Simon will be talking about the SEO Principles at Manchester Central Library at 5.30pm for Manchester Digital Development Agency (MDDA), and I’ll be talking to small business owners about Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing at 5.30pm at St Peters High, Levenshulme for Blue Orchid training.

I’ve added the presentation slides for both training courses for those who attend.

The post Online Marketing Courses appeared first on PushON Ltd.

The department for Children, Schools and families developed an interactive website aimed at encouraging children and “young people” to feedback their ideas and requirements for play spaces. The resulting website can be found at http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/playspace/

Apparantly the website cost £50,000 +VAT to develop, is due to close in August this year and has recieved just under 10,000 visitors since launch. That’s an approximate cost per visitor of £6. The source of these details can be read House of Commons Publications and Records website.

I wonder if the developers of the site were wearing a mask when they asked for their £50K? The site is built poorly failing validation for W3C guidlines and accessibility checks and the application is dull and completely unrewarding for the user.

Perhaps if they had spent some of the budget on marketing the application and engaging with a company with a proven track record of developing engaging content for children they might have been more successful.

Still, it’s only tax payers money isn’t it? and they’ll probably double the amount of visitors in the next week due to all the bad press it’ll get for failing. Well done!

The post Shocking ROI for short term goverment site appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Here are the slides from the evening:
[slideshare id=521888&doc=ppc-to-increase-traffic-to-your-website-1216633014713909-9&w=425]

I’ll be doing another one in December, so keep an eye on the blog for the details.

The post Pay Per Click Marketing Course appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Paul Fabretti from KMP in Stockport gave a great presentation on the reputation monitoring and online sentiment tool he uses.  We had our ears pricked up for this one in particular because we’ve been using a reputation monitoring tool to help with our organic online marketing campaigns.  We’re particularly interested in analysing the data to shape online marketing plans, but also in using it to tackle negative and ride on the wave of positive PR.

There was also discussion about whether we need a professional body specifically for our industry.

I personally don’t think the British Computer Society covers what we do in the slightest, and as for Marketing, although the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM), and the Institute of Direct Marketing (IDM) do courses for Digital and Online Marketing, it’s perhaps a bit of an afterthought.

I’m sure there was a branch off for digital from one of these institutions a couple of years ago, but it looks like nothing came of it. (If anyone has any information on this, please let me know).

Cathy Parker suggested a Digital Marketing Institute would help represent businesses working in our industry.  For example, in the case of Government Legislation – a professional body would more likely be called on for input.

This was all very interesting, and then we watched Spain versus Russia in the pub and carried on drinking… poor Julia’s not too pleased with the result.

The post Digital Marketing & Drinking Social appeared first on PushON Ltd.

West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band – Smell of Incense

Can – Mushroom

Big Black – Kerosene

Neil Young – Down by the River

and so on.  Anything else I should try and get played?

The post Online Search Marketing on Salford City Radio appeared first on PushON Ltd.

The Big Chips Awards are the most prestigious digital awards outside of London. They are run by Manchester Digital; the independent non-profit association for digital and new media in the area, and the awards are judged by industry experts.

We’ve been shortlisted for our Search Marketing work for ContractStore, who sell contract templates online. The project involved Organic Search Marketing as the main focus & management of their Pay Per Click Campaign.

Along with various search marketing tactics, we worked with the developer of their site, suggesting improvements to the code and website structure to improve search engine rankings. We also proposed changes to the purchase process which improved conversion rates.

The Pay Per Click campaign was taken over, and we implemented conversion tracking which identified wasted advertising spend. Over the year long project, we reduced the the Pay Per Click cost per conversion – making a saving of approximately 75%.

Last year, Jamie won best rising star for his work in Organic Search Marketing, and the previous year, Virtuaffinity (our sister company) received a special commendation for the Heaven Spa website.

The award night is generally lots of fun, but very messy. I’m really looking forward to the awards this year, even to the inevitable “I don’t know what to wear” debate from the boys.

The post Best Use Of Search Marketing appeared first on PushON Ltd.