Nottingham SME’s Still Invisible to the Search Engines

Guest Post by Susan Hallam, Director of Hallam Communications and organiser of The Internet Conference taking place in Nottingham on the 14th May 2010:

Hallam Communications have today released a research report revealing that 86% of the small businesses in Nottingham cannot be found easily in the search engines.

This project has been conducted every year since 2006 by Susan Hallam. It is three years on from the original research project and the small businesses reviewed in the research are still struggling to be found on Google and the other search engines.

76% of the UK adult population are active Internet users and a lack of visibility on the web means that the small businesses of Greater Nottingham are missing out on a huge number of potential visitors and customers.

The research project discovered the following:

• 86% of Nottingham businesses surveyed received a findability score of 70% or less. This means it is unlikely that these businesses will be found by potential clients or customers searching the Internet.
• Only three of the top ten businesses got a score of 90% or higher.
• The site that had previously been top of the findability research was now receiving a score of 56%. This shows that it is important to keep your website current and to update it regularly.

Susan Hallam, lead consultant on the project, comments “While it is encouraging that more businesses are achieving higher findability scores than in 2006, too many are still failing in the basics of Internet marketing.”

Internet Conference 14th May 2010, The East Midlands Conference Centre Nottingham Special offer

Susan has kindly offered a special reduced rate of £145 instead of £195 for Nott Tuesday members at the forthcoming Internet Conference.    All orders should be placed to conference@hallam.biz quoting Nott Tuesday.