SEO Blog

SEO and Internet marketing agencies are often given a bit of a rough ride. As an industry, it is not without its charlatans and is still tarnished by the bad old days of black hat upstarts propelling websites up the search rankings through the shadiest of methods.

Search engines have made it increasingly difficult for websites to cheat the system. Their complex set of rules and finely tuned algorithms ensure a far higher level of quality from any SERP (search engine results page). Modern-day SEO is all about adding quality through a series of multi-faceted processes; not simply spamming select pages full of white text or keywords. It can take time and exhaustive effort to make up a few places in the rankings.
(more…)

If you have a business blog, whether it serves independently or as part of a main website, you want to be ensuring that your posts are reaching out to the largest possible audience. Keywords provide a vital part of improving visibility on search engines, as such it is essential that you are targeting the optimum terms for your site.

Wordtracker provide an extremely useful service, allowing you to type in words and phrases before providing statistical data on the most popular examples relating to your search. Obviously if you’re in the middle of writing an engaging blog post you probably don’t want to be jumping between sites too often, so they’ve now come up with an incredibly helpful tool called SEO Blogger.

(more…)

Eco Worrier are a Hampshire based specialist in sourcing and retailing Green and Eco Friendly Household Products, through research and testing they are able to help their customers find only those products that will work effectively around the home.

As people become more concerned about the environment the demand for Eco Friendly Products continues to rise all the time, furthermore with the boom in internet shopping Eco Worrier are more than aware that having a strong online presence will be integral to the success of the business.

(more…)

Firefox have now started allowing “Add-on Collections” which is a great way for users of Firefox to share, or make public, their favourite plugins (add-ons) for a give topic.

One of those to already be made available is a “Best of Breed Firefox Collection for SEO and Internet Marketers” from Andy Beard. Andy’s assembled some very useful plugins here in one collection so you could add them all or just view the list and add individually. Enjoy!

As far as SEO tools go, link building is pretty high on the list. Incoming and direct links will add credibility to your site – assuming of course, that they are from credible sources – which invariably leads the search engines to sit up and take note.

The aforementioned point on credible sources does need to be flagged up immediately though. Just as in any walk of life, if you hang around with shady characters, regardless of your intentions, inevitably some of that perceived negativity rubs off on you. There are so many spamming directories, many of which may request a payment, that it can be a bit of a minefield. But simply submitting your site left right and centre could cause more problems than it does offer solutions.

A brilliant way to create a number of decent links is to write and publish articles. Wisely, most article submission sites – eZine and Buzzle are probably the most popular – don’t allow you to pepper articles with keywords and HTML code, so you’ll need to be a little smarter than that. Essentially, the back link will often come from the ‘Author’s Bio’ (or equivalent), where you can write a little blurb about yourself, the site and get in that all important embedded link.

Submitting articles not only creates strong links, but if readers find your piece interesting you may find that it is also a good source of direct traffic too. This is reflected in a number of other free posting sites such as Squidoo. Here you have the opportunity to write an informative page about any topic – preferably related to your site and area of expertise – and provide a useful resource; both selfishly for your own site’s SEO but also for the genuinely interested readership.

There are also literally hundreds of business directories where you can also post links that point back to pages of your site; many are free, some are not, but be sure to shop around when locating them to avoid the spammers mentioned earlier in the post. LinkedIn is a particularly reputable business networking tool, allowing users to write a little information about themselves, their company and provide a link; everything you need really to continue pushing that message.

Linking is very much the unseen part of SEO. Whilst you can analyse how many links you have coming in, it’s not always as easy to ascertain what effect they’re having. Without a steady stream of good links to your site though, you may never gain the respect of search engines. The better the quality, the higher the search ranking. It’s not overly complicated, but it’s certainly worth taking the time to research and effort to do it properly.

When looking to optimise any website’s search engine ranking there are a number of potential avenues to explore. PPC advertising, strong links and improving content to be more keyword orientated are just a few of the common methods.

Leading search engines have their own methods of analysing and ranking websites. One thing that they all look for though is good quality new content that is regularly updated. So rather than going through your site and adding or adjusting existing pages to boost visibility, why not set up a news section or blog?

Blogs are a simple and highly effective marketing device. By writing exclusively about your industry, using personal insight and knowledge where applicable, you can provide an exceptional service to clients, both existing and potential, as well as to your site’s online presence. It’s an extremely straightforward way of providing an added dimension to a company website, whilst also helping boost your content and hopefully your online visibility.

Blogging for Business Success

Remember, a blog needn’t be simply stating the daily facts and figures within your own company. Whilst it is good to keep customers informed of what is going on, there’s a whole world of related information and news that can serve the same purpose. Relating your company’s activities with the latest industry news and events can provide an interesting spin on the latest breaking stories, helping generate additional interest from organic searches.

If you visit any successful website, you can be sure that there will be a blog in one guise or another; in fact many include a whole range of them for individual sectors. The quality of content is obviously integral to its credibility. If you don’t employ an SEO copywriter in-house or anybody else who can provide the same high level of focussed copy, then you may need to outsource to a specialist just to ensure that you’re getting the very best results from your blog.

Unique copy, written to the very highest standards with thoroughly researched keywords and titles used throughout, is what every business website should look to achieve on each and every page. This of course is true of a blog too. Your blog articles should be about creating an immediate impact, but always keep in mind that they can also help boost your long-term rankings too. As they are archived and stored on your site indefinitely, articles can really aid optimisation of the overall content; providing a vital additional source of keywords and phrases.

Boost Your Site’s Search Engine Visibility

Successful blogs generally tend to have a unique niche or something else that distinguishes them from any others. Creating a preferred writing tone, perhaps reflecting that used elsewhere in your site, whilst also maintaining regular updates will help visitors build up a trust of your company. This credibility boost may even help turn sceptical visitors into long-term clients or customers.

Best of all, blogs needn’t take up too much critical time. A short post here and there throughout the week, along with a few more detailed articles when larger news stories break, will help keep your site fresh and new, whilst also drawing in those search engine spiders for a closer examination. If you have the time to dedicate to it and are able to produce useful and informative articles with greater regularity, the results should follow suit.

As with anything in business though, you tend to get out of it what you choose to put into it. Regardless of your site’s status, the ability to improve its visibility is at your fingertips. Site content is quickly becoming the most important aspect in any SEO strategy. So whether creating a cutting edge blog or just filling your website’s pages, quality and clarity of the copy used is essential in improving your popularity with the search engines and your intended market.

Microsoft Advertising and research agency Synovate have joined forces to create a definitive study of young adult’s online activities titled Young Adults Revealed.

12,000 people aged between 18 and 24 from across the globe were asked about how they used the Internet, covering everything from viral advertising to social media usage, helping to unearth  some interesting and surprising results.

For example, when on the lookout for a new or even a known brand, the first port of call for young adults appears to be Internet search engines. 46% of those questioned claimed that they used a search engine to find the brand they were looking for, showing once again just how important search engine optimisation really is for any website.

47% also claimed to have clicked on adverts within the last month; further highlighting the power of keyword targeted advertising for specific audiences when using PPC services on search engines.

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is one of the most important tools for businesses aiming to target customers on the Internet. It is part of an integrated package of Internet or online marketing activities that can massively increase the traffic to your website.

However, when most people design and build a website, SEO becomes an afterthought. When you have cold feet, putting your socks on over your shoes means you’re wearing shoes and socks, but something tells me it’s not the best way to do it.

Search engine optimisation and your online marketing strategies must be part of the initial planning of your website. Because too many people are willing to employ a web designer (many of whom have zero SEO knowledge) without fully understanding their marketing goals or the needs that their website will have. This means you can end up with a well designed website that isn’t fit for purpose.

It’s common for people to try to ignore the problem, to carry on and make small amendments as they go, but without ever making the most of their site. But let’s make one thing clear. Without effective SEO, you can kiss goodbye to your long-term success on the Internet, because you might be lucky now, but eventually, all of your competitors are going to get their SEO and online marketing in order and you will disappear so far down Google’s listings, no one will find your business.

Bringing in SEO experts before the design is the only way to do it, so that means discussing your business, its needs and marketing goals before the designer is even consulted. Your SEO experts should conduct their keyword research before any initial designs. Why? Because SEO should be wholly integrated in your site to get the most from it. And it’s a simple choice. Is your website just a big expensive billboard lost in the dusty wilderness of cyberspace. Or is it a way to increase revenue and build your business? The choice is yours, but SEO must not be an afterthought.

CMS systems help to create some very pretty websites; they’re easy to use and so people concentrate on the ease of creation, but so many of them are practically useless for marketing purposes, they become ineffective by not building SEO into the design.

So stop, before you spend time and money designing a website for your business that no one can find! Think it through. The way that potential customers find you is as important (if not more)as the aesthetic design of your site.

Most people just want to throw up a site because everyone else has one. But this ‘keeping up with the Jones and Co.’ mentality is what pushes people to build sites with no knowledge of how to get people to visit it. Imagine opening up a big restaurant in the middle of nowhere but failing to advertise your business or put up signs so that people could find you; that’s what putting the cart before the horse with SEO is like. SEO needs to come first if you want your business to succeed online.

If you’re planning a website and quite like the idea of people being able to find it, read more about our professional SEO services.

If you’re a Finance Director, you probably don’t think you have much to do with the online marketing of your company. However, online marketing is the answer to many Finance Director’s prayers during this time of economic trouble. Online marketing is a straightforward and effective way to immediately begin reducing costs and dramatically increasing profits.

Advertising
How much does it cost to put a 30 second advert on commercial television? In the UK, the average cost is £140,000. That’s for one advert that airs once. For that cost, you get blanket coverage of a particular broadcast region. But how many of those people seeing the ad would actually want to buy your product? And what if the people who would respond positively to that ad were at work or making a cup of tea during your commercial? With Online marketing, you can target your market directly.

Pay per Click
Using Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising, you pay only for those potential customers that actually click on your adverts. It’s competitive, so you bid to compete with other companies for the keywords in your ad. But with £140,000 and a professionally managed PPC campaign you could receive many more leads or sales due to the highly effective targeting of PPC. What’s more, the ads appear any time of the day or night and for whatever period you set. And there’s a certain commitment involved in clicking an ad that isn’t achieved through simply viewing a television commercial.

In the next two years, Internet advertising will take over from all other forms of traditional marketing. Why pay more and receive less?

SEO
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is another way to ensure that people looking for your product find it and spend their money with you and not the competition. The Internet is a competitive marketplace and with billions of pounds of consumer’s money at stake each year, getting a high placement on Google really matters. SEO is a specialist craft and requires an expert but again the cost is very little compared to other forms of traditional marketing.

People go to the Internet to find the things they want to buy. When your website comes up top on Google, you get most of the attention and most of the business. This is a very cheap alternative to traditional advertising and could save you tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of pounds.

Website
Your website is the new place to do business. The website is now your marketing pitch, your point of sale and your customer service centre. It’s your public face and it comes at the fraction of the cost of maintaining buildings, paying the wages and travel costs of a sales force, investing in tradeshows, printing expensive glossy brochures, engaging in costly direct marketing or cold calling campaigns. Your website is the greatest tool in reducing your costs and increasing your business.

Britain’s recession is causing many Finance Directors to force more and more cut backs. Businesses need to tighten their belts, even those that are currently in a growth period. As the Head of Finance, you have two choices, continue with these devastating cut backs, redundancies and wage freezes or make real savings by transforming your costly offline marketing into a cheaper, streamlined and dynamic revenue source.

It’s a trying time for UK companies; you can hardly switch on the TV or the radio without hearing about the economic downturn and the gloom of the recession. Business leaders are under great pressure to take stock of their financial situation and cut back wherever possible; every pound saved means less dependence on immediate new business.

However, there is a slight paradox; if companies are to survive the recession and emerge strong and competitive with a healthy market share, then they must continue to invest in their sales and marketing to get more orders.

The wise choice then, is to market your company in a way that provides the best return on your investment. Those companies that have an online presence have an immediate advantage, since online marketing represents the most cost effective and beneficial opportunity to make a healthy profit.

As online marketing goes, the most immediate benefits can be achieved through the use of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategies to push your business to the top of search engine listings in your chosen market.

By investing in the right SEO consultant to collaborate with you, you can increase the number of potential clients that find you online, based on the key words and phrases they have searched for in the likes of Google and Yahoo.

You may have the best products and prices in your market, and the confidence to provide a better service than your competitors, but if people can’t find you near the top of the list, you won’t get the opportunity to win their business.

You don’t need to sell products and services directly online to get the benefit of Search Engine Optimisation. Since a good SEO strategy is multifaceted by using a mix of optimised web copy, site content and article writing there are many different methods to grab the potential customer’s attention.

Once your business has been noticed and given attention by the customer, you can use a variety of cost effect direct marketing techniques (such as e-mail marketing) to encourage them to place an order.

Along those lines, it’s also worth remembering that a good SEO approach cannot only win new clients, but also help develop existing ones. As any marketing manager knows, it’s more profitable to develop additional business from existing clients than to solely rely on new ones, and online marketing is a perfect tool to achieve those results.

As consumers in the private and commercial sector look to get the best value for money in their purchases, they will invariably increase their online buying habits in the search for a better deal. This is comforting news for a marketing manager who is looking towards a strong online marketing push to get results.

Search Engine Optimisation is regarded by Internet experts and business leaders as the most effective and efficient way to transform your online presence into orders. SEO is a high impact tactic, and most importantly in these tough times, offers an excellent return on your investment.

If you’re a business looking to maximise the return on your marketing investment, Impact Media can help with cost effective SEO services.

Search Marketing Careers offer great opportunities during a terrible economic period. Whilst many sectors of business are making people redundant, the growth of the search marketing field offers a range of opportunities now and in the future. Universities and other training institutions are beginning to offer more specialised search marketing education to produce graduates that can make the most of this rapidly growing area.

The Internet marketing field has developed quickly and strongly, responding to the need for high quality, targeted marketing with lower costs than traditional marketing and advertising agencies could offer.

So what kinds of career opportunities exist within the Search Marketing field?

SEO – Search Engine Optimisation Specialist
Optimising websites, performing research and selecting keywords for clients. The role requires someone who stays ahead of the game and is completely up to date with changes in Search Engine policies and procedures. SEO specialists know how to fix website traffic problems and make positive suggestions to clients.

Web Article Writer
Writing content for websites to be used for increasing traffic and backlinks. Good knowledge of SEO and Keywords helps to create articles with great search potential.

PPC – Pay Per Click Specialist
Devises PPC strategies for clients, picks keywords, creates PPC adverts and analyses traffic and conversions.

Online PR Consultant
Public Relations has now strongly moved into the sphere of the Internet. A company’s reputation and credibility are built on what people think of them. This job is about using the Internet and Social Media to promote the company positively online.

Web Analytics Specialist
An important player in an Internet marketing team, this expert uses their analysis skills and those opportunities provided by software systems to improve their client’s web traffic and conversion rates. As well as having strong analysis abilities, they also need excellent communication skills to inform the client how and what changes are needed to develop their site’s potential.

Social Media Maven
This is one of the newest areas for exploiting the Internet for marketing purposes. Social Media includes the well-known social networking sites such as BEBO, MySpace and Facebook, but also includes YouTube and Blogging. Social Media experts know how to exploit the benefits of Social Media to benefit their client’s business.

Link Builders
To obtain a good relationship with Google, a website should have lots of quality incoming links. The quality is more important than the quantity, so merely signing up for thousands of link directories is not enough. Link Builders negotiate with individuals and companies to ensure that they source links that benefit their clients.

Bloggers
Bloggers are writing experts that can develop short pieces of writing aimed at building reputation, backlinks and SEO possibilities. A good blog can massively benefit a website and bring potential customers and clients from all over the world to your site.

As the Internet continues to dominate business sales and marketing, more and more recession-proof jobs will come into existence. Internet commerce is growing stronger and stronger each month and without people with these skills, businesses will not prosper in this new business environment.

Impact Media are always interested in hearing from talented individuals with a passion for search. If that’s you, get in touch if you’re interested in developing your search marketing career with a leading UK SEO agency.

1: Use a Good SEO Agency
If you’re not an SEO expert, you’ll need to hire a top SEO agency, to deliver results and avoid the many costly mistakes that amateur SEO tinkering causes. A good SEO agency will have a proven track record and not be bashful about their successes. A great agency understands how to segue SEO into your present marketing plans and develop your online marketing in tandem with your current strategy.

It’s vital that your website includes optimised content and copy, but an excellent SEO agency will know how to select and place your target keywords throughout the site copy without killing the readability of the site or the experience of the visitor.

Great agencies know that the long way round is the shortest way home. They avoid short-cuts, automated submission and quick fix solutions.

2: There are no Guarantees
It’s vital that you understand in the world of SEO, there are few absolute guarantees. People that offer them are looking to earn quick money. A good, solid, blended approach to online marketing with SEO is the only way to deliver results, but the delivery of exact results such as the Number 1 position on Google is not something that can be guaranteed. Positions can be improved, traffic can be increased, but don’t listen to false guarantees.

3: Blend SEO into your PR Strategy
Slowly but surely SEO and PR strategies are merging. It’s no longer possible for you to plan a future PR strategy without considering SEO. The success of the Internet to reach the widest public audience means all of your online PR material can be optimised for Search Engines. Anything that’s published on the web becomes a way to interest customers. To survive in an increasingly competitive market, marketing managers will also need to begin using SEO with Social Media tools such as blogging, Squidoo, Twitter and Facebook to keep up with the competition.

4: Content is King
Relevant, fresh and original content is king. By keeping your website up to date, by publishing helpful articles and a daily blog, you not only attract frequent recurrent visitors, but also help increase your flow of visitors. Encourage your visitors to comment, debate and discuss your product/service with you and others and you’ll develop a community around your brand. This community can be instantly accessed to test new ideas and receive immediate feedback from.

5: Avoid the IT Crowd
IT specialists may be able to design and build your website, they may even be able to cobble together a bit of optimisation, but SEO is one of the core marketing activities that you should be undertaking. If you don’t have the expertise, then passing it off to your IT people is like passing off some of your most important offline marketing to your accountant. Poor SEO choices can have a dire effect on your online success.

Effective SEO for Marketing involves tracking leads, analytics, conversions and sales and adjusting your online marketing accordingly. Your team needs to make all of the SEO decisions, particularly content and copy generation and how to factor SEO into your overall public relations strategy. That’s why expert knowledge or advice on SEO is essential for all marketing managers.

There are two questions we occasionally get asked with regard SEO:

1. How long will it take?
2. What guarantees do you offer?

Whilst we appreciate that for a business investing in SEO it is important to have an understanding of what they may receive for that investment, it is equally important for any business looking to use search as part of their marketing strategy that they realise it is an ongoing process that needs constant development. No ethical SEO company can tell you when a certain phrase will appear in a certain position nor can they offer any (meaningful) guarantee.

An excellent article by Mark Jackson, CEO of US based Vizion Interactive, has articulated this point very well. In “Give SEO Time!“, Mark uses an example of a situation where he was asked to provide a proposal but declined because the project was doomed to failure.

It’s an interesting read for anyone involved in SEO or looking to invest.

These days, when someone has a problem, they go to the Internet for the solution.  Smart Internet marketers have learned to offer their products and services in the form of solutions to those problems.  Nothing could be truer than the area of health and healthcare.  These days, before they even think of calling the Doctor’s Surgery, many people Google their symptoms to see what they can find out.   Even when they’ve been to the Doctor, people still search for more information around what they’ve been told by their physician.

UK Healthcare Spend Continues to Rise

The average family in the UK now spends £1200 per year on private healthcare.  Where do those families look for details of private healthcare providers? The answer, of course, is the Internet and the companies that appear on the first page of Google for the search term they used when looking for their solution.

In the past few years at Impact Media Ltd, we’ve seen an increase in companies looking to us for help in marketing their healthcare products and services online.  Why? Because quite rightly, they want to share in the £15 billion spent each year on private healthcare!

Marketing Healthcare Online Works!

Many of the big companies have already got their Internet marketing organised, and by people finding them first when searching online, they’re taking the lion’s share of the healthcare target market online.  But SMEs don’t have to sit back and take their meagre leftovers! Many smaller and medium-sized healthcare businesses are fighting back, using the latest Internet marketing techniques that can really help them compete with the big boys.

There’s no point signing up with a company that’s offering you quick success.  First of all, there’s no such thing.  Guarantees are worth nothing when it comes to Internet marketing; what counts are the results.  Always look for a company that allows you the time to assess results and doesn’t tie you into a lengthy contract.

Even if you’re confident about designing and building a website and selling from it, you might not have the knowledge to promote your business effectively online.  Traditional marketing techniques need an overhaul when applied to the Internet and specialist skills and knowledge are now required.  What you need is month by month support and assistance in building your company’s online presence and very soon, you’ll start seeing results: Increased Google placement, improved traffic to your website, new sign-ups, orders and sales.

Whether you want to start off just improving your natural search results, or start paying for online ads to massively ramp up the flow of traffic to your site, an online marketing agency can meet your needs at each stage of development.

The best approach to Internet marketing is a blended one.  By combining SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) for a higher Google ranking, plus carefully crafted keyword targeted AdWords for an increased supply of qualified traffic, you’ll see more and more customers arriving at your site.  Of course, this means your company website needs to be ready to handle qualified traffic from people interested in your buying your product or services.  So, now’s the time to update your site if it isn’t ready!

If you’re a marketing professional looking to promote a healthcare business online, take a look through some of our SEO case studies to see how we could help your business attract more qualified leads.

When you’re writing copy for your website, you need to ensure that it’s SEO or Search Engine Optimisation friendly. Here are ten things to remember:

1. Write for your Reader
One of biggest mistakes people make with SEO Friendly Web Copy is trying to please the Search Engines at the cost of alienating the human visitors to their website. So your web copy should be written specifically to target your intended reader. This means imagining the site from the perspective of someone coming to it for the first time.

2. Clean Code
In order to get the most SEO value out of your website, your code needs to be crisp and clean. That means writing code that is well organised, well structured and correctly formatted. This will help your website’s relationship with the Search Engines stay friendly.

3. Use Images to Support the Main Message
A picture is worth a thousand words they say. But that doesn’t mean you should clutter your pages with unnecessary pictures. Find just the right images to support the main message of your website and each of its pages. Remember, Search Engines cannot read pictures, but your human visitors can really be persuaded by good quality, professional looking images.

4. Externalise Scripts
When using complex scripts such as Java, you can make your pages easier to read by placing the JavaScript into External Files. This will make them easier to read by Search Engines. If you must use JavaScript on your pages, consider placing it at the bottom of the page so that the Search Engines read your content first.

5. Keywords
Research your Keywords carefully, choose 2 or 3 priority Keywords and work them naturally into your web copy. There’s no point stuffing the pages with Keywords, as both the Search Engines and human visitors will find your pages of little value. Your copy needs to naturally feature your Keyword selections at the right density without losing its flow.

6. Use Headers
Your headers need to feature your keywords and your brand/company name. Search Engines often crawl this information first, so important decisions as to the relevance of your site are made at this point. Spend considerable time choosing the right copy for these Headers.

7. Copy Length
Keep your copy above 250 words if you wish to ensure that there’s enough space to get your message across without making the Keywords jar. Don’t waffle on to thousands of words; just keep your copy informative but to the point. People don’t read drivel and they won’t engage with reams and reams of text.

8. Benefits not Features
Describe the benefits that your product, service or company have to your potential customer or client. People don’t buy features, they want to know ‘What’s in it for me? When a prospective buyer reaches the point where they feel that your product or service would really benefit them, they will then consider buying.

9. Paragraphs
Keep your web copy to small bite sized paragraphs. Don’t give the reader too much work to do, web readers are lazier by nature and like to skip through to the important parts.

10. Proof Reading
Many people are so happy to have filled up their website with great copy that they forget to go back and proof read it. Silly mistakes make you and your comGpany seem thoughtless and unprofessional!

We hope this helps but if you’d rather spend your time managing your business, please review our search engine optimisation services page to see if we can be of assistance.

For those who are interested in increasing their web presence, Squidoo offers an interesting opportunity. If you haven’t visited Squidoo, you might not understand what it is. Squidoo is a sort of cross between MySpace and Wikipedia. It’s a space where you can promote yourself, your company, and your ideas or simply write a page about any topic that you’re passionate about.

Lenses

Each page is called a Lens. Lenses are easy to create, and there is a Squidoo Wizard to help you do this. You can create a good Squidoo lens with about 30 uninterrupted minutes. Of course, keeping it up to date and fresh, will take more of a time commitment. Google seems to have a very positive attitude towards Squidoo lenses when it comes to SEO.

SEO and Squidoo

If you wish to use Squidoo for SEO purposes, then make a relevant keyword rich lens on Squidoo related either directly to your business or to an area of interest within your business.

But how do you get Google to power up the SEO value of your Squidoo page? This is simple and relies on our old friend the ever-important backlink. If you want your Squidoo page to assist with increasing your web presence, you need to ensure that people make backlinks using keyword rich anchor text from their site to your Squidoo lens. This is the best way to get a Squidoo lens indexed on Google. This helps Google to view your Squidoo page as relevant. The more quality backlinks to your Squidoo lens, the more popularity votes your Squidoo page gets, and the more relevant Google assesses your lens.

Squidoo Tags

Many people are unaware of the power of the tags on Squidoo. Experts debate their value. But the tags can make all of the difference between having your lens read and indexed by Google and seeing it end up discarded and lost in cyberspace. Adding keyword tags to your Squidoo lens will help Google in the indexing process and will help your Squidoo lens become searchable from the Squidoo index.

Traffic

If you’re going to make Squidoo work for you, you’ll want to get traffic to it. If you use backlinks and tags, that’s the first step, but there are other things. By giving something away of value on your Squidoo, you’ll likely increase your inbound traffic and potentially the quality backlinks that you need. So, if you’re able to write articles, or an entire e-Book on something of interest to lots of people, you’ll conceivably gain considerable traffic.

Squidoo for You?

If you’re interested in improving your web presence through SEO then Squidoo can help. It’s important to remember that Squidoo is just one piece of the entire SEO puzzle and that a blended approach to Search Engine Optimisation is still the most successful method of gaining the results that you seek.

At Impact Media, we can help you find your way through the social media maze with our social media marketing services. Get in touch if you’d like to know more.

On the 2nd day of Christmas Impact Media share 2 user experience tips:

Build a Text Based Site Map
Large, complex sites should always have a site map. Don’t let your visitors feel their way through the site, if they are lost or confused, a site map will help them find their way.

Use Consistent Navigation
People are impatient, and therefore so are the users of your website. Don’t confuse people by making them learn new site navigation when they have just made sense of your current one. Use obvious and consistent navigation throughout your whole site, and always have a link to your homepage from every page on the site.

As it’s the season of good will, we thought we would spread some Christmas cheer by offering you our very own Search Engine Marketing 12 Days Of Christmas.

We won’t be singing but we will be posting 12 Days worth of SEO and PPC tips, tricks, advise and expertise.

From link building tips, free online tools, analytics advice to SEO do’s and don’t, our Christmas gifts will be more welcome than the inevitability unwanted gift from Gran this year.

Our 12 days starts tomorrow so be sure to come by and pick up your first gift. Better still, subscribe using RSS to make sure you don’t miss out.

Search engine optimisation refers to the act of optimising a website to improve its rankings in the search engines.

Used to describe acts or techniques that would be deemed to be unethical by the search engines.

For example hiding lots of keywords on your web page would be a Black Hat technique.

At the PubCon Search Marketing Conference in Las Vegas, Bruce Clay (bruceclay.com) gave a presentation in which he discussed how search engine optimisation (SEO) as we know it today is changing rapidly in line with the personalisation of search results that the search engines are moving towards, with Google being the leader of the pack.

He then re-capped his presentation in an interview with WebProNews: SEO About to be Turned on its Ear?

Chances are, that if you search online, you’ve already experienced personalisation of the search results. You would have received a different set of results based on your location or search history. In his interview, Bruce explains how he anticipates this being the tip of the iceberg as technologies improve and other media, e.g. video, contribute towards the rankings that a web page enjoys.

With mobile search entering the mainstream and search results by IP (location) becoming increasingly accurate, the ability for the search engines to send different results to individuals based upon intent, location and history is sure to feature prominently in the future. If we’re all seeing different search results, how do you measure success of your SEO based on search rankings (SERPS) alone?

Many site owners are fixated with SERPS to the detriment of other areas, e.g. the quality of the traffic. It is far better to work with the analytics for your site and to understand other factors such as bounce rate and conversions.

During an online chat with Webmasters in October, Google have answered many questions about ranking in the search engine and what factors effect search engine optimisation. Hopefully, this will put some myths to bed once and for all.

The full transcript has now been published on Google Groups – Questions and Answers from Online Webmaster Chat – or, if you prefer, WebProNews published a summary – Google Answers Some Tricky Questions – with their own translation on some of the answers that the Google panel gave.

There’s no great surprises in any of this but, if you run your own website or are responsible for the online marketing of one, it’ll certainly be worth spending a few minutes having a read through.

US based SEO consultant, Dustin Woodard, has just published a guest blog post over at Hitwise, the Internet research company.

In his article, “Sizing up the Long Tail of Search” he highlights the gulf between the top search terms when compared to overall search volume.

Naturally, he used Hitwise for his research and in September of this year reviewed the previous three months data for the US. He discovered that, in this period, 14 million search terms had been tracked and then exported the top 10,000 searches:

Long Tail Top 10000 Searches

Source: Hitwise

Clearly the chart is of little value other than to highlight the extreme tail-off (pun intended), bearing in mind this is just reflecting the top 10,000 search terms.

Long Tail Dominates Search Traffic

In his article, he goes on to show the result of narrowing his search to the top 100. He concludes that the top 100 terms account for 5.7% of total search traffic and even extending to the top 1,000 searches would only be responsible for approximately 10% of searches. The point here is that there’s 90% of all search traffic in the long tail; you could argue even more depending on where you believe the tail starts.

As a site owner or online marketer, you should be aware of the value of long tail searches and find ways to capitalise on this traffic. It may be tempting to go after ‘golden goose’ search terms but you need to be realistic with your aspirations given the competitive landscape of the Internet.

SEO Advantages of Long Tail

Towards the end of 2007 it was established that, for the first time, the average search was made up off four words. As searchers become ever more ‘net savvy’, searches will continue to become more precise and you should try and accommodate this in your marketing efforts. From an SEO point of view, that means performing keyword research and, rather than simply ignoring the perceived low volume terms, find ways to blend the relevant terms into your web copy, blog posts and articles.

As part of our SEO copywriting services, we research long tail keywords and take these into account when creating new copy. This can provide a boost to your site’s traffic that is not short-lived and likely to suffer from swings in the search rankings for ultra-competitive terms.

With the rise of the Internet as the most powerful business tool created, there has never been such a need for words. Regardless of developments in Internet video, the World Wide Web is still a text-driven medium. With blogs, articles, advertising and website text all needing words, copywriting has taken on a new importance in the battle for online presence. Words have always had great power, now they’ve taken on a vital significance for all companies that do business on the web.

But copywriting for the web is not like copywriting in the traditional sense. The requirements of Internet copy and the psychology of the Internet readership are very different from those involved in print copywriting. What’s more, SEO copywriting, the craft of creating copy that appeals both to human readers but also exploits SEO principles to attract higher Search Engine Rankings (SERPS) is an entirely different game.

The SEO copywriter needs to constantly balance the needs of their human reader with the need to maintain strong connections to Google and the other Search Engines. Writing for the Search Engines requires an awareness of what they are looking for. Ensuring that the article is topical, entirely original and contains the important keywords at an appropriate density is only the starting point of SEO copywriting.

The trouble is that even inserting the keywords is enough to flummox the average amateur copywriter. Sentences stuffed with keywords make little sense and the human reader clicks away to another page immediately.

Instead, SEO copy needs to appear like any other form of copy, well written, informative and engaging whilst retaining the highest possible optimisation factor. This requires expert writing skills to blend the SEO into the already tight copy.

Web copywriting is about grabbing the attention of the human reader who is already distracted by images, offers and enticements. Maintaining their interest with relevant and topical content known as ‘web copy’ is the next essential element of successful web copywriting. Web copy should differ from traditional written English because it is more accessible, less formal, and closer to the way that we speak.

The next stage is to lead the reader to the point of making a decision. The original meaning of the word ‘decision’ means to cut oneself off from all other options and choices. The persuasive copywriter invisibly removes all objections and concerns whilst leading the reader to the point of making the decision to click.

The aim of good web copywriting is to hook the human reader into staying at the website long enough to make that all-important click, to compel them to take action. This is the final stage of web copywriting.

Above all things, SEO copywriting creates crisp, attractive text that moves the reader towards the point of action. At the same time, it blends in optimisation techniques that ensure that the copy gets read. Without the SEO element, no matter how good the copy, if no one can find it, they cannot read it.

Excellent website copy is the correctly judged balance between highly compelling copy and expertly optimised text. If you need SEO copy, use SEO copywriting services.

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.