It’s good news that an increasing number of companies are doing more to take responsibility for themselves and give something back to society. We’ve been trying to do a bit more of that over the last 12 months and I thought some of you might be interested to learn a little more about some of the groups we support and the activities we’ve been up to.
SiteVisibility has a proud history of leadership in corporate responsibility having won the “BITC Small Company of the Year” award in 2007 for our CSR Strategy, and since then our CEO Jason Woodford has served on the prestigious BITC South East Leadership Board.
We are currently revising our CSR strategy to bring our objectives up to date with our current business strategy, the needs of our local community and desires of our staff. Everyone in the company is given one day per annum to participate in either company or personal volunteering or charity activities. We’ve also recently appointed an internal Sustainability Officer who’s in charge of making sure we all do our parts to reduce our usage, as well as keep us up to date on any environmental developments that might make us consider redesigning our strategy.
Posted by Nick in Miscellaneous on November 24th, 2011 0 Comments
You can’t help but notice the so many coffee shops springing up in Brighton. Digital Marketing Consultant Nick Johnstone is one of SiteVisibility‘s biggest coffee drinkers, so we asked him to find the best baristas in Brighton. You can read more about Brighton coffee houses on his blog, Coffee Pot & Kettle.
Coffee is the new tea. These days you can get your caffeine fix on every street corner (and lots of straight bits) of Brighton. With so many coffee shops to choose from, it’s easy to get a bit overwhelmed with which one to go with, which is why I’m here to tell you my top ten coffee shops in Brighton & Hove (in no particular order). In the name of good old fashioned debate, these are my favourite choices. Feel free to join the conversation and suggest other worthy entries.
1. Red Roaster
One of the oldest independent café’s in Brighton and still one of the best. They really know their coffee and offer a chilled atmosphere (although it can get ridiculously busy) that’s ideal to sit by yourself, with friends or a small meeting. I do wish they’d bring back the piano player though, I miss the live music accompaniment while I imbibe caffeine…
2. Café Coho
In under a year Café Coho has quickly become one of Brighton’s best loved coffee houses. Offering an intimate experience with a lounge area upstairs or the more traditional table & chairs offering downstairs, what matters is the coffee and Coho has taken the time to get the coffee right. Read on
Despite the moustache making a fashion comeback in recent years, we here in the Think Tank tend to view that particular item of facial hair with the same disgust, suspicion and disdain as any other respectable citizen, but that didn’t stop many of us participating in Movember last year. It’s a month of sponsored tache-cultivating in aid of prostate cancer prevention, research and awareness. As Kelvin remarked on the internet marketing podcast, it’s a great cause with superb marketing, and we’re proud to be part of it yet again.
From the 1st of November we will be letting their hair down. The hair on our upper lip that is. Last year we raised over a thousand pounds for the cause and we’re hoping to improve on that this year. You can track our progress on the SiteVisibility Movember Team page, both in terms of growth and sponsorship. Perhaps you might consider sponsoring us or getting involved yourself, if you’re the type of individual who can cultivate the appropriate fuzz. Read on
Here we are with Lucia, Georgia, Ella, Olivia, and Connie (and Molly, Hugo and Tristan, too)
Cake making
Today we started with cup cake making, we gave a gingerbread man to every person who is working in the office today- let’s see what they thought of it!!!
I hope everyone enjoyed their time off with all of the bank holidays that they gave us!
After BrightonSEO we had a bright idea to arrange an interagency/Digital Media Rounders afternoon and we have picked a date, the 10th of June at 2pm in Preston Park.
Apparently there are nine people in a rounders team, who knew?
If you have a team and want to enter let me know and if you don’t have enough people let us know and I will see how many people come back with a shortfall and we can look into joining some teams together or getting some other agencies on board.
Starting as an intern, and after 3 months as a Trainee Digital Marketing Consultant, I have decided to share my journey so far at SiteVisibility. Hold on to your seats.
Flickr user anyjazz65
Starting at SiteVisibility as an intern came about as a result of the “Women in the Media” networking event run by Wired Sussex. Such events are held quarterly for women in the Sussex area who work in, or are looking for work in the area of Digital Media. At this particular event SV was giving a presentation on an introduction to SEO, introducing basic SEO tools, as well as highlighting its importance for visibility of a website. Luckily for me I got chatting to the right person at the event, one the managers at SiteVisibility, to whom I presented an offer of working as an intern for cup-a- soups. This deemed to be a successful tactic. Read on
Posted by Digital Marketing Manager in Miscellaneous on January 25th, 2011 2 Comments
With the implementation of Google place search, websites with a local focus are now reaping the rewards. Google place search means if you perform a search with a location keyword e.g. “accountant London” “organic food London” “gym Manchester” the search results appear with place holders. This has created some real waves within the SEO community and has been a bit of a shock for some SEO who haven’t been preparing for the dawn of local SEO. For instance, web directories that previously relied on simply listing locations are now faced with an uphill struggle when competing with sites that are locale specific. Having a local address is going to push you higher as Google will see this as evidence that your company is trading out of your area. Using location specific keywords in the domain is even better; Google will think you are specifically searching for that website.
Lets take a closer look at location based search phrases. For example “Plumber Brighton”:
We can see that sites which have been added to Google Local Business appear in the Search Results, but what are the secrets to achieving the highest results in Place searches?
Have up to date addresses and phone numbers in directories across the web. Remove any old phone numbers and out of date information.
Make sure your website has been correctly categorised with your top keywords in Google Local Business, for example: “bathroom fitter brighton, bathrooms brighton, bathroom installer hove, Bathroom Design and Installation, Bathroom installer brighton, bathroom fitter hove, Bathroom Remodeler, plumbers hove, plumbing brighton”.
Make sure you partner with local websites associated with the keyword you are trying to rank for and get a localised keyword rich link from these sites e.g. “Plumber Brighton”.
Be sure to fill in all possible details on Google Local Business, add pictures, offers and persuade others to write positive reviews.
Have the local destination within the domain name. This is a very powerful factor when ranking a site for local phrases.
During last month’s company meeting, in the Any Other Business part was mentioned something called Movember. At first I thought this was a spelling mistake and was very close to pointing this typo out. I’m so glad I didn’t.
Having been briefed on what it was, I was sold on the idea immediately. A conversation I’d had with a close friend of mine a number of years ago sprang to mind where we discussed the idea of growing a moustache for charity with much hilarity.
Apparently it takes place every November, but this was the first I’d heard of it. It may have been reasonably big last year but I spend the majority of last November in South East Asia so I wouldn’t have noticed.
Facial hair growth has always been one of my strong points ever since starting to shave when I was eleven. If I have a shave in the morning and want to look sharp in the evening, sometimes a second shave is required before attending that all important soiree.
Movember is all about growing facial hair to raise awareness and funds for prostate cancer, with the slogan “to change the face of men’s health”. Having done a bit of research on the what, how and how many factors of prostates and the big C, I was surprised to learn about a part of my body whose function and whereabouts I’d have probably guessed incorrectly. I had heard the shocking statistic about prostate cancer affecting as many men as breast cancer did women, but then again mathematics was always a subject at which I excelled, whereas geography was not.
After no shaving above the upper lip for the first three days of November, I decided to produce a series of increasingly ridiculous photographs to share with my Facebook friends. As well as a number of close up shots showing the development of my ‘tache as it has progressed over time, I decided to have my picture taken in situations like being in the gym, next to a vintage car and on a motorbike. Thus far, the photos have generated much laughter, bewilderment and controversy, which is exactly what I wanted to happen. As a result, some of my friends have agreed to donate some money after I have finished cultivating my masterpiece.
After several days it became apparent that my moustache was going to turn into a bit of a beast, and I was thoroughly enjoying the attention and laughter as well as the awareness and funds that it was generating. I had raised £30 online, but then for a few days nothing happened. Then I realized I could use my CSR day to spend a day raising funds for charity, and knew exactly what I wanted to do.
Having played a series of successful DJ slots at Bestival on the Isle of Wight and the Zombie Walk after party at the Concorde 2 in Brighton among others, I was, no am, on a bit of a roll when it comes to DJing. I’ve recently rediscovered disco music in all its forms, and find its happy vibe and groove irresistible once more.
So I decided to find a pub in Brighton that was supporting Movember and asked if they would be up for allowing me to DJ for nothing, purely to raise money for charity. I knew this wouldn’t be that hard but was amazed when the first pub I went into said yes. This was on the 9th of November. I would need some collection tins so emailed the Movember team to request they send me some. Merely nine days into the month they had run out of tins, which should give you some idea of quite how big it has become. However, they did send me some moustache shaped stickers, which I thought were fantastic.
As the day itself drew nearer I drummed up some support and encouraged people from work to come down to the pub as soon as their working day finished. They arrived in droves and were greeted with myself with a now thick ‘tache wearing a suit jacket, white shirt and silver medallion moving behind my laptop. Stickers were dished out accordingly and people gradually started smiling more and relaxing and enjoying themselves.
My good friend Emily had turned up to show her support, and being the sort of girl who doesn’t take no for an answer, she did a quick whip around of the pub with a collection tin, vastly exceeded my expectations by returning after a few minutes with a heavy bucket containing coins and tins. I also managed to get some funds by going up to groups of people I spotted jigging and singing while a long track was on. This proved successful, but nowhere near as good as the whip around Emily and I had of the pub garden after I had finished playing. In less than five minutes, a load of coins were added to the tin, and when counted up came to an additional fifty pounds. Added to the eighty pounds that had already been raised, the grand total now stood at a sweet £130, and I was delighted. When combined with the £10 that had been left on my desk by another company that work in the same building as I do, the £140 I raised exceeded the £138 I had raised for the RSPCA on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square last year, only this was all in cash and didn’t include any online donations.
It feels good to raise money for charity, but the amount of money raised and the amount of fun I had at this particular event by all who came is something of which I am very proud.
Posted by Kelvin in Miscellaneous on September 8th, 2010 2 Comments
In all the tweeting and blogging about Google’s new streaming search there’s a very real risk you may have missed out a tragic death in the world of search. When Google announced their new streaming search, where as you type the results begin to appear they killed of one of their oldest friends – I’m feeling lucky button.
Okay you might still see it when you visit the home page, and it might be there in a hidden way when search suggestions appears, but what use is a button when it’s never gets clicked? I for one am gonna miss ol’lucky, he’s been a friend through the years and we’ll all be sad to see him go. So join me in raising a glass to our fallen friend.
