It’s almost certainly not your job to know this, but Google makes changes which might affect the way you present your website almost every month. Just to give you an idea of how much goes on, and how much search engine optimisation consultants have to keep up with, have a read of Google updates – SEO implications of significant first half 2009 changes on Dave Chaffey Internet Marketing. It’s mind-boggling at times. Any questions?

Here’s a nice article about a subject I’m often asked to advise on. Effective Web Copywriting – from copywriting 101 to the latest research on Dave Chaffey Internet Marketing is a Q+A with consultant Anne Caborn from Content Delivery and Analysis in Surrey, which looks at the main differences in writing for the web compared with print, and more. There are some nice ideas, including sending different classes of visitors to different pages, so you can address them appropriately. Online more than in print, creating copy which works well when read out loud is a good idea. I recently wrote a sales email which I was very pleased with, and I did this by writing the email to my mother first, to ensure I didn’t assume any prior knowledge on the recipient’s part. Sounds daft, but it worked really well.

As if there wasn’t enough to be thinking about anyway when it comes to tuning up your website, many of you probably have to think about non-English speakers. One company I’ve been talking to about our Insider Programme tells me it’s in the process of developing its website into twenty-six languages! And guess what? There are different considerations in different countries when it comes to search engines.

The top five mistakes in foreign language website optimisation are outlined in Multilingual SEO best practice on Dave Chaffey Internet Marketing. I can’t imagine many UK industrial companies having the resources to really get stuck into this sort of thing, but it’s certainly worth bearing in mind.

If you do “pay-per-click” advertising on the web (like the ads on the right hand side on Google results pages), then you’ll find loads of good advice online about making these really effective. However, as Online advertising creative tips on Dave Chaffey Internet Marketing points out, there’s far less advice available on more conventional display (banner) ads. This is a shame, because “pay-per-click” advertising is probably more easily optimised (by changing the ad and testing the results), whereas banner advertising is used as much for branding, making the peformance less measurable. So the article is a useful read: if your ad is breaking the rules listed here, you might want to check if there’s a reason why.