Sage Blog

So firstly, why blog? Why not advertise your practice in the local Yellow Pages or Newspaper?

My answer to this is simple, think about the last time you needed to know something, not specifically a business query, but anything.

What did you do? Where did you go to find information?

I’d be amazed if more than five percent of you didn’t think ‘I Googled it’. Research is showing that our behaviour is changing; we are now much more inclined to trust internet search engine results ahead of paid-for directory listings, and we trust higher ranking websites ahead of those below them. This change is going to be reflected in the behaviours of your target audience, so you must consider search engines as integral to developing your business.

So the next question has to be, how do I rank higher on search engines?

Websites are regularly indexed by mathematical algorithms which calculate their ranking position, the precise indexing algorithm is kept top-secret but it considers factors such as Keyword Density, Meta Content, Age of Content, Inbound Links and Richness of Content.

High ranking websites will be rich in relevant keywords for the given search string, well built, updated regularly, referenced regularly and contains a healthy mixture of images, text and videos. These attributes are also typical of blogs, and so they can be invaluable to improving your website’s performance on search engines.

So, now you understand that having a blog can add value, we come to the crucial part, content. A lot of people are concerned about creating content; they assume that because they are not journalists or writers, that no-one will be interested in what they have to say. I argue to the contrary, regardless of whether you are a secretary, accountant or bookkeeper, what you are is an expert in your professional field and someone whose experience and insight has value to your peers.

Thought leadership

In Sage we refer to this as ‘Thought Leadership’, being seen by your industry as a reliable source of relevant information. Writing a blog isn’t easy, far from it. Your content needs to be accurate, relevant, engaging and most importantly original. Once you get into the habit of writing though, it becomes a lot less challenging and you will actually find that there are lots of topics out there for you to discuss.

What are the latest developments from HMRC, has using software helped your practice become more efficient, how will VAT changes impact upon your clients, how has working with your practice helped resolve problems for a client. There are a handful of topics ripe for blogging, which you can have on me!

Ideally I’d recommend keeping your blogs fairly short, something like 300 words is about right, and should only take you around half an hour to write. When you start, don’t overstretch yourself, try to write a blog once a fortnight, perhaps while you’re having a sandwich over your keyboard. Don’t expect instant results, but keep writing anyhow, the more relevant content you create, the better. The key part is that if you persevere, you will get results.

If you use other social media like Twitter, Facebook or Linkedin, then share your content there as well. Every click and inbound link will add to your blog’s authority and help to improve search engine performance.

Once you’re feeling confident in your blogging, you could even guest blog on Sage’s blog, we’re always interested in hosting content, which by linking back to your site will add to its authority. Just let us know if you fancy giving it a go!

Alex Walker, Sage Accountants’ Team @alexatsage

If you’re reading this blog then you may be a regular visitor to the Sage Blog, or more likely you’ll have been directed here by a tweet.

My inspiration to write this blog came from reading an article in the BA Business Life magazine whilst I was flying last week. I read the statistic that 27% of UK SME’s use twitter. Doing a quick piece of math, 27% of 1.4 million businesses registered for VAT equals 460,000 SME businesses using twitter in the UK today…  and this number would rise to well over 1 million if you include businesses who are not VAT registered.

There is a readymade network out here that the SME can leverage, not only to share information about their business, but to set up trading network and build their brand. What’s more the buzz word in industry today is globalisation, more and more businesses are trading overseas and twitter plays to this as you’ll see in the example below, as it has no boundaries.

As a social networking tool Twitter has had a bit of a meteoric rise to fame with between 3 and 6 million users from all walks of life, with some very notable participants in the likes of Bill Gates and Barak Obama, although I’m not sure the latter writes his own tweets.

I have to admit when I tried it first time round, I was unimpressed… how can it possibly be of any use? How do I know who to follow? How do I get followers? What could I talk about? and how could I say it in only 140 characters?

Today, I’m a convert, I use twitter every day, it’s an excellent source of news and information on just about any topic. For me it allows me to keep my finger on the pulse of IT and Business information as well as to share information about Sage as well as my other passions with people who have chosen to follow me.

When I say share information with people who have chosen to follow me, the twitter network leverages the six degrees of separation principle well, so if one of my follower’s re-tweet’s my tweet, then all of their followers get to see my tweet, and so on.

To give you an example of how this works, I tweeted a link to my last blog on the secret to successful innovation then I watched what happened… even though I only have a few hundred followers myself, within the first hour, my original tweet had an audience of over 30,000 people. Within a couple of days my blog had gone around the world and turned up on other sites such as Innovation America,  it also stimulated others to reuse parts of my blog in their own innovation blog a way to keep the message alive and a complement indeed.

I was amazed by what had happened here… one piece of information, seen by a huge audience across the globe and recycled a second and third time, what’s more it increased network traffic on sage.co.uk and on average people looked at 8 pages in addition to the one they were directed to… and all from a single tweet… the power of social networking truly is amazing.

I would strongly encourage all of the SME’s reading this to think about how you might use the power of social/business networking to benefit your business. Twitter is just one part of what you need, it’s a tool to build your network, headline key information and lead people to your business. When they get there they need to find a website, or a blog with more meaningful and relevant information.

I don’t propose to tell you how to get going with twitter in this blog as it has been covered by many  people already… although you might find this link useful from CIO online and this link from Social SmallBiz who offer great advice to SME’s or our own guide to social media for small businesses.

Give it a try, other than a little of your time and effort, it’s free… and you might be as amazed with the results as I was.

Follow me on Twitter http://twitter.com/_stuartlynn

Written by Stuart Lynn, Head of R&D, Sage Mid Market Division

How to store card data

Online trading has never been more important, but if you’re new to e-commerce getting started can be a bit daunting. Here are some of our top tips to help you get set-up as an e-tailer.

Get a domain name

You’ll need one to run your website. It should be relevant to your business, memorable, and easy to spell. Try to register the .com and .co.uk versions in particular. Keep it snappy and check whether your ideas are original. Companies like Daily.co.uk. can help with this.

 Building your website

If you’re not an html pro, you’ll need a web developer and a web hosting account to store your site. Most hosting companies offer e-shop software packages and there are plenty of easy to use shopping carts and e-commerce platforms.

 Think payments– online: credit card, debit card, paypal, via telephone or mail order?

You’ll need a merchant bank account to deposit your online income and a good payment services provider (PSP), such as Sage Pay. Your PSP should take care of fraud screening, card compliance (PCI DSS), payment authorisation, settlement of funds into your merchant account and in some cases can take care of your merchant account too.

Design your shop

While your merchant account is being set up, it’s a good idea to work on your shop/web design.  Easy navigation around the site and usability are essential. Research how others are doing and test it out on friends if you can’t afford ‘usability testing’ and get them to give you some constructive feedback!

Prevent online fraud

Make sure you’re PCI DSS compliant [check out the article on p38-39 of Sage Pay’s Moving Money mag) and that you take online fraud seriously. As an online merchant you have a responsibility to your customers to make sure that their card details are not compromised in any way.

Optimise your website for search engines (SEO) – think clear, accessible design and incorporate the search terms your customers will use into your website copy. Keep text short and succinct.

Free book giveaway: Starting your own online business

Sage Pay have teamed up with Startups.co.uk and Crimson Publishing to produce Starting Your Own Online Business, an all you need to know guide to getting your business online.  And we have 5 copies to give away in our prize draw!  You can register by emailing your details to marketing@sagepay.com.  Entries close Monday 14th December 2009.

Written by Amy Monro, Sage Pay and Catherine Widdowson from www.daily.co.uk

Some of you may have read that the battle between Microsoft’s search engine Bing and Google is hotting up. It’s been reported today that Microsoft are trying to partner with major news providers like Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp in an attempt to get exclusive access to news content. The idea is simple; news providers who partner with Microsoft would be encouraged to de-list their content from all search engines except Bing.

It’s worth noting that these reports are very much unconfirmed at the time of writing.

Why should we care?

Searches for news constitute a massive proportion of all search engine activity. If you look at Google’s Insights For Search tool, you can see that there’s been a massive increase in web search interest in the category News and Current Events over the last few years. Therefore any moves to get major news providers to delist from Google could, in theory, put a large dint into Google’s traffic, and therefore its market share.

What does this mean for business?

In the short-term, not a lot. Google is still far and away the dominant force in search in the UK, with Hitwise stating their market share was 90.39% in December 2008; so I certainly wouldn’t recommend moving your search engine campaigns away from Google. However, I would always encourage that any business should spread their search engine marketing campaigns across as many search engines as possible.

Here at Sage, we get traffic from a wide range of search engines, which in the last month included Yahoo, AOL, Ask, Altavista and the Chinese language search engine Baidu. Admittedly Google drove much of this traffic, but in the world of digital marketing, every click counts.

The long term

Given the ever-changing landscape of search, it’s definitely worth keeping an eye on developments. Remember that Google AdWords only came into existence in 2003, turning the world of digital advertising on its head. Who’s to say that there won’t be anymore seismic changes over the next few years?

In the meantime, here at Sage we’ll keep our ears to the ground and let you know about any major developments.

Ewan McIntyre is Sage (UK) Limited’s Digital Implementation Manager