Imperial College London approached us last year to help with their new Strategic Marketing course, Technology in Marketing. We were asked to cover the SEO part of the course and were video’d answering lots of questions on the subject! Students were then able to view the video on a special educational iTunes store.

The course has been a huge success at the Imperial College Business School and SpeedySEO wish all the students the best of luck for their future!

(And also say thanks for the Imperial College scarf they sent us)

• SEO
• education
• imperial college london
• business school

Comments

As you may be aware, our MD Glenn Jacobs often writes for .Net Magazine on the topic of SEO and this month his article is the cover feature. Glenn covered a range of SEO tools that can help you be more efficient in your job and one of those mentioned was Raven Tools.

So it was to our surprise this morning that a wonderful basket turned up sent by Jon from Raven Tools containing lots of fruit and also some treats like chocolate, fudge, etc. Everyone here will be well fed today!
It’s also worth mentioning the basket was from Baskets Galore.

It was a lovely gesture from Raven and also a prime example of building relationships for your company, and as you can see they’ve been rewarded with a link in the process.

• SEO
• gifts
• linkbuilding

Comments

We are proud to announce that our favourite MD Glenn Jacobs has written again for .Net Magazine this month, and this time the article is the cover feature!

There are many tools available to SEO’ers and it’s very difficult to see the woods from the trees. Glenn has carefully selected the best SEO tools available at this moment to help you with your SEO campaign.

You can pick up a copy of the magazine today at your local newsagents or buy a digital copy from here.

• net magazine

Comments

Earlier this week you may have been using Google, and noticed another evolution in their results pages, with the development of more detailed sitelinks.

Sitelinks are “the two columns of links that appear under some search results and ads that help users easily navigate deeper into the site.” Still unsure?  The image below displays how they used to be displayed:

Although these were useful, Google has decided to develop these one step further so that you now not only see the links, but also a description too - similar to the individual search results that you see on the page, as shown in the example below.

So what does this mean for the optimisation of your website?

Quite simply these expanded sitelinks mean that you should be paying more attention to the construction of your meta titles and descriptions on your website to ensure that they are correctly completed.

This development means that there is a greater need for the meta information on each of your webpages to be truly reflective of the content on that particular page.  The reason being, if a user clicks the sitelink to your website about a particular product, they will be expecting to land on that page.

If you’re fortunate enough to have sitelinks, they can now be even more influential than ever before.  Whereas the condensed sitelinks meant your website had a greater prominence, the revised versions mean that your listing can take up the bulk of the users screen above the fold, which can result in a much high click through rate.

Are there any useful tools for sitelinks?

Google has a tool that you may be interested in using to test the potential snippets that will display for your webpages, is the Rich Snippets Testing Tool.

In terms of manipulating the sitelinks that are displayed for your website, this unfortunately isn’t possible.  However, you are able to ‘demote’ the pages which Google will take into account when they generate the sitelinks, although this isn’t guaranteed.  To do this, login to your Webmaster Tools, go to Site Configuration, then Sitelinks and follow the straightforward instructions… Simples!

• Google
• search engine results
• SERPs
• sitelinks

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The latest statistics from Hitwise show that Google still dominates the market, however its growth appears to have slowed right down with just a 0.01% increase since June this year.

In the same time, Bing and Yahoo have both lost market share, whilst other search engines such as Ask have increased.

• Search Engine Optimisation
• Getting Ranked in Google
• Search Engine Market Share
• Google

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When it comes to off site SEO, there are three methods you can use to develop links to your website in order for it to rank well. These are:

• White hat techniques which Google and other search engines love and they involve no underhanded tactics.
• Grey hat techniques which aren’t as favoured and (when flaunted) can potentially get your website into trouble.
• Black hat techniques which are a major no-no. Under no circumstances should these tactics be utilised, as the consequences of getting caught can be fatal for your website.

We have previously written for .net magazine about the types of tactics that comprise black hat techniques and the importance of not employing them. A prime example of which is J.C. Penney, an American department store the equivalent of Debenhams here in the UK. Though the tactics employed by J.C. Penney’s SEO agency were undoubtedly underhanded (so it seems), the way in which they came to light has also been the subject of some debate…

On the 12th of February this year, the New York Times published an article entitled ‘The Dirty Little Secrets of Search’, giving details of the unrelated backlinks that were generated to the J.C. Penney website. Examples that they use in the article include site-wide footer links and generously littered links on unrelated and seemingly low quality websites (some of which had next to no content at all). The question was raised at the time about how the NYT might have come across this information; as speculation concerning how the store’s competitors stood to benefit from such revelations of wrong-doing persisted.

So what effect did this have on J.C. Penney and their search engine positions?

They went from position 1 for keywords such as ‘Samsonite Carry-on Luggage’ and ‘Living Room Furniture’ to 71 and 68 respectively within a space of two hours.

And what effect will this have on J.C. Penney’s online sales from organic search traffic?

Well that’s the multimillion-dollar question; so bear with me while we work out a monetary figure.

Take for example the keyword ‘Dresses’ - it receives approximately 301,000 exact searches each month. From research carried out, the website in position 1 receives around 35% of the clicks (just short of double the number of clicks the website in position 2 receives). So being in position 1 for the keyword ‘Dresses’ would mean J.C. Penney had received around 105,350 clicks each month.  Using the first 100 results on their website for the search ‘dresses’, the average price per item is $55.49 (approximately £33.79) and other research has shown that a reasonable conversion rate would be 5%.

So if 5% of the 105,350 searches for dresses converted into a sale, at an average cost of £33.79, that means that J.C. Penney was set to make around £177,988.825 a month, just from the keyword ‘Dresses’ alone. So the financial implication of being dropped in Google was massive when looking at this type of figures. Imagine what it would be like if their conversion rate was nearer 10 - 15%, then take into account the number of broad searches and the figure would be much higher.

However, it wasn’t all doom and gloom for the department store. Google can be sympathetic to a company’s needs and appreciate that (at times) it isn’t their fault. Within a number of weeks (if not months) J.C. Penney were back ranking in the search engines, not because their ban was lifted, but because Google works with companies that have been penalised to show them the error of their ways.

J.C. Penney are just one example of a well-known company that has fallen foul of Google’s rules by adopting black hat techniques in the past decade.

Back in 2006, BMW were penalised for breaching Google’s guidelines, but openly admitted to what they had done (which was using doorway pages to increase the number of visitors to a website). At the time, Google was still using Page Rank as its primary metric to compare websites and it instantly returned BMW to Page Rank Zero (“PR0”).

At the beginning of 2008, Go Compare was blacklisted for “irregular inbound links” and then again in April 2009 (presumably for the same offence). Unfortunately this didn’t stick and they were able to develop their brand further (which means that we still have to tolerate those awful television commercials). A few months later, in July 2008, moneysupermarket.com were also penalised by Google for making use of black hat techniques. It is largely due to their lack of SEO foresight that these comparison sites have since had to resort to such expensive (and aggravating) TV ad-campaigns.

These are all high profile examples of black hat SEO and the negative impact that it can have on a company. The J.C. Penney example in particular emphasises that the short term windfalls of employing such underhanded tactics are not contributory to the long term success of a company.

Resources:

NY Times
Search Engine Journal
Chitika
eConsultancy
Wikipedia
Hitwise
This Is Money
BBC

• Search Engine Optimisation
• On site SEO
• Backlinks
• Off Site SEO

Comments

After a short break, we are back monitoring the search engine market shares.  The latest statistics from Hitwise show that even after our break Google still dominates the market with a 90% market share.

Whilst Bing (4%) has continued to grow, Yahoo (2.5%) has remained somewhat static whilst the other smaller search engines make up the remaining 3%.

• Search Engine Optimisation
• Getting Ranked in Google
• Search Engine Market Share
• Google

Comments

After being approached again by the good people at .net magazine, SpeedySEO is proud to announce that another of our feature articles is now available to view online. Following on from the success of Glenn’s article about the Google Caffeine update (and how it could be used to boost website ranking), the new feature highlights how best to get your site blacklisted by the search engine giant.

Tagged as “the top 10 SEO tips you should never follow”, our guide illustrates the principle techniques employed by “black hat” SEO tricksters. Such practices (often dirty and despicable) are designed only to achieve positive results for a very brief period. In the long-term they prove to be a false-economy; because when your underhanded tactics are eventually exposed, Google will almost certainly open a fresh can of whoop-ass on your website. To find out more, check out our article now.

At SpeedySEO we only use Google-approved “white hat” methods to optimise our client’s websites, as we believe in providing positive results on a more permanent basis. We work with search engines (rather than against them), building quality links and creating user-friendly content, to ensure your website stays safely inside the white hat camp.   

• article
• magazine

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Shockingly there are only 27 more sleeps until Christmas… Where has the time gone? 

Despite being encouraged by large supermarkets since October to get into the Christmas spirit, it is now probably a more realistic time for online retailers to consider developing their websites and and implementing Pay Per Click campaigns to target the influx of Christmas online shoppers. 

Christmas is notoriously the time when people spend, spend, spend, and this year online sales are expected to surpass last years figures.  From a survey conducted by Moneydashboard 56.7% of respondants plan on using the internet to browse for Christmas presents, while over 45% are expecting to do the majority of their shopping online.

Tomorrow (29th November), has been dubbed ‘Manic Monday’ as the Centre for Retail Research predict that £537million will be spent online, up 29% on last year.

However, ‘Manic Monday’ is to be superceeded by ‘Mega Monday’ on December 6th, as IMRG predict that hourly online sales to peak between 12pm and 1pm at £23.2 million, and draw in approximately 11% more sales.  These figures are massive, but tiny in comparison to the £6.4 billion they expect to be spent online throughout December.  The CRR also predict that 17% of all Christmas sales this year will be made online.

So if you’re an e-tailer, you must be thinking how can you get a share of this?  Here’s some ideas for you to make your festive period a little more jolly!

Getting More Traffic to Your Website

On average we say that it takes 3 to 6 months for an SEO campaign to fully take swing, so realistically this isn’t the most viable option, unless you are in a niche market with few competitors. 

Alternatively instant publicity in the search engines can be achieved through a Pay Per Click campaign.  Tailored adverts promoting your top selling products, free delivery, free gift wrapping and so on can entice potential customers to your website, and differentiate yourselves from the competition.

Investing in a well structured PPC campaign can draw in thousands of pounds worth of extra business over the Christmas period.

Converting Your Additional Traffic
If a customer has come directly from PPC, they want to want to land on the product page of the product which was being advertised in the sponsored links.  Therefore check that all of your adverts and URLs match up.

Navigation
Make it easy for customers to navigate around your website, consider implementing additional categories for the Christmas holidays.  For example, you could add a category of Presents for Him under £15.

Delivery Options
On a website wide basis, make it clear when the last delivery dates are in order to receive any items purchased off of the website.  Offering a range of delivery options is often favoured by the public and having next day delivery or even same day delivery can entice the last minute shoppers.  If it is possible, free delivery can be very appealing in this costly time of the year, and if it is clearly mentioned in the PPC advert, customers may be more inclined to click through and purchase from you as opposed to a competitor.  If free delivery is not available, make sure that the prices are listed clearly on the website.

Gift Vouchers
For troublesome friends and family members, gift vouchers are sometimes the easiest solution when it comes to buying them presents.  If this something that isn’t offered then it may be worth considering them, as they can be great last minute presents and increase sales.

These are just some examples of how to increase conversion ratios over this festive time of year.  Don’t wait until it’s too late to capitalise on the Christmas sales boom!

• PPC
• Pay Per Click
• Online Sales Trends

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Hitwise have released the latest search engine market share statistics with the details shown in the graph below.

Predicatably, Google continues to lead the way by leaps and bounds with a majoirty share of 91.59%.  Although Google.com searches are down 0.2%  (month on month), Google.co.uk has seen an increase of 0.32% (month on month).  Meanwhile Bing.com has lost 0.07% market share, whilst Yahoo’s UK search has increased by 0.14%.

• Getting Ranked in Google
• Search Engine Market Share
• Google
• Bing

Comments

Since the boom of E-commerce in the early noughties, online shopping has become the norm for many, with £250 billion being spent online between 2000 and 2010.  Going back to 2001, only six million people in the UK were purchasing goods from the internet, spending around £1.8 billion.  Now in 2010, this figure is expected to surpass the £58 billion mark and is evident from the £4.4 billion that was spent in June 2010 (an 18% increase from what was spent in the same month the year before).  IMRG and Capgemini predict that the online retail market is set to reach £123 billion by 2020, an increase of 110%.  Although annual growth is predicted to slow down, dropping to an increase of 12% per annum between 2009 and 2014, as opposed to the 35% increase that we have seen over the past 10 years.

On average, 40% of UK consumers will buy online once a week, spending an average of £71 each month.  Not surprisingly, the two main reasons that people have turned to the internet to shop is price and convenience.  Additionally, the appeal of free shipping, price guarantees and customer reviews also hold a heavy influence too.  However the main deterrents for making purchases from certain websites are predominantly poor navigation, concerns about security and overly long check out processes.

Verdict, an online retail analyst, predicts that by 2014 the number of online shoppers will increase by 14% to 32.5 million.  The markets that are showing the greatest growth potential are the 15 - 24 and 55+ age brackets.  Currently, those aged between 34 and 44 spend the most online and accounted for approximately a third of all online sales in 2009.

So what bearing does this have on online marketing?

With more and more money being spent online each year, the importance of search and social media marketing has never been so prevalent during a buyer’s decision making process. 

61% of online consumers use search engines to research and ultimately purchase a product online.  The vast majority of which will be influenced by the websites that are prominent in the organic search engine results pages, namely those listed on the first page. 

The importance and influence that social media has during the purchase decision phase has grown drastically in recent years, especially amongst 18 – 26 year olds.  75% of people in this age bracket who use social media networks take into account recommendations from these websites before purchasing products online. 

These figures are in stark contrast to the likes of more traditional online marketing strategies, such as email marketing, where only 36% of people will make a purchase after being prompted by an email.  This information is backed up by research by Litmus, an email marketing solutions company, who identified that 51% of marketing emails (of 4 million opened), were deleted within 2 seconds.

Therefore, it is now critical that online retailers to have a recognisable presence in the search engines, or social media (dependent upon their key demographics), coupled with a website that has undergone suitable usability testing, in order to reduce bounce rates and people exiting the website in favour of a competitor.

Resources:
eConsultancy
eCommera
IMRG Capgemini
Verdict
Litmus

• SEO
• Search Engine Optimisation
• eCommerce

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What is bounce rate?
A bounce rate is the number of visitors that source a website through a search engine (paid and non paid) but leave without navigating to any other webpage and “bounce” back to the search engine to find another resource.  These statistics can be used to quantify the quality of the specific landing pages, which is typically the homepage, which a web user arrives at.

How can this affect SEO?
A high bounce rate will affect search engine position because it implies to the search engines that the website is not relevant to the searched terms that people are locating the website through and will consequently penalise the website which will ultimately be reflected in its search engine position.  Conversely if your website is of a high quality, looks good and relevant to the target market, is easy to navigate and has targeted the right keywords then there should be no need for a person to bounce away from the website.  Instead they should be engrossed by the content of the website, and navigate around further.  This good user experience will then be noted by the search engines as their aim is to provide their users with the best quality results.

What is a low and high bounce rate?
There is no definitive answer as to what a high and low bounce rate is as it is dependent on factors such as the nature of the website and how many webpages it contains.  Obviously 0% is the ideal figure but not realistic.  As a general rule of thumb anything below 30% is low, whilst anything above 50% is considered to be high and therefore should be addressed in order to ascertain the reason for the high bounce rate.

How can I monitor the bounce rate?
The bounce rate of a website can be monitored using tools such as Google Analytics which can tell its users which individual webpages have the highest bounce rates over a period of time.

How can a high bounce rate be lowered?
The lower the bounce rate a website has, the greater the chance it has of achieving its objectives, whether that is making a sale or provide information on a subject matter.  Four of the most common reasons for a website having a high bounce rate are:

• targeting the wrong keywords
• poorly written or not enough content
• poorly designed web pages
• poor website structure which is difficult to navigate around.

Therefore if a website does have a high bounce rate these are the four areas to address first of all and coupled with user experience testing a website owner can identify the cause of the problem.

• SEO
• Search Engine Optimisation
• On site SEO
• Bounce Rates

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June 11th 2010 couldn’t have come quick enough.  With the Premiership finishing in May; the World Cup fills the void that we normally have to face until August.  It is also the opportunity that we get to see the world’s greatest footballers on the biggest global football stage and all 5760 minutes of football are compacted into just one month.

We’ve now seen all 32 teams play once but what affect has this had on social media?  Well quite a bit actually.  Statisticians from Google, Nielsen and the like have been compiling data, not analysing the action specifically on the pitch but what buzz the tournament has been created around the World Wide Web.

Google Insights for Search has identified that there was a spike in the number of people searching for World Cup tickets, predominantly in South Africa, initially in April and then between May and the start of the tournament people have been going crazy to get tickets.

The same software also identified that out of five faces that will dominate the World Cup, Ronaldo (the winker) has been by far the most searched for player over the past 12 months.  Understandably there were spikes in the number of searches in the past couple of weeks when news broke that Didier Drogba broke his arm and Arjen Robben was injured in training.

Following his mistake in England’s first game Robert Green’s quickly became very popular around the English language social media websites with over 11% of messages that referred to the game commenting on his performance (or howler to be more specific), followed by Wayne Rooney (9%) and the American goalkeeper Tim Howard (6.7%).  The disappointment of the result for English fans was noted by a 20% decline in social media buzz whilst for the Americans who viewed the game as a success, the buzz about their national team increased by over 750%, it is probably a good thing now that Fabio banned the use of social media websites prior to tournament beginning last week. (Source: Nielsen Market Research)

In regards to the effect that the World Cup has had on specific businesses, Experian Hitwise data has identified that searches for South African Airways increased 129% between the 5th and 12th June, which follows suit with the 85% increase in searches for flights to South Africa in the past month.  Finally, according to their research, 1 in 150 searches in the United Kingdom were related to the World Cup in the past week.

We will keep taking note on the impact that the tournatment has on the internet over the coming weeks.  Fingers crossed come the 12th July there is an explosion in the number of searches for England World Cup Success!

• Social Media Marketing
• Google
• World Cup

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Hitwise have released the latest search engine market share statistics with the details shown in the graph below.

Google has mainted its domination with an overall market share of 91.70%, although google.co.uk has increased its share by 0.07% with the same figure coming away from the .com equivalent.  Similarly, Bing.com has lost 0.05% market share whilst Yahoo search has increased by the same amount.

• SEO
• Search Engine Optimisation
• Getting Ranked in Google
• Search Engine Market Share

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Following our previous post regarding 15 on site factors that influence your search engine positions, here is our list of some of the off site factors that search engines take into account when ranking your website.

Number of quality backlinks
When it comes to optimising your website and obtaining backlinks, quality by far outweighs quantity.  Every page that Google indexes is given a Page Rank from 0 to 9 based on how authoritatitve the webpage and website are deemed to be, for example, the BBC homepage has a Page Rank of 9.  This information can be useful when developing your SEO campaign as you want to obtain backlinks from websites which have high page ranks as the search engines will perceive your website to have something of value on it.

Number of relevant backlinks
Similarly to the previous point, it is best to obtain backlinks from websites that are relevant to your own.  This will increase your relevancy to a particular subject and consequently the search engines will reflect this in your positioning.

Anchor text used for backlinks
The anchor text is the clickable text that opens a link to your website.  For the greatest SEO impact this should be one of your keywords and ideally featured within relevant content, as opposed to added at the bottom of the page.  For example, TFH Gazebos would receive a greater SEO benefit from us linking using the anchor text Gazebos than linking their domain name.

Source of backlinks
Search engines hate spam, automatically generated backlinks and anything that they perceive not to be an organic backlink.  Therefore if your backlinks are predominantly from spammy websites or paid sources then Google and the other search engines will hold this against your website.

Diversity of backlink sources
For the most effective SEO results your website have backlinks from a diversity of sources, such as directories, websites, blogs, social media and so on.  This diversity makes search engines believe that unique websites are linking to you which they presume means that your website is authoritative on that particular topic.

Total number of backlinks on the webpage that links to your website
With the exception of directories, if the website that you have a backlink from has a whole range of backlinks on the page then search engines will reduce the SEO weighting that these links carry, if any at all.

Number of deep links
Deep links are the links which go to other pages on your website other than the homepage.  If you have a high number of backlinks to these pages, search engines see this as there being relevant information throughout the website.

Speed of building backlinks
Search engines are seeking an organic and steady development of backlinks.  If your website instantly have hundreds of backlinks then the search engines will suspect that something isn’t right and so your website will not receive the SEO benefit that it should from these links.  This is partly why we recommend spreading an SEO campaign over a period of months and gradually increase the number of links, as opposed to performing a slap dash approach.

There are many other off site factors that effect your search engine position, but these are some to take into consideration.

• SEO
• Search Engine Optimisation
• Off Site SEO
• Building Backlinks

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There are many, many factors that will influence your search engine position, some even suggest that Google has 200 signals that it uses to rank a website by.  Unfortunately very few people are privy to this information, and in this post we will explore some of the on site factors that have an influence on your search engine positions.

Keywords in the domain name
The domain name is the very first thing that a search engine robot will look at and if there is a keyword within it, then it stands your website in good stead.  In addition if somebody links to the website and just uses the domain name as the anchor text, the keyword is still prominent.  However, there is more than SEO benefit that you can receive from having a keyword in your domain name.  When a search is carried out the keywords that have been used in the search query are bolded in the snippet which also includes the domain name and potentially this could increase the number of clicks through to your website.

Age and history of the domain name
The age of a domain name can be influential because search engines will perceive older domains which have had the same website on it for many years to be an authoritative and established source for information.  Therefore it is harder for new websites to hold a consistent search engine ranking and avoid the ‘Google Dance’ because the search engine is trying to calculate where they should position the website within the results.  In addition, if a website has a history of being penalised by a search engine then the chances are that this could be held against you which is why it is important to carry out a domain name history check prior to buying it.

TLD of the domain name
TLD is an abbreviation for Top Level Domain, and is the .co.uk, .com or one of the many other suffixes to the main part of the domain name.  For the best results in UK versions of search engines a .co.uk will hold a greater weighting as the search engines are able to easily identify the source and country of origin of the website.

Location of the hosting server
In order to achieve a better search engine results position in UK versions of search engines, the search engine needs to know which country your website is targeting.  This can be achieved through the TLD, but also through the location of your server.  For example if you have a server that is based in Germany, your IP address will be reflected in this and consequently the search engine will believe your website to be most beneficial to German Internet users.  Therefore having the server based in the UK will play a significant role in your search engine positioning.  Although Google now has the provision in its Webmasters Tools to specify the country, many of the other search engines do not have this facility.

Website loading speed
If your website takes a long time to load (anything over a few seconds is slow) then you are being perceived to be slowing down the Internet and so this will have some bearing on your search engine position.  There are free online speed tests that can be used to check this, but the general thing to look out to counter this are to reduce the size of any assets (videos, images, etc.) that may take time to load and the speed of your server.

Amount of Internet downtime
If a search engine robot visits your website and it cannot find it because the website is down, it will mark this against you.  If this repetitively happens then the search engine will think that there is a problem with your website and as a result this will have a detrimental effect on your search engine positions.  To combat any downtime that you may incur you should try to resolve the problem immediately to know when your website is down install a server monitor which will send you an alert.

Use of keywords in the title tag
The title tag holds a lot weighting in regards to your search engine position.  Therefore it is important that it includes your most relevant keywords and the one’s that you want to rank for the most.  When you write these keep your human audience in mind as not only will they read them but they will also form part of the search engine snippet.  There is a delicate balance on how to write the title tag, do not overload it with keywords and keep within the confinements of the number of characters that the search engine results title can display.

Use of keywords in the meta description tag
The meta description tag should summarise for a search engine robot what content is on each specific page.  It should be written in a manner that combines an explanation of the products or services that your company offers along with a clear call to action for the customer.  The reason being that the meta description tag can play a significant role in creating the snippet that is displayed by the search engine in the results pages.

Use of keywords in the meta keywords tag
Many argue that there is little point in completing the meta keywords tag as Google doesn’t make use of it anymore.  Originally it did, however people cottoned onto the fact that if they stuffed it full of their keywords they could rank for as many terms as they wanted which is why Google changed its algorithm.  However, many other search engines still use them and so this tag is definitely worth completing.  In addition, if the keywords are used in the tag then it can only improve the relevancy that search engines place on your website.  For more information on the use of keywords in the meta tag, please view our previous blog post on The Importance of Keywords.

Uniqueness of the meta titles, descriptions and keywords on each page
Each and every page on your website needs to be individually written in order to maximise your chances of ranking well in the search engines.  This is because the search engines could perceive your website as containing duplicate content if all of these tags are the same, but also having a diversity of tags and keywords within them can only increase your chances of ranking for a greater range of keywords.

Use of keywords in the H1, H2 and H3 tags
Since the inception and growth of style sheets, the usage of H1, H2, H3, etc. tags has declined.  Initially they were used to inform the search engine robot that that the content within these tags held greater importance than that on the rest of the page.  If you website doesn’t use style sheets then it is important that these tags are used correctly.

Keyword density of content
Search engines are looking for websites that are authoritative on the subject matter that a user is looking for information on.  Therefore it is imperative that your content on the website includes your relevant keyword and is written in a manner that it reads well for the human end users.  Ideally you should be looking to use your keywords once in every twenty words written.  If you are too liberal in their usage then you may be penalised for keyword stuffing which will negatively impact your search engine position.

Original and unique content
It is important that the content of your website is well written and original.  If a search engine indexes a web page and comes across another website that has exactly the same content, or slightly adapted, it will determine which website had the content first and rank it accordingly whilst the second website it will receive no SEO benefit from the content.

Website structure and internal linking
The objective for any website is to provide human readers with information and this should be presented to them in a logical manner when navigating around the website with clear links.  Search engine robots are looking for this and the better that it is done then it will increase your search engine position.

How often the website is updated
Search engines look more favourably on websites that are regularly updated and it also gives you the opportunity to increase your keyword density with new posts and information.

Deletion of pages without 301 redirects
If you update or change the URL’s of your website it is important to redirect the old pages to the new ones with 301 redirects.  This is important for search engine optimisation as search engines may have indexed the original page and if they cannot find it then this will be reflected in the search engine positions which will drop.  In terms of usability, if a search engine has indexed a page and displays it in the results pages, when a web user clicks through to the website and the page no longer exists and a 301 redirect hasn’t been set up an error message will be displayed so they will return to the search engine and click through to your competitors website.

This concludes some of the on site factors that can influence your website.  For the off site factors which influence your search engine position, you can find this in the blog post 8 off-site factors that influence your search engine position

• SEO
• Search Engine Optimisation
• On site SEO

Comments

There is no doubt that the internet is growing in terms of users and what it can achieve.  This information has been quantified and documented by OFCOM in their bi-annual UK Adult’s Media Literacy Report that was released earlier this week.  The report is based upon a quantitative survey involving over 1800 people aged 16 plus, which although is a small percentage of the total population, it provides an insight into developing trends since the previous reports published in 2005 and 2007.

Who is using the internet?
As you can see from the graph below, the dominant age group of internet users are those in the 35 - 44 age bracket followed closely by those aged 25 - 34, however comparing the statistics against previous years, there has been a slight decline in the number of users in these age brackets with the 65+ age bracket increasing by 2%.

How accessible is the internet?
The internet is becoming more accessible with the vast majority of modern mobile phones now enabling web browsing.  Whilst a PC or laptop is still the most common means to access the internet, nearly a third of people will search the internet on their phone, whilst 10% use a games console and 6% use a portable media player to view websites.  By far the 16 - 34 age bracket are the one’s using alternative technologies to access the internet.

How much time is being spent on the internet per week?
The number of hours that people spend on the internet per week on the whole is increasing since 2007.  This is the trend for people accessing the internet at home or “anywhere else” whilst the use of internet at work or school has declined.

Not shown in the graph put written in the report, men on average spend 4½ hours more time at home and at work / school on the internet than women, most of which is done at home.

Reasons for using the internet
To ‘find out or learn things’ is the by far the most popular reason that adults use the internet with ‘for contact with other people’ coming in behind.  In terms of gender differences, men are more inclined to use the internet to keep up to date with news and sports, but other than that they are pretty matched.

In terms of ages, those in the 45 - 54 bracket use the internet for most to find out and learn things (85%), followed by 35 - 44 year olds (79%), 55 - 64 year olds (76%) and 16 - 24 year olds (72%).

Internet users attitudes towards the internet
For those that use the internet they do so because they overwhelmingly believe that it makes life easier (81%) and saves time (87%).  Conversely those that do not use the internet found that it was too difficult to use or didn’t know (70%) and were more unaware of how it can help save time, make life easier and the risk of putting privacy at risk.

Internet activities carried out at least once a week
The number of people that are purchasing items over the internet on a weekly basis has dropped by 2% in since 2007 which when questioned was during the recession and so that may have influenced their decision.  To communicate is still by far the most popular activity carried out on a weekly basis whilst the use of social networks has increased by 16% in two years.

The increase in popularity of social media
For those interested in social media and its growth of popularity in recent years, this is the section for you.  Everyone knows that social media has exploded in recent years and this is evident from the graph shown below.

The graph shows the difference in the number of people that have set up their own social media profile page between 2007 and 2009.  In regards to age the 25 - 34 year olds have seen the greatest increase (38%) with the smallest increase being in the 55 - 65 age range (3%).  More women than men have created social media pages whilst a greater number of people in the DE socio - economic group have created profiles.

Most popular social media websites
Those that had answered the previous question by saying that they had created a profile on a social media website were then asked on which websites.  The results show that most people only creating a profile on one website with Facebook resoundingly leading the way and being the website of choice for 90%, a 28% increase since 2007.  MySpace’s glory days appear to be over with a decline of 28% in the same two years, and other social networks such as Bebo and Hi5 share a similar fate.

So what does all this information mean?
These statistics emphasise that there is a growing trend to make use of the internet across all age groups, genders and social classes which highlights that with online marketing businesses can target a whole range of people in volumes that they couldn’t do just a few years ago.  This means that a greater emphasis should be placed on improving a company’s online visibility which would predominantly be through search engine optimisation, social media marketing and pay per click.

The development of social media websites continues to grow which increases the importance for companies, especially with a target market of 16 - 34 year olds, to use it effectively in order to generate interest and sales of their products and / or services.

The information provided here is just a snippet of what the 92 page report shows, if you would like to read more of the report you can download it from the link at the top of the page.

• Search Engine Optimisation
• Social Media Marketing
• Internet Usage

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Hitwise have released the latest search engine market share statistics with the details shown in the graph below.

Google’s dominantion continues with an overall market share of 91.70% (up from 90.58% last month) whilst the Yahoo (UK) and the other smaller search engines are the ones that have lost out.

• SEO
• Search Engine Optimisation
• Getting Ranked in Google
• Search Engine Market Share

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For those of you that aren’t aware, .net magazine “is the world’s best-selling magazine for web designers and developers.”  This month’s edition is particularly special to us at the SpeedySEO offices as it features an article written by our very own Glenn Jacobs.

Last month there was an invitation from the magazine for someone to report on the latest update to Google.  Being knowledgeable about the subject, Glenn wrote an article which highlights the recent changes that have been made to the search engine giant.  Although it has been written with a more technical point of view, it is a good read giving insights on how to increase your websties chances of ranking higher in search engines.

To summarise, the changes that have been made for the end user include making the speed at which it returns results much faster, making results more relevant and the inclusion of real time results from social networking websites such as Twitter. In terms of SEO, a larger weighting has now been placed on the on-site optimisation and the importance of keywords prominence, proximity and density has increased as has the relevance and building of backlinks.

The magazine is out now for you to buy.

• Search Engine Optimisation
• Google

Comments

In the industry that we are in, we see hundreds of websites each week.  After looking at websites in relation to how they have (or haven’t) been optimised you begin to recognise the common mistakes that are made.  This can be because website owners are attempting to do the work themselves or even sometimes because they have opted to use an inexperienced or cheap SEO company.

The most frequent mistakes that we see include:

Targeting the Wrong Keywords
Believe it or not, this is a common problem that we see happening too regularly.  The reason that this is a frequent problem is because website owners have an idea of what their target keywords should be as a result of the products that they sell or the industry that they’re in.  However, these may not be the keywords that internet users are typing into search engines in high volumes to warrant the word or phrase being optimised for.

For example, we could optimise the SpeedySEO website for “Search Engine Optimisation Consultancy in Chelmsford”, however the search volume is negligible in comparison to say “SEO Essex,” and consequently we could potentially be missing out on valuable business just because we have not researched and analysed our market correctly.

Incorrectly Completing the Meta Tags
The Meta Tags field are there so that search engine robots can crawl websites and find out what content is on the webpage in question.  This information can be extremely valuable in terms of SEO, especially as Google has returned to placing greater weighting on the on-site SEO in its latest update.

There are three dominant fields that should be unique and completed for each webpage that requires indexing by search engines.  These are the:

• Meta Title which must contain the primary keyword that the SEO campaign is targeting.
• Meta Description which should be a combination of explaining the products or services on offer along with a clear call to action.  The page description will contribute towards creating the snippet that is displayed in the search engine results pages.
• Meta Keywords which should be relevant to the content on the webpage and although there is an on going dispute over their relevancy, it is advised that they are completed.  For more information on this debate, see our earlier blog post on The Importance of Keywords.

Lack of HTML Alternative for Flash and Silverlight Websites
The opportunity to create websites that are made using Rich Internet Applications (RIA) such as Flash and Silverlight can make a website more appealing as opposed to HTML.  However, the common error that is either overlooked or forgotten about is that when websites are created using these methods it is imperative that the content is also written in a static format, this is so that search engines can see what content is on the website and ranks it accordingly.

Over Dependency of Buttons for Images and Headers
In an attempt to make websites more visually appealing some webmasters have a tendency to replace buttons, menus and page headers with images.  Visually they can look better, but this can come at the expense of the SEO as the search engine robots cannot distinguish what the buttons are displaying.  To improve the ranking of a website, it is better to replace these buttons and make use of the h1 and h2 tags which can be customised using CSS to make them more appealing.

Poorly Constructed Backlinks
Backlinks are fundamental in the SEO process and this is something that we have discussed in the earlier post, The Importance of Backlinks.  Obtaining a relevant backlink is good but to increase it value, firstly make sure that the link is not “nofollow” which informs search engines that the link cannot be used to influence your websites ranking in the search engine.  Secondly where permissible the anchor text, which is the clickable text of the link, should be the keyword that a website is trying to be optimised for.  These will aid the SEO efforts and help develop the authority and relevance of the website.

These are just five common SEO mistakes that we see on a regular basis that can easily be avoided, but why run the risk of falling into these traps when you can just get us to do the work for you?!

• SEO
• Search Engine Optimisation
• On site SEO
• Off Site SEO
• Building Backlinks

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The latest statistics from Hitwise have been released and Google continues to dominate the search engine market by breaking the 90% barrier for its .co.uk and .com versions.

As you can see from the graphic below, Bing, Yahoo and the other smaller search engines have a tiny portion of the market share,  which collectively totals just more than 9%.

• SEO
• Search Engine Optimisation
• Getting Ranked in Google
• Search Engine Market Share
• Google

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With social media reaching 77% of the online population it is by far becoming one of the most important advertising and promotional mediums that businesses can utilise.  In the UK over 23 million people are using Facebook making it the second most visited website after Google.co.uk.

But what makes a good or bad social media campaign?  In recent times we have seen examples of how it can be used to improve a brands image or have an adverse effect if poorly managed, both of which we will now look at.

British Airways

Following the latest setbacks for the national airline carrier with the walk out of cabin crew, British Airways and Willie Walsh utilised YouTube in an attempt to reduce the negative impact that the strikes would have on the brand.  At the beginning of April the company had uploaded seven videos updating customers and those with an interest in the events of the airline which have been viewed by almost 100,000 people.

As to whether this is a successful campaign or not is still yet unknown, however the speed that the videos were released and the interest that the videos have drawn means that British Airways have been given the opportunity to convey their message to the masses in an attempt to stabilise any negative perceptions of the brand.

Compare the Market

ComparetheMarket.com, ComparetheMeerkat.com… simples!

We all know the strap line and this is a good example to show how a national television campaign can use social media and the internet to reinforce a brand and keep it fresh in potential customer’s minds.  The success of VCCP’s campaign has drawn in many fans, predominantly because of its key character, Aleksander Orlov, a fictitious meerkat.  The overspill from the television campaign to the internet has resulted in over 7 million Facebook fans, 37,000 Twitter followers, an iPhone application (iSimples), a monthly audio podcast (Meerchat), a Flickr gallery and of course the infamous microsite.

But what success has the company seen?  The combined effects of the television and online marketing campaigns had seen an 80% increase in traffic to their website after just 8 months.

Barack Obama

During his infamous campaign trail in 2008, Barack Obama and his team utilised social media and the internet like no politician had ever before in order to spread his message of hope and change in order to persuade millions to vote for him.  For one man to communicate with in excess of 300 million people is impossible; however with social media it allowed Barack Obama to communicate with the masses which is why he used in excess of 10 social media platforms.  From the mainstream websites such as Facebook (8 million fans), MySpace (2 million friends), Twitter (3.5 million followers), LinkedIn, YouTube and Flickr he also used social networks that targeted specific demographics such as Black Planet (African Americans) and MiGente (Latinos).  The end result of this campaign is well known, with Barack Obama taking 54% of the votes and winning the presidential election.

Nestle and Greenpeace

March 2010 was a bad month for Nestle as it came under attack from Greenpeace regarding the use of palm oil in their products from unsustainable sources.  This primarily came in the form of a micro site which put the organisations argument across as to why people should contact the brand to stop destroying the rainforests.

Initially Greenpeace’s campaign was centred around a micro site and a video which was put onto You Tube.  However, recognising the damage that the video would cause to the brand, Nestle had it removed on the grounds that it infringed on copyright laws but Greenpeace used an alternative video sharing website to host the short film and consequently it received over 70,000 views within a space of hours.  As a result of the video, Nestle’s Facebook Fan Page become inundated with people leaving questions seeking answers and comments to provoke a response, which is what they eventually got.  The person that was responsible for running the brands Fan page took the defensive and left sarcastic replies which enraged the situation further and caused Greenpeace’s campaign to spread like wildfire across the social networks, especially Twitter.

From Greenpeace’s perspective social media got their message across to thousands of people and they succeeded in gaining support for their campaign.  Conversely for Nestle it was a bad experience and where damage limitation could have been taken the company had the wrong person in control of their Facebook account which only caused the campaign to escalate further.

The moral of the story is that having a social networking platform to use is one thing, managing it is another.

Sony

Back in Christmas 2008, Sony attempted to break into social networking and promote itself within the Facebook community.  This was done through the release of a personalised snow globe application that users could add to their Facebook page and customise.  In theory this was a great idea as it was seasonal and something fun that could compete with the overwhelming success of apps like Elf Yourself.

The problem that Sony had however was with their execution of the application.  It was severely limited and lacked many important features such as the ability to be shared (or recommended amongst friends) which would help it grow in popularity and spread across Facebook.  In addition the applications wall where users were able to leave comments was not monitored as messages were left but ignored.  The end result of this SMM campaign for Sony was that it didn’t have a negative effect on the brand but what could have been a great campaign that spread their brand across Facebook failed, probably at a great cost, because there wasn’t the function for this social media viral to be shared.

These are just five examples to demonstrate the influence that social media can have on any business.  Its enormity can either help spread marketing communication messages across the internet and develop brand awareness or it can be tool that if it is not understood then could cause harm to the brand either through the loss of money or by attracting bad publicity.

• Social Media Marketing
• SMM

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Backlinks are a major part of the search engine optimisation process and are imperative to increase a websites search engine position. For those that don’t know, backlinks are the links that connect one website to another, so that when it is clicked a completely different website is opened.  For example, clicking web design Chelmsford will take you to Neon Digital’s website and this is a backlink.

How can these backlinks help improve search engine ranking?

Search engines results are based upon the relevancy of websites to the internet users searched for term and the level of authority that they also have.

Backlinks are crucial in building up a websites relevancy and authority.

In regards to relevancy, search engines are looking for websites that have a high number of backlinks from relevant websites with its logic being that if all of these websites are pointing to it then it must have high quality and relevant information on it and will therefore be returned higher in the search engine results pages.

As for authority, every webpage has an allocated Page Rank (PR) from Google. This is a numerical weighting between 0 and 10 (0 being lowest and 10 being the highest) which in itself is based on a complex algorithm, althouugh Google claim that this factor is irrelevant, it is an indicator of how valuable Google deems the the page to be. Therefore, if a website obtains one backlink from anouther website with a high PR (5+) then this potentially can have a greater and more positive impact than a numerous backlinks from websites with low page ranks.

What types of backlinks are there?

There are a variety of different types of backlinks available for website owners to acquire, each varying in importance and how effective they will be in an SEO campaign.

The most desirable links are one way backlinks. These as their name suggests are links that point at a website with no link going the other way, if it did the it would be a reciprocal link which are less desirable as search engines recognise the link swapping and reduce the weighting given to each.

Backlinks that should be avoided include those from scraper sites and link farms. Scraper websites are those that replicate websites by scraping the content of the original website and are utilised by spamming search engines. Whilst link farms are pages on the internet which contain nothing but links to other websites and are generally paid for. These emerged a few years ago when webmasters realised their potential to artificially improve search engine position, however the main search engines recognised these and swiftly removed any value that these links would have carried. Any website that is found using them could now run the risk of being penalised by Google and the like for using them.

How to build backlinks

When building backlinks, search engines are looking for a natural development of the number backlinks to a website. Too many and they will deem this to be unnatural and therefore will discard the value of the links or even penalise the offending website. Therefore it is important not too build too many backlinks in a short period of time.

One of the best methods of building backlinks is by writing content and articles for the website that other webmasters would deem to be important and relevant and link back to the specific website or webpage. This is what is known as link baiting and is one of the best means of building backlinks and increasing search engine position.

Finally, it is important to remember that once a website is ranking well, it is crucial to continually build backlinks in order to maintain a stable search engine position.

• SEO
• Search Engine Optimisation
• Off Site SEO
• Building Backlinks

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Keywords are the foundations that search engines use to rank websites when returning search results. They are the words that are most relevant to a companies or person’s website and in terms of search engine optimisation are the words and phrases that internet users are most likely to type into search engines to find relevant websites.

Primarily, keywords should be used (in moderation) in the content of the website, meta data and the anchor text for links.

A general rule of thumb is that for each page of content, the keyword density should be approximately 5 to 7% – fewer than this and the search engines will fail to recognise this as a notable keyword, more than this and they may consider it to be keyword stuffing, a black hat technique. When writing content for a website the fundamental rule to remember is that it will be read by humans who will then decide to purchase the product or service on offer. Therefore, liberally using keywords out of context may be appealing to the search engine robots reading the text, however if this content is not readable for humans then they will quickly click back to the search results and find another website.

Another area onsite that keywords should be used is in the meta tags.  They definitely need to be prominent in the title and page description, however there is an ongoing dispute about the importance that they have in the keyword field and whether they have any SEO value.  Originally, this field was introduced so that webmasters could tell the search engines what content their websites contained and then rank them based on this. However, with the rapid expansion of the Internet and webmasters taking advantage of this, the search engines needed to implement alternative algorithms which gave less weighting to the keyword tag.

Google states that they no longer use this tag to rank websites and so many webmasters, rightly or wrongly believe that there is no point in including this information to their web pages. However, our understanding is that although this may be the case, it is good practice to include them when building or modifying a website as it will back up the content that has been written on the specific webpage, in turn increasing the relevancy of the page. Another reason to include them is that although Google says that they don’t use the meta keywords, other search engines do take them into account. Despite Google having the majority market share of the search engines market, internet users still use these other websites and not having the keywords in place could be the difference between a click through to the website or not. Finally, search engine algorithms are forever changing and what’s to say that tomorrow Google could give the keyword meta tag a far greater weighting in ranking websites?

But how do you know which keywords to use?

There are a number of tools available on the internet that allow webmasters to research their market and analyse which keywords people are using to find their website.

Google Keyword Tool is one such example, it allows for a few keywords to be entered into the search box and it will return “related” keywords, along with their search frequency.  Although this is primarily used for creating AdWords (PPC) accounts, it can be a handy SEO tool too. For those with established websites, Google Analytics can provide webmasters with a helpful insight with which keywords their website is being found for, and of these which ones internet users are most likely to click through to the website. But a simple search in any of the search engines will return a plethora of keyword tools available on the internet.

Keywords are fundamental to an SEO campaign, get them right and the results will be positive, get them wrong and it could be disasterous!  The keyword to remember in SEO is moderation – don’t be too liberal using your keywords but at the same time include them wherever possible.

• SEO
• Search Engine Optimisation
• On site SEO
• Off Site SEO
• Keywords
• Meta Keywords

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As a search engine optimisation company, it is our responsibility to monitor the trends in search engine usage.  The reason for this is so that we can then tailor our SEO strategies and develop our clients websites to meet the criteria of their algorithms.

The statistics for this month have been analysed and according to Hitwise the overwhelming market leader in the UK is once again Google, with a majority share of just shy of 90% (for .co.uk and .com).

As you can see from the graph above, Bing.com receives approximately 3% of search traffic and Yahoo’s combined number of searches for their global and localised (UK) search engine get approximately 5% of the traffic.  This leads to question whether the imminent merger of the Bing and Yahoo search engines will be able to compete with the domination that Google has developed over the years, but that is something to discuss in another post.

For the mean time we will continue with what we preach, that for our clients, Google.co.uk is the website to focus our SEO campaigns towards. As a general rule of thumb, rank highly on Google and the work that got you there will pay divdends with the other “smaller” search engines.

• SEO
• Search Engine Optimisation
• Getting Ranked in Google
• Search Engine Market Share
• Google

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A quick search on Google for SEO Consultants, Search Engine Optimisation Specialists and the like will return thousands upon thousands of results.  But how do you know which one is best suited for you and your company?

The first thing to do is narrow down your search to SEO companies that are in the same county or town as your business, for example, SEO Essex to find us.  The reason for this is that it is better to meet face to face than dominantly converse through telephone and email conversations.  Once you have pin pointed your search to a specific geographic location, look at the websites of those that are returned on the first page – if they’re a good SEO company, they will have done their keyword research and should be ranking well for the term.

Now that you have established which SEO companies are based in your local area, it is time to consider which one to contact.  This can be established by going onto their websites and seeing what services they offer, what the feel of their website is and whether you think that they will be able to help you.

You Get What You Pay For
When choosing an SEO company, keep in mind that the price that you pay will be reflective of the amount of time and effort that the company will be putting into optimising your website.  Therefore, those that are offering really cheap services will typically put little effort into the keyword, on site and off site SEO phases, for example, companies that offer SEO for £50 will generally have the whole process automated, which is something that Google frowns upon, which will ultimately result in you wasting your money.

SEO costs and budgets can range from tens of thousands of pounds to a couple of hundred, but sometimes it is worth paying that little but extra to get a better level of service.

Submission to Hundreds of Search Engines
When you look at the services that SEO companies offer you, avoid the ones that make a song and dance about submissions to hundreds of search engines.  Why?  The UK search engine market is dominated by Google and even their closest competitors, Bing and Yahoo!, are having to merge in order to compete, so submission to hundreds of irrelevant search engines isn’t likely to improve the traffic to your website.

But I want to be Number 1
In an ideal world, every SEO company would make their clients rank number 1 for every relevant search term.  However, the reality is that this is not always possible and the SEO companies that guarantee a ranking of number 1 in search engines should be approached with some caution.  Which search engine will they get you to number 1 in?  What techniques will they use to get you there? And sometimes they will choose an obscure keyword which has little relevancy to their clients industry in order to fulfil this promise and they may even mean getting you to number in the paid adverts and not the organic searches, which are completely different.

Those with the knowledge of SEO are fully aware of the techniques to rank a website highly in Google, Yahoo and Bing, however sometimes this can take many months, if not years to achieve.  It is dependent on the competitiveness of the market, your budget, how much SEO work your competitors have done and other variants such as these.

Back Links or Bad Links?
Back links make up a very important portion of an SEO campaign.  However, it is quality over quantity that will have the greatest impact on your website and improve your rankings in search engines, therefore those SEO companies that offer thousands of back links could end up to be a fruitless and costly exercise.  A couple of things to be careful of are that if your website goes from having ten back links to hundreds or thousands in a very short period of time, search engines such as Google will deem this to be unnatural and consequently reduce the emphasis that these links would normally have and never go for black hat techniques!

Free Analysis Report
The SEO companies that are confident in their abilities will be more than likely offer you a free analysis report at the initial point of contact.  These usually contain a general overview of your website in regards to its current search engine positions and what can be done to improve this.

These are just some pointers on how to choose the best SEO company for your business.  If you would like to get in contact with us to see what we can do for you, then please do either by phoning us on 01245 608 225 or emailing us using the contact form.

• Search Engine Optimisation Essex
• SEO Chelmsford
• Essex SEO
• SEO Essex

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Optimising a website through the use of black hat techniques is frowned upon by every search engine and most SEO consultants, including ourselves.  Black hat refers to methods which are deceptive and fool search engines into believing a website is more credible than it actually is, and if caught, the punishment can be as severe as being struck off of Google.

But what are these black hat techniques?  Well, they vary and here’s our list of the five more commonly used ones to be careful of…

Hidden Text
Webmasters create a webpage hiding large numbers of keywords in a text layer in front of the background and in the same colour so they cannot be identified by human readers.

Keyword Stuffing
Everybody knows the importance of using keywords to rank anywhere in Google and the volume which it is used in will generally help too.  However, utilising keywords too often and repetitively in the content and Meta tags is something that will get websites penalised.

Cloaking
Search engine bots have difficulty ranking certain assets such as Flash animations, so cloaking was born in an attempt to avoid this.  When a bot crawls a website, a script would display another version of the webpage, one that is search engine optimised and would perform better in the search engines.

Duplicate Content
This is when an article or piece of content is written (probably with a back link to the originating website) and then distributed on numerous websites, blogs and forums.  Search engines are seeking original and unique content.

Spam Blogs
Back links are a fundamental means of increasing a websites ranking in search engines.  One black hat method of increasing this is by creating a number of spam blogs (blogs created with the sole purpose of creating a back link to a website).

There are many other black hat methods that are used to promote a website, but these are amongst the most common.  There is generally never a need to use such techniques as putting time into white-hat SEO methods (the opposite of black-hat) will pay dividends in the end.

• On site SEO
• Search Engine Optimisation Essex
• Black Hat SEO
• White Hat SEO

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The battle of the acronyms and internet marketing.  Each has their advantages and disadvantages, and can be used effectively depending on the desired results.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is tailoring your website so that it ranks highly in the organic search results which are returned when a search is carried out using a search engine.

The main advantages of an SEO campaign are:

• The ROI can be far greater than that of PPC as the initial and ongoing costs are negligible, if any (if done yourself).
• Internet users deem the organic results to be more credible and trustworthy and are therefore more likely to go by these results as opposed to the sponsored ads.
• Organic results work well throughout the consumers buying decision process from initial research through to product or service purchase.
• In less competitive markets, it will be easier to rank highly if the website is optimised correctly.

The main disadvantages of an SEO campaign are:

• It can take over 3 months to recognise the effects of an SEO campaign.
• A website will require ongoing updates to keep the content fresh and search engines happy.
• There are no guarantees as to where a website will rank.

PPC (Pay Per Click) is the paid advertising that you see at the top and right hand side of the pages.

The main advantages of a PPC campaign are:

• Results of a PPC can be seen almost instantly and is therefore good for publicising short term offers.
• You can affectively pay for the position that you want to be in.
• The effects of a PPC can be easily measured.

The main disadvantages of a PPC campaign are:

• The costs of maintaining a PPC campaign can be very expensive, and the more competitive the market, the greater the costs.
• Conversion rates are typically low.  This is due to only 35% of internet users using the PPC ads.
• Your advert will be competing against up to 10 other companies for these few clicks.
• PPC requires extensive keyword research to be carried out.  If you get the wrong keywords, you have wasted time and money.
• Although the search engines are trying to penalise those that do it, you are susceptible to click fraud where competitors click on your ad to increase your ad spend.

In conclusion, there is no black and white answer, it generally depends on your specific circumstances.

SEO works well if you are trying to make a long term online presence for your company, however if you are looking for a short, sharp burst to promote an offer then PPC would work in your benefit.  Budget restrictions are also another key factor to consider, PPC campaigns can be expensive with little return, whereas more often than not an SEO campaign will give a much greater ROI.

Generally, the advice that we would give is to focus primarily on SEO and establish a foot hold in search engines and then work towards a campaign that integrates a bit of both to maximise your presence online.

• SEO
• Search Engine Optimisation
• PPC
• Pay Per Click

Comments

As more and more businesses go online to captivate their target audience, do managers understand that there is a great deal more than just having an online presence?

According to IMRG (membership community for the e-retail industry), online retail sales amounted to £5.46 billion in 2009, which is a 17% year on year increase and this figure is only set to increase further in 2010.  Therefore, having a strong online presence is a must for the vast majority of businesses.  However, it is one thing to have a website, but unless the public are made aware of it, it is unlikely to generate a vast quantity of relevant traffic and is likely to get lost amongst the infinite World Wide Web.

Statistics have proven that 90% of people will locate websites through search engines of which a mere 16% will look beyond page 2 of the results pages.  Therefore search engine optimisation is an absolute must for companies that are seeking to generate sales through their website, but there is even more to it than just ranking on the first two pages of Google, Bing and Yahoo!  The graph below shows the percentage of click through’s a website is likely to get from ranking on the first page of Google.

As you can see, the optimum position to rank for is naturally number 1, but even more surprisingly is the decline in the number of clicks that the latter positions get, and remember this is on page 1 – subsequent pages are even worse!  The only result that gets a higher percentage of click through’s than its predecessor is position 10 – the most likely reason for this is because internet users will take a last look before clicking onto page 2 or entering an alternative search term.

The financial benefit to businesses can be drastic depending on their search engine position.  For example the average sale for company A is £15 per 100 visitors to the website.  For every 1000 searches, if it ranks number 1 the company is set to make approximately £63.20 where as if it ranks in position 5, it is only set to make £7.38.

Remember that these figures are not set in stone, for more or less competitive markets the click through rate will be higher or lower, however it goes to show that it is one thing to have a nice, functioning website but without it ranking highly in the search engines, it is unlikely to make a significant impression.

• SEO
• Search Engine Optimisation

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You can now follow SpeedySEO.com on the social networking websites Facebook and Twitter.  These will be used to communicate search engine optimisation news and information as well as details of the work that we complete for our clients so that you can see what we’re up to!

You can now follow us on Twitter @speedy_seo and become a Fan of ours on Facebook.

• Search Engine Optimisation Essex
• SEO Chelmsford
• Essex SEO
• Search Engine Optimisation Chelmsford

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Our location is ideal for those looking for SEO services in Essex – particularly in Chelmsford, Colchester and Southend. We are based in Moulsham Mill which is in Chelmsford, Essex and has good travel links by road and rail.

For those looking for search engine optimisation in Chelmsford and other nearby towns, our prime location allows for us to make regular face to face contact with you to discuss your SEO campaign.

• Search Engine Optimisation Essex
• Essex SEO
• Chelmsford SEO
• Colchester SEO
• Southend SEO

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