How to cut your energy bills and make the most of recent gas and electricity reductions

By Lauren Thompson

Last updated at 9:51 AM on 18th January 2012

Recent gas and electricity cuts have saved households only £34 a year on average. Lauren Thompson explains how to make sure you’re on the best deal… 

What’s going on with energy bills?

All of the ‘big six’ companies have announced small price reductions in the past week, taking the average total annual energy bill from £1,293 to £1,259 — a £34 cut, according to comparison site uSwitch.

British Gas has reduced electricity by 5 per cent with immediate effect. This will mean 5.3million people will save £24 a year on average.

EDF will reduce gas prices by 5 per cent from February  7, allowing 1.4million people to save £36 a year. Scottish & Southern Energy will cut gas prices by 3.8 per cent from March 26. It means 3.5million customers will save £28 a year.

Npower is cutting gas prices by 5 per cent from February 1, so 1.9million gas customers will save an average of £38. For the next two months, it is also waiving the £20 exit fees it charges 140,000 customers on fixed tariffs.

E.ON is cutting electricity prices by 6 per cent from February 27. This means 3.7million people will see an average reduction of £33 and exit fees will also be waived.

Scottish Power will reduce gas prices by 5 per cent, also from February 27, knocking an average £36 off 1.4million people’s bills.

Bills increased by an average of £224 last year, so the recent cuts have only wiped out 15 per cent of this.

Why has this happened?

Wholesale gas and electricity prices have fallen over the past year. British Gas says the ‘longer term trend’ of gas prices will be for them to rise.

But Adam Scorer, of Consumer Focus, says: ‘Companies will respond differently depending on where they think wholesale prices are heading.’

Should I switch to a new deal?

Now that all of the big six suppliers have changed prices, it is a good time to switch because there is a level playing field.

If you are on a fixed tariff, it will depend on when you signed up as to whether you can now save money. You should also calculate if the exit penalties — typically £20 for gas and £20 for electricity — are more than the savings you could make by switching, although Npower and E.ON are waiving these fees.

For example, those on British Gas’s dual fuel deal that expires in June 2012 are currently paying over the odds at £1,217, but those whose deals expire in October 2012 are paying only £1,045 — which is hard to beat, according to comparison site Moneysupermarket.

The average standard tariff is now £1,251. But you can save money by switching to an online deal — where you input your meter readings and receive your bills via email. The cheapest online deal is First Utility’s iSave v9 at £1,030, or Scottish Power’s Online Energy Saver 17 at £1,085. If you want a fixed tariff, the cheapest is Ovo’s New Energy Fixed at £1,059.

How do I switch?

If you have access to the internet, you can use a comparison website such as Moneysupermarket, uSwitch or Confused. You can also use This is Money’s energy bill finder to switch.

To get the most accurate comparison, you will need your annual usage in kWh (this should be on the back of your bill or on your annual statement) and the exact name of the tariff you are on.

If you don’t have the internet, comparison website uSwitch’s free service ‘Send us your bill’ allows people to send them a copy of their latest energy bill and an adviser will call you back. Send your bill and phone number to FREEPOST USWITCH.

Copies of bills will not be returned afterwards, but will be destroyed. Alternatively, you can call uSwitch on 0800 093 06 07.

Is there anything else I can do?

you should submit a meter reading the day before your price fall comes into effect, to ensure as many days as possible are billed at the lower price. Keep our table to remember when to do it.

Read more: http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-2087987/How-cut-energy-bills-make-recent-gas-electricity-reductions.html#ixzz1l7x2od1q

If you haven’t done so yet you need to compare gas and electricity prices so you can switch to save money.

Link building for effective search engine optimization
By: James Day CEO of www.submit-site.org

Article Source: http://www.ArticleGeek.com – Free Website Content

When you begin the task of acquiring quality and relevant backlinks to your website there are many factors that can increase or decrease your search engine rankings. This article outlines the difference between good and bad backlinks.

A quality backlink pointing to your site should be in the same category and relevant in content to your website. The page where your link is located should be indexed by Google and the page should also have a Google page rank. The webpage where your link is located should also contain no more than 30 other out-going links to other websites. Link pages with more than 30 out-going links are less relevant to the search engines. Having your link posted on this type of webpage can affect your search engine rankings in a negative way. Other excellent techniques of acquiring backlinks are directory submissions, posting articles, blogs and forums.

For directory submissions select the proper directory category and take a look at how many other websites are contained in the category where your link would be posted, if you can manage to get on the first or second page of the listings, this is a quality backlink. Also look at the Google page rank of the landing page for your link. If the page has a Google page rank this is also a quality backlink.
Stay within your category, relevant content is very important to the search engines. Write an article preferably relevant in content to your website and submit the article to high quality article directories. Blogs are an excellent way to get quality one-way backlinks, Blog sites also receive tons of traffic, which in turn give your site more exposure. Posting your link on forum pages is also an efficient method of aquiring backlinks instantly.

Backlinks to avoid would be a zero page ranked webpage, especially if the home page has a zero page rank. Links posted within framed webpages which will also steal your traffic. Especially avoid link farms, webpages which contain more than 100 unrelated outgoing links, This type of link page is frowned upon by many major search engines. Avoid Webpages with mirror sites containing the exact same content with a different URL, also pages that utilize redirects and URL cloaking. Never post your link on a webpage that contains a “no follow” or “no index” robots meta tag within the source code. Dynamic websites with question marks in the URL should be avoided because they are not always indexed by the search engines.

Avoid posting your link on a page that opens very slow or contains mostly ads and flash banners. Try not to aquire or purchase great numbers of backlinks in a short period of time, backlinks should be accumulated gradually. Also avoid webpages and directories that list their results in alphabetical order, as their database increases your link could be moved to a less relevant page with less pagerank. Quality backlinks are one of the most important factors involved in the process of acheiving high search engine ranking.

Of course, you don’t need to create the linkwheels yourself, you can outsource them or use software.
Before you begin to maximise your building link juice program you will get some very useful tips for making your linkwheels successful and for your links to stick. Some people have problems with their linkwheel spokes being deleted because they don’t know how to make them stick. That is why it’s worth learning techniques that will ensure your linkwheel spokes are building link power and are also treated as authority sites and do well in the search engines.
With well constructed linkwheels you can give your money site a huge kick up the search engines and can make the difference between your site earning some money and earning a lot of money.

A linkwheel is an interconnected group of sites which have been created to push a “money” site higher in the search engine rankings. They link to each other and to your central site to help the central money site rank better and if you match them up with one way link building the results can be electrfying.

Whilst they are very effective in what they do they can be time consuming to create by hand simple because of the number of sites involved and how much you need to do to create each spoke site. However,there is software than can automate this for you but it is notoriously unreliable due to the complexity of the software and the task it has to perform, one way link building is a bit more reliable as you can do it yourself our outsourse it..
However, linkwheels can really boost your money site up the search engines and so it is a useful component of any traffic generation strategy as is one way link building.
The way to approach this is to get hold of a step by step guide to creating linkwheels. Whereas many people talk about them, there are very few step by step guides to the process of creating and promoting a linkwheel.

This link building tutorial website focuses on producing good content and providing proven resources for those seeking to learn the truth about link building. We focus on the safest methods of link building for search engines. Blackhat techniques that may get your site banned at the search engines we leave to others.

Quick Link Building Tutorial

If your website or blog is new, then as part of its launch you need to submit the site to various niche web directories as well as general ones. Start with high quality online directories, but do not have more than ten to fifteen per cent of your overall links coming from them. One link building tutorial tip is not to write off specific ‘niche’ directories that may be paid or unpaid. These can often send highly qualified traffic to your website or blog.  Directories provide your site natural one-way links, at a natural speed of growth. This combination of type and speed is very beneficial.

Linkbaiting.

Linkbaiting is simply the different videos, images, article, press releases or anything on your site that is created with the intention of increasing links to it. Link baiting is highly effective in getting links, probably the cheapest too. It has no negative effects as far as the search engines are concerned because all the links generated look natural. Another link building tutorial tip is to complement your link building with social bookmarking, the Web.2.0 associated with these links add even more juice to them.

Paid Links.

Paid links can have a quick short-term benefit. And these should be used primarily by sites that have lots and lots of pages with lots of content. Sites that have been established online for years could also pay for links. Paid links are not recommended for new sites by link building tutorial. But if you want to pursue paid links look for websites or blogs that are relevant to yours, or in complementary niches. If you do buy links you will have to be very careful of the infamous ‘Google Slap’ that happens if sites do heavy link buying.

Bad Links.

Lots of folk don’t realise that outbound links play a big role in the way search engines determine who your “neighborhood” sites are. There are bad neighborhoods and if you are associated with them it will affect your search engine rankings for the worse. Don’t hang out with free for all pages, link pages, links farms, etc, because they fall in this bad category. A small amount of them would not trigger a penalty, but make try to make sure that your site is not related in any way to them.

Link Building Tutorial Search

This link building tutorial site covers a great number of link building issues and resources. So have a good look round at the pages and resources. You will be helped in your link building endeavors.