SEO Blog

Technology has been at the forefront of change in relation to how we communicate – and the Internet has created a number of methods for us to stay in touch with the world. From MSN Messenger to Skype and not forgetting the big social networks; they all have their place in modern communications, alongside more traditional platforms such as email, phone, and even text messaging. In a world where businesses are in constant communication with clients and customers around the globe, it’s important to harness all forms of communication so that nobody misses any relevant news.

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The issue of user generated reviews has reared its head once again. After receiving complaints from several hoteliers, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) have recently told Trip Advisor to remove the word ‘Trusted’ when describing the reviews contained on their site. Whilst this serves as a warning to all site’s offering user generated material, restaurants and hoteliers shouldn’t shy away from gaining a review. Nor should people veer away from telling others about their experiences online.
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If you were looking to find out about a decent local business in your area, what would you do? You’ll most likely search on the Internet or ask a friend for recommendations, rather than looking through the Yellow Pages. That’s because new ways of finding out information have evolved and become more dominant, and the search engine is one of them.

So, let’s say you use search engines to find out the information you require, only for you to click through to a site, which may be what you want, but you don’t like the look of it as it isn’t engaging enough. Your likely response is to close down the page and look elsewhere. This is why it is essential that you create a decent website for your local business, otherwise you could potentially be losing out on customers.

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On Friday I wrote about the problems that online retailers face at this time of year when trying to promote their businesses online. Today those issues really come to the fore with the arrival of ‘Mega Monday’, supposedly the busiest day of the year for ecommerce sites.

With the world pouring online to buy Christmas goodies, you want to make sure that your site isn’t left behind. So whilst this advice might come a little late for some, there’s no harm in learning lessons from the mistakes and triumphs of this year’s big players.
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There’s a line of thought that suggests you have to have a website that looks professional and adheres to modern design concepts. However, when browsing the Internet, you can be met with dozens of sites that completely ignore these basic ‘rules’ but yet continue to succeed. So what’s the secret of good design and just how much of an impact will it have?

One famous example of what many might technically as being an ‘ugly’ website is that of LINGs cars. It’s blotted with multicolour text, garish imagery and features that wouldn’t look out of place on a student website circa 1996. However, it works. In fact it works remarkably well indeed, as Ling revealed in a recent interview with Dan Barker.

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I’m all for recommendations from stores that you shop with regularly. It shows an understanding of your interests and helps to identify items that you may never have know existed otherwise.

It takes a clever algorithmto connect past purchases with potential interest. Unfortunately Amazon appears to be having a few issues with its system at the moment, at least where I’m concerned. As you may already be aware, I have authored two popular books on SEO. Whilst I’m very happy with the books and would whole heartedly recommend them to anybody starting out in Search Engine Optimisation, it comes as quite a surprise when Amazon suggests that I should by it.

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As I reported last week, Google underwent something of a stark makeover to become a far more clinical and industrial looking search engine. Now whether you prefer the fresh design or prefer the older, more colourful version, what it highlight is the potential issues a change in appearance can have.

Google, as well as updating their SERPs, also introduced (and removed) some on page elements. This included a number of search options, which help to scale down organic results and cause bigger headaches for SEOs. Whenever a site has  a bit of a shake up, not only does the design change but it also offers the opportunity to adjust the navigation.
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It would be a massive mistake to ignore the needs of your human visitors. Search Engine Optimisation is all well and good, but Google aren’t going to be buying your products or signing up for services. So build a site that your visitors can use first and foremost, all else is secondary.

Usability is defined by your audience though. For instance, if you are selling mobility scooters to elderly customers, then it might be advisable to have clear navigation and even a larger font to ensure that even those that aren’t Internet savvy or have poor eyesight can still use it.
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Whenever you market something, be it a home, a product or a service, you need to be reliant on more than visibility alone to ensure success. What if the product is unsafe or unusable, the home is run down and in a bad neighbourhood or the service offers poor value for customers? Well, you’re never going to be able to convert the interest generated by the advertising.

Therefore you always need to ensure that there is substance behind your marketing efforts. What does your website and business really offer? Why have you decided to go online in the first place? What image are you trying to project? If you can’t answer these kinds of questions or your answer is simply to ‘make money’ then you might as well give up now.
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This is a post based purely in the hypothetical. It is not a ringing endorsement of sabotage or other such skulduggery. However, it won’t have escaped your attention that Google have been pretty vocal about how they plan to punish those who break their rules.

For this we need to go back to the pre Panda days and look at the shenanigans surround JC Penney et al. Now, in the most part, these sites (and many others) were being targeted because of paid links within their profile. This is no less of an issue now, however everybody appears to have moved on somewhat and it has all been swept under the carpet a little.
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