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This is part two of a series of blogs about how we can use keyword research to see the differences between the people of Shrewsbury and Telford. Start here if you haven’t read the intro and go here to read about our methodology, if you like that kind of thing. Leisure in Telford v Leisure in…

If you’re from Shropshire, you’ll be aware of the – ahem – friendly rivalry between Shrewsbury and Telford. But are the two towns really so different? We decided to find out. Using the Google AdWords keyword tool it is possible to find out which phrases related to the two towns are searched for most frequently on Google. What phrases do Shrewsbury people search for and how are those different to the searches of Telford people? Let’s…

This is part one of a series of blogs about how we can use keyword research to see the differences between the people of Shrewsbury and Telford. Start here if you haven’t read the intro and go here to read about our methodology, if you like that kind of thing. Leisure in Telford v Leisure in Shrewsbury In both Telford and Shrewsbury, leisure related searches make up the biggest proportion of Google searches. In Shrewsbury leisure accounts…

This research is based on Google AdWords keyword data. It has been compiled by taking the top 250 search terms to include the word ‘Telford’ and the top 250 search terms to include the word ‘Shrewsbury’, with the match type set to exact to get reliable data on the number of searches for that exact phrase, and then categorising and analysing the keywords. Of course there are various problems with this approach – it…

Those following the progress of our favourite content management system/blogging platform, WordPress, will no doubt be eagerly anticipating the release of version 3.5. The finished version is scheduled to be unleashed on the internet on December 5th 2012, but we’ve got our hands on it early! We’ve been having a play with the beta version, and can give you a sneaky peek at some of the enhancements that are coming in this release.…

Those of you who visit this site regularly may have noticed a few changes – yes, we made time in our schedule to work on our own website! Feedback so far has been overwhelmingly positive, and we’re really proud of it – but why is doing your own website so hard? Having just gone through the process ourselves, here are my thoughts: 1. Subjectivity This goes for your own marketing in general, I think, not just your website –…

Recently, Google Places became Google+ Local, and at first glance very little changed other than the name. You’ve all seen these pages come up in Google’s search results – typically you search for a business type plus a location – in the example to the right I searched for ‘Dentist Shifnal’ – and you see a ‘pin’ and a link to a Google+ page. Google wants to assign all businesses to a…

In our day to day work at Ascendancy we look at hundreds of websites every day from almost every industry you could think of. We look at our own websites of course, but we also do search engine and pay per click advertising work on websites that we didn’t build ourselves, we look at our…

You’ve probably never noticed, but at Ascendancy we call ourselves a ‘Website optimisation company’ as opposed to a ‘Search engine optimisation company’. The difference is that we recognise that for clients’ websites to succeed, you don’t just need to get traffic to a site – you need to convert it into actual sales or enquiries. You usually can’t just ‘bolt on’ search engine…

We’re pleased to announce that we’ve just launched a new WordPress-powered website for Stipersones and Corndon Hill Country Landscape Partnership Scheme. Normally we wouldn’t blog about the launch of a new website – but we’re really proud of this one, so it gets a…

Are you baffled by the thousands of WordPress plug-ins on the market? Not sure which you need? Here are 3 of our current favourites that are simple yet effective to try on your site. Why we love WordPress As you know, we’re big advocates of WordPress, not least because it’s a simple platform to…

As of the 26th May, a new law will come into effect which will mean that all UK websites should gain the consent of visitors to serve them with web cookies. What does this mean? Well, to the general public, not a lot, as many people don’t even know what a cookie is and if they’re aware of them, they’re suspicious.  In fact, according to a recent consumer survey by Econsultancy, only 31% of consumers know what cookies are and what…