The SEO Blog

It’s been a lovely weekend here in the UK, almost ‘Summer like’.  It’s been an opportunity to spend a bit of time outdoors, something us brits dont get chance to do that often!  A whole two days away from the screen explains the lack of recent activity on the blog, but I hope you find this latest post useful.

You will hear from many Search Engine Optimisation professionals, SEO Web sites and forums telling you that Blogs are a great way to create relevant back links to your web site through regular posts.  There are many free blogs out there, both hosted and available to use on your own servers.  The most popular blogging software is WordPress.

Here are some tips to help you optimise your blog posts for SEO.

1.  Use Permalinks for your URL structure.  Permalinks include the title of your blog posts in the URL (with hyphens replacing splaces).  This flags for attention when Google is crawling the site.

2. Make use of H tags in your posts.  Where you can use the Heading1, Heading2, Heading3 etc tags when writing your posts. As with any SEO content the search engines value the text in these tags and see them as an important part of ranking the page.

3. Dont stuff your blog posts with keywords.  Make your blog posts interesting and relevant.  Remember that you are writing your blog posts for humans to read.  Make them engaging – offer readers tips or advice.   Google likes human readable content!

4. Dont stuff your blog posts with links.  Typically try to use about 5-6 links, all to different pages – maybe even some to different web sites.   Your links should always be anchored on your the keywords that you are optimising you target site on.    If your blogging software allows, aways make use of the Title tag on your links and include your keywords.

5. Dont forget to register your Blog URL with the Search Engines – and also register it with Blog directories.  If you are writing good content then people will link to you, your Page Rank will increase and your outgoing links will become more valuable.

I hope you all have a good week.  If anyone has any other tips on blogging for SEO then please feel free to comment!

Google Page Rank (PR) is a measurement of relevance / popularity.  Each page in your web site will have its own ranking.

The scale of Page Rank goes from 1-10, although it is possible that your pages could have no ranking at all.  Generally this means that they havent been indexed yet.

So how do you improve your Page Rank?

The simple answer is to get good back links to your site from pages that already have a good page rank.  Each time Google links out from a page with a good PR it passes a peice of that Page Rank to the destination page.  Due to this it may be better for you to get a back link from a page with a PR of 4 that has 10 back links on it, than to get a backlink from a page with a PR of 6 with 70 back links on it.  This is because the PR is distributed across the outgoing links equally.

Building back links is an important part of any Search Engine Optimisation Campaign.  If you need help or advice on building up back links then please get in touch with UK Search Engine Optimisation Company, eSoftware Solutions

This is a very common question and it happens to the very best of websites. If you’re sure your website was previously listed in Google, then has suddenly disappeared, you’ll need to start investigating the reasons why and how you can resolve the problem.

Lets take a step by step approach and be methodical about this as it’s the only way to truly determine the blame and hopefully resolve the problem.

Step 1 – How do I check if my website is listed with Google?

First of all, visit www.google.com and type your website address into the search box, then press search. If you get a result, you’re in Google. Move on to Step 3. If not, then chances are you’ve either mispelled your domain name, so check carefully, otherwise, you’re banned. In this case, move on to Step 2.

Step 2 – Help, my site has been banned from Google

The very first thing you have to do is clean up your website. If you have any of the following issues, remove or deal with them immediately.

- Was your web server down when the Googlebot last visited?  If so, talk to your hosting company.  A good host is invaluable in terms of SEO.

- Is your web site a duplicate of another?  Duplicate websites are also dismissed. Check for your content on other peoples websites. Google may have favoured them over you.  Sometimes if you have switched over content from another URL you may also fall into this category.

- Check and remove any hidden tricks or spam. White text on white background is common. This is likely to be the main reason for being banned or dropped. Check for hidden elements, doorway pages, client sniffers sending different content to different users etc.  Dont try and trick Google – it always finds out!

- Although you can’t ulmimately control your inbound links, avoid bad neighbourhoods such as massive link farms, spammy directories full of adverts etc when seeking links.

Once you’re sure your website is clean, write an email to Google explaining your circumstances. Tell them your website is now tidy and full of important information, there are no hidden tricks employed and that you have learnt your lesson. Also provide full contact information. If you have relied on a search engine optimisation company to promote your website, it is recommended to provide Google with their information too and it helps them get a better understanding of the tricks employed and how to provide a better service.

If done correctly, Google should respond and start to include your website within a few weeks, however, be prepared to wait.

Step 3 – Why has my Google rank be dropped?

First of all, is your site new? If so, you could be trapped in the highly controversial and theoretical “Google sandbox”. Whether this really exists or not is unimportant as the symptoms most certainly do. The sandbox is like a probationary period for new sites. It can take months to climb out but if your site is under 6 months old then use this time to publish content rich information, articles and the like as well as getting some quality links from other relevant sources and directories. Be patient and keep watching results.

If your site is well established, been around a while and suddenly disappeared, then you’ll need to check your inbound links. You do this by running a character check and entering “+www.yourdomain.com” into Google, then noting the results. This isn’t the number of links Google associates with your PageRank, but the actual number of website pages that has your domain listed either by hyperlink or plain text. Write down the number of results.

Next run a link check. Enter link:www.yourdomain.com into Google and write down the results. This lists the number of sites offering value to your site that Google knows of so is very important to get as many as possible.

Analyse the results

Now, analyse the numbers. If you have no character check results, you must start getting inbound links to your website.

If you have character check results but no link check results, then the links you are getting are the wrong ones.

Download the Google Toolbar and monitor PR of the pages your links appear. There are many ways of linking to websites and those that link to you must do so properly.

Rule: Your link must be a proper hyperlink and not a redirect through an ID. No JavaScript, Flash or other such links either. Proper hyperlink or nothing at all.

Another thing to note is make sure you see the location of where the link will be placed. It must have a PageRank value. Remember the Google Toolbar. Quality and quantity equals results.

If you have character check results and link check results then basically you need more of them. Remember, quality and quantity.

OK, so you have tons of links, both character check and link check. It’s not your marketing that’s the problem, it’s the SEO side of the coin. Search engine optimisation consists of document structure and correct keyphrase placement.

Google, as do many other search engines, constantly shift the posts as to what they deem a relevant website which is why results and positions constantly move about.

This makes things extremely difficult to keep up with but it’s important to stick to certain rules to be as consistent as possible.

Google will take time to display the changes you have made so be patient. It could well be that the competition have simply squeezed you out which does happen, however you’ll know if you’ve suddenly taken a hit in the listings as it can be very immediate.

Ultimately, follow the steps laid out above, be methodical and be patient.

Search Engine Optimisation is a collective term for a range of techniques used to getting your web site to the top of the search engine results.   What are the benefits of being at the top of the Search Engine results I hear you day?  Here are a few reasons why.

·         15% off sales in Great Britain are done online.  This figure is set to grow to around 40% in the next 12 years.

·         90% of Internet users find what they are looking for by using search engines, in particular Google.  As an SEO, focus on Google is the most important due to the volume of search users and potential visitors it can bring to your Web site.

·         Over 80% of search users never make it onto the second page of search results, and around 60% don’t click on the paid (otherwise known as sponsored) links.  The key to online success it to break into the top 5 listings on Google for your chosen keywords.

Based on the above statistics its quite clear that the nearer to the top of the search engine rankings you are the greater chance of getting enquiries and therefore sales.  Internet searchers associate the top results as the better brands on the internet.

A good SEO campaign is split into three equally important stages. 

1.       The analysis and preparation

2.       The execution of the campaign

3.       Maintenance of the campaign.

Any Search Engine Optimisation campaign should always be carried out in that exact order.  The reason for this is that you create the foundation for your campaign by researching and carefully selecting performing keywords.  These keywords form the base that allows the execution of your campaign, which in a nutshell is all about optimizing your web pages and building up popularity via back links.  Once you have achieved a good ranking you need to ensure that you maintain it on a regular basis – as some might say staying at the top is harder than getting there!

Another important aspect of any SEO Campaign is to make sure that your web site is up to date and easy to navigate for your site visitors.  Does it give them the opportunity to request call backs, place orders or make enquiries?  Are your call to actions obvious or to people have to hunt around to find them?  All these items may seem like common sense but they are often over looked.  When designing any web site think about what you would expect from the web site as a site visitor. 

Think about this – before you start inviting people to your site is what you have at the moment what you want hundreds, many thousands, mainly tens of thousands of people to see?

When your house is in order and you want to start inviting people around its time to start to think about promotion and backlinks…..

Are you just starting out in Search Engine Optimisation, or maybe you just want to have a go at optimising your web site.  Take a look at the steps below to give yourself a basic ground to build on.

Firstly, think about why your need to optimise your site.  What is the purpose of getting your site to the top of the search engines.  The easy answer is because you want to increase the traffic that visits your web site, but what do you want people to do once they visit you?   Register for newsletters, buy products or services, create profiles and submit information? 

Next think about they keywords that people might use to find a web site like your own.  Once you have brain stormed a list of around 30 head on over to the Google Keyword Tool or sign up for a Wordtracker account to see just how often these search terms are used and how competitive they are.

Once you have chosen your keywords use them to conduct a Google search and make a note of your competiton.  These sites will be your benchmark in terms of what you want to acheive.

Then you need to optimise the pages of your web site.  It’s important that you understand that you are optimising web pages, and not the web site.  You should, ideally, be dedicating each page to a specific topic or key word/phrase .  The plan is to make each page an authority on that topic as far as the search engines go.   First, focus on the following areas of the page;

The Title Tag – Put your keyword first, and then write a short sentance that relates to the content on the page.  Do not use more than 70 characters in the Title Tag.

Description Tag – Write a short sentance that describes the content of the web page.  Make sure to use your keyword / phrases as close to the start of the sentance as possible.  Remember that this is what is also shown in the search engines results as a description of the page.  Don’t just cram this with keywords, but make it engaging and give the search user a reason to click through to your site.  We recommend no more than 155 characters in the description tag.

Keyword Tag - Although technically we are told that this tag isn’t used for SEO these days we still do this as a matter of practice.  Afterall, we dont actually know for sure that this META tag is now redundant.  Use around 7-10 keywords here.  Again avoid cramming as it could be seen as SPAM.

Finally think about the content of your page.  Make sure that your content headings are formatted using the correct h tags.  Use <h1> for major headings, <h2> for sub-headings etc etc.  <h1> Tags are given a greater weighting in terms of relevance. Where possible make use of your keywords in the headings.  Then write the content of the page for real people, not the search engines.  Make sure that you use your keywords / phrases a few times, but don’t ruin the content by overuse.  It’s also good practice to <b> or <strong> (bold) your keywords.  Google picks up on this and marks it as an important phrase on the page.

Where you use hyperlinks to other pages, always make use of the title=”insert keyword here” tag and always use keywords as your anchor text.

Following these rules / tips will give you a solid grounding in getting your web pages optimised.  The next step is to start to build up your back links.  More on that another time.

The owner or Web master of every site wants their pages to appear high in the search listings for their main keywords. Depending on what industry or niche they are in this can either be fairly easy or a long haul, time consuming process. It’s not impossible to rank well for competitive terms, but it takes time.

Some web site owners, and even some Search Engine Optimisation Professionals, look for techniques to help them rank quicker.

This is a risk in itself, especially when your domain / web site is newly registered. Initially you find that some people will go over the top with the on site optimisation of their web pages and try to cram every keyword into every possible area of the page. This technique is known as keyword stuffing. If you over optimise your site, beleive it or not your site can get penalized. Typically, each page should have no more than 7-10 keywords. And use them wisely in places such as the Title and Description tags of your pages.

Another way to harm the ranking of your site is to get too aggresive with your back links. Your site should always grow slowly and naturally, so any burst of activity, such as creating 1000′s of back links in one go can be harmful to your campaign. The best way to create back links to your site is to create engaging content that people will naturally want to link to.

Google is an intelligent search engine. It has the ability to scan for hidden text in your pages, so dont try to fool it by putting text or links in a hidden format such as using the same text colour on the same background, or even putting content in hidden divs. Make sure that the page Google sees is the page that you deliver to your customer.

Black Hat techniques may get you a quick listing, but in the long term they can be more damaging to your web site than you every imagined, as through being penalized you could get struck off the listings.

Quick SEO Tip – If you want to see how Google’s search bots see your web pages then sign up for a Google Webmaster tools account.  They have a great tool in their that allows you to see what the bots see when spidering your site.

I’ve just watched a great video that I found on Twitter.

It’s really interesting to see the different views that Search Engine Optimisation and Web Professionals have on black hat SEO’s.  I’ve always been of the opinion that they are damaging to the industry and by using quick fire techniques to promote search engines they can make life difficult for White hat SEO’s who try to use organic growth techniques to promote a site.

However, there are a few comments on here that I find very interesting.  Words such as ‘Innovative’ and  ‘leading edge’ stand out – words I would never have associated with black hat SEO’s up until now.

I still strongly beleive that white hat SEO is the only way to go to achieve long term success, but its an eye opener to see that so many people in the industry actually think Black Hat is acceptable.

Ps. Flogging them. Ace!

In the early days of Search Engine Optimisation, the only way to get your web site listed by the Search Engines was by submitting it on a regular basis.  There were even companies that specialised in submitting your web sites on a regular basis to make sure they kept checking out the content.

Thankfully, the world has moved on (be warned, that some companies still think that submitting your web site on a regular basis is a fruitful activity – it isnt!). 

The modern way to manage your Google inclusion is through the user of XML sitemaps and a well structured web site.

All Search Engines use spider programs, also known as robots or crawlers.  The scour the web and visit web pages to scan their text and links.  The text and links are then sent off for indexing .  The spider the Google uses is called Googlebot.  If you have access to an analytics package you can probably see when Googlebot has been viewing your site.

The first step to getting your site indexed is through classic submission.  Let Google know that you site exists.  Then, if you haven’t already got one, sign up for a Google Webmaster Tools account, register your site and create an XML Sitemap containing the structure of your web site.

The big question on everyones lips (especially customers of SEO companies) is how long will it take for your site to be indexed?

The truthful answer to this is that there are no guarantees, however by following the correct “white hat” procedures you can expect your site to be crawled with 1-2 months.  As your campaign grows and you create more backlinks and on site content the frequency of crawls will increase along with your ranking.

One of the reasons that back links are so important in any SEO campaign is that they help Google find your site.  Each time Google scans a page containing a backlink to your site it credits the landing page with being an authority on the topic of the originating page.  This is why back links from relevant sources are so important and should never be underestimated.

In a nut shell thats how Google find your pages.  The key is backlinks…

Google is to change its algorithm to tackle the problem of spammers using black hat search engine optimisation to get malicious pages at the top of results pages, it has emerged.

An unnamed source at the search engine told WebProNews that the algorithm for calculating search rankings will change in due course and should mean that web users do not see malicious results at the top of listings “nearly as often”.

The spammers in question get their pages to the top of Google’s search results by using Google Trends and Google News to research the most popular keywords of the moment, including these in their web pages and distributing links through comment boxes and forums on social media

Google uses over 200 different signals to determine the ranking of a website by calculating its importance to the rest of the web and its relevance to users’ search queries.

No one is sure about exactly what changes will be made, and the chances are that no one will ever find out but it will have an effect on the SEO techniques in the future.

I’ve just read an interesting article about SEO’s having a liability strategy.  For me this is a very interesting topic.

If, like me, you get regular emails promising this, that and every top position in Google you hopefully treat this with nothing more than a quick glance and a ‘delete’.   One thing that I’ve learned over the years in Search Engine Optimisation is that the only guarantee you can offer people is that you will carry out the tasks required to improve the ranking of a web site.  It is impossible for any SEO to guarantee that they will be listed on any particular page, in any particular position and I urge all SEO‘s to make sure that this message is clear when talking to the client.

If you think about it, simple common sense says that if 30 web sites (pages) are being SEO’d then not all of them can appear on the front page, however common sense in business is sometimes (unfortunately) overlooked.

Make sure that you have a good contract drawn up with your client and in your proposals go into detail about what activities you will perform each month.  Provide your client with a monthly activity report explaining what you have done, and show a breakdown of rankings for your keywords.  Hopefully, if you are doing things right, the monthly report will show a steady improvement on rankings and your client will be happy.

One other key point is to let your client know that SEO changes dont happen overnight and that it can take 2,3 maybe even 6 months or more for changes to take effect.  There are so many factors to take into account that no single SEO project is the same.  Factors such as the age of the domain, the current page rank, number of backlinsk, content etc etc all have to be considered. 

It can be painful being an SEO sometimes, but when you start to see results its extremely rewarding to see a happy client.