Archive for the ‘SEO’ Category
5 Steps To YouTube Success
Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012
Video marketing, if done correctly is a great way to market your business, direct traffic to your website, gain authority and spread your brand. There are literally millions of people on YouTube every day and it’s a great market to tap into for potential new customers. There is however some important things to know in order to make your YouTube campaign a success.
1. Add some value
It is quite simple these days for anyone to create their own video. Most PCs come with Windows Movie Maker already installed, and Apple Macs have their own version that comes free with their computers. There is software that can be used to record the actions you make on your computer such as Camstudio that is really quite simple to use. But the most important thing is to add value to your video. ”How to” videos are excellent because they give people a reason to want to share it. If you offer some real advice in your video and maybe solve a problem for someone, then they are likely to appreciate it and pass it on. Also they are far more likely to subscribe/follow/like your company.
2. Stand Out
There are literally millions of videos on YouTube and it is unlikely that whatever video you make will be completely unique. Think of a title that will stand out among all the other titles. But be sure to keep it relevant and ideally to contain the keywords that you want it to be found for. The same applies to the description of the video. Reiterate points in your video in your description and make sure you have your keywords in there, and a link back to your website. Also if you notice on YouTube each video has a thumbnail picture still of the video. This still is taken from the exact halfway point of your video. So plan your video beforehand to ensure at the exact halfway point you have an image that will stand out.
3. Use SEO techniques
Many people don’t realise that you can use SEO techniques on YouTube videos. A popular video has a good chance of getting ranked highly on Google if it has the right SEO in place. Videos that are ranked highly on Google have a great chance of converting because people like to watch videos. And if you can entice them with your video then there is a good chance they’ll click through to your website. SEO techniques that work are using your keywords throughout the title, description and tags of your video. Then you can put a link to your video on your website, on Facebook, Twitter LinkedIn etc.. and anywhere else that will have it.
4. Be Prolific/ Consistent
When you have the knack of how to make a video and upload it correctly to YouTube then don’t stop at one video. Try to make a series of videos and release one each week or fortnight. This way you can build up a following on YouTube and have your own channel that can be a wealth of information for your followers. This will help to build up your authority in your subject matter and people will think highly of you for it.
5. Going Viral
Most people have heard of videos going viral and most think its completely by accident. Granted some are by happy accident where someone has got lucky and posted a video that has blown up on YouTube and received millions of views. By the way a viral video on YouTube can pull in a healthy salary for the owner in advertising rights. Some top videos can receive up to £100,000+ a year! These are the lucky ones but it is possible to give a video a kick start into going viral, and the majority of viral videos nowadays have had “viral marketing” done to them. This involves using viral marketeers to purchase views to your video and actively make comments. Not many people have seen a viral video first when it has had 10 views and no comments. People always discover it when its had over 20k views and atleast 30 or 40 comments. These can be purchased from the right place, and then when people do stumble across your video they feel that they’ve hit something that is already really popular and are more inclined to share it and leave a comment.
Successful video marketing has huge potential and shouldn’t be underestimated. There are many companies that rely on YouTube alone to make their income and are very successful at it. If you follow the above 5 steps then you can’t go far wrong. Of course if you haven’t the time or the inclination to do it yourself you can always hire a company like Deep Space Design to do it for you 
.
Has Google Gone Too Far?
Tuesday, May 1st, 2012
It has been big news on the Internet the last couple of months that Google have been shaking up the serps in their full frontal attack on “web spam”. Some people go as far to say as this is an attack on SEO itself, which has been the source behine much of the web spam that has been out there. But not all SEO is about generating spam to manipulate results. SEO is an important part of web marketing and is essential for a website to rank high in a search for most things on Google. The main thing in dispute is not SEO itself but the various ways in which SEO is carried out. There are a plethora of ways in which SEO can be carried out. From link baiting, to link building there are many ways to gain links for a website. The trend in the last few years is to get automation software that automatically generates content and posts it out to thousands of websites, or blogs. This fills up the Google index with millions of pages that are effectively complete junk. Another way to generate backlinks to a website is to write informative articles of unique content and contact renowned blogs and website to have them post your article which contains a link back to your website.
The problem Google has had is distinguishing which is which. They appeared to have tarred many websites that have had SEO cariied out in the last 12 months with the same brush. This has resulted in many high quality and relevant websites that were ranking highly getting dropped down to the lower regions of Google where nobody can find them. And the flip side to this is tany strange results appearing in Google searches.hat there are many websites that aren’t relevant or high quality now ranking well on Google for various keyword searches. This hasn’t helped the end user at all, and has resulted in m
For example a search for “paypal france” with bring up many results for Viagra: … I cannot see how this is relevant to PayPal. The problem that Google are having is huge and i’m guessing they they are thinking that you can’t make an omellette without breaking a few eggs. But I don’t think Google are finished with their updates yet, and with the apparent rise of “negative SEO” there still may be a few twists and turns to come yet.
The Google Penguin Update
Monday, April 30th, 20122012 has been the year that Google has really got serious in its war on web spam and black hat SEO. March saw the bigger and badder Panda update which saw it send out close to a million “unnatural link warning” emails via Webmaster Tools, then set about closing down a multitude of blog networks. The biggest of these being Build My Rank and Authority Link Network. A number of smaller blog networks also got hit such as Rank Jumpers and LinkVine. This resulted in millions of blogs being deindexed and a huge shake up in search engine positions. The latest Panda update is said to have affected around 11% of search queries, and Matt Cutts is saying the more recent “Penguin” update is only impacting around 3.1% of search queries.
Whats It All About?
The aim behind the latest series of updates which is being called a “nuclear war” by some SEOs on the forums is aimed at cutting down web spam and the huge quantity of spammy networks that have been springing up all over the web in the last few years, with auto generated content. The stance they have taken to fight this war is to penalize websites that have links pointing to them from any of these networks. This opens an ethical problem and opened a new field in SEO called “negative SEO”, whereby unscrupulous SEOs can blast their competitors rankings away from Google by building malicious and “unnatural” links to their websites. To make things worse it isn’t only the banned blog network links that Google are penalizing for, but any links or linking patterns that they deem untrustworthy and suspicious. This development has made Negative SEO a very real problem.
A real case in point for is what happened recently to Dan Thies of seofaststart.com sent a smug Tweet to Matt Cutts regarding the latest Panda update and exposed himself to hundreds of angry SEOs. This resulted in tons of spammy links being pointed at his website, followed swiftly by an “unnatural link” warning in Webmaster Tools and a subsequent loss in rankings on Google. This pretty much provides clear evidence that Negative SEO really works.
The Future?
So where does that leave the future of SEO? Well Google is constantly changing and updating so everyone is hoping that it won’t be long before they shut this Negative SEO loophole. The thing that make Google such a successful search engine in the first place was its linking and patented PageRank system that organised and ranked websites by analysing the links pointed at them. So links are still the most important part of ranking well on the search engines, but unfortunately with the development of getting a website penalised for links pointing at it, then unless Google fix this problem then the future may very well be innocent companies getting blasted out of their rankings by dirty tactics and SEO. What the search results will look like after this is anybodies guess.
Why We Love WordPress
Monday, February 6th, 2012
We love WordPress here at Deep Space for so many reasons. As a CMS it is an excellent platform with all the functionality required for content management. As a blogging platform it is second to none. As the basis for a website it is the choice the experts.
Reasons to Love WordPress
- Seo friendliness
- Ease of use
- Social media capabilities
- Automation makes automated posting and networking a breeze.
- With millions of active users it is supported by legions of developers
SEO Benefits
The code produced by WordPress is very SEO friendly and clean. On top of that is the wide range of plugins developed by SEO experts that tick all the requirements needed for a highly SEO friendly website. Titles, descriptions, meta tags, sitemaps, Google Analytics and all you could possible need for SEO is catered for by WordPress plugins.
Social Benefits
There are huge possibilities available for social networking with WordPress. There are tons of plugins available that allow for Tweeting, Facebook Likes, YouTube embedding and much more. The we we like most about WordPress for social networking though is that it can be configured to auto tweet and post to Facebook and updates you make to the website. This means that all you have to be concerned about is updating your website and WordPress will take care of your social updates for you.
All in all WordPress is a wonderful thing and we can only forever be grateful to its creators for given us such a great gift.
Successful SEO Drives Traffic to Your Website
Tuesday, January 31st, 2012
The ability of any online business on the internet to be successful depends almost entirely on the number of people who visit it. This, in internet jargon, is referred to as the “volume of traffic”. It stands to reason that the more people visit the website of an online business the more likely they are to buy something from it. There are some businesses that are so well known from long years in trading that they are a household name and therefore do not need extra promotion for people to find them on the web. However, most new businesses need to be promoted and the job of this internet promotion is where SEO specialists come in. The basic steps of seo are not that hard to fathom out, but most business owners are generally so tied up with running their business that they just don’t have the time to follow all the seo steps themselves. That’s where seo companies or web design companies that offer a seo service are important.
The goal of most of this internet optimisation is to get the online business appearing right up in the top half of the first Google search page, where it is going to be more likely to grab the attention of anybody who is making a general search for the services which that business offers. SEO promotion is basically one of several different ways that a website can advertise on the internet. There are more direct ways of doing it – Google ads, for instance. None of this advertising is free and there is no guarantee that any of it will work. However, the majority of online businesses end up using one or another of the promotional strategies in order to get noticed and give their business a boost.
. Don’t expect that any sort of advertising or promotion is going to make a sudden and radical difference in a short time. SEO in particular has become more complex and harder over the years that it has been around and there is no easy recipe that will guarantee you a place on the right page in the search engines without spending money and being patient. Don’t forget that if your business is in a field that is highly competitive that your competitors are doing exactly the same as you. If there are a hundred online companies all basically selling the same products or services then only ten of them will ever get on the first page of Google or any other search engine at any one time.
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!
How is Your Website Performing?
Sunday, September 18th, 2011
If you are operating a business that depends on online marketing you will, or should be, interested in how well you are performing from month to month. You may very well have engaged a professional SEO company to help you boost your presence on the net and wish to know if the fee being charged is making any difference. A lot will depend on the goals of your website being firmly established. If you fail to make any goals, then it is likely your performance will be little more than having an online presence.
One way that you can find out how your website is performing is to have a visitor number indicator, which will give a measure of the number of visitors to your website per month. The number to take as being the average should be when you are not offering anything unusual to entice people to your site. The number of visitors per se of course does not really tell you how well your website is performing but it does tell you how well it could be performing. What you now need to know is how many of these visitors are actually doing anything useful when they visit your site.
The object of having the website is of course not to provide useful free bits of information but to allow customers to select and purchase goods and services online. What you need to know is what is called the site conversion rate. This is the percentage of visitors who actually use your online payment system or online shopping cart to do business and purchase something. The site conversion rate is measured by taking the number of people who have made a purchase and dividing it by the total number of visitors in the same time period and multiplying by 100.
The object of any improvements so far will not only be to increase the number of visitors to your website but to increase the effective site conversion rate. The measurements and statistics are useful as they are a tool that can be used to monitor how effective any changes in strategy you might make which is designed to boost your overall internet marketing.
If you find that both the visitor numbers and site conversion rate are both low it is certainly time that you will be thinking of some additional marketing techniques to boost your performance. If you have not already done so, then using a search engine optimisation company to devise an optimisation campaign for your business will probably be top of the list to improve the numbers of people visiting your site. Optimisation strategies are not designed to yield instant success and it is often a long drawn out procedure which needs constant and careful monitoring and honest switches in strategy if things don’t work out over that long time period.
The way in which your website is designed is another critical area. Especially if your statistics indicate healthy visitor numbers but poor conversion rate you should be asking whether visitors are able to easily make a purchase without too much needless navigation. Visitor numbers indicate a reasonable level of interest in what you are offering but they may be switching to another company if they find it too hard to make a purchase.
SEO for New Websites
Saturday, September 17th, 2011If you have a new website that is designed for the public to view, browse items and purchase goods or services online, you are probably beginning to wonder how on Earth anybody is ever going to find it among all the other hundreds of websites that are offering something similar to yours. The short answer to that question is the three letter word SEO.
The long answer to that question is that if you rely totally on people searching the search engines, then the only way your website is going to be recognised is if it appears on the first page of a search i.e. Amongst the top ten, or preferably, the top five in the listings. There are of course many other ways you can advertise your website, some of which may be using the internet and others might be conventional non internet based methods, all of which will cost money. Of course getting your site to a point where it is spotted amongst the search engine top ten will also cost money as it is likely that you will have to pay a SEO company to optimise your website for you, with no particular guarantee that it is ever really going to make much difference. The tactics listed below are some of the now time honoured ways of optimising your site.
Put relevant and interesting content onto your website. It pays to have a look at what the other websites in your category have on display, particularly those that are currently ranking well and ponder how you can match their content with that of your own. To stand a chance, the content on your site should have some uniqueness as well as being of intrinsic usefulness and interest to potential readers.
Choose keywords for your web pages that will really make a difference. Imagine that you yourself are a potential visitor to your site and think what keywords are likely to be of significance. Use general keywords at first rather than being too specific.
Work at getting as many top quality back links to your web pages listed somewhere and everywhere. It’s hard to get anywhere in the search engine rankings without having sufficient quantity of quality back links. These links can be from articles that you have published in article directories or social networking sites or from other websites that already have a high standing in the rankings.
Make the navigation system on your website easy to use. Visitors must be able to find their way around your website easily and locate what they want on it. The longer they stay on your website, the more likely it is that it will get a better ranking. Visitors will stay longer and return more readily to a site that has a good navigation system and, for a large website, a decent search map facility.
Use a professional SEO company to help you optimise your site. Your website has competition and each competitor is out to get the biggest share of the market just the same way you are. As you are new on the net you are going to find it hard to do all of the things you need to do to boost your search engine ranking totally by yourself.
