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Special Offers
Cartoon Shorelines Art
Supermarkets in the UK and around the
world often advertise new product ranges and wider
ranges of products than their competition but did
you know…
-
Asda in Wrexham in March this
year sold tickets for a local football match
-
Tesco sell its own label anti
virus software for £10
-
Tesco sell a Pole dancing kit in
stores that supply fitness equipment
-
Lidl last year sold one way
European airline tickets for £19
-
Wal-Mart sells a computer game in
which a player can take on a role of converting
non Christians
-
Sainsbury’s sell electricity and
gas
-
Tesco extra stores last year sold
a full equestrian outfit
-
Costco in the US sells coffins
for less than $1000
-
Asda in Carlisle is selling a six
bedroom bungalow in Carlisle as part of its
property sale division
homes-in-asda.com
-
Tesco in China sells live turtles
Source the Grocer
Chinese restaurants in the UK started
out by selling food to Chinese seamen. Owners of
these restaurants selling basic food to sailors had
often converted their shops from laundries. In the
early 1900’s there were hundreds of Chinese
laundries around the UK offering cleaning for
households and businesses. The introduction of
washing machines led to their decline and owners
switched to serving food. The early restaurants
gradually attracted local people who adapted to the
new Chinese food but in the 1960’s everything came
with chips. Alongside the early restaurants selling
basic Chinese food were more up market restaurants.
Famously the Asiatic in London opened its doors in
1949 following the closure of the Chinese Embassy
during the cultural revolution. Staff from the
embassy opened The Asiatic restaurant which served
fine Chinese cuisine alongside quality French wines.
Their clientele included the rich and famous.
Source BBC History
Attention all
entrepreneurs
The Royal Bank of Scotland and The Sunday Times have
launched the Entrepreneur Challenge, which is a
nationwide competition offering £25 million of
prizes for four businesses. The five winners will be
chosen on a regional basis by a panel of judges. The
judges are looking for entrepreneurs who have the
drive and motivation to make their businesses one of
the leaders in their particular market. One overall
winner will also receive four days free mentoring
from Sir Phillip green owner of BHS and Arcadia who
is one of the panel of judges. Go to
www.theboschallenge.co.uk for more information
and download your application form. the drawback?
Applicants businesses must have a turnover of
£2million.
Linking
your web site
What is it and why should you do it?
Everyone talks
about it and all business owners are very keen to do
it. But how do you increase the number of links to
your web site, what is the point of linking your
site and what difference do links make to your web
site anyway.
The number of
links associated with a web site affect a web sites
ranking. Search engine optimisation and internet
marketing are complex subjects and links are not the
whole picture. However for any business web site
the number of links can make a significant
difference to site ranking and drive traffic to your
site. There are four different types of link
associated with web sites.
-
Mutual links
-
Outgoing links
-
Inbound links
-
Internal links
Mutual links
are reciprocal. For example linking to your business
associates and suppliers and they link back to you
in return. Are these links worth having? The answer
is yes and the more closely related to your business
the sites you link to the better. Rather than simply
listing the web address you are linking to add some
text e.g. exclusive personalised handbag designs.
Take the opportunity to provide a short keyword rich
headline for your site link.
Outgoing links
which point away from your site to other sites
are not as you would imagine to be avoided. However
you should think carefully about where to place
these outgoing links as you are in effect sending
traffic away from your site. Place them further down
your hierarchy of web pages. Outgoing links are a
trade off between providing information and helping
your customers and sending site visitors away from
your site. Overcome this disadvantage by making sure
these links open in a new window.
Inbound links
these are the golden links and the most difficult to
acquire. Sometimes called back links, these are the
web sites pointing back to your site and these type
of links carry much more weight with the search
engines. Start by registering with the major search
engines, Google, MSN, Yahoo and then directories
such as the open directory. Then spend some time
researching the minor directories that exist for
your business type. Lastly check who your
competition are linking to.
Internal links
work in a different way to the other three types of
links but are still worth including in your site.
The search engines value internal links,
particularly if you include some keywords in the
linking text. Internal links are of great value to
site visitors and help visitors to scan your web pages
and find what they are searching for more quickly.
As with all things
marketing a mix of the four types of links will help
towards your site ranking, will make your site work
more effectively and will make your site more
appealing and more useful to site visitors.
To help you with
your linking strategy we have included
a linking
tool to help you to check links to your site. It can
be very revealing, but is even more value in
checking the links of your online competitors.
Web
site News
New on the web site
this month is a RSS
(Really Simple Syndication) feed. View it on the home
page to catch the latest marketing and business news
from the U.K. We plan to modify the feed so
that a wider selection of marketing and business
news from different sources will be available for
you.
Recycling
Martin Meyerscough has spent eighteen months
inventing the Green Bottle, a new fully recyclable
milk bottle made from cardboard with an inner
plastic sleeve made from corn starch. At
present the majority of plastic milk bottles are not
recycled and take up a lot of room in land fill
sites where they take 500 years to biodegrade. Asda
is trialing the new milk bottle in its Lowestoft
store and plans to roll them out nationwide if they
are a success. Source The Week
Meanwhile............
Remarkable is an online stationery business that
uses UK recycled materials to make a variety of
unusual items that includes pencils made from
polystyrene cups, notebooks made from car tyres and
from fruit cartons. The company philosophy is 'to
create recycled items that are well designed, great
quality and a joy to own'. Information about every
item online tells you their recycled credentials. Prices
range from £1.60 for a small notebook and £18.72 for
a box of 50 black pencils made from car parts.
And finally…
A baker in Weymouth has had to rename
the cakes she bakes because Trading Standards
officials say the names of the cakes do not give an
accurate description of their contents. Robin Cakes
which feature a likeness to Kermit’s nephew Robin
must be renamed because they do not contain robin
meat. Miss Piggy tarts do not contain pork and
Paradise slice is not made in heaven.
Source the Week.
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