DynamoAsh SEO consultant providing professional SEO tips

5 Ways to speed up the performance of your website

Ash — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 18:33:31 +0000

Google now partially rates your website based on speed. However don’t panic…. accordion to SitePoint Google says while site speed is a new signal, it doesn’t carry as much weight as the relevance of the page.

At the moment fewer than 1% of search queries are effected by the site speed signal.

Here are 5 ways to boost the performance of your website:

Optimise the image size. The obvious one, and had to come first although everybody already must know about this but I thought to share a few good tools for this. In terms of page weight, images are normally the biggest contributor. If you have access to a professional photo editing software such as Photoshop or Fireworks, then they all come with image optimisation feature. I normally use Jpg format for most images and all photos and keep the quality something between 80 to 90 %. If you need to keep transparency then you need to use gif or png format.If you need to do batch resizing then this is a useful tool I have used before: http://www.vso-software.fr/products/image_resizer/. You can download a free trial to test it out.
Use good tools to analyse the performance and identify bottlenecks. There are many performance analysis tools out there. Having tested most of them here are my favourites:http://tools.pingdom.com/ to see how long it took for the page to load and a breakdown of files downloaded. Great to immediately see which files are not optimised.http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/ to get an easy to follow report on areas you can improve. Page Speed is an open-source Firefox/Firebug Add-on. Webmasters and web developers can use Page Speed to evaluate the performance of their web pages and to get suggestions on how to improve them. If you haven’t already installed Firebug for Firefox, I highly recommend it. You will love it.http://developer.yahoo.com/yslow/ Similar to Google page-speed tool ( bullet point 2), but by Yahoo.
Combine external CSS and Javascript. Instead of embedding the CSS or JavaScript code within the html link to a Js or CSS file (include) and keep the number of includes to a minimum. For example instead of having 5 different JavaScript includes, combine them into one. The aim here is the number of calls to files to a minimum.
Specify image dimensions. If you don’t specify the image width and height the browser can work it out but it will take additional resources. So best to specify the exact width and height.
Keep the HTML lean and clean. Make sure your website developer keeps the HTML table free, CSS driven and comply with standards. A good quality and complying website should ideally be error free when validated here: http://validator.w3.org/

Is SEO in 2010 vanishing or exploding?

Ash — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 10:16:14 +0000

Everybody you talk with seems to have a different opinion about what SEO is and whether paying professional SEO’s is to help with natural search optimisation is on the increase or decrease?

Here I pulled together come interesting statistics which I first came accross from seomoz.org and blogstorm.co.uk.

based on a survey by econsultancy.com of more than 1,000 company and agency marketers carried out in December 2009 spending on digital marketing will increase by an average of 17% year-on-year in 2010. On average, digital marketing accounts for 24% of overall marketing spend.

UK shoppers spent £5.3bn online in November, with sales up by 25% on October, and up by
11% compared to November 2008. [Source: IMRG via Econsultancy Blog, December 2009]
Deloitte forecasts the UK Online Retail market will be worth £25bn in 2010. [Source: Deloitte,
November 2009]

Link building part 2: How one competition boosted my Google Page Rank

Ash — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 19:01:23 +0000

A really effective way of attracting visitors and promoting your website is creating competitions. Competitions have a fun element to them and many people enjoy participating in one. You know that winning feeling!

I will give you an example of how one competition created a great big buzz, promotion and back-links for my blog. In fact as early as 5^st of January 2010 DynamoAsh.com suddenly jumped to Page Rank 3 and I know for a fact the competition played a very big role in this. Not bad really for a 2 months old blog with only 5 posts! How did it happen?

I launched this blog back in October 2009 and since I was quite new to blogging I decided to seek the advice and guidance of a pro blogger so I contacted the authority blogger Chrisg.com to help speed up the learning curve. In my opinion when trying to master a new area it pays dividend to seek help and mentoring from somebody that has been there and done it!

Chris provided much valuable help and advice and as we were chatting on Skype and I was explaining about some of the consulting and SEO audit services I provide, he came up with this competition idea. I was initially planning to give away some SEO audits for free to demonstrate my ability and also attract visitors, but Chris told me about the importance of perceived value of my services. In other words just giving away something for free makes it sound of low value.

Chris offered to create a competition on his blog to give away three starter SEO audits to the winners of competition. This was obviously a fantastic idea which would work to my benefit in all fronts: buzz and promotion for my new SEO audit service, visitors, valuable backlink, and last but not least an opportunity for me to try and test my new audits and receive valuable feedback and testimonials. Chrisg.com benefited form this as well by providing an interesting post and the chance for readers to win valuable SEO advice and review for their website! Excellent idea!

You can see the actual competition post here:

http://www.chrisg.com/win-dynamoash-seo-audit/

And see what the winners had to tell about my SEO audit here:

http://dynamoash.com/seo-audit/

Do you have any interesting competition stories to share?

Link building part 1: One way editorial links and how to get them

Ash — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 12:32:51 +0000

8 weeks to more back-links more visitors and more business from your website.

Summary

This week I am going to start a series about link building. Each week I will be looking at a certain type of link opportunity and provide some useful tips on how to get high quality back-links to your website. Each week I will also give you a real life example of some of the link-building successes I have had, how I did it and how you can also do the same. I will end the series with a little link building technique which you can use without much investment and time needed. It has worked for me every time without exception. Just 1 hour per week is the investment you need and just watch the ranking of your keyword grow and grow.

If you have been doing Search Engine Optimisation then you most be quite familiar with the concept of links and back-links (sometimes even referred to as in-links or inbound links). You probably also know that when it comes to SEO, back-links is the most important factor and also the hardest and most time consuming part. If you get it right you can find your website on that number 1 position of Google. Get it wrong and you might find your website being penalized for it. If you are new to link-building and want to know more about the basics then read What is link building?

My website is all about organic search engine optimisation that works hard for your website by generating free traffic, as such my focus is on links that actually will attract visitors and customers to your website. That’s what I do for my clients and that is what I like to share with you.

Planned episodes in this series:

Part 1 – One way editorial links – how to get them
Part 2 – Competitions – How one competition boosted my Page Rank
Part 3 – Which directory links do actually matter
Part 4 – Link exchange and reciprocal links best practice
Part 5 – Article submission the complete list and how to submit
Part 6 – Highly valued back-links through news releases
Part 7 – Create buzz using social media promotion
Part 8 – 10 link-building techniques to stay away from
Part 9 – A little secret technique that always works for me

Part 1 – One way editorial links – how to get them

I will start the series with the juiciest and most important of them all: one way editorial links. By definition editorial links are links which are not paid for and not traded for. That is why we call them one-way links. Some people also say a true editorial link is not even asked for. Although that is true to a degree, i.e. you are not directly asking for a link, still the same way that it works in offline PR, you want to somehow make the editor of a site aware of your amazing new content. Do you see what I mean?

What is the key to getting editorial links?

1. If you want a quality editorial link form a trusted website you need to earn it. Is the content of your website original and link worthy? Does is answer a question or solve a problem? Is the content entertaining and engaging? Do you sell a product that is not easily found on other websites or maybe you sell it cheaper than the competitors? If your answer is yes to one or more of the above then link building will be much easier. Certain type of link worthy content is also sometimes referred to as link-bait, which means the content is so good that many other websites and blogs would love to refer to your site and pass a link, as long as they are being made aware of it. This type of engaging and hot content also has the potential of going viral.

2. Contact site editors: So you have written an amazingly informing article which answers a burning question for a certain community. Next step is to identify some of the top online publications, magazines or news websites targeting the community in question. Most of these websites will have the contact details of the editor somewhere on the website. Find the email address and wire to the editor. All you need to do is to send your article to the editor or mention what is happening on your website that their readership would find of value. If your content adds value to the site and is something the readers of the site find interesting then the editor will publish it with pleasure. You just have to make sure to also ask for the link and what the anchor text of the link should be.

An example

To give you an example, some time ago I was looking for some editorial links for a marketing website which targeted dentists, so I identified one of the main online magazines called dentistry.co.uk and submitted an informative article about online marketing for dentists. I sent the article to the site editor and also very kindly I asked for the back link to be named “dental website marketing”. Here is the article published on the website with the anchor text I asked for. http://www.dentistry.co.uk/news/news_detail.php?id=2385

Media sites have large audiences of people looking for information – get coverage and a link to your site and not only will you get a significant spike in traffic to your site, but you’ll also get a percentage of that audience linking to you because the media site did. Links attract links.

So once you’ve identified your market sectors, and collated your list of 250 link targets, separate the high profile portals or information sites from the rest of the list and start with them. That’s right – at the top!

Useful Tip!

A quick tip on how to get started with identifying online publications and magazines.

Say for example you are a clothing retailer and are after editorial links from good online publications.

Apart from all the magazines and publications that you already know there are many other opportunities you can find by going to Google.com and type these searches:

fashion online publications
fashion online magazine
fashion Webzines
fashion news
fashion blogs

And you can do all the above searches replacing fashion with clothing.

Next go to Facebook groups and search for the same terms to find what publications and blogs are popular.

Next week: How one competition boosted my Google Page Rank

Make sure you don’t miss next weeks episode. Subscribe to my posts below!

A good rouce for more SEO and web design news

How to grow a digital agency – a success story

Ash — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 18:17:59 +0000

It’s a Saturday morning and I am reading the latest .net magazine. By the way, It’s a great magazine for all Internet enthusiasts. I am reading an article about the digital agency Fortune Cookie whilst eating my fried egg breakfast.

.net profiles a digital agency every month and this month they were covering the agency fortunecookie.co.uk in an interview with the founder Justin Cooke. I started reading the article. The first question from .net to Justin was “How and when did Fortune Cookie form?” The answer to this question always fascinates me.

I’ve been working on growing my own digital agency for the past two years and who better to gain inspiration from than other entrepreneurs who have made it. One of my biggest questions has always been how to win those bigger and better deals? I am sure you know the scenario: small agency bidding for a large project, client asking for previous experience and a solid track record with their industry. Yes! Typical chicken and egg scenario.

So anyway, back to the answer that Justin gave to .net’s question “How and when did Fortune Cookie form?” Just the first two paragraphs told me so much that I can’t believe it. Have you ever had that moment when suddenly everything becomes clear and an answer appears right in front of you?

Here is the exact answer:

“JC: I founded Fortune Cookie in 1997 with the aim of making it one of the most successful web design agencies in the UK.”

With the aim of making it one of the most successful web design agencies in the UK

My commentary: already here we have the mindset of an ambitious and confident entrepreneur. What we also have is clear goal setting and vision. All of the things I have heard time and time again from various entrepreneurs and motivational speakers. A bit different than when I first started with the aim of designing a few websites that can pay the bills! Go figure! OK that was long time ago and I have expanded my vision since then!

Justin continues:

“JC: Our first account was with a luxury Caribbean hotel chain, as we had no previous experience, we did the work in exchange for hotel room bookings, which we then sold on to the travel agent for £35.000 profit! Fortune Cookie was a one-man band in the beginning and I founded the business on credit cards.”

WOW! Talk about thinking outside the box…

My commentary: I mean here it is again a fantastic example of an entrepreneurial mindset. How did he get around the lack of experience? He provided his services in return for something the hotel could give away for free. I remember Roger Hamilton put it very nicely once. “first prove your worth, then ask for what you are worth”. Other things that inspire me here is the fact he started the whole business on his own and only on credit cards. So no big investments or venture capital here.

Back to Justin’s answer:

“JC: We got lucky with our second project. The CEO of Thames Water had returned from a course in the US where he’d learnt about this new medium called the internet. He found Fortune Cookie in the Yellow Pages, called us up and we struck a deal! Thames Water would send us a Quark Express file and we’d transform it into ‘an internet’! I was then able to take on our first two employees. “

Inspiring stuff!

My commentary: So here we have another key element of success: LUCK! Yes luck, but still that luck wouldn’t be there if Justin hadn’t placed the ad in yellow pages. Reading this struck a chord with me. When I was operating as a one man band, my biggest question was at what point can I afford to take on employees? Justin’s story answers this for me: When you win a large enough deal that allows you to pay the monthly salary of an employee then you are in a position to take on your first employee. Simple isn’t it? I think so.

My conclusion – key elements in getting a new agency off the ground:

Ambition
Clear goal
Being creative and think outside the box
Prove your worth first
Take action
Luck

Ok, so this was me getting so much clarity from reading two paragraphs on this article! I don’t know maybe it was the omelette I was having for breakfast. I am sure Justin’s story means different things to different people. You can read the rest of the article in issue 198 of the .net Magazine. The website for .net magazine is http://www.netmag.co.uk.

What has been your experience with growing your business?

Hype or reality: How is real time search affecting SEO?

Ash — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 22:32:28 +0000

What is Google real time search and how is it going to change the rules of engagement when it comes to SEO?

Real time search is the big talk of the day at the moment. On December 7 Google announced the release of their real time search in this blog post Relevance meets the real-time web. This is what Google says:

“Try searching for your favourite TV show, sporting event or the latest development on a recent government bill. Whether it’s an eyewitness tweet, a breaking news story or a fresh blog post, you can find it on Google right after it’s published on the web.”

So let’s put this to the test. Basically to see real time search in action I went to Google.com and searched for “social media”. The search results initially appearing is the normal good search results so no difference yet.

To see the real time search I clicked on Show options and selected “Latest” from the left menu. The result is what you see on the picture above.

You can see that on top there is the a tweet about social media posted 6 seconds ago. Then there is one from Friendfeed posted 18 seconds ago and we have a blog post about social media posted 57 seconds ago. I think you get the pictures. To me real time search is up to the second coverage of what is being said in social media and blog sites.

The real time web casting and search was really started by Twitter. Also referred to as micro blogging, the concept is around short posts about something that is happening right now normally posted via mobile phones. For example I was at the SEO Pro seminar a couple of months ago and people were tweeting about some hot topics being discussed at that very moment. Another example was the post election results in Iran, you could get the latest news in tweeter as it was unfolding in the streets of Tehran.

Talk about entertainment and well real time search is going to provide a very fertile ground for up to the second gossip and news. Good example was Tiger woods accident. Socialmediatoday.com covers what happened in twitter in this post Why Twitter Wins: Tiger Woods’ Accident.

Twitter, along with other social media tools such as Facebook has become essential tools in the distribution of news. The Tiger Woods’ accident further exemplifies that the Internet is squeezing the life out of a traditional medium such as newspaper industries by bringing dishing up-to-date reports of the incident. This is why Google don’t want to be left out and their real time search is primarily about integration with Twitter.

So how is Google real time search going to effect our organic SEO strategy?

Since real time search is very new, it is currently under constant updating and fine-tuning by Google. As yet I can’t see many real time search results in the standard organic listing, but Google says based on relevance they will include this.

Rand Fishkin from seomoz.org talks about real time search in his post 8 Predictions for SEO in 2010 and predicts that the implementation in the actual search results is something that is going to fade away. He goes as far as saying “This is, in my estimation (and many others), the worst implementation of new results Google’s ever implemented”. So to make sure we are clear here, what he is referring to is the search results without clicking on Show Options and selecting Latest.

My own take on this? I agree with Rand to the extend that I don’t believe Google will sacrifice quality for PR in the sense of just tapping into this new and popular phenomenon. On the other hand the additional filters in the options left menu is certainly a useful feature for people who want to narrow down their search results and peak into what is currently covered in social media sites such as twitter.

The partners that Google announced as supporting in their real time search results are:
Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed, Jaiku and Identi.ca — along with Twitter

My conclusion?

In my opinion businesses should definitely plan to engage and contribute in websites Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed and mySpace. SEO starts with good content and social media sites are a good means of spreading the word for your content and building buzz. This not only creates brand awareness and brings you visitors but also will improve your SEO ranking. However, when engaging in social media sites it is important to get the balance right. If you focus on selling that will defiantly turn many people off. After all it is called social media because it is supposed to be sociable. It’s a bit like going to the pub. You need to go every week to start building trust and making friends. In the long run those friends can then work as a good connections for business referrals.

Top 10 SEO myths revealed

Ash — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 23:20:38 +0000

Do you find SEO mystifying? I know I did when I first started. I decided to get to the bottom of it all and here is what I found

1. Keyword and description META tags are the most important part of SEO

This used to mean something a few years ago. Now days the Keyword META tag is completely ignored by search engines like Google. The reason for this is primarily because the META tags are not visible to the visitor and as such can easily be misused to trick search engines into believing the site is about something that it is really not. So what matters now is actually the visible text on your page. I have been told that some other search engines might look at the keyword META tag so doesn’t harm to have it there but not important at all. And as for the Description META tag, this one again has no baring on your SEO but is useful one to have because search engines like Google us this as the site description in the search results.

2. Search engine technology is moving too fast: I can’t keep up!
Yes Google and other search engines keep updating and improving their algorithm all the time, but the underlying concepts of SEO has always been the same and will remain the same. Create interesting and valuable content on a well designed and developed infrastructure. Next start spreading the word about your website by building relationships, providing and asking for links and building buzz in social media. These basic core principles will get you a long way.

3. Submitting my site to search engines takes forever
Again more of a thing of the past.

Consider this facts: Google, Yahoo and Bing (MSN) have a 95% market-share of all search engines.

Once your website is designed and developed to be search engine friendly it will automatically get discovered and indexed by Google, Yahoo and Bing. Take for example this blog. I launched the blog in Oct 2009. 2 weeks later it was included in all the three search engines without me having to do any submission.

4. SEO is dangerous and can get my site taken off the search engines.
Good SEO is about using ethical and best practice technique to help your site get the ranking it deserves. Your site will never be taken off if you stick with Good ethical SEO (also referred to as white hat). On the other hand there are people who try to trick search engines and use spammy and un-ethical techniques which can indeed harm your ranking. This darker side of SEO is also referred to as black hat. If you have the long term benefit of your site in mind then I would recommend to stay away from risky and spammy techniques!

Useful link: Here is what Google recommends about hiring an SEO http://www.google.com/support/webmasters

5. I’ll see results from SEO quickly.
Although some elements of SEO can have a quick impact, namely fixing the technical aspect of your site. The main impact of SEO, specially in competitive markets, will only happen in the long run and will require ongoing effort. After all the biggest factor in SEO is link building and link building will takes time.

6. Visitor numbers to my site is an important element of SEO
Some people believe that the number of visitors to your site has a major impact on the SEO rankings. I have heard this question before: my website is new so it’s not possible to have good ranking in search engines before achieving a high traffic? This assumption is actually not correct at all. Although of course the end result of any successful website is high traffic but in-fact Google has no way of actually judging pages bases on the number of visitors. What will give you good ranking is good quality content with the right keywords and then a healthy number of back links.

Just one point to add I am not saying that visitor numbers won’t matter at all. With the ever increasing ways of collecting page visit data, for example via Google tool bar, Google can see the visitor numbers to many pages and this might also have a bearing on their algorithm but the weight of this factor is not very high compared to the all the major factors.

7. SEO is a hands off project. Let the consultant take care of it
Be very carful here. Although a technical SEO consultant might be good at fixing all the technical issues, when it comes to keywords and links nobody knows your business better than you so you need to play a very active part here. Otherwise it just wont work. Also be very carful with services that give you high quantity of links for small money. Chances are these links are very spammy websites such as link farms or low quality automated directories.

8. SEO is about tricking search engines into ranking my site high
Good ethical SEO is definitely not about tricking search engines by using underhand techniques to gain unfair advantage. Simple rule of thumb: stay away from hidden text or techniques that are there just to deceive the search engine. If what you do adds value to the visitor experience then it’s a good practice. Of course it is your website and your choice if you want to go down the riskier rout. All I can say is that search engines are becoming better and better at catching un-ethical techniques, so risky techniques might harm the long term SEO health of your site.

Simple rule of thumb: stay away from hidden text or techniques that are there just to deceive the search engine

9. SEO is a once and done project: when website is optimized then job is done
Couldn’t be further from the truth. I think I touched on this slightly before. The only part of the work which can be fixed quickly is the technical aspects which have to do with site development and infrastructure. The more important elements that are keywords and links require an ongoing effort. The game here is to constantly measure and refine if you want to stay ahead of the competition.

10. I should optimize my site for search engines above users
The best SEO is about optimizing both for search engines and users in a right balance. Getting this balance right I suppose is what sets apart a successful SEO campaign from a less successful one.

If you found the above useful make sure to subscribe to my email list (top right corner of screen) to receive weekly tips and advice about SEO.

Do you have any other SEO puzzles in your mind? Ask in the comments below and I will answer

How I got my first 100 Twitter followers

Ash — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 17:42:23 +0000

Photo by Todd Barnard

7 easy steps to your first 100 twitter followers. For those of you who are new to Twitter (like me), here is how I got my first 100 followers. Tips for twitter newbies.

I am reasonably new to twitter. I opened my twitter account about four months ago and really started tweeting a couple of months ago. It took me a bit over a month before I had my first 100 followers. You can achieve this a lot quicker if you spend the time. A bit of a late starter I suppose. I am not one of those who quickly jumps on the latest band wagon. I most say I am still trying to get the hang of it and find the 140 character limit a bit frustrating. I mean how can you have conversation with the limit. Anyway that is beyond the point. Here I want to share with you my journey so far and how I built my first 100 followers.

So down to business now. Here are the 10 steps which I went through in order to get my first 100 followers.

1. Open an account. If you haven’t already signed up for an account go to http://twitter.com/ and sign up.

2. Create your profile. As a bear minimum these are the fields you need to complete.

Name: Use your real name and make sure you separate your first and last name. This is how people can find you.

Username: This is your display name in Twitter, which will show up against your posts and also in the web address for your twitter: http://twitter.com/DynamoAsh. DynamoAsh is my username

BIO – Write a strong bio. Make sure it is relative to what or who you are.

Photo: Go to the picture tab and upload a nice picture of yourself. It is very important to have a photo, otherwise you are trying to socialise without a face!

3. Follow people you already know: Ok so now you have your profile setup and want to start getting followers. Before you get followers you need to start by following people. It’s a bit like you follow them, then they follow you. So click on Find People and start by following the people you know, then go to “Find on other networks” tab and import people from your email address books (these are people that already have twitter accounts). Because these are people you already know you can be sure that almost all of them will also follow you in return.

4. Follow people you like and admire: Basically these are people you like to get to know or quite simply want to follow their posts. These can be leading figures around your topic of interest or business related people whom you admire.

5. Discover people who share your interest: Say for example if you are into marketing you can quite simply search marketing in the Find People search box and this way find people who have mentioned marketing in their profile. The second search you can do is to search for marketing in the search box in the side bar. This search box will search all posts that contain marketing. So here you can listen to discussion going on around your searched topic and find people you find interesting to follow.

For more advanced users try Twellow.com . Twellow has a category function that you search for individuals within certain markets or categories. It is really good, and will give you tons of people to pick from.

Pick your target guru, and click on his/her followers ‐ Click as many as you can, add every single last one of them if you can. I know it seems like a lot of work, but it’s worth it. About 40% of the people you follow will follow you back.

6. Post interesting tweets. This is a bit then up do you whether you are so passionate about one topic or your business that that is all you want to tweet about or maybe it is more your personal thoughts and quite simply what you are up to. Personally I tweet about things that I believe are worth sharing and as yet I am not doing high quantity of tweeting just about everything that comes to my mind.

This is what @SeanMalarkey, who has101K followers, says: “Live and die by this ‐ Give 80% and take 20%. In other words, don’t sell sell sell. Give back, believe me it works.”

I’ve given you some ideas on what to tweet – but try and be personal – tweet things that are relevant to your niche or target audience.

What gets re-tweeted

Funny tweets
Cool articles
Quotes
RT of other good tweets

The more you post good tweets the more people will find you and follow you.

7. Start conversations.

Generally conversations start in two main ways

1. You retweet somebody else’s tweets. Twitter has just released an updated version to make this easier. Up to now the way it has been is that you copy the original message and Add RT to it. Twitter has just released an updated version which automates this. You can find out all about it here http://bit.ly/7q1hQl.

2. Start or engage in a conversation using the # tag. See the picture below. You can see that OscarDS has re-twitted a message with hash tag #CGWhiz. If you were to click on #CGWhiz then you will see all the tweets with that hash tag. In other words all the tweets from people engaging in this particular conversation.

TIP: for steps 3-7 I would recommend setting aside a little time everyday or every other day. Don’t rush through it trying to do it all at once. Building followers takes time. The more you engage the more followers you will have.

Some useful tools:

http://tweetlater.com Once registered, click on “add account”, add your Twitter account and it will give you an option to automatically send a DM to all new followers.
http://www.tweetdeck.com. Makes browsing and organising your tweets easier. Also you can add your Facebook and myspace account here.

Top 10 SEO tips to help you improve your search ranking

Ash — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:40:06 +0000

In the past few years I have helped many website owners achieve first page listing in Google. When I asked myself what are the top 10 most crucial elements that must be right to achieve first page listing, this is what I came up with. Without exception I have had to get every single element below right for my clients to ensure they appear on the first page of Google.

1. Content is king. Well known fact and always recommended by SEO specialists. It all starts with content. If you have good compelling content which your target audience will find useful then optimising your site will be all that much easier.

You will benefit from:

Regularly updated content
Satisfying your customers needs and problems
Answering common questions your customers might have
Be specific and focused
Niche is good

For more reading about good content strategies here is a useful post on SEOmoz.org: Content is King!

2. Choose the right keyword: What do you want to be best known for? What does your brand stand for? What is the main search term people would search for when they look for your products and services? This is about identifying the right keyword or combination of keywords (phrases) that you want to optimise your page for. For example for the home page you want to choose one primary phrase which normally comprises of 2-4 words. This primary phrase is the most likely search term your potential customers would search for. To help you identify your primary search phrase please read my keyword research 101 post.

3. Title of the page: By far the most important element to get right. Almost everybody agrees that this is one of the top three criteria’s when robots like Google are trying to rank your site’s relevancy. Make sure you place the main keywords here. If you competed step 2 successfully and identified your primary search phrase then you want to make sure the primary search phrase is mentioned in the title.

4. Heading. Have you ever heard of H1, H2, H3 etc? if not then the only way to find them is by doing view source in your browser. H1 is your heading number one (the large text heading of your article or page). H2 is heading number 2 and so on. After The tile of the page H1 is the most important location to place your primary keywords. Because you can only effectively optimise your page for one or two phrases then I recommend to keep the Title and Heading as similar as possible, both containing your primary keywords identified in step 2.

5. Image Alt attribute: The alt attribute is meant to be used as an alternative text if the image is not available. In some browser also if you hover over the image the text that pops up is the alt text. Search Engines can not interpret an image, Instead they look at the alt text behind the image. For the alt text you want use your primary keywords and any related keywords that describe the image.

6. Valid and error free HTML: Search engines like Google like it when the HTML code behind your web pages are clean and written according to recommended standards. After all a search engine is only a computer program that needs to understand the HTML of your page and try to make sense of it, hence the easier it is to interpret the better. A good way to check that your web pages are developed according to best practices is to use the W3C validator. The fewer error the better. In fact you need to aim for error free if you are serious about SEO and high ranking.

7. Avoid flash: Ok so yes flash can look good but if we are talking SEO and good ranking in search engines then this is a bit of show stopper. Flash can work if it is only used as part of a HTML site. In other words don’t build the whole site in flash if you are serious about SEO. It’s ok if you want to use some flash elements such as animation or video, but if you build the whole site in flash then your chances of being found by Google and other engines is much decreased.

8. Links within your site: The Google engine (a.k.a. Google robot) loves finding pages by crawling from one link to the other. In fact this is how it finds pages on the World Wide Web. So this is where a well designed site navigation is helpful. Try to use a simple and logical navigation and create a good number of internal linking between your related pages. If you have a large site with many pages (for example an e-commerce website) then I would also recommend to set up two site indexes, one for the readers (HTML site index) and one for the search engines (XML site index). There are inexpensive tools like CoffeCup SiteMapper that helps you create site maps automatically.

9. The text of your links – Anchor text: Anchor text is the blue underline text you click on to navigate to another page. Always use descriptive keywords in your anchor text. Google crawls from one link to the other and one way it can tell what type of content you are linking to is by reading the anchor text.

10. Back-links: now that you have a well designed and well built website with compelling content and all the right keywords in all the right places, it is time to spread the word about your site. You want to let others know about your site and ask them to link to your site. These types of links are also referred to as back-links or in-links.

Link building is a huge and time consuming area in its own right where a lot of creativity is needed, hence I am not going into details here. But the quickest way to get started is to list your site in reliable manually moderated directories. Note the distinction I made here about being manually moderated and reliable. This is because there are many low quality and spamy directories out there which I wouldn’t recommend to use. They will add no value to your ranking and might even harm your credentials. A few well known and reliable directories I would recommend are http://www.freeindex.co.uk, http://www.ezilon.com , www.dmoz.org and the Yahoo Directory. These are all manually moderated directories that search engines like and would bother to attach any value to. There are many more sector specific directories which I use for my clients. But remember what I always recommend to my clients is that the number of links from directories should only make up a small percentage of the overall link profile.

What’s next?

I will be posting more articles about link-building and social media in the next few weeks. In particular social media is an area I am passionate about and the opportunities there are endless, if you are ready to invest the time and you are sociable enough! So make sure you follow me on twitter or subscribe to my posts using the RSS or email subscription options in the top right part of my blog.

Final Thought

Whether you employ a SEO specialist or decide to do it all yourself, a well executed online marketing campaign will help create awareness and increase your website’s visibility. In terms of when it is the right time for you to hire an SEO specialist and what to look for, the best tip I can give you is to read the SEO guidelines provide by Google

Keyword Research 101

Ash — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:53:35 +0000

Analyse and target the right keywords for your website in 2 easy to follow steps.

1. Brain storm keywords

If you are selling a niche product or service then your job is easy. You just list all variations of keywords for your niche topic and try to think of related words.

Here is what I would recommend:

Name all key terms that are most relevant to your business proposition. I recommend opening an excel spreadsheet and listing the keywords there.

NOTE: Think like your customer and use their language, not yours!

Ask yourself this: what do I think my customers would search for when they look for my products/services?

Useful tip: You can always draw ideas from your competitors. Have a look at a couple of competitors who rank well for key terms that you are targeting. If they rank well then they must have done a decent job optimising their pages for the keywords in question. You can view the title and heading of the page and see what keywords or key phrases they are using. Also do a view page source in your browser and look for the meta tags Keywords and Description. You can see all the variation of keywords they are optimising the page for.

Interesting statistics (based on research by OneStat.com)

Of all searches on search engines

20% are for single words (only!)
33% are for two-word combination
26% are for three-word combination
21% are for four or more words

So as you can see 2 or 3 word combinations are the best to go for and if you can be specific enough to use 4 or more then those will be quite easy to rank high for these keywords that relate to your company.

This being an introduction to keyword research I won’t go into details of more advanced topics such as how to look for and analyse related, qualifying and semantically equivalent phrases. I will be blogging on those topics soon, so do follow my updates on RSS, twitter or email subscription.

2. Analyse keyword effectiveness

So now you should have a spreadsheet with a list of key phrases. How do you prioritise and identify which ones to go for as your primary keyword?

To ensure that you have a good chance in getting a high ranking in Google and other search engines its beneficial to spend some time finding out which of these key phrases will give you the best chance in ranking high?

Note: you can only effectively optimise a page for one primary key phrase (2 or more keyword combination) and one secondary one. The key to success here is focus.

We need to strike a balance between how much search demand there is for a keyword combination and how much competition. The way we can do that is by looking at two different variables:

Keyword Demand

Say for example you are selling business cards. After doing some research and brain storming you have come up with the following phrases that relate to your speciality:

Business cards
Business card design
Business card printing
Quality business cards
Corporate business card

There are various tools you can use to see how many searches are done for the above phrases on daily basis. www.wordpot.com, freekeywords.wordtracker.com, and Google keyword tool are a few popular ones. I like to use the Google keyword tool. In the UK something like 80% of all searches are done by Google, the Google keyword tool shows you reliable local and global figures.

So if I type each of the above in the Google Keyword Tool I get these global search results figures:

The above figures are the number of times people searched for a phrase in Google. This is also referred to as search volume or search traffic.

Keyword Competition

Put simply this is the number of pages on the Internet that contain your chosen phrase, for example “business cards”.

If you do a search for “business cards” in Google.com this is the result you get

93,800,000 is the number of pages on the net that contain the phrase “business cards”. That’s right, a huge number and as such not very easy to get a high ranking for if you are not a major player in this field with a website that has been on the Internet for years. Also worth mentioning is that the accuracy of these large numbers are very questionable. In this example, if you keep clicking the next page in the search results, the maximum number of pages that Google let’s you see is 87. So where the 98 million comes from is a bit questionable, but in any case a good indication to the level of competition.

Now if you’re trying to get the competition figures for a long list of keywords it might take a long time. That is why I have created a tool to automate this process for you. Check our Keyword Competition Tool here. With this tool not only can we retrieve the raw competition (as above) but also we look at direct competition which is the result of allinanchor:Search Term. This shows the number of pages with an inbound link that has anchor text matching the phrase. In my example below I am going to use the direct competition figures because I think this returns more accurate results.

So after inputting the phrases into our Keyword Competition Tool this is what we get back:

Some keyword analysis tools use a figure called KEI which is calculated as SearchVolume ^2 / RowCompetition. In my example above I am going to use KOI which is calculated as SearchVolume ^2 / DirectlyCompeting. In my experience this returns a more accurate indication.

How to analyse the above table? The higher the KOI the better change for you to rank higher for that phrase. This is because higher KOI means a higher search volume demand and lower competition in comparison to the other phrases.

Surprisingly the broader phrase “business cards” has the highest KOI and this is purely because it has the much bigger search volume. Hence use these figures as part of a balanced mixed of factors. Other factors to look for are to analyse other websites that appear on the first page of Google for each of these keywords.