Tag: SEO
Without SEO, a good business can sink like a stone
Earlier this year a prestigious Government prize was awarded to a ‘unique’ new online service.
Submitted by a member of the public in good faith, the prizewinning idea was a website that tells people what they can and can’t recycle in their area.
Shortly after the winner was announced on the BBC Radio 4 news, a listener emailed the programme to reveal that there’s already a website in existence that does just that.
All very embarrassing for the Government department concerned, who insisted that they’d searched far and wide but hadn’t found anyone else offering the same thing.
The Government’s researchers probably used plenty of common sense key words and phrases like ‘recycling by UK postcode’ and ‘recycling by UK town’ and ‘Recycling by UK county council’. They probably also asked Google questions like ‘What can I recycle in my area?’.
Because no websites containing those phrases were returned, they could be forgiven for thinking that the prizewinning idea was unique. Which is logical, but fatally flawed.
In real life a business can be online forever, but unless they pay some attention to SEO they might never be found.
The rock bottom basics:
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Make sure your site is structured with SEO in mind
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Once it is properly optimised from a structural perspective, make sure your content is as attractive as possible to readers and search engines
Which search engines should I concentrate on for SEO?
Find out where to focus your resources.
It’s easy to forget that there’s more to life than Google. But is it worth spending time and money targeting SEO at the other search engines, like Yahoo and Ask?
I’ve just uploaded an RSS feed from Hitwise which gives the latest stats for search engine usage in the UK. As I’m writing this, October 2008 stats are the latest available:
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Google (UK and dot com) – 89.44%
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UK Yahoo – 2.86%
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UK Ask – 2.16%
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The rest – 5.54%
No contest. With just under 90% of all UK searches conducted on Google, that’s where your SEO resources should probably be spent.
But that’s now. What about next month? It can be dangerous putting all your SEO eggs in one basket. In the unlikely event that Google suddenly disappears down some kind of cosmic e-toilet, the wise marketer keeps tabs on the latest stats.
Check http://www.hitwise.co.uk/datacenter/searchengineanalysis.php for the latest monthly UK search engine usage stats. If you’re in the US Hitwise also provides US search engine usage stats.
Update Nov ’09… watch out for Bing!
Answer silent questions for extra home page power
Visitors arrive at your site for the first time seething with silent questions.
Here’s an example. If your site advises people about anger management, first time visitors’ll probably be unconsciously wondering things like:
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I need help. Can I find out more about anger management here?
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I wonder how angry I really am. Can I evaluate my anger levels here?
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I’d love to talk to someone face to face. Can I book a course or a workshop here?
People don’t want to waste time searching for these basics. A good anger management website would answer visitors’ silent questions clearly – with no frills – up front. There are several ways of doing this:
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Using copy headers and subheads (recommended)
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In your first paragraph
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Within your site’s header design
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Prominently elsewhere within the page
So, your anger management index page headers and subheads might read:
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Header: Find out about anger and how to manage it positively
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Subhead 1: How angry are you? Take a quick test!
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Subhead 2: Book effective, life-changing anger management workshops here
The more time you can save your visitors, the more likely they’ll be to stick around, buying or doing the stuff you want them to. If you don’t satisfy their silent questions early on, they’ll click away to someone who does.
Use keywords in your url file names and boost your website’s visibility
The power of logically-named url file names
When planning the redesign of my website I included primary keywords and phrases in my file names.
These were words and phrases that were also relevant to – and repeated within – each page’s content, title and description.
Doing so appeared to pull my site higher in Google almost immediately. Within a week or so I’d popped up on page two.
A few weeks later, to maximise my file names’ effectiveness, I separated the words within each with an underscore. I’d heard that this helps search engines recognise each word as distinct. eg copywriting_brighton.html rather than copywritingbrighton.html or copywriting-brighton.html.
Putting underscores into my url file names appeared to give my site another boost, bringing it onto Page one of Google the following week for a couple more of my key search terms.
I know this isn’t rocket science. But it’s a relatively simple aspect of SEO that’s often overlooked. If you name your files sensibly it won’t rocket your site to the top of Page 1 of Google the next day from a standing start, but it could make a real difference.
TIP: Don’t forget to write 301 redirects for the pages you rename!
Danger: beware of cowboy SEO copywriters
“OK, my copy’s difficult to read. But it works brilliantly for search engines“, I read on someone’s blog.
What an idiot.
A professional copywriter will create smooth, flowing, beautifully written website copy. They’ll include key words and phrases subtly so they enhance the power of your copy.
Effective, naturally optimised website copy is readable and human. You can’t see the joins. Whereas you’d seriously injure yourself tripping over the search terms that this twit probably crowbars in.
SEO doesn’t increase conversion. You can have a million visitors but that doesn’t mean they’ll buy from you.
If you want sales, your site must be well designed, clearly written and easy to understand. There are loads of wannabee website copywriters out there but it isn’t a job for the faint hearted or inexperienced. If in doubt ask your copywriter to write you a free sample paragraph before letting them anywhere near your website!
