Lion SEO

Cheap SEO – The Potential Damage Explained

KJ Sudbury — Sat, 29 Dec 2012 22:09:04 +0000

I created this article to help non technical people understand why they should avoid cheap SEO that could negatively affect their websites online visibility.

Why Cheap SEO Used To Work

In the past some SEO's (not us!) built links in ways that violated Google's guidelines, using automated tools or scripts to create garbage posts on other interlinked blogs filled with junk posts that made little or no sense as the words were all generated by a robot (this is called article spinning). Another popular method was buying links from large networks of sites that all linked to each other (link networks) this worked until Google banned several larger link networks and focused on low quality anchor text heavy links with the Penguin update in 2012.

Why Cheap SEO is Bad

Google are constantly fighting against scummy link building methods outlined above and have released a number of updates over the years to try and prevent non-ethical methods from working. Unfortunately people still try to sell cheap SEO services that will get you penalized, if you are unsure of how your SEO consultant is building links to your site you should ask them. If they are reluctant to tell you or charging a very cheap amount I would advise you investigate further.

Why Good SEO is More Expensive

Good SEO's will make sure there are no existing issues on your website, optimize your whole site using legitimate on page techniques and ensure your partners & peers are linking to you correctly. Additionally they will advise or conduct legitimate methods of building links that are not in violation of Googles guidelines. As you can imagine this will take time, research and hard work, far more work than the automated (scummy) methods outlined above.

Benefits of good quality SEO

We are not trying to game Google using tricks or techniques they do not approve of our rankings are likely to increase throughout the Google updates (all of Lion's monthly clients have seen an increase throughout 2012). Brand Awareness - Writing quality content on respected authoritative sites will often bring business & traffic directly Quality Links Are Worth More - Your inbound link will be from a quality site related to your industry, worth far more than many bought / automated links Social Awareness - Writing for quality sites has the additional benefit that you already have an audience to share your content socially via Twitter, Facebook, Google+ etc Lasting Links - As your links are from quality sites Good Articles Will Increase in Value - Over time more people will link to your articles passing on link juice to your site Organic Links - As your brand visibility increases through blogs, social networks and search engine rankings you will naturally acquire more links to your site

You Get What You Pay For

Unfortunately most small businesses are not aware of how much damage cheap SEO can cause and shop around for prices based on "How many links a month?", "How Many Keywords can you Rank for Me" or "How much will it cost to get to page 1 of Google?". When they should be asking what each SEO company can provide for their monthly budget and reviewing the responses accordingly... I hope this has educated you about the dangers of cheap SEO and even helped some people make the right decision, please feel free to contact us or drop us a comment below if you have any questions.

Build Links from Internet Thieves

KJ Sudbury — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 09:29:22 +0000

Unless you have taken steps to prevent hot linking people are probably directly linking to images on your site, this is a bit cheeky as you are technically hosting content for them... But instead of blocking their access why not contact them and request a credit link? Most of you will be running Linux servers, so here is a quick one liner that will parse the Apache access log and give you a list of hot linking domains. You will need root level shell access... Or you could ask your admin to run the command and mail you the list.

[root@thor ~]# awk -F\" '($2 ~ /\.(jpg|gif|png)/ && $4 !~ /^http:\/\/www.\lionseo\.com/){print $4}' /var/log/httpd/access_log | sort | awk '{ if (a[$1]++ == 0) print $0; }' "$@" | sort

The location of the Apache access log may vary depending on the Linux distribution or hosting environment you are using (the above is for a standard RHEL system). To email yourself a list that you can copy and paste into Excel enter the following:

[root@thor ~]# awk -F\" '($2 ~ /\.(jpg|gif|png)/ && $4 !~ /^http:\/\/www.\lionseo\.com/){print $4}' /var/log/httpd/access_log | sort | awk '{ if (a[$1]++ == 0) print $0; }' "$@" | sort | mail you@yourdomain.com

The above command assumes you have mail correctly configured on your Linux server. Now go ask for credit links to your images, something like this works quite well... To save time I would use Canned Response for the credit link request template and Boomerang (which is awesome) to remind me if they have not responded to my request. If you are evil and they don't respond after a couple of emails you could block their domain from hot linking in my .htaccess with:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(.+\.)?domain1\.com/ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(.+\.)?domain2\.com/ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(.+\.)?domain3\.com/ [NC]
RewriteRule .*\.(jpe?g|gif|bmp|png)$ - [F]

Htaccess Redirect 301 Guide for SEO’s

KJ Sudbury — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 21:06:56 +0000

SEO's are often tasked with redirecting pages, directories or entire websites, normally with a htaccess file located in the root directory of your website. A htaccess file is a hidden configuration file that Apache reads, the purpose of this file is to allow site configuration at a user level. If you have access to your httpd.conf (Apache configuration file) then you should configure your redirects directly and not use a .htaccess file as they negatively affect website performance. The following article is designed as a reference for htaccess redirects, in most cases you can copy and paste the code snippet and replace the example domain with your own.

Htaccess Redirect 301

See the example below to redirect a single page (old to new), this is performed with a basic pattern match redirect so the same syntax applies for files or directories. Redirect 301 Examples How to redirect a page or directory:

Redirect 301 /old-page-name http://www.your-domain.com/new-page-name

To redirect an entire site to a new domain:

Redirect 301 / http://www.new-domain.com

Note: The URL structure on the new site would have to be the same as on the old or you will encounter 404 errors.

Redirect Any URL's Matching a Phrase Using RedirectMatch

The only time you should use a ReWrite rule for redirection are in these circumstances:

If you are redirecting based on the query string
If you are redirecting based on non URL specific data such as the user agent or IP address

If you need to redirect any URL’s matching a phrase you can use RedirectMatch to perform a regular expression redirect. RedirectMatch Examples Redirect an entire directory, any files in /old-dir/ will be redirected to /blog/old-dir/:

RedirectMatch 301 /old-dir/(.*) http://www.yourdomain.com/blog/old-dir/$1

Redirect all .gif files to .jpg files on your server.

RedirectMatch (.*)\.gif$ http://www.yourdomain.com$1.jpg

301 Redirect Using ReWrite Rules

Here are some ReWrite rule examples for circumstances when other solutions won’t work, but bare in mind the more complex your rules get the more of a performance hog they will become. Enable Mod_Rewrite Make sure you have Mod_Write enabled by adding the following line to the top of your .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine on

To redirect example.com to the www.example.com

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]

ReWrite Rule Redirect Based on UserAgent

RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} UserAgent
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]

301 Redirect Based on IP Address: The following performs a 301 redirect based on the clients IP address, this could be used for banning IP addresses. Banning an IP Address using ReWrite:

RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} ^(A\.B\.C\.D)$
RewriteRule ^/* http://www.yourdomain.com/access-denied.html [L]

A better option might be to ban the IP address using iptables or use the Auth “Require not ip xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx” directive, use the above only if you wish to redirect the user to a specific page based on their IP address.

How To find Long Tail Keywords using UberSuggest

KJ Sudbury — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 21:23:41 +0000

With any SEO campaign it's important to spend time on quick wins, finding longer more targeted key phrases that are easier to rank for and are far more likely to convert than broader high search volume keywords. This guide explains how to find long tail keywords that still return decent monthly traffic using free online tools.

Ask Google for Long Tail Keywords

In this example I am going to show you how to find long tail keywords for a website selling Dell laptop batteries.

As a starting point to generate ideas we are going to use Google Suggest, open your browser and start to type a search phrase.

As you can see above Google has started auto completing long tail searches for us, these phrases are searched by large numbers of people and make a great starting point. I am going to run with “dell laptop battery inspiron” and see what Google suggests for this keyword.

The model number searches above should give us some healthy highly targeted targeted traffic, we will confirm this later on in the article. Another way of finding some great long tail search phrases is to simply do a search and scroll down to the bottom of the page for the "Searches related to" section for some more Google long tail suggestions:

How To find Long Tail Keywords with UberSuggest

The above method works well for keyword searching but it’s a very manual and time-consuming process; the good news is there is a free online Google Suggest scrapper called UberSuggest that will extract key phrases and provide suggestions for related keywords and present them in a list that we can easily copy and paste.

Point your web browser at http://ubersuggest.org and enter some of the ideas we came up with at the start of the article.

You also have the option of changing the location and the type of the search, for the purpose of this example I have left it on the default setting (English/USA).

After hitting “Suggest” you should see results similar to:

I recommend browsing through the list of ideas, if you see any relevant key phrases click the keyword to expand the suggestion length (make the long tail longer), here is an example for “dell laptop battery replacement”:

To select the keywords you wish to use simply click the green plus icon to the left of the keyword.

I have selected some likely keywords that I think will return decent monthly traffic for my laptop battery site. I'v also gone through the rest of the suggestions and selected some other likely keywords.

Once you have finished selecting, scroll up to the top of the page on the right and click “Get”.

After clicking the Get button the box below should appear, select all and click copy so we can export UberSuggest directly into the Google Keyword tool (or Excel).

After copying all the key phrases head over to the Google Keyword tool and copy and paste the contents into the “Find keywords” section at the top, before hitting search make sure you have the “Match Types” set to “[Exact]” over on the left hand side (I find Exact data the most accurate):

I also recommend changing your Location and Device options; here is what I use for the USA:

Finally hit search!

You can hit the “Save All” button and then select “Download” and “My keyword ideas” this will then pop up the following box, select “CSV for Excel” and click “Download” you can then open this data in Excel.

Repeat the process over and over for your keywords and then remove duplicates in Excel.

I hope you found this guide on finding long tail keywords useful :) - have fun creating content for your chosen keywords, let me know your thoughts on Twitter @kjsudbury

SEO Image Optimisation Advice

KJ Sudbury — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 21:26:53 +0000

Having optimised several large photography sites I have compiled a check list for SEO Image optimisation, following the advice outlined below has positively increased rankings on a number of image rich sites I have optimised this year.

#1 Use Descriptive Image Names

I always use the primary target keyword for the page for example if I was targeting SEO UK as my keyword I would use the image name "seo-uk.png" or "seo-uk.jpg" as this identifies the image a lot better than a generic name such as "image-03.jpg".

#2 Use a Descriptive ALT

Traditionally ALT text is displayed in text based internet browsers when images cannot be displayed however, Google use the ALT tribute when crawling your website to help identify what the images represent. I highly recommend setting ALT text for all images on your website, if you take nothing else from this guide hooking your images up with ALT text and descriptive file names will improve your sites image SEO considerably.

#3 Use Keyword Text near the Image

Use keyword text near the image or even use CSS to overlay the text over the image(s).

#4 Enable Image Search

Log into Google Webmaster Tools and enable Google Image Search this will allow your website images to appear in Google Image Search. Being listed in Google Image Search should increase traffic and will also target users looking for images, so they could check out other images on your website.

#5 Smaller Image Size

Keep your image sizes down as low as possible, both people and Google hate slow loading times! Your images should be compressed as much as possible without affecting user experience.

#6 Give people Embed Code

Provide a nice easy way for readers to embed your images on their site with copy'n'paste embed code modify the embed code to use your keywords in the ALT text and to link back to your page. Feel free to leave a comment below if you found this guide useful or if you have any further questions.

Top Free UK Business Directory List

KJ Sudbury — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 11:40:38 +0000

Below is the Top Free UK Business Directory List, a great starting point before searching out more Google Places citations. Google often scrape reviews from the directories listed below and I have seen a positive increase in Local Places rankings on google.co.uk after submitting or completing the following directory listings. Please see my article on Google Places Optimisation if you are looking for a guide to Local Places optimisation. These directories are free, however they do offer paid options so expect a full scale marketing assault on your phone after submitting. Be nice and say you don't have the marketing budget at the moment but you would like to keep the free listing.

UK Business Directories for Google Places Citations

www.yell.com
www.qype.co.uk
www.freeindex.co.uk
www.thomsonlocal.com
www.localdatacompany.com
www.touchlocal.com
www.ratemyarea.com
www.upmystreet.com
www.bizwiki.co.uk
www.scoot.co.uk
www.hotfrog.co.uk
www.192.com
www.118.com
www.linkedin.com
www.yelp.co.uk

If you know of any other quality UK Business directories shout us on Twitter @lion_seo

Google Places Optimisation

KJ Sudbury — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 21:54:59 +0000

As you are probably aware Google Places listings appear when a person searches for a product or service with a geographical location in the search key-phrase for example “SEO Company London” or "Shoe Shop Bristol". Check out the video above to see what Google have to say about Places before we get stuck into some Google Places Optimisation. Places sounds great for local businesses doesn't it? But the reality is these days Google Places is so competitive that the chance of anywhere near the front page from just signing up is pretty much zero.Depending on how popular your niche is will depend on how much Google Places Optimisation you will have to perform.Below are the steps I have taken for other companies (and some of my own) when optimising their Google Places ranking position.

Step 1 - Claim your Google Places Page

Claim your Google Places page fill in your info and Google will send you a post card with a activation PIN to the business address in your listing. This can take up to a couple of weeks, when it arrives login to your Google account and enter the PIN to confirm your Confirm your Google Places Page.

Step 2 - Optimize the Google Places Page

When you login you will have to enter all your business information into your Google Places listing, I have broken down each section below. In this example I am optimising local places for a flower shop in Bristol called “Super Awesome Flowers” Basic Information Fill everything in the “Basic Information” section, all of it! The more complete your Google Places page the better, fill in your country and all the obvious information for your business anything that needs extra attention I have outlined below.

Company / Organisation

Fill in your company name, do not spam this field with location based keywords for example “Flower Shop Bristol” - Google will get you ;) or your competition will report you.

Category's

This section is very important you should enter in phrases that people are going to search for your product, for a flower shop I would enter the following category’s. “Flower Shop” “Florist” And then perhaps some more niche terms that will get searched less but should earn the business more money for example: “Wedding Flowers” “Funeral Flowers” Do not add location names in the category fields for Google Places, I know some of your competitors will be doing this but it’s against Google’s Quality guidelines for Places.

Phone Number

If you have a local number use it, some people have said that using a local based number will affect the ranking position. Personally I have seen no difference between local numbers and national numbers such as 800 0800 / 0845’s etc, make sure you list the phone number you have listed on other directories for the address used in your Google Places listing.

Web Address

If you only have one Google Places listing then enter your home page if you have multiple then create a localised landing page for each, for example www.yourdomain.com/places/flower-shop-bristol on the page target the keywords you mentioned in the category’s section above.

Service areas and Location Settings

Google give you two options here:

I would recommend selecting "No, all customers come to the business location" whenever I have set the area using either the map marker or typing in locations of towns /cities served my places listings never seem to rank as well.

Hours of Operations

Fill in your opening hours, make sure you do this so that your listing is as complete as possible.

Payment Options

Fill in your payment options, make sure you do this so that your listing is as complete as possible.

Photos

Add your company logo and few other images of work you have done or some photos of your office, I would recommend naming a few of the images the same as the keywords you are targeting such as "flower-shop-bristol.jpg".

Videos

If possible add a YouTube video for your business, most businesses leave this out as they do not have a video. Often in competitive niche's page 1 Google places listings are those businesses that have added a video.

Additional Details

Fill this section in, for a flower shop I would enter the following: "Flowers available" "Wedding, Funeral, Special Occasions" "Special Services" "Flower Delivery, Custom Flower Selection & Arrangement" Click Submit we are done with the Google Places page optimisation.

Step 3 - List your address on your website!

Sounds kind of obvious but many businesses don't! I would recommend listing your company address in the footer of every page on your website, use the exact same address format as in your Google Places advert.

Step 5 - List your address on other websites

Sign up to some well respected online directory website and fill the profiles in using as much detail as possible, again make sure you keep the address format and phone number the same. There have been suggestions made that the more higher ranking well respected pages your address appears on the higher your places page will rank on Google. Here are a list of UK online directory sites I would recommend for Google Places:

www.yell.com
www.qype.co.uk
www.freeindex.co.uk
www.thomsonlocal.com
www.localdatacompany.com
www.touchlocal.com
www.ratemyarea.com
www.upmystreet.com
www.bizwiki.co.uk
www.scoot.co.uk
www.hotfrog.co.uk

If you are in the US check out the Local directory list provided by SEO Moz or our UK free business directory list.

Step 6 - Get more Google Places Reviews

Here are my top tips for getting more Google Places reviews:

Ask your clients to review your business, this is best done after you have just completed some excellent work for them or sold them a product they love
Email clients you know well asking for reviews
Include a link in your email signature to your Google Places page using the anchor text "Write us a Google review" or similar
Include a link on your invoices, especially if you send them out digitally

Get reviews on other websites not just on your Google Places page, Google will then scrape / harvest reviews. If you have any more suggestions on how to rank higher for Google Places please drop us a comment on Twitter @Lion_SEO