SEO Blog

In the SEO business we often go on about the importance of building your inbound links. Not without good reason admittedly. This is where you’ll get your PageRank, your site strength and help your website get ranked. But what’s the point in linking to a half-cocked website?

It is a difficult one though. There’s always a temptation to get your site on Google’s radar and get those first links set up; nothing wrong with that at all. But before you embark on a full blown link building odyssey, you need to get your house in order.
(more…)

There are certain elements of your website that are essential. Legally binding areas such as your Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions sit in your site’s footer. Rarely seen, even less frequently visited.

These have to be there. They ensure that your content is protected and visitors are aware of their rights. Not always an exciting read, but important nonetheless.

The question from Chad Walls though was two-fold, firstly can you actually optimise the privacy policy? Well, in theory you can. You could add links to other parts of your site and add a little strength. But in all honesty, there is very little value in doing so.
(more…)

When we optimise websites, we are actually only optimising individual pages. Whilst a lot of site strength is passed down from the homepage, and this will be where your primary keyword points, there are in fact dozens, if not hundreds of pages that are equally in need of a little SEO magic.

Each page, therefore, has its own individual key term; a phrase that it is targeting on search engines and looking for rankings therein. So logic dictates that the more (optimised) pages you have, the more rankings you’ll achieve. This increases search engine visibility and provides additional entry points. All of this can only be beneficial.

Of course though this does take a fair amount of work and will need regular maintenance too. In short, not something you should try to do on your own.

Regardless of resources, you don’t want to go overboard. Additional pages should add value, not simply be bolted on to gleam a bit of extra traffic. It can overburden a website and leave it looking ugly and full of pointless cul-de-sacs. In short, it could end up ruining user experience if done incorrectly.

So how can you extend your site without weakening it? Well, a good place to start is by integrating a blog. With each post constituting a fresh page, you can soon add huge volumes of entrance points to your site and do so in a productive and informative fashion. Keep your blog on topic and ensure that you don’t slip into spammy practices and you should be fine.

Blogs are also a great source of internal links. As you are probably already aware, links within your site help to pass around strength and also improve keyword authority – as long as embedded text links are used. Individual posts can also serve as decent link bait, which in turn helps build authority across the site and improves visibility – in short, great for SEO.

An FAQ page is also a great way of providing a useful service and boosting your page numbers  a little. Find some of the most regularly asked questions you receive, or indeed just pre-empt some and provide a thorough answer. This will help visitors and give them greater confidence in your professionalism.

You can also have pages dedicated to your services and any individual stores or locations around the country where you’re based. These might be placed quite deep within the site, but again you’ll have the opportunity to use some pretty precise key terms and rank for niche phrases that should achieve decent levels of targeted traffic.

Remember though that all this work is only going to be successful if you actually invest the time to do it properly. It has to be planned and structured so that it appears natural and the content needs to be in line with the rest of your site. Slapdash pages will appear as such and add little or no value; you need to be productive and a little creative.

In short, a big website offers big benefits. The more pages you have, the more SEO you can do and the better your chances of attracting targeted traffic. You can’t guarantee success, but it certainly won’t hurt to expand and explore new terms.

Not meaning to initialise everything, but there is a great deal that small and medium sized businesses (SMEs) can gain from investing in SEO. If they have a website already, then it makes sense that optimisation is the next step.

Unfortunately there are plenty of misunderstandings and misinterpretations of SEO as a practise. This leads many to either ignore it or fail to realise that it even exists. The trouble is, whatever your own views are of SEO and however you view practitioners, the results speak for themselves.

A good search engine ranking is a golden ticket to targeted traffic. Search engines are the backbone of the Internet and most people’s automatic go-to for information. By ignoring SEO you could be surrendering this potential.
(more…)

So you’ve optimised your content, you have a decent link infrastructure and your Meta is all up to scratch. The one thing that might be missing is your URLs.

It sounds simple enough, but making sure that your page URLs reflect the key terms of each unique page can make a huge difference. Search engines extract a great deal of information out of all elements of the page, including the somewhat unassuming contents following ‘http://’. Therefore ignoring URLs could end up confusing visitors and losing vital SEO authority.

So what do I mean by optimising URLs?
(more…)

SEO is a funny old thing. Some elements will work better than others; some changes you make will see you climb the ranks others will see no effect at all or, worse still, a drop.

To see a drop in direct response to SEO work is extremely rare though. Unless you have somehow broken the rules of Google, maybe by getting a bad link, or have ruined your content, any change should be beneficial.

Let’s take your link profile as a good example. If you employ ethical link building practices then there can be no damage done to your site’s ranking. Of course if you do stray over onto the dark side and buy a link, get involved in a link farm or start inter-linking with some dodgy characters, then you might do more damage than good.
(more…)

Occasionally you’ll receive feedback on your website and its various elements. Sometimes it’ll be complimentary, often it will be tainted with a little constructive criticism.

Whilst nobody wants to be told that they’re doing something wrong and we all enjoy positive comments; criticism is often one of the most important pieces of feedback you’ll receive. Whilst you might want to bury your head in the sand and hope that problems just sort themselves out, the reality is that nothing is ever perfect and you need to seek to improve constantly.

So if somebody phones your customer services and says that your checkout isn’t working properly, they can’t find the product they’re looking for or to enquire further about certain aspects as the content isn’t clear enough – take action!
(more…)

So you’ve been slowly working your way up to the top of Google for a keyword. But you’ve become stuck on page two or aren’t getting the traffic you want. What do you do?

Well, it comes down to research. You have to find out what your competition is and find out what the traffic levels are likely to be like if you do get to the top. High competition and low search volume are a disaster waiting to happen for any site.

Sometimes keywords just aren’t quite right. Maybe there are a good few terms that adequately describe what your page offers, which do you choose? Instinctively you could go for the most commonly used, but that might also be the one that is targeted most by your competitors. It could take you weeks or even months to make a dent on the first page rankings, all of which is largely time wasted.
(more…)

Meta is a funny old thing. Every website has it to some extent, but still so few are willing to take full advantage of it. Some just choose to copy and paste some content from the site, some just have the same Meta description for every page, whilst others just don’t bother at all.

Not only is Meta another fantastic opportunity to explicitly tell the search engines what your page is all about, but it can do the same for your visitors too. The Meta description, by and large, is featured within the search engine results page. Therefore it is a great opportunity to get a little more meat into your marketing efforts and really help to earn a click.

A search engine ranking alone won’t guarantee you visitors. People don’t want to have their time wasted, so they are looking to find a site that meets their requirements first time around. With your Meta description, you have a great opportunity to tell them exactly what you offer and offer them a reason for coming in.

(more…)

The work of an SEO is never over. Not only does a site require continual development in order to stay competitive, but the techniques and best practices update with equally frequent regularity.

It isn’t something that you need to be nervous of, but awareness is certainly a benefit. Search engine optimisation isn’t a linear story. Whilst there is a beginning, the middle and end are elusive. This is why it is so important to keep your SEO fresh.

By fresh, I mean you can’t get stuck in a groove. Yes, you might have been doing some great SEO work that has always gotten you results in the past, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll have the same good fortune going forwards.

Search engines and their algorithms are changing, which in turn influences how we optimise them. Most adjustments are only very slight and won’t make a jot of difference to how you perform SEO. However occasionally these small alterations build up and create something more substantial. This is where keeping an eye on industry commentary can be a real benefit.
(more…)