Within today’s article we’ve brought you ten stunning examples of branding from the Behance network, a leading online platform that showcases creative work.

Mojito Creative Agency

The use of negative space in the logo for Mojito is simple and effective with a colour scheme that stays consistently elegant throughout the branding.

Pop Grub

A fun, New York based, foody community brand. The website is very clean with the white space being used excellently to emphasise the important information.

Mangalica es Tarsai

A beautiful example of branding and the most all-encompassing on our list with everything from the chef’s hat to the coffee cups being expertly designed.

Herofilm

A very professional branding example and one that shows it is not just retail stores that can be effective with their depth of branding.

Eastfield

This example from Eastfield Village offers some great ideas towards a more eco-friendly focussed branding alternative.

EVO fitness

EVO fitness not only use the branding in their website and printed materials but carry the design and colours schemes throughout the gym and office space.

NYC Media Lab

NYC Media Lab shows you how to incorporate branding into the 21^st century with iPad integration.

The Flower Company

This branding execution perfectly encapsulates the target audience for this business. Clean, simple and incredibly elegant.

Bosporus

Another great example of branding execution for print, smartphone, website and vehicle graphics consistency.

Above & Below

I have to admit that a tree museum would not normally be a leaflet or website I’d want to read but thanks to the branding execution for Above & Below it is hard not to drool over the magnificent design.

That’s all from us. If you have any of your own suggestions then please let us know in a comment below.

Written by James Hay, Social Media Coordinator at Fasthosts Internet Ltd.

What do you know about Google’s “Panda” Update?

The term may sound like an adorable black and white bear; however, it is definitely NOT cuddly. This applies mostly if you have been practising the wrong search engine optimisation (SEO) techniques.

So, what exactly is it all about?

Overview

It is a major algorithm update, which Google introduced in the U.S. in February 2011 and then, globally in April 2011. The latest Panda modifications rolled out in March 2012, while another set of guidelines – the “Penguin Update” – came out on April 24 2012.

All these changes intend to provide the users with relevant and quality search results by looking out for these wrong practices.

• Less or no original content
• Low-quality links
• High bounce rate (number of single-page visits, wherein the individuals left the landing page right away because of irrelevant content)
• Too much adverts
• Slow page loading time
• Keyword stuffing
• Several server errors

Looking into these optimisation mistakes, you can say that the main purpose of the “Panda” update is to give low ranking to websites with useless information.

With that said, how do you know if it has hit your site?

Well, the most obvious means of determining the impact is by checking your ranking. If you used to land in Google’s first page but your site is nowhere to be found these days, it means that you need to improve your webpages. And, how can you do this?

Spring back after the Google Panda Update.

1. Produce unique content
This aspect should always come first because many users visit your website for its information and not for its flash graphics or images. While you are applying this strategy, go beyond originality. You must also write engaging and high-quality articles for your target audience to make them stay longer and visit your site repeatedly.

Moreover, add statistical data and figures through tables, charts, and infographics. This way, you can increase your webpage’s relevancy using interesting approaches.

2. Prevent duplication
No matter Google’s warnings on copied content, some domains will go against these. Now, you can prevent other people from replicating your articles through canonicalization.

3. Concentrate on the right SEO techniques
In general, proper optimisation is all about relevance and authority. The former refers to how well the information on your website matches queries, while the latter indicates your pages’ ranking strength.

Additionally, it has two vital parts.

1. On-page – It typically involves optimising your site’s internal components through methods such as the following:

• Boost page loading speed
• Create title, meta, and header tags
• Search, analyse, and use high-ranking keywords
• Make a sitemap and link to your website’s other content

2. Off-page – It usually encompasses external factors using the following tactics:

• Get backlinks from authority sites
• Generate anchor texts

4. Use natural links
These consist of the latest types such as the following:

• Naked – the exact URL of a webpage as it appears in search engines, for example: http://www.domainname.co.uk/webpagetitle.html
• Junk – refers to general text links (e.g. click here, read more, visit this website, etc.), which Google considers important
• Brand – incorporate your trade name to the link, an applicable approach if you have an e-commerce site
• Latent semantic link – consist of phrases synonymous to your targeted search terms

5. Get help from social media
Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, and Reddit – these are some of the top social platforms today. You can take advantage of these by creating a profile page on any of these sites and then, acquiring votes through shares, likes, follows, and reviews.

Additionally, integrate your blog site or website with social media buttons (like the ones on the next image) and RSS feeds to generate backlinks.

Given that Google includes social pages in its SERPs, you can benefit greatly through networking.

Conclusion

So, there you have the top ways of getting your website back on its feet after the Panda Update hit.

As a note, you will not obtain high ranking immediately after practising these strategies. You have to remember that it will take some time for your page rank to increase. With that said, you have to be patient while rectifying your previous practices.

Written by Emma Tomlinson, Head of Retail at Smart Traffic, an SEO services company listed at the Top 10 of the Microsoft Tech Track 100 for 2011.

We are in going through a fundamental shift in the way businesses communicate with their audience. Seeing fewer and fewer advertising methods that “shouts at” us and rather more advertising methods that “talk to” us. This in my opinion is a good thing as it puts greater power in the hands of the consumer whilst giving businesses a far better way of measuring their advertising success. With a chance to listen to the consumer this ultimately leads to an improved end product.

So how are the top internet retailers performing on social media?

Thanks to the team at Campalyst, who have recently created the infographic below, we can find out:

Click image for full size version.

We are seeking a Senior Network & Telephony Engineer to work with the Network & Telephony Team within our Infrastructure department.

The core hours for the role are 9.00am – 6.00pm but some out of hours work and on call duties will also be required.

Key responsibilities include:

• The design, evolution and architecture of the Fasthosts network and IP traffic infrastructure.
• Day to day administration and maintenance of the Fasthosts network including local and upstream connectivity, traffic management and security.
• Supporting the Operations Team with network related incidents and requests received from our customers. This also on occasions involves conversations directly with end users and partners.

Essential skills experience and attributes:

• A desire to work with ‘leading edge’ technology
• At least CCNP qualified
• Large scale Cisco datacentre environment design, implementation & support.
• Virtualised infrastructure including FWSMs & Contexts
• Firewall administration
• Load balancing administration
• Thorough OSPF & eBGP configuration
• PBX administration
• Excellent communication and negotiation skills

Desirable:

• Multi-tenant, virtual hosting environments
• Nexus Family administration (we are currently using N7k, N5K and N2k and 1000V under development)
• Cisco ASA firewall administration
• F5 Load balancing
• VRF Aware such as IPSec VPN on ASR1000/IOS-XE.
• Cloud/IaaS service knowledge
• Implementing IPv6

If you would like to help us achieve our ambitious growth plans and have the attributes listed, please send us your CV to careers@fasthosts.com

No agencies please.

If you’re looking to find out a little bit more about the Fasthosts products then check out these fantastic PDF’s courtesy of our creative team.

Business Web Hosting

“Working with Fasthosts is smooth, from choosing a domain name or hosting and managing your website the process is simple. The support services are excellent and communication superb! I highly recommend Fasthosts to my clients and connections.” Jules Thomas – The last Hurdle

Click the image below to download the PDF.

View Web Hosting Packages

Exchange Email 2010

We’re confident our latest Exchange 2010 Professional mailbox, featuring Outlook 2010, will blow your old mailbox out of the water. Check out the PDF image link below to find out how it will boost your productivity and improve collaboration in your workplace.

Click the image below to download the PDF.

View Email Packages

Virtual Private Servers

“Fasthosts’ great value, high performing Virtual Servers support our mission critical websites and help power our advanced network monitoring platform, eView Live.” Evolving Networks Ltd

Click the image below to download the PDF.

View Virtual Server Packages

Dedicated Servers

“100% reliable and secure over the past two years, our Fasthosts dedicated server works without fuss or drama.” Steve Adams – Pepperneck Web Design

Click the image below to download the PDF.

View Dedicated Server Packages

Secure Online Backup

Our simple to use cloud backup software allows you to set up automatic backups for single or multiple files so that you can get on with your day with the peace of mind that your data is accessible even if the worst should happen.

Click the image below to download the PDF.

View Online Backup Packages

Our domain names are great value with .CO.UK domains £2.95pa and .COM domains £5.99pa – View our Domain Name Offers.

If you have any questions about our products and services or would like to find out more then please call our Technical Sale Experts on – 0808 1686 777

We are seeking an exceptional Salesperson!

We’re looking for a bright, highly motivated, self-starter with excellent communication and interpersonal skills to join the Fasthosts sales team. As the Senior Salesperson within the existing Fasthosts sales team you will lead by example, your focus will be to hunt and close new business as well as to nurture and grow existing accounts, we have over 200k existing customers so there is a lot of opportunity for you! The right candidate can be assured that the rewards for overachievement will be recognised financially.

Key responsibilities include:

• Identifying and targeting prospective business using all available means including prospecting/cold calling and Social Media
• To work independently with a high degree of self-sufficiency
• To build positive and consistent relationships with new and existing customers to ensure the maximum level of customer retention and additional revenue generation.
• Play an active role in the on-going growth and success of the company
• To improve your conversion ratio of sales opportunities

You will be measured against a monthly revenue target which you will achieve by growing revenue from new and existing accounts, improving your personal sales performance and better technical knowledge and conversion rates.

Essential Skills and Experience:

• Experience of selling IT services b2b is ideal however other industry experience will be considered as full training will be provided
• Must have strong phone selling and follow up skills, proven record of closing deals, ability to proactively generate sales opportunities, and be able to effectively maintain and expand business relationships
• Ability to effectively communicate to SME & SoHo businesses over the phone and through email, you will have the interpersonal skills to build external relationships at all levels of an organisation.
• Can do, flexible and mature attitude to the role with plenty of common sense and an outgoing personality, you will need to perform under pressure.

If you would like to help us achieve our ambitious growth plans and have the attributes listed, please send us your CV indicating your current salary package to careers@fasthosts.com

No agencies please.

We’re happy to announce that we are now offering up to 70% OFF our Virtual server range.

Respond to the changing needs of your business with Fasthosts award winning virtual private servers.  Choose from a selection of servers or customise your specific requirements.

What you’ll get?

You’ll get powerful IT without the upfront costs. What’s more, you won’t have to spend time managing hardware because we’ll host it for you.

Five reasons to work with us:

• Innovative products – you want powerful technology, so we make it easy to use
• Expert staff – you want to work with the best, so we employ experts
• Secure UK data centres – you’re based in the UK, so that’s where we keep your data
• 24/7 support – your business doesn’t stop at 5:30pm, so neither does ours
• Value for money – you look at price and performance, so we do too

Call now for our latest special offer: 0844 583 2499

You can also Tweet us @fasthosts, where our support team are on hand to answer your questions.

When Google launched its social network, G+, we all knew that having a social presence there would be a valuable asset in our social portfolios. But with recent advances in Google’s search algorithm that are including social as a major factor, G+ just became an even bigger player. Let me explain.

Where your site appears in search rankings is determined by the way in which Google and other search engines “read” your site. They look at a variety of factors from what works appear on your site to how many links your site receives to how often you update your content. But now, they are also looking to see what kind of social activity your site generates. In other words, does anyone care?

A major factor in the social discussion is how many Google Plus users have shared your site.

Overview of Google+

Google+ has several factors that you need to understand.

Circles: Circles is the terminology that Google+ uses to organize your contacts. Via Circles, you can organize your contacts into different tranches such as employees, customers of different product lines or associated with different projects, vendors, and other allies of your business.
Updates: Updates work similarly to status updates on Facebook. You can type a short (or longer) update on new products, an upcoming sale, a big event, a new hire, and more.
Shares: Shares allow you to bookmark great content and push it out to your network. This is a good way to disseminate information that you think will be of interest to your target market.
Hangouts: Hangouts is a feature that works like a group chat, except that there is a video component and you can see everyone that participates at the same time. If you work in coaching or are doing a teleconference to promote a new product, this can be a way to make a virtual event feel very in-person.

How Do I Get Started on Google+?

Getting started on Google+ is easy. Here is your step by step guide to getting things started:

1. Visit the Google+ for business page at http://www.google.com/+/business/ and click the Create Your Google+ Page button.

2. You will then be prompted to sign into your Google account.
3. Once you are logged in, you’ll be taken through the steps of creating a public profile including your first and last name, gender, and a photo if you choose. Once you’ve filled out everything, click the “Upgrade” button.
4. If you don’t have an existing Google+ account associated with that Google log-in, you’ll need to go through the process of adding existing contacts to your circles, selecting interests, and filling out your profile. Just push through, and bear in mind that your customers can see this information so choose accordingly.
5. You will eventually be taken to the Create a Page section. Begin by choosing what category of business you own or want to promote.

6. You’ll then fill out a page name, include your website, choose a subcategory if appropriate, and set any access restrictions (anyone can see it, over 18, over 21, or alcohol related). Make sure to agree to the terms & services, and then click create.
7. You’ll then have the chance to add a tagline and icon photo.
8. Invite people from your circles, and then you’ll have a created page with the options to make posts, add photos, videos, and more.

Interested people will be able to follow your work on Google+, which will not only help you reach new audiences but will make a positive impact on your search rankings as well.

Written by Elizabeth Hooper.

Elizabeth Hooper writes on behalf of www.broadbandgenie.co.uk, the social shopping site for everything from broadband internet to contract iPads.

While every company targeting search engine marketing and optimisation will have their own specific list of targets and goals, there are a number of aspects to online marketing which are universal and apply to all kinds of companies, regardless of the sector they are in.

If you want to measure just how successful your SEO campaign has been, you need to keep a monthly record of how many visits your site gets through search engine queries. Visits can be split into a number of different categories – direct navigation, which includes bookmarks and typed URL traffic, referral traffic which can come from links, email or advertising campaigns, and search engine visits.

When measuring success it is absolutely vital to look at each search engine individually, as certain issues with ranking can be down to aspects of SEO which are unique to an engine itself – for instance, if you have fallen down the rankings in Google, but not Bing, it might be because Google has penalised your site for your back link campaign.

If your site dramatically drops down the rankings of all the major search engines then your issue will be with accessibility and navigation, so double check your site to ensure that spiders and bots can easily travel around your pages.

There could be all kinds of reasons why your site is doing well on one engine but badly on another, and it is important to bear in mind that Google and Yahoo often have different focuses – Yahoo! often takes users to sites which they own or have a hand in, while Google has a focus on more information based searches rather than navigational ones.

Checking the number of visits you get from keyword search referrals is also an important aspect of measuring success and can be helpful in a number of ways. If you are getting a lot of traffic for a certain phrase, but your website doesn’t have the relevant content to get your customer from query to sale, you’re missing out.

As well as this, keyword tracking can help to identify changes in trends and can also highlight if a keyword is more popular at a certain time of the year.

Once you’ve managed to get people on your site, the best way of measuring success is to check your conversion rate. But what is conversion? Well, it depends on your focus and your goals. For some companies, a conversion could simply be an online form query or a customer finding their phone number on their site and then calling them up – for others, it will refer to an actual sale.

To measure your conversion success you must first define what conversion means to you.

There are plenty of tools available to help you track the success of your internet marketing campaign and many of these are free – try Google Analytics, Yahoo! Web Analytics, Piwik Open Source Analysis or Woopra Website Tracking.

These tools measure your traffic, track your keyword success and can help a campaign to be more targeted.

Written by Kimberley Homer, Copywriter at Add People.

“Add People have worked with more than 3000 businesses to improve their internet marketing strategy, by offering a wide choice of SEO, PPC, web design and social media services. With our team of qualified experts, we have vast experience in helping small to medium sized businesses, across a wide range of industry sectors, to achieve outstanding results. To see how Add People can boost your online presence and increase traffic to your website, visit www.addpeople.co.uk and receive a free website appraisal today.”

Website: www.internetworld.co.uk

Dates: 24^th – 26^th April 2012

Venue: Earls Court 2, Earls Court, Warwick Road, London SW5 9TA

On April 24-26 Earls Court plays host to Europe’s largest and longest-running event for digital marketing and online business – Internet World. As sponsors we will be running two seminar presentations in the Cloud and Hosting Theatre as well as providing demos of our virtual private servers, Exchange 2010 and online backup at our stand – E3037. On top of our usual offers we’re offering all attendees an additional discount, more details of which are below.

This year is the twentieth anniversary for Internet World (1992 – 2012) and the event will welcome over 11,000 visitors and 300 solution providers over the three days. Internet World enables visitors to find targeted content across the breadth of the digital industry and is divided into the following categories:

• Digital Marketing world
• Ecommerce world
• Social media world
• Content management world
• Cloud & hosting world
• Mobile world

Why visit?

Internet world is a fantastic opportunity to meet with key suppliers and industry leaders. There is a host of brilliant speakers and technology pioneers to listen to and you’ll also be able to check out the latest trends and technology. Best of all, the event is free if you pre-register online.

Fasthosts’ Marketing Director, Steve Holford, will be speaking about two highly topical subjects so well worth attending:

Cloud Adoption Trends and Predictions for 2012

24^th April @ 13:10 to 13:40

Cloud & Hosting Theatre

How to Get Started with the Cloud

25^th April @ 15:00 to 15:30

Cloud & Hosting Theatre

Visitors to Internet World who purchase any of our core products up to four weeks after Internet World will receive, on top of our usual offers,  an additional two months free.

Come and see us at Stand E3037 for more information

Click here to register.