Archive for the ‘Latest News’ Category
10 Features of a Well Optimised Page
Tuesday, January 31st, 2012
One thing that search engines have done over the last few years is to advance significantly in how they analyse the content on a website. A seo company knows all about the ins and outs of SEO and what is of current importance in order to get maximum support from Google.
When it comes to content there are certain things that are important for the perfectly optimised page. Title tags are initially important but they should not be over optimised. Descriptions of things do not seem to bear a lot of weight when it comes to ranking but this does not mean they do not encourage clicks. A header tag must still be relevant to the page. The URL should have a mention of the key words in it as this carries an important weight in the eyes of Google.
When it comes to the content of a website, it is now more about suitably relevant back up keywords, not the continual mention of the same keywords. The way of checking what key words Google may consider are relevant is to conduct a keyword search. Another way, let’s be clear, only involves common sense and knowledge of your subject.
The use of video, podcasts and other useful content can be of great use on a page to elevate the level of engagement and bring down bounce rates. This can also include the use of interactive buttons and animation on the web pages as these attract attention and this, in turn, builds confidence in the site.
Inner links have to follow the fair surfer copyright. The use of Facebook and Twitter are a way of bringing the content onto other stages. The direct SEO advantage may be up for debate, but it never does any damage to display your content in view of a large number of individuals. With Google search plus your own word search, it could be that those put together and a Google + login is of far greater importance than any other options.
Reviews made by users add continual content to the page, which may also be directed to include minor formatting instructions and add additional elements to your listing in the search engine outcome pages.
Newsfeeds only share around content that already appears somewhere else, but they still add to the general reaction to the page because they change regularly.
It’s a good thing to note that the best optimised page will not necessarily be perfect for all things, not every body has the capability to build customer reviews onto their product pages. Obviously this would depend on the type of product up for sale.
Updating Your Website
Thursday, September 22nd, 2011When a new website is first set up with that initial burst of energy and enthusiasm, it seems easy to inject it with what it takes to keep it up in the rankings. Every website that requires a reasonable exposure needs reinvigorating every so often with new content and a new look. This is certainly an opportunity to engage a company like web design Surrey to have a look at your website and what it has been dong for your business and coming up with a new set of strategies.
One of the things that you can do by yourself is to have a look at a freshly created ranking report on all the possible links and web addresses that you think are a suitable innovation for your site. This information will be able to give you some guidance about what is or what is not going to be of value to you as you restructure your site. An overall picture of how your site is working at the moment is also a good idea. What keywords do you use which are working well and which ones aren’t, what links are you using that help to direct traffic to your site. You may find that large parts of what you already have are actually giving you sufficiently good exposure in the rankings and do not need to be changed.
When this has been done make sure that anybody who is engaged in your web restructure is fully conversant with good seo techniques. If somebody who has been set aside to be working on your home page decided that it has too much text and would look far more appealing with anew Flash presentation then you should be rightly concerned. The people who work on your website need to think seo all the time and have to have the experience to match. Especially if your website basically needs to be tweaked and already is getting a good exposure in the rankings you certainly don’t want to make wholesale changes that are going to have unknown effects.
It’s a good idea to keep your website pruned of obsolete web pages. This is especially important when you have had web pages set aside to promote or to inform about products that you do not offer any longer or which are obsolete. These web pages need to be removed otherwise they are either going to be confusing or simply give the message that you are not running your website efficiently enough. Just remember that Google or any other search engine that has you indeed isn’t necessarily going to remove the links to those dead web pages, which makes it very confusing for any member of the public who is searching for them. Make sure that there is a 301 redirect on any of those discontinued web pages.
Whatever changes you think will be good for your website should be run through with your web design or seo consultant. Even if you are thinking of introducing new content for your business it’s a good idea getting their opinion or even getting them to furnish content for you.
Effective Article Marketing
Wednesday, September 21st, 2011
The internet shares some of the constant demands for information as does any conventional media, but unlike TV, newspapers and radio, it has become the realm of both amateur and professional contributor alike. This creates the opportunity for using article writing to help promote one’s website. Article marketing is very much part and parcel of a good web design strategy. So, what is involved in article marketing?
Article marketing involves composing pieces of writing between 300 to 600 words long. The articles are written about a particular subject area that comes within the experience and expertise of the writer and is addressed to a specific target audience using a clear writing style, often with bulleted or numbered points. The articles usually contain a number of keywords that are relevant to the target audience. The articles are then published on one or more of the numerous online article directories, usually for free, but occasionally for a small fee.
As for the article directories, they come in a number of different categories and the content writer must be selective about which particular category of directory that the article that has been written should be submitted to. In addition to the article itself, the directory allows for information about the author, keywords and the website link to be incorporated as well as any business information that is relevant. Each content article usually has a small biographical box at the bottom which gives details about the author.
The directories normally have a small staff complement that assesses each article as it comes in and reviews its usefulness and legibility before making sure that it is posted on the directory site. One may wonder at this stage how all this article writing ever has any effect on potential visitors to one’s own website. One reason is that the directories themselves enjoy a much better visible presence on the internet than your own website alone and this is where the article or articles that you have had written might be more likely to be read. Any reader of your article might spot the website link and then decide to visit your website as a result. The article directories have this sort of exposure because their sites are particularly content rich.
A second and perhaps more significant reason is that the article directories act as a source of content specific articles which are a good resource for e-zine publishers and other website owners who are always eager for new and informative information to put on their own sites. The articles posted in article directories are almost always free for use elsewhere as long as they are not modified and the original writer’s information box with the links are kept intact. This is another way in which back links to your own site can multiply.
In addition to article directories, there is another avenue available for publishing your articles and that is via other websites and blog posts. This does mean a bit more work and you would have to search through what sort of websites and blog posts would actually have any overlap with your subject area and communicate with them directly in order to ask permission for your articles to be published in those locations.
In this way the articles you write or have written for you have multiple pathways and generally the greater the number of opportunities for them to be seen and read by the greatest number of visitors, the greater the effect on boosting traffic to your site and business.
Appreciating the Value of Outbound Links
Tuesday, September 20th, 2011
Webmasters continually fail to appreciate the value of outbound links from their website and their effect on search engine rankings. You don’t have to leave it entirely to a SEO company to understand what is needed to help you boost the significance of those outbound links.
One of the most obvious ways that outbound links can have some effect on website optimising is through anchor text. Both outbound and inbound links’ anchor text has the same sort of effect on the search engines’ rankings. Of the two different sources inbound links’ anchor text no doubt has the greatest weighting when it comes to search engine rankings. For example if the term “vague sentence” appears in the inbound anchor text linked to your web page then that whole term will get a mention in SERP’s even if neither the keyword “vague” or the keyword “sentence” happened to have appeared in any of your web pages.
The anchor text of outbound links acts in the same sort of way although as stated already doesn’t have quite the same weighting as inbound links’ anchor text. A specific keyword in the anchor text of a webpage link can result in that particular webpage showing up in the search engine results even when it is the only place that it appears and even if there are no inbound links for that particular anchor text.
If you are not sure whether this is a valid argument or not have a look at your own website traffic logs. Locate the search engine traffic to specific pages on your site. You are most likely to find a lot of traffic for search strings that have originated in the anchor text of your own outbound links.
Listed below are three things you should or should not do when it comes to putting links on your site.
Don’t just limit your website links to your own site or at best to the web designer or your web host. Make sure there are relevant links to other sites. You will find that this is a fairly widespread fault amongst a lot of commercial websites. Search engine algorithms find it hard to take these sites too seriously when the only links are to pages within the site itself.
Make sure that you have links to other web sites that have relevance to your own. If your own website has any real value, then of course it will have extra links to other sites that have real value too. This is recognised by the search engines and informative inclusive sites get the nod ahead of sites that are simply blowing their own trumpet.
Don’t include links that have no relevance to your website. If for instance you have an online business that sells gardening equipment, there’s not a lot of point in putting links on your homepage to rental villas in the Costa Del Sol! What happens if you do something like this is that the search engine algorithm gets a little stumped and decides to put the whole website well off the rankings. There are plenty of websites that make a case for either rental villas in the Costa del Sol or for gardening supplies in England, so it might as well treat them with more seriousness!
LinkedIn and SEO
Thursday, September 15th, 2011
LinkedIn is definitely a more sophisticated and exclusive social networking site than either Facebook or YouTube but it is also one of the most powerful and a great way to stimulate business growth and openings on the World Wide Web. There is a technique to gaining success on LinkedIn and any SEO companywill know what is the most appropriate strategy to use at any point in time.
LinkedIn analysers have outlined a profile for suitable members of this social networking site. For a start it is a professional site and is most appropriate for both professional occupations and businesses. It is not seen to be used as a daily chat line for catching up with friends and sharing personal information.
Busy professionals usually check in to the site with a precise business aim on their agenda and that is to add connections, communicate with fellow group members and air their views in discussions. The constraints to business are that you cannot invite people to connect with you that are complete strangers.
A personal profile is not too dissimilar to a professional resume or a marketing profile that you want everyone to view. Facebook is a little different because of its more personal nature – you might not want to share everything with everybody.
LinkedIn is not designed to be a mass marketing arena. It is more in tune with relationship building. Individuals conduct business with those they are familiar with and have faith in. If, as a new unknown business, you go in claiming how wonderful your products are and your business as well, you will not necessarily be welcomed with open arms. In fact you might be treated with contempt and simply ignored.
The golden rule in LinkedIn is to remember that at least seventy five percent of your communication should be engaged in the sharing of information and becoming a useful resource for others while the rest of the time can be set aside for mentioning products or services.
Seemingly, the very worst thing you could possibly do is to send out the same promotional material to everyone expecting it to help to generate traffic towards your product. You have to be clear about your intentions. Are you trying to increase sales, elevate your visibility online, look for business colleagues or partners etc?
Once you have established your reason for your connection, you can start to bring in contacts from your email lists, and contacts from any business cards that you might have in your desk draw. Once a person to person connection has been established, then it is possible to see who else they are connected to. From there you can select who might be a useful contact and also join any groups that seem to attract the sorts of people you may wish to contact.
If you are new to the game of social networking you should not hesitate to contact your local SEO company to advise you on proven tactics with the use of LinkedIn.
Web Design Ways to Gain Googles Attention
Tuesday, September 13th, 2011
Web design companies are forever seeking out new methodology that they should use to ensure that the websites they are paid to create will reach the top or gain reasonable ranking in Google and other search engines. The way forward for the internet into the future is the adaptability of web designers to create innovative web design features.
Flash technology is a device that in recent months has simply been overused and abused to the extreme that it has got itself a negative reputation. To make matters worse, the antics between Adobe, creators of Flash technology, and Apple, the modellers of iPhone and iPad are not assisting in the resolution of the current situation. Today, websites need to have clean and orderly design features and be capable of fast loading by the user and, without exception, all must be user friendly and visible to search engines. This is an ongoing issue for Flash and now with the entry of the more up to date web coding languages which are called HTML5 and CSS3, together with the phenomenal expansion of web surfing on portable devices such as iphones and ipads, perhaps Flash is now about to lose its appeal in web design.
Straightforward, short and orderly is the way to attract attention in modern web design. However, black and white or colours with a greyish appearance are still seemingly unpopular especially in certain industries. Green, yellow, red, blue are now seen to be the primary colours but limiting the combination to two or three colours would be preferable. Each of the shades of colour should be worked to get the right pattern. Results through just using a few colours can be very effective at putting the appropriate message across.
Larger scale backgrounds will increase throughout 2011 and these images will be very high resolution and will appear to cover the site completely. Large photos are an automatic method for catching an audience and as well as the development of faster internet connections, web designers can empower sites by loading on images.
The preference is for images that merge in with the general appearance of the site and not completely take over the site’s appearance. All these little tactics help to push up the ranks with the search engines.
Thumbnail images of a website are now the in thing with Google so just with a wave of a virtual magnifying glass, there will appear the inners of the website. This facility is definitely a search engine plus to have incorporated into any website. As the year progresses more and more users will most likely use this innovative tool for searching for important items they wish to buy and to gain snippets of information such as up to date news features. It means they do not have to actually open the entire website to seek out information. They can simply look in from outside. This is certainly a very well adapted feature for today’s busy people.
Pay Per Click and Organic Seo
Tuesday, August 16th, 2011
Organic SEO is search engine optimisation that is not paid for but relies on the algorithm directed results of a search engine. However, if you have got a well established SEO company doing your work for you they view organic SEO not just as the results but the techniques used to get those results. If you decide to get a SEO company to do search engine optimisation for you then it is worth your while checking out the methodology that the company uses.
Pay per click, or PPC, is an online advertising tool used on search engines and blogs and the advertisers are given a certain amount of money every time there is a click by users. Google Adwords, MSN Adcentre, Yahoo Search Marketing are some examples.
Pay Per Click Advertising takes place after successful bidding done by the advertiser for certain key phrases or individual words. The amount of the bid varies depending on keyword competition and all search engines are different in the way they approach it. If any web visitor searches the particular key phrase which the particular advertiser has bid for and then clicks on the advert then the advertiser is responsible for paying the amount of the bid. The usual minimum payment or a bid is US$ 0.01 for any key phrase.
A search engine optimization company usually fits in to one or other categories. A “White Hat” search engine optimisation company will use in general a content based approach and will not disrupt the expectations of the major search engines. A “Black Hat” search engine optimisation company will use more of a technology guided angle and quite often they take no notice of rules and regulations and expectations. Which ever way it is approached there is nothing legal or illegal in the picture of things and surprisingly both of them can achieve high rankings. However, a search engine optimisation company that attaches to the word “organic” its true meaning, believes that the “Black Hat” technique is not organic SEO at all.
To a search engine optimisation company, organic means the development of a set of tactics and the movement forward which entails reaching a peak. This approach precisely describes the angle taken to achieve long lasting results in through the selection executed by search engines.
Once a business or an organisation has been given a rank on the first page of a search engine’s search results then consumers searching for that site will expect it to be listed on the first page so there is no necessity to bookmark the company website.
This, overall, is the desired outcome for many businesses and through the using of organic seo methods it could be realised sooner rather than later. If other methods are used then the results might not turn out as predicted and hoped.
Google Plus 1
Tuesday, August 16th, 2011
The new Google +1 system is gaining new ground in their competition with Facebook. Google +1 is Googles equivalent of the Facebook Like button and with the mite of Google behind it we are sure it is going to be big. It is still relatively new but is being rolled out across the board on the Google search engine.
Google says:
“Sometimes it’s easier to find exactly what you’re looking for when someone you know already found it. Get recommendations for the things that interest you, right when you want them, in your search results.
The next time you’re trying to remember that bed and breakfast your buddy was raving about, or find a great charity to support, a +1 could help you out. Just make sure you’re signed in to your Google Account.”
Appearing as a small icon next to each search result and text ad, logged-in users can share their recommendations with contacts through their Gmail address book, Google Reader and Buzz contacts and, eventually, Twitter contacts. Google would not comment on whether Facebook contacts could eventually be integrated. Google is characterising Plus One as a different function to Facebook’s Like, saying that recommendations are only shared within the context of relevant searches, rather than spamming all contacts. Social is widely seen as the next generation of web services, but Plus One will also begin to influence the ranking of sites within search results listings. Users will be able to choose for recommended sites to be more visible in search results. Google is also planning to extend the service to news publishers so that they can integrate Plus One on story pages.
Installing Google +1
Its easy to install a Goolge+1 on your website. and set your configuration for the button. It will then display the code needed to add your website. This can be placed anywhere on a website but it is a good idea to have it prominent to encourage people to “plus” you. You can see our one in our header at the top of the page. People need a Google account or profile in order to be able to give you a Plus One and this is part of the network that Google are aiming to develop.
Does It Help With Rankings?
There are rumours in the SEO world that Google Plus Ones will help with Google rankings. In theory this would be a tough call because there is scope to pay people to Plus One your website to climb the rankings rather than add good content and build links that are the cornerstone of SEO. But we say if Google want Plus Ones then they shall have them. So we are actively seeking people to Plus One us and we should other web marketeers to do the same.
The Rise Of Web Presenters
Saturday, August 13th, 2011
Web design is moving forward in leaps and bounds and one of the latest developments is to engage and train a live web presenter to provide an introduction for your website. A human web host can provide a friendly outgoing and engaging welcome to your visitors and it has been discovered that it lengthens the period of the time a visitor will remain on the specific web page, and can uplift sales in excess of 75%. The use of web presenters is becoming increasingly popular, and it appears that those businesses who are using it have a competitive advantage over any close competitors. Many web design companies are sourcing some excellent live web hosts to meet the needs of companies. Web presenters bring life into what normally would be text so it gives visitors the option to read or simply listen.
A well trained, suitably attired professional web presenter with the right voice can liven up your website and at the same time offer a friendly, inspiring face for your visitors. Web presenters don’t just talk but they can demonstrate products as well or just offer a friendly welcome greeting. Having some interaction with Flash or web elements along with the web presenter can offer, additionally, an impressive impact to a web page as well as really assisting navigation around your website.
Most web design professionals aim is to make web videos as promotional material affordable to all website holders. It only takes a thirty second video with an experienced professional website presenter to put across the realistic message of a website. The mixing of visual and audio can relate a lot more useful information in thirty seconds than a large number of pages in the written word.
There are quite a number of ways in which a web presenter can be put to use on your website. They can stroll on exposing a full body video shot and then go on to introduce your website and the services or products it has on offer. Or they could simply be part of an image, and their head and shoulders are viewed only. Many web presenters are trained how to demonstrate and use products and services with amazing results. They adopt language that is easy to recall and offer all the positive sides of buying and using a product.
Numerous surveys have discovered that people who surf the internet do not have long attention spans. Web video presenting is excellent for that type of customer as all is said in a few seconds in a well presented performance. It seems that it is a natural instinct to want to press that play button. In doing so the visitor is pleasantly surprised to find a well presented, informative and clear sales pitch for a product.
What You Should Know About Google Places for SEO
Wednesday, August 10th, 2011
Google, whether virtual or a real human being, has expressed that one in five searches that take place on Google is related to a specific location. It has been suggested that Google prepares results for in excess of two billion searches each day. That amounts to more than four hundred million local searches each day by individuals searching for a product in their local area. If you happen to own a business that provides services or products to buyers in your own local area, and you have the requirement to get more visibility to those buyers online, then Google Places is the tool that you should be using to gain SEO.
Furthermore, it appears that not only does a high ranking Google Places listing send a lot of traffic to a website, but the traffic from Google Places often appears more useful than that derived from organic traffic. Therefore, the majority of smaller businesses should not have any trouble handling a Google Places listing and make it work for their business.
It is very useful to understand the process of gaining a Google places listing even if you don’t have time to do it yourself and go about handling to a specialist. It can be noted here that Google has a system of guidelines in place that are there to fight spam. Basically this means that sites are ranked according to their relevance and not their ability to take advantage of the system.
First of all Google has a great appreciation for data so therefore any website should provide as much useful and relevant data as they can. This can begin with the official name for your business in full, not using shortened words. Secondly, the physical address of your business which cannot be a post box. Thirdly, the official phone number or numbers of your business should be included. This should also include your fax number as well. Fourthly,a proper reliable email address should be used which you access regularly. Of course, a website address, this is not essential but of course very useful. It is also useful to be able to categorise your business. Sorting out some useful photos of your business and its products as well as suitable videos is a good idea. Further supplementary details are useful for example the brands of products that your business sells.
If you are the owner of a number of businesses located throughout the south of England for example then obviously some of the details asked for will be different so you will have to adjust them accordingly. Google has to get their information from somewhere and more often it crawls around everywhere trying to locate information. Once located the businesses are incorporated into Google Maps. Of great importance of course is the accuracy of the address as this puts the focus onto the website. Often Google only likes to surf for recent information but a website whose origin clearly labeled should have no problem getting listed. This is just another way to go about seo in this competitive world.
