MC-Tooling needs you in 2010?

Why do we need you? For those of you who don’t know us so well. Right from the outset we set ourselves the target of becoming the UK bench mark in this industry, the investment made in our continuous improvement program started to deliver last year and is already gaining momentum for 2010. Just one example of this is that Google announced sometime ago that they would no longer use Meta-descriptions in their search algorithms. But recent changes in Google’s search algorithms as brought Meta descriptions back to life as an important ranking factor. In response to Google’s change of direction, we installed some 2 months ago bespoke software not only to allow us to further optimise our own www.mctooling.com categories Meta description, but more importantly to do the same for our clients long-term advertising that appears on the site as well, and this along with all our other changes are really starting to deliver increased UK traffic to the our advertisers! The only down side is that we now have 1000’s of adverts that have to carry keyword research/ optimise on, and trust me when I say “it a lot of work”. All this means that we finish 2009 by recording 1000’s of adverts being viewed every day. These figures are then boosted by the video channel which is also recording in excess of 12,000+ videos being viewed monthly. So how can you help us? All we are asking is that you remember to add us to your press release/news letters mailing list. It’s as simple as that. Send us your videos, or any technical help publications/data/article/conversion charts etc which would be helpful to visitors, and gain hyperlinks back to your own site. Where possible add a back-link or hypertext link from your own site back to your www.mctooling.com advert or video. Recommendation, if you know anyone that you think we could help their business by being on our site, please let us knows, and we will contact them a.s.a.p. Everyone in this industry has had to tighten their belts in the last 12 months, but we at MC-Tooling know given your help and support this year we can deliver a truly long term cost effective means of promoting your business both to new and existing clients.

Regards
Alan

Please feel free to ring us on +44(0)1332 799913 if you would like to talk to us about using any of our services.

Google Browser/Screen Sizes Tool

When developing a website, one of the trickiest components to master is having your site appear well in all monitor resolutions, and to this end Google has released a tool to help with this called Browser Size.

This tool will load up any URL and provide you a schematic of how your site looks on certain monitor resolutions.

Google Browser Size claims to be able to show “contours” of the percentages of visitors who will be able to see any part of your page. Try it to see how it works. It suggest that anything important falling outside the 80% range should be given serious attention, as should messages which cross those lines.

However it was very encouraging to see that our site key messages all fell neatly within the 80% contour, although we will be looking at the site to see how we could improve its performance.

Alan

Merry Christmas from all at MC-Tooling

Walking in the Peak District

As a “Thank You” for your support, we have done 3 animated Christmas ecards for you and some Christmassy type sites that we think you will also enjoy!

For our interactive Christmas card, click on the following link:

http://www.americangreetings.com/ecards/view.pd?i=501948886&m=6459&rr=y&source=ag999

 For ‘Cat lovers’, click on the following link:

http://www.americangreetings.com/ecards/view.pd?i=501978810&m=6459&rr=y&source=ag999

For our ‘Christmas Spelling Game’, click on the following link:

http://www.americangreetings.com/ecards/view.pd?i=501954156&m=6459&rr=y&source=ag999

Track Santa’s journey on Christmas Eve (great one for the kids)
The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) obviously don’t have enough to keep them occupied (guarding US airspace must leave them with plenty of free time), because every Christmas they set up a website that lets you track Santa’s progress on his journey round the world. This year they’re even planning to take some snaps of his sleigh en-route, so you can finally prove his existence.
Track Santa online >

Tree decorating 101
If you’re cat lover in search of the perfect way to decorate your Christmas tree, this site should be right up your street. The rest of us will just visit, and then spend a few minutes wondering what on earth the whole point of this utterly bemusing website is. Seriously, if you figure it out, can you take a moment to let us know by leaving a comment here:
It’s Christmassy, and it involves cats >

The best Christmas jumpers around
Ever wondered where to pick up a really authentic Christmas sweater? You know the kind: bright, knitted, big, and very furry and with a big picture of a reindeer or snowman on. This Welsh company has a great range. There’s just one problem. They’re so popular, they seem to have sold out already. Still, it’s worth visiting just to see the designs. Perhaps one site that worth remembering for the mothering law next year? See some great Christmas jumpers >

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas, and a more Prosperous New Business Year for 2010

Alan

Ramping up Mc-Tooling for Caffeine!

Google Caffeine was first announced back in August this year. No doubt it’s going to be even bigger news when the update goes live in the New Year, and the question is whether this is going to be good news for our sites?

Google is about to inject a new ranking factor into the algorithm – impacting on our site download speed.  This new-generation search engine [codename Caffeine] will be replacing the current Google search engine which is supposed to be even better in every way. Caffeine will be faster! It will index more pages, be more accurate and will deliver better results. Or at least that’s what we are told from Google.

You can learn more on this subject from Matt Cutts (head of Google’s Webspam team) from this news video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NU5cKDryjy0

To stay ahead of the game, we have started making changes to the www.mctooling.com site. If you visit the site you will see that some of the images have been removed from the home page, although we still have some work to do!  If you also click on one Eng-Toolstore subcategories you will no longer see the icons displayed alongside the category headings, this was slowing down the speed of site. On the upside we have added/displayed a brief description of each advert pulled from the text, and we have already received some positive feedback from visitors, which make me wonder why we had never done it before now!

In the meantime please don’t forget to send us your press releases, videos, and any technical/ reference information that would useful to our visitors.

Regards

Alan

What B2B advertisers really want from media?

This is an interesting articale that I feel worth spending a few minutes to read:

I’m not an advertiser, but I’ve spent the last 10 years selling to them.

I think my first day selling was the last day of the golden age in B2B media — back when magazine people spent all day bending over to pick up money, and then marveled at how hard they were working.

On my second day the balance tipped; customers by-and-large stopped looking for reasons to advertise, and started looking for reasons not to advertise. This has been documented and discussed. What’s missing from the discussion is why industrial advertisers might actually want the trade media to fail.

Start with the assumption that as much as buying marketing, these advertisers were buying security.They followed a  simple formula, perfect for the engineering mindset that drives these companies. It was this: Advertising with trade media is the only reliable way to reach a targeted audience. So by doing whatever the competition does you will achieve similar results.

Feeling aggressive? Spend a little more and you’ll do a little better. There were few variables, like the strength of your creative, and the novelty of your logo-ed novelties. It was neat and simple and let companies get back to the business of making stuff — which was their true DNA.

Then came the Internet, which replaced measurement by lead-generation with measurement by click-throughs and unique visits. It put a premium on speed and courage; and it created so many variables that there was no longer assurance you could match your competitors’ results by matching their spend.

Suddenly, buying print meant spending a lot of money without getting any security.

That would be enough for marketers to resent the media. But there’s another piece.

The traditional media model is sponsorship: Media creates content, which advertisers sponsor to reach a targeted audience. As friend and former boss Teri Mollison now at F&W Media, likes to say, this is the “We talk, you listen” model of marketing.

Click here to see the whole editorial.

Alan

Making the internet deliver!

 We often get comments from member on how we are doing so well, as their site never really delivered for them. A typical case in point was the owner of a company I spoke to at the recent TCT exhibition in Coventry.

He informed me that he tried the internet but had such a specialist product it was a waste of time putting on. He was so adamant there was no point in arguing with him at the show.

He was making the classic mistake that 1000’s of other company make including myself. I am still amazed how many company websites I visit have the wrong telephone number, address, and missing pages or old news, what is even more disappointing is that over 70% of buyers will not deal with companies who do not have a website, can you imagine what impression these buyers are left with when they land on such a site!

Also you need to stop treating the internet like a telephone book, yes if you type in your name with a bit of luck it will find you, or having your site layout like a company profile. You really need to ensure that you not have a site/software that you cannot easily create & add your own content on.

Having done that, there is loads of really good free information on the internet on SEO (search engine optimization) and free software to help improve your site, but you need to spend some time getting your head around it, before you employ some one to do it for you.

Otherwise when people like me visit it I will be thinking: “it really is a good looking website” but about as much use as a chocolate teapot!

My site is designed for a busy engineer to find what he looking in hurry, and failing that ring me, is your telephone number easy to see on every product page, or tucked away at the back of your site?

You have to take control of your site otherwise it’s like employing a new salesman that you lock into an office with a telephone that only allows incoming calls, and then wondering why he not selling anything.

I have, like others employed poor sales staff, but I have at least given them a chance of delivering the goods, and the same goes for marketing on the internet.

Regards Alan

Use Video to ‘Pump Up Your Marketing’

Using video in your marketing efforts is about delivering your message in a format that you’re target audience is readily willing to it take on board, hence why over a year ago we took the decision to add video via Youtube into the www.mctooling.com listing, with our first few videos being added on the site in November last year.

Since the launch of this video marketing feature on our MC-Video channel, we have recorded them being played over 66,000 times. There is also very noticeable improvement in the number of recorded viewing of adverts which contain videos on the site.

Following our lead companies like: Dormer, Hardinge, Kennametal, Kitagawa, OSG, SGS, just to name few,  have also gone on to create their own video channels, and as industry traditional printed media usage declines, they too are being force into upgrading their online actively to compete with sites such as our own!

A few years ago, creating a marketing video for your business was time-consuming and expensive. You might spend thousands of pounds for a video, but these days don’t be fool into thinking you need to do the same!

The influents of site like YouTube. Thanks to affordable, easy-to-use video technology, wide adoption of broadband internet that allows for streaming video, and an acceptance of—some would say a preference for—more “homespun” video productions, video is a widely popular tool for B2B marketing, as people feel they are more trustworthy source of information, than traditional advertising methods.

As a way of example, this introduction video was created for visitors to the site to help us reinforce our message, and you could do the same!

Remember if you would us to add your video onto our channel, all you need to do is to email it to use, or post to the address below, with a covering note giving us your approval for copyright.

Astonlee Partnership Ltd, PO BOX 7438 Derby, DE1 0JG, United Kingdom

Please feel free to ring us on: +44(0)1332 799913 if you would like to talk to us about using any of our services.

Can you spend a penny?

can you spend a penny

Would you spend a penny to have someone read your advert, instead of spending £1000s on adverts in the industry press that never really get read (other than by your competitors)?

• Targeted at UK machine shop users that are actually looking for your products/services at a time of need
• Rather than hoping someone flipping through the magazine pages is going to read them.
• Even worse, do you really expect them to remember where they saw your advert and in which magazine, rather than just looking for the item they want on the internet!

Would you prefer your advertising cost to be even less than a penny per click?

Well you will be pleased to learn that www.mctooling.com  site software since we upgraded has now recorded over 200,000 of active adverts being open by visitors (expired/deleted ads are not included)!

This means that the majority of our advertisers are spending less than a penny to have their product/service advert, being read by machine shop users who are looking for product/services information on the internet.

Rather than a useless database of company details or magazine editorials!

Hence why over 87% of our advertisers have renewed their subscription in the last year regardless of the downturn!

Can you afford not to spend a few pence per click of your advertising budget to get your products on www.mctooling.com?

Then give Alan ring on +44(0)1332 799913

Should you “swap links” with other sites?

There are many misconception about swapping back-link with other sites, so let me explain:

There are two reasons to get links: the traffic they generate directly, and the incremental boost they give you in the search engine rankings. Now, the amount of boost each one gives you in the search engines is related to the “quality” of that link, and the “quality” is actually an external, machine-calculated estimate of …how much traffic that link ought to give you.

What sort of a link do you think would send you the most traffic? One on a website related to your area of business, or one on an irrelevant website?

A link hidden in the middle of a long list of other links, or a highlighted one in the middle of a paragraph someone’s reading, like this? A link from a long-established, well-known website, or one from a blog launched yesterday?

The answer as to which links will send you the most traffic are obvious …and they’re also what the search engines are looking for. Quality links, within the text, on well-regarded, relevant sites.

So to return to the original question, if I was offered a link from the home page of microsoft.com, would it somehow be valueless because I already have a link to Microsoft on this website? Of course not. It would be fantastic.

There is nothing wrong with “reciprocal” links if they’re useful to the visitor on both sites. Where you don’t want to waste time is on reciprocal links which would never generate traffic between the sites. And an exchanged link between you and a coffee producer in south america is never going to generate traffic, and it’s not going to help you in the search engines either.

MC-Tooling site upgrade news!

Down in the MC-Tooling.com dungeons, the Astonlee team have been celebrating the completion of a major site software upgrade, which having been promised would take only 2/3 days, has taken us a month to get it working correctly (“ho how we love these software designer houses”).

We have implemented this next generation software upgrade to improve the site “Search Engine Optimisation” (SEO) functionality for google, but it will take a couple of months before we really see the full benefits of this. Hence why we planned July/August being the main holiday season, when business normal slows down anyway for this upgrade.

To help make it even easier than ever for everyone use the new page layout etc, we have started the creation of some tutorial videos on how to use/get the best out of the site, and are working flat-out to get them all completed a.s.a.p.

The home page as also had a major update to make it easier for visitors to locate the item/service they are trying to find, and to raise the prominence of the featured adverts section.

Some other great news is that earlier this month we recorded over 190,000 viewings in the 10 months since the site was launch (mid September last year) which is a fantastic result bearing in mind how bad the turndown as been in the industry.

It is also very pleasing to see that our geographical targeting is working, with over two thirds of our traffic coming from the UK, so what is the point of being on a site that may have higher ranking/traffic volume, if the majority traffic is coming from places like India, and the UK traffic is so small it doesn’t even warrant a mention.

However this approach does make it a lot harder work for us, but it does mean we deliver honest value for money, hence the reason why we record every time a visitor opens your advert. We know that we cannot force them to buy from you, but at least you know your advertising budget is being read and not being recycled or wasted in none target markets.

So it’s really pleasing when talking to so many of you about the business you received. Such as from Bob Coals, at Midland Metrology who told me about one of the best orders he had received this year, it was for two 30” projectors from an Irish company who saw his advert on our mctooling site, they contacted him and flew over specially to purchase them from him.

This latest update means no other site delivers in the UK better value for money, especially when you consider what’s included for a fraction of the cost as compared with so called market leaders provide.

So please help us by remembering to add your: new products, news letters, and the special offer or your videos, so we can all gain the benefits of this unique site!

tutorial videos

Please feel free to ring us on +44(0)1332 799913 if you would like to talk to us about using any of our services.

Regards

Alan