Page optimisation and link building are the bread and butter of SEO, is to say that you can’t have one without the other. In other words a page will never rank first if it doesn’t combine page optimisation with links.

Over the past couple of years a lot of weight has been put in links and the vast majority of SEOs consider it to be the most important ranking signals either on Google or Bing ranking algorithm. But if the page that these links are pointing is not optimised for the right keywords it will lack in relevance which in turn will affect its rankings.

For instance, if a page has 100 links pointing to it with the anchor text “Internet Marketing Bedford” it is likely that this given page will rank well for that term. But if the page itself is not optimised for that term it will never reach the top position on the SERPs.

On the other hand, if the same page is optimised for the term “Internet Marketing Bedford” and has no links pointing to it with the targeted anchor text it won’t reach top position either.

In other words you can’t reach first place by only optimising a page or by only pointing links to it. To reach top positions on the SERPs you need to combine page optimisation with links and vice-versa. I know I haven’t invented the wheel but many SEOs overlook a really important aspect of search engine optimisation and that is relevance.

Many search marketers think they can game the search engines by pointing thousands of links to irrelevant pages in order to rank them well or over-optimise a page to include as many keywords as possible thinking that the more the better.

Search engine optimisation is fairly simple and that is the beauty of it; you can not optimise a page or a website thinking solely on the search engines. Optimise with your end users in mind, provide them with the stuff they are looking for and the search engines will value your efforts by ranking your website on the top of their results pages.

As afore mentioned SEs are looking for relevance because that is their end product, so if your website provides the best relevance for a search query it is more likely to rank higher.

By combining a well optimised page with a good number of links pointing to it with the right keywords as anchor texts I can guarantee you that you will achieve good rankings.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Every week, you see thousands of advertisements in newspapers, on the TV and up on posters. How many can you remember?

Worrying, isn’t it. Especially if you fear it might be your adverts that are being ignored and forgotten.

With all this advertising noice, your business needs to make sure that your advertisements stand out, cut through the clutter and inspire your audiences. So instead of flipping past it, walking past it or zapping it with a remote control, your audience stays with it, enjoys it and remembers it. If that happens, it will affect their buying behaviour.

It’s important from the outset to be clear about whether you want a new advertising idea or a new executional idea; i.e. is it a totally new idea or a new way of freshening up an existing campaign? Once you’ve determined whether the new B2B advertising campaign is required for a new advertising idea or a new execution, you should ensure that you provide your B2B advertising agency with a brief that answers the following questions:

Why do you want new advertising?

What customer insight drives the brief?

Who is the target audience?

What do they think and do now (in relation to your brand and its product category)?

What would you like them to do in response to the new advertising (and how will you measure this)?

What is most likely to achieve this change?

Why should they believe it?

If you can inspire your advertising agency, copywriter or creative designer then you’re on the way to developing great B2B advertising.

But don’t forget, the most effective ads are not those that get your target au

Popularity: 46% [?]

Well, it’s been quite a year. No recession at Chapter & Verse as you can probably tell from the complete lack of updates to this website!

Still, we’re getting our New Year’s resolutions in early this year and will be updating this “more regularly” from now on.

On the plus side, we’ve got lots of things we can show you what we’re been working on over the past 8 months – yes, I can’t believe this site has been dormant since January!!!

Things like….the work we’ve been doing for Capita Children’s Services.

Case Studies for One

New case studies have appeared over the last few months written by Chapter & Verse. There is one below and clicking on the above link will take you to Capita’s own site where you can see plenty more. We conducted telephone interviews with Capita’s customers and then drafted the text to the satisfaction of both the client and their customer.

OneVision – Cambridgeshire Children’s Services

“Our vision is to have a single record for every child within Cambridgeshire so we can access the information we need quickly and use it effectively. Our teams need to have relevant background information to hand so they can use their time to move a child’s position forward not to recap on ground already covered”, says Roger Green, Head of Service, Information Sharing and OneVision at Cambridgeshire County Council.

The initiative to provide a single, complete record for every child within Cambridgeshire County Council has been driven by the Children’s Services team’s commitment both to the Children’s Act and Every Child Matters.

The reality of delivering this vision however, is rather complex in terms of technical and professional terms, but as Lord Lamming stated in his report of March 2009, “The complexity of managing performance across partner services should not be allowed to be a barrier to improving the safety of children and young people in England”, says Roger Green.

The Requirement

Prior to developing the one-child, one-record vision (or OneVision as it is called internally), Cambridgeshire had been using a number of administrative-based databases into which information was added after an episode, or contact, with a child.

This method increased the risk of errors being made as information was added at a later date and was usually entered by an administrator rather than the professional directly involved. It was also difficult to see a full picture on any child due to the complex nature in which information was held.

Green describes the situation, “We had five different databases across education and social care with various spreadsheets and different paper methods to record data. This made cross-agency sharing of information very difficult.”

“It was essential to adopt an IT solution that would provide a single integrated picture of a child. We did not want a solution that merely employed interfaces between existing databases as this would make the situation even more complex. Capita Children’s Services where the only company to offer us a system that reflected the standards we wanted to achieve in terms of caring for the 130,000 children in our area.”

The Solution

Cambridgeshire County Council has adopted Capita’s One management information system. The software manages virtually every aspect of contact with a child by the local authority. The same core data is used by a school, a social worker or an individual arranging transport for a child.

So, for example, an education welfare officer with the right permissions, investigating why a child is not attending school could see if there was a social worker also working with the child. They can then deduce that this is not a straightforward case of non-attendance and respond accordingly, involving the social worker along the way. This means children get a far more appropriate response to their needs.

The council was also one of the first to implement Capita’s One Integrated Children’s System, which brings together a local authority’s massive respository of information on children from schools with data from social care services. One ICS is designed to help social workers as it ensures they have all the information they need to make good decisions regarding the children they are working with. They can examine a child’s academic achievements or details of special needs assessments to help understand how best to respond to a child’s needs without having to wait for information from various different agencies. Previously, this would have been a long drawn out paper-based exercise.

The Benefits

Using One has meant that there is no re-keying of data that already exists in the system and it has put an end to hand-written records. In the past, for example, when a child was excluded from school, their school would make a record of this on their own management information system and then so too would the local authority school admissions and student support teams. Now all departments access the same information that the school inputs, saving time and ensuring information is up-to-date across the council.

Whilst efficiency was never a key driver in the whole process the reduction in the amount of data entry required is no doubt helping. As the information is now contained within One it has meant five sets of people who were employed for data cleansing tasks across the old databases are now able to contribute in different ways.

One has most importantly helped Cambridgeshire develop its multi-agency approach to child welfare.

Meetings with families are much more fruitful as there is no need to recap on previously gathered information. “Our director of children’s services recently joined a social worker on a visit to the family of a disabled boy. The director was surprised at how productive the meeting could be as the complete case history was already known. The family too were less frustrated at not having to cover old ground. It is helping us move forward more quickly with the right support for children,” comments Green.

The information sharing is helping all of the council teams. The school transport team, for example, are now able to see the special educational needs of children so they can easily identify and provide transport that is relevant to their needs.

The Challenges

There have been some challenges during the move, as there are with any major overhaul of working practices. Many professionals, such as social workers, were being asked to use computers for the first time and take responsibility for entering data on children themselves. For many this involved learning previously unnecessary skills, however, it meant more accurate data in the long run. Others were being given access to much more information on children than they had before and it was important that we explained carefully the responsibility of this as well as the benefits.

The Future

The future will see the authority continue to develop its vision of having all children’s records in one place. “The data currently starts when a child is born, as we bring across Health Authority records of new births, and ends when a child leaves school. Going forward we want to have Connexions data included in the system so there is a full record for every individual from the ages of 0 to 19,” says Roger Green.

At present the authority is also considering introducing Capita’s PRIME Business Intelligence software. This provides directors with a personalised summary of their day-to-day performance against key indicators. It collates the data held within One and presents it as simple graphs or alerts based on what is important to the senior management, so for example, it could show truancy levels or the summary GCSE results for children in care.

As Lord Lamming commented, “One of the main challenges is to ensure that leaders of local services effectively translate policy, legislation and guidance into day-to-day practice on the frontline of every service.” To meet these demands it is essential for leaders to have easy access to indicators of performance which can then be used to help direct their decision making.

“Cooperation from Capita throughout the implementation of One has been good and we have worked as true partners on this project. Capita has responded quickly and supported us both at a technological and consultative level to ensure that we achieve the objectives of our vision of one record for every child,” concludes Roger Green.

Download a PDF of this case study, “OneVision – Cambridgeshire Children’s Services”

Popularity: 25% [?]

This month OVL has been asking how David Gallagher likes his eggs in the morning. David is the Chapter Director of Enterprise Bedford BNI, Bedfordshire’s most successful, professional networking group.

Enterprise Bedford BNI is a group of local business professionals who meet every Thursday at The Bedfordshire Golf Club in Stagsden, to provide a structured and supportive platform to maximise the referral potential of every member’s business.

Word-of-mouth marketing may be old but it is still highly effective. Successful businesses both large and small, ensure that a networking strategy forms part of their overall marketing campaign and runs in conjunction with their advertising, PR and promotional campaigns.

David was attracted to BNI for one reason: professionalism. He says, “there are lots of networking opportunities in Bedfordshire and beyond from morning to night, but BNI was the only one I found where the members were less interested in selling to me, or to each other in the room for that matter, and more interested in developing long-term, relationships that would ultimately benefit both parties. It was this professional approach, combined with the lively, fun atmosphere you only get in rooms of 40+ like-minded individuals that meant it was a real no-brainer for me to sign up last year.”

Keith Lilley from Greycourt Florists, was one of the original founder members of the Chapter in May 2002 and he is still going today. That’s a lot of breakfasts for Keith (in fact, as David found out from the members’ database which tracks the group’s and individual member’s performance on a weekly basis, he has enjoyed 246 breakfasts at Enterprise Bedford BNI) but more importantly, a lot of business. Over the last, almost 7 years, Keith has received 1,300 business referrals from members.

And Keith isn’t the only long-standing member of the 38-strong networking group today. Robert Umpleby from The Quantum Organization, Jonathan Ward from Metrosigns, Tony Wiles from Pola Print and Mike Cryer from eMC Design are all double centurions in terms of the number of weekly breakfasts attended at Enterprise Bedford. You don’t get that sort of commitment unless business networking really works.

So what is it that makes Enterprise Bedford BNI so effective? “Networking is about building personal relationships”, says David. “Because we meet every week, because we make a financial and personal commitment, because we agree to meet the highest ethical and professional standards and because, like any good business, we set goals and monitor our progress towards achieving those goals, the personal relationships are by definition stronger and the referral business therefore naturally flows more easily.”

Enterprise Bedford BNI consists of all types of professionals, from large businesses to sole traders, and welcomes new members from established businesses, as well as those just starting up. “For new start-ups, networking is a very cost-effective way to build a business”, says David. “But the fact that we have members from large local businesses, such as Jensa Distribution, successful and expanding medium-sized businesses such as CN Packaging and eMC Design, as well as professionals from national business organisations such as The Utilities Warehouse and Edward Jones, shows that networking, when done professionally, works for anyone and any size of business.

To find out more about Enterprise Bedford BNI and how it could benefit your business, or to book a space at their next weekly meeting, contact David on 01234 345 161 or email david@chapterandverse.co.uk

Popularity: 51% [?]

Mark Palmer, Green & Black’s Global Brand Director, has been talking to Paul Gallagher, Freelance Journalist  about how he helped turn Green & Black’s chocolate from a niche product into an international phenomenon.

Green & Black’s has come a long way since its inception in 1991 by the journalist Josephine Fairley and her partner Craig Sams, an organic foods specialist. The pair were inspired by the taste of the cocoa they savoured on a holiday in Belize. Fairley, a chocoholic, frequently returned from foreign assignments to complain that the dark chocolate she found in other countries was nowhere to be found in the UK. Green & Black’s was soon born.

Mark joined the company in 2001 when he moved from Burger King to become marketing director. At the time, Burger King’s turnover dwarfed Green & Black’s so many people may have questioned his decision to switch companies. But Mark had no doubts, knowing a move to a young, entrepreneurial company, would reap dividends.

“My advice to anyone is to work in a business where you can control your own destiny, somewhere you can be accountable and have an influence. That may involve downsizing companies, like I did, and it’s a real challenge for anyone, but you’ll never look back.”

Mark’s initial two years at Green & Black’s were spent working on a major brand positioning, moving from the chocolate company’s niche of its organic roots to a serious player in the premium confectionary market. By 2004, Green & Black’s turnover had jumped from £4.5m to £20m. His team’s efforts were extraordinary and the hard work was paying off.

As Mark explains: “We didn’t have the advertising budget in the early days so we had to take a long hard look at the product and ask ourselves whether it was as good as it could possibly be. I’d suggest that to every company.

“Many companies think throwing money at something, or having a decent marketing budget, is a short cut to success, but that’s a common mistake. There’s nothing wrong with spending money, but it’s important how you spend it. Ultimately, as with anything, it’s the quality of the product that drives everything. There’s no point in marketing something if it’s inferior.

“We spent a long time studying our target market and basically spent two years almost stalking customer groups. The ‘time poor, food rich group’ was particularly important to us. We wanted to know where these people shop, what they buy, which newspapers do they read. Everyone needs a robust case study.”

Focus groups were vital for Mark in getting public feedback. One early challenge was explaining what “organic” meant as it featured so prominently on the packaging. He also discovered many people didn’t like the packaging and that it was giving off the wrong image.

“We wanted to be known as an affordable luxury. People wanted fancy chocolates without the intimidation of going into a fancy shop so we adapted our packaging to reflect that.”

At the focus groups, some people didn’t even want to put it in their mouths confirming Mark’s idea that a great product was being presented in totally the wrong way. The decision was made to take the chocolate out of the organic aisles and place it among mainstream chocolate to compete on its own.

Good PR helped, with an Observer Food Monthly cover story in May 2006 entitled “How a Green & Black’s chocolate bar rescued the families of Belize from ruin” confirming the company’s stance on ethics and sustainability. This was emphasised when Green & Black’s Maya Gold chocolate became the first product in the UK to carry the fair trade logo.

Observer Food also gave away sample chocolate bars – something it had never done before. That year’s Green & Black’s Easter campaign ran with the slogan “disappoint the kids this Easter”. It was a brave move. But Green & Black’s were not prepared to target consumer groups who did not fit their model and reaped the rewards.

As sales improved, Green & Black’s were in a better position to invest heavily in sampling. In recent years, the company has given away more than five and a half million chocolate bars. “If we have a distinctive taste, then people need to have a chance to try it,” says Mark.

Sampling became a far more powerful tool than advertising.

In 2006, the Independent raved about “the greatest marketing triumph in recent years”. Green & Black’s had “come from nowhere to be the chocolate of choice on the office tea run”.

It took a long time to get there, as Mark, now Global Brand Director overseeing expansion into the USA, New Zealand and Japan, acknowledges: “It took us 7-8 years to get to the level we are at today. We have had a few products that didn’t work out but when we do something new, we try to do it on a small scale so if there are problems, we haven’t lost much time and money on them. So don’t invest too much on a new product, start slow before you build up.”

Today, not only Green & Black’s chocolate bars, but also ice creams, hot drinks, gift chocolates and biscuits, can be found in a wide range of supermarkets, delicatessens, from Harrods to health food stores and sandwich stores such as Pret a Manger, whose founder, Julian Metcalf, Mark considers a business mentor.

“He didn’t spend any money on advertising either so he was a great example of how to build a brand without a big budget. They used their own packaging to optimise their product, just as we then tried to do at Green & Black’s.

“Julian called us one day years ago and, because of the manner of our receptionist who didn’t even know who it was, ended up asking us to sell our chocolate bars in 180 of his stores around the country. So it’s vital to make the first point of contact as good as possible as you never know who might be calling.”

This interview and article was commissioned by Inside Business and is copyright protected.

Popularity: 100% [?]