Chameleon Web Services

What is Google doing at the moment?

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 21:25:47 +0000

There are so many people in the search engine world talking about what Google is up to. With the recent comments made about using website load speed times and performance paying a part in the Google calculation and then the talks of Google starting war on Backlink companys and then Google bring social media into the equation.
Facebook and Twitter carry so much weight now and it seems that if you do not have Facebook or Twitter account you are certainly loosing out on marketing.
As an example I posted on my personal Facebook page that I had brought some retro sweets from Sweet Heaven a sweetshop selling old school retro sweets online. The comment after comment, what a nice site, what did you buy, etc.
It seems that all the people that sit on Facebook are actually bored customers waiting to buy from your website when you trigger them buy a link.
The other thing that we have noticed is that if you try hard to be top of Google for a section you are likely to fail.
Google seems to like minimal effort in a constructive manner.
So what is Google up to at the moment?
We do not know, but we are monitoring them closely.
If you want to make money using your internet business you need to follow Google and do what they want thou thats for sure.

Marketing That Makes Sense

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 20:18:45 +0000

Marketing Ideas!
Every Business will be successful or fail by its sales. Your product or service might be unique and by far the best. But unless you market the product or service, its worth nothing. The better the marketing the more people will pay for your products or services.
Just look around you and think what you value something, the brand dictates the price!.
Think of Apple, there products are priced to show quality and not priced to sell as a budget. Everyone knows there products, and everyone knows there expensive. Apple marketing is so good that they have now made it that professionals all think they need an Apple computer, and posers also think they need an Apple computer.
Apple maybe high in quality or problematic, but either way they have sold there brand name to us in a way that people just want one and no matter what the cost is But marketing is an expensive game, and everyone's budget is different. The problem is, starting your business and giving the wrong impression can be very damaging.
Choose carefuly how you brand you product and check out the competition before considering using the name for the branding. Branding a name and starting off is the hardest part of the business in our view.
The best advice we can give you is to shop around and not get sucked into a hard sell company, there staff will be specially chosen to get you!
Free Marketing Advice
Discounts for returning customers starts loyalty
Offer free gifts to customers who spend a lot of money
Run topical themes to match events and seasonal times
Run a competition
Get on You Tube
Give a guarantee
Setup a referral program
Don't price things too low, people want a bargain but they no how much quality costs
It sounds wrong but your pictures dependant upon the product can sometimes sell by gathering the audience's attention, and attractive woman do this well
This advert could be for a phone?
Business Shows, Car Shows, etc all have attractive woman, why?

Google AdWords Management

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 20:17:04 +0000

Google AdWords can be the most important part your advertising and can be cheapest form of advertising you run. But in the wrong hands however, it can be a total waste of time and money. Chameleon Web Services manage clients Adwords accounts and have successfully lowered expenditure and increased targeted traffic and sales.
Our AdWords Manangement services have allowed clients to reap the benefits of the AdWords system, whilst lowering costs, increasing traffic providing improved results by fine tuning the AdWords improving ROI giving increased profits.
We manage all aspects of your Google AdWords account. Starting by identifying the aims of your campaign/s, and then handled the keywords to target the audience you require. We can work to any budget no matter how large or small that is. We have tracking on all the ads as an ongoing concern and monitor every visitor to your site.
Our pricing for the Google AdWords package depends on your specific requirements. If you are paying currently for an AdWords package we can recommend that we can reduce the cost you are paying and increase traffic. This reduced costs pays us and the increased traffic put more money in your pocket.
The benefits of using Chameleon Google AdWords Campaign management is to free up your time, as time is money, Your Adwords Campaigns will run by Professionals, Reduce your overal spend, achieve low cost targeted traffic, recieve montly reports to show how efficient the AdsWords Campaign is running, have confidence that your Google AdWords campaign is being professionally Budget Managed, specific Keyword research and optmisation to increase sales and lower advertising costs.
Google AdWords is the Pay-Per-Click advertising service that is offered by Google. Google Adwords is by-far the best way to get targeted traffic to your website or web page.
The main source of Googles revenue is from Advertising and this is something that Google have the market perfectly captured. If you pay Yell or Thompson to be in there advertising books then it will cost you a £1000 a year minimum.
In the technological world we live in today, people throw away printed magazines and leaflets as it clutters there lovely new modern homes. If they want a plumber, some DIY materials, play bark for a childrens play ground, a garden landscaper or even a pack of battery's for the kids toys they use the internet and 99.9% of poeple use google. Nearly all house holds now have computer and everyone understands how important having a computer is. Even mobile phones are being developed for internet use now such as the iphone. Internet banking is more and more popular and even shopping online and having your weekly shopping brought to you by a delivery van is now the norm.
To appear in top position organically in google takes a lot of effort and money. SEO is not cheap and is an ongoing task.
However Google AdWords are great as you pick your specific audience if you know how! and be top using the Google Adwords program. Below is an example showing Chameleon Web Services as a the top paid advert in a google search for "Web Design". All Web Design company's want to be top in Google and this is something that is very difficult to do.
Chameleons Expert Pay Per Click Management Services-
Chameleon one of the UK market leaders covering all aspects of Pay Per Click marketing campaigns. We are a professional online advertising and design company and within our team we can carry out Web Design, Search Engine Optimisation, Google Adwords account management and much much more.
We are experts in increasing new business by pay per click advertising and we have a proven track record.
One of our largest companys was spending on average £1000 a week for advertising there products
Due the customer not fully understanding the basics of Google Adwords they decided to put more money into it by increasing there cost per click.
Another random week below showing they have increased there cost per click to achieve a higher average position and there average is position 2.9.
There expenditure is over £1000 a week with reduced click to achieve a higher average position.
On average at this point they were achieving average sales of 70 sales from 5000 visitors costing £1000 a week which was only just covering the costs of the Google AdWords.

SEO - Search Engine Optimisation

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 20:13:26 +0000

Chameleon Web Services Search Engine Optimisation program will help get you the traffic you require.
Having a good looking website is great if you want to show your friends, but one that actually attracts real customers is a seperate job. If your website is not well positioned in search engines for key phrases your site is virtually invisible.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to your web site from search engines search results.
Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results, or the higher it "ranks," the more searchers will visit that site.
SEO can also target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.
As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines.
The acronym "SEO" can also refer to "search engine optimizers," a term adopted by an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients, and by employees who perform SEO services in-house. Search engine optimizers may offer SEO as a stand-alone service or as a part of a broader marketing campaign. Because effective SEO may require changes to the HTML source code of a site, SEO tactics may be incorporated into web site development and design. The term "search engine friendly" may be used to describe web site designs, menus, content management systems and shopping carts that are easy to optimize.
Another class of techniques, known as black hat SEO or Spamdexing, use methods such as link farms and keyword stuffing that degrade both the relevance of search results and the user-experience of search engines. Search engines look for sites that employ these techniques in order to remove them from their indices.
An example of search engine optimisation that we have been involved in:
Sweet Heaven Online, the traditional retro sweet shop came to us asking to be top of google when you search for :
Retro Sweet Shop
Traditional sweet shop
We look at the keyword density from of pages and include a tag cloud for easy display of the most important keywords from your site and will use every tool available to locate the best solution to get you the desired results.
Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of optimising a web site by improving internal and external aspects in order to increase the traffic the site receives from search engines.
Search engine companies are always working towards improving technology to crawl the web more deeply, returning improved relevant results to users. The problem with SEO is if done correctly you net thousands of visitors and attention, but done incorrectly and you can hide your site deep in the search results where visibility is minimal. SEO helps boost ranking to enable content that has been found to be placed where people will find it easier.
Unfortunately SEO has become like double glazed windows for your home. You will get so many companies trying to sell you SEO and make money that its hard to get rid of a SEO company once you show the smallest amount of interest.
So Chameleon are here to help you save money:-
To get into google is free.
Abide by google standard rules and your site will work.
Black HAT SEO is not going to help.
Original quality content on your site will generate quality links.
Search engines find your site by other web sites that link to it.
High ranking for specific keyword searches you will need to have the keywords on your page.
For specific keyword searches it helps to have links pointing to your website.
One link from a �trusted authority� site in Google could be all you need.
The more �trusted� links you build, the more trust Google will have in your site.
Linking to a page using actual key-phrases in the link will help search engines find the links.
Duplicate content found on other websites and Google will ignore your page.
There is so much to dicuss when talking about SEO that is hard to give free advice on SEO. It is a vast subject that needs to be treated with respect. Any web developer that say "You nod need SEO" or "SEO companies are just taking your money", then they dont understand SEO.
Some Free SEO Tips to help you try SEO yourself
First things first, think about specific keywording that will be relevant to your web site.
Keywords like: SEO Google, Web SEO, Web Site Design, Website Design, web 2.0, Seo Web Design
Your website "Title" is the first think to start with.
How to get top of Google
The Title of your website should be highly relevant to your website page. Remember to think of the keywords carefully for your website. 5 to 16 words generally a good rule of thumb. A maximum of 70 words to ensure the title is able to be displayed in the Google SERPS. Remember every page should have an individual title. You can use dividers like "|" to split words. If you find most of the sites that appear top of google have a title like "Get top of Google | SEO at its best | Free SEO | SEO Optimization".
Now we can throw a spanner in the works, look at the title example "Get top of Google | SEO at its best | Free SEO | SEO Optimization", and look at the wording "Optimization". This is great for the American market but what would people search in the UK?, "Optimisation" so you need to consider your target audience.
If you can follow the title article we have written and understand it, then you are well on your way to getting an increased CTR on Google organic results. What is "CTR" well this is something google looks at and uses to work out pages relevance to search result ranking by monitoring Click-Thru Rate (CTR).
Meta Description aimed to help google

This description should be written for humans to read. Make it relevant to the target audience using key phrases that you think people in google will use to search. Take you time to think about this and you always look at competitors website titles and see what works for them.
Google looks does look at the description tag but some people will tell you that google is not interested in META tags at all. The description tag is not used to rank your site within Google. But google will use it, so not having a perfectly written META Description is like have not having a postcode for your home. Your post will still get you via the address, but its much better if you a postcode.
Your META Description should be no more than 160 characters or google will truncate it. We recommend using 150 to 150 characters to be safe. Remember to have a different META description for each page.
The Best Keywords Meta Tags

Keywords have been in the SEO debate for over 10 years now. They used to be one of the most important part of your website in order for you to achieve a high ranking position within google. Now however things have changed as people cheated the system and made keywords have less of an importance. If you rely on Meta keyword optimisation only to rank for terms then you are in trouble. However if you don't use them, will this have a negative effect?, who really knows.
We would recommend using Meta keyword tags to help identify keywords to relevant pages of your site. No matter what you are told. It does not take very long to do complete the process and who knows!
If major SEO companies recommend not using them, why do they themselves bother putting them in on there sites?
An example code from a top ranking SEO company:-

Monika Henziger Research Director Google, was quoted in 2002 as saying "Currently we don't trust metadata because we are afraid of being manipulated."
Google have been using the Open Directory Project (ODP), also known as Dmoz for helping index sites for years.
Sometimes Search Engine Optimisation companys use jargon that baffles the non trained SEO person. So here is a quick guide:-
URL Canonicalisation: This is where a website has two homepages and therefore two entry points into the website. The search engines identify this and then give your website a detrimental rankings.
Sitemaps (XML and HTML): Search engine spiders use these understanding a site layout.
RSS Feed: Important feature for the search engines to identify that you have on your site. Creation of an RSS Feed will be beneficial to your websites SEO rankings.
One Way Links: Link builders who work with the SEO Programmers, generate one way links from relevant websites across the internet to your site, these act as votes to your website site and in the eyes of the search engine spiders these are very important.
Validation Errors: Removing errors speeds up the time a search engine spider takes to cache each page of your website, meaning it can cache more pages each visit and your rankings improve.

Web Design

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 20:05:12 +0000

Why compromise on quality?
Just pay less for it!
We are a Midlands based bespoke internet company based in Birmingham and have been offering a wide variety of websites to various public sector individuals and commercial companies for the last few years.
Why wait 6 months for the new printed Yellow Pages to advertise your latest service or product when with the Internet we can do it in hours. The Internet is far more immediate than any directory or weekly paper could be. With the Internet you can put as much, or as little, information as you want. If you sell another company's product's and they have a Web site, your Web pages can link to their site to give a comprehensive picture of the goods you sell.
Whether you require a large web site for your business, you want to sell your products online, you want to advertise your product or events to a wider audience or you just require a small homepage, maybe you just want to display your wedding pictures on something other than Facebook or Myspace. Your holiday photos or a special project that you are working on and fancy showing it to the world.
We try to keep the sites pleasing on the eye and easy to use. If you want a flash site that looks smart but is not user friendly and takes ages to load then we can accommodate you. But in our experience it is much better to keep a web site clean. The plain simple site will get much more traffic and be much more user friendly. Take a look at the BBC, SKY, GOOGLE, EBAY, FACEBOOK. Simple and to the point
Chameleon Web Services design and implement SEO (Search Engine Optimization) into all there websites from the start which will save you money and time. SEO normally costs more than the website itself, and takes much longer in man hours.
Search Engine Optimization or Marketing is the best way to promote your business on the internet. Every single day several millions users search Google, Bing and Yahoo to locate business services and products. A website that is optimized properly will rank higher on search engines than one that has no SEO in mind. SEO will improve brand visibility for your business.
Most of our clients are in the Birmingham area, but being internet based we are not restricted to any particular location geographic location. If you are in the Birmingham, Solihull, West Bromwich, Wolverhamptopn, Harborne, Coleshill, Dudley, Edgbaston area then it makes our life easier should you require us to visit you more frequently being as we are Birmingham based ourselves.
We work from offices based in Bartley Green, Harborne and Hall Green. There are many Birmingham based Web Design Companys, but there are not many Birmingham based Web Design Companys that are like Chameleon. We named our company Chameleon due to the fact that Chameleons need to keep changing the appearance to survive, and in animal kingdom there are many species of animals that change colour and appearance, but not any as good as the Chameleon. Chameleons adapt to there surroundings and need to be adapting all the time to survive.
The Credit crunch has meant that many Birmingham based firms have gone under, they have not survived and if at the right time they were able to adapt to the change and be ahead other Birmingham based firms, would they still be here today?.
Obviously this is something that is not just localised to the Birmingham area, and this is something all companies are dealing with across the world. But due to the fact that we are based in Birmingham and the fact that we see Birmingham based companies closing so frequently around us, it makes us feel that we need to help in the Birmingham area as we have more of a connection.
A local sweet shop in Studley known as Sweet Heaven, selling Old Fashioned Traditional Retro Sweets contacted us in January 2009, and explained they needed a revamp as they were only surviving week by week. We looked the sweet shop ecommerce online business and realise that this was going to be a tall order to get to the top of google in many sections that they were requesting.
We looked at the online sweet shops and we thought the online sweet shop websites looked very unprofessional, but they are targeted to an different audience than we had been used to targeting for. The one thing we noticed was that online sweet shop websites are not very user friendly, so in our quote to Sweet Heaven we made it clear we wanted to make a site that look cleaner than the other sites, a site that was less busy and made you want to buy from it because it looked like a quality site.
Hence the Sweet Heaven design and the fact that it looks nothing like any other Sweet Shop out there.
We designed and built the site thinking of all aspects of users visiting the site. There are 2 search boxes on the front page, to make sure people can find what they require. The vast quantity of sweets and gifts that Sweet Heaven sell means that to get a low bounce rate would be a challenge. For those of you that do not understand bounce rates, this is where people land your site and then cant find what they want or get bored and jump to another site. A bounce rate of less than 30% we class as good, we suggest looking for the high bounce rate pages and trying to reduce them buy looking at the low bounce rate pages and learning why they cause people to continue though your site. Another free tip from Chameleon.
The Sweet Shop went live in June as it took so long for the Sweet Heaven staff to be able to get all the sweets photographed and loading into the product database.
So the challenge began to dominate the ecommerce Retro Sweet Shop Online Shopping area with Sweet Heaven. There were many online sweetshop with high google page rankings and some were 8 years old. Sweet Heaven was new and google do not like new sites, as the older a site the more trust they put into it. Look at the screen shots below showing Google Page One search results for the chosen keywords.
We have been carrying out SEO for just over 3 months now and as you can see we have had great results as the site was written with SEO in mind from the start. This means that we hit the web running not walking.

Chameleon turned this Birmingham based Retro Sweet Shop into an online success in 3 months. This is something that is not easy and has taken a lot of hard work.
We have just taken over a the website contract for a Garden Design Landscape company called Grant Allen Garden Design Landscape. Grant Allen had no google visibility at all with a 2 year old site.
This being our new project, we will update the information here in a few months.
Get a free quotation today for a custom-built website designed by Chameleon Web Services. Chameleon Web Services one of the UK's growing website design companys with a design team who will project manage your website from start to finish and a professional aligned web consultant for every customer.