Ethical SEO Consultant

Archive for the ‘SEO’ Category

CMS are great for websites and for SEO but picking the wrong one can turn your ecommerce dreams into a nightmare.  There are many web companies out there charging the earth for CMS they claim to have made themselves and is the best and so on.  But very few are SEO friendly, and furthermore the best ones are free anyway and take no time at all to install.

Here are some guidelines that a CMS must adhere too, to be classed as SEO friendly.

Meta
You need the ability to add/edit a unique title and meta description to each page. Also helpful but not essential is the ability to add additional meta tags. What is bad in SEO is if each page is titled with your business name.

URLs
You  need static customisable URLS.  No dynamics if possible.

Images
You need the ability to add your own Alt Tags (alternative text) to an image and add an appropriate description of the image.

Unique Headers
You want to be able to add and edit page headers (H1, H2 tags).  Each page should have a unique H1 tag.  You want to be able to edit the header without it changing another field e.g. title.

Body Text
You need to be able to add bold/italics, bulleted lists, just all the basic word processing functions.   You also want to be able to add hyperlinks to link to other pages.  Flexibility is key.

Navigation
You should be able to easily update your site navigation so you can ensure all pages are crawlable.

Redirects
The ability to redirect pages is beneficial.

RSS facility
The ability to show your content via rss.

Sitemaps
You need the ability to create and update sitemaps.  Ideally one for the site to help people navigate , but also an XML one to help with indexing.

To get strong links pointing to your site you need to make your website the best it can possibly be.  Content is king and always will be.  If you learn nothing else about online marketing, remember that the content/text you place on your website and the effort you put out on SEO will determine how successful you are with online marketing. Your website needs lots of unique text rich pages with a minimum of 300 words. 

Link popularity is what you need to come up top in Google.  It is like being popular at school.  The more friends you have the more popular you are, so the more credibility you have.  The more links you have the more popular you are.  But if you had say 80 links and your competitors only have 40 it could be that some of their links are strong than yours.  It would be similar to someone having 80 friends, but the person with 40 had half a dozen famous friends like Posh and Becks or Madonna.  So it is not always about numbers but quality links.  Some of your best links could be from your competitors sites.     Finding the links is the tricky part.  Some webmasters have a fairly high standard for linking.  If your entire website looks like an advertisement you will struggle to get strong links.  There is nothing worse on a website than flashing banner ads.  And even more annoying than the actual look of them is that many site owners use adverts which are not even relevant to that market.  So as well as having an annoying banner that is putting you off reading the web page, the actual banner is totally irrelevant to you.  If you must have ads go for text ads as they blend better into the content of the site which creates ad blindness.

Website owners need to look more at their competition.  If your competitors are coming up top in Google there is a reason for it, it’s down to thier good content which gives them good inbound linking.  But you can’t get the inbound linking without good content.  This is why content is king and always will be.

I am sometimes asked why some websites drop for certain keywords and the answer is one of 3 things.  You need to remember your site hasn’t dropped, but other sites have moved up.  Your site is in competition with every other site out there, so websites will go up and they will also go down.  The only way your site will stay at the top is if it is the best site out there, or you are paying more than everyone else to market it.

Some of the reasons why a website has dropped in rankings are:

1) It could be some of the links pointing to your site which previously had been providing a significant amount of PageRank could have been removed or deleted, or the PageRank of the originating site has dropped possible for similar reasons.

2) Search engines are always changing the methods they use to rank websites so they can improve the general quality of their search results.  So there could have been a recent algorithm change. Google is constantly changing its algorithm.

3) Several new web pages that also target your keywords could have been recently created and indexed making that keyword/phrase more competitive.

‘Organic’ or ‘natural’  SEO is a term in search engine optimisation to describe the unpaid algorithm-driven results of any particular search engine. In other words all of the sites listed in Google or any other search engine which are NOT sponsored ads.  These listings are known as organic or natural.  The sponsored ads are known as PPC which means ‘pay per click’ which is exactly what you do, pay for every click you get.  If your site is listed naturally at the top UNDER these sponsored ads it this means your site is the most popular, most relevant and has the highest score in the algorithm. This is where 80% of users click, NOT the google ads.  This is why smart savvy business owners concentrate their marketing strategy to being listed here and hiring SEO experts to market their sites.  You get far better conversions from organic SEO and it is an investment on your business, unlike PPC, when you stop the site remains in that position.

A website without SEO is like a car without an engine.  It will site there, look pretty but it wont move.  The same can be said for websites.  You need to spend as little as possible on the design of your site and as much as you can on the SEO and the SEO is an ongoing activity which should be part of your marketing strategy.

Ever wondered what the hashtags are for in twitter?

eg. #hashtags How hash tags help your tweets get found?

Well they were originally created by Twitter users as a way to categorize messages. They help people find interesting tweets.

To use hashtags you simple put the symbol # before relevant keywords in your Tweet.. This helps them get found when someone searches for that keyword.
If you click on a hashtag in a tweet it will show you all other tweets in that category. Some hashtagged words that become very popular are often Trending Topics.

There are loads of SEO software you can buy and I am often asked to review some.  Most of them are the same and offer the same, but whats different is the price.  I have never bought any as I know all the tip and tools and they are free anyway.

When it comes to keyword tools the best tool I believe is Googles.  As 90% of all searches are made via google it makes sense to use it.

Google offer many other tools, more than enough to help with your SEO efforts. So never waste money on SEO software as they are just using what is already there and free for everyone to use…

Googles Keyword Tool

Rubbish! SEO done correctly is all about providing the content and products people want. When done logically you will still show up for the right keywords for your audience. It’s all about being the best in your industry.

I believe Google instant will help because with Google’s suggestions appearing, we have our keywords… these are the words people are more likely to select. If they don’t select them them they will keep trying untill they produce the results they want. If people arnt happy about this feature they can turn it off.

All the time there are search engines SEO will continue to thrive. Every website needs to be optimised to be found naturally in search.

Nothing is going to change in terms of the results for the query but it’s possible that people will learn to search differently over time. All Google Instant is doing is answering and solving peoples problems faster. Google is pretty fast already, returning results in milliseconds, but it takes us several seconds to type in a query. With predictive search and instant results, we get the answer we want much faster.

Google instant is a simple feature that shows the results of searches as your typing in the queries. So you get instant search results. Also it predicts the rest of your query before you finish typing. You can then scroll through these predictions and see the results instantly.