The Adido Digital Blog

Why your business needs a responsive website

2012-01-18T16:58:00.003Z

Responsive web design is a solution that deals with the ever changing technology hardware that consumers are using to access the internet.

It has become a necessary aspect of the design and build of websites in 2012 because it is vital to ensure your website is as usable on every browser size and every mobile device on the marketplace.

It has been forecast that by the end of 2015, more users will connect via mobile devices to the internet than PC’s which just shows the speed at which this change is moving.

Smartphone sales have already surpassed PC sales, which gives us a clear indication with regards to where the market is going.

Changing the web

In short, a responsive website is a web build that adjusts itself according to the screen resolution of the device you are accessing it from.

Seems simple, but it has in actual fact been a difficult thing to implement.

Let’s show you how it works. One excellent site that has implemented responsive web design is http://foodsense.is/

When looking at it, note how it automatically adjusts the content when you resize your browser.

This technology is exactly what is needed in the current digital climate and is the future of web design.

Joel Draper, technical web design expert at Adido says:

“A responsive website is the way forward and will benefit our many clients considerably. Having a site that is optimised to show the most important content, no matter if is accessed from a mobile phone, iPad or PC, is vital and means that potential customers on the move can find the information they need quickly and easily".

"I think that by the end of 2012, responsive websites will be standard because of the increasing popularity of mobile devices”.

Other aspects of responsive websites

As well as making your site more friendly to many types of devices, your content - arguably the most important thing on your site – is also adjusted with the general layout of the page so that it reads well no matter what the size of your browser is.

This content - as stated on Trentwalton.com now fits “its container”.

We can’t help but add a water metaphor here when we say that web content now has the potential to be like a fluidic substance. The particle structure of water enables it to adapt to fit its container and content on responsive web sites is designed to do this in a similar way.

Like water, we suspect responsive web design may not make all content fit its container and there are still issues relating to HTML/CSS compatibility with browsers.

However, with these problems ironed out, we can see that - with the technology refined – responsive web design can really help your business by making your content readable and engaging, no matter where it is accessed from.

Find out more about responsive web design and what we can offer your business by going to http://www.adido-digital.co.uk/services/creative/fully-responsive-web-design.aspx

Adido’s Predictions for Digital in 2012

2011-12-23T14:54:00.002Z

As a forward-thinking and strategic digital marketing agency and web design company, we like to keep on top of what is happening in the digital world.

As you may remember, we held a very successful seminar in November 2011 that discussed what we think will happen in the digital world in 2012. The digital sphere is a fast-changing place, with many exciting innovations happening all the time with regards to search, advertising, web design and usability.

So, what do we think will happen in 2012?

Social and User Signals will be more influential in search

We have already seen this start to happen with Google +1 but this will really explode in 2012, with social likes/retweets and shares becoming a lot more influential in the search engine rankings.

Google is the number one search engine in the world, it has this position because it gives people what they want and they obviously want to maintain it. Prioritising content that has the most positive feedback is therefore the logical way to go surely?

Google has already revamped the way it looks at sites - who can forget the numerous Panda updates that saw some sites completely drop in the rankings overnight? It was a frightening time for businesses and it looks like Google will continue to update its algorithm in 2012 to make sure that users get the content they like. This is where “Likes”, shares and comments will most likely come in.

As mentioned on State of Search, there have been studies that show a positive correlation between Facebook “likes” and Google rankings. Whether this is merely because popular content is likely to come from big, world renowned brands that have already spent millions on their search marketing is unknown.

Google has already admitted here that it uses Twitter when ranking sites.

So, expect to see social factors influencing search in 2012!

Brands will up the ante to build social media relationships with consumers.

Another thing that will become more apparent in 2012 is the use of social pages to create relationships between brands and consumers. Of course we all know this has been going on for years on Facebook; but never has it become harder, yet easier for big brands to interact with their target audience.

Let’s explain. Brands now have more information on us than ever thanks to sites like Facebook. You can now find out which songs their target audience are listening to and what content they’re reading. Brands can also target their social recruitment advertising campaigns to people dependant on whether they are single, married, have children over 16 or are in certain jobs.

But, making advertisers nervous is the fact that Facebook has never been busier. Now, users are updated the very instant their friends do something on Facebook or listen to a song on Spotify.

The new Timeline feature also complicates matters somewhat, as well as the fact that it is now easier than ever to hide and filter what content you see on Facebook.

Brands will have to work harder than ever in 2012 to snare their target market and keep them in their grasp.

Humanising big brands is the key, and we think Timeline will play a huge part here.

Brands haven’t been given Facebook’s new Timeline feature yet, and Facebook hasn’t ever confirmed that they will. However, we predict that the first half of 2012 will see Facebook making an announcement that brands will be given the feature. Mashable has mocked up what McDonalds would look like when switched over to Timeline.

We also predict that more integration between Augmented Reality and social media will be the key to doing this.

We mention Augmented Reality a little further on, so keep reading!

Web design will become much more abstract and minimal

Again, this is already happening, but will become much more common in 2012. We’re loving the postcard-esque, image led designs that we have come across in the last few months and are excited about where this trend will go.

Fonts will also become more “handwritten” in the way they look, leading to websites having more of a personal feel. Also, as speculated on in this article, designs will be more all-encompassing, taking into account the fact that people now buy products across a wide range of digital platforms.

Designs have also become a lot more textured, with a more 3D feel and look to them.

Whereas, 2011 was all about content, 2012 is all about the visuals and texture baby!

Mobile devices will overtake the desktop PC and laptop

Pretty soon, it’ll be hard to imagine a world where people didn’t order pizzas, buy furniture and book a restaurant table from a mobile device such as a smartphone or IPad.
It'll also be hard to imagine a world without responsive web design. Responsive web design is where a website will automatically resize to scale if you reduce the size of your browser. This is perfect for sites likely to be accessed from a variety of devices.

This future for web design is crashing towards us at breakneck speed, and it is clear that mobile devices are going to rise to the top of the tree in 2012; becoming the default choice for most people.

With the news reported here that the number of active mobile devices in the US now actually exceeds its population, this is not surprising at all really.

CNN reports here that tablet devices are not just alternatives to laptops and desktop PCs; they are replacements and will sweep their older versions away gradually in 2012.

We’ve already seen sites specifically built for mobile devices, but 2012 will see sites built that work excellently across multiple platforms.

It will become very important to make sure you website design is fully responsive to every device a user decides to surf with. 2012 will be all about ensuring your website is compatible with every size to maximise conversion and customer satisfaction.

Augmented reality (AR) will start to have a definite role within digital advertising and marketing

Augmented reality is already seen in advertising, but will become more and more commonplace as we advance through 2012. Augmented reality, unlike Virtual Reality, works with your actual environment and enhances it, providing users with fresh and interesting content and new and exciting experiences.

Previously famous examples include the excellent Rayban Virtual Mirror (which allows you to virtually try on Rayban sunglasses from the comfort of your bedroom) and We Are Autobots (self-explanatory and totally awesome!).

Augmented reality is now being touted as the future of advertising. Apps like Blippar demonstrate this by allowing you hover over a brand with your camera phone and access content that has been put there for Blippar users only. It’s like the QR code, only not boring. The fact that we can now whip out our Smartphones and scan our environment, finding out live information is incredibly exciting for the advertising and marketing worlds.

Considering apps like Blippar are free to download and provide original content to users on the go, this could explode in 2012 and we think it will.

Tell us what you think of our predictions for 2012!

We’ll look back later in the year and let you know if we were right!

Merry Christmas and a happy New Year from the Adido team.

Find out more about the amazing services we offer by having a look around our site! We offer excellent services like web design and SEO.

Call us now on 0845 260 2343 to find out more!

Google +1’s; Search Flop or Search Success?

2011-12-15T11:35:00.000Z

As the world falls deeper and deeper into the arms of the Social Network phenomenon, Google was not going to let it go unnoticed. With the launch of Google +1 in June and the subsequent launch of Google+ a month later, what has this meant for the world of SEO and can it actually aid ranking results?

The buzz of Google +1’s on the twittersphere has always been positive with the majority of expert search gurus giving it the ‘thumbs up’… or the ‘+1’ as the case may be. The notion that people will all be +1’ing their most favoured URL or relevant and useful URL’s they may have come across is still under debate. It is supposed that this may become “old hat” after the initial buzz and the likelihood of users continuing to actively +1 URLs will dwindle. Whether this is what actually happens, the jury is still out; it ultimately is all in the aid of search results (Source: Read Write Web blog.)

Timothy Jordan, a Development Advocate at Google was quoted in a recent Search Engine Watch blog post to be reinforcing the use of the +1 button by mentioning the callback mechanism. This is where a user may click the +1 button on a specific product they may find on a site which essentially bookmarks it so it is easily found when they return later.

Timothy goes on to mention how webmasters can be utilising this click instantly via the +1 data callback mechanism whereby similar product recommendations can be made on page immediately after the click. In light of webmasters actively jumping on board in terms of utilising the mechanism in this way, it is highly likely that it will aid search massively.

The need and want for internet users to find the most relevant website for their search is obviously paramount. Surely it should be a logical step that users will embrace the +1 process in favour of optimising their future searches, furthermore, optimising Google to be their most trusted source of providing quality search results every time.

Here at Adido, we have a sneaking suspicion that sooner or later, +1 may actually begin to assist rankings and do what it was designed for. Again, it may be too early to truly make an educated assumption, but with the spotlight always on Google and their 80-90 per cent market share, we would all like to think that they know what they’re doing… right?.. RIGHT?

Social Metrics; What Does it Mean?

2011-12-15T09:50:00.000Z

Tracking and reporting social media results still proves to evade certain attempts of analysis, and accurately translating what the key performance indicators (KPI’s) are actually showing you is not an exact science. Whilst you may be clocking up 100 more likes or followers a day, are you actually reaching the right community for that client?

It seems that measuring certain metrics for some marketers is less important than others, similarly any measurement needs to be in correlation to the needs of the client. Finding the right balance for you as the marketer as to be able to accurately express and explain effective results efficiently is important. It can be something that develops over a period of time due to the continuous changes and developments, but you will definitely get there.

Whilst analysing Facebook insights and targeting specific KPI’s, the addition of “Klout” into your analysis is a simple and effective way to strengthen your findings. For those who may not be too familiar, Klout is a social analysis platform that can give you the results of your social media campaign using a simple 1 – 100 scoring system; the higher the score, the more influential your campaign has been.

With the aid of Klout, it can show you how much you influence people as well as showing you your true reach across not only your immediate network, but your fans extended networks also. Displaying this knowledge in such simple a format is handy for explaining results and your analytical findings to clients that may not be too familiar with social media marketing. As a digital marketing agency in Bournemouth, the smaller clients definitely find it useful to analyse any social media work we may have done for them via the results from Klout.

Are you looking for more of a presence online? You could do a lot worse than to contact a SEO company Bournemouth like Adido who can help you showcase your products and services to the right audience.
Call us now on 0845 260 2343 to find out more, and feel free to leave a comment below. We always appreciate feedback and debate about the subjects we cover in this blog.

Until next time.

The Adido Team.

Adido goes to the V&A London Design Festival

2011-11-14T11:41:00.000Z

Adido’s senior creative designer Laura Cannings took a trip up to London to be inspired and impressed by the offerings from influential creative minds at the annual London Design Festival. What better place to host the main events than at the beautiful setting of the V&A museum?

The festival hosted many free exhibitions that were quirky and thought provoking such as Grey Matter by artist Man Bartlett. Over two days, visitors to the Digital Design Festival were invited to leave their answer in response to the question, “Where are you from?" via Twitter.

The artist then translated the answers (viewed via a live video link) into a weave of colours, demonstrating how he was geographically inspired to create a multi-coloured tapestry.

Exhibitons such as Grey Matter led the mind to naturally open up for seminars such as The Post Digital Culture with guest speakers: Tom Uglow (Google creative labs), Katy Beale (Caper) and Filip Visnjic (Creative applications network) to name but a few running throughout the day.

The Post Digital Culture seminar was aimed to stretch the imagination of the digital future beyond social media and look at how the boundaries between physical reality and online are being blurred. Speakers asked the audience to participate in live creative activities (such as The Jonny Cash project where the user can help to generate frames for a music video) and watch films such as Augmented City, which showcased beautifully that what was once a “sci-fi film futuristic” effect seems not far from our digital grasps.

Thoughts of the day:

What next for the digital world? It would seem that we are all so immersed in the digital world; for example we take notes on an ipad rather than a notepad and use chat to ask people questions rather than get up to talk. Digital has become such a natural part of everyday life.

It was highlighted by each speaker that the next step is more human interaction with the online experiences of everyday – Augmented Reality! The examples of how brands could promote themselves further through AR were inspiring and something every digital agency should prepare for!

Until next time.

The Adido Team!

Facebook changes and the F8 Conference!

2011-09-26T11:19:00.001+01:00

As you may know, Facebook held a conference last week to announce the changes they have made to the world’s number one social networking site.

This latest version of Facebook is its second major overhaul since it launched in 2004, the last revamp was in 2008.

Here we’ll discuss some of the changes that have been made and analyse how they could affect user interaction with Facebook.

So, what changes have been announced?

Facebook’s aim is “To make this profile the best way to share everything you want and the best way to express who you are” - Mark Zuckerberg at the F8 conference 2011.

He went on to say that “The next era [of Facebook] is going to be defined by the apps and the depth of engagement that is now possible, now that everyone has their connections in place and this network is already established.”

In a nutshell, users will be able to add and find out more about their friends and have more access to more multimedia than ever before.

So, the major changes to expect when you log in to Facebook are:

Timeline:

Described by Fastcompany.com as a “reverse chronology of everything a user has done in their lives.” Facebook collects this data “as a user adds status updates” but users can also go back and fill in past details and events going all the way back to their birth”.

(screenshot from zdnet.com)

Watch Facebook’s video on timeline

Lists

Users can now select their close friends, family and colleagues on Facebook and subscribe to their updates, they can also subscribe to yours. You can also subscribe to updates of people you’re not friends with on Facebook. They will have to approve this before you see anything.

The key feature of this is that you can write something that only your close friends can see. This is very much like the Google+ ‘Circles’ functionality which was seen as one of main differentiators when it launched.

This benefits users because they can update their status to say “Good morning all” or something and make sure via a drop down box that only the people they have selected to be in their close friends list can see it.

This is perfect for people who have a lot of friends on Facebook they don’t speak to for whatever reason.

Timeline: More updates on your friends

Lots of people don’t get to log into Facebook very often, maybe once a week or once a month. The new timeline features allow users to get a summary of what their friends have been up to when they next log in.

As well as this, users will be updated in real time when a friend does something on Facebook.

Apps and content consumption

Once upon a time in the dark old days, users would have needed to view and listen to content outside of Facebook whenever anything was “shared”.

No more! Now Facebook has partnered up with media providers like Spotify, Yahoo, Vevo and Hulu.

These media providers have built apps into Facebook to allow Facebook users to consume content inside Facebook. Some sites like Yahoo will still send you to their site to read the content there but Spotify will allow you to click on a link inside Facebook and listen to music without leaving the site.

Information on media consumed will then be sent to friends in real time - you won’t get asked if you’d like to share your choices at the time of consumption. You’ll be warned up front that your choices will be shared when you install the application.

It’s not just the music you listen to that your friends will know about in real time. Every time you “like” something, comment on something or become someone’s friend, your friends will see it on their real time ticker (just about the “chat” box on the right of your profile page.

Benefits and Concerns

Of course, nothing on Facebook is ever done completely altruistically. As this Fastcompany.com article rightly points out, it’s not just friends and subscribers that will know more about you. Facebook will.

This information is gold dust to advertisers who are always trying to find better ways to target potential consumers. Now they’ll have information on what your favourite songs are, how often you go to the gym and how long you have been engaged.

Identity theft is a real concern. Of course, you can choose who you share your information with, but issues can still arise.

The major benefit of the new real time updates that appear just above the chat box is that you can interact with your friends without necessarily having to go to their page. For example, if your friend updates their status, you’ll know about it immediately and be able to comment via a pop up without having to go to their page. This new feature is very much a direct attempt to compete with Twitter.

It’s unconnected to chat though, which means that even if you make yourself unavailable to chat, you can still see your friends’ updates.

With regards to convenience, the new changes to Facebook couldn’t be better. You can see everything that’s going on from the comfort of your Facebook page, which means you can sign in but get to do other things and check in occasionally as it all updates in real time.

(Screenshot from Tecca.com)

What are the potential benefits to businesses that have company pages on Facebook?

At Adido, we have many clients who run social ad campaigns with us or have “fan” pages that users can “like”.

For our clients, it will be far easier to target relevant users who will be far more likely to convert.

With regards to the “interests” section, the broad category targeting has become a lot more niche, with advertisers being able to target people who like certain films, songs or cats for example. You can also target users who have an IPhone, have been engaged for 6 months or are parents to a child under three.

Of course, to be targeted, consumers would have to provide that specific information about themselves.

With this new tool, we can make our campaigns far more effective, really getting granular in how we target our ads.

Search Engine Watch describes this as “a marketer’s dream” in this article.

Conclusion

The changes made to Facebook will give friends much more information about each other than ever before, however, with the new lists feature, you will be able to control who sees what better as well.

We love the new lists feature, and the real time updates.

We’re also big fans of the timeline feature, as long as people are happy to share that level of information with other users and are educated in the various ways they can choose who sees their data.

Make sure you read the small print when installing an application to your profile. Many manufacturers will tell you up front whether everyone can see what you do on it. You won’t get any other warnings.

At Adido we’re happy that advert targeting will now be even more granular than ever before, this will save time and money in the long run.

Find out more about Adido and our excellent work by going across to www.adido-digital.co.uk.

Would you buy a car from this Computer?

2011-09-22T09:56:00.002+01:00

One in five of those surveyed believe they will buy a car online in the future, and men are more likely to do so than women – 20% compared with 13%. And the under-55s were the most likely to buy online – 24-28% – compared with 12-17% of those aged over 55. A report showed from consumer magazine Which?

And if a consumer has already bought a car online, the likelihood of doing it again rises to 74%, showing a high level of confidence and satisfaction in this purchase route. The breakdown of responses to the survey into consumer’s likelihood to purchase a car online showed

Not at all likely	42%
Not very likely	33%
Fairly likely	13%
Don't know	6%
Very likely	5%

New and used car dealerships should be turning the concerns about buying a car online into ways to drive footfall to their showroom from their dealership website.

Digital marketing company Adido produces websites for car dealerships and has advised clients on the best way to not only present their stock online, but also how to engage with users of their website and encourage them to take the next step by visiting the showroom, booking a test drive or request more information.

Adido’s Sales Director, Gary Seneviratne commented on these findings, “We understand the online market and that for major purchases the consumer is still very wary of completing a transaction on the internet. This is why we work with our clients to use their website to build trust and engage with their customers and make their website visit the first part of an enjoyable purchasing experience and a channel through which the dealership can maintain communication with customers and encourage repeat business.”

Social Media’s Role in the 2011 UK Riots

2011-08-24T11:13:00.001+01:00

The UK riots have racked up considerable column inches since they began on the 6th/7th August 2011 in Tottenham, London.

There has been a lot of talk in the industry regarding the use of social media in the planning and organisation of the rioting and looting activity; and also how social media networks like Twitter and Facebook were both vital in telling rioters where the lootings were taking place. A lot has also been made of how rioters used encrypted instant messaging service Blackberry Messenger (BBM) to work out where to meet.

Reports like this one on Storify.com have also come through that social media helped people stay safe and avoid troubled areas while the riots were occurring.

As a result a very blurred image of social networks including Facebook and Twitter has been portrayed in the popular media in the last week and a half.

There have even been calls to switch off social networks until the furore has died down. This has, quite understandably caused anger. This article on Wired.com explains it quite well.

So, here is our analysis of the role of social media in both inciting and avoiding violence.

The Good

Police were able to prevent one of the riots after monitoring Twitter. From looking at the social network, police in London received intelligence that areas including Oxford Street and the Westfields shopping centre were the rioters’ next locations to target. Police were then able to secure these areas quickly, thanks to tip offs from both rioters’ tweets, and tweets from those uninvolved in the riots trying to prevent more trouble.

Leon Piers, a Bristol resident, used Twitter to help calm down violence in his local community. He set up a Twitter account under @BristolRiots and cycled around the Bristol area tweeting information about where the riots were and details of what was happening. Piers was annoyed with the mass media misreporting what was happening in his area and also that people were using Twitter to spread false rumours about the riots. His real time social journalism approach can only be admired and adapted by those in the ever changing digital industry. Piers tweets helped police and the emergency services calm the area and told people where to avoid. This undoubtedly kept many people safe and helped prevent the riots spreading further.

Twitter also helped clean up an area of London. Within hours of the riots, #riotcleanup was trending on Twitter after the @riotcleanup profile was set up to get people to clean up Clapham, which they did in spades. Other areas affected by the riots were soon seeing flocks of tweeters keen to help clean up other areas of the UK including Birmingham and Manchester, with all planned clean ups posted from location specific ‘riotcleanup’ twitter accounts. This article provides more information on the London clean up.

This article on Storify.com includes screenshots of some touching Tweets sent out to calm the violence and make sure that vulnerable people were taken care of.

The Bad

Although not a social network, Blackberry Messenger has been blamed for a lot of the violence as it emerged that people had been using the encrypted service to organise where to meet. The instant messaging service gives users a special PIN number and you can send messages that only users utilising that PIN can access. Therefore rioters could easily contact friends and gangs via BBM to plan their next attack without the police knowing.

Facebook has also been blamed for inciting a lot of the violence with pages being set up with times and dates for people to meet. Currently, many teenagers are facing lengthy stays in jail for trying to start riots in the towns that they lived in.

Conclusion

So, social media did a lot of good with regards to calming the trouble down and containing the violence but also did its part to start and enhance it.

Requesting that social media sites be shut down however is not just unfair to the millions of users who had nothing to do with the trouble; but it takes away a key freedom and leaves people bereft of real time instant information, a real bonus that Twitter brings to the journalistic sphere. It has also enabled some excellent citizen journalism with Leon Piers being an exemplary example.

We have seen the use of social media in rallying people together to do positive things like praise the police and organise a mass cleanup of affected areas across the country. The future potential that social media has on top of its existing potential is sky high and the minority that used it to incite violence should not ruin the experience for those who opposed the rioting.

Tell us what you think by commenting below or Tweeting us @adido. We’re really interested to get your views, predictions and analysis on social media in the current political and social climate!

We’ll be back with more digital media news and analysis very soon! Keep watching for new posts from the Adido team.

Adido is a full service digital marketing agency specialising in all aspects on online marketing from web design, usability and content management systems right through to SEO, PPC, online PR, social media marketing and copywriting.

Call us any time on 0845 260 2343 to find out more!

What Car Buyers do on the Internet

2011-08-05T14:55:00.002+01:00

Buying a new car online is the least use of the internet by consumers. Researching their next purchase is the biggest reason by far to browse car dealership websites.

A Survey by consumer magazine Which? found that half of consumers made use of the internet to search for cars for sale, review cars, compare specifications and prices.

The table below breaks down the way consumers were found to use the internet in connection with buying a new or used car:

Reason	Percentage of people
Look for car reviews	52%
Look for car specifications	49%
Compare price of different cars	46%
Looking for cars for sale (new & used)	38%
Did not use internet at all	29%
To find a dealer	24%
Assessing availability & cost of car insurance	22%
Assessing availability & price of car accessories	10%
Placing order & buying car	5%
Booking a test drive	2%
Don't know	1%

Today a car dealership website makes a fantastic shop window and a chance to engage with browsing customers like never before. A new consumer survey into car buying habits carried out on autotrader.co.uk has revealed that more than two thirds (70%) of shoppers now use both the internet and mobile site before deciding what vehicle to purchase.

Adido raises £200 for Youth Cancer Trust

2011-07-28T11:36:00.000+01:00

You may have heard that we have recently launched our exciting new branding; this includes a new website, logo and “Do Digital Better” branding.

To celebrate this, we held a party for clients, colleagues and friends at the Royal Bath Hotel. The party launched the new logo and branding and also gave us the chance to announce our chosen charity: Youth Cancer Trust.

We have chosen to work with this charity because, like us, they always try and do better than they did the day before. At Adido, we never rest on our successes and always strive to improve ourselves every day; this is why we were pleased to see that reflected in the work that Youth Cancer Trust does.

As part of our work with Youth Cancer Trust, we will be doing some exciting fundraising work for them.

We started this at the party with a fun charity raffle and a highly debated “guess the number of millions” challenge!

The prizes and winners are as follows:

One case of Bollinger champagne (donated by Additional Media) – won by Lindsay from Postgoldforcash.com.
One case of wine (donated by AJI Interactive) – won by Natalie King, Project Coordinator at Adido.
A selection of executive gifts (donated by BH1 Promotions) – won by Derek from Youth Cancer Trust
Two games of Bowling and a meal for six (Donated by Bowlplex) – won by Lauren from Business Link
A free email newsletter set up with Adido Mail and worth £500 (donated by Adido) – won by Paul from BCHA
A night for two in Park Central Hotel (donated by Park Central Hotel) – won by Jenny from Vocalzone.

The raffle and “guess the number of millions” challenge raised £200 for the charity!

We’re very pleased with the amount raised so far and hope to raise even more with our impending charity bike ride in September.

Want to take part or sponsor us? Simply go to http://www.adi.do and contact us!

We are a vibrant full service digital marketing agency in Bournemouth specialising in search marketing, site usability and design and other exciting aspects of the digital world!

Call now on 0845 260 2343 to find out more about the outstanding work we are doing and our exciting new branding.

Surviving Panda 2.2

2011-07-26T10:47:00.001+01:00

As you may know, there was another tweak to the new Google algorithm in June that saw many sites losing their PageRank and SERP rankings.

Even the mighty Google.com went from PageRank ten to PageRank nine, which suggests the changes were a lot more severe than Google has originally hinted.

What has changed?

Anyone in digital marketing not living under a huge rock will know that Google updates its algorithm several times a month. Most of these are tiny tweaks that only make small differences to search. Others, like the Panda update in March have had more catastrophic repercussions for webmasters and online businesses.

The latest tweak to Panda has been rolled out to tackle more “scraper” sites that actually outrank the sites they have stolen content from.

Because of the updates, it has become even clearer that a good PageRank is not going to be something that automatically puts you at the top of the SERP listings.

When PageRank was first brought in it was massively important and was seen as the be all and end all. It was more vital to achieving good rankings in the SERPs and seen as the ultimate barometer on which the worth of a site was based by both Google and users.

Over the years however, this has dropped in importance and is best seen as a rough indication of trust of the page it is showing for.

What is important?

What has become clearer in the recent Google algorithm updates is that content on sites needs to be written for people and not search engine spiders. Not sure what we mean? Go to a site where the content has just been written for SEO purposes and note the differences it will have from original, useful content written for people.

Penalised content which is targeted by the Panda update:

      Is stuffed with keywords.
      Has been found in its entirety on other sites.
      Isn’t relevant to the page it is on or the page it points at.
      Is of poor quality.
      Has other attributes that indicate it has been written purely for search engine spiders (such as high bounce rates and low time spent on page.

How do I survive Panda 2.2?

Make sure your content isn’t just written for search engines.

Make sure the content is written so that people find it useful.

Structure your copy properly, making sure any links are pointers to what the page is about.

Take down any copy that could be found anywhere else on the web. There is really no excuse for duplicate content! A good place to check is www.copyscape.com or www.dupecop.com. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

What to do next?

The repercussions of the Google Panda effect are still being felt by website owners across the world. We guess at this point there is still more to come from Google as it looks to really crack down on traditional link practises and it focus’ more on getting ‘relevant’ and ‘quality’ websites nearer the top of their search engine listings.

Keep your eyes locked on the Adido blog for more news as it happens!

Page Rank is still important in determining the trust your site has, but it won’t save you if you’ve got duplicate content.

Find out more about the excellent services offered by Adido by heading across to http://adi.do now. We’re a full service digital marketing agency and the one stop shop for all things digital marketing (including PPC advertising) for many businesses across the UK.