Keyword Stuffing

A huge mistake made by marketers, business owners and bloggers every day is the practice of stuffing irrelevant keywords (keyword stuffing) into web pages and articles in an attempt to dominate Google search for particular search terms.

You need to know that Google’ has grown very wise to this practice, and as soon as they consider that you have undertaken any form of keyword stuffing you will get a Google ranking penalty and in severe case be delisted from their index (i.e. no-one will be able to find you from a Google search).

Avoid keyword stuffing at all costs, and only include the major keywords that will assist your pages in being indexed properly by ALL search engines.

For an example of an overstuffed web page, take a look at this >> keyword stuffing.

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So what does Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) give you?

SEO utilises modern search engines (such as Google, Yahoo!, and Bing etc) to increase the visibility of your website or individual web page which in turn ensures that your potential customers find your website rather than your competitors when they are searching for a solution you provide.

Typically a SEO professional will handle and provide on website design, content marketing and website optimisation tactics - all designed to provide the search engine visibility that you need.

Bottom line with search results is that the higher your site appears in the search results, the more people will come and see your site, the more visitors you get, the more customers you will get.

KEY BENEFITS OF MY SEO SERVICES IN YORKSHIRE

• Expert advice on how to achieve desired results
• Drives high-quality, profitable traffic to your website or individual web pages
• Gives your business long-term visibility, never short term hope.
• Introduces your brand to a much wider audience
• Increases traffic to your website
• Provides a cost-effective method of reaching your target market
• Establishes trust and credibility in the marketplace

Contact me for further details.

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Don’t forget your keywords in your Social Media

Most webmasters and (hopefully) all internet marketers know the importance of properly understanding keywords for website ranking, but that nugget of knowledge seems to be forgotten when thinking about and posting on social media channels.

But the keywords are king rule is as equally important in social media, and this is why.

At the moment Google views everything online as if it was a website – in fact in essence that’s all your social channels are.

Take your Twitter account for example – it’s just a page (albeit a long one) of content, same for your Google+, LinkedIn, YouTube and Pinterest accounts etc.

So if Google does see your social streams as a web page element, doesn't it make sense that these also contain your best keywords - just as your web pages do!

So when you post, think carefully about what you want to say and craft them carefully to get your valuable keywords in.

This will ensure that in search these could be more easily picked up by search engines, but also your brilliantly crafted accounts start to show your authority, which will be passed to your website and web pages when you link back to them.

AND like your web pages, please don’t add posts purely to spam your keywords, Google is wise to this trick just as it is with websites and it could lead to a social penalty!

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3 minutes to a better website

There are a couple of things that websites MUST DO.

1. Visitors MUST be able to understand instantly what products/services you provide. 
2. Visitors MUST be able to find products or services to buy from you. 
3. Visitors MUST be able to understand your value proposition 

MINUTE 1:

Choose a close friend; choose someone who isn't close to your business.
Get them to look at your website and get them to write down what product/service they think you provide.
They have 1 minute to complete this task.

MINUTE 2:

Choose another friend; again, someone who isn’t close to your business.
Give them 4-5 products of yours to find and see if they can easily find them on your website.
They have 1 minute to complete this task.

MINUTE 3:

This is about your Value Proposition.

A Value Proposition helps you to connect to your customers; it says to them ‘we know you’, ‘we know what you’re looking for’. It’s the value proposition that makes them love you and your products. A good value proposition explains how you can solve your prospects problems, it tells your prospects why they should buy from you.

Choose yet another friend; again, someone who isn’t close to your business.
Get them to look at your website and get them to write down 3-4 reasons why they think they should buy from you.
They have 1 minute to complete this task.

You're done!

OK, that’s your 3 minutes. Take a look at the results and see if it tells you anything.

• Is your offering obvious?
• Can people find your products/services easily?
• Are reasons obvious as to why visitors should buy from you? 

The answers to these questions should help you to amend your website to make it more relevant to your visitors.

Good luck

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Old skool SEO still works

Matt Cutts and the team at Google have had a lot of press lately about how SEO should be done; a lot of people took some of Matts comments the wrong way and seemed to suddenly stop wanting to do any old school SEO in fear that Google would find out and deindex their website or pages.

Matt was only really repeating what he has basically said from day one, and that is that you can do pretty much anything that is ethical to help promote your website, but just don’t be spammy about it. Rule number one always has been and always will be – think about your market first and ranking second.

So what “old school” SEO still works?

The truth is that pretty much everything!

Guest blogging

Ok, this was the recent big topic that started to get webmasters a bit jittery, you can still be a guest blogger for someone else, there are just some very simple ‘do’s’ and ‘don’ts’ that you need to follow.

Do guess blogging as it can drive targeted visitors to your own site. Always add value to the blog that you are writing for – consider their audience AND yours. Consider creating a separate landing page for this guest blog post that adds value to the post.

Don’t use the same article that you have used elsewhere, this simply doesn't work. If you like the theme of a previous article you have written then consider a heavy rewrite of it. Don’t write a heavily weighted keyword article. Neither should you expect a link to your website, if this is your only motivation then don’t guest blog.

Forum backlinks

Do try to get links back from forums – there still is SEO value in doing this, but ensure that the forum is highly relevant to the pages that you want to link to. As with guest blogging consider creating a landing page that provides additional value to the forum comment you post – give the readers a real reason to click on your link.

Don’t create lots of spammy low value comments on Forums with a link back to your site, and don’t put your keywords in the Name field, and NEVER use automatic blogging software – that is so 1990’s and it will get you a Google penalty.

Directories

Do continue to use directory sites, but ensure that you are listing your website in a high quality directory that is likely to delivery good quality traffic to your site. Look for Directories that have strict submission guidelines. If you are a local business then local business directories can work well.

Don’t bulk submit your details to every directory that you can find, and NEVER use automated listing software.

Your own link pages

Do have quality outbound links to relevant websites, use pages that are highly themed and only consider links that are relevant to your audience.

Don’t have pages full of random outbound links, Google know that this type of activity is usually from link exchange programs and it could get you a penalty.

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SEO benefits of Social Media

Most businesses now recognise the fact that social media doesn't necessarily directly lead to a sale, but I know for a fact that it can help that sales process; instead most big businesses now look at social media as having SEO benefits and allowing their website and webpages to gain better rankings than their competitions, but how!

Let’s take a quick look at the benefits that social media could bring your to your SEO.

Social Media in general:

There are a couple of linked reasons why we would want to use social networks in the first place.

1. It allows people to share your information and links with their Friends and Followers 
2. It allows a greater chance for more people to see your brand and your products 
3. You get a spread of profiles and individuals that link back to your site 

Google+:

Specifically Google+ looks good because of the obvious tight integration with Google Search; this benefits you because Google has a good chance of knowing a little about everyone that use its services.

It knows for example if individuals are interested in or an expert in ‘home decor’ or ‘flooring’ because of their Google+ profiles and/or their search patterns and/or their Gmail topics etc – now if you sell flooring and one of these individuals shares or +1’s some of your content (image/URL etc) then Google will naturally believe that your site or specific page is more important than a competitors that hasn't been shared by these interested parties.

Social sites as information hubs:

We also look at social media sites now as information hubs (a bit like mini websites).

If we take the above example about a flooring business and they focus on posting good content about flooring then Google will understand that their Blog, Google+, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Pinterest account is about ‘flooring’; and as such any links from it back to that site will generate a little more link juice.

The future of SEO and Social Media:

We (the SEO community) also don’t yet fully understand how Google looks at social engagement (individuals sharing social content), but whether it happens now or in the future, if individuals engage with your social content and brand then it can only benefit ranking.

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SEO techniques you should NEVER try

We all make mistakes, but if you end up making a mistake of your SEO then it could really start to ruin your business.
Many businesses, including some top international companies, have fallen foul of Google Webmaster Guidelines and have been penalised by being removed from Google index.

Google has developed sophisticated algorithms to look out for websites and website owners that look like they are attempting game or beat Google at their own game. You can’t win.

Here are a couple of tips to ensure that it doesn't happen to you.

Keyword stuffing

OK, so you have worked out what keywords will bring visitors to your website; once you have this knowledge the temptation is to stuff these keywords all over your pages!

This is a definite violation of Google Guidelines and will result in getting you delisted from their index. Write your pages as if you were talking to someone about that product or service, use your keyword, but use then sparingly.


Automated comments

It doesn't take long searching the internet to find companies that are willing to sell you software that will enable you to leave comments automatically on blogs and forums – this can’t go wrong can it as we all know that Google loves to see links to your website.

Actually Google employs some very clever software that detects instances of when you attempt to leave lots of comments on blogs and forums, leaving lots of comments simply isn't natural behaviour. It’s fine to find forums and blogs that are related to your business and leave comments on them (in moderation), but do so with the understanding that your comments need to help a wider community, you need to add value to these sites, not just expect a link back to your site.


Paid links

Lots of high profile websites offer to sell links to other sites to help their ranking, and it can be very tempting to use these services as a quick win for ranking.

Google knows the sites that sell links and will penalise sites that they link to, also many of these site will again be unrelated to yours and so Google will see these links as unnatural (i.e. these sites wouldn't naturally link to yours).


Generic Directories

There are lots of internet directories that offer (either paid or free) to provide a link back to your website. As many of these directories are just pages of links to websites then Google again sees these as unnatural linkage and if you are found to have listings in lots of these directories then they are likely to take actions against your site.

Linking from directories that are dedicated to your market or location are better, as are using well known household name directories. These can be a useful way to gain traffic, but don’t reply on this tactic for ranking purposes.

Cloaking or Hidden Content

This is a technique that attempts to hide content from website visitors but is instead made available only for to search engines to see; again Google is now really clever at spotting these techniques.

All content should be available to your visitors, it should be informative; it should make sense and read well.


Doorway Pages

This isn't a technique that is used much today, but Doorway pages are pages that are again just written just for search engines and typically have content on them that is not able to be seen by website visitors. They are used to try to build a large amount of authority into a single page; these pages then automatically take visitors off to a completely different website.

Again, they tend to be stuffed with keywords, but once again it’s a technique that Google are very good at sniffing out.


In Summary

There isn't any way that you can beat Google and fool it into giving you better search engines rankings that your site deserve – always write pages with your visitor in mind.

Good quality, well written site will always (in time) rank better than poorly written, low quality ones.

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Best Practice SEO on a budget

Many individuals and smaller businesses don’t have a budget for SEO work, but if you plan to do your own SEO then all it will only cost you is a little bit of time and effort.

Here's some thing you want to get done:

Keywords:

The first step is to think carefully about how potential visitors are likely to find you when they fire up their favourite search engine; what are the key terms that you would expect them to type into the search engine to find you.

Don’t be too general here, if you are repair clocks and you live in Bristol then “Clock Repairer in Bristol” is a very good start. When putting your list together, consider the ‘transactional’ keywords that someone might use for your service, these are words that might be used in an internet search that would suggest that some if ready or likely to buy, and could also help you understand how you might be trying to position yourself as a business.

So back to our “Clock Repairer” example, they could use something like:

“Cheap Clock Repairer in Bristol”
“The best Clock Repairer in Bristol”
“Order a clock repair in Bristol”

Also consider informational searches that someone might try; these are terms that show that someone is looking for more information before they make a purchases decision, those could be things like:

“Is my clock worth repairing?”
“How do I look after a clock?”
“How much is my clock worth?”

The idea with a lot of these informational terms is that you are looking to show that you know what you are talking about; you are building trust and credibility with your web pages.

Once you have 3-5 key terms that you think visitors will type to find your services then ensure that these terms are on your web pages (then search engines will get the idea that these are the terms that you want to rank well for).


Writing your pages:

It’s always worth writing your pages as if you are talking to someone who doesn’t know anything about what you do or sell, this way you are more likely to talk to your visitor in the right (consultative) way.
 Always remember to add more words like “you” and “your” etc and less of the “me” and “us” etc, that way you will be writing with your audience in mind.


Tagging:

Remember to include unique META Tags on each page, specifically ensure that the META Description and META Title are completed and unique for every page.

Ensure that the META Title is around 50-60 characters in length and the META Description is 100 and 150 characters in length.

Links are important

Links are the lifeblood of your website ranking, without any links to your pages you will not rank on any search engines and you’ll never found.

Think about any relationship you might have with other businesses – partners, suppliers, trade bodies or associations etc. See if you can get links from any of these websites.

If you create good content and people like your site and you’ll start to attract natural links.


Social Media

Use some form of social media when you start off, whether it be Twitter, LinkedIn, a blog, Facebook or Pinterest, and post often, several times a day is good, and make the post relate to your business.

To start off with pick one network and work hard at it – social media posting can take a lot of time and effect and it’s not worth spreading yourself thinly. You’ll have a good idea where most of your audience hang out – post there.

The search engines will quickly pick up the fact that you are posting quality content and hopefully engaging with your audience – this will help with ranking.


Can’t do it yourself?

As you won’t be able to afford to pay for speculative SEO work by an agency then look around for an SEO company that is willing to offer a ‘Risk and Reward’ deal. With this type of contract they will agree that they won’t get paid unless then get you on the first page of your chosen search engines for agreed keywords.

If they are successful then it will cost you money, but at least you know you're only paying for keywords that are on the first page of search engine results.

WARNING: Never pay an agency who guarantee that they can get you onto the first page – no-one can guarantee it.


It isn't quick:

Don't expect great results overnight, doing SEO like this without much effort isn't easy and getting on to the first search engine results page is very difficult, but see how you get on in 3-6 months and take things from there.

Top SEO agencies can't get you sustainable results overnight either!

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