The SEO Blog

It seems that there are many different types of SEO professionals on the market.  Some do just enough to get web pages up the rankings where as others go the extra mile and focus on enquiries and conversion rates.  So what is being an SEO really all about and what should you offer as a service?

I think that its fair to say that in the current SEO climate, the role of Search Engine Optimisation goes beyond the technical boundaries of optimising web sites.  It forms a part of the overall marketing strategy of a web site from the coding right through to the analysis and conversion rates.

Here is a list of 10 things that I believe every SEO should be able to do and offer to their clients as part of a search engine optimisation campaign.

 If you are looking for an SEO professional who can tick all the boxes above, why not get in touch with Ian Sheldon from UK SEO Company, eSoftware Solutions.  We have solutions available for most budgets and have enjoyed success with both localised and national SEO campaigns in the UK and USA.

SEO’s, myself included, have always beleived that duplicate content can harm your Search Engine Optimisation campaign.  Now, Greg Grothaus of Google’s Search Quality team as dismissed that by addressing the large number of duplicate content / sites that web site owners and SEO’s face when trying to rank well in Google.

Greg begins by telling us that Google does NOT penalise for sites having duplicate content.   Of course, this doesnt mean that duplicate content will have a negative effect on your campaign, but Google won’t penalise you for it.

So how did the myth get started?

Basically Greg tells us in the Video.  When you do a Google search for any term you may have seen the following message.

In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 20 you already displayed.
If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.

Basically, Greg thinks that this message created the myth that the content being omitted from the results is “duplication”. Greg stresses that duplicate content is not an ongoing process and is most often just a factor on a case by case or  “by query” basis.

So what is duplicate content?

According to Greg, he gives the following examples of URLs, all with the same content:

Google will not penalise your site for using more than one of the above, but there are other issues that could negatively affect website rankings.  The most damaging is the dilution of link juice.  If you have back links that point to several different URLs, from the same content, it makes it difficult to accumulate link juice to help increase popularity and page rank.

Canonical URLs

To stay away from the above issues, Greg suggest using a cononical version of your URL.  What does this mean?  It means the simplest and most significant form. He suggests picking one for each page and use it consistently for internal links.  He suggests adding 301 redirects (permanent redirect) to all non-canonical URLs

Multiple Domains

Greg also discussed the issue of  multiple domains.   People often have different domains to target different audiences in another country and/or language.   The main concern for SEO’s  is how your reputation can be distributed across multiple Web sites.  Simple, Google will only show what its algorithm assumes to be the best page for a specific search query.  This can be based on the location of the search user at the origin of the search.  As Greg puts it – Google thinks multiple domains are “great”!

The information in the video and this blog post  is based on Greg’s presentation from the recent Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose, California.

As an SEO Professional you will understand the importance of Social Bookmarking sites in your SEO campaign.

Typically we have a list of around 200 social bookmarking sites that we use for our clients, however here are our top 10 Social Bookmarking Sites :

1. twitter

2. digg.com

3. Yahoo! Buzz

4. StumbleUpon.com

5. reddit.com

6. tweetmeme.com

7. Technorati.com

8. del.icio.us

9. kaboodle.com

10. mixx.com

If you would like assistance with your SEO Campaign then why not get in touch?  We can manage all or part of your directory, article and social book marking submissions aswell as best practice recommendations for your on-site optimisation.  Call eSoftware Solutions, a UK SEO Company, on 0845 838 8588 or mail hello@esoftware-solutions.com

There is a rumour on the rounds that Twitter will be releasing premium ‘paid for’ accounts for businesses before the end of 2009.  The primary intention for these accounts would be marketing, promotions, customer relations, advertising etc.   The benefit over standard Twitter accounts is that you would be able to view statistics and analytics on your tweets.

However, word on the street is that there wont be a great amount of interests in these accounts, especially for smaller businesses.  Some smaller businesses on Twitter benefit from the word of mouth and personal touch that a standard Twitter account offers as a marketing tool.

So, when the Premium accounts are made public, would you register for one?  If you do, make sure that, with any paid marketing or Search Engine Optimisation stategy that you have clearly defined goals in place so that you know what you want to achieve from your investment.

Search Engine Optimisation techniques vary, from white hat techniques such as Link Building, Content Copy Writing and Blogging to black hat techniques bordering on SPAMMING.   Googles main aim is to provide a trust worthy search service, presenting search users with a list of useful web sites based on their search criteria.

Some, although not all, of the known black hat techniques can quickly get you to the top of the Google rankings for your chosen keyword.  In the short term you can yield some excellent results, enquiries and conversions, but you will find that eventually your site will drop like a stone or in the worst case scenario dissapear completely.

Why does this happen?  You have been penalised by Google for using black hat techniques to promote your site.

This is one of the most frustrating things to happen for any SEO, or web site owner.

Depending on how serious your violations are (against the Google Webmaster Guidelines) depends on how serious your penalty is.  In some cases you may only be blacklisted for a few weeks and you can correct your penalty by dropping your black hat techniques and working towards Googles Webmaster Guidelines.  In the most serious cases web sites have been known to dissapear completely from the rankings forever.

There are two major levels of penalty that have been reported, the -30 and the -950.

The-30 penalty basically does what it says on the tin.  It drops your web site ranking by 30 places.  Minus 30 penalty is one that filters for handling spam in Google algorithm.  The only solution to get around this penalty is to have unique content on your site, to get links from well trusted sites and to link to high quality sites.

The -950 penalty is a different beast altogether.  It only affects precise URLs for particular keywords.  However, the -950 is also the harshest penalty and web sites can be dropped to the bottom of the results for the given keywords. How can this be avoided?  The only thing you can do is to stick to the Google Webmaster Guidelines and stick to White Hat SEO tactics.

If you have been penalised by Google then don’t take it out on the Search Engine.  You have been penalised for a reason and it’s nearly always down to the techniques that have been used in an attempt to promote your web site.

Having now worked on a number of SEO projects over the last 12-14 months it’s becoming more and more apparant that Search Engine Optimisation means different things to different people.

To some it means being able to rank highly in the results for quality key phrases, for others it means being able to push increased volumes of visitors to their web site.

Then we have those that get heavily involved in the metrication in terms of visitors vs enquries and enquiries vs sales.  Those that want to understand what people are actually doing on their web site – what pages they visit and what call to actions are triggered.

SEO being what is doesn’t have an actual defintiation and there is a fine line between SEO and Internet Marketing (if there is a line at all). 

So why today’s blog post?  If you are looking to employ the services of an SEO professional then think carefully about what you are looking to achieve from the project.  Some SEO’s may offer more than others and its important that you team up with the right one in order to achieve the desired results.

Bye for now!

One of the most important things to focus on when developing a new Web site is your content.   You should treat each page individually, with the view that each page has the opportunity to either capture or deplete your audience.   You should not only consider the actual copy content but also the volume of copy on any given page.  If a site visitor sees reams of text, they may well be put off and close the browser (or even worst go to another web site!).

When writing good copy for a web page make good use of the page title.    Make the headings attractive and descriptive of the subject of the page.  Your opening paragraph should then give an overview of the page.  Tell your audience :

• What you are going to be discussing
• Why you are discussing it
• How it can be acheived

If you need to make use of lists within your copy then keep them tidy and precise.  Make sure you use the list tags to create a structured ordered / unordered list.

Create content relevant to your audience

Know your audience and talk to them, not at them.  No matter what your objective play to people’s emotions.  Try and stay away from technical terms so as not to alienate your non-technical audience.   Dont assume that people have read other parts of your web site before reading your copy.   With deep links and SEO site visitors often arrive at pages two or three levels deep into a web site.  Consider that your visitor may have never read anything concerning the topic in question when writing the content.

Proof read everything you write (twice!)

Make sure that you proof read all the content on your page.  It’s very easy to write web copy ‘on the cuff’ whilst typing but this can lead to unobvious grammatical or spelling errors.  If you can, ask a second pair of eyes to review the copy for you.

Finish with a call to action

Beleive it or not many readers won’t actually reach the end of your content, but for those who do conclude with a summary and action point.

To summarise

These are just a few basic pointers to help you write good content for your web site.  As you may well know, quality content is an important part of any Search Engine Optimisation campaign and help can to boost your rankings.

I recently logged onto a forum I read quite alot and noticed a post from somebody promoting a new web site they had done.  Being the curious type I thought I would take a look.  Design wise the site looked quite nice, but the way it had been built made me very uncomfortable. 

1.  The site had a splash page as the opening page.  No text on it, just a large logo type image in the centre of the screen.  On closer inspection this image had no ALT tag, there was not description or keyword tags in the META data.  The guy had used an external CSS file though so give him credit for that.

2. On clicking through to the site the page loaded slowly.  Could be a hosting issue, or it could be that ALL his graphics were PNGs, where he could have easily used GIFs or JPEGs.  There was nothing overcomplicated about this page that would have required transparent PNGs.  Again, the layout of the page was nice and pleasing to the eye

3. HORROR!  To my amazement every peice of text on this page is embedded in a PNG.  Basically there is NO text on the page at all, and even worse the images containing the text don’t have an ALT property. 

4. Again, these main pages dont have description or keyword tags and the Title property just contains the name of the web page i.e About Us, Constitution etc.

It may well be that the designer of the site isn’t too bothered about SEO, but why get into the habit of using bad techniques to build your site.  Start as you mean to go on.  There is no reason why design should suffer when it comes to building a search engine friendly web site.  The two can co-exist with a little bit of time and effort.

If you are looking for an SEO review of your existing web site then contact eSoftware Solutions, a UK SEO Company, who will be more than happy to help you out.  We are a friendly, trust worthy SEO with references available on request.

I engaged in an intersting blog comment exchange last night with some people from the USA, where the blog owner had started to scrutinise techniques used by SEO companies on his own patch (namely Denver).  Something didn’t sit quite right with this for me.

Now I don’t engage in, or condone, Black Hat SEO Techniques, although from time to time I will admit that I have slipped into the grey area in between (but what SEO is actually whiter than white?)  However, running down your competition in order to make yourself look good – that’s just wrong and unethical in a business sense.

If I found an local SEO company that was engaging in black hat techniques I would contact them directly, question their methods and wait for their response.  After all, every tale has two sides and everyone deserves their right to comment.  Directly posting on a public forum is not a professional way to do it, although maybe this is a sign of the behaviour of people raised in the Internet Generation.

I’ve found that the best road to business success is to work with companies, not become known as a ‘sneak’ who goes round whistle blowing their competition at every given opportunity.

So my question is, would you publically hang a company for its techniques, or engage in a dialog with the company to question their methods and integrity?

One of the most common questions concerning measurement of web site activity is what is Bounce Rate and what does it mean?

Put in very simplistic terms, the bounce rate percentage is the number of people that have visted one page on your web site, and then leave.  This may be for any number of reasons, but the bounce rate metric is especially important if you are trying to engage your site visitors and want them to visit other pages featuring product / service information and promotions.

Why do people bounce from my web site?

There are a number of reasons why people might contribute to a high bounce rate.  The first of which can be poor keyword choice in your SEO campaign.  If you are optimising your site for the wrong keywords then your site visitors might be landing on your site and not finding what they expect. 

Another reason might be poor web site navigation.  Maybe they find your site easily on the Google search results, but once they hit the landing page (the page on the Google link) they cant find an easy way to view other pages on your site.

Do you offer external links away from your site on your landing pages?  If so, these can be a contributing factor to increasing your bounce rate.  Consider your external links carefully.

If a site visitor leaves your web page open for 30 minutes, and takes part in no further SEO activity then this can be recorded as a bounce.  Even opening a new tab in their web browser can classify as a bounce.  Visitors may do this if they need find an explanation of a term or phrase on your web site using another method such as Google or Wikipedia.  This is a great reason for making sure you right top content for your site.

To quote Google.com itself

“It is really hard to get a bounce rate under 20%, anything over 35% is cause for concern, 50% (above) is worrying.”

Sometimes, it can be difficult to get to the bottom of why your bounce rate is so high, but in time, with some careful attention you can help to turn it around.  Recently, we noticed that a client was optimising their Google PPC campaign for a huge array of keywords, and since refining them and doing a bit of keyword research they have reduced their bounce rate by over 45%.

How can I improve my bounce rate?

• Check out the content of your web page.  Is it self explanitory?
• Are you optimising your site for the right keywords?   Is the content on your web page relevant to those keywords?
• Can people easily navigate around your web site?  Do you need to consider a new menu structure?
• Do you have external links on your web page inviting people to leave your site?  Remove them!

Bounce rate is an important metric in any SEO project.  eSoftware Solutions are a UK SEO Company, based in Staffordshire.  For more information visit our web site or call Ian on 0845 838 8588.