We all know by now that quality relevant links pointing to your site is an important ranking factor in search engines. When commencing a link building strategy for your chosen keywords, it is important to consider your anchor text. Anchor text is the visible text that contains the link to a web page e.g SEO. As a user you will know if you click on that link you will go to a page with information about SEO.

Historically people made the mistake of linking up their company name, or a prime example is “to find out more about SEO click here“. This link will work from a usability perspective, but a search engine would not know you want to rank for SEO, although it appears effective, there is no benefit for your rankings.

Use Anchor Text Wisely:

• Keep the user experience in mind with internal linking, make sure the link is relevant and not there for the sake of adding a link.
• Links will only add value if they are related to the page they are on.
• Links within the copy are more valuable than within the footer or another secondary area of the website.
• Vary your anchor text when carrying out external linking. To many incoming links with the same anchor text will shout that you are trying to manipulate rankings!
• Leave a snippit of code on your contact page with your desired anchor text in, that way if someone wants to add a link to your site from theirs, you are getting the most benefit.

As with all ethical SEO practices don’t abuse anchor text, anchor text is an important way of highlighting to search engines what you wish to rank for, and at the same time has help your users understand and navigate your site.

Choosing an SEO company to optimise your site is probably a likely move for most small to medium companies. There are advantages and disadvantages of carrying out your SEO in house, but for most companies the main issue is having the resources available. Realistically you don’t need to fully understand how SEO works to make a decision on which company is right for you, but you do need to have enough knowledge to know you have made an informed choice. Here is my list of questions you should find out answers to:

• Will the company outsource any of the work?
• Can I visit my SEO consultant if needed?
• How much time will be spent on my account?
• Can I call my SEO consultant when I need them during business hours?
• What is included in your budget, web changes, article marketing, link building?
• Are only rankings important to their company or keywords that provide the best return on investment, and will they adjust my campaign accordingly?
• What is the payment plan and contracts?
• How much will I have to be involved?
• How much will the company allow me to be involved?
• What are the timescales they would expect for my site to perform?

This list will give you something you can compare and gauge feedback from different SEO companies. Leaving you with the best opportunity to make a decision on which company will be most suitable for you and your business.

Structuring your content to reflect your business, include your keywords and help your SEO is tricky.

You have designed your site, you have carried out keyword research, now comes the time to sit down and write the content. If you are like me sitting here now, you are probably wondering where do I start…?

Well, I’m hoping you have your list of keywords, and you have identified a list of long tail keywords to support these. Your long-tail keywords won’t be massively competitive, and are most likely to reflect your best selling products or services, they tend to be very industry specific and will usually convert better.

I would also advise typing your keywords into Google and checking them against Google’s Wonder Wheel. This will give you a spider diagram indicating other words Google associates with your chosen keywords. It would put you in good stead to try and integrate these into your copy.

Step two is how you structure these into your content. Firstly remember your content must be written for your audience, and structured to rank higher in search engines with maximum emphasis on your chosen keywords. I will outline 5 ways you should structure your copy in an attempt to fulfill this criteria.

1.Heading tags should be structured chronologically, your h1 being the most important and should include the exact keyword you are targeting. Working down the page to include the long-tail keywords you have identified.

2.Aim to use an exact match of your keyword within the first paragraph below your heading.

3.Following on from the above, the first reference to your keyword should be in bold for maximum effect.

4.Use a variety of your keywords, long-tail keywords and other phrases you have identified from Wonder wheel naturally throughout your text.

5.Finally optimise your page title tag with your main keywords. Google has a limit to the number of characters it will display so bare this in mind.

Only you can decide what is appropriate for your site, your clients and your readers. Every site will be different (different is imperative, make use of Copyscape to ensure you have no duplicate content).

Keep it professional but don’t be afraid to use a little humor, keep your paragraphs short and concise, include images to back up your message (don’t forget to make use of alt tags). Finally ask someone to read your copy before publishing it, to check for spelling and grammar, you want your copy to flow naturally, the more you read it the more you will over look mistakes.

Last weeks blog we looked at 10 simple tips to get you started on your onsite SEO. If you are serious about SEO it would pay to make sure you understand all the points in last weeks blog. To move forward here are a few more suggestions:

• Make sure you use the links within your site to make use of your keywords. For example if your keyword is “SEO” then link to SEO, and not “to find out more about SEO click here”
• Following on from this, make sure you include title tags to your links. Title tags will appear when you hover your mouse over a link. Don’t spam these with keywords, but make them descriptive from a users perspective, for example “click here” wont mean anything to a user or search engines but if you have “to find out more read our SEO blog” with a title tag of “search engine optimisation blog” you give the link more value.
• While we are on links, check that your homepage links throughout your site link back only to the domain and not www.yourdomain.co.uk/index.php. If your external links are pointing to www..yourdomain.co.uk and your internal links point to /index.php you are splitting your links and they are therefore not effective.
• If you have a new site it can often take some time to get indexed through submission to Google. If you can get a link from another good quality site it is likely you will get indexed much quicker.
• Make sure your site is easy to use, navigation reflects the pages it points to, links are easily identifiable from regular text, and that they are easy to click.
• Alt tags for images are there for the visually impaired, they wont be able to see the image, but a screen reader will be able to pick up what the alt tags say, allowing the user to make sense of the site. If you images are relevant for your site then you can make use of them for SEO but don’t abuse them, a brief descriptive alt tag in your coding will mean you image will get indexed by search engines and serve it’s intended purpose.
• We create sitemaps for users, and for search engines we need to create an XML sitemap. To learn more have a look at James and Nick’s video blog.
• My last tip of the day is utilise Google’s wonderwheel for long tail keywords you can integrate into your copy and blog posts. This will give you some ideas of what Google considers relevant to your selected keywords, and support your content.

If I have missed anything please let me know, I’m sure my colleagues will be able to point out a vital element they think I have over looked. If you can get to grips with my last two blogs you have set your self up with the basics to get started. Make yourself a check list, and tick things off as you work your way through, that way you always have something to refer back on and reflect on room for improvement.

They key to online success is to identify your goals and objectives. Many clients believe the success of their campaign is measured by how many page 1 number 1 listings they have in the search engine results. There is no denying that rankings are a vital element in SEO success, they should not be your main goal, it may or may not be true that you could be missing out on visitors for not being page 1 number 1, but it is important to realise that rankings will not make sales, and that different rankings will produce different bounce rates.

For example if you look at buyer behavior, it consists of needs or wants (in my case it is usually a want) a period of research, to see what if on offer to fulfill that need or want, and then the act of purchasing. From personal experience I will browse the first, sometimes the second page and then re-visit the site that most suited my requirements. The point I’m making is that although a good ranking might bring more in through the door at position 1, they might not be as ready to buy as those at who come in the door at position 5.

Goal Setting and Monitoring

• Visitors: Again a common misconception, once you start performing for your keywords you will notice a rise in visitors to your site. Without being negative its not quite time to declare victory just yet, and my next point will lead on from this. If the visitors you are receiving are not converting, you are going to have to have a good look at changing the direction of your focus, it could be identifying new keywords, re-assessing your products, updating your website, you will need to identify where the problem lies and work on improving this. Monitoring visitors is very useful, but its not a numbers game and should not be your main goal.
• Conversions: In my opinion this should be your ultimate goal, this is the biggie! SEO is more than just rankings and visitors and I cant stress this enough. It is vital that before progressing forward with your plans for world domination, you define these goals to your web designer and SEO consultant, or if undertaking a solo mission; yourself. A conversion will be personal to your business, for an online shop it will be people making a purchase, if you are a blog it might be how many people leave you a comment, it could be a new follower on facebook or twitter. Without understanding and defining these goals you will have no way of monitoring your success or return on investment.

Can you track your conversions?

Installing analytic tracking on your website is a must for you to be able monitor your goals and objectives. Some of the most basic data you will need to get to grips with are the amount of traffic (visitors) your site receives, where these visitors are coming from (traffic sources) and how they are finding you, how the visitors use your site and bounce rates, and identify the best method for monitoring conversion rates personal to your goals. Rebecca wrote a post last week about how webmaster tools can help you can develop your SEO, and Nick’s video blog is a good place to start for installing analytic tracking to your site.

We all know SEO is evolving, with Google rolling out personalised searches, and anytime search results, meaning not all users will see the same 10 results dependent on their settings. What does this mean for SEO… well, you can no longer quantify a successful SEO campaign based on the highest listings in Google. You will need to identify goals and then the data needed to prove the success of the goals you have chosen.