Using Videos To Make Your Website Stand Out From The Crowd.

With so many businesses offering the same or similar products and services online, it is important to understand how your company can stand out from the crowd.

This is where SEO and good website design is important. If your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is successful your businesses website will be found near the top of the search engine rankings where your potential customers are most likely to click. In the same way, it is relatively easy for individuals to attempt to design their own websites using boxed packages.

By introducing a few simple editions to your website design, you can not only improve the look of your site, but it also offers the opportunity to improve your websites SEO. Incorporating a video into your website is one such way that this can be done.

When browsing the internet, it has been proven that potential customers only spend a few seconds on a website before deciding whether or not it is suitable for their requirements, a video immediately introduces the products and services that a business has to offer without the need for the visitor to read through pages of text, making it much more accessible.

Here at The Creare Group we offer the opportunity for our customers to add a video, similar to the one found on our homepage, to their website. In addition, we can also add dynamic videos alongside the presenter to demonstrate how certain products work.

As well as increasing the accessibility of a website, a video can boost your websites SEO. Search engines such as Google, Bing, MSN and Yahoo allow Internet users to clearly define their search using particular filters. One such filter is video, this means that they could look for videos tagged under a specific search term. By adding a video to your website you are inadvertently increasing your presence online.

These days it is so important to make your website stand out and for this SEO is just as important as your design skills. Adding a video is one simple way that you can tackle both, potentially increasing the traffic to your website and reducing bounce rates.

Search Engine Optimisation is still a fairly niche industry, and as a result, it is vastly unregulated. At Creare we understand that it is easy for business owners to invest large amounts of time and money into their digital media and optimisation, without necessarily being sure of the services they should subsequently expect. This video may be fun, but it does have a purpose – to educate small to medium sized businesses as to the dangers of believing companies who promise an immediate and organic number one ranking in Google when they just aren’t capable of achieving this.

At Creare we feel really strongly about this, and mean to raise awareness for all those who may not have an in depth understanding of what SEO involves. Starring home grown talent in the form of our very own web designer Michael Angrave, our video shows that with us, you can be sure our ‘SEO O O will take you higher’!
For anyone in doubt about the services they are receiving, do check the Google guidelines and make sure your site is getting the best possible rankings.

Enjoy!!

Script:

Welcome

Most SEO consultants will suggest that flash is not search engine friendly and cannot be indexed.

Although a HTML site will naturally perform better in search engines than a flash site, this doesn’t necessarily mean that flash is ignored all together.

We have developed methods of integrating flash so that a user and search engines can see it.

Step 1.) Embedding the flash file:

Google actually provides flash embed code at its code.google.com website and recommends that you use SWF Object to embed your flash.

This method also complies with w3c standards.

Step 2.) Ensure you use your IE hacks:

It is important that you use the ie hacks provided via HTML comments, otherwise you will see a blank space in IE.

Step 3.) Adding content to your flash file:

Again SEO consultants often think that only dynamic text within flash gets indexed, again not true as your will see shortly. Our recommendation is to ensure that the text within your flash file has been written in flash and is not imagery.

Step 4.) Object Title

You can also give your object a title, like in most HTML you can name your flash file, be honest with your title tho.

We will show you an example looking at Creares flash file, it has been indexed by Google.

URL: http://www.seo-creare.co.uk/bounce.swf

You can also see that the content within the flash file has been indexed.

Conclusion - You can actually specifically search for just flash file using the following string: filetype:swf

Titles Make Your Content More Readable

People write about their business differently but they all have one thing in common; to draw people in to read their content. However, one common mistake that people often make is cramming all the information into the title.

The theory behind this is right, you want people to find your content through titles, but how it is practiced can be wrong. Many people choose to title their external content with long, overdrawn headings that cannot be read at a glance. This is no good if people are scanning through content to find something that is relevant to their business.

The trick with titling your content is to make sure they follow three simple rules;

1.Short and snappy words that people can digest at a glance. They shouldn’t have to click on the post just to read the title and you’ll find many won’t.

2. Keep Search Engine Optimisation in mind. Keywords should be inserted in the title to appear higher in searches.

3. Ensure your title reflects what you’ve written about. There is nothing worse than reading a post about something that was of use, only to find out in the second paragraph there is no relevance to the title at all.

Following on from point 2, there are many ways titles can also increase the performance of your website within the search engines. Making your titles key word rich (but still concise) is a sure fire way to attract readers to your post. Inserting your key words see the title of your PR, article and even blog, will ensure it appears higher than those that don’t making sure your entry is of greater importance, as well as increasing your Search Engine Optimisation.

So, next time you open that fresh clean page and start typing, take extra care devising your titles. Read over and think; Would you click to read further?

Every SEO knows the importance of links. Links are the ‘currancy’ of the web. External links are great to get your site found, spidered and indexed by the Search Engines, but can be difficult to obtain, manage and control. So, your site should have two types of links, some pointing to it ie external and some pointing to other pages on your site ie internal links. The best thing about internal links is that you have control over them, you get to decide the anchor text, you get to decide the placement of them and you get to decide how many you’re going to have on a page, or pointing to a page.

Internal links don’t cost anything. They can be targeted, from within relevant text, to relevant pages, making them stronger and more valid. You can increase the PageRank of a page with internal links. You homepage usually has the highest PageRank of your site, so create an internal link from your homepage to the page that you want to pass the PageRank on to (ie a page where you’re optimising a competitive keyword that doesn’t fit on the homepage). Use descriptive anchor text. Use the keywords that the linked-to page is about, this will help the search engines and your users to know what the link goes to. You can use this technique to help your internal pages attain higher rankings

You should have several different types of internal links on your site.

1. Navigation Links – Always ensure that if you use JavaScript or image based navigation that you provide a html version as well to help the search engines spider your site effectively.
2. Footer Navigation – this is different to the main navigation, and should always be written in a list format. Use your most competitive keywords as the anchor text.
3. Inline Text Links – These are some of the most important links on the page. Why? Because you can surround them with relevant text to increase their ‘worth’ to the search engines. You can also use them to direct users around your site, and hopefully eventually towards a conversion.
4. Sitemap links – by providing a sitemap you are giving the search engines a valuable list or ‘contents page’ of all the page’s within your website. This is useful for both the search engines and your visitors, especially if you have a large site with a lot of pages to visit.

You should use internal linking as part of your SEO campaign. You may well find that by creating a few targeted inline text links that your site starts to climb the listings. Obviously this isn’t the only SEO technique that will make a difference to your campaign, but when integrated with well written copy, good site architecture, and of course a great external linking strategy, you will find your listings are higher, your pages stronger and your visitor numbers increase.