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.

New Magazine Subscription Review Site

If you are looking for somewhere to get honest reviews on magazine subscriptions then you should look no further than www.buymagazines.co.uk.

The site is aimed at those who are looking to purchase a magazine subscription but want to know a bit more about other peoples experiences when ordering via the internet.

Visitors are encouraged to post comments and rate the magazine.

Check it out at www.buymagazines.co.uk

Bubble on the Tyne - Plans to build a bar on the Tyne

So here is a client of ours who has decided he wants to get planning permission to build a bubble like structure on the Tyne, just off the swing bridge, which will be an upmarket bar. Ali owns La Riviera (an Italian Restaurant on the Gateshead side of the Swing Bridge) and can be seen talking about the Bubble on the Tyne Project to the local news).



You can also find out more by visiting http://www.bubbleonthetyne.co.uk/

Customise your Trainers....

Check out these guys Sneakart.com. They are a North East company and are going on to great things. You heard it hear first, these guys have a fantastic product and I urge you to take a look.

For those looking to customise trainers or something different for any friends, family, children who like to be individual take a look at there massive range of stickers and sneakskins (the name of the transfers) at Sneakart.com

Take a look at this video which shows how easy it is to customise your trainers.

Compare Apples with Apples, have your website specified by Professionals BEFORE you get any quotes

Before you go out and spend your hard earned money on a website or ecommerce store why not consider having a web site specification done for you.

Unless you are building and running ecommerce stores everyday how are you suppose to know what is the best approach when building a new one? Luckily we do...

Why not get us to do the hard work of the specification for you - and then you can send the specification out to tender and get the best price. So instead of having to consult three or four web developers (only to come up with three of four different solutions leaving you at the same point you started) - give them all one specification, interview them and get their prices - they will all be playing on a level playing field and you can compare apples with apples.

We charge a small fee for doing this, but it WILL save you money in the long run AND you will get the website you want not what someone thinks you want.

Give Alex a call on 0191 241 6726 for more details today.

New Blog Launched

Mancala has launched a new blog. Mancala Today is the official blog of Mancala - Newcastle based SEO company.

The blog will give advice, background and general chit chat about Mancala, its staff and what is happening in the world of Internet Marketing.

Please feel free to check out the blog today.

Mancala Today

Google, Yahoo and Microsoft colabarate to launch the Canonical Tag

So what is a Canonical Tag?

A big problem with large website is the amount of duplicate content caused by the same page being displayed but with different URLs. This is a problem we at Mancala have already gotten around by rewriting out URLs to be search engine friendly - but the Canonical Tag reinforces this even more.

How does it work? basically a tag is included in the code of your web page to tell the search engines what the definitive URL is for this page. That is then the page that should appear in the search engine results.

So what? Well it means that in the future the results you get from searching should contain less duplicate information from the same website and so you should get to the content you want easier.

Simple.

Introducing Magento Ecommerce

We at Mancala towers have been spending the last few of months getting ourselves up to speed with Magento Commerce.

Magento Commerce is highly sophisticated ecommerce software which will make running an ecommerce store a breeze for our clients who take it up.

The first of these store will be coming on line soon and they are brilliant. From the front end ease of ordering (after all that is the most important thing about having an ecommerce store) and from the back end ease of management, Magneto and Mancala are providing top class solutions for any online store owner.

If you would like a free demonstration on how Magneto Commerce could change the way you run your online store then please just get in touch with us on 0191 241 6726 to arrange demo.

Jelly and Icecream Please - Mancala is six years old and better than ever

Mancala reached a milestone yesterday... six years old! And we are stronger than ever before despite the doom and gloom in the market place.

When I started Mancala in 2003 there was only a small appetite amongst the north east business community for internet marketing. It was only business owners with real vision who could see the benefit of making sure their website was ranking high in the search engines - now of course it is common knowledge that the Internet is one of the best (and I believe the best) forms of advertising and attracting new business.

So what has changed in the last six years? well pay per click advertising has really taken off, for many business and clients of ours this brings in significant business - easily making more money than is spent - after all if for every £1 I spent I got £5 back wouldn't you just want to do that all day long? The problem with pay per click is that if you set it up wrong you could be pouring money down the drain - that's why we became Google Accredited Advertising Professionals so that we could set these campaigns for our clients and get maximum ROI (return on Investment).

Email marketing is now a necessary tool for any business serious about gaining leads and business from the internet. We set up sophisticated and effective email marketing campaigns for our clients with proven results.

What about those who's website does not work for them. We now carry our independent reviews of website for anyone who wants one (they don't have to be our client) and will tell them what is not working well and where they could dramatically improve the website and Internet marketing to not only get move visitors but to increase the number of enquiries or sales when a visitor arrives at the website.

We are looking forward to the next 6 years.... in two years time the Internet turns 20, it has grown up and Mancala will be there to make sure that our clients are running grown up sensible and most importantly profitable Internet marketing campaigns.

Now for some more jelly and ice cream!

Running an Ecommerce store or Online Store?

Lately I have been spending a lot of time looking at ecommerce stores and what makes a good one and what makes a bad one. Well my research has come to the conclusion that there are a lot of bad ecommerce stores out there.

So if you are running an ecommerce store, or you are looking to set up a online shop of some description here are a few tips to make sure you head in the right direction with it.

1. Remember the purpose of your online store.... not sure what that is? well the purpose of your store is to sell your products, simple as that. So make it easy for your visitors to buy from you.
2. Most of your visitors do not know who you are... so there is a little trust issue that you need to overcome. Think about what sort of reassurances you would need to to buy from someone you didn't know. Here are a few ideas - have a prominent telephone number on the page - if they have a query they can give you a call. Offer them a money back guarantee on your sales if you can - if the buyer is not taking a perceived risk then this will help them make a decision to buy. Make sure your web store looks professional.
3. Give as much information about your products as you can - some of your buyers will only want the highlights of the product information BUT some will want to know everything - cater for both.
4. Make sure your website is search engine friendly! that means that every page, every category and every product page can we indexed by the search engines - in short it will help you get every product you list into the google database - and if you are lucky, you will get high rankings on every one of these and so lots of free customers!!
5. Try out pay per click advertising. Google Adwords is a good place to start.
6. Use Google Base to list all of your products - Google base is like a shopping comparison tool and can generate a whole load of traffic for your website.
7. Ask friends and family to try and buy certain products from your website. watch them as they do it (but don't give them any help) - see where they struggle, you will be surprised. Try and improve on the areas where they struggle.

These seven tips are the bases for good ecommerce internet marketing. There are plenty more things you can do - so many ecommerce stores do nothing to promote themselves - make sure your's isn't one of them.

SEO Newcastle is now on Twitter

In an experiment to try out all the new fangled communications devices on the internet I have set up a Newcastle SEO Twitter account. For those of you not familiar with Twitter it is basically blogging for the text generation.

I will try and use my Twitter account to give short sharp SEO tips. Please follow me by Visiting Twitter and then click on Follow! (that sounds a little desperate - but is still a heart felt plea).