We’re thrilled to have launched 3D Wallpaper Pro for iPad. Developed by Tecmark for iNetwallpaper.com Ltd, the application offers 8 distinctive, high resolution wallpapers for iPad and iPad 2 apps, with the ability to purchase more through in app purchasing.
Without a doubt the finest looking wallpapers we’ve seen, all designed by Kevin Wolstenholme of iNetwallpaper.com.
You can download the application for £1.79 here!
We’re forever banging on about original content and the recent Panda update seemed to confirm its importance as part of a sustainable SEO campaign.
It’s not just about ‘unique’ content. It’s about original ideas. Simply rewording somebody else’s article or blog post doesn’t really cut it. One of the ways in which we’ve been encouraging clients to create original content is by sharing some data or research and we decided to practice what we preach.
In February, we put together a research paper on UK mobile internet usage statistics. We published this on our blog on March 6th and, without doing any link building, saw the post indexed and ranking for a number of related keywords very, very quickly:
In fact, it turns out we are ranking very well for a whole host of related keywords. Let’s take a look at the Analytics from the date the post went live (6th March) to the end of yesterday (26th April).
The blog post has enjoyed, in the 7 weeks since it has been live, 1,131 views, the vast majority of which are from search. Not bad for a blog post that we did little to promote! But what’s most interesting for us is the sheer quantity of keywords that are referring traffic from search directly to that blog post – 412 so far to be specific.
Here’s just a sample of the referring keywords:
And for those of you interested in what the rest were, here’s a spreadsheet with all 412 – just because we’re generous like that.
Now, for us who go on and on and on about the value of content in driving traffic through search, this is a nice little case study. No, we’re not talking millions and millions of views – but by the same token nor did we do anything explicitly to promote the post.
Producing something like this is time consuming. Granted. But it’s proven worthwhile. Google ranks us incredibly highly for all manner of searches relating to UK mobile internet stats and that is generating traffic and even a few natural links.
We all know that the old adage, “build it and they will come,” really is a load of waffle when it comes to getting traffic to your website. Perhaps it would be more suitable to suggest build it, market it a lot, build a presence in the search engines, get yourself engaged in social media, keep your content fresh, say something different and give people a reason to share it with their friends and then they will come – if you do it particularly well.
But they might not come directly.
Even after someone finds your website, visits it and decides they will return, they might not return “directly.” Even if they know of you, there’s a decent chance they’ll return via a search for your brand term, rather than by typing your web address into their browser’s address bar.
Here’s some traffic source data from our site(taking data from 1st April 2010 – 31st March 2011) where:-
We invariably see a similar pattern across client sites as well.
Essentially, more of the people who were looking for us online went to a search engine to find us than came straight to us.
There are likely to be all manner of reasons for this. Some people may not remember or know the domain name off the top of their head. Others might be looking for some specific information about us and want the search engines to present the relevant page or another website that might have that information. But let’s not also forget that we’ve become very accustomed to letting Google and the other search engines do the legwork for us. I’m guilty of searching a brand in Google even when I know the domain, just to save me the “hassle,” of typing the web address in!
There were all manner of Tecmark related brand terms that referred search traffic over the 12 month period analysed. Some of the more common ones include:-
There are also commonly searches for various names alongside “Tecmark.” Again, we see similar patterns across all the websites we deal with.
If someone types anything to do with your brand into Google, you want the first website they see to be yours. What you don’t want is for other sites, whatever they are, to be outranking you.
If you manufacture goods that are then sold by other retailers, you may find people competing with you on brand searches. You may find other companies across the world with the same or a similar name outranking you on some searches too. You could find other companies with a similar name “competing” with your search terms or you might find yourself up against forums, directories or blogs.
If you have a comprehensive SEO campaign in place, you will generally find your obtain rankings for your brand terms efficiently. But it’s worth keeping an eye on traffic to your site from your brand terms and keeping an eye on rankings, particularly for your secondary brand terms.
By not ensuring your presence for your company name and similar searches, you could be losing potential clients who are already looking for you, to your competitors.
We posted a while back on Google’s February 2011 algorithm update. Known as ‘Panda,’ the update rolled out in the US in February, followed by the UK and the rest of the English speaking world just a couple of nights ago. This April 2011 rollout has given Google 2 months to incorporate some feedback as well and essentially tweak the algorithm further.
Google rolls out hundreds of algorithm updates in a year but only ever announces the biggest. Panda had already affected rankings and search visibility on 12% of websites in the USA and a similar impact was anticipated in the UK.
Any major update, no matter how prepared you know you are for it, leads to bated breath. So yesterday, we spent some time running in depth checks on a lot of our clients and were thrilled to find a host of improvements across many. We haven’t been stung by Panda and it has, in fact, been a great thing for us.
Well, we discussed a bit of this in a bit of detail in our previous post on the topic, but to sum it up it’s essentially about content. It’s a clichéd and overused statement and but the old “content is King,” adage is one that Google really wants to make us believe with this change. The algorithm punishes not only duplicate content, but just generally low quality (perhaps even ‘unoriginal’) content.
I’ll be honest. My relationship with Google is love-hate at times. There are things the search giant does that really get my goat (like Google Instant, which slows my browser down and is impossible to turn off in Firefox). But I love Panda. Undoubtedly, that’s the work geek within me appreciating a bit of recognition for webmasters I know put a lot of time and/or money into creating unique quality and keeping their site fresh. But in addition to that, as a search engine user (and not just a SEO) I want to see high quality sites delivered. I don’t want to have to sift through twenty rubbish results before finding something decent irrespective of what I’m searching. Now, this update by no means eradicates spam. But what it does do is rewards high quality content thus incentivising people to create more organic, natural and thought out content – essentially to start catering to their human audience in their content and not to over-focus on the search bots!
Yes, we love it. But in any update there are winners and losers and some big name websites have featured on the lists. This post on Searchmetrics is a great summary detailing those hardest hit and those who benefited the most in the update.
Puttluck is the first ever golf app to use the iPhone 4’s gyroscope. Tecmark has spent over a year developing the game for Steve McGuinness – a PGA professional golfer and co-founder of Mobile Golf Games Ltd.
The game features Wii-style motion controls that utilise the iPhone’s built-in gyroscope and is powered by an advanced physics engine.
Puttluck is controlled by swinging your iPhone, imitating the motion and technique used with a real putter. With 9 real holes from the world’s best courses, Puttluck will test your ability to judge the lie of the green and the amount of power required, as well as your ability to execute the putt you just visualised in your head.
The game’s features include arcade and tournament modes, spanning 9 genuine holes from some of the world’s top courses. Players can access live leaderboards and participate in competitions through the Puttluck website.
Leading golf accessories supplier Black Widow are sponsoring the game from its launch. They will be contributing prizes worth £500 for Puttluck competitions. Competitions will run in tandem with major golf tournaments, starting with The Masters 2011 which began today.
You can download Puttluck from the App Store for just £0.59.
