As a bit of an experimental foray into the way of the SEO world and as a marketing exercise we decided to build a blog aimed at readers interested in spoiling themselves and those they love. With a mixture of topics and more than one author the aim of the exercise is to give the blog varied but relevant content just as a bit of a test to see what results we could achieve. Its an ongoing project that over time we hope will grow.

We are currently testing out plug-ins for it and would welcome more contributors and article writers.

Pampering for You

The Rainbow Studios Team were asked not so long ago to get involved in designing a new forum dedicated solely to online trading and e-commerce, there are plenty of business forums out there geared to various types of businesses and it was felt that there was a gap available for a dedicated e-commerce forum that was focussed around making a success of an online store.

It has sections dedicated to all aspects of e-commerce from cart software to dropshipping and wholesale.

So pop along a join up, join the friendly online community of small business owners looking to make a success of their online ventures.

Increasingly more companies use Twitter for business – to do market research, do brand advocacy and reputation management and provide selected highlights from a conference or event. Twitter allows them to expand their brand and thus generate new opportunities.

In this article, Mahendra shows you how you can integrate Twitter into your Powerpoint presentation and receive instant feedback. Steven has written about using hashtags effectively. And also, you can learn more about Twitter Lists to follow people more closely.

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Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” search results.
These natural search results are the hard work alternative to any adwords or pay per click campaigns.

The target for many website owners is to appear at the top of a search engine such as google for their chosen keywords and search terms, the holy grail in many website owners minds is to appear within searches on a purely organic basis , preferably in the number one spot!!!
This however is not guaranteed as the search engines and slurps change the alogrithms constantly pertaining to a websites worthiness of appearing. Over doing the techniques by using keyword stuffing or spamming and using ‘Black Hat’ SEO techniques (such as blocks of hidden text within a web page and link farms) will cause your rankings to drop and may even cause your site to be backlisted by the great google.

Typically, the higher a site’s “page rank” (i.e, the earlier it comes in the search results list), the more visitors it will receive from the search engine.
As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines.

Search engine optimisation may be offered as a stand-alone service or as a part of a broader marketing campaign. Because effective SEO may require changes to the HTML source code of a site, SEO tactics may be incorporated into web site development and design. The term “search engine friendly” may be used to describe web site designs, menus, content management systems and shopping carts that are easy to optimize.

For those with a Bricks and Mortar Business,  geographically identifying your business is a must in order for people to find you amongst the pages and pages of results linked to your search terms.

Adding yourself to google  geographically is a relatively simple task and all the help you need is right under your nose at the  New! Google Local Business Centre .
Now offering a reporting dashboard. Learn how people find your business.

1. Claim your local listings on the search engines and enhance your local profile! The goal is to be very visible and found easily on Search Engines through PPC, organic results, and Maps.
2. Enhance your local profile and make sure your listings are complete — use images,  videos,  testimonials,  and rich descriptions.
3. Take advantage of Social Media — Facebook,  Twitter,  LinkedIn,  and blogs to enhance internet marketing campaigns and utilize them effectively to keep in touch with customers.
4. Create a separate company profile and fan page for your business — Fan pages add juice and elevate your search rankings.
5. Social Media is about having conversations with your customers, with real-time communication — specials, tips, and products. Customers who enjoy what you are talking about will re-tweet and give links. This is how you can dramatically expand your reach.
6. Brand Factor — How far does your brand go?  Social media broadcasts and expands your reach for little cost and increases your search factor.
7. Video Impact on Organic Search — Videos have a huge impact on the number of visitors to your website and conversion rates. Videos on your website or landing pages create excitement and help people understand your business.
8. Use analytics to find out what is driving traffic, and then do more of what is driving that traffic.
9. Focus on conversion rates. See what your website is saying about your business and if it is exciting for your customers.
10. Network with Local Businesses — Get links from your ecosystem and network,  and create a community.

Focussing on Key Phrases

Keyphrases rather than keywords ?



Everyone goes on about keywords … I think practically any SEO guide ive read will bang on about keywords before they even mention phrases, but very few people type one word into a search engine.

If you want to buy knickers and you live in a town called twaddlesville, you don’t just type in knickers ……. Do you ?

You tend to write a phrase something like: knickers for sale twaddlesville, this search would narrow down your results making it much more realistic. If you use the search phrase: knickers “for sale” twaddlesville, you’re narrowing the results even futher. Not everyone knows how to do exact searches but you can see how a key phase is much more workable than a keyword.



Many people make the mistake of trying to make their homepage the be all and end all when it comes to SEO, there really is only so much you can do to optimise one page in terms of catching traffic, trying to optimise one page with four different search terms or keywords amounts to what i would term a pretty impossible task. Better to optimise the deeper pages with a mind to what you want the whole site to achieve, this is why we advise our clients to consider their target market and their chosen phrases and words before even embarking on the onpage SEO of their new site. Every page, category, title, meta tag has a relevance when it comes to helping your site perform at its best in the search engine results.



Despite opinions to the contrary i fail to see in the experiments ive seen and conducted myself that meta tags are ‘defunkt’ these days and am more of the mind that anything that can possibly help should be done and done in a well planned and controlled manner. Any text entered on your site has the ability to be turned into what i term as google food, Google is clever tho, it will recognise sentences that are badly constructed and out of context or irrelevant. It will take into account the text around any link you make as well as the text of the link itself, it does indeed read the same way more or less that a human does, so therefore it HAS to make sense as readable content in order for the search engines to give it any credibility.

To sum up: building an e-commerce store doesn’t guarantee it will be seen by the search engines and bring in business.
Even if search engines have been to your website; if it isn’t properly optimised they may not index all of the pages and information you have. If search engines do not index your entire site then the only visitors you will have are people you send the website address to.