Posts Tagged ‘Search Engine Optimisation’

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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 »

Google Caffeine Encourages SEO Content

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010
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It has been confirmed by Google that they have now updated their search index with their system named “Google Caffeine”. For a while it has been speculated whether it would be released worldwide and what it would bring to the search engine optimisation (SEO) industry, but now details have been announced by Google it is much easier to understand what can be done in terms of SEO.

“Our old index had several layers, some of which were refreshed at a faster rate than others; the main layer would update every couple of weeks. To refresh a layer of the old index, we would analyze the entire web, which meant there was a significant delay between when we found a page and made it available to you.

With Caffeine, we analyze the web in small portions and update our search index on a continuous basis, globally. As we find new pages, or new information on existing pages, we can add these straight to the index. That means you can find fresher information than ever before—no matter when or where it was published.”

This means only one thing, fresh content is a must! By using services such as blogs you are able to keep your website updated with new content as frequently as you desire. The more relevant the content is to your chosen keywords the better your chance of ranking highly in Google’s new search engines results pages.

It is recommended that you now think about hiring an experienced copywriter as they will be able to create fresh and relevant content for your websites helping optimise your website more than ever. It has always been known that fresh content is required to help SEO chances, but now Google are able to find new pages quicker it has never been more important to make sure new content is created as often as possible.

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Posted in Google, Search Engine Optimisation, Search Engine Ranking | 4 Comments »

Benefiting From Your Social Networking Accounts to Evolve Internet Marketing

Tuesday, June 8th, 2010
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Have you created an account on a social networking website such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace for your Internet Marketing campaign but have no idea how to benefit from it? Allow me to help you. By understanding what you should be doing and why you should be doing it you will be able to achieve more from your social networking accounts than you may be doing at this moment. It doesn’t take much knowledge, the only thing you must have available is time to spend conversing with the public.

The main thing you must understand when using a social networking account is that it does what it says on the tin – it allows you to become social with the public through the Internet. By neglecting your friends (Facebook & MySpace) or followers (Twitter) you will only lose numbers rather than gain them. By commencing conversation with different people you are able to make new contacts that you may not come across through the use of your website which will encourage more people to come to you rather than away.

By uploading media content for the public to view you are able to collect opinions and once again encourage the public to talk to you. By uploading media such as photos, videos or music you have the chance to show people what you can do. Ever heard of the saying “All talk and no action”, well this is where you can prove them wrong. Features like this are available for a reason, by taking advantage of what is available you have a better chance in making numbers instead of losing them.

You can ask existing contacts to help promote your profile by either posting or tweeting a link to your profile on their account. By giving your profile exposure on other established profiles you have a better chance in attracting more people. It’s not always so simple as to leave you account to wait for people to come to it, by giving the public a “doorway” to your profile they are more likely to visit it rather than ignore it.

I’m positive other advice is available to people who want to help their Internet marketing campaign evolve with the use of social networking so if anyone has any tips please leave a comment below.

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Posted in Facebook, Internet Marketing, MySpace, Social Networking, Twitter | 2 Comments »

Does Retweeting Assist Internet Marketing?

Tuesday, June 8th, 2010
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Have you ever come across a Retweet button on a website that you’ve viewed in the past? Most likely you will have seen one at some point or another – in fact there is one on this page right now. The purpose behind the Retweet button is simple, by being able to allow Twitter members to post a link to the page being viewed you are benefiting from free promotion.

The question is does retweeting assist Internet marketing? The answer is yes. Since we embedded Retweet buttons on our blog recently we have noticed an increase in traffic from not only search engines such as Google but also from Twitter itself. This is because some of our past posts have had well over 100 retweets at a time which means hundreds of different accounts are posting links to even more accounts. Not only is it an effortless process but it is also free which means money can be spent more on other areas of Internet marketing than on the social media area. This doesn’t mean money should be spent on social related websites, but by giving people the chance to do the promotion for yourselves most of the jobs for you are already done.

So how do you convince people to Retweet your pages/posts? By having fresh, relative and innovative content displayed you are more likely to encourage readers to use the Retweet button. From there it’s just a matter of leaving the content to the public and creating new pages/posts to continue the Retweeting.

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Posted in Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation, Social Media | 2 Comments »

Experienced Copywriters Can Assist Your Internet Marketing

Monday, June 7th, 2010
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If your company is pumping money into an Internet marketing strategy it may be advised to hire an experienced copywriter, according to Tori Hywel-Davies of the Liverpool Daily Post. This is to help ensure that all text displayed on your website is easy to read and creates the correct messages wanted.

By having content which is both fresh and gripping your website is much more likely to perform better in terms of search engine optimisation (SEO) standards. It is said by Google themselves that by composing compelling content is the main factor to remember when optimising a website to rank highly in search engine results. This will help assist in creating a better reputation for the website as it is much more likely to draw readers attention resulting which will result in recommendations amongst friends.

“As any professional writer will know – that is, one who understands how to work online media and the meaning of brand strategy – there’s a true skill in getting it right,” Ms Hywel-Davies explained.

By doing the appropriate research into what content should be displayed on your website you have a better chance in acheiving high positions in search engines for your chosen keywords. There are hundreds of factors to take into account when creating content for your chosen keywords but this will happen through trial and error. Don’t be reactive be proactive, by frequently updating your content through features such as blogs you are able to give your website a fighting chance against other websites with similar keywords.

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

Local SEO is Growing

Monday, June 7th, 2010
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Recently local search engine optimisation (SEO) has become more and more popular due to new technology becoming available to the public. Thanks to services such as Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Loopt everyone has the chance to make their location available to friends and the public. Your industry has no effect on local SEO as any business can benefit from making their location well known to surrounding areas. This may be down to people feeling more comfortable working with companies closer to them than companies hundreds of miles away. The bottom line is that local SEO is the way to go for both small and large companies due to it’s surge in popularity.

So what can you do to jump on the band wagon and ensure that your company is search engine friendly when it comes to local SEO? There’s a couple of things you can do for your company which involve social media and new technology.

  • By utilising websites such as Facebook, Twitter or MySpace you are able to communicate with the public and make both new friends, clients and partners. By being able to make your location available through websites such as Foursquare or Loopt you are able to sync up your social media profiles to post updates of where you are. By making your location available members are able to discover you through searching for locations which gives both your company and your website a shot at promotion. It’s proven that members of the public will analyse companies through the Internet before they approach them properly so by ensuring you are doing anything you can to promote your company you will have a better chance in encouraging visitors to choose you.
  • Recently more and more devices are utilising GPS technology which means your location is able to be broadcasted when you want. With websites such as Foursquare, Brightkite and Loopt being avaialble on the mobile web you are able to publish your location no matter where you are (as long as your location is available). By utilising GPS services you are able to use new promotions by choosing areas to concentrate on and show that you actually care about them by visiting them time to time and publishing your location.

It’s a great novelty to be able to show your whereabouts, don’t be one of those companies who believe the old ways are the best ways else you may miss out on the best opportunity for your company yet!

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Posted in Mobile, Search Engine Optimisation, Social Media | 3 Comments »

Which Blog Service for SEO?

Friday, June 4th, 2010
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Are you setting up a blog for your website but don’t know where to start? If this is the case then you’ve come to the correct place. Having experience in creating blogs I have come across 2 different services which are worthy of your time. But before I explain which services you can use and why, I would first like to explain why you should create a blog in the first place in case your not completely convinced it’s right for you.

Blogging has been around for years and was once known as Internet journalism but as time has progressed so has blogging itself, such as who owns blogs and who posts on blogs. Blogs allows you, the author, to post content relevant to your blogs chosen industry and gives you a voice amongst many others. This means you are able to offer your own knowledge to readers and in return receive a nice flow of traffic to your blog. The better and more relevant the content in your posts the better your chances at getting a high traffic rate to your blog.

So back to the services. Both services are free, one being for novices with the least amount of Internet skills and the other being for more experienced computer users. These services are called Wordpress and Blogger. Each offers different features to users of the services, blogger being a much simpler blogging platform and Wordpress being a much more complex and diverse blogging platform. The biggest difference between the two is why you should own both, blogger is an off site blog which is hosted by Google whilst Wordpress is hosted on your own server. This means you are giving your website a huge support towards it’s search engine optimisation attempt.

Blogger is a simple service which requires a registered account through Google. The blog doesn’t take long to set up and once created is easy to post on. The purpose behind owning a blog through blogger is due to it’s capability of containing links. By pointing links towards your website you are able to give your website a decent linking structure as long as you regularly update your blog with new content.

Wordpress is a better service for both posting and customisation. As Wordpress is capable of being modified it gives admins the chance to give readers a better experience by using themes and plugins. As a huge number of both themes and plugins exist any industry your blog aims for can match which means you will always have just as much chance as any other blog to be successful. Not only is it good for customisation but because Wordpress can be used to submit posts to Googles news results your posts have a better chance at being discovered by readers.

Don’t choose just one and work on that only, by owning two different blogs you are able to give your website more exposure by submitting fresh content regularly. The more frequent posts are created and published the more search engines will visit both the blog and the website (through added links on the blogs).

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

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