Kingswood Associates, the property finance and commercial mortgage specialist, asked Liberty Marketing to improve the ranking of its newly launched site at the beginning of 2009.

We already had a working relationship with Kingswood, managing their Pay Per Click advertising and email marketing, and now were responsible for greatly increasing traffic from the natural search listings.

The process involved a lot of on-site and off-site work, including:

SEO consultancy – We provided keyword research to find the phrases that could be competed for, would bring in traffic and would fit in with the business objectives. We then worked with Kingswood to build an online marketing strategy based on the main keywords chosen.

SEO copywriting – Amendments were made to many pages and entirely new ones were created to give the site more strength in the search engines. Keywords now feature more prominently where needed on each page and within the site structure.

Inbound link building – An intensive, on-going link building campaign has been in place where the site is connected to relevant directories and websites. The link building service generates direct traffic as well as helps push the site up the search results.

How has this benefited the business?

Within a few months the company has gone from barely being found on the search engines to coming up on the first page of Google for many local terms such as “mortgages Cardiff”, “mortgage brokers Cardiff”   and “buy to let mortgages Cardiff” as well as some competitive national phrases such as “residential mortgage broker” (coming in the top 5 listings out of over 3 million results).

Having such a large presence on the search engines has led to thousands of new visitors coming to the site over the past few months, and new mortgage enquiries every day of the week.

There is now enough traffic that the Pay Per Click advertising spend has be greatly reduced, meaning that Kingswood is now enjoying high levels of traffic and enquiries but is actually spending far less money on marketing.

Google has just launched a new product called Web Elements. See here for details. The product aims to make it simple for webmasters and bloggers to place Google applications on their pages.

Whilst many of these applications have been available to developers for a while, they have never been in a single, easy-to-use package like this. On a single page you can now pick to show Google favourites such as Calendar, Maps, Custom Search, Spreadsheets, Presentations, and receive fresh news content from Google News and YouTube News.

Google has certainly put some thought and effort into the applications. For example, the YouTube news widget lets you choose content from over a dozen news agencies. So far there are a total of eight separate apps, but more are thought to be in the pipeline.

One of the widgets already gathering a bit of buzz (even though it isn’t yet 24 hours old) is the Conversation feature. It allows you to turn your site into a social community where users can comment on any topic you choose to start. Expect to start seeing this on quite a few sites.

Implementation for the most part is simply embedding a bit of JavaScript code, much in the same way as Google Analytics, allowing even novice developers to take full advantage of these widgets.

Google has recently filed for a patent where part of the ranking calculation is made up by the click through rate of web pages that have previously been listed for that search. See here for in-depth details.

This means that if your site appears on the first page for "cheap MP3 players" below Amazon.co.uk but receives a higher rate of clicks for that keyword then there is a chance your site could start showing above theirs.

Search engine optimisation and in-bound link building could now only the first half of the battle when it comes to winning the search engine war. If people aren't clicking your listing then you may start slipping back down the results.

How do you combat this? Strong calls to action.

The search results show three things that you have control over: your page title, your meta description and your URL. Make them really work for you.

Page title - Along with making sure your main keywords are in here try adding a sales message that will help people click through, e.g. "Cheap MP3 Players. Huge selection of low price MP3 players."

Meta Description – This is where you should see a big difference. In the meta description you have up to 160 displayed characters, so can create a couple of really strong sentences that will entice searchers towards your site. Make sure you include the keywords a couple of times too. e.g. "Cheap MP3 players. Full range of MP3 players from iPods to Zens. Cheapest price guarantee plus FREE shipping."

URL - If you have search engine friendly URLs then make sure the keywords show, as this increases click through rates. e.g. www.example.com/cheap-mp3-players

This just goes to show that you never know what's next in the world of search engine marketing. Many search engine optimisation companies and webmasters have ignored meta desciptions for years, writing them off as 'old-hat' and of no real value. With this update though, spending time on your meta data will once again be a fundamental part of online marketing.

Some search engine marketers are already reporting changes in the ranking of their sites since the recent Google update, with many suspecting historic click through rates already playing a part.

The number of companies that invest in online marketing is growing by the day, and the amount they spend is growing by the minute. Investment in activities like search engine marketing, pay per click advertising, and social media marketing is now really starting to take money away from the more traditional, offline marketing campaigns. A new study from Forrester Research shows just how large this marketing budget shift will be.

Looking at companies in the US, Forrester expects the amount of money spent on internet marketing activity to increase from the $23 billion that was spent last year, to almost $55 billion in 2014. This extra money is, for the most part, being taken from the more traditional marketing avenues, like print advertising and direct mail.

60% of the companies interviewed by Forrester stated that to fund further ventures into the digital world they would be "shifting money away from traditional marketing." Only 14% of respondents said they would be increasing spend for online marketing as well as offline forms of marketing.

Direct mail is the traditional marketing method that will be hit the hardest over the next five years. 40% of companies said that they will be decreasing the amount spent here to fund further online activity. If the companies interviewed are representative of US businesses as a whole then print media will also feel a very real change. Owners of newspapers can expect a 35% reduction in advertising spend and magazine publishers will see client budgets drop by 28%.

With internet marketing proving itself more cost effective and easier to measure than traditional marketing campaigns, companies have been making the transition for years. This research shows that these changes are starting to accelerate, even though it is something that has been predicted by experts within the online marketing world for a while. Last month the Society of Digital Agencies released a report that showed how more than 87% of advertising agencies and 73% of digital marketing agencies have started moving their own marketing budgets from offline to online. If we’re all now doing this, then shouldn’t you be too?