SEO Blog

How to Select an SEO Agency

November 28, 2008 6:24 pm | Posted by Adrian

When selecting a UK-based SEO Agency, many companies struggle to get a grip on what they should look for and how much they should pay.  The need for SEO assistance has never been greater, but a reliable, expert and cost effective SEO Agency can be hard to find.

SEO is not a matter for amateurs; a great SEO Agency is part design team, part IT whiz, part business analyst, part marketing guru and part copywriter.  In order to test the mettle of any potential SEO Agency, here are ten questions you should ask:

Q1:  What guarantees can you give us about Search Engine Ranking Positions?
Whilst all SEO Agencies will aim to improve and increase your SERPs, the truthful answer is none.  Search Engine Rankings cannot be guaranteed by anyone other than the Search Engines themselves.  If the SEO Agency claims they can guarantee ANYTHING, they shouldn’t be trusted.

Q2:  How much will increased website traffic cost me?
The cost won’t always indicate the quality of SEO service you’ll receive.  But clearly, with a bona fide SEO Agency, the more money you spend, the more dedicated time and effort they can place on your SEO work.

Q3:  Can we meet in your office to discuss this in person?
If you’re based in the UK, you’ll want to deal with a UK-based company.  Face to face contact builds trust and rapport and gives you a point of contact with your SEO Agency.  Outsourcing your SEO to someone in Pakistan, India or Mars doesn’t give you the same customer experience.

Q4: Will you need to change my website?
To optimise a website often requires changes to it. All changes should be mutually agreed, expertly actioned and made in-line with the design of your website.

Q5: What linking process do you use?
A good SEO Agency will be open with you about the entire linking process and give you weekly linking reports.  They will use acceptable linking techniques that won’t get you banned.

Q6: What’s your company’s history?
Clearly, the fly-by-night cowboy will have a sketchy past; the trustworthy company will have years of experience and a researchable online presence.

Q7:  What does your pricing include?
Ask for a full list of services included and compare this with their competitors.

Q8: What length of contract do you require?
Flexibility is the keyword.  All companies need to tie you into a contract, that’s business, but look for flexibility and no lengthy tie-ins.

Q9: Are you certified in Google AdWords?
Let’s face it, Google still accounts for the lion’s share of all search engine traffic, and AdWords remains the obvious choice for your Ad campaign. But anyone with a credit card can set one up, so Google offer certified status to professionals completing AdWords qualifications. Consider this as the benchmark for AdWords expertise.

Q10: Can you provide examples of the results that you’ve previously achieved?
If the SEO Agency can really do what they say, they should be teeming with testimonials and evidence of their success rate.  It’s a competitive marketplace where SERPS can shift on a daily basis, but happy clients show you that this SEO Agency really know their job.  If you get the opportunity to talk directly to one of their clients - do it, it will speak volumes.

Asking these questions is essential to choosing the best SEO Agency.  Don’t be dazzled or distracted; the answers to these questions and your common sense will indicate to you which SEO partner you should select.

Obviously we’re biased but we believe that if you’re looking for a professional SEO Agency, you should consider discussing how Impact Media could help you.

Posted in Articles, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)  | The post has tags: ,  |  Leave Comment »

The Impact of Google on Traditional Marketing Media

November 24, 2008 11:07 am | Posted by Adrian

In 1998 computer magnate Bill Gates was targeted by pie terrorists in Brussels and pelted with cream pies for taking himself too seriously. In California, in the same year, Larry Page and Sergey Brin were busy giving birth to Google. In 2008 - the year of its tenth birthday - Google is a household name, having graduated from slang use to an official verb (’to google’) and included in dictionaries in the UK and US. Google has changed the way we think and the way we live our lives. It has changed the way we do business and organise our leisure time. Search engines have become an indispensable extension of our brains.

So, what effect has all this googling had on the traditional ways of advertising and doing business? In today’s competitive climate a business, no matter how small, cannot ignore the necessity of having a website. Marketing budgets are changing from traditional routes to focus on Internet searches and Google ads.

Since its introduction in the UK in 2002, Google’s UK advertising revenue has risen beyond anyone’s expectations (or worst nightmares). While Google’s revenue has increased by somewhere close to 40% each year, giants like ITV1 have seen their revenue decrease by around 7%. According to statistics reported in The Guardian, Google’s UK advertising revenue has been steadily increasing and crushing all other forms of media advertising:

2003 - £70 m - Google UK trailing all other media
2004 - £201m - a massive jump, putting it ahead of cinema advertising
2005 - £439m - overtaking ad revenue of Channel 5 (£300m)
2006 - £802m - overtaking Channel 4 network, ahead of radio by almost double (£458m) and consumer magazines (£698m).
2007 - £1.265bn - ahead of business magazines ($835m) and multi-channel TV market ad revenue (£974m)

The gurus predict Google’s UK 2008 advertising revenue will reach £1.74bn, putting it ahead of ITV1 and national newspapers. Also likely to find themselves in the cross hairs for the New Year are Google’s remaining competitors, the regional newspapers (£2.33bn in 2008) and commercial television sector (£3.5bn in 2008).

The old methods of targeting customers are becoming less and less viable as consumers find what they need via Google. A website gives businesses the chance to target potential customers with a myriad of information and possibilities such as directions and maps, tempting special offers and mailing lists, as well as bookmarking and sharing options.

Advertisers are learning that in order to maximise search results they need to fine-tune their landing pages and advertising copy - usually with the help of SEO professionals. According to Google, its largest advertising areas are in retail, finance, travel, automotive and technology. One major and significant benefit of investing in online advertising over traditional methods such as television, newspapers, magazines and radio is the ability to track results.

Statistics provided for 2008 by comScore and Hitwise show that Google continues to command the lion’s share of the UK search market and search engine rankings in the U.S. Google is no sleeping giant and so far has fended off cream-pie attacks as it has set about decimating the marketing income of traditional offline media.

Source of Google UK statistics:
The Guardian - April 2008

Posted in Articles, Google  | The post has tags: , ,  |  1 Comment »

How to Calculate Conversion Rates

November 21, 2008 12:40 pm | Posted by Adrian

To make the most of your Internet marketing strategy, you will undoubtedly be using some form of pay per click (PPC) advertising system.  If you aren’t yet using it, pay per click is a form of online advertising that involves paying only for the number of clicks that your advert receives from web users.  The most popular PPC system is Google AdWords, although there are other options such as Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter.  But simply gaining clicks on your advert is not enough; these clicks need to be converted into a desired outcome.

To anyone using PPC, tracking conversions is essential.  A conversion in this sense happens when a user clicks a PPC advert, and that click leads directly to one of your required results.  This may include buying, signing up, leaving their details or simply reading something.

Tracking these conversions is of vital importance to your business because it allows you to make better decisions about how to use your ads. It allows you to adjust and experiment with different headlines and keywords and check that ads lead to optimum conversions.  It is a simple way to check your ROI (Return on Investment), make budgeting alterations and make future choices based on this data.

The tracking of a conversion is carried out by a cookie, which is automatically placed on the user’s computer when they click your Ad.  In the case of Google, if the user continues from your PPC ad to one of your conversion pages, the cookie on the user’s computer web browser sends a notification back to Google. When this occurs, Google tracks this as a successful conversion.

There are several tools that Google uses to analyse your conversion rates.  However, in order to set these up, a small piece of code needs to be placed on your conversion pages so that Google can monitor the conversion.  Once Google’s conversion tracking software is running, it will deliver conversion reports for you automatically.

Calculating your conversion rates involves some basic mathematics.  If I sell Blue Widgets, I put up a Google AdWords Ad Group and see that I have 500 sales from 5000 unique visits.

Ad Group              Keywords        Unique Visitors    Sales

Blue Widgets1       Blue Widgets          5000            500

The calculation for conversion is simply SALES divided by VISITORS multiplied by 100 to get the rate as a percentage.  If you had more than one Ad Group/Set of Keyword, you could compare their performance.

Using this calculation, you can see a direct relationship between your PPC spending and the income it generates by comparing the cost of the PPC ad clicks against profit. If you choose a PPC rate of £0.25p per click and each sale creates £250 profit, you can see that your total PPC cost is £1250, whereas your gross profit is £125,000.

Tracking your conversions is imperative, but it’s what you do with that information that counts.  It’s the action that you take as a result of your conversion rate analysis that will enable you to be successful.  Of course, your conversions also rely on the content of your website being valuable and relevant to the visitor.

Hopefully this article will prove useful but if you need help with your PPC management, please get in touch with the team at Impact Media!

Is Twitter Right for Business Marketing?

November 7, 2008 2:17 pm | Posted by Adrian

Twitter is a micro-blogging tool that allows short messages (called Tweets) of up to 140 characters to be instantly shared with others via the Internet or mobile phones.  Like updating your status on FaceBook, it allows everyone within your network (known as Followers) to immediately catch your latest messages and read, reply or comment upon them.  It’s a free service that allows anyone to publish their thoughts, ideas or messages to anyone wishing to ‘follow’.

Twitter’s potential for use as a business marketing tool is only just being tapped.  But Internet marketers and online business owners are already using it as a valuable device in their overall marketing mix.  Clearly, the simplicity of this free service offers business tremendous opportunities.  Companies in the US such as Southwest Airlines have used Twitter to build loyalty and increase their high quality of customer service.

Potential Uses of Twitter for Marketing:

  • Offer customers/clients an intimate insight into the workings of your company
  • Offer incredible promotional opportunities, an instant FREE PR tool
  • Target the specific customers/clients you wish to reach
  • Provide instantly updated product/service information
  • Gives potential for future Pay-to-Follow Services
  • Perfect for influencing Online Reputation Management
  • Build brand loyalty by offering exclusive news and offers via Twitter
  • Instantly inform ‘Followers’ of the latest offers, sales and other promotions
  • Create mass and immediate buzz around a Product/Service launch
  • Clickable tiny URL links can be added to Tweets
  • Allow Followers to provide immediate feedback on Product/Services

Many high profile users are on Twitter.  Both Barack Obama and John McCain used Twitter in the run up to the US Presidential Election.  It worked for one of them!

Concerns About Using Twitter for Business Marketing:

  • The casual nature of the Tweets can be deceptive; people can reveal more than they would normally be willing to do in any other medium
  • Twitter presents things a distinct way, it’s aesthetically ugly
  • It’s easy to pretend to be someone else on Twitter; anyone could set up a Twitter pretending to be your company (e.g. Fake Steve Jobs’)
  • People need to log in to Twitter in order to use it, if users aren’t regular followers
  • High volume of Tweets can be very irritating for customers/clients
  • Twitter is not always a reliable service and has crashed in the past, wiping all of its data.   There are new third party tools to prevent this though
  • Twitter is still relatively new and has not been properly evaluated as a marketing tool.  Insufficient data exists with regards to its effectiveness
  • Misuse of Twitter could seriously damage your company’s online reputation
  • Pay to Follow Services are not yet available

Twitter may be the latest zeitgeist Internet based marketing tool, but it cannot succeed alone.  If you’re planning on using Twitter for Business, it needs to be another useful tool in the Marketing arsenal of your company.  Combined with the other elements of your marketing mix, Twitter can be a powerful promotional tool.

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Christmas Online Shopping Trends - 2008

November 6, 2008 5:46 pm | Posted by Adrian

Analysts are predicting that in spite of the economic slowdown, 2008 is still going to be a big year for online Christmas shopping in the UK, as everyone is turning to the web to save time and money. Research suggests that more shoppers than ever will look for their Christmas gifts online in 2008.

This echoes last year’s phenomenal online retail results, which some estimates suggest reached nearly £5bn in the fourth quarter of 2007, a growth of nearly 40% from the previous year. Last December’s most searched item was the Nintendo Wii, which vastly overshadowed searches for Apple’s iPod and iPhone, it’s anyone’s guess as to this year’s most searched item.

According to a recent YouGov survey, 54% of people polled said that they would be spending less money on Christmas gifts this year.  Whilst that might seem a depressing prospect, the same survey revealed a 10% rise in those using the Internet to purchase their gifts this year.  One in five people in the UK will buy half of their Christmas presents online.  Despite the decline in total amount spent, the average online shopper will spend £1600 this year.

Internet sales in United Kingdom are climbing at a dramatic pace.  Since the year 2000, Internet sales have risen by 3,500% to £42bn this year.  It’s expected that by 2010, that figure is set to climb further still to £72bn. As an indication of 2008 shopping trends, Primark, the clothing retailer announced that this year’s online sales have increased so far by 12% whilst High Street sales have fallen by 6%.

Despite the massive success of online Christmas shopping, it’s hard to believe that more than 50% of the top 100 retailers will not make any revenue from Internet sales during Christmas 2008, because they do not have their own website.

One surprise factor is the Christmas Day shopping phenomena.  Whilst the shops were already closed on the 25th December, four million Britons went online in 2007 and spent £84 million.  Without a website, without an online presence, businesses of all sizes are missing out on a huge slice of the Christmas retail pudding.

One of the reasons for the increase in online Christmas sales is that older Internet users between the ages of mid 40’s and 50’s are beginning to use the Internet for their own online shopping.  Previously, this age group didn’t shop online but as the UK’s population becomes more Internet savvy, a greater number of older customers are buying their Christmas presents online.

Kelkoo, the online shopping comparison website recently did an online survey in the UK and found that 78% of those polled stated that they would be buying the greater part of their Christmas gifts online.

Despite the rather undeniable financial crisis, online sales continue to rise and this Christmas will be no different.  Don’t expect deserted High Streets this year though, the key figure for 2008 is that only 17p in every retail pound is currently being spent online.  This figure is set to rise year on year, leading to the conclusion that this is just the beginning.

Posted in Articles, Internet News  | The post has tags: , , , ,  |  1 Comment »

Affordable Website Marketing for Business

October 16, 2008 5:49 pm | Posted by Adrian

The Internet presents limitless opportunities for mid-sized businesses that want to compete in the larger market.  Thanks to affordable online marketing options, it’s possible for a medium-sized business to carve a place in their sector and contend with the bigger companies.  The problem is finding or choosing the most suitable way to market your product or service online.

There are a number of options for businesses to choose from when considering cost-effective or affordable Internet marketing solutions, although the combined method or blended mix of marketing might better serve as the best approach.  This blended approach is made up of the five most effective and affordable ways to market your business website online.

SEO

Although SEO, or search engine optimisation, appears to be a rather simple way to increase your share of online traffic, the Natural Search results that it yields are powerfully impressive. SEO is the process of engineering your website so that it most effectively responds to the way that potential customers search for your business online.

Many people believe that SEO is something that can be done by just about anyone, but it takes a professional SEO expert to glean dynamic results without causing some of the very damaging errors that amateurs easily make.

Always choose to work with a professional SEO in order to get the best out of your website’s SEO potential.  The cost of an SEO expert is nothing compared to the potential increase in revenue from having your website optimised.

Articles

The Internet is a word-based medium and very much search driven.  Including articles on your website has a multiplicity of benefits, not least of all providing your customers with up to date expert advice.  Other benefits include:

  • Increased credibility
  • Improved SEO results from keywords in the articles
  • Expanded web presence

You don’t need to be an expert author, there are lots of highly competent and affordable writers that can provide any number of quality articles for your website on any topic.

PPC

PPC, or pay per click, is one of the best methods of bringing traffic to your website and converting it to sales.

Imagine advertising that is read directly by people who are already interested in your product or service.  That’s exactly what PPC offers!  When a potential customer is interested in your ad, they click to find out more.  You only pay for the number of clicks that your ad receives and you can set your budget accordingly.

PPC represents a highly customisable and a truly affordable method of advertising.  Unfortunately, this has been one of the reasons why so many people have attempted DIY PPC, resulting in some quite catastrophic wasted opportunities.

Online PR

Your reputation online matters because it’s easily raised and easily damaged in the same measure.  Online PR can be used to fire fight problems but can also be used to announce important product news, service changes, sales, launches and make the best use of all profile raising opportunities.

Video Marketing

Still relatively in its infancy but drawing increased interest and attention, online video marketing can offer a stunningly effective alternative to television advertising. Many people have found that they can obtain dramatic results from very simple videos.  In the increasingly competitive online market, this is one approach that cannot be ignored.

By using these five methods together, you will create a powerful yet affordable website marketing campaign for your business.

If you feel you need help with any of these areas and would like to work with a professional UK based search marketing agency, please refer to our search engine marketing services page.

How to Plan Your Internet Marketing Strategy

October 3, 2008 5:44 pm | Posted by Adrian

Planning your Internet Marketing strategy involves taking a new perspective on traditional offline marketing approaches.  Follow these steps to develop a plan for extending your offline strategies onto the Internet.  Your Internet Marketing plan should include:

  • Website Design
  • Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
  • Link Building & Article Marketing
  • Opt-In Opportunities
  • Paid Search

Web Design

Create a simple-to-navigate website that’s easy on the eye. Finding the balance between striking visual content and attractive written content is an important part of planning your site.

Search Engine Optimisation

The next step is to get your potential customers or clients to visit your website. SEO is how you prepare your website so that people searching for keywords related to your business can find you on the major search engines.  Your position in the Search Engine Ranking Positions (SERPS) often affects your online credibility with visitors.

Choosing a Domain Name that clearly reflects your business is vital and although not THE most important factor, it certainly helps your SEO.  Your website page titles should each feature your keywords and all of the written content of your website should be optimised for your keywords, but not to the exclusion of your human visitors.

Link Building and Article Marketing

Another way to improve your SERPs is through backlinks.  This means the number of high quality links from other websites back to your page.  It’s possible to engage in link swapping with other people within your business sector, but avoid buying backlinks from link farms, as this will damage your relationship to the Search Engines.

A very successful way to create excellent backlinks and build credibility is by conducting Article Marketing.  This means writing or paying someone else to write a series of high quality articles related to your business and posting them at respected article directories.  When a potential customer searches for information in your field, they find your well-written article, this increases their perception of your credibility and they follow the link to your site.

Opt-in Opportunities

Online you can offer potential interested customers the opportunity to join your mailing list.  This can be done from a sign up or opt-in page on your website or from a single stand alone page on a separate domain.  To be sure that you are getting customers with a serious interest and not just spammers or those with a passing interest, you can offer what’s called Double Opt-In.  This means once you’ve captured the customer’s data, you send them an email asking them to confirm their interest and once they click that, they are signed up as a confirmed lead.

Paid Search

To stand a realistic chance of getting good quality visitors to your site, it’s worth investing in Paid Search.  This usually comes in the form of Google Ads.  This means deciding on a range of keywords or keyphrases that you feel potential customers might use when searching for your goods or services and bidding to appear first in the Paid Search rankings.  The advertiser pays per individual click on an advert (known as PPC) or per 1000 page impressions (known as CPM).  When choosing your keywords or phrases try to think from the perspective of your customers and not use too many trade terms.

A blended approach to Internet Marketing, a method that involves some Paid Search, some SEO, Article Marketing and Opt-In Opportunities is more likely to be successful than exclusively focusing on one single strategy. Our search engine marketing services fit with this Internet marketing strategy and can help you increase your return on your online marketing investment.

What Does Video Advertising Cost on the Internet?

September 21, 2008 9:15 am | Posted by Adrian

On the Internet, the written word has always dominated.  Whilst a picture may be worth a thousand words, the word holds pride of place in online marketing and advertising.  However, since the development of fully proliferated wireless access and high performance video technology integrated within the World Wide Web, the power of Video has really come into its own and it’s already becoming a multi-billion pound phenomenon across the globe.

The obvious example of the explosion of video on the Internet is from YouTube.   The most popular video site on the Internet is owned and run by Google, the most powerful search engine company on the planet.  If you want to advertise with a video on the front page of YouTube for a day, it will currently cost you a minimum of £25,000.  Cheap enough if you’ve got that kind of budget.  But what if you haven’t?

Internet analyst David Hallerman suggests that while Paid Search is very effective for direct marketing, nothing grabs the surfer’s ‘heart and mind’ like video advertisements.

Video Advertising is now considered an excellent choice if you want to drive brand awareness and sales.  Research has shown that web users have higher levels of interaction with video than they do with traditional online image ads.  The average surfer will click ‘Play’ on a video far more easily than committing to the click on a Paid Search ad.

Google have recently brought together the idea of PPC (Pay per Click) with Video Advertising in attempt to make the most of these rapid changes in the online advertising market.   Like their PPC campaigns, marketers bid the maximum that they would pay per CPM (Cost per 1000 impressions).  Google claim to offer a guarantee against overpaying by reducing the cost you actually pay to one cent more than the nearest next bid.

There are alternatives to the YouTube/Google monopoly, if you want to use Video Advertising as part of your marketing campaign.  Many video advertisers charge via CPM.  This type of advertising has exploded in the US, where sites such as MySpace offer a short 5 second video display at a cost of $25 per CPM.  At the other end scale, the Wall Street Journal charges $90 per CPM.

In the UK, local search site SCOOT already offers video advertising deals.  By building on their relationship with media group ITV, they offer localised video ads around online television programming.  With SCOOT, 25,000 plays is just £500.  Other companies offer more bespoke services and are therefore reticent to publish prices.

Recently, the Guardian predicted that by 2009, Internet Video advertising would outspend traditional television advertising for the first time.  By 2012, it’s considered that £361 million will be spent on Internet Video advertising in the UK alone.

By 2009, to actively compete in the global marketplace, Video Advertising is an area of your online marketing campaign that you simply must factor into your budget.  Whilst the costs are currently high with the most obvious main providers like YouTube, more cost effective video advertising services are being made available from smaller sources all the time.

If you can see video forming part of your marketing stratagy, take a look at our Video Marketing Services to evaluate whether we can help you.

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Local Search Engine Marketing

September 19, 2008 11:47 am | Posted by Adrian

The importance of Local Search, the industry term for Local Search Engine Marketing, is rising.  Over the past few years, Local Search has gained in sophistication and taken an increasingly significant role in Internet Marketing. Local Search is yet another vital revolution in the way that we search for, buy and sell products and services on the Internet.

Since the Internet first became a major marketplace, online retailers have competed for the attention of the world’s consumers.  This has been great for global business; it means that a small business in Southampton, England can compete with key retailers and sell its products to customers anywhere in the World.  But it also means that any trader with access to the World Wide Web can sell to Southampton too!  Online retailers who want to attract local customers to them need to work to compete on a local level.

In order to increase the profile of local businesses to local customers, Local Search was created.  In 2006, over 20% of all searches made on the Internet were intended to find something local.   The big Search Engine companies like Google and MSN are all spending huge sums of money developing their own search technologies and experts reveal that Local Search is the biggest area of research and development that’s likely to start affecting the way we all buy and sell our products and services from now on.

In order to benefit most from local searches, your company should dominate all local keyword searches. Local Search isn’t going away, it’s only going to develop and grow as a direct, cost-effective method of online marketing.  It’s important to know that any online business wishing to compete locally will need to carefully construct a local search engine marketing plan.

So what are the benefits for online retailers of using Local Search Engine Marketing to reach their target customers?

  • Local Search is a cost effective way of marketing.  You only pay to market to customers who are searching within your specified geographical area.
  • Local Search Engine Marketing is like placing a giant advert for your product or service in front of qualified traffic. Your ads are positioned to appear to people that are already looking for what you offer within your designated area.
  • Unlike the potential expense of dominating keyword searches on a national or international level, Local Search Engine Marketing allows you to completely dominate keyword searches in your area and save money by specifying local searches.
  • See increased sales as customers search for you; get a superior ROI for your marketing costs.
  • Customers use the Internet to compare potential retailers but are more likely to trust local retailers over those located further away.
  • Local Search increases offline traffic such as footfall and telephone enquiries for those businesses with a physical storefront.

Whereas Local Search Engine Marketing was once an optional extra, for businesses retailing on the Internet, it’s now a real necessity! We offer a complete Local Search Engine Marketing Service for any UK business looking to increase visits from searchers in their geographical area.

Improving the Rankings of Your Website

September 17, 2008 1:37 pm | Posted by Adrian

Everyone wants to be Number 1 on Google!  Why?  Because those businesses that are Number 1 on Google get the greatest share of traffic to their site.  If you have a website and you aren’t placing within the first page on Google or one of the other search engines - then you don’t really exist.  Getting a good ranking equates to increased chances to convert interested visitors into satisfied customers.

Without this, no one will find your site; very few people even look beyond the second search page.  Getting a first page ranking is a priority for all businesses using the web to promote and sell their products and services.

There are various ways to improve your rankings and experts will tell you that it’s difficult to be sure which makes the biggest improvements fastest.

Content

They say that Content is King.  But the truth is that engaging, informative, constantly updated and search engine friendly content is the King of Kings.  Adding content keeps Google’s spiders crawling all over your site.  The content has to be original and make sense in order to cater to your human visitors.  Content can come in the form of articles, blogs, press releases, landing/squeeze pages - whatever style you believe will work best.

Keywords

Using a range of keyword tools, you can find out the best keywords and phrases that will attract the right visitor to your site.  It’s no use getting to Number 1 on Google for keywords that are unrelated to what you have to offer.  Be as specific as possible and think of combining your keywords into the phrases that people would use when searching for your product.  The key to choosing the best keywords is to choose words from the perspective of your potential visitor.  What would someone type if they wanted what you have to offer? This can be very different from how you might market the product traditionally.  The keyword density has to be just right so as not irritate Google, so if you’re not sure, consult an expert.

Links

The search engines look at your popularity with others and if you appear to have a steady stream of people linking to your site, it looks like your website is something that should appear higher up in the rankings.  Many people buy links from Link Farms and once Google finds out, they will punish your site, even making it disappear off the search engine rankings all together.

Black Hat SEOs

There are many dodgy characters out there that can make you Number 1 on Google.  But their tactics and techniques are highly questionable, their results tend to be temporary, they charge very high sums and eventually the search engines catch up with you and punish you and not the black hat SEO. It’s just not worth the risk!

Improving the rankings of your website is a tricky business.  There are many ways that people trying to get higher rankings can mess up their optimization and damage their relationship with the search engines.  No one knows exactly how many different levels or facets the search engine algorithms have, but through years of experience, reputable SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) companies have developed techniques that increase the chances of a good ranking on Google or one of the other search engines.

At Impact Media, we offer a professional search engine optimisation service for UK based businesses that are looking to achieve greater returns from their website.

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