SEO Blog

Well Christmas is almost here, which means the New Year isn’t far behind. So whether you’re recovering from your office party or working feverishly to get everything done before the end of the week, now could be a good time to take stock of your website and plan your objectives for 2011.

A successful site is one that constantly develops. There’s no room for those who are happy standing still. That doesn’t mean that you need to have a complete overhaul every month, but you need a strategy for where you want to go. But, as with any future plan, you need to be realistic.

If you have no budget whatsoever and don’t have the time to re-write content, then adding a blog probably isn’t going to provide the solution. However a structured process for building links – perhaps signing up to five directories a week, or leaving a couple of blog comments elsewhere each day – can help to keep your site building.
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The issue of multiple websites targeting the same primary keywords is one that appears to rumble on and on. Despite the massive weight of evidence to the contrary, many people still believe that developing a replica site will yield double the traffic.

But let’s take a logical look at this for a moment. When you’re looking to develop a second (third, fourth, fifth…) site you will be in one of two positions:

1) You’ve got a site struggling to get to the top of Google and want to hedge your bets
2) You’ve already got a site at the top of Google and want to dominate the SERPs.
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For most businesses the time has now passed for creating an effective Christmas SEO campaign. Developing a dedicated page, writing the content and scrambling for last minute links just isn’t going to work.

Remember that Google prefers sites with authority, age and relevance. So a quickly fashioned Christmas page just isn’t going to be able to compete with the big boys – not instantly at least. In fact the likelihood is that it won’t even be (fully) indexed by the time you need it to be getting you strong rankings.

When it comes to SEO you need a little foresight. By working out your busiest times of year, what kind of products or services sell best and where you position these, you can start to prepare.
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How often have you searched on Google and read the short description and it has either been garbled nonsense or cuts off mid-sentence? It happens. In fact it continues to happen with worrying regularity.

Your default Meta will often be the first area of content that the search engines can find. In many cases this will be your body text on that particular page; however, occasionally it will be your navigation titles, links or even footer text.

Not only is this not exactly the best way of optimising your site, it will also surrender one of your prime opportunities to entice the click. Who is really going to click on a site that has a description reading ‘|Home|Services|About Us|Contact Us|’? It’s an avoidable nonsense.
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If you’ve written some excellent content and are looking for ways to get a little more impact, you might be tempted to put some phrases in bold. More likely than not you will have seen this on a number of sites and you might be surprised to learn that it can actually have an impact on your site’s SEO.

Moderation is key here though. Putting everything in bold is just going to confuse your visitors and the search engines. However, if you’re sensible and just highlight usage of a particular term, this will highlight to the search engines the keyword in question is one that is relevant to the page. As a consequence, you could see a slight boost in your rankings.
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Many people still swear by the power of paid links. There’s no doubting that many are very difficult to trace and therefore can’t be penalised. However, as a promoter of ethical SEO and a believer in long-term strategies (rather than short-term gains), it’s impossible to condone it as a practice for client sites.

The reasoning for these reservations is is simple enough – it contravenes Google’s rules. If you decide to go up against the most powerful search engine, then there’s a good chance you’ll get burnt. Of course you can pull the wool over its eyes, but eventually you may be found out and when you do it could be disastrous. However, does that mean that you should just get rid of them all and start again?

Let’s take an example we see time and time again. A client has a site full of paid links and has seen a slight drop for one term but others remain strong, what do you do?
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Google aren’t a fan of sites that show mutual link love. A few years ago this was big business; with webmasters realising that their rankings were based on the number of links they had coming into a site, it made sense to tempt others into adding a little hyperlink with the promise of reciprocation providing the lure.

This went on for years. People were gaming the system happily and openly, and it worked too. Unfortunately Google soon realised and clamped down on this, rendering millions of links entirely redundant. That should have been the end of that.

Unfortunately though it still goes on. People are being duped into believing that this is still a viable link building strategy, occasionally paying third parties to plug them into a link farm. Bad idea – very bad idea in fact.
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