StickySpace: premium web hosting, blinding speed

We are proud to announce the launch of our new premium web hosting service StickySpace.

StickySpace has been created in response to overwhelming client demand for a high-speed premium web hosting with great customer service.

It is also a direct response to the need for better site-speed to keep up with the latest search engine optimisation criteria. Google has made plenty of noise in the last year about how site speed is now a factor in search rankings, so we feel it is crucial that we ensure our clients are not penalised by the slow hosting speeds offered by many hosting companies.

StickySpace offers:

• Reliable Service

• Premium Hosting

• Blistering Speeds

• Massive traffic allowance

• Huge amounts of space

StickySpace completes the full web / SEO service from Sticky. Clients can now source their website build, search engine optimisation, inbound marketing strategy and web hosting from one supplier. The result should be better results, better traffic and better conversion rates.

If you are sick of the hosting run-around and want to step up to premium web hosting then take a look at StickySpace.

An SEO specialist can help

Have you considered hiring a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO ) specialist? If you are an Australian corporate marketer trawling through this website you will find plenty of reasons why it is crucial for your organisation to take web marketing and SEO seriously.

For example:

• The Internet is now the most consumed media in Australia. The average Australian spends 16.1 hours per week online according to the 2009 Nielsen Annual Internet & Technology report. (You can see the other media here).

• First place in organic search receives around 42% click-through rate. This is compared to around 11% click-through for 2nd place and 3% for 10th place.

• Even Fortune 500 companies fail at search engine optimization, and many still don’t link paid-search keywords to SEO campaigns, although they collectively spend about $3.4 million daily on 97,559 keywords, according to a report.

The problem is, that this is so important to your business that it is also crucial that you obtain the right advice and assistance. Your web designer probably doesn’t understand web marketing and SEO and its not realistic for corporate marketers to keep up to date with all the latest SEO information and techniques.

So here are 6 reasons why you might need to hire a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) specialist:

1. You have too much to do and too little time to do it. Good SEO takes a lot of time, is it the best use of yours?

2. A fresh set of eyes. You probably stare at your website too much as it is and are possibly now blind to potential issues. An SEO specialist brings afresh set of eyes to the site with a single-minded view to improve your search results.

3. True expertise. Many people working around the web industry say they understand SEO but to be fair in most cases their knowledge is basic. SEO evolve on a daily basis and is increasingly complicated. You need a specialist who is up-to-date with the very latest SEO strategies and tools.

4. Overcome internal politics. There can be a a lot of parties with vested interests in your website, all clamouring for your attention or priority. An SEO specialist can present the FACTS and an unbiased strategy to achieve everyone’s goals in the RIGHT order.

5. Education. You and your team can learn more about SEO from a specialist, that will improve your knowledge and value to the organisation as well assist in communicating why and what needs to be done. A good SEO explain “why” and “how” as well as performing the tasks at hand.

6. Better results. Unless you are a gun at SEO then a specialist will most likely produce better and faster search results than you could achieve on your own. This is good for your company and good for you.

Let’s face it, excellent search results can be invaluable to your organisation. These days it could be amongst the most productive marketing you undertake. But achieving great results is not easy unless you are living and breathing SEO every day. Hiring an SEO specialist is definitely worth exploring.

Of course, that’s where we’d like to help. If you are an Australian corporate marketer then Sticky might be able to help you achieve better search results. Feel free to test your site with our Web NLYZR or to contact us to discuss your needs.

Paintball supplier wants to hit search targets

We came across a job advertisement today placed by a Paintball supplier based in Australia who is looking to hire an SEO specialist. In fact, the company is the world’s largest Paintball provider and their office is near ours in Wickham.

The advertisement explains that this is a hands on position that includes activities such as keyword analysis, SEO and  Social Media campaigns and link building.

Its fantastic to see more local businesses beginning to take search engine optimisation seriously, but what this advertisement also illustrates is the general lack of knowledge in the marketplace about SEO.

We used our NLYZR tool to study the leading Paintball suppliers based upon their Google rankings and it was soon evident that this is an industry that has paid little attention to search engine optimisation. The number one ranked site on Google received an NLYZR score of just 45/100 and has NO Google PageRank.

So here is our pitch to Paintball suppliers and any other business looking to hire a full-time SEO specialist – get some independent advice first. There’s no need to hire a full-time employee to achieve the search results you desire. A professional SEO and Inbound Marketing firm, such as Sticky, could quickly whip your website into shape and have you achieving outstanding search results. Even better, we’d map out a strategy that ensures that you turn your new traffic into sales not just hits. Our Inbound Marketing approach turns websites into customer magnets.

Sticky is trusted by leading organisations such as Colliers International, Australian Cancer Research Foundation, Promax (currently under construction), and World Society Protection for Animals to manage their SEO strategies. We could easily help a leading Paintball supplier to hit their targets.

Note: this post was done as an SEO test. We regularly use our sites to test different search markets.

Sticky is now well established the leading SEO agency in Newcastle having successfully won and managed search engine optimisation accounts in Newcastle, Sydney and Australia wide.

SEO Newcastle, Sydney & Australia wide

Our industry-leading SEO tool, NLYZR, is now used by major organisations such as Colliers International, World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA), Australian Cancer Research Foundation (ACRF), Promax and Community CPS to assist with their search engine optimisation in competitive industries.

We are also often called on by leading Australian advertising and digital agencies to provide NLYZR reporting and SEO recommendations for their clients.

Sticky’s SEO packages cover both “Broad Optimisation” and “Strategic Optimisation” for both the websites we build or for third party sites in need of professional search engine optimisation.

Broad optimisation involves properly formatting the pages of your website so that their content is actually search-able and effective. It can result in significantly higher web traffic from search engines for a broad range of keyword searches, including terms  that you may not have considered previously.

NLYZR SEO tools

Strategic optimisation is about having your website ranking on the first page of Google, Bing or Yahoo for competitive terms for your industry. It involves a much deeper analysis of your website plus competitive analysis to provide the right recommendations. Done well, strategic optimisation can make a significant difference to your business.

You can read more about our approach to SEO throughout this website. If you’d like to discuss search engine optimisation for your organisation’s website, or whether you need Broad Optimisation or Strategic Optimsation please contact us. Also feel free to test your website’s SEO performance with our Free Web NLYZR.

Inbound marketing for Google's new search results

Google has launched a new look for their venerable search interface, borrowing heavily from the Bing user interface. According to Google they are now offering more contextually relevant navigation options to the page. You can now Google search Everything, News, Blogs, Images, Video, Books and much more.

But the big story is the ongoing move towards relevance. Google’s changes are great news for those who practice professional inbound marketing. We have been saying for some time now that search is increasingly going to be about relevance. Bing made a big deal about their desire to provide more relevant results and now Google is responding. The list of options Google is now providing allows users to drill down to more relevant searches more quickly, including variable date ranges, shopping sites and related searches.

What does this mean to your business? A lot in our opinion. Now, more than ever, you need to professionally optimise your entire web presence rather than just your website. Your customers will have the ability to find you, or your opposition, through a multitude of search options. It’s crucial that you have addressed each of those options.

Video optimisation. Image optimisation. Blog optimisation. News optimisation. Related search optimisation.

There’s a lot to look at but can your business afford to miss out on the new customers that might find you via these options?

Corporate marketers need to adjust their thinking about their search marketing strategies in order to keep with the latest changes to search engines. Its important to keep creating and publishing diversified content that is relevant to what your customers are searching for.

The marketer who is only just getting around to finally optimising their website might find that the market has already moved on. However those who actively optimise their entire web presence will be a long way in front of the bulk of their competitors.

You can check out how well optimised your current website is with a Free SEO report at www.nlyzr.com

NLYZR - search engine optimisation engine

Meet the all new NLYZR.

Its exactly 12 months since we launched NLYZR (pronounced analyzer), our advanced website optimisation engine.

Up til now NLYZR has been a a semi-automated system. It provides us with powerful an accurate website analysis and recommendations that we then supply to our clients.

The Free Web NLYZR we have offered at www.nlyzr.com for the last year was also semi-automated, meaning we could offer same-day reporting but not exactly instant reporting.

That’s all changed with the latest version of NLYZR. You can now receive a Free Web NLYZR report for any website in less than 1 minute, with much more detail about your site.

The Free Web NLYZR assesses your website’s overall search engine optimisation and nominated keyword search performance. The score will change depending upon the keyword you provide. NOTE: the keyword search is for Google.com.au searches only at this stage, not the “Pages from Australia” search.

The free report includes information about your website’s Metadata and other on-site analysis, it’s important off-site data and the keyword search results.

It’s like a quick health-check for your website.

Our advanced analytics have also evolved during the last year, allowing us to provide unparalleled website optimisation advice to clients looking to improve their online marketing results.

Since it’s launch, we have used NLYZR to assist leading organisations such as Colliers International, Australian Cancer Research Foundation, World Society for the Protection of Animals, Terry White Chemists, Promax and many more.

We have used NLYZR to report on over 3000 Australian websites during the last year, providing a keen insight into the state of the web.

Please, feel free to use NLYZR to test your site as often as you like. Its fast and its free.

This week on Sticky TV Craig Wilson delves further into Inbound Marketing as he talks to Gordon Whitehead (Director of Interactive Media at Sticky) about The Basic’s of search engine optimisation.

They cover The Three C’s:
1. Code
2. Content
3. Connections

proper SEO is crucial

We just came across this article from MediaPost. Unfortunately this problem is not contained to the USA.

Fortune 500 companies fail at search engine optimization, and many still don’t link paid-search keywords to SEO campaigns, although they collectively spend about $3.4 million daily on 97,559 keywords, according to a report.

The Conductor Research Q4/2009 Fortune 500 Report released Wednesday identifies that only 25% of those keywords rank in the top 50 natural search results on search engines such as Google, Microsoft Bing or Yahoo. The Fortune 500 report analyzes national search results and optimization effectiveness, as well as trends and integration plans for the corporate and the consumer brands during the December 2009 quarter.

Analyzing the most expensive keywords that companies bought allowed Conductor to measure intent by assuming these words should float to the top of natural search in query results.

“Since they spend all that money on paid-search keywords you would expect these companies would want the keywords in natural search to correlate with investments on the other side and make them as visible as possible,” says Nathan Safran, senior research analyst at Conductor Research.

The group made slight improvements in aligning natural search with their paid campaigns, increasing the percentage of companies in the top 50 natural search results to 25% in the December 2009 quarter — up from 17% in the year-ago quarter, but overall the Fortune 500 remains largely invisible in natural search.

Results also identify that only 2% of the domains surveyed show a significant number of terms in the top results. Many companies still have not adopted a culture that identifies what it takes to build and support a natural search campaign, Safran says.

Still, 15% of the companies demonstrate mid-to-strong presence for their most advertised keywords. And, 53% have no natural search visibility for their most advertised keywords.

Fortune 500 natural search visibility decreased with longer search queries, and 68% of keywords were found on a landing page, such as amazon.com/cell phone, compared with a top-level domain page, such as amazon.com.

Compete ranked each keyword, gave it a score and averaged it into a grade. Grades A and B note the best, but Grades C through F average poor visibility across keywords.

Compared with Q4 2008, the results this year identify a major gap between the companies that rank well for some terms and ones that have poor visibility. Even among the top performers, there were no companies that had a majority of terms ranking in the top 25. The group also did not improve on their overall visibility score, rating a ‘D-’ and scoring 61 on the visibility scale, the same score it received in our previous research.

The report breaks down the companies by market segment, including retail, finance and insurance, manufacturing, transportation and warehouse, food services, construction, science and technical, and more. It shed light on keyword distribution of the retail and information subcategories, and search visibility by industry.

Conductor also found that the Fortune 500’s visibility remains in inverse proportion to the length of the search query. The most significant drop occurred in searches with greater than seven words. The inconsistency between the visibility in query results for one- and two-word searches increased in this year’s study, with one-word searches scoring a 70 on the search visibility scale and two-word searches scoring a 65, compared with 62 for both one- and two-word searches last year.

Does your web designer understand internet marketing?

In the early days of the Web the imperative was upon having a website and as a result an industry was born, and boomed, creating websites. Good, bad or ugly, it didn’t really seem to matter a long as you were part of the the new wave online.

These days however its a lot different. Everyone has a website and a substantial portion of the population uses the web to shop, search research, chat, meet, discuss, review…well you get the point, we’re online a lot. In fact a recent study revealed that 97% of clients purchasing decisions were influenced by websites.

Now, amid the clutter and competition online, mere web existence isn’t good enough. Now professional internet marketing is crucial. You don’t just build a website, you build a web presence.

Search engine optimisation, social media, conversion strategies, data analysis, geo-targeting, the mobile web, real time search. They’re all part of a sophisticated internet marketing plan that enable you to compete and thrive online.

Unfortunately, many web designers are still just building websites.

Check if your designer understands internet marketing by asking:

• Can you optimise the website for multiple search terms?

• Can you easily integrate social media sharing sites like Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Delicious, LinkedIn, FriendFeed and more?

• Can you tell me how many people were searching for our products and services online last month?

• Can you create a local search plan?

• Can you test various conversion strategies and help lift conversion rates?

• Can you help me grow my online audience?

If the answer is NO, then you might end up with a website, but will have done very little to enhance your marketing.

Does your website need a rebuild or a re-think?

One of our biggest frustrations here at Sticky is seeing organisations pay little attention to their web presence. They run old, rarely updated websites that provide the user with little information and a generally poor experience. These organisations are finding it increasingly harder to compete and will be left behind unless they totally re-think (or start thinking about) online.

However, at the other end of the scale is the organisation who is enthusiastically online but is constantly thinking about a rebuild, or a new look, or an expensive new addition to their under-performing website. We see them all the time. I can think of a few examples where a site is going through its 2nd rebuild in as many years, when the original site was fine.

The thing is….if a website is under-performing the first thing everyone should look at are the real reasons why. In many cases its not the layout / design / format that necessarily needs work.

If the site isn’t getting enough traffic, the first thing you should look at is the quality of the content. Is it up to scratch? Does it really speak to the desired audience? Does it demand attention?

If the answer is NO to any of these then start improving and focusing your content NOW.

If you honestly think the content IS good enough then you need to address your traffic sources or and connections. Look at your web stats (surely you have web stats) and determine where the traffic is coming from.

Most under-performing websites get the bulk of their traffic from their URL (direct) or a Google search for their name. This means that most of your visitors already know of you and you are not using the web properly to grow your market.

If the majority of it is direct traffic then you need to bolster your search and referred traffic. You might need proper search engine optimisation, you might need to build your social networks.

Once again, if you don’t have many links coming into your site from other sources, there’s a very good chance your content is not working for you.

Finally, if your traffic IS at reasonable levels but you are not getting the sales or leads you desire / require then you need to quickly address your conversion strategies (you do have conversion strategies don’t you?).

Too many organisations think that a “Contact Us” page is a conversion strategy. Its not. Smart inbound marketers provide multiple opportunities for visitors to become customers. They’ll have conversion strategies littered throughout their website.

So, by all means, consider rebuilding your website, it might really need it. But before you do, re-think its content, connections and conversion.

Note: you can get a quick idea of your website’s strengths and weaknesses with our Free Web NLYZR