I'm not usually known for sharing videos but I thought this was great!
An amazing example of viral content!
Monday, 18 October 2010
Distilled Pro SEO
This time next week, I'll be in the West End of London listening intently to some of the best heads the SEO world has to offer. For two days Distilled is bringing together an amazing lineup for their London Pro training event, and I'm just a little bit excited!
Having recieved the details last week, I have to say there's nothing there that I'd want to give a miss, it all looks like 100% valuable learning time. I'm hoping to be back on here next week to give you a summary of my favourite points, but as a sneak preview here are a few things I'm really looking forward to seeing:
How lessons from sales can make you a better SEO (Caitlin
Krumdieck)
Sales skills are something we could probably all do with improving on, so this should be quite interesting! Looking forward to how this is discussed with SEO in mind.
Advanced linkbuilding (Wiep Knol)
Linkbuilding's tough, so the more information the better. Can't wait to see some real life examples of successful campaigns, should be a good'n!
SEO in competitive niches (Jane Copland)
Working in competetive fields for tough keywords is always going to be a struggle, but one that can obviously be overcome with the right work. Learning how SEO's have achieved success in such areas should be a valuable lesson.
I'll be back next week with some of my highlights to share!
Having recieved the details last week, I have to say there's nothing there that I'd want to give a miss, it all looks like 100% valuable learning time. I'm hoping to be back on here next week to give you a summary of my favourite points, but as a sneak preview here are a few things I'm really looking forward to seeing:
How lessons from sales can make you a better SEO (Caitlin
Krumdieck)
Sales skills are something we could probably all do with improving on, so this should be quite interesting! Looking forward to how this is discussed with SEO in mind.
Advanced linkbuilding (Wiep Knol)
Linkbuilding's tough, so the more information the better. Can't wait to see some real life examples of successful campaigns, should be a good'n!
SEO in competitive niches (Jane Copland)
Working in competetive fields for tough keywords is always going to be a struggle, but one that can obviously be overcome with the right work. Learning how SEO's have achieved success in such areas should be a valuable lesson.
I'll be back next week with some of my highlights to share!
Thursday, 7 October 2010
Some Favourite Recent Blog Posts
Apologies for the lack of posting here recently! Things have been hectic, but that's no excuse hey!
I'm going to change my tack a little bit with this blog, instead of writing articles and posting them, I've chosen to take a more general approach and comment more on the 'goings on' of the SEO world.
I've read some great posts recently so thought I'd share a few of them with you. They all offer some great advice that can be implemented fairly easily, so take a look and enjoy:
Reputation Management SEO: 6 advanced tactics
I thought this was a really great post about ways in which you can quite easily control the search results for your name or brand? If you're worried about the SERPS for your name, you'll find this pretty interesting...
SEO For Huge Sites: An Interview With Dennis Goedegebuure of eBay
Doing SEO for ebay must be a massive untertaking and constantly challenging. If you've ever wandered what it would be like to be thrown into such a job, then check out this video interview
15+ Tips to Speed Up Your Website, and Optimize Your Code!
Some great, well laid out advice for speeding up your websites page load time. As we all know, the search engines are placing more and more importance on speed. These tips are sure to help you in your quest for the record loading time!
I'm going to change my tack a little bit with this blog, instead of writing articles and posting them, I've chosen to take a more general approach and comment more on the 'goings on' of the SEO world.
I've read some great posts recently so thought I'd share a few of them with you. They all offer some great advice that can be implemented fairly easily, so take a look and enjoy:
Reputation Management SEO: 6 advanced tactics
I thought this was a really great post about ways in which you can quite easily control the search results for your name or brand? If you're worried about the SERPS for your name, you'll find this pretty interesting...
SEO For Huge Sites: An Interview With Dennis Goedegebuure of eBay
Doing SEO for ebay must be a massive untertaking and constantly challenging. If you've ever wandered what it would be like to be thrown into such a job, then check out this video interview
15+ Tips to Speed Up Your Website, and Optimize Your Code!
Some great, well laid out advice for speeding up your websites page load time. As we all know, the search engines are placing more and more importance on speed. These tips are sure to help you in your quest for the record loading time!
Friday, 2 July 2010
SEO: Top Five Questions
Communication between client and service provider is a vital part in the success of any campaign, or indeed any business relationship at all. Due to the nature of SEO, many clients will have quite a lot of questions and these should be dealt with right at the early stages, before a campaign has even begun. It is really important that clients are made aware of the fact that it can take a long time to see results, especially for new domains. It is also highly advisable to discuss suitable measurements of a campaigns success, for example traffic numbers, search engine results and so on. These will all have to be tailored to the work in question and every job will have its own individual needs and challenges. This article aims to point out five common questions, and how you can deal with them effectively.
1. Why Don’t I Have More Traffic ?
Many clients simply don’t know what they can expect with regards to traffic numbers. This is no fault of their own, but sometimes they can be disappointed by the traffic they receive from seemingly good search engine positions. Traffic estimates should be based on search volume and it’s important to clearly explain the huge difference in click through rate between a number one position and a number four position.
2. Why Don’t I Appear For This Keyword or That Keyword?
When clients first engage in SEO activities, it must be clearly explained that in order to even begin to rank well for certain keywords, each page must effectively target its own keyword. If you try to focus a page on too many different keywords, it will dilute the message and leave the search engines confused as to what the page in question is talking about. Therefore, unless you have a large website, there is a limit to how many keywords you can expect to rank well for.
3. My Local Directory Listing Is Outranking Me, Why Is This?
This is a very common problem for small and new websites. Quite often when a search is carried out for a chosen keyword, not only will you see your website come up, you will also see your directory listings appear. Sometimes the directory listings will actually outrank you. This is down to the fact that the directory probably has a lot more authority than you, and work will have to be done to boost the importance of your website above that of your page on the said directory. You could also try changing your directory listing to reduce its competitiveness.
4. How Long Do I Have To Wait?
Probably the biggest question of all, how long will it take and how long will I have to pay you for? This is really important to clear up right at the beginning of any work. You have to explain that it will take time for your work to bear results. Honesty really is the best policy here. I would recommend preparing a client for anywhere between at least six to twelve months with a thorough check of progress being carried out every three months.
5. How Will Doing More Help
This is a big one, especially if you are not getting the results as quickly as you may have expected. You may be going back to client several months down the line and suggesting yet more site improvements or link building efforts. Marketing on the internet is an ongoing process and the best results always come from the long term approach. If results aren’t going so well it may mean you have to revisit some of the website structure and address any technical issues that may be causing issues. Explain the from the offset and you should avoid digging yourself into any unnecessary holes.
1. Why Don’t I Have More Traffic ?
Many clients simply don’t know what they can expect with regards to traffic numbers. This is no fault of their own, but sometimes they can be disappointed by the traffic they receive from seemingly good search engine positions. Traffic estimates should be based on search volume and it’s important to clearly explain the huge difference in click through rate between a number one position and a number four position.
2. Why Don’t I Appear For This Keyword or That Keyword?
When clients first engage in SEO activities, it must be clearly explained that in order to even begin to rank well for certain keywords, each page must effectively target its own keyword. If you try to focus a page on too many different keywords, it will dilute the message and leave the search engines confused as to what the page in question is talking about. Therefore, unless you have a large website, there is a limit to how many keywords you can expect to rank well for.
3. My Local Directory Listing Is Outranking Me, Why Is This?
This is a very common problem for small and new websites. Quite often when a search is carried out for a chosen keyword, not only will you see your website come up, you will also see your directory listings appear. Sometimes the directory listings will actually outrank you. This is down to the fact that the directory probably has a lot more authority than you, and work will have to be done to boost the importance of your website above that of your page on the said directory. You could also try changing your directory listing to reduce its competitiveness.
4. How Long Do I Have To Wait?
Probably the biggest question of all, how long will it take and how long will I have to pay you for? This is really important to clear up right at the beginning of any work. You have to explain that it will take time for your work to bear results. Honesty really is the best policy here. I would recommend preparing a client for anywhere between at least six to twelve months with a thorough check of progress being carried out every three months.
5. How Will Doing More Help
This is a big one, especially if you are not getting the results as quickly as you may have expected. You may be going back to client several months down the line and suggesting yet more site improvements or link building efforts. Marketing on the internet is an ongoing process and the best results always come from the long term approach. If results aren’t going so well it may mean you have to revisit some of the website structure and address any technical issues that may be causing issues. Explain the from the offset and you should avoid digging yourself into any unnecessary holes.
Thursday, 17 June 2010
SEO Watch List
People can often feel overwhelmed when conducting an SEO campaign. It feels like there’s a huge amount of information and data that you need to keep an eye on. This is true, however if you are limited on time there are a few things that you should make sure you check regularly, and if this is all you can do then you should still be able to get a good sense of what is going on. When keeping checks on SEO work, it is important that you think of the main points; how much traffic am I getting, and how many people are talking about the website. If you can answer these questions then you should be heading along the right lines.
Traffic
Keeping an eye of traffic is perhaps the single most important aspect. After all, if someone is paying you to carry out an SEO campaign, then they are effectively paying you to help increase their traffic. Logging into Google Analytics on a daily basis is well worth the effort, even if it’s just for a quick glance over the figures. I would also recommend that you set at least a little bit of time aside to look into traffic patterns. Try and monitor how long people are spending on your website, how high or low is your bounce rate and what your most popular pages are. If you can get a handle on these figures you will start to get a good idea of how your visitors see and use your website, and changes can be made when necessary....without having to rely on guess work.
Traffic Sources and Links
Undoubtedly, in some shape or form you will be trying to increase the number of links pointing to your website, and get more people talking about your business or online project. Checking the traffic sources will help identify which links are providing the most value and give you a good marker with which to measure your success. Checking the number of inbound links is also a good way of keeping tabs on your campaign. Services such as Yahoo’s site explorer will indentify any inbound links you have coming in. The numbers published are not 100% accurate and you will find they vary somewhat, however it’s still worth checking to see how well your content is spreading. Not everyone will let you know if your content or story has been published, so this is also a very good method of seeing who has published any content or news stories you may be distributing.
Ranks
The number one goal of any SEO campaign is to increase your ranks on the search engines. Results should be checked regularly and it’s recommended to use a spreadsheet with month by month results. You will find that some keywords jump around a little, this is perfectly normal and is nothing to be worried about. Google personalise search results which does make tracking your ranks harder, but if you take the long term approach and compare results over three month periods you will get a good idea of what’s going on. Just don’t fall into the trap of checking daily and getting worried when certain results slip or even disappear...it happens!
Traffic
Keeping an eye of traffic is perhaps the single most important aspect. After all, if someone is paying you to carry out an SEO campaign, then they are effectively paying you to help increase their traffic. Logging into Google Analytics on a daily basis is well worth the effort, even if it’s just for a quick glance over the figures. I would also recommend that you set at least a little bit of time aside to look into traffic patterns. Try and monitor how long people are spending on your website, how high or low is your bounce rate and what your most popular pages are. If you can get a handle on these figures you will start to get a good idea of how your visitors see and use your website, and changes can be made when necessary....without having to rely on guess work.
Traffic Sources and Links
Undoubtedly, in some shape or form you will be trying to increase the number of links pointing to your website, and get more people talking about your business or online project. Checking the traffic sources will help identify which links are providing the most value and give you a good marker with which to measure your success. Checking the number of inbound links is also a good way of keeping tabs on your campaign. Services such as Yahoo’s site explorer will indentify any inbound links you have coming in. The numbers published are not 100% accurate and you will find they vary somewhat, however it’s still worth checking to see how well your content is spreading. Not everyone will let you know if your content or story has been published, so this is also a very good method of seeing who has published any content or news stories you may be distributing.
Ranks
The number one goal of any SEO campaign is to increase your ranks on the search engines. Results should be checked regularly and it’s recommended to use a spreadsheet with month by month results. You will find that some keywords jump around a little, this is perfectly normal and is nothing to be worried about. Google personalise search results which does make tracking your ranks harder, but if you take the long term approach and compare results over three month periods you will get a good idea of what’s going on. Just don’t fall into the trap of checking daily and getting worried when certain results slip or even disappear...it happens!
Friday, 4 June 2010
Google Analytics For Beginners
As a freelance SEO consultant I always set my clients up with a Google Analytics account. This enables them to keep track of what progress is being made and adds transparency to the relationship. However, there are usually a fair amount of questions directed my way as how to understand the data, and what exactly they should be looking for or expecting to see. The main aim of using Google Analytics is to keep an eye on traffic. Not only does this mean seeing how many visitors your site is getting, but also seeing where they are coming from both in the geographical sense, and via other sites on the internet. This article goes through a few basic things can help someone who is unfamiliar to Google Analytics.
The Dashboard
This is the first page that you will see when you enter the report. It is there to give you an overview on what is going on, and typically includes; Visitor Numbers, Site Usage Data, Unique Visitor Numbers, Map Overlay and Page View details. Any of these modules can be removed and if you’d prefer to include something else in the dashboard e.g Keyword data then you can. To add another module to the dashboard, simply view the report in question and click ‘add to dashboard’.
Visitors Vs Unique Visitors
At the top of the dashboard you should see a large line graph spanning the page. This graph shows you the amount of visitors or ‘hits’ your website has received. The standard display shows data from the previous month, with points for each day. This can be changed to weekly or whatever you’d prefer to see. You can also go back in time to compare results against another period. This data shows the total number of visits and will include yours. The real number you should be interested in is the ‘Unique Visitors’. To get a more accurate view, you can block certain IP addresses from the report.
Traffic Sources
For anyone involved in SEO this is the really interesting bit. It is crucial for any online marketing that you can keep an eye on where the traffic is coming from, and also see what keywords are sending traffic from the search engines. If you are fortunate to spot a dramatic spike in traffic numbers this report will identify where they have come from. With regards to keywords, you can go into quite a lot of detail and find out not only which phrases send you the most traffic, but which ones are actually converting into customers. This is vital if you are engaging in pay per click advertising when each click is costing you money.
Site Usage
This is the bit that confuses most people. Once you understand what’s being reported you will find this information extremely useful as it lays out a very detailed report on what people are looking at, and for how long. The three most important things you should be checking are; Bounce Rate, Average Page Views and Average Time On Site. If your site is doing well, you should expect to see a low bounce rate, a relatively high average page view and again a relatively high average time on site (over 2-3 mins is good!). For poor performing websites the bounce rate is often very high, i.e people are clicking on the website and ‘bouncing’ straight off.
The Dashboard
This is the first page that you will see when you enter the report. It is there to give you an overview on what is going on, and typically includes; Visitor Numbers, Site Usage Data, Unique Visitor Numbers, Map Overlay and Page View details. Any of these modules can be removed and if you’d prefer to include something else in the dashboard e.g Keyword data then you can. To add another module to the dashboard, simply view the report in question and click ‘add to dashboard’.
Visitors Vs Unique Visitors
At the top of the dashboard you should see a large line graph spanning the page. This graph shows you the amount of visitors or ‘hits’ your website has received. The standard display shows data from the previous month, with points for each day. This can be changed to weekly or whatever you’d prefer to see. You can also go back in time to compare results against another period. This data shows the total number of visits and will include yours. The real number you should be interested in is the ‘Unique Visitors’. To get a more accurate view, you can block certain IP addresses from the report.
Traffic Sources
For anyone involved in SEO this is the really interesting bit. It is crucial for any online marketing that you can keep an eye on where the traffic is coming from, and also see what keywords are sending traffic from the search engines. If you are fortunate to spot a dramatic spike in traffic numbers this report will identify where they have come from. With regards to keywords, you can go into quite a lot of detail and find out not only which phrases send you the most traffic, but which ones are actually converting into customers. This is vital if you are engaging in pay per click advertising when each click is costing you money.
Site Usage
This is the bit that confuses most people. Once you understand what’s being reported you will find this information extremely useful as it lays out a very detailed report on what people are looking at, and for how long. The three most important things you should be checking are; Bounce Rate, Average Page Views and Average Time On Site. If your site is doing well, you should expect to see a low bounce rate, a relatively high average page view and again a relatively high average time on site (over 2-3 mins is good!). For poor performing websites the bounce rate is often very high, i.e people are clicking on the website and ‘bouncing’ straight off.
Friday, 21 May 2010
Common SEO Mistakes
Getting good results in the search engines can be tricky business. However, many people make common mistakes that hinder an otherwise good campaign. By sticking to and following some basic principals, you should be able to see your rankings improve. There is obviously a lot more to it than this, but below we have laid out three common mistakes that people make, and with each one comes an explanation of how to try and fix the errors.
For the purpose of this article, we are using a fictional website called dogwalking.com, trying to target the pages for keywords such as ‘dog walkers’ etc.
Bad Meta Data
Getting the meta data right is one of the first things you should focus on when optimising a website. The titles, descriptions, and tags should all be clear and concise and inclusive of you main keywords. Many new webmaster simply aren’t aware of this, and the most common mistake is to just use the website title, or page title with no thought to what keywords should be used.
The picture above shows the common mistake of simply repeating the website title as a meta title. This adds no focus to each page and leaves the search engines confused as to what the page is talking about. Duplicate titles are also bad for the very same reason. This can easily be resolved by using keywords within the titles, and making sure nothing is repeated. See the picture below for a good example:
Broken Links
Links throughout the site act as the passageway in which the search engine’s spiders crawl your website. Therefore it is crucial that there are no broken links that could negatively affect this process. Having broken links will basically mean that the spiders hit ‘dead ends’, and if this happens too often then they just won’t be able to get to the information you need them to.
Always ensure that your website is tidy, and that your sitemaps are up to date. If content is changed or replaced, or new pages added, make sure these are linked to correctly and that there are no dead links pointing at the old content.
Wrong Anchor Text
Anchor text is extremely important in telling the search engines how much authority your website has and in what area this should be counted for. The text that displays a link will give reference to what the linked to website is about. If the link is coming from an authoritative website, then it’s crucial that the search engines are instructed clearly via the use of anchor text. This can have a really strong effect on rankings, and below are two examples to illustrate the point:
Bad anchor text example
Good anchor text example
For the purpose of this article, we are using a fictional website called dogwalking.com, trying to target the pages for keywords such as ‘dog walkers’ etc.
Bad Meta Data
Getting the meta data right is one of the first things you should focus on when optimising a website. The titles, descriptions, and tags should all be clear and concise and inclusive of you main keywords. Many new webmaster simply aren’t aware of this, and the most common mistake is to just use the website title, or page title with no thought to what keywords should be used.
The picture above shows the common mistake of simply repeating the website title as a meta title. This adds no focus to each page and leaves the search engines confused as to what the page is talking about. Duplicate titles are also bad for the very same reason. This can easily be resolved by using keywords within the titles, and making sure nothing is repeated. See the picture below for a good example:
Broken Links
Links throughout the site act as the passageway in which the search engine’s spiders crawl your website. Therefore it is crucial that there are no broken links that could negatively affect this process. Having broken links will basically mean that the spiders hit ‘dead ends’, and if this happens too often then they just won’t be able to get to the information you need them to.
Always ensure that your website is tidy, and that your sitemaps are up to date. If content is changed or replaced, or new pages added, make sure these are linked to correctly and that there are no dead links pointing at the old content.
Wrong Anchor Text
Anchor text is extremely important in telling the search engines how much authority your website has and in what area this should be counted for. The text that displays a link will give reference to what the linked to website is about. If the link is coming from an authoritative website, then it’s crucial that the search engines are instructed clearly via the use of anchor text. This can have a really strong effect on rankings, and below are two examples to illustrate the point:
Bad anchor text example
Good anchor text example
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