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4 things and their minimum effective dose for DIY organic SEO
Understanding Organic SEO
There are four points to organic seo – keywords, source materials (this is the site that is actually going to be ranking in the search engines and where we want visitors to go), links and manipulating user metrics.
Keywords:
Researching keywords is key to cover all aspects of the broader spectrum of searches people will do looking for what your site offers. This is generally done by looking at a cross section of competitors (at least 5) and tabulating every keyword that is relevant. From this list source materials can be generated. It will take about 30 minutes to do this at a basic level and get you broad keywords and any interesting secondary keywords you can use in your article titles for ongoing content. Anything above 5 main competitors starts to get samey.
Source materials:
By the far the most important aspect of successful organic SEO is having sufficient high quality content to link to. Every possible concept, especially current ones, needs to be explored with content for your product or service. This includes all information or questions a potential customer may have whether a beginner or a veteran shopper.
I have done exacting tests on the importance of ongoing content – especially for new sites. Here are the maximum effect for minimal effort results – 1) new article/posts added weekly, 2) 1-2 static pages updated monthly, social media content streamed in real time with 4-5 various updates per week, 3) Add links monthly from your content to external review content and other social mentions to help them get crawled sooner.
Links:
The subject of links is best broken down into 3 types when it comes to organic SEO (there is a lot more to links than just organic SEO as high value links on popular and relevant pages can bring in more converting customers than all of your organic rankings combined): High value links, high relevance links and low level links.
High value links are those that give ranking power to your site. These are researched and built. Get 1 a month and link it to your home page – mainly it is worth taking your best article for the month and getting it guest posted on a major industry specific site – you can even get high value sites to link to your guest post and have it feed back through that way.
High relevance links are links to suppliers, authorities and web 2.0 sites specialising in your industry. These can be requested and sometimes bought (although when bought they will usually be less valuable). Get 1 a week and link it to your homepage.
Low level links are generally links that you can easily build from the multitude of social media, forums, article directories, social bookmarking, RSS sites and other smaller or up and coming web 2.0 sites. Link to pages within your content rather than home pages and category pages. The vast majority of the pages with these links on them will not be visited by people more than a few times. These links are generally used to help index your site in to the search engines and to show that there is regular promotion of your content occurring. These links generally lose their ranking power over time and need to be replenished regularly. Unfortunately, because this methodology does some small amount of good, it is required to get to the top of moderately competitive and above industries. Automating the process as much as possible is recommended – many programs take an hour or so to set up and you can just repeat the process monthly from then on with different links within your site and a new broad article on your industry. Do this once a month.
Manipulating User Metrics:
This is a very controversial topic as it involves promoting sites through creating an initial impression to the search engines. We are not talking faking it, we are talking about using who you know to get the ball rolling so you people and businesses that do not know you can subsequently find you.
The principle of presence and profit vs presence and problems – think about this: if you searched on Google for ‘best bank account’ you would probably get 500 different banks listed in 10,000 web pages. Only one of them (or perhaps none of them) will be the best – Google doesn’t try to just give you one answer even to a black and white question as the answer is seldom black or white.
One thing is for sure: the average visitor is going to pick the one on the first page in the top 10 listings or in the top 6 paid advert slots.
Really, the search term ‘best bank account’, probably shows bank accounts for the ten biggest banks on the first page. The order of which depends on the quality and expense laid out for the best organic SEO team and the highest bid on Google adwords (the paid advertising system that gives Google its revenue).
If those bank account pages were not present and visible would they be successful bank accounts? Probably not.
I’ll give you another example that has a negative effect with presence – a client of mine once had a related search for the company name followed by the word “scam”. This is a serious problem – beforehand nobody ever searched to find out if this company was a scam – but after some negative press generated by a rival had got high enough to leave a related search on Google, the searches started happening to find out if the company was indeed a scam. Nothing else had changed, the business was still doing a good job for all of its satisfied customers – the damage was that new customers were being put off.
If the scam link was not present would there have been a negative effect? No.
With that out of the way let me explain user metrics. You basically show the search engine that you have a great site, it is very popular and very well visited for long periods of time with lots of happy visitors interacting with the site, reviewing the site and recommending people visit it. You show that the business deals with all of its interactions rapidly and you do it all under the watchful gaze of the search engine so it cannot be mistaken – you have an amazing site, excellent content and incredibly happy visitors.
What if all of that was done for the single and initial benefit of the search engines so you get to be present to profit? Immoral? Possibly. Not best practices? Depends who is asking.
Does this mean you can have a site with poor content, aesthetics and quality and still get it to the top? Yes. Will it stay there? Not for long.
Does this mean that you can get an exemplary site to the top with excellent content, continued updates and constantly improving and expanding value fast? Yes. Will it stay there? Yes!
It is the combination of 1) keywords, 2) source materials, 3) link building that keep a site at the top and eventually get a site to the top and it is by manipulating user metrics that you can take a site rapidly to the top where it will then be visible enough to maintain its own user metrics naturally.
So how do you go about this?
Get your friends, colleagues, connections, family, suppliers, customers, potential customers and any networking peers to promote you – ask them to do specific things online to increase your size and your appearance. Offer them all incentives for doing so, after all in today’s online world – we need to talk the talk so we can show everyone that we can walk the walk, otherwise they will not be looking – they will be watching Coldplay live on youtube or whatever is the next big buzz.
Social Media, Review Sites, Facebook Likes, Retweets, Recommendation Sites and Rank promotion.
Make yourself look big and popular and people will want to check you out.
What if you “have no tech savvy friends”, “are embarrassed to ask”, or any of the other multitudes of comments people say to me? Find someone who will do it for you – and pay them for it.
Notice you still have to put in a lot of work, provide good content and a great user experience. You are just accelerating and making possible high visibility. It is the ongoing content that makes your site one that Google comes back a recrawls regularly. But it is these user metrics that make Google sit up and come over in the first place.
Seven things that get forgotten in Online Marketing
A key area of online marketing is actually marketing your product or service. Sometimes, this gets completely forgotten with all the new technical breakthroughs, getting to the top of the search engines, the latest social media marketing techniques, and PPC advertising methods.
Suddenly you find you have spent a lot of money on your online marketing yet no major business growth is forthcoming. We take a look at some basic points to consider and ensure get added to the online marketing mix for your company.
Why is there more buzz about online marketing than anything else?
There are many answers but two of the most key reasons are:
Anyone can do online marketing.
You pick up a book or read someone else’s blog post (like this one) and you get started. Everyone likes to have an opinion and generally, the least opposition to your opinion is on your own web site!
Every other type of marketing generally leads to a person going online to find you.
Think about it: you give someone your business card then what? They go online. The less tech savvy contact proceeds to type in your web site address into the Google search box and comes up in the search engine results page with you at the top and perhaps some other pages from your site but also pages that link to your site and possibly good and bad reviews. They will probably click on your paid ad that so many businesses put on Google Adwords for their company name. It is inevitable that they will glean some sort of first impression.
16 online marketing subjects that you need to know about
Online Marketing is one of the fastest growing industries today. As with any fast growing industry, this spawns many specialist subjects within it. There will be many more of these as time goes on but, for now, these are the main ones:
- Online Marketing Strategy
- Online Marketing Project Management
- Keyword and competitor research
- On-site SEO
- Off-site SEO
- Online Traffic Building
- Social Media Marketing
- Online Branding
- Pay Per Click management
- Paid traffic management
- Content generation and copywriting
- Online Reputation and PR
- Ranking Penalties Remediation
- Online Buzz and Viral Marketing Management
- Analytics and Conversion Rate Optimisation
- Ongoing Website Design
Without any doubt online marketing is where the majority of your promotional budget should be going. Every business should be looking closely at all of these subjects, scrutinising carefully the work being done in these areas currently (if any) and how to start reaching their commercial potential by pushing on these marketing levels heavily.
Evolutionising your Online Marketing: what the future holds and staying ahead
The main difference between traditional outsourced marketing and effective outsourced marketing
Many online marketing companies want to “revolutionise” your business. I do not like the use of that word at all. The truth is that your business has been successful to the degree that you have made the right decisions, provided the right services and products, and dealt with your customer base in the right way.
These methods, principles and standards are perhaps the most important attributes to incorporate into your online marketing strategy. We do not want to change everything, we just want to take your company values and services and make them available to people looking for you on the internet.
At Doggart Design we use the term “Evolutionise”. This communicates what we strive to do for your company in regards to its online marketing.
Successful Online Marketing… It is no longer just about SEO
Online marketing as an industry has begun to move out of its infancy. However, one very uncommon attribute to an industry that is growing up is the distinct lack of significant market leaders.
My take on this is that everyone jumping on the online marketing train called themselves “Search Engine Optimisers” and online marketing has become so much more than just about optimising for Search Engines. In fact, Search Engine Optimisation has become so much more than just getting to the top of the search engines!
Back in the early 90’s more and more people were searching online using search engines. People with web sites trying to get more business worked out that if they stuffed their web pages with the main keyword they showed up top. Then search engines and their users suffered from low quality sites also stuffing words on their web sites so new algorithms came out that ranked sites by popularity through number of links. So link farms were born. Then everything got really complicated so as to prevent people from manipulating the search engines too much without delivering quality content.
More than words: compelling your audience with Google friendly content
Many people forget that Google is really just looking to provide the right content for the right search terms.
Sometimes we try to write something for Google, rather than write something that is genuinely informative on an interesting subject. I remember several years ago I was writing some copy for my web design site. I must have written 20 variations of “website design” in four paragraphs. When I read it back to myself it was practically gobbledegook!
I realised at this point that even if I did get someone to visit my site from the search engines I would only end up with idiots ordering my services based on my copywriting skills. Idiots often do not have money to pay for good design work!
So I wrote my copy on the areas I was passionate about and within a few weeks I was on the search engines. Enough people saw my site and linked to the articles and, sure enough, I started getting good business from the site directly.
A Prelude to Search Engine Optimisation – what Google wants, they eventually get
The key to successful SEO for the long term
Search Engine Optimisation is a very big subject. There are many books and, these days, it seems like there are millions of people writing blogs, selling pdfs and telling people what to do to get their web sites to the top of the search engines.
Recently Matt Cutts – Google’s SEO (Spam) policeman – told us to stop trying to figure out what Google wants you to do and start figuring out what your user wants you to do.
Why? Because all Google is trying to do is to provide the content and web sites that offer the user exactly what they want from a specific search.
Even Apple, Microsoft, Google and Facebook (and everyone else) are powerless to stop you getting their business – but you need to get on the online marketing train before it’s too late
Crunching the numbers, ever increasing people are going online to Google and social media for everything
There has been a 23% increase in number of searches online per month since 2007
Assuming similar growth in the subjects these people are searching for it is extremely likely that more than 90% of people now use the internet to find local businesses and around 90% of people research a product or service online before eventually purchasing offline from a local business.
Google know these statistics and they understand what they mean. The user experience is as dependent on the search terms as it is on the user’s location for the majority of commercially intended searches.
More and more businesses are providing industry information so as to compete with their online savvy peers; Google will of course strive to provide the best information that is most relevant to the user and is taking location more and more into account.
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Doggart Design Ltd. is based in Birmingham city centre and have built a strong reputation in the industry. Contact us here or alternatively call on 0121 289 3414.
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