We are Moving to a New URL

From today our online marketing blog has merged with Mancala Today. From now on you can find us at http://www.mancalatoday.co.uk

Is this the end for Yellow Pages?

This week saw the latest edition of the Yellow pages distributed around Newcastle city centre. This photo shows what I saw on my way back from a meeting. A wheelie bin with a pile of Yellow Pages stacked up next to it!

I'm not sure what this picture tells me other than they companies these were delivered to did not need the Yellow Pages or thought it was surplus to requirment.

My belief is that the days of Yellow Pages and similar directories are well and truly over. Why would you thumb through a directory when you can have all the information about the services you are looking for at you finger tips via a computer or mobile phone - what is more you can often get much more information about these business online that you could ever do in the Yellow Pages. At the end of the day your business could be spending hundreds or thousands of £££'s each year on advertising in these directories only for your advert to end up dumped next to a wheelie bin in a back alley of Newcastle!!! What a waste.

Spend your adverting budget smarter! Make sure you are trying out new ways to make contact with prospective clients. My first port of call, use the money you would spend on telephone directories on advertising using Pay Per Click Advertising.

Of course there are some businesses who will make more money than they spend in telephone directories and to those business I say keep doing it.... but also try Pay Per Click advertising.

And don't stop there. There are dozens of ways to attact customers online, try one out each month and you could be looking at a different business this time next year.

Relaunch of ecommerce store to buy your PA Systems from

The New PA Super Centre website has now been launched.

The new website builds on the success of the old website and has improved the experience for the website visitor greatly.

Built for Suffolk based PA Super Centre who are part of Gofer Ltd, the new site allows users to compare products as well as create customer accounts and get much more detailed information on the products. The new website will be backed with a Pay Per Click advertising campaign as well as using email and search engine optimisation to attract new, relevant visitors.

Please take a look at www.pasupercentre.co.uk.

PAsupercentre is one of the UK's leading suppliers of PA Systems and Sound Equipment. Gofer are a leading supplier of sound equipment and cabling to major UK venues and festivals including Glastonbury, Tea in the Park as well as live bands. The website has been built using Magneto Commerce by Newcastle SEO and Internet Marketing agency Mancala

Do you run an ecommerce store? Want help?

Back by popular demand we are running a new internet Marketing Seminar/

The focus this time is on all the essential information you need to run a successful ecommerce store. The seminar will show how you increase the number of qualified leads to your online store and persude them to buy - we will also tell you how you can get them back to your store and how to increase the average value of a sale.

Worth a couple of hours of your time?

Find out more at our website for Internet Marketing Seminars

Magento Commerce

We are now creating ecommerce stores using a product call Magento and frankly it is fantastic!!

For the last six months our developers have been learning the ins and outs of this sophisticated and versitile ecommece store creator and are now offering this expertise to you and your business.

The important thing to remember when developing an ecommerce store is to get your calls to action in the correct place. Don't forget the purpose of your store... to make you money!! Make your key products easy to find, clearly price them and where you can offer upsells and cross sells.

Magento makes this easy to happen and we can help you implement your store.

Blog Post appear in Google Quicker than normal web pages

Something I have noticed recently is that Google adds blog posts to it's index a lot quicker than normal web pages.

I posted an article on a sister blog last night ( www.buymagazines.co.uk ) at about 11pm - by lunchtime today it was in the Google index - amazing. Of course this could have been a coincidence, but I have noticed this time and time again - so here are my tips on getting your blog index rapidly.

1. Make sure it is already being visited by Google. The easiest way to do this is to get a link to your blog from a website that is already in the Google index.
2. Make sure you have a xml sitemap and submit it to Google Sitemaps. Automate the site map to update at least once a day.
3. Get links from other blogging websites if you can.
4. Update your blog regularly.

And that is all there is to it.

Happy blogging

Updating the content on your website

One of the most effective ways I find to maintain high positions in search engines is to make sure that you do the following

• Regularly update the content of your website - search engines periodically visit your website and look at the content on it. If your website has changed since the last time it visited it will see that you have 'current' website which is likely to rank better than your competition that is not as well update.
• Try and add a new page every week (at least). As your website grows you will increase your opportunity to target search phrases.

Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimisation are the keys to your business's Internet success.