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.

What speed did Marty McFly’s DeLorean have to reach before it travelled through time?

It may come as a surprise to many readers to learn that here at Creare we do very occasionally put down the mice, shutdown our computers and go home to let our hair down. And during one such very rare (practically unheard of) session of relaxation I found myself watching one of my all time favourite films - ‘Back to the Future’ (the first one, naturally).

Now I’m no film buff (I enjoy cinema as much as the next guy) but that’s one entertaining piece of cinematic brilliance, is it not? I spent 116 minutes enraptured and made a mental note not to wear my retro high tops in public again for fear of the inevitable Michael J. Fox comparisons. It wasn’t until a few days afterwards when, working hard on all things SEO, I noticed certain similarities/unbearable puns between the film and Search Engine Optimisation.

Arguably, Marty and Doc are in possession of the most stylish search engine of all time – the DeLorean DMC – 12, a car that wouldn’t necessarily look out of place today. With it, they’re able to trawl the ages in search of assurances of their existence and sports almanacs alike (fast forwarding to part II I know) . But what’s all this got to do with SEO? Well just like Marty, I think there’s something we can all learn regarding SEO, simply by strapping in and venturing into the past.

We needn’t go far; the process of search engine optimisation is a fairly recent one, and like all newborns, it grew quickly. In the old days achieving page one rankings could be as simple as submitting your URL to Google, taking care of your Meta tags and securing a few well chosen links. Unfortunately for DIY-ers there’s now a lot more to it - but we can still take something from the old ways.

Look after the basics. Making sure your tags and keyword are all in order lays a good foundation on which to build; learn from Marty and tie up any loose ends to ensure that you don’t disappear from your family photo (or the search engines as the case may be). Of course, make sure you avoid the big mistake of the past, keyword stuffing, as this is likely to get your site penalised heavily.

Many of you will remember the music from Back to the Future (Chuck Berry anyone?) and look back in anguish at the scene where Marty and his band are rejected in an audition for being ‘too loud’. The search engine equivalent is creating far too many low quality links – something that many companies were hired to do in the early days of SEO. Most simply created basic websites and threw a few of your linked keywords in.

If you have thousands of links, Google will think your site is unnaturally loud and with low grade links from weak sites, it won’t rate the music very much either. Just a few links from relevant and authoritative sites or directories is music to Google’s ears, and will get your site noticed.

My final piece of advice is simple – don’t change too much. Marty, bless him, got a little carried away, and what was the result? He was in danger of ceasing to exist. SEO is no different, if you obsess too much over PageRank, links, keywords, directory submissions and fresh content you’ll end up changing something that was integral to your rankings.

Every SEO change you make to your website should have a purpose for a human visitor too, rather than just for SEO purposes. Bear this in mind, take your time and listen to trusted consultants like Dr Emmett “Doc” Brown when you get into trouble, and you’ll be on the right track.

P.S. It was 88mph.

P.P.S. If you find yourself actually in 1955 then something’s gone terribly wrong: seek help.

Google’s dominance remains solid but with Bing and Yahoo’s search engine union looking to be completed in the next few weeks there could actually be another option when making a search.

Over at Web Pro News they have the latest data from Chikita showing Bing is now the number two search engine, taking the place of Yahoo.

But with Yahoo’s searches to be powered by Bing I doubt if Yahoo has put as much emphasis on advertising their organic search engine over the last year or so.

Google’s contract with Mozilla is expiring next year meaning that we could see a little bit of a bidding war to become the default search engine of Firefox. Currently, searches using Google on Firefox outnumber Bing and Yahoo’s total searches.

Bing has a powerful ally in Facebook, though at the moment it isn’t necessarily helping it increase in the search engine market however it is exposing 500 million people a day to Bing as a brand and another option.

Bing will definitely have their eyes on the mobile market with Windows Phone 7 arrival in the near future. Smart phones have taken off big-time over the last year. Now there is a choice rather than just the iPhone, and this competition will increase bringing down prices making Smart phones more affordable and ubiquitous. Expect a focus on mobile search engines next year (I guarantee it, hold me to this, this will definitely happen, definitely, maybe).

Next year could see a huge shift in the SEO landscape and with Facebook looking to put down Google’s attempt at social marketing before it starts there probably won’t be a better time to de-throne Google.

How to set up Custom Reports in Google Analytics

You’ve set up your Google Analytics account so you can monitor your Internet Marketing but with the minefield of information that GA offers do you wonder where to go past the default dash board that is already present there?

Too much data without a purpose or a function is worthless so its important for you to decide what it is from your analytics that you actually want to find out.

For your SEO purposes you most likely wish to know if the keywords you are optimising for are actually bringing the traffic to your site that you expect. You will want to know about which keywords have been directly responsible for your goal conversions. Other important things you may wish to know when measuring the success of your SEO is which areas your visitors come from especially for local SEO campaigns and for e-commerce websites you will need to know the average value that each area or keyword has actually brought.

There are many variables which you can play with in custom reports so consider which are important to you and which results will enable you to create actions to improve your business and your SEO.

The main essential set up that I use for my clients is the Keywords Goals Report. You can set this up in a simple custom report which collates this information into one simple report. To do this you need to click on the custom reports tab and click to create a new report.

Within this set up you need to set the metrics which are to be reported and the dimensions on which they are to be shown against.

Type the metrics you wish to use into the search bar and when found drag and drop them into the correct box. For the Keyword Goals Custom Report use the settings in the image below. With this report the goal 1 has been configured against people visiting the contact page and goal 2 is where people have submitted an email enquiry and reached the contact process page (thank you page).

You can rename this report at the top by simply editing the date section and calling it Keyword Goals.
Click to save and then you will see the full report you have created.

The sources will be listed showing how many contact and contact process conversions there are, along with the contact process conversion rate. You can now click on the source to reveal the keywords that were typed to find your site under each source which brought the contact and contact process goals.

You can customise your report to suit your needs and make multiple reports in any one account. The great thing about custom reports is that once set up you can access the information your business needs to know about the performance of your website and your SEO quickly and easily without having to know how to navigate around the whole of Google Analytics.

To see the selection of variables you can choose from you can scroll the side bar to make your selection on the metrics and dimensions

The example of how to see which cities have brought the most traffic and the value of each visit is demonstrated below.

Planning before creating your reports is essential to ensure you create the right kind of reports for your needs and to make analysing your SEO a much easier task.

It is well known that Twitter is a great way to connect with millions of people worldwide, and there is no doubt that if you can master it, it can be an effective way to promote your brand and your company. Social media and SEO do go hand in hand in many ways although not in the conventional sense we would imagine when talking about SEO. If you choose to use Twitter as an online marketing tool you need to earn your respect and build trust. You will be the voice of your company. This is not easy as anyone who has been involved with a forum will know. Online “relationships” are more difficult to build than in real life and equally as hard to maintain.

The first and possibly the most difficult step is to build up a following for your company. This is going to be the tricky part. A good place to start is to make a list of suppliers, clients and retailers you offer your products and services to, if they are on Twitter follow them and it is likely they will reciprocate. If you use Facebook add a link to your Twitter page, equally add a link in your email signature, many people out of curiosity will click on the link and then it’s down to the profile being engaging enough for them to follow you.

Use your Twitter account as if you are a real person, make your Tweets interesting and if so inclined there is no harm in adding a touch of humour. Ensure your blog is linked up to aggregate your latest post, make the effort to engage with your followers and those who follow you, you never know who might be reading it. Try search.twitter.com to see if someone has mentioned your company name, if so acknowledge that, it will go a long way. Try and tweet once a day and re-tweet anything you find interesting, flattery goes as far online as in real life, knowing someone has read something you have written and found it interesting makes it all worthwhile!

Twitter is very similar to SEO in the sense that it takes time, but it is free and nothing worth having comes easy. Twitter won’t help your rankings improve but it can give you a greater presence, and therefore more traffic and more people visiting your site, these factors combined will go a little way towards helping your SEO.