SearchEngineOptimisation.com, only one way up

One of the big ranking influences is site architecture. It’s hidden within your site, lurking, waiting to trip up the little search robots. Usually, reorganisation of site structure is a big part of the early work of any SEO agency on a new client site. For this to be effective, however, the client needs to know what style of architecture they favour.

When resolving the issue of site architecture, the following questions need to be considered:

*What is the current structure? Is it appropriate? These two questions are related. Site owners often cling to existing architecture when a different structure would be more useful from a business point of view. Review the existing structure and analyse its effectiveness from a user point of view.

*What do users favour? The structures of the top-ranking sites for your major keywords should be considered. They can provide some good guidelines.

*What are the sales paths? This is a vital question, but one that can be pushed aside. Conversion paths are often SEO-friendly because they set out a path of information users are looking for. Talk to our experts at SearchEngineOptimisation.co.uk about this.

The issue of site architecture can be a much bigger question than it seems at first. Most site owners are already pretty attached to the way their site’s organised before professional SEO services come into play. Arguments over architecture won’t help your search engine optimisation agency conduct a speedy campaign. Remember that good SEO is as much about usability as it is about search engines.

Building your online business can be a challenge and the first year is always hard work. When setting up a business from scratch you need to be able to invest huge amounts of effort, time and in some cases, money. The whole process of developing a winning online marketing strategy can be exhausting at times. It is therefore no surprise that many website owners feel that once the site and the initial SEO methods have been applied it is time to relax and wait for the returns to come flooding in. However if the push to take the business forward dries up at this point it’s likely that the success of the company will dry up also.

Online business requires you to constantly analyse your target audience until you develop a deep and rounded understanding of their needs, wants and buying patterns. If any area of their behaviour starts to change it can dramatically affect the success of the business. Taking time to actively monitor your audience will pay dividends in the long run. There are many ways you can gather this form of information and an SEO company is often best placed to advise how best to tackle this area.

At the outset of an SEO campaign to establish the business you need to develop communications strategies so that people know who you are and what you do. SEO services can help you to achieve this and stand out from the numerous other online businesses within your market. It is essential to gain the right amount of exposure and seek different strategies for differentiating your site. Without the best SEO strategy for the business your site will go unnoticed and unvisited.

Developing communication channels between a website owner and their potential customers is a crucial part of search engine optimisation. Customers need to be able to make your product relevant to their needs and lifestyles for them to be interested in visiting your site. You have to know what benefits will appeal to them making the content on the site relevant to their needs.

Monitoring competitor behaviour is also important. What your rivals do can also change the landscape of your online market and impact your internet marketing initiatives. To compete successfully keep an eye on what they do and how they approach SEO. Know how the different elements of their online business work and who they are targeting. This will establish you as a worthy rival and ensure that you are always one step ahead rather than scrabbling to react to market changes.

Launching an online business successfully is a massive achievement but it’s only the beginning in a long journey. You will be faced with a multitude of challenges and opportunities and you need to stay on the ball to capitalise upon them effectively. SEO will help you achieve many of your marketing goals. At www.searchengineptimisation.co.uk we can offer a range of SEO services to clients and can help your business develop a winning online marketing strategy.

When an SEO company is called into work on a retail site, several barriers are in the way. The size of the site presents a number of challenges, particularly with content. The traditions of retail present another.

Retailers have long been using manufacturer descriptions to advertise products. It’s a sensible and economical move. The manufacturer has a vested interest in getting their product to sell, and so is well placed to provide the advertising copy. So why bother going to the expense of getting your own unique descriptions?

Unique descriptions are worthwhile for two reasons:

1. The SEO angle. This is the angle that your search engine optimisation agency will push. There is overwhelming evidence that search engines favour unique content. Google’s webmasters have said it several times in very clear terms. The evidence is also clear on the SERPs, and you can discuss this with us at Optimization.co.uk. Having the same content as another retailer puts you in danger of being dropped, which means your product page never sees the light of day.

2. The human angle. In truth, SEO is not the most important reason to write up original descriptions for your products. The human angle is even more important. Internet purchases are made just like any other purchase. Price is important, but they won’t necessarily be the deciding factor. Put yourself in the place of your customers: in a field full of duplicate descriptions, would a different set of words impress? Standing out via your descriptions is a good way to augment your online reputation management.

Even skilled copywriters can have difficulty with tricky keywords. As the way people search becomes more sophisticated, longer search terms are being used. This is both good and bad news for the average site owner. Good news, because it enables more strategic SEO. Bad news, because it requires longer and longer strings of words to be worked into content.

Getting one instance of a keyword into a piece of content isn’t too difficult, but when you’re aiming for two or three instances, things become difficult. Here are three tricks to make it easier.

*Punctuate. A full stop in the middle of a keyword string can be a great way to work an extra instance in. Simply end a sentence halfway through your keyword, and make sure your next sentence naturally begins with the rest. For example, a company’s ‘search engine marketing‘ services keywords can become ‘search engine. Marketing.’

*Mix it up. Trying to wrangle single and plural keywords onto a single page can be impossible. Most attempts result in far too many instances of the keyword to be natural. The answer? Mix things up a bit. Using a plural near the singular form can be a strong enough link for the search engines to pick up on both. Talk to us at SearchEngineOptimisation.co.uk about how to naturally blend keywords into text.

*Use linking words. This is an old and very basic copywriter’s trick. Words like ‘the,’ ‘a,’ ‘an,’ and even ‘you,’ can be slotted inside your keyword string without any damage. This makes lengthy keyword chains easier to deal with.

If you’re lucky, you’ve never had to submit a reconsideration request to Google. This means you’re also unlikely to know what to do if the worst happens. Here are five things to keep in mind for your request:

1. Concentrate on fixing the issue.

Before you do anything, you need to figure out what’s wrong with your site and fix it. Google’s not going to reconsider anything until you’ve made a few steps forward. If you’re unsure, it’s worth getting some professional SEO services on board, and you can talk to us about this at SearchEngineOptimisation.co.uk.

2. Be clear in your statements.

The comments sections of a reconsideration request are there for a reason. Explain exactly what the problem was and how you’ve fixed it. Be specific about the sections that you have fixed, to show that you’ve recognised where the problem areas are.

3. Don’t get defensive.

The reconsideration process comes at a stressful time, so try to stick to the dry facts. This will help you to stay away from the rights and wrongs of the situation.

4. Don’t try to throw your advertising weight around.

Google’s reconsideration team isn’t interested in how much AdWords revenue you pay over. Stick to the important issues and keep your search engine marketing separate.

5. Accept your problems and face them.

Google’s team reports people trying to hide issues when applying for reconsideration. The purpose of a reconsideration request is to show that you’ve acknowledged the problems and have addressed them.

There’s a lot of talk in the SEO industry about the 301 redirect code. This code can come in handy for search engine optimisation, forwarding, as it does, just about all of the link juice from old to new pages. It is not the code to use for every occasion, however. There are times when a 302 redirect is a far more appropriate move.

It was once true that many sites misused redirect codes. This resulted in a tide of advice from the professional SEO services industry advising against 302 codes and pushing the use of 301s. The unfortunate outcome of this is that it may seem, to a newcomer, that 302 codes aren’t useful in SEO.

When a 302 code is appropriate?

There are times when you only want to temporarily redirect your pages, and many of these will come during your initial SEO. For example, when you’re rewriting your content and redesigning your pages, there will be times when you simply don’t want the public to see a page. A 302 temporary redirect is infinitely preferable to a 404: not found response.

It should be noted that there are SEO issues with 302 redirects. Being temporary, this code doesn’t pass on link juice, and you can discuss this with us at SearchEngineOptimisation.co.uk. Also, not every site will be able to make use of codes within the 3xx class. If this is the case with your site, it’s important to talk to your SEO company about your options. That said, the 302 redirect code is a useful stop-gap and shouldn’t be ignored.

Vertical search content is highly sought after by the search engines. The many facets of content over and above the standard webpage type are growing. Vertical channels such as video can be easier to rank for than traditional content when using a particular keyword. If you are still approaching search engine marketing using traditional content alone you may be struggling to get the results you need.

There are many different forms of content you can submit. Here are some to get you going:

1. Gadgets
If you have a quirky gadget that adds value to your audience then get it on there. If you set it up right and promote it well your fans will install it and possibly refer others your way.

2. RSS & FeedBurner
No matter what the content type you can offer your audience a feed. If your site uses one of the mainstream blogging platforms then it’s likely that you have an automatic feed set up. You can then run your working feed through FeedBurner and utilise the information there. The benefits can help you build better relationships with readers.

3. Blog Search
If you don’t use one of the standard blogging platforms then it can be a great benefit to use the Blog Search Pinging Service with Google. This informs Google when you update content and automatically adds it to the list of content to be indexed.

At www.searchengineoptimization.co.uk we offer a wide range of SEO services and can help you maximise your search engine marketing campaigns.

No matter how much your search engine optimisation company might wish it, there are some things about your online presence that can’t be directly used for SEO.  Emails, for example, simply don’t count. Google isn’t going to read your inter-office memos. There are, however, some pieces of content that you can make work directly for your SEO strategy.

The business newsletter has traditionally had limited use. Aside from posting a copy on your website, the average company treats newsletters as disposable content in a way. There are ways to put your newsletter to better use.

*Posting it around the net. There are places where your newsletter content will be welcome. Simply Google your main keywords with the addition of ‘association,’ ‘club’ or ‘group.’ Posting your newsletter on the sites that come up helps with link building with UK and international links, and can add to your online reputation management efforts.

Something to be aware of if pursuing this is the duplicate content issue. It can be a good idea to leave re-posted newsletters off your home site to avoid problems.

*Using it to gather content. Newsletters don’t have to be a one-way communication. Create competitions and comment sections to attract content from your target market. These can then be posted on your site or used in marketing.

It is important to know exactly what you can do to make your non-SEO content work for website optimisation purposes. Talk to our team at SearchEngineOptimisation.co.uk about the content you can repurpose during professional SEO services.

As your search engine optimisation marketing develops and you actively track your rankings you may start to wonder how you can find out which keywords your website ranks for. This may seem like a simple enough area of analysis but in fact identifying the total number of keywords your site ranks for is very complicated and for some an answer will always remain elusive.

There are two great myths that have caused SEO-ers to question their keywords. These are ‘the ranking table’ and ‘Google has the data’.

The Ranking Table

You wouldn’t be alone if you can imagine Google with a massive ranking table. However due to the scope of data required, the speed at which it updates and the distribution of data across huge server farms a master table does not exist.

Google Has All the Data

Ok, you may say, Google might not have a master table but it certainly has all the required data, doesn’t it? Although Google does hold back on some data there are some areas that even they don’t know. There have been startling statistics revealed in the past suggesting that around 25 per cent of Google searches are new. Back in 2007 Udi Manber at Google shocked search marketers everywhere when speaking about this and although Google clarified that this data came from a specific time frame the amount of new enquiries is still significant. As search queries grow longer and searchers use more detailed and natural language the amount of new search terms will grow.

So, finding the total keywords you rank for may be impossible but you can still glean insights from your analytics so don’t get too obsessive about this.

At www.searchengineoptimisation.co.uk we offer a wide range of professional SEO services.

Search engine optimisation is about gradually improving the performance of a site. It is important to recall that performance is best measured in terms of sales rather than rankings. However, it is not enough to merely build up the number of goods or services sold from a site. This is because the sphere of search is somewhere in which the reputation of a company can be easily threatened.

At Searchengineoptimisation.co.uk we can assist in the protection of a site’s reputation. The knowledge we have gathered during the course of diverse campaigns can be used for internet reputation management. It is the case that preparation pays dividends in this complicated area.

Online firms are exposed to a diversity of dangers. Review sites can be places where a business is criticised without regard for fairness. The social media networking sites can swiftly distribute unpleasant stories about a company around large audiences. Furthermore, the search engine results pages can be colonised by negative blog posts with regard to a firm’s activities.

Preparation can limit the influence of any bad news in the world of search. If the right steps are taken, parts of the target audience which would otherwise be affected by unfair comments about the company will be less inclined to take the criticism seriously. A proper complaints procedure can be used to address the genuine concerns customers may occasionally experience.

In the event of a poor review, a measured response is required. Factual errors in the review may be pointed out, but a calm and courteous reply is essential.