Archive for the ‘Search Engine Optimization’ Category

Search Engine Optimisation – The Basics and What SEO is

Tuesday, June 12th, 2012

What is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?

So quite a few people have been talking about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO for short) but not many people will understand it or what it does and why it is important. Basically SEO is a common technique used main in web design to improve a websites SERP (search engine results page) for extra traffic. As you can imagine improving the position of your website on major search engines can have a huge effect on your business or website. If your business or website was at the top of a major search engine I.e. Google, Bing and Yahoo, when people search for something the odds are they would click your website. It is said that at least 50% of all people who search for something always click the top result as it is at the top and perceived as the best. So how do people get to be at search engine and with people searching so many different things what should you be at the top for?

How do you decide the right search term?

The most important thing before trying to get to the top of a search engine is the search term you want to be at the top for. If you are a web design company then trying to get to the top of a search engine for the search term sport or cars would be ridiculous. I know that is a bit obvious when you think about it sport is searched 4,090,000 time per month, cars is searched 1,220,000 per month and web design is searched 301,000 per month. They may be searched more often than web design but it isn’t relevant and you would be misleading people who search for the search term sport or cars and the odds are they wont want web design and wont go back to your website again. So if you are a web design company would web design be the best search term to aim for? Yes and no. Yes because that is the highest search term for web design but no because there is a lot of competition. If a web design company was at the top of a search engine for web design then they would get a lot of customers and I am sure they would know a lot about search engine optimisation as well as being around the scene for a long time. When you search web design roughly 500,000,000 results come up. The odds you are going to even get on the first page of a search engine for web design is highly unlikely so we need to narrow down your main keyword search term.

How do you narrow down a search term to benefit you?

When narrowing down a search term there are a lot of things to think about. Do you want to target a specific area? Do you want to attract customers with a budget or with unlimited money to spend? To narrow down your search term, plan what you want to get out of it and focus on a specific audience. If you are a web design company based in Newcastle and you want to be the best in that area then Web Design Newcastle would be a perfect keyword. The reason why is because people looking for web design in the Newcastle area are more likely web design Newcastle. Even though Web Design in Newcastle sounds better, for example, say only 73 people search for this per month where as Web Design Newcastle is searched 2,400 times per month. 2,400 is a big drop from 301,000 but the competition has dropped from 500,000,000 to 534,000. The competition ratio for web design 1:1661 search’s per result where as web design Newcastle has a competition ratio of 1:225 searches per result. Not only is the competition a lot better but the people who would search this are a lot more likely to want a web design service than to study it or learn about it. There are many more ways of narrowing your search term down for example you sell cars as we know a huge search term but if you only sell a specific car second hand I.e. Ford Focus Second Hand then making Ford Focus Second Hand your main search term means you are targeting 1,900 people per month looking for that product.

Decided on a search term so now how do you get to the top?

This is the quite possibly the hardest part of search engine optimisation and is also the most time consuming. You have decided what your search term or search terms are now you need to get to the top of a search engine for that term. There are hundreds of factors to consider when performing search engine optimisation but I shall only cover the basic’s, if you are wanting to get proper results then I would recommend going to a professional SEO company or a web design company what perform search engine optimisation. I will only go over 5 important factors which anyone is capable of performing.

Factor 1 – Fresh Content

Search engines love new, original and fresh content. Don’t duplicate other peoples work or try to copy what they have done, come up with your own ideas and write your own content and you will go a long way. Remember to include your search terms (known as keywords and this will be explained more in the next factor) so a search engine can recognise what your content is all about and then decided to pull it up when someone search’s it. It is better to spend hours on one page than spend 5 minutes copy and pasting someone else’s hard work. Duplicate content is where you copy someone’s content and pass it off as your own. Search engines index all pages on the internet that they come across and if they find you have copied someone’s content they will mark your website down and it will struggle to get onto the first page. If you regularly update your content a search engine will discover this and it shall only work in your favour (as long as it’s relevant) and improve your position.

Factor 2 – Keyword Density

Keyword density is another important factor to ranking high on a search engine. A keyword is a search term so to keep the same theme as earlier the search term I spoke about was web design Nottingham therefore web design Nottingham would be my main keyword. The density of a keyword is the percentage of many times the keywords appear in comparison to others. Adding up all the words in view (and meta data factor 3) and finding the percentage of your keywords can be a very time-consuming act and nearly impossible to get accurate. How ever there are many tools out there that will do this for you and the majority of them are free so quickly flicking through the internet should help you find the tools you need.

There is no set density in which your keyword should appear for a search engine to pick up on but there are guidelines. Some people think between 2-4% is the right amount where as other think 4-6% is the best. This is all a matter of opinion and all what matters is that your keywords stand out to both search engines and readers. Do not spam your content with keywords as a search engine will mark you down for this and should you reach the top of a search engine people will not be able to understand it but don’t be funny about placing them, you can’t be to careful otherwise a search engine may not pick up on what you want your search term to be. I always like to make sure I mention my keyword at the begging just because of my personal beliefs of what a search engine’s algorithm is but the more content you write and the more skilled you become at search engine optimisation, you too will have your opinions on what works better than others.

Factor 3 – Meta Data

Things start to become a bit more complex no but anyone who has gotten to this point of the article is more than capable of understanding it. Meta data is the title, description and keywords a reader won’t see but a search engine will. Some web design software’s come with add ons to make it easy to input meta data but if not and you are experienced with HTML then you can still input this in yourself. The meta title is basically a title of the webpage you are writing. This should be no more than 60 letters and it doesn’t have to make sense. For example the home page of a web design companies meta title might read “Web Design Nottingham – Web Design | Web Designers” or something along that effect. It isn’t quite understandable or a sentence but a search engine would see this and understand they are words of importance and what the content is about.

After the Meta Title there is the Meta Description which is longer and should be more understandable to readers as some search engines display this when a result comes back to the searcher. This should be no more than 160 words and should include your keywords again. It may read “We are the number 1 web design company in Nottingham. We offer the best web design around and……” so on. The final piece of Meta Data is the Meta Keywords. This is where you should place all keywords you wish to be indexed for by a search engine and it should read like a list with a comma separating all keywords. Again for a web design company it may look like “web design, web designers, web design Nottingham….” and so on. There is no set mount of how many you can add but I don’t advice spamming it by adding excessive keywords and only enter each keyword once.

Factor 4 – Back Links

A back link is an internal link from one web page to another both on your domain. The reason for this is when a search engine lands on one off your web pages it will scan and index that web page. It cannot scan and index another webpage on your domain if there is not link from that page. For example (all links use a semi colon and not a full colon to prevent actual links) “http;//www.madeupwebsite.co.uk/page1″ has a link on it to “http;//www.madeupwebsite.co.uk/page2″ therefore a search engine can scan and index “http;//www.madeupwebsite.co.uk/page1″ and notice the link. It will then follow the link to “http;//www.madeupwebsite.co.uk/page2″ and index that as well. This is important because if only one of your web pages is indexed, the rest of your pages won’t appear when someone searches and you will be relying on people finding your website and flicking through all your pages for your website to get noticed. Another thing to think about as well is how are you going to link from page to page? This can all be done with a site map but you can have some on page links which will improve your SERP by linking keywords to pages that have been optimised for that keyword. Say a web page has been optimised for web design, the keyword density and meta data includes web design then why not link the word web design from one page to the web design page?

Factor 5 – Anchor Text and External linking

Anchor text is the words that are linked to a link. Sounds a bit confusing but instead of a a link reading “please feel free to click this link for web design “http;//www.madeupwebsite.co.uk” you could always place the link so it read “please feel free to click this link for web design” linking the word web design to “http;//www.madeupwebsite.co.uk”. Again with web design software and add on’s this is made easy but if its in HTML you would use “< href=” website “>keyword” and this would link your keyword to a website.

The reason for doing this is that you are telling a search engine what the link is. If the anchor text is web design and the content on the web page you are linking to is optimised for web design the search engine will rank you higher and index it for the search term web design. This doesn’t get you to the top of a search engine straight away and one link wont do that but to show the power of links just search click here. If you search click here it takes you to an Adobe Reader download page. The reason for this is loads of people link the word click here to that web page as it is a useful tool that people may need to view certain things.

It doesn’t stop there

When it comes to search engine optimisation there are hundreds of other ranking factors that I have not mentioned. You can go off and study more SEO techniques but this could take years to understand and as the internet is ever growing and expanding I would suggest you leave SEO to the experts as if you don’t fully understand search engine optimisation you may make things worse for your website. However should you wish to study it more in depth there are loads of websites out there and plenty of other articles and resources you can read but SEO techniques aren’t written in stone and other people will have different opinions.

The best way to learn search engine optimisation techniques would be to test them out and see what work for you but it can be a long process and it does take time. Don’t ever go with a company that promise a page 1 rank on all search engines within days as this is not possible. If a company do claim this then they are more than likely on about an ad words campaign which is completely different to organic search engine optimisation and doesn’t offer the same results as well as being expensive.

What is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?

Tuesday, March 20th, 2012

After talking to others within your field or searching the Internet, you’ve probably come across the term: SEO. This is short, of course, for search engine optimization. You’ve probably asked yourself, “What is SEO?”

SEO, or search engine optimization, is simply the process of getting your website ranked higher in the search engines through the natural, or unpaid, search results. In other words, not the paid (Pay-Per-Click) results on the outside columns. This is important because the face of the Internet is changing. With over 75% of large and small companies now online, there’s an increase in competition and ‘market share’ for the top search engine positions. Your goal should be having your website placed within the top ten positions in the major search engines, like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Google, of course, currently holds over 60% of all online searches. So, this should be a primary target for your SEO work. Studies show that most consumers will rarely look beyond these top placements when conducting an online search.

Keep in mind, however, SEO is not done by simply creating a website and hosting it online. Many large companies pay large sums of money to make sure their site stays at the top. Although smaller budgets may not allow for this type of dedicated SEO service, it doesn’t mean smaller sites can’t still earn their rank. Either on your own, or through an SEO professional, make sure your site has quality SEO services-aimed at getting your site placed higher in the search engines. This is essential to the growth of your website and your business.

Most SEO experts will use two methods to get your site placed high in the search engines: on-page and off-page SEO. Typically, on-page SEO involves editing the content of a site to ensure it is properly optimized for the search engines. Another common tactic is link-building. Although off-page methods may vary, link-building is one common element. How your SEO professional decides to build those links will differ. Common white-hat SEO methods will include forum postings, blog commenting, and article marketing.

First introduced in the mid-1990′s, the nature of SEO has changed and continues to evolve with the World Wide Web. As SEO improves so will the user’s search experience on the Internet. So, what is the true answer to the “What is SEO” question? Quite simply, it’s essential.

What Makes A Good SEO Service Provider?

Tuesday, January 17th, 2012

If you have a business and you would like to reach more customers, one of the best things that you can do is to make it accessible to people on the Internet. When we say making it accessible, it means that you need a website or a platform that will make you more visible to people on the Internet. Aside from this, you also need to make sure that when people are searching a service or product that you are offering, they will easily find your website. This is where SEO comes in, and is where you need to focus most of your efforts.

Nowadays, there are a lot of SEO services that you can contact if you want to have higher rankings in SERP (Search Engine Results Page). The problem is that not all of them can help you get better rankings, so you need to make sure that you are going with the best company possible. Here are some of the guidelines that you need to follow whenever you are looking for an SEO service provider:

Look for someone who can provide you with what you need, which is also suitable for your monthly budget. Get an SEO service from someone who has a track record in this kind of business, and has established their reputation in terms of search engine optimization.

Make sure that you are going after an SEO service that is focused in white hat practices to be sure that you won’t suffer drawbacks from the service that they are offering. Avoid those that only focused on building back-links, go with those provider that focused on creating high quality content that can also create high quality one way links that most search engine love.

A good SEO service provider will talk to you directly and will give you tips, advices, and recommendations on the things that you need to do. They are after the results that you will gain from their service, and not with the money that you will be spending on them.

An SEO service provider should have a team of experts to ensure that you will always get the best in every aspect of SEO that they will be doing for you. Flexibility is a great factor as well, so you need to make sure that an SEO service can adapt to your needs and your budget, without sacrificing the results that you gain.

SEO is a very competitive industry, so you need to make sure that you are going with someone who is very competitive in terms of services, pricing, and professionalism.

SEO Content Writing

Tuesday, December 20th, 2011

Links in SEO content writing services when accompanied by suitable keywords ensure website popularity and play the role of a guide for your business’ clients through a web search. An enterprise will prepare a document online outlining what they sell or deal in and they will not only want it put on the internet but with good results in terms of influx of clients. The same applies to a new venture that wants to achieve the same purpose. A content service helps your enterprise by making search engines acknowledge its website. It is the one with links to your website.

If your site has more links, the easier it will be to find during a look up and vice versa. You should seek to have as many links listed online line up as possible. These will also determine the site’s ranking. It is the source of the SEO content writing services that will establish whether the literature they have written is suitable or not. A suitable editorial will avail material by writers who have the language they are using as their first language. For SEO writing services foreign writers are not recommended. Even though anyone that is free and wants to do this work can be engaged to do it, there are those who have particular experience in this work. They train in doing summarized word specific articles. You should note that getting below standard work will not do any good for your website in terms of serving your market segment in the desired manner.

SEO content writing services are not known to be a costly affair. The SEO writing should state their billing system, vow to give you excellent work, which is free of property rights issues. The work could be seriously compromised if it is found to be counterfeited, with serious repercussions for a young enterprise. It can result in content from your website being treated as untested and thus be frozen or passed for some time. These are measures that search engines take for property theft and they have tools to help discover it. A SEO content writing services provider that cannot give their word for authenticity shouldn’t be contracted. You should certify that their staff is language proven and that rejected work can be returned.

Website visitors are usually looking for data that will increase their knowledge and pass the test of originality. If SEO content services are done professionally, the result will be a surge in visitors to your site. This is a tested strategy for ecommerce including commercial announcements and adverts. SEO content writing services will ensure that both you and customers benefit from your website.

High Rankings but Low Traffic?

Tuesday, December 13th, 2011

You have put all your efforts to achieve high rankings in search engine result pages and are happy with the rankings given by search engine. But did you notice and measure the amount of traffic coming to your website? Why is it still low? Why are your efforts not bringing in the amount of traffic you had wished for? What went wrong with your SEO strategies? Here is the reasons may be responsible for low traffic and low conversion rate.

 

Are you actually getting ranked?

Web is one of the finest places where most people look for their desired information, be it local, global or customized. As a website owner, what you see in SERPs is different from what others are seeing. Your rankings may differ when your website is being searched from a different location or using the similar keywords with a different intention.

 

If you are getting personalized rankings, it would be advised to come out of your personalized settings and conduct a test using a different web browser. If you are running a local business and your website appears on first page in local search results, ensure you get the same rankings outside of local search. Change your current location in Google and see what rankings your website receives? One of the rising issues is the frequency of appearing in stuffed search results that consist of images, videos, news, blogs, and forums. Consider your website’s ranking in organic search results, what rankings do you adhere in organic search results.

 

Do you have low volume keywords?

Make sure you do a keyword research before you put in your SEO strategies into play. Bring out accurate and limited targeted keywords for your website. If your targeted keywords have low search volume then probably it do not show up in search results. One of the reasons is user’s intention. You may have put in keyword phrases for your website and users are searching through longtail keywords.

 

Putting right keywords in place is very essential. For instance, if user conducts a search for mango (the fruit), search engine will bring up variants of results including Mango Fashion, FlyMango Airlines and Mango Languages at the top. You need to be very careful about your targeted keywords. If you are a wholesale mango supplier, your targeted keywords should be like “Wholesale mangos supplier” or “fresh mango wholesale” etc. Your targeted keywords should correspond to user’s intention.

Do you get enough click-throughs?

 

Now you have everything set right and achieved top rankings in Google, but watch out for your site’s click-through rates. You can use Google Webmaster Tools to analyze your website’s overall performance. Make sure that you have put in right targeted keywords and matched user’s intent. This is the best way to increase click-throughs and driving traffic towards your website. You can also opt for PPC campaigns and increase traffic to your website.

 

You need to take a look at your search engine ranking and click through rates. Revisit your SEO program and review your SEO strategies. Going back and fixing the issues you have with targeted keywords, on and off page optimization and link building etc may result into increasing traffic and achieving top rankings in SERPs.

If you are running a website and still not getting enough click through rates and high rankings in search engine results, it’s time to go for SEO plan. We at Onit Solutions provide SEO assistance and help you achieve high rankings in SERPs and make sure you have increased traffic and ROI. For more information please contact us at www.onitsolutions.co.uk

Why Is SEO So Important?

Monday, May 9th, 2011

So why is SEO so important? Millions of people every day search for information on search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo. For any given search term, there are anywhere from a few hundred to a few million search results that reference that given search term. Generally speaking, the search results are designed to be ranked in the order of their relevance to the searcher’s search term, or keyword (or keyword phrase).

Most people, when searching for a keyword or keyword phrase, will click on one of top 10 search results on the first page of the search results, or will initiate another search. Therefore in order to gain a reasonable amount of search engine traffic, a website should appear in the top 10 search results for a given keyword. Given the fact that there are for some keywords millions, literally millions of websites having some relevance to the keyword, it can often be a difficult feat, if not almost impossible, to get your webpage in the first 10 search results for a given keyword.

However, by learning the techniques by which the search engines decide which web pages should show in the top 10 search results of a given keyword or keyword phrase, and by optimizing your Web site, in such a way that your website outperforms other websites or web pages in the search engines algorithms, you can literally send your website or webpage to the top 10 search results in the search engines, surpassing many other web pages and websites, if you know what to do.

Although speaking from experience, SEO is not something for the faint hearted. If you are competent and you know what you are doing then go for it. But do be aware that you could possibly get your website sand boxed if you do the SEO incorrectly or use black hat techniques and once your web site has been sand boxed, it’s up to the gods at Google when you get it back! It could be a day…..or 6months. In my opinion, SEO is best left to the professionals, especially those with a proven track record like Onit Solutions.

Search Engine Optimization

Monday, March 28th, 2011

Search engine optimization is vital to the success of a website
but unfortunately, it is a very confusing thing for new website
owners. Many feel like they can strike out on their own without
using professional search engine optimization services while
others feel that search engine optimization is best left to the
experts. While SEO is not easy and techniques for getting top-ranking are ever changing, an ongoing commitment to learning about search engine optimization will save you time and money as well as improving the performance of your website.

Achieving top ranking in the search engines through effective
search engine optimization is like free advertising. It is the
most logical way to drive loads of traffic to your website.
Traffic combined with good sales copy and a quick loading website
converts browsers to buyers and can skyrocket your sales.

The majority of people that visit a website find the website in
the search engines. Moreover, they usually don’t browse past the
first two pages in the search results. So using search engine
optimization to get top-ranking in the major search engines is
vastly important if you desire the amazing amounts of traffic
that the search engines can direct to your website.

A major misconception about search engine optimization is that
the alternative to it is to buy your way to the top of the search
engines through pay-per-click advertising. There are some
definite advantages to pay-per-click advertising because it is
easier to achieve and maintain a top position in the search
engines. Also, with pay-per-click advertising you only pay for
click-throughs and you can get listed quickly. But, it can be
costly if you fail to manage your pay-per-click campaigns
aggressively and consistently.

The biggest mistake that website operators make in using the pay-
per-click search engine services over search engine optimization
is not considering the value of each website visitor. Because you
are paying for every click to your website it is vital that your
maximum bid for the keyword does not exceed the value of the
click. Without adequate attention to that factor, your pay-per-
click advertising costs can eat up your precious advertising
funds rather quickly.

For search engine optimization to work and to work consistently,
your website has to be submitted to the search engines initially
and resubmitted periodically. You need to monitor the
effectiveness of your search engine optimization and maintain it.
This is necessary because the search engine indexing rules change
frequently and such changes can cause your site to move down in
ranking without ongoing search engine optimization efforts.

This is an important consideration if you choose to use a search
engine optimization company rather than doing your own search
engine optimization. Some offer one time services while others
offer ongoing maintenance. Unless you learn to retain your search
engine position on your own through continued search engine
optimization, you will need ongoing monitoring and maintenance
services.

Search engines use algorithms to rank websites. Algorithms are
simply their rules for determining relevance of a website’s
content to a browser’s search. Because the search engine’s
purpose is to serve those looking for information, their
algorithms are closely held trade secrets and aren’t made
available to those aiming at search engine optimization. This is
what complicates the process of search engine optimization as
much of it must be accomplished through trial and error.

There are a couple of things that seem to remain consistent in
search engine optimization techniques. Those are the use of
keywords and keyword phrases and obtaining link popularity with
relevant links coming into your website. The main advantage of
search engine optimization, naturally, is that having a top-
ranked site in the major search engines is effective, free
advertising. The disadvantages are that it may take several weeks
after you submit your site for the search engines to index it and
ongoing maintenance is required to ensure that your search engine
optimization efforts achieve the results you desire.