The SEO Blog

We hear it all the time  -  “We want to get good rankings on Google, but we have no budget.”

Why is SEO always seen as an expense and not as an investment?

The mindset of marketing professionals and attitude towards SEO is, quite frankly, sometimes baffling.  Companies want to reap the rewards of getting to the top of the Search Engine Listings but they are not prepared to reward those that can help them achieve it.

Maybe SEO has a bad name.  There are many people out there that over promise and under deliver, and its true that once bitten twice shy, so maybe the good guys are suffering the bad guys mistakes.  Or maybe it genuinely is that people do not understand Search Engine Optimisation and the good it can bring to your business.

My advice to any business wanting to be successful online is to step into reality.  SEO is not a nice to have, its a necessity.   You don’t want to just exist, you want to thrive and SEO can help you to acheive that.

For an informal chat on SEO why not give us a call on 0845 838 8588 or email ian@esoftware-solutions.com

New figures just out show that the number of people using Twitter in the UK has gone through the roof over the last year.

It’s not just the public using the site either – celebrities like Barack Obama, Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand have all jumped on the bandwagon.

Market research company Nielsen Online says Twitter grew by 1,689% from February 2008 to February 2009.

That means there are now more than 1.78 million people signed on.

This time last year the social networking site only had 100,000 members.

The same figures, however, show Facebook is still far and away the leading social networking site, with 17.8 million users and steady, strong growth of 114%.

Social Networking sites are still a great way of getting your products and services out in the public domain.

I’ve recently been working on an online dating site for a client and friend of mine and it’s raised a few eyebrows.

Over the last few years I have seen adverts for paid online dating web sites on the T.V, namely Match.com and the business model they use is based on income from monthly subscribers.  The free dating model, however is something totally different.

I read an article today about a guy who is making thousands of dollars a day (literally) from running a free dating site in collaboration with Google Adsense.  So how does he do it?  If it were that easy we would all be doing it but essentially its all about knowing how to get your site seen on the search engines, which brings us back full circle to Search Engine Optimisation (or Search Engine Marketing if you will).

Without some form of SEO no site will succeed.  SEO is all about getting site visitors to you and then getting them to engage and take action on what your site has to offer.  Take one away from the other and you are treading water in quicksand.

So, in summary, find your Niche and stick to it.  Good SEO can take time but the key is not to give up – if you give up you fail.

More and more blogs are appearing everyday and knowing that there are nearly 350 million people reading blogs it’s not hard to see why.

There are many reasons to consider starting a blog, however the first thing you should do is consider why you need one.  What is your strategy and ultimate goal?  A lot of people blog to get noticed or to help promote their business or product.  Some blog just to let off steam and contribute to a community.   As with every marketing strategy you need to know your goal before your start.

Blogs are a great way of connecting with your customers.  If you run an Internet business then the chances are that your customers don’t know you from Adam, so Blogging provides an outlet for you to make a personal connection with them.  It also gives them the opportunity to make comments to your posts so you know how they feel about certain things.
In turn this helps customers and helps your business, because you are being provided with valuable feedback.

A big factor in setting up is a blog is the cost.  They are really cheap to startup and many blogging platforms, such as WordPress are free.  All you need is a domain name, some web space and a database (to store the posts in) and you are away.  Many hosting companies will provide blogs for you as a package so you don’t have to worry about the technicalties of setting it up – meaning you can contentrate on your content.

Many people blog to help increase traffic to their main web site.  Blogs provide a great way of increasing back links from relevant content.   No one knows for sure exactly what is required to get to the top spot on Google, but many SEO’s use a variety of techniques to achieve this.   The golden rule in Search Engine Optimisation is that Content is king.    Loads of quality, relevant content on the same subject will, in Googles eyes, establish you as an expert in that area.  Fresh, quirky ideas on your blog will help to increase your visitor count and therefore the quality of your backlinks increases.

There are many more reasons for you to start your own blog, be it communicating with family and friends over a long distance or using it as a diary that you want to share with the world, but its in business that they hold the real value.

An important part of any Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) campaign is to keep your web site fresh and up to date.

Consider the scenario with your car.  Would you purchase a car and just drive it, expecting it to run economically and without problems, or would you take it in for regular services to keep it tuned and oiled?  A web site is no different.

A quick check up on your site doesn’t take long.  For starters you can just check your META information, making sure it is still relative and up to date.  Secondly make sure that there are no dead links on your site.

One of my favourites is checking Google Analytics.  This tells you how your site is performing and what areas of the site possibly need a little more TLC.  Google Analytics is free, so make good use of it!

On top of that, keep checking the performance of your keywords.  Keyword trends can change so its possible that the research you did at the start of your campaign is no longer reliable.

Alexa Ranking is another good way of monitoring your sites success.    Say, for example, you own a cake shop in Manchester.  You look up your competiter and they have an Alexa score of 5,000,000 and you have an Alexa score of 90,000.  This is a pretty good indicator that they are getting alot of your potential business.  Downloading the Alexa toolbar for your browser and spreading the word about your site is definately a good way to give your site a better Alexa ranking.

Across the board, SEO experts agree that if you download the “Alexa Toolbar” and visit your website once a day, encourage friends and colleagues to download the tool bar and visit each other’s websites–that this will increase your Alexa ranking, too. It’s a simple thing to do, but don’t expect dramatic results. You can also flaunt your url in Alexa forums, but the best use of your time is simply to try to get targeted visitors to your website through standard marketing channels.

So there we have it.  It’s true that little and often is a great tonic for helping your site feature higher in the search engine positions so if you are serious about your SEO campaign then make the time to do it.

Today I came across a great article, written by Shane Richmond.

He comes up with a brilliant opening line of ” Search engine optimisation can ensure content attracts maximum web hits. And it doesn’t mean conning readers, says an online editor”.

It does seem that, although SEO has been around for a number of years that journalists are just starting to understand why it is important.

How SEO is changing journalism

If you get chance give it a good read.

Building a new website can be a difficult task, but getting it found by users is something else altogether.   By following the 5 golden key rules of SEO you should be able to acheive good search engine rankings for your site.

Find out what keywords are important to your business

The starting point for any successful search engine optimisation campaign is to start right at the beginning. Use the search engines to firstly find your competitors, secondly to look at the keywords and search terms they are organically marketing, and finally to use this information to create a list of keywords and search terms which are appropriate to your business. Once you have assembled a list the next stage is to find out if your keywords will perform at a high level. Each search engine offers tools which will help you to find out how popular a search term is. Use this information to create a definitive list, removing, adding and editing to maximise your keywords potential traffic levels.

Build your site navigation to maximise your exposure

The next stage of the Search engine optimisation process is to create a website category tree using your keyword list. Simply categorise your keyword list into groups and to split the groups into pages. Each category and page should have approximately 4-6 keywords associated to it. Use the category tree to build the navigation of your website.  You should also have a site map that clearly links to each page within your site.  The site map should link from the front page of your site so that Google can find it easily.

Target the content of your site to your market

This simple stage makes complete sense. Content is the single most important part of any successful Search engine optimisation campaign. By targeting your content to include the appropriate page and category keywords and search terms, you are enabling each of the search engines to view your sites content, understand subject matter, and list and index the page correctly under important keywords and search terms. By following this process, you will be in control of where and how your site appears within Google, Yahoo and MSN. This will help to maximise your sites exposure.

Descriptive, keyword rich, page titles and meta data

The TAGS on your page hold a key to key word prominence.  To help maximise SEO on your pages its vitally important to include your keywords in your Page Titles, Descriptions and Keywords tags.  Also make sure that your body content contains your keywords – but don’t go ‘stuffing’ crazy!  Don’t forget traditional marketing, good content with a clear sales message will increase your conversion rates.

Making every page unique

It’s very important to avoid duplicate content.  Rumours are afoot about Googles duplicate content penalty, although we don’t believe that its as stringent as once thought.  Remember, however, that the golden rule in SEO is to build your sites for your visitors and would they want to read the same content over and over?  Keep adding new pages to your site, target the pages to new markets, and make every page unique. Don’t duplicate content.

In a recent report, Hitwise said that the length of search queries has increased over the past year. Longer search queries, averaging searches of 5+ words in length, have increased 10% from January ’08 to January ’09 they noted.

Ask has an interesting interpretation of this data:

In a nutshell, users are now expecting search engines to not just index the Internet, they are expecting search engines to process the data on the Internet. Searchers don’t consider their query to be just keywords; they are starting to expect that the search engine will understand the intent of the query better. Expressing a query with intent requires more words, and the user’s investment of more words means that his or her expectations on the search engine are higher. We are clearly experiencing a transition in the way that people are using the Internet.

FAQs are relevant results to targetted searches about what your business offers. What a powerful, yet simple and overlooked concept. And considering the emphasis Google seems to be putting on brand it sounds like a can’t-miss when it comes to Search Engine Optimisation.

Any company that is serious about search engine marketing will have a blog.

Why?

A blog that is updated on a regular basis (i.e. daily) , with back links back to their main company site will always perform much better in the search engines.

So you might wonder why many companies overlook this seemingly simple form of marketing?  The answer is that the thing that blogging or writing articles will take up too much of their time!  I don’t quite understand the concept of how anyone can pass up such a valuable Search Engine Marketing practice claiming that it takes too much time – perhaps its an education issue and they don’t realise that blogging is valuable to their business.

As part of our SEO service we can create and maintain a blog for you on your behalf, with each post offering 2/3 backlinks to your main site. 

Remember, with a active Blog the Search Engines will love your web site!

Search engine optimisation is simply a must have for any web site.

If you are looking to optimise your web site you will hear about the different tools and techniques you can use to help improve your rankings.  This article describes the most popular myths going around the SEO Industry.  Whether you are planning to do your own SEO, or hire an SEO Specialist make sure you keep this list in mind.

The importance of Meta Tags

Not all Meta tags are important, or at least not as important as they once were.  There was a time when SEO was all about Meta Tags but these days the search engines prefer better content.  However, dont neglect your Meta Tags altogether, just dont focus all of your efforts on them.

Monthly submission to search engines

Many SEO companies will tell you that they will submit your web site to the search engines on a monthly basis.  This will not help your rankings.  If your SEO company are creating your backlinks on a monthly basis then the Search Engines will pick up your site through these anyway.

SEO is too expensive

Not true, and SEO should always be seen as an investment, not an expense.  With the right SEO, the right keywords and the right strategy you can expect to reclaim your costs through good search engine postioning and increased visitor traffic.

PPC is better than SEO

Some will argue this is correct until the cows come home.  As a short term strategy PPC can be better than SEO.   We don’t beleive that PPC is better than organic results.  Why?  Search Engines results are built on content and relevance and this builds up trust between the search engines and the searchers.  Searchers are now aware that anyone can buy a position on the sponsored links and look to the trusted organic results to offer web sites that are relevant to their search criteria

Optimising your sites home page

SEO is about optimising web PAGES and not web SITES.  Make sure that each individual page is optimised, not just the homepage.

Content is King

Yes, the content of your web site is important, however it is only one part of SEO.  Your efforts should be focussed on both on and off site SEO activities.

Competitive Keywords

If you are in a competitive industry then don’t give up on keywords just because they are difficult to conquer.  Stick to your SEO plan, and in time you will reap the rewards.

Guarantee SEO

There are absoultely NO guarantees with SEO.  No SEO company or consultant can offer you a guarantee of what position they can get you to in the search engines.

So there we have it.  A few myths surrounding SEO, that you are now aware of.   As always, if you have any comments or suggestions with regards to our article posts then please feel free to contribute!