Search Engine Marketing Blog

Blogs are now being adopted more and more by business’ but why? That’s easy, because not only can they communicate to your clients and potentials clients but they can also be a great source of traffic for you. If you have a business and you are knowledgeable on your niche then the chance are you have a lot to offer people in the way of information.

Information you can blog about are:

• Tips
• How to Guides
• Articles on different subjects
• Latest products
• Discounts and offers
• New Clients
• Latest Company News
• Jobs and Recruitment

There are many benefits to blogging within your business but the main 4 are:

1. Increase your online visibility for the blogged about subjects
2. Become an industry authority on your niche subject
3. Create a rapport with potential clients and show you are a real company not just a pretty site
4. Keep existing clients informed

Blogging does take effort and discipline to ensure it is kept up to date and current but it is well worth it when you start seeing the results.

The only warning I would give is if you are not prepared to keep your blog up to date you are better off not having one as nothing puts potential clients off like an out of date blog.

Although there is some debate to whether the search engines will penalise your site directly for duplicate content, in certain circumstances it can directly affect your websites rankings.

There are a vast amount of pages for the Search engine bots to crawl so to make things more efficient each bot arrives at a website with a “crawl budget”. If you have a large amount of duplicate pages on your site this budget can get used up before the entire site is crawled. As a result fewer pages may end up getting indexed. Incidentally this is another reason it’s worth keeping JAVA script in external files and using external CSS style sheets rather than embed the code on the actual page.

Another issue to consider is when a search engine comes across duplicate pages how does it decide which page to show in the rankings.

For example many companies choose to have both the .com and .co.uk versions of their domain names. Unfortunately this often results in duplicate content issues as the search engines end up seeing each domain as two separate, but identical, websites.

Identical Pages from both sites can get indexed but there is no control over which page ends up getting ranked. For instance the .com/products.html may have more links than the .co.uk/products (because the .com domain has more links) but the search engine chooses to show the lower ranked .co.uk version instead for a particular keyword. A lower ranking means less traffic.

Fortunately this scenario can be easily rectified by using an .htaccess file to 301 redirect the .co.uk domain to the .com domain. From then on the search engines will only see one version of the website.

Sometimes duplicate content on a website is impossible to avoid. For instance you may have a print version of a particular page as well as the web version. In this circumstance it is simply a matter of telling the search engine bots not to crawl the page by using nofollow links to the print version and a Meta noindex on the page itself.

Although an AdWords Search Query Report can give you some idea of what search queries are triggering broad and phrase match keywords much of the useful data is hidden under ‘….other unique queries’ entries.

This data is an absolute gold mine for identifying new keyterms and negative keywords.

So how do we find out what some of those hidden terms were?

By using Google Analytics thats how. By following the simple instructions shown at www.semvironment.com you can easily start to use this vital data.

Did you know it only takes 8 seconds for your website’s visitors to decide to leave your website?

First impressions really count in business and they can make the difference between your business’ success and failure.

Things that can make visitors hit the dreaded back button are:

• Slow loading speed (caused by big page sizes and bad hosting providers)
• Poor navigation
• Unprofessional design (made in your bedroom type designs)
• Background music (elevator music is not a good idea)
• Flash only sites (some people don’t have the applicable plug ins)
• Site is an obvious ad farm
• Not displaying correctly in all browsers (very common problem with websites)
• Excessive pop up or pop under adverts
• Poor spelling / grammar
• Hard to read text (too small or non standard colours of text or backgrounds)

Are you making any of the above mistakes? If so you know what to do, fix them!

Micheline Arcier are a aromatherapy specialist with a salon in Knightsbridge, London. They also develop exclusive aromatherapy products and wish to raise their online visibility in order to increase online sales.

We are delighted to have been appointed as Micheline Arcier’s professional search engine marketing partner, and we are very much looking forward to working with them on this project.

It’s amazing with an industry such as Search Engine Marketing how many people know a lot about it but, for whatever reason, fail to implement the basics, even on their own site.

Just as interesting is how many web designers, in fact anyone who’s job involves using computers, seem to have gained an inside knowledge into the finer points of search engine optimisation or building effective pay per click campaigns without needing to do any form of study.

In his recent article, Don’t Hire a Butcher to do a Baker’s Job, Mark Jackson, has written an excellent piece explaining why you really shouldn’t trust your site’s search marketing success to someone who just happens to “know a bit”.

Before you let your web designer, IT support technician or Milkman loose on your site, check their credentials. Get evidence of success. Case studies? Testimonials? Anything!

Of course I’m going to suggest that if you’re a UK business you at least have a chat with us but, whatever you do, don’t just leave your site’s search marketing to chance. Getting it wrong could leave you more than just a bit disappointed; you could find yourself worse off than if you did nothing at all!

Connex Education are an industry leading education recruitment specialist, looking to increase their online visibility across all of the major search engines within their target market.

We are delighted to announce we have been appointed as Connex Education’s search engine marketing partner, and we are very much looking forward to working with them on this project.

We are yet again, due to our continued expansion, recruiting. This time we are looking for a sales executive to join our proactive sales team.

Ideally we are looking for someone who has experience in the search engine marketing field but we would be prepared to train from the ground up if the right candidate presented them self.

If you are currently working in sales and and are looking for a new challenge then please send in a copy of your CV with a covering letter detailing why you would make a great asset to the team.

For more details please have a look at our search engine marketing jobs page.

Do you know how many people leave your site as soon as they arrive? Do you know where these visitors came from? If the answer is no, then you had better sign up for a Google Analytics account immediately.

The bounce rate can be found on the dashboard in Google Analytics and quickly provides you with a snapshot of the user’s first impression of your website.

If they found your site relevant to their search they will stay and explore your site further. This lets you know that the user found your site relevant and as a result your bounce rate will be low. However, if the page the visitor arrived at was not relevant and they left your site without visiting any other page, then you would expect to see a high bounce rate. Remember the landing page may not always be your homepage.

Your bounce rate has a relationship with your conversion rate so if you are able to lower your bounce rate and become more relevant to user’s searches then you could see in an increase in the number of sales and leads.

Use the reports within Google Analytics to identify individual pages which have a high bounce rate so you are able to improve landing pages and spot traffic sources which are delivering unqualified visitors.

Carehome Selection are a well established company who help patients and their families choose the right care home; the information they provide helps people to make an informed decision with regards to their choice of home.

We are delighted to announce we have been appointed as Carehome Selection’s professional search engine marketing partner; and we are very much looking forward to working with them on this project.