SEO Blog

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.
(more…)

The temptation to tinker always exists. Whether it’s your on-page content, PPC campaigns or keyword targeting, making changes can be a positive thing as well as negative. Therefore it’s important to pick your time to tinker, as well as understanding when it’s best to leave well alone.

So what is the answer?

Well, you can’t leave your keywords and copy the same forever. A day will come where a change is necessary in order to refresh your site and move things forward. However, deciding when the best possible time to do so is far from easy.
(more…)

It might sound a little convoluted, but PPC can be an extremely valuable SEO tool. If you’re looking to test the effectiveness of a keyword, optimising a page and waiting for rankings to appear can take time and prove ineffective. However, with Pay per Click advertising you can get strong results in a matter of weeks.

So how does it work?

Well, imagine you’ve got a few keywords that you’re toying around with for your homepage. How do you know which one will actually convert? Of course you can have an educated guess, but sometimes that’s simply not enough. If you get it wrong, you could attract traffic, but not get the conversions that you’re looking for. This can quickly become a major issue.
(more…)

We do SEO work to achieve good organic rankings within search engines. The terms targeted are directly linked to what our site’s pages offer in an effort to attract the visitors we want.

Rankings within the likes of Google and Bing are still much sought after, purely because Internet users are still largely programmed to follow what they see as being the most relevant sources. Whilst the integration of new features has cluttered up the SERPs to a certain degree, the top organic positions are still highly coveted.

So when you achieve your goal and get to the top of Google what do you do next? You’re in a great position, collecting lots of free, targeted traffic, but could you be getting more? This is when some people turn to Paid Search.
(more…)

Whilst I obviously spend a great deal of my time telling clients about the benefits of SEO, it isn’t your only option when it comes to marketing your website online. SEO is still hugely important, but it certainly isn’t the only thing you need to address when looking to achieve online success.

Firstly, you need a product. If your business model is inept, your prices are higher than all competitors or you just don’t have an audience, nothing will help you. Regardless of your search engine ranking, you can’t sell chocolate teapots.

Your website also has to be user friendly. If you have a dated looking website that is difficult to navigate around it will be difficult to get conversions.
(more…)

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.
(more…)

Whether you’re using PPC or SEO, search engine visitors have to find you somehow. Due to the way in which each individual page is capable of earnings its own ranking, there are numerous ways for people to enter your site.

This means that every page is effectively your homepage. It is the first one that a visitor sees and it should be the most relevant to their search query. But what happens when some landing pages are experiencing a high bounce or exit rate? What can you do?

Well, identifying the problem is your first issue. Use your analytics to pinpoint any areas that are potentially weak and that could be deterring visitors from venturing further into your site. If there are some pages with the aforementioned high bounce rate, that is usually a good place to start.
(more…)

To ensure that you maintain a high level of online exposure, you need to sustain visibility. For some this might include extensive (and expensive) online marketing and advertising campaigns, for others though, the options are a little more restricted.

When you don’t have the budget to shell out for expensive Pay per Click campaigns or the time to dedicate to social media promotion, you need SEO. Don’t get me wrong, search engine optimisation isn’t free [see: How to Budget for SEO]. There is a huge time and/or financial investment required to achieve the best results. However, you tend to enjoy far more long-term benefits.
(more…)

When it comes to marketing a website there are plenty of options available to you. Some are more obvious than others whilst the effectiveness of each also varies. Whatever you choose to do, make sure you allocate plenty of your budget and time to it; website marketing isn’t quick and it can cost a fair amount of money to do properly.

Marketing a website is all about trying to increase visibility where it really counts. Whilst you want traffic filtering through your site, it is important that this is targeted. So whatever direction you want to push, always bear this in mind.

Effective online marketing requires a determination and focus like no other form. It is a continuous process that allows for immediate changes that can encourage quick results. If something is failing, you have to fix it. If something is working, you have to optimise it. You can’t just make a poster campaign, sit back and hope for customers to find you. The Internet is about engagement and bettering the efforts of your opponents.
(more…)

Results in search engine optimisation are rarely immediate. If you want instant results, you should probably consider Pay per Click (PPC) advertising instead. However, despite this lack of immediacy, SEO is still very much the forerunner when it comes to Internet marketing.

If you are just setting out on your voyage of SEO discovery, then you have to be prepared for the trials and tribulations that lie ahead. There will be times where nothing seems to be working, but you have to learn to ride these out. SEO, despite what you may hear elsewhere, isn’t an exact science. It is made up of a series of educated guesses based on the successes and failures of the wider community’s efforts over the years.
(more…)