SEO Blog

Everybody wants to have their company seen online. Unfortunately of course there are always those pesky competitors who keep appearing and taking away some of your share of the search traffic. What can you do to stop them getting in on the act? How about hosting a number of different websites?

You’d be surprised how often people still choose to take this route. Whilst it is a practice that should have died off when the dotcom bubble burst, somehow it has survived.

The theory behind it is sound enough. I’ve got one website that is ranking well, perhaps even at the top of Google, why not build another one and get more visitors? That way you push your competitors further down the list, get more business and maybe boost your coffers a little. The perfect plan…
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Meta is a funny old thing. Every website has it to some extent, but still so few are willing to take full advantage of it. Some just choose to copy and paste some content from the site, some just have the same Meta description for every page, whilst others just don’t bother at all.

Not only is Meta another fantastic opportunity to explicitly tell the search engines what your page is all about, but it can do the same for your visitors too. The Meta description, by and large, is featured within the search engine results page. Therefore it is a great opportunity to get a little more meat into your marketing efforts and really help to earn a click.

A search engine ranking alone won’t guarantee you visitors. People don’t want to have their time wasted, so they are looking to find a site that meets their requirements first time around. With your Meta description, you have a great opportunity to tell them exactly what you offer and offer them a reason for coming in.

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SEO is all about trying to get the top spot. We are all looking to optimise our sites to reach the promised land of a number one ranking on Google. However, what actually comes with reaching the search summit? How will your site actually benefit.

First and foremost, rankings are all about exposure. When you use Google to search for something more often than not you won’t scroll beyond the first few results. These are usually regarded as the most relevant and authoritative sites (rightly or wrongly) as decided by the Google algorithm.

Therefore, by being seen within this high level clique your site immediately gains some level of authority within the searcher’s mind. Better still, if you find your way to the top position, you should also find yourself receiving your fair share of traffic too.
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When you come to optimise a website invariably a lot of your efforts will go into creating some first rate content. Playing such a vital role in your SEO efforts and visitor communication, you will have to ensure that you get it right.

The good thing about content is that it is often naturally optimise. You don’t need to worry about deliberately forcing in dozens of unsightly keywords so as to appease the Google gods. When you come to write the content for any page you write on subject, therefore you should be using the related terms and phrases anyway.
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Generally speaking blackhat techniques will be picked up by the search engines and the perpetrators punished. However, this isn’t always the case. There are still occasions where you can get a huge benefit from bending the search engines rules, for as long as you remain undetected.

Let’s take link buying as a primary example. Whilst many would class this as more of a grey area, it is against Google’s usage policy and therefore it certainly couldn’t be construed as ethical. Link buying is still hugely popular though; this is in no small part due to the fact that it is often difficult to trace whether a link is natural or not.
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The Internet is awash with directories. Some are good, strong directories, others are hardly worth the time of day. The challenge your are charged with is finding those that will give you the most benefit.

At the top of the list for any business looking for quick, free submissions is for Yellow Pages sites like Yell.com and Qype. These provide a whole range of benefits for your site, as not only do they provide a standard link, they also help boost your local profile and relevance with the search engines.

Yellow page sites, like all other authoritative directories, are given plenty of weight by the search engines. By having your website listed here in the relevant category and with your contact details clearly displayed Google knows exactly where you are located and what you do. This will all help you to gain future rankings in local listings and for industry keywords that you’re targeting.
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Many who are new to SEO are often blinded by the notion that content helps to improve your Google ranking. Yes, content will help your pages improve relevance for certain phrases and encourage search engines to rank you better as a consequence. However that isn’t a free pass to fill your pages with endless words.

There’s nothing to suggest that having 2,000 words on each page won’t help you improve your SEO authority; in fact many would argue that it does. Unfortunately though, you do have to justify their inclusion.

If you land on a 10 page site with 20,000 words on it you are probably entitled to ask some questions. The first one probably being: ‘why hasn’t this been categorised better?’ The second one, as a result, is likely to be: ‘where do I start?’
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When it comes to SEO, one of the most important things that you’ll need to do is to define your keywords. Whilst you might already have some in mind, if you are starting from scratch there is every chance that the competition rate might put them out of reach.

Imagine you’re a new online store offering designer clothing. You will probably have already established that there is a fair amount of competition out there. When you come to decide on your keywords, a generic phrase like ‘designer clothing’ is going to be difficult to achieve.

A quick search on Google reveals that there are around 38 million other sites currently ranking for the phrase. Among these will be some strong pages that will have many years of optimisation behind them. Inevitably this will be a very difficult phrase to gain a ranking for, especially at this stage. So when you’re starting out on your SEO journey, you might want to consider some long tail keywords.
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It’s not often that I turn fire on SEO. It is an industry with detractors and a fair few rogues crawling around. However, it is also massively misunderstood in some quarters; largely due to the lies that I will now cover.

Lie 1: SEO will guarantee you a top Google ranking

Quite simply nobody can make that claim. If there was any way that I could 100% guarantee that you could get to number one for any term on any search engine, I would be a wealthy man indeed. In my book, Get to #1 On Google In Easy Steps, I talk about the methods of working towards the top spot, not the absolute assurance that you can reach the summit. It is possible, many people achieve it in fact, but there is no way that doing SEO arbitrarily will have you leapfrogging all competitors.
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If you have ever been involved with an all-encompassing online marketing campaign you will be all too aware of how many different branches there are. It also won’t have escaped your attention how much it can cost too.

Pay per Click advertising, or paid search, is a great way for picking up further clicks for your targeted keywords. However it does come with its own financial implications. Whilst effective, you do have to pay a set charge for each click that your advert receives. So if you aren’t getting any financial return for your paid adverts, you end up leaking money from your budget.

Social media takes a lot of time to develop and often doesn’t have much in the way of tangible results. As it is a format based on participation and interaction, the basis of your work will be on creating relationships. The divide between being too promotional and not advertising enough is remarkably slender. You have to get the balance right.
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