Last week I went to a ‘Digital Marketing’ networking event in Southampton and met some cool people doing some great search engine optimisation, social media and design work for their clients. Why? Because they were all small independent specialists who were passionate about what they do.
As an aside, I can’t bare the term ‘digital marketing’ because to me it embodies the bloated and over priced online marketing agencies that often provide very little value for money to their clients. If you want more ‘bang for your buck’ online there is a growing army of solo consultants that will deliver great results for you.
Anyway, now let me tell you the whole story that inspired this blog post. At the networking event I met a guy called Babul who had just sold his restaurant business and was interested in geting in to search engine optimisation consultancy. Babul had been doing a lot of studying but couldn’t believe how simple search engine optimisation seemed to be.
Here’s the thing, Babul and I had quite a debate, because he couldn’t believe that the fundamentals of SEO were so simple when so many people get it wrong. The truth is SEO is generally easy if you stick to the rules, it gets complicated when you try to cut corners or believe that the latest greatest software will do it all for you.
Now let me explain, the methods of SEO, (Search Engine Optimisation), aren’t as far along the path of evolution as you might think. Sure, just like with the recent Google Panda update, search engine algorithms cause ripple effects in the online marketing world every time they are changed, but the tried and true methods of SEO are much the same as they have always been.
Don’t get the wrong idea here, while there are certain strategies for getting your website to the top of the search engine results pages, like link building, web 2.0, article marketing, etc., it is really the core ‘On Page’ Search Engine Optimisation methods that you need to start off with, in order to have a solid foundation to branch out into these other areas.
The core methods of search engine optimisation or at least the short list, involve the right Domain Name, accurate Title Tags, proper Page Name, quality content, frequency of updates, popularity of topic, reputation of your site, and number and quality of backlinks.
Remember, this is just a short list of all the factors that will affect your rankings. In truth, there are over 200 of them, that need to be addressed for effective search engine optimisation.
Keep in mind also, that you shouldn’t focus on just the home page for your search engine rankings. You should be treating each page on your site as individual, and go through the SEO strategies we discuss with each and every page that you want to rank.
At a very basic level, there are two very important elements to search engine optimisation that we’ll discuss today and you should absolutely pay attention to them.
Let’s talk first about your domain name (URL). If your site is new, then chosing a domain name that contains a keyword that you want to target is better than using just your business name. If you’re trying to optimise your existing site then getting your URL structure is key.
First off, make sure that although your domain name should favour your targeted keyword phrases, you should not be too “hyphen-happy”. If you have more than two hyphens in your proposed domain name, you need to scale back. In other words, if your keyword phrase is only two words, but the domain for those two words is taken, then don’t be tempted to add silly phrases like “the-best-ever-keyword1-keyword2.com kind of thing.
Secondly, your URL structure can be manipulated to contain keywords too. For example www.yourdomain.com/discount-keyword-and-keyword is better than www.yourdomain.com/productid1257_%category21.
Just be careful to protect any of your existing URLs that have already been indexed by Google because changing them to a new structure can make your rankings drop like a stone. To protect them all you need to do is set up something called a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one for each existing page on your site. Your webmaster can do this for you.
Next, let’s review the proper use of title tags in your search engine optimisation strategy.
As bad as the mullet haircut was/is, it’s a great analogy coined by my friend Michelle Chance-Sangthong about the right way to create your title tags. The catchphrase for mullets was “All party in the front, but all business up front.”
Using it for an SEO analogy, you want your best keywords as all business up front, and your “party” in the back is the strong motivation and reason for your prospects to click through to your offer of products and services. An example would be:
Blue Ray DVD Players: Free Delivery on Orders Over £100
There is no need to stuff unnecessary keyword “fluff” to fill up your title tag. In the search results pages, it is the title tag that shows up as clickable, so this is the reason to compel searchers to click on it. Fire all of your big guns at once right here in the title tag. You want it to please the search engines with its relevancy, and please the visitor because they see it as a solution to the problem they have.
Here’s the thing, depending on how much competition there is for a given keyword or phrase, even a slight tweak in your title tags could give you a boost of a few positions or even several pages in the search engine results.
Next time we’ll talk about some of the other ‘on page’ search engine optimisation factors that will help improve your rankings.
Yellow Pages Print Advertising Down 18.4%
If you are looking for a phone number or the address of a particular company, do you root around looking for your bulky Yellow Pages or do you simply go online and search?
Here’s the thing, 1 in 3 internet searches are now done on a mobile phone. Why? Because these days even with a slow connection it’s quicker to use your phone than finding your Yellow Pages, opening it to the right section and then struggling to find what you’re looking for.
The chances are your Yellow Pages are being kept somewhere inaccessible where it’s forgotten and gathering dust.
And another thing your mobile phone’s always within arms reach, some people even sleep with it under their pillow. By the way the electro magnetic radiation from electrical items can cause all sorts of serious health problems so it’s best to switch your phone off at night but that’s another story.
If you own a business, will you still advertise in the Yellow Pages when it’s time for renewal or will you think about getting on the Internet to tell the world about your services? If you’re smart, you will go for the latter option simply because you’ll get better and 100% trackable return on your investment.
What’s more Yellow Pages have been hit in goolies by the Google. If you need hard numbers as proof for this well read on. Discover for yourself why going digital is the better option in this day and age.
According to Yell, its revenues fell by 12 percent to £1.25 billion in the last 9 months of 2010. The pre-tax profits were virtually cut in half from £75 million to £38.6 million. Even the operating profit fell by as much as 72 percent from £335 million all the way down to £244 million. The revenue, which the company gets from print advertising, fell by 75 percent of its overall total.
On the other hand, it is interesting to note that Yell’s digital media revenue increased by 10.4 percent, which is £342.2 million. In the United States, Yell’s revenues fell by 17 percent while its online revenues increased by 14 percent. The numbers do not lie and this is concrete proof that digital media is the new phase if you want your business to not just survive but to thrive.
Google recognises the power of local search and places a huge amount of emphasis on local results:
- 43% of all searches on the Google network included a geographical identifier.
- 86% of those people followed up with a phone call
- 61% of those people ended up making a purchase offline
If you’re still spending a fortune on Yellow Pages and other ‘old school’ advertising like newspapers, magazines and radio, you could be ‘missing a trick’.
Here’s the thing, small businesses are changing their advertising strategy because they need to be exactly where their customers are looking for them; online.
Whenever people want to find or buy something or research a purchase, they jump straight on the Internet and do a quick search – at home, at work or increasingly on their mobile phones.
But here’s what happens, if they don’t find your business in the results, they won’t know you exist and won’t buy from you. It’s that simple.
The chances are your competitors that are getting found have already realised that online marketing is ‘hands down’ the best return on investment for your marketing budget.
Now let me tell you the whole story, if your competitors are getting found on the search engines and are all over the social media sites and you’re nowhere to be found, this means you’re in literally giving away business to them.
So, let me ask you a vital question…
Is your business easy to find online?
If you’re like most business owners you know you need to do something but you’re just too busy running your business to do anything about it.
Let’s face it, doing everything you need to do to make sure that you’re everywhere you need to be online can be overwhelming so it keeps getting put to the back of the queue.
You’re not alone, Thompson Local has found that 70% of all small businesses don’t do any local search engine optimisation to help them get found online. This means that you are leaving the door wide open for larger online companies to steal market share from you, right on your doorstep.
Here’s the thing, you literally can’t afford to ignore what’s going on any longer because your savvy competitors aren’t. And the longer you leave it you’re business is getting harder and harder to find.
What’s more, until you finally do take action it’s going to get more and more expensive to catch up with your competition.
Yellow Pages have been slow to react to the change in society and it’s cost them dearly. My advice is to take action now before you get left behind.
Have you ever wondered how Google works?
The infrastructure behind such a massive operation that delivers search results within a fraction of a second after you hit the ‘enter’ key is phenomenal.
From keeping their servers from overheating to filtering junk content produced by ‘black hat’ SEO and spam from their search results, Google has its work cut out.
Here’s a mindmap of what it takes to run Google and its algorithm so they can deliver you the most relevant results for your search.
Infographic by the Pay Per Click Blog
How could someone who created this masterpiece possibly teach us anything about conversion rate optimisation?
Especially because it was painted before the internet or computers were even thought about?
Well, take a look at the picture, where is your eye drawn to? Where are you naturally drawn to placing your focus?
Here’s the thing, da Vinci cleverly positioned Jesus so that he was framed in front of the window, using the ‘natural light’ to make him appear brighter than everyone else in the picture.
Now let me tell you the whole story, making one element of a web page stand out is a technique that is often used to draw the visitor’s attention to something we want them to notice and take an action on. You wouldn’t blend your add to cart/basket button into the background of your web page would you?
What’s also clever about the way da Vinci has painted The Last Supper is that he has created some space between Jesus and the people either side of him. On a web page, leaving some ‘white space’ around an object is a proven technique to draw attention to it. The reason you would do this because you want your visitor’s to notice it, for example the price of a product or a button that you want them to click.
And another thing, nearly everyone in the painting is subtly pointing towards Jesus. If you are choosing images for your website, have ones with people looking at or subtly pointing at your product or the button you want them to click. Doing this is a proven way of increasing your conversion rate optimisation.
Now this is how it works,people look at people so having images of them using or at least holding your product will improve your conversion. Doing this is far more interesting than a boring image of your product.
But there is something else, great photographers and graphic designers have long known of a particular spot on the canvas to which your eye is irresistibly drawn.
This square is nick named the ‘Magic Square’ and is centred at the intersection of the upper right matrix lines when a picture is divided into 9 rectangles.
Take a look at this other piece of da Vinci’s work. Knowing that your eye will go to the magic square, great artists like da Vinci will put something there for your eye to find.
The painting of The Last Supper proves this is not an unbreakable rule but it’s an interesting tip for the next time you’re trawling through stock photography, trying to find a suitable image to use on your website.
On the other hand, visual clutter is nobody’s friend so above all keep your web pages clean and simple. This is because every new element you add to the layout of your web page reduces the importance of the others.
There’s a golden rule to direct response web page design and that’s ‘one page, one action’.
What this means is that you shouldn’t try to get your web visitors to take too many actions on a single page. They’ll just get confused about what they’re supposed to do and leave. So if you’re trying to get them to add an item to the cart and opt-in to your newsletter on the same page your conversion rate optimisation may suffer. Less is definitely more.
I’m sure you have wondered where to get started with conversion rate optimisation. It’s probably something you’ve had on your to do list for a long time but haven’t had 5 minutes to give it any real attention.
Here’s the thing, it’s the difference that makes the difference to an online business. The most successful online marketers all do one thing, they test. They test every element of every page of their websites. The return on investment is huge and the best part is that your competition won’t have a clue how you’re so much more profitable than them.
If you’re ready to let someone else get started with improving your conversion rate so you can keep focusing on what you’re best at contact Wizard of Web.
The New York Times recently outed US retail giant J.C. Penney’s ‘Spam SEO secret’ creating a real buzz about ‘black hat SEO’ tactics which Google considers a dark art and tantamount to cheating.
Here’s the thing when it comes to SEO Companies and search engine optimisation, Google makes the rules and you don’t want to ever break them no matter how many shortcuts you might be tempted by.
If you are tempted by the dark side and break the rules, you might be lucky and have a honeymoon period of achieving fantastic results in the search results but it will be short lived and when Google slaps you with a penalty, it will be very costly to recover from.
J.C. Penney found out the hard way, after several months of ranking in the top spots for dozens of really competitive keywords like ‘home decor’, ‘furniture’ and ‘bedding’.
Google’s boffins eventually caught up with J.C. Penney’s SEO Company’s dubious tactics and the ‘corrective action’ of having their site go down in the rankings like a sinking ship was dropped on them. They are now currently not even in the top 50 for many of their keywords.
Now in J.C. Penney’s defense, they may have been absolutely unaware that the SEO Company they were working with were using ‘black hat’ methods. They were discovered to be using undisclosed paid links and link farms to achieve their extraordinary results, conveniently over the Christmas shopping period.
Could this Happen to Your Business?
Now let me explain, Google has an anti-spam policy that should never ever be violated and if you are deciding which of several SEO companies to work with, asking the question of how they will achieve results for you has to be asked.
In 2006 BMW’s German website was temporarily removed from Google’s search results for using ‘doorway pages’ which is another type of black hat method which Google feels deceives its users.
This is just one example and unfortunately many other online businesses may be involved in black hat activities including cloaking, keyword spamming, comment spamming, hidden text or even sabotaging their competitors by ‘Google Bowling’. This is buying spammy links for a competitor and then reporting them to Google.
Because some SEO Companies are paid on results, i.e. high rankings and often without disclosing how they achieve the results, there’s a temptation and often need to cheat.
How to Protect Your Online Business from Black Hat Seo Companies
- Never work with SEO Companies that want to be paid on results. Quality SEO with long lasting results takes time and investment but is well worth the wait. Paying on results means black hat inevitably comes into play as the cashflow drain on SEO companies using ethical methods would be too great.
- Read up on what Google considers spam so you can spot it if it’s being used on your site. Google provides these resources in its Quality Guidelines and Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide.
- Ensure SEO companies that you’re evaluating disclose their tactics. If they’re ethical, there is nothing to hide. If they’re reluctant then this should be a red flag.
- Keep an eye on your site’s profile on the web. Check the sites that link to you and the quality of the links by using BackLinkWatch.com or Open Site Explorer.
- Don’t fall for SEO Companies that send you spam emails to offer their services, the chances are they’ll be using spam SEO too. The best way to find SEO companies is by referral, this can be either word of mouth or using social networks like Linkedin and Facebook. Otherwise you can do a Google search and look for a firm with testimonials and case studies that you can check out.
- Spread your online marketing across several channels. Because Google is always changing its algorithm, one change or spamming incident could affect your rankings instantly. So make sure you’re using affiliates, pay per click, social media, video, email and mobile marketing as well so all your eggs aren’t in one basket.
If you’d rather not worry about whether your site might get banned form Google and have your SEO done properly with sustainable results contact Wizard of Web today.
How often do you get emails from another webmaster saying they liked your website and they would like to exchange links with you?
These sort of link building strategies are outdated and totally ineffective which they obviously don’t realise. This is a common mistake made by webmasters and SEO companies working for struggling websites. And the only takers for these kind of link exchange offers are from other struggling sites.
Here’s what happens when you follow this kind of strategy, one non-authourative website links to another non-authourative website and the end result is a vicious cycle leaving you wondering why all your efforts have got you nowhere.
Do you want to make sure your SEO invesment of either your own time or with an SEO company is used properly?
We’ll here’s the whole story;
So if the strategies mentioned above don’t work, which ones do?
The secret to an effective link building campaign is to target quality links, these are:
Links from Other Sites in Your Niche
Links that Positively Affect your Seach Engine Rankings
Links to Achieve Your Shorterm Goals
Links to Achieve Your Longterm Goals
Links that Increase the Trust & Credibility of Your Website
And another thing, this method of SEO link building has never been penalised by Google or any of the other search engines simply because it follows traditional marketing methods. So you never need to worry that the strategies are a danger to your business unlike other quick fix and automated approaches which can get you site banned.
Here are the top 7 things you should definitely not do when link building:
- Never outsource your link building projects unless you can be absolutely certain and have checked that the person or SEO Company understands the correct methods and is highly qualified.
- Do not backlink to just your homepage. You need to deep link to your other pages like product/ service or articles pages. This will also help with conversion as you can tke prospects directly to a page relevant to their keyword search.
- Do not use the same anchor text in every link, this looks unatural to Google and the other search engines. Always vary it.
- Never participate in three-way linking schemes. They are exactly what they say they are – schemes.
- Do not request links by performing a search for ‘your keyword phrase’ + ‘submit to site’. Doing this will give a load of sites that are useless and will not help improve your link quality.
- Never buy link packages that promise 300 links for £67 or something similar. It will end in disappointment, they are never good value.
- Never build links using keywords that you have not proven are profitable by using pay-per-click advertising first.
If you want to get started with getting your site ranked for profitable keywords and grow your business online contact Wizard of Web today.
It ‘s great to have a pretty website but what if no-one can find you? There are over a trillion webpages out there competing to get shown on the first page of Google. So how can you get yours to show up and bring you business?
The first thing to do is to do some SEO Keyword Research for your product or service. This will give you a list of keywords relating to your market and tell you how much competition there is for them and how many people are searching every month using each of these keywords.
Now let me tell you the whole story. To make sure that the keywords you want to be found for are actually profitable we recommend that you start a pay per click campaign before doing any SEO. This will also help you go from thousands of potential keywords to a short list to suit your SEO budget.
Here’s the thing about SEO, it’s not an instant fix. It can take several months to see results but as long as you’ve done your homework first (which is why we recommend SEO keyword research and pay per click) the rewards for your business can be huge.
Now let me explain, SEO is a moving target because Google likes to change its algorithm every 18 months to 2 years to continually deliver the most relevant results for its users. The more relevant you make your webpage to a keyword the more likely you will be to rank on the first page.
The trouble is, the longer you leave it before you get into the race to be on the first page results, the more expensive it’s going to get and the further ahead your competition will be.
On the other hand if you follow the rules of SEO it’s actually quite simple to get onto the first page as long as you have the budget to beat your competition and you act quickly before your competitors get too savvy.
And another thing, there’s more than one way to show up on the first page using SEO and pay per click as well as social media. Below is a screenshot showing all the places you could show up on Google, each of which requires a different technique.
But there is something else, if you add the name of a town or city to the keyword you type in, then the Google Places results will also appear.
If you didn’t know already, Google Places is a free web page about your business provided by Google that you can add your information to. Google displays results for these in any search that includes a town or city in the keywords.
We can help you optimise your Google Places page as part of our Local SEO Services.
If you would like a free evaluation of the SEO potential of your website contact us now. Do it now before one of your competitiors does. You’ll be glad you did.
Courtesy of www.websitemagazine.com
Do you run a local business? Do you want to be the first business listed in Google Places when someone searches for your speciality + your town /city?
Here’s how to optimise your Google Places (formerly Google Maps) listing, which is something Wizard of Web offer as part of their local SEO services.
To get your Google Places listing ranked at number 1 just follow these 8 tips:-
- Get More Reviews than Your Competitors
The best way to do this is to send an email to your list of customers and ask them to write a review of your services. Send them a link to your Google Places page to make it easy for them.
Make sure your reviews are all genuine and from previous or current customers/ clients. If it doesn’t contravene any local laws you could also offer them an incentive to write a review for you.
Getting reviews from your customers should become procedural within your business so that you keep ahead of your competitors as this is the main factor in ranking at the top of Google Places.
For every 10 reviews your competitor might have, you need 20 or 30 to stay ahead.
2. Leverage the Power of Photos & Videos
You can add up to 10 photos and 5 You Tube videos to your Google Places page so take full advantage of this. It’s a good idea to include your logo and web address on any photos or videos for branding.
Photos can be of you, your team, your premises, your products or even events relating to your business. Remember people look at people so don’t bore your prospects with a photo of your offices without you in the picture.
Your videos don’t need to be the full 10 minutes allowed by You Tube, 2 minutes each is enough. Making a video is an opportunity to talk about what makes your business great and also to connect on both a personal and professional level.
3. How to Use Keywords in Your Local Business Description
Just like regular SEO, using the right keywords in your listing’s 200 character description is important. Choose your keywords carefully. If you need help, do some SEO keyword research using the Google Keyword Tool.
The caveat to this is not to cram the description full of keywords at the price of making it hard to read, turning your prospect off. Your description is an ideal opportunity to write a short advert for your business.
4. Use Keywords in Your Business Name
If your business name includes a description of your service, for example ‘Acme Cleaning Services’ this is going to help as ‘cleaning services’ is a popular keyword.
If you’re starting a new business I recommend coming up with a name based on popular keywords relating to your services.
5. Choose Your Categories Carefully
The categories you choose will have a big influence on what you show up for when someone does a local search. You can create your own category but it’s better to choose one of Google’s auto-complete suggestions.
6. Connect to Your Google Places Page Through Backlinks & Citations
Whenever there’s an opportunity to link back to your Google Places Page take it. Make sure your link contains anchor text with your keyword(s).
Every Press Release, article, blog post, photo or video should have a link back to your listing. Citations and reviews on other authority sites are also really helpful to improve your rankings.
Here are the top sites to get citations in the UK, if you’re in the US or other countries, many of these sites have an equivalent there.
Top 17 places for UK citations:
- Checkatrade
- Hotfrog
- Qype
- Local Data Search
- Thomson Local
- Yelp
- UpMyStreet
- Trusted Places
- Bview
- Tipped
- We Love Local
- Brown Book
- Infoserve
- Yell.com
- TouchLocal
- Scoot
- Ufindus
- SmileLocal
7. Create a Coupon Offer
You can create a coupon and upload it to your Google places listing so that it can be downloaded by visitors. Make sure your coupons are a limited time offer and change them regularly. The expiration date on he coupon will encourage people to take action.
Track your coupons and test which offers work best.
8. Google Tags
Google Tags are the little yellow tags that appear in front of the listing when you do a search, for example, ‘Dentist Portsmouth’. Once you’ve verified your listing the tag will appear right next to the maps listing and will help you stand out more.
If you are a local business, Google Places is an essential place to advertise your business and optimising your listing will help with your local SEO to get more prospects to your page.
Use each of the 8 steps above to bring you more business. If you’re too busy running your business Wizard of Web’s Local SEO Services can get this done for you.
Are you wondering whether SEO is right for your business? The mindset of a great SEO strategy is something every business owner or marketing professional must realise. SEO is more than just ranking on the first page of the search engines .
Businesses that truly ‘get it’ reap the rewards by treating SEO as marketing their message and their brand to the right people at the right time in the online search space. It’s an ongoing marketing effort that needs investment to reap the rewards for years to come.
Great search engine optimisation isn’t something that just happens overnight or with some magic tool that you found online promising to get instant results with no effort.
Here’s the thing, there are very few SEO companies that actually get it. The process of ranking at the top of Google for a keyword is so complex that very few SEO companies have mastered it.
There are 100′s of SEO companies out there and out of those, only a small percentage can actually do what they say. When you do achieve a first page ranking for a keyword that generates you profitable business it’s hard for your competitors to take that from you.
SEO is a capital investment and once you achieve a first page ranking, it not only brings unlimited prospects to your site for “Free”, but your website becomes a much more valuable asset to your business.
A business that has invested in getting their website found has realised that traditional advertising doesn’t really get results and telephone directories like the Yellow Pages are virtually dead. For maximum ROI, there’s no better way to advertise than to speak directly to your prospects that are looking for your goods and services ‘right now’.
The beauty of SEO is that it’s not just getting your message out there in the vain hope that someone will see it and happen to be in the market for precisely what it is you’re offering at that precise point in time. That’s called advertising. SEO is direct marketing.
SEO allows you to put your business right in front of the people that are looking for your offerings at the exact moment they are searching. There is simply no better way of marketing to your audience.
And another thing, 1 in 3 internet searches are done on a mobile phone so because people are glued to their phones virtually 24 hours a day, your message can be found the very instant someone gets the impulse to buy.
Here’s what truly makes a superior SEO strategy, it’s the realisation that it isn’t a quick fix or temporary solution. It’s the knowing that SEO can transform your business by giving you the most precise way of reaching your prospects of any marketing medium that has ever existed.
Once you realise this and make the investment in SEO, you will set your business on a path that will change it for the better forever.
