Search Engine Optimisation Blog - SEO

Nick and James explain the basics of sitemaps and how to generate search friendly sitemaps online, both XML and HTML.

Nick and James explain  the basics of internal / onsite SEO as a follow up to their keyword selection video. You can visit our youtube channel to view all our videos at http://www.youtube.com/crearecomm and if your interested in web design then check out our web design video blog http://www.youtube.com/crearegroup.

As a business, in order to find success online it is important to have a fully functional website.

Firstly, it should tell customers exactly what your company does and secondly, it should show them exactly how they could purchase your products and services online.
It is also essential that you are aware of how you can market your site effectively, making it visible to your customers in the search engines.

Online developments, particularly in relation to search engines such as Google, have meant that there is now a wide range of ways that businesses can implement a successful marketing campaign, using a variety of techniques.

Through Google’s Universal Search, consumers can search using particular specifications including, videos, articles, reviews and forums. This could potentially attract a wider audience to your site, boosting ranking in the search engines and increase your companies business.

Creating videos about your business or related to the services that you offer, not only enables you to target a wider audience but it also offers a more personal, user-friendly service for the user.

Employing an SEO strategy to your site is one way of increasing its’ traffic, professional online marketing agencies could offer the best advice as to how you can get yourself noticed online.

The pressure of making a web site list highly through search engine optimisation, often makes businesses look at the short cut options. Like any form of competition people try and cheat the system to ensure they get to the top. However, the end result is very much the same as any other from of cheating; you are caught and penalised.

Search engines work in an honest and natural way. They reward those sites that have taken the time and effort to develop their web site and continue to do so through different forms of link building. This includes various forms of online content including article distribution, press releases and updating site content, as well as building links through directories, posts on forums and social media sites.

Because of the long process that reaching top positions on search engines takes, people have found that they could find ways to reach the top through unnatural link building now known in the trade as Black Hat SEO.

Spamdexing and unnatural link building means that initially the search engines recognise work is being done to help a site succeed until closer inspection. After recognising a website has been abusing the SEO system a site is then ‘sandboxed’. This refers to the childhood stage and as a site is trusted more by a search, they are then released and return to join the professional companies that have earned their listings.

It is compulsory for businesses to understand the detrimental effects that trying to cheat the system will have on a websites listings. Fortunately The Creare Group only ever use legitimate techniques for themselves and their customers and to achieve the listings they have for competitive phrases such as ‘web design’, they are proof that cheaters never prosper.

‘Link Baiting’ is yet another buzzword that seems to have become a popular phrase in SEO/social media marketing.  It’s strange, when the term is mentioned I often draw an analogy with my childhood days when we used to go fishing down the local canal.
Friends and myself would haul our fishing gear (rods and baskets) for miles, along the canal bank, to find the best ‘patch’ to set up for the day. We would intuitively know where the best patch was, either by word of mouth from fellow anglers or we would look for an area of the canal that was potentially teeming with fish. I say potentially because as we well know with fishing (if you are an angler) a lot of things happen under the water, so you learn to trust your instinct for where the fish are. This might be a small ripple or other indications that conditions appear to be right. These conditions would depend on how clean the water is, the depth of the water, safety in numbers, where the fish would gather, what kind of cover the fish have and where the location poses no threat.

Preparation and checks would be next on the list.  A good angler would then check his equipment; rod, reel, line, float, weights, hook, bait and depending on the size of the fish, a landing net.  Next, the preparation of the water, to attract the fish, this would entail using a catapult to launch balls of fish bait to the selected target area. The next thing to prepare would be the type of hook you use (size) and also the strength (breaking strength) of the fishing line. For example it would be no good trying to catch a large fish with a small hook and a line to weak to hold it and the same principle would take affect for a small fish but in reverse.  When all preparations are in place the game or sport begins.

In many ways (SEO) link baiting is similar to this analogy where in-bound links are encouraged by preparation and hard work and maybe a little luck to entice the catch.  The next question should be what bait (bait linking) are at our disposal as a resource to lure in-bound links to a customers site. The following list could be used as a guide:

• Current news baiting - Continuous, up to date news on breaking topics with expert commentary on the topic, products and service.
• Controversial baiting - You can also say something controversial to generate discussion – introducing  debate into a topic that will  encourage  reasoned response. Check your facts and make sure you know what you are talking about or you’re going to get some serious reputation management issues to deal with.
• Resource baiting – Build authority by resources that are available to all, social media sites, directories, blog sites and create your own blogs or RSS feed. There are plenty of ways that can establish that you are an expert in your particular interest or have a knowledge that will help others to promote there product or service. And, in the process attract a whole bunch of links at the same time.
• Humor baiting- Write something funny about your industry or the people in it. Everybody needs a good laugh now and then, it alleviates stress and helps bring approachability. A little self-deprecation is great to show people you don’t really take yourself too seriously. Create a site that is purely for fun and allow the links to flow in
• Ego baiting. Create a site that allows other bloggers with a voice to express their ideas by offering them significant exposure.

To summarize Link bait - Link baiting simply put, is content that is interesting, useful, funny or otherwise so outstanding that it becomes alluring to bloggers and website owners, who set up links from their pages to the original material. It’s a good way of improving your site’s inbound links and therefore it’s value in the eyes of search engines.

Writing for the web is different from writing other advertising copy. You need to use the language that your target audience usually uses, so you seem to speak directly to them. You need to use short, snappy sentences. This helps with scanning, and as most of your visitors will end up scanning your site, this is important. And you need to ensure that your keywords are distributed effectively for SEO purposes.

So, how do you write effective web copy?

The very first thing you need to do before you put pen to paper or fingers to keys is find out your target audience. Now, if you have an established business you probably know something about your target audience already. However, if this is your first or only attempt at marketing you will benefit from asking yourself these questions.

• Are the people you want to target easy to reach?
• Can they be converted easily?
• Do you have a ‘list’ of them? – An association, club, support group etc.
• Are there large enough numbers of them to make your efforts worthwhile?
• Can you solve their problems effectively
• Do enough of them want their problems solved
• Can they pay you for your services?

By answering these questions you will soon start to get a picture in your mind as to who your target audience is. You will start to understand how you can convert them into customers, and where to go to find them.

There are many books, websites and other information, about finding your target audience, so I would suggest you do a lot of more thorough research before you launch yourself into writing your copy.

So, once you have your target audience nailed you can begin writing. As mentioned above, you need to write specifically for your target audience. Use the kind of language they use. Find out about the kinds of places they go for information. Is there an industry governing body and how do they write or ‘speak’ to their members?

Keyword Research

Again, this is a massive subject that has been covered many times, in far more detail than I am going to cover here. We have written about keywords before, here, and here…

But to get to the point of it you need to choose effective keywords. These are the ones your target audience would use to search for your products or services. This is why it is important to know your target audience first. Once you have selected your keywords you will be ready to write your copy.

Use the Inverted Pyramid

This is a metaphor used to illustrate how your information should be presented within your copy.

The top of the inverted pyramid is the largest part of is, this is your most important and interesting information. Your least important information should be close to the end, but not quite at the very end… We’ll get to that later…

This is a good way of writing online because your readers can leave the story at anytime, and still understand what has been said. They can go back for further information if they need to.

Break Your Copy Up

Use effective headings to pull your audience in, and entice them to read further. This is really very important, as a huge block of text will probably put off your potential customers before they get a chance to read what you have to say.

For SEO, it is important to put your chosen keywords in headings, as search engines place more importance to words in headings. For your readers, it is also important because they have used those words to search for you.

Put your keywords in <strong> tags

This again, tells the search engine that you are putting more emphasis on these words. It makes them stand out, and your readers will home in on them as they scan the text. So, this will help them to know instantly what the page is about, without them having to read it. This will help them decide whether or not to read on.

Call to Arms!

Make sure you end your copy with a clear, compelling call to arms. Tell your readers exactly what you want them to do. This could be to download some information, call you for further information, buy something etc. The call to arms, is incredibly important for conversion, so never leave it out.

So there you are… Writing for the web is difficult, but highly rewarding. When you gain high positions in the search engines, it is usually down the the quality of your copy. When you convert your visitors into customers, it is largely due to the copy on your site.

StoryRank is a theoretical algorithum designed for Google’s news service. Google news is an automated news aggregator, The initial idea was created by Krishna Bharat in 2001 with the principle of using various high quality news services to publish relevant content via its news service. You can submit you own website to Google’s news service to basically be asked to be aggregated into their news functionality. http://www.google.com/support/newspub/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=40787.

StoryRank basically is the value and strenght of an article which may feature on your website / RSS feed and be accepted into Google news.

If you were ever wondering whether Google, Yahoo and MSN has access to information such as bounce rate and time on site, without analytics the answer is yes. Alexa provides an average time on site, bounce rate and pages viewed data for any site. I would asume then that Google and other search engines take this into consideration and it should play a part in your search engine optimisation campaign.

So how would Google use this information?

Consider that your site is of high quality and the design reflects your industry and is usable etc. This means that users will not bounce away from your site, spend time looking at the rest of your site and also read the content increasing time on site. This then suggests to Google and other search engines that your site provide a good user experience. Google’s policy is to ensure the users search query returns the best result, so by providing a good quality site it is forfilling its promise.

This will then be directly related to your SERP. The other situation is that your sites design, usability and content is poor meaning users don’t want to remain on your site and will not spend anytime on the site.

Consideration for your target audience is vital within an online marketing campaign and listings aren’t everything, If the site isn’t up to scratch then Google will see the users opinions through the variables stated and the strenght of you site will be effected.

So, you have your shiny new website, full of functionality, great toys to amuse people, and its all set and primed with a good standard of SEO. So you wait. And you wait. After a few weeks, you still can’t find your site when you type your keywords into Google, and according to Google analytics, the Marie Celeste has had more visitors than you.

What have you done wrong?

Well, this is a problem that we often encounter. People do the right things for their sites, but leave out one or two vital pieces of the puzzle that makes the difference between and successful site and an unsuccessful one. A common mistake is submitting their site to the search engines that they want to list for.

Sometimes search engines need to have someone come to them and wave a flag and shout “Hey! Come here and look at the site I have made and have put on the Internet!” as you cant rely on them to pick up your site automatically.

So, how is this accomplished? Well, lets take Google for example. With Google, using their Webmaster Tools, you can create an XML sitemap and submit it to them for them to take a look at. This allows them to index your site, normally in a matter of hours. Other search engines use different methods. For MSN for example, you can go to http://search.live.com/docs/submit.aspx to submit your site.  For Yahoo you could use http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/uk/free/request

These actions don’t guarantee that your site will work, but it is definitely good practice to submit them anyway.  They could potentially bring an increase in business from the very moment your site goes live.
And isn’t that worth it?