A key aspect of proper SEO is keyword placement. It is important to remember it isn’t just about the quantity of keywords. In fact, you can get penalised if you over-do the keywords. It can also look unnatural for the reader, and you must make your reader feel as though they are in the right place at all times to ensure your site actually does what you want it to do: get sales, enquiries etc.

Many people believe that if they fill their web pages with keywords then they will ‘get to the top of Google’ – this simply isn’t true. You should ensure your keywords are placed in the correct HTML tags.

Use these guidelines to optimise your page:

• Place your keywords in the Title tag, Meta Description tag, Meta Keyword tag, and if applicable in the Alt tags.
• Place your keywords inside one h1 tag,  h2 tag and h3 tag.
• Ensure your keywords are in the first paragraph of the page – ideally this should be in the first 25 words.
• Place your keywords at the end of the page – ideally in the last 25 words.
• Make sure your keywords are in strong (bold) tags at least once on the page.
• Italicise your keywords at least once on the page.
• Put your keywords in lists.

By following these simple guidelines your site should not only read better than a page stuffed with keywords (and therefore be better at converting a browser into a customer) you are far more likely to get high rankings.

After an intensive training programme into internal and external search engine optimisation, research led me to the question that continues to intrigue SEO consultants, when is it viable to include a “pay per click” campaign into a failing organic site? In many ways it would be quite easy to spend customers money to achieve this goal.  However, there lies the quandary, is PPC the best way to improve traffic ratings or is it just a ‘quick fix’ or ‘patch’ to failing ‘Organic’ campaign?
I have recently read reports from various resources that inform potential on-line businesses the ‘Opportunity’ of using “pay per click” services provided by many search engines and directories such as Google and Yahoo. They guarantee to achieve the highest desired position on the front pages of many of the major search engines. Many might say ‘a lively marketplace, the higher you bid, the higher your advertisement will be displayed in the list’. There lies another important question at what cost is this achievable and who truly benefits from this route, is it the customer, or is the providers, or is the ‘cake’ big enough for all. I do believe that the way forward for SEO will be a combination of both ‘PPC’ and ‘Organic’ routes as long as the campaign has solid foundations with sound SEO basics.

Organic SEO campaigns can take months to develop, keeping your sites strength building with links and content honest is a time consuming process. My thought is…. If given the choice would i use organic SEO or PPC to try and promote Xmas offers. Following my previous post on search engine optimisation trends i was thinking more about the Xmas period and what we can do for our clients to boost traffic at a competitive time of year.

PPC - The downside of using PPC to promote Xmas offers is that the cost per click will increase with demand, the upside is that you are guaranteed results. With more and more people turning to the internet to grab Xmas bargains, i know we will start to see customers demand for listings expand seasonly.

Organic SEO - Well this all depends on the product, competitiveness of the phrase and how specific your target market is… With niche key phrases that are name specific i think that you can successfully optimise organically in a short time period. Organic SEO would work out cheaper in the long run.

In conclusion to see a good return on your investment you would need to calculate the time scales, phrases and cost on each method. To do this a good consultant is vital. If you are interested in search engine optimisation this Xmas please contact Creare.