Archive for the ‘Search Engine Optimisation’ Category

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Internet Marketing Lesson: Wax On, Wax Off

Tuesday, July 20th, 2010
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Due to the recent trend in “Karate Kid” I saw it only fit I try to create a post which relates to the film. Luckily enough for me not only was I able to create a post relevant to the movie but also to search engine optimisation (SEO) too. If you’re wondering how the quote “Wax on, wax off” can relate to SEO then allow me to explain – you may learn a thing or two, grasshopper.

When making your website search engine friendly you must bare in mind that once you’ve applied the foundations they aren’t permanent forever. You should always be looking to tweak the SEO to meet new standards which may appear as time passes by. Content such as keywords, descriptions and pages may begin to gather dust as the website ages which is when it is ideal to perform the wax on, wax off technique.

So what is the wax on, wax off technique? On the film “Karate Kid” Daniel is asked by Mr. Miyagi to wax his car with a motion he is demonstrated. To wax a car you must apply the wax, remove the wax correctly and then apply the wax once again, etc. This same process can be used with the SEO on your website. By removing the content which has existed since the start of the website and replacing it with new material you are able to give your a website a fresh appearance to search engines. Be sure you don’t remove all your SEO as this can affect your current positions, especially if you are ranked high on search engines already.

This technique is only ideal if your site is not ranking high enough for your chosen keywords. If you are on page 1 it is not recommended you attempt this and concentrate on gaining new links to your website instead or adding more pages with new content on your site.

wax_on_wax_off

Posted in Search Engine Optimisation | No Comments »

Get Your SEO Blogger Posts in Search Engines

Monday, July 12th, 2010
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For those who don’t know what Blogger is – it is a service offered by Google which allowed anyone to create a blog and post on it. It has been proven that blogging is beneficial for search engine optimisation (SEO) which is why services such as Blogger are popular.

When posting on blogger it can take a while for the posts to appear in search engine result pages, even when they have been pinged. One of the reasons this may be is because the URL used for the blogs commonly uses http://example.blogspot.com which may effect the strength of the blog and blog posts.

Fortunately if this is the case then it can be easily resolved by purchasing a domain for your blog. The more relevant the domain is to your blog the more effective your blog will be. We (Weblinx) have in the past used this process with success which is why I recommend you also do this. Not only will this increase your chances of having a more succesful blog but it also looks good for visitors.

If you don’t want to spend money on buying a new domain for your blog then installing an on-site blog may be the way for you to go. Services such as Wordpress are available for you at no cost which prove to be highly successful when it comes to SEO.

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Posted in Blogs, Search Engine Optimisation | 1 Comment »

Your URL Structure Can Affect Your Blogs SEO

Friday, July 9th, 2010
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When creating posts through blogging services such as wordpress you may notice that the URL contains a partition of the post title by default. This can affect SEO chances if the title is extremely long because search engine such as Google, Yahoo! and Bing will take into account the excessive use of words and weaken the strength of the URL. This is bad if websites are using a blog to help their SEO chances.

Not to worry though – this problem can be resolved easily through the editing post section of your blogs wordpress admin control panel. You can edit the permalink of your blog posts when creating a new post by clicking “Edit” beside the permalink displayed beneathe the title text box. You can also edit current posts permalinks through the post section of your admin panel but this isn’t recommended as this can break the current links created.

I recommend you aim to cut the permalink down as short as possible if you are trying to aim for a certain keyword as this will give your URL optimum strength.

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Posted in Blogs, Search Engine Optimisation | No Comments »

Keyword Research is Vital for SEO Blog Posts

Wednesday, July 7th, 2010
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If you post regularly on a blog like myself then you will understand that the only way to attract visitors is by creating and publishing interesting posts. The better the posts the more likely your blog posts will be successful. The struggle with creating blog posts is that it’s hard to always write about what people want to read, so how can you encourage people to visit your blog and read your posts?

By doing the correct keyword research into the industry you write about you will be able to discover the main keywords people use. By spending time reading what people publish on their blogs you are able to find out what people want to read about and recommend to their friends (through the use of retweets, Facebook sharing, Diggs, etc.)

To use the keywords that people search for the most in your industry isn’t a difficult task. The only thing you must make sure of is that the post is relevant to the title. Search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and Bing analyze blog posts to ensure they are consistantly relevant at all times. By placing the keywords you have discovered are most popular in your title you are more likely to attract visitors than you would with a title that may be relevant but is hardly searched for.

Weblinx for example uses certain keywords such as SEO, search engine optimisation and Internet marketing as these are all highly search keywords. It has been discovered that the keyword Internet marketing is one of the most successful keywords used in our blog posts as hits on the website are a lot more than they are when using SEO in titles.

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Posted in Blogs, Search Engine Optimisation | 5 Comments »

SEO For Your Website

Tuesday, June 29th, 2010
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Before I explain how you can help your website benefit from search engine optimisation (SEO)  I want to make something clear – if you don’t have time to spare then I do not recommend you try doing SEO yourself. This is because SEO takes time to get right which consists of many different elements, e.g Google has over 200 different signals it looks for when ranking websites in its search engine results pages (SERPs). Companies such as Weblinx are available to do the SEO work for you so you can concentrate on other tasks for your company. Remember, your website is to help your company grow, by eliminating the need to do any other jobs you are able to spend your time on the main jobs for your business.

So if you think you have the time to spend optimising your website then allow me to welcome you to my post. The aim of the game is to help you get your website on page 1 for your chosen keywords.

Search Engine Optimisation

The aim of search engine optimisation is to ensure your website is search engine friendly. By having the SEO on your website done correctly your website will, in theory, climb up the SERPs. The problem with SEO is that there is no guarantees which means sometimes web masters have to do some guess work as to why their website isn’t doing as well as it should be.

It takes time to get your website on to page 1, especially if your website doesn’t exist in any SERP’s at all, which is why a lot of research has to be made before hand. to get as much work done as possible to show search engines your website is improving. One other thing to bare in mind is that SEO is not a one time thing; meaning websites such as yours will be battling for the positions you have achieved. By stopping any work on your SEO will give other websites a chance to take your newly achieved positions for themselves.

Getting Started

So what can you do for your website to encourage search engines to rank you highly? You’ll be surprised that there isn’t that much you have to do. To begin with you must pick keywords for your website which are certain words that summarise your website as a whole. For example this blog uses keywords such as SEO blog, search engine optimisation and Internet marketing. These words are what will be used to find this blog on search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, Bing and others. By ensuring these keywords are optimised correctly your website will eventually be found on page 1 when queries such as “What is search engine optimisation?” are entered in search engines.

A method I have discovered to help find keywords for your website is using a feature called “Wonder Wheel” found on Google which has only just surfaced recently due to the newly updated design. To use this feature to your advantage you can do the following:

  1. Enter a keyword relevant to your industry, e.g SEO, into Google and click search.
  2. Once the search engine results page has loaded click the link named “Wonder Wheel” found in the sidebar found on the left side of the page.
  3. A diagram similar to a spider will apear with keywords surrouding your chosen keyword. These keywords when clicked will seperate into more keywords.

The advantage using Wonder Wheel is that it allows you to find keywords you may not have come up with yourself which may infact be the keywords you end up using for your website in the end.

Once you have picked the keywords you want to optimise for your website it’s time to decide what information you want to display on your website. The better the content you use on your website the more your site will benefit, especially when your keywords are placed strategically within your content. When search engines crawl your website they will come across the content contained within each of your pages so by ensuring the content you use is relevant to your site search engines are more likely to give your website a better ranking. I recommend creating pages of content ready for your website or even better hiring a copywriter to do the job for you as they have the experience to ensure your site displays only the best information.

Another important requirement you must ensure you meet is creating a linking structure. The better your linking structure the better your website will rank. By splitting your created content into parts you will be able to add different pages to your website for each piece of your content. Each page should be treated individually for certain keywords so they are given an equal amount of exposure which means the content displayed on each page should have designated keywords. It may be a struggle to ensure each page has different keywords but as long as each keyword you have chosen is given a chance at being discovered by search engine bots then your pages should be okay.

Meta Data

When all the pages you require are added to your website you must ensure they have the correct meta data added to them. Meta data is one of the areas search engines use to find information to use when displaying your website on their search engine result pages. Meta data commonly consists of the title, description and keywords. By making sure your chosen keywords are added to these areas you are able to give your keywords even more exposure. Remember, the better you expose your keywords the better your website will rank for those keywords.

The html you want within your website is the following:

<meta name=”description” content=”" />
<meta name=”keywords” content=”" />

Make sure your description for each page contains at least 1 keyword relevant to the title. I find this demonstrates to search engines that the page is all full of relevant information which is exactly what you want.

Concluding

In no way is this the end of optimising your website, this is only the beginning. By using search engines you will be able to find masses and masses of advice on how to optimise your website even more with services such as blogs, press releases, social media, social networking and more. Search engine optimisation may sound complicated but once you have gotten your head around it it will become your friend.

If you have any advice or feedback then please leave a comment, I always try to respond to my comments as soon as fast as possible.

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Posted in Search Engine Optimisation | 15 Comments »

Are Your Images SEO Friendly?

Monday, June 21st, 2010
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When it comes to search engine optimisation (SEO) images are one of the most ignored features even though they can be just as handy as text. The reason why they aren’t optimised as much is because not everyone knows how to optimise images due to hardly any text being involved around them. The way to look at images is that search engines may not be able to see the images but they will be able to see the text involved with them such as image names and alt tags. By ensuring your images are optimised correctly will help increase your SEO chances of success.

So how do you make sure your images names and alt tags are added correctly? First you must look at the names of your images. Most designers will name images anything relevant without thinking about what they will be used for, this is an area you can add keywords to. By having an image named header.jpg your image will not benefit as much as it would from seo_header.jpg so give any image a checkover and add any of your chosen keywords to the image names.

Once you’ve added keywords to all over your images names you then must revise the alt tags you may or may not have given them. Alt tags are not only used by software to allow blind computer users to hear what images are – they are also read by search engines. By giving images alt tags with keywords you are able to help optimise your chosen keywords even more without having to include it within your text. This is an advantage as it avoids making content on your site look suspiciously over populated with keywords which is something search engines don’t like.

By strategically using images on your website you will be able to give your website a better chance at seeing SEO success and also make your site look better presented and less boring than it may have done before. Remember, you can include images in blog posts too so if you have any relevant images that are worthy of including then do it.

Search Engine Optimisation

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Posted in Search Engine Optimisation, Search Engine Ranking, Search Engines | 3 Comments »

SEO Company Hoax Tell-Tale Signs

Thursday, June 17th, 2010
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When choosing a search engine optimisation (SEO) company to optimise your website you must be careful. This is down to companies saying anything they can to take your money and then give you nothing in return. It’s unfortunate that companies will do this and even more unfortunate that it works all the time. The reason it works is simple, because people don’t understand what they are buying companies will make SEO sound more complex than it actually is and create a load of promises which are in reality unachievable.

Not to worry though, not every SEO company will lie to you and will give you the results you’ve paid for. But to be on the safe side here are a few points to remember when looking for a SEO company.

  • If a SEO company promises you results then put the phone down instantly. No SEO company should promise you results as there are no guarantees you will achieve the results. You wouldn’t ask a lawyer to promise you you won’t go to prison so why ask a SEO company to promise results?
  • If they try to make search engine optimisation sound far more complex than it is then be careful, they may try to make you pay for things you probably don’t need.
  • If you’re asked for a huge amount of money then you’ve every right to be skeptical. Look for other quotes before deciding on a company as you may lose money to a company that doesn’t achieve the results other companies could have.
  • If you don’t hear anything about keywords then stop stop talking and walk away. SEO is all about the keywords you choose, if they don’t mention keywords then they couldn’t possibly know what they are talking about.
  • If you can’t find the company on the first page of Google for any of their keywords then there’s no point using them. If they can’t achieve results for themselves then how are they possibly going to help you gain results?

The world is full of cruel people who are all about money and not about pride. Be careful with who you choose as this may not only destroy your website but may destroy you in the process. This doesn’t mean SEO isn’t worth investing in, search engines revolve around websites being search engine friendly, just beware that if a deal sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

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Posted in Search Engine Optimisation, Search Engine Ranking, Search Engines | No Comments »

Do You Know Your SEO Links?

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010
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When it comes to search engine optimisation (SEO) one of the most important factors is the linking structure for your website. The better your sites linking structure the better your chance of ranking highy in search engine result pages for your chosen keywords. The difficulty with linking is that different types of links exist which not everyone understands. To understand what each link is I’ve compiled a list with descriptions for you.

External Links

External links are used to point to other websites that do not belong to your domain. A lot of people worry that external links divert traffic to other websites but in actual fact it helps strengthen SEO efforts. If the links are pointing at relevant pages on other websites then search engines will take this into account.

Internal Links

Internal links point to pages located within your website. By displaying as many links as possible to other pages on your website you will give a better experience for visitors as they may find pages that they couldn’t find before. By placing links at the bottom of your page beneath your footer you are able to strengthen your linking structure.

One Way Links

One way links are the best way of optimising your website. They are links that are coming from other places such as websites, blogs, etc. and have a big effect due to one way links being added naturally and are not by choice like external links and internal links. There are ways to persuade websites into including one way links to your website but search engines such as Google do not encourage this or condone it.

Ensure that you include these types of links in your website to give your it the best chances of ranking highly due to a strategically created linking structure.

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Posted in Search Engine Optimisation, Search Engine Ranking, Search Engines | 1 Comment »

Don’t Become a Twitter Zombie When It Concerns Your Internet Marketing

Tuesday, June 15th, 2010
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Does your company own a Twitter account to help assist with your Internet marketing? Most likely you will do, as do a lot of people. The problem with companies using Twitter to help promote themselves is that they don’t use their accounts properly to gain all the benefits possible. The main issue is down to communication, by only posting links you will lose followers, not gain. This is what I call a “Twitter Zombie”.

Everyone who uses Twitter is a human normally but there are robots that have been set up to use Twitter accounts to spam. By communicating with your followers you are able to demonstrate that you are human rather than a robot. This is the best way to gain trust amongst your followers – the more they trust you the more they are going to trust the links you post – which is why it helps promote your company.

Ways to communicate with your followers are the following:

  • By tweeting questions such as “How are you?”, “What are you doing?” or “What interests you?” you are able to initiate a conversation with your followers.
  • By sending personal messages to individual followers you are able to ask them more personal questions about their business and other intentions.
  • Advertising competitions through Twitter is a great way to both promote your company and encourage followers to converse with you.

Twitter is a great social networking which allows you to socialise with people you may never have spoken to before. The better the chance you have in finding new people the better your choice in creating new clients.

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Posted in Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation, Twitter | No Comments »

Assist Your Internet Marketing With Twitter Trends

Tuesday, June 15th, 2010
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If you own a Twitter account then you have probably noticed the the “Trending” module located at the bottom right of your homepage. Trends are certain keywords that have been tweeted the most that day which means trends are more likely to be news relevant rather than industry. This doesn’t mean trends can’t be utilised by yourself to give your account a surge of followers.

By using popular trends found in the “Trending” module your tweets will appear in the timeline for that keyword. This means if people view the timeline they make find your tweet amongst others. By ensuring the tweet you use is informative and relevant to the keyword people make choose to follow you. Nothing is definite as noone can control a humans actions, but by making the most of trending keywords you will give your profile some exposure to other Tweeters.

Every now and then you may strike gold with a trending keyword which has a sole purpose of attracting followers. This has happened previously and is bound to happen again so keep your eyes open for any trends you may be able to utilise to give your Twitter account more followers than you already have.

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Posted in Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation, Twitter | No Comments »

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