Category: SEO

SEO Agency For Small Business

Posted by admin – 25/06/2010

What can an SEO Agency Do for the Smaller Business

The internet is the place where, with the right seo company the smaller business can compete with the big boys. Getting the right advice is essential to success and it may not cost as much as you think. An SEO consultant can give you the tools you need to push your business forward online. If your willing to do the work yourself you may find a 2 hour session is enough to get you on the right track

What an SEO consultant will provide for you


  • Keyword Research

Identifying the right keywords is the basis of a well performing website. Choosing the wrong keywords and you may only get a few visitors or you may get hundreds who don’t buy anything. My take on this is, try to become the perspective customer, identify what they want and why they buy then tailor your content to them.

  • Improve Your Site Structure

Site design can have a large impact on your on page SEO efforts your agency will be able to advise you on how to structure your site for maximum benefit in the SERPS (search engine results page’s)

  • Off-site SEO

Your SEO agency will give you guidelines to start your off site optimisation. Off site SEO is all about gaining links back to your site with good keyword focused linking text.

What constitutes a good link

A good link is a link that contains your keywords, is within page content and is on a page directly related to the theme of your main site.

Finding Links

A short list to get you going on link building

  • Blog Commenting
  • Posting blog posts
  • Directory submissions
  • Social Bookmarking
  • Article Submissions

Smaller companies have different goals from larger businesses

SEO is the science of getting top search engine rankings, If you have a bottomless pit of money, getting top rankings is easy, you just chuck large amounts of cash at generic terms related to your business on pay per click marketing. Many small businesses don’t have this amount of cash to repeat this exercise month after month

If your a small business your marketing on and off line is your life blood. Without customers you are not in a position to continue trading. Larger companies have reserves of cash to fall back on if things are a bit slow. They will often employ teams of sales people banging the phone all day to produce sales and new customers.

SEO is Constantly Developing

SEO is in a constant state of flux. Search engines are constantly looking for the best way to return relevant results and on the whole are getting smarter at picking up on the automated drivel that once filled the search results. Although it is possible to perform your own SEO it is always best to get an SEO Agency in to help you. The cost of a few hours of SEO wisdom can pay huge dividends in the future giving you a roadmap to help your site get great rankings.

SEO For Business

Posted by admin – 15/06/2010

Seo For BusinessThe business world is firmly embracing the art of SEO like a long lost, much loved relative. Of course SEO is another way of marketing a business. It is like traditional advertising but at the same time its totally different.

In the past

In the past,seo was all about being number one. The top spot was the prised position as there could only be one top spot. Competition was fierce and in the early days a lot of the returned results were pages designed to gain rankings not to entice visitors. Spamming was rife. Meta tags held a large sway with the then search engine algorithms, they would be stuffed with words in the hope of getting traffic. I must even admit to using some of these tactics in the early days. Using software such as web position gold in the hope of it telling me the magic numbers to make me an SEO God

Business SEO has Matured

Like all things, SEO has aged, looking back on it’s past and reminiscing how silly it used to be. The modern online marketing consultant is no longer just interested in rankings , now he or she is interested in helping you the business owner.

SEO has gone all holistic

As I said previously SEO used to be all about the position. Now from my point of view I want to get your website and online marketing working seamlessly together. Using the term  SEO is a little misleading as search engine optimisation is only a part of what a good internet marketing company does.

So what does a “good” internet marketing company do

SEO is still a major part of the mix but for it to be done properly you need your SEO involved from the conception stage of the web design process. By having them involved they can advise the web designer on how to structure the site so it is search engine friendly. The other option would be to hire an SEO web designer with the skills in place to build a search engine friendly website.

Keyword Research

One of the most important parts of an SEO’s job finding good high traffic keywords and phrases relevant to your business.

Ditching Keywords

Once your SEO has built his list of key phrases he or she will “ditch” the ones with to much competition (new sites) or not enough searches to be profitable.

Copy writing

Your website copy could mean the difference between making a sale or not, your SEO will help you with your copy giving you pointers to improve the wording or take on the project themselves using a good SEO copywriter .

Calls to action

Call to action is a common phrase in the world of online marketing simply put it is asking the customer to perform a single or set of actions these may be as simple as using the phrase “buy now” or using your phone number as a focus point with “call us now”

Converting visitors to buyer, website conversion rates

The ability of a website to make sales or enquiries is measured in its conversion rate. A conversion rate of a page or a site is calculated in the number of sales divided by the number of visitors. An example would be a websites gets a thousand visitors a month and from that thousand 35 people go on to buy the product or service we would have a conversion rate of 35/1000 = 0. 035 or 3.5 %.

things that can decrease or increase conversion rates are headlines, copy, site design, colour and calls to action. For the bigger budget projects your SEO would undertake some split testing of different layouts, wording, headlines,colours and images. A quick way to get some results for the conversion rates would be to use PPC (pay per click) sending half the clicks to one page and the other half to the other modified page and compare conversion rates.

Off Page Optimisation

Off page SEO is a whole subject in it’s own right. To give you an idea it mainly involves link building and the way link building is done is dependent on the SEO. It could be blog commenting, article marketing or the creation of micro-sites to feed traffic back to your main site the list goes on.

Speed Up Your Website For an SEO Benefit

Posted by admin – 01/06/2010

There is  a lot of buzz at the moment about the speed of your website being a factor that affects your search engine rankings. Matt Cutts the unofficial  public face of Google seems to be dropping little hints to this fact whenever he speaks, most recently when he addressed the Dublin chamber of commerce you can read more about Matt’s visit in the Irish Times

You know you need to speed up your site but how do you do it

Now that you know the benefits of having a higher page loading speed, how do you actually go about it? Well, most SEO experts will usually proceed by performing the following SEO methodologies considered to be the best in order to achieve higher web page speed:

  • Reduce initial display time of webpage
  • Resize and optimize images
  • Upgrade CSS style sheets to the latest standards
  • Optimize Java scripts
  • Optimize multimedia content

What did you just say?

All this sounds great but if your a small business owner with limited experience with the web its a tall order in anyone’s book.  what you need is a step by step guide on how to do all the above tasks.

  • Reduce initial display time of webpage

Well yes, that’s what were trying to do! ignore this one as it’s the out come of the methods we are going to put in place.

  • Resize and optimize images

One we can work with. Often images on a web page are unoptimised. What this means is they are larger in file size then they need to be (larger the file the longer it takes to download) this can be because the image is using more detail then it needs, or the actual image dimensions are lager then is being displayed

these are both exactly the same image except one has been resized in the page mark-up

speed

speed

You can do optimise and resize your images online with www.webresizer.com

  • Upgrade CSS style sheets to the latest standards

This is a bit misleading as its not upgrading your CSS as such,  it’s just re-writing it into a shorthand version. We use CSS tidy there was a hosted version at http://csstidy.sourceforge.net/ but it’s no longer there, we have our own copy hosted on our servers http://webmojo.co.uk/csstool/

  • Optimize Java scripts

What this simply means is place all your Java scripts into one external file

  • Optimizing Multimedia Content

Audio: First ask yourself whether your site really needs sounds or music! Having a midi file playing in the background is an annoyance (my opinion); visitors come to your page because of its contents and not to listen to music. However, if it’s imperative to include background sounds or music try to use a midi file or a small .wav file that loops seamlessly.

Video: Since video files can be quite large, it’s best to provide a link to the file mentioning the file size and leave the choice of viewing it to the visitor rather than forcing it to load in the page.

Flash: Flash is a vector based program. To keep Flash files at a minimal size try to use fewer fonts, reuse symbols, compress the included sounds, convert bitmaps to vector graphics etc. To judiciously decide whether Flash intros are required for your site.

http://www.webdevelopersnotes.com/design/optimizing_web_pages.php3

SEO Meta Tags

Posted by admin – 16/05/2010

SEO meta tagsHere’s short post on SEO meta tags. For the majority of search engines the meta tags have zero relevance to ranking a page in the search engine algorithm. It hasn’t always been like that in the past the main ranking factor was the meta tags, like any thing that can be humanly changed we had the years of the meta tag stuffing where keywords would be placed in the description and keyword tag area often not relevant to what’s on the page. This would lead to higher ranking but made for a crap user experience with pages returned that were not relevant to what the person was searching for. Today it’s all about relevancy and user intention.

So should you use the SEO Meta Tags

Yes you should, let me explain why. The keyword meta tag is all obsolete for the search engines. There is a but, Some social bookmarking sites read the keyword tag and use it to auto generate tags for bookmarking and sharing. This will save any user bookmarking the page time and effort. Thus making the process of bookmarking more striate forward.

The description tag , although this tag is not used for the ranking of pages this text is displayed under the page title in the search engine results page. This gives you opportunity to write attractive and enticing copy to increase your click through rates

How to write meta tags

Description tag

<meta name=”description” content=”your descriptive enticing copy”>

Keyword tag

<meta name=”keywords” content=”keywords or phrases,that,relate,to,your,page”>

Remember to choose the keywords as if your were tagging the document .

A word From Google on the subject of tags

Recently we received some questions about how Google uses (or more accurately, doesn’t use) the “keywords” meta tag in ranking web search results. Suppose you have two website owners, Alice and Bob. Alice runs a company called AliceCo and Bob runs BobCo. One day while looking at Bob’s site, Alice notices that Bob has copied some of the words that she uses in her “keywords” meta tag. Even more interesting, Bob has added the words “AliceCo” to his “keywords” meta tag. Should Alice be concerned?

At least for Google’s web search results currently (September 2009), the answer is no. Google doesn’t use the “keywords” meta tag in our web search ranking. This video explains more, or see the questions below.

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SEO Pricing

Posted by admin – 14/05/2010

Woman holding the words SEO Pricing in her handSEO is very important to the online business with on average the number of leads the search engines produce being anything from 60% – 100% of the visitors to a website.

So as an SEO how do you work out your SEO pricing. I find this part of the job one of the hardest. Search engine optimisation and pricing, it is a minefield. Price too low and the client thinks your unskilled at your art, price too high and your run the risk of pricing yourself out of the job. So where’s the middle ground.

SEO is a two stage process the first being the on page optimisation where the structure and content is optimised to take full advantage of how the search engines rank a page / site. The second stage is off site optimisation this involves building links to the site from relevant sources across the internet. Pricing should always reflect the amount of time that is going to be spent on the optimisation process. A rule of thumb is an newly trained SEO’s time is worth £25 per hour and an SEO at the top of their game can be worth up to £175 an hour. So you should be pricing for your SEO service accordingly.

Word of warning, if you are a new to the world of SEO, know your own level. You don’t have to tell your customer, but if you price according to the the results you expect, then you shouldn’t go far wrong. There is nothing more irritating then an SEO who is over confident and under skilled, they give the whole industry a bad name.

Method one: Price on performance SEO

This sounds simple, you get the customer on first page and they pay you. This method is problematic especially with the introduction of personalised search. You may find yourself educating your clients on the search engines so they can validate the data you send over in your monthly report. I’ve talked to business owners who have used this type of service and it seems to turn into a pay us if you want to relationship. With the client only paying when they think the seo company has done enough. This may seem the fairest but its often the SEO company that is left out of pocket.

This opens the system up to abuse by not having a set metric. I normally see this sort of SEO pricing at the lower end of the market with uncompetitive phrases and localised search. Price wise you are looking at £50 – £150 a month on phrases with moderately low level of competing sites.

Method two: Fixed monthly fee

You agree with the client a fixed monthly rate no mater what the performance is in the serps. This is a risky situation for the customer as they have no regress if the performance is not up to standard. Most customers will need to see your past victories to make them feel comfortable with this pricing module. You may need to educate your client that SEO is not an overnight process and the monthly fee needs to be considered as an investment in the long term success of a website

Method three: Pay Per Action

this method is the most risky for the SEO company as they will only get paid on the event that a pre defined action is taken. This action can be someone signing up for a newsletter, a customer making contact with the client or directly making a sale of a tangible product. Normally this is worked out as a percentage of the sale normally ranging from 10% – 15%. At this point you start to leave the SEO world and merge with the affiliate marketing fraternity. I would only follow this form of seo pricing if you have total control of the website design. Leaving it down to a third party to implement conversions is not a good idea. A lot of work but the rewards could be good especially if it’s a large company with lots of customers

Which ever method you use for your Search engine optimisation pricing you must have a clearly defined contract. Your contract should be in plain English with in detail definitions of the criteria that is to be met. After meeting those goals you would expect to be paid by the client a pre agreed amount. SEO is not like a normal service it can be hard work. Some clients don’t want to pay the amount you quote. Sure, negotiation is part of business but always have a bottom pricing line that your not prepared to cross. This will save you from taking on unprofitable jobs

Why Can I not find you online

Posted by admin – 07/05/2010

I’m frustrated, in fact I’m really frustrated. Part of the reason is my washing machine is on the blink and I’m down to my, only in the house cloths. The second and main reason is, I can’t find the contact details for the washing machine repair man.

I don’t want to just call anybody out of the paper due to a bad experience with a rouge trader type. The reason I want to use this guy is I trust him not to rip me off and to charge me a fair price. I know the search engines better then most and I know how to lever every ounce of search power out of them but I still can’t find any mention of his details on line.

You need to make it easy for people to find you

If I’m having difficulty finding him who else wants to use him and cant, Like me they have lost the slip of paper that was stuck on the fridge with his contact details on it. How much business is this guy loosing due to not having any sort of listing online (even a free one).

If you have any sort of business you need to have a web presence. New businesses see it as a must. If you have been in business for a while you may not see any reason for changing. The reason to change is if you have built a loyal customer base who are happy to recommend and use you time after time you need to make it easy for them to find you.

If Internet marketing is war is this battle worth fighting

Posted by admin – 25/04/2010

Face facts if your an SEO or a web marketer you are at war, you are at war with the guy who’s targeting the same phrase’s and keywords as you. The other person may be nice or nasty, they may even be your most hated enemy or best friend ether way they are trying to take the food from your children’s mouth and thy must be stopped.

Before you go off to battle this foe in the search engine rankings, you need to figure out if the battle is worth fighting. Firstly do you have a chance of winning without wasting large amounts of your resources. Secondly is the battle worth your time. By choosing your battles with a clearly defined criteria you can save your self many hours of wasted effort.

Is the term you are targeting profitable
Are your competitors well established in the market
Is your target term specific
Are you being led by ego

Lets deal with the fist on the list “Is the term you are targeting profitable”. Profitability is a major factor in your keyword decision in regard to SEO. A key phrase is profitable when its product or service led, non generic and hints at the user intention. In plain English, the end result is money changing hands

The phrase “health and safety consultant” is a prime example of a phrase that hints at what the user is looking for when they search via the search engines. The intention being that they wish to find a person to help them with health and safety. If the user had typed in just “health and safety” then the intention is not that well laid out.

A well established market can be hard to compete in if your a late comer to the party. To establish how entrenched the top ten sites are here are a few points to look for.

High PR(page rank)
Lots of indexed pages (found by typing in the search engine “site:thedomain.com”)
Domain age (old domains rank better then young ones)
Dmoz listing
Yahoo directory listing

If you find a few sites in the top 10 that are young with little or no PR then you should be able to compete.

Are you being specific in your target, similar to profitability a phrase that is more specific will convert to a sale better then a generic term.

Ego is a flew in the competitive SEO or web marketeer. We like to be number one and the search engines are the place to do it. I have fallen into this trap of targeting a competitive term with little profitability value to prove how good I am. Don’t do it it is wasted effort. Its just ego, your ego doesn’t put food on the table. To be a web marketeer you need to be pragmatic and look at the bigger picture.

Once you have the habit of looking at the bigger picture and only take on projects that are winnable you will find you have more time for the more important things.

Googles New Adwords Keyword Tool layout

Posted by admin – 23/04/2010

Google has rehashed it’s adwords tools layout. The new layout looks very similar to the Google search based keyword tool. It now has the ability to segment keyword by industry which can only be a good thing. Another added benefit is you can now see the different match types in the same list, although I would have liked them in different columns.

Google Keyword tool

Keyword tool 2

keyword tool 3

A new look for the Google keyword tool, let us know what you think.

Rundown of SEO Web Design

Posted by admin – 22/04/2010

A brief rundown of SEO web design by a company in LA

What is SEO Web Design

Posted by admin – 20/04/2010

seo web design helps business growSEO Web design as the name suggests is an amalgamation of web design and SEO. There are some strong reasons why you should use a company that is expert in SEO as well as website design. To explain this further we need to break down what is web design and what is SEO

Web Design

For the dedicated web designer, designing a website is all about the look with considerations given to how well the design communicates the message. The use of graphics and typography is there to support the core communication. Many web designers come from a graphic design background and have a basic grasp of the code behind the design and may well depend strongly on web design packages such as Dreamweaver to help them produce the end product. Many of theses designers are able to produce designs that a visually breath taking

SEO

For the SEO its all about the traffic. Getting visitors to your site they rely on statistics and conversion rates. From a design point of view it’s all about making it easier for the search engines to crawl and index your website. The skills of good SEO’s should never be underestimated as they can help a business thrive by delivering targeted visitors, identifying search trends and even new markets.

SEO Web Design is …

When you combine these two disciplines, what you get is a web designer that can produce great looking websites while creating a design that is optimised to produce great search engine results.

On page optimisation is easer as the site structure is designed to place the most relevant content higher up in the page. As a rule of thumb, the closer to the top of a page a word or phrase is placed the more relevant it is.

Image optimisation

The optimisation of the web design images this is done by the use of file names, title text and alt tags this can be used to support the overall website theme

Linking text optimisation

Optimising the way the pages are linked by the use of keyword rich links as opposed to generic terms like “home” or “about us”

Conclusion

I have done my best to lay out the basics of why SEO web design is so crucial to long term success of any website. As you can see there is more to web design then just making things look nice or just getting traffic. For a website to work it has to appeal to the senses as well as perform well. You have to strike a balance between the search engines and the user, stray to far one way and you cancel out the other.