Many companies sell online these days. Some are very successful at what they do, and can make a large profits based on their web sales alone; others fail at this. There are few things to avoid in particular if you are considering setting up your own online business:

Poor Navigations…

You want your customers to be able to find exactly what they need and fast. The more confused they become on your site trying to find a certain product, the more likely it is they will go to another website who can provide the same or a similar service.

Keep your website clear, and easy to follow. Make sure you categorize your products so they can be easily found. Ask friends and family to try your website, maybe test them to find certain products, and see how easy or hard it is for them to locate them on your site. Listen to your feedback, while some is opinion and might not be something you agree, there could be some good ideas that apply to your site.

Cluttered Website…

Some websites can become cluttered with too many images of products, links to here, there and everywhere, advertising banners splashed all over the home page, several different coloured fonts, and font styles.

Whatever you site is, make sure it is clear straight away for visitors. If you are selling goods, show what you do and tell them about your business. Make it clear where the online shop is, if you have one.

People will judge a lot by your homepage. Make sure you keep your website visitors attention; it is easy for them to navigate to another website with a click of the mouse. Get across your message in a clear concise way so you don’t leave them confused, wondering what it is you actually sell, or what service you provide.

Keep your colours and fonts simple and planned, by this you will be finding a sense of a brand. Make this brand and these colours and fonts suit your product.

Poor photography…

If your website has poor sloppy photography you will not convince your customers to buy from you. How can your products be judged fairly if all you provide is a small grainy image which isn’t really clear?

Make sure your photographs are big enough to be seen, a zoom button feature can help here. They need to be of good quality, and the angles must show in detail what you are providing. Wording and photography is all have to achieve sales. Make sure they are correct and will serve their purpose. A professional photographer is expensive, but if you want to sell online successfully, then you need to invest and look professional. You might have a fantastic product, but if it can’t be seen in a way that gives it justice, then it won’t come across in the way it deserves.

Poor content, or no content…

Your content is what is written on your website. This could be ‘about you’ sections or product descriptions. Google will list your page in a search if it finds it to be relevant to a particular search entered. It does this by reading your site and picking out these keywords that the searcher is looking for. It is therefore important you really describe your products well. Write down the details, what is it? What it’s made from? Provide dimensions etc. The more information you provide, the better, but remain clear and clutter free.

Some websites are built using templates where you upload your images. If you don’t have actual text on your website, and your text is in the form of an image, Google will never rank you for anything, it won’t be able to read your website. Make sure your content is actual text which can be found in searches so you can attract new customers.

Poor graphics…

Your graphics can let you down. This relates back to colours, fonts and brand. Your graphics need to be professional. Not all of us are professional Photoshop users. If you aren’t then seek help from somebody who can help you make your artwork look good. People won’t trust your company if your artwork looks old fashioned or unprofessional. Really think how you are presenting yourself to the public. Would you purchase goods from your website?

About the author: Kirsten works for whoishostingthis  a company who lists reviews and ratings of hosting companies such as hostpapa.co.uk, Yahoo and One.com.

This might sound cynical, and it might in fact even be cynical, but the fact is that a lot of business is simply based around companies using a series of strategies in order to manipulate people emotionally into spending money or using their product.

This sounds harsh yes, but the reality is that most of our decisions as consumers do come down to emotion, and that leaves businesses with no real option other than to focus on this (because a business does need to make money).

This is highly true when it comes to getting people to make purchases of various commercial goods – many of which we buy on impulse, or even to make ourselves feel better. It’s also very true of course of something like Facebook which we use almost compulsively because basically we hope it will lead to our developing new friendships or romantic relationships.

How This Applies to Your Website

But what you might not have realized is that this also very much applies to your own websites – and if you want to make your site into something that people visit compulsively, or that they spend a lot of time on, then it’s highly important to start thinking of your website in terms of the emotional impact it has on visitors.

But how can a simple website have an emotional punch? Here are just a few ways you can tap into the emotional aspect of your visitors to encourage more visits, more clicks and more purchases.

Choose the Right Niche: Of course you can get people to develop an emotional response to your website by simply writing about the right thing. If your site is about dating, or self improvement, then people will be more emotionally attached to your site because they will think it can help them find a romantic partner or to make more friends/do better in work. All of which are very good things.

Find an Emotional Hook: But if you don’t have a niche that is inherently emotional in nature or likely to benefit the reader then think of a way to make it more enticing – by using anticipation or curiosity. When you see a magazine telling you about what Jennifer Aniston really thinks about Brad and Jolie you read it out of a sense of curiosity. And yes, that counts as an emotion you can manipulate.

Create a Sense of Community: You can also benefit from creating a sense of community on your site so that they seem to make friends on your website. You can accomplish this by giving your site a forum or a comments section and encouraging your visitors to talk among themselves.

Let Them Know You: Meanwhile you should try to make your visitors feel as though they know you. That means writing in a chatty style that puts across some of your personality, it means writing about yourself and generally it means making it more like something you would write as advice in an e-mail to a friend rather than to a client in an office.

Make the Site Stimulating: You should also try to ensure that the site is stimulating in the right ways so that it encourages some kind of emotional response to look at. This means using the right colors and using the right imagery. Try to make your site calming and relaxing and attractive, and generally ensure that people want to spend time here rather than wanting to leave quickly because it’s stressing them out.

Cyril runs a SEO comapny in Toronto and offers real world web marketing advice to his customers. At BigAnthem, he believes he has created a right mix of services so that his clients can promote their websites via various methods like social media, SEO and videos.

The amount of money spent on internet advertising is forecasted to reach over £100 per user this year in the UK. Five years ago the figure was around £70 and it has been steadily rising year on year. The internet advertising industry is huge across the world, and the UK is currently coming in at fourth after Norway, Australia and the US. While SEO and organic search results remain a priority for many businesses, PPC seems to be a strong and continually growing feature of most marketing strategies. Whatever the size of your SEO and PPC budget, it needs to be one part of a much bigger strategy if your share of the estimated £4.85 billion spent on internet advertising isn’t wasted.

Get into Reverse

While it’s tempting to see internet advertising as a quick way to avoid the quagmire of SEO – an ever shifting set of sands if ever there was one – the merry sound of clicking customers is only the start of it. Getting your ads right in the first place requires some thought. If, for example you search the phrase “copywriting” you’ll get a whole range of organic and not-so organic results. They’ll all look and sound very much the same. If just over to the right of your screen, hovering in the peripheral PPC margins of your vision, you spy the phrase “Really Bad Copywriting” the chances are you’ll click on that. OK, so it’s good old fashioned reverse pshyco stuff, but it works. Whatever your competitors are saying in their ads, try to say the opposite.

What Happens Next?

Well, your potential customers will land gently, we hope, on your page. Make it a soft landing if you can, a gentle pleasant experience that is not, repeat not, full of sales hype. It only takes a nano-second to click back and that’s normally the effect that hard sell will have. If you’ve got them this far you haven’t yet won the war on engagement, but you’ve certainly one battle under your belt. At this point you need to engage them further, I could say reel them in but that would be harsh, unfair and disrespectful, if a little true. This is the point that your content, graphics, imagery and copy will matter.

What and Where?

If your internet advertising channel of choice is getting attention, that attention needs to be maintained. If your copywriting skills aren’t up to it you may get attention of the pointing and laughing kind – but that isn’t really the desired effect. Having landed gently on your page, they’ll be looking for stuff to entertain, inform or provide some use to them. Your “About Us” section, or your blog, will be the next place that they are most likely to click – according to statistics, if you believe that sort of thing.

Content Pages

Fresh, well written content here is essential. It needs to be relevant to the sort of customers you are expecting to visit. It doesn’t need to be – probably shouldn’t be – product focused. Informative, articles and blog posts relating to the general subject you’re working with, will be more useful. The more creative the better, the funnier the better and in many cases as controversial as you can get away with while avoiding libel, slander and other types of prosecution. If you’re not a pro-writer or haven’t the time to constantly update your blog, hire one. It’s not money you’ll regret.

While paid internet advertising can fast track you to a high rank – the content of both your advertising and site is equally important. Copywriting services can help you to ensure that customers don’t just click and then click ‘back’, but keep coming back.

Whether you have a productive day or not is reliant on multiple different factors, but of course the main thing responsible is simply how you’re feeling. In short then it comes down to your psychology and if you could control this then you would find you were able to control your productivity much more closely. Here we will look at how to make yourself more productive in a number of ways by understanding how your own mind works.

The Mozart Effect

Most people have heard of the ‘Mozart effect’ which is a theory that you can work better and faster when listening to Mozart music. So is there any truth to this? Well the answer is yes and no. Yes for some people, listening to Mozart can help them to work, but at the same time so can a lot of music and other things. The reason this works so well is that it helps us to manage your boredom levels and keep up a high level of productivity.

If you read around then you will have heard some nonsense about ‘left brain right brain’. This is just pop psychology unfortunately and you shouldn’t take it too seriously.

However while there’s little evidence for some of the left brain and right brain theories, it is certainly true that there are parts of our brain which thrive more on creative endeavours rather than dry facts. Most work is by definition boring – otherwise it wouldn’t be work, it would be play… And this then can make it somewhat hard for us to focus on what we’re doing and to work without that part of our brain kicking up a fuss. That’s why you can’t simply work for hours straight, because pretty soon you’re going to crave something a little bit stimulating.

This gives you a few options to get around this problem. One of these is to try and give your creative part some entertainment to make the situation you’re working in less dry. This is why the Mozart effect works, because it allows you to focus on something other than just numbers or text, and to instead enjoy some music that won’t distract you from what you’re doing.

I personally don’t find this to be quite enough, and when I’m working I start hankering after some action – which inevitably leads to me loading up a computer game or something. A great way to get around this I find is to watch something non-distracting in YouTube while I work which allows me to look at that while I type. I often choose to watch computer games that other people are playing through for instance, or YouTube playlists of action scenes. I imagine you could watch Tom and Jerry too as the absence of talking would make it suitable.

Let’s Talk About Alternatives

The other option is to take a break from your wok and to do something more creative and entertaining for a bit so that you can focus more when you come back to working. If you’ve been working solidly for a while or if you find yourself starting to procrastinating, then instead of half working for ages and not really getting anything done or enjoying yourself; take a bit of time off and separate your work from your play so you can come back refreshed.

And finally you can simply make your work more interesting. You can do this by making it into a game or a challenge, or if your work has a creative element (such as writing) aim to make something more interesting out of it and to apply some more inventiveness. You’ll end up with a better end product too.

Brad Campbell is a very successful entrepreneur coach and has mentored many super affiliates and top internet marketers.

It’s 2012 and the way we interact in today’s world is, without a doubt, rapidly changing. One of the driving forces behind how we interact is without a doubt the Internet. The world online changes the way we talk with others, they way we share information, and even the way we market our products and services. Since the vast majority of US households are Internet-connected with at least one device, such as a PC, it makes sense that marketing would start to focus on the web. Honestly though, how important is online marketing for businesses today? The answer is very.

First of all, print, TV, and radio advertising can be very expensive and often out of the reach of smaller businesses because of the cost. Best of all, there are marketing options online for all sorts of budgets, big and small. From social network marketing, to blog writing, and more, there are many profitable ways to market your business online. You get the reach of TV/radio but without the exorbitant costs involved.

So how do you advertise your brand online? There are many options, which include getting involved in e-mail marketing, paying a click-per-ad company to feature your product or business ad, and of course creating your own website and/or blog. This last option is very profitable as long as you understand the methods needed to make your site/blog known to the public and drive traffic to them.

The single most important reason for why marketing online is important is a no-brainer– it’s here to stay and it is constantly growing. Over the next several years, millions of new potential customers and clients will connect to the net, becoming a big force. More and more consumers are turning to the net to search for local businesses (instead of the YellowPages) and even buying completely online. Staying with traditional marketing alone will make your business look behind the times and will miss many thousands of potential customers you could easily have reached.  The Internet is so important to average people because finding information is often easy, free and can be done from almost anywhere thanks to mobile phones, tablets, and other internet-connected devices.

So could you stick to traditional print, radio, and TV methods alone? Sure you could, but you would also risk missing out on millions of customers over the course of your businesses life and you will quickly find that you are spending as much in a year with TV, radio and print as you could have online in a five year period. Getting started is easier than ever, and simply starts with finding a marketing firm that understands how to reach your target audience through great online marketing techniques.

Articles Provided by the Content Development Team at SIS Media Group, LLC – a Kentucky SEO Firm located in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

The days of stuffing keywords, using black-hat link building strategies and trying to cheat the system are over. Google introduced the second Panda update in March of 2012, and many websites fell off the map, once again. This is one of many updates Google has made to the way they rank websites and they will continue to make more updates in the future.

The worst part for websites that used to rank high with flawed SEO (search engine optimization) strategies, all the other search engines tend to follow what Google does. This means they will rank lower in all the search engines and not just Google. However, there are ways to make sure you gain ranking and maintain it.

Three Easy Ways to Avoid SEO Mistakes

1.  Ditch the Shortcuts

Shortcuts might seem appealing, but most of the time they only produce temporary results. There was a time when you could just repeat a specific keyword phrase over and over within your content and rank well.

Do that now and watch your website get buried deep in the rankings and potentially end up on the Google blacklist. If you want to make sure your site gets the Google love it deserves, avoid shortcuts that sound too good to be true or just seem a bit shady.

2.  Post Only High Quality Content

The worst thing you can do is start a website about one subject and post low quality content that doesn’t fit. If you want to start a site about something like metso crushers, then you don’t want to write about the newest sports car.

That wouldn’t fit very well with the theme of the site. Instead, you want to write about things that fit with your subject and make sure the content gives the readers what they are searching for.

3.  Backlink for Quality and Quantity

Another trick that used to work for better search engine ranking was to blast out tons of backlinks. Google used to rank sites without really paying attention to the quality of the backlinks. This is a thing of the past and Google now rewards those that get backlinks from sites in their industry and from others.

You want both quality and quantity when it comes to your link building. A variety of links from low PR to high PR sites will give you the natural balance you need for better rankings.

Take these three tips and put them to use with your websites and blogs as soon as you can. If you do this and you pay attention to how current the SEO information you get is, then you will be able to rank higher on all the search engines for the long-term instead of just for a few days or weeks.

By guest blogger Stephanie who specializes in writing about search engine optimization and what it can do for your site, whether you sell metso crushers or designer handbags.

The iPad is where it’s at now for business owners and employees alike. There really is nothing that this awesome little piece of technology can’t do – but I bet you don’t even know the half of its amazing powers when it comes to your business.

So get to work using your iPad to its fullest business potential. Here are 5 apps that will change yours and your business’ life, no matter your industry.

iAnnotate PDF (For Everyone)

Everyone in business needs to have the iAnnotate PDF app. This wondrous app not only allows you to read and organize your PDF files, but it gives you the option of marking up your entire document with personal notes and highlighted sections, then lets you share your markups with anyone you choose.

It’s a perfect solution for teachers who have significant corrections to make on student papers but still need a way to organize all of said papers. This app can accomplish both, and will help move the process along more quickly.

Or for those who just wish to add notes or make corrections to PDF files shared throughout the company, this is the perfect app for you. For just $9.99 it certainly packs a punch – once you’ve marked up your files, you can then share them with coworkers, clients and anyone else you’d like to share your notes with.

Numbers (For the Data Cruncher)

Numbers is a classic Mac app that’s just as awesome on the iPad as it is on a Mac or MacBook.

You can view, create and share tables, graphs and charts to make analyzing data on the go easier than ever. The app comes with 16 different pre-made templates to choose from so you can just put in your data and get to work quickly.

The Numbers media browser makes it a breeze to add images and video to your document and you can even create printable forms with headers and footers for data reporting purposes.

Print your documents to any wireless printer on your network, or export as an Excel spreadsheet, PDF document or Numbers project for online sharing. And all this for just $9.99 – you’ll be amazed at how much you can get done on your iPad with this awesome app!

Analytics HD (For the Online Entrepreneur)

If you have an online business or online store, or you work in the world of internet marketing, rejoice in this app, because it is literally Google Analytics right at your fingertips, everywhere you go.

This app makes it easier than ever for you to view traffic patterns to your site, check conversion rates and sales and do everything else on the go that you can do on your desktop with the classic Google Analytics program.

People who use this app say that it is faster and easier to use than the classic GA, and you can do more. Now you can share full-screen charts and graphs in meetings or across emails – so no more screen shots of the tiny charts that the GA on your desktop is capable of producing.

For just $6.99, you get the most powerful online tracking tool at your fingertips 24/7. It’s worth the investment!

SketchBook Pro for iPad (For the Creative Type)

If you work in a creative environment or you’re a graphic designer of any sort, this app will become your new best friend after you download it onto your iPad.

Now you can create professional drawings, sketches and graphic manipulations with an easy-to-use app that features high-quality brushes and tools. It’s the mobile equivalent of its desktop counterpart, so if you love the original SketchBook Pro, it won’t be hard for you to fall even more in love with this app.

You can create any digital design with just your fingertips, so this is a must for the digital professional on the go – all for a mere $4.99. And if you have the third generation iPad, the sketches are beautifully designed on the unsurpassed retina display, so you’ll be amazed at how crisp and clear your creations turn out – pretty darn good for a little handheld device!

Bento (For the Small Business Owner)

If you run a small business or work for a small business, Bento will be the only major app you’ll need to organize every piece of information that’s important to the success of your business.

With just one $9.99 app, you can organize your contacts, set reminders for yourself, keep a digital catalog of your products, keep records of sales and sales opportunities, track projects and plan meetings all in one place. And it’s all totally mobile, of course.

You can even record voice notes and attach them to potential sales contacts or customers if you wish. This is the super organizational app that solves all of your organizing needs if you’re a small business owner. You don’t want to go without this one.

Jackie Ryan is a freelance writer who works closely with many small businesses and knows the importance of integrating technology into the office. Although she still is still convincing some of her clients that their logo mats aren’t exactly the latest technology, she still tries to figure out what tech gear will work out best for each business that she works with!

Learning web design is a little like learning to play the drums – it is very easy to grasp the basics and knock out some simple rhythms, but extremely difficult to become great at. To distinguish yourself from all the others out there, you need to become truly great.

Fortunately, there are so many bad practices in web design around at the moment that simply taking the time to really learn the basics can often be almost enough to get there.

Good/Useful Information

Whilst many designers have a creative flair, they often overlook vital techniques. A website is first and foremost a source of information, and that information needs to be clear and concise. Prettying it up with colourful backgrounds, interesting graphics and fancy fonts is all well and good, but if a customer can’t immediately find what they are looking for the chances are they will try another site.

Too much info

Having too much information crowded onto one page is the most common mistake made. While it may seem convenient to have all the information on one page, it can be daunting and also unclear. Each page should have a clearly defined purpose, and that purpose should be to offer a certain piece of information. Beyond that, anything else is unnecessary clutter, and far from attracting customers will instead leave them bewildered and heading back to the search engine.

Website Colours

Harsh colours are another over-used tool that backfires more often than not. Whilst neons are certainly eye-catching, they are hard to look at and will therefore probably not be looked at for very long. It’s no use getting someone’s attention if, once you have it, you lose it again immediately because they have sore eyes.

Hidden navigation tools

Another way of putting off a prospective customer is badly designed navigation. If a person needs to move to a new page, but cannot find out where the link for that page is without moving the cursor over several un-named buttons, chances are they will give up and perform a new search.

Also, not changing the colour of links after they have been used can be off-putting. We often decide how to move forward by looking at where we have already been, and knowing which links we have followed is a useful tool. If we accidentally click on the same link one too many times because we can’t remember if we have already looked at it, we will eventually get bored and switch to a new site.

Font Size

Keeping the font at a fixed size is another bad idea. Many people find it hard to read a lot of text on the computer screen, and if you take away their ability to alter the font size you may just take away their inclination to read your text at all.

Fast Fwd web designers in Birmingham are a premium digital agency that will produce your website for you, free from pitfalls and search engine optimised.

With Google’s continued updates fighting web spam and other forms of Garbage on the Internet, they have published a list of things specifically to do / not do, in order be successful with Google and be penalized. The 8th item on the list is:

“If you run an affiliate site, your site must add value to the Internet above and beyond your vendor’s site”

Here are 10 ways that you can add value to your affiliate site and thereby add credibility to your site and and yourself on the Internet.

1. Develop a Product Specific Newsletter

Many vendors offer a generic newsletter about a sale on a wide variety of products, and a “this week’s sales” general flyer, but very rarely do you see something about a specific product. If you run a site on men’s v-neck sweaters for example, you could do a newsletter on effective color combinations with the sweater + khakis, or the sweater with the right kind of tie underneath. Then expand into socks and different kinds of shoes, and what’s considered business dress vs. business casual. A weekly or twice monthly newsletter list of topics could be easily generated to with 26 topics that relate around that one product. Be specific, go for combinations, and include real life pictures.

2. Tell the Bad

One thing that most vendors don’t do is tell the bad things about the product. Everybody gets a glazed look in their eye when they see the typical salesmen coming and giving another “this product is heaven” pitch. By telling the bad things about this product, it gives a well rounded perspective on the product as a whole. This process is also a way to build credibility with your audience, especially when the product has some obvious flaws.

3. Personalize your Experience with the product

Another method to build credibility with the product is to share a story or experience on how you not only bought the canoe, but you used the canoe to take your new girlfriend out on your first date. By sharing a story that’s personal and includes the product, that gives a practical down to earth side of the story that’s rarely shared in product reviews

4. Take Photos of the product with you in them

Personalizing the product reviews as much as you can is always going to be a great tactic to add value above what the vendor offers. Have someone take a picture of you with the product in it, or do before and after shots, if you doing a clothing line. Share before and after shots of what your trips look like when traveling in the car without a wifi hotspot phone, and online with a wifi hotspot phone. (Don’t forget to smile in the “after” photos

5. Make videos of the product unboxing

a. Start with Delivery guy walking up to the house, Have your significant other, or a child film for you, so you can get yourself on the video with the product arriving at your house
b. Take a video of you opening the box, and lifting the product out of the packaging. Be honest on the video, if the product is difficult to get out of the shrink wrapped plastic, then say so. People will appreciate the honesty.
c. Film your first impressions holding the product, lifting the product, smelling the product, cleaning the product
d. Follow up on your first impression by making a video of yourself after using the product for 30 days. A 30 day review is a very comprehensive review and will bring a lot of credibility to the product.

6. Develop a video based training series around the product

One thing that can encourage people to not just visit your page once, but to keep coming back, is a video training series on how to use the product. If you’re going to be filming many videos in the series then invest in a good quality professional camcorder like the ag-hmc40 and make 4-5 minute videos on how to do basic things with the product. If you’re selling cooking products, then make some videos where you’re making food in the pots and pans, or mixing things in the great pampered chef bowl. If you’re doing a site on HDTV’s then make a video on how to tune in the channels, or how to color correct the picture, and how to connect up all the cables in the back. If you need ideas on what to film, then sit down with some business owners or other good friends and have a brainstorming session for 5 minutes. You will be surprised on what comes up.

7. Develop a training course complete with homework and tests using the product

This tip doesn’t apply to every kind of product, but if you have a complex product that can bring a lot of fun and value to your customer’s life, then this could be worth it. If you have a site around migrating from a “Dying Dell” to a “mighty mac”, then build on #6 and offer quizzes at the end of each series of videos, to make sure people know what they learned. You could do simple tests on questions like, “where’s the start menu” on a mac, or go into more complex topics like photo editing or document creation on Pages instead of Microsoft Word.

8. Write an ebook that you can give away entitled “the no B.S. User’s Guide to _____”

People like books and reading, especially since tablets have really taken off in the last few years. A catchy title, and some decent graphics and your personalized experience using the product can go a long ways to give your site credibility If you have the newsletter already going, then the writing from the newsletter plus the 30 day review from earlier could be combined to create this specific product, even if it includes the same information.

9. Develop a “Who should not get this product” Review section

People appreciate honesty, and sometimes people need to hear it, even if they don’t want to hear it. A 500 pound man should not buy a porsche to try to get a woman to sleep with him. Teenagers should not buy weight loss products. Newly married couples should not buy new houses. These things should be common sense, but unfortunately you don’t have to look around too much to see people all over making bad life decisions.

10. Photos / Videos of the product in action, or people using the product and how it’s working well

Action shots with people using the product, such as kids having fun trying the new toy, or home owners mowing the lawn with the new motorless machine can work miracles. Some vendors are very good at this process already. You can’t hardly see a new movie these days without seeing a new iMac or a new quad core i7 macbook pro that’s used by the teen star of the movie or the Secret Government agency to take down the bad guy. Apple does an amazing job of product placement in TV shows and movies.

If you can implement just a few of these tips into your affiliate site, then your site will give more value than the vendor’s text and pictures, and your users will get a more personalized experience with more reasons to buy the product you are promoting.

Are you guilty of over-optimising your website? Google’s Matt Cutts recently announced that a new algorithm has been introduced that will penalise sites which have paid too much attention to search engine optimisation. While there are no clear outlines as to exactly how the search engine is going to filter out such sites one thing is clear, Google want great content at the top of the search engine results pages.

Visitors to Your Website Need to Be Put First

As a reader of multiple blogs I can truly appreciate what Google are trying to do. When I search for content I want to be shown a great website that has the information or product that I am looking for. The last thing I want is to see a page that either:

• Has nothing to do with the actual keyword I typed in
• Repeats the keyword I typed in too many times without giving me much information
• Is poorly constructed, boring and is difficult to read

So when it comes down to creating my content I like to try and get an even mix of satisfying readers and also helping to boost my site in the search engines so the readers can find me in the first place. This isn’t rocket science but you do need to keep your eye on the ball to make sure you keep up with the latest algorithms and trends.

Finding the Perfect Balance

While I like to use optimisation I have found the best way to boost the integrity of my site in the eyes of visitors and search engines is to focus more on the content I am adding. I have started to write more frequently, at least once a day, and I always have regular posts on set days in a certain theme. My readers know when to expect certain types of stories from me and I have found this to be a great technique at building up returning readers who are helping me by sharing my posts more and leaving comments.

I do report on news stories within my niche and this can be difficult if you want to make the content your own. It is a good idea to research several different reports on the same story and try and find an angle that hasn’t been covered. I don’t always have time to do this but if you can it is a good way of bringing something completely new to the table. Always check to see of the content has any other matches online though, this is to stop any plagiarism issues from arising and so the search engines realise you are coming up with your own original content.

Optimising Your Website Effortlessly

I guess the best way I am managing to find the balance is to create the content first, and add a dash of SEO into the ingredients. I have started adding just one link into my posts, and not every post I have to say. I am also more confident about linking to other websites too, especially if I have found their information to be relevant and the source of my idea for my latest blog post.

To satisfy Google and the other main search engines always but value into everything you post. The reader must be thought of first, and your site will not succumb to being over-optimised. The last thing you want is to jeopardise the position you have achieved in the SERPS so try and keep an eye on things. Don’t link too much in each post and create something original and useful for those who are searching your website.

If you need help with the original content on your website copywriting services can help.