This week NLYZR assesses the websites of 25 Australian Commercial Construction Firms, a list originally published in BRW.

Search engine optimmisation by NLYZR

We have used the all new NLYZR for this list. NLYZR assesses a website’s Search Engine Optimisation using criteria such as On-page SEO, Off-page SEO and a Keyword search result. These are crucial aspects of Inbound Marketing and Internet Marketing Strategies.

Check out how they rate…

Top 25 Commercial Construction Websites

71/100 for Ranbuild

68/100 for Stucterre

67/100 for Lidoran Roofing

67/100 for Reed Constructions Australia

65/100 for Becon Constructions

62/100 for Hansen Yunken

58/100 for Walker Industrial

57/100 for Pact Construction

54/100 for BGC Commercial Construction

51/100 for Neater Constructions

50/100 for Diploma

50/100 for Incorp

48/100 for Glenzeil

46/100 for DJ Builders & Son

46/100 for Synertec

46/100 for Firm Construction

46/100 for Meridian Construction

45/100 for Giro

44/100 for Grindley Group

37/100 for ICPS

30/100 for Clarke Constructions

27/100 for BrandUp

26/100 for James Trowse Constructions

25/100 for Constructex

24/100 for Prime Constructions

For several years now the highly entertaining Marta Kagan has been packaging up and producing a slide show titled What the F**k is Social Media. Its an excellent insight into the latest figures around the phenomenal rise of social media and networks.

And in the spirit of social media, Marta has allowed us to embed her presentation for all to share and see. Enjoy.

This week NLYZR assesses the websites of 25 Australian Sales Training Firms, a list originally published in BRW.

We have used the all new NLYZR for this list. NLYZR assesses a website’s Search Engine Optimisation using criteria such as On-page SEO, Off-page SEO and a Keyword search result. These are crucial aspects of Inbound Marketing and Internet Marketing Strategies.

Check out how they rate…

Australia’s 25 Top Sales Training Firms

89/100 for Pittard Training Group

87/100 for Prosell

87/100 for Paramount Training

78/100 for Marketing Nous

78/100 for Sales Achievement

77/100 for AchieveGlobal

72/100 for Huthwaite

79/100 for Strike Force Sales

65/100 for Deakon

65/100 for MacMahon

64/100 for i perform

58/100 for BOOM Sales

58/100 for Salesmasters International

58/100 for Brainpower Training

55/100 for National Sales Academy

54/100 for The Fortune Group

53/100 for Acuere

53/100 for Business Support Training

47/100 for National Workplace Training

47/100 for Wenworth Training

41/100 for Academy

38/100 for SG Partners

36/100 for Contract Trainers

26/100 for SalesOne

22/100 for Katalyst Consulting

Gavin Heaton has posted an excellent piece about the Three Ages of Content Management Systems which goes a long way to explaining how the web has evolved and how organisations and the systems they use may or may not have progressed. Its a great read and I urge you to take 5 minutes to see what Gavin has to say.

We now live in the sharing web age

The 3 ages Gavin talks about are:

• The Age of Waving

• The Age of Shouting

• The Age of Sharing

Clearly, given the ubiquity of social media now, we are in The Age of Sharing. Organisations who realise this and have moved to ensure their web presence reflects it are the ones who are benefiting. The content on their websites is being passed around, searched and now generates considerably more traffic than many of their contemporaries who still live in The Age of Shouting.

Unfortunately many people treat the web the same way as they treat their traditional advertising. They see it purely as a broadcasting media. They haven’t heard of the Age of Conversation and they haven’t heard of the 1000 True Fans theory. They are still yelling at an audience that isn’t necessarily listening.

At a more technical level, as Gavin points out, this is reflected in their Content Management Systems. The odds are that if a company has on old-fashioned, hard to use CMS then they are probably Shouting from their website. Its simply too hard to update information so they publish their content once and leave it. Or perhaps they spend a small fortune on Banner ads and Adwords to drive traffic to their static sites.

We constantly advise clients to take the Sharing route. Create innovative websites on easy-to-use CMS systems that are SEO and social media-friendly. It encourages a solid, long-term approach to marketing than generates much greater loyalty than shouting ever will. It results in increased traffic from multiple sources, like social networks and organic search, that is substantially more cost-effective than broadcast style advertising.

The question is, which web age do you live in?

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.

SEO rankings for Australian Tax Specialists

This week NLYZR assesses the websites of 26 Australian Tax Specialists, a list originally published in BRW.

We have used the all new NLYZR for this list. NLYZR assesses a website’s Search Engine Optimisation using criteria such as On-page SEO, Off-page SEO and a Keyword search result. These are crucial aspects of Inbound Marketing and Internet Marketing Strategies.

Here is how they compared…

Tax Specialist Top Websites

85/100 for First Class Accountants

78/100 for Grant Thornton

66/100 for BeFree

65/100 for WHK Horwath

63/100 for KD Johns & Co

63/100 for Outlook Financial Solutions

62/100 for AKA Group

60/100 for PFK Australia

59/100 for ITP Australia

57/100 for H&R Block

57/100 for RSM Bird Cameron

54/100 for etax

52/100 for Deloitte

52/100 for Prosperity Advisors

50/100 for BAAS

46/100 for Fordham

46/100 for Open Financial Services

42/100 for AccountantsRus

35/100 for Cooper Partners

29/100 for SP Solutions

28/100 for Tax Services Australia

27/100 for McCormack Reynolds

26/100 for Accurate Business and Accounting Services

26/100 for Anchor Business Group

26/100 for 123 Bookkeepers and Accountants

23/100 for Collins & Co

Blogging is an important part of Inbound Marketing

Forget the standard web template approach that most businesses employ, if your organisation wants to generate meaningful, engaged visitors then you should incorporate a blog into your website. Its a significant element of our Inbound Marketing philosophy.

Most corporate websites look fairly similar. There’s been a group-think mentality that your site should all be contained in the one screen, with content not falling “below the fold”. You see the same logo position, same navigation and the same bland corporate information.

What you don’t often see is regularly updated information that is both helpful and relevant to your target audience.

That’s where a blog can become extremely valuable to your organisation. Here are 6 reasons why one should be incorporated into your web presence.

1. A blog keeps your visitors interested. The more regularly you update your website with quality information, the more likely visitors are to return. Otherwise they can just visit once and then move on, quickly forgetting about you.

2. Visitors can actually show loyalty to a website by subscribing to your RSS feed or updates by email. The more interesting and helpful your information is, the more likely it is you will grow a base of subscribers. These regularly engaged visitors can be an extremely valuable asset and are obviously more likely to become customers over time.

3. A blog post is more likely to be shared or passed onto others than a normal web page. If you are generating useful content and have included social media sharing devices such as a Facebook “Share” button, a Twitter “ReTweet” button or a Digg prompt, there is a good chance visitors will share your information with others. This immediately broadens your audience and can boost your traffic. your audience can become your distribution network. Even if your organisation is not heavily engaged in Social Media it can benefit from those who are.

4. Search engines love blogs. Every blog post is another piece of content for Google, Bing and Yahoo etc to index, and its another potential slot in the search results that can deliver more traffic to your website. In fact, Google’s latest algorithm changes seem to be favouring fresh, relevant content so if your website is sitting there unchanged month after month you are likely to be overtaken by your competitors who are posting regularly. Even if you don’t have a sophisticated SEO strategy, simply posting regular content will go a long way to building your online success.

5. Most websites are limited by the design and pages in the websites they launch. Once the initial content has been uploaded the site is left to age. New content means design hassles, additional expense and problems. But if you built your site with a blog mentality the limitations are removed. You can add as much new information as you desire. In fact, the blog demands your attention and will keep your organisation more focused on driving your site onto bigger and better things.

6. Blogging is thinking. The discipline of blogging about your industry and organisationand creating new content can lead to great insight. It forces you to constantly consider why your organisation exists and how it can benefit others. Sometimes that “light bulb” moment can come whilst writing a thoughtful blog post.

We urge most organisations to add a blog to their online presence and have seen wonderful results from those who have embraced it. So move away from the old-fashioned corporate web templates and incorporate a more dynamic approach to your website.

For another take on how to blog successfully, watch this great presentation by Jason Fried called Marketing by Sharing

web design for inbound marketing

Welcome to the new-look GetSticky website. This is the fourth iteration of the site since it’s launch in April 2009 and is representative of our missi0n to constantly improve design and layout to achieve better results.

Inbound marketing is made up of 5 distinct areas: web design, search engine optimisation, content generation, social media and conversion strategies. These 5 elements all combine to create a powerful marketing model that attracts qualified traffic to your site and turns it into enquiries or business.

Here at Sticky we work hard on each element of the Inbound Marketing formula, testing new tools and ideas to identify best practices. We treat our sites as the guinea pigs before rolling out the best ideas for our clients.

And that’s the reason behind the latest look for this site. We have introduced a cleaner, less cluttered design with concise information about who we are, what we do and how we can assist you. Everything you see is there for a well-considered reason.

The next step is to now measure the results of these changes. We’re doing heat-mapping of the site to see how visitors interact with each element. We’ll be studying the analytics behind the site very closely and we’ll be tweaking where necessary to achieve better lower bounce rates and higher conversion rates.

Then we’ll be able to pass on our best thinking and insights to our clients.

As far as we’re concerned, a website is a constant work in progress requiring regular fine-tuning and updating. A well-managed website can be your organisation’s greatest marketing asset, so give it the attention it deserves.

Inbound marketing case study

Sticky has performed SEO contracts with ACRF in two phases. Initially we were contracted to optimise their existing website for 3 keyword terms, with the contract beginning in October 2009. The website was already performing reasonably well in most searches however, being a charity relying upon online donations in a competitive sector, the higher the search ranking the greater the returns.

Using NLYZR, we performed our standard procedures:

- Keyword Analysis

- Benchmarking

- Competitive Analysis

- Recommendations

- Refinement of SEO

Just over two months from beginning the contract, and one month from implementation of recommendations ACRF hit first place in Google global searches for all 3 terms.

We have since launched a new website for ACRF and broadened their keyword search base. We used NLYZR to benchmark the old site and its SEO then to provide post-launch recommendations for ongoing SEO improvements and broadening of the search base. Our websites are extremely search friendly and have allowed us to improve search rankings for a large number of terms. Already ACRF web traffic has increased 60% in the first month.

We think NLYZR is exceptional. We’d trailed global charity groups in three key search categories for three years, pretty much giving up on organic search. Sticky worked on it, and in just over two months, Voilà! We hit #1 in all three.

- Suzie Graham, Executive Manager, Philanthropy, Australian Cancer Research Foundation

We have been working with Sticky since last year. Over that time we have used them for optimising our website and we have just launched a new website in the last couple of months which is wonderful.

Over that time they have really helped us with optimising search on our site. Its been so exciting seeing ACRF being lifted up in the Google rankings and also seeing all the extra traffic that is coming through to the website.

They have been really wonderful to work with. I have worked with a number of agencies both big and small over the years and none have been as easy to work with as Sticky and is as passionate about our business as we are. Sticky are always on the end of the phone or email to help us out. They are always looking for new ways to better us on search and to improve our website, which is really great.
We have really enjoyed working with them.

- Claire McArthur, Fundraising Program Coordinator, Australian Cancer Research Foundation