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
Thursday, 13 May 2010
Simple Steps To Increasing Traffic
Nowadays every man and his dog have a website. However, having a website with a good volume of traffic is a completely different kettle of fish. About 50% of websites that get set up only ever get seen by friends and family…so how can you go about making sure that you website reaches a wider audience? If you don’t have a large budget for advertising then fear not, with a little bit of hard work and a long-term approach you should be able to build your traffic numbers up substantially. Of course, you must first make sure that your website serves a purpose, that it gives your visitors what they are looking for in exactly the way they want it. Too many people simply set up a website and leave it at that. The best websites are constantly tweaked and updated to fit in with the needs of the audience.
Blogs and Content
One of the most common mistakes people make is never to update their websites with fresh, new and interesting content. Why would anyone return to look at a website that is always the same? Blogs offer an ideal opportunity to update your website with regular content, and a well written blog can keep people coming back time and time again. A good blog should contain a mix of news, advice and discussions all aimed at what you believe your website visitors want and need. Also try to add content to your website, and continuously be thinking of inventive ways in which you can help your users. Videos, pictures and other media make a website much more interesting so try to involve these elements into your new content.
Social Media
Website such as Facebook, Twitter and Myspace have revolutionised the internet. And have given everyone the opportunity to reach a wider audience. Since their inception many people have found success via their vast audience; rock bands have been discovered and business have made huge sums of money. So, what’s the secret? Again, it’s all about putting in regular work and trying to be interesting to try and incentivise people to join your groups or view your pages. If your social media content is useful and interesting, your online community should grow and thus the traffic to your main site should also grow. Remember, keep it useful and interesting….and DON’T SPAM!!!
Email Newsletters
Email newsletters are one of the best ways in which to keep your customers returning. The key to running a successful website is to have a good link between you and your customers and or website visitors. Many people over use this and send out way too many emails with the effect of loosing custom, so make sure you keep your news to the necessary bits of information only. Most people find that a monthly news letter, plus the odd one-off special offer works quite well. Email marketing gives you’re the perfect opportunity to shout about special offers and deals. These can be real incentives for your customers so make sure you always make the most of it.
Blogs and Content
One of the most common mistakes people make is never to update their websites with fresh, new and interesting content. Why would anyone return to look at a website that is always the same? Blogs offer an ideal opportunity to update your website with regular content, and a well written blog can keep people coming back time and time again. A good blog should contain a mix of news, advice and discussions all aimed at what you believe your website visitors want and need. Also try to add content to your website, and continuously be thinking of inventive ways in which you can help your users. Videos, pictures and other media make a website much more interesting so try to involve these elements into your new content.
Social Media
Website such as Facebook, Twitter and Myspace have revolutionised the internet. And have given everyone the opportunity to reach a wider audience. Since their inception many people have found success via their vast audience; rock bands have been discovered and business have made huge sums of money. So, what’s the secret? Again, it’s all about putting in regular work and trying to be interesting to try and incentivise people to join your groups or view your pages. If your social media content is useful and interesting, your online community should grow and thus the traffic to your main site should also grow. Remember, keep it useful and interesting….and DON’T SPAM!!!
Email Newsletters
Email newsletters are one of the best ways in which to keep your customers returning. The key to running a successful website is to have a good link between you and your customers and or website visitors. Many people over use this and send out way too many emails with the effect of loosing custom, so make sure you keep your news to the necessary bits of information only. Most people find that a monthly news letter, plus the odd one-off special offer works quite well. Email marketing gives you’re the perfect opportunity to shout about special offers and deals. These can be real incentives for your customers so make sure you always make the most of it.
Saturday, 8 May 2010
Using Traffic To Help Gain Links
If you’re fortunate enough to have a website with a good level of regular traffic, you may be wondering about how you can harness its potential. Most websites that are built never get to the stage where substantial traffic is coming through, so if you’ve made it this far...well done! As with most things, success breeds success, so if you are getting some good traffic there are always ways in which you can use this to create more. Finding out how to do this is the real gem of internet marketing and SEO and is where the real creative side of the industry comes into play. This article discusses a few ideas as to how you can use your traffic to build links for you.
Content
Creating useful and interesting content is where everyone should start. By coming up with some areas on your website that your visitors will find useful, you should be creating things that people will talk about. ‘Spreading the word’ on the internet usually translates into links, so the more interesting and useful content you can come up with...the more links you should earn. Ideas could include fact sheets, FAQ’s, video tutorials; or anything that will aid your users purpose.
Affiliate Schemes
Affiliate schemes are fantastic as they offer one way links, and also an opportunity for both parties to make money. If you run an online store the idea is simple; if someone places a link on their website back to yours, and in turn a ‘click’ converts to a sale, the website publisher who placed the link will earn a percentage of the sale. Obviously, there is a bit of setting up to do to make sure the ‘clicks’ can be tracked, but once set up it’s win win for both parties. The online shop boosts it’s sales with more advertising, and the website publisher can now earn money from their website.
Social Media
Getting your website traffic involved with you social media sites can be a great way of encouraging return business, and also attracting new traffic. Social media sites such as twitter and facebook can allow you to keep in touch on a regular basis with your customer base, in a non invasive and interesting way. The world of social media is one where things can spread quickly, and if you can build up a vibrant ‘community’ you are sure to attract more business and more links at the same time.
Blogs
Having a regularly updated and interesting blog can be another great way of attracting both return visits and new traffic. The aim is to provide useful bits of information that your users will find interesting. Once you have built up an audience, RSS feeds and other such tools can keep them updated and word should start to spread...and in turn the links should build up. Remember though, make sure it’s interesting and aimed at what your users want!
Content
Creating useful and interesting content is where everyone should start. By coming up with some areas on your website that your visitors will find useful, you should be creating things that people will talk about. ‘Spreading the word’ on the internet usually translates into links, so the more interesting and useful content you can come up with...the more links you should earn. Ideas could include fact sheets, FAQ’s, video tutorials; or anything that will aid your users purpose.
Affiliate Schemes
Affiliate schemes are fantastic as they offer one way links, and also an opportunity for both parties to make money. If you run an online store the idea is simple; if someone places a link on their website back to yours, and in turn a ‘click’ converts to a sale, the website publisher who placed the link will earn a percentage of the sale. Obviously, there is a bit of setting up to do to make sure the ‘clicks’ can be tracked, but once set up it’s win win for both parties. The online shop boosts it’s sales with more advertising, and the website publisher can now earn money from their website.
Social Media
Getting your website traffic involved with you social media sites can be a great way of encouraging return business, and also attracting new traffic. Social media sites such as twitter and facebook can allow you to keep in touch on a regular basis with your customer base, in a non invasive and interesting way. The world of social media is one where things can spread quickly, and if you can build up a vibrant ‘community’ you are sure to attract more business and more links at the same time.
Blogs
Having a regularly updated and interesting blog can be another great way of attracting both return visits and new traffic. The aim is to provide useful bits of information that your users will find interesting. Once you have built up an audience, RSS feeds and other such tools can keep them updated and word should start to spread...and in turn the links should build up. Remember though, make sure it’s interesting and aimed at what your users want!
Thursday, 29 April 2010
Keyword Strategy
When setting up an SEO campaign, keyword research and keyword choice should be at the centre of your focus. It’s the keywords that everything centres around, and the choice of what to aim at will ultimately depict the success and subsequent traffic levels of any search engine marketing. Every sector in any business will have hundreds of potential keywords and phrase variations that could be chosen, all with varying levels of search traffic and competition. Therefore, the biggest decision to make is whether to aim for high traffic with high competition or go for less competitive phrases and sacrifice potential traffic volumes.
High Traffic/High Competition
Going for keywords with high competition and high traffic levels is definitely a long term approach for any website. If the website and domain are both new, this can sometimes be unrealistic however services such as Google Adwords can be used effectively to launch into a competitive market should the budget allow this. The difficulty with highly competitive keywords is that so many website will be trying to be seen for these particular search results. Quite often, the websites at the top will have been around for a long time, and as a result will probably have very high domain authority. To get anywhere near them will take considerable effort and time. However, if you can achieve good results for competitive keywords, the results are almost certain to bring you a high amount of very good traffic. If you have a website that has been around for a number of years and already has lots of regular high quality links coming in, your chances are improved somewhat and going for high traffic keywords is definitely more of a realistic approach. This doesn’t mean the work is already done, it just means you have a better base from which to start.
Less Competitive Keywords
This option is a lot more popular, especially for brand new websites and also for SEO projects where the budget may be limited. Many websites survive quite nicely on picking up traffic from several smaller keywords where their pages have a strong chance of coming up high in the listings. The other benefit to this is that often the less competitive keywords represent a ‘niche’ and therefore the traffic that they generate can be a lot more focused and likely to convert into sales or new leads. Another very popular option within the less competitive keywords is to focus in on geographical areas. Good results using Google Maps can be relatively easy to achieve to go alongside a good result in the organic listings below. If you operate an online shop, you will probably find that you can pick up a substantial amount of traffic from people searching for specific items. For this reason it is really important that every product page is optimised towards the appropriate keyword or product title.
To summarise, it’s really important when making this decision to be realistic about the chances of success. You need to ask yourself about your budget and time and try to weigh up what’s best for your particular circumstance.
High Traffic/High Competition
Going for keywords with high competition and high traffic levels is definitely a long term approach for any website. If the website and domain are both new, this can sometimes be unrealistic however services such as Google Adwords can be used effectively to launch into a competitive market should the budget allow this. The difficulty with highly competitive keywords is that so many website will be trying to be seen for these particular search results. Quite often, the websites at the top will have been around for a long time, and as a result will probably have very high domain authority. To get anywhere near them will take considerable effort and time. However, if you can achieve good results for competitive keywords, the results are almost certain to bring you a high amount of very good traffic. If you have a website that has been around for a number of years and already has lots of regular high quality links coming in, your chances are improved somewhat and going for high traffic keywords is definitely more of a realistic approach. This doesn’t mean the work is already done, it just means you have a better base from which to start.
Less Competitive Keywords
This option is a lot more popular, especially for brand new websites and also for SEO projects where the budget may be limited. Many websites survive quite nicely on picking up traffic from several smaller keywords where their pages have a strong chance of coming up high in the listings. The other benefit to this is that often the less competitive keywords represent a ‘niche’ and therefore the traffic that they generate can be a lot more focused and likely to convert into sales or new leads. Another very popular option within the less competitive keywords is to focus in on geographical areas. Good results using Google Maps can be relatively easy to achieve to go alongside a good result in the organic listings below. If you operate an online shop, you will probably find that you can pick up a substantial amount of traffic from people searching for specific items. For this reason it is really important that every product page is optimised towards the appropriate keyword or product title.
To summarise, it’s really important when making this decision to be realistic about the chances of success. You need to ask yourself about your budget and time and try to weigh up what’s best for your particular circumstance.
Thursday, 8 April 2010
Using Google’s Extra Search Functions
When coming up with an SEO strategy, the biggest aim of all is to appear at the top of the organic listings for the keywords you have chosen. However, depending on competition this can take a long time to achieve and sometimes you just may never reach the top. However, there is plenty of traffic you can pick up from smaller searches, and also by using Google’s other functions. This article gives you a few tips on how you can use Google’s other features to increase your traffic and also increase your visibility on the search engines.
Maps
Google maps is an excellent source of traffic, particularly business that rely on local trade such as restaurants and tradesmen. Most people will have noticed that when you do a local search on Google, the maps often appear and the top with a handful of businesses listed next to them. These listing carry a lot of weight with potential customers, and having your website listed next to the map is a great source of extra traffic. Depending on the search term, this can be relatively easy to achieve and often websites will appear here long before they appear in the actual listings themselves, thus giving a great opportunity to pick up some local business.
Images
Google’s image feature works roughly in the same way as the natural listings. When someone searches for a term, for example ‘puppies’, Google will find as many images of puppies as possible and display them on the image page of the results. To view these results, simply click on the ‘image’ tab once you have entered a keyword. The benefit here is that when someone clicks on your image in the results, they are sent to where the image is hosted on your website. There are many theories as to how you can optimise your images to appear high in the listings, but the first step is to make sure you efficiently tag and name is each image using appropriate keywords.
Products
Google products is a must use opportunity for anyone selling anything on the internet. A small selection of products will appear in the natural listings, however you can see the full extent of the service by clicking on the ‘shopping’ tab at the top. As with the image functions, if someone clicks on your product, they will be sent to your website to continue shopping (exactly what you want as an online store, an SEO dream!!). Online merchants can submit products to the service for free, and although this can take quite a bit of effort if you have lots of products, the results are well worth the time given. To stand a good chance of being seen, products must be tagged and described accurately.
Videos
As with the features discussed above, Google will show a selection of relevant videos in the search results, and then more under the ‘videos’ tab. As a website owner, this is where deciding to host your video on your website (not just YouTube) will pay dividends. When a search engine user clicks on a video result, they are taken to the hosting site. If the video has been posted on YouTube, it is likely that they will be taken there, instead of being directed to your website. This can be a tough choice to make as it is likely that your video will get many more views if posted on YouTube. For this reason, the purpose of each video must be carefully considered in order to get the results you require.
Maps
Google maps is an excellent source of traffic, particularly business that rely on local trade such as restaurants and tradesmen. Most people will have noticed that when you do a local search on Google, the maps often appear and the top with a handful of businesses listed next to them. These listing carry a lot of weight with potential customers, and having your website listed next to the map is a great source of extra traffic. Depending on the search term, this can be relatively easy to achieve and often websites will appear here long before they appear in the actual listings themselves, thus giving a great opportunity to pick up some local business.
Images
Google’s image feature works roughly in the same way as the natural listings. When someone searches for a term, for example ‘puppies’, Google will find as many images of puppies as possible and display them on the image page of the results. To view these results, simply click on the ‘image’ tab once you have entered a keyword. The benefit here is that when someone clicks on your image in the results, they are sent to where the image is hosted on your website. There are many theories as to how you can optimise your images to appear high in the listings, but the first step is to make sure you efficiently tag and name is each image using appropriate keywords.
Products
Google products is a must use opportunity for anyone selling anything on the internet. A small selection of products will appear in the natural listings, however you can see the full extent of the service by clicking on the ‘shopping’ tab at the top. As with the image functions, if someone clicks on your product, they will be sent to your website to continue shopping (exactly what you want as an online store, an SEO dream!!). Online merchants can submit products to the service for free, and although this can take quite a bit of effort if you have lots of products, the results are well worth the time given. To stand a good chance of being seen, products must be tagged and described accurately.
Videos
As with the features discussed above, Google will show a selection of relevant videos in the search results, and then more under the ‘videos’ tab. As a website owner, this is where deciding to host your video on your website (not just YouTube) will pay dividends. When a search engine user clicks on a video result, they are taken to the hosting site. If the video has been posted on YouTube, it is likely that they will be taken there, instead of being directed to your website. This can be a tough choice to make as it is likely that your video will get many more views if posted on YouTube. For this reason, the purpose of each video must be carefully considered in order to get the results you require.
Sunday, 28 March 2010
Tactics for Increasing Traffic
Many people who launch a website don’t realise quite how competitive the internet is. If you want to start gaining traffic, you must put in some work to start telling people that your website is live. This article gives you a few ideas that can help bring traffic to a new website, and if you use a long term approach these methods can be very successful. As with any form of marketing, building a website’s reputation takes time but even with a little bit of regular work there is no reason why you can’t start to get some good traffic numbers. Below is a list of some things that you can do for free, all you need is a little bit of regular time.
Through experience, I have found that the most effective way to use the following tactics is to sync them all up. With minimal effort your facebook fans, twitter followers, and blog readers can be fed the same information. This will also help any SEO and or link building work that is being done for your website.
Videos
Putting together a successful video campaign can result in a very high amount of traffic and exposure for your website. Video blogs and promotional videos are easy to put together and with websites such as Youtube; publishing your videos has never been easier. The biggest decision to make is whether to host, or post your videos. I would argue that doing both is the best way. Having a great video on your website can attract a good number of natural links, and posting a video on Youtube should attract traffic. I would advise that you put the full video on your website, and a shorter ‘promo’ version on Youtube. This way, anyone who watches your video on Youtube will then have a reason to visit your website.
Twitter/Facebook
Using both twitter and facebook gives you the opportunity to reach an extremely wide audience. Both can be synced up together feeding the same information out to your online friends and fans, with each site adding momentum to the other. Popular activities on these sites include fan competitions, publishing company news, promoting new content and generally growing an ‘online community’. If your content is always of a high quality, and interesting and useful to the user, your groups should grow naturally and also gain links and traffic back to your site. The most important thing is that they are updated regularly with good content; it’s not enough to just set up some profiles and hope for the best!
Blogs
Having a regularly updated, useful and interesting blog can really help your website grow with regards to returning traffic. A well composed blog can attract a following of it’s own, thus giving you traffic that you would never have otherwise benefited from. Popular ideas for blog entries could include; top ten lists, product reviews; tips; industry news or company news. Once you have published a new blog post, make sure you promote via your facebook page and your twitter account.
Through experience, I have found that the most effective way to use the following tactics is to sync them all up. With minimal effort your facebook fans, twitter followers, and blog readers can be fed the same information. This will also help any SEO and or link building work that is being done for your website.
Videos
Putting together a successful video campaign can result in a very high amount of traffic and exposure for your website. Video blogs and promotional videos are easy to put together and with websites such as Youtube; publishing your videos has never been easier. The biggest decision to make is whether to host, or post your videos. I would argue that doing both is the best way. Having a great video on your website can attract a good number of natural links, and posting a video on Youtube should attract traffic. I would advise that you put the full video on your website, and a shorter ‘promo’ version on Youtube. This way, anyone who watches your video on Youtube will then have a reason to visit your website.
Twitter/Facebook
Using both twitter and facebook gives you the opportunity to reach an extremely wide audience. Both can be synced up together feeding the same information out to your online friends and fans, with each site adding momentum to the other. Popular activities on these sites include fan competitions, publishing company news, promoting new content and generally growing an ‘online community’. If your content is always of a high quality, and interesting and useful to the user, your groups should grow naturally and also gain links and traffic back to your site. The most important thing is that they are updated regularly with good content; it’s not enough to just set up some profiles and hope for the best!
Blogs
Having a regularly updated, useful and interesting blog can really help your website grow with regards to returning traffic. A well composed blog can attract a following of it’s own, thus giving you traffic that you would never have otherwise benefited from. Popular ideas for blog entries could include; top ten lists, product reviews; tips; industry news or company news. Once you have published a new blog post, make sure you promote via your facebook page and your twitter account.
Friday, 19 March 2010
Improving Website Usability
No matter how much effort you put into SEO and online marketing, your website must be user friendly in order to get the most out of your new traffic. In addition to this, having a website that aids the user in their needs will also help the SEO process as great content will always attract natural links. Therefore, anyone undertaking SEO work should be aware of website usability and try to ensure that some basic measures are put in place.
Window Of Opportunity
So many people fall into the trap of designing their website to display what they want to display, and not what their target users are looking for. If you look at any analytical software you will see that most traffic from the search engines will only stick around for about 15 seconds; unless of course they find exactly what they are looking for. This is a very small window of opportunity and needs to be carefully thought through to gain success.
Research
As with any other type of SEO work, you should always start with some keyword research. This will show you exactly what your potential visitors will be looking for, and help you to identify what words and phrases they will need to see on your website. When conducting your research, think long and hard about exactly what it is you’re offering on your website. If you have a website offering ‘luxury airport pick ups’, titles such as ‘airport pick ups’ might be too vague. Use ‘luxury airport pick ups’ and you know this will precisely target the market you are looking for.
Content
Writing content for your website can be quite hard from an insider’s perspective. It’s all too easy to waffle on and on, after all you know your business better than anyone else. It’s always advisable to have a third party check over your content to make sure the message gets across quick enough. Remember, give your users exactly the information they want and need; nothing more, nothing less. It might help when writing content to think about the ‘four W’s’: What, Where, When, Why. Try to be as focused as possible always remembering that you only have about 15 seconds at the most to capture a potential client.
Navigation
Once you have your traffic hooked into your website, it is vital that they can navigate their way through the website in a clear and structured manner. Many websites fail by being too complicated with different bits of information everywhere. Drawing out a plan will help you to decide on the layout of the website from the user’s perspective. Be as ruthless as possible in your approach, if a page isn’t needed...remove it.
Website Features
You should also be thinking about a couple of features that you could have on your website that are aimed at trying to increase return visits. These features could be anything that’s helpful to the user, and they don’t have to be fancy or expensive. A simple, well written blog can keep people returning, or in a similar vein, a regularly updated news page should also do the trick. If you want to go a bit further you could offer free tools or widgets to your users, this will certainly keep traffic returning and at the same help your link building efforts.
Window Of Opportunity
So many people fall into the trap of designing their website to display what they want to display, and not what their target users are looking for. If you look at any analytical software you will see that most traffic from the search engines will only stick around for about 15 seconds; unless of course they find exactly what they are looking for. This is a very small window of opportunity and needs to be carefully thought through to gain success.
Research
As with any other type of SEO work, you should always start with some keyword research. This will show you exactly what your potential visitors will be looking for, and help you to identify what words and phrases they will need to see on your website. When conducting your research, think long and hard about exactly what it is you’re offering on your website. If you have a website offering ‘luxury airport pick ups’, titles such as ‘airport pick ups’ might be too vague. Use ‘luxury airport pick ups’ and you know this will precisely target the market you are looking for.
Content
Writing content for your website can be quite hard from an insider’s perspective. It’s all too easy to waffle on and on, after all you know your business better than anyone else. It’s always advisable to have a third party check over your content to make sure the message gets across quick enough. Remember, give your users exactly the information they want and need; nothing more, nothing less. It might help when writing content to think about the ‘four W’s’: What, Where, When, Why. Try to be as focused as possible always remembering that you only have about 15 seconds at the most to capture a potential client.
Navigation
Once you have your traffic hooked into your website, it is vital that they can navigate their way through the website in a clear and structured manner. Many websites fail by being too complicated with different bits of information everywhere. Drawing out a plan will help you to decide on the layout of the website from the user’s perspective. Be as ruthless as possible in your approach, if a page isn’t needed...remove it.
Website Features
You should also be thinking about a couple of features that you could have on your website that are aimed at trying to increase return visits. These features could be anything that’s helpful to the user, and they don’t have to be fancy or expensive. A simple, well written blog can keep people returning, or in a similar vein, a regularly updated news page should also do the trick. If you want to go a bit further you could offer free tools or widgets to your users, this will certainly keep traffic returning and at the same help your link building efforts.
Friday, 5 March 2010
Ten Link Building Tactics
Link building is a hard task and should be seen as an ongoing long term effort, not a quick sprint. The best way to go about link building is to have a solid, yet varied strategy. Read below for my top ten ways to gaining inbound links to your site:
1. Creating Interesting Content
Creating great content is the best way to gain natural links back to your site. The aim is to publish content that your website users will want to link to. The search engines love these links as they produce a really natural link profile. Your new content could be anything from videos, to articles.
2. Giving Away Free Tools
Web users love free tools. If you can create tools that can really help people go about their work, you are guaranteed links. The idea is that whenever a tool is given away, it comes complete with a link to your website. Tools could include maps, analytical software, widgets and more.
3. Free Directory Submissions
There are thousands of directories on the internet offering publishers the chance to list their websites into relevant categories. This can be an effective method of building a large amount of links, especially for new websites. However, care must be taken to ensure that the directories actually pass value with their links.
4. Paid Directory Submissions
This is a very similar tactic to the one above, however in this instance you opt to pay for links in premium positions within the directory in choice. This can be a great way of gaining traffic, and most directories will give you multiple links if you pay for premium submissions. However, it is still vital that you make sure the directory has value.
5. Social Media
Having busy and active social media profiles will give you a great outlet for promoting your website and the content within it. With social media, the aim is to create an exciting online community that will generate interest back to your website. The more interesting content you post, the more interest you get, and the more links you should achieve. This also a very good way of increasing your traffic.
6. Blogging
Setting up a blog and keeping it updated can be hard work, but eventually you should end up with a base of regular readers. If you can create an interesting blog for your industry, this should help establish you within your field and generate interest and links back to your website.
7. Blog Comments
Finding relevant blogs and commenting on them not only gives you an opportunity to leave a link, it should also get you seen within the online community. Being seen as an active member of the online community in your field should make promoting your content easier.
8. Article Writing
Writing interesting and useful articles that are relevant to your industry is an effective way to keep pushing out new content. Leaving links within the article body should mean that when someone reposts your article, they in turn give you a link. There are many websites that allow you to post your articles, all of varying quality.
9. Press Releases
If you’ve got great content, shout about it! Taking care to write a carefully constructed press release should entice journalists and bloggers to write about your website (with a link of course). Try to target journalists and bloggers who write about your industry, and also make use of news wires that can distribute your press release to thousands of writers.
10. Forum Posts
Most forums allow their users to leave a link within their signature. Try to find relevant forums within your field and get stuck in. Don’t be spammy, just try to be useful and interactive. This should also lead to gaining some traffic.
1. Creating Interesting Content
Creating great content is the best way to gain natural links back to your site. The aim is to publish content that your website users will want to link to. The search engines love these links as they produce a really natural link profile. Your new content could be anything from videos, to articles.
2. Giving Away Free Tools
Web users love free tools. If you can create tools that can really help people go about their work, you are guaranteed links. The idea is that whenever a tool is given away, it comes complete with a link to your website. Tools could include maps, analytical software, widgets and more.
3. Free Directory Submissions
There are thousands of directories on the internet offering publishers the chance to list their websites into relevant categories. This can be an effective method of building a large amount of links, especially for new websites. However, care must be taken to ensure that the directories actually pass value with their links.
4. Paid Directory Submissions
This is a very similar tactic to the one above, however in this instance you opt to pay for links in premium positions within the directory in choice. This can be a great way of gaining traffic, and most directories will give you multiple links if you pay for premium submissions. However, it is still vital that you make sure the directory has value.
5. Social Media
Having busy and active social media profiles will give you a great outlet for promoting your website and the content within it. With social media, the aim is to create an exciting online community that will generate interest back to your website. The more interesting content you post, the more interest you get, and the more links you should achieve. This also a very good way of increasing your traffic.
6. Blogging
Setting up a blog and keeping it updated can be hard work, but eventually you should end up with a base of regular readers. If you can create an interesting blog for your industry, this should help establish you within your field and generate interest and links back to your website.
7. Blog Comments
Finding relevant blogs and commenting on them not only gives you an opportunity to leave a link, it should also get you seen within the online community. Being seen as an active member of the online community in your field should make promoting your content easier.
8. Article Writing
Writing interesting and useful articles that are relevant to your industry is an effective way to keep pushing out new content. Leaving links within the article body should mean that when someone reposts your article, they in turn give you a link. There are many websites that allow you to post your articles, all of varying quality.
9. Press Releases
If you’ve got great content, shout about it! Taking care to write a carefully constructed press release should entice journalists and bloggers to write about your website (with a link of course). Try to target journalists and bloggers who write about your industry, and also make use of news wires that can distribute your press release to thousands of writers.
10. Forum Posts
Most forums allow their users to leave a link within their signature. Try to find relevant forums within your field and get stuck in. Don’t be spammy, just try to be useful and interactive. This should also lead to gaining some traffic.
Monday, 1 March 2010
Google's Page Rank
Page rank was invented by Larry Page, co-founder of Google. Page rank is intended to measure the importance of a website on the internet and is sculpted by the amount of links a page has pointing at it, and the quality of those links. It is not a measurement of how relevant a page is to a particular term...it just measures the importance of that page. Therefore, by increasing the page rank of a web page, we can increase the importance of that page. However, if the page is not relevant to the search phrase in question, it won’t show up in the results no matter how high the page rank is.
The page rank you can see displayed on the toolbar of your web browser is different to the actual page rank used by Google to calculate the results. The toolbar page rank goes from 0-10 where as the real page rank can run into the millions. The difference between the two values in unknown, however we do know that the toolbar page rank is not linear. A toolbar page rank of 6 is not twice the value of 3. An increase of 2-3 is fairly easy, whereby an increase from 4-5 would take a considerable amount more effort. From this we can’t assume that if a publisher has a website with a page rank of 5 and their competitor has a site with page rank 6, that the difference is neither large nor small. It could be that their real page rank is miles away, or maybe that they are actually quite close.
Page rank is definitely a grey area for SEO’s, and the calculation changes regulary. However it is safe to assume that the value of page rank is still vital in search engine rankings, and also that it measures the importance of a website, not the relevance. As this is the case, Link building is still of upmost importance to gaining a website higher rankings. Gaining high quality links from authoritative websites will no doubt increase your page rank and also your position in the results. It is also vital that you have a good variation of domains linking to your site. A broad link profile is always the best.
When coming up with a link building strategy, it is important that you don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Try to have a varied approach; there are many ways in which to build links. Below is a list of four approaches that could be used together to produce a healthy link profile:
1. Links from authoritative domains
Possibly the most important step. Try to identify which domains are the most ‘important’ in your field, and how you could go about striking up a relationship and gaining a link. Examples could include relevant trade bodies or education centres.
2. Directories
Submitting your site to directories is a good way of gaining links from a large amount of different domains. Be careful when paying for links, this can be a dodgy tactic, and always make sure you place your site in the most relevant category.
3. Social Media
Setting up social media profiles and optimising them can be a great way of gaining links. Avoid being spammy and try to be ‘natural’ and you should reap the benefits.
4. Blogging
Setting up and writing a good quality blog can be another great tactic. Remember content is king, so keep your blog updated and full of great information and hopefully you’ll find people will want to link to your blog.
The page rank you can see displayed on the toolbar of your web browser is different to the actual page rank used by Google to calculate the results. The toolbar page rank goes from 0-10 where as the real page rank can run into the millions. The difference between the two values in unknown, however we do know that the toolbar page rank is not linear. A toolbar page rank of 6 is not twice the value of 3. An increase of 2-3 is fairly easy, whereby an increase from 4-5 would take a considerable amount more effort. From this we can’t assume that if a publisher has a website with a page rank of 5 and their competitor has a site with page rank 6, that the difference is neither large nor small. It could be that their real page rank is miles away, or maybe that they are actually quite close.
Page rank is definitely a grey area for SEO’s, and the calculation changes regulary. However it is safe to assume that the value of page rank is still vital in search engine rankings, and also that it measures the importance of a website, not the relevance. As this is the case, Link building is still of upmost importance to gaining a website higher rankings. Gaining high quality links from authoritative websites will no doubt increase your page rank and also your position in the results. It is also vital that you have a good variation of domains linking to your site. A broad link profile is always the best.
When coming up with a link building strategy, it is important that you don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Try to have a varied approach; there are many ways in which to build links. Below is a list of four approaches that could be used together to produce a healthy link profile:
1. Links from authoritative domains
Possibly the most important step. Try to identify which domains are the most ‘important’ in your field, and how you could go about striking up a relationship and gaining a link. Examples could include relevant trade bodies or education centres.
2. Directories
Submitting your site to directories is a good way of gaining links from a large amount of different domains. Be careful when paying for links, this can be a dodgy tactic, and always make sure you place your site in the most relevant category.
3. Social Media
Setting up social media profiles and optimising them can be a great way of gaining links. Avoid being spammy and try to be ‘natural’ and you should reap the benefits.
4. Blogging
Setting up and writing a good quality blog can be another great tactic. Remember content is king, so keep your blog updated and full of great information and hopefully you’ll find people will want to link to your blog.
Monday, 22 February 2010
Keyword Implementation
By the time you get round to entering your keywords into your website, you should have conducted a good amount of research to make sure that you know what keywords to use and why you are using them. It is also vital that you target your page towards keywords that are directly related to your business and specifically what your website describes and offers the user. Choosing the wrong keywords can either result in having hardly any traffic, or more likely having a very high bounce rate (where visitors click on the website and leave immediately).
The first step is to take a good look at your website and make sure that each page has a specific purpose. Your website should be arranged so that each page describes an individual part of your business or service, this will make it easier for you to target each page with the correct keyword. Far too many people build websites and add pages to the site for the sake of adding pages. This can result in the message of the website being spread thinly across various pages and not only will that lead to SEO difficulties, anyone who has looked into website analytics will tell you that 90% of website visitors simply don’t hang around long enough to navigate through a poorly organised website. They need to get the information they are looking for straight away, or they will simply go back to Google and click on the next website. Don’t be afraid to reorganise your website, or even re-build it at this stage. Although this will take time and money; you will definitely benefit from increased productivity of the website.
Your website should by now be nice and focused, with each page targeting a different subject matter. Having conducted some keyword research, you should also know what keywords to put into what page. Targeting a page towards a keyword needs to be a focused effort with many elements of the page saying the same thing. Many people think that simply entering some meta tags will do the trick. This is certainly not the case. Let’s work through an example to explain how you can effectively target your pages. For the purpose of the example below, we will imagine that we are doing some SEO for a website that sells holidays in Greece, and that the page in question is focusing in on Corfu, and the keyword we have chosen to target the page for is ‘holidays in corfu’. We recommend putting the keyword in the following areas of the page:
Page URL:” www.exampleholidays.co.uk/holidaysincorfu”
Meta Title: “Example Holidays :: Holidays in Corfu”
Meta Description: “Example holidays; some of the finest packages available of Holidays in Corfu; Book now for early bird discount”
Meta Tags: “Holidays In Corfu, Keyword, Keyword, Keyword, Keyword, Keyword, ”
H1 Tag: “Holidays in Corfu”
Text: “Holidays in Corfu” within first 100 words
Image Tags: “Holidays in Corfu” included in tags
The first step is to take a good look at your website and make sure that each page has a specific purpose. Your website should be arranged so that each page describes an individual part of your business or service, this will make it easier for you to target each page with the correct keyword. Far too many people build websites and add pages to the site for the sake of adding pages. This can result in the message of the website being spread thinly across various pages and not only will that lead to SEO difficulties, anyone who has looked into website analytics will tell you that 90% of website visitors simply don’t hang around long enough to navigate through a poorly organised website. They need to get the information they are looking for straight away, or they will simply go back to Google and click on the next website. Don’t be afraid to reorganise your website, or even re-build it at this stage. Although this will take time and money; you will definitely benefit from increased productivity of the website.
Your website should by now be nice and focused, with each page targeting a different subject matter. Having conducted some keyword research, you should also know what keywords to put into what page. Targeting a page towards a keyword needs to be a focused effort with many elements of the page saying the same thing. Many people think that simply entering some meta tags will do the trick. This is certainly not the case. Let’s work through an example to explain how you can effectively target your pages. For the purpose of the example below, we will imagine that we are doing some SEO for a website that sells holidays in Greece, and that the page in question is focusing in on Corfu, and the keyword we have chosen to target the page for is ‘holidays in corfu’. We recommend putting the keyword in the following areas of the page:
Page URL:” www.exampleholidays.co.uk/holidaysincorfu”
Meta Title: “Example Holidays :: Holidays in Corfu”
Meta Description: “Example holidays; some of the finest packages available of Holidays in Corfu; Book now for early bird discount”
Meta Tags: “Holidays In Corfu, Keyword, Keyword, Keyword, Keyword, Keyword, ”
H1 Tag: “Holidays in Corfu”
Text: “Holidays in Corfu” within first 100 words
Image Tags: “Holidays in Corfu” included in tags
Thursday, 18 February 2010
Keyword Research
The first step of any online campaign is deciding what you want to be known for, particularly when aiming for a stronger presence on the search engines. These terms or search phrases that you wish to be seen for are called ‘keywords’. Researching and implementing these keywords into your website is crucial to the success of your website. It is vital that you look into both the search volume of each keyword and also the competition levels. By conducting a bit of research first you will gain a good understanding of how your market looks online, and also what keywords you could realistically achieve good positions for.
There are many ways you can conduct keyword research. The internet offers different tools, both free and paid for, and in addition to that there are some commands on the search engines that will also give you some clues. Free tools such as Google’s Adword’s keyword tool give you a basic look into monthly search volumes and competition levels, however it is sometimes questionable as to how accurate these figures can be. If you want to step it up a notch, you could try paying for software such as Word Tracker. Word Tracker will give you a much more thorough analysis of each word and ultimately give you a better view of the market.
For most people, using the free tools and search commands are enough to give a good idea of what keywords you should target with your website. Listed below are a few useful search commands that you could use to do a little research:
1. “In URL : ‘keyword’”
By typing this into a search engine and replacing the word ‘keyword’ with your keyword, you will get a list, and more importantly a number, of websites that are using your keyword in their URLs. This will give you a solid idea of how many websites are directly targeting your keyword.
2. “In title: ‘keyword’”
2nd most important to the url, the meta title is vital to targeting a particular keyword. By using this command you will be able to see how many websites are using your keyword in their meta titles.
3. “In text: ‘keyword”
This command will give you a really good rounded view of the market. It will produce a list of websites that are talking about your keyword.
The perfect keyword is one that has a substantial amount of traffic, yet a relatively low competition level. Of course, the keyword must be highly relevant to your website and business to ensure that any traffic that comes from the search engines is looking for exactly what you offer. You will probably find that when you start to look into keywords, by varying the phrase slightly you can find keywords with high traffic levels and low competition...this is exactly what you are looking for. Also, don’t ignore keywords with low search volumes; if these keywords are relevant to your website the traffic they could bring could be a lot higher in quality if you are targeting a niche area.
There are many ways you can conduct keyword research. The internet offers different tools, both free and paid for, and in addition to that there are some commands on the search engines that will also give you some clues. Free tools such as Google’s Adword’s keyword tool give you a basic look into monthly search volumes and competition levels, however it is sometimes questionable as to how accurate these figures can be. If you want to step it up a notch, you could try paying for software such as Word Tracker. Word Tracker will give you a much more thorough analysis of each word and ultimately give you a better view of the market.
For most people, using the free tools and search commands are enough to give a good idea of what keywords you should target with your website. Listed below are a few useful search commands that you could use to do a little research:
1. “In URL : ‘keyword’”
By typing this into a search engine and replacing the word ‘keyword’ with your keyword, you will get a list, and more importantly a number, of websites that are using your keyword in their URLs. This will give you a solid idea of how many websites are directly targeting your keyword.
2. “In title: ‘keyword’”
2nd most important to the url, the meta title is vital to targeting a particular keyword. By using this command you will be able to see how many websites are using your keyword in their meta titles.
3. “In text: ‘keyword”
This command will give you a really good rounded view of the market. It will produce a list of websites that are talking about your keyword.
The perfect keyword is one that has a substantial amount of traffic, yet a relatively low competition level. Of course, the keyword must be highly relevant to your website and business to ensure that any traffic that comes from the search engines is looking for exactly what you offer. You will probably find that when you start to look into keywords, by varying the phrase slightly you can find keywords with high traffic levels and low competition...this is exactly what you are looking for. Also, don’t ignore keywords with low search volumes; if these keywords are relevant to your website the traffic they could bring could be a lot higher in quality if you are targeting a niche area.
A Little Intro to SEO
The process of search engine optimisation (SEO) is aimed at pushing a website further up the search engines for specified searches. This can be quite a difficult and time consuming process and is definitely one that requires a certain amount of patience. SEO involves both on-site and off-site activity and one must first analyse the website in question and carefully look into options for keywords to be used. There are many companies who specialise in SEO and their prices range greatly, as do the techniques they use. At the end of the day, it’s their results that matter the most so if you are considering paying a company to engage in SEO of your behalf, first make sure you are happy with their track record.
On-Site Optimisation
On-site optimisation is as the title suggests; it involves work carried out on a website and its aim is to make a website as search engine friendly as possible and also relevant to the searches involved. Typically, the work done on a website will be both technical and content based. Search engines use complicated formulas or ‘algorhythms’ to decide upon the placement of websites within their listings, and thus there are many factors involved at this stage. Once the keywords have been chosen, the first step is to make sure that all the content on the website is focused towards the keywords, and that the meta page titles/descriptions/tags are also keyword strong. This ensures that the search engines identify your website in relation to your chosen keywords. Technically, a website must be of a high quality and that includes factors such as page validation, load times and XML site maps etc. All these things can help you earn ‘brownie’ points with the search engines and therefore increase your positioning.
Off-Site Optimisation
Off-site optimisation is focused mainly on gaining a website inbound links. A major part of any search engines algorithm is the amount of links a website has coming in. However, not only do search engines judge on the quantity of links, they also judge the quality of links. A high quality link is worth so much more than hundreds of low quality links. A high quality link is usually a link coming from a website with an old domain name and a high page ranking that is relevant to you particular line of work. Having a link as close to the home page as possible also helps the cause. When acquiring a new link, it is important that you try to make sure that the ‘anchor text’ includes the keywords for your website. ‘Anchor text’ is the text that forms the link to your website. This text helps identify to the search engines what the link is all about, and goes a long way to helping boost your websites positioning.
There is much more to it than discussed in this article, but hopefully some of the points raised can go some way to making the process of SEO clearer.
On-Site Optimisation
On-site optimisation is as the title suggests; it involves work carried out on a website and its aim is to make a website as search engine friendly as possible and also relevant to the searches involved. Typically, the work done on a website will be both technical and content based. Search engines use complicated formulas or ‘algorhythms’ to decide upon the placement of websites within their listings, and thus there are many factors involved at this stage. Once the keywords have been chosen, the first step is to make sure that all the content on the website is focused towards the keywords, and that the meta page titles/descriptions/tags are also keyword strong. This ensures that the search engines identify your website in relation to your chosen keywords. Technically, a website must be of a high quality and that includes factors such as page validation, load times and XML site maps etc. All these things can help you earn ‘brownie’ points with the search engines and therefore increase your positioning.
Off-Site Optimisation
Off-site optimisation is focused mainly on gaining a website inbound links. A major part of any search engines algorithm is the amount of links a website has coming in. However, not only do search engines judge on the quantity of links, they also judge the quality of links. A high quality link is worth so much more than hundreds of low quality links. A high quality link is usually a link coming from a website with an old domain name and a high page ranking that is relevant to you particular line of work. Having a link as close to the home page as possible also helps the cause. When acquiring a new link, it is important that you try to make sure that the ‘anchor text’ includes the keywords for your website. ‘Anchor text’ is the text that forms the link to your website. This text helps identify to the search engines what the link is all about, and goes a long way to helping boost your websites positioning.
There is much more to it than discussed in this article, but hopefully some of the points raised can go some way to making the process of SEO clearer.
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