by Karl Hudson | Jan 12, 2014 | Search Engine Optimisation
WHAT IS SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. It is the process of optimising a website or webpage using specific methods which can help boost its page position.
The term “SEO” was created/mentioned in an article published by Bruce Clay. Which Danny Sullivan then promoted, as he published an article on his ezine titled “Congratulations! You’re a Search Engine Marketer!” Source: searchenginejounal.com.
So the concept has been around since 2001. Major developments in search engine technology and algorithms has made SEO a core piece of any company’s marketing strategy. Businesses are now beginning to understand the value of SEO and what it can do to help their business succeed online.
WHAT DOES “ON PAGE SEO” MEAN?
On page SEO used to be as simple as stuffing your page with the keywords you wanted to rank for.
This is no longer the case. In fact, it has become very important to do on page SEO, as search engine algorithms are becoming more advanced.
Back in the day, search engine algorithms used to just read your content, find your keywords and then try to rank you for those keywords based on your back links and other metrics.
Now, search engines take a look at your site as a whole, as well as the individual pages and can work out what niche your site belongs to. As well as fully analysing all of your on page SEO factors.
THREE FUNDAMENTAL FACTORS OF ON PAGE SEO
1. SEO Friendly Permalinks
You may find many websites out there have horrible URLs. To show this I will use IMDB.
So one way to help with this is to ensure that all URLs on your site describe and mention the keywords you want to rank for. As you can see, IMDB pulls no punches with their unreadable URL’s. The problem with this is crawlers – the robots that work for the search engines and have the job of checking out pages and introducing them into the SERPs (search engine results pages) – can’t understand what the page is about from just looking at the URL, which means they have to dig deeper and find correlations within their data.
Matt Cutts even mentioned in an interview that the first 3-5 words of the URL are given more weight. You can check out that interview here. So it’s quite an important feature that needs to be incorporated into your site.
2. The title of your page has to start with your keyword.
Your title tag is still the most important factor of your entire on page optimisation strategy. A recent Moz.com study shows the correlation between pages that had the keyword as the title of their page and the different weight it carried.
The closer the keyword is to the beginning of the title, the more weight/value it will have.
3. Keyword Density
Keyword density still plays a major part in any company’s optimisation process. Many people try to stuff huge amounts of keywords into one little 500-word article. Now the problem with this strategy is algorithms penalise your website for having high keyword density. Basically, if you’re inserting keywords randomly, then you’re doing it wrong.
The best practice for ensuring keyword density is kept low is to just write the article naturally. The whole algorithm is designed to stop people from unnaturally stuffing their keywords into an article.
What I like to do is start with the keyword in mind. So for instance if I were to write an article on “cat walking”, I would brainstorm the ideas for the article and create titles that are associated with the topic. It’s a great way of ensuring your producing quality content and keeping it all looking natural.
WHAT ARE THE ACTUAL BENEFITS OF EFFECTIVE OPTIMISATION?
Effective optimisation can help your website rank organically without the need of much link building. Algorithms are starting to reward people for writing quality content and contributing to their niche.
If you start to optimise your website you should start to see an increase in the amount of visitors as well as the amount of crawlers visiting your site. It can also help you reduce bounce rates. Bounce rates are where a user clicks on to your site, skims through, and decides to click the back button on their browser.
Effectively optimising your site can help reduce this as you can give them answers to the questions they have.
Over the next few months, we will be publishing monthly tips on how to improve your website and how to align it with an effective SEO strategy.
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by Karl Hudson | Jan 7, 2014 | Pay Per Click Marketing
When to Use PPC Ads on Google AdWords:
The main reason that you should use PPC ads should always be about timing. When you need to attract short-term traffic to a new website or to one that needs to meet its quarterly goals, there is never a better time to initiate a PPC campaign. Since PPC’s aren’t going to net your longe-term SEO goals that are effective, just be sure to understand that you are not going to impress anyone with metrics coming off of a PPC advert unless they have absaloutley no clue about how they work or understand that it is only short-term in nature of AdWord’s ads.
In fact, using PPC to build up organic traffic is probably the most cost-effective use of paid ads. Obviously this only works for new websites or new parts to websites that haven’t really got a stable SEO platform built for them yet. These situations are used to increase your “findability”, just be certain that the content you have on the site will draw those “finds” in-it makes no sense to run a PPC if your bounce rate is going to see a higher rise than your sales. Research is always key.
You can also use PPC ads if you have a particularly small site. Obviously, i dont advise your site stays this way. Although in some niche markets it is very marketable and infact much better to keep the sight small. This can be to make the customers feel more close to the business than a cold giant business. In this instance you will need to pretty much rely on PPC ads to get going. Onsite SEO isn’t really going to make a big impact, so outside of advertising and word-of-mouth / blog / links, you’re going to have to get traffic in any other way possible.
Keeping Your PPC Ads Efficient:
Of course, knowing when to apply your PPC ads is only half the battle-the other half is knowing how to run them. To steer clear of waste, you have to follow a few simple rules of AdWords ads:
Keep your PPC ads targeted. This doesn’t just mean keyword targeting, but intent of customer.
Disqualify with negative words. You don’t just want to attract, you want to eliminate leads that will raise your click-through-rate (CTR) without the need for making a purchase.
Don’t bid on position. Big Mistake. You want dedicated leads clicking so you don’t pay for bounces. Bid on conversions rather than ad position since someone looking for your product or service will click on a few. This lowers your spend and increases your ROI.
Keep your eye on the prize. It’s easy to start looking at other metrics such as page view instead of gawking at the number of leads and clients you’re generating with your PPC.
Don’t Let Google make you Panic!
The bottom line here is you dont want to be forced into using PPC ads just because your in need of your keyword data that you have been placing all of your faith in. Trust me, using PPC adds at the wrong time and in the wrong way is detrumental to your wallet. Try switching your SEO tactics instead. This will work much better than being pushed into PPC at the wrong time.
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by Karl Hudson | Jan 6, 2014 | Search Engine Optimisation
Anyone involved with internet marketing or web site design and development must be aware of the necessity of keyword research. A keyword is the word or phrase that an individual types into the search bar in order to find the most relevant web pages. It is possible to have to allocate an hour or more for keyword research, depending upon the depth of keyword research the marketer, designer or developer wants to achieve. It can prove to be a time-consuming and harrowing experience, indeed.
There seems to be no exactly correct way to perform keyword research. Recommendations on how to do keyword research vary immensely, depending upon which “expert” you choose to consult. The primary consideration is what the marketer, designer or developer wants to accomplish with the keyword. Usually, it is for the purpose of search engine optimization (SEO). But again, the best way to achieve keyword SEO is different from so-called pro to so-called pro.
Numerous tools are available that can assist with the keyword research aspect of an internet project. Some of these tools are free of charge, others can cost up to a couple of hundred dollars. Most authorities will admit profuse use of the Google keyword research tool, a free tool available to everyone. The major drawback is that the statistics reflected with the Google tool relate to ad placement and are not necessarily useful to a marketer or site designer. The tool will, however, give the user sufficient information on the number of searches performed for a specific keyword in order that keyword research begins SOMEWHERE.
The Google keyword tool is easy for even a novice to use. The researcher need only type in the niche of his project, a keyword idea or the URL of a specific website. The tool will search Google’s database and provide the results. A good practice is to write down the top ten long-tail keywords that appear, ignoring the competition column. A long-tail keyword is a keyword that consists of 3 or more words (more like a keyword phrase). Then write down the top ten LSI (latent search indexing) keywords. The LSI keywords are the top 10 keywords that appear from the search, regardless of length, in order of relevance. It is a good practice to not only use ONE primary keyword to a density of at least 2%, but to utilize LSI keywords in the content to avoid keyword spamming while accomplishing improved results.
The next step in keyword research is to determine the amount of competition for each of the 10 long-tail keywords that were selected. To accomplish this, the researcher must individually type the keywords into the Google search bar and perform a search of the relevant web pages himself. He should write down the number of competing pages (the total number of results returned from the search) and also make note of the sites that appear on the first page. Since the objective of keyword research is usually to rank on Google’s first page, the page rank of the sites that already appear on page one must be taken into consideration.
The software tools that can be purchased can cut research time dramatically. Most are equipped with complex algorithms that will not only find the most relevant keywords, but also weigh the competition to determine what will be the most profitable keywords – all in a matter of minutes. Though some of these tools may be expensive, the money that can be saved because of the cost of time-spent may make the investment worthwhile, if the marketer, designer or developer has the intention of performing keyword research on a regular basis.
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by Karl Hudson | Jan 1, 2014 | Marketing
You may have noticed that our website has been down for just over one week and had been replaced by a splash page. This was because we have decided to go with a geographical strategy, so each domain extension we have will have its own targets i.e. .nl (Netherlands) .de (Germany) .se (Sweden) and so on.
It has also allowed us to create v3 of our website. Which is a lot slicker, quicker loading and essentially bug free, it will also work perfectly across all devices, this, put simply, illustrates what we can do for you and your business.
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by Karl Hudson | Dec 28, 2013 | Search Engine Optimisation
In today’s world, internet and online marketing have become increasingly important for growing businesses, both big and small. The key to online marketing is your website and the key to gaining traffic and potential customers to your website is search engine optimization. Many people are not familiar with search engine optimization and know next to nothing about white hat, grey hat, and black hat SEO. This article will give readers a broad overview of search engine optimization as well as explaining the difference between white hat, gray hat, and black hat SEO.
To begin, search engine optimization affects how well your site ranks on Google and other prominent search engines such as Yahoo and Bing.
The first type of SEO is white hat SEO. White Hat SEO is basically a process where users try to increase their search engine optimization through honest techniques and by following search engines’ guidelines. This means creating an error free website that has a ton of quality and unique content that offers a valuable experience to visitors. Examples of White Hat SEO include writing articles for other sites in order to gain backlinks, guest posting on blogs in order to gain targeted traffic, and posting on relevant forums in order to receive backlinks. White hat SEO is a very time consuming process because of the quality, time consuming work that must be done manually by humans.
Secondly, and in complete contrast to white hat SEO is black hat search engine optimization. Black Hat SEO seeks to improve search engine optimization through techniques that are frowned on by search engines, or even considered illegal. Black Hat SEO wants to rank websites as quickly as possible. There are many different black hat techniques. One is keyword stuffing, which happens when a certain website includes a huge amount of keywords in an article in order to rank highly for that keyword. Another black hat technique is creating thousands of low quality or spam backlinks that link to your site in order to try and gain backlinks. Other methods include cloaking and hidden text.
Black HAT SEO is found attractive by many website owners because it is extremely cheap and if done right, can still work. The costs of black hat SEO are a mere fraction of the cost of white hat SEO. However, black hat SEO is risky and can get you demoted or even outright banned from search engines such as Google.
As you might have figured out, grey hat SEO is a mixture of black hat and white SEO. Grey hat SEO avoids or bends the guidelines that search engines have. Many website owners choose to engage in grey hat SEO because it offers a balance. You can quickly rank your website without being too risky.
I hope you enjoyed this article about white hat, grey hat, and black hat SEO.
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