The Remarkable SEO Wizzard

Spring cleaning for your web site

michael@rainbowmotion.co.uk (Administrator) — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

From a purely technical perspective (of course), is your web site a little dirty? Would it benefit from a good spring clean? Would a digital Kim and Aggie be horrified by the dust and cobwebs in your HTML?

2011 Fallout, the state of the SERPS and SEO for 2012

michael@rainbowmotion.co.uk (Administrator) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT

It is probably fair to say that 2011 was the year of the Panda. In a bid to improve the quality of the SERPS and penalise bad practice in the SEO industry, Google’s ‘Panda’ updates certainly whipped up a storm from early in the year. Well over 10% of search results and companies have been dramatically affected by their fluctuating performance.

An SEO Glossary

michael@rainbowmotion.co.uk (Administrator) — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 00:00:00 GMT

This month we are taking an opportunity to bring you a concise SEO Glossary. We hope you find it useful. Even if you think you know what some of these terms mean, you may be surprised what you learn from this article ;)

Algorithm
An algorithm is programme or rule that governs how a web page is interpreted by the search engines and how/where it is indexed.

Alt tags
Alt tags or ‘alternate text’ is the text that appears when you hover over an image. This is useful when an image file breaks, since the Alt Tag describes the image. This is also useful for the visually impaired when using voice over technologies to read the page. Whist still common practice, Alt Tags are no longer considered as valuable for SEO.

SEO for 2011

michael@rainbowmotion.co.uk (Administrator) — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Much of what we may expect for 2011 will be the natural progression and development of features introduced by search providers in 2010. Most notably, the competition and rising tensions between Google and Bing should provide for continued changes and updates this year. All ready as we have discussed in previous articles, Bing has raised the stakes on search relevancy by factoring Facebook activity into the equation. Although Google has made moves towards including social media within the SERPS, such as the recent and relevant Tweets, they continue to use Page Ranks as their core system to this end.

Social Media Insights & Planning For Business - SEO Impact

michael@rainbowmotion.co.uk (Administrator) — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 00:00:00 GMT

The Facebook juggernaut and its counterparts have been relentless in their dominance of new media and technologies throughout 2010. With nothing set to change in 2011, is it time that those of us not yet involved allow ourselves to be assimilated? In particular, for businesses large and small, taking the reigns on social media appears to be becoming a necessity. The more that social media dominates the public’s lives, the more that the major search engines have stood up and accounted for them. For business in general, social platforms represent audiences of a prolific scale.

Changes to Google Local and SERPS

michael@rainbowmotion.co.uk (Administrator) — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 00:00:00 GMT

During October and November this year Google has increased testing of new ways to present page 1 results. Amongst experts and speculators nobody is quite sure if the new layout as tested will become a global role-out/ permanent fixture for Google...

Bing to raise the bar on relevancy with Facebook

michael@rainbowmotion.co.uk (Administrator) — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 00:00:00 GMT

As many people know, relevancy rings true as a crucial factor when it comes to optimisation and the SERPS (search engine results pages) in general and with particular emphasis on Google. It seems as though we have all been banging on about making content relevant for the audience and ensuring that backlinks are done with relevant and credible sites whenever possible. Certainly it can be said that relevant backlinks need to establish the foundations of your backlinking campaigns.

SEO For Dummies & Idiots

michael@rainbowmotion.co.uk (Administrator) — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 00:00:00 GMT

In light of the title here lets firstly establish the meaning of SEO – Search Engine Optimisation. Considered, the holy grail of Internet Marketing and indeed for the general success of many modern businesses, Google is of vital importance. Both official and unofficial figures suggest that 90% plus of search traffic never navigates beyond the first results page (Listed 1-10). Even more alarming than this is that the vast majority of these people find what they are looking for within the top 3 search results.

Localised optimisation and niche SEO

michael@rainbowmotion.co.uk (Administrator) — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 14:13:31 GMT

Depending on you business product or service you may benefit from placing a local slant on your SEO efforts. For example, if you operate a car spares company in London it may be possible to rank higher for a more exact localised key term. Perhaps the autospares company in the example is specifically located in Hammersmith. Not only do the potential customers want to know where there local garages are as opposed to the city wide locations, but Google wants to know too. Using Google’s ‘Places’ feature companies are able to register their company details and become searchable live on Google maps. You may also notice when searching some key terms combined with a location parameter, that the relevant businesses in that search vacinty will feature near the top of the results page. Not a bad place to be? Depending on the level of competition in your industry it may be that many businesses within certain locations may have Google Places all to themselves.

Page Rank Misconceptions

michael@rainbowmotion.co.uk (Administrator) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Search Engine Optimisation – Page Rank Misconceptions

Page Rank is both something, which is obsessed upon, and also something which if often quite mis-understood. When we talk about Google Page Rank (PR) this is the PR value, which has been assigned to any given page of your web site. This is entirely different from the ranking of your page in the search engine results. This is usually referred to when discussing SERPS (search engine results pages).

Lets talk about the PR value for a moment. If you are using Google tool bar you will often notice a small white and green bar (like a small progress bar), which indicates the PR value of the page you are currently browsing. As we’ve said, webmasters and their clients often needlessly obsess upon this value. It is quite possible to find a web site with a PR = 6 which does not return in search results unless you look for the site by name. Conversely you may notice a lot of web sites with a PR = 4 that command a top slot on page 1 of Google for an array of key phrases.