One of the biggest mistakes that people make when they start out on their first SEO campaign is that they don’t work out exactly what it is they want to achieve from the campaign. Being page 1 on Google is all very well, but if you target the wrong keywords for your site you will actually damage your site in the ‘eyes’ of Google.

You must get to know your client. Make sure you are all ‘on the same page’ in terms of what they hope to achieve from the campaign. Ask them what outcome they hope to get from their SEO campaign. It may be increased sales, increased enquiries, signing up for a newsletter or simply brand reaffirming by placing them first for their company name.

If your client has an eCommerce site it is worthwhile asking them which products have the highest margin, as targeting these directly will make the client the best ROI (Return on Investment). This approach also works well for targeting service providers (e.g. plumbers, electricians etc) as there may be a particular service that brings in more money than other services. For example a new boiler installation for a plumber would be better than fixing leaking taps.

Another thing to consider is regional specific SEO, something that the team here at Creare are particularly expert in. I often ask my clients which area they want to target first, as there are often add-on costs involved for the client if they have to service areas further away. Alternatively, they may know that certain areas have more of their target audience in, and therefore are better to ‘go for’.

The next thing to make sure your client is well aware of is the timescales involved with SEO. SEO is a time consuming process, and the first three months are often fraught with dangers, the client can’t see results because the listing hasn’t yet reached its desired position, and you feel under pressure to get the site performing asap. This is not the time to dip into black hat techniques though! Make sure you are transparent with your client as to what can be achieved in the timescale they are willing to work with. It may be a case of working on ‘easier’ keywords that will get them an ROI first before tackling the ‘tougher’ keywords that take time.

Remember, SEO is all about marketing your client, albeit through a search engine rather than ‘traditional’ means. Therefore, you must make sure that you client makes money. This is your ultimate job. Page 1 listings are fantastic, of course they are, but money in the bank for your client is what really makes the difference.

Use all the tools at your disposal, Google Analytics for example can tell you a lot about which keywords perform well, whether the pages targeted for those keywords are effective and ultimately whether you are going for the right keywords. Watch out for Rebecca’s articles on Google Analytics, and how to get the best from this fabulous tool.

Once you have a good relationship with your client, and this takes time, you will be in a unique position to be able to advise them as to where their online marketing should go next. If you are anything like me, you will genuinely want to help make your client money! I get a massive buzz when my clients report increased sales or enquiries.

If I have done the initial work in ensuring I am targeting the best keywords for their business then I know I will be on the right track once the site starts to perform. This is the key to a successful SEO campaign.

Improve your SEO

Improving the SEO of your website and making the users experience a matter of high importance when planning your internet marketing strategy, is made much easier by taking into account these 4 essential SEO tips. They will help to boost your conversions by ensuring your site is one of high quality and that it achieves a top position in the search engines.

1.Create Quality Content that visitors will want to read.

To maximise the quality of your web pages you must ensure that your content is written with your visitors in mind. Make sure that it gives them what they are looking for in relation to the keywords that you are optimising for them to reach you through.
You need your content to be both engaging and informative getting your businesses message across confidently and accurately. This will build visitors confidence not only in the quality of your site but also the professionalism of your business.
A great way to check what visitors think of your pages is to log into your Google analytics account and go under the content tab where you will find information on top content as well as exit pages which can be a real eye-opener in terms of the quality of your web sites content. Any pages that demonstrate poor performance will require you to update them and make them more relevant to what your visitors are looking for.

2.Build your online profile and get client reviews.

Take advantage of the free resources online where you can build your company profile to help your SEO. The main ones are Google Places, Bing Local and Yahoo Local. Each of these should be completed as comprehensively as possible and you should add images from your business or at least your company logo.
The great thing with the free profiles is that you can then invite all your clients at the completion of each sale or service provided to write a review on your business. Potential customers like to see what others’ experience of your business has been like and having these reviews added to your Google places listing will boost your Google map helping to get your site to appear next to the map that is shown at the top of search engine listings.

3.Improve your linking and Page Rank.

The quality of your SEO linking system that you build will mean the difference between the page rank you get which measures the quality of your website and ultimately the position your website gets placed in the search engine listings
Ensuring that you have a quality internal linking system within your site linking each of the pages together is very important. Here the keywords you are optimising for need to be used as the anchor text that links are created within to point to the pages they relate to. As well as this you should think about how your site is structured and ensure it is done in a way that makes it easy for your visitors to navigate.
External linking needs to be a continual process to not only get your website to page 1 but even when it is there it needs to be continued to ensure your position is maintained. Although you maybe tempted to take any link offered to you it is wiser to choose your linking partners with the philosophy of “quality over quantity”. Try to ensure you get the bulk of your links from sites which have a page rank (which can be checked by downloading the Google Toolbar) and that the link is a “follow” link (check by viewing a link already on the site in the source code and checking the code “nofollow” isn’t present.) For more information on getting quality external links read my earlier blog How to increase Page Rank.

4. Optimise for local search, add local phone numbers and area pages.

This is especially relevant for small businesses that provide a service for a particular locality. It is estimated that 65% of users of search engines search with a local area added to the keyword they are searching for. Not only will adding an area to the keyword you optimise for enable you to be found easier by these type of searchers but it will also be easier for you to reach that page 1 position in the SERPs as these keywords will be less competitive than optimising for the keyword nationally without an area attached.
Having a local telephone number for each area you optimise for visible on your site is a great way for providing a local connection for your clients. These can be purchased and redirected to your main sales number so you don’t need to have a physical office in each of these locations to provide this service.
If you do optimise for certain locations it is better to have multiple location landing pages. Having dedicated area pages for your keywords to take your visitors to ensures further feeling of a local connection which often equals higher conversion rates.

There are several other aspects of SEO that you can look into to support these tips but taking the time to ensure you get these right will give your site a strong foundation on which you can build your websites success.’

Spurred from hearing ‘I have had these keyword thingies added to my site’.

Last week we compared a website without SEO to a library with no index, and keywords are where you start to put the indexing system together. Where libraries use the Dewey Decimal System to index books into relevant categories and business directories use categories in alphabetical order to allow the user to find what they are looking for, search engines work in a similar fashion, only rather than categories they use keywords.

You turn on your computer, bring up your favorite search engine and ponder for a second on the best words to type in to bring up the information you are looking for. Search engines have become increasingly popular due to the relevance of information they present the user with.

You need to carefully decide which keywords reflect your business and then incorporate them onto your website. Outlined below are some very basic guidelines of how we integrate keywords throughout websites.

Keywords in your copy: Believe it or not search engines are not clever. Your keywords need to be :

• Included in your copy as an exact match.
• Repeated naturally throughout the copy on the site.
• Included in the headings, sub-headings, first paragraph even better in the first sentence.
• If at all possible in a list.

META tags:

• The page title is the blue underlined writing you see on your search results, although the characters are limited on Google to 69 characters it’s a prime location for keywords.
• Description needs to be a short yet comprehensive summary including your keywords, you need to clever about this as it needs to grab the attention of anyone reading it to ensure they click through to your site.
• Keyword tag has no limit on length and should include all the keywords you are choosing to optimise on that page.
• Remember to make every page unique!

Make use of ALT tags:

• An alt tag quite simply is an alternative description for an image, if the images are appropriate to the site they should be appropriate for you to add a keyword rich description but don’t abuse them!

Domain name and keyword rich page names:

• Having a keyword rich domain and pages throughout the site that appropriately named with keywords.

While keywords alone won’t get you the number one spot in the search engines, they are one of the vital elements that contribute to a successful SEO campaign. As with the Dewey Decimal System, consisting of numbers, index cards filled alphabetically complete with keywords, author and the title of the book, giving the user three possibilities to find the same outcome. Keywords, a professionally built search engine friendly site and industary specific backlinks will all do the same to support your SEO and help your listings in the search engines.

Anyone involved with SEO knows that Link Building is essential for maintaining good listings. But, you may or may not be aware that not all links are equal.

I often get clients tell me they ‘don’t have enough links’ because they’ve spoken to someone ‘who knows about SEO, who says they need more links’. Now, they may have a point, their backlinks may seem slight on first looks, but what they may not be aware of is that it is quality, not quantity that we look for in link building.

Anyone can buy hundreds of links but in my experience this is often a pointless and costly exercise. There is no point building links for the sake of it. You need to look at each link for it’s own individual merit and how it will benefit the site in question.

How do you know which links are best?

1. Relevancy
   I put relevancy high up on my list of attributes I believe links should have. This is because a link from a relevant source is much more powerful than a link from somewhere unrelated.
2. High PageRank Source
   If the page you link from has a high PageRank (PR) then some of that PR will ‘leak’ out to your site.
3. How many other links are on the page?
   I often have to ask myself this question, because the fewer the links out the stronger the link will be. PR gets divided up amongst all the links on the page, so a page with a PR 4, but with only one other link will be much more powerful than a link from a PR 6 page with 40 links out.
4. To ‘Follow’ or ‘Not to Follow’
   That is the question… A ‘follow’ link is more powerful than a ‘no follow’ link. ‘No Follow’ was originally created as a backlash against spam commenting on blogs (which still goes on, unfortunately). That isn’t to say that ‘no follow’ links are useless, they do have their place, and I think show that your link building activities are ‘natural’.

Where do you find ‘good’ links?

I think one of the best places to start for link building is your competitors backlink profile. Check Yahoo Site Explorer, and drill down the list of links. There must be some places amongst the list that you can approach for links.

You could also start to ‘think outside the box’ at this point and think of similar industries to your own where you could get links from – remember relevancy is important.

Another place to look for links is from your suppliers, do they have a website? If so, could you ask them for a link?

What keyword do I need in my link?

This question has a simple answer… ‘The Keyword you are optimising for, of course?’ But I would elaborate a bit further here, don’t link everything back to the homepage, make sure you link to your internal pages where possible as well. This will strengthen your domain and help support your website.

I would also add that if you only optimise for one keyword, then it would be a good idea to create a few keyword combinations with that one keyword in and link build using variety. This is because a large amount of keywords with the same anchor (link) text going to the same site will trigger ‘alarm bells‘ at Google HQ, so avoid this by maintaining a healthy amount of variety in your link building activities.

So there you are, next time ’someone who knows about SEO’ tells you that ‘you don’t have enough links’ tell them: ‘it’s quality over quantity’. And remember, one quality link can be worth a lot more than a hundred ‘bad’ (useless) links.

Over at WebProNews they have reported that there is a ‘70% chance’ that Apple will build a search engine in the next 5 years. The article goes on to say that Apple will be in a unique position to utilise data harvested from it’s App Store to create a mobile search engine. Interesting stuff methinks…

I am beginning to realise that the next big change (well it’s already happening, perhaps acceleration is a more apt word?) in SEO will be the mobile market. This is definitely the way forward for SEO, there is a whole new market emerging that is just waiting to be utilised. Mobile search may be a small section of the current market, but I can foresee (in my crystal ball, no less) that this is set to grow, and grow, and grow.

How can an SEO move into the mobile market?

• The first thing to consider is that location is a big factor in mobile search. People on the move looking for products and services. So, get your Google Maps profile up to date.
• Make sure your code validates. When I was a web designer it was a pride issue more than anything else that my code validated, but there still seems to be a lot of sites out there that don’t validate.
• Follow Accessibility best practices. This makes sense for SEO anyway. Watch my (somewhat embarrassing) Video, SEO vs Accessibility, I did with Nick last year for more info…
• Use ‘traditional’ SEO on-site techniques – Keywords in headings, easy navigation, internal linking etc etc.

So, even if Apple don’t set up their own mobile search engine it’s well worth dipping into this market now before the inevitable explosion happens – that way you’re at the top before it gets difficult to be there.