Find broadband faster

Problem: How to help visitors to my broadband comparison website narrow down their choice to the best broadband deal for them?

If you live in an urban area you might have all the ADSL broadband deals available to you, plus several LLU provider deals, plus Virgin Media cable, plus Sky satellite. Unless you've heard particularly good or bad things about a broadband provider, or you are buying solely on price, or you can't get ADSL broadband at all, it can be really hard to know why broadband package A might be any better than broadband package B.

Broadband can be quite a long sell, and while I want to have enough helpful content to keep buyers on my broadband website until they have made an informed decision, ideally I should be speeding up the time it takes for them to choose and buy broadband.

So I have been looking at ways I can help my visitors find a broadband package more quickly.

1. Search by bundle / just broadband - visitors could already select home or business broadband on their initial postcode or phone number search - now they can also select broadband-only or bundles on my broadband search box.
2. Best Sellers - I've written a new page (suitably optimised!) called Broadband providers - best sellers which lists the top 5 broadband providers on www.ukbroadbandfinder.com
3. I already had several pages of element-specific broadband packages, eg Cheap Broadband, Superfast Broadband, Special Offers, and Free Broadband.

In progress:

1. There has always been a filter on my broadband package listings and results page so visitors can reorganise their results by price, download speed, broadband type, and provider (alphabetical listing). But I don't think it is obvious enough so I'm looking at making this stand out much more - and adding an Unlimited Downloads filter.
2. Add a poll - a regular poll on visitors' views on different broadband providers would help other users, and help me highlight the best deals and providers.
   
3. Best Buys for each category - to highlight particularly great deals

Check out the changes already on www.ukbroadbandfinder.com. I'll be coming back to this issue as my website develops and the broadband filtering speeds up.

By Sarah, UK Broadband Finder

Search engine optimisation (SEO)

In my last post I mentioned the new broadband articles I had written. These were keyword-rich but I know search engine optimisation (SEO) is about more than liberally dotting the word broadband about the site (which, as it is a broadband website, it has enough of already).

I've worked on SEO before, particularly when I used to work for other companies and I got to spend their money on it - and I have also tried to follow the principles on UK Broadband Finder (adding keywords, not using Flash or images to convey content). But I knew I had got lazy with my H1 and H2 headings and that I wasn't making it easy for Google to spider down through my website.

SEO was one of the areas I spoke to AOL and TradeDoubler about - and Sanjeev Mirchandani, the Publisher Manager at TradeDoubler, has helped me out with an SEO checklist covering the basic SEO principles. He also had a good browse around www.ukbroadbandfinder.com and came back with feedback on what I'm doing right, and where I'm missing a trick. (Good - lots of content. Bad - little internet linking from within the body text, poor use of H headers).

So I've started work on some of the main articles, making SEO changes in the following areas:

1. including SEO keywords in H1, H2 and H3 headers
2. using SEO keyword phrases in the body text, particularly near the top of the page
3. adding internal and external text links (again, using keyword phrases in the link) to make it easier for Google to visit other pages on the website (rather than just relying on the surrounding page navigation)
4. adding new content
5. diving into Joomla and giving my main content pages search engine friendly URLs (eg http://www.ukbroadbandfinder.com/dial_up.html)
   

There's loads more to do - and now I'm worried I've added too many links and keyword phrases - but it's a start. Next step is to give each of my broadband packages a friendly URL (over 100 of them) which will take time but should be worth it.

By Sarah, UK Broadband Finder

More broadband content!

Content is king was one of the first things I learnt when I started working as a web editor back in the mists of internet time (well, 1999). We all used to say clicks and mortar without irony as well.

I may not say clicks and mortar any more, or make my fingers into quotation marks to stress a point (ah, the delights of 20th century business meetings) but it is pretty obvious that new, relevant content is still vital. So when I started this TradeDoubler / AOL broadband affiliate mentoring scheme it gave me the push I needed to look again at content gaps on my broadband website, www.ukbroadbandfinder.com

UK Broadband Finder needed more content for three reasons:

• to keep broadband buyers on my website by answering their questions and helping them with the buying process (I think we used to call it "stickyness")
• as a vehicle for all those broadband keyword phrases I need to include, to improve my organic traffic via the search engines
• to keep the website changing regularly
  

So as a first step I have been written a few new articles:

• Getting started with broadband
• Switching broadband providers
• Dial up internet access
• Broadband for Macs
  
• Short contract broadband

I've noticed already that we're already getting more organic traffic - some of this may be down to the appalling weather but I can see from Google Analytics that some of it is content-driven.

I've also written more broadband definitions for my Broadband Glossary blog, which has also driven more visitors - to the blog itself and then on to www.ukbroadbandfinder.com.

Now, I'm off to do some SEO!

By Sarah, UK Broadband Finder

Welcome to The Broadband Apprentice

But... what is it?

I run a UK broadband availability website where you can compare broadband in your area - you can see it at www.ukbroadbandfinder.com

The website started last year with a handful of broadband providers and our trusty broadband checker (thank you, SamKnows). Now it has over 100 broadband packages and more than 20 broadband providers; a broadband speed test; broadband FAQs; a business broadband section and more.

But despite all this, there's a lot more I could do to make UK Broadband Finder more effective, credible and profitable. I've learnt a lot in the past year from podcasts, books, forums, and the day-to-day running of my website, but I know I still have loads to learn.

So when I was lurking on the Affiliates4U affiliate forum and read about the inaugural AOL / TradeDoubler affiliate mentoring scheme for broadband affiliate websites, I applied... and was chosen.

This mentoring scheme will last for around six months, and I'll be getting advice and practical help improving my website, including website feedback, SEO tips, and pay-per-click (ppc) advice. In return, AOL and affiliate network TradeDoubler should get more sales, good publicity and feedback on the problems broadband affiliates encounter.

My Broadband Apprentice blog will follow this mentoring scheme for the next few months, from my point of view.

This is a big opportunity for me. We've already had our first meeting and I've started work on improving my website's effectiveness. So please check back and find out how www.ukbroadbandfinder.com is doing.

By Sarah, UK Broadband Finder