Category: SEO

Is Yellow Pages and Other Paper Directory Advertising Dead

Posted by admin – 10/03/2010

Yellow pages is synonymous with business advertising and has been for many years, but are its days numbered. Ten years ago you may have got some return fo

If you have ever advertised with Yellow pages, the process starts with a sales person coming to visit you to book your money making advert. For more and more of the advertisers the book is a money loosing proposition.

Normally the sales person tells you to expect lots of enquiries a week, that you will be rushed off your feet and the small monthly payments of 3 – 4 hundred pounds will be easy to meet as you will have so much business that this amount will be small change.

The reality is normally a lot different. I first advertised many years ago, fresh faced out of university after completing my degree in Media production, specialising in multimedia design.

I was eager to join the world of small business, selling my newly acquired skills to a hungry local business community. My advert in Yellow pages was going get me business the likes of I had never known. That year went slowly, I didn’t receive one call from that advert; not one single little enquiry.

I cant blame the directory completely, my advert was small but it was the only paid advert in the section. The web was all new and shiny,many businesses didn’t know about websites or thought them just a passing fad.

I even went and did it again a few years later and thought it was the size of my advert that was the problem the first time, so I splashed out on a full colour half page ad. I did get responses to that ad but twenty times less then the directory sales people were telling me the average response rate was for an advert of that size and in that section. I covered the cost of the advertising but not much else.

The thing was I didn’t know what I know now. Paper directory advertising is dieing, then it was just in decline now it’s on its way to the retirement home.

For some; paper directories like Yellow pages can be great but for these it’s normally out of hours services like emergency plumbers or services aimed at the older generation who don’t use a computer let alone the internet. For most

Advertising is changing for the first time online marketing spend is going to over take traditional paper advertising

If you want a business or service nine times out of ten the web is the place you look first not last. I, being a person who makes a living online one way or another do everything online from shopping to research to entertainment it’s all there. I suspect I may be a little extream because of my comfort level online but I don’t think average Joe is far behind me .

If you run any sort of business you need to be found online so you need to establish a web presence now if you haven’t already got one. If you main form of marketing is paper directory’s then you need to be moving at least some of your marketing spend to online marketing now , not tomorrow.

We can use Google trends to see how the interest in Yellow pages and Thomson Local had declined since 2004

Yellow Pages

Thomson Local

As we can see the Yellow pages interest has dropped dramatically over the last six years to approximately 25% of the 2004 search volume.

Where is the interest going

Online marketing is growing with the biggest gains in search volume being in SEM an acronym for Search engine marketing

SEO

SEM

PPC

online marketing trends

So as we can plainly see the interest in online marketing is growing.  I can see the growth slowing as we see with SEO (search engine optimisation) PPC (pay per click) is in a slight decline but I put that down to businesses trying to reduce costs.

Social Media vs Search Engine Marketing

Posted by admin – 05/03/2010

Social media iconsTo start with this post started off as a comment in response to MOGmartins post about Social Media, PR vs Traffic. Where the argument is,

whether social media sites, like facebook and twitter are of use to large corporations as traffic sources, or are they just vehicles for public relations and one to one, or one to many communications.

Now I both agree and disagree at the same time, let me explain. Social Media is about making connections with people which it does for individuals, but I don’t think it does for most businesses at this moment in time to make a marked increase in the profitability of a company.

Quality of Traffic

Social media like Facebook and Twitter do produce traffic. When someone clicks through what is the users intention. Is it to buy from or use the company’s services, for the most part , no. I myself see a link posted and click on it to be nosey.

With SEM or search engine marketing when a user clicks through from Google ,Yahoo or Bing you can be sure that they are actively looking for what you have to offer. The user has been qualified by the search engine. Of course some customers are more qualified then others but for the most part a user coming from a search engine will convert to a paying customer click for click a lot better then a user from Facebook or twitter.

The Flip Side

There is a flip side to this argument in that fan pages and twitter is like an segmented email list , it’s full of people who are interested in one way or another in what you have to offer. So per head, these interested people are going to convert quite well. when the right offer is presented.  These people are waiting to see the next big thing and simply have to be told about it . A well segmented email list can be a gold mine allowing you to sell to the same person over and over again. social media I see working in a similar way.

The Future

Nobody can be certain of what the future of social media and search marketing is going to be. My view is that we are going to see a total merging of the two, we see the beginning with Google and Bing showing tweets in search results. We will to have to wait and see.

Conclusion

Yes social media does have an ever increasing part to play in traffic generation for businesses we will just have to be creative in how we use these channels.

SEO Web Design Secrets: Search Engine Optimization Tips For Beginners – Web Design Tips – Web Development

Posted by admin – 28/02/2010

web design SEO Web Design Secrets: Search Engine Optimization Tips For Beginners

SEO web design is a skill that can be learned, though most search engine optimization for beginners courses dwell too much on linking strategy as opposed to web site design per se. There are many ways for most normal people to get an improved search engine ranking, and secure a high search engine listing, and while linking is important, good on-site SEO is also necessary.

Although it might not seem like it, getting a good listing on Google or any of the other search engines is not as difficult as many like to claim. There are rules to follow, and if you play the game properly then the outcome should be in your favour. The tips provided in this article are not really secrets as such; although many people offer to divulge marvelous secrets to you, all they are giving you is stuff that people have been using for years.

So you won't get any secrets here. I have nothing hidden away that I don't want anybody to know, and if I had I wouldn't tell you about it! Would you? If you had some secrets that were so valuable that they were making you money, would you give them away free in an article like this one? Of course you wouldn't!

So here are my not-so-secret tips on getting a good listing in Google and improving your search engine ranking. You likely know a fair bit about meta tags, and have been informed that most are not used by search engines. Well let me tell you something. If you Google' Article Services you will finds my website right at the top in the #1 position for that keyword. Check the description that Google provides right under the title: that is exactly as it is in the Description' tag that I have on the site. So don't let anybody tell you that Google don't use the Description tag, because they do. So do Ask and MSN (now Live Search), and Yahoo also uses it, but not the whole thing exactly as written.

The Keyword tag is another matter. Google aren't interested in what you tell them the keywords are: they decide the relevance of the page themselves from the text and Alt tags on the page. Google no longer need keyword repetition to understand what you are writing about: they have the LSI algorithm now, that will determine the meaning of your page from the character strings it contains. The algorithm is programmed to calculate a relevance factor from the vocabulary you use in relation to the rest of the vocabulary on the page. However, back to SEO web design, and some search engine optimization tips for beginners.

In addition to the Description meta tag, the HTML tags you should use are:

1. The Keywords meta tag. Although little used it only takes a second to put in, and does no harm. There is evidence that some search engines might use it. The rest of the meta tags are pointless.

2. The TITLE tag. This is the title of your web page, and should contain the primary keyword for the page. Each page should be written round one primary keyword that relates to the subject of your website or niche.

For example, if your niche is costume jewelry, the primary keyword for your home page would be costume jewelry'. You could then have a number of 'silos' with a main page title each. The title of one main silo page could be 'simulated diamonds' and the first page title of that silo could be garnets'. All of these are the primary keywords for their respective pages. Another silo could be colored gem stones', with that as the primary keyword for the main silo page, and that for your first sub-page in that silo could be citrine'. And so on.

Each page must have one primary keyword, and it should be included in the Title tag for that page. The Title tag does not appear in the body of the article, but in the HTML between the two HEAD tags in your html.

3. The H tag. These are heading tags, with H1 being the most important. The heading for each main section in your page should be contained within H1 tags, and many pages have only the one set of such tags. Subheadings, containing secondary keywords, should be contained within H2 tags, and so on. Thus, in the example above, the heading or your garnets silo could be could be Garnets in Costume Jewelry' in H1 tags.

After an introduction to garnets, you could then have an H2 heading containing The Source of Garnets: Where Garnets Come From', then another passage of text headed How Garnets are Cut for Costume Jewelry', again held in H2 tags.
4. The ALT attribute. Use Alt = within the Img tags of your images and graphics. This lets the search engines know what the graphic is about: search engines do not read graphics, and the Alt attribute offers you the chance to use your graphics meaningfully with respect to SEO web design.

TEXT FORMATTING

That's all you have to worry about regarding the HTML tags. You text formatting can be used to emphasize to search engines what the important text on your page is. Thus, if you use bold text, underscoring or italics, they indicate the important words and phrases. Thus, use the STRONG and U html tags in your heading.

WRITE NATURALLY

Don't worry too much about your keyword density (KD), other than having to much. Too high a KD could harm you if Google thinks you are making unnecessary use of them. Write naturally for human readers, and not robots. If your text reads well and makes it clear what the subject of the passage is about, then you will be fine. In my writing I ignore the concept of KD altogether. I use my keywords as indicated above, and also in the first and last 100 characters on the page (or at least in the last paragraph somewhere).

Good SEO web design is not keyword fixated, but contains good contextually related vocabulary that the LSI algorithm can use to target the relevance of the page to the search term being used by somebody using the search engine to find information. That's all a keyword is: a term used by somebody looking for information. If you cannot work without a target KD, then I would go for a max of 1% with plenty associated vocabulary, synonyms. Related terms, etc.

Thus, if you are writing a 400 word article on the keyword losing weight', use these words four times, not twelve (1% not 3%)

None of these are web design secrets, and I doubt if there are any such secrets left any more. I suppose the only thing even approaching a secret here is that my description meta tag is copied exactly by Google in the listing for my #1 placed website. That allows you to determine how Google users see the description of your site in the listing.

I have several more SEO web design tips to offer, but these will be the subject of another article. In the meantime if you implement these search engine optimization tips for beginners, then you should soon see an improvement in your website's search engine ranking.

If you want more SEO web design tips, you will find Part 2 of this article with more search engine optimization tips for beginners on Seocious Tips 2 along with a free gift for everybody from me, Pete Nisbet of SEOcious.

SEO and Web Design Welwyn Garden City Hertfordshire

Posted by admin – 20/02/2010

Webmojo are opening  in a new location. we have expanded into welwyn garden city in hertfordshire

Web Design Welwyn Garden City

SEO Welwyn Garden City

Web Design Tips For SEO

Posted by admin – 31/01/2010

It really wasn't all that long ago that SEO or search engine optimisation was one big giant mystery. Back then it was a rare person who even understood its basic principles let alone effective techniques.

Now how times have changed and it seems that today almost everyone with a website is aware of its basic functions. However; what still remains pretty much exclusive knowledge is the finite workings of SEO.

So just what can you do to better familiarize yourself with SEO and its inner workings, prior to having your website designed. Understand them in such a way that you won't be stuck like you were the last time you had to talk to a mechanic about your car when it comes time to communicate with your Web Designer.

You can start by typing in what ever you're selling or providing into your computers search engine. Check out the sites on the first page brought up by the most popular keyword entries. The ones at the top are doing something right, so study their sites carefully.

One thing you're going to notice is that at least one of them and probably more will have the keyword in their name. For instance if your business in wedding cakes and the most popular keyword is of course wedding cakes, you're going to see sites with names like weddingcakes-4U etc.

Now check out all the pages of their site and you'll see that they have their name, which includes this keyword plastered all over each page. They won't be penalized for “keyword abuse” either because it's in their name and it's only normal that a company would put their name at the top of each page and in their text.

So the gist of all of this is to consider including a popular keyword in your domain name, so it can be used liberally in your site. It's really not worth changing or adapting your name for less popular keywords though but its really all up to you.

OK so whats next? How about a selection of topic related keyword articles in your site. Perhaps a box on the right or left of your opening page with around 15 well written articles that contain 15 good keywords. Now bear in mind that the top keywords can be very competitive, so you may want to consider passing some up.

Consider wedding cakes as an example again. Type in (wedding cakes) and you may find that 2,000,000 entities are competing under that keyword. However; if you live in, say Kalamazoo Michigan, you may be better served by focusing on less popular and far less competitive “regional oriented” keywords in your articles like (Kalamazoo Wedding Cakes) or (Michigan Wedding Planners), etc.

Do yourself a big favor by taking some time to study up on article writing and keywords before you put your pen to paper, so to speak. Once again, another great idea is to check out what some of the better article directories have to offer under your selected keywords.

Do the same thing there. That is, check out the top articles on page one and consider duplicating or even copying what they're doing. Of course direct copies will never pass copyscape, so you'll have to rewrite them in your own words but there is nothing wrong with writing “similar adaptations”.

Pau Harris writes for Studio-40 a web development company based in the United Kingdom. Learn more about them here: Web design Leicestershire.

What Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Can Do For You

Posted by admin – 28/01/2010

Why is search engine optimization (SEO) so important? What is all the hype about? Well, most every business, even from the smallest Mom & Pop shops around the corner to the huge corporations has a website today. Okay, you may be thinking so what? Well patience my friend, for I will tell you just what all this hype is about. Though everyone and their cousin seem to have a website today; that simply isn’t enough. Well, not if you want that website to be noticed anyway. How do you get noticed? Your probably already thinking it, search engine optimization (SEO) of course!

Have you ever used the Google search engine? Silly question, I know. If you have, you notice when you type in a keyword you get results, copiously flowing amounts of them in fact. Did you ever wonder how they did it? Let me enlighten you. What happens is the keywords you typed in are filtered through hundreds and even thousands of websites and articles that contain your keywords. They then will provide results based on the highest ranking and most relevant to your keywords. How do you make your website climb up in rank? By search engine optimization (SEO) of course! You need to create sources that saturate and use your keywords in the right fashion within your website and other sources linked to you. Then you need other reputable sites to link back to things you wrote. Sounds complicated, I know. That is why many choose to hire website development companies that provide SEO packages.

It isn’t easy competing in the world of the Internet today. Hundreds, thousands, even millions of sites are competing for top ranks with certain keywords. The only way to bring your site up to a high rank is to know and understand the SEO aspects. It isn’t as easy as spamming a certain keyword throughout an article, that is why there are spam filters you know. The quality of writing is certainly taken into account and let’s face it, writing, I mean real honest-to-goodness quality writing, truly is an art form that takes experience and skill.

It takes a lot to be on top of anything – whether it be a mountain or a search engine results page. It doesn’t happen overnight and it will not happen without expertise and knowledge backing your site. Consider a website development company that offers search engine optimization packages. They have the skills, knowledge, and experience to get you to the head of the pack. If you truly want results, just like with anything else, you need to look to and trust the professionals.

SEO Rankings Or SEO Results

Posted by admin – 21/12/2009

While it is generally agreed that metrics are a critical part of search engine optimization (SEO), experts disagree about their application, according to Search Engine Watch’s Eric Enge.

Enge, in a recent column, says that there are still issues with the measurement of a search engine optimization (SEO) campaign’s success. Some clients become overly fixated on website rankings, demanding that the SEO campaign catapult their site to the top of the list for key terms. Enge, however, says that not only do the tools used to compute website rankings frequently violate search engines’ terms of service, the data that they retrieve can be deceptive and harmful to the performance of SEO efforts.

Enge also writes that a simple count of inbound links to a given website is not particularly useful in and of itself, since some links can be worth “100,000 times” the value of others.

Search engine optimization (SEO) metrics may change in the future, however, as innovations like real-time search and improved mobile device capacity change the way people use search engines.

ADNFCR-1513-ID-19514417-ADNFCRMy view on this news story is the only metrics that matter with SEO are conversions period. If a client wants to be at the top of the rankings for their “token phrase” then the SEO they are employing is not advising their client in his or her best interest. A site with hundreds of visitors that don’t convert into an action is as useful as a site that gets no traffic at all.

Please comment on this!

How to Write Effective SEO Copy for Websites

Posted by admin – 09/12/2009

All websites want to be listed at the top of the best known search engines. Website developers and business owners alike understand that an effective site involves more than simply spending time and money on a good design. The overall goal is to get visitors to the website and then make it 'sticky', using good, solid content to keep them there. In this context, design is only used as a tool to make the content visually appealing to the target audience.

Boosting a company's web presence is a crucial aspect of any good marketing campaign, and search engine optimization (SEO) is how successful websites get visitors, and keep them. Search engine optimization is the art of striking a balance between the words and phrases visitors use in search engines when looking for information, with website content that is written to appeal to site visitors.

The first step in creating effective SEO copy is to determine what keywords or terms site visitors are using to find your website and/or your competition. By using tools such as Hitwise or the less expensive alternative, WordTracker, you can find common terms and phrases your content should be built around.

The top search engines, Google and Yahoo, also have their own useful tools for determining which keywords are being searched on, and how much traffic you can expect to get for certain keywords and phrases. It's often best to be very specific when selecting your search terms too, choosing multiple word keyphrases instead of single words. For example, 'SEO copywriting' instead of just 'copywriting'.

Once your keywords and/or keyphrases have been identified, the next step is to build effective copy around those terms. Building naturally flowing content around specific terms and phrases may take some getting use to, especially if the phrases are a bit awkward. Despite these limitations, try and produce quality sentences. The general rule of thumb is to always write the content that appeals to and caters to your site visitors, even if it's not perfect for the engines.

Discovering which keywords your site visitors are looking for is the first step in writing SEO copy. Writing copy that motivates and interests your readers, while keeping focused on the purpose of the website (based on these terms) is next. Writing effective SEO copy takes time and practice, but the end result is a major boost in both your site's appeal to visitors and its overall search engine rank.

SEO Shouldn't Be a Retro-Fit Add-on, It's Way More Important Than That!

Posted by admin – 03/12/2009

I've just had a meeting with a potential client regarding their website. They launched into a list of things they wanted including, videos, animations, 360 degree images etc. What they hadn't thought about was the whole purpose of the site. Who is was for, what it was for, who the stakeholders were and what success looks like.

Building a website is a time consuming and costly exercise. There are many component parts to a website, the look and feel being only one of them. The problem is many people only focus on the pretty pictures and Flash animations, only stopping to think about SEO once the site's live. This is a recipe for disaster.

SEO starts before a single line of HTML is written or a single pixel has been added to an Illustrator canvas. SEO can be used to help you figure out some of the BIG questions you should be asking when developing a website.

SEO will help you better understand your market, SEO will ensure you understand what your potential market is searching for, SEO will help you understand the competition you are up against. In extreme cases SEO may even help you decide if your proposed enterprise is worth pursuing at all!

Leaving SEO until after your website is live is a big mistake and one that will ultimately cost you dearly. You will be left scrambling around desperately wondering why your site isn't attracting customers and why Google and the other search engines are not listing your site when people search for what you offer.

Get SEO sorted from the get go and reap the benefits.

David A Robinson

Simple SEO: How To Create Content The Search Engines Will Like

Posted by admin – 01/12/2009

Improved search positioning means greater exposure to targeted traffic, but few E-Biz owners really understand how to run an effective search engine optimization (SEO) campaign. According to Andy Jenkins, founder of online business forum http://StomperNet.com, “Your web site ranking is determined, in large part, by the quality of your content – it must be both compelling to your visitors and consumable to the search engine spiders.”

A Matter of Substance

Jenkins reveals two key practices that can help you cooperate with the search engines and give them the kind of useful information they’re after:

Avoid Duplicate Content

When pages living on separate domains are extremely similar, the engines will classify them as “duplicate content” and rank them very poorly. One page will go in their normal index; the other will be relegated to their supplemental index, where none its value is manifested. This often poses a problem for eCommerce stores selling numerous similar items.

Every page of your web site probably has some design elements that are the same, like your navigation bar, header and footer, and any special messages, like “In Stock” or “Money Back Guarantee”. To keep from ending up in the supplemental index, you should strive to have at least more original content in your product descriptions than exists in the permanent template layout of your pages. In other words, if you have two hundred fifty words of repeating content on each page, you should also have at least two hundred fifty-one words per page of new and different content.

If writing interesting, witty descriptions of your products seems difficult, it may help to try manifesting your copy in some form of ownership. For instance, if you’re selling a box of tortellini, talk about how simple it is to cook, how good it tastes with pesto sauce, how wonderful it is to enjoy with your family around the dinner table. You’re simultaneously engaging your customers, sharing the benefits of using your product, and avoiding the mire of the supplemental index.

Implement Latent Semantic Indexing

Search engine algorithms have grown increasingly complex over time. Optimizing your copy is no longer a matter of stuffing it with keywords: “This pasta site is the best pasta site for the pasta lover’s pasta needs.” Now, in fact, repeating a keyword or phrase too often will raise red flags, and may even cause your site to drop in the rankings.

The engines have learned to recognize the relationships between many words. So to rank well for a keyword, you need to talk about things that relate to it, also know as “latent semantic indexing”. For example, if you’re trying to rank for the keyword “pasta”, you might talk about carbs, marinara sauce, fusilli, linguini, and so forth. It’s okay to sprinkle “pasta” throughout your copy, but concentrate on using latently related words. You’re generating copy that’s interesting to the users reading it, and palatable to the engines ranking it.

(Tip: To discover keywords latently related to your keywords, perform a Google search with a tilde in front of the keyword – like “~pasta”. You’ll bring back results containing latently related words: noodles, recipes, Italian, etc.)

While the search engines regularly revise their algorithms, the basic principles of SEO remain the same. You don’t need to play games or try to trick the engines to show up in their results. Advises Jenkins, “The engines want to give users the information they’re seeking. So if you create a user-friendly site with good, valuable content, you’re going to do well – period.”


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