SEO Blog

When you’re embarking on a major link building campaign you’re far more likely to be monitoring your link profile a little closer than usual. Whatever your metric is for counting the number of inbound links (Webmaster Tools, Yahoo Site Explorer etc.), the figure generated is unlikely to stay the same for long.

Whilst we all hope for a major upsurge in the links our site receives, there are quite often a number of seemingly unexplainable slips in the figure being quoted. So why, when you’ve submitted your site to a dozen directories, released a number of articles to submission sites and done an array of blog comments might your link number actually go down?
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Where SEO is involved, content can be a hugely influential factor in where you rank and how easily the search engines are able to identify the target phrases for your page. Using that principle therefore, long copy would probably be the automatic choice – at least where optimisation is concerned. But it isn’t always that simple.

First and foremost, your content needs to reach out to your visitors. If you can’t grab their attention and provoke a reaction then it isn’t doing its job. But that doesn’t necessarily rule out long copy as a solution.

Your page needs as much content as required to provide all of the necessary information. You shouldn’t feel curtailed by the need to cut it short of 200 words and you certainly shouldn’t feel like you have to over elaborate to the extent where you’re shoehorning in phrases to reach 1,000.
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I don’t particularly enjoy talking about the darker side of SEO, it doesn’t exactly do much to help improve the image of the industry any. However, the biggest problem is that there are still so many people who falsely use the SEO as their excuse to print money.

They don’t take the time to even understand the industry, the practices involved or even bothering about delivering on promises. Online though, promises are easily broken.

Anyway, if you have ever faced the hardest of hard sells from one of these practitioners, you’ll probably know all the warning signs anyway. Just in case you don’t, here are a few things to watch out for:
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It doesn’t matter how deep they may be in your site, a landing page is an opportunity for you to pursue new keywords and search engine rankings. Whilst you can easily go overboard and have hundreds of pages about, well, not a lot really, if you’re after a new keyword and don’t want to shift the focus of an existing page, a fresh, unique page can provide the answer.

So what might you target? Well, if you’ve got a few categories covering lots of different products, you might want to consider splitting these it into more manageable chunks. By developing related sub-sections you can make it easier for people navigating around your site, uncluttered overpopulated categories and also provide a fresh gateway to your site.
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Following the crowd is all well and good when you’re happy picking up the scraps. But SEO isn’t just about trying to outgun the biggest sites immediately, it’s about carving out a niche and developing your own distinct audience.

Every business is different. Even those that offer the same product have their own unique selling point. As an example let’s take a large coffee store like Starbucks. It thrives on providing customers with a variety of coffee styles quickly and for a reasonable price. It’s fast food for coffee lovers.

However that isn’t for everybody. Some would still rather sit down and enjoy a cup of tea or coffee in a cosy cafe. This little cafe might not have the same amount of people visit, but it has a unique appeal that will always attract specific custom.
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The SEO industry doesn’t stand still. As is evidenced by the recent Google Instant update [see: Why Google Instant Won't Destroy SEO], anything can come along and shift the focus of the work done and the way in which you have to approach optimisation. For this reason your efforts to educate yourself on SEO should never stop.

Google could announce tomorrow that inbound links from sites of PR 2 or below won’t count towards your site’s overall strength anymore. As unimaginable as that is (both in the sense of the content of the announcement and the fact that Google would make it in the first place), the need to keep up with the latest thinking on the subject and amend your understanding is vital.
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It’s been hard to avoid the subject of Google Instant over the past 8 hours. There have been all sorts of alarmist posts claiming some kind of SEO Armageddon and that it’s time for online marketers to pack up their bags and leave. It’s nonsense.

Whilst we don’t fully know what the impact of Google’s instant search option will be, it’s difficult to imagine a scenario whereby SEO as a practice and an industry would collapse as a consequence. In fact the very opposite may be true.
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As I’ve mentioned in the past, Google generally have a soft spot for the big brands in their listings. Whether it is for product searches or terms related to the businesses themselves, more often than not a corporate big hitter will be at the top.

Now we can’t discredit SEO work entirely on these sites. If they’re a multi-national corporation then there’s a fair chance that they’ve got the marketing budget to employ a pretty decent team of search engine optimisation services. But what happens if they start buying up paid links, are involved in huge link farms, what then?
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Sometimes it can be difficult judging exactly when you need to update content on a site. Clearly it’s beneficial to have refreshed copy on a page as it provides the search engines with something new to index. However, you don’t want to inadvertently ruin your rankings for a search term. So what’s the solution?
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The search engines’ results pages have gradually seen local elements gaining additional focus. You’ll find maps with businesses in your vicinity at the top of Google even for generic searches. As far as services are concerned, search engines believe that local is better.

They’re not wrong either. If I’m looking for a bakery, I don’t want to have results coming back from other counties or countries either. The likelihood is that you will want to find one within your vicinity so you can easily visit it or contact them regarding an order.
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