SearchEngineOptimisation.com, only one way up

E-commerce sites can have a hard time with search engine optimisation. Not only are e-commerce sites more difficult to optimise, they have pages that can be hard to boost organically. A search engine optimisation company will have a few tricks up its sleeve, but site owners going it alone can find the going difficult. Luckily, there are things that are easy to do to boost those tricky e-commerce pages.

*Entertain them. One of the problems with e-commerce pages is that they tend to be very marketing-focussed. This is fine for internet users looking to buy products, but not so fine for site owners looking for interesting things to link to. Give potential linkers something to use by posting demonstration videos or reviews.

*Give them extras. A resource a lot of e-commerce site owners ignore is the products themselves. When customers are looking for products, they’re likely to be interested in extra information. Offer a how-to PDF.

*Hold a competition. This is a classic marketing tactic, and it works well for quick one way link building. Stick a competition on your main product [...] Continue Reading…

Search engine marketing companies frequently talk about the value of search engine traffic, but they rarely talk about traffic in general. Your site doesn’t survive just on traffic from the search engines. There are many paths to any website, and all the traffic that flows along them counts toward the site’s rankings.

Traffic is, essentially, a sign of popularity. While the search engines are interested in the popularity of a page within the search results, they also look at the general attractiveness of the site. This means that all of your traffic sources are valuable for your SEO.

Your site’s traffic is made up of a number of sources:
*Direct traffic – this is the kind of traffic that sites used to live off in the old days, attracted by direct advertising. Few businesses can rely on these loyal customers.
*Link traffic – link traffic is a handy side-benefit of link building.
*Industry traffic – this traffic is brought in by talk of your business around your industry.
*Social traffic – any social media connection coming to your site forms a part of this section [...] Continue Reading…

No matter how slick your ongoing SEO plan is, there’s guaranteed to be little areas that you’ve missed. It’s important every so often to revisit those areas of optimisation that are commonly overlooked. Things like canonicalising business information and straightening up content schedules are annoying chores, but they’re on every SEO maintenance list for a reason.

*Online profiles: Make sure these contain the same information across the board. It’s much easier for your target internet users to find you if your user name is the same on every social site, and your directory listings don’t have old URLs. This will also help your website optimization in terms of building your reputation across the net.

*Content plan: If you’re not already planning your content, you should be. Content plans have been a regular part of SEO for years, but these days they’re even more essential. It’s not sufficient any more to just slap something together every week or so.

Your content plan doesn’t necessarily have to set out the title of every piece you plan to run, but it is a good idea [...] Continue Reading…

Social media is big. Every search engine optimisation agency will agree on that. What SEOs can’t agree on is just how site owners should participate. Some experts will tell you to concentrate on one main social media profile. Others will tell you that you can only succeed if you participate on multiple networks. With a major time investment at stake, it’s incredibly frustrating to have so many differing opinions on the line.

As with anything, there are pros and cons to each side of the argument. Social media networks tend to feed off each other at some level, so site owners investing time in multiple networks will have an easier time getting their name known. On the other hand, social media networks are notoriously difficult to get into in the early stages, so a big investment is needed. Another problem is that competition for attention is high. But on the other hand, the rewards can be big once a site owner is established…

The list of positives and negatives could go on forever. While it is important to have a social [...] Continue Reading…

The ideal retail site would be magnetic. Customers wouldn’t be able to keep themselves from endlessly wandering the virtual shelves, adding products to their baskets. This may not be a possibility in reality, but making your retail site more magnetic isn’t that difficult. What’s more, it can help your website optimisation.

The maze effect

Creating maze-like navigation for retail sites is a tried-and-true method for keeping users stuck to the site. The idea is to take customers through as many pages as possible, providing maximum exposure for products along the conversion path. Unfortunately, this method has some drawbacks when it comes to SEO and marketing.

Search engines don’t tend to like maze-like site navigation. You can talk about navigation and search engine optimization services with us at SearchEngineOptimisation.co.uk. This kind of navigation scheme is also ineffective for sharing rankings power across a site. The SEO complications of site mazes led to the development of a much more enticing method of keeping customers browsing.

The Siren technique

The Siren technique uses the customer’s existing preferences to tempt them further into the site. This is achieved [...] Continue Reading…

Everyone’s always looking for a way to turn content into links. In the SEO world, it’s like the alchemical recipe for gold. Luckily, turning the content of your pages into valuable links in your profile is much simpler than metal transmutation.

There are many methods for making pages more link-worthy. Some of them require more thought or investment than others, and you can talk to us at www.SearchEngineOptimisation.co.uk about your options. You can try embedding a piece of software or adding an e-book to your pages. Or, you could simply place an infographic next to your text.

Consider the infographic. It’s about as simple an image as you can get on the internet. Some content producers spruce theirs up, it’s true, but the simple lines of traditional infographics work just as well. Yet, somehow, they seem to capture the imagination. Just look up any slightly technical topic on Google Images and you’ll see how popular this device is.

Adding an infographic to a piece of content is a good way to attract your target users’ attention, help you get noticed in Google [...] Continue Reading…

Any your search engine optimisation company will advise that good content is a way to get ahead in today’s internet. The search engines have been pushing for better and better content over the years, as have internet users. In order to impress the search engines – and your site’s users – you need to find ways to make your content shine out from the rest.

It’s not easy to be witty and original all the time. For those days you can’t dredge up some sparkling commentary, here are some easier ways to make your content stand out:

*Subheadings, bullet points, numbers and other block-busters. Every SEO company uses these in content to create flow and catch the user’s eye. They’re worth a mention here, though, because they really do work. Just be sure to vary your use of them to avoid monotony.

*Images. Images are underrated by site owners and even by many SEOs. It’s amazing how an image can make a relatively ordinary piece of text stand out. You can make further use of your images by optimising them for Google [...] Continue Reading…

There was a time when Wikipedia pages were seen as a useful tool for SEO. They fit in nicely with link building strategies, and they were great for search engine reputation management as well. While there is still a search engine optimization company or two that will include Wikipedia in their clients’ online plan, the general consensus is that Wikipedia’s usefulness is a thing of the past.

The reason for this is wrapped up in practicalities. In years gone by, it was thought that Wikipedia helped boost a site’s profile with links and attention, and you can find out more about the implications of this with us at SearchEngineOptimization.co.uk. When it became clear that was no link joy in SEO terms, those that favoured the Wiki route concentrated on the reputation benefits.

These days, the scales are tipped even further against using Wikipedia as an SEO tactic. Some SEOs feel that there’s too much risk involved, reputation-wise. Wikipedia entries tend to zoom to the top of the rankings for brand keywords, but the open-source editing system of the site means such [...] Continue Reading…

Many SEO experts sing the praises of .edu links. These links, coming from academic institutions, tend to carry a fair amount of weight with the search engines because, presumably, they can’t be bought. If you’re engaging in a high quality link building campaign, it’s likely your SEO agency has advised you to pursue these links if you can. The trouble is, they’re incredibly hard to get.

Being links from educational organisations, .edu links are different from other forms of links. It’s difficult to organise some sort of exchange with the sites involved, because generally you don’t have anything that they want. ‘Generally’ is the word here. The trick is to find something that they do want. There are two common ways to get in:

*Fundraising. Every educational institution is interested in fundraising, or has student organisations that are. Offering up products and services for a fundraising effort can usually get you a link. Just investigate the causes your targets have going.

*Students. The student body of any school or university is a wide-open gateway for link building. Universities, in particular, usually allow [...] Continue Reading…

It takes more than technical SEO these days to get to top spots in the SERPs. Particularly if you’re in a high-competition industry, you need to work every angle you can get. Luckily, with social media hotting up like never before, there are plenty of angles to work. If you want an effective campaign, you need to know how to engage with the social media to build up your site’s authority.

Social media services are a common addition to organic search engine optimization as they can build links and make contacts. The most important thing that social media brings to the table, however, is the building of a site’s authority. As any search engine optimization company will tell you, it’s not as simple as joining a social media network. You have to fully engage:

*Create. This is likely to be a part of social media you’re already engaged with. Content creation is a major part of any SEO campaign, and you can discuss this with our team at SearchEngineOptimisation.co.uk.

*Chat. Just as important is the contribution of chatter. Social media users love [...] Continue Reading…