• Outsourcing SEO: The Pro’s and Con’s of Hiring an SEO Agency

    Are you still at the crossroads about whether to hire an SEO agency or not? Many business and website owners can relate to this dilemma though, so you should not be all that scared about figuring out the pros and cons of paying companies that provide search engine optimisation  services.

    Pros

    There are many advantages that you can get from relying on outside resources to promote your business online. Knowing the following advantages would likely convince you now to hire SEO specialists:

    • Cut down on your workload. As if it isn’t enough that you have to take care of your business and make sure that you’re still making money, you also have to think about how to keep the public aware of your products and services. You can focus more on managing your business if you hire experts who know what the latest SEO techniques are. You will also have the assurance that all the services will be provided by skilled and devoted staff from analysts and copywriters to editors and marketing professionals. All these people work as a team with the ultimate goal of optimising your website and increasing its ranking in the search engine results page. You can also hire consultants if you want to develop in-house services.
    • Expect professional help. Given the fact that you will get your services from an established online marketing company, you can expect that only professionals will handle your project. These experts would determine what your website needs after careful analysis, then come up with methods to increase your ranking in the SERP without the risk of doing something unethical. Good SEO service providers only pursue white hat techniques, such as organic link building, blogging, and other methods that require providing the web users with fresh, useful, and relevant content. The staff will provide all the help that you need to ensure a sustainable success for your website.
    • Save time and money. If you hire a professional Internet marketing firm, you won’t need to train your own staff, which would have cost you a lot of time and money on your part. The good news is that the competition between the different firms has led to the availability of services with very competitive prices.
    • Conduct a fairly easy brand awareness campaign. As what was mentioned before, the ultimate goal of SEO efforts is to increase the visibility of your website in the search engine results page. This can be achieved through guest blogging, link building, directory submission, article marketing, meta tag development, keyword analysis, keyword selection, website analysis, and similar techniques. All these methods would aim to increase your conversion rates. Your website visitors will turn into customers who actually buy from you.

    Cons

    The biggest drawback in hiring SEO agencies is that you won’t be in full control of your online business. Remember that you will be handing the reins to the promotion of your business to outsiders, who are also likely to  promote themselves as experts. That’s why it is even more important to screen all the companies that are offering their services to you.

    The worst thing about entrusting your online promotions to outsiders is the feeling of being kept in the dark. It can be quite frustrating if you don’t know what is going on with your business or how it is perceived by the market. You will also have to pay them for whatever it is that they are doing, especially if you hired a company that does not provide results-oriented services. Regardless of the results, you are required to pay them for their services. However, you can avoid this by hiring a company that fosters transparency in providing their services. They will consult with you, tell you what they are about to do, what the expected results are, and what actually happened after the plans were implemented.

    In the name of transparency, the team will try to explain to you their process of promoting your business online. You have to at least learn the basics about SEO. It would be even better if the service provider will let you give some input and update you about what they are doing with every major step in the process. You will still feel a bit in control over your website instead of being alienated from the project.

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  • Why Content Is Becoming a Huge Part of Any Marketing Campaign

    In 2013, search engines are all about content. This is expected to continue in 2014, especially with the fierce emphasis of the executives from Google and Bing to promote good user experience. Copywriting services will likely become more in demand this year.

    Search engines define quality user experience as the ability of the users to find the answers in that they are looking for in your high quality content. This is worth pursuing given how becoming popular online and offline all boils down to good content.

    Content Is Effective in SEO

    According to marketers, 92% of their population rely on content creation for search engine optimisation. A survey even showed that it is still the most effective promotional strategy there is. However, the post-Panda times make it hard to pass any content as a good one.

    Content Marketing Is All About The Content

    If you want to establish contact and influence your market, you will need to pay them back with information, which is often seen as a valuable currency these days. This further emphasises that content is still king. A marketing campaign will lose steam quickly if it is based on bad content. To get long-lasting results, you need to produce good content at all times. This might mean a costly investment on your part, but it will be paid back in terms of increased visibility and better ROI.

    Remember how search engines like Google really appreciate high quality content. This will in turn earn you broader search coverage, which can lead to increased website traffic that increases the ROI.

    The Role of Content in Inbound Marketing

    You can use content to attract the attention of your target customer during the different phases in their relationship with you in the following ways:

    • Knowing-you phase. Blog content can be used during this stage because this is when you can introduce your products or services through organic search. This may later give way to premium contents from seminars and eBooks. The blogs might be your first point of contact with the customer so if you’re not that confident about writing them, you can hire SEO experts that provide copywriting services.
    • Liking-you phase. The customers’ awareness of your business should be nurtured with the use of newsletters. This is when you can show them the extent of your knowledge, expertise, resources, and experience without overselling yourself. The newsletters may be eBooks or a series of emails composed of several blog posts.
    • Trusting-you phase. Once you have captured the attention of your target customers, they have to learn to trust you. You can gain their trust through case studies, customer-generated videos, and customer success stories. It also helps if you get links, considered as votes of confidence, from other websites and good words from your customers through social media. During this phase, many customers who genuinely love your offers would be more than happy to participate in producing content for you.
    • Trying-you phase. This phase is often neglected, but it is actually a good motivator to convince people to buy from you. The appropriate content here would be offline and online seminars, eBooks, and survey processes. At this point, you will have to deliver sample products or services at a zero or lower cost. You may also want to rely on workbooks, videos, checklists, and examples.
    • Buying-from-you phase. This is another phase that many business owners missed out on during their marketing campaigns, thinking that customers have already bought from them anyway. However, it will significantly improve customer experience if you educate them about your products and services using content, such as an orientation or a new customer kit about what you are selling. You can give them in-depth user manuals or quick start guides.
    • Repeat-buying-from-you phase. You would not want to wait around until the customers will realise that they still need your products and services. Enlist the help of your customers in spreading their success stories showing how good your offerings are.
    • Refer-you phase. Make referrals easy on the part of your existing customers by developing certain tools for them. Work with your copywriting services to come up with content that will make introducing your business to other clients less challenging for your loyal customers.

    Content creation is certainly an important aspect of any marketing campaign. It ushers new customers to your business, make them loyal to you, remind them of you, and help them convince other customers to come to you too.

  • Ecommerce Design and Usability

    Ecommerce design and usability factors have an extraordinary impact on the success or failure of a webpage. Optimizing your ecommerce site according to best usability and design standards is a must for all entrepreneurs thinking of jumping on the bandwagon with an online business. Here are a few tips and guidelines on ecommerce usability and design.

    Perfect Design in ecommerce:

    Ecommerce design is not all about fancy eye-catching colours, layouts; Instead it should be something that shows your visitors how professional and high quality your services/product are/is. If your visitors don’t understand what you sell and cannot figure out how to use your page to find out then they wont spend anything. It is also highly important to develop and design your ecommerce site focusing on SEO factors because more searches means more sales which mean more earnings. Some other key factors to keep in mind are:

    • Categorise products
    • Use easier navigation system
    • Recommend related products
    • Use breadcrumbs
    • Provide internal searching facility
    • Test cross browser compatibility

    Usability Practices that Build Trust:

    Trust plays a vital role in ecommerce. If visitors don’t find your site to be a trust worthy legit site, then you will never be able to generate profit through ecommerce. Use the usability practices that help establishing trust in market and have already been through trial and error:

    • Provide your real and available contact info
    • Use logos, Trustmark’s and security badges of your payment methods in your shopping cart to make them more trust worthy.
    • Disclose all hidden costs; return ability issues, security issues, shipping costs and others.

    Best Usability Practices in Checkout:

    Checkout process affects the actual number of sales in ecommerce. If you can make the checkout process simple and quick to use then visitors will more be more likely to buy from your site. Sometimes complexity and confusion in this process create barriers for customers. So, always try to adopt the best checkout process practices such as:

    • Let them purchase without registration
    • Show a confirmation page before they submit the order
    • Break up the checkout process into number of easily understood steps
    • Show order details with each and every cost associated with it
    • Show easily visible and understood checkout button and shopping cart
    • Don’t ask for unnecessary information

    Ecommerce Design Factors – Layout Trends:

    You must make an appropriate layout for your ecommerce site. The trendy ecommerce layouts have content, rich and longer homepages with fixed headers. Another big issue is responsiveness. Now we are seeing more and more visitors using mobile devices and tabs to access ecommerce sites. So, make sure that your site is responsive in nature so that anyone can get the actual layout of your site using whatever device they have. Some other factors that are an absolute must for the current trend are:

    • Larger visual elements
    • Social media badges
    • Product comparison section (if needed)
    • Promo products section

    Well, there are lots of them. But you must keep an eye on the market as with everything in the world evolution is prominent online. Here comes the issue of flexibility in design and usability. Make sure when doing changes that your ecommerce design is easy enough to readjust effectively at any time. Also keep continuity on the standard of usability of your ecommerce site. This will ensure that customers you already have will not be startled by changes and it is still a comfortable way for your visitors to surf your page.

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  • Affordable Website Design

    In the age of technology that we live in today it has become essential for each and every company to have a web presence. This is to effectively market one’s products and services. Even individuals now have their own websites. But if you run a business or an organization, then you will definitely need to have a website to create awareness about your services, or risk not making anywhere near as much potential customers and profit as you could be making.

    To create a website doesn’t need to be taxing on your wallet, with only a little money on the Internet you can go a long way. You have a few affordable web design options. Even if you are not technology literate or you just don’t have the manpower to develop your website online, you can always hire the services of a reputed design firm to take the heavy load of your hands. However, you cannot just pick a company and let them take over the design phase for you. You want to do some research and use a few important criteria that I will go on to explain to you now.

    First of all, check to see that the company you are interested in has a nice back catalogue of clients who they have created websites for. Go through this catalogue to see the quality of their work. See if there style matches what you are looking for and see if you they have made websites for any companies that have similar products or services as your own. This will give you an idea of how your website will turn out when they design it for you. So, research is key. Make sure you have checked them out before deciding on hiring them or not.

    Secondly, when the Internet was still in its infant phase. Companies charged fortunes for a simple little website. Now it has all changed. You want to find a company that charges a reasonable price for the services. Usually companies that charge you outstanding amounts will also try to squeeze as much more out of you as possible.

    Finally, choose a company that will give you a free quote for their web services. Some companies may not have a price on hand and you want to avoid these services. Go for a company that is transparent and is ready to give you a free quote for their services right from the start.

    There are lots of different website design services out there, but not all of them would be up to your standard. Some might be well known companies and well respected, this means they could charge heavily for their services. Others may provide services at a reasonable rate, but their quality may be lacking severely. Therefore use this simple criteria to choose a business that is not only established, well reputed and will carry out your web design needs, but will also match the budget you have set. Select a company with a good back catalogue, which can provide a free quote for an affordable web design service. This will help you to find the balance between quality and cost. Therefore getting you a professional looking website at a price that makes your wallet smile.

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  • Why Ethics and Ethical SEO Is On the Rise?

    These days, given all the changes from Google, it would be suicide for you to still use less than ethical SEO efforts. That’s why it is important that you at least know the difference between good and bad search engine optimisation efforts. A single mistake may cost you the entire website, which would be such a huge waste of resources on your part.

    Ethical search engine optimisation refers to the methods used to optimise websites for the readers and web visitors rather than for search engines. This is the basic difference between white and black hat SEO techniques.

    Unethical Tactics Explained

    You may know the black hat tactics, which include the following:

    • Developing content that creates a poor user experience
    • Violating the rules imposed by search engines
    • Using content that is meant more to gain the attention of search engine spiders instead of providing useful information to the users

    These tactics used to be such a hit years ago. They were even considered legitimate back then. However, the excessive and improper use of these methods caused the search engines to brand them as unethical. Keyword stuffing is probably the most popular example of these black hat SEO techniques. It refers to the method of using a lot of keywords in a content, even if they are not really relevant to the topic.

    Other forms of unethical SEO include doorway pages and invisible text. Doorway pages can’t be seen by users. They are mainly used to engage search engine spiders to give the site a higher ranking. Invisible text, on the other hand, makes use of keywords that are coloured in the same way as the background. It could be white on white or black on black, which means they can’t be seen by users but are certainly scanned by search engine spiders. These are tricks used to deceive the bots for a higher SERP ranking. If these methods are used now, you will surely get penalised.

    Despite these risks though, there are still a lot of businesses willing to use these bad practices. They produce quick yet temporary results, making it seem like they are effective at first. But when you’re caught, the penalties would range from having a reduced website ranking in the SERP to being banned.

    What Is Ethical SEO?

    Given the risks that the use of black hat methods entail, website owners, businesses, and marketers realised that the only way to get sustainable and improved results is to use white hat SEO techniques. Add to that the fact that Google has made major changes in its algorithms, being ethical does seem like the best approach towards reaching the first page of the SERP.

    In white hat SEO, the methods used are those in compliance with the search engine’s guidelines. It is usually about giving users informative and relevant content.

    Content has always been king, but this point has been emphasised now more than ever with the introduction of the Penguin and Panda updates that are designed to ensure a good user experience. Lower quality sites are pushed back in the rankings, while sites with original content are being sent higher up in the SERP.

    Content optimisation is best done using targeted keywords. Avoid overusing keywords though if you don’t want to be thought of as using keyword stuffing methods. Content should be original. It can stay unique through regular updates. But the most important thing to remember is to create content for the users, not for the search engines. Otherwise, users would be discouraged to visit your site and search engines may catch you and ban you from their results page.

    Meta tags should be used in your white hat promotional efforts. These include title, description, and keywords and serve as an overview to the users and search engines. These tags should be original and relevant to the web page content.

    For directory submissions, content should be submitted under relevant categories. A sitemap would help search engines find the links on the site quickly.

    Although it would take time for the results to show from ethical SEO methods, they would be long lasting and significant. Temptations to use unethical efforts may be strong, but it’s just not worth it considering how smart Google and other search engines have become.

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  • Why You Can’t Just Dabble In SEO

    If you are looking into implementing a search engine optimisation strategy, you might want to look into outsourcing this part of your plan rather than doing it yourself. Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is an art and a science, which you cannot learn after reading a text or sleeping on a book overnight. SEO campaigns and strategies need expertise, patience, time, dedication and focus for it to work. However, if you are really interested on doing this part of your online marketing yourself, you always have the option to learn SEO on your own time.

    So you want to learn SEO?

    You should know what activities are involved in it. Of course, the advantage of learning SEO is that you will have the opportunity to learn the ins and outs of the SEO market. You would know the fundamentals and the basic foundation of a successful SEO campaign. To learn SEO means that your company has gained an asset out of you.

    You have then acquired a new set of skills that can help the performance of your company online. If you learn how to implement an SEO campaign, you don’t have to worry about the progress of your campaign as you can monitor the project first hand. You will also have full control of what is going on with the project, and you can constantly monitor the employees working on it.

    However, executing a sound SEO is not that easy. As mentioned, SEO is an art and science that needs expert hands and minds. If you are ready to learn SEO, you should be ready to do investigative work and research:

    • You should know that SEO involves the use of keywords and keyphrases that are relevant to your company, niche and industry.
    • You should also learn how to do On-page Optimisation and Off-page Optimisation.
    • You should also familiarize yourself with white hat SEO and black hat SEO.
    • You would also need to learn how to monitor and adjust your campaign that it stays current, fresh, and relevant to search engines and to your consumers.

    These are the basic things you need to know if you want to learn SEO. It may take some time for you to find and absorb information that you need, especially when misleading information is available on the internet. If you are not in a hurry to launch your website, you can learn SEO as you go. However, if you already have a website and is eager to drive traffic to it, you always have the option to outsource this part of your plan and have professionals under your employ.

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  • With So Many Types of SEO, Which is Best?

    There are so many types of SEO services that it can be quite confusing for the business clients and website owners to choose from. Online marketing firms seem to have come up with new services in their bid to entice more clients and amaze them with such. However, such offerings will not work unless they are customised to meet the goals of your online promotions.

    Discussion with Consultants

    Usually, the firms would tell you that they will let you discuss your requirements and aspirations for your website with their expert SEO consultants. Think of it as a brainstorming session wherein you will formulate comprehensive strategies to position the website in your target market, increase its visibility, and boost its traffic for you to profit from your site. All these strategies will always have customer loyalty, brand awareness, and sales development at their core to ensure that you will have increased ROI.

    Typical SEO Services

    During the consultation, online firms usually offer the following:

    • Audit. The consultants will check your site, monitor it, and assess all the changes that will help optimise it.
    • Content optimisation. Content should be developed for the readers’ benefit, not the search engines. The firm should review and change your content for easier search engine bot indexing, without forgetting that they should be informative and relevant to your business. This is how good user experience is ensured, as per Google’s guidelines.
    • Blog posting. This solution is more about producing optimised blogs that talk about  your products and services. It could be a technical description or a review of your offerings to the market. If they are done well, they can gain the attention of the web users and turn them into potential or actual customers.
    • Article submission. This is almost like blog posting, although it is more about comprehensive writing. It is more formal than the casual tone used  in blogging. However, both services can be used to directly talk to the customers and lead them to your website.
    • Image optimisation. Not all the images that you use on your website can be seen by visually challenged web users. They might not even be crawled by search engine spiders.  This is why experts can optimise your images and get them indexed to help you get a good ranking in the search engine page results.
    • Directory submission. This is one of the oldest types of SEO services that still work now. That is, if you ensure that your content will be submitted to relevant categories. This can help broaden the visibility of your website online since website owners and webmasters often source some of their content from reputable directories.
    • Link building. This is among the most effective off-page optimisation techniques that you can still use now. Links are established from another site to yours through your blog posts, profile, forums, image posts, blog commenting, and articles. With this method, web users who are interested in your products or services can simply click on your link and be redirected to your website.
    • Social media marketing. This is considered as one of the rising stars among all the SEO methods that can be used these days because of how search engines are giving more attention to social media. If you don’t have a Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn account, you’re losing so many opportunities to get a better ranking, not to mention to establish a platform for a direct communication with your market.
    • Mobile SEO. Considering how there is an increasing number of people who are now using mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, to access the Internet, your website should be accessible through mobile search engines too, such as Google’s.
    • Multilingual optimisation. If you want to expand your business worldwide, multilingual solutions will make your site more accessible to international customers.
    • Location-based referencing. Users will be provided information about local businesses or services.
    • ECommerce solutions. These are services designed for eCommerce sites, which are meant to help boost relevant traffic and sales.

    Which Is The Best?

    If you are keen on knowing which is the best SEO service among the ones mentioned above, there is no definite answer to that. What is more important is what your website needs, what your marketing goals are, and what solutions can reach out to your market more. For instance, social media marketing might be the best approach for a company selling the latest gadgets, seeing how the market of a younger generation would spend more time in their social media accounts. Everything should be customized to your website’s needs. The best among these types of SEO service is also one that is in full compliance with the search engine guidelines and one that is developed ultimately for the users.

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  • Definition of Responsive Web Design

    What is responsive web design? In essence it is when the design of the website responds to the dimensions of the screen. In lamens terms, a website built to be responsive, takes note of the height and width of the screen (actually, the viewable area is usually a browser window, as in Internet Explorer), and adjusts the web page layout to fit the viewable area appropriately (according to what the web designer or creative director deem appropriate).

    This is normally used in web layouts; responsive web design can go well beyond layouts. Primarily achieved using media queries which is code language. Responsive web design empowers you to produce web pages that are independent of the viewable area.

    Responsive Web Design Case Examples

    I think a good example would be a web page that is used for computers and mobile phones, wherein the links in the top menu would be more workable repositioned as a vertical list, rather than a horizontal bar going across. This is not only achievable but the sort of details you will encounter during ur time using Responsive web design.

    If you have a grid in your layout where 10 thumbnails fit nicely across on a regular desktop computer monitor, those thumbnails would have to be nearly microscopic to fit 10 across on an iPad or iPhone. With a responsive design you can change it so that if the width of the device is as short as an iPad, it only places 7 thumbnails across, then only 4 thumbnails across for an IPhone may work well.

    A lot of website contact forms have a sidebar area (or two) for up-sale and other purposes. This is brilliant for a desktop computer, but on a smart phone, not so good because the form and the sidebar both are shrunken down too small to read. With responsive web design the form can be made to fill the screen and the sidebar could be hidden, placed underneath, “replaced” by other smaller versions with the same message, almost anything is possible.

    Responsive Web Design vs. Liquid Layouts

    For a while now, there have been web page layouts that flex to the size (usually the width, specifically) of the browsers window, known as liquid layouts. These are still in use today, although they’ve never been as common as the typical fixed layout you’ll find on most websites, this is where the layout stays the same no matter what the viewable area maybe. Liquid layouts are more commonly used for mobile devices, as they can be counted upon to fit every mobile screen size. This sort of layout is usually kept very simple, like a grid of thumbnails or a list of buttons. But if you took that same layout and let it span the width of a desktop monitor, you will probably find it to be too sparse, too stretched or everything is oversized.

    Responsive web design includes taking advantage of both liquid and fixed layouts, to accommodate for all screen sizes. Making your business/product/service available for all no matter where they are or what they are doing.

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  • Why Is Professional Website Design Important?

    You may already be aware of the importance associated with having a website for your business. With that said, you may not be aware of precisely how important it is to the success of your business.

    For instance, did you know that more than 80 percent of consumers turn to the Internet for information on services and products prior to making a purchase? Websites are a necessity for most businesses today. If you do not have a great website, you could be missing out on business and putting your company at risk. A great website can be an essential tool for informing your customers about your business and generating leads and sales.

    No matter what kind of business you may have, you can benefit from a professionally designed website. While it might seem easier to try to go it alone in designing your website, there can be many benefits associated with working with a professional website design company.

    While the benefits of having a website for your business are undeniable, it is also important to make sure that your website is professionally designed. There is simply too much competition today to present anything less than the best website possible. Users today expect a website that loads quickly and offers easy navigation. In addition, it is important to ensure that your website offers the latest options. A website that loads slowly, is difficult to navigate or reflects an out of date design could actually drive away visitors rather than attract leads. A professional website design company can help you make a great first impression while also attracting business to your company.

    Not only can you be assured that your website will present the right image, but working with a team of experts can also help to save you a tremendous amount of time. With the time that you save, you can focus on other important aspects of your business, thus presenting you the opportunity to grow your business even more.

    Experts understands exactly what is needed to help design a website that will send the right message to your visitors and customers. Whether your business has an outdated website that needs to be updated or you need an entirely new site designed from scratch, it is important to choose a professional website design company that can provide you with a reliable website solution. Let an expert help you create a website that will take your business to the top.

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  • How effective are UK SEO services

    There is a continuous demand for Search Engine Optimization companies all over the world. If you are managing an online business or planning to launch a company website, you will come to understand the need for SEO agencies to help land a good spot in the search engines. It’s one of the reasons why there are a fast number of companies getting involved; the demand for SEO companies is increasing.

    UK SEO services are effective in terms of helping start-up, small and large companies alike. Agencies in the UK understand that the organic searches have continued to grow despite economic constraints and uncertainties. They are also affordable.

    More and more consumers are relying on their computers, PDA’s, smartphones, and iPhones to search for the things they want and the things they need. The next hard step of the process is finding companies that are good. Every one says they are good; but over 80% of the companies don’t know how to do it, or are so outdated in their methods what they know doesn’t work.

    There is a continued increase of trust in the companies providing these services and the quality of their service. In fact, 2012 seen an increase in companies providing these services from 9% to 13%, which is quite a significant increase.

    What are the services provided?

    A typical company can provide you services such as search engine optimization, analytics, link building, content marketing, social media or community management, and others. Of course, services may vary from one company to another.

    You have to make sure your getting the best value for your money. Whether you are looking for an agency that can provide you localized or globalized strategies. You should be able to ask the company to devise a localized plan to target your local customers, or you can ask the firm to devise a global approach, for your online marketing strategy. Either way, a reputable firm, should be able to help you achieve success online.

    In answer to the initial question; such companies can be very effective provided you choose the right one.

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  • Effective Off Page SEO In 2014

    The year 2014 has come, which means a new year of opportunity has opened for online business owners. If 2013 was not so great for you, it is time you make changes and look into effective off page SEO strategies that you can use this year.

    Beating your competition and keeping your rightful space online is a must if you want to survive the bloody world of online business. It is a must that you stay on top of your game and keep up with the changes made online. Here are some effective off page strategies you can try to achieve your desired traffic this year:

    Quality Link Building: This technique is nothing new to veterans in the off page SEO strategies, but this continues to be an effective tool in generating valuable leads to your website. Get as many recommendations or backlinks from reputable sources and relevant sources as possible. You should keep in mind that your sources should be related to the products and services that you offer. It is highly irrelevant that you ask a baby product website to link to you, if you offer dating services. Google and other search engines do not only check your incoming links, but will also check the quality of your backlinks. If you have a friend that is operating in a related niche, you can always ask him or her to link you up.

    Use Anchor Text: Search Engine Optimization, as you know, is all about using the right keywords and key phrases. It is always your goal that you use enough keywords and key phrases to achieve a good ranking in the search engine results pages (SERPs). With this, it is possible avoid creating content that is stuffed with keywords and key phrases, please note search engines do not like it when you keyword stuff, so just don’t do it. You can instead use anchor texts like “Click Here” or “Visit Here” to lead valuable traffic to your site.

    Content Quality: Again, this is an old off page SEO technique that is still useful for this year’s SEO campaigns. Google and other search engines value quality website content. They will continue to prefer websites, which can offer valuable quality information to end-user’s. Make sure that your content remains fresh and relevant to your market today. Maintain and update your site content regularly.

    Social Networking: This off page SEO strategy will continue to be a fad as long as the Internet is alive and kicking. Social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Multiply, and others are very helpful in bringing awareness to the public that your company exists. This will most definitely increase your visibility online. Remember, Google is not the only way for you to achieve online visibility and drive important and relevant traffic to your website.

    If you haven’t done this in the previous years, then you should re-strategize and apply these techniques this year. This will keep you from being penalized and being banned in Google and other search engines. Most importantly, this will help drive valuable leads to your website.

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  • On Page SEO Factors: How To Rank High In 2014

    WHAT IS SEO?

    SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. It is the process of optimising a website or webpage using specific methods which can help boost its page position.

    The term “SEO” was created/mentioned in an article published by Bruce Clay. Which Danny Sullivan then promoted, as he published an article on his ezine titled “Congratulations! You’re a Search Engine Marketer!” Source: searchenginejounal.com.

    So the concept has been around since 2001. Major developments in search engine technology and algorithms has made SEO a core piece of any company’s marketing strategy. Businesses are now beginning to understand the value of SEO and what it can do to help their business succeed online.

    WHAT DOES “ON PAGE SEO” MEAN?

    On page SEO used to be as simple as stuffing your page with the keywords you wanted to rank for.

    This is no longer the case. In fact, it has become very important to do on page SEO, as search engine algorithms are becoming more advanced.

    google-oldschool

    Back in the day, search engine algorithms used to just read your content, find your keywords and then try to rank you for those keywords based on your back links and other metrics.

    Now, search engines take a look at your site as a whole, as well as the individual pages and can work out what niche your site belongs to. As well as fully analysing all of your on page SEO factors.

    THREE FUNDAMENTAL FACTORS OF ON PAGE SEO

    1. SEO Friendly Permalinks
    You may find many websites out there have horrible URLs. To show this I will use IMDB.

    unoptimised-urls-not-seo-friendly

    So one way to help with this is to ensure that all URLs on your site describe and mention the keywords you want to rank for. As you can see, IMDB pulls no punches with their unreadable URL’s. The problem with this is crawlers – the robots that work for the search engines and have the job of checking out pages and introducing them into the SERPs (search engine results pages) – can’t understand what the page is about from just looking at the URL, which means they have to dig deeper and find correlations within their data.

    Matt Cutts even mentioned in an interview that the first 3-5 words of the URL are given more weight. You can check out that interview here. So it’s quite an important feature that needs to be incorporated into your site.


    2. The title of your page has to start with your keyword.

    Your title tag is still the most important factor of your entire on page optimisation strategy. A recent Moz.com study shows the correlation between pages that had the keyword as the title of their page and the different weight it carried.

     

    moz-statistics-weight-of-optimised-titles

    The closer the keyword is to the beginning of the title, the more weight/value it will have.

    3. Keyword Density

    Keyword density still plays a major part in any company’s optimisation process. Many people try to stuff huge amounts of keywords into one little 500-word article. Now the problem with this strategy is algorithms penalise your website for having high keyword density. Basically, if you’re inserting keywords randomly, then you’re doing it wrong.

    The best practice for ensuring keyword density is kept low is to just write the article naturally. The whole algorithm is designed to stop people from unnaturally stuffing their keywords into an article.

    What I like to do is start with the keyword in mind. So for instance if I were to write an article on “cat walking”, I would brainstorm the ideas for the article and create titles that are associated with the topic. It’s a great way of ensuring your producing quality content and keeping it all looking natural.

    WHAT ARE THE ACTUAL BENEFITS OF EFFECTIVE OPTIMISATION?

    Effective optimisation can help your website rank organically without the need of much link building. Algorithms are starting to reward people for writing quality content and contributing to their niche.

    If you start to optimise your website you should start to see an increase in the amount of visitors as well as the amount of crawlers visiting your site. It can also help you reduce bounce rates. Bounce rates are where a user clicks on to your site, skims through, and decides to click the back button on their browser.

    Effectively optimising your site can help reduce this as you can give them answers to the questions they have.

    Over the next few months, we will be publishing monthly tips on how to improve your website and how to align it with an effective SEO strategy.

     

    Learn more of GetMediaWise services.

  • Advertising Gold Rush

    When to Use PPC Ads on Google AdWords:

    The main reason that you should use PPC ads should always be about timing. When you need to attract short-term traffic to a new website or to one that needs to meet its quarterly goals, there is never a better time to initiate a PPC campaign. Since PPC’s aren’t going to net your longe-term SEO goals that are effective, just be sure to understand that you are not going to impress anyone with metrics coming off of a PPC advert unless they have absaloutley no clue about how they work or understand that it is only short-term in nature of AdWord’s ads.

    In fact, using PPC to build up organic traffic is probably the most cost-effective use of paid ads. Obviously this only works for new websites or new parts to websites that haven’t really got a stable SEO platform built for them yet. These situations are used to increase your “findability”, just be certain that the content you have on the site will draw those “finds” in-it makes no sense to run a PPC if your bounce rate is going to see a higher rise than your sales. Research is always key.

    You can also use PPC ads if you have a particularly small site. Obviously, i dont advise your site stays this way. Although in some niche markets it is very marketable and infact much better to keep the sight small. This can be to make the customers feel more close to the business than a cold giant business. In this instance you will need to pretty much rely on PPC ads to get going. Onsite SEO isn’t really going to make a big impact, so outside of advertising and word-of-mouth / blog / links, you’re going to have to get traffic in any other way possible.

    Keeping Your PPC Ads Efficient:

    Of course, knowing when to apply your PPC ads is only half the battle-the other half is knowing how to run them. To steer clear of waste, you have to follow a few simple rules of AdWords ads:

    Keep your PPC ads targeted. This doesn’t just mean keyword targeting, but intent of customer.

    Disqualify with negative words. You don’t just want to attract, you want to eliminate leads that will raise your click-through-rate (CTR) without the need for making a purchase.

    Don’t bid on position. Big Mistake. You want dedicated leads clicking so you don’t pay for bounces. Bid on conversions rather than ad position since someone looking for your product or service will click on a few. This lowers your spend and increases your ROI.

    Keep your eye on the prize. It’s easy to start looking at other metrics such as page view instead of gawking at the number of leads and clients you’re generating with your PPC.

    Don’t Let Google make you Panic!

    The bottom line here is you dont want to be forced into using PPC ads just because your in need of your keyword data that you have been placing all of your faith in. Trust me, using PPC adds at the wrong time and in the wrong way is detrumental to your wallet. Try switching your SEO tactics instead. This will work much better than being pushed into PPC at the wrong time.

    Learn more about us and what we can do. https://www.getmediawise.com/

  • The Importance of Keyword Research

    Anyone involved with internet marketing or web site design and development must be aware of the necessity of keyword research. A keyword is the word or phrase that an individual types into the search bar in order to find the most relevant web pages. It is possible to have to allocate an hour or more for keyword research, depending upon the depth of keyword research the marketer, designer or developer wants to achieve. It can prove to be a time-consuming and harrowing experience, indeed.

    There seems to be no exactly correct way to perform keyword research. Recommendations on how to do keyword research vary immensely, depending upon which “expert” you choose to consult. The primary consideration is what the marketer, designer or developer wants to accomplish with the keyword. Usually, it is for the purpose of search engine optimization (SEO). But again, the best way to achieve keyword SEO is different from so-called pro to so-called pro.

    Numerous tools are available that can assist with the keyword research aspect of an internet project. Some of these tools are free of charge, others can cost up to a couple of hundred dollars. Most authorities will admit profuse use of the Google keyword research tool, a free tool available to everyone. The major drawback is that the statistics reflected with the Google tool relate to ad placement and are not necessarily useful to a marketer or site designer. The tool will, however, give the user sufficient information on the number of searches performed for a specific keyword in order that keyword research begins SOMEWHERE.

    The Google keyword tool is easy for even a novice to use. The researcher need only type in the niche of his project, a keyword idea or the URL of a specific website. The tool will search Google’s database and provide the results. A good practice is to write down the top ten long-tail keywords that appear, ignoring the competition column. A long-tail keyword is a keyword that consists of 3 or more words (more like a keyword phrase). Then write down the top ten LSI (latent search indexing) keywords. The LSI keywords are the top 10 keywords that appear from the search, regardless of length, in order of relevance. It is a good practice to not only use ONE primary keyword to a density of at least 2%, but to utilize LSI keywords in the content to avoid keyword spamming while accomplishing improved results.

    The next step in keyword research is to determine the amount of competition for each of the 10 long-tail keywords that were selected. To accomplish this, the researcher must individually type the keywords into the Google search bar and perform a search of the relevant web pages himself. He should write down the number of competing pages (the total number of results returned from the search) and also make note of the sites that appear on the first page. Since the objective of keyword research is usually to rank on Google’s first page, the page rank of the sites that already appear on page one must be taken into consideration.

    The software tools that can be purchased can cut research time dramatically. Most are equipped with complex algorithms that will not only find the most relevant keywords, but also weigh the competition to determine what will be the most profitable keywords – all in a matter of minutes. Though some of these tools may be expensive, the money that can be saved because of the cost of time-spent may make the investment worthwhile, if the marketer, designer or developer has the intention of performing keyword research on a regular basis.

    Want more of what we can do? Click here..

  • NEW: Website In line With Our New Geographical Strategy

    You may have noticed that our website has been down for just over one week and had been replaced by a splash page. This was because we have decided to go with a geographical strategy, so each domain extension we have will have its own targets i.e. .nl (Netherlands) .de (Germany) .se (Sweden) and so on.

    It has also allowed us to create v3 of our website. Which is a lot slicker, quicker loading and essentially bug free, it will also work perfectly across all devices, this, put simply, illustrates what we can do for you and your business.

    Learn of GetMediaWise services. https://www.getmediawise.com/

  • What is the difference between White Hat, Grey Hat and Black Hat SEO?

    In today’s world, internet and online marketing have become increasingly important for growing businesses, both big and small. The key to online marketing is your website and the key to gaining traffic and potential customers to your website is search engine optimization. Many people are not familiar with search engine optimization and know next to nothing about white hat, grey hat, and black hat SEO. This article will give readers a broad overview of search engine optimization as well as explaining the difference between white hat, gray hat, and black hat SEO.

    To begin, search engine optimization affects how well your site ranks on Google and other prominent search engines such as Yahoo and Bing.

    The first type of SEO is white hat SEO. White Hat SEO is basically a process where users try to increase their search engine optimization through honest techniques and by following search engines’ guidelines. This means creating an error free website that has a ton of quality and unique content that offers a valuable experience to visitors. Examples of White Hat SEO include writing articles for other sites in order to gain backlinks, guest posting on blogs in order to gain targeted traffic, and posting on relevant forums in order to receive backlinks. White hat SEO is a very time consuming process because of the quality, time consuming work that must be done manually by humans.

    Secondly, and in complete contrast to white hat SEO is black hat search engine optimization. Black Hat SEO seeks to improve search engine optimization through techniques that are frowned on by search engines, or even considered illegal. Black Hat SEO wants to rank websites as quickly as possible. There are many different black hat techniques. One is keyword stuffing, which happens when a certain website includes a huge amount of keywords in an article in order to rank highly for that keyword. Another black hat technique is creating thousands of low quality or spam backlinks that link to your site in order to try and gain backlinks. Other methods include cloaking and hidden text.

    Black HAT SEO is found attractive by many website owners because it is extremely cheap and if done right, can still work. The costs of black hat SEO are a mere fraction of the cost of white hat SEO. However, black hat SEO is risky and can get you demoted or even outright banned from search engines such as Google.

    As you might have figured out, grey hat SEO is a mixture of black hat and white SEO. Grey hat SEO avoids or bends the guidelines that search engines have. Many website owners choose to engage in grey hat SEO because it offers a balance. You can quickly rank your website without being too risky.

    I hope you enjoyed this article about white hat, grey hat, and black hat SEO.

    Know more of GetMediaWise services. Click here..

  • What Is The Google Hummingbird Update

    Google launched this update claiming that its search was going to be more designed to provide users with a more direct answer to their questions. Google actually started using this update in the end of August, but they only announced the change on September 26th.

    WHAT DO WE DO NOW?

    As you may have probably guessed by now, Google’s algorithms continue to be a complete mix of factors that weight the relevancy of a page or site to the search query typed in. This definitely has not changed and continues to progress in the same pattern.

    Keywords are still a vital part of SEO. Google is trying to encourage SEOers to move away from just basing their strategies around keywords. They are now looking for people to actively engage users and to start answering questions.

    Provided you’ve been keeping up to date with the latest SEO strategies, you should have no cause for worry. Many SEOers believe that their entire strategy needs to be revamped, but there is nothing to worry about.

    Based on what we know about Google and how it’s improving their search results, we know there is a list of things that will continue to matter;

    ·Structured Data Mark up: If you scratch their back they’ll scratch yours. Making the search engine spider’s job easier will help them navigate through your site and do a much better job. Structured data can also help you improve your click through rates when your data is displayed in rich snippets.

    ·Google+: Google loves its own stuff. Its social network is essential in helping identify your online brand. Connecting it with concepts and serving your content in its search engine results pages.

    ·Keyword Optimisation & Content Creation: Keywords are not dead. You do not stop focusing on them; instead you have to learn how to refine them. Meaning focusing on quality content is becoming a vital part of the whole program and not over optimising keywords.

    ·Mobile SEO: Mobile SEO is becoming huge because everyone nowadays uses their mobile phones to access and search for things online, although there is still debate on whether or not people buy things online.

    ·Backlinks: Are still very important and a vital part to SEO and online marketing. You have to remember that even though Google is cutting back on their PR updates, they are still looking at backlinks, a valuable aspect of their ranking algorithm.

    HUMMINGBIRD UPDATE IMPROVING UPON THE FUTURE OF SEO:

    Hummingbird is a fantastic step forward in connecting relevant search result pages to the questions people are asking.

    It could also be a great way for users to focus on gaining visibility, especially if they change their whole marketing approach to target the user first, answer the questions they are asking, then follow up with some fantastically written content.

    Today, instead of focusing on questions like “How do I rank for this keyword?”, you would ask, “What are the best questions that I have about this keyword?”.

    Google can help you identify these questions by simply typing in the search keyword and it will produce results of related search questions.

    So now you know how to do this. You have to take a step forward and look to actually put this plan into action.

    More of what we can do? https://www.getmediawise.com/

  • Why Exact Match Domains Can Benefit Your Site

    For those of you that have not heard of Exact Match Domains, these are domains that contain the keyword in which you want to rank for. For example, if you were a dentist based in Newcastle upon Tyne, an exact match domain would be:http://www.dentistnewcastleupontyne.co.ukNow, the benefits of having a domain like this have decreased recently as Google has been focusing on reducing the amount of trust and link juice these types of sites can pass.

    How can you ensure an EMD retains its power?

    It’s simple. Google has been targeting poor quality content and poor quality anchor text structures on sites.

    So one of the best strategies moving forward with any domain you have is to ensure that every piece of content you write is unique.

    Then, any linking strategies you make have to target brand and generic anchor text.

    Then, adopting the “less is more” principle you can look to build very high quality links into these sites.

    As soon as you get the high quality links setup, it will help you increase the quality of your website.

    CMSwire recently produced an article on Content Quality vs. Quantity. With this they tried to distinguish a clear winner. The article was published in September so it’s a little dated now.

    “There is one question weighing on almost every marketer’s mind, or at least should be: what is better, quality of content or the quantity produced? The debate is ongoing and seems to be picking up momentum, but is there a clear and definitive answer to this question?

    No. The answer is that simple.”

    This piece is from http://www.cmswire.com/cms/customer-experience/content-quality-vs-quantity-is-there-a-clear-winner-022575.php

    Google has launched their recent update which is targeting quality content. Humming bird is the name of this update.

    It is focusing on content that answer’s questions.

    Answering questions is a great way to show off good quality content. The focus on semantic research is even more powerful thanks to this update.

    What do I mean by semantically related content?

    Semantically related content is content that is similar to other related keywords.

    Google is becoming highly focused on this type of content, content that relates to other things.

    You can see it from this example.

    Now with this example, you can see a lot of searches relating to “keyword research”. This gives us a rough idea of different keywords that should be used in the articles.

    These keywords can help us devise a good content plan and structure based on these related terms.

    It also means that you will be answering a lot of the questions that Google is asking. This could hopefully assist you in creating great quality content.

    Following on from the idea of using EMD’s and linking them to your site, this would give you the highest level of control on the links coming into your money sites.

    It also means you can use grey hat techniques to help you achieve online success without having to worry about Google.

    Learn more about our winning strategies! https://www.getmediawise.com/

  • Internet marketing tips for small business

    Most small business owners do not have the big bucks to market their business like the large companies do. This does not mean though that they should forget all about marketing as this is vital for the well-being and the success of their businesses. Since traditional marketing tool cost and arm and a leg, the best thing for small businesses to do is to make use of internet marketing tools.

    Know Your Market

    Keep in mind that your internet marketing endeavor will never be successful if you do not know who your target market is. There is no need to pay for a fancy marketing study to look for your your target market; if you know your product then you know who you cater to. Once you have a clear profile for your target market, what you need to do is to determine how best to reach them online. You can make us of blogs or even social networking sites.

    Set a Realistic Budget

    One good thing about internet marketing is that it can be successful even if you do not have much money. Just bear in mind though that while sticking to the free forms of online marketing will have great effects, it may also be to your benefit to get some paid ads. However, since you are taking out ads online, you will still pay less than what you wold normally pay for regular ads.

    Get to Work on Branding

    The world of online business is pretty harsh and you need to make a name for yourself. This is what branding is for and brand awareness can do wonders for your business. For your website not to be confused with that of another company’s, splurge a little on getting your own domain name as this is one investment that is sure to pay off.

    Know more about our winning strategies!

  • SEO Audit: How To Clean Up Your Websites Link Profile?

    Wikipedia’s definition: “Back links, also known as incoming links, inbound links, inlinks, and inward links, are incoming links to a website or web page”. Source:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backlink

    WHAT DO I MEAN BY “LINK PROFILE”?

    I get asked this question every day. Put simply, a link profile is when someone or something goes through your entire website and creates a report based on your current link profile and portfolio of back links.

    A link profile usually quantifies and evaluates the different types of links pointing to your site as there are many different content management systems and platforms that can pass you links.

    SEO Providers tend to specialise in link profiles as it allows them to see what is happening with the website behind the scenes and because of that, it gives them the edge when it comes to creating online marketing campaigns.

    SO WHAT ARE THE ELEMENTS OF A GOOD LINK PROFILE?

    • A good link profile should include the following elements:

    One way links vs. Reciprocal links: These are the two main types of back links that a website can have. One way means website A points to B and that’s it. Reciprocal mean’s that both point to each other. See figure one.

    Studies show that reciprocal links still work but usually don’t work as well as one way links. Barry Schwartz from the SERoundTable:

    “The overall understanding from the thread is that reciprocal links still work and work well. The issue comes up when you do it “excessively” where your links are coming from unrelated web sites and you are linking back to unrelated pages.” Source: http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/022388.html

    • Back link relevance

    How relevant is the website to yours? The easy way of understanding this would be to imagine a shop that sells toothbrushes. They wouldn’t want to purchase TV’s and sell them as their niche is toothbrushes. So if you have a website that is selling toothbrushes, you would want other sites that mention dental work pointing to you to keep it niche specific. This also helps search engines figure out what your website is about.

    • Back link quality

    I can’t preach this enough. Quality matters and it goes back to the old saying, “quality over quantity”. You only want websites that are trusted sources of information in the search engines eyes linking to your site. Many people believe it’s better to have a huge bunch of links pointing to your site, but these links could come from a variety of different places and have minimal value, whereas a website that is trusted by the search engine could have a much higher value if it links to your site.

    This then leads into the next section:

    • Bad link neighbourhoods

    Avoid sites that just seem to spam links. You don’t want to be associated with sites that have huge amounts of outbound links. Think “less is more” principle.

    Bad link neighbourhoods can really put your whole link profile in danger. I have had many web masters approach me and ask how to identify bad link neighbourhoods. The simple way of doing it is by asking yourself this question:

    “If I owned this website, why would it link to this website?”

    If the answer is “It wouldn’t” and you happen to find that it has a bunch of outgoing links to a wide range of different sites, there is a chance that Google will see this site as poor quality.

    PUTTING IT TOGETHER IN A REPORT:

    There are various tools out there that can help you collect this information. Tool’s like Ahrefs.com & MajesticSEO are two of the top tools for finding out information on a websites back link profile.

    Because of this you can quickly generate reports and identify flaws within your back link profile. If you need help in doing this, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

    Learn more about our SEO services. https://www.getmediawise.com/