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21/07/2009  |  White Hat Media fast growing digital agency appoints new Marketing Manager

17/11/2008  |  When in Rome

The new development from Google Earth allows you to see exactly what the people of Rome would have seen back in the day.

A fully recreated Ancient Rome 3-D opens up the world of the Colosseum, the Forum and the Circus Maximus to get a taste of the life that ancient Romans would have lived.

Developed by Google and teams from the University of California at Los Angeles and University of Virginia the project took ten years to complete and further year to transfer it on to the web.      

The project has had positive feedback from the mayor of Rome, Gianni Alemanno who has commented on the accuracy of the project.

You may not be able to witness a Gladiatorial combat in the great arena or the Senate sitting around drinking wine and eating grapes but you will be able to get an idea of the architecture that made up the streets and buildings of the city that once ruled the world.  Does make you wonder if people will be looking on the ruins of the White House in another thousand years.

17/11/2008  |  US Retailers Failing on SEO

17/11/2008  |  MySpace Launching Virtual Payment System

Still the top earning social network site, thanks to its popularity in the US it has the seen the revenues being generated by Facebook, said to be a nine figure number and wants a piece of the pie.

With over $2 billion a year spent on virtual gifts and people getting more and more attached to their online identities it seems as though it is a market worth investing in.

17/11/2008  |  Google Avoids Bugs

Using the results of hundreds of billions of searches dating back to 2003 the results were then compared to data from the Centres for Disease Control [CDC]. These results can provide information that is two weeks ahead of anything the government can provide.

Citing that their team had found that certain aggregate searches tend to be very common during flu season they then compared these results against data from the CDC.

Google hopes that this information can be used to identify early outbreaks in the future.

30/10/2008  |  LookGoodForLess.co.uk

With the run up to Christmas fast approaching and with people looking to save money wherever possible White Hat Media is pleased to announce the launch of a new website LookGoodForLess.co.uk.   

Two of the most popular cosmetic brands, Yardley of London and Woods of Windsor have got together to offer special priced classic lines and recent favourites before they are re branded or are no longer available at. 

The site has been the result of a close working relationship between White Hat Media and the brands themselves, utilizing new search engine developments too make sure the content is delivering to the needs of the consumer.

Aimed at offering their loyal customers the chance to obtain high quality special offers with the ease of home shopping and bulk buying the website has many original ideas for the client. Included in this is its Going, Going, Gone section which informs customers of a favourite brand that may be selling out fast with a continuously updated stock list.      

White Hat Media's team have been involved in the design and build process of the site from the onset and have used some innovative and tried and trusted means to build a highly usable and aesthetically pleasing site.     

The White Hat technical team have built the site with open source technology which allows for rapid application development and fully featured content management systems. Together this makes it very simple for the client to update their own products and to chart all orders.  

At White Hat Media we are heavily involved in the promotion and marketing of the site as well and are using aspects of social media optimisation and Analytics to drive the publicity of the site forward.

Our specialist search engine marketers have used forums and blogs that target the intended market and to promote information of special offers as they appear.  

These are updated alongside specialised press releases helping to consistently create and maintain exposure to its maximum level. Analytics are then used to monitor where the successful links are coming from which then helps to make the marketing plan more efficient in the future and maximises the value of money to the client.   

Relationships have been managed successfully by the White Hat Media team with a specialist member of our search marketing team allocated as a sole point of contact for the client, cutting down on the chance for miscommunication. This helps to provide the client with the trust and consistency needed when working towards the goal of setting up the website efficiently and effectively.  

30/10/2008  |  White Hat Media helps bring Sussex businesses together

White Hat Media has announced they have now partnered with The Brighton & Hove Chamber of Commerce (BHCC) to re-develop their website. A voluntary organisation, the BHCC is run by the members for the members and represents the local business in Sussex and wants to improve awareness of their membership scheme.

The BHCC has two main functions. Firstly, it voices the needs and interests of the local businesses community, and feeds these into the City's strategy developments. Secondly, the Chamber provides members with opportunities to meet, learn from, and network with a diverse range of business people. The BHCC enjoys a high reputation in Brighton and Hove for quality networking and provides an excellent way to keep in touch with the local business community.

White Hat Media is an active member of the BHCC and believes in fully supporting the local community and as such sees the Brighton and Hove Chamber of Commerce as being an intrinsic part of this.

White Hat Media will be using their pool of search engine marketing experts to work alongside the BHCC to help update and improve their current website. The core of White Hat Media's work is in re-engineering websites and marketing them for their clients to increase traffic and sales.

The new website for BHCC will allow users the facility to pay for events and membership fees online. The website will have a new newsletter sign up facility and allow BHCC members to send in press releases, special offers which will be published on the website.

30/10/2008  |  Duplicate content penalty

Google has finally put to bed the myth surrounding the penalty for using duplicate content on your website - There isn't one.

On the Google webmaster central blog, Susan Moskwa who is Google's webmaster trends analyst clearly states there is no such thing as a "duplicate content penalty" and it does not impact search engine optimisation. At least, not in the way most people mean when they use the phase "duplicate content".

However she did say that Google does apply certain penalties to websites that just purely scrape content from other websites and republishing it and those that republish content without adding any additional value. It is only real deliberate duplication that is likely to result in any negative effect on search engine rankings.

However you don't have to panic if you're now thinking "well what if someone else scrapes my content!".  In an earlier post on the same Google blog, Sven Naumann of Google's search quality team said that their search engine is usually capable of determining what the original source of duplicated content is, which meant that the original host of the content should not incur any penalties.

Ms Moskwa wrote "Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results."

In her post the webmaster trends analyst advised website owners to refrain from creating multiple sub-domains, domains and pages that contain the same content and to avoid affiliate programs that offer little in the way of original content.

Also having multiple URLs on the same domain that point to the same content is seen as duplicate content.  However Google view this type of content duplication, which is fairly common, as non-malicious so a website would not incur any penalties.

As a search engine optimisation (SEO) company, White Hat Media would not recommend you do actually start using multiple URLs on the same domain knowing it will not create any penalties for you. The reason for this is that this type of duplicate content on a website can actually potentially have a negative affect on your websites performance in search engines due to the way search engines work.

"Most search engines strive for a certain level of variety; they want to show you ten different results on a search results page, not ten different URLs that all have the same content. To this end, Google tries to filter out duplicate documents so that users experience less redundancy." Ms Moskwa explained.

So to sum up, having duplicate content can affect your website in a variety of ways; but unless you've been duplicating deliberately, it's unlikely that one of those ways will incur a penalty.If you'd like to discuss any issues you may have with your website or you would like a professional SEO agency to look at your website or take over your current search marketing campaign then call Jason Smith at White Hat Media on 01273 704 771

30/10/2008  |  Google surfs the wave of economic downturn

30/10/2008  |  Google takes a gamble

Google have changed their stance on allowing gambling advertisements on their search engine. This new move has caused very mixed reaction from leading figures in Britain. 

Google, who are one of the biggest search engines, have justified the decision by commenting on the fact that it will be in accordance with local business practices and that companies will have to be registered with the British Gambling Commission to advertise. All adverts will also be classified as Non-Family Safe meaning they won't come up on a search where the Safe Search filter is active.

This hasn't stopped senior government figures and church leaders condemning the decision for its irresponsibility. A Church of England spokesman was quoted as saying that, "whatever people are searching for on the internet it isn't the chance to develop a serious gambling problem."

According to sources at Google, the search engine giant, they have been reviewing their worldwide ban on online advertising for some time now and hope that the lifting of the ban will help enhance the search engine experience for users. With online gambling legal in the UK, unlike the US, it is a fast growing industry that naturally the big companies will not want to miss out on. 

Google is said to control around 70% of the online advertising marketing worldwide and that some of the major gambling companies have been leaning on them to reverse their policies in recent months.

Still, this is proving to be a concern for some politicians who have noted that there has been a recent rise in gambling addictions being dealt with by GamCare and so have questioned the wisdom of the decision.     

In light of the UK advertising growth slowing down in the last quarter, industry marketing experts have noted that adverts for UK online gambling would be worth up to £00 million a year to Google. So are Google really bringing their advertising polices in line with local practices or are they finding other sources of generating income in a time when the UK economy is temperamental and some businesses are spending less?

30/10/2008  |  SEO can help in these tough economic times

Could your site and the use of search engine optimisation (SEO) be your most effective ally in combating these tough economic times for your company? Now is not the time to be resting on your laurels, a pro-active attitude towards your website and SEO could help your business changing market and get you one step ahead of your competitors.

Some key factors to look at in this battle against these tough economic times can begin with being aware of how things are changing around you. Is your market looking for alternative products and are these being advertised correctly on your website? It is a good idea to be watching your competitor's actions and seeing if you need to be moving in the same direction.  

Is your site still up to date with its content relating to your industry? Don't be afraid to change your websites content so that it relates with the customers needs for the moment.  

Think what you can do to enhance your company and your websites reputation so that you can become a reputable voice in your industry. In tough times people like names they can trust, so now could be the perfect time to start up that blog you were always thinking of writing and become a voice of reason in your industry.  

Added on to any changes that may be relevant to your website, is there a need to add any more specific pages with specialist services or products that the customer may be looking for? Look at the different options that will enable you to add more optimised content to your site.

How can you increase your website traffic and keep people engaged enough to stay on your website? Are your potential customers coming to your website reaching the correct landing pages? Be aware of your search engine optimisation results and where they are leading the customer to as this could be a significant factor.

Remembering to work closely with your partners could be one of the smartest and easiest moves to make in tough times. Making sure you continue to drive users towards their pages may increase the chances of them maintaining some of their marketing investment in you.    

Lastly, don't forget about your links. If your links are good and credible they will help to drive traffic towards your site through search engines and prospectors.  

White Hat Media's search engine optimisation services or search engine marketing (SEM) services can be tailored so that the SEO campaign we can provide is totally customised to match your specific website or budget requirements.  If you would like to contact us to find out more about our search engine optimisation services or to find out more about search engine marketing in general then please call +44 (0) 1273 704771 or email us

30/10/2008  |  Search Marketing Spend To Increase in 2008

Even with the possibility of recession hitting, it appears that businesses are realising that tightening their online budgets is not an option and continue to increase their spending on search marketing activities.

Jefferies & Company, an invest bank, have suggested that there is still an going increase in the importance of search engine optimisation (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) marketing strategies. They have produced a report that shows that the overall spending on search marketing will grow at a slower rate then previously expected.

SEO and PPC on the other hand will see an increase in expenditure of 26 per cent by the end of 2008 and will see a further growth of 23 percent in 2009.

In the most recent "Search Engine Marketing Buyer's Guide" published by E-consultancy, it forecasts that search marketing spending in the UK will increase by 24 percent in 2008 along.

This report anticipates that companies will dedicate around £2.7 billion to search engine promotions this year of which £2.42 billion will go on pay per click campaigns, while £330 million will be spent on search engine optimisation.

Jefferies & Company believe that search will play a greater part in online marketing strategies as a result of its performance based nature. This increase in need will then create a rise in the use of professional SEO agencies like White Hat Media to help increase the efficiency and profitability of websites.

White Hat Media believes that as general search engine marketing budgets start to slow, as Jefferies & Company has predicated, then it is inevitable that the need for organic SEO will rise. However if a company does only choose one form of online marketing then they are missing out on a vast potential revenue stream if it does not use PPC and as well as SEO. An effective online marketing campaign should use a range of search marketing techniques to capture potential customers.

If you would like to find out more about search engine optimisation and pay per click then please consult one of our profession search engine marking team on 01273 704 771

08/10/2008  |  White Hat Media Gives The Gym Group Extra Muscle

White Hat Media, an expert search engine optimisation (SEO) company, has built and marketed online a new website for The Gym Group. The Gym Group chain is a revolutionary concept in UK health clubs. By providing a cost effective, no contract online membership to their state of the art equipped gym.

White Hat Media's objective was to create a user friendly system and then drive traffic to the new website. By developing innovative backend technology designed to ease the joining process, the expert team at White Hat Media created an uncomplicated website to process gym membership via the web. This; combined with a comprehensive search engine marketing (SEM) campaign means we are now helping to pave the way for a new pioneer in the fitness industry.

The SEO campaign started in June 2008 with an original goal to sign up six thousand members within six months. The most recent statistics show that this number has already been far exceeded and the site is now top of Google for ‘West London Gym'. Type it in and see for yourself!!!!

So within just a few months, White Hat Media has managed to generate a three-fold increase in expected traffic to the site and have significantly exceed all new membership expectations. We were able to achieve because of our broad range of skills and our professional approach to combining deep technology programming with the more ‘human' element of such a project.

To read our full press release please click here

To found out more about our SEO and SEM services then please call us on +44 (0) 1273 704 771.

11/09/2008  |  High Street Retailers Beat Online Stores at Their Own Game

The emergence of online retailers such as Amazon and ASOS provides a further challenge to the survival of well known High Street brands; a challenge that the major traditional retailers are rising to, according to a recently released report from leading online competitive intelligence analyst, Hitwise. In its August 2008 report, entitled "Can Retailers Have a Happy Christmas during the Credit Crunch?", Hitwise concludes that retailers with a strong offline brand are enjoying higher internet  sales than the purely online traders.

Hitwise found that the 100 largest online High Street retailers in the UK, such as Argos, Next, and Marks and Spencer, received 19.3% more UK Internet visits during July 2008 than the 100 largest online only retailers, such as Amazon, Play.com and ASOS. Robin Goad, Research Director for Hitwise UK, revealed that since last Christmas, the High Street brands have led the solely online sites in every month except February 2008. Fashion retailers, in particular, seem to have weathered the credit crunch, having enjoyed an annual growth rate of over 34%. Seven of the top ten fashion websites are strong High Street brands. Fashion sites account for one visit in ten to all online shopping websites.

One top High Street retailer is further researching the correlation between the online habits of its customers and shop floor sales. Argos, in conjunction with marketing agency, Summit Media, is working with Google to find out how an effective search marketing campaign can bring more shoppers into its High Street stores. Google is keen to establish how search engines contribute to offline buying patterns. The search giant has recently issued its 2008 UK consumer snapshot which reveals that retailer's websites are almost as important as search engines in influencing consumers' buying choices.

11/09/2008  |  Is Chrome Up To Scratch

Google's detractors remind us of the Mountain View, California based Corporation's privacy issues, such as Street View on Google Maps, and the way Google compiles information on our browsing habits to present us with relevant ads based on our preferences. Proponents point out that the Chrome browser is open source, available for Microsoft, Mozilla, et al to adapt Google's technology to their own products.

The cynics among us will be well aware that anything Google releases will be expected to increase its already considerable revenue from online advertising. Despite this, judging from first impressions among bloggers, many users are enthusiastic about the speed and security benefits Chrome offers. One widely praised innovation is the ability to ‘sandbox' tabbed browsing items. Made popular by Firefox before Microsoft incorporated them into IE 7, tabs enable the web user to view several pages within the same window. The problem, up to now, has been that if you experience a bug while opening one tab, the remaining tabs will be frozen. The only way out was to close the whole window and start again, a particularly frustrating experience. Chrome isolates the browsing function within each tab so that if one tab bombs the others are still usable. Google likens this to the ability of a modern aeroplane to be able to continue to function with the loss of one engine.

Early indications are that the technology behind Chrome will revolutionise the way we view the internet. With the imminent release of its Android mobile phone, aligned with Chrome, Google hopes to steal a march on Apple's iPhone; a device that Google executive Matthew Glotzbach praised highly in his keynote speech at the Cloud 2.0  conference in San Francisco yesterday.

11/09/2008  |  Microsofts 300m TV Ad Campaign Kicks Off NFL

Microsoft has previously stated that it needed to respond to the Apple airings. Bill Veghte, Senior Vice President, Online Services & Windows Business Group, was interviewed in July. "We have a huge perception opportunity," he said to CNET News, "We are going to try a bunch of stuff." Veghte states in a memo to Microsoft employees that the first ad aims to reignite consumer excitement about the broader value of Windows. The early commercials in the series should be seen as an icebreaker in order to reintroduce Microsoft to viewers in a consumer context. The later ads will go deeper into telling the Windows story and highlight what Microsoft can do for customers at work, at home and on the move.

Reaction on the blogosphere was mixed. Many viewers were perplexed at the bizarre nature of the ad. Some bloggers were seeking a deeper interpretation of the sight of Bill Gates struggling to get to a pair of leather shoes. Seinfeld's suggestion that Gates should shower in his clothes and the sight of Bill shaking his tail feather was all too much for some. The fact that Microsoft needs to refresh its brand name in the hearts and minds of consumers seems more than a little incredulous. As if there might be people out there who have not heard of Microsoft!

01/09/2008  |  Google Will Allow You to Change Search Results

 It's all pretty mediocre stuff including how Google tried out differing amounts of white space around the top entry in the list to make it stand out. It isn't until you get to the last bit of the post when, almost as a throwaway remark, Gomes details an experiment where search users can move the results up or down the rankings; they can also add their own comments. When you look at the example more closely you can see an x in a box next to each entry. This would appear to indicate that you can delete entries, although Gomes doesn't mention this in his blog.

Gomes does not specify how Google would progress the concept of interactive search. There are already so called "social search" sites which include Digg and StumbleUpon that allow user interaction. Is Google planning to compete with these sites? There is also speculation in the blogosphere that Google is eyeing up Digg for a potential acquisition. Maybe Google has noticed how new human powered search sites, such as Mahalio and Wikia Search are making noises in the search industry and chooses to keep tabs on developments.

Significantly, Gomes omits to indicate whether Google plans to allow users to modify publicly displayed search results or whether they only apply to private search. If Google is looking to revolutionise the way we search on the internet, they would need to put in place measures that will prevent abuse of a more open approach. For instance, how would Google stop website owners from relegating or even deleting their competitors' sites from the search rankings?

01/09/2008  |  MySpace Beats Yahoo in US While UK Online Ads Overtake TV

The mainstream TV broadcasters, BBC, ITV and Channel 4 have embraced the internet by offering video on demand services from their websites. Consumer devices are becoming ever more sophisticated. 78% of adults who use a Digital Video recorder fast forward over commercial breaks, another dent in TV advertisers' earnings.

Subscription television, such as satellite and cable services, now brings in more money than advertising; £4 billion was raised from subscription, £500 million more than total TV advertising revenue during 2007.

While web advertising takes the lead over TV, social networking sites are increasingly attracting the lion's share of online advertising. In the United States, Yahoo has lost its number one position for display advertising visits to Fox Interactive, headed up by MySpace. ComScore, the US web audience monitoring company, reported that Fox Interactive received 56.8 billion views in June compared with Yahoo's 53.1 billion. While MySpace's growth is encouraging, Yahoo's cost per thousand clicks (CPM) is significantly higher, consequently attracting more advertising dollar.

June was the first time that Yahoo lost its lead and it remains to be seen whether MySpace can maintain its position. The worry for Yahoo though, is that its advertising returns have been on a downward trend for eleven months. Yahoo's Adam Grossberg has queried the methodology being used by ComScore. Andrew Lipsman of ComScore argues that Yahoo's decline is organic and nothing to do with the way ComScore measures the advertising statistics.

What is clear is that as technology develops, advertising models need to be continually reinvented to reflect consumers' viewing habits.

06/08/2008  |  Microsoft offers search services on Facebook

This search and advertising deal will give wider web-searching capabilities from within the social network for the first time. This means that with roughly 90 million active users worldwide on facebook, Microsoft's audience and demographic viewers will be soaring through the roof!! Emily Riley, an analyst with Jupiter Research, states "For most of its history, Microsoft has been known as a tech-oriented portal, while Google and Yahoo are regarded more as media aggregators." Developers of facebook are allegedly now deciding on how and where the search function from Microsoft will be incorporated into the Facebook site.

The new deal will also be made in the same week that Facebook unveiled a new idea for their site re-design called Facebook Connect. This will allow the users on facebook to sign into selected third-party sites using their existing login and will incorporate online activity into their existing Facebook feed.

But will the inclusion within this social networking site have any immediate effect for Microsoft? Many people who use social media sites still go back to their trusted search engines such as Google and yahoo etc so why should they use Microsoft's? Justin Long (editor of the InsideFacebook blog) thinks that both Microsoft and Facebook should be able to drive additional revenue through the deal. He noted that a deal which was similar to this struck between Google and social networking site My Space, boosted the search revenues of both parties.

Although, It was noted that Google has had a hard time monetizing the search deal with MySpace and blames the under performance on the difficulty with monetizing social networks in general. It's therefore possible that Microsoft will run into similar issues on Facebook.

Shar VanBoskirk (Principal analyst with tech research firm Forrester Research) stated: "This is a great deal for Microsoft, They have some really smart search technologies, but there just aren't a lot of people using them."

The new search and ad feature that is part of the expanded deal will not launch until year's end, with integration details not clear, the Journal reported. Financial terms of the Facebook deal have also not yet been disclosed.

06/08/2008  |  Google Launches it's own Wiki - Knol

Wikipedia has been running for seven years and has had over 75,000 contributions and over 10 million articles published in over 250 languages, allowing people from all over the globe to contribute their own knowledge and interesting facts to the site. So what could possibly challenge such a genius website?

The competition is from Google's recently released site called Knol. Knol is a website which introduces a new method for authors to work together by submitting authoritative articles about specific topics, written by people who have the knowledge about these subjects. This moderated contributor model is apparently designed to address issues of quality as well as motivation for contributed content.

Readers of the submitted articles can suggest edits to the content to which the authors can choose to accept, reject, or modify before the changes are visible to the public. This has a big advantage over wikipedia, who due to their open concept collaborative framework could never provide this opportunity. Knol will also allow multiple articles to be published on the same subject, whereas ‘wiki' will encourage readers to add additional information to the original content.

Knol also has an interesting advantage over wikipedia in terms of lack of anonymity in authorship. Google believes that as Knols topic editors are professionals steeped in the academia of each topic, the articles published will gain more trust from their audience rather than those published in wikipedia written with supposedly little knowledge of the subject. Google wrote. "We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of Web content."

An example of this disadvantage is from August 2007 when a British graduate student came up with ‘wikiscanner', a programme that identified the authors behind wikipedia edits. The programme revealed that people at the IP addresses of several major companies made changes to their own or competitors entries.

In addition to article submission, Knol contributors can opt to include Google ads in their writing. So the amount of ads combined with the amount of traffic now steering away from wiki to knoll and the bonus of Google splitting its revenue with the authors, means it's not hard to predict Knols popularity already.

05/08/2008  |  You Can Run but You Cant Hide

A new study from ABI Research indicates that, despite the hiccup in Loopt's privacy policy, smartphone users are increasingly eager to share geo-tagged user-generated content, exchange recommendations about places, and identify nearby friends. There are clear opportunities for a new kind of advertising that will be targeted to the geographical location and the consumer's individual buying habits. GPS availability on more handsets will lead to significant expansion in the location based social networking market. ABI predicts the market will be worth $3.3 billion within the next five years.

The report also concludes that companies wishing to exploit social networking should not necessarily rely on advertising revenue alone.  Dominique Bonte, principal analyst at ABI, pointed out that licensing and revenue sharing deals, such as GyPSii's agreements with Garmin and Samsung are more likely to help grow customer bases and achieve profitability.

 Significantly, Loopt have signed up with all the major US mobile telecoms providers. ABI's conclusions are backed up by a flurry of deals in the location based social networking sector.  Nokia recently increased its exposure within this developing marketplace by acquiring Plazes, a Berlin based Start-up Company. Limbo and Whrrl are just two of the many location-based networking applications available from Apple's App Store.

Location based Networking promises future growth in previously untapped markets. Consumers are eager to join in but service providers must ensure that they retain the customer's confidence that their personal details are not going to be made available to third parties without permission.

05/08/2008  |  Where Is Yahoo Going

Carl Icahn, the billionaire corporate raider, is trying to replace the Yahoo board of directors following the Microsoft debacle where co-founder, Jerry Yang turned down Microsoft's offer of $33 per share against Mr Yang's evaluation of $38 per share. Wall Street is buzzing with speculation that Microsoft is going to lodge a new bid in the near future.

The failed bid was followed by an announcement that Yahoo had signed an agreement allowing Google to post ads alongside Yahoo search results and paid search ads on websites owned by Yahoo and its partners. The agreement is non-exclusive, giving Yahoo the option to enter into agreements with other paid search advertisers. The deal is estimated to be worth in the region of $800 million in extra annual revenue and is expected to generate between $250m and $450m in operating cash flow.

A number of mid and senior level executives have recently departed Yahoo. Probably the highest profile name is Jeremy Zawodny who has moved to Craigslist as chief technology officer.  A member of Yahoo! Search's Technology Development team, Zawodny is highly respected by his peers. His blog, subtitled "Random thoughts on technology, aviation, and life in general" is read by many influential decision makers within the web marketing industry.

Since leaving Yahoo, Jeremy Zawodny has been lavish in his praise for Yahoo's DIY search product, BOSS (Build your Own Search Service).  Yahoo's search technology is being opened up to allow developers to create innovative new applications. Yahoo recognises that the current search climate needs shaking up and is encouraging smaller enterprises to take part in the latest search revolution.

Whether BOSS or Carl Icahn will enable Yahoo to launch a serious attack on Google's domination of the search market remains to be seen. That there is never a dull moment in Sunnyvale, California these days is beyond doubt.

15/07/2008  |  Google Ad Planner Released

Google has announced the launch of Google Ad Planner, a free online research and media planning tool that connects advertisers and publishers. If you're a Google Adwords member you can use the Google Ad Planner to find out which websites your audience is more likely to visit.

Google Ad Planner can help you find demographics and sites associated with your target audience. You can drill down further to get the aggregate statistics for the websites that you are targetting for your Google ad campaigns. In addition, the Google Ad Planner, can easily create media plans and export these to a .csv file which you can then open using any spreadsheet applications when planning your next Google ad campaign.

Google has freely promoted the launch of its new Ad Planner tool, but has been very quite when it comes to revealing any details about how they work out their figures. The Google Ad Planner tool is still currently being tested and is only available to selected customers, but Google's plan is to eventually make the Ad Planner available to everyone free of charge.

Also the Google Ad Planner isn't without its competitors as some companies such as Quantcast already use similar systems to help measure online audience statistics. However with the influence and industry muscle Google has the Google Ad Planner could accelerate the digital transformation of advertising.

15/07/2008  |  Microsofts New Bid for Yahoo

The Yahoo-Microsoft battle is still continuing with a second proposal now shunned again from Microsoft Corp and activist investor Carl Icahn. The "take it or leave it" attempt to bid for Yahoo's online search operations was described as "completely absurd and irresponsible" by Yahoo and suggested that this would dismantle their Internet franchise.

Yahoo had previously rejected an offer from Microsoft on the 12th of June in favour of a search advertising deal with Google. This represented a bit of irony because Google's domination over Internet search advertising is the main reason why Microsoft pursued Yahoo in the first place. Microsoft's new proposal offered better revenue guarantees from search advertising in which the enhanced terms were to include $2.3 billion in guaranteed annual revenue for five years from search advertising.

Yahoo were given just 18 hours to decide on the latest proposal which would have required the internet giant to instantly sack its top management, sell its stakes into several Asian internet companies and replace its entire board of directors. Roy Bostock stated "It is ludicrous to think that our Board could accept such a proposal".

When Microsoft announced to the public the possibility of the company buying all or part of Yahoo if its shareholders voted to remove the current board, Yahoo shares then climbed 10 percent on the hopes that Icahns support for this proposal might help to seal the deal.
After the offer was put forward by Microsoft, Yahoo's board formed into a conference call and immediately declined, but alternatively offered the chance to purchase Yahoo for $33 a share. Yahoo has yet to explain why it finds a sale at $33 per share to be more acceptable now and more so than it was a little over two months ago when they previously rejected the offer on the 3rd of May. The board also said Yahoo was willing to negotiate a different search-only transaction.

The plans for Yahoo's annual meeting are said to be on the 1st August. Carl Icahn, who owns 5 per cent of the company's stock, will attempt to replace Yahoos board and if he is successful, Microsoft's door for a fresh takeover bid of Yahoo will be opened and ready to be enter. Microsoft however has stated they are no longer interested in buying Yahoo in its entirety unless Icahn's board is involved in the negotiations.

03/07/2008  |  Google to stop Pay Per Action Campaigns

20/06/2008  |  Monster Traffic Flow for Recruiter

Monster, the online recruiter, has announced that they have had a substantial increase in traffic recently due to carrying out a search engine optimisation (SEO) campaign for their website. It has been reported that they have seen an increase of around 26% during March 2008 due to their attempts to raise their position in the search engines. Its seems that the recruitment industry has woken up to the benefits of search engine optimisation and are now using search engine optimisation tactics to achieve higher ranking in search engines and increase their high visibility to the internet community. Firms like Monster can cut the amount they spend on recruitment if they where to just improve the performance of their websites.

This is a good sign because a lot of larger organisations who have decent websites but have never grasped the importance of optimisation will now hopefully sit up and take note of Monsters increased success thought the use of search engine optimisation.

20/06/2008  |  UK Charities to Benefit From New Google Earth Programme

A powerful new programme to help charities reach tens of millions of people around the world was unveiled today by Google. Sir David Attenborough was at the launch to highlight the work by the charity Wildscreen to document and photograph critically endangered species - a project called ARKive. UK charities Wildscreen and WaterAid are using Google Earth, under the new programme, to highlight their work.

The Google Earth Outreach programme gives NGOs and charities the skills and resources to use Google Earth and Maps to show their work and highlight their cause to a mass audience. It means campaigners can overlay written, audio and video information onto Google Earth in what is known as a layer and have their campaigns viewed by people across the globe.

Unveiling the new ARKive layer in Google Earth, Wildscreen charity patron Sir David Attenborough said: "Having spent over 50 years working in natural history broadcasting, I know how important technological innovation is for reaching new audiences. With the Internet, there are now even more opportunities to bring the wonders of the natural world to a global audience. Google Earth is a really powerful way for Wildscreen to show the vital work it's doing with the ARKive project. It is visual, easy to understand, and another important step in helping us appreciate that without care and conservation many of our amazing plants and animals may soon be lost forever."

The new Google Earth Outreach programme includes grants for licences of the professional versions of Google Earth and Google SketchUp (the 3D modelling software) plus text and video tutorials on how to use these powerful tools.

Also speaking at the event was Chief Almir Surui from Brazil, who has been working with Google for the past year to map his tribe's lands in the Amazon and to create a 50 year plan for sustainable living.

Chief Almir reiterated the importance of the work that ARKive was doing with Google Earth, explaining that some of the threatened species in the layer are found on his land in Brazil. He said: "It is vital that people know what is happening to these species and Google Earth is a great way for ARKive to reach a wider audience. The Google Earth Outreach team is helping me and my people to map our lands to ensure our knowledge is saved for future generations and to ensure our forests are not cut down by illegal loggers." A layer by WaterAid was also unveiled showing the work the charity is doing around the world.

WaterAid spokesperson Vincent Casey said: "This Google Earth layer will help WaterAid highlight the life threatening water supply and sanitation issues that affect billions of people every day. The layer also allows us to communicate simply and effectively how WaterAid is making a difference."

20/06/2008  |  Google Adwords New Matching Option

Google has been recently testing a brand new keyword matching option for its Adwords platform called “automatic matching”. It was launched at the beginning of June in the USA and we hope to be able to use it soon in the UK!

With this AdWords new feature, Google automatically uses an advertiser’s excess budget to post ads against keywords other than those the advertiser is actually bidding on.

According to Google: “Automatic matching shows your ads on relevant search queries not already captured by your keywords. It works by analyzing the content of the landing pages, ads, and keywords in your ad group. It then shows your ads on search queries relevant to this information. The system will continually monitor your performance on these queries and adjust its matches accordingly.”

16/06/2008  |  Google Sets Its Sites on Google Apps

Google has recently introduced Google Sites™, an application that makes creating a team web site as easy as editing a document. With Google Sites, people can quickly gather a variety of information in one place -- including videos, calendars, presentations, attachments, and text -- and easily share it for viewing or editing with a small group, their entire organisation, or the world.

Creating and editing a set of pages in a Google Site requires no knowledge of HTML or web design skills. People can start a new page with one click. Adding content is as easy as clicking the edit button. Sharing is as simple as sending an invitation. All content is instantly searchable, and Google Sites is accessible through any web browser.

Anyone inside an organisation can begin using Google Sites by signing up for Google Apps™ communication and collaboration services through Team Edition -- without having to burden IT for support. After verifying their business or school email address, people can instantly invite others to join, or easily identify people within their organisation already using Google Apps.
Google Sites is secure and scalable. Users have full control over who can own, collaborate and view pages, and view version history for each site. Google Sites is built to scale to any sized organisation -- from a five person start-up to a 50,000 person enterprise or university -- and requires no hardware or software to buy, install, or maintain.

Google Sites is based on JotSpot™ technology and available in the Team, Standard, Premier, and Education Editions of Google Apps. If your business or school doesn't use Google Apps, please visit http://sites.google.com and sign up for Team Edition with your work or school email address. Existing Google Apps administrators can enable Google Sites immediately from the Google Apps control panel.

The Google Sites interface is available in US English only at this time, however, users can input content in any language. International organisations wishing to use Google Sites immediately can switch their display setting to US English. The interface is in the process of being translated into multiple languages.

16/06/2008  |  Microsoft Offers Cashback to Advertisers

Microsoft is offering cash rebates to US customers who buy products from retailers advertising on the Live Search website. Microsoft’s aim is to try to catch up with search market leader Google. Advertisers will only be charged per acquisition, as opposed to more traditional pay-per-click methods. Microsoft Cashback is currently only available in the United States.

Cashback has been launched in an attempt to gain ground on rival search engines, Yahoo and runaway leader, Google.  Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft, highlighted how he hoped Live Search Cashback would attract more advertisers in order to compete with Google. Speaking at Microsoft’s annual digital ad conference, Mr Gates claimed that the overwhelmingly positive feedback from all the partners confirms there is this opportunity for change.

Greg Sterling, an analyst at SearchEngineLand.com, welcomes the challenge to Google.  Mr Sterling acknowledges that Google’s existing customers are comfortable and there has been little to lure them away. The cash incentive may offer something different.  Search industry reaction to the announcement has not all been positive. Jeffrey Lindsay, a financial analyst at Sanford Bernstein & Co, concluded that the effect would be limited in scope and would not undermine margins across Google's larger market share. Mr Lindsay proposed that in the unlikely event of Live Search Cashback making inroads to Google’s superiority, Google would just retaliate with a similar scheme of its own.

Bloggers responding to Microsoft’s announcement are questioning whether Search Live Cashback offers better value than existing online retailers, such as Amazon and Google. Some goods were available at lower prices, even allowing for the Cashback rebate.

Time will tell whether or not the scheme is a success and is introduced in the United Kingdom. Web advertisers should keep up to date with new developments in the lucrative online search industry. Bill Gates also announced in his keynote speech that Microsoft will be announcing big news every six months.
 

16/06/2008  |  Piracy or Threat to Exchange of Information

Will YouTube Saga Decide Future of Business on the Web?

The long running court battle between Viacom and YouTube “threatens the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information" over the web, according to Google, the owners of YouTube. Viacom, owner of The MTV, VH1 and Comedy Central networks, is suing YouTube for $1 billion (£506 million) for failing to keep copyrighted material off its site.

The action, taken out in March 2007 was, in the eyes of many observers, fizzling to a halt. Google has this week claimed that YouTube “goes far beyond its legal obligations in assisting content owners to protect their works”. Viacom disagrees, having last month rewritten its lawsuit, claiming that YouTube has consistently allowed unauthorised copies of popular television programmes to be shown on its website. Viacom claims to have identified tens of thousands of viewings of its product, including SpongeBob Square Pants and MTV Unplugged.

The common consensus among industry observers is that Google should offer a settlement. Google are having no part of it. Google's vice president of content partnerships, David Eun, has claimed that Google will push all the way to the Supreme Court to seek a successful outcome.  Google claims that YouTube is protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA) which offers service providers a “safe harbour” by not making them responsible for the content posted by site users.  YouTube has also taken down copyrighted material when detected. Viacom claims to have witnessed clips back on YouTube, just hours after being removed.

The dispute will be fought to the bitter end, leaving new media experts bemused that Viacom hasn’t embraced the opportunity to compete with YouTube by making its material more widely available online. British Television companies have made available popular material free to view online, offering a much higher quality product than the postings on YouTube. The advertising and sponsorship opportunities are unlimited. The best way to wipe out the pirates is to offer a superior, monetized product.

In the mean time we wait for a ruling which could forever change the way we do business on the internet.

16/06/2008  |  Suing For Links from Google Are They Kidding

Members of the Belgian press are suing Google for $77 million in damages for use of their material. The Belgian newspapers claim that the stories are copyright protected and they don’t want readers linking to their websites from Google News. Apparently the Belgians want readers to find the news stories through their own home pages. The distorted logic is that if readers seek news stories through the newspaper home page they stay on that newspaper’s website, whereas if they follow the link from Google, readers will leave the newspaper website and search again through Google News.

It seems incredible that the people in charge of Belgium’s press have no knowledge of how the web works. Maybe they should stick to producing print based newspapers. Most website owners would bite Google’s hand off for offering free links into their website. Not so, it appears the Belgian Press. The irony of this is that many bloggers responding to the Information Week article reporting this story found it through Google.

This story, together with Viacom’s continuing court action against Google for allowing copyrighted material to be posted on YouTube, demonstrates how some media organisations are failing to embrace the web’s ability to open up new markets for free. New products are being developed, including YouTube’s own Insight tool, which can help identify how the market is reacting. YouTube Insight can measure when certain videos are being viewed.  As many advertisers discover the importance of advertising on social media, tools, such as YouTube Insight, can prove invaluable in maximising advertising revenue.

Scripps Networks, part of media conglomerate E.W. Scripps Co., have recognised the opportunity that YouTube offers in bringing its brands to the attention of social networkers. Scripps Networks have made available short clips from its lifestyle channels, including home-improvement channel HGTV, DIY Network and Fine Living Network, on YouTube.

Contrasting attitudes among media organisations make for interesting and exciting times for the legal department of Google Inc.

12/06/2008  |  Google Aims To Target Russia

The general perception among web users is that Google dominates the global search industry. This may be the case in America and Western Europe. Not so in Russia or China, whose combined populations will provide over 50% of the anticipated growth in world internet usage during the remainder of this decade.

Google is currently the second largest search engine in Russia, behind Yandex who receive approximately double Google’s total in searches. Sergei Brin, Google’s Russian-born co-founder expressed in a recent newspaper interview that he is keen to fill the gap between Google and his home country’s favourite search engine.

Similarly, the Chinese search industry is dominated by the domestic provider, Baidu who currently enjoys 55% of the market, compared to Google’s 27%. Given that internet penetration in China is currently only 10.9% and 19.5% in Russia, compared with 69% in the United States, the scope for growth is massive.

China is estimated to overtake the US as the largest online community by the end of next year. Russia is likely to provide the majority of new web users in Europe. Google, clearly, is closely monitoring the growth of internet usage in the East. Companies who look to the internet for generating new business will ignore these twin opportunities at their peril.

While the opportunity for growth cannot be overestimated, focussing solely on Google listings in Russia and in China will cause web marketers to miss out on a large proportion of the available market. Achieving listings on both Baidu and Yandex is theoretically possible but not easy. There are a number of potential pitfalls, not least the fact that Yandex will only accept site submissions from within Russia. Baidu, in turn, combines both paid and natural search results in one listing. Achieving top site rankings in China, will therefore probably involve some outlay on paid-for advertising.

In summary, Russia and China will provide high dividends when you use a professional web agency with proven expertise in the necessary skills to penetrate the lucrative Eastern market.

12/06/2008  |  Charities Grasp Social Networking Opportunity

Leading charitable organisations are leaving major retail brands behind when it comes to utilising Social Network Marketing. Oxfam and Global Call to Action Against Poverty have joined forces to launch a new fund raising initiative using Social Networking technology.

Strategies are being adopted by a number of non-governmental organisations worldwide in order to increase awareness of their campaigns and to share success stories. The phenomenal success of social networking sites such as Facebook, YouTube and MySpace has not gone unnoticed among politicians, particularly within the United States Presidential Election. It seems strange, in contrast, that commercial organisations seem to be slower in adapting from traditional advertising-based marketing strategies within their websites.

Research indicates that Web 2.0 based marketing techniques, such as social media and blogging will increase rapidly in the next five years. Businesses, on the whole, appear to be taking a cautious approach to implementing these new strategies, in marked contrast to non-commercial organisations.

Another report shows that more web users in the United Kingdom than any other country in Europe visit Social Networking sites. The opportunities for growth for UK business wishing to embrace Web 2.0 marketing techniques are highly apparent. The time is right for a more adventurous approach.  Businesses need to act now. The reluctance of the major brands to adapt provides small businesses with a very real chance to compete with the well known brands.

As with any developing technology, social networking needs to be addressed professionally. There is no magic pill that will get your website promoted to your prospective clients through Social Networking sites. As with all web marketing, you are well advised to obtain the services of a reputable, professional web marketing agency.

29/03/2008  |  The Power of Blogging

It took a while to catch on but blogging appears to have gone mainstream. With businesses continually looking for new ways to compete, blogging, short for web logging, is now a major factor in website marketing.

Blogs began in earnest during the 1990s, when technological advances enabled web owners to post messages in reverse chronological order, inviting comments from site visitors. Businesses were initially slow to grasp the initiative. With technology outpacing business development, all but the savviest marketers were allowing the benefits of blogging to pass them by.

It soon became apparent that key factors in web marketing, particularly those associated with search engine optimisation (SEO) could be exploited through weblogs. Many businesses were finding that blogs provided opportunities for building inbound links, considered by SEO professionals as the key to high rankings in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS). This in turn required blog postings, particularly by the website owner, to contain relevant keywords.

Blogging has therefore become more popular with web owners wishing to attract new business and provides an instant form of feedback from existing clients. Just as websites need to be regularly updated the same is true with blog pages. It is essential to keep readers interested and returning to seek updates and new posts.

You should use a reputable internet marketing agency to ensure that your blog attracts the people who will buy your products or services.

29/03/2008  |  Internet Marketing The Importance of Search Engine Optimisation

Internet marketing is almost universally accepted as a “must have” in order to compete in the 21st Century business environment. The challenge is how to identify and utilise the most effective aspects of the science that is internet marketing.

Online marketing consists of many components, including paid search marketing, pay-per-click, email marketing and search engine optimisation (SEO). There are hundreds of internet marketing “experts” each with their own opinion on how to promote your website. The stark truth is that unless your website is optimised to attract search engines and human readers, every other part of your internet marketing strategy will be in vain.

Search engine optimisation is the key to successful internet marketing because it ensures that your site is recognised and ranked by the search engines. It is also important to remember the reason for having a website; to attract visitors who are interested in buying your products or services.

The key components of search engine optimisation include keyword research, competitive analysis and link building. Relevant, easily readable content is also essential in your internet marketing strategy.

The necessary skills can be obtained by website owners who wish to do the job themselves without paying outside agencies. It is advisable, however, to save yourself considerable time and potential frustration by engaging a reputable internet marketing company.

29/03/2008  |  Search Giants Join Forces in Social Networking Alliance

Yahoo has finally agreed to become a member of the OpenSocial Foundation, the non-profit making organisation formed to help social networking sites to compete with the numerous applications available through Facebook. Following its acquisition of web desktop company, Parakey, Facebook is rapidly emerging as a serious challenger to Google as an all-encompassing operating system. The increased competition between Google and Facebook surfaced when Facebook revealed its online advertising service, Facebook Ads, the day after Google’s original planned announcement regarding the social networking initiative.

Yahoo, allegedly, had initial concerns that Google’s leadership of the OpenSocial Foundation would give the UK’s most popular website too much control over the social networking alliance. These concerns have since been dismissed by Joe Kraus, director of product management at Google and Yahoo vice president, Wade Chambers.

OpenSocial is a more open cross-platform alternative to the Facebook model, defining a common application programming interface (API) across multiple websites.  The developers of OpenSocial are aiming to make it possible for any social networking site to host third party applications. Site users will have the ability to share photographs or play games as well as sharing many other applications between different social networking sites.

Current members of the OpenSocial Foundation include the following social networking sites: Bebo, Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, NetModular, mixi, MySpace, Ning, orkut, Plaxo, Six and Apart. A number of business orientated networking sites have also joined up, including LinkedIn, Tianji, Salesforce.com, Viadeo and Oracle.

29/03/2008  |  Who's Watching YouTube?

New Analytic Tool Identifies Prospective Customers

If you needed convincing that you should be embracing Social Media in your marketing strategy, this should do the trick. YouTube has introduced a new set of analytical tools that show you not only the numbers watching your video. YouTube Insight lets you know who is watching and where they live.
This information will be invaluable to online marketers because the statistics will reveal geographical viewing figures and identify how popular individual videos are over a certain period of time. Comparisons can be made against all videos in the same category.

Detailed analysis will help to match relevant advertisements with videos at peak viewing times and in which geographical areas. Advertising revenue can be maximised by using the data to determine how to target key markets when and where particular videos are popular.

Future developments from YouTube will include the ability to track which website viewers of a particular video are linking from.  With YouTube currently accounting for a third of all videos being viewed on the web, Insight offers an extremely powerful weapon in your advertising and marketing armoury.

The great thing about YouTube and other social networking sites is that anybody can post their videos or blogs when and where they wish. If you are using social marketing media to promote your products or services, however, you need to use a professional web marketing agency to advise you how to maximise your revenue.

29/03/2008  |  Who Will Be The First President Elected by YouTube

The 2008 US Presidential Election could be the first to be decided by social networking sites. Both frontrunner candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain have made extensive use of YouTube and MySpace in the race to the White House.
 
A 38 minute clip of Obama’s televised “race” speech attracted more than two million views in the first two days on YouTube. Meanwhile, McCain’s daughter, Meghan, has been publishing a blog of daddy’s campaign through MySpace.

Obama’s identification with the YouTube generation would seem to be a natural result of his youth and “cool” appeal. There is, however, a real professional edge to this story. An agency that promotes video presentations on YouTube helped an earlier Obama video reach 85,000 views following an intensive marketing campaign. Related postings were made on a number of political blogs, regional newspapers and even on music blogs, to enhance the “rock star” feel of the presentation. It can therefore be assumed that the 2m views for the “race” speech may not necessarily have been totally down to Obama’s natural appeal.

This demonstrates that with expert promotion and professional marketing, a business presentation can reach thousands of new potential customers. Anyone can post on YouTube but getting your video to be seen by the people that matter is critical to your success. This is why using a professional web agency, such as White Hat Media, is essential to ensure that your efforts are rewarded.

02/02/2008  |  Microsoft looking to buy Yahoo

Industry giants Microsoft and Yahoo are in talks about Microsoft buying Yahoo. For some time now Microsoft has been trying to get a stronger position in the Search industry but have spent many millions has little to show for it. By buying Yahoo, Microsoft would get a foot up by tailing over the mutiple assets Yahoo has in this sector.

The current offer by Microsoft was made by letter and was for $44.6 bn (£22.4 bn) and was 62% above Yahoo's current share price.It is likely that if the Board of Yahoo accept the offer that Competition authorities in both the US and the EU will investigate the tie-up.

Jerry Lang, the Yahoo chief executive had already announced that 1000 staff were being laid off as part of re-structuring plans. Yahoo shares have dropped 46% since October but increased by 48% after the announcement of the offer.

There is some concern over the level of the offer with the financial sector divided on opinion as to what the value is. The concern is based on the lack of perfomance that Yahoo has shown against Google in the last twelve months even after re-engineering its offer.

17/01/2008  |  Do you trust Google Search?

How much do you trust the search results served up by Google? Although the biggest search engine to date, only half of users trust the results they receive, down about 10% on two years ago.

"Only 51% of people trust information provided by search engines, down from 62% in 2006. Google, as the most popular search engine in the United States, isn't trusted by nearly half (49%) of the people who use it, an interesting result."

Always check the source of information you find on the web and take it as a guide unless you know the source is trustworthy. In this age of information overload finding accurate data can be an onerous task!

- Digital Future Report

27/12/2007  |  Stem Cell Storage first for Online Sales

As part of the ongoing digital solutions delivery for Cells4Life, the experts in stem cell storage, White Hat Media have integrated an ecommerce package into the existing website at http://www.cells4life.co.uk/.

Now site visitors can easily become valued customers after using the stem cell storage product wizard to help them choose the right package. Cells4life are the first in their field to offer an online payment option.

The current website is powered by a bespoke content management system to allow easy addition of external and internal news, podcasts, blog articles and more.

11/10/2007  |  First Skins4things Ecommerce Site Launched

Skins4things commissioned White Hat Media to build the first of a series of ecommerce sites to promote their range of vinyl skins for electronic devices such as phones, mp3 players, laptops and games consoles.

Actinic Ecommerce V8 Multi Site can run multiple ecommerce sites from one easy to use interface, allowing plenty of room for future expansion. The solution included custom middleware to link direct to the fuilfillment house for rapid order processing and minimum manual processing.

www.skins4things.com

10/08/2007  |  Google acquire Postini

Google Inc. has recently announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Postini, a global leader in on-demand communications security and compliance solutions serving more than 35,000 businesses and 10 million users worldwide. Postini's services -- which include message security, archiving, encryption, and policy enforcement -- can be used to protect a company's email, instant messaging, and other web-based communications. Under the terms of the agreement, Google will acquire Postini for £309 million in cash, subject to working capital and other adjustments, and Postini will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Google. The agreement is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close by the end of the third quarter 2007.

19/07/2007  |  A new arrival, wonderful news!

03/07/2007  |  A new way to pay. Pay-Per-Action

03/07/2007  |  Google Desktop now on Linux

18/06/2007  |  Climate Savers Computing Initiative

05/06/2007  |  Salesforce.com and Google Form a Strategic Global Alliance

17/05/2007  |  Google Begins to Move to Universal Search

According to recent news, it seems that Google is at its critical first steps toward a universal search model that would be able to offer internet users an even more integrated and comprehensive way to search and view information in the web. The US based company also introduced an updated homepage design and several new navigation features that would make it a lot faster and easier for us, the users, to find the information we are looking for. 

It is obviously something that any SEO company or anyone doing Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) will keep an eye on to see the further developments.

14/05/2007  |  Google Advertising Professionals Exam

Congratulations to the two members of our team who successfully passed the Google Exam. They are now accredited by Google as Advertising Professionals.Google Advertising Professionals are online marketing professionals, who currently manage or want to manage AdWords accounts. They must sign up for the programme successfully and have an active AdWords account. Qualified Individuals and Qualified Companies go to extra lengths to attain this status, including passing the Google exam which demonstrates their in-depth knowledge of AdWords.The success of our teammates is a great reward for all the company and a great achievement as they are now recognised by Google as AdWords Qualified Individuals.

16/04/2007  |  Google buys DoubleClick

Google has recently bought the web advertising network company DoubleClick for roughly £1.6 bn.The sale offers Google access to DoubleClick ’s advertisement software and, more importantly, its relationships with Web publishers, advertisers and advertising agencies. Acquiring DoubleClick expands Google ’s business far beyond algorithm-driven ad auctions into a relationship-based business with Web publishers and advertisers. Google has been expanding its AdSense network into video and display ads online and is selling ads to a limited degree on television, newspapers and radio.But now with DoubleClick, Google vastly expands its Web display advertising business, which includes richer graphic and online banner ads for corporate brands, and represents half of all online marketing. Until now, display advertising has been dominated by rival Yahoo.

03/04/2007  |  MSN and inbound links

For those using tools like marketleap, linkdomain or inurl on a regular basis, you may have noticed that, MSN does not return any backlinks (or inbound links) on those tools any longer.According to Marketleap: “MSN has recently discontinued reporting results for the operator ‘link:’. As such our Link Popularity tool is no longer able to generate reports for MSN.  We will be removing MSN from our Link Popularity tool shortly.”It seems that MSN has turned off this functionality because of a too broad use of this kind of tools by illegitimate user, mainly for data mining.Strange enough, the bigger Search Engines that are Google and Yahoo do not seem too bothered by giving out their link data. Even though Google does not report every links, it still gives a rough idea.All the SEO professionals in the world probably screamed in the same time when they noticed what MSN had just done… What will be the next move of the third biggest Search Engine?

06/02/2007  |  Google in Video Game Advertisements soon?

According to some online newspaper, it seems that Google is planning to enter the video game advertising industry by acquiring one company which is already in the sector of advertisement in the virtual world.

It would definitely be a step forward for this search engine giant, since these advertisements would be permanently embedded into a video game. Video Game advertisement is definitely a powerful way to reach a wide audience of gamers that could be well targeted according to the kind of video game the ad is placed in. When you are simply playing football on a video game, you could be surrounded by Google’s ads on the pitch.

One of Google’s competitors Microsoft is already a player in the video game advertising market, since they have easy access to video game developers who are creating games for the XBOX 360. It is obviously a lot easier for Microsoft in this sector of the advertisement.

Google is probably going to be successful once again when compared to Yahoo! or Microsoft’s MSN when it comes to advertising. There are now more and more ways to advertise your company in this world or in the virtual one!

06/02/2007  |  The end of Google bombs?

Google bombs have become a problem for Google.

Basically, Google bombs are Internet pranks. Google heavily relies on the number and the type of links that point to a website. If many websites link with a special search term to a website then the linked site will get a top ranking on Google for that search term. You should keep in mind though that what we call "inbound links" or "back links" are not enough to get you a top ranking on Google.

Some people abused once again this behavior of Google's ranking algorithm to get web sites to the top of the search results that normally should not be there for those key phrases.

The most famous Google bomb is the miserable failure Google bomb. For several months, the official home page of George Bush was among the first results on Google for the search term "miserable failure", simply because loads of websites were linking to the official home page of George Bush by using the term “miserable failure”.

Google recently decided to do something against these Google bombs and came up with an algorithm that should minimize the effects of many Google bombs.

What does this mean to your web site?

Inbound links are very important if you want to get high rankings on Google. It is important to optimize your web pages properly so that they are relevant to specific search terms, but it is equally important to get high quality links to your web site.

A site can only get high rankings on Google if it has good inbound links in addition to good content. However, it is important that you get the right links.

If the links to your web site have an unnatural pattern then Google probably will not count these links. If you get many links with exactly the same link text in a short time period then these links might be interpreted as a Google bombing attempt and be ignored by the search engine.

06/02/2007  |  News in the world of Pay-Per-Click

Yahoo’s new ad ranking system is now live in the US only since the 5th of February. Yahoo have finally switched on its new ad ranking model, so that bid price is no longer the only factor in determining ad positions. The new ad quality algorithm makes Yahoo Search Marketing more like Google Adwords. People at Yahoo say the new ad ranking model will improve overall ad quality by making it harder for low-quality sites that are engaging in arbitrage to rank well. In the short-term, it will also annoy many marketers that have grown used to having a purely bid-based alternative to Google. But it will be greatly appreciated by the people who search on Yahoo, as it will provide better results for them.

The first part of Yahoo's Panama roll-out, the management interface, has raised some concerns with advertisers. There are numerous horror stories of mangled campaigns, inept or unhelpful support staff, and quirky interface elements.

The new ranking model is bound to bring out a whole new round of concerns and complaints. Yahoo gives advertisers some tips on its Yahoo Search Marketing Blog.

The battle between the big search engines on Pay-Per-Click is not over… what will be their next move?

22/11/2006  |  White Hat client wins Brighton & Hove Best Business Web Award

Nigelsecostore.com website has won the Best Business Website award at the SCIP Brighton & Hove Web Awards. White Hat Media built the solution using Actinic Ecommerce software. Several plug-ins and custom modules were utilised to automate the end to end management of the website.

Since the launch of the site it has seen continuously increasing traffic to it due to multiple marketing activities. Because the site sells eco friendly products White Hat Media are proud to be associated with a site that cares about the environment.

Winning the Brighton & Hove Best Business Website of the Year award, although a local event, was the icing on the cake. There are approximately 1200 digital media agencies in the Sussex area and this was the most popular category with many entries. We were therefore very pleased to win this award along with Nigel Berman, the owner of the business.

More details can be found here:

View the website - www.nigelsecostore.com

23/10/2006  |  Online Retail Report Q4

White Hat Media analysed the websites of 20 of the biggest high street retailers to see how well they had been optimised for Christmas shoppers to find their goods online. In-house analysts carried out White Hat Media’s research into the following aspects of Search Engine Optimisation.

• If the company uses Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
• The page titles
• The keywords used
• The H tags. Are there H tags and if yes are there keywords in it?
• If there are keywords in the URLs and the link names
• Whether the copyright is being used as a link back to the homepage.
• The availability of a newsletter and / or site map.

» Read the Online Retail Report
(you need Adobe PDF Reader)

20/05/2006  |  The Brandy Update - Google

After the infamous “Florida” update at the end of 2003, Google is processing another update. According to many experts, these big updates Google is doing are good for the search engine if it wants to stay the main search engine. Even if it causes a lot of trouble to website owners, especially those who have spent a lot of time trying to optimise their site.

This time, Google is doing five main changes in its algorithm formula. The first one is simple in that the search engine wants to increase the size of its index.

The second change deals with Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI).This is a very significant new technology that Google has always been interested in. But what is it exactly. It's all about synonyms finally. LSI-based algorithms will look for words and links that pertain to related topics. The third change is about Links and Anchor Text. Links have always been the essence of Google. The importance of Page Rank (PR), Google's unique ranking system, is being steadily downgraded in favour of the nature, quality, and quantity of inbound and outbound link anchor text.

The fourth change concerns the website’s Neighbourhoods. Now and even more than before, the links to your website must be from related topic sites (the higher the PR the better); those links are seen to define your 'neighbourhood'.

The fifth change is related with the downgrading of Traditional Tag-Based Optimisation. Clever use of the title, h1, h2, bold, and italics tags, and CSS, is no longer as important to a site's ranking as it was in the past.

14/03/2006  |  Google and the Jagger Update

Have you noticed lately really strange things on Google? Is the Page Rank of your website collapsing? Has your site disappeared from the top? Well it may be because Google is once again doing an update... Google does minor algorithm updates regularly, but once in a while, it implements a major algorithm update. It has recently carried out a major algorithm update, nicknamed the “Jagger” update series.

But why? It is actually very simple. First, this algorithm always needs to be adjusted in order to provide the best results because the web is evolving all the time.

Then, Google hates spam and like other search engines keeps its algorithm secret to prevent it from being exploited. So, by re-engineering its algorithm, it keeps “the bad sites” out of its top ranks.

The third reason comes actually from the expansion of Google itself. Because the Search Engine is now much larger than it was, with audio and video content spiderable and searchable, it needs to update its algorithm. Unfortunately this kind of update doesn’t last for only few days but few months!

If your website is suffering from this last update, your SEO or SEM provider should be able to help you. This latest update is going to have different effects on various SEO aspects of websites like the value of incoming links and reciprocal links, the impact of outbound links, the size of your site’s content...

You should for example have a look at the inbound and outbound links associated with your website to check their relevancy to your website’s topic. But also make sure your site is more spider friendly by including a sitemap.

01/08/2005  |  SEO services, The New Battleground!

SEO services are now vital for a successful website. Now that there are many millions of web sites out there, if you want any chance of your site being found by your target audience then you should make sure it has a high position on the major Search Engines.

Current statistics show that these top Search Engines are Google, Yahoo and MSN. Each has its own algorithms and methods of indexing sites. But what are good SEO services? And how do you identify a good SEO services company? Good SEO services are not simply stuffing the meta tags of spamming the content of the site to contain multiple instances of the target key phrases.

The first step in any good SEO campaign is to identify what key phrases you want to be found with. After taking a brief from you a good SEO services company should be able to research these properly and advise you on what they are.

Having done that a good SEO services company should be able to engineer your code and content so that it is Search Engine friendly. This is not the same thing as carrying out a series of tricks to fool the Search Engines as these can be considerably damaging to a Search Engine Optimisation campaign.

A good SEO services company should be able to either write Search Engine friendly copy or edit the copy you have written so that it is Search Engine friendly. Good Search Engine copywriting is vital for a successful Search Engine Optimisation campaign. Again it is not a case of fooling the Search Engines with tricks or spam.

A good SEO services company will be able to re-engineer your site code whether it is static or dynamic. It should be able to and make the necessary changes to it, whether it is written in html, DHTML, XML, asp, php or other programming languages. This should be done unobtrusively so that it doesn't disrupt the functionality of the site in any way.

Having made the necessary changes to a site a good SEO services company will be able to help you maximise the number of good relevant links back to your site from other websites. In this there are a variety of activities that can be carried out and a good SEO serviecs company will be able to both advise and implement if necessary.

A good SEO services company will be able to accurately and effectively monitor your site. It will also be able to use analytics software to gather a large amount of data which it will use to make further changes to the site and to the online marketing campaign.

When you use a good SEO services company, you will notice some benefits immediately. A truly effective campaign takes time and hard work though,and it results in top positions for multiple key phrases.

15/02/2005  |  .net SEO competition - Read the full interview Here

After White Hat Media won the .net SEO competition they were asked how
they did it. Read the full interview here.


In December 2004, White Hat Media won the .net magazine SEO competition.
The objective was to get a site to the top of Google with the search
phrase 'crystalline incandescence'. After winning .net interviewed White
Hat Media about what strategy they used. The editorial has now appeared
in the March issue of .net magazine but understandably due to the
limitation of space only part of the answers have been used.

Here you can read the full interview:

.net: You came 1st in the competition. Well done!
What were your initial strategies?

WHM: Thanks. Our first decision was to build a good
site that people might want to visit and link to. This is important.

We assumed that the other competitors would be able to competently
optimise their sites with the search phrase. Therefore we felt that
other factors such as site structure and IBLs (in-bound links) would win
the competition and be the differentiator.

Unusually the phrase was set while the site could be about anything and
this was something that needed some thought.

We needed a site that could be built quickly, have multiple pages, and
use non-copyright material. It would have to enable us to build
multiple IBLs linking back to the Home Page. We also wanted a site where
the words crystalline incandescence wouldn’t look completely ridiculous.
We needed a site which we could drop into directories around the web. A
site based around humour seemed perfect.

Page optimisation is important though, so it’s worth mentioning a few
words on that. When optimising pages it’s important to consider many
factors. As well as the meta-tags also look at how many times the phrase
is mentioned in the body copy, the frequency of the phrase, its
weighting, font sizes, headings, alt tags and other factors. For
instance frequency is important with 5-15% considered optimum and at 12%
plus we knew we were pushing things. Also we didn’t want the phrase to
look too out of place.

.net: How did they differ from what you'd do for a real
business?

WHM: When working for a real business we would look at
all aspects of their site and fully understand their business first. We
would plan what should be done and what is to be achieved. We would
carefully work with the client on deciding what their target words and
phrases should be. We would look at the site structure, code, content,
links, and make any necessary changes to the site. We would mount a link
building campaign over a period of time and increase the number of links
to the site. This would all be carefully monitored and reported back to
the client.

.net: Did your approach change over time?

WHM: Because the people in second position were using a
page which simply mentioned the phrase many times with multiple sub pages we
had to build more IBLs internally than we planned. We increased the
number of these twice during the competition, the last time three days
before the end of the competition. One thing we didn’t want was to be
copied.

.net: Were you surprised by the final result?

WHM: No. We have been working with the web for many
years and spend a considerable amount of time keeping up to date with SEO
techniques.

.net: Would you have done anything differently?

WHM: We would like to have spent more time on the
actual design of the site. Due to the pressure of having many client projects running
at the time we had a specific amount of time we could dedicate to the
competition.

We would also have liked to spend more time on the content making the
use of the key phrase more subtle than it was.

.net: Did you monitor your competitors’ strategies?

WHM: We did but having said that we were in no way hung
up with
what the others were doing. We simply do our job to the very best of our
abilities. We do the same for all our clients.

.net: Did they have any ideas you wish you'd adopted?
WHM: No.

.net: Any that you thought were unfair, or wouldn't
work in real life?

WHM: Nothing was unfair about the competition. We did
feel in real life that one or two of the other sites would have found it
difficult to have as many outbound links on their home page with the
phrase in them. This did strike us as strange though as Google doesn’t
score outbound links from a home page so why bother building multiple
outbound links from it with the phrase?

We were also surprised by the lack of sitemaps on some of our
competitors’ sites as Google has stated publicly this helps (See
p30 .Net magazine Issue 123, May 2004). Also the use of anchor text was
missing in some cases on some of our competitors’ sites and on some
sites alt tags were missing as well. There were other aspects of what
our competitors did, that surprised us.

.net: What about the test itself -- was it a reasonable
reflection of your abilities?

WHM: Hey, we won. Seriously though, as mentioned we
spend a great deal of time on what we do and in understanding how Google and other
Search Engines position sites. This does change often and we keep to
date with all the latest thinking on the subject. We are active members
of the major forums and have written various papers on the subject. We’d
write a book if things stayed the same until the ink dried.

.net: Would you have constructed it differently, and if
so, how?

WHM: No, not for the competition. We knew we had to
have multiple IBLs with the key phrase as anchor text and that we had to do this
rapidly. There simply wasn’t time to develop a significant link
campaign with other external sites so we had to have multiple internal
IBLs. We also built some small sites and pointed links from these back
to the main site to increase the number of links back to it. Normally we
would spend time in building relevant external links to the target site.
Having said that you’ll see the site in few directories around the web
and the number of external IBLs to it grows every day.

.net: What did our test not reveal that might be shown
up in
other ways?

WHM: Meta-tags were once considered to be of huge
importance.
They are less important now. Then it was the thing to build your phrase
into your body copy properly and this is certainly also important. Now
although these have their place certain things are paramount. Build a
good site that people will visit, and having optimised it properly, have
as many relevant links to it as possible. One thing that was clearly
revealed was the importance of internal links and how well they can work
for you.

With regards to external links though avoid link farms as these may
actually work against you. Oh yes, and be sure to include a sitemap.

.net: Who do you think were the real winners?

WHM: Now you’re being cheeky! Seriously though apart
from White Hat Media we hope it’s the .Net Readers. SEO is a fascinating subject.
If you want to more about it, there are many great sites on which you can
find out what you need to know. If you want someone else to do it for
you, then you know who to call.

.net: What conclusions can you draw from the results of
the test, if any?

WHM: Build a good site, optimise it properly, structure
it properly, generate as many relevant IBLs to it as possible and you will
raise your position on Google. Alternatively pay a specialist to do it
for you, preferably people who eat, sleep and breathe SEO. You know who
to call.

.net: Are there any lessons for our readers, for their
own sites?

WHM: Build a good site. Ensure that it complies with
W3C and Bobby Standards. CSS2 is also preferable but not essential as file sizes
will be smaller. Decide what words and phrases you want to be highly
positioned with. Ensure your pages are optimised properly. Ensure the
structure of your site is good. Use the target words as appropriate such
as in anchor text and alt tags. Encourage traffic to your site.
Encourage links to your site. Include a sitemap. Learn about SEM or use
an expert. Also and this is important, be patient. Do not be conned by
so called quick fix offers. Getting a good page position usually takes
time and effort.

.net: And talking about the readers... What are the
ten most important pieces of SEO advice/ tips you can give them?

WHM:
1.Build a good site and make sure it is structured properly. This is
singularly the most important factor if you want a good position.
2.Ensure that the content of your site is relevant to what phrases you
want to be found under.
3.Encourage traffic and links to your site. Find out who’s linking to
your competitors sites using the link: <URL> command or linkdomain:
<URL> command and if you can get them to link to yours.
4.Optimise the pages. This means much more than just mentioning your key
phrase lots of times. Look at frequency, weight, font sizes, use of
headings, titles, alt-tags and other factors.
5.Use anchor text where and when appropriate if you want to be found
with specific words.
6.Include a sitemap. This is so that Search Engines can more easily find
pages on your site.
7.Talk about your site in forums. Use the main keywords as anchor text
to it.
8.Be patient.
9.If you decide to do it yourself learn as much as you can about the
subject and then keep up to date.
10.If you decide not to do it yourself, use experts. You know who to
call.

.net: If readers want to find out more about how Search
Engine
Optimisation works, then where can they go online?


WHM: You can visit our own site at
www.whitehatmedia.com where
you’ll find information and links.

The .net magazine site at www.netmag.co.uk is also very good for free
articles about SEO and many other subjects as well.

Other excellent sites on the subject which are all packed with
information, and have lively well run forums are:

www.webworkshop.net
www.webworldpro.com
www.searchenginewatch.com

Do you have any other favourite resources you'd like to recommend?

www.wordtracker.com - Find out about your words and phrases.
www.pandia.com - Lots of information and resources here.
www.searchengineforums.com - Lively forums on the subject.


.net: Some readers may think SEO is all very easy, and
they can do it themselves with a little thought. What do you think of software
packages that promise to do the work for you?

WHM: We don’t recommend software packages for SEO other
than site monitoring software. We use matrixtstats to monitor site traffic and in
particular finding out the names of referring pages, URLs, Search
Engines and the words and phrases used to find pages as well as other
important information.

Software packages that auto register your site can actually work against
you and are best avoided.

There are some software packages that analyse pages with certain fixed
rules but we believe you can do it better yourself and in a more
flexible way.

.net: Why should they consider paying for your services
instead?

WHM: The team at White Hat media have many years
experience in both building and optimising sites. The algorithms that Google and other
Search Engines use to score sites and thus position them are complex and
change often. We spend a considerable amount of time in ensuring we keep
ourselves up to date and use this knowledge and expertise for our
clients’ sites.

.net: What typically might you charge?

WHM: Depending on what is needed, SEM work can cost
from few
hundred pounds. Ideally it is something that should be done regularly
though and a reasonable budget should be committed. This can be spread
over time.

.net: And why should readers consider you,
specifically? How are you different, and better than the competition?

WHM: Well for one thing we’ve just won the .Net SEO
competition against some superb companies. We have considerable experience in the
sector and provide an excellent service. We explain to our clients what
we are doing and provide regular reports. Everything we do is measurable
and we have been responsible for many successes.


.net: What is your background, and how did you get into
the SEO business?

WHM: White Hat Media was founded by Jeremy Spiller and
Kevin Elliott, both veterans of the web industry and who have been working in
it for over ten years. Some time ago White Hat Media was asked to do
some Search Engine work to get a site to the top of various Search
Engines. The project went extremely well and White Hat Media decided to
offer the service to other clients. Many recommendations came in and the
business grew from there and continues to grow.

.net: How many clients here?

WHM: We have many SEM clients, both large and small.
Having recently taken on a number of new clients we are extremely busy at the
moment.

.net: Anyone the readers will know?

WHM: White Hat Media works for Chauffeurforce, Blue Gem
Eyewear, Hunter Wellingtons, the Communications International Group and Lets Talk
Music among others. We also work for other agencies and their clients,
some of which are major companies.

.net: What other services, if any, do you offer?

WHM: SEM is one of our main core services and is a
rapidly growing part of the business. We also offer site design and development
and applications development. We believe that SEM now requires a level
of technical expertise coupled to marketing expertise as well as an in-
depth understanding of the subject.

.net: Any interesting business success stories you'd
like to tell the readers?

WHM: We have many business success stories. One good
example is Lets Talk Music. Music is a very crowded area on the web and there are
many forums on the subject. However by keying in the phrase ‘Talk Music’
the Lets Talk Music appears in first position. We usually get high
positions for our clients when asked to do so for certain
keywords or phrases. This takes time though.

.net: How do you see the SEO business developing in the
future (both yours, and overall)?

WHM: Businesses will continue to want their sites to
appear in first position on Search Engines and the market will become increasingly
competitive. The subject will become more complex and the need for
significant expertise will be even greater than it is now.

.net: Any trends or developments of interest?

WHM: Personalisation is an area which most of the major
Search Engines will pursue. We might also see self learning Search Engines.
This might result in returns being different for different users.

Geographical targeting is another area which is gaining increasing
popularity and which the major Search Engines will implement more.

In the future and as the number of sites continues to grow it is
possible that specialist Search Engines will be more popular and become
more main-stream.

To counter this it’s possible that the major players will offer more
specialised services and will definitely continue to offer more
sophisticated Search Features than they do at the moment.

.net: What will happen if MSN
Web Search, for instance, becomes a serious Google competitor, and sites
want to optimise for both engines?

WHM: Microsoft is a major force to be reckoned with but
Google has continually introduced new features to stay in the top spot and
maintain its position as the most popular Search Engine. This will
result in enormous competition between the two companies. It’s
definitely going to continue to be a fascinating field to work in.

23/01/2005  |  White Hat Media launches new Viora website

Today White Hat Media announce the launch of the new Viora website. Viora is a bright fresh lifestyle range of products from Warmways Healthcare.

The website explains how the Viora range of lifestyle aircare products work, a detailed FAQ, some key facts and some testimonials from people who love the products.

Visitors to the site can find out where to buy the Viora range as well as buy directly off the site.

Behind the site is a content management system so that Warmways can update their site when and where they wish.

To check out the Viora website go to www.viora.co.uk

06/01/2005  |  White Hat Media wins crystalline incandescence .Net comp

White Hat Media has won the crystalline incandescence .Net competition. After one of the competitors dropped out, leaving only five, the challenge set out by .Net magazine was to get a website to the number one position on Google with the Search Phrase crystalline incandescence.

At exactly noon on the 16th of December 2004 and within six weeks of the start of the competition, White Hat Media had achieved this by getting its site www.crystalwhat.com to number one position when using the search phrase crystalline incandescence and beating all the other five competitors to the top spot.

We would like to congratulate all who took part in the crystalline incandescence .Net competition and to say that it was a tough job as clearly all competitors are clearly experts in this field.

09/11/2004  |  WHM invited to enter crystalline incandescence .net SEO competition

.net Magazine have invited White Hat Media to enter its crystalline incandescence SEO competition. Along with five other competitors, .net magazine, one of the UK's most popular internet magazines, has invited White Hat Media to attempt to get a website to the number one spot on Google with the phrase crystalline incandescence. The deadline is short with the competition closing in December. The Winner will then be announced in the January issue of the publication.

Entrants are already off the blocks with their sites but White Hat is quietly confident that when its site for the competition is launched the combination of techniques it deploys will give it pole position. Whatever happens though things should be fun!

Of course we won't be using this page as our submitted URL for the competition but if it does make it into the listings when using the Search Phrase crystalline incandescence that's fine by us as well.

04/10/2004  |  SEM now very important for website success

Search Engine Marketing is the new battleground for website owners. Now that most companies have a website how do you get yours higher on Google and other Search Engines than your competitors? If you do nothing at all then it's likely that when someone searches on terms you'd like to be found on they simply won't find you.

So how is it done and can it be done quickly? There are a number of companies who offer instant guaranteed results that you will be 'number one' on Google within days. These claims should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Of course someone has to be number one on Google but it is more complicated and more hard work than it might initially seem. This is because Google have publicly stated that it uses more than 100 ways of scoring a website in order to determine how to position it. Yet it has never publicly stated what these criteria are.

in addition to this Google and other Search Engines constantly changes their algorithms by which they score sites.

However there are some steps you can take to give yourself a better chance. First you need to spend some time doing what's called 'keyword research' and decide which words you'd like to be found with.

After that comes optimisation and this doesn't mean just putting some keywords into your metatags. It is believed that Google looks at keywords in a number of places as well as the metatags, such as headings, body text, alt-tags, links and others. It measures frequency, weighting, number of occurences, font size amd other factors. And you have to get it all right to get a good position.

Even when you have optimised your page you must know about Page Rank a score determined by the number of links to and from your pages which can either be calculated with an arcane formula, or if you like the easy method, read off the Google toolbar.

IBL or In-bound Links are also vitally important and you should endeavour to get as many of these as possible. Having an active and continuous link building strategy is a must for the aspirant website owner or marketeer.

White Hat Media is a specialist in all these things and if you would like to find out more about how to raise your position on Search Engines and improve your webiste marketing then email us

28/09/2004  |  Is it worth having a shop on my website?

If you have products to sell is it worth having a shop or best just to use the site to encourage people to contact you directly? There is no question that to set up a shop properly can be time consuming and complex and so it is briefly worth looking at what is really involved.

If you've set about setting up an online shop from scratch then you probably know all the pitfalls already and don't need to be reading this. On the other hand if you haven't done so yet then it's worth taking a deep breath and carefully considering the whole subject.

The first thing that it is important to emphasise if you are going to set up a shop is that it is done properly. If a customers try to buy off your site and fail or have problems it is probable that they will never return. The disaster that was Boo found this out to their costs and even when Sainsbury's originally launched their first online store, they were criticised for having a difficult interface. Now it's all resolved of course but it is probably that they suffered because of it.

If you are a large organisation then there will be many issues to consider and it is worth spending some time thinking about these. Many of these will concern integrating your online shop with the current sales process and stock control systems and it is important to build a platform that is future proof and will not have to be constantly changed.

But for smaller businesses the planning of an online shop is also important. Product ranges must be decided as well as prices and carriage. There are issues of sending goods across borders as well as those of VAT when selling to other nationalities. Returns policies have to be decided and posted and these must come within the law. Fraud has to be protected against.

There are some Internet Providers who offer quick solutions to setting up an online shop but in the main these are limited in their scope.

If you are a smaller or medium sized business there are some excellent software packages available for building a shop. The best known is probably Actinic which offers a superb range of features is relatively easy to setup and get running. It costs a few hundred pounds but there is also a freeware option, OSCommerce. Either way it is recommended that you get people who know what they're doing to implement the shop.

Getting a Merchants id for online trading can be a nightmare. All the major clearing banks offer this and in some cases you have to provide them with a large amount of information including a detailed business plan. The process can be tortuous and can takes weeks to complete. We would recommend using a dedicated service such as Worldpay. Worldpay offer a range of products for ecommerce back end processing, their charges are transparent and it is possible to set up a Worldpay account in a few days.

When building a shop it is important to make the buying process as easy as possible. There should be good online support including telephone numbers available.

The shop should be tested, tested and then tested again. It is vital that when the shop goes live it works properly and well. As a developer of online shops we have seen numerous examples where this hasn't been the case.

Having built the online shop it's then important to market it properly but that's a subject for another article.

If you wish to respond to this article email us

15/09/2004  |  Hunter Wellington Charity Site Goes Live

Hunter Wellingtons the best known brand name and leading manufacturer of Wellington boots have launched a new website at www.giving-welly.co.uk

Small but perfectly formed the new website was designed and built by White Hat Media and celebrates the support Hunter Wellingtons gives to nine charities being the Countryside Foundation for Education, Marie Curie Cancer Care, The British Horse Society, The Rainbow Trust, The Game Conservancy Trust, The British Lung Foundation, The Woodland Trust, and Haven Breast Cancer.

The site features a number of sections both traditional and not so traditional including a shop, some history about the welly, and a ‘Rogues Gallery’ which features pictures of celebrities and the public in their Wellys.

Also included is the ‘Lonely Wellys Club’ an area where people who want to wear odd coloured Wellys can partner with people who want to wear the other half of the two pairs. Hunter will do their best to match people with their ‘opposite’ coloured pairs.

The site was launched at the CLA Game Fair at Blenheim Palace and was built from scratch in less than two weeks.

Mark Sater, Chairman of Hunter Wellingtons said ‘We had to have a professional site up with a working shop in just a couple of weeks. We’re very pleased with the site that White Hat Media have delivered and it’s a great platform on which to build for the future.

There are links on it to the charities we support and we would like to encourage people to use these to link to their chosen charity to find out more information and hopefully donate.

Hunter Wellingtons is proud of its position within the community of country people and this site perfectly reflects that.’

www.giving-welly.co.uk

12/09/2004  |  Why should I care about making my site Search Engine friendly?

Many websites are built without any optimisation whatsoever. Does this matter or are they not getting the traffic they should do because of this? With vast numbers of people now using Search Engines to find websites this is something that all site owners must consider.

When most websites are commissioned or built more often than not most of the effort goes into the design and technology of the site with little thought to making it friendly for Search Engines. There is sometimes a nod to optimisation with the inclusion of some keywords in the code but usually little more.

Statistics vary but it is said that Google now has a 43% reach of the web (Nielsen). That means that out of every million web users 430,000 are using Google to find sites.

If you don't optimise your site then it is unlikely that any of those will find your site. It's possible that you don't care, rather preferring your site to be a form of contact point and not in any way there to really promote what you do. Alternatively the task may just seem too daunting as you may work in a field where you think it would difficult or even impossible to get a decent listing with any words at all.

The fact is it is possible to get a good listing, even a number one position on your chosen keywords. Someone is doing this. It's not usually easy or quick but with time and effort it can be done. Some of your competitors' sites will be Search Engine friendly and they will be getting traffic and sales that should be yours.

Search Engine Marketing is a science. Google is now by far and away the leader in Search Engines and to get a good listing on Google will improve the traffic to your site enormously. And some of that traffic, hopefully most of it will be the traffic you want.

Engineers at Google have said that there are over 100 factors that Google scores a site on. These factors are used by Google in deciding where to rank a site. Some of these are well known such as including keywords in your title, some are less well known.

Making a site Search Engine friendly can cost little or no money. By doing so the traffic to your traffic will improve and your site will work much harder for you.

If you wish to respond to this article email us

29/08/2004  |  Community sites, useful or a waste of time?

As the development partner of two community websites at www.letstalkmusic.com and www.forum4business.com it is clear that there are those who love them and those who shun them. With the recent growth of web-based communities it's worth taking a look at some of the dynamics behind these.

To grow a successful community based website although obvious you need a common interest that people are passionate about and then a way of telling them about your community. In the case of www.letstalkmusic.com we were lucky in that recently a site called Tonos had gone down and many of its members were looking for somewhere to talk about their passion.

After setting up the forum and other features we quickly realised that it was vital to regularly change the site, add new features and keep things very upbeat. The site launched with the facility to upload tunes and submit these to opportunities so there was a real pull to independent musicians to join.

It's clear though that there is a core of dedicated members and these often post every day and certainly help drive the direction of the site. Like any community characters develop and roles are fulfilled and we look forward to seeing how things unfold.

In the case of www.forum4business.com it's a tougher proposition. People don't seem to be as passionate about business as hey are for music. The growth has been slower but nonetheless steady.

There are other business sites out there such as Ecademy, which I personally find a it spooky. The people who are keen members come across as a little religious in their fervour for the site and I do wonder what the term 'trusted networks' actually means. Having said that I do know people who have done business together through it and so it had its place and each to their own.

Coming back to www.forum4business.com though, it's clear that we have to take a different direction in growing the community. The key element is to make the site genuinely useful and then market it properly on the web. As this is what we do and know about are experts in we are confident that the swww.forum4business will go from strength to strength.

If you wish to respond to this article email us

14/08/2004  |  Many UK companies still to commerce enable their websites

Over ten years after the introduction of the web a huge number of UK companies have still not commerce enabled their websites. Those who have successfully done so have often found that their websites have gone from being static brochure style sites to an important part of their business strategy significantly contributing to the bottom line.

It is believed that there are a number of reasons for the lack of implementation of commerce enablement on their websites by many businesses. Some wrongly perceive that it is expensive and complex and with the myriad of back end processors currently available offering a variety of services making the market-place even more complicated.

However the truth is that commerce enabling a website is simpler than ever before and can be done in a few days. A shop can be set-up using third party software such as Actinic or OSCommerce, a Merchants ID set- up and an agreement completed rapidly. These third party packages are rich with features and offer a variety of ways in which the shop can be built.

White Hat Media is an expert in commerce enabling websites and working with these third party packages and back end systems suppliers. Because of this they look forward to continuing to turn many sites from electronic brochure ware into sites which genuinely contribute to business success.

29/07/2004  |  Battle For Google Ranking is fiercer than ever

Now that most businesses have websites more then ever before are asking how they can achieve high ranking on Google and other Search Engines. The answer is that there is no quick fix. There are many companies out there who claim that for a few hundred dollars or pounds they can do a few tricks and suddenly your website will appear in the top ten on Google and other Search Engines.

Of course this is complete nonsense and if it was possible then everybody would be doing it. But of course they're not. The people at Google are rapidly closing down the more dubious tricks that used to be used to spoof a high ranking and in some cases simply removing these sites addresses from their database.

Google has publicly stated that it uses multiple methods of scoring pages but has never published the details of how exactly it does score pages.

There are certain factors that are understood, such as the importance of keywords of good website design and the number of In-bound links to a site and it is in these areas that almost all sites can be improved.

This is why White Hat Media pay particular attention to these when building a website. The first two should always be adhered to but are so often not. The last factor being the number of in-bound links takes time, patience and effort. However if this work is put in it will make a huge difference to both the amount of traffic through a site and its position on Search Engines.

26/06/2004  |  500th member joins www.letstalkmusic.com

Less than six months after its launch, www.letstalkmusic.com sees its 500th member join.

www.letstalkmusic.com is a site which is dedicated to supporting independent musicians and helps them promote their careers.

On the site artists and song-writers can upload their music for review by others, talk in the forums, collaborate and submit to opportunities.

There's also news, and lots of helpful content. The site launched in December 2003 and is already well supported by industry professionals and is rapidly growing within the music industry with hundreds of members in 22 countries.

16/04/2004  |  New Property World Site launches at www.propertyworld.tv

White Hat Media launches the new property world website at www.propertyworld.tv

The site boasts some interesting features such as a sophisticated Content Management System, 360 panoramas of properties, a Business Directory and a newsfeed.

The site at www.propertyworld.tv offers sellers a remarkably inexepensive method of promoting their properties online to a large web audience.

01/03/2004  |  White Hat Media launch new SEM service

Due to huge demand by clients White Hat Media have launched a new Search Engine Marketing Service.

Although White Hat Media already builds websites that are optimised for Search Engines, White Hat Media has now broadened their service.

The SEM service now includes full consultancy, campaign planning,keyword research, full site optimisation for Google and other leading Search Engines, Link Campaigns, Paid advertising e.g. pay-per-click, and affiliate marketing.

01/02/2004  |  www.letstalkmusic.com sales begin

White Hat Media successfully commerce enable the Lets Talk Music website with Worldpay at www.letstalkmusic.com

From the moment payment was launched sales have been pouring in.

The LTM website is recognised as the fastest growing site for independent musicians in the world. On the site, musicians can post messages and chat with others, submit to opportunities, collaborate with others, get help and support and much, much more.

27/01/2004  |  www.forum4business.com launches

www.forum4business.com launched on January 27th 2004 and was built by White Hat Media. www.forum4business.com is an exciting new business community website for entrepreneurs and owner managers of UK businesses.

On www.forum4business.com visitors can post messages and discuss issues that are important to them and their businesses, with other like-minded people.

On forum4business.com people can post a profile of their company and view others’ profiles. Through this and the message boards, they can get to know potential partners, customers and suppliers before meeting them in the real world, saving time and money.

On forum4business.com there is a library containing papers on many business related subjects, and over time this will grow into a huge resource for help and advice.

www.forum4business.com will regularly feature a business in the Business Focus section and will carry interviews and success stories.

Through www.forum4business.com members can buy products and services at discounted rates and from companies that have been tried and tested, with reviews and reports published by other members.

Over the coming months many new features are planed for www.forum4business and the future for the site is looking very good.

20/12/2003  |  White Hat win Soussol website

White Hat Media have won the contract to build the website for Soussol Records. Soussol Records is a very successful independent music label with a roster of four artists who make chill/lounge music.

The site will reflect the style of the music as well as provide details of Soussol's artists.The music will able to be streamed from the site and there will be links to a shop where the tracks can be bought.

Richard Cleveley, Managing Director of Soussol Records said 'When we decided to build the site we looked for a company that could design and build a website quickly, with the minimum of fuss and who understood what we are trying to do in terms fo design and style. We are confident that White Hat Media can deliver these and complete the site within the deadline, being the Midem festival in the South of France in January.'

01/12/2003  |  www.letstalkmusic website launches

A major new website for musicians launches today at www.letstalkmusic.com, designed and developed by White Hat Media.

The objective of www.letstalkmusic.com is to build an exciting new online global music community. It has been setup by experienced industry professionals with great track records, all looking to help unsigned solo musicians bands, songwriters and producers, in every genre.

www.letstalkmusic.com is dedicated to serving the independent musician apnd artist, while helping them to develop and promote a career in music.

Members can upload tracks for review, secure in the knowledge that the technology deployed on the site prevents the file from being saved, when it is streamed down and listened to.

The site will provide an online review and critique service, from both other site members as well as industry professionals.

www.letstalkmusic.com will allow online collaborations between musicians located throughout the world. The site will give ongoing expert advice on all aspects of the music business. www.letstalkmusic will promote live showcases in the UK, Europe and the US.

The site will find and post opportunities and provide an immediate way for musicians to respond.

The site has a number of busy message boards for members to talk, set up collaborative projects and buy and sell kit and services.

Through partnerships and affiliations, www.letstalkmusic.com will offer goods and services at discounted prices to its members. This will include companies selling musical instruments, studios, travel companies, and companies who draft contracts and specialise in the entertainment industry.

Stevie Vann Lange , one of the founders of www.letstalkmusic and a veteran of the industry says ‘Every artist is always looking for a good song. I know that the demand is there, but the difficulty is being heard. I’m a great believer in collaboration and remixing, I would particularly like to see these areas thriving on the site.

‘As well as increasing contacts you rarely find someone that’s good at everything’ she says. ‘One person may excel at melody, another at production and mostly a great song comes together through collaboration. I am very, very excited about this site and what it will do for musicians.’

04/11/2003  |  White Hat Media win Precision website

White Hat Media has won the contract to build the site for Precision, a database marketing company who specialise in the Pharmaceutical sector.

Precision are based in Cambridgeshire and London manage and carry out direct marketing campaigns for many large organisations in the sector.

The site will carry comprehensive information about the company and its services, as well as demonstrate sample data.

Precision chose White Hat Media after talking to a number of web design agencies.

20/10/2003  |  White Hat Media win www.letstalkmusic.com site

Today White Hat Media won the contract to build the site for www.letstalkmusic.com, a new online global music community, founded by experienced industry professionals with great track records, all looking to help unsigned solo musicians bands, songwriters and producers, in every genre.

www.letstalkmusic.com is dedicated to serving the independent musician and artist, while helping them to develop and promote a career in music.

Stevie Van Lange, Director and Founder of www.letstalkmusic.com says 'The people at White Hat came up with some excellent ideas for the site as well as some sound business advice. We were very impressed with the quality of service they offered. We'd spoken to a number of agencies about this project but White Hat were way ahead in what they offered. We're very pleased to have them as development partners in this project.'

01/10/2003  |  New website for Dynamic DTP

The website for Dynamic DTP launches at www.dynamicdtp.com Dynamic DTP (dDTP) harnesses the connectivity of the Internet to accelerate the production process of design-for-publishing. After creating master designs, the designer can now step out of the path between a client and publisher to act as a facilitator for a fast, seamless process direct from individuals in client firms to printers and publishers.

dDTP's software tool LIVE.ID liberates the designer from repetitive production artwork. LIVE.ID Designers can super-empower clients with LIVE.CREATE systems that dynamically generate, proof and approve artwork files for despatch direct to printers: LIVE.ORDERS.

The site includes detailed demos with step by step explanatons of how the system works as well as a mass of information about dDTP.

dDTP is a revolution in how to use the net for real business processes, reduce costs and improve speed of delivery.

The site has strong colours, full details of pricing and a forum for people who use the system.

Phil James, Director and Founder of dDTP says 'When choosing a company to build this site we had to find one who were prepared to listen carefully to what we wanted as well as understand the concept. In White Hat Media, we found that company and also found a company who really know what they're doing and provide a very good level of service. We are very pleased with the results.'

10/09/2003  |  New website launches for GMC Leasing

The GMC Leasing website launches at www.gmcleasing.co.uk. GMC Leasing is a leading car leasing company based on the South Coast. It has a number of large organisations as clients.

The website has a content management system as well as a number of other dynamic features integrated into it. This means that it can be updated with special offers as they come in, as well as give GMC the ability to respond to enquiries immediately.

The site was built to be striking in its appearance and as easy as possible to use and manage.

The site is being promoted though Search Engines and the management team at GMC have reported that there has already been a marked increase in business which can be directly attributed to the site.

John Bardill the Managing Director of GMC Leasing says ' We're very happy about our decision to use White Hat Media to build the site. Within a day or two of the launch we received some good leads which we're following up.

The White Hat team have built an excellent site for us.'

14/08/2003  |  Blue Gem launches new website

The Blue Gem website launches at www.bluegemeyewear.com

Blue Gem is now regarded as the number one high fashion supplier by most retailers in the UK. It innovates and designs unique styles in-house and develops ranges of sunglasses and, more recently, new branded optical ranges. Branded Product is marketed under several ranges including Global Eyewear, Kangol and STORM.

The website is packed full of information about Blue Gem and its products. Both the Kangol and STORM catalogues are included on the site. As a pioneer of safety in eyewear, there is also details about the methodology that Blue Gem uses in checking the safety of eyewear.

Steve Abraham says 'We are very pleased with the results of the new website and will be using it as a platform for increasing the use of the web as a communications medium for our customers, the press, our suppliers and staff. White Hat Media have done a great job.'

16/07/2003  |  Toniq launches new website

The Toniq website launches at www.toniq.co.uk

The new site explains in detail how the marketing and communications consultancy, Toniq, work and why they are different from so many other agencies. With strong graphics and powerful copy, it is also fast to load and very easy to navigate.

In developing the site the prinicpals at Toniq wanted a site that accurately relected their philosophy while at the same time allowing the viewer to get a quick appreciation of what they do.

Alison Miles and Simon Greenbury, founding consultants at Toniq say "We’re really pleased with the site that White Hat Media have created. It’s stylish, easy to access and reflects the Toniq approach. White Hat Media have also made it easy to evolve the site in the future."

20/06/2003  |  White Hat Media Wins Blue Gem Eyewear Contract

WHM announce today that they have won the contract to re-build the Blue Gem Eyewear website. Blue Gem, is regarded as the leading fashion supplier by most retailers in the UK. It develops a large number of ranges of sunglasses and, more recently, new branded optical ranges.

The branded product is marketed under several ranges including Global Eyewear, Kangol and STORM. Blue Gem currently export products to international markets including the USA, Italy, Spain, Germany, Russia, Scandinavia and Benelux.

The brief is to design a site which promotes the Blue Gem name as well as provide a resource to anyone who wants to learn more about the company.

Kevin Elliott, Technical Director at WHM says 'We're very pleased to have won this job as we're confident we can do an excellent job in giving Blue Gem one of the best sites in its sector'.

10/06/2003  |  Director Runs Stockholm Marathon

Kevin Elliott, Technical Director at WHM, completed the 25th Stockholm marathon on the 14th June in a net time of 04:09:53.

Kevin had been training for 18 months and had been refused entry to the USA marathon last November, due to a visa overstay 8 years ago! "I have no burning desire to do another as it was probably the hardest thing I have done in my life!".

Over £500 was raised for the Sara Lee Trust charity in aid of alternative therapy cancer treatment.

22/05/2003  |  Products Website for Communications International Group

Website pharmacyfocus.com launched today, delivered by WHM. Communications International Group (CIG), a driving force in the Pharmaceutical Publications arena, have commissioned WHM to deliver several of their magazine websites.

Already running is www.cosmeticsint.co.uk, serving the Cosmetics Industry and promoting several of Communication International's paper based offerings. The latest launch for Pharmacy Focus promotes new products in the pharmaceutical industry mainly in the OTC (over the counter) sector. Manufacturers who currently advertise in CIG magazines will be able to get online exposure via this new website. An archive will also build month on month for searching older products

View the site: www.pharmacyfocus.com

Look out for the coming launch of pharmacymag.co.uk, the next website in the CIG portfolio.

02/05/2003  |  PDA Connectivity Software Solution

WHM delivered the first phase of their PDA based project to a new globally renowned client. The application had to be extremely user-friendly, robust and able to be used on a portable device. It had to have an intuitive interface and allow the user to tell the display to perform a number of functions.

The project had to be developed at speed for demonstration at a major US trade show, the delivery of which was acheived. White Hat Media developed the software in under six weeks, well in time for the trade show and it was extremely well received. This resulted in massive global interest and many orders being placed. All agreed that the brief had been met.

White Hat Media have now been asked to carry out a number of other projects for the client. If you need to discuss your software application requirements give White Hat Media a call or email us.

20/04/2003  |  HOT Internal Accounts System

White Hat Media have been given the task of upgrading and enhancing the inhouse accounts and project tracking system for HOT. The work will be carried out in two phases with possible further work in discussion.

This system is crucial to the smooth running of the business and many new time saving features have been incorporated.