If SEO is That Simple, Why Use SEO Suffolk

We've been writing a lot lately about our new training books, two of which are about Search Engine Optimisation. The book by that same was written by Jacqui and is on Bookboon. The other, called Really Simple SEO for Business Owners is for sale on Amazon for the princely sum of £1.95 in the UK or $2.99 in the US.

The Amazon book has also sold in Germany and France. So, can SEO really be that simple and, if so, why should you hire an SEO company like SEO Suffolk to do your search engine optimisation?

Well, as the two books show you, the principles behind SEO are simple enough - just give your website visitors exactly what they expect and give them as much as possible, in a format that the search engines can 'read', too. Then make sure that as many people as possible can find it by creating lots of incoming links.

Really Simple SEO outlines the exact steps I've used several times to get websites indexed and onto page one quickly (sometimes in less than a week). Follow the steps and you could do the same. Jacqui's book goes into more detail about the ongoing work (and the theory behind it) that can ensure long-term success.

SEO Suffolk's search engine optimisation service uses the simple strategies, the longer term measures and a good understanding of the theory behind effective SEO. Perhaps more important to you is that SEO Suffolk does all the work for you - whether you understand it or not - because you probably don't have the time or the inclination to do it yourself. If you do, get the books. If you don't, get the books so you can keep an eye on what your SEO firm is doing on your behalf!

Unless you use SEO Suffolk, of course, because then you'll know they're following their own guidance to the letter. Working by the book, as it were.

Naturally, you can use SEO Suffolk for search engine optimisation of your business' website, even if you're not in Suffolk!

Roy

SEO Made Simple

This is a very simplified explanation of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). It doesn't cover the subject in depth (you would need a few hours at least to do that) but it does give you an idea of the basics.



If you're looking for SEO services, contact Cinnamon Edge at info@cinnamonedge.co.uk

Roy

"My Website Isn't in Google"

One of the online marketing services we've been asked for occasionally is getting a website to appear in the Google listings. Not on page one, necessarily, but listed at all. Something Google calls 'indexing'.

You see, while you can search for and find any website in the world by typing its address into the address bar in your browser, this doesn't necessarily mean it will appear in a search on Google because Google doesn't always get around to 'indexing' or listing new websites for some time. In fact, your new site could languish for weeks, as happened to one of the people who approached us for help.

You can test this by typing your website's URL (including the .co.uk or .com) into the Google search box. For example, "mywebsite.com". If your website doesn't appear in the results it means Google haven't 'indexed' (listed) it yet. Which means no one will ever find it with a Google search. 

It used to be the case that you could submit a new site to Google via their webmaster tools, but with so many sites being created every minute of every day, that service has been withdrawn. So what should you do now?

Well our solution was to build links to the new site from one that we know Google 'spiders' (sends its robots to look at) regularly, like one of our blogs, for example. The next time they (the Google robots) visit, they find the new link, follow it to the new site and, "Hey presto!" the site gets indexed.


That process still works. But now there's a refinement to the process that makes it quicker and it makes use of one of the most active and therefore most spidered websites on the Internet - Twitter. Google visits Twitter every few minutes. In fact, it's probably on there pretty much all the time, and anything that gets tweeted can get indexed on Google within minutes. That includes links to your new site, if you include them in your tweets.

So the answer to the question of "How can I get my site listed on Google" is easy: Tweet it. Just say something like "Look at my new website" followed by the full URL. Mention the exciting content and you should get some human visitors, too, but the objective is to get Google to come calling.

Bear in mind that even the super-powerful computers Google uses still work in the real universe, so it can still take a few hours for your site to appear on all the Google servers, but Twitter is the easiest and fastest way to make that happen.

You can get more online marketing help and training from Cinnamon Edge. We run courses, in-house training, and of course we offer marketing services as well!

Roy

Why Google Results Aren't All That They Seem

If you're in the healthy habit of keeping a close eye on the performance of your website you might well check its position in the search engine results (Google) on a regular basis.

While it's always good to measure and track as much of your marketing as you can, checking the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) regularly can actually be a bad idea.

Why?

Because Google, in trying to serve you the best possible results for your search, actually delivers the results it thinks you want to see - including your own website, and especially if you often click on the listing to make sure everything is working. This means that the more often you look for your own website the more likely it is to come near the top of the results - but only for you.

And this means the results you see are not the same results that anyone else sees, and that can mean that while your website appears on page one for you it might be nowhere to be seen for your potential customers.

That's why it's important to have independent verification of your website's performance and an ongoing 'optimisation' campaign to push it further up your potential customers' results pages too. Optimisation doesn't need to be complicated and it's not a precise science but a small investment (of time or cash) is usually all you need to improve your website's performance.

Needless to say, Cinnamon Edge can help with Search Engine Optimisation for your website.

Call us on 01284 753912 or email info@cinnamonedge.co.uk and let us check your website's performance.

We'll even supply a written website report (value £47) at no cost to you!

Roy

Next Time - Search Engine Marketing

Our next Bury St Edmunds marketing workshop, on 11th May, is on the subject of Search Engine Marketing.

It's a one day event in which you will discover how to promote your business effectively online, using your website and other web properties to increase your:

• Subscribers
• Prospects
• Customers
• Sales
• Profits

We'll be adding more details about marketing workshops to our website very soon.

You can book your seat(s) for this all day event on Search Engine Marketing at http://www.learnsearchenginemarketing.eventbrite.com

Roy

Online Marketing 6 - Some Changes

The world of Search Engine Optimisation and online marketing in general is constantly changing, although our Bury St Edmunds online customers needn't worry - that's what we're here for...

But if you're following SEO advice from even six months ago you might be doing a few things you needn't bother with and damaging your website's ranking by ignoring some important issues.

For example, metatags. If you're not familiar with these, they're a kind of labelling system that website designers use in the coding of a site. Human readers don't see them but search engine spiders do, and they use them to assess a website's 'relevancy'. One of the most obvious ways to start optimising a site, apart from the web copy itself, is by inserting as many keywords as possible in the 'keyword tags'.

But, back in November 2009, Google confirmed they no longer took any notice of keyword tags in assessing a website's relevance and ranking. They don't count at all any more. That's a pretty big change and one that not all SEO 'experts' have spotted yet.

It won't hurt to add keywords to the keyword tags, and it's not yet clear if Bing and Yahoo spiders still use them, or if Google will start attaching some weight to them in the future, but for now, Google ignores them.

A second example is speed of loading. Google is committed to giving users the best possible experience, and that includes not having to wait too long while a page loads. Now, it's always been a bad idea to keep your prospects waiting and we all know by now that people have even shorter attention spans online than they do with their TV remote, but now Google is taking action , too.

So now, if your web pages are slow to load, Google will punish you by reducing your site's PageRank accordingly. That will mean a lower position in the results if your competitors' sites load more quickly than yours.

This means you won't just lose customers through boredom, you could miss out on them visiting your site at all.

So if your website designer wants to include loads of slow to load features like flash and huge image files, because they 'look good', just say 'No!'

It's important that you keep up to date with SEO and remember to keep building those links - there's some vitally important information now emerging about linking strategies that I'll bring you next time.

Roy

Online Marketing 5 - Optimised Listings

In our experiment for online marketing in Bury St Edmunds we spent a lot of time researching directories and building links as we went. It paid off, as you probably know.

We found that there are probably hundreds of directories and similar sites where you can list your company or service, so obviously I can't go into detail about exactly what to put in each field on every one of them!

What I can do here is give you some general advice and a few tips on the finer points of using directories to build backlinks to your site.

First of all, a directory that doesn't let you include backlinks is probably a waste of your time. A few of them might have enough traffic to justify listing your company with them, because they might bring some customers to your site, but generally, if you can't include a backlink, move on.

Secondly, a 'deep link' to the optimised page on your site is worth more than a link to your index page, unless they are one and the same. That should really only happen if you have a one-page site (or maybe one content page and some about us info on another page). So if you can add a deep link, always do so. Some directories even allow you several links, and you should definitely take full advantage of those.

Where you can include embedded links in your company description, use anchor text (the actual words highlighted as a link) that includes your target key phrase. Where you can add tags or labels, use your key phrase there as well. Use the key phrase in the rest of your description and heading if there is one.

Link building should be a continuing process. Adding loads of links very quickly is probably worse than adding the same number over a week or two. Worse still is adding plenty of links and then just stopping as though your work is done. This gives the wrong kind of signal to the search engines. In fact it's a sure sign you were trying to work the system, so you need to be consistent and keep adding or getting links to make your list-building look as natural and 'organic' as possible.

There are plenty of sites you can link from, so there's no reason to stop, even if you just add one link a week from now on. Keep at it and you should be able to keep your website where it belongs!

Incidentally, there's some new research just out that shows the relative importance of various factors in optimisation, especially in relation to Google. There are a few surprises and maybe a bit of controversy, too, and I'll look at that next time.

Roy

Online Marketing 4 - More Backlinks

So far in this online marketing course, we've covered keyword research, on site optimisation for your key phrase and building your first SEO backlinks by starting a blog.

There are lots of other ways of building backlinks, and also increasing your online presence. Ultimately, you could even take over most of page one of Google for your target key phrase, but that looks a lot more impressive if your website is number one. For that you need more backlinks from high ranking websites.

The easiest places to get high ranking links are directories and social media sites. Two directories we've had excellent results with are Free Index and Touch Local. While the easiest social media site yet invented has to be Twitter. We've also had good and very rapid results with free ads posted on Gumtree and Craigslist.

Facebook may not be free for much longer, but it's also worth using for driving traffic to your site and for SEO backlinks.

You can get a free listing on almost all directory websites, and most of those will give you at least one backlink. Some will only allow you to link to your website's front (index) page, but you should link to your optimised page, like this one to our online marketing Bury St Edmunds page if you can.

With some directories it might be worth paying for an enhanced listing, but there are so many free ones that you probably don't need to. Of course, you may get a few calls from directory owners trying to persuade you otherwise!

With social media, you can include a backlink in every post if you want, as well as the link to your website that you'll include in your profile. One of the benefits of posting links on social media sites is that they actually bring you traffic, not just search engine spiders, and traffic itself helps to improve your website's ranking, as well as bringing you potential customers, of course!

You can easily get ten good backlinks leading to your optimised webpage, or at least to your site, just by spending an hour or so adding yourself to directories and social media sites.

With some sites, that will be a very basic listing, but others allow you to optimise your listing quite a lot, too, and we'll look at that next time.

Until then, get linking!

Roy

Cinnamon Edge - Online Marketing and SEO in Bury St Edmunds