All Things Search

Thought we would give you some good SEO tips for August 2010….. well here goes:

 1. Keyword Research - Before undertaking any SEO on your website you must always do keyword research. How else will you know what your target market are actually typing into search engines to find you.  To undertake keyword research (with limited time), make a list of possible keywords by thinking what potential customers would type into a search engine while looking for your website (also ask staff & friends for their keyword ideas). Then use the free Google Keyword Tool to find out search volume.  What you are trying to locate are keywords with high search volume, high relevancy to your website and ideally low competition (the holy grail!).

2. Content - Search engines love content. Try and update a website often with new content. If you already create a physical newsletter, why not re-use this collateral and put it in a blog or something. Remember… potential customers can land on any page on your website.

3. Backlink Anchor Text - When obtaining back links to your website (a back link is a link from someone else’s website pointing to yours - this is viewed as a ‘vote’ for your website) make sure that the anchor text of that link is keyword rich. If the link is just your domain name you are missing a trick - the likelihood is you will already rank for your domain (unless it is something generic).

4. Think of SEO From The Start - Don’t design your website without first considering SEO. Things like Flash and Java Script can be detrimental to your website unless dealt with in the proper manner. Getting things right from the start will benefit you in the long term.

5. No Short Cuts - There are no short cuts to good SEO. Tactics such as buying links and link exchanges may give you short term gains but will often cause problems in the long run. Things like this are known as ‘black hat SEO’ and should be avoided.  There was a time when link exchanges worked, then Google got wise to it so people started 3 way linking… Google soon got wise to that… see a trend happening :-). It’s not worth trying to trick the super brains that develop the search algorithms.

Hope you liked our top 5 SEO tips for August.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and the Internet has helped level the playing field for small businesses around the globe. Unfortunately many small businesses do not have a general marketing budget and therefore cannot afford to spend a lot of money working on their search engine rankings.  Here is a few top tips that can be implemented by small businesses to assist their rankings:

1. CONTENT IS KING

Search engines love content, the more content that you can add to your website the better, an analogy that I like to use is: “fish and a fishing pole - when explaining how text heavy sites often outrank thin ecommerce sites, I like to call searchers fish and each word on the page an additional fishing pole in the water. The more text you have on a website the more searchers you are likely to ‘catch’”.

It is important that the content added to your site is unique, a good idea to increase content is to add a frequently asked questions page which you can update regularly or even better add a blog which you post to on a weekly basis.

2. THE PERSONAL TOUCH

Customers often like the personal touch and opinion. Make your personal knowlege on your subject known, this will help you become an authority in the eyes of a searcher/potential customer. (again using a blog will help here).

3. LOCAL SEARCH IS IMPORTANT

Optimising for local search is crucial. There are many ways to do this, one such way is to incorporate geographical terms in your on-page optimisation (ie. Your city name in the META title and H1 tags). The other thing that is quick and easy to do is register with Google Places, Yahoo Local & Bing Local - this allows people to find your business through the map searches etc.

4. WEBSITE SPEED

As stated in a previous post, Google now incorporates a website’s loading speed in it’s algorithm. Use the tools highlighted in the previous post to check and improve your website’s loading speed.

5. PRESS RELEASE

Write a press release for local online media outlets (and offline). make sure that you have links (with anchor text) back to your website. This can be a crucial help - one of my recent press releases has led to a pitch for one of the countries largest organisations - It can work very well.

 Hope you like these tips…. feel free to add more if you like.

Google has now introduced Google TV, the concept is simple, you attach a ‘freeview’ style box to your TV (via HDMI) and can watch/surf the Internet through your television. Google state that currently TV is too complicated and that watching the Internet through a TV is not good enough. With  Google TV you will be able to search for the latest programs on the Internet or TV and have immediate access. There is a good video to explan this on Google’s website: http://www.google.com/tv/

In terms of SEO the ramifications are pretty huge, we already have to consider the implications of SEO on mobile media such as IPhones and the Android phone, we will now have to also incorporate SEO into thinking about the new TV by looking at SEO for streaming media.

 Here is a bit of information on the new Logitech Google TV box: http://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/logitech-google-tv-box/?news=123

The Logitech Google TV box will let you add Google TV to an existing TV, as long as you have HDMI ports and an internet connection.

Logitech takes aim squarely at Apple TV with their new Google TV external box which will be powered by the popular Android-based OS and Chrome web browser. This will allow users to add Google TV to an existing television without the need of purchasing a new one.

The futuristic-styled glossy black box will feature a 1.2-GHz Intel Atom Processor, 4 GB of internal memory, 802.11n Wi-Fi, two HDMI out ports, a pair of USB ports and Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound. The Logitech box will work in tandem with your existing set-top box provided by your cable or satellite company and pull content in that way, allowing you to search both the internet and your DVR under a single Android -based infrastructure.

Included with the system is a remote control, but users will also be able to use their Apple iPhone or Android based smartphone to control content. The application for your phone will include an on-screen keyboard, D-pad and other necessities. From what has been demonstrated, it looks like the phone will need to have a touchscreen in order for the application to work.

Google TV promises to give users easy access to the videos they love including photos and other internet content, all accessible through a compatible Google TV or peripheral box.

The Logitech Google TV box will be available in the U.S. this fall and pricing has not yet been announced. Logitech has a small teaser micro-site which you can check out.

This month Matt Cutts has proclaimed on his blog that Google have decided to incorporate site speed (loading times) in their search algorithm. What this means from a practical sense is that if your website takes a long time to load, it may be penalised by Google’s new ranking system.

On the Google Webmaster’s blog it states:

“Speeding up websites is important — not just to site owners, but to all Internet users. Faster sites create happy users and we’ve seen in our internal studies that when a site responds slowly, visitors spend less time there. But faster sites don’t just improve user experience; recent data shows that improving site speed also reduces operating costs. Like us, our users place a lot of value in speed — that’s why we’ve decided to take site speed into account in our search rankings. We use a variety of sources to determine the speed of a site relative to other sites.”

If you are worried about your website’s speed you can use the following tools to check out how your site performs: 

For more information: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/

I don’t think this change is a major problem for most websites, as many sites do not take very long to load. It may however be a problem with websites that have loads of pictures/ Flash (which I dislike with a passion!) or video content.

There are literally hundreds of ways (black hat, muddy hat and white hat) of getting great backlinks. Here I have highlighted a few that anyone can do that can achieve good quality, long lasting links:

1. Asking business partners/associates or suppliers for a link from their website (with correct anchor text)

2. Looking at where competitors have got their links from and trying to get links from the same places.

3. Writing superb and interesting articles (publsh on places like Ezine) that people will want to use on their blogs etc. (obviously there should be self serving links in the articl / authors biography)

4. Creating a blog (again with compelling content and links). Make sure the blog is part of your domain rather than on a 3rd party domain.

5. Online press release with links - again the quality of the content is crucial to haw many people wil pick it up and run with it.

Hope you liked them… feel free to add some of your own.

The holy grail of many website owners is getting on the first page or even achieving the pole position on Google and other search engines.  While no reputable Search Engine Optimisation Company can guarantee you the top spot on any search engine, there are a number of key principals that can be undertaken to give you the best chance of achieving this goal.

This blog post will highlight key areas that a website owner or professional or amateur Search Engine Optimiser should adopt in order to improve their website’s search engine rankings. These simple principals can be undertaken by anyone with the desire and motivation to increase visitors to their website.

Everyone website owner would like their website to appear at the top of the search engines for their chosen keywords, yet few actually achieve this goal.  The vast majority of those website owners that manage to achieve these top rankings do so either by employing a Search Engine Optimiser or by undertaking Search Engine Optimisation themselves. May people perceive Search Engine Optimisation as a hugely complex and bewildering science and are often baffled by industry jargon, such as keyword spamming, black hat techniques and Meta Tags.  However, many of the techniques and principals that need to be undertaken are not complex or incomprehensible at all.

This blog post will provide some simple steps, using clear and concise English that can be undertaken to improve your website performance, any jargon used will be carefully explained in order to make the processes accessible to anyone.

The first area that must be considered when looking at optimisation is keyword selection, this is often cited as being the single most important step in your search engine optimisation strategy. Selecting the correct keywords is a lengthy and sometimes boring process, however it is imperative to a successful and structured SEO campaign. Keyword selection refers to the process of choosing the keywords or keyword phrases that a website owner believes their target market would type into search engines when looking for them.  In the first instance a list of every keyword phrase that you think is relevant to your business and that you think your target audience may type into the search engines. It is a good idea to ask other employees and friends for their ideas, because in the first instance it is imperative to have a comprehensive list of keywords.  Once a list of keywords has been selected, a keyword data tool must be used to determine if these keywords are actually being searched for.

Many SEO professionals will use software such as Wordtracker or Keyword Discovery, however both of these tools have a monetary cost, so may not be suitable for novice or part time SEOs. Wordtracker also offer a ‘watered down’ version of their tool which is free, this can be found at freewords.wordtracker, and alternatively, Google offer an Adwords Keyword tool which is also free.

By using these tools you can determine both the search popularity of your terms (approximately how many people are typing these terms into a search engine during a given period of time – usually a month) and the competition level of your chosen keywords.  

The ultimate goal of this process is to choose a small selection of keywords (say 3-5) per page of your website that you want to optimise, that are popular to searchers, relevant to the content on your website and have a low level of competition. If you find keyword phrases that match these three criteria you are doing very well and have found perfect keywords to get started with.Once keywords have been selected, these must be incorporated in the Meta Tags (HTML coding – this is quick and easy and can be done by a website developer or someone with rudimentary HTML skills), and into the text on the website.

The second area that needs to be considered is copywriting, this refers to the actual text on the webpages.  Having effective copy on your website is essential for online marketing and can often make the difference between an ineffective website and a highly productive and profitable website.

First and foremost even when writing copy with search engines in mind the primary goal of the copywriter must be to write copy that is interesting and compelling to humans. It’s all very well writing perfect copy for Google or Yahoo, but if your target market is not interested in what you are saying, then, you are wasting your time.

In order to create effective copy one must be able to interweave the selected keyword terms within the compelling copy they are writing, thereby satisfying both search engines and readers.  One must be very aware that overuse of keywords (otherwise known as keyword spamming) is disliked by Search Engines and may even result in a penalty or blacklisting.The final aspect that will be considered in this article is back links.

This refers to links to your website from other websites. In simple terms, search engines consider a link from another website to your website to be akin to a ‘vote’ for your website, in essence someone else saying that the content on your website is useful or interesting. The best back links to get are from websites that have content that is relevant to your website or is from a ‘reputable’ source (eg. A national newspaper website, a government institution or large corporation).

There are many different methods of obtaining Backlinks, such as writing and calling companies and associations to request a link from their website. Some companies also offer links for sale, although this can be something to be wary of and may not actually be very effective.The three processes highlighted in this article touch on three of the most important aspects of search engine optimisation. Obviously, each of these aspects merits an individual blog post themselves which will be completed in due course.

Everyone website owner would like their website to appear at the top of the search engines for their chosen keywords, yet few actually achieve this goal.  The vast majority of those website owners that manage to achieve these top rankings do so either by employing a Search Engine Optimiser or by undertaking Search Engine Optimisation themselves.
May people perceive Search Engine Optimisation as a hugely complex and bewildering science and are often baffled by industry jargon, such as keyword spamming, black hat techniques and Meta Tags.  However, many of the techniques and principals that need to be undertaken are not complex or incomprehensible at all. This article will provide some simple steps, using clear and concise English that can be undertaken to improve your website performance, any jargon used will be carefully explained in order to make the processes accessible to anyone.
The first area that must be considered when looking at optimisation is keyword selection, this is often cited as being the single most important step in your search engine optimisation strategy. Selecting the correct keywords is a lengthy and sometimes boring process, however it is imperative to a successful and structured SEO campaign. Keyword selection refers to the process of choosing the keywords or keyword phrases that a website owner believes their target market would type into search engines when looking for them. 
In the first instance a list of every keyword phrase that you think is relevant to your business and that you think your target audience may type into the search engines. It is a good idea to ask other employees and friends for their ideas, because in the first instance it is imperative to have a comprehensive list of keywords. 
Once a list of keywords has been selected, a keyword data tool must be used to determine if these keywords are actually being searched for. Many SEO professionals will use software such as Wordtracker or Keyword Discovery, however both of these tools have a monetary cost, so may not be suitable for novice or part time SEOs. Wordtracker also offer a ‘watered down’ version of their tool which is free, this can be found at freewords.wordtracker, and alternatively, Google offer an Adwords Keyword tool which is also free.
By using these tools you can determine both the search popularity of your terms (approximately how many people are typing these terms into a search engine during a given period of time – usually a month) and the competition level of your chosen keywords.   The ultimate goal of this process is to choose a small selection of keywords (say 3-5) per page of your website that you want to optimise, that are popular to searchers, relevant to the content on your website and have a low level of competition. If you find keyword phrases that match these three criteria you are doing very well and have found perfect keywords to get started with.
Once keywords have been selected, these must be incorporated in the Meta Tags (HTML coding – this is quick and easy and can be done by a website developer or someone with rudimentary HTML skills), and into the text on the website.
The second area that needs to be considered is copywriting, this refers to the actual text on the webpages.  Having effective copy on your website is essential for online marketing and can often make the difference between an ineffective website and a highly productive and profitable website. First and foremost even when writing copy with search engines in mind the primary goal of the copywriter must be to write copy that is interesting and compelling to humans. It’s all very well writing perfect copy for Google or Yahoo, but if your target market is not interested in what you are saying, then, you are wasting your time.
In order to create effective copy one must be able to interweave the selected keyword terms within the compelling copy they are writing, thereby satisfying both search engines and readers.  One must be very aware that overuse of keywords (otherwise known as keyword spamming) is disliked by Search Engines and may even result in a penalty or blacklisting.
The final aspect that will be considered in this article is back links. This refers to links to your website from other websites. In simple terms, search engines consider a link from another website to your website to be akin to a ‘vote’ for your website, in essence someone else saying that the content on your website is useful or interesting. The best back links to get are from websites that have content that is relevant to your website or is from a ‘reputable’ source (eg. A national newspaper website, a government institution or large corporation).
There are many different methods of obtaining Backlinks, such as writing and calling companies and associations to request a link from their website. Some companies also offer links for sale, although this can be something to be wary of and may not actually be very effective.
The three processes highlighted in this article touch on three of the most important aspects of search engine optimisation. Obviously, each of these aspects merits an individual article themselves which will be completed in due course.

On-page SEO is crucial in order to get good rankings. The on-page factors must be right before off-page factors can be considered. Here is a list of 10 crucial on-page SEO factors:

1. Keywords, keywords, keywords. So important it is worth mentioning 3 times. Selecting the correct keywords can be the difference between a hugely successful SEO effort and a miserable failure (see Google Bomb for George Bush - unrelated but funny).The ideal scenario for keyword (or keyphrase) selection is high search volume, high relevancy and low competition (or as close to this as possible). Free tools to help you select keywords are Google Adwords Keyword tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal) and Wordtracker tool (http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/).

2. META Data. Of the META data tags arguably the most important one is the title tag. The title tag should be concise (best to be under 70 characters) and should contain the keywords selected for that partiocular page. Other META tags, such as description and keyword tags are less important but should also contain the keywords.

3. Content/Copywriting. First things first, copy must be undertaken with the potential customer in mind. Therefore it must be clean, legible and compelling and should contain a strong call to action.

4. Clean Code. Code should be ‘clean’. Industry standard code as specified by the World Wide Web Consortium (www.w3Cc.org) should be used. To check if code complies with the code a free tool can be used: http://validator.w3.org 

5. Heading Tags (H1, H2, H3…). Heading tags (sometimes referred to as headers) should be used on websites and should contain the selected keywords whenever possible. It is not a good idea to go overboard on heading tags but H1 tags should be used on every optimised page.

6. Alt Tags. If a website has any images or graphics (what website doesn’t have any images!) Alt tags should be implemented. To tell if an image has an Alt attribute already, you can hover over the image. If text is displayed this is the Alt text. Alt text should contain keywords, but must not appear ’spammy’ therefore it may be a good idea to include the keyword followed by the word picture, graphic or image.

7. Keyword Placement. Keywords should be placed correctly. Keywords should be placed in, title tags, description tags, keyword tags, alt tags and headings. Keywords should also be positioned within the first and last 20 words on the page. Keywords should be in bold, italics or underlined at least once on the page.

8. Internal Link Structure. A simple and easily navigable link structure is crucial. All main pages should be linked to from the homepage and it is a good idea wherever possible to include your keywords in links to the relevant page.

9. Avoid Flash/Java Script. Both Flash and Java script can have a detrimental effect on rankings. How many purely Flash websites have you seen in the first place of search results (probably none!).

10. Sitemaps. A sitemap allows a search engine spider to navigate your site easily (especially for large websites). Sitemaps can be created in both XML and HTML. There are many websites that will create a sitemap for you (just search via Google). Search engines require an XML sitemap.

Obviously this list is not comprehensive, and is open to any comments and additions. I hope this is useful.