August 7, 2009

Just What is SEO then?

Hi Guys

A question I get asked a lot is. What's SEO? Search Engine Optimization. If your business has a website, you're using the greatest tool in the small business world - the internet. Now you need to learn about search engine optimization. You've got a beautiful web page with a great design. Effective search engine optimization makes sure your target audience can find you. This is where search engine optimization services come in. Search engine optimization helps make sure your website attracts the people who really want your service or product. A search engine optimization service can help improve the traffic flow on your site. Search engine optimization is used by every successful website. Don't underestimate the importance of search engine optimization - it can mean the difference between being on page one or being buried somewhere on page 200.

How does search engine optimization work? Search engines aim to provide relevant results. Search engine optimization helps the search engines recognize your website as relevant. Specifically, search engine optimization helps identify your website as being relevant to what someone searched for. Search engine optimization helps attract more clients because it puts your website closer to the top of the page rankings. By investing in a search engine optimization service, you will get more hits than you would otherwise. This means more traffic for your company and ultimately, more business for you.

Mark

Posted by Mark at 5:04 PM | Comments (0) | Search Engine Optimization | TrackBack

November 13, 2008

Websites and SEO

You can create the greatest of websites with the most important information known to man but, if people can't find it, what good is it? This is why special care must be given to making sure your website is easily found on a search engine. The best way to do this is through Search Engine Optimization or SEO.

Search Engine Optimization is the process by which you make your website a lot more attractive to the spiders used by search engines to scour the web as it looks for websites. A spider is a term for searching sites for specific keywords that people use when they search for things online. If you site is optimized well, it will show up on more and more search results.

This means you get more hits to your site.

One of the first steps is to make sure you are filling your site full of the specific keywords related to what you are placing on your site. You can look on sites like Google for information about how people are searching for the information you are hosting.

There are some ways to make sure you are getting found easily. The first are tags. Many website have what are known as tag clouds on their main pages. These are groups of keywords in one location, which helps those search engine spiders find you. There are add-ons you can get for popular blog software packages such as Word Press, which will fill in your tag cloud for you making your site much more attractive to a search engine.

Google also has some great tools you can use to see exactly what phrases people are using to find your site and you can add these lines to the meta tags of your website as well. If you don't know what a meta tag is, there are add-ons for these as well. They go into the code of your website on each page and add another level of attractiveness for search engines.

Check back each week to see if the way people look for the information you have changes so you keep up to date and keep your site at the top of web searches.

Mark

Posted by Mark at 2:40 PM | Comments (0) | Search Engine Optimization | TrackBack

December 14, 2007

SEO: Traffic

Getting traffic to your website or blog can be as difficult as getting hundreds of backlinks or as expensive as taking out ads at popular websites. It can also be as simple as using a few SEO techniques to make sure your site is getting the traffic it needs through popular search engine searches. By using the principles of search engine optimization, you can get a better placement in the search engine results and more traffic to your site. This traffic is known as organic traffic, and the search engines are not paid for these placements. The search engines benefit by giving their users the information they’re seeking, bringing them back to the same search engine again for the next search.

So, where are the search engine placement rules? In a perfect world, perhaps they would be written out for all to see and benefit from. But search engines keep these secret, leaving site owners to speculate about what has worked for them and what has not. By drawing on all of that experience, you can see what the best techniques are for getting high placement to bring in more traffic to your own site.

Keywords

One of the easiest SEO techniques is to master the use of keywords. The keyword density is the percentage of the article made up of the keywords you have chosen. While most search engines won’t say exactly what percentage they are looking for, there is an optimal percentage range for each search engine. For this reason, the recommended keyword density will vary, depending on what SEO resource you read. Most sources recommend a keyword density of anywhere from 1.5 to 5 percent.

Getting the keyword density you need can be done in one of two ways: counting the words in each piece and placing the keyword enough times, or using a keyword density tool. If you choose to count, just divide the number of times a keyword appears by the number of words in the entire piece. The answer is your keyword density percentage. If you use a keyword density tool, you can paste the copy directly into a box, click a button to calculate the density, and be given the answer. Either method is reliable, so it’s just a matter of personal preference which one your choose.

Original Content

To get good search engine rankings, you also need good, original content. If the item has been printed elsewhere, it will not rank as well as if it were original to your site. Getting your original content should be an ongoing process, however. If you put all of your content on a site at one time, never adding to it, you will not rank as highly as if you added to it often. Search engines like large sites, and they like sites that continually add to their content. A stagnant site is not one that is likely to be looked at again and again, and search engine owners don’t want their users being turned off by them.

If you can implement some basic SEO techniques, you have a much better chance of getting one of the coveted top spots in the search results. And, these results aren’t dependent on your ad budget or whether your backlinks stay in place.

Mark

Posted by Mark at 7:50 AM | Comments (0) | Search Engine Optimization | TrackBack

June 29, 2007

Search Engine Optimisation: Link Popularity

Hi All

We have finished our first FREE SEO tool on Link Popularity. Check it out I am sure you will find it usefull for something :)

Mark

Posted by Mark at 8:18 PM | Comments (0) | Search Engine Optimization | TrackBack

May 28, 2007

SEO: How to use Link-baiting to Help Earn Free Links

Since one-way/inbound links are among the primary considerations by Google for their ranking during the indexing process, it is important that you achieve as many inbound links as possible throughout your search engine optimizing process. The more, the merrier. Among the best methods for accomplishing this is link-baiting.

This is not at all a new idea, and has been in practice for a number of years. The process is quite direct. It means that you simply offer something free to other internet users – such as free online tools, a free research brief on a unique topic, or something else that they would consider valuable – in order to convince them to create a link to your website from their own. Google’s link popularity issue has made link-baiting an even more popular activity than it ever was.

There are many ways in which you can encourage other internet users through link-baiting. If you are good at programming simple scripts – or if you are willing to hire a programmer to do so – you can create a small program for assisting other webmasters and website owners. These small program tools can include:

- online calculators such as currency converters or mortgage payment calculators
- a program that will check the number of incoming links to a given website
- a script that will verify a given site’s ranking with Google and the other major search engines with regards to a specific keyword
- a contest that requires that a link to be created on the person’s website in order for them to see the winning results.

The techniques are practically limitless. Whatever way you find is effective to encourage people to link to you is a link-baiting technique that works. Your goal is simply to achieve as many inbound links to your website as possible.

Mark.

Posted by Mark at 8:03 AM | Comments (0) | Search Engine Optimization | TrackBack

April 18, 2007

SEO: The Difference Between SEO and Search Engine Positioning

There are so many new techniques and strategies being developed in order to obtain the best results from search engines, it is sometimes difficult to understand the subtle differences between them.

Among these issues has been the difficulty in knowing what search engine optimization is, and how it differs from an equally important method called search engine positioning.

To best understand these two techniques, it is best to define them independently.

Search engine position refers to the precise key terms, words, and phrases – that is, the words that are used in order to search for the site using a search engine. These terms are not always as obvious as they may seem.

However, they are extremely valuable when it comes to drawing targeted traffic to your website from the search engines.

Search engine positioning means that you identify exactly the precise terms used by your site’s target market at the times that they are most receptive to your message.

With these terms, under the search engine positioning theory, you will be able to manipulate your site in a way that will enable it to be placed in front of your target market when they are searching for your product or service.

This may sound relatively simplistic, but experts have been trying for years to manage the perfect keyword balance within websites in order to obtain the desired results.

On the other hand, search engine optimization – often referred to as SEO – is the process of taking those key terms, words, and phrases and applying them to the content of a website, using certain placement techniques, and the right wording to appeal to the search engine spiders and achieve the best possible ranking.

Therefore, the difference is essentially that search engine positioning is the selection of the proper keywords for searches using search engines, and search engine optimization is the application of those terms to a website in the right way to obtain the best rank.

Mark.

Posted by Mark at 8:06 AM | Comments (0) | Search Engine Optimization | TrackBack

March 18, 2007

SEO: A Definition of SEO That You Can Actually Use

Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of those strange, fiddly kind of topics that experts are always trying to define, but they never seem to come up with anything practical. Sure they have some very impressive-seeming textbook-style definitions, that are likely quite accurate, but until now, nobody seems to have put out any kind of usable definition. That is, the kind of definition that you can actually understand, and then apply to your website in some kind of practical and realistic way.

Think about it. What does the phrase “a highly specialized process of building a successful website” really do for you? Yes, it does state what search engine optimization is about, but it doesn’t really help you to get the job done, or achieve that “successful website” they mention. So here’s the definition of SEO that you’ve been waiting for. The one you can actually use as a foundation for your own SEO strategy.

Search engine optimization addresses two important needs for a website. Those are:

* Attracting new visitors
* Turning those visitors into customers who make a purchase

There are many different marketing strategies that an be used to bring in a lot of traffic to your website. However, nothing is as specialized and effective as search engine optimization. The reason for this is that it is in the nature of SEO to achieve the two aforementioned needs in a very specific way. This means that search engine optimization:

* Attracts targeted visitors, that is, people who are actually looking for what the website is offering, as opposed to just anybody on the internet.

* Attracts those targeted visitors at the time that they are most receptive to your message, because they are already specifically seeking information regarding what your website has to offer.

This is all accomplished by using certain specific techniques, such as:

* Keywording,
* Meta tags,
* Creating inbound links,
* Working on achieving high traffic levels

These are only the most popular among the most commonly used methods. From here, it’s only a matter of coming up with your own strategy, and making SEO work for you.

Mark

Posted by Mark at 10:34 AM | Comments (0) | Search Engine Optimization | TrackBack

August 7, 2006

Search Engine Optimization – Save Money and Obtain the Same Results with Free Tools Online

Any webmaster who is serious about achieving substantial results from their websites is certain to include search engine optimization as a main part of their marketing strategies. However, search engine optimization is a complex activity, with many different levels that need attention and effort.

Large companies and corporations have state-of-the-art technologies, tools, and teams of people to have this done. Unfortunately, small businesses cannot possibly afford to compete with that level of equipment and staffing that those larger organizations have readily available. However, this doesn’t mean that they cannot take advantage of very similar opportunities.

There are a number of terrific free search engine optimization (SEO) tools online that can give virtually the same results as those received by large corporations, but without spending millions of dollars or hiring teams of professionals. These tools range from providing you with accurate statistics, to helping keyword optimize your website, to analyzing your position within search engines, researching competitor websites, and a great deal more.

These tools can be used in two primary ways:

• If you are new to SEO, and you need some information and insight into the ways in which search engine optimizing can change and help your site, these tools can help your website’s performance and ranking. You’ll receive a rapid overview of the primary issues and trends that will impact your current website, and inform you as to where you most require SEO work.

• If you already work with SEO and require a compliment to further specialize your efforts, these tools can give your search engine optimization greater focus and accuracy. They can both compliment and supplement your SEO actions and add to your experience and understanding of the way you perfect your site.

The main types of free search engine optimization tools online include:

• Keyword research tools – to provide you with the right words and phrases for keyword optimizing your site

• Keyword analyzing tools – to scan your content and let you know the density of the keywords you wish to use for optimization.

• Search engine position verification tools – for checking within the first fifty results of each of the most important search engines for any given keyword or phrase that you wish to check.

• Link popularity tools – to find out how many times a search engine has found links to your website. This is important for the more recent additions to Google’s ranking elements, since inbound links, and links in general to your site now matter in the ranking process.

• Meta tag generator – certainly, meta tags aren’t as important as they once were for ranking, but they don’t hurt, either. Having them automatically generated saves a lot of time and energy.

This is not, by far, an exhaustive list of all of the free online search engine tools that you will discover, and the number of different tools is always growing. However, it will give you a good start for getting your site on its way.

Mark.

Posted by Mark at 7:30 AM | Comments (0) | Search Engine Optimization | TrackBack

July 27, 2006

SEO – Can You Buy The Necessary One-Way Links?

One of the main factors of search engine optimization involves having a number of direct, one-way links to your website from other websites and directories. However, this has created a number of debates regarding the acquisition of these links.

The main question involves whether or not all links are created equal. If someone links you to their site, is that the same as buying a link from another site? The truth is, while all links will make a difference, some links will make more of a difference than others.

As far as SEO is concerned, earned links are believed to have a greater value. This is true for viral advertising as well, since they are links that people have purposely placed on their websites of their own volition because they feel that your site has some value; whether that be information, entertainment, or a great product or service.

The placement of the link will also have an impact on the way that search engines will weigh the link to your site. Though an accumulation of links will generally overcome any issue of poor placement, when the number of links is only building, this will make a measurable difference.

Links that have been purchased will help you get off the ground with your credibility among search engines. However, this can be very expensive, and difficult to maintain.

The best thing to remember is that while all links do count, and every link will help your SEO efforts, it is the genuine, non-purchased links that will get you the glory in the end.

Mark.

Posted by Mark at 7:28 AM | Comments (0) | Search Engine Optimization | TrackBack

June 27, 2006

Search Engine Optimization: How to Create a Google-Friendly Site Map in Your Web Design

One of the best ways to make absolutely certain that every part of your site gets fully crawled by search engine spiders – especially the almighty Google – is to include a properly designed Google-friendly site map.

Many website users find site maps very useful anyway, because they can find a direct link to precisely what they want without having to go through several different layers of the site. However, when it comes to proper search engine optimization for sites such as Google, site maps make sure that you’re getting the most out of your SEO efforts, and all of your site’s pages.

The most important thing about laying out your site map in a way that is friendly to Google is to have it listed not only by category, but also by priority. Use the value that you give each of your pages to order your pages within the site map. The search engine spider will take in this order, and make assumptions regarding the placement of the pages on the site map.

Make sure that every page from your website is added once. This will make sure that nothing gets missed or left out. Especially when you’ve gone to all the effort to keyword optimize each of the pages on your site. The site map should be clearly available from all of the pages of your website, or at least the main ones. This is especially true of the home page.

Once you’ve finished, don’t forget to submit the specific sitemap page to Google…after all, that’s the last page you’d want the spider to miss!

Mark.

Posted by Mark at 8:20 AM | Comments (0) | Search Engine Optimization | TrackBack

June 12, 2006

SEO: You’ve Reached The Number One Rank But Still No New Traffic…

To reach that coveted number one rank in the search engines, you’ve obviously worked very hard to search engine optimize your site, submit it to all the right places, earn the one-way links you need, and to build your public relations. However, one problem that is being seen by a growing number of webmasters is that they have put forward all this effort and achieved such fine rankings, but are not experiencing an increase in traffic to go along with it. The burning question then becomes: where is the return on investment for all of the time and money involved in search engine optimization?

To answer that question, you must first discover why the traffic hasn’t increased. There are a few causes for this dilemma:

• The keywords for which you have achieved the number one ranking aren’t those utilized most frequently by your target market. To resolve this issue, find out what terms your customers are using when they’re searching for your products and services on Google and Yahoo! You can do this in many ways. For example, you can ask your customers, imagine that you were looking for your service and try to guess, or use an online service such as wordtracker.

• You may also not be bringing in traffic from your top ranking because the search engine where you have achieved this rank doesn’t have much to do with your target market. Currently, the top three search engines are Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. Other than those, there are search engines that specialize in certain types of users. If you have achieved your rank in a search engine that targets users other than those that would look for your products and services, it won’t do you much good other than to provide you with one-way links that will boost your rank at other search engines.

The key is to be certain that you’re using basic language, and nothing too industry specific. You need to make your site very searchable, and then you may find that achieving the number two rank or better isn’t as hard as you thought. Happy Hunting.

Mark.

Posted by Mark at 6:52 AM | Comments (0) | Search Engine Optimization | TrackBack

June 1, 2006

SEO – Link Popularity is Vital to Your Search Engine Optimization

When web designers build a site, a great deal of emphasis is placed on the content and the tags as far as their SEO efforts. However, link popularity, an extremely vital part of search engine optimization, is not receiving nearly enough attention. In fact, with many search engines, including the all-important Google, link popularity is among the MOST important factors that determine the rankings achieved when a search engine indexes a given site.

If you want to build link popularity in your website, there are some very effective techniques that you can employ for doing so. In fact, many of them are extremely direct and simple to do, while still allowing you to build a substantial link popularity.

Your first step is to make sure that there are many inbound, one-way links. This can be done in a number of different perfectly legal and acceptable ways:

• Web Directories – these sites index and categorize lists of links throughout the world wide web. There are countless web directories out there, and each has their own method for having you add your link. They can be a great way to build your inbound, one-way links. Yahoo! and DMOZ are also fantastic for your link popularity.

• Quality Web Site Content – having great site content is among the best ways to achieve lots of inbound, one-way links. It is your content that will convince other sites – not just directories – to list your site among their links. In fact, you will rarely need to approach other sites about this. If your site has fantastic content, then other sites will often find you and list you without your having to do anything at all. Most of the time, if your content is shoddy, then other sites won’t naturally link to you. The fact is that most of the top ranking sites are there because of their winning web site content. To do this, gradually add informative, interesting articles and features to your website.

• Contact Webmasters – if you should come across a links list on the internet – other than a directory – where you believe that your link will be well placed, it won’t hurt to contact that site’s webmaster to ask if they might link to your site. They may request a reciprocal link in return, but some do not, and this will give you a perfect one-way link as your reward.

Next week I will run through the software we ourselves use for this vital task.

Mark.

Posted by Mark at 12:44 PM | Comments (0) | Search Engine Optimization | TrackBack

May 22, 2006

SEO – Is it Worth It To Pay For Inclusion (PFI) With Search Engines?

Though many search engines offer to list your site for free, there are a number that are considered “PFI”, that is, pay for inclusion. They are marketing very heavily these days, and with such an in-your-face presence, it’s hard for webmasters to know whether or not it’s worth it to pay to be listed in these directories.

When you pay for listing, you need to remember that you won’t be receiving any additional services over what you’d get for free with other search engines. The money spent won’t guarantee you a good rank for any given keyword or search with that search engine. Therefore, all you’re really paying for is the indexing itself.

This being said, it should be noted that those search engines that require you to pay to be listed generally provide their indexing much faster than search engines with free listing services. For example, when listing with Google or Yahoo!, you can expect to wait a bare minimum of six weeks…when you’re lucky. On the other hand, these PFI’s will generally have you listed in seven days or sooner.

If you are urgently seeking to be listed at a search engine to begin bringing in your traffic as soon as possible, then this may be worth the money to you. Especially if you have made great efforts to search engine optimize your site so that it will achieve a good ranking. After all, a top rank for your primary keyword within seven days isn’t too shabby.

You do need to keep in mind, however, that Google, is still the reigning king of search engines, with Yahoo!, and MSN at second and third place. Therefore, must remember that you won’t be receiving the same amount of traffic from a top ranking site at a PFI as you would with Google.

It’s up to you to balance these factors and make your decision as to whether PFIs are worth it for your specific website. Spend wisely!

Mark.

Posted by Mark at 7:09 AM | Comments (0) | Search Engine Optimization | TrackBack

April 25, 2006

Search Engine Optimization: Your Domain Name Matters!

One of the elements most commonly forgotten by search engine optimization (SEO) specialists is the importance of the domain name. Among all of the other elements considered by Google and the other large search engines that are used throughout the world, the domain name itself is now being included. What does that mean to you as a website owner? It means that you’re going to need to understand what your domain name is doing for you when it comes to SEO.

Not only will your domain name need to say something about your site, but you will also be disclosing how long you intend to keep the domain name, and for how long you currently have it registered. One year just doesn’t count as much as it used to. Spammers will frequently keep a one year registration for their single hit and run. However, a five year domain name registration will look much more favorably on your SEO efforts, as Google will consider you a business that intends to be around for a good long while.

So now there is just one more benefit to registering your domain name for a few more years down the road. Not only will you save money in the long run, since most domain name registration companies will give a discount for longer periods of time, but you will also avoid having to pay for the registration renewal every year, and it will effectively work in your favor when it comes to the search engine optimization of your website.

When you show that you’re serious about sticking around for a good while into the future, your domain name can be your best friend for search engine optimization. Contact your registration company to find out how you can extend your registration and obtain better search engine ranking.

Mark.

PS
yes yes I know 15dn does not mean anything but its to late to change it now :) At the time I was trying to keep the email address short as 15degrees-north is a bit long.

Posted by Mark at 11:13 AM | Comments (3) | Search Engine Optimization | TrackBack

April 19, 2006

Search Engine Optimization: Indexing and Ranking!

So ive got a new client. And he has this great idea for a dating website! It is a good idea by the way :) Anyway so we are having dicussions about his SEO campaign. I told him basically you can forget Google for a couple of years unless we buy you an old Domain. No im in Google already he says! Really I say? Oh yes he says!

So I do some checking and he has no PR and a grand total of two links to him! Are you sure your in Google I say? What keywords do you come up for? I dont know he says but we have been indexed!

And herein lies the rub as they say. To be indexed means nothing! To appear on page one for your best keyword is what matters! Yes you need to be indexed for that to happen but indexing is NOT the end of the story it is only the beginning! So I asked some of my other clients and ALL of them thought that getting a spider to visit you was the most important part of SEO :(

Just goes to show ehhh

Mark.

Posted by Mark at 6:22 AM | Comments (0) | Search Engine Optimization | TrackBack

April 11, 2006

Search Engine Optimization: Moving Hosts!

Does moving web hosts affect your SERPS? A resounding yes is the answer. We have recently moved hosts from the US to a UK based host and have dropped off the map on all engines for our best keywords. We are just coming back up in yahoo for

web page design

which as of today we were at number 42 for. Not bad I guess out of 335 million but even so we are nowhere to be seen at the moment in the other engines! Good job I am on holiday huh :)

Mark.

Posted by Mark at 2:21 PM | Comments (0) | Search Engine Optimization | TrackBack

March 10, 2006

Search Engine Optimization: Managing your links

Ok so whilst we are on the subject of links how do we manage them and keep them in order? There are several link manager software packages available on the market at the moment and we use 3

1. Reciprocal Manager
2. Link Metro Advanced
3. Link Market

We use all three of the above to get and then manage our links, we also get links manually by actually emailing webmasters themselves. Essentially you can NEVER have too many links!

Mark.

Posted by Mark at 3:24 PM | Comments (1) | Search Engine Optimization | TrackBack

February 28, 2006

Search Engine Optimization: How many links do I need?

Yes it's a question I get asked all the time! Regardless of what Matt Cutts says about links it is a fact that links and more importantly how many you have pointing at your website are one of the largest factors in how well you will rank in the engines period!

So how many do you need exactly. Well as a rough guide try this

For a top 10 position, your text link count should outnumber the count of half of the 10 top ranked pages, and also exceed the count for two-thirds of the top 20 pages.

For a top 3 position, on average, you will need to have 50% more text links than were required to crack the top 10, although in some markets there may be a wide gap between the top few sites and the rest of the top 10.

Try that and you won't go far wrong

Mark.

Posted by Mark at 10:30 AM | Comments (0) | Search Engine Optimization | TrackBack

February 13, 2006

Search Engine Optimization: When getting old is good for you!

Carrying on from last week Let's talk about age and why it's good to be old in terms of search. As far as the engines are concerned and this is especially so for Google the older your site is the more relevant it must be!

So if your targeting search engine optimization for example and the the top 100 results are all web sites that were registered pre 2000 then you're going to have to work ten times harder to beat them with a new site! They have natural link buildage over time and that's difficult to fool or get around and the search engines know this! Interestingly this is also why you CANT have a one price fits all mentality to SEO!

So how do you do it then?

In a nutshell you have to find and buy an OLD website and then 301 redirect it to your site by using .htaccess. In this way you will (should) get the old websites related age transfered to your new website! Et Voila now you have an old website and your happy to be old :)

Mark.

Posted by Mark at 9:05 AM | Comments (0) | Search Engine Optimization | TrackBack

February 8, 2006

Search Engine Optimisation: Why am I Not in Google?

How many times have I heard that! Well join the club we are not in Google, well we are but not where I want us to be :)

Open up msn.com and type in web page design. You will see we are on page one out of around 130 million websites. Not bad after a little over 6 months of optimising this site! But we are still not ranking high in Google for the same term! Why is this?

Essentailly it's simply because Google is favoring the age part of its algorithmn higher than MSN is and because this site is a 2003 site we are simply not old enough to please Google for that term! There is a way around this dilemma and later this week Im going to tell you what it is :)

Mark.

Posted by Mark at 9:09 AM | Comments (0) | Search Engine Optimization | TrackBack

January 25, 2006

Search Engine Optimization: Article Marketing does it work?

A resounding yes would be my answer! It has to be the best way to generate one way links to your site bar none! Not only that but as your articles spread around the net this leads to extra traffic, you begin to be known as an expert in your field.

As proof of this We recieved from our web design form an enquiry today for web design. Nothing new there as we get them everyday epsecially since we arrived on page one for "web page design" in MSN and others. What struck me though was right at the bottom where we ask "how did you find us" The answer was

One of your articles on yahoo!

It is amazing where all these little breadcrumbs that we spread around the net turn up and this is the beauty of article marekting, you just never know who is reading them.

Mark.

Posted by Mark at 1:45 AM | Comments (0) | Search Engine Optimization | TrackBack

December 19, 2005

Search Engine Optimisation: Google and Relevance!

Google as we know favours relevance above all things. But it appears this is only when BIg bucks are not involved :) And because AOL has plenty $$$ Google has decided to show favour

Now all we have to do is get as much money as AOL and then we can also find favour with the Great Dragon :) Still thinking about it If I have as much money as AOL im not sure I would be bothered either way to be honest!

Mark.

Posted by Mark at 7:51 PM | Comments (0) | Search Engine Optimization | TrackBack

December 14, 2005

Search Engine Optimization: How good is your Content?

Content Content Content! It's the buzzword again on the net so it seems. Everywhere you go people are talking about content. (As if there has ever been anything else)!

Yep content is what the engines want and content is what your customers want also. Let’s face it what is a newspaper if it's not fresh content on a daily basis! And with the advent of Googles jagger update never has content been more important to you. So how can we best use it to boost our rankings? Did I hear you say Article marketing? Your right of course and in case you didn’t know this is how you do it to maximum effect :) And also how we do it!

1. Pick some topics that relate to your chosen industry. For us this can be Internet marketing, SEO or Web design. So let’s say we want to write content about web design.

2. Sit down and write 4 articles of about 700 words each on your chosen subject. Make sure in each article you have a scattering of your best keywords relating to web design. So for us this would be say

web design company
website design
etc

I can’t write I hear you say! No problem. There are literally thousands of good writers advertising their services on Elance and Guru

You can expect to pay around $10 for a good article so it’s not going to break your bank getting 4 a month written. I give my writers the main topic and a list of keywords I want them to use in the article. Some articles I write myself.

3. Once you have your first article head over and join Article Marketer Once you have signed up you can submit your first article. There are many sites you can use for this to be honest it’s just that we find Article marketer to be the best value for money. You can also buy software that will automate your article submission but you don’t need it if you use a submission service.

4. Your article will now start what is on average a 10 week journey. It will appear in all the myriad article directories, get spidered by Google and the other engines and start to count towards your ever valuable link popularity.

5. The following week submit your second article. This will start its journey around the content sites and will be picked up by the engines.

6. The following week submit your third article. This will start its journey around the content sites and will be picked up by the engines.

7. The following week submit your fourth article. This will start its journey around the content sites and will be picked up by the engines.

You do this each week like clockwork. As your first article becomes stale the links from it will drop and be deleted. Google will have settled on the links it wants to keep from this article and lose the rest. But this is not a problem because your second article and so on are coming up and replacing these lost links.

It’s like an engine and each week (we do ours on Mondays) you submit a fresh article to keep the fires stoked so to speak. Of course you can do an article a day if you wish. There is no upper limit with content and to be honest the more the better.

Get writing…

Mark.

Posted by Mark at 8:05 AM | Comments (0) | Search Engine Optimization | TrackBack

December 9, 2005

Search Engine Optimization: Push Button Sites. Do they work?

There are lots of different pieces of software out there that will create you instant "push button" websites today. You know the ones. The nasty looking adsense sites with no real content on them where you just click an adsense ad to get the hell out of there fast!

I see lots of ads daily for the latest software that will apparently DRIVE the search engines into a feeding frenzy :) BUT what you must remember and this goes for PR (page rank) to. It doesnt matter if the search engine spiders are visitng your site and it doesnt matter what your PR is either. This is not important. What matters is when someone types in you best keyword phrase do you appear on page one in the SERPS!

As an example of this in action go to Google and type in "web design company". Now go to page 10 and have a look at some of them. Most are PR6 ill wager. But who cares! How many of you click through to page 10 of search results?

So next time you see an ad for the latest push button software just remember that once you have bought it then the hard work really starts. Your SEO campaign :)

Mark.

Posted by Mark at 7:44 AM | Comments (0) | Search Engine Optimization | TrackBack

November 24, 2005

Search Engine Optimization: Reciprocal linking is worthless!

Oh my Jagger has done some damage ehh! But should it suprise you? Come on Google employs the smartest brains in the business and pays them uber dollars! They know what us SEO guys do and of course they know how to beat us at our own game.

You cannot beat Google at SEO or indeed the other engines for that matter because they own the engine, the algrothmn, the playing field, all the equipment needed for playing and it's their game!

Reciprocal links are important BUT in no way as much as they were before jagger and more importantly they will decline even more as time goes on! So what can you do?

Content content content is the game now. Relevant content is what you need both on your website and also in tasty articles that you scatter about the web for others to use. This will provide you with relevance in the engines eyes and juicy one way links from your articles for your link popularity. Get writing!

Mark.

PS
I always hated recips anyway as it's oh so damned boring doing them all day long :(

Posted by Mark at 12:10 PM | Comments (0) | Search Engine Optimization | TrackBack

November 21, 2005

Search Engine Optimisation: E-commerce is dead!

Well it is in Googles eyes if you dont have good relevant content that is!

Yep it had to happen and the engines in their wisdom are now heavily weighting their algorithmn on the content side. So what can you do if you have a pure Ecommerce site with only products? Write or have written for you good quality content that enhances the products you sell. Simple really!

You can moan about this all you like but the fact is The search engines prefer content over anything at the moment. Lots of links with good content will win for you all day long.

Mark.

Posted by Mark at 10:43 AM | Comments (0) | Search Engine Optimization | TrackBack

November 11, 2005

Search Engine Optimization: Links are dead!

So apparently the new buzz after The Google jagger update is that reciprocal linking is dead and one way links are the way to go!

While this theory (and it is a theory) has some merit as in one way links into your site of course carry more weight. It is not true to say that reciprocal links are of no value and you should only pursue natural one way linking strategys! If I link to a PR10 site and that site has a link back to me of course I am going to gain both PR from his PR10 and also add to my overall link popularity at the same time.

The natural web is about links both to and from your website. Search engines understand this and while they might tweak their algorithms to give certain apsects more credence, to say they discount an apsect altogther (and a large one at that) is only so much nonsense!

Mark.

Posted by Mark at 8:46 AM | Comments (1) | Search Engine Optimization | TrackBack

November 9, 2005

Search Engine Optimization: Jagger Update Blues

So were into November and hopefully the latest Google Dance is finally over!

Google goes through an update and people instantly get paranoid. Most people I know question their own SEO efforts in relation to the update.

Most of the questions surrounding an update are as follows

Do I have enough site-wide links
Do I have enough homepage links
Do I have footer links on my pages
Should I be Link trading
Not having enough content
Having too much content on page
Adding 200 pages in 1 week
Deleting 200 pages in 1 week
Not adding any pages in a year
Updating content too often
Not updating content enough
Having PR newspaper links
Not being in the news at all
Buying links from text link brokers
Not buying links from text link brokers
Posting links in forums, guestbooks and blogs
Should I Join an automatic link network

Of course I could go on and on and on. I even got asked the other day to Remove a link because my links page is only a PR3 and they dont want to link to PR3 sites! Note here this is my links page not my site page or blog which is a PR5! Oh how I laughed at that! Of course I removed it but what is that webmaster thinking here? His site is a web design site so we are topically related. It can only benefit him to link to me even if I was a PR0 it would benefit him. But I digress.

After an update and before you jump to any conclusions look at the top ten sites in your niche and analyze them! It really is that simple. If you want to be top ten analyze the sites that are and then incoporate what they are doing into your SEO plan.

Mark.

Posted by Mark at 8:19 AM | Comments (2) | Search Engine Optimization | TrackBack

October 28, 2005

Search Engine Optimization: How old are you?

It's a fact that Most (I would say all) search engines Algorithms are heavily weighted to a web sites age! This is not so good if you have a Domain less than 2 years old!

What does this mean for you? Essentially if the top ten domains in your niche are older than yours. Then you are going to have to work ten times harder on your On page optimization and also your links in order to beat them!

Mark.

Posted by Mark at 1:32 PM | Comments (0) | Search Engine Optimization | TrackBack

October 4, 2005

Search Engine Optimization: Are you a contender?

As you know we started optimizing this site back in June of this year. It's funny because that post now has a PR of 4 which just shows how effective a blog is if you can be bothered with the work each week!

Anyway Here's a Great Tool I use to check on the sites progress link wise! As you can see we are slowly on our way to becoming a contender :) Not bad considering we started from scratch this year.

Mark.

Posted by Mark at 9:00 AM | Comments (0) | Search Engine Optimization | TrackBack

September 29, 2005

Search Engine Optimization: PR0? Not interested thanks

I get asked occasionly why I link to PR0 sites! Such a shortsighted view dont you think! A bit like everything on the net, here one minute gone the next. Well we are here to stay and have been here in one form or another for years (since 1999 for this Blog) So why?

Here's some reasons....

1. A PR 0 today might be a PR 8 (great site) in the future

2. ANY link to you is a good link at the moment unless they are grey barred. Topical links of course are better

3. Your a FOOL if you rely on Googles PR at all :) It's meanigless trust me!

4. You were a PR 0 once or have you forgotten! Shame on you!

So 4 good reasons to link to all and sundry. This might change in the future but at the moment it's sound.

Mark.

Posted by Mark at 9:40 AM | Comments (4) | Search Engine Optimization | TrackBack

September 26, 2005

Search Engine Optimisation: Blog and Pings (Part Four)

So we come to part four of my little mini series on the merits of Blog and Ping.

Im going to link to an entry on Andy Beards site for this post as he pretty much covers what I want to say anyway. You will have to decide if you want to use such a tool :)

Mark.

Posted by Mark at 10:35 AM | Comments (0) | Search Engine Optimization | TrackBack

September 22, 2005

Search Engine Optimization: Linking Rich

I just read a very interesting article by Mike Grehan

To be honest it's something I have had my suspicions over for some time and it's nice to see it so well explained. I think it will be interesting to see where search heads over the next few years in light of this information...

Mark..

Posted by Mark at 8:11 AM | Comments (0) | Search Engine Optimization | TrackBack

September 19, 2005

Search Engine Optimisation: Blog and Pings (Part three)

So where did we get too? Ah yes Blog and Ping. I know for some of you this works, and it has for me too. But not for much longer. As the spiders get wiser this technique get's less productive.

So let's look at scraping feeds onto a page. Here's one in action...

News

Oh look it's got a PR 4 too! It gets spidered daily by Google (and others) and at the moment seems to work great! It also refreshes with new feeds each time you load the page. I'm using BlogBomb for this which uses a combination of .htaccess and SSI to weave its magic. The content is also relevant to my site.

Later this week I'll look at your last option for Blog and Ping. Seems its controversial in certain cirlces too!

Mark.

Posted by Mark at 12:11 PM | Comments (0) | Search Engine Optimization | TrackBack

September 14, 2005

Search Engine Optimisation: Blog and Pings (Part two)

Ok so I said I would go into this subject more and here's part two for you.

Firstly though lets look at what our problems are and this is especially so if your a Niche marketer with a typically one page sales letter type web site

The 3 most important and sadly most elusive marketing and advertising methods are...

1. Getting search engines to your pages in the first place.

2. Getting search engines to index and list your pages in their directories.

3. Getting high positions for all of those listed Pages.

So how do we achieve this and where does blog and ping come into play?

Well we can get a search engine spider to visit daily by having a proper blog with proper content that is updated regularly (don't take me to task on my definition of proper here please). Im sure you know this!

Google and others visit this blog daily and as you can see it has a PR5 which is not to bad. As a consequence the spiders also visit all the links I have going out from this Blog, not least the website it's sitting in (my main site). So this is one way you can use a Blog and Ping to get indexed. You Blog and then you ping that Blog using a service such as

PinGoat

or in my case as I use MT I just configure all the servers I want to ping in my settings and MT pings them each time I post.

It's the hard way though because it takes no small amount of effort to write a Blog week in week out believe me :) So Blog and Ping part two! The easier way which did indeed work but now is losing it's effectivness as the spiders get cleverer :(

This time you have a Blog that you set-up and lets say that 3 times a week you post your links and then ping the Blog. The spider visits and follows your links (hopefully). Sadly though it's very easy for a spider to recognise that each time it visits your Blog all it finds is a bunch of links and no real content! Et Voila it stops coming to see you :( So Blog and Ping in this sense is not as effective as it was a few months ago.

later this week Ill outline one way that is more effective than just Blog and Ping and is what I use on this site and also on my Niche sites. See if you can find it on this site?

Mark.

Posted by Mark at 8:23 AM | Comments (1) | Search Engine Optimization | TrackBack

September 12, 2005

Search Engine Optimisation: Blog and Pings

Does it work? This is the question buzzing around at the moment. The simple answer is yes it does work but with reservations.

Spiders are not stupid and neither are the people who spend all day everyday coding them. Google peeps aint stupid either and they KNOW what strategys we are all upto to try and trick their little arachnid into ranking us higher :)

Lately people have been seeing that the spiders are getting smarter. Simply posting your links on a blog that you setup somewhere and then pinging that blog so that the spiders will come to it has lost some of it's effectiveness.

There is a new strategy available and this week I am going to go into it in greater detail :)

Mark.

Posted by Mark at 12:15 PM | Comments (2) | Search Engine Optimization | TrackBack

September 7, 2005

Search Engine Optimisation: Finding Link partners

Posted by Mark at 1:10 PM | Comments (0) | Search Engine Optimization | TrackBack

August 2, 2005

Search Engine Optimization: Long search terms!

"been on google for 7 days with no sales from about 100 click throughs now"

Yes and he did indeed buy :) Can you beleive what people type into Google though? We come up page three for that although I can assure you it's not one I was intending to target ha ha :)

Heres another one

"find web design and search engine optimization personnel"

Still the old adage that one word searchers are info gatherers and three or more words are buyers seems to hold true!

Mark.

Posted by Mark at 2:29 PM | Comments (2) | Search Engine Optimization | TrackBack

July 13, 2005

Search Engine Optimisation: Felix and his amazing underpants!

Well I am called odd by all that know me, not least her indoors :) And you would'nt click my posts if I used crap titles would you?

So what's the SEO lesson for today then?

LINKS
LINKS

and more

LINKS

Yep whatever anyone tells you, at the moment links is the game my man. The more you have the higher you WILL rank! All talk of algorithms and keyword density blah blah is so much balderdash piffle and popycock!

However in a competitive market where your aiming for say

"internet marketing" or perhaps "web design" then you have to be much more technical with your on page optimisation techniques. Refine Refine Refine.

Oh yes and dont listen to so called "internet marketers" that tell you traffic isnt everything! What they FAIL to tell you is that for them with huge email lists it isnt but for you my friend it is because you dont happen to have lying around a huge list of previous buyers who drool over your every word :)

You have two options only, well maybe three but essentially PPC or SEO and then later when you have links you will get number three which is non search engine traffic from your links. Hmmm there might be a 4 which is hit exchanges but im not sure how much of that traffic translates to hard cash to be honest! Number 5 the email list only comes later once you have had the traffic (and sales)

I predict that this will change! The reason for this is because reciprocal links are not natural and the engines know this (they aint stupid) they know we are all AT IT like mad things! So they will adapt and then we will have to adapt back. It's a game. Learn to play it well and you will earn lots of money :) Dont play and noone will know your there!

Mark.

Posted by Mark at 10:12 AM | Comments (5) | Search Engine Optimization | TrackBack

July 11, 2005

Search Engine Optimisation: Keywords

I had a discussion recently about NOT going for highly targeted keywords like "web design" but picking easier fair like say "web design uk"! I have to disagree to be honest, because if I took that attitude with any of my projects I would not start any for fear of FAILURE.

As far as I am concerned you CAN obtain any keyword if

A. You work hard enough
B. You have anough links pointing to you containing it in the anchor text (search for Miserable Failure)
C. You have enough money and can buy good quality links when needed.

Dont listen to doom mongers! We have been doing SEO for only a few weeks only now and already we come out on page one for some nice keywords. The more I refine and the more links we get the better that situation will get too.

Mark.

PS
If you shoot for the stars you might land on the moon. If you shoot for the moon you might land on earth. If you shoot for nothing then nothing is what you'll get!

Posted by Mark at 2:26 PM | Comments (0) | Search Engine Optimization | TrackBack

July 4, 2005

Search Engine Optimisation: Google Sitemaps

I have been playing with Google Sitemaps recently. Not sure if it will increase the ol SEO results but hey there is no feeling like pleasing google ehh :)

I found a very nice application for spidering your site and then creating a sitemap that you can upload to Google.

It's called Softplus Gsitecrawler and makes the whole process a Breeze.

Google provide some links for applications and also a script that you can install server side that will automatically create a sitemap for you, but I prefered the sitecrawler. It also tells you if you have any dodgy pages or links too.

Mark.

Posted by Mark at 1:07 PM | Comments (2) | Search Engine Optimization | TrackBack

June 29, 2005

Search Engine Optimization: A Miserable failure!

Yes it's a sad fact but as far as Google is concerned our old mate Dubya is a Miserable Failure! Whats that? You already knew :)

What's even sadder though is that this highlights a glaring failure in SEO terms. Get many sites to link to you with non relevant anchor text in the link and you will rank highly for that term even if it does not appear on your page. Ah the wonders of search engine algorithm's ehh.

Mark.

Posted by Mark at 9:19 AM | Comments (2) | Search Engine Optimization | TrackBack

June 22, 2005

Search Engine Optimization: Top results are not Necessarily Top company's!

It's quite funny that when I chat to "Non Techy" Customers or even friends about the internet. ALL of them assume that the pages on page one of any results MUST be the BEST companys for that service or product! How scary is that? They assume (quite mistakenly) that Google, MSN and Yahoo etc are providing accurate results ROFL!

Seriously that is actually quite scary isnt it? If your not on page one your considered to be inferior in some way shape or form. Of course I know that not all people think this way and perhaps it's just my clients and friends that do (I think not) I guess it was about time we started out own SEO afteral then huh.

Mark.

Posted by Mark at 3:40 PM | Comments (2) | Search Engine Optimization | TrackBack

June 16, 2005

Search Engine Optimization: Directorys

Carrying on my SEO mission I thought I would post a Link to a very useful resource I use. As you know Who links to you is EVERYTHING in the SEO game we play at the moment.

So here is a regularly updated list provided by Vilesilencer of directorys that you can get a link from.

Mark.

Posted by Mark at 8:26 AM | Comments (2) | Search Engine Optimization | TrackBack

June 1, 2005

Search Engine Optimization: The journey begins

I have to say im glad my business does NOT rely on raw search engine traffic :) MY GOD what an unstable beast that is ehh! Google changes its algorithm slightly and bang you drop 1000 places for your best search term :( Should you try to get good raw FREE search listings? (FREE being a laugh here) Yes of course but you should'nt rely on it.

I say FREE being a laugh because raw search engine listings arnt FREE. If you do the SEO yourself it takes an awfull lot of time, effort and learning and my time is money! If you pay someone then it's not FREE eh.

As ive said before we have done zilch SEO on the main 15dn site although this has changed in the past week. Anyway I thought it would be a good idea if I documented here in the blog what we do on a weekly basis with regards to SEO.

So to kick off this week we are doing all on page optimization for the whole site on a page by page basis. Also included in this is adding new copy to the pages that are missing copy (sacrilage) Please bear in mind the 80/20 rule with only %20 of your SEO efforts being 'on page' optimization and %80 being who links to you!

So for the on page stuff we are doing

A: The meta tags (even though some engines dont use them)
B: The titles of each page making sure we use our main search terms within the title
C: Sprinkling our keyword terms within the copy on each page. Called keyword density.
D: Bolding some of our keyword phrases on these pages
E: Entering our keyword phrases are within the alt tags of all graphics and making sure we call each tag graphic like this

"internet marketing graphic"

F: Internal linking to other pages using our main keyword phrases.

The tool we are using to analyze our competitors pages is called optilink and you can grab a copy Here

Phewww thats actually quite a lot of work ehh no wonder SEO gurus charge $10.000 per month :)

Mark...

Posted by Mark at 8:33 AM | Comments (4) | Search Engine Optimization | TrackBack

May 27, 2005

Search Engine Optimization: Smoke and Mirrors

As I said a few days ago we are starting to optimize 15dn for the engines and as such I have been once again making myself familiar with my old friend SEO and not least the SEO Expert! Oh yes as with all things internet there are an awful lot of SEO experts out there :) We have not bothered with SEO on 15dn as I said before, simply because most all of our clients come from the great ol recomendation route.

But it is going to be a fun experiment to see how much of an expert we are in this field :) Yes and this post might come back to haunt me in months to come if we are crap at it LOL (I know were not) lets see eh

Mark...

Posted by Mark at 8:51 AM | Comments (0) | Search Engine Optimization | TrackBack