The register of recommended agencies is collated from research carried out by RAR for the London/South area.

RAR independently research the UK market every year for the best of the UK agencies across different disciplines. They talk to over 1500 client marketers and ask them to rate their agencies for account handling, creativity, strategic thinking, value for money and overall professionalism.

Proof that it’s not the most expensive agencies that make the list.. but the ones that are best at what they do!

Driving organic search traffic and sales through multinational search engine optimization requires a fusion of keyword relevance and geo-targeting to send location relevance signals. The search engines have to decipher a site’s geo-targeting signals to deliver the right page in the right language with the right SKUs, pricing, currency and availability. Optimizing the geo-targeting signals a site sends is critical to driving organic search traffic and sales in multiple countries.

Consider a searcher in the U.K. who wants to buy a toy for her daughter’s birthday. She searches Google U.K. for “dolls house.” Along with her query, the searcher is unconsciously sending location signals that the search is coming from a U.K.-based IP address and the query is in English. She may have also set her Google preferences to favor certain languages or countries. In response, Google quickly serves up all the pages from U.K. sites with English content relevant to “dolls house.”

An ecommerce merchant in the U.K. that serves only the U.K. market is most likely sending U.K. signals without even trying. Google can easily match the U.K. seller’s location signals plus its “dolls house” signals to the searcher’s desire to buy a doll’s house in the U.K. However, merchants with sites based in the U.S. who also serve the U.K. market and other English-speaking countries have a much greater challenge. Regardless of the strength of the keyword’s relevance, the number of relevant product offerings or customer service, U.S. merchants are not going to win the U.K. search or the U.K. sale if their multinational sites don’t geo-target their content to send U.K. signals.

How to Send Geo-targeting Signals to Search Engines

1. Register all relevant country code top-level domains (ccTLDs), such as .co.uk and .ca, even if the site’s content will be hosted on a general top-level domain (such as a .com). The ccTLD can then be redirected to the content’s true home on the .com to channel link popularity and customers.
2. Host the site’s content locally in each country. This can be fraught with business issues, and it isn’t a deal breaker if it’s not possible; but it’s a strong signal if it can be accomplished.
3. Build local links (ccLinks) in each country. The strongest ccLinks will mirror the site’s desired geo-targeting signals. For example, strong ccLinks for an English-language Canadian site would be hosted on a .ca ccTLD in Canada, and the content would be topically relevant and written in English.
4. Establish crawlable country navigation. A simple HTML country sitemap or crawlable navigation ensures a clear path for search engine crawlers to find and index country content.
5. Offer content in the local language. This signal impacts SEO by distinguishing between countries that speak different languages natively, such as geo-targeting the U.S. and France.
6. Register each country “site” in Google Webmaster Tools and geo-target each to a specific country. This is helpful whether a country “site” is hosted on its own ccTLD, or as a subdomain or subdirectory of a multinational domain.
7. Use the standard language and country codes in the URLs as the country’s subdomain or root directory, especially if it’s not possible to host the content at the ccTLD. These URL identifiers serve as a signal to observant humans to influence click-through in the search results, as well as sending a small signal to engines.
8. Establish language meta tags. While not generally considered a strong geo-targeting SEO signal, accurate use of country and language metadata can only help. Use the standard language and country codes to identify each site’s target either in a language meta tag or in the language attributes of the HTML tag.

Geo-location Challenges

Geo-location refers to the delivery of a default country/language content based on the visitor’s geographic location. Generally considered to be good usability practice, it can be disastrous if SEO concerns aren’t taken into consideration.

Consider the geographic footprint Googlebot leaves: California, U.S. Same with Yahoo’s bot, Slurp, and Bing’s MSNbot crawls from Washington. If geo-location occurs on every page of a site with no persistently crawlable navigation to all country/language sites, the search engines may only be allowed to crawl U.S. content based on the IP address. If this happens, only the site’s U.S. content will be able to rank in Google, Yahoo! and Bing, seriously limiting international traffic or sales. Analyze the URLs indexed in each country to determine if geo-location may be impacting SEO.

Indigo Sky built a dedicated flash microsite at www.simonellismusic.com, which included a live Twitter feed from the controversial Britney Spears ‘Circus’ World Tour Australian leg. Indigo Sky is also running a comprehensive social media strategy across Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, as well as SEO and Google pay per click ads

Simon Ellis was the Musical Director for Britney Spears ‘Circus’ Tour. Also a ITV & BRIT Award winning pop songwriter/producer/ musical director for artists like SClub7, Spice Girls & Jamelia

When asked what he would do do if he was starting out in todays industry he replied:

“I would probably build a site, a home for my music, a destination where people could come and see me and what I do and what I’m thinking about.

“And then I’d probably assemble a team of kids that would go and bug the hell out of advertising agencies and marketing companies to use my music.”

(see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8478000.stm for the full story)

It’s an interesting, but yet obviously practical point of view – and one which we here at IndigoSky agree with wholeheartedly. As digital specialists we can help bands build a professional image along with an engaged community of fans, as well as help them to effectively distribute mp3s, video and other media across the web. Between these specialist digital services and the extra avenues for music distribution available through more traditional ad agencies a band can get the proverbial ball rolling without ever going near a record label.

Why is this any different to before though? What has changed?

The answer is simple: both making music and marketing it has become cheaper and simpler than ever before, creating affordable options where before there were none at all.

On the music side the availability of increasingly cheap and accessible recording facilities/equipment, and a more technologically savvy generation of musicians allowing for DIY recording/mixing (its amazing what you can learn to do on the internet these days…) means that the average band can produce high quality recordings on their own.

On the marketing side, Digital Marketing is more cost effective and demonstrates a greater and more immediate return on investment than traditional print media meaning that less money is required and the bands will see immediate results directly attributable to different aspects of their marketing. In short a digital agency (a relatively new concept) opens doors which until recently didn’t exist.

If you’re in a band and you’d like to know more then just drop visit our website dedicated to online promotion of music and bands or drop IndigoSky an email hi@indigoskydigital.co.uk

Read the full article here: www.digitalstrategyconsulting.com/documents/DIR_Media_Planning_2008.pdf

Indigo Sky launch clients include Britney Spears’ musical director and BRIT award winner Simon Ellis, and Image Foundry who recently won a BAFTA & EMMY award for their CGI studio work.

Founder Matt Thompson spent 2 years as Account Director at US-based digital agency, Booyah, where he led digital accounts for Coca Cola, Dish Network, Dominos and Thomson Gale.

Matt Thompson said: “The United States is the leader in online marketing and we have brought these developments to the UK market. There is a knowledge gap in the UK of US digital marketing innovations like video ad networks, cookie exchanges and search re-targeting and it’s our intention to fill that gap. US marketers are profitably employing tools & technologies which are still relatively unknown over here to extend audience reach, leverage their online data and ultimately drive sales. UK agencies simply aren’t talking to their clients about them. Indigo Sky are here to prove that the old ‘2 year technology lag’ myth of US innovations crossing the pond is a thing of the past.”

London-based Indigo Sky has already attracted attention as an innovative, forward-thinking agency in the areas of display/rich media planning & buying, e-commerce marketing, and social media.

Indigo Sky is a Google AdWords Qualified Company, a Yahoo Search Ambassador, Google Analytics Consultant, and member of TopSeos.com