Storm Marketing Define SEO Strategy

Storm Marketing have years of experience in SEO. Our link building team has built up a database of thousands of websites categorised by sector and market. We actively target link partners by topicality and relevance.

Our link partners MUST have a close logical association with the theme of the client’s site. Inevitably there is a degree of interpretation involved here but the association should be intuitive, and they should add value to our clients’ visitors, giving a focus on the user experience.

We see little or no point in soliciting links from direct competitors to the client. Firstly they are unlikely to return the link and secondly the search engines are likely to see these links as “artificial” – we focus on partners that have complimentary sites.

Search Engine algorithms are dynamic, we have a set of rules that ensures that our links will keep within their guidelines, such as be on-topic , have relevant content,  avoid “Black Hat” Tactics, Avoid excessive or off-topic linking and above all Avoid spamming techniques.

We develop sites to W3C standards, and always optimize for cross browser compatibility – allowing for rich and interactive sites to be deployed with no fear of damaging the user experience. Utilizing semantic code allows us to improve the accessibility of web documents, and we always recommend achieving a minimum of “Level A conformance” to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. When undertaking a project, take a proactive approach to accessibility, and consult with the client to ensure we achieve the standard they require.

Storm knows how the search engines have evolved and where they are heading in the future. We have achieved top rankings in the most competitive verticals including Mobiles, Gambling, Travel and Finance. We have developed our own systems for SEO from which we can provide real-time access to fundamental aspects of SEO, Content Writing, Link Building, Keyword Density Analysis and so on. Our clients benefit from our insight with detailed reporting at a granular level. We practice what we preach when it comes to SEO as we use an identical methodology for all of our own in-house brands.

For more details of SEO services offered by Storm Marketing click here Search Engine Optimisation

Innovation Only Benefits Google – Competitors Beware

Bing, the new search engine from Microsoft has been causing ripples in the online search market.  We all know that Google dominate the search engine market but that hasn’t stopped Bing from chipping away at that supremacy with new features.  That said, it’s definitely an uphill struggle for the smaller search engines to unsettle Google.

The problem is that innovations made by other search engines often work to the advantage of Google.  This was a point made by the CEO of InterActive Corp to which Ask.com belongs.

Ask.com hit the news this week with changes to its user interface that took the site back to a question and answer format.  Whilst Ask.com exceeded analyst expectations by achieving growth of 18%, CEO Barry Diller had some frank words about future prospects.

 “One thing I want to make clear to investors is that Ask itself is not a large segment of the company. I had hoped it would become one, but I was wrong about that. I was wrong about the competitive landscape with Google.”

Ask.com is a minor competitor in the search sector, but its problems are common. Diller continued:

“A lot of our new features that Ask has been sporting has only helped the competition, as they’ve copied us at every turn and they look a lot like Ask.  We’ve learned that spending a lot of money on marketing search products doesn’t get you very far.”

Problems like this are endemic of every search engine.  No sooner has a new feature been launched by one search engine than another copies it.  Just recently, Google changed its results page, images and background images to look similar to Bing’s.

It seems it will mostly work in Google’s favour because any changes made by smaller competitors to copy Google are unlikely to pinch Google’s customers.  Whereas it’s easy for Google to retain its members with any changes they make.

All of this said, Microsoft is far from giving up in the fight to gain the market percentage.  Microsoft has invested a lot of money to market Bing and has made modest gains against Google.

New Storm Marketing Website Launched

Storm Marketing are proud to announce the release of their new website www.stormmarketing.com.

The site utilises a number of different client and server technologies to present a fresh and vibrant user experience that showcases Storm’s experience and talent.

Early reactions have been very positive, with users especially liking the personal profiles of the senior team at Storm.

“The concept for the site was very organic with ideas coming form every member of the team this made my job very easy (lie). Its always hard when the site is for yourself because you become the client from hell.” said Andy, Storm’s Head of Creative.

“I wanted the site to capture the ethos of storm and I think we have achieved that with the little tweaks like the illustrations of the team but also to show we are not just another marketing company. Another main part of the site was for it to fit in with the creative we already have, so there were no gaps between the offline and online creative.

The feedback we have been getting so far is good so lets hope that it continues, I have already starting thinking about the next version.“.

Storm Develop Online Print Management System

Storm have completed development of a bespoke print management application for midlands based print firm Lion FPG, allowing businesses such as Lloyds TSB, Towry Services and Arriva Trains.

The system, developed in PHP, allows the client to quickly and easily select printing and stationary requirements based upon pre-defined stock lists managed by Lion FPG. The user then submits the order online, which is instantly presented to the account manager for processing.

The system is fully content managed and allows printers to individually manage clients, stock lists and delivery information at the click of a button, taking feeds from their existing internal CRM systems.

Mark Jones, Customer Account Manager for Lion FPG said “Our customers love the new system, ‘very user friendly and much faster than the old site’. They particularly like the new feature of displaying images for each product listed. From our point of view its working really well, and comparing it to our old system it’s so much easier to update and manage “.

Storm have many years of experience providing Inventory Management and CRM systems for a diverse range of business and markets.  To find out more about Web and Application development contact us on 01785 215 676 or click here.

Apple releases iOS 4.0.2 for iPhone and 3.2.2 for iPad

Steve Jobs of Apple demonstrating iPhone 4

Apple has just released iOS 4.0.2 for the iPhone and 3.2.2 for the iPad, which (most importantly) are reported to fix the PDF security exploits in previous versions.

The update reportedly doesn’t add anything further for the user, which whilst the majority of iPhone owners will sleep soundly knowing their phone is no longer vunerable, iPhone Jailbreak fans will be devistated – as the fix closes the loophole used by the JailbreakMe software and apparantly ‘breaks’ the jailbreak.