SEO Blog

Link building and the various ways to gain links will be hotly debated for as long as this method is relevant – there’s a whole host of advice and recommendations out there. However, when we turn our attention to internal linking, there isn’t as much advice to guide us in the right direction. Obviously external linking is important as this can really help you in your cause to reach the top spot, but internal linking also has a place in the overall SEO picture. Internal linking is not a complicated procedure, so with a little guidance, hopefully you will feel assured that you’re heading in the right direction.

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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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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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Before starting out on this post, I would like to acknowledge that there are exceptions to this rule. Google’s algorithm isn’t perfect and sometimes bad sites do rank above those that offer value; not sure why but hey, it happens.

Anyway, if you want to rank higher for your selected keywords then you had better have a site that is better than your competitors. Search engines reward those sites that people enjoy using. They analyse content and visitor reaction (i.e. bounce rate, time on site etc.) and make informed decisions based on that data.

Of course you can attempt to manipulate that through excessive (blackhat?) SEO practices, like spamming comment boards, getting involved in link farms or exchanging cash for a few inbound gems, but ultimately you can’t blind Google to a bad site.
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As I’ve said before, all websites are just a collection of inter-connecting pages. Each page is optimised independently to achieve its own rankings and perform a certain duty. However, just because each page is, fundamentally speaking, unique it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be looking for consistency.

If your design completely changed from one page to the next your site would resemble an online patchwork quilt. There would be no identifiable theme and users might think better of venturing any further. The same though can be true of your content.

Maintaining a continuous theme right throughout your site, and any other online/offline literature can help bridge gaps.
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Whilst we all want to create a website that creates an instant visual impact with visitors, it’s important that search engine rankings aren’t overlooked entirely. So if you create a site full of images and flash, it might look great to the human eye but it will be invisible to the search engines’ site crawlers.

Search engines aren’t human. They don’t judge a page on how nice it appears and they can’t scan through an entire site to see what information your flash files contain. They are blind to all of this.

The only content that a search engine spider can see is that which is included within the HTML coding of a page. Therefore on page copy, headers, links, Meta and tags are all visible, everything else is not.
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Quite often you’ll find that you have a ranking for a term you aren’t even targeting. While it is related to your page’s content, it perhaps isn’t what you’re going after. But, as long as you are getting good rankings for your main keywords, this provides an invaluable bonus.

This usually comes about because you have a strong site, certainly in terms of links and overall authority. Somewhere in your content you may have used the phrase or word that you have earned a ranking for, Google then picks this up, recognises it within the context of your content and assigns you a ranking on that basis.

This is an important lesson for any copywriter. Whilst you want to make sure your keywords are used and prominent, you have to anchor them in some kind of context. This means using phrases that are related to the core message of the page.
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So you’ve invested time into creating a good blog post or information page, what now? What can you do to get that content seen and ensure that you get some return on that original time you invested in it?

Content, as we all know by now, is integral to SEO. It is what the search engines look for when trying to decode what a website is all about. They use the words on any page to find context and provide a comparative metric for indexing sites that are targeting the same phrases.

Content is context, but it is also there for your human visitors. It can inform, educate and persuade, you just need to find the best platform for it. A blog is a great way of furthering the spread of your website. It can build internal link structures and encourage external links. Posts can earn you individual rankings for phrases you’ve never previously targeted, earning you more visitors and increased search visibility.
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Many who are new to SEO are often blinded by the notion that content helps to improve your Google ranking. Yes, content will help your pages improve relevance for certain phrases and encourage search engines to rank you better as a consequence. However that isn’t a free pass to fill your pages with endless words.

There’s nothing to suggest that having 2,000 words on each page won’t help you improve your SEO authority; in fact many would argue that it does. Unfortunately though, you do have to justify their inclusion.

If you land on a 10 page site with 20,000 words on it you are probably entitled to ask some questions. The first one probably being: ‘why hasn’t this been categorised better?’ The second one, as a result, is likely to be: ‘where do I start?’
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It can make all the difference. Sometimes you will have a page that is fundamentally fine, it just needs some tweaks to bring it right up to pace. On other occasions it is so badly flawed that you’re better off just ripping it up and starting again.

Unfortunately there is no exacting standard for each. Knowing when to fine tune your website’s page and when to start afresh is a personal call, one that needs to be made correctly too.

So let’s start with the most obvious issue, content. If your page has old, tired content that just isn’t doing anything for your rankings or your visitors, rip it down. Don’t look twice at it, get a fresh sheet, know what you want to say and make sure you do so.
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