Archive for the ‘SEO Tips’ Category

How To Rank Well On Google

If you want to know how to rank well on google then you really should get your information direct from the source. Ie. Google, Google provide a wealth of information on how to rank your website well on the google SERPS. (search engine results pages)

Their webmaster tools which can be found at Google webmaster help There is everything you need to not only find out how to rank your website but also they provide the tools to do it with.

You can setup google analytics which will show you who comes to your website how many hits, where they come from and the keywords that they used to find you.

They are an invaluable source of information which you should have on every site that you own or manage.

Once you work out how to rank well on google by reading and studying the google webmaster pages as well as the Matt Cutts Videos you should put what you learn into practise bit by bit.

It is much better to work steadily and make it an ongoing part of your strategy rather than bash away like a mad thing for several weeks and then stop and leave it alone for months.

If you want to be successful online whatever market you are in you really must spend time to understand how the search engines work. This is equally true even if you intend to outsource your search engine optimisation work.

There are many companies the offer you SEO services at varying prices but few actually really know what they are doing.

You need to have an idea as I have seen websites losing rankings due to careless link building, mass links appearing overnight and links to a website from link farms or other dubious paid link services.

The boys at www.ppcblog have also put together a really good diagram of how google works. Click on it to see a full size version.

Pandemonium and chaos is the key to good SEO in my experience so come back here soon where I will put together a basic SEO course to show you what you need to know before you begin your SEO work.

Direct Holiday Investments Beating the System

If you do a search for Direct Holiday Investments in google you will see that there are around 4,500,000 results for that particular keyword phrase.

However if you type in the term “Direct Holiday Investments” using inverted commas that is looking for a phrase match there are no results in the SERPS at all.

This means ranking for the term Direct holiday investments is going to be easy.

Why is this important?

Well, when setting up a new company and you need a name or are looking for a new domain that you want to rank fast, then there are a few things that you need to think of now that never mattered before.

Traditionally, when searching for a company it was always in alphabetical order so you just went to the yellow pages and then looked down the pages in alphabetical order and bobs your uncle.

However, not only do more people now search for you on the internet they tend to use a search engine rather than a directory like yell or localpages. The search engines do not use alphabetical listings they use relevancy amongst other things.

This means that you have to do what you can to get the advantage. If you are going to advertise and promote the company name using traditional offline marketing methods then you really need to think of a name that you can rank for fast.

This means that once your name is out there and people start typing it into the major search engines you will be at the top of the SERPS in a flash which is always good when looking to generate more business from your website and build credibility and trust.

When people these days will do a search on your company name they want to find you and the higher up the SERPS you are the more people will trust you. This is because people trust the search engines. Google spend a lot of time promoting themselves as the credible search engine. IF they therefore rank your website highly then you in turn will benefit as this trust will rub off on you.

If you have a name that has millions of results then you will get lost in the crowd and if people have trouble finding you then you will lose a bit of credibility and trust.

Once you have come up with the name of the company in this case Direct Holiday Investments then you need to make sure that the domain is available.

In this case www.directholidayinvestments.com is available which means that we shoul dbe up the SERPS in no time.

I am about to go and buy this domain name and see how fast we can get it ranked in the top of the major search engines.

It is now 11.29 on the 20th September when I posted this article and it was indexed on the first page of google by 11.48. Not bad for a phrase with 4.5 million results.

I have just bought the domain name www.DirectHolidayInvestments.com so lets see how well we can rank for that and in what time period.

In the meantime search for Direct Holiday Investments and see for your self where we are in the rankings.

Don’t Be Scared of Keyword Competition  

It does not matter how many competing websites there are for a particular keyword phrase, what matters is the strength of that competition.

To give you an example, lets consider you going into a motor race and there are 1000 cars in that race. That is a lot of competition and winning is going to be hard if all things are equal. Now, lets look at another perspective. The car you are driving is a formula one car and the others are all standard road saloon cars. Now, it does not matter how many other cars are in that race, you are going to win it.

The same goes for your niche and the keywords that you want to rank for.

If you are looking for a niche do not be scared of the competing pages, you need to look at the strength of the competition. Try and stay away from the niches that have tough and strong competitors. These include life insurance, credit repair, gambling or accident lawyers.

These markets are very lucrative and therefore have a lot of people and companies involved spending a lot if time and money. They also are up to date with all the latest techniques on how to rank well. You are racing against formula one cars with more experience and money than you.

If you are already in one of these tough niches then you have two choices, dump it and go for something else or dig deep and be prepared for a long drawn out and tough fight.

If you have any questions just ask them via my contact us page. I will do my best to help you.

 

Keyword Research Choosing Effective Keywords – Get Traffic To Your Website

When it comes to keyword research, many of us when we first set out to build a website do not understand the importance of doing right from the start. 

Setting up a website without doing keyword research or planning the structure around these keywords is like building a house without foundations or a set of plans.

Most of us know that it is important to write a business plan if we are going to setup a business and to have goals to aim for. Not everyone does it and I think that most who do not tend to fail. Not having a business plan is like setting sail on the ocean with no charts or navigational equipment, you will soon be lost at sea and lucky ever to see land again.

There is a saying “fail to plan and you plan to fail”

I believe that keyword research is as important as your business plan.

So how do you go about doing effective keyword research that will drive traffic to your blog or website?

Well, it is not as difficult as all that. It just takes time and a bit of a thought process.

If you are using wordpress to build a site, which I highly recommend, then building the structure is relatively easy, even for a beginner. The beauty of word press is that it already has the structure in place all you have to do is add the page names and all is done for you.

There are two type of keyword research that you need to do. The first is the theme keywords. These are the keywords that you would use for your website pages. The second ones are your money keywords.

Theme words are what people will use when they are looking for information on your topic or subject. I have seen many articles advising people not to bother with these but just to go for the buying or money keywords but I do not agree. Ranking for the information seeking keywords is as important in the long term future of a website. Becoming an authority on a subject will have a sustainable effect on your long term rankings.

Once you have the reputaion as an authority website then it becomes much easier to rank for the more valuable money keywords.

Lets say you were setting up a website about The Isle of Man. A small Island off of the West coast of England.

You could well have the following as your themed keywords.

• The Isle of Man
• Main Towns
• IOM Villages
• History of the Isle of Man
• The manx (search it for yourself   )
• Isle of Man books
• Travel guide to the Isle of Man
• Things to Do on The Isle of Man
• Fishing on the Isle of Man
• Sea Fishing on IOM
• Fresh water fishing on the IOM
• Scuba Diving on the Isle of Man
• Places to dive on the Isle of Man
• Dive centres on the IOM
• Cycling Holidays on the Isle of Man
• Hiring a bike on the Isle of Man (link to relevant page on the Getting about section)
• The Isle of Man TT Race (a very famous annual motorbike race they have on the island)
• Getting to the Isle of Man
• Plane
• Ferry
• Fast boat
• Swimming (only joking)
• Shopping on the Isle of Man
• Walking Holidays on the Isle of Man
• Night Life in the Isle of Man
• Clubs
• Restaurants
• Bars
• Pubs
• Places to Stay on the Isle of Man
• Isle of Man Hotels
• Guest Houses on the Isle of Man
• Campsites on the IOM
• Getting about on the Isle of Man
• Public Transport
• Taxis
• Private hire
• Cycling
• Hiring a Car
• Working on the IOM
• Type of jobs
• How to find a job on IOM
• Living on the Isle of Man
• Buying a house
• Legal requirements
• Cost of buying a house
• Estate agents details
• Renting a house

The above list covers a lot of the main themes that people will be looking for when they search for information on the Isle of Man. There are probably more that you can think of to add but this should give you  the basic idea of what you need to do for your website. The bolded keywords are headings and the others are sub headings.

Once you create these pages then you need to add content. Some of the headings will only require a small amount of content.

The second type of keywords are the buying ones and these are far more important but without the first ones you will have difficulty getting found for these money keywords.

Some of them are also in the main page headings as you will see.

Keyword Research For Content

when you begin to add content then you will use keywords like.

• flights to the isle of man
• plane tickets for the isle of man
• booking a ferry to the isle of man
• scuba diving clubs on the isle of man
• cycling holidays
• bike rentals
• car hire companies
• booking a hotel
• where to stay in the IOM

These keywords are what people will use when they are closer to making a buying decision.  Not only will you get traffic from google for these keywords but visitors to your site that see links to other parts of your website will also click through and go from information seekers to buyers.

This is quite a lengthy post and I hope it gets the main point across that you really MUST take the time to research your keywords before building your website.

As always if you have any questions or do not understand then just let me know on the contact us form and I will do my best to help.

Keyword research – An important part of SEO.

 

 

How to Use Onlywire Properly 

You need to know how to use onlywire properly if you are going to succeed.

If you are not careful you can spend all your time setting up the 42 accounts only to get them banned or cancelled very quickly.

What Does OnlyWire Do?

Onlywire will bookmark your web pages to a number of social bookmarking websites. You setup accounts on each of them and then add the url of the webpage you want to promote. Alternatively you can use a plugin that will help do this for you on autopilot.

On the face of it to use onlywire looks like a simple process and, in principal it is. However, you need to understand what it does and think the process through!

If you use one onlywire account and only bookmark the same urls’s the social bookmarking sites will cancel you account very quickly and maybe ban you too.

This means that all of your hard work will have gone to waste.

As with all your SEO efforts you need to make it all look as natural as possible.

How natural do you think it looks to have your website the only one that is bookmarked? The social bookmarking websites have plenty of checks in place to weed out those that are not using their service properly.

There are a number of ways to help ensure that you keep your accounts open and working for you.
To use onlywire properly and get the best results you need do the following.

Setup at least 2 different sets of accounts.

Setup two different onlywire accounts and then go to each bookmarking website and register with all of the bookmarking websites.

The more the merrier. Then, alternate the onlywire accounts when bookmarking.

Work With Other Friends Or Colleagues

An alternative to using multiple accounts is to work with a number of other trusted people that will ALL use the same onlywire account.

If there are 5 or 10 different people in different niches and markets using one account this will look far more natural.

As like anything that you do when you are doing SEO think it all through first and understand the full implications of what you are about to do.

Onlywire is a great tool but abuse it and you will find your efforts have been wasted.

If you have any questions or do not understand this fully then as always just send me a message from my contact form and I will do my best to help answer your query.

Google social search Is It A Game Changer

Google social search has been around since 2009 but it recently has had some recent changes. There is a good reason for this. Read on and you will see why.

The thing is, as internet marketers, we carry on with what we do and some of us spend a lot of time on SEO forums and blogs to try and understand the nuances of the latest search engine optimisation techniques and tricks.

Not all of the participants on these sites know anything at all about SEO, they just spout stuff that they have read on other sites or even worse, make it up as they go along. I always find it best to do my own tests and make up my own mind based on the results of my testing. I often find that different strategies can have varying effects depending on the types of websites and niches.

For example an technique that works really well for an e-commerce site will not work as well for a niche blog site.

A static site that is not updated on a regular basis can rank very well if you do certain things. Carrying out these same tasks on a blog will not have much impact. that is why testing is so important.

I read in an email from a supposed seo expert the other day that read “it if we could figure out the google algorithm then we could rank on the first page of google as easy as pie.”!!

Actually, google DO NOT hide the secret to first page results. It is simple but time consuming and takes a lot of effort. You have to produce and provide value for your visitor. Relevant information related to what the searcher is looking for.

Google even provide a whole section of their website dedicated to helping webmasters learn the basic of SEO the google way. here is the link  google webmaster help

Few of us pay enough attention to the facts that are out there. This is because a lot of this information is hidden amongst lengthy technical data which can be difficult to dissect and gleem the golden nuggets.

For those that do spend time reading these long winded white papaers and the SEO news releases you will have seen the recent announcement by bing and facebook. They are going to fully integrate the social data from facebook into the bing search results.

Why is this link between facebook and bing so important?

Well after the announcement, Google made an almost instant repsonse and you can bet your bottom dollar that this will not be the last change.

This intergration will change the way that google brings back results. Especially if you use gmail and are usually logged into your google account when you use the google search.

Why is Google Social Search A Game Changer?

The changes to the google social search will change the way the search engines deliver results. This may not have an immediate effect on your rankings or traffic. However, over time it will do and so it is important that you take the time to understand what it is google social search does.

If you want to stay ahead or even get ahead of your competition then learn all you can about social searching and then take some action to ensure your website is the one that is served up to those searching for your product or service.

As always use the contact me page if you have any questions, I will be happy to helo if I can.

Here is the video

 
Mark my words the next thing that will be hot all over the forums will be google social search.

 

Search engine optimisation is about so many things. You will read many different theories on the rights and wrongs of ranking your website, design factors, on page optimisation, W3C compliance and the like.

The thing is this can all be done over time and I would always recommend that you first get it up (if you pardon the pun) and then work on getting it right.

When trying to rank your website in the search engines, produce a new product or even to design a new website, the first thing is to get it up and out there.

Whilst of course it is important to get it right waiting for perfection is a problem we should try and live without.

Every time I look at my website I find of something that I think I can improve. I also get comments from visitors either praise or criticism which is great. Any form of feedback is very much appreciated as they have taken the time to put finger to keyboard and type me a message.

I have tried many different ways to make the site better. Most of the improvements these days revolve around faster speeding times as this makes a difference to my google rankings and, of course, the visitor experience.

Over time, I believe that my website has improved in the way it looks and the overall onpage search engine optimisation.IT is still far from perfect but, I think that it is doing ok. It ranks well for a number of highly competitive terms with very few backlinks.

However much you are tempted to wait until everything is just right, I suggest you get your site online or your product launched as soon as possible and you will reap the benefits.

As always if you have any questions or comments then do not hesitate to email me via my contact us form.

 

Do Not Search For Your Own Domain on Google Too Often And, If You Do………  

Google use a number of ways to help them rank a website. We are always being told that the mighty google works under a veil of secrecy and as far as their algorithm is concerned this is true.

However, if you take the time to read google’s extensive webmaster section then you will find a wealth of information on what google is looking for in a good website.

The gurus selling automated software, only tend to talk about the issues that they have a solution for.

Search engine optimisation is about on page factors including keywords, page titles, meta tags, internal links and outbound links as well as backlinks from other relevant and non relevant websites as well as link wheels, social bookmarking, pinging and other tactics that will have you flying up the rankings.

There are also a number of other factors that never seem to get a mention and that includes peoples search habits and practises.

Most people with any experience of SEO will also have heard of bounce rates and stickiness of the pages. Google measure the time that is spent on a site, if a website is visited and clicked back off within 30 seconds this is not good.

Google will think that the results it served up are not as relevant as they should be. this is the reason that we do what we can to make the page sticky to keep visitors on our sites for as long as possible.

Another factor is whether you click on the results pages at all.

For example, if someone does a search for “bird table plans” then google delivers the results in the order of relevance based on their ranking factors.

Now, when you then click on the results and spend time on the site, this confirms googles opinion and all is good. However,  if you do not click on any of the links, especially the top ones, they will assume that these are not as relevant as they first thought and your site can start to drop down the results pages.

This means that if you are regularly searching for your website or keyword phrases and do not then click on it then you could well be damaging your rankings.

So do not google your keywords too often and, if you do then make sure you stay on the site and even navigate to other internal pages on your site.

Tips To Get Your Website Ranked On Google 

There is an easy formula to help you get your website ranked on google and the other major search engines.

If you follow these tips you will find that your website content will begin to rank a faster and for longer.

The first thing is to make sure that you have your keywords in the main title of the page or post. Some people say that it should be as close to the start of the title as possible in fact the best thing is to have the phrase you want to rank for at the very beginning of the title. I have not found a discernable difference but I do try to do this if possible. (apart from this particular post, where I have the phrase at the end)

Write a decent length article I try for around 300 words or more. This is not always required but if you are going after a highly competitive keyword phrase then the longer the better..

Your keyword density should be around 1.5% to 2% but no more than 3% to help get your website ranked fast in google.

Using H1 header tags with your keywords in the sentence will also help to get your website ranked in good time.

You should also put your keywords in italics, bold as well as underline an instance of your keyword phrase. This should be 3 seperate insantces to get your website ranked for the best results.

If you can then also use h2 and h3 header tags. This is another reason why you should have at least 300 words on each post otherwise it looks odd. I do not always manage this but can still rank well for less competitve phrases and keyowrds.

An image on your website not only makes the post look more appealing and pulles the reader in but it also helps to get your website ranked well on google. It is important to use the image alt text once you have added the picture. Try and make the image relevant to your post.

Try to use the keywords in the last sentence as well as the first.

Linking to other internal pages or posts on your website also helps google to confirm that the page is relevant to your reader and deserves the top spot, or close to it on their mighty index.

The last thing is to make sure that you get your website ranked fast on the google search engine is to bookmark it. I use the pro version of onlywire as well as auto social poster pro and feedburner to send syndicate your RSS feed.

IF you link out to a number of other external sites some say it is better to add nofollow links to them but I do not always do this as I think google wants to see a mix which helps to get your website ranked well and in record time.

Get Your Website Ranked In Goolge Fast

1. The Keyword Phrase should be in the title
2. Create an article or post with at least 300 words
3. Use a keyword density of about 2% do not go over 3%
4. Put the Keywords in <H1> header tags
5. Bold your keywords
6. Put your keyword phrase in italics
7. Underline your keyword phrase
8. Add an <H2> and <H3> header tags with your keywords included in the phrase.
9. Add an image to the page and use the keyowrds in the alt tags.
10. Use the keywords in the last sentence
11. Link to another relevant internal page on your website
12. Use only wire to bookmark the page
13. Use Auto Social Poster Pro if you have it
14. Use feedburner to post your RSS feed

It is not about getting everything perfect, in fact the more you mix is up the better. It is important to look natural and this will not be the case if all your outbound links are nofollow for example.

But, if you follow the top tips above you will see an improvement in your results. You do not have to use every one of the tips on every post or webpage but the more the merrier.

I use a pluin called SEOpressor and there is a review here. You do not need to have it but it does automate the process and makes it all much easier to do.

So try out all or some of the above and see how fast you can get your website ranked.