Digital marketing course from the University of Salford
Blog feature is to describe the how attending an SSMM will enhance the brief and product catalogue spreadsheet for a re-developed site before handover to a web development company.
Explain current position, i.e. website needed to incorporate back office and decided to use the opportunity to re-visit the website build
One excellent method to help your business achieve an SEO boost is to listen and monitor your industry to find out what topical subjects are being discussed. Topical subjects for SEO can help you identify relevant content for your blog posts, websites, social media networks and press releases, either on-line, off-line or both.
Google is by far the most successful search engine in the UK and they achieved this through their algorithms that are constantly being refreshed. The Google algorithms strive to deliver the most relevant website page for a given search query and Google especially likes pages that appear to have expert information. An excellent way to achieve this is by posting topical content for your industry on a regular basis, you will then become an authority webpage and gain a higher page rank. For an example I have written a blog post about the NHS Reform bill and the affects on patients, how I achieved this is shown below:
The reason I chose this subject was because:
Each of these points will give you a higher chance of ranking highly in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS) and thus the start of the process to be seen as an industry expert.
Please take a look at the NHS Reform Cut blog at this link. NHS Reform cuts that affect patients
To conclude on this subject, please comment, share and pass this message to others so people know what how to use topical subjects for SEO.
The NHS Reform bill is having a detrimental affect on the treatment and care of patients in the Stockport area. This blog post illustrates this negative effect by bringing attention to one of many patients who is struggling to get help from NHS in the form of Terbinafine prescription thanks to the Funding Cuts!
The Stockport PCT (Primary Care Trust) are currently responsible for cutting the Stockport region spend and are stopping GPs from prescribing certain medication to their patients.
A resident based in Stockport, who wishes to remain anonymous, was told by their GP surgery, that they can no longer prescribe the drug Terbinafine.
The patient was diagnosed with a fungal fingernail infection and needed the Terbinafine treatment over a course of 6 months.
In January 2012 the patient went to their GP surgery to discuss options for treating the fingernail, because the GP could not prescribe Terbinafine through the NHS as a result of recent funding cuts that have been enforced by Stockport PCT. However the GP was able to give the patient a private prescription for the Terbinafine, which was taken for 18 days. The patient was content with this because, using Terbinafine for six months would most likely get rid of the infection.
The patient then went to get a repeat prescription but was told by the GP they cannot prescribe the Terbinafine privately either, because Stockport PCT has ruled that this is not possible.
“I am very upset and disappointed by this news, and I really do not know what I can do to get rid of this nail fungus, which is affecting my quality of life.”
This decision by Stockport PCT is incomprehensible, it is forcing the patient to have to go private or move GPs in another area. I have also been told by a GP that many drugs have been black listed by Stockport PCT and GPs are unable to prescribe a number of drugs.
To conclude on this subject, please comment, share and pass this message to others so people know what real affects are happening as a result of the NHS reforms.
Journey Into The Unknown Or Silent Assassin?
When signing up for the Search and Social Media Marketing Course at the Manchester Salford Business School, I had precious little knowledge of how SEO worked – this, despite working as a freelance journalist and therefore attuned to promoting ‘brand awareness’ over the last four years for an industry-leading motorsport website. Journalists and writers tend to chase the next story and are much less concerned with keywords and search rank – rather leaving it to the organisations they are loosely connected with, or represent, to get on with task of improving results within SERPs.
Therein lay the problem – I didn’t understand SEO and how to maximise the opportunities that being creative presents. I enjoy my part-time writing work much more than my regular job, working within the warehousing and logistics sector as a forklift truck driver. At the start of this year my personal life reached a crossroads and this was the perfect time to do something about it. Learning SEO and Social Media marketing seemed a logical step forward and armed with a healthy Twitter following and enthusiasm to learn another skill, I signed up.
Information Superhighway
My eyes would be opened over the next six weeks much more than I could imagine. What became clear very quickly is that with any good business, success begins with planning, research and building the foundations to work from. Studying the competition, keyword research through Google and Google AdWords is a great place to start and can give you so much information in just a few minutes. Without a clear structure and plan of how you want to go about improving search rankings, failure to achieve the maximum is likely. In my case, I had just lost a deal to supply detailed written Formula 1 motor racing weather forecasts to the site I was affiliated with. The choice was either to stop completely and give up what I love doing – or to find another outlet to share my views and knowledge with others.
The #SSMM course – run by Aleksej Heinze – is the perfect educational tool to take your website on the road to major SEO improvements and a better search rank. Citing previous creative examples, students are guided through the do’s and dont’s of planning, keyword research, creating widgets, social media engagement and social media asset management to name but a few topics – all with you in mind. Prominent industry speakers are backing this course and give talks, adding further insight and giving information openly on how you can change things on your own site to help improve visibility and search ranking potential.
The road to success
Many people like myself, prior to enrolling on this course would be entitled to think that 99% of companies and website owners have their systems already optimised to the maximum, and therefore it would impossible to go and work as an SEO, or to create your own site as an independant. After all, SEO has been around for several years. When you actually conduct the research and examine the competition of your chosen field, you may be surprised. I certainly was. The best endorsement that I could give this course, is to demonstrate that in just 15 days from starting my own blog, I took http://f1weather.com to second in Google’s worldwide search for the short-tail keyword ‘F1 Weather’.
This is Neil Spencer Bruce
Neil wants to drive more traffic to his website so he can get more work as a rated session musician and sound designer, or in music production. He also wants more people to go to his website so he gets more money from advertising. Apart from the obvious Musicians Wanted or guitarist wanted adverts, I had to think of other ideas.
When he found out I was undertaking the Search and Social Media Marketing Course (#SSMM) he asked for some tips. As I was stuck with an idea for my blog, I said I’d make Neil my pet project!
The first problem is that his website is called www.spencerbruce.com, but everyone knows him as Neil Bruce, so I’ve made sure his full name appears as much as possible in this blog!
Neil can do everything – he’s available as a rated session musician, a sound designer, he works as a freelance photographer, and you can read his blog about all his areas of expertise. Despite all this, somehow Neil still manages to produce a creation a day.
He’s also worked as a recording engineer on sessions with legends including Al Green, Barbara Cooke, Led Zeppelin, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page and Channel 4’s White Room.
As well as being an expert in making sound by design, he can also do audio branding (you know when someone says “Intel Inside”, and you go “do-do-do-do”?! ).
Neil also teaches music and sound – his most popular video on YouTube is how to play Jessie J’s Domino
Neil is already doing pretty well for SEO and Social Media – he has accounts in all the right places: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, uses testimonials about his work on his website (as you can see from these links though, the URLs need work to be optimised!)
I suggested Neil could maybe do some more online freebies, like this guide to audio branding? I also suggested he look at his competitor’s websites for both music and sound design for tips, and follow similar people on Twitter.
He could make his Facebook posts interactive – friends could rate his piece a day – getting a chance to get involved makes it more likely they will listen to the entries.
I’ve even managed to sneak him on Wikipedia’s page on session musicians (and it’s still there as of 3pm on 28 March!) Of course this is of little use since Wikipedia use our lovely friend the rel=”nofollow”, but I guess someone who might want a session musician might click through and hire him?!
If anyone else has any ideas how I can help Neil Spencer Bruce, please comment below!
If you look carefully, hopefully I’ve AIDA’d you. I made you:
(You can also find Neil on LinkedIn and contact him at mailto:neil@spencerbruce.com or +44 (07771) 877690. Oh, and if you mention this blog when hiring Neil, you’ll get a 15% discount.)
When looking at the statistical data, Sri Lanka has shown an adult literacy rate of 92%, which is one of the highest in Asia. However, the country is still lagging in internet penetration and usage compared to the rest of the region.
As of 2011 the household access to the Internet is at a mere 11.2%, which is an increase of 35% from the 2010 value of 8.3%. This indicates a positive growth towards internet usage. A possible reason for growth could be a result of the government coming up with an ambitious 5 year plan to increase the household internet access to 75%. The plan was based on the realisation that a failure to acquire the requisite technical knowledge will prevent large segments of the population benefiting from the fruits of the Information Age. Although hitting the 75% mark is very ambitious, looking at the 2010/2011 growth rate it could be stated that a percentage increase of 30.7% is possible by 2015.
In less than 3 years as of today, there could be a figure of 6,030,360 Facebook users in Sri Lanka. This figure is backed up by the statistics, where there are 1,220,100 Facebook users as of 2011; a growth of 191,660 new users in 6 months was seen. According to latest statistics, Sri Lanka is ranked No 75 in the ranking of all Facebook statistics by country. This could be a tremendous opportunity to develop a new product or service online in Sri Lanka using social media marketing.
An obvious fact in the last 6 months has been that more and more companies are visible on Facebook. Most of these companies have identified that online marketing could be the key with regard to been visible to the target market via a social media platform. In addition, it is becoming a lot easier to focus on the target market using Facebook or Google; which would be a reason why most companies have opted for social media marketing. However, according to available statistics there is a big disparity between urban and rural population with regard to computer literacy, where the urban internet user segment is 3 times the rural sector.
This could be a result of simple economics such as per capita income being higher in urban areas or the more complex issue of English literacy rate been lower in rural Sri Lanka. If the English literacy rate is the main reason for people not using the internet then it would be an uphill battle to reach high internet penetration levels. This is because at present there are limited translation software available to translate from English to native Sri Lankan languages. Currently, some brands have started advertising in native Sri Lankan languages by using pictures on Facebook.
By taking into consideration the points discussed above, it could be stated that there is a tremendous potential for growth for online sales and marketing in Sri Lanka. Have a look at the Youtube clip below as I found it very interesting which is about the potential of social media in Sri Lanka.
Are you a small or medium sized business looking to grow and expand to compete with the much larger companies? If so I can bet you every last penny in my pocket that you have tried many different marketing methods to increase productivity but have found most only burn a whole in your pocket. Marketing is all about ROI (Return On Investment) if your aim is to increase sales and you are not returning on your outgoings here is a little advice, GET RID!
Is Your Small Business On The Internet?
Over the past 12 years Internet marketing has grown rapidly. With over 90 million searches made per day on Google alone and over £6B spent on line in Jan 2012 a small business can take advantage of promoting their products and services on the web using their website as a point of action. No longer do we rely on paper directories, with access to the Internet within our pockets these days search engines have made life much easier by delivering us exactly what we are looking for within a matter of seconds via mobile phones. What are your options to reach out to those searching for your services? Most search engines like Google offer two types of listings for you:
Some of the latest statistics indicate organic listings reach over 85% of searches leaving sponsored links to cover 15% searches.
What is SEO (search engine optimisation)? SEO is an on-line marketing strategy which helps you to maximise your exposure on a search engine and identify what people are searching for. Its all about understanding the buying cycle of the consumer and their search terms used during there journey to purchase. Search engine optimisation is the process of improving the visibility and the presence of a webpage or blog on a search engine with in the natural, organic search results.
Before using SEO you need to know that it is not a get rich quick scheme nor is it a speedy process, it takes time skill and patients. For more information enrol on this course or take a look at Google SEO starter Guide.
See introduction to SEO by Dan Taylor – one of many great guest speakers on the Search and Social Media Marketing Course.
At Salford Business School, student placements are offered as part of both undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. Our links with local, national and international companies means that we can offer students the opportunity to get in touch with prospective employers and get students on the right track to future employment success.
A paid internship can be an IT placement in London or a business management placement in Edinburgh, if you have the passion and commitment to secure a placement, it could be the best thing you ever did.
Working on a placement abroad can be within your reach. One of the great things about doing a placement is, as long as it is relevant and approved by the school, you can go anywhere. Students have been on placements at home in Manchester to as far away as Australia. So if you have ever dreamed of working abroad, this is your chance!
Mentoring other students can be a most rewarding and beneficial experience. Once students have completed their year in industry, students have the opportunity to mentor other students looking to undertake a placement, which also looks great on your CV! Here’s what Salford Business School placement mentors have to say about their mentoring experiences:
Placement students at Salford, upon completion of their sandwich year, have typically performed better in their degree and have much better job prospects after graduating. Many of our placement graduates go on to secure a job with that same organisation.
Alongside these benefits, students become more confident, gain communication and problem solving skills and develop transferable skills that can’t be gained elsewhere.
Sandwich year, paid internship, whatever you want to call your placement year, it’s your time to make it happen.
To help you find a placement, keep checking our regularly updated placement website on Blackboard.
Check out our Salford Business School placements website
Come along to one of our placement fairs where you can speak to potential employers from different industries, speak to our placement team and meet other like minded students.
If you have any questions or would just like to chat through your options, pop in to see the placement co-ordinator, Chris Procter or contact the placement team, Sunayna Tailor or Nicola Moss
You can follow us on Twitter for up to date information on placements SBSPlacements
Is a placement the way forward for you? Looking to gain invaluable industry experience and want to share some of your experiences? Please use comments section below!
Working as a Graphic / Web Designer for the past 4 years, has been a very interesting ride. I have learned a lot to do with online marketing and I thought, to develop my skills further I would need to delve into the world of SEO, and become a jack of all trades.
The company that I currently work for, own a number of websites that SEO companies have torn to pieces, tried to glue back together with the wrong glue and left us with a shambling mess!
Within the first 2 weeks of being on the Search and Social Media Marketing course, I knew exactly where our sites were lacking optimisation and had produced a strategic plan of how to save our sites from the plummets of low Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
Here are some things which I noticed on our sites after attending the Foundation SSMM course:
I noticed that the Meta Title tags were duplicated throughout. This is obviously a big NO NO, as every page with-in your site needs to have a unique title. Also, they were averaging at around 150 characters, which I know I could keep down to, at most 80 characters that include my primary keywords and secondary.
So once I was done with the unique titles throughout the whole of the site, it was time to start working on the descriptions for each of the pages. This I found was the most time consuming of all the on page stuff that I was doing, I remembered what Simon Wharton had told us about ” writing for the user, and NOT the search engine ” and made sure all my descriptions included my keywords for that page and read fluently.
The next step that I was going to look at was the page structure and content. Now the previous bunch of “apes”, who carried out the SEO services for our sites, must have had literally NO IDEA what they were doing!
All our pages contained no <h1> tags and basically had copied all the content from other sites! Tools like Copyscape had helped me find the original source of all our content! So my mission was to create the <h> tags using the relevant keywords, come to the table with fresh new content that included the keywords for the relevant pages. Again remembering what Simon had said, we made sure the new content for our pages read very fluently, and delivered the message they intended too, without spamming it with random keywords.
The outcome of the work I have been putting into our sites is really starting to show through now. There are points which I haven’t even covered and I am already starting to see great results! In the next couple of weeks I will be looking more into the internal and external links for our sites and also be pushing towards some Social Media tools.
So unfortunately due to the nature of our business, I am not able to link to any of the sites that I am currently working on, so you can all have my Twitter and LinkedIn accounts instead! 🙂
Throughout my time on the SSMM course at Salford Business School, a common theme put forward by industry guest speakers such as Simon Wharton of PushON and Mark Johnson of Latitude Group, has been of the immense value of Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising. Any aspiring Internet based business that doesn’t utilise it, can be clearly said to be missing out on a major tool in their advertising armoury.
As useful as it has been to hear this from the experts, it’s also been immensely frustrating as when it comes to my own desire to set up Gambling PPC adverts, where my own interest lies, I have encountered numerous problems.
Regardless of your own views on the subject of gambling – its most definitely here to stay. Old, Young, Male or Female – there is something to get each of us gambling as big business wants a ride on the betting gravy train. You won’t find a football club without its official ‘betting partners’ and as the Independent explains, sports betting will likely be a major beneficiary of the 2012 Olympics.
Yet despite all of this vested interest, it still seems a dirty word when it comes to PPC advertising.
The reason I am so keen to on Gambling PPC adverts is based on my own business, the Secret Betting Club, for which I am the Editor of the regular newsletters we produce to help people with their own betting. First established in 2006, we have forged a clear niche in our area of expertise and have built it based on word of mouth, a strong email marketing set-up and more recently a burgeoning Twitter and Facebook presence.
If you want to bet professionally and make a profit, then you would come to us for help. A more helpful and arguably ethical service I would venture than that of a bookmaker or casino who have just one goal – to attract losing punters.
Despite our well established business, when it comes to PPC advertising it seems the odds are truly stacked against us.
Just last week, I tried to create a new Facebook PPC campaign via a simple advert which invited people to like our Secret Betting Club Facebook page to receive free football tips from us every Friday.
I was targeting people with the interest ‘Football Betting Tips’ in the UK and Ireland between 25 and 45 who are male. My advert is below:
The result?
My advert was disapproved after being reviewed with Facebook’s reasoning as follows: “The content promoted in your advert or Sponsored Story violates Facebook’s Advertising Guidelines. Please visit our Help Centre for additional information and examples compliant with our Advertising Guidelines.”
A quick look at the aforementioned guidelines reveals the following relevant section devoted to Gambling:
Gambling and lotteries
I’m no legal expert but presumably we meet the criteria of 1) as betting is legal in the UK and Ireland and we are not a lottery so 2) does not apply. Neither does 3) as we are not an offline gambling establishment and therefore it’s very difficult to understand the reasoning for our disapproval.
I dug deeper into the Facebook advertising help centre, but once again there appeared no clear reasoning or guidelines, which would indicate exactly where I am going wrong.
I’m all for having rules and regulations, but for a small betting business like ours, how do we gauge exactly what we have to do to have our adverts approved?
This may all seem fair enough to some of you. Betting isn’t everyone’s cup of tea and I completely respect that. Facebook might consider allowing betting adverts as more trouble than it’s worth or have an anti-gambling advertising policy.
That however, doesn’t seem to be the case as when I log into my Facebook account, can you guess what kind of adverts I see beaming back at me?
Yep you guessed it – adverts for betting!
At the top of the pile we have Michael Vaughan’s Betfair Cricket tips and a bit further down an advert inviting me to play Roulette at Betfair’s casino (let’s not even get onto the debate about a 60 second credit card application advert!).
The Michael Vaughan advert in-particular seems remarkably similar to my own in the fact its offering free betting tips to those that like the Betfair page.
Of course, Betfair is a well-established betting brand and business, but how exactly can I compete with them on a Gambling PPC basis, if at all?
My Facebook PPC example is not a one-off because I have had a similar response from Google and other advertisers when it comes to PPC advertising.
Similar targeted adverts have been struck off Google for relevant search terms in the past, yet the big betting companies with gambling PPC campaigns – the likes of Betfair, Ladbrokes, William Hill & Bet365 constantly appear. Mixed amongst these big companies, I do find smaller betting firms like mine who somehow squeeze through the T and C’s – so presumably it can be done. Exactly how as yet is still a mystery to me.
Therefore my quest as part of the course, is to emulate them and actually establish the Secret Betting Club its very own PPC presence.
Response from experts so far as regards this dilemma has been of a very grey area that exists within PPC for betting, and the ‘black hat’ SEO tactics that some experts use.
Perhaps it’s the sales letter we employ (which admittedly needs work and is in the hands of a copywriter as we speak), our Facebook page, the wording of my adverts or the fact we are a very small fish in a big pond.
It could be of course that I will just never get a successful long-term gambling PPC campaign going!
I certainly hope not and perhaps through this article I can even help a few other betting related businesses with their own PPC campaigns.
I will endeavour to find out but in the meantime I welcome any expert tips you may have as to where I am going wrong. Please use the comments section below or contact me – here are my details: