Script:

Welcome to this weeks SEO video blog, following on from the ‘web design’ video blogs from the last couple of weeks on the benefits of top level domains (TLD’s), so this we are going to look at methods of Geotargeting.

We mentioned previously if you are targeting a particular country, then having a country specific domain .co.uk, .fr. .de helps Google to assign your site with that particular country. We also mentioned if you are targeting the UK search with a .com or .org that it is worth hosting the site on a UK IP address to assist google in identifying your target country.

A colleague of mine recently found a tool that identifies the IP address location from your URL.

It can be found at http://www.81solutions.com/server-location.html, you can see that it pin points your IP location.

We also found out this week that you also specify Geotargeting via websmaster tools and we will show we how to do this in this weeks tutorial.

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Thanks for watching if you have any questions of comments please leave them on the youtube channel or supporting blog post.

http://www.seo-chicks.com/1463/geotargeting-on-the-same-domain-using-xml-sitemaps.html

Don’t Let Excuses Affect Your Campaign.

I’m a big fan of routine, which is why every Wednesday I prepare for my SEO blog post for the following morning. I browse online, see what news is out there, if there are any interesting points that have caught my eye and read more on a subject to see if it’s something I could give my opinion on.

You could say, this makes me a creature of habit, but fortunately, I do not let this interfere with my blog content.

There are various reasons why blogs fail but two major factors are; bad habits and excuses. But many people are still unaware of the impact that having a blog could have on their SEO, and often leave it days, weeks and even months before they update their blog again.

There is no excuse for not blogging everyday because your blog should be up to date with current affairs and events as well as discussing what you know best anyway.

No-one says blog post have to be pages long, but updating to inform your readers of social goings on as well as industry bites will mean you connect with them on various levels.

So what good habits should you employ to improve your blogging techniques?

Good Timing:

Ensure you set a plan to blog post. When that time rolls round you then won’t feel daunted by the task of writing again. You can devise a post with ease and it will spur you to keep your eyes open for new content as your browse the web or newspapers.

Also, don’t post about something that is a week old. Keep news current and if you’re struggling to find something interesting, write about what you know, or take the opportunity to engage with your readers on a more personal note. Whatever you do, DON’T avoid writing and posting.

Don’t Play Hide and Seek:

One habit that people should practice throughout every blog post is ensuring they have links that are visible. No reader wants to trawl through the internet trying to find a website you’ve referred to or a post that you’ve mentioned.

Highlight your links for everyone to see and make sure that you refer to information that has inspired your blog. Authors will appreciate the traffic you drive to their site and doing so provides a great opportunity for networking.

Don’t Be A Bore:

What is the main reason you are writing your blog? Obviously to attract readers and keep them coming back for more information. To ensure this is the case you must write contact that is informative but written with personality.

Take a look at Danii, one of our Content Writer’s last post, ‘Why Your SEO Copy Should Have Personality’ for tips on the benefits of writing for your audience, not your Search Engine Crawlers.

Getting into good blog habits is easy if you know how and the advantages these will have for your SEO campaign will be reflected in good time. Don’t just write for the sake of it. Have a purpose and make sure you stick to it for longer than a month!

SES London is the biggest search marketing conference in Europe. All the leadings SEO consultants and experts will be attending this exciting event to share their knowledge and discuss new techniques. The event is being held at The Business Design Centre and runs from 15h February to 18th February.

Many SEO experts will be speaking at SES London, offering their insights and expertise in Search Engine Marketing. They will discuss all aspects of search marketing, from developing SEO content for websites through to analysing analytics data to get the best from your website. You can learn why an XML sitemap is important, what Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites can do for your business.

Nick Rinylo, SEO Department Manager here at Creare, will be attending the event today and will hopefully return with some useful nuggets of information for the rest of us.

What’s today’s agenda then?

• Bryan Eisenberg, will divulge ‘21 Secrets of Top Converting Websites’ this morning.

• Shari Thurow and Alan Perkins will offer advice on successful Information Architecture.

• Jeff Ferguson and Crispin Sheridan will offer their insights into Digital Asset Optimisation.

• Mel Carson and Lisa Myers will give a Social Media 101 talk.

• Lisa Myers, Maile Ohye, Dan Cohen and Julian Sambles will talk about the future of SEO and how to distinguish useful SEO advice from the guff that abounds online.

• Jon Myers and Dave Chaffey will give an introduction into paid search and the benefits that can be obtained from it.

• Brent Payne, Paul Roach and Julian Shambles will talk about realtime search.

• Jim Boykin will share his knowledge of link building.

• Abhishek Rungta and François Planque will discuss best practices in outsourcing.

• Sante Achille and Mikkel deMib Svendsen will talk about the usefulness of xml sitemaps, synidication and sitemaps.

• Rishi Saha, Mark Pack and Mark Hanson will discuss how digital media affected the 2008 elections in the USA and how this could pan-out for the upcoming UK elections.

• Johnathan Allen, Heather Lloyd-Martin, Greg Jarboe and Amanda Davies will offer real advice about developing great online content for websites.

• Judith Lewis, Paul Reilly and Matthew Wood will talk about New Affiliate Opportunities and Strategies.

• Crispin Sheriden, Bas van den Beld, Marco Corsaro and Anders Hjorth will discuss the meteoric rise of Social Media.

• Matt McGowan and Mike Grehan will finish up with a discussion at the Hilton Cocktail Lounge all about black hat / white hat SEO.

What a Long Day! But, I expect that there will be a lot gained from attending such an interesting and useful event.

Are you attending the conference? If so please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Writing SEO Copy For Real People

When writing web copy whether on-site, an article or press release it can be really easy to get hung up on packing in all of the SEO tricks of the trade. As an example, it is really easy to stuff your copy full of keywords, to the point that it doesn’t read very well at all.

SEO consultants may think that using a multitude of techniques in one piece of copy will win them favour in the eyes of the search engines, however, as well as being accepted as an authority by Google, Bing and Yahoo, it is important that the copy is read and understood by real people – ultimately that will lead to a sale for a business.

Adding a dash of personality to your copy will instantly draw readers in, encouraging them to visit your website, and browse your products and services.

Interesting copy could even help towards your SEO; article marketing is a popular technique used by consultants as it is a means of creating back links. Traditionally, if the information contained in the article is interesting and engaging, others would take the copy and use it on their website or blog with the back link intact, increasing the number of links to a site, hence working towards the SEO.

So how can you give your copy personality?

Vary your words and phrases – there is nothing more boring than reading a piece of copy that repeats the same words and phrases over and over. Try to vary the language in your copy, for example if you are writing about SEO, you could also use the words online marketing or search engine optimisation as slight variations of the term.

Write for your target audience – one of the most important aspects of making your copy engaging, is to know exactly who it is that you are writing for. Just as each business is targeted at a particular audience, so is copy. What might interest one individual may not connect with another. Try to write in a style that identifies with the audience, whether that is casual or formal. Also, try to inject the personality of the reader into the copy.

Add images – adding images to your copy is likely to draw your readers in more than a page full of text, it will literally paint a picture of what your article, website or press release is trying to convey.

Images could even help towards your search engine optimisation, as they too can be optimised. To optimise an image you should choose a suitable file name. Google Universal Search indexes images, if an internet user searches for an image of a computer and your image’s file name is ‘computer’ your image is likely to feature somewhere in the list of images for that search term. This is just another means of linking people to your site or copy.

As search engines become increasingly sophisticated, it has been argued that they are giving more authority to those websites that are human-friendly, after all it is humans that use websites. As much as SEO has to make a website search engine robot friendly, it also has to reflect the information that is most likely to be useful for real people.

Can the Launch of Google Buzz Broaden the Horizons of Social Media Optimisation?

Google has recently launched its ‘Buzz’ social networking platform that it hopes will rival established giants such as Facebook and Twitter. We all know the magnitude of Google, so could its own network mean a new dawn for SEO? In a word – maybe. Not the most conclusive answer I know, but until a few technical issues are addressed it is hard to know if it will add anything of note to the industry.

Google Buzz will enable that crucial link-building though, including YouTube, and also allows users to connect feeds from Twitter and Flickr as well. Everything from images, videos, links, ‘Tweets’ and blog content can be sourced from these other applications quickly and easily. In this sense, search engine optimisation can be undertaken, as material will be indexed by Google.

As I noted in a previous blog regarding Google’s Social Search function, until the organisation secures some sort of link-up with Facebook then their social media aspirations are unlikely to prosper. This is widely-regarded as the web’s largest community network, and SEO organisations are becoming increasingly aware of the possibilities that it provides.

As with the Social Search, users will have to be logged into a Gmail account to participate with Buzz. While Gmail is the third most popular email service on the planet with an estimated 177 million users, it still lags behind Hotmail and Yahoo in popularity, which will naturally have an impact on the amount of traffic that Buzz will generate. But is likely that many individuals will sign up to a Gmail account if Buzz does ‘catch on’ in much the same way as Facebook and MySpace previously have.

What is unique about Google Buzz is that it offers a basic email function alongside the ability to consolidate social content in one place. This is a clear advantage over Facebook and ultimately Hotmail, and something that Google will look to build-on.

While it is unlikely that Buzz will dethrone Facebook in the near distant future, it is an important step in keeping all of the social networks on their toes and ensure that they keep creating new technologies and features that can be exploited to maximum effect by the SEO world.