123-reg.co.uk

Whether you are directly selling via ecommerce or just have a landing page to let people know your contact details, the reason you created a web presence and the reason you are reading this blog is that you want people to find out about the products and / or services you offer.

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Image courtesy of ddpavumba / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Imagine a website’s Page Rank as a number that defines how many votes you’ve received from other websites. A high PR means more websites have linked back to you.

In theory, a website that has received more votes should be ranked higher.

But with votes, same as in the every-day world, these can be influenced. You can pay to have your link placed on a website or add it yourself instead of waiting for someone to genuinely recommend your site.

To ensure such manipulative strategies won’t work, when it comes to ranking, Google’s algorithms take into consideration over 200 factors! These are not all known and they keep changing as user needs evolve.

Just having a high PR (thus a lot of backlinks) doesn’t necessarily mean your website is also relevant for a search query. Because backlinks can be created artificially, these are not always the best indicator that a website is worthy of a good rank in Google’s result pages.

To ensure the delivery of relevant results, Google also looks at other factors such as:

• The age of your domain
• Where your website is hosted
• Your hosting neighbors
• URL structure
• Content
• Internal links structure
• Trust
• Keywords
• Bounce rate
• Outbound links

And even if your PR is good, Google also analyzes the quality of the websites linking back to you. A few of these quality indicators include:

• Total incoming links
• Backlinks from high-ranking pages
• PR of the referring page
• Anchor text of the inbound link
• Age of link
• Number of outgoing links on the referrer page
• Keyword density of the referrer page
• Type of link (image, JavaScript)

Please note these are just a few of the factors that weigh in Google’s decision to rank your website better than your competitors’.

There are no exact steps you can follow in order to convince Google that your website deserves to rank first. There are some guidelines though that can help you understand what search engines like and what they don’t like. Google even published a search engine optimization starter guide to help webmasters. Beside all the technical aspects, you’ll notice that the most important decisional factor for Google is the user experience. If you build your website having your visitors in mind, you’ll be covering most of the requirements from the guidelines.

So stop thinking about ways to rank higher and start thinking of ways to make your visitors enjoy their stay on your website.

Best way to do this is by creating interesting and unique content. This will not only make your visitors keep coming back for more but it can also help increase and diversify your backlink profile.

By offering the information they need, your visitors will do all the sharing in your place, be it on social media platforms or on their own websites.

Also pay attention to other issues that might offer a bad user experience such as slow loading pages, complicated menus and duplicate content.

Next time you see a website with a lower PR ranking better than you, just have a look and see what they’re doing for their users and you’re not. Your competitors can be your best friends when it comes to tips and tricks for pleasing visitors (and implicitly search engines).

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You’ve spent time writing catchy meta descriptions for your web pages, but you notice Google isn’t displaying them on the results page. Why is that? More importantly, what snippets of text is Google displaying instead and is it helping your site rank higher?

These are all valid questions we have asked ourselves when we discovered that major search engine Google is being a Meta Description puppet master, so we’ll try answering them in this post.

But first: what is the Meta Description tag? It’s a summary of a page’s content that helps users understand what information they’ll find on that page. For site owners, this is the snippet of text displayed by search engines on the results page. Meta descriptions are basically short “advertisements” that are meant to determine web users to click on your pages in the search results, rather than your competitors’ pages. This means it needs to sell.

The Google Meta Description puppet master

Some believe that once they have added meta descriptions for their web pages, search engines will pull those default meta tags and display them in the search results page. However, that’s not always the case as things have become more complex.

Google evaluates your default meta description but if it finds more keyword relevance in one of your page’s content, then it won’t use your custom meta description.

Our little experiment

For example, in the Google results for “domain names”, Google is displaying the following result for 123-reg.co.uk, which is our default meta description.

Now let’s do a little experiment and see what happens if we take a phrase from the domains landing page, one that’s not included in the meta description, and search on Google for that?

So, we ran a search on Google using this phrase:

… and this is what Google returned for our 123-reg domain names page:

Hm, that’s weird. As you can see, our default meta description is nowhere to be found and it’s now been replaced by the phrase we searched for along with some other on-page text.

This is not a singular case. It happens with any other site so here’s another example for you. We’ve done the same thing with the SEOMoz site.

This is the meta description displayed by Google when searching for “seo moz”:

Now run a search on Google using an onsite non-meta description term…

… and watch the default meta description disappear!

This can also happen with page titles, no matter how well-formulated or clear they are. According to Google, titles can change in search results to show their relevance to the user’s search query. The title tag you set for a web page is static, which means that it remains the same regardless of the users’ search queries.

However, Google can change the titles depending on the search query in order to show users results that are highly relevant to what they are looking for. So, the alternative title not only helps users find what they are searching for but also site owners by providing a title that is tailored to the users’ query which can increase the chances of click through.

So, what does this all mean?

For us, this has resulted in an increase in organic traffic and in time spent on site as well as a lower bounce rate. If you think about it, this makes perfect sense – when the descriptions on search engine results are personalised to a user’s search query, these are more relevant. If they’re more relevant you’d expect all of these improvements.

This change is in line with Google’s efforts to prioritise high quality and unique content over more traditional search engine optimisation techniques. Bottom line, Google is actually trying to help by providing accurate descriptions for websites that are good but run by people who don’t have the know-how to fiddle with meta data.

It seems doubtful Google will want to kill off meta data completely. A well-written, targeted description should really have the edge over a description picked out by an algorithm. On the other hand, what you need to understand is that every piece of content on your website needs to be well-written and unique because, from now on, it might just be your opening sales pitch.

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Google is constantly trying to improve its search engine results and help users find exactly what they’re looking for and fast. Now it has released a Data Highlighter tool that allows site owners to create structured data, currently only for events and only in English. Soon enough it will extend the functions for this tool to other data types and languages.

By using the Data Highlighter on your site, Google will be able to show rich snippets in its search results for your future events, concerts, exhibitions, etc. In other words, if you have a site where you list events such as upcoming concert dates, sports events or exhibitions you can use this great tool to have your events and general info about them listed on Google’s search results page.

The great thing about this new tool is that it’s so easy to use that you don’t have to be tech-savvy to use it on your site. You don’t even need to edit any code. You only have to click, drag and highlight the data fields and name them (for eg. Date, Address, Location, etc).

Getting started with Data Highlighter

To get started, go to Google’s Webmaster Tools and start tagging. Watch this short video that explains exactly what steps you need to follow to get started with Google’s Data Highlighter tool:

Another great thing about this tool is that if you use a specific format to list all your events, Google will crawl your site regularly for new event listing and will automatically add them to its search results. Google says that “5 or 10 manually tagged pages are enough for our sophisticated machine-learning algorithms to understand the other, similar pages on your site.”

However, it also mentions that using the Data Highlighter to add events data does not guarantee that your events will always show up in Google’s search results.

“Each product applies its own rules when deciding whether and how to display the data. For example, Google search results will display as rich snippets only for events that are in the future and that appear to be legitimate events,” Google mentions.

All things considered, this should not stop you from using it as it can only benefit your business.

What do you think about Google’s new Data Highlighter tool? Will you be using it for your business?

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SEO is such an unpredictable domain, constantly changing and putting the website owners’ patience to the test. The optimisation techniques that worked perfectly until yesterday can be considered history today after yet another algorithm update from Google. Even obscure codes like 7NVUUV33MHET come to have relevance and meaning in what we do.

This year, the Google Zoo has grown after the endless series of 2012 Google Panda updates and the algorithm change called Penguin. With so many changes, one question remains unanswered: white hat, black hat… or zebra hat link building?

To help answer this question, we’re going to go through all the major 2012 Google updates. This 2012 SEO overview will hopefully bring some light into what has changed in the way that Google evaluates a website for ranking.

We will also describe all the important 2012 Google updates, from the Panda updates bundle that were rolled out this year to the Penguin updates that were created to stop spam on the Internet and many others.

Image courtesy of Thanamat – www.freedigitalphotos.net

Ready? Let’s begin…

Panda updates bundle

Google rolled out several Panda updates in March and April but most of them were fairly routine updates with minimum impact. However, the Panda 3.4 update that was rolled out at the end of March 2012 coincided with a number of notifications sent to webmasters worldwide warning them about unnatural linking to their sites.

So, even though some site owners might have thought that they had the best kind of links, one of the Google Panda updates had a surprise in store for them. They received an important notice informing them that Google Webmaster Tools detected unnatural links to their site. Obviously, most site owners panicked until Google’s Matt Cutts explained they had nothing to worry about:

“If you received a message yesterday about unnatural links to your site, don’t panic. […] While it’s possible for this to indicate potential spammy activity by the site, it can also have innocent reasons. For example, we may take this kind of targeted action to distrust hacked links pointing to an innocent site. The innocent site will get the message as we move towards more transparency, but it’s not necessarily something that you automatically need to worry about.”

Parked domain bug

Another one of the 2012 Google updates focused on classifying the sites that were actually parked domains, meaning domains that had only ads and no other content. The purpose was to target parked domains or ‘placeholder’ sites so these wouldn’t rank on Google. However, Google mistakenly classified some sites as being parked domains even though they weren’t. As a result, some sites no longer ranked in Google. The issue was later solved as it wasn’t an intentional algorithm change but rather a data error.

Penguin updates

The Penguin updates are a group of the 2012 Google updates whose purpose is to stop webspam. Here is Google’s official explanation of Penguin: “a decrease in rankings for sites that we believe are violating Google existing quality guidelines”.

This year’s Penguin updates focused on site owners who abused Google’s quality guidelines by either stuffing their content with keywords or exchanging too many links. In other words, the Penguin updates penalised people who went beyond what is natural, such as:

• Hiding text

Using white text on white background or hiding text behind an image with the sole purpose of getting a few more keywords in are violations of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. Penguin has improved its detection of content for search engine optimisation that has been hidden using CSS.

• Keyword stuffing

This is probably one of the most significant changes that has come with the Penguin update. Google has improved its algorithm for detecting websites that are stuffing their content with keywords in order to rank higher.

• Unnatural external links

One of the major Penguin updates focused on penalising websites with unnatural external links as a result of excessive link building. Another important Penguin update was over-optimisation. This refers to having too many sitewide links from other sites, which could indicate a much too aggressive link building that includes but is not limited to excessive link acquisition, links exchange or over-optimised anchor texts.

As a result of these Penguin updates, in July 2012, many webmasters have received notifications from Google through Google’s Webmaster Tool warning them about having unnatural links linking to their websites.

The Pirate update

Not long after the Penguin updates, Google hit with yet another update. The ‘Pirate update’ was rolled out back in August with the purpose of penalising sites that have been repeatedly accused of copyright infringement. So, if Google receives a large number of ‘takedown’ requests against your site and after analysing it comes to the conclusion that your site violates copyright, then your site gets penalised. How? Google will cause your site to rank lower in search results.

Domain diversity update

A few months later, in September, Google rolled out yet another update, this time to improve domain diversity. The purpose of this update was to show search results from different domains and not just from one or two. This way, users can get a more diverse set of results.

Exact match domain crackdown

Domain names with exact keywords have been a commodity since the internet became a commercial marketplace. However, many have argued that Google gives too much weight to keywords included domain names. You have probably seen plenty of three, four or five keywords included in a single domain name and these are clear cases of abuse of keywords. So, at the end of September, Google rolled out another update disputing the relevance of certain EMDs.

So, which are the EMD most likely to be considered spam? The most important ones are multiple dash domains and domains with too many words.

Link Disavow tool

In October 2012, Google announced a new tool to disavow links. This can be useful if you’ve been notified by Google about having too many spammy, unnatural or low-quality links pointing to your site and if you believe that these may cause issues for your site. Find out more about this tool and how to use it for your site.

Too many ads above the fold

Also in October, Google released a new Page Layout Algorithm also known as the ‘above the fold’ update. This was designed to target pages with ads above the fold instead of content.

Here’s how Google’s Matt Cutts explains the update: “We’ve heard complaints from users that if they click on a result and it’s difficult to find the actual content, they aren’t happy with the experience. Rather than scrolling down the page past a slew of ads, users want to see content right away. So sites that don’t have much content “above-the-fold” can be affected by this change. If you click on a website and the part of the website you see first either doesn’t have a lot of visible content above-the-fold or dedicates a large fraction of the site’s initial screen real estate to ads, that’s not a very good user experience. Such sites may not rank as highly going forward.”

Changing rel=author tags in the search results

Last month, Google changed the way rel=author tags work in search results. The rel=author tag helps you show a by line and a photo next to your blog listings in the SERPs. The latest update refers to what happens when one clicks on the author name or by line. In the past, this would have taken you to the author’s Google+ profile. Now clicking on the author name or picture runs a new search for that author, displaying the author’s bio and even listings of recent blog post or status updates from the author’s page. If you’d like to find out how to implement rel=”follow”, make sure to read our dedicated post on the subject.

This 2012 SEO overview includes only the most important Google updates that have affected many site owners worldwide. Some have managed to recover while others are still trying. So, here comes our question for you: have any of the updates presented in this 2012 SEO overview affected your site? And if so, what have you done to recover?

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If content is King, then we can say that SEO is Queen (most of the times, a drama Queen). Everyone knows that article optimisation as well as creating fresh and engaging content can help you not only build a loyal following but also attract links.

This article is a short ‘Wordpress SEO for articles’ guide that you can use for article optimisation. So, make sure to bookmark it so you can easily access it whenever you need to write a search-engine- friendly post for your blog. It will explain how to optimise articles in order to achieve a better search engine visibility and get more organic traffic to your site. How do I know this? Because WordPress SEO works for us.

Let’s begin…

SEO for WordPress blogs

To make it easier for you to understand how WordPress SEO works, I’ve chosen a random post from our 123-reg blog so I can describe the exact steps to simple article optimisation.

Add a title for your post

The first step to optimise articles is by setting a correct title. Usually, the title of your post will be used to create the URL so here are three main things you need to consider:

• Use your main keyword in the title
• Try to place the main keyword at the beginning of the title.
• Keep it as short as possible.

Double check the URL

If you’re using special characters in your title (like apostrophes, quotes or pound signs) check out the URL to ensure these characters don’t appear inside the URL. If they do, then use the EDIT button and remove anything extra aside from words, numbers and hyphens used for separating words.  A shorter title means a shorter URL which can only help because long URLs are never fully displayed in search engines’ result pages.

Optimise articles for specific keywords

When it comes to WordPress SEO for articles, you want to make sure your post turns up in search engines’ result pages for certain terms. Thus, I recommend you employ your main keyword a minimum of three times throughout the copy as it will help that word(s) to be perceived as a keyword.

• Don’t use it in consecutive sentences;
• Don’t use it too often as it will fall into keyword stuffing. While correct SEO for articles is important, making your posts informative, useful and attractive should be your main focus. You want your readers to read and enjoy the articles you write so that they become loyal readers.
• SEO for articles also means using synonyms and variations of your keyword across the post and not the same keyword over and over again.

Adding URLs

You also need to pay attention to the website addresses that you include in your post as these are also contribute to the correct SEO for articles on your site. When adding an URL into your post, check it to ensure it’s functional, is not redirected and doesn’t open a 404 page and…

• ALWAYS start URLs with HTTP://
• Use descriptive anchor texts, even if these are long.
• Avoid “click here” anchors in favour of “Visit our Website Builder page”, for example.

Adding images

The descriptions you give to the images included in your post are also important part to WordPress SEO. When adding images to your post, make sure you add an ALT tag. Just go to HTML editing and in the <img> tag you will see alt=””.  Wordpress adds it automatically without assigning it a value. Add a short description between the quotation marks that best describes the image you used to help with SEO for articles.

SEO for articles 101

When it comes to SEO for WordPress blogs, there are a few things you must keep in mind when adding the meta title and meta description for your post:

 1. Meta TITLE

• The maximum length for SEO for articles should be 68 characters, including spaces.
• WordPress can automatically add your brand name at the end of every title if you want it to. So, if you choose this feature, then keep in mind that the name will add up to the total number of characters in the meta title.
• Make sure your title isn’t too long. I recommend a maximum of 68 characters including your brand’s name and character spaces.
• Use your main keyword at the beginning.

2. Meta DESCRIPTION

• Maximum length should be 154 characters, including spaces.
• You can use the first paragraph if it contains the main keyword and doesn’t go over 154 characters.
• You can write your own in which case you should use the main keyword to ensure correct SEO for articles.

3. Meta Keywords

Find out which search engines sends your most traffic to decide if meta keywords are really necessary. If most visitors come from Google, then you can leave the Meta Keywords box blank as Google ignores the meta keyword tag included in the article optimisation. Other search engines like Yahoo and Bing still give the tag some value.

As you can see, SEO for WordPress blogs can be a child’s play if you can spare five minutes for every post you publish. And you definitely should because WordPress SEO can help you get more traffic to your site and also increase your site’s rankings.

Are you using WordPress SEO to optimise your blog posts? In your experience, has SEO for articles helped you get more traffic to your blog/ site?

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Matt is the founder and CEO of Domainmonster.com, which was acquired by the Host Europe Group in May 2012. On joining the Group Matt was appointed ‘Head of Domain Strategy’ and is now responsible for managing its international domain portfolio and strategic development.

When Matt founded Domainmonster.com in 2006, he had a vision for a registrar that could offer exceptional pricing, whilst still delivering old fashioned superior no wait customer support. Prior to founding Domainmonster.com, Matt held various Senior Technical Marketing roles in marketing and technology companies including Adobe, Quark & Vertis.

Mansell’s initial interest in domains came when working for Adobe in 2001. For Mansell, it was striking that domains were never considered core business for Hosting providers, something that presented an enormous opportunity. ‘Having a domain is imperative, especially when developing a brand. A domain allows the consumer to feel connected.’

For anyone looking to start their own businesses, it is Mansell’s assessment that having the right domain is decisive. No matter how great your design is, or how effective your offline marketing may be, Mansell believes that you are fighting a losing battle if you do not have the most appropriate domain to deliver your brand.

‘When I began, it was a difficult process of acquiring what we started to call the Monopoly set of domains. We started by registering the available Meshdigital.net. We then purchased Meshdigital.com and then added the .co.uk with a successful backorder. Over the years, we then acquired, or caught via backorders, various uses of the brand Domainmonster and international extensions of it. Despite this process being costly in the short term, it allowed us to establish a real brand which has been pivotal to the continued success of Mesh.’

With that being the case, it may seem somewhat daunting for a novice to know what domains are right for their business, a point Mansell is more than happy to offer his advice on. ‘The three most important TLD’s are always:com, .net, .org and of course your local TLD, in my case, .uk.. If you see your business expanding into Asia or Europe, make sure you purchase the top level domains of those countries most important to your business. Of course, the .com is hugely important but local TLD’s are pivotal to any business, as are emerging domains that have been very successful like .co and .me. I would encourage anyone with aspirations of starting their own business to invest in the future and acquire the right domains as soon as you can and most importantly while you can.’

When Mansell started Domainmonster.com, many may felt that the domain market was saturated, and that a new entrant couldn’t compete in the space, but Mansell does not believe that should dissuade anyone with a business idea. ‘There are two ways to make money, be it niche or mass market, but better than that– we ended up being both as Domainmonster.com’.’

Any entrepreneur who decides to sell their business clearly makes one of the toughest decisions of their career. It may have been easier for Mansell to stick with Mesh but his reasons for selling were clear. ‘Selling Mesh to make money was never my plan. After eight years, the decision to sell was difficult, but every business has its lifecycle – its own natural progression. I was once told that any business needs about ten years to mature before becoming successful – so I was happy to achieve it in 8!’

When talking with Mansell you quickly glean that this was the right sale. The selling of Mesh to the Host Europe Group provided Mansell an opportunity to return to big business but also to stay connected with the IP he created at Mesh in his new role as Head of Group Domain strategy. ‘I wanted to return to big business. In a strange sort of way, I wanted to get back into the politics and challenges that a big business throws at you. The sale of Mesh afforded Mesh access to the faster growth and infrastructure of the wider Host Europe Group business and put me back in the hot seat of big business’

Mansell’s commitment to his job is phenomenal. Those who have worked with him will testify to his total commitment and passion for what he does, something Mansell believes can be accredited to his own personal success. ‘Without doubt, passion is part of it. I have never seen myself as having to do a job, because it has never been a chore for me. Every day’s a holiday and always has been.  I can’t wait to go to work on a Monday.

‘Your greatest resource is your own hard work. If you do not know something about how to improve your business, go out and learn it. You are the resource! If you think that you can come into the office at nine and leave at five, you will never be successful. You need to slog it out and make the most of the opportunity for that day. That often means late nights, early starts and an ability to turn stress into action.’

As Mansell alluded to, the day to day running of business is something an entrepreneur should thrive on. ‘The best piece of advice given to me was to get away from the admin. You can’t get bogged down with it. The only way you will be successful during the day is to be doing business. Sending emails all day is not a valuable use of time, sometimes this simply has to be done out of hours or you’ll sink and never reach your destination. The nine to five working day has to be about doing business with whatever tools work for that day –  you should never lose sight of this.’

So what about ideas that haven’t taken off? In Mansell’s view, it is extremely important to be open and honest with yourself, especially if you are a one man band. ‘Everyone in business will make mistakes, but you must learn from them. The single worst thing you can do is be blind to reality. Not every idea you have will be the best in the world, sometimes you have to take it on the chin and move on.’

Being acutely aware of how to manage your business in the most effective way is the reason Mansell believes entrepreneurs are ultimately successful. So what final advice would Mansell give to somebody wanting to set up their own business? ‘Make sure you manage money effectively, manage, protect and create intellectual property and of course, actively acquire, defend and develop your brand with your domain portfolio.’

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Nick Leech started his career in the magazine publishing industry, joining Future Publishing as an Advertising Manager. Leech began selling advertising space for companies in publications including .Net, Internetworks and Business 2.0. In 2000, Leech recognised an opportunity in the market and along with a colleague set up Euston Digital, an agency specialising in search engine marketing. In 2012, Leech was headhunted by the Host Europe Group as its new Group Marketing Director.

Nick Leech sat down with 123-reg to offer his personal experience and give his advice to young entrepreneurs in 2012.

So how did Leech go from selling advertising to running his own successful search marketing business? Leech began with an initial belief that he could do things better, a thought many people in business hold. ‘Euston Digital wasn’t about creating a unique product but more about providing a service that was better than the competition. This was my true inspiration – I knew I could do it better than others.’

Nick Leech is an entrepreneur, despite his own modesty. Realising ones potential is sometimes the main stumbling block, something anyone who wants to start their own business can learn from. While Leech may be somewhat embarrassed to be described as an entrepreneur, his non-traditional path into the business world and story of success should be inspirational to those who might one day takes the plunge. ‘I wouldn’t describe myself as a typical entrepreneur, because I have always seen my investment as low risk. Added to that, the economic environment was better in 2000. Maybe where I am different is I have always seen commercial potential in an idea.’

When you have a great idea and can compete with the competition, there is no need to borrow vast sums of money. ‘When we created Euston Digital there were a lot of people doing things badly, a lot of money was around at the time and there was a serious opportunity if we did it correctly.’

What makes Leech’s story so relevant is that it was not a unique idea, in many ways this is what sets him apart. Leech’s story is one for the masses, an individual who was good at something and had the passion and determination to make it a success. ‘That eureka moment normally costs a great deal of money. What people can take from my experience is to do what you are good at and do it well. The only real cost should be your time and passion.’

It is the Marketing Director’s belief that commitment, passion and skill are essential ingredients for anyone wanting to set their own business up. ‘Working within the service industry, what set us apart was the effort we put in for our clients. Clients saw the passion and the extra effort we were putting in for them. That goes a long way.’

So what advice would Leech offer those wanting to gain a presence on search engines? ‘When you start a business you need to be thinking about how you can rank well on Google. The sooner you do it, the better for your business. There is a perception that this opportunity has been taken by big corporations. However, upstarts are constantly finding way to challenge and even beat large competitors.

‘Do not feel like the ship has sailed. There is still so much potential online.’

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SEO is not a set-it-and-forget it process. You can’t just work a few hours on your on-page SEO and then expect your site to climb to the top position on Google. If this were possible, a lot of us would be out of a job.

Optimising your site for search engines takes time and if you do it white-hat you can build the level of trust that Google searches for when it determines what results to return. No one can deny the importance of on-page SEO as you need a clean and easy to crawl architecture, a solid on-site linking structure and content that is optimised for strong keywords. However, on-page SEO is not enough. You still need to build trust and authority on search engines. If there’s no trust, then it’s unlikely that your site will have any chance of competing with others in the industry.

So, how can you gain trust with links?

Have popular bloggers review your product

Getting high-quality links from authority sites that are already trusted by search engines is the way to go. These sites have already earned trust for their niche and by getting some love from them via links your site will also earn some trust. For example, if you are selling shoes online, you want to get some love via links from quality shoes or clothing related sites.

A fantastic way to do this is to have popular bloggers review your products. There are plenty of authority bloggers that are known to write reviews about various project so what you can do is to reach out to them and make them an offer they cannot refuse. For instance, you can send them your product for free so they can test it and write a review about it. So, they get a great product while you get the word out there about your product. It’s a win-win.

Create content that people will want to share

Use content marketing to create a clever or hilarious message/ infographic/ video, etc that raises awareness on your brand. If it’s amazing, people will not hesitate to share it again and again. Sure, not all the links you acquire will come from trusted sources, but some of them will make it all worth it.

Send out press releases

This is the easiest thing you can do to increase your link profile. Use a distribution service, free or paid, to share your press releases but make sure these are of interest for your customers and potential clients. If your press release is not newsworthy, then it’s not worth reading it. We’ll talk about how to optimise your press release in a future post.

Your turn now. What are you doing to climb the ranks in search engines?

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If the science of search engine optimisation is too much for you to get your head around and the budget won’t stretch to some expert advice, here’s six top tips to help you on the right tracks.

Be passionate

If you are not excited about the topic you are writing about, you will struggle to convince your audience to get excited too. If you are passionate about a topic it will come out clearly in your writing and if it’s a passion you will find it easier to write too. Being passionate also means you will more likely know and use the buzzwords that people interested in your topic will be searching for, that makes for great SEO.

Be Expert

Niche topics naturally won’t find mass general traffic but if you can offer information, thoughts, opinions that can’t be found elsewhere then you are far more likely to develop good traffic for your ‘expertise’. Unique content like that helps you rise higher up the competitive search engine rankings too, so the more likely you will get additional hits too. That’s sharp SEO.

Use descriptive titles

The way you head your pages, is a signpost to visitors but also to search engine bots crawling your site. Using words that clearly describe the content on those pages makes it easier for people to find your pages. Weight is given to these titles too, so if you can sum everything up in a short title you increase your chances of getting a better listing.

Use conversational language

If you want searches to find your pages, fill those pages with the language they will be searching for. Buzzwords and technical jargon will be great for a few but to reach a wider audience you need to be using those words the majority of people are using.

Link beyond

You know those bits at the end of TV programmes where they drive you back to their website…..”to find out more go to our website….” They do that because it works. It aids engagement with your original piece and topic and drives people to look for more. So if you have a blog, link beyond for more information on your main site. Externally linking can work to an extent too. Although driving traffic to other sites may not be ideal, may those links open in another window and you won’t necessarily have lost your customer. If the link works and informs them then they will be more likely to return to you as the site that first signposted those facts. Links to other sites can help your SEO too, so linking to sites you perhaps have a favourable relationship with can make great sense.

Keep it short and sharp

It’s not rocket science so don’t overdo the words. Use understandable vocabulary that explains things sweet and simply.

Short, sharp SEO

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