Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), the process of gaining good “natural” (unpaid) rankings in the search engines is being implemented effectively by more and more UK businesses. The investment can reap huge rewards, from increased brand exposure, increased traffic and ultimately, increased revenue. The following general tips are aimed at companies and marketers looking to begin a Search Engine Optimisation campaign.

1)Be Realistic
Everybody knows the “ideal” keyword / keyphrase that they would like to rank well for, but the chances of ranking well for this keyword may be slim / almost impossible in very competitive industries. Be realistic with yourself in terms of the amount of time, money and effort required to rank well for these search terms. Does the potential reward justify the time and effort? Are your competitors actively carrying out SEO work? Would the rewards of achieving 6th / 7th position justify the effort? If not, would you be better targeting more niche / long tail keywords? Are you competing against big brands outsourcing their SEO to large search marketing companies? Prioritise your tasks and look at outsourcing opportunities if you do not have the time necessary to complete tasks. You should be asking yourself all of these questions before deciding on a primary keyword to target.

2)Short Term / Long Term Goals

Related to the point above, setting realistic short and long term goals are great ways of staying motivated. Keep the short term goals towards longer tail search terms. If you already have a relatively established site, which terms are currently driving significant amounts of traffic? How easy will it be to increase the ranking of this term? Use click-through rate data to predict the number of clicks you (Read more ...)

1)Use available tools
There are a number of useful tools out there today to help with all aspects of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and search marketing. The use of Google webmaster tools, and rank checking software are a definite must. Google trends and Google adword keyword suggestion tools are great resources for keyword research. Other handy tools include SEO plug-ins for the firefox browser, spider simulators and keyword density tools. Many of these tools are available online. There are often multiple versions of particular tools; it is worth spending a little bit of time trying each tool to determine which tools you find most beneficial.

2)Stay Up to Date
The SEO industry is changing all of the time, so it is important to stay up to date with the latest developments. Reading SEO blogs and browsing SEO discussion forums are a great way of staying informed of the latest developments. By doing so, you will also learn a lot, be it a new link building idea or a new handy plug-in which may save you a lot of time. Recommended blogs include: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/, http://www.wolf-howl.com/, and http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/.

3)Wider Picture
Look at your search marketing campaign from broader picture, what else could you be doing in online marketing that will have a positive impact on your backlink profile / traffic / rankings? For example, if your site has a blog, are you using blog pinging services (Google’s own service or services such as Weblogs and Feed burner). Are you utilising local search, universal search elements? For example, are you including unique image alt tags, increasing the chances of appearing in Google image search? If you publish news articles, does your site have a Google news sitemap? How appropriate is (Read more ...)

Ten Most Costly Search Engine Mistakes to Avoid
If you have a website then you already know the importance of traffic. Traffic is to Internet marketing as location is to real estate. It’s the only thing that really matters. If you cannot generate targeted visitors to your site, you will not make any sales.

Usually the owner or designer of the website is the person designated to drive traffic to the site. The chief ingredient in generating traffic is the search engine. Of coarse, you can use advertising, but it’s going to cost you. Using the search engines to generate targeted (interested in your product) traffic is the least expensive method known.

Unfortunately, many website owners do not understand the importance of search engine visibility, which leads to traffic. They place more importance on producing a “pretty” website. Not that this is bad, but it is really secondary to search engine placement. Hopefully, the following list of common mistakes, made by many website owners, will help you generate more targeted traffic to your site…after all, isn’t that what you want.

1. Not using keywords effectively.

This is probably one of the most critical areas of site design. Choose the right keywords and potential customers will find your site. Use the wrong ones and your site will see little, if any, traffic.

2. Repeating the same keywords.

When you use the same keywords over and over again (called keyword stacking) the search engines may downgrade (or skip) the page or site.

3. Robbing pages from other websites.

How many times have you heard or read that “this is the Internet and it’s ok” to steal icons and text from websites to use on your site. (Read more ...)

What Are Your Internet Marketing Secret Weapon?
These days, blogs are among the most important secret weapons that internet marketers can employ. They are a terrific way to have opinions stated in an un-moderated and public place, where ideas and insights can be shared among everyone who wishes to read them.

For internet marketing, blogging builds credibility for the website through the many opinions and ideas that are shared there. The company, and its bloggers, becomes recognized by their readers as a resource for useful information. Therefore, people will not only visit once, but will return again and again to find out what else is new.

Blogging itself is an extremely inexpensive, quick, and simple way to reach out to thousands of website visitors. It draws people who are in your direct target market, making relationship building a much more natural process once that visitor takes their use of your website one step further and makes a purchase of whatever product or service you are selling – and have been covering in your blog.

Blogs make you an expert in your field. That’s right, with the right researching and writing skills (or with a skilled writer and researcher in your employ) then you can become an expert in your field as far as your website blog is concerned. To be an expert, all you need to do is keep up with the latest in your industry within your blog posts, and maintain it regularly.

To make sure that you’re headed in the right direction with your blog, check up on other website blogs in your industry to see what they have posted. Naturally, this doesn’t mean that you should be posting the same things as your competition. In fact, that is among the worst things that you can do. Certainly, (Read more ...)

The Top of the Search Engines
If you have surfed the web then you have most likely used a search engine. Search engines are a great way to find what you are looking for in an easy manner. 85 to 90% of people online use search engines to find information for which they are looking. When you do a search on a search engine you get many pages of links, but most people only look at the first three pages. This is why it is very important to get your website at the top of the search engines list.

The first step in getting your website at the top of a search engines list is to understand how they rank websites. The criteria for ranking websites vary between search engines and have changed in many ways over the years. There are two basics rules, though, that most search engines follow.

1. Content. They want good content, meaning something a person would want to look at or read. It should be well written and put together. This also includes links to other sites.

2. Optimization. Making good use of META tags is important. Using the title and description META tags is a must. Be sure to use keywords, but keep it readable and content driven. An example of this is linking all your pages together, like in an index on each.

The best way to see what a search engine wants is to look at some their top ranked websites. See how they have used content and optimization to get to the top of the list. Use these websites as a loose guideline on how to set up your website.

On the other hand of things there are some things that search engines do not like. These things should be avoided because not only will it hurt your ranking, but could get you banned from the search engine.

1. Do not use keywords unnaturally. This means loading pages down with (Read more ...)