The Images Group Blog

The Images Group have just received notification from Business Link about changes to the way Innovation Vouchers can be used. Our clients who are currently in the process of applying for Innovation Vouchers will not be affected, this only applies to applications made on or after March 3rd 2010

3 March 2010

New eligibility criteria for Innovation Vouchers

What has changed?

To ease confusion about eligible projects for Innovation Vouchers, we have agreed with One North East to clarify the criteria for this fund. This clarity should help you to better identify which project referrals would be eligible for Innovation Vouchers and those which may be more appropriate for other funds e.g. Innovation, Advice and Guidance.

The revised criterion for Innovation Vouchers is below:

Innovation Vouchers help small and medium sized established businesses in the North East research and develop new ideas for commercial exploitation i.e. activity resulting in a new product or service being taken to market.

By established businesses, we mean a business which is trading and has made a sale.

An Innovation Voucher could be used to:

• Research new markets (for new products or services)
• Design or develop a new product or service
• Design or develop new or improved production processes
• Carry out an innovation or technology audit¹
• Experiment, test or measure.

¹ Technology audit:

As part of the research and development phase of a new product, service or new working practices. An assessment to determine the adequacy and integrity of controls in information processing systems, including hardware, software solutions, information management systems, security systems and tools, communications technologies.

Innovation audit:

As part of the research and development phase of a new product, service or new working practices. The innovation audit is a method to improve innovation by examining key indicators to determine strengths and weaknesses and identifies ways of improving innovation throughout the organisation e.g. SWOT analysis in production processes.

• The activity must be new.
• An applicant can only receive one Innovation Voucher.

An Innovation Voucher could not be used to:

• Design or develop a website²
• Design or develop a product or service where it is using the standard application of an existing technology²
• Design or develop internal non-production processes such as HR, marketing, finance, ICT²
• Support the marketing of a product or service²

² These activities may be eligible for support through other Solutions for Business products including Innovation Advice and Guidance.

The following are not eligible for support:

• Existing projects and activities with Knowledge Based Institutions (KBIs) are not eligible for support. University spin out companies as they are by their nature already engaged with the knowledge base

• items or costs which are required by law

• VAT.

When will this change come into effect?

As of today (3 March) this new criteria should be used when ceding Innovation Voucher referrals into the Business Link and North East England Investment Centre services.

For those projects that are already being progressed, applications against the old criteria will be accepted until 31 March 2010.

Where can I find out more information?

If you have any questions about this, please contact Business Link on 0845 600 9 006 or email enquiries@businesslinknortheast.co.uk

Social Media Listening and Monitoring Tools by Clay McDaniel

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Clay McDaniel is the principal and co-founder of social media marketing agency, Spring Creek Group. Find him via @springcreekgrp on Twitter.

By now, most consumer marketers know they could be using Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and other social media platforms to boost brand recognition, engage customers, and drive sales. But getting a social media marketing program started – and keeping up with the rapid pace of change in the industry – can be daunting. The good news is that with the right technology tools, social media marketing programs can be managed at scale and can help the entire organization (not just the marketers!) find out what customers are saying, sharing, even feeling about your brand or business.

When thinking about the technology tools you need to launch, measure, and optimize your social media marketing and online customer engagement programs, it helps to organize your efforts into categories: listening and monitoring tools; editorial, publishing, and content syndication tools; and conversation measurement tools. There are hundreds of tools out there, but here are some of the more popular and effective ones that can be put to work for you.

The first step in any social media marketing campaign is “listening.” Find out what is being said about your brand, where, and by whom. The following tools provide visibility into conversations that are happening about your brand or company online.

1. Monitter allows marketers to listen in on the Twitter conversations taking place about their brand in real time. Visit the Monitter home page and type in the keywords you want to search, and all tweets with those keywords instantly appear. Free.

2. Google Alerts is one of the most comprehensive social media tools out there; it monitors millions of blogs and news sites. Set up alerts to easily target keywords that are important to your brand and receive streaming or batched reports. Free.

3. Alltop is an online news aggregation service that scans news sites, blogs, and forums to present a one-stop shop of thousands of news stories about a certain topic or trend. It also includes some useful historical searching tools. Free.

4. Visible Technologies TruCast and TruPulse are robust applications that allow licensees to monitor conversations about their brand or industry on blogs, forums, microblogs, comment threads, and anything else likely to be indexed by search engines. They include analytics features and integrated “engagement manager” workflow tools to assist in managing outreach/follow-up across the social web. Licensing fees apply.

5. Radian6 is one of the industry leaders in social media monitoring technology, and their application allows configurable monitoring dashboards, broad and narrow Topic definitions to target and focus your listening programs, and key features such as custom alerts and engagement workflow management. Licensing fees apply.

6. ScoutLabs has come on strong during the past year with a versatile listening and monitoring service and low per-month access pricing, as well as a 30-day free trial offer. Post volume, location, and even sentiment scoring are included in the service’s core monitoring feature set. Licensing fees apply.

7. TweetDeck () is a desktop app that combines Twitter and Facebook monitoring with search for a multi-dimensional social application that also allows for publishing. Free.

[*Disclosure: TweetDeck partnered with Mashable () to create MashDeck, a branded version of the software.]

8. PostRank Analytics combines trend analysis, engagement reporting and unified conversations to provide a hub for keeping track of your brands in the online space. Licensing fees apply.

9. BackType finds and connects online conversations in real-time creating a clear path of discussion. Free.

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Editorial, Publishing, and Content Syndication Tools

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Now that you’ve heard what’s being said about your brand, you’re ready to respond by creating your own messages. The following tools help you join the conversation and promote the sharing of your content.

10. Co-Tweet is a tool for businesses using Twitter to communicate marketing messages. The application offers Twitter account management and tweet publishing tools for brand accounts that utilize multiple contributors. Free.

11. HootSuite () also offers Twitter account management and tweet scheduling and publishing for brand accounts with many contributors. Free.

12. TubeMogul lets you syndicate your video content to multiple UCG video sites (YouTube () and some 15 others), and then track views and engagement metrics. Free and paid versions.

13. Seesmic Desktop () allows you to review and publish status updates across Twitter and Facebook simultaneously, and manage multiple social media accounts in one place. Free.

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Conversation and Content Sharing Measurement Tools

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The final, and perhaps most critical, step in your social media marketing campaign is measurement. The following tools enable you to measure and track everything from “soft metrics” like brand sentiment and buzz, to “hard metrics” like traffic and conversion resulting from your campaigns.

14. Meteor Solutions offers Meteor Tracker, which enables marketers to determine the real impact of social media marketing programs on traffic and conversion by tracking the flow of shared content via links, email, instant messages, social networks, and Twitter. Meteor lets marketers identify the most effective sites on which to make paid media buys, as well as sites to target for further community outreach. Licensing fees apply.

15. Jodange monitors word-of-mouth conversations about your brands or products to give a reading on customer sentiment. Jodange offers the TOM (Top of Mind) measurement tool, which tracks consumer sentiment about your brand or product across the web. Licensing fees apply.

16. Twendz is a Twitter monitoring and measurement tool created by public relations firm Waggener Edstrom that piggybacks off of Twitter Search to provide a snapshot of tweet volume, sentiment, and sample tweets. Mini keyword-clouds and sentiment mix estimates are automatically generated for brands or phrases that you input. Free.

17. Trendrr lets marketers set up configurable dashboards to see where conversations about their brand are happening, and how their industry, sector, or topic is “trending” across the social media web. Free.

18. Hubspot’s “Grader” Tools provide directional scores and metrics for channels such as Twitter and Facebook to help marketing and customer engagement program managers assess the relative impact of their branded Pages and accounts. Free.

The Images Group software and systems development expertise has been recognised by the award of NE Business Link Innovation Support Service Provider status allowing us to provide Business Link funded support to local SMEs for eligible projects.
As part of Business Link’s aid package for small-to-medium sized enterprises there are opportunities to benefit from 100% grant aid for innovative R&D projects assisting product or service development via the Innovation Voucher scheme.

The Images Group has now been added to the Innovation Service Provider register which allows the company’s software and systems development expertise to be made available to local businesses. This effectively gives the company the same Innovation Provider status as the five Universities in the region.
If you are interested in exploring how this award can be used in your product or service development, or wish to learn more about the Innovation Voucher scheme, contact James on 0191 5197279.

Over £2m has been made available to help North East firms boost their competitiveness by working closely with the region’s colleges, universities and other innovative organisations.

Accessed via Business Link, the £2.4m Innovation Vouchers project will encourage collaboration between SMEs and academic and engineering institutions, allowing businesses to use the vouchers to purchase support services and improve their competitiveness and efficiency.
The vouchers are being made available as part of the Government’s overall Solutions for Business framework – a streamlined portfolio of business support products that are easy to identify and simple to access.

For the first time all government help for business will share an easily identifiable ‘Solutions for Business’ banner and can be accessed mainly via Business Link. The aim also is to rationalise the vast array of support on offer with over 3,000 separate schemes targeted to be reduced to 30 by March 2010.
Innovation Vouchers aim to encourage small and medium sized companies to engage with Higher Education institutions such as the region’s five universities, Innovation Connector projects, Centres of Excellence and other Knowledge Base providers.  Businesses most likely to attract support will be in the process of developing or testing a technology, product or service.

The project is being part financed by the European Union’s ERDF Competitiveness Programme 2007-13, securing £1.2m ERDF investment which has been matched by regional development agency One North East.
The total value of any one voucher will be at least £3,000, through to a ceiling limit of £7,000, depending on the project.
One North East Director of Business and Industry, Ian Williams, said: “Innovation Vouchers will stimulate productivity and economic competitiveness by increasing innovation and the exploitation of new ideas within businesses.

“The North East has a lower number of businesses per head of population than the average for England.  With a clear need to increase the region’s business stock levels, Innovation Vouchers will provide much needed support and growth for businesses in deprived areas of County Durham, Northumberland, Tees Valley and Tyne and Wear.

“As such, it is another important way that we are helping North East businesses address the challenges of the economic downturn and come out of it fitter and stronger.

“Ultimately, Solutions for Business will make it easier for companies, small and large, new and existing, to find the right products to help them with common business issues such as getting started, growing, finance, export, skills, innovation and the environment.”
Alastair MacColl, chief executive of Business & Enterprise North East, which delivers the Business Link service in the region, said: “Increasing innovation in North East England will be crucial to the region’s long term prosperity, so continuing to invest in the ongoing generation of great business ideas is vital.

“At Business Link we want to ensure that the North East is the best place in the UK to run an innovative business or service. Encouraging innovation and maximising its potential will both help to develop new areas of opportunity and also protect and reinforce those areas in which the region already excels. The new Innovation Vouchers represent an outstanding example of how this region is helping SMEs and knowledge based institutions to work together, providing the catalyst for the development of viable new products and services.
“Solutions for Business has been designed to make key business support products easier to access and I urge firms in the North East to contact Business Link in order to find out how their enterprise can benefit from the range of support that is now available.”
Minister for Business, Ian Pearson said: “To succeed in a competitive global environment UK businesses need ongoing access to help and support. The streamlined Solutions for Business portfolio makes it simpler for businesses to access the help they need, providing long term, sustainable support to business.”

Innovation Vouchers will be distributed via the North East England Investment Centre (NEEIC) following initial business needs analysis from Business Link

Thank you, danke, merci, efharisto,gracias!

This five times thank you is for our clients who have been so pleased with our service that we have been awarded ‘Five Star’ status by Business Link in their assessment process for our services to our customers.

It’s great to be appreciated!

A couple of things to update you in Movember.

Movember? The month formerly known as November is a moustache growing charity event held during November each year that raises funds and awareness for men’s health. At Images we are valiantly growing the Mo’s (and no doubt removing them in December), so if you would like to support us by donating to the Prostate Cancer research fund, drop us a line at Mo@theimagesgroup and we will tell you how you can help the battle against this devastating disease.

ISMA Membership.

As proponents and experts in Social Media Marketing, Images have joined the International Social Media Association, an organisation set up to define and promote best practice in this growing marketing system. Accreditation takes some time and involves some hefty sums of cash changing hands, but we believe it will pay massive dividends to our clients once we have gone through the accreditation processes.

Keep posted and watch out for the ISMA logo on our website.

Newsletters with Ooomph (and brains!)

If you need to send out occasional email newsletters to your clients, we have just the system for you. Avaialbe as a bolt-on to your website, our new email newsletter system is jam-packed with statistical analysis tools to show you how many opens you have, how many clickbacks were made from the newsletter to your website and a really clever marketing tool.

It works like this: you create two slightly different versions of the newsletter and the system emails version 1 to 25% of your subscribers and version 2 to 25% of your subscribers. After a set period (which you determine) the system analyses opens and responses, then sends the remaining 50% of the list subscribers the version of the newsletter that performed better in the the test!

Clever or what!

If you would like to know more about this system give us a call on 0191 519 2728 or email us on newsletters@theimagesgroup.co.uk.

We are Now Certified

Not before time you might say, but Images are now on the list as approved suppliers of training to companies in the Business Link North East Area for most matters relating to ebusiness – websites, Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation, Social Media Marketing, Adwords, Analytics, ecommerce – in fact whatever your training need relating to online matters, we can now provide funded training to your company.

Christmas

Sorry to remind you of this, but with Christmas just around the corner, followed swiftly by New Year, there will be times when we won’t be in the office.

Our support customers will be given a special support number for any problems that might arise over the holiday period, but for those not on support, please be reminded that our regular ticket support service will still be available over the festive period.

Simply go to http://www.support.theimagesgroup.co.uk  and raise a ticket there and our support staff will deal with your requests within 72 hours – we have added an extra 24 hours to the regular response time because of the Christmas Holidays.

Changes Affect Testimonial Advertisements, Bloggers, Celebrity Endorsement

The Federal Trade Commission recently announced that it has approved final revisions to the guidance it gives to advertisers on how to keep their endorsement and testimonial ads in line with the FTC Act.

The notice incorporates several changes to the FTC’s Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising, which address endorsements by consumers, experts, organizations, and celebrities, as well as the disclosure of important connections between advertisers and endorsers.

The Guides were last updated in 1980.

Under the revised Guides, advertisements that feature a consumer and convey his or her experience with a product or service as typical when that is not the case will be required to clearly disclose the results that consumers can generally expect. In contrast to the 1980 version of the Guides – which allowed advertisers to describe unusual results in a testimonial as long as they included a disclaimer such as “results not typical” – the revised Guides no longer contain this safe harbor.

The revised Guides also add new examples to illustrate the long standing principle that “material connections” (sometimes payments or free products) between advertisers and endorsers – connections that consumers would not expect – must be disclosed. These examples address what constitutes an endorsement when the message is conveyed by bloggers or other “word-of-mouth” marketers. The revised Guides specify that while decisions will be reached on a case-by-case basis, the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement.

Thus, bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service. Likewise, if a company refers in an advertisement to the findings of a research organization that conducted research sponsored by the company, the advertisement must disclose the connection between the advertiser and the research organization.

And a paid endorsement – like any other advertisement – is deceptive if it makes false or misleading claims.

Celebrity endorsers also are addressed in the revised Guides. While the 1980 Guides did not explicitly state that endorsers as well as advertisers could be liable under the FTC Act for statements they make in an endorsement, the revised Guides reflect Commission case law and clearly state that both advertisers and endorsers may be liable for false or unsubstantiated claims made in an endorsement – or for failure to disclose material connections between the advertiser and endorsers. The revised Guides also make it clear that celebrities have a duty to disclose their relationships with advertisers when making endorsements outside the context of traditional ads, such as on talk shows or in social media.

The Guides are administrative interpretations of the law intended to help advertisers comply with the Federal Trade Commission Act; they are not binding law themselves. In any law enforcement action challenging the allegedly deceptive use of testimonials or endorsements, the Commission would have the burden of proving that the challenged conduct violates the FTC Act.

The new guidelines afect those under the jurisdiction of the FTC, so presumably offshore bloggers or affiliates aren’t affected by the ruling. Those who make a living from this form of marketing are up in arms, and understandably so. If a product purchased from a reputable internet marketer or promoted via an affiliate doesn’t live up to expectations, the purchaser can ask for a refund, which is invariably given.

This is probably a knee-jerk reaction to the plethora of over-hyped claims for certain TV offers that purport to make the buyers of specific programs millionaires within weeks.

Where stating ‘Results not guranteed’ or ‘Results not typical’ satisfied the 1980 guidelines, it seems our gullibility factor is now so high that the State has to protect us from ourselves.

Where the US leads…. Can we now expect similar reactions from International Governments who like to control their citizens’ every move and ensure that they do not even attempt anything remotely entrepreneurial, which by nature is inherently risky?

Probably, except for those regions where the spammers, hackers and virus writers rule the land. They will be planning now for the next big push from their own unregulated domains.

Power Marketing

The Images Group are delighted to announce the launch of their ‘Power Marketing’ service.

The Power Marketing system is the culmination of knowledge acquired through 14 years of research, seminars and in-depth training for some of the World’s leading Internet Marketers. Using this knowledge we have developed a system that really delivers results for website owners very quickly and consistently. Since putting together the system we have tested it thoroughly ‘in the field’, taking several websites in different sectors that were not performing to their potential and ran them through our ‘Power Marketing’ systematic process.

The results were amazing; within days website pages that were previously unranked in Google, shot up the rankings, some appearing on page one of Google.

In all cases the visitor traffic to the websites dramatically increased and our award-winning analysis package identified precisely where the traffic was being generated, showing which keywords were the most favoured and which areas of the websites needed additional tweaking.

We have now fully refined our ‘Power Marketing’ service, and are now ready to launch this service formally.

If you want your website to perform to the max, then one of our custom-designed ‘Power Marketing’ packages is for you.

How Does It Work?

The Images Group emarketing team will analyse your site, your market and your current marketing methods, and devise and implement a bespoke package of marketing initiatives designed to improve the performance of your website. The initiatives will vary depending on the results of our assessment, but they will all have the same aims – to increase relevant visitor traffic to your site. We say relevant, because it is quite easy to drive unqualified traffic to a website. What we need to do is to drive visitors that are interested in the type of products and services that you provide, greatly increasing the chances of a profitable transaction occurring between the qualified visitor and your company.

That is the USP of our ‘Power Marketing’ system – driving qualified buyers to your site when they are ready to buy.

What Services Could be Provided?.

The services we provide vary according to needs of the clients, but a sample Power Plan is given below:

Initial research into keywords

Competitor Analysis Report

Key Market Analysis

Benchmark Scan to establish company’s position on internet

Set Up Monitoring with In-House Software

Install Google Analytics tracker & integrate with AdWords if required

Set up external Blog

Implement Data Capture for Remarketing

Timeline: Month 2

Modify page content to match profile of report analysis and new target keywords

Analyse results against keyword profiles

Set up site scan to monitor results

Adjust and optimise individual pages on the website.

Review the site performance against statistical reports

Implement changes to page URL paths – create Search Engine Friendly Pages for better keyword placement – requires back-up of current site, installation of third party module to generate search engine friendly pages.

Research appropriate directories for potential listing, make recommendations to client

Research, devise and implement link strategy

Carry out site audit to analyse effectiveness of site structure, visitor navigation paths, exit pages, bounces

Produce month end reports on traffic trends and effectiveness of pages

Timeline: Month 3

Continue results analysis, producing appropriate reports for comparison, analysis and action.

Produce month-end reports on traffic trends and effectiveness of pages

Look for improvement factors on site; update pages/content as appropriate

Implement brand monitoring systems to monitor and protect brand reputation.

Continue SEO/SEM initiative

Link Types

Generally there are two types of links that you should consider in your linking strategy; unsolicited, where people link to you without any coercion or prompting and requested links. While these are the ones that you ultimately should aim for as they require no input or work from you, these will appear gradually as your site gains more popularity and the work that you put in to obtain solicited links pays dividends.

A solicited incoming link is one you requested , one that you generally had to do something to acquire it. Developing  a solid linking strategy from day one will show immediate results, and it important that you plan this in to daily strategic activities.

To encourage the generation of links by third parties, you need to have systems and ideas in place to reach out to the market. To help the process along, it is useful to have a site that offers several useful features to its visitors. Features such as:

• Useful tools
  By giving people useful tools to use you do two things:
  1. You start to get talked about
  2. You create an element of reciprocation with the receiver of the tool. Psychologically they feel indebted to you and feel that they should reciprocate the favour, by either becoming a customer of yours (lovely, thank you) or by telling others how useful your tool has been.
• bEING dIFFERENT
  Walk and talk a different path. Be controversial, be talked about and people will spread the buzz about you. And they spread the word by mentioning your site – which of course is a link! Luminaries such as Seth Godin and Mark Joyner have distinct takes on marketing and their content is avidly followed by many other internet marketers.
• Valuable content
  “Valuable” content is informative, easy to understand, informs rather than sells and has unique properties in that it is information that is not readily available internet-wide. While it is great to target a large audience, it is better to go for a specific niche audience.
• Reputation, reputation, repetition
  Size and reputation can help spread buzz. Gmail’s parent Google created fever-pitch excitement by offering a free product that blew the competition out of the water, and by restricting the service initially to invitation only create an elite product that people wanted – because they couldn’t easily acquire it. Build your reputation and capitalise on it!
• Talk, Talk, Shout
  Give people the opportunity to express themselves in your forums and pages on specific topics and your platform will benefit from the associated buzz. Hot topics can generate thousands of posts and your platform will become known as the place to express them.
• JIT – just in time!
  People will go to certain sources to hear the latest breaking news or information, and if you have access to hot news or horse’s mouth information, use this to add gravitas to your inbound links. And create a great deal of link traffic!
• Niche is Nice
  Relevant information aggregated into niche topics are a traffic magnet for all seekers of information. If you can provide an area that holds information from several sources on tight niche topics, why would visitors want to go anywhere else? And would they recommend your site and give it some link power? You bet!
• Ask
  Put up a resource box on your site asking people to link to you. Don’t be shy!
  Of course sell the benefits of such and action and provide all the relevant information required for the links to be implemented.

The following article is the first in a series to show you how to maximise your search engine rankings by using links.

There are three basic types of links that refer websites to one another and each has significant role in the marketing of websites.

The three types are:

• Incoming links
• One-way outbound links
• Two-way reciprocal links

One-way incoming links (also known as “inbound links”) are links leading in to your site from other sites. Incoming links are the best types of link to get, from a marketing point of view, since they’re offering you something for nothing in the form of free traffic and a boost in the search engines. Hub sites is a collective name for websites with a large number of relevant, on-topic incoming links.

One-way outgoing links (also known as “outbound links”) are links on your own site which connect to other sites i.e. links that will lead your visitors away from your own site. From a marketing perspective, outgoing links are usually considered the weakest type of link as you are effectively giving away your traffic. Conversely, if your site is provides useful information via its outbound links, your visitors may well come back again – and they will appreciate your site even more for its willingness to point them to other relevant resources. Sites with a lot of on-topic outgoing links are sometimes referred to as authority sites.

Two-way reciprocal links are circular link relationships, i.e. your site links out to a 3rd party site, and that site links back to yours. The links might be homepage to homepage, linkpage to homepage or linkpage to linkpage, depending on the arrangement, but they’re essentially a link trade. Reciprocal links can be beneficial when you’re trying to market your site, especially if they are set up between complementary sites, but their value is dropping as the search engines tend to discount such “mutual admiration” relationships.

Benefits of Incoming Links

The most immediate and obvious benefit of an incoming link is that it can bring more traffic – sometimes significant amounts of traffic – to your site. Each time a visitor sees a link to your site on a 3rd party site, there’s a chance they’ll click on it and be whisked over to your site. An incoming link from a very busy site or page might bring you dozens or hundreds of visitors a day from that one link!

If you work to build up more incoming links to your site, and diversify the sources of your visitors more widely, you’ll be protecting yourself from the roller-coaster dips and spikes in traffic that come from relying mainly on the traffic that major search engines bring.

Incoming links are also important from a search engine ranking perspective. Search engines take a lot of factors into consideration in their algorithms, including incoming links. (An algorithm is a formula that the search engine uses to decide how sites will rank where for a given search query).

While the exact way each search engine makes use of incoming link information in its overall ranking calculations is a closely guarded commercial secret, broadly speaking what they are considering is the quantity, relevance and strength of the incoming links pointing to a particular site or page.

Let me explain these in more depth.

Quantity is the easiest, so we can get it out of the way quickly. We’re simply talking about the overall number of incoming links pointing to a particular site or page. This is sometimes known as the link popularity of a site.

Relevance is an awkwardly vague concept, but it basically relates to how much the search engine “thinks” a particular site linking to yours is somehow similar to, or on the same theme as, your own. For example, a site about luxury cars would not be very “relevant” to a site about deep-sea fishing, so a link from the Rolls Royce site to the deep-sea fishing site would score very poorly for relevance. On the other hand, a general site about fishing would be considered relevant, and consequently a link from that site to your deep-sea fishing site would score very well on the relevance scale. Finally, a site about deep-sea fishing linking to your own deep-sea fishing site means you just hit the incoming link jackpot, as it’s about as relevant a link as you can hope to get!

The relevance of a single page or section of a site can also be important. Going back to the fishing site example, if the general fishing site had a page on deep-sea fishing, that would be of the highest relevance to the deep-sea fishing site, even if the overall site was also generally relevant.

The strength of an incoming link basically depends on the relevance and quantity of links pointing to the site/page providing that incoming link, recursively.

If you’ve ever stood between facing mirrors and seen your reflection multiplied to infinity on either side, you’ll have some idea of just how tricky recursion gets.

In Google’s case, the overall strength of a page is known as its PageRank.

To maximise your Search Engine Optimisation using links, your aim should be to get as many (quantity) strong (strength) incoming links as possible from pages and sites that relate to yours (relevant).

Search engines also use incoming links as a “trigger” when deciding what pages their automated spiders , (little robots that ‘read ‘ the text on your website) will visit. For example, if you put up a new site, it may take quite a while before it gets visited by a search engine spider, and indexed. On the other hand, if the search engine spots a strong incoming link pointing to your site from a good and reliable  source, it will be much more likely to be spidered early

The magic formula is:

lots of good quality inbound linksto your website = more traffic, and quicker and better search engine rankings.

The more incoming links point to your site, the more your link popularity increases. But be sure your links are coming in from relevant sites, because the more relevant an incoming link, the more gravitas your website assumes and the more authority it carries.

Despite all the hype and the major take-up of Social Media, don’t you think that this ‘new wave’ is creating a new breed of cybermugger, whose sole intent is to follow you around pushing unwanted goods and services at you.

Twitter now reminds me of the Soukh at Hammamet in Tunisia, where everybody, but everybody is pushing things at you, entreating you to buy. It can be a fun experience, but as every non-native appears to have ‘gullible tourist’ stamped on the forehead it can be very tiring when it happens street after street, day after day.

Almost every new Twitter follower comes with his own special brand of baggage – make tons of money, get 8 billion followers in a day, learn the secrets of life -you know the pack drill. This is the era of the 140 character bit.ly sell; no relationship marketing – just a mass-user development of the blipvert first lampooned by Max Headroom.

Blipverts are multiple marketing messages flashed in milliseconds at the target audience that subliminally cause them to react according to the message delivered.

This will be the death of Social Media Marketing; you can turn off your Twitter spam quite easily by unfollowing the offenders or by leaving the Twitterverse altogether.