Entries Tagged 'seo' ↓

You may have been trying to ignore social media but whether you think it’s for you or not, it’s here to stay.

Leveraging the social power of the internet is vital for any business today regardless of industry. Understanding how to use it correctly is the key to success so you must come up with a strategy before you dive in.

The most important aspect of any social interation is listening. Without listening you won’t know what your customers are talking about, what’s important to them, or where they’re hanging out. After all, what’s the point in using visual channels such as YouTube and investing a shed load of cash in video marketing if your audience use Twitter and Facebook?

Listen – Content – Socialise – Measure

Those four words are the key stages of any successful social media strategy as identified by Lee Oden in his post 4 Steps to Social Media Success on toprankblog.com.

If you want to develop a great strategy that works it’s well worth a read. Lee helps you understand the importance of listening to identify where your market hangs out, the importance and types of content you can generate, how to socialise effectively and, most importantly, how to measure your effectiveness.

This basic structure will help you develop a strategy that will promote your brand, develop relationships with customers and potential business partners and generate content that will also help make you stand out in the search engine rankings.

Social media is here to stay. It will constantly evolve so now’s the time to get on board.

Keyword research (as opposed to keyword guessing) is vital if you want your search engine optimisation activities to bear fruit.

The words or phrases you decide to target will have a big effect on your website and its contents which is why it should be done before you begin the design process.

How can a few keywords affect your site?

Well quite easily. After all it’s not until you know what you’ll be targeting that you can:

• Create your on page text (SEO copywriting)
• Decide on your link building anchor text
• Work out your internet linking structure
• Decide on your site navigation
• Produce your page titles (title tags)
• Decide on your URLs
• Write your META tags

So as you can see it’s quite important that your keyword research comes first.

How to decide on your keywords

That’s all well and good but how do you begin the process of deciding on which words and phrases to target?

Here are 3 steps you can take to ensure you get the best possible match between your keywords and your target audience.

1. Be open to new ideas

Don’t go into the research blinkered to the ideas of others. You must remember that you are trying to find the words that other people search for to find your products and services, not necessarily the terms you would use.

The main thing is that the words you decide on must be relevant to your product or service. There’s no point in using a keyword that generates lots of traffic if it’s not pertinent to what you do. You’ll just end up with a lot of frustrated people.

2. Create word groups

Your starting point will be to generate a list of words that relate to your product/service.

Then, expand that list to incorporate names used in your industry for what you do. Expand this again with words used within the media for your product/service. Then, if you work in a specific locality, add in relevant geographical modifiers.

Then it’s time to use keyword research tools such as Google’s to further refine and expand your list.

3. Check competition and relevancy

The final step is to work out which are the best terms to go for.

Although you want to target terms that generate a lot of search traffic, you don’t want to pick something so competitive you won’t stand a chance of ranking for it.

This table below will help you determine which the best terms to try are:

That’s why keyword research is so important. Make sure it’s the first think you do before starting your web design process.

You know you have got to get to grips with SEO if you want your website to get noticed.

You also know a big part of that strategy will be the building of back links which means one thing – blogging.

The regular production of blog posts relevant to your business is essential to:

• Boost your link building activities
• Drive traffic to your sales site
• Add value to your customers
• Position yourself as an expert in your field
• Increase your online exposure

Whether you are a writer, designer, plumber or manager you can utilise the power of blogging to drive targeted traffic to your website.

But there’s always one thing that holds people back from giving it a go…

What on earth do I write about?

A blank mind coupled with the idea that you don’t have time to blog usually means you don’t try.

But there’s so much you could write about.

If you’re a copywriter like me you can provide tips on sales writing, marketing and using social media. If you’re a web designer you can talk about new thinking in your industry, how to structure a website, or how to get the most out of your site.

But what if you’re a manager, or supplier? You can still blog about your core business. Give hints and tips – if you are an intermediary to source gardeners for people, for example, you can blog about garden related issues, what to look for in a gardener – perhaps you could even get some of your gardeners to guest blog for you.

As long as what you are blogging about is relevant to your business it will help drive traffic if you utilise your keywords as anchor text back links (in the way I’ve linked the word ‘copywriter’ above).

How to get your ideas

That all sounds fairly straight forward but even I will admit to getting writers’ block now and then.

So when your mind goes blank what do you do?

Well, here are 8 tips to help you banish the dreaded block for good:

1. Fresh air brain storming

Get out of the office and go for a long walk. The fresh air and change of scenery will do wonders for your blankness. Take a note pad or Dictaphone with you so you don’t forget your blinding flash of inspiration when it strikes.

2. Write what you like

The best way to get the creative juices flowing is to write about something that interests you. You will already have the knowledge so no research is necessary and your passion for your subject will shine through.

3. What if…

Reading around your subject is a great way to spark ideas. Take a look at other blogs in your industry and see what other people are saying. If you find their writing interesting think about the subject from a different angle – that’s where the what if comes it.

4. Outline

It’s not very often someone can sit down and write an article straight off. If you have ideas buzzing round your head but can’t quite form them into an article list them as bullet points. This visualisation of ideas can often help you flesh them out into an interesting blog post.

5. Put it away

If you have managed to get a few ideas down but somehow it still doesn’t seem to gel, put it away for a day or two. Fresh eyes can often help craft it into an interesting and thought provoking post.

6. Magazine time

As with number 3, reading any sort of material can help the creative process – they don’t even have to be from your industry. An article in a magazine or newspaper can trigger an idea especially if a topical event can be seen to affect your industry.

7. Fancy a coffee?

Relaxing your mind will refresh it. Meet up with some friends for a coffee and a chat. Again you never quite know what will come out of your conversations; they could stimulate a great article idea. But if not, at least you’ve had time to recharge your batteries before returning to your desk and trying again.

8. Swipe file

No, I’m not talking about plagiarism! Your swipe file can be electronic or paper and should contain items you find of interest. As a writer, if I come across an effective sales letter I’ll save it, if I receive a brochure that’s particularly eye catching, I’ll save it. If I read a great article, I’ll save it. All of this is great information that can be used for inspiration when I need it.

Blogging is a great business tool and one that shouldn’t be ignored. Everyone can blog regardless of their industry or skill set. So give it a go – once you get the hang of it you’ll find that you really enjoy it.

Search engine optimisation is vital for today’s online businesses.

If you want to be found you have to make your website as visible as possible and the only way to do that is through a strong SEO strategy.

More and more companies are realising that PPC is find for short a term push (if you have the budget for it) but unless you have seriously deep pockets, it’s not a long term solution.

A winning SEO strategy

If you want to be an SEO winner you’ll need the following:

• A well-researched list of keywords
• A well designed website structured inline with your identified keywords
• A professional SEO copywriter on board who really knows what they are doing
• An ongoing link building strategy

But whatever you do don’t try and go for fast results. SEO is a slow burning entity. You won’t get overnight results but if you work at it constantly you will be rewarded by lasting high rankings that will bring a continuous stream of targeted traffic to your website.

What to avoid in your SEO strategy

I came across a post on Seomoz the other day entitled “32 SEO Tactics to Avoid in 2011” which gives you a run down of ‘black hat’ techniques that should be avoided at all costs.

Have a read through and make sure you’re strategy is above board. Also take a look at some of the comments—it is a post that generated a lot of debate about SEO.

I have written several posts in the past about the importance of search engine optimisation. For a newcomer to SEO arena there’s a lot to take in:

• Keywords
• Alt tags
• Header tags
• Title tags
• META descriptions
• Links

It can be very daunting trying to get to grips with what each of these terms mean, how to find the keywords your target audience are searching for and that’s even before you get round to thinking about how to produce SEO Copywriting that works, is relevant and interesting to your reader.

Have you got a headache yet?

So how can a complete beginner start to grasp the basics of SEO?

Well I could write an extremely long post about the intricacies of each elements but that would be boring and you’re unlikely to have the time to wade through it all. But, as it would just so happen, I stumbled across a superb post by Mike Mindel of WordTracker that takes you through all the main elements in a very simple-to-understand way.

In previous posts you would have seen me refer to Google’s keyword tool, well WordTracker is a similar tool to help you easily research and discover the keywords you need to target. It is a pay-to-use tool but you can try it out for free with their 7 day risk free trial. Check it out, it’s well worth it.

Anyway, back to the really important stuff. Mike has put together a video that runs through the basics of how to SEO your web pages. It explains in simple language how to find your keywords and how to use them in your title tags, META descriptions, heading tags and image tags as well as the importance of using diverse keywords and linking.

It’s about 19 minutes in length so grab a coffee, sit down and take a look by clicking the button below. It could be your first step to great rankings.