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News - This weeks news feature is the sneaky peak at Google’s new search layout.

We think that the new layout will possible be released along side the caffeine algorithm update in the new year, to create a bit of publicity.

Its pretty simple and we’ll show you have to do it now.

Tutorial - This week we are going to look at headings and heading structure for SEO.

The key thing to remember when formatting headings is that heading values vary from <h1> through to <h6> and a heading within a page should denote the importance of the piece of information that the headings heads up.

We have made an example page on the blog which you can see here.

It is good practice to have your headings run throughout your page with hierarchy of importance.

As you can see my heading 1 represents my main keywords and is consisted with the page title I have chosen to optimise this page for.

Then you can see I have my secondary headings running down the page in order. The secondary headings are a good opportunity to include some keyword that are related to your main keyword for the current page.

You can have more than one heading 2 to represent multiple pieces of information of similar importance. This is consistent with all heading values.

Now, To contradict myself slightly you can have headings that don’t run down the page in order if relevant. As you can see in this example the heading structure can be as follows:

<h1> Heading

<h2> Sub Heading

<h3> Sub Sub Heading

<h2> Sub Heading

Thanks for watching.

Resources:

• http://gizmodo.com/5412801/how-to-try-the-new-google-search
• Heading Example 1
• Heading Example 2

Strategies To Make Your Company Run Smoother

Recently at Creare we have been looking at the different ways we can evolve our current techniques. Danii wrote an interesting post on how it’s vital to keep up with the industry in SEO as you can get left behind practising techniques that are deemed ‘old fashioned’.

Of course implementing techniques can be difficult when you have been used to working in a particular way. However there is a solution: devising marketing strategies.

The ultimate focus of any SEO campaign is to rank highly, to get traffic, to convert that traffic into enquiries and those enquiries to sales.

Now that’s been established, it’s time to understand what needs to be devised to ensure this occurs. Sounds easy doesn’t it? But finding solutions that are different to what you are used to takes time and testing.

Research; The first thing that you need to do is research. Look online to see what is happening differently to what you are currently doing. How have things changed? Why have they changed? And how does this affect you if you don’t change?

Plan: Now you gathered what you need it’s time to put it in some structure. Compare your ideas to your current strategy, as you need to know whether this can be adapted or started from scratch. It’s important to recognise what needs to change and how this will be more beneficial in the long run for you and your customers SEO campaigns.

Test: Take a sample and test it over a reasonable time. This will allow you to know whether you are on the right track before you implement strategies and change what you are doing entirely. It’s important to know that you carried out your own tests and not gone on your research entirely. You know your customers, your aims and objectives so go with your gut and evolve as you see fit.

Devise Strategies: Put together a strategy that can be understood by others in your team as well as your customers. It’s vital that any changes are explained to those it affects verbally so they know what to expect and how it will make a difference.

Implement: Once you are confident with the above, then it’s time to continue and adapt to those changes. It’s vital to ensure that you are comfortable in what you know and are doing to make each strategy flow.

There is so much information out there that advises on the best way to devise strategies which is what inspired me to write this post. It’s so important when changing the way you work that it’s simple to understand by both you and your customers.

Adapting with the times is vital for any industry and with social media, video and content outlets, there has never been so much potential for sales.

Earlier this year it was reported that Bing and Yahoo will be forging a deal sometime in the future to integrate their search facility. With this in mind it’s important to realise that although Google is going to stick around as the number one search engine, but we must pay more attention to Bing’s search if we are to get the most out of or SEO campaigns in the future.

On Web Pro News yesterday Rick DeJarnette of Bing Webmaster Center has shared some link building ‘rules’. These ‘rules’ read a lot like Google’s own, as one blog commenter already pointed out.

Some Do’s of Link Building for Bing

1. Develop your site as a business brand and brand it consistently
2. Find relevant industry experts, product reviewers, bloggers, and media folk, and make sure they’re aware of your site/content
3. Publish concise, informative press releases online
4. Publish expert articles to online article directories
5. Participate in relevant conversations on blogs/forums, referring back to your site’s content when applicable
6. Use social networks to connect to industry influencers (make sure you have links to your site in your profiles)
7. Create an email newsletter with notifications of new content
8. Launch a blog/forum on your site
9. Participate in relevant industry associations and especially in their online forums
10. Strive to become a trusted expert voice for your industry, while promoting your site

Do you do all the ‘Do’s’? I think it’s important to take note of this list, as the variety of links you will get by doing all of this is what’s important here. Without doing numbers 1 – 9 you have no chance of becoming “a trusted expert voice for your industry”. You must participate in your area of expertise, because if you don’t somebody else will.

Some Do Not’s of link building for Bing

This list is so similar to Google’s list of bad behaviour, that I’m almost certain that if you read this SEO blog, you don’t do any of this, right? But I will break each point down for SEO novices.

1. The number of inbound links suddenly increases by orders of magnitude in a short period of time
   To a search engine that relies on inbound links this is an important point. Links gained by honest means should increase gradually. A sudden increase of links isn’t necessarily going to get you banned, but it may trigger a reaction for the search engines to pay attention to your site and if you have anything slightly ‘black hat’ on your there it will be noticed.
2. Many inbound links coming from irrelevant blog comments and/or from unrelated sites
   Ah, blog comment spam. It’s not to say you shouldn’t blog comment, as this is a natural thing for someone who is a “trusted expert voice for your industry”. But, just don’t do a search for follow blogs and comment on blogs about knitting if your site is about plumbing. Make sure that you comment in relevant places.
3. Using hidden links in your pages
   Surely nobody does this anymore? I’m surprised that this even made it on the list, not that I agree with it, but just that it astounds me that such an old-fashioned black hat technique is still considered important enough for Bing to include it in their “Do Not” list!
4. Receiving inbound links from paid link farms, link exchanges, or known “bad neighborhoods” on the Web
   Again, I’m surprised that this made the list, for the same reasons expressed above. I guess there are a lot of green horns’ about who go right ahead trying to spam search engines without realising they are doing bad. Or they are just idiots.
5. Linking out to known web spam sites
   This one is a little bit trickier to determine. How does one work out what’s a spam site and what’s not? Use your common sense here, if you think it’s a spammy site, it probably is. Only ever link out to sites that are relevant, with information that your visitors will find useful.

Take Away

Your own site should have good, useful relevant content. This does several things; first of all it’s great for your visitors. With great content you are far more likely to get what you want from them, whether it’s a call to your sales department or to download an ebook, if you provide something useful and fulfil a need you will be rewarded.

Great content also gives other webmasters something to link to. Great content allows you to become an ‘expert’ in your industry. I personally think the secret of success online is content, after all ‘content is king…’

The SEO Industry Has Seen Some Significant Changes Over The Past Decade

As with any industry, SEO has developed dramatically over the past few years. With everyone talking about the ways that social media has transformed online marketing, what better time to reflect upon the importance of keeping up with advances.

Search engine optimisation has always been concerned with ranking highly in the search engines and driving traffic to a website, and these are still the results that SEO consultants are looking for, but the way they go about it have altered somewhat over time.

There are various techniques that most SEO consultants use, internal methods related to the websites code and content and external techniques such as link building, article marketing and press releases. With added competition, advances in search engines and more knowledge about SEO in general these techniques have evolved and become more specialised.

One of the main reasons why the way that we practice SEO has changed so much over the past decade is due to the increase of competition with in the marketplace. These days most businesses on your local high street will have a website, this means that SEO consultants have to ensure that their client stands out.

This could be applied to both SEO and website design. Web designers have to create designs that differentiate their clients site from their competitors. Designers can also add videos and products within online shops that can be indexed by the search engines using their universal search function.

Meanwhile, SEO consultants have to work continuously to ensure that their clients’ sites are consistently at the top of the search engine rankings.

It is essential that the right keywords are chosen for a particular business, they must reflect the products and services that they offer and they must be competitive, in other words something that an internet user is likely to search for.

However, choosing competitive keywords is just the start. Due to the increased competition SEO consultants must work on their clients’ websites continuously to maintain high positions in search engines such as Google.

A decade ago consultants were primarily focussed upon submitting to directories and building back-links that way, today search engine optimisation has evolved to encompass blogging, article marketing and even press releases, other viable methods of building back-links that are also concerned with brand building.

This brings me to the social aspect of SEO, arguably one of the biggest changes over the past few years is the introduction of bookmarking and networking websites such as Digg, Delicious, Twitter and Facebook. The industry has its own community, wherein consultants can share their knowledge. They can also share articles, press releases and blog posts in the hopes that others will share their work, multiplying back links, improving rankings and increasing traffic to a website.

Since its inception search engine optimisation has changed in terms of the ways that the primary techniques are used; with added competition it is essential that you keep up with the changes in the industry.

Script:

This week were going to take a look at the free link analysis software called ‘SEO spyglass’. You can download the free tool from http://www.link-assistant.com/seo-spyglass/.

Once installed and you start a new project you get a choice of 2 options:

1.) Enter a keyword you wish to rank well for.

2.) Enter a competitors URL to analysis.

We will start with the first option, when choosing a keyword, SEO spyglass automatically chooses the website that ranks first in your specified search query.

The second options provides you list of information about your own or your competitors backward links.

Unfortunately on the free version it only uses Google.com and not .co.uk, with backward links from Yahoo!. Once the software has found the first 1000 links of your chosen site it then prompts you to further analyise the links, click yes to this option and we will see the following.

Along the top of the screen you can see all the variables of the backward links:

The main one to look out for are:

• Anchored Text
• Page Rank
• External Links
• Total Links
• Link Value - This is determined by an algorithm built within SEO spyglass.

A few others you might recognise are:

• Dmoz Listings
• Alexa Rank

You can also perform multiple analysis against a few different competitors, have a play and see if you can put any of the tools to good use.

Please leave any comments or questions on the Youtube channel or Blog.