SEO Blog

At this time of year it’s always nice to reflect on the year that’s been and the one that is just about to arrive. In 2011 the Panda bit hard and sent hundreds of businesses tumbling down the rankings in Google. Invariably, people complained. Social came to the fore with the dual announcements of Google +1 bookmarking button and Plus, the social networking site. Site quality also became integral to rankings, ensuring everybody cleaned up their content and code.

So what about 2012? Expect more of the same essentially. The Panda update has continued to expand and develop throughout the year, so it’s fair to assume that this won’t stop when January comes. The importance of content has always been promoted, but it is becoming a very real issue for siteowners and one which cannot be overlooked.
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Hitting the top spot in Google has become even harder in recent years, particularly after the Panda update. The algorithm update was brought in to punish the sites that Google deemed to be using poor quality or duplicated content. Some sites that have been punished still haven’t reached the heights they once were since their punishment as they look to rebuild.

The way Google index and even search for information is constantly changing; becoming more complex as a result. In addition to this, because search results bring up blogs, videos and images, it can be harder for websites to take up the space of the first page. During times like this, you have to adapt and go with the changes, finding new ways of getting to the top.

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There are plenty of good reasons for businesses to create their own profile on Facebook; however, this week, the social media giant added two more to that list. First up, Facebook users can now contact businesses directly, just as they might do with their group of friends. These messages remain secret and the lines of communication must come directly from a human user, eliminating the chances of people falling foul of spammy marketing pitches.

Whilst your contact details, including phone number and email address, should be featured prominently within your business profile, this should help to make the process much more fluid. So if somebody has a grievance, they can air it privately rather than using your wall as a platform. Equally, if a customer wants some extra information or pass on some praise, then they don’t need to navigate away from Facebook.

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The ultimate goal in SEO is to greatly improve the rankings of your site and it’s visibility in the SERPs, even taking the top spot for specific terms related to your industry. However, some people might think that once they have reached a comfortable position, they can stop implementing SEO techniques as their goal has been achieved.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that in the world of SEO. If your site is in a good position, you need to work on this so that you can maintain a decent ranking. You shouldn’t believe that just because you are in first, third or fifth place that your work is finished, as there are always new methods to put in place that will benefit your brand online. (more…)

It’s easy to get frustrated with SEO efforts. You can spend hours writing decent content and a few days to build inbound links for your key pages, only to see minor fluctuations in the rankings. But this isn’t restricted to your site, it happens to almost everybody. So why doesn’t SEO deliver excellent short-term results?

Whilst results are delivered in an instant, the search engines have to continuously crawl the billions of pages on the Internet in order to index them effectively. This means that most sites have to wait a few days until their time comes around. As such, any improvements that you make will often take a while to get spotted. However, this isn’t restricted to your own site.
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For anyone involved in SEO, knowing a quality resource to link from can be like finding a needle in a haystack. Yet this is what SEO is all about, getting that all important link legitimately to help a website rank higher in the SERPs.

Long gone are the days where buying links and spamming sites with links is an effective link building strategy. For any webmaster or search specialist, the art of building quality links is what motivates them day-to-day. Common methods include linking from directories, and all sorts of content like articles, press releases and hubs. However, there are also a number of other methods which can prove just as valuable.
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Each year Google compile the most searched for terms of the year, with 2011 throwing up some fantastic insights into the UK’s search behaviour. Amongst the winners this year was the Royal Wedding as well as the fabled iPhone 5.

The Search Engine giant, which dominates the UK search market, have also revealed various other categories, such as the fastest rising people, movies, TV and sports terms as well as the most searched for ‘how to’ and ‘what is’. So who topped the lists in each category? Here are the highlights….
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There will be people that claim you can’t rank without regular usage of keywords within the body copy and Meta. Others though rubbish the notion that keyword density has anything to do with rankings anymore; as long as they are included, the frequency shouldn’t matter. So who is right?

Well, if you think that you need to use your keywords dozens of times on every page, then you’re certainly barking up the wrong tree. When search engines were using very basic ranking factors (i.e. before Google and PageRank), the number of terms used and their frequency was vital. This is why you’d have issues like hidden text, where site owners would just repeat terms hundreds of times using white words on a white background, so nobody could see.
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Social media has really grown in the last couple of years. In September 2011 it was reported that Twitter had over 100 million network users, so when you think that there are around 62 million people living in the UK, it really puts this figure into perspective. It’s not just Twitter that has taken off, with Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and more recently Google + all seeing an increase in user interaction, as the social world becomes a greater part of, not only our daily lives, but also our business strategy. The power of promoting a message to millions of people online has never been greater.

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With the constant evolution of search engine algorithms, we are seeing that more emphasis is being placed on branding as a ranking factor. Whilst you may already have a brand, it’s important to expose this in many spaces online and offline, otherwise your positioning in the SERPs will suffer.

It’s well known that search engines favour brands. You only have to type in a well known brand into the search bar to see it dominate the top page, especially given the larger, more dominant site links which now appear on Google. It’s not just those in online marketing saying this, it’s not a prediction, as it comes straight from the top of Google. According to Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt: “brands are increasingly important signals that content can be trusted.”
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