Orchid Box SEO Blog

Orchid box Blog

Handy tactics and advice straight from the Orchid Box team. Keep up to date with the latest developments in research, SEO, social, technical & PR.

Google Recommends Avoidance of the plus sign in URLs

Posted by Frank Vitetta |

Interesting little piece of advice here for you - it has come to our attention at Orchid Box that Google are now recommending the avoidance of the "plus" sign in - that is to say "+" - in URLs. Generally speaking, the plus sign is used as shorthand for a space in query parameters, but while it can be used in such a way in URLs, it isn't a good idea. The plus sign is sometimes transformed into a space or to "%20" which can cause problems for the spiders cr...

SEO Professionals for Hire in Soho, London - Now with 10% Discount for New Customers!

Posted by Frank Vitetta |

Wanting a boost for your site but can't afford the charges of SEO companies? Looking to switch to a cheaper and more effective London SEO agency? Well the search is over... Orchid Box are now offering a 10% discount for all new SEO customers, and when that is added to our already great rates it's a super bonus for you and your site! Get in touch now to find out exactly what we can do to boost your traffic and bring you the revenue your site deserves....

Bookarmy.com's secret authors

Posted by Frank Vitetta |

Patricia Hunter Adam Hathaway Alan Clamp Alan Cobley Annie Elizabeth Delany Laura Vaccaro Seeger Lee Server Maria Savva Mark Lauterbach Allan Luke Allan Mallinson Allan Rune Pettersson Allegra Hicks Allon White Alma Hudson 1st World Library Literary Society 1st World Library A A Thomson A Aram Yengoyan A B Weisweiller A C Nairn A David Collier A David Kyle A David Wilkinson A Derek SchneiderA Desbonnet A E Coppard A E M Nairn A Elizabeth Delany A Elizabeth Neustadt A E...

Bookarmy.com's secret books

Posted by Frank Vitetta |

The Other End Of The Leash Mark Billingham Interview CWA Gold Dagger Award Shortlist 2009 Top Ten Halloween Events Mark Mills Interview ...

Canonical Tag, 301 redirects? Avoiding Duplicate Content and Multiple Site issues

Posted by Frank Vitetta |

Google recently posted a useful video about Duplicate Content and Multiple Site issues, a talk which brought up some very interesting points to consider for many webmasters. It is regularly told by both us and other SEOs around the globe (not just London PPC agencies!) that duplicate content needs to be managed carefully, especially amongst bigger sites, as it can impact the search engines’ rankings of your pages. Duplicate content between different domains is most cer...

Second level domain names in the UK and SEO

Posted by Frank Vitetta |

Some of our clients have asked us to advise them on domain names. There are quite a few second level domain names in the UK. The easiest choice is to get a co.uk, but sometimes you might be able to get very powerful domain extensions. If you don't try you will never win :) Second-level domains • .ac.uk - academic (tertiary education and research establishments) and learned societies • .co.uk - general use (usually commercial) • ...

What's Prohibited on Adwords?

Posted by Frank Vitetta |

Some of our PPC clients have asked us which products are forbidden on Google Adwords. We have put together a list of must not advertise on Google and we suspect the list is pretty much the same for yahoo and Bing. • Drugs & Drug Paraphernalia No selling weed, crack, meth, magic mushrooms, LSD, or any other mind-bending substances via PPC. You also can't sell bongs, glass pipes, and other getting high accessories... except for black lights, those are still ok. •&nbs...

Google Search - Is Google Becoming a Monopoly?

Posted by Frank Vitetta |

The story of Google is one of growth, gross and global domination. They have long prided themselves as a company of bringing the fairest and most accurate search results in the world, their algorithms and innovations bringing about the very best of web technology over the last decade. But for a company with the slogan "competition is one click away", has Google begun to abuse its position atop the internet's pedestal? You might have noticed search results changing ove ...

London PPC with Orchid Box - We Don't Compare Meerkats

Posted by Frank Vitetta |

As a prominent London PPC agency, we like to keep up to date with the latest UK PPC technology and developments so we can remain in front of the competition. A great UK Pay Per Click story arose in the news the other day which might have surprised a few outside of the paid click advertising but not us at Orchid Box. It is proof of the way you can use our London PPC Agency to gain a headstart in the Google search world, no matter how well ranked your site is organically. ...

.htaccess and 301 Redirects and rewrite - SEO secrets to indexation

Posted by Frank Vitetta |

What is 301 redirect? 301 redirect is the best method to preserve your current search engine rankings when redirecting web pages or a web site. The code "301" is interpreted as "moved permanently". After the code, the URL of the missing or renamed page is noted, followed by a space, then followed by the new location or file name. You implement the 301 redirect by creating a .htaccess file. What is a .htaccess file? When a visitor/spider requests a web page, your w...

How the SEO Page Analyser Saved the Day - Fairytales for SEOs

Posted by Frank Vitetta |

Once upon a time there was a little website called Shirley, who lived at www.shirley.com in World Wide Web Land. She was a brave little girl with a good heart and well intended page content, but she just couldn't seem to ever be noticed by the rather froggish Prince Google. Now our Shirley was all about the money, and Prince Google had lots, but no matter how much she waved her hands and wrote insightful and interesting original content Prince Google was simply oblivious to her very am...

From Garage Google to Godly Google - Humble Web Beginnings

Posted by Frank Vitetta |

Being a startup company ourselves, Orchid Box understand our clients' needs when they have to work within tight and constrained budgets and timings. And every company has to start somewhere, which, in the case of the web, more often than not means a bedroom or dark and dingy cupboard somewhere. So where did some of the biggest web companies today actually begin? Well, let's have a look: 1. Facebook Mark Zuckerberg, almighty creator of the Facebook "empire", is much ...

Image and Flash Action Script Ads - Increase Your Advertising Revenue and Look Good Doing It

Posted by Frank Vitetta |

The developing wizards (not literally, they tend to favour keyboards over magic wands) at Orchid Box have once again struck gold in the eternal search for the best online advertising. Our new flash action script ads are now active and ready to spread about the world wide web to promote our Page Rank Crawler (for link see below), and if you want something similar, all you have to do is get in touch with us. The wide experience of our developers mean we have ideas and designs for all eve...

Be a Better SEO - Five Reasons You and Your Site Need the Orchid Box PageRank Crawler

Posted by Frank Vitetta |

The Orchid Box Crawler is a unique and intelligent tool, free for all to use, that allows you to spider your own site and approach any SEO problems that might be contained within. By simply typing in your homepage our tool will trawl through the pages of your site, most important first, and give you their page rank (PR) alongside a multitude of further valuable information - for both SEOs and web designers. Here's just five reasons why you should be using it: 1/ Track your Pag...

How to Get Your Website's Images Found on Google Image Search - A Guide to Webmasters and SEOs

Posted by Frank Vitetta |

The dimension of images brings a whole new problem to search engines and optimisation. There are billions of jpegs, bitmaps, gifs amongst many other images to view on the web, all in need of organisation, but it’s not nearly as simple to do so as it is with websites. Normal HTML pages have titles, metadata, anchor links and backlinks amongst other factors, all of which influence its subject matter and quality as determined by the Google crawlers. With web pages there is all this hidden ...

Viral Marketing as an SEO - Get Google and the World Logging On

Posted by Frank Vitetta |

In the SEO world today, it's not just about keywords, keywords and a few more keywords for good measure. There's the wealth of adjusting and tweaking that has to be done deep down in a site, within its site structure and metadata alongside the multitude of off-page promotional SEO techniques that might bore the legs off a sloth if we told you them all. When you become one of Orchid Box's clients, you needn't worry about all that nitty gritty and the mind-numbingly mind-numbing stuff tthat comes...

How to not index a page but follow links on that page.

Posted by Frank Vitetta |

Google Supplemental Index how to check if your site is in there

Posted by Frank Vitetta |

If you want to view ONLY your supplemental results you can use this command : site:www.yoursite.com *** -sljktf Calculate Your Supplemental Index Ratio: To get your percentage of supplemental results you would divide your number of supplemental results by your total results count site:www.yoursite.com *** -sljktf site:www.yoursite.com ...

New Google Feature: Multidimensional Bid Management through the Conversion Optimizer

Posted by Frank Vitetta |

Any PPC regular who uses the Google Bid Optimizer alongside Adwords will have experienced the endless battles that ensue between what Google wants you to do (spend more money funnily enough) and the results you want from your campaign. But now Google has brought about a Multi-dimensional Bid Management add-on which, according to them, will... "Increase your AdWords conversions and decrease cost per acquisition. On average, campaigns adopting the Conversion Optimizer achieve a 21% increa...

Press release for Bookarmy.com - an Example of Orchid Box's Bespoke SEO Press Releases

Posted by Frank Vitetta |

Just one of the wide range of services Orchid Box offers to its clients is that of press releases - a great way to promote your site for both SEO and user awareness. Orchid Box will write you bespoke press releases, tailored to your promotional needs, and ensure these are submitted to all the best press release sites - free and/or paid. We've attached below a little snippet of the sort of promotional material we can offer you as a client, a press release for the book site Bookarmy: &quo...

Orchid Box Google Page Rank Crawler Tool - A New Revolution in SEO Tools

Posted by Frank Vitetta |

Once again the brainy boffins at Orchid Box HQ have been working their technological magic and have struck gold in their intrepid travels over internet world. They've come up with the revolutionary new Orchid Box Google Page Rank Crawler - a fantastic and unique tool that we're giving you use of for absolutely no cost at all. Where other Page Rank (PR) checkers require you to plug in every individual URL for all your site’s pages, a laborious and boring process, our brand new ...

SEO and the Credit Crunch - Don't Miss the Best Opportunities in the Recession

Posted by Frank Vitetta |

When I first heard the term "credit crunch" I assumed it was some new Kelloggs product I should have with my brekky. But as it became more and more real it was clear that it shouldn't really be enjoyed at all, let along in a bowl with milk. But have no fear ladies and gents, it’s not all doom and gloom for the economy in this time of recession, indeed the SEO world has actually seen a great boost in business since the economic problems as companies increasingly look to t...

Google Chrome Steps Up To Rival Windows, But Do We Need Another Operating System?

Posted by Frank Vitetta |

Having been on holiday for two weeks, I'm inundating the World Wide Web with a plethora of blog posts at the moment like some kind of rambling epic spammer , and here's another for your eyes only. You'll no doubt have caught the news today that the Big G (that's Google if you were somehow wondering) are to try and spread their net of dominance over the, well, net with a new operating system to accompany the web browser Google Chrome. Google Chrome OS as it's inventively named, will be...

Google Kills Pagerank Sculpting, Consolidation Technique Seems To Be A Good Alternative

Posted by Frank Vitetta |

To say the tactics and techniques of SEOs changes regularly would be an understatement, but there is one specific debate that never fails to get us hot under the collar and a little tongue-tied at Orchid Box. Fresh from the excitement of the Michael Jackson web furore we've opted for an equally incendiary post, if a little more esoteric for some people's demands. However, whatever your background in the web there is no escaping the importance of Page Rank distribution for an web site looking to ...

What do Michael Jackson and George Clooney have in common? The Power of Death in the Twitter and SEO world

Posted by Frank Vitetta |

The death of the somewhat polarising personality of the legendary and bizarre “King of Pop” Michael Jackson recently was obviously a sad, if not tragic, tale of talent, madness and suspicious sleepovers . But it didn't just mark the end of one of the "last great perfomers" (I bet they said that when Elvis/John Lennon/Kurt Cobain died) - it also sparked a great debate about the modernity and accuracy of the internet as a media source. Before any TV news stations had even a ...

Bing Search Overtakes Yahooo - But Google is still Boss of the Search Engines

Posted by Frank Vitetta |

A few weeks ago Orchid Box brought you a review of the four top new search engines - Bing, Wolfram, Cuil and Kosmix. Hearing today that Bing has overtaken Yahoo in the US in terms of traffic, we reckon it's time for an update... 1/ Bing So as mentioned above, Bing has stepped up to the plate for the new search engine kids and taken up the mantle of main Google challenger (though they are still well behind the G-Dog - 88% of the market compared to 6%). And even if it i...

Web Usability Design Testing Tips: How to Optimise Your Site for the User

Posted by Frank Vitetta |

At Orchid Box we like to keep in the loop with the very cream of cutting edge web developers to maintain involvement with the latest technological developments across the web, whether it be in SEO, web design or ecommerce amongst many other facets. A recent drink shared with the web usability guru Steve Krug got us thinking about usability and the standard web user, and what we can do to optimise sites to meet the needs of the customer alongside the requirements of the search engines. A website...

Wolfram, Bing, Cuil, Kosmix - New Search Engine Kids on the Block disunited against Google

Posted by Frank Vitetta |

There always seems to be lots of excitable web news about the ‘latest rival to Google’ or how ‘Google’s dominance is about to end’, but in the last few weeks it appears that finally there might actually be some new search engines coming into existence that could potentially rival the big G. In the days of the decline of the searches Yahoo and MSN live! (though in the US both still hold a decent measure of success) it seems some new kids are on the block, ...

P Diddy, Puff Daddy, Sean Combs, Diddy (or whatever his name is) and How to Lose 1,000,000 Twitter Followers in One Tweet #unfollowpdiddy

Posted by Frank Vitetta |

Warning: this blog post may contain a small amount of cynicism. Ah Twitter. What a bizarre world the Twitterers, Tweeters and Twits (that’s what I call them) live in. Orchid Box noticed this morning that the top Twitter Trending Topics was the rather strange #unfollowdiddy. We did some expert research into the trend using Reverend Google to establish the roots of this Twitter keyword and P Diddy’s involvement in such. Our research uncovered the following: Mr Diddy was obvi...

Adwords Displays Google Base Products in the Product Plusbox; Google Base Feed is must for Ecommerce

Posted by Frank Vitetta |

Google have this week expanded their testing of the “Product Plusbox” within Adwords – a project which entitles users to click a “plus” inside a sponsored listing, displaying products and information from that listing before the user clicks on the ad link itself. Now sending your feed to Google Base is ever more vital for ecommerce sites! Google’s Product Plusbox has moved into a limited beta setting, available only in the US at the moment, but Orchid Box can...

SEO and IT Professionals hard at work... the Orchid Box Party

Posted by Frank Vitetta |

Thursday evening was time to for everyone here at Orchid Box to put our feet up and relax, have a few drinks and a good chat…not necessarily about SEO and PPC. We invited our clients from Bookarmy and Gurgle, as well as the Orchid Box crew and a few friends and web contacts, to come have a drink on us; an offer they seemed more than happy to take us up on! So we all headed to Alphabet in the trendiest e...

Google Analytics for Dummies: Track, Analyse and Optimise the Traffic to Your Site

Posted by Frank Vitetta |

All you intrepid browsers of the web (not web browsers as in IE and Firefox) will probably have heard of Google Analytics, and if not, well frankly you are missing out. It is one of the essential tools of the SEO world, unavoidable when associated with PPC campaigns, and one Orchid Box uses on a daily basis to track our clients’ progress. First a little history. The Analytics interface was developed when, having purchased Urchin Media in 2005, Google took on the “Urchin on D...

IE6 and IE7 hack for max-width CSS property

Posted by Frank Vitetta |

IE does not recognize the max-width CSS property. This piece of code will fix it for IE6 and IE7. This code snip will make the maximum width for the html object 900 pixels. .cssClass { width:expression(document.body.clientWidth > 900? "900px": "auto" ); } ...

WAMP NOT STARTING SERVICES while SKYPE RUNNING (WINDOWS)

Posted by Frank Vitetta |

In the xammp or xampplite directory, there is a utility named "xampp-portcheck.exe" - running it will tell you if port 80 is "free", or if it is not it may show "SYSTEM" for example. If this test does not show port 80 is "free" proceed with the settings below. When installing wampserver the port 80 test determined that Skype might be using it. Solution: You can make it work if you change your skype's port. open skype... tools, options, connection . ...

PHP Developer Internship (Expenses paid) London Soho

Posted by Frank Vitetta |

Recruiters: our board won’t let us use you, even though you may have our literal exact perfect candidate just waiting for an interview. Sorry. We are looking for PHP Developer Internee to join our vibrant team. We are offering internship for 3-4 months. Based on your performance we might offer a full time or part time job after successful completion of internship. What we require 1. Someone who is confident in using PHP, MySQL and AJAX. 2. Good to have knowledge of any AJAX framewor...

Increase Your PageRank: The SEO process of Linkbuilding

Posted by Frank Vitetta |

Spiffing or Spam? At Orchid Box, we certainly do not think Linkbuilding is “spam” – in fact it is an essential part of the SEO business (as competitors like Omniforce, Epitaph Solutions and Vivid Lime will testify to), a laborious but invaluable process which spreads the word of your site out about the World Wide Web. We have wide experience in this field having provided for a number of different sites with very different needs (including gurgle and bookarmy) and thus can give...

JavaScript function to generate URLs without any rubbish characters

Posted by Frank Vitetta |

Have you ever wanted to generate perfect URL from blog post or any page title? We couldn't find any free function available, for this reason our Sergey built an collection of amazing JS function for Orchid box CMS. We have decided to release it to the world so no other developer should struggle as we did. URL stripper features: - Strip of any non alphanumeric characters - Space convert...

How To Build A Cutting Edge, SEO Friendly and User Focused Website...In 24 Hours

Posted by Frank Vitetta |

At Orchid Box we pride ourselves on being able to optimise sites and increase traffic as quickly as possible, so we decided to set ourselves a challenge. We wanted to see if we could create an SEO friendly site that would also be able to gain large numbers of traffic and low bounce rates – and complete this site within a day. The result was purehairstyle.com – a fully working site set up in well under 24 hours. Keyword Optimisation and User Interface The basic site idea is based...

Another bookmarking service gone : Magnolia is dead

Posted by Frank Vitetta |

Shame to see another web 2.0 service wipped away by techincal problems. Here what you find on the Magnolia website: Unfortunately, database file recovery has been unsuccessful and I won't be able to recover members' bookmarks from the Ma.gnolia database. This means that the public bookmark recovery tools are the only source for recovering your bookmark collections. If you are interested in hearing more about what happened, the history of Ma.gnolia in general, and future prospects, you can wa...

Furl has become part of Diigo.com

Posted by Frank Vitetta |

Dear Furl Users, The Furl team is very pleased to announce that Furl has become part of Diigo.com. We worked hard to find Furl a home where loyal users like you could continue to benefit from best-of-breed social bookmarking and annotation tools. Hands down, Diigo.com was the winner due to its innovative approach to online research tools and knowledge sharing. The Diigo team is dedicated to making sure you continue to get top notch features and service. They've got a crack team of technolo...

Creatine Store has gone bust

Posted by Frank Vitetta |

Dear Reader another company has gone bust ! Hi frank We are sorry to have to inform you that Creatine Store Ltd, owners of Healthy Living Store have gone into administration. As a result, we have had to close the affiliate programme with immediate effect. Although we have not been paid by Creatine Store Ltd, as a gesture of goodwill, all pending transactions up to today will be validated (whether the order was fulfilled or not) and we will be paying all outstanding commissions ...

Perfect Landing pages tips and technology

Posted by Frank Vitetta |

Effective landing pages are the key to converting customers through paid search. There is little point in spending money attracting people to your site if your pages aren't doing their job properly. If visitors to your landing pages have clicked through from your ad, they will have a specific goal in mind, so you need to convince them that your landing page is relevant to that goal. Orchid Box Perfect Landing pages Landing pages should be tested frequently to see if improvements can be ma...

Top 3 Pregnancy, Sleeping and Feeding Books for Worrying Mothers

Posted by Frank Vitetta |

After locking ourselves away to read pregnancy books and baby books nonstop, we’ve emerged once again, newly born. Instead of speaking our first words, we’re speaking about our first pick of books. Hopefully our long process will be your bundle of joy and what satisfied our cravings will satisfy yours. And like all mothers, we’re confident that ours is the best. Pregnancy Books 1. Pregnancy: How To Enjoy It By: Gurgle This was a breath of fresh air in our otherwise stale and...

Easy Keyword Extraction and Assured Keyword Strength

Posted by Frank Vitetta |

Here at Orchid Box, we’re always looking for the best keyword extraction techniques. Finding strong keywords for your content can be time consuming and full of trial and error. Having come across this fantastic keyword extractor we’re confident that this will make the keywords quest a whole lot easier. What It Can Do For You First, it acts as a safety net. Before you start using keywords in your campaign the site checks them for you. It makes sure that the keywords you sele...

Top 7 tips on how to get better QS and save time creating google ads

Posted by Frank Vitetta |

Orchid box's top 7 tips on how to pay less for your pay per click ads, give your user a clear call to action and improve your quality scores. 1. Know your enemies (the competition) Check out what the other guys are doing. Not only will you see what you’re up against but it might even give you ideas. If they mention a certain percentage off a purchase, then you can mention an exact number. Or you can tackle it from another angle; if they say “fast delivery” you can s...

Gurgle.com Explains How to Spot the Signs of Antenatal and Postnatal Depression

Posted by Frank Vitetta |

At Orchid Box, we love to promote our clients via Online Press Releases. We worked with gurgle to make gurgle press release more accessible to search engines. While many women will have heard of the 'baby blues' and postnatal depression, some may be surprised to hear that depression during pregnancy is also quite common - this is referred to as 'antenatal depression.' Gurgle.com tells you how to spot the signs, discover the causes and find out how you can help if you experience any of these con...

Link Builder / PPC copywriter wanted for work experience

Posted by Frank Vitetta |

Update : Thanks for your applications ! We have got the role covered now ! Our marketing solutions include Search Engine Marketing (PPC), Shopping Engine Management, Display Advertising. This is an unpaid work-experience placement - but an amazing opportunity to get some experience at an early stage start up. The Role: - Our Marketing team is looking for a work experience candidate to perform interesting Online Marketing tasks. - Our PPC and SEO clients include Mothercare, Harper ...

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