Dear subscribername

It has been quite some time since we last sent out a newsletter, so this one is quite long. There is nothing urgent below, but we think you will find some topics of interest.

If you would like to be removed from this mailing list just reply to this email with the word REMOVE in the subject line.

You can also read this email online at http://webintegrations.co.uk/newsletter.html

Current Scams
Search Engine News
Web Integrations Hosting
Website Statistics
Your Email
Mailing Lists
Website Updates
Web Integrations News
Survey

Things to watch out for
The list of scams operating on the Internet continues to grow at a rapid pace. Most of you will by now be aware that if anyone phones you saying your domain name is at risk, or another name is available, then you should not be talked into purchasing anything. If you have any doubts, call us on 01569 763300 or email info@webintegrations.co.uk.

The most prominent of these scams comes from the "Domain Registry of Europe", which sometimes operates under other, similar names. The common approach is to phone you and tell you that someone is about to purchase a domain name similar to yours which would threaten your business. They then offer to sell you this domain name at the reduced price of around £200. As far as I am aware, at least three of our customes have been caught by this scam, and purchased domain names for several hundred pounds, which had no real value or use at all. This company mentions the name Nominet in their calls and correspondonces, to accrue some legitimacy. Nominent came out this week with a general warning that they have no association at all with this company.

Another common scam is the Nigerian who wishes to transfer money from his homeland into your bank account. I don't think any of our customers are foolish enough to be caught by this one, but one American woman was in court recently after stealing 2.1 million dollars as a result of this scam (see http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/28/27243.html)

However, there are other more insidious tricks, which might catch the unwary. Chief among these are the Search Engine and Website Promotion Scams. Some of them, like the relatively innocuous Samantha who has "visited your website and noticed that you are not listed in any search engines" are fairly obvious. Samantha like much of today's spam, operates from China. She will take your credit card details as quick as a flash, and that's probably the last you will hear from her.

There are other, seemingly reputable companies operating in the search engine market. We advise you to avoid even those ones. Several of our customers have paid between 1 and 2 thousand pounds to top the search engines. The common result is that their search engine position worsens, or else nothing happens at all. These companies will not do any more for you than Web Integrations already does for free, so you have absolutely nothing to gain. If you were not to be found in the search engines, and you were not hosting with Web Integrations, perhaps you could get some benefit from a good SEO (search engine optimizer).

There is some more information about search engine optimization under the next heading which might assist you in marketing your website

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Search Engine News

There have been big shake-ups in the search engine world of late. The most important happening has been the coming together of Yahoo and Google. These two companies have formed an arrangement whereby Yahoo now primarily relies on Google results in its listing. What is new here is that previously Yahoo would respond to a search by bringing up its own results first, followed by its Google listing. Now, if you are listed in Google as well as Yahoo, you will only see the Google listing in Yahoo, unless you actually drill-down through the directories to find the result you want. The major effect of this is that it is no longer at all worthwhile to pay $299 for a yahoo listing, since the listing now has very little extra value.

AltaVista, which had fallen to nowhere in the search engine stakes after failing to update its regional listings for almost a year, has now declared its intention to fight its way back. However, we haven't seen any real effect from this yet. Altavista also changed its practices in that they no longer read "MetaTags" (description and keywords) on pages. Virtually NO search engine now reads meta tags.

The Open Directory Project (ODP or Dmoz) which previously was very important in the process of actually getting a website into the search engines in the first place, has also declined rapidly in importance over the last six months. Now that it is owned by AOL, some editors (like myself) are reluctant to provide volunteer services. And now that google accepts many other base links, the value of an ODP listing has declined. In fact, arguably, a listing on the web integrations website is more valuable now than having a listing in the ODP. It is also becoming more difficult to get a listing on the ODP now, because of the amount of time the submission process does not work.

All this can be very confusing for the non-specialist, so what should you do to improve the traffic to your site? Let me take you through the options.

The first thing you have to make sure of, is that you are listed in Google. All our customers should be listed in Google, indeed, since we are very good at this, you should be listed highly in google.

I noticed recently when searching Google for "Edinburgh Guesthouse" that the top seven listings are all Web Integrations Websites, as are 8 of the top 10.

This is not only true for Edinburgh Guesthouses, but for many sectors in the Scottish and UK and world markets. Recently one of our customer who had been with us only a few weeks was offered £1800 for his domain and website, purely because of its high search engine ranking, which we had achieved very easily. The customer didn't sell, though we advised him to do so and start again.

The search terms under which google will list you are dependent mainly on the titles of the pages on your website. (That's why it is very bad to have page titles like "Welcome to our Site"). So if you are not coming up in the searches where you want to be, let us know and we will change your page titles and descriptions accordingly.

The next thing you have to do is to have other sites linked to your sites. Again, all our customers should have varying numbers of other sites linking to their websites. This is the main reason we list so many of our websites on our own Web Integrations website, in order to get you into the search engines and keep you there.

However, with links, it is not always a case of "the more the merrier". The sites which have a link to your site, should be "good" sites. They should be listed high in google, themselves, and they should not be simple link sites with no ranking, or sites where you have a link, but it is hidden somewhere in a database.

Links to your sites have a diminishing effect as the numbers increase. In practical terms, the difference between having 3 links to your site and 33 links to your site is quite small. However the difference between having no links to your site and 2 or 3 links to your site is very large.

The third important element is the way that your website is built. If it is built correctly with clean code, no frames, not much Flash then it should be okay. All of our sites avoid these techniques, so again, you should not suffer. However, we do host some sites built by other companies which ARE penalised because of the software technology used.

If you are at the stage where you have done everything right, but are still not getting enough hits, then you might want to consider whether or not you actually have a right to expect more hits. We recently lost a customer from a village in the highlands because he felt he was not getting enough hits. So he moved his website to another, much much more expensive company. However, the fact is, there is not a great demand for plumbers in Highland villages, and his expectations were false in the first place. There is only so much web traffic available, and while it would have been possible for us to drive his hits up, these would not have been hits that were worth anything since they would not have been looking for a plumber.

But in some cases, particularly if you are selling directly from your site, or you are targeting a very wide audience, then it CAN pay to consider other search engine options. One of these is Google Adwords. This will bring some directed traffic to your site, at a pay per click cost (usually around 10p). So you "buy" a phrase, and people who search using that phrase may be brought to your site at a cost. One or two of our customers are using this cost-effectively. We do not recommend any other pay-per-click option available in this country.

So, what else can you do?

• Have you tried promoting your website outside of the internet?
• Do you have your website details printed on your stationery?
• Have you included it in your advertising material?
• Do you use a signature in your email that might gradually start to bring business to your website?
• Do all your customers and suppliers know about your website?
• Is your website up-to-date?
• Does it contain interesting and useful information?
• Does it change from time-to-time?
• Are you listed in the relevant directories for your industry sector?

There are some other search engine techniques which we sometimes use which can make a difference which are very labour intensive, but these are not suitable for the average website.

Finally, if you have any doubts or questions about these issues, you are welcome to call us and discuss it.

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Web Integrations Hosting

Are you finding your webhosting charges onerous? If so, perhaps you might wish to save some money by managing your own website.

During the course of the summer we set-up a new server particularly for customers who wish to manage their own hosting. Hosting charges on this server run from £60 per annum. Most of our customers pay £100 per annum or more, depending on the level of support they require and the amount of resources that their website uses. If you wish to forego the support element in your hosting charge, (which entitles you to limited free website updates as well as the search engine work), then we will be happy to move your website to this server, and provide you with the connection details that will allow you to manage things yourself. We suspect that few of our customers would really benefit from this since our charges are fairly low in the first place. But you may wish to consider it.

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Web Site Statistics

With the installation of Urchin statistics on the last of our webservers which previously did not have a statistics package loaded, now ALL Web Integrations websites come with comprehensive traffic statistics. Please do not underestimate the importance of these. Some internet companies charge £40-£100 per month for the statistics that we give you for free, so if you haven't looked already, have a look now. If you do not know how to access your site statistics, call us on 01569 763300 and ask us.

If you need instructions on what the statistics actually mean, you can find some help here

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Your Email

There are normally three different ways of dealing with email on a webhosting account. These are

• Email forwarding
• Web Mail
• Pop3 email

Email forwarding is the simplest and should be your first choice. This simply means that any mail that comes to your domain is forwarded to another email account, usually your ISP email account (eg AOL, or Freeserve or Btinternet).

Just as every one of our websites now has statistics available, everyone of our sites now also has WebMail available. Webmail is simply software that allows you to access your email from a web browser rather than an email client. So you can send mail from a pc when you are not at your own machine.

The third type of email on a hosting account is pop3 email. This is the same type of email account as the one you setup for your ISP account. It means that you login directly to your domain and pull mail down from it to your client. This is also a robust solution, but it suffers from the problem that it requires configuration on your PC, which confuses some people. Pop 3 accounts are versatile and speedy, but due to security considersations, your ISP might not let you connect directly to your domain for outgoing mail (smtp). This is the case with AOL, which makes life difficult in a number of other ways too. If you are with AOL, then you are probably better to stick with email forwarding.

If you have any problems with your email, or you think that you may not be using the optimal solution, just ask us for advice.

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Mailing Lists

Undoubtedly one of the most cost-effective ways of marketing today is email marketing. We all hate spam, but targeted email marketing where people have signed up voluntarily to your email list is a good thing.

In the U.S. e-mail marketing expenditures were $927 million in 2001, generating 15 percent of all online sales, up from only 3 percent in 2000. In 2002, that rate of increase has continued.

E-mail marketing can be very cost-effective in retaining customers. Companies enjoyed an 8 percent click-through rate and a 3 percent conversion rate in their retention marketing in 2001.

If you are currently using email marketing techniques, here are some guidelines that might help you. (From a report featured in the E-Business Secrets newsletter.)

1. DON'T BE NOSY. The report cites NetLine, a marketing program that sent out an offer of a free white paper. One registration form requested contact info plus one optional question. A nearly identical form asked for the same things, but with THREE optional questions. The longer form garnered a 50 percent response from the pre-qualified group, but the short form received a 74.6 percent response. The less you ask, the more you get.

2. OFFER SOMETHING. When consumers were asked by Jupiter Media Metrix what a Web site could promise in exchange for typing in their personal information, 48 percent wanted a chance to win a prize in a sweepstakes. About 31 percent wanted frequent-flier miles or a similar affinity program. But most important, 73 percent wanted a guarantee that the information would not be misused.

3. KEEP IT FRESH. One site, iEntry, which sends 50 million e-mails per month to its opt-in subscribers, noted the percentage of readers who opened each issue. "If they subscribed within the past three months, they open at 85-90 percent," says founder Rich Ord. "If they're two years old, on average they could be down to a 15 percent open rate unless you really revamp content and find new reasons to make them open."

4. MAIL EARLY. More than 3 out of 4 Internet users (76 percent) spend their first few minutes online reading and sending e-mail, according to figures from the U.S. Yankee Group. Gartner estimates that business users spend an average of 49 minutes per day managing their e-mail. This may explain why Travelocity found that it obtains the best results when it sends its messages between 8 a.m. and noon of each recipient's local time.

Web Integrations offer a number of Mailing List applications. If your website does not already have a newsletter list, and you would like one, just call us and ask about it.

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Website Updates

70% of the time we spend dealing with website updates is on behalf of about 10% of our customers. We have a large number of customers who NEVER ask for site updates.

Curiously, almost all of these customers who never ask for anything are from the Highlands and Islands, while our city customers tend to make full use of what we offer.

So, if you are one of our silent customers, let me remind you that we will make small, regular, updates to your website free of charge. We also like to hear from you whether or not you need anything,. We like to know our customers and to be in a position to respond correctly to their requirements.

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Web Integrations News

We have moved into our new offices in Stonehaven. Here is our postal address:

Web Integrations
2 Market Square
Stonehaven
Aberdeenshire AB39 2BT
Tel 01569 763300

We have had a fairly busy year so far, and we would like to thank all of our customers for the recommendations they have given their friends and colleagues about us. Almost 70% of our new business has been coming through customer referalls. We were particularly delighted to get the account of the Scottish Wedding Directory, because it complements the business of so many of our existing customers.

Finally, we'd like to ask a favour on behalf of one of our customers. Natural Solutions, a company specialising in allergy free food products are conducting a survey on their website. They are urgently seeking people to complete their survey to help them understand the needs of people who live with food allergies.

If you do have any interest in this field, we'd be grateful if you could spend a few minutes taking part in the survey.

If you have got this far, thanks for reading it.

regards

Bob Gray
Web Integrations
bob@webintegrations.co.uk

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