Digits ready for the most busy shopping days of the year?

Is your local business prepared for Black Friday sales?

Local SEO could be your salvation.

Whatever your opinions, news forecasts suggest Black Friday could be the UK's first £1 billion online shopping day as retailers open their doors to bargain hunters. The Centre for Retail Research experts expects tills over the weekend, including Cyber Monday, to take £3.49 billion. So what does this mean for a local small business?

If you really want to be found on Black Friday here are a couple of suggestions for your online marketing strategy...

Photo credit: Reuters

Digits ready for the most busy shopping days of the year?

Is your local business prepared for Black Friday sales?

Local SEO could be your salvation.

Whatever your opinions, news forecasts suggest Black Friday could be the UK's first £1 billion online shopping day as retailers open their doors to bargain hunters. The Centre for Retail Research experts expects tills over the weekend, including Cyber Monday, to take £3.49 billion. So what does this mean for a local small business?

If you really want to be found on Black Friday here are a couple of suggestions for your online marketing strategy...

Photo credit: Reuters

Karen Gillan Underwear Example

How to identify Trending Topics for SEO

Writing or blogging about trending topics can be a great way to generate traffic (and links) to your site, provided that your content is high quality and that you pick the right keywords to optimise on.

The second half of that equation can be the difference between loads of traffic and very little, so identifying what people want to read about (and more importantly, exactly what they are typing in to Google right now) is paramount. If you can be among the first to blog on a trending topic you can get your site on the front page of Google quickly, and bag the traffic (what's more if you're the first, you're more likely to stay on the front page longer).

If you need to learn more about blogging and SEO, we run regular Blogging Training, Search Engine Optimisation Course, Social Media Training and Google Analytics courses in Brighton, Sussex.

So - "how can I find trending topics?" At Friday's BrightonSEO conference Malcolm Colesgave a very informative (and highly entertaining) presentation about how he used a variety of tools to discover trending topics when working on the celebrity news site HolyMoly, including some very interesting data on the searching habits of the Great British male!

Here are our video highlights from his presentation, along with a summary of the tools discussed (more information can also be found on Malcolm's site here)....

News Search Tools: How to Find Trending Topics

We've split the video of Malcolm's presentation in to two parts - the first summarises the News Search Tools used to identify Trending Topics. The second, which I couldn't resist adding, is an example of how HolyMoly used these tools to exploit the search term 'Karen Gillan Underwear', which reveals some interesting (and very amusing) trends in men's searching patterns after they've watched Doctor Who!

#BrightonSEO Video: News Search Tools Summary

A summary of the News Search Tools mentioned is provided below, but do watch the video as Malcolm puts them nicely in to context with examples...

News Search Tools Summary:

Which of these tools you use will depend largely on the sort of content you publish...

--READ MORE--

AOL homepage(look for the green hot searches box) - This tool is more useful for keyword selection as it provides details of exactly the searches users are submitting

AOL hot search blog (ignore the slow-to-update picture box and look for the topic boxes further down) - Scroll down the hot search blog to find most popular searches by category - e.g. if you often write about gadgets you can see which are currently the most popular.

Google News UK (look for the ‘in the news’ list)
Google News USA (click the categories on the left to see the topics)

Google News provides a good summary of what's in the news that day - if its in the news it means that people have already written about it - you won't be able to compete with the major news channels (unless you are one), but you may be able to find an angle on one of these stories for a long-tail search.

Google Insights - A very useful tool if you're writing about an annual / regular event. You can use Google Insights to see what people searched for last time and optimise for those terms. Remember for annual events to include the year in your title (although this has been over-used for major celebrity events like Big Brother and is no longer useful for these).

Webmaster Tools & Google Analytics - These are useful once you're up and running to help you to make the most of the traffic you're already getting and refine your keyword optimisation. Silicon Beach run regular Google Analytics Training and Advanced Google Analytics Trainingcourses if you want to learn more!

Experian Hitwise Data Centre - always a week behind - top 10 searches in various categories on a weekly basis - good for establishing general trends but less useful on a day to day basis.

Surchur - Auseful tool that aggregates multiple sources together to provide "The dashboard to Right Now"!

Major Newspapers often provide useful indicators of what is most viewed - e.g. Guardian Most Viewed and  Telegraph (has a 'most viewed' box on each category page and also 'hot topics' right at the bottom of the page.

The BBC also has a summary of the most popular seaches hour by hour on the site

So - there are some really useful News Search tools out there to help you identify what's trending - but what do you do with this information to ensure you get as much traffic as possible...

#BrightonSEO Video: Using News Search Tools: Example - Karen Gillan's Underwear

Here's Malcolm's highly entertaining summary of how HolyMoly discovered a pattern of men searching for "Karen Gillan Underwear", and what they did to ensure they used this to their benefit to obtain maximum site traffic when the Dr. Who Christmas Special came around.

Karen Gillan Underwear Example

How to identify Trending Topics for SEO

Writing or blogging about trending topics can be a great way to generate traffic (and links) to your site, provided that your content is high quality and that you pick the right keywords to optimise on.

The second half of that equation can be the difference between loads of traffic and very little, so identifying what people want to read about (and more importantly, exactly what they are typing in to Google right now) is paramount. If you can be among the first to blog on a trending topic you can get your site on the front page of Google quickly, and bag the traffic (what's more if you're the first, you're more likely to stay on the front page longer).

If you need to learn more about blogging and SEO, we run regular Blogging Training, Search Engine Optimisation Course, Social Media Training and Google Analytics courses in Brighton, Sussex.

So - "how can I find trending topics?" At Friday's BrightonSEO conference Malcolm Colesgave a very informative (and highly entertaining) presentation about how he used a variety of tools to discover trending topics when working on the celebrity news site HolyMoly, including some very interesting data on the searching habits of the Great British male!

Here are our video highlights from his presentation, along with a summary of the tools discussed (more information can also be found on Malcolm's site here)....

News Search Tools: How to Find Trending Topics

We've split the video of Malcolm's presentation in to two parts - the first summarises the News Search Tools used to identify Trending Topics. The second, which I couldn't resist adding, is an example of how HolyMoly used these tools to exploit the search term 'Karen Gillan Underwear', which reveals some interesting (and very amusing) trends in men's searching patterns after they've watched Doctor Who!

#BrightonSEO Video: News Search Tools Summary

A summary of the News Search Tools mentioned is provided below, but do watch the video as Malcolm puts them nicely in to context with examples...

News Search Tools Summary:

Which of these tools you use will depend largely on the sort of content you publish...

--READ MORE--

AOL homepage(look for the green hot searches box) - This tool is more useful for keyword selection as it provides details of exactly the searches users are submitting

AOL hot search blog (ignore the slow-to-update picture box and look for the topic boxes further down) - Scroll down the hot search blog to find most popular searches by category - e.g. if you often write about gadgets you can see which are currently the most popular.

Google News UK (look for the ‘in the news’ list)
Google News USA (click the categories on the left to see the topics)

Google News provides a good summary of what's in the news that day - if its in the news it means that people have already written about it - you won't be able to compete with the major news channels (unless you are one), but you may be able to find an angle on one of these stories for a long-tail search.

Google Insights - A very useful tool if you're writing about an annual / regular event. You can use Google Insights to see what people searched for last time and optimise for those terms. Remember for annual events to include the year in your title (although this has been over-used for major celebrity events like Big Brother and is no longer useful for these).

Webmaster Tools & Google Analytics - These are useful once you're up and running to help you to make the most of the traffic you're already getting and refine your keyword optimisation. Silicon Beach run regular Google Analytics Training and Advanced Google Analytics Trainingcourses if you want to learn more!

Experian Hitwise Data Centre - always a week behind - top 10 searches in various categories on a weekly basis - good for establishing general trends but less useful on a day to day basis.

Surchur - Auseful tool that aggregates multiple sources together to provide "The dashboard to Right Now"!

Major Newspapers often provide useful indicators of what is most viewed - e.g. Guardian Most Viewed and  Telegraph (has a 'most viewed' box on each category page and also 'hot topics' right at the bottom of the page.

The BBC also has a summary of the most popular seaches hour by hour on the site

So - there are some really useful News Search tools out there to help you identify what's trending - but what do you do with this information to ensure you get as much traffic as possible...

#BrightonSEO Video: Using News Search Tools: Example - Karen Gillan's Underwear

Here's Malcolm's highly entertaining summary of how HolyMoly discovered a pattern of men searching for "Karen Gillan Underwear", and what they did to ensure they used this to their benefit to obtain maximum site traffic when the Dr. Who Christmas Special came around.

Custom Facebook Tab Using iFrame App

FBML is Dead - Long Live the Facebook iFrame App!

Lots of businesses use Facebook Fan pages to promote their products and services. In addition to the standard page tabs (Wall, Photos, Links, Videos etc...) Facebook had its own markup language called FBML that allowed you to easily create your own custom tabs. This was really handy for creating custom landing pages and special pages for promotions.

On 10 March 2011 Facebook withdrew FBML (the spoilsports!), so you can no longer add FBML custom tabs to your Facebook Fan page (if you already have an FBML page it will continue to work though - phew!).

HOWEVER - there's a new way to create custom tabs for Facebook pages - enter Facebook iFrame Apps! With an iFrame App, you can create normal web-pages using good old fashioned HTML & CSS, and embed them in new tabs on your Facebook Fan Page - sweet!

To use iFrame Apps you'll need to know some HTML and CSS, and also be able to upload content to an FTP server (which if you have your a website shouldn't be a problem!).

But let's not get ahead of ourselves! In this tutorial we're going to cover how to use FacebookiFrame Apps to create simple HTML page tabs in Facebook Fan Pages

If you have a Facebook Fan Page - find out how to optimize it for SEO here

How to create a custom tab in Fan pages with Facebook iFrame Apps

Custom Facebook Tab Using iFrame App

FBML is Dead - Long Live the Facebook iFrame App!

Lots of businesses use Facebook Fan pages to promote their products and services. In addition to the standard page tabs (Wall, Photos, Links, Videos etc...) Facebook had its own markup language called FBML that allowed you to easily create your own custom tabs. This was really handy for creating custom landing pages and special pages for promotions.

On 10 March 2011 Facebook withdrew FBML (the spoilsports!), so you can no longer add FBML custom tabs to your Facebook Fan page (if you already have an FBML page it will continue to work though - phew!).

HOWEVER - there's a new way to create custom tabs for Facebook pages - enter Facebook iFrame Apps! With an iFrame App, you can create normal web-pages using good old fashioned HTML & CSS, and embed them in new tabs on your Facebook Fan Page - sweet!

To use iFrame Apps you'll need to know some HTML and CSS, and also be able to upload content to an FTP server (which if you have your a website shouldn't be a problem!).

But let's not get ahead of ourselves! In this tutorial we're going to cover how to use FacebookiFrame Apps to create simple HTML page tabs in Facebook Fan Pages

If you have a Facebook Fan Page - find out how to optimize it for SEO here

How to create a custom tab in Fan pages with Facebook iFrame Apps

MicroSites, MiniSites, Campaign Sites.... Do they actually work for SEO?

Our LinkedIn discussion of the month

Learn more about Search Engine Optimisation on our recently revamped Search Engine Optimisation Course in Brighton, Sussex.

Our LinkedIn discussion of the month

Microsites can be an excellent way to drive traffic, rank competitive keywords and target niche markets, however many SEOs advise that it's better to bring content into your main domain. With the increased use of Social Media, many also suggest that time is better invested in building networks and sharing resources on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter - a very different kind of online marketing (see this great blog on why you should be wary of using Facebook Pages like MicroSites).

At Silicon Beach Training we used to have microsites but we brought them all into our main site, with much content now in our Free Resources section. This was under the advice of SEO companies. However, we did lose a lot of traffic and many SEOs are now suggesting we should create microsites!... Confused, Heather posed the question "Should I use MicroSites" to her LinkedIn network; what follows are the helpful responses.

MicroSites, MiniSites, Campaign Sites.... Do they actually work for SEO?

Our LinkedIn discussion of the month

Learn more about Search Engine Optimisation on our recently revamped Search Engine Optimisation Course in Brighton, Sussex.

Our LinkedIn discussion of the month

Microsites can be an excellent way to drive traffic, rank competitive keywords and target niche markets, however many SEOs advise that it's better to bring content into your main domain. With the increased use of Social Media, many also suggest that time is better invested in building networks and sharing resources on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter - a very different kind of online marketing (see this great blog on why you should be wary of using Facebook Pages like MicroSites).

At Silicon Beach Training we used to have microsites but we brought them all into our main site, with much content now in our Free Resources section. This was under the advice of SEO companies. However, we did lose a lot of traffic and many SEOs are now suggesting we should create microsites!... Confused, Heather posed the question "Should I use MicroSites" to her LinkedIn network; what follows are the helpful responses.