Blogs - Your SEO Consultanthttp://devsite3.e-flo.info/blogen-gbsingle-blog.aspx?id=364If you're still wondering how a lot of this SEO malarky works, then you're not alone.  Despite the fact that search is now a well-entrenched aspect of our daily lives, a great many business owners are still to become educated in this seemingly dark art.  In our opinion, that's fine - after all, you've got your own business to run - do you really want to have a hand in every aspect of your marketing operations? In this month's DIY SEO Tip, we wanted to bring your attention to the importance of building links to your site.  Google, Yahoo!, and Bing, to name but a few search engines, all hold importance in the number of links that a site acquires from other sites.  Each time a webmaster sees fit to link to your site from theirs, you can consider it a vote of your importance and authority on a given topic (typically indicated by the keywords resident on the page that links to you).Companies can pay a great deal to have an agency build links for them, but what options and quick wins are available to the frugal business owner.  Well, you could start with one very simple and easy to implement strategy...... Ask your friends!  How many people do you know, who have their own website, Blog or social media profile?  Whilst they may not write a huge amount of content on the subject of animal hypnotherapy (if that's your business), you can usually illicit some value from their site, and a link thereon. Here are some important factors to consider: Choose a page which uses related keywords and phrases associated with the topic you wish to be found for.  relevance between the linking page, and the destination page on your site, is of utmost importance to the engines. Choose your most popular friends first!  If they have a healthy following, and a healthy link popularity themselves, they'll add more benefit to you. Use anchor text on the link, to tell search engines exactly which keyword(s) are associated with the link.  Never use link text like "Click here" or "Read more", as they're simply not relevant, and hence will not add as much value. Look out for Spam.  Many search engines apply a Trustrank score to sites, based on their own link popularity and the quality of the links they possess.  There are a number of websites that will help you assess the Trustrank of sites you're thinking about linking from. In short, not all links are built the same.  Choose your friends carefully, and set yourself on the right link-building path today!single-blog.aspx?id=360Now us guys have got a bit of a reputation for refusing assistance when it comes to seeking directions, but when it comes to the internet, you should have no excuses when it comes to directing search engines to your website.  And just like a real world car journey, the best way to show Google and Co. the way is with a map.  Sitemaps are the easy way to show search engines where all the pages of your site are located, allowing them to access, and index, all your content from one handy page.  Here are some of the benefits:  Your website gains easier navigation and better visibility from search engines. You get the opportunity to have your content changes indexed faster. Through the sitemap you basically inform search engines immediately about any changes on your site. A Sitemap gives you more freedom regarding your relation to external links, which usually have the role of bringing search engines to your site. It can be of help with accidentally broken internal links or orphaned pages that cannot be reached in other ways. It is of high importance for new sites to have a Sitemap: it speeds the process of indexing pages. It is of great help in classifying your site content better. Although it does not mean the search engines will necessarily classify a page as belonging to a particular category or as matching a particular keyword only because of your sitemap, there is an increased likelihood that they would.  There are plenty of sites out there, designed to help you create a simple sitemap in XML and HTML format (both preferred by search engines), and it’s as simple as uploading the file to the root directory of your site (e.g. http://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml).  A really simple and easy-to-use tool can be found at http://www.xml-sitemaps.com and the whole process should take no longer than 5 minutes. You can go a step further, and use Google’s Webmaster Tools to tell Google where your sitemap is located.  Even without this step, however, all the major search engines should be indexing more pages in no time, and as you should have discovered by now … more content = more traffic = more business for you!single-blog.aspx?id=359With the recent rollout of Google's Panda/Farmer algorithm changes, Your SEO Consultant decided to look into the most important factors for business owners and webmasters, to put into plain English the implications of these sweeping changes to the ranking system.  Summarised below is what we've gleaned from our tests: Domain names are now considered even more important in terms of keyword placement.  If your domain contains keywords relevant to your business, products and services, you'll be in good shape.  If not, perhaps it's time to consider some mirror sites, that make use of keyword targeted names; and which can drive more referral traffic to your main site. .com extensions have seemingly been given higher priority in the United States, making it even more important to use localised domain extensions.  Since the advent of Google Places, it has been even more imperative to have a .co.uk extansion for a UK business, for example, and Panda provides another reason to do so.  For globalised or "glocal" companies, you may find that your chances of attracting traffic and business from the US has increased.  Happy days! There has been a perhaps-overstated crackdown on "Content Farms" and “Scraper” sites; those widely defined as not having original content but instead pulling content in from other sources. Some do this through legitimate means, such as using RSS files with permission.  If you have used an SEO company or outsourced organisation to build backlinks for your site, you may have seen a drop in the number of backlinks credited to you.  This is an indicator that your chosen resource has used a scraper site or content/link farm. The real impact is  still being assessed, and the sweeping and widespread changes in ranking have yet to be reported.  One thing's for sure; every business should be aware of the methods by which their chosen SEO partners are creating links and promotional content, so as to ensure the greatest possible benefit for their efforts, and your money! single-blog.aspx?id=358You wouldn't embark on any marketing campaign without first conducting some basic market research; and SEO should be no different.  The tools are out there, to assist you in proving the demand for your products and services, before you need to invest any time or money.  When it comes to market share in the search engines stakes, Google still reigns supreme, and they happily share details of keyword demand with any and all their potential customers.  Check out the Google Keyword Research Tool, and do some basic searches, for terms which loosely describe what you're offering.  The tool will suggest some in-demand search terms, for you to optimise your content for.  Here's what to look for: Relevance - First things first; make sure that the terms you're considering are highly-relevant to your offering.  Also consider the likely proximity to a purchase decision the prospect might be, based on their terminology. Demand - Ensure there are a good, healthy number of daily searches for your chosen terms.  Balance this with relevance, as more-generic terms will often receive a relatively large number of searches in comparison to more-targeted keywords.  Competition - Ensure that the number of competing pages (those which are optimised towards the chosen term) is kept as low as possible.  Your chances of ranking for highly-competitive terms could well make for a lengthy and expensive campaign, resulting in poor ROI in the short-to-medium term. Whatever your line of business, there are usually a good many high-value keywords still being overlooked by the competition.  Invest some time in getting this first, basic step right, and you could reap the rewards in next to no time.single-blog.aspx?id=357We've all, it would seem, had some exposure to the varying messages about what makes for a successful SEO campaign.  The less-informed would cite traffic as the goal.  The slightly more savvy would look at "stickiness" metrics, such as bounce rate, average page views per visit, and overall time on site.  But let's face it; there's only one reason why anyone embarks on any marketing journey ... conversions. For many; especially those with an ecommerce site, this is a very simple process.  Search traffic that results in a sale means success for your search efforts.  The next step would be to repeat, and expand the search terms for which you're attracting traffic (that then converts, too). But if you already enjoy a healthy number of visitors to your site, coming from search engines, how can you improve the proportion that make a purchase.  The answer is "Conversion Rate Optimisation".   The practice is simple; offer your visitors a number of differing versions of your pages, and test them to see which converts best.  You'll need some web design and development help, but the results have the potential to transform your bottom line, and make your website a far-more effective marketing tool.  Here are some things you can work on, to improve your chances of converting visitors into customers: Headlines and sub-headers (content and placement) Page layout and design Placement, colour and content of Calls to Action Contact details Testimonials and Case Studies Special Offers Form design and layout Google offers its Conversion Optimizer to Adwords customers, and acts as a good guide on how to improve your end-to-end offering.  The important thing is to continually improve your chances of making a sale.  Review the tips above, and see the effects it can make to your online success.single-blog.aspx?id=356Your SEO Consultant Founder, Matt Hodkinson, appeared on the Business section of BBC Breakfast this morning, to offer his views on Google Instant, and the impact this functionality will have on search optimisation.  The overriding message seems to be that small businesses should take note!  See the interview here: single-blog.aspx?id=355When performing a full SEO audit of your small business website, you'll want to ensure that you give the search engines as much chance as possible, of finding and indexing all of the pages on your site.  There are 2 files that you should think about histing, on your site, in order to "tell" the search engines where your pages are located. In the fifth and final video in our series "DIY SEO for Small Business", we look out how you can quickly and easily create a robots.txt file, and a simple sitemap, to do just this. single-blog.aspx?id=354OK, so there was a bit of a gap between videos 3 and 4, but here it is!  The fourth in our series of videos, helping Small Business Owners to do their own SEO, focuses on Google Webmaster Tools, and how you can use this free tool to assess your website's chances of ranking in Google, as well as the other crawler-based search engines. I promise not to leave it so long next time.  Enjoy!single-blog.aspx?id=353In the third of our series of video's helping Small Business owners to do their own basic SEO, we cover the subject of page optimisation.  There are a few simple changes you can make TODAY, that will have far-reaching ramifications for your ability to attract more, targeted visitors to your website, and to get them converting! Any questions?  Add you comments below, and we'll do our best to respond.  Let's make promoting your business as easy as possible.single-blog.aspx?id=352This is the equivalent of researching your market online.  Think you know what your customers are typing into the search engines in order to find your products and services?  You might be surprised!  Either way, why not take 5 minutes out of your busy schedule, to find out how to do your own Keyword Research?  You might just some popular, non-competitive terms, that you can use to bring targeted, pre-qualified visitors to your site. single-blog.aspx?id=351This is the Slideshow presentation of our first DIY SEO Guide for Small Businesses.  We'll be providing more information about this at the Ricmond Expo, where we'll be exhibiting on this coming Tuesday, 2nd March.  Come and see us at Stand 17, for some fun and games, and the chance to win some great prizes and discounts off your next SEO campaign. How Search Engines Work View more presentations from Your SEO Consultant. We'll be posting the next 4 guides in the coming weeks, so check back here for more tips and tricks to get your business more success online. single-blog.aspx?id=350I recently involved myself on a discussion with some like-minded (and not-so-like-minded) Online Marketing exponents on Linkedin, when the question was raised "Is there a need for SEO, now that Social Media has arrived".  I took the stance that Social Media allows the potential to create an online presence, without the need for your own business website, and in that respect, SEO is less important than it once was (shooting oneself in the foot?). It got me thinking, though, about how I utilise Social Media for my own business gains.  A look at my Analytics shows that traffic from referring sites; mostly Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook, Ecademy and The Best of Richmond, comprises more than 50% of non-direct traffic.  That's great in itself, but there's more to consider.  It's fair to assume that only a fraction of people who view your Social Profiles and Pages will click through to your website.  Therefore, in the case of my own online presence, there are a great deal more people finding out about me from the Social Networks than my own Website!  You could argue that this behaviour comes from the position of my being an SEO Consultant, residing in a super-competitive Search environment.  Whilst that's a factor, I'm sure, there is evidently a great deal of promise in Social Media as a Business generation toolset. Social networks allow you to be more targeted about who you connect with; your ideal clients and partners can be found with relative ease, and providing you're willing to nurture the relationship, your efforts should be rewarded with paid work.  Treat your online networking in the same way as you do your real-world networking, and you can't go far wrong, whatever your chosen industry. What have been your own experiences of Social Media for generating new business?single-blog.aspx?id=349We've been toying around with Animoto for a few days now, and finally got around to pulling together a short promotional video for our work in harnessing Social Media for our Clients.  The results for less than 15 minutes work are really very impressive. For those who haven't crossed paths with Animoto, the benefits are in the technology.  You simply upload a number of images or short video clips, intersperse with some textual snippets, and let their rendering engine do the rest!  With web video helping to raise conversion rates for online businesses, this service could be an invaluable tool.  The devil is in the detail, and you'll want to get some good stock photo's or personalised shots first.  Talk to our friend, John Frye for some really professional-looking portraits, then get your Animoto account and start making professional-looking videos in minutes. For something even more professional looking, contact us, or visit our friends at Media Wisdom. And after all that, talk to us about getting more eyes on your promotional videos.single-blog.aspx?id=348With the new year comes another new addition to the Google Search Engine Ranking Pages.  Freshness has been a focus of Google's for some time now, with results deserving freshness being given a certain level of prominence, some times in preference to long-established, but less recent pages. After partnering with a number of Social Media and newsfeed sites, including Facebook, Twitter, Jaiku, MySpace, Friendfeed and Identi.ca, Google has added a scrollable box, part way down the first page, showing related "real time" posts and content.  Here's how it looks, headed "Latest results for snow day" with keyword shown bold: Our opinion is that the ramifications are 2-fold.  Firstly, the organic results in positions 4+ are likely to get pushed further from the searcher's eye.  We already knew that position #1 was important; now even more so! Secondly, it re-emphasises the importance that is being placed on Social Media for the most up-to-date and still-relevant content on the web.  Businesses that want to improve their brand exposure, whilst expanding their reach at the same time, are increasingly turning to Facebook, Twitter, and the Social Network sites, such as Linkedin, Plaxo and Ecademy.  Perhaps the day is not far away, when owning your own domain and website is nothing more than a needless expense.single-blog.aspx?id=347Yesterday, Hitwise tweeted the news that Facebook took Number 1 spot as the US's top-visited site for 2 days over Christmas.  This is the first time Facebook has ever been the #1 visited site in the US, and it overtook Google.com (web search only) on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, taking more than a 7.5% market share on both occasions. The news comes just days after Facebook hit the headlines in the UK, for helping the mosh-pit favourite "Killing in the name" by Rage Against the Machine, to hold off this year's X-Factor winner, for the #1 spot in the UK Singles Chart.  A campaign, centering around a Group set up on Facebook that became viral to an unexpected and unprecedented scale, was set up in an effort to upset the formbook for the first time in 4 years of X-Factor Dominance. The success that followed allegedly resulted in a job offer for the Group Organisers by none other than Simon Cowell himself, and it should be noted, also raised in the region of £100k for homeless charity "Shelter". Facebook and Twitter are now surely battling it out to be the outright King of Social Media sites, and more so a tool for business to showcase their talents.  Through the use of Fan Pages, Events promotion and one of the most-targeted advertising systems on the web, can any business afford to ignore Facebook when it comes to Social Media Marketing?single-blog.aspx?id=346A couple of weeks back, yours truly and the rest of Richmond's greatest BNI Chapter brought panto to breakfast networking, and made the baffling decision to capture it all on video.  What follows is the first draft of our entry into the BNI "YouTweet" Challenge: Please give our entry your honest rating (or if it's below 5 stars, then feel free to be as dishonest as you like!).  If you're mad enough to want to join us for breakfast, and grab a share of the business referrals we pass to each other every Tuesday morning, then please get in touch. From Your SEO Consultant, have a very Merry Christmas!single-blog.aspx?id=345Much has been made, in recent days, of Google's personlized search, and what it means for SEO experts and their Business Owner clients alike.  Firstly, for those to whom this is new information, Google has recently rolled out functionality to allow users more relevance and accuracy between the searches they make and the listings they see in the SERP's (Search Engine Results/Rankings Pages).  Here's a short video on how it works: Not only has Google enabled this for used who are "logged in" to their Google account, but also to those not logged in, via cookie storage and web history logs that can go back as far as 9 months.  Some see this as a massive invasion of privacy, whereas Google insist it is a measure meant to improve their offering, and the experience of its myryad users. Regardless of your opinion on the methods, Personalized Search is seemingly here to stay.  So with so many users getting personalized results, how, as an SEO, do you target the top positions for your clients?  The top positions, after all, could be different for everyone! The general concensus is that there's little to be concerned about.  Relevance in search, along with well-formed page content and descriptions, will encourage clickthroughs from the SERP's, and ensure top positioning DUE TO personalized search!  What seemed like a challenge just moments ago now seems like one to be relished.  Regardless of what Google does to enhance/degrade their products, a good SEO will move with the times, and make the best of the opportunities that present themselves for their clients.single-blog.aspx?id=344The world of advertising has seen a massive shift in direction over the past few years, and not only in the UK. Across the World, TV channels have struggled to keep their hold on the big money as their target market move to the web for everything from shopping and news, to movies and streaming television programming. Contextual advertising was perhaps the first advent in the online World to herald accessibility both on the part of publishers and advertisers, to a massive and highly-targeted market. All of a sudden, Webmasters and Bloggers could get financially rewarded for providing great content. So when Twitter took the internet by storm after its 2006 launch, heads were scratched over ways to monetize what was to become an almost-overnight phenomenon. Affiliate marketers and the like were inevitably quick to spam their followers with product recommendations and reviews, in the hope of boosting their Clickbank balances, and then Ad.ly hit the scene earlier this year, with a rather novel spin on how to cash in on Twitter's success. Ashton Kutcher had long-since been hailed as the first Twitterer to reach a million followers, in April 2009, and many Celebs (both real-world and online “names”) were racking up a healthy following. So with each of these celebs attracting their own special kind of demographic, and with many followers eager to know what their idols had to say on everything from Demi Moore's bedroom attire to what's happening on the set of the latest Harry Potter movie, Ad.ly saw an opportunity to “employ” Twitter's most popular commentators to sell their Client's brand. Here's how it works: You're the CEO of a drinks company, and you want to have the hip young kids buying your product. Choose an Ad.ly publisher that fits the bill, in terms of follower numbers and market appeal, and pay them to tell their followers about your product. It's concept that has had a few months to bed in as I write this, and judging by the increase in Celebrity costs, it seems to have been a great success. Not only that, if you consider yourself a Twitterer of note, you can join the Ad.ly network too, and share in the revenue. You choose your own price, and the advertisers select you. Now there's some incentive to get more followers. Time will tell whether the Advertisers are getting their rewards, as Twitter gets older, and the number of lapsed followers will inevitably increase. For the time-being, though, there are opportunities to be had in the monetized World of Twitter.single-blog.aspx?id=343When I look at how the list of services we provide at Your SEO Consultant has changed in the past year, and how client demand has changed, too, it's hard to look past Link Building as the single area or service for which attitudes have changed for the better. When I tell Clients that the best way to get other quality sites linking to their own is to create great quality content, it almost seems a little too simplistic (and also like a bit of a cop-out on my part!). The truth is though, that when we consider how a lot of SEO and Online Marketing “Experts” were using every underhand trick in the book to gain links for their Clients, the recommended alternative has a comparable air of authenticity and good old white hat'edness! Google and the rest are now so good at matching relevance, and assessing trust in linking sites, that black hat no longer exists in the “Real World” of SEO. It should come as no surprise that the virtuous find their rewards in rankings! So how can you do your bit for your own site, and “cause” links with great link bait? Here are a few tips for what rings bells with the online community: The most important tip of all; Get into your target market's mindset. Ask your existing clients what information or tools would help them, that relate to your services or products. Give them what they want – Author a free whitepaper or report, hosted on your site. If you're not a writer, then you will find some excellent copywriters on the web, such as on Elance or Guru.com. Develop a tool or calculator, perhaps in Widget form, that can be hosted on other sites, and which link to your own. Look at what others are doing, and put your own spin on it. There are very few truly original ideas out there, so why re-invent the wheel. Going forward, our own strategy towards link building will no doubt change just as much, year on year, as it has in the past. For the time-being, though, we will continue to advocate the use of the very latest Social Media tools, putting your site content in front of people, not robots, and letting them decide for themselves whether you are worthy of their backlink gold!single-blog.aspx?id=342For those who don't have an e-commerce site, but still wish to track the success of their site in converting, or holding on to visitors, Google has released a couple of useful Goal "Types".  Historically, the only option for Goals was to declare a target or destination URL (usually the "Thank You", post-purchase page), but we now have the option of measuring the success of a visit, based on time spent on-site, or number of pages visited.   You still have the option to assign a monetary value to each goal.  The video below does a pretty good job of explaining how to use the new features:     Leave your comments, and let us know how you're getting on with Google Analytics.  Does it still prove to be the best option for small to medium-sized businesses, as well as the "Bloggerati"?single-blog.aspx?id=341 Many Business Owners come to me with aspirations of higher traffic levels for their website. It seems to be that the importance of high search engine placement, and enjoying improved numbers of daily visitors, is finally hitting home with those wishing to grow their business beyond their current position.But does more traffic equal more sales? Well, the simple answer is ... Sometimes! The fact is that there are a number of other, often overlooked factors, driving the success of your online targets and goalsRead more ... Search Engine Placement is just the beginning