Search engines have opened a new marketing channel, that can benefit small and medium-scale businesses
Now that so much of day to day life involves technology and interaction with the web through searching – the process of improving your website’s performance in the ‘organic’ (natural) search results can deliver some of the highest returns of all available marketing mediums.
In the past, search optimisation involved complex coding and trickery to fool the search engines to the top of the results. Some companies still implement these techniques but are being punished as Google cracks down on spam and develops advanced semantics algorithms to reward unique, useful and informative content. Find out of your website is at risk of penalties from Google with a search engine optimisation audit.
The Official Word from Google themselves
Google’s spokesman for the quality of Google search results: Matt Cutts explains how Google finds webiste pages through links, “indexes” them (for storage) and then ranks the pages to appear in search results for particular search keywords entered by the user:
So – How do you appear in the search results?
Search engine optimisation is the process of improving a website and the “presence” of a brand on the internet, in order to increase visibility in the organic search engine results. Because search engines do not accept payment for listing in the (organic) search results – this involves optimising a website for hundreds of factors (as Matt Cutts mentions in the video) to improve the website compatibility, whilst creating a quality website that others will want to link-to.
What can you do yourself? There are aspects of SEO that you the business owner can do yourself, to improve progress of your webpages up the rankings.
- But at some point before you reach the top of page 1, you are likely to be held back by competitors who have got the edge over your website, in Google’s opinion at least.
- To get above these competitors in the rankings, you need to invest in Search Optimisation from a reputable provider, who will assure you of proper representation of your business online.
SEO in 2011
Search engine optimisation in 2011, still involves the technical aspects of writing clean & compliant website code and enabling search engine spiders to read and access all the content. But the more important considerations are creating and producing unique and useful content and then creating interest elsewhere on the web in the form of brand name mentions or even better – links back to your website.
As seen in the diagram to the right, optimisation has many influencing factors, that could be simplified into 2 halves – On-page and Off-page SEO. These 2 aspects work more effectively when used together in a properly planned strategy.
On-page SEO
On page SEO involves optimising hundreds of factors on your website to satisfy the Google ranking algorithm. Factors include coding, the link/ menu architecture and the content of the pages – both text and images. On-page SEO is often the first recommendation as internal improvements to your website are often the easiest and cheapest to correct and improve.
Once a website’s coding, structure and content is optimised, the next step is to produce more content as regularly as possible. Google’s recommendation to website owners, for high search results has always been – “Content is King”.
Creating great, unique content, whether text or media has benefits on many levels:
- Information and resources about your business can persuade uncertain customers to buy
- News and messages can encourage a dialogue with potential customers
- Every new page acts as a potential ‘net’ to catch particular key-phrase searches from the search engines
- Search engines reward new content, on topical subjects with high positions in the results
- If there’s no news about your business, publish your own version of news related to your industry and relevant to your potential customers
- Useful content will also encourage users elsewhere on the web to link back to you – a critical factor of Off-Page SEO
On-page SEO Prices
On-page technical SEO – See Prices
Following an analysis of your website, all coding and compatibility errors are corrected
New pages created - From £49 per page
New static pages created on your website to help convert customers and improve SEO
Blog platform setup – From £150
Wordpress publishing platform setup, styling and configured to publish content with ease
Content creation service - £30 per 300 word article
Articles written on any subject, optimised for search engines and published either on your website or strategically across the web
Off-page SEO
Off page SEO has many similarities with general internet marketing, in that you are trying to build interest and awareness of your website across the internet. Though rather than trying to attract visitors directly from other websites, we aim to improve the authority of your site in the eyes of Google, by acquiring mentions and more importantly links from trusted, established and authority websites elsewhere on the net.
These mentions and links across various websites are picked up by search engines, adding to your authority score and boosting the performance of your website’s pages on the search results. Before pursuing every last link from anywhere on the web, it’s important to remember a few critical factors.
- A mention or link from a website that has no relation to your business, eg: a plumber linking to a counselling website would have very little chance of delivering human visitors and would very likely be ignored due to irrelevance by the search engines
- A link from a website that has been flagged by Google as a link manipulator, may provide human visitors but will have no value to SEO
- Some websites (especially on website comments sections) put a limiter on your link known as “nofollow” that allows humans to use the link, but prevents any influence being passed on to your site for SEO benefits
- The best and highest value links come as rewards for great content, and when you can insert them in articles you publish on external websites
- There are less than 10 websites/directories you should consider paying to become a member of, due to the value of the link you acquire
- In general though Google discourages buying links for SEO and you should seek professional advice before paying any money for a link or membership
Improve your off-page SEO performance
Various ways to contribute towards SEO and generate links to your website include the following with ‘easiest’ and least influential first.
- Getting Twitter tweets about your business and even better – tweeted links to your website home page and subpages
- Links to your website from social media profile pages – often a link on your “info” page of each network
- Leaving links whilst commenting on blogs and article websites
- Links from business directory websites – there are thousands of these and 99% of the links have no real value either for traffic or SEO
- Links from within articles of blogs and article publishing networks
- Links from review websites – especially important for local businesses
- Links from within the content of any ‘authority’ website
- Links from within the content of .edu (education) .gov (government) websites
Be cautious of link-sellers
For several years and up until quite recently, links were a disproportionately effective and relatively easy to acquire by the thousands. Many businesses, in the US, Europe and especially India were in fact created just to sell links in order to push their client’s websites higher in the results.
Over the last few years Google has been cracking down on spam and cancelling out the value of many of these links, and highly recommends against companies who try to sell these “link building packages” as 99% of the links will be from far-eastern spam sites and have no value to SEO or traffic. Following the Google algorithm changes, these companies are resorting to desperate measures to cash in before the word gets out that their service is worthless.
Some links that are bought can even incur a Google penalty which would blacklist a website from the search results. If you would like advice and guidance on ‘white hat’ link building strategies please contact us today.
Link building strategies
Alloy SEO and link building packages revolve around extensive experience identifying valuable authority websites, then either contacting the owner/webmaster directly for a link, publishing an article or leaving a comment that adds value to the discussion and encourages recognition of your brand.
With all link building packages you will receive advice and guidance on the best premium business directories to join as a member. With thousands of different directories, suited to particular business types and market sectors and with membership prices from £5 – £1000 per month; recommendations on the best sources to deliver targeted traffic and boost SEO performance can be a huge advantage.
Higher priced packages involve viral marketing techniques, and also ‘link-baiting’ whereby highly topical, interesting or controversial content is created with the aim of generating interest, links and visitors.
Off-page SEO Prices
N.B. No contracts & no cancellation charges.
SEO Package 1 – See Prices
Setup of brand monitoring tools, ongoing analysis / reporting of perfomance, link building.
SEO Package 2 – See Prices
Setup of brand monitoring tools, ongoing analysis / reporting of perfomance, link building, content creation and strategic publishing.
SEO Package 3 – See Prices
Setup of brand monitoring tools, ongoing analysis / reporting of perfomance, link building content creation and strategic publishing, viral marketing.
Client advice section: marketing your website
- Word of mouth / networking
Tell friends, family, colleagues past customers and more about your website - Search engine optimisation
Climb higher in the search results to increase visitors - Social Media Marketing
Interact with customers to increase awareness and interest - Pay per click advertising
Display ads across the web & only pay for clicks to your site - Email marketing
Collect email addresses from customers and website subscriptions then send them targeted messages
