So why do some people use multiple <h1> headings in pages? Apart from a lack of web accessibility knowledge, they can be overused for supposed search engine benefits. It is widely thought in the search optimisation industry that <h1> heading tags are quite influential in the search engines, and the keywords used in these help search rankings. I would tend to agree with this, however it needs to be remembered that web designers should be creating sites designed for users, and not for search engines.

Now I’m not proposing that search engines should be ignored – they can be a very powerful source of traffic and revenue! What I am saying, though, is that the search optimisation of a website should not interfere with accessibility and the general user experience. A balance should be struck where the site is fully optimised for Google, Yahoo and Bing etc, but should not interfere with the usability and accessibility of the site.

Tags: web design, accessibility, accessible web design, search engines, usability, heading tags, title tags

After reading through a web design forum earlier today, one topic caught my interest regarding certain SEO software packages which claim to be able to achieve first page results on Google for customers websites. First of all, they can’t, simple as that. It’s a fact that for the majority of even slightly competitive keyword phrases, no automated tool will be able to cut the mustard when it comes to achieving results…

SEO is very much an intuitive process involving a multitude of factors from high quality website content, inbound links, on-site search optimisation, site link structure etc.. It needs a human eye to assess the level of competitiveness of the keyword, and develop a strategy accordingly. If you read the terms and conditions of many of these SEO software packages which make such claims, you will probably see that the first page results they quote are based upon a number of unrealistic (or just plain stupid) assumptions. For example, one major SEO software package states that to achieve the results it promises, your website must have more inbound links than the current most competitive sites. Well, to any seasoned SEO consultant, that really isn’t much of a surprise and would form the basis of most SEO campaigns anyway.

SEO software packages are not the panacea in achieving the much coveted first page of Google (or any other search engine for that matter!), and should only be used for a small fraction of the overall SEO strategy (mainly on-page optimization). Despite all of the above comments, these packages may help business owners new to SEO to gain an appreciation into some of the factors that go into on-page optimisation, however don’t be fooled into believing claims of ‘first page of Google’ other than by an experienced SEO consultant or company that can actually back up their claims.

Tags: search, optimisation, optimization, engines, Google, SEO, packages, software, automated

The diagram on the right shows an example of long-tail keywords in practice – for example although we get a proportion of our traffic for the competitive keyword phrase ‘web designers’, we get a lot more traffic combined from other less popular keyword phrases. There are various methods of targeting these long-tail keywords, either directly or indirectly.

You can target less popular keyword phrases directly by utilising search engine optimising techniques for the page, such as making sure the phrase appears in the title tag and on the body of the web page. You can also build the amount of inbound links to that page that contain the keyword phrase in the anchor text, boosting your link popularity and rankings for that phrase.

As many search engine optimisers espouse, ‘content is king’ – the more text-rich content you have on your website, the more potential visitors the search engines will pass to you. Provide guides around your subject, write articles, and as long as you stick to a relevant theme or topic then you will start to get visitors that use search terms you won’t ever have thought of. If you check your website statistics log to see what keyword phrases people have used to enter your site, you’re sure to be surprised, and will probably be amused when you see what some people type in!

Tags: long-tail keywords, keywords, website visitors, search engine traffic, search engines

TrustRank comprises a variety of features which can contribute to your rankings in Google, and is aimed at removing spam sites from their listings, thus increasing the quality of the results they provide. They are just a selection of criteria which are used to automatically ‘judge’ your website, effectively calculating the authority and trustworthiness of your site. The other aspect of TrustRank is a manual editorial review by Google in determining what the characteristics of high quality sites in each topic are – other sites are then compared to the benchmark ‘seed’ website. In my opinion the five most important criteria for which we can influence are as follows…

1. Length of Domain Registration – With domain name extensions such as .com it is possible to register your domain for up to ten years. Doing so is likely to make your website look more trustworthy in the eyes of the search engines, as most spam sites are less likely to invest in their site. In other words, they know you’re serious.
2. Privacy Policies & Contact Details – Whilst a legal requirement in some countries, displaying your contact details (which include a physical trading address, contact telephone number and email address) on your website will not only make your site visitors trust in you more, but Google can also detect these and it will make your website seem legitimate. Having a comprehensive privacy policy (call it privacy-policy.html or suchlike) can also provide a benefit. If you’re not sure where to start then you can download some free example privacy policies from here.
3. Authority Of Inbound Links – Whilst the best link building strategy is to create useful and interesting content that people link to naturally, however for commercial sites this sometimes isn’t really an option. If you are proactively running a link building campaign, then try and get a variety of links from trusted sites. You can identify these by most websites with a domain name extention of .edu, .gov for example. Other good sites to get links from are ‘authority sites’ – these are considered like ‘hubs’ for certain topics, and the giveaway sign is if you type their name into Google, it displays a range of ‘sub-links’ underneath the main website listing.
4. Outbound Linking Strategy – Matt Cutts, an employee of Google has specifically stated that you need to ensure that you don’t link to any ‘bad neighbourhoods’ from your website. Bad neighbourhoods can be spam sites, affiliate sites and any containing dubious content. Avoid linking to sites such as these, as they will definitely pull down your rankings.
5. Link Age - It is much better to have long-term inbound links to your site, than an equal number of transient links. Google puts more weight onto links which have been established for a longer period of time.

In summary for Google to give you the maximum amount of trust, you should take care over your link strategy, and display your contact details and privacy policy on your website. Quite possibly you could already be doing this, but if not then they should help boost your rankings and Google TrustRank. This is just one aspect to successful search engine optimisation, we have a website promotion guide that contains a range of other SEO strategies.

Tags: Google trustrank, building trustrank, google, trustrank, seo, link building

What Is A Search Engine Index?

Search engine indexing is the process whereby they include your website in their list of potential results that match a search query. For example when you type a phrase in Google, it searches its index, which is like a huge database containing billions and billions of web pages, and according to its highly sophisticated algorithms, it tries to return the websites at the top of the list that it thinks will be of most use to the visitor.

So How Do You Get Included In The Search Engines Index?

Search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN typically use two methods to include websites in their indexes. They don’t know about your website automatically, and they either have to be notified of its existance, or by discovering links to your website from other websites. To notify them that your website exists, you can submit your URL (your web address) to inform them. When you’re top in the queue to be spidered (the process of Google visiting your page and analysing all of the content), they will visit your website and you will start to be included in their index. This will then allow you to appear in the search results for certain terms. There is unfortunately no way to influence how quickly a website is included in the search engine indexes, however, by gaining links from other sites to your own, you can speed this process along. Here are the addresses you should go to to submit your website to the top three search engines:

• Google Add URL
• Yahoo Site Submit
• MSN Submission

Is My Website In The Search Engines Index?

To determine if your website is included in Google’s index (which had a market share of 44% of all web searches in July 2006), you should type these terms into Google (obviously replacing yourdomain.com with your own domain name):

site: http://www.yourdomain.com

If your website is included in their index then you will see that Google returns the amount of pages from your site that are included. So if you are included in the search engine index, but don’t rank well for your chosen keywords, then the problem is a ranking issue, which can be fixed by a solid marketing campaign. Our website promotion guide is an introduction to the essentials necessary for ranking highly in the search engines.

Tags: search engine index, index inclusion, website, search engines

Short-Term vs. Long-Term Results

It can sometimes take a significant amount of time to achieve free traffic from the search engines, and whilst you develop the strategies listed below, you can gain a ‘quick fix’ of website visitors by creating a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaign. PPC is run by many search engines however the big two are Yahoo Search Marketing (Overture) and Google Adwords. With both of these, you choose a bid amount for certain keywords and according to your bid the search engines display an advert of your choice in the “sponsored search” section of their website. In Google this is the pale yellow area at the top and right of the search results. Then when someone searches for a keyword phrase you’re bidding on, if they subsequently click on your ad, then you have to pay Google. Obviously the amount you bid should depend on the value to you of a potential sale (or lead), and your expected conversion rate. When starting a PPC campaign you’re obviously not sure of what your conversion rate is going to be, and so you should calculate the bid amount based on a ‘worst case’ scenario – perhaps try a 1% conversion rate. Using PPC will help boost your traffic quickly and in the short-term, however for long-term and best of all FREE results, carry on reading for more tips that will help you boost your visitor numbers.

Links, Links and More Links

Yes as the title suggests, all of the search engines (with particular emphasis on Google) value inbound links to your website. It is believed that Google won’t even include your website in its search engine if you don’t have at least one inbound link. In reality if you are in a competitive industry then you will need many more than just one link. Inbound links serve two purposes, firstly they drive traffic directly to your website from visitors who click on the link, and secondly they help to boost your rankings in the search engines. Without giving away too many trade secrets, it is safe to say that for websites that don’t naturally attract inbound links (unlike blogs for example), an inbound link building campaign should be high on your agenda. This can be done yourself, if you know where to look, or you can employ a search engine optimisation company such as ourselves, to do the legwork for you.

You may have heard of reciprocal links, whereby you place a link from your site to another site in exchange for a link to yours from theirs. These were all the rage up until a few years ago, until they were devalued by Google. You should now focus on getting one-way inbound links to your website.

How can you get people to link to your website with nothing in return? Well, as I said the approach varies dependent on the type of website. The best bet is to create useful and relevant content or features on your website (perhaps install a blog) that people will naturally link to. I’m sorry to say it but unless you’re a multinational company (in which case you probably wouldn’t be reading this), your 5-page company introductory website is unlikely to gain many inbound links without you putting some effort into getting them.

There are literally thousands of free web directories out there that allow you to submit your website to – first of all you should try and get included in those directories relevant to your industry. If you are in the electronics industry for example, you should run a search for “electronics directories” and many of the websites at the top of the results will allow you to submit your website to. There may be a cost for submission, however, and this needs to be weighed up against the advantages that the link will gain in terms of visitors and also search engine benefit. To weigh up the latter, you need to know quite a bit of advanced SEO stuff so if you’re operating a link building campaign involving paid submissions then you are best to use an SEO company as they will be able to maximise the return on your money.

Will any old link do the trick?

In terms of search engine benefit, no, not all links are equal. Avoiding the majority of the technical jargon, the best thing you can do is to make sure that the anchor text (ie: the text of the link that is highlighted and usually underlined) contains the keyword phrases you are trying to rank highly for. Quality is just as important a consideration as quantity of links.

Content Is King

A popular phrase that is often mentioned in SEO circles is that ‘content is king’. Basically, this means that it is the content (the actual text) of your website that play a large role in determining the success of your website in attracting high rankings and visitors. The more keyword-rich pages you have on your website, the more website visitors you will attract, as you will rank for a much wider variety of phrases. Ideally you should try and add content to your site regularly, particularly content which is useful and relevant to your target market. A blog would be a great starting point, allowing you to post articles and company notices regularly. You can post anything you like, from informative articles to press releases for example. It will also help to establish a level of credibility in the eyes of your customers, particularly if you include descriptions of your recent business successes and positive customer testiomonials.

Ladies & Gentlemen, Welcome To Web 2.0

Web 2.0 is a term that has gained much popularity recently, and encompasses the ‘next generation’ of websites such as social bookmarking sites (eg: del.icio.us), blogs, podcasts, social networking sites etc.. These should all be investigated and considered to make the most of free promotion strategies, however I consider that Digg can offer the most possible reward for the least effort, and so this is explained in more detail below:

Using Digg.com To Promote Your Website’s Content

Once you have written your latest article and posted it on your website, rather than sitting back and waiting days, weeks or even months for the search engines to find it and include it in their index, you can get visitors from day 1 by submitting the story to Digg for example. Digg is probably the most well known website of its type whereby users submit ‘news stories’ and Digg visitors can rate it by either giving the story a “Dig”, or they can “Bury” it. If you’ve just written a catchy and informative article that you think other users would benefit from then by all means submit it to Digg. At worst case you’ll probably get half a dozen website visitors who have clicked on your story link – and at the best case, if you’re story has hit the spot, then many people will Digg it, and visitors will increase exponentially if you’re lucky enough to be one of the popular stories featured on their homepage. It takes less than five minutes to submit your story, and is one of those strategies whereby the disadvantages are minimal, but the possible advantages are huge. Some really popular stories receive thousands of Dig’s, which means that they have probably received even many more visitors than this, as not everyone will ‘Dig’ the story after reading it.

To conclude, website promotion should be a consideration for every new website owner, and there are a variety of approaches that should be looked into. They range from content and link building to making the most of next generation Web 2.0 websites such as Digg and YouTube. With a bit of dedication and hard work, your website can become a valuable tool (if not an essential resource) in gaining extra publicity and ultimately sales.

If you need help with search engine optimisation or boosting the visitors
to your website then feel free to contact us to find out how we can help.

Tags: guide to website promotion, business owners, website promotion, increase visitors

With the start of January 2007 seeing the last PR update, it has been expected that April would result in the next update. True to form, albeit nearly into May, the update has occurred in April, and shows that Google is still operating almost quarterly updates.

What new PageRank values have your websites received?

If you’ve been building links manually or have quality content that receives inbound links then it is highly likely that your PageRank will have increased. If, on the other hand, you haven’t added links or they have even decreased in quantity, then unfortunately your PageRank may have decreased. Not that it necessarily matters unless you’re trying to sell links on your site, as PageRank doesn’t translate into high search engine rankings by itself. Your inbound links also need to have a good anchor text relevence and be from trusted and reputable sites to boost your rankings. Combine this with great content and a high PageRank value will probably mean that you will rank more highly for your ‘big money’ keywords, and you will gain significantly more visitors from the ‘long tail’ keywords.

The January 2007 PR update gave very new pages higher PageRank values than older pages on the same website, even if they didn’t have a quality inbound link structure! The April 2007 update, however, doesn’t seem to have given new pages (those created within the last month) any PR at all (well not any on our site). Perhaps if a new page has been the target of a widespread link campaign then the PR may have increased, please let us know about what effects the April 2007 Google PR update has had on your website…

Tags: April 2007 PageRank update, 30th April 2007, pagerank update, update in progress

This isn’t necessarily bad news, as it gives webmasters the time to keep on building those quality inbound links and organising website structure so it is in tip-top form for the next Google Update. As mentioned in the previous post, newer pages were awarded a higher PageRank value than older pages so that’s something to look out for.

We are monitoring the datacentres daily, looking for any inconsistencies which would give evidence of an update in progress, and will post our findings as and when they develop.

Tags: may 2007 pagerank update, google pagerank, PR, may 2007

Over the next few weeks you should look out for your PageRank improving, and your un-PageRanked pages increasing in value. The last update saw a strange feature of newer pages receiving a greater PR value than older pages, despite them not having a greater link volume.
We’ll post again when we start noticing changes in PageRank, until that time, we’ve also published an introductory what is PageRank article.

Make The Most of The PageRank Update

So what should you be doing in advance of the next Google PR Update? If you have any intentions to build your website then I’d make sure all your new pages exist and are spiderable. That way they should gain some PageRank in this update – in the January 2007 update a strange phenomenon occurred whereby newer pages were given higher PageRank than older pages. Secondly you should also ensure you internal linking structure is optimised, linking your pages together in as shallow a structure as possible. The higher a page’s position in your website hierarchy the better – for example if you can access a page by clicking on a link from the home page then this is better in Google’s eyes than having to go through three other pages.

Finally, keep building those quality inbound links to ensure your PageRank increases and doesn’t decrease!

Tags: pagerank update, april 2007 pagerank, google pagerank update, google pagerank, PR updates