"Creative, clear thinking.
Right on the nail."

Ros Adams Project Manager, FilmCircle Ltd

useful websites

Getting found : The 'dark art' of search engine optimisation

Search engine optimisation is NOT the dark art that SEO companies would have you believe!

Google's aim is to return the best answers - the most relevant and credible results. Google looks at the words on your pages, at how many people are finding you and at who is linking to you.

Clearly, creating and maintaining a useful, respected website is key. If yours is a niche field, this may be all that is needed!

The rest of us need to maintain a list of keywords in order of importance and make sure they are included in key places.

It's easier to build links from sites where you create content yourself - forums and social sites, directories and review pages. Ask suppliers and industry associations to link to you. Encourage customers to share your content.

In addition to natural SEO, Pay-Per-Click advertising can bring amazing returns, because the spend can be accurately targeted and the results accurately measured.

Keywords and placement

Creating your keyword bible

The low hanging fruit is a keyword or phrase which prospects are searching for, but competitors are not using.

Your prospect may be looking for something entirely different when they 'happen' to find you.

Post-it notes are a truly wonderful invention! Use a large table and a whole pad (Post-its are also great for planning the website itself). Write a new note for every concept, keyword or keyphrase.

When finished, put them in order of importance, type up and save the list. Be selective, keep it manageable, select the 10 or so top keywords/phrases each time you do the exercise.

website and application app design for online sharing concept

FilmCircle is on page 1 for "DVD exchange" and "DVD swap"

Google Keyword Tool

This works best if you are signed in to Google. Paste in your Keyword Bible to generate new ideas, to eliminate over-popular/competitive keywords and to re-order the list.

As well as generating keywords from your existing list, you can input your URL or competitors' URLs.

Look for phrases that your customers are searching for but your competitors haven't included (high searches / low competition). Local searches are UK.

See : How to use Google Keyword Tool.

Writing for your website

Writing to attract Google is not going to produce interesting, respected content. Forget Google and write well. Then check that articles are keyword-rich and sprinkle in key places where sparce. See : Writing killer web copy

Location, location

The most important place for keywords is the URL, followed by page title, then headlines. So a pet insurance broker should...

  • Buy www.sams-pet-insurance.co.uk for example
  • Include their best keywords in the page title (the bar at the top) varied across different pages and relevant to that page.
  • Do the same with the headlines on the page.
  • Check keywords are used liberally in body text, headlines, page titles and tags.

Geography

Where a keyword is too competitive, consider adding town and county names. For example "pet shop" returns 238M results. "Pet shop Warwick" returns 2M results (see just below the search box). Google is now aware of the searcher's location.

Landing pages

Pages that contain articles and keywords that perhaps aren't necessary to the main site. They increase the chances of getting found. There must be a route toa page from the home page Google won't know it exists. A sitemap is good for this.

bespoke website design

"Jon pays high attention to detail and has been a pleasure to work with. He genuinely cares about his customers, putting in that extra discretionary effort."

Andrew Ward,
Managing Director,
Scorchsoft Ltd


External links

A directory of your competitors

Oh this is controversial! Why on earth would you create a landing page that lists and links to all of your competitors?

Sure, it's seen as useful and authoritative by Google or as a bold statement that you're not afraid of the competition!

This really gives a fighting chance of legitimately appearing in the search results when someone searches for your competitor's name. We think the pros outweigh the cons!

Forums

Find places to contribute articles and answers and link to your site. Be careful not to promote overtly as you'll be kicked out!

Facebook

Create a group or fan page. Make it attractive and keep it up to date, or it may do more harm than good. Look at LinkedIn and Twitter.

Share

Include buttons to like, share, tweet, bookmark or otherwise recommend content, in turn sharing with all the reader's contacts. Bookmarking tools include : Digg, Stumbleupon, Reddit, Delicious. Shareaholic is also useful.

bespoke website design

"...displays, flyers, leaflets and my fabulous website! Jon is great at getting me to think about what I need, he never uses jargon & always comes up with the goods"

Gwilym Roberts,
CEO
Relate Wales


Analytics

Running a website without Google Analytics is like dozing on the back seat whilst driving your car down the M1.

Analytics tells you...
How many people visited
Where they came from
What device they were using - computer or phone
What pages they looked at
How long they stayed
Where they left

If you ask nicely, we'll install Analytics on your existing site free of charge. We include Analytics on every site we build.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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