This test was to see what the effect was of stating the you were either working as part of the client’s company, as a freelancer working for the company, or as an agency working with the client.

In-house was successful 64% of the time, Freelancers were 62% and agencies were successful 46% of the time.

Theory 3 – Timing is important

Disappointingly, due to varying time zones, they pulled no useable data from this survey, but observed that there are some patterns, such as sports bloggers are more likely to respond in the evening, indicated their blogs are run as hobbies by people with jobs in the day time.

Theory 4 – Personalisation is worth it (or is it?)

They didn’t send out any completely generic emails, although we can be pretty sure that anyone technically savy enough to run a website is unlikely to be convinced by generic emails. Instead they tested entirely bespoke emails vs. personalised templates. The response rate was 79% for bespoke emails against 53% for moderately personalised emails.

Theory 5 – The style of outreach email has an impact

Emails with very “proactive” wording which included a ready written guest post received a 68% response rate while a more gentle approach was found to work 42% of the time. However it was noted that the softer approach seemed more successful in industries where guest posting was less common.

Theory 6 – Persistence pays off

It risks annoying people but 30% of successful article requests received no response on the initial email. The second and to a lesser extent third email convinced the respondent to take action.