So, if SEO is Dead...

If Search Engine Optimisation is dead, as many people would have you believe, it follows that you would expect a website's visitor numbers to be more or less independent of optimisation.

This would be especially true in the last few months since Google's latest SEO-busting algorithm change, with little to be gained from link-building, on-page optimisation, internal structure, and all the other staples of conventional SEO. At the same time, an established domain with lots of citations and pre-existing presence ought not to be affected by a redesign and a neglect of that 'obsolete' SEO.

In which case, why did this happen to a website that was relaunched just last week?

As you can see, traffic to the site, which had been generally rising until last week, all but stopped on November 29th, almost as though someone has thrown a switch.

We'll save the site owner's blushes by not naming them but rest assured we are encouraging them to get to grips with basic SEO as soon as possible!

Roy

PS. You can learn the kind of basic SEO that would certainly benefit the website's owner from my book 'Really Simple SEO for Business Owners', available on Amazon Kindle.

PPS. You can also ask for our help, at www.cinnamonedge.co.uk 

Multiple Streams of Income: Flatpack Assembly UK Review - Unique and Low-Cost ...

Multiple Streams of Income: Flatpack Assembly UK Review - Unique and Low-Cost ...: Brand-New Business Opportunity Makes £200 per Day A business opportunity has just been launched that allows you to make £200 a day or more...

Novanna Measurement Systems: New Blog Added to the Main Novanna Website

Novanna Measurement Systems: New Blog Added to the Main Novanna Website:  

It was a bit of a wrestling match with the shopping cart program but I got there in the end!

"We've decided to add an articles blog to the main Novanna website in order to better inform our readers, customers and followers and allow ..."

What's this Google Photography Business?

Last week I heard about a new service being rolled out by Google, and I heard about it in the way I like best: with an offer for our company Cinnamon Edge to become an exclusive supplier. 

After undergoing lots of tests and an intensive grilling, photographer Mark Swanson has been granted Google Trusted Photographer status, meaning he is one of very few photographers in the UK who's allowed to supply Google Business Photography, or GBP..

Google Business Photography takes their acclaimed Street View technology right inside your business, allowing potential customers to browse your premises and get a better impression of your business from the 360 degree panoramas and 'walk-throughs'. It's great for shops and brilliant for restaurants, bars, hotels and spas.

Learn more about GBP here.

Mark liked what he saw of Cinnamon Edge and approached us last week via Twitter. We wasted no time and met this week to agree terms. What that means to you is Cinnamon Edge are your first port of call for Google Business Photography in the Bury St Edmunds area.

As it's a new service, GBP is very competitively priced at the moment. Prices will rise as it becomes better known, so if you're interested in getting a real advantage in these tricky times, contact us at info@cinnomedge.co.uk or email me at roy@royeveritt.com.

Or call us on 01284 767193.


Roy

Client Blog: Soil Testing and Analysis: What is a pH Meter?

Soil Testing and Analysis: What is a pH Meter?: A frequently asked question is: "What is a pH meter?" Soil acidity (and acidity of any substance) is expressed as 'pH' and so a 'pH meter'...

Things I'll Never Know...

I’ll never know if I could have run a four-minute mile. I know I could run, but…

I’ll never know if I could have won a stage in the Tour de France. Probably not but who knows?

I’ll never know what might have happened if… [enter missed opportunity here]

I’ll never know any of those things because I never tried to do them when the time was right.

I’m too old now to run a four-minute mile and I’ll never have a chance now to be a professional cyclist.

I do know I could never have played cricket or football at a high level because I tried and found I wasn’t good enough.

I also do know that I COULD be a published author with thousands of people reading my books, because I tried and found I WAS good enough.

And so are you, very probably.

But you will never know if you don’t try.

That’s why it pains me to see would be writers who don’t try – where the only writing they do is writing off their chances before they even attempt it.

And that’s why I’m co-presenting a workshop with Jacqui on 31 May to help people like you write, edit and publish their books on Amazon’s Kindle – where authors are paid up to seventy percent (yes, 70%) royalties on every book sold, and where publication is guaranteed and promotion world-wide is free... 

It’s probably harder to fail with Kindle than it is to succeed, but you will never know what that feels like unless you do it.

Thousands of people have read our books on Kindle and elsewhere. Those people could be reading your book just a couple of weeks from now if you join us on 31 May:

http://www.cinnamonedgepublishing.co.uk/get-published-on-kindle-workshop-2/

Roy

PS. If you can’t make it on 31 May but would like our help with publishing on Kindle or elsewhere, do get in touch. Just hit ‘reply’ and tell us how we can help.

Ever Wanted to Publish a Book?

You really can write and publish your own book and sell it through Amazon, "The World's Biggest Bookstore", exactly like us.

Join us on 31 May 28 June and we'll show you how:

http://www.cinnamonedgepublishing.co.uk/get-published-on-kindle-workshop-2/

Discover how to write, publish and sell your own book and get paid 70% commission.

Simple as that.

Novanna Agricultural Measurement Systems: Buying Agricultural Measuring Systems Online

Novanna Agricultural Measurement Systems: Buying Agricultural Measuring Systems Online: Although a search on Google will reveal several companies selling agricultural measuring equipment, only Novanna in the UK has a full range...

Best First Step for a Local Business

Before you build a website and even before you claim your new company's Google Places page there's a simple step you can take that will get your business visible online in a matter of minutes.

Doing this first will also help get your Places Page verified and indexed quickly and will ultimately help the search engine optimisation of your website. This step often takes just minutes and your new business can be in front of a targeted audience (potential customers looking to buy) in next to no time.

If you haven't guessed already, I'm talking about directories. Adding your new business (or your established business) to all the diectories you can is an excellent way to increase your visibility directly, and a very good way to tell Google to index your Places page and your main website as well.

Thanks to directories, our clients often have seven or eight positions on page one of Google for their main keywords. Only one or two places will be their website, one may be a places page and the rest will be directory listings. They can all bring clients and customers to the business.

Local directories are especially valuable for local businesses and practices like dentists, accountants and solicitors, which is why we've been developing directories for Bury St Edmunds dentists and solicitors and why we'll be developing our Bury St Edmunds accountants' directory soon.

We have already added basic information for most if not all the local dentists and solicitors to our directories.This basic listing is free.

If you have a dentist or solicitors practice in or near Bury St Edmunds you should check your listing on the relevant directory, which is already live and climbing the search engine rankings. It's important that your details are accurate and as complete as possible, so please get in touch (details on each site) if you want to change anything about your listing or add more detail.

You'll find the Bury St Edmunds Solicitors directory at http://www.solicitorsburystedmunds.co.uk.
The Bury St Edmunds Dentists directory is at http://www.dentistburystedmunds.co.uk

Roy

Complaints - A Cause for Concern or Simply Inevitable?

We have automated messaging set up on most of our Twitter accounts, so that new followers get a brief DM about Cinnamon Edge and an invitation to call us. We use Social Oomph which is a free service and it seems that recently some of our long-term followers have been getting the message at random, and sometimes twice.

We've had one complaint about it (out of several thousand followers across all our accounts) but I investigated anyway and saw that the messages have been sent to some people who shouldn't have received them. As a result, I turned off the automated 'Welcome DM' on that account.

Then I stopped to think. The only reasons for us as a marketing company to stop communicating are if it either costs more than it returns directly, or if it indirectly harms the business by damaging our reputation in some way. Of course, a complaint on Twitter is fairly public, so it has to be taken seriously, but one complainant in about five thousand followers is hardly statistically significant.

I can imagine, I think, what top copywriter Jon McCulloch might say about this - if nobody's complaining you're not trying hard enough. He doesn't do Twitter but he does advocate emailing your list every day and asserts once again in today's email that no one who's followed his advice about that has failed to make more sales and profit. Some people hate daily emails, it's true, and will unsubscribe, but more people become customers than would otherwise do so and if you're in business you presumably want to sell something...

Keep communicating. As it happens, I don't think we get a measurable return from our welcome DM so it will be no great loss if we stop it altogether, but not just because one person complained about getting the same message twice in three days (and three times in six months).

Meanwhile, we plan to step up our email marketing. I'll let you know how that goes!

Roy

Keep Calm and Stop Spinning

Do you ever get that feeling that whatever you do you should probably be doing something else? That there aren't enough hours in the day and however hard you try, nothing gets done? That you're going round in circles and getting nowhere?

It's usually down to stress, and it's a killer for you and your business. And it usually has less to do with how much you have to do than with how little success you're having from doing it. If you feel you're stressed about a lack of customers, or the customers who are late paying you (again), you're actually stressed about a lack of income. And the way out of that isn't found by running round in circles or getting angry with the late payers or reluctant buyers (although you should have a system to pursue late payers).

No, the answer to a lack of customers is better marketing, starting with assessing what you're doing now.

But what if you're too stressed to see that clearly, too?

Well, the answer to that is to have someone objective and relatively uninterested do it for you. Someone who will listen calmly, see clearly and advise objectively. And preferably someone that can get done what you're not getting done however hard you try, which is where we came in.

And it's where Cinnamon Edge's marketing expertise comes in. If you can stop spinning just long enough to pick up the phone or shoot us an email, call 01284 767193 or email info@cinnamonedge.co.uk.

Or you can find us on Twitter @CinnamonEdge or Facebook www.facebook.com/CinnamonEdge. Choose whichever is easiest and least stressful for you, because we're here to take that stress away, not add to it.

Roy

Our New Publishing Website

A quick note today to tell you about the new website for Cinnamon Edge Publishing.

We'll probably keep the publications page on the main website as well, but all our writing, editing, reviewing and publishing services will be decribed on the new site, as well as a list of publications with links to the relevant pages (on Amazon, Bookboon or wherever).

Not all the books we publish are written by us, so maybe your book can be added to our list, too!

Roy

Bargain-Price Business Book Blitz

Jacqui has been busy updating the Cinnamon Edge website to list all the books we've published in the last few weeks. That includes all our business books, on Kindle and Bookboon, and two volumes of my poetry - plus our first by Alain Godard, about how to use online dating.

Our Kindle books have multiple 5-star reviews and Bookboon were very pleased with the two they commissioned from us. We've had very good sales on Amazon.com and in the UK and we've even sold a few in Germany and France.

All the books are available via the special page on our site, at http://www.cinnamonedge.co.uk/publications and you'll be able to read the reviews when you view the Amazon listings.

If nothing else you should download the two free Bookboon books!

Roy

A Rhyme in Time for Valentines

Charming Love Poems

This 5-star review appears on Amazon.co.uk:

"What charming poems this volume holds. Full of love and human wisdom, the poems speak to the better part of who we are. There are pure love poems as well as ones that are less intense, more quisical. Touching and endearing, these poems will warm your heart and delight your senses."

As well as all the business books we've published recently, a collection of my poems is also on Amazon for instant download - meaning you can have them on your Kindle or your laptop or tablet in just a couple of minutes.

Just in time for Valentine's Day.

 Roy

Saturday - A Good Day for Business

Local businesses will get a timely boost on Saturday when we give away seven of the eight books we've published this year! The other one will cost you less than a pound - but only for one day, Saturday 11 Feb. Here's our news release explaining everything:

Although our part of the country has fared better than most regions during the recession, there are still a lot of anxious business owners who will be grateful for some free help to alleviate their business worries.

That’s why local marketing firm Cinnamon Edge has pulled out all the stops and published not one, but eight business books online in the last few weeks – and why they’re making most of them available for free this Saturday.

The books cover business topics ranging from basic search engine optimisation for your website, to email marketing, how to start a small practice from scratch and even how to run workshops and seminars. All the books have been written by Cinnamon Edge partners Jacqui Carrel and Roy Everitt.

“The books are available from our website now,” says Roy, “and they’re not expensive anyway, but we decided we can reach more people by making them free for a day.”

Only the seminar and workshops one won’t be free – but it will cost less than a pound!

Six of the books are available via Amazon for Kindle (and you don’t even need a Kindle to read them, just a free app that you download easily for your computer or tablet). The other two books are PDFs published by Bookboon, who specialise in free ebooks for businesses and professionals. These can be read on any computer.

You can find links and descriptions for all the books on a special page on Cinnamon Edge’s website, at http://www.CinnamonEdge.co.uk/publications

Remember, they’ll only be free for a day!

Roy adds, “I hope people will take full advantage of the chance to download our books while they can.”

With experts telling us the economy is likely to be sluggish for some time, anything that can help a business do better while saving them money has to be a good idea.

 We're hoping the local press will pick up on our offer and spread the word, but feel free to pass it on yourself - there's a Tweet button on the right of this page!

Roy

Positioning Yourself with Workshops and Seminars

One of the best ways to increase your perceived value to potential customers and clients is to make yourself the "obvious expert".

And one of the best ways to become the obvious expert is to run workshops and seminars that demonstrate your expertise, introduce you to potential customers and even make you money at the same time.

A few years ago, after many months of research and pulling together many years' practical experience, I wrote a manual all about planning, promoting and running your own workshops and seminars. I called it Niche Seminar Secrets and it was published and on sale for £197. Even at that price, the publisher said I had "over-delivered..."

It got great reviews from the likes of Mark Anastasi and Paul Conway and it's been on sale ever since.

The manual has been updated several times since it was published, including late in 2010 and it's just been updated again, for 2012. Even more important, The Complete Secrets of Seminar Success is now available from Amazon for Kindle and at a fraction of the original price - just $9.99, or £6.54 in the UK (including VAT).

You don't have to buy a Kindle to read Kindle books, by the way - you can simply download a free app from the Kindle site, the same place you get the books. Then you can download loads of free books, hundreds of bargains and - most important - The Complete Secrets of Seminar Success!

Roy

You can get your Kindle here:

 

Really Simple SEO for Business Owners

Our latest book has just been published on Amazon and this one carries my name, so I'm very happy to announce the launch today of Really Simple SEO for Business Owners.

 

In the book you will learn about the techniques I used to get SEO Suffolk onto page one for at least four major keywords in less than a week. Those are the same methods we've used to help Flatpack Assembly Suffolk to multiple listings on page one and it's a major factor in helping The Foot Care Centre Kings Lynn and the College of Foot Care Professionals to dominate the search results in their markets.

You might be wondering how that could be "really simple", but you won't know until you read the seven powerful steps in the book!

Really Simple SEO for Business Owners is a short book that costs less than £2 and you don't even need a Kindle to read it - download the free app and read it on your PC or iPad.

After the launch yesterday of How to Become a Foot Care Professional we were thrilled to see it's already a best seller in its category. We're obviously doing something right, which is why you should think of us if you're planning a book of your own. We can help you write, edit, format and publish it. In fact, we could even do all of that for you. Visit the Cinnamon Edge website to see more about our witing and publishing services .


Roy

SEO-Suffolk.co.uk

Rather than desecrate the Cinnamon Edge blog with the little poem I used at the Stowmarket Chamber meeting this morning to introduce our dedicated SEO service for Suffolk, I thought I'd better post it under my own name...

It's called SEO-Suffolk.co.uk

There once was a business near here
that wanted its site to appear
on Google's first page,
it was taking an age:
"It will never appear" was the fear...

To Cinnamon Edge for a chat.
(You don't pay a penny for that.)
Some testing, some tweaking,
brought what they were seeking:
Google's top page - just like that!

Remember the website - you heard it today:
SEO-Suffolk dot co dot uk

I was also very pleased to be able to tell everyone that the website is on page one of Google in less than a week!

Roy

Reasons to be Secret about SEO Suffolk

Since I built our new website SEO Suffolk on Friday evening I've been delighted to see it rising quickly in the search results, for lots of reasons.

For example, while being successful with our own SEO obviously demonstrates that our SEO system works, any delay could have looked like failure and been embarrassing and possibly damaging to our reputation. It's one thing having SEO success for a client who sells foot care, another entirely to have the same success when we're selling SEO!

As soon as we start building links from social media the whole undertaking becomes very public, especially to our local audience of Suffolk business owners. Without quick success we could have looked a bit desperate posting those links. Thankfully, success did come quickly and it was achieved over a weekend, so we could tell people on Monday morning that we were already on page one or two for at least three of our main search terms.

We might have taken a more cautious route and avoided social media altogether while we built less conspicuous links from directories, article sites, news releases and the like. Success might have taken longer but any delayed success or 'failure' would then have been a private affair.

But there's another question about being so public with our SEO methods - are we giving the game away to our competitors or our potential customers (so they no longer need us)?

Well, yes, we are giving away our secrets, but they're really not so secret to an SEO 'expert' who really knows what they're doing (although not all of them seem to). And we find the best clients for us aren't so much ignorant of what's required as uninterested or just too busy. Busy is good - it usually means they can afford to pay us!

So we use Social Media Marketing as part of our Search Engine Optimisation and as a big part of our Search Engine Domination, too. It's not secret, but it is wonderful to see it working!

Roy

PS. If you want to know even more about the Search Engine Optimisation techniques that got our new SEO Suffolk site onto page one inside three days, watch out for my new book to be published on Kindle in the next day or two. It will be called something like "Very Simple SEO for Business Owners" but there are a few wannabe SEO experts who can learn from it, too!

"New" SEO Service for Suffolk

I've been busy over the last two days creating a new website to promote our Search Engine Optimisation for Suffolk businesses. Of course, we offer the same service to businesses wherever they're based, but with local search marketing becoming such a big deal, companies are tending to look for local SEO companies.

This is both an example of satisfying a demand and a real-world test of our abilities. There are a lot of websites optimised to some extent for the phrase "SEO Suffolk", and it's no surprise to see our new SEO Suffolk website isn't on page one just yet!

So if you're a business in Suffolk and you're looking for a Suffolk-based SEO company, you might just as well go straight to SEO Suffolk. And, pretty soon, when you search for SEO services in Suffolk you'll find us anyway.

At the moment the Wordpress based site is using the standard 2010 theme and there's a lot to do to make it truly stand out, but I have started with the SEO!

Roy

Happy New Year - Take 2!

So, did you jump out of bed on 2nd or 3rd of January and launch the new year with a spring in your step and a song in your heart? Is your business now humming with activity and the balance sheet swelling with new customers' money?

Did you set your automated marketing system to 'maximum' and start to reap the benefits within days?

Are you snowed under with work and filling your coffers while your customers are bursting to pay you more?

Thought not.

The new year is supposed to be a time for fresh starts and refocused efforts. Unfortunately, customers have hangovers, too. They didn't jump out of their beds on the 2nd January eager to find new things to buy and desperate to give you their money. Apart from the excitement of the January Sales (which probably started in December), spending money is not high on most people's "to do" lists at this time of year.

But a sluggish market is no excuse for not trying. In fact, it's a signal that you need to try harder - history shows us time and again that companies who continue marketing in a slump are more likely to survive and even thrive. So, if you don't have a marketing plan in place or you haven't quite found the impetus to get started yet in 2012...

... HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Time to get up and get going!

Naturally, Cinnamon Edge are eager to help with your marketing so your business can thrive in 2012. In fact, we're all fired up and ready to go!


Roy

Embrace This and Grow in 2012

Written for the Crack on Newsletter:

This is traditionally the time of year when we wish each other health and prosperity, success, happiness and everything we would wish for ourselves. I certainly wish you all of that.

At the start of 2012, though, you might just be hoping it will turn out better than 2011!

Not necessarily, of course. You might have made great progress with your life's plans, started a new career, met the love of your life, or had any number of wonderful things happen to you. Hopefully, you did.

For the world in general, though, 2011 was a tough year. While some parts of the world went through political turmoil and even violent revolution, other places suffered financial crisis, mass redundancies and unsettling events that point to an uncertain future.

However, there are two things we can be certain about. Firstly, the future will not be exactly as we expect - there will be unforeseeable events, accidents and discoveries, unimaginable alliances and probably acts of violence and stupidity that affect millions of people worldwide.

The second thing we can be sure of is that we'll all have more of something very valuable by the end of 2012 than we do today. It's something we earn more of every year we're alive.

While we can't guarantee to be richer, happier or healthier from one day to the next, let alone year by year, there is something unique we can only acquire and seldom if ever lose...

That thing is experience, and to some extent it governs who we are and who we become.

It's experience that gives us an idea of what to expect from a given situation. It's experience that tells us whether to trust someone (or ourselves) to keep a promise. It's experience that helps to keep us alive and it's experience alone that always grows, whether the events in our lives are good, bad or indifferent.

While I certainly wish you more good and happy experiences than bad or unhappy ones, whatever events happen in your life in 2012 you can be sure they will all be positive, in that you can only ever grow your experience account.

Embrace experience in the next twelve months and grow your account more than ever before. No one ever reached the end of their life and wished they'd done less!

~ Roy

PS. What I can't be certain of is the exchange rate between experience and wisdom... that is up to you!