Posts Tagged ‘Content’

Seven Simple Steps to Onsite Optimisation

Published: September 11th, 2009

These seven steps assume you’ve been given a fully finished site to optimise and you don’t have much time! Follow them and you can’t go far wrong.

1. Decide which pages will focus on which terms

This is crucial. Choose no more than a handful of terms per page. I am a believer that landing pages are for SEO as well as PPC (those who disagree can berate me in comment section below). Ensure this strategy does not become confused, with more than one page focusing on exactly the same key phrase - focusing on longer-tailed key phrases is fine though.

2. Alter page titles

Put priority terms at the front end of the title and make sure they are written with word proximity in mind. The closer together the words within the title, the better the effect on the ranking of the phrase combining those words. For example, the title ‘One two three’ is likely to have better rankings for the phrase ‘one two’ than the phrase ‘one three’. Also, phrases that are entered after the first 60-70 characters will be far less effective than those within the first 60-70 characters.

3. Write keyword rich content

Don’t over-do it on the key phrases but make sure there are a couple of each in there. At least 250-300 words on each landing page is best, though every little helps.

4. Ensure there is no duplicate content

Make sure there is only one version of each page – use .htaccess to redirect and robots.txt to exclude where necessary. Ensure identical content isn’t elsewhere on the web with use of Copyscape or simply by copying and pasting the text into Google. Make sure there is only one version of your homepage – Google views http://yoursite.com, http://www.yoursite.com, http://www.yoursite.com/index.html and http://yoursite.com/index.html as 4 different pages. Make sure it knows which one you prefer by using Google Webmaster Tools and the .htaccess file.

5. Insert relevant headings

Make sure there are headings on the page containing the key terms - but also ensure they do not exactly match the page titles.

6. Insert relevant meta tags

Write an interesting 120 character-long meta description mentioning relevant key terms. Ensure that the meta keywords tag does not mention anything that isn’t actually mentioned in the body of your content.

7. Upload sitemaps

Xml sitemap is vital to inform Google about your site structure and URLs. Html sitemap is useful.

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How to come up with a landing page strategy

Published: August 14th, 2009

The most difficult thing at the start of an SEO project can be to come up with a landing page strategy.

The difficulty is to try and avoid an overlap in strategy – the terms you’ve been asked to optimise may be associated with more than one page, and it can be very difficult to completely restructure the site once it’s been built, especially if you’ve been given a long list of keywords.

The effect of this can be confusion with search engines as to which page is the main focus for which term. However, a strategy I believe in is to focus the homepage upon the general, most searched for term and focus the deeper page on slightly different or longer tailed terms associated with the general term. The simple reason is: the homepage is more likely to get natural links.

This should be reflected in the page titles, which are the most important onsite optimisation factor – they are not only highly considered by the search engines but they also provide a clear insight into your strategy. Remember the 65 character restriction and your strategy should fall into place.

So for example, a marketing agency may focus the homepage on general terms such as ‘marketing’ ‘marketing company’, ‘design company’, ‘brand design company’, ‘brand design’. Then you can focus the pages that outline these services on longer tailed/less popular terms such as ‘internet marketing services leeds’, ‘logo design leeds’ etc. This would give you the following page titles, with most popular term at the front and word proximity also determined by popularity of term:

Homepage: Marketing Company & Brand Design Company

Marketing service page: Print, Online & Internet Marketing Services Leeds & Yorkshire

Brand design service page: Brand Logo Design Services & Branding Services Leeds & Yorkshire

The content on each page should then reflect these titles. For example homepage content should focus on what a great marketing and brand design company you are. The content on the marketing services pages will expand on the marketing service you provide with headings for online & internet marketing and print marketing, and how you provide these services throughout Leeds and Yorkshire. The brand design service page would follow suit.

Links gained to each page should use the appropriate anchor text.

Ok the example isn’t perfect but hopefully you’ve got the gist of what I mean!

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The Conflict Between Brand and SEO

Published: August 6th, 2009

Coming to SEO from a marketing background, I immediately noticed conflict between SEO and branding.

When building a brand, a positioning statement is usually drawn up outlining its values and core message. Words are used very carefully in order to portray what exactly it is that the brand stands for. This message is then spread to the world using different marketing channels, such as the internet.

However, if SEO is important to your brand, then good marketing does not appear to equal success on the internet channel in terms of SEO. There are barriers prevent your precisely chosen message being spread across your site and throughout the internet. According to the principles of SEO this will mean there will be a plethora of duplicate content out there to negatively affect your rankings.

I believe there is a way around this though. Google thinks about these things and, using common sense, usually introduces answers to support its overall goal – to return the expected result (most relevant and highest quality). A high quality, popular site cannot help if identical content is spattered across the web. Therefore, Google determines which content is the original by comparing the amount of one way links.

My conclusion then is this: if you go out into the web and spread your message by only using reciprocal links to increase your rankings, then you’d better consider diluting/altering your carefully chosen words in order to avoid duplicate content penalties. If you really believe in the value of your brand message then have the confidence to resist simply relying on a link swapping strategy to get you up the rankings.

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Your site needs content!

Published: July 31st, 2009

Content is king – that’s what they always say. But not many people offer a good explanation as to why - other than the flakey ‘because search engines like it’.

The explanation is simple really. Links determine the quality of your website. If you have lots of (one-way) links then a search engine will determine that you must have a high quality site. In Google, this will give you a high page rank. But content determines the relevancy. If you have loads of links but no content (copy) on your site then the search engine is unable to determine what your site is relevant to. So you will have a high page rank score with Google but you will be unlikely not appear high in the rankings for any of terms that you want.

So – your site needs content!

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How to get into Google’s ‘Inner Ring of Trust’

Published: July 13th, 2009

On Friday I wrote a post about how on-site changes can have larger effects on rankings for some sites than others. I outlined why I believe this is the case – one way links from quality sites lead Google to trust the content on your site.

Therefore there seems to be a form of ‘ring of trust’ in Google’s eyes. Once you get into that ring of trust then you can rely less on outside sources.

So how do you become a member of the ‘ring of trust’?

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