There are many SEO techniques that can help a website to rank well

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is an important part of most business’ online marketing strategies. It’s a complex area – that’s why many businesses choose to use SEO specialists – but the core best practice SEO techniques are surprisingly straightforward.

To start with, it’s vital to remember what the purpose of your website is. Focus first on what you are trying to achieve and only then think about SEO. There’s no point driving lots of traffic to your website for its own sake – you want the right visitors.

Creating the best content

Creating useful (and preferably unique) content helps with SEO. So:

• think about the kinds of things your target customers are likely to search for, and develop content that will attract and satisfy those searchers
• write focused text – ideally, each web page should deal with a single topic rather than mixing lots of ideas together
• use headings and subheadings to break content down into readable chunks
• regularly update your website with fresh new content

Organising your website

Organising your content well makes it easy for visitors – and search engines – to find relevant content:

• plan your site with a simple sitemap, and include the sitemap online so that every page is easy to find
• give each page a unique title that accurately defines what it’s about, and a brief description that summarises the content
• make the page’s URL (eg www.mysite.co.uk/a-page-about-SEO) easy to understand

The title, description and URL tend to appear in search results, so the clearer they are the easier it is to see what your website has to offer.

What mistakes should I avoid?

Be careful with images and other non-text content. Partially-sighted people – and search engines – find these difficult to understand, so make sure your website builder provides text alternatives as well.

Wherever you have links in your site, use link words that explain where the viewer’s being sent: for example, ‘Yell’s local search marketing directory’ rather than ‘marketing.yell.com’.

With those basics in place, don’t forget to promote your content, helping to attract visitors and links from other sites.

Black hat SEO

Whatever you do, don’t be tempted to use illicit ‘black-hat’ techniques to improve search engine rankings. These could include using hidden text on your website filled with keywords, or ‘link spam’ (posting irrelevant links to your website on forums and comments boards, to make it appear popular).

These techniques are frowned on by search engines and if your site is found to be doing this, you could be penalised and actively downgraded in the rankings.

Be careful as well with links out to other websites – if you link to sites that use dubious SEO techniques, it could damage your reputation.

In today’s digital world it’s almost impossible to avoid incorporating Google Adwords within your marketing strategy.  More importantly managing a planned and effective Adwords campaign has become critical.  Compared to traditional marketing avenues such as newspaper and radio advertising, Google allows for high levels of control over your audience.

So it’s welcome news that Google now enables advertisers to add their Google Plus business profile to their adverts in the form of an extension.

What is an extension?

Extensions for Google Adwords

An extension allows you to display key information upfront on the sponsored advert seen by users.  In the past this has been limited to address and sitelinks but this is all changing as there is a growing list of ways in which we interact with a business.

The most recent extension allows you to add a Google Plus link to your advert allowing users to +1 and head straight over to your profile page.  From previous posts you will note that this is now increasingly being seen as your new hub on the internet by Google.

These extensions are created at campaign level which allows you to tailor the preferred interaction required.

Here are some further interactions available to be applied to you Adwords account ;

• Locations
• Call Extensions
• Product Extensions
• Seller Ratings

With the ubiquity of smartphones and the popularity of tablets, here are some of my predictions for future extensions :

• Download Apps onto your phone
• Play games direct from the extension
• Display Images of products/gallery when hovering over

I’m sure the guys in Google are busy working out new ways to make us click on the adverts so watch this space.

I am referring to Google Plus Local, Bing, Yahoo!, Yell, Yelp or Best of the Web.

These listings have the potential to offer a much larger share of traffic than a website ever could with paid advertising!

A common annoyance for SME’s when managing their online presence is trying to keep track of all the different local listings across the growing web.  I am always on the lookout for new innovative tools to empower the SME and it’s not often that I come across free tools that fit the bill.

GetListed.org offers just this functionality and promise…

GetListed.org aggregates local search information from the top networks allowing the easy control of your identity.  You are then able to monitor and authenticate your entries in one place.  See screenshot below.

There is a UK version in BETA at the moment which is worth signing up to but you will see from the screenshot below for a search done on the US site it has a lot of potential to save time and money.  There is also an option to see your reviews aggregated in one place, very smart!

The UK site can be found here : Click Here

Today it was announced that this company was acquired by SEOMOZ which is the most popular provider of SEO tools.  Give it time and we will hear more about it.

Check it out for yourself.

Why is it important to claim your business listings?

Google Plus Local Listings

In previous posts we have looked at the most recent changes to Google Places and now Google Plus Local listings, these entries are key for any small to medium sized business.  I am finding most SME’s are still unaware of the changeover and are failing to make the most of the new social features of Google Plus.

This post will shed some light on how to merge any existing Google Places listings to the new Google +Local pages.  Note this is free to to do and can take just a few minutes to setup.

Lets recap, Google initially gave us the facility to setup a Google Plus business listing as long as you had a personal G+ profile (similar to Facebook).  The business listing remained disconnected from your Google Places listings (now rebranded as Google Plus). Confused yet?

Very simply Google has made local one entity and you now have no choice but merge your entries…Google Search, Google Maps, and Google+ in one…

What are the benefits of merging?

The advantage is that you will have one dashboard to deal with and more importantly greater facility to optimise your local entry.

Compared to Places here are some other benefits :

• More visually interesting
• Ability for pages to be indexed in search
• Facility to attach reviews to your listing
• Have multiple administrators of your listing

Here are official instructions from Google to get you started :  Click here

I have also attached a link to a useful article which provides a step by step guide to create your listing : Click here

Here is a link to a fully claimed Google Plus Local listing : Click here

If you have any questions feel free to submit and share your own experience.

“Can we supply you a list of keywords to appear on our site as we have been told that this will improve it’s performance on Google?”

Keyword stuffing is not only unethical but also ineffective

Undoubtedly, keywords are a very important part of creating and optimising a website and it’s going to be beneficial to use the best keywords across your content.  This in turn helps make the content more crawlable by search engines and makes individual pages more accessible and easier to find.

That’s the theory….

This does not mean the following :

• Repeat the same/related keywords multiple times on each page
• Repeated blocks of text listing towns/cities that you are trying to rank for
• Randomly overusing keywords with no context
• Adding blocks of keywords disguised with the same colour as the background
• Insert lists of phone numbers with no added value
• Fill META description data with lists of keywords (coding behind websites)

The above are known tactics for manipulating search engines and could get your website into a lot of trouble.  In Google’s Panda Update announced last year it was made clear that websites found taking part in this “black hat SEO” activity will be heavily penalised.

Here is a link to Google’s official site confirming the above - click here

The message is very simple if you try and manipulate Google, not only will this hurt the user experience of your site but it will also lead to a SEO penalty.  The penalty could be in the form of a demotion in search rankings or worst case scenario a complete ban!

The below is a  classic example of a request to add keywords into our web design teams, we were instructed to add all the text below :

Areas; Moffat, Beattock, Lockerbie, Wamphray, Crawford, Abington, Johnstonebridge, Elvanfoot, Dumfriesshire, Keywords; MOT, MOTs, servicing, repair, repairs, car service, mot testing, diagnostics,engine diagnostics, engine management, millers oils, performance modification, performance tuning, bodywork, garage services, motor mechanic,

Also I would like all the manufacturers names put into the background of the website I have found a list below that I hope you can just copy and paste; Abarth Alfa Romeo Aston Martin Audi Bentley BMW Bugatti………………

I am sure you will agree that this is not ethical and that the sooner Google stamps this out the better for us all.  The best advice is to keep your most important content ‘above the fold’ avoid link schemes and focus on delivering good content to influence rankings.

Real or Fake?

Let’s be honest about it, for all those serious about optimising their presence on search engines, you may have considered buying LIKES in bulk for SEO!

Methods of generating fake LIKES

• Malware
• Compromised accounts
• Deceived Users

The intention behind this move is to clean up content making it more relevant to users on Facebook.  This will drive more engagement and better advert performance on Facebook which it is especially keen to monetise.  After all it is the number one social media network and has just floated on the stock market!

It’s also a very clear message which goes out to those trying to manipulate Facebook and other search engines, the only way to build a presence is through genuine user activity.

It now means that your competitors no longer have an edge over you just because they have the budget to go out and buy their way to a social media presence.

Facebook is clearly making a good move here but the fear is that it is just interested in delivering adverts now.  The speculation is that the advertisement route may just be a dead end path for them.  However, seeing display banner performance from the Hibu Netreach Premium product is very encouraging on Facebook which is one of the partners.

What’s your experience with Facebook adverts? Do they work?

Bing beat Google to the Disavow Links Tool

Looks like website owners are going to finally get more control over link removal via their Webmaster Tools portals.  What’s surprising here is that Bing have beaten Google to it.  Maybe this is Bing’s attempt to increase market share and win the confidence of SEO’s?  They have a long way to go…!

The tool easily allows you to alert Bing of ‘bad’ links that are deemed untrustworthy using simple drop down tools.  I would recommend making use of this tool even though your efforts may be concentrated on Google.

It’s a very simple process to register with the Bing Webmaster Centre, why not register for free and see what links could be damaging your site performance.  You will get an option to submit your site to Bing and then register for their enhanced services, see link inc the SEO Analyzer which I will cover in more detail next week.

Here is a link to the official blog post from Bing : Click Here

Have you tried out this tool yet? Have you been able to successfully remove poor links from your site?

There should be no real surprises here as Google are learning to play to their own strengths.  Social network data is individual and preference orientated compared to any other type of targeting data.  In order to fight off competition from Facebook and to accelerate integration of it’s own social networking site the marriage of the two was inevitable.

Google+ is competing with Facebook in a number of new ways

Most business owners who are serious about local SEO will have claimed their Places listing and updated with content including images, video, catergories and location targetting preference.  The algorithm is not so straightforward to understand when it comes to placement of these ‘pin’ listings but now has a further twist.

In light of this change, it is now possible to move your content and reviews over to Google+ Local through a simple verification process.  Of course it is essential to have a Google+ profile, we have covered this in previous posts.

Upon uploading content to a new Google+ profile you  will need to confirm that you wish to use existing content against that profile.  The visibility of this content can be set on or off.  It is now not possible to amend reviews on a Places listing previously accessed by maps.google.com unless you have a Google+ account.

Have you already migrated across? How was the process?  Has this affected your rankings?

SEO is changing and social signals are clearly influencing rankings, the difficulty is to track these signals especially now that search engines are always evolving at a faster pace.

As the hub of your online presence is now your website, Google has launched social reports within it’s free Google Analytics tool.

The best feature I have come across is Social Visitors Flow, see below for a live example.

Google have made it easy to see at a glance which social networks are feeding your site and how they compare to each other.

The above example clearly shows Facebook is the dominant social network with a high amount of traffic dropping off at the homepage. Working with this client I am advising on how we can retain more traffic and push to encourage engagement with additional content i.e pages and video.  The other option we are looking into is setting up a Twitter account to introduce another stream of response.

Along with this option in the new social reports there are also options for tracking goal conversions and social plugins to understand further what type of social buttons are being used on your site.

A very useful tool if understood fully and something which is absolutely free for all.

What are your thoughts on using this report? Do you feel that there are features missing from Google Analytics?

If you have ever looked into link building for your own site in the past to boost your inbound/backlink count then it is very likely you have considered buying them in as it’s a pain to do yourself.  This was convenient, effective and fairly cheap to do but generally the links were unrelated to you target site and low quality from unreliable sources.

With Google now potentially penalising sites who took part extensively in this practice there has been no way of simply removing these links.  Instead, for most businesses it means contacting each webmaster individually to remove the links via email.  This can be a time consuming exercise and I wonder if most businesses affected will even try to do something about it.

I came across an innovative company called Remove’em which aims to make this task of removing bad backlinks a lot simpler.

There are some simple steps which if followed will allow you to keep track of any removals requested.  The interface is very easy to understand and means you can manage the process in one place, saving time and hassle.

I would recommend visiting the site and seeing the simple guide on this video :  http://www.removeem.com/video-tutorial.php

Here are the steps :

1. Identify the bad backlinks through a simple search tool

2. Contact Webmasters to remove links in one place

3. Track the performance of the requests

4. Submit the results once you are happy to Google to reconsider your site

Google is continuing to release newer updates to Penguin and every adjustment may mean further damage to rankings.  It’s best to take action now and understand the full extent of the damage if any.

The link factor is one of many which now includes social, we have covered this in previous SEO link factor posts.

So what do we mean by a Link Wheel?

Simply put, this is a pattern of links which flow from one website to another that in turn link through to a website target which requires the improvement to rankings.  Link wheels have been around for some time now and can range from a chain of 1 to 100′s of sites.

The sites that are used to pass links are those that are already highly ranked in the Google system i.e WordPress, Blogger, Squidoo, Tumblr.  These are commonly referred to as Web 2.0 properties/sites which allow users to post blog content including posting of links.  They tend to be highly ranked sites with social, collaborative and interactive properties and are normally FREE.

Link Wheels for SEO

The technique involves creating articles/posts on these sites with one link to the main target site and another to the next site within the chain.  The link juice is then passed to each of the sites within the chain and counted as FOLLOW links which we have covered in previous posts.

If applying this technique here are some tips to ensure you do not get penalised by Google :

• Create relevant content to the target site
• Use strong anchor text within posts
• Ensure the sites allow FOLLOW links
• Use random link patterns
• Use original and unique content

The key is to use this technique alongside others to ensure you see the best results, note that it is evolving all the time so keep checking  back here for the latest.