Monday, February 23, 2009

Life after Google

Is there a life after Google, well I guess we will have to wait and see in the meantime though people are begining to use other methods by which to carry out searches on the internet and I am not just talking about other search engines I am also talking about bookmarking and social networking sites. If you are looking for new ways to get visitors to your website you have to be looking at social bookmarketing and social networking in order to get the widest possible audience, we shall look at this a lttle later.
In the UK Google lead the way with 80% of internet users using Google as their main search engine. So does this mean that we shoul only be worried about our websites positions with Google? Well, without doubt if you are seeking to market your website you should always be looking to get better positions on Google, but do not neglect these other search engines as it is possible that you can double even trebel your websites traffic by looking at other search engines.
To make the point, we had a client who was getting around 300 hits a day via search engines after having carried out some onsite optomisation and built a number of forum links we had doubled the amount of traffic comming to the website to 600 hits a day. Now when we looked at the data what we saw surprised us the search engine that had brought the most traffic was a search engine called 'Search'. We had not heard of this search engine prior to working with this website and what this proved to us was that you can generate a lot of new business through other search engines and not just Google.
A good SEO campaign really can only start if you can get some stats for the website before you start, why? Because you then have the ability to show your client that figures (number of hits) have increased whilst they have been using your services.

Sunday, February 22, 2009

How can blogs help with SEO?

Ok so how do blogs help to promote a website? Well apart from the obvious which is that you are reading this blog and may decided to go and view my website there are other advantages to blogs.
Blogs give you the oppotunity to point links back to your own website, with the advantage that you control the content that surounds the link. Meaning you write good content that relates well to the key term that you are looking to promote. Example:

My kitchen is fitted with all the necessary accessories for the basic chef I have a just installed a ......(key term)

So you can see that the link is within the context of the writing, the content is kitchen related. Obviously you would be writing more content than I have in my example but hopefully you get the point. You are able to write good content about the product, service you are looking to promote.

Blogs should be regularly updated, the more you update your blog the more likely people will subscribe to your blog and read them and link to them. The golden rule with blogs is to try and avoid advertising your services, products in an traditional advertising way. You are looking to engage your readers and make the content imformative, give free advice and always respond quickly to comments made on your blogs. If others start to subscribe to your blog this will help to build backlinks to your blog and so others will start to see your blog.

Can blogs help with search engine traffic? Well if you are pointing links back to your website and in turn others are linking to your blog then this all helps to gain better positions on search engines.

Saturday, February 21, 2009

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What is SEO?

OK, so we talk about SEO (search engine optomisation) a lot, or at least I do with my clients and I'm hoping in turn that those who are viewing my posts are involved in some way with SEO. SEO search engine optomisation, the idea is that you get more traffic to your website via search engines. Why is it important to look at search engines? Because nearly everybody in the world is using them!!
So if we know that search engines are important what are we going to do to make sure our website is number 1 for its key terms? Ha, ha, ha!! Let's not fool ourselfs, if you have just launced a website selling mobile phones do you really think any SEO company is going to get you number 1 for the key term mobile? Well if you do you need to take a deep breath and re-think your marketing campaign. Why??? Well here is the simple answer, for the last 10 years there have been websites set up to sell mobile phones, these websites are 10 years ahead of your brand new website!
Ok, that's the reality check, now here's the good news. There are 1000's of key terms that people type into search engines each and every second of the day and what we need to do is find the right key terms that we can build your business and your website upon.
Google is God! Every website should be ranking on page 1 of Google for its key terms! IMPOSSIBLE!! How can every website rank in the top 10 of Google for its key terms? Think about it, how many websites are there selling Kitchens, can they all be on page 1 (top 10) of Google? No, they can not. 80% of people from the UK will use Google this is an important fact. A good SEO campaign needs to include how the website will be promoted on Google but do not think that Google is the only place that you can improve website's traffic.
Ther were a recorded 165,745,689 internet users and this figure is increasing every day, so what if your not on Google there is still an estimated 33,150,000 people that are not using Google. Are these people not worth reaching? And of the Google users, are they just using Google? Of course not. People are getting more sophicicated with their searches on the internet and this includes using more than search engines, we will leave that for another day, so don't be fooled into thinking that if your not top of Google you cannot generate more business for your website.
I have recently had a client that had double the traffic to his website via search engines, however most of these unique visitors came via a search engine called Search. Have you heard of them? Well I hadn't either but this search engine had increased their unique visitors by 65%. So there you have it there is life before and after Google.

Friday, February 20, 2009

Forum Link Building

How do you build links from forums? Many forums give you the oppotunity to have a signature at the bottom of each of your posts so each time you reply to a thread (topic, discussion) or start a thread you leave your signature just under your post. Not all forums allow you to place a link in your signature, so you should view this as a sort of 'thank you' from the forum for adding content to their website and so PLEASE make sure the content you add is relevant to the discussion and DONT SPAM forums. The better or more interesting your posts are the more likely you will recieve comments back and in turn have people click onto the links you leave. This means you will have direct traffic going to the website you are linking to because you have made a good post. The one thing to remember about building links in forums is to make sure that your posts are interesting and relevant to that forum.
How do I set up my signature? First you will need to register with a forum having done this you then go to profile settings and then edit signature, here is where you place your link (rememeber to use key terms see my earlier post on link styles) make sure you click the box that says add signature to all my posts. Now each one of your posts will leave your signature and thus leave a link to the website you are trying to promote.
Forum link building is one of my my favourite form of link building. Why? Because it gives me the oppotunity to interact with others on the internet and try to discuss and enlight others about my clients websites using the various forums that relate to their key terms. Forums are a great place to learn about anything and everything from babies to cars there are forums to suit all tastes.
Here is an example of 2 forum links I built click this link 100 years romance if you look at the num 1 position (forums.buddy.com) that's my link, look at num 9 (womenonlyforums.com) that's my link. Each of these links are built from forums what is important to note is that these are starter threads (meaning I started the thread or topic) and this enables me to give a title to the thread which in turn gives me the ability to get my title in the title tags and meta information which search engines look at when ranking web pages.
Imagine if my forum posts are ranking position 1 on Google for their key terms - how good are these links? Good! I have managed to move clients onto page 1 for their key terms, sometimes with very few of these links.
What is important when building forum links is to try and find forums that are of the same theme as the website you are promoting. Example look at my num 1 link http://forums.buddytv.com/romance/73065-100-years-romance.html you can see that although buddytv is about television programs I have gone to the romance section to post my link, therefore I am now building a link from a forum that has a theme of romance. If you look at the link I have left in my signature it is the key term romance. Thus I have now built a link from a themed forum.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

2 Styles of link building

Firstly let me lay out the two style of links you can build and then we will cover the 5 different sources from which you can build these links from to increase traffic to your website. Please, if any of you reading this feel you would like to ammend or add anything I would greatly appreachiate it, as I claim only to know so much and after all what is the internet if not a tool for learning and gaining valuable input from others.

Here is the first style of link one can build www.naturallinkbuilding.co.uk you will see I have used the url (the url is address of the website you are linking to) as the link. This is a very natural way to build links for instance if you like a website and you recommend your friend to use it you would normally forward the url to them.

The second style of link building is to use key terms in the anchor text of the link for instance bespoke SEO (you will see 'bespoke seo'. this is the key term, you may have many different key terms) now if you click on this link you will find that it still takes you to www.naturallinkbuilding.co.uk. What is the purpose of building links this way? The purpose of building links this way is that search engines pick up the key terms in the links and so the more you build the higher positions you will get on search engines for the key terms (well, that's the principle). However bare in mind that when you are marketing your website using links you should be hoping for a certain amount of direct traffic from those links, not just using the links to gain positions on the search engines.