Archive for the ‘Website Promotion’ Category

12 Things You Should Be Doing For Localised SEO

Tuesday, May 15th, 2012

 

Local search results have been around for many years now, but with each new update rolled out by Google, either announced or unannounced, the need to optimise for local search results is increasingly important.

But whilst there is plenty of information and advice on how to optimise your website or your marketing for the search engines, the focus on localisation is often rather vague. In fact I have come across several examples recently of people recommending a form of SEO localisation which amounts to little more than either translating text verbatim, or using boilerplate text.

If the recent algorithmic updates released by Google over the past few months have demonstrated anything, it is that tactics such as these are likely only to result in your website being severely disadvantaged.

So if optimising for local results is important for your business, what techniques should you be implementing in order to have the best chance of both appearing high up the relevant search results for your local area, as well as remaining on Google’s good side? Here are 12 tips for localised search engine optimisation.

12 Things You Should Be Doing For Localised SEO

1. Domain Name

Naturally if your website is already established then it may be too late to think about choosing a suitable domain name. However, if you are looking at setting up a local business presence or a new website presence then this is definitely the first step toward optimising for localised results.

If your domain they can include the area or town relevant to your business then clearly this is going to help stand out as a relevant local result. Remember, if buying a domain name which includes multiple words, one of which may be a town, use hyphens rather than underscores as this will be more accurately interpreted by Google when identifying local place names. Just be sure not to use more than two hyphens and don’t spam!

2. Domain Extension

Again, if your business is already established then this won’t be as easy to change, but if possible it is always preferable to make sure that your website domain extension is as localised as possible. So if your business is based in the UK, having a .co.uk extension is better than having a .com extension.

3. Web Host Location

There is some evidence to suggest that Google takes into account the physical location of your website’s host server. So if your business is based in the UK, it may be of some help to have your website hosted in the UK as well. Google has not released any specific word on this matter, and opinion is divided. However there are many major players who swear adamantly that their.co.uk websites hosted in the UK perform better than .co.uk websites hosted elsewhere, such as in the United States.

4. Address In The Footer

It is extremely important to make sure that your business’s postal address is included in the footer section of every single page within your website. Doing this significantly enhances your local relevance as far as Google is concerned.

5. Local Directions

On your contact page, in addition to your postal address and a map, include some text which provides local directions. Inevitably you will be including various place names and town names, as well as road names, carriageways and motorways.

6. Register On Google Maps

This is one of the most important points in this blog. I cannot emphasise enough how crucial it is in terms of localised SEO to make sure that your business is registered on Google Places. When people search specifically for a local business, those businesses which have registered on Google Places will be listed at the very top of the page, above the organic search results, often with a map displayed on the right-hand side which clearly indicates your business’s geographic location. This is better than having a sponsored listing, and it doesn’t cost anything. Visit https://accounts.google.com/ServiceLogin?service=lbc and make sure you get your business registered as soon as possible.

7. Local Events And Community Issues

If possible try to include a page or section within your site which focuses on local events or any community related issues connected with your line of business. Most businesses will have at least some connection to the local community. If not, perhaps it might be worth establishing some sort of connection, even if it is minor sponsorship of a local charity event. This is perhaps a little cynical, but there are almost certainly issues and events which you can write about which will demonstrate to Google that your business really is local and relevant.

8. Local Directories

As well as making sure that your website is submitted to major online search directories, also make sure that you submit your site to local directories. Some of the major directories such as Yelp and Thomson Local will enable your business to demonstrate a local presence, but there are also opportunities such as those run by the local Chamber Of Commerce which allow your business to be listed alongside other businesses in the area.

9. Use Of Language And Words

One of the biggest mistakes many businesses make when contracting a copywriter or SEO specialist to market their site is to hire the services of someone who is not local to the UK. Inevitably this means that the language, use of language, vocabulary and spellings do not conform to local UK styles. Even looking at the word ‘localised’ it is immediately apparent whether this is to do with the UK or the US simply because of the fact that it is spelt with the letter ‘s’ rather than a ‘z’.

But simply translating text is not enough. The way in which British writers write is inevitably unique, and cannot be replicated merely through translation or the correction of spellings. But it goes even further than this, because in many parts of the country there will be specific ways in which things are described, including local vocabulary. So whereas one website might be talking about an alley at the back of a property, a writer based in East Yorkshire may be more likely to talk about a “10 foot” at the back of a property.

So using UK writers who specialise in writing using British English rather than American English, and by using words or vocabulary specific to the region you can significantly improve your website’s apparent relevance as far as Google is concerned.

10. Images And Alt Text

There are two benefits to including images of local places and locations within the pages of your website. If you have ever experimented with Google’s image recognition tool you will be aware of the fact that it is apparent Google is able to roughly identify images of some locations and features. Whether or not this provides any measurable advantage in terms of localised optimisation is unclear at this stage. Certainly Google has not published any information on it, but there are a few experts experimenting with the idea, and some at least claim results which could prove that in some cases it may be of benefit.

But the second and perhaps more obvious advantage is the fact that having pictures of local places also enables you to include captions, filenames, image titles and alt text which emphasise the fact that the business is directly connected to these known locations. Of course from the point of view of real potential customers visiting the website, photographs of the local area also help to foster a feeling of confidence that the business really is local and relevant.

11. Twitter And RSS Feeds

We certainly do know now that Google is paying much more attention to social media such as Twitter. It may be useful therefore as a small aside to embed a Twitter feed on your site which highlights local events and news. This Twitter feed could include headlines from the local paper or radio, as well as information regarding events run by local museums, galleries and the town council. Don’t overdo it, but if used sparingly and sensibly could well improve the localisation of your businesses website.

12. Avoid Boilerplate Text Or Spun Text

Far too many businesses seem to feel that if they have a business website which needs to provide a number of localised presences across the UK that it is acceptable either to have a page or section within the site specific to each location, or to have a sub domain specific to each location. By itself this isn’t wrong, but the way it is implemented almost inevitably means that boilerplate text is used, with great swathes of text duplicated over and over again with only minor changes, such as the place name.

Similarly, spinning text so that on each page the town name and one of two local details are changed will almost certainly mean that following the recent Penguin update Google will penalise your site quite severely. There is simply no shortcut to creating unique, custom and original local content written specifically for each geographic location.

Do you optimise for local search results? Have you found some methods work better than others? What do you do in order to maximise your business’s visibility for local searches? Please leave any comments, thoughts or questions below.

 

Image Credit: http://www.seo-creative.co.uk

 

Tags: google, local search, local seo, localisation
Posted in Google, Image SEO, Local Search, online marketing, Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), SEO Copywriting, Website Promotion | No Comments »

15 Ingredients To Create An Effective Blog Post (Guest Blog)

Thursday, May 10th, 2012

 

Each post is important, along with the impression it creates and the people it convinces. It’s important, therefore to have the ingredients of a successful blog post formula. This comes from defining every aspect of what a successful blog post means to you. Here are the 15 essential ingredients of an effective blog post.

1. Define A Clear Purpose For Each Post

Define a clear purpose for each post based on its type – for example, your goal from a product review is to make a certain number of sales. Your goal from a guest post could be to generate backlinks to your site. Your goal from a series of tips could be to bolster your email list.

2. Select Topics Based On Reader Requirements

Readers are of primary importance when it comes to your blog. Don’t assume to know what they like. Do proper research; check other blogs to see what works. You can always take inspiration from what the top players in your niche area are doing.

3. Look Up Search Engine Matches For Your Keywords

Note the suggestions on Google for your keywords. Then use the same keywords on Quora and Yahoo Answers. Follow this approach by running phrase matches on the Google Keyword Tool. The point of this exercise is to pick up potential keywords for your new topic that has medium or low competition.

Write A Great Topic..

15 Ingredients To Create An Effective Blog Post 4. Do Enough Research

Analyse similar posts on your competitors’ sites (focus only on top-level authority blogs). Read comments and understand how much value was provided, what gaps can be filled and what more you can offer.

5. Create A Great Headline

Your headline is the first thing people will see, whether it’s on your tweet or your newsletter. Make sure your headline is compelling enough to make people want to click your link.

6. Put All Your Effort Into The First Paragraph

Reader patience differs – so make sure that the first para encapsulates the essence of your post. Be sure to include a loop at the end so your readers feel like skimming the rest of the topic.

7. Add More Value

Focus on writing a useful, practical article including facts, tips and tricks that others have not included. Focus on over-delivering – not under-delivering or delivering the same. Make your post stand out.

8. Engage Your Reader

Ask ‘what do you think’ questions at periodic intervals in your post. Get your readers thinking – evoke a response. Reading your post should be an interactive process and not like reading a school essay.

9. Make Sure It’s The Right Length

Your research phase should tell you how many words to use for what kind of topic. For example, you can write a long article with tons of tips. However, if you’re writing a product review, keep it short and sweet.

10. Do A Wrap Up

At the end of the post, include a few ideas to take away. These are the ideas that people will retain for a long time, even if they forget the rest of your post. For example, if it’s a post about personal growth and development, write down the specific benefits in real time.

11. Include A Call To Action

Based on the goal you set for your post, include a call-to-action that clearly indicates what you want your readers to do. If you want them to sign up, ask for it and put up your form. If you want comments, ask for them. If your post is a product review, don’t forget to include the product link at the end with a request to check it out.

Promote Your Post…

12. Social Media

Add a few lines describing your post and why you’re sharing it on social media. Create a teaser for your post with a loop so that your subscribers will feel compelled to click the link.

13. Newsletter

Announce an upcoming new post in your newsletter at least a week before it’s due. Create a sense of anticipation. Include a teaser and a loop. After the post is uploaded, include the link in your newsletter with an announcement and a couple of lines explaining how the post will benefit your readers. Keep their attention engaged and focused on the post.

Analyse The Results Of Your Efforts So Far…

14. Goal 1: Subscription

Create a new named subscription form for your post. Check the tracking ID for that form to know how well the form converts. Compare this conversion rate with other forms and you’ll know if your post was successful or not.

15. Goal 2: Sales

Use Google Analytics to check the referral information on the target page of your product link. You can easily find out which pages your traffic came from. Note the ones that came from your post and you’ll have the metrics you need.

 

About The Author: Dean is a freelance writer and specialises in writing about topics related to conversion funnel optimization, landing pages practices, customer acquisition and website uability.

Tags: blogging, blogging tips, tips for bloggers
Posted in Blog Marketing, Website Promotion | No Comments »

8 Algorithmic Changes Google Slipped Past You During April

Tuesday, May 8th, 2012


A couple of days ago Google released a list summarising 52 changes which they implemented during April which are now affecting search results. This has nothing whatsoever to do with penguins, pandas, or indeed any other monochromatic animal. These are just simply run-of-the-mill algorithmic changes which have been implemented without any formal announcement.

I have carefully gone through this comprehensive list of changes and have identified 8 which I believe offer some value to those of us who take a keen interest in our site’s performance and optimisation. In today’s blog post I’m going to go through those 8 points, explaining briefly what the changes are that Google has introduced, and what the implications are for online marketers, as well as offering relevant advice to those who wish to adapt their strategies.

8 Algorithmic Changes Google Slipped Past You During April

1. Paginated Documents

If you have a very long document in your website, perhaps a tutorial, or in-depth guide, you may find that rather than serving this on a single rather bloated page you paginate it. This means splitting the documents across multiple pages, including navigational links which allow the reader to move forwards or backwards through the document.

What Google has identified is that in some cases highly optimised paginated documents can end up dominating some search results. So if you have a tutorial on left-handed bath plugs which has been divided across 10 different pages, it is possible that anybody searching for left-handed bath plugs would find that the first 10 results, in other words the whole of the first page, only lists the 10 different pages of your tutorial.

Clearly this would be good news for you, less so for anybody else trying to deliver relevant or useful information. Certainly from Google’s point of view it is not ideal to serve results which include such a poor level of diversity. Their algorithmic change means that searches will now generate a more diverse selection of results in such cases.

So the message here is that if you have been investing a great deal of time in deliberately splitting up documentation across multiple pages in order to have multiple chances at having those pages listed in the results, this may be time wasted. Unless the document is so long that it deserves to be divided up across multiple pages it may be more advisable to have more quality content per page.

2. Individual Webpage Localisation

We all know that for some time now Google has been serving results which it believes are likely to be more relevant based on localisation. So if you’re searching for information related to train timetables it is more likely that you will receive results which are either predominantly for your country, or possibly even more local than that.

However, what Google has tended to do in the past is to assess the localisation of a website at the domain level, or at most, sub-domain level. This isn’t always ideal, and what they are now doing is to assess individual pages for localisation in cases where content is at least in part user generated. So if you have a web page within your site which includes user generated content which may be specific to a particular town or country, this page may be assessed differently from other pages within your domain, or indeed different from the entire rest of the domain.

I have mentioned in previous blog posts the importance of optimising for localisation, and I think that whilst this algorithmic change may not affect a wide number of business websites, it does underline the importance of making sure that such opportunities are taken advantage of as fully as possible.

3. Domain Diversity

Google is aware that sometimes searches can result in a high number of listings appearing from the same domain. This is less likely to happen now though, as they have made algorithmic changes which should see a more diverse set of domains served for each search. Clearly this means that if you have been seeing your website listed multiple times within the first page for any particular query, you could find that you are now only appearing once. Don’t take this as a warning that you are losing your rank, since it is simply likely that you are being affected by this change.

Perhaps the message here is that it is now more important than ever not to rely on appearing multiple times within search results, but making sure that the listing you do have is optimised for the user as much as possible. I’m talking here about making sure you have highly relevant and appealing titles, as well as descriptive text or rich text snippets.

4. Text Snippets

On the subject of rich text snippets, or at least text snippets, a change implemented during April means that it is more probable now that Google will be taking text snippets from the beginning of your page rather than elsewhere. Although I would not go as far as to suggest that this means you focus more on the text at the beginning of your page than at the end, it is perhaps important to think about getting those soundbites and key messages early on in each page.

5. Fresh Content

We all know that Google is very keen to promote content which is fresh, relevant and up-to-date, and a minor algorithmic change they made during April means that the search results are more likely to prioritise content which appears to be fresh. I have been writing quite a bit recently about the fact that it is now more important than ever to make sure that the content on your website, and in your blog, is regularly added to, expanded and updated. This change simply underlines the importance of having fresh, relevant content on your site as often as possible, even if only to hold on to your search results page position.

Google wants quality content sign6. Quality Content

This is perhaps a warning from Google in case you feel that simply adding any old content will count as fresh content. They are introducing a modification to a classifier they use to promote fresh content. This modification does not simply prioritise high-quality fresh content, but actually excludes fresh content which has been identified as being low quality.

Just make sure you saw the word ‘excludes’ in that last sentence. Yes, it is now vital that you ensure your website is regularly packed full of fresh, original content, but sticking any old rubbish in there is not just going to be a waste of time and money, but could well see your content being actively excluded.

7. Query Interpretation

I was amazed when I read this line from Google. In one very buried, very brief sentence Google has basically said that it is now likely to adapt and respond to your queries based on the most recent searches you have carried out. Effectively I see this as being the case that Google will be monitoring the sort of thing you are looking for, and use this to predict what you might be wanting in subsequent searches.

I don’t think this particularly means that in terms of SEO we could, or should, be doing anything different. But it is important to be aware of the fact that when you are searching on Google it is possible that the results you see for identical searches may change based on interim searches you have carried out. I haven’t carried out any specific testing on this, but it’s certainly worth bearing in mind that it is a possibility, especially when looking to assess either your own site’s or your clients’ sites’ ranking.

8. Concise And Informative Titles

Again, I have mentioned the importance of good quality titles in previous blog posts, but a change implemented by Google during April seems to mean that they are now looking at a wider range of factors when determining what to show for the title of each result. It seems that what they are after is to ensure that titles are always as concise as possible, and as informative as possible.

Get rid of those boilerplate titles, titles which include your business name unnecessarily, keyword stuffed titles, duplicated titles, overly long titles, and titles which don’t really inform as to the content or purpose of the specific page.

If you found this blog post useful, please consider sharing it through Twitter, Facebook, or Google+. If you have any comments on any of these algorithmic changes, or feel that they help to explain any changes you have already been noticing, please leave your comments and thoughts below.

 

Tags: google, localisation, search results, titles
Posted in Google, Local Search, online marketing, Personalised Search, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), SEO Copywriting, Website Promotion | 3 Comments »

Google Publishes Advice On Effective Image Optimisation

Friday, May 4th, 2012

 

Is your website Googlebot-Image friendly?An aspect of SEO which I think we are all a little guilty of occasionally is to focus too much on text alone, overlooking the importance of image SEO. It is interesting to note that Google has recently published some information about the optimisation of images, but looking at the reactions and responses of many website publishers and SEO advisers it seems a little odd to me how many people have misunderstood one of the aspects of Google’s advice.

Although you may find that your website is mostly focused on delivering text based information to your visitors, there are many businesses which rely more heavily on image-based information. This could of course be graphical representations of data in the form of charts and infographics, visual-based representations of styles, furnishings and decorations, displays of food and drink, and even of course photographs demonstrating the sort of services offered by a photographer’s studio.

What Google has made clear in its recent publication is how important it is to make sure that any images which you include on your page, and which may be discovered by somebody carrying out a search online for images, are optimised appropriately and effectively.

So what image optimisation advice has Google offered?

First of all they have made it clear how important it is to ensure that any images embedded on the page are named appropriately, and that the alt attribute of the image describes it in a human friendly way. It is also important to make sure that the text content of the page is highly relevant to the image, and in particular text which is positioned very close to the image very closely relates to that image.

One point raised by Google is that whilst their Googlebot will crawl all of the text within your website, it will not crawl your images. Instead it will be Googlebot-Image which does this. It is therefore essential to make sure that you have allowed crawling of your images and your pages by both Googlebot and Googlebot-Image. It is also important to make sure that you include an image sitemap to assist with this, and you can get more information about creating image sitemaps here – http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=178636

Many people have been pleased to see that Google is paying close attention to the correct optimisation and use of the alt attributes, but in all of the information and advice provided by Google there is no mention of the title tag for images. This has led many people in discussions online to suggest that the title tag is no longer of any value.

I have been astonished to see so many people, including so-called SEO experts, suggest this. After all, even though the title tag for images may not be actively crawled by Googlebot-Image, it is important to remember that the title tag is something which will provide useful information to your visitors. Websites which are not user-friendly do not generally have as much success in generating loyalty and strengthening reputation, which means that the site is less likely to be visited less often, linked to less frequently and recommended less too, therefore generating fewer signals which could be interpreted by Google as meaning that your site is unpopular with real people.

In Summary!

So while making sure that you have named your images appropriately, including suitable alt text, included relevant text close to the image and ensured that your page can be crawled by both Googlebot and Googlebot image, as well as including an image sitemap, do not forget the fact that it is real people who will ultimately be the ones looking at your images, your links and your website.

Do you actively ensure that your images are optimised effectively? Have you found that your website generates a proportion of its traffic as a result of image searches rather than text based searches? Is this even something you have investigated? How important do you feel effectively optimised images are within your own businesses website? Please feel free to join in the discussion and leave your comments and thoughts in the box below, or share this post with your friends. :)

 

 

Image Credit: http://www.wirecase.com

Tags: google, image optimisation, image seo, seo
Posted in Google, Image SEO, Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Website Promotion | 1 Comment »

Analysing Google’s Penguin Update In Practical Terms

Monday, April 30th, 2012

 

So finally we know where we’re going. It’s off from Asia and their pandas and on to the Antarctic to greet the penguins. If you have absolutely no idea what I’m on about then it is simply that Google has just announced the name of the new algorithmic changes they’ve rolled out, and which I’ve been discussing in this blog for the last week or two. First there was the Panda update, and now it is the Penguin update.

Google Penguin Update

I have been discussing on this blog ways in which it is likely to be advisable to adapt your web marketing and development strategies in order to safeguard your site’s current position and traffic. But until recently it was purely speculation and guesswork on my part, and on the part of all other SEO marketers I have been discussing it with.

But finally Google has released clear, precise and unequivocal advice on exactly how to survive the Penguin update. Matt Cutts and others have been very clear from the beginning that the Penguin update is specifically designed to minimise the visibility of websites within the search results that have achieved that position through underhand web spam techniques.

We are all fairly confident that we can spot a web spam, underhand or black hat technique, but how closely do our assumptions and beliefs match the statements released by Google? Let’s take a look at what Google has said what we should and shouldn’t be doing within our website marketing strategies.

Hidden Text Or Links

Unsurprisingly Google is very clear about this, stating that at no time should we ever include hidden text or hidden links within our websites. This isn’t news, and you may well be surprised to learn that there are still many website marketers using this technique. Reducing the size of your text so that it becomes so tiny it is virtually invisible, colouring your text white on a white background so that it is invisible, or including large chunks of text within ‘div’ tags so that is not rendered visible on the page are all techniques which should be avoided at any cost.

However, we know that some people will be concerned as to whether this also includes text which may be hidden within a tag such that when the reader clicks on a ‘Read more..’ link the section of text expands to reveal the remainder of that passage. This will not harm your website, as long as it is done in a reasonable way. For example, if you simply have one or two words, then a ‘Read more..’ link which reveals several hundred words this doesn’t suggest a reasonable balance.
However, if you have one or perhaps two paragraphs, with a ‘Read more..’ link that reveals another two or three paragraphs this is perfectly reasonable. If in any doubt, think about whether you are genuinely formatting the text for the benefit and convenience of real readers. If you are, then the chances are high that Google will appreciate that and you will not be penalised.

Cloaking And Redirects

Astonishingly there are still many webmasters who are using cloaking techniques, or automatic redirects so that in effect whenever a genuine visitor or search engine bot reaches the top level domain they are briefly confronted with a torrent of keyword rich text which is quickly replaced by a more reasonable homepage. This technique should be totally avoided, and there is no excuse for having a URL redirect within your meta tags which is virtually instant and provides no warning or explanation to the visitor.

Automated Google Queries

I suspect that this is something Google has been cracking down on increasingly over recent months as even I have sometimes found that when searching on Google I am redirected to a Captcha verification page because they suspect I may be a bot! Hopefully they have addressed this slight overreaction, but clearly they are making a statement that automated queries of any kind are absolutely not permitted. If these come from your own site in any way then fully expect your domain to be quickly penalised.

Irrelevant Keywords

A technique which some people seem to be using and which Google has not appreciated is creating pages full of what appears to be perfectly reasonable text, but which has completely irrelevant keywords, often turned into links, and these seem to be randomly inserted throughout the page. As an example, “clearly if you were cheap clock repairs a real reader you would notice a sentence which second-hand cars in Manchester didn’t seem to really make sense because it included random irrelevant words and phrases“! But this is exactly what some people are doing. If guilty, stop it. No excuses.

Duplicated Content Across Pages Or Domains

Again, this is something which I have recently mentioned in a previous blog post, highlighting the danger in having duplicated or very similar content included in different pages either within the same domain, across subdomains, or even across different domains altogether. Effectively this message is that you should be reducing your usage of content, and increasing the variety of fresh, original content. Good news for copywriters!

Affiliate Program Dangers

It seems that Google has picked up on the fact that a large number of people who have affiliate websites through which they are promoting and selling products and services under various affiliate schemes are failing to provide sufficient original and relevant content. Many of the websites which have suffered most as a result of Google’s Penguin update seem to be those which do not themselves offer any unique, original content or service, but which use a variety of marketing techniques to draw in traffic and then promote and sell products through affiliate links.

It is important if this is a technique or approach you have been using yourself to make sure that your website is bolstered with unique and original content which provides useful and relevant information. Again, it seems that the biggest winners as far as the Penguin update is concerned are the copywriters!

In summary then it would seem that the advice and recommendations I have been giving recently are pretty close to the mark. Reduce any duplicated or low value content, and increase the variety, relevance and quality of content on your website.

Has the Penguin update affected your website rank for traffic? Have you made any changes to your website or your SEO marketing in advance of or in response to the Penguin update? Share your thoughts and experiences by leaving a brief comment in the box below.

 

 

Image Credit: http://emieltenhoor.com

Tags: affiliate, algorithm, content, google, Panda, Penguin, seo
Posted in Google, Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Website Promotion | No Comments »

5 Reasons Why Your Website Will Never Be Top Of Google

Tuesday, March 20th, 2012

 

Number one on GoogleIf I had a pound for every person in the last week who has asked me how they can get their website to be at the top of Google’s search results, well I’d have enough for a bag of chips.

But that’s not the point, because frankly there are a huge number of people out there (wherever ‘there’ is) who are scratching their heads (metaphorically) wondering why in blazes their magnificent website is still buried so far down the search engines there are starfish crawling over them.

To be honest with you there’s really very little point in dwelling on being at the top of the search results, since that in itself means virtually nothing. It’s not about your position in the search results, it’s about traffic, and not just the amount, but the quality. It’s perfectly possible to gain huge amounts of highly targeted traffic and make a very nice living thank you very much without your site even appearing in the search listings. I know plenty of people who don’t even bother checking how their site is doing on Google.

But enough of the reasons why I don’t think people should be so obsessed with being NOOGs (Number One On Google). What I really want to focus on today in a fairly light-hearted way (as if you hadn’t noticed by yet) is why your site will never get to the top of the search results. So let’s kick off with reason number 1.

The Keyword Of Death

So you’ve set up a nice shiny new website offering information and advice about car insurance. And you want to get to the top of the search results for the word ‘insurance’. Right then. Good luck with that. Never mind the fact that there are one and a half BILLION search results for ‘insurance’, and a mere 425 million for ‘car insurance’, have you any idea at all just how big the budgets national insurance corporations have to spend on advertising, promotion and marketing?

For every half hour of your time you spend on your online marketing they’ve had a team of professionals invest the equivalent of a week in marketing, and for every fifty pounds of your money you spend on advertising, they’re throwing in fifty thousand. Trying to compete just isn’t viable.

Don’t be daft when it comes to choosing your primary keywords and keyphrases. Make sure you choose longtail keyphrases instead. For example, a search for ‘low mileage car insurance advice in Cheshire’ has less than 180,000 results. That’s still a lot, but you stand a much better chance of getting found.

Copy Paste Syndrome

It’s so exciting isn’t it? You’re putting together a brand new website and launching yourself into the world of online marketing. The only trouble is that you don’t have much content on your website at the moment. Frankly it’s just your logo, your address, a rather embarrassing photo taken of you eight years ago when you still had that ridiculous hairstyle, and a few words you thought of in blind panic.

Still, you’ve heard about this great thing called PLR articles, which gives you the chance to just copy and paste relevant articles wholesale into your site, as well as use them for marketing. Job done. Except you’ve overlooked one tiny little problem. From the very first moment the very first person publishes a PLR article anywhere on the web, Google’s seen it, got it, listed it, and lost interest in further examples of it.

Imagine someone telling you a rather weak cracker joke. Then someone else comes along and tells you the same joke. Then another. Then a few dozen more. Then a couple of hundred more. You get the picture? In my opinion PLR articles are a waste of time, money and web storage space. Copy and paste is a guaranteed way to shoot your site down in flames. It takes two fingers to copy and paste, and that’s what you’ll probably get from Google.

Addicted To Binary

Some people are really great at communicating, getting the message across in the right way to the right people. Understanding your audience and what they need is essential, as is writing in a way that ensures you are easily understood. The problem is that if you’re writing specifically for Google’s benefit then effectively your audience is comprised of robots, spiders, algorithms and programming.

Now don’t get me wrong, because if you want to spend your time writing to robots then that’s absolutely fine. Some people write to their mothers, some to pen friends, others even write poetry for their partners. But if you want to write to a robot that’s fine. As long as you realise that (a) it won’t ever write back and (b) it will absolutely guarantee you won’t be taking up any space at the top of the search results.

This is partly because Google can see straight through you if you write for algorithms rather than people, and also because real people will be so put off your badly worded, clunky and blatantly forced language that they’ll disappear faster than a duck in an orange sauce factory.

Can You Guess What It Is Yet

You don’t see it around these days as much, but you may remember the ‘Reduced to Clear’ shelves in supermarkets of tins of food which had lost their labels. You had a tin, you paid a few pence for it, and you never knew what it was. It could be a tin of baked beans, ham, spaghetti or even dog food.

Unbelievably some website designers actually seem to have seen this mystery approach to retail as something to be emulated. These are the websites where you have to hunt for the navigation. Sometimes it’s there, sometimes it’s not. Sometimes you think a picture or logo might be a button, but it’s not. Sometimes it is, but you’ve no idea where it will take you.

Take a look at the website for FlatPak (http://www.flatpakhouse.com).

Spot the navigation menu? 3 points for finding the contact link.

This is a clear example of a web designer deciding to try to look ‘cool’ whilst completely oblivious to the world of the internet in the 21st century. You might be forgiven for not noticing the navigation, thinking that those numbers are just there to look interesting. No, that there is your menu.

Just so that you know, press ’1′ for information about what FlatPak is, ’4′ for news and 6 to contact them. Oh, and the whole thing is made using Flash, so if you don’t have this browser plugin then you’re screwed. Oh, and this is what their website looks like if you happen to be using a mobile device such as an iPhone:

The dangers of using a Flash only website

A sure-fire way to make sure your website never rises high enough in the search results to be found by anyone is to design a website which tries its damndest to prevent anyone from finding anything, or even seeing anything.

Did I Forget Something?

What’s the point of your website? It’s a simple question, but surprisingly hard for some people to answer. Vague answers along the lines of ‘to get more business’, ‘to make money’ or ‘to increase brand recognition’ are simply not valid. The trouble is that a website without a point is a little like a needle without a point.

Just throwing up some nice graphics, some information about the business, a contact page, prices, a few photos of products and other such information simply isn’t going to work. Your website has to have a clear purpose, and without it, you’ll never make it to the top of the results.

Perhaps your website’s purpose should be to increase sales of specific products or services by a target percentage, but even that’s not enough. Because having a purpose is only a third of the challenge. The next step is to make sure you know exactly what you’re doing to achieve that aim, and the third stage is using analytics to assess how successful you’ve been.

If you aren’t clear about what the purpose of your site is, neither will your visitors, who will inevitably amble away with slightly glazed expressions.

If you enjoyed this blog post please consider sharing it via Twitter or Facebook, or clicking the Google+ button above.

 

 

Tags: google, seo, website development
Posted in Google, online marketing, Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Website Development, Website Promotion | 1 Comment »

Number 1 On Google And You’re Still Not Making Money?

Thursday, March 15th, 2012

 

Increase sales as well as increasing trafficSo you’re at the top of Google, you’re number one, you’re the best! Woohoo, great job. It’s just a shame you’re not making any more money though, isn’t it?

That’s the thing these days. I see it so many times – people spending ages (and a fair amount of cash too) making sure their site ranks brilliantly for their chosen keywords only to find that the horde of extra sales they were anticipating has never materialised. What’s going on? Where’s all that extra money you were promised?

You see, the problem is that so many people seem to assume a direct and inexorable correlation between rank and income. If I didn’t know better I’d almost swear some people are close to believing that you get paid just for sitting at the top of the search results.

You don’t.

There is simply no point investing time and money trying to get your site up the search results if you don’t spend at least as much time and effort making sure that you think about converting sales, monetising your site and making it work.

Look, if you have your site at the top of the results for a keyphrase that sees about a thousand visitors a day reaching your business, how many of those do you want to have handing over their credit card details to you?

So what are you doing about it?

Too many people think that those one thousand visitors will be awestruck by your insanely cool logo, blown away by your exciting animated banner, mightily impressed by your bright and colourful pictures and mesmerised by the great 3D buttons.

Sadly, people are very unlikely to be impressed by any of these things.

Okay, so stick a few hundred words of high quality, professionally written text on there.

Great, that will certainly get the attention of the search engines, and will provide interesting information for those who are actively looking for just that – information, but what if they’re looking for products, or services?

What if they’re just looking for a sales page?

I’m frequently dazzled by the fact that so many websites seem to virtually hide their sales pages, contact pages and other means of extracting cold hard cash from visitors.

By all means work hard to get your site noticed by the search engines and seen by people looking for what you have to offer.

But don’t stop there!

Make sure that you grab the attention of your visitors, that you give them a clear, bold reason to take action, make sure that you make it clear what action they should take, and make it clear how they should take that action!

“Save yourself £500 a year on your home gas bill! Get a free brochure and order form now – just enter your email address in the box below.”

You see that? A clear reason, a clear call to action, and a clear explanation of how to take that action.

Right then, here goes: “Increase your online reputation for seeking out the best SEO advice! Tweet or share this blog post to your friends, colleagues and followers – just click one of the cheerful buttons at the top!”

See, easy isn’t it?

 

Image Credit: http://www.titaniumconsulting.co.uk

Tags: bounce rate, google, monetise, promotion, rank, seo
Posted in Google, online marketing, Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Website Promotion | 3 Comments »

3 Overlooked Ways To Increase Quality Traffic To Your Website

Thursday, January 26th, 2012

TargetIt’s easy to become so involved with SEO and social media marketing that you become blind to some of the more obvious and fundamental ways in which you can boost traffic to your website. We’re not talking here about just boosting numbers, because that in itself is of course a relatively fruitless exercise.

No, what we’re talking about here is boosting targeted traffic – those people who are likely to have at least a degree of interest in what you’re offering, and who are more likely to convert and make all your hard work worthwhile. You can have the busiest website in the world but if those numbers aren’t translating into sales then you’re on a road to nowhere.

So I thought it would be helpful in today’s post to have a look at some of the methods which people too often forget or ignore, but which could often make much more difference than several more hours updating your Facebook profile, tweeting your backside off or writing a few thousand words between caffeine top-ups.

1. Offline Advertising

You remember that, right? You know, bits of paper? Business cards? Flyers? Newspaper adverts? There are literally scores of offline ways of advertising, from posters and flyers to business cards and promotional items such as pens and t shirts. It will obviously vary from one business to another as to what is suitable, what is relevant and what is likely to be used, seen and remembered, but if you stick your web address on your offline advertising material you’ll almost certainly find that your web traffic increases, and with an improved quality of visitor.

This is largely because these days people tend to remember web addresses more easily than a telephone number, and often people like to find out about a company before committing themselves to a potential sales call they’ll want to wriggle out of if it’s not what they’re after. Customers feel more in control if they visit a website, and so combining these two facts means that offline advertising shouldn’t be ignored.

2. Targeted Advertising

It’s also worth thinking carefully about exactly where you place your offline advertising. Take flyers for example – you could stick 20,000 through every letterbox in town, but if you happen to be selling health foods you’ll miss more times than you hit. Instead you could head to every gym and sports centre in the area and leave flyers under the wipers of every car in the car parks. Targeted offline advertising which includes an easy to remember web address equals increased targeted online traffic.

3. Be Remembered!

Make sure your web address is easy to remember. if not, consider buying an easier to remember web address and setting up a 301 permanent redirect.

If your website address is; ‘http://www.smithsonandjoneshealthylocalproducesuppliers.org.uk/localoffers’  then don’t be surprised if people ignore your offline advertising. You can easily forget the ‘http://’ part, and really these days the ‘www’ is irrelevant when advertising offline because most people and browsers add this as standard anyway. Avoid sub directories if you can help it as this makes remembering the address much harder. ‘healthy-local-food.biz’ is far more likely to bring in the traffic (and it’s available! http://goo.gl/djHa3)

It’s easy to think that people spend all day long online, but that’s not true, and today we’re more easily influenced through the hard work and effort that offline marketing requires than a few quick cheap shots online.

Like this post? Click on the Google+1 button at the top of this page to give us your vote and/or leave a comment below to let us know your thoughts.

 

 

 

 Image Credit: http://shbco.blogspot.com/

Tags: offline advertising, website promotion
Posted in Website Promotion | No Comments »

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