What is Google Product search?

If you’re not familiar with the name, Google Product Search gives online businesses the opportunity to have a presence in Google’s shopping results. Earlier this year we ran a blog piece talking about this service, if you missed it you can read it here.

So what is the new specification?

Google will be shortly issuing warnings to many Google Shopping feed owners that do not supply the following information alongside their existing feeds:

• Brand
• Gtin – EAN or barcode number
• Mpn – manufacturer product number

Any two of these three product identifiers must be displayed for the feed to stay live. If this information is not supplied then your feed will be suspended and if not corrected, deactivated.

As of 22^nd September 2011, further information will need to be displayed including:

• Availability – you must display whether the item is in stock or not.

This is required for all Google shopping feeds.

Other product identifiers such as Google category may also be needed depending on the nature of your business.

A full list of the other variations, depending on what items are being sold can be viewed here: Google’s summary of attribute requirements.

For your Google shopping feed to continue to run without a hitch, please contact us to discuss the options available. We can upgrade your website to incorporate new functionality, so that you can populate the new data into your feed.

It is a well-known fact that social media is fast becoming one of the most popular ways for people to communicate, socialise and network online. Businesses around the world are embracing social media and using these platforms to help reach out to their client bases.

Social Media Management can be an effective way to help your company spread news and information about your business, product or services. There are a wide range of solutions to choose from such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn and soon Google Plus. We will look at a few of the most popular networks below.

Facebook

Why choose to use Facebook? The main purpose of having a Facebook business page is to improve your brand awareness. Facebook is the largest social networking platform in the world with currently over 500 million active users. Of these users, it is estimated that 50% log onto Facebook daily. On top of this, people spend around 700 billion minutes on Facebook every month. Facebook business pages can be used to promote your services, events, competitions or products and allow you to have a presence on the largest social network.

As the demographic of Facebook users becomes older, these users are often the decision makers when it comes to online purchases or using your services. BF Internet can build a business page and update accordingly to promote your business and campaign. This will help to increase awareness about your brand and drive traffic to your main website.

Twitter

The use of Twitter continues to grow and grow with everyone from children, students, business people, celebrities and everyone in-between all signing up for an account. On average there are 175 million registered users and on any one day there are around 95 million tweets.

Although Twitter “tweets” are limited to 140 characters, this medium provides a great way to give your audience news about products, promotions or even just to create more awareness about your brand. Twitter posts can also appear in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) because search engines such as Bing and Google now look for real time results as part of their algorithms.

YouTube

The YouTube channel is the second most used search engine in the world. This means that if your business has video content then it makes sense to have a presence on this search engine.

Uploading your videos to YouTube will help to increase your online presence by allowing you to share your content and get the highest amount of impressions. YouTube videos appear in the organic listings too giving your message even more exposure too.

These are just a few of the social media platforms on offer. Here at BF Internet, we can help you with all aspects of your social media campaign no matter which platform you choose. Whether it is simply setting up a social media account on your behalf or managing a social media campaign, we are happy to work alongside you. To find out more contact us or telephone 0845 519 4727.

If you sell products online yet you don’t use Google Product Search then are missing out. Google Product Search or Froogle as it was previously known was first launched in the UK back in 2004 and is a free service that allows companies to have their products displayed in the shopping results on Google.

For instance, if we were to do a search for the phrase ‘trilby hats‘ then you would see on the first page of results some shopping results for trilby hats. Typically, there are three or four listing with a small thumbnail image but these results can be expanded further by clicking the shopping tab at the top of the page or the text “Shopping results for trilby hats”. Doing so will take you to a whole section dedicated to shopping results powered by data uploaded to Google.

In order to get your products listed on Google product search, you will need to open a Merchant Center account with Google. This is a straightforward task and can be accessed from the settings link in your Google account. Once registered, you will be able to upload a product feed that will keep your product list up to date. The upload of the feed can be set to daily, fortnightly or monthly depending on the frequency your stock changes and you can specify what time you want the feed to run. Our Get-Trolleyed system can help you with this by uploading the automated product feed, we would be happy to discuss setting this up along with you on your behalf.

Once you have got your feed up and running, you can then turn your attention to optimising it to give your products a much better chance of being placed near the top of the list (remember, the top three or four listings appear on the first page of Google).

There are a few simple things you can do to give your product feed a better chance. Be careful not to overdo it though because this can be more harmful than doing nothing at all. Ensuring that you have some keywords in the title and description of each product can help to improve your placement in the shopping results. Also make sure that you all products in the feed have an image associated with them and if possible, the name of the image relates to the product.

If you are interested in setting up a Google Product Feed of your own and would like us to give you a quote, why not get in touch? Simply give us a call on 0845 519 4727 or use our contact form which can be found here.

You may not realise it but SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) plays a large part in how easily your website is found by potential customers on the Internet. Sometimes this happens naturally but in many cases, websites need help to improve their rankings in the major search engines.

Perhaps the best way for a website to rank well is to use content that is relevant to your niche market. By this we mean words or phrases throughout your website that are often searched for by people when are looking for a product or service into a search engine. Search engine spiders also crawl through these relevant phrases and use them as part of their ranking algorithm which ultimately determines where you are placed in the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages).

What you are aiming for is website that appeals to both the search engine spiders in order to ensure that you rank well, while at the same time making sure that the website is equally as presentable to human users too. SEO is used to help increase your website’s rankings by using targeted keywords in the body of the text as well as in the META data. These keywords are usually determined at the start of a project and are based on how many people search for them on the major search engines.

Once the best key phrases have been determined, they can then be used throughout the website. Updatable content such as blogs or articles can then be created again using these key phrases and added on to the website. These new pieces of optimised content can then be crawled by the search engine spiders and be indexed accordingly. This helps to give your website more relevance online allowing users and customers to find you when they search on the Internet.

It is important however, to always remember that it is all too easy to get carried away and put too many key phrases into the website. Doing so could be deemed as spam, which looks bad to a human user and could result in a penalty from the search engines that would damage your rankings.

SEO is important for your website because without it your products or services may not get the attention they deserve. If your website cannot be found easily then users will go somewhere else. By ensuring that your website is properly optimised, you can give your website the edge over your competition.

To keep everyone up to date with how things are progressing at the new office, we have created a gallery of images to help show where we are at the moment. We will keep updating our gallery as the build continues.

We recently mentioned that we are going to be moving to our new office location in Sandside so we thought that we would take the opportunity to give a progress report on how things are shaping up.

When we first got our hands on the building it was little more than an empty shell but this did give us the scope to make it exactly how we wanted to be without any constraints from previous designs.

The first thing that was decided on was that a mezzanine floor should be factored in to the new design as this would better utilise the buildings height and provide a large open space for all the staff to sit and work together. This will be invaluable for collaborations on projects and allow information and knowledge to be shared much more easily.

Downstairs will provide a reception area, meeting room, office and staff area too. The offices will have a thoroughly modern feel to it that helps to reflect our professional work ethics. The meeting rooms give added space to entertain clients should they wish to visit the new office.

Work has commenced on the office and at the moment, much of the groundwork has been completed meaning that it should not be too long before the building is ready for us to begin the move. We will keep updating the news section in order to keep everyone up to speed with the progress. Here are a few images of how things are presently.

Web design and hosting company, BF Internet are soon to be moving to their brand new offices in Sandside.

Located only a mile away from the existing office in Milthorpe, these new offices at Shoreline Business Park not only provide more space for the expanding needs of the company but will also have a new, professional interior for the programming and design teams.

The interior of the new building is being designed from scratch and will provide better laid out office space as well as reception and meeting areas for clients if required.

Managing Director, Rob Holden commented;

“We have been at our current location in Milnthorpe now for many enjoyable years but the time has come for us to move somewhere that is going to allow us to grow further. The new premises at Sandside, will give us everything we need including a better working environment, while still being close to the main roads and motorway.”

The company was formed in 1996 and began designing and hosting websites for clients across the UK. Today, BF Internet boasts a large portfolio consisting of small, medium and large clients and can cope with a diverse range of needs.

Company Information

BF Internet is a UK web design company based in Milnthorpe, Cumbria.

For further information please get in touch via telephone or email.

Back in the early days of search engine optimisation it was more a case of everyone for themselves since search engine algorithms were nowhere near as complicated and sophisticated as they are today.  There were many tactics that were commonplace to help improve websites rankings that are now frowned upon by the search engines and SEO’s alike.

Like in any industry, there are always some people who want to try and cheat the system or fast track their website to the top of the rankings.  Short term they may achieve good results but eventually these techniques will always be found out by the major search engines and it is then that your site may start to suffer.  ‘Black Hat’ search engine optimisation as it is known should be avoided so let’s take a look at what to watch out for when considering online marketing.

Keyword stuffing

This was certainly one of the favourite techniques used by website optimisers in the early days of SEO. Stuffing lots of keywords into every page of a website was commonplace and often, the font would be the same colour of the background. This meant that unless you clicked over it with your mouse, it would be hidden from the user. The same thing could also be done behind the scences in the back end of the website where the META data, heading tags, etc could be filled with keywords.

These are still practised today with optimisers coming up with increasingly sophisticated ways of accomplishing them. This can make it difficult to spot these kinds of underhand methods except by someone who knows what they are looking for.

Gateway/Doorway pages

Put simply, these are pages that are not designed to be seen by the web user because they redirect very quickly to the main website. They are web pages that have been stuffed full of keywords that wouldn’t actually make any sense to the casual observer.  This excessive use of keywords is just one example of a practice known as spamming.  This is highly frowned upon by the major search engines as it is seen as trying to cheat the system.

Link Farming

This is where your website is submitted to large numbers of websites whose sole purpose is to list links to as many different sites as possible, whether they are relevant to your business or not.  This will not result in your website gaining any extra traffic and ultimately will likelyend up with your site being penalised.  The only real way to build good quality links to your website is through the writing and distribution of quality copy and submission to relevant directories.

These are just three examples as there are many other ways that ‘Black Hat’ optimisers can try to cut corners in order to achieve quick short term results to justify their existence and make themselves look good. It is very important to remember that online marketing should be seen as a long term project and not just a quick fix.

Ultimately, if you use an SEO company who are open and upfront about how they go about your online marketing and explain the associated processes that go with running a solid campaign then the chances are that they are not going to employ ‘Black Hat’ techniques. However, if you are promised the earth by a company but they are unwilling to discuss how they are going to go about it then perhaps you need to start asking them a few more questions.

Every e-commerce website, no matter what its size or focus, could benefit from an increase in activity over the busy and highly competitive Christmas period. According to research conducted by eBay advertising, 85% of consumers intend to maintain or increase their festive online shopping for 2009, and it’s estimated that online retailers will see an overall spend of £8.9 billion this Christmas. We’ve just passed “ Cyber Monday” – the busiest Internet shopping day of the year, which typically falls on the first Monday of December (7^th December for 2009).

• Add a Christmas Gift Section
• Provide Extra Delivery Options & Notify Customers of Dates
• Focus on Email Marketing
• Offer a Gift Wrapping Service

Christmas Gift Sections

Help your customers find gifts quickly and conveniently this year by adding a Christmas-specific department to your e-commerce website. Anything can be a potential Christmas present, so group your products into handy categories – for example, allow shoppers to sort by price or suggest gifts for potential recipients, ‘Under £20’, ‘For Her’, ‘Stocking Fillers’, to help guide your shoppers towards their ideal products. To make the selection process even easier, you could also consider offering a choice of gift cards or Christmas-themed gift packs.

Delivery Options & Dates

Provide clearly visible information to your customers regarding your Christmas delivery schedule, and make sure you offer the latest delivery deadlines available to you. Many shoppers leave Christmas shopping until the last minute, so it’s important to provide shipping as close to Christmas Eve as possible. The worst thing you can do is deliver late!

You might also expand your range of shipping options over the festive period to deal with demand – for instance, if you don’t currently offer a Next Day courier service, consider catering to last-minute shoppers and implementing one for Christmas.

It’s suggested that free delivery influences almost half of online purchasers – so you may want to offer complimentary shipping when customers spend over a certain threshold. Christmas is a hugely competitive period, and free shipping could consolidate a customer’s decision to purchase from you rather than another Internet retailer.

Focus on Email Marketing

As months turn into weeks and weeks turn into days, Christmas time seems to get closer and closer without us even realising. Try using our easy to use email marketing software, EmailTool, to send out mailshots and reminders – even though Christmas will probably see an influx of new customers to your retail website, it’s important not to neglect your existing ones! Email newsletters containing seasonal content – from Christmas gift ideas to festive promotions and discount codes – will encourage your email subscribers to make a return visit and subsequently a Christmas purchase.

Keep reminding your customers how close Christmas is… and, more importantly, how many Christmas shopping days remain!

Gift Wrapping Service

The weeks leading up to Christmas are hectic for a huge number of stressed shoppers, and taking Christmas gift-wrapping out of the equation for them could easily lead to a sale for you. If offering free gift-wrapping for your products proves prohibitively expensive or time consuming, you could always offer the service as a freebie with purchases over a certain value, or as an inconsequent additional cost per item.

As an even greater incentive, think about offering a varied choice of gift wrap to your customers, and displaying previews of your Christmas paper or even pre-wrapped and beribboned gifts on your website.

What you need to be mindful of however is the fact that your website will have been crawled by search engine robots and its pages indexed accordingly. These pages will have a rank in the search engine results and could well be driving quality traffic and visitors to your site. Providing these visitors find what they are looking for then a conversion will be made and you will make money.

Moving these pages without planning ahead will likely result in one of two scenarios:

1. Your website may still show up in the search engine rankings but when viewed, return a 404 page not found error (because you have moved the page and it can no longer be found).
2. Your rankings for those pages may disappear completely from the search engines, which means potentially missing out on business.

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Although turbulence within the results is inevitable, to help cause minimal disruption to your website rankings, planning ahead can make all the difference. Here are our tips on what to do before moving that page…

301 Redirects

• Ensure that a 301 redirect is issued for any page/section that is going to be moved. This means that should a visitor arrive at the old page, they will be automatically taken to the new version.

Custom 404s

• If it is not possible to issue 301s for every page that has been moved then creating a custom 404 page that gives the visitor an option to find the correct page may be an alternative.

Inbound Links

• Other external websites may have placed links to pages that you are preparing to move. In these situations, it is best wherever possible to contact those websites and ask them to update their links accordingly.

Internal Links

• Similarly, any internal links within your site that point to pages being moved should also be updated to minimise the issuing of a 404 page. Creating an up to date sitemap may also help ensure that the newly organised pages are indexed correctly.

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If you are considering re-ordering the pages of your website why not get in touch. We can discuss what steps to take, how to take them and can even do the hard work for you. Give us a call on 015295 64580 and find out how we can help.